Later in the autumn, the opening of a Nonjuring chapel in Spital Fields roused the fury of ‘loyal people.’ The pious and peaceable ‘Weekly Journal’ hoped that ‘all persons loyally affected to King George will timely suppress the diabolical society, as they have done the like seditious assemblies of blind, deluded fools in the Savoy, Scrope’s Court in Holborn, and in Aldersgate Street;’—where the chapels had been set on fire, and the congregations beaten and kicked, as they tried to escape, by the Hanoverian roughs.
AT DRURY LANE THEATRE.
The Jacobites used similar arguments, and found approval for their application, from grave Tory scholars. A Berkshire vicar, named Blewberry, preached a sermon in a City church against Queen Anne. ‘The auditors,’ says Tory Hearne, ‘pulled him out of the pulpit.’ Blewberry printed his sermon. ‘’Tis wretched stuff,’ says Hearne, ‘in commendation of usurpers, for which he deserved to be mobbed as he was.’
In October, Whigs heard with some surprise that Lords Carnwath, Nairn, and Widdrington were, as the papers put it, ‘allowed the liberty of the Tower to walk in.’ The public was, subsequently, more concerned with an incident which took place at the theatre. On the 6th of December, the Prince of Wales was in his box, at Drury Lane, heeding, as well as he could, the utterances of Wilks, Booth, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield, when an excited gentleman, named Freeman, endeavoured to pass into the house. The Grenadiers crossed their bayonets and prevented his ingress. That Freeman was a mischievous Tory seemed clear enough to the Guards, when he drew a pistol from his pocket and fired it point blank into the body of one of the Grenadiers. The shot was heard within the house, where no one was unmoved but the Prince. Of the ladies, all who did not indulge in shrieking, went off silently swooning into gentlemen’s arms. Of the gentlemen, all who were not thus pleasantly employed, put their hands to their swords. Some drew their weapons and held them aloft. Others rushed sword in hand into the lobbies, and drew up there ready for the onslaught of any number of Jacobites. While this hubbub prevailed, the officer on duty reported the exact state of things to the Prince. Freeman was a lunatic, the Jacobites were not rising, and the Prince, in token of his complete satisfaction, sent out five guineas to the Grenadiers; and the man who was shot into did not find himself sufficiently hurt to prevent his getting drunk with his fellows. The beaux who had held the fainting ladies, rather than draw swords for the Prince, called the next day to make enquiries, and were to be seen combing their periwigs as they tripped up the door-steps. AFTERNOON CALLS. The belles received them, with a laugh on their lips, and the fashionable guittara in their hands. Highly-spiced compliments passed in the afternoon as the orange brandy, aniseed, citron and cinnamon waters were handed round with the tea. The stouter champions took the sack and toast presented to them on a salver, or were divided between hock with a dash of palm in it, a glass of noble canary with a squeeze of Seville orange, or a tankard of cyder, sweetened with a little old mead, and a hard toast. It was a perspiring time for Running Footmen, who beat the post in carrying the news of ‘Freeman’s shot’ into the country. The runners are well described in a comedy of the period, in the query of a gentleman who encounters one of them, ‘How now, Pumps, Dimity, and Sixty miles a day! Whose Greyhound are you?’
ESCAPE OF CHARLES RADCLIFFE.
The year ended with a great surprise. Mr. Charles Radcliffe literally walked out of Newgate without molestation! Wardens and turnkeys saw a strange gentleman, in a mourning suit and a brown tye-wig, pass them, and did not question him! This suit and wig were called his ‘disguise;’ but it was no better than a theatrical disguise, which deceives nobody, not even those who seem to be deceived. Mr. Radcliffe passed as easily to France as if no one was interested in stopping him. His old ‘chum’ in the room which they occupied together ‘in the Press Yard, overlooking the garden of the College of Physicians,’—Basil Hamilton—did not more easily pass into freedom, under the Act of Grace, than Charles Radcliffe did under his so-called disguise, and his resolution not to owe his freedom to the ‘Elector of Hanover.’ The chief wardens lost their places, which they had bought at 200l. a-piece, and which they were not allowed to sell; but they probably had already had their places’ worth from Radcliffe’s friends.
The above dramatic incident was thus simply set down, with additions, in the newspapers. ‘Charles Radcliffe, Esq., brother to the late Earl of Derwentwater, made his escape out of Newgate on Thursday last, December 13, as did a few days before, Mr. James Swinburne out of the hands of persons who had him in cure for lunacy.’ Gibson of Stonycroft, Northumberland, less lucky, died of broken heart, in the prison which he could not ‘break,’ and from which he could not pass on plea of being mad. Radcliffe, like Wintoun, had all along refused every offer of royal pardon, a proud, honest, but in Radcliffe’s case, a fatal refusal. Had he been content to wait in bonds a little longer, he would have been in the Act of Grace whether he liked it or not. Thirty years later he pleaded, in vain, the pardon he had scornfully refused, and the Act, from the application of which he had withdrawn himself.
THE STAGE AND PLAYGOERS.
Considering the critical condition of the country, in 1715 and 1716, the drama was remarkably backward in outspokenness to support the new order of things, as well as in suggestiveness through plays or portions of their dialogue to allude, with friendly intention, to the Jacobite side. Royal commands were so frequent that actors may have recognized patrons in the king and his family, and have honoured them accordingly. As in Charles I.’s time, they were independent as individuals, taking sides in agreement with their opinions. One poor, obscure player, named Carnaby, was arrested on a charge of seditious action for the benefit of the ‘Pretender.’ We lose sight of him under the parting kick of the Whig papers, that he was a wretch of an actor who unluckily died in Newgate before he could be taken to Tyburn! On the other hand, when the prospects of the kingdom were at least gloomily uncertain, there was a class of individuals who lost no opportunity of being gay. Twice, within three weeks, the performances at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, were ‘by desire of several Ladies of Quality.’ On one occasion, the ladies ordered the highly spiced ‘Recruiting Officer;’ on the second occasion, that comedy of still higher gusto, ‘The Old Bachelor.’ When most men were, or should have been, bracing themselves to share in, or to meet, the serious issues that as yet were hidden from them, we find among the entertainments at Mrs. Thurmond’s benefit—‘A Scaramouch dance by a Gentleman, for his diversion.’
LOYAL PLAYERS.