‘Defender of the Faith!’ What could this mean? It is the first ‘inkling’ of the young Chevalier’s playing with his ‘orthodoxy.’ The ‘fermentation’ puzzled a French journalist, who, at the close of June, wrote thus: ‘Prince Edward (_sic_) keeps up an intercourse with secret correspondents in England; and one does not absolutely know in what corner of Europe he is residing. He is said to have gone over the whole of the North. He is an extraordinary and indefatigable man; and travels twenty leagues a-foot, with a couple of confidential followers. If he were daring enough to pass into Scotland, during the King of England’s absence, what, without a party on which he can depend, will he be able to accomplish, wanting (as he does) arms and money, and especially _without having publicly embraced the Anglican religion_?’ [Sidenote: _NEWS FOR LONDON._] Had Charles Edward then _privately_ become a member of the Protestant Church of England? Did the London correspondent of the ‘Gazette de Hollande’ know anything of an intention to that effect? However this may be, it is certain that in the autumn of this year we have the record, true or false, of the presence of the young Chevalier in London, and of his renunciation of Roman Catholicism, _privately_, however, and under an assumed character, in one of the London churches! In December the same journals chronicle as a notable incident, ‘That the Chevalier de St. George and his Son (call’d Cardinall of York) had a long audience of the Pope, a few days ago, which ’tis pretended turn’d upon some despatches, receiv’d the day before from the Chevalier’s eldest Son.’ Whatever these despatches contained, loyal Londoners hugged themselves on the fact that the Princess of Wales was taking her part in annually increasing the number of heirs to the Protestant Succession, and loyal clerics expounded the favourite text (Prov. xxix. 2), ‘When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.’ Preachers of the old Sacheverel quality took the other half of the verse, ‘When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.’ These were convenient texts, which did not require particularly clever fellows to twist them in any direction. [Illustration: Decorative Banner] CHAPTER XII. (1751 to 1761.)