(1751 to 1761.)
[Illustration: Drop-F]rom the year 1751 to the coronation of George
III. (1761), the London Parliament and the London newspapers were the
sole sources from which the metropolitan Jacobites, who were not ‘in
the secret,’ could obtain any information. There were two events in
the earlier year which in some degree interested the Jacobite party.
The first was the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. His way of life
has been mercilessly censured, but, considering the standard of morals
of his time, it was not worse than that of contemporary princes. It
was quite as pure as that of Charles Edward (the Jacobite ‘Prince of
Wales’), with whom ultra-Tories disparagingly compared him. Many lies
were told of him, cowardly defamers knowing that a prince cannot stoop
to defend himself from calumny. It was assumed that he was of the bad
quality of the worthless, scampish men who were among his friends. The
assumption was not altogether unjustifiable. ‘He possessed many amiable
qualities,’ said Mrs. Delany, speaking for the aristocracy. ‘His
condescension was such that he kept very bad company,’ said a May Fair
parson on the part of the church. The well-known Jacobite epigram not
only refused to be sorry at his death, but declared that had it been
the whole royal generation, it would have been so much the better for
the nation. The press chronicled the event without comment. On ‘Change,
the Jacobites openly said, ‘Oh, had it only been the butcher!’ A few
weeks later everybody was drinking ‘the Prince of Wales’――George or
Charles Edward.
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF GREAT PERSONAGES._]
The other death was that of Viscount Bolingbroke, which occurred
in the last month of the year 1751. Bubb Dodington reflected the
general indifference, by the simple entry in his Diary, ‘Dec. 12.
This day died Lord Bolingbroke.’ The newspapers said little more of
the pseudo-Jacobite than they had said of the prince. It amounted
to the sum of Mrs. Delany’s testimony, and ‘_she_ remembered Lord
Bolingbroke’s person; that he was handsome, had a fine address, but
that he was a great drinker, and swore terribly.’ His own treachery to
the Chevalier de St. George caused more than one honest Jacobite to be
suspected of treason to his lawful king. He made the name odious, and
almost warranted the assertion of Burgess (an old divine, a familiar
friend of the St. John family), who declared in all good faith, that
God ever hated Jacobites, and therefore He called Jacob’s sons by the
name of Israelites!
[Sidenote: _THE NEW HEIR TO THE THRONE._]
The references to modern Jacobites in the Parliament at Westminster
began, however, now to be fewer and far between. There was not, on
the other hand, much additional respect expressed for ‘the happy
establishment.’ On an occasion in 1752, when 22,000_l._ were about to
be voted as a subsidy to the Elector of Saxony, some of ‘_the electoral
family_’ seem to have been present in the House. Beckford, as outspoken
as Shippen of old, saw his opportunity and remarked: ‘I am here as an
English gentleman; as such, I have the right to talk freely of the
greatest subject of the King, and much more of the greatest subject
of any foreign state. If there be any persons in the House, belonging
to any Princes of Germany, they ought not to be here; and, if they
are, they must take it for their pains;――for, their presence, I hope,
will not keep any member in such an awe as to prevent him from freely
speaking.’ The subsidy, however, was granted.
The principles of the men who surrounded the young Prince of Wales
became of absorbing interest,――for pure, as well as party, reasons.
Bubb Dodington, in December, 1752, speaks in his Diary of an anonymous
manifesto, which was in fact a remonstrance to the king from the Whig
nobility and gentry, against the method according to which the heir
to the throne was being educated; and also against the arbitrary
principles of the men then in power; but especially that ‘there was
a permanency of power placed in three men whom they looked upon as
dangerous; and that these three men entirely trusted and were governed
by two others, one of whom had the absolute direction of the Prince,
and was of a Tory family, and bred in arbitrary principles; and the
other, who was bred a professed Jacobite, of a declared Jacobite
family, and whose brother, now at Rome, was a favourite of the
Pretender, and even his Secretary of State. In short, the corollary
was, that Murray, Solicitor-General, and Stone, governed the country.’
A copy of this anti-Jacobite declaration reached the king’s hands.
‘What was the effect,’ says the diarist, ‘I can’t tell; but I know they
were very much intrigued to find out whence it came, and who was the
author.’
[Sidenote: _LORD EGMONT ON JACOBITES._]
In 1753, in the debate in the Commons on the number of land forces to
be raised and paid for during that year, Lord Egmont made a speech, the
immediate report of which must have raised surprise and anger in St.
James’s Street and Pall Mall. That Lord Egmont should denounce increase
in the number of men was to be expected, but the Jacobites hardly
expected from him such a blow as was dealt in the following words:――‘I
am sure the old pretence of Jacobitism can now furnish no argument for
keeping up a numerous army in time of peace, for they met with such a
rebuff in their last attempt that I am convinced they will never make
another, whatever sovereign possesses, as his Majesty does, the hearts
and affections of _all the rest_ of his subjects, especially as they
must now be convinced, however much France may encourage them to rebel,
she will never give them any effectual assistance.’
[Sidenote: _IN BOTH HOUSES._]
It is observable that the Jacobites began to be spoken of in less
unworthy tones by their antagonists than before. The Pope and
‘Papists’ were referred to in no unbecoming phrases. Indeed, the
_English_ ‘Catholics’ were never rancorously assailed. The popular
spirit was (and is) against that Ultramontanism which would stop at no
crime to secure its own triumph; which recognises no law, no king, no
country, but Roman, and which, asserting licence for itself, is the
bitter and treacherous enemy of every civil and religious liberty.
The Earl of Bath reflected the better spirit that prevailed when, in
1753, in the debate on the Bill for annexing the forfeited estates
in Scotland to the Crown (which ultimately passed), he said, ‘I wish
national prejudices were utterly extinguished. We ought to live like
brothers, for we have long lived under the same sovereign, and are now
firmly united not only into one kingdom, but into one and the same
general interest; therefore, the question ought never to be, who are
English? or, who are Scots? but, who are most capable and most diligent
in the service of their King and Country.’
One reference to the rebellion was made in the House of Commons, in
1754, in the debate on the propriety of extending the action of the
Mutiny Bill to the East Indies. Murray, the Solicitor- (soon after the
Attorney-) General, observed, ‘His present Majesty will not attempt
it’ (proclaim martial law, under any circumstance, independently
of parliament), ‘as no such thing was thought of during the late
Rebellion, notwithstanding the immense danger we should have been in,
had His Royal Highness and troops from Flanders been detained but a
few weeks by contrary winds.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE HEALTHS._]
Although there was plotting in 1753, and mischief was a-foot, and
Government spies were far from having an idle time of it, the royal
family lived in comparative quiet, save one passing episode connected
with a charge laid, in the month of March, against Bishop Johnson,
of Gloucester, Murray (Solicitor-General), and Stone (one of the
sub-preceptors to the Princes George and Edward)――as Jacobites――of
having had, as Walpole puts it, ‘an odd custom of toasting the
Chevalier and my Lord Dunbar (Murray’s brother and one of the
Chevalier’s peers) at one Vernon’s, a merchant, about twenty years
ago. _The Pretender’s counterpart_ (the King) ordered the Council to
examine into it.’ The accuser, Fawcett, a lawyer, prevaricated. ‘Stone
and Murray,’ says Walpole, ‘took the Bible, on their innocence. Bishop
Johnson scrambled out of the scrape at the very beginning; and the
Council have reported to the King that the accusation was false and
malicious.’
Vernon was in reality a linen-draper. Few people doubted the alleged
drinking of Jacobite healths at his house. The dowager Princess of
Wales told Bubb Dodington that her late husband had told her that Stone
was a Jacobite,――the prince was convinced of it, and when affairs went
ill abroad, he used to say to her in a passion: How could better be
expected when such a Jacobite as Stone could be trusted?
[Sidenote: _THE ROYAL FAMILY._]
Lord Harcourt, Prince George’s governor, was a pedantic man, having
no sympathies with the young. My lord was not much of a Mentor for
a young Telemachus. He bored the prince by enjoining him to hold up
his head, and, ‘for God’s sake,’ to turn out his toes. The tutors of
Prince George, after his father’s death, were in fact divided among
themselves. Bishop Hayter, of Norwich, and Lord Harcourt were openly
at war with Stone and Scott (the last put in by Bolingbroke), who
were countenanced by the dowager princess and Murray, ‘so my Lord
Bolingbroke dead, will govern, which he never could living.’ Murray,
and Stone, and Cresset were Jacobites. Cresset called Lord Harcourt a
groom, and the bishop an atheist. The princess accused the latter of
teaching her sons, George and Edward, nothing. The bishop retorted by
declaring that he was never allowed to teach them anything. His chief
complaint was that Jacobite Stone had lent Prince George (or the Prince
of Wales) a highly Jacobite book to read, namely, ‘The Revolutions of
England,’ by Father D’Orléans; but the objectionable work had really
been lent by ‘Lady Augusta’ to Prince Edward, and by him to his elder
brother.
[Sidenote: _PARLIAMENTARY ANECDOTES._]
Tindal, the historian, remarks that about this very year (1753) ‘a
wonderful spirit of loyalty began to take place all over the kingdom.’
The debates in the two Houses at Westminster confirm this. The old
anxious tone was no longer heard. Not a single reference to Jacobites
and their designs can be found in the reports of the proceedings in the
Legislature. ‘High Church,’ which was once a disloyal menace, became
a subject of ridicule. Horace Walpole thus playfully illustrated the
ignorance of the High Church party in a debate on the proposal to
repeal the Jews’ Naturalization Bill. ‘I remember,’ he said ‘to have
heard a story of a gentleman, a High Churchman, who was a member of
this House, when it was the custom that candles could not be brought in
without a motion regularly made and seconded for that purpose, and an
order of the House pursuant thereto, so that it often became a question
whether candles should be brought in or no, and this question was
sometimes debated until the members could hardly see one another, for
those who were against, or for putting off the affair before the House,
were always against the question for candles. Now it happened, upon one
of those occasions, that the High Church party were against the affair
then depending, and therefore against the question for candles; but
this gentleman, by mistake, divided for it, and when he was challenged
by one of his party for being against them, “Oh Lord!” says he, “I’m
sorry for it, but I thought that candles were for the church!”’
[Sidenote: _ATTEMPT TO MAKE ‘PERVERTS.’_]
Admiral Vernon, ‘the people’s man,’ supporting the popular prejudice
against the emancipation of the Jews, said that if the Bill passed,
rich Jews would insist upon the conversion of everyone employed by
them, ‘and should they once get the majority of common people on their
side, we should soon be all obliged to be circumcised. That this is no
chimerical danger, Sir, I am convinced from what lately happened in my
county. There was there a great and a rich Popish lady lived in it,
who, by connivance, had publicly a chapel in her own house, where mass
was celebrated every Sunday and Holiday. The lady, out of zeal for her
religion, had every such day a great number of buttocks and sirloins
of beef roasted or boiled, with plenty of roots and greens from her
own garden, and every poor person who came to hear mass at her chapel
was sure of a good dinner. What was the consequence? The neighbouring
parish churches were all deserted, and the lady’s chapel was crowded,
for as the common people have not learning enough, no more than some of
their betters, to understand or judge of abstruse speculative points of
divinity, they thought that mass, with a good dinner, was better than
the church service without one, and probably they would judge in the
same manner of a Jewish synagogue.’
[Sidenote: _DR. ARCHIBALD CAMERON._]
In one sense Tindal’s view of the general increase of loyalty was not
ill-founded. There was, however, an increase of Jacobite audacity
also; but the Government were as well aware of it as they were that
the Chevalier was hiding at Bouillon, and that the people there were
heartily sick of him. One proof of their vigilance was made manifest
in the spring of 1753. On the 16th of April, at 6 o’clock in the
evening, a coach, with an escort of dragoons about it, and a captive
gentleman within, was driven rapidly through the City towards the
Tower. The day was the anniversary of Culloden. The time of day was
that when the friends of the happy establishment were at the tipsiest
of their tipsy delight in drunken honour of the victory. It was soon
known who the prisoner was. He was Dr. Archibald Cameron, brother of
Duncan Cameron, of Lochiel. Duncan had joined Charles Edward, in
obedience to his sentimental prince, but with the conviction that
the insurrection would be a failure. Archibald had followed his
elder brother as in duty bound, and the prince from a principle of
allegiance. After Culloden and much misery, they and others escaped
to France by the skin of their teeth. The King of France gave Duncan
the command of a regiment of Scots; Archibald was appointed doctor to
it, and each pretty well starved on his appointment. Both were under
attainder, and subject to death, not having surrendered before a
certain date, or offered to do so after it.
Had Archibald remained quietly in France, his life at least would
have been in no danger; but in the early part of 1753, he crossed to
Scotland in the utmost secrecy, and when he landed he had not the
remotest idea that the eye of Sam Cameron, a Government spy, was
upon him, by whom his movements were made known to the Ministry at
the Cockpit in Downing Street. There can be no doubt that the doctor
went to his native land on a political mission. ‘He certainly,’ says
Walpole, ‘came over with commission to feel the ground.’ He always
protested that he was there on private business connected with the
estate of Lochiel. His enemies declared that the private business
referred to a deposit of money for the Jacobite cause, the secret of
the hiding-place of which was known to Archibald, and that he intended
to appropriate the cash to his own use. Had Cameron’s mission not been
hostile to the established government, he probably would have asked
permission to visit Scotland; and, more than probably, he would have
been permitted to do so. Be this as it may, his namesake, the spy,
betrayed him; and the Justice Clerk of Edinburgh, washing his hands
of the business, sent the trapped captive to London, where he arrived
on the seventh anniversary of the decisive overthrow of the Stuart
cause, and while the ‘joyous and loyal spirits’ were getting preciously
hysterical in memory thereof. The ‘quality,’ however, were supremely
indifferent ‘Nobody,’ writes Walpole, ‘troubled their head about him,
or anything else but Newmarket, where the Duke of Cumberland is at
present making a campaign, with half the nobility, and half the money
of England, attending him.’
[Sidenote: _BEFORE THE COUNCIL._]
In the Tower Dr. Cameron was allowed to rest some eight and forty
hours, and then a multitude saw him carried from the fortress to where
the Privy Council were sitting. The illustrious members of that body
were in an angry mood. They were blustering in their manner, but they
stooped to flattering promises if he would only make a revelation.
When he declined to gratify them, they fell into loud tumultuous
threatenings. They could neither frighten nor cajole him; and
accordingly they flung him to the law, and to the expounders and the
executants of it.
[Sidenote: _TRIAL OF CAMERON._]
Very short work did the latter make with the poor gentleman. It is
said that when he was first captured he denied being the man they took
him for. Now, on the 17th of May, he made no such denial, nor did he
deny having been in arms against the ‘present happy establishment.’ He
declared that circumstances, over which he had no control, prevented
him from clearing his attainder by a surrender on or before a stated
day. But he neither concealed his principles nor asked for mercy.
There was no intention of according him any. Sir William Lee and his
brother judges, the identity of the prisoner being undisputed, agreed
that he must be put to death under the old attainder, and Lee delivered
the sentence with a sort of solemn alacrity. It was the old, horrible
sentence of partial hanging, disembowelling, and so forth. When Lee had
reached the declaration as to hanging, he looked the doctor steadily
in the face, said with diabolical emphasis, ‘but NOT till you are
dead;’ and added all the horrible indignities to which the poor body,
externally and internally, was to be subjected. The judge was probably
vexed at finding no symptom that he had scared the helpless victim, who
was carried back to the Tower amid the sympathies of Jacobites and the
decorous curiosity of ladies and gentlemen who gazed at him, and the
gay dragoons escorting him, as they passed.
[Sidenote: _THE DOCTOR’S JACOBITISM._]
Next day, and for several days, Jean Cameron, the doctor’s wife,
was seen going to St. James’s Palace, to Leicester House, and to
Kensington. She was admitted, by proper introduction to majesty, to
the dowager Princess of Wales and to the Princess Amelia. The sunshine
of such High Mightinesses should ever bear with it grace and mercy;
but poor and pretty Jean Cameron found nothing but civility, and an
expression of regret that the law must be left to take its course. She
went back to cheer, if she could, her doomed, but not daunted, husband.
He was not allowed pen and ink and paper, but under rigid restrictions.
What he wrote was read. If it was not to the taste of the warders,
they tore up the manuscript, and deprived the doctor of the means of
writing. Nevertheless, he contrived to get slips of paper and a pencil,
and therewith to record certain opinions, all of which he made over to
his wife.
It cannot be said that the record showed any respect whatever for the
king _de facto_, or for his family. These were referred to as ‘the
Usurper and his Faction.’ The Duke of Cumberland was ‘the inhuman son
of the Elector of Hanover.’ Not that Cameron wished any harm to them
hereafter. He hoped God would forgive, as he put it, ‘all my enemies,
murderers, and false accusers, from the Elector of Hanover (the present
possessor of the throne of our injured sovereign) and his bloody son
down to Sam Cameron, the basest of their spies, _as I freely do_!’ He
himself, he said, had done many a good turn to English prisoners in
Scotland, had also prevented the Highlanders from burning the houses
and other property of Whigs, ‘for all which,’ he added, ‘I am like to
meet with a Hanover reward.’
[Sidenote: _CHARLES EDWARD, A PROTESTANT._]
On the other hand, the doomed man wrote in terms of the highest praise
of the old and young Chevalier, or the King and Prince of Wales. There
would be neither peace nor prosperity till the Stuarts were restored.
The prince was as tenderly affectioned as he was brave, and Dr. Cameron
knew of no order issued at Culloden to give no quarter to the Elector’s
troops. As aide-de-camp to the prince, he must (he said) have known if
such an order was issued. On another subject, the condemned Jacobite
wrote: ‘On the word of a dying man, the last time I had the honour of
seeing His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, he told me from
his own mouth, and bid me assure his friends from him, that he was a
member of the Church of England.’ It is to be regretted that no date
fixes ‘the last time.’ As to the assurance, it proves the folly of the
speaker; also, that Cameron himself was not a Roman Catholic, as he was
reported to be.
From Walpole’s Letters and the daily and weekly papers, ample details
of the last moments of this unfortunate man may be collected. They
were marked by a calm, unaffected heroism. ‘The parting with his wife
(writes Walpole) the night before (his execution) was heroic and
tender. He let her stay till the last moment, when being aware that the
gates of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she fell at his
feet in agonies: he said, “Madam, this is not what you promised me,”
and embracing her, forced her to retire; then, with the same coolness,
looked at the window till her coach was out of sight, after which, he
turned about and wept.’
[Sidenote: _CAMERON’S CREED._]
On the following morning, the 7th of June, Dr. Cameron expressed a
strong desire to see his wife once more, to take a final leave, but
this was explained to him to be impossible. With a singular carefulness
as to his own appearance, which carefulness indeed distinguished all
who suffered in the same cause, he was dressed in a new suit, a light
coloured coat, red waistcoat and breeches, and even a new bagwig!
The hangman chained him to the hurdle on which he was drawn from the
Tower to Tyburn. ‘He looked much at the Spectators in the Houses
and Balconies,’ say the papers, ‘as well as at those in the Street,
and he bowed to several persons.’ He seemed relieved by his arrival
at the fatal tree. Rising readily from the straw in the hurdle, he
ascended the steps into the cart, the hangman slightly supporting
him under one arm. Cameron, with a sort of cheerfulness, welcomed a
reverend gentleman who followed him,――‘a Gentleman in a lay habit,’
says the ‘Daily Advertiser,’ ‘who prayed with him and then left him
to his private devotions, by which ’twas imagined the Doctor was a
Roman Catholic, and the Gentleman who prayed with him, a Priest.’ This
imagining was wrong. On one of the slips, pencilled in the Tower, and
delivered to his wife, the Doctor had written: ‘I die a member of
the Episcopal Church of Scotland, as by law established before that
most unnatural Rebellion began in 1688, which, for the sins of this
nation, hath continued till this day.’ At Tyburn, moreover, Cameron
made a statement to the sheriff, that he had always been a member of
the Church of England. There was no discrepancy in this, he was simply
an active Jacobite Nonjuror. ◆[Sidenote: _THE LAST VICTIM._]◆ As the
reverend gentleman who attended him, hurriedly descended the steps, he
slipped. Cameron was quite concerned for him, and called to him from
the cart, ‘I think you do not know the way so well as I do.’ Walpole
says: ‘His only concern seemed to be at the ignominy of Tyburn. He was
not disturbed at the dresser for his body, nor for the fire to burn
his bowels;’ but he remembered the emphatic remark of his Judge, that
the burning was to take place while he was yet alive; and he asked
the sheriff to order things so that he might be quite dead before the
more brutal part of the sentence was carried out. The sheriff was a
remarkably polite person. He had begged Cameron, after he had mounted
into the cart, not to hurry himself, but to take his own time: they
would wait his pleasure and convenience, and so on. The courteous
official now promised he would see the Doctor effectually strangled out
of life, before knife or fire touched him. On which, Cameron declared
himself to be ready. It was at this juncture, the chaplain hurriedly
slipt down the steps. ‘The wretch,’ says Walpole, who in doubt as to
his Church, calls him ‘minister or priest,’ ‘after taking leave, went
into a landau, where, not content with seeing the Doctor hanged, he let
down the top of the landau, for the better convenience of seeing him
embowelled.’
[Sidenote: _IN THE SAVOY._]
Even such brutes as then found a sensual delight in witnessing the
Tyburn horrors were touched by the unpretentious heroism of this
unhappy victim. Some of them recovered their spirits a day or two
after, when a man was pilloried at Charing Cross. They repaired to the
spot with a supply of bricks and flung them with such savage dexterity
as soon to break a couple of the patient’s ribs. On the 9th of June
at midnight, there was a spectacle to which they were not invited.
The Government (wisely enough) were resolved that Cameron’s funeral
should be private. The body lay where Lovat’s had lain, at Stephenson’s
the undertaker, in the Strand, opposite Exeter Change. A few Jacobite
friends attended and saw the body quietly deposited in what the papers
styled, ‘the great vault in the precincts of the Savoy.’
It was in this month a report was spread that an attempt had been made
to blow up the Tower, from which, perhaps, the legend has arisen that
the young Chevalier and a friend in disguise had been there to see if
it could not be done! ‘The Report,’ according to the ‘Weekly Journal,’
‘of a lighted match being found at the door of the Powder Magazine
in the Tower was not true.’ A bit of burnt paper lying on the ground
within the Tower gave rise to a story which agitated all London for a
day or two;――and which will be presently referred to.
[Sidenote: _A SCENE AT RICHARDSON’S._]
How Dr. Cameron’s death affected both parties, in London, is best
illustrated by a well-known and picturesque incident recorded by
Boswell. Soon after the execution, Hogarth was visiting Richardson, the
author of ‘Clarissa Harlowe.’ ‘And being a warm partisan of George II.,
he observed to Richardson that certainly there must have been some very
unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this particular case
which had induced the King to approve of an execution for rebellion so
long after the time when it was committed, as this had the appearance
of putting a man to death in cold blood, and was very unlike his
Majesty’s usual clemency. While he was talking, he perceived a person
standing at a window of the room shaking his head, and rolling himself
about in a strange ridiculous manner. He concluded that he was an idiot
whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson, as a very
good man. To his great surprise, however, this figure stalked forward
to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up
the argument, and burst out into an invective against George II., as
one who, upon all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous, mentioning
many instances. In short, he displayed such a power of eloquence that
Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that the
idiot had been at the moment inspired. Hogarth and Johnson were not
made known to each other at this interview.’
[Sidenote: _CAMERON’S CASE._]
Neither Hogarth nor Johnson knew the real facts of this case. Cameron
played a desperate game and lost his stake. Scott, in the Introduction
to Redgauntlet,’ declares that whether the execution of Cameron was
political or otherwise, it might have been justified upon reasons
of a public nature had the king’s Ministry thought proper to do so.
Cameron had not visited Scotland solely on private affairs. ‘It was
not considered prudent by the English Ministry to let it be generally
known that he came to inquire about a considerable sum of money which
had been remitted from France to the friends of the exiled family.’ He
had also, as Scott points out, a commission to confer with Macpherson
of Cluny who, from 1746 to 1756, was the representative or chief
agent of the ‘rightful King,’ an office which he carried on under
circumstances of personal misery and peril. Cameron and Macpherson were
to gather together the scattered embers of disaffection. The former,
being captured, paid the forfeit which was legally due. ‘The ministers,
however,’ says Scott, ‘thought it proper to leave Dr. Cameron’s new
schemes in concealment, lest, by divulging them, they had indicated the
channel of communication which, as is now well known, they possessed
to all the plots of Charles Edward. But it was equally ill-advised
and ungenerous to sacrifice the character of the King to the policy
of the administration. Both points might have been gained by sparing
the life of Dr. Cameron, after conviction, and limiting his punishment
to perpetual exile.’ As it was, Jacobite plots continued to ‘rise and
burst like bubbles on a fountain.’ An affectionate memory of Cameron
was also transmitted through the hearts of his descendants. In the
reign of Victoria, his grandson restored honour to a name which, in a
political point of view, had never been dishonoured.
In the royal chapel of the Savoy, the following inscription is to
be read on the wall beneath a painted glass window:――_In memory of
Archibald Cameron, brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who having
been attainted after the battle of Culloden in 1746, escaped to France,
but returning to Scotland in 1753, was apprehended and executed. He was
buried beneath the Altar of this Chapel. This window is inserted by Her
Majesty’s permission in place of a sculptured tablet which was erected
by his grandson, Charles Hay Cameron, in 1846, and consumed by the fire
which partially destroyed the Chapel in 1864._
The window above referred to has six lights, and each light now
contains figures representing _St. Peter_, _St. Philip_, _St. Paul_,
_St. John_, _St. James_, and _St. Andrew_.
[Sidenote: _A MINOR OFFENDER._]
As a sample of how minor offences on the part of unquiet Jacobites
were punished, the case may be cited of the Rev. James Taylor, who was
not allowed to indulge his Jacobitism even in a compassionate form. A
beggar was arrested in his progress from house to house. He was found
to be the bearer of a recommendatory letter from the Nonjuror Taylor,
in which it was stated that the bearer had fought on the right side
at Preston Pans and Culloden. For this offence Mr. Taylor was tried,
convicted, and heavily sentenced;――namely, to two years’ imprisonment,
a fine of 300_l._, and to find sureties for his good behaviour during
the next seven years, himself in 1000_l._, and two others in 500_l._
each.
All this time, Parliament was perfectly tranquil. There was no flash
of anti-Jacobitism. There was nothing in the debates but what partook
of the lightest of summer-lightning. In the whole session of 1755,
there is but one allusion to Jacobites, and that took the form of a
wish that, ten years before, Scotland had been as heavily oppressed
as England was,――in that and many a succeeding year,――in one special
respect. Mr. Robert Dundas, in the Commons’ debate on speedily manning
the Navy, insisted on the legality and propriety of pressing seamen,
and remarked: ‘How happy it would have been for Scotland, in 1745,
if all her seamen had been pressed into the public service, in order
to man a few guard-ships, to prevent the landing of those who, at
that time, raised such a flame in the country; and yet I believe that
a press could not then have been carried on without the aid of the
military.’
[Sidenote: _SUSPICION AGAINST THE DUKE._]
At this time there was one especial trouble in the royal family.
The dowager Princess of Wales had as much dread of the conqueror at
Culloden, as if he had been the Jacobite prince himself. Her dominant
idea was that the really good-natured and now corpulent duke would
act Richard III. towards the prince, her son, if opportunity should
offer. Bubb Dodington says, in his Diary, May, 1755: ‘On my commending
the Prince’s figure, and saying he was much taller than the King, she
replied, yes; he was taller than his uncle. I said, in height it might
be so, but if they measured round, the Duke had the advantage of him.
She answered, it was true; but she hoped it was the only advantage that
he ever would have of him.’
[Sidenote: _THE ANTI-JACOBITE PRESS._]
In the following year, 1756, electioneering politics found violent
suggestion and expression. Walpole, referring to the clamour raised by
the Jacobites, speaks of ‘Instructions from counties, cities, boroughs,
especially from the City of London, in the style of 1641, and really in
the spirit of 1715 and 1745, (which) have raised a great flame.’ On the
other hand, Jacobites and their manifestations were treated by the Whig
press with boundless contempt. For example, the ‘Contest,’ in 1757,
flung this paragraph at the supposed few _Jacks_ now left in London to
read it:――‘The word _Jacobite_ is _vox et prœterea nihil_. The Name
survives after the Party is extinct. There may be a few enthusiastic
Bigots who deem Obstinacy a Merit, and who appear to be ungrateful for
the Liberty and Security they enjoy under the present Government, and
insensible of the Calamity and Oppression of the Government they would
be willing to restore. But their Power is as inconsiderable as their
Principles are detestable. And many of them, had they an Opportunity
of accomplishing their proposed desires, would be the last to put them
in Execution; for they are mostly influenced by an idle Affectation of
Singularity, and the ridiculous Pride of opposing the Common Sense of
their Fellow Citizens.’
In the same year, the ‘Independent Freeholder’ turned the question
to party account, and divided the people of England into three
classes. It admitted the diminished numbers of Jacobites, recorded
their disaffection, and also accounted for it. The three classes
were――Place Hunters, Jacobites, and English Protestants, whether Whig
or Tory. The ‘Freeholder’ described the Jacobites as:――‘An Offspring
of Zealots, early trained to support the divine hereditary Right of
Men, who forfeited all Right by persisting to do every Wrong. They
are not considerable in Number; and had probably mixed with the Mass
of rational Men, had not the continued Abuses of the Administration
furnished cause of Clamour, enabling secret Enemies of the Constitution
to cherish a groundless Enmity to the Succession.’
[Sidenote: _THE CITY GATES._]
As the reign of George II. drew to a close, in the autumn of 1760, a
change came over the City of London, which, to many, indicated a new
era; namely, the destruction of those City gates in the preservation
of which timid Whigs saw safety from the assaults of Jacobites. _Read_
announced the fate of those imaginary defences, in the ‘Journal’ of
August 2nd:――‘On Wednesday, the materials of the three following
City Gates were sold before the Committee of Lands, to Mr. Blagden,
a carpenter, in Coleman Street; namely, Aldgate, for 157_l._ 10_s._;
Cripplegate, for 91_l._; and Ludgate, for 148_l._ The purchaser is to
begin to pull down the two first, on the first day of September; and
Ludgate on the 4th of August, and is to clear away all the rubbish,
&c., in two months from these days.’ In two months, a new reign had
begun, and the old gates had disappeared.
But before proceeding to the new reign, there remains to be chronicled
how the ordinary London Jacobites obtained news of _their_ King, James,
and _their_ Prince of Wales, Charles Edward.
[Illustration: Decorative banner]