Remembering the Bonnie Prince...
There was not the slightest pinch of justice in the treachery of Cromwell and his rebellious storm-troopers who were traitors to a man, looking to line their own pockets and seize power by their treacherous deeds. King Charles, by contrast, behaved with great dignity, noble serenity and most king-like demeanour, so that it was said of him ever after:
murdered by the treacherous Puritans under Oliver Cromwell
Let us also pray for the soul of his great-grandson, the Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart, who died this day in 1788. Interestingly, this means that he was de jure King over the newly found Australian colony, the First Fleet having landed 6 days before.
wearing the decorations of the Orders of the Garter and the Thistle
Of him it was sung all over the Highlands, Islands and Lowlands of Scotland, and much further afield, these words in song:
Here are extracts from the 1948 film version made on the story of the Bonnie Prince, starring David Niven as the Prince and Margaret Leighton as Flora MacDonald. It is the best film version ever made, the remainder being largely mocking and offensive portrayals of the Prince. This extract has Loreena McKennit singing Bonny Portmore, in the background.
It is perhaps also a good day to remember the Most Honourable Sir John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester, the defender-chatelain of the ever-loyal Basing House, for whom his fellow Roman Catholic, the poet, John Dryden, wrote him a stirring epitaph (see below).
In this, the learned and generous-minded king, perhaps unwittingly, echoed the teaching of the great Roman Catholic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas, who held heaven open for any and all who be sorry for their sins and confess the Triune God and His Incarnation and Resurrection.
Lord Winchester garrisoned for the King his fine castle at Basing, and underwent a siege of two years, from August 1643 to 16 October 1645 on which day it was taken by the odious Cromwell, by storm, after having been defended with great gallantry to the very last extremity, no quarter being given by the savage and brutal Puritan revolutionaries.
The Marquess had written, in every window of Basing House, with a diamond, the motto “Aymez Loyaulté”, which became his motto and which has remained the motto of Stuart loyalists ever since.
The Puritan devils, incensed at this device, burned down his noble seat, (a conflagration which the false Cromwell imputed to accident) and destroyed and plundered property to the amount of 200,000l.
The Marquess himself was made prisoner. Later the devilish Cromwell ordered that Basing House be reduced two bricks in height and so it remains to this day, all that was once a mansion and castle as large as Hampton Court Palace.
The Marquess of Winchester survived until the Restoration of King Charles II and, having died premier marquess of England in 1674, was buried at Englefield Church, Englefield House, Royal Berkshire, a property he had owned but which is now owned, together with the church and the village, by the Benyon family, also of the old gentry.
Within the church is the monument, upon which Dryden’s verse is engraved, and it is made of black and white marble and a copartment underneath the lines bears this inscription:
On a flat marble stone, beneath the monument, is the following further epitaph: