London in the Jacobite times, Volume I

by Dr. Doran

A NONJURING CLERGYMAN, TO BE WHIPT.

The Crown messengers in pursuit of copies of the more stingingly written works, having Nonjuring and Jacobite tendencies, discovered in Dalton’s printing office copies of the famous pamphlet, ‘The Shift Shifted,’ and in Redmayne’s, the equally offensive work, ‘The Case of Schism in the Church of England truly stated.’ In the first matter the Government could get hold only of the printer, and Dalton was fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to the pillory. With the ‘Case of Schism,’ it was different. Justice not only laid hands on the printer, Redmayne, but on the author, the Rev. Lawrence Howell. Redmayne suffered for sending forth the libel, but the learned author was more severely dealt with for writing it. On conviction at the Old Bailey, the reverend scholar was condemned to three years’ imprisonment, to pay a fine of 500l., to be whipped, and to be degraded and stripped of his gown by the public executioner. To his question, ‘Who will whip a clergyman? ‘the court replied, ‘We pay no deference to your cloth, because you are a disgrace to it, and have no right to wear it. Besides, we do not look upon you as a clergyman, in that you have produced no proof of your ordination, but from Dr. Hickes, under the denomination of Bishop of Thetford: which is illegal, and not according to the constitution of this kingdom, which has no such bishop!’ Thereupon, the executioner, in obedience to command, stepped up to Howell, and stripped Howell’s gown from off his back, as he stood at the bar.

SAVED BY THE BISHOP OF LONDON.

The Tories generally, and ‘the Nonjurants’ in particular, thought the sentence severe; and that the Common Sergeant, Duncan Dee, was sarcastic when he told Mr. Howell that he ought to be obliged to the king for his great mercy, who might have ordered him to be tried for High Treason,—and also to him, the Common Sergeant, for his lenity in ‘pronouncing so easy a sentence!’ The whipping was far worse than hanging; and Mr. Howell was, in fact, likely to be in prison for life; as, after his three years’ imprisonment, he was condemned to find security for his good behaviour as long as he lived, himself in a thousand pounds, and four sureties in five hundred pounds, each!—Robinson, Bishop of London, at once stepped in to save the Nonjuror from the most cruel and degrading part of the punishment. At his intercession, the whipping was not carried into execution. ‘Well,’ cried the coffee-house Whigs, ‘the fellow ought to be hanged!’ The Nonjurors and the Papists suffered persecution because of him. The former were arrested wherever they attempted to meet, and the houses of both were rigorously searched for arms, to the loss of property and much ruffling of the tempers of indignant womankind.

Mr. Justice Dormer subsequently asserted that Howell’s ‘Case of Schism’ attempted to show that all the clergy and laity who were loyal to King George were in a state of damnation!—‘I think,’ said Mr. Justice, ‘that the Pretender is about as near to the Crown as this Howell is to the Church!’

THE ROSE IN JUNE.

June 10th found the Jacobites prepared to celebrate their Prince’s birthday. The fact that during the preceding week, three of the force captured at Preston—Dalzell, Ramsay, and Shaftoe—had been condemned to death, did not prevent the Jacobites at large from procuring a store of white roses, to be worn ‘in favour’ of James III. According to the papers, most of these roses were ‘nipped in the bud.’ Yet, political prisoners in Newgate decked their windows with them, or flung them to passers by. Other Jacobites walked in the highways with the emblematic rose in their bosoms, but ‘they met with severe Rebukes.’ ‘One of them,’ says the ‘Weekly,’ ‘dressed somewhat like a Gentleman, was challenged by one of His Majesty’s Officers, near Gray’s Inn Lane, had his Badge torn from him and was wounded and disarmed.’ Thus, private war was still kept up, after the public one had been gloriously concluded. It was more easy for a Whig official to whip a white rose out of the button hole of a ‘gentle’ Jacobite’s coat, and draw a little Jacobite blood in the process, than it was to suppress the seditious sayings and doings of the common people. The streets, lanes, and public markets of the City were still infested with people singing ballads, or crying for sale pamphlets and broadsides hostile to the Government, and, as the Lord Mayor’s proclamation, threatening heavy penalties against the offenders, says, ‘corrupting the minds and alienating the affections of his subjects, causing animosities and stirring up seditions and riots.’ In these riots, blood was shed, especially when the soldiery appeared on the scene, and the Jacobite mob saluted them with the exasperating cry of ‘George’s Bull Dogs!’ Private quarrels on the great political question came to as bloody conclusions. Major Cathcart and Colonel Gordon fought a fierce fight with swords in Kensington Gardens, from which neither came out alive. It took the major six deadly thrusts at his adversary, before he could deliver the fatal one, but at that moment Gordon ran the major through, and slew him on the spot.

MORE BLOODSHED.

After the demonstration of the 10th of June was over—in which, it must be confessed, the Jacobites had the worst of it—the ‘Flying Post’ thought it would not be amiss to ‘caution the Jacobites of both sexes, not to appear any more in public with badges of sedition and rebellion, lest they meet with severer treatment than hitherto.’ The ‘He-Jacobites’ that were ‘drubbed till they eat their rue … are advised to take care lest the next dose be Hemp or Birch; and the She-Jacobites ought to be wise, lest they meet with the same fate as some of their sisters near Charing Cross, who, for insulting gentlemen that wore orange ribbons, on May 28th, were committed to the care and management of some of the worshipful Japanners of Shoes, who painted them, they best know where, with the proper mark of the Beast.’

JACOBITE LADIES.