Wearing the years well

ON October 7, I wrote here of a fragment of a mid-18th-century waistcoat that had a plausible claim to have been worn by the Young Pretender in Edinburgh in 1745. This week, we have a letter certainly written by him, 2½ years earlier, when he was seeking to establish relations with anyone who might aid his ambition to reconquer his ancestral kingdoms . The great essential was to gain the support of France and, in September 1742, when Cardinal de Tencin became minister of state, that became much more likely; the cardinal owed his red hat to the patronage of the Old Pretender.