Decorated bannerCHAPTERVII.(1746.)
Decorated banner
theplayers 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 HenryVII.Macklin called his piece ‘HenryVII., 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 applyagainst 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 invectivesagainst 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.
SADLER’S WELLS AND THE NEW WELLS.
‘As the Proprietors of Sadler’s Wells have diligently embraced every opportunity of giving their audiences satisfaction, they would have thought themselves guilty of the highest Error to have been silent upon the present happy occasion. Every Class of Britons must be pleased at the least Hint of Gratitude to the excellent Prince who has exposed himself to so many Difficulties for the sake of his country, and therefore they have endeavour’d to show a Natural Scene of what perhaps may happen to many a honest Countryman in consequence of the late happy Victory, in a new Interlude of Music, called Strephon’s Return, or the British Hero, which will be perform’d this Night, with many advantages of Dress and Decoration.’
But ‘how the wit brightens and the style refines’ in the following announcement from Mr. Yeates!
CULLODEN ON THE STAGE.
‘The Applause that was so universally express’d last Night, by the numbers of Gentlemenet cæterawho honoured the New Wells near the London Spaw, Clerkenwell, with their Company, is thankfully acknowledg’d; but Mr. Yeates humbly hopes that theIdeas 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, whenCourageappeared (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 gainednot by entrance money, but by paying for a certain quantity of wine or punch.
MRS. WOFFINGTON.
It would, however, appear as if some of the bards, like Bubb Dodington with his transparency, had so contemplated the result of the war, as to be ready to hail any issue, and any victor. One of these, the Jacobites being defeated, wrote an epilogue, ‘designed to be spoken by Mrs. Woffington, in the character of a Volunteer;’—but the poem was not finished till interest in the matter had greatly evaporated, and the poet was told he was ‘too late.’ Of course, he shamed the rogues by printing his work,—which is one illustrating both the morals and the manners of the time. It illustrates the former by infamously indecent inuendo, and the latter by the following outburst, for some of the ideas of which the writer had rifled Addison’s ‘Freeholder.’
Joking apart, we women have strong reasonTo sap the progress of this popish treason;For now, when female liberty’s at stake,All women ought to bustle for its sake.Should these malicious sons of Rome prevail,Vows, convents, and that heathen thing, a veil,Must come in fashion; and such institutionsWould suit but oddly with our constitutions.What gay coquette would brook a nun’s profession?And I’ve some private reasons ’gainst confession.Besides, our good men of the Church, they say(Who now, thank Heaven, may love as well as pray)Must then be only wed to cloister’d houses;—Stop! There we’re fobb’d of twenty thousand spouses!And, faith! no bad ones, as I’m told; then judge ye,Is’t fit we lose our benefit of clergy?In Freedom’s cause, ye patriot fair, arise!Exert the sacred influence of your eyes.On valiant merit deign alone to smile,And vindicate the glory of our isle.To no base coward prostitute our charms;Disband the lover who deserts his arms.So shall ye fire each hero to his duty,AndBritishrights be saved byBritishbeauty.
Joking apart, we women have strong reasonTo sap the progress of this popish treason;For now, when female liberty’s at stake,All women ought to bustle for its sake.Should these malicious sons of Rome prevail,Vows, convents, and that heathen thing, a veil,Must come in fashion; and such institutionsWould suit but oddly with our constitutions.What gay coquette would brook a nun’s profession?And I’ve some private reasons ’gainst confession.Besides, our good men of the Church, they say(Who now, thank Heaven, may love as well as pray)Must then be only wed to cloister’d houses;—Stop! There we’re fobb’d of twenty thousand spouses!And, faith! no bad ones, as I’m told; then judge ye,Is’t fit we lose our benefit of clergy?In Freedom’s cause, ye patriot fair, arise!Exert the sacred influence of your eyes.On valiant merit deign alone to smile,And vindicate the glory of our isle.To no base coward prostitute our charms;Disband the lover who deserts his arms.So shall ye fire each hero to his duty,AndBritishrights be saved byBritishbeauty.
Joking apart, we women have strong reason
To sap the progress of this popish treason;
For now, when female liberty’s at stake,
All women ought to bustle for its sake.
Should these malicious sons of Rome prevail,
Vows, convents, and that heathen thing, a veil,
Must come in fashion; and such institutions
Would suit but oddly with our constitutions.
What gay coquette would brook a nun’s profession?
And I’ve some private reasons ’gainst confession.
Besides, our good men of the Church, they say
(Who now, thank Heaven, may love as well as pray)
Must then be only wed to cloister’d houses;—
Stop! There we’re fobb’d of twenty thousand spouses!
And, faith! no bad ones, as I’m told; then judge ye,
Is’t fit we lose our benefit of clergy?
In Freedom’s cause, ye patriot fair, arise!
Exert the sacred influence of your eyes.
On valiant merit deign alone to smile,
And vindicate the glory of our isle.
To no base coward prostitute our charms;
Disband the lover who deserts his arms.
So shall ye fire each hero to his duty,
AndBritishrights be saved byBritishbeauty.
THE PRESS, ON CULLODEN.
The Whig press was, of course, jubilant. The papers in the opposite interest put as good a face as they could on the matter, and expressed a conviction that they ‘ventured no treason in hoping that theweather 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 suggestedthat 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!
SAVAGERY AND SATIRE.
In the ‘General Advertiser,’ a man who probably had reached the age when a sense of humanity fails before any of the other senses, asked what objection was to be found with such terms as ‘Extermination,’ ‘Extirpation,’ and similar significances applied to those savages, the Highlanders? This ogre, in his easy chair, cared not to see that, in driving out a whole race, more cruelty would be deliberately inflicted on innocent human beings, than the savage Highlanders had inflicted in their fury. And indeed, the latter did not spare their own people, if the milkmaids’ song be true, in which the illustrative line occurs, ‘We dare na gae a milkin’ for fear o’ Charlie’s men.’ However, the least punishment which the correspondent of the ‘Advertiser’ would accept was a general transportation of the race to Africa and America, and a settlement on their lands of English tenants at easy rents! This sort of Highlander-phobia and the threatened application of severe laws which included the suppression of what has been called ‘the Garb of old Gael,’ or Highland dress, gave rise to some good-natured satire. ‘We hear,’ said one of the newspapers, ‘that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so heroically the doors of snuff shops, intend to petition the Legislature in order that they may be excused from complyingwith 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.’
THE CARICATURISTS.
So spoke the fun-loving spirits; but there were baser spirits on the conquering side, and these speedily exhibited an indecent exultation. The ignominious caricaturists attracted crowds to the print shops to gaze at the facility with which vulgar minds can degrade solemn and lofty themes. On the one hand, the defeat of the Highlanders and the consternation of Sullivan, the standard-bearer in Charles Edward’s army, attracted laughter. On the other hand, the too early, and altogether vain, boast conveyed on the young Chevalier’s banner, ‘Tandem triumphans,’ was more legitimately satirised in an engraving in which the standard-bearer is an ass, and on his standard are three crowns surmounted by a coffin, with the motto ‘Tandem triumphans,’ done into English by the Duke of Cumberland, as equivalent to ‘Every dog has his day;’—which, after all, was no great compliment to the duke. The triple crown and coffin represented the issue of crown or grave; in one print the Devil is seen flying with it over Temple Bar, as if it merited to be planted there,as were afterwards the spiked heads of Towneley and of Fletcher.
PSEUDO-PORTRAIT OF CHARLES EDWARD.
Jacobite sympathies were attracted and puzzled by a portrait of ‘The young Chevalier,’ which was to be seen, for sale, in every printshop. Alexander Carlyle gives an amusing account of it in his ‘Autobiography.’ ‘As I had seen,’ he says, ‘the Chevalier Prince Charles frequently in Scotland, I was appealed to, if a print that was selling in all the shops was not like him? My answer was, that it had not the least resemblance. Having been taken one night, however, to a meeting of the Royal Society, by Microscope Baker, there was introduced a Hanoverian Baron, whose likeness was so strong to the print which passed for the young Pretender, that I had no doubt that, he being a stranger, the printsellers had got him sketched out, that they might make something of it before thevera effigiescould 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 wereinscribed:—
‘Few know my face, though all men do my fame,Look strictly and you’ll quickly guess my name.Through deserts, snows, and rain I made my way,My life was daily risk’d to gain the day.Glorious in thought, but now my hopes are gone,Each friend grows shy, and I’m at last undone.’
‘Few know my face, though all men do my fame,Look strictly and you’ll quickly guess my name.Through deserts, snows, and rain I made my way,My life was daily risk’d to gain the day.Glorious in thought, but now my hopes are gone,Each friend grows shy, and I’m at last undone.’
‘Few know my face, though all men do my fame,
Look strictly and you’ll quickly guess my name.
Through deserts, snows, and rain I made my way,
My life was daily risk’d to gain the day.
Glorious in thought, but now my hopes are gone,
Each friend grows shy, and I’m at last undone.’
Fear of him, and of his followers, was far fromhaving 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.
THE DUKE OF ORMOND.
Meanwhile, the Government was not meanly hostile to their dead enemies. The Duke of Ormond, the boldest and frankest of conspirators against the Hanoverian succession; the man who more than once would have invaded his country at the head of foreign troops; he who had fostered rebellion, and maintained foiled rebels, during his thirty years’ exile, had, at last, died in his eighty-third year. King and ministers made no opposition to the interment of this splendid arch-traitor in Westminster Abbey. His anonymous biographer (1747), after stating that the duke died, on November 14th, 1745, at Avignon, says: ‘On the 18th, his bodywas 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.’
BURIAL OF ORMOND.
There was something more than mere ‘decency.’ In the ‘General Advertiser,’ May 23rd, it is announced, but without a word of comment on the great Jacobite:—‘Last night, about Eleven o’Clock, the Corps of the late Duke of Ormond was, after lying in State, in the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey, interr’d in great Funeral Pomp and Solemnity, in the Ormond Vault in King Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, the whole Choir attending, and the Ceremony was perform’d, by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.’
But the popular attention was directed to the other ‘Duke.’ Whatever Tories may have said at the time, or people generally, since that period as to the character of the Duke of Cumberland, he was the popular hero from the moment he arrived in London, after the victory at Culloden. The papers were full of his praises. They lauded not only his valour but his piety. After the battle, so they said, he had gone unattended over the battle-field, and he was not only seen in profound meditation, but was heard to exclaim,—his hands on his breast, and his eyes raised to heaven—‘Lord! what am I that I should be spared, when so many brave men lie dead upon the spot?’ Even Scotsmen have owned that the duke attributed his victory to God, alone, and that he was unmoved bythe 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, whenhetriumphed at Culloden. The latter was then in his twenty-sixth year.
THE QUESTION OF INHUMANITY.
The orderly-books of the Duke of Cumberland, recently published, fail to confirm the reports of his cruelty after Culloden. The Jacobites exaggerated his severity, and they gave the provocation. That an order was given to the Highlanders to refuse quarter to the troops under the Duke of Cumberland is proved by Wolfe’s well-known letter. The only trace of retaliatory rigour is to be found in the following entry in the above book (Maclachlan’s ‘William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland,’ p. 293): ‘Inverness, April 17th.—The ‘Officers next from Duty to come from Camp, in order to divide and search the Town for Rebels, their effects, stores, and baggage. A Captain and 50 Men to march immediately to the field of Battle, and search all cottages in the neighbourhood for Rebels. The Officers and Men will take notice that the public orders of the Rebels yesterday were to give us no quarter.’ In Wolfe’s letter (he was then on the staff, and one of Hawley’s aides-de-camp), written on the day the above order was issued, that young officer says: ‘Orders were publicly given in the rebel army, the day before the action, that no quarter should be given to our troops.’ The latter, it is equally true, had said onleaving 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.
INSTIGATORS OF CRUELTY.
It was said in the London newspapers that the French did not act at the Battle of Culloden, by reason of their being made acquainted with the order of giving no quarter to our troops; and that the French Commanding Officer declared that rather ‘than comply with such a Resolution he would resign himself and Troops into the Hands of the Duke of Cumberland; for his directions were to fight and not to commit Murder.’
THE PRISONERS IN LONDON.
While London was awaiting the return of the hero, whose triumphs had already been celebrated, the anti-Jacobites were disappointed by being deprived of greeting in their rough way the arrival of the captured rebel lords. As early, indeed, as November 1745, Charles Radcliffe (calling himself Lord Derwentwater) had been taken with his son on board the ‘Soleil,’ bound for Scotland and high treason, and these hadbeen 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;thatpassed 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 downincog.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, “anddrive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa Tree”—the Jacobite Coffee House in St. James’s Street.’
THE DUKE IN ABERDEEN.
With leafy June came the duke; but before him arrived his baggage. When that baggage which the duke and General Hawley brought with them from Scotland was unpacked in London, the articles of which it consisted must have excited some surprise. To show what it was, it is necessary to go northward to the house of Mr. Thompson, advocate, in the Great Row, Aberdeen. The duke had his quarters in that house, after his state entry into the granite city, in February 1746. Six weeks were the Thompsons constrained to bear with their illustrious but unprofitable lodger. They had to supply him with coals, candles, the rich liquids in the advocate’s cellars, and all the milk of his sole cow. The bed and table linen was both used and abused. The duke is even charged with breaking up a press which was full of sugar, of which he requisitioned every grain. At the end of the six weeks, when about to march from the city, the duke left among the three servants of the house as many guineas. This was not illiberal; but Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were chiefly aggrieved by his Highness’s lack of courtesy. He went away without asking to see them, or leaving any acknowledgment of their hospitality by sending even a curt thank ye! General Hawley behaved even more rudely in the house of Mrs. Gordon of Hallhead. Before he took possession it was understood that everything was to be locked up, and that the general was only to have the use of the furniture. This gallantwarrior, 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, everybook, 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.’
THE DUKE AND HIS PLUNDER.
Out of this miscellaneous plunder, a tea equipage and a set of coloured table china, addressed to the Duke of Cumberland at St. James’s, reached their destination. With what face his Highness could show to his London friends the valuable china he had stolen from a lady whose loyalty, he allowed, was above suspicion, defies conjecture. The spoons, boy’s shirts, breeches, and meaner trifles, were packed up under an address to General Hawley, London. ‘A house so plundered,’ wrote the lady, ‘I believe was never heard of. It is not 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 tohave 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.
A HUMAN HEAD.
If report might be credited the Duke of Cumberland brought with him to London, and in his own carriage, a human head, which he believed to be that of Charles Edward! Young Roderick Mackenzie called to the soldiers who shot him down in the Braes of Glenmorristen, ‘Soldiers, you have killed your lawful prince!’ These words, uttered to divert pursuit from the young Chevalier, were believed, and when Roderick died, the soldiers cut off his head and brought it to the Duke of Cumberland’s quarters. Robert Chambers, in his ‘History of the Rebellion,’ qualifies with an ‘it is said’ the story that the duke stowed away the head in his chaise, and carried it to London. Dr. Chambers adds, as a fact, that Richard Morrison, Charles Edward’s body-servant, and a prisoner at Carlisle, was sent for to London, as the best witness to decide the question of identity. Morrison fainted at this trial of his feelings; but regaining composure, he looked steadily at the relic, and declared that it was not the head of his beloved master.
‘SWEET WILLIAM.’
But all minor matters were forgotten in the general joy. Now the duke was back in person, loyal London went mad about ‘the son of George, the image of Nassau!’ Flattery, at once flowery and poetical, was heaped uponhim. A flower once dedicated to WilliamIII.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 asample:—
The pride of France is lily-white,The rose in June is Jacobite;The prickly thistle of the ScotIs Northern knighthood’s badge and lot.But since the Duke’s victorious blows,The Lily, Thistle, and the RoseAll droop and fade and die away:Sweet William’s flower rules the day.’Tis English growth of beauteous hue,Clothed, like our troops, in red and blue.No plant with brighter lustre grows,Except the laurel on his brows.
The pride of France is lily-white,The rose in June is Jacobite;The prickly thistle of the ScotIs Northern knighthood’s badge and lot.But since the Duke’s victorious blows,The Lily, Thistle, and the RoseAll droop and fade and die away:Sweet William’s flower rules the day.’Tis English growth of beauteous hue,Clothed, like our troops, in red and blue.No plant with brighter lustre grows,Except the laurel on his brows.
The pride of France is lily-white,
The rose in June is Jacobite;
The prickly thistle of the Scot
Is Northern knighthood’s badge and lot.
But since the Duke’s victorious blows,
The Lily, Thistle, and the Rose
All droop and fade and die away:
Sweet William’s flower rules the day.
’Tis English growth of beauteous hue,
Clothed, like our troops, in red and blue.
No plant with brighter lustre grows,
Except the laurel on his brows.
FLATTERY.
Poetasters converted Horace’s laudation of Augustus into flattery of Cumberland. Fables were written in which sweet William served at once for subject and for moral. Epigrams from Martial, or from a worse source—the writers’ own brains—were fresh but bluntly pointed in his favour. Some of them compared him to the sun, at whose warmth ‘vermin cast off their coats and took wing.’ Others raised him far above great Julius; for Cumberland ‘conquers, coming; and before he sees.’ Sappho, under the name ofClarinda, 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 Maidtogether. 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 onmetalandmettle, 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!’
Flowers