(1716.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he loyal Whig gentlemen had celebrated
their king’s birthday on May 28th. The Tories were all the more
alert on the following morning to celebrate the anniversary of
King Charles’s Restoration, as they supposed their adversaries
would be too seedy, after their riot and revel, to molest them.
The Jacobites,――emphatically spoken of by the Whig papers as
‘rascals,’――came in from all the parishes, and also from the suburban
country. They appeared in their best, with oaken boughs in their hats,
the women wearing sprigs in their bosoms, and as the leaves were mostly
covered with gold or silver leaf, the same was held (by the Whigs) to
be a proof of malice prepense.
[Sidenote: _FESTIVE FIGHTING._]
In great numbers, the Jacobites paraded the streets, or stood about
in defiant groups, till church-time pealed out, and then the most of
them filed off to various churches and chapels, where they knew sermons
were prepared to their liking. The chief of the ‘High Church Faction’
went to St. Andrew’s, Holborn. Sacheverel, it is to be presumed, had
returned from an excursion he was said to have taken with two ale-house
men the day before, in order to avoid noticing the king’s birthday.
The professed Jacobites, decked with all the insignia worn by the
High-flyers, mostly favoured the chapel, in Scrope’s Court, nearly
opposite. This place was especially crowded, and especial mention is
made of the presence of ‘several men in a genteel habit, booted and
spurred.’ After devotion, dinner; at and after dinner, drinking; and
then a general mustering and marching in the streets, with, in addition
to oaken boughs in their hats, oaken towels, or clubs in their hands.
They were――so say the Whig authors――‘animated as they went along by
Jacobite Trulls, and several Scaramouches, of whom one might be named
not far from a Jacobite Conventicle, only,’ adds the Whig insinuator,
with droll reasoning, ‘he was so much elevated with the spirit of Malt
that he was “Non compos.”’ Of course, they shouted the usual Slogan;
not only complimenting High Church and Ormond, but Sacheverel and
Queen Anne, the latter in the words ‘the Doctor and the Queen!’ The
Whigs describe them as ‘crews of tatterdemallions, blackguardly boys,
wheelbarrow men and ballad-singers;’ but these could not be the same
people who, in the morning, had crowded the churches. The genteel men
in cloaks, boots and spurs, were not to be seen in the streets where
now hell seemed to have broken loose. The ‘street’ Jacks knocked down
all passengers who did not sympathise with them by voice or by carrying
Jacobite tokens. They were furious in denouncing Presbyterians, and
they were proceeding to carry on war against certain chapels, clubs,
and mug-houses, when the ‘loyal societies’ from these houses, and the
gallant Hanoverians from the _Roebuck_ descended to the highway, met
their foes in fair fight, and after an hour of it, scattered all save
those who lay senseless, or who were in the hands of the police. If
there had been any thought of rescuing the Jacobite prisoners that
night, or furthering the Chevalier’s pretensions by the demonstration,
the realisation was prevented by this sort of fiercely civil war,
in which the Whigs took the law into their own hands, and quelled a
sanguinary riot by a sanguinary fight, left the field of battle to be
watched by soldiers who arrived after the victory, and then went home
as modest and harmless as lambs!
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE BOYS._]
It was very observable that among the noisiest and most violent of the
Jacobite mob or army were the ‘Charity School Boys.’ Possibly, they
thought that any change must be the better for them; but moralists
ventured to believe that the benefactors of schools had not founded
them for the furtherance of popery and slavery, which were put down
as among the objects of the rioters. The real criminals were, it was
said, the masters and mistresses of the schools, who ‘poysoned’ the
children with principles which would surely conduct them to Bridewell
or the gallows. However, the writers take courage in the conviction
that the Pope has as little cause to sing _Te Deum_, for the success of
the mobs of London, as for that of his armed rebels who appeared at
Dunblane and Preston.
[Sidenote: _FLOGGING SOLDIERS._]
The presence of the Charity Boys as active fighters and rioters with
the Jacobite mobs, was accounted for naturally enough. They had been
told that the Institute from which they derived so much advantage was
about to be abolished. This tale had been invented by ‘Popish Priests
or Jesuits, who, going in a genteel habit to apple stalls, oyster
women, wheelbarrow folks, and peddling ale-houses, frequented by poor
people, put base, erroneous notions into the heads of the populace,
purely to raise animosities and divisions among the King’s subjects.’
Strong appliances were employed to repress all Tory audacity. It had
been allowable, in former years, to wear oak apples, or sprigs of oak,
in the hat on May 29th. _Now_ the symbol of rejoicing for the Stuart
was construed as being meant offensively to Hanover. This must have
been strongly impressed upon the army, when two soldiers were whipt, in
Hyde Park, almost to death, and were then turned out of the service for
wearing oaken boughs in their hats on this 29th of May!
[Sidenote: _HOADLY IN THE PULPIT._]
While uproar reigned in the streets on that anniversary, King George,
during a part of the day, was quietly sitting in the Chapel Royal,
St. James’s, with a brilliant congregation, some of whom feared God,
and a greater number honoured the king. The faces of all were turned
to the Rt. Rev. Father in God, Benjamin (Hoadly), Lord Bishop of
Bangor. All ears were ready to hear how the preacher would illustrate
the occasion,――the anniversary of the Restoration. The text was 126th
Psalm, v. 3――‘The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are
glad!’ Nothing could well be more appropriate. How the king, however,
could look the preacher in the face while Hoadly was overwhelming
him with flattery is not conceivable. He perhaps smiled when the
bishop described loyalty to Charles II., after the Restoration, as a
thing falsely so-called. The happiest touch was where Hoadly brought
Charles II. and King George together, by Heaven’s decree. Providence,
he intimated, had a great design in hand, when the Restoration was
permitted, which was only the lesser half of that design. The divine
scheme was made complete by the birth of King George on the very
day before that 29th of May, 1660, on which the Restoration was
accomplished. In George, the great work was to culminate, and it was
now concluded. And then, the bishop eulogised the sovereign, who was
perhaps incapable of comprehending a tenth part of the words which
fell from Hoadly’s lips, as a king resplendent by his virtues! The
difference on this point between the two kings being that Charles
loved handsome hussies and George fat ones. Hoadly was not only in
an ecstacy at the present overwhelming happiness, but he was lost in
wonder at the almost excess of felicity which England would experience
in the existence of the descendants of such a virtuous king! The very
contemplation of that future delight was almost too much for him. He
recovered by bewailing the not delightful fact that, beaten as the
Jacobites had been, they were already growing daily more audacious!
[Sidenote: _FLATTERY BY ADDISON._]
This audacity was also noticed by Addison, in the ‘Freeholder.’ ‘It
is impossible,’ he wrote, ‘to reflect with patience on the Folly and
Ingratitude of the Men who labour to disturb the King in the midst
of his Royal Cares and to misrepresent his generous Endeavours for
the Good of his People.’ Under a Stuart, the English people would
be in helpless slavery. Under a king like George, there would be
freedom――perhaps with some dissensions, but, ‘a disturbed Liberty,’ it
had been well said, ‘is better than a quiet Servitude.’ Subsequently,
he praised a healthy despotism, and remarked that under Augustus (the
Whig poets called George ‘Augustus’), Rome was happier than when she
was in possession of her ancient liberty! What a prince Augustus must
be, seeing that when he left Hanover, ‘his whole people were in tears!’
All other monarchs sought his counsel and friendship. No man retired
from his presence but with admiration of his wisdom and goodness.
Addison professed, therefore, to be unable to account for the fact that
his royal client should still suffer under the attacks of malicious
tongues and more malicious pens.
[Sidenote: _ON THE SILVER THAMES._]
There seemed nothing but enthusiasm on the part of the people, at
all events, of the Whigs, when the Prince and Princess of Wales took
the young princesses on the river. The royal barge thus pleasantly
freighted, and quite unguarded, was a familiar object between London
and Greenwich. The Thames was often the scene of more splendid
spectacles than the above. On the 5th of June, the Duke of Newcastle
was the giver of one of those gay and gorgeous entertainments. His
Grace was early afloat in his new barge, pulled by a dozen rowers, in
new liveries. He was soon joined by the Duke of Montague, the Earl of
Carnarvon, and other members of ‘the quality,’ in similar state. Last
of all came the Prince and Princess in royal barges, scarlet and gold,
flags flying, trumpets proclaiming, while cannon and human throats
on the shores roared their rough welcome. As the royal barges glided
into the space left for them within a half-circle of other brilliant
galleys, the Haymarket orchestra, especially engaged, gave to the royal
guests a most harmonious welcome. In the simpler record of this aquatic
festival we are told that ‘There was a very fine cold Treat consisting
of above eighty Dishes, the three principal Barges to be served in
Place,’ whatever that may mean. When twilight descended upon the scene,
the guests, landing, accompanied the Duke of Newcastle to his house at
the north-west corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where a magnificent ball
and a sumptuous supper detained them till long after the dawning of
another day.
About this time, the Scottish gentleman, in lodgings in Rathbone Place,
Simon Fraser, who had had public audience of the king, was received by
his Majesty, in private. Fraser of Lovat thus wrote of what passed to
Mr. Duncan Forbes:――
[Sidenote: _TWO PRETTY FELLOWS._]
‘I can tell you, that no man ever spoke freer language to his Majesty
and the Prince than I did of our two great friends, in letting him
know that they did him more service, and were capable to do him more
service, than all those of their rank in Scotland, and it is true. I
hope what I said will be useful, and let it have what effect it will
as to me, I am overjoyed to have occasion to serve the two prettiest
fellows in Europe.’ Lovat spoke of King George as ‘one of the best
men on earth, but strangely imposed upon by certain persons. I hope
it will not be always so,’――While serving the ‘two prettiest fellows
in Europe,’ Lovat did not neglect a prettier,――himself. In one of his
letters to Forbes, in the Culloden papers, he says, ‘If you suffer
Glengarry, Frazerdale, or Chisholm to be pardoned, I will never more
carry a musquet under your command.’ Lovat’s motive is betrayed in
another letter, in which he says: ‘The king has been graciously
pleased to grant me, this very day, a gift of Frazerdale’s Escheat,
and M. Stanhope told me I was so well in his Majesty’s spirit, that
all my enemies are not able to do me harm.’ The crafty rascal is fully
manifested in the following passage: ‘I spoke to the Duke and my Lord
Islay about my marriage, and told them that one of my greatest motives
to that design was to secure them the joint interest of the North. They
are both fully for it, and the Duke is to speak of it and propose it to
the King.’
His Majesty, just then, thinking there was something to be grateful
for, appointed the 7th of June as a Thanksgiving Day, for the glorious
suppression of the late rebellion. Tory parsons tried their best not
to be thankful. Sacheverel suddenly found that St. Andrew’s was out
of repair, and must be immediately shut up, but his more discreet
churchwardens were afraid to support him. They maintained that, in
this case, whatever they thought, the congregation at St. Andrew’s must
at least look thankful, by duly assembling.
[Sidenote: _THANKSGIVING DAY._]
This Thanksgiving Day, being a holiday, the streets were made lively by
the onslaughts of contending factions. The Whigs wore orange-coloured
ribbon cockades, and a bit of laurel in their hats. The Jacobites
sported a scrap of rue or thyme, symbols of their sorrow and of their
hopes as to what Time might bring round to them. The Jacobite women
wore the same emblems, and they were foremost in the fights which
invariably took place when the antagonistic mobs met on the highway.
The Whig papers report the total defeat of their adversaries. ‘They
were thrashed, cut, and wounded to that degree,’ says the facetious
‘Weekly Journal,’ ‘that many of them will have reason to Rue the Time
that ever they met the Whigs, on the 7th of June.’
[Sidenote: _SHERLOCK’S SERMON._]
While they were fighting, Sherlock, Dean of Chichester, was preaching
his Thanksgiving sermon before the House of Commons, in St,
Margaret’s, Westminster. His text was from Psalm cxxii. 6, ‘Pray for
the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.’ The most
remarkable passage in the discourse was one which quietly reasserted
the Sacheverel maxim that resistance to constituted authority is
unrighteous. Sherlock did not mean to tell the senators that the
opposition to James II. was unrighteous. Nevertheless, he says of
those who would rebel on grounds real or imaginary, ‘Where did they
learn that Rebellion is the proper remedy in such cases? The Church
of England has no such doctrine; and if they cannot govern their own
passions, yet in justice to her, they ought not to use her name in a
cause which she ever has and ever will disclaim.’ The dean drew no
ill picture of the public feeling just before the revolution. ‘Oh,
that I had words to represent to the present generation the miseries
which their fathers underwent; that I could describe their fears and
anxieties, their restless nights and uneasy days, when every morning
threatened to usher in the last day of England’s liberty, when men
stood mute for want of counsel, and every eye was watching with
impatience for the happy gale that should save the kingdom, whose
fortunes were reduced so low as to depend upon the chance of wind and
weather.’ After this poor compliment to Providence, Sherlock hinted
at the possible occurrence of another attempt of the Jacobite Prince
to overthrow the established Church and Throne. Private and party
selfishness facilitated such an attempt, but ‘it is as absurd,’ he
said, ‘for a man, under any resentment whatever, to enter into measures
destructive of his country’s peace, as it would be for him to burn the
Title to his Estate, because the Tenant was behind in his rent.’ There
were few of the listeners to this passage who did not feel that if the
words condemned revolution against George I., they equally condemned
(to Jacobite thinking, at least), that which overthrew James II.
The dean was not afraid to say a word in favour of the Nonjurors.
The rashness of some of these persons had involved the whole body in
obloquy. He observed:――‘The principles on which the legality of the
present Establishment is maintained, are, I think, but improperly, made
a part of the present quarrel which divides the nation. There are but
few who have not precluded themselves on this point, those, I mean, who
have had courage and plainness enough to own their sense and forego
the advantages, either of birth or education, rather than give a false
security to the government, which under their present persuasion they
could not make good. To these, I have nothing more to say, than to wish
them what I think they well deserve, a better cause.’
[Sidenote: _BISHOP OF ELY’S SERMON._]
A large concourse of people flocked on this day to Ely House Chapel,
to hear the Bishop’s Thanksgiving sermon; which was preached from
the text,――‘Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed and
delivered from the hand of the enemy,’ Psalm cvii. 2. The ‘Holbourn’
congregation had to listen to a highly-spiced discourse. Indeed, the
prevailing taste of all the discourses was a sharp attack on Popery,
its ends, and its cruelty in establishing and maintaining them. The
Bishop, Fleetwood, stated that, had the rebellion been successful,
London would have seen the slaughter of the whole of the royal family,
in order to have no other but a Popish succession possible. The most
mischievous and calumnious party cry that he had heard was ‘The Church
in danger!’ ‘I have lived myself,’ he said, ‘in and about this city,
six or seven and twenty years, and been as careful and diligent an
observer how things went with relation to the Church, as I could.’ The
prelate declared that neither in William’s nor Queen Anne’s reign, nor
in the existing one, had there been the slightest foundation for the
cry. There was no such cry during the last three or four years of Queen
Anne’s reign, because there were men then in power at Saint James’s
‘some of the greatest of whom are now actually in the service of the
Pretender.’ When the bishop alluded to the unhappy persons who had
suffered for their active Jacobitism, he let drop words which, somewhat
strange, perhaps, as coming from a Christian prelate, enable us to see
into some of the practice of London hitherto unknown. ‘The marvellous
compassion, the strange and hitherto unpractised charity of public
prayers and tears bestowed upon the few State Criminals that have
fallen of late, by the hands of Law and Justice, this new and unusual
tenderness, I say, was shown rather for their sufferings than their
sins, by such as approve their cause.’
[Sidenote: _KING GEORGE’S RIGHT TO THE THRONE._]
Nothing was more clear than the king’s statement, published soon after
his accession,――that he had succeeded to the crown of his ancestors.
His hereditary right was there proclaimed. The bishop, in his sermon,
told his hearers of many ways in which the king did _not_ ascend
the throne. Among them is this: ‘Nor did he come by what they call
Hereditary Right.’ The king was called, according to the prelate,
by the Nation represented in a free Parliament, ‘not,’ he quaintly
remarked, ‘not by gratitude for any benefits or service past.… He was
called to the Throne by all the Nation, King and Parliament; and also
afterwards by _Queen_ and Parliament, if that will please some people
better.’ When the congregation dispersed, Ely Place was resonant with
the diverse comments such passages were calculated to elicit.
The press was as active as the pulpit, but not exactly in the same way.
[Sidenote: _A NONJURING CLERGYMAN, TO BE WHIPT._]
The Crown messengers in pursuit of copies of the more stingingly
written works, having Nonjuring and Jacobite tendencies, discovered in
Dalton’s printing office copies of the famous pamphlet, ‘_The Shift
Shifted_,’ and in Redmayne’s, the equally offensive work, ‘_The Case of
Schism in the Church of England truly stated._’ In the first matter the
Government could get hold only of the printer, and Dalton was fined,
imprisoned, and sentenced to the pillory. With the ‘Case of Schism,’ it
was different. Justice not only laid hands on the printer, Redmayne,
but on the author, the Rev. Lawrence Howell. Redmayne suffered for
sending forth the libel, but the learned author was more severely dealt
with for writing it. On conviction at the Old Bailey, the reverend
scholar was condemned to three years’ imprisonment, to pay a fine of
500_l._, to be whipped, and to be degraded and stripped of his gown by
the public executioner. To his question, ‘Who will whip a clergyman?
‘the court replied, ‘We pay no deference to your cloth, because you are
a disgrace to it, and have no right to wear it. Besides, we do not look
upon you as a clergyman, in that you have produced no proof of your
ordination, but from Dr. Hickes, under the denomination of Bishop of
Thetford: which is illegal, and not according to the constitution of
this kingdom, which has no such bishop!’ Thereupon, the executioner, in
obedience to command, stepped up to Howell, and stripped Howell’s gown
from off his back, as he stood at the bar.
[Sidenote: _SAVED BY THE BISHOP OF LONDON._]
The Tories generally, and ‘the Nonjurants’ in particular, thought
the sentence severe; and that the Common Sergeant, Duncan Dee, was
sarcastic when he told Mr. Howell that he ought to be obliged to the
king for his great mercy, who might have ordered him to be tried for
High Treason,――and also to _him_, the Common Sergeant, for his lenity
in ‘pronouncing so easy a sentence!’ The whipping was far worse than
hanging; and Mr. Howell was, in fact, likely to be in prison for
life; as, after his three years’ imprisonment, he was condemned to
find security for his good behaviour as long as he lived, himself
in a thousand pounds, and four sureties in five hundred pounds,
each!――Robinson, Bishop of London, at once stepped in to save the
Nonjuror from the most cruel and degrading part of the punishment. At
his intercession, the whipping was not carried into execution. ‘Well,’
cried the coffee-house Whigs, ‘the fellow ought to be hanged!’ The
Nonjurors and the Papists suffered persecution because of him. The
former were arrested wherever they attempted to meet, and the houses
of both were rigorously searched for arms, to the loss of property and
much ruffling of the tempers of indignant womankind.
Mr. Justice Dormer subsequently asserted that Howell’s ‘Case of Schism’
attempted to show that all the clergy and laity who were loyal to King
George were in a state of damnation!――‘_I_ think,’ said Mr. Justice,
‘that the Pretender is about as near to the Crown as this Howell is to
the Church!’
[Sidenote: _THE ROSE IN JUNE._]
June 10th found the Jacobites prepared to celebrate _their_ Prince’s
birthday. The fact that during the preceding week, three of the force
captured at Preston――Dalzell, Ramsay, and Shaftoe――had been condemned
to death, did not prevent the Jacobites at large from procuring a
store of white roses, to be worn ‘in favour’ of James III. According
to the papers, most of these roses were ‘nipped in the bud.’ Yet,
political prisoners in Newgate decked their windows with them, or flung
them to passers by. Other Jacobites walked in the highways with the
emblematic rose in their bosoms, but ‘they met with severe Rebukes.’
‘One of them,’ says the ‘Weekly,’ ‘dressed somewhat like a Gentleman,
was challenged by one of His Majesty’s Officers, near Gray’s Inn Lane,
had his Badge torn from him and was wounded and disarmed.’ Thus,
private war was still kept up, after the public one had been gloriously
concluded. It was more easy for a Whig official to whip a white rose
out of the button hole of a ‘gentle’ Jacobite’s coat, and draw a little
Jacobite blood in the process, than it was to suppress the seditious
sayings and doings of the common people. The streets, lanes, and public
markets of the City were still infested with people singing ballads,
or crying for sale pamphlets and broadsides hostile to the Government,
and, as the Lord Mayor’s proclamation, threatening heavy penalties
against the offenders, says, ‘corrupting the minds and alienating
the affections of his subjects, causing animosities and stirring up
seditions and riots.’ In these riots, blood was shed, especially when
the soldiery appeared on the scene, and the Jacobite mob saluted them
with the exasperating cry of ‘George’s Bull Dogs!’ Private quarrels
on the great political question came to as bloody conclusions. Major
Cathcart and Colonel Gordon fought a fierce fight with swords in
Kensington Gardens, from which neither came out alive. It took the
major six deadly thrusts at his adversary, before he could deliver the
fatal one, but at that moment Gordon ran the major through, and slew
him on the spot.
[Sidenote: _MORE BLOODSHED._]
After the demonstration of the 10th of June was over――in which, it
must be confessed, the Jacobites had the worst of it――the ‘Flying
Post’ thought it would not be amiss to ‘caution the Jacobites of both
sexes, not to appear any more in public with badges of sedition and
rebellion, lest they meet with severer treatment than hitherto.’ The
‘He-Jacobites’ that were ‘drubbed till they eat their rue … are advised
to take care lest the next dose be Hemp or Birch; and the She-Jacobites
ought to be wise, lest they meet with the same fate as some of their
sisters near Charing Cross, who, for insulting gentlemen that wore
orange ribbons, on May 28th, were committed to the care and management
of some of the worshipful Japanners of Shoes, who painted them, they
best know where, with the proper mark of the Beast.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE LADIES._]
Addison, in the ‘Freeholder,’ satirised them without mercy. He
ascribed to the Jacobite ladies a want of grace, resulting from
their country life; whereas the Whig ladies, daily in attendance at
Court, possessed a courtly air to which the Jacobite ladies could
never attain! The latter were as raw militia-men compared with the
accomplished soldier in all his glory. Addison accuses the Jacobite
ladies of having a tone of vulgarity and mendacity in the expression
of their disloyal prejudices. Before the ‘beautiful part of creation’
became antagonistic in politics, they were perfect as mistresses of
households, or as maidens worthy of becoming such. But in the present
disturbed times, he describes wives and maidens as mere ‘stateswomen.’
‘Several women of this turn are so earnest in contending for hereditary
right, that they wholly neglect the education of their own sons
and heirs; and are so taken up with their zeal for the Church that
they cannot find time to teach their children the Catechism,’ A
‘pretty bosom heaving with party rage’ is moved by wrong impulses.
‘We sometimes,’ writes Addison, ‘see a pair of stays ready to burst
with sedition; and hear the most masculine passions expressed in the
sweetest voices. I have lately been told of a country gentlewoman,
pretty much famed for this virility of behaviour in party disputes,
who, upon venting her notions very freely in a strange place, was
carried before an honest Justice of the peace. This prudent magistrate,
observing her to be a large black woman, and finding by her discourse
that she was no better than a rebel in her riding-hood, began to
suspect her for my Lord Nithsdale, till a stranger came to her rescue,
who assured him, with tears in his eyes, that he was her husband!’
[Sidenote: _LADIES’ ANTI-JACOBITE ASSOCIATIONS._]
Addison further told the ladies that they must by nature be Whigs,
as were a Jacobite Popish Government to be established, it would be
the vocation of women to be nuns, while all the beaux, officers, and
pretty fellows generally, would be priests or monks, and then celibacy
would be almost universal. The great Essayist approves of various
Ladies’ Associations for the suppression of Jacobitism. At one, there
was an open tea-table, accessible only to Whig gentlemen. At a second,
there was a Basset table, where none but the loyal were admitted to
punt. Young ladies are praised who recognise the doctrine of passive
obedience only in lovers to their mistresses. One Whig nymph hit upon
a way of wearing her commode so seductively, that Tory lovers were
converted at her feet, and Tory damsels imitated the fashion. Another
nymph went abroad in a pearl necklace which, according to the Essayist,
manifested her abhorrence of the Popish fashion of beads. Maids, wives,
and widows, are reviewed at this crisis, and such counsel is given them
as a writer at the beginning of the last century _could_ give without
any imputation of audacity.
A publisher, with a name that bespeaks his being baptized before
the Puritan fire was extinguished――Bezaleel Creak――now sent forth,
from the Bible and Ink-Bottle, in ‘Germain Street, St. James’s,’ a
poem, ‘occasioned by the many Lies and Scandals Dispersed against
the Government, Since the late Rebellion.’ The piece was entitled
‘Rebellious Fame,’ as that allegorical personage was just then given
to report wonders and miracles on land, in the sea, in rivers, and in
the skies, all which――by ‘the Members of the British Society and the
Mugg-Houses about the City of London,’ to whom the book was satirically
dedicated――were said to portend the speedy restoration of the king over
the water to his own again. The doggrel is of the worst sort. The most
descriptive bit in it refers to Lorraine, the Newgate Ordinary, whose
Calendar is called a history which
with pious dread
Is ev’ry Morn by pious Porters read.
Lorraine is told that the greatest rascal in his record is Paul, who
affected piety in Newgate, was having his speech penn’d by non-juring
parsons, and would be turned off, singing.
How decently the Caitiff ends his days,
With Howell’s Rhetorick and Sternhold’s lays.
[Sidenote: _RIOT IN A CHURCH._]
The churches were occasionally as disturbed as the streets at this
troubled period. It was by order of his diocesan that the Rev. Mr.
Hough, a temperate rector of St. George’s, Southwark, dismissed his
ultra-Jacobite curate, the Rev. Mr. Smith, ‘as a clergyman,’ says the
‘Flying Post,’ ‘of the most infamous Morals and outrageous Impudence
against the Government.’ Sunday after Sunday, the rector was hissed
and buffeted by the Tories for this dismissal. On one occasion the mob
tried to stone him, but Mr. Hough escaped in a coach. On each occasion
he was assailed, say the Whig papers, by ‘a vile, rascally, beggarly
mob,’ and it is added that the ‘Rev. but scandalous Smith led the mob
himself to the charge, from St. Sepulchre’s.’ The ‘Postmaster’ quaintly
describes the particulars as being ‘not only dreadful, but shameful.’
On the 23rd of June the Jacobite congregation at St. George the
Martyr, Southwark, were punished by having the chaplain of the Duke of
Newcastle sent down by authority to pray for and preach to them. They
would neither have his prayers nor heed his preaching. During the whole
service the Tories behaved in a most irreverent manner. At its close,
the clergyman’s calm self-possession so exasperated them that they
showed symptoms of using personal violence towards him. Some of his
friends ran off to the Marshalsea to ask the guard there to come to the
rescue. The soldiers arrived just in time to save him from the rough
proceedings of ‘the High Church Mob.’ They hurried him into a coach,
and escorted him to the duke’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
[Sidenote: _POPE’S DOUBLE DEALING._]
Pope tells Gay, in June, 1716, ‘I suffer for my religion in almost
every weekly paper. I have begun to take a pique at the Psalms of
David, if the wicked may be credited, who have printed a scandalous one
in my name.’ This might serve to show an anti-romanist illiberality
did we not now know that Pope himself wrote the indecent parody of the
first psalm, of which he complains, and advertised in the ‘Postman’
that he would give a reward of three guineas for the discovery of the
author and publisher. ‘When Mrs. Burleigh,’ says Pope’s editor, Mr.
Elwin, ‘announced that she had the original in his own hand-writing,
he relapsed into silence.’ Pope, in the above letter to Gay, reflects
the views on Church matters which were entertained in the London
coteries and coffee-houses:――‘The Church of Rome, I judge from many
modern symptoms, as well as ancient prophecies, to be in a declining
condition; that of England will in a short time be scarce able to
maintain her own family; so Churches sink as generally as Banks in
Europe, and for the same reason――that religion and trade, that at first
were open and free, have been reduced into the management of Companies
and the roguery of directors.’
[Sidenote: _ADDISON, ON LATE AND PRESENT TIMES._]
[Sidenote: _POLITICAL WOMEN._]
When the Parliament and Addison’s ‘Freeholder’ came to an end together,
the Essay writer boasted of having given the ‘complexion of the times.’
He was sorry that there were men still left who thought they could
never be wrong as long as they opposed a Minister of State; and that
the Government was blamed for severity towards the rebels, when the
friends of the administration rather murmured at too great leniency
being practised towards them. He thought it was a pity, since oak
garlands used to be the reward of those who saved cities, that oak
apples and oaken clubs were the signs and weapons, on one day in the
year at least, of those who would bring destruction on the kingdom.
He deplored the ruffianism of both Whig and Tory mobs, of the women
as well as of the men. It was not so in Charles II.’s time, when men,
instead of declaring their opinions by knocking out one another’s
brains, ‘hung out their principles in different coloured ribbons.’
He traced the brutal violence of the times to the general conceit
which visited all hostile argument with a blow. Children were taught
politics, and to hate each other, before they understood the meaning of
words. Squires came up from the country like dictators from the plough,
and got drunk in praise of the aristocracy. Oyster women concerned
themselves with the abolition of Episcopacy, and cinder wenches were
sticklers for indefeasible right. Addison is alarmed at the novel
establishment of country newspapers. They would make provincial towns
as turbulent and uncomfortable as London. It was some consolation
to him that the very sight of the royal family, particularly of the
pretty princesses, was sufficient to soften many a Jacobite; and,
though Jacobite ladies _would_ distinguish themselves by wearing white
roses――less white, of course, than the bosoms against which they
lay――how much more beautiful were the loyaler ladies who proclaimed
their principles, and excited the most tender sympathies, by fastening
in their hair the simple but significant Sweet William!――a compliment
to William of Nassau.
[Illustration: Lily of the valley]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]