ive; Letters of Philip, second
Earl of Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, First
Series. iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot MS.; Burnet, i. 606:
Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 1684-5: Welwood's Memoires 140; North's Life of
Guildford. 252; Examen, 648; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's Threnodia
Augustalis; Sir H. Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See
also a fragment of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is
printed in the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnet
an impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any candid
and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I have seen in
the British Museum, and also in the Library of the Royal Institution, a
curious broadside containing an account of the death of Charles. It will
be found in the Somers Collections. The author was evidently a zealous
Roman Catholic, and must have had access to good sources of information.
I strongly suspect that he had been in communication, directly or
indirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length; but the
initials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said
that the D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother
by P.M.A.C.F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last
five letters. It is some consolation that Sir Walter Scott was
equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first edition of this work
was published, several ingenious conjectures touching these mysterious
letters have been communicated to me, but I am convinced that the true
solution has not yet been suggested. (1850.) I still greatly
doubt whether the riddle has been solved. But the most plausible
interpretation is one which, with some variations, occurred, almost at
the same time, to myself and to several other persons; I am inclined to
read "Pere Mansuete A Cordelier Friar." Mansuete, a Cordelier, was
then James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it peculiarly belonged
to remind James of a sacred duty which had been culpably neglected. The
writer of the broadside must have been unwilling to inform the world
that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to perish had
been snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of
loose character. It is therefore not unlikely that he would prefer a
fiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could not
fail to give scandal. (1856.)----It should seem that no transactions in
hist