DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

Prussia to assist him in a renewed descent upon England subjected him to humiliating rebuffs. For three years he kept ceaselessly importuning the French Government with the same object, until at last they lost all patience, and one day, on his way to the Opera, he was arrested by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, ignominiously bound, and sent to prison, whence he was taken with an escort to the Italian frontier, where he was liberated. For some years his life is shrouded in obscurity. His head-quarters were at Avignon, in the south of France, but he spent much of his time in various parts of Europe engaged in more or less impracticable schemes for the recovery of the Eng- lish throne. There is no doubt that he visited London disguised as a servant under the name of Smith. There he met some Jacobite conspirators in an obscure tavern and displayed on that occa- sion the intrepidity of character and confidence in his friends which had won him so many hearts. He was informed about this time that his brother Henry had become a Cardinal of the Church of Rome. He never forgave him for taking this step, which hopelessly removed this Prince from the pros- pect of a succession to the British Crown, and hence- forth his relations both with his father and brother became strained. From the chivalrous youth and the gallant sol-