(1715).
[Illustration: Drop-R]ightly or wrongly, the Tory mob in London were
in no wise daunted. They listened to street preachers of sedition.
The listeners were generally called ‘scum,’ and the orator was often
designated ‘as a Tory cobler.’ Powder and arms were discovered on board
ships in the Thames, and persons, accused of giving information to the
Government, posted bills in the City affirming their innocence. Often
the information was intended to mislead. Mr. Harvey, of Combe, was said
to be expressing his contrition to a divine. The police messengers
could not believe he was either so sick or so sorry as his friends
affirmed. Their opinion was justified when they found him attempting
to escape from his house through the tiles――an attempt which they
frustrated.
Towards the end of the month, more of the lofty heads among the
Jacobites were struck at. Sir John Pakington and Sir Windsor Hunlake
were added to the list of prisoners, and the Whigs were elated by a
display made in London by a delegation from Hanoverian Cambridge. The
king had rewarded the loyalty of that University by purchasing, for
6,000_l._, the library of the Bishop of Ely, which he presented to
the Whig seat of learning. Cambridge, by delegation, came up to St.
James’s. The king declared that his present was only an earnest of
future favour.
[Sidenote: _PAMPHLETEERING._]
Both the Whig and the Tory press exasperated the Government. From the
former was issued a pamphlet, called ‘The necessity of impeaching the
late ministry.’ The pamphlet took the form of a letter to the Earl of
Halifax, and was written by Thomas Burnet. The amiable author, after
such vituperation as was then much enjoyed by those who admired the
flinger of it and were out of reach of the missiles, mildly remarks
that,――‘having commenced an enemy to the late ministry even from
their first entrance into power, he cannot forbear from pursuing them
with his resentment even to their graves, the only place, indeed,
where their crimes can be forgotten!’ This was a Whig cry for blood.
‘“England expects it,” as the saying is,’ rang out from the throats of
the ultra Whigs.
[Sidenote: _GENERAL CONFUSION._]
A still more perplexing pamphlet was sold in the streets, despite the
constables, namely, ‘The Soldiers’ humble address for the impeachment
of the late ministry.’ Political soldiers were felt to be as out of
place as militant parsons. It rained pamphlets; and the embarrassment
caused thereby was increased by the circumstance that some of them
bore on the title-page the names of eminent men as authors, whose
sentiments were directly opposed to those set forth in the pamphlet.
Great confusion ensued, and a fear of impending calamity fell upon
many. So marked was this fear, that two months before the eclipse
of April, the astronomers, Dr. Halley and Mr. Whiston, ‘thought it
necessary to caution people against being surprised or interpreting it
as any ill omen, wherein there is nothing but what is natural, or than
the necessary result of Sun and Moon.’ ‘It is all very well,’ said the
Tories, ‘but there has been no such eclipse in England, since the days
of Stephen the Usurper.’
The eclipse and the Pretender were subjects that gravely occupied
men’s minds. From the coffee-houses where ‘Captains’ more or less
genuine used to congregate and talk loudly, those swaggerers began to
disappear, and their acquaintances felt quite sure that mischief was
afoot. The Secretaries of State knew all about those ‘Captains.’ They
were followed whithersoever they went, till all of them, nearly two
dozen, were pounced upon in Dublin, after spies had discovered that
they were enlisting men for the Chevalier. Two-thirds of these Jacobite
recruiters were, upon brief trial and conviction, hanged, drawn, and
quartered. In England, a poor Jacobite who had drunk ‘Damnation to King
George,’ was only fined 50_l._; but as he was to lie in prison till he
paid that sum, he probably slowly rotted away instead of being promptly
hung. When the Tories had the opportunity to express hostile opinions
with impunity, they never failed to avail themselves of it. They had
this opportunity at the theatre. Whig papers remarked that ‘the Tory
faction hissed as much like serpents from the galleries as their
leaders, the High Church faction, did from the pulpits.’ Any allusion
to desertion of allies or to a separate peace was sure to be greeted
with volleys of hisses.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE MOBS._]
In the Mug Houses bets began to be laid as to the length of time King
George was likely to be on the throne. Daring men, with their thoughts
over the water, wagered a hundred guineas he would not be king a month
longer. The next day, on the information of some of the company, they
would find themselves in peril of going to Tyburn in half that time.
The Tory mob had a way of their own to show their sentiments. They kept
the anniversary of Queen Anne’s coronation-day, and made the most of
their opportunity. They assembled at the Conduit on Snow Hill, with
flag and hoop, and drum and trumpet. They hoisted the queen’s picture
over the Conduit, and a citizen having flung to them a portrait of King
William, they made a bonfire and burnt it. They displayed a legend, the
contribution of a Mob Muse, which ran thus, alluding to the queen:――
Imitate her who was so just and good,
Both in her actions and her royal word!
[Sidenote: _RIOTING._]
They smashed the windows that were not illuminated, and they pelted
with flints the people who were lighting the candles intended to
propitiate them. They stopped coaches, robbed those who rode in them,
even of their wigs, and if the victims would not shout for Queen Anne,
the rascalry stript them nearly naked. Right into a Sunday morning in
April, this orthodox crew of incendiaries went about plundering, while
they shouted God bless the Queen and High Church! They drank horribly
the whole time, and toasted Bolingbroke frequently, but never King
George. High Churchmen would not blame riot when it took the shape of
burning down dissenters’ chapels, and the pious villains danced to
the accompaniment of ‘High Church and Ormond.’ At Oxford, town and
gown overstepped limits observed in London. In one of the many tumults
there, before they burnt in the street the furniture of one of the
dissenting ‘meeting houses,’ they fastened a Whig Beadle in the pulpit
and rolled him about the town till he was bruised in every limb. The
Whig papers, thereupon, significantly pointed out to their friends,
that there was a nonjuring congregation who met over a coffee-house in
Aldersgate Street. These people, it was said, prayed for ‘the rightful
king,’ and such wretches, of course, merited all that a Whig mob
could inflict on them. One of the most dangerous symptoms of the time
occurred on the arrest of some strapping young ballad wenches, who were
taken into custody, opposite Somerset House, for singing ballads of a
licentious nature against King George. The soldiers on guard rescued
the fair prisoners; and when much indignation was expressed at this
fact, the officers excused the men on the ground that they did not
interfere on political grounds, but out of gallantry to the ladies.
[Sidenote: _BALLAD-SINGERS._]
The street ballad-singers were irrepressible. They were the more
audacious as they often sang words which were innocent in their
expression, but mischievous by right application. The Jacobites were
ever apt at fitting old words and tunes to new circumstances. There was
a song which was originally written in praise of the Duke of Monmouth.
That song which lauded the unhappy nephew of James II. was now revived
in honour of that king’s son. ‘Young Jemmy’ was to be heard at the
corner of many a street. Groups of listeners and sympathisers gathered
round the minstrel who metrically proclaimed that
Young Jemmy is a lad that’s royally descended,
With ev’ry virtue clad, by ev’ry tongue commended.
A German gentleman, who subsequently published his experiences, was
astonished at the remissness or lenity of the magistrates generally,
but especially towards one arch-offender who, by song, furthered the
Pretender’s interests at the corner of Cranbourne Alley. ‘There a
fellow stands eternally bawling out his Pye Corner pastorals in behalf
of _dear Jemmy, lovely Jemmy_,’ &c.
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL SONGS._]
The writer adds, in sarcastic allusion to nobler personages who were
said to have the Chevalier’s commission in some secret drawer――‘I have
been credibly informed this man has actually in his pocket a commission
under the Pretender’s Great Seal, constituting him his Ballad-Singer
in Ordinary in Great Britain; and that his ditties are so well-worded
that they often poison the minds of many well-meaning people; that
this person is not more industrious with his tongue in behalf of his
master, than others are at the same time busy with their fingers among
the audience; and the monies collected in this manner are among those
mighty remittances the _Post Boy_ so frequently boasts of being made to
the Chevalier.’
The ballad, however, of ‘Young Jemmy’ did not mar the popularity of
‘The king shall enjoy his own again.’ The Jacobites knew no king but
James III. It was he who was referred to when the singers vociferated
The man in the moon may wear out his shoon
By running after Charles’s wain;
But all to no end, for the times will not mend
Till the king enjoys his own again.
Although songs in support of the house of Hanover were sung to the
same tune by Whig ballad-singers, this tune was thorough Tory,
and was profitable only to the Jacobites. Ritson compares it with
_Lillibulero_, by which air James II. was whistled off his throne.
‘This very air,’ he says, alluding to ‘The king shall enjoy his own
again,’ ‘upon two memorable occasions was very near being equally
instrumental in placing the crown on the head of his son. It is
believed to be a fact that nothing fed the enthusiasm of the Jacobites
down almost to the present reign (George III.), in every corner of
Great Britain, more than “The king shall enjoy his own again.”’
[Sidenote: _ARRESTS._]
Among the gentlemen of the laity whose fortunes were seriously affected
by the times and their changes was Colonel Granville. His brother
George, Lord Lansdowne, was shut up in the Tower, with Lord Oxford and
other noblemen. The colonel simply wished to get quietly away, and live
quietly in the country. He ordered horses for two carriages to be at
his door, in Poland Street, at six in the morning. The horse-dealer,
finding that the colonel was making a secret of his movements, lodged
an information against him with the Secretary of State. The spy accused
him of being about to leave the kingdom, privately. Early in the
morning, the two young ladies of the family, Mary and Anne Granville,
were awoke in their beds, by the rough voices of a couple of soldiers
with guns in their hands, crying out, ‘Come, Misses, make haste and
get up, for you are going to Lord Townshend’s’ (the Secretary of
State). Hastily dressed, by their maid, the young ladies were conducted
below, where the colonel and his wife were in the custody of two
officers and two messengers, supported by sixteen soldiers. Colonel
Granville devoted himself to consoling his wife, who went off into a
succession of hysterical fits, which could not have been cheering to
the daughters, the elder of whom was fifteen, the younger nine years of
age.
Colonel Granville did not come to harm, but there was a general
scattering of high-class Tories. Some fled in disguise; some were
ordered, others had leave, to depart. The Earl of Mar found his offer
to serve King George promptly rejected. Whereupon he galloped through
Aldersgate Street, and went northward, to serve King James.
[Sidenote: _IN THE PARK._]
Occasionally we meet with a Catholic Jacobite who preferred his ease
to his principles. In one of Pope’s letters he refers to a gentleman
in Duke Street, Westminster, who, having declined to take the oath of
abjuration, had consequently forfeited his chariot and his fashionable
Flanders mares. Supported by spiritual consolation, he bore his loss
like a patient martyr. Unable to take a drive, he watched from his
window those who could exhibit themselves in their carriages. The sight
was too much for his principles. These were maintained for the greater
part of one day, till about the hour of seven or eight, the coaches
and horses of several of the nobility, passing by his window towards
Hyde Park, he could no longer endure the disappointment, but instantly
went out, took the oath of abjuration, and recovered his dear horses,
which carried him in triumph to the Ring. ‘The poor distressed Roman
Catholics,’ it is added, ‘now unhorsed and uncharioted, cry out with
the Psalmist, “Some in chariots and some on horses, but _we_ will
invocate the name of the Lord.”’
There were other people, who met events with a philosophical
indifference. Sir Samuel Garth was to be seen squeezing Gay’s
forefinger, as Gay set Sir Samuel down at the Opera. The coffee-houses
were debating the merits of Pope’s ‘Homer,’ and of Tickell’s. The wits
at Button’s were mostly in favour of the former, but they made free
with Pope’s character as to morals, and some few thought that Tickell
stood above Pope. ‘They are both very well done, sir,’ said Addison,
‘but Mr. Tickell’s has more of Homer in it.’ Whereat, Pope told James
Craggs that ‘Button’s was no longer Button’s,’ indeed, that England
was no longer England, and that political dissensions had taken the
place of the old refinement, hospitality, and good humour. Politics
superseded poetry, yet all the world of London, in spite of politics,
was, according to Pope, discussing the merits of his translation. ‘I,’
wrote Pope in July, ‘like the Tories, have the town in general, that
is, the mob, on my side; ‘and to show the Secretary of State how little
politics affected him, he gaily notes that ‘L―――― is dead, and soups
are no more.’
[Sidenote: _INVASION IMMINENT._]
In that same July, however, there was a withdrawal of well-to-do Roman
Catholics, especially from London. Their opponents gave them credit for
having been warned of an approaching invasion, and of being desirous to
escape imprisonment. Popish disloyalty might be cruelly tested by any
constable who chose to administer the oath against Transubstantiation.
Towards the end of the month the king’s proclamation was first posted
in London. It announced that invasion was imminent, and it ordered all
Papists and reputed Papists to withdraw to at least ten miles from
London before the 8th of August. One hundred thousand pounds was the
reward again offered for the body of ‘the Pretender,’ dead or alive, if
taken within the British dominions. Meanwhile, at the Tory coffee-house
in Warwick Lane, the portrait of the Chevalier was passed from hand
to hand; while, to confirm waverers and encourage the converted,
great stress was laid upon the heroic look, the graceful carriage,
and the beautiful expression of clemency which belonged to the
original! Whig London was scandalised at the circumstance of a ‘priest
in an episcopal meeting-house’ in Edinburgh having prayed and asked the
prayers of the congregation for _a young gentleman that either was, or
would soon be, at sea_, on a dangerous enterprise. The London Whigs,
moreover, complained that the importation of arms and ammunition for
the service of the Pretender was favoured by Tory Custom-House officers
who had been appointed by the late ministry. Among the king’s own
foot-guards, enlisting for the Pretender was again said to be going
on. A strong recruiting party for the English army which went from
London to Oxford, and entered the latter city with its band playing,
was attacked by the Tory mob, by some of whom the big drum was cut to
pieces. The mob in various places attacked the houses of the Whigs.
◆[Sidenote: _SOUND OF SHOT._]◆ Shots were exchanged, and if a Whig
happened in defence of his life and property to slay a Tory, and the
case occurred where a jury of Jacobites could be summoned on the
inquest, the verdict was sure to be one of ‘wilful murder,’ whereat the
‘loyal’ London press waxed greatly indignant. It was with a sort of
horror that the Whig papers announced that eight-and-forty dozen swords
had been discovered in the north in the house of a tenant of Lord
Widdrington. Some of the papers ridiculed all idea of real danger. The
Duke of Ormond and Lord Rolle, the Duke of Leeds and Viscount Hatton,
might be dining with French ministers, but some papers thought little
would come of it. France objected to the English armaments going on,
as uncalled for. ‘Uncalled for!’ cried the Whig papers, ‘why, bloody
riot is rife in half-a-dozen large towns! One of the rebels shot in
Bromwicham had a fine lace shirt under his common frock!’
[Sidenote: _AFLOAT ON THE THAMES._]
Unpopular as the king and royal family may have been, there was never
the slightest show of fear or uneasiness about them. Even in August,
when an invasion was imminent, they went abroad among the people
quite unprotected. One Saturday evening in that month we hear of them
embarking in barges attended by many of the nobility afloat, and going
down the river ‘through bridge as far as _Limus_, to divert themselves
with music, which was most excellently performed on a great number of
trumpets, hautboys, and double curtails.’ On the return, the boats on
the river became so closely packed that the king ordered his watermen
to ship their oars and drift up with the flowing tide, as there was no
room left for rowing. The whole mass thus moved up together. The king
and royal family had perfect confidence in the people, and this trust
was not abused. The enthusiasm was unbounded. As twilight came down
upon them, the shipping and also the houses ashore illuminated with
lanterns and fired salutes. George I. was as safe as if he had been at
Windsor; and when, on landing at Privy Garden Stairs, he turned round
to salute the people, he must have felt that they were a noble people,
and they must have acknowledged that he was a stout-hearted king.
[Sidenote: _THE HORSE GUARDS._]
This was putting a bold face in front of peril. French emissaries were
in London, and there was no knowing for what desperate ends they had
been employed. Proclamations were despatched to Ireland for the arrest
of all Tories, robbers, and raparees, of whom there were already too
many concentrating for treasonable work about Dublin. The army itself
was not free from the most audacious treason. One morning as the fourth
troop of Horse Guards were about to turn out, an officer of the troop,
named Smith, was arrested in Whitehall. He affected to be indignant,
but the messengers produced the Secretary of State’s warrant for his
capture on a charge of high treason. Smith was shocked, and certainly
did not recover his coolness when the messengers took from his pockets
a commission signed by the Chevalier. The popular report as Smith
passed on his way to Newgate was, that on that very day he was to have
sold his post at the Horse Guards!
The king had no fear of assassination, but the ‘faction,’ as the
Jacobites were called, did their best to render his life uncomfortable.
There was natural indignation on the part of all moderate men when
a reprint appeared of the nonjuring Rev. Dr. Bedford’s work, ‘The
Hereditary Right of the Crown of England Asserted.’[4] This reprint was
denounced as being equivalent to the Pretender’s declaration, in folio.
The burthen of the book was, that to attempt the life of an usurper in
aid of the rightful prince was not murder. ‘As the rightful prince’
was not the same personage in the eyes of Whigs and of Tories, those
who put forth the book thought that neither party would be angry at the
justification of the murder of the chief of the opposite party.
While such publications were being printed, the metropolitan
authorities narrowly watched the temper of the people. The Lord Mayor
and Common Council were against the holding of Bartholomew Fair. One
newspaper, nevertheless, announced that the festival would be held as
usual. This step so smelt of sedition that the ‘author’ (as an editor
was then called) was only too glad to be let off by an abject apology.
It ended with:――‘We humbly beg his Lordship’s pardon for such an
affront.’
[Sidenote: _THE CHEVALIER DE ST. GEORGE._]
On September 13th news reached London that the Chevalier de St.
George had at last set out from Lorraine ‘in a Post Calash,’ in order
to travel incognito and so the more easily reach a seaport where he
could embark unobserved for some point in Great Britain. The Calash,
it was said, had not gone far before it was overturned. The august
traveller was reported as being generally hurt and bruised, but
particularly about the neck. This last was especially pointed out,
as if it were very significant. James was, at all events, so shaken
that his attendants had to carry him back. The Whigs eagerly longed
for confirmation of this news. ‘If it only proved true to the letter,
then,’ cried the Whigs, ‘it will give his party a further occasion to
remember the month of August, and furnish them with an opportunity to
drink as liberally to the Confusion of some other horses as they drank
to the “health of Sorrel,” the name of the horse that stumbled with
King William, and gave him the fall of which he died.’
[Sidenote: _THE KING’S SPEECH._]
There was growing uneasiness in London, despite the general confidence.
When the king prorogued Parliament in September, he was described
in the papers as being ‘pleased to take notice of the rebellion in
Scotland.’ He roundly laid that rebellion and the intended invasion
to the tumults and riots which had prevailed in the capital and in
various parts of the kingdom. Protestants, he said, had been deluded
into seditiously joining with Papists by false reports of the Church
of England being in danger under his administration. The king thought
this step was both unjust and ungrateful, considering what he had done
and what he had undertaken to do for her. The king naturally sneered
at the idea that a Popish Pretender was likely to be a better head of
the Church of England than a Protestant king. That informers were not
lacking may be perceived in a curious advertisement for a minister to
have put into the papers. It was to this effect:――‘Whereas a letter was
directed to the Right Hon. Robert Walpole, Esq., proposing to discover
matters of great importance, signed G. D., Notice is hereby given that
the said letter is received, and that if the person who wrote it will
come to Mr. Walpole’s lodgings at Chelsea any morning before nine
o’clock and make out what he therein proposes, he shall receive all due
encouragement and protection.’
On September 20th the ‘Daily Courant’ made no allusion whatever to the
troubled and anxious state of the nation, but it gave the satisfactory
intelligence that ‘All is in tranquility in France.’ On the same day,
however, a proclamation in the king’s name was issued, wherein it was
stated that ‘a most horrid and treacherous conspiracy’ was afoot, and
‘an invasion’ intended for the establishing of the Pretender.
[Sidenote: _PREACHERS AWAKE._]
The pulpits thereupon began to ring, but the Government made a
commendable attempt to muzzle the preachers, whether the latter were
blind adversaries or blinder advocates. The employment of violent
and malevolent terms against any persons whatsoever was prohibited.
The ‘intermeddling,’ in sermons, with affairs of state, was strictly
forbidden. The authorities, in fact, enjoined Christian ministers to
observe the charity which is the leading feature in Christianity.
The ministers, for the most part, claimed and exercised a rather
unchristian liberty. Foremost among the blaring trumpeters who sounded
on the Hanoverian side was White Kennett, Dean of Peterborough.
Kennett was a man who, in his early days, had offended the Whigs, by
his political publications; and, something later, had gratified the
Tories by putting forth an English translation of Pliny’s panegyric
upon Trajan, which was supposed to apply to James II.; while, at the
same time, he displeased the Jacobites by declaiming against popery and
by refusing to read the royal declaration of indulgence. The Whigs
whom he had offended, he appeased by his fierce opposition to
Sacheverel. Kennett was a man of great parts, as it is called, and was
particularly qualified for maintaining his opinions in a controversy.
Scholar, gentleman, priest and politician, he steadily went up the
ladder of preferment, till his merits and patronage had now brought
him to the deanery of Peterborough and the rectory of St. Mary,
Aldermanbury ◆[Sidenote: _A FAMOUS SERMON._]◆. It was in the church so
named that Kennett, on September 25th, 1715, preached his famous sermon
on witchcraft. The text was taken from 1 Samuel, xv. 23:――‘Rebellion is
as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected
thee from being king.’ The sermon, a long one, and full of an invective
that almost reaches ferocity, is stuffed with inflammatory politics
from beginning to end, incendiary matter which _then_ made men half-mad
with joy or indignation, but which seems _now_ a poor thing save in
weight of mischievous words. The preacher, of course, proved to his own
satisfaction that all concerned in promoting the imminent rebellion
were bewitched by the devil; that stubbornness in opposing the royal
authority was the iniquity and idolatry alluded to in the text; and
that the Pretender, like his father, had lost the crown because he
did not care to be of the true community of faith. The sermon was
‘inspired,’ according to the Whig papers;――but by the devil, according
to the Tories and Tory critics in the clubs. Art took a curious revenge
for this discourse. ◆[Sidenote: _SATIRICAL ART._]◆ An altarpiece was
painted for St. Mary’s, Whitechapel, by order of Welton, the Jacobite
rector. The subject was The Last Supper. It gained a certain modest
amount of admiration, till some spectator remarked that Judas Iscariot
not only seemed a more than usually prominent figure in the group,
but that the face was wonderfully like Dr. White Kennett’s. It was,
in fact, Kennett’s portrait, and when this became known, all London,
but especially Jacobite London, was crowding to Whitechapel to behold
this novel pillorying of the modern Iscariot. If any spectator had
a doubt on the matter, it was removed by the black patch on Judas’s
head. Kennett, in William’s days, used to go out with his dog and his
gun, and with companions in his shooting excursions. On one of these
‘outings,’ an awkward companion let part of the charge of his gun go
into the head of the divine. The consequences were grave, but Kennett
was saved by undergoing the operation of trepanning. Ever afterwards
he wore a black patch over the place. The artist had not forgotten the
fact. Delighted Jacobites gazed at the figure in jeering crowds; and
when the picture had been seen and re-seen by all the Tories in town,
the Bishop of London interfered, and ordered it to be put away. Kennett
could afford to laugh. His sermon on the witchcraft of the rebellion
carried him to the episcopal throne at Peterborough.
[Sidenote: _MISCHIEVOUS SERMONS._]
The pulpits were not silenced. As what was considered the supreme
moment of peril became imminent, they shook again with the trumpet-like
roar of the preachers. The High Church lecturers inculcated obedience
to the _rightful king_, without naming him. The thorough Whig
Hanoverian clergy spared no epithets that they could fling, winged with
fire and tipped with poison, at the Jacobites’ sovereign, ‘a boy sworn
to destroy this kingdom,’ said one. Others were both foul and ferocious
in dealing with the Chevalier who desired to get possession of his
inheritance. The more eagerly they pelted him with unsavoury missiles,
the more lavish they were in terms which amounted to worshipping the
god-like monarch whom Heaven had sent for the advantage of England and
the wonder of the world. On October 16th, 1715, one of these sermons
was preached in St. Katherine Cree Church, London, by the minister,
the Rev. Charles Lambe. The text was taken from Proverbs, xxiv. 21,
‘My son, fear thou the Lord and the king: and meddle not with them
that are given to change.’ Such a text foreshadows its comment in
such hands as those of Lambe. But he went out of his way to assail
the Chevalier, into the circumstances of whose birth――to show he was
not the born son of Mary of Modena and James II.――Lambe entered in
the gossiping manner of such matronly midwives as his bishop was then
in the habit of licensing. ‘That was done in a corner,’ he said, with
an air of mystery, ‘which should have been done openly to the utmost
extent of decency.’ Had Lambe’s congregation been disposed to sleep, he
had matter prepared for the awakening of them in a passage which was
certain to touch them nearly. He knew that distant danger was unheeded,
but he brought this suggestive picture of London to the attention of
Londoners, and it could not have done otherwise than make their souls
uneasy, and rouse their spirits to be up and doing. ‘Have you any
notion of a civil war, your Treasury exhausted, your Banks plundered,
your Trade decayed, your Companies bankrupt, your Shops rifled, and the
various species of Stocks sunk, run down, and lost? Have you any idea
of Fields flow’d with blood, your Streets pav’d with the carcasses of
fellow citizens, your Wives and your Daughters torn from your Sides,
and made a Prey to enrag’d undistinguishing Soldiers. Think that you
see this beautiful and spacious City burnt, destroy’d, made a ruinous
Heap, attended with all the dismal Horrors of Fire and Sword even from
Fellow Countrymen, Fellow Subjects, and Fellow Protestants!’
[Sidenote: _A SOUND OF ALARM._]
Citizens and fathers must have stared in a sort of dismay. Lambe might
well say that if any disloyal man was present, he hoped such person
had been cured of his malady. Jones, probably, went home thinking
of a pavement made out of the carcasses of Brown and Robinson; and
the ladies of citizen families walked behind them in a flutter of
speculation as to what part of the force those undistinguishing
soldiers belonged.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE AGENTS._]
London may be called the head-quarters of the rebels, before actual
war broke out. Captain John Shafto (on half-pay), an ex-Captain John
Hunter, and an Irish Papist who had served in the brigade in France,
were among the more active and daring agents. The leaders of the party
kept their secret tolerably well. They met, debated, provided all
things needful for their success, and carried on a correspondence
with friends at a distance. While agents moved quietly away from
London to teach the ‘Rurals’ the sacred duty of rebellion, more trusty
messengers, still, rode or walked through and away from town, bearing
letters and despatches which, if discovered, might cost a dozen lives.
These trusty gentlemen were sent into various parts of the kingdom.
They rode from place to place as travellers, pretending a curiosity
to view the country; and they performed their dangerous duty with a
success which perplexed the king’s messengers. The most dexterous of
these agents were Colonel Oxburgh, Nicholas and Charles Wogan, and
James Talbot, all Irish and Papists. There were others, men of quality
too, and occasionally a clergyman, who were entrusted with important
but still dangerous duties. ‘All these,’ says Patten in his ‘History,’
‘rid like Gentlemen, with Servants and Attendants, and were armed with
swords and pistols. They kept always moving, and travelled from place
to place, till things ripened for action.’
Meanwhile, the otherwise curious part of the public might be seen
wandering in troops to Duke Street, Westminster, to gaze at the house,
the master of which, the Earl of Scarsdale, was there put under
confinement. There was, elsewhere, a good look-out kept for perils
ahead; there was no indulgence of any mean spite. His Majesty’s ship
‘Ormond’ was then lying at Spithead. The Government did not stoop to
the little vindictiveness of painting out the name of the great rebel
who was then aiding and fostering rebellion, abroad. Sedition at home
was hottest very close to the Royal Palace. There was quite a commotion
at the bottom of St. James’s Street, at seeing messengers and guards
enter Mr. Ozinda’s chocolate-house, next door to the palace. Ozinda
himself was brought out captive, and when the mob saw him followed by
Sir Richard Vivyan and Captain Forde, also captives, they began to
smell a new gunpowder plot, and to surmise that the blowing up of the
royal family was to be one of the means for restoring the Stuarts.
[Sidenote: _ARRESTS._]
Much of the safety of London was entrusted to the Westminster
Cavalry Militia, who were now very active. Record is made of their
rendezvousing in Covent Garden, going thence to _Tuttle Fields_, where,
says the sarcastic ‘Weekly Packet,’ ‘they exercised without so much
as one Man falling from the saddle.’ At the same time, captures were
being effected in every direction. Now, a whole club might be seen,
properly secured, and passing on their way to Newgate, amid the jeers
of most spectators, and with the sympathy of a few. Country gentlemen
of many thousands a year were not held sacred even in the middle of
their dinner at an ordinary. It was a regular frolic to carry off half
the guests in eating-houses, before they had finished their repast, for
which perhaps they had little appetite left. Then, unlucky Italians or
demonstrative Frenchmen were ever and anon being handcuffed in country
places and hurried through London on suspicion of being the Pretender.
Ambassadors from foreign Powers had endless trouble thrown upon
their hands in protecting the rights of foreign hawkers of flash
jewelry, suspected of designs upon the throne. ◆[Sidenote: _POPULAR
FEELING._]◆The Whig writers seriously warned the London apprentices
who had Tory proclivities that Heaven was certainly against them.
At a feast in celebration of the expiration of a young fellow’s
apprenticeship, the freedman, in an after-dinner speech, railed
furiously at his late Whig master and at Whiggery generally. Before the
speaker, with anti-Hanoverian expletives for fireworks, had come to
an end, the young fellow’s excitement became too much for him. A fit
laid him senseless, and he died in an hour or so. The Whig patriots
protested that the Judgment of God was never so manifest as in this
case.
[4] The authorship of this pamphlet, first published
in 1713, for which Bedford was condemned to pay a
fine of 1,000 marks, and to be imprisoned three
years, was subsequently assumed by another nonjuring
clergyman――the Rev. George Harbin.
[Illustration: Flowers]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]