MILITARY DIFFICULTIES.
Later in the year, the public had the not too cheering spectacle of the 3rd Regiment of Guards having the oath of allegiance administered to them at the drumhead. Subsequently came an order that such of the gentlemen of the 4th troop of Horse Guards (commanded by the Earl of Dundonald) as followed trades, should abandon such lay occupations within three months, or dispose of their posts. This strange order becomes easier to understand, when it is remembered that ‘gentlemen’ is the word still applied to the whole regiment; and that, in 1718, Government did not like the practice of the soldier being half the day a civilian. Some solace was awarded to the army generally for various restrictions. Pay was advanced to 5s. a week; and clothes were to be furnished, as in the last Charles’s days, without deductions. This Stuart practice did not satisfy the perverse soldier. Two or three times a week, privates who had talked in too laudatory terms of King James, or who had deserted King George, were to be seen by thousands of spectators in the Park, undergoing the severe punishment—some of running, other of walking, the gauntlet. In either case the flagellation was severe. In October, when it was thought expedient to reform several regiments, which were accordingly ordered to be ‘broke,’ some men and, it is said, a whole regiment at Nottingham, refused to lay down their arms. Great discretion was required to tide smoothly over these perils.
SCENES AT COURT.
There was, however, no appearance of any sense of peril at Court, where gaiety with a certain amount of quaintness prevailed. The people who attended there were of a mixed quality. On the little Duke of Gloucester’s birthday, Lord Lovat was to be seen bearing the sword of state before the king, to the Royal Chapel. On a levee day, the pushing, preaching, loyal, reverend Charles Lambe, with all the sermons he had preached against traitors, during the rebellion, printed in one volume, laid them at the king’s feet, kissed the king’s hand, and got nothing by his motion. On another levee day, Colley Cibber was at Court, holding daintily a printed copy of ‘The Nonjuror,’ opened at the dedication, which he presented, kneeling, to his Majesty, who gave him his hand to kiss, and promised him a ‘purse’ for his work. Colley got the purse with a couple of hundred guineas in it. On a drawing-room day, a stranger courtier stood in the royal presence, namely, a woman who had journeyed from Lanark, under the impulse of a ‘longing’ to kiss the royal hand. This inclination was gratified, and, imprudently, a gift was added of twenty guineas, to take the lady home again—a circumstance which greatly moved sundry other wives in the same direction. When the Rev. Mr. Peploe, of Preston, who had stuck to his Hanoverian principles, while the Jacobites lorded it, in that town, made his appearance at Court, Whig zeal described the king as waxing merry, not to say witty. His Majesty is reported to have remarked that, ‘Peep low should look high.’ Loyal people laughed at the joke, but Mr. Peploe laughed with better reason, on being appointed Warden of Manchester College. He was afterwards made Bishop of Carlisle. On a later occasion, Colonel Oughton was to be seen, pulling a shy private of the 2nd Foot Guards, through the press, to the front of the throne, where the man was duly presented to his Majesty, with a copy of an ode which he had written on ‘Liberty.’ He was the first soldier who obtained preferment, not on professional, but on literary, grounds.
A SCENE IN ‘BEDLAM.’
After receptions like the above, the king usually honoured some Whig nobleman with his company, at dinner or supper—fearless, though the air was full of sinister reports. The Prince and Princess of Wales, on their parts, did not want for mirth. They went to see the mad folk in ‘Bedlam,’ and had especially good sport with a demented creature who thought herself a queen, and who solemnly married them to each other, amid royal bursts of questionable laughter.
Throughout the year the Nonjurors continued to be harassed by the Government. Their chapels were pointed out by the Whig press to the mob, for destruction. Sometimes the pulpit was protected by a burly butcher or two. No man was admitted who did not wear a black ribbon at his button-hole. Every woman was suspected who came to divine service without a black necklace. Loyal officials, notwithstanding, would force their way in, tender the oath of allegiance to the congregation, and arrest all those who declined to take it, unless they could show they had been already sworn. When a report was circulated that the Nonjurors had ‘some design’ afoot, the Whig press piously hoped they ‘might all be blasted, like their departed brother, Sheppard!’
A WHIG WHIPT.
One at least of these pious loyalists came to grief himself. His name was Burridge. He was editor (‘writer’) or sub-editor (‘corrector’) of one of the three ‘Weekly Journals’—that one which had for its second name ‘The British Gazetteer.’ Loyal and pious Burridge got so drunk in a tavern as to lose all control over his tongue. He let it loose in the utterance of inexpressibly horrible blasphemies, for which he was indicted and found guilty. Loyal as he was, Burridge did not escape. His own paper very coolly recorded that he had, on such a morning, been whipt from the New Church in the Strand to Charing Cross, and then sent to prison for a month, there further to remain till he had paid a fine of 20s. The ‘Jacks’ were jubilant, and cheered lustily when the hangman ‘laced’ the poor wretch’s back with his whip, as Burridge passed at the cart’s tail slowly along the Strand. These ‘Jacks’ who gloried in seeing a blasphemous Whig thus mauled were not very religious people themselves. There was complaint being constantly made that Jacobites who went through the formality of attending church—and particularly the ladies—made a practice of laughing, sneering, or otherwise showing their contempt, whenever the king and royal family were prayed for.
TREASON IN THE PULPIT.