[3] Case of Lieut. John Kynaston.
CHAPTER V.
(1715).
ightly or wrongly, the Tory mob in London were in no wise daunted. They listened to street preachers of sedition. The listeners were generally called ‘scum,’ and the orator was often designated ‘as a Tory cobler.’ Powder and arms were discovered on board ships in the Thames, and persons, accused of giving information to the Government, posted bills in the City affirming their innocence. Often the information was intended to mislead. Mr. Harvey, of Combe, was said to be expressing his contrition to a divine. The police messengers could not believe he was either so sick or so sorry as his friends affirmed. Their opinion was justified when they found him attempting to escape from his house through the tiles—an attempt which they frustrated.
Towards the end of the month, more of the lofty heads among the Jacobites were struck at. Sir John Pakington and Sir Windsor Hunlake were added to the list of prisoners, and the Whigs were elated by a display made in London by a delegation from Hanoverian Cambridge. The king had rewarded the loyalty of that University by purchasing, for 6,000l., the library of the Bishop of Ely, which he presented to the Whig seat of learning. Cambridge, by delegation, came up to St. James’s. The king declared that his present was only an earnest of future favour.
PAMPHLETEERING.
Both the Whig and the Tory press exasperated the Government. From the former was issued a pamphlet, called ‘The necessity of impeaching the late ministry.’ The pamphlet took the form of a letter to the Earl of Halifax, and was written by Thomas Burnet. The amiable author, after such vituperation as was then much enjoyed by those who admired the flinger of it and were out of reach of the missiles, mildly remarks that,—‘having commenced an enemy to the late ministry even from their first entrance into power, he cannot forbear from pursuing them with his resentment even to their graves, the only place, indeed, where their crimes can be forgotten!’ This was a Whig cry for blood. ‘“England expects it,” as the saying is,’ rang out from the throats of the ultra Whigs.