THE WHITE COCKADE.
[Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke at St. Germains]
When Bolingbroke got to Paris he did not immediately attach himself to
the service of James. Even then and there he still appears to have
been undecided. In the modern American phrase, he "sat on the fence"
for a while. Probably, if he had seen even then a chance of returning
with safety to England, if the impeachments had not been going on, and
if any manner of overture had been made to him from London, he would
forthwith have dropped the Jacobite cause, and returned to profess his
loyalty to the reigning English sovereign. After a while, however,
seeing that there was no chance for him at home, he went openly into
the cause of the Stuarts, and accepted the office of Secretary of State
to James. It must have been a trying position for a man of
Bolingbroke's genius and ambition when he found himself thus compelled
to put up with an empty office at a sham court. Bolingbroke's desire
was to play on a great stage, with a vast admiring audience. He loved
the heat and passion of debate; he enjoyed his own rhetorical triumphs.
He must have been chilled and cramped indeed in a situation which
allowed him no opportunity of displaying his most splendid and genuine
qualities, while it constantly called on him for the exercise of the
very qualities which he had least at hand. Nature had never meant him
for a conspirator, or even for a subtle political intriguer; nor,
indeed, had Nature ever intended him to be the adherent of a lost
cause. All that could have made a position like his tolerable to a man
of his peculiar capacity would have been faith in the cause--that faith
which would have {117} prevented him from seeing any but its noble and
exalted qualities, and would have made him forget himself in its hopes,
its perils, its triumphs, and its disasters. On the contrary, it would
seem that Bolingbroke found it difficult to take the Stuart cause
seriously, even when he was himself playing the part of its leading
statesman. A critical observer writes from Paris in the early part of
the year 1716, saying that he believed Bolingbroke's chief fault was
"that he could not play his part with a grave enough face; he could not
help laughing now and then at such kings and queens." Meantime,
Bolingbroke amused himself in his moments of recreation after his old
fashion, he indulged in amour after amour, intrigue after intrigue.
Lord Chesterfield said of him, that "though nobody spoke and wrote
better upon philosophy than Lord Bolingbroke, no man in the world had
less share of philosophy than himself. The least trifle, such as the
overroasting of a leg of mutton, would strangely disturb and ruffle his
temper." On the other hand, a glance from a pretty woman, or a glimpse
of her ankle, would send all Bolingbroke's political combinations and
philosophical speculations flying into the air, and convert him in a
moment from the statesman or the philosopher into the merest _petit
maître_, macaroni, and gallant.
Louis the Fourteenth refused to give open assistance to the cause of
the Stuarts, but he was willing enough to lend any help that he could
in private to Bolingbroke and to them. His death was the first severe
blow to the cause which Bolingbroke now represented. Louis the
Fourteenth was, according to Bolingbroke himself, the best friend James
then had. "When I engaged," says Bolingbroke, "in this business, my
principal dependence was on his personal character; my hopes sank as he
declined, and died when he expired." The Regent, Duke of Orleans, was
a man who, with all his coarse and unrestricted dissipation, had some
political capacity and even statesmanship. He saw that the Stuart was
a sinking, the Hanoverian a rising cause. Even when the two seemed
{118} most nearly balanced it yet appeared to Orleans, if we may quote
a phrase more often used in our days than in his, that the one cause
was only half alive, but the other was half dead. Orleans, moreover,
had a good deal of that feeling which was more strongly marked still in
a Duke of Orleans of a later day. He had a liking for England and for
English ways; he was, indeed, rather inclined to affect the political
manners of an English statesman. He therefore leaned to the side of
the Government established in England; and, at the urgent request of
the English Ambassador in Paris, he acted with some energy in
preventing the sailing of vessels intended for the uses of an
expedition to the English coast.
[Sidenote: 1715--"Mischief, thou art afoot."]
James Stuart seemed as if he were determined still further to imperil
the chances of his family, and to embarrass his adherents. The right
moment for a movement in his favor had been allowed to pass away, and
now, with characteristic blundering and ill fortune, he seized upon the
most unsuitable time that could possibly have been employed for such an
attempt. Something might have been done, perhaps, a temporary
alteration in the dynasty might have been obtained, if energy and
decision had been shown in that momentous interval when Queen Anne lay
dying. But when that time had been allowed to pass, the clear policy
of the Pretender was to permit the fears of Englishmen to go to sleep
for a while, to endeavor to reorganize his plans and his party; to wait
until a certain reaction should set in, a reaction very likely to come
about because of the apparent incapacity and the unattractive character
of George the First, and then at some timely hour, with well-matured
preparations, to strike an energetic blow. George the First was only a
year on the throne when the adherents of James got up a miserable
attempt at an insurrection.
There were three conditions under which, and under which alone, an
insurrection just then would have had a reasonable chance of success.
These conditions were fully recognized and understood by the Jacobite
leaders {119} in England, Scotland, and France. The first was that a
rising should take place at once in England and in Scotland, the second
that the Chevalier in person should take the field, and the third that
France should give positive assistance to the enterprise. The Jacobite
cause was strong in the south-western counties of England, and there
the influence of the Duke of Ormond was strong likewise. The general
arrangement, therefore, in the minds of the Jacobite chiefs was that
James Stuart should make his appearance in Scotland, that at the same
moment the Duke of Ormond should raise the standard of revolt in some
of the south-western counties, and that France should assist the
expedition with men, money, and arms. When James, acting against the
advice of his best counsellors, resolved on striking a blow at once,
two of the necessary conditions were clearly wanting. France was not
willing to give any actual assistance, and Ormond was not ready to
raise the standard of rebellion in England.
Ormond's sudden appearance in Paris struck dismay into the hearts of
the Jacobite counsellors, men and women, there. It had been distinctly
understood that he was to remain in England, and that, if threatened
with arrest, he was to hasten to one of the western counties, where he
and his friends were strong, and strike a sudden blow. He was to seize
Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and other towns, and set the Stuart flag
flying all over that part of England. When he appeared in France, a
mere solitary fugitive, all men of sense saw that the game was up.
Bolingbroke at once sent through safe hands a clear statement of the
condition of things, to be laid before Lord Mar. Bolingbroke's object
was to restrain Mar from any movement in the altered state of affairs.
The letter, however, came too late. Mar had already made his movement
towards the Highlands: there was no stopping the enterprise then; the
rebellion had taken fire. James was determined more than ever to go.
His arguments were the arguments of mere desperation. "I cannot but
{120} see," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that affairs grow daily worse and
worse by delays, and that, as the business is now more difficult than
it was six months ago, so these difficulties will, in all human
appearance, rather increase than diminish. Violent diseases must have
violent remedies, and to use none has, in some cases, the same effect
as to use bad ones." Indeed, it was impossible that the Chevalier
himself or the Duke of Ormond could hold back. Both had personal
courage quite enough for such an attempt. On the 28th of October James
Stuart, after many delays, set out in disguise, and travelled westward
to St. Malo. Ormond sailed from the coast of Normandy to that of
Devonshire, but found there no sign of any arrangement for a rising.
His plans had long been known to the English Government, and measures
had been taken to frustrate them. In that little Jacobite Parliament
sitting in Paris, which Bolingbroke spoke of with such contempt, and
from which, as he puts it, "no sex was excluded," there was hardly any
secret made of the projects they were carrying on. Before the sudden
appearance of Ormond in Paris they had counted, with the utmost
confidence, on a full success, and were already talking of the
Restoration as if it were an accomplished fact. Every word they
uttered which it was of the least importance for the British Government
to hear was instantly made known to Lord Stair, the new English
Ambassador--a resolute and capable man, a brilliant soldier, an astute
and bold diplomatist, equal to any craft, ready for any emergency,
charming to all, dear to his friends, very formidable to his enemies.
Ormond found that, as he had let the favorable moment slip when he fled
from England to France, there was now no means whatever of recalling
the lost opportunity. He returned to Brittany, and there he found the
Chevalier preparing to start for Scotland. After various goings and
comings the Chevalier was at last enabled to embark at Dunkirk in a
small vessel, with a few guns and half a dozen Jacobite officers to
attend him, and he made for the Scottish coast.
{121}
[Sidenote: 1715--The camp in Hyde Park]
About the same time, and as if in obedience to some word of command
from France, there was a general and almost simultaneous outburst of
Jacobite demonstration in England, amounting in most places to riot.
In London, and all over England, so far as one can judge, the popular
feeling appears to have been rather with the Jacobites than against
them. Stout Jacobites toasted a mysterious person called Job, who had
no connection with the prophet, but whose name contained the initial
letters of James, Ormond, and Bolingbroke; and "Kit" was no less
popular, because it stood for "King James III.," while the mysterious
symbolism of the "Three B's" implied "Best Born Briton," and so the
Chevalier de St. George. The Chevalier's birthday--the 10th of
June--was celebrated with wild outbursts of enthusiasm in several
places. Stuart-loving Oxford in especial made a brave show of its
white roses. The Loyalists, who endeavored to do a similar honor to
the birthday of King George, were often violently assailed by mobs. In
many places the windows of houses whose inmates refused to illuminate
in honor of the Chevalier were broken; William the Third was burned in
effigy in various parts of London, and in many towns throughout the
country. So serious at one period did the revulsion of Jacobite
feeling appear to be, that it was thought necessary to form a camp in
Hyde Park, and to bring together a large body of troops there. The
Life Guards and Horse Grenadiers, three battalions of the Foot Guards,
the Duke of Argyll's regiment, and several pieces of cannon were
established in the camp. By a curious coincidence the troops were
reviewed by King George, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of
Marlborough, on the 25th of August, 1715, the very day on which, as we
shall presently see, the Highland clans set up the standard of the
Stuarts at Braemar, in Scotland. The camp had a certain amount of
practical advantage in it, independently of its supposed political
necessity--it made Hyde Park safe at night. Before the camp was
established, and after it was broken up, the Park appears to {122} have
been little better than Bagshot Heath or Hounslow Heath. It was the
favorite parade-ground of highway robbers and murderers. The soldiers
themselves were occasionally suspected of playing the part of
highwaymen. "A man in those days," says Scott, "might have all the
external appearance of a gentleman, and yet turn out to be a
highwayman;" and "the profession of the polite and accomplished
adventurer who nicked you out of your money at White's, or bowled you
out of it at Marylebone, was often united with that of the professed
ruffian who, on Bagshot Heath or Finchley Common, commanded his brother
beau to stand and deliver." "Robbers--a fertile and alarming
theme--filled up every vacancy, and the names of the Golden Farmer, the
Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were
familiar in our mouths as household words." The revulsion of Jacobite
feeling actually showed itself sometimes among the soldiers in the
camp. Accounts published at the time tell us of men having been
flogged and shot for wearing Jacobite emblems in their caps. Perhaps
in mentioning this Hyde Park camp it may not be inappropriate to notice
the fact that General Macartney, who had figured in a terrible tragedy
in the Park two or three years before, returned to England, and
obtained the favor of George by bringing over six thousand soldiers
from Holland to assist the King. General Macartney was the man who had
acted as second to Lord Mohun in the fatal duel in Hyde Park on the
15th of November, 1712, when both Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton were
killed. Macartney escaped to Holland, and was charged by the Duke of
Hamilton's second with having stabbed the Duke through the heart while
Colonel Hamilton was endeavoring to raise him from the ground.
Macartney came back and took his trial, but was only found guilty of
manslaughter--that is to say, found guilty of having taken part in the
duel, and escaped without punishment. Probably Macartney, and
Hamilton, and Mohun, and the Duke are best remembered in our time
because of the {123} effect which that fatal meeting had upon the
fortunes of Beatrix Esmond.
[Sidenote: 1715--John Erskine of Mar]
The insurrection had already broken out in Scotland. John Erskine,
eleventh Earl of Mar, set himself up as lieutenant-general in the cause
of the Chevalier. Lord Mar was a man of much courage and some
capacity. He had held high office under Queen Anne. One of the
biographers of that period describes Mar as a devoted adherent of the
Stuarts. His career is indeed a fair illustration of the sort of thing
which then sometimes passed for devoted adherence to a cause. When
King George reached England he dismissed Mar from office, suspecting
him of sympathy with the Jacobite movement. Mar had expected something
of the kind, and had written an obsequious and a grovelling letter to
George, in which he spoke of the king's "happy accession," professed
unbounded devotion to the house of Hanover, and promised that "You
shall ever find in me as faithful a subject as ever any king had." The
new king, however, declined to trust to the faithfulness of this
subject; and a year after the faithful subject had returned to his
Jacobite convictions, and was gathering the Highland clans in James
Stuart's name.
The clans were got together at Braemar. The white cockade was mounted
there by clan after clan, the Macintoshes being the first to display it
as the emblem of the Stuart cause. Inverness was seized. King James
was proclaimed at several places, notably at Dundee, by Graham, the
brother of "conquering Graham," Bonnie Dundee, the fearless, cruel,
clever Claverhouse who fell at Killiecrankie. Perth was secured. The
force under Mar's leadership grow greater every day. He had begun with
a handful of men. He had now a little army. He had set up his
standard almost at hap-hazard at Braemar, and now nearly all the
country north of the Tay was in the hands of the Jacobites.
The Duke of Argyll was put in command of the royal forces, and arrived
in Scotland in the middle of September 1716. He hastened to the camp,
which had been got {124} together somehow at Stirling. He came there
almost literally alone. He brought no soldiers with him. He found few
soldiers there to receive him. Under his command he had altogether
about a thousand foot and half as many dragoons, the latter consisting
in great measure of the famous and excellent Scots Grays. His prospect
looked indeed very doubtful. He could expect little or no assistance
from his own clan. They had work enough to do in guarding against a
possible attack from some of the followers of Lord Mar. Glasgow,
Dumfries, and other towns were likewise in imminent danger from some of
the Highland clans, and were kept in a continual agony of apprehension.
It seemed likely enough that Argyll might soon be surrounded at
Stirling. If Mar had only made a forward movement it is impossible to
say what degree of success he might not have accomplished. It seems
almost marvellous, when we look back and survey the state of things, to
see what a miserable force the Government had to rely upon. In the
whole country they had only about eight thousand men. They had more
men abroad than at home, and in the critical condition of things which
still prevailed upon the Continent, it did not seem clear that they
could, except in the very last extremity, bring home many of the men
whom they kept abroad. Of that little force of eight thousand soldiers
they did not venture to send a considerable proportion up to the North.
They had, perhaps, good reason. They did not know yet where the
serious blow was to be struck for the Stuart cause. Many of George's
counsellors still looked upon the movement in Scotland as something
merely in the nature of a feint. They believed that the real blow
would yet be struck by Ormond in the West of England.
[Sidenote: 1715--Sheriffmuir]
But the evil fortune which hung over the Stuart cause in all its later
days clung to it now. There was no conceivable reason why Mar should
not have marched southward. The forces of the King were few in number,
and were not well placed for the purpose of making any considerable
resistance. But in an enterprise like that of {125} Mar all depends
upon rapidity of movement. What we may call the ultimate resources of
the country were in the hands of the King and his adherents. Every
day's delay enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay beyond a
certain time discouraged and weakened the invaders. Mar might, at one
critical moment, have swept Argyll's exhausted troops before him, but
he was feeble and timorous; he dallied; he let the time pass; he
allowed Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack him. It
was then that one of the Gordon clan broke into that memorable
exclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dundee!"--the exclamation which Byron
has paraphrased in the line,
Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
Certainly one hour of Dundee might, at more than one crisis in this
melancholy struggle, have secured for the time the cause of the
Stuarts, and won for James at least a temporary occupation of the
throne of his ancestors. Mar's little force remained motionless long
enough to allow the Duke of Argyll to get sufficient strength to make
an attack upon it at Sheriffmuir. Sheriffmuir was not much of a
victory. Each side, in fact, claimed the conqueror's honor. Mar was
not annihilated, nor Argyll driven back. The Duke of Argyll probably
lost more of his men, but, on the other hand, he captured many guns and
standards, and he re-appeared on the same field the next day, while Mar
showed there no more. Tested in the only practical way, it is clear
that the Duke of Argyll had the better of it. Lord Mar wanted to do
something, and was prevented from doing it at a time when to him
everything depended on advance and on success. The Duke of Argyll
successfully interposed between Mar and his object, and therefore was
clearly the victor.
It is on record that no small share of Mar's ill-success was due to the
action, or rather the inaction, of the famous Highland outlaw, Rob Roy.
He and his clan had joined Mar's standard, but his sympathies seem to
have been with Argyll. He had an unusually large body of {126} men
under his command, for many of the clan Macpherson had been committed
to his leadership, in consequence of the old age of their chief; but at
a critical moment he refused to lead his men to the charge, and stood
on a hill with his followers unconcernedly surveying the fight. It is
said that had he kept faith he could have turned the fortunes of the
day.
[Sidenote: 1715--"If he will die like a prince"]
Argyll and the cause he represented could afford to wait, and Mar could
not. The insurrection already began to melt. James Stuart himself
made his appearance in Scotland. He was characteristically late for
Sheriffmuir, and when he did throw himself into the field he seemed
unable to take any decisive step, or even to come to any clear
decision. He did not succeed in making himself popular, even for the
moment, among his followers in Scotland. The occasion was one in which
gallant bearing and kingly demeanor would have gone for much, and
indeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a different stamp
from James might even then have so inspired the Highland clansmen, and
so made use of his opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and the
Hanoverian forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But James
was peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He had graceful
manners, a mild, serene temper, and great power of application to work.
His personal courage was undoubted, and he was willing enough to risk
his own life on any chance; but he had none of the spirit of a
commander. He was sometimes weak and sometimes obstinate. His very
appearance was not in his favor among the Highland men, to whom he had
previously been unknown. He was tall and thin, with pale face, and
eyes that wanted fire and expression. His words were few, his behavior
always sedate and somewhat depressed. Here, among the Scottish
clansmen on the verge of rebellion, he seemed utterly borne down by the
greatness of the enterprise. He was wholly unable to infuse anything
like spirit or hope into his followers. On the contrary, his
appearance among them, when he did show {127} himself, had a
dispiriting and a depressing effect on almost every mind. Those who
remember the manner and demeanor of the late Louis Napoleon, Emperor of
the French, the silent shyness, the appearance of almost constant
depression, which were characteristic of that sovereign, will, we
think, be easily able to form a clear idea of the effect that James
Stuart produced among his followers in Scotland. He did not care to
see the soldiers exercise, and handle their arms; he avoided going
among them as much as possible. The men at last began to feel a
mistrust of his courage--the one great quality which he certainly did
not lack. A feeling of something like contempt began to spread abroad.
"Can he speak at all?" some of the soldiers asked. He was all ice; his
very kindness was freezing. A man like Dundee called to such an
enterprise would have set the clans of Scotland aflame with enthusiasm.
James Stuart was only a chilling and a dissolving influence. His more
immediate military counsellors were like himself, and their only policy
seemed to be one of postponement and delay. They advised him against
action of every kind. The clansmen grew impatient. At Perth, one
devoted Highland chief actually suggested that James should be taken
away by force from his advisers, and brought among men who were ready
to fight. "If he is willing to die like a prince," said this man, "he
will find there are ten thousand gentlemen in Scotland who are willing
to die with him." If James had followed the bent of his own
disposition, he might even then have died like a prince, or gone on to
a throne. His opponents were as little inclined for action as his own
immediate advisers. The Duke of Argyll himself delayed making an
advance until peremptory orders were sent to him from London. So long,
and with so little excuse, did he delay, that statesmen in London
suspected, not unreasonably, that Argyll was still willing to give
James Stuart a chance, or was not yet quite certain whether the cause
of the Stuarts was wholly lost. It is characteristic of the time that
so long as there seemed any possibility of James {128} redeeming his
crown Argyll's own colleagues suspected that Argyll was not willing to
put himself personally in the way. At last, however, the peremptory
order came that Argyll must advance upon Perth. The moment the advance
became apparent, the counsellors of James Stuart insisted on a retreat.
On a day of ill omen to the Stuart cause, the 30th of January, 1716,
the anniversary of the day when Charles the First was executed, the
retreat from Perth was resolved on. That retreat was the end of the
enterprise. Many Jacobites had already made up their minds that the
struggle was over, that there was nothing better to be done than to
disperse before the advancing troops of King George, that the sooner
the forces of James Stuart melted away, and James Stuart himself got
back to France, the better. James Stuart went back to France, and the
clansmen returned to their homes. Some of the Roman Catholic gentlemen
rose in Northumberland, and endeavored to form a junction with a
portion of Mar's force which had come southward to meet them. The
English Jacobites, however, were defeated at Preston, and compelled to
surrender. After a voyage of five days in a small vessel, James
succeeded in reaching Gravelines safely on the 8th of February, 1716.
His whole expedition had not occupied him more than six weeks.
[Sidenote: 1715--Marlborough's counsels]
It was believed at the time that the counsels of the Duke of
Marlborough were mainly instrumental in bringing about the prompt
suppression of the rebellion. Marlborough's advice was asked with
regard to the military movements and dispositions to be made, and the
belief of the day was that it was his counsel, and the manner in which
the Government followed it out, which led to the utter overthrow of
James Stuart and the dispersion of his followers. Marlborough is said
to have actually told in advance the very time at which, if his advice
were followed, the rebellion could be put down. Nothing is more likely
than that Marlborough's advice should have been sought and should have
been given. It would not in the {129} least degree militate against
the truth of the story that the outbreak took place so soon after
Marlborough had been professing the most devoted attachment to the
cause of the Stuarts, and had declared, as we have said already, that
he would rather cut off his right hand than do anything to injure the
claims of the Chevalier St. George. But it would not seem that any
advice Marlborough might have given was followed out very strictly in
the measures taken to put down the rebellion. We may be sure that
Marlborough's would have been military counsel worthy of the greatest
commander of his age. But in the measures taken to put down the
rebellion we can see nothing but incapacity, vacillation, and even
timidity. An energetic man in Argyll's position, seeing how James
Stuart halted and fluctuated, must have made up his mind at once that a
rapid and bold movement would finish the rebellion, and we find no such
movement made, until at last the most peremptory orders from London
compelled Argyll at all hazards to advance. If then Marlborough gave
his advice in London, which is very likely, it would seem that, for
some reason or other, the advice was not followed by the commanders in
the field. The whole story reminds one of the belief long entertained
in France, and which we suppose has some votaries there still, that the
great success of the Duke of Wellington, in the latter part of the war
against Napoleon, was due to the military counsels of Dumouriez, then
an exile in London.
There was a plan for the capture of Edinburgh Castle, which, like other
Stuart enterprises, would have been a great thing if it had only
succeeded. Edinburgh Castle was then full of arms, stores, and money.
Some eighty of the Jacobites, chiefly Highlanders, contrived a
well-laid scheme by which to get possession of the Castle. They
managed by bribes and promises to win over three soldiers in the Castle
itself. The arrangement was that these men were to be furnished with
ladders of a peculiar construction suited to the purpose, which, at a
certain hour of the night, they were to lower down the Castle rock on
the {130} north side--the side looking on the Prince Street of our day.
By these ladders the assailants were quietly to ascend, and then
overpower the little garrison, and possess themselves of the Castle.
When the stroke had been done, they were to fire three cannon, and men
stationed on the opposite coast of Fife were thereupon to light a
beacon; and the flash of that light would be the signal for other
beacons from hill to hill to bear the news to Mar--as the lights along
the Argive hills carried the tale of Troy's fall to Argos. The plan
was an utter failure. It broke down in two places. One of the
conspirators told his brother; the brother told his wife; the lady took
alarm, and sent an anonymous letter disclosing the whole plot to the
Lord Justice Clerk. Yet even then, had the conspirators been in time,
their plan might have succeeded; for the anonymous letter did not reach
its destination till an hour after the time appointed to make the
attempt on the Castle. But the conspirators were not punctual. Some
of them were in a tavern in Edinburgh, drinking to the success of their
enterprise. Every one in the neighborhood seems to have known what
their enterprise was, to have had some sympathy with it, to have talked
freely about it. Eighteen of these heroes kept up their conviviality
in the tavern till long after the appointed time. The hostess of the
place was heard to say that they were powdering their hair to go to the
attack on the Castle. "A strange sort of powder," Lord Stanhope
remarks, "to provide on such an occasion." Lord Stanhope evidently
takes the hostess's words in a literal sense, and believes that the
lady really meant to say that the jovial conspirators were actually
powdering their locks as if for a ball. We may assume that the hostess
spoke as Hamlet did, "tropically." Whether she did or not--whether
they were really adorning their locks, or simply draining the
flagon--the result was all the same. They came too late; the plot was
discovered; the sympathizing soldiers from the Castle were already
under arrest. The conspirators had to disperse and fly; a few of them
were arrested; {131} their neighbors were only too willing to help them
to escape. It cannot be doubted that there was sympathy enough in
Edinburgh to have made their plan the beginning of a complete
success--if it had only itself been allowed to succeed. But the
disclosure to the lady, and the powder for the hair, brought all to
nothing. The whole story might almost be said to be an allegorical
illustration of the fortunes of the Stuarts. The pint and the
petticoat always came in the way of a success to that cause.
[Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke's dismissal]
When James reached Gravelines, he hurried on to St. Germains. There,
the next morning, Bolingbroke came to see him. Bolingbroke, to do him
justice, had done all in his power to dissuade James from making his
fatal expedition at such a time, and under such untoward circumstances.
He had shown judgment, prudence, and, in the true sense, courage. He
had shown himself a statesman. He might very well have met James in
the mood and with the remonstrances of the counsellors who, after the
event, are able to say, "I told you so." But Bolingbroke appears to
have had more discretion and more manliness. He advised James to
withdraw once again from the dominions of the King, and take refuge in
Lorraine. Bolingbroke knew well, by this time, that there was not the
slightest chance of any open assistance from the French Court; and even
that the French Court would be only too ready to throw James over, and
sacrifice him, if, by doing so, they could strengthen the bonds of good
feeling between France and England. James professed to take
Bolingbroke's counsel in very friendly fashion, and parted from
Bolingbroke with many expressions of confidence and affection. Yet it
is certain that at this time he had made up his mind not to see
Bolingbroke any more. He went for a time to a house near Versailles, a
kind of headquarters of intriguing political women, and thence
immediately despatched a letter to Bolingbroke, relieving him of all
his duties as Secretary of State. Bolingbroke affects to have taken
his dismissal very composedly, but it cannot be doubted that his heart
burned within him at what he, {132} doubtless, believed to be the
ingratitude of the prince for whom he had done and sacrificed so much.
For Bolingbroke had that unlucky gift of fancy which enables a man to
see himself, and his own doings, and his own merits, in whatever light
is most gratifying to his personal vanity. He had, in truth, never
risked nor sacrificed anything for the sake of James or the Stuart
cause. He never had the least idea of risking or sacrificing anything
for that cause, or for any other. It was only when his fortunes in
England became desperate, when impeachment, and, as he believed, a
scaffold threatened him, when he had no apparent alternative left but
to join the Pretender or stay at home and lose all--it was only then
that he took any decided step as an adherent of the cause of the
Stuarts. We cannot doubt that James Stuart knew to the full the part
that Bolingbroke had played. He knew that he owed Bolingbroke no
favor, and that he could have no confidence in him. Still, it remains
to the present hour a mystery why James should then, and in that
manner, have got rid of Bolingbroke forever. Bolingbroke himself does
not appear to have known the cause of his dismissal. It may be that
James had grown tired of the whole fruitless struggle, and was glad to
get rid of a minister whose restless energy and genius would always
have kept political intrigue alive, and political enterprises going.
Or it may be that just then there had fallen into James's hands some
new and recent evidences of Bolingbroke's willingness to treat, on
occasion, with either side. However this may be, James made up his
mind to dismiss his great follower, and Bolingbroke at once made up his
mind to endeavor to ingratiate himself into the favor of the House of
Hanover, and to secure his restoration to London society. Almost at
the very moment of his dismissal he made application to some of his
friends in London to endeavor to obtain for him a permission to return.
[Sidenote: 1715--"Banished Bolingbroke repeats himself"]
We do not absolutely say a farewell to Bolingbroke now and here, as he
stands dismissed from the service of {133} the Stuarts and disqualified
for the service of the Hanoverians. Nearly forty years of life were
yet before him, but his work as a statesman was done. Never again had
his genius a chance of shining in the service of a throne. The
master-politician of the age was out of employment forever. We do not
know if history anywhere supplies such another example of a great
political career snapped off so suddenly at its midst, hardly even at
its midst, and never put together again. Bolingbroke re-appeared again
and again in England. He even took more than once a certain kind of
part in politics--that is in pamphleteering; he tried to be the
inspiration and the guiding-star of Pulteney and other rising men who
had come, for one reason or another, to detest Walpole. But even these
soon began to find Bolingbroke rather more of a hinderance than a help,
and were glad to shake him off and be rid of him. He becomes
everything by turns; plays at cool philosophy and philosophic retreat;
is always assuring the world in tones of highly suspicious eagerness
that he is done forever with it and its works and pomps; and he is
always yearning and striving to get back to the works and pomps again.
He plays at farming, actually puts on countrified manners, and dines
ostentatiously off homely farmer-like fare, to the amusement of some of
his friends. He undertakes to settle the whole question of religion,
of this world and the next, including the entire code of human ethics;
and at the same time he is very fond of expatiating to young men
concerning the most effective ways for the seduction of women, the
course to be followed with a lady of quality, the different course in
dealing with an actress, the policy of a long siege, and the policy of
an attack by storm. He marries again and gets money with his wife, a
French _marquise_, once beautiful, somewhat older than himself, and
seems to be fond of her and happy with her, and discourses to her as to
others about the variety of his successful amours. Through long, long
years his shadow, his ghost, for in the political sense it is {134}
nothing else, keeps revisiting the glimpses of the moon in England.
For all the influence he is destined to have on the realities of
political life, he might as well be already lying in that tomb in the
old church on the edge of the Thames at Battersea where his strangely
brilliant, strangely blighted career is to come to an end at last.
{135}