(1715.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he popular demonstrations troubled the
authorities less than the expressed discontent of some of the soldiery.
The Foot Guards especially had become clamorous at having to wear
shirts that would not hold together, and uniforms that _would_ go into
holes, while the wearers were liable to punishment for what they could
not prevent. On the anniversary of the king’s birthday (20th May),
crowds of soldiers of the regiments of Guards paraded the streets,
exhibited their linen garments on poles, and shouted, ‘Look at our
Hanover shirts!’ Others stript off shirts and jackets, and flung them
over the garden walls of St. James’s Palace and Marlborough House.
Some of the men made a bonfire in front of Whitehall, and cast their
shoddy garments into the flames! The soldiers were treated with
peculiar consideration. Marlborough reviewed them in the Park, and then
addressed them in a deprecatory speech which began with ‘_Gentlemen!_’
He acknowledged that they had grievances, promised that these should
be redressed, informed them that he himself had ordered new clothes
for them, and he almost begged that they would be so good as to wear
the old ones till the new (including the shirts) were ready! The
whole address showed that the soldiers were considered as worth the
flattering. It ended with a ‘tag’ about ‘the best of kings,’ and as
the tag was cheered, it was, doubtless, supposed that the flattery
had not been administered in vain. Fears connected with the soldiery
were certainly not groundless. A reward of 50_l._ was offered for the
apprehension of Captain Wright, of Lord Wimbledon’s Horse. The Captain
had written a letter to a friend in Ireland, which letter had probably
fallen into the hands of ‘the king’s decypherer.’ The Government had,
at all events, got at the contents. The offensive portion was to the
effect that the Duke of Ormond would overcome all his enemies, and the
writer expressed a hope that they should soon send George home again!
The ‘loyal’ papers were not afraid to accuse the bishops of so far
tampering with the soldiery as to encourage them in thinking, or even
in saying, how much better off they were in Ormond’s days than _now_!
[Sidenote: _POLITICS IN THE ARMY._]
The papers proved both the watchfulness and uneasiness which existed
with respect to the army. One day it is recorded that a Colonel of the
Guards was dismissed. As danger seemed to increase, a camp was formed
in Hyde Park, whither a strong force of artillery was brought from
the Tower. A sweep was made at the Horse Guards of suspected men, on
some of whom commissions were said to have been found signed by the
‘Pretender!’ All absent officers were ordered to return at once to
their posts in the three kingdoms. An important capture was supposed
to have been made of a certain Captain Campbell. London was full of the
news that Mr. Palmer, the messenger, was bringing the Captain to town;
but the messenger arrived alone. He had let the Captain escape, and
people who expected that Palmer would be hanged were disappointed that
he was only turned out of his place.
[Sidenote: _LIEUTENANT KYNASTON._]
At this period, Fountain Court, in the Strand, was a quiet spot, with
good houses well-inhabited. In one of these lodged two Captains,
Livings and Spencer, and a Lieutenant, John Kynaston. The last had got
his appointment through sending ‘information,’ under the pseudonym
of ‘Philo-Brittannus’ to the Secretary of War. The Lieutenant looked
for further promotion if he could only discover something that the
Government might think worth a valuable consideration. Kynaston lounged
in coffee-houses, listened to gossip on the parade, and was very much
at home among the Captains of all services, and especially of some who
assembled in the little room behind the kitchen at the ‘Blew Postes,’
in Duke’s Court. But his well-regulated mind was so shocked at what
he heard there that he unbosomed himself to the two Captains, his
fellow-lodgers in Fountain Court. Loyalty prompted Kynaston to let
King George know that his Majesty had dangerous enemies within his own
capital. The Captains approved. But then, the idea of being an informer
was hateful to Kynaston’s noble soul! The Captains thought it might
be. On the other hand, to be silent would be to share the crime. His
sacred Majesty’s life might be in peril. It was not acting the part of
a base informer to put his Majesty on his guard. The Captains endorsed
those sentiments as their own; and when Lieut. Kynaston went to make
an alarming revelation to Mr. Secretary Pulteney, he carried in his
pocket the certificates of the Captains that the bearer was a loyal
and disinterested person, and that it gave them particular pleasure in
being able to say so. Pulteney heard what the gallant gentleman, the
principal in the affair, had to say, and he, forthwith, called together
a Board of General Officers, with General Lumley for president, before
which Kynaston and the naughty people whom he accused were brought face
to face.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE PLOTTERS._]
The latter bore it very well. Among the first whom Kynaston charged as
pestilent Jacobite traitors were a Cornhill draper and a peruque-maker
from Bishopsgate Street. The Lieutenant declared that when he was
present they had drunk the Pretender’s health. The honest tradesmen
swore that they did not drink that toast, but that Kynaston had
proposed it. They were set aside, while a lawyer and a doctor were
brought before the Board for a similar offence. They pleaded their
well-known principles. ‘Aye, aye,’ said the Lieutenant, ‘your
principles are better known than your practice.’ This faint joke did
not elicit a smile; and in the next accused individual, a ‘Captain
D――――,’ Kynaston caught a Tartar. The Lieutenant deposed mere ‘hearsay’
matter as to the accused being a Jacobite, but the Captain claimed to
be sworn, and he then testified that Kynaston had said in the Captain’s
hearing: ‘If I’m not provided for, I shall go into France,’ which was
as much as to say he would go over to ‘the Pretender.’ ◆[Sidenote:
_FALSE ACCUSER._]◆ This pestilent Captain was then allowed to withdraw.
‘As he was departing the Court,’ says Kynaston, in a weak but amusing
pamphlet he subsequently published, ‘he gave me a gracious nod with
his reverend head, and swore, “By God, I’ve done your business!”’ The
Lieutenant felt that he had. The best testimony he could produce,――that
is, the least damaging to himself,――was in the case of the free-spoken
roysterers of the little room behind the kitchen at the ‘Blew Postes.’
Ormond’s health, Bolingbroke’s health, and similar significant toasts,
were given there――so he alleged. ‘Yes,’ answered the accused, ‘but they
were given by you, and were not drunk!’ They called the kitchen wench
in support of their defence. The loyal Lieutenant summoned rebutting
testimony, but his cautious witnesses alleged that no such healths were
proposed, and, therefore, could not be drunk by Kynaston or anybody
else. The military Board of Enquiry thereupon separated, leaving
informer and accused in ignorance of what further steps were likely to
be taken. Kynaston went away for change of air, but such severe things
were publicly said of him, by friends as well as foes, that he thought
the best course he could take would be to show himself in the Mall.
[Sidenote: _THE MILITARY BOARD._]
_There_, then, is the next scene in this illustrative comedy. Kynaston,
with his hat fiercely cocked, is seen at a distance by a ruffling
major, named Oneby. The Major says, loud enough for the general
audience,――‘As soon as I see Kynaston, I’ll make him eat his words
and deny his Christ! I’ll _path_ him, and send him quick to hell!’
The Lieutenant, leaning on the arm of one of his captains, blandly
remarks to him as both draw near to the fire-eating major, ‘Gentlemen
give themselves airs in my absence.’ And then looking Oneby sternly
in the face, exclaims, ‘I value not a Jacobite rogue in the kingdom!’
According to Kynaston’s pamphlet, this had such an effect on Oneby,
that the Major came daintily up to him and in the most lamb-like voice
asked, ‘What news from the country, Lieutenant?’ To which the latter
replied, ‘News, sir? that his Majesty has enemies there as well as
here.’ And therewith, they cross the stage and _exeunt_ at opposite
sides.
This was not the ordinary style of Major John Oneby’s acting. He was
an accomplished and too successful duellist. A few years after the
above scene in the Park, he killed Mr. Gower in a duel fought in a
room of a Drury Lane tavern――the result of a drunken quarrel――over a
dice-board. The Major was found guilty of wilful murder, and condemned
to be hanged; but he opened a vein with a penknife, as he lay in bed in
Newgate, and so ‘cheated the hangman.’
[Sidenote: _THE LIEUTENANT DISPOSED OF._]
The Military Board, meanwhile, went quietly and steadily about its
work. What it thought of the disinterested Lieutenant and those whom
he charged with treason, he learned in a very unexpected way. He was
ill at ease in bed, reading the ‘Post Boy,’ when his much astonished
eyes fell upon the following paragraph:――‘Lieutenant John Kynaston
has been broke, and rendered incapable of serving for the future.’
This was the first intimation he had had of any return made to him
by way of acknowledgment for his information. He accounted it a lie,
inserted by ‘that infamous and seditious Bell-wether of their party,
Abel Roper!’ In quite a Bobadil strain, Kynaston afterwards registered
a vow in print that he ‘should, by way of gratitude, take the very
first opportunity of promoting a close correspondence between Abel
Roper and his brother Cain.’ Before that consummation was achieved,
Kynaston――it was a fortnight after the announcement appeared in the
‘Post Boy’――received a document, ‘On his Majesty’s Service,’ which
convinced the ex-Lieutenant that he no longer formed part of it. He
rushed to the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Marlborough. ‘It’s a hard
case,’ said the Duke, ‘but I am going into my chair!’ and so he got
rid of the appellant. Kynaston hired a chair and was carried over to
General Lumley, the President of the Military Board. ‘You had better
keep quiet,’ said the General, ‘you might get insulted!’ _Insulted_
meant beaten or pointed out in the streets. Kynaston at once went to
bed with a fever which conveniently kept him there for seven weeks.
‘The Lieutenant is sneaking,’ cried his enemies; but he appeared in the
guise of a pamphlet, in which he said that he should never recover the
surprise into which he had been thrown by discovering that the people
whom he had accused had found readier belief than he――the accuser.
Never again did John Kynaston ride with Colonel Newton’s Regiment of
Dragoons.[3]
[Sidenote: _CAPTAIN PAUL._]
Other informers were more profitable to listen to than Kynaston.
Marlborough, who dismissed the ex-Lieutenant so cavalierly, was one
day giving ear, with deep interest, to a sergeant in the Foot Guards.
The staple of the fellow’s news was, that his captain, Paul, had in
his desk a commission as Colonel of a regiment of cavalry, from the
Pretender; and that he had promised a lieutenant’s commission to the
sergeant, who had accepted the same, and now, out of remorse or fear,
or hopes of getting a commission in a safer way, came and told the
whole story to the great Duke. Marlborough dismissed him, bade him be
of good cheer, and keep silent. An hour or two afterwards, Captain
Paul was at the Duke’s levee. The Commander-in-Chief greeted him with
a cordial ‘Good morning, Colonel!’ (Captains in the Guards were so
addressed), ‘I am very glad to see you!’――and then, as if it had just
occurred to him――‘By-the-by, my Lord Townshend desires to speak with
you; you had better wait on him at the office.’ Paul, unsuspecting,
rather hoping that some good chance was about to turn up for him, took
his leave, ran down-stairs, jumped into a chair, and cried, ‘To the
Cock-pit!’ When his name was announced to the Secretary of State, Lord
Townshend sent a message of welcome, and a request that Paul would
wait in the anteroom, till some important business with some of the
Ministers should be concluded. Paul was still waiting when the Duke of
Marlborough arrived, and passed through the room to the more private
apartment. As he passed, the Colonel rather familiarly greeted him,
but Marlborough confined his recognition to a very grave military
salute, and disappeared through the doors. Paul looked the way that
the Commander-in-Chief had gone, felt perplexed, and then, addressing
the door-keeper who was within the room, said, ‘I think I need not
wait longer. I shall go now, and wait on my Lord another time.’ The
door-keeper, however, at once took all the courage out of him by
civilly intimating that the gallant officer must be content to stay
where he was, as Lord Townshend had given stringent orders that he was
not to be permitted to depart on any account. The sequel was rapidly
arrived at. Paul was taken before the Council, where he found that
the knaves’ policy was best――to avow all. He alleged that he got his
commission at Powis House, Ormond Street, and it was found in his desk.
He purchased comparative impunity by betraying all his confederates.
[Sidenote: _ARREST OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT._]
Conspirators who betrayed their confederates, like Colonel Paul,
yielded such information that Parliament readily granted power to the
king to seize suspected persons. His Majesty had grounds for getting
within safe-keeping half a-dozen members of the Lower House. The
suspected persons were, Sir William Wyndham, Sir John Packington,
Edward Harvey of Combe, Thomas Forster, and Corbet Kynaston. King
George, however, would not put a finger on them, without going through
the form of asking leave. The Commons gave consent, with alacrity,
thanking his Majesty, at the same time, for the tender regard he had
manifested for the privileges of the House. Before five o’clock the
next morning, Mr. Wilcox, a messenger, knocked at the door of Mr.
Barnes, the bookseller in Pall Mall. The sight of the silver greyhound
on his arm was as sufficient as if he had displayed his warrant in the
face of the Bibliopole, himself. ◆[Sidenote: _HARVEY, OF COMBE._]◆
Wilcox was in search of Harvey, who lodged there, when in town, but he
was not there on that morning. The messenger looked over his papers,
sealed them up, and then went post-haste down to Combe, in Surrey.
He arrived just in time to meet Mr. Harvey going out hawking. Harvey
welcomed Wilcox as if he had been a favoured guest, and went up to
London with him, as if it were a pleasure-excursion. Taken immediately
before the Council, he was good-humouredly bold, till he was shown what
he did not expect to see, a damaging treasonable letter in his own
handwriting. He faltered, turned pale, complained of sudden illness,
and asked for permission to withdraw, which was granted. Harvey, shut
up in his room, stabbed himself with a pruning knife, and when he
was found by his servant, almost unconscious from loss of blood, the
unlucky Jacobite refused to have medical aid. He only consented, at the
urgent prayer of his kinsman, the Earl of Nottingham, Lord President
of the Council, to at least see those who had been sent for. Mead,
Harris, and Bussiere restored him to a condition of capability to take
the sacrament. A Whig Lecturer, the Rev. Mr. Broughton, was at hand,
but that worthy man declined to administer, even after Mr. Harvey had
made a general confession of his sins. When the Jacobite had expressed
some measure of sorrow for his latest iniquities, the Whig clergyman
performed the rite, but not till he had fortified himself with a
warrant from the Council to give Harvey the comfort he desired.
[Sidenote: _SIR WILLIAM WYNDHAM._]
Meanwhile, Sir William Wyndham had secretly fled from London, as soon
as he knew the peril he would incur by tarrying there. Sir William’s
flight took him to Orchard Wyndham, his house in Somersetshire, where,
surrounded by partisans, he deemed himself safe at least till he could
devise means for putting a greater distance between himself and the
Tower. One morning, in September, at five o’clock, before it was yet
full daylight, two gentlemen arrived at the house, express from London,
with letters for him, which were of the utmost importance. Sir William
himself admitted them, in his night gear. They had scarcely crossed the
threshold, when one of the visitors informed the Baronet that the two
gentlemen he had admitted were Colonel Huske and a messenger, bearing a
warrant to arrest and carry him up to town. ‘That being the case,’ said
Sir William, ‘make no noise to awake Lady Wyndham, who is in a delicate
condition of health.’ The Colonel had received orders that Lady
Wyndham, being the Duke of Somerset’s daughter, was ‘on that account
to be put in as little disorder as possible.’ ◆[Sidenote: _SEARCH FOR
PAPERS._]◆ Accordingly, Colonel and messenger quietly followed Sir
William to his dressing-room, where the Colonel told him that he was
ordered to search his papers, and seize all that might be suspicious.
Wyndham produced his keys, readily; and he expressed such alacrity in
recommending a thorough search of drawers, desks, chests, &c., that
the wary Colonel, thought it might be as well to look elsewhere, first.
His eye fell on the Baronets garments, as they lay carefully flung over
a chair, and the astute agent, judging that the unlikeliest place was
the likeliest for treasonable matter to be stowed away in, took up Sir
William’s coat, with a ‘what may we have here?’ thrust his hands into
one of the capacious pockets, and drew thence a bundle of papers. The
emotion of Sir William was warrant of their importance. The Colonel
read it all in his confusion and disorder, and urged the instant
departure of his prisoner. ‘Only wait,’ said Sir William, ‘till seven
o’clock, and I will have my carriage and six horses at the door. The
coach will accommodate us all.’ Huske made no objection. Sir William
proceeded to dress; and, finally, he remarked, ‘I will only go into my
bed-room to take leave of my lady, and will shortly wait on you again.’
The Colonel allowed Sir William to enter the bed-room, and quietly
waited till the leave-taking should be accomplished. As the farewell,
however, seemed unusually long in coming to an end, the Colonel and
messenger began to look at each other with some distrust. They had
supposed that Wyndham was on his honour to return to them, but Sir
William had supposed otherwise. Whether he stopped to kiss his sleeping
wife or not, he never told, but he made no secret of what the Colonel
discovered for himself, on entering the room, namely, that Wyndham
had escaped by a private door, and perhaps his lady was not half so
much asleep as she seemed to be. Her husband, at all events, lacked no
aids to flight, the incidents leading to which were the common talk of
the town, soon after the Colonel had come back to Secretary Stanhope.
A reward of one thousand pounds was offered for the recapture of the
Jacobite whom the Colonel had been expected to take, keep, and deliver
up, in the ordinary discharge of his duty.
[Sidenote: _WYNDHAM’S ESCAPE._]
On the morrow of Wyndham’s escape, Lord William Paulet and Paul Burrard
were seated at a window in Winton market-place. From an inn-window
opposite a parson was seen staring at them rather boldly, and both
the gentlemen agreed that they had seen that face before, but could
not well tell where. It was Wyndham in disguise; and in that clerical
garb he contrived to get into Surrey, a serving-man riding with him.
There, at an inn, his servant wrote, in Sir William’s name, to a
clerical friend of the fugitive, asking for an asylum in his house.
If the friend’s fears were too great to allow him to grant such
perilous hospitality, he was urged to procure a resting place for
the fugitive in the residence of the rector of the parish, who might
receive an inmate in clerical costume without exciting suspicion.
This letter chanced to reach the house of the person to whom it was
addressed, during his absence. His wife had no scruples as to opening
the missive; perhaps she suspected there was mischief in it. Having
read its contents, and being anxious to serve and save her husband
before all the Sir Williams in the world, she promptly sent the
letter to the Earl of Aylesford, who as promptly submitted it to the
Ministry. Meanwhile Wyndham felt that the delay in answering his
request was the consequence of a discovery of his whereabouts. He at
once set forth again, and the magistrates being too late to seize the
master, laid hands upon the servant. There was found upon him a cypher
ring containing a lock of hair, at sight of which a Whig magistrate
exclaimed, ‘It’s the Pretender’s hair. Lord! I know the man and his
principles. It cannot be nobody’s else!’ On examination, however, it
was seen that the ring bore the cypher and carried the hair of Queen
Anne. While the other magistrates were jeering their too confident
colleague, Wyndham was quietly escaping from them.
[Sidenote: _DRAMATIC COURTESY._]
Passing on his way to London, Sir William encountered Sir Denzil Onslow
on horseback, escorted by two grooms. ‘Hereupon,’ says a pamphlet of
the period, ‘the knight, as it is customary for those of the black
robe (whose habit he had taken upon him) to do to Men of Figure, very
courteously gave him the salute of his hat and the right hand of
the road, which the said Mr. Onslow, being some time after apprised
of, acknowledged to be true, with this circumstance, that he well
remembered that he met a smock-faced, trim parson on such an occasion,
but that his eyes were so taken up, and his attention wholly employed,
with the beauties of the fine horse he rode upon, that he had no time
to make a true discovery of his person at that juncture.’
[Sidenote: _UNCOURTEOUS INTERVIEW._]
Wyndham, finding the pursuit grow too hot for him, rode to Sion House,
Isleworth, one of the seats of his father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset.
The two went up to the Duke’s town residence, Northumberland House,
whence Wyndham’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Hertford, sent notice
of the presence of such a guest to Secretary Stanhope. That official
dispatched a messenger, by whom Wyndham was carried before the Council
Board. It was said in London that he there denied all knowledge of a
plot; but the Council, nevertheless, committed him to the Tower. The
next day all London was astir with reporting the news that the Duke of
Somerset, having been refused as bail for his son-in-law, had at once
resigned his office of Master of the Horse.
Before Wyndham surrendered, the carriage of the Duke of Somerset, his
father-in-law, was seen standing at the door of the famous lawyer,
Sir Edward Northey. After the surrender, Government suspected that
this interview was for the purpose of a consultation as to whether the
proofs against Sir William could convict him of treason. Ministers
resolved that the Duke should be deprived of his places, and Lord
Townshend called upon him, with a sorrowful air, and a message from the
king that his Majesty had no further occasion for the Duke’s services.
‘Pray, my Lord,’ said Somerset, ‘what is the reason of it?’ Lord
Townshend answered, ‘I do not know!’ ‘Then,’ said the Duke, ‘by G――, my
Lord, you lie!’ ‘You know that the king puts me out for no other cause,
but for the lies which you, and such as you, have invented and told of
me!’ Such were the amenities which passed between noblemen in those
stirring Jacobite times. The duke asked leave to wait upon the king,
but he was curtly told to wait till he was sent for.
[Sidenote: _A GENERAL STIR._]
Still the plotters at large plotted on. The reiteration on the part
of the Whigs that they were powerless and on the road to destruction,
betrayed more fear than confidence. ‘If the (Tory) Party were not
under a judicial infatuation,’ says one paper, ‘they might plainly
see that Heaven has declared against them, by depriving them of their
Chief Supporters, and discovering their treasonable plots, which, when
set in a true light, will appear so treacherous and barbarous against
their lawful sovereign, King George, and so bloody against their fellow
subjects, as must make the memory of the Party execrable to latest
Posterity.’ This seemed to have little influence on the Jacobites.
The plot became so serious, there was so much uncertainty as to where
it might break out, that officers were hurrying from London to assume
command, in various directions, to Chester and to Dover, to Newcastle
and to Portsmouth, to Berwick and to Plymouth, to Hull, to Carlisle,
to York, to Edinburgh――east, west, north, south――there was a general
hurrying from London to whatever point seemed likely to prove dangerous.
[3] Case of Lieut. John Kynaston.
[Illustration: Flower]
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