In the spring of this year died, in Rome, the only contemptible Jacobite peer who had been condemned to death; and he had had the good luck to escape,――the Earl of Nithsdale. He was taken into the Chevalier’s service, but for more than a quarter of a century, he looked to his heroic wife for money; and was neither satisfied nor grateful. He was unreasonably querulous, never had brains enough to be conscious of what his wife had risked and had done for him; was mean and untruthful; ever and utterly unworthy of this brave, noble, and true-hearted woman. Even after her husband’s death she saved his honour by paying his debts, as she had before saved his life. When she too passed away, in 1749, there could not have been a Jacobite who read the record of her death in the London papers, nor any _man_, however he might have hated the Stuarts and their church, but would have acknowledged that no truer martyr ever died at Rome than this angelic daughter of the house of Herbert. [Illustration: Flower] [Illustration: Decorative banner] CHAPTER V. (1745.) [Sidenote: ‘_TANCRED AND SIGISMUNDA._’] [Illustration: Drop-T]he stage took an early opportunity to put forth utterances in behalf of ‘moral order.’ On March 18th, 1745, Thomson, as warm a Hanoverian as could be found among Scots, produced his tragedy――‘Tancred and Sigismunda,’ at Drury Lane. The piece was ostentatiously patronised by Frederick, Prince of Wales, to whom the poet subsequently dedicated it, as a liberal patron of all arts, but particularly of dramatic art. Pitt and Lyttelton were present at a private reading of the play, which, therefore, had a certain political significance, and Whigs and Jacobites sat in judgment on it. Thomson’s cunning, however, enabled him to please both parties. When _Siffredi_ (Sheridan) uttered the lines, referring to a deceased king,―― He sought alone the good of those for whom He was entrusted with the sovereign power, Well knowing that a people, in their rights And industry protected, living safe Beneath the sacred shelter of the laws, Encouraged in their genius, arts, and labours, And happy each as he himself deserves, Are not ungrateful,―― the applause which followed had a divided, or a double, application; but it was as nothing to the tumult of approbation which greeted the passage emphasised by _Tancred_ (Garrick):―― They have great odds Against the astonished sons of Violence Who fight with awful justice on their side. All Sicily will rouse, all faithful hearts Will range themselves around Prince Manfred’s son; For me, I here devote me to the service Of this young Prince. And again had thundering acclamation double-meaning when _Siffredi_ exclaimed:――