There were people who were to be more easily got at than the pamphleteers. Dr. Bramston, for a sermon preached in the Temple Church, was struck out of the list of Royal Chaplains. He published the discourse, for his justification. The most rabid Whig in the kingdom could find no hostility in it, nor the most rabid Tory any support. The Court found offence enough. Dr. Bramston and his fellow chaplains, who had read prayers to Queen Anne,—Dr. Browne, Dr. Brady, the Rev. Mr. Reeves of Reading, and the Rev. Mr. Whitfield, were informed that they were not only struck out of the list of her late Majesty’s chaplains, but that ‘they would not be continued when his Majesty is pleased to make a new choice.’ Compassion is not aroused for Dr. Brady, he being half of that compound author Tate and Brady, of whom many persons have had such unpleasant experience on recurring Sundays at church. Tate helped Brady to ‘improve’ the Psalms, after the fashion in which he had ‘improved’ Shakespeare; and it is hard to say which king suffered most at his hands—King Lear or King David!
On the other hand, the feeling on the Jacobite side very much resembled that which is recorded in the ‘Memoirs of P. P., clerk of this Parish,’—in which parish, Jenkins, the farrier, ‘never shoed a horse of a Whig or fanatic, but he lamed him sorely.’ Turner, the collar-maker, was held to have been honoured by being clapt in the stocks for wearing an oaken bough on the 29th of May;—Pilcocks, the exciseman, was valued for the laudable freedom of speech which had lost him his office;—and White, the wheelwright, was accounted of good descent, his uncle having formerly been servitor at Maudlin College, where the glorious Sacheverel was educated!
THE CHEVALIER IN LONDON.
At a somewhat later period, a pamphlet was published, in which the Chevalier de St. George is introduced, saying:—‘Old Lewis assur’d me he would never desert my Interest, and he kept his Bona fide till he was drub’d into the humble Condition of su’ing for Peace, and I was seemingly to be sacrificed to the Resentment of my Enemies; but our dear Sister and the Tories concerted privately to elude the force of the Treaty, and kept me at Bar-le-Duc, from whence I made a Trip to Somerset House, but was soon Frighten’d away again by the sound of a Proclamation, at which Sir Patrick and I scour’d off. Soon after, dear Sister departed this mortal Life, but the Schemes being yet not entirely finish’d, and my good Friends not having the Spirit of Greece, Hanover whipt over before me.’ This passage will recall an incident in Mr. Thackeray’s ‘Esmond.’
CHAPTER III.
(1715.)
he second homage paid by the stage to the royal family was, in 1715, rendered in person by Tom Durfey. Tom had been occasionally a thorough Tory. Charles II. had leant on his shoulder. Great Nassau, nevertheless, enjoyed his singing. Queen Anne laughed loudly at his songs in ridicule of the Electress Sophia; and yet here was the Electress’s son, George I., allowing the Heir Apparent to be present at Tom’s benefit. This took place on January 3rd, 1715. On this occasion, Tom turned thorough Whig. After the play, he delivered an extraordinary speech to the audience on the blessings of the new system, the condition and merits of the royal family, and on the state of the nation as regarded foreign and domestic relations! At the other play-house, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a piece was acted called the ‘Cobler of Preston,’ in which Kit Sly and his story were ‘lifted’ from the ‘Taming of the Shrew.’ Kit was played by Pinkethman. When he said, ‘Are you sure now that I’m your natural Lord and Master? I am devilishly afraid I am but a Pretender!’—the Whigs clapped till their hands were sore, and the Tories ‘pished’ at the poorness of the joke.