Decorative bannerCHAPTERV.(1715).
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rightlyor wrongly, the Tory mob in London were in no wise daunted. They listened to street preachers of sedition. The listeners were generally called ‘scum,’ and the orator was often designated ‘as a Tory cobler.’ Powder and arms were discovered on board ships in the Thames, and persons, accused of giving information to the Government, posted bills in the City affirming their innocence. Often the information was intended to mislead. Mr. Harvey, of Combe, was said to be expressing his contrition to a divine. The police messengers could not believe he was either so sick or so sorry as his friends affirmed. Their opinion was justified when they found him attempting to escape from his house through the tiles—an attempt which they frustrated.
Towards the end of the month, more of the lofty heads among the Jacobites were struck at. Sir John Pakington and Sir Windsor Hunlake were added to the list of prisoners, and the Whigs were elated by a display made in London by a delegation from HanoverianCambridge. The king had rewarded the loyalty of that University by purchasing, for 6,000l., the library of the Bishop of Ely, which he presented to the Whig seat of learning. Cambridge, by delegation, came up toSt.James’s. The king declared that his present was only an earnest of future favour.
PAMPHLETEERING.
Both the Whig and the Tory press exasperated the Government. From the former was issued a pamphlet, called ‘The necessity of impeaching the late ministry.’ The pamphlet took the form of a letter to the Earl of Halifax, and was written by Thomas Burnet. The amiable author, after such vituperation as was then much enjoyed by those who admired the flinger of it and were out of reach of the missiles, mildly remarks that,—‘having commenced an enemy to the late ministry even from their first entrance into power, he cannot forbear from pursuing them with his resentment even to their graves, the only place, indeed, where their crimes can be forgotten!’ This was a Whig cry for blood. ‘“England expects it,” as the saying is,’ rang out from the throats of the ultra Whigs.
GENERAL CONFUSION.
A still more perplexing pamphlet was sold in the streets, despite the constables, namely, ‘The Soldiers’ humble address for the impeachment of the late ministry.’ Political soldiers were felt to be as out of place as militant parsons. It rained pamphlets; and the embarrassment caused thereby was increased by the circumstance that some of them bore on the title-page the names of eminent men as authors, whose sentiments were directly opposed to those set forthin the pamphlet. Great confusion ensued, and a fear of impending calamity fell upon many. So marked was this fear, that two months before the eclipse of April, the astronomers, Dr. Halley and Mr. Whiston, ‘thought it necessary to caution people against being surprised or interpreting it as any ill omen, wherein there is nothing but what is natural, or than the necessary result of Sun and Moon.’ ‘It is all very well,’ said the Tories, ‘but there has been no such eclipse in England, since the days of Stephen the Usurper.’
The eclipse and the Pretender were subjects that gravely occupied men’s minds. From the coffee-houses where ‘Captains’ more or less genuine used to congregate and talk loudly, those swaggerers began to disappear, and their acquaintances felt quite sure that mischief was afoot. The Secretaries of State knew all about those ‘Captains.’ They were followed whithersoever they went, till all of them, nearly two dozen, were pounced upon in Dublin, after spies had discovered that they were enlisting men for the Chevalier. Two-thirds of these Jacobite recruiters were, upon brief trial and conviction, hanged, drawn, and quartered. In England, a poor Jacobite who had drunk ‘Damnation to King George,’ was only fined 50l.; but as he was to lie in prison till he paid that sum, he probably slowly rotted away instead of being promptly hung. When the Tories had the opportunity to express hostile opinions with impunity, they never failed to avail themselves of it. They had this opportunity at the theatre. Whig papers remarked that ‘the Tory faction hissed as much like serpents from the galleriesas their leaders, the High Church faction, did from the pulpits.’ Any allusion to desertion of allies or to a separate peace was sure to be greeted with volleys of hisses.
JACOBITE MOBS.
In the Mug Houses bets began to be laid as to the length of time King George was likely to be on the throne. Daring men, with their thoughts over the water, wagered a hundred guineas he would not be king a month longer. The next day, on the information of some of the company, they would find themselves in peril of going to Tyburn in half that time. The Tory mob had a way of their own to show their sentiments. They kept the anniversary of Queen Anne’s coronation-day, and made the most of their opportunity. They assembled at the Conduit on Snow Hill, with flag and hoop, and drum and trumpet. They hoisted the queen’s picture over the Conduit, and a citizen having flung to them a portrait of King William, they made a bonfire and burnt it. They displayed a legend, the contribution of a Mob Muse, which ran thus, alluding to thequeen:—
Imitate her who was so just and good,Both in her actions and her royal word!
Imitate her who was so just and good,Both in her actions and her royal word!
Imitate her who was so just and good,
Both in her actions and her royal word!
RIOTING.
They smashed the windows that were not illuminated, and they pelted with flints the people who were lighting the candles intended to propitiate them. They stopped coaches, robbed those who rode in them, even of their wigs, and if the victims would not shout for Queen Anne, the rascalry stript them nearly naked. Right into a Sunday morning in April, this orthodoxcrew of incendiaries went about plundering, while they shouted God bless the Queen and High Church! They drank horribly the whole time, and toasted Bolingbroke frequently, but never King George. High Churchmen would not blame riot when it took the shape of burning down dissenters’ chapels, and the pious villains danced to the accompaniment of ‘High Church and Ormond.’ At Oxford, town and gown overstepped limits observed in London. In one of the many tumults there, before they burnt in the street the furniture of one of the dissenting ‘meeting houses,’ they fastened a Whig Beadle in the pulpit and rolled him about the town till he was bruised in every limb. The Whig papers, thereupon, significantly pointed out to their friends, that there was a nonjuring congregation who met over a coffee-house in Aldersgate Street. These people, it was said, prayed for ‘the rightful king,’ and such wretches, of course, merited all that a Whig mob could inflict on them. One of the most dangerous symptoms of the time occurred on the arrest of some strapping young ballad wenches, who were taken into custody, opposite Somerset House, for singing ballads of a licentious nature against King George. The soldiers on guard rescued the fair prisoners; and when much indignation was expressed at this fact, the officers excused the men on the ground that they did not interfere on political grounds, but out of gallantry to the ladies.
BALLAD-SINGERS.
The street ballad-singers were irrepressible. They were the more audacious as they often sang wordswhich were innocent in their expression, but mischievous by right application. The Jacobites were ever apt at fitting old words and tunes to new circumstances. There was a song which was originally written in praise of the Duke of Monmouth. That song which lauded the unhappy nephew of JamesII.was now revived in honour of that king’s son. ‘Young Jemmy’ was to be heard at the corner of many a street. Groups of listeners and sympathisers gathered round the minstrel who metrically proclaimed that
Young Jemmy is a lad that’s royally descended,With ev’ry virtue clad, by ev’ry tongue commended.
Young Jemmy is a lad that’s royally descended,With ev’ry virtue clad, by ev’ry tongue commended.
Young Jemmy is a lad that’s royally descended,
With ev’ry virtue clad, by ev’ry tongue commended.
A German gentleman, who subsequently published his experiences, was astonished at the remissness or lenity of the magistrates generally, but especially towards one arch-offender who, by song, furthered the Pretender’s interests at the corner of Cranbourne Alley. ‘There a fellow stands eternally bawling out his Pye Corner pastorals in behalf ofdear Jemmy, lovely Jemmy,’ &c.
POLITICAL SONGS.
The writer adds, in sarcastic allusion to nobler personages who were said to have the Chevalier’s commission in some secret drawer—‘I have been credibly informed this man has actually in his pocket a commission under the Pretender’s Great Seal, constituting him his Ballad-Singer in Ordinary in Great Britain; and that his ditties are so well-worded that they often poison the minds of many well-meaning people; that this person is not more industrious with his tongue inbehalf of his master, than others are at the same time busy with their fingers among the audience; and the monies collected in this manner are among those mighty remittances thePost Boyso frequently boasts of being made to the Chevalier.’
The ballad, however, of ‘Young Jemmy’ did not mar the popularity of ‘The king shall enjoy his own again.’ The Jacobites knew no king but JamesIII.It was he who was referred to when the singers vociferated
The man in the moon may wear out his shoonBy running after Charles’s wain;But all to no end, for the times will not mendTill the king enjoys his own again.
The man in the moon may wear out his shoonBy running after Charles’s wain;But all to no end, for the times will not mendTill the king enjoys his own again.
The man in the moon may wear out his shoon
By running after Charles’s wain;
But all to no end, for the times will not mend
Till the king enjoys his own again.
Although songs in support of the house of Hanover were sung to the same tune by Whig ballad-singers, this tune was thorough Tory, and was profitable only to the Jacobites. Ritson compares it withLillibulero, by which air JamesII.was whistled off his throne. ‘This very air,’ he says, alluding to ‘The king shall enjoy his own again,’ ‘upon two memorable occasions was very near being equally instrumental in placing the crown on the head of his son. It is believed to be a fact that nothing fed the enthusiasm of the Jacobites down almost to the present reign (GeorgeIII.), in every corner of Great Britain, more than “The king shall enjoy his own again.”’
ARRESTS.
Among the gentlemen of the laity whose fortunes were seriously affected by the times and their changes was Colonel Granville. His brother George, Lord Lansdowne,was shut up in the Tower, with Lord Oxford and other noblemen. The colonel simply wished to get quietly away, and live quietly in the country. He ordered horses for two carriages to be at his door, in Poland Street, at six in the morning. The horse-dealer, finding that the colonel was making a secret of his movements, lodged an information against him with the Secretary of State. The spy accused him of being about to leave the kingdom, privately. Early in the morning, the two young ladies of the family, Mary and Anne Granville, were awoke in their beds, by the rough voices of a couple of soldiers with guns in their hands, crying out, ‘Come, Misses, make haste and get up, for you are going to Lord Townshend’s’ (the Secretary of State). Hastily dressed, by their maid, the young ladies were conducted below, where the colonel and his wife were in the custody of two officers and two messengers, supported by sixteen soldiers. Colonel Granville devoted himself to consoling his wife, who went off into a succession of hysterical fits, which could not have been cheering to the daughters, the elder of whom was fifteen, the younger nine years of age.
Colonel Granville did not come to harm, but there was a general scattering of high-class Tories. Some fled in disguise; some were ordered, others had leave, to depart. The Earl of Mar found his offer to serve King George promptly rejected. Whereupon he galloped through Aldersgate Street, and went northward, to serve King James.
IN THE PARK.
Occasionally we meet with a Catholic Jacobite whopreferred his ease to his principles. In one of Pope’s letters he refers to a gentleman in Duke Street, Westminster, who, having declined to take the oath of abjuration, had consequently forfeited his chariot and his fashionable Flanders mares. Supported by spiritual consolation, he bore his loss like a patient martyr. Unable to take a drive, he watched from his window those who could exhibit themselves in their carriages. The sight was too much for his principles. These were maintained for the greater part of one day, till about the hour of seven or eight, the coaches and horses of several of the nobility, passing by his window towards Hyde Park, he could no longer endure the disappointment, but instantly went out, took the oath of abjuration, and recovered his dear horses, which carried him in triumph to the Ring. ‘The poor distressed Roman Catholics,’ it is added, ‘now unhorsed and uncharioted, cry out with the Psalmist, “Some in chariots and some on horses, butwewill invocate the name of the Lord.”’
There were other people, who met events with a philosophical indifference. Sir Samuel Garth was to be seen squeezing Gay’s forefinger, as Gay set Sir Samuel down at the Opera. The coffee-houses were debating the merits of Pope’s ‘Homer,’ and of Tickell’s. The wits at Button’s were mostly in favour of the former, but they made free with Pope’s character as to morals, and some few thought that Tickell stood above Pope. ‘They are both very well done, sir,’ said Addison, ‘but Mr. Tickell’s has more of Homer in it.’ Whereat, Pope told James Craggs that ‘Button’swas no longer Button’s,’ indeed, that England was no longer England, and that political dissensions had taken the place of the old refinement, hospitality, and good humour. Politics superseded poetry, yet all the world of London, in spite of politics, was, according to Pope, discussing the merits of his translation. ‘I,’ wrote Pope in July, ‘like the Tories, have the town in general, that is, the mob, on my side; ‘and to show the Secretary of State how little politics affected him, he gaily notes that ‘L—— is dead, and soups are no more.’
INVASION IMMINENT.
In that same July, however, there was a withdrawal of well-to-do Roman Catholics, especially from London. Their opponents gave them credit for having been warned of an approaching invasion, and of being desirous to escape imprisonment. Popish disloyalty might be cruelly tested by any constable who chose to administer the oath against Transubstantiation. Towards the end of the month the king’s proclamation was first posted in London. It announced that invasion was imminent, and it ordered all Papists and reputed Papists to withdraw to at least ten miles from London before the 8th of August. One hundred thousand pounds was the reward again offered for the body of ‘the Pretender,’ dead or alive, if taken within the British dominions. Meanwhile, at the Tory coffee-house in Warwick Lane, the portrait of the Chevalier was passed from hand to hand; while, to confirm waverers and encourage the converted, great stress was laid upon the heroic look, the graceful carriage, and the beautiful expression of clemency which belongedto the original! Whig London was scandalised at the circumstance of a ‘priest in an episcopal meeting-house’ in Edinburgh having prayed and asked the prayers of the congregation fora young gentleman that either was, or would soon be, at sea, on a dangerous enterprise. The London Whigs, moreover, complained that the importation of arms and ammunition for the service of the Pretender was favoured by Tory Custom-House officers who had been appointed by the late ministry. Among the king’s own foot-guards, enlisting for the Pretender was again said to be going on. A strong recruiting party for the English army which went from London to Oxford, and entered the latter city with its band playing, was attacked by the Tory mob, by some of whom the big drum was cut to pieces. The mob in various places attacked the houses of the Whigs.SOUND OF SHOT.Shots were exchanged, and if a Whig happened in defence of his life and property to slay a Tory, and the case occurred where a jury of Jacobites could be summoned on the inquest, the verdict was sure to be one of ‘wilful murder,’ whereat the ‘loyal’ London press waxed greatly indignant. It was with a sort of horror that the Whig papers announced that eight-and-forty dozen swords had been discovered in the north in the house of a tenant of Lord Widdrington. Some of the papers ridiculed all idea of real danger. The Duke of Ormond and Lord Rolle, the Duke of Leeds and Viscount Hatton, might be dining with French ministers, but some papers thought little would come of it. France objected to the English armamentsgoing on, as uncalled for. ‘Uncalled for!’ cried the Whig papers, ‘why, bloody riot is rife in half-a-dozen large towns! One of the rebels shot in Bromwicham had a fine lace shirt under his common frock!’
AFLOAT ON THE THAMES.
Unpopular as the king and royal family may have been, there was never the slightest show of fear or uneasiness about them. Even in August, when an invasion was imminent, they went abroad among the people quite unprotected. One Saturday evening in that month we hear of them embarking in barges attended by many of the nobility afloat, and going down the river ‘through bridge as far asLimus, to divert themselves with music, which was most excellently performed on a great number of trumpets, hautboys, and double curtails.’ On the return, the boats on the river became so closely packed that the king ordered his watermen to ship their oars and drift up with the flowing tide, as there was no room left for rowing. The whole mass thus moved up together. The king and royal family had perfect confidence in the people, and this trust was not abused. The enthusiasm was unbounded. As twilight came down upon them, the shipping and also the houses ashore illuminated with lanterns and fired salutes. GeorgeI.was as safe as if he had been at Windsor; and when, on landing at Privy Garden Stairs, he turned round to salute the people, he must have felt that they were a noble people, and they must have acknowledged that he was a stout-hearted king.
THE HORSE GUARDS.
This was putting a bold face in front of peril.French emissaries were in London, and there was no knowing for what desperate ends they had been employed. Proclamations were despatched to Ireland for the arrest of all Tories, robbers, and raparees, of whom there were already too many concentrating for treasonable work about Dublin. The army itself was not free from the most audacious treason. One morning as the fourth troop of Horse Guards were about to turn out, an officer of the troop, named Smith, was arrested in Whitehall. He affected to be indignant, but the messengers produced the Secretary of State’s warrant for his capture on a charge of high treason. Smith was shocked, and certainly did not recover his coolness when the messengers took from his pockets a commission signed by the Chevalier. The popular report as Smith passed on his way to Newgate was, that on that very day he was to have sold his post at the Horse Guards!
The king had no fear of assassination, but the ‘faction,’ as the Jacobites were called, did their best to render his life uncomfortable. There was natural indignation on the part of all moderate men when a reprint appeared of the nonjuring Rev. Dr. Bedford’s work, ‘The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England Asserted.’[4]This reprint was denounced as being equivalent to the Pretender’s declaration, in folio. The burthen of the book was, that to attempt the life of an usurper in aid ofthe rightful prince was not murder. ‘As the rightful prince’ was not the same personage in the eyes of Whigs and of Tories, those who put forth the book thought that neither party would be angry at the justification of the murder of the chief of the opposite party.
While such publications were being printed, the metropolitan authorities narrowly watched the temper of the people. The Lord Mayor and Common Council were against the holding of Bartholomew Fair. One newspaper, nevertheless, announced that the festival would be held as usual. This step so smelt of sedition that the ‘author’ (as an editor was then called) was only too glad to be let off by an abject apology. It ended with:—‘We humbly beg his Lordship’s pardon for such an affront.’
THE CHEVALIER DE ST. GEORGE.
On September 13th news reached London that the Chevalier deSt.George had at last set out from Lorraine ‘in a Post Calash,’ in order to travel incognito and so the more easily reach a seaport where he could embark unobserved for some point in Great Britain. The Calash, it was said, had not gone far before it was overturned. The august traveller was reported as being generally hurt and bruised, but particularly about the neck. This last was especially pointed out, as if it were very significant. James was, at all events, so shaken that his attendants had to carry him back. The Whigs eagerly longed for confirmation of this news. ‘If it only proved true to the letter, then,’ cried the Whigs, ‘it will give his party a further occasionto remember the month of August, and furnish them with an opportunity to drink as liberally to the Confusion of some other horses as they drank to the “health of Sorrel,” the name of the horse that stumbled with King William, and gave him the fall of which he died.’
THE KING’S SPEECH.
There was growing uneasiness in London, despite the general confidence. When the king prorogued Parliament in September, he was described in the papers as being ‘pleased to take notice of the rebellion in Scotland.’ He roundly laid that rebellion and the intended invasion to the tumults and riots which had prevailed in the capital and in various parts of the kingdom. Protestants, he said, had been deluded into seditiously joining with Papists by false reports of the Church of England being in danger under his administration. The king thought this step was both unjust and ungrateful, considering what he had done and what he had undertaken to do for her. The king naturally sneered at the idea that a Popish Pretender was likely to be a better head of the Church of England than a Protestant king. That informers were not lacking may be perceived in a curious advertisement for a minister to have put into the papers. It was to this effect:—‘Whereas a letter was directed to the Right Hon. Robert Walpole,Esq., proposing to discover matters of great importance, signed G. D., Notice is hereby given that the said letter is received, and that if the person who wrote it will come to Mr. Walpole’s lodgings at Chelsea any morning before nineo’clock and make out what he therein proposes, he shall receive all due encouragement and protection.’
On September 20th the ‘Daily Courant’ made no allusion whatever to the troubled and anxious state of the nation, but it gave the satisfactory intelligence that ‘All is in tranquility in France.’ On the same day, however, a proclamation in the king’s name was issued, wherein it was stated that ‘a most horrid and treacherous conspiracy’ was afoot, and ‘an invasion’ intended for the establishing of the Pretender.
PREACHERS AWAKE.
The pulpits thereupon began to ring, but the Government made a commendable attempt to muzzle the preachers, whether the latter were blind adversaries or blinder advocates. The employment of violent and malevolent terms against any persons whatsoever was prohibited. The ‘intermeddling,’ in sermons, with affairs of state, was strictly forbidden. The authorities, in fact, enjoined Christian ministers to observe the charity which is the leading feature in Christianity. The ministers, for the most part, claimed and exercised a rather unchristian liberty. Foremost among the blaring trumpeters who sounded on the Hanoverian side was White Kennett, Dean of Peterborough. Kennett was a man who, in his early days, had offended the Whigs, by his political publications; and, something later, had gratified the Tories by putting forth an English translation of Pliny’s panegyric upon Trajan, which was supposed to apply to JamesII.; while, at the same time, he displeased the Jacobites by declaiming against popery and by refusing to read the royal declaration ofindulgence. The Whigs whom he had offended, he appeased by his fierce opposition to Sacheverel. Kennett was a man of great parts, as it is called, and was particularly qualified for maintaining his opinions in a controversy. Scholar, gentleman, priest and politician, he steadily went up the ladder of preferment, till his merits and patronage had now brought him to the deanery of Peterborough and the rectory ofSt.Mary, Aldermanbury.A FAMOUS SERMON.It was in the church so named that Kennett, on September 25th, 1715, preached his famous sermon on witchcraft. The text was taken from 1 Samuel, xv. 23:—‘Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king.’ The sermon, a long one, and full of an invective that almost reaches ferocity, is stuffed with inflammatory politics from beginning to end, incendiary matter whichthenmade men half-mad with joy or indignation, but which seemsnowa poor thing save in weight of mischievous words. The preacher, of course, proved to his own satisfaction that all concerned in promoting the imminent rebellion were bewitched by the devil; that stubbornness in opposing the royal authority was the iniquity and idolatry alluded to in the text; and that the Pretender, like his father, had lost the crown because he did not care to be of the true community of faith. The sermon was ‘inspired,’ according to the Whig papers;—but by the devil, according to the Tories and Tory critics in the clubs. Art took a curious revenge for this discourse.SATIRICAL ART.An altarpiecewas painted forSt.Mary’s, Whitechapel, by order of Welton, the Jacobite rector. The subject was The Last Supper. It gained a certain modest amount of admiration, till some spectator remarked that Judas Iscariot not only seemed a more than usually prominent figure in the group, but that the face was wonderfully like Dr. White Kennett’s. It was, in fact, Kennett’s portrait, and when this became known, all London, but especially Jacobite London, was crowding to Whitechapel to behold this novel pillorying of the modern Iscariot. If any spectator had a doubt on the matter, it was removed by the black patch on Judas’s head. Kennett, in William’s days, used to go out with his dog and his gun, and with companions in his shooting excursions. On one of these ‘outings,’ an awkward companion let part of the charge of his gun go into the head of the divine. The consequences were grave, but Kennett was saved by undergoing the operation of trepanning. Ever afterwards he wore a black patch over the place. The artist had not forgotten the fact. Delighted Jacobites gazed at the figure in jeering crowds; and when the picture had been seen and re-seen by all the Tories in town, the Bishop of London interfered, and ordered it to be put away. Kennett could afford to laugh. His sermon on the witchcraft of the rebellion carried him to the episcopal throne at Peterborough.
MISCHIEVOUS SERMONS.
The pulpits were not silenced. As what was considered the supreme moment of peril became imminent, they shook again with the trumpet-like roar of the preachers. The High Church lecturers inculcatedobedience to therightful king, without naming him. The thorough Whig Hanoverian clergy spared no epithets that they could fling, winged with fire and tipped with poison, at the Jacobites’ sovereign, ‘a boy sworn to destroy this kingdom,’ said one. Others were both foul and ferocious in dealing with the Chevalier who desired to get possession of his inheritance. The more eagerly they pelted him with unsavoury missiles, the more lavish they were in terms which amounted to worshipping the god-like monarch whom Heaven had sent for the advantage of England and the wonder of the world. On October 16th, 1715, one of these sermons was preached inSt.Katherine Cree Church, London, by the minister, the Rev. Charles Lambe. The text was taken from Proverbs,xxiv.21, ‘My son, fear thou the Lord and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change.’ Such a text foreshadows its comment in such hands as those of Lambe. But he went out of his way to assail the Chevalier, into the circumstances of whose birth—to show he was not the born son of Mary of Modena and JamesII.—Lambe entered in the gossiping manner of such matronly midwives as his bishop was then in the habit of licensing. ‘That was done in a corner,’ he said, with an air of mystery, ‘which should have been done openly to the utmost extent of decency.’ Had Lambe’s congregation been disposed to sleep, he had matter prepared for the awakening of them in a passage which was certain to touch them nearly. He knew that distant danger was unheeded, but he brought this suggestive picture ofLondon to the attention of Londoners, and it could not have done otherwise than make their souls uneasy, and rouse their spirits to be up and doing. ‘Have you any notion of a civil war, your Treasury exhausted, your Banks plundered, your Trade decayed, your Companies bankrupt, your Shops rifled, and the various species of Stocks sunk, run down, and lost? Have you any idea of Fields flow’d with blood, your Streets pav’d with the carcasses of fellow citizens, your Wives and your Daughters torn from your Sides, and made a Prey to enrag’d undistinguishing Soldiers. Think that you see this beautiful and spacious City burnt, destroy’d, made a ruinous Heap, attended with all the dismal Horrors of Fire and Sword even from Fellow Countrymen, Fellow Subjects, and Fellow Protestants!’
A SOUND OF ALARM.
Citizens and fathers must have stared in a sort of dismay. Lambe might well say that if any disloyal man was present, he hoped such person had been cured of his malady. Jones, probably, went home thinking of a pavement made out of the carcasses of Brown and Robinson; and the ladies of citizen families walked behind them in a flutter of speculation as to what part of the force those undistinguishing soldiers belonged.
JACOBITE AGENTS.
London may be called the head-quarters of the rebels, before actual war broke out. Captain John Shafto (on half-pay), an ex-Captain John Hunter, and an Irish Papist who had served in the brigade in France, were among the more active and daring agents. The leaders of the party kept their secret tolerably well. They met, debated, provided all things needfulfor their success, and carried on a correspondence with friends at a distance. While agents moved quietly away from London to teach the ‘Rurals’ the sacred duty of rebellion, more trusty messengers, still, rode or walked through and away from town, bearing letters and despatches which, if discovered, might cost a dozen lives. These trusty gentlemen were sent into various parts of the kingdom. They rode from place to place as travellers, pretending a curiosity to view the country; and they performed their dangerous duty with a success which perplexed the king’s messengers. The most dexterous of these agents were Colonel Oxburgh, Nicholas and Charles Wogan, and James Talbot, all Irish and Papists. There were others, men of quality too, and occasionally a clergyman, who were entrusted with important but still dangerous duties. ‘All these,’ says Patten in his ‘History,’ ‘rid like Gentlemen, with Servants and Attendants, and were armed with swords and pistols. They kept always moving, and travelled from place to place, till things ripened for action.’
Meanwhile, the otherwise curious part of the public might be seen wandering in troops to Duke Street, Westminster, to gaze at the house, the master of which, the Earl of Scarsdale, was there put under confinement. There was, elsewhere, a good look-out kept for perils ahead; there was no indulgence of any mean spite. His Majesty’s ship ‘Ormond’ was then lying at Spithead. The Government did not stoop to the little vindictiveness of painting out the name of the great rebel whowas then aiding and fostering rebellion, abroad. Sedition at home was hottest very close to the Royal Palace. There was quite a commotion at the bottom ofSt.James’s Street, at seeing messengers and guards enter Mr. Ozinda’s chocolate-house, next door to the palace. Ozinda himself was brought out captive, and when the mob saw him followed by Sir Richard Vivyan and Captain Forde, also captives, they began to smell a new gunpowder plot, and to surmise that the blowing up of the royal family was to be one of the means for restoring the Stuarts.
ARRESTS.
Much of the safety of London was entrusted to the Westminster Cavalry Militia, who were now very active. Record is made of their rendezvousing in Covent Garden, going thence toTuttle Fields, where, says the sarcastic ‘Weekly Packet,’ ‘they exercised without so much as one Man falling from the saddle.’ At the same time, captures were being effected in every direction. Now, a whole club might be seen, properly secured, and passing on their way to Newgate, amid the jeers of most spectators, and with the sympathy of a few. Country gentlemen of many thousands a year were not held sacred even in the middle of their dinner at an ordinary. It was a regular frolic to carry off half the guests in eating-houses, before they had finished their repast, for which perhaps they had little appetite left. Then, unlucky Italians or demonstrative Frenchmen were ever and anon being handcuffed in country places and hurried through London on suspicion of being the Pretender. Ambassadors from foreign Powers had endlesstrouble thrown upon their hands in protecting the rights of foreign hawkers of flash jewelry, suspected of designs upon the throne.POPULAR FEELING.The Whig writers seriously warned the London apprentices who had Tory proclivities that Heaven was certainly against them. At a feast in celebration of the expiration of a young fellow’s apprenticeship, the freedman, in an after-dinner speech, railed furiously at his late Whig master and at Whiggery generally. Before the speaker, with anti-Hanoverian expletives for fireworks, had come to an end, the young fellow’s excitement became too much for him. A fit laid him senseless, and he died in an hour or so. The Whig patriots protested that the Judgment of God was never so manifest as in this case.
[4]The authorship of this pamphlet, first published in 1713, for which Bedford was condemned to pay a fine of 1,000 marks, and to be imprisoned three years, was subsequently assumed by another nonjuring clergyman—the Rev. George Harbin.
[4]The authorship of this pamphlet, first published in 1713, for which Bedford was condemned to pay a fine of 1,000 marks, and to be imprisoned three years, was subsequently assumed by another nonjuring clergyman—the Rev. George Harbin.
Flowers