Decorative bannerCHAPTERVII.(1715-16.)
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themournful procession of Scottish nobles, gentlemen, and brave fellows of less degree, was not the first spectacle of the same kind witnessed by the Londoners. After the abortive attempt at insurrection, made in 1708, the year after the Union of England and Scotland, under the title of Great Britain,—the castles of Stirling and Edinburgh, and all the prisons in Edinburgh, were crammed full of nobility and gentry; ‘at first,’ says George Lockhart of Carnwath, the gentle Jacobite, ‘no doubt, the Government expected to have proof enough to have brought several of them to punishment, but failing, blessed be God, in that, the next use they made of them was to advance their politics; for no sooner did any person who was not of their party pretend to stand a candidate, to be chosen a Parliament Man, at the Elections which were to be next summer, but were clapt up in prison, or threatened with it, if he did not desist; and, by their means, they carried, generally speaking, whom they pleased; but to return to the prisoners;—after they had been in custody some weeks, orderscame from London, to send them up thither; which was accordingly done; being divided in three classes, and sent up three several times, led in Triumph, under a strong Guard, and exposed to the Raillery and Impertinence of the English mob; and now it appeared to what a fine market Scotland had brought her Hogs, her Nobility and Gentry being led in chains, from one end of the Island to the other, merely on account of suspicion, and without any accusation or proof against them.’
THE CHEVALIER IN SCOTLAND.
This last made all the difference between the captives of 1708 and those of 1715. Those of the former year were in time liberated, on agreement on the part of the most influential to serve the English Government at the Scottish elections, else, ‘I am afraid,’ says Lockhart, ‘some heads had paid for it.’ This was the payment exacted at the later period.
THE CHEVALIER OUT OF SCOTLAND.
It was fatal to the political prisoners that the rebellion was carried on after the double defeat at Sheriff Muir and Preston. The Chevalier deSt.George, otherwise JamesIII., arrived in Scotland as inopportunely as the chief actor in a tragedy, when the curtain is falling. On December 22nd, 1715, he landed at Peterhead. All was lost before he appeared. His progress was made with the saddening conviction that nothing could be recovered. He marched with a loose array from Peterhead to Dundee. From Dundee he went and played ‘king’ for a few days in regal Scone, after having burnt a village or two. On January 9th, he entered Perth. A stand was to be made there, but, on that day three weeks, the anniversary of the execution of his grandfather CharlesI., the stand wasabandoned. News reached Perth that Argyle was coming down upon them. The Jacobite army dispersed in various directions, but chiefly scattered through the Highland fastnesses. A faithful few accompanied James to Dundee, a fewer still to Montrose. There was then further talk of holding out, but the unhappy prince slipped away from the talkers, went on board the little vessel waiting for him, and on February 9th, 1716, he was quietly dining at Gravelines. Altogether, he was about six weeks in Scotland. It would have been as well for him, and better for his followers, had he been at the Antipodes. London would not then have raved so cruelly as it did against the prisoners of Sheriff Muir and Preston.
On February 6th, 1716, when news of the dispersion from Perth had reached London, Lady Cowper went to the play, to see ‘The Cobler of Preston.’ It was ‘the poet’s night.’ The good news, in fact, ‘had reached town the previous day. The good effects of the news, which not only told of the withdrawal of the Jacobites, but that King George’s forces had taken possession of that important city, were manifested in the theatre; for there was not a word that was loyal but what met with the greatest acclamations.’
COST OF LIVING IN NEWGATE.
The prisoners claim more notice than the players. Those who were marched to Newgate had the worst of it; but in that worst there were degrees of difference. An Act of Parliament allowed a rent of half-a-crown a week to be levied, for indulgence that would barely save the lodger from lying on hard boards or harder stone. Instead of half-crowns, pounds were exacted.For twenty guineas a prisoner might buy the right of living in the governor’s house. When he had paid the fee, he found he had bought the right of walking all day long in the fetid press yard, and of eating in the pot-house rooms connected with it. The governor argued that his house consisted of every part of Newgate which was not really within the prison. It suited his purpose to call the press yard external; and he derived profit from it, accordingly.
As soon as a prisoner passed within the gates, it was quickly ascertained if he had money in his purse; and, if this proved to be the case, wine and brandy were called for, in his name, by a horde of ruffians, male and female, and drunk by them, till they could drink or call no longer. But there were other birds of prey. If the victim had a few guineas left, after he had paid his garnish, the turnkeys would take down various sets of fetters, handle them in his presence, affect a shudder at their fearful weight, or praise their lightness,—one pair being so many guineas lighter than the other. Should the novice be reluctant, he received a taste of the quality of the ‘Condemned Hold’ for the night. This dungeon was in the arch beneath Newgate. At noon-day it was so dark that a candle only showed its darkness,—and a candle, duly paid for, had usually only a lump of clay for its ‘stick.’ To escape from the horror, the victim was docile enough in the morning, when he negotiated with the governor, over a bottle of brandy, for a removal.
INSIDE NEWGATE.
If this removal brought him to the comparativeluxury of the press yard, he was not necessarily privileged to partake of all its enjoyments. On entering there, he saw, perhaps, one or two captives studying books, a few reading newspapers, others at skittles, cards, or toss-penny; and a numerous company in the drinking boxes or at the windows of the different floors of the boozing kens looking into the yard. In an instant, these left their occupations, to surround and examine the new comer, and to exact his ‘footing,’ of a dozen of wine; with tobacco in proportion. If he could afford it, this was the company with which he might associate till he was hanged, or was otherwise disposed of. ‘Lovely women’ formed part of it, and with these, marriage might be contracted on limited liability. At ten (but later hours were to be had, for the paying for them) the ladies and gentlemen were sent to their respective rooms, but if they were docile and generous, the turnkeys left their room doors unlocked, only bolting the doors at the foot of the various staircases. In these places at night, ‘Hell let loose’ is the only phrase that can becomingly describe the scene and its incidents.
A man with a decent spirit might leave this stage of iniquity and drunken despair, if he could muster 18d.daily, to have fellowship with felons, in a stinking cellar on the master’s side. But this was only to fall into a lower depth of this Hell.
VISITORS TO NEWGATE.
When the staircase doors were unbolted in the morning (at eight o’clock!), the prisoners were called over in the press yard, and every one who had beendrunk the night before was fined a groat. All pleaded guilty to the soft impeachment if they possessed a groat, and the liquor was drunk with the turnkeys, as an antepast of breakfast. One day was not altogether like the others. Amid the despairing jollity, a poor wretch might now and then be seen at a table, dictating his last dying speech and confession to a friend, and sorrowfully admiring the neatness of some of its points. Perhaps the ‘ordinary,’ as the chaplain was then called, would venture a little of his ministry with him, and utter the small standing joke of how ‘a passage of the Gospel’ meant, to such an offender, ‘in at one ear and out at the other.’ On a summer’s evening, company from outside resorted to the press yard, as some did to suburban tea-gardens, and drank and smoked, and sang and swore with the regular inmates. On winter evenings, they resorted to the rooms, and gave their orders from the windows to the tapsters below. It was on one of those evenings that the prisoners in Newgate were attracted by the sudden joyous peals ringing out from the London steeples. Political prisoners looked sullen over their liquor, for they knew that the side with which they sympathised had suffered some defeat. Governor and officials looked glad, for orders had come down to prepare for a large body of prisoners, and from Governor Pitt to Marvel, the hangman, there was joyous expectation of a golden harvest at hand.
‘It’s all up!’ was the prison comment, ‘from Lord Derwentwater to George Budden, the upholsterer: they are all netted.’ The latter was among the party whoentered Newgate. The London Jacobite entered quietly; whereas, Forster, full of pride and wrath, fumed because, he, a member of parliament, and Jacobite General, for the nonce, had not been taken, like Derwentwater and the other lords, to the Tower.
SORTING THE PRISONERS.
The rebel prisoners were soon sorted. The moneyless were consigned to the ‘Lions’ Den,’ the ‘Middle Dark’ and the ‘Common Side.’ They who had guineas in their purses paid dearly for all they required.
The rebels had scarcely passed under the shadows of their respective prisons, when the police messengers narrowly searched among the crowd for traitors. A Justice of the Peace recognised a spectator in a lay habit, who was perhaps too sympathetic in his aspect, as a clergyman named Paul, who had preached seditious sermons in London and the country, and who had been with the rebels at Preston. Paul’s audacity or curiosity cost him dear. The Justice pointed him out to the rogue-takers, and the parson was speedily hurried to the Cock-pit, and thence was committed to Newgate.
It is related that when a handsome young prisoner, named Bottair, was seen among the suffering crowd of captives, as they entered Newgate, a kind-hearted ‘clerk of the prison’ cut away his tightened bonds. Young Bottair expressed his regret. ‘The cord,’ he said, would have served to hang me; or to show, if I escape the gallows, how I have been led, like a dog in a string, for twice two miles together.’ The handsome lad then dismissed the subject of himself, to think of his more destitute fellow prisoners in other prisons. ‘I mustdesire you,’ he said to the clerk, ‘to make enquiry after them. They have been brought so many miles from home, out of observance to my orders, that I hold myself obliged to see that they do not want.’
EXTORTION.
It was only those who had plenty of money who could procure some lightening of their prison burthen. From twenty to twenty-five guineas was now the fee for not being obliged to wear irons. Five pounds weekly was the charge for lodging and being allowed to diet in the ‘Governor’s house.’ Even the brigadiers, colonels, and captains, who had less ‘cash’ than the generals and gentlemen of wealth, had to pay dearly for places of little ease, ‘for which they advanced more money’ (say the papers) ‘than would almost have paid the rent of the best house inSt.James’s Square, or Piccadilly, for several years.’ Every one who wished to avoid being thrust into the horrors of the common side, could only escape by a fee of ten guineas, and a weekly rent, for such accommodation as was then allotted them, varying from two shillings to two guineas, and for that, in some rooms, ten men lay in four beds. Thousands of pounds including costly gifts—bothfrom outside sympathisers—fell into the hands of officials. Indeed, but for ‘outsiders’ the prisoners generally would have been miserably off.
DISSENSIONS.
While some of the Jacobite prisoners exchanged moral or philosophical reflections, others, embittered by misfortune, fell to quarrelling. Forster and Brigadier Mackintosh fought the battle of Preston over and over again, in Newgate. The cause of quarrel sprangfrom an incident in that unlucky town. During the contest, Forster rode up to the barrier which Mackintosh held, and commanded him to make a sally against the assailing force which was within gun-shot. The Brigadier flatly refused. Forster declared that if he outlived the day, and his king’s cause triumphed, he would have Mackintosh before a court-martial. General and Brigadier were captured and confined together. In the corridors, court-yard, and common-room of Newgate, the leader and subordinate angrily discussed this incident, while eagerly listening groups—for there was almost unlimited freedom of entrance into the prison, in those days, visitors eating and drinking with the captives—stood around and learned more from the wrangling chiefs than they could from the newspapers or from any other source.
Some of the prisoners, like the aged, refined, and witty ex-paymaster-general of the Jacobite army, found solace in writing verses, ‘which gained applause,’ says Patten,[5]‘from good judges of poetry.’ Four Shaftoes, Northumberland men, two fathers and two sons, were in Newgate. The elder, William Shaftoe, was a rich Northumbrian squire, well-disposed to live at home at ease, but, being easily persuaded, he joined the Rebellion at the instigation of his wife. Mr. Justice Hall, his cousin, shared his captivity in Newgate. Patten tells a story of the kinsmen, which, he says, ‘has something diverting in it.’ They were walking in the press yard together when Shaftoe (who was a Church ofEngland man, but had been formerly a Romanist) exclaimed, ‘Cousin Jack! I am thinking upon what is told us, that God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation. I am of opinion that it is so with us, for your grandfather and my grandfather got most of their estates as sequestrators, and now we must lose them again for being rebels.’
JACOBITE PATTEN.
Another captive, the Rev. Mr. Patten (to whom reference has already been made), on finding himself in close confinement, soon turned his thoughts upon the method for getting out of it. He found he had leisure for reflecting on his past life. He took for especial subject of consideration that part of his life which he had spent in promoting the unsuccessful rebellion. He had been a fool. Could he save his neck by becoming a knave? He thought he might, and that the attempt was worth the making. The reverend gentleman, on the allegation of his being troubled with scruples, petitioned the Secretary of State, Lord Townshend, to be pleased to allow a clergyman to converse with him. The noble lord freely granted what was asked, and in a short time the Rev. Dr. Cannon was dispatched to the wavering Jacobite. He was, says Patten, ‘a man of singular good temper and literature, who applied his best endeavours to satisfy me in every Point and Query I proposed. In which, his Learning and solid Reasoning prevailed upon me; for which good Service, my best Wishes shall always attend him.’
HANOVERIAN PATTEN.
Dr. Cannon’s course was made known by its results.Patten became suddenly convinced that it was a duty incumbent upon him to make all the reparation he could, for the injury he had done and had intended to do to the Hanoverian cause. By being a traitor to his old comrades, he would serve the cause against which he had been in arms, and secure safety to himself by doing his best to destroy his former friends. ‘As the first thing in that way,’ he tells us, ‘I became an Evidence for the King; which I am far from being ashamed of, let what calumnies will follow.’
His revelations were received and recorded by commissioners who had no need to ‘bribe or brow-beat him,’ as they were accused of doing in other cases. Patten ‘was used in the most gentleman-like manner.’ His treachery was quickened by their politeness, and the Rev. Robert Patten saved everything but honour.
Patten had first, however, to satisfy the Government that his testimony was worth having. He made full confession, not only of what he knew of others, but of his own preachings and practices. He told of his more than ordinary activity at Penrith, where he had once been curate; how, in obedience to orders from Forster, he had headed a troop of horse and beset the house of his own brother-in-law, Mr. Johnston, collector of the Salt Tax, whom he was charged to bring in prisoner, with his books, papers, and, above all, with whatever money he had belonging to the Government. Johnston, however, escaped, taking documents and money with him. Patten, unwilling to return empty-handed, made prisoners of theposse-comitatusandbrought them to Forster’s camp, where they were despoiled of their arms, and then turned loose. At Preston he acknowledged that he was constantly riding from one post to another, giving accounts of how the battle was proceeding, and doing in fact aide-de-camp’s work till his horse was shot under him. He thus succeeded in being accepted as king’s evidence.
ADDISON’S SATIRE.
Before his evidence was wanted, partisan newspapers mocked and misrepresented the unfortunate prisoners, as was only natural inthem; but it is with pain that one sees Addison flinging dirt at them and ridiculing them, in his paper, the ‘Freeholder.’ In an imaginary diary of a Preston rebel, given in one of the numbers, the diarist is made to state that, at a meeting of Jacobites, before the outbreak, a resolution was passed that, as no cause existed for that outbreak, they would rebel first and give reasons for it afterwards. All Jacobites, it was agreed, were in want of something, and if they could overturn the throne and King George with it, carry fire and sword into England, as their chaplains recommended in their sermons, and divide property amongst themselves, there would be a fair chance of happiness under a new state of things, for the accomplishment of which they had had the prayers of all the harlots in the kingdom!
LACK OF CHARITY.
In similar unfairness of spirit, Jacobite squires in England were described as maintaining that there had been neither tolerable weather nor good laws in the country since the Revolution of 1688. Such squires read only ‘Dyer’s Letter,’ and that rather for the stylethan for news. They were heart and soul for Passive Obedience, and were ready to knock out the brains of whoever held contrary opinions. A fling at ‘Dyer’ was a favourite amusement with the Whig Essayist, who also assailed the news-writer on the stage. ‘The reasons,’ says Vellum in ‘The Drummer,’ ‘why I should believe Sir George Truman is still living, are manifold.’ One of them is, ‘because the news of his death was first published in “Dyer’s Letter.”’
For a few days, the noblest of the prisoners were lightly held. Their going to and fro between prison and the Secretary of State’s office, in order to be questioned, kept the streets lined with gazers. Soon, however, the various cases assumed more gravity. In the Tower the captives were put under closer restraint, and the privilege of visiting them was abolished. The wives and other relatives of the chief prisoners endeavoured to present petitions on their behalf to the king, but mostly in vain. The guards kept them at a distance from the royal person. The Whigs were now thinking less of the prisoners than of their estates. TheSt.James’s ‘Evening Post’ was delighted to inform the public that all the estates and property, forfeited by rebellion, would be ‘strictly applied to public uses.’ In some of the papers the Jacobite ladies who were petitioning for their husbands’ or kinsmen’s lives, were denounced as barbarous women who had driven their husbands and relatives into rebellion. They were stigmatised as ‘tigresses,’ and it was pointed out to them that, to find themselves compelled to seek mercy at thefoot of that throne which they had sought to overturn by fire and sword, was a retribution which they had justly incurred. London was told to be glad at having escaped the tax which the chiefs of the rebellion in Scotland were levying upon gentlemen who voluntarily failed to join them, namely, 50 per cent. of their property.WHIG LIBERALITY.Whig liberality was praised in the person of Lord Strathnaver, the Earl of Sutherland’s son. He had promised his vassals to make good all their losses; and if the married men fell in battle for King George, Lord Strathnaver undertook to transfer their leases, if they held any, to their widows—gratis, and for their lives. Many a Scottish wife in London sighed when she thought of the pleasant alternative here suggested. With regard to the rank and file of the Preston prisoners, who were not thought worth the expense of bringing to London, judges left the capital to dispose of them in a singular way. Every twentieth man taken by lot was to stand a trial, all the rest were to be transported! This was the sternest of jokes that the Whigs had ever had to laugh at, between the capture and trial of the Jacobite prisoners of war in London. In the meantime, the law myrmidons kept sharp eye and ear on London sympathisers. With respect to these, it must be allowed that justice was very capricious. While men were put to death for little more than wishing King George back in Hanover, others were fined only a few marks for much worse offence. For instance, one Thomas Smout was fined five marks ‘for speaking traiterous and devilish words of his most excellent Majesty,namely, devoting that sacred Majesty to the nethermost hell and protesting that he would sooner fight for t’other King than for him.’
WHIG AND JACOBITE LADIES.
In illustration of these times, nothing more strongly proves the influence which women exercised in politics, especially on the Jacobite side, than the persistence with which Addison addressed himself to them in jest or in earnest. He insisted on the superiority of the charms of Whig ladies, and he assured those on the Tory side that they might improve their attractions by changing their politics. He counselled the former to turn their fans into banners, and to make them convey a declaration of principles by a display of loyal and significant portraits. Such display, he thought, would lessen the Tory interest much more than the Jacobite figures in the Oxford Almanack would advance it. He characterised the Whig ladies as gentle creatures, but the Jacobite women, he said, were shrews in their families and scolds in politics. The vulgarity of the latter is offensively assumed, and never more so than in the passage where Addison affects to counsel the Jacobite ladies to be as gentle in their utterances as Cordelia. If they were loud-tongued they would be taken for harlots, all of whom (he said) were notorious Jacobites.
While Addison’s papers were being read at private breakfast tables and in the coffee and chocolate-houses, the High Church mobs, less loyal than the Drury Lane players, went about breaking the windows of the meeting houses, where prayers were put up for the welfare of King George. A diabolical attempt was made by aHigh Church ruffian to blow up the people in the meeting houses in the Old Jewry, during divine worship. Perhaps it was intended to suffocate them. Gunpowder and other combustibles are mentioned in the reports. Their ignition filled the place with flames, attended by a smoke and stench which nearly killed those exposed to them. In the tumultuous rush to escape many persons were grievously maimed; but no one was killed on the spot. The building suffered much damage, and those who staggered from it helplessly into the street, were speedily set upon by thieves, who carried off a great booty in wigs, watches, and scarves.
MATTHEW PRIOR.
About this time Mr. Matthew Prior shocked his old Jacobite friends by taking the oaths at Hicks’s Hall, in order to prove that he was a good Whig. Trimming Tory gentlemen who took the same oaths, on the first day of Sessions, excused themselves for doing so, by writing pointless epigrams to prove they had committed perjury. Jacobites, on the other hand, greeted with hurrahs Swan, the Mayor of Newcastle-under-Line, and two other Magistrates of that place, as they passed to Newgate in custody, for having shown kindness to some of the destitute Preston prisoners, as they were being escorted through that midland town. Tories, in coffee-house debates, held Cuthbert Kynaston, M.P. for Salop, to be a fool for having surrendered himself a prisoner. Soon they had other things to think of. There was the fair on the hard frozen Thames. That grand festival of the time was got up by the Whigs. They roasted an ox whole on the ice near Whitehall, inhonour of the ninth anniversary of the birthday of Prince Frederick, and they made night hideous with their toasts and drunken revelry.
ROYALTY ON THE ICE.
Roasting oxen whole soon became an ordinary occurrence. The frozen-out watermen were made glad by contributions of joints; to which were added liberal donations from the royal family. While the ice was still in solid block, a little procession of sedan-chairs was seen, one bracing morning, going rapidly fromSt.James’s to Westminster. The hard-trotting bearers set down their honourable load in Old Palace Yard. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Marlborough issued from their respective chairs. Noblemen and gentlemen had come by similar and by other conveyances. When all were afoot they went down to the river which they crossed on the ice to Lambeth, and then returned, seeing ‘all the fun of the fair,’ as they walked, or sometimes, as they tarried. The prince was unguarded, though well accompanied, and the enthusiasm gave extraordinary warmth to the occasion. When the king went publicly, a few days after, to stand as godfather to the second son of the Earl of Portland, Jacobites admired his fearlessness, and Whig ladies began to call their new-born sons by the monarch’s Christian name.
IMPEACHMENT OF THE REBEL LORDS.
The king’s words which announced the Chevalier’s arrival in Scotland were still vibrating in the ears of Parliament, when Mr. Lechmere rose in the House of Commons to take the preliminary steps for the condemnation of ‘the seven lords.’ In other words, he moved that the House should impeach them. The motionwas grounded, not on evidence, but on common report. The speech was an able speech, with a craftily seeming fairness in it. The speaker maintained that the existing rebellion was the natural consequence of long preparation, and that those most forward in it, here, were the guilty tools of equally guilty men who were withdrawn from the public eye, or who conspired in greater personal safety, abroad. A portion of the press, at home, by denouncing the old Revolution, had knowingly made way for the new. The lenity extended to writers who encouraged treason against King George by denying the legality of the dethronement of King James, only inspired more venomous authors to write down the Hanoverian dynasty and the Protestant succession.
Then, adverting to the conspirators, as Queen Anne’s Tory friends were called, Mr. Lechmere pointed out that Ormond, for whose sake Marlborough had been traduced, now avowed his treachery, by serving the Pretender, and by the preparations he was carrying on for a fresh invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery in this country. The enemy of Townshend—Bolingbroke—was then on the point of manifesting the principles which had made him the enemy of so virtuous a man, by becoming one of the ministers of the Chevalier. While the great engines were actively working from afar, the lesser engines and more ignoble tools were, said Mr. Lechmere, as actively carrying on their work ‘below stairs.’ By this phrase he implied that the juries in Westminster Hall, who acquitted mencharged with sedition against the present powers, were the enemies of the reigning House. But, he added—making reference again to the Tory ministry of the last reign,—those conspirators made their master-stroke when they traitorously made England a party to her own destruction, by procuring a majority of votes in Parliament which gave sanction to a Peace, whereby France was restored to her former power of dominating over Europe, and the barriers which guarded the liberties of this and allied nations were broken down. The same influences, added the speaker, had nearly sacrificed the trade of England to the interests of France.
CHARACTER OF KING GEORGE.
The weakest point of the speech was in the passage in which, by almost deifying King George—especially for his alleged divine quality of mercy—Mr. Lechmere seemed to make of the sovereign a conspirator against himself. The monarch, he said, was of such a tender nature that he could not find it in his heart to be severe against his enemies. ‘On the contrary, those who have shown the greatest aversion to his government, have received the kindest invitations and enjoyed the highest indulgences from him.’ Equally at fault was the Impeacher when he avowed that impeachment of the seven lords was a safer process than leaving their case to be treated in the ordinary course of law and justice. More vindictiveness was exhibited by Mr. Lechmere when he expressed his gladness at the thought that, if the lords were convicted, no plea of pardon under the Great Seal could stay the execution of a sentence which was the result of an impeachment by the Commons.Not, of course, that the Commons would be influenced by vindictive considerations! It was certainly not to keep them calm and clear and justly minded that he ended by shaking the Pretender’s declaration in their faces. That act seemed to arouse the majority of the House to fury, as a red rag might excite the fierceness of a sufficiently angry bull. The terms in which it was written, and the epithets applied to those terms by Mr. Lechmere, stirred the Whig members as the alarm stirs the war-horse to dash forward whithersoever his rider would force him. In a burst of frenzy, the House voted, on the motion of Mr. Lechmere, the impeachment of James, Earl of Derwentwater and his six confederates, the Lords Kenmure, Nithsdale, Carnwath, Widdrington, Nairn, and Wintoun, for high treason.
FROM THE TOWER TO WESTMINSTER.
Shortly after, of all the London sights, the most interesting was the passing to and fro of those captured Jacobite Lords, between the Tower and Westminster, where they underwent preparatory examining by the privy council. When they went by water, the public knew little of the matter. It was otherwise when they were taken to Westminster in one huge lumbering coach; especially as on their way back they stopped to dine at the famous tavern, theFountain, in the Strand. The House had long been patronised by the Tories, so that the Jacobite lords were ‘at home;’—and Jacobite mobs cheered them as they entered and when they departed. The repast, however, could not have been a joyous one—seven lords eating roast beef and drinking port, with the something more thanchance of soon dying on the scaffold! They dined, closely guarded by twelve Warders. Before they left, they who would, might have their snuff-boxes filled at Lillie’s, next door, and for one of the street Jacobites to get a pinch from this supply, made him happy for a week.
THE DRUM ECCLESIASTIC.
This indulgence brought the Lieutenant of the Tower into trouble. He was summoned before the Peers, and was questioned as to the unseemly dining of the rebel lords in a tavern. The perplexed officer replied that those lords had complained of feeling faint, and he had therefore allowed them half an hour for dinner, at theFountain, under rigorous guard; but he was peremptorily forbidden to do so on any future occasion. ‘If their lordships require refreshment,’ said the Chancellor, ‘they must refresh here.’
On January 30th, Addison preached a smart lay sermon in the ‘Freeholder,’ and loyal pulpits resounded the universal sameness. One of the exceptions was atSt.George’s, Southwark. This place was said to be the mint where all the lies were coined which were afterwards put in circulation at the Royal Exchange. It is obvious that a sermon on the dethronement and martyrdom of a king could be made to serve two purposes. In the Whig pulpits, the discourse illustrated the wickedness of treason against the powers that be,—the Government of King George. In the Tory pulpits it was well understood that the Government of that king was daily committing High Treason against the power that ought to be,—that of JamesIII.Accordingly, when the Rev. Mr. Smith, Tory curate ofSt.George’s, gave out his text on January 30th (1 Samuel xii. 25), ‘If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king,’—there was scarcely a person present who did not interpret its sense as antagonistic to King George. A Whig gentleman was there, and he began to take notes of the sermon. This disturbed the Jacobite preacher, who probably recognised in him a Government agent. At all events, he called upon the note-taker to desist, but the latter showed no signs of obedience. This led to the clergyman exclaiming, ‘Mr. Wicks, if you go on writing, I won’t preach any more!’ The imperturbable Wicks added this remark to his notes, and then the Tory parson called at the top of his voice, ‘Take away that fellow that writes, out of church!’
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANS.
The muscular christians of the congregation not only flung Wicks into the street, they hunted him home, assailed his house, and threatened to destroy it with all his family therein. They had committed much damage when a civil and an armed force arrived, and compelled the assailants to raise the siege and retreat. The virtuous mob, however, having heard that Wicks had recently buried his father, scampered to the neighbouring churchyard and commenced digging up the grave! They were on the point of committing still more horrible violation, when they were put to flight by the constables and a few soldiers. Whig writers in the papers ask, jeeringly, if the preacher objected to notes being made of his sermon,because he was about to say ‘something extraordinary and smutty.’
CHARLESI.KING AND SAINT.
The full High Church flavour of this anniversary is given in the ‘Weekly Remarks,’ of which the following is a sample: ‘Last Monday being the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles the First, who now wears a crown of glory in Heaven, and is the greatest saint there in the English calendar (the English saints would neither let him wear his crown nor even his head on earth), the Reverend Dr. Trap, who is lecturer ofSt.Martin’s, preached an excellent sermon in the morning atSt.Andrew’s, where the church was so crowded that many could not be admitted to the audience; and in the afternoon, the very Reverend Dr. Henry Sacheverel, rector ofSt.Andrew’s, preached at St Martin’s, where there was a like concourse of people and a like elegant sermon. Their texts followed one another. They were taken out ofSt.Matthew xxiii., 31st to 36th verses. In these sermons they have shown themselves glorious Ministers of the Gospel.’
The same Jacobite paper thinks that the death of Dr. Williams, the eminent dissenting preacher of Hogsden, is a very ominous matter to the Dissenters. ‘The good old cause,’ it said, ‘must be playing the crab, and going backwards.’ The writer in the ‘Weekly Remarks’ affects to be grieved that the doctor did not outlive the 30th of January, to make merry with his congregation at a ‘Calves Head Feast,’ on the anniversary of the murder of King Charles.
THE REBEL PEERS.
But more serious scenes in the drama were now tofollow. The rebel peers were to be tried, and Lord Cowper was appointed to act as Lord High Steward. Lord Cowper’s appointment to the office vexed both himself and his lady, but he had to support it with dignity. The going down to Westminster Hall was a grand sight for the Londoners. All the Lord High Steward’s servants had new liveries. There were five coaches, four with two, and one (in which Lord Cowper rode) with six horses—two footmen behind each. Garter with the wand, and the Usher of the Black Rod were in the same coach next to that of the Lord High Steward. Eighteen ‘gentlemen’ out of livery were on horseback between these two carriages. Although the liveries of the coachmen and footmen were new, Lady Cowper had them made plain, expressly. ‘I think it very wrong,’ she says in her Diary, ‘to make a parade upon so dismal an occasion as that of putting to death one’s fellow creatures.’
SOLEMN POLITENESS.
Their lordships entered the Hall in procession from the Upper House. A proclamation for silence hushed the remaining buzz of talk among the excited spectators. The managers of the impeachment for the Commons then took their places with much punctilious reverence. Next, order was given for the prisoners to be produced, one after the other, and then all eyes were directed towards the door from which each entered—the centre figure of a group of officials of distinguished rank, who held him in custody. The most remarkable official walked immediately behind the captive, bearing the processional axe with the edge turned away from theprisoner. This official was not the executioner, whose presence would not have been tolerated in such an assembly, but ‘the gentleman-jailor.’ The processional axe is not the weapon which is publicly exhibited; it is in charge of the resident governor. As soon as the prisoner reached his appointed place he sank on his knees, from which position the Lord High Steward blandly begged him to arise. Having obeyed, the poor prisoner turned to the peers and saluted them with the lowest bow he could accomplish, in testimony of his respect. Not to be behindhand in courtesy, the peers arose (such of them as were covered took off their hats), and bowed in return, as if they were quite glad to see the unhappy gentleman who was standing there for life or death. Lest he should build too lofty hopes on that basis of civility, or on any other token of politeness vouchsafed to him, the Lord High Steward, almost invariably, hastened to observe to him that he had better keep in memory that all those little attentions were tributes to hisrank, which he hoped the peers would never forget. It was further intimated that they would send him to death should he be found a traitor, with every mark of detestation that their sense of politeness to him as a peer would permit them to show.
DERWENTWATER’S PLEA.
The Earl of Derwentwater was the first in rank, and therefore had the poor privilege of being the first of the seven lords who was called upon to plead. The crimes for which he was impeached by the Commons having been published, the prisoner wasasked what answer he had to make thereto? Was he guilty or not guilty? The reply was a mean apology. The best thing that may be said for it is, that it was probably the work of Lord Derwentwater’s legal advisers, and that he was counselled to be almost abject, as the only means of rescuing at least his life.
The sum of it amounted to this. The poor earl was quite sure that if the ordinary course of justice had not been followed, it was because mercy might be the more readily extended to him, if the circumstances of his case could authorise it. He complimented the king for his royal attribute of clemency, and the earl the more urged its exercise on the ground that forgiveness would not encourage anyone to the future commission of treason, upon the presumption that his offence would necessarily be mercifully visited.—Guilty, no doubt, he had been, but he could hardly account for having become so. Constitutionally he was disposed to lead a quiet life. He knew nothing of any conspiracy (!); and, if he went to the first gathering at Plainfield, in Northumberland, he went innocently, having been told that he would find many friends and kinsmen assembled there. He joined them, he confessed, but it was done thoughtlessly; and, after casting in his fortunes with the enemies of King George, he never used the arms he wore. He might have cut his way through the king’s forces at Preston, but he had shuddered at the bloodshed that must ensue. The spilling of blood he was always anxious to prevent, and, in point of fact, he had yielded at the first manifestation ofopposition; but, on assurance that the king’s mercy would be extended to him. When he was in the hands of the king’s generals, as a hostage for the surrender at Preston, he had urged on his friends the necessity of their honourably observing the promise, for the keeping of which he was himself a guarantee in safe custody. And he had told General Wills, whose prisoner he was, that whatever might happen, he would remain with the royal army;—from which there was no possibility of his getting away!
Every phrase in this reply to the charge fell cold on the hearts of many hearers who were ready to sympathise with a gallant gentleman, standing in peril of a horrible death. The half apology, half confession; the hope of mercy, and the hint that he was not unworthy of it, did not serve the ill-fated nobleman. The Lord High Steward asked him to plead ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty.’ Brought to this alternative, Lord Derwentwater answered ‘Guilty.’ He made appeal to the royal clemency, and withdrew, so gracefully self-possessed as to give assurance to all present that a true gentleman, having done all he could to save his life, would now meet his fate with dignity.
WIDDRINGTON’S REPLY.
The answer put in by Lord Widdrington, who was brought in with the same grim ceremony as Lord Derwentwater, was even more abject than that of the earl who had just retired. He stood aghast, as it were, at the measure of his own guilt, ‘but he came,’ as he said, ‘unawares into this sudden and unpremeditated action.’ He went with his kinsmen to the assemblingat Plainfield in October, 1715, without any definite knowledge as to what was intended! When treason came of it, he took credit to himself for having practised it with small amount of wrong or violence to those who withstood the traitors. Moreover, as he was the last to take up arms, he was the first to lay them down, by which Lord Widdrington suggested that he was less of a rebel than some of his comrades in misfortune. He added that the surrender at Preston was made on the encouraging assurances from the general on the other side that they would experience the royal clemency. ‘Nature must have started at yielding themselves up,’ on other grounds. Those who were in arms against King George at Preston might have escaped had they chosen to spill more blood, but they preferred to yield on the happy prospects held out to them. In the same strain the answer went on to the end, concluding with the assertion that clemency from the throne, and the recommendation of mercy by the parliament, would make him for ever the most loyal of subjects to King George, and cause him to have undying esteem and veneration for the two Houses of Lords and Commons!!!
APPEAL FOR MERCY.
As Widdrington remained standing at the bar, he was asked if he had anything further to say. Whereupon he replied, that he hoped for mercy; that he had the gout in the stomach! that he had not been able to finish his answer till that morning; that it was doubtless full of defects; and that ‘he humbly implored their Lordships’ intercession to his Majesty for favourand mercy’—and therewith the unhappy lord withdrew.
Patten’s testimony of him, if it be true, would lead us to expect this undignified bearing in the unheroic son of a most heroic race. ‘There is but a small part of that left in this lord. I could never discover anything like boldness or bravery in him, especially after his Majesty’s forces came before Preston.’ Patten states that Lord Widdrington was as unfit for a general as Mr. Forster himself, over whose easy temper he had considerable influence. The peer’s family had been distinguished for their bravery and their loyalty to the English Crown; but ‘yet there is little of it left in this lord,’ writes Patten, ‘or at least he did not show it that ever we could find, unless it consisted in his early persuasions to surrender, for he was never seen at any barrier or in any action but where there was the least hazard. He was wonderfully esteemed at home by all the gentlemen of the county, and it had been happy for him, and so we thought it had been better for us (the rebels) had he stayed at home.’