Then, adverting to the conspirators, as Queen Anne’s Tory friends were called, Mr. Lechmere pointed out that Ormond, for whose sake Marlborough had been traduced, now avowed his treachery, by serving the Pretender, and by the preparations he was carrying on for a fresh invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery in this country. The enemy of Townshend—Bolingbroke—was then on the point of manifesting the principles which had made him the enemy of so virtuous a man, by becoming one of the ministers of the Chevalier. While the great engines were actively working from afar, the lesser engines and more ignoble tools were, said Mr. Lechmere, as actively carrying on their work ‘below stairs.’ By this phrase he implied that the juries in Westminster Hall, who acquitted men charged with sedition against the present powers, were the enemies of the reigning House. But, he added—making reference again to the Tory ministry of the last reign,—those conspirators made their master-stroke when they traitorously made England a party to her own destruction, by procuring a majority of votes in Parliament which gave sanction to a Peace, whereby France was restored to her former power of dominating over Europe, and the barriers which guarded the liberties of this and allied nations were broken down. The same influences, added the speaker, had nearly sacrificed the trade of England to the interests of France.
CHARACTER OF KING GEORGE.
The weakest point of the speech was in the passage in which, by almost deifying King George—especially for his alleged divine quality of mercy—Mr. Lechmere seemed to make of the sovereign a conspirator against himself. The monarch, he said, was of such a tender nature that he could not find it in his heart to be severe against his enemies. ‘On the contrary, those who have shown the greatest aversion to his government, have received the kindest invitations and enjoyed the highest indulgences from him.’ Equally at fault was the Impeacher when he avowed that impeachment of the seven lords was a safer process than leaving their case to be treated in the ordinary course of law and justice. More vindictiveness was exhibited by Mr. Lechmere when he expressed his gladness at the thought that, if the lords were convicted, no plea of pardon under the Great Seal could stay the execution of a sentence which was the result of an impeachment by the Commons. Not, of course, that the Commons would be influenced by vindictive considerations! It was certainly not to keep them calm and clear and justly minded that he ended by shaking the Pretender’s declaration in their faces. That act seemed to arouse the majority of the House to fury, as a red rag might excite the fierceness of a sufficiently angry bull. The terms in which it was written, and the epithets applied to those terms by Mr. Lechmere, stirred the Whig members as the alarm stirs the war-horse to dash forward whithersoever his rider would force him. In a burst of frenzy, the House voted, on the motion of Mr. Lechmere, the impeachment of James, Earl of Derwentwater and his six confederates, the Lords Kenmure, Nithsdale, Carnwath, Widdrington, Nairn, and Wintoun, for high treason.
FROM THE TOWER TO WESTMINSTER.
Shortly after, of all the London sights, the most interesting was the passing to and fro of those captured Jacobite Lords, between the Tower and Westminster, where they underwent preparatory examining by the privy council. When they went by water, the public knew little of the matter. It was otherwise when they were taken to Westminster in one huge lumbering coach; especially as on their way back they stopped to dine at the famous tavern, the Fountain, in the Strand. The House had long been patronised by the Tories, so that the Jacobite lords were ‘at home;’—and Jacobite mobs cheered them as they entered and when they departed. The repast, however, could not have been a joyous one—seven lords eating roast beef and drinking port, with the something more than chance of soon dying on the scaffold! They dined, closely guarded by twelve Warders. Before they left, they who would, might have their snuff-boxes filled at Lillie’s, next door, and for one of the street Jacobites to get a pinch from this supply, made him happy for a week.
THE DRUM ECCLESIASTIC.
This indulgence brought the Lieutenant of the Tower into trouble. He was summoned before the Peers, and was questioned as to the unseemly dining of the rebel lords in a tavern. The perplexed officer replied that those lords had complained of feeling faint, and he had therefore allowed them half an hour for dinner, at the Fountain, under rigorous guard; but he was peremptorily forbidden to do so on any future occasion. ‘If their lordships require refreshment,’ said the Chancellor, ‘they must refresh here.’
On January 30th, Addison preached a smart lay sermon in the ‘Freeholder,’ and loyal pulpits resounded the universal sameness. One of the exceptions was at St. George’s, Southwark. This place was said to be the mint where all the lies were coined which were afterwards put in circulation at the Royal Exchange. It is obvious that a sermon on the dethronement and martyrdom of a king could be made to serve two purposes. In the Whig pulpits, the discourse illustrated the wickedness of treason against the powers that be,—the Government of King George. In the Tory pulpits it was well understood that the Government of that king was daily committing High Treason against the power that ought to be,—that of James III. Accordingly, when the Rev. Mr. Smith, Tory curate of St. George’s, gave out his text on January 30th (1 Samuel xii. 25), ‘If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king,’—there was scarcely a person present who did not interpret its sense as antagonistic to King George. A Whig gentleman was there, and he began to take notes of the sermon. This disturbed the Jacobite preacher, who probably recognised in him a Government agent. At all events, he called upon the note-taker to desist, but the latter showed no signs of obedience. This led to the clergyman exclaiming, ‘Mr. Wicks, if you go on writing, I won’t preach any more!’ The imperturbable Wicks added this remark to his notes, and then the Tory parson called at the top of his voice, ‘Take away that fellow that writes, out of church!’
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANS.
The muscular christians of the congregation not only flung Wicks into the street, they hunted him home, assailed his house, and threatened to destroy it with all his family therein. They had committed much damage when a civil and an armed force arrived, and compelled the assailants to raise the siege and retreat. The virtuous mob, however, having heard that Wicks had recently buried his father, scampered to the neighbouring churchyard and commenced digging up the grave! They were on the point of committing still more horrible violation, when they were put to flight by the constables and a few soldiers. Whig writers in the papers ask, jeeringly, if the preacher objected to notes being made of his sermon, because he was about to say ‘something extraordinary and smutty.’