Decorative bannerCHAPTERVI.(1715.)
Decorative banner
next, the idea of a camp and mimic war in Hyde Park was viewed, bysomeladies, with unconcealed delight. Pope wrote half sportively, half seriously, to one of those gay women of the period—most of them Jacobite at heart. ‘You may soon have your wish,’ he says, ‘to enjoy the gallant sights of armies, encampments, standards waving over your brother’s corn-fields, and the pretty windings of the Thames stained with the blood of men. Your barbarity, which I have heard so long exclaimed against, in town and country, may have its fill of destruction.’ The writer adds a notification of the perils that may environ lovely women who delight in war, and he thus proceeds:—‘Those eyes that care not how much mischief is done, or how great slaughter committed so they have but a fine show, those very female eyes will be infinitely delighted with the camp which is speedily to be formed in Hyde Park. The tents were carried thither this morning. New regiments with new clothes and furniture, far exceeding the late cloth and linen designed by his Grace for the soldiery—the sight of so many gallant fellows, with all the pomp and glare of war,yet undeformed by battles, those scenes which England has, for so many years, only beheld on stages, may possibly invite your curiosity to this place.’
CAMP AND PULPIT.
The Guards, while encamped in Hyde Park, were preached to, on Sundays, with an earnestness which stood for an apology. It seemed necessary to persuade them, as the preachers did, that the happiness of Great Britain, in having a wise and just Protestant king, was beyond all conception.
The ‘Friends,’ too, lifted their voice. In November the Quaker spirit was moved to uplift a shout against the Jacobites. A Ministering Friend of the people so called gave a blast through the press of ‘a trumpet blown in the North and sounded in the ears of John Ereskine, called by the Men of the World Duke of Mar.’ At the Cheshire coffee-house, in King’s Arms Court, Ludgate Hill, this pamphlet might be bought, or read over the aromatic cup which was sold in that locality.
Pamphleteers came out with ‘bold advice,’—that Jacobitism should be stamped out by vigorous laws. Everywhere the clerical Jacobites, who prayed for the Pretender, byinnuendo, were denounced. In Holland, it was said, when a clergyman meddles with affairs of State, the magistrates send him a staff and a pair of shoes, and that significant course was recommended for Tory parsons. Another Dutch custom was highly approved of. It was gravely proposed for adoption here, that the clergy, generally, should preach only from texts prescribed for them by the civil authorities!
POPULAR SLOGAN.
Throughout this year, on days popular with either party, the streets resounded with different cries, according to the anniversary. Now, it was ‘a Stuart!’ ‘an Ormond!’ ‘No Hanoverians!’ or ‘High Church and Ormond!’ which last cry was interpreted by the opposite party to mean ‘Pope and Pretender!’ Tory mobs of patriots went about asking High Churchmen for money, to drink ‘Damnation to Whigs and Dissenters.’ The same men went to the other side to ask drinking money for damning the Pope; and when the Tories accused the Whigs of burning down their own meeting houses, it was perhaps because the leading incendiaries were recognised by Tories as having been active in supporting with their sweet voices what they were then destroying torch in hand! The same men would, the next day, burn the Pretender in effigy, in Cheapside, and get drunk on the wages of their infamy. On the king’s birthday, it was observed that loyalty prevailed among the lower orders, wherever wine was to be had for nothing. Some made a demonstration. ‘In the Marshalsea,’ said the papers, ‘after the king’s birthday, our prisoners, wherever able, had select companies to drink King George’s health.’ As some keepers of prisons distributed punch at the prison gates, nobody refused to drink ‘The king’s health,’ as long as the liquor lasted.
PERILOUS ANNIVERSARIES.
The London Jacobites showed their characteristic spirit on the night of Friday, November 4th, the anniversary of King William’s birthday. They built up a huge bonfire in Old Jewry, and prepared to hang overit an effigy of that monarch. The Williamite Club, assembled at the Roebuck in Cheapside, hearing of the insult, rushed out with ‘oaken plants’ in their hands, and made furious and effective onslaught on the ‘Jacks,’ They scattered the faggots, broke the heads of all opponents, and ultimately carried off the effigy in triumph. Some Jacks pleaded that it was only an effigy of Oliver, but they were kicked for gratuitously lying. The Whigs installed the captured figure in their club room, where it was preserved as an ‘undeniable proof of that villainous Design which the Faction had not then the courage to own and now have the Impudence to deny.’
On the following day, loyal Londoners had their revenge. They celebrated the national deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, and, through WilliamIII., from popery, slavery, and wooden shoes. With bands of music, flaunting of flags, and continued hurrahs from loyal and thirsty throats, the procession moved or stumbled through the city. The effigies borne along with them in derision were those of the Pope, the Pretender, the Duke of Ormond, Lord Bolingbroke, and the Earl of Mar. There were men who carried warming pans, in allusion to the legend that the Pretender had been brought in one into the palace on the day that the queen, his mother, believed she had borne him. There were men who represented the prince’s nurses, and others who carried nursery emblems. The music played ‘Lillibulero,’ and tunes of similar quality. The effigies of Ormond and Mar rode together in thesame cart.POPULAR DEMONSTRATIONS.The former wore an extravaganza sort of uniform, with an emblematic padlock on his sword. Ormond was in scarlet and gold. Mar was in blue and silver, with a paper pinned to his staff. It bore this inscription: ‘I have sworn sixteen times to the Protestant religion, and I ne’er deceived you but once.’ Pope and Pretender followed, cheek by jowl, in another cart. They were pontifically and royally decked out, in caricature. Bolingbroke, in absurd court dress, sat at the tail of the cart, as in dutiful attendance on both masters; and a paper above him bore the words, ‘Perjury is no crime!’ All these personages rode backwards like traitors. The lengthy procession passed westward, from the Roebuck in Cheapside by Holborn toSt.James’s Palace, returning by Pall Mall and the Strand. For the time being they were in full possession of the streets. They paused at the houses of celebrated personages, to hail them with blessings or curses equally highly-pitched. ‘Sometime before their arrival at the Roebuck, on their return, a sneaking Jacobite mob, perceiving the pile for the bonfire unguarded, came up with a shout of “King George for ever!” the better to deceive the people, and scower’d off with the faggots into bye-lanes and corners.’
Eastward, the procession went as far as Grace-church Street, amid vast multitudes of people. The trumpets and hautboys now played none but Protestant tunes. A double set of effigies were burnt on gibbets over two huge bonfires, one in front of the Roebuck, the other before the Royal Exchange,—the devil beingadded to the rest as abonne bouchefor the loyal and pious people. The mob at last separated in pursuit of liquor, and over their cups they talked of how an Irish priest had just been clapped into Newgate for attempting to blow up the powder magazine at Greenwich; and how Governor Gibson had saved Portsmouth Castle from being seized and the fleet in the harbour burnt by rascally Jacks who had conspired for the purpose. Before the next day had dawned, expresses were galloping into London with news from the North.
NEWS FROM THE NORTH.
Letters of November 3rd, sent express from Edinburgh, were printed in the London papers of the 8th. They brought news of London to the Londoners themselves, namely, that, according to a proclamation made by Lord Mar, the Pretender’s friends had risen in such numbers in and about London, that ‘King George had made a shift to retire.’ Fortified in Perth, and awaiting communications from James, Mar ‘affects to seem merry, diverts himself with balls, and has a press, with which he prints and disperses false news, to keep up the spirit of his party.’ Among the reports sent to London was one that Mar’s detachments had crossed the Forth, and swept the country clear as far as Newcastle. Other chiefs, Lord Ogilvy, the Earl of Seaforth and Glengarry, were said to be in occupation of the most important roads, bridges, and passes.
Letters from Stirling assured the Londoners that the Duke of Argyle was fully prepared to meet and defeat any movement that could be made by the rebels.Great comfort was it to the Whigs in the metropolis to hear that in some places those rebels were met on their march by members of synods, who urged on the insurgents the duty of loyalty to King George. Jacobite Foot and Horse were said to be in extremely bad condition. The newspapers thensay:—
REPORTS FROM SCOTLAND.
‘Before they went into Kalso, they plundered the house of the Right Hon. George Baillie of Jerviswood, and broke open everything that was locked. They did the like to Sir John Pringle’s house at Stitchel. When they went from Hawick, the Highlanders being unwilling to march, they gave them a crown a-piece to go with ’em to Langham, where, being alarm’d in the night, the Horse mounted, abandoned the Foot at two o’clock in the morning, and marched towards Lancashire, upon which the Foot marched to Ecclefechan, where they were divided about the course they should take. Some of them were for going to Moffat and some to Dumfries, but hearing that there were four thousand of the king’s friends at the latter, seven hundred of them marched to Moffat, where they dispersed to make the best of their way. Two hundred of them got as far as Lamington in Clydesdale, where they were made prisoners in the churchyard. The rest are picked up in parties of fifty or sixty, as they march. The Lord Kenmure, with the Scots horse, is gone along with the English; and Mackintosh of Borland with him. Mr. Forster commands the (rebel) English Horse. The Lords Derwentwater and Widdrington be with him, but they decline command because they are Papists. Borland lefthis nephew sick at Kelso, under the care of Dr. Abernethy.’
FURTHER INTELLIGENCE.
London laughed at the simplicity of Mar, who sent a trumpet to Argyle, soliciting him to spare Mar’s plantations at Alloway. Mar also hoped Argyle would ‘treat his prisoners civilly.’ The report that ‘Cameron of Lochiel had been prevailed upon by some means or other from Inverary to stay at home,’ made curses ring against him in the Tory coffee-houses of London. The loungers and politicians in the Whig coffee-houses laughed as they read or heard read that ‘Mar wrote to Captain Robertson, offering him great Incouragement if he would come over to him and bring others with him. The letter was delivered to the captain by a lady, but he was so honest that he carried both the lady and the letter to the Duke of Argyle.’—From Tiviotdale, under date of October 31st, the London papers of November 8th gave accounts of dissensions among the rebels. ‘The Highlanders were unwilling to cross into England in support of the rebel English Horse; and although they offered the Highlanders 12d.a day, could not prevail with them.’
Then there is report of irresolute tarrying here, and of equally irresolute wending elsewhere—of scares and scurries, of hurried saddling of horses, leaving mangers full of corn, and of panics—which sent crowds of rebels pell mell into rivers, which they forded at great peril,—all to avoid General Carpenter, who was supposed to be at their heels. In various ways they were said to have helped themselves.‘Kelso has lost 7,000 marks by them, and Selkirk in the article of shoes 100l. sterling.’ Numbers of the gentry and common people were said to have joined Carpenter. This day’s news must have been discouraging to the Tories. It had such a depressing effect on Dr. Sacheverel, that he gave up the Jacobite cause. On the following day, November 9th, the reverend gentleman, with another or two of less note, quietly slipped into the Court of Exchequer, and took the oaths of allegiance to King George!!!
NEWS FROM PRESTON.
The news of the battle of Sheriff Muir and of the crowning affair at Preston reached London only four or five days after the events. TheSt.James’s ‘Running Post’ was the first in the field with anything like details. The public were told that Major-General Wills, being informed that the Popish Lords Derwentwater and Widdrington, with the Scotch and Northumberland rebels, in all between 4,000 and 5,000 men, were in Preston, Wills marched upon that town on Saturday, November 12th. He had with him regiments of horse and dragoons, known as Pitt’s, Wynne’s, Honeywood’s, Dormer’s, Munden’s, Stanhope’s, and Preston’s. Other dragoons held Manchester, and prevented the Jacobites there from rising in arms as they had promised.
On arriving at the bridge over the Ribble, about a mile from Preston, Wills saw about 300 of the insurgent horse and foot precipitately retreating towards Preston, which they entered and barricaded. The bridge was at once crossed, the town was reached, and a hot engagement took place at the first barricade.The assailants suffered severely from the shots fired by men from windows and in cellars. The infantry, however, got a lodgment. When night came on, all the avenues of the town were blockaded by Wills’s cavalry, the men keeping by the horses’ heads throughout the night. At nine on Sunday morning General Carpenter joined Wills with three additional regiments of cavalry.
JACOBITE FURY.
Private letters confirmed the report of the deadly nature of the defence made by men under cover. This led Wills to fire the houses, upon which the Jacobites withdrew to the centre of the town and into the church, fighting again behind new barricades. When the resistance became hopeless, offers to capitulate were sent to the attacking general, but Wills refused all terms. They must surrender, he said, at discretion. He would not treat with rebels. The surrender followed; and the same day saw the fatal issues of Preston and of Sheriff Muir.
STREET FIGHTING.
This news from Preston infuriated rather than depressed the London Jacobites. On Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, November 17th, it was whispered about that they intended to profane the day by burning the effigies of his sacred Majesty King George himself, as well as that of King William. The Whigs of the Roebuck assembled in and about that hostelry, armed and resolved to prevent the profanation. At seven p.m. one of their scouts rushed in breathless with the news that the ‘hellish crew’ were mustered inSt.Martin’s-le-Grand to cries of ‘High Church and Ormond,’‘Ormond and King James,’ ‘King James and Rome for ever!’ The Roebucks, thus interrupted when they were drinking to the memory of Queen Elizabeth, while keeping their powder dry for contingencies, at once marched out. The hostile forces encountered at the east end of Newgate Street. The Jacobites were thoroughly thrashed, and the assailants carried in triumph to the Roebuck the figures, which had been destined for the flames in Smithfield, of the above two kings, and also that of ‘the victorious Duke of Marlborough.’ The figures were carried to the tavern-head-quarters of loyalty, and with them a sort of Scaramouch, who had brandished in their defence a huge scymitar, four fingers broad. The Whigs had scarcely got safe within their stronghold when it was vigorously assaulted by at least five hundred Jacobites. The latter, after whetting their rage by smashing windows on their march, commenced their attack on the Roebuck fortress by pulling down the sign, and breaking everything that was breakable in front of the house. Finally, the crowning assault was made by the hatchet and cleaver wielders against the gates. They laughed at being rather politely requested to desist, and were amused when shot at from the windows with powder only. Then, in self-defence, the Whigs fired into the mass with ball. Down went two or three into the London November mud, dead for James and the High Church. Up went, at the same time, the shrieks and curses of the wounded. The remnant were staggered; for a moment indecisive, they sooncame to a resolution and to action upon it. At this moment appeared in Cheapside the Lord Mayor with a guard, some officers and citizens, shouting, ‘King George for ever!’ The Jacobites fled in precipitation. The Scaramouch and some other prisoners were lodged in Newgate. Great tribulation prevailed in all the Jacobite quarters. In London, as at Preston, the star of the Stuarts paled before the fire of Brunswick.
THE PRISONERS FROM PRESTON.
The Londoners now looked for nothing more eagerly than for the arrival in town of the prisoners taken at Preston. Some officers among them had been shot for desertion. On the march to London the body consisted of about three hundred men. The officers walked or rode first. The gentlemen-volunteers followed, and the Highlanders brought up the rear. They travelled by easy journeys, and were sometimes fettered, at others free, according to the caprice of those who had them in guard. The public were informed that they would enter London in four bodies, ‘according to the several prisons they were to go to,’ the first body to the Tower, the second to Newgate, the third to the Fleet, the fourth to the Marshalsea. On the march several attempted to escape. A few succeeded; others were recaptured; some were cut down by pursuing soldiery. Among the slain was a Cornet Shuttleworth. There was found on his body the Chevalier’s banner. It was of ‘green taffety, with buff-coloured silk fringe round it—the device, a pelica feeding her young, with this Latin motto, “Tantum valet amor regis et patriæ,” “So prevalent is the love of Kingand Country.” All London was in a fever of agitation for this arrival—friends, that they might condole; foes, that they might exult.
TYBURN TREE.
Even the march of Major-General Tatton’s detachment of Guards up Gray’s Inn Lane to Highgate, to meet the prisoners there, attracted crowds, despite the severe weather. The last day of November a spectacle of a gloomier character attracted the Londoners. Three Jacobite captains—Gordon, Kerr, and Dorrell—went up Holborn Hill in carts to Tyburn. They had been captains under William and under Anne, but had flung up their commissions under George to take others from ‘King James.’ Even the Tyburn mob must have respected them—they died in such heroic, gentlemanlike fashion. They were calm, and declined to acknowledge the justice of their sentence. ‘Obstinate and sullen’ were the terms applied to them by the Whigs. To the last they persisted in justifying themselves. To account for which it was illogically said that ‘Gordon died a Papist, and ’tis shrewdly suspected the other two were tainted with the same principles.’ ‘It is therefore no great wonder,’ said the Whig‘Evening Post,’ ‘that the precepts of their Religion as well as the Sake of their Cause should inspire them to leave the World in such an unrelenting Manner.’ These captains had striven to secure Oxford for their king.
JACOBITE CAPTAINS.
In rebel times and crimes, every captain is not a captain who is called by that title. Thus, Captain Gordon was an adventurer who had killed one manin England and another in Bengal. The captain was brought in chains to England, but the chief witness against him died on the voyage, and Gordon was set free. Dorrell had been a hostler at the inn which gave its name to Hart Street, Covent Garden. Early in King William’s reign he had risen through a sea of troubles to the rank of ensign in the army, into which he had enlisted. His scarlet coat, cocked hat, and sword, rendered him acceptable to a rich old widow, with a portion of whose money Dorrell bought a share in a brewery near Clare Market. Bankruptcy carried him to the Fleet, whence, issuing in due time, he became a ruffler and gambler in taverns. When he was hanged as a martyr to Jacobitism, the hostile papers said that he had already earned that fate by cheating one Harper at the Cock and Pye in Drury Lane, of a hundred pounds. These little incidents illustrate the morals and customs of the period.
There is tradition of the gallant bearing of Lord Derwentwater on the progress of the captives towards London. Thus, it is said in the Jacobiteballad:—
Lord Derwentwater to Lichfield did ride,With armed men on every side;But still he swore by the point of his sword,To drink a health to his rightful lord.
Lord Derwentwater to Lichfield did ride,With armed men on every side;But still he swore by the point of his sword,To drink a health to his rightful lord.
Lord Derwentwater to Lichfield did ride,
With armed men on every side;
But still he swore by the point of his sword,
To drink a health to his rightful lord.
The earl took another view of the cause as he drew nearer to the capital.
DRAWING NEAR LONDON.
After arriving at Barnet, Lord Derwentwater, conversing with an officer of General Lumley’s horse,which force had the prisoners of quality in their keeping, asked him if he knew how they were to be disposed of? The officer communicated his belief that they would be divided among three or four prisons, according to their rank. Derwentwater was silent for awhile, and then he remarked, ‘There’s one house would hold us all, and we have a better title to it than any other people in Great Britain.’ ‘What house is that, my Lord?’ asked the officer. ‘It is Bedlam,’ answered Derwentwater, as the madness of the enterprise in which he had been, not too willingly, engaged presented itself, not for the first time, to his mind.
On the whole way from Lancashire to Highgate most of the Jacobite captains were unsubdued in spirit. Many of them, however, on reaching Highgate, and perceiving preparations for pinioning them, suddenly became more sedate. Kindly-hearted Whigs in the London papers suggested that the rebels were sad, from a thought of similar ropes that would soon be about their necks! Allusion was made to the men of lesser quality who would speedily be ‘under hatches in the Fleet before they sailed forHanging Island.’
HIGHGATE TO LONDON.
There were noble men among these unfortunate Jacobites. The Earl of Derwentwater and his brother Charles Radcliffe; the three brothers, Lord Widdrington, with Charles and Peregrine Widdrington; old Edward Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk; even Alexander and William, sons of Sir Alexander Dalmahoy, were bound together. Two other brothers,John and James Paterson, of Preston Hall, were also in fond, but melancholy, companionship. William Shaftoe, of Bevington, had his son, John Shaftoe, at his side; two other Shaftoes, kinsmen of the former, and also father and son, rode near them. John Cotton, of Geding in Huntingdonshire, supported his father, Robert Geding. Two brothers Swinburne were among the prisoners, but not their father, Sir William. James Dalzell cheered the drooping spirits of his nephew, the Earl of Carnwath. Two Heskeths of Whitehill, Gabriel and Cuthbert, were pointed out by the soldiery as another father and son. In the same relationship were the two George Homes of Wedderburn; the George and Alexander Home of Whitfield; and George and John Winraham of Eymouth. William and George Maxwell were two brothers. Of cousins there were many. And among those of best blood not yet named were the Earls of Nithsdale and Winton, Viscount Kenmure, and Lord Nairn, with the Master of Nairn, his son. The flower of Northumberland chivalry, members of the old church, were there, Ordes, Forsters, Griersons, Riddells, Thorntons, Claverings, and Scotts. These, with commoner men, yet men in all essentials of manhood equal in quality, descended Highgate Hill amid crowds of spectators, who lined the roads from the hill to the Tower, the Fleet, Newgate, or the Marshalsea, into which prisons the noble herd was driven, according to their degree of nobility. ‘The crowd gave most remarkable demonstration of their abhorrence of this rebellion and of their loyalty to hisMajesty,’ so says the ‘London Gazette;’ and no one expected it to say otherwise.
ARRIVAL IN TOWN.
Even a Quaker could exult at the sight of the procession of captives. Gerard Penrice, a prisoner, gave the following instance in his so-called ‘Life of Charles Radcliffe’: ‘A Quaker fixed his eyes upon me, and distinguishing what I was, said, “Friend, verily thou hast been the Trumpeter of Rebellion to these men. Thou must answer for them.” Upon this a Grenadier gave him a push with the butt end of his musket, so that the Spirit fell into the ditch. While sprawling on his back, he told the soldier, “Thou hast not used me civilly. I doubt thou art not a real friend to King George.”’
From first to last the prisoners had looked to be rescued. The Highlanders asked where the High Church Tories were? If they had had no heart for the fight, could not they now come to the rescue? Forster told his fellow-captives that a gentleman of Highgate had assured him that a Tory mob would rescue them before they reached London. Nothing came of it. Forster thought his quality might have taken him to the Tower instead of to Newgate. ‘When,’ says a Whig paper, ‘he understood that Gordon, Carr (Kerr), and Dorrell were executed the day before, and their quarters then in the box just by, in order to be set upon the gates, it spoiled his stomach so that he could not eat with his then unhappy companions. It was the Whig crowd that shouted at the prisoners in a triumphant manner. Not only werethe streets thronged, every coign of vantage in and about the houses was occupied, and spectators on horseback and in coaches accompanied, followed, and in some cases drew up to enjoy the pitiful, yet triumphant spectacle. ‘It gave a very lively idea,’ said the ‘Flying Post,’ ‘of the triumphs of the ancient Romans when they led their captives to Rome.’
THE JACOBITE CHAPLAIN.
The rebel chaplain-general, Mr. Patten, rode by the side of the ex-Northumbrian M.P. Forster, the leader of the English Jacobites. It is hard to say which was the most coarsely assailed. The chaplain was audacious enough to talk treason as he went on his way. Forster was more reticent, but he was loudly taunted as a perjurer. He had taken the oaths to King George, before he transferred his loyalty to King James. The slang term for him was, ‘the Man under the Rose.’
Of priests and clergymen among the prisoners, few attracted more attention than this Rev. Mr. Patten. The Londoners looked with curiosity on a man who had delivered a sermon from such a significant text as the following—Isaiah xiii. 15, 16, ‘Every one that is found shall be thrust through, and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes. Their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.’ This looks like a weak invention of the enemy, but it was believed in, at least by the Whigs. Even while the procession of captives was passing, swords were drawn at tavern doors, and in tavern rooms. If aWhig was there to call Mar a villain, and the prisoners hang-birds, a Jacobite’s rapier was speedily thrusting at his ribs to teach the other better manners.
LADY COWPER’S TESTIMONY.
Lady Cowper confirms these accounts. In her Diary, under date, December, 1715, she says:—‘This week the prisoners were brought to town from Preston. They came in with their arms tied, and their horses (with the bridles taken off), led each by a soldier. The mob insulted them terribly, carrying a warming-pan before them, and saying a thousand barbarous things which some of the prisoners returned with spirit. The chief of my father’s family was among them. He is above seventy years old.’ Lady Cowper’s maiden name was Judith Clavering; and it was the aged chief of that Jacobite house who rode defiantly through the Low Church blackguards. ‘A desperate fortune,’ adds Lady Cowper, ‘had drawn him from home, in hopes to have repaired it. I did not see them come into town, nor let any of my children do so. I thought it would be an insulting of the relations I had here; though almost everybody went to see them.’
JACOBITE REPORTS.
From the very outbreak of the rebellion London had teemed with reports which had no shadow of foundation. They were spread chiefly by Jacobite incendiaries of figure and distinction. They protested that if King George reigned, he would make a bridge of boats from Hanover to Wapping,—a phrase which served to intimate that the kingdom would be annexed to the electorate. People in the country were told that the London churches were closed, and that a clergymancould not appear in the streets in his clerical dress without risking a knock on the head. As for resisting the Jacobites, the Highlanders were described as too powerful to be resisted. It was certainly in ridicule of such exaggerations that a story ran for a few days to the effect that those terrible Highlanders had cut off the Dutch auxiliaries, had put on their breeches, and, advancing on an English detachment which did not recognise them, had cut the Whig soldiers to pieces. It is quite as certain that the London Jacobites claimed the victory at Preston fortheirside, and were not silenced till the cavalcade of Jacobite captives was passing from Highgate to the London prisons. Even then, ultra-Tories were found who strongly suspected, or said they did, that half the prisoners were hired players who were dismissed when the public performance came to an end!
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