In the years that followed, while the young Prince Charles was growing up to his tragic inheritance, it can hardly be maintained, even by the most devoted adherent of the Stuart line, that James showed himself in the slightest degree worthy of the crown towards which he reached. Indeed, his conduct showed a reckless indifference to the means most likely to attain that crown which it is difficult to account for. When everything depended for the success of his schemes upon the friends he made abroad and the favor he retained at home, he wantonly acted as if his dearest purpose was to alienate the one and to wholly lose the other. His conduct towards his wife, and his persistent and stupid favoritism of the Mar man and woman--especially the woman--drove the injured and indignant Clementine into a convent, and made the great European {201} princes of Spain, Germany, and Rome his adversaries. Spain refused him entrance to the kingdom unaccompanied by his wife; the Pope struck him a heavier blow in diminishing by one-half the income that had hitherto been allowed him from the Papal treasury. But worse than the loss of foreign friends, worse even than the loss of the Sistine subsidy, was the effect which his treatment of his wife produced in the countries which he aspired to rule. His wisest followers wrote to him that he had done more to injure his cause by his conduct to Clementine than by anything else in his ill-advised career. At last even James took alarm; his stubborn nature was forced to yield; the obnoxious favorites were dismissed, and a reconciliation of a kind was effected between the Stuart king and queen. But fidelity was a quality difficult enough for James to practise, and when the Queen died in 1735 it is said that she found death not unwelcome. [Sidenote: 1734-1735--Charles in his first campaign]