JACOBITE FURY.
Private letters confirmed the report of the deadly nature of the defence made by men under cover. This led Wills to fire the houses, upon which the Jacobites withdrew to the centre of the town and into the church, fighting again behind new barricades. When the resistance became hopeless, offers to capitulate were sent to the attacking general, but Wills refused all terms. They must surrender, he said, at discretion. He would not treat with rebels. The surrender followed; and the same day saw the fatal issues of Preston and of Sheriff Muir.
STREET FIGHTING.
This news from Preston infuriated rather than depressed the London Jacobites. On Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, November 17th, it was whispered about that they intended to profane the day by burning the effigies of his sacred Majesty King George himself, as well as that of King William. The Whigs of the Roebuck assembled in and about that hostelry, armed and resolved to prevent the profanation. At seven p.m. one of their scouts rushed in breathless with the news that the ‘hellish crew’ were mustered in St. Martin’s-le-Grand to cries of ‘High Church and Ormond,’ ‘Ormond and King James,’ ‘King James and Rome for ever!’ The Roebucks, thus interrupted when they were drinking to the memory of Queen Elizabeth, while keeping their powder dry for contingencies, at once marched out. The hostile forces encountered at the east end of Newgate Street. The Jacobites were thoroughly thrashed, and the assailants carried in triumph to the Roebuck the figures, which had been destined for the flames in Smithfield, of the above two kings, and also that of ‘the victorious Duke of Marlborough.’ The figures were carried to the tavern-head-quarters of loyalty, and with them a sort of Scaramouch, who had brandished in their defence a huge scymitar, four fingers broad. The Whigs had scarcely got safe within their stronghold when it was vigorously assaulted by at least five hundred Jacobites. The latter, after whetting their rage by smashing windows on their march, commenced their attack on the Roebuck fortress by pulling down the sign, and breaking everything that was breakable in front of the house. Finally, the crowning assault was made by the hatchet and cleaver wielders against the gates. They laughed at being rather politely requested to desist, and were amused when shot at from the windows with powder only. Then, in self-defence, the Whigs fired into the mass with ball. Down went two or three into the London November mud, dead for James and the High Church. Up went, at the same time, the shrieks and curses of the wounded. The remnant were staggered; for a moment indecisive, they soon came to a resolution and to action upon it. At this moment appeared in Cheapside the Lord Mayor with a guard, some officers and citizens, shouting, ‘King George for ever!’ The Jacobites fled in precipitation. The Scaramouch and some other prisoners were lodged in Newgate. Great tribulation prevailed in all the Jacobite quarters. In London, as at Preston, the star of the Stuarts paled before the fire of Brunswick.
THE PRISONERS FROM PRESTON.
The Londoners now looked for nothing more eagerly than for the arrival in town of the prisoners taken at Preston. Some officers among them had been shot for desertion. On the march to London the body consisted of about three hundred men. The officers walked or rode first. The gentlemen-volunteers followed, and the Highlanders brought up the rear. They travelled by easy journeys, and were sometimes fettered, at others free, according to the caprice of those who had them in guard. The public were informed that they would enter London in four bodies, ‘according to the several prisons they were to go to,’ the first body to the Tower, the second to Newgate, the third to the Fleet, the fourth to the Marshalsea. On the march several attempted to escape. A few succeeded; others were recaptured; some were cut down by pursuing soldiery. Among the slain was a Cornet Shuttleworth. There was found on his body the Chevalier’s banner. It was of ‘green taffety, with buff-coloured silk fringe round it—the device, a pelica feeding her young, with this Latin motto, “Tantum valet amor regis et patriæ,” “So prevalent is the love of King and Country.” All London was in a fever of agitation for this arrival—friends, that they might condole; foes, that they might exult.
TYBURN TREE.
Even the march of Major-General Tatton’s detachment of Guards up Gray’s Inn Lane to Highgate, to meet the prisoners there, attracted crowds, despite the severe weather. The last day of November a spectacle of a gloomier character attracted the Londoners. Three Jacobite captains—Gordon, Kerr, and Dorrell—went up Holborn Hill in carts to Tyburn. They had been captains under William and under Anne, but had flung up their commissions under George to take others from ‘King James.’ Even the Tyburn mob must have respected them—they died in such heroic, gentlemanlike fashion. They were calm, and declined to acknowledge the justice of their sentence. ‘Obstinate and sullen’ were the terms applied to them by the Whigs. To the last they persisted in justifying themselves. To account for which it was illogically said that ‘Gordon died a Papist, and ’tis shrewdly suspected the other two were tainted with the same principles.’ ‘It is therefore no great wonder,’ said the Whig ‘Evening Post,’ ‘that the precepts of their Religion as well as the Sake of their Cause should inspire them to leave the World in such an unrelenting Manner.’ These captains had striven to secure Oxford for their king.
JACOBITE CAPTAINS.
In rebel times and crimes, every captain is not a captain who is called by that title. Thus, Captain Gordon was an adventurer who had killed one man in England and another in Bengal. The captain was brought in chains to England, but the chief witness against him died on the voyage, and Gordon was set free. Dorrell had been a hostler at the inn which gave its name to Hart Street, Covent Garden. Early in King William’s reign he had risen through a sea of troubles to the rank of ensign in the army, into which he had enlisted. His scarlet coat, cocked hat, and sword, rendered him acceptable to a rich old widow, with a portion of whose money Dorrell bought a share in a brewery near Clare Market. Bankruptcy carried him to the Fleet, whence, issuing in due time, he became a ruffler and gambler in taverns. When he was hanged as a martyr to Jacobitism, the hostile papers said that he had already earned that fate by cheating one Harper at the Cock and Pye in Drury Lane, of a hundred pounds. These little incidents illustrate the morals and customs of the period.