207
, 1727.
Since James dismissed Bolingbroke, every one of his Ministers was suspected, by one faction or another of the party, as a traitor. Atterbury denounced Mar, Lockhart denounced Hay (titular Earl of Inverness), Clementina told feminine tales for which even the angry Lockhart could find no evidence. James was the butt of every slanderous tongue; but absolutely nothing against his moral character, or his efforts to do his best, or his tolerance and lack of suspiciousness, can be wrung from documents. {264}
By 1734 the elder of James's two sons, Prince Charles, was old enough to show courage and to thrust himself under fire in the siege of Gaeta, where his cousin, the Duc de Liria, was besieging the Imperialists. He won golden opinions from the army, but was already too strong for his tutors--Murray and Sir Thomas Sheridan. He had both Protestant and Catholic governors; between them he learned to spell execrably in three languages, and sat loose to Catholic doctrines. In January 1735 died his mother, who had found refuge from her troubles in devotion. The grief of James and of the boys was acute.
In 1736 Lovat was looking towards the rising sun of Prince Charles; was accused by a witness of enabling John Roy Stewart, Jacobite and poet, to break prison at Inverness, and of sending by him a message of devotion to James, from whom he expected a dukedom. Lovat therefore lost his sheriffship and his independent company, and tried to attach himself to Argyll, when the affair of the Porteous Riot caused a coldness between Argyll and the English Government (1736-1737).
THE PORTEOUS RIOT.
The affair of Porteous is so admirably well described in 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian,' and recent research {265} has thrown so little light on the mystery (if mystery there were), that a brief summary of the tale may suffice.
In the spring of 1736 two noted smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, were condemned to death. They had, while in prison, managed to widen the space between the window-bars of thei