It was when the struggle was over that the Stage began to ridicule the losing side, and Mrs. Oldfield, at Drury Lane, on her benefit night, spoke a new epilogue to the ‘Man of Mode’ in which the cause of liberty was recommended to the beauties of Great Britain. It was not till August, 1716, that in honour of the accession of the House of Hanover, Doggett, the Drury Lane comedian, gave ‘an Orange-coloured Livery with a Badge representing Liberty, to be rowed for by Six Watermen that are out of their time within the year past—they are to row from London Bridge to Chelsea—it will be continued annually on the same day for ever.’ This incident gave rise to the still popular operetta of ‘The Waterman;’ and, with some modifications, the match is still rowed on the annual first of August.
Christmas cheer gave many Jacobites a courage to which they would not have given expression at another time, considering how death, fines, transportation, imprisonment or whipping had been inflicted on outspoken and more active Jacobites during the year. One John Humphreys, a lawyer’s clerk, displayed no ordinary audacity in Mr. Read’s Mug-house, Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, by proposing the health of James III. For such a Christmas toast, however, he was carried before a magistrate, who sent him to Newgate, to answer for his boldness—the last Jacobite victim of the year.
AN ANTI-JACOBITE PAMPHLET.
But this was of small account compared with a much more exasperating incident. Baker, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, issued many aggravating pamphlets against the adherents of the king over the water, but never one which provoked them to such fury as the following:—‘A true account of the proceedings at Perth; the debates in the Secret Councils there, and the reasons and causes of the sudden finishing and breaking-up of the Rebellion. Written by a Rebel. London: printed by J. Baker, at the Black Boy in Paternoster Row, 1716. 12mo.’ This ‘true account,’ like the Master of Sinclair’s, exposed the conceit, incapacity and folly of the Jacobite leaders, and left its readers with a much lower opinion of the cause generally than they had previously entertained.
CHAPTER XIV.
(1717.)
he streets this year were occasionally disturbed, but violence gradually abated. Now and then there were sorrowful sights, as exasperating as they were full of sorrow. One of these was the procession of a hundred chained Preston prisoners from the Savoy to the lower part of the Thames, where they were embarked to serve as slaves in the West Indies. Such freight did not invariably reach its destination. A few months previously, a similar freight of thirty prisoners, similarly bound, rose upon the crew, got possession of the vessel, and carried her to France, where they sold the ship and quietly settled themselves in trade or service. There was a procession of another sort, from Cheapside to Charing Cross, in January (soon after the king’s return to England), by torchlight, which, we are told, was very acceptable to those who saw it. It ended by burning the figures of Pope, Pretender, & Co., at the latter place, after which the mob drank his Majesty’s health. Thereupon, the officers at the windows of Young Man’s coffee-house ‘returned thanks,’ and civilians at other windows followed with similar speeches! All anniversaries did not pass so happily, because the Whigs were the most readily irritated.…. A man with an oak apple in his hat, on May 29th, walked the causeway in danger of a broken head, and a too audacious fellow mounting a turnip was certain to be knocked down, as insulting King George (who had threatened to turn St. James’s Park into a turnip ground), unless the bearer of the audacious symbol took the initiative, with confederates, and knocked down those who looked at him too angrily. Ruffianism was not confined to the common folk afoot. There is record of a gentleman leaping from his chariot to tear a white rose from the bosom of a Jacobite young lady, on the Pretender’s birthday—and, after lashing her with his whip, flinging the poor girl to a Whig mob to be stript pretty well naked, but a body of more gallant Jacks rushed in and escorted the young lady home.