It is well known that James started from Commercy on the 28th of October, 1715, in disguise. But the precise manner of his escape is not generally quite correctly related. It explains why, for a full fortnight after James's disappearance, newspapers still go on reporting his supposed doings in Lorraine. The escape was of course abetted by the Prince de Vaudémont, who, to make it possible, invited a large company to Commercy for the day appointed, to hunt in his forests. James went out to hunt, and James apparently came back in the evening. But the James who returned was not the James who had gone out with the Pretender, but a follower of his, who bore a striking resemblance to his master, and had more than once been mistaken for him. Who this gentleman was I have not been able to trace. With this man James had exchanged clothes, unseen by any one, out in the forest. And so, as the Duc de Villeroy writes to Madame de Maintenon (the letter is in the Paris MSS), "_Il partit misterieusement de Commerci en chaise roulante, vestu du violet en Ecclesiastique, avec un petit colet, malgré la vigilance des Espions, sans qu'ils ayent pû auoir ni vent ni nouvelles de son depart, que deux ou trois jours après sa sortie_." The Pretender pursued his journey, carefully avoiding highroads, reaching Peterhead safely in the end, though only after much travelling backwards and forwards, taking pains to elude Stair's spies, who were placed at all important points. At Nonancourt he narrowly missed being caught, as we know, by Captain Douglas and two other emissaries, evidently what Bunyan calls "ill-favoured ones." For the impression became general in France--over which the editor of 'The Annals of the Earls of Stair,' Mr Murray Graham, grows exceedingly indignant--that these men were assassins retained to destroy the Pretender by Lord Stair, whose passports they carried, and who promptly came to their rescue when they were brought before the Grand Prévôt de la Haute Normandie. Very probably they looked cut-throats. One of them was armed. And as cut-throats, not spies, the _maîtresse de la poste_ cautioned James against them, helping him off, to save his life, in a disguise and with a guide provided by herself. As supposed cut-throats they were seized by the police, and as cut-throats they were brought before the judge. Stair's interference probably it was that saved their lives. But all his explanations and all his protestations could not for a long time remove from the mind of the French people the impression that the men were assassins. The Regent, we hear, released them without inquiry, simply to avoid scandal.