The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
It is a mere conjecture, suggested by more than one inquirer, as by Mr.
Steuart, that the words ‘Signora D. Maria Stuardo della famiglia delli
Baroni di S. Marzo,’ refer to the Lennox family, which would naturally
be spoken of as Lennox, or as d’Aubigny. About the marquisate of Juvigny
(which cannot mean the dukedom of d’Aubigny) we have said enough. In
short, the whole will is absurd, and it is all but inconceivable that
the real de la Cloche could have been so ignorant as to compose it.
So the matter stands; one of two hypotheses must be correct--the Naples
man was de la Cloche or he was not--yet either hypothesis is almost
impossible.*
*I was at first inclined to suppose that the de la Cloche papers in
the Gesu--the letters of Charles II. and the note of the Queen of
Sweden--were forgeries, part of an impostor’s apparatus, seized at
Naples and sent to Oliva for inspection. But the letters--handwriting
and royal seal apart--show too much knowledge of Charles’s secret policy
to have been feigned. We are not told that the certificates of de la
Cloche’s birth were taken from James Stuart in prison, and, even if he
possessed them, as Armanni says he did, he may have stolen them, and
they may have been restored by the Viceroy of Naples, as we said, to the
Jesuits. As to whether Charles II. paid his promised subscription to
the Jesuit building fund, Father Boero says: ‘We possess a royal letter,
proving that it was abundant’ (Boero, Istoria etc., p. 56, note 1),
but he does not print the letter; and Mr. Brady speaks now of extant
documents proving the donation, and now of ‘a traditional belief that
Charles was a benefactor of the Jesuit College.’
It may be added that, on December 27, 1668, Charles wrote to his sister,
Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans: ‘I assure you that nobody does, nor
shall, know anything of it here’ (of his intended conversion and secret
dealings with France) ‘but my selfe, and that one person more, till
it be fitte to be publique...’ ‘That one person more’ is not elsewhere
referred to in Charles’s known letters to his sister, unless he be ‘he
that came last, and delivered me your letter of the 9th December; he has
given me a full account of what he was charged with, and I am very well
pleased with what he tells me’ (Whitehall, December 14, 1668).
This mysterious person, the one sharer of the King’s secret, may be de
la Cloche, if he could have left England by November 18, visited Rome,
and returned to Paris by December 9. If so, de la Cloche may have
fulfilled his mission. Did he return to Italy, and appear in Naples in
January or February 1669? (See Madame, by Julia Cartwright, pp. 274,
275, London, 1894.)
IX. THE TRUTH ABOUT ‘FISHER’S GHOST’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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