rldom of Strathgowrie, to which curious parallel the writer in the
_Quarterly_ adds the additional point that Errol, being in the district
of Gowrie, the Earldom of Strathgowrie claimed by the imaginary Admiral
O'Haloran was evidently another name for the Earldom of Errol claimed by
the real Admiral Carter Allan, two names, by the way, O'Haloran and
Carter Allan, of which the first seems intended to reproduce in some
measure the sound of the other. The father of Messrs. John Hay and
Charles Stuart Allan, was married in 1792, and the hero of the _Tales of
the Century_ was married somewhere about 1791, both to ladies more
suited to the sons of an admiral than to the sons of the Pretender.
Taking all these circumstances into consideration it becomes obvious
that when the two brothers Hay Allan assumed respectively the names
of John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, they distinctly, though
unofficially, identified themselves with the sons of the Jolair Dhearg
of their book, with the sons of that mysterious infant at whose birth
Dr. Beaton had been present, who had been conveyed by night on board the
_Albina_ and educated as the son of Admiral O'Haloran; in other words,
with the sons of the child, unknown to history, of the Count and
Countess of Albany.

Now, not only are we assured by Sir Horace Mann, whose spies surrounded
the Pretender and his wife, and included even their physicians, that
there never was the smallest or briefest expectation of an heir to the
Stuarts; but, added to this positive evidence, we have an enormous bulk
of even more convincing negative evidence by which it is completely
corroborated. This negative evidence consists of a heap of improbabilities
and impossibilities, of which even a few will serve to convince the
reader. The Pretender married, and was pensioned for marrying, merely
that the French Court might have another possible Pretender to use as a
weapon against England; is it likely, therefore, that such an heir would
be hid away so as to lose his identity, and be completely and utterly
forgotten? The Pretender, separated from his wife in consequence of
circumstances which will be related further on, called to him, as sole
companion of his old age, his illegitimate daughter by Miss Walkenshaw,
after neglecting and apparently forgetting both her and her mother for
twenty years; is it likely he would have done this had he possessed a
legitimate son? Cardinal York assumed the title of Henry IX.