Decorative bannerCHAPTERXII.(1716.)
Decorative banner
theloyal Whig gentlemen had celebrated their king’s birthday on May 28th. The Tories were all the more alert on the following morning to celebrate the anniversary of King Charles’s Restoration, as they supposed their adversaries would be too seedy, after their riot and revel, to molest them. The Jacobites,—emphatically spoken of by the Whig papers as ‘rascals,’—came in from all the parishes, and also from the suburban country. They appeared in their best, with oaken boughs in their hats, the women wearing sprigs in their bosoms, and as the leaves were mostly covered with gold or silver leaf, the same was held (by the Whigs) to be a proof of malice prepense.
FESTIVE FIGHTING.
In great numbers, the Jacobites paraded the streets, or stood about in defiant groups, till church-time pealed out, and then the most of them filed off to various churches and chapels, where they knew sermons were prepared to their liking. The chief of the ‘High Church Faction’ went toSt.Andrew’s, Holborn. Sacheverel,it is to be presumed, had returned from an excursion he was said to have taken with two ale-house men the day before, in order to avoid noticing the king’s birthday. The professed Jacobites, decked with all the insignia worn by the High-flyers, mostly favoured the chapel, in Scrope’s Court, nearly opposite. This place was especially crowded, and especial mention is made of the presence of ‘several men in a genteel habit, booted and spurred.’ After devotion, dinner; at and after dinner, drinking; and then a general mustering and marching in the streets, with, in addition to oaken boughs in their hats, oaken towels, or clubs in their hands. They were—so say the Whig authors—‘animated as they went along by Jacobite Trulls, and several Scaramouches, of whom one might be named not far from a Jacobite Conventicle, only,’ adds the Whig insinuator, with droll reasoning, ‘he was so much elevated with the spirit of Malt that he was “Non compos.”’ Of course, they shouted the usual Slogan; not only complimenting High Church and Ormond, but Sacheverel and Queen Anne, the latter in the words ‘the Doctor and the Queen!’ The Whigs describe them as ‘crews of tatterdemallions, blackguardly boys, wheelbarrow men and ballad-singers;’ but these could not be the same people who, in the morning, had crowded the churches. The genteel men in cloaks, boots and spurs, were not to be seen in the streets where now hell seemed to have broken loose. The ‘street’ Jacks knocked down all passengers who did not sympathise with them by voice or by carrying Jacobite tokens. They were furious in denouncing Presbyterians,and they were proceeding to carry on war against certain chapels, clubs, and mug-houses, when the ‘loyal societies’ from these houses, and the gallant Hanoverians from theRoebuckdescended to the highway, met their foes in fair fight, and after an hour of it, scattered all save those who lay senseless, or who were in the hands of the police. If there had been any thought of rescuing the Jacobite prisoners that night, or furthering the Chevalier’s pretensions by the demonstration, the realisation was prevented by this sort of fiercely civil war, in which the Whigs took the law into their own hands, and quelled a sanguinary riot by a sanguinary fight, left the field of battle to be watched by soldiers who arrived after the victory, and then went home as modest and harmless as lambs!
JACOBITE BOYS.
It was very observable that among the noisiest and most violent of the Jacobite mob or army were the ‘Charity School Boys.’ Possibly, they thought that any change must be the better for them; but moralists ventured to believe that the benefactors of schools had not founded them for the furtherance of popery and slavery, which were put down as among the objects of the rioters. The real criminals were, it was said, the masters and mistresses of the schools, who ‘poysoned’ the children with principles which would surely conduct them to Bridewell or the gallows. However, the writers take courage in the conviction that the Pope has as little cause to singTe Deum, for the success of the mobs of London, as for that of his armed rebels who appeared atDunblane and Preston.
FLOGGING SOLDIERS.
The presence of the Charity Boys as active fighters and rioters with the Jacobite mobs, was accounted for naturally enough. They had been told that the Institute from which they derived so much advantage was about to be abolished. This tale had been invented by ‘Popish Priests or Jesuits, who, going in a genteel habit to apple stalls, oyster women, wheelbarrow folks, and peddling ale-houses, frequented by poor people, put base, erroneous notions into the heads of the populace, purely to raise animosities and divisions among the King’s subjects.’
Strong appliances were employed to repress all Tory audacity. It had been allowable, in former years, to wear oak apples, or sprigs of oak, in the hat on May 29th.Nowthe symbol of rejoicing for the Stuart was construed as being meant offensively to Hanover. This must have been strongly impressed upon the army, when two soldiers were whipt, in Hyde Park, almost to death, and were then turned out of the service for wearing oaken boughs in their hats on this 29th of May!
HOADLY IN THE PULPIT.
While uproar reigned in the streets on that anniversary, King George, during a part of the day, was quietly sitting in the Chapel Royal,St.James’s, with a brilliant congregation, some of whom feared God, and a greater number honoured the king. The faces of all were turned to the Rt. Rev. Father in God, Benjamin (Hoadly), Lord Bishop of Bangor. All ears were ready to hear how the preacher would illustrate the occasion,—the anniversary of the Restoration. The text was 126th Psalm,v.3—‘The Lord hath done great thingsfor us, whereof we are glad!’ Nothing could well be more appropriate. How the king, however, could look the preacher in the face while Hoadly was overwhelming him with flattery is not conceivable. He perhaps smiled when the bishop described loyalty to CharlesII., after the Restoration, as a thing falsely so-called. The happiest touch was where Hoadly brought CharlesII.and King George together, by Heaven’s decree. Providence, he intimated, had a great design in hand, when the Restoration was permitted, which was only the lesser half of that design. The divine scheme was made complete by the birth of King George on the very day before that 29th of May, 1660, on which the Restoration was accomplished. In George, the great work was to culminate, and it was now concluded. And then, the bishop eulogised the sovereign, who was perhaps incapable of comprehending a tenth part of the words which fell from Hoadly’s lips, as a king resplendent by his virtues! The difference on this point between the two kings being that Charles loved handsome hussies and George fat ones. Hoadly was not only in an ecstacy at the present overwhelming happiness, but he was lost in wonder at the almost excess of felicity which England would experience in the existence of the descendants of such a virtuous king! The very contemplation of that future delight was almost too much for him. He recovered by bewailing the not delightful fact that, beaten as the Jacobites had been, they were already growing daily more audacious!
FLATTERY BY ADDISON.
This audacity was also noticed by Addison, in the ‘Freeholder.’ ‘It is impossible,’ he wrote, ‘to reflect with patience on the Folly and Ingratitude of the Men who labour to disturb the King in the midst of his Royal Cares and to misrepresent his generous Endeavours for the Good of his People.’ Under a Stuart, the English people would be in helpless slavery. Under a king like George, there would be freedom—perhaps with some dissensions, but, ‘a disturbed Liberty,’ it had been well said, ‘is better than a quiet Servitude.’ Subsequently, he praised a healthy despotism, and remarked that under Augustus (the Whig poets called George ‘Augustus’), Rome was happier than when she was in possession of her ancient liberty! What a prince Augustus must be, seeing that when he left Hanover, ‘his whole people were in tears!’ All other monarchs sought his counsel and friendship. No man retired from his presence but with admiration of his wisdom and goodness. Addison professed, therefore, to be unable to account for the fact that his royal client should still suffer under the attacks of malicious tongues and more malicious pens.
ON THE SILVER THAMES.
There seemed nothing but enthusiasm on the part of the people, at all events, of the Whigs, when the Prince and Princess of Wales took the young princesses on the river. The royal barge thus pleasantly freighted, and quite unguarded, was a familiar object between London and Greenwich. The Thames was often the scene of more splendid spectacles than the above. On the 5th of June, the Duke of Newcastle was the giver of one ofthose gay and gorgeous entertainments. His Grace was early afloat in his new barge, pulled by a dozen rowers, in new liveries. He was soon joined by the Duke of Montague, the Earl of Carnarvon, and other members of ‘the quality,’ in similar state. Last of all came the Prince and Princess in royal barges, scarlet and gold, flags flying, trumpets proclaiming, while cannon and human throats on the shores roared their rough welcome. As the royal barges glided into the space left for them within a half-circle of other brilliant galleys, the Haymarket orchestra, especially engaged, gave to the royal guests a most harmonious welcome. In the simpler record of this aquatic festival we are told that ‘There was a very fine cold Treat consisting of above eighty Dishes, the three principal Barges to be served in Place,’ whatever that may mean. When twilight descended upon the scene, the guests, landing, accompanied the Duke of Newcastle to his house at the north-west corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where a magnificent ball and a sumptuous supper detained them till long after the dawning of another day.
About this time, the Scottish gentleman, in lodgings in Rathbone Place, Simon Fraser, who had had public audience of the king, was received by his Majesty, in private. Fraser of Lovat thus wrote of what passed to Mr. DuncanForbes:—
TWO PRETTY FELLOWS.
‘I can tell you, that no man ever spoke freer language to his Majesty and the Prince than I did of our two great friends, in letting him know that they did him more service, and were capable to do him moreservice, than all those of their rank in Scotland, and it is true. I hope what I said will be useful, and let it have what effect it will as to me, I am overjoyed to have occasion to serve the two prettiest fellows in Europe.’ Lovat spoke of King George as ‘one of the best men on earth, but strangely imposed upon by certain persons. I hope it will not be always so,’—While serving the ‘two prettiest fellows in Europe,’ Lovat did not neglect a prettier,—himself. In one of his letters to Forbes, in the Culloden papers, he says, ‘If you suffer Glengarry, Frazerdale, or Chisholm to be pardoned, I will never more carry a musquet under your command.’ Lovat’s motive is betrayed in another letter, in which he says: ‘The king has been graciously pleased to grant me, this very day, a gift of Frazerdale’s Escheat, and M. Stanhope told me I was so well in his Majesty’s spirit, that all my enemies are not able to do me harm.’ The crafty rascal is fully manifested in the following passage: ‘I spoke to the Duke and my Lord Islay about my marriage, and told them that one of my greatest motives to that design was to secure them the joint interest of the North. They are both fully for it, and the Duke is to speak of it and propose it to the King.’
His Majesty, just then, thinking there was something to be grateful for, appointed the 7th of June as a Thanksgiving Day, for the glorious suppression of the late rebellion. Tory parsons tried their best not to be thankful. Sacheverel suddenly found thatSt.Andrew’s was out of repair, and must be immediately shut up, but his more discreet churchwardens were afraid tosupport him. They maintained that, in this case, whatever they thought, the congregation atSt.Andrew’s must at least look thankful, by duly assembling.
THANKSGIVING DAY.
This Thanksgiving Day, being a holiday, the streets were made lively by the onslaughts of contending factions. The Whigs wore orange-coloured ribbon cockades, and a bit of laurel in their hats. The Jacobites sported a scrap of rue or thyme, symbols of their sorrow and of their hopes as to what Time might bring round to them. The Jacobite women wore the same emblems, and they were foremost in the fights which invariably took place when the antagonistic mobs met on the highway. The Whig papers report the total defeat of their adversaries. ‘They were thrashed, cut, and wounded to that degree,’ says the facetious ‘Weekly Journal,’ ‘that many of them will have reason to Rue the Time that ever they met the Whigs, on the 7th of June.’
SHERLOCK’S SERMON.
While they were fighting, Sherlock, Dean of Chichester, was preaching his Thanksgiving sermon before the House of Commons, in St, Margaret’s, Westminster. His text was from Psalmcxxii.6, ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.’ The most remarkable passage in the discourse was one which quietly reasserted the Sacheverel maxim that resistance to constituted authority is unrighteous. Sherlock did not mean to tell the senators that the opposition to JamesII.was unrighteous. Nevertheless, he says of those who would rebel on grounds real or imaginary, ‘Where did they learn that Rebellion is the proper remedy in such cases? The Church of England has no such doctrine; and if they cannotgovern their own passions, yet in justice to her, they ought not to use her name in a cause which she ever has and ever will disclaim.’ The dean drew no ill picture of the public feeling just before the revolution. ‘Oh, that I had words to represent to the present generation the miseries which their fathers underwent; that I could describe their fears and anxieties, their restless nights and uneasy days, when every morning threatened to usher in the last day of England’s liberty, when men stood mute for want of counsel, and every eye was watching with impatience for the happy gale that should save the kingdom, whose fortunes were reduced so low as to depend upon the chance of wind and weather.’ After this poor compliment to Providence, Sherlock hinted at the possible occurrence of another attempt of the Jacobite Prince to overthrow the established Church and Throne. Private and party selfishness facilitated such an attempt, but ‘it is as absurd,’ he said, ‘for a man, under any resentment whatever, to enter into measures destructive of his country’s peace, as it would be for him to burn the Title to his Estate, because the Tenant was behind in his rent.’ There were few of the listeners to this passage who did not feel that if the words condemned revolution against GeorgeI., they equally condemned (to Jacobite thinking, at least), that which overthrew JamesII.
The dean was not afraid to say a word in favour of the Nonjurors. The rashness of some of these persons had involved the whole body in obloquy. He observed:—‘The principles on which the legality ofthe present Establishment is maintained, are, I think, but improperly, made a part of the present quarrel which divides the nation. There are but few who have not precluded themselves on this point, those, I mean, who have had courage and plainness enough to own their sense and forego the advantages, either of birth or education, rather than give a false security to the government, which under their present persuasion they could not make good. To these, I have nothing more to say, than to wish them what I think they well deserve, a better cause.’
BISHOP OF ELY’S SERMON.
A large concourse of people flocked on this day to Ely House Chapel, to hear the Bishop’s Thanksgiving sermon; which was preached from the text,—‘Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed and delivered from the hand of the enemy,’ Psalmcvii.2. The ‘Holbourn’ congregation had to listen to a highly-spiced discourse. Indeed, the prevailing taste of all the discourses was a sharp attack on Popery, its ends, and its cruelty in establishing and maintaining them. The Bishop, Fleetwood, stated that, had the rebellion been successful, London would have seen the slaughter of the whole of the royal family, in order to have no other but a Popish succession possible. The most mischievous and calumnious party cry that he had heard was ‘The Church in danger!’ ‘I have lived myself,’ he said, ‘in and about this city, six or seven and twenty years, and been as careful and diligent an observer how things went with relation to the Church, as I could.’ The prelate declared that neither in William’s nor Queen Anne’sreign, nor in the existing one, had there been the slightest foundation for the cry. There was no such cry during the last three or four years of Queen Anne’s reign, because there were men then in power at Saint James’s ‘some of the greatest of whom are now actually in the service of the Pretender.’ When the bishop alluded to the unhappy persons who had suffered for their active Jacobitism, he let drop words which, somewhat strange, perhaps, as coming from a Christian prelate, enable us to see into some of the practice of London hitherto unknown. ‘The marvellous compassion, the strange and hitherto unpractised charity of public prayers and tears bestowed upon the few State Criminals that have fallen of late, by the hands of Law and Justice, this new and unusual tenderness, I say, was shown rather for their sufferings than their sins, by such as approve their cause.’
KING GEORGE’S RIGHT TO THE THRONE.
Nothing was more clear than the king’s statement, published soon after his accession,—that he had succeeded to the crown of his ancestors. His hereditary right was there proclaimed. The bishop, in his sermon, told his hearers of many ways in which the king didnotascend the throne. Among them is this: ‘Nor did he come by what they call Hereditary Right.’ The king was called, according to the prelate, by the Nation represented in a free Parliament, ‘not,’ he quaintly remarked, ‘not by gratitude for any benefits or service past.… He was called to the Throne by all the Nation, King and Parliament; and also afterwards byQueenand Parliament, if thatwill please some people better.’ When the congregation dispersed, Ely Place was resonant with the diverse comments such passages were calculated to elicit.
The press was as active as the pulpit, but not exactly in the same way.
A NONJURING CLERGYMAN, TO BE WHIPT.
The Crown messengers in pursuit of copies of the more stingingly written works, having Nonjuring and Jacobite tendencies, discovered in Dalton’s printing office copies of the famous pamphlet, ‘The Shift Shifted,’ and in Redmayne’s, the equally offensive work, ‘The Case of Schism in the Church of England truly stated.’ In the first matter the Government could get hold only of the printer, and Dalton was fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to the pillory. With the ‘Case of Schism,’ it was different. Justice not only laid hands on the printer, Redmayne, but on the author, the Rev. Lawrence Howell. Redmayne suffered for sending forth the libel, but the learned author was more severely dealt with for writing it. On conviction at the Old Bailey, the reverend scholar was condemned to three years’ imprisonment, to pay a fine of 500l., to be whipped, and to be degraded and stripped of his gown by the public executioner. To his question, ‘Who will whip a clergyman? ‘the court replied, ‘We pay no deference to your cloth, because you are a disgrace to it, and have no right to wear it. Besides, we do not look upon you as a clergyman, in that you have produced no proof of your ordination, but from Dr. Hickes, under the denomination of Bishop of Thetford: which is illegal, and not according to the constitutionof this kingdom, which has no such bishop!’ Thereupon, the executioner, in obedience to command, stepped up to Howell, and stripped Howell’s gown from off his back, as he stood at the bar.
SAVED BY THE BISHOP OF LONDON.
The Tories generally, and ‘the Nonjurants’ in particular, thought the sentence severe; and that the Common Sergeant, Duncan Dee, was sarcastic when he told Mr. Howell that he ought to be obliged to the king for his great mercy, who might have ordered him to be tried for High Treason,—and also tohim, the Common Sergeant, for his lenity in ‘pronouncing so easy a sentence!’ The whipping was far worse than hanging; and Mr. Howell was, in fact, likely to be in prison for life; as, after his three years’ imprisonment, he was condemned to find security for his good behaviour as long as he lived, himself in a thousand pounds, and four sureties in five hundred pounds, each!—Robinson, Bishop of London, at once stepped in to save the Nonjuror from the most cruel and degrading part of the punishment. At his intercession, the whipping was not carried into execution. ‘Well,’ cried the coffee-house Whigs, ‘the fellow ought to be hanged!’ The Nonjurors and the Papists suffered persecution because of him. The former were arrested wherever they attempted to meet, and the houses of both were rigorously searched for arms, to the loss of property and much ruffling of the tempers of indignant womankind.
Mr. Justice Dormer subsequently asserted that Howell’s ‘Case of Schism’ attempted to show that all the clergy and laity who were loyal to King Georgewere in a state of damnation!—‘Ithink,’ said Mr. Justice, ‘that the Pretender is about as near to the Crown as this Howell is to the Church!’
THE ROSE IN JUNE.
June 10th found the Jacobites prepared to celebratetheirPrince’s birthday. The fact that during the preceding week, three of the force captured at Preston—Dalzell, Ramsay, and Shaftoe—had been condemned to death, did not prevent the Jacobites at large from procuring a store of white roses, to be worn ‘in favour’ of JamesIII.According to the papers, most of these roses were ‘nipped in the bud.’ Yet, political prisoners in Newgate decked their windows with them, or flung them to passers by. Other Jacobites walked in the highways with the emblematic rose in their bosoms, but ‘they met with severe Rebukes.’ ‘One of them,’ says the ‘Weekly,’ ‘dressed somewhat like a Gentleman, was challenged by one of His Majesty’s Officers, near Gray’s Inn Lane, had his Badge torn from him and was wounded and disarmed.’ Thus, private war was still kept up, after the public one had been gloriously concluded. It was more easy for a Whig official to whip a white rose out of the button hole of a ‘gentle’ Jacobite’s coat, and draw a little Jacobite blood in the process, than it was to suppress the seditious sayings and doings of the common people. The streets, lanes, and public markets of the City were still infested with people singing ballads, or crying for sale pamphlets and broadsides hostile to the Government, and, as the Lord Mayor’s proclamation, threatening heavy penalties against the offenders, says,‘corrupting the minds and alienating the affections of his subjects, causing animosities and stirring up seditions and riots.’ In these riots, blood was shed, especially when the soldiery appeared on the scene, and the Jacobite mob saluted them with the exasperating cry of ‘George’s Bull Dogs!’ Private quarrels on the great political question came to as bloody conclusions. Major Cathcart and Colonel Gordon fought a fierce fight with swords in Kensington Gardens, from which neither came out alive. It took the major six deadly thrusts at his adversary, before he could deliver the fatal one, but at that moment Gordon ran the major through, and slew him on the spot.
MORE BLOODSHED.
After the demonstration of the 10th of June was over—in which, it must be confessed, the Jacobites had the worst of it—the ‘Flying Post’ thought it would not be amiss to ‘caution the Jacobites of both sexes, not to appear any more in public with badges of sedition and rebellion, lest they meet with severer treatment than hitherto.’ The ‘He-Jacobites’ that were ‘drubbed till they eat their rue … are advised to take care lest the next dose be Hemp or Birch; and the She-Jacobites ought to be wise, lest they meet with the same fate as some of their sisters near Charing Cross, who, for insulting gentlemen that wore orange ribbons, on May 28th, were committed to the care and management of some of the worshipful Japanners of Shoes, who painted them, they best know where, with the proper mark of the Beast.’
JACOBITE LADIES.
Addison, in the ‘Freeholder,’ satirised them withoutmercy. He ascribed to the Jacobite ladies a want of grace, resulting from their country life; whereas the Whig ladies, daily in attendance at Court, possessed a courtly air to which the Jacobite ladies could never attain! The latter were as raw militia-men compared with the accomplished soldier in all his glory. Addison accuses the Jacobite ladies of having a tone of vulgarity and mendacity in the expression of their disloyal prejudices. Before the ‘beautiful part of creation’ became antagonistic in politics, they were perfect as mistresses of households, or as maidens worthy of becoming such. But in the present disturbed times, he describes wives and maidens as mere ‘stateswomen.’ ‘Several women of this turn are so earnest in contending for hereditary right, that they wholly neglect the education of their own sons and heirs; and are so taken up with their zeal for the Church that they cannot find time to teach their children the Catechism,’ A ‘pretty bosom heaving with party rage’ is moved by wrong impulses. ‘We sometimes,’ writes Addison, ‘see a pair of stays ready to burst with sedition; and hear the most masculine passions expressed in the sweetest voices. I have lately been told of a country gentlewoman, pretty much famed for this virility of behaviour in party disputes, who, upon venting her notions very freely in a strange place, was carried before an honest Justice of the peace. This prudent magistrate, observing her to be a large black woman, and finding by her discourse that she was no better than a rebel in her riding-hood, began to suspect her for my Lord Nithsdale, till a stranger came to herrescue, who assured him, with tears in his eyes, that he was her husband!’
LADIES’ ANTI-JACOBITE ASSOCIATIONS.
Addison further told the ladies that they must by nature be Whigs, as were a Jacobite Popish Government to be established, it would be the vocation of women to be nuns, while all the beaux, officers, and pretty fellows generally, would be priests or monks, and then celibacy would be almost universal. The great Essayist approves of various Ladies’ Associations for the suppression of Jacobitism. At one, there was an open tea-table, accessible only to Whig gentlemen. At a second, there was a Basset table, where none but the loyal were admitted to punt. Young ladies are praised who recognise the doctrine of passive obedience only in lovers to their mistresses. One Whig nymph hit upon a way of wearing her commode so seductively, that Tory lovers were converted at her feet, and Tory damsels imitated the fashion. Another nymph went abroad in a pearl necklace which, according to the Essayist, manifested her abhorrence of the Popish fashion of beads. Maids, wives, and widows, are reviewed at this crisis, and such counsel is given them as a writer at the beginning of the last centurycouldgive without any imputation of audacity.
A publisher, with a name that bespeaks his being baptized before the Puritan fire was extinguished—Bezaleel Creak—now sent forth, from the Bible and Ink-Bottle, in ‘Germain Street,St.James’s,’ a poem, ‘occasioned by the many Lies and Scandals Dispersed against the Government, Since the late Rebellion.’ Thepiece was entitled ‘Rebellious Fame,’ as that allegorical personage was just then given to report wonders and miracles on land, in the sea, in rivers, and in the skies, all which—by ‘the Members of the British Society and the Mugg-Houses about the City of London,’ to whom the book was satirically dedicated—were said to portend the speedy restoration of the king over the water to his own again. The doggrel is of the worst sort. The most descriptive bit in it refers to Lorraine, the Newgate Ordinary, whose Calendar is called a history which
with pious dreadIs ev’ry Morn by pious Porters read.
with pious dreadIs ev’ry Morn by pious Porters read.
with pious dread
Is ev’ry Morn by pious Porters read.
Lorraine is told that the greatest rascal in his record is Paul, who affected piety in Newgate, was having his speech penn’d by non-juring parsons, and would be turned off, singing.
How decently the Caitiff ends his days,With Howell’s Rhetorick and Sternhold’s lays.
How decently the Caitiff ends his days,With Howell’s Rhetorick and Sternhold’s lays.
How decently the Caitiff ends his days,
With Howell’s Rhetorick and Sternhold’s lays.
RIOT IN A CHURCH.
The churches were occasionally as disturbed as the streets at this troubled period. It was by order of his diocesan that the Rev. Mr. Hough, a temperate rector ofSt.George’s, Southwark, dismissed his ultra-Jacobite curate, the Rev. Mr. Smith, ‘as a clergyman,’ says the ‘Flying Post,’ ‘of the most infamous Morals and outrageous Impudence against the Government.’ Sunday after Sunday, the rector was hissed and buffeted by the Tories for this dismissal. On one occasion the mob tried to stone him, but Mr. Hough escaped in a coach. On each occasion he was assailed, say the Whig papers, by‘a vile, rascally, beggarly mob,’ and it is added that the ‘Rev. but scandalous Smith led the mob himself to the charge, fromSt.Sepulchre’s.’ The ‘Postmaster’ quaintly describes the particulars as being ‘not only dreadful, but shameful.’
On the 23rd of June the Jacobite congregation atSt.George the Martyr, Southwark, were punished by having the chaplain of the Duke of Newcastle sent down by authority to pray for and preach to them. They would neither have his prayers nor heed his preaching. During the whole service the Tories behaved in a most irreverent manner. At its close, the clergyman’s calm self-possession so exasperated them that they showed symptoms of using personal violence towards him. Some of his friends ran off to the Marshalsea to ask the guard there to come to the rescue. The soldiers arrived just in time to save him from the rough proceedings of ‘the High Church Mob.’ They hurried him into a coach, and escorted him to the duke’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
POPE’S DOUBLE DEALING.
Pope tells Gay, in June, 1716, ‘I suffer for my religion in almost every weekly paper. I have begun to take a pique at the Psalms of David, if the wicked may be credited, who have printed a scandalous one in my name.’ This might serve to show an anti-romanist illiberality did we not now know that Pope himself wrote the indecent parody of the first psalm, of which he complains, and advertised in the ‘Postman’ that he would give a reward of three guineas for the discovery of the author and publisher. ‘When Mrs. Burleigh,’ saysPope’s editor, Mr. Elwin, ‘announced that she had the original in his own hand-writing, he relapsed into silence.’ Pope, in the above letter to Gay, reflects the views on Church matters which were entertained in the London coteries and coffee-houses:—‘The Church of Rome, I judge from many modern symptoms, as well as ancient prophecies, to be in a declining condition; that of England will in a short time be scarce able to maintain her own family; so Churches sink as generally as Banks in Europe, and for the same reason—that religion and trade, that at first were open and free, have been reduced into the management of Companies and the roguery of directors.’
ADDISON, ON LATE AND PRESENT TIMES.
POLITICAL WOMEN.
When the Parliament and Addison’s ‘Freeholder’ came to an end together, the Essay writer boasted of having given the ‘complexion of the times.’ He was sorry that there were men still left who thought they could never be wrong as long as they opposed a Minister of State; and that the Government was blamed for severity towards the rebels, when the friends of the administration rather murmured at too great leniency being practised towards them. He thought it was a pity, since oak garlands used to be the reward of those who saved cities, that oak apples and oaken clubs were the signs and weapons, on one day in the year at least, of those who would bring destruction on the kingdom. He deplored the ruffianism of both Whig and Tory mobs, of the women as well as of the men. It was not so in CharlesII.’s time, when men, instead of declaring their opinions by knocking out one another’sbrains, ‘hung out their principles in different coloured ribbons.’ He traced the brutal violence of the times to the general conceit which visited all hostile argument with a blow. Children were taught politics, and to hate each other, before they understood the meaning of words. Squires came up from the country like dictators from the plough, and got drunk in praise of the aristocracy. Oyster women concerned themselves with the abolition of Episcopacy, and cinder wenches were sticklers for indefeasible right. Addison is alarmed at the novel establishment of country newspapers. They would make provincial towns as turbulent and uncomfortable as London. It was some consolation to him that the very sight of the royal family, particularly of the pretty princesses, was sufficient to soften many a Jacobite; and, though Jacobite ladieswoulddistinguish themselves by wearing white roses—less white, of course, than the bosoms against which they lay—how much more beautiful were the loyaler ladies who proclaimed their principles, and excited the most tender sympathies, by fastening in their hair the simple but significant Sweet William!—a compliment to William of Nassau.
Lily of the valley