Decorative bannerCHAPTERXV.(1718.)
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theJacobite rage aroused by ‘The Nonjuror’ (so ‘damned a play,’ Pope called it) seemed to increase even after the novelty had worn off. Cibber’s bitterest foe in the press was Mist’s ‘Weekly Journal.’ On the 4th February, 1718, this ultra-Jacobite paper contained the following paragraph: ‘Yesterday, died Mr. Colley Cibber, late Comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing “The Nonjuror.”’ Upon this, Cibber pleasantly says, in his ‘Apology’:—‘The compliment in the latter part, I confess I did not dislike; because it came from so impartial a Judge; and it really so happened that the former part of it was very near being true; for I had that very day just crawled out, after having been some weeks laid up by a Fever: However, I saw no use in being thought to be thoroughly dead, before my Time, and therefore had a mind to see whether the Town cared to have me alive again. So the play of the “Orphan” being to be acted that Day, I quietly stole myself into the part of theChaplain, which I had not been seen in for many years before. TheSurprize of the Audience at my unexpected Appearance on the very Day I had been Dead in the News, and the Paleness of my Looks seem’d to make it a Doubt, whether I was not the Ghost of my real Self Departed; But when I spoke, their Wonder eas’d itself by an Applause, which convinced me they were then satisfied that my FriendMisthad told aFibof me.’
But there was at this period a tragedy in contemplation which drew the public interest far away from Cibber and his comedy. It is necessary to go back a year or so, in order the better to understand the principal actor.
A YOUTHFUL JACOBITE.
In the year 1711, there was a pupil at the Latin school in Salisbury, who was remarkable for his ‘fine parts.’ His name was James Sheppard. His late father had been a glover in Southwark. His uncle, Dr. Hinchcliffe, took the father’s place, and provided for this promising boy. The lad was excessively fond of reading; and, in order to catch an intelligent young fellow for the Jacobite cause, some Salisbury Nonjurors thrust upon him their party pamphlets, which the boy read and re-read till he became more Jacobite than the writers. Perilous stuff, so thought Dr. Hinchcliffe, and he took the too earnest student from the Latin school, and bound him apprentice to a Liverpool coach-painter.
A WOULD-BE REGICIDE.
In 1715, Liverpool was as much excited as London by the question between the king regnant and the king claimant. Young Sheppard was gloomy and silent. The fray fought out adversely to the Jacobites, andthe executions of the next year chafed his temper. Among his fellows, he let drop the fearful words that it might be a good thingto kill the king. He was counselled, if he would not go to the gallows, not to give tongue to such possibilities, for the future. The matter sank deep into his mind. Sheppard thought much and wrote much, and at last, he disappeared from Liverpool.
Shortly after, it was early in 1718, a quiet-looking young man left a letter at the City dwelling of a Nonjuring minister, named Leake. He would call for an answer, he said, in a day or two. The minister was nearly lost in fear and horror when he read this monstrous epistle from a stranger. The writer spoke of the ‘discontents’ of the nation; and suggested that they might be remedied by removingPrinceGeorge, and putting ‘ourking’ in his place. This could be done, said the writer, without much bloodshed! The young maniac then stated that if Leake would pay Sheppard’s journey to Italy, and furnish him with a letter to King James, he would undertake to bring the king secretly into the country, and to smite the usurper in his palace. It was, he said, ‘easy to cut the thread of human life.’ If he succeeded, King James could publicly appear. If he failed, the king might still lie safely hiding. Sheppard promised that, if he himself were taken, no amount of torture should extract from him a single word damaging to the sacred cause. He was ready to suffer the cruelest death, the best preparation for which, he thought,would be the reception of the Sacrament daily from the hands of a Priest, ignorant of his design.
A FIGHT IN NEWGATE.
To be found in possession of such a letter was a hanging matter. Leake dropped it at once into the flames, and then hurried to Sir John Fryer, a magistrate, who severely reprimanded him for destroying such an important document, and ordered the arrest of the enthusiast. Before the magistrate, in presence of the Secretary of State, and at his trial, at the Old Bailey, the speech and general carriage of young Sheppard were most becoming. When Leake tried to repeat the contents of the fatal letter, Sheppard calmly prompted or corrected him. The latter wrote it out from memory, and it agreed, literally, with a draft discovered among the prisoner’s papers. He was, of course, foundGuilty; and when the Recorder urged him to ask mercy of the king, Sheppard replied, ‘I cannot hope for mercy from a King whom I cannot own!’
Between judgment and execution, this brave but erring boy of seventeen, lay in Newgate. Paul Lorraine, the Ordinary, and a Nonjuring minister, one Orme, fought for spiritual possession of him. ‘He is of my flock!’ said the Newgate chaplain. ‘He is not of your communion,’ retorted the Nonjuror. ‘Youare a rebel rascal!’ rejoined Paul. ‘Youare a canting hypocrite!’ cried the other reverend gentleman. At which words, they flew at each other and were in the midst of a furious stand-up fight, when discreet turnkeys rushed in, and separated the combatants.
UP THE HILL TO TYBURN.
On the day of execution, six persons suffered at Tyburn. In the morning, Ferdinando, Marquis of Paleotti, had the honour of hanging alone, out of compliment to his rank. He was the brother of the Duchess of Shrewsbury, and the murderer of his valet, whom he had slain, in a fit of passion, on some trivial provocation. The Duchess tried hard to get her brother beheaded, and the Prince and Princess of Wales called on her to express their regret that they could not turn the king from his determination that the Marquis should be hanged—an infamous way of death for a Marquis, as it would degrade every relative he had at foreign courts. Paleotti was hanged accordingly, and he died becomingly, as a gentleman should. Had he only lived as decently, he would never have gone to Tyburn at all.
SCENE AT TYBURN.
Later in the day,St.Patrick’s Day, 1718, two carts went up Holborn Hill, to Tyburn. In one sat young Sheppard, in calm, unostentatious bearing, as much of a gentleman as Paleotti. Four companions, doomed to die at the same tree, rode, pale and silent, hustled together, in the other cart. One of them was a burglar; the second, a highwayman; the third was a young lad who had taken to thieving as a profession; and the fourth was a younger girl who had stolen some finery to the value of one pound sterling! These, however, attracted only a passing attention. All eyes were turned more intently towards Sheppard. All Jacobite hearts sympathised with him on his dolorous way to death. Women looked down upon him fromthe windows, tenderly and tearfully, that one so young, and handsome, and well-endowed, should die so early, and in such dreadful manner. The Whig ‘mobile’ assailed him with insulting shouts. But Sheppard was not moved by it. His dignity was not even ruffled by the renewed contest in the cart of the Newgate chaplain and the Nonjuror. Each sought to comfort or confound the culprit, according to his way of thinking. Once more, the messengers of peace got to fisticuffs, but as they neared Tyburn, the Nonjuror kicked Paul out of the cart, and kept by the side of Sheppard till the rope was adjusted. Then he boldly, as those Jacobite Nonjurors were wont, gave the passive lad absolution for the crime for which he was about to pay the penalty; after which he jumped down to have a better view of the sorry spectacle, from the foremost rank of spectators.
The general belief was that Sheppard was perfectly sane; but there was a general conviction that the boy’s assertion of the hopelessness of expecting mercy at the hands of a king whom he could not own, afforded a sublime opportunity (for showing that mercy) which the sovereign had thrown away. As nobody was the worse for the young Jacobite’s design, his pardon would have shown that King George knew how to triumph over his own passions; ‘but,’ says an audacious Jacobite contemporary, ‘the Great seldom forgive offences committed against themselves.’
Sheppard left a letter and a ‘speech,’ written, it was said, by Orme, which were printed privately,and circulated, in spite of the Government. The boy’s portrait was as secretly and extensively sold, equally in spite of the authorities; and the ministry, having nothing better to do, settled an annuity of 200l.a year on the Nonjuror, Leake, for discovering the treason, and clapped the other Nonjuror, Orme, into Newgate, for absolving the traitor. Orme’s chief offence lay in his being the author of the ‘last dying speech,’ in which the crime was justified. ‘Mr. Orme’s friends,’ said the sarcastic Whig papers, ‘are very apprehensive that he will shortly have to prepare a speech for himself!’
A JACOBITE TOAST.
Neither severity nor sarcasm could subdue the Jacobite spirit. In the Jacobite taverns a new health was drunk with loud cheers:—‘To Miss Clarke!’ This was the name of a pretty girl, in Sunderland, who had boldly drunk King James’s health, in a mixed company. She was called to account for it, of course; but she was only lightly fined, and several of the justices kissed her, as she passed in front of the bench, on her way out of court. Thence came the health, given in London coffee-houses, ‘to Miss Clarke and her friend,’ as Jacobite revellers lifted their punch to their lips, and winked one eye as they went through this performance. Both eyes subsequently glittered with delight when Orme was liberated unconditionally, as no case could be made out against him.
One of the consequences of Sheppard’s crime was to suggest murder to another hot-headed fanatic, of the opposite faction. His name was Bowes. To revengethe design of Sheppard to murder King George, Bowes offered to one of the ministers to go to Italy and murder the so-called King James. He was properly shut up as a madman.
SATIRICAL PAMPHLET.
Pamphleteers, on their side, were as active as men of darker designs.
Some little insight into London manners is afforded by one of their works, published this year, entitled ‘The Necessity of a Plot; or, Reasons for a Standing Army. By a Friend to K.G.’ It is, of course, a satirical pamphlet. Among the good or bad reasons for having a permanent force is the one noticed in the following paragraph: ‘I do not conceive where our youth of spirit could be so well educated as in a Military School. The laudable accomplishments of a Fine Gentleman are there so suddenly acquired that a Fellow who but just throws off a private person’s Livery, to wear that of the King’s, commences immediately a most accomplished Beau. He can swear with as good a grace, talk as rationally against Jesus Christ, the Church, and Parsons, as if he had served an Apprenticeship at the Grecian.’
LOVAT ALREADY SUSPECTED.
This pamphlet, provoking in both style and subject, affected a reverence for the king, so finely expressed that the satire beneath it was ungraspable by the law. There were some members of the House of Commons, it remarks, who were bold enough to assert that there was disaffection in this country. The writer suggests that it was only disaffection to the German language, morals, custom, and ladies. The king himself mightbe called ‘the Delight of Mankind,’ if people chose—as Titus had been called by an earlier people. Was not the king the darling of those who welcomed him with shouts, plays, balls, and bacchanals? How disloyal it was to oppose his wish for a standing army! Did the thinking people of London reflect on the danger which Russia was becoming to us? Russia was said to be far off. Not at all; she was next door to us. She was near to Sweden, which was next to Norway, which was only a few days’ sail from Scotland, whichmight yet prove to be but a week’s march from London. Therefore, let a standing army be raised, and the people be made to pay for it. Dull people! Why, there was already peril looming from Scotland. Brigadier Mackintosh’s ghost had been seen in the Highlands, and Rob Roy (whose name was thus familiar to the Londoners of 1718) was moving about uncontrolled, as if he were undisputed lord of Scotland. The pamphlet-writer suggests that a standing army should not only be raised, but be kept standing in daily array, as if Mackintosh and Rob Roy were at the gates ofSt.James’s! Then, as for Scotland, why not let Lord Lovat have 30,300 men to keep it safe? The character of Simon Fraser was thoroughly understood by the Paternoster-row pamphleteer, although Lovat had been thorough Whig and Hanoverian in the late rebellion. Let him have the men, says the ‘Friend to K.G.’ ‘From Lovat’s principles and dexterity, I think him almost capable of everything. Besides,’ the laughing coffee-house readers were told, ‘a Gentleman is comingfrom France who will give you reasons enough for keeping up a standing army.’ This was the first intimation to the Londoners that Bolingbroke might possibly be recalled.
HEARNE ON ECHARD’S ‘ENGLAND.’
This clever pamphlet supported the cause which Shippen advocated, but in another way. That offender was then suffering a very mild imprisonment. His Jacobite friends supplied him with all the luxuries that money could purchase. A boat from France was freighted with wine for him, but it was run down in the Thames, and the precious liquid was lost. When downright Shippen was released at the end of the Session, jubilant sympathisers escorted him to the Strand; and there was a levee at his house in Norfolk Street, as crowded as the opposing levees of the king and his son put together.
The wrathful old Jacobites were certainly wanting in reason. Even wise, liberal, or politic actions were decried by that disappointed faction. In April, 1718, Echard published in London his ‘History of England.’ It was dedicated to the king, who in return sent the author three hundred guineas. ‘I suppose,’ said Hearne, ‘’t is a most roguish, whiggish thing, much such as what Kennet writes. I have not read it,’ added the Jacobite; ‘such writers ought to be laid aside. Yet I hear that Dr. Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, mightily commends this Echard’s “Church History.” But Prideaux is a great Whig himself, though a good scholar.’ Even Hearne allowed that Echard had a good pen; but he tempered the slight concession by the remark thatEchard never looked into, much less followed, original authors.’
ATTERBURY CONSPIRING.
All this while secret but busy plotting was going on. Atterbury, in correspondence with the Chevalier and his Court, thus alludes (in a letter to Mar, June, 1718) to one of the go-betweens of that Court and the Deanery at Westminster. This agent passed by the name of ‘Johnson,’ but he was the Nonjuror Kelly, and he is thus described by the Bishop:—‘He has been far from meddling here, or venturing to enter with me into matters foreign to what I apprehend to have been the design of sending him. If he mistook my thoughts upon a certain occasion … I will take effectual care that he shall mistake them no more.’ After speaking of his ‘natural indisposition towards a correspondence of this kind, especially at a juncture when so many, and such malicious, eyes are upon me,’ he laments want of wisdom and unity among the Jacobites around him, but he adds: ‘God grant that our deliverance may not be so far off!’
In another document, written no doubt at the Deanery, Westminster, the patriotic bishop reviewed the general condition of things in London, and concluded by declaring that nothing would be done there unless an invading force came hither, ‘from France, Spain, or Sicily!’
THE BISHOP’S VIEW OF THINGS.
The time, he thought, was favourable, and he gave his reasons in the following picturesque sketch of city, court, andadministration:—
‘June, 1718.—Informations are sometimes officiouslygiven concerning transactions on foot; but no effectual care is taken to discover the men or the measures by which they are carried on; nor do those whose peculiar business it is to search into these things, seem at all to concern themselves in them, though they are forced now and then to commit and examine a person (upon particular information given) and then dismiss him, without any hurt done or light gained by that means. Hearne’ (the pseudonym for King George) ‘in the meantime is soothed up with new pleasures and new Mistresses. English Ladies and a Garden take up all his time, and his indolence and ignorance of his affairs are more remarkable than ever; and this sense of life is not casual, but plainly contrived for him. Should any accident happen, they who manage under him have no refuge; their heads must answer for what they have conceived and done, and perhaps without any formal process of Law, vengeance would be taken of them. Nor could they have any methods of saving themselves but by a voluntary exile, should they have time enough to get away upon such an occasion. They seem to take no single step towards avoiding this storm, as the fastest friends of the present Settlement have been all along gradually removed and disgraced; so are some of them even now, that still continue in the service, far from receiving the encouragements they have promised themselves.’
THE ROYAL FAMILY ON THE ROAD.
The king kept none the more private, nor protected himself any the more, for any troubles that were seriously threatening. There seemed really tobe in him the ignorance or indifference described by Atterbury. Early in July the king drove from Kensington to sup with the Duke of Kingston, at Kingston House, Acton. At three o’clock on the following morning he was cheerily trotting home in his ponderous carriage, daylight breaking on him, as he passed the men hanging in chains on the gibbet at Shepherd’s Bush. There is something more lively in another royal incident. One evening during the summer, the young Princesses left London for Hampton Court. Nearly the whole way they were singing French and Italian songs, and as the ‘Lady-governess’ ordered the coachman to drive slowly through the crowds that lined the road, the pretty incident and the implied confidence in the public loyalty delighted the people, and rendered the princely vocalists as safe as if they had been in their father’s drawing-room.
Nevertheless, there was much uneasiness in this same July, 1718, as to the temper of the army. It was not only that a drunken soldier would now and then shout for King James in the street, but that sergeants and men met in taverns, and talked or plotted treason against King George. Some of these latter, as they passed handcuffed through the Strand to the Savoy prison, were hissed by the Whigs and cheered by the Tories. Early in July the ‘Scottish regiment of Foot Guards’ was paraded in the Park, and the Articles of War were read aloud to them, at the head of every company. This was the regiment most suspected of faithlessness, and whose members had been most watched. At thisparade persons attended ‘incognito in Hackney Coaches,’ as the newspapers state, to identify any of the men whom they might have seen at private meetings held with treasonable ends in view. The spies failed to identify any; and when the significant War Articles had been read with distinct emphasis, the regiment marched, in sullen silence, out of the Park.
MILITARY DIFFICULTIES.
Later in the year, the public had the not too cheering spectacle of the 3rd Regiment of Guards having the oath of allegiance administered to them at the drumhead. Subsequently came an order that such of the gentlemen of the 4th troop of Horse Guards (commanded by the Earl of Dundonald) as followed trades, should abandon such lay occupations within three months, or dispose of their posts. This strange order becomes easier to understand, when it is remembered that ‘gentlemen’ is the word still applied to the whole regiment; and that, in 1718, Government did not like the practice of the soldier being half the day a civilian. Some solace was awarded to the army generally for various restrictions. Pay was advanced to 5s.a week; and clothes were to be furnished, as in the last Charles’s days, without deductions. This Stuart practice did not satisfy the perverse soldier. Two or three times a week, privates who had talked in too laudatory terms of King James, or who had deserted King George, were to be seen by thousands of spectators in the Park, undergoing the severe punishment—some of running, other of walking, the gauntlet. In either case the flagellation was severe. In October, when it was thought expedientto reform several regiments, which were accordingly ordered to be ‘broke,’ some men and, it is said, a whole regiment at Nottingham, refused to lay down their arms. Great discretion was required to tide smoothly over these perils.
SCENES AT COURT.
There was, however, no appearance of any sense of peril at Court, where gaiety with a certain amount of quaintness prevailed. The people who attended there were of a mixed quality. On the little Duke of Gloucester’s birthday, Lord Lovat was to be seen bearing the sword of state before the king, to the Royal Chapel. On a levee day, the pushing, preaching, loyal, reverend Charles Lambe, with all the sermons he had preached against traitors, during the rebellion, printed in one volume, laid them at the king’s feet, kissed the king’s hand, and got nothing by his motion. On another levee day, Colley Cibber was at Court, holding daintily a printed copy of ‘The Nonjuror,’ opened at the dedication, which he presented, kneeling, to his Majesty, who gave him his hand to kiss, and promised him a ‘purse’ for his work. Colley got the purse with a couple of hundred guineas in it. On a drawing-room day, a stranger courtier stood in the royal presence, namely, a woman who had journeyed from Lanark, under the impulse of a ‘longing’ to kiss the royal hand. This inclination was gratified, and, imprudently, a gift was added of twenty guineas, to take the lady home again—a circumstance which greatly moved sundry other wives in the same direction. When the Rev. Mr. Peploe, of Preston, who had stuck to his Hanoverian principles,while the Jacobites lorded it, in that town, made his appearance at Court, Whig zeal described the king as waxing merry, not to say witty. His Majesty is reported to have remarked that, ‘Peep lowshould look high.’ Loyal people laughed at the joke, but Mr. Peploe laughed with better reason, on being appointed Warden of Manchester College. He was afterwards made Bishop of Carlisle. On a later occasion, Colonel Oughton was to be seen, pulling a shy private of the 2nd Foot Guards, through the press, to the front of the throne, where the man was duly presented to his Majesty, with a copy of an ode which he had written on ‘Liberty.’ He was the first soldier who obtained preferment, not on professional, but on literary, grounds.
A SCENE IN ‘BEDLAM.’
After receptions like the above, the king usually honoured some Whig nobleman with his company, at dinner or supper—fearless, though the air was full of sinister reports. The Prince and Princess of Wales, on their parts, did not want for mirth. They went to see the mad folk in ‘Bedlam,’ and had especially good sport with a demented creature who thought herself a queen, and who solemnly married them to each other, amid royal bursts of questionable laughter.
Throughout the year the Nonjurors continued to be harassed by the Government. Their chapels were pointed out by the Whig press to the mob, for destruction. Sometimes the pulpit was protected by a burly butcher or two. No man was admitted who did not wear a black ribbon at his button-hole. Every woman was suspected who came to divine service without ablack necklace. Loyal officials, notwithstanding, would force their way in, tender the oath of allegiance to the congregation, and arrest all those who declined to take it, unless they could show they had been already sworn. When a report was circulated that the Nonjurors had ‘some design’ afoot, the Whig press piously hoped they ‘might all be blasted, like their departed brother,Sheppard!’
A WHIG WHIPT.
One at least of these pious loyalists came to grief himself. His name was Burridge. He was editor (‘writer’) or sub-editor (‘corrector’) of one of the three ‘Weekly Journals’—that one which had for its second name ‘The British Gazetteer.’ Loyal and pious Burridge got so drunk in a tavern as to lose all control over his tongue. He let it loose in the utterance of inexpressibly horrible blasphemies, for which he was indicted and found guilty. Loyal as he was, Burridge did not escape. His own paper very coolly recorded that he had, on such a morning, been whipt from the New Church in the Strand to Charing Cross, and then sent to prison for a month, there further to remain till he had paid a fine of 20s.The ‘Jacks’ were jubilant, and cheered lustily when the hangman ‘laced’ the poor wretch’s back with his whip, as Burridge passed at the cart’s tail slowly along the Strand. These ‘Jacks’ who gloried in seeing a blasphemous Whig thus mauled were not very religious people themselves. There was complaint being constantly made that Jacobites who went through the formality of attending church—and particularly the ladies—made a practice of laughing,sneering, or otherwise showing their contempt, whenever the king and royal family were prayed for.
TREASON IN THE PULPIT.
One of the tumultuous Jacobite incidents of the year was the passage of the Rev. Mr. Bisse, of Bristol, from the Western Road to the house of the messenger who had him in custody, at the cost of 6s.8d.daily, for his keep. Bisse, in the spring of the year, had preached a sermon to an ultra-Jacobite congregation, from this suggestive text, Psalmxciv.20-23: ‘Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood. But the Lord is my defence, and my God is the rock of my refuge. And He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness: yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off.’ The sermon proved to be more directly audacious than the text was suggestive. Bisse impressed upon his hearers that God hated usurpations, although, asthey knew, he permitted them. God had allowed an usurpation of now thirty years’ duration in England, where, he said, there had been neither laws nor parliament since JamesII.’s days. He is reported to have added: ‘The present possessor is obliged to unite with Turks, infidels, and heretics, to save his bacon!’ The treason was as malicious as the expression of it was vulgar. Messengers were sent down to arrest Bisse, on whom they laid hands on the following Sunday, in church. But the Jacobite congregation arose, they beat and repulsedthe messengers, and they triumphantly rescued their pastor!
MORE TREASON.
The offender, however, was in a short time arrested. A crowd assembled, to cheer or hiss him, on his way to the messenger’s house, in Charles Street, Westminster. Between Bisse’s various examinations, he seems to have been a prisoner at large—but bound to return to custody, nightly. He abused the liberty, if there be truth in the charge, that at this period he preached in a Nonjuring chapel, to this text from Ezekiel xxi. 25-27: ‘And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, Thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no more,until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him!’ Such was the ring of the Jacobite metal; and Bisse, in his defence, asserted that he was only a humble instrument in God’s hands, giving forth the sound which God impelled.
This Jacobite uttered those sounds in churches in three separate counties. He was found guilty in Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and Buckinghamshire; and the Court of King’s Bench condemned him to stand twice in the pillory; to be imprisoned for four years, to pay a fine of 500l., and to find sureties to the amount of 2,000l.for his good behaviour during life. Bisse stood in the pillory at the Royal Exchange and at Charing Cross. The Whigs complained that he washeld so loosely, he could withdraw his head when he pleased. Favoured by the Jacobite hangman, Bisse was protected by a Jacobite mob. A collection was made for him on the spot; and people in carriages who did not contribute liberally were roughly handled. Women flung flowers on to the scaffold. A single individual who ventured to make an observation aloud, of a Whiggish quality, was compelled to ask Bisse’s pardon on his knees. For the rudely, out-spoken priest, the affair was an ovation, and Defoe remarked, in the ‘Whitehall Evening Post,’ that Mr. Bisse did not bear himself too modestly.
JACOBITES IN THE PILLORY.
Similar scenes took place when another Jacobite, Harrison, stood in the pillory, at Whitechapel, for sedition. He stood at ease, he was protected from all assault and insult, and, according to the Whig papers, ‘Non-resisting ladies supplied him with money or brandy.’ Other offenders, felonious and political, were summarily got rid of. A Mr. Forward, a London merchant, offered to transport all the convicts of England to the Transatlantic Plantations, at 4l.a head. The Government offered him 3l.for each; and, at that price, whole ship-loads of ruffians, but with some honest fellows among them, were cast into slavery, for indefinite periods.
The light penalty of the pillory had no deterring effect on some ministers. On the 5th of November, the Rev. Mr. Milborne preached atSt.Ethelburg’s, London, and he traced all the present miseries of the Church to that abominable anniversary, but whetherhis conclusion was based on the fact that the gunpowder plot had failed, or William’s invasion of England had succeeded, Mr. Milborne did not say.
THE KING AT THE PLAY.
Although London Jacobitism was not wanting in malice and menace in this and the preceding year, the king and royal family maintained a dignified indifference. GeorgeI.was the most exposed to peril, but he met it like a man. He frequently went to the theatre, not in a bullet-proof carriage densely surrounded by cavalry, but in a sedan chair, some members of the Court being conveyed in similar vehicles. Such vehicles were easily assailed; an ‘ugly rush,’ pet phrase of the modern demagogue, might have overturned the king, and put him ‘out of the story,’ as the Sagas say, in a minute; but he encountered nothing worse than a distant word of chaff, which was perhaps not audible, or, if so, not understood. In this way, he was carried, in a November night, 1718, to see ‘The Orphan,’ unmolested; and he went in the same conveyance, and in equal comfort and security, in the same perilous month, to the ‘Little Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields’, where he laughed over ‘Le Maître Etourdi,’ and fairly ‘roared’ at ‘Les Fourberies d’Arlequin,’ but he understood those farces better than he did Otway’s loftier tragedy.
DANIEL DEFOE.
There remains to be noted a most remarkable illustration of these Jacobite times, in connection with the celebrated Daniel Defoe, the Ministry, and the London press. Five letters written by Defoe, in the first half of this year, were discovered in the State Paper Office, a few years ago. They are inserted, in ‘Notesand Queries, 3rd Series, vol. vi., p. 527-9.’ They are addressed to some official in the Secretary of State’s Office, for the information of his superiors. From these startling documents, sad truths are to be gathered. They make the strange revelation that the author of the ‘True-Born Englishman’ was in the secret service of the Government under whose resentment he was supposed to be suffering. He was giving information of ‘traitorous pamphlets’ to Lord Sunderland. By Lord Chief Justice Parker’s recommendation to Lord Townshend’s Ministry, Defoe had been employed on ‘a little piece of secret service,’ which won for him the subsequent favour of Lord Stanhope. Under Townshend, Defoe, the once ultra-Whig, appeared in the disguise of a Tory. He became chief proprietor of the ‘News Letter,’ a Jacobite paper very hostile to the Ministry. He took out all its sting, to the satisfaction of his secret employers, by writing mild Toryisms in it himself, and striking out all that was vigorous and damaging to ministers, in articles sent in by contributors. At a later period Lord Sunderland retained Defoe in the same questionable employment and rewarded him in the same manner as Lord Townshend had done. ‘With his Lordship’s approbation,’ says Defoe, ‘I introduced myself in the disguise of a translator of the “Foreign News,” to be so far concerned in this paper ofMist’s, as to be able to keep it within the circle of a secret management, also prevent the mischievous part of it, and yet neither Mist nor any of those concerned with him have the least guess or suspicionby whose direction I do it.’ In this case, Defoe was not a proprietor, therefore should matter offensive to the Government slip in, despite his watchfulness, Lord Sunderland is begged to consider whether he has a servant (Defoe) to reprove, or a stranger to punish! The extent of the dirty work done by Defoe is to be seen by his remark that the ‘News Letter,’ the ‘Mercurius Politicus,’ and ‘Mist’s Journal’ shall ‘pass as Tory papers, and yet be disabled and enervated, so as to do no mischief or give any offence to the Government.’ Subsequently, poor Defoe writes, ‘I am for this service posted among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories,—a generation who, I profess, my very soul abhors. I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions and outrageous words against his Majesty’s person and Government, and his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it. I am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them, to put them into the news; nay, I often venture to let things pass which are a little shocking, that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow in the house of Rimmon.’
HIS DIRTY WORK.
This is pitiable in the extreme. So is Defoe’s occasional expression of fear lest a paragraph too Jacobitish in flavour, inserted during his absence, should be laid to his charge. He almost servilely entreats to be remembered as the Government’s slave who could not help it, but who is yet worthy of his reward. Besides, ‘it is a hard matter to please theTory party, as their present temper operates, without abusing, not only the Government, but the persons of our Governors, in every thing they write.’ Nevertheless, as all former ‘mistakes’ of his were forgiven by his former Ministerial Whig employers whom he served as a Tory, he trusts for a continuation of favour, which in his Tory disguise he will constantly endeavour to merit!
MIST’S JOURNAL.
Even Jacobite Mist himself came into an ‘arrangement’ into which he was frightened by Defoe, as a cautious and prudent Tory. He was made to see safety in rallying the Whig writers, and in admitting foolish and trifling things only in favour of the Tories! Mr. Mist resolved that his paper should in future ‘amuse the Tories but not offend the Government!’ But for such resolution, Defoe assured him ruin and a prison would speedily be his inheritance. Correspondents, in their innocence and ignorance, wrote letters loaded with treason to the ‘Journal.’ Mist submitted them to Defoe, who put them aside as improper; and then, without Mist’s knowledge, sent them to the Government! As for the ‘Journal’ itself, Defoe writes: ‘I believe the time is come, when the “Journal,” instead of affronting and offending the Government, may in many ways be made serviceable to the Government, and I have Mr. Mist so absolutely resigned to proper measures for it, that I am persuaded I may answer for it.’
JACOBITE HOPES.
Such is a sample of the morality of ‘honest Daniel Defoe,’ in matters regarding the London press andhome politics in those Jacobite times. The full benefit of what has been said in his defence he is, however, entitled too: namely, that he was a Whig, that he never ceased to be a Whig, and that he sincerely supported the Whig cause and Whig principles while (in the pay of a Whig Government) he passed resignedly for a Papist, a Jacobite, and a High Tory.
There was undoubtedly much active Jacobitism going on in London, throughout this year, of which the Government knew nothing, or despised; probably the latter. They ignored the Cardinal Dubois’s English mistress who served him as his Intelligencer, and they let the fashionable French dancing-master, Dubuisson, carry about his kit to aristocratic houses without molestation, though he was well known to be an agent of Cardinal Alberoni, the friend of the Stuarts. ‘How it was they did not hang him,’ says Dubois, in his ‘Mémoires,’ ‘I never could understand.’
Probably, Dubuisson served the Cabinet atSt.James’s better than he did Alberoni, whose ambitious projects had been checked by the death of his ally CharlesXII.Yet, at the end of the year the Jacobites in London wore a radiant air. They toasted ‘the Queen’ that was to be, meaning the Princess Sobieska whom ‘JamesIII.’ was about to marry; and again drank ‘High Church and Ormond!’ on learning that the duke was in Spain, preparing with Alberoni for an invasion of England and the restoration of the rightful king.
ART AND POETRY.
Towards the close of the year, the popular admirationwas appealed to by the uncovering of the equestrian statue of GeorgeI., in the Royal Exchange. Neither loyalty, disaffection, or criticism had much to say to it. Indeed, criticism, such as it was, alone raised a voice, and then only with a mild sort of utterance: ‘It was judged by the most eminent Masters of that Art to be an excellent and accomplished piece of Work.’ Later in the year, December 15th, when Rowe died, one might expect to find some Tory sarcasm against that ultra-Whig Poet-Laureate, who furnished the prologue to ‘The Nonjuror,’ and for whom Nahum Tate had been displaced. The only expression in reference to the bard who reverenced Hanover was one of indifference for bards generally. ‘Last Saturday,’ say all the papers, ‘died Nicholas Rowe,Esq., Poet Laureate to his Majesty, at his house in King Street, Covent Garden, and is to be interred in Westminster Abbey, where Cowley, Chaucer, Ben Jonson, and the rest of those people lie’!!
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