(1722.)
[Sidenote: _THE BISHOP IN THE TOWER._]
[Illustration: Drop-O]n the 24th of August the storm burst on the
prelate’s head. Of this event the public were aware long before the
press reported it. When the report _was_ made, it described the
following scenes of this Jacobite time:――‘On St. Bartholomew’s day
last, in the afternoon, the Right Reverend Dr. Francis Atterbury,
Lord Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, was committed to
the Tower, on an accusation of High Treason. His Lordship was at
his Deanery of Westminster, when two Officers of the Guards and two
Messengers came to his House and carried him and his papers to a
Committee of Council. At the same time two other Officers and as many
Messengers were despatched to the Episcopal Palace of Bromley, in Kent,
who, with the assistance of a Constable, searched his Lordship’s House
and brought away what Papers they thought proper. John Morrice, Esq.,
the High Bailiff of Westminster, and his lady, the Bishop’s daughter,
were then at his Lordship’s House at Bromley. On Monday last, they
both went to the Tower to enquire after the Bishop’s health, but were
not suffered to see him.’ So spoke the ‘Weekly Journal’ of Saturday,
September 1st. ‘It was on Friday last,’ says another paper, the ‘Post
Boy,’ of August 25th to Tuesday, August 28th, ‘in the afternoon that
the Bishop of Rochester was committed to the Tower; but the Bishop
was not carried to the Tower in his own coach, as some papers have
mentioned.’ The ‘Post Boy’ says that his Lordship went from the
Committee of Council in Whitehall ‘in his own Coach round by Holbourne,
London Wall, &c., attended by a Messenger and Colonel Williamson of
the Guards.’ He was again before the Committee on the following day.
In the Tower, ‘his chaplain, his _valet-de-chambre_ and a footman
are allowed to attend him, but nobody else is permitted to see him.
’Tis said that several letters in his own hand-writing, but signed in
fictitious names, have been intercepted, by which the Government has
made some important discoveries.’ A strong military force from the
camp in the Park was marched through the City to reinforce the Guard
at the Tower. In September the bishop was little likely to break locks
and take flight, being confined to his bed with gout in both hands and
feet. The report that he would be tried by a special commission of Oyer
and Terminer, at the King’s Bench Bar, gained little credit, for the
feeling was very strong that even if he were guilty, the crafty leader
of the Opposition against Walpole, in the Lords, was not likely to have
left any traces of his guilt. The publication of the prelate’s portrait
looking through a grate, with Ward’s seditious verses beneath,
caused much excitement, the confiscation of the portrait, and the
incarceration of the poet.
[Sidenote: _POPE AND ATTERBURY._]
In the Tower the bishop was treated with unusual severity. Pope, in a
letter to Gay (September 11th, 1722), ridicules the rigour observed
with respect to small things: ‘Even pigeon-pies and hogs’-puddings
are thought dangerous by our governors; for those that have been sent
to the Bishop of Rochester are opened and profanely pried into at the
Tower. It is the first time that dead pigeons have been suspected
of carrying intelligence.’ In October, however, means seem to have
been adopted by which the annoyance of ‘prying’ could be avoided. In
a letter to Carlyle (October 26th) Pope says: ‘I very much condole
with my friend whose confinement you mention, and very much applaud
your obliging desire of paying him a compliment at this time of some
venison, the method of which I have been bold to prescribe to Lady
Mary.’
[Sidenote: ‘_THE BLACKBIRD._’]
John Wesley’s elder brother, ‘Sam,’ earnest in his duties as one of the
masters of Westminster School, but still more earnestly hopeful, though
not active, as a High Tory and Jacobite, showed his indignation at his
patron’s incarceration and treatment, in a lively poem called ‘The
Blackbird.’ This pleasant songster’s enemies were nailed to the general
‘barn-door’ as screech-owl, vulture, hawk, bat, and
The noisy, senseless, chattering Pie,
The mere Lord William of the sky.
The poet next disposed of Colonel Williamson:――
The Kite, fit gaoler must be nam’d,
In prose and verse already fam’d:
Bold to kill mice, and now and then
To steal a chicken from a hen.
None readier was, when seized, to slay,
And often to dissect his prey;
With all the insolence can rise
From power when join’d to cowardice.
The captive Blackbird kept his cheer;
The gaoler, anxious, shook with fear,
Lest roguy traitors should conspire
T’ unlock the door or break the wire;
Traitors, if they but silence broke,
And disaffected if they look.
For, by himself, he judg’d his prey,
If once let loose, would fly away.
Conscious of weakness when alone,
He dares not trust him, one to one.
So, every day and every hour,
He shows his caution and his power,
Each water-drop he close inspects,
And every single seed dissects;
Nay, swears with a suspicious rage,
He’ll shut the air out of the cage.
The Blackbird, with a look, replies,
That flash’d majestic from his eyes;
Not sprung of Eagle-brood, the Kite
Falls prostrate, grovelling, at the sight.
A Hero thus, with awful air
(If birds with heroes may compare),
A ruffian greatly could dismay:
‘Man! dar’st thou Caius Marius slay?’
Blasted the coward wretch remains,
And owns the Roman, though in chains.
[Sidenote: _TREATMENT OF ATTERBURY._]
The Jacobite sympathy for Atterbury was, of course, very active.
Hawkers boldly sold seditious songs and broadsheets in his favour,
despite the magistrates. The prelate himself lay day and night in bed
in the Tower, suffering from gout in hands and feet. The Jacobite
barrister, Sir Constantine Phipps, moved for his release, and that
of Kelly, on bail; but the application was refused. On the following
Sunday bills were distributed by active agents through the London
churches, asking the prayers of the congregation for a suffering
captive in bonds. The only favour granted to Atterbury was that he
should have the occasional company of the Rev. M. Hawkins, of the
Tower, to whose companionship the bishop preferred that of the gout.
When the illustrious prisoner was convalescent, he used to sit at a
window of the house in which he was confined, and converse with his
friends who assembled below. It was manifest that mischief might come
of it, but there was meanness in the method taken to prevent it. The
window was nailed up and partly covered with deal boards. The chief
warden of the Tower was censured for allowing Atterbury’s servants to
speak with those of his son-in-law, Mr. Morrice, without the warden
being present. At last, the bishop’s servants were kept as closely
confined as their master.
[Sidenote: _SCENES IN CAMP._]
London was busy with the Tower incidents to talk about, and with the
martial spectacle in the Park, which people daily witnessed. But all
things must have an end; and the camp, which was pitched in May, was
broken up towards the end of October. The gayest times were when the
king visited it, or reviewed the troops. He was popular there, for the
various regiments, foot, horse, and artillery, had, in marching to or
from the ground, to pass through the Mall, and the king invariably
greeted them from his garden wall. He was so pleased with the City
of London artillery, that he ordered 500_l._ to be paid in to their
treasurer. After the reviews held near the camp, the Earl of Cadogan
entertained the monarch and a noble company, either in the earl’s tent
or at his house in Piccadilly. Each banquet cost the host about 800_l._
A costly hospitality was maintained by other commanders. The dinners in
tent given by Colonel Pitt to the Duke of Wharton and other peers were
the subject of admiration. In what sense the Jacobite duke drank the
king’s health, may be easily conjectured. A coarser jollity prevailed
in the booths set up near the camp, and there, a reckless reveller of
the night was, now and then, to be found stark dead on the grass in the
morning.
[Sidenote: _SOLDIERS AND FOOTPADS._]
Wine and politics brought several men to grief. Inspired by the first,
an Ensign Dolben spoke disrespectfully of the king’s Government, and
was cashiered for his recklessness. Some indiscreet wagging of tongues
led to Captain Nicholls and Mr. Isaac Hancocke drawing their swords,
and the Captain passing _his_, up to the hilt, through Hancocke’s
body. As the dead man lay on the ground, someone remarked, he was
worth 300_l._ a year; and for killing so well-furnished a gentleman,
the Captain got off with a slight punishment under a verdict of
manslaughter. Other ‘bloody duels’ are recorded, and the pugnacity of
the gentlemen took a savage character in some of the rank and file.
It was by no means rare to hear of a hackney-coach full of officers
returning at night, through Piccadilly to the camp, being attacked,
brutally used, and plundered by men in disguise, who were at least
suspected of being soldiers. Never were so many footpads northward, in
the direction of Harrow and of Hampstead (which latter place yielded
victims laden with gold on their road from the ‘tables’ at Belsize),
as during the time of the encampment. A Lieutenant, who was entrusted
with 10_l._ subsistence-money, to pay to some men of his (the second)
regiment of Guards, hired a hackney-coach, rather early in the morning,
put the coachman inside, and took the reins himself. He thought by this
means to carry his money safely. The coach, however, was stopped by a
single mounted highwayman in Piccadilly, who bade the inside gentleman
deliver his money or his life. ‘I am only a poor man,’ said the rascal,
‘but the gentleman on the box has 10_l._ in his pocket, a gold watch in
his fob, and a silver-hilted sword under his coat,’――and the highwayman
stripped the young hero of his property, and rode contentedly away, by
Hay Hill.
[Sidenote: _DISCIPLINE._]
In camp itself, there were continual quarrels and savage fights between
brawlers of the horse and foot. The rioters there lost all respect for
their officers. On one occasion, the Earl of Albemarle intervened,
but with so little effect that he was soon seen issuing from the fray
without his hat and wig! Nevertheless, these savage rioters could be
subdued to the melting mood, and weep solemn showers like old Greek
heroes. Detachments from the camp attended Marlborough’s funeral,
in August. As they passed under their old commander’s garden wall in
the Park, many officers and men are said to have burst into tears;
a circumstance which the Whig papers were unanimous in describing
as ‘very remarkable,’ and ‘well worth mentioning.’ A Jacobite
hackney-coachman laid his whip to the shoulders of one of these honest
fellows; and, strangely enough, for all punishment only lost his
license. A fact more ‘remarkable’ than the genuine sympathy of the
soldiers for Marlborough, was that there were Frenchmen in the ranks,
in camp! One of them, named Leman, did, what might have been expected
of him, drank the Pretender’s health, in liquor bought with money
coming to him from King George. Monsieur Leman did not love the latter
any the more for the terrible whipping he received in the Savoy. Other
military offenders ‘ran the gauntlet,’ at the hands and scourges of
their comrades in the Park. The place was not so pleasant as to make
desertions unfrequent. But, deserters, when caught, were summarily
treated. One Tompkins, ‘a jolly young fellow of about twenty,’ say
the newsmongers, was shot for the crime; yet, the practice was not
diminished by the penalty. When the camp was about to break up in
October, the infantry, artillery, cavalry, and the gentlemen of his
Majesty’s horse guards paraded, for the last time. The Earl of Cadogan
inspected the line from right to left; and when it was announced that
he had left a guinea to each troop and company, to drink the king’s
health, cheers, as the news spread, burst forth along the line like
a running fire. Soon after, there was not a soldier left in the Park,
except the bodies of those who had been shot there, and were buried
where they fell.
On the day of the break-up, however, there were Jacobites on the ground
who were contemplating how they could most easily seize the person of
the king, murder the Earl of Cadogan, and restore the Chevalier de
St. George to his rightful place. A few soldiers, having left their
arms behind them, stealthily followed those men to aid them in their
purpose. They went towards Chancery Lane, where however the civil
authorities had long been on the watch before them.
[Sidenote: _CHRISTOPHER LAYER._]
Neither exile nor death on the scaffold, which had followed this
outbreak of 1715-16, quenched the ardour of individual Jacobites. An
enthusiastic candidate for martyrdom was earning the reward of his
unrighteous enthusiasm this year. He was an eminent barrister of the
Middle Temple, named Christopher Layer. He was a man of extreme views.
He hated the Act of Settlement and (it is said) he loved unlovable
women. In order that he might be the Lord Chancellor of James III.,
he was willing to murder, by deputy, George I. Layer went to Rome and
had an interview with ‘the King over the Water.’ The zealot sought
to be permitted to accomplish a revolution which, he said, no one
would understand till it had been carried out successfully. Layer’s
theory was that King George should be seized, which meant murdered, at
Kensington, by hired assassins; that, at the same time, the prince and
princess should be secured, and the ministry be summarily dispatched.
Layer boasted of having the ultra-Papists and Jacobites with him, and
it is certain that, whether James favoured the design or not, Layer
and his confederates met at an inn in Stratford-le-Bow; where Layer
protested that the so-called Prince of Wales should never succeed to
the crown of England.
[Sidenote: _THE PLOT._]
After conspiring at Stratford, and trying to entice soldiers at
Romford, the would-be Chancellor of the Stuart wrote his letters and
despatches at the residence, now of one Dalilah, in Queen Street, now
at that of another in Southampton Buildings! He who would fain have had
the keeping of his king’s conscience could not keep his own secret.
He might have written in comparative secrecy and safety in his own
chambers in the Middle Temple, but he both wrote and prattled in the
presence of two beautiful and worthless women, who, in their turn,
first betrayed and then gave testimony against him. It was subsequent
to one of his examinations before the magistrate by whose warrant
Layer had been arrested, that the Jacobite counsellor was confined in
a messenger’s house. There, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, and to
be left perfectly undisturbed while he wrote out a full confession of
all his treasonable designs. All that he asked was granted; but Layer
devoted his undisturbed time to other objects, and not to confession.
He prepared means for descending from the window of his room into a
yard below. In testing them, he fell on to a bottle rack, by which
he was grievously hurt; yet, not so much but that he was up and off
before the alarmed officials reached the yard. A hot pursuit commenced.
The messenger and his men came upon Layer’s trail at Westminster Ferry,
and finally ran him down at Newington.
[Sidenote: _LAYER AT WESTMINSTER._]
Layer was put in close confinement in the Tower; even his clerks were
placed in the custody of messengers; and his wife was brought to town
from Dover in custody. Previous to his trial, his passage from the
Tower to Whitehall, where the Secretaries of State and the Committee
of Council sat to interrogate him, was one of the sights of London.
The state prisoner was conveyed in a carriage, surrounded by warders,
and preceded and followed by detachments of foot guards. With similar
solemnity he was carried down to Romford, to plead, after a true bill
had been found against him; and then followed, but not immediately, the
last struggle for life.
[Sidenote: _ANTAGONISTIC LAWYERS._]
The case was carried to the Court of King’s Bench, on the 21st of
October, 1722. The accused traitor was brought into court, heavily
chained and fettered. Threats from loyal Whigs assailed him as he
staggered beneath his clanking burthen through Westminster Hall. A
cowardly fellow shouted that Layer, or the plot, must die! Two or three
men, waiting to be summoned on the jury, declared that, if called,
they would hang him! He mentioned these insults in court, and he asked
that he might be allowed to stand free of the grievous bonds which
oppressed him. He would then have his reason clearer, and he might hope
for ‘a fair and tender trial.’ Chief Justice Pratt promised him ‘a
fair and just one,’ but would not order his bonds to be unloosed. The
Attorney-General, Raymond, said, ‘He has as much liberty as is allowed
to prisoners who have tried to escape.’ Yorke, the Solicitor-General,
declared that Layer’s complaints were only made to excite sympathy.
Pratt agreed with both gentlemen. Hungerford, Layer’s chief counsel,
protested that this was the first case of a prisoner from the Tower
coming loaded with irons to plead; and Kettleby, also on his side,
maintained that Layer had a right to stand unshackled before he pleaded
to the charge against his life. This latter barrister tempered his
boldness with a little servility. ‘Having been appointed by your
lordship to defend the prisoner, I will not apologize for the course
I take.’ This was one way of begging the court to excuse that course.
Layer, in pitiful state from painful organic suffering, which was
aggravated by his heavy load of chains, was compelled to stand. The
sympathising ‘gentleman gaoler’ held up his captive’s bonds in his own
hands, to save him from fainting. The charge was then read in Latin,
and Kettleby argued its worthlessness, if not in law, in the badness
of its Latin. ‘It is Latin,’ he said, ‘that may go down in Westminster
Hall, but it would not in Westminster School.’ Similar pointed remarks
came up at the close of long――very long――winded discussions, to which
Sergeant Pengelly, for the Crown, replied by expressing his suspicion
that Kettleby’s objections, made with such pomp and ceremony, probably
meant something else than mere quashing of the indictment; upon which
all the judges, Pratt, Powys, and Fortescue Aland, declared all the
objections groundless; but a world of words was wasted before Layer
could be brought to plead. Ultimately he pleaded _Not Guilty_, and he
was ordered back to the Tower. He asked earnestly to be allowed to have
there the comfort of the company of his wife and sister. In his hour of
great peril, he thought of his two best, truest, and wisest friends.
Pratt sanctioned the companionship of the wife alone. Layer urged that
she would be subject to humiliating search on the part of rude warders
every time she passed to or fro; but that when there were two women,
one might save the other from gross insult. ‘No, no!’ said the Chief
Justice, ‘we must not be too forward in allowing women to go there. We
all remember how an escape from the Tower was managed by women going
thither.’
[Sidenote: _THE TRIAL._]
The trial was opened on the 21st of November. Layer stumbled forward to
his place, still weighed down by irons. Pratt, at the sight, exclaimed,
as if the matter occurred to him for the first time, ‘I will not stir
till the prisoner’s irons are taken off;’――accordingly they fell;
and the next scene in the drama was the calling and challenging the
jury. Layer recognised some of them who had said they would hang him
if they were on the panel, and his ‘challenge for cause’ was allowed.
His right to peremptory challenge was also unquestioned, but almost
invariably when Layer accepted the juror, by remaining silent at the
calling of the name, the Attorney-General struck in with the cry: ‘I
challenge him for the king,’ and the possible Tory or Jacobite was
set aside. ◆[Sidenote: _A FALSE WITNESS._]◆ Every avenue of escape
was as carefully closed by the Whig lawyers. The junior counsel, in
opening the case, asked how the jury could find a man not guilty
who had fled from justice as soon as he was accused. The jury were
told, moreover, that even if it were possible they could not convict
him, they would have ‘to enquire of his goods and chattels;’ thus
forfeiture of estate seems to have followed the mere charge of high
treason! Layer was charged with every possible sort of treason,
but the heaviest and highest included all the rest,――regicide, or
what Layer’s Jacobite friends called ‘securing the person of King
George in safety from the mob.’ Wearg did not go into detail with
much bitterness, and the Attorney-General, who followed, confined
himself to a renewal of circumstances already detailed. He then called
Stephen Lynch, and a very accomplished villain stept into the box with
ostentatious alacrity. He was objected to by Layer as a man who had
confessed to treason, and who was about to give evidence which had
already bought for him a promise of pardon. This was pooh-poohed by
one of the judges. Lynch, he remarked, might speak the truth under
that promise; and suppose he did not, he could not be questioned on
it. Lynch’s evidence showed one side of Jacobite hireling life. He (a
broken-down merchant) had been engaged in affairs, he said, with a Dr.
Murphy, abroad and at home. By Murphy he was introduced to Layer, who
engaged him in a special affair, and paid him money for furthering
the end desired by himself and confederates; or, he and ‘_other
gentlemen_,’ as the witness called them. The means were the enlisting
of discontented soldiers when the camp broke up; seizing the Tower, the
Mint, the Bank, &c.; getting possession of the king and royal family,
and (like the Cato Street conspirators of later days) murdering the
commander-in-chief and ministers whenever the plotters could find them
together. For all these objects ample aid was promised at all the
several points, and much preparation was made, but there was vexatious
delay, which Lynch protested against; and, most singular of all, there
were two or three visits to the house of Lord North and Grey, in Essex,
where the ‘affair’ was discussed; but not a word was said by Lynch, or
asked by counsel on either side, to show what part in the ‘affair’ was
borne by that peer of the realm.
[Sidenote: _A CONFEDERATE._]
Lynch was succeeded by Matthew Plunket, a discharged sergeant, a
confessed traitor, and an avowed purchaser of safety by giving
testimony against the counsellor. According to this witness, he himself
was a simple-minded soldier, who had been beguiled into attending
Sacheverel’s church, in Holborn, and drawn further away from loyalty
by a tippling, insinuating, ‘unjuring parson,’ named Jeffreys. Parson
and sergeant met and drank and concocted treason in half the taverns
of Fleet Street and Drury Lane. The ex-sergeant, having received his
fee, was told that his services would be required in enlisting old
soldiers who could discipline a mob. On yielding consent, Plunket was
introduced to Layer, who encouraged him by the assurance that Lord
North and Grey, an experienced soldier, was the ‘promoter’ of the
enterprise, and that Lord Strafford was deeply engaged in it. Plunket
affected to be scrupulous, like Lynch, on religious grounds. Would not
bringing in the Chevalier be putting a Papist on the throne? What of
that? asked Layer, the usurper who now sits there is a Lutheran. What’s
the difference? The ex-halberdier thought there was none.
The cross-examination was carried on simultaneously by the two
barristers and their client. Neither of them made the slightest
allusion to the peers referred to by Plunket, and all three wandered
from the point at issue.
[Sidenote: _LAYER’S LADIES._]
The next step was to prove the discovery of treasonable papers in
Layer’s handwriting. This proof was established by King’s Messengers,
who, acting on information, made seizure of such papers in a house in
Stonecutter’s Yard, Little Queen Street. Layer had entrusted them to
the keeping of ‘an honest woman named Mason,’ who kept the house with
equally honest ladies in it. He called them ‘love letters,’ said they
were worth 500_l._, and was anxious that his wife should be kept from
all knowledge of them. ‘What’s your trade, mistress?’ asked Kettleby.
‘What’s that to you?’ rejoined the honest woman; with which reply the
learned gentleman seemed satisfied.
[Sidenote: _LAYER’S ‘SCHEME.’_]
Her testimony helped Layer towards the scaffold, for among the papers
was one entitled the ‘Scheme,’ which a Mr. Doyley, in whose office,
many years before, Layer had been a clerk, swore to be in Layer’s
handwriting, to the best of his belief. This most damaging document
bore, by way of epigraph, these words: ‘Au défaut de la force il faut
employer la ruse.’ In detail it gave instructions how the insurrection
was to be begun, carried on, and ended,――from the first summoning of
soldiers in their lodgings, and of drilled mobs, to their various
quarters in and about London, to the insulting direction which bade
‘an officer to go to Richmond, and at the exact hour of 9, to seize on
Prince Prettyman, and bring him away to Southwark.’ The details were
made out as a stage-manager might note down dramatic business, wherein
every actor knows what he has to do, and can find no obstacle in the
doing of it, except from his own dulness. When some comment came to be
made by the Chief Justice on this and on certain correspondence between
Layer and the Pretender, Mr. Hungerford interrupted with ‘I humbly beg
your lordship’s pardon――――,’ but Pratt cut the remark and the maker
of it short by petulantly exclaiming, ‘Sir, if you will not hear me,
you’ll teach me not to hear you!’ After this rebuke, ample proof was
adduced of the intimate relations which existed between the Pretender’s
family and Mr. Layer’s. One instance was, that the exiled prince and
his wife had consented to stand, by proxies, godfather and godmother to
Layer’s daughter. The proxies were Lord North and Grey and the Duchess
of Ormond. The ceremony was privately performed at a china shop in
Chelsea, the minister being, doubtless, what Plunket would have called
‘an unjuring parson.’
[Sidenote: _THE DEFENCE._]
The defence was not badly sustained, especially by Layer himself.
His chief point was that being accused of an overt act of treason
in the county of Essex, if that accusation failed to be proved,
whatever he had done elsewhere was irrelevant. Kettleby too addressed
himself so clearly to this elucidation as to excite the chief judge
to reprehensible pettishness. ‘You have mixed your discourse so,’
cried Pratt, ‘that nobody knows what to make of it!’ The counsel tried
hard to prove that Layer had not even been where Lynch swore he had
committed an act of treason. Mackreth, the host of the ‘Green Man,’ at
Epping, his wife, and John Paulfreeman, their servant, swore positively
that no one resembling Layer had ever been in that house. ‘But,’
said mine host, ‘there was the Duke of Grafton and Lord Halifax came
to my house some time since. The Duke said to me, “Mackreth, you’re
to be hanged.” “Hanged!” said I, “for what?” “You and your friend,
Layer, are to be hanged!” Said I, “I never saw him in all my life.” He
added, “They walked to and fro in the hall.” “What!” said they, “do
you know nothing of this Layer?” “No!” said I, “I don’t, directly nor
indirectly, as I hope to be saved.”’ This characteristic attempt by
great personages to intimidate a witness failed.
[Sidenote: _STRANGE WITNESSES._]
Great interest was next excited by the appearance of Lord North and
Grey, a prisoner from the Tower. He had been captured in the Isle of
Wight, in an attempt to escape to France. He served the Government
rather than Layer, on whose part he was called. Lord North confessed
that Lynch was twice at his house, in Essex; but was rather uncivilly
got rid of the second time. Being pressed as to what passed between
himself, Lynch, and Layer, he answered:――‘It is a little hard for a man
of honour to betray conversation that passed over a bottle of wine, in
discourse.’ Although he said he must submit if ordered to betray, he
was _not_ ordered; and he the more confidently added: ‘As to particular
things, I don’t care to speak of them. I should be sorry to say it,
when it was said in my company and under my roof.’ Having made this
singular speech, Layer’s counsel rejoined with one as singular:――‘We
won’t press it,’――as if my lord’s silence bore less peril to their
client than his outspokenness would bear. At length, said Lord North
and Grey, ‘I must, by your Lordship’s leave, if these gentlemen have no
further to say to me, and your Lordships have no further commands, ask
that I may return to my prison.’ Upon which, Mr. Hungerford, as if he
were glad to be well rid of him, called out, ‘I hope you will make way
there for Lord North and Grey through the crowd!’ It was a turbulent
crowd, and given to ‘tumbling about’ such witnesses as happened to
displease them. This was especially the case with Sir Dennis O’Carroll,
one of many witnesses who swore to the rascal repute of Lynch and
Plunket. ‘It’s a mighty bad character Plunket has,’ said the gallant
knight, ‘I wouldn’t take his evidence to hang a dog!’ ‘And here he
is,’ said Hungerford, ‘trying to hang a Protestant!’ Other witnesses
spoke to the infamous life led by Mrs. Mason; others swore that the
‘Scheme’ was not in Layer’s handwriting, and Layer himself denounced
it as a forgery. He and his counsel argued one after the other in his
defence; he did not trust his case entirely to their idea of conducting
it; and they seemed more pleased than troubled by his interference.
His courage, without the slightest bravado, was beyond all praise. His
course was rather to deny the alleged proof adduced on the trial than
to deny acts which, he contended, were unproved.
[Sidenote: _THE VERDICT._]
The Solicitor-General then, in a manner, rushed at him. When he had
finished his long and blindly furious speech, Kettleby merely said in
reply: ‘I shall not take up much of your Lordship’s time, especially
since your Lordship and Court have been so long and so well entertained
by Mr. Solicitor-General at least two hours, as I have observed by my
watch, but it was impossible for me to think him tedious, though so
late at night.’ Therewith, he seated himself; and a few persons having
been called by the Crown in support of the honesty and virtue of some
of its very questionable witnesses, the Lord Chief Justice summed
up with a cruel sort of equity, and the verdict of _Guilty_, which
followed from an unanimous jury, brought to an end a trial of eighteen
hours’ duration.
[Sidenote: _LAYER’S DIGNITY._]
Sentence was not pronounced till the 27th. The doomed man was brought
from the Tower heavily ironed. The cruelty excited sympathy, but the
Lord Chief Justice said he could not interfere. It was not lawful for
a man to be ironed when on his trial, but this trial was over, and Mr.
Layer was legally in chains. Pity, however, prevailed, and the prisoner
was relieved of the burthen while he pleaded ably but vainly in arrest
of judgment. He made no craven cry for mercy promising abundant
loyalty in return, but he did not affect to look with indifference on
death, and he certainly hoped that his life might be spared. Pratt,
in passing sentence, smote Layer’s counsel as well as their client.
‘Your Counsel,’ he said, ‘have been permitted to say whatever they
thought proper for your service; and I heartily wish I could say they
had not exceeded, that they had not taken a greater liberty than they
ought to have done.’ After this philippic, Pratt pointed out the
happiness of England in possessing such a church, such a constitution,
such laws, such lords and commons, and such a king and royal family.
Not to enthusiastically worship these blessings was, in his eyes,
inexplicable folly. To attempt to overthrow any of them was a criminal
madness worthy of death; and he who had so dared must now die. Layer
was accordingly condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. ‘I will
dare,’ said he, ‘to die like a gentleman and a Christian.’ Whereupon,
he was again ironed, hurried into a coach, and driven off to the Tower.
[Sidenote: _THE JACOBITES IN MOURNING._]
There was another Jacobite ‘wanted’ by the Government. This was Carte,
the Nonjuror. The Government thought it worth while to offer a thousand
pounds for the apprehension of this obnoxious clergyman, but as in
the proclamation to that effect, he was described in exactly opposite
terms to those by which he could possibly be recognised, Carte got
off to France, where he lived under the name of Phillips, till in
the next reign Queen Caroline kindly obtained permission for the
Jacobite scholar to return to England. In the Mall, and at other public
places, the authorised watchers of suspected persons were surprised
to find several of the latter, in mourning. This was accounted for,
when it was known that Princess Sobieska, the mother of her whom the
Jacobites acknowledged as the true Queen of England,――the wife of the
Chevalier――was dead. ‘Chevalier!’ said an enthusiastic handmaid to
a distiller in Fleet Street, ‘I wish all the hairs on my head were
so many dragoons, to fight for the Chevalier!’ That night she lay in
Bridewell, and a day or two after, the poor handmaid was whipped,――into
a more determined Jacobite than ever!
Towards the close of the year, the Tories took their condition joyously
enough. Indeed, Whig and Tory fraternised over the punch-bowl. The
Whig Sir John Shaw entered into drunken frolics with the Tory Duke of
Wharton. A body of tipsy companions, members of Parliament, including
Sir John, tumbled in to a committee of the whole House. ‘We met,’ he
writes to Lord Cuthcart, ‘the Duke of Wharton, as well refreshed as
I. He proposed to survey all the ladies in the galleries. I was for
turning them all up: but he declined. He proposed to knock up Argyle;
but I proposed the king.’ The roysterers did knock up Argyle, and
the loyal Whig Duke received them well. A strong illustration of the
coarseness of the times is to be seen in the circumstance that Sir John
is not ashamed to let his wife know that _he_ had proposed to practise
on the ladies, the ruffianly insult often indulged in by Mohawks,
Bloods, and cowardly muscular gentlemen generally, namely, flinging
their garments over their heads.
[Sidenote: _A JACOBITE PLAYER._]
While the riotous character of the time was thus kept up by such
gentlemen as the Duke and Sir John, the Jacobite feeling among a few
actors of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre was maintained by John
Ogden. He was not a secret agent, like handsome Scudamore, of the
same house, but an outspoken Tory in coffee-houses and elsewhere. He
was too much of a roysterer for an actor who played such serious or
dignified parts as the _Duke de Bouillon_, in Beckingham’s ‘Henry IV.,’
_Northumberland_, _Kent_, _Shylock_, _Mr. Page_, and _Bellarius_,
in Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II.,’ ‘King Lear,’ ‘Merchant of Venice,’
‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ and ‘Cymbeline.’ Towards the close of the
year, Ogden, being in a tavern, drank King James’s health on his
knees; then, rising, he proposed that the company present should do
the same, and the Tory player drew his sword, in order to enforce the
proposal. At this time, there were always constables on the look-out
for such offenders, and a leash of them on this occasion made a rush
at John Ogden. The player kept them at a distance with his sword, very
unceremoniously damned King George, and urged the constables to follow
his example. Ultimately, John was knocked down and captured. He passed
his Christmas in Newgate, before trial, when he had a narrow escape of
going to Tyburn. Considering how full the air was of plots, Ogden was
not harshly treated. On being found _guilty_, he was sentenced to three
months’ imprisonment, to pay a fine of 50_l._, and to find security for
his good behaviour for three years. He satisfied all the conditions of
law and justice. In the next summer season of Lincoln’s Inn Fields he
made his reappearance as _Prince of Rosignano_ in d’Urfey’s revived
play of ‘Masaniello,’ and he created the part of _Diocletian_ in
Hurst’s tragedy, ‘The Roman Maid.’ He might have been seen studying
both parts as he walked to and fro in the noisy Newgate press-yard.
[Sidenote: _SUSPENSION OF THE ‘HABEAS CORPUS.’_]
After the sham fights in the camp, the hotter contests in Parliament
drew the attention of all London. In October, a Bill for the suspension
of the Habeas Corpus Act, for a whole year, was brought into the House
of Lords, where it passed through all the forms, and was sent to the
Commons, in one day. The Commons passed the Bill. Nineteen peers,
including the Archbishop of York, protested against the suspension for
so long a time of an Act which was the bulwark of the liberties of all
Englishmen; and which was brought in when the detestable conspiracy,
which was the motive for the suspension, had been rendered abortive.
The ministry were of another opinion. In the latter half of October,
the king asked the consent of the peers for the continued detention
of members of the House, namely, the Bishop of Rochester, the Duke of
Norfolk, Lord Boyle (Earl of Orrery), and Lord North and Grey. In the
case of the Duke of Norfolk, the consent was opposed, but was carried
by 60 to 28. Again, nineteen peers protested, on very good grounds.
The Duke was described as being suspected of having committed high
treason, and the protestors held that it was contrary to the rights and
privileges of the House, to detain any member (while a session was in
existence) on suspicion, without the grounds for such suspicion being
communicated to the House. There was probably no ground.
[Sidenote: _ARREST OF PEERS._]
Commoners, naturally, were not treated with more courtesy than peers.
Their houses were invaded by messengers in search of a reason for the
invasion. On a similar search, in November 1722, Mr. Spratt, king’s
messenger, knocked at young Mr. Cotton’s door, in Westminster, and
entered the house with a warrant for his arrest. Cotton received the
unwelcome visitor civilly, and Spratt’s eye, falling on a picture of
a lady, he asked, as if he were interested, whose portrait it might
be? Cotton answered, ‘the Queen’s.’ ‘What Queen’s?’ rejoined the
messenger. ‘The Queen of England’s, the wife of James III.,’ was the
bold reply. ‘You mean,’ observed the officer, ‘the Princess Sobieska.’
‘You may call it what you please,’ returned Cotton, ‘I acknowledge it
as my Queen’s portrait; and if Lord Townshend was to ask me, I should
make the same answer.’ On his trial subsequently, a constable and
two men who supported the messenger, deposed to similar effect; but
Mr. Cotton’s footman gave a modified relation. Their testimony was
that when their master was asked as to the portrait, he replied, ‘You
may call it whose you please!’ Counter-evidence was then adduced to
corroborate the prosecutor’s story, according to which, the messenger
had facetiously called the picture, ‘The portrait of the lady who
married the young gentleman ‘tother side of the water!’ To which Mr.
Cotton, being heated, cried, ‘A plague!――something worse, upon you! Why
do you trouble me? Call it what you please!’
[Sidenote: _LORD CHIEF JUSTICE PRATT._]
Lord Chief Justice Pratt, in summing up, found that the evidence for
the Crown was confirmed rather than contradicted by the witnesses for
the defence, and his lordship suggested a verdict accordingly. When,
after a quarter of an hour’s consultation, the jury returned with the
words ‘Not guilty!’ on the lips of their foreman, the Chief Justice
looked surprised, and the Whig papers, in the course of the week,
clearly thought the jury were as great _Jacks_ as Mr. Cotton himself.
[Sidenote: _LONDON SIGHTS._]
Never was society in London in a worse condition than at this time. In
every class there was a pitiful cynicism, and pitiless savagery, with
open contempt for becomingness in man and woman. A report of a sermon
in the newspapers would be followed by an unutterably filthy epigram.
Essayists claimed to exercise the utmost nastiness of life, and denied
the right of anyone to find fault with it. The monthly executions at
Tyburn were periodical fiendish revels. The newspapers made jokes upon
them; and Newgate convicts who cut their throats to avoid the long
agony in a Tyburn cart, were banteringly censured for disappointing a
public eager for such shows. The doomed man who rode thither pluckily,
was lauded. Much notice was taken of a gentleman highwayman, with many
_aliases_, who was captured in a western county, and who drove up to
Newgate with attendant constables, in his own coach and six. The papers
reminded him, however, that his next ride would be in a cart and two.
The departure of criminals for the Plantations was another sight. It
was always spoken of as the exportation from the storehouse in Newgate
Street of certain merchandise to America. ◆[Sidenote: _AMBITIOUS
THIEVES._]◆ The crowds of young thieves, who, with finer company,
lined the route by which the older ruffians walked from Newgate to
Blackfriars, where the lighter lay which was to convey them to the
ship waiting for them off Gravesend――were spoken of as nice young
shoots that would be transplanted in two or three years. The convicts
walked, slightly guarded, free in limbs, free and foul in tongue, full
of spirits and blasphemy. It was among their gentler acts of felony,
committed on their way, to rob the fine gentlemen who stood near enough
as they passed, of their hats and perukes. They clapped the stolen
property on their own heads, and congratulated themselves that they
would land in America, something like gentlemen. This sort of theft
was a favourite one at the time. A gentleman riding in his chariot, to
court or opera, was not so safe as walking on the highway with a sword
in his hand. A thief, fond of dress, would cut a square in the back
part of the chariot, draw the new wig off the beau’s head, and wear it
proudly at night in presence of his own Sukey Tawdry! Gentlemen, in
defence of their new wigs, were obliged to ride with their backs to
their horses!
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