refused a French pension for himself, and asked favours only for his
friends--afforded singular proofs of Dr. King's charge of selfish
greed. The fault grew on him later. After breaking with the French
Court in 1748, Charles had little or nothing of his own to give away.
His Sobieski jewels he had pawned for the expenses of the war, having
no heart to wear them, he said, 'on this side of the water.' He was
often in actual need, though we may not accept d'Argenson's story of
how he was once seen selling his pistols to a gun-maker. {25a} If
ever he was a miser, that vice fixed itself upon him in his utter
moral ruin.

Were there, then, no signs in his early life of the faults which grew
so rapidly when hope was lost? There were such signs. As early as
1742, James had observed in Charles a slight inclination to wine and
gaiety, and believed that his companions, especially Francis
Strickland, {25b} were setting him against his younger brother, the
Duke of York, who had neither the health nor the disposition to be a
roysterer. {26a}

Again, on February 3, 1747, James recurs, in a long letter, to what
passed in 1742, 'because that is the foundation, and I may say the
key, of all that has followed.' Now in 1742 Murray of Broughton paid
his first visit to Rome, and was fascinated by Charles. This unhappy
man, afterwards the Judas of the cause, was unscrupulous in private
life in matters of which it is needless to speak more fully. He was,
or gave himself the air of being, a very stout Protestant. James
employed him, but probably liked him little. It is to be gathered,
from James's letter of February 3, 1747, that he suspected Charles of
listening to advice, probably from Murray, about his changing his
religion. 'You cannot forget how you were prevailed upon to speak to