Decorated bannerCHAPTERIV.(1741 to 1744.)
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atthe 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 themovers 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.
INCIDENTS IN PARLIAMENT.
This was not the only incident of the debate. Mr. Edward Harley, uncle of the Earl of Oxford, was one of the speakers. Walpole had borne hardly against the earl as an enemy to the Protestant Succession, for being which the peer had stood in some peril of his life, and had temporarily lost his liberty. Mr. Harley said, he would refrain from acting as unjustly to Walpole, (against whom there was no specific charge, only a general accusation, without any proofs,) as Walpole had acted against his nephew on mere suspicion;—and Mr. Harley walked out of the House, without voting.
PARTY CHARACTERISTICS.
Walpole said of members of Parliament,—he would not declare who was corrupt, but that Shippen was incorruptible. Coxe, in his Life of the Minister, does not describe Shippen as a ‘Hanover Tory,’ running with the hare and holding with the hounds, of whom there were many, but as an uncompromising Jacobite, one who repeated among his Whig friends that there would be neither peace nor content till the Stuarts wererestored; 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 JamesIII.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 GeorgeII.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.
ON HOUNSLOW HEATH.
The ‘Gentlemen of the Road,’ loyal robbers asthey 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 GeorgeI.,’—an instalment of a great collection to be afterwards completed. They were dedicated to the prince by his permission,—acondescension 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.
TORIES NOT JACOBITES.
Although men’s minds were chiefly occupied in 1742 with the withdrawal of Walpole from office and public life, and the Chevalier and his projects seemed well-nigh forgotten, these projects were kept in view by public men. Pulteney said in the House that he had himself told the king, the Tories were not universally Jacobites, but that, treating them as if they were, would certainly make them so. Aye, rejoined Sir Everard Digby, just as in CharlesI.’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 wasspeaking:—
CONDITION OF PARTIES.
‘There are still many gentlemen of figure and fortune among us who openly profess their attachment to the Pretender. There is a sort of enthusiastic spirit of disaffection that still prevails among the vulgar; and there is too great a number of men of all ranks and conditions who now seem to be true friends to the Protestant Succession who would declare themselves otherwise, if they thought they could do so without running any great or unequal risk. These considerations shall always make me jealous of the Jacobite party’s getting any opportunity to rebel, and this they have always thought they had, and always will think they have, when they see the nation destitute of troops, for which reason, I shall always be for keeping in the island such a number of regular troops as may be sufficient for awing them into obedience.... The danger of an invasion from abroad, with the Pretender at the head of it, is equally to be apprehended.’ Alluding to Spain with whom we were at war, Mr. Winnington said: ‘She will use every art that can be thought of for throwing into this island 8 or 10,000 men of her best troops, with the Pretender and some of his adherents at their head.’ Mr. Carew believed that there were very few men in England who would join the Pretender, if he invaded it, and that in such case he would speedily be overwhelmed. The motion was, however, successful by 280 to 269.
IN LEICESTER FIELDS.
The popularity of the Prince of Wales was manifested in a singular way this year. It was known that he was about to take up his residence in LeicesterFields. 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 GeorgeI., 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.’
AWAKING OF JACOBITES.
It would seem that the term ‘Prime Minister’ was first applied to Walpole, and in a reproachful sense. Speaking in the House, in 1741, he said of his opponents: ‘Having invested me with a kind of mockdignity, and styled me aPrime 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.’
CHESTERFIELD’S OPINIONS.
The Jacobites found, perhaps, unconscious supporters of their cause in the writers who energetically denounced the reigning monarch’s partiality for Hanover, at the cost of England. Atterbury himself could not have turned this subject more profitably to the cause of the Chevalier than Chesterfield did in the first number of ‘Old England’ (Feb.5th, 1743):—‘I am entirely persuaded that in the words, “our present happyestablishment,” 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 aredeterminedto live free.’
KING AND ELECTOR.
Lord Chesterfield spoke in similar sense and spirit in the various fiery debates upon keeping Hanoverian troops in British pay, andthatfor 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.
HIGHLAND REGIMENT IN LONDON.
Early after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, a forceconsisting of six companies of Highlanders was formed, for the purpose of causing the peace to be kept in the northern portion of Scotland. In 1739, this force, known as the Black Watch, was embodied as a regiment, which, from its commander, was named ‘Lord Sempill’s.’ An idea prevailed among the men that they were embodied for home service only. In 1743 the regiment was ordered to London, for the purpose of joining the actively employed British army. The scene of this actively employed army was then in Germany. Sempill’s regiment marched to London with unconcealed aversion. They were in some degree calmed by assurances from their officers that the march to London was in order that the king might gratify his royal wish to review the regiment in person. Their pride was gratified; they reached Highgate in good order, and they were there encamped. The camp was visited by thousands of Londoners, who praised the good discipline and quiet disposition of the Highlanders. Among the most assiduous, insinuating, and seductive of the visitors were the London Jacobites. When the men heard that the king had left London for his army on the Continent, and that they were under orders to follow, their pride was wounded; and the Jacobites took care to inflame the wound and aggravate both the alleged slight and the anger of the offended soldiery. A review of Sempill’s regiment on the king’s birthday, 14th May 1743, by General Wade, on Finchley Common, was more gratifying to the spectators than to the men. The papers describe the Highlanders as making‘a very handsome appearance. They went through their exercises and firing with the utmost exactness. The novelty of the sight drew together the greatest concourse of people ever seen on such an occasion.’
DESERTION OF THE MEN.
Four days later, orders came for the troops to embark on the Thames. On that day about a hundred and fifty of the men failed to answer the morning roll call. They had not only disappeared, but with them their arms and several rounds of ball cartridge. ‘They did not care to go,’ says Walpole, in one of his May letters, ‘where it would not be equivocal for what King they fought.’ Sir Robert Munro, their Lieutenant-Colonel, before their leaving Scotland, asked some of the Ministry, ‘But suppose there should be any rebellion in Scotland, what should we do for these eight hundred men?’ It was answered, ‘Why, there would be eight hundred fewer rebels there!’ They were evidently mistrusted. The deserters, who justified the mistrust, had conceived that the review, for which they had marched to London, being over, they had a right to march back again. They concerted together, kept their own secret, were not betrayed by comrades who looked upon their military duty in another light, and they quietly left the camp at Highgate in the dead of night. They were under the command of a fine stalwart corporal named Macpherson, the corporal’s brother, and an intelligent private, Shaw. For what purpose they set out forScotland was probably best known by the Jacobites of the metropolis. The object must have been far more serious than simply to return,because they conceived such action was within the limits of their legal right. This would have been the wildest folly, and the Macphersons and their men were neither fools nor savages.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, inNorthamptonshire. 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. Oneof 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 ofShaw reverently covered their bodies, and removed them for interment near the spot where they had perished.
THREATENED INVASION.
The incident was not altogether apart from Jacobitism; nor probably was the subsequent fact, namely, that Lord John Murray, who afterwards was Colonel of the regiment, had the portraits of these three men hung up in his dining-room. The year closed with a threatening incident. Charles Edward left Rome in December for France, in order to accompany the expedition which was preparing in French ports for the invasion of England, under Marshal Saxe. There can be little doubt that the Government was well informed of the good intentions of France, by trustworthy agents abroad.
There is a tradition, however, that the first intelligence of a plot to restore the Stuarts was sent up to London from the Post office at Bath. Ralph Allen (theSquire Allworthyof Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’) had, since the year 1720, enjoyed a grant, or farm, of all the bye-way or cross-road letters in England and Wales, which grant he possessed till his death, in 1764. It is said that this Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, owed much of his large fortune to the result of his practice of opening letters; and it is added that by opening one of these cross-road letters he gained information of a plot for the Jacobite invasion of England,—and this information being sent to London, gave to its inhabitants the first announcement of an impending rebellion. In this same month of December, as was afterwards made known, a packet passed through the post,addressed to Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, hitherto a supposed friend of the Hanoverian dynasty. It contained matter which helped him to the scaffold on Tower Hill,—namely, his appointment to an important command in the Jacobite army about to be organised, and a flattering allusion to Lovat’s worthiness to wear a ducal title. Walpole was entitled to say, as he did:—‘We are in more confusion than we care to own.’
CONFUSION.
There was mirth enough in the opposition papers. Their columns crackled with epigrams against the king, court, and the Countess of Yarmouth. They were but slightly veiled and were still less slightly pointed. There was some regret perhaps that the reward offered by De Noailles, at Dettingen, to the troops that should capture GeorgeII., 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 renewtheir 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 JamesII.had branded as an invader and usurper that William of Orange, who was afterwards hailed by the country as its glorious deliverer. He referred also to the incident in Roman history of the Roman soldiers refusing to march against foreign invaders till they had destroyed the tyranny which reigned at Rome. The application of these remarks was easy enough. They showed the spirit of the Jacobite party, particularly in London. The natural result ensued, namely, a proclamation to the justices to put in force the laws which had been framed against Papists and Nonjurors. The former were ordered to remove to a distance of at least ten miles from the metropolis, or to keep close within their habitations. Those persons who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration were to be deprived of their arms and horses; and every attempt at rioting was to be put down by armed force. Further, every person found corresponding with the Pretender or his sons were pronounced to be guilty of High Treason,—which involved forfeiture of life, title,and estates. If this seems stringent, it must be remembered that already had there been caught and caged in Newgate a Popish priest, who, putting in action the teaching of his Church that it only interfered with religion,—and with morals, which means everything else,—had, in the disguise of an imaginary captainship, been trying to enlist men into the service of the enemy.
DECLARATION OF WAR.
Then came the mutual declarations of war. That of France against England accused the latter power of every political enormity. That of England against France was equally explicit,—with the special addition that France had treacherously assisted Spain against England, when France was openly at peace with England, and that it was now aiding and abetting the Pretender who, through his son, was preparing to overthrow the royal family, government, and constitution of Great Britain.
What was the temper of the nation with regard to the present condition of things?
No doubt there was some satisfaction felt by the Jacobite guests over their cups at the ‘Mourning Bush’ in Aldersgate Street. This sign was originally set up in London by Taylor, the Water Poet, at his tavern in Phœnix Alley, Long Acre, as a token of his principles, after the death of CharlesI.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 ‘MourningMitre’ 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’wasin mourning, and would continue to be so, till the Stuarts were restored.
LETTER FROM HURD.
Among the persons, on the other hand, who looked upon the threatened coming of Prince Charles Edward as hardly amounting to a bad dream was Mr. Hurd,—subsequently a bishop, but in February, 1744, at Cambridge, looking forward to receive priests orders in May at the hands of Dr. Gooch, Bishop of Norwich, in the chapel of Caius College. The news from London was exciting, and Hurd writes to his friend, the Rev. John Devey, on the 17th of February:—‘Nothing is talked of here but an invasion from the French. The Chevalier is at Paris, and we are to expect him here in a short time. Whatever there may be in this news, it seems to have consternated the Ministry. The Tower is trebly guarded, and so is St. James’s, and the soldiers have orders to be ready for action at an hour’s warning. They are hasting, it seems, from all quarters of the kingdom to London. I saw a regiment yesterday, going through Newmarket. After all, I apprehend very little from this terror. It seems a polite contrivance of the French to give a diversion toour men, and keep the English out of Germany. Let me know what is said in your part of the world.’
PUBLIC FEELING.
Lady Sarah Cowper (in the Correspondence of Mrs. Delany) writes:—‘If it is true that the French design only to draw our troops from Flanders, and facilitate their own conquests abroad, and that the Kingdom of England and our present government may however be safe, I am sure at least that the unhappy wretches already drawn into rebellion, and more that may follow their example, must be sufferers. The distress must fall somewhere, and all humane people must have some share in it.’
Again, some idea of the half-frightened, half-jocular feeling of persons in humbler life (as to invasion) may be gathered from a letter in the same Correspondence (ii. 384), written from Fulham, by a waiting gentlewoman in the service of Mrs. Donnellan, to a friend in the country:—‘I really believe in my heart, Master do not care if the French comes and eats us all up alive. Is there not flat boats, I know not how many thousands, ready to come every day? and when they once set out, they will be with us as quick as a swallow can fly, almost; and when they land we have no body to fight them, because you will not raise your militia. For my part, I dare not go to the Thames, for fear they should be coming; and if I see one of our own boats laden with carrots, I am ready to drop down thinking it one of the French.’
LADY M. W. MONTAGUE.
How difficult it was for English subjects in France to send news to London is exemplified in a letter,written in March, 1744, by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at Avignon, to her husband, of an interview with the Duke de Richelieu. The latter asked her, ‘What party the Pretender had in England?’ ‘I answered,’ she writes, ‘as I thought, a very small one.’ ‘We are told otherwise at Paris,’ said he; ‘however a bustle at this time may serve to facilitate our other projects, and we intend to attempt a descent; at least, it will cause the troops to be recalled, and perhaps Admiral Mathews will be obliged to leave the passage open for Don Philip.’ The lady thus continues: ‘You may imagine how much I wished to give you immediate notice of this; but as all the letters are opened at Paris, it would have been to no purpose to write it by post, and have only gained me a powerful enemy in the Court of France. In my letter to Sir Robert Walpole, from Venice, I offered my service, and desired to know in what manner I could send intelligence, if anything happened to my knowledge that could be of use to England. I believe he imagined that I wanted some gratification, and he only returned me cold thanks.’
CARTE, THE NONJUROR.
‘Nobody is yet taken up: God knows why not!’ Such is the exclamation of Horace Walpole in a letter to Mann, on the 23rd of February, this year. Government, however, soon began the system of arrest. Colonel Cecil, supposed to be designed for the Chevalier’s Secretary of State, was captured. Papers which were found upon him compromised Lord Barrymore, the Pretender’s general, who, before day-break on aMarch 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 isnotMinister, 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’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Carte, the biographer of Ormond, and the ex-secretary of Atterbury, was a man who had twice fled abroad when accounted a rebel, and who was allowed to return when he was thought to be harmless. He, this year, issued a prospectus of his intended History of England. The London municipality met the overture in a liberal spirit which did it honour, but which brought upon it the bitterest sarcasm of Horace Walpole. ‘I wish to God,’ he wrote in his anger to Mann, from Arlington Street, in July, 1744, ‘I wish to God Boccalini was living! Never was such an opportunity for Apollo’s playing off a set of fools as there is now!The good City of London, who, from long dictating to the Government, are now come to preside over taste and letters, having given one Carte, a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a year, for seven years, to write the History of England; and four aldermen and six common-councilmen are to inspect his materials and the progress of the work. Surveyors of common-sewers turned supervisors of literature! To be sure, they think a History of England is no more than Stowe’s survey of the parishes! Instead of having books printed with theimprimaturof 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.
VARIOUS INCIDENTS.
Walpole had looked for a landing of the French and the Pretender, in Essex or Suffolk. He thought the English crown would be fought for, not on the seas but on land, and he declared that he never knew how little he was a Jacobite till it was almost his interest to be one. The interest changed as London was secured and our preparations were more successfully made than those of France. In March, he was sure, ‘if they stillattempt 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.Oneat least may be excepted. Sir John Cotton was forced upon the king as Treasurer of the Chambers. The king was naturally displeased that an adherent of the Stuarts should be thrust into an office in the royal household at St. James’s. The matter was illustrated by a caricature, in which the Falstaffian Sir John was being thrust down his majesty’s throat by the united endeavours of the Ministry—the ‘Broad-bottom,’—a coalition of men of opposite parties,which therefore gave a tameness to most of the debates.
LADY NITHSDALE.
In the spring of this year died, in Rome, the only contemptible Jacobite peer who had been condemned to death; and he had had the good luck to escape,—the Earl of Nithsdale. He was taken into the Chevalier’s service, but for more than a quarter of a century, he looked to his heroic wife for money; and was neither satisfied nor grateful. He was unreasonably querulous, never had brains enough to be conscious of what his wife had risked and had done for him; was mean and untruthful; ever and utterly unworthy of this brave, noble, and true-hearted woman. Even after her husband’s death she saved his honour by paying his debts, as she had before saved his life. When she too passed away, in 1749, there could not have been a Jacobite who read the record of her death in the London papers, nor anyman, 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.
Flower