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SEVEN

The Stuart Court of St Germains, 1702

‘The dismallest place in all Europe’

– THE EARL OF MIDDLETON

Lovat trotted out through the forests west of Paris. His goal was the palace at St-Germains-en-Laye, twelve miles out of the city, and ten miles north of the new and still-expanding Palace of Versailles.

It soon loomed above him. Birthplace and childhood home of Louis XIV, the French King had only moved from St Germains on the completion of Versailles seven years earlier. Until then it was the premier royal palace in France, fit for a king-in-waiting. Louis XIV and James II’s grandparents, Henry IV of France and Marie Medici, laid out six formal terraces descending from the palace in huge, graceful steps to the Seine. Mary, Queen of Scots, lived at St Germains as Queen of France when she was married to Francis II. By offering James II sanctuary and a pension at St Germains after he fled England in December 1688, Louis showed how highly he regarded his Stuart cousins, and how acutely he felt their injury. James had died the previous September and spent his final years depressed and obsessed with religious devotions. His body was buried in the chapel at St Germains, and his brain in a sarcophagus at the Scots Chapel in Paris.

The Stuart Court had been looking for a way home, scanning the vistas from the palace’s uppermost terraces, across northern France, for almost fifteen years. The hills of Montmartre lay in the distance to the east. Below the chateau, deep avenues cut long ago, lined with chestnuts and oaks, disappeared into the forest. The woods nurtured wild boar, deer and birds. Louis XIV’s children came regularly from Versailles for the sport. It was imperative Lovat improve his prospects. He had borrowed money from Principal Carstares to go home and from the Fraser lairds and merchants to return to London. He was ‘in a starving condition’ and needed funds and protection. He tormented himself with thoughts of what his life should be: Dounie and all that went with it, the chief at ease in his own hall. Instead, Amelia and Alexander Mackenzie of ‘Fraserdale’ sat in his chairs and made heirs in his bed.

Lovat’s first contact was a cousin, Sir John MacLean. The two had communicated as soon as Lovat landed in France. Sir John addressed his letters to Lovat’s new alias, ‘Donald Campbell’, or ‘Dole Don, Ambassador Extraordinaire of the Devilish Cantons’ as he was in MacLean’s crazy demotic. (Dole is the phonetic rendition of the Gaelic for Donald, Domhnall. Donn is dull brown – in hair or mood. The ‘devilish cantons’ were their beloved Highlands.) Lovat was vic mo chri, ‘son of my heart’, and ‘I am yours and yours I will be to all eternity or may God confound me. Your own, In saecula, seculorum. Amen.’ Sir John mixed Gaelic, English, French and Latin promiscuously.

Before Louis XIV moved to Versailles, he had spent years upgrading the irregular pentagon of his grandparents’ medieval palace to the sprawling monster Lovat now gazed on. Louis’s architect, Hardouin-Mansart, added five projecting wings, regularising each façade. To allow for the crush and scramble of courtiers milling around the French King as he moved from room to room, the architect collapsed walls dividing the cramped medieval rooms. Wind-tunnel passages now stretched from end to end of the vast building, creating walkways for processing, parading and plotting in. Dogs, servants, politicians and courtiers tripped over each other as they jostled to keep close to the Sun King, his family, his favourites and his succession of mistresses. Then one day they all left for the new palace at Versailles.

Neglected, St Germains fell fast into disrepair. The ‘Accounts of the Royal Buildings’ record the condition of the empty palace when James II arrived in winter 1688/89: broken glass; dried-out, un-waxed, shrunken parquet flooring heaved out of line; locks stuck with rust that bled down doors and windows in damp weather; blown plaster and warping woodwork needed repairing. St Germains reeked of neglect. Nevertheless, in 1702 the new war and Louis’s opportunistic proclamation of ‘James III and VIII’ gave Lovat optimism: plans and counter-plans changed as news of the progress of the war arrived.

The layout of the palace made day-to-day management hard. Louis’s half-completed building works failed to open up a way to allow internal communication between the royal apartments of the Queen Regent, and sixteen-year-old James, and their ministers. The royal accommodation spread over most of the bel étage (the second floor was the ‘beautiful floor’). Everyone here was forced to live modestly. Lovat wandered with counsellors and royalty alike, scurrying rat-like from one suite to another between floors via exterior gangways. He would soon understand that the palace’s rambling and incoherent structure mirrored deep problems amongst the leading Jacobites at St Germains.

Lovat was introduced by Sir John to one of the most senior politicians and nobles, the Duke of Perth. An energetic man, ‘always violent for the party he espoused, and … passionately proud’, Perth was impatient for the Jacobite call to action. He was very sociable and open hearted, lively but quixotic. He ‘tells a story very prettily, is capricious, a thorough bigot, and hath been so in each religion while he professed it’, observed one of the British Secretary’s spies. Perth converted – more than once – and dashed through a spiritual palette that took in Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, and Roman Catholicism.

Lovat’s reports about the discontent in Scotland and England were sweet music to Perth’s ears. Perth was happy to make the Scottish throne available to James as a first step, whether by Act of Parliament or at the point of a sword. Lovat claimed to have met ‘the chiefs of the clans and a great number of the Lords of the Lowlands’ before he left Scotland. Never deserted by the rhetoric of self-promotion, Lord Lovat claimed he had pleaded their Majesties’ case ‘in so spirited a manner … urged with so much force’ that the leading men of the Highlands begged him to go and represent them in Paris, and tell their King to come now, and rule over them. The country suffered grievously under the yoke of the Union of Crowns, Lovat said. Hence, he ‘arrived in Paris with this important commission’.

If this accorded exactly with Perth’s hope, it was anathema to the other dominant character at St Germains. The Earl of Middleton was a moderate Jacobite and an English Protestant. He had come over in 1693 to be James II’s chief minister. The Duc de Saint-Simon, recorder of everyday life in Louis XIV’s Court, described Middleton and his wife as ‘fiendishly spiteful and scheming, but Middleton, because he was admirably good company, mixed on equal terms with best people at Versailles’. Though the Earl hated St Germains, calling the palace ‘the dismallest place in all Europe’, he remained ferociously loyal to young James and his mother, Mary of Modena. Guided by Middleton, devout Catholics though they were, the Stuarts were committed to preserving the Protestant settlement in Britain, and offering religious tolerance to all. Middleton’s secretary recalled the late James II counselling his son that ‘if ever he came to Rule over that People, to be a strict Observer of … the Laws of England … that he might not split upon that Rock which had been so fatal to him’.

In Middleton’s judgement, strict observation of ‘the Laws of England’ and diplomatic exchanges between magnates – not threats of violence by Gaelic-speaking Highlanders like Perth’s kin – was the correct strategy for restoration. When speaking to Middleton, Lovat emphasised the need to strengthen resistance in the Scottish Parliament, to vote for independence and then the restoration of the male Stuarts. Someone should be sent back with money to buy votes, he argued. He, Lovat, could do it.

By living at daggers drawn (‘like cats and dogs’ was how Louis XIV’s daughter-in-law put it) Perth and Middleton terminally weakened the Jacobite ruling council. Lovat tried to avoid taking sides, or being treated with contempt by one side or the other. However, the minute Middleton heard of Lovat’s strategy for restoration and the key role of the Highland clans, he opposed it. The Earl then worked to ruin Lovat’s credibility, gleefully repeating at Versailles gossip about ‘the Grand Fornicator of the Aird’. Lovat hit back that the Earl’s strategy had slowly suffocated the cause: his many missives lay smothered under a mountain of paperwork in the English administration. While some English ministers nodded and gave verbal support to Middleton, they prevaricated with questions, delaying commitment to bring back James, even as they worked to proclaim George of Hanover King of England and Scotland when Anne died. Their measured, meaningless exchanges with the Court at St Germains damped down the Jacobite threat while satisfying their own residual Jacobite sympathies.

Middleton soon hated Lovat for his views. He truly believed the Fraser chief was wrong. Yet it was plain to Lovat that Middleton’s group were out of touch with national sentiment. They had been away from the British political and social scene for at least a decade and more. What Parliament might have accepted then was not so obviously attractive now. Bringing in Anne instead of James, and negotiating with other claimants to the thrones, should have alerted old hands at St Germains to the new political realities. Only force would carry them home.

Perth countered, citing Lovat, that only a rising in Scotland, backed by France, would give them what they wanted. He bemoaned ‘the counsel that prevails here is that which advises inaction and waiting for a miracle’. The ultra-pious Mary of Modena liked to believe waiting for a miracle was a viable policy and would retreat frequently to the convent at Chaillot to pray for one.

Middleton had some reason to pursue the policy he did. Even pro-Hanoverians admitted the level of support for James in both English Houses of Parliament. ‘There is a party in this Kingdom for the Prince of Wales,’ they wrote to the Elector of Hanover. Even his enemies called Young James the Prince of Wales. Their ‘boldness is founded, not only on their confidence in the King of France, but on an assurance with which they flatter themselves, of being countenanced and supported by the present government’. Many of the most powerful men in Queen Anne’s administration – Godolphin, Marlborough, Bolingbroke, Ormonde – engaged in friendly communications with St Germains. It did not mean they would actually vote to bring ‘King James III’ back. Lovat declared in frustration that ‘while her Majesty implicitly followed the advice of the people who were at the head of the English Parliament, Jesus Christ would come in the clouds before her son would be restored’. Middleton recalled the Queen Regent to the reports he had from Scotland, that Lovat ‘joined insinuating talents to low manners and a profligate character’.

Lovat lost patience. He had intended to be in France just a few weeks, obtaining money and stirring up opposition to Anne in the Scottish Parliament and the Highlands. He urged the Jacobites to catch hold of the opportunity the war presented and persuade Louis XIV to back them. It offered the sort of chance that might not come again for another fifteen years. An invasion of Scotland would merely be part of Louis’s larger strategy, and divert some British troops menacing his northern border through the Low Countries.

Though Mary disliked Lovat’s arrogant tone, the logic of his argument tempted her. She agreed that Middleton’s policy was not working, and if the war suddenly turned against France, Louis might recognise Anne, and then George as her successor. She would ask Louis to back an invasion.

Before she could act, the Queen Regent was distracted by a bizarre religious conversion. Middleton claimed to have been woken in the night, ‘hearing the Blessed Sacrament carried along with the sound of a little bell before it, to the apartment of his son, Lord Clermont, who was at the point of death’. Middleton’s son suddenly felt better. He was convinced it had been Mary’s husband, the late James II, ringing to exhort him to convert to Catholicism. Middleton declared that the keys to the offices of state were incompatible with the keys to heaven, and theatrically handed them back to the Queen Regent. He needed to go on retreat to clean his soul.

Mary’s attention swung ecstatically away from Perth, Sir John MacLean and Lovat, and back to her dear Middleton. She told everyone that Middleton’s conversion gave her the only joy she had experienced since the death of ‘our Saint King’, as Mary now called her late husband. It was almost beyond belief. Up to now, Middleton ‘had so mean an opinion of converts, that he used to say, “A new light never comes into the house but by a crack in the tiling”.’ It was a miracle, said the Queen, the first her dead husband had performed. Middleton slid back into Mary of Modena’s favour, and slipped the keys of office back into his pocket. Mary waited for another ‘sign’.

Living with the infighting at St Germains for even a few months made it clear to Lovat that he must go straight to the real decision-maker, or he would be trapped inside this melodrama for years. Only Louis XIV could provide effective support for an uprising. However, the French King would not meet with a heretic. All things considered, it was a good time to consult one’s religious conscience. Besides, it was clear that conversions were de rigueur for ambitious politicians at St Germains.

Lovat went to Brother McLoghlan, a priest at St Germains, and declared his intention to convert. Brother McLoghlan advised the Scot to retire to a convent to think it over. Lovat did not need to go that far: this was not a huge leap of faith for an Episcopalian, and not a very devout one. Without Catholicism he did not have the support of the Queen Regent or a recommendation to Louis XIV. By early the following year, Lovat was writing to Italy to offer the Pope his service to the Holy Mother Church ‘to the spilling of my blood … With this object I go to hazard my life and my family.’ The Pope replied, thanking Lovat and welcoming him into the Church of Rome.

Lovat’s persistence had paid off. In the autumn of 1702, he had heard that Louis XIV would grant him a private audience. Immediately Lovat started penning a grandiloquent harangue for the edification of ‘The Greatest Prince in the Universe’ from the self-appointed spokesman of his Scottish allies – les chefs des tribus montagnards – the chiefs of the Highland clans.