A PRISONER 111

“Tt is some distance to look forward to, sire. If Anne
comes to the throne at William’s death, it will, I think,
postpone our hopes, for Anne is a Stuart, and is a favourite
with the nation in spite of her undutiful conduct to her
father. Still it will be felt that for Stuart to fight against
Stuart, brother against sister, would be contrary to nature.
Foreigners are always unpopular, and as against William,
every Jacobite is ready to take up arms. But I think that
nothing will be done during Anne’s reign. The Elector
of Hanover would be as unpopular among Englishmen in
general as is William of Orange, and should he come to
the throne there will assuredly ere long be a rising to bring
back the Stuarts.”

Charles shook his head.

“T don’t want to ruffle your spirit of loyalty to the Stu-
arts, Captain Jervoise, but they have showed themselves
weak monarchs for a great country. ‘They want fibre.
William of Orange may be, as you call him, a foreigner
and a usurper, but England has greater weight in the coun-
cils of Europe in his hands than it has had since the death
of Elizabeth.”

This was rather a sore point with Captain Jervoise, who,
thorough Jacobite as he was, had smarted under the subser-
vience of England to France during the reigns of the two
previous monarchs. “You I!nglishmen and Scotchmen are
fighting people,” the king went on, “and should have a
military monarch. I do not mean a king like myself, who
likes to fight in the front ranks of his soldiers; but one like
William, who has certainly lofty aims, and is a statesman,
and can join in European combinations.”

“William thinks and plans more for Holland than for
England, sire. He would joina league against France and
Spain, not so much for the benefit of England, which has
not much to fear from these powers, but of Holland, whose
existence now as of old is threatened by them,”