London in the Jacobite times, Volume I

by Dr. Doran

On September 20th the ‘Daily Courant’ made no allusion whatever to the troubled and anxious state of the nation, but it gave the satisfactory intelligence that ‘All is in tranquility in France.’ On the same day, however, a proclamation in the king’s name was issued, wherein it was stated that ‘a most horrid and treacherous conspiracy’ was afoot, and ‘an invasion’ intended for the establishing of the Pretender.

PREACHERS AWAKE.

The pulpits thereupon began to ring, but the Government made a commendable attempt to muzzle the preachers, whether the latter were blind adversaries or blinder advocates. The employment of violent and malevolent terms against any persons whatsoever was prohibited. The ‘intermeddling,’ in sermons, with affairs of state, was strictly forbidden. The authorities, in fact, enjoined Christian ministers to observe the charity which is the leading feature in Christianity. The ministers, for the most part, claimed and exercised a rather unchristian liberty. Foremost among the blaring trumpeters who sounded on the Hanoverian side was White Kennett, Dean of Peterborough. Kennett was a man who, in his early days, had offended the Whigs, by his political publications; and, something later, had gratified the Tories by putting forth an English translation of Pliny’s panegyric upon Trajan, which was supposed to apply to James II.; while, at the same time, he displeased the Jacobites by declaiming against popery and by refusing to read the royal declaration of indulgence. The Whigs whom he had offended, he appeased by his fierce opposition to Sacheverel. Kennett was a man of great parts, as it is called, and was particularly qualified for maintaining his opinions in a controversy. Scholar, gentleman, priest and politician, he steadily went up the ladder of preferment, till his merits and patronage had now brought him to the deanery of Peterborough and the rectory of St. Mary, Aldermanbury. A FAMOUS SERMON. It was in the church so named that Kennett, on September 25th, 1715, preached his famous sermon on witchcraft. The text was taken from 1 Samuel, xv. 23:—‘Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king.’ The sermon, a long one, and full of an invective that almost reaches ferocity, is stuffed with inflammatory politics from beginning to end, incendiary matter which then made men half-mad with joy or indignation, but which seems now a poor thing save in weight of mischievous words. The preacher, of course, proved to his own satisfaction that all concerned in promoting the imminent rebellion were bewitched by the devil; that stubbornness in opposing the royal authority was the iniquity and idolatry alluded to in the text; and that the Pretender, like his father, had lost the crown because he did not care to be of the true community of faith. The sermon was ‘inspired,’ according to the Whig papers;—but by the devil, according to the Tories and Tory critics in the clubs. Art took a curious revenge for this discourse. SATIRICAL ART. An altarpiece was painted for St. Mary’s, Whitechapel, by order of Welton, the Jacobite rector. The subject was The Last Supper. It gained a certain modest amount of admiration, till some spectator remarked that Judas Iscariot not only seemed a more than usually prominent figure in the group, but that the face was wonderfully like Dr. White Kennett’s. It was, in fact, Kennett’s portrait, and when this became known, all London, but especially Jacobite London, was crowding to Whitechapel to behold this novel pillorying of the modern Iscariot. If any spectator had a doubt on the matter, it was removed by the black patch on Judas’s head. Kennett, in William’s days, used to go out with his dog and his gun, and with companions in his shooting excursions. On one of these ‘outings,’ an awkward companion let part of the charge of his gun go into the head of the divine. The consequences were grave, but Kennett was saved by undergoing the operation of trepanning. Ever afterwards he wore a black patch over the place. The artist had not forgotten the fact. Delighted Jacobites gazed at the figure in jeering crowds; and when the picture had been seen and re-seen by all the Tories in town, the Bishop of London interfered, and ordered it to be put away. Kennett could afford to laugh. His sermon on the witchcraft of the rebellion carried him to the episcopal throne at Peterborough.

MISCHIEVOUS SERMONS.

The pulpits were not silenced. As what was considered the supreme moment of peril became imminent, they shook again with the trumpet-like roar of the preachers. The High Church lecturers inculcated obedience to the rightful king, without naming him. The thorough Whig Hanoverian clergy spared no epithets that they could fling, winged with fire and tipped with poison, at the Jacobites’ sovereign, ‘a boy sworn to destroy this kingdom,’ said one. Others were both foul and ferocious in dealing with the Chevalier who desired to get possession of his inheritance. The more eagerly they pelted him with unsavoury missiles, the more lavish they were in terms which amounted to worshipping the god-like monarch whom Heaven had sent for the advantage of England and the wonder of the world. On October 16th, 1715, one of these sermons was preached in St. Katherine Cree Church, London, by the minister, the Rev. Charles Lambe. The text was taken from Proverbs, xxiv. 21, ‘My son, fear thou the Lord and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change.’ Such a text foreshadows its comment in such hands as those of Lambe. But he went out of his way to assail the Chevalier, into the circumstances of whose birth—to show he was not the born son of Mary of Modena and James II.—Lambe entered in the gossiping manner of such matronly midwives as his bishop was then in the habit of licensing. ‘That was done in a corner,’ he said, with an air of mystery, ‘which should have been done openly to the utmost extent of decency.’ Had Lambe’s congregation been disposed to sleep, he had matter prepared for the awakening of them in a passage which was certain to touch them nearly. He knew that distant danger was unheeded, but he brought this suggestive picture of London to the attention of Londoners, and it could not have done otherwise than make their souls uneasy, and rouse their spirits to be up and doing. ‘Have you any notion of a civil war, your Treasury exhausted, your Banks plundered, your Trade decayed, your Companies bankrupt, your Shops rifled, and the various species of Stocks sunk, run down, and lost? Have you any idea of Fields flow’d with blood, your Streets pav’d with the carcasses of fellow citizens, your Wives and your Daughters torn from your Sides, and made a Prey to enrag’d undistinguishing Soldiers. Think that you see this beautiful and spacious City burnt, destroy’d, made a ruinous Heap, attended with all the dismal Horrors of Fire and Sword even from Fellow Countrymen, Fellow Subjects, and Fellow Protestants!’

A SOUND OF ALARM.

Citizens and fathers must have stared in a sort of dismay. Lambe might well say that if any disloyal man was present, he hoped such person had been cured of his malady. Jones, probably, went home thinking of a pavement made out of the carcasses of Brown and Robinson; and the ladies of citizen families walked behind them in a flutter of speculation as to what part of the force those undistinguishing soldiers belonged.

JACOBITE AGENTS.

London may be called the head-quarters of the rebels, before actual war broke out. Captain John Shafto (on half-pay), an ex-Captain John Hunter, and an Irish Papist who had served in the brigade in France, were among the more active and daring agents. The leaders of the party kept their secret tolerably well. They met, debated, provided all things needful for their success, and carried on a correspondence with friends at a distance. While agents moved quietly away from London to teach the ‘Rurals’ the sacred duty of rebellion, more trusty messengers, still, rode or walked through and away from town, bearing letters and despatches which, if discovered, might cost a dozen lives. These trusty gentlemen were sent into various parts of the kingdom. They rode from place to place as travellers, pretending a curiosity to view the country; and they performed their dangerous duty with a success which perplexed the king’s messengers. The most dexterous of these agents were Colonel Oxburgh, Nicholas and Charles Wogan, and James Talbot, all Irish and Papists. There were others, men of quality too, and occasionally a clergyman, who were entrusted with important but still dangerous duties. ‘All these,’ says Patten in his ‘History,’ ‘rid like Gentlemen, with Servants and Attendants, and were armed with swords and pistols. They kept always moving, and travelled from place to place, till things ripened for action.’

Meanwhile, the otherwise curious part of the public might be seen wandering in troops to Duke Street, Westminster, to gaze at the house, the master of which, the Earl of Scarsdale, was there put under confinement. There was, elsewhere, a good look-out kept for perils ahead; there was no indulgence of any mean spite. His Majesty’s ship ‘Ormond’ was then lying at Spithead. The Government did not stoop to the little vindictiveness of painting out the name of the great rebel who was then aiding and fostering rebellion, abroad. Sedition at home was hottest very close to the Royal Palace. There was quite a commotion at the bottom of St. James’s Street, at seeing messengers and guards enter Mr. Ozinda’s chocolate-house, next door to the palace. Ozinda himself was brought out captive, and when the mob saw him followed by Sir Richard Vivyan and Captain Forde, also captives, they began to smell a new gunpowder plot, and to surmise that the blowing up of the royal family was to be one of the means for restoring the Stuarts.