Walpole reflects, but exaggerates, the opinions of London fashionable society, on the marriage of Charles Edward. He knows little about the bride. ‘The new Pretendress is said to be but sixteen, and a Lutheran. I doubt the latter. If the former is true, I suppose they mean to carry on the breed in the way it began――by a spurious child. A Fitz-Pretender is an excellent continuation of the patriarchal line.’ At that time the Royal Marriage Bill, which prohibited the princes and princesses of the Royal Family from marrying without the consent of the Sovereign, or, in certain cases, of Parliament, was being much discussed. ‘Thereupon,’ Mr. Chute says, ‘when the Royal Family are prevented from marrying, it is a right time for the Stuarts to marry. This event seems to explain the Pretender’s disappearance last autumn; and though they sent him back from Paris, they may not dislike the propagation of thorns in our side.’ In a subsequent letter, Walpole continues the subject. ‘I do not believe,’ he says, ‘that she is a Protestant, though 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, and that, on that account, the Irish Catholics no longer make him remittances. This would be some, and the only apology, but fear, for the Pope’s refusing him the title of king. What say you to this Protestantism? At Paris they call his income twenty-five thousand pound sterling a year. His bride has nothing but many quarters. The Cardinal of York’s answer last year to the question of _whither his brother was gone_? is now explained. “You told me,” he replied, “_whither_ he should have gone a year sooner.”’ [Sidenote: _THE LAST HEADS ON TEMPLE BAR._] The London papers of the 1st of April contained other information not uninteresting to Jacobites. It was in this form:――‘Yesterday, one of the rebel heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now remaining.’ The remaining head fell shortly after. They were popularly said to be those of Towneley and Fletcher; and, as before noticed, there is a legend that Towneley’s head is still preserved in London. The late Mr. Timbs, in his ‘London and Westminster,’ gives this account of ‘the rebel heads’ and their farewell to the Bar:――‘Mrs. Black, the wife of the editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ when asked if she remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply in her brusque, hearty way: “Boys, I recollect the scene well. I have seen on that Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads――real heads――traitors’ heads――spiked on iron poles. There were two. I saw one fall (March 31st, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, as I have heard, shrieked. One woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I recollect seeing human heads on Temple Bar.”’ The spikes were not removed till early in the present century. [Sidenote: _DALRYMPLE’S ‘MEMOIRS.’_]