cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 32

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:) Still talking about Charles XII of Sweden / the Great Northern War and the Stuarts and the Jacobites, among other things!

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From:

regshoe

I hope you don't mind me suddenly butting in here, but I noticed this conversation and I've just found a primary source for this!

Archibald Cameron, writing in 1753 and quoted by Robert Forbes in The Lyon in Mourning, says:

I likewise declare on the word of a dying man that the last time I had the honour to see his Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales, he told me from his own mouth, and bid me assure his friends from him that he was a member of the Church of England.

Archibald could have been mistaken, of course, and he doesn't say anything about the circumstances of Charles's conversion. But at least it was something that people were saying in the 1750s!

From:

luzula

Oh, how interesting! That certainly is evidence that it's not something made up much later, anyway. No, of course we don't mind it. : )

I've never plowed the whole of The Lyon in Mourning, just parts of it. Maybe I should go back to it...and by the way, check out the footnote on the page just previous to that! Broster used those exact words about the prospects of appealing to the Duke of Argyll. : ) Interesting that it was in actual history another Campbell pleading with him for Archie's life, and taking the role that Ewen takes in GitN.

From:

regshoe

Aha, later on in the same volume there's (what is supposedly) a letter from the Prince himself saying that he'd converted.

There's all sorts of interesting stuff in there... Ooh, yes, that footnote about the Duke of Argyll is good—Broster definitely read The Lyon in Mourning, I wonder if that's where she got the idea for that bit in GitN!

From:

luzula

Oooh, thanks for your detective work! That's great. \o/

From:

cahn

Ooooh this is amazing, thank you! Though does it seem a bit, idk, wound about with protestations that it Really Truly Is From the Prince No Really to you? Still, that plus Archibald Cameron's source does make it seem at the very least plausible!

From:

regshoe

Hmm, possibly! Forbes is usually pretty scrupulous about his sources (he'll compare different accounts of the same event, note contradictions and gaps and try to figure out the truth, and so on), and all the Really Truly stuff could come from that attitude of wanting to be very clear about accuracy—but I agree it's slightly doubtful.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, awesome! That's great, thanks for turning that up.

And we absolutely want people to butt in and teach us things, that's what these discussion posts are all about. :)