Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography Read Online Free PDF Page B

religious service. And they observed the arrivals and departures at the palace of the cardinals, noblemen and political envoys, speculating about what the visits might mean for the future of the Stuart cause.
    By the summer of 1720 the exiles were delighted to learn that Clementina was expecting her first child. A Stuart prince was just what they needed to give them heart, and they looked forward to his birth with all the eagerness of men with too little to do and far too little to spend. Clementina was in good health; neither the sweltering heat nor the disease-ridden air of the city affected her. She often rode to the town of Albano in the hills to spend the afternoon in the cool gardens of Cardinal Aquaviva's palace, or she went with James to one of Rome's water carnivals, gaudy affairs at which the crowds were doused with jets of water while fashionable society paraded in finery around a flooded piazza.
    By mid-December Clementina had grown "as big as a house," according to James, and her principal attendant Marjory Hay was becoming apprehensive about the approaching delivery. She thought the baby would not be born before January, and at the rate the diminutive mother was swelling, the birth was likely to be difficult and the labor prolonged. 3
    On December 26 Clementina went into false labor, and at once all the clergy and magistrates of the city and several dozen of the nobility were informed and invited to attend the birth. They arrived at the palace, only to be told that the queen was not in labor after all and sent home. Four days later messengers were dispatched to the same notables again, "at a very late hour," to request their presence in the birth chamber. This time Clementina was truly in labor, and her pains continued all night and most of the next day. 4
    James was determined to make certain there would be no controversy over the legitimacy of his child. (His own birth in 1688 had been attended by doubts and accusations of fraud; his father's enemies had claimed that he, James, was not the queen's child but another infant smuggled into the royal apartments in secret.) With so many witnesses present, he reasoned, no one could claim afterward that this baby was not Clementina's child. Cardinal Aquaviva, the papal secretary of state Cardinal Albani, the English cardinal of St. Peter's, brother of the Duke of Norfolk, and a great many other cardinals mingled with the princes, dukes and duchesses of the Roman nobility in the birth chamber and surrounding rooms, aware of Clementina's gasps and cries and impatient for the extended vigil to end. They waited all morning and afternoon, refreshing themselves with wine and food and distracting themselves with gossip. At about sunset Clementina reached the final stage of her labor. The crowd became subdued, the anguished noises from the birth chamber grew louder. Finally the baby was born. It was a boy, a prince to inherit all the rights, hopes and destiny of the Stuarts.
    James announced that the tiny infant would be baptized at once with the names Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester Maria. 5 Charles and Edward were English royal names, Louis the name of the Stuart benefactor Louis XIV. John and Casimir recalled the baby's Polish grandparents, while Silvester and Maria were his Catholic baptismal names.
    In the church of the Gesù a special mass was sung at the command of the pope to give thanks for the child's birth, and the cannon of Castel Sant'Angelo boomed out a salute. New Year's Day being by tradition a day of giving gifts, Pope Clement himself celebrated mass the next morning "for the gift granted to two such exemplary sovereigns, through whom the royal descent over three kingdoms is thus maintained."
     
    Chapter 3
    The heir to three kingdoms was a vigorous, hardy infant, fair like his mother and with her liveliness and animation. His hardihood was a good thing, for within hours of his birth he was taken from Clementina and propped up on a couch, wrapped