Who had got clear off was hardly known till the Lord Mayor and Aldermen had come down, affrighted, to the gaol, and called over the names. No answer of ‘here’ came from Brigadier William Mackintosh, from his son, nor from his brother, John Mackintosh; nor from Robert Hepburn, Charles Wogan, William Dalmahoy, Alexander Dalmahoy, John Turner, and James Talbot. There were some others who were of minor importance, and the deputy keeper (Pitt being a prisoner, under suspicion of favouring the escape of Forster) took the first step towards repairing a serious fault, by offering money for the recapture of the brigadier especially, whose escape, it was thought, was the purchased consequence of money cautiously invested. The brigadier, or ‘William Mackintosh, commonly called Brigadier Mackintosh,’ was so well described in the placards set up, in, and about London by the chief turnkey of Newgate, that we seem to see the man clearly before us:—‘A tall, raw-boned man, about 60 Years of age, fair Complexioned, Beetle-browed, Grey Eyed, speaks broad Scotch.’ For his recapture the sum of 200l. was offered by Bodenham Rowse, the turnkey.
DOMICILIARY VISITS.
Old Mackintosh and his son safely reached the Thames, where a boat received them, and took them on board a vessel, from which they were landed on the French coast. The brigadier’s brother lost his way, and after some time, was retaken. The Jacobite bards expressed their feelings in the words,—
—Old Mackintosh and his friends are fled,
And they’ll set the hat on another head;
And whether they are gone beyond the sea,
Or, if they abide in this country,
Tho’ the King would give ten thousand pound,
Old Mackintosh will scorn to be found.
The king, by advice of his Privy Council, proclaimed in the ‘London Gazette’ that he expected all his loving subjects to join in recapturing those audacious prisoners at large. The sum of 500l. was to be the guerdon of him who should deliver any one of the prisoners to the next justice of the peace,—excepting Brigadier Mackintosh. For that noble quarry the king offered 1,000l.