The churches were occasionally as disturbed as the streets at this troubled period. It was by order of his diocesan that the Rev. Mr. Hough, a temperate rector of St. George’s, Southwark, dismissed his ultra-Jacobite curate, the Rev. Mr. Smith, ‘as a clergyman,’ says the ‘Flying Post,’ ‘of the most infamous Morals and outrageous Impudence against the Government.’ Sunday after Sunday, the rector was hissed and buffeted by the Tories for this dismissal. On one occasion the mob tried to stone him, but Mr. Hough escaped in a coach. On each occasion he was assailed, say the Whig papers, by ‘a vile, rascally, beggarly mob,’ and it is added that the ‘Rev. but scandalous Smith led the mob himself to the charge, from St. Sepulchre’s.’ The ‘Postmaster’ quaintly describes the particulars as being ‘not only dreadful, but shameful.’
On the 23rd of June the Jacobite congregation at St. George the Martyr, Southwark, were punished by having the chaplain of the Duke of Newcastle sent down by authority to pray for and preach to them. They would neither have his prayers nor heed his preaching. During the whole service the Tories behaved in a most irreverent manner. At its close, the clergyman’s calm self-possession so exasperated them that they showed symptoms of using personal violence towards him. Some of his friends ran off to the Marshalsea to ask the guard there to come to the rescue. The soldiers arrived just in time to save him from the rough proceedings of ‘the High Church Mob.’ They hurried him into a coach, and escorted him to the duke’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
POPE’S DOUBLE DEALING.
Pope tells Gay, in June, 1716, ‘I suffer for my religion in almost every weekly paper. I have begun to take a pique at the Psalms of David, if the wicked may be credited, who have printed a scandalous one in my name.’ This might serve to show an anti-romanist illiberality did we not now know that Pope himself wrote the indecent parody of the first psalm, of which he complains, and advertised in the ‘Postman’ that he would give a reward of three guineas for the discovery of the author and publisher. ‘When Mrs. Burleigh,’ says Pope’s editor, Mr. Elwin, ‘announced that she had the original in his own hand-writing, he relapsed into silence.’ Pope, in the above letter to Gay, reflects the views on Church matters which were entertained in the London coteries and coffee-houses:—‘The Church of Rome, I judge from many modern symptoms, as well as ancient prophecies, to be in a declining condition; that of England will in a short time be scarce able to maintain her own family; so Churches sink as generally as Banks in Europe, and for the same reason—that religion and trade, that at first were open and free, have been reduced into the management of Companies and the roguery of directors.’
ADDISON, ON LATE AND PRESENT TIMES.
POLITICAL WOMEN.
When the Parliament and Addison’s ‘Freeholder’ came to an end together, the Essay writer boasted of having given the ‘complexion of the times.’ He was sorry that there were men still left who thought they could never be wrong as long as they opposed a Minister of State; and that the Government was blamed for severity towards the rebels, when the friends of the administration rather murmured at too great leniency being practised towards them. He thought it was a pity, since oak garlands used to be the reward of those who saved cities, that oak apples and oaken clubs were the signs and weapons, on one day in the year at least, of those who would bring destruction on the kingdom. He deplored the ruffianism of both Whig and Tory mobs, of the women as well as of the men. It was not so in Charles II.’s time, when men, instead of declaring their opinions by knocking out one another’s brains, ‘hung out their principles in different coloured ribbons.’ He traced the brutal violence of the times to the general conceit which visited all hostile argument with a blow. Children were taught politics, and to hate each other, before they understood the meaning of words. Squires came up from the country like dictators from the plough, and got drunk in praise of the aristocracy. Oyster women concerned themselves with the abolition of Episcopacy, and cinder wenches were sticklers for indefeasible right. Addison is alarmed at the novel establishment of country newspapers. They would make provincial towns as turbulent and uncomfortable as London. It was some consolation to him that the very sight of the royal family, particularly of the pretty princesses, was sufficient to soften many a Jacobite; and, though Jacobite ladies would distinguish themselves by wearing white roses—less white, of course, than the bosoms against which they lay—how much more beautiful were the loyaler ladies who proclaimed their principles, and excited the most tender sympathies, by fastening in their hair the simple but significant Sweet William!—a compliment to William of Nassau.
