(1748 to 1750.)
[Sidenote: _DEPRECIATION OF THE STUARTS._]
[Illustration: Drop-T]he Government at this time began to be
embarrassed with the surviving Jacobite prisoners. Many who were
destined for the Plantations, and had made their little melancholy
preparations for going into a life-long exile and slavery, were set
free unconditionally. Others were variously treated. In January, 1748,
Æneas Macdonald was brought from Southwark gaol to the Cockpit, where
he was examined by the Dukes of Newcastle, Dorset, and Montague, the
Earl of Chesterfield, and others of the Privy Council. It is not known
what was got from him; but one result of the examination was that his
execution, which had been fixed for Friday, the 22nd, was deferred
‘for some days.’ The report was immediately raised in London that the
Earl of Traquair would be tried for his life, and Macdonald would be
admitted king’s evidence against him. The report was unfounded, for
the earl was soon afterwards liberated on bail. Four dukes――Norfolk,
Gordon, Hamilton, and Queensborough――were his sureties. Macdonald was
also set free. The Government thought they had captured Lord Elcho at
Dover; and the prisoner, with three others, was brought to London,
where they proved to be four Jacobite _valets de chambre_, who were on
their way to join their escaped rebel masters in France. Other small
game continued to be brought to town from time to time, particularly
deserters from the duke’s army, when in Carlisle, to that of the
Chevalier. For such men there was no mercy. Death, or worse than death,
was the penalty. The journals give an account of six deserters being
whipt in St. James’s Park. ‘One of them refusing to be tied up to the
Halberts, in a very obstreperous manner, was tied and drawn up to a
tree, and very severely handled for his obstinacy.’
Exultation over the victory at Culloden was still prevailing. In
other respects, it may be asserted that apprehensions of domestic
disturbances had now pretty well ceased. Walpole felt that if the
French attempted an invasion, it would be for themselves, and not
for the Chevalier. ‘They need not be at the trouble,’ he wrote in
January, ‘of sending us Stuarts; that ingenious House could not have
done the work of France more effectually than the Pelhams and the
patriots have.’ The London Whigs maintained the memory of the triumph
of Cumberland. For years they kept the anniversary of the Jacobite
overthrow at Culloden by dining, or drinking, or doing both, together.
Here is a sample of what they thought of the triumph, taken from the
advertisement columns of ‘The General Advertiser:’――
‘HALF-MOON TAVERN, CHEAPSIDE. Saturday next, the 16th April,
being the anniversary of the Glorious Battle of Culloden,
the Stars will assemble in the Moon, at six in the evening.
Therefore, the choice spirits are desired to make their
appearance and fill up the joy.’
[Sidenote: _THE GOVERNMENT AND THE JACOBITES._]
Within a month, however, the Government were referring to the
Jacobites, as if the rebellion had not been stamped out at Culloden.
The special occasion on which the Jacobites were ill-spoken of in
Parliament this year was in the House of Lords. The Peers were
discussing the Scottish episcopal question, and the Highland dress.
Lord Hardwicke, the Chancellor, with other Lords, denounced the
Scottish bishops as Nonjurors, whose _congé d’élire_, if there was one,
came from the Pretender; and whose ‘orders,’ conferred on others, could
only be a farce. Jacobitism had by no means lost its vitality. In some
cases it had been bribed into a deceitful calm, which might be followed
by a storm at any opportunity. Lord Hardwicke thought the condemned
Jacobites had been too leniently dealt with, and that they would have
had no cause to complain had the most rigorous penalties been exacted.
In short, his lordship went far to authorise Lord Campbell’s judgment,
that if the Duke of Cumberland was responsible for the way in which he
stamped out rebellion in Scotland, Lord Hardwicke, at Westminster, was
responsible for the judicial murders committed on rebels. The following
is from the speech, which aroused some surprise in the House of Lords:――
[Sidenote: _ENLARGEMENT OF PRISONERS._]
‘Every man who has taken orders from a nonjuring Bishop in England
or Scotland must be supposed to be disaffected to our present happy
establishment. I think the government ought not to allow them to
be preachers in any congregation whatever.’――After allowing that
there were honest Nonjurors, who, while preserving their principles,
refrained from all hostility towards the Government, the Lord
Chancellor said there were others, ‘who, notwithstanding being
Jacobites in their hearts, not only take all the oaths we can impose,
but worm themselves into places of trust and confidence under the
present government, and yet join in, or are ready to join in, any
rebellion against it; and with respect to such men I must say that no
regulation we can make, no punishment we can inflict, can be called
cruel and unjust.’
No doubt one of the Jacobites to whom Lord Hardwicke alluded was the
Jacobite Mr. Pitt, Lord of Trade, and the pet M.P. of Jacobite Wareham.
[Sidenote: _IN THE PARK AND ON THE MALL._]
For all this, lenity towards the Jacobite prisoners continued to
be practised. The three brothers Kinloch were liberated from close
custody. Sir James Kinloch and Mr. Stewart were to be confined to an
English provincial town, with liberty of walking to a distance of a
couple of miles. The exact conditions were,――‘that they should remain
in such places, as his Majesty, his heirs, and successors shall from
time to time appoint.’ Then came pardons, a half-dozen at a time,
to various of the ‘Manchester officers’ taken at Carlisle, who had
been lying under sentence of death since 1746. Among them was Captain
Lindsay, who was haltered and in the sledge, with Governor Hamilton
and Sir John Wedderburn, when a reprieve arrived for him at the
prison-gate. The two younger brothers Kinloch, with Farquharson of
Monaltries, were banished, but might go whithersoever they would,
except to any part of the British dominions. The most joyous party of
Jacobites was that of the Earl of Cromartie (or ‘Mr. Mackenzie,’ as
he was called since his attainder) and his family. The eldest son,
Lord Macleod, was freely pardoned. The earl was permitted to leave the
Tower, but he was bound to reside in the house of a King’s Messenger.
Accordingly, the earl, countess, my lord, the younger children, and a
servant or two, were to be seen alighting from a hackney-coach at the
door of Mr. Lamb’s house in Pall Mall. Their appearance at the windows
attracted many a gazer, and when Mr. Lamb permitted them to stroll on
the Mall, crowds of sympathisers congratulated them as they passed.
Later, the earl had so far an extension of liberty as was to be found
in a permission, or order, to reside in some town in the south of
England.
It was probably by accident that, on the Pretender’s birthday, June
10th, a special free pardon passed the Great Seal for Mr. John Murray,
of Boughton, and Hugh Fraser, gentleman (king’s witnesses against Lord
Lovat). Murray obtained a pension of 200_l._ a year. The pardon cleared
them of all treason committed before 1st May, 1748. On Saturday,
the 11th, they were both at large, and were to be seen, two pale
men, trying to get a complexion in the parks. At the same time small
parties of men left London for Scotland, for the purpose of fortifying
various points of that kingdom, an invasion of which by the French was
vaguely talked of in all taverns and coffee-houses in London. There was
certainly an undefined fear from the beginning of the year of something
being intended there in the interest of the Pretender.
[Sidenote: _THE STATUE IN LEICESTER SQUARE._]
In 1742, the Prince of Wales had promised the mob greeting him on his
birthday, with roaring cheers, from the front of Leicester House, that
he would put up a statue of his father in the centre of the square.
Since that promise was made and forgotten, the famous ducal mansion
of the Duke of Chandos had been knocked to pieces by the auctioneer’s
hammer. On the princess’s birthday, 19th November, 1748, there was
again a mob in front of the prince’s ‘palace’ in Leicester Square,
not only to congratulate him, but to witness the uncovering of an
equestrian statue of George I. This statue was one of the many which
had adorned the duke’s house, Canons, near Edgeware. Nobody seems to
know now at whose cost it was purchased and put up. It is suggested
that the prince, or his semi-Jacobite friends, bought it, with the
thought that, irritated as George II. might be by having a statue
erected to him by his son, he would be still more irate at having one
erected of his father. The fact is that the statue was bought and set
up by subscriptions of the inhabitants of the square. The unveiling of
the ‘Golden Horse and Man’ was witnessed by a brilliant company at the
windows of Leicester House, among whom was the Duke of Chandos himself,
Groom of the Stole to the Prince. Hogarth and other celebrities,
doubtless, looked on, from other windows of houses in the square.
This was the statue which in later days so ignominiously perished;
which dropt its arms, lost its limbs, fell from its horse; and which
ultimately was swept away, horse and rider, in 1874, under a storm of
sarcasm and contempt.
[Sidenote: _AN ECCENTRIC JACOBITE._]
From this record of London in the Jacobite times must not be omitted
the death of a most remarkable Jacobite, of whom little is remembered.
This was Mr. John Painter, of St. John’s, Oxford. This Jacobite scholar
made three several attempts, by letter, to induce the Government to
allow him to be beheaded in place of Lord Lovat! Mr. Painter asked it
as a particular favour. The ministers were not amiable enough to grant
his prayer, and he was never happy afterwards. Just previous to his
death, he forbade his executors to bury him near any of his relations.
He urged them to obtain permission for his corpse to hang in chains
over the spot where Lovat’s head was struck off. On being questioned
as to his reasons, he replied vaguely, that he had not been guilty of
any baseness, but he had committed a fatal error in judgment which had
led to Lovat’s destruction. He did not define it; he left complimentary
farewells to Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pelham, and an expression of
pity for Lovat’s son. ‘That unfortunate gentleman,’ said Painter,
‘suffers not only through his father’s folly, but through mine.’
[Sidenote: _GLOOMY REPORTS._]
As the year drew to an end, adverse parties quarrelled over the terms
of the peace of Aix la Chapelle; but this matter was forgotten in the
news which reached London that the young Chevalier had been literally
seized ‘neck and heels’ at the Paris Opera house, and deposited at
Vincennes, as a preliminary to turning him out of France. About the
same time his conqueror, the Duke of Cumberland, quietly returned to
London from the continent. He came post from the coast to Lambeth,
where he took a boat from which he landed at Whitehall; and thence he
quietly walked across the park, to St. James’s. He was warmly greeted
on his way, especially by that part of the garrison from Carlisle which
had reached the metropolis before their fellows.
Rumours of fresh outbreaks by the Jacobites had been freely circulated
in London from the moment of the suppression of the last. The sight
of the Duke of Newcastle, entering Leicester House, one November day,
gave rise to a report with which London was speedily busied. ‘It
was owing,’ writes the Countess of Shaftesbury, in the ‘Malmesbury
Correspondence,’ ‘to a message from the Prince of Wales, that he had
something of importance to communicate; and he accordingly laid before
him the intelligence he had received of a new rebellion forming, and
almost ready to break out in the Highlands. The Duke assured His Royal
Highness that his Majesty would take very kindly this information,
which he observed to concur exactly with the accounts sent to the
Government above a month ago. I heartily wish this may produce a union
between the King and people which, sure, can never be more necessary
than at this crisis, when new dangers threaten us from the untamable
bigotry of the Scotch Jacobites, encouraged, perhaps, by the insolence
of their friends in many parts of England.’
[Sidenote: _THE HAYMARKET THEATRE._]
‘The great Duke’ seems to have been among the very simple people who,
in February, 1749, were drawn to the Haymarket Theatre by the promise
of ‘the Bottle Conjuror,’ to jump into a quart bottle in presence of
the audience. When the matter proved to be a hoax, and the audience
were further insulted by a loud announcement from behind the curtain
that, if they would sit quiet till the following night, the conjuror
would jump into a pint bottle, a riot ensued in which the interior of
the house was absolutely destroyed. In the confusion, the duke was
seen looking for his sword; and it is said that an audacious Jacobite
called out, ‘Billy the Butcher has lost his knife!’ The alleged loss
was certainly made known by a satirical Jacobite, in the following
advertisement:――‘Lost on Monday night, at the Little Play House in
the Haymarket, a Sword, with a gold Hilt and a cutting Blade, with a
crimson and gold Sword-knot tied round the Hilt. Whoever brings it
to Mrs. Chenevix’s Toy-shop, over-against Great Suffolk Street, near
Chearing Cross, shall receive thirty Guineas reward, and no Questions
asked.’ This advertisement, with its reference to the Court toy-woman,
offered fair opportunity for further Jacobite wit or venom to show
itself; and the demonstration was made in the following manner:――‘Found
entangled in the Slit of a Lady’s Smock Petticoat, a gold-hilted Sword
of martial length and temper, nothing the worse for wear;――with the
Spey curiously wrought on one side of the blade, and the Scheldt on the
other;――supposed to have been stolen from the plump side of a great
General, in his precipitate retreat from the Battle of Bottle Noodles,
at Station Foote. Enquire at the Quart Bottle and Musical Cave,
Potter’s Row.’
[Sidenote: _TREASONABLE PAMPHLETS._]
In the same month, there was a loosening of the bonds of some condemned
Jacobites and a tightening of others; a releasing of old prisoners
and a netting of new;――with a recapturing of Jacobite exiles who had
been glad to leave the country, but who had come secretly back again.
Half-a-dozen of the Carlisle and Manchester officers left the Southwark
gaol for Gravesend, on their way to America. The more audacious of
them wore white rosettes in their hats, in proud assertion of their
unbending principles. Quite as audacious was the republication, at the
price of 6_d._, of the regicidal pamphlet, by Col. Titus,――‘Killing
no Murder, a Discourse proving it lawful to kill a tyrant.’ Another
pamphlet,――‘A Letter from a Friend in the Country to a Friend at
Will’s, on the 3 new articles of War,’ with the epigraph, from Waller’s
‘Maid’s Tragedy Altered’――was much to the same purpose:――
Oppression makes men mad, and from their breast
All reason does, and sense of duty, wrest.
The Gods are safe, when under wrongs we groan,
Only because we cannot reach their throne.
Shall Princes, then, who are but Gods of clay,
Think they may safely with our honour play?
[Sidenote: _MURRAY AND LORD TRAQUAIR._]
There was a less serious incident of the year which probably amused
both Jacobites and Hanoverians. Mr. Murray of Boughton and the Earl
of Traquair had come out of the late perilous time, with their necks
safe. The two liberated Jacobites were not the better friends for their
good fortune. They had a desperate quarrel, which led Murray to air his
bravery by sending the earl a challenge to fight a duel. Lord Traquair,
having no stomach for fresh perils, indicted Murray in the King’s
Bench, for inciting to a breach of the peace. A verdict of _Guilty_
brought on him stern rebuke, and led to his ultimate withdrawal into
privacy in Scotland.
On the part of institutions as well as of individuals, there was a
sort of anxiety to advertise their loyalty. When the fireworks in St.
James’s Park were about to be exploded in celebration of the Peace of
Aix la Chapelle, many of ‘the Quality’ desired to see the display,
from the windows of St. George’s Hospital. The ruling powers there,
by no means, wanted such company; but being afraid of a charge of
disloyalty being levelled against them, if they refused, the Board made
an explanation thus singularly worded:――‘Whereas it is apprehended that
many persons will be desirous to see the fireworks from St. George’s
Hospital, this is to inform them there are but two wards from which
they can be seen; that these are women’s wards, and that most of the
patients in them are in very dangerous disorders. It is therefore hoped
that, for Decency’s sake, for sake of the Patients, and indeed for
their Own sake (it not being at all certain that some of the Disorders
are not catching), it will not be taken amiss that no person whatever
can be admitted. By Order. Hugh Say, Clerk.’
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL MEETING._]
At this time, the Pretender’s chief agent in England was Dr. William
King, Vice-Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and public orator. At
the opening of the Radcliffe Library, the ultra-Jacobite orator made a
speech, in his official capacity. The ‘General Advertiser’ says that
‘it was a most eloquent speech of an hour long; and it met with great
applause.’ Other journals describe it as ‘an elegant oration.’ Walpole,
however, says: ‘The famous Dr. King, the Pretender’s great agent,
made a most violent speech at the opening of the Radcliffe Library.
The Ministry denounced judgment but, in their old style, have grown
frightened, and dropt it.’ Then follows this singular illustration of
the men and times:――‘This menace gave occasion to a meeting and union
between the Prince’s party and the Jacobites which Lord Egmont has been
labouring all the winter. They met at the St. Alban’s Tavern, near Pall
Mall, last Monday morning, a hundred and twelve Lords and Commoners.
The Duke of Beaufort opened the ceremony with a panegyric on the stand
that had been made this winter, against so corrupt an administration,
and hoped it would continue, and desired harmony. Lord Egmont seconded
this strongly, and begged they would come up to Parliament early next
winter. Lord Oxford spoke next, and then Potter, with great humour,
and, to the great abashment of the Jacobites, said he was very glad to
see this union, and from thence hoped that if another attack, like
the last Rebellion, should be made on the Royal Family, they would all
stand by them. No reply was made to this; then Sir Watkin Williams
spoke, Sir Francis Dashwood, and Tom Pitt, and the meeting broke up.’
[Sidenote: _DR. KING’S ORATION._]
Walpole says that ‘the great Mr. Dodington’ gave the assistance of
his head to this conference; but there is no notice taken of it in
Dodington’s ‘Diary.’
With regard to Dr. King’s oration, which was published as he delivered
it, in Latin; and also in an English translation, by a friend,――it
is elegant throughout, and harmless also, except perhaps in the
closing paragraphs, in which the Ministry found offence. Dr. King,
after deploring the universal corruption, wickedness, misery, and
misgovernment which reigned without check or restraint, goes on to hope
for a return or restoration of men, measures, and incorruptible virtue,
whereby the nation might recover its wrecked honour and happiness.
Here is a sample of one of the four paragraphs with which the oration
closes:――‘REDEAT (necque me fugit hoc verbum meum, quippe meum, ab
inficetis et malevolis viris improbari iterandum est tamen), Redeat
nobis Astræa nostra, aut quocunque nomine malit vocari ipsa Justitia:
non quidem fabulosa illa, sed Christianissima Virgo, si non genitrix,
certe equidem custos virtutum omnium.’
[Sidenote: _THE EARL OF BATH._]
No doubt the ‘redeat’ had direct reference to the hoped-for return
of the ‘king’ at Rome, for whom good wishes were offered up in the
London toast――‘The Royal Exchange,’――a toast which is really a summary
of Dr. King’s closing paragraphs. At this time the London papers
were busy with reporting the movements of that king’s son――the young
Chevalier. He had promised the municipality of Friburg to take up his
residence there. The magistracy had invited him, not having the fear
of the English Government before their eyes. Charles Edward broke his
promise, upon which the magistrates (according to a letter from Friburg
in the London papers) sharply reproached him for having caused them
to offend the King of England by an invitation which came to nothing.
Why he should prefer Avignon to Friburg they could not understand. The
latest notice of his movements in the metropolitan journals was that
he was living _incognito_ at Venice. There was manifestly some uneasy
curiosity about him, and a desire on the part of the loyal citizens to
be prepared for anything that might turn up in the chapter of accidents
or conspiracies. The Earl of Bath only expressed the general feeling
of the city, if not of the country, when he said, in a debate on the
Mutiny Bill in the Lords, ‘A parcel of rascally Highlanders marched
from the northernmost part of Scotland through millions of people to
within 100 miles of London, without meeting with any resistance from
the people; and might, for what I know, have marched to London, and
overturned our government, had we had no regular troops to prevent
it;――a manifest proof that a standing army is absolutely necessary.’
[Sidenote: _THE LAUREATE’S ODE._]
The loyal Muse was at Court, as usual, on New Year’s day, 1750, when
the royal family and a brilliant array of privileged peers and
peeresses assembled to hear the annual ode of the laureate ‘set to
Music.’ There was nothing in it like the ring of a hearty Jacobite
song. The more Cibber piled his loyalty, the more ridiculous he became,
as may be seen by the sample of a single brick out of the lumbering
edifice:――
When the race of true Glory
Calls Heroes to start,
Then the Muse meets a story
Well worthy of Art.
Had her Pindar of old
Known our Cæsar to sing
More rapid his raptures had roll’d,
But;――Never had Greece such a king.
All that Whigs and Cibber’s friends could say for such tuneless and
burlesque lines was that he made them so on purpose. Jacobites replied
to them less fiercely than Johnson, but yet not without wit. For
instance, on seeing a tobacco pipe lit with one of the laureate’s
odes:――
While the soft song that warbles George’s praise
From pipe to pipe the living flame conveys,
Critics, who long have scorn’d, must now admire,
For who can say his Ode now wants its fire!
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE MUSE._]
The laureate’s odes could neither make people loyal, nor keep them
so. On the other hand, the Jacobite Muse, with her petticoat busked
up to her knee, was as brisk and winning as Maggie Lauder, especially
in Scotland. She gave much concern to the people at St. James’s and
the Cockpit, from the beginning to the end of the year. She was
working mischief in the north. How matters were going on there, and
how different was the treatment of the Scotch Muse, in December, from
that of England before the throne of George, at St. James’s, in the
preceding January, is told in the London papers. Captain Stafford, of
Pulteney’s Foot, was stationed in Aberdeen, where the Jacobite Muse
was rampant. The captain seized the singers of treasonable ballads in
the streets, and brought them, with ballads and publishers, before the
magistrates. These were Jacobites, and they could see no harm in the
minstrels or the muse; and they discharged the peripatetic singing
agents of the young Chevalier. They would not even confiscate the
ballads. This the loyal captain took upon himself to do; he brought
the whole mass of harmonious treason from the printer’s to the Market
Place, and set fire to the ton of songs that was intended to raise one.
While they were burning he made a speech, of which this is one of the
flowers:――‘May all the enemies of His Most Sacred Majesty, King George,
our rightful and lawful King, be consumed off the face of the earth, as
the fire consumeth these vile and treasonable ballads.’ For which the
captain was much commended in and about St. James’s.
[Sidenote: _PRISONS AND PRISONERS._]
The disloyal muse was not silent in London. Macdonald, ‘said to be an
Irish priest,’ made the echoes of a Jacobite tavern in George Street,
Bloomsbury, reecho with treasonable songs till he was flung into
Newgate,――which then was a sentence of death. The gaol-fever was then
destroying prisoners, judges, and witnesses, and sweeping life out of
hundreds of homes in the vicinity. While suppressing chords of a lyre
which was soon re-strung, a certain sort of service was not forgotten.
‘We hear,’ says the ‘Penny Post,’ ‘that a pension of 400_l._ per annum
is settled on a person eminently concerned in the late Rebellion,
for services done by him.’ The Government treated Lovat’s son with
justice,――gave him a free pardon, he having been an unwilling rebel.
As for emptying the London prisons of convicted rebels, they seemed
to be filled as fast as they were emptied. Some of the captives were
sent over the Atlantic, others were allowed to transport themselves,
and many were set free altogether. A little matter, however, could
cast a man into a dungeon. The ‘Daily Post’ (in July) records that ‘A
Person of Note has arrived in Town, in the Custody of a Messenger,
from Scotland. He is accused of seditious Practises, particularly in
encouraging the use of the Highland Dress.’ A good look-out was kept
at the Tower, which was undergoing repair, and sentinels showed much
alacrity in firing on, or over, people who approached too near the
Tower ditch after sun-set.
This year is one of several assigned to a secret visit of the young
Chevalier and a friend to the exterior of the Tower. As very few
people really knew where he was residing, this story was probably
invented. The London papers said of Charles Edward, in the spring, ‘It
is currently reported that the young Pretender, who lately made such
a disturbance in these kingdoms, died a few days ago in Switzerland.’
However, the prince was alive again in June. In that month the London
and Paris journals were treating of a trade riot which was being
turned to political purposes. In June, soon after the king left London
for Hanover, the metropolis was disturbed by a report that a body
of Northumberland colliers, to the amount of six thousand, had left
the pits and had scattered themselves among the hills and about the
border. Out of what seems to have been a mere strike, the ‘Gazette de
Hollande’ made an incipient insurrection. On the faith of its Jacobite
correspondent in London, it announced that one of the leaders of the
colliers had ascended a hill, and in presence of his followers had
proclaimed Charles Edward as ‘King of England, France, and Ireland,’
and ‘_Defender of the Faith_,’ to which the devout pitmen had replied
with a fervent ‘Amen!’
[Sidenote: ‘_DEFENDER OF THE FAITH._’]
‘Defender of the Faith!’ What could this mean? It is the first
‘inkling’ of the young Chevalier’s playing with his ‘orthodoxy.’ The
‘fermentation’ puzzled a French journalist, who, at the close of June,
wrote thus: ‘Prince Edward (_sic_) keeps up an intercourse with secret
correspondents in England; and one does not absolutely know in what
corner of Europe he is residing. He is said to have gone over the whole
of the North. He is an extraordinary and indefatigable man; and travels
twenty leagues a-foot, with a couple of confidential followers. If he
were daring enough to pass into Scotland, during the King of England’s
absence, what, without a party on which he can depend, will he be able
to accomplish, wanting (as he does) arms and money, and especially
_without having publicly embraced the Anglican religion_?’
[Sidenote: _NEWS FOR LONDON._]
Had Charles Edward then _privately_ become a member of the Protestant
Church of England? Did the London correspondent of the ‘Gazette de
Hollande’ know anything of an intention to that effect? However this
may be, it is certain that in the autumn of this year we have the
record, true or false, of the presence of the young Chevalier in
London, and of his renunciation of Roman Catholicism, _privately_,
however, and under an assumed character, in one of the London churches!
In December the same journals chronicle as a notable incident, ‘That
the Chevalier de St. George and his Son (call’d Cardinall of York)
had a long audience of the Pope, a few days ago, which ’tis pretended
turn’d upon some despatches, receiv’d the day before from the
Chevalier’s eldest Son.’ Whatever these despatches contained, loyal
Londoners hugged themselves on the fact that the Princess of Wales
was taking her part in annually increasing the number of heirs to the
Protestant Succession, and loyal clerics expounded the favourite text
(Prov. xxix. 2), ‘When the righteous are in authority, the people
rejoice.’ Preachers of the old Sacheverel quality took the other half
of the verse, ‘When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.’ These
were convenient texts, which did not require particularly clever
fellows to twist them in any direction.
[Illustration: Decorative Banner]