King George, our Defender
From Pope and Pretender.
—There was a great pinning of them on as breast knots and shoulder knots, and a good deal of gallantry and flirtation went on between young ladies and gentlemen helping to adorn each other.
THE SCENE IN THE ABBEY.
The ceremony was of the usual sort. King George was crowned King of France, as well as of Great Britain and Ireland. In proof of his right, ‘two persons, representing the Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy,’ consorted with peers of more sterling coinage. These ‘persons’ were, on this occasion, a couple of players. They wore crimson velvet mantles, lined with white sarcenet, furred with miniver, and powdered with ermine. Each of them held in his hand a ‘cap of cloth of gold, also furred and powdered with ermine.’ They did homage to the king, as the English peers did, and when these put on their coronets in the royal presence, the sham Dukes clapped their caps jauntily on their heads. This part of the spectacle was the only part that afforded merriment to the Jacobite nobility, all of whom were present, from Bolingbroke, with his three bows bringing his head to the ground, to James II.’s old mistress, the Countess of Dorchester, who made saucy remarks on all that passed.
WHIGS AND JACOBITES.
The Whig Lady Cowper says in her Memoirs that the Jacobites looked as cheerful as they could, but were very peevish with every one that spoke to them. There was no remedy for them, remarks my Lady in her Diary, but patience. ‘So everybody was pleased, or pretended to be so.’ Lady Dorchester is an exception to the rule. When Archbishop Tenison went round the throne, formally asking the consent of the people at large to the making of the new king, the lively Jacobite countess remarked to Lady Cowper, ‘Does the old fool think anybody here will say no! to him, when there are so many drawn swords?’ The will was there, but the expression of it was kept down. Lady Dorchester was not the only saucily-disposed lady present. The Tory Lady Nottingham rudely shoved the ex-Tory Lady Cowper from her place. The latter found refuge on the pulpit stairs. ‘Her ill-breeding,’ says Lady Cowper, in her Diary, ‘got me the best place in the Abbey, for I saw all the ceremony, which few besides did. The lords that were over against me, seeing me thus mounted, said to my lord that they hoped I would preach. To which, my lord laughing, answered, he believed that I had zeal enough for it, but that he did not know I could preach.’ To which my Lord Nottingham answered, ‘Oh, my lord, indeed you must pardon me, she can and has preached for the last four years such doctrines as, had she been prosecuted in any court for them, your lordship yourself could not defend!’ After this little passage, when the scene was changed to Westminster Hall, the usual challenge was fruitlessly made by the hereditary champion. The banquet was held and came to an end. The king and guests departed. The weary waiting-men took their refreshment, and when they came to collect the ‘properties’ of the scene—plate, knives, forks, viands, table cloths—nearly all had disappeared. Great outcry arose, and the rogues were commanded in advertisements to make restitution, or dreadful penalty was to follow; but they seem to have kept all they took that day, and to have escaped detection.
TORY MOBS.
The day did not pass off decorously in the streets. Some unwelcome cries reached the king’s ears as he walked along the platform between the Abbey and the Hall. At night, Tory mobs, on pretence that the Whigs, by the motto on their ‘favours,’ showed a disposition to ‘burn the Pope and the Pretender, with Dr. Sacheverel to boot,’ lit up bonfires, danced round them to rebel airs, and while some of the celebrants shouted for Sacheverel, others uttered blasphemy and ill-wishes against King George. In country places, similar incidents occurred; but messengers were despatched thither, and they soon returned, bringing the worst of the offenders with them through London to its various prisons. York, Norwich, and Bedford; Reading, Taunton, Bristol, and Worcester, yielded the greatest number of seditious rioters. A boy, twelve years of age, was brought up as leader of the Taunton mob! The most notable person bagged by the messengers was Alderman Perks of Worcester. The Jacobites in London witnessed his passage to Newgate with manifestations that showed they looked on him as a martyr. On the other hand, the Irish Protestants in London made a manifestation in favour of Church and Government. In commemoration of the delivery of their fathers from the massacre in Ireland of so many of their contemporaries, in October 1641, by the Papists, these Whig loyalists marched in procession at 10 A.M. to St. Dunstan’s, where they heard a sermon from Dr. Storey, Dean of Limerick. At noon, they again marched in procession to the Old King’s Head, Holborn, where they dined, drank, and cheerfully celebrated the massacre in which so many innocent persons had perished.
THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE PARK.