The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
Say that a French servant of de la Cloche robbed and perhaps even
murdered him. In that case he certainly would not have been released
from prison. The man at Naples was regarded as a gentleman, but that is
not so important in an age when the low scoundrel, Bedloe, could pass in
Spain and elsewhere for an English peer.
But again, if the Naples man is a swindler, as already remarked, he
behaves unlike one. A swindler would have tried to entrap a woman of
property into a marriage--he might have seduced, but would not have
married, the penniless Teresa Corona, giving what money he had to her
father. When arrested, the man had not in money more than 160 pounds.
His maintenance, while in prison, was paid for by the Viceroy. No
detaining charges, from other victims, appear to have been lodged
against him. His will ordains that the document shall be destroyed by
his confessor, if the secret of his birth therein contained is divulged
before his death. The secret perhaps was only known--before his
arrest--to his confessors; it came out when he was arrested by the
Viceroy as a coiner of false money. Like de la Cloche, he was pious,
though not much turns on that. If Armanni’s information is correct, if,
when taken, the man wrote to the General of the Jesuits--who knew de la
Cloche’s handwriting--we can scarcely escape the inference that he was
de la Cloche.
On the other hand is the monstrous will. Unworldly as de la Cloche may
have been, he can hardly have fancied that Wales was the appanage of
a bastard of the Crown; and he certainly knew that ‘the province of
Monmouth’ already gave a title to his younger brother, the duke, born
in 1649. Yet the testator claims Wales or Monmouth for his unborn child.
Again, de la Cloche may not have known who his mother was. But not only
can no Mary, or Mary Henrietta, of the Lennox family be found, except
the impossible Lady Mary who was younger than de la Cloche; but we
observe no trace of the presence of any d’Aubigny, or even of any
Stewart, male or female, at the court of the Prince of Wales in Jersey,
in 1646.*
*See Hoskins, Charles II. in the Channel islands (Bentley, London,
1854).
The names of the suite are given by Dr. Hoskins from the journal (MS.)
of Chevalier, a Jersey man, and from the Osborne papers. No Stewart or
Stuart occurs, but, in a crowd of some 3,000 refugees, there MAY have
been a young lady of the name. Lady Fanshaw, who was in Jersey, is
silent. The will is absurd throughout, but whether it is all of the
dying pretender’s composition, whether it may not be a thing concocted
by an agent of the Corona family, is another question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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