The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
The Gentleman who WOULD HAVE BEENE HIS MAT’YS BASTARD at Naples, vpon
the receipt of his Ma’ties Letters to that Vice King was immediately
taken out of the Castle of Gaetta brought to Naples and Cast into the
Grand Prison called the Vicaria, where being thrust amongst the most
Vile and infamous Rascalls, the Vice King intended to have Caused him
to bee whipt about the Citty, but meanes was made by his wife’s kindred
(Who was Likewise taken with this pretended Prince) to the Vice-Queene,
who, in compassion to her and her kindred, prevailed with Don Pedro to
deliver him from that Shame [and from gaol, it seems], and soe ends the
Story of this fourb WHO SPEAKS NOE LANGUADGE BUT FFRENCH.
The newsletter says nothing of the intended whipping, or of the
intercession of the family of the wife of the unknown. These points may
be the additions of gossips.
In any case the unknown, with his wife, after a stay of no long time in
the Vicaria, is set at liberty. His release might be explained on the
ground that Charles disavowed and cast him off, which he might safely
do, if the man was really de la Cloche, but had none of the papers
proving his birth, the papers which are still in the Jesuit archives.
Or he may have had the papers, and they may have been taken from him and
restored to the Jesuit General.
So far, the betting as to whether de la Cloche and the Naples pretender
were the same man or not is at evens. Each hypothesis is beset
by difficulties. It is highly improbable that the unworldly and
enthusiastic Jesuit novice threw up, at its very crisis, a mission which
might lead his king, his father, and the British Empire back into the
one Fold. De la Cloche, forfeiting his chances of an earthly crown,
was on the point of gaining a heavenly one. It seems to the last degree
unlikely that he would lose this and leave the Jesuits to whom he had
devoted himself, and the quiet life of study and religion, for the
worldly life which he disliked, and for that life on a humble capital
of a few hundred pounds, and some jewels, presents, perhaps from the two
Queens, his grandmother and stepmother. De la Cloche knew that Charles,
if the novice clung to religion, had promised to procure for him, if he
desired it, a cardinal’s hat; while if, with Charles’s approval, he
left religion, he might be a prince, perhaps a king. He had thus every
imaginable motive for behaving with decorum--in religion or out of it.
Yet, if he is the Naples pretender, he suddenly left the Jesuits without
Charles’s knowledge and approval, but by a freakish escapade, like ‘The
Start’ of Charles himself as a lad, when he ran away from Argyll and
the Covenanters. And he did this before he ever saw Teresa Corona. He
reminds one of the Huguenot pastor in London, whom an acquaintance met
on the Turf. ‘I not preacher now, I gay dog,’ explained the holy man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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