Serious as the times were, the king and royal family manifested no fear. They were unostentatiously brave. The most bitter Tory could not but admire them, walking round St. James’s Park, in a November afternoon, almost unattended; not guarded at all. This too was at the time when the Attorney-General was ‘prosecuting authors,’ as the journals have it, ‘for reflecting expressions in their writings against the king.’ The Government were at that very moment complaining of seditious meetings being held, by the encouragement of some whose duty it was to suppress them; meetings which were accompanied by rioting, and often followed by murder or attempts at such crime. It was a time when almost all the lords in office are said to have received the Pretender’s ‘Declaration’ and his other manifestoes by ‘foreign post’ or the ambassadors’ bags. In November 1714, a pamphlet was published with this significant title: ‘The sentiments of our Forefathers relative to Succession to the Crown, Hereditary Right, and Non-Resistance. Dedicated to all those who prefer Hereditary Right to a Parliamentary one, notwithstanding the latter is likely to take place. By a Lover of Right.’ SEDITIOUS PAMPHLETS. Every night were significant works like this, and even more scandalous pamphlets, cried through the streets. As yet, however, no vindictive measures were adopted. It was thought politic to give the Tories good words, but not to put any trust in them. Their audacity sometimes challenged prosecution. Mr. Pottes was arrested for a ‘provoking’ pamphlet: ‘Reasons for Declaring a War against France;’ and messengers were busy in looking after the author of a ‘Test offered to the Consideration of Electors of Great Britain, which at one view discovers those Members of Parliament, who were for or against the Hanoverian Succession.’ A thousand pounds was the sum offered to anyone who could and would discover the author of the ‘Test,’ and half that sum was offered for the discovery of the printer. The Government dreaded the effects of these writings on the elections to the first new parliament under King George. When the matter was happily over, the ‘squibs’ did not die out. The Whigs, to show how Tories had triumphed, published a (supposed) list of expenses of a Tory election in the West. Among the numerous items were: ‘For roarers of the word, Church! 40l.’ ‘For several gallons of Tory Punch drank on the tombstones, 30l.’ ‘For Dissenter Damners, 40l.’ The Tory journal writers laughed, and expressed a hope that at the forthcoming anniversary of the birthday of glorious Queen Anne, there would be more enthusiastic jollity than on the natal anniversaries of Queen Elizabeth and King William, which were still annually kept. The public were requested to remember that Anne as much excelled every English sovereign since Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had excelled every one before her. Whigs looked at one another in taverns and asked, ‘Does the fellow mean that Brandy Nan was better than King George?’
JACOBITE CLUBS.
In the Tory pamphlet, ‘Hannibal not at our gates,’ the writer sought to persuade the people that there was no danger a-foot. In the Whig pamphlet ‘Hannibal at our gates, or the progress of Jacobitism, with the present danger of the Pretender,’ &c., Londoners were especially warned of the reality of the peril. The Jacobite clubs, it was said, had ceased to toast the Jacobite king, or ‘impostor,’ under feigned names. They were described as ‘so many publick training schools where the youth of the nation were disciplined into an opinion of the justice of his title,’ and into various other opinions which were strongly denounced. The writer has an especial grievance in the fact that an honest Englishman cannot show respect to King William by keeping his birthday, without running the chance of being in the Counter as a rioter, if he only happens to fall into the hands of a Tory magistrate. Respect for princes, according to this Whig, is a courteous duty, and, forthwith, he speaks of the Chevalier as a ‘notorious bastard,’ and of his mother, Mary of Modena, as a ‘woman of a bloody and revengeful temper.’
ROYALTIES.
Rash deeds followed harsh words. Among the persons assaulted in the streets, on political grounds, was the Duke of Richmond, who was roughly treated one dark night. Such an attack on a Duke who was an illegitimate son of the Stuart King Charles II., by a Popish mistress, Louise de Querouaille, was taken by the Government as a certain evidence of a perhaps too exuberant loyalty. Nevertheless, the king continued to go about without fear. He drove almost unattended to dine or sup with various gentlemen and noblemen. We hear that ‘His Majesty honoured Sir Henry St. John, father of Viscount Bolingbroke, with his royal presence at dinner.’ The king thus sat at table with a man whose son he would unreluctantly have hanged! As for the Prince and Princess of Wales, they were as often at the play in times of personal danger, as princes and princesses are in times of no peril whatever. Perhaps they trusted a little in the proclamation against Papists and Nonjurors, whereby the former were disarmed, and were (or could be) confined to their houses, or be kept to a limit within five miles of their residences. The oath of allegiance was to be taken by all disaffected persons, and among the drollest street scenes of the day was that of some Dogberry stopping a man on the causeway and testing his loyalty by putting him on his affidavit!
AT ST. JAMES’S.
There was zeal enough and to spare among the clergy of all parties. Not very long after the Princess of Wales was established at St. James’s, Robinson, bishop of London, sent in a message to her by Mrs. Howard, to the effect that, being Dean of the Chapel, he thought it his duty to offer to satisfy any doubts or scruples the Princess might entertain with respect to the Protestant religion, and to explain what she might not yet understand. The Princess was naturally ‘a little nettled.’—‘Send him away civilly,’ she said, ‘though he is very impertinent to suppose that I, who refused to be Empress for the Protestant religion, do not understand it fully.’ The Bishop thought that the august lady did not understand it at all, for the Princess had declared among her ladies ‘Dr. Clarke shall be one of my favourites. His writings are the finest things in the world.’ Now Dr. Clarke was looked upon as a heretic by Robinson, for Clarke was not a Trinitarian according to the creed so-called of Athanasius. Lady Nottingham, High Church to the tips of her fingers, denounced the Doctor as a heretic. Lady Cowper gently asked her to quote any heretical passage from Dr. Clarke’s books. Clarke’s books! The lady declared she never had and never would look into them. Cowper mildly rebuked her. Cowper’s royal mistress laughed, and the ‘Duchess of St. Alban’s,’ says Lady Cowper, ‘put on the Princess’s shift, according to Court Rules, when I was by, she being Groom of the Stole.’
ELECTIONEERING TACTICS.
The first election of Members of Parliament which was about to take place excited the liveliest and most serious interest throughout the kingdom, but especially in London. Mighty consequences depended on the returns. To influence these, Popping issued from under his sign of the Black Raven, in Paternoster Row, a pamphlet entitled, ‘Black and White Lists of all Gentlemen who voted in Person, for or against the Protestant Religion, the Hanoverian Succession, the Trade and the Liberties of our Country, from the Glorious Revolution to the Happy Accession of King George.’ These lists, like others previously published, were as useful to the Jacobites as to the Hanoverians, and perhaps were intended to be so. A phrase in the Preface, which seems thorough Whig, was understood in every Jacobite coffee-house. ‘French Bankers, Friends of the Faction, are continually negotiating great Sums for Bills of Exchange upon London,—to support the Pretender’s party, and bribe Voters.’ The various questions to which these division lists refer are very numerous. Among them may be noted the names of those who voted for or against the Crown being given to the Prince of Orange,—of members who, in 1706, voted for tacking the Bill for preventing occasional Conformity, to a Money Bill, to secure its passing in the House of Lords; finally,—of those members ‘who are not numbered among Tackers or Sneakers.’ On the other hand, a decidedly Tory pamphlet was circulated, in which the Londoners, and, through them, Englishmen generally, were implored not to vote for men who wanted war, whatever might be the motive. It bids each elector bless the present peace, ‘while his sons are not pressed into the war nor his daughters made the followers of camps.’ This was bringing the subject thoroughly home to the bosoms of the Athenians.
ROYAL CHAPLAINS.