(1761-1775.)
[Sidenote: _STATE OF LONDON._]
[Illustration: Drop-L]ondon, at the beginning of the reign of George
III., was, as it had been for many years, in a condition resembling
the capital of Dahomey at the present time. It could not be entered
by any suburb, including the Thames, without the nose and eyes being
afflicted by the numerous rottening bodies of criminals gibbeted in
chains. The heads of two rebels still looked ghastly from Temple Bar.
The bodies on gibbets often created a pestilence. The inhabitants of
the infected districts earnestly petitioned to be relieved from the
horrible oppression. If their petition was unheeded they took means to
relieve themselves. A most significant paragraph in the papers states
that ‘_All_ the gibbets in the Edgware Road were sawn down in one
night.’ Not only the suburban roads, but the streets and squares were
infested by highwaymen and footpads. Robberies (with violence) were
not only committed by night, but by day. Murders were perpetrated out
of mere wantonness, and a monthly score of delinquents, of extremely
wide apart offences, were strangled at Tyburn, without improvement to
society. It was still a delight to the mob to kill some very filthy
offender in the pillory, who generally was not more unclean than his
assassins. Ladies going to or from Court in their chairs were often
robbed of their diamonds, the chairmen feigning a defence which helped
the robbers. A prince or princess returning to London from Hampton
Court would now and then pick up a half-murdered wretch in a ditch, and
drop him at the first apothecary’s in town. The brutal school boys of
St. Bride’s, imitating their fathers, took to violence as a pastime.
They could sweep into Fleet Street with clubs, knock down all whom they
could reach, and retreat all the prouder if they left a dead victim on
the field. There was anarchy in the streets and highways, but it is a
comfort to find that at the Chapel Royal, there were none but ‘extreme
polite audiences.’ Indeed, the sons of violence themselves were not
without politeness. A batch of one hundred of those of whom the gallows
had been disappointed, were marched from Newgate to the river side, to
embark for the Plantations. A fife band preceded them, playing ‘Through
the wood, laddie!’ The convicts roared out the song. ‘You are very
joyous?’ said a spectator. ‘Joyous!’ cried one of the rascals, ‘you
only come with us and you’ll find yourself _transported_!’
[Sidenote: _GOOD FEELING._]
There were no Jacobites at Oxford now, but there was a new sect
of Methodists there. Six of its members, students of Edmund Hall,
were expelled for praying and expounding the Scripture in their own
rooms! In another direction there was something like reconciliation.
The Government at St. James’s allowed a Popish prelate to establish
himself in Canada, on condition that France should entirely abandon the
Jacobites; and now, for the first time, the king and royal family of
the House of Hanover were prayed for in all the Roman Catholic chapels
in Ireland, and in the Ambassadors’ chapels in London.
The king showed his respect for the principle of fidelity, on the part
of the Jacobite leaders, by restoring some of the forfeited estates to
the chiefs. He showed it also in another way. Having been told of a
gentleman of family and fortune in Perthshire, who had not only refused
to take the oath of allegiance to him, but had never permitted him
to be named as king in his presence, ‘Carry my compliments to him,’
said the king, ‘but what?――stop!――no!――he may perhaps not receive
my compliment as King of England; give him the Elector of Hanover’s
compliments, and tell him that he respects the steadiness of his
principles.’ Hogg, who tells this story in the introduction to the
‘Jacobite Relics,’ does not see that in this message there was an
excess of condescension that hardly became the king, though the spirit
of the message _did_. The story is told with some difference in the
introduction to ‘Redgauntlet.’
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE FUNERAL._]
In October of the year 1761, there died a Jacobite of some
distinction, who had the honour to be permitted to lie in Westminster
Abbey; but, the spectators who had been at the lying in state,
observed, with some surprise, that his coffin-plate bore only the
initials K. M. L. F. The ‘Funeral Book’ of the Abbey is not more
communicative, save that the age of the defunct was forty-three. As
the coffin sank to its resting place in the South Aisle, curious
strangers were told that it contained the body of Kenneth Mackenzie,
Lord Fortrose――a dignity not sanctioned by the law; for, Kenneth was
the only son of the fifth Earl of Seaforth, who suffered attainder and
forfeiture for the part he played in the insurrection of 1715. But
Kenneth left an only son, Kenneth (by Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of
the Earl of Galloway). This son was not restored to his grandfather’s
titles in the Scotch peerage, but he was created Viscount Fortrose and
Earl of Seaforth in the peerage of Ireland. This transplantation was
not fortunate. Lord Seaforth died, leaving no male heir, in 1781, when
the old Jacobite title became extinct. The son of the attainted earl,
restored as to his fortune, was in the army, and in Parliament in 1746,
when he accompanied the Duke of Cumberland to Scotland, but his wife
and clan, as Walpole remarks, went with the Rebels. The Irish peer but
Scotch Earl of Seaforth well deserved his distinction, when in 1779,
with seven hundred Mackenzies at his back, he repelled the invasion of
Jersey by a French force.
[Sidenote: _DR. JOHNSON’S PENSION._]
Other Jacobites were taken into favour, for which loyal service was
rendered. One of the first gracious acts of George III. was to confer
a pension on Dr. Johnson, of 300_l._ a year, equal now to twice that
sum. Johnson had well earned it, and he was expressly told that it
was conferred on him for what he had done, not for anything he was
expected to do. He felt that he was not expected to be an apologist
of the Stuarts, and the first act of the ex-Jacobite, after becoming
a pensioner, was to write for the Rev. Dr. Kennedy’s ‘Complete System
of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures,’ a dedication
to the king who had pensioned him (and whom he had looked upon as the
successor of two usurpers), which dedication is truly described as
being in a strain of very courtly elegance. As to the granting of the
pension by the king, Dr. Johnson, the once adherent to the Stuart,
remarked, ‘The English language does not afford me terms adequate to
my feelings on this occasion. I must have recourse to the French. I am
_pénétré_ with his Majesty’s goodness.’ Johnson was quite sensible that
it would be right to do something more for his reward. The something
was done in another dedication to the Queen, of Hoole’s translation of
Tasso, ‘which is so happily conceived,’ says Boswell, ‘and elegantly
expressed, that I cannot but point it out to the peculiar notice of
my readers.’ Johnson soon became a partisan of the Hanoverian family.
Speaking of some one who with more than ordinary boldness attacked
public measures and the royal family, he said, ‘I think he is safe from
the law, but he is an abusive scoundrel; and instead of applying to my
Lord Chief Justice to punish him, I would send half-a-dozen footmen and
have him well ducked.’ A semi-noyade was now thought fitting recompense
for a Stuart apologist.
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON’S VIEW OF IT._]
At a later period, when Johnson reviewed, in ‘The Gentleman’s
Magazine,’ Tyler’s Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, the Jacobitism
quite as much as the generosity of his principles led him to say, ‘It
has now been fashionable for near half a century to defame and vilify
the House of Stuart.... The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the
dead cannot pay for praise, and who will without reward oppose the tide
of popularity?’
Johnson being accused of tergiversation, has a right to be heard in
his own case. Much censured for accepting a pension which many a
censurer would have taken with the utmost alacrity, ‘Why, Sir,’ said
he with a hearty laugh, ‘it is a mighty foolish noise that they make.
I have accepted a pension as a reward which has been thought due to
my literary merit; and now that I have the pension, I am the same man
in every respect that I have ever been. I retain the same principles.
It is true that I cannot now curse (smiling) the House of Hanover,
nor would it be decent of me to drink King James’s health in the
wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, Sir, I think
that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking King
James’s health, are amply overbalanced by 300_l._ a year.’ To this
may be added Boswell’s assurance that Johnson had little confidence
in the rights claimed by the Stuarts, and that he felt, in course of
time, much abatement of his own Toryism. ◆[Sidenote: _HIS DEFINITION
OF A JACOBITE._]◆ It was in his early days that he talked _fierce_
Jacobitism, at Mr. Langton’s, to that gentleman’s niece, Miss Roberts.
The Bishop of Salisbury (Douglas) and other eminent men were present.
Johnson, taking the young lady by the hand, said, ‘My dear, I hope you
are a Jacobite.’ Her uncle was a Tory without being a Jacobite, and
he angrily asked why Johnson thus addressed his niece? ‘Why, Sir,’
said Johnson, ‘I meant no offence to your niece, I mean her a great
compliment. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the Divine Right of kings.
He who believes in the Divine Right of kings believes in a Divinity.
A Jacobite believes in the Divine Right of bishops. He that believes
in the Divine Right of bishops believes in the Divine Authority of the
Christian Religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist
nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig, for Whiggism is a negation
of all principle.’
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND._]
Be this as it may, Jacobitism was as surely dying out as he was who had
crushed the hopes of Jacobites at Culloden. The victor on that field,
and even now in the prime of life, died in 1765, of what Walpole called
a ‘rot among princes.’ He was a ton of man, unwieldy, asthmatic, blind
of one eye, nearly so of the other, lame through his old Dettingen
wound, half breathless from asthma, half paralysed by an old attack,
able to write a letter, yet not able to collect his senses sufficiently
to play a game of piquet. On the 30th of October, he went to Court, and
received Lord Albemarle to dine with him, at his house in Grosvenor
Street. Unable to attend a Cabinet Council in the evening, the Duke of
Newcastle and Lord Northington called on him. As they entered the room,
one of his valets was about to bleed him, at his own request. Before
the operation could be performed, the duke murmured, ‘It is all over!’
and fell dead in Lord Albemarle’s arms.
Lord Albemarle remembered that when the duke’s brother, Frederick,
Prince of Wales, died, his cautious widow immediately burned all his
papers and letters. Lord Albemarle could not take upon himself to
destroy the duke’s papers, but he sent the whole of them to the duke’s
favourite sister, the Princess Amelia. She replied, from Gunnersbury,
‘You are always attentive and obliging, my good Lord Albemarle. I thank
you for the letters, and I have burnt them.’ Many a secret perished
with them. George III. conferred on Lord Albemarle the duke’s garter.
The bitterness and pertinacity of the Jacobites against the duke cannot
be better illustrated than by an incident recorded by Boswell. Johnson,
Wedderburne, Murphy, and Foote, visited ‘Bedlam’ (in Moorfields)
together. At that time idle people went to look at the ‘mad people in
dens,’ as they now go to a menagerie, or ‘the Zoo.’ Boswell says that
Foote gave a very entertaining account of Johnson having his attention
arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his
straw, supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland, whom he was
punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746. The entertainment
was in the fact that Jacobite Johnson was amused by this sad spectacle.
The duke was soon followed on ‘the way to dusty death,’ by him whose
life he had certainly helped to embitter.
[Sidenote: _DEATH OF THE OLD CHEVALIER._]
The death of the Chevalier de St. George, at Rome, on New Year’s Night,
1766, was not known in London for nearly a fortnight. The only stir
caused by it was at the Council Board at St. James’s, whence couriers
rode away with despatches for foreign courts, which couriers speedily
returned with satisfactory answers. The Chevalier might, like Charles
II., have apologised to those who attended his death-bed, on his being
so long adying. What had come to be thought of him in London may be
partly seen in Walpole’s ‘Memoirs of the reign of George III.’ There
the Chevalier is spoken of as one who had outlived his own hopes and
the people who had ever given him any. ‘His party was dwindled to
scarce any but Catholics.’ Of the church of the latter, Walpole calls
him the most meritorious martyr, and yet Rome would not recognise the
royalty of the heirs. ‘To such complete humiliation was reduced that
ever unfortunate House of Stuart, now at last denied the empty sound of
royalty by the Church and Court, for which they had sacrificed three
kingdoms.’
[Sidenote: _FUNERAL RITES._]
The newspapers and other periodicals of the time took less interest in
the event than in a prize-fight. The feeling with trifling exception
was one of indifference, but there was nowhere any expression of
disrespect. The various accounts of the imperial ceremony with which
the body of the unlucky prince lay in state, and was ultimately
entombed, were no doubt read with avidity. The imagination of
successive reporters grew with details of their subject. A figure of
Death which appears among the ‘properties’ of the lying in state,
in the earliest account, expands into ‘thirteen skeletons holding
wax tapers’ in the later communications. To this state ceremony, the
London papers assert, none were admitted but Italian princes and
English――Jacobites of course,――several of whom left London for the
purpose. At the transfer of the body to St. Peter’s, the royal corpse
was surrounded by ‘the English college,’ and was followed by ‘four
Cardinals on mules covered with purple velvet hangings.’ The Jacobites
must have put down the London papers with a feeling that their king was
dead, and a hope that his soul was at rest.
The death seems to have had a curious effect on at least one London
Jacobite. In January, 1766, two heads remained on Temple Bar. The
individual just referred to thought they had remained there long
enough. For some nights he secretly discharged bullets at them from a
cross-bow; and at last he was caught in the act. He was suspected of
being a kinsman of one of the unhappy sufferers; but in presence of the
magistrates he maintained that he was a loyal friend of the established
government; ‘that he thought it was not sufficient that traitors should
merely suffer death, and that consequently he had treated the heads
with indignity by trying to smash them.’ This offender, who affected a
sort of silliness, was dismissed with a caution. There were found upon
him fifty musket bullets, separately wrapped in paper, each envelope
bearing the motto ‘Eripuit ille vitam,’ the application of which would
have puzzled Œdipus himself.
[Sidenote: _GEORGE III. AND DR. JOHNSON._]
The next incident of the time connected with Jacobitism is the
celebrated interview between the king and Dr. Johnson. In that
celebrated audience which the old Tory had of the king, in February,
1767, in the library of Buckingham Palace, sovereign and subject
acquitted themselves equally well. Mr. Barnard, the librarian, had
settled Johnson, and left him, by the library fireside. The Doctor was
deep in a volume when the king and Barnard entered quietly by a private
door, and the librarian, going up to Johnson, whispered in his ear,
‘Sir, here is the king.’ George III. was ‘courteously easy.’ Johnson
was self-possessed and equally at his ease, as he stood in the king’s
presence.
With little exception, the conversation was purely literary: the
characteristics of the Oxford and Cambridge libraries; the publications
of the University presses; the labours of Johnson himself; the
controversy between Warburton and Lowth; Lord Lyttelton as a historian;
the merits of the universal Dr. Hill; the quality of home and foreign
periodicals; and so on. When Lyttelton was named, Johnson said he had
blamed Henry II. over much. The king thought historians seldom did such
things by halves. ‘No, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘not to kings;’ but he
added: ‘That for those who spoke worse of kings than they deserved, he
could find no excuse; but he could more easily conceive how some might
speak better of them than they deserved, without any ill intention; for
as kings had much in their power to give, those who were favoured by
them would frequently, from gratitude, exaggerate their praises; and as
this proceeded from a good motive, it was certainly excusable――as far
as error was excusable.’
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON, ON GEORGE III._]
When Johnson submitted that he himself had done his part as a writer,
‘I should have thought so, too,’ said the king, ‘if you had not
written so well.’ Johnson spoke of this to Boswell in these words:
‘No man could have paid a handsomer compliment, and it was fit for
a king to pay: it was decisive.’ On another occasion, Johnson being
asked if he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered: ‘No,
Sir. When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to
bandy civilities with my sovereign.’ Later still he said, ‘I find it
does a man good to be talked to by his sovereign;’ and for some time
subsequently he continued to speak of the king as he had spoken of him
to Mr. Barnard, after the interview: ‘Sir, they may talk of the king
as they will, but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen;’ and
later, ‘still harping on my daughter,’ he said at Langton’s: ‘Sir, his
manners are those of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Louis XIV.
or Charles II.’
Assuredly, the fine-gentleman manners of either king were not now to
be found in the Charles Edward who aspired to the throne which Charles
II. had occupied. A passage in an autograph letter, addressed in May,
1767, by Cardinal York to a friend of the family in London (where it
was offered for sale three or four years ago), shows the condition of
the prince, and shadows forth the lingering hopes of the family. The
Cardinal, after stating that the Pope had presented Charles Edward with
‘a pair of beads,’ adds: ‘They are of such a kind as are _only given to
Sovrains_, and could wee but gett the better of the nasty Bottle, which
every now and then comes on by spurts, I would hope a greet deal of
ouer gaining a good deal _as to other things_.’
[Sidenote: _JOHNSON’S PENSION OPPOSED._]
Four years later (that is, in 1771), the pensioning of Jacobite
Johnson was brought before the notice of the House of Commons. In
parliament, his Jacobitism was made use of as a weapon against himself.
Townshend’s charge against the Ministry was based on the alleged fact
that Johnson was a pensioner, and was expected to earn his pension. ‘I
consider him,’ said Townshend, ‘a man of some talent, but no temper.
The principle he upholds I shall ever detest. This man, a Jacobite by
principle, has been encouraged, fostered, pensioned, because he _is_
a Jacobite.’ Wedderburn denied it, and aptly asked, ‘If a papist, or
a theoretical admirer of a republican form of government, should be
a great mathematician or a great poet, doing honour to his country
and his age, and should fall into destitution, is he to be excluded
from the royal bounty?’ The answer is patent; but it is not a matter
for gratulation that Johnson wrote, as Lord Campbell remarks, ‘out of
gratitude, “The False Alarm,” and “Taxation no Tyranny,” the proof
sheets of which were revised at the Treasury.’ Johnson himself did not
prove that his withers were unwrung by the vaunting remark to Davies:
‘I wish my pension, Sir, were twice as large, that they might make
twice as much noise.’
[Sidenote: _A 30TH OF JANUARY SERMON._]
In 1772, Jacobitism was again under parliamentary notice. At this
time, although the Nonjurors kept true in their allegiance to the
hereditary right of the Stuarts, the Tories were as opposite as could
be to those of the old turbulent era of ‘High Church and Ormond!’
On the 30th of January, Dr. Nowell (Principal of St. Mary, Oxford)
preached before the House of Commons a sermon that Sacheverel might
have preached. That is to say, he vindicated Charles I.; he also drew
a parallel between him and George III., and indulged in very high Tory
sentiments. As usual, the preacher was thanked, and he was requested
to print his discourse, which was done accordingly. At this juncture
the younger Townshend moved in the House to have the sermon burnt
by the common hangman; but, says Walpole (in his ‘Last Journals’),
‘as the Houses had, according to custom, thanked the parson for his
sermon, without hearing or reading it, they could not censure it now
without exposing themselves to great ridicule.’ They did censure it,
nevertheless. ◆[Sidenote: _DEBATE ON THE SERMON._]◆ Captain Walsingham
Boyle, R.N., proposed, and Major-General Irwin seconded, the motion
that the vote of thanks should be expunged. This was opposed by Sir
William Dolben and Sir Roger Newdegate, who had proposed the vote of
thanks. ‘Sir Roger,’ says Walpole, as above, ‘was stupidly hot, and
spoke with all the flame of stupid bigotry, declaring that he would
maintain all the doctrines in the sermon were constitutional.’ T.
Townshend, jun., showed how repugnant they were to the constitution,
and it was carried by 152 to 41, to expunge the thanks. General Keppel,
Colonel Fitzroy (Vice-Chamberlain to the king), and Charles Fox, all
descendants of Charles I., voted against the sermon, as did even Dyson
and many courtiers. The 41 were rank Tories, all but Rigby, who had
retired behind the chair; but, being made to vote, voted as he thought
the king would like, to whom he paid the greatest court, expecting to
be Chancellor of the Exchequer if Lord Guilford should die and Lord
North go into the House of Lords. This proper severity on the sermon,’
as Walpole now calls it, ‘was a great blow to the Court, as clergymen
would fear to be too forward with their servility, when the censure
of Parliament might make it unadvisable for the king to prefer them.’
Boswell thought that ‘Dr. Nowell will ever have the honour which is
due to a lofty friend of our monarchical constitution.’ ‘Sir,’ said
Johnson, ‘the Court will be very much to blame if he is not promoted.’
A dozen years later, Johnson, Boswell, and ‘very agreeable company
at Dr. Nowell’s, drank Church and King after dinner with true Tory
cordiality.’ The toast had a different personal application in former
days.
[Sidenote: _MARRIAGE OF CHARLES EDWARD._]
And there was something a-foot which might culminate in restoring
that old personal application. London suddenly heard that Charles
Edward had quite as suddenly disappeared from Florence. ‘I am sorry,’
Walpole wrote to our minister at Florence, in September, ‘that so
watchful a cat should let its mouse slip at last, without knowing
into what hole it is run.’ Walpole conjectured Spain, on his way to
Ireland, with Spanish help. But the prince was bent on other things,
and not on invasion and conquest by force of arms. Charles Edward
had once declared (London gossip at least gave him the credit of the
declaration) that he would never marry, in order that England might
not be trammeled by new complications. When he _did_ marry, the
London papers made less ado about it than if the son of an alderman
had married ‘an agreeable and pretty young lady with a considerable
fortune.’ This single paragraph told the Londoners of the princely
match: ‘April 1st, 1772. The Pretender was married the 28th of last
month at St. Germain, in France, by proxy, to a Princess of Stolberg,
who set off immediately to Italy to meet him.’
[Sidenote: _WALPOLE, ON THE MARRIAGE._]
Walpole reflects, but exaggerates, the opinions of London fashionable
society, on the marriage of Charles Edward. He knows little about the
bride. ‘The new Pretendress is said to be but sixteen, and a Lutheran.
I doubt the latter. If the former is true, I suppose they mean to carry
on the breed in the way it began――by a spurious child. A Fitz-Pretender
is an excellent continuation of the patriarchal line.’ At that time
the Royal Marriage Bill, which prohibited the princes and princesses
of the Royal Family from marrying without the consent of the Sovereign,
or, in certain cases, of Parliament, was being much discussed.
‘Thereupon,’ Mr. Chute says, ‘when the Royal Family are prevented from
marrying, it is a right time for the Stuarts to marry. This event
seems to explain the Pretender’s disappearance last autumn; and though
they sent him back from Paris, they may not dislike the propagation of
thorns in our side.’
In a subsequent letter, Walpole continues the subject. ‘I do not
believe,’ he says, ‘that she is a Protestant, though I have heard
from one who should know, General Redmond, an Irish officer in the
French service, that the Pretender himself abjured the Roman Catholic
religion at Liége, a few years ago, and that, on that account, the
Irish Catholics no longer make him remittances. This would be some, and
the only apology, but fear, for the Pope’s refusing him the title of
king. What say you to this Protestantism? At Paris they call his income
twenty-five thousand pound sterling a year. His bride has nothing but
many quarters. The Cardinal of York’s answer last year to the question
of _whither his brother was gone_? is now explained. “You told me,” he
replied, “_whither_ he should have gone a year sooner.”’
[Sidenote: _THE LAST HEADS ON TEMPLE BAR._]
The London papers of the 1st of April contained other information not
uninteresting to Jacobites. It was in this form:――‘Yesterday, one of
the rebel heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now
remaining.’ The remaining head fell shortly after. They were popularly
said to be those of Towneley and Fletcher; and, as before noticed,
there is a legend that Towneley’s head is still preserved in London.
The late Mr. Timbs, in his ‘London and Westminster,’ gives this account
of ‘the rebel heads’ and their farewell to the Bar:――‘Mrs. Black,
the wife of the editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ when asked if she
remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply in her brusque,
hearty way: “Boys, I recollect the scene well. I have seen on that
Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads――real heads――traitors’
heads――spiked on iron poles. There were two. I saw one fall (March
31st, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, as I have heard, shrieked.
One woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I recollect seeing human heads
on Temple Bar.”’ The spikes were not removed till early in the present
century.
[Sidenote: _DALRYMPLE’S ‘MEMOIRS.’_]
At this period merit in literature was allowed or denied, according
to the writer’s politics. In 1773 Sir John Dalrymple published the
famous second volume of his ‘Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,
from the dissolution of the last Parliament until the Sea-Battle of La
Hogue.’ The first volume had appeared two years previously. The third
and concluding volume was not published till 1788. The second volume
was _famous_ for its exposure of Lord William Russell and Algernon
Sidney as recipients of money from Louis XIV.; money not personally
applied, but used, or supposed to be used, for the purpose of
establishing a republic. Walpole was furious at a book which, while it
treated both sides, generally, with little tenderness, absolved the
last two Stuart kings from blame, and spoke of William with particular
severity. Walpole says of Sir John: ‘He had been a hearty Jacobite;
pretended to be converted; then paid his court when he found his old
principles were no longer a disrecommendation at court. The great
object of his work was to depreciate and calumniate all the friends
of the Revolution.... The famous second volume was a direct charge of
bribery from France, on the venerable hero, Algernon Sidney, pretended
to be drawn from Barillon’s papers at Versailles, a source shut up to
others, and actually opened to Sir John, by the intercession of even
George III.――a charge I would not make but on the best authority. Lord
Nuneham, son of Lord Harcourt, then ambassador in Paris, told me his
father obtained licence for Sir John to search those archives――amazing
proof of all I have said on the designs of this reign; what must they
be when George III. encourages a Jacobite wretch to hunt in France
for materials for blackening the heroes who withstood the enemies of
Protestants and Liberty?... Men saw the Court could have no meaning
but to sap all virtuous principles and to level the best men to
the worst,――a plot more base and destructive than any harboured by
the Stuarts.... Who could trust to evidence either furnished from
Versailles or coined as if it came from thence? And who could trust to
Sir John, who was accused, I know not how truly, of having attempted
to get his own father hanged, and who had been turned out of a place,
by Lord Rockingham, for having accepted a bribe?’
[Sidenote: _WALPOLE’S ANTI-JACOBITISM._]
The above, from Walpole’s ‘Last Journals,’ is a curious burst of
Anti-Jacobitism, on the part of a man who gave Sir John Dalrymple a
letter of introduction to the French Minister, de Choiseul! Sir John
in his preface names ‘Mr. Stanley, Lord Harcourt, and Mr. Walpole,’ as
furnishing him with such introductions. All that the king did was to
allow access to William III.’s private chest, at Kensington, and the
‘ex-Jacobite wretch’ to make what he could out of the contents. Walpole
never forgave him. In 1774, when a Bill, to relieve booksellers who had
bought property in copies, was before the Commons, ‘the impudent Sir
John Dalrymple,’ as Walpole calls him, ‘pleaded at the bar of the House
against the booksellers, who had paid him 2000_l._ for his book in
support of the Stuarts. This was the wretch,’ cries Walpole, ‘who had
traduced Virtue and Algernon Sidney!’
[Sidenote: _ANTI-ULTRAMONTANISM._]
Walpole spared Lord Mansfield, the brother of Murray of Broughton
(and almost as much of a Jacobite), as little as he did Dalrymple. In
June, this year, there was a hotly-sustained battle in the Commons
over the Quebec Bill. The Bill was denounced as an attempt to involve
Protestants under a Roman Catholic jurisdiction. The Court was accused
of preparing a Popish army to keep down the American colonies. Walpole
charged Lord Mansfield with being the author of the Bill, and with
disavowing the authorship. On the 9th of June, Lord North proposed
to adjourn the debate till the 11th, as on the intervening day Lord
Stanley was to give a grand entertainment at the Oaks, near Epsom, in
honour of his intended bride, Lady Betty Hamilton. The opposition in
the House did not let slip the palpable opportunity. They severely
ridiculed the minister, and Tom Townshend told him,――the Pretender’s
birthday, the 10th of June, was a proper festival for finishing a
Bill of so Stuart-like a complexion! Camden said, in the Lords, that
the king, by favouring such a measure, would commit a breach of his
coronation oath. Walpole has recorded, in his ‘Last Journals,’ that
the sovereign who was wearing the crown of England, to the prejudice
of the Stuart family, was doing by the authority of a free parliament
what James II. was expelled for doing. The City told the king, in a
petition not to pass the Bill, that he had no right to the crown but
as a protector of the Protestant religion. Walpole remarked, ‘The King
has a Scotch Chief Justice, abler than Laud, though not so intrepid as
Lord Strafford. Laud and Strafford lost their heads,――Lord Mansfield
would not lose his, for he would die of fear, if he were in danger,
of which, unfortunately, there is no prospect.’ The Bill was carried
in both Houses. On the 22nd of June, the king went down to the Lords
to pass the Bill, and prorogue the Parliament. The crowded streets
wore quite the air of old Jacobite times. The feeling of dread and
hatred, not against English Catholics, but against that form of
Popery called Ultramontanism, which would, if it could, dash out the
brains of Protestantism, and overthrow kings and thrones ‘ad majorem
Dei gloriam,’ found bitter expression on that day. ‘His Majesty,’
according to the journals, ‘was much insulted on his way to the House
of Peers yesterday. The cry of NO POPERY! was re-echoed from every
quarter, and the noisy expressions of displeasure were greater than
his Majesty ever yet heard.’ On the other hand, the king’s brother,
the Duke of Gloucester, rose suddenly into favour. He voted against
the Bill. With reference to that step, the ‘Public Advertiser’
chronicled the following lines: ‘’Tis said that a great personage has
taken an additional disgust at another great personage dividing with
the minority on Friday last. This is the second heinous offence the
latter has been guilty of; the first, committing matrimony; and now,
professing himself a Protestant.’ Walpole thought it was judicious in
him to let it be seen that at least one Prince of the House of Hanover
had the Protestant cause at heart, and the preservation of the ‘happy
establishment.’
[Sidenote: ‘_THE HAPPY ESTABLISHMENT._’]
As the study of the times is pursued, the student is no sooner disposed
to believe that Jacobitism has ultimately evaporated, than he comes
upon some remarkable proof to the contrary. The following is one of
such proofs.
[Sidenote: _GARRICK’S MACBETH._]
In the year 1775, some friend of the drama remonstrated with Garrick
on the absurdity of the costume in which he and other actors of
Macbeth played the hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The actor of the
Thane generally dressed the character in a modern military uniform.
As an improvement, it was suggested that a tartan dress was the proper
costume to wear. Of course the real Macbeth was never seen in such a
dress; but Garrick was not troubled at _that_. He objected for another
reason. ‘It is only thirty years ago,’ he said, ‘that the Pretender was
in England. Party spirit runs so high that if I were to put on tartan,
I should be hissed off the stage, and perhaps the house would be pulled
down!’ It should be remembered that when Macklin changed _his_ Macbeth
costume from that of an English general to a plaid coat and trousers,
Quin said that Macklin had turned Macbeth into an old Scotch piper.
The party spirit to which Garrick alluded seems to have revived in the
person of Dr. Johnson, whose principles led him still to sympathise
with the Jacobite cause.
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