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
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)
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.
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1877
All rights reserved.
[Pg v]
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
| 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.Pg vi | |
| (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.vii | |
| (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.viii | |
| (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—Trialix 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.x | |
| (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 |
1
LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES.
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 them2
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.
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 much3 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.’
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,4 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 500l. 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 3,000l., 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 preached5 on by expounders on both sides: ‘If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king.’
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.
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 this6 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. 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 whom7 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.
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)8 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.’
9
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.
10
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.
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 England11 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.’
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 the12 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!
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 and13 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 of14 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.’
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:—
When the king was this year in town, he risked his15 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.
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 in16 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 little17 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.
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 your18 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.’ 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 two19 others, more notable than all the rest, ‘James, commonly called Lord, Ogilvie,’ and ‘Robert Campbell, alias MacGregor, commonly called Rob Roy.’ 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.20 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 the21 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.
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 catholic22 Majesty which thoroughly disgusted the people of these kingdoms. 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 100l. was offered in vain for the discovery of the perpetrators.
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 of23 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!
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. A24 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.
25
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. Some26 ‘state prisoners’ in Newgate were also liberated on their recognizances.
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.
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.
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, named28
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, were29 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!
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.
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 eviting30 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 should31 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.’
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.’
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.32 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; or33 they leave the House and the Men of Business, as they call them, to mind such matters.’
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 and34 despise him; and whenever he happens to fall in the way of them, he looks methinks very silly.’ 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,35 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. 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.
36
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,37 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.
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 the38 eyes of those for whom he suffered, more valuable; and I hope it will prove so that others may not be discouraged.’
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,—
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 at39 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.
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, 50l. Every Jacobite who could pen a line, printed it against the laurelled minstrel. Apollo himself was pressed into the Nonjuring faction:—
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:—
40
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.’
The Tories, on their side, were savagely mauled by the Whig press. The old Jacobite fire of Earbery41 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 the42 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. 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 extract43 is taken, ‘managed to make his way in some line of business.’
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.’
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 messengers44 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:—
This matter passed over. A press war sprang up in another direction.
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.”’45 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.46 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.
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 suffering47 son of one of the martyrs to the cause of the Stuarts.
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 ‘in48 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.
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.
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,49 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:—
‘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 seen50 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:—
—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,51 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.’
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,
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 London52 coffee-houses and taverns. It ran to another tune than that made upon him by Prior, namely:—
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.
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,53 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.’
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 3,000l. 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 whose54
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.
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,56
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]
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.
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 larger57 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 their58 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.’
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.’
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.59 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, every60 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. 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;—men61 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.
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 his62 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.
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-Jacobites63 observed the 30th of January as a festival. 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 the64 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’:—
‘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.’
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 Middlesex65 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 by66 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. 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;67 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.’
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 that68 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.
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.’
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 600,000l. on the Sinking Fund. A difference of opinion might69 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 200l. 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,70 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.’
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 of71 the constitutional forces was sufficient to preserve the peace of the metropolis.
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.72 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.’
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.
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 what73 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 day74 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.’
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.’
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 of75 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.
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 undoubtedly76 meant as incense for Cæsar, and instruction for his people—Whigs and Jacobites.
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:—
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 the77 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.
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 endeavoured78 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:—
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:—
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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.:—
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 by80 this means, some, perhaps, after they had got a seat in this House.’
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 at81 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.’
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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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 the83 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.
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.
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 were84 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.
The ‘Gentlemen of the Road,’ loyal robbers as85 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,—a86 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.
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:—
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‘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.
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 Leicester88 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.’
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 mock89 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.’
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 happy90 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.’
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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.
Early after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, a force92 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 making93 ‘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.’
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,94 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. 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. 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, in95 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. One96 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. 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 of97 Shaw reverently covered their bodies, and removed them for interment near the spot where they had perished.
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,98 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.’
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 renew99 their attempt to destroy the present dynasty. 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,100 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.
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 ‘Mourning101 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.
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 to102 our men, and keep the English out of Germany. Let me know what is said in your part of the world.’
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.’
How difficult it was for English subjects in France to send news to London is exemplified in a letter,103 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.’
‘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 a104 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.’
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!105 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.
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 still106 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,107 which therefore gave a tameness to most of the debates.
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.
108
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,—
109
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):—
And again had thundering acclamation double-meaning when Siffredi exclaimed:—
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:—
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 faithless110 prince, an upstart king,’ and in an allusion to the Normans who bravely won,
but especially in denouncement of a reign which Osmond stigmatised as a usurpation; and added—
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 power111 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.
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 30,000l. 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. On112 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.
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! HOPES AND FEARS. So ambitious and intriguing a man, who was the author113 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 100l. 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 in114 the island, and not above fourteen or fifteen ships at home. Allelujah!’
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.
When the young Chevalier, stealing a march upon Cope, was approaching Edinburgh, Walpole wrote from London, that people there had nothing to oppose,115 ‘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.
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 with116 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.
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 in117 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.’
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.118 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.
When Parliament met in October, the attendance was thin. The Pretender had threatened to confiscate119 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. THE RADCLIFFES. Among them was Mr. Radcliffe who had been condemned to death120 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!
There was a desire to bring the matter to a conclusion as cheaply as possible. The ‘Craftsman’ recommended121 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.122 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.
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 made123 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.
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 the124 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!
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 going125 to Court, ‘to show his public attachment to the Revolution of 1688.’
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.’
Conflicting reports flew about, but the discouragement126 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.
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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 it128 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.’
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 to129 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.
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!
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 all130 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, as131 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.’
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 indifference132 which seems affectation. 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.’
133
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!’
134
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.’
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 a135 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.
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 dragoons136 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 favour137 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.
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:—
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 guarded138 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. 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 conspiracy139 was beaten into shape between foreign hammers and a British anvil.
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.
The course of war in Scotland, from the beginning140 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!’141 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 5,000l. 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.142 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.
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.143 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.’
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,144 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.’
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 offence145 to persons whose political opinions were different, he sat down without reply and, with an air of great indignation, subjoined the concluding stanza:—
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:—
The picture was somewhat over-drawn, but there were thousands who believed it to be true to the very letter.
146
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 apply147
against Tories and Jacobites.
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 600l. 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 invectives148
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.
‘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!
‘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 the149 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 gained150 not by entrance money, but by paying for a certain quantity of wine or punch.
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.’
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 suggested152 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!
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 complying153 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.’
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,154 as were afterwards the spiked heads of Towneley and of Fletcher.
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:—
Fear of him, and of his followers, was far from155 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.
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 body156 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.’
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 by157 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.
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 on158 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.
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.’
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 had159 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, “and160 drive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa Tree”—the Jacobite Coffee House in St. James’s Street.’
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 gallant161 warrior, as soon as he had flung his plumed hat on the table, demanded the keys. 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, every162 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.’
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 600l. 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 to163 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.
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.
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 upon164 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:—
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 Maid165 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!’
166
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 Justice167
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.
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 of168
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.
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’s169 house. 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 be170 believed on his oath, might as well have remained at home.
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 acts171 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.
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 50l. 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.
Lieutenant Chadwick and Ensign Battragh were then put forward. They belonged to Captain James Dawson’s company. The ensign had been an attorney’s172 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.
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 mere173 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.
There was some variety on the 18th at the trial of a Welsh barrister named David Morgan. ‘I waited174 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;175 and in these journals might be read again and again the lines from ‘Measure for Measure’:—
But Shakespeare pleaded and suggested in vain.
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. PAINFUL PARTINGS. In order, however, that he might die like a gentleman as well as176 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 1,000l. 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.
Among the untried prisoners there was one Bradshaw,177 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,178 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!
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!’179 And then appeared the governor with, ‘Now, gentlemen, if you please!’
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.
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,180 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, but181 needing some little violence to make the application suit the circumstances.
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 his182 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’s183 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.’
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,184 to his usurping father, who bade him be of good cheer,—adding:—
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.
185
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.
If Bradshaw excited some interest in the City aldermen,186 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 of187 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.
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.’
188
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!’
All military sights did not go off so pleasantly as the above. There is record of a soldier being shot by an189 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 George190 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.
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.’
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 and191 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 in192 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.’
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 High193 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.
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 been194 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.
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, the195 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. 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.
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 the196 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.
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 peer197 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?’ asked198 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. ‘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 in199 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.’
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 Kilmarnock200 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!’
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 in201 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.
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 a202 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.
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.203 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!’
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 the204 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!’
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 told205 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.
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 pardoned206
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.
207
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 of208 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.’
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.
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 a209 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.
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,’ when210 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 as211 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.’
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’s212 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.’
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 as213 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.’
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.
214
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:—
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:—
215
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.
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 in216 black velvet, and gold buttons, a gold-laced waistcoat, bag wig, and hat and white feather.’
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 other217 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. 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 dignity218 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.
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 at219 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.
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 a220 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.
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 the221 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.
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 produced222 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.’
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, by223 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 7s. 6d.’
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.’
The old roystering Lovelace who kissed his hostesses on his way up, and talked of saluting them on224 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.
Murray yielded at the first pressure. As early as July, Walpole speaks of him as having made ‘ample225 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 that226 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.’
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:—
At the same time a print was selling which represented227 ‘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.’
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,’228 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.
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, who229 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!’
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 impeachment230 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. 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 when231 this witness quoted a ballad in English, which Lovat had composed, ‘in Erse’:—
‘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.
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 of232 the Tower, ‘We will hang my eldest son and then my second shall marry your niece!’
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,233 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.’
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 was234 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.’
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?’ CROSS EXAMINATION. Murray let drop235 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.’
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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.
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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.238 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.
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.
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 live239 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 the240 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.
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 were241 going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said, “My Lord Lovat, your Lordship may rise.”’
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, without242 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.
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 was243 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.’
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 a244 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’:—
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 certain245 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.’
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.’
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. This246 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.
The banker’s trial was put off from time to time,247 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 jury248 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.
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 ribbons249 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.
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.
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 to250 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 600l. 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 to251 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. 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.
The highest praise which he could give to Dr. Panting, the Master of Pembroke (Johnson’s College),252 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:—
It was perhaps accidental that during the years 1745-6 Johnson’s literary work seems to have been253 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.
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,254 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.’
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 Macolm255 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.’
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.
256
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;257
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,258 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.’
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:—
‘Every man who has taken orders from a nonjuring Bishop in England or Scotland must be supposed to be259 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.
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,260 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 200l. 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, for261 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.
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 the262 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.
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.’
As the year drew to an end, adverse parties quarrelled over the terms of the peace of Aix la Chapelle;263 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 more264 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.’
‘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-hilted265 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.’
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 6d., 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:—
There was a less serious incident of the year which266 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 that267 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.’
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, and268 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.’
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.’
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 summary269 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.’
The loyal Muse was at Court, as usual, on New Year’s day, 1750, when the royal family and a brilliant270 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:—
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:—
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 mischief271 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.
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, and272 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 400l. 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 prince273 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!’
‘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 be274 able to accomplish, wanting (as he does) arms and money, and especially without having publicly embraced the Anglican religion?’
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.
275
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 Fair276
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.
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!
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,277 much additional respect expressed for ‘the happy establishment.’ On an occasion in 1752, when 22,000l. 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 was278 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.’
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.’
It is observable that the Jacobites began to be spoken of in less unworthy tones by their antagonists279 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 from280 Flanders been detained but a few weeks by contrary winds.’
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?
Lord Harcourt, Prince George’s governor, was a281 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.
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 a282 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!”’
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 rich283 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.’
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.284 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 own285 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.’
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.
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 the286 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.
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 Cameron287 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.’
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 would288 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.’
On the following morning, the 7th of June, Dr. Cameron expressed a strong desire to see his wife once289 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 Jacobite290 Nonjuror. 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.’
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, when291 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.
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 unfavourable292 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.’
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 be293 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, brother294 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.
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 300l., and to find sureties for his good behaviour during the next seven years, himself in 1000l., and two others in 500l. 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 lightest295 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.’
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.’
In the following year, 1756, electioneering politics found violent suggestion and expression. Walpole,296 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’ described297 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.’
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 157l. 10s.; Cripplegate, for 91l.; and Ludgate, for 148l. 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.
298
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 of299
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 kept300
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.
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.
301
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 of302 Lord Holdernesse, James Drummond was ordered instantly to quit England.’
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, had303 resigned it, and conferred it on a Commander Altieri. The collation has been confirmed by the Pope.’
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,304 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.’
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.305 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?
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 such306 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.’
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.307 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.
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.308 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!
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 to309 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.
310
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:—
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 and312 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.
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.313 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.
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-armed314 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.
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 is315 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.
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 have316 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.’
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 the317 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.
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.
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) and318 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 little319 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.
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, entered320 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!
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 at321 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.
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 stories322 was to keep warm the hopes—fading hopes—of the Jacobites, and it was not the last story invented with that purpose in view.
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.
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 up323 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. GEORGE AND CHARLES EDWARD. Out of it the story of the Jacobite taker-up of324 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.’
Altogether it is very clear that dates, persons, and325 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 found326 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! 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, ‘General327 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.’
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.’
328
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 were329
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!’
There were no Jacobites at Oxford now, but there330 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.’
In October of the year 1761, there died a Jacobite331 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.
Other Jacobites were taken into favour, for which332 loyal service was rendered. One of the first gracious acts of George III. was to confer a pension on Dr. Johnson, of 300l. 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 instead333 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.
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 300l. a year.’ To this may be added Boswell’s assurance that Johnson had little334 confidence in the rights claimed by the Stuarts, and that he felt, in course of time, much abatement of his own Toryism. 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.’
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 Lord335 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 his336 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.
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.’
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,337 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 by338 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.
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,’339 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.’
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 either340 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.’
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?’ The341 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.’
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. DEBATE ON THE SERMON. Captain Walsingham Boyle, R.N., proposed, and Major-General Irwin seconded, the motion that the vote of thanks should be342 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.
343
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.’
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 the344 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.”’
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 now345 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.
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 the346 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,347 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?’
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 2000l. for his book in support of the Stuarts. This was the wretch,’ cries Walpole, ‘who had traduced Virtue and Algernon Sidney!’
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 9th348 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, which349 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.’
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.
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 military350 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.
351
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 be352
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.
In the last week of November 1779, reverential353 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 in354 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.
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:—
At this period, the unhappy Charles Edward was neither lovely nor loveable. His ballad poet, above, has paraphrased,355 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.
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.’
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 and356 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 guess357 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.
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, and358 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.
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:—
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:—
359
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:—
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 sent360 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!”’
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.
Strange was an Orcadean lad, who was early destined361 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 escaped362 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.
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 she363 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.
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 obstacles364 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.’
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 me365 to the good Principle Gordon, and all our honest’ (that is, Jacobite) ‘friends.’
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 to366 make a print from it. 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!’
It is a custom to speak in the present day of law367 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 refer368 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.
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?’
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 there369 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.’
370
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.
The widow of Charles Edward found England generally, and London in particular, much duller than371 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.’
Her sojourn in England was from April to August.372 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 magistrates373 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.’
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 ‘the374 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.
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 4,000l. 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 and375 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.’
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 young376 Chevalier, in the novel by an anonymous author, ‘Waverley, or ’tis 60 years since.’
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. THE DRAMA REVISED. Charles Kemble removed the scene to Sweden, and377 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.
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 visit378 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:—
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,380 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.
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 regard381 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.’
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 its382 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.’
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.
On the 7th of September, the Paris papers announced that a solemn mass would be celebrated on383 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.
It really now seemed as if the curtain had fallen on the great Jacobite drama, and that it would not be384 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.
385
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 new386
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.
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.
387
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.388 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.
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 1869,389 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.
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.
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,390 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,’ 2,200l.; to the younger, ‘Thomas Allen, third Lieutenant in His Majesty’s navy,’ 100l. The reader is respectfully requested to keep this lieutenant, Thomas Allen, alone in view. He may turn out to be a very unexpected personage.
Lieutenant Thomas, in 1792, married, at Godalming, Katherine Manning, the second daughter of the vicar.391 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 100l. 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 legitimate392 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.
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.393 There is a dedication ‘To Marie Stuart, by her father and uncle.’
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 board394 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.
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 as395 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!
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,396 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.
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.
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 her397 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.
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!’ The398 figure the nobles from Scotland made at the Court of London in 1848, is thus smartly sketched:—
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)399 unsheathed against English, Irish, and Scots, on the field of Waterloo.
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.’
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 character400 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.
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 a401 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.
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 stout402 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, 1s. 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.’
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 by403 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.404 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.
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. THE ELDER SON OF ‘RED EAGLE.’ Quietly unobtrusive,405 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 down406 Donald Alison for violently assaulting the Comte’s landlady in a Pimlico lodging house!
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 pretensions407 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!
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:—
The first of the three was the author of poems published in 1822, as written by John Hay Allen.408 Both those gentlemen subsequently became authors of works, under the name of Stuart.
‘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.
‘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, from409 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.’)
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 as410 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,411 they would have been celebrated for their loyalty in all succeeding ages.’
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]
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 at412 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.
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.
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. 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.
The following items were changed: