(1716.)
ut while the great Essayist revelled in this social and political banter, earnest tragedy was being enacted elsewhere. On July 8th the death warrant for the execution of two dozen Jacobites seems to have been stayed at Court before it went on its dreadful way. There was such effectual discussion upon it, that the good souls there snatched twenty-two lives from the hangman. ‘All to be reprieved,’ says Lady Cowper, ‘but Justice Hall and Parson Paul.’ The Duchess of Shrewsbury pleaded hard for the lives of the whole four-and-twenty; but the hangman got his allotment of one in the dozen.
THE REV. MR. PAUL.
Patten sketches the incidents of the Rev. Mr. Paul’s first appearance on the scene. It occurred at Lancaster. Forster, the commander, was at dinner with Patten in the Recorder of Lancaster’s house. ‘He (Paul) entered the room in a blue coat, with a long wig and a sword, and Mr. John Cotton of Cambridgeshire with him. They let him (Forster) know who they were, and in a flourishing way, made a tender of their services for the cause, which Mr. Forster accepting, they withdrew. Then Mr. Forster told Mr. Patten, that the taller of the two gentlemen was a clergyman and was of St. John’s College in Cambridge, and that he (Paul) had given him a perfect account of General Carpenter’s marches, and that he was then at Barnard’s Castle, in the bishoprick of Durham, that his men and horses were soon fatigued, and the like, all which,’ adds the turncoat Patten, ‘was true enough, though their being so fatigued did not hinder their march after us.’
The Reverend Mr. Paul, undoubtedly, acted both as spy and messenger. Before the surrender at Preston, Paul rode away, charged, ‘as he then said,’ to use Patten’s significant words, ‘with letters, to a noble lord in Staffordshire and some friends in Leicestershire.’ Paul had a narrow escape on the road, but it did not lead him to ultimate safety. He met General Wills, at the head of his troops. By the former, he was stopped and questioned, but the general, not suspecting that Paul was one of the rebels, ‘he himself also putting on a contrary face,’ Wills let him go.
A CRY FOR LIFE.
Mr. Paul had no desire to die a martyr for the Jacobite cause. After his condemnation, he addressed himself to the great object of saving his life. He wrote to bishops, archbishops, and ministers. To the Lord Primate he said he had pleaded guilty only on the advice of his lawyers, as the surest way to obtain mercy. The Government wished him to make a clean breast of it, and tell all he knew and all he did after running away from Preston. But, he observed, ‘what confession the Court would have from me, I can’t tell. I am sure your Grace would not have me, for the world, speak more than I know.’ He denied having been guilty of promoting rebellion, after he left the rebels ‘as fast as I could.’ He prayed earnestly that his life might be spared, and that if he were not allowed to spend the remainder of it in England, the Government might be pleased to send him to the Plantations or anywhere rather than Tyburn! He protested that since he was in Newgate he had not prayed for the Pretender, by any name or title; and he humbly desired his Grace would take him from ‘this nasty prison.’
Writing to the Bishop of Salisbury, Paul spoke of his being unfortunately at Preston among the rebels; but that he left them ‘upon the first opportunity.’ He asserted that ‘Fear more than Choice’ had taken him there. He had once the honour to be under the bishop’s patronage. If the prelate would only get his life spared, he promised that it should be wholly employed in pouring down abundance of blessings on King George, the Royal Family, the three kingdoms generally ‘and the Church in particular.’ In despairing terms, Paul again turned to the archbishop. Life, only life! The truly repentant rebel asks for no more. ‘I do not question,’ he said, ‘but that your gracious temper and compassion will move you to assist one that had once the honour to be instituted into a Living, in your diocese of Lincoln, by your Grace.’
PAUL AND PATTEN.