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.
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.
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.
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.
ANTAGONISTIC LAWYERS.