CHAPTER XV.
(1718.)
he Jacobite rage aroused by ‘The Nonjuror’ (so ‘damned a play,’ Pope called it) seemed to increase even after the novelty had worn off. Cibber’s bitterest foe in the press was Mist’s ‘Weekly Journal.’ On the 4th February, 1718, this ultra-Jacobite paper contained the following paragraph: ‘Yesterday, died Mr. Colley Cibber, late Comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing “The Nonjuror.”’ Upon this, Cibber pleasantly says, in his ‘Apology’:—‘The compliment in the latter part, I confess I did not dislike; because it came from so impartial a Judge; and it really so happened that the former part of it was very near being true; for I had that very day just crawled out, after having been some weeks laid up by a Fever: However, I saw no use in being thought to be thoroughly dead, before my Time, and therefore had a mind to see whether the Town cared to have me alive again. So the play of the “Orphan” being to be acted that Day, I quietly stole myself into the part of the Chaplain, which I had not been seen in for many years before. The Surprize of the Audience at my unexpected Appearance on the very Day I had been Dead in the News, and the Paleness of my Looks seem’d to make it a Doubt, whether I was not the Ghost of my real Self Departed; But when I spoke, their Wonder eas’d itself by an Applause, which convinced me they were then satisfied that my Friend Mist had told a Fib of me.’
But there was at this period a tragedy in contemplation which drew the public interest far away from Cibber and his comedy. It is necessary to go back a year or so, in order the better to understand the principal actor.
A YOUTHFUL JACOBITE.
In the year 1711, there was a pupil at the Latin school in Salisbury, who was remarkable for his ‘fine parts.’ His name was James Sheppard. His late father had been a glover in Southwark. His uncle, Dr. Hinchcliffe, took the father’s place, and provided for this promising boy. The lad was excessively fond of reading; and, in order to catch an intelligent young fellow for the Jacobite cause, some Salisbury Nonjurors thrust upon him their party pamphlets, which the boy read and re-read till he became more Jacobite than the writers. Perilous stuff, so thought Dr. Hinchcliffe, and he took the too earnest student from the Latin school, and bound him apprentice to a Liverpool coach-painter.
A WOULD-BE REGICIDE.
In 1715, Liverpool was as much excited as London by the question between the king regnant and the king claimant. Young Sheppard was gloomy and silent. The fray fought out adversely to the Jacobites, and the executions of the next year chafed his temper. Among his fellows, he let drop the fearful words that it might be a good thing to kill the king. He was counselled, if he would not go to the gallows, not to give tongue to such possibilities, for the future. The matter sank deep into his mind. Sheppard thought much and wrote much, and at last, he disappeared from Liverpool.