Meanwhile rival papers watched each other as jealously as adversaries in churches and the streets. Abel, in the ‘Post Boy,’ happened to say, ‘We patiently await the arrival of the king!’ The ‘Flying Post’ flew at him immediately. ‘Villain,’ ‘vile wretch,’ and ‘monster,’ were among the amenities flung at Abel. Here was a ‘fellow’ who dared to say he ‘patiently waited’ for an event for which the ‘faithful Commons’ had declared they ‘waited impatiently.’ In his next number, Abel said he meant ‘impatiently.’ He was called a liar now, as he had been traitor before. Others said, ‘Hang this odious beast!—he dares to say he waits impatiently the arrival of the king! What king, Bezonian? We guess it is his Bar-le-ducish Majesty!’ Such was the nick-name given to the Chevalier de St. George, who was then residing at Bar-le-Duc, in Lorraine.
SACHEVEREL: MARLBOROUGH.
People in streets and taverns next became anxious about the wind. The Whigs were desirous that it should blow so as to bring the new king speedily from Holland. If a gentleman in a coffee-house ventured to remark that ‘it was strange the wind should have turned against his Majesty just as he had reached the Hague,’ the speaker was set upon as a Jacobite who took that way to insinuate that God was ruling the elements in the Tory interest. Swords were whipt out, and he had to fight, beg pardon, or run for it. In the street if an old basket-woman lamented that the wind was bad, and a thoughtless porter rejoined that the wind was well enough, the loyal woman raised a cry which hounded on a hundred blackguards to hunt the porter down, and beat him to the very point of death. An indifferent man could not express, in any circle of hearers, a word or two of respect for Queen Anne without being accused of disrespect for King George. While Tories bought from the street-criers the broadsheet ‘Fair and softly, or, don’t drive Jehu-like,’ the Hanoverian papers called for the imprisonment of the criers, and confiscation of the broadsheet. The latter, they said, implied that the established Government was acting fraudulently, and was likely to upset the State-chariot. ‘Stand fast to the Church; no Presbyterian Government!’ was the title of another sheet, published by word of mouth, in the City. Down swooped the constables on the criers,—audacious fellows, it was said, who dared to insinuate that the Government was abandoning the Church. Of course, the sight of Dr. Sacheverel on the causeway was provocative of hostile demonstration. As he once came from St. Andrew’s Church into Holborn, a Whig, anxious for a row, shouted, ‘There goes Sacheverel, with a footman at his back. It ought to be a horsewhip!’ On the other hand, Tories entrapped Whigs into drinking ‘his Majesty’s health,’—meaning the health of King James. In a Smithfield tavern a gentleman said to an Essex farmer, ‘I will give you half-a-crown to drink “His Majesty’s health.”’ The farmer ‘smoked’ the Jacobite speaker, took the money, gave him a couple of kicks as equivalent to two shillings change, and then walked off, uttering the slang word ‘bite!’ by way of triumph.
ON PARADE. FIRST BLOOD.
There was one individual whose coming was as anxiously looked for as that of the king; namely, the Duke of Marlborough, who had been for some time in voluntary exile. England at last was informed that the duke had condescended to return to this ungrateful nation. On his arrival in London, after passing triumphantly through provincial towns, he was addressed by officials, the spokesmen of mounted gentlemen and of commonalty afoot. He is said, not without some sarcasm in the words, to have replied to these addresses ‘with that humble and modest air which is so peculiar to himself.’ At Temple Bar his state carriage broke down. Tories jeered him as he emerged from it. A humbler sort of coach was procured, and Whigs saluted him with huzzas! as he entered it.
Loyal captains were spirited up by the news of the coming of their old leader. On the parade in the Park, Captain Holland addressed his company. He congratulated them on having acquired such a king as George the First after such a sovereign as Queen Anne! The captain swore that he would sustain the Hanoverian Protestant Succession. ‘If,’ he added, ‘If there’s any person among you that’s a Roman Catholic, or not resolved to act on the same principles with me, I desire him to march out!’
Pretty well the first blood drawn in the growing antagonism of Stuart and Brunswick was in a coffee-house dispute as to the merits of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Constantine Phipps. A Cornet Custine, who shared Captain Holland’s opinion, spoke contemptuously of the Jacobite Chancellor. A Mr. Moore, described as a ‘worthy gentleman’ by the papers with Stuart proclivities, left the room in apparent displeasure. Custine followed him into the street, compelled him to defend himself, and ran him through the heart with the energetic Hanoverian thrust. Young Moore died of it, and the Cornet was imprisoned. ‘We wish Mr. Custine, on this occasion’ (killing a Jacobite), say some of the papers, ‘all the favour the law can allow him.’ The alleged grounds for favour were that the duel was fairly fought, swords having been simultaneously drawn on both sides. At a later period, Chancellor Phipps was dismissed. He returned to England. Oxford immediately made him a D.C.L., and, as he resumed practice at the English Bar, the Jacobites confided to him the conduct of their cases, and Sir Constantine became the great Tory lawyer of Westminster Hall.
THE ‘PEREGRINE YATCH.’
At length news arrived that the king and the prince had left the Hague, where, in their impatience to reach England, they had tarried eleven days, and laid all the blame upon the wind. Next, London was a-stir with the intelligence that the ‘Peregrine Yatch,’ bearing Cæsar and his fortunes, with a convoy of men of war, was off the buoy at the Nore. The new sovereign was to land at Greenwich, whither every sort of vehicle, carrying every sort of persons, now repaired. The loyal excursionists hoped to have a good view of their new sovereign as he went processionally through the Park. Pedestrians passed the gates without difficulty, but not even to the ‘Quality’ indiscriminately was it given to enter within the enclosure. Carriages bearing friends to the royal family were turned back full of malcontents, when they did not carry the great officers of the crown, privy-counsellors, judges, peers, or peers’ sons. The Duke of Ormond’s splendid equipage drove up to the palace, but the great Tory duke had to retire without alighting. The king would not receive him. His Majesty was barely more gracious to the Earl of Oxford. The ex-Lord Treasurer kissed the king’s hand, amid a crowd of other homage-payers, but the sovereign took no more notice of Harley than of the most insignificant unit in that zealous mob. The other mob outside were discussing the reported changes in the Administration, when a sovereign homage was rendered to that would-be sovereign people.
THE KING AT GREENWICH.