of Queen Anne, he had all the rights of a subject born in
the United Kingdom; and, among others, of course, had the right to
succeed to any property to which he might be legally entitled. But the
government perceived the fix in which they were placed, and
immediately, on the death of the son of the earl, and when James
Bartholomew was an infant of the age of five years, they hurried an
Act through Parliament which declared that nothing contained in the
dictatory law of Queen Anne gave the privilege of a natural born
subject to any child, born or to be born abroad, whose father at the
time of his or her birth either stood attainted of high treason, or
was in the actual service of a foreign state in enmity to the crown of
Great Britain. This excluded the boy, and the government began to
grant leases of the estates which would otherwise have fallen to him.

And now we begin to plunge into mystery. It is asserted that the
reported death of John Radcliffe, son of the last earl, was merely a
scheme on the part of his friends to protect him against his
Hanoverian enemies who sought his life. Some say that he died at the
age of nineteen, at the house of his maternal grandfather, Sir John
Webb, in Great Marlborough Street, on the 31st of December, 1731.
Others maintain that he was thrown from his horse, and killed, during
his residence in France. But the most recent statement is that his
interment was a sham, and was part of a well-devised plan for
facilitating his escape from France to Germany during the prevalence
of rumoured attempts to restore the Stuarts, and that, after marrying
the Countess of Waldsteine-Waters, he lived, bearing her name, to the
age of eighty-six.

By this reputed marriage it is said that he had a son, who was called
John James Anthony Radcliffe, and who, in his turn, espoused a
descendant of John Sobieski of Poland. To them a daughter was born,
and was named Amelia. Her first appearance at the home of her supposed
ancestors was very peculiar; and the report of her proceedings, which
appeared in the _Hexham Courant_, of the 29th of September, 1868, was
immediately transferred into the London daily papers, and was quoted
from them by almost the entire provincial press. The following is the
account of the local journal, which excited considerable amusement,
but roused very little faith when it was first made public:--

"This morning great excitement was occasioned in the
neighbourhood of Dils