THE VERDICT.
The conclusion of the protracted affair was that Lovat was pronouncedguiltyby 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. GeorgeI.had been his ‘dear master;’ for GeorgeII.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 hemustdie, that it should be in the old style of the Scottish nobility,—by the Maiden.
GENTLEMAN HARRY.
While this tragic drama was in progress, there arose a report in the coffee-houses of a Jacobite plot. It came in this way. At the March sessions of the Old Bailey, a young highwayman, named Henry Simms, was the only offender who was capitally convicted. ‘If it hadn’t been for me,’ said the handsome highwayman, ‘you would have had a kind of maiden assize; so, you might as well let me go!’ As the judges differed from him, he pointed to some dear friends in the body of the court, and remarked, ‘Here are half a dozen of gentlemen who deserve hanging quite as much as I do.’ The Bench did not doubt it, but the remark did not profit Gentleman Harry, himself, as the young women and aspiring boys on the suburban roads called him. But Mr. Simms was a man of resources. As he sat over his punch in Newgate, he bethought himself of a means of escape. He knew, he said, of a hellish Jacobite plot to murder the king and upset the Happy Establishment. Grave ministers went down to Newgate and listened to information which was directed against several eminent persons. Harry, however, lacked the genius of Titus Oates; and besides, the people in power were not in want of a plot; the information would not ‘hold water.’ The usual countless mob of savages saw him ‘go off’ at Tyburn; and then eagerly looked forward to the expected grander display on Tower Hill. But Lovat and his friends spared no pains to postpone that display altogether.
The Scots made a national question of it. The Duke of Argyle especially exerted himself to get the sentence commuted for one of perpetual imprisonment.This was accounted for by Mr. Harris (Malmesbury Correspondence), in the following manner: ‘The Duke owes Lord Lovat a good turn for letting the world know how active his Grace was in serving the Government in 1715, and for some panegyric which the Duke is not a little pleased with.’
In the Tower, Lovat mingled seriousness and buffoonery together. But this was natural to him. There was no excitement about him, nor affectation. He naturally talked much about himself; but he had leisure and self-possession to converse with his visitors on other topics besides himself. Only two or three days before his execution he was talking with two Scottish landed proprietors. The subject was the Jurisdiction Bill. ‘You ought to be against the Bill,’ said Lovat; ‘the increase of your estates by that Bill will not give you such an interest at Court as the power did which you are thereby to be deprived of.’ The interest of his own friends at Court was gone.
THE DEATH WARRANT.
On April the 2nd, the Sheriffs of London received the ‘death warrant’ from the Duke of Newcastle for Lovat’s execution. At the same time, a verbal message was sent expressing the duke’s expectation that the decapitated head should be held up, and denounced as that of a traitor, at the four corners of the scaffold.
EXECUTION.
On the 9th, the hour had come and the old man was there to meet it. It is due to him to say that he died like a man, therein exemplifying a remark made by Sir Dudley Carleton, on a similar occurrence, ‘So much easier is it for a man to die well than to livewell.’ 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 theceremony; 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.
GEORGE SELWYN.
The head was not held up nor its late owner denounced as a traitor. The Duke of Newcastle was displeased at the omission, but the Sheriffs justified themselves on the ground that the custom had not been observed at the execution of Lord Balmerino, and that the duke had not authorised them to act, in writing. A sample of the levity of the time is furnished in the accounts of the crowds that flocked to the trial as they might have done to some gay spectacle; and an example of its callousness may be found in what Walpole calls, ‘an excessive good story of George Selwyn.’ ‘Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution, and asked him how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off?’ “Nay,” says he, “if that be such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again!” When he was at the undertaker’s, Stephenson’s in the Strand, as soon as they had stitched him together, and weregoing to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said, “My Lord Lovat, your Lordship may rise.”’
LOVAT’S BODY.
Lovat had expressed a passionate desire to be buried in his native country, under the shadow of its hills, his clansmen paying the last duty to their chief, and the women of the tribe keening their death-song on the way to the grave. The Duke of Newcastle consented. The evening before the day appointed for leaving the Tower, a coachman drove a hearse about the court of the prison, ‘before my Lord Traquair’s dungeon,’ says Walpole, ‘which could be no agreeable sight, it might to Lord Cromartie, who isabove 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, withoutopposition, ‘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.
THE WHITE HORSE, PICCADILLY.
There was in Piccadilly an inn, whose loyal host, Williams, had set up the then very loyal sign of ‘The White Horse’ (of Hanover). While Lovat’s trial wasproceeding, 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.’
JACOBITE TOASTS.
On the first anniversary of Culloden, the celebration of the day was as universally joyous as when the news of the victory first reached town. The papers speak of a ‘numerous and splendid appearance of nobility,’ at St. James’s; of foreign ministers and native gentry, eager to pay their compliments to his Majesty on this occasion. At night, London was in a blaze of bonfires and illuminations. At the same time, in houses where Jacobites met, they drank the very enigmatical toast, ‘The three W’s,’ and talked of aprivate 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’sJockeyin the ‘Prophecy ofFamine’:—
Full sorely may we all lament that day,For all were losers in the deadly fray.Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,Well do’st thou know were none more hopeful swains:Five brothers there I lost in manhood’s pride;Two in the field, and three on gibbets died.Ah! silly swains to follow war’s alarms;Ah, what hath shepherd life to do with arms?
Full sorely may we all lament that day,For all were losers in the deadly fray.Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,Well do’st thou know were none more hopeful swains:Five brothers there I lost in manhood’s pride;Two in the field, and three on gibbets died.Ah! silly swains to follow war’s alarms;Ah, what hath shepherd life to do with arms?
Full sorely may we all lament that day,
For all were losers in the deadly fray.
Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,
Well do’st thou know were none more hopeful swains:
Five brothers there I lost in manhood’s pride;
Two in the field, and three on gibbets died.
Ah! silly swains to follow war’s alarms;
Ah, what hath shepherd life to do with arms?
THE EARL OF TRAQUAIR.
There was still an untried rebel peer in the Tower, the Earl of Traquair. He bore the royal name of Charles Stuart, and had some drops of the Stuart blood in his veins. Captured in 1746, he had seen the arrival of Lovat at, and also his departure from, the Tower. Soon after the latter event, there was some talk of impeaching the earl; but this was held to be idle talk when the earl was seen enjoying the liberty of the Tower—walking in one of the courts with his friends. Whether he had rendered any service to Government, to be deserving of this favour and subsequent immunity, is not known. Walpole, when Lovat’s trial was going on, said, ‘It is much expected that Lord Traquair, who is a great coward, will give ample information of the whole plot.’ However, it is certainthat 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.’
PLOTTING AND PARDONING.
Therewith came a doubtful sort of pardoning to about a thousand rebels cooped up in vessels on the Thames, or in prisons ashore. They, and some Southwark prisoners who had been condemned to death, were compelled to suffer transportation to the American Plantations. ‘They will be transported for life,’ the papers tell their readers, ‘let them be of what quality and condition soever.’
ÆNEAS MACDONALD.
There was one Jacobite prisoner in Newgate who was disinclined to live in durance, to take his trial, or to be hanged after it or transported without it. Thiswas 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 COUNTESS OF DERWENTWATER.
The banker’s trial was put off from time to time,between July and December. The public in general were beginning to doubt its ever coming on at all; and the autumn seemed dull to people now long used to excitement, when London suddenly heard that Charles Radcliffe’s widow, with a son and two daughters, had arrived in London, and had taken a mansion in, then highly fashionable, Golden Square. She was a Countess (of Newburgh), in her own right; but, of course, the gentry with Jacobite sympathies, who called on her, recognised her as Countess of Derwentwater. This arrival in Golden Square may have had some influence on a demonstration at Westminster Abbey. For years, on the anniversary of that rather un-English king and canonized saint, Edward the Confessor, groups of Roman Catholics were accustomed to gather round his shrine, kneeling in prayer. ‘Last Tuesday,’ says the ‘Penny Post,’ ‘being the anniversary of Edward the Confessor, the tombs were shut in Westminster Abbey, by order of the Dean and Chapter, to prevent the great concourse of Roman Catholics, who always repair there on that day. Notwithstanding which, most of them were kneeling all the day at the gates, paying their devotions to that Saint.’
This incident having passed out of discussion, the trial of Macdonald was looked for. When it did come on, in December, at St. Margaret’s, Southwark, it disappointed the amateurs of executions, and delighted the Jacobites. The prisoner’s main plea was that he was French, and was legally at Culloden. The juryfound 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.
SERGEANT SMITH.
This was on December 10th. All public entertainment for the death-delighting mob seemed suppressed; but there was an exulting crowd the next day, lining the road from the barracks and military prison, in the Savoy, to the parade, St. James’s Park, and from the latter place to Hyde Park, where savages had come ‘in their thousands,’ and assembled round a gibbet in the centre of the Park. From the Savoy was brought a stalwart sergeant, in gyves, marching, without music, and eagerly gazed at as he passed on his way to the Parade. He was a good soldier, something of a scholar, knew several languages, and was utterly averse from serving any other sovereign than King James or his friend King Louis. Sergeant Smith had deserted, had been caught, and was now to suffer, not a soldier’s death by shooting, but the ignominious one of a felon. On the Parade, he was received by his own regiment, in the centre of which he was placed, and so guarded went slowly on to Hyde Park, to a dead roll of the drums. He was dressed in a scarlet coat, all else white. In token of his Jacobite allegiance, he wore, and was allowed to wear, a rosette of tartan ribbons on his bosom, and similar bunches of ribbonson 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.
THE JACOBITE’S JOURNAL.
In December 1747, a new paper was started, called the ‘Jacobite’s Journal.’ It was eminently anti-Jacobite, and was adorned with a head-piece representing a shouting Highlander and his wife on a donkey, to whose tail is tied the shield and arms of France; and from whose mouth hangs a label ‘Daily Post;’ the animal is led by a monk with one finger significantly laid to the side of his nose. The journal joked savagely at the idea of the above-named Sergeant Smith, being compelled to listen to his own funeral sermon in the Savoy Chapel, and hoped there was no flattery in it. As to the gay rosettes of tartan ribbons which he wore, the journal was disgusted with such a display on the part of a traitor.
CARTE’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
There remains to be noticed the appearance this year of the first volume of the Jacobite Carte’s History of England. It was received with a universal welcome which was soon exchanged for wrath on the part of the Hanoverians. Although Carte was a non-juring clergyman, had been in ’15 and again in ’22 ‘wanted’ by the Secretary of State, and had been secretary toAtterbury, 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 tobe 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.
JACOBITE JOHNSON.
The highest praise which he could give to Dr. Panting, the Master of Pembroke (Johnson’s College),was to call him ‘a fine Jacobite fellow.’ The worst he could say of the Gilbert Walmsley, of Lichfield, whom he loved and honoured, was that ‘he was a Whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party.’ Boswell’s father pelted Johnson with the term which Johnson applied to Panting, as one of laudation, and spoke of him contemptuously as ‘that Jacobite fellow.’
The truth is, that if Johnson felt the principle of allegiance due to the Stuarts, he felt no love for the system which prevailed where the Stuarts found their best friends: ‘A Highland Chief, Sir, has no more the soul of a chief, than an attorney who has twenty houses in a street, and considers how much he can make by them.’ Johnson had but scant eulogy for a convert from Whiggery. To join the Tories was to ‘keep better company.’ In an honest Whig, the learned Jacobite had no belief; ‘Pulteney,’ he remarked, ‘was as paltry a fellow as could be. He was a Whig who pretended to be honest, and you know it is ridiculous for a Whig to pretend to be honest. He cannot hold it out.’ It would be difficult to say whether Cibber or GeorgeII.was the more hateful object to Johnson. He gibbeted both in the epigram he took care not topublish:—
Augustus still survives in Maro’s strain,And Spenser’s verse prolongs Eliza’s reign;Great George’s acts let tuneful Cibber sing;For Nature formed the Poet for the King.
Augustus still survives in Maro’s strain,And Spenser’s verse prolongs Eliza’s reign;Great George’s acts let tuneful Cibber sing;For Nature formed the Poet for the King.
Augustus still survives in Maro’s strain,
And Spenser’s verse prolongs Eliza’s reign;
Great George’s acts let tuneful Cibber sing;
For Nature formed the Poet for the King.
JOHNSON’S SYMPATHIES.
It was perhaps accidental that during the years 1745-6 Johnson’s literary work seems to have beenalmost suspended. ‘That he had a tenderness for that unfortunate house’ (of Stuart, said Boswell) ‘is well known, and some may fancifully imagine that a sympathetic anxiety impeded the exertion of his intellectual powers, but I am inclined to think that he was, during this time, sketching the outlines of his great philological work.’ It is not certain that Johnson was the author of the following lines, which appeared in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ for April 1747, but his fond habit of repeating them, ‘by heart,’ is some proof of his sympathy with the Jacobites named therein; and their publication demonstrates that the Government respected hostile opinion when it was becomingly expressed.
On Lord Lovat’s Execution.Pity’d bygentle minds,Kilmarnockdied;Thebrave,Balmerino, were on thy side;Radcliffe, unhappy in his crimes of youth,Steady in what he still mistook for truth,Beheld his death so decently unmovèd,Thesoftlamented and thebraveapprovèd.ButLovat’sfate indifferently we view,True to noKing, to noReligiontrue;Nofairforgets the ruin he has done;Nochildlaments the tyrant of his son;NoTorypities, thinking what he was;NoWhigcompassions,for he left the cause;Thebraveregret not, for he was not brave;Thehonestmourn not, knowing him a knave.
On Lord Lovat’s Execution.Pity’d bygentle minds,Kilmarnockdied;Thebrave,Balmerino, were on thy side;Radcliffe, unhappy in his crimes of youth,Steady in what he still mistook for truth,Beheld his death so decently unmovèd,Thesoftlamented and thebraveapprovèd.ButLovat’sfate indifferently we view,True to noKing, to noReligiontrue;Nofairforgets the ruin he has done;Nochildlaments the tyrant of his son;NoTorypities, thinking what he was;NoWhigcompassions,for he left the cause;Thebraveregret not, for he was not brave;Thehonestmourn not, knowing him a knave.
On Lord Lovat’s Execution.
Pity’d bygentle minds,Kilmarnockdied;
Thebrave,Balmerino, were on thy side;
Radcliffe, unhappy in his crimes of youth,
Steady in what he still mistook for truth,
Beheld his death so decently unmovèd,
Thesoftlamented and thebraveapprovèd.
ButLovat’sfate indifferently we view,
True to noKing, to noReligiontrue;
Nofairforgets the ruin he has done;
Nochildlaments the tyrant of his son;
NoTorypities, thinking what he was;
NoWhigcompassions,for he left the cause;
Thebraveregret not, for he was not brave;
Thehonestmourn not, knowing him a knave.
For the sake of ‘the cause,’ Johnson could tolerate persons of very indifferent character, always providing they were not fools. Topham Beauclerk was a handsome fellow, of good principles, to which his practices in no wise answered. Boswell calls him lax in both,but Johnson said to Beauclerk himself, ‘Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue.’ And why did Jacobite Johnson love, nay, become fascinated by this other Jacobite? Boswell gives the reason: ‘Mr. Beauclerk, being of the St. Alban’s family, and having in some particulars a resemblance to CharlesII., 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.’
FLORA MACDONALD.
The arrival in London of the most interesting of all the Jacobite prisoners in 1746, and her departure in 1747, are left unrecorded, or dismissed in a line, by the journalists. Flora Macdonald, on board the ‘Eltham,’ arrived at the Nore, on the 27th of November, 1746. Transferred to the ‘Royal Sovereign,’ Flora was brought up to the Tower. Soon after, she was allowed to live in the house, and under the nominal restraint, of Mr. Dick, the messenger. After her release, and complete liberation in 1747, without any questioning, Flora Macdonald is said to have been the favoured guest of Lady Primrose, in Essex Street, and thelionneof 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 MacolmMacleod, 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’S SONS.
Flora, it is well known, married Macdonald of Kingsburgh, settled in America, took the royalist side, when the Colonies revolted, returned to Skye, and gave her five sons to the military or naval service of the Georges! When the latest survivor of the five brothers, Lieut.-Col. Macdonald, was presented to GeorgeIV., 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 whommy familyowe a great obligation.’ And such was the debt of the ‘family’ for Flora’s five sons.
Flower