Decorative bannerCHAPTERIV.(1715.)
Decorative banner
thepopular demonstrations troubled the authorities less than the expressed discontent of some of the soldiery. The Foot Guards especially had become clamorous at having to wear shirts that would not hold together, and uniforms thatwouldgo into holes, while the wearers were liable to punishment for what they could not prevent. On the anniversary of the king’s birthday (20th May), crowds of soldiers of the regiments of Guards paraded the streets, exhibited their linen garments on poles, and shouted, ‘Look at our Hanover shirts!’ Others stript off shirts and jackets, and flung them over the garden walls ofSt.James’s Palace and Marlborough House. Some of the men made a bonfire in front of Whitehall, and cast their shoddy garments into the flames! The soldiers were treated with peculiar consideration. Marlborough reviewed them in the Park, and then addressed them in a deprecatory speech which began with ‘Gentlemen!’ He acknowledged that they had grievances, promised that these should be redressed, informed them that he himself had ordered new clothes for them, and he almost begged that theywould be so good as to wear the old ones till the new (including the shirts) were ready! The whole address showed that the soldiers were considered as worth the flattering. It ended with a ‘tag’ about ‘the best of kings,’ and as the tag was cheered, it was, doubtless, supposed that the flattery had not been administered in vain. Fears connected with the soldiery were certainly not groundless. A reward of 50l.was offered for the apprehension of Captain Wright, of Lord Wimbledon’s Horse. The Captain had written a letter to a friend in Ireland, which letter had probably fallen into the hands of ‘the king’s decypherer.’ The Government had, at all events, got at the contents. The offensive portion was to the effect that the Duke of Ormond would overcome all his enemies, and the writer expressed a hope that they should soon send George home again! The ‘loyal’ papers were not afraid to accuse the bishops of so far tampering with the soldiery as to encourage them in thinking, or even in saying, how much better off they were in Ormond’s days thannow!
POLITICS IN THE ARMY.
The papers proved both the watchfulness and uneasiness which existed with respect to the army. One day it is recorded that a Colonel of the Guards was dismissed. As danger seemed to increase, a camp was formed in Hyde Park, whither a strong force of artillery was brought from the Tower. A sweep was made at the Horse Guards of suspected men, on some of whom commissions were said to have been found signed by the ‘Pretender!’ All absent officers were ordered to return at once to their posts in the three kingdoms. Animportant capture was supposed to have been made of a certain Captain Campbell. London was full of the news that Mr. Palmer, the messenger, was bringing the Captain to town; but the messenger arrived alone. He had let the Captain escape, and people who expected that Palmer would be hanged were disappointed that he was only turned out of his place.
LIEUTENANT KYNASTON.
At this period, Fountain Court, in the Strand, was a quiet spot, with good houses well-inhabited. In one of these lodged two Captains, Livings and Spencer, and a Lieutenant, John Kynaston. The last had got his appointment through sending ‘information,’ under the pseudonym of ‘Philo-Brittannus’ to the Secretary of War. The Lieutenant looked for further promotion if he could only discover something that the Government might think worth a valuable consideration. Kynaston lounged in coffee-houses, listened to gossip on the parade, and was very much at home among the Captains of all services, and especially of some who assembled in the little room behind the kitchen at the ‘Blew Postes,’ in Duke’s Court. But his well-regulated mind was so shocked at what he heard there that he unbosomed himself to the two Captains, his fellow-lodgers in Fountain Court. Loyalty prompted Kynaston to let King George know that his Majesty had dangerous enemies within his own capital. The Captains approved. But then, the idea of being an informer was hateful to Kynaston’s noble soul! The Captains thought it might be. On the other hand, to be silent would be to share the crime. His sacred Majesty’s life might be in peril. It was not acting the part of a base informer to put hisMajesty on his guard. The Captains endorsed those sentiments as their own; and when Lieut. Kynaston went to make an alarming revelation to Mr. Secretary Pulteney, he carried in his pocket the certificates of the Captains that the bearer was a loyal and disinterested person, and that it gave them particular pleasure in being able to say so. Pulteney heard what the gallant gentleman, the principal in the affair, had to say, and he, forthwith, called together a Board of General Officers, with General Lumley for president, before which Kynaston and the naughty people whom he accused were brought face to face.
JACOBITE PLOTTERS.
The latter bore it very well. Among the first whom Kynaston charged as pestilent Jacobite traitors were a Cornhill draper and a peruque-maker from Bishopsgate Street. The Lieutenant declared that when he was present they had drunk the Pretender’s health. The honest tradesmen swore that they did not drink that toast, but that Kynaston had proposed it. They were set aside, while a lawyer and a doctor were brought before the Board for a similar offence. They pleaded their well-known principles. ‘Aye, aye,’ said the Lieutenant, ‘your principles are better known than your practice.’ This faint joke did not elicit a smile; and in the next accused individual, a ‘Captain D——,’ Kynaston caught a Tartar. The Lieutenant deposed mere ‘hearsay’ matter as to the accused being a Jacobite, but the Captain claimed to be sworn, and he then testified that Kynaston had said in the Captain’s hearing: ‘If I’m not provided for, I shall go into France,’ which was as much as to say he would go overto ‘the Pretender.’FALSE ACCUSER.This pestilent Captain was then allowed to withdraw. ‘As he was departing the Court,’ says Kynaston, in a weak but amusing pamphlet he subsequently published, ‘he gave me a gracious nod with his reverend head, and swore, “By God, I’ve done your business!”’ The Lieutenant felt that he had. The best testimony he could produce,—that is, the least damaging to himself,—was in the case of the free-spoken roysterers of the little room behind the kitchen at the ‘Blew Postes.’ Ormond’s health, Bolingbroke’s health, and similar significant toasts, were given there—so he alleged. ‘Yes,’ answered the accused, ‘but they were given by you, and were not drunk!’ They called the kitchen wench in support of their defence. The loyal Lieutenant summoned rebutting testimony, but his cautious witnesses alleged that no such healths were proposed, and, therefore, could not be drunk by Kynaston or anybody else. The military Board of Enquiry thereupon separated, leaving informer and accused in ignorance of what further steps were likely to be taken. Kynaston went away for change of air, but such severe things were publicly said of him, by friends as well as foes, that he thought the best course he could take would be to show himself in the Mall.
THE MILITARY BOARD.
There, then, is the next scene in this illustrative comedy. Kynaston, with his hat fiercely cocked, is seen at a distance by a ruffling major, named Oneby. The Major says, loud enough for the general audience,—‘As soon as I see Kynaston, I’ll make him eat his words and deny his Christ! I’llpathhim, and sendhim quick to hell!’ The Lieutenant, leaning on the arm of one of his captains, blandly remarks to him as both draw near to the fire-eating major, ‘Gentlemen give themselves airs in my absence.’ And then looking Oneby sternly in the face, exclaims, ‘I value not a Jacobite rogue in the kingdom!’ According to Kynaston’s pamphlet, this had such an effect on Oneby, that the Major came daintily up to him and in the most lamb-like voice asked, ‘What news from the country, Lieutenant?’ To which the latter replied, ‘News, sir? that his Majesty has enemies there as well as here.’ And therewith, they cross the stage andexeuntat opposite sides.
This was not the ordinary style of Major John Oneby’s acting. He was an accomplished and too successful duellist. A few years after the above scene in the Park, he killed Mr. Gower in a duel fought in a room of a Drury Lane tavern—the result of a drunken quarrel—over a dice-board. The Major was found guilty of wilful murder, and condemned to be hanged; but he opened a vein with a penknife, as he lay in bed in Newgate, and so ‘cheated the hangman.’
THE LIEUTENANT DISPOSED OF.
The Military Board, meanwhile, went quietly and steadily about its work. What it thought of the disinterested Lieutenant and those whom he charged with treason, he learned in a very unexpected way. He was ill at ease in bed, reading the ‘Post Boy,’ when his much astonished eyes fell upon the following paragraph:—‘Lieutenant John Kynaston has been broke, and rendered incapable of serving for the future.’ Thiswas the first intimation he had had of any return made to him by way of acknowledgment for his information. He accounted it a lie, inserted by ‘that infamous and seditious Bell-wether of their party, Abel Roper!’ In quite a Bobadil strain, Kynaston afterwards registered a vow in print that he ‘should, by way of gratitude, take the very first opportunity of promoting a close correspondence between Abel Roper and his brother Cain.’ Before that consummation was achieved, Kynaston—it was a fortnight after the announcement appeared in the ‘Post Boy’—received a document, ‘On his Majesty’s Service,’ which convinced the ex-Lieutenant that he no longer formed part of it. He rushed to the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Marlborough. ‘It’s a hard case,’ said the Duke, ‘but I am going into my chair!’ and so he got rid of the appellant. Kynaston hired a chair and was carried over to General Lumley, the President of the Military Board. ‘You had better keep quiet,’ said the General, ‘you might get insulted!’Insultedmeant beaten or pointed out in the streets. Kynaston at once went to bed with a fever which conveniently kept him there for seven weeks. ‘The Lieutenant is sneaking,’ cried his enemies; but he appeared in the guise of a pamphlet, in which he said that he should never recover the surprise into which he had been thrown by discovering that the people whom he had accused had found readier belief than he—the accuser. Never again did John Kynaston ride with Colonel Newton’s Regiment of Dragoons.[3]
CAPTAIN PAUL.
Other informers were more profitable to listen to than Kynaston. Marlborough, who dismissed the ex-Lieutenant so cavalierly, was one day giving ear, with deep interest, to a sergeant in the Foot Guards. The staple of the fellow’s news was, that his captain, Paul, had in his desk a commission as Colonel of a regiment of cavalry, from the Pretender; and that he had promised a lieutenant’s commission to the sergeant, who had accepted the same, and now, out of remorse or fear, or hopes of getting a commission in a safer way, came and told the whole story to the great Duke. Marlborough dismissed him, bade him be of good cheer, and keep silent. An hour or two afterwards, Captain Paul was at the Duke’s levee. The Commander-in-Chief greeted him with a cordial ‘Good morning, Colonel!’ (Captains in the Guards were so addressed), ‘I am very glad to see you!’—and then, as if it had just occurred to him—‘By-the-by, my Lord Townshend desires to speak with you; you had better wait on him at the office.’ Paul, unsuspecting, rather hoping that some good chance was about to turn up for him, took his leave, ran down-stairs, jumped into a chair, and cried, ‘To the Cock-pit!’ When his name was announced to the Secretary of State, Lord Townshend sent a message of welcome, and a request that Paul would wait in the anteroom, till some important business with some of the Ministers should be concluded. Paul was still waiting when the Duke of Marlborough arrived, and passed through the room to the more private apartment. As he passed, the Colonel ratherfamiliarly greeted him, but Marlborough confined his recognition to a very grave military salute, and disappeared through the doors. Paul looked the way that the Commander-in-Chief had gone, felt perplexed, and then, addressing the door-keeper who was within the room, said, ‘I think I need not wait longer. I shall go now, and wait on my Lord another time.’ The door-keeper, however, at once took all the courage out of him by civilly intimating that the gallant officer must be content to stay where he was, as Lord Townshend had given stringent orders that he was not to be permitted to depart on any account. The sequel was rapidly arrived at. Paul was taken before the Council, where he found that the knaves’ policy was best—to avow all. He alleged that he got his commission at Powis House, Ormond Street, and it was found in his desk. He purchased comparative impunity by betraying all his confederates.
ARREST OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT.
Conspirators who betrayed their confederates, like Colonel Paul, yielded such information that Parliament readily granted power to the king to seize suspected persons. His Majesty had grounds for getting within safe-keeping half a-dozen members of the Lower House. The suspected persons were, Sir William Wyndham, Sir John Packington, Edward Harvey of Combe, Thomas Forster, and Corbet Kynaston. King George, however, would not put a finger on them, without going through the form of asking leave. The Commons gave consent, with alacrity, thanking his Majesty, at the same time, for the tender regard hehad manifested for the privileges of the House. Before five o’clock the next morning, Mr. Wilcox, a messenger, knocked at the door of Mr. Barnes, the bookseller in Pall Mall. The sight of the silver greyhound on his arm was as sufficient as if he had displayed his warrant in the face of the Bibliopole, himself.HARVEY, OF COMBE.Wilcox was in search of Harvey, who lodged there, when in town, but he was not there on that morning. The messenger looked over his papers, sealed them up, and then went post-haste down to Combe, in Surrey. He arrived just in time to meet Mr. Harvey going out hawking. Harvey welcomed Wilcox as if he had been a favoured guest, and went up to London with him, as if it were a pleasure-excursion. Taken immediately before the Council, he was good-humouredly bold, till he was shown what he did not expect to see, a damaging treasonable letter in his own handwriting. He faltered, turned pale, complained of sudden illness, and asked for permission to withdraw, which was granted. Harvey, shut up in his room, stabbed himself with a pruning knife, and when he was found by his servant, almost unconscious from loss of blood, the unlucky Jacobite refused to have medical aid. He only consented, at the urgent prayer of his kinsman, the Earl of Nottingham, Lord President of the Council, to at least see those who had been sent for. Mead, Harris, and Bussiere restored him to a condition of capability to take the sacrament. A Whig Lecturer, the Rev. Mr. Broughton, was at hand, but that worthy man declined to administer, even after Mr. Harvey had made a generalconfession of his sins. When the Jacobite had expressed some measure of sorrow for his latest iniquities, the Whig clergyman performed the rite, but not till he had fortified himself with a warrant from the Council to give Harvey the comfort he desired.
SIR WILLIAM WYNDHAM.
Meanwhile, Sir William Wyndham had secretly fled from London, as soon as he knew the peril he would incur by tarrying there. Sir William’s flight took him to Orchard Wyndham, his house in Somersetshire, where, surrounded by partisans, he deemed himself safe at least till he could devise means for putting a greater distance between himself and the Tower. One morning, in September, at five o’clock, before it was yet full daylight, two gentlemen arrived at the house, express from London, with letters for him, which were of the utmost importance. Sir William himself admitted them, in his night gear. They had scarcely crossed the threshold, when one of the visitors informed the Baronet that the two gentlemen he had admitted were Colonel Huske and a messenger, bearing a warrant to arrest and carry him up to town. ‘That being the case,’ said Sir William, ‘make no noise to awake Lady Wyndham, who is in a delicate condition of health.’ The Colonel had received orders that Lady Wyndham, being the Duke of Somerset’s daughter, was ‘on that account to be put in as little disorder as possible.’SEARCH FOR PAPERS.Accordingly, Colonel and messenger quietly followed Sir William to his dressing-room, where the Colonel told him that he was ordered to search his papers, and seize all that might be suspicious. Wyndhamproduced his keys, readily; and he expressed such alacrity in recommending a thorough search of drawers, desks, chests, &c., that the wary Colonel, thought it might be as well to look elsewhere, first. His eye fell on the Baronets garments, as they lay carefully flung over a chair, and the astute agent, judging that the unlikeliest place was the likeliest for treasonable matter to be stowed away in, took up Sir William’s coat, with a ‘what may we have here?’ thrust his hands into one of the capacious pockets, and drew thence a bundle of papers. The emotion of Sir William was warrant of their importance. The Colonel read it all in his confusion and disorder, and urged the instant departure of his prisoner. ‘Only wait,’ said Sir William, ‘till seven o’clock, and I will have my carriage and six horses at the door. The coach will accommodate us all.’ Huske made no objection. Sir William proceeded to dress; and, finally, he remarked, ‘I will only go into my bed-room to take leave of my lady, and will shortly wait on you again.’ The Colonel allowed Sir William to enter the bed-room, and quietly waited till the leave-taking should be accomplished. As the farewell, however, seemed unusually long in coming to an end, the Colonel and messenger began to look at each other with some distrust. They had supposed that Wyndham was on his honour to return to them, but Sir William had supposed otherwise. Whether he stopped to kiss his sleeping wife or not, he never told, but he made no secret of what the Colonel discovered for himself, on entering the room, namely, that Wyndham had escapedby a private door, and perhaps his lady was not half so much asleep as she seemed to be. Her husband, at all events, lacked no aids to flight, the incidents leading to which were the common talk of the town, soon after the Colonel had come back to Secretary Stanhope. A reward of one thousand pounds was offered for the recapture of the Jacobite whom the Colonel had been expected to take, keep, and deliver up, in the ordinary discharge of his duty.
WYNDHAM’S ESCAPE.
On the morrow of Wyndham’s escape, Lord William Paulet and Paul Burrard were seated at a window in Winton market-place. From an inn-window opposite a parson was seen staring at them rather boldly, and both the gentlemen agreed that they had seen that face before, but could not well tell where. It was Wyndham in disguise; and in that clerical garb he contrived to get into Surrey, a serving-man riding with him. There, at an inn, his servant wrote, in Sir William’s name, to a clerical friend of the fugitive, asking for an asylum in his house. If the friend’s fears were too great to allow him to grant such perilous hospitality, he was urged to procure a resting place for the fugitive in the residence of the rector of the parish, who might receive an inmate in clerical costume without exciting suspicion. This letter chanced to reach the house of the person to whom it was addressed, during his absence. His wife had no scruples as to opening the missive; perhaps she suspected there was mischief in it. Having read its contents, and being anxious to serve and save her husband before all the Sir Williams in the world,she promptly sent the letter to the Earl of Aylesford, who as promptly submitted it to the Ministry. Meanwhile Wyndham felt that the delay in answering his request was the consequence of a discovery of his whereabouts. He at once set forth again, and the magistrates being too late to seize the master, laid hands upon the servant. There was found upon him a cypher ring containing a lock of hair, at sight of which a Whig magistrate exclaimed, ‘It’s the Pretender’s hair. Lord! I know the man and his principles. It cannot be nobody’s else!’ On examination, however, it was seen that the ring bore the cypher and carried the hair of Queen Anne. While the other magistrates were jeering their too confident colleague, Wyndham was quietly escaping from them.
DRAMATIC COURTESY.
Passing on his way to London, Sir William encountered Sir Denzil Onslow on horseback, escorted by two grooms. ‘Hereupon,’ says a pamphlet of the period, ‘the knight, as it is customary for those of the black robe (whose habit he had taken upon him) to do to Men of Figure, very courteously gave him the salute of his hat and the right hand of the road, which the said Mr. Onslow, being some time after apprised of, acknowledged to be true, with this circumstance, that he well remembered that he met a smock-faced, trim parson on such an occasion, but that his eyes were so taken up, and his attention wholly employed, with the beauties of the fine horse he rode upon, that he had no time to make a true discovery of his person at that juncture.’
UNCOURTEOUS INTERVIEW.
Wyndham, finding the pursuit grow too hot forhim, rode to Sion House, Isleworth, one of the seats of his father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset. The two went up to the Duke’s town residence, Northumberland House, whence Wyndham’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Hertford, sent notice of the presence of such a guest to Secretary Stanhope. That official dispatched a messenger, by whom Wyndham was carried before the Council Board. It was said in London that he there denied all knowledge of a plot; but the Council, nevertheless, committed him to the Tower. The next day all London was astir with reporting the news that the Duke of Somerset, having been refused as bail for his son-in-law, had at once resigned his office of Master of the Horse.
Before Wyndham surrendered, the carriage of the Duke of Somerset, his father-in-law, was seen standing at the door of the famous lawyer, Sir Edward Northey. After the surrender, Government suspected that this interview was for the purpose of a consultation as to whether the proofs against Sir William could convict him of treason. Ministers resolved that the Duke should be deprived of his places, and Lord Townshend called upon him, with a sorrowful air, and a message from the king that his Majesty had no further occasion for the Duke’s services. ‘Pray, my Lord,’ said Somerset, ‘what is the reason of it?’ Lord Townshend answered, ‘I do not know!’ ‘Then,’ said the Duke, ‘by G—, my Lord, you lie!’ ‘You know that the king puts me out for no other cause, but for the lies which you, and such as you, have invented and told of me!’ Such were the amenities which passed betweennoblemen in those stirring Jacobite times. The duke asked leave to wait upon the king, but he was curtly told to wait till he was sent for.
A GENERAL STIR.
Still the plotters at large plotted on. The reiteration on the part of the Whigs that they were powerless and on the road to destruction, betrayed more fear than confidence. ‘If the (Tory) Party were not under a judicial infatuation,’ says one paper, ‘they might plainly see that Heaven has declared against them, by depriving them of their Chief Supporters, and discovering their treasonable plots, which, when set in a true light, will appear so treacherous and barbarous against their lawful sovereign, King George, and so bloody against their fellow subjects, as must make the memory of the Party execrable to latest Posterity.’ This seemed to have little influence on the Jacobites. The plot became so serious, there was so much uncertainty as to where it might break out, that officers were hurrying from London to assume command, in various directions, to Chester and to Dover, to Newcastle and to Portsmouth, to Berwick and to Plymouth, to Hull, to Carlisle, to York, to Edinburgh—east, west, north, south—there was a general hurrying from London to whatever point seemed likely to prove dangerous.
[3]Case of Lieut. John Kynaston.
[3]Case of Lieut. John Kynaston.
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