called her the Lady Mary Stuart, of the house of the Barons of St. Mars, as it is in the contemporary English translation, or of San Marzo, as it stands in the Italian copy of his will ; and said that it was in consequence of her relationship with the royal family that the king was unwilling to acknowledge him. The will is dated 24th August 1669, and two days later the testator died, reiterating his statements in the same breath in which he recommended his soul to the mercy of God and the intercession of Our Lady, in terms of the deepest piety and resignation. He appointed his cousin, Lewis XIV., his executor ; demanded of Charles, for his unborn child, either the principality of Wales or Monmouth, or a royal dukedom, with an income of a hundred thousand crowns, besides his mother's fortune, amounting to £16,000 a year ; and left enormous legacies to his wife's relations and to the Church. "And this," says Kent, "is the end of that princely cheat, or whatever he was." The cautious agent did not venture to determine the adventurer's quality ; and in the manuscript letter of news sent weekly to the English Government, called the Gazzetta di Roma, from which most of his information was derived, the Englishman is constantly called the English prince.
Yet none of these contemporaries knew that there was actually at that time a son of King Charles born at Jersey of a lady of high rank, privately addressed as Highness, provided with money, and speaking French as his native tongue. Had they known it, and could they have discovered that the illegitimate prince was really called James Stuart ; that though a novice he was not ordained ; and that all authentic traces of him were at an end from the moment of his arrival in Italy, at the very time when the English traveller put up at the inn of Corona, — if, in short, their knowledge had extended generally as far as ours, and had stopped where ours stops, it is probable that they would not have hesitated to believe in the claims of the prisoner at Gaeta. The king's denial, and what followed, would not have shaken their conviction. Charles was always careful to conceal the
