From the very outbreak of the rebellion London had teemed with reports which had no shadow of foundation. They were spread chiefly by Jacobite incendiaries of figure and distinction. They protested that if King George reigned, he would make a bridge of boats from Hanover to Wapping,—a phrase which served to intimate that the kingdom would be annexed to the electorate. People in the country were told that the London churches were closed, and that a clergyman could not appear in the streets in his clerical dress without risking a knock on the head. As for resisting the Jacobites, the Highlanders were described as too powerful to be resisted. It was certainly in ridicule of such exaggerations that a story ran for a few days to the effect that those terrible Highlanders had cut off the Dutch auxiliaries, had put on their breeches, and, advancing on an English detachment which did not recognise them, had cut the Whig soldiers to pieces. It is quite as certain that the London Jacobites claimed the victory at Preston for their side, and were not silenced till the cavalcade of Jacobite captives was passing from Highgate to the London prisons. Even then, ultra-Tories were found who strongly suspected, or said they did, that half the prisoners were hired players who were dismissed when the public performance came to an end!
CHAPTER VII.
(1715-16.)
he mournful procession of Scottish nobles, gentlemen, and brave fellows of less degree, was not the first spectacle of the same kind witnessed by the Londoners. After the abortive attempt at insurrection, made in 1708, the year after the Union of England and Scotland, under the title of Great Britain,—the castles of Stirling and Edinburgh, and all the prisons in Edinburgh, were crammed full of nobility and gentry; ‘at first,’ says George Lockhart of Carnwath, the gentle Jacobite, ‘no doubt, the Government expected to have proof enough to have brought several of them to punishment, but failing, blessed be God, in that, the next use they made of them was to advance their politics; for no sooner did any person who was not of their party pretend to stand a candidate, to be chosen a Parliament Man, at the Elections which were to be next summer, but were clapt up in prison, or threatened with it, if he did not desist; and, by their means, they carried, generally speaking, whom they pleased; but to return to the prisoners;—after they had been in custody some weeks, orders came from London, to send them up thither; which was accordingly done; being divided in three classes, and sent up three several times, led in Triumph, under a strong Guard, and exposed to the Raillery and Impertinence of the English mob; and now it appeared to what a fine market Scotland had brought her Hogs, her Nobility and Gentry being led in chains, from one end of the Island to the other, merely on account of suspicion, and without any accusation or proof against them.’
THE CHEVALIER IN SCOTLAND.
This last made all the difference between the captives of 1708 and those of 1715. Those of the former year were in time liberated, on agreement on the part of the most influential to serve the English Government at the Scottish elections, else, ‘I am afraid,’ says Lockhart, ‘some heads had paid for it.’ This was the payment exacted at the later period.
THE CHEVALIER OUT OF SCOTLAND.