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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 33, 14 August 1902, Page 1

His present Majesty, King Edward VII., reigns in right of the Protestant Succession from the more remote line of James I. of England and VI. of Scotland. The Catholic or senior line is still existent, and its present head is Mary of Bavaria. It is strange that, despite the long-consecrated prescriptive right and indefeasible tenure of the present Royal House, there are still in existence small groups of supporters of the Stuart line at both sides of the Atlantic — non-Catholics, too — who still drink to the memory of ' Bonnie Prince Charlie ' and style Mary of Bavaria ' Mary 111. and IV.' And yet it is even so. 'But,' says a recent English Catholic writer, 'as Mary of Bavaria makes no claim to the Crown, except a genealogical one — which no one questions or denies — and as she has authorised no one to make any claim on her behalf, and as she, being a staunch Catholic, cannot reign in this country, I have always thought the periodical proclamations concerning her, made by irresponsible persons, somewhat unmeaning and slightly ridiculous. I do not deny that there is something pathetic in them as well. The whole history of the House of Stuart, a fascinating and fateful race, is pathetic. And in that history nothing is, perhaps, more touching than the closing scenes: James 11. and VII. in exile in France, and rather laughed at by the Most Christian King ; the abortive attempts of his son and grandson to re=>tore the fallen dynasty ; the catastrophe of Culloden, and the plaintive Jacobite songs sung to the accompaniment of harpsicord and spinet by ladies of high degree in Scotland, while the hero of these songs, " Bonnie Prince Charlie," was engaged in drinking himself to death in Florence or in Rome.'