GENERAL CONFUSION.
A still more perplexing pamphlet was sold in the streets, despite the constables, namely, ‘The Soldiers’ humble address for the impeachment of the late ministry.’ Political soldiers were felt to be as out of place as militant parsons. It rained pamphlets; and the embarrassment caused thereby was increased by the circumstance that some of them bore on the title-page the names of eminent men as authors, whose sentiments were directly opposed to those set forth in the pamphlet. Great confusion ensued, and a fear of impending calamity fell upon many. So marked was this fear, that two months before the eclipse of April, the astronomers, Dr. Halley and Mr. Whiston, ‘thought it necessary to caution people against being surprised or interpreting it as any ill omen, wherein there is nothing but what is natural, or than the necessary result of Sun and Moon.’ ‘It is all very well,’ said the Tories, ‘but there has been no such eclipse in England, since the days of Stephen the Usurper.’
The eclipse and the Pretender were subjects that gravely occupied men’s minds. From the coffee-houses where ‘Captains’ more or less genuine used to congregate and talk loudly, those swaggerers began to disappear, and their acquaintances felt quite sure that mischief was afoot. The Secretaries of State knew all about those ‘Captains.’ They were followed whithersoever they went, till all of them, nearly two dozen, were pounced upon in Dublin, after spies had discovered that they were enlisting men for the Chevalier. Two-thirds of these Jacobite recruiters were, upon brief trial and conviction, hanged, drawn, and quartered. In England, a poor Jacobite who had drunk ‘Damnation to King George,’ was only fined 50l.; but as he was to lie in prison till he paid that sum, he probably slowly rotted away instead of being promptly hung. When the Tories had the opportunity to express hostile opinions with impunity, they never failed to avail themselves of it. They had this opportunity at the theatre. Whig papers remarked that ‘the Tory faction hissed as much like serpents from the galleries as their leaders, the High Church faction, did from the pulpits.’ Any allusion to desertion of allies or to a separate peace was sure to be greeted with volleys of hisses.
JACOBITE MOBS.
In the Mug Houses bets began to be laid as to the length of time King George was likely to be on the throne. Daring men, with their thoughts over the water, wagered a hundred guineas he would not be king a month longer. The next day, on the information of some of the company, they would find themselves in peril of going to Tyburn in half that time. The Tory mob had a way of their own to show their sentiments. They kept the anniversary of Queen Anne’s coronation-day, and made the most of their opportunity. They assembled at the Conduit on Snow Hill, with flag and hoop, and drum and trumpet. They hoisted the queen’s picture over the Conduit, and a citizen having flung to them a portrait of King William, they made a bonfire and burnt it. They displayed a legend, the contribution of a Mob Muse, which ran thus, alluding to the queen:—
Imitate her who was so just and good,
Both in her actions and her royal word!
RIOTING.
They smashed the windows that were not illuminated, and they pelted with flints the people who were lighting the candles intended to propitiate them. They stopped coaches, robbed those who rode in them, even of their wigs, and if the victims would not shout for Queen Anne, the rascalry stript them nearly naked. Right into a Sunday morning in April, this orthodox crew of incendiaries went about plundering, while they shouted God bless the Queen and High Church! They drank horribly the whole time, and toasted Bolingbroke frequently, but never King George. High Churchmen would not blame riot when it took the shape of burning down dissenters’ chapels, and the pious villains danced to the accompaniment of ‘High Church and Ormond.’ At Oxford, town and gown overstepped limits observed in London. In one of the many tumults there, before they burnt in the street the furniture of one of the dissenting ‘meeting houses,’ they fastened a Whig Beadle in the pulpit and rolled him about the town till he was bruised in every limb. The Whig papers, thereupon, significantly pointed out to their friends, that there was a nonjuring congregation who met over a coffee-house in Aldersgate Street. These people, it was said, prayed for ‘the rightful king,’ and such wretches, of course, merited all that a Whig mob could inflict on them. One of the most dangerous symptoms of the time occurred on the arrest of some strapping young ballad wenches, who were taken into custody, opposite Somerset House, for singing ballads of a licentious nature against King George. The soldiers on guard rescued the fair prisoners; and when much indignation was expressed at this fact, the officers excused the men on the ground that they did not interfere on political grounds, but out of gallantry to the ladies.
BALLAD-SINGERS.