Tea at Trianon: The Jacobites and the Patrimony

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

The Jacobites and the Patrimony

James II

From Charles Coulombe:

After the Restoration, Charles II converted on his deathbed; his brother, James II (who as Duke of York had entered the Church with his first wife, Anne Hyde, and lent his title to the recent English conquest of New York) was crowned in an Anglican ceremony that received Papal approval. The King’s deposition in 1688 and accompanying wars in Scotland and Ireland sealed devotion toward him from those who remained loyal. In exile, James became ever more devout; after his death, his cause of canonisation was introduced – although stalled since the French Revolution, it remains the unique concern of the English Congregation of Benedictines. The Anglican Nonjurors remained loyal to him, and were later cited as major forerunners of the Oxford Movement. His son, de jure James III was something of a mystic; while the repeated defeats of the ’15, the ’19, and ’45 risings certainly damaged the movement as a political force, it grew as a quasi-religious one – retaining its hold upon the imagination of many, inside and outside the Church; indeed, in similar manner to the Arthurian legend – and this quite consciously...(Read more.)