(1718.)
[Illustration: Drop-T]he Jacobite rage aroused by ‘The Nonjuror’ (so
‘damned a play,’ Pope called it) seemed to increase even after the
novelty had worn off. Cibber’s bitterest foe in the press was Mist’s
‘Weekly Journal.’ On the 4th February, 1718, this ultra-Jacobite
paper contained the following paragraph: ‘Yesterday, died Mr. Colley
Cibber, late Comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing “The
Nonjuror.”’ Upon this, Cibber pleasantly says, in his ‘Apology’:――‘The
compliment in the latter part, I confess I did not dislike; because
it came from so impartial a Judge; and it really so happened that the
former part of it was very near being true; for I had that very day
just crawled out, after having been some weeks laid up by a Fever:
However, I saw no use in being thought to be thoroughly dead, before my
Time, and therefore had a mind to see whether the Town cared to have me
alive again. So the play of the “Orphan” being to be acted that Day,
I quietly stole myself into the part of the _Chaplain_, which I had
not been seen in for many years before. The Surprize of the Audience
at my unexpected Appearance on the very Day I had been Dead in the
News, and the Paleness of my Looks seem’d to make it a Doubt, whether
I was not the Ghost of my real Self Departed; But when I spoke, their
Wonder eas’d itself by an Applause, which convinced me they were then
satisfied that my Friend _Mist_ had told a _Fib_ of me.’
But there was at this period a tragedy in contemplation which drew the
public interest far away from Cibber and his comedy. It is necessary to
go back a year or so, in order the better to understand the principal
actor.
[Sidenote: _A YOUTHFUL JACOBITE._]
In the year 1711, there was a pupil at the Latin school in Salisbury,
who was remarkable for his ‘fine parts.’ His name was James Sheppard.
His late father had been a glover in Southwark. His uncle, Dr.
Hinchcliffe, took the father’s place, and provided for this promising
boy. The lad was excessively fond of reading; and, in order to catch
an intelligent young fellow for the Jacobite cause, some Salisbury
Nonjurors thrust upon him their party pamphlets, which the boy read and
re-read till he became more Jacobite than the writers. Perilous stuff,
so thought Dr. Hinchcliffe, and he took the too earnest student from
the Latin school, and bound him apprentice to a Liverpool coach-painter.
[Sidenote: _A WOULD-BE REGICIDE._]
In 1715, Liverpool was as much excited as London by the question
between the king regnant and the king claimant. Young Sheppard was
gloomy and silent. The fray fought out adversely to the Jacobites, and
the executions of the next year chafed his temper. Among his fellows,
he let drop the fearful words that it might be a good thing _to kill
the king_. He was counselled, if he would not go to the gallows, not to
give tongue to such possibilities, for the future. The matter sank deep
into his mind. Sheppard thought much and wrote much, and at last, he
disappeared from Liverpool.
Shortly after, it was early in 1718, a quiet-looking young man left a
letter at the City dwelling of a Nonjuring minister, named Leake. He
would call for an answer, he said, in a day or two. The minister was
nearly lost in fear and horror when he read this monstrous epistle from
a stranger. The writer spoke of the ‘discontents’ of the nation; and
suggested that they might be remedied by removing _Prince_ George, and
putting ‘_our_ king’ in his place. This could be done, said the writer,
without much bloodshed! The young maniac then stated that if Leake
would pay Sheppard’s journey to Italy, and furnish him with a letter
to King James, he would undertake to bring the king secretly into the
country, and to smite the usurper in his palace. It was, he said, ‘easy
to cut the thread of human life.’ If he succeeded, King James could
publicly appear. If he failed, the king might still lie safely hiding.
Sheppard promised that, if he himself were taken, no amount of torture
should extract from him a single word damaging to the sacred cause. He
was ready to suffer the cruelest death, the best preparation for which,
he thought, would be the reception of the Sacrament daily from the
hands of a Priest, ignorant of his design.
[Sidenote: _A FIGHT IN NEWGATE._]
To be found in possession of such a letter was a hanging matter.
Leake dropped it at once into the flames, and then hurried to Sir
John Fryer, a magistrate, who severely reprimanded him for destroying
such an important document, and ordered the arrest of the enthusiast.
Before the magistrate, in presence of the Secretary of State, and at
his trial, at the Old Bailey, the speech and general carriage of young
Sheppard were most becoming. When Leake tried to repeat the contents
of the fatal letter, Sheppard calmly prompted or corrected him. The
latter wrote it out from memory, and it agreed, literally, with a
draft discovered among the prisoner’s papers. He was, of course, found
_Guilty_; and when the Recorder urged him to ask mercy of the king,
Sheppard replied, ‘I cannot hope for mercy from a King whom I cannot
own!’
Between judgment and execution, this brave but erring boy of seventeen,
lay in Newgate. Paul Lorraine, the Ordinary, and a Nonjuring minister,
one Orme, fought for spiritual possession of him. ‘He is of my flock!’
said the Newgate chaplain. ‘He is not of your communion,’ retorted
the Nonjuror. ‘_You_ are a rebel rascal!’ rejoined Paul. ‘_You_ are a
canting hypocrite!’ cried the other reverend gentleman. At which words,
they flew at each other and were in the midst of a furious stand-up
fight, when discreet turnkeys rushed in, and separated the combatants.
[Sidenote: _UP THE HILL TO TYBURN._]
On the day of execution, six persons suffered at Tyburn. In the
morning, Ferdinando, Marquis of Paleotti, had the honour of hanging
alone, out of compliment to his rank. He was the brother of the Duchess
of Shrewsbury, and the murderer of his valet, whom he had slain, in a
fit of passion, on some trivial provocation. The Duchess tried hard
to get her brother beheaded, and the Prince and Princess of Wales
called on her to express their regret that they could not turn the king
from his determination that the Marquis should be hanged――an infamous
way of death for a Marquis, as it would degrade every relative he
had at foreign courts. Paleotti was hanged accordingly, and he died
becomingly, as a gentleman should. Had he only lived as decently, he
would never have gone to Tyburn at all.
[Sidenote: SCENE AT TYBURN.]
Later in the day, St. Patrick’s Day, 1718, two carts went up Holborn
Hill, to Tyburn. In one sat young Sheppard, in calm, unostentatious
bearing, as much of a gentleman as Paleotti. Four companions, doomed
to die at the same tree, rode, pale and silent, hustled together, in
the other cart. One of them was a burglar; the second, a highwayman;
the third was a young lad who had taken to thieving as a profession;
and the fourth was a younger girl who had stolen some finery to the
value of one pound sterling! These, however, attracted only a passing
attention. All eyes were turned more intently towards Sheppard. All
Jacobite hearts sympathised with him on his dolorous way to death.
Women looked down upon him from the windows, tenderly and tearfully,
that one so young, and handsome, and well-endowed, should die so early,
and in such dreadful manner. The Whig ‘mobile’ assailed him with
insulting shouts. But Sheppard was not moved by it. His dignity was not
even ruffled by the renewed contest in the cart of the Newgate chaplain
and the Nonjuror. Each sought to comfort or confound the culprit,
according to his way of thinking. Once more, the messengers of peace
got to fisticuffs, but as they neared Tyburn, the Nonjuror kicked Paul
out of the cart, and kept by the side of Sheppard till the rope was
adjusted. Then he boldly, as those Jacobite Nonjurors were wont, gave
the passive lad absolution for the crime for which he was about to pay
the penalty; after which he jumped down to have a better view of the
sorry spectacle, from the foremost rank of spectators.
The general belief was that Sheppard was perfectly sane; but there was
a general conviction that the boy’s assertion of the hopelessness of
expecting mercy at the hands of a king whom he could not own, afforded
a sublime opportunity (for showing that mercy) which the sovereign had
thrown away. As nobody was the worse for the young Jacobite’s design,
his pardon would have shown that King George knew how to triumph over
his own passions; ‘but,’ says an audacious Jacobite contemporary, ‘the
Great seldom forgive offences committed against themselves.’
Sheppard left a letter and a ‘speech,’ written, it was said, by
Orme, which were printed privately, and circulated, in spite of the
Government. The boy’s portrait was as secretly and extensively sold,
equally in spite of the authorities; and the ministry, having nothing
better to do, settled an annuity of 200_l._ a year on the Nonjuror,
Leake, for discovering the treason, and clapped the other Nonjuror,
Orme, into Newgate, for absolving the traitor. Orme’s chief offence lay
in his being the author of the ‘last dying speech,’ in which the crime
was justified. ‘Mr. Orme’s friends,’ said the sarcastic Whig papers,
‘are very apprehensive that he will shortly have to prepare a speech
for himself!’
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE TOAST._]
Neither severity nor sarcasm could subdue the Jacobite spirit. In the
Jacobite taverns a new health was drunk with loud cheers:――‘To Miss
Clarke!’ This was the name of a pretty girl, in Sunderland, who had
boldly drunk King James’s health, in a mixed company. She was called
to account for it, of course; but she was only lightly fined, and
several of the justices kissed her, as she passed in front of the
bench, on her way out of court. Thence came the health, given in London
coffee-houses, ‘to Miss Clarke and her friend,’ as Jacobite revellers
lifted their punch to their lips, and winked one eye as they went
through this performance. Both eyes subsequently glittered with delight
when Orme was liberated unconditionally, as no case could be made out
against him.
One of the consequences of Sheppard’s crime was to suggest murder to
another hot-headed fanatic, of the opposite faction. His name was
Bowes. To revenge the design of Sheppard to murder King George, Bowes
offered to one of the ministers to go to Italy and murder the so-called
King James. He was properly shut up as a madman.
[Sidenote: _SATIRICAL PAMPHLET._]
Pamphleteers, on their side, were as active as men of darker designs.
Some little insight into London manners is afforded by one of their
works, published this year, entitled ‘The Necessity of a Plot; or,
Reasons for a Standing Army. By a Friend to K.G.’ It is, of course,
a satirical pamphlet. Among the good or bad reasons for having a
permanent force is the one noticed in the following paragraph: ‘I
do not conceive where our youth of spirit could be so well educated
as in a Military School. The laudable accomplishments of a Fine
Gentleman are there so suddenly acquired that a Fellow who but just
throws off a private person’s Livery, to wear that of the King’s,
commences immediately a most accomplished Beau. He can swear with as
good a grace, talk as rationally against Jesus Christ, the Church, and
Parsons, as if he had served an Apprenticeship at the Grecian.’
[Sidenote: _LOVAT ALREADY SUSPECTED._]
This pamphlet, provoking in both style and subject, affected a
reverence for the king, so finely expressed that the satire beneath
it was ungraspable by the law. There were some members of the House
of Commons, it remarks, who were bold enough to assert that there was
disaffection in this country. The writer suggests that it was only
disaffection to the German language, morals, custom, and ladies. The
king himself might be called ‘the Delight of Mankind,’ if people
chose――as Titus had been called by an earlier people. Was not the king
the darling of those who welcomed him with shouts, plays, balls, and
bacchanals? How disloyal it was to oppose his wish for a standing army!
Did the thinking people of London reflect on the danger which Russia
was becoming to us? Russia was said to be far off. Not at all; she was
next door to us. She was near to Sweden, which was next to Norway,
which was only a few days’ sail from Scotland, which _might yet prove
to be but a week’s march from London_. Therefore, let a standing army
be raised, and the people be made to pay for it. Dull people! Why,
there was already peril looming from Scotland. Brigadier Mackintosh’s
ghost had been seen in the Highlands, and Rob Roy (whose name was thus
familiar to the Londoners of 1718) was moving about uncontrolled, as
if he were undisputed lord of Scotland. The pamphlet-writer suggests
that a standing army should not only be raised, but be kept standing
in daily array, as if Mackintosh and Rob Roy were at the gates of St.
James’s! Then, as for Scotland, why not let Lord Lovat have 30,300
men to keep it safe? The character of Simon Fraser was thoroughly
understood by the Paternoster-row pamphleteer, although Lovat had been
thorough Whig and Hanoverian in the late rebellion. Let him have the
men, says the ‘Friend to K.G.’ ‘From Lovat’s principles and dexterity,
I think him almost capable of everything. Besides,’ the laughing
coffee-house readers were told, ‘a Gentleman is coming from France who
will give you reasons enough for keeping up a standing army.’ This was
the first intimation to the Londoners that Bolingbroke might possibly
be recalled.
[Sidenote: _HEARNE ON ECHARD’S ‘ENGLAND.’_]
This clever pamphlet supported the cause which Shippen advocated,
but in another way. That offender was then suffering a very mild
imprisonment. His Jacobite friends supplied him with all the luxuries
that money could purchase. A boat from France was freighted with wine
for him, but it was run down in the Thames, and the precious liquid was
lost. When downright Shippen was released at the end of the Session,
jubilant sympathisers escorted him to the Strand; and there was a levee
at his house in Norfolk Street, as crowded as the opposing levees of
the king and his son put together.
The wrathful old Jacobites were certainly wanting in reason. Even wise,
liberal, or politic actions were decried by that disappointed faction.
In April, 1718, Echard published in London his ‘History of England.’ It
was dedicated to the king, who in return sent the author three hundred
guineas. ‘I suppose,’ said Hearne, ‘’t is a most roguish, whiggish
thing, much such as what Kennet writes. I have not read it,’ added the
Jacobite; ‘such writers ought to be laid aside. Yet I hear that Dr.
Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, mightily commends this Echard’s “Church
History.” But Prideaux is a great Whig himself, though a good scholar.’
Even Hearne allowed that Echard had a good pen; but he tempered the
slight concession by the remark that Echard never looked into, much
less followed, original authors.’
[Sidenote: _ATTERBURY CONSPIRING._]
All this while secret but busy plotting was going on. Atterbury, in
correspondence with the Chevalier and his Court, thus alludes (in a
letter to Mar, June, 1718) to one of the go-betweens of that Court
and the Deanery at Westminster. This agent passed by the name of
‘Johnson,’ but he was the Nonjuror Kelly, and he is thus described
by the Bishop:――‘He has been far from meddling here, or venturing to
enter with me into matters foreign to what I apprehend to have been
the design of sending him. If he mistook my thoughts upon a certain
occasion … I will take effectual care that he shall mistake them
no more.’ After speaking of his ‘natural indisposition towards a
correspondence of this kind, especially at a juncture when so many,
and such malicious, eyes are upon me,’ he laments want of wisdom and
unity among the Jacobites around him, but he adds: ‘God grant that our
deliverance may not be so far off!’
In another document, written no doubt at the Deanery, Westminster, the
patriotic bishop reviewed the general condition of things in London,
and concluded by declaring that nothing would be done there unless an
invading force came hither, ‘from France, Spain, or Sicily!’
[Sidenote: _THE BISHOP’S VIEW OF THINGS._]
The time, he thought, was favourable, and he gave his reasons in the
following picturesque sketch of city, court, and administration:――
‘_June_, 1718.――Informations are sometimes officiously given
concerning transactions on foot; but no effectual care is taken to
discover the men or the measures by which they are carried on; nor do
those whose peculiar business it is to search into these things, seem
at all to concern themselves in them, though they are forced now and
then to commit and examine a person (upon particular information given)
and then dismiss him, without any hurt done or light gained by that
means. Hearne’ (the pseudonym for King George) ‘in the meantime is
soothed up with new pleasures and new Mistresses. English Ladies and
a Garden take up all his time, and his indolence and ignorance of his
affairs are more remarkable than ever; and this sense of life is not
casual, but plainly contrived for him. Should any accident happen, they
who manage under him have no refuge; their heads must answer for what
they have conceived and done, and perhaps without any formal process of
Law, vengeance would be taken of them. Nor could they have any methods
of saving themselves but by a voluntary exile, should they have time
enough to get away upon such an occasion. They seem to take no single
step towards avoiding this storm, as the fastest friends of the present
Settlement have been all along gradually removed and disgraced; so are
some of them even now, that still continue in the service, far from
receiving the encouragements they have promised themselves.’
[Sidenote: _THE ROYAL FAMILY ON THE ROAD._]
The king kept none the more private, nor protected himself any the
more, for any troubles that were seriously threatening. There seemed
really to be in him the ignorance or indifference described by
Atterbury. Early in July the king drove from Kensington to sup with
the Duke of Kingston, at Kingston House, Acton. At three o’clock on
the following morning he was cheerily trotting home in his ponderous
carriage, daylight breaking on him, as he passed the men hanging in
chains on the gibbet at Shepherd’s Bush. There is something more lively
in another royal incident. One evening during the summer, the young
Princesses left London for Hampton Court. Nearly the whole way they
were singing French and Italian songs, and as the ‘Lady-governess’
ordered the coachman to drive slowly through the crowds that lined the
road, the pretty incident and the implied confidence in the public
loyalty delighted the people, and rendered the princely vocalists as
safe as if they had been in their father’s drawing-room.
Nevertheless, there was much uneasiness in this same July, 1718, as to
the temper of the army. It was not only that a drunken soldier would
now and then shout for King James in the street, but that sergeants and
men met in taverns, and talked or plotted treason against King George.
Some of these latter, as they passed handcuffed through the Strand to
the Savoy prison, were hissed by the Whigs and cheered by the Tories.
Early in July the ‘Scottish regiment of Foot Guards’ was paraded in the
Park, and the Articles of War were read aloud to them, at the head of
every company. This was the regiment most suspected of faithlessness,
and whose members had been most watched. At this parade persons
attended ‘incognito in Hackney Coaches,’ as the newspapers state, to
identify any of the men whom they might have seen at private meetings
held with treasonable ends in view. The spies failed to identify any;
and when the significant War Articles had been read with distinct
emphasis, the regiment marched, in sullen silence, out of the Park.
[Sidenote: _MILITARY DIFFICULTIES._]
Later in the year, the public had the not too cheering spectacle of
the 3rd Regiment of Guards having the oath of allegiance administered
to them at the drumhead. Subsequently came an order that such of the
gentlemen of the 4th troop of Horse Guards (commanded by the Earl of
Dundonald) as followed trades, should abandon such lay occupations
within three months, or dispose of their posts. This strange order
becomes easier to understand, when it is remembered that ‘gentlemen’
is the word still applied to the whole regiment; and that, in 1718,
Government did not like the practice of the soldier being half the day
a civilian. Some solace was awarded to the army generally for various
restrictions. Pay was advanced to 5_s._ a week; and clothes were to
be furnished, as in the last Charles’s days, without deductions. This
Stuart practice did not satisfy the perverse soldier. Two or three
times a week, privates who had talked in too laudatory terms of King
James, or who had deserted King George, were to be seen by thousands
of spectators in the Park, undergoing the severe punishment――some
of running, other of walking, the gauntlet. In either case the
flagellation was severe. In October, when it was thought expedient to
reform several regiments, which were accordingly ordered to be ‘broke,’
some men and, it is said, a whole regiment at Nottingham, refused to
lay down their arms. Great discretion was required to tide smoothly
over these perils.
[Sidenote: _SCENES AT COURT._]
There was, however, no appearance of any sense of peril at Court,
where gaiety with a certain amount of quaintness prevailed. The people
who attended there were of a mixed quality. On the little Duke of
Gloucester’s birthday, Lord Lovat was to be seen bearing the sword
of state before the king, to the Royal Chapel. On a levee day, the
pushing, preaching, loyal, reverend Charles Lambe, with all the sermons
he had preached against traitors, during the rebellion, printed in
one volume, laid them at the king’s feet, kissed the king’s hand, and
got nothing by his motion. On another levee day, Colley Cibber was at
Court, holding daintily a printed copy of ‘The Nonjuror,’ opened at the
dedication, which he presented, kneeling, to his Majesty, who gave him
his hand to kiss, and promised him a ‘purse’ for his work. Colley got
the purse with a couple of hundred guineas in it. On a drawing-room
day, a stranger courtier stood in the royal presence, namely, a woman
who had journeyed from Lanark, under the impulse of a ‘longing’ to
kiss the royal hand. This inclination was gratified, and, imprudently,
a gift was added of twenty guineas, to take the lady home again――a
circumstance which greatly moved sundry other wives in the same
direction. When the Rev. Mr. Peploe, of Preston, who had stuck to his
Hanoverian principles, while the Jacobites lorded it, in that town,
made his appearance at Court, Whig zeal described the king as waxing
merry, not to say witty. His Majesty is reported to have remarked that,
‘_Peep low_ should look high.’ Loyal people laughed at the joke, but
Mr. Peploe laughed with better reason, on being appointed Warden of
Manchester College. He was afterwards made Bishop of Carlisle. On a
later occasion, Colonel Oughton was to be seen, pulling a shy private
of the 2nd Foot Guards, through the press, to the front of the throne,
where the man was duly presented to his Majesty, with a copy of an
ode which he had written on ‘Liberty.’ He was the first soldier who
obtained preferment, not on professional, but on literary, grounds.
[Sidenote: _A SCENE IN ‘BEDLAM.’_]
After receptions like the above, the king usually honoured some Whig
nobleman with his company, at dinner or supper――fearless, though the
air was full of sinister reports. The Prince and Princess of Wales, on
their parts, did not want for mirth. They went to see the mad folk in
‘Bedlam,’ and had especially good sport with a demented creature who
thought herself a queen, and who solemnly married them to each other,
amid royal bursts of questionable laughter.
Throughout the year the Nonjurors continued to be harassed by the
Government. Their chapels were pointed out by the Whig press to the
mob, for destruction. Sometimes the pulpit was protected by a burly
butcher or two. No man was admitted who did not wear a black ribbon at
his button-hole. Every woman was suspected who came to divine service
without a black necklace. Loyal officials, notwithstanding, would
force their way in, tender the oath of allegiance to the congregation,
and arrest all those who declined to take it, unless they could show
they had been already sworn. When a report was circulated that the
Nonjurors had ‘some design’ afoot, the Whig press piously hoped they
‘might all be blasted, like their departed brother, _Sheppard_!’
[Sidenote: _A WHIG WHIPT._]
One at least of these pious loyalists came to grief himself. His name
was Burridge. He was editor (‘writer’) or sub-editor (‘corrector’) of
one of the three ‘Weekly Journals’――that one which had for its second
name ‘The British Gazetteer.’ Loyal and pious Burridge got so drunk in
a tavern as to lose all control over his tongue. He let it loose in
the utterance of inexpressibly horrible blasphemies, for which he was
indicted and found guilty. Loyal as he was, Burridge did not escape.
His own paper very coolly recorded that he had, on such a morning, been
whipt from the New Church in the Strand to Charing Cross, and then
sent to prison for a month, there further to remain till he had paid
a fine of 20_s._ The ‘Jacks’ were jubilant, and cheered lustily when
the hangman ‘laced’ the poor wretch’s back with his whip, as Burridge
passed at the cart’s tail slowly along the Strand. These ‘Jacks’
who gloried in seeing a blasphemous Whig thus mauled were not very
religious people themselves. There was complaint being constantly made
that Jacobites who went through the formality of attending church――and
particularly the ladies――made a practice of laughing, sneering, or
otherwise showing their contempt, whenever the king and royal family
were prayed for.
[Sidenote: _TREASON IN THE PULPIT._]
One of the tumultuous Jacobite incidents of the year was the passage
of the Rev. Mr. Bisse, of Bristol, from the Western Road to the house
of the messenger who had him in custody, at the cost of 6_s._ 8_d._
daily, for his keep. Bisse, in the spring of the year, had preached a
sermon to an ultra-Jacobite congregation, from this suggestive text,
Psalm xciv. 20-23: ‘Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship
with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? They gather themselves
together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent
blood. But the Lord is my defence, and my God is the rock of my
refuge. And He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall
cut them off in their own wickedness: yea, the Lord our God shall cut
them off.’ The sermon proved to be more directly audacious than the
text was suggestive. Bisse impressed upon his hearers that God hated
usurpations, although, as _they knew_, he permitted them. God had
allowed an usurpation of now thirty years’ duration in England, where,
he said, there had been neither laws nor parliament since James II.’s
days. He is reported to have added: ‘The present possessor is obliged
to unite with Turks, infidels, and heretics, to save his bacon!’ The
treason was as malicious as the expression of it was vulgar. Messengers
were sent down to arrest Bisse, on whom they laid hands on the
following Sunday, in church. But the Jacobite congregation arose, they
beat and repulsed the messengers, and they triumphantly rescued their
pastor!
[Sidenote: _MORE TREASON._]
The offender, however, was in a short time arrested. A crowd assembled,
to cheer or hiss him, on his way to the messenger’s house, in Charles
Street, Westminster. Between Bisse’s various examinations, he seems to
have been a prisoner at large――but bound to return to custody, nightly.
He abused the liberty, if there be truth in the charge, that at this
period he preached in a Nonjuring chapel, to this text from Ezekiel
xxi. 25-27: ‘And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is
come, when iniquity shall have an end, Thus saith the Lord God; Remove
the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt
him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn,
overturn it: and it shall be no more, _until he come whose right
it is_; and I will give it him!’ Such was the ring of the Jacobite
metal; and Bisse, in his defence, asserted that he was only a humble
instrument in God’s hands, giving forth the sound which God impelled.
This Jacobite uttered those sounds in churches in three separate
counties. He was found guilty in Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and
Buckinghamshire; and the Court of King’s Bench condemned him to stand
twice in the pillory; to be imprisoned for four years, to pay a fine
of 500_l._, and to find sureties to the amount of 2,000_l._ for his
good behaviour during life. Bisse stood in the pillory at the Royal
Exchange and at Charing Cross. The Whigs complained that he was held
so loosely, he could withdraw his head when he pleased. Favoured by the
Jacobite hangman, Bisse was protected by a Jacobite mob. A collection
was made for him on the spot; and people in carriages who did not
contribute liberally were roughly handled. Women flung flowers on to
the scaffold. A single individual who ventured to make an observation
aloud, of a Whiggish quality, was compelled to ask Bisse’s pardon
on his knees. For the rudely, out-spoken priest, the affair was an
ovation, and Defoe remarked, in the ‘Whitehall Evening Post,’ that Mr.
Bisse did not bear himself too modestly.
[Sidenote: _JACOBITES IN THE PILLORY._]
Similar scenes took place when another Jacobite, Harrison, stood in
the pillory, at Whitechapel, for sedition. He stood at ease, he was
protected from all assault and insult, and, according to the Whig
papers, ‘Non-resisting ladies supplied him with money or brandy.’
Other offenders, felonious and political, were summarily got rid
of. A Mr. Forward, a London merchant, offered to transport all the
convicts of England to the Transatlantic Plantations, at 4_l._ a head.
The Government offered him 3_l._ for each; and, at that price, whole
ship-loads of ruffians, but with some honest fellows among them, were
cast into slavery, for indefinite periods.
The light penalty of the pillory had no deterring effect on some
ministers. On the 5th of November, the Rev. Mr. Milborne preached at
St. Ethelburg’s, London, and he traced all the present miseries of the
Church to that abominable anniversary, but whether his conclusion was
based on the fact that the gunpowder plot had failed, or William’s
invasion of England had succeeded, Mr. Milborne did not say.
[Sidenote: _THE KING AT THE PLAY._]
Although London Jacobitism was not wanting in malice and menace in
this and the preceding year, the king and royal family maintained a
dignified indifference. George I. was the most exposed to peril, but
he met it like a man. He frequently went to the theatre, not in a
bullet-proof carriage densely surrounded by cavalry, but in a sedan
chair, some members of the Court being conveyed in similar vehicles.
Such vehicles were easily assailed; an ‘ugly rush,’ pet phrase of
the modern demagogue, might have overturned the king, and put him
‘out of the story,’ as the Sagas say, in a minute; but he encountered
nothing worse than a distant word of chaff, which was perhaps not
audible, or, if so, not understood. In this way, he was carried, in
a November night, 1718, to see ‘The Orphan,’ unmolested; and he went
in the same conveyance, and in equal comfort and security, in the
same perilous month, to the ‘Little Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields’,
where he laughed over ‘Le Maître Etourdi,’ and fairly ‘roared’ at ‘Les
Fourberies d’Arlequin,’ but he understood those farces better than he
did Otway’s loftier tragedy.
[Sidenote: _DANIEL DEFOE._]
There remains to be noted a most remarkable illustration of these
Jacobite times, in connection with the celebrated Daniel Defoe, the
Ministry, and the London press. Five letters written by Defoe, in the
first half of this year, were discovered in the State Paper Office, a
few years ago. They are inserted, in ‘Notes and Queries, 3rd Series,
vol. vi., p. 527-9.’ They are addressed to some official in the
Secretary of State’s Office, for the information of his superiors.
From these startling documents, sad truths are to be gathered.
They make the strange revelation that the author of the ‘True-Born
Englishman’ was in the secret service of the Government under whose
resentment he was supposed to be suffering. He was giving information
of ‘traitorous pamphlets’ to Lord Sunderland. By Lord Chief Justice
Parker’s recommendation to Lord Townshend’s Ministry, Defoe had been
employed on ‘a little piece of secret service,’ which won for him
the subsequent favour of Lord Stanhope. Under Townshend, Defoe, the
once ultra-Whig, appeared in the disguise of a Tory. He became chief
proprietor of the ‘News Letter,’ a Jacobite paper very hostile to the
Ministry. He took out all its sting, to the satisfaction of his secret
employers, by writing mild Toryisms in it himself, and striking out
all that was vigorous and damaging to ministers, in articles sent in
by contributors. At a later period Lord Sunderland retained Defoe in
the same questionable employment and rewarded him in the same manner as
Lord Townshend had done. ‘With his Lordship’s approbation,’ says Defoe,
‘I introduced myself in the disguise of a translator of the “Foreign
News,” to be so far concerned in this paper of _Mist’s_, as to be able
to keep it within the circle of a secret management, also prevent the
mischievous part of it, and yet neither Mist nor any of those concerned
with him have the least guess or suspicion by whose direction I do
it.’ In this case, Defoe was not a proprietor, therefore should matter
offensive to the Government slip in, despite his watchfulness, Lord
Sunderland is begged to consider whether he has a servant (Defoe)
to reprove, or a stranger to punish! The extent of the dirty work
done by Defoe is to be seen by his remark that the ‘News Letter,’
the ‘Mercurius Politicus,’ and ‘Mist’s Journal’ shall ‘pass as Tory
papers, and yet be disabled and enervated, so as to do no mischief or
give any offence to the Government.’ Subsequently, poor Defoe writes,
‘I am for this service posted among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged
High Tories,――a generation who, I profess, my very soul abhors. I am
obliged to hear traitorous expressions and outrageous words against
his Majesty’s person and Government, and his most faithful servants,
and smile at it all as if I approved it. I am obliged to take all the
scandalous and indeed villainous papers that come, and keep them by me
as if I would gather materials from them, to put them into the news;
nay, I often venture to let things pass which are a little shocking,
that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow in the house of
Rimmon.’
[Sidenote: _HIS DIRTY WORK._]
This is pitiable in the extreme. So is Defoe’s occasional expression of
fear lest a paragraph too Jacobitish in flavour, inserted during his
absence, should be laid to his charge. He almost servilely entreats to
be remembered as the Government’s slave who could not help it, but who
is yet worthy of his reward. Besides, ‘it is a hard matter to please
the Tory party, as their present temper operates, without abusing,
not only the Government, but the persons of our Governors, in every
thing they write.’ Nevertheless, as all former ‘mistakes’ of his were
forgiven by his former Ministerial Whig employers whom he served as
a Tory, he trusts for a continuation of favour, which in his Tory
disguise he will constantly endeavour to merit!
[Sidenote: _MIST’S JOURNAL._]
Even Jacobite Mist himself came into an ‘arrangement’ into which
he was frightened by Defoe, as a cautious and prudent Tory. He was
made to see safety in rallying the Whig writers, and in admitting
foolish and trifling things only in favour of the Tories! Mr. Mist
resolved that his paper should in future ‘amuse the Tories but not
offend the Government!’ But for such resolution, Defoe assured him
ruin and a prison would speedily be his inheritance. Correspondents,
in their innocence and ignorance, wrote letters loaded with treason
to the ‘Journal.’ Mist submitted them to Defoe, who put them aside
as improper; and then, without Mist’s knowledge, sent them to the
Government! As for the ‘Journal’ itself, Defoe writes: ‘I believe the
time is come, when the “Journal,” instead of affronting and offending
the Government, may in many ways be made serviceable to the Government,
and I have Mr. Mist so absolutely resigned to proper measures for it,
that I am persuaded I may answer for it.’
[Sidenote: _JACOBITE HOPES._]
Such is a sample of the morality of ‘honest Daniel Defoe,’ in matters
regarding the London press and home politics in those Jacobite times.
The full benefit of what has been said in his defence he is, however,
entitled too: namely, that he was a Whig, that he never ceased to
be a Whig, and that he sincerely supported the Whig cause and Whig
principles while (in the pay of a Whig Government) he passed resignedly
for a Papist, a Jacobite, and a High Tory.
There was undoubtedly much active Jacobitism going on in London,
throughout this year, of which the Government knew nothing, or
despised; probably the latter. They ignored the Cardinal Dubois’s
English mistress who served him as his Intelligencer, and they let the
fashionable French dancing-master, Dubuisson, carry about his kit to
aristocratic houses without molestation, though he was well known to be
an agent of Cardinal Alberoni, the friend of the Stuarts. ‘How it was
they did not hang him,’ says Dubois, in his ‘Mémoires,’ ‘I never could
understand.’
Probably, Dubuisson served the Cabinet at St. James’s better than he
did Alberoni, whose ambitious projects had been checked by the death
of his ally Charles XII. Yet, at the end of the year the Jacobites in
London wore a radiant air. They toasted ‘the Queen’ that was to be,
meaning the Princess Sobieska whom ‘James III.’ was about to marry; and
again drank ‘High Church and Ormond!’ on learning that the duke was
in Spain, preparing with Alberoni for an invasion of England and the
restoration of the rightful king.
[Sidenote: _ART AND POETRY._]
Towards the close of the year, the popular admiration was appealed to
by the uncovering of the equestrian statue of George I., in the Royal
Exchange. Neither loyalty, disaffection, or criticism had much to say
to it. Indeed, criticism, such as it was, alone raised a voice, and
then only with a mild sort of utterance: ‘It was judged by the most
eminent Masters of that Art to be an excellent and accomplished piece
of Work.’ Later in the year, December 15th, when Rowe died, one might
expect to find some Tory sarcasm against that ultra-Whig Poet-Laureate,
who furnished the prologue to ‘The Nonjuror,’ and for whom Nahum Tate
had been displaced. The only expression in reference to the bard who
reverenced Hanover was one of indifference for bards generally. ‘Last
Saturday,’ say all the papers, ‘died Nicholas Rowe, Esq., Poet Laureate
to his Majesty, at his house in King Street, Covent Garden, and is to
be interred in Westminster Abbey, where Cowley, Chaucer, Ben Jonson,
and the rest of those people lie’!!
[Illustration: Leaf design]
[Illustration: Decorative banner]