There is little doubt that the Tories in London were exasperated to the utmost by the disregard which the Whig and the Dissenting preachers manifested for the decree in the ‘Gazette’ which forbade the meddling with State affairs in the pulpit. Bradbury made his chapel echo again with demands for justice against traitors. Tories called him the ‘preaching Incendiary.’ They had previously treated Bishop Burnet as ‘a lay preacher who takes upon him, after a series of lewdness and debauchery, in his former life, to set up for an instructor of Ministry, and impudently tells the Ministers of State, the King’s Majesty, and all, that he expects the last Ministry should be sacrificed to his resentments, and their heads be given to him in a charger, as that Lewd Dancer did to John the Baptist.’[2]
Humble Jacobites, on the other hand, were often mercilessly treated. Ill words spoken of the king brought the hangman’s lash round the loins of the speaker. Half the Whig roguery of London went down to Brentford in May, to see a well-to-do Tory butcher whipped at the cart’s tail from Brentford Bridge round the Market Place. That roguery was very much shocked to see wicked Tory influence at work in favour of the High Church butcher; for, he not only was allowed refreshment, but the cart went so fast and the lash so slowly, that the Hanoverian cockneys swore it was not worth while going so far to see so little.
THE LASH.
To their loyal souls, ample compensation was afforded soon after. There was a Jacobite cobler of Highgate who, on the king’s birthday, was seen in the street in a suit of mourning. On the Chevalier’s natal day, he boldly honoured it by putting on his state dress, as holder of some humble official dignity. Jacobites who, on the same occasion, wore an oaken sprig or a white rose, well-known symbols, could easily hide them on the approach of the authorities, but a beadle who came out in his Sunday livery, to glorify the ‘Pretender,’ was courting penalties by defying authority. The magnanimous cobler went through a sharp process of law, and he was then whipped up Highgate Hill and down again. To fulfil the next part of his punishment, the cobler was taken to Newgate, to which locality he was condemned for a year. People in those days went to see the prisoners in Newgate as they did the lions in the Tower, or the lunatics in Bedlam, and parties went to look at the cobler. If they were Tories, they were satisfied with what they saw, but Whigs turned away in disgust. ‘Why,’ said they, ‘the villain lives in the press-yard like a prince, and lies in lodgings at ten or twelve shillings a week!’ The disgusted Whig papers remarked that ‘he was not whipped half as badly as he deserved.’ They were not always thus dissatisfied. A too outspoken French schoolmaster, one Boulnois, was so effectually scourged for his outspokenness, from Stocks Market to Aldgate, that he died of it. The poor wretch was simply flogged to death. The Stuart party cried shame on the cruelty. The Hanoverians protested that there was nothing to cry at. The man was said to be not even a Frenchman, only an Irish Father Confessor in disguise! What else could he have been, since the Jacobites, before Boulnois was tied up, gave him wine and money. Such gifts to suffering political criminals were very common. THE PILLORY. An offender was placed in the pillory in Holborn, for having cursed the Duke of Marlborough and the ministry. He must have been well surrounded by sympathisers. Not a popular Whig missile reached him; and when, with his head and arms fixed in the uprights, his body being made to turn slowly round to the mob, he deliberately and loudly cursed Duke and ministry, as he turned, the delight of that mob, thoroughly Tory, knew no bounds. They even mounted the platform and stuffed his pockets with money.
A HARMLESS JACOBITE.
The author of ‘George III., his Court and family,’ in the introductory part illustrates the gentler side of George I.’s character, by quoting his remark when entrapped by a lady into drinking the Pretender’s health,—‘With all my heart! I drink to the health of all unfortunate princes.’ And again, when paying one of his numerous visits to private individuals in London, the king marked the embarrassment of his host as his Majesty looked on a portrait of the Chevalier de St. George, which the host had forgotten to remove. ‘It is a remarkable likeness,’ said the king, ‘a good family resemblance.’ Nor was he insensible to humour, if the following story, told in the above-named work, may be taken for a true one. ‘There was a gentleman who lived in the City, in the beginning of the reign of this Monarch, and was so shrewdly suspected of Jacobitism that he was taken up two or three times before the Council, but yet defended himself so dextrously, that they could fasten nothing on him. On the breaking out of the Rebellion in 1715, this person, who mixed some humour with his politics, wrote to the Secretary of State, that as he took it for granted that at a time like the present he should be taken up as usual for a Jacobite, he had only one favour to beg, that if the administration meant any such thing, they would do it in the course of next week; for, the week after, he was going down to Devonshire on his own business, which, without this explanation, would no doubt be construed as transacting the business of the Pretender. Lord Townshend, who was Secretary of State at that time, in one of his convivial moments with the king, showed him this letter, and asked him what his Majesty would direct to be done with such a fellow. “Pooh! pooh!” says the king, “there can be little harm in a man who writes so pleasantly!”’
[1] ‘Letter, from Perth to a gentleman in Stirling.’
[2] ‘Confederacy of the Press and the Pulpit for the blood of the last Ministry.’
