On the other hand, to cultivate loyalty and gain popularity, the Prince and Princess of Wales continued to make the Thames their highway, in summer time. They made frequent voyages to Putney and Hampton Court, and did not forget to propitiate those who were worth the trouble of it. Oxford, for the most part, hated the royal Hanoverian family. On one of these water excursions, the Princess, meeting an Oxford barge, went on board. She ate of the barge meat and bread, and drank out of the bargemen’s bowl. To each of the men, she gave two guineas. The men, after arriving at Oxford, went through the city with tokens in their hats; ‘and,’ says Hearne, ‘carrying their bowl to Balliol College, were made drunk there, by the care of Dr. Baron, our Vice-Chancellor.’
MORE PROSECUTIONS.
Notwithstanding these amenities, those in authority were conscious that danger threatened ‘the happy establishment,’ and their ‘messengers’ were kept actively employed. In the course of this year a messenger and constables entered a house in Plough Yard, Fetter Lane, and arrested one of the inmates. His name was Francia, and he passed for a Jew and general dealer. Letters and papers were seized in his room. They treated of business in such a way as to read also very like treason, at least, they could be so interpreted. Francia was carried before Lord Townshend, Secretary of State. He and Mr. Harvey of Combe were charged with holding traitorous correspondence with Alban Butler of Cambray, and the Duke d’Aumont. Francia seems to have been, at once, pressed to give evidence against Harvey. At the interview with Lord Townshend, the latter put in Francia’s hand five guineas. The Secretary said it was done out of charity. Francia looked on it as a bribe. He took the money, and as he failed to be as communicative as it was at first hoped he would be, Francia was committed to Newgate. At his trial, he challenged nearly every juryman on the panel. One of them was a Sir Dennis Dutry, latinized on the usual list as ‘Dionysius,’ which, Francia insisted, was not Latin for Dennis, but the Chief Baron declared that it was, and, after many other frivolous objections were disposed of, the trial proceeded; Francia pleading ‘Not Guilty.’
TRIAL OF FRANCIA.
Jekyll, in opening the case, used a singular expression with regard to the rebellion of ‘15, which, he said, ‘was not publicly known till his Majesty was pleased, in July, to acquaint the public with the coming invasion.’ The letters and papers seized in Francia’s lodgings referred to business transactions, under which form the rebellion was clearly to be understood. The prisoner’s defence was that he was an alien, born at Bordeaux, in 1675, and owed no allegiance to King George, but also, that he had practised no treason against him. The main feature of the defence was that Francia was accused because he had refused to bear false evidence against Harvey, for which purpose Townshend had given him money. One Mary Meggison swore that being in the same room in Newgate, with Francia, she heard an agent of the Government press Francia to swear Harvey’s life away. If the agent did not see her it was because the room was ‘the Lion’s den’ and was as ‘dark as pitch.’ Lord Townshend swore by all his great gods, that he had been moved solely by compassion when he put the five guineas into Francia’s hands,—partly, however, also, as it would seem, because Francia, when he was first brought before my Lord, had made some disclosures, and had sworn to the truth of them on a Hebrew book—produced in court. ‘Ah!’ said Mr. Hungerford, the Jew’s counsel, taking up the book, ‘I understand a little Hebrew. This is a book to pray by—not swear by. It is a collection of Jewish prayers and rituals, I believe taken out of Maimonides. You had better send it to the learned Montfaucon in Paris; he is compiling some critical observations on the Eastern languages.’ What purpose that might have served does not appear. The only important circumstance was that the Secretary of State swore vehemently one way; the Jew, as vehemently in an opposite direction; and that the Jury believing Francia—acquitted him accordingly.—The subsequent jollity in Fetter Lane, and Jacobite resorts, generally, showed that Francia, be he what he might, was not a supporter of ‘the Elector of Hanover.’
PATTEN’S ‘HISTORY OF THE LATE REBELLION.’
Support came from other quarters—from the Press and from the Stage;—from Mr. Patten, the priest, and Colley Cibber, the player. In literature, undoubtedly, the book of the year, 1717, was the Rev. Mr. Patten’s ‘History of the late Rebellion. With original papers and characters of the principal noblemen and gentlemen concerned in it.’ Baker and Warner’s shop, the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, was beset with parties purchasing, or with footmen sent to purchase, copies. The ex-Jacobite knave who wrote it had the impudence to dedicate it to the Generals Carpenter and Wills. He quite as impudently gave assurance to the world, that it was to ‘their prudent management and unshaken bravery,’ at Preston, ‘animated by the Justice of the Cause,’ that the defeat of the Rebels (‘unfortunate Gentlemen, whose principles were once my own,’ but ‘some of which kept themselves warm in a Chimney Corner during the Heat of the Action’) was to be attributed.
SLANDER AGAINST THE JACOBITES.
Of the fate of those who perished on the scaffold he speaks unfeelingly. Of others, he asserts that they did not hesitate to bribe all who would take their money, ‘and by that means, not unfrequently gained their ends.’ And to this assertion, the frocked rascal adds the following precious remark:—‘It may be said, in the Face of Heaven, that fairer Trials were never allowed, at least, to Men who so little deserved it.’—The critics in the coffee-houses and taverns must have felt the regret they may have feared to express, that the Reverend Robert Patten had not also had a trial and an issue in accordance with his deserts.
Patten especially hated these tavern and coffee-house critics. In his book, he is never weary of depreciating such Jacobites. He wrote of them summarily and contemptuously in 1717, as ‘a party who are never right hearty for the Cause, till they are mellow, as they call it, over a bottle or two.… They do not care for venturing their carcasses any further than the Tavern. There indeed, with their High Church and Ormond! they would make men believe, who do not know them, that they would encounter the greatest opposition in the world, but after having consulted their pillows, and the fumes a little evaporated, it is to be observed of them that they generally become mighty tame, and are apt to look before they leap; and, with the snail, if you touch their houses they hide their heads, shrink back, and pull in their horns. I have heard Mr. Forster say he was blustered into this business by such people as these, but that, for the time to come, he would never again believe a drunken Tory.’