JACOBITE PATTEN.
Another captive, the Rev. Mr. Patten (to whom reference has already been made), on finding himself in close confinement, soon turned his thoughts upon the method for getting out of it. He found he had leisure for reflecting on his past life. He took for especial subject of consideration that part of his life which he had spent in promoting the unsuccessful rebellion. He had been a fool. Could he save his neck by becoming a knave? He thought he might, and that the attempt was worth the making. The reverend gentleman, on the allegation of his being troubled with scruples, petitioned the Secretary of State, Lord Townshend, to be pleased to allow a clergyman to converse with him. The noble lord freely granted what was asked, and in a short time the Rev. Dr. Cannon was dispatched to the wavering Jacobite. He was, says Patten, ‘a man of singular good temper and literature, who applied his best endeavours to satisfy me in every Point and Query I proposed. In which, his Learning and solid Reasoning prevailed upon me; for which good Service, my best Wishes shall always attend him.’
HANOVERIAN PATTEN.
Dr. Cannon’s course was made known by its results. Patten became suddenly convinced that it was a duty incumbent upon him to make all the reparation he could, for the injury he had done and had intended to do to the Hanoverian cause. By being a traitor to his old comrades, he would serve the cause against which he had been in arms, and secure safety to himself by doing his best to destroy his former friends. ‘As the first thing in that way,’ he tells us, ‘I became an Evidence for the King; which I am far from being ashamed of, let what calumnies will follow.’
His revelations were received and recorded by commissioners who had no need to ‘bribe or brow-beat him,’ as they were accused of doing in other cases. Patten ‘was used in the most gentleman-like manner.’ His treachery was quickened by their politeness, and the Rev. Robert Patten saved everything but honour.
Patten had first, however, to satisfy the Government that his testimony was worth having. He made full confession, not only of what he knew of others, but of his own preachings and practices. He told of his more than ordinary activity at Penrith, where he had once been curate; how, in obedience to orders from Forster, he had headed a troop of horse and beset the house of his own brother-in-law, Mr. Johnston, collector of the Salt Tax, whom he was charged to bring in prisoner, with his books, papers, and, above all, with whatever money he had belonging to the Government. Johnston, however, escaped, taking documents and money with him. Patten, unwilling to return empty-handed, made prisoners of the posse-comitatus and brought them to Forster’s camp, where they were despoiled of their arms, and then turned loose. At Preston he acknowledged that he was constantly riding from one post to another, giving accounts of how the battle was proceeding, and doing in fact aide-de-camp’s work till his horse was shot under him. He thus succeeded in being accepted as king’s evidence.
ADDISON’S SATIRE.
Before his evidence was wanted, partisan newspapers mocked and misrepresented the unfortunate prisoners, as was only natural in them; but it is with pain that one sees Addison flinging dirt at them and ridiculing them, in his paper, the ‘Freeholder.’ In an imaginary diary of a Preston rebel, given in one of the numbers, the diarist is made to state that, at a meeting of Jacobites, before the outbreak, a resolution was passed that, as no cause existed for that outbreak, they would rebel first and give reasons for it afterwards. All Jacobites, it was agreed, were in want of something, and if they could overturn the throne and King George with it, carry fire and sword into England, as their chaplains recommended in their sermons, and divide property amongst themselves, there would be a fair chance of happiness under a new state of things, for the accomplishment of which they had had the prayers of all the harlots in the kingdom!
LACK OF CHARITY.
In similar unfairness of spirit, Jacobite squires in England were described as maintaining that there had been neither tolerable weather nor good laws in the country since the Revolution of 1688. Such squires read only ‘Dyer’s Letter,’ and that rather for the style than for news. They were heart and soul for Passive Obedience, and were ready to knock out the brains of whoever held contrary opinions. A fling at ‘Dyer’ was a favourite amusement with the Whig Essayist, who also assailed the news-writer on the stage. ‘The reasons,’ says Vellum in ‘The Drummer,’ ‘why I should believe Sir George Truman is still living, are manifold.’ One of them is, ‘because the news of his death was first published in “Dyer’s Letter.”’