THE MARCH OF THE PRINCE (First published 1965.

Suitable for everyone, including

young children.)

This book tells the story of Prince Charles Edward Stuart -- Bonnie Prince Charlie,
also called by his opponents "The Young Pretender" -- from his landing in Scotland with
seven men in 1745 to the Battle of Culloden in the following year. The story is not only
constantly as exciting as any story could be, but also almost unbearably agonizing. Seriously,
it could haunt you for days as you think of what might have been and so easily could have
been. Indeed one hardly knows how Jane Lane could bring herself to put down on paper the
heart-rending facts she describes so well.

I said it was exciting. This is how the book opens:

"At noon on 9th July, in the year 1745, two ships were sailing northwards upon an
empty sea. One of them, on whose tall sides was painted the name 'Elizabeth', was an old
French man-of-war; the other was a little brig, the 'Du Teillay' of 100 tons armed fore and aft
with a few light cannon.

"On the 'Elizabeth', Captain D'Eau, was noting in his log that they were thirty-nine
leagues west of the meridian of the Lizard, when he threw down his quill and hastened to the
quarter-deck as a shout came from the look-out: 'A sail on the larboard bough!'

"The captain immediately sent the bo'sun aloft with a spy-glass to discover the
stranger's nationality. When this was established, D'Eau had himself rowed in the shallop to
the 'Du Teillay', where, after holding a short whispered conversation with her captain, Mr.
Walsh, he was taken to the Great Cabin. Having fastened the door and given strict orders that
no one was to approach, he addressed himself to a very tall young man who sat writing at the
table, and who was dressed in a plain black coat, breeches and stockings, with a cambric
stock, not over-clean, at his neck, and brass buckles on his shoes. He wore his own corn-
coloured hair, tied carelessly with a black ribbon.

"A stranger would have taken him for a divinity student from one of the colleges
overseas, and that was precisely what he wished, for at present it was vital that no one should
guess his real identity. He was Prince Charles Edward Stuart, whose grandfather, King James
II, had been driven from the throne of Great Britain in the Revolution of 1688, when his son,
Prince Charles's father, was a baby of six months old. Prince Charles had grown up in exile
with one fixed aim, to recover for his father that lost inheritance; and now here he was,
embarked on his most daring and perilous adventure.

"'Sir,' said Captain D'Eau, making a courtly bow, "I have to inform you that there is a
man-of-war of sixty guns to windward, and that she flies the Union Jack. As she is bearing
down on us we must either run for it or fight...'"

And the pace is kept up throughout the book, each incident, of course, authentic.

We said that the book was agonizing, and it is; if there were a stronger word we would
use it instead. For the third time in just over fifty years, a great Scottish military commander
streaked like a dazzling meteor across the sky of history, Prince Charles Edward following in
the footsteps of Montrose and Dundee. For the third time such a military commander created
an army in Scotland out of almost nothing but his personal power to inspire (on none of the
three occasions had the fact that the Highland clans were fighting for their rightful sovereign
been alone sufficient to persuade them to rise up). And for the third time the Highlanders,
untrained, undisciplined, inexperienced, underarmed and often underfed, reeled off a series of
stunning and almost impossible victories against disciplined, well armed, well fed, for the
most part seasoned, regular troops. Take the first of Prince Charles Edward's major battles,
the Battle of Gladsmuir:

"The sun, dispelling the morning mists, gave the clansmen their first full view of the
foe, and it was a sight enough to daunt the bravest. They themselves were without cavalry,
while Sir John Cope [the English Commander-in-Chief in Scotland! had both horse and
dragoons, and it was a Gaelic belief that the English warhorse was trained to kick and bite.
The ground, too, was level, not fitted for a Highland charge; and the apparently disciplined
regulars, with their modern muskets into which the bayonets were screwed, so that they need
not pause in stabbing after a discharge, their smart red uniforms, and above all the dreaded
cannon, all these were unnerving to men used only to guerilla fighting.

"But Charles gave them no time to falter.

"'They are doomed!' he exalted. '...make haste! In the name of God and King James,
gentlemen, charge!'

"The clansmen muttered a short prayer, flung off their plaids as was their custom in
battle, and in profound silence raced forward in their shirts, each clan commanded by its
chief, his near relations making up the front rank, with his banner displayed and his bard
ready to inspire the men with reminders of valiant deeds of old, and his pipe with tunes played
in many an ancient battle...'"

We shall not describe the battle any further except to say that, as a result of that
charge, against some of the best troops in Europe, the Battle of Gladsmuir was over in ten
minutes.

And so it went on. Prince Charles entered Edinburgh in triumph; soon he controlled
the whole of Scotland; then he crossed the border into England, obtained the surrender of
Carlisle, which was in its way as much a triumph as Gladsmuir, and proceeded without a set-
back as far as Derby, only ninety miles from London.

It seemed that it was all over. The army that had been hastily raised for the defence of
London was untrained and indeed had never even fought. London itself was in a panic; there
was a run on the Bank of England; King George III had his valuables packed up in yachts at
Tower-stairs and was ready to flee to Hanover at a moment's notice; and there was strong
Jacobite representation both on the City Council and in Parliament.

But Prince Charles had, much earlier, made a terrible mistake. An experienced officer
called Lord George Murray had offered himself for service in the Jacobite forces and, despite
the fact that Murray had had many connections in the past, both personally and through
members of his family, with the other side, Prince Charles had not only accepted him - no
crime of imprudence thus far, for the great Montrose himself had started in opposition to his
sovereign - but had made him joint-lieutenant-general of his army before he had had nearly
enough personal experience of him to know that this was a sound decision. Worse, as incident
after incident showed that Murray, either because he was over-cautious and incompetent or
because he was a traitor, was a completely alien factor in the Highland army, Prince Charles
Edward did not remove him from his command. It would have been desperately difficult,
because Murray had by then undermined the confidence of the Highland chiefs and was
wielding enormous influence over them; but Prince Charles did not even try, whereas it can
hardly be doubted that, for instance, Dundee would have not only seen quickly what had to be
done but would have decisively and expertly done it. Anyway, they were at Derby, and the
obvious next move was either to attack the English army led by the Duke of Cumberland or to
move straight to London without engaging Cumberland's army. At this point Lord George
starts speaking as follows:

"'The whole world would blame your Royal Highness's Council for allowing you to
make an attempt so foolish and rash, which could not possibly succeed... Nothing short of an
absolute certainty of success could justify such a step; but retreat, which is still practicable,
and of which I willingly offer to undertake the conduct, will give your Royal Highness as
much honour as a victory.'

"Glancing swiftly at the prince, O'Sullivan [one of those present at the meeting] was
reminded of the first time he had seen a man mortally wounded in battle. The victim had
continued to stand upright for several moments after receiving a bayonet-thrust in his chest,
his face wearing an expression of pitiful, blank bewilderment.

"'Did you - did you - I must have heard you amiss,' stammered the Prince. 'You could
not have used the word - retreat.'

"'I did, Sir,' replied Lord George, unmoved. 'It must be the opinion of every rational
man that to get back to Scotland while the roads are still open is our only course..."

"Unable to bear the sight of the Prince's stricken face, 0'Sullivan broke in harshly: 'To
advance might be dangerous; to retreat would not only be disgraceful but disastrous. Whoever
heard of an army, unbeaten, suddenly turning tail when within sight of their objective, after
they have marched without opposition some four hundred miles?'

"'And don't forget this,' added Sir John MacDonnell, 'that the war undoubtedly would
follow you Scots into your own country and desolate it.'"

Two or three days later the Stuart dynasty could have been reigning in London, with
Bonnie Prince Charlie's father, King James III, king in fact as well as in law. But the
unbelievable happened, and it remained unbelievable even though it happened. Back to the
borders; back into Scotland; back, eventually, up to Inverness, four miles from which was a
place called Culloden Moor. There the prince's army met the redcoats of the Duke of
Cumberland, and even then the Highlanders ought to have gained the victory, and a victory
which would have won the whole of Great Britain for the Stuarts . But...

But you will find out exactly what happened next, and all the other momentous events
that took place in this astonishing period if and when you read this book. In summary,
however, we can see that in the councils of Heaven it was evident to God that the Scots and
the British did not deserve a Stuart victory. They had betrayed their God and too many of
them had betrayed their king, and too many more were prepared to turn their coats whenever
they thought it in their immediate material interests to do so. What they had brought upon
themselves they had brought upon themselves; and while God was prepared to show again
and again what, by a virtual miracle, could be done, He did not deem it appropriate that, by a
virtual miracle, it should be done. What they had brought upon themselves they must suffer;
and suffer, decade after decade, they certainly would.
 And anyway - we have already digressed a little, for Jane Lane does not address
herself to such questions in her book, and we are unable to refrain from digressing just a little
further still - and anyway, supposing that Prince Charles had been successful, had driven
George II over to Hanover, and had been able to present his father with the throne. The Stuart
family would have found themselves engaged in battles far more difficult than "mere" battles
in the field against all but impossible odds. They would have been fighting battles of a
different kind against the vested interests, who were determined that the country should be
ruled for their benefit and not for the benefit of the ordinary man, who were firmly
entrenched, and who were by then expert at that kind of battle, based on intrigue, bribery,
blackmail, double-dealing, treachery and treason.

How would Prince Charles and his father have fared, where King Charles II, with all
his brilliance and unscrup-ulousness, had all but lost his throne, and where King James II had
lost his. In 1745 King James III would still have had some twenty years to reign before his
death, but Prince Charles, owing to the circumstances of the resumption of the throne, would
doubtless have played a major part in the government of the realm, and all the evidence up to
this point is that he had the makings of someone who could do this well and in due course be
a great king. Both in the period from his landing up to Culloden and during the period when,
usually in conditions of incredible hardship, he was both hiding and trying to escape from
England, he showed himself to be princely in every sense: magnificent looking, charming,
inspiring, a courageous soldier and outstanding military leader, intelligent, kind, considerate,
merciful, responsible, straightforward (though perhaps carrying the virtue to a fault in
someone of his particular calling1), fully conscious of the duties to which he was born and
devoted to the people whom he wished to serve, no less noble under adversity than in
prosperity - few people born to rule had in their early lives given such grounds for hope of
wonderful achievements. But the question must also be asked: undoubtedly he showed
himself to have stamina in some considerable degree, but did he have it in the virtually heroic
degree that would have been necessary? Did he have sufficient to wage successfully
throughout the whole of the rest of his life a battle against intrigue and treachery which would
never have abated? And it is worth adding that in this battle he would have been without the
resources of his predecessors, for Parliament had made good use of its opportunity to remove
virtually all the supports upon which kingly power rested. No money of any significance
would he have had unless Parliament had voted it to him, for example; nor would a standing
army have been available to him when only by force could he have resisted encroachment on
his rights and on the rights of his subjects.

And we are bound to say that, as emerged clearly in another book by Jane Lane that
we shall be reviewing shortly, FAREWELL TO THE WHITE COCKADE, his life in exile
after his escape from England does not encourage one to be confident that he had either the
fortitude or the almost unfailing ability to judge character accurately that would have been
indispensable to him in his efforts to rule England as a true king ought to rule her and to avoid
losing his throne - or even failing to come to the throne - in the process.

1
We are not suggesting that he should have been devious. But no person with
important responsibilities should be excessively trusting of other people. "Be ye therefore
wise as serpents and gentle as doves," said Our Lord. (Matthew 10:16) prepared to
acknowledge even the strong possibility that he was a traitor; but the cumulative evidence as
otherwise incident follows otherwise inexplicable incident is surely overwhelming, and only
Jane Lane, as far as we are aware, pulls all the evidence together and draws the obvious
conclusion.
 But who knows? Not until the Day of Judgment shall we know what would have
happened; and in the meantime perhaps the best that can be said for speculations that victory
instead of retreat from Derby - the upshot of which would have been the more astonishing
political turnabout in the whole of history - might not have been followed by equivalent
success thereafter, is that perhaps they offer a crumb of comfort to relieve the agony of the
story and to lessen the haunting effect of what-might-have-been!

But we must not digress further from this book, about which we have two final things
to say. The first is that although the tale of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Scotland has been told
innumerable times, we do not believe that you will find it better told than in the comparatively
short space (160 pages) that it is told here. The second is that Jane Lane makes a more uncom-
promising assessment of Lord George Murray's role in the Highland army than any of the
many other writers on the "'45" are prepared to do.

THE ESCAPE OF THE PRINCE (First published 1951. Suitable for everyone, including
young children.)

This is one of Jane Lane's books written principally with younger readers in mind. It
tells of the last of the great escapes, all of them improbable, achieved one after the other by
the perpetually romantic royal family of Stuart. Born to live in palaces, to eat the best of food,
to sleep between silken sheets, and to be the rulers and protectors of millions of loyal subjects,
seldom did it work out like that, as we have seen from the books already reviewed.

But if the escapes of Mary Queen of Scots, King Charles II and the future King James
II were unlikely to a degree, that of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the future rightful King Charles
III, was over and over again virtually impossible. This is the sort of news that he would
receive from a loyal Highland friend who returned from a reconnaissance:

"'No less than six ships-of-war are anchored in Loch Nevis,' said he with a distracted
air, 'they having followed your Royal Highness from the Isles. But there is worse in it than
that. So certain are the soldiers that you are in this district, that there is a cordon of troops
flung completely round it, with sentinels stationed every half mile from the head of Loch Eil
to the head of Loch Hourn. Patrols march up and down between the sentinels to keep them to
their duty, and every ford and pass is guarded.'"

And then there was the constant appalling discomfort, though discomfort is scarcely
an adequate word. Constant hunger and thirst, numbing cold, utter exhaustion, and sickness
brought on by all of these - and we have hardly begun to describe what the prince went
through. Here is some more in Jane Lane's words:

"It was raining again, a thin, miserable drizzle, and crouched down there in the fissure
of the rock, the prince and his companion were soon wet through. They were used to this by
now, but they were not used to so narrow and confined a hiding-place, and because they dared
not move, their limbs soon became cramped and numb. It was the most uncomfortable of their
concealments so far, and as the day wore on they found it almost unbearable. For there came
swarms of midges, such as infest the Highlands through the summer months. These tiny
insects settled on the exposed parts of their bodies, especially upon their eyes, raving a
dreadful irritation and making their eye-lids puffed and swollen. So close were the
militia...that the fugitives dared not so much as lift their hands to drive the midges away."
 But do not think that the book is entirely filled with horror. In the first place there is
also the charm, gallantry, thoughtfulness, kindness, unfailing cheerful endurance and in every
way gentlemanliness of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself, a prince in character as well as in
breeding until, long after his escape had become history, the disappointment and frustrations
of his later years were to tempt him to become the slave of alcohol and generally coarsen his
character. No wonder those of the Highlanders who were loyal to him loved him:

"Not only was he their lawful prince, but during the time he was with them he showed
himself their superior in the manly arts of wrestling and sword-play, outdid them in his skill at
hunting and in shooting birds upon the wing... Added to this was his coolness in danger, his
endurance of hardship, and his persistent cheerfulness so that altogether they regarded him
with something approaching worship."

Moreover, the story is lit up not only by the heroic prince, but also by the heros who
helped him, many of whom who had been prosperous and powerful before rising up in arms
for him and were now in hiding, their homes burnt down and just as much outlaws as he.
Furthermore, there was a reward on his head that was a huge sum of money even in today's
terms and a staggering amount more than two centuries ago; and yet none of those who could
have done so made any attempt to claim it. As one clan chief said, when escape had finally
become all but certain:

"'You have seen, Sir, how little this thing called money means to my race, seeing that
there has been no less than thirty thousand pounds lying ready to the hand of any poor man,
ignorant and starving, who would have betrayed you. Many a shepherd and herdsman, many a
beggar and outlaw, has known these past six months how to earn that reward, but, God be
thanked, not one has stooped to such a crime.'"

And then there is the manner in which Jane Lane, with her characteristic delicacy,
instructs her readers in the beauties of the clan system and kingship, not known about today,
indeed generally held to be a tyranny from which people have happily been freed. In the
following passage, one of the clan chiefs, MacPherson of Cluny, himself in hiding, is also
hiding the prince, who witnesses the following:

"Every morning, one of Cluny's gillies, who was a barber, came to shave Cluny and
his guests, and to give his master the news of the countryside; other gillies acted as scouts,
bringing information of the movements of the red soldiers and the militia; others again
brought food, a change of linen, and many little luxuries; and often one or two of the other
MacPherson clansmen would seek out their chief to ask advice about their personal affairs, to
beg him to settle some domestic dispute. Cluny listened to them all with great attention,
interrupting a meal or a game of cards to give his judgment on a quarrel between two
clansmen, or to cuff another soundly for some misdeed. He was as quick to praise as to blame,
and whichever he did, the clansman in question took it as meekly and as unquestioningly as a
child accepts the verdict of a loving father.

"This enduring loyalty and devotion of clansman to chief, made Charles both happy
and sad. For since he was a very little boy he had been taught that the only right and natural
government in this world was that of one man accepting responsibility for the rest. This, he
knew, was the principle of the government called monarchy. The ruler had the duty of
protection; the governed that of obedience. And the ruler must hold his office by the right of
his blood, it being handed down from father to son, so that there should never be any dispute
about who ruled next. As a man was master in his own house, so was a king master of his
kingdom. He must take decisions, he must accept the heavy burden of deciding on peace or
war, the punishment of criminals, and the protection of the weak. He must see the law
enforced, and make sure that the rich did not oppress the poor. In return, he had the right to
expect a loyalty and submission which no outward circumstance could change; for every man
whether ruler or ruled, has rights as well as duties."

"But what about the bad kings, and other tyrannical rulers under this system?" some of
our readers may be protesting after reading this passage, claiming that it is giving but half the
picture if that. It is not Jane Lane's place, in a summary as brief as that, to present the except-
ions and difficulties which human beings have endured from time immemorial, and fervently
clung to their monarchies nevertheless. Certainly there are going to be mishaps in any human
institution; but if the system itself is sound and good, the failures will be mere punctuation
marks in the system as a whole. And what is quite certain is that there will be far fewer
mishaps - self-seeking and corrupt leaders - than in any other system.

Are there among our readers any enthusiasts for the democratic and/or republican
systems of government who object that the system of monarchy is not a sound and good
system? This we do not have to argue about. The Holy See has told us that monarchy is the
best system of government (POURQUOI NOTRE VOIX, allocution by Pope Pius VI, 1793-
reviewed in the section of this catalogue on papal documents), and that, for any faithful
Catholic, is that. Since the Divinely appointed authority has pronounced on the subject,
neither we nor Jane Lane have to prove that monarchy is the best system; all that is necessary
is to explain why it is the best system, and this Jane Lane does very ably, here as elsewhere.
Someone has got to rule, or anyway some group of people; so the only question is how he or
they should be chosen, how trained, and what responsibilities and powers are given to him or
them. And whatever system of government you institute, you are not going to be able to
provide any guarantee against the entry into power of bad rulers, so the only question is which
system is going to produce the fewer bad rulers and the greater number of good rulers. As we
say, the Holy See has already told us the answer to this, but perhaps the answer ought to be
already obvious enough from the fact that every system of elected government (other than the
government of the Catholic Church) almost invariably requires the person chosen to have
been willing and even eager to put himself forward as a candidate; and, as has been
perceptively said, the qualities needed by a person to gain government office are the exact
opposite of the qualities needed by a person to govern wisely.

Anyway, the episode related in THE ESCAPE OP THE PRINCE is a wonderful story,
a tragic but somehow glorious end to the active involvement of the Stuart family in the British
Isles, and we recommend this book not only for younger readers but for adults as well. We
close this review with Jane Lane's last words in the book:

"The story of his wanderings was over, and he was safe. But that story would live for
ever in the memories of those who had taken part in it, and who had been the means of
bringing about the most miraculous deliverance that ever happened in real life. And whatever
became of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the future, the remembrance of his gallantry and
danger, his endurance of hardship, his cheerfulness in discomfort, and his eternal
thoughtfulness of others, would ensure that to those who knew and loved him he would ever
remain, King of the Highland hearts, Bonnie Prince Charlie."

FAREWELL TO THE WHITE COCKADE (First published 1961. Suitable for adults and
mature children. Insert added.)
 The white cockade is of course the famous Stuart emblem, and this book describes the
long sequel to the astonishing campaign of 1745 which at one point looked as though it was
going to sweep the House of Hanover off the throne of England and restore the romantic - and
Catholic - House of Stuart in its place, and closes with the death of Prince Charles Edward.

The high spots of the lives of Mary Queen of Scots, King James I, King Charles I,
King Charles II, King James II, and King James III and King Charles III (or the Old Pretender
and the Young Pretender, respectively, according to your point of view), are fairly well
known by those who are averagely well informed in historical matters; but few people, we
believe, know what happened to the Stuart family after Bonnie Prince Charlie's shattering
defeat - his only military defeat - at Culloden and his improbable, heroic and desperately
romantic escape from Scotland after seven months spent as a fugitive. This book fills in the
gap and of course brings the events to life as we can rely on Jane Lane to do, and the story is
an enthralling one and at times extremely moving.

King James III is there in the background in the first half of the book, but he plays
only a small role, because, like his father, he has humbly accepted the dispositions of Divine
Providence and, while always prepared to do his duty to recover his throne if circumstances
should look favourable, is devoting his main efforts to leading the sort of life that will earn
him a holy death and a far more glorious crown for all eternity. The other three descendants of
King James II play the principal parts. One, of course, is Bonnie Prince Charlie, who becomes
King Charles III on his father's death. Like so many members of his family, he has exper-
ienced catastrophes such as are visited on very few people in their lifetimes, but these
catastrophes have not had the same effect on him as they did on his father and grandfather.
During his time in Scotland, as we saw in THE ESCAPE OF THE PRINCE, he gave evidence
of wonderful nobility of character, both inherited and acquired. But his terrible sufferings did
not make him nobler still. Sadly, the "Bonnie Prince Charlie" that had existed so far vanished
completely virtually from the moment he arrived in France after his escape from Scotland. As
Jane Lane writes early in the book:

"Charles had acquired many things, some good, some bad, during his campaign and
his wanderings after Culloden. An indifference to comfort and refinement, a rough skill in
doctoring, a slightly childish love of disguise, an utter confidence in the love of men and
women, particularly Highlanders, a contempt for the vacillation and self-interest of the great,
a conviction of his own natural genius as the leader of a forlorn hope, varicose veins in his
legs, and appalling and recurring nightmares which sometimes drove him to find refuge in
drink."

So far, not too bad, but the tiniest deterioration, if not checked, leads to a greater
deterioration, and then... Well, one thing he did not lack was determination, and he threw
himself headlong into obtaining help for a further invasion of Great Britain. On the face of it,
his ambition was far from being an impractical one: without any foreign aid at all he had
gained control of Scotland and all but conquered England on one occasion; in the meantime
the Hanovers and those who ruled the kingdom behind them had become even more
unpopular than before; and there could be little doubt that, despite the problem that the Stuarts
continued to adhere to the Catholic Faith, he would have been welcomed by the ordinary
people of England and that, given a reasonably well-equipped and efficient army to help him,
the lawful rights of the Stuarts could have been won back without great difficulty.

But although he was not kept short of promises of help from many royal houses in
Europe, promises were all that they ever became. This was depressing for Charles, but Jane
Lane never allows it to become dreary for the reader, because she is given the opportunity of
providing us with brilliant pictures of some of the European courts.

The best of these pen-pictures is undoubtedly that of France. In THE BRIDGE OF

SIGHS she gave us a superb depiction of the court of Louis XIV and of King Louis himself -
one which we think you will not see bettered anywhere. In this book she paints, again
marvellously, the dreadful King Louis XV and his court, including the extraordinary Mme de
Pompadour. And we even get a brief glimpse of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie
Antoinette, who reached the throne before the death of the now aged "Young Pretender", and
who were of course eventually to be victims of the guillotine after the outbreak of the French
Revolution. Spain also features prominently at one point. And so too does Rome, at fairly
frequent intervals. Nor is it only members of the royal families who are brought to life for us
through the eyes of Charles Stuart. Not surprisingly, several people visit him from England
and Scotland; and - shame on him! - he fails to shun the company and the influence of some
of the most sinister men who ever lived, the French "Philosophes", such as the immensely
influential Diderot, Rousseau, with Voltaire in the background though wielding arguably the
most potent influence of them all.

And so Charles Stuart slips and slips, and Jane Lane shows brilliantly how it
happens... until he gets to the stage of doing what his grandfather and father never did and
what his grandfather forbade his descendants to do: he set a higher value on the throne of
England than on his immortal soul and showed himself, like his great uncle King Charles II,
to be prepared to barter the former for the latter. Informed that there was strong support for
him in London, he paid, at the risk of his life, a secret visit to London and, informed that he
would only have the support of the conspirators if he renounced his religion... -

"On the eve of his leaving London, Charles was received into the Church of England
in St. Mary-le-Strand... Since there was no official rite in the Prayerbook for receiving a
convert from Popery, one of the conspirators, Dr. King, had drawn one up in his own hand,
taking infinite pains and a great delight therein."

"Never put the crown of England in competition with your eternal salvation," had been
King James II's dying words to Prince Charles Edward's father.

Well we shall spare our readers Charles's abjuration and acknowledgement of his new
allegiance, though readers of the book will not be spared the highlights of it by Jane Lane.

At this point we shall leave Charles Edward for the moment, and turn to his younger
brother, Henry Duke of York. Younger brothers of kings have been a varied bunch during
English history. Some have been intensely loyal, like the Duke of York who became King
James II, and some have been jealous and treacherous, like the man who became the infamous
King John. What did Henry do? If you do not already know, it is completely safe to say that
you will never, never guess. He became a cardinal, aged 22! - the youngest man to be created
cardinal since St. Charles Borromeo in the sixteenth century. From that position he was to
play a prominent part in Charles Edward's life on a number of occasions; and there was also
the remarkable irony that, while King Charles III spent a large part of his later life in the very
opposite of kingly state, suffering in fact really grinding poverty, his younger brother, who
forsook the interests of this world for those of the next world, served God in princely
splendour with a huge income, two palaces to live in, and a coach-and-six with outriders, a
train of chaplains, liveried servants, and all the rest, to convey him on any journey he might
undertake.
 The third main character in the story is Charlotte. Have you never heard of Charlotte
Stuart? In case you have not, we shall not risk spoiling the book for you by telling you any
more about her. Let us just say, however, that her main period of prominence is in the closing
years of Charles Edward's life, which occupy the large part of the book. And we would add
that the climax of the book, in which she plays a leading role, is extraordinary and satisfying
enough to have been invented by a novelist. Can such things really happen in real life? They
did on this occasion, anyway, and, as we have said before about episodes which Jane Lane
has described, we doubt if a novelist would have dared concoct this particular conclusion.

So much for the astonishing royal House of Stuart. King James I of Scotland had been
murdered, James II killed by accident, James III again murdered, James IV, grandfather of
Mary Queen of Scots, killed on Flodden Field, Mary Queen of Scots beheaded, King Charles
I of England beheaded, King James II twice exiled and eventually dying overseas, and finally
119 years of exile suffered by King James II's son and two grandsons. What other dynasty in
any other country has had such a history? The Stuarts had their faults, and many of them; but,
with the exception of King James I of England, they were truly royal in character as well as in
blood. And how great were their virtues and few and small their faults compared with those of
the usurpers of their throne, William of Orange, Queen Anne, and the Hanovers whose direct
descendants occupy - as puppets - the throne of Great Britain to this day. Right worthily this
book brings their story to its end.

Now we must say a few more words about the book which relates this history. Both in
the picture it gives of eighteenth century Europe and in its reconstruction of the dramas of the
main characters in the story it is, as the publishers validly claim, a piece of consummate
craftsmanship. But for three reasons we are more hesitant about this book than we are about
most of Jane Lane's others.

In the first place, although her facts are, as usual, for the most part indisputable, this is
by no means so of all her interpretations of the facts, and we ourselves are by no means
certain that, for instance, she has been completely fair in her handling of the relationships
between Charles Edward and his two wives. In the second place, something occurred after her
writing this book which, as far as we know, occurred in relation to none of her other books:
subsequent evidence came to light, in this case relating to Charlotte Stuart, which showed one
of her facts to be incorrect. We are including with each copy of the book an insert drawing
attention to the error and providing the evidence proving what she says to be incorrect. And in
the third place, the story is in our view not really complete. It ends with the death of Charles
Edward, and, while this is perfectly satisfactory from the point of view of the requirements of
an historical novelist, it carries the problem that, by omitting the last years of the last Stuart
"de jure" king, King Henry IX, the only king - even titular - ever to have been a cardinal, it
suggests that the closing years of the Stuart dynasty were unimportant and uneventful. And
such is by no means the case: the last years of Henry IX's life were as extraordinary and
dramatic as any novelist could possibly want for his or her subject matter.

So although we consider the story in the book to be interesting and important enough
for us to want to make the book available, we would not be happy for it to be relied uoon
completely. For this reason, we should like to draw attention to the fact that there is in print a
work which, once again not without reservations, we can recommend as a supplement to it.
This is a book called The Last Stuarts by James Lees-Milne, which was published in 1980.
Mr. Lees-Milne by no means has Jane Lane's genius for perceiving historical reality, and, for
instance, the concept of kingship of James II and his descendants which Jane Lane keeps
emphasizing - and which is also Catholic teaching on the subject - is completely
incomprehensible to him. But he is by no means a propagandist for William of Orange, the
Hanovers and the Whig oligarchy, and is far from unsympathetic to the Stuarts as people; and
where his interpretation of relationships and the causes of events differs from those of Jane
Lane, we think that he is right as often as not. And we would add that his book is well
researched and beautifully written. Bearing in mind also that he fills in the two gaps we have
just referred to (and many others too, because his book, unlike Jane Lane's, sets out to be
reasonably exhaustive) we are happy to recommend it as something to be read after
FAREWELL TO THE WHITE COCKADE, while not completely happy for either one to be
read without the other. We have not listed The Last Stuarts in the catalogue, because its
importance is not in our view absolute (any more than many other books written by
establishment historians which are excellent as far as they go), but relates, for our purposes,
specifically to FAREWELL TO THE WHITE COCKADE.