he king’s proclamation against the Pretender, in which 100,000l. was offered for the capturing him alive, caused angry discussion in the Commons. Pulteney said, in his lofty way, that if the Pretender did not come over, the money would be saved; and, if he did, the sum would be well laid out in the catching of him! Campion and Shippen denounced the outlay, and Sir William Wyndham, casting blame on the king’s words, was called upon to assign a reason for his censure. Wyndham would not condescend to explain. By a vote of 208 to 129 he was subjected to be reprimanded by the Speaker. The minority withdrew from the House, and when the Speaker reproved the Jacobite member, and extolled his own lenity in the words and spirit of the reproof, Wyndham would neither admit the justice of the censure, nor acknowledge any obligation to him who administered it.
CARTE, THE JACOBITE.
‘What will King Lewis do for the Chevalier?’ was the next query of the Londoners. The King of France and Navarre soon showed his indisposition to do anything for the substantial good of the Stuarts. Quidnuncs in the Cheapside taverns made light of ‘your James III.’ They advised him to learn to get his bread by tile-making, by cutting corns, by selling Geneva, or by turning horse-doctor. They cocked their hats as they swaggered home on the causeway, but the low whistling of a Jacobite air, by some hopeful person on the opposite side of the street, showed them that the White Rose was not so withered as they thought it to be. Men’s minds were anxious as to coming struggles, though the Hanoverians affected much, and well-founded, confidence. Little else was thought of. The newspapers seemed to wake up from absorbing contemplation when they announced, as if they scarcely had time for the doing of it, that ‘about a fortnight ago died Mr. William Pen, the famous Quaker.’ One man, at least, as grave as Pen, stooped to make a joke, in order to show his principles. He walked abroad in a lay habit, but there were many people who passed by, or met him in the street, who very well knew Mr. Carte, the ex-reader of the Abbey Church, at Bath. He had avoided taking the oaths which were supposed to secure the allegiance of the swearer to the Hanoverian king. Mr. Carte, happening to be overtaken in the streets by a shower of rain, was accosted by a coachman with the cry of ‘Coach, your reverence?’ ‘No, honest friend,’ replied the nonjuring parson, ‘this is no reign for me to take a coach in!’ Smaller jokes cost some men their lives. A nod or a shrug was a perilous luxury. At the first court held at St. James’s, Colonel Chudleigh, a zealous Whig, marked some jocular vivacity on the part of Mr. Aldworth, M.P. for New Windsor. The Colonel took it in an offensive light, and when exchange of words had heated him, he cast the most offensive epithet he could think of at Aldworth, by calling him ‘Jacobite!’ Almost at the foot of the king’s throne, it was nearly equivalent to calling Aldworth ‘Liar!’ The two disputants descended the stairs, entered a coach together, and drove to Mary-le-Bone fields. In a few minutes after the two angry men had alighted, the Colonel stretched Aldworth dead upon the grass, and returned alone to the levee. This was the second bloodshed in the old Jacobite and Hanoverian quarrel.
AN OLD AND NEW LORD CHANCELLOR.
Shortly after this duel, Lord Townshend was seen to enter Lord Chancellor Harcourt’s house, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from which he soon after issued, carrying with him the Purse and Great Seal. These symbols of power he had obtained by warrant signed by the king’s hand. On his way from Lord Harcourt’s house to the palace, Townshend left word with Lord Cowper to wait on the king at St. James’s at one o’clock,—and men who saw my Lord on his way made, probably, as shrewd guess as himself as to the result of his visit.
The king received him in the closet. Cowper’s acute eye recognised the Purse and Seal lying in the window. His Majesty, in a few words in French, shortly committed them to his keeping, ‘having,’ says Cowper in his Diary, ‘been well satisfied with the character he had heard of me.’ Cowper replied in English, saying, among things less noteworthy, ‘that he had surrendered the Great Seal to the late Queen, believing she was going into measures which would raise France again, and ruin the common cause.’
After the new Chancellor had taken his leave, the following little dramatic scene occurred. ‘The Prince was in the outer room,’ says Cowper, ‘and made me a very handsome and hearty compliment both in French and English, and entered very kindly into talk with me. Among other things, speaking of the Princess’s coming, I wished she was here while the weather was good, lest she should be in danger in her passage; he said Providence had hitherto so wonderfully prospered his family’s succeeding to the Crown in every respect, by some instances, that he hoped it would perfect it, and believed they should prosper in every circumstance that remained.’
PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION.
The next circumstance was the spectacle of the coronation, which soon followed that of the public entry. Among the advertisements offering accommodation to see the show, there was one of a house, near the Abbey, ‘with an excellent prospect, and also with a back door out of Thieving Lane into the house. There will be a good fire,’ it is added, ‘and a person to attend with all manner of conveniences.’ Meanwhile, Mr. Noble’s shop in the New Exchange, Strand, was beset by ladies, or their servants, eager to buy the Coronation favour with the Union Arms, which had been sanctioned by the Earl Marshal, who had also (it is to be hoped, with reluctance) approved of the poetical motto without which the favour was not to be sold: