decorated bannerLONDONINTHE JACOBITE TIMES.decorated lineCHAPTERI.(1714.)
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LONDONINTHE JACOBITE TIMES.
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onthe last morning of Queen Anne’s life, a man, deep in thought, was slowly crossing Smithfield. The eyes of a clergyman passing in a carriage were bent upon him. The carriage stopped, the wayfarer looked up, and the two men knew each other. The one on foot was the dissenting preacher, whom Queen Anne used to call ‘bold Bradbury.’ The other was Bishop Burnet.
‘On what were you so deeply thinking?’ asked the bishop.
‘On the men who died here at the stake,’ replied Bradbury. ‘Evil times, like theirs, are at hand. Iam thinking whether I should be as brave as they were, if I were called upon to bear the fire as they bore it.’
IN THE CHURCHES.
Burnet gave him hope. A good time, he said, was coming. The queen was mortally ill. Burnet was then, he said, on his way from Clerkenwell to the Court, and he undertook to send a messenger to Bradbury, to let him know how it fared with Anne. If he were in his chapel, a token should tell him that the queen was dead.
A few hours later, Bradbury was half-way through his sermon, when he saw a handkerchief drop from the hand of a stranger in the gallery. This is said to have been the sign agreed upon. The preacher went quietly on to the end of his discourse; but, in the prayer which followed, he moved the pulses of his hearers’ hearts, by giving thanks to God for saving the kingdom from the doings of its enemies; and he asked for God’s blessing on the King of England, GeorgeI., Elector of Hanover.
About the same time Bishop Atterbury had offered to go down in front ofSt.James’s Palace, in full episcopal dress, and proclaim JamesIII.—the late Queen’s brother. The Tory Ministry wavered, and Atterbury, with words unseemly for a bishop’s lips, deplored that they had let slip the finest opportunity that had ever been vouchsafed to mortal men.
IN THE STREETS.
The Regency knew better how to profit by it. George was proclaimed king. Dr. Owen of Warrington preached a Whig sermon, from 1 Kingsxvi.30, ‘And Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight ofthe Lord, above all that were before him.’ The text was as a club wherewith to assail the soil of JamesII.A little later, Bradbury was accused of having preached from the words, ‘Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her; for she is a king’s daughter.’ This was a calumny. Burnet’s sermon was on Actsxiii.38-41, and defied objection. In those verses there was nothing to lay hold of. The most captious spirit could make little out of even these words, ‘Behold, ye despisers; and wonder and perish, for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.’ The Jacobites could turn it to no purpose.
Queen Anne was dead, George was proclaimed. The fine gentlemen in coffee and chocolate houses, and the fine ladies who breakfasted at noon, in bed, read in their respective papers that ‘the late queen’s bowells were yesterday buryed in Henry theVII.’s Chappel.’ ‘If,’ wrote Chesterfield to Jouneau, ‘she had lived only three months longer, … she would have left us, at her death, for king, a bastard who is as great a fool as she was herself, and who, like her, would have been led by the nose by a band of rascals.’
STEELE’S SATIRE.
On the other hand, there were men who sincerely mourned the queen’s death. These men were troubled in their walks by the revels at Charing Cross. There Young Man’s Coffee-house echoed with sounds of rejoicing. Some of the revellers had been recipients of the most liberal bounty of the queen, and did not careto conceal their ecstacy. Men circulated the good news as they rode in carriages which the queen had purchased for them. At Young Man’s might be seen an officer sharing in the unseemly joy, whose laced coat, hat and feather, were bought with the pay of the sovereign, whose arms were on his gorget. People who had been raised from the lowest degree of gentlemen to riches and honours, could not hide their gladness. And now, men read with diverse feeling a reprint, freshly and opportunely issued, of Steele’s famous letter in the ‘Reader,’ addressed to that awful metropolitan official, the Sword-bearer of the City Corporation. The writer reminded the dignitary that, as the Mayor, Walworth, had despatched the rebel Wat Tyler with a stroke of his dagger, so ‘is it expected of you,’ said Steele, ‘to cut off the Pretender with that great sword which you bear with so much calmness, which is always a sign of courage.’ ‘Let me tell you, Sir,’ adds Steele, with exquisite mock gravity, ‘in the present posture of affairs I think it seems to be expected of you; and I cannot but advise you, if he should offer to land here (indeed if he should so much as come up the river), to take the Water Bailiff with you, and cut off his head. I would not so much, if I were you, as tell him who I was, till I had done it. He is outlawed, and I stand to it, if the Water Bailiff is with you, and concurs, you may do it on the Thames; but, if he offers to land, it is out of all question, you may do it by virtue of your post, without waiting for orders. It is from this comfort and support that, in spite ofwhat all the malcontents in the world can say, I have no manner of fear of the Pretender.’
IN PARLIAMENT.
There were, however, some who had hopes of that luckless prince, and who looked upon any other who should take the crown which they considered to be his, by divine right, as a wicked usurper. Accordingly, the Nonjuring Jacobites and High Church congregations sang their hymns, in their respective places of worship, to words which had a harmless ring, but which were really full of treason. One sample is as good as twenty,—and here itis!—
Confounded be those rebels allThat to usurpers bow,And make what Gods and Kings they please,And worship them below!
Confounded be those rebels allThat to usurpers bow,And make what Gods and Kings they please,And worship them below!
Confounded be those rebels all
That to usurpers bow,
And make what Gods and Kings they please,
And worship them below!
On the day the queen died, Parliament met to vote addresses to her successor. The Jacobite spirit was not entirely extinguished in either House. In spite of an attempt to obtain an adjournment in the Upper Chamber, the Lords carried an address, in which they said: ‘With faithful hearts we beseech your Majesty to give us your royal presence.’ In the Commons, Mr. Secretary Bromley moved an address so made up of grief expressed for Anne’s death, that Walpole demanded ‘something more substantial;’ and loyal members insisted that congratulations rather than condolence should abound in the address from the Commons. To both Houses the king intimated that he was hastening to satisfy their ‘affectionate urgences.’
POLITICAL AMENITIES.
Meanwhile rival papers watched each other asjealously as adversaries in churches and the streets. Abel, in the ‘Post Boy,’ happened to say, ‘We patiently await the arrival of the king!’ The ‘Flying Post’ flew at him immediately. ‘Villain,’ ‘vile wretch,’ and ‘monster,’ were among the amenities flung at Abel. Here was a ‘fellow’ who dared to say he ‘patientlywaited’ for an event for which the ‘faithful Commons’ had declared they ‘waitedimpatiently.’ In his next number, Abel said hemeant‘impatiently.’ He was called a liar now, as he had been traitor before. Others said, ‘Hang this odious beast!—he dares to say he waits impatiently the arrival of the king!What king, Bezonian?We guess it is his Bar-le-ducish Majesty!’ Such was the nick-name given to the Chevalier deSt.George, who was then residing at Bar-le-Duc, in Lorraine.
SACHEVEREL: MARLBOROUGH.
People in streets and taverns next became anxious about the wind. The Whigs were desirous that it should blow so as to bring the new king speedily from Holland. If a gentleman in a coffee-house ventured to remark that ‘it was strange the wind should have turned against his Majesty just as he had reached the Hague,’ the speaker was set upon as a Jacobite who took that way to insinuate that God was ruling the elements in the Tory interest. Swords were whipt out, and he had to fight, beg pardon, or run for it. In the street if an old basket-woman lamented that the wind was bad, and a thoughtless porter rejoined that the wind was well enough, the loyal woman raised a cry which hounded on a hundred blackguards to hunt the porterdown, and beat him to the very point of death. An indifferent man could not express, in any circle of hearers, a word or two of respect for Queen Anne without being accused of disrespect for King George. While Tories bought from the street-criers the broadsheet ‘Fair and softly, or, don’t drive Jehu-like,’ the Hanoverian papers called for the imprisonment of the criers, and confiscation of the broadsheet. The latter, they said, implied that the established Government was acting fraudulently, and was likely to upset the State-chariot. ‘Stand fast to the Church; no Presbyterian Government!’ was the title of another sheet, published by word of mouth, in the City. Down swooped the constables on the criers,—audacious fellows, it was said, who dared to insinuate that the Government was abandoning the Church. Of course, the sight of Dr. Sacheverel on the causeway was provocative of hostile demonstration. As he once came fromSt.Andrew’s Church into Holborn, a Whig, anxious for a row, shouted, ‘There goes Sacheverel, with a footman at his back. It ought to be a horsewhip!’ On the other hand, Tories entrapped Whigs into drinking ‘his Majesty’s health,’—meaning the health of King James. In a Smithfield tavern a gentleman said to an Essex farmer, ‘I will give you half-a-crown to drink “His Majesty’s health.”’ The farmer ‘smoked’ the Jacobite speaker, took the money, gave him a couple of kicks as equivalent to two shillings change, and then walked off, uttering the slang word ‘bite!’ by way of triumph.
ON PARADE. FIRST BLOOD.
There was one individual whose coming was asanxiously looked for as that of the king; namely, the Duke of Marlborough, who had been for some time in voluntary exile. England at last was informed that the duke had condescended to return to this ungrateful nation. On his arrival in London, after passing triumphantly through provincial towns, he was addressed by officials, the spokesmen of mounted gentlemen and of commonalty afoot. He is said, not without some sarcasm in the words, to have replied to these addresses ‘with that humble and modest air which is so peculiar to himself.’ At Temple Bar his state carriage broke down. Tories jeered him as he emerged from it. A humbler sort of coach was procured, and Whigs saluted him withhuzzas!as he entered it.
Loyal captains were spirited up by the news of the coming of their old leader. On the parade in the Park, Captain Holland addressed his company. He congratulated them on having acquired such a king as George the First after such a sovereign as Queen Anne! The captain swore that he would sustain the Hanoverian Protestant Succession. ‘If,’ he added, ‘If there’s any person among you that’s a Roman Catholic, or not resolved to act on the same principles with me, I desire him to march out!’
Pretty well the first blood drawn in the growing antagonism of Stuart and Brunswick was in a coffee-house dispute as to the merits of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Constantine Phipps. A Cornet Custine, who shared Captain Holland’s opinion, spoke contemptuously of the Jacobite Chancellor. A Mr. Moore,described as a ‘worthy gentleman’ by the papers with Stuart proclivities, left the room in apparent displeasure. Custine followed him into the street, compelled him to defend himself, and ran him through the heart with the energeticHanoverian thrust. Young Moore died of it, and the Cornet was imprisoned. ‘We wish Mr. Custine, on this occasion’ (killing a Jacobite), say some of the papers, ‘all the favour the law can allow him.’ The alleged grounds for favour were that the duel was fairly fought, swords having been simultaneously drawn on both sides. At a later period, Chancellor Phipps was dismissed. He returned to England. Oxford immediately made him aD.C.L., and, as he resumed practice at the English Bar, the Jacobites confided to him the conduct of their cases, and Sir Constantine became the great Tory lawyer of Westminster Hall.
THE ‘PEREGRINE YATCH.’
At length news arrived that the king and the prince had left the Hague, where, in their impatience to reach England, they had tarried eleven days, and laid all the blame upon the wind. Next, London was a-stir with the intelligence that the ‘Peregrine Yatch,’ bearing Cæsar and his fortunes, with a convoy of men of war, was off the buoy at the Nore. The new sovereign was to land at Greenwich, whither every sort of vehicle, carrying every sort of persons, now repaired. The loyal excursionists hoped to have a good view of their new sovereign as he went processionally through the Park. Pedestrians passed the gates without difficulty, but not even to the ‘Quality’ indiscriminately was it given to enter within the enclosure. Carriagesbearing friends to the royal family were turned back full of malcontents, when they did not carry the great officers of the crown, privy-counsellors, judges, peers, or peers’ sons. The Duke of Ormond’s splendid equipage drove up to the palace, but the great Tory duke had to retire without alighting. The king would not receive him. His Majesty was barely more gracious to the Earl of Oxford. The ex-Lord Treasurer kissed the king’s hand, amid a crowd of other homage-payers, but the sovereign took no more notice of Harley than of the most insignificant unit in that zealous mob. The other mob outside were discussing the reported changes in the Administration, when a sovereign homage was rendered to that would-be sovereign people.
THE KING AT GREENWICH.
‘At Greenwich,’ say the London papers, ‘the king and prince were pleased to expose themselves some time at the windows of their palace, to satisfy the impatient curiosity of all loving subjects.’ Among those who were ready to be so were Scottish chiefs with historical names. There had been no lack of homage to Queen Anne on the part of Scottish peers. The Master of Sinclair was a Jacobite, who had been in trouble in Queen Anne’s time. His neck was in peril, but the queen pardoned him. His history of the insurrection of ’15, in which he took part, is severely condemnatory of all the leaders, and especially of Mar. In the introductory portion of it, the Master sketches in equally censuring terms the Scottish peers in London, a little before Queen Anne’s death. ‘While atSCOTTISH HOMAGE.London,’ he says, ‘I had occasion to see the meanness of some of our Scots nobilitie who were of the sixteen, and who I heard complain grievously of the Treasurer’s cheating them, because he had gone out of town without letting them know, or giving them money as he had promised. I was told they wanted a hundred pound, or some such matter, to pay their debts, and carry them down to Scotland, and that they used to hang on at his levee like so many footmen. My God! how concerned I was to see those who pretended to be of the ancient Scots nobilitie reduced to beg at an English Court! And some of those, of which number was my Lord Kilsyth, were they who gave themselves the greatest airs in our affair,—so useful is impudence to impose on mankind!’—See ‘Memoirs of the Insurrection in Scotland in 1715,’ by John, Master of Sinclair, published by the Abbotsford Club, 1858, and reviewed in the ‘Athenæum,’ 31st December, 1859, by the able hand of the late Mr. Dilke.
In reference to the king’s arrival at Greenwich, Mr. Dilke says: ‘Queen Anne’s ministers had taken the chiefs into the direct pay of Government, at the rate of about 350l.a year each. The Highlanders were then as quiet as Lowlanders, and when King George landed at Greenwich, an address was ready for him, signed with all the great names that so soon after figured in the rebellion, by Macdonel of Glengarrie, Macdonald of the Isles, Mackenzie, Macklean, Macleod, Cameron of Lochiel, Mackintosh, Macpherson of Cluny, Chisholm,and others, offering loyal and faithful service to ‘a prince so highly adorned with all royal virtues, and expressing a hope that his Majesty’s royal and kindly influence would reach them even in their distant homes.’ His Majesty was not so advised; his kindly influence, that is, his money, did not reach them, and these poor people were driven to follow the standard of a little Mogul like Mar. Mar knew what would be influential, and in his Proclamation, though he called on them ‘by their faith, honour, allegiance, by their devotion and love, to join the standard of their king, he wisely concluded with the promise of a gratuity and regular pay.’
CLARET LOYALTY.
After the king and prince had set out on their journey from Greenwich to London, the impatient curiosity of all loving subjects in Greenwich was directed to another object. At eight o’clock precisely they were in crowds about theShip, calling on the landlord, Thomas Sweetapple, to make good his promise, namely, that he would broach a hogshead of the finest French claret behind his house, and give thereof to all true loyalists, to drink his Majesty’s health. Mine host kept his word; but the liquor was out long before all true loyalists could taste of it. The unsatisfied drinkers were made as loyal to the Establishment as to the throne. One zealous Whig exclaimed, in proof of his zeal for the Protestant succession, ‘It’s true I never go to church, but d—n me if I don’t always stand up for her!’
THE ARTILLERY COMPANY.
For the royal entry into and through London every preparation had been made. Occasionally little difficultiespresented themselves. For example, Captain Silk, whose office and principles may be guessed by his being described as ‘Muster Master, with others of his kidney,’ ventured to assert that the London Artillery Company had no right to appear officially at the royal passage through the City. The cannoneers, descendants of primitive heroic Cockneys, appealed to the proper authorities, and the appeal was allowed. Further, the Artillery Company had their little revenge. Captain Silk was prevented from even seeing the spectacle. The warlike company charged him with having drunk the health of the pretended JamesIII.on his knees, while the song was sung of ‘The king shall have his own again!’ The captain was laid by the heels, and the artillery of London rejoiced at it. But ‘Captain Silk’s Jacobite Militia tune’ became a favourite with Tory musicians.
Among the advertisements which offered places to spectators along the whole line, from Greenwich toSt.James’s, there was one which announced that ‘several senior gentlemen, with their own gray hairs,’ had resolved to ride before the king ‘in white camblet cloaks, on white horses.’ They advertised for volunteers, old and gray enough, who were assured that they ‘would be led up in the procession by persons of eminence and figure.’ It was subsequently reported that these ‘senior gentlemen, in their own gray hairs,’ applied too late to the Earl Marshal to have a place appointed for them in the procession, but that they would have seats in a gallery of their own at the eastend ofSt.Paul’s. They would be presented, it was said, with lovely nosegays, to revive their spirits and refresh their memories, ‘which will be a fine orange stuck round with laurel—the former to put them in mind of the happy Revolution; the latter, of the glorious victories gained under the Duke of Marlborough in the late wars.’ The above is a specimen of the mild political wit of the day. Curious eyes looked at the gallery at the east end ofSt.Paul’s. They saw nothing of the seniors and their emblems, but others swore they were there, nevertheless, or why was the heroic Marlborough factiously hissed as he passed? At other points, the Church and King party had their revenge. The king and prince in their state coach might have been excused for wearing an air of surprise at the unusual huzzaing and clapping of hands of the gentlemen, and the ecstacy of the ladies in the balconies of the Three Tuns and Rummer tavern in the City. The applause was not for Great Brunswick but for the Earl of Sutherland. The people in the balcony remembered that in King William’s days, Lord Sutherland had been insulted in that very tavern. He had drunk King William’s health on his birthday, and the Jacobites present flourished their swords and vapoured about the Earl as if they would slay him and all Protestantism with him.
THE ROYAL ENTRY.
The stately line—and it was a right pompous affair—was a little cumbrous, but it was well kept together, from the kettle-drums and trumpeters, followed by hosts of officials, troops, coaches, &c., to the dragoonswho snatched a drink from the people, as they brought up the rear. Perhaps the road about the east end of Pall Mall was the most joyous; for there the balconies and galleries were filled with people who had something to satisfy besides curiosity or loyalty, and who had been attracted thither by the promise that all the fronts of the balconies and galleries should have ‘broad flat tops large enough to hold plates and bottles.’ The spectators there were primed to any pitch of loyalty as his Majesty passed.
THE PLAYERS’ HOMAGE.
At night, the stage paid its first homage to the new sovereign. Graceful Wilks spoke an ‘occasional prologue’ at the theatre in Drury Lane; and loyal and dramatic people bought it in the house or at Jacob Tonson’s over against Catherine Street, Strand, for twopence. But while Wilks was loyal, he had an Irish Roman Catholic servant, who was so outspokenly Jacobite, that the player discharged him, lest evil might follow to himself. The fellow, however, had what the French call ‘the courage of his opinions,’ but not the discretion which many had who shared them. He went down to the colour-yard atSt.James’s, drew his sword upon the flag, abused the new king, gave a tipsy hurrah for his ‘lawful sovereign,’ and knew little more till he found himself next morning aroused from the straw to answer a charge of treason. He pleaded ‘liquor,’ and was allowed the benefit of his hard-drinking.
THE AFFAIRS OF SCOTLAND.
The press at this moment burst into unusual activity. There was especially great activity in and aboutthe Black Boy, in Paternoster Row. It was from under that well-known literary emblem that Baker, the publisher, issued the popular edition of a work that all the world was soon reading, for exactly opposite reasons. Baker had, somehow, got possession of the Jacobite Lockhart’s manuscript of his ‘Memoirs concerning the Affairs of Scotland, from Queen Anne’s Accession to the Throne to the commencement of the Union of the two kingdoms of Scotland and England, in May, 1707. With an Account of the Origin and Progress of the designed Invasion from France, in March, 1708. And some Reflections on the Ancient State of Scotland.’ On the same title-page, notice was made of ‘an Introduction, showing the reason for publishing these Memoirs at this juncture.’
These Memoirs treat with immense severity all the leading Whig noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland. The book was therefore read with avidity, by the Tories, or Jacobites. But many Tories who had rallied from the Whig or Hanoverian side were handled quite as roughly, to the great delight of their former colleagues, and to a certain satisfaction on the part of present confederates. The volume showed both Whigs and Tories where their enemies were to be found, and it was accordingly read by both to the same end. But, it also recognised no other king than James the Third of England, and Eighth of Scotland, and, therefore, crafty Baker had an introduction written for the Whig party; that is to say, it warned all loyal people to put no trust now in men who had pretended to reconcilea sham fidelity to Queen Anne with a real one to her brother; men who, in 1708, had hoped to set aside the Protestant succession. ‘And if,’ says the last paragraph of the Introduction, ‘a rebellion of thatBlack Dyewas carried on against a Queen of the greatest Indulgence to their Follies, and who was wickedly represented by them as having concealed Inclinations to serve their Interest, and keep the Crown in trust for their King, what Rancour, what Hellish Malice, may not King George expect from a Faction who put their Country in a Flame to oppose his Succession, and were reducing it to a Heap of Ruins to prevent his being Sovereign of the Soil!’
A ROYAL PROCLAMATION.
One of King George’s first acts was to issue a proclamation against the ‘Pretender,’ in which the reward of 100,000l.was promised to any person who should apprehend him, if he attempted to land in the British dominions.
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