(1714.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he king’s proclamation against the Pretender,
in which 100,000_l._ was offered for the capturing him alive, caused
angry discussion in the Commons. Pulteney said, in his lofty way, that
if the Pretender did not come over, the money would be saved; and, if
he did, the sum would be well laid out in the catching of him! Campion
and Shippen denounced the outlay, and Sir William Wyndham, casting
blame on the king’s words, was called upon to assign a reason for his
censure. Wyndham would not condescend to explain. By a vote of 208 to
129 he was subjected to be reprimanded by the Speaker. The minority
withdrew from the House, and when the Speaker reproved the Jacobite
member, and extolled his own lenity in the words and spirit of the
reproof, Wyndham would neither admit the justice of the censure, nor
acknowledge any obligation to him who administered it.
[Sidenote: _CARTE, THE JACOBITE._]
‘What will King Lewis do for the Chevalier?’ was the next query of the
Londoners. The King of France and Navarre soon showed his
indisposition to do anything for the substantial good of the Stuarts.
Quidnuncs in the Cheapside taverns made light of ‘your James III.’
They advised him to learn to get his bread by tile-making, by cutting
corns, by selling Geneva, or by turning horse-doctor. They cocked
their hats as they swaggered home on the causeway, but the low
whistling of a Jacobite air, by some hopeful person on the opposite
side of the street, showed them that the White Rose was not so
withered as they thought it to be. Men’s minds were anxious as to
coming struggles, though the Hanoverians affected much, and
well-founded, confidence. Little else was thought of. The newspapers
seemed to wake up from absorbing contemplation when they announced, as
if they scarcely had time for the doing of it, that ‘about a fortnight
ago died Mr. William Pen, the famous Quaker.’ One man, at least, as
grave as Pen, stooped to make a joke, in order to show his principles.
He walked abroad in a lay habit, but there were many people who passed
by, or met him in the street, who very well knew Mr. Carte, the
ex-reader of the Abbey Church, at Bath. He had avoided taking the
oaths which were supposed to secure the allegiance of the swearer to
the Hanoverian king. Mr. Carte, happening to be overtaken in the
streets by a shower of rain, was accosted by a coachman with the cry
of ‘Coach, your reverence?’ ‘No, honest friend,’ replied the nonjuring
parson, ‘this is no _reign_ for me to take a coach in!’ Smaller jokes
cost some men their lives. A nod or a shrug was a perilous luxury. At
the first court held at St. James’s, Colonel Chudleigh, a zealous
Whig, marked some jocular vivacity on the part of Mr. Aldworth, M.P.
for New Windsor. The Colonel took it in an offensive light, and when
exchange of words had heated him, he cast the most offensive epithet
he could think of at Aldworth, by calling him ‘Jacobite!’ Almost at
the foot of the king’s throne, it was nearly equivalent to calling
Aldworth ‘Liar!’ The two disputants descended the stairs, entered a
coach together, and drove to Mary-le-Bone fields. In a few minutes
after the two angry men had alighted, the Colonel stretched Aldworth
dead upon the grass, and returned alone to the levee. This was the
second bloodshed in the old Jacobite and Hanoverian quarrel.
[Sidenote: _AN OLD AND NEW LORD CHANCELLOR._]
Shortly after this duel, Lord Townshend was seen to enter Lord
Chancellor Harcourt’s house, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from which he
soon after issued, carrying with him the Purse and Great Seal. These
symbols of power he had obtained by warrant signed by the king’s
hand. On his way from Lord Harcourt’s house to the palace, Townshend
left word with Lord Cowper to wait on the king at St. James’s at one
o’clock,――and men who saw my Lord on his way made, probably, as shrewd
guess as himself as to the result of his visit.
The king received him in the closet. Cowper’s acute eye recognised the
Purse and Seal lying in the window. His Majesty, in a few words in
French, shortly committed them to his keeping, ‘having,’ says Cowper
in his Diary, ‘been well satisfied with the character he had heard of
me.’ Cowper replied in English, saying, among things less noteworthy,
‘that he had surrendered the Great Seal to the late Queen, believing
she was going into measures which would raise France again, and ruin
the common cause.’
After the new Chancellor had taken his leave, the following little
dramatic scene occurred. ‘The Prince was in the outer room,’ says
Cowper, ‘and made me a very handsome and hearty compliment both in
French and English, and entered very kindly into talk with me. Among
other things, speaking of the Princess’s coming, I wished she was
here while the weather was good, lest she should be in danger in her
passage; he said Providence had hitherto so wonderfully prospered his
family’s succeeding to the Crown in every respect, by some instances,
that he hoped it would perfect it, and believed they should prosper in
every circumstance that remained.’
[Sidenote: _PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION._]
The next circumstance was the spectacle of the coronation, which soon
followed that of the public entry. Among the advertisements offering
accommodation to see the show, there was one of a house, near the
Abbey, ‘with an excellent prospect, and also with a back door out of
Thieving Lane into the house. There will be a good fire,’ it is added,
‘and a person to attend with all manner of conveniences.’ Meanwhile,
Mr. Noble’s shop in the New Exchange, Strand, was beset by ladies, or
their servants, eager to buy the Coronation favour with the Union Arms,
which had been sanctioned by the Earl Marshal, who had also (it is to
be hoped, with reluctance) approved of the poetical motto without
which the favour was not to be sold:
King George, our Defender
From Pope and Pretender.
――There was a great pinning of them on as breast knots and shoulder
knots, and a good deal of gallantry and flirtation went on between
young ladies and gentlemen helping to adorn each other.
[Sidenote: _THE SCENE IN THE ABBEY._]
The ceremony was of the usual sort. King George was crowned King of
France, as well as of Great Britain and Ireland. In proof of his right,
‘two persons, representing the Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy,’
consorted with peers of more sterling coinage. These ‘persons’ were, on
this occasion, a couple of players. They wore crimson velvet mantles,
lined with white sarcenet, furred with miniver, and powdered with
ermine. Each of them held in his hand a ‘cap of cloth of gold, also
furred and powdered with ermine.’ They did homage to the king, as the
English peers did, and when these put on their coronets in the royal
presence, the sham Dukes clapped their caps jauntily on their heads.
This part of the spectacle was the only part that afforded merriment
to the Jacobite nobility, all of whom were present, from Bolingbroke,
with his three bows bringing his head to the ground, to James II.’s old
mistress, the Countess of Dorchester, who made saucy remarks on all
that passed.
[Sidenote: _WHIGS AND JACOBITES._]
The Whig Lady Cowper says in her Memoirs that the Jacobites looked as
cheerful as they could, but were very peevish with every one that spoke
to them. There was no remedy for them, remarks my Lady in her Diary,
but patience. ‘So everybody was pleased, or pretended to be so.’ Lady
Dorchester is an exception to the rule. When Archbishop Tenison went
round the throne, formally asking the consent of the people at large
to the making of the new king, the lively Jacobite countess remarked
to Lady Cowper, ‘Does the old fool think anybody here will say _no!_
to him, when there are so many drawn swords?’ The will was there, but
the expression of it was kept down. Lady Dorchester was not the only
saucily-disposed lady present. The Tory Lady Nottingham rudely shoved
the ex-Tory Lady Cowper from her place. The latter found refuge on the
pulpit stairs. ‘Her ill-breeding,’ says Lady Cowper, in her Diary,
‘got me the best place in the Abbey, for I saw all the ceremony,
which few besides did. The lords that were over against me, seeing
me thus mounted, said to my lord that they hoped I would preach. To
which, my lord laughing, answered, he believed that I had zeal enough
for it, but that he did not know I could preach.’ To which my Lord
Nottingham answered, ‘Oh, my lord, indeed you must pardon me, she can
and has preached for the last four years such doctrines as, had she
been prosecuted in any court for them, your lordship yourself could
not defend!’ After this little passage, when the scene was changed
to Westminster Hall, the usual challenge was fruitlessly made by the
hereditary champion. The banquet was held and came to an end. The king
and guests departed. The weary waiting-men took _their_ refreshment,
and when they came to collect the ‘properties’ of the scene――plate,
knives, forks, viands, table cloths――nearly all had disappeared. Great
outcry arose, and the rogues were commanded in advertisements to make
restitution, or dreadful penalty was to follow; but they seem to have
kept all they took that day, and to have escaped detection.
[Sidenote: _TORY MOBS._]
The day did not pass off decorously in the streets. Some unwelcome
cries reached the king’s ears as he walked along the platform between
the Abbey and the Hall. At night, Tory mobs, on pretence that the
Whigs, by the motto on their ‘favours,’ showed a disposition to
‘burn the Pope and the Pretender, with Dr. Sacheverel to boot,’ lit
up bonfires, danced round them to rebel airs, and while some of the
celebrants shouted for Sacheverel, others uttered blasphemy and
ill-wishes against King George. In country places, similar incidents
occurred; but messengers were despatched thither, and they soon
returned, bringing the worst of the offenders with them through London
to its various prisons. York, Norwich, and Bedford; Reading, Taunton,
Bristol, and Worcester, yielded the greatest number of seditious
rioters. A boy, twelve years of age, was brought up as leader of the
Taunton mob! The most notable person bagged by the messengers was
Alderman Perks of Worcester. The Jacobites in London witnessed his
passage to Newgate with manifestations that showed they looked on him
as a martyr. On the other hand, the Irish Protestants in London made
a manifestation in favour of Church and Government. In commemoration
of the delivery of their fathers from the massacre in Ireland of so
many of their contemporaries, in October 1641, by the Papists, these
Whig loyalists marched in procession at 10 A.M. to St. Dunstan’s, where
they heard a sermon from Dr. Storey, Dean of Limerick. At noon, they
again marched in procession to the Old King’s Head, Holborn, where they
dined, drank, and cheerfully celebrated the massacre in which so many
innocent persons had perished.
[Sidenote: _THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE PARK._]
Serious as the times were, the king and royal family manifested no
fear. They were unostentatiously brave. The most bitter Tory could
not but admire them, walking round St. James’s Park, in a November
afternoon, almost unattended; not guarded at all. This too was at
the time when the Attorney-General was ‘prosecuting authors,’ as
the journals have it, ‘for reflecting expressions in their writings
against the king.’ The Government were at that very moment complaining
of seditious meetings being held, by the encouragement of some whose
duty it was to suppress them; meetings which were accompanied by
rioting, and often followed by murder or attempts at such crime.
It was a time when almost all the lords in office are said to have
received the Pretender’s ‘Declaration’ and his other manifestoes by
‘foreign post’ or the ambassadors’ bags. In November 1714, a pamphlet
was published with this significant title: ‘The sentiments of our
Forefathers relative to Succession to the Crown, Hereditary Right, and
Non-Resistance. Dedicated to all those who prefer Hereditary Right
to a Parliamentary one, notwithstanding the latter is likely to take
place. By a Lover of Right.’ ◆[Sidenote: _SEDITIOUS PAMPHLETS._]◆
Every night were significant works like this, and even more scandalous
pamphlets, cried through the streets. As yet, however, no vindictive
measures were adopted. It was thought politic to give the Tories good
words, but not to put any trust in them. Their audacity sometimes
challenged prosecution. Mr. Pottes was arrested for a ‘provoking’
pamphlet: ‘Reasons for Declaring a War against France;’ and messengers
were busy in looking after the author of a ‘Test offered to the
Consideration of Electors of Great Britain, which at one view discovers
those Members of Parliament, who were for or against the Hanoverian
Succession.’ A thousand pounds was the sum offered to anyone who could
and would discover the author of the ‘Test,’ and half that sum was
offered for the discovery of the printer. The Government dreaded the
effects of these writings on the elections to the first new parliament
under King George. When the matter was happily over, the ‘squibs’ did
not die out. The Whigs, to show how Tories had triumphed, published
a (supposed) list of expenses of a Tory election in the West. Among
the numerous items were: ‘For roarers of the word, _Church!_ 40_l._’
‘For several gallons of Tory Punch drank on the tombstones, 30_l._’
‘For Dissenter Damners, 40_l._’ The Tory journal writers laughed, and
expressed a hope that at the forthcoming anniversary of the birthday of
glorious Queen Anne, there would be more enthusiastic jollity than on
the natal anniversaries of Queen Elizabeth and King William, which were
still annually kept. The public were requested to remember that Anne as
much excelled every English sovereign since Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had
excelled every one before her. Whigs looked at one another in taverns
and asked, ‘Does the fellow mean that Brandy Nan was better than King
George?’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE CLUBS._]
In the Tory pamphlet, ‘Hannibal not at our gates,’ the writer sought
to persuade the people that there was no danger a-foot. In the Whig
pamphlet ‘Hannibal at our gates, or the progress of Jacobitism, with
the present danger of the Pretender,’ &c., Londoners were especially
warned of the reality of the peril. The Jacobite clubs, it was said,
had ceased to toast the Jacobite king, or ‘impostor,’ under feigned
names. They were described as ‘so many publick training schools where
the youth of the nation were disciplined into an opinion of the justice
of his title,’ and into various other opinions which were strongly
denounced. The writer has an especial grievance in the fact that an
honest Englishman cannot show respect to King William by keeping his
birthday, without running the chance of being in the Counter as a
rioter, if he only happens to fall into the hands of a Tory magistrate.
Respect for princes, according to this Whig, is a courteous duty, and,
forthwith, he speaks of the Chevalier as a ‘notorious bastard,’ and
of his mother, Mary of Modena, as a ‘woman of a bloody and revengeful
temper.’
[Sidenote: _ROYALTIES._]
Rash deeds followed harsh words. Among the persons assaulted in the
streets, on political grounds, was the Duke of Richmond, who was
roughly treated one dark night. Such an attack on a Duke who was an
illegitimate son of the Stuart King Charles II., by a Popish mistress,
Louise de Querouaille, was taken by the Government as a certain
evidence of a perhaps too exuberant loyalty. Nevertheless, the king
continued to go about without fear. He drove almost unattended to dine
or sup with various gentlemen and noblemen. We hear that ‘His Majesty
honoured Sir Henry St. John, father of Viscount Bolingbroke, with
his royal presence at dinner.’ The king thus sat at table with a man
whose son he would unreluctantly have hanged! As for the Prince and
Princess of Wales, they were as often at the play in times of personal
danger, as princes and princesses are in times of no peril whatever.
Perhaps they trusted a little in the proclamation against Papists and
Nonjurors, whereby the former were disarmed, and were (or could be)
confined to their houses, or be kept to a limit within five miles
of their residences. The oath of allegiance was to be taken by all
disaffected persons, and among the drollest street scenes of the day
was that of some Dogberry stopping a man on the causeway and testing
his loyalty by putting him on his affidavit!
[Sidenote: _AT ST. JAMES’S._]
There was zeal enough and to spare among the clergy of all parties.
Not very long after the Princess of Wales was established at St.
James’s, Robinson, bishop of London, sent in a message to her by Mrs.
Howard, to the effect that, being Dean of the Chapel, he thought it
his duty to offer to satisfy any doubts or scruples the Princess might
entertain with respect to the Protestant religion, and to explain
what she might not yet understand. The Princess was naturally ‘a
little nettled.’――‘Send him away civilly,’ she said, ‘though he is
very impertinent to suppose that I, who refused to be Empress for the
Protestant religion, do not understand it fully.’ The Bishop thought
that the august lady did not understand it at all, for the Princess had
declared among her ladies ‘Dr. Clarke shall be one of my favourites.
His writings are the finest things in the world.’ Now Dr. Clarke was
looked upon as a heretic by Robinson, for Clarke was not a Trinitarian
according to the creed so-called of Athanasius. Lady Nottingham, High
Church to the tips of her fingers, denounced the Doctor as a heretic.
Lady Cowper gently asked her to quote any heretical passage from Dr.
Clarke’s books. Clarke’s books! The lady declared she never had and
never would look into them. Cowper mildly rebuked her. Cowper’s royal
mistress laughed, and the ‘Duchess of St. Alban’s,’ says Lady Cowper,
‘put on the Princess’s shift, according to Court Rules, when I was by,
she being Groom of the Stole.’
[Sidenote: _ELECTIONEERING TACTICS._]
The first election of Members of Parliament which was about to take
place excited the liveliest and most serious interest throughout the
kingdom, but especially in London. Mighty consequences depended on
the returns. To influence these, Popping issued from under his sign
of the _Black Raven_, in Paternoster Row, a pamphlet entitled, ‘Black
and White Lists of all Gentlemen who voted in Person, for or against
the Protestant Religion, the Hanoverian Succession, the Trade and
the Liberties of our Country, from the Glorious Revolution to the
Happy Accession of King George.’ These lists, like others previously
published, were as useful to the Jacobites as to the Hanoverians, and
perhaps were intended to be so. A phrase in the Preface, which seems
thorough Whig, was understood in every Jacobite coffee-house. ‘French
Bankers, Friends of the Faction, are continually negotiating great Sums
for Bills of Exchange upon London,――to support the Pretender’s party,
and bribe Voters.’ The various questions to which these division lists
refer are very numerous. Among them may be noted the names of those who
voted for or against the Crown being given to the Prince of Orange,――of
members who, in 1706, voted for tacking the Bill for preventing
occasional Conformity, to a Money Bill, to secure its passing in the
House of Lords; finally,――of those members ‘who are not numbered among
Tackers or Sneakers.’ On the other hand, a decidedly Tory pamphlet
was circulated, in which the Londoners, and, through them, Englishmen
generally, were implored not to vote for men who wanted war, whatever
might be the motive. It bids each elector bless the present peace,
‘while his sons are not pressed into the war nor his daughters made the
followers of camps.’ This was bringing the subject thoroughly home to
the bosoms of the Athenians.
[Sidenote: _ROYAL CHAPLAINS._]
There were people who were to be more easily got at than the
pamphleteers. Dr. Bramston, for a sermon preached in the Temple Church,
was struck out of the list of Royal Chaplains. He published the
discourse, for his justification. The most rabid Whig in the kingdom
could find no hostility in it, nor the most rabid Tory any support. The
Court found offence enough. Dr. Bramston and his fellow chaplains, who
had read prayers to Queen Anne,――Dr. Browne, Dr. Brady, the Rev. Mr.
Reeves of Reading, and the Rev. Mr. Whitfield, were informed that they
were not only struck out of the list of her late Majesty’s chaplains,
but that ‘they would not be continued when his Majesty is pleased to
make a new choice.’ Compassion is not aroused for Dr. Brady, he being
half of that compound author Tate and Brady, of whom many persons have
had such unpleasant experience on recurring Sundays at church. Tate
helped Brady to ‘improve’ the Psalms, after the fashion in which he had
‘improved’ Shakespeare; and it is hard to say which king suffered most
at his hands――King Lear or King David!
On the other hand, the feeling on the Jacobite side very much
resembled that which is recorded in the ‘Memoirs of P. P., clerk of
this Parish,’――in which parish, Jenkins, the farrier, ‘never shoed
a horse of a Whig or fanatic, but he lamed him sorely.’ Turner, the
collar-maker, was held to have been honoured by being clapt in the
stocks for wearing an oaken bough on the 29th of May;――Pilcocks, the
exciseman, was valued for the laudable freedom of speech which had
lost him his office;――and White, the wheelwright, was accounted of good
descent, his uncle having formerly been servitor at Maudlin College,
where the glorious Sacheverel was educated!
[Sidenote: _THE CHEVALIER IN LONDON._]
At a somewhat later period, a pamphlet was published, in which the
Chevalier de St. George is introduced, saying:――‘Old _Lewis_ assur’d
me he would never desert my Interest, and he kept his _Bona fide_ till
he was drub’d into the humble Condition of su’ing for Peace, and I was
seemingly to be sacrificed to the Resentment of my Enemies; but our
_dear Sister_ and the _Tories_ concerted privately to elude the force
of the Treaty, and kept me at Bar-le-Duc, from whence I made a Trip
to Somerset House, but was soon Frighten’d away again by the sound of
a Proclamation, at which Sir Patrick and I scour’d off. Soon after,
dear Sister departed this mortal Life, but the Schemes being yet not
entirely finish’d, and my good Friends not having the Spirit of Greece,
_Hanover_ whipt over before me.’ This passage will recall an incident
in Mr. Thackeray’s ‘Esmond.’
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