The race of 1715 was passing, the race of 1745 was coming on, and
touching it is to read in the brown old letters the same loyal
names--Floyds, Wogans, Gorings, Trants, Dillons, Staffords,
Sheridans, the Scots of course, and the French descendants of the
Oglethorpe girls. Eleanor's infants, the de Mezieres family, had been
growing up in beauty and honour, as was to be expected of the children
of the valiant Marquis and the charming Eleanor. Their eldest
daughter, Eleonore Eugenie, married Charles de Rohan, Prince de
Montauban, younger brother of the Duc de Montbazon, whose wife was the
daughter of the Duc de Bouillon and Princess Caroline Sobieska, and so
first cousin to the sons of James III. That branch of Oglethorpes thus
became connected with the royal family, which would go far towards
rousing their hereditary Jacobitism when the Forty-Five cast its
shadow before.
In May 1740, Madame de Mezieres took it into her head to run over to
England, and applied to Newcastle for a pass, through Lady Mary
Herbert of Powis--a very _suspect_ channel! The Minister made such
particular inquiries as to the names of the servants she intended to
bring, that she changed her mind and did not go. One wonders what
person purposed travelling in her suite whose identity dared not stand
too close scrutiny. There was a brave and eager Prince of Wales over
the water, nearly twenty, who had some years ago fleshed his maiden
sword with honour, and who was in secret correspondence on his own
account with his father's English supporters. Could he have had some
such plan even then of putting fate to the touch? He is reported in
Coxe's _Walpole_ to have been in Spain, in disguise, years before.
In 1742 Eleanor had the sorrow of losing a daughter in a tragic way.
She had recently become a canoness of Povesay, a very noble
foundation, indeed, in Lorraine, where the Sisters wore little black
ribbons on their heads which they called 'husbands.' She was
twenty-five, very pretty, and most irreligiously devoted to shooting
and hunting. Though these chapters of noble canonesses are not by any
means strict after the use of ordinary convents, there were serious
expostulations made when the novice insisted upon constantly carrying
a gun and shooting. She fell one day when out with her gun as usual.
It went off and killed her on the spot.
Whatever Eleanor aimed at in 1740 by a journey to England, was baulked
by Newcastle's caution. In 1743 the indefatigable lady, 'and a
Scottish lord,' submitted a scheme to Louis XV., but it was thwarted
by de Noailles. Then Prince Charles rode secretly out of Rome, landed,
like Napoleon, at Frejus, and at the expedition of Dunkirk met the
Earl Marischal and young Glengarry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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