The Guards, while encamped in Hyde Park, were preached to, on Sundays, with an earnestness which stood for an apology. It seemed necessary to persuade them, as the preachers did, that the happiness of Great Britain, in having a wise and just Protestant king, was beyond all conception.
The ‘Friends,’ too, lifted their voice. In November the Quaker spirit was moved to uplift a shout against the Jacobites. A Ministering Friend of the people so called gave a blast through the press of ‘a trumpet blown in the North and sounded in the ears of John Ereskine, called by the Men of the World Duke of Mar.’ At the Cheshire coffee-house, in King’s Arms Court, Ludgate Hill, this pamphlet might be bought, or read over the aromatic cup which was sold in that locality.
Pamphleteers came out with ‘bold advice,’—that Jacobitism should be stamped out by vigorous laws. Everywhere the clerical Jacobites, who prayed for the Pretender, by innuendo, were denounced. In Holland, it was said, when a clergyman meddles with affairs of State, the magistrates send him a staff and a pair of shoes, and that significant course was recommended for Tory parsons. Another Dutch custom was highly approved of. It was gravely proposed for adoption here, that the clergy, generally, should preach only from texts prescribed for them by the civil authorities!
POPULAR SLOGAN.
Throughout this year, on days popular with either party, the streets resounded with different cries, according to the anniversary. Now, it was ‘a Stuart!’ ‘an Ormond!’ ‘No Hanoverians!’ or ‘High Church and Ormond!’ which last cry was interpreted by the opposite party to mean ‘Pope and Pretender!’ Tory mobs of patriots went about asking High Churchmen for money, to drink ‘Damnation to Whigs and Dissenters.’ The same men went to the other side to ask drinking money for damning the Pope; and when the Tories accused the Whigs of burning down their own meeting houses, it was perhaps because the leading incendiaries were recognised by Tories as having been active in supporting with their sweet voices what they were then destroying torch in hand! The same men would, the next day, burn the Pretender in effigy, in Cheapside, and get drunk on the wages of their infamy. On the king’s birthday, it was observed that loyalty prevailed among the lower orders, wherever wine was to be had for nothing. Some made a demonstration. ‘In the Marshalsea,’ said the papers, ‘after the king’s birthday, our prisoners, wherever able, had select companies to drink King George’s health.’ As some keepers of prisons distributed punch at the prison gates, nobody refused to drink ‘The king’s health,’ as long as the liquor lasted.
PERILOUS ANNIVERSARIES.
The London Jacobites showed their characteristic spirit on the night of Friday, November 4th, the anniversary of King William’s birthday. They built up a huge bonfire in Old Jewry, and prepared to hang over it an effigy of that monarch. The Williamite Club, assembled at the Roebuck in Cheapside, hearing of the insult, rushed out with ‘oaken plants’ in their hands, and made furious and effective onslaught on the ‘Jacks,’ They scattered the faggots, broke the heads of all opponents, and ultimately carried off the effigy in triumph. Some Jacks pleaded that it was only an effigy of Oliver, but they were kicked for gratuitously lying. The Whigs installed the captured figure in their club room, where it was preserved as an ‘undeniable proof of that villainous Design which the Faction had not then the courage to own and now have the Impudence to deny.’
On the following day, loyal Londoners had their revenge. They celebrated the national deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, and, through William III., from popery, slavery, and wooden shoes. With bands of music, flaunting of flags, and continued hurrahs from loyal and thirsty throats, the procession moved or stumbled through the city. The effigies borne along with them in derision were those of the Pope, the Pretender, the Duke of Ormond, Lord Bolingbroke, and the Earl of Mar. There were men who carried warming pans, in allusion to the legend that the Pretender had been brought in one into the palace on the day that the queen, his mother, believed she had borne him. There were men who represented the prince’s nurses, and others who carried nursery emblems. The music played ‘Lillibulero,’ and tunes of similar quality. The effigies of Ormond and Mar rode together in the same cart. POPULAR DEMONSTRATIONS. The former wore an extravaganza sort of uniform, with an emblematic padlock on his sword. Ormond was in scarlet and gold. Mar was in blue and silver, with a paper pinned to his staff. It bore this inscription: ‘I have sworn sixteen times to the Protestant religion, and I ne’er deceived you but once.’ Pope and Pretender followed, cheek by jowl, in another cart. They were pontifically and royally decked out, in caricature. Bolingbroke, in absurd court dress, sat at the tail of the cart, as in dutiful attendance on both masters; and a paper above him bore the words, ‘Perjury is no crime!’ All these personages rode backwards like traitors. The lengthy procession passed westward, from the Roebuck in Cheapside by Holborn to St. James’s Palace, returning by Pall Mall and the Strand. For the time being they were in full possession of the streets. They paused at the houses of celebrated personages, to hail them with blessings or curses equally highly-pitched. ‘Sometime before their arrival at the Roebuck, on their return, a sneaking Jacobite mob, perceiving the pile for the bonfire unguarded, came up with a shout of “King George for ever!” the better to deceive the people, and scower’d off with the faggots into bye-lanes and corners.’
Eastward, the procession went as far as Grace-church Street, amid vast multitudes of people. The trumpets and hautboys now played none but Protestant tunes. A double set of effigies were burnt on gibbets over two huge bonfires, one in front of the Roebuck, the other before the Royal Exchange,—the devil being added to the rest as a bonne bouche for the loyal and pious people. The mob at last separated in pursuit of liquor, and over their cups they talked of how an Irish priest had just been clapped into Newgate for attempting to blow up the powder magazine at Greenwich; and how Governor Gibson had saved Portsmouth Castle from being seized and the fleet in the harbour burnt by rascally Jacks who had conspired for the purpose. Before the next day had dawned, expresses were galloping into London with news from the North.
NEWS FROM THE NORTH.