(1751 to 1761.)
[Sidenote: _THE OLD CHEVALIER AND THE CARDINAL._]
[Illustration: Drop-D]uring this decade, there was great anxiety, on
the part of the Jacobites in London, to have news of their Prince.
Of their ‘King’s’ whereabout they knew as much as the papers could
tell them. These anxious Jacobites who eagerly opened the London
journals for news from Rome, of ‘the King’ or ‘Prince of Wales,’
were not often rewarded for their pains. The ‘London Gazette,’ which
chronicled the veriest small beer, had not a word to say as to the
Chevalier or his sons. The other papers recorded, for the comfort or
diversion of readers, such paragraphs as these; namely, that Cardinal
York, on his brother’s birthday, had given a grand entertainment to
a brilliant company of Cardinals and Ladies; and that Rome was more
crowded with English nobility than Hanover, even when King George was
in his electoral dominions. Some sympathy was excited in Jacobite
company, at the intelligence that the Cardinal was recovering from ‘an
attack of Small Pocks,’ which had carried off thousands of victims.
As for _Prince Edward_, as the Cardinal’s brother is often called in
the papers, ‘his place of residence is not known, there being no
other proof of his being alive but the rejoicings of his father on his
son’s birthday.’ Next, ‘Read’ announced, no doubt for the pleasure
of some of its readers, ‘We hear from Rome, by authentick hand, that
Henderson has been formally excommunicated for his “History of the
Rebellion.”’ ‘No one can tell in what place Prince Edward resides,’
says another ‘authentick hand,’ ‘it is currently reported that he is
actually in Italy;’ and again, ‘Some are ready to believe he is still
_incog._ in France.’ Then came ‘authentick’ news to London, of ignoble
quarrels between the Chevalier and his younger son, squabbles about
money, squabbles among their friends in trying to reconcile them;――the
Pope himself being mixed up in the turmoil, and getting such grateful
return as usually falls to mortal mediators. The father and son were at
vulgar loggerheads on the vulgar but important subject of money. Living
together, each wished that the other should contribute more towards
keeping up the household in as much royal state as could be had for
the money. Each also wished the other to send away the confidential
servants that other most wished to keep, and neither would yield.
Subsequently, the London papers tell how the Cardinal went off in a
great huff and princely state, and how he was received in the ‘Italian
cities with guns, like a king’s son,’ as he was held to be. The ‘King,’
his father, is described as ‘greatly distressed, having always counted
on the affection of his son.’ At another time came one of those scraps
of news which always kept alive a feeling of hope in the bosoms of
Jacobites. ‘The Grand Pretender’ had been for two hours in conference
with the Pope, ‘on receipt of important despatches from his Eldest
Son and Heir, Edward. The despatches are at present kept a secret.’
They were supposed to be favourable to something, for the younger son
had promised to return. Probably some tears fell from soft Jacobite
eyes in London, at reading that, as ‘the son tarried, the father stood
patiently waiting for him, in the Hall of his House, and wept over him
when he came.’ The good-natured Pope was almost as much touched.
[Sidenote: _ROMAN NEWS IN LONDON PAPERS._]
All the honours conferred on the Cardinal of York in Rome, and all the
royal and solemn ceremonies which took place on the occasion, were duly
reported in the London papers. The father seems to have been warmly
desirous that dignities should be heaped on the younger son’s head.
The cardinal affected, perhaps felt, reluctance. On his gracefully
yielding, the ‘Grand Pretender’ made him a present of a set of horses.
Reports of the death of Charles Edward had been ripe enough. The
suspense was relieved when, in March, 1753, news reached London from
Rome that the old Pretender had received letters from his son, with the
information that the writer was well; but, says the ‘Weekly Journal,’
‘the Chevalier de St. George don’t absolutely discover where his son
is.’ That he had known of his son’s whereabout, from the first, is most
certain; but he didn’t absolutely discover it to every enquirer.
[Sidenote: _A SON OF ROB ROY._]
A personage of some note was in London this year, the eldest son of Rob
Roy,――James Drummond Macgregor. He seems to have previously petitioned
Charles Edward for pecuniary help, on the ground of suffering from the
persecution of the Hanoverian government, and to have been willing to
serve that government on his own terms. In the introduction to ‘Rob
Roy,’ Sir Walter Scott says that James Drummond Macgregor made use of a
license he held to come to London, and had an interview, as he avers,
with Lord Holdernesse. ‘His lordship and the Under-Secretary put many
puzzling questions to him, and, as he says, offered him a situation,
which would bring him bread, in the government’s service. This office
was advantageous as to emolument, but in the opinion of James Drummond,
his acceptance of it would have been a disgrace to his birth, and have
rendered him a scourge to his country. If such a tempting offer and
sturdy rejection had any foundation in fact, it probably related to
some plan of espionage on the Jacobites, which the government might
hope to carry on by means of a man who, in the matter of Allan Breck
Stewart, had shown no great nicety of feeling. Drummond Macgregor was
so far accommodating as to intimate his willingness to act in any
station in which other gentlemen of honour served, but not otherwise;
an answer which, compared with some passages of his past life, may
remind the reader of Ancient Pistol standing upon his reputation.
Having thus proved intractable, as he tells the story, to the proposals
of Lord Holdernesse, James Drummond was ordered instantly to quit
England.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE PARAGRAPHS._]
The son of Rob Roy, hated and suspected by the Jacobites, got over to
Dunkirk, but he was hunted thence as a spy. He succeeded in reaching
Paris, ‘with only the sum of thirteen livres for immediate subsistence,
and with absolute beggary staring him in the face.’
The hopes of the friends of the Stuarts were encouraged by a paragraph
in the London sheets of 1754 stating, that though the Chevalier was
suffering from sciatica, he was well enough to receive a stranger
(in June), ‘who, by the reception he met with, was supposed to be a
person of distinction. Two days later, the banker, Belloni, had a long
private conference with the Chevalier. What passed was not known, but
what followed _was_; namely, a large sum of money was advanced by the
banker.’ It is easy to imagine how paragraphs like the above stirred
the pulses at the Cocoa Tree and at St. Alban’s coffee-house.
The Jacobite interest was kept up in 1755 by paragraphs which showed
that the family were well with such a civil potentate as the King of
Spain, and with such a religious one as the Pope. The King of Spain,
it was said, had conferred a benefice on Cardinal York, worth 6,000
piastres yearly. In the autumn the London papers announced that ‘The
Chevalier de St. George, who enjoyed the Grand Priory of England, of
the Religion of Malta, which gave him an active and passive voice in
the election of Grand Master, had resigned it, and conferred it on a
Commander Altieri. The collation has been confirmed by the Pope.’
[Sidenote: _HUME’S ‘HISTORY.’_]
In the same year London was stirred by the publication of Hume’s
‘History of England,’ which was denounced as a Jacobite history by
the Whigs, and it was not warmly received by the Jacobites, as it
did not sufficiently laud their historical favourites. ‘It is called
Jacobite,’ wrote Walpole to Bentley, ‘but in my opinion it is only not
_George-abite_. Where others abuse the Stuarts, he laughs at them. I am
sure he does not spare their ministers.’
But it was still to the news sent from Rome that the Jacobites looked
most eagerly for indications of what might be doing there, and the
significance of it. Under date of January 3, 1756, the paragraph of
news from Rome, the Eternal City, in the ‘Weekly Journal,’ informed
all who were interested, that an Irish officer had arrived there with
letters for the Chevalier de St. George, had received a large sum of
money, on a bill of exchange, from Belloni, and had set out again with
the answers to those letters. Again, on January 17th, the Chevalier’s
friends in London were told that two foreigners had called on him with
letters, but that he refused to receive either. ‘He refused to yield to
their most earnest entreaties for an interview.’ ‘Read’ communicates
a no less remarkable circumstance to the Jacobite coffee-houses.
‘Tho’ people have talked to him very much within the last two months
of an expedition on Scotland or Ireland, he has declared that those
kind of subjects are no longer agreeable to him, and that he should
be better pleased to hear nothing said about them.’ Then came news
of the Chevalier being sick, and the Pope, not only sending his own
physician, but stopping his coach to enquire after the exile’s health.
Occasionally, the paragraph of news is communicated by a ‘Papist,’ as,
for instance, in an account of the reception into the Church of Rome of
the young son of the Pasha of Scutari, where it is said that Cardinal
York performed the ceremony of receiving the dusky convert, who had
abandoned a splendid position ‘to come,’ says the writer, at Rome, ‘and
embrace our holy religion.’
[Sidenote: _AT ROME._]
For the purpose of reading such intelligence, the Jacobites opened
feverishly the sheet which oftenest satisfied their curiosity. This
had to be satisfied with little. Throughout ’56 and ’57 they learnt
little more than that the Pope had been ill, and that the Chevalier
and the Cardinal drove daily from their villas to leave their names
at the dwelling of the Pontiff. Next, that the quaint Jacobite, Sir
William Stanhope, had actually had an audience of the Pope, to whom he
had presented a gold box full of rhubarb; and reasons were assigned
why the contents might prove more useful than the casket. Then, clever
English lords had established themselves in great magnificence in
Roman palaces, or in villas as magnificent as palaces; and, still more
encouraging news for the Cocoa Tree and St. Alban’s coffee-house,
the King of Spain had increased the income of Cardinal York by 1,200
crowns yearly, drawn from the revenue of the bishopric of Malaga.
On the north side of Pall Mall, and on the lower terrace of the west
side of St. James’s Street, or beneath the Walnut tree walk in Hyde
Park,――places still much affected by Jacobites, imagination may see
them wearing congratulatory looks on the English lords collecting
near the Chevalier, and the Spanish monarch contributing money to the
Cardinal. If these things were without significance, where should they
look for incidents that would bear cheerful interpretation?
[Sidenote: _HOPES AND INTERESTS._]
Then ensued long silence, broken only by brief announcements of
archiepiscopal (and other) honours heaped upon Cardinal York, and of
splendid dinners in the Quirinal, with Pope and all the Cardinals,
strong enough to sit up, as the joyous host and guests. Not a word,
however, is to be traced with reference to Charles Edward; nor was it
looked for, at the time, by the ‘quality,’ who were contented with ‘the
happy establishment.’ On Christmas Day of this year, Walpole wrote: ‘Of
the Pretenders family one never hears a word. Unless our Protestant
brethren, the Dutch, meddle in their affairs, they will be totally
forgotten; we have too numerous a breed of our own to need princes from
Italy. The old Chevalier ... is likely to precede his rival (George
II.), who, with care, may still last a few years; though I think he
will scarce appear again out of his own house.’
But the hopes and the interest of the London Jacobites had to be
maintained, and, through the London papers, the hopes and the interest
of the adherents of the Stuarts, in the country. The aspirations of
such sympathisers were hardly encouraged by an incident of which
Walpole made the following note, to Conway, in January, 1759: ‘I forgot
to tell you that the King has granted my Lord Marischal’s pardon, at
the request of M. de Knyphausen. I believe the Pretender himself could
get his attainder reversed, if he would apply to the King of Prussia.’
[Sidenote: _ILLNESS OF THE OLD CHEVALIER._]
In the Chatham Correspondence, it is stated that the King of Prussia
had said he should consider it a personal favour done to himself. The
pardoning of such an able military Jacobite as Keith, Earl Marischal,
indicated that the ‘Elector of Hanover’ considered Jacobitism as
dead, or at least powerless. At the same time, the more mysteriously
secluded Charles Edward kept himself, the more curiosity there was
among ‘curious’ people in London to learn something about him and his
designs, if he had any. The apparently mortal illness of the Chevalier
de St. George, in May 1760, caused some of the London papers to publish
a sort of exulting paragraph, not over the supposed dying Chevalier,
but over the fact, announced in the words: ‘We shall soon know where
the young Pretender is!’ Of the father’s impending death no doubt was
made. Was he not seventy-two years of age? And had he not for thirty
years of the time been worn out with anxieties caused by his sons?
One saucy paragraph included the saucier remark:――‘He has left his
estates, which may be Nothing, to his eldest son, whom many think is
Nobody.’ But all this was premature. The old prince did not die this
year. George II. _did_. The grandson of the latter began to reign in
October. The Jacobites laughed at his new Majesty’s boast of being
born a Briton, for ‘James III.’ was more purely British than he; born
in London, and son of a father who was also born in this metropolis,
he was less of a foreigner than George III., whose parents were purely
German. The Jacobites made the most of this difference; and when
such of them as were in Hyde Park saw the king’s horse nearly break
his rider’s neck by suddenly flinging him out of the saddle, those
spectators probably thought of the results of King William’s fall from
horseback, and hoped that heaven was on their side. The newspapers
admiringly recorded the presence of mind of the young king, who, though
shaken, went to the play the same night, to calm the supposed anxieties
of his faithful people.
[Sidenote: _ACCESSION OF GEORGE III._]
Much as Jacobites had railed at the late ‘Elector of Hanover and his
bloody son,’ and had devoted both of them to eternal perdition in hell,
a sort of serio-comic assurance that their malice was ineffective seems
to have been insinuated in the first words of the anthem, set to music
by Boyce, for the king’s (or the elector’s) funeral; namely, ‘The souls
of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall be no torment
touch them.’ On the first occasion of George III. going to the Chapel
Royal (Sunday, November 17th), the Rev. Dr. Wilson took his text from
Malachi i. 6, where the prophet speaks of the rebellious spirit and
irreligiousness of Israel, a text which Nonjurors, and especially the
Nonjuring clergy, might well take to themselves. ◆[Sidenote: _KING
AND PEOPLE._]◆ After ‘Chapel’ there was a ‘Court.’ Of the latter, the
papers say: ‘By the insolence of the soldiers many persons were not
suffered to go into the Gallery. All those that paid for seeing his
Majesty were admitted, a practice, it is hoped, will soon be put a stop
to.’ The price of admission is not stated; but among those who had
gathered about the Park were nearly a thousand tailors, who, rather
than stoop to work for five shillings a day, refused to work at all.
The newspapers protested that it was a thousand pities a press-gang or
two had not been in the Park to sweep these fellows into the ships that
lacked men. If they would not work for themselves on liberal wages,
they ought to be compelled to serve their country on less. There was no
doubt about their bravery, for the London tailors had, not long before,
brilliantly distinguished themselves under Elliot, at Gibraltar. The
hint of the amiable journalists was acted on, on the Coronation day, in
1761. While the British-born king of a free people, over whom, he said,
he was proud to reign, was being crowned (with his young queen) in the
Abbey, ruffianly press-gangs were making very free with that people all
around the sacred edifice; seizing whom they would; knocking on the
head all who resisted; flinging them into vessels on the river, and so
despatching them to Gravesend, the Nore, and thence to men-of-war on
various stations!
[Sidenote: _CHARLES EDWARD AT WESTMINSTER._]
One visitor is alleged to have been present at this coronation, who
certainly was not an invited, nor would he have been a welcome, guest.
This visitor is said to have been Charles Edward himself! As he is
also credited with two or three earlier visits to London, the question
as to the truth of the reports may be conveniently considered here.
We will only remark that, in the closing years of the reign of George
II., Jacobites, who had neither been harmless nor intended to remain
so if opportunity favoured them, were allowed to live undisturbed.
As Justice Foxley remarked to Ingoldsby, they attended markets,
horse-races, cock-fights, fairs, hunts, and such like, without
molestation. While they were good companions in the field and over a
bottle, bygones were bygones.
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