DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

BM 0 AAS t 22} berland and Marshal Wade were rapidly approaching. There was no alternative but to retire. Charles vainly stormed and expostulated, vainly he pressed upon his friends the determination to advance : ‘Rather than go back,’ he cried, ‘I would wish to be twenty feet underground. Threats and promises were alike fruitless, and he at last gave an ungracious consent with the words: ‘In future I shall summon no more councils. I am accountable to nobody for my actions but to God and my father, and therefore I shall no longer either ask or accept advice.’ It is useless to speculate what might have happened if Charles’s audacity had prevailed over the more cautious policy of his friends. Given the success of his first innings, the enthusiasm of his troops, the relative strength of the Jacobites in London, and the unpopularity of the Court, there is no telling whether he might not have succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of his ancestors. But it is more than doubtful that he would have been able to maintain himself there. The claim of divine right, and the adherence to the principles of the Church of Rome with which the creed of the Stuarts was inalienably bound up, must before long have offended the privileges of a nation that had justly become proud and jealous of its civil and religious rights. Whilst we cannot withhold our sympathy from