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Title: London in the Jacobite Times
Volume II
Author: Dr. Doran
Release date: November 6, 2023 [eBook #72050]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1877
Credits: Carol Brown, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONDON IN THE JACOBITE TIMES ***
LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES
VOL. II.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES
BY
Dᴿ DORAN, F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS’ ‘QUEENS OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER’
‘THEIR MAJESTIES’ SERVANTS’ ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1877
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
[Illustration: decorative line]
CHAPTER I.
(1724-’25-’26-’27.)
PAGE
Loyal and Disloyal Printers――Sacheverel――His Death――A new
Toast――Bolingbroke――Bolingbroke’s Adversaries――In the
Lords’ House――Denunciations against him――An Epigram――
Fresh Intrigues――Political Writers――Wharton, Boasting――
Prince William, Duke of Cumberland――In Kensington
Gardens――Seaforth’s Pardon――Robert Macgregor Campbell――
Rob Roy’s Letter to Wade――Rob Roy in Newgate――Rob Roy
in London――A Note of Alarm――Patriotic Jacobites――
Voltaire――The New Reign――Coronation――Prince Frederick 1
CHAPTER II.
(1728 to 1732.)
Mist’s Journal――Lockhart of Carnwath――George II. and Lockhart――
The Jacobite Cause――Character of the House of Commons――The
King and Queen――Atterbury weary of Exile――The Prince of
Wales at Church――The Morals and Manners of the Time――
Atterbury, on Mist――Thomson’s ‘Sophonisba’――Cibber made
Poet Laureate――Jacobite Hearne――A Jacobite Threat――
Difficulties in Professional Life――Death of Defoe――‘Fall
of Mortimer’――Duels and Sermons――Young Lord Derwentwater――
A Standing Army――The Duke’s Grenadiers――General Roguery――
Death of Atterbury――Burial of Atterbury――At Scarborough――
Notorious Jacobites――The Earl of Derwentwater 27
CHAPTER III.
(1733 to 1740.)
Approaching Storm――Wyndham in Parliament――Political Sermon――
Stormy Debates――The Young Chevalier――Lord Duffus――The
Calves’ Head Club――The Calves’ Head Riot――The ‘30th of
January’――Objectionable Toasts――Foster, in the Old Jewry――
The Queen and the Artist――Chesterfield’s Wit――Scene in
Westminster Hall――Jacobites and Gin-Drinkers――The Stage
fettered――Fear of the Pretender――Walpole, on Jacobites――
Curious Discussion――Safety of the Royal Family――‘Agamemnon’――
The King, in Public――Political Drama――Henry Pelham and the
Jacobites――Jacobite Prospects――Death of Wyndham 55
CHAPTER IV.
(1741 to 1744.)
Incidents in Parliament――Party Characteristics――On Hounslow
Heath――Tories not Jacobites――Condition of Parties――In
Leicester Fields――Awaking of Jacobites――Chesterfield’s
Opinions――King and Elector――Highland Regiment in London――
Desertion of the Men――March of the Deserters――The
Highlanders at Oundle――Military Execution――Threatened
Invasion――Confusion――Preparations――Declaration of War――
Letter from Hurd――Public Feeling――Lady M. W. Montague――
Carte, the Nonjuror――Carte’s History of England――Various
Incidents――Lady Nithsdale 82
CHAPTER V.
(1745.)
‘Tancred and Sigismunda’――Political Drama――The young Chevalier――
Feeling in London――Hopes and Fears――Horace Walpole’s Ideas――
Divisions in Families――Court and City――Varying Opinions――
London Wit――The Parliament――The Radcliffes――The London
Jacobites――The Venetian Ambassador――Monarch and Ministers――
News in private Letters――The London Trainbands――Scenes at
Court――The King’s Speech to the Guards――Aspects of Society――
French News of London――Anxiety and Confidence――Johnson and
Lord Gower――Bolingbroke 108
CHAPTER VI.
(1746.)
War Criticism――Breaking an Officer――Rebel Prisoners――London
Mobs――Ambassadors’ Chapels――The Havoc of War――Flying
Reports――News of Culloden――A popular Holiday――Carlyle and
Smollett――‘Tears of Scotland’――Indignation Verses 133
CHAPTER VII.
(1746.)
The Players――Sadler’s Wells and the New Wells――Culloden on the
Stage――Mrs. Woffington――The Press, on Culloden――Savagery
and Satire――The Caricaturists――Pseudo-Portrait of Charles
Edward――The Duke of Ormond――Burial of Ormond――The Question
of Inhumanity――Instigators of Cruelty――The Prisoners in
London――The Duke in Aberdeen――Looting――The Duke and his
Plunder――A Human Head――‘Sweet William’――Flattery 146
CHAPTER VIII.
(1746.)
Colonel Towneley――King’s Evidence――Towneley’s Trial――Conviction――
Captain Fletcher――The Manchester Officers――‘Jemmy Dawson’――
The Jacobite Press――The Condemned Jacobites――Painful
Partings――Within Prison Walls――The Last Morning――Via
Dolorosa――At Kennington Common――Behaviour――Execution――Heads
and Bodies――Other Trials――A Mad Jacobite――Sir John
Wedderburn ‘Bishop’ Coppock 166
CHAPTER IX.
(1746.)
At the Whipping Posts――In Westminster Hall――Preparations for
the new Trials――The Lord High Steward――The Spectators’
Gallery――Kilmarnock and Cromartie――Balmerino――The
Prosecution――Balmerino and Murray――‘Guilty, upon my
Honour!’――Kilmarnock’s Apology――Cromartie’s Plea――
Balmerino’s Defence――Balmerino’s Conduct――George Selwyn――
Kilmarnock’s Principles――The Principles of Balmerino――
Leniency of the Government 188
CHAPTER X.
(1746.)
The Duke at Vauxhall――Opinion in the City――In the Tower――Lord
Cromartie――Lord Kilmarnock――On Tower Hill――The Executions――
Charles Radcliffe――The Trial――Mr. Justice Foster――Conduct
of Radcliffe――To Kennington Common――Cibber’s ‘Refusal’――
Execution of Radcliffe――Lovat’s Progress――Hogarth’s
Portrait of Lovat――Arrival at the Tower――Rebels and
Witnesses――Tilbury Fort――French Idea――A London Elector’s
Wit――Trial of Lovat――Scene in Westminster Hall――Father
and Son――The Frasers――Murray of Boughton――Murray’s
Evidence――Cross Examination――The Verdict――Gentleman
Harry――The Death Warrant――Execution――George Selwyn――Lovat’s
Body――The White Horse, Piccadilly――Jacobite Toasts――The
Earl of Traquair――Plotting and Pardoning――Æneas Macdonald――
The Countess of Derwentwater――Sergeant Smith――The
Jacobite’s Journal――Carte’s History of England――Hume’s
‘History’――Jacobite Johnson――Johnson’s Sympathies――Flora
Macdonald――Flora’s Sons 207
CHAPTER XI.
(1748 to 1750.)
Depreciation of the Stuarts――The Government and the Jacobites――
Enlargement of Prisoners――In the Park and on the Mall――The
Statue in Leicester Square――An Eccentric Jacobite――Gloomy
Reports――The Haymarket Theatre――Treasonable Pamphlets――
Murray and Lord Traquair――Political Meeting――Dr. King’s
Oration――The Earl of Bath――The Laureate’s Ode――The Jacobite
Muse――Prisons and Prisoners――‘Defender of the Faith’――News
for London 256
CHAPTER XII.
(1751 to 1761.)
Death of Great Personages――The New Heir to the Throne――Lord
Egmont on Jacobites――In both Houses――Jacobite Healths――The
Royal Family――Parliamentary Anecdotes――Attempt to make
‘Perverts’――Dr. Archibald Cameron――Before the Council――Trial
of Cameron――The Doctor’s Jacobitism――Charles Edward, a
Protestant――Cameron’s Creed――The Last Victim――In the
Savoy――A Scene at Richardson’s――Cameron’s Case――A Minor
Offender――Suspicion against the Duke――The Anti-Jacobite
Press――The City Gates 275
CHAPTER XIII.
(1751 to 1761.)
The old Chevalier and the Cardinal――Roman News in London
Papers――A Son of Rob Roy――Jacobite Paragraphs――Hume’s
‘History’――At Rome――Hopes and Interests――Illness of
the old Chevalier――Accession of George III.――King and
People――Charles Edward at Westminster 298
CHAPTER XIV.
(1744 to 1761.)
Charles Edward in Manchester――Miss Byrom’s Diary――The Visit
in 1748――The Visit in 1750――Dr. King and the Chevalier――
Memoranda――Further Memoranda――Charles Edward’s Statement――
The Visit in 1752-3――Credibility of the Stories――Conflicting
Statements――At the Coronation――At the Banquet――George and
Charles Edward――A Disqualification――The Protestantism of
Charles Edward――Foundation of the Story 310
CHAPTER XV.
(1761 to 1775.)
State of London――Good Feeling――A Jacobite Funeral――Dr. Johnson’s
Pension――Johnson’s View of it――His Definition of a Jacobite――
Death of the Duke of Cumberland――Death of the old Chevalier――
Funeral Rites――George III. and Dr. Johnson――Johnson, on
George III.――Johnson’s Pension opposed――A 30th of January
Sermon――Debate on the Sermon――Marriage of Charles Edward――
Walpole, on the Marriage――The Last Heads on Temple Bar――
Dalrymple’s ‘Memoirs’――Walpole’s Anti-Jacobitism――Anti-
Ultramontanism――‘The Happy Establishment’――Garrick’s
Macbeth 328
CHAPTER XVI.
(1776 to 1826.)
A Plebiscite for the Stuarts――The Last of the Nonjuring
Bishops――The Jacobite Muse――Jacobite Johnson――Boswell on
Allegiance――A Jacobite Actress――Burns’s ‘Dream’――Burns
on the Stuarts――The Count of Albany――Robert Strange――
Strange’s Adventures――Strange in London――New Hopes――Strange
at St. James’s――The Jacobite Knighted――Sir Robert and Lady
Strange――Death of Charles Edward――The Countess of Albany
at Court――In the House of Lords――The Countess, on English
Society――Hanoverian Jacobites――Jacobite Ballads――‘Henry
the Ninth’――Hume’s History of the Rebellion――A Jacobite
Drama――The Drama Revised――Satirical Ballad――Reversal of
Attainders――Debate in the Commons――A Transpontine Play――
The Body of James the Second――Ceremony at St. Germain――
Something New 351
CHAPTER XVII.
VICTORIA.
Old Jacobite Titles――More Restorations――The Cromartie Title――
Titles under Attainder――Fitz-Pretenders――Admiral Allen’s
Son and Grandsons――Working through Literature――The
Romance of the Story――‘Red Eagle’――‘Tales of the Last
Century’――The Lever of Poetry――Poetical Politics――The
Black Cockade――The Allens in Edinburgh――The Succession
to the Crown――A Derwentwater at Dilston――Descent of the
Claimant――Obstacles in Pedigrees――John Sobieski Stuart――
The elder Son of ‘Red Eagle’――Stuart Alliances――Fuller
Particulars――The Stuart-d’Albanies――Jacobite Lord Campbell――
Lord Campbell, on old Judgments――Time’s Changes――At Chelsea
and Balmoral 385
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES.
[Illustration: decorative line]
CHAPTER I.
(1724-’25-’26-’27.)
[Sidenote: _LOYAL AND DISLOYAL PRINTERS._]
[Illustration: Drop-A] singular illustration of the still partially
troubled times which followed is furnished by a proceeding of Samuel
Negus, printer. In 1724 he published a list of all the printers
then exercising their craft in London, and he most humbly laid it
before Lord Viscount Townshend; no doubt, for his guidance. The list
is divided into four parts. The first consists of those ‘known to
be well affected to King George.’ There are thirty-four of these
ultra-loyal fellows, with Negus, of course, among them. The second
list is headed ‘Nonjurors;’ in this, three names are entered, one
of which is ‘Bowyer.’ In the third list, headed, ‘said to be High
Flyers,’ there are two and thirty names; among them are found Alderman
Barber (the friend of Swift, of Bolingbroke and Pope), Richardson (the
novelist), and Mist (the Jacobite and something more!). The fourth
list consists of three names, ‘Roman Catholics.’ Negus was probably
a malicious though loyal busy-body. His list harmed neither Nonjuror
nor High Flyer. When, in 1729, Mr. Speaker Onslow was instrumental
in procuring for Bowyer the printing of the votes of the House of
Commons, an alarmed and loyal Whig asked Mr. Speaker if he was aware
that he was employing a Nonjuror. ‘I am quite sure of this,’ said
Onslow, ‘I am employing a truly honest man.’ There was no lack of them
among Nonjurors, and it is pleasant to find that even the High Flyers
came soon to be looked upon by reasonable Whigs as honourable men. In
1732 Alderman Barber was elected by his fellow citizens Lord Mayor of
London; and he was the first printer who enjoyed that dignity. This is
the more remarkable, as poor Mrs. Manley, mistress of the alderman’s
house and of the alderman, had bitterly satirised the Whig Ministry in
her ‘New Atalantis.’ But the lady was now dead, and the High-Flying
Barber lost nothing by his old Jacobite opinions.
[Sidenote: _SACHEVEREL._]
In the year 1724, the Nonjurors lost one who had been their foremost
man till he took the oath of allegiance; namely Sacheverel. That
act of homage to Brunswick was never forgotten or forgiven by the
Jacobites. When Sacheverel died in the spring of 1724, Hearne could
only acknowledge his boldness and good presence. ‘He delivered a thing
better than a much more modest man, however preferable in learning,
could do.’ Hearne sarcastically calls Sacheverel a ‘but,’ and says the
best thing this _but_ ever printed was the speech at his trial, ‘which
was none of his own, but was penned by Dr. Francis Atterbury.’ Hearne’s
hardest hit at this recreant parson is to be found in the following
words: ‘He was but an indifferent scholar, but pretended to a great
deal of honesty, which I could never see in him, since he was the
forwardest to take the oaths, notwithstanding he would formerly be so
forward in speaking for, and drinking the health of, King James III.’
[Sidenote: _HIS DEATH._]
The once famous and audacious Nonjuror, the friend of Addison when both
were young together, lost caste with the Jacobites without gaining the
esteem of the Whigs. Mist’s High-Flying ‘Weekly Journal,’ of which
Sacheverel was once the Magnus Apollo, recorded his death and burial
with no more ceremony than if he had been an ordinary alderman of no
particular political colour. Perhaps this great reserve showed that
sureties binding Mist to keep the peace were not mere formalities. Not
so with Read and his Whig ‘Weekly.’ On Saturday, June 20, Sacheverel
received therein this charitable notice: ‘Yesterday night was buried,
at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, Dr. Henry Sacheverel, whose virtues are too
notorious to be enlarged upon. One of his most conspicuous excellences
for many years last past was that he got his living in the high road
to――which though through great Mercy he escaped _here_, yet some
people are so very censorious as to judge,――but this we look upon to
be barbarous and unchristian, and we say we _hope the best_, and yet
we heartily wish our Hopes were a little better grounded. However, as
there is a good old saying, _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_, _i.e._ “If you
speak of the dead, speak in their praise,” and not being able, upon the
strictest enquiry, to find the least commendable circumstance relating
to the Deceased, from his cradle to his coffin, we choose rather to be
silent than uncivil.’
The doctor seemed to recall his oath of allegiance, when he made a
bequest in his will of 500_l._ to Atterbury. It was an approval, as far
as the sum went, of the efforts of the ex-prelate to dethrone George
I., and to bring in a Popish sovereign, who was not at all reluctant
to promise especial favours to the Church of England! That Atterbury
was watching events in London is now known, from his correspondence.
In one of his letters from Paris to the Chevalier or ‘King,’ he refers
with vexation to the conciliatory course the Government in London was
adopting towards the Jacobites: ‘They are beginning,’ he says, ‘with
Alderman Barber on this head, and have actually offered him his pardon
here for 3,000_l._, which it shall not be my fault, if he accepts.’ The
ex-Jacobite alderman ‘went over,’ in spite of the Jacobite ex-bishop.
The 30th of January sermons (1725) before the Lords, in the Abbey, and
the Commons, in St. Margaret’s, had now almost ceased to be political.
The former was preached by Waugh, Bishop of Carlisle, from the Book of
Chronicles; the latter, by the Rev. Dr. Lupton, from 1 Samuel xii. 25,
a text which had been much preached on by expounders on both sides:
‘If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your
king.’
[Sidenote: _A NEW TOAST._]
Against the king in possession, the Jacobites now and then flung
pointless darts. Mist’s Journal uttered sarcasms against the
Westminster mounted Train Bands, complimenting the most of them for
not tumbling out of their saddles. The same semi-rebel paper recorded
with satisfaction, as a sign of the Duke of Wharton’s principles, that
if the little stranger ‘expected by the Duchess, proved to be a boy,
his name should be James; if a girl, Clementina;’ or, in other words,
the child was to be called after the King or Queen of England, _de
jure_. Not long after, the bold and roystering London Jacobites were
rapturously drinking a health, which was given by one guest in the
form of ‘Henry,’ to which another added, ‘Benedict,’ a third named
‘Maria,’ and a fourth raised his glass to ‘Clement.’ In this form, they
greeted the birth of the second son of the Chevalier de St. George.
Some ventured to (prematurely) speak of him as Duke of York. The Whigs
looked upon this birth with more or less indifference; and their papers
contain no unseemly jests on the occasion.
[Sidenote: _BOLINGBROKE._]
But the especial attention of Londoners was drawn to more important
matters. Whigs and Jacobites looked with equal interest to the attempt
made by Bolingbroke’s friends to enable him to succeed to his father’s
estates, notwithstanding the Act of Attainder to the contrary. Leave
to bring in a Bill, with this object, was asked by Lord Finch, in the
Commons, on April 20th, with the sanction of king and Government, whom
Bolingbroke had petitioned to that effect. Lord Finch explained that
the petitioner had been pardoned by his Majesty, for past treason,
but that even a royal pardon could not ride over an Act of Attainder,
to the extent asked, without an Act of Parliament. The petitioner had
fully acknowledged his former great guilt, and had made promises, on
which his Majesty confidently relied, of inviolable fidelity for the
future. Walpole gave great significance to the words uttered in support
by saying, ‘He has sufficiently atoned for all past offences,’ Then Mr.
Methuen, of Corsham, Wilts, sprang to his feet to oppose the motion and
denounce the traitor. He did both in the most violent and unmeasured
terms. He lost no point that could tell against Bolingbroke, from the
earliest moment of his political career,――ever hostile to true English
interests,――down to that of the asking leave to absolve the traitor
from the too mild penalties with which his treason had been visited.
No expiation could atone for his crimes; and no trust could be placed
in his promises. ◆[Sidenote: _BOLINGBROKE’S ADVERSARIES._]◆ One after
the other, Lord William Paulet, Arthur Onslow, Sir Thomas Pengelly and
Gybbon smote Bolingbroke with phrases that bruised his reputation like
blows on mail from battle-axes. They were all, however, surpassed in
fierceness and argument by Serjeant Miller, who branded Bolingbroke
as a traitor to the king, country, and Government; a villain who,
if favoured as he now asked to be, would betray again those whom
he had betrayed before, if he found advantage in doing so. Serjeant
Miller said that he loved the king, country, and ministry more than he
loved himself, and that he hated their enemies more than they did. To
loosen the restraints on Bolingbroke was only to facilitate his evil
action, and so forth; but Jacobite Dr. Freind, who had tasted of the
Tower, extolled the royal clemency to Bolingbroke; and the assurance
of Walpole that the traitor had rendered services which expiated all
by-gone treason, weighed with the House, and the condoning Bill was
ultimately passed, by 231 to 113.
[Sidenote: _IN THE LORDS HOUSE._]
Public interest in London was only diverted for a moment from this
measure, by the debate in the House of Lords, in May, on another Bill
(from the Commons) for disarming the Highlanders in Scotland, which
ended in the Bill being carried. Five peers signed a protest against
it, partly on the ground that England now enjoyed ‘that invaluable
blessing――a perfect calm and tranquility;’ that the Highlanders now
manifested no spirit of disorder, and that it became all good patriots
‘to endeavour rather to keep them quiet than to make them so.’ The
comment in all the Whig circles of London, as they heard of the
protest, was to repeat the names of those who subscribed it,――Wharton,
Scarsdale, Lichfield, Gower, and Orrery. Of them, the first was almost
openly in the Chevalier’s service, and the other four were thorough
Jacobites. But the interest in this Bill was as nothing compared
with that renewed by the Bill (sent up by the Commons) which passed
the House of Lords on May 24th, 1725, by 75 to 25, for restoring
Bolingbroke to his estates. The protest against the Act was signed by
the Earls of Coventry and Bristol, Lords Clinton, Onslow, and Lechmere.
The articles of the protest are among the most explicit and interesting
ever issued from Westminster, and are to this effect:――
The lands and other property of ‘the late Viscount Bolingbroke’ had
been forfeited through his treason, and had been appropriated to public
uses; therefore, say the protesters, it would be ‘unjust to all the
subjects of this kingdom, who have borne many heavy taxes, occasioned,
as we believe, in great measure by the treasons committed, and the
rebellion which was encouraged by this person, to take from the public
the benefit of his forfeiture.’
The treasons he committed were of ‘the most flagrant and dangerous
nature’; they were ‘fully confessed by his flight from the justice
of Parliament,’ and they were indisputably demonstrated by his new
treasons when he ‘entered publicly into the counsels and services of
the Pretender, who was then fomenting and carrying on a rebellion
within these kingdoms for the dethroning his Majesty, into which
Rebellion many subjects of his Majesty, Peers and Commoners, were
drawn, as we believe, by the example or influence of the late Lord
Bolingbroke, and for which reason many Peers and Commoners have since
been attainted and some of them executed, and their estates become
forfeited by their attainder.’
[Sidenote: _DENUNCIATIONS AGAINST HIM._]
What services Bolingbroke had rendered to King George, since he was
a convicted traitor, were not publicly known, but might justly be
suspected. He had never expressed the slightest sorrow for his treason;
and there was no security that he might not again betray the king and
country, for no trust could be placed in his most solemn assurances.
Supposing recent services justified reward, it was not such reward as
could not be recalled. Persons who had rendered similar services had
been rendered dependent on the Government for the continuance of those
rewards, and so it should be, they thought, with Bolingbroke. The five
peers further remarked that no pardon under the Great Seal could be
pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons, and that Bolingbroke had,
in fact, no right or title to the benefits conferred upon him by a Bill
which restored him to his estates, in spite of the Act of the Attainder.
The public discussed these matters with interest, and (except a few
Jacobites) thought nothing of plots and pretenders. Atterbury, however,
was as pertinaciously working as ever, to see his royal master James
crowned at Westminster. In one of the numerous letters written by him
this year, Atterbury suggests that James shall express his hopes to the
Duke of Bourbon, then at the head of the French Government, that if the
juncture at present will not suffer the Duke to do anything directly
for him, yet at least that he will not so far act against him as to
endeavour to draw off others from their designs and determinations to
serve him――the King, James III.
[Sidenote: _AN EPIGRAM._]
Among the ex-bishop’s friends in London was the Rev. Samuel Wesley,
brother of John. The Tory journal ‘Mist’ had said of him that Mr.
Wesley had refused to write against Pope, on the ground that ‘his best
patron’ had a friendship for the poet. Thence arose the question,
‘Who _was_ his best patron?’――a question which was answered by an
epigrammatist (by some said to be Pope himself), who suggested that the
patron was either the exiled Jacobite Bishop Atterbury, or the Earl of
Oxford.
Wesley, if Wesley ’tis they mean,
They say, on Pope would fall,
Would his best patron let his pen
Discharge his inward gall.
What patron this, a doubt must be,
Which none but you can clear,
Or Father Francis ’cross the sea,
Or else Earl Edward here.
That both were good, must be confest,
And much to both he owes,
But, which to him will be the best,
The Lord (of Oxford) knows.
[Sidenote: _FRESH INTRIGUES._]
The king’s speech, on opening Parliament in January, 1726, rather
alarmed London (which was not dreaming of the recurrence of evil
times), by assurances that in the City and in foreign Courts intrigues
were then being carried on for the restoration of the Pretender.
Additions to the armed force of the realm were suggested as advisable.
A suspicion arose that in this suggestion the defence of Hanover from
foreign aggression was more thought of than that of England against
the Chevalier. However, the Lords dutifully replied:――
‘We can easily believe that at such a juncture, new schemes and
solicitations are daily making by the most profligate and abandoned of
them (the enemies of the King and Government), to revive the expiring
cause of the Pretender; all which, we assure ourselves, can have no
other effect than to hasten his destruction and the utter ruin of all
his perjured adherents.’
The majority in the Commons, not a whit less loyal, used similar terms,
adding, with reference to traitors near St. James’s: ‘The disaffected
and discontented here have not been less industrious by false rumours
and suggestions to fill the minds of the people with groundless fears
and alarms, in order to affect the public credit, and, by distressing
the government, give encouragement to the enemies of our peace.’
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL WRITERS._]
Two notable persons who had, in their several ways, filled people’s
minds with groundless alarms, now departed from the stage. On the
5th of February died the two great antagonistic news-writers of this
Jacobite time, Abel Roper and George Ridpath. The former was proprietor
of the Tory ‘Post Boy,’ the latter of the Hanoverian ‘Flying Post.’
Pope has pilloried both in the ‘Dunciad,’ and pelted them in an
uncomplimentary note. The Whig ‘Weekly Journal’ says of Abel, that in
the ‘Post Boy’ ‘he has left such abundant testimony for his zeal for
indefeasible hereditary right, for monarchy, passive obedience, the
Church, the Queen (Anne), and the Doctor (Sacheverel), that the public
can be no strangers to his principles either in Church or State.’
Ridpath, Ropers celebrated antagonist, had been obliged in 1711 to fly
to Holland, to escape the consequences of too severely criticising
Queen Anne’s Ministry. In exile, he wrote ‘Parliamentary Right
Maintained, or the Hanover Succession Justified.’ This was by way of a
confuting reply to the ultra-Jacobite work of Dr. Bedford, ‘Hereditary
Right to the Crown of England Asserted.’ Ridpath, having rendered such
good service to the Hanoverian succession, appeared in London, as soon
as George I., himself. He got his reward in an appointment to be one
of the Patentees for serving the Commissioners of the Customs, &c., in
Scotland, with stationery wares!
[Sidenote: _WHARTON, BOASTING._]
Ridpath was a sort of public intelligencer for the Government. It is
certain, on the other hand, that not only was the Government in London
well served by its own private ‘Intelligencers,’ but it was equally
well supplied through the folly of Jacobites at foreign Courts. From
the British Envoys at those Courts dispatches reached London, which
must have often made the Cockpit, where the Cabinet Ministers met,
joyous with laughter. For example, towards the end of April, Mr.
Robinson was reading a dispatch from Mr. Keen at Madrid, in which the
latter described the Duke of Wharton, then a fugitive, as ever drinking
and smoking; and such a talker in his cups as to betray himself, his
party, and their designs. Keen encouraged his visits, accordingly.
‘The evening he was with me he declared himself the Pretender’s Prime
Minister and Duke of Wharton and Northumberland. “Hitherto,” says he,
“my master’s interest has been managed by the Duchess of Perth and
three or four other old women who meet under the portal of St. Germain.
He wanted a Whig and a brick van to put them in the right train, and I
am the man. You may now look upon me, Sir Philip Wharton, Knight of the
Garter, and Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the Bath, running a course,
and by God, he shall be hard pressed. He bought my family pictures, but
they will not be long in his possession; that account is still open.
Neither he nor King George shall be six months at ease, as long as I
have the honour to serve in the employ I am in.”’ Wharton was telling
the Duke of Ormond that his master did not love foxhunting, but that he
promised to go to Newmarket. To which Ormond answered, ‘he saw no great
probability of it on a sudden, but wished the Pretender might take such
care of his affairs that he might be able to keep his word.’
Besides a promise to go to Newmarket, there was shadowed forth another
promise this year, which was, or was not, performed some years
later――namely, the adhesion of the young Chevalier to the Church of
England. Probably from some follower of the exiled family was derived
the information, which was put into London newspaper shape in the
following fashion, in the month of July:――
‘The Chevalier de St. George is at his last shifts, for now his eldest
son is to be brought up in the principles of the Church of England. To
give a proof of which he was led by a Church at Rome, by his Governor,
who did not stop to let him kneel at the singing of the Ave Maria.’
[Sidenote: _PRINCE WILLIAM, DUKE OF CUMBERLAND._]
This announcement was made, probably, to keep warm the interest of
the Protestant Jacobites in the Stuart family generally, and in the
person, particularly, of young Charles Edward, of whose equivocal
Church-of-Englandism this is the equally equivocal foreshadowing. In
the same month, little Prince William was created Duke of Cumberland.
The future victor at Culloden was then five years old. The papers had
at an earlier period recorded how he had cut his teeth, and they now
noticed his military tendencies; but none could have conjectured how
these were to be applied subsequently, at Fontenoy, and on the field
near Inverness.
A simple act on the part of his father, the Prince of Wales, awoke
the Whig muse to sing his praise. During the absence of the king in
Hanover, a fire broke out in Spring Gardens. The Prince went down to
it, not as an idle spectator in the way of the firemen, but as an
active helper. This help was so effectively given as to induce a Whig
poet to put the popular feeling in rhyme:――
Thy guardian, blest Britannia, scorns to sleep,
When the sad subjects of his father weep.
Weak Princes, by their fears, increase distress,
_He_ faces danger, and so makes it less.
Tyrants, on blazing towers may smile with joy:
_He_ knows to _save_ is greater than _destroy_!
[Sidenote: _IN KENSINGTON GARDENS._]
When the king was this year in town, he risked his popularity among
the Whig mobile, by adding a considerable portion of Hyde Park to the
pretty but confined grounds――Kensington Gardens. There was an outcry,
but grumblers were informed that they should rather rejoice, seeing
that the whole would be laid out ‘after the fashion of the Elector of
Hanover’s famous gardens at Herrenhausen.’ The Jacobites wished the
Elector had never quitted that ancestral home of beauty. The present
generation may be congratulated that the King of England created such
another home of beauty here. It was, indeed, for himself and family:
the public were not thought of. A few peers and peeresses, with other
great personages, were allowed to have keys, in the absence of the
royal family; but, at the present time, the gardens have become the
inheritance of the nation; and the national heir may be proud of such a
possession.
It was there, in the autumn of the year, that two pleasant acts of
grace occurred. The Earl of Seaforth, attainted for his share in the
rebellion of 1715, was there, by arrangement, presented to the king.
The Jacobite peer went on his knees and confessed his treason. The
king granted him his pardon, and gave him his hand to kiss; but the
great Scottish earldom has never been restored to the noble house
of Mackenzie. A similar scene took place when Sir Hugh Paterson, of
Bannockburn, received the royal pardon.
[Sidenote: _SEAFORTH’S PARDON._]
Nevertheless, who was serving or betraying King George at the
Chevalier’s Court, or King James in London, is, among other official
secrets, locked up in State papers. One illustration of the state of
affairs in London was afforded, unpleasantly, to Atterbury, by the
pardon of Lord Seaforth. That Jacobite peer had been made a Marquis
by James III., and wished to be further made a Duke. At the same time
Seaforth was negotiating with the British Government for his pardon
and a grant out of his forfeited estate. Both were accorded, and the
ex-Jacobite became a courtier at St. James’s. Mr. F. Williams, the
apologist of Atterbury, says, that such Jacobites caused endless
anxiety to the ex-bishop, and that their heart was not in the cause:
all they had nearest at heart was their own pride, selfishness, and
vanity!
The above acts of grace increased the general goodwill which was
entertained towards the royal family. The Prince of Wales showed
especial tact in obtaining popular suffrage. When the water-pageant
of the Lord Mayor, Sir John Eyles, Bart., passed along the river, the
Prince and Princess of Wales, with the little Duke of Cumberland, stood
in the river-side gardens of old Somerset House, to see the procession
pass. It was not pre-arranged; but when the family group was seen, the
state barges pulled in towards the garden-terrace, and there the chief
magistrate offered wine to the prince who, taking it, drank to ‘The
Prosperity of the City of London.’ Colonel Exelbe, Chief Bailiff of
the Weavers, brought up the company’s state barge, as the others were
pulling out to the middle stream, and, say the daily chroniclers, ‘in a
manly, hearty voice, drank to the health of the Prince, the Princess,
and the little Duke.’ The prince delighted the weavers by drinking to
them ‘out of the same bottle.’
The autumn brought pleasant news to London, namely, that the
disarmament of the Highlands had been successfully accomplished by
General Wade. This brings, in connection with London, a well-known
personage on the stage.
[Sidenote: _ROBERT MACGREGOR CAMPBELL._]
Robert Macgregor, having been compelled to drop the prohited surname,
had taken that of Campbell, but he was familiarly known as Rob Roy. He
was in arms against King George at Sheriff Muir, but he betrayed the
Jacobite cause by refusing, at a critical moment, to charge and win
a victory for King James. Romance has thrown a halo round this most
contemptible rascal. He wrote to Wade, when the disarmament was going
on: ‘I was forced to take part with the adherents of the Pretender;
for, the country being all in arms, it was neither safe nor indeed
possible for me to stand neuter. I should not, however, plead my being
forced into this unnatural Rebellion against his Majesty, King George,
if I could not at the same time assure your Excellency, that I not
only avoided acting offensively against his Majesty’s forces, on all
occasions, but, on the contrary, sent his Grace the Duke of Argyle
all the intelligence I could, from time to time, of the strength and
situation of the rebels, which I hope his Grace will do me the justice
to acknowledge.... Had it been in my power as it was in my inclination,
I should always have acted for the service of his Majesty King George;
and the one reason of my begging the favour of your intercession with
his Majesty, for the pardon of my life, is the earnest desire I have
to employ it in his service, whose goodness, justice, and humanity are
so conspicuous to all mankind.’ This precious letter, signed Robert
Campbell, is quoted by Scott (Introduction to ‘Rob Roy,’ edit. 1831),
from an authentic narrative, by George Chalmers, of Wade’s proceedings
in the Highlands, which narrative is incorporated into the Appendix to
Burt’s ‘Letters from the North of Scotland.’ ◆[Sidenote: _ROB ROY’S
LETTER TO WADE._]◆ Scott remarks on the letter from Rob Roy to Marshal
Wade: ‘What influence his plea had on General Wade we have no means
of knowing.... Rob Roy appears to have lived very much as usual.’
The London newspapers show, on the contrary, that the usual tenour
of this thief and traitor’s life was very seriously interrupted. Of
the disaffected chiefs of clans who had been ‘out and active’ on the
Jacobite side in 1715, a good number at the time of the disarmament
were seized and brought to London, with intimation that their lives
would be spared. What became of them is told in the ‘Weekly Journal’
for January 24th, 1727, namely, that ‘His Majesty, with his usual
clemency, had pardoned the following Jacobites who had been convicted
capitally of high treason in the first year of his reign, for levying
war against him.’ The pardoned traitors were: ‘Robert Stuart of Appin,
Alexander Macdonald of Glencoe, Grant of Glenmorrison, Machinnin of
that Ilk, Mackenzie of Fairburn, Mackenzie of Dachmalnack, Chisholm of
Strathglass, Mackenzie of Ballumukie, MacDougal of Lorne,’ and two
others, more notable than all the rest, ‘James, commonly called Lord,
Ogilvie,’ and ‘Robert Campbell, _alias_ MacGregor, commonly called Rob
Roy.’ ◆[Sidenote: _ROB ROY IN NEWGATE._]◆ They had been under durance
in London, for it is added that ‘on Tuesday last, they were carried
from Newgate to Gravesend, to be put on shipboard for transportation
to Barbadoes,’ Rob Roy marching handcuffed to Lord Ogilvie through the
London streets, from Newgate to the prison barge at Blackfriars, and
thence to Gravesend is an incident that escaped the notice of Walter
Scott and of all Rob’s biographers. The barge load of Highland chiefs
and of some thieves seems, however, to have been pardoned, and allowed
to return home.[1]
The Highland ‘Bobadil,’ MacGregor, is said to have appeared publicly in
London, both in street and park, and that, as he was walking in front
of St. James’s Palace, the Duke of Argyle pointed him out to George I.,
or according to another version, George II.; and that at the sight, the
king declared, he had never seen a handsomer man in the Highland garb.
This was probably one of the floating stories of the time, lacking
foundation, save that a plaided Scotsman may have been seen near the
palace; thence came the story. ◆[Sidenote: _ROB ROY IN LONDON._]◆ With
a fictitious story of Rob’s exploits, the Londoners, however, were
familiar. This appeared in a history called the ‘The Highland Rogue.’
Scott describes it as ‘a catchpenny publication. In this book, Rob is
said to be a species of ogre with a beard of a foot in length; and his
actions are as much exaggerated as his personal appearance.’ It seems
to have been made up of details in which there was much inaccuracy and
still more invention. Seven years after the release from Newgate, Rob
Roy died at Innerlochlarig-beg, on the 28th of December, 1734. He was
buried in Balquhidder churchyard, half a dozen miles from where he
died, and he was, at the time of his death, sixty-three years and some
odd months old.
An honest man, one who served his country well, but who has not been
celebrated in romance like Rob Roy, was missed from the Southwark side
of the Thames, where his figure had been daily familiar for a long
period to the inhabitants, namely, Sir Rowland Gwyn. On the last Monday
in January, this venerable baronet died. The ultramontane Jacobites had
little respect for him. When Sir Rowland was M.P. for Radnor, in King
William’s reign, he brought in the Bill for settling the Protestant
Succession in the House of Hanover. For some time Sir Rowland was
our ‘Resident’ in Hanover; but he displeased Queen Anne’s Ministry,
withdrew to Hamburg, and did not return to England till the accession
of George I. After figuring in London for a time, hard circumstances
drove him to live in the Liberties of the King’s Bench, and there,
after having been familiarly known to, and diversely treated by, both
Whigs and Tories, the old ultra-Protestant Baronet died, somewhat
miserably.
[Sidenote: _A NOTE OF ALARM._]
The king blew a loud note of alarm, with regard to the Chevalier, on
the last occasion of the opening Parliament during his reign. Lord
Chancellor King read the royal speech, in which the announcement
was made that the Emperor and the King of Spain had entered into an
offensive alliance, the object of which was to place the Pretender
on the British throne and to destroy the established religion and
government. The Emperor’s representative in London, Von Palm, made
a bold comment on this speech. It was conveyed in a Latin letter to
his British Majesty, in which the writer impertinently stated that
there were many assertions in the speech which were misstatements,
meant truthfully, perhaps, but much strained to make them wear a
truthful appearance. Other assertions were (if well meant) based on
erroneous grounds; but the declaration that the Emperor had joined,
secretly or openly, with the King of Spain to effect the restoration
of the Stuarts, was denounced by Von Palm as an unmitigated falsehood.
For this audacity, the Imperial representative was ordered to leave
the kingdom. The envoy’s great offence had been made greater by the
publication of the Imperial Memorial (translated) in London, by the
Emperor’s order. This appeal to the nation against the sovereign
manifested a vulgar impudence on the part of his sacred, imperial,
and catholic Majesty which thoroughly disgusted the people of these
kingdoms. ◆[Sidenote: _PATRIOTIC JACOBITES._]◆ To the great honour of
the Jacobites in Parliament, they exhibited a true English spirit.
They became, in fact, for the first time, ‘his Majesty’s Opposition.’
Shippen and Wyndham, especially, in Parliament, supported by their
political colleagues, branded this ignoble attempt to put dissension
between king and people as one which touched the honour of the nation,
and which the nation would resent, to sustain the honour of its king.
If this display of spirit led some to believe that Jacobitism, as
a Stuart sentiment, was dead, the belief was erroneous. Soon after
Palm was compelled to leave the kingdom, an outrage was committed on
the recently erected double-gilt equestrian statue of George I., in
Grosvenor Square. The statue, which was ‘by Nost,’ according to the
papers, Van Ost was pulled down, horse and rider. The kings sword
was broken, his truncheon beaten out of his hands, his legs and arms
hammered off, and a significant hacking at his neck was a token of
beheading him in effigy. A gross libel was stuck to the pedestal; and
that unoccupied pedestal still remains as a monument of the Jacobite
virulence of the time. A reward of 100_l._ was offered in vain for the
discovery of the perpetrators.
[Sidenote: _VOLTAIRE._]
At this moment there was a Frenchman in London who was sufficiently
distinguished, even then, to have his name turned to account in a
partisan political paragraph,――Voltaire. The Jacobites were probably
not aware of Voltaire’s approval of the martyrdom of their king and
saint, Charles I. ‘On the 30th of January,’ said Voltaire, ‘every King
wakes with a crick in the neck.’ On January 28th, the ‘British Journal’
had the following well-turned paragraph: ‘Last week, M. Voltaire, the
famous French poet, who was banished from France, was introduced to
his Majesty who received him very graciously. They say he has received
notice from France not to print his Poem of the League, “La Henriade,”
a Prosecution still depending against him, by the Cardinal de Bissy, on
the Account of the Praises bestowed in that Book on Queen Elizabeth’s
behaviour in Matters of Religion, and a great many Strokes against the
Abuse of Popery, and against Persecution in Matter of Faith.’ This
allusion to religious liberty had, unconsciously, a startling comment.
While Voltaire was kissing the royal hand, a soldier was being ‘whipt’
in the Park, for being a Papist! He was neither the first nor the last
who suffered for no worse cause. At the same moment, the ultramontane
authorities in France were hanging men for belonging to the reformed
religion! What an excellent thing it is for Christian brethren to live
together in love and unity!
[Sidenote: _THE NEW REIGN._]
On the 3rd of June, the royal and imperial courts having become
reconciled, and peace seeming established among nations, the king set
out for Hanover. That day week he was lying dead on a sofa at Osnaburg.
A heavy supper and much cold melon, the night before, had done the work
which, as some thought, might prove a Jacobite opportunity. It proved
otherwise. A paragraph of a few lines in the newspapers, unencumbered
by any mourning border, told the people that a new reign had begun. The
old king was soon forgotten. The younger one and his queen, Caroline,
mourned officially, but they inaugurated their own accession, joyously.
It may be added, ‘wisely,’ too. Their water-pageants made the then
silver Thames glad and glorious. They went afloat in state, followed
by gay Court barges full of high-born ladies and gallant gentlemen.
The royal musicians in another vessel played the last new opera airs.
According to the tide, these great folk went up the river to Chelsea or
down to Shadwell. They received warm welcome whithersoever they went;
more particularly when the royal barge pulled in near the shore, and
the pleased occupants graciously took the flowers offered to them by
good people, who might be hanged before the month was out, for stealing
half of one of the nosegays. On these occasions, the broad river could
hardly be seen for the compact mass of boats, fearfully laden, that
drifted or were rowed upon it. As in the first George’s time, these
popular pageants continued afloat long after the moon was up. Often on
these occasions, the king and queen did not land at Whitehall, till
after ten had struck. There, the sedan chairs were in waiting, and with
one individual in each, gentlemen of the chamber and maids of honour
being carried in the rear, and torchbearers, if need were, flanking the
procession, the whole party were daintily lifted through the park to
St. James’s palace.
[Sidenote: _CORONATION._]
The coronation was to have taken place on the 4th of October. It was
put off for a week. At this postponement, people speculated on the
possibility of some Jacobite daring to take up the Champion’s gage.
The Jacobite that was really feared was named Spring Tide. An invasion
of Westminster Hall was both possible and probable; and thence, the
postponement for a week. On the 11th the ceremony was performed
with somewhat of maimed rites. The queen went in a close sedan to
Westminster, with the Lord Chamberlain and a Maid of Honour in hack
chairs; and they returned in the same unroyal fashion. There was no
interruption in Abbey or Hall, as timid people anticipated, and at
night all London was drunk, or nearly so, according to custom.
On the king’s birthday in October, there was a singular sort of
rejoicing in one part of the metropolis. There were Jacobite and other
prisoners in Newgate who ‘lay there for their fines,’――in fact, could
not be discharged for lack of cash to pay their fees. They celebrated
the day ‘by illuminating the windows of the gaol with candles;’ they
drank the health of their Majesties who would do nothing to deliver
them, the Judges who had condemned, and the Magistrates who had
previously committed them. They forgave everybody, and went to bed
almost as drunk as their keepers. It is due to the king however to say
that when he with the queen and royal family dined with the Mayor and
chief citizens in the Guildhall, he left a thousand pounds for the
relief of poor debtors. Some ‘state prisoners’ in Newgate were also
liberated on their recognizances.
[Sidenote: _PRINCE FREDERICK._]
In December, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in obedience to his father’s
commands, left Hanover suddenly in the night. He travelled to the
coast, and embarked on board an ordinary packet-boat from Holland to
Harwich. Thence, he went on his way posting to Whitechapel; there he
hired a hackney-coach, drove to St. James’s, and walked by the back
stairs to the queen’s room, where he was decently welcomed, though the
greeting was neither affectionate nor enthusiastic.
Outwardly, there was an appearance of tranquility; but there was
still an uneasiness in the Ministry, which seems to have led to the
establishment of a spy system in private society. In the Atterbury
correspondence of this year, there is a letter (written in December)
from the Duchess of Buckingham to Mrs. Morrice, in which that
illegitimate daughter of James II. says:――‘I have nothing passes in
my family I would give three farthings to hide, yet I am sure the
gossiping women and such kind of men send and invite my son to dinner
and supper, to pick something from him of what passes in conversation
either from me or my company.’
Walpole, however, had never experienced any difficulty in getting any
information he required from the Jacobite duchess, whom he duped and
flattered.
[1] Lord Ogilvie, son of the Earl of Airlie, did not assume
the title borne by his father, when the latter died in
1717; but when Lord Ogilvie died childless, in 1731, his
next brother, John, took the title of Earl. This John’s
son, David, Lord Ogilvie, not profiting by experience, fell
under attainder for acting with the Jacobites in arms, in
1745; but he too was ultimately pardoned by George III. The
hereditary honours, however, were not confirmed by Act of
Parliament till 1826, when David, who had called himself
Earl of Airlie, could thenceforth do so without question.
[Illustration: Decorative Banner]
CHAPTER II.
(1728 to 1732.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he Court of George II. opened the new year with
a reckless gaiety that reminds one of Whitehall in the time of Charles
II., as described by Evelyn. Twelfth Night was especially dissipated
in its character. There was a ball at St. James’s, and there were
numerous gaming tables for those who did not dance. The king and queen
lost 500 guineas at Ombre; the Earl of Sunderland, more than twice as
much. General Wade lost 800 guineas, and Lord Finch half that sum. The
winners were Lord William Manners, of 1,200 guineas; the Duchess of
Dorset, of 900 guineas; the Earl of Chesterfield, of 550 guineas. The
play was frantically pursued, and a madder scene could not have been
exhibited by the Stuarts themselves. ◆[Sidenote: _MIST’S JOURNAL._]◆
Mist’s Jacobite Journal referred sarcastically to the brilliant
dissipation. On the wit and repartee which duly distinguished a royal
masquerade at the opera-house, Mist made a remark by which he contrived
to hit the Parliament. ‘They may be looked upon,’ he said, ‘as a
Prologue to the Top Parts that are expected to be soon acted in another
place.’ The death of an honest Scotch baronet, named Wallace, gave
Mist another opportunity which he did not let slip. ‘Sir Thomas’ was
declared to be ‘a lineal descendant of the famous Sir William Wallace
of Eldersly, called the Restorer of the Liberties of Scotland, in whose
days our distressed country wanted not a worthy patriot to assert her
rights.’ On the anniversary of Queen Anne’s birthday, Mist eulogised
her as ‘that great and good Queen,’ praised the lovers of Justice,
Religion, and Liberty who kept the day; and added that she was the
zealous defender of all three, ‘and therefore dear to the memory of all
such whose hearts are _entirely English_.’ For less than this, men had
stood in the pillory. Edmund Curll, the publisher, was standing there
at this very time for nothing worse than publishing a ‘Memoir of John
Ker of Kersland.’ The times and the manners thereof were, the first,
miserable; the second, horrible. Robbery and murder were accounted for
‘by the general poverty and corruption of the times, and the prevalency
of some powerful examples.’ In June, the ‘wasp sting’ takes this form:
‘There is no record of any robberies this week;――_we mean, in the
street_.’
But for Mist, the general London public would have been ignorant of the
movements of illustrious Jacobites, abroad. In that paper, they read
of the huntings of the Chevalier de St. George and his boy, Charles
Edward. Lord North and Grey, now a ‘Lieutenant-General in the army of
England,’ and the Duke of Wharton, Colonel of the Spanish regiment,
‘Hibernia,’ with other honest gentlemen of the same principles, were
helping to make Rouen one of the gayest of residences. At a later
period, when Wolfe became the printer of this Jacobite ‘Weekly,’ and
changed its name to ‘Fog’s Journal,’ _canards_ were plentiful. The Duke
of Wharton is described as having opened a school in Rouen, with a
Newgate bird for an usher; Mist is said to have set up a hackney coach
in the same city; and all three are congratulated on being able to earn
a decent livelihood!
[Sidenote: _LOCKHART OF CARNWATH._]
A much more honourable Jacobite than any of the above, was this year
pardoned, namely, Lockhart of Carnwath; but, he was required by the
English Government to pass through London, and present himself to
the king. His return from exile was permitted only in case of his
obedience. On the other hand, Lockhart stipulated that he should be
asked no questions, and that he should be at full liberty to proceed
home, unmolested. Sir Robert Walpole agreed to these terms. Lockhart
left Rotterdam in May, and arrived safely in London.
[Sidenote: _GEORGE II. AND LOCKHART._]
King George seems to have had a curiosity to see a man who had been
plotting to set another in his place. ‘It was the more remarkable,’
says Lockhart, ‘in that he could not be persuaded or prevailed on to
extend it’ (his gracious disposition) ‘to others, particularly my Lady
Southesk, whose case was more favourable than mine; and so, to gratify
him by my appearing in his Court, I was obliged to come to London. This
was what did not go well down with me, and what I would gladly have
avoided, but there was no eviting it; and as others, whose sincere
attachment to the king’ (James III.) ‘had often preceded me on such
like occasions, I was under a necessity of bowing my knee to Baal, now
that I was in the house of Rimmon.’
Lockhart was kept waiting more than a fortnight for the interview.
During the whole of that time, he was ordered to keep himself shut
up in his house. Imagining he was to be put off, he boldly wrote to
Walpole that he might be sent back to Rotterdam. ‘Whereupon, he sent
for me next day, and introduced me to King George in his closet. After
a little speech of thanks, he told me with some heat in his looks that
I had been long in a bad way, and he’d judge, how far I deserved the
favour he had now shown me, by my future conduct. I made a bow and went
off and determined never to trust to his mercy, which did not seem to
abound.’
Lockhart, however, did trust to King George’s mercy, and to his honour.
He appeared in public, and was much questioned by Tories in private,
or at dinners and assemblies, as to the affairs of the so-called James
III. He told them just as much as he pleased to tell them. They knew
too much, he said, already; but they evidently thought the Jacobite
cause in a better condition than it really was. Lockhart adds the
strange fact that all the members of the Government received him with
great――Sir Robert Walpole with particularly great――civility. ‘Several
insinuations were made that if I would enter into the service and
measures of the Government I should be made very welcome. But I told
them that I was heartily weary of dabbling in politics, and wanted only
to retire and live privately at home.’
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE CAUSE._]
Lockhart lingered in London, only to hear how well-informed the
Government had been of his proceedings; they had read his letters, knew
his cyphers, employed his own agents, and had a spy at the Chevalier’s
side who enjoyed his confidence and betrayed it, for filthy lucre!
Lockhart suspected Inverness, but _he_ was doubtless not the _only_
agent. The old Jacobite began to despair of the cause. Above a dozen
years had elapsed since the outbreak of 1715, and while much had been
done, the activity had been employed on doing nothing. There was now no
party, and of course, no projects. Lockhart’s visit to London, where he
associated with Whigs and Tories, taught him a sad truth to which he
gives melancholy expression. ‘The old race drops off by degrees, and
a new one sprouts up, that, having no particular bias to the king, as
knowing little more of him than what the public newspapers bear, enter
on the stage with a perfect indifference, at least coolness, towards
him and his cause, which consequently must daily languish and, in
process of time, be totally forgot. In which melancholy situation of
the king’s affairs. I leave them in the year 1728.’
[Sidenote: _CHARACTER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS._]
George Lockhart admired neither the English people nor their
representatives in the House of Commons. Both he considered equally
ignorant of the nature of true liberty and the principle of honest
government. Speaking at one time of the members in Parliament
assembled, he observes,――‘Though all of them are vested with equal
powers, a very few, of the most active and pragmatical, by persuading
the rest that nothing is done without them, do lead them by the nose
and make mere tools of them, to serve their own ends. And this, I
suppose, is owing to the manner and way of electing the members; for,
being entirely in the hands of the populace, they, for the most part,
choose those who pay best; so that many are elected who very seldom
attend the House, give themselves no trouble in business and have no
design in being chosen, even at a great expense, but to have the honour
of being called Parliament men. On the other hand, a great many are
likewise elected who have no concern for the interest of their country,
and, being either poor or avaricious, aim at nothing but enriching
themselves; and hence it is that no assembly under Heaven produces so
many fools and knaves. The House of Commons is represented as a wise
and august Assembly; what it was long ago I shall not say, but in
our days, it is full of disorder and confusion. The members that are
capable and mindful of business are few in number, and the rest mind
nothing at all. When there is a party job to be done, they’ll attend,
and make a hideous noise, like Bedlamites; but if the House is to enter
on business, such as the giving of money or making of public laws, they
converse so loud with one another in private knots, that nobody can
know what is doing, except a very few who, for that purpose, sit near
the clerks’ table; or they leave the House and the Men of Business, as
they call them, to mind such matters.’
[Sidenote: _THE KING AND QUEEN._]
In 1728, royalty continued to exhibit itself in a manner which, now,
seems rather unedifying. On Sundays and Thursdays, in the summer, the
city sent curious multitudes to Hampton Court, to see their Majesties
dine in public. The sight-seers went freely into the gallery, where
a strong barrier divided them from the royalties at table. On all
occasions, the pressure against this barrier was immense; on one, it
gave way, when scores of ladies and gentlemen were sent sprawling at
the foot of the king’s table. Away went perukes and hats; for which
there was a furious scramble, with much misappropriation, more or
less accidental. While it lasted, king and queen held their sides and
laughed aloud, regardless of etiquette, or indeed, of becomingness; but
there was provocation to hilarity, when the worshippers were rolling
and screaming at the feet of the national idols.
One of the latter showed how little he was prejudiced against Jacobites
when they had qualities which outweighed their political defects.
Dr. Freind, the Jacobite physician, whom the Prince of Wales had
taken to St. James’s from the Tower, was, on the Prince’s accession
to the throne, appointed physician to the queen. The doctor did not
escape sneers and inuendoes from his old friends. ‘Dr. John Freind,’
writes Mr. Morrice (June, 1728), ‘is a very assiduous courtier, and
must grow so more and more every day, since his _quondam_ friends and
acquaintances shun and despise him; and whenever he happens to fall in
the way of them, he looks methinks very silly.’ ◆[Sidenote: _ATTERBURY
WEARY OF EXILE._]◆ Atterbury in exile, on hearing of Freind’s death,
in 1728, remarked: ‘I dare say, notwithstanding his station at Court,
he died with the same political opinions with which I left him.’ There
was a talk in London of Atterbury himself being at least weary of
exile. His later letters show some longing to die in his native land;
and Walpole seems to have been aware of the fact. In October 1728,
Atterbury’s son-in-law, Morrice, wrote to the bishop,――‘I was assured
near two months ago, that Sir Robert Walpole had given out that you
had entirely shaken off the affair of a certain person,――were grown
perfectly weary of that drooping cause, and had made some steps, by
means of the Ambassador at Paris, towards not being left out of the
General Act of Grace which, it is every now and then talked, will pass
the next Parliament; and that you desired above all things to come
home, and end your days in your own country.’ The next Parliament,
however, was not disposed to lenity.
In the king’s speech, on opening the Session in January, 1729, there
was no reference to the Pretender. The king, however, attributed
certain delays at the Courts of Vienna and Madrid to ‘hopes given from
hence of creating discontents and division’ among his subjects; but if
this hope encouraged these foreign Courts, ‘I am persuaded,’ said the
king, ‘that your known affection for me, and a just regard for your own
honour, and the interest and security of the nation, will determine
you effectually to discourage the unnatural and injurious practices
of some few who suggest the means of distressing their country, and
afterwards clamour at the inconveniences which they themselves have
occasioned.’ In the usual reply, the Lords lamented that the lenity
of the constitution was daily abused, and that the basest and meanest
of mankind ‘escape the infamous punishment due by the laws of the
land to such crimes.’ The Commons, after some debate, employed terms
equally strong. ◆[Sidenote: _THE PRINCE OF WALES AT CHURCH._]◆ The
Heir Apparent used the opportunity to illustrate his fidelity to the
Protestant succession. Prince Frederick, to convince all good people of
his Protestant orthodoxy, went a round of the London churches. He was
accompanied by a group of young lords and gentlemen of good character,
and, at this time, his reputation did not suffer by his being judged
according to the company he kept. On the occasion of his dissipated
church-going, the prince and his noble followers took the Sacrament in
public: the doors of the church, whichever it might be, were set wide
open, and the church itself was packed by a mob of street Whigs and
Tories, who made their own comments on the spectacle, which was not
so edifying and impressive as it was intended to be. Fog’s Jacobite
paper hinted that a family not a hundred miles from St. James’s was
split up with petty domestic quarrelling. The family, indeed, dined
together twice a week in public; but people were reminded that outward
appearances were exceedingly deceptive,――and sacramental partakings (it
was said) proved nothing.
[Sidenote: _THE MORALS AND MANNERS OF THE TIME._]
The papers of the year bear witness to the wickedness and barbarity of
all classes of people, of both sexes. Half the highwaymen and footpads
were members of his Majesty’s own guards. There was not a street or
suburb of London that was free from their violence and villany. Small
offences being as much a hanging matter as the most horrible crimes,
lawless men found it as cheap to be murderers as petty-larcenists; and
all looked to Tyburn as the last scene, in which they must necessarily
figure. Three or four of these fellows, behind old Buckingham House,
stopped the carriage of the Bishop of Ossory, who was on his way to
Chelsea with his son. They took from the prelate’s finger his episcopal
ring (of great value), and from his hand what seemed to be a pocket
book, but which was a Book of Common Prayer. When the highwayman who
held it saw that it was a Prayer Book, he handed it back to the bishop.
‘Had you not better keep it?’ said the prelate. ‘Thank you, no!’
rejoined the Pimlico Macheath, ‘we have no occasion for it at present,
whatever may be the case at some time hereafter.’ The time alluded
to was the hour of ‘hanging Wednesday,’ at Tyburn, when each patient
was provided with a Prayer Book, which he often flung at someone in
the crowd of spectators before he was pinioned. There was always a
great variety of company at the triple tree in Tyburn field, built to
accommodate a score. At a push a couple of dozen could be disposed
of on a very busy hanging morning. The sufferers ranged,――from the
most brutal murderers, men and women, down to timid pickpockets and
shy shoplifters, boys and girls, to all of whom the bloody code of
the time awarded the same measure of vengeance. The London mob were
almost satiated with Tyburn holidays. It was an agreeable change for
them to witness the public military funeral of old Mary Davis, who had
served, both as sutler and soldier, in our wars in Flanders. In her
later years, Mary kept a tavern in King Street, Westminster, bearing
the curious sign of ‘Man’s worst ills.’ The crowd there, and about St.
Margaret’s, where she was buried, was as great as at their Majesties’
coronation.
[Sidenote: _ATTERBURY, ON MIST._]
The press prosecutions of this year were few. A vendor of some reprints
of former very offensive numbers of Mist’s Journal lost his liberty
for a while; and a poor servant girl, for delivering to a caller (who
may have been a police agent) an obnoxious pamphlet, was sentenced to
imprisonment in Bridewell, there to receive ‘the correction of the
house,’――which meant a severe whipping.
No better proof of Atterbury’s sympathy with Mist and the enemies
of the established Government can be given than in the following
passage, from a letter written at Montpellier, in March, 1729-30. It is
addressed to Sempill, who was a favoured resident at the Chevalier’s
Court, but really a spy in the service of the Court in London.――‘I
shall be concerned if so honest a man as Mr. Mist should have any just
cause of uneasiness. His sufferings, that were intended to distress and
disgrace him, ought to render him in the eyes of those for whom he
suffered, more valuable; and I hope it will prove so that others may
not be discouraged.’
[Sidenote: _THOMSON’S ‘SOPHONISBA.’_]
During the next ten years Jacobitisin in the capital made no
manifestation, but the Whig poets were rather ostentatious in their
loyalty; and the royal family patronised them accordingly. For
instance, on the last day of February, 1730, Thomson produced at Drury
Lane his tragedy, illustrating the virtue of patriotism, namely,
‘Sophonisba.’ The queen herself had attended the full-dress rehearsals,
at which crowded audiences were not so much delighted as they were told
they ought to be. However, the notice the queen condescended to take
of this essay to keep alive the virtue of patriotism, led the author
to dedicate it to Caroline. In that dedication the poet informed both
Whigs and Jacobites that the queen ‘commands the hearts of a people
more powerful at sea than Carthage, more flourishing in commerce than
those first merchants, more secure against conquest, and under a
monarchy more free than a commonwealth itself.’ In the prologue it was
said of Britain,――
When freedom is the cause, ’tis her’s to fight,
And her’s, when freedom is the theme, to write.
In the play Mrs. Oldfield splendidly illustrated the spirit of
patriotism, in the part of the heroine. Cibber acted the subordinate
part of _Scipio_, in which he suffered at the hands of the Jacobites.
These had not forgotten the offence in his ‘Nonjuror;’ and joining,
hilariously savage with the critics who laughed at Cibber in tragedy,
they hissed him off the stage and out of the part on the second night.
Williams, a moderately good player, succeeded him as _Scipio_, and
he, on the third night, looked so like the ultra-Whig actor, that
the Jacobite spectators received him with groans and hisses, which,
however, speedily turned to laughter and applause.
[Sidenote: _CIBBER MADE POET LAUREATE._]
But Colley had his reward. The zeal he had displayed against Jacks
and Nonjurors, by producing his famous comedy, now obtained its
recompense, and his sufferings their consolation. In 1730, Cibber was
appointed to the office of Laureate, with its annual butt of sack, or
the equivalent, 50_l._ Every Jacobite who could pen a line, printed it
against the laurelled minstrel. Apollo himself was pressed into the
Nonjuring faction:――
‘Well,’ said Apollo, ‘still ’tis mine,
To give the real laurel,
For that, my Pope, my son Divine,
Of rivals end the quarrel.
But, guessing who should have the luck
To be the Birth-day fibber,
I thought of Dennis, Tibbald, Duck,
But never dreamed of Cibber.’
The year was one fruitful in plays; but it was observed that when nuts
are plentiful, they are generally of poor quality; so it was with the
plays of 1730. They are all clean forgotten, including ‘Sophonisba’
itself,――the epilogue to which tragedy had this advice to ladies who
patronised foreign productions:――
To foreign looms no longer owe your charms,
Nor make their trade more fatal than their arms,
Each British dame who courts her country’s praise,
By quitting these outlandish modes, might raise
(Not from yon powder’d band, so thin, so spruce)
Ten able-bodied men, for public use.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE HEARNE._]
There was much meanness in the ill feeling of the Jacobites at even
the little mischances that happened to the royal family. On a dark
evening in November, the king and queen were returning from Kew to St.
James’s, their footmen and grooms carrying torches. A storm of wind
blew out the torches, and at Parson’s Green the carriage and its royal
freight was overturned. Lord Peterborough’s people came to the rescue,
with flambeaux, and the royal pair went on to town with nothing worse
than an assortment of bruises. Such accidents were kindly attributed to
the drunkenness of servants, but that bitter Jacobite Hearne thought
that the mistress, if not the master, could be as drunk as they. Here
is a sample of both thought and expression.――‘The present Duchess
of Brunswick, commonly called Queen Caroline,’ says Hearne, in his
‘Reliquiæ,’ ‘is a very proud woman, and pretends to great subtlety and
cunning. She drinks so hard that her spirits are continually inflamed,
and she is often drunk. The last summer, she went away from Orkney
House, near Maidenhead (at which she had dined), so drunk that she was
sick in the coach all her journey, as she went along;――a thing much
noted.’
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE THREAT._]
The Tories, on their side, were savagely mauled by the Whig press.
The old Jacobite fire of Earbery was thereby inflamed, especially by
the attacks on the old Tories in the ‘Craftsman.’ The former Stuart
champion, who, in 1717, fled the country to avoid the consequences of
publishing his ‘History of the Clemency of our English Monarchs,’ but
whose sentence of outlawry was reversed in 1725, gave the ‘Craftsman’
warning, in the following advertisement, which was in the ‘Evening
Post,’ of September 26, 1730,――‘Whereas the “Craftsman” has, for some
time past, openly declared himself to be a root and branch man, and
has made several unjust and scandalous reflections upon the family of
the Stuarts, not sparing even King Charles I., this is to give notice,
that if he reflects further upon any ONE of that line, I shall shake
his rotten Commonwealth principles into atoms. _Matthias Earbery._’ The
writer kept his word in his ‘Occasional Historian.’
To decline to take the oath of abjuration was still a very serious
matter, involving not merely temporary loss, but life-long professional
ruin. Pope had a nephew, Robert Rackett, whose position affords a
striking illustration of these Jacobite times. The story is thus
told by Pope himself, in a letter to Lord Oxford, Nov. 16, 1730: ‘It
happens that a nephew of mine, who, for his parents’ sins and not
his own, was born a papist, is just coming, after nine or ten years’
study and hard service under an attorney, to practise in the law.
Upon this depends his whole well-being and fortune in the world, and
the hopes of his parents in his education, all which must inevitably
be frustrated by the severity of a late opinion of the judges, who,
for the major part, have agreed to admit no attorney to be sworn the
usual oath which qualifies them to practise, unless they also give
them the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. ◆[Sidenote: _DIFFICULTIES
IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE._]◆ This has been occasioned solely by the care
they take to enforce an Act of Parliament, in the last session but
one, against fraudulent practices of attornies, and to prevent men
not duly qualified as attornies from practising as such. It is very
evident that the intent of the Act is in no way levelled at papists,
nor in any way demands their being excluded from practising more than
they were formerly. Therefore, I hope the favour of a judge may be
procured, so far as to admit him to take the usual attorney’s oath,
without requiring the religious one.’ Pope hopes one of the judges will
be good-natured enough to do this, and he suggests Judge Price for Lord
Oxford’s manipulation. ‘In one word the poor lad will be utterly undone
in this case, if this contrivance cannot be obtained in his behalf.’
Lord Oxford applied, not to Price, but to ‘Baron C.’ (Carter or Comyns,
as Mr. Elwin suggests). This judge, says Pope (Dec. 1730), ‘showed him
what possible regard he could, and lamented his inability to admit any
in that circumstance, as it really is a case of compassion.’ Ultimately
the obstacle seems to have been surmounted. Within a few months of
half a century later, Pope’s nephew died in Devonshire Street, London,
where he had ‘clerks’ in his employment. ‘He had, therefore,’ says Mr.
Elwin in a note to the letter from which the above extract is taken,
‘managed to make his way in some line of business.’
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF DEFOE._]
In the year 1731 died a popular and political writer, in the
announcement of whose death neither his popular works nor his
provocating agency in the service of Government is referred to. The
event is thus recorded in Read’s ‘Weekly,’ for May 1st, 1731: ‘A few
days ago died Mr. Defoe Sen., a person well known for his numerous
and various writings. He had a great natural genius and understood
very well the Trade and Interest of this Kingdom. His Knowledge of
Men, especially of those in High Life, with whom he was formerly very
conversant, had weakened his Attachment to any Party, but in the Main,
he was in the Interest of Civil and Religious Liberty, in behalf of
which he appeared on several remarkable Occasions.’
[Sidenote: ‘_FALL OF MORTIMER._‘]
In the month of July the Government began to look sharply after
political offences on the stage. At the Haymarket Theatre, an
historical tragedy, called ‘The Fall of Mortimer,’ was announced; and,
in the announcement the Ministry saw an attack on Walpole, and probably
on the queen. The grand jury of the County of Middlesex delivered a
long ‘presentment’ to the Court of King’s Bench, in which the new
play was described as ‘a false, infamous, scandalous, seditious, and
treasonable libel, written, acted, printed, and published against the
peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity.’ It is
not clear that the play was ever more than rehearsed. On the night it
was to have been regularly acted, a body of messengers and constables
rushed through the stage door in order to make capture of the players.
These were attired, and ready for the curtain to go up; Mullart, as
_Mortimer_, stood plumed and gallant at the centre of the stage. At
the first alarm, however, he and his mates took to flight, decked out
as they were, and succeeded in escaping. This play, which some thirty
years later was again turned to political purpose, grew out of the
brief fragment and the sketched-out plot of a play designed by Ben
Jonson. In the few lines he wrote, there are the following against
upstarts and courtiers. These were held to be adverse to Walpole’s
peace as well as the king’s. For example:――
Mortimer
Is a great Lord of late, and a new thing!
* * * * *
At what a divers price do divers men
Act the same things. Another might have had
Perhaps the hurdle, or at least the axe,
For what I have this crownet, robes, and wax.
There is a fate that flies with towering spirits
Home to the mark, and never checks at conscience.
* * * * * We
That draw the subtle and more pleasing air
In that sublimed region of a Court,
Know all is good we make so, and go on,
Secured by the prosperity of our crimes.
This matter passed over. A press war sprang up in another direction.
[Sidenote: _DUELS AND SERMONS._]
Lord Hervey published a pamphlet called, ‘Sedition and Defamation
Displayed.’ An anonymous author speedily followed it up by ‘a Proper
Reply to a late scandalous libel, called “Sedition and Defamation
displayed.”’ Hervey challenged William Pulteney, the reputed author
of the Proper Reply. The parties fought in the new walk in the upper
part of St. James’s Park. Their respective friends, Sir John Rushout
and Henry Fox looked on, while the adversaries made passes at each
other; but, when they closed, the seconds rushed in, parted, and
disarmed them. A little plaister was all the remedy required to cover
all the damage done by a few scratches on Lord Hervey’s person.
Pulteney’s name, however, was struck out of the Council Book, and he
was ignominiously put out of the commission of the peace.
The royal family proceeded to show that there was no prejudice on
their part against the noble art of printing. A printing press and
cases were put up at St. James’s House (as the old palace used to be
called), and the noble art of printing was exhibited before their
majesties. The future victor of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland,
worked at one of the cases. He set up in type a little book, of which
he was the author, called ‘The Laws of Dodge Hare.’ The duke, at this
time, also took lessons in ivory-turning, which was considered to be
a ‘most healthful exercise.’ Generally on Sunday, while the king and
queen were in the Chapel Royal, one of the Bishop of London’s chaplains
preached to the young Duke and the Princesses Mary and Louisa in his
royal highness’s apartment! As his royal highness had recently stood
godfather, in person, to the son and heir of Lord Archibald Hamilton,
he was supposed to be of importance enough to be thus preached to. The
young princesses were thrown in to make up a juvenile congregation.
Very much seems to have been made of the young duke this year, as if he
had a mission to perform. A little establishment was set up for him,
and he became a ‘personage.’ The papers solemnly proclaimed how the
Duke of Cumberland appeared in public, for the first time, with his own
coach and livery servants. He paid a visit to Sir Robert Walpole, in
Arlington Street, and went afterwards to Major Foubert’s Riding House
(on the site of what is now called Major Foubert’s Passage, Regent
Street), and there received his first lesson in riding.
The only manifestation of party feeling this year was made by the
citizens of London. A subscription had been entered into for the
casting of a statue of William III. When it was executed, the city,
influenced by Jacobite feeling, refused to receive it. Bristol was more
loyal. The citizens there bought the effigy that London despised, and
William soon stood erect in the midst of Queen Square.
[Sidenote: _YOUNG LORD DERWENTWATER._]
Among the miscellaneous chronicling of the year, there is one made by
most of the Saturday papers to this effect: ‘Yesterday, Friday, August
19th, the Lord Derwentwater arrived at his house in Poland Street, from
France.’ This was John, the late earl’s only son. He came to London
to consult Chiselden, the great physician. He was hopelessly ill of
dropsy; and a double sympathy attracted crowds of Jacobites to resort
to Poland Street to manifest their respect for the suffering son of
one of the martyrs to the cause of the Stuarts.
[Sidenote: _A STANDING ARMY._]
When in 1732 the National Defences became a serious matter for
consideration, the Jacobites affected to think that an army of 12,000
men would suffice for the protection of the realm. The Whigs insisted
that at least 17,000 would be required for its defence. The London
Whig papers asserted that 4,000 men would have all their work to do in
keeping Scotland quiet. The fortified towns of England would require
2,000 men. The remainder would not be sufficiently strong in numbers,
for sudden emergencies, if the total was only to be 12,000. Such
insufficiencies would leave many places without defence. This would
encourage Risings. Open insurrection would lead to foreign invasion,
with the Pretender at the head of it. The wind that would bring over
his hostile fleet would shut up our own in our harbours. Why had
Jacobitism increased tenfold in the last four years of Queen Anne?
Because the High Priests had been unmuzzled, and the necessary forces
had been disbanded. The Preston Rebellion, as the outbreak of 1715 was
contemptuously called, would never have happened at all if we had had
17,000 men under arms. As it was, it was crushed not by the bravery or
ability of our troops and officers, but by the incapacity and timidity
of the rebels themselves. So ran Whig comments in Parliament.
Unless the Government in London were sure that there were as many
majorities in all Corporations against the Chevalier’s pretensions as
there were ‘in certain places against King William’s statue,’ the
administration was conjured to keep up the numbers of the army. While
the Jacobites had hopes, England must entertain fears. Had Louis XIV.
lived a few months longer, a French army would have been in full march
to seat the Chevalier on a throne at Westminster. The Regent, Duke
of Orleans, did not help the Pretender, simply because he needed our
alliance against Spain which refused to recognise his Regency.
[Sidenote: _THE DUKE’S GRENADIERS._]
At home there was a seeming fixed determination that the Duke of
Cumberland _should_ be a soldier, and be trained to the ability
necessary to meet future emergencies. The youthful prince had military
inclinations. That military spirit was stimulated by the formation of
a company of youthful grenadiers out of a dozen sons of persons of
quality. Their dress resembled the uniform of the 2nd Foot Guards. ‘His
Royal Highness the Duke,’ say the journals of the day, ‘diverts himself
with acting as corporal, choosing to rise regularly in Preferment. The
number being but twelve, is to be increased.’ Fog’s Jacobite journal
says maliciously,――‘increased in case of War.’
Observance of the solemn anniversary of the 30th of January used to be
considered as a protest that all parties might make against ‘the sin of
rebellion.’ However this may be, reverence for the Royal Martyr seems
to have suffered some diminution in the year 1732.
[Sidenote: _GENERAL ROGUERY._]
When Dr. Hare, Bishop of Chichester, preached before the House
of Lords, in the Abbey, on the 30th of January, the only peers
present were the Lord Chancellor, Lord Onslow, and the Bishops of
Peterborough, Lincoln, Lichfield and Coventry, St. David’s, and
Rochester. The sermon was thoroughly political. The text was from
Proverbs xxiv. 21, ‘My son, fear thou the Lord and the king: and meddle
not with them that are given to change.’ The sermon was described
as ‘most extraordinary; the preacher vindicated the King’s honour
and sincerity in his concessions to the Parliament;’ and he insisted
strongly on the uses of ‘keeping up the day.’
Later, the Jacobites found some little satisfaction in the smart
reprimand delivered by the Speaker of the House of Commons to Sir John
Eyles, for directing the secretary of the Commissioners for the sale
of forfeited estates to set his name to an order for the disposal of
the Earl of Derwentwater’s estates, in the sale of which, great frauds
were discovered. But where was fraud not found at that time? From the
benches of Parliament to the council-room of the Charity Commissioners,
rogues abounded; the country was sold by the Senate, and the poor were
plundered by their trustees. Yet, these things caused less emotion in
the London coffee-houses than the report which came of the death of
Bishop Atterbury at Paris, in February. The event was simply recorded
in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ in these uncompromising words:――
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF ATTERBURY._]
‘_February 15, 1732._――The Revd. Dr. Francis Atterbury, late Bishop of
Rochester, died at Paris, justly esteemed for his great learning and
polite conversation.’ In what sense the Jacobites esteemed him may be
seen in an expression in one of Salkeld’s letters, wherein the writer
laments the loss of ‘that anchor of our hopes, that pillar of our
cause.’
Pope, in a letter to Lord Oxford, referred to Atterbury’s death in
these terms: ‘The trouble which I have received from abroad, on the
news of the death of that much-injured man, could only be mitigated by
the reflection your Lordship suggests to me――his own happiness, and
return into his best country, where only honesty and virtue were sure
of their reward.’ Pope could not have thought the ex-bishop innocent
of the treason, of which he was undoubtedly guilty; for the poet had
knowledge of the treachery before the Jacobite prelate’s death. Samuel
Wesley must have known it too, but he ignored all but his patron’s
virtues in a very long elegy on Atterbury’s decease, written in very
strong language, of which these lines are a sample:――
Should miscreants base their impious malice shed,
To insult the great, the venerable, dead;
Let truth resistless blast their guilty eyes!
――which is a sort of malediction that is now quite discarded by moral
and by fashionable poets.
The ‘Craftsman’ of May 6th announces the arrival of Mr. Morrice, the
High Bailiff of Westminster, at Deal. On landing he was taken into
custody and sent up prisoner to London, where, after being rigorously
examined by one of the Secretaries of State, he was admitted to bail.
The corpse of the ex-bishop was arrested as it came up the river. It
was taken to the Custom House, where, the coffin being examined for
papers, and nothing compromising being found, the body, according
to the facetious ‘Craftsman,’ was discharged without bail. Great
opposition was made to a request for burial in the Abbey; and when this
was granted, the ‘Craftsman’ was ‘not certain as to the usual Church
ceremony being read over the corpse.’
[Sidenote: _BURIAL OF ATTERBURY._]
The public were, at all events, kept in the dark, lest Jacobite mobs
should make riotous demonstrations at the ceremony. ‘On Friday, May
12th,’ says Sylvanus Urban, ‘the Corpse of Bishop Atterbury was
privately interred in his Vault in Westminster Abbey. On the Urn which
contained his Bowels, &c., was inscribed: “In hac Urnâ depositi sunt
cineres Francisci Atterburi Episcopi Roffensis.” Among his papers
brought over by Mr. Morrice was “Harmonia Evangelica,” in a new and
clearer Method than any yet publish’d. ’Tis also said he translated
Virgil’s “Georgics,” which he sent to a friend with the following Lines
prefix’d,
Haec ego lusi
Ad Sequanæ ripas, Tamesino a flumine longe
Jam senior, fractusque, sed ipsa morte meorum
Quos colui, patriæque memor, neque degener usquam.’
They who were of the prelate’s way of thinking made him, in one sense,
speak, or be felt, even in his grave. The body of the Jacobite Bishop
of Rochester had scarcely been deposited at the west end of the south
aisle of Westminster Abbey, of which he had been the Dean, when
copies of an epigrammatic epitaph were circulating from hand to hand,
and were being read with hilarity or censure in the various London
coffee-houses and taverns. It ran to another tune than that made upon
him by Prior, namely:――
His foes, when dead great Atterbury lay,
Shrunk at his corse, and trembled at his clay.
Ten thousand dangers to their eyes appear,
Great as their guilt and certain as their fear!
T’ insult a deathless corse, alas! is vain;
Well for themselves, and well employ’d their pain,
Could they secure him,――not to rise again!
The printsellers reaped a harvest by selling the Bishop’s portrait.
The most popular was sold by Cholmondely in Holborn, but he was had up
before the Secretary of State, and was terrified by that official into
suppressing the sale.
[Sidenote: _AT SCARBOROUGH._]
All London, that is, what Chesterfield called ‘the Quality,’ went
seaward in August. The cream of them settled on the Scarborough sands.
‘Bathing in the sea,’ says Chesterfield, ‘is become the general
practice of both sexes.’ He gives an amusing account of how ‘the
Quality’ from London looked, at Scarborough, and he jokes, in his
peculiar fashion, upon plots, Jacobites, and ministers. He writes
to the Countess of Suffolk: ‘The ladies here are innumerable, and I
really believe they all come for their healths, for they look very
ill. The men of pleasure are Lord Carmichael, Colonel Ligonier, and
the celebrated Tom Paget, who attend upon the Duke of Argyle all day,
and dance with the pretty ladies at night. Here are, besides, hundreds
of Yorkshire beaux, who play the inferior parts and, as it were, only
tumble, while those three dance upon the high ropes of gallantry.
The grave people are mostly malignants or, in ministerial language,
“notorious Jacobites,” such as Lord Stair, Marchmont, Anglesea,
and myself, not to mention many of the House of Commons of equal
disaffection. Moreover, Pulteney and Lord Cartaret are expected here
soon; so that if the Ministry do not make a plot of this meeting, it is
plain they do not want one for this year.’
[Sidenote: _NOTORIOUS JACOBITES._]
Chesterfield was branded as a ‘notorious Jacobite,’ because he had
opposed Walpole’s famous Excise Bill, this year. As a consequence, he
was deprived of his staff of office as Lord Steward of the Household.
While Chesterfield was writing so airily to Lady Suffolk, the king was
laying out 3,000_l._ in repairing the Palace of Holyrood. A dozen years
later, when ‘news frae Moidart’ reached the London Jacobites, they
laughed at the idea of the ‘Duke of Brunswick’ having made Holyrood
suitable for the reception of Charles Edward, Prince of Wales.
In the meantime a voice here and there from the metropolitan pulpits
ventured to hope the king would be kept by divine guidance, in a safe
groove. The future hero of Culloden was taking lessons in philosophy
from Whiston, and in mathematics from Hawksbee; and, at a funeral more
public than Atterbury’s, the Jacobites assembled in Poland Street, to
pay a last mark of respect to the ‘Earl of Derwentwater,’ the patient
whom great Cheselden could not save, and whose [Sidenote: _THE EARL OF
DERWENTWATER._]
corpse was carried to Brussels to be deposited by the side of that of
his mother, Anne Webb. The so-called ‘Earl’ John, son of the attainted
and beheaded peer, as a sick man, was left unmolested, though he called
himself by a title unrecognised by the Government.
[Illustration: Flowers]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER III.
(1733 to 1740.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he feverish imagination of Tories who were
decided Jacobites also, saw impossible reasons for every event. From
the 23rd to the 30th of January, 1733, there raged in the metropolis
what would probably now be called an influenza. The disease was then
known as the ‘London head-ache and fever;’ and it was fatal in very
many cases. Some of the Jacobites at once discovered and proclaimed
the cause and the effect of this visitation, which carried off fifteen
hundred persons in the metropolis. Observe the two dates. ‘On the
23rd of January, 1649, Charles denied the jurisdiction of his Judges,
who, nevertheless, sent him to the block on the 30th.’ The week of
mortal fever and headache was only an instalment of that former week’s
work which ended in the martyrdom of the Chevalier de St. George’s
grandfather! Horace Walpole asserts that George II. always attended
Church on the 30th of January. The king and the whole Court went
thither in mourning. All who had service to perform at Court, put
on sables. The king’s sister, the Queen of Prussia, was a declared
Jacobite, ‘as is more natural,’ says Walpole, ‘for all princes who do
not personally profit by the ruin of the Stuarts.’[2]
[Sidenote: _APPROACHING STORM._]
The royal speech on opening Parliament was of a peaceful character. The
Lords re-echoed it in their address, but in the Commons, both Sir John
Barnard and Shippen moved amendments to the address, from that House.
The speech had recommended an avoidance of all heats and animosities.
The theme of Barnard and Shippen was that the liberties and the
trade of the nation were probably menaced; that a general terror was
spreading of something being about to be introduced, perilous, nay
destructive, to both. Men of all parties being subject to this terror,
‘they cannot,’ said Shippen, ‘be branded with the name of Jacobites
or Republicans, nor can it be said that this opposition is made by
Jacobites or Republicans. No, the whole people of England seem to be
united in this spirit of jealousy and opposition.’ The address, of
course, was carried. But a storm was approaching.
[Sidenote: _WYNDHAM IN PARLIAMENT._]
This year, 1733, was the year of the famous debates on the motions for
a permanent increase of the army, and on the Excise question introduced
by Walpole, who proposed to transfer the duties on wine and tobacco
from the Customs to the Excise. The two propositions set the country in
a flame. The universal cry was that they were two deadly blows at trade
and liberty. The first proposal was carried; Walpole, under pressure
of large minorities against him in the House, and larger adverse
majorities out of it, withdrew the Excise measure. All his opponents
were branded by his partisans as Jacobites and something more. This
gave opportunity to the Jacobites in Parliament, and increased the
vigour of their opposition. It was against the motion for increasing
the number of the Land Forces, that the ‘Patriot’ Sir William Wyndham
spoke with almost fierce sarcasm. ‘As for the Pretender, he did not
believe there was any considerable party for him in this nation.
That pretence had always been a ministerial device made use of only
for accomplishing their own ends; but it was a mere bugbear, a raw
head and bloody bones fit only to frighten children; for he was very
well convinced his Majesty reigned in the hearts and affections of
his people, upon that his Majesty’s security depended; and if it did
not depend on that, the illustrious family now on the throne could
have little security in the present number, or in any number, of the
standing forces.’
A few press prosecutions, a few imprisonments of Jacobite tipplers
who _would_ drink the health of King James in the streets, or call
it out in church services; a weeding-out of disorderly soldiers from
otherwise trustworthy regiments; and a little trouble arising from
pulpit indiscretions, are the only symptoms of yet uncertain times, to
be detected. The ‘Craftsman,’ of August 4th, chronicles the discharge
of ‘several Private Gentlemen out of the Lord Albemarle’s troop of
Life Guards, some as undersized, and others as superannuated, but such
have been allowed fifty guineas each and their college. His Lordship
proposes to give every Private Gentleman in his Troop a new Surtout and
a pair of Buckskin breeches, at his own Expense.’
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL SERMON._]
Later, in the autumn, preachers took for a subject the want of respect
manifested, by the mass of people, for their ‘betters,’ including all
that were in authority. On Saturday, October 13th, the ‘Craftsman’
had this paragraph, showing how the pulpit was lending itself to
politics as well as to morals:――‘Last Sunday a very remarkable sermon
was preached at a _Great Church in the City_, against speaking
evil of dignities, in which the Preacher endeavoured to show the
unparalleled wickedness and Impudence of Tradesmen meddling in
Politicks, and particularly of their riotous Procession to Westminster
to petition against the late Excise scheme (so _evidently calculated
for their good_), which he placed among the number of Deadly Sins,
and recommended Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, for which the
Audience were so unkind as to laugh at him so much that he shut up his
book before he had done and threatened them with a severe Chastisement.’
[Sidenote: _STORMY DEBATES._]
The fear of the ‘Pretender,’ the recruiting in back parts of London
for ‘foreign service,’ and the relations of England with Continental
powers, kept up a troubled spirit among those who wished to live at
home, at ease. One of the most remarkable debates of the session
occurred in the House of Lords. The king had exercised, and wished to
continue to exercise, a right (such as he supposed himself to possess)
of dismissing officers from the army, without a court martial. The
Duke of Marlborough (Spencer) brought in a Bill to prevent such summary
expulsion, at the king’s pleasure. In the course of the debate the
figure of the Pretender was brought forward. The Duke of Newcastle
warmly supported the king’s ‘prerogative.’ There would be no safety,
he said, unless the king held that right. ‘There is,’ he remarked,
‘at present a Pretender to the Crown of these realms, and we may
conclude that there will always be plots and contrivances in this
kingdom against the person in possession of the throne. While there
is a Pretender, he may have his agents in the army as well as he has
everywhere else.’ Officers (according to the duke) might be led away
from their duty, and he held it to be unjust to the king to deprive
him of the right to dismiss officers suspected of Jacobitism, or known
to be disloyal, on evidence which a court martial might not think
sufficient for cashiering them. The Bill was lost, and to the king was
left the power of doing wrong.
In a portion of the Duke of Newcastle’s speech he asserted that the
right claimed for the king was indispensable, on the ground that not
only were private soldiers being recruited in London for ‘foreign
service,’ but that officers might be tampered with, and that there was
no real security that a general-in-chief might not be seduced into
the enemy’s camp. This spread some alarm. The debates, indeed, were
supposed to be delivered in private, but what was called ‘the impudence
of some fellows’ gave all that was essential to the public. For defence
of the nation, however, every precaution had been taken. Early in
the spring, a fleet of twenty sail of the line was sent to the Downs.
Eight regiments were brought from Ireland to England. It is certain
that these precautions preserved the public tranquility of the kingdom.
◆[Sidenote: _THE YOUNG CHEVALIER._]◆ Young Prince Charles Edward was
serving ‘with particular marks of distinction’ in the army of Don
Carlos; and the boy gave no obscure hints that he would, whenever it
was in his power, favour the pretensions of his family. An exclamation
of Sergeant Cotton, at a review in Hyde Park, that he would shoot the
king; and the fact that the sergeant’s musket was loaded with ball, and
that he had a couple of bullets in his pocket which had no right to
be there, seemed to imply that Cotton was ready to favour the Stuart
family’s pretensions.
The metropolis, moreover, was disturbed this year by the appearance
of strangers in the streets, with more or less of a military
air about many of them. These were, however, for the most part,
Jacobites who were void of offence, and who had hastily come over
from France. The Government there had given them a taste of what it
was to live under such a system in Church and State as the Stuarts
would establish in England, if they could get permanent footing
there. A royal edict was published throughout France, peremptorily
commanding all English, Irish, and Scotch, of the ages between
eighteen and fifty, who were without employment, to enter the
French army, within a fortnight. Disobedience to this edict was to
be punished:――civilians, by condemnation to the galleys;――men who had
formerly served, to be shot as deserters! Those who were not fortunate
enough to get away from such a paternal Government found friends in
the ministers of that George II. whom they still styled ‘Duke of
Brunswick’ and ‘Elector of Hanover.’ Lord Waldegrave, the British
Ambassador in France, sharply censured the edict, remonstrated against
the injustice of treating the persons named in the edict worse than the
natives of any other country, and pointed to the ingratitude of the
French Government for various good service rendered to it by England on
recent occasions. There was not a place in London where men met, but
there Lord Waldegrave’s health was drunk. Whatever the politics of the
drinkers were, all parties were glad to find a cause for drinking which
carried unanimity with it.
[Sidenote: _LORD DUFFUS._]
There was another Jacobite incident of the year, not without interest.
Queen Anne’s old naval captain, the gallant Kenneth, Lord Duffus, when
attainted for his share in the affair of 1715, was in safety in Sweden,
but he gave formal notice of his intention to repair to England and
surrender himself. On his way, the British Minister at Hamburg had him
arrested, and he held Lord Duffus prisoner till after the limited time
had elapsed for the surrender of attainted persons. Lord Duffus was
brought captive to London, was shut up in the Tower, and, destitute
of means, was maintained at the expense of Government. By the Act of
Grace, of 1717, he obtained his liberty, and he subsequently entered
the naval service of Russia. At his death, he left an only son,
Eric Sutherland (whose mother was a Swedish lady) who, in this year,
1734, at the age of twenty-four, claimed the reversal of his father’s
attainder (as Lord Duffus was forcibly prevented from obeying the
statute), and his own right to succeed to the baronial title. The claim
excited much interest while it was being pursued; and there was some
disappointment in Jacobite circles when the Lords came to a decision
that the claimant had no right to the honour, title, and dignity of
Baron Duffus. Eric was, at this time, a loyal officer in the British
army; he died in 1768. He left a son, James, born in 1747, who was
restored to the title, by Act of Parliament, in 1826, when he was in
his eightieth year. He enjoyed it only a few months. His successor,
Benjamin, died in 1875, when the title became extinct.
[Sidenote: _THE CALVES’ HEAD CLUB._]
The 30th of January 1735 was kept in memory by other means than
‘services’ before the Senate, and others in the parish churches. By a
tradition which was founded in a lie, and which rooted itself and grew
in the public mind by additional lying, there was a popular belief that
a Calves’ Head Club, from the time of Cromwell, had a special meeting
and dinner on every anniversary of the death of King Charles, to
dishonour his memory. The calf’s head served at table was in derisive
memory of the decollated head of that sovereign; and the ocean of
liquor drunk was in joyous celebration of those who brought about the
monarch’s death. The story was a pure invention, but the invention led
to a sort of realisation of the story. Here and there, anti-Jacobites
observed the 30th of January as a festival. ◆[Sidenote: _THE CALVES’
HEAD RIOT._]◆ Hearne mentions a dinner given on that day by a number of
young men at All Soul’s College, Oxford. They had ordered a calf’s head
to be served up, but the cook refused to supply it. He unwittingly,
however, gave the guests an opportunity of declaring their approval of
the sentence executed on Charles, by sending them a dish of woodcocks,
and these the audacious Oxford Whigs solemnly decapitated. In the
present year, 1735, occurred the famous Calves’ Head riot at and in
front of a tavern in Suffolk Street. According to the record, some
noblemen and gentlemen had the traditional dinner on the above day,
when they exhibited to the mob, which had assembled in the street, a
calf’s head in a napkin dipped in claret to represent blood, and the
exhibitors, each with a claret-stained napkin――in his hand and a glass
of strong liquor in the other, drank anti-Stuart toasts, and finally
flung the head into a bonfire which they had commanded to be kindled
in front of the house. The Jacobite mob broke into the house and would
have made ‘martyrs’ of the revellers but for the timely arrival of
the guards. Now, with regard to this incident, there are two opposite
and contemporary witnesses, whose testimony nevertheless is not
irreconcilable. The first is ‘a lady of strong political tendencies
and too busy in matters of taste to be ignorant of party movements.’
She is so described by a correspondent of the ‘Times,’ who, under the
signature ‘Antiquus,’ sent to that paper a few years ago the following
copy of a letter, written by the lady, and forming one of a collection
of old letters in the possession of ‘Antiquus, of Lincoln’s Inn’:――
[Sidenote: _THE ‘30TH OF JANUARY.’_]
‘I suppose you have heard of the Suffolk-street Expedition
on the Thirtieth of January, and who the blades were; they
went and bespoke a dinner of calves’ heads at the Golden
Eagle, and afterwards ordered a bonfire at the door,
then came all to the window with handkerchiefs dipt in
blood, and shook them out, and dress’d up a calf’s head
in a nightcap and had it thrown into the bonfire. The mob
gather’d about the door and were exceedingly inraged, so
that they broke ye door open and broke all the windows,
and threw fire into the house. The gentlemen were forc’d
to take sanctuary in the garret, and had not the Guards
been sent for the house would have been pull’d down and the
actors, no doubt, pull’d to pieces.
‘Feb. 5, 1734-5.’
‘The list of the British worthies I formerly sent you an
account of are as follows:――Lord Middlesex, Lord Harcourt,
Lord Boyne, and Lord Middleton――Irish; Lord John Murray,
Sir James Grey, Mr. Smith, Mr. Stroud, and, some say, Mr.
Shirley. Lord A. Hamilton dined with them, but, I am told,
went away before the riot began.
‘Feb. 16, 1734-5.’
[Sidenote: _OBJECTIONABLE TOASTS._]
Unfortunately, the name of the writer of the above letter is not
given. On the other hand, a letter written by one of the guests, a
week earlier than the above, has often been published. Therein, Lord
Middlesex informs Spence, then at Oxford, that he and seven others
met at the Golden Eagle to dine, without any thought as to what the
date of the month was. The eight included men of various political and
religious principles. Lord Middlesex says nothing as to the dishes
served up, but he states that all the guests had drunk hard and some
were very drunk indeed, when, happening to go to the window, they saw a
bonfire in the street, and straightway ordered fresh faggots, by which
they had a bonfire of their own. _Then_, they remembered the day, and
fearful of the consequences of this demonstration, the soberer part of
the guests proposed, from the open windows, loyal toasts to be drunk
by all. To a Jacobite mob this was an aggravation of insult, for to
drink the king, the Protestant succession, and the administration, was
to express affection for what they cordially hated. The mob besieged
the house, and then made an ugly rush to get at the offenders, which,
however, was checked by the arrival of the soldiers. Lord Middlesex
says that the leader of the mob was ‘an Irishman and a priest belonging
to Imberti, the Venetian Envoy.’
In the pulpits of the chapels of some of the foreign ambassadors,――most
Christian, most Catholic, or most Apostolic,――the preachers, naturally
enough, expounded Christianity in a politico-religious point of view.
The Protestant-succession papers speak of them as a daring vanguard
dashing forward to secure improved and fixed positions. Of course, the
preachers, when supporting the Papacy, were advocating the Pretender
by whom, were the Stuarts restored, the Papacy would be supported.
This led to an outburst of anti-papal sermons from half the London
pulpits. Secker, the ex-dissenter, ex-medical student, and now Bishop
of Bristol, was at the head of this body. They preached sermons against
Popery in a long and fiery series, in some cases to the extent of
two or three dozen. Where, on one side doctrines were sincerely held
which made the other side sincerely shudder, as at awful blasphemy,
charity got sadly mauled and knocked about. ◆[Sidenote: _FOSTER, IN
THE OLD JEWRY._]◆ It occurred to James Foster, the celebrated Baptist
who had passed through Arianism and Socinianism, before he became a
Trinitarian, that good citizens of both churches and factions might
be made even better by their understanding the excellence of charity.
His pulpit in the Old Jewry became accordingly a point to which men
of opposite opinions resorted,――just indeed as they did to the Popish
ambassadorial chapel, where they could hear _gratis_ the great tenor
Farinelli sing mellifluously. In reference to Foster, the general
‘Evening Post,’ of March 25th, says that on the previous Sunday
evening, ‘upwards of a hundred Gentlemen’s coaches came to the Rev. Mr.
Foster’s lecture in the Old Jewry. It must give,’ adds the newswriter,
‘a great Satisfaction to that ingenious and polite Preacher, to see
such an Audience at his Lectures, as well as to be a Reputation to
his Hearers, in their discovering a disposition to be pleased with
his useful and instructive Discourses, they turning upon the Truth,
Excellency, and Usefulness of the grand Parts of Moral Science; not
tending to support private or party egotism of Religion, or Rule of
Conduct, but a Conduct founded on the most sacred Rights of Mankind, a
universal Liberty, and a diffusive and extensive Benevolence.’
Another account states that ‘at his chapel there was a confluence
of persons of every rank, station, and quality; wits, freethinkers,
and numbers of the regular clergy who, while they gratified their
curiosity, had their prepossessions shaken and their prejudices
loosened.’
[Sidenote: _THE QUEEN AND THE ARTIST._]
There was one Jacobite who died this year, whose prejudices were never
in the least degree softened, namely, Hearne, the antiquary. Richardson
the painter, when party spirit between Whig and Tory, Hanoverian and
Jacobite raged bitterly, was as severe in a remark to Queen Caroline,
as Hearne was in what he wrote upon her. The queen once visited
Richardson’s studio to view his series of portraits of the kings
of England. Her Majesty pointed to the portrait of a stern-looking
individual between those of Charles I. and II. She very well knew the
likeness was that of a man who had helped to dethrone the Stuarts on
whose throne her husband was seated, and she therefore might have
entertained a certain respect for him; but she asked the artist if
he called that personage a king? ‘No, madam,’ answered the undaunted
Richardson, ‘he is no King, but it is good for Kings to have him among
them as a memento!’
The queen’s favourite painter, Anniconi, was more of a courtier than
blunt Richardson. To that artist who, for a season, drew the ‘Quality’
to Great Marlborough Street, she gave an order to paint a picture,
which was designed as a gift to the young Duke of Cumberland’s tutor,
Mr. Poyntz. It was an allegorical composition, in which the queen
herself was to be seen delivering her royal son to the Goddess of
Wisdom,――who bore the features of Mrs. Poyntz.
[Sidenote: _CHESTERFIELD’S WIT._]
The year 1736 may be said to have opened merrily, with Chesterfield’s
paper in ‘Fog’s Journal,’ on ‘An Army in Wax Work.’ In the course of
this lively essay, the writer argues that since the English army had
not been of the slightest active use during many years, in time of
war,――a waxen army (to be ordered of Mrs. Salmon, the wax-work woman)
would be cheap and sufficient in time of peace. He then alludes to
the Government cry against all who opposed it. ‘Let nobody put the
“Jacobite” upon me, and say that I am paving the way for the Pretender,
by disbanding the army. That argument is worn threadbare; besides,
let those take the “Jacobite” to themselves who would exchange the
affections of the people for the fallacious security of an unpopular
standing army.’
[Sidenote: _SCENE IN WESTMINSTER HALL._]
While there were, at this time, Nonjurors worthy of the esteem of
honourable men of all parties, there were others who were contemptible
for their spitefulness, and for the silliness with which they displayed
it. Here is an example. Parliament had passed the Gin Act, the Mortmain
Act, the Westminster Bridge Act, the Smugglers’ Act, and the Act for
borrowing 600,000_l._ on the Sinking Fund. A difference of opinion
might exist as to the merits of one or two of these Acts, but there
was no justification for the method taken by one person to show his
hostility. On July 14th, in Westminster Hall, while the Courts were
sitting therein, a bundle, dropped in front of the Court of Chancery,
suddenly exploded, and blew into the air a number of handbills,
which announced that, on this, the last day of term, copies of the
above-named Acts would be publicly burned in the hall during the
afternoon! One of the bills was handed in to the judges in the Court
of King’s Bench, where it was presented as a false and scandalous
libel. Three days later a proclamation was issued for the discovery
of the persons concerned in this outrage, and a reward of 200_l._
offered for the respective arrests of either the author, printer,
or disperser of the handbills. This led to the arrest, trial, and
conviction of the Rev. Mr. Nixon, a brainless Nonjuring clergyman, who
was proved to be the author of the bills, and the blower-up of the
bundle of crackers. On the 7th of December he was condemned to pay 200
marks, to be imprisoned for five years, and to be paraded before the
different Courts, in the Hall, with a parchment round his head――a sort
of foolscap――bearing a summary of his audacious offence. A portion of
this sentence was fulfilled soon after, and, finally, this foolish
Nonjuror was required to find security for his good behaviour during
the remainder of his life.
This daring, yet stupid, act was supposed to be part of an organised
Jacobite plot. In the month of April, when Frederick, Prince of
Wales, was married to the Princess of Saxe-Gotha, Sir Robert Walpole
had information which set him on his guard. After the explosion in
Westminster Hall, he wrote a letter to his brother Horace, in which
the following passage is to be found:――‘Since my coming to town I
have been endeavouring to trace out the authors and managers of that
vile transaction, and there is no reason to doubt that the whole was
projected and executed by a set of low Jacobites, who talked of setting
fire to the gallery built for the marriage of the Princess Royal, by
a preparation which they call _phosphorus_, which takes fire from the
air. Of this I have had an account from the same fellow that brought me
these, and many such sorts of intelligencies.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITES AND GIN-DRINKERS._]
And again, in September, when it was decreed that unlicensed dealing
in gin should cease, riots occurred, and more than mere rioting was
intended, in the metropolis, about Michaelmas. On this occasion Sir
Robert wrote to his brother:――‘I began to receive accounts from all
quarters of the town that the Jacobites were busy and industrious, in
endeavouring to stir up the common people and make an advantage of the
universal clamour that prevailed among the populace at the expiration
of their darling vice.’ The Jacobite idea was, according to the
information received by Walpole, to make the populace drunk _gratis_
by unlimited supplies of gin from the distilleries, and then turning
them loose in London to do such work as such inspiration was likely to
suggest to them; but an efficient display of the constitutional forces
was sufficient to preserve the peace of the metropolis.
[Sidenote: _THE STAGE FETTERED._]
The alleged abuse of the liberty of the press and of that of the stage
was denounced, as all opposition to the Government was, as the work of
Jacobites for the subversion ‘of our present happy establishment.’ The
Government undoubtedly hoped, by suppressing the liberty of satire on
the stage, to be enabled to go a step further, and to crush the liberty
of comment in the press. Sir Robert made his own opportunity to ensure
the success of his preliminary step. Mr. Giffard, of the theatre in
Goodman’s Fields, waited on Sir Robert in 1737 with the MS. of a piece
named ‘The Golden Rump,’ which had been sent to him, for performance,
by the anonymous author. Its spirit was so licentiously manifested
against the Ministry, and was so revolutionary in its speech,
suggestions, and principles, that the prudent manager felt bound to
place it at the discretion of the minister. Sir Robert put it in his
pocket, went down to the House with it, and ultimately succeeded, by
its means, in carrying the Licensing Act, by which the stage has been
ever since fettered. The anonymous piece brought by Giffard was never
acted, never printed, probably never seen by anyone except manager and
minister; and the question remains,――Was it not written to order, to
afford a plausible pretext for protecting the administration from all
its antagonists? Chesterfield, in his speech in the Lords against the
proposed Act, denounced it as a long stride towards the destruction of
liberty itself. He declared that it would be made subservient to the
politics and schemes of the Court only. In the same speech occurred
the famous passage: ‘This Bill, my Lords, is not only an encroachment
upon Liberty, but it is likewise an encroachment upon Property. Wit, my
Lords, is a sort of property. It is the property of those who have it,
and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is indeed
but a precarious dependence. Thank God! we, my Lords, have a dependence
of another kind.’
[Sidenote: _FEAR OF THE PRETENDER._]
In 1738, when the Opposition proposed a reduction of the army, the
Government manifested an almost craven spirit. They believed that if
the number of armed men were diminished, the king would not be secure
from assault in St. James’s, nor the country safe from foreign invasion.
[Sidenote: _WALPOLE, ON JACOBITES._]
In the Commons, Sir Robert Walpole spoke as follows, on the Jacobites,
their views, and their dealings at that period:――‘There is one thing I
am still afraid of, and it is indeed I think the only thing at present
we have to fear. Whether it be proper to mention it on this occasion, I
do not know; I do not know if I ought to mention it in such an Assembly
as this. I am sure there is no necessity for mentioning it, because I
am convinced that every gentleman that hears me is as much afraid of it
as I am. The fear I mean is that of the Pretender. Everyone knows there
is still a Pretender to his Majesty’s crown and dignity. There is still
a person who pretends to be lawful and rightful sovereign of these
kingdoms; and what makes the misfortune much the more considerable,
there is still a great number of persons in these kingdoms so deluded
by his abettors, as to think in the same way. These are the only
persons who can properly be called disaffected, and they are still so
numerous that though this government had not a foreign enemy under the
sun, the danger we are in from the Pretender and the disaffected part
of our own subjects, is a danger which every true Briton ought to fear;
a danger which every man who has a due regard for our present happy
establishment, will certainly endeavour to provide against as much as
he can.
‘I am sorry to see, Sir, that this is a sort of fear which many
amongst us endeavour to turn into ridicule, and for that purpose they
tell us that though there are many of our subjects discontented and
uneasy, there are very few disaffected; but I must beg leave to be
of a different opinion, for I believe that most of the discontents
and uneasinesses that appear among the people proceed originally from
disaffection. No man of common prudence will profess himself openly a
Jacobite. By so doing he not only may injure his private fortune, but
he must render himself less able to do any effectual service to the
cause he has embraced; therefore there are but few such men in the
kingdom. Your right Jacobite, Sir, disguises his true sentiments. He
roars out for Revolution principles. He pretends to be a great friend
of Liberty, and a great adviser of our ancient Constitution; and
under this pretence there are numbers who every day endeavour to sow
discontent among the people, by persuading them that the constitution
is in danger, and that they are unnecessarily loaded with many and
heavy taxes. These men know that discontent and disaffection are, like
wit and madness, separated by thin partitions, and therefore hope that
if they can once render the people thoroughly discontented, it will be
easy for them to render them disaffected. These are the men we have
the most reason to be afraid of. They are, I am afraid, more numerous
than most gentlemen imagine; and I wish I could not say they have
been lately joined, and very much assisted, by some gentlemen who, I
am convinced, have always been, and still are, very sincere and true
friends to our happy establishment.’
[Sidenote: _CURIOUS DISCUSSION._]
Walpole went on to say that he hoped Jacobitism would die out. He was
sure the Jacobites were daily decreasing; but if such a mad step were
taken as that of reducing the army――‘I should expect to hear of the
Pretender’s standards being set up in several parts of the island,
perhaps in every part of the three kingdoms.’
[Sidenote: _SAFETY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY._]
Wyndham ridiculed the idea that the army must not be reduced, because
‘a certain gentleman was afraid of the Pretender.’ Lord Polwarth
(afterwards Earl of Marchment) went further. He could scarcely see the
use of an army at all, and did not believe that there were Jacobites
to be afraid of. ‘I am sure his Majesty, and all the rest of the Royal
Family, might remain in St. James’s Palace, or in any other part of
the kingdom, in the utmost safety, though neither of them had any
such thing as that now called a soldier to attend them. Of this now we
have a glaring proof every day before our eyes. His royal highness the
Prince of Wales has now no guards to attend him. He passes every day to
and fro in the streets of London, and travels everywhere about London
without so much as one soldier to guard him. Nay, he has not so much
as one sentry upon his house in St. James’s Square, and yet his Royal
Highness lives, I believe, in as great security, at his house in St.
James’s Square, without one sentry to guard him, as his Majesty can be
supposed to do in St. James’s Palace with all the guards about him.’
The debate in the Lords was of much the same quality as that in the
Commons. Farewell to liberty if there be a standing army. On the other
side:――Freedom will perish if the king cannot back his will by force of
bayonets. The Government, of course, succeeded.
[Sidenote: ‘_AGAMEMNON._’]
The debates encouraged the Jacobites to hope. They were evidently
feared, and opportunity might yet serve them. The wise men at
Westminster had declared it. Meanwhile, the stage recommended them to
consider the difficulties of Government, and to make the best of the
one under which they lived. Thomson put his tragedy ‘Agamemnon’ under
the protection of the Princess of Wales, trusting she would ‘condescend
to accept of it.’ In the tragedy itself, in which there is much blank
verse that is only honest prose in that aspiring form, there are
few political allusions; but the following passage was undoubtedly
meant as incense for Cæsar, and instruction for his people――Whigs and
Jacobites.
_Agamemnon_ ... ――Know, Ægisthus,
That ruling a free people well in peace,
Without or yielding, or usurping, power;――
Maintaining firm the honour of the laws,
Yet sometimes soft’ning their too rigid doom,
As mercy may require, steering the state
Thro’ factious storms, or the more dangerous calms
Of Peace, by long continuance grown corrupt;
Besides the fair career which Fortune opens
To the mild glories of protected arts,
To bounty, to beneficence, to deeds
That give the Gods themselves their brightest beams;――
Yes, know that these are, in true glory, equal
If not superior to deluding conquest;
Nor less demand they conduct, courage, care,
And persevering toil.
_Ægisthus_ answered with a slight rebuke to the Jacobites who denounced
the merits of all government that had not their James III. at its
head:――
Say, thankless toil,
Harsh and unpleasing, that, instead of praise
And due reward, meets oft’ner scorn, reproach,
Fierce opposition to the clearest measures,
Injustice, banishment, or death itself,
Such is the nature of malignant man.
[Sidenote: _THE KING, IN PUBLIC._]
Quin, as Agamemnon, rolled his measured lines out with double emphasis,
his anti-Stuart feelings adding to the force. The ‘fierce oppositions’
of Ægisthus were not to be found in factious shape, at least, in the
next session of Parliament. The debates at the opening of the session
had but the slightest touch of Jacobitism in them; and that was in a
speech by Lord Gower,――whom Horace Walpole classed with the Prince
of Wales himself as a thorough Jacobite! Lord Gower spoke ill of the
‘so-called’ King’s Speech as being no royal speech at all, but one
which conveyed the dictates of the Ministry to the country. ‘The King,’
said Lord Gower, ‘has no more share in the councils of the country than
I have.’ A faint allusion in the Commons to his Majesty and family
being less popularly esteemed than formerly, Mr. Lyttelton remarked:
‘I’ve repeatedly seen proofs to the contrary. In the streets of London
I’ve seen the people clinging to the wheels of his coach, so as almost
to impede it;’――and the inference was that they would not have so
affectionately clung to the chariot-wheels of the Pretender. Other
proofs, during the session, were adduced of the satisfactory condition
of things. Recruiting for his Majesty’s army was successfully going on
in Scotland, and the last cargo of old firelocks, resulting from the
disarming of the Highlanders, was just then being landed at the Tower.
Nevertheless, there were Jacobites who were hoping for the best, and
keeping their powder dry.
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL DRAMA._]
Thomson made another effort in the year 1739 to introduce politics on
the stage. His ‘Edward and Eleanora’ (after being publicly rehearsed)
was advertised for representation, on March 29th, at Covent Garden;
but, before the doors were open, the licenser withdrew his permission,
and prohibited the performance absolutely. Thomson’s almost servile
worship of the reigning family was manifested in the dedication of the
tragedy to his patroness, the Princess of Wales. ‘In the character of
Eleanora,’ he says, ‘I have endeavoured to represent, however faintly,
a princess distinguished for all the virtues that render greatness
amiable. I have aimed particularly to do justice to her inviolable
affection and generous tenderness for a prince who was the darling of
a great and free people.’ As Eleanora loved Edward, so, it was hinted,
did Augusta love Frederick!
Dr. Johnson could not see why this play was ‘obstructed.’ Genest could
no more see the reason than Dr. Johnson. Yet, the licenser may be
easily justified in withdrawing a license which should never have been
granted. The play touched nearly on the dissensions between George
II. and his son Frederick, who were then living in open hostility.
Such passages as the following would certainly have been hailed with
hilarious sarcasm by the Jacobites, who dwelt with satisfaction on the
unseemly antagonisms in the royal family:――
Has not the royal heir a juster claim
To share the Father’s inmost heart and Counsels,
Than aliens to his interest, those who make
A property, a market, of his honour?
The prince is urged to save the king from his ministers; England is
represented as in peril from without as well as from within. Frederick,
under the name of Edward, is described as one who ‘loves the people he
must one day rule,’――Whigs and Jacobites equally, for:――
Yet bears his bosom no remaining grudge
Of those distracted times.
[Sidenote: _HENRY PELHAM AND THE JACOBITES._]
When Henry III. is declared to be dead, his son thus speaks of him in
terms applicable, by the poet’s intention, to George II.:――
The gentlest of mankind, the most abus’d!
Of gracious nature, a fit soil for virtues,
Till there his creatures sow’d their flatt’ring lies,
And made him――No! not all their cursed arts
Could ever make him insolent or cruel.
O my deluded father! Little joy
Had’st thou in life;――led from thy real good,
And genuine glory, from thy people’s love,――
That noblest aim of Kings,――by smiling traitors!
These domestic and political allusions pervade the play. Its production
would probably have led to riot, and the Lord Chamberlain, or his
deputy, did well in prohibiting the play and thus keeping the peace.
In January, 1740, Mr. Sandys moved for leave to bring in a Bill for
the better securing the freedom of Parliament, by limiting the number
of Government officers to sit in the House of Commons. Among the
opponents was Mr. Henry Pelham, who was convinced that the Bill would
help the Jacobites to carry out their designs. ‘We know,’ he said,
‘how numerous the disaffected still are in this kingdom; and they, we
may suppose, are not insensible to the prejudice that has been done to
their faction, by the places and offices which are at the disposal of
the crown. These places and offices are of great use to the crown and,
I think, to the nation, in preventing gentlemen from joining with a
faction, or winning them away from it; and the Jacobites are sensible
they have lost many by this means, some, perhaps, after they had got a
seat in this House.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE PROSPECTS._]
Mr. Pulteney, alluding to the assertion that if most placemen were
excluded from the House, there would soon be a majority of Jacobites
in it, said this was supposing that there was a majority of Jacobites
among the people, a supposition which he denied, and which he
stigmatised as very uncomplimentary to the king and his family. ‘But,’
he added, ‘if there should once come to be a majority of placemen and
officers in this House, that majority would soon create a majority
of Jacobites in the nation.’ The consequences, he was sure, would be
an insurrection, the army joining with the insurgents. This motion,
in the debate on which the Jacobites figured as both a dangerous and
a mercenary people, was lost by 222 to 206. Sixteen placemen saved
Sir Robert, who had spoken with much plausibility and cunning against
the leave asked for. The Bishop of Salisbury in the House of Lords,
in the discussion in March on the Pension Bill, could only express
a _hope_ that faction would not foster insurrection. The opposition
papers maintained that no such thing as faction existed, and that
Jacobitism was a name now utterly unknown to the mass of the people.
The opposition to Sir Robert was increasing in strength, and this was
taken to be a proof that the Jacobites were increasing in number; but
everything was done to sustain the minister. ‘’Tis observable,’ says
the ‘Craftsman,’ ‘that St. Stephen’s Chapel was never attended with
more devotion than at present, the very lame and the blind hardly
being excused; and both Parties seeming to indicate by their conduct
that nobody knows what a day or an hour may bring forth.’
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF WYNDHAM._]
The opposition, rather than the Jacobite party, experienced an
immense loss this year, by the death of Sir William Wyndham. This
able man ceased to be a Jacobite after he gave in his allegiance to
the accomplished fact of the established supremacy of the House of
Hanover. Wyndham became simply a ‘patriot,’ never ceasing his fierce,
but polished, hostility to Walpole, yet lending himself to no measure
likely to disturb the ‘happy establishment.’ Two years before his death
he took for second wife the widowed Marchioness of Blandford, whose
relatives opposed a match with an ex-Jacobite. ‘She has done quite
right,’ said the old Dowager Duchess of Marlborough. ‘I’d have had him
myself, if he’d only asked me sometime ago!’
The camp pitched at Hounslow this year reminded quidnuncs of the one
formed by James II., to overawe London. Londoners themselves expressed
a hope that the army would sweep ‘the infamous road’ of its mounted
highwaymen and its brutal footpads. But by the presence of soldiers
there was only an addition to the number of robbers and of victims.
[2] ‘Last Journals of Horace Walpole,’ vol. i. p. 41.
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CHAPTER IV.
(1741 to 1744.)
[Illustration: Drop-A]t the time when to be discovered carrying on a
treasonable correspondence with the Chevalier might cost a man his
life, Walpole made such a discovery in the person of a friend of honest
Shippen who, himself, kept up such correspondence, but was successful
in keeping it concealed. Shippen went to the minister with an urgent
entreaty not to bring down destruction on his friend. Mercy was a card
it suited the minister to play; he granted the prayer of his great
political opponent. But he suggested a stipulation. ‘I do not ask you,’
said Sir Robert, ‘to vote against your principles; but if questions
should arise in the House, personal to myself, do not then forget what
I have done for you to-day.’
A great personal question did arise,――this year. Lord Carteret in the
Lords, and Mr. Sandys, with his long cravat of Queen Anne’s days, in
the Commons, moved, on the same day and in precisely the same words,
that the king should be requested to dismiss Walpole from his service
and counsels for ever. The debate was hot in each House, and the object
of the movers was unsuccessful in both. In the Commons, this incident
occurred. The impetuous Jacobite Shippen rose to speak. He certainly
astonished the House. The motion, he said, was merely made to put out
one minister, and to put in another. For his part, he did not care who
was in or who was out. He would not vote at all. Shippen walked out of
the House, and he was followed by thirty-four friends who had yielded
to his persuasions. He thus proved to Walpole the gratefulness of his
memory.
[Sidenote: _INCIDENTS IN PARLIAMENT._]
This was not the only incident of the debate. Mr. Edward Harley, uncle
of the Earl of Oxford, was one of the speakers. Walpole had borne
hardly against the earl as an enemy to the Protestant Succession, for
being which the peer had stood in some peril of his life, and had
temporarily lost his liberty. Mr. Harley said, he would refrain from
acting as unjustly to Walpole, (against whom there was no specific
charge, only a general accusation, without any proofs,) as Walpole had
acted against his nephew on mere suspicion;――and Mr. Harley walked out
of the House, without voting.
[Sidenote: _PARTY CHARACTERISTICS._]
Walpole said of members of Parliament,――he would not declare who was
corrupt, but that Shippen was incorruptible. Coxe, in his Life of
the Minister, does not describe Shippen as a ‘Hanover Tory,’ running
with the hare and holding with the hounds, of whom there were many,
but as an uncompromising Jacobite, one who repeated among his Whig
friends that there would be neither peace nor content till the Stuarts
were restored; and who confessed to his confidants, that there were
occasions on which he never voted in the House till he had received
orders from Rome;――that is, not from Innocent, Benedict, or Clement,
but from King James III. Shippen used to say of Walpole and himself,
‘Robin and I understand each other. He is for King George, I am for
King James; but those men with the long cravats, Sandys, Rushout,
Gybbon, and others, only want places, and they do not care under which
King they hold them.’ This corresponds with John, Lord Harvey’s,
account of parties under George II. The Whigs were divided into
patriots and courtiers, or Whigs out, and Whigs in; the Tories into
Jacobites and Hanover Tories,――the first ‘thorough,’ the second joining
with their opponents when there was a promise of profit, personal or
political. But their prayer was something like that of the half-starved
Highland chieftain: ‘Lord, turn the world upside down, that honest men
may make bread of it!’
At this time, there was much reiteration of the assurance of Jacobitism
being either dead or in despair. As a proof of the contrary, on May
19th, the London ‘Champion’ referred to movements in the Chevalier’s
court at Rome. He had held several meetings with Ecclesiastics, and
also with laymen, ‘well-wishers to his interests.’ The ‘Champion’ could
not explain the meaning of these two extraordinary assemblies, but
attributed them to letters received from London.
[Sidenote: _ON HOUNSLOW HEATH._]
The ‘Gentlemen of the Road,’ loyal robbers as they were, were
despatched at Tyburn, in spite of their Hanoverian principles. Those
principles were manifested by a couple of highwaymen who stopped a
carriage on Hounslow Heath, the inmates of which, four young children
and two ladies, were on the way from Epsom to Cliefden. The highwaymen
were informed that the children were Prince George, Princess Augusta,
and a younger prince and princess. The Whig highwaymen hoped God would
bless them all, and they rode off towards another carriage coming
up at a little distance. This carriage was filled with nurses and
servants of the royal children; and the robbers stripped them of every
article of value which they carried with them. The singularity of this
illustration of the times consists in this,――that at a period when
robbers abounded, and that more highwaymen were to be found on Hounslow
Heath than elsewhere, the young members of the royal family were sent
across that dangerous heath without any protecting escort.
At the court of the Prince of Wales in London, an incident, not
without a certain significance, occurred. The Marquis of Caernarvon
presented Mr. Chandler, ‘the bookseller, outside Temple Bar,’ to the
prince. The worthy bookseller handed to the Heir Apparent three volumes
of what may be almost called ‘forbidden fruit,’ namely ‘Reports of
Parliamentary Debates, from the accession of George I.,’――an instalment
of a great collection to be afterwards completed. They were dedicated
to the prince by his permission,――a condescension which, no doubt,
was suspected of being tainted by Jacobitism. An incident of another
description may have gratified a rancorous Jacobite or two. The Jenny
Diver who, in her youth, had nearly stolen Atterbury’s ring from his
finger, as she kissed his hand, came now, in maturer years, to the
end of her career at Tyburn. With nineteen others of both sexes, she
journeyed to the gallows. The nineteen were divided into half a dozen
carts, but Hanoverian Jenny went in a mourning coach accompanied by
a chaplain, and escorted by four soldiers of the footguards. An hour
later, a ghastly equality shrouded the whole of the strangled score.
[Sidenote: _TORIES NOT JACOBITES._]
Although men’s minds were chiefly occupied in 1742 with the withdrawal
of Walpole from office and public life, and the Chevalier and his
projects seemed well-nigh forgotten, these projects were kept in view
by public men. Pulteney said in the House that he had himself told the
king, the Tories were not universally Jacobites, but that, treating
them as if they were, would certainly make them so. Aye, rejoined
Sir Everard Digby, just as in Charles I.’s time, the advisers of
arbitrary measures against the Puritans only increased the numbers of
those people. Fear of the designs of the Jacobite faction led to an
application to the Commons for a money grant in aid of the bringing
over certain bodies of troops in Ireland, to England. It was in the
course of this debate that Winnington described the exact position of
Jacobites and Jacobitism, at the moment he was speaking:――
[Sidenote: _CONDITION OF PARTIES._]
‘There are still many gentlemen of figure and fortune among us who
openly profess their attachment to the Pretender. There is a sort
of enthusiastic spirit of disaffection that still prevails among
the vulgar; and there is too great a number of men of all ranks and
conditions who now seem to be true friends to the Protestant Succession
who would declare themselves otherwise, if they thought they could do
so without running any great or unequal risk. These considerations
shall always make me jealous of the Jacobite party’s getting any
opportunity to rebel, and this they have always thought they had, and
always will think they have, when they see the nation destitute of
troops, for which reason, I shall always be for keeping in the island
such a number of regular troops as may be sufficient for awing them
into obedience.... The danger of an invasion from abroad, with the
Pretender at the head of it, is equally to be apprehended.’ Alluding
to Spain with whom we were at war, Mr. Winnington said: ‘She will
use every art that can be thought of for throwing into this island 8
or 10,000 men of her best troops, with the Pretender and some of his
adherents at their head.’ Mr. Carew believed that there were very few
men in England who would join the Pretender, if he invaded it, and that
in such case he would speedily be overwhelmed. The motion was, however,
successful by 280 to 269.
[Sidenote: _IN LEICESTER FIELDS._]
The popularity of the Prince of Wales was manifested in a singular way
this year. It was known that he was about to take up his residence in
Leicester Fields. The place was in some degree beautified for the
occasion, and the grass in the centre was enclosed by a neat wooden
railing. On the first night of the arrival of the Prince and his
family, the congratulating mob pulled down the rails, piled them up in
front of Leicester House, and kindled a bonfire which nearly ignited
the doors of the mansion. The Prince, however, sent out his thanks to
the mob for their civility, and he promised to adorn the enclosure with
a statue of the king his father――a promise which he failed to keep,
and probably never meant to do so. A statue of George I., brought from
Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos, was put up there in 1748.
The new sect of Methodists was now creating suspicion. Some friends of
the Happy Establishment looked upon them with even more aversion than
they bestowed on the Jacobites. At the execution of two criminals,
the Prince of Wales sent one of his chaplains (Mr. Howard) to afford
them spiritual comfort. But, they were also attended by a Mr. Simms,
who, says the ‘Whitehall Evening Post,’ ‘was formerly a butcher, but
lately a strict follower of the modern Methodists.’ The orthodox ‘Post’
adds:――‘By the Influence of whose Doctrine these hardened Wretches were
brought to Penitence, we need not point out to our Readers.’
[Sidenote: _AWAKING OF JACOBITES._]
It would seem that the term ‘Prime Minister’ was first applied to
Walpole, and in a reproachful sense. Speaking in the House, in 1741,
he said of his opponents: ‘Having invested me with a kind of mock
dignity, and styled me a _Prime Minister_, they impute to me an
unpardonable abuse of that chimerical authority, which only they
created and conferred.’ Under the Earl of Wilmington as First Lord of
the Treasury the better times, foretold by the ex-Prime Minister’s
enemies, failed to come to pass. Meanwhile, every significant incident
in Parliament, every detail of the domestic life of the king, was
regularly transmitted from London to the Chevalier, at Rome. One of
the Parliamentary incidents of the year was the appointment of the
Duke of Argyle to the offices of Master-General of the Ordnance, and
Commander-in-chief of the Forces, offices which he resigned, a month
later, because of the exclusion of Tories from power, but especially
because of the refusal to admit the Jacobite, Sir John Hynde Cotton,
to a place in the Government. ‘The Pretender and all that set,’ wrote
Mann, at Florence, to Horace Walpole, ‘are in high spirits and flatter
themselves more than ever. I don’t know but they have reason. I confess
to you I should be very sorry to see the Duke of Argyle with an army;
then, might the Pretender, in my opinion, triumph.’
[Sidenote: _CHESTERFIELD’S OPINIONS._]
The Jacobites found, perhaps, unconscious supporters of their cause
in the writers who energetically denounced the reigning monarch’s
partiality for Hanover, at the cost of England. Atterbury himself
could not have turned this subject more profitably to the cause of the
Chevalier than Chesterfield did in the first number of ‘Old England’
(Feb. 5th, 1743):――‘I am entirely persuaded that in the words, “_our
present happy_ _establishment_,” the happiness meant there is that of
the subjects; and that if the “establishment” should make the Prince
happy, and the subjects otherwise, it would be very justly termed
“_our present unhappy establishment_.” I apprehend the nation did not
think James unworthy of the Crown, merely that he might make way for
the Prince of Orange; nor can I conceive that they ever precluded
themselves from dealing by King William in the same manner as they had
done by King James, if he had done as much to deserve such a treatment.
Neither can I in all my search find that when the Crown was settled in
an hereditary line upon the present Royal Family, the people of Great
Britain ever signed any formal instrument of recantation by which they
expressed their sorrow and repentance of what they had done against
King James, and protested that they would never do so by any future
Prince, though reduced to the same melancholy necessity.’ The ‘sacred
right of insurrection’ was here maintained, as fully as any Jacobite
could have maintained it, against a family whose possession of the
Crown of England was not by right of blood, but because the nation
‘which gave the crown looked for the greatest amount of happiness from
the recipients.’ In a subsequent number Chesterfield somewhat modified
this tone, but without mutilating its sense. If he spoke treason, he
said it should be treason within the law. He was loyal to the reigning
family because he thought he could live free under it, and hoped that
‘we are _determined_ to live free.’
[Sidenote: _KING AND ELECTOR._]
Lord Chesterfield spoke in similar sense and spirit in the various
fiery debates upon keeping Hanoverian troops in British pay, and _that_
for Hanoverian interests solely, to further which the British people
were taxed. It was even doubted whether the Elector of Hanover had any
right to appear at the head of a British army, where such interests
alone were concerned. Mr. Murray (afterwards Lord Mansfield) in the
Commons denounced such sentiments as republican and Jacobitical. Lord
Chesterfield, in a later discussion in the Lords, said: ‘It is said of
a noble Lord in a late reign, that he turned Roman Catholic in order
to overrule a Roman Catholic king then upon our throne. I hope we have
not at present any reason to suspect that any British subject is now
with the same view turned Hanoverian. But as such a thing is possible,
as wolves sometimes appear “in sheeps” clothing, those who are truly
jealous of our present happy establishment will always have a jealousy
of a British Minister that savours too strong of the Hanoverian.’
A most unpleasant incident of the year was connected with two anonymous
letters addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord
Carteret, in which the writer, ‘Wat Tyler,’ informed them that if the
latter brought in Hanoverian troops that winter, there were two hundred
men bound by oath who would tear him, and all who voted with him, limb
from limb. The most significant incident of all, however, remains to be
told.
[Sidenote: _HIGHLAND REGIMENT IN LONDON._]
Early after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, a force consisting of six
companies of Highlanders was formed, for the purpose of causing the
peace to be kept in the northern portion of Scotland. In 1739, this
force, known as the Black Watch, was embodied as a regiment, which,
from its commander, was named ‘Lord Sempill’s.’ An idea prevailed
among the men that they were embodied for home service only. In 1743
the regiment was ordered to London, for the purpose of joining the
actively employed British army. The scene of this actively employed
army was then in Germany. Sempill’s regiment marched to London with
unconcealed aversion. They were in some degree calmed by assurances
from their officers that the march to London was in order that the king
might gratify his royal wish to review the regiment in person. Their
pride was gratified; they reached Highgate in good order, and they were
there encamped. The camp was visited by thousands of Londoners, who
praised the good discipline and quiet disposition of the Highlanders.
Among the most assiduous, insinuating, and seductive of the visitors
were the London Jacobites. When the men heard that the king had left
London for his army on the Continent, and that they were under orders
to follow, their pride was wounded; and the Jacobites took care to
inflame the wound and aggravate both the alleged slight and the anger
of the offended soldiery. A review of Sempill’s regiment on the king’s
birthday, 14th May 1743, by General Wade, on Finchley Common, was more
gratifying to the spectators than to the men. The papers describe the
Highlanders as making ‘a very handsome appearance. They went through
their exercises and firing with the utmost exactness. The novelty of
the sight drew together the greatest concourse of people ever seen on
such an occasion.’
[Sidenote: _DESERTION OF THE MEN._]
Four days later, orders came for the troops to embark on the Thames.
On that day about a hundred and fifty of the men failed to answer
the morning roll call. They had not only disappeared, but with them
their arms and several rounds of ball cartridge. ‘They did not care
to go,’ says Walpole, in one of his May letters, ‘where it would not
be equivocal for what King they fought.’ Sir Robert Munro, their
Lieutenant-Colonel, before their leaving Scotland, asked some of the
Ministry, ‘But suppose there should be any rebellion in Scotland,
what should we do for these eight hundred men?’ It was answered,
‘Why, there would be eight hundred fewer rebels there!’ They were
evidently mistrusted. The deserters, who justified the mistrust, had
conceived that the review, for which they had marched to London, being
over, they had a right to march back again. They concerted together,
kept their own secret, were not betrayed by comrades who looked upon
their military duty in another light, and they quietly left the camp
at Highgate in the dead of night. They were under the command of a
fine stalwart corporal named Macpherson, the corporal’s brother,
and an intelligent private, Shaw. For what purpose they set out for
Scotland was probably best known by the Jacobites of the metropolis.
The object must have been far more serious than simply to return,
because they conceived such action was within the limits of their
legal right. This would have been the wildest folly, and the
Macphersons and their men were neither fools nor savages. ◆[Sidenote:
_MARCH OF THE DESERTERS._]◆ However this may be, London was in
uncontrollable alarm, and expected a record of plunder, murder, and
incendiarism along the line of march, till the retreat was stopped and
the deserters captured. On the contrary, the Highlanders, as they
proceeded northward, injured neither man, woman, nor child――neither in
person nor property. The most active measures were taken to pursue,
meet, envelope, and destroy this most disloyal and yet much admired
body. They were heard of everywhere; were scarcely seen anywhere. The
reward for catching a single straggler was forty shillings; but there
were no stragglers. The men understood the uses of solidarity, and
kept compact in body as they were united in sentiment. Corporal
Macpherson seemed to know the country perfectly, and to have a map of
it ever under his eyes. Infantry, cavalry, volunteer mobs, and posses
of constables scoured the districts on the line of march, but could
not meet with those who were nearly successfully accomplishing this
Xenophonian retreat. Macpherson, in fact, constantly changed his line.
He led his men across country by night, always encamping in woods, by
day, behind hastily constructed defences. Sometimes they made rapid
marches by day, and took food and repose at night. ◆[Sidenote: _THE
HIGHLANDERS AT OUNDLE._]◆ On the morning of the 22nd, a Mr. Justice
Creed heard of them as being encamped near his residence, about four
miles from Oundle, in Northamptonshire. Like a brave and good man, he
went down to them and got permission to address the famished and
foot-sore band. He did this with such effect, as to obtain from them a
sacred promise to surrender on condition of receiving a general
pardon. Creed wrote in camp a letter to that effect to the Duke of
Montagu, Master of the Ordnance. Macpherson undertook that the
Highlanders should remain in their quarters till an answer was
received. In the meantime, a Captain Ball, who had been despatched by
General Blakeney with a force of cavalry from the northeastern
district to intercept the march of the Highlanders, came upon them
near Oundle, and demanded their immediate and unconditional surrender.
The parties interchanged civilities. Macpherson informed the Captain
that, through Creed, they were in negotiation with the Government. The
Corporal also found means to let Creed know the exact state of
affairs. The Justice advised them to surrender and hope for the best.
Macpherson then invited the Captain to come and look at his entrenched
position in the wood, as authorising him to hold out, and to defy any
attack from Ball’s cavalry. The Captain confessed that they were
unassailable by cavalry. Then, said the Corporal, here we will die
like men, our arms in our hands. The Captain intimated that if they
did not surrender, not a man should leave the place alive. Two of the
Highlanders escorted Ball to the edge of the wood; but on the way he
convinced both that the only thing left for them was to return unarmed
to their regiment. One of these two remained with the persuasive
cavalry officer. The other returned to the little fortress in the
wood, where he laid before the corporal commander-in-chief and the
body of Highlanders the Captain’s arguments and conclusions.
◆[Sidenote: _MILITARY EXECUTION._]◆ This he did with such effect that
the body of fugitives surrendered unconditionally to General Blakeney,
who disarmed them and sent them, as captured deserters, to their old
quarters at Highgate. London literally ‘turned out,’ to see them
subsequently marched down to the Tower. Their uniforms were torn, and
each man was tightly pinioned; but their bearing was so becoming that
no voice insulted them. Their manliness was worthy of respect, and
their offence was deserving of the issue which followed on the parade
ground of the Tower. Justice was satisfied with the sacrifice of three
victims. On the 22nd of July, the whole regiment was drawn out
semi-circular on the ground. Some paces in front stood three groups of
soldiers with loaded muskets――the firing parties. Presently
Macpherson, his brother, and Shaw walked up, without fear or
ostentation, but with great gravity, to places face to face with those
comrades who had been told off for their swift destruction. As the
three men were seen to kneel in prayer, the whole regiment
simultaneously, unordered, followed the example, and prayed for their
countrymen. After a brief silence, the doomed three stood firmly
upright. A rattle of musketry from the respective firing parties
rolled over the ground; and a minute or two later a few clansmen of
the Macphersons and comrades of Shaw reverently covered their bodies,
and removed them for interment near the spot where they had perished.
[Sidenote: _THREATENED INVASION._]
The incident was not altogether apart from Jacobitism; nor probably
was the subsequent fact, namely, that Lord John Murray, who afterwards
was Colonel of the regiment, had the portraits of these three men hung
up in his dining-room. The year closed with a threatening incident.
Charles Edward left Rome in December for France, in order to accompany
the expedition which was preparing in French ports for the invasion
of England, under Marshal Saxe. There can be little doubt that the
Government was well informed of the good intentions of France, by
trustworthy agents abroad.
There is a tradition, however, that the first intelligence of a plot to
restore the Stuarts was sent up to London from the Post office at Bath.
Ralph Allen (the _Squire Allworthy_ of Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’) had,
since the year 1720, enjoyed a grant, or farm, of all the bye-way or
cross-road letters in England and Wales, which grant he possessed till
his death, in 1764. It is said that this Ralph Allen, of Prior Park,
owed much of his large fortune to the result of his practice of opening
letters; and it is added that by opening one of these cross-road
letters he gained information of a plot for the Jacobite invasion
of England,――and this information being sent to London, gave to its
inhabitants the first announcement of an impending rebellion. In this
same month of December, as was afterwards made known, a packet passed
through the post, addressed to Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, hitherto
a supposed friend of the Hanoverian dynasty. It contained matter which
helped him to the scaffold on Tower Hill,――namely, his appointment to
an important command in the Jacobite army about to be organised, and
a flattering allusion to Lovat’s worthiness to wear a ducal title.
Walpole was entitled to say, as he did:――‘We are in more confusion than
we care to own.’
[Sidenote: _CONFUSION._]
There was mirth enough in the opposition papers. Their columns crackled
with epigrams against the king, court, and the Countess of Yarmouth.
They were but slightly veiled and were still less slightly pointed.
There was some regret perhaps that the reward offered by De Noailles,
at Dettingen, to the troops that should capture George II., in that
battle, had only resulted in the utter cutting to pieces of the Black
Mousquetaires, who made the attempt.
It was on the 15th of February, 1744, after there had been some
difficulty to persuade people of the impending danger, that the king
informed Parliament and the nation, that this kingdom was about to be
invaded by the French, with the design of overthrowing the present
happy establishment, and the Protestant succession, and of restoring
the Stuarts and the Romish religion. In the debates which ensued in
both Houses, all the occasional references to Jacobites seemed to have
come together in one heap. Lord Orford (Walpole) reminded the peers how
he had been calumniated and ridiculed for repeating that the Jacobites
had never ceased to plot, and that they would one day renew their
attempt to destroy the present dynasty. ◆[Sidenote: _PREPARATIONS._]◆
If England was not ready to meet this attempt, the fault would be
with those who were now in power. Lord Chesterfield still maintained
that the Jacobites in the metropolis were few, and that hostility
to the Government was chiefly maintained there by the malicious and
contemptible sect of Nonjurors. One Jacobite member in the Commons,
Sir Francis Dashwood, was audacious, at least by inuendoes. Alluding
to the harsh epithets flung at the Chevalier, he remarked that James
II. had branded as an invader and usurper that William of Orange, who
was afterwards hailed by the country as its glorious deliverer. He
referred also to the incident in Roman history of the Roman soldiers
refusing to march against foreign invaders till they had destroyed the
tyranny which reigned at Rome. The application of these remarks was
easy enough. They showed the spirit of the Jacobite party, particularly
in London. The natural result ensued, namely, a proclamation to the
justices to put in force the laws which had been framed against Papists
and Nonjurors. The former were ordered to remove to a distance of at
least ten miles from the metropolis, or to keep close within their
habitations. Those persons who refused to take the oaths of allegiance
and abjuration were to be deprived of their arms and horses; and
every attempt at rioting was to be put down by armed force. Further,
every person found corresponding with the Pretender or his sons were
pronounced to be guilty of High Treason,――which involved forfeiture
of life, title, and estates. If this seems stringent, it must be
remembered that already had there been caught and caged in Newgate
a Popish priest, who, putting in action the teaching of his Church
that it only interfered with religion,――and with morals, which means
everything else,――had, in the disguise of an imaginary captainship,
been trying to enlist men into the service of the enemy.
[Sidenote: _DECLARATION OF WAR._]
Then came the mutual declarations of war. That of France against
England accused the latter power of every political enormity. That of
England against France was equally explicit,――with the special addition
that France had treacherously assisted Spain against England, when
France was openly at peace with England, and that it was now aiding and
abetting the Pretender who, through his son, was preparing to overthrow
the royal family, government, and constitution of Great Britain.
What was the temper of the nation with regard to the present condition
of things?
No doubt there was some satisfaction felt by the Jacobite guests over
their cups at the ‘Mourning Bush’ in Aldersgate Street. This sign was
originally set up in London by Taylor, the Water Poet, at his tavern
in Phœnix Alley, Long Acre, as a token of his principles, after the
death of Charles I. He was however compelled to take it down. Another
adherent of the Stuarts, Rawlinson, who kept the ‘Mitre’ in Fenchurch
Street, put it in mourning, as a testimony of similar opinions.
Jacobite Hearne thought the ‘Mourning Mitre’ very appropriate.
‘Rawlinson certainly did right. The honour of the mitre was much
eclipsed through the loss of so good a parent of the Church of England.
Those rogues say, this endeared him so much to the churchmen, that he
soon throve amain and got a good estate.’ It is not to be supposed that
the ‘Bush’ in Aldersgate Street was actually craped, or sable-framed,
in 1744; but the tradition was kept up that the ‘Bush’ _was_ in
mourning, and would continue to be so, till the Stuarts were restored.
[Sidenote: _LETTER FROM HURD._]
Among the persons, on the other hand, who looked upon the threatened
coming of Prince Charles Edward as hardly amounting to a bad dream was
Mr. Hurd,――subsequently a bishop, but in February, 1744, at Cambridge,
looking forward to receive priests orders in May at the hands of Dr.
Gooch, Bishop of Norwich, in the chapel of Caius College. The news
from London was exciting, and Hurd writes to his friend, the Rev.
John Devey, on the 17th of February:――‘Nothing is talked of here but
an invasion from the French. The Chevalier is at Paris, and we are to
expect him here in a short time. Whatever there may be in this news, it
seems to have consternated the Ministry. The Tower is trebly guarded,
and so is St. James’s, and the soldiers have orders to be ready for
action at an hour’s warning. They are hasting, it seems, from all
quarters of the kingdom to London. I saw a regiment yesterday, going
through Newmarket. After all, I apprehend very little from this terror.
It seems a polite contrivance of the French to give a diversion to our
men, and keep the English out of Germany. Let me know what is said in
your part of the world.’
[Sidenote: _PUBLIC FEELING._]
Lady Sarah Cowper (in the Correspondence of Mrs. Delany) writes:――‘If
it is true that the French design only to draw our troops from
Flanders, and facilitate their own conquests abroad, and that the
Kingdom of England and our present government may however be safe, I am
sure at least that the unhappy wretches already drawn into rebellion,
and more that may follow their example, must be sufferers. The distress
must fall somewhere, and all humane people must have some share in it.’
Again, some idea of the half-frightened, half-jocular feeling of
persons in humbler life (as to invasion) may be gathered from a letter
in the same Correspondence (ii. 384), written from Fulham, by a waiting
gentlewoman in the service of Mrs. Donnellan, to a friend in the
country:――‘I really believe in my heart, Master do not care if the
French comes and eats us all up alive. Is there not flat boats, I know
not how many thousands, ready to come every day? and when they once
set out, they will be with us as quick as a swallow can fly, almost;
and when they land we have no body to fight them, because you will not
raise your militia. For my part, I dare not go to the Thames, for fear
they should be coming; and if I see one of our own boats laden with
carrots, I am ready to drop down thinking it one of the French.’
[Sidenote: _LADY M. W. MONTAGUE._]
How difficult it was for English subjects in France to send news to
London is exemplified in a letter, written in March, 1744, by Lady
Mary Wortley Montague, at Avignon, to her husband, of an interview with
the Duke de Richelieu. The latter asked her, ‘What party the Pretender
had in England?’ ‘I answered,’ she writes, ‘as I thought, a very small
one.’ ‘We are told otherwise at Paris,’ said he; ‘however a bustle at
this time may serve to facilitate our other projects, and we intend to
attempt a descent; at least, it will cause the troops to be recalled,
and perhaps Admiral Mathews will be obliged to leave the passage open
for Don Philip.’ The lady thus continues: ‘You may imagine how much I
wished to give you immediate notice of this; but as all the letters are
opened at Paris, it would have been to no purpose to write it by post,
and have only gained me a powerful enemy in the Court of France. In my
letter to Sir Robert Walpole, from Venice, I offered my service, and
desired to know in what manner I could send intelligence, if anything
happened to my knowledge that could be of use to England. I believe he
imagined that I wanted some gratification, and he only returned me cold
thanks.’
[Sidenote: _CARTE, THE NONJUROR._]
‘Nobody is yet taken up: God knows why not!’ Such is the exclamation of
Horace Walpole in a letter to Mann, on the 23rd of February, this year.
Government, however, soon began the system of arrest. Colonel Cecil,
supposed to be designed for the Chevalier’s Secretary of State, was
captured. Papers which were found upon him compromised Lord Barrymore,
the Pretender’s general, who, before day-break on a March morning,
was arrested by a file of soldiers at his house in Henrietta Street,
Cavendish Square. Cecil had previously removed his papers out of harm’s
way; but, thinking the danger over, he had resumed possession of them.
‘These discoveries,’ says Horace Walpole, ‘go on but lamely. One may
perceive who is _not_ Minister, rather than who is.’ The notorious
Carte, who had been taken up under a suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act, was carried before the Duke of Newcastle. ‘Are you a bishop?’
asked the duke, thinking he might be a Nonjuring prelate. ‘No, my
lord duke,’ replied the Nonjuror; ‘there are no bishops in England
but what are of your Grace’s own making; and I am sure I have no
reason to expect that honour.’ After he was set at liberty, the saucy
‘Westminster Journal’ remarked: ‘Mr. Carte was confined for he knew not
what; and discharged for he knew not why.’
[Sidenote: _CARTE’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND._]
Carte, the biographer of Ormond, and the ex-secretary of Atterbury, was
a man who had twice fled abroad when accounted a rebel, and who was
allowed to return when he was thought to be harmless. He, this year,
issued a prospectus of his intended History of England. The London
municipality met the overture in a liberal spirit which did it honour,
but which brought upon it the bitterest sarcasm of Horace Walpole. ‘I
wish to God,’ he wrote in his anger to Mann, from Arlington Street,
in July, 1744, ‘I wish to God Boccalini was living! Never was such an
opportunity for Apollo’s playing off a set of fools as there is now!
The good City of London, who, from long dictating to the Government,
are now come to preside over taste and letters, having given one Carte,
a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a year, for seven years, to write the
History of England; and four aldermen and six common-councilmen are
to inspect his materials and the progress of the work. Surveyors of
common-sewers turned supervisors of literature! To be sure, they think
a History of England is no more than Stowe’s survey of the parishes!
Instead of having books printed with the _imprimatur_ of an university,
they will be printed, as churches are whitewashed, John Smith and
Thomas Johnson, Churchwardens!’ Such was the light spirit with which
the fine gentleman of Strawberry visited the first step taken by the
London Corporation, in imitation of the ancient foreign guilds, to do
honour to literature and literary men. In Carte’s case, politics were
not considered. The Jacobite had given proof of his ability, and the
Whigs trusted to his honesty. If his discretion had been equal to both,
his History would have been more acceptable to the City companies. This
Nonjuror died in 1754.
[Sidenote: _VARIOUS INCIDENTS._]
Walpole had looked for a landing of the French and the Pretender, in
Essex or Suffolk. He thought the English crown would be fought for,
not on the seas but on land, and he declared that he never knew how
little he was a Jacobite till it was almost his interest to be one. The
interest changed as London was secured and our preparations were more
successfully made than those of France. In March, he was sure, ‘if they
still attempt the invasion, there will be a bloody war.’ The spirit
of the nation was sound. As troops marched towards London, they were
fed and cherished on the way as the defenders of England from Popery
and the French. The London merchants were equally spirited. The name
of the French was injurious to the Chevalier’s cause; and the fear
of Popery was not abolished by the assurances of the Jacobites that
the young Chevalier was a Lutheran. One of the curious features of
the time was connected with the Swiss servants in London, who formed
themselves into a volunteer regiment, and placed themselves at the
disposal of the Government. The warlike appearances subsided a little
when tempests broke up the naval preparations at Dunkirk, and drove
the Brest squadron from the Channel. The Jacobite interest, however,
was maintained in some of the counties. Walpole, in allusion to the
changes in the Ministry at the end of the year (when Carteret and
Lord Granville withdrew), says that several Tories refused to accept
proffered posts from an impossibility of being re-chosen for their
Jacobite counties. _One_ at least may be excepted. Sir John Cotton
was forced upon the king as Treasurer of the Chambers. The king was
naturally displeased that an adherent of the Stuarts should be thrust
into an office in the royal household at St. James’s. The matter was
illustrated by a caricature, in which the Falstaffian Sir John was
being thrust down his majesty’s throat by the united endeavours of the
Ministry――the ‘Broad-bottom,’――a coalition of men of opposite parties,
which therefore gave a tameness to most of the debates.
[Sidenote: _LADY NITHSDALE._]
In the spring of this year died, in Rome, the only contemptible
Jacobite peer who had been condemned to death; and he had had the
good luck to escape,――the Earl of Nithsdale. He was taken into the
Chevalier’s service, but for more than a quarter of a century, he
looked to his heroic wife for money; and was neither satisfied nor
grateful. He was unreasonably querulous, never had brains enough to be
conscious of what his wife had risked and had done for him; was mean
and untruthful; ever and utterly unworthy of this brave, noble, and
true-hearted woman. Even after her husband’s death she saved his honour
by paying his debts, as she had before saved his life. When she too
passed away, in 1749, there could not have been a Jacobite who read
the record of her death in the London papers, nor any _man_, however
he might have hated the Stuarts and their church, but would have
acknowledged that no truer martyr ever died at Rome than this angelic
daughter of the house of Herbert.
[Illustration: Flower]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER V.
(1745.)
[Sidenote: ‘_TANCRED AND SIGISMUNDA._’]
[Illustration: Drop-T]he stage took an early opportunity to put
forth utterances in behalf of ‘moral order.’ On March 18th, 1745,
Thomson, as warm a Hanoverian as could be found among Scots, produced
his tragedy――‘Tancred and Sigismunda,’ at Drury Lane. The piece was
ostentatiously patronised by Frederick, Prince of Wales, to whom the
poet subsequently dedicated it, as a liberal patron of all arts, but
particularly of dramatic art. Pitt and Lyttelton were present at a
private reading of the play, which, therefore, had a certain political
significance, and Whigs and Jacobites sat in judgment on it. Thomson’s
cunning, however, enabled him to please both parties. When _Siffredi_
(Sheridan) uttered the lines, referring to a deceased king,――
He sought alone the good of those for whom
He was entrusted with the sovereign power,
Well knowing that a people, in their rights
And industry protected, living safe
Beneath the sacred shelter of the laws,
Encouraged in their genius, arts, and labours,
And happy each as he himself deserves,
Are not ungrateful,――
the applause which followed had a divided, or a double, application;
but it was as nothing to the tumult of approbation which greeted the
passage emphasised by _Tancred_ (Garrick):――
They have great odds
Against the astonished sons of Violence
Who fight with awful justice on their side.
All Sicily will rouse, all faithful hearts
Will range themselves around Prince Manfred’s son;
For me, I here devote me to the service
Of this young Prince.
And again had thundering acclamation double-meaning when _Siffredi_
exclaimed:――
Thou art the man of all the many thousands
That toil upon the bosom of this isle,
By Heaven elected to command the rest,
To rule, protect them, and to make them happy.
When the first act ended, the factions of Jacobites and Hanoverians
were equally satisfied with their power of making political use of
passages in this play.
They found few opportunities in the second act; but both parties
clapped hands at the lines of _Osman_:――
We meet to-day with open hearts and looks;
Not gloom’d by Party scowling on each other,
But all, the children of one happy isle,
The social Sons of Liberty.
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL DRAMA._]
During the remainder of the tragedy the love-woes of _Tancred_, and
_Sigismunda_ absorbed the sympathies of the audience, though Thomson
laid a clap-trap or two, in a passage where mention was made of ‘a
faithless prince, an upstart king,’ and in an allusion to the Normans
who bravely won,
With their own swords, their seats, and still possess them,
By the same noble tenure;
but especially in denouncement of a reign which Osmond stigmatised as a
usurpation; and added――
This meteor King may blaze awhile, but soon
Must spend his idle terrors;――
which usurpation Jacobites would assign to George; while Whigs saw in
the temporary royal meteor the ‘King’ in whose name, his son, Charles
Edward, was preparing to invade Great Britain.
The Earl of Orford, the champion of Brunswick and the staunch supporter
of the Hanoverian succession, died this year. Horace Walpole says of
his father, ‘he died, foretelling a Rebellion which happened in less
than six months, and for predicting which he had been ridiculed.’ It
required no gift of prophecy to foretell an event which had been long
almost openly preparing.
Amid the growing excitement of London, there was a motion made by
Mr. Carew in the Commons, for holding new parliaments annually. He
supported the motion by a curious illustration. The king, he said, who
first introduced long parliaments (Richard II.) was dethroned and put
to death by Henry of Lancaster, who took his place and was honoured by
the people as their deliverer from slavery. Sir William Yonge replied
that annual parliaments would deprive the king of all power over them;
and deprivation of all such power cost Charles I. his head. Similar
effect would follow from like cause. Sir John Phillips, who was said
to be equally troublesome whether as patriot or placeman, was not only
for annual parliaments, but for a fresh Ministry every new session! The
motion was negatived by 145 to 112.
[Sidenote: _THE YOUNG CHEVALIER._]
After the prorogation of Parliament which followed in May, the king
went abroad. He did not return till the end of July, more than a
fortnight after the young Chevalier had sailed from Port St. Nazaire,
with a band of Scotch and Irish adventurers, who, after much peril,
arrived in the Hebrides. The Regency, in London, offered a reward of
30,000_l._ to anyone who should capture him on British ground. On the
4th of June King James III. was proclaimed, at Perth, King of Great
Britain. On the 10th a similar proclamation was made at Edinburgh.
Five days later the Highland army attacked, and in ten minutes,
utterly routed Sir John Cope, seven miles from Edinburgh, near Preston
Pans, and Gladsmuir. This victory left almost the whole of Scotland
in possession of the Jacobites,――and the road open to them to invade
England. They did not reach Carlisle till the 15th of November. On
the 24th they were in Lancaster. On the 28th they entered Manchester,
imposed a heavy requisition on the town, and were joined by some
bold spirits among the younger men. On the 1st of December, Charles
Edward entered Macclesfield. On the 4th that young prince, with 7,000
men, entered Derby, and losing heart, left it on the 6th, in retreat
northward. On the 9th they were again in Manchester. On Christmas
day, they entered Glasgow;――‘a very indifferent Christmas-box to the
inhabitants,’ according to Ray; and on the 30th of December, Carlisle,
in which a rebel garrison was stationed, surrendered at discretion to
the young Duke of Cumberland. Therewith ended the rebel invasion of
England. This succession of events greatly influenced the metropolis.
When the storm was threatening, and also when it burst, clergymen
in town, and probably in the country also, opened their Bibles,
questioning them as oracles, and interpreting the answers, according
to their respective temperaments. One good man, whose eye fell
upon the words of Jeremiah,――‘Evil appeareth out of the North, and
great destruction,’ proclaimed to his congregation that the words
had reference to the Pretender and his invasion of England. This
application of the text has been pronounced to be as absurd as that of
the ‘casting down of Mount Seir’ to the overthrow of the French.
[Sidenote: _FEELING IN LONDON._]
For what London was feeling and saying in this eventful year, 1745,
search must be made in the correspondence of the time. The letters of
Walpole, for instance, begin the year with the expression of a fear, if
Marshal Belleisle, who had been made a prisoner at Hanover, where he
was travelling without a passport, should be allowed to go at large,
on his word, in England, as it was reported he would be, that mischief
would come of it. ‘We could not have a worse inmate! ◆[Sidenote: _HOPES
AND FEARS._]◆ So ambitious and intriguing a man, who was the author
of this whole war, will be no bad general to head the Jacobites on any
insurrection.’ The marshal was, at first, kept ‘magnificently close’ at
Windsor, but as he cost the country there 100_l._ a day, he was sent to
Nottingham, to live there as he pleased, and for the Jacobites to make
what they could of him. For the moment, the Duke of Beaufort was more
dangerous than the marshal. The duke was a declared, determined and an
unwavering Jacobite, and led the party against Court and Ministry. At
the end of April there was ‘nothing new.’ In May came the honourable
catastrophe of Fontenoy, and the dishonourable sarcastic song made by
Frederick, Prince of Wales, on his brother, the Duke of Cumberland’s
glorious failure. Alluding to the duke, Walpole writes, ‘All the
letters are full of his humanity and bravery. He will be as popular
with the lower class of men as he has been for three or four years
with the low women. He will be the soldiers’ ‘_Great Sir_,’ as well as
theirs. I am really glad; it will be of great service to the family if
any one of them come to make a figure.’ Walpole saw the necessity of
having a hero opposed to the young Chevalier. One was sorely needed.
Belleisle must have enchanted the Jacobites by his publicly asserting
that this country was so ill-provided for defence, he would engage,
with five thousand scullions of the French army, to conquer England.
Walpole owned his fears. He was depressed by our disasters in Flanders,
the absence of the king from England, that of ministers from London,
‘not five thousand men in the island, and not above fourteen or
fifteen ships at home. Allelujah!’
[Sidenote: _HORACE WALPOLE’S IDEAS._]
The Ministry released Belleisle, who went _incog._ about London, and
was entertained at dinner by the Duke of Newcastle at Claremont, and
by the Duke of Grafton at Hampton Court. Walpole compares the idle
gossip about the French coming over in the interest of the Pretender,
and the neglect of all defence, with the conduct of the Londoners
on a report that the plague was in the city. ‘Everybody went to the
house where it was, to see it!’ If Count Saxe, with ten thousand men,
were to come within a day’s march of London, ‘people will be hiring
windows at Charing Cross and Cheapside to see them pass by.’ Walpole,
in truth, was as indifferent as he accused his contemporaries of
being. If anything happened to the ship, what was that to him, he was
only a passenger. He playfully described himself as learning scraps
from ‘Cato,’ in case of his having to depart in the old, high, Roman
fashion. Recollecting that he is writing on the anniversary of the
accession of the House of Brunswick, he tacks a joyous P.S. to one
of his letters, in the words, ‘Lord! ’tis the first of August, 1745,
a holiday that is going to be turned out of the almanack!’ When the
Government _did_ begin to prepare for serious contingencies, Walpole
expressed his belief of their being about as able to resist an invasion
as to make one.
[Sidenote: _DIVISIONS IN FAMILIES._]
When the young Chevalier, stealing a march upon Cope, was approaching
Edinburgh, Walpole wrote from London, that people there had nothing to
oppose, ‘scarcely fears.’ Lord Panmure, who had got his title through
the attainder of his elder brother, for the ’15 affair, and the Duke of
Athol, who owed his dukedom to the attainder of his elder brother, the
Marquis of Tullibardine (who was then with Prince Charles Edward), for
the same affair, left London, in order to raise forces in Scotland for
the defence of the Hanoverian succession. Panmure, with other Scotch
lords, raised a few men. Athol returned to London to announce his
inability to get together a force for such a purpose; and when it was
proposed to send the Duke of Argyle, Maccullummore excused himself on
the singular ground that there was a Scotch Act of Parliament against
arming without authority. There was a scene in a London house that
might furnish a subject to a painter. The young Whig Duke of Gordon, at
an interview with his Jacobite uncle, told the latter that he must go
down to Scotland and arm his men. ‘They are in arms,’ was the reply.
‘You must lead them against the rebels.’ ‘They will wait on the Prince
of Wales,’ rejoined the uncle, who alluded to the young Chevalier. The
duke flew in a passion, but the uncle pulled out a pistol, and said it
was in vain to dispute. As Walpole here drops the curtain over this
scene, we may suppose that the little domestic drama was carried no
further.
[Sidenote: _COURT AND CITY._]
As news reached town that the rebellion did not grow in the North,
and that there was no rising in England to help it, Walpole wrote,
‘Spirit seems to rise in London.’ The king, or as Walpole calls him,
‘the person most concerned,’ took events with heroic imperturbability,
or stupid indifference. Charles Edward had repealed the union between
England and Scotland. King George believed himself to be, and likely
to remain, King of Great Britain, as before. When ministers proposed
to him any measures with reference to the outbreak, his Majesty only
answered, ‘Pooh! don’t talk to me about that stuff!’ It is not,
therefore, to be wondered at that ministers did not summon Parliament.
They had nothing either to offer or to notify. The London merchants, on
the other hand, were zealous and liberal in opening subscriptions for
raising more troops.
[Sidenote: _VARYING OPINIONS._]
In this time of uncertainty, if not trouble, the professional patriot
came to the surface in the person of Alderman Heathcote. At a City
meeting, that sham Jacobite proposed to supplant a loyal address
to the king by a demand for a redress of grievances; ‘but not one
man seconded him.’ Walpole, with all his affected indifference and
pretence of indifference on the part of the public, betrays the true
temper of the metropolis, when he says, ‘We have great hopes the
Highlanders will not follow him [Charles Edward] so far [into England],
very few of them could be persuaded the last time to go to Preston.’
And something of the general uneasiness may be traced in Walpole’s
intimation to Montagu, of his dislike of becoming ‘a loyal sufferer
in a thread-bare coat, and shivering in an antechamber at Hanover, or
reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at Copenhagen.
Will you ever write to me in my garret at Herrenhausen?’ With all
this simulation of light-heartedness, Walpole writes seriously enough,
from Arlington Street, ‘Accounts from Scotland vary perpetually, and
at best are never very certain.... One can’t tell what assurances of
support they may have from the Jacobites in England ... but nothing
of the sort has yet appeared.... One can hardly believe that the
English are more disaffected than the Scotch, and among the latter no
persons of property have joined them.’ The temper of the Government
is also described in a few words: ‘Lord Granville and his faction
persist in persuading the king that it is an affair of no consequence;
and, for the Duke of Newcastle, he is glad when the rebels make any
progress in order to refute Lord Granville’s assertions.’ London was
as delighted as Walpole with the naval watch kept in the Channel, and
with the spirit of the English nobility adding, or promising to add,
regiments to the regular force, to which, however, they gave little or
no additional strength. He who had been laughing and calling others
laughers, confesses in September that his own apprehensions were not
so strong as they had been. ‘If we get over this I shall believe that
we never can be hurt, for we never can be more exposed to danger.
Whatever disaffection there is to the present family, it plainly does
not proceed from love to the other.’
[Sidenote: _LONDON WIT._]
This sense of security was seriously shaken when London got the news
of the victory gained by Charles Edward’s army near Preston Pans
over General Cope. It was known to ‘the Papists’ on Sunday, but the
Government received no official news till Tuesday! ‘The defeat,’ says
Walpole, ‘frightens everybody but those it rejoices.’ Then _he_, who
had alternately laughed and trembled, affected the philosopher, and
pretended that he could endure without emotion the ruin which he had
foreseen. ‘I shall suffer with fools, without having any malice to our
enemies, who act sensibly from principle and interest.’ When London
found that no advantage was taken of the victory by the victors, London
and Walpole resumed their good spirits. The latter referred to the
subjoined advertisement as a proof that there was more wit in London
than in all Scotland. ‘To all jolly Butchers.――My dear Hearts! The
Papists eat no meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, nor during Lent!
Your friend, John Steel.’ Such wit can hardly have alarmed the Papists,
but it may have had something to do with a report which followed,――that
they intended to rise and massacre their enemies in London. It was
taken seriously. All the Guards were ordered out, and the Tower was
closed at seven o’clock. When the murrain among the cattle broke out,
it was absurdly said that the Papists had poisoned the pools! The
Papists however did send money contributions from London to Charles
Edward. It is wonderful that the highwaymen did not intercept the
bearers, and make them deliver.
[Sidenote: _THE PARLIAMENT._]
When Parliament met in October, the attendance was thin. The Pretender
had threatened to confiscate the property of all Scotch members who
should attend, and to make it treason for English members to do so!
Yet there were Jacobites present, and they opposed the address as well
as the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. A proposal to enquire into
the causes of the progress of the Rebellion was shelved by a majority
of 194 to 112. Most of the former felt, it is said, ‘the necessity of
immediately putting an end to it, and that the fire should be quenched
before we should enquire who kindled or promoted it.’
There were many whose fears had been great because of the greatness
of the stake. These rejoiced when the Guards left London, roaring as
they marched from the parade that they would neither give nor receive
quarter. Walpole affirmed that the army adored the duke who was to be
their commander. On the other hand, ‘the Calligulisms’ of the Prince
of Wales brought on him a general contempt. The working men were,
almost without exception, loyal. When there was an idea of the king
going to the encampment at Finchley, the weavers offered him a guard
of a thousand men. It was in the caricature of the march to Finchley
that Hogarth exhibited the baser side of his character. The wrath of
the king at the painter’s insult to the defenders of their country
was well-founded. The popular feeling was not with the artist. When
the prisoners captured in the ‘Soleil’ were brought to London, it was
difficult to save them from being cruelly handled. ◆[Sidenote: _THE
RADCLIFFES._]◆ Among them was Mr. Radcliffe who had been condemned
to death with his brother, Lord Derwentwater, in 1716, and Mr.
Radcliffe’s son, who was at first suspected of being Charles Edward’s
brother, Henry. This suspicion very nearly cost the young captive
his life, more than once, on the road. ‘He said that he had heard of
English mobs, but could not conceive they were so dreadful; and wished
he had been shot at the battle of Dettingen, where he had been engaged.
The father, whom they call Lord Derwentwater, said, on entering the
Tower, that he had never expected to arrive there alive. For the young
man, he must only be treated as a French captive; for the father it is
sufficient to produce him at the Old Bailey, and prove that he is the
individual person condemned for the last Rebellion; and so to Tyburn.’
Walpole reflected the general feeling of the metropolis which had been
kept so long in a state of suspense, sometimes concealing it under
indifference, at others not caring to conceal its own fears.
Noblemen’s servants were not rendered particularly cheerful in October,
by a report that they were to be made to serve as soldiers, receiving
their pay both as warriors and flunkeys. The soldiery were so ill off,
that civilians bestirred themselves for their relief. The Quakers
contributed ten thousand woollen waistcoats to keep them warm. The
Corporation of London gave them as many blankets and watchcoats. King
George, when everything else had been provided, paid for their shoes
out of his privy purse!
[Sidenote: _THE LONDON JACOBITES._]
There was a desire to bring the matter to a conclusion as cheaply
as possible. The ‘Craftsman’ recommended that the Pretender should
be ‘cut off,’ if that end could be compassed. A hope was expressed
that the nation would not be taxed for encountering a ‘ragged,
hungry rabble of Yahoos of Scotch Highlanders,’ with the cost of an
expedition against an Alexander. There would be no use, it was said,
in constructing an apparatus fit for hunting a lion,――for the catching
of a rat. The rats were, nevertheless, troublesome, if not formidable.
The London Jacobites were ostentatiously ecstatic when news reached
town of the defeat of Cope. King George’s proclamation had ordered an
observation of silence on public affairs. When the removal of notorious
Papists from the city had been contemplated, ‘What will you get,’
loudly asked the Jacobites of the Romish Church, ‘by driving us ten
miles out of town? We shall then form a camp, and you will find us a
much more formidable body than we now appear to be while dispersed
among you.’ Remove the Papists! why, the Duke of Newcastle had shown so
little disposition that way, that his French cook still ruled supreme
in the kitchen of his mansion in Lincoln’s Inn Fields! There were
others like the duke; and, what trust could be placed in a militia
formed out of servants of noblemen whose lackeys went to mass in the
private chapels of the Ambassadors? Yet, something must be done. It was
in vain that proclamations, signed ‘James III.’ and ‘Charles Edward,’
were burnt at the Royal Exchange, by the common hangman, in presence of
the sheriffs. New documents were circulated as widely as ever. If they
were not cried in the street, there were other ways of bringing them
before the public. In the dusk of the evening, a baker would rest with
his basket, or a street porter with his burthen, against a wall. Inside
the basket, as inside the porter’s burthen, there was a little boy who
had all the necessary contrivances to enable him to paste a Jacobite
paper on the wall. In the morning, London was found to be covered with
treasonable documents, and for some time, magistrates were driven
almost mad in trying to account for the appearance of papers which
seemed to have got on the walls by inexplicable and undiscoverable
means.
[Sidenote: _THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR._]
On Sunday, October 6th, half of riotous London followed the Foot Guards
to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and applauded them as they entered the old
abandoned play-house, which was converted by them into a barrack. A
couple of days later all uproarious London was on the river, or in
the streets, to witness the grand entry of the Venetian Ambassador.
His Excellency and suite came in state barges from Greenwich to the
Tower, and he passed in greater state still of coach and cavalry, from
the Tower to his noble residence in _Thrift_ Street, Soho, as Frith
Street was once called. The greetings which welcomed him on the part of
those who hailed in his person an ally of King George, were as nothing
compared with the unceasing thunder of hurrah-ing which saluted him as
he rode, next day, in greatest state of all, to have audience of the
sovereign. When his wife, as soon as she was installed in her house, in
Soho, gave a masquerade which made everybody forget the perils of the
time, there may have been people who distrusted her Popish principles,
but no one doubted her taste, or objected to her politics.
[Sidenote: _MONARCH AND MINISTERS._]
Yet was there every now and then a cry of alarm. Messengers had seized
a waggon load of cutlasses, and they were slow to believe that the
weapons were not ordered by Pope and Pretender for the slaughter of
Church-and-King men. They proved to have come to London in due course
of trade. Persons who believed, nevertheless, in the existence of a
conspiracy were gratified by the seizure of some Irish priests who
indulged in the utterance of seditious words in public places. Zealots,
of Jacobite proclivities, even had the assurance to contradict loyal
preachers in their own pulpits, but afterwards found themselves in
durance for their boldness. One day, Sir Robert Ladbroke astounded the
Duke of Newcastle by rushing in to his office and announcing that he
had had anonymous warning to leave his house, as Jacobite insurgents
meant on a certain night to set fire to the city. Everywhere guards
were doubled, and there was much fear. The king showed none. He stood
for a couple of hours on the terrace at St. James’s, overlooking the
park, to witness the manœuvres and the ‘march past’ of six regiments of
trained bands, and he had an air as if he and danger were strangers.
Moreover the Londoners were in a fever of delight with the other
king,――the king of the city. On Lord Mayor’s day, Sir Richard Hoare
was resolved that if he was to be the last Protestant Lord Mayor of
London, people should remember him. On October 29th (old Lord Mayor’s
day), he went from Guildhall to the Court of Exchequer, in the grandest
coach ever seen, and he was accompanied by ‘a large body of associated
gentlemen out of Fleet Street, completely clothed,’ as one, indeed,
might expect they would be!
[Sidenote: _NEWS IN PRIVATE LETTERS._]
From the ‘Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury, his Family and
Friends,’ it is to be gathered that the Londoners were kept in
ignorance of Sir John Cope’s defeat, till private letters arrived
by which the whole disgrace was revealed. Lord Shaftesbury writes
that Pitt’s respectful motion to advise the king to recall the
troops (chiefly cavalry) from Flanders, and use them in suppressing
the rebellion, was lost, or ‘eluded,’ by putting the previous
question――ayes 136, noes 148; in which division young Horace Walpole
was in the minority, and old Horace Walpole on the other side; ‘not
a Tory on either side speaking. I leave you to reflect on this
proceeding, though I think a very little reflection will suffice.’
People who had letters from the north ran with them from house to
house, some, even, to St. James’s, to impart their contents, and small
regard was had to any of the newspapers. But individuals could be as
untrustworthy as the papers. Old Lord Aylesbury was conspicuous as a
‘terror-raiser.’ He says ‘the Papists poisoned his grandfather, and
made a fool of his father, and that he believed all the Jacobites would
turn to Popery very easily, if it was to prevail.’ The old lord was to
be seen daily going to Court, ‘to show his public attachment to the
Revolution of 1688.’
[Sidenote: _THE LONDON TRAINBANDS._]
With respect to the king reviewing the Trainbands from the garden
wall of St. James’s, recorded in a preceding page, Lord Shaftesbury
writes, Oct. 26th, 1745: ‘This morning the Trainbands were reviewed
by his Majesty. By what I saw of them myself, I can venture to affirm
that, notwithstanding their deficiency in smartness, from want of an
uniform, which may possibly expose them to the ridicule of some of
our very fine gentlemen, they would make an honourable and effective
stand, if needful, for their religion and liberties. They are really,
upon the whole, good troops.’ The Rev. William Harris gives a fuller
account of the same incident to his brother: ‘I was to-day accidentally
in St. James’s Park, when the City Militia were reviewed by the King,
who stood on the terrace in his own garden, attended by the Duke,
Lord Stair, Dukes of Dorset, Newcastle, Bolton, and several others of
the nobility. It was a most tedious affair, I make no doubt, to his
Majesty; for the London men made but a shabby appearance, and there
could be no great entertainment in seeing them. Their officers were
well enough, and to these, as they made their salute, passing by under
the terrace, his Majesty returned everyone the compliment by pulling
off his hat. There were no less than six regiments, and I suppose it
might be near two hours before they all had gone in review before his
Majesty.’
[Sidenote: _SCENES AT COURT._]
Conflicting reports flew about, but the discouragement was not very
profound, and the birthday drawing-room, on the 30th of October, was
as gay and brilliant as if there were no rebellion afoot. The reverend
writer of the letter quoted above was present, and he describes to
Mrs. Harris the silks of the princesses, the brocades and damasks of
the ladies, and the blaze of Lady Cardigan, who excelled as to jewels,
having on a magnificent solitaire, and her stomacher all over diamonds.
There, too, fluttered the Prince of Wales in light blue velvet and
silver; the Duke of Cumberland strolled about with a little more gold
lace than usual on his scarlet uniform; and Lord Kildare outdid all
other fine and loyal gentlemen present, ‘in a light blue silk coat,
embroidered all over with gold and silver, in a very curious manner,
turned up with white satin, embroidered as the other; the waistcoat
the same as his sleeves.’ But the grandest and quaintest figure there
was the Venetian ambassadress, who had gone in state from Frith
Street, Soho, to the intense delight of the ‘mob.’ This lady ‘drew
most people’s attention by somewhat of singularity both in her air and
dress, which was pink, all flounced from top to bottom, with fringe of
silver interspersed. She looks extremely young, has the French sort of
behaviour, and was much taken notice of and spoke to by all the Royal
Family in the Circle.’ The most soberly-dressed man there was the king
himself. He wore a deep blue cloth coat and waistcoat trimmed with
silver, and was as good humoured and gracious as if Johnny Cope was
carrying all before him in the north.
[Sidenote: _THE KING’S SPEECH TO THE GUARDS._]
The regiments which arrived in London, in November, from Fontenoy, kept
the metropolis in some commotion, till they were pushed forward, after
brief rest, to the midland counties. While they were receiving tents
and arms at the Tower, the Duke of Cumberland had his headquarters at
St. James’s, whence orders were issued (says Mr. Maclachlan――‘Order
Book of the Duke of Cumberland’) of the most minute character and
detail.
The king has been accused of indifference to passing events, and of
having only reluctantly allowed the Duke of Cumberland, who served so
nobly with him at Dettingen, to command the army against the young
Chevalier. Perhaps, what seemed indifference was confidence in the
result. There is evidence, however, that he was not without anxiety
at this critical juncture. In Hamilton’s ‘History of the Grenadier
Guards,’ there is the following description of a scene at St. James’s,
quoted from Wraxall. The incident described is said to have occurred at
the military levee held by the king, previous to the Guards marching to
the north: ‘When the officers of the Guards were assembled, the king
is said to have addressed them as follows: “Gentlemen, you cannot be
ignorant of the present precarious situation of our country, and though
I have had so many recent instances of your exertions, the necessities
of the times and the knowledge I have of your hearts, induce me to
demand your service again; so all of you that are willing to meet the
rebels hold up your right hand; all those who may, from particular
reasons, find it inconvenient, hold up your left.” In an instant, all
the right hands in the room were held up, which so affected the king,
that in attempting to thank the company, his feelings overpowered him;
he burst into tears and retired.’
[Sidenote: _ASPECTS OF SOCIETY._]
While this scene was being acted at St. James’s, Mrs. Elizabeth
Montagu, then residing in Dover Street, wrote to Dr. Freind: ‘People
of the greatest rank here have been endeavouring to make the utmost
advantage of the unhappy state of their country, and have _sold_ the
assistance it was their duty to _give_. Self-interest has taken such
firm possession of every breast, that not any threatening calamity can
banish it in the smallest instance. There is no view of the affair
more melancholy than this.... Everything is turned to a job, and money
given for the general good is converted too much to private uses....
There were some exceptions. Almost all our nobility,’ she writes, ‘are
gone to the army, so that many of the great families are in tears, and
indeed it makes the town appear melancholy and dismal.’ There were
exceptions in this case. ‘Let it be said, to the honour of our sex,
there are no dramas, no operas, and plays are unfrequented; and there
is not a woman in England, except Lady Brown, that has a song or tune
in her head; but indeed her ladyship is very unhappy at the suspension
of operas.’ On the night this letter was written, Mrs. Clive’s Portia,
at Drury Lane, was unattractive, in spite of her imitations of eminent
lawyers, in the trial scene; and Mrs. Pritchard’s Lappet was equally
unavailing to bring the public to witness ‘The Miser,’ at Covent
Garden. But Rich’s three nights of the ‘Beggars’ Opera,’ for the
benefit of the patriotic fund, produced happy results. From Mrs. Cibber
down to the candle-snuffers, all sacrificed their pay with alacrity.
[Sidenote: _FRENCH NEWS OF LONDON._]
As correct news of the condition of London in the latter half of
the year, it was stated in the French papers that insurrectionary
undertakings prevailed; that the principal shops were closed; that
suspected peers were under arrest; that an attempt had been made to
murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the Tower had been
captured by a Jacobite mob, who had liberated nearly three hundred
prisoners! Every _quidnunc_ in Paris turned to the article ‘London’
in the ‘Gazette de France,’ to read with avidity of the closing of
great firms, the breaking of the chief banks, and the bewilderment of
the king on his reaching the capital from Hanover. The ‘Gazette’ had
no doubt of the crowning of James Stuart in Westminster Abbey during
the Christmas holidays; and, perhaps, hoped for the appearance of ‘the
Elector of Hanover’ on Tower Hill!
[Sidenote: _ANXIETY AND CONFIDENCE._]
On Friday, the 5th December 1745, it is undeniable that London was
shaken into terror and consternation by the news of the arrival of
Charles Edward on the Wednesday at Derby. It was long remembered as
‘Black Friday.’ ‘Many of the inhabitants,’ says the Chevalier de
Johnstone, in his ‘Memoirs of the Rebellion,’ ‘fled to the country
with their most precious effects, and all the shops were shut. People
thronged to the Bank to get payment of its notes; and it only escaped
bankruptcy by a stratagem. Payment was not indeed refused; but as they
who came first were entitled to priority of payment, the bank took care
to be continually surrounded by agents with notes, who were paid in
sixpences in order to gain time. Those agents went out at one door with
the specie they had received, and brought it back by another; so that
the _bonâ fide_ holders of notes could never get near enough to present
them, and the bank by this artifice preserved its credit, and literally
faced its creditors.’
This, of course, was imaginary. The metropolis recovered its
tranquility. The king, on his side, regained his equanimity. At a
levee, held in December, his Majesty and Lord Derby disputed pretty
loudly as to the numbers of the rebels. ‘Sir,’ said Lord Derby, who had
just arrived from Lancashire, whoever tells you the rebels are fewer
than 10,000 deceives you;’ which was, as Mr. Harris writes, thought to
be a pretty strong expression for his Lordship to use to the king. At a
court held a day or two later, Sir Harry Liddel, just from the north,
was asked by his Majesty what Sir Harry held the rebel force to be? He
answered about 7,000, to which estimate the king seemed to assent; but
this did not prevent the whole Court and City from falling into the
utmost panic again before the end of December. The alternation of hope
and fear however passed suddenly into confidence, when, as the year
ended, news reached the London coffee-houses that young Cumberland was
likely to turn the tide of rebel success. Carlisle was evidently on the
point of surrendering, and this important event took place at the close
of the year 1745.
Down to that close, traitors were as closely looked for in London as
rebels were now pursued in their retreat. Whether through delicacy or
ignorance, the style in which a successful ‘take’ of traitors was made
was comically mysterious. For example, in this month of December, the
papers announced that ‘A Musician who resided some years in London as a
foreign Nobleman, and an Irish Comedian who has acted five years on the
English Stage, were committed to the Marshalsea for High Treason.’
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON AND LORD GOWER._]
In this eventful year, Jacobite Johnson was quietly engaged on his
Dictionary. Aloof from the fray, he could not forbear flinging a stone
on an ex-Jacobite who had ratted. When he came to the word ‘renegade,’
he remembered Lord Gower’s abandonment of the old Jacobite interest,
for place at Court; and his prejudice prompted him to make Lord Gower
infamous for ever, by adding his name to the vocabulary of slang. ‘When
I came to the word _renegade_,’ he said to Boswell, ‘after telling
that it meant “one who deserts to the enemy; a revolter,” I added,
“sometimes we say a GOWER.” Thus it went to the press; but the printer
had more wit than I, and struck it out.’ Another distinguished man
was looking on events with an indifference which seems affectation.
◆[Sidenote: _BOLINGBROKE._]◆ ‘I expect no good news,’ writes
Bolingbroke to Marchmont, in September, ‘and am therefore contented to
have none. I wait with much resignation to know to what Lion’s paw we
are to fall.’
[Illustration: Scrollwork]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER VI.
(1746.)
[Illustration: Drop-O]n the first day of the year 1746, the parole
given at the Duke of Cumberland’s headquarters, at Carlisle, was
‘London.’ He well knew the joy the metropolis would soon receive. Part
of the general orders then issued was thus expressed: ‘The Rebels that
have or shall be taken, either concealed or attempting their escape, or
in any ways evading the Capitulation, to be immediately put in Irons,
in order to be hanged.’ After publishing this order, the duke, leaving
Hawley to cross the border in pursuit of the young Chevalier, returned
to London. There was great fear of a French invasion; and the duke was
to have the command of a southern army to repel it. The invaders were
expected in Suffolk, and the Jacobites hoped that the expectation would
be realised. They often reported it as an established fact. Fielding’s
Jacobite squire in ‘Tom Jones’ is made to exclaim to the landlord of
the inn at Upton: ‘All’s our own, boy! ten thousand honest Frenchmen
are landed in Suffolk. Old England for ever! Ten thousand French, my
brave lad! I am going to tap away directly!’
[Sidenote: _WAR CRITICISM._]
Carlisle being recaptured, London breathed again, and considered its
past perils and future prospects. The fire-side critics of the war
concluded, as the Earl of Shaftesbury did with his friends in London,
‘that _eminus_, we exceeded the ancients, but _cominus_ we fell below
them; and this was the result of our having, it was said, learnt the
art of war from the Spaniards. We never used bayonets in our service
till after the battle of Steinkirk, in King William’s time. Now the
Highlanders by their way of attacking (new to our troops) make a quick
impression and throw our men into confusion. This I imagine to be the
principal reason of the Highlanders gaining such repeated advantages.’
Walpole wrote from Arlington Street: ‘With many other glories, the
English courage seems gone too.’ Yet the old spirit was not extinct.
When the Ministry tried to prevent Mr. Conway going as aide-de-camp
with the Duke of Cumberland, on the ground of his being in Parliament,
the duke informed the young soldier of the fact. ‘He burst into tears,’
says Walpole, ‘and protested that nothing should hinder his going――and
he is gone.’
[Sidenote: _BREAKING AN OFFICER._]
Without being uneasy at the idea of invasion the Government took
precautions in case of emergency. It was announced that at the firing
of seven guns at the Tower, answered by the same number in St. James’s
Park, soldiers and officers should repair to previously named places
of rendez-vous. No crowds were allowed to assemble. A race between two
pairs of chairmen, carrying their chairs, round the Park, having caused
a large mob to gather within hail of the palace, was stopped in mid
career by a file of musqueteers, who drove competitors and spectators
into the neighbouring streets. When the park was pretty well cleared,
Captain Stradwick was brought out and ‘broke,’ for desertion. Why he
was not shot, as the king said he deserved to be, was owing to some
influence which seemed to be stronger than the king himself. Perhaps,
as a consequence, the common rank and file who had deserted were
allowed their lives, but at dear cost. They got a thousand lashes,
administered half at a time, in Hyde Park; and on the off days the mob
were regaled with the sight of soldiers getting their five hundred
stripes for speaking evil of his Majesty in their drink.
[Sidenote: _REBEL PRISONERS._]
Meanwhile, the river one day suddenly swarmed with galleys, which
picked up numbers of ‘useful fellows to serve the king.’ Even the City
taverns were broken into, and there similar seizure was made, but not
without occasional mortal frays, in which there was much promiscuous
shooting, and a forcible carrying off of other ‘useful fellows,’ who
were hurried on board tenders, and thence sent to sea. There was
hardly time for sympathy. A few women in the streets and by the river
side filled the air with shrieks and clamour, but they were not much
heeded. London became full of expectancy of the renewal of an old and
a rare spectacle. The Carlisle prisoners were on their road to town.
There were nearly four hundred of them, including about threescore
officers. Those who were able to march were tied in couples, and two
dragoons had charge of ten prisoners, one leading them by a rope from
his saddle, the other ‘driving them up.’ The captured officers were
mounted, but their arms and legs were tied. Batches of other captive
men were sent by sea; some seem to have been exceptionally treated.
The papers announced the arrival of ‘six coaches and six,’ filled with
rebel prisoners, under an escort of horse and foot. The London gaols
were emptied of felons, who were transferred to distant prisons, in
order to ‘accommodate’ the captives till they were otherwise disposed
of. But the most important arrival was that of the hero himself. The
Duke of Cumberland, fresh from Carlisle, reached London on a dark
January morning, at seven o’clock. Much was made of his having passed
only ‘one night in bed,’ in that now easy day’s journey. The duke came
with modesty and great becomingness. Shortly after reaching St. James’s
he went straight to the little Chapel Royal. At the subsequent usual
Sunday drawing-room, there was brilliancy with the utmost gaiety,
such as had not been witnessed for many a year. After a few days the
duke returned northward, departing with the same modesty that had
marked his arrival. He left at one in the morning, but even at that
ghostly hour, and in that inclement season, he was done honour to by
a crowd which he could scarcely penetrate, whose torches were flashed
to their brightest, and whose voices were pitched to the loudest, as
their last ‘God speed!’ The temper of London may be seen in one of
Walpole’s letters, in which he alludes to the too great favour which
had been always shown towards Scotland since the last rebellion; and he
expresses a hope that the duke will make an end of it.
[Sidenote: _LONDON MOBS._]
In the meantime, old rancour against the Jacobites was embittered by
the publication of various ‘provocating pamphlets;’ and the month came
to a conclusion with the preachings of the 30th of January, and the
comments made on the sermons next day. Bishop Mawson, of Chichester,
preached before the Lords at St. Peter’s, Westminster; Dr. Rutherford
before the Commons at St. Margaret’s; while a reverend gentleman, who
is variously called ‘Pursack’ and ‘Persover,’ aroused the echoes of
St. Paul’s in the ears of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Finally, an
anonymous poet swept the lyre in laudation of the duke. How he made the
chords ring may be gathered from a single line:――
Blast, gracious God, th’ assassins’ hell-bred scheme!
The London mob, on the Whig side of politics, cannot be said to have
been more civilised than the same mob of thirty years earlier. One
of its favourite sights was to see Jacobite prisoners brought into
London. The captives were invariably ill-used; but there was a much
more humane feeling manifested for such of them as might end their
career by the axe or the halter. One day in February upwards of forty
officers (including a French colonel of Engineers and four Frenchmen
of lower grade) were brought into London in four waggons and a coach.
The more dignified vehicle carried the French colonel. They were
guarded by a strongly-armed escort. Some were taken to the New Prison
in Southwark, some to Newgate. The French colonel in the coach, and
his four countrymen in a cart, were driven to the Marshalsea. ‘They
were very rudely treated by the populace,’ say the newspapers, ‘who
pelted them with dirt, and showed all other marks of abhorrence of
their black designs.’ Foreigners were just then looked upon with great
suspicion. ◆[Sidenote: _AMBASSADORS’ CHAPELS._]◆ Two servants of the
Portuguese and Sardinian envoys, respectively, having let their tongues
wag too saucily at a tavern, under the shield, as they thought, of
ambassadorial protection, had been seized by the constables and clapped
into irons. The envoys demanded their release; and much correspondence
ensued between the Home Office and the envoys. It was settled that
the legation could not shelter an offender against the law, even
though the offender were a fellow-countryman of the legate. Some
attempt was made to compel the foreign representatives to abstain from
employing Popish priests of English birth in the chapels annexed to the
ambassadors’ private residences. The answer was reasonable enough. As
their Excellencies could bring no foreign priests of the Romish Church
with them, they were obliged to employ English ecclesiastics who were
priests of that Church, in the chapels of the respective embassies.
These were the only ‘mass houses’ to which English Papists, it was
said, could resort, and the Whigs denounced them as the smithies where
red hot conspiracy was beaten into shape between foreign hammers and a
British anvil.
[Sidenote: _THE HAVOC OF WAR._]
London Whig temper was irritated in another direction. There was not
only a reckless assertion of Jacobitism on the part of the prisoners
from the north, but there was abundance of sympathy manifested for
them. Moreover, full permission was given to the practical application
of this sympathy. Jacobite visitors poured into the prisons, and
the captives ate, drank, and were merry with them, regardless of
what the morrow might bring. Many of the prisoners had pockets well
furnished with gold; and where this was wanting it was supplied by
Jacobite outsiders. Scarcely a day passed without waggoners or porters
depositing in the first lodge hampers of the richest wines and of the
finest delicacies. The warders rejoiced, for they took toll of all;
and the prison chaplains had some idea that this good time was the
beginning of the Millennium.
On the other hand, there was much more misery in the loyal than in
the Jacobite army. The Londoners saw nothing for the encouragement of
loyalty in such a sight as the landing at the Tower wharf of some of
the troops that had been with Cope at Preston Pans. ‘The poor men,’
say all the papers, ‘were in a most miserable shocking condition. Some
without arms or legs, others their noses cut off and their eyes put
out; besides being hacked and mauled in many parts of their bodies,
after a most terrible and cruel manner.’ This ‘atrocity’ was forgotten
in the news that roused London in April.
[Sidenote: _FLYING REPORTS._]
The course of war in Scotland, from the beginning of the year to
the 16th of April, was in this wise. On the 17th of January Hawley
was defeated at Falkirk. On the 30th, the Duke of Cumberland arrived
in Edinburgh. March 14th, news came that the Highland army had taken
Fort Augustus and had blown up Fort George. The Ladies Seaforth and
Mackintosh headed two rebel clans on the hills; but their husbands were
with the duke’s army! About the same time old Lord Lovat stimulated the
rebel resistance by proclaiming that it was the intention of the Duke
of Cumberland to transport the Highlanders to America. On April 3rd,
the rebels captured Blair Castle, and on the 16th the duke’s victory at
Culloden proved decisive of the fate of the Stuarts.
Exactly a week after the Duke of Cumberland gained the victory, a
_report_ to that effect reached London, but there was no news from the
duke himself till the 25th. His business-like account of the battle
appeared in the ‘London Gazette’ next day. In the interim the London
Jacobites in their places of resort asserted loudly that the duke was
in full retreat; and it was whispered that if he was _hopelessly_
beaten, the ‘Papists would rise all over the kingdom.’ But _now_ ‘hope’
herself was beaten out of the souls of Papists and Jacobites. The
military in London were in a vein of swaggering delight. They talked
of the young duke’s briefly heroic address to a cavalry regiment on
the point of charging. He patted the nearest man to him on the back,
and cried aloud, ‘One brush, my lads, for the honour of old Cobham!’
◆[Sidenote: _NEWS OF CULLODEN._]◆ Then was curiosity stirred in London
barracks as to which regiments were to get the prize for bravery,
subscribed by the Corporation of London――namely 5,000_l._ The duke so
wisely distributed it as to rebuke nobody. Veterans at Chelsea were
looking at the vacant spaces where they should hang the captured flags,
and were disappointed when they heard at the Horse Guards that the
duke, considering that it was said how little honour was connected
with such trophies, had sent the flags to Edinburgh to be burnt by the
common hangman. The Chelsea veterans, however, envied the capturers
of the (four) flags; for to each man the duke gave sixteen guineas.
Medals and crosses were not yet thought of. His generosity was lauded
as enthusiastically as his valour.
While the Jacobites were overwhelming him with charges of cruelty
and meanness, the friends of ‘the present happy establishment’ were
circulating stories in and about London of his humanity and liberality.
Soldiers of the young Chevalier’s army had wreaked their vengeance upon
Mr. Rose, the minister at Nairn――on himself and his house. He was a
Whig and anti-Romanist, who had favoured the escape of some prisoners
taken by the Jacobite army. The Highlanders burnt his house, and, tying
the minister up, they gave him 500 lashes. The duke, on hearing of this
outrage, fell into uncontrollable fury, and swore he would avenge it.
If there was some savagery at and after Culloden, no wonder! Such, at
least, was the London feeling among the duke’s friends. But the feeling
generally was one of ecstacy at the decisive victory. Lord Bury, who
had arrived on the 25th with the news direct from the duke to the king,
could hardly walk along the then terraced St. James’s Street for the
congratulations of the crowd. Nobody thought such a halcyon messenger
was too highly rewarded with a purse of a thousand guineas, and with
being nominated own aide-de-camp to King George.
[Sidenote: _A POPULAR HOLIDAY._]
That 25th of April was indeed a gala day for the London mob. They had
ample time for breakfast before they gathered at the ‘end of New Bond
Street, in Tyburn Road’ (as Oxford Street was then called), to see
the young footman, Henderson, hanged for the murder of his mistress,
Lady Dalrymple. The culprit did not die ‘game,’ and the brutes were
disappointed, but they found consolation in the fall of a scaffolding
with all its occupants. Then they had time to pour into the Park and
see four or five sergeants shot for trying to desert from King George’s
service to King James’s. Moreover there was a man to be whipt somewhere
in the City, and a pretty group of sight-seers assembled at Charing
Cross in expectation of ‘a fellow in the pillory.’ What with these
delights, and the pursuing Lord Bury with vociferations of sanguinary
congratulation, the day was a thorough popular holiday.
The anxiety that had been felt in London before Culloden may be
measured by the wild joy which prevailed when the news of the victory
arrived. Walpole, in Arlington Street, on the evening of the 25th
April, writes: ‘The town is all blazing around me as I write with
fireworks and illuminations. I have some inclination to wrap up half a
dozen sky-rockets to make you drink the duke’s health. Mr. Dodington,
on the first report, came out with a very pretty illumination, so
pretty that I believe he had it by him, ready for any occasion.’
On the same evening the Rev. Mr. Harris wrote from London to the mother
of the future first Earl of Malmesbury, just born: ‘You cannot imagine
the prodigious rejoicings that have been made this evening in every
part of the town; and indeed it is a proper time for people to express
their joy when the enemies of their country are thus cut off.’
[Sidenote: _CARLYLE AND SMOLLETT._]
On that evening Alexander Carlyle was with Smollett in the Golden Ball
coffee-house, Cockspur Street. ‘London,’ he says, ‘was in a perfect
uproar of joy. About nine o’clock I asked Smollett if he was ready to
go, as he lived at May Fair’ (Carlyle was bound for New Bond Street on
a supper engagement). ‘He said he was, and would conduct me. The mob
were so riotous and the squibs so numerous and incessant that we were
glad to go into a narrow entry to put our wigs into our pockets, and
to take our swords from our belts and walk with them in our hands, as
everybody then wore swords; and after cautioning me against speaking a
word lest the mob should discover my country and become insolent, “John
Bull,” says he, “is as haughty and valiant to-night, as he was abject
and cowardly on the Black Wednesday (Friday?) when the Highlanders were
at Derby.” After we got to the head of the Haymarket through incessant
fire, the doctor led me by narrow lanes where we met nobody but a few
boys at a pitiful bonfire, who very civilly asked us for sixpence,
which I gave them. I saw not Smollett again for some time after, when
he showed Smith and me the manuscript of his “Tears of Scotland,” which
was published not long after, and had such a run of approbation.’
[Sidenote: ‘_TEARS OF SCOTLAND._’]
Smollett was one of those Tories who, like many of the Nonjurors, were
not necessarily or consequently Jacobites. They were more willing to
make the best of a foreign king than to risk their liberties under
an incapable bigot like James Stuart, who, save for the accident of
birth, was less of an Englishman and knew less of England (in which,
throughout his life, he had only spent a few months) than either of the
Georges. But Smollett felt keenly the sufferings of his country, and
out of the feeling sprung his verses so full of a tenderly expressed
grief,――‘The Tears of Scotland!’ How that mournful ode was written in
London in this year of mournful memories for the Jacobites, no one can
tell better than Walter Scott. ‘Some gentlemen having met at a tavern,
were amusing themselves before supper with a game of cards, while
Smollett, not choosing to play, sat down to write. One of the company
(Graham of Gartmoor), observing his earnestness and supposing he was
writing verses, asked him if it was not so. He accordingly read them
the first sketch of the “Tears of Scotland,” consisting only of six
stanzas, and on their remarking that the termination of the poem being
too strongly expressed might give offence to persons whose political
opinions were different, he sat down without reply and, with an air of
great indignation, subjoined the concluding stanza:――
[Sidenote: _INDIGNATION VERSES._]
While the warm blood bedews my veins
And unimpair’d remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country’s fate
Within my filial breast shall beat.
Yes! spite of thine insulting foe,
My sympathising verse shall flow;
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banish’d peace, thy laurels torn!’
The following were the lines which were supposed to be likely to offend
the friends of the hero of Culloden; but the sentiment was shared by
many who were not friends of the Stuart cause:――
Yet, when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor’s rage was not appeased;
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murd’ring steel.
The pious mother, doom’d to death,
Forsaken, wanders o’er the heath, &c., &c.
The picture was somewhat over-drawn, but there were thousands who
believed it to be true to the very letter.
[Illustration: Leaves]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER VII.
(1746.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he players and the playwrights were zealous
Whigs throughout the rebellion. The Drury Lane company to a man
became volunteers, under their manager, Mr. Lacy, who had asked the
royal permission to raise a couple of hundred men, in defence of
his Majesty’s person and Government. To attract loyal audiences at
a time when the public could not be readily tempted to the theatre,
‘The Nonjuror’ was revived, at both houses. Two players, Macklin and
Elderton, set to work to produce plays for their respective theatres,
on the subject of Perkin Warbeck. While Macklin was delivering what
he wrote, piecemeal, to the actors, for study, and Elderton was
perspiring over his laborious gestation of blank-verse, the proprietors
of the playhouse in Goodman’s Fields forestalled both by bringing out
Ford’s old play, which is named after the Pretender to the throne
of Henry VII. Macklin called his piece ‘Henry VII., or the Popish
Impostor.’ This absurd allusion to Perkin was a shaft aimed at the
actual Pretender. The Whigs approved of both title and play, and
they roared at every line which they could apply against Tories and
Jacobites. ◆[Sidenote: _THE PLAYERS._]◆ At both houses, occasional
prologues stirred the loyal impulses or provoked the indignation of
the audience. At Covent Garden, ‘Tamerlane,’ which was always solemnly
brought out when the popular wrath was to be excited against France,
was preceded by a patriotic prologue which Mrs. Pritchard delivered in
her best manner, and Dodsley sold the next day, as fast as he could
deliver copies over the counter of his shop in Pall Mall. Rich and his
Covent Garden players did not turn soldiers, but he gave the house,
_gratis_, for three days for the benefit of a scheme that was to be to
the advantage of the veterans of the army; and this brought 600_l._
to the funds. The actors sacrificed their salaries, and charming Mrs.
Cibber sang as Polly, in the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ more exquisitely than
ever, to prove (as she said) that, ‘though she was a Catholic, she was
sincerely attached to the family who was in possession of the Throne,
and she acknowledged the favour and honour she had received from
them.’ On the night when the first report of the victory at Culloden
was circulated, Drury Lane got up a play that had not been acted for
thirty years, ‘The Honours of the Army,’ and Mrs. Woffington, as ‘The
Female Officer,’ ‘new dressed,’ spoke a dashing prologue. A night or
two later, Theophilus Cibber wrote and delivered a prologue on the Duke
of Cumberland’s victories. At Covent Garden were revived two pieces,
by Dennis: ‘Liberty Asserted’ and ‘Plot and no Plot.’ Genest says of
the first piece that it was revived ‘for the sake of the invectives
against the French; and “Plot and no Plot,” for the sake of the cuts on
the Jacobites,――at this time almost every play was revived, which might
be expected to attract, from its political tendency.’
The minor, or unlicensed, theatres tempted loyal people with coarser
fare,――to the same end, keeping up a hostile feeling against the French
and the Jacobites. Observe with what quaint delicacy the matter is put
in the following advertisements.
[Sidenote: _SADLER’S WELLS AND THE NEW WELLS._]
‘As the Proprietors of Sadler’s Wells have diligently embraced every
opportunity of giving their audiences satisfaction, they would have
thought themselves guilty of the highest Error to have been silent upon
the present happy occasion. Every Class of Britons must be pleased at
the least Hint of Gratitude to the excellent Prince who has exposed
himself to so many Difficulties for the sake of his country, and
therefore they have endeavour’d to show a Natural Scene of what perhaps
may happen to many a honest Countryman in consequence of the late happy
Victory, in a new Interlude of Music, called Strephon’s Return, or the
British Hero, which will be perform’d this Night, with many advantages
of Dress and Decoration.’
But ‘how the wit brightens and the style refines’ in the following
announcement from Mr. Yeates!
[Sidenote: _CULLODEN ON THE STAGE._]
‘The Applause that was so universally express’d last Night, by the
numbers of Gentlemen _et cætera_ who honoured the New Wells near
the London Spaw, Clerkenwell, with their Company, is thankfully
acknowledg’d; but Mr. Yeates humbly hopes that the Ideas of Liberty
and Courage (tho’ he confesses them upon the present Occasion extremely
influencing) will not for the future so far transport his Audiences
as to prove of such Detriment to his Benches; several hearty Britons,
when _Courage_ appeared (under which Character, the illustrious Duke,
whom we have so much reason to admire, is happily represented) having
exerted their Canes in such a Torrent of Satisfaction as to have
render’d his Damage far from inconsiderable.’
The other ‘New Wells’ declined to be outdone. There too, love and
liquor were shown to be the reward due to valiant Strephons returning
from Culloden to London. There, they were taught to ‘hate a Frenchman
like the Devil;’ and there, they and the public might see all the
phases of the half-hour’s battle, and of some striking incidents before
and after it, all painted on one canvas.
‘At the New Wells, the Bottom of Lemon Street, Goodman’s Fields,
this present Evening will be several new Exercises of Rope-dancing,
Tumbling, Singing, and Dancing, with several new Scenes in grotesque
Characters call’d Harlequin a Captive in France, or the Frenchman trapt
at last. The whole to conclude with an exact view of our Gallant Army
under the Command of their Glorious Hero passing the River Spey, giving
the Rebels Battle and gaining a Complete Victory near Culloden House,
with the Horse in pursuit of the Pretender.’
To these unlicensed houses, admission was gained not by entrance
money, but by paying for a certain quantity of wine or punch.
[Sidenote: _MRS. WOFFINGTON._]
It would, however, appear as if some of the bards, like Bubb Dodington
with his transparency, had so contemplated the result of the war,
as to be ready to hail any issue, and any victor. One of these, the
Jacobites being defeated, wrote an epilogue, ‘designed to be spoken by
Mrs. Woffington, in the character of a Volunteer;’――but the poem was
not finished till interest in the matter had greatly evaporated, and
the poet was told he was ‘too late.’ Of course, he shamed the rogues by
printing his work,――which is one illustrating both the morals and the
manners of the time. It illustrates the former by infamously indecent
inuendo, and the latter by the following outburst, for some of the
ideas of which the writer had rifled Addison’s ‘Freeholder.’
Joking apart, we women have strong reason
To sap the progress of this popish treason;
For now, when female liberty’s at stake,
All women ought to bustle for its sake.
Should these malicious sons of Rome prevail,
Vows, convents, and that heathen thing, a veil,
Must come in fashion; and such institutions
Would suit but oddly with our constitutions.
What gay coquette would brook a nun’s profession?
And I’ve some private reasons ’gainst confession.
Besides, our good men of the Church, they say
(Who now, thank Heaven, may love as well as pray)
Must then be only wed to cloister’d houses;――
Stop! There we’re fobb’d of twenty thousand spouses!
And, faith! no bad ones, as I’m told; then judge ye,
Is’t fit we lose our benefit of clergy?
In Freedom’s cause, ye patriot fair, arise!
Exert the sacred influence of your eyes.
On valiant merit deign alone to smile,
And vindicate the glory of our isle.
To no base coward prostitute our charms;
Disband the lover who deserts his arms.
So shall ye fire each hero to his duty,
And _British_ rights be saved by _British_ beauty.
[Sidenote: _THE PRESS, ON CULLODEN._]
The Whig press was, of course, jubilant. The papers in the opposite
interest put as good a face as they could on the matter, and expressed
a conviction that they ‘ventured no treason in hoping that the _weather
might change_.’
The ‘Craftsman’ was, or affected to be, beside itself for joy at the
thought that no foreign mercenaries had helped to reap the laurels at
Culloden. The victory was won by British troops only; and the duke
might say, like Coriolanus, ‘Alone, I did it!’ The ‘True Patriot’
insisted on some share of the laurels being awarded to the king, since
he stood singly in refusing to despair of the monarchy, when all other
men were, or seemed, hopeless and helpless. To which the ‘Western
Journal’ added that not merely was the king far-seeing, and the duke
victorious at the head of English troops without foreign auxiliaries,
but that never before had an English army made its way so far into
the country, to crush a Scottish foe. The ‘Journal,’ much read in all
London coffee-houses resorted to by Western gentlemen, was opposed to
the killing of rebels in cold blood, and could not see what profit was
to be got by hanging them. This paper suggested that some benefit
might be obtained by making slaves of them; not by transporting them
to the Plantations, but by compelling them to serve in the herring and
salmon fisheries, for the advantage of the compellers, that is, the
Government!
[Sidenote: _SAVAGERY AND SATIRE._]
In the ‘General Advertiser,’ a man who probably had reached the age
when a sense of humanity fails before any of the other senses, asked
what objection was to be found with such terms as ‘Extermination,’
‘Extirpation,’ and similar significances applied to those savages, the
Highlanders? This ogre, in his easy chair, cared not to see that, in
driving out a whole race, more cruelty would be deliberately inflicted
on innocent human beings, than the savage Highlanders had inflicted in
their fury. And indeed, the latter did not spare their own people, if
the milkmaids’ song be true, in which the illustrative line occurs, ‘We
dare na gae a milkin’ for fear o’ Charlie’s men.’ However, the least
punishment which the correspondent of the ‘Advertiser’ would accept
was a general transportation of the race to Africa and America, and a
settlement on their lands of English tenants at easy rents! This sort
of Highlander-phobia and the threatened application of severe laws
which included the suppression of what has been called ‘the Garb of old
Gael,’ or Highland dress, gave rise to some good-natured satire. ‘We
hear,’ said one of the newspapers, ‘that the dapper wooden Highlanders,
who guard so heroically the doors of snuff shops, intend to petition
the Legislature in order that they may be excused from complying with
the Act of Parliament with regard to their change of dress, alleging
that they had ever been faithful subjects to his Majesty, having
constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch out of their Mulls, when
they marched by them; and so far from engaging in any Rebellion, that
they have never entertained a rebellious thought, whence they humbly
hope that they shall not be put to the expense of buying new Cloaths.’
[Sidenote: _THE CARICATURISTS._]
So spoke the fun-loving spirits; but there were baser spirits on the
conquering side, and these speedily exhibited an indecent exultation.
The ignominious caricaturists attracted crowds to the print shops
to gaze at the facility with which vulgar minds can degrade solemn
and lofty themes. On the one hand, the defeat of the Highlanders
and the consternation of Sullivan, the standard-bearer in Charles
Edward’s army, attracted laughter. On the other hand, the too early,
and altogether vain, boast conveyed on the young Chevalier’s banner,
‘Tandem triumphans,’ was more legitimately satirised in an engraving
in which the standard-bearer is an ass, and on his standard are three
crowns surmounted by a coffin, with the motto ‘Tandem triumphans,’ done
into English by the Duke of Cumberland, as equivalent to ‘Every dog has
his day;’――which, after all, was no great compliment to the duke. The
triple crown and coffin represented the issue of crown or grave; in
one print the Devil is seen flying with it over Temple Bar, as if it
merited to be planted there, as were afterwards the spiked heads of
Towneley and of Fletcher.
[Sidenote: _PSEUDO-PORTRAIT OF CHARLES EDWARD._]
Jacobite sympathies were attracted and puzzled by a portrait of
‘The young Chevalier,’ which was to be seen, for sale, in every
printshop. Alexander Carlyle gives an amusing account of it in his
‘Autobiography.’ ‘As I had seen,’ he says, ‘the Chevalier Prince
Charles frequently in Scotland, I was appealed to, if a print that was
selling in all the shops was not like him? My answer was, that it had
not the least resemblance. Having been taken one night, however, to a
meeting of the Royal Society, by Microscope Baker, there was introduced
a Hanoverian Baron, whose likeness was so strong to the print which
passed for the young Pretender, that I had no doubt that, he being a
stranger, the printsellers had got him sketched out, that they might
make something of it before the _vera effigies_ could be had. The
latter, when it could at last be procured, was advertised in cautious
terms, as ‘A curious Head, painted from the Life, by the celebrated M.
Torcque, and engraved in France, by J. G. Will, with proper decorations
in a new taste.’ Beneath the portrait, the following verses were
inscribed:――
‘Few know my face, though all men do my fame,
Look strictly and you’ll quickly guess my name.
Through deserts, snows, and rain I made my way,
My life was daily risk’d to gain the day.
Glorious in thought, but now my hopes are gone,
Each friend grows shy, and I’m at last undone.’
Fear of him, and of his followers, was far from having died out.
A letter in the ‘Malmesbury Correspondence,’ dated May, might
almost have been written by the advocate of Extermination, in the
‘Advertiser;’――the rev. writer says: ‘A Bill is now preparing and will
soon be brought into the House of Lords, for putting the Highlands of
Scotland under quite a new regulation, and you may be assured, until
some bill is passed effectually to subdue that herd of savages, we
shall never be free from alarms of invasion in the North of England.’
Lord Stair, then in London, was more hopeful, and expressed a belief
that the king would now have weight in the affairs of Europe. ‘Fifty
battalions and fifty squadrons well employed, can cast the balance
which way his Majesty pleases.’ Derby captains now looked to shake
themselves out of mere tavern-life; while spirited young fellows
thought of commissions, and the figure they would cut in new uniforms.
[Sidenote: _THE DUKE OF ORMOND._]
Meanwhile, the Government was not meanly hostile to their dead enemies.
The Duke of Ormond, the boldest and frankest of conspirators against
the Hanoverian succession; the man who more than once would have
invaded his country at the head of foreign troops; he who had fostered
rebellion, and maintained foiled rebels, during his thirty years’
exile, had, at last, died in his eighty-third year. King and ministers
made no opposition to the interment of this splendid arch-traitor in
Westminster Abbey. His anonymous biographer (1747), after stating that
the duke died, on November 14th, 1745, at Avignon, says: ‘On the 18th,
his body was embalmed by four surgeons and three physicians, and in
the following month, May, as a bale of goods, brought through France to
England, and lodg’d in the Jerusalem Chamber, and soon after, decently
enterr’d.’
[Sidenote: _BURIAL OF ORMOND._]
There was something more than mere ‘decency.’ In the ‘General
Advertiser,’ May 23rd, it is announced, but without a word of comment
on the great Jacobite:――‘Last night, about Eleven o’Clock, the Corps
of the late Duke of Ormond was, after lying in State, in the Jerusalem
Chamber, Westminster Abbey, interr’d in great Funeral Pomp and
Solemnity, in the Ormond Vault in King Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, the
whole Choir attending, and the Ceremony was perform’d, by the Right
Rev. the Lord Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.’
But the popular attention was directed to the other ‘Duke.’ Whatever
Tories may have said at the time, or people generally, since that
period as to the character of the Duke of Cumberland, he was the
popular hero from the moment he arrived in London, after the victory
at Culloden. The papers were full of his praises. They lauded not only
his valour but his piety. After the battle, so they said, he had gone
unattended over the battle-field, and he was not only seen in profound
meditation, but was heard to exclaim,――his hands on his breast, and
his eyes raised to heaven――‘Lord! what am I that I should be spared,
when so many brave men lie dead upon the spot?’ Even Scotsmen have
owned that the duke attributed his victory to God, alone, and that he
was unmoved by the adulation of that large body of Englishmen who
were grateful at having been relieved by him from a great danger. They
compared him with the Black Prince, who won the day at Poictiers, when
he was about the same age as the duke, when _he_ triumphed at Culloden.
The latter was then in his twenty-sixth year.
[Sidenote: _THE QUESTION OF INHUMANITY._]
The orderly-books of the Duke of Cumberland, recently published, fail
to confirm the reports of his cruelty after Culloden. The Jacobites
exaggerated his severity, and they gave the provocation. That an order
was given to the Highlanders to refuse quarter to the troops under the
Duke of Cumberland is proved by Wolfe’s well-known letter. The only
trace of retaliatory rigour is to be found in the following entry in
the above book (Maclachlan’s ‘William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland,’
p. 293): ‘Inverness, April 17th.――The ‘Officers next from Duty to come
from Camp, in order to divide and search the Town for Rebels, their
effects, stores, and baggage. A Captain and 50 Men to march immediately
to the field of Battle, and search all cottages in the neighbourhood
for Rebels. The Officers and Men will take notice that the public
orders of the Rebels yesterday were to give us no quarter.’ In Wolfe’s
letter (he was then on the staff, and one of Hawley’s aides-de-camp),
written on the day the above order was issued, that young officer says:
‘Orders were publicly given in the rebel army, the day before the
action, that no quarter should be given to our troops.’ The latter,
it is equally true, had said on leaving London for the North that
they would neither give nor take quarter; but they had no orders to
such cruel effect. It was soldierly swagger. At the very outset, what
savagery there was, was fostered by the London gentlemen who lived at
home at ease. Walpole suggested if Cumberland were sent against the
Jacobite army, ‘it should not be with that sword of Mercy with which
the present Family have governed their people. Can rigour be displaced
against bandits?’ But, if the young duke should be full of compassion
after victory, Walpole rejoiced to think that in General Hawley there
was a military magistrate of some fierceness, who would not sow the
seeds of disloyalty by too easily pardoning the rebels.
[Sidenote: _INSTIGATORS OF CRUELTY._]
It was said in the London newspapers that the French did not act at
the Battle of Culloden, by reason of their being made acquainted with
the order of giving no quarter to our troops; and that the French
Commanding Officer declared that rather ‘than comply with such a
Resolution he would resign himself and Troops into the Hands of the
Duke of Cumberland; for his directions were to fight and not to commit
Murder.’
[Sidenote: _THE PRISONERS IN LONDON._]
While London was awaiting the return of the hero, whose triumphs had
already been celebrated, the anti-Jacobites were disappointed by being
deprived of greeting in their rough way the arrival of the captured
rebel lords. As early, indeed, as November 1745, Charles Radcliffe
(calling himself Lord Derwentwater) had been taken with his son on
board the ‘Soleil,’ bound for Scotland and high treason, and these
had been got into the Tower, at peril to their lives. But others were
expected. The Earl of Cromartie and his son, Lord Macleod, had been
taken at Dunrobin the day before Culloden. The Earl of Kilmarnock had
been captured in the course of the fight; Lord Balmerino a day or two
after. The old Marquis of Tullibardine, who had been in the fray of
’15, the attempt in ’19, and had escaped after both, missed now his
old luck; _that_ passed to his brother, Lord George Murray, who got
clear off to the Continent. Lord Tullibardine being sorely pressed and
in great distress, sought the house of Buchanan of Drummakill. It is
a question whether Tullibardine asked asylum or legally surrendered
himself. In either case, he was given up. The above lords were
despatched to London by sea in two separate voyages. Thus they were
spared the insults undergone thirty years before by Lord Derwentwater
and his unfortunate companions. On June 29th, Walpole writes: ‘Lady
Cromartie went down _incog._ to Woolwich to see her son pass by,
without the power of speaking to him. I never heard a more melancholy
instance of affection.’ Lord Elcho, who had escaped, solicited a
pardon; but, says Walpole, ‘as he has distinguished himself beyond
all the rebel commanders by brutality and insults and cruelty to our
prisoners, I think he is likely to remain where he is.’ Walpole was of
opinion that the young Chevalier was allowed to escape. He also says:
‘The duke gave Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender’s coach, on condition
he rode up to London in it. “That I will, sir,” said he, “and drive
till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa Tree”――the Jacobite Coffee
House in St. James’s Street.’
[Sidenote: _THE DUKE IN ABERDEEN._]
With leafy June came the duke; but before him arrived his baggage. When
that baggage which the duke and General Hawley brought with them from
Scotland was unpacked in London, the articles of which it consisted
must have excited some surprise. To show what it was, it is necessary
to go northward to the house of Mr. Thompson, advocate, in the Great
Row, Aberdeen. The duke had his quarters in that house, after his state
entry into the granite city, in February 1746. Six weeks were the
Thompsons constrained to bear with their illustrious but unprofitable
lodger. They had to supply him with coals, candles, the rich liquids
in the advocate’s cellars, and all the milk of his sole cow. The bed
and table linen was both used and abused. The duke is even charged with
breaking up a press which was full of sugar, of which he requisitioned
every grain. At the end of the six weeks, when about to march from
the city, the duke left among the three servants of the house as
many guineas. This was not illiberal; but Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were
chiefly aggrieved by his Highness’s lack of courtesy. He went away
without asking to see them, or leaving any acknowledgment of their
hospitality by sending even a curt thank ye! General Hawley behaved
even more rudely in the house of Mrs. Gordon of Hallhead. Before he
took possession it was understood that everything was to be locked up,
and that the general was only to have the use of the furniture. This
gallant warrior, as soon as he had flung his plumed hat on the table,
demanded the keys. ◆[Sidenote: _LOOTING._]◆ Much disputation followed,
with angry squabbling, and the keys were only given up on the general’s
threat that he would smash every lock in the house. The yielding came
too late. General and duke together declared all the property of Mrs.
Gordon to be confiscated, except the clothes she wore. ‘Your loyalty,
Madam,’ said Major Wolfe to her, ‘is not suspected;’ which made the
poor lady only the more perplexed as to why she was looted. The major
politely offered to endeavour to get restored to her any article she
particularly desired to recover. ‘I should like to have all my tea
back,’ said Mrs. Gordon. ‘It is good tea,’ said the major. ‘Tea is
scarce in the army. I do not think it recoverable.’ It was the same
with the chocolate and many other things agreeable to the stomach.
‘At all events,’ said the lady, ‘let me have my china again!’ ‘It is
very pretty china,’ replied the provoking major, ‘there is a good deal
of it; and we are fond of china ourselves; but, we have no ladies
travelling with us. I think you should have some of the articles.’ Mrs.
Gordon, however, obtained nothing. She petitioned the duke, and he
promised restitution; but, says the lady herself, ‘when I sent for a
pair of breeches for my son, for a little tea for myself, for a bottle
of ale, for some flour to make bread, because there was none to be
bought in the town, all was refused me!’ ‘In fact, Hawley, on the eve
of his departure,’ Mrs. Gordon tells us, ‘packed up every bit of china
I had, all my bedding and table linen, every book, my repeating clock,
my worked screen, every rag of my husband’s clothes, the very hat,
breeches, night-gown, shoes, and what shirts there were of the child’s;
twelve tea-spoons, strainer and tongs, the japanned board on which the
chocolate and coffee cups stood; and he put them on board a ship in the
night time.’
[Sidenote: _THE DUKE AND HIS PLUNDER._]
Out of this miscellaneous plunder, a tea equipage and a set of coloured
table china, addressed to the Duke of Cumberland at St. James’s,
reached their destination. With what face his Highness could show to
his London friends the valuable china he had stolen from a lady whose
loyalty, he allowed, was above suspicion, defies conjecture. The
spoons, boy’s shirts, breeches, and meaner trifles, were packed up
under an address to General Hawley, London. ‘A house so plundered,’
wrote the lady, ‘I believe was never heard of. It is not 600_l._ would
make up my loss; nor have I at this time a single table-cloth, napkin,
or towel, teacup, glass, or any one convenience.’ One can hardly
believe that any but the more costly articles reached London. Moreover,
whatever censure the Londoners may have cast upon the plunderers, the
duke was not very ill thought of by the Aberdeen authorities. When the
duke was perhaps sipping his tea from the cups, or banquetting his
friends at St. James’s off Mrs. Gordon’s dinner-service, a deputation
from Aberdeen brought to his Highness the ‘freedom’ of the city, with
many high compliments on the bravery and good conduct of the victor at
Culloden!
The duke got tired of his tea-set. He is said to have presented it to
one of the daughters of husseydom, and the damsel sold it to a dealer
in such things. A friend of Mrs. Gordon’s saw the set exposed for sale
in the dealer’s window, and on inquiry he learnt, from the dealer
himself, through what clean hands it had come into his possession.
[Sidenote: _A HUMAN HEAD._]
If report might be credited the Duke of Cumberland brought with him to
London, and in his own carriage, a human head, which he believed to be
that of Charles Edward! Young Roderick Mackenzie called to the soldiers
who shot him down in the Braes of Glenmorristen, ‘Soldiers, you have
killed your lawful prince!’ These words, uttered to divert pursuit
from the young Chevalier, were believed, and when Roderick died, the
soldiers cut off his head and brought it to the Duke of Cumberland’s
quarters. Robert Chambers, in his ‘History of the Rebellion,’ qualifies
with an ‘_it is said_’ the story that the duke stowed away the head in
his chaise, and carried it to London. Dr. Chambers adds, as a fact,
that Richard Morrison, Charles Edward’s body-servant, and a prisoner
at Carlisle, was sent for to London, as the best witness to decide the
question of identity. Morrison fainted at this trial of his feelings;
but regaining composure, he looked steadily at the relic, and declared
that it was not the head of his beloved master.
[Sidenote: ‘_SWEET WILLIAM._’]
But all minor matters were forgotten in the general joy. Now the duke
was back in person, loyal London went mad about ‘the son of George, the
image of Nassau!’ Flattery, at once flowery and poetical, was heaped
upon him. A flower once dedicated to William III. was now dedicated
to him. The white rose in a man’s button-hole or on a lady’s bosom,
in the month of June, was not greater warranty of a Jacobite than the
‘Sweet-William,’ with its old appropriate name, was of a Whig to the
back-bone. Of the poetical homage, here is a sample:――
The pride of France is lily-white,
The rose in June is Jacobite;
The prickly thistle of the Scot
Is Northern knighthood’s badge and lot.
But since the Duke’s victorious blows,
The Lily, Thistle, and the Rose
All droop and fade and die away:
Sweet William’s flower rules the day.
’Tis English growth of beauteous hue,
Clothed, like our troops, in red and blue.
No plant with brighter lustre grows,
Except the laurel on his brows.
[Sidenote: _FLATTERY._]
Poetasters converted Horace’s laudation of Augustus into flattery of
Cumberland. Fables were written in which sweet William served at once
for subject and for moral. Epigrams from Martial, or from a worse
source――the writers’ own brains――were fresh but bluntly pointed in his
favour. Some of them compared him to the sun, at whose warmth ‘vermin
cast off their coats and took wing.’ Others raised him far above great
Julius; for Cumberland ‘conquers, coming; and before he sees.’ Sappho,
under the name of _Clarinda_, told the world, on hearing a report of
the duke’s illness, that if Heaven took him, it would be the death of
her, and that the world would lose a Hero and a Maid together. Heroic
writers, trying Homer’s strain, and not finding themselves equal to
it, blamed poor Homer, and declared that the strings of his lyre were
too weak to bear the strain of the modern warrior’s praise. Occasional
prologues hailed him as ‘the martial boy,’ on the day he entered his
twenty-sixth year. Pinchbeck struck a medal in his honour; punsters in
coffee-houses rang the changes on _metal_ and _mettle_, and Pinchbeck
became almost as famous for the medal as he subsequently became for his
invention of new candle-snuffers, when the poets besought him to ‘snuff
the candle of the state, which burned a little blue.’ In fine, ballads,
essays, apologues, prose and poetry, were exhausted in furnishing
homage to the hero. The homage culminated when the duke’s portrait
appeared in all the shops, bearing the inscription, ‘ECCE HOMO!’
[Illustration: Flowers]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER VIII.
(1746.)
[Illustration: Drop-I]n contrast with the triumph and the deification
came the torture and the slaughter of the victims. The trials of the
prisoners taken at Carlisle and in Scotland next monopolised the
public mind. When the precept was issued by the judges, to the High
Sheriff of Surrey, to summon a jury for the trial of the prisoners, at
the Court House, in Southwark, a very equivocal compliment was paid
to Richmond. The grand jury were selected from among the inhabitants
of Addiscombe, Bermondsey, Camberwell, Clapham, Croydon, Kennington,
Lambeth, Putney, Rotherhithe, Southwark,――but not from Richmond, or
its immediate neighbourhood. The inhabitants of that courtly locality
were spared. They were supposed to be thoroughly Hanoverian, and
therefore to a certain degree biassed! The trials of those called ‘the
Manchester officers’ divided the attention of London with those of
the Jacobite peers. The former were brought to the Court House, St.
Margaret’s Hill, Southwark, on July 3rd, for arraignment. The judges in
commission were Chief Justice Lee, Justices Wright, Dennison, Foster,
and Abney; Barons Clive and Reynolds, with two magistrates, Sir Thomas
De Viel and Peter Theobald, Esqs. Eighteen prisoners were brought to
the Court through an excited and insulting mob. Of these eighteen, five
pleaded ‘guilty.’ The trials of the remaining thirteen were deferred
to the 13th July. Of these, one was acquitted. ◆[Sidenote: _COLONEL
TOWNELEY._]◆ The first prisoner placed at the bar was Francis Towneley,
Colonel of the Manchester regiment, and nephew of the Towneley who
had such a narrow escape of the gallows for his share in the earlier
outbreak. The trials so nearly resembled each other, that to narrate a
few will afford a sample of the whole. The Attorney-General (Ryder),
the Solicitor-General (Murray), Sir John Strange, Sir Richard Lloyd,
and the Hon. Mr. Yorke were the prosecuting counsel. Towneley was
defended by Sergeant Wynne and Mr. Clayton. The addresses of the king’s
counsel altogether would make but a short speech, in the present day.
One briefly explained the charge; and the others, among them, expressed
their horror at the rebel idea of overturning so glorious a throne
and so gracious a king. They laughed at the motto on the rebel flag:
_Liberty, Property, and King_. Liberty was interpreted as meaning
slavery; property meant plunder; and king, an usurper who was to sit in
the place of a murdered and rightful monarch. Seven witnesses deposed
against Towneley. The first two were ‘rebels’ who, to save their
necks, turned traitors. The first, Macdonald, swore to his having seen
Towneley acting as colonel of the Manchester regiment with a white
cockade in his hat, a Highland dress, a plaid sash, sword and pistols.
The cross-examination was as brief as that in chief. Out of it came
that Macdonald expected his pardon for his testimony; that he was only
a servant; was brought by sea and came ashore from the Thames in a
destitute condition, and had nothing to subsist on.
[Sidenote: _KING’S EVIDENCE._]
Macdonald’s fellow in iniquity, Maddox, succeeded. He was nominally an
ensign, but he held no commission, and Towneley was his colonel. In the
retreat, northward, Maddox stated that he had expressed a desire to
get back to his master at Manchester, and that Towneley replied that,
if he attempted to withdraw, he would have his brains knocked out.
At Carlisle, he added, the Pretender, on leaving, appointed Towneley
Commandant, under Hamilton, the Governor of the town. That, in the
above capacity, Towneley fortified the city, sent out foraging parties,
to whom he made signals by firing a pistol as he stood on the wall,
to warn them against surprises by the enemy. When Governor Hamilton
spoke of surrendering the citadel, Towneley, according to Maddox, flew
into violent rage, and protested that ‘it would be better to die by
the sword than to fall into the hands of the damned Hanoverians.’ In
his cross-examination, Maddox accounted for his being an approver, by
saying: ‘My brother came to me in the New Prison, and advised me to do
my best to save my own life, and serve my country.’ He had followed
the fraternal counsel, and was then living, at Government cost, in
a messenger’s house. ◆[Sidenote: _TOWNELEY’S TRIAL._]◆ The third
approver, Coleman, gave similar evidence. A Carlisle grocer, Davidson,
deposed that he heard Colonel Towneley give orders to set fire to a
house near the city, from which ‘the Elector of Hanover’s troops’
had fired on some Jacobite soldiery. Two captains, Nevet and Vere,
stated, that on entering Carlisle, they had found Towneley acting as
Commandant; and Captain Carey said, that the Duke of Cumberland having
ordered him, through Lord Beauclerc, to take the rebel officers under
his guard, he found on Towneley some guineas and a watch, ‘which I did
not take from him,’ the captain added; ‘for His Royal Highness’s orders
were, not to take any money out of the pockets of any of the officers,
as it might be of service in their confinement.’
The process of accusation was not long; the defence was briefer
still. Towneley’s counsel could not save him by stating that he was
a gentleman by birth and education; that motives which weighed upon
him forced him to go abroad in 1722; that he held a commission from
the King of France; and that he was at the side of Borwick, when that
marshal was slain at Phillipsburgh; that he had come over to England,
some time before, while in the service of the French king; and that, as
a French officer, he had ‘a right to the cartel.’ Captain Carpenter,
whose evidence was to the same effect, served the colonel as little
by his deposition; and two Manchester men, Hayward and Dickinson, who
swore that Maddox was a cheating apprentice to a Manchester apothecary,
not to be believed on his oath, might as well have remained at home.
[Sidenote: _CONVICTION._]
The summing-up was brief, but to the purpose. The jury, consisting
of three gentlemen, one yeoman, three brewers, a baker, brazier,
starch-maker, gardener, and cloth-worker, promptly replied to it, by
finding Towneley ‘guilty.’ The colonel heard the word and the sentence
which followed, so horrible in its details of strangling and burning,
without being much moved. His dignity never failed him; and the crowd
through which he returned to his dungeon was less savage, in its
expletives, than the loyal press in its comments. ‘The commission from
the French king,’ said the ‘Penny Post,’ ‘was treated with the contempt
it deserved, and must convince the Jacobites that such foolish and
wicked contrivances can have no effect on men of understanding.’ ‘Hear!
hear!’ cried the Whig papers; ‘so much for the nominal Colonel!’
While these trials were in progress, a curious enquiry was attracting
not a few of ‘the mobile’ to another part of the town. A goodly number
of King George’s soldiers were made prisoners by the Jacobites, at the
battle of Preston Pans. These had been recovered, but they did not
return to the ranks unquestioned. They were compelled to appear, in
batches, at Hicks’s Hall, Clerkenwell, to clear themselves from the
imputation of cowardice and desertion; and to undergo the rough wit of
the populace as they went to and fro. Other soldiers, against whom the
above imputation could not be laid, offended in another way. For acts
of murderous violence and robbery in the London streets, six soldiers
were hung on the same day, at Tyburn. As long as such spectacles were
provided, the mob little cared to which side the victims belonged.
[Sidenote: _CAPTAIN FLETCHER._]
Three prisoners were tried on the following day, July 16th, Fletcher,
Chadwick, and Battragh. Maddox, the approver, stated, as in Towneley’s
case, that he had expressed a wish to withdraw, but that Fletcher had
said: ‘That it would be a scandalous shame to retreat;’ and, added
the witness, ‘putting his hand in his pocket, he pulled out a great
purse of gold, and told me I should not want while that lasted! I have
seen him in the assembly with ladies, he was a chapman and dealt in
linen before this affair.’ Bradbury, another witness, said, ‘When the
recruiting sergeant had finished his speech, at Manchester, with “God
save King James and Prince Charles!” Captain Fletcher pulled off his
hat and hallooed.’ For the defence, Anne Aston, an old servant of seven
and twenty years’ standing, stated that Fletcher carefully managed his
mother’s business at Salford; that he was always loyal, but that the
Jacobites had carried him off by force, from the house, and that he
went away weeping. It was, however, said that he gave 50_l._ for his
captain’s commission. He was found _guilty_, was again put in fetters,
and was taken back to prison. ‘I would do it again!’ was his bold
remark, as he turned away from the bar.
[Sidenote: _THE MANCHESTER OFFICERS._]
Lieutenant Chadwick and Ensign Battragh were then put forward. They
belonged to Captain James Dawson’s company. The ensign had been
an attorney’s clerk. The lieutenant was the son of a Manchester
tallow-chandler and soap-boiler, but he was too proud to follow his
sire’s calling. He was a handsome fellow, with a sweet voice for
singing, and was no mean proficient on the organ. ‘He kept,’ it was
said, ‘some of the most polite company in the place, and never followed
any trade.’ One of the witnesses stated that when the lieutenant was
with the Jacobite army at Lancaster, he went into the organ-loft of
one of the churches and played ‘the King shall have his own again!’ In
addition to the old witnesses, a Jacobite drummer-boy, twelve years
old, was called. ‘Child,’ said the judge, ‘do you know the nature of
an oath?’ The child readily answered in the affirmative, adding: ‘I
know I am sworn to speak the truth, and I shall never be happy if I
don’t.’ Upon this, he was sworn, and he deposed to being a servant to
Captain Lowther, and to being taken prisoner at Carlisle, where, said
he, ‘I begged my life on my knees, of His Royal Highness, which he
readily granted, and God bless him for it!’ The active presence of both
prisoners in the rebel army having been duly proved, they held their
peace, and were duly found guilty, were ironed, and carried back to
their dungeons.
[Sidenote: ‘_JEMMY DAWSON._’]
Lieutenant-Colonel Deacon, Captain Berwick, and Captain James Dawson
stood successively at the bar, on the 17th July. Deacon was the son
of a Manchester physician, and long before the Jacobites entered
Manchester, he had proclaimed his intention of joining them. This he
did with two brothers; one, a mere boy, was captured, detained, and
ultimately released. The other was slain. Berwick (who was familiarly
dignified with the titular honour of ‘Duke’) was a gay young fellow
who had dealt in ‘chequered linens,’ but had not been ‘prudent’ in
trade; and had joined the rebels to escape his creditors. The third
rebel, ‘Jemmy Dawson,’ has become better known to us than either ‘brave
Berwick,’ or ‘gallant Deacon.’ He was a ‘Lancashire lad,’ of good
family. He was so fond of what is also called ‘good company,’ when
he was at St. John’s, Cambridge, that he withdrew from his college,
in order to escape expulsion. He returned to Manchester, where he
lived ‘on his fortune and his friends.’――‘He was always a mighty gay
gentleman,’ it was said at his trial, ‘and frequented much the company
of ladies, and was well respected by all his acquaintances of either
sex, for his genteel deportment.’
The usual testimony was given against the three Jacobites. Maddox
added, of Deacon, that he had seen him sitting at the ‘Bull’s Head,’
Manchester, taking the names of the recruits, and also making up blue
and white ribbons into bows, to decorate the recruits with. On the
march, he seems to have indulged in making long speeches, praising
‘Charles, Prince Regent,’ and inducing many to join, on assurance of
good treatment when they got to London, or five guineas wherewith to
get home again. He was very conspicuous in his plaid suit, with laced
loops, broad sword, and pistols.
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE PRESS._]
There was some variety on the 18th at the trial of a Welsh barrister
named David Morgan. ‘I waited on him at Preston,’ said one Tew, ‘when
he and Lord Elcho dined together. They talked on the Pretender’s
affairs. Morgan asked of what religion the prince might be, and Lord
Elcho replied that his religion was yet to seek.’ Other witnesses
deposed to Morgan’s active participation in the rebellion, the
consideration with which he was treated by other officers, and his
close attendance upon the Pretender, by whose side he rode out of Derby
on a bay horse. Captain Vere, who had received his surrender, said,
‘He called me a great scoundrel, as I prevented gentlemen getting
commissions under Sir Daniel O’Carrol.’ Another witness deposed that he
had gone the night before out of curiosity to see Morgan in Newgate,
and that this Pretender’s counsellor had actually exclaimed, ‘We shall
soon be in Derby again, in spite of King George or anybody else!’
Morgan’s defence was that he had repented, and had tried to escape, but
was arrested. The Solicitor-General remarked that the attempt was not
made till the cause was desperate, and Morgan was pronounced ‘Guilty!’
The trials and sentences impressed the writers of the London newspapers
in various ways. The ‘happy establishment’ supporters thirsted for
rebel blood. The Jacobite journals were ‘cowed.’ They seemed even
afraid to express a hope that mercy might be extended to the condemned
officers. The utmost they ventured to do was to suggest mercy, or keep
a thought of it alive in the breast of princes and people, by selecting
Shakespeare for their advocate; and in these journals might be read
again and again the lines from ‘Measure for Measure’:――
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As Mercy does.
But Shakespeare pleaded and suggested in vain.
[Sidenote: _THE CONDEMNED JACOBITES._]
After sentence the Jacobite officers were heavily ironed, even by day.
At night they were fastened to the floor by a staple. Colonel Towneley
was speedily interviewed by a ‘good-natured friend,’ who, in the spirit
of one of Job’s comforters, remarked: ‘I believe, Sir, you deceived
yourself in imagining you should be able to clear up your innocence;
... and that you was not quite right in supposing that you could
invalidate the credit of the king’s witnesses.’ Tears for the first
and last time came into the colonel’s eyes. Towneley said simply, ‘I
never thought it could have come to this.’ The remark may have referred
to his weakness rather than to his fate. In the disorderly prison,
when hopes of reprieve caused some to sing hysterically, and to drink
in much the same spirit, Towneley never lost his grave and becoming
dignity. His reserve when he, for an hour, came from his room into the
yard was looked upon by the hilarious and untried Jacobite prisoners
as insolent contempt. This did not affect the colonel, who communed
only with himself, and passed on without remark. ◆[Sidenote: _PAINFUL
PARTINGS._]◆ In order, however, that he might die like a gentleman as
well as a Christian, a tailor measured him for a suit of black velvet,
in which he might appear with dignity on the day of his execution.
Young Fletcher never lost his cheerfulness, except, perhaps, when he
alluded to his ‘poor mother’ having offered him 1,000_l._ not to join
the rebel army. ‘Here I am,’ said the young fellow, ‘for which I have
nobody to thank but myself.’ Blood refused to trust, as his friends
did, in a reprieve. ‘I can die but once,’ he replied to their remarks;
‘as well now as at any other time. I am ready.’ ‘My father,’ said the
valiant barber, Syddal, ‘was put to death for joining the Stuarts in
’15. I am about to follow him for joining them in ’45. I have five
children; may none of them fall in a worse cause!’ Two fathers had
interviews on the eve of the execution, with their sons. ‘Jemmy Dawson’
and Chadwick had displayed the utmost unobtrusive fortitude. ‘You may
put tons of iron on me,’ said the former young captain, when he was
being heavily fettered after judgment: ‘it will not in the least damp
my resolution.’ Chadwick had manifested a similar spirit; but when
the two lads were held for the last time each in his weeping father’s
arms, resolution temporarily gave way. The parting scene was of a most
painful nature. Poor Syddal, the Jacobite barber, behaved with as much
propriety as any of higher rank. Morgan, the lawyer, was irritable, and
on the very eve of being hanged quarrelled with the charges made by the
prison cook for indifferent fare.
[Sidenote: _WITHIN PRISON-WALLS._]
Among the untried prisoners there was one Bradshaw, in whom there
seems to have been a touch of the insanity which was afterwards pleaded
in his defence. This gay, thoughtless fellow hated Towneley, with whom
he had quarrelled at Carlisle, ‘on account,’ say the newspapers, ‘of
a young lady whom they had severally addressed at a ball which was
kept at the Bull’s Head Inn, Manchester, for the neighbouring gentry.’
This trifle seems to show what feather-brained gallants some of the
Jacobite officers were. The quarrel about a pretty girl was never made
up. On the day before the sentence was carried out, Bradshaw shuffled
up in his fetters to Colonel Towneley in the yard, and saluted his
former superior officer with, ‘I find, sir, you must shortly march
into other quarters.’ Towneley looked at him in silent surprise, but
Berwick, who was at the colonel’s side, spiritedly remarked: ‘Jemmy,
you should not triumph at our misfortunes. You may depend upon it,
mocking is catching;’ and turning to Chadwick, who had not yet been
summoned to meet his fate, Berwick rejoined: ‘Bradshaw has no pity in
him.’ Chadwick looked at the pitiless scoffer, who had been drinking
freely (prison rules set no limit to tippling), and said: ‘What could
be expected of such a fellow? He is a disgrace to our army.’ At length
on their last evening came the hour for locking up. As the doomed
Jacobites were being stapled to the floor, some of them ordered that
they should be called at six in the morning, and that coffee should be
ready for them when they descended to the yard. They were wide awake,
however, at that hour; but when the fastidious Morgan heard that the
coffee was ready before he was released from the staple, he flew into a
furious passion, and, within an hour or two of being hanged, drawn, and
quartered, this irascible Jacobite made a heavy grievance of having to
drink his coffee half cold!
[Sidenote: _THE LAST MORNING._]
Before they descended to the yard the three sledges were drawn up
there, in which the nine Jacobites were to be drawn, by threes, to the
gallows, the quartering block, and the fire, at the place of sacrifice.
Prisoners whose hour had not yet come were curiously inspecting these
gloomy vehicles. Bradshaw, with his morning brandy in his brains,
affected much curiosity in the matter, and his doings were watched,
like the performance of a mime, by idle gentlemen who had walked in,
without let or hindrance, to the spectacle. It was raining heavily, but
that was no obstacle to the acting. Bradshaw inspected the sledges,
and pronounced them very proper for the purposes for which they were
designed. Then he raked about the straw, declared there was too little
of it, and bade the warders to procure more, or ‘the lads’ would get
their feet wet.
The ‘lads’ took their last coffee in a room off the yard, generally in
silence. Chadwick alone made a remark to Berwick: ‘Ah, Duke,’ he said,
‘our time draws near, but I feel in good heart.’ ‘I, too,’ answered
Berwick; ‘death does not shock me in the least. My friends forgive me,
and have done their best to save me. May God be merciful to us all!’
And then appeared the governor with, ‘Now, gentlemen, if you please!’
[Sidenote: _VIA DOLOROSA._]
The gentlemen were ready at the call. Their irons were knocked off
before they entered the sledges, and each was slightly pinioned――so
slightly that Syddal took advantage of it to take snuff, whereby to
cover a little natural nervousness. Behind the sledges followed a
coach, in which, under the guard of a warder, the younger Deacon lay
rather than sat. His youth had saved his life. The parting of the two
brothers was most touching, and the younger one implored that he might
suffer too. He suffered more, for he was condemned to witness the
sufferings of his brother. The mob between the prison and Kennington
Common was enormous, in spite of the pitiless rain. At the period of
the trials, when the Jacobite prisoners passed to and fro, the mob
treated them in the most ruffianly manner; but now, on their way to
death, not even a word of offence was flung at them. The crowd gazed at
the doomed men and the heavy escort of horse and foot in sympathising
silence.
[Sidenote: _AT KENNINGTON COMMON._]
At the gallows tree there was neither priest, nor minister, nor
prison ordinary, to give spiritual aid. Singular incidents ensued.
The captives could scarcely have been pinioned at all. Morgan took
out a book of devotion, and read it full half an hour to his fellows
in misery, who stood around him, gravely listening. Syddal and Deacon
read speeches, which were word for word identical. They were, in fact,
addresses said to be written by a nonjuring minister, one Creake, and
printed for circulation in the crowd. The purport was, that the two
culprits professed to belong to neither the Church of England nor of
Rome, but to a poor episcopal church that had cured the errors of
all other modern churches. They were further made to say that one
universal church was the only perfect principle; and they recommended
a perusal of a work called ‘A Complete Collection of Devotion, A.D.
1734,’ which was believed to be by Dr. Deacon, the father of one of the
condemned. Morgan appears to have really spoken. He abused the Church
of Rome, which was rather ungracious at such a moment, in Towneley’s
presence, who, however, never uttered a word in reply. Morgan declared
he was a Church of England man (the anti-Jacobite journals denounced
him as an unmitigated miscreant), and that his faith was set forth
in two works: ‘The Christian Test,’ and, he added, ‘in a work to be
hereafter published by my most dutiful daughter, Miss Mary Morgan.’ The
other sufferers observed silence, but all, before they died, manfully
declared that they died willingly in a just cause, and that their
deaths would be avenged. One or two threw papers into the crowd; one or
two their gold-laced hats――which must have disgusted the hangmen, who
were thus deprived of part of their perquisites. Others, it is said,
flung to the mob their prayer-books, which were found to be turned
down at the 89th Psalm, from the 21st verse to the end, which passages
will be found, not, indeed, altogether inapplicable, but needing some
little violence to make the application suit the circumstances.
[Sidenote: _EXECUTION._]
Next followed the unutterable barbarity of the execution; where,
however, the strangling rendered the sufferers above all consciousness
of the butcher’s knife, and the flames. The mob had time to notice
that the twist of the halters were alternately white and red. The
rope-maker, much urged to explain, gave no other answer than that it
was his fancy. The crowd, at the close, had to make way for a coach
which had been drawn up by the side of the scaffold. It contained the
poor lad, Deacon, condemned to see his elder brother die. Thence,
probably, has arisen the romance, which tells us that the coach
contained a lady who had died of her love, and of her horror at the
sufferings of her sweetheart, Dawson, and which afforded an opportunity
to Shenstone to write his well-known ballad,――‘Jemmy Dawson.’
The Whig Press observed a certain decency in its comments on the
sufferers. Exception, however, was made in the case of Morgan.
‘What his virtues and better qualities were,’ said the loyal ‘Penny
Post,’――‘if he had any, have not yet come to our knowledge; if they
had, we should gladly have mentioned them, that the world might not
run away with the opinion that Mr. Morgan was the only man who ever
lived half a century without doing one good action, and that he died
unlamented by friend, neighbour, or domestic.’ There is a charming
affectation of delicacy in another paragraph, which runs thus: ‘What
his treatment of his wife has been, we have no business with. He
parted from her with a good deal of seeming affection.’ One of the
journals paid the sufferers as much compliment as the writer could
afford to give under the circumstances: ‘They all behaved,’ he says,
‘with a kind of fixt resolution of putting the best face they could
upon a Bad Cause, and therefore behaved with Decency and seeming
Resolution.’
At the ‘clearing up,’ it was discovered that the papers the poor
fellows had flung among the crowd, before they were hanged, were of a
highly treasonable nature. There was eager snatching of them from one
another, and a still hotter eagerness on the part of the Government
to discover the ‘rascal printer.’ He had audaciously set in type the
last expression of the sufferers,――that they died willingly for their
king and the cause; regretted the brave attempt had failed;――and, had
they the opportunity, they would make the same attempt, for their king,
again. A mob rather than a group had collected about Temple Bar to see
their heads spiked. Deacon’s and Syddal’s had been sent to Manchester.
When the hangman and his assistant tripped up the ladder at the bar,
each with a head under his arm, the sympathising spectators were
in doubt as to whose shoulders they had originally come from. Bets
were laid on one, as being certainly Colonel Towneley’s. There were
counter-bets that Towneley’s had gone to Carlisle. Assertions were
made upon oath――very strong oaths, too,――that Towneley’s head was then
lying with his body at an undertaker’s up at Pancras, and was to be
buried with it. The hangman was a reserved man, and his comrade was
taciturn. They left the gaping crowd uncertain. One of the heads was
truly Fletcher’s. Was the other Morgan’s? Information was not supplied
by the officials; but, after consideration, the spectators decided that
the colonel’s head was set up with the captain’s; and this judgment
was never shaken from the popular mind. A correspondent of ‘Notes and
Queries’ (Dec. 7, 1872, p. 456), says of the Jacobite colonel: ‘His
head is now in a box, in the library at 12, Charles Street, Berkeley
Square, the residence of the present Colonel Charles Towneley.’
[Sidenote: _HEADS AND BODIES._]
The bodies of the Jacobites executed on Kennington Common were
buried in the parish of St. Pancras. The headless trunk of Towneley
was deposited in a grave in the old churchyard. Those of Fletcher,
Deacon, Chadwick, Berwick, Syddal, Dawson, Blood, and Morgan, lie in
the burial-ground of the parish, near the Foundling Hospital. The
heads of the last three were given up to their friends. Syddal’s and
Deacon’s were exposed on the market-cross at Manchester. Chadwick’s and
Berwick’s were sent to Carlisle.
Towneley’s ghost was appeased by a ballad-writer who brought the spirit
to the Duke of Cumberland’s bed, where the ghost scared him from
sleep, charged him with crimes which he could hardly have committed in
a life time, and so horrified him with a recital of the retributive
pains the victor at Culloden would suffer in hell, that William
rushed, for safety, to his usurping father, who bade him be of good
cheer,――adding:――
If we on Scotland’s throne can dwell,
And reign securely here,
Your uncle Satan’s King in Hell,
And he’ll secure us there.
[Sidenote: _OTHER TRIALS._]
One of the most cruel illustrations of the period has reference to the
father of young Captain Deacon. The captain’s head was sent down to be
‘spiked’ at Manchester. The father, a nonjuring minister in the town,
always avoided the spot. One day, he involuntarily came within view of
what was to him a holy relic. He reverently raised his hat on passing
it. For this testimony of respect and affection, he was charged with
sedition, and was fined.
Several of the so-called Jacobite captains and lieutenants who were
subsequently tried, were allowed their lives (to be passed beyond the
Atlantic) on condition of pleading guilty. Others who stood their
trial, similarly escaped. Alexander Margrowther, a lieutenant, a
well-dressed, active, joyous, hopeful fellow, protested that he did
not join the army of Prince Charles Edward till after Lord Perth had
three times threatened to lay waste his property and burn his house;
and even then he was carried off against his will. Chief Justice Lee
acknowledged that constraint had been put upon him, but that his
remaining and fighting on the rebel side was voluntary. The verdict was
‘guilty,’ but execution did not follow.
[Sidenote: _A MAD JACOBITE._]
The brothers of Sir James Kinloch, Charles and Alexander, were
equally fortunate. Mr. Justice Wright differed with his judicial
brother on a point of law, and was of opinion that judgment should be
arrested. This saved the dashing pair of brothers from the gallows.
Bradshaw, who came up for trial, October 27th, appeared at the bar in
a gay suit of green; he looked as confident as his suit looked gay.
His presence and activity in the Pretender’s array at Manchester,
Carlisle, and Culloden, were amply proved; but a plea of insanity was
set up to excuse it. This amounted to little more than that he was a
sleep-walker, was eccentric, had always been so, and that eccentricity
was almost developed into madness at the death of his wife who was
described as ‘a fine lady whom he had accompanied to all the gay places
of diversion in London.’ He was certainly out of his senses when he
left a flourishing business at Manchester, in order to wear a pair
of epaulettes and a plaid scarf among the Jacobites. That he quitted
Carlisle, instead of surrendering, and took his chance with the Scots,
till the decisive day at Culloden, was held by the prosecuting lawyers
as a proof that Bradshaw had his senses about him. His courage failed
him when he was adjudged to be hanged on the 28th of November. Some
of his friends among the London Jacobites tried, but in vain, to get
him off. The Whig papers were quite scandalised that even certain
‘city ald――rm――n’ had petitioned for a pardon for this once defiant,
insolent, and impetuous rebel.
[Sidenote: _SIR JOHN WEDDERBURN._]
If Bradshaw excited some interest in the City aldermen, there was a
Sir John Wedderburn, Bart., who found sympathy in men of both parties.
His father, a stout Whig, had been at the head of the excise, in the
Port of Dundee. Old Sir John had an ample estate, but being of a
liberal and generous spirit, as the contemporary press remarks, his
liberality and generosity utterly ruined his family. At his death
there was no estate for his heirs to inherit. The new baronet, with
his wife and family, took up his residence near Perth, in a thatched
hut, with a clay floor, and no light except what came through the
doorway. It was placed on a very small bit of land from which Sir John
could not be ousted. He tilled his half acre with ceaseless industry,
and he made what was described as ‘a laborious but starving shift’
to support his wife and nine children. They all went about barefoot.
To the head of this family, a proposal was made, when the Jacobites
occupied Perth, that he should collect all dues and imposts for Prince
Charles Edward. Sir John’s poverty consented. He collected the taxes,
but he never joined the Jacobite army. Nevertheless, when the army
under the Duke of Cumberland came that way, Sir John was seized and
sent south. Put upon his trial, he pleaded his poverty, his starving
family, and his light offence. He was however condemned, though more
guilty offenders had unaccountably escaped. He bore himself with a calm
dignity till the adverse verdict was pronounced, and then he could not
completely control an emotion which sprung rather from thoughts of his
family, than for himself. The lowest and loyalest of the Londoners
acknowledged that Sir John Wedderburn was a gentleman and deserving of
pity. After his death, the king afforded pecuniary relief to his wife
and family.
[Sidenote: _‘BISHOP’ COPPOCK._]
Some of these unfortunate Jacobites manifested a dauntless bravery
which almost amounted to absence of proper feeling. Coppock was one
of them. Charles Edward had nominated this reverend gentleman to the
bishopric of Carlisle. Leaving the bar, after sentence of death, with a
doomed and somewhat terrified fellow prisoner,――‘What the devil are you
afraid of?’ said the prelate; ‘we sha’n’t be tried by a Cumberland Jury
in the next world.’
[Illustration: Leaves]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER IX.
(1746.)
[Illustration: Drop-D]uring the summer, the parks had special
attractions for the public. The tactics which were supposed to have
won Culloden were ordered to be followed in the army. Consequently,
the twenty-eight companies forming the First Regiment of Foot Guards
were exercised in Hyde Park, by General Folliot, half of idle London
looking on. ‘They went through their firing,’ as the papers reported,
‘four deep, with their bayonets fixed, as at the late battle near
Culloden House, and performed the exercise, though quite new to them,
exceeding well.’ Then, there was a little spectacle in the presentation
to General St. Clair of a sword which had been taken from the Earl
of Cromartie. When the earl possessed this weapon, the blade bore
two inscriptions: ‘God preserve King James VIII. of Scotland!’ and
‘Prosperity to Scotland, and No Union!’ For these were substituted ‘God
preserve King George II., King of Great Britain, France and Ireland!’
and ‘Prosperity to England and Scotland!’
[Sidenote: _AT THE WHIPPING POSTS._]
All military sights did not go off so pleasantly as the above. There
is record of a soldier being shot by an undiscovered comrade in the
new Culloden exercise. There is also the chronicling of the sentence of
death having been passed on fifty-six deserters, who declined further
service under King George. On being reprieved, they were paraded in St.
James’s Park, for the public scorn, perhaps for the public sympathy.
Thence, the Londoners saw them marched, under a strong guard, on their
way to Portsmouth. They arrived there footsore, but the loyal folk
refused to give them the refreshment which was generally offered to
troops on the march and about to embark for war service abroad. These
deserters were destined for Cape Breton, for ‘General Frampton’s
regiment,’ a position celebrated for its power of using up all
consigned to it. There were worse characters left behind. So disloyal
and riotous were parts of the Westminster populace that the magistrates
adorned several of the streets with new Whipping Posts. When constables
heard a disloyal cry, or fancied they did, or had a loyal spite against
a poor devil, they had him up to a Whipping Post, in a trice, dealt
with him there in ruffianly fashion, and then took the patient before
a magistrate to see if he deserved it. While too outspoken Jacobites
and the ruffians of no particular politics were exhibited as patients
at the Whipping Posts, the Pugilists took Whiggery by the arm and
taught it the noble art of self-defence. Mr. Hodgkins, a great bruiser,
fencer, and single-stick player of that day, loyally advertised that he
was ‘fully resolved to maintain his school gratis to all well-wishers
of King George and Duke William, that they may know how to maintain
their cutlass against their enemies.’
All this while, arraigners and hangmen were kept in great professional
activity. While rebel officers and men were being tried at Southwark
and hanged at Kennington,――a process which went on to the end of the
year,――so grand an episode was offered to the public in the trial of
the rebel peers, that it took, in the public eye, the form of the chief
spectacle, to which the Southwark butcheries were only accessories.
[Sidenote: _IN WESTMINSTER HALL._]
When the day for the arraignment of the ‘rebel lords’ was fixed for
July 28th, there was a general movement of ‘the Quality.’ All who
belonged to it rushed to the country to get a preparatory breath of
fresh air. Nobody, who was at all Somebody, or related thereto, was
expected to remain there for the season. ‘You will be in town to be
sure, for the eight and twentieth,’ wrote Walpole to George Montague
(July 3rd). ‘London will be as full as at a Coronation. The whole form
is settled for the trials, and they are actually building scaffolds
(for spectators) in Westminster Hall.’
[Sidenote: _PREPARATIONS FOR THE NEW TRIALS._]
The general public watched all the preliminaries of the trials of the
lords with much interest. On the first Tuesday in July, late at night,
the workmen began to enclose nearly two-thirds of Westminster Hall,
‘to build a scaffold for the trial of the lords now in the Tower.’ The
mob watched its progress eagerly. By the next day, as we read in the
papers, ‘the platform of the same scaffolding was laid, being even
with the uppermost step of that leading to the Courts of Chancery and
King’s Bench.’ All the colours that hung there since 1704, the trophies
of Marlborough’s victories, were taken down, and all the canopies were
removed from the shops or stations, in the hall, in order to make way
for the galleries and scaffolding, which, it was said, would be kept
up for some years, in case of future trials of Jacobites of lordly
degree! All the following Sunday night, fifty workmen were plying saw,
nail, and hammer; but the gates were shut to keep out a mob which, by
pressure, noise, and drinking, impeded the work in hand. A favoured
many, however, gazed at the royal box, for the Prince and Princess of
Wales, on the right of the throne, and one on the left, for the Duke
of Cumberland and his friends. Boxes were also erected for the foreign
ministers next to the duke’s. No member of the royal family had the
bad taste to be present, but the Duke of Cumberland took the oaths
which would enable him to sit, as a peer, in Judgment on the lords whom
he had captured. Happily, he thought better of it, or he was better
advised, and he was becomingly absent from Westminster Hall, both as
judge and as spectator.
At this juncture, when the feeling in London against the late Jacobite
army was intensified by the accounts of the reckless and cruel
acts which marked both the advance to Derby and the retreat, every
Scotchman, and especially every Highlander, was looked upon as a
horrible savage; but the Londoners got good counsel from the old seat
of war itself. A letter from Fort Augustus, dated July 8th, appeared
in most of the London papers, and it was well calculated to moderate
the superabundant wrath of the metropolis. ‘We see,’ says the writer,
‘a good many letters here from London, that treat these people with
the opprobrious name of savages, which is a term which I think they
don’t deserve, for, excepting what relates to the rebellion, I can see
nothing in their behaviour worse than other people, and, I am sorry to
say, in many respects better, bringing rank to rank, and I only wish
some fair measure was pursued, the better to understand their morals
and dispositions by a friendly intercourse, which, I hope, when the
rebellion is over, will be worth thinking on.’
[Sidenote: _THE LORD HIGH STEWARD._]
On Monday, July 28th, the Lord High Steward set out in great pomp from
his house in Great Ormond Street to open the proceedings in Westminster
Hall. There were in the procession ’6 led coaches and six,’ and a
stupendous state carriage, of which much had been previously said in
the papers. The carriage was not so remarkable as the attendants upon
it. Ten footmen, bareheaded, were clustered upon the platform which
served for footboard in the rear. When the spectators had done admiring
them, they turned to the vehicle itself, and rather contemptuously
remarked that it was nothing more than the old faded state carriage
of the mad Duchess of Buckingham, who used to go to Court in it,
as a sprig of royalty, she being an illegitimate daughter of James
II. However, there was mock splendour enough to satisfy reasonable
spectators. The great Earl of Hardwicke, Lord High Steward, moved,
according to the arrangements of the Master of the Ceremonies, with six
maces before him as well as ten bareheaded footmen behind him; and less
ceremony would not have suited the circumstance that was to begin at
the bar, in the House of Lords, and end at the block, on Tower Hill.
[Sidenote: _THE SPECTATORS’ GALLERY._]
Lord Orford’s gallery, on the south side of the hall, was filled by
his friends. While it was building, a marriage took place which was
thus announced in the papers. ‘On Wednesday, July the 23rd, Walford,
Esq., clerk of certificates at the custom house, was married to Miss
Rachel Norsa, daughter of Mr. Norsa, steward to the Earl of Orford,
a beautiful young lady with a very considerable fortune’.... We
learn from Horace Walpole that among the spectators was ‘the Old Jew
tavern-keeper, Norsa, now retired from business.’ He had sanctioned
(for money) an arrangement whereby his daughter, a singer of some
eminence, was to live with Lord Walpole, my lord signing a contract to
marry Miss Norsa when his wife happened to die――but she happened to
survive him. The Jew and Horace Walpole were in the extensive gallery,
which the latter’s brother, Lord Orford, had at his disposal as auditor
of the exchequer. Horace, not disdaining to speak to this rascal,
Norsa, remarked: ‘I really feel for the prisoners!’ Old Sparker,
as Walpole calls him, replied, ‘Feel for them! Pray, if they had
succeeded, what would have become of all us?’
They who could not get tickets for the official galleries thought
that there might as well have been no rebellion! The grand jury of
Surrey having found true bills, the curious order was issued that,
on the above Monday, July 28th, Lord Kilmarnock should be tried in
Westminster Hall at 9 o’clock, Lord Cromartie at 10, and Lord Balmerino
at 11. The three lords were brought to the hall in three separate
carriages, heavily escorted. It was at starting that the little
difficulty occurred as to which carriage should convey the official and
significant axe; difficulty which Balmerino terminated by exclaiming,
‘Come, come! put it in here with me.’ He needed not to have been in a
hurry, for the Lord High Steward kept everybody waiting, and eleven
had struck when the three lords were brought into the hall together,
and then Lord Hardwick addressed them prosily, yet sharply, on their
alleged wickedness, and he did not particularly interest them by
remarking that their lordships were the first of their rank who had
been brought to trial upon _indictments_ for high treason, since the
passing of the Act of William III.
[Sidenote: _KILMARNOCK AND CROMARTIE._]
On being arraigned, the tall, slender, and dignified Kilmarnock, and
Cromartie, without dignity, or self-possession, disappointed half the
audience by pleading ‘Guilty.’ They were at once removed, Cromartie
almost swooning. Balmerino was left standing, with the gentleman-gaoler
at his side, holding the ominous axe, with its edge turned away from
the prisoner. The latter conversed with the axe-bearer as unconcernedly
as if both were mere spectators; while talking, he played with his
fingers on the axe, and when a bystander listened to what Balmerino
was saying, the stout old lord himself turned the blade of the axe in
such a way as to partly hide his face, and to enable him the better
to speak with the gentleman-gaoler without being heard. ◆[Sidenote:
_BALMERINO._]◆ Balmerino, on being asked to plead, fenced rather than
fought for his life. He was not, he said, what the indictment styled
him, ‘Arthur, Lord Balmerino, of the city of Carlisle.’ He could prove,
he said, that he was never within twelve miles of it. On this and
other trifling objections being over-ruled, he bluntly pleaded, _Not
Guilty_, and the clerk of arraigns as bluntly called out, ‘Culprit,
how will you be tried?’ and Balmerino, looking at the clerk with some
disgust for assuming his guilt, muttered the formula, ‘by God and my
peers’; whereupon Sir Richard Lloyd opened the case against him. In a
few words to the purpose he accused Balmerino with waging war against
the king, and with slaughtering the king’s subjects. Sir Richard was
followed by careful Serjeant Skinner, who spoke of Balmerino as ‘this
unfortunate peer,’ adding: ‘I will not bring a railing accusation
against this unhappy lord,’ but he marred this fair precedent by a
fierce denunciation of the traitor whose treason merited death, and
whose condemnation would cover his posterity with infamy.
[Sidenote: _THE PROSECUTION._]
The serjeant committed a few plagiarisms from various loyal sermons,
such as,――that rebellion was as wicked as witchcraft, and as absurd
as transubstantiation; and that, had it succeeded, it would have
reduced England to the degraded position of being a mere province of
France. Then, having traced the progress of the ‘rebels’ from the
landing of the Pretender, in June 1745, to the battle of Preston Pans,
the serjeant heaved a sigh, and added: ‘I wish we could forget the
miscarriages of that day!’ Having noted at what period Kilmarnock and
Cromartie had joined the Pretender’s army, and added some forcible
comments on the alleged murdering of the king’s wounded soldiers on
the field at Clifton, the serjeant alluded to Balmerino having held a
commission in the king’s service, and deserting that service to side
with traitors, whereby ‘he heightened every feature of the deformity of
treason.’ Having sketched the career of Balmerino from his first entry
into Carlisle till his capture near Culloden, the serjeant gave place
to the Attorney-General, who began by sympathetically remarking that
it was ‘disagreeable to try a noble person, one of their lordships’
high order,’ and then Mr. Attorney did what he could to condemn him by
insisting that failing to prove a single event in the indictment could
not invalidate it. On the contrary, if but one alleged criminal act was
proved, a verdict of _Guilty_ must follow.
[Sidenote: _BALMERINO AND MURRAY._]
Balmerino protested against such interpretation of the law. But, being
asked if he would have counsel assigned to him to argue the question,
he curtly replied: ‘I don’t want any.’ Only four witnesses were called.
They made brief and simple statements, and not a question was put to
them by way of cross-examination. William M‘Ghee swore to Balmerino’s
active offices in the rebel army. The accused peer only remarked
that M‘Ghee confused his dates. ‘I can’t tell the time myself,’ said
Balmerino, ‘unless I was at home to look at my notes.’ He declined,
however, to ask M‘Ghee any questions. Next, Hugh Douglas gave similar
evidence, with the additional circumstance that, at Falkirk, where
the cavalry were not engaged, he was with them, and saw Balmerino,
Kilmarnock, and Lord Pitsligo, with the reserve of horse. One James
Patterson corroborated this testimony, and Balmerino asked him what
he was. ‘I am a gentleman’s servant,’ was the reply. ‘What regiment?’
rejoined Balmerino. Patterson intimated that he was a soldier, servant
to a gentleman in the first troop of Horse Guards. ‘Horse Guards!’
cried the Lord High Steward, ‘whose Horse Guards?’ ‘The Pretender’s,’
answered the ‘approver.’ One Roger Macdonald deposed to similar
purpose, and closed the case for the Crown. Balmerino had ‘nothing to
say,’ except that all the acts laid in the indictment had not been made
out. Long pleadings ensued, the end of which was unfavourable to the
prisoner. ‘My solicitor, Mr. Ross,’ he said, ‘thought as the king’s
counsel thinks, but I thought Mr. Ross was wrong. I was mistaken. I
heartily beg your lordships’ pardon for taking up so much of your
present time.’ It was at this juncture that the Solicitor-General
(brother of the Pretender’s secretary) officiously and insolently
went up to Balmerino and asked how he dared to give the lords so much
trouble, when his solicitor had told him his plea could be of no use
to him. ‘Who is this person?’ asked Balmerino, and being told it was
Mr. Murray, ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Balmerino, ‘Mr. Murray! I am glad to see
you. I have been with several of your relations: the good lady, your
mother, was of great use to us at Perth!’ When the votes were about to
be taken, Lord Foley withdrew, ‘as too well a wisher,’ says Walpole.
Lord Moray and Lord Stair also withdrew, being kinsmen of Balmerino;
and Lord Stamford ‘would not answer to the name of _Henry_, having been
christened Harry. ◆[Sidenote: ‘_GUILTY, UPON MY HONOUR!_’]◆ All the
remaining peers put their hands to their breasts and said, ‘Guilty,
upon my honour,’ except Lord Windus, who remarked, ‘I am sorry I must
say, “Guilty, upon my honour.”’ When Lord Townshend uttered the usual
formula, his wife, with her well-known audacity, applied it to himself,
and said, ‘Yes, I knew he was guilty, but I never thought he would
own it upon his honour!’ The joking and the solemnity being over, the
gentleman-gaoler turned the edge of his axe towards the traitor, and
Balmerino bowed to his judges and was ushered out of the hall. On going
out he remarked: ‘They call me a Jacobite. I am no more a Jacobite than
any that tried me; but if the Great Mogul had set up his standard, I
should have followed it, for I could not starve!’ and he good-naturedly
remarked, that if he had pleaded _Not Guilty_, it was chiefly that the
ladies might not be disappointed of their show.
Walpole spoke of Balmerino as the most natural, brave old fellow he
had ever seen, his intrepidity amounting to indifference. While the
lords were in consultation in their own house, Balmerino shook hands
and talked with the witnesses who had sworn against him. Among the
spectators was a little boy who could see nothing. Balmerino alone was
unselfish enough to think of him. ‘He made room for the child,’ says
Walpole, ‘and placed him near himself.’
[Sidenote: _KILMARNOCK’S APOLOGY._]
On Wednesday, July 30th, the three Jacobite lords, Kilmarnock,
Cromartie, and Balmerino, were brought from the Tower to Westminster
Hall, to receive judgment. On being asked what they had to say why
sentence should not be passed upon them, Kilmarnock was the first to
speak. Walpole says that, ‘with a very fine voice he read a very fine
speech.’ It was a very curious speech. Lord Kilmarnock stated that
his father had been a loyal officer of the late King George in 1715,
and that he had since followed his father’s example, practising and
inculcating loyalty on his estate, till he was unhappily led away.
(It was said that his wife’s rich aunt, the old Countess of Errol,
had forced him into joining Charles Edward, under the threat that
she would leave all her money elsewhere if he refused. The old lady
did, ultimately, leave her property to Kilmarnock’s widow.) Lord
Kilmarnock passed over the fact that he had led away his second son
into rebellion; but he made a merit of another fact, that his eldest
son, Lord Boyd, was in the Duke of Cumberland’s army at Culloden,
fighting there, as Walpole remarks, for the liberties of his country,
‘where his unhappy father was in arms to destroy them!’ He could have
escaped, Lord Kilmarnock said, when he resolved to surrender. He
trusted to King George’s mercy, and he expressed great indignation that
the King of France (through his ambassador) had been impudent enough
to interfere in the affairs of this kingdom, by interceding in his
behalf. On this point, Walpole remarks, ‘he very artfully mentioned
Von Hoey’s letter, and said how much he should scorn to owe his life
to such intercession!’ Lord Kilmarnock also referred to his tenderness
towards the English prisoners, but, according to Walpole, it was
stated,――that the Duke of Cumberland had spoken aloud, at a levee,
to the effect that Kilmarnock was guilty of an atrocious proposal to
murder his English prisoners, and that the statement hardened the
king’s heart, who was otherwise disposed to be merciful. If it had been
true, Kilmarnock could hardly have had the audacity to insist on his
kindness towards the English prisoners, as one ground for mercy being
extended towards him. When Lord Kilmarnock had read, with dignity and
effect, his apology for his rebellion, Lord Leicester, remembering that
the Ministry had lately given the paymastership of the army to Pitt,
out of fear of his abusive eloquence, went up to the Duke of Newcastle,
and said, ‘I never heard so great an orator as Lord Kilmarnock. If I
was your grace, I would pardon him and make him paymaster!’
[Sidenote: _CROMARTIE’S PLEA._]
Lord Cromartie’s reply could only be heard by those who sat near him,
as he read it with a low and tremulous voice. They who heard it are
said to have preferred it to Kilmarnock’s address――an opinion in which
they who now read both will not concur. Cromartie expressed sorrow
at having drawn his eldest son (who was captured with him) into the
rebellion, and while he hoped for mercy, professed to be resigned to
God’s will, if mercy were denied him; but the substance of his reply
was that he had never thought of rebelling till there was a rebellion!
Walpole has put on record that if Lord Cromartie had pleaded ‘_Not
Guilty_,’ there was ready to be produced against him a paper, signed
with his own hand, for putting the English prisoners to death. The best
proof that the statement is unfounded is the fact that Cromartie was
ultimately pardoned.
[Sidenote: _BALMERINO’S DEFENCE._]
Last came bold Balmerino. He had little to say, but it was to the
purpose. Before the three lords left the Tower, that morning, a good
friend had sent them a suggestion, in the form of a plea which, if
successfully made, would not only save the lives of the lords, but
stop the further execution of the Jacobites at Kennington. The plea
was,――that as the Act for regulating the trials of these lords did not
take place till after their crime was committed, judgment ought not
to be pronounced. The plea had been handed to the Lieutenant of the
Tower, who had made it over to the Governor, the Earl of Cornwallis,
by whom it was laid before the Lords sitting in Westminster Hall, who
‘tenderly and rightly,’ says Walpole, sent it to the Jacobite peers
awaiting judgment. Balmerino alone made use of it, and he demanded
counsel to assist him in establishing it. ‘The High Steward,’ almost in
a passion, told him that when he had been offered counsel he did not
accept it! After some discussion, Messrs. Forester and Wilbraham were
named as counsel, and as they needed time to consider the question, the
Court adjourned to Friday, August 1st, on which day Balmerino’s counsel
confessed that the plea was invalid, and simply apologised for having
wasted their lordships’ time, and Lord Hardwicke, after a tedious
speech, pronounced sentence. The worst point in the Lord High Steward’s
speech was in a taunting expression of surprise at the two earls, who,
with so much loyal feeling as they pretended to possess, had gone into
rebellion. ‘Your lordships,’ he remarked, ‘have left that a blank in
your apologies,’ a course, he added, which might be safely left to the
construction of others.
[Sidenote: _BALMERINO’S CONDUCT._]
In the room to which the condemned lords were conducted after sentence,
refreshment was served to them, previous to their removal to the Tower.
When this had nearly come to an end, Balmerino, ever self-possessed,
proposed that they ‘might have t’other bottle,’ for, said he, alluding
to their being now condemned to separate cells: ‘We shall never meet
again till――’ and here he pointed to his neck. Kilmarnock was more
depressed than Cromartie. Balmerino did not greatly encourage him
by showing how he should lay his head. He bade him ‘not wince, lest
the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders, and advised him
to bite his lips.’ In some of the idle half-hours in Court, during
adjournments, Balmerino had played with the tassels of the axe, and
affected to try its edge with his finger. His good humour towards
it did not last. On this eventful day, after he had gone into his
coach, the symbolic weapon was rather carelessly flung in, before the
gentleman-gaoler himself took his seat. ‘Take care!’ cried Balmerino
to that official, ‘or you will break my shins with that damned axe!’
However, he recovered his good humour by the time he arrived at Charing
Cross, where he stopped the coach at a fruit stall, that he might buy
‘honeyblobs,’ as the Scotch call gooseberries. Balmerino had lost his
playful indifference for the gaoler’s weapon. He observed, with a grim
expression, that, as the Lord High Steward proceeded with his address,
the gentleman-gaoler gradually turned the edge of the axe towards the
condemned peers. On entering the Tower, he thought no more of himself.
‘I am extremely afraid,’ he said, ‘that Lord Kilmarnock will not behave
well!’
[Sidenote: _GEORGE SELWYN._]
George Selwyn, of course, contrived to get a dreary joke out of the
solemnity. He saw plain and meagre Mrs. Christopher Bethel, her sharp
hatchet visage looking wistfully towards the rebel lords. ‘What a shame
it is,’ said Selwyn, ‘to turn her face to the prisoners till they are
condemned!’ Selwyn, who was fond of keeping memorials of capital trials
and executions at which he was present, begged Sir William Saunderson
to get him the High Steward’s wand, after it was broken, when the
trials were over. When that time came, Selwyn had no longer a fancy for
the fragments. Lord Hardwicke, he said, behaved so like an attorney
the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he wouldn’t
take it to light his fire with. Walpole gives an illustration of the
foreign idea which found expression in the hall, in which he seems
to have discerned some wit, which might escape the detection of less
acute personages. One foreign ambassador, addressing another, said,
‘Vraiment, cela est auguste.’ ‘Oui,’ replied the other, ‘mais cela
n’est pas royal!’
[Sidenote: _KILMARNOCK’S PRINCIPLES._]
There was something about both lords which diminishes in a certain
degree our pity for them. Kilmarnock and Balmerino were both brave
men, each in his way. The first had a terror of death, but heroically
concealed it. The latter had nothing to conceal, for he was insensible
to fear. But both were void of lofty principles. Kilmarnock childishly
pleaded that his poverty and not his will drove him to join the young
Prince Charles Edward. This plea was put forth in his apologetic
speech, as well as in private. ‘My lord,’ he said to the Duke of
Argyle, who had expressed his sorrow at seeing Lord Kilmarnock in such
an unhappy condition, ‘for the two kings and their rights, I cared
not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving; and by God, if
Mahomet had set up his standard in the Highlands, I had been a good
Mussulman for bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat!’
This poor hungry and noble Scot was not nice as to the company with
whom he dined. So miserable had been his condition in London that he
was not above taking his dinner with a dealer in pamphlets sold in the
street. This circumstance was told to Horace Walpole by an attendant
at the Tennis Court in the Haymarket, where Kilmarnock occasionally
showed himself. ‘He would often have been glad,’ said the professional
tennis-player, ‘if _I_ would have taken him home to dinner!’ The
tennis-player was above stooping to take up with a Scotch lord who
could condescend to dine with a dealer in ballads, broadsides, and
pamphlets. And yet this Scottish peer had an estate, and a steward upon
it, in Scotland. In neither was there much profit. Lady Kilmarnock
once importuned the steward, for a whole fortnight, for money. All
that she could obtain from him at last, to send to her lord in London,
was three shillings! The steward seems an unnecessary luxury, and his
place a sinecure. Horace Walpole’s father had settled a pension on
Kilmarnock, which Lord Wilmington, on coming into power, had taken
away. Thenceforth, in London, at least, he often wanted a dinner.
[Sidenote: _THE PRINCIPLES OF BALMERINO._]
Balmerino had even less of noble principle than Kilmarnock. In
the Rebellion year of 1715, he was on the Hanoverian side. The
Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Argyle, was warned not to trust him;
but the duke relied on him, and Balmerino did his duty under the
duke at Sheriff-Muir. When that rather indecisive victory had been
‘snatched’ on the Whig side, Balmerino went off with his troops to the
Pretender, ‘protesting,’ as Walpole says, ‘that he had never feared
death but that day, as he had been fighting against his conscience.’ He
was treated very leniently by the Government in London. They pardoned
[Sidenote: _LENIENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT._]
a crime which, according to military men, made him infamous for ever.
The pardon lost some of its grace from the fact that it was granted
simply to engage the vote of Balmerino’s brother at the election of
Scotch Peers! The deserter at Sheriff-Muir took up arms against the
side that had pardoned his desertion. Like Lord Kilmarnock, he pleaded
the pressure of poverty.
[Illustration; Decorative Banner]
CHAPTER X.
(1746.)
[Illustration: Drop-B]etween condemnation and execution, Drury Lane, as
if London had not had enough of trials and judgments, got up a showy
spectacle, in one act, partly obtained from Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V.,’
called ‘The Conspiracy Discovered, or French Policy Defeated,’ with
‘a representation of the Trial of the Lords for High Treason, in the
reign of Henry V.’ This was first acted on the 5th of August. But the
populace knew where to find a ‘spectacle, gratis.’
Gazing at the heads above Temple Bar became a pastime. Pickpockets
circulated among the well-dressed crowd, reaping rich harvest; but,
when detected, they were dragged down to the adjacent river, and
mercilessly ‘ducked,’ which was barely short of being drowned. A head,
called ‘Layer’s,’ had been there for nearly a quarter of a century.
An amiable creature, in a letter to a newspaper, thus refers to it,
in connection with those recently spiked there:――‘Thursday, August
7.――Councillor Layer’s head on Temple Bar appears to be making a
reverend Bow to the heads of Towneley and Fletcher, supposing they
are come to relieve him after his long Look-out, but as he is under a
mistake, I think it would be proper to put him to Rights again, which
may be done by your means.――_An Abhorrer of Rebellion._’
[Sidenote: _THE DUKE AT VAUXHALL._]
About this time Walpole offers, with questionable alacrity, evidence
against the character of the Duke of Cumberland. The duke had fixed an
evening for giving a ball at Vauxhall, in honour of a not too reputable
Peggy Banks. The evening proved to be that of the day on which the
lords were condemned to death, the 1st of August. The duke immediately
postponed the ball, but Walpole says he was ‘_persuaded_ to defer it,
as it would have looked like an insult to the prisoners.’ After all,
the unseemly festivity was only deferred from the 1st of August to the
4th; and Walpole was one of the company. He saw the royalties embark at
Whitehall Stairs, heard the National Anthem played and sung on board
state city-barges; and saw the duke nearly suffocated by the crowds
that greeted him on his landing at Vauxhall. He was got safely ashore,
not being helped by the awkward officiousness of Lord Cathcart who, a
few evenings previously, at the same place, stepping on the side of
the boat to lend his arm to the duke, upset it; and the conqueror at
Culloden and my lord were soused into the Thames up to their chins.
[Sidenote: _OPINION IN THE CITY._]
In another letter Walpole declares that the king was inclined to be
merciful to the condemned Jacobites, ‘but the Duke, who has not so
much of Cæsar after a victory as in gaining it, is for the utmost
severity.’ Walpole adds the familiar incident: ‘It was lately proposed
in the city to present him with the freedom of some company;’ one of
the aldermen said aloud: ‘Then let it be of _the Butchers_!’ If this
alderman ever said so, he represented the minority among citizens.
‘Popularity,’ writes Walpole (August 12th, 1746), ‘has changed sides
since the year ’15, for _now_, the city and the generality are very
angry that so many rebels have been pardoned. Some of those taken at
Carlisle dispersed papers at their execution, saying they forgave
all men but three, the Elector of Hanover, the _pretended_ Duke of
Cumberland, and the Duke of Richmond, who signed the capitulation of
Carlisle.’ This bravado in the North was not calculated to inspire
mercy in the members of the administration (who were the real arbiters
of doom) in London.
[Sidenote: _IN THE TOWER._]
People of fashion went to the Tower to see the prisoners as persons
of lower ‘quality’ went there to see the lions. Within the Tower, the
spectator was lucky who, like Walpole, in August, ‘saw Murray, Lord
Derwentwater (Charles Radcliffe), Lord Traquair, Lord Cromartie and
his son, and the Lord Provost, at their respective windows.’ The two
lords already condemned to death were in dismal towers; and one of Lord
Balmerino’s windows was stopped up, ‘because he talked to the populace,
and now he has only one which looks directly upon all the scaffolding.’
Lady Townshend, who had fallen in love with Lord Kilmarnock, at the
first sight of ‘his falling shoulders,’ when he appeared to plead at
the bar of the Lords, was to be seen under his window in the Tower.
‘She sends messages to him, has got his dog and his snuff-box, has
taken lodgings out of town for to-morrow and Monday night; and then
goes to Greenwich; foreswears conversing with the bloody English, and
has taken a French master. She insisted on Lord Hervey’s promising
her he would not sleep a whole night for Lord Kilmarnock! And, in
return, says she, “Never trust me more if I am not as yellow as a
jonquil for him!” She said gravely the other day, “Since I saw my Lord
Kilmarnock, I really think no more of Sir Harry Nisbett than if there
was no such man in the world.” But of all her flights, yesterday was
the strongest. George Selwyn dined with her, and not thinking her
affliction so serious as she pretends, talked rather jokingly of the
executions. She burst into a flood of tears and rage, told him she
now believed all his father and mother had said of him; and with a
thousand other reproaches, flung upstairs. George coolly took Mrs.
Dorcas, her woman, and made her sit down to finish the bottle. “And
pray, Sir,” said Dorcas, “do you think my mistress will be prevailed
upon to let me go see the execution? I have a friend that has promised
to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the night before.”――My
lady has quarrelled with Sir Charles Windham, for calling the two
lords, malefactors. The idea seems to be general, for ’tis said, Lord
Cromartie is to be transported, which diverts me for the dignity of
the peerage. The Ministry really gave it as a reason against their
casting lots for pardon, that it was below their dignity.’ Walpole, who
has thus pictured one part of London, in 1746, says, in a subsequent
letter,――‘My Lady Townshend, who fell in love with Lord Kilmarnock,
at his trial, will go nowhere to dinner, for fear of meeting with
a rebel-pie. She says, everybody is so bloody-minded that they eat
rebels.’
[Sidenote: _LORD CROMARTIE._]
The Earl of Cromartie, the smallest hero of the Jacobite group, was
among the most fortunate. He owed his comparative good luck to the
energy of his countess who, having driven him into rebellion, moved
heaven and earth to save him from the consequences. One Sunday, she
obtained admission to St. James’s, and presented a petition to the
king, for her husband’s pardon. The sovereign was civil, but he
would not at all give her any hope. He passed on, and Lady Cromartie
swooned away. On the following Wednesday, she presented herself at
Leicester House, to procure the good offices of the Princess of Wales,
accompanied by her four children. The princess, seeing the force and
tendency of this argument, ‘made no other answer,’ says Gray, in a
letter to Wharton, ‘than by bringing in her own children, and placing
them by her; which, if true, is one of the prettiest things I ever
heard.’ Lady Cromartie and her daughter, who was as actively engaged as
her mother, prevailed in the end. Her lord was pardoned; and Walpole
made this comment thereupon: ‘If wives and children become an argument
for saving rebels, there will cease to be a reason against their going
into rebellion.’ Walpole’s remarks are only the ebullition of a little
ill-temper. Writing to Mann, in August, 1746, he says, ‘The Prince
of Wales, whose intercession saved Lord Cromartie, says he did it in
return for old Sir William Gordon (Lady Cromartie’s father), coming
down out of his death-bed, to vote against my father in the Chippenham
election. If His Royal Highness,’ adds Walpole, ‘had not countenanced
inveteracy, like that of Sir Gordon, he would have no occasion to exert
his gratitude now, in favour of rebels.’
[Sidenote: _LORD KILMARNOCK._]
The doomed peers bore themselves like men, and awaited fate with a
patience which the unpleasantly circumstantial old Governor Williamson
could not disturb for more than a moment. On the Saturday before the
fatal Monday, he told Lord Kilmarnock every detail of the ceremony,
in which he and Balmerino were to bear such important parts. The
summoning, the procession, the scaffold in sables, the whole programme
was minutely dwelt upon, as if the governor took a sensual delight
in torturing his captive. There was something grim in the intimation
that my lord must not prolong his prayers beyond one o’clock, as the
warrant expired at that hour; and, of course, he could not lose his
head, that day, if he was unreasonably long in his orisons. There was
not much, moreover, of comforting in the assurance that the block,
which had been raised to the height of two feet, to make it comfortable
for Lord Kenmure, had been so steadied, that Lord Kilmarnock need not
fear any unpleasantness from its shaking. They talked of the heads
and the bodies as if they belonged to historical personages. ‘The
executioner,’ said the governor, ‘is a good sort of man.’ Kilmarnock
thought his moral character might make him weak of purpose and
performance. My lord hoped his head would not be allowed to roll about
the scaffold. The governor satisfied him on that point; but, he added,
‘it will be held up and proclaimed as the head of a traitor.’ ‘It is
a thing of no significance,’ said the earl, ‘and does not affect me
at all.’――The governor then visited Lord Balmerino, whose wife, ‘my
Peggy,’ was with him. At an allusion to the fatal day, the poor lady
swooned. ‘Damn you!’ said the old lord, ‘you’ve made my lady faint
away.’
[Sidenote: _ON TOWER HILL._]
The details of the last scene on Tower Hill are better known than those
of any similar circumstances. It was nobly said by Balmerino, when he
met Kilmarnock, on their setting out, ‘My Lord, I greatly regret to
have you with me on _this_ expedition.’ Careful of the honour of his
prince, he questioned Kilmarnock on the alleged issue of the order to
give no quarter to the English, at Culloden. Lord Kilmarnock believed
that the order was in the hands of the Duke of Cumberland, signed only
by Lord George Murray. ‘Then, let Murray,’ said Balmerino, ‘and not the
Prince, bear the blame.’ He exhorted Kilmarnock, who preceded him to
the scaffold, ‘not to wince;’ and, when he himself appeared there, he
prayed for King James, requested that his head might not be exposed,
and that he might be buried in the grave where lay the Marquis of
Tullebardine. These requests were granted.
[Sidenote: _THE EXECUTIONS._]
The sight-seers were disappointed in one respect. The papers had
announced that Lord Balmerino had bespoken a flannel waistcoat,
drawers, and night-gown, in which he had resolved to make his
appearance on the scaffold. But he came in his old uniform, and had
nothing eccentric about him. The newspapers compared the two sufferers
much to Balmerino’s disadvantage. ‘Lord Kilmarnock’s behaviour,’ says
the ‘General Advertiser,’ ‘was so much the Christian and gentleman that
it drew tears from thousands of spectators.’ Then, remarking that ‘the
executioner was obliged to shift himself by reason of the quantity of
blood that flew over him,’ the ‘Advertiser’ announces that, ‘Balmerino
died with the utmost resolution and courage, and seemed not the least
concerned; nor even the generality of spectators for him.’
A sympathising Jacobite lady honoured Balmerino with the following
epitaph:――
Here lies the man to Scotland ever dear,
Whose honest heart ne’er felt a guilty fear.
A much more remarkable, and altogether uncomplimentary, effusion was to
be found in verses addressed ‘to the pretended Duke of Cumberland, on
the execution of the Earl of Kilmarnock, who basely sued for life by
owning the usurper’s power, whereby he became a traitor, and, though
apprehended and condemned for a loyalist, died a rebel:――
The only rebel thou hast justly slain
Was base Kilmarnock, &c.
But this censure sprang from the fact of Kilmarnock’s declaration that
Charles Edward had no religious principle at all, and that he was
prompt to profess membership with every community where a shadow of
advantage was to be derived from the profession.
There remained two other rebels of quality who were destined to afford
another savage holiday to the metropolis.
[Sidenote: _CHARLES RADCLIFFE._]
On the 21st of November, the road from the Tower to Westminster was
crowded, in spite of the weather, to see Charles Radcliffe ride, under
strong military escort, to his arraignment in the Court of King’s
Bench. He was the pink of courtesy on his way, but spoilt the effect
by his swagger in Court. He denied that he was the person named in
the indictment, asserted that he was Earl of Derwentwater; and, it is
supposed, he wished to create a suspicion that he might be his elder
brother, Francis. He would not address the Chief Justice as ‘my Lord,’
since he himself was not recognised as a peer. He also refused to hold
up his hand, on being arraigned, though the Attorney-General appealed
to him as a gentleman, and assured him there was nothing compromising
in what was a mere formality. In short, Mr. Radcliffe, according to the
news-writers, behaved very ‘ungentlemanly to Governor Williamson as
also to Mr. Sharpe for addressing a letter to him as _Mr. Radcliffe_.
He said he despised the Court and their proceedings, and he behaved in
every respect indecent and even rude and senseless. He appeared very
gay, being dressed in scarlet faced in black velvet, and gold buttons,
a gold-laced waistcoat, bag wig, and hat and white feather.’
[Sidenote: _THE TRIAL._]
On the above Friday, his trial was fixed for the 24th, the following
Monday. On the Friday evening, Radcliffe had one more chance of escape,
if he had only had friends at hand to aid him. ‘As the Guards,’ says
the ‘Daily Post,’ ‘were conveying him back through Watling Street
to the Tower, the coach broke down at the end of Bow Lane, and they
were obliged to walk up to Cheapside before they could get another.’
This last chance was unavailable, and the captive remained chafed
and restless till he was again brought, in gloomy array, on the long
route from the Tower to the presence of his judges and of a jury whose
mission was not to try him for any participation in the ’45 Rebellion,
but to pronounce if he were the Charles Radcliffe who, when under
sentence of death for high treason, in 1716, broke prison, and fled the
country. Two Northumbrian witnesses, who had seen him in arms in ’15,
and who had been taken to the Tower to refresh their memories, swore to
his being Charles Radcliffe, by a scar on his cheek. A third witness,
whose name has never transpired, but who seems to have been ‘planted’
on Radcliffe, swore that the prisoner, when drunk, had told him he was
Charles Radcliffe, and that he had described the way in which he had
escaped from Newgate. This witness said, he was not himself drunk at
the time; but Radcliffe, who had evidently treated him to wine in the
Tower, flung at him the sarcasm,――that there were people ready enough
to get drunk if other people would pay for it. The jury very speedily
found that the prisoner was the traitor who, when under sentence of
death, had escaped to the Continent. This old sentence must, therefore,
now be executed. There seemed no room for mercy. ◆[Sidenote: _MR.
JUSTICE FOSTER._]◆ Mr. Justice Foster, however, made an effort to
save the prisoner. The latter had pleaded that he was not the Charles
Radcliffe named in the indictment. The jury had found that he was. At
this point the prisoner pleaded the king’s general pardon. The other
judges held that the prisoner must stand or fall by his first plea; it
failed him, and execution, it was said, must follow. ‘Surely,’ remarked
the benevolent Foster, ‘the Court will never _in any state of a cause_
award execution upon a man who plainly appeareth to be pardoned.’ He
thought that if anyone could show that Mr. Radcliffe was entitled to
the benefit of the Act of Pardon, he should be heard. The Chief Justice
ruled otherwise, and it was ultimately shown that as the prisoner had
broken prison when under attainder, he came within certain clauses of
exception in the Act――and could therefore not be benefitted by it.
The papers of the day make an almost incredible statement, namely, that
Radcliffe was informed, if he himself would _swear_ he was not the
person named in the indictment, he should have time to bring witnesses
to support him; but he remained silent. Still, ‘he was very bold,’ is
the brief journalistic comment on his hearing. It is quite clear that
Charles Radcliffe did not keep his temper, and he therefore lost some
dignity on the solemn occasion of his being brought up to Westminster
Hall to have the day of his execution fixed. He is described, in the
Malmesbury correspondence, as acting with unheard-of insolence, and
apparently wishing to set the whole Government at defiance. This is
the evidence of a contemporary. Lord Campbell (in the ‘Life of Lord
Chancellor Hardwicke’) says, on the contrary, that the calmness of
his demeanour, added to his constancy to the Stuart cause, powerfully
excited the public sympathy in his favour. Moreover, Lord Campbell does
not think that the identity of the Charles Radcliffe of ’45 with him of
’15 was satisfactorily established by legal evidence, though he has no
doubt as to the fact.
[Sidenote: _CONDUCT OF RADCLIFFE._]
Radcliffe was condemned to die on the 8th of December. His high pitch
(naturally enough, and with no disparagement to his courage) was
lowered after his sentence; and he stooped to write in a humble strain
to the Duke of Newcastle, for at least a reprieve. His niece, the
dowager Lady Petre, presented the letter to the duke, and seconded her
uncle’s prayer with extreme earnestness, as might be expected of a
daughter whose father had suffered, thirty years before, the terrible
death from which she wished to save that father’s brother. The duke was
civil and compassionate, but would make no promise. In fact, it was
resolved that the younger brother of the Earl of Derwentwater should
die, lying as he did under the guilt of double rebellion. ‘If I am to
die,’ said Radcliffe, splenetically, ‘Lord Morton ought to be executed
at Paris, on the same day.’ Morton was a gossiping tourist, who,
being in Brittany, made some idle reflections on the defences of Port
L’Orient in a private letter, which the French postal authorities took
the liberty to open. This brought the writer into some difficulty in
France, but as no harm was meant, Lord Morton suffered none.
[Sidenote: _TO KENNINGTON COMMON._]
The ever-to-be-amused public were not left without diversity of grim
entertainment between the condemnation of Radcliffe and the execution
of his sentence. On Friday, November 28th, there was the strangling
(with the other repulsive atrocities), of five political prisoners, on
Kennington Common, in the morning, and the revival of a play (which
had years before been condemned because of the political opinions of
the author), in the evening. In the morning, two sledges stood ready
for the dragging of eight prisoners from the New Prison, Southwark, to
the gallows, disembowelling block, and fire, on the Common. This was
not an unfrequent spectacle; and on this occasion, as on others, there
was, without cowardly feeling, a certain dilatoriness on the part of
the patients, who never knew what five minutes might not bring forth.
Sir John Wedderburn, indeed, went into the foremost sledge, with calm
readiness, and Governor (of Carlisle) Hamilton stept in beside him.
Captain Bradshaw stood apart, hoping not to be called upon. There was
a little stir at the gate which attracted feverish attention on the
part of the patients.――‘Is there any news for me?’ asked Bradshaw,
nervously. ‘Yes,’ replied a frank official, ‘the Sheriff is come and
waits for you!’ Bradshaw had hoped for a reprieve; but hope quenched,
the poor fellow said he was ready. Another Manchester Captain, Leath,
was equally ready but was not inclined to put himself forward. Captain
Wood, after the halter was loosely hung for him around his neck, called
for wine, which was supplied with alacrity by the prison drawers. When
it was served round, the captain drank to the health of the rightful
king, James III. Most lucky audacity was this for Lindsay, a fellow
officer from Manchester, bound for Kennington. While the wine was being
drunk, Lindsay was ‘haltering,’ as the reporters called it. He was
nice about the look of the rope, but just as he was being courteously
invited to get in and be hanged, a reprieve came for him, which saved
his life. Two other doomed rebels, for whom that day was to be their
last, had been reprieved earlier in the morning, and that was why the
puzzled spectators, on the way or at the place of sacrifice, were put
off with five judicial murders when they had promised themselves eight.
[Sidenote: _CIBBER’S ‘REFUSAL.’_]
In the evening, the play which was to tempt the town was a revival of
Cibber’s ‘Refusal, or the Ladies’ Philosophy.’ It had not been acted
for a quarter of a century (1721), when it had failed through the
opposition of the Jacobites, who damned the comedy, by way of revenge
for the satire which Cibber had heaped on the Nonjurors. _Now_, the
play went triumphantly. No one dared,――when the hangman was breathless
with over-work, and the headsman was looking to the edge of his axe,
for the ultimate disposal of Jacobites,――to openly avow himself of
a way of thinking which, put into action, sent men to the block or
the gallows. All that could be done in a hostile spirit was done,
nevertheless. The Jacks accused Cibber of having stolen his plot from
predecessors equally felonious; but they could not deny that the play
was a good play; and they asserted, in order to annoy the Whig adaptor,
that the _Witling_ of Theophilus Cibber was a finer touch of art than
that of his father in the same part.
[Sidenote: _EXECUTION OF RADCLIFFE._]
On the 8th of December, Charles Radcliffe closed the bloody tragedies
of the year, with his own. He came from the Tower like a man purified
in spirit, prepared to meet the inevitable with dignity. They who had
denied his right to call himself a peer, allowed him to die by the
method practised with offenders of such high quality. The only bit of
bathos in the scene on the scaffold was when the poor gentleman knelt
by the side of the block, to pray. Two warders approached him, who took
off his wig, and then covered his head with a white skull cap. His head
was struck off at a blow, except, say the detail-loving newspapers, ‘a
bit of skin which was cut through in two chops.’ The individual most to
be pitied on that December morning was Radcliffe’s young son, prisoner
in the Tower, who was still believed by many to be the brother of the
young Chevalier.
There was another prisoner there whose life was in peril; namely Simon,
Lord Lovat. The progress up to London of Lovat and of the witnesses
to be produced against him was regularly reported. There was one of
the latter who hardly knew whether he was to be traitor or witness,
Mr. Murray of Boughton. The following describes how he appeared on
his arrival at Newcastle, and is a sample of similar bulletins. ‘July
17th. On Thursday Afternoon, arrived here in a Coach under the Care
of Lieutenant Colonel Cockayne, escorted by a Party of Dragoons, John
Murray, Esq., of Boughton, the Pretenders Secretary, and yesterday
Morning he proceeded to London. He seem’d exceedingly dejected and
looked very pale.’
[Sidenote: _LOVAT’S PROGRESS._]
The London papers sketched in similar light touches the progress of
Lovat. In or on the same carriage in which he sat were other Frasers,
his servants or retainers who, as he knew, were about to testify
against him, and whose company rendered him extremely irritable. The
whole were under cavalry escort, travelling to London, only by day. On
the morning Lovat left his inn at Northampton, the landlady was not
there to bid him farewell. The old gallant enquired for her. He was
told that she was unavoidably absent. ‘I have kissed,’ said he, ‘every
one of my hostesses throughout the journey; and am sorry to miss my
Northampton landlady. No matter! I will salute her on my way back!’ On
Lovat’s arrival at St. Albans, Hogarth left London, for what purpose is
explained in part of the following advertisement, which appears in the
papers under the date of Thursday, August 28th. ‘This day is published,
price one shilling, a whole length print of Simon Lord Lovat, drawn
from the life and etch’d in Aqua fortis, by Mr. Hogarth. To be had at
the Golden Head, in Leicester Fields, and at the Print shops. Where
also may be had a Print of Mr. Garrick in the character of Richard
III., in the first scene, price 7_s._ 6_d._’
[Sidenote: _HOGARTH’S PORTRAIT OF LOVAT._]
On the day on which the above advertisement appeared, the Rev. Mr.
Harris enclosed one of the sketches of Lovat in a letter to Mrs.
Harris, written in Grosvenor Square, in which he says:――‘Pray excuse my
sending you such a very grotesque figure as the enclosed. It is really
an exact resemblance of the person it was done for――Lord Lovat――as
those who are well acquainted with him assure me; and, as you see, it
is neatly enough etched. Hogarth took the pains to go to St. Albans,
the evening that Lord Lovat came thither in his way from Scotland to
the Tower, on purpose to get a fair view of his Lordship before he
was locked up; and this he obtained with a greater ease than could
well be expected; for, in sending in his name and the errand he came
about, the old lord, far from displeased, immediately had him in,
gave him a salute and made him sit down and sup with him, and talked
a good deal very facetiously, so that Hogarth had all the leisure and
opportunity he could possibly wish to have, to take off his features
and countenance. The portrait you have may be considered as an
original. The old lord is represented in the very attitude he was in
while telling Hogarth and the company some of his adventures.’
[Sidenote: _ARRIVAL AT THE TOWER._]
The old roystering Lovelace who kissed his hostesses on his way up,
and talked of saluting them on his way back, was so infirm that to
descend from his carriage he leaned heavily on the shoulders of two
stout men, who put their arms round his back to keep him from falling.
As he crossed Tower Hill he came suddenly on the partly dismantled
scaffold on which the two lords had recently suffered; and he was heard
to mutter something as to his perception of the way it was intended
he should go. But, on being lifted from the carriage, he said to
the lieutenant, ‘If I were younger and stronger, you would find it
difficult to keep me here.’――‘We have kept much younger men here,’ was
the reply. ‘Yes,’ rejoined Lovat, ‘but they were inexperienced; they
had not broke so many gaols as I have.’ The first news circulated in
London after Murray, the Chevalier’s ex-secretary, had passed into the
same prison, was that he had given information where a box of papers,
belonging to the Pretender, was buried, near Inverness. A couple of
king’s messengers riding briskly towards the great North Road were
taken to be those charged with unearthing the important deposit.
Of the two prisoners,――one was eager to save his life by giving all
the information required of him. The other, equally eager, pleaded
his innocence, his age, and his debility; but apart from declaring
that he was a loyal subject, and that he willingly had no share in the
rebellion, although his son had, he remained obstinately mute to all
questioning, or he answered the grave queries with senile banter.
[Sidenote: _REBELS AND WITNESSES._]
Murray yielded at the first pressure. As early as July, Walpole speaks
of him as having made ‘ample confessions, which led to the arrest of
the Earl of Traquair and Dr. Barry; and to the issuing of warrants for
the apprehension of other persons whom Murray’s information had put
in peril. Walpole believed that the Ministry had little trustworthy
knowledge of the springs and conduct of the rebellion, till Murray sat
down in the Tower and furnished them with genuine intelligence.
While he and Lord Lovat were travelling slowly by land to the Tower,
traitors were coming up, by sea, to depose against him, or any
other, by whose conviction they might purchase safety. The ‘General
Advertiser’ announced the arrival in London (from a ship in the
river) of six and twenty ‘Scotch rebels,’ who were conducted to the
Plaisterer’s Corner, St. Margaret’s Lane, Westminster, where they were
kept under a strong military guard. ‘They are brought up,’ says the
above paper, ‘as evidences for the king. Several of them are young.
Some have plaids on; others in waistcoats and bonnets, and upon the
whole make a most despicable and wretched figure.’ Meanwhile Lovat
struggled hard for the life he affected to despise, and which he tried
to persuade his accusers was not worth the taking. He kept them at bay,
for months, by his pleas; and he vehemently declared his innocence of
every one of the seven heads of accusation brought against him,――of
every one of which he was certainly guilty. Towards the close of
December, he was arraigned at the bar of the House of Lords. There
is no better condensation of what took place than that furnished by
Walpole, on Christmas Day, 1746:――‘Old Lovat has been brought to the
bar of the House of Lords. He is far from having those abilities for
which he has been so cried up. He saw Mr. Pelham at a distance, and
called to him, and asked him, if it were worth while to make all this
fuss to take off a grey head fourscore years old. He complained of his
estate being seized and kept from him. Lord Granville took up this
complaint very strongly, and insisted on having it enquired into. Lord
Bath went farther and, as some people think, intended the duke; but I
believe he only aimed at the Duke of Newcastle.... They made a rule to
order the old creature the profits of his estate till his conviction.
He is to put in his answer on the 13th of January.’
[Sidenote: _TILBURY FORT._]
In the meantime, the papers reported that there were nearly four
hundred Scottish rebels cooped up in Tilbury Fort. Watermen’s arms
were weary with rowing boats full of Londoners down to the fort, to
visit the wretched captives, or to stare at the fort which held them
in. Most of them were transported to the Plantations. There was a
sanguinary feeling against all such offenders. The last words in the
‘General Advertiser’ for December 31st, 1746, are contained in the two
concluding lines of a poem, signed ‘Williamite,’ and which are to the
following charitable effect:――
A righteous God, with awful hands,
In justice, Blood for Blood demands.
At the same time a print was selling which represented ‘Temple Bar,
the City Golgotha,’ with three heads on the spikes,――allegorical
devils, rebel flags, &c.,――and more ‘blood for blood’ doggrel
intimating that the naughty sons of Britain might there see ‘what is
rebellion’s due.’
[Sidenote: _FRENCH IDEA._]
The idea of altogether sacrificing Charles Edward was as distasteful to
his numberless friends in France, as it was to the English Jacobites.
One of the most singular of the French suggestions for a definite
arrangement was made to this effect, in some of the French papers,
namely:――that George II. should withdraw to his electorate of Hanover,
taking his eldest son and heir with him; renouncing the English crown
for himself and successors, of the elder line, for ever;――that the
Chevalier de St. George should remain as he was;――that the Prince
Charles Edward should be made King of Scotland and Ireland;――and that
the Duke of Cumberland should, as King of England, reign in London.
It was a thoroughly French idea,――making a partition of the United
Kingdom, and establishing the duke in the metropolis to reign over a
powerless fragment of it,――a Roi de Cocagne! Both political parties
laughed at it in their several houses of entertainment.
The Prince of Wales, himself, was something of a Jacobite; but he was a
Jacobite for no other reason, probably, than because his brother, the
Duke of Cumberland, had crushed the Jacobite cause. It is due to the
Prince, however, to notice that he once solemnly expressed his sympathy
when the Princess, his wife, had just mentioned, ‘with some appearance
of censure,’ the conduct of Lady Margaret Macdonald, who harboured
and concealed Prince Charles when, in the extremity of peril, he
threw himself on her protection. ‘And would not you, Madam,’ enquired
Prince Frederick, ‘have done the same, in the same circumstances? I
am sure,――I hope in God,――you would.’ Hogg relates this incident in
the introduction to his ‘Jacobite Relics,’ and it does honour to the
prince, himself,――who used at least to profess fraternal affection, if
not political sympathy, by standing at an open window at St. James’s
overlooking the Park, with his arm round the Duke of Cumberland’s neck.
[Sidenote: _A LONDON ELECTOR’S WIT._]
Frederick, however, was not a jot more acceptable to the Jacobites,
because he was on bad terms with the king, and that he refrained from
paying any other compliment than the above-named one to the Duke of
Cumberland, on his victory at Culloden. The prince invariably came
off, more or less hurt, whenever he engaged personally in politics.
When his sedan-chair maker refused to vote for the prince’s friend,
Lord Trentham, a messenger from his royal highness’s household looked
in upon the elector, and bluntly said, ‘I am going to bid another
person make his royal highness a chair!’ ‘With all my heart!’ replied
the chair maker, ‘I don’t care what they make him, so they don’t
make him a throne!’ Again, on that day which all Tories kept as an
anniversary of crime and sorrow, the 30th of January,――‘the martyrdom
of King Charles,’ the prince entered a room where his sister Amelia
was being tended by her waiting woman, Miss Russell, who was a
great grand-daughter of Oliver Cromwell. Frederick said to this
lady, sportively, ‘Shame, Miss Russell, why have you not been to
Church, humbling yourself, for the sins on this day committed by your
ancestors?’ To which she replied, ‘Sir: I am a descendant of the great
Oliver Cromwell. It is humiliation sufficient to be employed, as I am,
in pinning up your sister’s tail!’
[Sidenote: _TRIAL OF LOVAT._]
During the early months of 1747, the Londoners waited with impatience
for the trial of Lord Lovat. The old rebel had exhausted every means
of delay. The time of trial came at last. On the 9th of March, Lovat
was taken from the Tower to Westminster Hall. An immense crowd lined
the whole way, and the people were the reverse of sympathetic. One
woman looked into his coach, and said: ‘You ugly old dog, don’t you
think you will have that frightful head cut off?’ He replied, ‘You
ugly old ――――, I believe I shall!’ Lovat was carried through the hall
in a sedan-chair, and to a private room, in men’s arms. Mr. Thomas
Harris, writing of the trial next day, from Lincoln’s Inn, says:――‘It
was the largest and finest assembly I ever saw: the House of Commons
on one side; ladies of quality on the other, and inferior spectators
without number, at both ends.’――After much pantomimic ceremony on
the part of officials, Lovat, having been brought in, knelt (as he
is described to have done on each of the nine days of the trial). On
each occasion Lord Hardwicke solemnly said to him, ‘My Lord Lovat,
your Lordship may rise.’ On the opening day, the prosecuting managers
of the impeachment sent up by the Commons, ‘went at him,’ at dreary,
merciless, length. After them, the prosecuting counsel opened savagely
upon him, especially Murray, the Solicitor-General, whose chief witness
was his own Jacobite brother, and who was himself suspected of having
drunk the Pretender’s health on his knees. Lovat lost no opportunity
of saving his life. ◆[Sidenote: _SCENE IN WESTMINSTER HALL._]◆ He
pitifully alluded to his having to rise by 4 o’clock, in order to be
at Westminster by 9. He spoke of his frequent fainting fits; he often
asked leave to retire, and, in short, he so exasperated the Lord High
Steward as to make that official grow peevish, and to wrathfully advise
Lord Lovat to keep _his_ temper. When the Attorney-General called his
first witness, Chevis of Murtoun, the lawyer described him, with solemn
facetiousness, as being as near a neighbour as man could be to Lovat,
but as far apart from him as was possible in thought and action. Lovat
protested against the legal competency of the witness, he being Lovat’s
tenant and vassal. Hours were spent over this objection, and the old
lord wearied the clerk, whom he called upon to read ancient Acts of
Parliament, from beginning to end. The protest was disallowed; and the
witness having been asked if he owed Lovat money, and if a verdict of
guilty might help him not to pay it, emphatically declared that he owed
Lovat nothing. He then went into a long array of evidence, sufficient
to have beheaded Lovat many times over, as a traitor to the reigning
family, and indeed no faithful servant of the family desiring to reign.
The traitor himself laughed when this witness quoted a ballad in
English, which Lovat had composed, ‘in Erse’:――
When young Charley does come over,
There will be blows and blood good store.
‘When,’ said the witness, ‘I refused a commission offered me by the
Pretender, Lord Lovat told me I was guilty of High Treason.’ Further,
Lovat had drunk ‘Confusion to the White Horse and the whole generation
of them;’ and had cursed both the Reformation and the Revolution. Lovat
retorted by showing that this not disinterested witness was a loyal man
living at the expense of Government. ‘He is trying to hang an old man
to save himself,’ said Lovat. This was warmly denied, but Lovat was
right in the implication.
[Sidenote: _FATHER AND SON._]
Lovat’s secretary, Fraser, was a dangerous witness. He proved that, by
Lord Lovat’s order, he, the secretary, wrote to Lord Loudon (in the
service of George II.) informing him that he was unable to keep his son
out of the rebellion, and another letter to the Pretender that, though
unable to go himself to help to restore the Stuarts, he had sent his
eldest son to their standard. It was shown that the son was disgusted
at his father’s double-dealing, and only yielded to him at last (in
joining the army of Charles Edward), on the ground that he was bound
to obey his sire and the chief of the clan Fraser. Undoubtedly, the
attempt to save himself by the sacrificing of his son, was the blackest
spot in Lovat’s mean, black, and cruel character. According to Walpole,
‘he told’ Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, ‘We will hang my
eldest son and then my second shall marry your niece!’
[Sidenote: _THE FRASERS._]
Fraser after Fraser gave adverse evidence. Lovat maintained that they
were _compelled_ to speak against him. One of them confessed, with
much simplicity, that he lived and boarded at a messenger’s house;
but that he had no orders to say what he had said. ‘I am free: I walk
in the Park or about Kensington; I go at night to take a glass,’――but
he allowed that the messenger went with him. One or two witnesses
had very short memories, or said what they could for their feudal
superior. Another, Walker, spoke to the anger of Lovat’s son, on being
driven into rebellion. ‘The Master of Lovat took his bonnet and threw
it on the floor. He threw the white cockade on the fire, and damned
the cockade, &c.’ Lord Lovat, on the other hand, had sworn he would
seize the cattle and plaids of all the Frasers who refused to rise,
and would burn their houses. One of these adverse Frasers, being hard
pressed by Lovat, allowed that he expected to escape punishment, for
his evidence, but that he had not been promised a pardon. ‘If,’ said
he, ‘I give evidence, in any case it should be the truth; and,’ he
added, with a composure so comic that it might well have disturbed
the august solemnity, ‘if the truth were such as I should not care to
disclose, I would declare positively I would give no evidence at all.’
Another witness, a Lieutenant Campbell, in the king’s service, but who
had been a prisoner in the power of the Jacobites, being questioned as
to a conversation he had had with Lovat, made the amusingly illogical
remark, ‘As I did not expect to be called as a witness, so I do not
remember what passed on that occasion.’ The lieutenant did, however,
recollect one thing, namely, that Lovat had said that his son had
gone into the rebellion, but that he himself was a very loyal person.
A second officer, Sir Everard Falconer, secretary to the Duke of
Cumberland (and very recently married to Miss Churchill, daughter of
the old general), stated that he had been sent by the duke to converse
with Lovat, and he repeated the loyal assertions that the prisoner had
made. ‘Will your Lordship put any question to Sir Everard?’ asked the
Lord High Steward, of Lovat. ‘I have only,’ replied Lovat, ‘to wish him
joy of his young wife.’
[Sidenote: _MURRAY OF BOUGHTON._]
The most important witness of all was, of course, Mr. Murray, of
Boughton, late secretary to the young Chevalier, and, only a day or
two before, a prisoner in the King’s Bench, from which he had been
discharged. In the course of his answers, Murray said he had been
‘directed’ to give a narrative of the springs and progress of the late
rebellion,――when he came to be examined at the Bar of the High Court
of Justice, where he was then standing. ‘Directed?’ exclaimed the Earl
of Cholmondely, ‘who _directed_ you?’ The Lord High Steward and the
Earl of Chesterfield protested they had not heard the word ‘directed’
used by the witness. There was a wish to have the matter cleared up,
and Murray then said, ‘Some days after my examination in the Tower, by
the honourable Committee of the House of Commons, a gentleman, who, I
believe was their secretary, came to me to take a further examination;
and to ask me as to any other matter that had occurred since my last
examination. Some days after that, he told me I should be called here
before your Lordships, upon the trial of my Lord Lovat, and that at the
same time, it would be _expected_ that I should give an account of the
rise and progress of the Rebellion in general.’
[Sidenote: _MURRAY’S EVIDENCE._]
The above shows pretty clearly how the weak natures of prisoners in
the Tower were dealt with, in order to get evidence by which they
would destroy at once the life of a confederate and their own honour.
Murray did what he was ‘directed’ or ‘expected’ to do, without passion
but with some sense of pain and shame. The whole rise and course of
the insurrection may be found in his testimony; he was prepared for
the questions, equally so with the answers he gave to them; and his
evidence is of importance for a proper understanding of the outbreak.
Some merit was made of his ‘voluntary surrender,’ but Lord Talbot,
quite in Lovat’s interest, roughly asked if Murray had really intended
to surrender himself at the time he became a prisoner to the Royal
forces. The poor man truthfully answered that ‘it was not then my
intention particularly to surrender myself’;――adding, ‘it was not
my intention till I saw the dragoons;’――but that he had never since
attempted to escape.――‘Have you ever taken the Oaths of Allegiance and
Fidelity to the King?’ asked Lord Talbot. He never had. ‘Did you ever
take such Oaths to anybody else?’ ◆[Sidenote: _CROSS EXAMINATION._]◆
Murray let drop a murmured ‘No’; and then Sir William Yonge, one of
the Managers for the Commons, came to his help, with the expression
of a hope that the king’s witness should not be obliged to answer
questions that tended to accuse himself of High Treason. To which Lord
Talbot replied that the gentleman had already confessed himself guilty
of that crime. Lord Talbot then asked Murray if he was a voluntary
evidence. Murray requested him to explain what he meant by those two
words. ‘Are you here?’ said Talbot, ‘in hopes of a pardon? And if you
had been pardoned, would you now be here as a witness at all?’ The
Attorney-General came to the rescue. It was an improper question, he
said, resting upon the supposition of a fact which had not happened.
Lord Talbot insisted: he asked Murray, ‘Do you believe your life
depends upon the conformity of the evidence you shall give on this
trial, with former examinations which you have undergone?’ There was a
fight over this matter, but a lull came in the fray, and then Murray
spoke with a certain dignity, and said: ‘I am upon my oath and obliged
to tell the truth; and I say that possibly and very probably, had I
been in another situation of life, I should not have appeared before
your Lordships as a witness against the noble Lord at the Bar.’ There
was a touch of mournful sarcasm in Murray’s truthful answer, which
escaped Lord Talbot, for he remarked: ‘I am extremely well satisfied
with the gentleman’s answer; and it gives me a much better opinion of
his evidence than I had before.’
[Sidenote: _THE VERDICT._]
The conclusion of the protracted affair was that Lovat was pronounced
_guilty_ by the unanimous verdict of 117 peers. He made no defence by
which he could profit; and when he spoke in arrest of judgment, he said
little to the purpose. There was a sorry sort of humour in one or two
of his remarks. He had suffered in this trial by two Murrays, he said,
by the bitter evidence of one, and the fatal eloquence of another, by
which he was hurried into eternity. Nevertheless, though the eloquence
had been employed against him, he had listened to it with pleasure.
‘I had great need of my friend Murray’s eloquence for half an hour,
myself; _then_, it would have been altogether agreeable to me!’ In
whatever he himself had done, there was, he said, really no malicious
intention. If he had not been ill-used by the Government in London,
there would have been no rebellion in the Frasers’ country. George I.
had been his ‘dear master;’ for George II. he had the greatest respect.
He hoped the Lords would intercede to procure for him the royal mercy.
The Commons had been severe against him, let them now be merciful.
Nothing of this availed Lovat. The peevish Lord Hardwicke called him
to order; and then, with a calm satisfaction, pronounced the horrible
sentence which told a traitor how he should die. Lovat put a good
face on this bad matter.――‘God bless you all!’ he said, ‘I bid you an
everlasting farewell.’ And then, with a grim humour, he remarked:――‘We
shall not meet all in the same place again, I am quite sure of that!’
He afterwards desired, if he _must_ die, that it should be in the old
style of the Scottish nobility,――by the Maiden.
[Sidenote: _GENTLEMAN HARRY._]
While this tragic drama was in progress, there arose a report in the
coffee-houses of a Jacobite plot. It came in this way. At the March
sessions of the Old Bailey, a young highwayman, named Henry Simms, was
the only offender who was capitally convicted. ‘If it hadn’t been for
me,’ said the handsome highwayman, ‘you would have had a kind of maiden
assize; so, you might as well let me go!’ As the judges differed from
him, he pointed to some dear friends in the body of the court, and
remarked, ‘Here are half a dozen of gentlemen who deserve hanging quite
as much as I do.’ The Bench did not doubt it, but the remark did not
profit Gentleman Harry, himself, as the young women and aspiring boys
on the suburban roads called him. But Mr. Simms was a man of resources.
As he sat over his punch in Newgate, he bethought himself of a means of
escape. He knew, he said, of a hellish Jacobite plot to murder the king
and upset the Happy Establishment. Grave ministers went down to Newgate
and listened to information which was directed against several eminent
persons. Harry, however, lacked the genius of Titus Oates; and besides,
the people in power were not in want of a plot; the information would
not ‘hold water.’ The usual countless mob of savages saw him ‘go off’
at Tyburn; and then eagerly looked forward to the expected grander
display on Tower Hill. But Lovat and his friends spared no pains to
postpone that display altogether.
The Scots made a national question of it. The Duke of Argyle especially
exerted himself to get the sentence commuted for one of perpetual
imprisonment. This was accounted for by Mr. Harris (Malmesbury
Correspondence), in the following manner: ‘The Duke owes Lord Lovat
a good turn for letting the world know how active his Grace was in
serving the Government in 1715, and for some panegyric which the Duke
is not a little pleased with.’
In the Tower, Lovat mingled seriousness and buffoonery together.
But this was natural to him. There was no excitement about him, nor
affectation. He naturally talked much about himself; but he had leisure
and self-possession to converse with his visitors on other topics
besides himself. Only two or three days before his execution he was
talking with two Scottish landed proprietors. The subject was the
Jurisdiction Bill. ‘You ought to be against the Bill,’ said Lovat;
‘the increase of your estates by that Bill will not give you such an
interest at Court as the power did which you are thereby to be deprived
of.’ The interest of his own friends at Court was gone.
[Sidenote: _THE DEATH WARRANT._]
On April the 2nd, the Sheriffs of London received the ‘death warrant’
from the Duke of Newcastle for Lovat’s execution. At the same time,
a verbal message was sent expressing the duke’s expectation that the
decapitated head should be held up, and denounced as that of a traitor,
at the four corners of the scaffold.
[Sidenote: _EXECUTION._]
On the 9th, the hour had come and the old man was there to meet it. It
is due to him to say that he died like a man, therein exemplifying a
remark made by Sir Dudley Carleton, on a similar occurrence, ‘So much
easier is it for a man to die well than to live well.’ Lovat was very
long over his toilet, from infirm habit, and he complained of the pain
and trouble it gave him to hobble down the steps from his room, in
order to have his head struck off his shoulders. On the scaffold, he
gazed round him and wondered at the thousands who had assembled to see
such a melancholy sight. He quoted Latin lines, as if they illustrated
a patriotism or virtue which he had never possessed or practised. He
would have touched the edge of the axe, but the headsman would not
consent till the Sheriffs gave their sanction. With, or apart from
all this, ‘he died,’ says Walpole, ‘without passion, affectation,
buffoonery, or timidity. His behaviour was natural and intrepid.’
Walpole adds, ‘He professed himself a Jansenist.’ Other accounts say,
‘a Papist,’ which is a Jansenist and something more. ‘He made no
speech; but sat down a little while in a chair on the scaffold, and
talked to the people round him. He said, he was glad to suffer for
his country, _dulce est pro patriâ mori_; that he did not know how,
but that he had always loved it, _Nescio quâ natale solum, &c._; that
he had never swerved from his principles, (!) and that this was the
character of his family who had been gentlemen for 500 years! He lay
down quietly, gave the sign soon, and was despatched at a blow. I
believe it will strike some terror into the Highlands, when they hear
there is any power great enough to bring so potent a tyrant to the
block. A scaffold fell down and killed several persons; one, a man that
had ridden post from Salisbury the day before to see the ceremony; and
a woman was taken up dead with a live child in her arms.’ This scaffold
consisted of several tiers which were occupied by at least a thousand
spectators. It was built out from the Ship, at the corner of Barking
alley. About a dozen people were killed at the first crash, which also
wounded many who died in hospital. The master-carpenter who erected it,
had so little thought of its instability, that he established a bar
and tap beneath it. He was joyously serving out liquors to as joyous
customers, when down came the fabric and overwhelmed them all. The
carpenter was among the killed.
[Sidenote: _GEORGE SELWYN._]
The head was not held up nor its late owner denounced as a traitor.
The Duke of Newcastle was displeased at the omission, but the Sheriffs
justified themselves on the ground that the custom had not been
observed at the execution of Lord Balmerino, and that the duke had not
authorised them to act, in writing. A sample of the levity of the time
is furnished in the accounts of the crowds that flocked to the trial
as they might have done to some gay spectacle; and an example of its
callousness may be found in what Walpole calls, ‘an excessive good
story of George Selwyn.’ ‘Some women were scolding him for going to see
the execution, and asked him how he could be such a barbarian to see
the head cut off?’ “Nay,” says he, “if that be such a crime, I am sure
I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again!” When he was
at the undertaker’s, Stephenson’s in the Strand, as soon as they had
stitched him together, and were going to put the body into the coffin,
George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said, “My Lord Lovat, your
Lordship may rise.”’
[Sidenote: _LOVAT’S BODY._]
Lovat had expressed a passionate desire to be buried in his native
country, under the shadow of its hills, his clansmen paying the
last duty to their chief, and the women of the tribe keening their
death-song on the way to the grave. The Duke of Newcastle consented.
The evening before the day appointed for leaving the Tower, a
coachman drove a hearse about the court of the prison, ‘before my
Lord Traquair’s dungeon,’ says Walpole, ‘which could be no agreeable
sight, it might to Lord Cromartie, who is _above the chair_.’ Walpole
treats Lord Traquair with the most scathing contempt, as if he were
both coward and traitor, ready to purchase life at any cost. After
all, Lovat’s body never left the Tower. ‘The Duke of Newcastle,’
writes Walpole to Conway, 16th April, on which night London was all
sky-rockets and bonfires for last year’s victory, ‘has burst ten
yards of breeches-strings, about the body, which was to be sent into
Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers to rise, to
attend the most trivial burial. The Duke, who is always at least as
much frightened at doing right as at doing wrong, was three days before
he got courage enough to order the burying in the Tower.’
Lovat’s trial brought about a change in the law. On the 5th of May, Sir
William Yonge, in the House of Commons, brought in a good-natured Bill,
without opposition, ‘to allow council to prisoners on impeachment for
treason, as they have on indictments. It hurt everybody at old Lovat’s
trial, all guilty as he was, to see an old wretch worried by the first
lawyers in England, without any assistance, but his own unpractised
defence. This was a point struggled for in King William’s reign, as a
privilege and dignity inherent in the Commons――that the accused by them
should have no assistance of council. How reasonable that men chosen by
their fellow-subjects for the defence of their fellow-subjects should
have rights detrimental to the good of the people whom they are to
protect. Thank God! we are a better-natured age, and have relinquished
this savage principle with a good grace.’ So wrote Walpole in Arlington
Street.
After Lovat’s death, the friends of the Happy Establishment ceased
to have fears for the stability of the happiness or for that of the
establishment. Walpole declined thenceforth to entertain any idea of
Pretender, young or old, unless either of them got south of Derby.
When Charles Edward ‘could not get to London with all the advantages
which the ministry had smoothed for him, how could he ever meet more
concurring circumstances?’ Meanwhile, the ‘Duke’s Head,’ as a sign,
had taken place of Admiral Vernon’s in and about the metropolis, as
Vernon’s had of the illustrious Jacobite’s――the Duke of Ormond.
[Sidenote: _THE WHITE HORSE, PICCADILLY._]
There was in Piccadilly an inn, whose loyal host, Williams, had set
up the then very loyal sign of ‘The White Horse’ (of Hanover). While
Lovat’s trial was proceeding, that Whig Boniface had reason to know
that the Jacobites were not so thoroughly stamped out as they seemed
to be. Williams attended an anniversary dinner of the Electors of
Westminster, who supported ‘the good old cause.’ He was observed to be
taking notes of the toasts and speeches, and he was severely beaten and
ejected. He laid an information against this Jacobite gathering, and he
described one of the treasonable practices thus:――‘On the King’s health
being drunk, every man held a glass of water in his left hand, and
waved a glass of wine over it with the right.’ A Committee of the House
of Commons made so foolish an affair of it as to be unable to draw up a
‘Report.’ If the enquiry had extended three years back, Walpole thinks,
‘Lords Sandwich and Grenville of the Admiralty would have made an
admirable figure as dictators of some of the most Jacobite toasts that
ever were invented. Lord Donerail ... plagued Lyttelton to death with
pressing him to enquire into the healths of the year ’43.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE TOASTS._]
On the first anniversary of Culloden, the celebration of the day was as
universally joyous as when the news of the victory first reached town.
The papers speak of a ‘numerous and splendid appearance of nobility,’
at St. James’s; of foreign ministers and native gentry, eager to pay
their compliments to his Majesty on this occasion. At night, London
was in a blaze of bonfires and illuminations. At the same time, in
houses where Jacobites met, they drank the very enigmatical toast,
‘_The three W’s_,’ and talked of a private manifesto of the Chevalier
to his faithful supporters, which stated that the late attempt was
an essay, which would be followed in due time by an expedition made
with an irresistible force. But there were also Jacobites who ‘mourned
Fifteen renewed in Forty-five,’ and whose sentiments were subsequently
expressed by Churchill’s _Jockey_ in the ‘Prophecy of Famine’:――
Full sorely may we all lament that day,
For all were losers in the deadly fray.
Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,
Well do’st thou know were none more hopeful swains:
Five brothers there I lost in manhood’s pride;
Two in the field, and three on gibbets died.
Ah! silly swains to follow war’s alarms;
Ah, what hath shepherd life to do with arms?
[Sidenote: _THE EARL OF TRAQUAIR._]
There was still an untried rebel peer in the Tower, the Earl of
Traquair. He bore the royal name of Charles Stuart, and had some drops
of the Stuart blood in his veins. Captured in 1746, he had seen the
arrival of Lovat at, and also his departure from, the Tower. Soon after
the latter event, there was some talk of impeaching the earl; but this
was held to be idle talk when the earl was seen enjoying the liberty
of the Tower――walking in one of the courts with his friends. Whether
he had rendered any service to Government, to be deserving of this
favour and subsequent immunity, is not known. Walpole, when Lovat’s
trial was going on, said, ‘It is much expected that Lord Traquair, who
is a great coward, will give ample information of the whole plot.’
However, it is certain that many Jacobites were pardoned without
any such baseness being exacted from them. Sir Hector Maclean and
half-a-dozen other semi-liberated rebels were to be seen going about
London, with a messenger attending on them. Other messengers, however,
were often sudden and unwelcome visitors in private houses, in search
for treasonable papers and traitorous persons. Gentleman Harry’s idea
of a plot was said, in loyal coffee-houses, to be a reality; and the
quidnuncs there were quite sure that money was going into the Highlands
from France, and small bodies of Frenchmen were also being sent
thither, and capable Scottish and English sergeants were now and then
disappearing. The only ostensible steps taken by the Government was to
make a new army-regulation, namely, that the 3rd (Scottish) regiment of
Foot Guards, and all other regiments, bearing the name Scottish, should
henceforward be called English, and ‘the drums to beat none but English
marches.’
[Sidenote: _PLOTTING AND PARDONING._]
Therewith came a doubtful sort of pardoning to about a thousand rebels
cooped up in vessels on the Thames, or in prisons ashore. They,
and some Southwark prisoners who had been condemned to death, were
compelled to suffer transportation to the American Plantations. ‘They
will be transported for life,’ the papers tell their readers, ‘let them
be of what quality and condition soever.’
[Sidenote: _ÆNEAS MACDONALD._]
There was one Jacobite prisoner in Newgate who was disinclined to
live in durance, to take his trial, or to be hanged after it or
transported without it. This was Æneas or Angus Macdonald, known
as the Pretender’s Banker. He had surrendered soon after Culloden,
and was lodged in Newgate. Seeing the death-like aspect of things,
Macdonald got two friends to call upon him, one evening. There was
nothing strange in such a visit. Newgate was like a huge hotel, open
at all hours, where turnkeys acted as footmen who introduced visitors.
Young Mr. Ackerman, the keeper’s son, received Mr. Macdonald’s friends.
As soon as he had opened the wicket, behind which the prisoner was
standing, they knocked Ackerman down, and as he was attempting to rise,
they flung handfuls of snuff into his face. He succeeded in getting on
his legs, but, when he could open his eyes, the captive and his friends
had disappeared. Alarm was given; young Ackerman led the pursuit,
and he came up with Macdonald in an adjacent street. Æneas faced his
pursuer as if to quietly surrender, but as soon as Ackerman came near,
he flung a cloud of snuff into his face. The gaoler struck him down
with his keys and broke his collarbone. When Macdonald was again within
the prison walls, he politely apologised for the trouble he had given.
Mr. Ackerman quite as politely begged him not to think of it, ‘but,
you see, Sir,’ he added, ‘I am bound to take care it does not happen
again,’ and clapping a heavy suit of irons on the prisoner’s limbs, he
stapled and screwed the banker down to the floor, sending the surgeon
to him to look to his collarbone.
[Sidenote: _THE COUNTESS OF DERWENTWATER._]
The banker’s trial was put off from time to time, between July and
December. The public in general were beginning to doubt its ever
coming on at all; and the autumn seemed dull to people now long used
to excitement, when London suddenly heard that Charles Radcliffe’s
widow, with a son and two daughters, had arrived in London, and had
taken a mansion in, then highly fashionable, Golden Square. She was a
Countess (of Newburgh), in her own right; but, of course, the gentry
with Jacobite sympathies, who called on her, recognised her as Countess
of Derwentwater. This arrival in Golden Square may have had some
influence on a demonstration at Westminster Abbey. For years, on the
anniversary of that rather un-English king and canonized saint, Edward
the Confessor, groups of Roman Catholics were accustomed to gather
round his shrine, kneeling in prayer. ‘Last Tuesday,’ says the ‘Penny
Post,’ ‘being the anniversary of Edward the Confessor, the tombs were
shut in Westminster Abbey, by order of the Dean and Chapter, to prevent
the great concourse of Roman Catholics, who always repair there on that
day. Notwithstanding which, most of them were kneeling all the day at
the gates, paying their devotions to that Saint.’
This incident having passed out of discussion, the trial of Macdonald
was looked for. When it did come on, in December, at St. Margaret’s,
Southwark, it disappointed the amateurs of executions, and delighted
the Jacobites. The prisoner’s main plea was that he was French, and was
legally at Culloden. The jury found that he was not French, but was
a Scotch rebel. He was sentenced to death; but the whole thing was a
solemn farce, the sentence was not carried out; and we shall presently
see wherefore he was immediately liberated on condition of leaving the
kingdom for ever, with liberty to live where he pleased, out of it.
[Sidenote: _SERGEANT SMITH._]
This was on December 10th. All public entertainment for the
death-delighting mob seemed suppressed; but there was an exulting crowd
the next day, lining the road from the barracks and military prison,
in the Savoy, to the parade, St. James’s Park, and from the latter
place to Hyde Park, where savages had come ‘in their thousands,’ and
assembled round a gibbet in the centre of the Park. From the Savoy
was brought a stalwart sergeant, in gyves, marching, without music,
and eagerly gazed at as he passed on his way to the Parade. He was a
good soldier, something of a scholar, knew several languages, and was
utterly averse from serving any other sovereign than King James or
his friend King Louis. Sergeant Smith had deserted, had been caught,
and was now to suffer, not a soldier’s death by shooting, but the
ignominious one of a felon. On the Parade, he was received by his own
regiment, in the centre of which he was placed, and so guarded went
slowly on to Hyde Park, to a dead roll of the drums. He was dressed in
a scarlet coat, all else white. In token of his Jacobite allegiance,
he wore, and was allowed to wear, a rosette of tartan ribbons on his
bosom, and similar bunches of ribbons on each knee. The sergeant went
on with a smile. His self-possession made the hangman nervous, and
Smith bade his executioner pluck up a spirit and do his duty. And so he
died; what remains of him may perhaps still lie in the Park, for the
Jacobite sergeant was buried beneath the gibbet. The quality of the
newspaper reporting at this time is illustrated by the fact that, in
some of the journals, Jacobite Smith is said to have been shot.
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE’S JOURNAL._]
In December 1747, a new paper was started, called the ‘Jacobite’s
Journal.’ It was eminently anti-Jacobite, and was adorned with a
head-piece representing a shouting Highlander and his wife on a donkey,
to whose tail is tied the shield and arms of France; and from whose
mouth hangs a label ‘Daily Post;’ the animal is led by a monk with one
finger significantly laid to the side of his nose. The journal joked
savagely at the idea of the above-named Sergeant Smith, being compelled
to listen to his own funeral sermon in the Savoy Chapel, and hoped
there was no flattery in it. As to the gay rosettes of tartan ribbons
which he wore, the journal was disgusted with such a display on the
part of a traitor.
[Sidenote: _CARTE’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND._]
There remains to be noticed the appearance this year of the first
volume of the Jacobite Carte’s History of England. It was received with
a universal welcome which was soon exchanged for wrath on the part of
the Hanoverians. Although Carte was a non-juring clergyman, had been
in ’15 and again in ’22 ‘wanted’ by the Secretary of State, and had
been secretary to Atterbury, he was permitted to live unmolested in
England, after 1729, at the request, it is said, of Queen Caroline.
Belonging to both Universities, the two antagonistic parties in
politics were disposed to receive him on friendly terms. His ‘Life of
James, Duke of Ormond,’ published in 1736, was such a well-merited
success, that when Carte subsequently circulated his proposals for
putting forth a general History of England, the proposal was received
with the greatest favour. All parties recognised his ability. The
Tories expected from him freedom of expression; the Whigs trusted in
his discretion. In the collecting of materials, Carte was assisted
by subscriptions from the two Universities, the Common Council, and
several of the Civic Companies of London, and from other public bodies.
These subscriptions are said to have amounted to 600_l._ a year. The
sum was honestly laid out. Carte spared no pains nor expense, at home
or abroad, in collecting materials. We may add that England still
possesses the collections, including much of great interest, which
Carte had not occasion to use. At length, in 1747, the first volume
appeared. Almost immediately afterwards, the London Corporation and
the City Companies withdrew their subscriptions. All public support
from the Whigs fell away from the author. The Jacobite author offended
the Hanoverians by unnecessarily thrusting in his Jacobitism. The
offence which shocked the Hanoverian sensibilities was conveyed in a
note which was, to say the least, indiscreet. Therein, speaking of the
power, supposed to be reserved to kings, of curing ‘the evil,’ Carte
betrayed his own belief in the right divine of the Stuart family, by
ascribing to the Pretender the preternatural cure of one Lovel, at
Avignon, in 1716, ‘by the touch of a descendant of a long line of
kings.’ The consequences of this indiscretion, which London was the
first to resent, materially crippled Carte’s means of proceeding; but
he lived to see three volumes through the press, and to leave one more
in manuscript, which brought the history down to the year 1654, and
which was published in 1755, the year after that in which Carte died.
Carte was dying when the loyal feelings of London were stirred with an
emotion which spread to such Whig readers as were to be found in the
country. ◆[Sidenote: _HUME’S ‘HISTORY.’_]◆ The feeling was aroused by
the publication of Hume’s ‘History of the Reigns of James the First
and Charles the First,’ the first instalment of the general History of
England which Hume wrote, so to speak, backwards. Such opposition was
shown by the Hanoverians, to what was looked upon as a defence of the
proscribed family, that Hume was disposed to give up his assumed office
of a writer of English history. Fortunately, he thought better of it,
and completed a great work which is as unjustly abused as Carte’s is
undeservedly forgotten.
In this year, the first taste of the quality of Johnson’s political
feelings is furnished by Boswell. At this period, Johnson was a
thorough Jacobite.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE JOHNSON._]
The highest praise which he could give to Dr. Panting, the Master
of Pembroke (Johnson’s College), was to call him ‘a fine Jacobite
fellow.’ The worst he could say of the Gilbert Walmsley, of Lichfield,
whom he loved and honoured, was that ‘he was a Whig, with all the
virulence and malevolence of his party.’ Boswell’s father pelted
Johnson with the term which Johnson applied to Panting, as one of
laudation, and spoke of him contemptuously as ‘that Jacobite fellow.’
The truth is, that if Johnson felt the principle of allegiance due
to the Stuarts, he felt no love for the system which prevailed where
the Stuarts found their best friends: ‘A Highland Chief, Sir, has no
more the soul of a chief, than an attorney who has twenty houses in a
street, and considers how much he can make by them.’ Johnson had but
scant eulogy for a convert from Whiggery. To join the Tories was to
‘keep better company.’ In an honest Whig, the learned Jacobite had no
belief; ‘Pulteney,’ he remarked, ‘was as paltry a fellow as could be.
He was a Whig who pretended to be honest, and you know it is ridiculous
for a Whig to pretend to be honest. He cannot hold it out.’ It would
be difficult to say whether Cibber or George II. was the more hateful
object to Johnson. He gibbeted both in the epigram he took care not to
publish:――
Augustus still survives in Maro’s strain,
And Spenser’s verse prolongs Eliza’s reign;
Great George’s acts let tuneful Cibber sing;
For Nature formed the Poet for the King.
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON’S SYMPATHIES._]
It was perhaps accidental that during the years 1745-6 Johnson’s
literary work seems to have been almost suspended. ‘That he had a
tenderness for that unfortunate house’ (of Stuart, said Boswell) ‘is
well known, and some may fancifully imagine that a sympathetic anxiety
impeded the exertion of his intellectual powers, but I am inclined to
think that he was, during this time, sketching the outlines of his
great philological work.’ It is not certain that Johnson was the author
of the following lines, which appeared in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’
for April 1747, but his fond habit of repeating them, ‘by heart,’ is
some proof of his sympathy with the Jacobites named therein; and their
publication demonstrates that the Government respected hostile opinion
when it was becomingly expressed.
ON LORD LOVAT’S EXECUTION.
Pity’d by _gentle minds_, KILMARNOCK died;
The _brave_, BALMERINO, were on thy side;
RADCLIFFE, unhappy in his crimes of youth,
Steady in what he still mistook for truth,
Beheld his death so decently unmovèd,
The _soft_ lamented and the _brave_ approvèd.
But LOVAT’S fate indifferently we view,
True to no _King_, to no _Religion_ true;
No _fair_ forgets the ruin he has done;
No _child_ laments the tyrant of his son;
No _Tory_ pities, thinking what he was;
No _Whig_ compassions, _for he left the cause_;
The _brave_ regret not, for he was not brave;
The _honest_ mourn not, knowing him a knave.
For the sake of ‘the cause,’ Johnson could tolerate persons of very
indifferent character, always providing they were not fools. Topham
Beauclerk was a handsome fellow, of good principles, to which his
practices in no wise answered. Boswell calls him lax in both, but
Johnson said to Beauclerk himself, ‘Thy body is all vice, and thy mind
all virtue.’ And why did Jacobite Johnson love, nay, become fascinated
by this other Jacobite? Boswell gives the reason: ‘Mr. Beauclerk, being
of the St. Alban’s family, and having in some particulars a resemblance
to Charles II., contributed, in Johnson’s imagination, to throw a
lustre upon his other qualities; and, in a short time, the moral, pious
Johnson, and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk were companions.’
[Sidenote: _FLORA MACDONALD._]
The arrival in London of the most interesting of all the Jacobite
prisoners in 1746, and her departure in 1747, are left unrecorded, or
dismissed in a line, by the journalists. Flora Macdonald, on board
the ‘Eltham,’ arrived at the Nore, on the 27th of November, 1746.
Transferred to the ‘Royal Sovereign,’ Flora was brought up to the
Tower. Soon after, she was allowed to live in the house, and under the
nominal restraint, of Mr. Dick, the messenger. After her release, and
complete liberation in 1747, without any questioning, Flora Macdonald
is said to have been the favoured guest of Lady Primrose, in Essex
Street, and the _lionne_ of the season. Tradition says she owed her
liberty to the Prince of Wales, and the romance of history has recorded
a visit paid by the prince to the guest in that Jacobite house, and has
reported all that passed and every word that was uttered when Flora
was thus ‘interviewed.’ Imagination built up the whole of it. The only
known fact is that Flora was captured and was released. Among other
liberated prisoners was Macolm Macleod, of Rasay. The two together,
Flora having chosen Macleod for her protector on her journey to
Scotland, started from Essex Street in a post-chaise; and ‘conjecture,’
which has freely played with this London incident, suggests that
loud cheers were given by Jacobite sympathisers as the couple drove
off. When they arrived in Scotland, Macleod remarked joyously to
his friends: ‘I went to London to be hanged, and I came back in a
post-chaise with Miss Flora Macdonald.’
[Sidenote: _FLORA’S SONS._]
Flora, it is well known, married Macdonald of Kingsburgh, settled in
America, took the royalist side, when the Colonies revolted, returned
to Skye, and gave her five sons to the military or naval service of the
Georges! When the latest survivor of the five brothers, Lieut.-Col.
Macdonald, was presented to George IV., the imaginative king fancied
himself a Stuart, of unmixed blood, and said to those around him:
‘This gentleman is the son of a lady to whom _my family_ owe a great
obligation.’ And such was the debt of the ‘family’ for Flora’s five
sons.
[Illustration: Flower]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER XI.
(1748 to 1750.)
[Sidenote: _DEPRECIATION OF THE STUARTS._]
[Illustration: Drop-T]he Government at this time began to be
embarrassed with the surviving Jacobite prisoners. Many who were
destined for the Plantations, and had made their little melancholy
preparations for going into a life-long exile and slavery, were set
free unconditionally. Others were variously treated. In January, 1748,
Æneas Macdonald was brought from Southwark gaol to the Cockpit, where
he was examined by the Dukes of Newcastle, Dorset, and Montague, the
Earl of Chesterfield, and others of the Privy Council. It is not known
what was got from him; but one result of the examination was that his
execution, which had been fixed for Friday, the 22nd, was deferred
‘for some days.’ The report was immediately raised in London that the
Earl of Traquair would be tried for his life, and Macdonald would be
admitted king’s evidence against him. The report was unfounded, for
the earl was soon afterwards liberated on bail. Four dukes――Norfolk,
Gordon, Hamilton, and Queensborough――were his sureties. Macdonald was
also set free. The Government thought they had captured Lord Elcho at
Dover; and the prisoner, with three others, was brought to London,
where they proved to be four Jacobite _valets de chambre_, who were on
their way to join their escaped rebel masters in France. Other small
game continued to be brought to town from time to time, particularly
deserters from the duke’s army, when in Carlisle, to that of the
Chevalier. For such men there was no mercy. Death, or worse than death,
was the penalty. The journals give an account of six deserters being
whipt in St. James’s Park. ‘One of them refusing to be tied up to the
Halberts, in a very obstreperous manner, was tied and drawn up to a
tree, and very severely handled for his obstinacy.’
Exultation over the victory at Culloden was still prevailing. In
other respects, it may be asserted that apprehensions of domestic
disturbances had now pretty well ceased. Walpole felt that if the
French attempted an invasion, it would be for themselves, and not
for the Chevalier. ‘They need not be at the trouble,’ he wrote in
January, ‘of sending us Stuarts; that ingenious House could not have
done the work of France more effectually than the Pelhams and the
patriots have.’ The London Whigs maintained the memory of the triumph
of Cumberland. For years they kept the anniversary of the Jacobite
overthrow at Culloden by dining, or drinking, or doing both, together.
Here is a sample of what they thought of the triumph, taken from the
advertisement columns of ‘The General Advertiser:’――
‘HALF-MOON TAVERN, CHEAPSIDE. Saturday next, the 16th April,
being the anniversary of the Glorious Battle of Culloden,
the Stars will assemble in the Moon, at six in the evening.
Therefore, the choice spirits are desired to make their
appearance and fill up the joy.’
[Sidenote: _THE GOVERNMENT AND THE JACOBITES._]
Within a month, however, the Government were referring to the
Jacobites, as if the rebellion had not been stamped out at Culloden.
The special occasion on which the Jacobites were ill-spoken of in
Parliament this year was in the House of Lords. The Peers were
discussing the Scottish episcopal question, and the Highland dress.
Lord Hardwicke, the Chancellor, with other Lords, denounced the
Scottish bishops as Nonjurors, whose _congé d’élire_, if there was one,
came from the Pretender; and whose ‘orders,’ conferred on others, could
only be a farce. Jacobitism had by no means lost its vitality. In some
cases it had been bribed into a deceitful calm, which might be followed
by a storm at any opportunity. Lord Hardwicke thought the condemned
Jacobites had been too leniently dealt with, and that they would have
had no cause to complain had the most rigorous penalties been exacted.
In short, his lordship went far to authorise Lord Campbell’s judgment,
that if the Duke of Cumberland was responsible for the way in which he
stamped out rebellion in Scotland, Lord Hardwicke, at Westminster, was
responsible for the judicial murders committed on rebels. The following
is from the speech, which aroused some surprise in the House of Lords:――
[Sidenote: _ENLARGEMENT OF PRISONERS._]
‘Every man who has taken orders from a nonjuring Bishop in England
or Scotland must be supposed to be disaffected to our present happy
establishment. I think the government ought not to allow them to
be preachers in any congregation whatever.’――After allowing that
there were honest Nonjurors, who, while preserving their principles,
refrained from all hostility towards the Government, the Lord
Chancellor said there were others, ‘who, notwithstanding being
Jacobites in their hearts, not only take all the oaths we can impose,
but worm themselves into places of trust and confidence under the
present government, and yet join in, or are ready to join in, any
rebellion against it; and with respect to such men I must say that no
regulation we can make, no punishment we can inflict, can be called
cruel and unjust.’
No doubt one of the Jacobites to whom Lord Hardwicke alluded was the
Jacobite Mr. Pitt, Lord of Trade, and the pet M.P. of Jacobite Wareham.
[Sidenote: _IN THE PARK AND ON THE MALL._]
For all this, lenity towards the Jacobite prisoners continued to
be practised. The three brothers Kinloch were liberated from close
custody. Sir James Kinloch and Mr. Stewart were to be confined to an
English provincial town, with liberty of walking to a distance of a
couple of miles. The exact conditions were,――‘that they should remain
in such places, as his Majesty, his heirs, and successors shall from
time to time appoint.’ Then came pardons, a half-dozen at a time,
to various of the ‘Manchester officers’ taken at Carlisle, who had
been lying under sentence of death since 1746. Among them was Captain
Lindsay, who was haltered and in the sledge, with Governor Hamilton
and Sir John Wedderburn, when a reprieve arrived for him at the
prison-gate. The two younger brothers Kinloch, with Farquharson of
Monaltries, were banished, but might go whithersoever they would,
except to any part of the British dominions. The most joyous party of
Jacobites was that of the Earl of Cromartie (or ‘Mr. Mackenzie,’ as
he was called since his attainder) and his family. The eldest son,
Lord Macleod, was freely pardoned. The earl was permitted to leave the
Tower, but he was bound to reside in the house of a King’s Messenger.
Accordingly, the earl, countess, my lord, the younger children, and a
servant or two, were to be seen alighting from a hackney-coach at the
door of Mr. Lamb’s house in Pall Mall. Their appearance at the windows
attracted many a gazer, and when Mr. Lamb permitted them to stroll on
the Mall, crowds of sympathisers congratulated them as they passed.
Later, the earl had so far an extension of liberty as was to be found
in a permission, or order, to reside in some town in the south of
England.
It was probably by accident that, on the Pretender’s birthday, June
10th, a special free pardon passed the Great Seal for Mr. John Murray,
of Boughton, and Hugh Fraser, gentleman (king’s witnesses against Lord
Lovat). Murray obtained a pension of 200_l._ a year. The pardon cleared
them of all treason committed before 1st May, 1748. On Saturday,
the 11th, they were both at large, and were to be seen, two pale
men, trying to get a complexion in the parks. At the same time small
parties of men left London for Scotland, for the purpose of fortifying
various points of that kingdom, an invasion of which by the French was
vaguely talked of in all taverns and coffee-houses in London. There was
certainly an undefined fear from the beginning of the year of something
being intended there in the interest of the Pretender.
[Sidenote: _THE STATUE IN LEICESTER SQUARE._]
In 1742, the Prince of Wales had promised the mob greeting him on his
birthday, with roaring cheers, from the front of Leicester House, that
he would put up a statue of his father in the centre of the square.
Since that promise was made and forgotten, the famous ducal mansion
of the Duke of Chandos had been knocked to pieces by the auctioneer’s
hammer. On the princess’s birthday, 19th November, 1748, there was
again a mob in front of the prince’s ‘palace’ in Leicester Square,
not only to congratulate him, but to witness the uncovering of an
equestrian statue of George I. This statue was one of the many which
had adorned the duke’s house, Canons, near Edgeware. Nobody seems to
know now at whose cost it was purchased and put up. It is suggested
that the prince, or his semi-Jacobite friends, bought it, with the
thought that, irritated as George II. might be by having a statue
erected to him by his son, he would be still more irate at having one
erected of his father. The fact is that the statue was bought and set
up by subscriptions of the inhabitants of the square. The unveiling of
the ‘Golden Horse and Man’ was witnessed by a brilliant company at the
windows of Leicester House, among whom was the Duke of Chandos himself,
Groom of the Stole to the Prince. Hogarth and other celebrities,
doubtless, looked on, from other windows of houses in the square.
This was the statue which in later days so ignominiously perished;
which dropt its arms, lost its limbs, fell from its horse; and which
ultimately was swept away, horse and rider, in 1874, under a storm of
sarcasm and contempt.
[Sidenote: _AN ECCENTRIC JACOBITE._]
From this record of London in the Jacobite times must not be omitted
the death of a most remarkable Jacobite, of whom little is remembered.
This was Mr. John Painter, of St. John’s, Oxford. This Jacobite scholar
made three several attempts, by letter, to induce the Government to
allow him to be beheaded in place of Lord Lovat! Mr. Painter asked it
as a particular favour. The ministers were not amiable enough to grant
his prayer, and he was never happy afterwards. Just previous to his
death, he forbade his executors to bury him near any of his relations.
He urged them to obtain permission for his corpse to hang in chains
over the spot where Lovat’s head was struck off. On being questioned
as to his reasons, he replied vaguely, that he had not been guilty of
any baseness, but he had committed a fatal error in judgment which had
led to Lovat’s destruction. He did not define it; he left complimentary
farewells to Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pelham, and an expression of
pity for Lovat’s son. ‘That unfortunate gentleman,’ said Painter,
‘suffers not only through his father’s folly, but through mine.’
[Sidenote: _GLOOMY REPORTS._]
As the year drew to an end, adverse parties quarrelled over the terms
of the peace of Aix la Chapelle; but this matter was forgotten in the
news which reached London that the young Chevalier had been literally
seized ‘neck and heels’ at the Paris Opera house, and deposited at
Vincennes, as a preliminary to turning him out of France. About the
same time his conqueror, the Duke of Cumberland, quietly returned to
London from the continent. He came post from the coast to Lambeth,
where he took a boat from which he landed at Whitehall; and thence he
quietly walked across the park, to St. James’s. He was warmly greeted
on his way, especially by that part of the garrison from Carlisle which
had reached the metropolis before their fellows.
Rumours of fresh outbreaks by the Jacobites had been freely circulated
in London from the moment of the suppression of the last. The sight
of the Duke of Newcastle, entering Leicester House, one November day,
gave rise to a report with which London was speedily busied. ‘It
was owing,’ writes the Countess of Shaftesbury, in the ‘Malmesbury
Correspondence,’ ‘to a message from the Prince of Wales, that he had
something of importance to communicate; and he accordingly laid before
him the intelligence he had received of a new rebellion forming, and
almost ready to break out in the Highlands. The Duke assured His Royal
Highness that his Majesty would take very kindly this information,
which he observed to concur exactly with the accounts sent to the
Government above a month ago. I heartily wish this may produce a union
between the King and people which, sure, can never be more necessary
than at this crisis, when new dangers threaten us from the untamable
bigotry of the Scotch Jacobites, encouraged, perhaps, by the insolence
of their friends in many parts of England.’
[Sidenote: _THE HAYMARKET THEATRE._]
‘The great Duke’ seems to have been among the very simple people who,
in February, 1749, were drawn to the Haymarket Theatre by the promise
of ‘the Bottle Conjuror,’ to jump into a quart bottle in presence of
the audience. When the matter proved to be a hoax, and the audience
were further insulted by a loud announcement from behind the curtain
that, if they would sit quiet till the following night, the conjuror
would jump into a pint bottle, a riot ensued in which the interior of
the house was absolutely destroyed. In the confusion, the duke was
seen looking for his sword; and it is said that an audacious Jacobite
called out, ‘Billy the Butcher has lost his knife!’ The alleged loss
was certainly made known by a satirical Jacobite, in the following
advertisement:――‘Lost on Monday night, at the Little Play House in
the Haymarket, a Sword, with a gold Hilt and a cutting Blade, with a
crimson and gold Sword-knot tied round the Hilt. Whoever brings it
to Mrs. Chenevix’s Toy-shop, over-against Great Suffolk Street, near
Chearing Cross, shall receive thirty Guineas reward, and no Questions
asked.’ This advertisement, with its reference to the Court toy-woman,
offered fair opportunity for further Jacobite wit or venom to show
itself; and the demonstration was made in the following manner:――‘Found
entangled in the Slit of a Lady’s Smock Petticoat, a gold-hilted Sword
of martial length and temper, nothing the worse for wear;――with the
Spey curiously wrought on one side of the blade, and the Scheldt on the
other;――supposed to have been stolen from the plump side of a great
General, in his precipitate retreat from the Battle of Bottle Noodles,
at Station Foote. Enquire at the Quart Bottle and Musical Cave,
Potter’s Row.’
[Sidenote: _TREASONABLE PAMPHLETS._]
In the same month, there was a loosening of the bonds of some condemned
Jacobites and a tightening of others; a releasing of old prisoners
and a netting of new;――with a recapturing of Jacobite exiles who had
been glad to leave the country, but who had come secretly back again.
Half-a-dozen of the Carlisle and Manchester officers left the Southwark
gaol for Gravesend, on their way to America. The more audacious of
them wore white rosettes in their hats, in proud assertion of their
unbending principles. Quite as audacious was the republication, at the
price of 6_d._, of the regicidal pamphlet, by Col. Titus,――‘Killing
no Murder, a Discourse proving it lawful to kill a tyrant.’ Another
pamphlet,――‘A Letter from a Friend in the Country to a Friend at
Will’s, on the 3 new articles of War,’ with the epigraph, from Waller’s
‘Maid’s Tragedy Altered’――was much to the same purpose:――
Oppression makes men mad, and from their breast
All reason does, and sense of duty, wrest.
The Gods are safe, when under wrongs we groan,
Only because we cannot reach their throne.
Shall Princes, then, who are but Gods of clay,
Think they may safely with our honour play?
[Sidenote: _MURRAY AND LORD TRAQUAIR._]
There was a less serious incident of the year which probably amused
both Jacobites and Hanoverians. Mr. Murray of Boughton and the Earl
of Traquair had come out of the late perilous time, with their necks
safe. The two liberated Jacobites were not the better friends for their
good fortune. They had a desperate quarrel, which led Murray to air his
bravery by sending the earl a challenge to fight a duel. Lord Traquair,
having no stomach for fresh perils, indicted Murray in the King’s
Bench, for inciting to a breach of the peace. A verdict of _Guilty_
brought on him stern rebuke, and led to his ultimate withdrawal into
privacy in Scotland.
On the part of institutions as well as of individuals, there was a
sort of anxiety to advertise their loyalty. When the fireworks in St.
James’s Park were about to be exploded in celebration of the Peace of
Aix la Chapelle, many of ‘the Quality’ desired to see the display,
from the windows of St. George’s Hospital. The ruling powers there,
by no means, wanted such company; but being afraid of a charge of
disloyalty being levelled against them, if they refused, the Board made
an explanation thus singularly worded:――‘Whereas it is apprehended that
many persons will be desirous to see the fireworks from St. George’s
Hospital, this is to inform them there are but two wards from which
they can be seen; that these are women’s wards, and that most of the
patients in them are in very dangerous disorders. It is therefore hoped
that, for Decency’s sake, for sake of the Patients, and indeed for
their Own sake (it not being at all certain that some of the Disorders
are not catching), it will not be taken amiss that no person whatever
can be admitted. By Order. Hugh Say, Clerk.’
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL MEETING._]
At this time, the Pretender’s chief agent in England was Dr. William
King, Vice-Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and public orator. At
the opening of the Radcliffe Library, the ultra-Jacobite orator made a
speech, in his official capacity. The ‘General Advertiser’ says that
‘it was a most eloquent speech of an hour long; and it met with great
applause.’ Other journals describe it as ‘an elegant oration.’ Walpole,
however, says: ‘The famous Dr. King, the Pretender’s great agent,
made a most violent speech at the opening of the Radcliffe Library.
The Ministry denounced judgment but, in their old style, have grown
frightened, and dropt it.’ Then follows this singular illustration of
the men and times:――‘This menace gave occasion to a meeting and union
between the Prince’s party and the Jacobites which Lord Egmont has been
labouring all the winter. They met at the St. Alban’s Tavern, near Pall
Mall, last Monday morning, a hundred and twelve Lords and Commoners.
The Duke of Beaufort opened the ceremony with a panegyric on the stand
that had been made this winter, against so corrupt an administration,
and hoped it would continue, and desired harmony. Lord Egmont seconded
this strongly, and begged they would come up to Parliament early next
winter. Lord Oxford spoke next, and then Potter, with great humour,
and, to the great abashment of the Jacobites, said he was very glad to
see this union, and from thence hoped that if another attack, like
the last Rebellion, should be made on the Royal Family, they would all
stand by them. No reply was made to this; then Sir Watkin Williams
spoke, Sir Francis Dashwood, and Tom Pitt, and the meeting broke up.’
[Sidenote: _DR. KING’S ORATION._]
Walpole says that ‘the great Mr. Dodington’ gave the assistance of
his head to this conference; but there is no notice taken of it in
Dodington’s ‘Diary.’
With regard to Dr. King’s oration, which was published as he delivered
it, in Latin; and also in an English translation, by a friend,――it
is elegant throughout, and harmless also, except perhaps in the
closing paragraphs, in which the Ministry found offence. Dr. King,
after deploring the universal corruption, wickedness, misery, and
misgovernment which reigned without check or restraint, goes on to hope
for a return or restoration of men, measures, and incorruptible virtue,
whereby the nation might recover its wrecked honour and happiness.
Here is a sample of one of the four paragraphs with which the oration
closes:――‘REDEAT (necque me fugit hoc verbum meum, quippe meum, ab
inficetis et malevolis viris improbari iterandum est tamen), Redeat
nobis Astræa nostra, aut quocunque nomine malit vocari ipsa Justitia:
non quidem fabulosa illa, sed Christianissima Virgo, si non genitrix,
certe equidem custos virtutum omnium.’
[Sidenote: _THE EARL OF BATH._]
No doubt the ‘redeat’ had direct reference to the hoped-for return
of the ‘king’ at Rome, for whom good wishes were offered up in the
London toast――‘The Royal Exchange,’――a toast which is really a summary
of Dr. King’s closing paragraphs. At this time the London papers
were busy with reporting the movements of that king’s son――the young
Chevalier. He had promised the municipality of Friburg to take up his
residence there. The magistracy had invited him, not having the fear
of the English Government before their eyes. Charles Edward broke his
promise, upon which the magistrates (according to a letter from Friburg
in the London papers) sharply reproached him for having caused them
to offend the King of England by an invitation which came to nothing.
Why he should prefer Avignon to Friburg they could not understand. The
latest notice of his movements in the metropolitan journals was that
he was living _incognito_ at Venice. There was manifestly some uneasy
curiosity about him, and a desire on the part of the loyal citizens to
be prepared for anything that might turn up in the chapter of accidents
or conspiracies. The Earl of Bath only expressed the general feeling
of the city, if not of the country, when he said, in a debate on the
Mutiny Bill in the Lords, ‘A parcel of rascally Highlanders marched
from the northernmost part of Scotland through millions of people to
within 100 miles of London, without meeting with any resistance from
the people; and might, for what I know, have marched to London, and
overturned our government, had we had no regular troops to prevent
it;――a manifest proof that a standing army is absolutely necessary.’
[Sidenote: _THE LAUREATE’S ODE._]
The loyal Muse was at Court, as usual, on New Year’s day, 1750, when
the royal family and a brilliant array of privileged peers and
peeresses assembled to hear the annual ode of the laureate ‘set to
Music.’ There was nothing in it like the ring of a hearty Jacobite
song. The more Cibber piled his loyalty, the more ridiculous he became,
as may be seen by the sample of a single brick out of the lumbering
edifice:――
When the race of true Glory
Calls Heroes to start,
Then the Muse meets a story
Well worthy of Art.
Had her Pindar of old
Known our Cæsar to sing
More rapid his raptures had roll’d,
But;――Never had Greece such a king.
All that Whigs and Cibber’s friends could say for such tuneless and
burlesque lines was that he made them so on purpose. Jacobites replied
to them less fiercely than Johnson, but yet not without wit. For
instance, on seeing a tobacco pipe lit with one of the laureate’s
odes:――
While the soft song that warbles George’s praise
From pipe to pipe the living flame conveys,
Critics, who long have scorn’d, must now admire,
For who can say his Ode now wants its fire!
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE MUSE._]
The laureate’s odes could neither make people loyal, nor keep them
so. On the other hand, the Jacobite Muse, with her petticoat busked
up to her knee, was as brisk and winning as Maggie Lauder, especially
in Scotland. She gave much concern to the people at St. James’s and
the Cockpit, from the beginning to the end of the year. She was
working mischief in the north. How matters were going on there, and
how different was the treatment of the Scotch Muse, in December, from
that of England before the throne of George, at St. James’s, in the
preceding January, is told in the London papers. Captain Stafford, of
Pulteney’s Foot, was stationed in Aberdeen, where the Jacobite Muse
was rampant. The captain seized the singers of treasonable ballads in
the streets, and brought them, with ballads and publishers, before the
magistrates. These were Jacobites, and they could see no harm in the
minstrels or the muse; and they discharged the peripatetic singing
agents of the young Chevalier. They would not even confiscate the
ballads. This the loyal captain took upon himself to do; he brought
the whole mass of harmonious treason from the printer’s to the Market
Place, and set fire to the ton of songs that was intended to raise one.
While they were burning he made a speech, of which this is one of the
flowers:――‘May all the enemies of His Most Sacred Majesty, King George,
our rightful and lawful King, be consumed off the face of the earth, as
the fire consumeth these vile and treasonable ballads.’ For which the
captain was much commended in and about St. James’s.
[Sidenote: _PRISONS AND PRISONERS._]
The disloyal muse was not silent in London. Macdonald, ‘said to be an
Irish priest,’ made the echoes of a Jacobite tavern in George Street,
Bloomsbury, reecho with treasonable songs till he was flung into
Newgate,――which then was a sentence of death. The gaol-fever was then
destroying prisoners, judges, and witnesses, and sweeping life out of
hundreds of homes in the vicinity. While suppressing chords of a lyre
which was soon re-strung, a certain sort of service was not forgotten.
‘We hear,’ says the ‘Penny Post,’ ‘that a pension of 400_l._ per annum
is settled on a person eminently concerned in the late Rebellion,
for services done by him.’ The Government treated Lovat’s son with
justice,――gave him a free pardon, he having been an unwilling rebel.
As for emptying the London prisons of convicted rebels, they seemed
to be filled as fast as they were emptied. Some of the captives were
sent over the Atlantic, others were allowed to transport themselves,
and many were set free altogether. A little matter, however, could
cast a man into a dungeon. The ‘Daily Post’ (in July) records that ‘A
Person of Note has arrived in Town, in the Custody of a Messenger,
from Scotland. He is accused of seditious Practises, particularly in
encouraging the use of the Highland Dress.’ A good look-out was kept
at the Tower, which was undergoing repair, and sentinels showed much
alacrity in firing on, or over, people who approached too near the
Tower ditch after sun-set.
This year is one of several assigned to a secret visit of the young
Chevalier and a friend to the exterior of the Tower. As very few
people really knew where he was residing, this story was probably
invented. The London papers said of Charles Edward, in the spring, ‘It
is currently reported that the young Pretender, who lately made such
a disturbance in these kingdoms, died a few days ago in Switzerland.’
However, the prince was alive again in June. In that month the London
and Paris journals were treating of a trade riot which was being
turned to political purposes. In June, soon after the king left London
for Hanover, the metropolis was disturbed by a report that a body
of Northumberland colliers, to the amount of six thousand, had left
the pits and had scattered themselves among the hills and about the
border. Out of what seems to have been a mere strike, the ‘Gazette de
Hollande’ made an incipient insurrection. On the faith of its Jacobite
correspondent in London, it announced that one of the leaders of the
colliers had ascended a hill, and in presence of his followers had
proclaimed Charles Edward as ‘King of England, France, and Ireland,’
and ‘_Defender of the Faith_,’ to which the devout pitmen had replied
with a fervent ‘Amen!’
[Sidenote: ‘_DEFENDER OF THE FAITH._’]
‘Defender of the Faith!’ What could this mean? It is the first
‘inkling’ of the young Chevalier’s playing with his ‘orthodoxy.’ The
‘fermentation’ puzzled a French journalist, who, at the close of June,
wrote thus: ‘Prince Edward (_sic_) keeps up an intercourse with secret
correspondents in England; and one does not absolutely know in what
corner of Europe he is residing. He is said to have gone over the whole
of the North. He is an extraordinary and indefatigable man; and travels
twenty leagues a-foot, with a couple of confidential followers. If he
were daring enough to pass into Scotland, during the King of England’s
absence, what, without a party on which he can depend, will he be able
to accomplish, wanting (as he does) arms and money, and especially
_without having publicly embraced the Anglican religion_?’
[Sidenote: _NEWS FOR LONDON._]
Had Charles Edward then _privately_ become a member of the Protestant
Church of England? Did the London correspondent of the ‘Gazette de
Hollande’ know anything of an intention to that effect? However this
may be, it is certain that in the autumn of this year we have the
record, true or false, of the presence of the young Chevalier in
London, and of his renunciation of Roman Catholicism, _privately_,
however, and under an assumed character, in one of the London churches!
In December the same journals chronicle as a notable incident, ‘That
the Chevalier de St. George and his Son (call’d Cardinall of York)
had a long audience of the Pope, a few days ago, which ’tis pretended
turn’d upon some despatches, receiv’d the day before from the
Chevalier’s eldest Son.’ Whatever these despatches contained, loyal
Londoners hugged themselves on the fact that the Princess of Wales
was taking her part in annually increasing the number of heirs to the
Protestant Succession, and loyal clerics expounded the favourite text
(Prov. xxix. 2), ‘When the righteous are in authority, the people
rejoice.’ Preachers of the old Sacheverel quality took the other half
of the verse, ‘When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.’ These
were convenient texts, which did not require particularly clever
fellows to twist them in any direction.
[Illustration: Decorative Banner]
CHAPTER XII.
(1751 to 1761.)
[Illustration: Drop-F]rom the year 1751 to the coronation of George
III. (1761), the London Parliament and the London newspapers were the
sole sources from which the metropolitan Jacobites, who were not ‘in
the secret,’ could obtain any information. There were two events in
the earlier year which in some degree interested the Jacobite party.
The first was the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. His way of life
has been mercilessly censured, but, considering the standard of morals
of his time, it was not worse than that of contemporary princes. It
was quite as pure as that of Charles Edward (the Jacobite ‘Prince of
Wales’), with whom ultra-Tories disparagingly compared him. Many lies
were told of him, cowardly defamers knowing that a prince cannot stoop
to defend himself from calumny. It was assumed that he was of the bad
quality of the worthless, scampish men who were among his friends. The
assumption was not altogether unjustifiable. ‘He possessed many amiable
qualities,’ said Mrs. Delany, speaking for the aristocracy. ‘His
condescension was such that he kept very bad company,’ said a May Fair
parson on the part of the church. The well-known Jacobite epigram not
only refused to be sorry at his death, but declared that had it been
the whole royal generation, it would have been so much the better for
the nation. The press chronicled the event without comment. On ‘Change,
the Jacobites openly said, ‘Oh, had it only been the butcher!’ A few
weeks later everybody was drinking ‘the Prince of Wales’――George or
Charles Edward.
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF GREAT PERSONAGES._]
The other death was that of Viscount Bolingbroke, which occurred
in the last month of the year 1751. Bubb Dodington reflected the
general indifference, by the simple entry in his Diary, ‘Dec. 12.
This day died Lord Bolingbroke.’ The newspapers said little more of
the pseudo-Jacobite than they had said of the prince. It amounted
to the sum of Mrs. Delany’s testimony, and ‘_she_ remembered Lord
Bolingbroke’s person; that he was handsome, had a fine address, but
that he was a great drinker, and swore terribly.’ His own treachery to
the Chevalier de St. George caused more than one honest Jacobite to be
suspected of treason to his lawful king. He made the name odious, and
almost warranted the assertion of Burgess (an old divine, a familiar
friend of the St. John family), who declared in all good faith, that
God ever hated Jacobites, and therefore He called Jacob’s sons by the
name of Israelites!
[Sidenote: _THE NEW HEIR TO THE THRONE._]
The references to modern Jacobites in the Parliament at Westminster
began, however, now to be fewer and far between. There was not, on
the other hand, much additional respect expressed for ‘the happy
establishment.’ On an occasion in 1752, when 22,000_l._ were about to
be voted as a subsidy to the Elector of Saxony, some of ‘_the electoral
family_’ seem to have been present in the House. Beckford, as outspoken
as Shippen of old, saw his opportunity and remarked: ‘I am here as an
English gentleman; as such, I have the right to talk freely of the
greatest subject of the King, and much more of the greatest subject
of any foreign state. If there be any persons in the House, belonging
to any Princes of Germany, they ought not to be here; and, if they
are, they must take it for their pains;――for, their presence, I hope,
will not keep any member in such an awe as to prevent him from freely
speaking.’ The subsidy, however, was granted.
The principles of the men who surrounded the young Prince of Wales
became of absorbing interest,――for pure, as well as party, reasons.
Bubb Dodington, in December, 1752, speaks in his Diary of an anonymous
manifesto, which was in fact a remonstrance to the king from the Whig
nobility and gentry, against the method according to which the heir
to the throne was being educated; and also against the arbitrary
principles of the men then in power; but especially that ‘there was
a permanency of power placed in three men whom they looked upon as
dangerous; and that these three men entirely trusted and were governed
by two others, one of whom had the absolute direction of the Prince,
and was of a Tory family, and bred in arbitrary principles; and the
other, who was bred a professed Jacobite, of a declared Jacobite
family, and whose brother, now at Rome, was a favourite of the
Pretender, and even his Secretary of State. In short, the corollary
was, that Murray, Solicitor-General, and Stone, governed the country.’
A copy of this anti-Jacobite declaration reached the king’s hands.
‘What was the effect,’ says the diarist, ‘I can’t tell; but I know they
were very much intrigued to find out whence it came, and who was the
author.’
[Sidenote: _LORD EGMONT ON JACOBITES._]
In 1753, in the debate in the Commons on the number of land forces to
be raised and paid for during that year, Lord Egmont made a speech, the
immediate report of which must have raised surprise and anger in St.
James’s Street and Pall Mall. That Lord Egmont should denounce increase
in the number of men was to be expected, but the Jacobites hardly
expected from him such a blow as was dealt in the following words:――‘I
am sure the old pretence of Jacobitism can now furnish no argument for
keeping up a numerous army in time of peace, for they met with such a
rebuff in their last attempt that I am convinced they will never make
another, whatever sovereign possesses, as his Majesty does, the hearts
and affections of _all the rest_ of his subjects, especially as they
must now be convinced, however much France may encourage them to rebel,
she will never give them any effectual assistance.’
[Sidenote: _IN BOTH HOUSES._]
It is observable that the Jacobites began to be spoken of in less
unworthy tones by their antagonists than before. The Pope and
‘Papists’ were referred to in no unbecoming phrases. Indeed, the
_English_ ‘Catholics’ were never rancorously assailed. The popular
spirit was (and is) against that Ultramontanism which would stop at no
crime to secure its own triumph; which recognises no law, no king, no
country, but Roman, and which, asserting licence for itself, is the
bitter and treacherous enemy of every civil and religious liberty.
The Earl of Bath reflected the better spirit that prevailed when, in
1753, in the debate on the Bill for annexing the forfeited estates
in Scotland to the Crown (which ultimately passed), he said, ‘I wish
national prejudices were utterly extinguished. We ought to live like
brothers, for we have long lived under the same sovereign, and are now
firmly united not only into one kingdom, but into one and the same
general interest; therefore, the question ought never to be, who are
English? or, who are Scots? but, who are most capable and most diligent
in the service of their King and Country.’
One reference to the rebellion was made in the House of Commons, in
1754, in the debate on the propriety of extending the action of the
Mutiny Bill to the East Indies. Murray, the Solicitor- (soon after the
Attorney-) General, observed, ‘His present Majesty will not attempt
it’ (proclaim martial law, under any circumstance, independently
of parliament), ‘as no such thing was thought of during the late
Rebellion, notwithstanding the immense danger we should have been in,
had His Royal Highness and troops from Flanders been detained but a
few weeks by contrary winds.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE HEALTHS._]
Although there was plotting in 1753, and mischief was a-foot, and
Government spies were far from having an idle time of it, the royal
family lived in comparative quiet, save one passing episode connected
with a charge laid, in the month of March, against Bishop Johnson,
of Gloucester, Murray (Solicitor-General), and Stone (one of the
sub-preceptors to the Princes George and Edward)――as Jacobites――of
having had, as Walpole puts it, ‘an odd custom of toasting the
Chevalier and my Lord Dunbar (Murray’s brother and one of the
Chevalier’s peers) at one Vernon’s, a merchant, about twenty years
ago. _The Pretender’s counterpart_ (the King) ordered the Council to
examine into it.’ The accuser, Fawcett, a lawyer, prevaricated. ‘Stone
and Murray,’ says Walpole, ‘took the Bible, on their innocence. Bishop
Johnson scrambled out of the scrape at the very beginning; and the
Council have reported to the King that the accusation was false and
malicious.’
Vernon was in reality a linen-draper. Few people doubted the alleged
drinking of Jacobite healths at his house. The dowager Princess of
Wales told Bubb Dodington that her late husband had told her that Stone
was a Jacobite,――the prince was convinced of it, and when affairs went
ill abroad, he used to say to her in a passion: How could better be
expected when such a Jacobite as Stone could be trusted?
[Sidenote: _THE ROYAL FAMILY._]
Lord Harcourt, Prince George’s governor, was a pedantic man, having
no sympathies with the young. My lord was not much of a Mentor for
a young Telemachus. He bored the prince by enjoining him to hold up
his head, and, ‘for God’s sake,’ to turn out his toes. The tutors of
Prince George, after his father’s death, were in fact divided among
themselves. Bishop Hayter, of Norwich, and Lord Harcourt were openly
at war with Stone and Scott (the last put in by Bolingbroke), who
were countenanced by the dowager princess and Murray, ‘so my Lord
Bolingbroke dead, will govern, which he never could living.’ Murray,
and Stone, and Cresset were Jacobites. Cresset called Lord Harcourt a
groom, and the bishop an atheist. The princess accused the latter of
teaching her sons, George and Edward, nothing. The bishop retorted by
declaring that he was never allowed to teach them anything. His chief
complaint was that Jacobite Stone had lent Prince George (or the Prince
of Wales) a highly Jacobite book to read, namely, ‘The Revolutions of
England,’ by Father D’Orléans; but the objectionable work had really
been lent by ‘Lady Augusta’ to Prince Edward, and by him to his elder
brother.
[Sidenote: _PARLIAMENTARY ANECDOTES._]
Tindal, the historian, remarks that about this very year (1753) ‘a
wonderful spirit of loyalty began to take place all over the kingdom.’
The debates in the two Houses at Westminster confirm this. The old
anxious tone was no longer heard. Not a single reference to Jacobites
and their designs can be found in the reports of the proceedings in the
Legislature. ‘High Church,’ which was once a disloyal menace, became
a subject of ridicule. Horace Walpole thus playfully illustrated the
ignorance of the High Church party in a debate on the proposal to
repeal the Jews’ Naturalization Bill. ‘I remember,’ he said ‘to have
heard a story of a gentleman, a High Churchman, who was a member of
this House, when it was the custom that candles could not be brought in
without a motion regularly made and seconded for that purpose, and an
order of the House pursuant thereto, so that it often became a question
whether candles should be brought in or no, and this question was
sometimes debated until the members could hardly see one another, for
those who were against, or for putting off the affair before the House,
were always against the question for candles. Now it happened, upon one
of those occasions, that the High Church party were against the affair
then depending, and therefore against the question for candles; but
this gentleman, by mistake, divided for it, and when he was challenged
by one of his party for being against them, “Oh Lord!” says he, “I’m
sorry for it, but I thought that candles were for the church!”’
[Sidenote: _ATTEMPT TO MAKE ‘PERVERTS.’_]
Admiral Vernon, ‘the people’s man,’ supporting the popular prejudice
against the emancipation of the Jews, said that if the Bill passed,
rich Jews would insist upon the conversion of everyone employed by
them, ‘and should they once get the majority of common people on their
side, we should soon be all obliged to be circumcised. That this is no
chimerical danger, Sir, I am convinced from what lately happened in my
county. There was there a great and a rich Popish lady lived in it,
who, by connivance, had publicly a chapel in her own house, where mass
was celebrated every Sunday and Holiday. The lady, out of zeal for her
religion, had every such day a great number of buttocks and sirloins
of beef roasted or boiled, with plenty of roots and greens from her
own garden, and every poor person who came to hear mass at her chapel
was sure of a good dinner. What was the consequence? The neighbouring
parish churches were all deserted, and the lady’s chapel was crowded,
for as the common people have not learning enough, no more than some of
their betters, to understand or judge of abstruse speculative points of
divinity, they thought that mass, with a good dinner, was better than
the church service without one, and probably they would judge in the
same manner of a Jewish synagogue.’
[Sidenote: _DR. ARCHIBALD CAMERON._]
In one sense Tindal’s view of the general increase of loyalty was not
ill-founded. There was, however, an increase of Jacobite audacity
also; but the Government were as well aware of it as they were that
the Chevalier was hiding at Bouillon, and that the people there were
heartily sick of him. One proof of their vigilance was made manifest
in the spring of 1753. On the 16th of April, at 6 o’clock in the
evening, a coach, with an escort of dragoons about it, and a captive
gentleman within, was driven rapidly through the City towards the
Tower. The day was the anniversary of Culloden. The time of day was
that when the friends of the happy establishment were at the tipsiest
of their tipsy delight in drunken honour of the victory. It was soon
known who the prisoner was. He was Dr. Archibald Cameron, brother of
Duncan Cameron, of Lochiel. Duncan had joined Charles Edward, in
obedience to his sentimental prince, but with the conviction that
the insurrection would be a failure. Archibald had followed his
elder brother as in duty bound, and the prince from a principle of
allegiance. After Culloden and much misery, they and others escaped
to France by the skin of their teeth. The King of France gave Duncan
the command of a regiment of Scots; Archibald was appointed doctor to
it, and each pretty well starved on his appointment. Both were under
attainder, and subject to death, not having surrendered before a
certain date, or offered to do so after it.
Had Archibald remained quietly in France, his life at least would
have been in no danger; but in the early part of 1753, he crossed to
Scotland in the utmost secrecy, and when he landed he had not the
remotest idea that the eye of Sam Cameron, a Government spy, was
upon him, by whom his movements were made known to the Ministry at
the Cockpit in Downing Street. There can be no doubt that the doctor
went to his native land on a political mission. ‘He certainly,’ says
Walpole, ‘came over with commission to feel the ground.’ He always
protested that he was there on private business connected with the
estate of Lochiel. His enemies declared that the private business
referred to a deposit of money for the Jacobite cause, the secret of
the hiding-place of which was known to Archibald, and that he intended
to appropriate the cash to his own use. Had Cameron’s mission not been
hostile to the established government, he probably would have asked
permission to visit Scotland; and, more than probably, he would have
been permitted to do so. Be this as it may, his namesake, the spy,
betrayed him; and the Justice Clerk of Edinburgh, washing his hands
of the business, sent the trapped captive to London, where he arrived
on the seventh anniversary of the decisive overthrow of the Stuart
cause, and while the ‘joyous and loyal spirits’ were getting preciously
hysterical in memory thereof. The ‘quality,’ however, were supremely
indifferent ‘Nobody,’ writes Walpole, ‘troubled their head about him,
or anything else but Newmarket, where the Duke of Cumberland is at
present making a campaign, with half the nobility, and half the money
of England, attending him.’
[Sidenote: _BEFORE THE COUNCIL._]
In the Tower Dr. Cameron was allowed to rest some eight and forty
hours, and then a multitude saw him carried from the fortress to where
the Privy Council were sitting. The illustrious members of that body
were in an angry mood. They were blustering in their manner, but they
stooped to flattering promises if he would only make a revelation.
When he declined to gratify them, they fell into loud tumultuous
threatenings. They could neither frighten nor cajole him; and
accordingly they flung him to the law, and to the expounders and the
executants of it.
[Sidenote: _TRIAL OF CAMERON._]
Very short work did the latter make with the poor gentleman. It is
said that when he was first captured he denied being the man they took
him for. Now, on the 17th of May, he made no such denial, nor did he
deny having been in arms against the ‘present happy establishment.’ He
declared that circumstances, over which he had no control, prevented
him from clearing his attainder by a surrender on or before a stated
day. But he neither concealed his principles nor asked for mercy.
There was no intention of according him any. Sir William Lee and his
brother judges, the identity of the prisoner being undisputed, agreed
that he must be put to death under the old attainder, and Lee delivered
the sentence with a sort of solemn alacrity. It was the old, horrible
sentence of partial hanging, disembowelling, and so forth. When Lee had
reached the declaration as to hanging, he looked the doctor steadily
in the face, said with diabolical emphasis, ‘but NOT till you are
dead;’ and added all the horrible indignities to which the poor body,
externally and internally, was to be subjected. The judge was probably
vexed at finding no symptom that he had scared the helpless victim, who
was carried back to the Tower amid the sympathies of Jacobites and the
decorous curiosity of ladies and gentlemen who gazed at him, and the
gay dragoons escorting him, as they passed.
[Sidenote: _THE DOCTOR’S JACOBITISM._]
Next day, and for several days, Jean Cameron, the doctor’s wife,
was seen going to St. James’s Palace, to Leicester House, and to
Kensington. She was admitted, by proper introduction to majesty, to
the dowager Princess of Wales and to the Princess Amelia. The sunshine
of such High Mightinesses should ever bear with it grace and mercy;
but poor and pretty Jean Cameron found nothing but civility, and an
expression of regret that the law must be left to take its course. She
went back to cheer, if she could, her doomed, but not daunted, husband.
He was not allowed pen and ink and paper, but under rigid restrictions.
What he wrote was read. If it was not to the taste of the warders,
they tore up the manuscript, and deprived the doctor of the means of
writing. Nevertheless, he contrived to get slips of paper and a pencil,
and therewith to record certain opinions, all of which he made over to
his wife.
It cannot be said that the record showed any respect whatever for the
king _de facto_, or for his family. These were referred to as ‘the
Usurper and his Faction.’ The Duke of Cumberland was ‘the inhuman son
of the Elector of Hanover.’ Not that Cameron wished any harm to them
hereafter. He hoped God would forgive, as he put it, ‘all my enemies,
murderers, and false accusers, from the Elector of Hanover (the present
possessor of the throne of our injured sovereign) and his bloody son
down to Sam Cameron, the basest of their spies, _as I freely do_!’ He
himself, he said, had done many a good turn to English prisoners in
Scotland, had also prevented the Highlanders from burning the houses
and other property of Whigs, ‘for all which,’ he added, ‘I am like to
meet with a Hanover reward.’
[Sidenote: _CHARLES EDWARD, A PROTESTANT._]
On the other hand, the doomed man wrote in terms of the highest praise
of the old and young Chevalier, or the King and Prince of Wales. There
would be neither peace nor prosperity till the Stuarts were restored.
The prince was as tenderly affectioned as he was brave, and Dr. Cameron
knew of no order issued at Culloden to give no quarter to the Elector’s
troops. As aide-de-camp to the prince, he must (he said) have known if
such an order was issued. On another subject, the condemned Jacobite
wrote: ‘On the word of a dying man, the last time I had the honour of
seeing His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, he told me from
his own mouth, and bid me assure his friends from him, that he was a
member of the Church of England.’ It is to be regretted that no date
fixes ‘the last time.’ As to the assurance, it proves the folly of the
speaker; also, that Cameron himself was not a Roman Catholic, as he was
reported to be.
From Walpole’s Letters and the daily and weekly papers, ample details
of the last moments of this unfortunate man may be collected. They
were marked by a calm, unaffected heroism. ‘The parting with his wife
(writes Walpole) the night before (his execution) was heroic and
tender. He let her stay till the last moment, when being aware that the
gates of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she fell at his
feet in agonies: he said, “Madam, this is not what you promised me,”
and embracing her, forced her to retire; then, with the same coolness,
looked at the window till her coach was out of sight, after which, he
turned about and wept.’
[Sidenote: _CAMERON’S CREED._]
On the following morning, the 7th of June, Dr. Cameron expressed a
strong desire to see his wife once more, to take a final leave, but
this was explained to him to be impossible. With a singular carefulness
as to his own appearance, which carefulness indeed distinguished all
who suffered in the same cause, he was dressed in a new suit, a light
coloured coat, red waistcoat and breeches, and even a new bagwig!
The hangman chained him to the hurdle on which he was drawn from the
Tower to Tyburn. ‘He looked much at the Spectators in the Houses
and Balconies,’ say the papers, ‘as well as at those in the Street,
and he bowed to several persons.’ He seemed relieved by his arrival
at the fatal tree. Rising readily from the straw in the hurdle, he
ascended the steps into the cart, the hangman slightly supporting
him under one arm. Cameron, with a sort of cheerfulness, welcomed a
reverend gentleman who followed him,――‘a Gentleman in a lay habit,’
says the ‘Daily Advertiser,’ ‘who prayed with him and then left him
to his private devotions, by which ’twas imagined the Doctor was a
Roman Catholic, and the Gentleman who prayed with him, a Priest.’ This
imagining was wrong. On one of the slips, pencilled in the Tower, and
delivered to his wife, the Doctor had written: ‘I die a member of
the Episcopal Church of Scotland, as by law established before that
most unnatural Rebellion began in 1688, which, for the sins of this
nation, hath continued till this day.’ At Tyburn, moreover, Cameron
made a statement to the sheriff, that he had always been a member of
the Church of England. There was no discrepancy in this, he was simply
an active Jacobite Nonjuror. ◆[Sidenote: _THE LAST VICTIM._]◆ As the
reverend gentleman who attended him, hurriedly descended the steps, he
slipped. Cameron was quite concerned for him, and called to him from
the cart, ‘I think you do not know the way so well as I do.’ Walpole
says: ‘His only concern seemed to be at the ignominy of Tyburn. He was
not disturbed at the dresser for his body, nor for the fire to burn
his bowels;’ but he remembered the emphatic remark of his Judge, that
the burning was to take place while he was yet alive; and he asked
the sheriff to order things so that he might be quite dead before the
more brutal part of the sentence was carried out. The sheriff was a
remarkably polite person. He had begged Cameron, after he had mounted
into the cart, not to hurry himself, but to take his own time: they
would wait his pleasure and convenience, and so on. The courteous
official now promised he would see the Doctor effectually strangled out
of life, before knife or fire touched him. On which, Cameron declared
himself to be ready. It was at this juncture, the chaplain hurriedly
slipt down the steps. ‘The wretch,’ says Walpole, who in doubt as to
his Church, calls him ‘minister or priest,’ ‘after taking leave, went
into a landau, where, not content with seeing the Doctor hanged, he let
down the top of the landau, for the better convenience of seeing him
embowelled.’
[Sidenote: _IN THE SAVOY._]
Even such brutes as then found a sensual delight in witnessing the
Tyburn horrors were touched by the unpretentious heroism of this
unhappy victim. Some of them recovered their spirits a day or two
after, when a man was pilloried at Charing Cross. They repaired to the
spot with a supply of bricks and flung them with such savage dexterity
as soon to break a couple of the patient’s ribs. On the 9th of June
at midnight, there was a spectacle to which they were not invited.
The Government (wisely enough) were resolved that Cameron’s funeral
should be private. The body lay where Lovat’s had lain, at Stephenson’s
the undertaker, in the Strand, opposite Exeter Change. A few Jacobite
friends attended and saw the body quietly deposited in what the papers
styled, ‘the great vault in the precincts of the Savoy.’
It was in this month a report was spread that an attempt had been made
to blow up the Tower, from which, perhaps, the legend has arisen that
the young Chevalier and a friend in disguise had been there to see if
it could not be done! ‘The Report,’ according to the ‘Weekly Journal,’
‘of a lighted match being found at the door of the Powder Magazine
in the Tower was not true.’ A bit of burnt paper lying on the ground
within the Tower gave rise to a story which agitated all London for a
day or two;――and which will be presently referred to.
[Sidenote: _A SCENE AT RICHARDSON’S._]
How Dr. Cameron’s death affected both parties, in London, is best
illustrated by a well-known and picturesque incident recorded by
Boswell. Soon after the execution, Hogarth was visiting Richardson, the
author of ‘Clarissa Harlowe.’ ‘And being a warm partisan of George II.,
he observed to Richardson that certainly there must have been some very
unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this particular case
which had induced the King to approve of an execution for rebellion so
long after the time when it was committed, as this had the appearance
of putting a man to death in cold blood, and was very unlike his
Majesty’s usual clemency. While he was talking, he perceived a person
standing at a window of the room shaking his head, and rolling himself
about in a strange ridiculous manner. He concluded that he was an idiot
whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson, as a very
good man. To his great surprise, however, this figure stalked forward
to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up
the argument, and burst out into an invective against George II., as
one who, upon all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous, mentioning
many instances. In short, he displayed such a power of eloquence that
Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that the
idiot had been at the moment inspired. Hogarth and Johnson were not
made known to each other at this interview.’
[Sidenote: _CAMERON’S CASE._]
Neither Hogarth nor Johnson knew the real facts of this case. Cameron
played a desperate game and lost his stake. Scott, in the Introduction
to Redgauntlet,’ declares that whether the execution of Cameron was
political or otherwise, it might have been justified upon reasons
of a public nature had the king’s Ministry thought proper to do so.
Cameron had not visited Scotland solely on private affairs. ‘It was
not considered prudent by the English Ministry to let it be generally
known that he came to inquire about a considerable sum of money which
had been remitted from France to the friends of the exiled family.’ He
had also, as Scott points out, a commission to confer with Macpherson
of Cluny who, from 1746 to 1756, was the representative or chief
agent of the ‘rightful King,’ an office which he carried on under
circumstances of personal misery and peril. Cameron and Macpherson were
to gather together the scattered embers of disaffection. The former,
being captured, paid the forfeit which was legally due. ‘The ministers,
however,’ says Scott, ‘thought it proper to leave Dr. Cameron’s new
schemes in concealment, lest, by divulging them, they had indicated the
channel of communication which, as is now well known, they possessed
to all the plots of Charles Edward. But it was equally ill-advised
and ungenerous to sacrifice the character of the King to the policy
of the administration. Both points might have been gained by sparing
the life of Dr. Cameron, after conviction, and limiting his punishment
to perpetual exile.’ As it was, Jacobite plots continued to ‘rise and
burst like bubbles on a fountain.’ An affectionate memory of Cameron
was also transmitted through the hearts of his descendants. In the
reign of Victoria, his grandson restored honour to a name which, in a
political point of view, had never been dishonoured.
In the royal chapel of the Savoy, the following inscription is to
be read on the wall beneath a painted glass window:――_In memory of
Archibald Cameron, brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who having
been attainted after the battle of Culloden in 1746, escaped to France,
but returning to Scotland in 1753, was apprehended and executed. He was
buried beneath the Altar of this Chapel. This window is inserted by Her
Majesty’s permission in place of a sculptured tablet which was erected
by his grandson, Charles Hay Cameron, in 1846, and consumed by the fire
which partially destroyed the Chapel in 1864._
The window above referred to has six lights, and each light now
contains figures representing _St. Peter_, _St. Philip_, _St. Paul_,
_St. John_, _St. James_, and _St. Andrew_.
[Sidenote: _A MINOR OFFENDER._]
As a sample of how minor offences on the part of unquiet Jacobites
were punished, the case may be cited of the Rev. James Taylor, who was
not allowed to indulge his Jacobitism even in a compassionate form. A
beggar was arrested in his progress from house to house. He was found
to be the bearer of a recommendatory letter from the Nonjuror Taylor,
in which it was stated that the bearer had fought on the right side
at Preston Pans and Culloden. For this offence Mr. Taylor was tried,
convicted, and heavily sentenced;――namely, to two years’ imprisonment,
a fine of 300_l._, and to find sureties for his good behaviour during
the next seven years, himself in 1000_l._, and two others in 500_l._
each.
All this time, Parliament was perfectly tranquil. There was no flash
of anti-Jacobitism. There was nothing in the debates but what partook
of the lightest of summer-lightning. In the whole session of 1755,
there is but one allusion to Jacobites, and that took the form of a
wish that, ten years before, Scotland had been as heavily oppressed
as England was,――in that and many a succeeding year,――in one special
respect. Mr. Robert Dundas, in the Commons’ debate on speedily manning
the Navy, insisted on the legality and propriety of pressing seamen,
and remarked: ‘How happy it would have been for Scotland, in 1745,
if all her seamen had been pressed into the public service, in order
to man a few guard-ships, to prevent the landing of those who, at
that time, raised such a flame in the country; and yet I believe that
a press could not then have been carried on without the aid of the
military.’
[Sidenote: _SUSPICION AGAINST THE DUKE._]
At this time there was one especial trouble in the royal family.
The dowager Princess of Wales had as much dread of the conqueror at
Culloden, as if he had been the Jacobite prince himself. Her dominant
idea was that the really good-natured and now corpulent duke would
act Richard III. towards the prince, her son, if opportunity should
offer. Bubb Dodington says, in his Diary, May, 1755: ‘On my commending
the Prince’s figure, and saying he was much taller than the King, she
replied, yes; he was taller than his uncle. I said, in height it might
be so, but if they measured round, the Duke had the advantage of him.
She answered, it was true; but she hoped it was the only advantage that
he ever would have of him.’
[Sidenote: _THE ANTI-JACOBITE PRESS._]
In the following year, 1756, electioneering politics found violent
suggestion and expression. Walpole, referring to the clamour raised by
the Jacobites, speaks of ‘Instructions from counties, cities, boroughs,
especially from the City of London, in the style of 1641, and really in
the spirit of 1715 and 1745, (which) have raised a great flame.’ On the
other hand, Jacobites and their manifestations were treated by the Whig
press with boundless contempt. For example, the ‘Contest,’ in 1757,
flung this paragraph at the supposed few _Jacks_ now left in London to
read it:――‘The word _Jacobite_ is _vox et prœterea nihil_. The Name
survives after the Party is extinct. There may be a few enthusiastic
Bigots who deem Obstinacy a Merit, and who appear to be ungrateful for
the Liberty and Security they enjoy under the present Government, and
insensible of the Calamity and Oppression of the Government they would
be willing to restore. But their Power is as inconsiderable as their
Principles are detestable. And many of them, had they an Opportunity
of accomplishing their proposed desires, would be the last to put them
in Execution; for they are mostly influenced by an idle Affectation of
Singularity, and the ridiculous Pride of opposing the Common Sense of
their Fellow Citizens.’
In the same year, the ‘Independent Freeholder’ turned the question
to party account, and divided the people of England into three
classes. It admitted the diminished numbers of Jacobites, recorded
their disaffection, and also accounted for it. The three classes
were――Place Hunters, Jacobites, and English Protestants, whether Whig
or Tory. The ‘Freeholder’ described the Jacobites as:――‘An Offspring
of Zealots, early trained to support the divine hereditary Right of
Men, who forfeited all Right by persisting to do every Wrong. They
are not considerable in Number; and had probably mixed with the Mass
of rational Men, had not the continued Abuses of the Administration
furnished cause of Clamour, enabling secret Enemies of the Constitution
to cherish a groundless Enmity to the Succession.’
[Sidenote: _THE CITY GATES._]
As the reign of George II. drew to a close, in the autumn of 1760, a
change came over the City of London, which, to many, indicated a new
era; namely, the destruction of those City gates in the preservation
of which timid Whigs saw safety from the assaults of Jacobites. _Read_
announced the fate of those imaginary defences, in the ‘Journal’ of
August 2nd:――‘On Wednesday, the materials of the three following
City Gates were sold before the Committee of Lands, to Mr. Blagden,
a carpenter, in Coleman Street; namely, Aldgate, for 157_l._ 10_s._;
Cripplegate, for 91_l._; and Ludgate, for 148_l._ The purchaser is to
begin to pull down the two first, on the first day of September; and
Ludgate on the 4th of August, and is to clear away all the rubbish,
&c., in two months from these days.’ In two months, a new reign had
begun, and the old gates had disappeared.
But before proceeding to the new reign, there remains to be chronicled
how the ordinary London Jacobites obtained news of _their_ King, James,
and _their_ Prince of Wales, Charles Edward.
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER XIII.
(1751 to 1761.)
[Sidenote: _THE OLD CHEVALIER AND THE CARDINAL._]
[Illustration: Drop-D]uring this decade, there was great anxiety, on
the part of the Jacobites in London, to have news of their Prince.
Of their ‘King’s’ whereabout they knew as much as the papers could
tell them. These anxious Jacobites who eagerly opened the London
journals for news from Rome, of ‘the King’ or ‘Prince of Wales,’
were not often rewarded for their pains. The ‘London Gazette,’ which
chronicled the veriest small beer, had not a word to say as to the
Chevalier or his sons. The other papers recorded, for the comfort or
diversion of readers, such paragraphs as these; namely, that Cardinal
York, on his brother’s birthday, had given a grand entertainment to
a brilliant company of Cardinals and Ladies; and that Rome was more
crowded with English nobility than Hanover, even when King George was
in his electoral dominions. Some sympathy was excited in Jacobite
company, at the intelligence that the Cardinal was recovering from ‘an
attack of Small Pocks,’ which had carried off thousands of victims.
As for _Prince Edward_, as the Cardinal’s brother is often called in
the papers, ‘his place of residence is not known, there being no
other proof of his being alive but the rejoicings of his father on his
son’s birthday.’ Next, ‘Read’ announced, no doubt for the pleasure
of some of its readers, ‘We hear from Rome, by authentick hand, that
Henderson has been formally excommunicated for his “History of the
Rebellion.”’ ‘No one can tell in what place Prince Edward resides,’
says another ‘authentick hand,’ ‘it is currently reported that he is
actually in Italy;’ and again, ‘Some are ready to believe he is still
_incog._ in France.’ Then came ‘authentick’ news to London, of ignoble
quarrels between the Chevalier and his younger son, squabbles about
money, squabbles among their friends in trying to reconcile them;――the
Pope himself being mixed up in the turmoil, and getting such grateful
return as usually falls to mortal mediators. The father and son were at
vulgar loggerheads on the vulgar but important subject of money. Living
together, each wished that the other should contribute more towards
keeping up the household in as much royal state as could be had for
the money. Each also wished the other to send away the confidential
servants that other most wished to keep, and neither would yield.
Subsequently, the London papers tell how the Cardinal went off in a
great huff and princely state, and how he was received in the ‘Italian
cities with guns, like a king’s son,’ as he was held to be. The ‘King,’
his father, is described as ‘greatly distressed, having always counted
on the affection of his son.’ At another time came one of those scraps
of news which always kept alive a feeling of hope in the bosoms of
Jacobites. ‘The Grand Pretender’ had been for two hours in conference
with the Pope, ‘on receipt of important despatches from his Eldest
Son and Heir, Edward. The despatches are at present kept a secret.’
They were supposed to be favourable to something, for the younger son
had promised to return. Probably some tears fell from soft Jacobite
eyes in London, at reading that, as ‘the son tarried, the father stood
patiently waiting for him, in the Hall of his House, and wept over him
when he came.’ The good-natured Pope was almost as much touched.
[Sidenote: _ROMAN NEWS IN LONDON PAPERS._]
All the honours conferred on the Cardinal of York in Rome, and all the
royal and solemn ceremonies which took place on the occasion, were duly
reported in the London papers. The father seems to have been warmly
desirous that dignities should be heaped on the younger son’s head.
The cardinal affected, perhaps felt, reluctance. On his gracefully
yielding, the ‘Grand Pretender’ made him a present of a set of horses.
Reports of the death of Charles Edward had been ripe enough. The
suspense was relieved when, in March, 1753, news reached London from
Rome that the old Pretender had received letters from his son, with the
information that the writer was well; but, says the ‘Weekly Journal,’
‘the Chevalier de St. George don’t absolutely discover where his son
is.’ That he had known of his son’s whereabout, from the first, is most
certain; but he didn’t absolutely discover it to every enquirer.
[Sidenote: _A SON OF ROB ROY._]
A personage of some note was in London this year, the eldest son of Rob
Roy,――James Drummond Macgregor. He seems to have previously petitioned
Charles Edward for pecuniary help, on the ground of suffering from the
persecution of the Hanoverian government, and to have been willing to
serve that government on his own terms. In the introduction to ‘Rob
Roy,’ Sir Walter Scott says that James Drummond Macgregor made use of a
license he held to come to London, and had an interview, as he avers,
with Lord Holdernesse. ‘His lordship and the Under-Secretary put many
puzzling questions to him, and, as he says, offered him a situation,
which would bring him bread, in the government’s service. This office
was advantageous as to emolument, but in the opinion of James Drummond,
his acceptance of it would have been a disgrace to his birth, and have
rendered him a scourge to his country. If such a tempting offer and
sturdy rejection had any foundation in fact, it probably related to
some plan of espionage on the Jacobites, which the government might
hope to carry on by means of a man who, in the matter of Allan Breck
Stewart, had shown no great nicety of feeling. Drummond Macgregor was
so far accommodating as to intimate his willingness to act in any
station in which other gentlemen of honour served, but not otherwise;
an answer which, compared with some passages of his past life, may
remind the reader of Ancient Pistol standing upon his reputation.
Having thus proved intractable, as he tells the story, to the proposals
of Lord Holdernesse, James Drummond was ordered instantly to quit
England.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE PARAGRAPHS._]
The son of Rob Roy, hated and suspected by the Jacobites, got over to
Dunkirk, but he was hunted thence as a spy. He succeeded in reaching
Paris, ‘with only the sum of thirteen livres for immediate subsistence,
and with absolute beggary staring him in the face.’
The hopes of the friends of the Stuarts were encouraged by a paragraph
in the London sheets of 1754 stating, that though the Chevalier was
suffering from sciatica, he was well enough to receive a stranger
(in June), ‘who, by the reception he met with, was supposed to be a
person of distinction. Two days later, the banker, Belloni, had a long
private conference with the Chevalier. What passed was not known, but
what followed _was_; namely, a large sum of money was advanced by the
banker.’ It is easy to imagine how paragraphs like the above stirred
the pulses at the Cocoa Tree and at St. Alban’s coffee-house.
The Jacobite interest was kept up in 1755 by paragraphs which showed
that the family were well with such a civil potentate as the King of
Spain, and with such a religious one as the Pope. The King of Spain,
it was said, had conferred a benefice on Cardinal York, worth 6,000
piastres yearly. In the autumn the London papers announced that ‘The
Chevalier de St. George, who enjoyed the Grand Priory of England, of
the Religion of Malta, which gave him an active and passive voice in
the election of Grand Master, had resigned it, and conferred it on a
Commander Altieri. The collation has been confirmed by the Pope.’
[Sidenote: _HUME’S ‘HISTORY.’_]
In the same year London was stirred by the publication of Hume’s
‘History of England,’ which was denounced as a Jacobite history by
the Whigs, and it was not warmly received by the Jacobites, as it
did not sufficiently laud their historical favourites. ‘It is called
Jacobite,’ wrote Walpole to Bentley, ‘but in my opinion it is only not
_George-abite_. Where others abuse the Stuarts, he laughs at them. I am
sure he does not spare their ministers.’
But it was still to the news sent from Rome that the Jacobites looked
most eagerly for indications of what might be doing there, and the
significance of it. Under date of January 3, 1756, the paragraph of
news from Rome, the Eternal City, in the ‘Weekly Journal,’ informed
all who were interested, that an Irish officer had arrived there with
letters for the Chevalier de St. George, had received a large sum of
money, on a bill of exchange, from Belloni, and had set out again with
the answers to those letters. Again, on January 17th, the Chevalier’s
friends in London were told that two foreigners had called on him with
letters, but that he refused to receive either. ‘He refused to yield to
their most earnest entreaties for an interview.’ ‘Read’ communicates
a no less remarkable circumstance to the Jacobite coffee-houses.
‘Tho’ people have talked to him very much within the last two months
of an expedition on Scotland or Ireland, he has declared that those
kind of subjects are no longer agreeable to him, and that he should
be better pleased to hear nothing said about them.’ Then came news
of the Chevalier being sick, and the Pope, not only sending his own
physician, but stopping his coach to enquire after the exile’s health.
Occasionally, the paragraph of news is communicated by a ‘Papist,’ as,
for instance, in an account of the reception into the Church of Rome of
the young son of the Pasha of Scutari, where it is said that Cardinal
York performed the ceremony of receiving the dusky convert, who had
abandoned a splendid position ‘to come,’ says the writer, at Rome, ‘and
embrace our holy religion.’
[Sidenote: _AT ROME._]
For the purpose of reading such intelligence, the Jacobites opened
feverishly the sheet which oftenest satisfied their curiosity. This
had to be satisfied with little. Throughout ’56 and ’57 they learnt
little more than that the Pope had been ill, and that the Chevalier
and the Cardinal drove daily from their villas to leave their names
at the dwelling of the Pontiff. Next, that the quaint Jacobite, Sir
William Stanhope, had actually had an audience of the Pope, to whom he
had presented a gold box full of rhubarb; and reasons were assigned
why the contents might prove more useful than the casket. Then, clever
English lords had established themselves in great magnificence in
Roman palaces, or in villas as magnificent as palaces; and, still more
encouraging news for the Cocoa Tree and St. Alban’s coffee-house,
the King of Spain had increased the income of Cardinal York by 1,200
crowns yearly, drawn from the revenue of the bishopric of Malaga.
On the north side of Pall Mall, and on the lower terrace of the west
side of St. James’s Street, or beneath the Walnut tree walk in Hyde
Park,――places still much affected by Jacobites, imagination may see
them wearing congratulatory looks on the English lords collecting
near the Chevalier, and the Spanish monarch contributing money to the
Cardinal. If these things were without significance, where should they
look for incidents that would bear cheerful interpretation?
[Sidenote: _HOPES AND INTERESTS._]
Then ensued long silence, broken only by brief announcements of
archiepiscopal (and other) honours heaped upon Cardinal York, and of
splendid dinners in the Quirinal, with Pope and all the Cardinals,
strong enough to sit up, as the joyous host and guests. Not a word,
however, is to be traced with reference to Charles Edward; nor was it
looked for, at the time, by the ‘quality,’ who were contented with ‘the
happy establishment.’ On Christmas Day of this year, Walpole wrote: ‘Of
the Pretenders family one never hears a word. Unless our Protestant
brethren, the Dutch, meddle in their affairs, they will be totally
forgotten; we have too numerous a breed of our own to need princes from
Italy. The old Chevalier ... is likely to precede his rival (George
II.), who, with care, may still last a few years; though I think he
will scarce appear again out of his own house.’
But the hopes and the interest of the London Jacobites had to be
maintained, and, through the London papers, the hopes and the interest
of the adherents of the Stuarts, in the country. The aspirations of
such sympathisers were hardly encouraged by an incident of which
Walpole made the following note, to Conway, in January, 1759: ‘I forgot
to tell you that the King has granted my Lord Marischal’s pardon, at
the request of M. de Knyphausen. I believe the Pretender himself could
get his attainder reversed, if he would apply to the King of Prussia.’
[Sidenote: _ILLNESS OF THE OLD CHEVALIER._]
In the Chatham Correspondence, it is stated that the King of Prussia
had said he should consider it a personal favour done to himself. The
pardoning of such an able military Jacobite as Keith, Earl Marischal,
indicated that the ‘Elector of Hanover’ considered Jacobitism as
dead, or at least powerless. At the same time, the more mysteriously
secluded Charles Edward kept himself, the more curiosity there was
among ‘curious’ people in London to learn something about him and his
designs, if he had any. The apparently mortal illness of the Chevalier
de St. George, in May 1760, caused some of the London papers to publish
a sort of exulting paragraph, not over the supposed dying Chevalier,
but over the fact, announced in the words: ‘We shall soon know where
the young Pretender is!’ Of the father’s impending death no doubt was
made. Was he not seventy-two years of age? And had he not for thirty
years of the time been worn out with anxieties caused by his sons?
One saucy paragraph included the saucier remark:――‘He has left his
estates, which may be Nothing, to his eldest son, whom many think is
Nobody.’ But all this was premature. The old prince did not die this
year. George II. _did_. The grandson of the latter began to reign in
October. The Jacobites laughed at his new Majesty’s boast of being
born a Briton, for ‘James III.’ was more purely British than he; born
in London, and son of a father who was also born in this metropolis,
he was less of a foreigner than George III., whose parents were purely
German. The Jacobites made the most of this difference; and when
such of them as were in Hyde Park saw the king’s horse nearly break
his rider’s neck by suddenly flinging him out of the saddle, those
spectators probably thought of the results of King William’s fall from
horseback, and hoped that heaven was on their side. The newspapers
admiringly recorded the presence of mind of the young king, who, though
shaken, went to the play the same night, to calm the supposed anxieties
of his faithful people.
[Sidenote: _ACCESSION OF GEORGE III._]
Much as Jacobites had railed at the late ‘Elector of Hanover and his
bloody son,’ and had devoted both of them to eternal perdition in hell,
a sort of serio-comic assurance that their malice was ineffective seems
to have been insinuated in the first words of the anthem, set to music
by Boyce, for the king’s (or the elector’s) funeral; namely, ‘The souls
of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall be no torment
touch them.’ On the first occasion of George III. going to the Chapel
Royal (Sunday, November 17th), the Rev. Dr. Wilson took his text from
Malachi i. 6, where the prophet speaks of the rebellious spirit and
irreligiousness of Israel, a text which Nonjurors, and especially the
Nonjuring clergy, might well take to themselves. ◆[Sidenote: _KING
AND PEOPLE._]◆ After ‘Chapel’ there was a ‘Court.’ Of the latter, the
papers say: ‘By the insolence of the soldiers many persons were not
suffered to go into the Gallery. All those that paid for seeing his
Majesty were admitted, a practice, it is hoped, will soon be put a stop
to.’ The price of admission is not stated; but among those who had
gathered about the Park were nearly a thousand tailors, who, rather
than stoop to work for five shillings a day, refused to work at all.
The newspapers protested that it was a thousand pities a press-gang or
two had not been in the Park to sweep these fellows into the ships that
lacked men. If they would not work for themselves on liberal wages,
they ought to be compelled to serve their country on less. There was no
doubt about their bravery, for the London tailors had, not long before,
brilliantly distinguished themselves under Elliot, at Gibraltar. The
hint of the amiable journalists was acted on, on the Coronation day, in
1761. While the British-born king of a free people, over whom, he said,
he was proud to reign, was being crowned (with his young queen) in the
Abbey, ruffianly press-gangs were making very free with that people all
around the sacred edifice; seizing whom they would; knocking on the
head all who resisted; flinging them into vessels on the river, and so
despatching them to Gravesend, the Nore, and thence to men-of-war on
various stations!
[Sidenote: _CHARLES EDWARD AT WESTMINSTER._]
One visitor is alleged to have been present at this coronation, who
certainly was not an invited, nor would he have been a welcome, guest.
This visitor is said to have been Charles Edward himself! As he is
also credited with two or three earlier visits to London, the question
as to the truth of the reports may be conveniently considered here.
We will only remark that, in the closing years of the reign of George
II., Jacobites, who had neither been harmless nor intended to remain
so if opportunity favoured them, were allowed to live undisturbed.
As Justice Foxley remarked to Ingoldsby, they attended markets,
horse-races, cock-fights, fairs, hunts, and such like, without
molestation. While they were good companions in the field and over a
bottle, bygones were bygones.
[Illustration: Scrollwork]
[IllustrationL Decorative banner]
CHAPTER XIV.
(1744 to 1761.)
[Illustration: Drop-A] subject of great interest in the life of Charles
Edward presents itself to consideration in the alleged romantic, but
particularly absurd, incidents of his various appearances in London,
or England. These doubtful visits commence with the year 1744, and
close with the no longer _young_ Chevalier’s supposed presence at the
coronation of George III., 1761.
In the former year, there was residing at Ancoats, near Manchester, Sir
Oswald Mosley, who had been created a baronet by the Hanoverian king,
George I., in 1720. At the end of nearly a quarter of a century, if
common report do not lie, he seems to have been a thorough Jacobite,
with Charles Edward for his guest, in disguise! The ‘fact’ is first
recorded in Aston’s ‘Metrical Records of Manchester,’ in the following
doggrel lines:――
In the year ’44, a Royal Visitor came,
Tho’ few knew the Prince, or his rank, or his name――
To sound the opinions and gather the strength
Of the party of Stuart, his house, ere the length
Then _in petto_ to which he aspired
If he found the High Tories sufficient inspired
With notions of right, indefeasive, divine,
In favour of his Royal Sire and his line.
No doubt, he was promis’d an army, a host!
But he found to his cost, it was all a vain boast;
For when he return’d in the year ’45,
For the crown of his father, in person to strive,
When in Scottish costume at the head of the clans
He marched to Mancunium to perfect his plans,
The hope he had cherish’d, from promises made,
Remains to this day as a debt that’s unpaid.
[Sidenote: _CHARLES EDWARD IN MANCHESTER._]
A foot-note states that the prince was the guest of Sir Oswald for
several weeks, ‘no doubt, to see the inhabitants of Manchester and its
vicinity, who were attached to the interests of his family.’
At that time, a girl was living in Manchester, who was about fourteen
years of age. For seventy succeeding years she used to relate that in
1744, a handsome young gentleman used to come from Ancoats Hall into
Manchester, every post day, to the inn and post house of her father,
Bradbury, for letters or to read the papers from London, in which
papers, as he sat apart, he seemed to take unusual interest. The girl
admired his handsome countenance, his genteel deportment, and the
generous spirit which led him to give her half-a-crown for some trivial
chamber-maid service. In the following year, when Charles Edward
marched past her father’s house at the head of his troops, the girl
made outspoken recognition of him as the liberal donor of the welcome
half-crown. The father, ill-pleased at her demonstration, drove her
in, and silenced her with threats; but when all danger had ceased to
exist, he acknowledged that the handsome young fellow with the genteel
deportment and the young Chevalier were one and the same.――Such is the
substance of a corroborative story told by a later Sir Oswald Mosley,
Bart., in ‘Family Memoirs,’ printed in 1849 for private circulation.
[Sidenote: _MISS BYROM’S DIARY_.]
In Miss Beppy Byrom’s Diary, she narrates an interview which some of
the leading Jacobites of Manchester had with the prince when he was
there in the ’45 rebellion. These included her celebrated father,
John Byrom, Deacon, the father of the unlucky young captain who was
afterwards executed on Kennington Common, Clayton, and others. The
day was St. Andrew’s Day, Saturday, November 30th. Many ladies were
making crosses of St. Andrew; Miss Byrom dressed in white to go and
see the prince, who witched her with his noble horsemanship. The horse
seemed self-conscious of bearing a king’s son. After the review, the
lady and others went to church. ‘Mr. Skrigley read prayers. He prayed
for the King and Prince of Wales, but named no names.’ There was much
mild dissipation afterwards, with too much restlessness to partake of
settled meals, but infinite sipping of wine to Jacobite healths. In
the evening, after having seen the prince at table, the lady and many
companions drank more healths in the officers’ room. ‘They were all
exceeding civil,’ she says, ‘and almost made us fuddled with drinking
the P.’s health, for we had had no dinner. We sat there till Secretary
Murray came to let us know the P. was at leisure, and had done supper;
so we all had the honour to kiss his hand. My papa was fetched prisoner
to do the same, so was Dr. Deacon. Mr. Cattell and Mr. Clayton did
it without. The latter said grace for him. Then we went out and drank
his health in another room,’ &c., &c. This record is quoted in ‘Notes
and Queries,’ May 1, 1869, and as it makes no reference to the alleged
visit of 1744 (only one year before), it may be taken as demolishing
the earliest legend of the legendary visits of Charles Edward to
England.
[Sidenote: _THE VISIT IN 1748._]
The next in order of date is a very undefined visit of 1748. In support
of it there appears that exceedingly, questionable witness, namely,
Thicknesse.
Crazy Philip Thicknesse, in his crazy Memoirs, on the title-page of
which he crazily announced that he had the misfortune to be the father
of George Thicknesse Tuchet. Lord Audley (the son George had succeeded
to the ancient barony, through his deceased mother) was the man who, on
his son refusing to supply him with money, set up a cobbler’s stall,
opposite the son’s house, with a board on which was painted, ‘Boots and
shoes mended in the best and cheapest manner, by Philip Thicknesse,
father of Lord Audley.’ This had the desired effect. In the farrago,
called his Memoirs, Thicknesse says he knew ‘an Irish officer who had
only one arm.’ In a note, the name _Segrave_ is given as that of the
officer; but this editorial addition has been transferred to the text
by all writers who have quoted crazy Philip’s account. The officer with
only one arm assured Thicknesse that he had been with the Prince in
England, between the years 1745 and 1756, and that ‘_they_,’ Prince and
one-armed officer, ‘had laid a plan of seizing the person of the King,
George II., as he returned from the play, by a body of Irish chairmen,
fifteen hundred of whom were to begin a revolution, in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields.’ Philip, however, with a return of sense, remarks: ‘I cannot
vouch for the truth of this story.’ Yet out of this unfounded story
grew a report that Charles Edward was in London in 1748, which was
between the years above named. Philip Thicknesse was in his 70th year
when he began to put together his book, which was published in 1788.
He reminds his readers, that he ‘never pretended to be an accurate
writer.’ The reminder was hardly necessary.
[Sidenote: _THE VISIT IN 1750._]
The next witness, in chronological order, is Dr. King, the Chevalier’s
great agent, who gives the year 1750, as that in which Charles Edward
came to London. This information was first furnished in a book which
was published in 1818, under the title, ‘Political and Literary
Anecdotes of his own time.’
The editor is anonymous. He gives this account of how he came in
possession of the MS. ‘A Friend’ (no name given) ‘who was a long time
a prisoner in France, met with the following work in the possession of
two ladies’ (not named, but who are described as) ‘relations of the
writer, Dr. King. From the interesting passages which he was permitted
to extract, the Editor’ (as destitute of name as the others) ‘conceived
that the original might be well worthy of publication, he therefore
desired his friend to procure it, and found, on a comparison of the
hand-writing with that which is well ascertained to be Dr. King’s, in
the account books of St. Mary Hall, in Oxford,――that there is every
reason to suppose this MS. to have been written by Dr. King himself.’
Four nameless persons, and only ‘a reason to suppose’ among them.
[Sidenote: _DR. KING AND THE CHEVALIER._]
Dr. King’s life extended from 1685 to 1763; and it was towards the
close of his life, that he collected the anecdotes from the manuscript
of which the editor (1818) was permitted to take extracts. Where the
original manuscript is to be found is not mentioned. The only reference
to the young Chevalier of any importance is in the paragraph in
which the writer leads us to infer that the prince was in England in
September, 1750, at Lady Primrose’s house. ‘Lady Primrose,’ he says,
‘presented me to ――――’ Why this mysterious dash, when frequent mention
is made of Charles Edward, in description of character, as ‘the Prince’
or ‘Prince Charles?’ It is also stated that the prince was King’s
guest, and was recognised by King’s servants. For a Jacobite, the
doctor is as severe a dissector of the young Chevalier as the bitterest
Whig could desire. He speaks ill of the illustrious visitor, morally
and intellectually. As to his religion, King says he was quite ready to
‘conform’ to the religion of the country; that he was a Catholic with
the Catholics, and with the Protestants, a Protestant. This was exactly
what Lord Kilmarnock said before he was executed. King further states
that Charles Edward would exhibit an English Common Prayer Book to
Protestant friends; to the Catholics he could not have afforded much
pleasure by letting Gordon, the Nonjuror, christen his first child, of
which Miss Walkenshawe was the mother. Such an easy shifting of livery,
from Peter’s to Martin’s, and back again to Peter’s, was natural enough
in the case of a man, who had been brought up at Rome, but who was
placed under the care of a Protestant tutor, who of express purpose
neglected his education, and who, if King’s surmise be correct, made a
merit of his baseness, to the Government in London, and was probably
rewarded for it by a pension. Dr. King speaks of the prince’s agents
in London, as men of fortune and distinction, and many of the first
nobility, who looked to him as ‘the saviour of their country.’
[Sidenote: _MEMORANDA._]
This visit to London in 1750, if it really was ever made, is supposed
to be referred to, in one of several memoranda for a letter in the
prince’s handwriting, preserved with other Stuart papers, in Windsor
Castle; and first published by Mr. Woodward, Queen’s Librarian, in
1864. It runs thus: ‘8thly. To mention my religion (which is) of the
Church of England as by law established, as I have declared myself
when in London, the year 1750.’ This memorandum is at the end of a
commission from the writer’s father dated 1743, to which commission
is appended a copy of the ‘Manifesto’ addressed by the prince to
Scotland, in 1745. At what date the memorandum was written there is no
possibility of knowing. If the prince, as was his custom, used only the
initial of the name of the city, it is possible that Liége was meant;
and, after the word ‘when,’ the writer may have omitted the name of
one of his many agents of ‘fortune and distinction,’ who looked to him
as the saviour of their country.
[Sidenote: _FURTHER MEMORANDA._]
There are other memoranda for letters, supposed to refer to the above
visit. For example:――‘Parted, ye 2nd Sept. Arrived to A, ye 6th, parted
from thence, ye 12th Sept. E, ye 14th, and at L, ye 16th. Parted from
L, ye 22nd, and arrived at P. ye 24th. From P, parted ye 28th, arrived
here ye 30th Sept.’ In this memorandum the initials are supposed to
stand for Antwerp, England, London, and Paris. There is nothing to
prove that they _do_; and, it may be said that A and L quite as aptly
represent Avignon and Liége. However this may be, dates and supposed
places are entirely at variance from other dates and places which are
taken as referring to this identical visit of the young Chevalier to
London, in 1750. ‘Ye 5th Sept. O.S. 1750, arrived; ye 11th parted to D,
ye 12th in the morning parted and arrived at B, and ye 13th at P. R. S.
ye 16th Sept. ye 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.’ Here, D and B are interpreted
as signifying Dover and Boulogne, P. is Paris. R. S. have received no
interpretation. It is certain that one of the two records _must_ be
incorrect; and both of them _may_ be.
[Sidenote: _CHARLES EDWARD’S STATEMENT._]
But, something more definite is reached in a despatch from the British
Minister at Florence (Mann), which Lord Stanhope published in his
‘Decline of the Stuarts.’ The minister, who writes in 1783, describes a
conversation which took place at Florence, between Charles Edward (then
known as Count d’Albany) and Gustavus, King of Sweden, in the course
of which the count told the king that, in September, 1750, he arrived
secretly in London with a Colonel Brett; that together they examined
the outer parts of the Tower, and came to the conclusion that one of
the gates might be blown in by a petard. After which, at a lodging in
Pall Mall, where fifty Jacobites were assembled, including the Duke
of Beaufort and the Earl of Westmoreland, the prince said to these
Jacobites, or rather to Gustavus, that if they could have assembled
only 4,000 men, he would have publicly put himself at their head. He
added that he stayed a fortnight in London, and that the Government
were ignorant of his presence there.
It is to be remembered that this story was told three and thirty years
after the alleged occurrence. The narrator was then an aged man, whose
brains and memory and general health were so damaged by ‘the drink,
the drink, dear Hamlet!’ that not the slightest trust could be placed
in any single word that he uttered in respect to his past history. He
may have dreamed it all, but that any two gentlemen, the face of one of
whom was familiar, from prints and busts publicly sold, could have so
carefully examined the Tower as to find out where it was vulnerable,
without the sentinels having discovered the same part in the explorers,
is surely incredible. The vaunt of the secret visitor publicly placing
himself at the head of an army of Jacobites, was just such a boast as
the brainless drunkard of 1783 would be likely to make. There is as
little reliance to be put on the statement of the Duke of Beaufort and
Earl of Westmoreland being present at a Jacobite meeting in Pall Mall.
The really Jacobite duke died in 1746. His successor, and also the Earl
of Westmoreland (of the year 1750), may have been often in opposition
to the Government, but no act of their lives would warrant the belief
that they could be insane enough to attend a meeting of half a hundred
Jacobites in Pall Mall, to listen to a project for blowing up the Tower
and pulling down the throne.
[Sidenote: _THE VISIT IN 1752-3._]
Two years after 1750, however, according to the MS. Journal of Lord
Elcho, Charles Edward was again in London, secretly at the house of
the very outspoken Jacobite lady, Lady Primrose. Hume, the historian,
says, in a letter to Sir John Pringle (dated 1773), that he knew with
the greatest certainty that Charles Edward was in London in 1753; his
authority was Lord Marischal, ‘who said it consisted with his certain
knowledge.’ The knowledge was derived from a lady――whom my Lord
_refused to name_, and whom Hume _imagined_ to be Lady Primrose. Now,
Lady Primrose was the Protestant daughter of the Dean of Armagh, of
Huguenot descent, bearing the name of Drelincourt. She was the widow of
Viscount Primrose who had been an officer of distinction in the king’s
service. Lady Primrose, herself, was a warm-hearted Jacobite who had
given a temporary home in Essex Street, Strand, to Flora Macdonald,
during part of her brief sojourn in London in 1747. According to
this legendary visit of 1753, Charles Edward, unexpectedly, entered
her room, when she was entertaining a company at cards. He was there
unannounced, yet Lady Primrose called him by a name he assumed! Her
object was to keep him undetected by her friends; but his portrait hung
in the room, and the company identified the visitor. Lord Marischal
told Hume (he thinks, ‘from the authority of the same lady,’ whom
Lord Marischal had refused to name), that the Prince went about the
streets and parks, with no other disguise than not wearing ‘his blue
ribband and star.’ Some years after, Hume spoke of this visit, to Lord
Holdernesse (who in 1753 was Secretary of State). This minister stated
that he received the first intelligence of Charles Edward’s presence
in London from George II.; who may have been misinformed, and who is
reported to have said, ‘When he is tired of England, he will go abroad
again!’ A very unlikely remark. Another story resembled that of the
Lincoln’s Inn Fields’ chairmen, namely, that in 1753, Lord Elibank,
his brother Alexander Murray, and five dozen associates, were to be
employed in carrying off this very good-natured monarch!
[Sidenote: _CREDIBILITY OF THE STORIES._]
As to the credibility of this story, it is only necessary to remark
that, in 1753, Dr. Archibald Cameron was hanged in London for being
present in Scotland, where mischief was intended; and that, if the
Ministry were so well served by their spies, such as Sam Cameron was,
through whom the Doctor was arrested and executed, Charles Edward could
not possibly have escaped; and his capture was of great importance
at the moment. Moreover, the king was powerless. It belonged to the
Administration to decide whether the undisguised Prince should be
captured or allowed to go free.
[Sidenote: _CONFLICTING STATEMENTS._]
Assuming that he was so allowed, he is again found in London in 1754.
At least, crazy Thicknesse says: ‘that this unfortunate man was in
London, _about_ the year 1754, I can positively assert. He was “at
a lady’s house, in Essex Street;” was recognised in the Park, by a
Jacobite gentleman who attempted to kneel to him, and this so alarmed
the lady in Essex Street, that a boat was procured the same night,
in which he was forthwith despatched to France. Tonnage of boat and
captain’s name not registered.
Later, the date of this last visit is given in a letter, addressed by
Lord Albemarle, British ambassador in Paris, to Sir Thomas Robinson,
namely, May 1754. The writer, in August, 1754, states that he had
been ‘positively’ assured by a discontented Jacobite, that ‘no longer
ago than about three months,’ Charles Edward had been in London, ‘in
a great disguise as may be imagined;’ that the prince had received
friendly notice, at Nottingham, that he was in danger of being seized,
and that he immediately fled. As to the authority, Lord Albemarle
writes:――‘The person from whom I have this, is as likely to have been
informed of it as any of the party, and could have had no particular
reason to have imposed such a story upon me, which could have served no
purpose.’ The ambassador is mistaken. The purpose of such stories was
to keep warm the hopes――fading hopes――of the Jacobites, and it was not
the last story invented with that purpose in view.
[Sidenote: _AT THE CORONATION._]
Lastly, there is the story of the prince’s presence at the coronation
festival of George III., in 1761. According to some authorities, it was
without any stirring incident. Others say, that very stirring matter
indeed sprang from it, and that much confusion was the consequence.
Walpole, describing the illustrious people, state officers, and others
at the coronation-banquet of George III., September 1761, pauses at
sight of the son of the unhappy Lord Kilmarnock. ‘One there was ... the
noblest figure I ever saw, the High Constable of Scotland, Lord Errol’
(he had succeeded to this title through his mother), ‘as one saw him
in a place capable of containing him, one admired him. At the wedding,
dressed in tissue, he looked like one of the Giants in Guildhall, new
gilt. It added to the energy of his person――that one considered him
acting so considerable a part in that very Hall, where, so few years
ago, one saw his father, Lord Kilmarnock, condemned to the block.’ In
1746, Lord Errol, then Lord Boyd, had fought at Culloden, against his
father.
[Sidenote: _AT THE BANQUET._]
They who were still of that father’s way of thinking were for long
afterwards comforted by a story that when the King’s Champion
proclaimed George III. king, and challenged all who questioned the
right of him so proclaimed, by throwing down his glove, a Champion
of James III. boldly stept forward, took up the glove, and retired
with it unmolested. The story, so to speak, got crystalised. It is
still partially believed in. It may have arisen out of an incident
chronicled in ‘Burke’s Peerage.’ It is there said that, officiating
at the coronation as Constable of Scotland, Lord Errol, by accident,
neglected to doff his cap when the king entered; but on his
respectfully apologising for his negligence, his majesty entreated him
to be covered, for he looked on his presence at the ceremony as a very
particular honour.’ This wears an air of absurdity. However that may
be, Scott has made use of the alleged challenge of the king’s right to
his crown.
It occurs in ‘Redgauntlet,’ where Lilias swiftly passes through the
covering lines of Jacobites, takes up the gauntlet, and leaves a pledge
of battle in its stead. But contemporary accounts take no note of any
such occurrence. Walpole, an eye-witness, merely records: ‘The Champion
acted his part admirably, and dashed down his gauntlet with proud
defiance. His associates, Lord Talbot, Lord Effingham, and the Duke of
Bedford were woful. Lord Talbot [the Lord High Steward] piqued himself
on backing his horse down the hall and not turning its rump towards
the king; but he had taken such pains to address it to that duty, that
it entered backwards; and, at his retreat, the spectators clapped, a
terrible indecorum.’ This indecorous clapping, as the Champion (Dymoke)
and his knights backed out of the hall may have been taken by those
who were not aware of the cause as some party expression. ◆[Sidenote:
_GEORGE AND CHARLES EDWARD._]◆ Out of it the story of the Jacobite
taker-up of the glove may have arisen. The story was told with a
difference. A friend (who is anonymous) informed the Earl Marischal
that he had recognised Charles Edward among the spectators at the
coronation banquet, and had spoken to him. The prince is said to have
replied: ‘I came only out of curiosity; and the person who is the
object of all this magnificence is the one I envy the least.’ Scott,
in a note to the incident in ‘Redgauntlet,’ remarks,――‘The story is
probably one of the numerous fictions that were circulated to keep up
the spirits of a sinking faction. The incident was, however, possible,
if it could be supposed to be attended by any motive adequate to the
risk.... George III., it is said, had a police of his own, whose
agency was so efficient that the Sovereign was able to tell his Prime
Minister, on one occasion, to his great surprize, that the Pretender
was in London. The Prime Minister began immediately to talk of measures
to be taken, warrants to be procured, messengers and guards to be got
in readiness. “Pooh! pooh!” said the good-natured Sovereign, “since I
have found him out, leave me alone to deal with him.” “And what,” said
the Minister, “is your Majesty’s purpose in so serious a case?” “To
leave the young man to himself,” said George III., “and when he tires,
he will go back again.” The truth of this story does not depend on that
of the lifting of the gauntlet, and while the latter could be but an
idle bravado, the former expresses George III.’s goodness of heart and
soundness of policy.’
[Sidenote: _A DISQUALIFICATION._]
Altogether it is very clear that dates, persons, and places have been
inextricably mixed up in the Jacobite legends of the Chevalier’s visit
to London. At the same time there seems to be but one opinion among all
writers, without exception, who have dealt with this subject hitherto,
namely, that the alleged visit of 1750 actually occurred. Perhaps
the best evidence is furnished in the ‘Diary of a Lady of Quality’
(Mrs. Wynne). The writer’s grandson states that his grandmother had
frequently told him that she had had, from Lady Primrose herself, full
particulars of the visit of Charles Edward to London in 1750. A few
questions, however, might easily break down even this assertion. After
all, the decision must be left to the reader’s judgment.
Although no overt act answered the Champion’s challenge in Westminster
Hall, the right of George III. to succeed to the crown was vigorously
denied in very High Church coteries. Soon after the king’s birth,
in 1738, he was baptised by Secker, Bishop of Oxford. Now, Secker
was born and bred a dissenter, and did not enter the Church till
after he had been a medical student, and had run a not too exemplary
career. How could an unbaptised bishop validly baptise a prince,
heir to the crown of England? If the king was an unbaptised, or
as good as unbaptised king, he was neither lawful King of England
nor temporal head of England’s Church! This was the only form in
which the Champion’s gage was picked up. It did not amount to much.
Nevertheless, an old inheritor of Nonjuring principles occasionally
may be found questioning the right of George III. to succeed, on the
score of his being unbaptised, or of being (still worse) baptised by
an ex-dissenter, who himself had never been sanctified by the rite
according to the Church of England! ◆[Sidenote: _THE PROTESTANTISM
OF CHARLES EDWARD._]◆ As to the story of the alleged Protestantism
of Charles Edward, it never had more foundation than his own ignoble
assurances to members of the Church of England whom he happened to
encounter. In this sense he often ‘_declared_’ himself; but, never in a
church, at Liége or in Switzerland, or in London, at St. Martin’s, St.
James’s, or St. Mary’s le Strand. There is no record of any such solemn
circumstance connected with any such exalted personage in any of those
places or edifices. Such a fact as his conversion would have been utter
ruin to him. The very report that the fact existed caused many of his
Irish friends to tighten their purse-strings. Rome, with full knowledge
that he really had no ‘religion’ at all, was perfectly satisfied that
his Catholicism was uncontaminated. When, after his father’s death in
1766, Charles Edward returned to Rome, no recantation, nor anything
like it, was demanded of him.
The stories of the change of religion not only differ from one another,
but the same spreader of the story gives different versions. Walpole,
in his Letters (April 21, 1772) says: ‘I have heard from one who should
know, General Redmond, an Irish officer in the French service, that
the Pretender himself abjured the Roman Catholic religion at Liége
_a few years ago_.’ Walpole, in his ‘Last Journals,’ i. 81 (April,
1772), says, ‘General Redmond, a brave old Irish officer in the French
service, and a Roman Catholic, told Lord Holland that the Pretender had
abjured the Roman religion at Liége, and that the Irish Catholics had
withdrawn their contributions on that account.’ The time is also set
down as ‘_a few years ago_.’
[Sidenote: _FOUNDATION OF THE STORY._]
The entire flimsy fabric of these stories of conversion was probably
raised on a simple but interesting incident. An English baronet of an
ancient family, Sir Nathaniel Thorold, died at Naples. His heir, a
Roman Catholic, could not succeed. Inheritance was barred by his being
of the Romish Church. The law was as cruel as anything devised by the
‘Papists,’ on whose overthrow this legislation was made against them.
To evade it, and secure his rights, the heir of Sir Nathaniel Thorold,
probably, _permissu superiorum_, stripped himself of his Romanism, and
became a member of the Protestant community, at St. Martin’s. This step
entitled him to his uncle’s estates, and, doubtless, little disturbed
his earlier convictions; but is not this the seed out of which grew the
legend of the Pretender’s cutting himself loose from Popery? Charles
Edward, in some things, was not unlike the craft commanded by poor
Nanty Ewart, which ran in to Annan, with her smuggled kegs of Cognac,
as the ‘Jumping Jenny,’ but which began her voyage from Dunkirk with
seminary priests on board, as well as brandy, and was there known as
‘La Sainte Geneviève.’
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER XV.
(1761-1775.)
[Sidenote: _STATE OF LONDON._]
[Illustration: Drop-L]ondon, at the beginning of the reign of George
III., was, as it had been for many years, in a condition resembling
the capital of Dahomey at the present time. It could not be entered
by any suburb, including the Thames, without the nose and eyes being
afflicted by the numerous rottening bodies of criminals gibbeted in
chains. The heads of two rebels still looked ghastly from Temple Bar.
The bodies on gibbets often created a pestilence. The inhabitants of
the infected districts earnestly petitioned to be relieved from the
horrible oppression. If their petition was unheeded they took means to
relieve themselves. A most significant paragraph in the papers states
that ‘_All_ the gibbets in the Edgware Road were sawn down in one
night.’ Not only the suburban roads, but the streets and squares were
infested by highwaymen and footpads. Robberies (with violence) were
not only committed by night, but by day. Murders were perpetrated out
of mere wantonness, and a monthly score of delinquents, of extremely
wide apart offences, were strangled at Tyburn, without improvement to
society. It was still a delight to the mob to kill some very filthy
offender in the pillory, who generally was not more unclean than his
assassins. Ladies going to or from Court in their chairs were often
robbed of their diamonds, the chairmen feigning a defence which helped
the robbers. A prince or princess returning to London from Hampton
Court would now and then pick up a half-murdered wretch in a ditch, and
drop him at the first apothecary’s in town. The brutal school boys of
St. Bride’s, imitating their fathers, took to violence as a pastime.
They could sweep into Fleet Street with clubs, knock down all whom they
could reach, and retreat all the prouder if they left a dead victim on
the field. There was anarchy in the streets and highways, but it is a
comfort to find that at the Chapel Royal, there were none but ‘extreme
polite audiences.’ Indeed, the sons of violence themselves were not
without politeness. A batch of one hundred of those of whom the gallows
had been disappointed, were marched from Newgate to the river side, to
embark for the Plantations. A fife band preceded them, playing ‘Through
the wood, laddie!’ The convicts roared out the song. ‘You are very
joyous?’ said a spectator. ‘Joyous!’ cried one of the rascals, ‘you
only come with us and you’ll find yourself _transported_!’
[Sidenote: _GOOD FEELING._]
There were no Jacobites at Oxford now, but there was a new sect
of Methodists there. Six of its members, students of Edmund Hall,
were expelled for praying and expounding the Scripture in their own
rooms! In another direction there was something like reconciliation.
The Government at St. James’s allowed a Popish prelate to establish
himself in Canada, on condition that France should entirely abandon the
Jacobites; and now, for the first time, the king and royal family of
the House of Hanover were prayed for in all the Roman Catholic chapels
in Ireland, and in the Ambassadors’ chapels in London.
The king showed his respect for the principle of fidelity, on the part
of the Jacobite leaders, by restoring some of the forfeited estates to
the chiefs. He showed it also in another way. Having been told of a
gentleman of family and fortune in Perthshire, who had not only refused
to take the oath of allegiance to him, but had never permitted him
to be named as king in his presence, ‘Carry my compliments to him,’
said the king, ‘but what?――stop!――no!――he may perhaps not receive
my compliment as King of England; give him the Elector of Hanover’s
compliments, and tell him that he respects the steadiness of his
principles.’ Hogg, who tells this story in the introduction to the
‘Jacobite Relics,’ does not see that in this message there was an
excess of condescension that hardly became the king, though the spirit
of the message _did_. The story is told with some difference in the
introduction to ‘Redgauntlet.’
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE FUNERAL._]
In October of the year 1761, there died a Jacobite of some
distinction, who had the honour to be permitted to lie in Westminster
Abbey; but, the spectators who had been at the lying in state,
observed, with some surprise, that his coffin-plate bore only the
initials K. M. L. F. The ‘Funeral Book’ of the Abbey is not more
communicative, save that the age of the defunct was forty-three. As
the coffin sank to its resting place in the South Aisle, curious
strangers were told that it contained the body of Kenneth Mackenzie,
Lord Fortrose――a dignity not sanctioned by the law; for, Kenneth was
the only son of the fifth Earl of Seaforth, who suffered attainder and
forfeiture for the part he played in the insurrection of 1715. But
Kenneth left an only son, Kenneth (by Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of
the Earl of Galloway). This son was not restored to his grandfather’s
titles in the Scotch peerage, but he was created Viscount Fortrose and
Earl of Seaforth in the peerage of Ireland. This transplantation was
not fortunate. Lord Seaforth died, leaving no male heir, in 1781, when
the old Jacobite title became extinct. The son of the attainted earl,
restored as to his fortune, was in the army, and in Parliament in 1746,
when he accompanied the Duke of Cumberland to Scotland, but his wife
and clan, as Walpole remarks, went with the Rebels. The Irish peer but
Scotch Earl of Seaforth well deserved his distinction, when in 1779,
with seven hundred Mackenzies at his back, he repelled the invasion of
Jersey by a French force.
[Sidenote: _DR. JOHNSON’S PENSION._]
Other Jacobites were taken into favour, for which loyal service was
rendered. One of the first gracious acts of George III. was to confer
a pension on Dr. Johnson, of 300_l._ a year, equal now to twice that
sum. Johnson had well earned it, and he was expressly told that it
was conferred on him for what he had done, not for anything he was
expected to do. He felt that he was not expected to be an apologist
of the Stuarts, and the first act of the ex-Jacobite, after becoming
a pensioner, was to write for the Rev. Dr. Kennedy’s ‘Complete System
of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures,’ a dedication
to the king who had pensioned him (and whom he had looked upon as the
successor of two usurpers), which dedication is truly described as
being in a strain of very courtly elegance. As to the granting of the
pension by the king, Dr. Johnson, the once adherent to the Stuart,
remarked, ‘The English language does not afford me terms adequate to
my feelings on this occasion. I must have recourse to the French. I am
_pénétré_ with his Majesty’s goodness.’ Johnson was quite sensible that
it would be right to do something more for his reward. The something
was done in another dedication to the Queen, of Hoole’s translation of
Tasso, ‘which is so happily conceived,’ says Boswell, ‘and elegantly
expressed, that I cannot but point it out to the peculiar notice of
my readers.’ Johnson soon became a partisan of the Hanoverian family.
Speaking of some one who with more than ordinary boldness attacked
public measures and the royal family, he said, ‘I think he is safe from
the law, but he is an abusive scoundrel; and instead of applying to my
Lord Chief Justice to punish him, I would send half-a-dozen footmen and
have him well ducked.’ A semi-noyade was now thought fitting recompense
for a Stuart apologist.
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON’S VIEW OF IT._]
At a later period, when Johnson reviewed, in ‘The Gentleman’s
Magazine,’ Tyler’s Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, the Jacobitism
quite as much as the generosity of his principles led him to say, ‘It
has now been fashionable for near half a century to defame and vilify
the House of Stuart.... The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the
dead cannot pay for praise, and who will without reward oppose the tide
of popularity?’
Johnson being accused of tergiversation, has a right to be heard in
his own case. Much censured for accepting a pension which many a
censurer would have taken with the utmost alacrity, ‘Why, Sir,’ said
he with a hearty laugh, ‘it is a mighty foolish noise that they make.
I have accepted a pension as a reward which has been thought due to
my literary merit; and now that I have the pension, I am the same man
in every respect that I have ever been. I retain the same principles.
It is true that I cannot now curse (smiling) the House of Hanover,
nor would it be decent of me to drink King James’s health in the
wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, Sir, I think
that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking King
James’s health, are amply overbalanced by 300_l._ a year.’ To this
may be added Boswell’s assurance that Johnson had little confidence
in the rights claimed by the Stuarts, and that he felt, in course of
time, much abatement of his own Toryism. ◆[Sidenote: _HIS DEFINITION
OF A JACOBITE._]◆ It was in his early days that he talked _fierce_
Jacobitism, at Mr. Langton’s, to that gentleman’s niece, Miss Roberts.
The Bishop of Salisbury (Douglas) and other eminent men were present.
Johnson, taking the young lady by the hand, said, ‘My dear, I hope you
are a Jacobite.’ Her uncle was a Tory without being a Jacobite, and
he angrily asked why Johnson thus addressed his niece? ‘Why, Sir,’
said Johnson, ‘I meant no offence to your niece, I mean her a great
compliment. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the Divine Right of kings.
He who believes in the Divine Right of kings believes in a Divinity.
A Jacobite believes in the Divine Right of bishops. He that believes
in the Divine Right of bishops believes in the Divine Authority of the
Christian Religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist
nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig, for Whiggism is a negation
of all principle.’
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND._]
Be this as it may, Jacobitism was as surely dying out as he was who had
crushed the hopes of Jacobites at Culloden. The victor on that field,
and even now in the prime of life, died in 1765, of what Walpole called
a ‘rot among princes.’ He was a ton of man, unwieldy, asthmatic, blind
of one eye, nearly so of the other, lame through his old Dettingen
wound, half breathless from asthma, half paralysed by an old attack,
able to write a letter, yet not able to collect his senses sufficiently
to play a game of piquet. On the 30th of October, he went to Court, and
received Lord Albemarle to dine with him, at his house in Grosvenor
Street. Unable to attend a Cabinet Council in the evening, the Duke of
Newcastle and Lord Northington called on him. As they entered the room,
one of his valets was about to bleed him, at his own request. Before
the operation could be performed, the duke murmured, ‘It is all over!’
and fell dead in Lord Albemarle’s arms.
Lord Albemarle remembered that when the duke’s brother, Frederick,
Prince of Wales, died, his cautious widow immediately burned all his
papers and letters. Lord Albemarle could not take upon himself to
destroy the duke’s papers, but he sent the whole of them to the duke’s
favourite sister, the Princess Amelia. She replied, from Gunnersbury,
‘You are always attentive and obliging, my good Lord Albemarle. I thank
you for the letters, and I have burnt them.’ Many a secret perished
with them. George III. conferred on Lord Albemarle the duke’s garter.
The bitterness and pertinacity of the Jacobites against the duke cannot
be better illustrated than by an incident recorded by Boswell. Johnson,
Wedderburne, Murphy, and Foote, visited ‘Bedlam’ (in Moorfields)
together. At that time idle people went to look at the ‘mad people in
dens,’ as they now go to a menagerie, or ‘the Zoo.’ Boswell says that
Foote gave a very entertaining account of Johnson having his attention
arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his
straw, supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland, whom he was
punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746. The entertainment
was in the fact that Jacobite Johnson was amused by this sad spectacle.
The duke was soon followed on ‘the way to dusty death,’ by him whose
life he had certainly helped to embitter.
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF THE OLD CHEVALIER._]
The death of the Chevalier de St. George, at Rome, on New Year’s Night,
1766, was not known in London for nearly a fortnight. The only stir
caused by it was at the Council Board at St. James’s, whence couriers
rode away with despatches for foreign courts, which couriers speedily
returned with satisfactory answers. The Chevalier might, like Charles
II., have apologised to those who attended his death-bed, on his being
so long adying. What had come to be thought of him in London may be
partly seen in Walpole’s ‘Memoirs of the reign of George III.’ There
the Chevalier is spoken of as one who had outlived his own hopes and
the people who had ever given him any. ‘His party was dwindled to
scarce any but Catholics.’ Of the church of the latter, Walpole calls
him the most meritorious martyr, and yet Rome would not recognise the
royalty of the heirs. ‘To such complete humiliation was reduced that
ever unfortunate House of Stuart, now at last denied the empty sound of
royalty by the Church and Court, for which they had sacrificed three
kingdoms.’
[Sidenote: _FUNERAL RITES._]
The newspapers and other periodicals of the time took less interest in
the event than in a prize-fight. The feeling with trifling exception
was one of indifference, but there was nowhere any expression of
disrespect. The various accounts of the imperial ceremony with which
the body of the unlucky prince lay in state, and was ultimately
entombed, were no doubt read with avidity. The imagination of
successive reporters grew with details of their subject. A figure of
Death which appears among the ‘properties’ of the lying in state,
in the earliest account, expands into ‘thirteen skeletons holding
wax tapers’ in the later communications. To this state ceremony, the
London papers assert, none were admitted but Italian princes and
English――Jacobites of course,――several of whom left London for the
purpose. At the transfer of the body to St. Peter’s, the royal corpse
was surrounded by ‘the English college,’ and was followed by ‘four
Cardinals on mules covered with purple velvet hangings.’ The Jacobites
must have put down the London papers with a feeling that their king was
dead, and a hope that his soul was at rest.
The death seems to have had a curious effect on at least one London
Jacobite. In January, 1766, two heads remained on Temple Bar. The
individual just referred to thought they had remained there long
enough. For some nights he secretly discharged bullets at them from a
cross-bow; and at last he was caught in the act. He was suspected of
being a kinsman of one of the unhappy sufferers; but in presence of the
magistrates he maintained that he was a loyal friend of the established
government; ‘that he thought it was not sufficient that traitors should
merely suffer death, and that consequently he had treated the heads
with indignity by trying to smash them.’ This offender, who affected a
sort of silliness, was dismissed with a caution. There were found upon
him fifty musket bullets, separately wrapped in paper, each envelope
bearing the motto ‘Eripuit ille vitam,’ the application of which would
have puzzled Œdipus himself.
[Sidenote: _GEORGE III. AND DR. JOHNSON._]
The next incident of the time connected with Jacobitism is the
celebrated interview between the king and Dr. Johnson. In that
celebrated audience which the old Tory had of the king, in February,
1767, in the library of Buckingham Palace, sovereign and subject
acquitted themselves equally well. Mr. Barnard, the librarian, had
settled Johnson, and left him, by the library fireside. The Doctor was
deep in a volume when the king and Barnard entered quietly by a private
door, and the librarian, going up to Johnson, whispered in his ear,
‘Sir, here is the king.’ George III. was ‘courteously easy.’ Johnson
was self-possessed and equally at his ease, as he stood in the king’s
presence.
With little exception, the conversation was purely literary: the
characteristics of the Oxford and Cambridge libraries; the publications
of the University presses; the labours of Johnson himself; the
controversy between Warburton and Lowth; Lord Lyttelton as a historian;
the merits of the universal Dr. Hill; the quality of home and foreign
periodicals; and so on. When Lyttelton was named, Johnson said he had
blamed Henry II. over much. The king thought historians seldom did such
things by halves. ‘No, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘not to kings;’ but he
added: ‘That for those who spoke worse of kings than they deserved, he
could find no excuse; but he could more easily conceive how some might
speak better of them than they deserved, without any ill intention; for
as kings had much in their power to give, those who were favoured by
them would frequently, from gratitude, exaggerate their praises; and as
this proceeded from a good motive, it was certainly excusable――as far
as error was excusable.’
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON, ON GEORGE III._]
When Johnson submitted that he himself had done his part as a writer,
‘I should have thought so, too,’ said the king, ‘if you had not
written so well.’ Johnson spoke of this to Boswell in these words:
‘No man could have paid a handsomer compliment, and it was fit for
a king to pay: it was decisive.’ On another occasion, Johnson being
asked if he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered: ‘No,
Sir. When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to
bandy civilities with my sovereign.’ Later still he said, ‘I find it
does a man good to be talked to by his sovereign;’ and for some time
subsequently he continued to speak of the king as he had spoken of him
to Mr. Barnard, after the interview: ‘Sir, they may talk of the king
as they will, but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen;’ and
later, ‘still harping on my daughter,’ he said at Langton’s: ‘Sir, his
manners are those of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Louis XIV.
or Charles II.’
Assuredly, the fine-gentleman manners of either king were not now to
be found in the Charles Edward who aspired to the throne which Charles
II. had occupied. A passage in an autograph letter, addressed in May,
1767, by Cardinal York to a friend of the family in London (where it
was offered for sale three or four years ago), shows the condition of
the prince, and shadows forth the lingering hopes of the family. The
Cardinal, after stating that the Pope had presented Charles Edward with
‘a pair of beads,’ adds: ‘They are of such a kind as are _only given to
Sovrains_, and could wee but gett the better of the nasty Bottle, which
every now and then comes on by spurts, I would hope a greet deal of
ouer gaining a good deal _as to other things_.’
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON’S PENSION OPPOSED._]
Four years later (that is, in 1771), the pensioning of Jacobite
Johnson was brought before the notice of the House of Commons. In
parliament, his Jacobitism was made use of as a weapon against himself.
Townshend’s charge against the Ministry was based on the alleged fact
that Johnson was a pensioner, and was expected to earn his pension. ‘I
consider him,’ said Townshend, ‘a man of some talent, but no temper.
The principle he upholds I shall ever detest. This man, a Jacobite by
principle, has been encouraged, fostered, pensioned, because he _is_
a Jacobite.’ Wedderburn denied it, and aptly asked, ‘If a papist, or
a theoretical admirer of a republican form of government, should be
a great mathematician or a great poet, doing honour to his country
and his age, and should fall into destitution, is he to be excluded
from the royal bounty?’ The answer is patent; but it is not a matter
for gratulation that Johnson wrote, as Lord Campbell remarks, ‘out of
gratitude, “The False Alarm,” and “Taxation no Tyranny,” the proof
sheets of which were revised at the Treasury.’ Johnson himself did not
prove that his withers were unwrung by the vaunting remark to Davies:
‘I wish my pension, Sir, were twice as large, that they might make
twice as much noise.’
[Sidenote: _A 30TH OF JANUARY SERMON._]
In 1772, Jacobitism was again under parliamentary notice. At this
time, although the Nonjurors kept true in their allegiance to the
hereditary right of the Stuarts, the Tories were as opposite as could
be to those of the old turbulent era of ‘High Church and Ormond!’
On the 30th of January, Dr. Nowell (Principal of St. Mary, Oxford)
preached before the House of Commons a sermon that Sacheverel might
have preached. That is to say, he vindicated Charles I.; he also drew
a parallel between him and George III., and indulged in very high Tory
sentiments. As usual, the preacher was thanked, and he was requested
to print his discourse, which was done accordingly. At this juncture
the younger Townshend moved in the House to have the sermon burnt
by the common hangman; but, says Walpole (in his ‘Last Journals’),
‘as the Houses had, according to custom, thanked the parson for his
sermon, without hearing or reading it, they could not censure it now
without exposing themselves to great ridicule.’ They did censure it,
nevertheless. ◆[Sidenote: _DEBATE ON THE SERMON._]◆ Captain Walsingham
Boyle, R.N., proposed, and Major-General Irwin seconded, the motion
that the vote of thanks should be expunged. This was opposed by Sir
William Dolben and Sir Roger Newdegate, who had proposed the vote of
thanks. ‘Sir Roger,’ says Walpole, as above, ‘was stupidly hot, and
spoke with all the flame of stupid bigotry, declaring that he would
maintain all the doctrines in the sermon were constitutional.’ T.
Townshend, jun., showed how repugnant they were to the constitution,
and it was carried by 152 to 41, to expunge the thanks. General Keppel,
Colonel Fitzroy (Vice-Chamberlain to the king), and Charles Fox, all
descendants of Charles I., voted against the sermon, as did even Dyson
and many courtiers. The 41 were rank Tories, all but Rigby, who had
retired behind the chair; but, being made to vote, voted as he thought
the king would like, to whom he paid the greatest court, expecting to
be Chancellor of the Exchequer if Lord Guilford should die and Lord
North go into the House of Lords. This proper severity on the sermon,’
as Walpole now calls it, ‘was a great blow to the Court, as clergymen
would fear to be too forward with their servility, when the censure
of Parliament might make it unadvisable for the king to prefer them.’
Boswell thought that ‘Dr. Nowell will ever have the honour which is
due to a lofty friend of our monarchical constitution.’ ‘Sir,’ said
Johnson, ‘the Court will be very much to blame if he is not promoted.’
A dozen years later, Johnson, Boswell, and ‘very agreeable company
at Dr. Nowell’s, drank Church and King after dinner with true Tory
cordiality.’ The toast had a different personal application in former
days.
[Sidenote: _MARRIAGE OF CHARLES EDWARD._]
And there was something a-foot which might culminate in restoring
that old personal application. London suddenly heard that Charles
Edward had quite as suddenly disappeared from Florence. ‘I am sorry,’
Walpole wrote to our minister at Florence, in September, ‘that so
watchful a cat should let its mouse slip at last, without knowing
into what hole it is run.’ Walpole conjectured Spain, on his way to
Ireland, with Spanish help. But the prince was bent on other things,
and not on invasion and conquest by force of arms. Charles Edward
had once declared (London gossip at least gave him the credit of the
declaration) that he would never marry, in order that England might
not be trammeled by new complications. When he _did_ marry, the
London papers made less ado about it than if the son of an alderman
had married ‘an agreeable and pretty young lady with a considerable
fortune.’ This single paragraph told the Londoners of the princely
match: ‘April 1st, 1772. The Pretender was married the 28th of last
month at St. Germain, in France, by proxy, to a Princess of Stolberg,
who set off immediately to Italy to meet him.’
[Sidenote: _WALPOLE, ON THE MARRIAGE._]
Walpole reflects, but exaggerates, the opinions of London fashionable
society, on the marriage of Charles Edward. He knows little about the
bride. ‘The new Pretendress is said to be but sixteen, and a Lutheran.
I doubt the latter. If the former is true, I suppose they mean to carry
on the breed in the way it began――by a spurious child. A Fitz-Pretender
is an excellent continuation of the patriarchal line.’ At that time
the Royal Marriage Bill, which prohibited the princes and princesses
of the Royal Family from marrying without the consent of the Sovereign,
or, in certain cases, of Parliament, was being much discussed.
‘Thereupon,’ Mr. Chute says, ‘when the Royal Family are prevented from
marrying, it is a right time for the Stuarts to marry. This event
seems to explain the Pretender’s disappearance last autumn; and though
they sent him back from Paris, they may not dislike the propagation of
thorns in our side.’
In a subsequent letter, Walpole continues the subject. ‘I do not
believe,’ he says, ‘that she is a Protestant, though I have heard
from one who should know, General Redmond, an Irish officer in the
French service, that the Pretender himself abjured the Roman Catholic
religion at Liége, a few years ago, and that, on that account, the
Irish Catholics no longer make him remittances. This would be some, and
the only apology, but fear, for the Pope’s refusing him the title of
king. What say you to this Protestantism? At Paris they call his income
twenty-five thousand pound sterling a year. His bride has nothing but
many quarters. The Cardinal of York’s answer last year to the question
of _whither his brother was gone_? is now explained. “You told me,” he
replied, “_whither_ he should have gone a year sooner.”’
[Sidenote: _THE LAST HEADS ON TEMPLE BAR._]
The London papers of the 1st of April contained other information not
uninteresting to Jacobites. It was in this form:――‘Yesterday, one of
the rebel heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now
remaining.’ The remaining head fell shortly after. They were popularly
said to be those of Towneley and Fletcher; and, as before noticed,
there is a legend that Towneley’s head is still preserved in London.
The late Mr. Timbs, in his ‘London and Westminster,’ gives this account
of ‘the rebel heads’ and their farewell to the Bar:――‘Mrs. Black,
the wife of the editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ when asked if she
remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply in her brusque,
hearty way: “Boys, I recollect the scene well. I have seen on that
Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads――real heads――traitors’
heads――spiked on iron poles. There were two. I saw one fall (March
31st, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, as I have heard, shrieked.
One woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I recollect seeing human heads
on Temple Bar.”’ The spikes were not removed till early in the present
century.
[Sidenote: _DALRYMPLE’S ‘MEMOIRS.’_]
At this period merit in literature was allowed or denied, according
to the writer’s politics. In 1773 Sir John Dalrymple published the
famous second volume of his ‘Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,
from the dissolution of the last Parliament until the Sea-Battle of La
Hogue.’ The first volume had appeared two years previously. The third
and concluding volume was not published till 1788. The second volume
was _famous_ for its exposure of Lord William Russell and Algernon
Sidney as recipients of money from Louis XIV.; money not personally
applied, but used, or supposed to be used, for the purpose of
establishing a republic. Walpole was furious at a book which, while it
treated both sides, generally, with little tenderness, absolved the
last two Stuart kings from blame, and spoke of William with particular
severity. Walpole says of Sir John: ‘He had been a hearty Jacobite;
pretended to be converted; then paid his court when he found his old
principles were no longer a disrecommendation at court. The great
object of his work was to depreciate and calumniate all the friends
of the Revolution.... The famous second volume was a direct charge of
bribery from France, on the venerable hero, Algernon Sidney, pretended
to be drawn from Barillon’s papers at Versailles, a source shut up to
others, and actually opened to Sir John, by the intercession of even
George III.――a charge I would not make but on the best authority. Lord
Nuneham, son of Lord Harcourt, then ambassador in Paris, told me his
father obtained licence for Sir John to search those archives――amazing
proof of all I have said on the designs of this reign; what must they
be when George III. encourages a Jacobite wretch to hunt in France
for materials for blackening the heroes who withstood the enemies of
Protestants and Liberty?... Men saw the Court could have no meaning
but to sap all virtuous principles and to level the best men to
the worst,――a plot more base and destructive than any harboured by
the Stuarts.... Who could trust to evidence either furnished from
Versailles or coined as if it came from thence? And who could trust to
Sir John, who was accused, I know not how truly, of having attempted
to get his own father hanged, and who had been turned out of a place,
by Lord Rockingham, for having accepted a bribe?’
[Sidenote: _WALPOLE’S ANTI-JACOBITISM._]
The above, from Walpole’s ‘Last Journals,’ is a curious burst of
Anti-Jacobitism, on the part of a man who gave Sir John Dalrymple a
letter of introduction to the French Minister, de Choiseul! Sir John
in his preface names ‘Mr. Stanley, Lord Harcourt, and Mr. Walpole,’ as
furnishing him with such introductions. All that the king did was to
allow access to William III.’s private chest, at Kensington, and the
‘ex-Jacobite wretch’ to make what he could out of the contents. Walpole
never forgave him. In 1774, when a Bill, to relieve booksellers who had
bought property in copies, was before the Commons, ‘the impudent Sir
John Dalrymple,’ as Walpole calls him, ‘pleaded at the bar of the House
against the booksellers, who had paid him 2000_l._ for his book in
support of the Stuarts. This was the wretch,’ cries Walpole, ‘who had
traduced Virtue and Algernon Sidney!’
[Sidenote: _ANTI-ULTRAMONTANISM._]
Walpole spared Lord Mansfield, the brother of Murray of Broughton
(and almost as much of a Jacobite), as little as he did Dalrymple. In
June, this year, there was a hotly-sustained battle in the Commons
over the Quebec Bill. The Bill was denounced as an attempt to involve
Protestants under a Roman Catholic jurisdiction. The Court was accused
of preparing a Popish army to keep down the American colonies. Walpole
charged Lord Mansfield with being the author of the Bill, and with
disavowing the authorship. On the 9th of June, Lord North proposed
to adjourn the debate till the 11th, as on the intervening day Lord
Stanley was to give a grand entertainment at the Oaks, near Epsom, in
honour of his intended bride, Lady Betty Hamilton. The opposition in
the House did not let slip the palpable opportunity. They severely
ridiculed the minister, and Tom Townshend told him,――the Pretender’s
birthday, the 10th of June, was a proper festival for finishing a
Bill of so Stuart-like a complexion! Camden said, in the Lords, that
the king, by favouring such a measure, would commit a breach of his
coronation oath. Walpole has recorded, in his ‘Last Journals,’ that
the sovereign who was wearing the crown of England, to the prejudice
of the Stuart family, was doing by the authority of a free parliament
what James II. was expelled for doing. The City told the king, in a
petition not to pass the Bill, that he had no right to the crown but
as a protector of the Protestant religion. Walpole remarked, ‘The King
has a Scotch Chief Justice, abler than Laud, though not so intrepid as
Lord Strafford. Laud and Strafford lost their heads,――Lord Mansfield
would not lose his, for he would die of fear, if he were in danger,
of which, unfortunately, there is no prospect.’ The Bill was carried
in both Houses. On the 22nd of June, the king went down to the Lords
to pass the Bill, and prorogue the Parliament. The crowded streets
wore quite the air of old Jacobite times. The feeling of dread and
hatred, not against English Catholics, but against that form of
Popery called Ultramontanism, which would, if it could, dash out the
brains of Protestantism, and overthrow kings and thrones ‘ad majorem
Dei gloriam,’ found bitter expression on that day. ‘His Majesty,’
according to the journals, ‘was much insulted on his way to the House
of Peers yesterday. The cry of NO POPERY! was re-echoed from every
quarter, and the noisy expressions of displeasure were greater than
his Majesty ever yet heard.’ On the other hand, the king’s brother,
the Duke of Gloucester, rose suddenly into favour. He voted against
the Bill. With reference to that step, the ‘Public Advertiser’
chronicled the following lines: ‘’Tis said that a great personage has
taken an additional disgust at another great personage dividing with
the minority on Friday last. This is the second heinous offence the
latter has been guilty of; the first, committing matrimony; and now,
professing himself a Protestant.’ Walpole thought it was judicious in
him to let it be seen that at least one Prince of the House of Hanover
had the Protestant cause at heart, and the preservation of the ‘happy
establishment.’
[Sidenote: ‘_THE HAPPY ESTABLISHMENT._’]
As the study of the times is pursued, the student is no sooner disposed
to believe that Jacobitism has ultimately evaporated, than he comes
upon some remarkable proof to the contrary. The following is one of
such proofs.
[Sidenote: _GARRICK’S MACBETH._]
In the year 1775, some friend of the drama remonstrated with Garrick
on the absurdity of the costume in which he and other actors of
Macbeth played the hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The actor of the
Thane generally dressed the character in a modern military uniform.
As an improvement, it was suggested that a tartan dress was the proper
costume to wear. Of course the real Macbeth was never seen in such a
dress; but Garrick was not troubled at _that_. He objected for another
reason. ‘It is only thirty years ago,’ he said, ‘that the Pretender was
in England. Party spirit runs so high that if I were to put on tartan,
I should be hissed off the stage, and perhaps the house would be pulled
down!’ It should be remembered that when Macklin changed _his_ Macbeth
costume from that of an English general to a plaid coat and trousers,
Quin said that Macklin had turned Macbeth into an old Scotch piper.
The party spirit to which Garrick alluded seems to have revived in the
person of Dr. Johnson, whose principles led him still to sympathise
with the Jacobite cause.
[Illustration: Flower]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER XVI.
(1776-1826.)
[Sidenote: _A PLEBISCITE FOR THE STUARTS._]
[Illustration: Drop-A] very fair instance of Jacobite sentiment in
London, in the year 1777, presents itself in a record by Boswell, in
his ‘Life of Dr. Johnson.’ The doctor, in argument with the Whig Dr.
Taylor, insisted that the popular inclination was still for the Stuart
family, against that of Brunswick, and that if England were fairly
polled, the present king would be sent away to-night, and his adherents
hanged to-morrow!’ Taylor demurred, and Johnson gave this as the ‘state
of the country.’――‘The people, knowing it to be agreed on all hands,
that this king has not the hereditary right to the crown, and there
being no hope that he who has it can be restored, have grown cold and
indifferent upon the subject of loyalty and have no warm attachment
to any king. They would not, therefore, risk anything to restore the
exiled family. They would not give twenty shillings a piece to bring
it about; but if a mere vote could do it, there would be twenty to
one; at least, there would be a very great majority of voices for it.
But, Sir, you are to consider that all those who consider that a king
has a right to his crown, as a man has to his estate, which is the
just opinion, would be for restoring the king who certainly has the
hereditary right, could he be trusted with it; in which there would be
no danger now, when laws and everything else are so much advanced, and
every king will govern by the laws.’ It was in the same year, 1777,
that Johnson called the design of the young Chevalier to gain a crown
for his father ‘a noble attempt;’ and Boswell expressed his wish that
‘we could have an authentic history of it.’ More than a generation
had passed away since the attempt had failed, but Johnson thought the
history might be written: ‘If you were not an idle dog, you might write
it by collecting from everybody what they can tell, and putting down
your authorities.’ It was shortly after that, hearing of a Mr. Eld, as
being a Whig, in Staffordshire, Johnson remarked, ‘There are rascals in
all counties.’ It was then he made his celebrated assertion that ‘the
first Whig was the Devil;’ but this Jacobite definition was provoked by
Eld’s coarse description of a Tory as ‘a creature generated between a
nonjuring parson and one’s grandmother.’ Lord Marchmont thought Johnson
had distinguished himself by being the first man who had brought ‘Whig’
and ‘Tory’ into a dictionary.
‘Nonjuring parsons’ still existed; but the hierarchy was all but
extinguished.
[Sidenote: _THE LAST OF THE NONJURING BISHOPS._]
In the last week of November 1779, reverential groups were assembled
in Theobald’s Road, to witness the passing to the grave of the
last nonjuring bishop of the _regular_ succession――Bishop Gordon.
There was no demonstration but of respect. Yet there must have been
some Jacobites of the old leaven among the spectators; though many
Nonjurors were not Jacobites at all. To this record may be added here
the fact that in St. Giles’s churchyard, Shrewsbury, lie the remains
of another nonjuring bishop, William Cartwright, who is commonly
called ‘the Apothecary,’ because, like other bishops of the sturdy
little community, he practised medicine. Cartwright (who came of the
‘Separatists,’ a division which started about 1734, with one bishop)
always dressed in prelatic violet cloth. Hoadley once surprised a party
at Shrewsbury by saying, ‘William Cartwright is as good a bishop as I
am.’ Cartwright hardly thought so himself, for in 1799, in which year
he died, he was reconciled to the established church, at the Abbey
in Shrewsbury, by a clergyman who in his old age revealed the fact
to a writer who made it public in 1874, in the ‘Dictionary of Sects,
Heresies, and Schools of Thought,’ edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt.
No reason is given why the alleged fact was made a mystery of for so
long a period.
The very last of _all_ the nonjuring bishops, one of the irregular
succession, died in Ireland in 1805, namely, Boothe. He was irregularly
consecrated by Garnet, who had been consecrated by Cartwright, who had
been consecrated by Deacon. Nonjuring congregations, in London and
elsewhere,――they generally met in private houses,――diminished and
dissolved. Here and there, a family or an individual might be met with
who would use no Prayer Books but those published before the Revolution
of 1688. Probably, the last Nonjuror (if not the last Jacobite) in
England died in the Charter House, London, in 1875――the late Mr. James
Yeowell, for many years the worthy and well-known sub-editor of ‘Notes
and Queries.’ To him, the true church was that of Ken, and his true
sovereign was to be looked for in the line of Stuart; but Mr. Yeowell
acknowledged the force of circumstances, and was as honest a subject of
Queen Victoria as that royal lady could desire to possess.
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE MUSE._]
The Jacobite and Nonjuring pulpits were unoccupied and silent, but the
Muses manifested vitality. The tenacity, and one might almost say,
the audacity of Jacobite loyalty was well illustrated in 1779 by the
publication of a collection of songs, under the title of ‘The True
Loyalist, or Chevalier’s Favourite.’ In one of the ballads both Flora
Macdonald and Charles Edward are alluded to:――
Over yon hills and yon lofty mountain,
Where the trees are clad with snow;
And down by yon murm’ring crystal fountain,
Where the silver streams do flow;
There fair Flora sat, complaining
For the absence of our King,
Crying, ‘Charlie, lovely Charlie!
When shall we two meet again?’
At this period, the unhappy Charles Edward was neither lovely nor
loveable. His ballad poet, above, has paraphrased, or parodied, a
popular song, ‘Over Hills and high Mountains,’――but so ill, with
excess or lack of feet, indifferently, as to serve the measure with
the arbitrary despotism with which the Stuarts themselves would have
visited Church and Constitution.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE JOHNSON._]
It will be remembered that when Jacobite Johnson was pensioned, the
English language did not suffice to give expression to his feelings.
He was obliged to borrow a word from France: he was _pénétré_ with
his Majesty’s goodness. In 1783,――weighing Stuart against Brunswick,
Johnson borrowed a word from the same foreign source, to disparage the
House of Hanover. It must be confessed that Dr. Johnson’s Jacobitism
had become a ‘sentiment,’ in 1783. He could then indignantly denounce
the factious opposition to Government, and yet account for it on
Jacobite principles. He imputed it to the Revolution. One night, at
Mrs. Thrale’s house in Argyle Street, where the conversation turned
on this subject, ‘Sir,’ said he, in a low voice, having come nearer
to me, while his old prejudices seemed to be fermenting in his mind,
‘the Hanoverian family is _isolée_ here. They have no friends. Now, the
Stuarts had friends who stuck by them so late as 1745. When the right
of the king is not reverenced, there will not be reverence for those
appointed by the king.’
[Sidenote: _BOSWELL, ON ALLEGIANCE._]
In June of the following year, 1784, Johnson made a remark which very
reasonably struck Boswell ‘a good deal.’――‘I never,’ said Johnson,
‘knew a Nonjuror who could reason.’ On which observation and on the
position of the Nonjurors and their Jacobite allegiance, generally,
Boswell makes this comment:――‘Surely, he did not mean to deny that
faculty to many of their writers,――to Hickes, Brett, and other
eminent divines of that persuasion, and did not recollect that the
seven Bishops, so justly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance
to arbitrary power, were yet Nonjurors to the new Government. The
nonjuring clergy of Scotland, indeed, who, excepting a few, have
lately, by a sudden stroke, cut off all ties of allegiance to the House
of Stuart, and resolved to pray for our present lawful Sovereign by
name, may be thought to have confirmed this remark; as it may be said
that the divine, indefeasible, hereditary right which they professed to
believe, if ever true, must be equally true still. Many of my readers
will be surprised when I mention that Johnson assured me he had never
in his life been in a nonjuring meeting-house.’――Johnson’s disrespect
for the reasoning powers of the Nonjurors was still less intense
than his detestation of the Whigs. Of some eminent man of the party,
he allowed the ability, but he added, ‘Sir, he is a cursed Whig, a
_bottomless_ Whig, as they all are now.’
Walpole was satisfied that the Stuart race was effete, and that the
family was incapable of exciting the smallest sensation in England. He
could not, however, pass over an incident in ‘the other family.’
In allusion to the Prince of Wales and the Roman Catholic widow (of
two husbands) whom he married,――Mrs. Fitzherbert, he says: 1786, ‘We
have other guess matter to talk of in a higher and more flourishing
race; and yet were rumour;――aye, much more than rumour, every voice
in England――to be credited, the matter, somehow or other, reaches
from London to Rome.’ Happily, no new ‘Pretender’ arose from this
extraordinary union.
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE ACTRESS._]
In this year, in the month of July, the comedy of ‘The Provoked
Husband’ was played at the Haymarket, ‘Lady Townley, by a Lady, her
1st appearance in London.’ The lady and the incident had some interest
for those who held Jacobite principles. They knew she was the daughter
of an old Scotch Jacobite, Watson, whose participation in the ’45
had perilled his life, ruined his fortune, and caused him to fly his
country. He died in Jamaica. His widow returned to Europe, and brought
up the family, creditably. In course of time; Miss Watson married a
paper-manufacturer, or vendor, named Brooks. His early death compelled
her to go on the stage; her success, fair in the metropolis, was more
brilliant in Dublin, Edinburgh, and other important cities, especially
where Jacobite sympathy was alive. It is curious that in Boswell’s
account of the tour to the Hebrides with Johnson, under the date,
September 7th, 1773, when they were at Sir Alexander Macdonald’s, at
the farm of Corrichattachin, in Skye, among the things which he found
in the house was ‘a mezzotinto of Mrs. Brooks, the actress, by some
strange chance in Skye.’ The portrait, in 1773, was not that of an
actress; nor was the lady then Mrs. Brooks; but that was her name, and
such was her profession when Boswell published his Life of Dr. Johnson,
in 1791; at which time, however, he was not aware of her Jacobite
descent. Some persons, unpleasantly advanced in years, recollect old
Mrs. Brooks’s powerful delineation of Meg Murdockson, in T. Dibdin’s
‘Heart of Mid Lothian,’ about the year 1820, at the Surrey Theatre, and
they suggest that she was the old Jacobite’s daughter.
[Sidenote: _BURNS’S ‘DREAM.’_]
In the year in which the Jacobite’s daughter made her first appearance
in London, as ‘Lady Townley,’ Burns wrote the verses which he called ‘A
Dream,’ with this epigraph:――
Thoughts, words, and deeds the Statute blames with reason,
But surely Dreams were ne’er indicted Treason.
The poet then dreams of being at St. James’s on the king’s birthday,
and addressing George III. in place of the Laureate. The feeling
expressed was no doubt one that had come to be universal,――namely, of
respect for a monarch and his family, about whom, however, the poet
could see nothing of that divinity which was supposed of old to hedge
such supreme folk. But Burns recognised a constitutional king, from
whom he turned, to attack his responsible ministers:――
Far be’t frae me that I aspire
To blame your legislation,
Or say ye wisdom want, or fire,
To rule this mighty nation.
But, faith! I muckle doubt, my Sire,
Ye’ve trusted ’Ministration
To chaps who, in a barn or byre,
Wad better fill’d their station
Than courts, yon day.
[Sidenote: _BURNS ON THE STUARTS._]
In the following year, Burns still more satisfactorily illustrated
the general feeling as being one of loyalty to the accomplished fact
in the person of the king at St. James’s, but with no diminution of
respect for the royal race that had lost the inheritance of majesty.
This the Scottish bard expressed in the ‘Poetical Address’ to Mr. W.
Tytler. He lamented indeed that the name of Stuart was now ‘despised
and neglected,’ but, he adds:――
My fathers that name have revered on a throne;
My fathers have fallen to right it.
Those fathers would spurn their degenerate son,
That name should he scoffingly slight it.
Still, in pray’rs for King George, I must heartily join
The Queen and the rest of the gentry:
Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of mine;
Their title’s avow’d by my country.
But why of that epocha make such a fuss,
That gave us the Hanover stem?
If bringing them over was lucky for us,
I’m sure ’twas as lucky for them.
But loyalty truce! we’re on dangerous ground,
Who knows how the fashions may alter?
The doctrine to-day, that is loyalty sound,
To-morrow may bring us a halter.
This sort of reserve was practised by many Jacobites, in London,
as well as in Scotland. There was no knowing what might happen. In
1770, the French minister, De Choiseul, was strongly disposed to help
Charles Edward to be crowned at Westminster, but that prince was so
helplessly drunk when he arrived at the minister’s house in Paris that
he was at once sent back. But the hapless adventurer never lost all
hope of finding himself in the Hall or the Abbey. In 1779, Wraxall
says that Charles Edward exhibited to the world a very humiliating
spectacle. Mrs. Piozzi, on the margin of her copy, wrote――‘Still more
so at Florence, in 1786. Count Alfieri had taken away his consort, and
he was under the dominion and care of a natural daughter who wore the
Garter and was called Duchess of Albany. She checked him when he drank
too much or when he talked too much. Though one evening, he called Mr.
Greathead up to him, and said in good English, and in a loud though
cracked voice: “I will speak to my own subjects in my own way, Sir;
aye! and I will soon speak to you, Sir, in Westminster Hall!”’
[Sidenote: _THE COUNT OF ALBANY._]
While the Count of Albany was thus dreamily looking towards London, and
the Scottish poet was playfully hesitating in his allegiance, there was
a Jacobite whose neck was once very near the noose of the halter, but
who now was a man whom the Hanoverian king delighted to honour.
There is no more perfect illustration of the now utter nothingness of
Jacobitism than may be found in an incident which took place at St.
James’s this year, namely, the knighting of a man who had fought at
Culloden and forged notes in the service of Charles Edward, whom he
looked upon as his king, and which king was still existing in Italy.
That man was the celebrated engraver, Robert Strange.
[Sidenote: _ROBERT STRANGE._]
Strange was an Orcadean lad, who was early destined to study law, but
who, hating the study, entered on board a man-of-war, out of intense
love of the sea, and grew sick of it in half a year. He turned to
what he hated, and seated himself on a high stool in the law office
of his brother David, in Edinburgh. But there the real natural bent
of his genius declared itself, and he was discovered, after drawing
drafts of deeds, leases and covenants, drawing portraits, buildings,
and landscapes, on the back of them. David was a sensible man: he
straightway articled his brother Robin to Cooper, the celebrated
engraver, for six years. Robin served his time with credit to himself.
The world of art still profits by Robin’s assiduity. He was out of his
time, and twenty-three years of age when, in 1744, bonnie Isabella
Lumisden’s beauty made prisoner of his soul. ‘No man may be lover
of mine,’ said Isabella, ‘who is not ready to fight for my prince.’
Strange, forthwith, became Isabella’s slave and Charles Edward’s
soldier. Isabella’s father, also her better known brother, Andrew
Lumisden, and herself, were uncompromising Jacobites. Robin became as
_ultra_ as any of them. His first contribution to the cause was an
engraved likeness of Charles Edward. His second was his plate of a
promissory note, for the paper currency by which the Jacobite army was
to pay its way, the note to be duly cashed after the Restoration of the
Stuart dynasty! Robin became the prince’s ‘moneyer,’ and a gentleman
of his Life Guards. Strange went through it all, from the first fray
to the overthrow at Culloden. He escaped from the field, played a
terrible game of hide-and-seek for his life, and at last reached
Edinburgh. His old master Cooper is quoted by Robin’s biographer,
Dennistoun, as his authority for saying that, ‘when hotly pressed,
Strange dashed into the room where his lady (Isabella Lumisden),
whose zeal had enlisted him in the fatal cause, sat singing at her
needlework, and, failing other means of concealment, was indebted
for safety to her prompt invention. As she quietly raised her hooped
gown, the affianced lover quickly disappeared beneath its ample
contour; where, thanks to her cool demeanour and unfaltering notes, he
lay undetected while the rude and baffled soldiery vainly ransacked
the house.’ Strange escaped, but he returned to Edinburgh, where he
privately engraved portraits of the chiefs in both factions, and drew
designs for fans, which were sold in London as well as in Edinburgh.
[Sidenote: _STRANGE’S ADVENTURES._]
There is a mystery as to how such a double offender as Strange――rebel
soldier and fabricator of fictitious bank-notes――was allowed to live
unmolested in Edinburgh. He himself, though now never ‘wanted,’ in
a police sense, grew uneasy. He married Isabella Lumisden in 1747,
and for some years he was better known to the Jacobite colony at
Rouen,――and in other cities――than he was at home. Mrs. Strange devoted
her children to the Jacobite cause. In the cap of her first-born, a
daughter, she fastened a couple of white roses; and she wrote of her
second, Mary Bruce:――‘I have taken great care of her education. For
instance: whenever she hears the word _whig_ mentioned, she grins and
makes faces that would frighten a bear; but when I name the Prince, she
kisses me and looks at her picture; and greets you well for sending
the pretty gumflower. I intend she shall wear it _at the coronation_.’
The Jacobite lady hoped to see _that_, and to let her windows at great
profit when James III. should pass by there to Holyrood.
[Sidenote: _STRANGE IN LONDON._]
Strange led a somewhat wandering life, but always for great purposes
of art, while his family remained in Scotland. He was even in London,
all Jacobite and unpardoned as he was, in the year of the accession of
George III.; in which year Walpole wrote to Mann, at Florence:――‘I am
going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who is going
to visit Italy. He is a first-rate artist, and by far our best. Pray
countenance him, though you may not approve his politics. I believe
Albano’ (the residence of the Chevalier de St. George) ‘is his Loretto.’
In Italy, Jacobite Strange not only triumphantly pursued his career
as an engraver, but proved himself a far more profitable agent in
purchasing foreign pictures for English connoisseurs at home, than
Hanoverian Dalton. In 1765, he was applying to Lord Bute, as a loyal
subject, to be allowed to live without fear of molestation in London.
After the death of the old Chevalier, this liberty was granted to
whomsoever cared to apply for it. Strange and his family then settled
in fashionable Castle Street, Leicester Square. The Whigs in the
Society of Artists raised obstacles to his being elected a member;
but ultimately the Jacobite disappeared in the glory of the artist.
The somewhat ignoble scattering of the old Chevalier’s servants caused
Andrew Lumisden, his under-secretary of state, to look anxiously
towards the English metropolis. His sister was anxious he should take
leave with all becomingness. She wrote to him from, now dingy, Castle
Street:――‘I entreat the person whom I never saw’ (Cardinal York)
‘but, even for his father and family’s sake, I ever loved, to, if
possible, patch up things so as, in the eyes of the world, you may bid
a respectful farewell. I could walk barefoot to kneel for this favour.’
[Sidenote: _NEW HOPES._]
Andrew Lumisden, however, was not among the Jacobites who would venture
to London on mere word of mouth permission. His sister encouraged him
in this hesitation. In a letter from Castle Street, 1773, she alludes
to the subject, and also to the new hopes that fluttered the bosoms
of her Jacobite friends, and which were raised on the marriage, in
the preceding year, of Charles Edward with the Princess Louise of
Stolberg:――‘I have not yet heard of your letter of liberty. Col.
Masterton says it is lying in Lord North’s office, and he is sure you
will be safe to come here. But I say we must have better security
than that. Whatever I learn, you shall know without loss of time....
When will you write me of a pregnancy? On that I depend. It is my
last stake.... As my good Lady Clackmannan says: “O, my dear, send me
something to raise my spirits in these bad times!” Remember me to
the good Principle Gordon, and all our honest’ (that is, Jacobite)
‘friends.’
[Sidenote: _STRANGE AT ST. JAMES’S._]
Five years more elapsed before the ultra-Jacobite Andrew Lumisden was
seen traversing Leicester Fields, a free man, in safety. He owed his
freedom, it is said, to the zeal and judgment shown by him in executing
a commission (entrusted to him by Lord Hillsborough) to purchase for
George III. some rare books at a great sale in Paris. Strange himself
had become a great master of his art, the glory of the English school
of engravers. There was still some distance kept between Robin and
the Court of St, James’s. He had declined to engrave a portrait
of George II., and also one of George III., by Ramsay. His reason
was not ill-founded, namely, that no engraving could be creditably
executed where the original painting was very defective. Be this as it
may, the old Jacobite effected a reconciliation by engraving West’s
picture of the apotheosis of the young princes――Octavius and Alfred.
Strange’s untameable Jacobite wife, who had never spoken of George
III. but as ‘Elector of Hanover’ or ‘Duke of Brunswick,’ now awarded
him and his queen their full title, in a letter addressed to her son
Robert, in January, 1787, written in Strange’s new London residence,
‘the Golden Head, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden,’ and containing an
account of the honours heaped on her husband, in recognition of his
last labours. ‘Your dear father has been employed in engraving a most
beautiful picture painted by Mr. West, which he liked so much that
he was desirous to make a print from it. ◆[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE
KNIGHTED._]◆ The picture was painted for his Majesty; it represented
two of the royal children who died. The composition is an angel in
the clouds, the first child sitting by the angel; and the other, a
most sweet youth, looking up. There are two cherubs in the top, and
a view of Windsor at the bottom. This piece was lately finished, and
Friday, the 5th currt., was appointed for your father’s presenting some
proofs of it to his Majesty. He went with them to the Queen’s house
and had a most gracious reception. His Majesty was very much pleased.
After saying many most flattering things, he said, “Mr. Strange, I
have another favour to ask of you.” Your father was attentive, and his
Majesty――“It is that you attend the levee on Wednesday or Friday, that
I may confer on you the honour of knighthood.” His Majesty left the
room, but, coming quickly back, said, “I am going immediately to St.
James’s; if you’ll follow me I’ll do it now; the sooner the better.”
So, calling one of the pages, gave him orders to conduct Mr. Strange to
St. James’s, where, kneeling down, he rose up SIR ROBERT STRANGE! This
honour to our family is, I hope, a very good omen. I hope it will be
a spur to our children, and show them to what virtue and industry may
bring them. My dear Bob, I hope you will equally share in our virtues
as you do in our honours: honours and virtue ought never to part. Few
families have ever had a more sure or creditable foundation than ours.
May laurels flourish on all your brows!’
[Sidenote: _SIR ROBERT AND LADY STRANGE._]
It is a custom to speak in the present day of law and justice being
a mere farce, and of a rogue having a better chance than his victim,
before a full bench of judges splitting hairs and disagreeing in the
interpretation and application of the law. But the ‘handy dandy’ of
law and justice was as confusing in the London of the Jacobite times.
Cameron, young Matthews the printer, the thoughtless youths who were
‘captains’ in the Manchester regiment, were harmless in what they
did, compared with Strange, the young Chevalier’s life-guardsman, and
forger of flash notes; but they were hanged and Robin was knighted!
Of course, Strange was not knighted for his Jacobite doings, but for
his distinction as an artist. One may at least be sorry that the other
Jacobites were strangled at Tyburn and on Kennington Common.
Sir Robert was grateful. In future royal dedications the ex-Jacobite
spoke of the king’s mother as ‘that august princess.’ George, the
king, was ‘the auspicious patron of art.’ Sir Robert ‘presumed to
flatter himself’ that he might ‘humbly lay his work at his Majesty’s
feet;’ that ‘millions prayed for him,’――the ‘Arbiter of Taste and the
beloved Father of his people.’ And ‘the king over the Water’ was still
(though scarcely) alive. Robin survived Charles Edward, and died in
1791. His widow lived till 1806. With full recognition of the ‘happy
establishment,’ Lady Strange never doubted the superior rights of the
Stuarts, and was angry and outspoken when such rights were, in any
sense, questioned. At one of her gatherings in Henrietta Street, one
of her guests happened to refer to Charles Edward as the ‘Pretender.’
This stirred the old lady’s Jacobite blood, and with a license not
uncommon to aged Scottish ladies of the time, in moments of excitement,
she thundered out, ‘_Pretender!_ and be damned to you! _Pretender_,
indeed!’――Flora Macdonald did not swear at such provocation, but it
once brought her fist in ringing acquaintance with the offender’s ears.
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF CHARLES EDWARD._]
In the year 1788 the poor prince, to designate whom as a ‘Pretender’
was so offensive to all Jacobites, died in Rome, on the night of a
terrible anniversary for the Stuart family, the 30th of January. In
all the London periodicals he was treated with courtesy, but his death
moved London society much less than that of ‘Athenian Stuart,’ whose
decease left a void in scientific and social companies. The funeral
ceremony is detailed in brief common-places. A very mild defender of
the prince, ‘Anglicanus,’ in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (Anno 1788,
p. 509), adds to the confusion touching Charles Edward’s religion, by
asserting that he was converted to Protestantism in Gray’s Inn Lane;
and proving the assertion by asking, ‘Did he not read the Church of
England prayers to his domestics when no clergyman was present?’
[Sidenote: _THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY, AT COURT._]
Soon after, London became an asylum to a fugitive ‘Queen.’ In 1791, the
French revolution drove the widow of Charles Edward to leave Paris and
seek a refuge in London. The Countess of Albany must have felt some
surprise at finding herself well received in St. James’s Palace by
the king and queen. She was there by force ‘of that tupsy-turvy-hood
which characterises the present age,’ as some wit remarked, at a supper
at Lady Mount-Edgcumbe’s. She was presented by the young Countess of
Aylesbury (of that Jacobite family) as Princess of Stolberg. Walpole’s
record is:――‘She was well-dressed and not at all embarrassed. The King
talked to her a good deal, but about her passage, the sea, and general
topics. The Queen in the same way, but less. Then she stood between the
Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and had a good deal of conversation
with the former, who perhaps may have met her in Italy. Not a word
between her and the Princesses, nor did I hear of the Prince; but
he was there, and probably spoke to her. The Queen looked at her
earnestly. To add to the singularity of the day, it is the Queen’s
birthday. Another odd accident, at the Opera, at the Pantheon, Mme.
d’Albany was carried into the King’s box, and sat there. It is not of
a piece with her going to Court, that she seals with the royal arms.’
Walpole thought that ‘curiosity’ partly brought her to London; and
that it was not very well bred to her late husband’s family, ‘nor very
sensible, but a new way of passing eldest.’ He had not then seen her,
and when he did, at the end of May, his report was: ‘She has not a ray
of royalty about her. She has good eyes and teeth, but, I think, can
have had no more beauty than remains, except youth. She is civil and
easy, but German and ordinary. Lady Aylesbury made a small assembly for
her on Monday, and my curiosity is satisfied.’
[Sidenote: _IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS._]
On the old Chevalier’s birthday, the 10th of June, Dr. Beilby Porteus,
Bishop of London, escorted Hannah More to the House of Lords, to hear
the king deliver the speech by which he prorogued Parliament. On that
once famous day for defiantly wearing a white rose and risking mortal
combat in consequence, the Countess of Albany ‘chose to go to see the
King in the House of Lords, with the crown on his head, proroguing the
Parliament.’ ‘What an odd rencontre!’ says Walpole, ‘was it philosophy
or insensibility?’ and he adds his belief, without stating the grounds
for it, ‘that her husband was in Westminster Hall at the Coronation.’
Hannah More was being ‘very well entertained’ with the speech; but the
thing that was most amusing, as she prettily described it, ‘was to see,
among the ladies, the Princess of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife of
the Pretender, sitting just at the foot of that throne which she might
once have expected to have mounted; and what diverted the party when I
put them in mind of it, was that it happened to be the 10th of June,
_the Pretender’s birthday_! I have the honour to be very much like her,
and this opinion was confirmed yesterday when we met again.’
It has been seen what Walpole and others thought of the Jacobites’
queen when she came to London. The lady kept a diary during her sojourn
here, from which may be collected her opinions of the English and
England of her day.
[Sidenote: _THE COUNTESS, ON ENGLISH SOCIETY._]
The widow of Charles Edward found England generally, and London in
particular, much duller than even she had expected. She saw crowds but
no society. People lived nine months in the country, and during the
three months in town they were never at home, but were running after
one another. They who were not confined half or all the year with gout,
went to bed at four, got up at midday, and began the morning at two in
the afternoon. There was no sun, but much smoke, heavy meals, and hard
drinking. The husbands were fond and ill-tempered; the wives good from
a sense of risk rather than disinclination for their being otherwise,
and they loved gaming and dissipation. There was a family life, but no
intimate social life; no taste nor capacity for art. The most striking
part of the judgment of the Countess of Albany refers to English laws
and constitution. ‘The only good,’ she says in her Diary, ‘which
England enjoys, and which is inappreciable, is political liberty....
If England had an oppressive government, this country together with
its people would be the last in the universe: bad climate, bad soil,
and consequently tasteless productions. It is only the excellence of
its government that makes it habitable.’ This judgment of England by
a Jacobite princess or queen, whose husband would have changed all
but the climate, is at least interesting. In England the Duchess of
Devonshire and many other ladies treated her as ‘queen.’ ‘The flattery’
(says the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ July, 1861, p. 170), ‘which the writers
probably regarded as polite _badinage_, was accepted as rightful homage
by the countess.’
[Sidenote: _HANOVERIAN JACOBITES._]
Her sojourn in England was from April to August. Her design to visit
the scenes in Scotland which her late husband had rendered historical,
was obliged to be given up for lack of means; and she became, but not
till the death of the Cardinal of York, the recipient of an annuity
from George III. This king, like many of his family before him, and
like all after him, had a strong feeling of sympathy with the Stuarts.
Indeed, the recognised Jacobitism of the king, and of the royal family
in general, was the apology made by friends of the Stuart for holding
office under what they had once called ‘the usurping family.’ Hogg
(‘Jacobite Relics’) has recorded that a gentleman in a large company
once gibed Captain Stuart of Invernahoyle, for holding the king’s
commission while he was, at the same time, a professed Jacobite. ‘So I
well may,’ answered he, ‘in imitation of my master; the king himself is
a Jacobite.’ The gentleman shook his head, and remarked that the king
was impossible. ‘By G――!’ said Stuart, ‘but I tell you he is, and every
son that he has. There is not one of them who, if he had lived in my
brave father’s days, would not to a certainty have been hanged.’
The public learned, in 1793, how different the ‘family feeling’ had
been in the past generation. The ‘Monthly Review’ (in August of that
year), in a notice of the Memoirs of the Marshal Duke de Richelieu,
states that the temporary refuge offered to Charles Edward in Friburg,
after his expulsion from France, highly displeased the Court at St.
James’s. The British minister wrote in a very haughty style to the
magistrates of that State, complaining that it afforded an asylum
to an odious race proscribed by the laws of Great Britain. This was
answered by L’Avoyer with proper spirit. ‘This odious race,’ said he,
‘is not proscribed by our laws. Your letter is highly improper. You
forget that you are writing to a sovereign State; and I do not conceive
myself obliged to give you any further answer.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE BALLADS._]
In corroboration of the better feeling of the reigning family for that
of the Stuarts, Hogg chronicles an act of graceful homage to loyalty
to the Stuarts (on the part of the Prince Regent), which is graceful
if it be true. He was heard to express himself one day, before a dozen
gentlemen of both nations, with the greatest warmth, as follows: ‘I
have always regarded the attachment of the Scots to the Pretender――I
beg your pardon, gentlemen, to Prince Charles Stuart I mean――as a
lesson to me whom to trust in the hour of need!’
The feeling of regard for those who had been true to the Stuarts was,
no doubt, genuine. It was certainly shared by the regent’s brothers,
the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex. At a meeting of the ‘Highland Society
of London,’ when the Duke of Sussex was in the chair, a suggestion was
made to Colonel Stuart of Garth, that it was desirable to rescue from
oblivion the songs and ballads of the Jacobite period, by collecting
and printing them. Colonel Stuart readily adopted the suggestion, which
may be said to have been made by the royal family, in the person of one
of its members; and ultimately the task of collecting devolved on ‘the
Ettrick Shepherd.’ Hogg published a first volume in 1819, the second in
1822. Some of the songs were his own, after the old tunes and fashions.
The genuine Jacobite ballads excited much attention; old Jacobites
were amused rather than gratified by viewing Cumberland in Hell, and
younger people whose sympathies had first been awakened (in 1805)
by ‘Waverley,’ were subdued to a sentiment of love and pity for the
Stuart whose sufferings are detailed in song, and the loyalty of whose
adherents is so touchingly illustrated in ardent, sometimes ferociously
attuned, minstrelsy. The republication of these ‘Jacobite Relics,’ by
Mr. Gardner, of Paisley, in 1874, is a proof that the old interest has
not died out either in London or the kingdoms generally.
[Sidenote: ‘_HENRY THE NINTH._’]
Meanwhile, the French revolutionary wave reached Rome, and it ruined
‘Henry the Ninth, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of men, King
of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,’ as it did his sister-in-law,
the Countess of Albany. Cardinal York did not seek refuge in London:
he found one in Venice. In London, however, Sir John Cave Hippisley,
having been informed of the venerable Cardinal’s destitute condition,
submitted the lamentable case of this Prince of the Church to the
Ministry (February, 1800). Almost immediately, in the king’s name,
an offer by letter was made to him of a pension of 4,000_l._ a year.
‘The letter,’ wrote the Cardinal to Sir John, in Grosvenor Street,
‘is written in so extremely genteel and obliging a manner, and with
expressions of singular regard and consideration for me, that, I
assure you, excited in me most particular and lively sentiments, not
only of satisfaction for the delicacy with which the affair has been
managed, but also of gratitude for the generosity which has provided
for my necessity.’ The Cardinal adds a touching statement of his utter
destitution. Sir John was right in informing the still illustrious
prince that the king’s action had the sympathy of the whole British
nation, irrespective of creeds and parties. ‘Your gracious Sovereign’s
noble and spontaneous generosity,’ rejoins the Cardinal, ‘filled me
with the most lively sensations of tenderness and heartfelt gratitude.’
[Sidenote: _HOME’S HISTORY OF THE REBELLION._]
In 1802, Cadell and Davies, in the Strand, published the first
regular history of the rebellion of 1745, and the London critics
expressed their surprise that more than half a century had elapsed
before a trustworthy account of so serious an outbreak had been given
to the public. The key-note of Home’s book is in a paragraph which
was very distasteful to the Jacobites. There it was laid down that
the Revolution of 1688, which transferred the Crown ‘to the nearest
protestant heir, but more remote than several Roman Catholic families,
gave such an ascendant to popular principles as puts the nature of
the constitution beyond all controversy.’ The critics with Jacobite
tendencies were disappointed that Home cast no censure on the Duke of
Cumberland. They supposed this was owing to the book being dedicated
to the king. Jacobite disappointment found ample compensation in 1805,
when romance flung all its splendour round the young Chevalier, in the
novel by an anonymous author, ‘Waverley, or ’tis 60 years since.’
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE DRAMA._]
The last male heir of the royal Stuart line was then living. The good
Cardinal York died in 1807 at Rome, when he was eighty-two years
of age. The announcement of his death in the London journals shows
sympathy and respect, without stint. It was well deserved, for he was a
blameless prince of a not irreproachable line.
After this last male heir of the line of Stuart had died, with
a dignity that characterised no other of his race, and with the
respectful sympathy of his adversaries, if he had any, it might be
supposed that all danger springing from such a line had ceased. The
last of the race had abandoned the empty title of king, and had
gracefully and without humiliation accepted a pension, gracefully
and delicately offered, from George III. The peril, however, was not
supposed to be over. While the last of the Stuarts was dying, Mr.
Charles Kemble was translating a French drama (originally German, by
Kotzebue), entitled ‘Edouard en Ecosse.’ On presenting it in 1808 to
the Lord Chamberlain and the Licenser, they did not see treason in
it, but much offence. The piece, in fact, represented the chances,
mischances, adventures, and escapes of Charles Edward after the
battle of Culloden. A licence to play a three-act drama, tending
to keep up interest in ‘the Pretender,’ was refused point blank.
Ultimately, it was granted under absurd conditions. ◆[Sidenote: _THE
DRAMA REVISED._]◆ Charles Kemble removed the scene to Sweden, and
called his drama ‘The Wanderer, or the Rights of Hospitality.’ Charles
Edward (played by Kemble) became Sigismond, Culloden figured as the
battle of Strangebro, and everything suffered silly change, except one
character, which was overlooked――Ramsay (Fawcett)――who throughout the
play talked in the broadest Scotch. When Sigismond’s perils culminated,
he melodramatically escaped them all, and those who had helped him were
proud of their aid, and not in much fear for having given it. More than
twenty years elapsed before the great official at St. James’s thought
that the original version might be acted without danger to the throne
of George IV. In November, 1829, it was produced at Covent Garden as
the ‘Royal Fugitive, or the Rights of Hospitality.’ Charles was played
by the ex-artillery officer, Prescott, whose stage name was Warde.
Diddear and Miss Tree acted the Duke and Duchess of Athol; Miss Cawse
represented Flora Macdonald; and the terrible Duke William was roared
through like a sucking dove by the milk-and-watery Horrebow. The drama
did not shake the ‘happy establishment.’ Of the performers in 1829,
one alone survives, the representative of the Duchess of Athol, Mrs.
Charles Kean.
[Sidenote: _SATIRICAL BALLAD._]
But, five years previous to abandoning the timidity which saw danger
in the stage dealing with a Stuart drama, a total change came over the
governing powers in London. George IV. and Alderman Curtis had appeared
in Edinburgh, in Highland garb, in 1822, and this led to an act of
grace in 1824. The king’s visit to Scotland, however, did arouse
a slumbering Jacobite bard, who gave vent to his rough humour in a
satire, copies of which reached London in the king’s absence, and the
flavour of which may be gathered from the following extracts:――
Sawney, naw the King’s come,
Sawney, naw the King’s come,
Down an’ kiss his gracious――hand,
Sawney, naw the King’s come.
In Holyrood House lodge him snug,
An’ blarnyfy his royal lug (_ear_)
Wi’ stuff wud gar a Frenchman ugg (_make sick_),
Sawney, &c.
Tell him he is great an’ gude,
An’ come o’ royal Scottish blude,
Down, like Paddy, lick his fud (_foot_)!
Sawney, &c.
Tell him he can do nae wrang,
That he’s mighty high an’ strang,
That you an’ yours to him belang,
Sawney, &c.
Swear he’s great, an’ chaste, an’ wise,
Praise his portly shape an’ size,
Rouse his whiskers to the skies,
Sawney, &c.
Make pious folk in gude black claith,
Extol, till they run short o’ breath,
The great Defender of the Faith,
Sawney, &c.
Make your peers o’ high degree,
Crouching low on bended knee,
Greet him wi’ a _Wha wants me?_
Sawney, &c.
Let his glorious kingship dine,
On gude sheepheads an’ haggis fine,
Gi’e him whiskey ’stead o’ wine,
Sawney, &c.
Show him a’ your buildings braw,
Your castle, college, brigs, an’ a’
Your jail an’ royal Forty-Twa (_an old institution_),
Sawney, &c.
An’ when he rides Auld Reckie through,
To bless you wi’ a kingly view,
Let him smell your ‘Gardy Loo’ (peculiar to the Old Town),
Sawney, &c.
[Sidenote: _REVERSAL OF ATTAINDERS._]
The successful royal visit to Scotland led to some happy results. On
Monday, May 24th, 1824, the Earl of Liverpool rose to inform the House
of Lords that he had the king’s command to present bills for restoring
the honours of several families which had been forfeited by attainder.
The royal visit to Scotland, the first which any king had made since
the Revolution, had led certain persons of undoubted loyalty to be
relieved from the effects of the attainder which, he would not dispute,
had been justly levelled against their disloyal ancestors. The king was
gracious, the Crown was discreet. Four peerages had been selected for
restoration, viz., the Earldom of Mar, in the person of John Erskine;
the Viscountship of Kenmure (John Gordon); the Earldom of Perth and
Viscountship of Strathallan to James Drummond; and the title of Lord
Nairn to William Nairn. It was also proposed to reverse the attainder
of Lord Stafford.
The Earl of Lauderdale warned the Government to be quite sure that
James Drummond had any claims, before they restored the above two
titles. The Earl of Radnor thought the proceeding a very extraordinary
one. Ultimately the Bill was read a first time.
[Sidenote: _DEBATE IN THE COMMONS._]
On June 4th, the Commons agreed to a proposition from the Lords that,
considering Mr. Erskine’s age and infirmity, the Bill to restore him to
the forfeited earldom should be proceeded with. Mr. Erskine was unable
to come up to London to take the indispensable preparatory oaths. He
found ready grace from an unanimous House.
When, ten days later, the Bills were read a second time in the Commons,
the restoration of the blood of Stafford (attainted in 1680) was
recognised as an act of justice; that of the Jacobite peers as one of
grace and favour. Captain Bruce expressed the pain he felt that while
this grace and favour cleared the taint in the blood of the lineal
descendants of those who had forfeited title and estates, such grace
was kept from descendants of collaterals; and but for this prohibition
he himself would now be Lord Burleigh. To which Lord Binning added the
remark that, by old Scottish law, the claims of a collateral branch
were not estreated by forfeiture.
Mr. Peel rejoined that there were only two courses――indiscriminate
reversal of all the attainders, or impartial selection. As to the
first, some of the lineal descendants did not desire restoration, on
considerations of property. Government, he said, had selected those
respecting whom no doubt existed with regard to the original patent;
and he spoke with reverence of the earldom of Mar, which existed prior
to any records of parliament.
The result was that king and parliament at Westminster, in this year
1824, restored the following forfeited titles:――Erskine, Lord Erskine,
Earl of Mar; Gordon, Lord Lochinvar and Viscount Kenmure; Nairn,
Lord Nairn; and Drummond, Lord Maderty, Drummond of Cromlix, and
Viscount Strathallan. The Viscount Strathallan restored this year was
a descendant of the viscount who was slain at Culloden, but who was
styled in the Whig London papers as ‘Mr. Drummond.’
[Sidenote: _A TRANSPONTINE PLAY._]
A minor incident, yet a characteristic one, may here be mentioned.
The power which in 1808 had prohibited the counterfeit presentment
on the stage of Charles Edward, could not obstruct those of George
III. and all his family, in 1824, at the ‘Coburg.’ This house, being
in Surrey, was beyond the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain’s
office. The drama, acted in defiance of him and of good taste, was
called ‘George the Third, the Father of his People.’ The defunct king
(acted by Bengough, who singularly resembled him), and the deceased
Queen Charlotte, with her inseparable snuff-box, next delighted the
Transpontines with their gracious presence; but tenfold more delight
and amusement were caused by the presence of all the living members
of the royal family. In noticing this singular piece, the ‘Morning
Chronicle’ gave a Jacobite (or perhaps a Jacobin) flavour to its
criticism. The title, it argued, was disrespectful to George IV. It
is always the king on the throne who is the Father of his People.
George III., therefore, should have been styled the Grandfather of his
People! Again, in the drama, the latter is called ‘the best of kings,’
a designation which is the right of the king in possession; therefore,
said the ‘Chronicle,’ George III. was ‘the second best,’ or the author
might have called him ‘the best but one.’
[Sidenote: _THE BODY OF JAMES THE SECOND._]
It is a singular coincidence that the same year in which four Jacobite
peerages were relieved from attainder, the remains of James II. were
discovered at St. Germain. The body was for many years ‘deposited’ in
the chapel of the English Benedictines, Paris――body, _minus_ heart,
brains, and bowels, entombed in various places, to which places
English Jacobites used to resort as to holy shrines. The leaders of
civilisation, at the outbreak of the Revolution, smashed the urns
containing brains, &c., and scattered the contents. The body at the
Benedictines was treated with similar indignity; but, in a mutilated
form, it was privately interred at St. Germain. No mark was set on the
place, and it was forgotten, but was discovered this year in the course
of rebuilding a part of the church. Information of this discovery was
sent to London by our ambassador, to whom orders were sent from Downing
Street to see the remains re-interred with every religious ceremony
that could manifest respect.
[Sidenote: _CEREMONY AT ST. GERMAIN._]
On the 7th of September, the Paris papers announced that a solemn mass
would be celebrated on the 9th, and invited the attendance of all
British subjects on this solemn occasion. Now, this invitation of the
Paris authorities to British subjects to attend the funeral service
in honour of the re-depositing of what remained of the body of James
II., puzzled rather than excited the London journals. Writers therein
protested against this service, if thereby the legitimate right of
the Stuarts was recognised, or confession was made that service for
the dead could get a soul in or out of purgatory. Sly hits were made
against Lord Eldon, the keeper of the king’s conscience, for ordering
such a mass at a period when he was in the habit of toasting the
Protestant ascendency. Many persons――the most of them, it is to be
hoped, moved by praiseworthy sympathies――went from London to be present
at the ceremony. It was solemn and dignified. Distinguished persons,
bearing familiar names of the old Jacobite times, were present. Marshal
Macdonald and the Duke of Fitz-James were amongst them. By a curious
coincidence, the British ambassador in France was then a Stuart――Sir
Charles Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothesay. He placed a royal
diadem of gold beneath a black crape veil, on the coffin, and this
graceful act of homage was in appropriate harmony with the restoration,
as far as it could be effected, of the descendants of those who had
suffered in the Jacobite cause, to the long forfeited titles of their
ancestors.
[Sidenote: _SOMETHING NEW._]
It really now seemed as if the curtain had fallen on the great Jacobite
drama, and that it would not be possible to cause it to rise again for
an additional act or for a farce succeeding to the tragic drama. In the
year 1826, indeed, there was a little graceful episode, namely, the
restoration of the titles of Ogilvie, Lord Ogilvie and Earl of Airly;
of Dalzell, Lord Dalzell and Earl of Carnwath; and of Sutherland, Lord
Duffus. But, not only while these acts of grace were being enacted, but
for many years before and many years afterwards, a course of action was
being taken which was intended to revive the whole question, and to put
on the stage the old Jacobite play, with alterations, improvements,
new actors, and an entirely new _dénouement_. London did not become
aware of this till about the year 1847. In Scotland, however, there had
long been expectancy raised of ‘something new,’ which will appear in
Jacobite incidents under Queen Victoria.
[Illustration: Flower]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]
CHAPTER XVII.
VICTORIA.
[Illustration: Drop-G]eorge Selwyn excused himself for going to see
Simon Fraser Lord Lovat lose his head at the block, by going to see it
sewn on again. That last head sacrificed wore a title which was the
first restored by Her Majesty after her accession. Old Lovat’s son,
whom his father forced into rebellion, and whom that exemplary parent
would have hanged, if he could have saved his own life by it, became a
distinguished General in the British service. General Fraser and his
half-brother Archibald died, without surviving heirs. Old Lovat was the
thirteenth lord, leaving a title under attainder. As early as 1825, Sir
Thomas Fraser of Lovat and Strichen claimed the ancient barony as a son
of the sixth lord, who died in 1557. Their Lordships at Westminster had
made no progress towards making the claimant a Baron, when Her Majesty
ascended the throne. The Queen settled the claim at once by creating
Sir Thomas Fraser, Baron Lovat in the United Kingdom. The new Lord
Lovat, however, still coveted the older and therefore grander dignity.
He persisted in asserting his right to possess the Scottish title, in
spite of the attainder which smote the lord who was beheaded on Tower
Hill. After twenty years’ consideration, the Peers at Westminster
were advised that the assertion was a correct one; and, in 1857, they
acceded to his demand. That was exactly three hundred years after the
death of the sixth lord, through whom the claimant asserted his right
to the title.
[Sidenote: _OLD JACOBITE TITLES._]
In a way something similar was another restoration of a Jacobite
title effected in London. Of all the lords who were tried for their
lives (1716 and 1746 included), there was not one who bore himself so
gallantly as the son of the illustrious House of Seton, the Earl of
Wintoun. All the Jacobite peers who pleaded guilty, petitioned for
mercy, and returned to a treasonable outspokenness, when they failed
to obtain forgiveness for an avowed crime. Even brave Balmerino cried
_peccavi!_ and got nothing by it. But noble Wintoun pleaded that he was
not guilty in fighting on what he considered the just side; when he
was condemned to death he refused to beg for his life; and he showed
his contempt for the Act of Grace, by anticipating it in an act of his
own,――escaping from the Tower to the continent. He was the fifth earl,
and his attainder barred the way to any heir of his own. But, in 1840,
the fifteenth Earl of Eglinton proved his descent from a preceding
earl, of whom he was forthwith served heir male general, and a new
dignity was added to the roll of Lord Eglinton’s titles.
[Sidenote: _MORE RESTORATIONS._]
In the following year, the Committee of Privileges went to the work of
restoration of Jacobite forfeitures with unusual alacrity. On their
advice, an Act of Parliament was passed which declared that Mr. William
Constable Maxwell, of Nithsdale and Everingham, and all the other
descendants of William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale and Lord Herries,
were restored in blood. There the Act left them. As far as they were of
the blood of Winifred Herbert, noble daughter of the House of Pembroke,
the ill-requited wife of the puling peer whom she rescued from death,
their blood was free from all taint, in spite of any Act. Mr. Maxwell
could not claim the earldom, but the way was open for him to the barony
once held by the unworthy earl, and in 1850, he was the acknowledged
Lord Herries.
Three years later, Her Majesty despatched a ‘special command and
recommendation’ to Parliament, which was speedily obeyed. It was to
the effect that the Parliament should restore George Drummond to the
forfeited Jacobite titles of Earl of Perth and Viscount Melfort the
dignities of Lord Drummond of Stobhall, Lord Drummond of Montifex,
and Lord Drummond of Bickerton, Castlemaine, and Galstoun, and to the
exercise of the hereditary offices of Thane of Lennox and Steward of
Strathearn. The peer who in 1824 advised Lord Liverpool to be sure
he had got hold of the right Mr. Drummond, when recommending one for
restoration to the peerage, had some reason for the course taken
by him. However, in this case, where there are so many Drummonds,
Parliament could hardly have been mistaken. That body having fulfilled
the Queen’s ‘command and recommendation,’ Her Majesty gave her assent;
and then, as if the better to identify the Drummond who was restored
to so many titles, record was gravely made that ‘born in 1807, he was
baptised at St. Marylebone Church,’ Hogarth’s church, of course.
In 1855 the act of attainder which had struck the Earl of Southesk
(Lord Carnegie) for the share he took in the little affair (which
intended a good deal) in 1718, was quietly reversed, at Westminster,
where it had been originally passed.
[Sidenote: _THE CROMARTIE TITLE._]
Not so quietly was effected the next business entailed on Parliament,
by the Jacobite rebellion,――or, rather, the business was assumed by Her
Majesty herself, if any business can be assumed by an irresponsible
sovereign whose ministers have to answer for everything done in that
sovereign’s name. The title of Earl of Cromartie (with its inferior
titles once worn by the head of the house of Mackenzie) was, and still
is, under attainder. But there was a great heiress, Miss Annie Hay
Mackenzie, who, in 1849, married the Duke of Sutherland. In 1861, the
queen _created_ this lady Countess of Cromartie, Viscountess Tarbat of
Tarbat, Baroness Castlehaven, and Baroness Macleod of Castle Leod, in
her own right, with limitation of succession to her second son Francis
and his heirs;――the elder succeeding to the Dukedom.
The latest restoration was by legal process. Among the minor
unfortunates whose Jacobitism was punished by forfeiture, was a Lord
Balfour of Burleigh. In 1869, Mr. Bruce, of Kennett, Clackmannan,
gained his suit to Parliament, and recovered that resonant title; and
it is said that the modern Balfour of Burleigh has in his veins the
blood of Bruce;――which, after all, is not so honest or so legitimately
royal as that of Baliol.
[Sidenote: _TITLES UNDER ATTAINDER._]
With regard to Jacobite peerages, ‘Experience has shown that in the
absence of a Resolution and Judgment of the House of Lords, it is
a dangerous thing to say, without qualification, who represents a
Peerage. The Duchess of Sutherland is Countess of Cromartie, as the
Earl of Errol is Baron Kilmarnock, not in the Peerage of Scotland, but
that of the United Kingdom, in virtue of a recent creation. Each of
the _Scottish_ Peerages held by the three Jacobite Noblemen is still
open to any Nobleman who can establish a right thereto, and obtain a
reversal of the Attainder.’ (‘Notes and Queries,’ Jan. 11, 1873, p.
45.) As to the heir to the title of Balmerino, we find that Captain
John Elphinstone, R.N. (Admiral Elphinstone of the Russian Navy,――the
hero of Tchesme), left a son, William, also a captain in the Czar’s
navy, whose son, Alexander Francis, Captain R.N., and a noble of
Livonia (born 1799), claimed to be heir to the title of Balmerino,
were the attainder removed. All his sons were in the British naval or
military service, in which they and other members of the baronial house
greatly distinguished themselves.
[Sidenote: _FITZ-PRETENDERS._]
While some of the above titles were being relieved from the obloquy
which had been brought upon them by the Jacobitism of former wearers,
and no one was dreaming, except in some out-of-the-way corner of the
Scottish highlands, that the Jacobites had still, and had never ceased
to have, a king of their own, a strange, wild, story was developing
itself, which had a remarkably ridiculous, not to say impudent, object
for its motive. To make it understandable, the reader is asked to
go a few years back, in order to comprehend a mystery, in which the
‘Quarterly Review’ of June, 1847, in an article sometimes attributed to
the Rt. Hon. John Wilson Croker, but more correctly to Mr. Lockhart,
smashed all that was mysterious.
In the year 1800 (October 2nd), Admiral John Carter Allen (or Allan),
Admiral of the White, died at his house in Devonshire Place, London.
Such is the record in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’ In the succeeding
number, a correspondent describes him as an old Westminster scholar, a
brave sailor, a Whig well looked upon by the Rockingham party, and of
such good blood as to induce Lord Hillsborough to believe that he was
the legal male heir to the earldom of Errol.
The admiral was twice married and had two sons. By his will, dated
February, 1800, he bequeathed to the elder, ‘Captain John Allen, of
His Majesty’s navy,’ 2,200_l._; to the younger, ‘Thomas Allen, third
Lieutenant in His Majesty’s navy,’ 100_l._ The reader is respectfully
requested to keep this lieutenant, Thomas Allen, alone in view. He may
turn out to be a very unexpected personage.
[Sidenote: _ADMIRAL ALLEN’S SON AND GRANDSONS._]
Lieutenant Thomas, in 1792, married, at Godalming, Katherine Manning,
the second daughter of the vicar. This would seem to have been a
suitable marriage; but it has been suggested that it may have appeared
unsuitable in the eyes of the admiral, and that, for this reason, he
bequeathed his younger son only 100_l._ But whatever the reason for
such disproportion may have been, the lieutenant’s marriage produced
two sons, John Hay Allen and Charles Stuart Allen. The younger
gentleman married, in November, 1822, in London, Anne, daughter of
the late John Beresford, Esq., M.P. In the record of this marriage,
the bridegroom is styled ‘youngest son of Thomas Hay Allen.’ In the
same year, the lieutenant’s elder son published a volume of poems
(Hookham), which, however, excited no attention, though it contained
dark allusions to some romantic history. The father, Thomas, the
lieutenant, seems to have been much on and about the Western isles
of Scotland, as well as on the mainland. There existed there a fond
superstition that Charles Edward would appear in some representative
of his race, very near akin to himself. The lieutenant must have been
an impressionable man. He died about the year 1831, and he must have
revealed previously a secret to his sons, who, in such case, kept it
long under consideration, till, probably out of filial respect for his
veracity, they manifested their belief in the revelation, and, in 1847,
declared themselves to be, the elder, John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart;
the younger, Charles Edward Stuart. Their father, Lieutenant Thomas
Allen, son of the old Admiral of the White, must have imparted to them
the not uninteresting circumstance, that he was the legitimate son of
the young Chevalier, and that all faithful Scots and Jacobites _had
yet a king_. Long after the lieutenant’s death, a book was published
in London (1847), by Dolman, the Roman Catholic publisher, of Bond
Street, of which the two brothers were joint authors, in which the
words _you have yet a king_, implied that John Sobieski S. Stuart was
the individual who had sole right to wear the crown of his ancestors.
But this momentous book was preceded by others.
[Sidenote: _WORKING THROUGH LITERATURE._]
Mr. John Hay Allen, as before stated, first appeared in literature
in 1822. His volume of poems bore those names. Twenty years later,
in 1842, the same gentleman edited, under the assumed name of John
Sobieski Stolberg Stuart, the ‘Vestiarium Scoticum,’ the transcript
from a MS. alleged to have been formerly in the Scots College at Douay;
with a learned introduction and illustrative notes. This folio, at the
time, made no particular sensation. It was followed, in 1845, by a
work, in which the elder brother was assisted by the younger, namely,
‘Costume and History of the Clans,’ with three dozen lithographs, in
imperial folio; the cheapest edition was priced at six guineas. Some
were much dearer. Two years later, a work very different in intention,
was published by the Roman Catholic publisher Dolman, of Bond Street,
who had Blackwood of Edinburgh and London as his colleague. The title
of this book was ‘Tales of the Last Century, or Sketches of the Romance
of History between the years 1746 and 1846,’ by John Sobieski and
Charles Edward Stuart. There is a dedication ‘To Marie Stuart, by her
father and uncle.’
[Sidenote: _THE ROMANCE OF THE STORY._]
As Sketches of the _Romance_ of History, the writers _might_ have
meant that they were not dealing with _reality_. But such seemingly
was not their meaning. They made a serious step towards asserting that
the elder brother was rightful heir to the throne of the Stuarts; and
that if Jacobites and Ultramontanists should ever be in search of such
an heir, after upsetting the present ‘happy establishment,’ he was to
be found at his lodgings, prepared to wear the crown, with Jacobite
instincts and Ultramontane ferocity. Of course, this was not said in
words. It is rather implied in the three sketches which make up the
romance of ‘Tales of the Last Century.’
The Tales illustrate the claims of the Chevalier John Sobieski Stuart,
after this fashion.――The ‘young Pretender’ married in 1772, Louise,
Princess of Stolberg Gœdern, and grand-daughter of the Jacobite Earl
of Aylesbury, who after his liberation from the Tower, in 1688, for
his political principles, settled in Brussels, and there married
(his second wife) a lady of the ancient family of Argentain. The
daughter and only child of this marriage wedded with the Prince of
Horne. Louisa of Stolberg, the youngest child of the last named union,
married Charles Edward in 1772, when she was not yet twenty, and he was
fifty-two. According to the ‘Tales of the Last Century,’ Louisa became
the mother of a son, in 1773. The alleged event was kept a profound
secret, and the child was as secretly carried on board an _English man
of war_! commanded by Commodore O’Halleran, who, if he had his rights,
was not only foster-father to the mysterious infant, but also Earl of
Strathgowrie! Admiral Allen, it will be remembered, was thought to be
heir to the earldom of Errol.
[Sidenote: ‘_RED EAGLE._’]
It may here be observed, by way of recovering breath, that if there
ever had been a son of this luckless couple, the fact would have been
proudly trumpeted to the world. The event the most eagerly desired by
the Jacobites was the birth of an heir to the Stuarts. Had such an
heir been born, to conceal the fact from the adherents of the House of
Stuart would have been an act of stark madness. Such insanity would
have simply authorised the House of Hanover to repudiate the claimant,
if he ever should assume that character.――To return to the romance of
history:――
The infant prince received by the commodore was brought up by him
as his own son. The young adventurer was trained to the sea, and he
cruised among the western isles of Scotland. He appears in the romance
as the _Red Eagle_; by those who know him he is treated with ‘Your
Highness’ and ‘My Lord;’ and, like Lieut. Thomas Allen himself, he
contracts a marriage with a lady, which is reckoned as a misalliance
by those who are acquainted with his real history. He drops mysterious
hints that the Stuart line is not so near extinction as it was
generally thought to be. The better to carry the race on, the Red Eagle
left, in 1831, two sons, the Chevaliers John and Charles Stuart, the
former being also known as the Comte d’Albanie; and both, no doubt,
sincerely believing in the rigmarole story of Lieut. Thomas Allen,
_alias_ Red Eagle, _alias_ legitimate son of Charles Edward, the young
Chevalier!
[Sidenote: ‘_TALES OF THE LAST CENTURY._’]
The ‘Tales of the Last Century’ do not say this in as many words. The
book leaves a good deal to the imagination. The hero fades out of
the romance something like Hiawatha, sailing into the mist after the
setting sun. There is abundance of melodramatic business and properties
throughout. There is mysterious scenery, appropriate music, serious and
comic actors, complex machinery, ships of war sailing over impossible
waters and looking as spectral as Vanderdecken’s ghastly vessel,――with
booming of guns, harmonised voices of choristers, cheers of _supers_,
and numerous other attractions in a dramatic way. There is nothing
‘dangerous’ in the book, though one gentleman does venture on the
following Jacobite outburst:――‘Oh! if I had lived when you did――or
_yet_, if he who is gone should rise again from the marble of St.
Peter’s,――I am a Highlander and my father’s son,――I would have no king
but Tearlach Righ nan Gael,’――no other king but Charlie.
In another page, one of the actors puts a sensible query, and
adds a silly remark on the present condition of the Stuart
cause:――‘Wonderful!――but why such mystery?――why?――for what should the
birth of an heir to the House of Stuart be thus concealed? It had――it
yet has friends (in Europe), and its interests must ever be identified
with those of France, Spain, and Rome.’ Of this sort of thing,
though there be little, there is more than enough; but the reader,
as he proceeds, has an opportunity of conceiving a high opinion of
Red Eagle’s common sense, and of fully agreeing with him at least in
one observation which is put in the following form: ‘Woman!’ said the
Tolair, ‘this is no time for bombast and juggling!’ The old Admiral
Carter Allen never indulged in either. In his will the gallant sailor
calls John and Thomas Allen his _sons_. He does not call Thomas his
_foster_ son. Prince Charles Edward spoke of no child in _his_ will but
his illegitimate daughter, the Duchess of Albany. The Cardinal of York
took the nominal title of king at his brother’s death; and received
the duchess into his house. At her death, in 1789, the Crown jewels,
which James II. had carried off from England, came into the cardinal’s
possession; and these, at the beginning of the present century, he
generously surrendered to George III. The cardinal was well assured
that no legitimate heir of his brother had ever existed.
[Sidenote: _THE LEVER OF POETRY._]
The assurance that there was one, however, continued to be made, and
that the sons of Tolair were as poetical as they were princely was next
asserted.
[Sidenote: _POETICAL POLITICS._]
In 1848, Mr. Dolman, of London (conjointly with Blackwood), published
a poetical manifestation by the Count, John Sobieski Stuart, and his
brother, Charles Edward. It had an innocent look, but a mysterious
purpose. Its title is, ‘Lays of the Deer Forest.’ The Lays are
dedicated to Louisa Sobieska Stuart, by her father and uncle. The
second volume, consisting of ‘Notes,’ is dedicated to a Charles Edward
Stuart, by _his_ father and uncle. There is something of a poetical
fire in the Lays; and much interesting matter on deer-stalking and
other sporting subjects in the Notes. The spirit is thoroughly
anti-English; very ‘Papistical’ in the odour of its heavily-charged
atmosphere, but betraying the combined silliness and ferocity which
distinguished the Stuarts themselves, in a hero-worship for the most
cruel enemies of England. For instance, in the poem called ‘Blot of
Chivalry,’ Charles Edward Stuart, the author, deifies Napoleon, and,
if there be any meaning at all to be attached to the words, execrates
England. In the ‘Appeal of the Faithful,’ there is a mysterious
declaration that the writer, or the faithful few, will not bow the head
to Somebody, and there are as mysterious references to things which
might have been, only that they happened to be otherwise.
[Sidenote: _THE BLACK COCKADE._]
There is a little more outspokenness in ‘The Exile’s Farewell,’ which
heartily curses the often-cursed but singularly successful Saxon, and
still more heartily vituperates the sensible Scots who stuck to the
Brunswick family and the happy establishment. The writer sarcastically
describes Scotland, for the exasperation of those judicious Scots,
in the words:――‘The abject realm, a Saxon province made! and the
Stuart heaps fire on the heads of Scottish Whigs by accusing them of
common-place venality, and charging them with selling ‘Their mother’s
glory for base Saxon gold!’ The figure the nobles from Scotland made
at the Court of London in 1848, is thus smartly sketched:――
While in the Saxon capital enthralled,
Eclipsed in lustre, though in senses palled,
The planet nobles, alien to their own,
Circle, dim satellites, the distant throne:
Saxons themselves in heart, use, tongue disguised,
Their own despising, by the world despised,
While those for whom they yield their country’s pride,
Their name, their nation, and their speech deride.
The above figures of speech are admissible in poetry, but in truth and
plain prose they are ‘palabras.’ The two authors are as crushingly
severe on the English cockade as on the anti-Jacobite Scottish nobles.
The cockade is shown to be altogether an imposture. The words in
which the demonstration is made have, however, left her Majesty’s
throne unshaken. ‘At this moment, most persons imagine that black is’
(the colour of) ‘the English cockade, ignorant that it was that of
the Elector of Hanover, and only introduced into England with George
I., who bore it as a vassal of the Empire; and it may be little
flattering to the _amour-propre_ of the British people to know that the
cockade which they wear as national is the badge of a petty fief, the
palatinate of a foreign empire.’ On this matter it is certain that the
national withers are unwrung. The black cockade won glory at Dettingen,
lost no honour at Fontenoy, and was worn by gallant men whom ‘John
Sobieski Stuart’ could not overcome when his sword was (if report be
true) unsheathed against English, Irish, and Scots, on the field of
Waterloo.
[Sidenote: _THE ALLENS IN EDINBURGH._]
Let us now turn to a minor Jacobite episode.――A correspondent of
‘Notes and Queries,’ M. H. R. (August 1st, 1857, p. 95), refers to an
account the writer had from an informant, who was accustomed to meet
John and Charles Allen in Edinburgh society. ‘I find however that
their claims to legitimate descent from the Royal Stuarts were treated
in such society quite as a joke, though the claimants were fêted and
lionised, as might be expected in such a case, in fashionable circles.
They usually appeared in full Highland costume, in Royal Tartan. The
likeness to the Stuart family, I am told, was striking, and may have
been without improving their claim a whit.’ The writer then alludes
to the number of young ladies who, at Her Majesty’s accession, were
thought to bear a great resemblance to the Queen. But accidental
resemblance is worthless as proof of consanguinity. ‘If,’ the writer
continues, ‘the two claimaints have no better foundation to rest upon,
their cause is but weak, for it is obvious there may be likeness
without legitimate descent; and I fancy, if the real history is gone
into, _that_ is the point to be decided here.’
[Sidenote: _THE SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN._]
The writer goes on to traduce the character of the wife of Charles
Edward. It must, indeed, be allowed that from the year 1778, when she
was twenty-six years of age, and she first became acquainted with
Alfieri, the lover with whom she lived from 1780, with some intervals,
till his death in 1803, her character was under a shade, and yet, in
1791, the Countess of Albany was received at Court, in London, by so
very scrupulous a sovereign lady as Queen Charlotte. So scrupulous
was the queen, that her reception of the widow of Charles Edward
seemed to disperse the breath of suspicion that rested on her. Another
circumstance in her favour is the fact of George III. having settled
a pension upon her. The Countess of Albany died at Montpellier plain
Madame Fabre, in 1824, leaving all she possessed to her husband, the
historical painter. It will be seen from the last-named date, that
Queen Victoria and the wife of Charles Edward were for a few years
contemporaries.
But the countess is out of the question in this matter of John and
Charles Allen. The correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ has something
more to the point when he says:――‘The question is not of any importance
as a matter of state. The succession to the English crown is secured by
parliament, and is not affected by a descent from the young Pretender;
but as an historical fact, it is desirable that the truth of the story,
apparently set afloat by the father of these two gentlemen, should be
settled at once and for ever.’ _That_ has been effectually settled in
the 81st volume of the ‘Quarterly,’ so far as the development from
Allen to Allan, and this to Stuart, is made out, without leaving a link
unsevered in the chain of testimony.
[Sidenote: _A DERWENTWATER AT DILSTON._]
In the year 1868, the Ministry and the Lords of the Admiralty, and the
Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital estates, were amused rather than
alarmed by a claim made to the forfeited earldom of Derwentwater,
and also to the confiscated estates. A sort of action was added to
the latter claim, by taking possession of a portion of them, in the
North. The claimant is an accomplished lady who has been long known
by sympathising northern friends as Amelia Matilda, Countess of
Derwentwater. She backed the assumption of such title by installing
herself in one of the ruined chambers of the castle in ruins――Dilston.
Her servants roofed the apartment with canvas, covered the bare earthen
floor with carpeting, made the best apologies they could for doors and
windows, hung some ‘family portraits’ on the damp walls, spread a table
with relics, documents, &c., relating to the Derwentwater persons and
property: they hoisted the Derwentwater flag on the old tower, and then
opened the place to visitors who sympathised with the countess in the
way in which she supported her dignity and its attendant rheumatism.
[Sidenote: _DESCENT OF THE CLAIMANT._]
The Lords of the Admiralty and the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital
speedily bestirred themselves. They sent their representatives from
London with due authority to eject the lady, if they could not persuade
her to leave. The countess received them with mingled courtesy and
outspoken defiance. Her manners seem to have resembled her costume,
which consisted of a foreign military upper coat, with a sword by
her side, and a white satin bonnet on her head. She appeared to be
between fifty and sixty years of age, but owned only to forty. The
countess made a stout fight for it, and when she was compulsorily
put out of the castle, she pitched a camp and dwelt in a tent on the
adjacent highway. Her effects and family relics, portraits, plate, &c.,
were announced for sale, under a sheriff’s seizure. The announcement
attracted many buyers from London, their motive being less Jacobitism
than curiosity-dealing. The liberality of personal friends satisfied
the sheriff’s claims, by their bidding, and the ‘relics’ were removed
to Newcastle for public exhibition; admission, 1_s._ The countess now
attired in her Stuart tartan, with a shoulder-scarf of silk of the same
pattern, and with a black plume in her bonnet, attended, as the local
advertisements said, ‘between two and four, to explain several of the
curiosities.’
[Sidenote: _OBSTACLES IN PEDIGREES._]
The question remains as to identity. The Lords of the Admiralty in
London, when those relics of the Jacobite time came up to trouble them,
naturally asked, but in more profuse and much more legal language,
‘_Who are you?_’ The reply was not satisfactory. There has already been
recorded in these pages, under the dates 1731 and 1732, the coming of
John Radcliffe to Poland Street, London, to consult Cheselden, and
the death and funeral of the great surgeon’s patient――sole son of the
beheaded earl. The present countess, if understood rightly, denies
that the above John, ‘Earl of Derwentwater,’ died childless, as he
undoubtedly did, in 1732. She states that he married in 1740 a certain
Elizabeth Amelia Maria, Countess of Waldsteinwaters (which is a sort
of translation of Derwentwater); that he lived till 1798, when he must
have been within hail of centenarianism, and that he was succeeded by
his two sons in order of age, the first, Earl John, the second, Earl
John James. The last-named coronetted shadow is described as dying in
1833, leaving his only child, the present Amelia Matilda, Countess of
Derwentwater, who took possession of Dilston Castle, &c., under the
delusion that she had hereditary right to both land and dignity. She
accounts for John, the son of the beheaded earl, by saying that he
lived till 1798 in the utmost secrecy, under fear of being murdered by
the British Government! As he really died in 1732, unmarried, and that
the Government knew very well that he was carried from London to be
buried in his mother’s grave in Brussels, one may be allowed to suspect
that there is some mistake in the pedigree to which the Countess Amelia
pins her faith.
With regard to the descendants of the Earl of Derwentwater, in a line
not yet considered, Mr. H. T. Riley (in ‘Notes and Queries,’ October
25th, 1856, p. 336), says: ‘I remember being pointed out, some time
since, a person who bears the family name and is generally reputed to
be a descendant, through an illegitimate son, of the unfortunate Earl
of Derwentwater. I have little doubt there are several other persons
similarly connected with him, to be found in the neighbourhood of North
or South Shields.’ A lady correspondent, ‘Hermentrude,’ says (‘Notes
and Queries,’ November 16th, 1861), ‘I have been applied to, through a
friend, to communicate some genealogical particulars for their (living
descendants of the Radcliffes) benefit, which, I am sorry to say, I
was not able to ascertain. I do not know through what branch they
descend, but I was told they still entertain hopes of a reversion of
the attainder and restoration of the title.’
After this romance, the chief actor in another made his quiet exit from
the stage.
[Sidenote: _JOHN SOBIESKI STUART._]
In 1872, the most eminent personage of this latest Jacobite time,
disappeared from the scene. The tall, gaunt, slightly bent figure
of the gentleman, who once believed himself to be plain John Allen,
till his father imparted to him a story that he, the sire, was the
legitimate son of Charles Edward, and that plain John Allen was John
Sobieski Stolberg Stuart, was missed from the Reading Room of the
British Museum. There he used to enter, cloaked and spurred like an old
warrior, with a sort of haughty resignation. Yet there was an air about
him which seemed as a command to all spectators to look at him well,
and to acknowledge that the character he had inherited from his father
the lieutenant, who fancied he was the rightful King of England, was
patent in him, as clearly as if he had been born in the purple. Some
few people, of those whose idiosyncracy it is to lend ready faith to
the romantic impossible, believed in the genuineness of the character,
and held the pretensions it interpreted to be as well-founded as
those of either of ‘the Pretenders.’ This Chevalier Stuart, or Comte
d’Albanie, mixed a flavour of the scholar with that of the warrior. He
and his brother sat together apart from unprincely folk in the Reading
Room. Books, papers, documents, and all the paraphernalia of study and
research were scattered about them. ◆[Sidenote: _THE ELDER SON OF ‘RED
EAGLE.’_]◆ Quietly unobtrusive, yet with a ‘keep your distance’ manner
about them, they were to be seen poring over volumes and manuscripts
as if in search of proofs of their vicinity to the throne, and found
gratification in the non-discovery of anything to the contrary. Looking
at the elder gentleman who was often alone, the spectator could not
help wondering at the assiduous pertinacity of the Chevalier’s labour.
Nothing seemed to weary him, not even the wearisome making of extracts,
the result of which has not been revealed. Perhaps it was the vainly
attempted refutation of the plain, logical, consequential, irrefutable
statements made in Volume 81 of the ‘Quarterly,’ by Mr. Lockhart,
who, courteously cruel, smashed to atoms the fanciful idea which had
entered Lieutenant Allen’s brains, and from which idea was evolved the
perplexing conclusion that he, the ex-lieutenant, was Tolair Deargh,
the Red Eagle, and by divine grace, obstructed by human obstinacy,
king of three realms! The elder son of the Red Eagle was as familiar a
figure in the streets of London as he was in the Museum; and wayfarers
who had no thought as to his individuality, must have felt that the
cloaked and spurred personage was certainly a gentleman who wore his
three score years and ten with a worthiness exacting respect. The same
may be said of his sorrowing surviving brother, ‘Le Comte d’Albanie’
(Charles Edward), as his card proclaims him. In this ‘Chevalier,’ whose
figure is well known to most Londoners, the chivalrous spirit survives.
The last record of him in this character is in the year 1875, when
he knocked down Donald Alison for violently assaulting the Comte’s
landlady in a Pimlico lodging house!
[Sidenote: _STUART ALLIANCES._]
A year previously, the Lady Alice Mary Emily Hay, daughter of the 17th
Earl of Errol, and therefore of the blood of Kilmarnock, did Colonel
the Count Edward Stuart d’Albanie the honour to become his wife. The
Colonel is the son of ‘The Count d’Albanie.’
This marriage is thus chronicled in Lodge’s Peerage (1877, p. 238),
‘Lady Alice Mary Emily (Hay) _b._ 6th July, 1835, _m._ 1st May, 1874,
Colonel the Count Charles Edward d’Albanie, only son of Charles Edward
Stuart, Count d’Albanie, and Anne Beresford, daughter of the Hon. John
de la Poer Beresford, brother of the 1st Marquis of Waterford.’ Anne
Beresford――widow Gardiner,――is variously described as marrying, in
1822, ‘C. E. Stuart, Esq.,’ and ‘Charles Stuart Allen, younger son of
Thomas Hay Allen.’
The Colonel Count d’Albanie who married Lady Alice Hay is said to have
been in the service of Don Carlos, than which nothing could so little
recommend him to a humane, right-thinking, liberal, peace-loving,
blood-odour-hating world. There is, however, manifestly, some
difficulty in identifying the descendants of Lieutenant Thomas Allen,
or Red Eagle, who mistook himself for a never-existing son of the once
‘young Chevalier.’ Perhaps the countship of Albany is not the exclusive
possession of Lieutenant Allen’s descendants. It is at least certain
that, a couple of years ago, there was some talk in London of a Count
and Countess ‘d’Albanie,’ in Hungary, but what their pretensions were
has gone out of memory; but they must, rightly or wrongly, have had
_some_, if the tale be true that they quitted a small estate there,
somewhat offended, because the bishop of the diocese had refused to
allow them to sit in the sanctuary of some church, on purple velvet
chairs!
[Sidenote: _FULLER PARTICULARS._]
In all this affair Lieutenant Thomas Allen may deserve rather to be
pitied than blamed. That he was under a delusion seems undeniable. The
immediate victims of it, his sons, do not forfeit respect for crediting
a father’s assertions. They or their descendants must not expect the
world to have the same confidence in them.
A clear and comprehensive view of this family matter may be acquired
by perusing the following statement, which appeared in ‘Notes and
Queries,’ July 28th, 1877, and which is from one who speaks with
knowledge and authority.
‘When James Stuart, Count d’Albanie, died, he left two sons and one
daughter.’
To understand this starting point aright, the reader should remember
that the above-named James Stuart was originally known as Lieutenant
Thomas Allen, second son of Admiral Allen. The two sons and one
daughter are thus enumerated:――
‘1st. John Sobieski Stuart, Count d’Albanie,
2nd. Count Charles Edward d’Albanie.
3rd. Countess Catherine Matilda d’Albanie.’
The first of the three was the author of poems published in 1822, as
written by John Hay Allen. Both those gentlemen subsequently became
authors of works, under the name of Stuart.
[Sidenote: _THE STUART-D’ALBANIES._]
‘The elder son, John Sobieski, Count d’Albanie, married the eldest
surviving daughter of Edward Kendall, of Osterey (_vide_ Burke’s
‘Landed Gentry,’ under Kendall of Osterey), and died, leaving no
children.
‘The second son, Charles Edward Stuart, now Count d’Albanie, married
Anna Beresford, daughter of the Hon. and Right Hon. John Beresford,
second son of Marcus Beresford, Earl of Tyrone, and brother of the
first Marquis of Waterford, and by her had four children.
‘1st. Count Charles Edward d’Albanie, major in the Austrian Cavalry, in
which he served from 1840 to 1870, when he left the service and came to
England, and in 1874 married Lady Alice Mary Hay, sister of the present
and eighteenth Earl of Errol.
‘2nd. Countess Marie, who died at Beaumanoir on the Loire, on the 22nd
of August, 1873, and was buried in the cemetery of St. Cyr sur Loire.
‘3rd. Countess Sobieska Stolberg, married Edouard Platt de Platt, in
the Austrian Imperial Body Guard, and has one son, Alfred Edouard
Charles.
‘4th. The Countess Clementina, a nun.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE LORD CAMPBELL._]
‘The Countess Catherine Matilda, daughter of James Count d’Albanie’
(that is, of the gentleman first known as Admiral Allen’s son),
‘married Count Ferdinand de Lancastro, by whom she had one son, Count
Charles Ferdinand Montesino de Lancastro _et d’Albanie_, from his
mother. He also served in the Austrian army, in the Kaiser Kürassier
Regiment, or Imperial Cuirassiers, of which the emperor is colonel.
He volunteered, by permission of the emperor, Franz Joseph, into the
Lancers of the Austrian Army Corps which accompanied the Arch-Duke
Maximilian to Mexico, and during the three years’ campaign he received
four decorations for valour in the many actions at which he was
present, two of which were given to him by the Emperor Maximilian, one
being the Gold Cross and Eagle of the Order of Ste. Marie de Guadalupe,
and two by the Emperor Napoleon III., and also four clasps. After the
campaign terminated, he returned to Austria with his regiment, and got
leave to visit his uncle, the present Count d’Albanie, then in London,
where he died on the 28th September, 1873, from inflammation of the
lungs, at the age of twenty-nine years and five days.’ (Signed ‘R. I.
P.’)
[Sidenote: _LORD CAMPBELL, ON OLD JUDGMENTS._]
Some adherents to the cause of the Stuarts have survived to the
present reign, and one at least may be found who was keeper of the
sovereign’s conscience, and sat on the woolsack. It is certainly
somewhat remarkable to find that one of Her Majesty’s chancellors was
not only a Jacobite at heart, like Johnson in part of the Georgian Era,
but openly expressed, that is, printed and published, his opinions. In
Lord Campbell’s life of Lord Cowper, the lord chancellor who presided
at the trial of the rebel lords in 1716, the biographer alludes to the
new Riot Act brought in by Cowper, in which it was stated that if as
many, or as few, as a dozen persons assembled together in the streets,
and did not disperse within an hour after a magistrate’s order to that
effect, the whole dozen would incur the penalty of death, and might be
lawfully strangled at Tyburn. ‘This,’ says Lord Campbell, ‘was perhaps
a harsher law than ever was proposed in the time of the Stuarts,’ but
he adds that it was not abused in practice, yet, nevertheless, ‘it
brought great obloquy upon the new dynasty.’ Lord Cowper in charging
and in sentencing the rebel lords in 1716, and Lord Hardwicke, in
addressing and passing judgment upon the rebel lords in 1746, could
scarcely find terms harsh enough to express the wickedness, barbarity,
and hellish character of the rebellion and of the lords who were the
leaders in it. As to their own disgust at such unmatched infamy, like
Fielding’s _Noodle_, they could scarcely find words to grace their tale
with sufficiently decent horror. Lord Chancellor Campbell, in the reign
of Victoria, flames up into quite old-fashioned hearty Jacobitism, and
‘bites his thumb’ at his two predecessors of the reigns of the first
two Georges. In especial reference to the ultra severe strictures of
the Chancellor Hardwicke in 1746, the Jacobite chancellor in the reign
of Victoria says, in Hardwicke’s ‘Life,’ ‘He forgot that although
their attempt, not having prospered, was called _treason_, and the
law required that they should be sentenced to death, they were not
guilty of any moral offence, and that if they had succeeded in placing
Charles Edward on the throne of his grandfather, they would have been
celebrated for their loyalty in all succeeding ages.’
[Sidenote: _TIME’S CHANGES._]
And now, in the year 1877, we are gravely told that the claims of the
brother, who supposes himself to be a legitimate heir of the Stuarts (a
supposition as idle as the claim of the convict Orton to be a baronet
is infamous), have been fully investigated by a ‘delegation of Roman
Catholic clergy, nobility, and nobles of Scotland,’ who, it is added,
with amusing significance, pronounced those claims to be _valid_.’ We
hear nothing, however, of the names of the investigators, nor of the
evidence on which their judgment was founded. Awaiting the publication
of both, the investigation (if it ever took place) may be called a
_trait_ of the very latest Jacobitism on record.[3]
[Sidenote: _AT CHELSEA AND BALMORAL._]
After being a serious fact, Jacobitism became (with the above
exception) a sentiment which gradually died out, or which was applied
in quite an opposite sense to that in which it originated. When the
French revolution showed a taste for pulling down everything that was
right on end, the old London Jacobite toast, ‘May times mend, and
down with the bloody Brunswickers!’ ceased to be heard. Later, too,
the wearing of gilded oak-apples, on the 29th of May, ceased to be a
Jacobite emblem of love for the Stuart race of kings. It was taken as
a sign that the wearer was glad that a king at all was left to reign
in England. It is only as yesterday that in Preston unruly lads were
called ‘a parcel of young Jacobites,’――so strong and enduring was the
memory of the Jacobite presence there. _Now_, yearly at Chelsea, the
veteran soldiers are drawn up in presence of the statue of Charles II.,
on the anniversary of his restoration. They perform an act of homage by
uncovering in that bronze presence (with its permanent sardonic grin),
and they add to it the incense of three cheers in honour of that civil
and religious king, and his ever-welcome restoration. How different
from the time of the first George, when soldiers in the Guards were
lashed to death, or near to it, in the Park, for mounting an oak leaf
on the 29th of May, or giving a cheer over their cups for a prince of
the line of Stuart. The significance of words and things has undergone
a happy change. Donald Cameron, of Lochiel, is groom-in-waiting to the
Queen; and, on Her Majesty’s last birthday, at Balmoral, the singers
saluted her awaking with welcome Jacobite songs, and ended their
vocalisation with ‘Wha’ll be King but Charlie?’
[3] As this page is going through the press, we have the
Comte d’Albanie’s authority for stating that the above
story (alluded to in ‘Notes and Queries,’ Oct. 6, p. 274)
is ‘a pure invention,’ or ‘a mystification.’
THE END.
_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square and Parliament Street._
Transcriber’s Note:
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. Jargon and obsolete
spellings have been left unchanged unless indicated below.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Initial drop capital letters at the beginning of chapters
are indicated [Illustration: Drop-X]. Footnotes were renumbered
sequentially and were moved to the end of the chapter in which the
corresponding anchor occurs. Page headers were converted to sidenotes.
Where the text continued for more than a full page, in-line sidenotes
were used, annotated within ◆ mark-up.
Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were
added. Duplicate words at line endings were removed. Archibald
Cameron’s brother, Donald, is misidentified in the text as Duncan, line
7824 et seq.
The following items were changed:
line 1939: punnished to punished
line 2836: Scotand to Scotland
line 5022: Jabobite to Jacobite
line 8652: orignal to original
line 9453: Lous to Louis
line 9933: It to In
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