Irish friends to tighten their purse-strings. Rome, with full knowledge that he really had no ‘religion’ at all, was perfectly satisfied that his Catholicism was uncontaminated. When, after his father’s death in 1766, Charles Edward returned to Rome, no recantation, nor anything like it, was demanded of him. The stories of the change of religion not only differ from one another, but the same spreader of the story gives different versions. Walpole, in his Letters (April 21, 1772) says: ‘I have heard from one who should know, General Redmond, an Irish officer in the French service, that the Pretender himself abjured the Roman Catholic religion at Liége _a few years ago_.’ Walpole, in his ‘Last Journals,’ i. 81 (April, 1772), says, ‘General Redmond, a brave old Irish officer in the French service, and a Roman Catholic, told Lord Holland that the Pretender had abjured the Roman religion at Liége, and that the Irish Catholics had withdrawn their contributions on that account.’ The time is also set down as ‘_a few years ago_.’ [Sidenote: _FOUNDATION OF THE STORY._] The entire flimsy fabric of these stories of conversion was probably raised on a simple but interesting incident. An English baronet of an ancient family, Sir Nathaniel Thorold, died at Naples. His heir, a Roman Catholic, could not succeed. Inheritance was barred by his being of the Romish Church. The law was as cruel as anything devised by the ‘Papists,’ on whose overthrow this legislation was made against them. To evade it, and secure his rights, the heir of Sir Nathaniel Thorold, probably, _permissu superiorum_, stripped himself of his Romanism, and became a member of the Protestant community, at St. Martin’s. This step entitled him to his uncle’s estates, and, doubtless, little disturbed his earlier convictions; but is not this the seed out of which grew the legend of the Pretender’s cutting himself loose from Popery? Charles Edward, in some things, was not unlike the craft commanded by poor Nanty Ewart, which ran in to Annan, with her smuggled kegs of Cognac, as the ‘Jumping Jenny,’ but which began her voyage from Dunkirk with seminary priests on board, as well as brandy, and was there known as ‘La Sainte Geneviève.’ [Illustration: Decorative banner] CHAPTER XV. (1761-1775.) [Sidenote: _STATE OF LONDON._]