London in the Jacobite times, Volume I

by Dr. Doran

At the palace there was so little alarm at the ‘little rebellion’ in progress, that the king resolved to leave his kingdom to the care of Lords Justices, and to go abroad, and to take with him the ungraceful and disreputable German women, who seldom appeared in the public highways without feeling the sting of a London epigram. In May, Lord Howe married Mary Sophia, reputed eldest daughter of the King’s Master of the Horse, Baron Kielmansegge. But the bride was the daughter of that Master’s master. The papers, however, only name the young lady’s mother, and her fortune, 1,500l. a year, and 5,000l. in cash. On the day following the wedding, the king, whose interest in the matter was easily accounted for, wore a favour on the occasion, and had the newly-married couple to sup with him in the evening. A few days after, early in the morning, his Majesty was to be seen in a common hackney chair, being carried to Privy Garden stairs; thence a barge conveyed him over to Lambeth, where he took coach for Gravesend. Here, the king and suite went on board a boat, in which he was rowed to the buoy at the Nore, where the ‘Caroline’ yacht and an escort of men-of-war awaited him. A few minutes after he had set his foot on the deck of the yacht, he gave orders that all the nobility who had assembled there in his honour, should clear out of the ship. Thereupon the Majesty of England sailed away for Holland, having in attendance or company Mesdames von der Schulenburg and Kielmansegge, and the ‘Duchess of Munster, alias Kendal,’ as the papers register that lady, with quite an Old Bailey air.

A SUSPICIOUS CHARITY SERMON.

Just before the king’s departure, the trustees of the forfeited estates delivered in an account of Papists’ registered estates, which amounted to nearly 380,000l. The Lords Justices left in charge of the capital and kingdom were the Archbishop of Canterbury (Wake), and a dozen of the chief officers of the Crown. They did their office mildly, at a time when invasion was threatened on one side, but so little-feared on the other that the king went abroad in May, in perfect confidence that all would go well at home with 2,500 Dutch auxiliaries to help his own troops in London. County Magistrates were far more fussy in acts and suspicions than the Lords Justices. So jealous were Whig justices at this period, they detected, or suspected, treasonable purposes even in a charity sermon for a parish school! One Saturday in this year, 1719, a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Hendley, and a friend or two arrived at Chislehurst, Kent, to make preparations for delivering a sermon in the church there on behalf of the schools of St. Anne’s, Aldersgate. The intended preacher had the consent of the rector and the license of the Diocesan, Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. The churchwardens and constables ‘smelt a rat.’ Their Jacobite bishop was credited with hoping to raise money for the Pretender under guise of alms for charity-children. They swept the whole of the intruders into the presence of a bench of local magistrates, and charged them as suspected persons. The Rev. Mr. Hendley pleaded episcopal license and the rector’s sanction for preaching. ‘We don’t care,’ said one of the justices, ‘either for bishops, archbishops, or anybody else.’ The parties were dismissed with a caution not to commit vagrancy in that parish.

RIOT IN CHURCH.

On the following morning groups of men and women were assembled in front of St. Ann’s schools, Aldersgate, to see the sample children off. The best looking and best behaved were carried down to Chislehurst as warrant that all aids to bring up more of such children would be well-bestowed. They went off, with masters and friends, joyously, and they arrived, full of fresh air and gladness, at Chislehurst while the bells for church were cheerily ringing. The service was conducted by the rector and curate. The sermon was delivered by Mr. Hendley. The collection then commenced. Gentlemen began to unbutton their pockets. The ladies quietly sank back on their cushions, for it was not the custom, in those days, to ask or to expect them to contribute at church collections. The eleemosynary cash rattled freely into the plates, till one of the collectors reached the pew wherein the local magistrates then sat. When the ‘paten’ was presented to the nearest of those potentialities, he seized the bearer, overturned the money, and denounced the whole proceedings as contrary to law. ‘It is only on behalf of the poor charity children!’ gasped the collector. ‘They are all vagrants!’ cried one from the magistrates’ pew. ‘They are all begging for the Pretender!’ cried another. ‘You must stop this!’ said a third. ‘Proceed with the collection!’ was the command of the rector from within the communion rails. ‘Go on with your business!’ was the injunction of the preacher from the pulpit. ‘Do it at your peril!’ shouted the magistrate who had laid hold of the collector and upset the cash. RIOT PROLONGED. ‘I will come and do it myself!’ remarked the rector. ‘Do so,’ called the preacher to him, ‘and someone bring me a prayer-book!’ While the rector was collecting, Mr. Hendley read the Rubric which authorised the proceeding; after which he turned to the justices, and, rebuking them for brawling in church, announced that he should make complaint to the bishop. ‘We care nothing at all for bishops nor for you,’ was the reply from the magisterial pew,—‘this matter must and shall be stopped!’ The congregation, Whigs or Tories, were in favour of contributing. They crowded round the collector, and some who could not get near enough threw their money into the plate. Farrington, a magistrate, made a dash at the latter, but the bearer safely delivered it to the rector within the rails; and Mr. Hendley having delivered another, both were placed upon the communion table. Farrington charged fiercely to get within the rails, but Mr. Hendley warned him that his place was not there, and kept him back, forbidding him to persist in entering. Thereupon Sir Edward Bettison and Captain Farrington beckoned to a constable to approach, and after whispering to him certain instructions, sent him up to the rails, where, staff in hand, he ordered all present to disperse on pain of being ‘guilty of riot.’ ‘Gentlemen,’ said the rector to the justices, ‘the congregation is not dismissed: service is not over; the prayer for the Church Militant has not been read; the Blessing has not been given.’ The magistrates murmured ‘Riot.’ The rector rejoined, ‘There is no riot but of your own making!’ Ladies began to grow frightened as the gentlemen waxed angry; and it was not till after much more unseemliness of word and action that the money was secured and the congregation lawfully dismissed. The charity children were conveyed back to London, delighted with the spectacle and its attendant sensations. The justices went to dinner, combining business with the banquet.

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

While the rector, preacher, and two or three of the gentlemen who had brought the Aldersgate children to Chislehurst, were at tea in the evening, they were all arrested, and brought before the justices, by whom they were all bound over to appear at the next Maidstone Quarter Sessions as rioters and vagrants. They duly appeared, the Grand Jury found ‘no bill,’ and the accused moved to be discharged. The justices looked on the Grand Jury as pestilent Jacobites, indicted the parties afresh, and bound them over to appear at the Assizes on the more serious charge of extortion, conspiracy, fraud, and ‘sedition,’—the alleged alms being nothing more, as they professed to believe, than a subscription for the Pretender.

The real interests of the Pretender were being furthered in another quarter, namely, in some of the London printing-offices, and with an audacity that was very offensive to the authorities.

A CAPITAL CONVICTION.

The liberty of the press was not for a moment tolerated, although the last words spoken or written of the hottest-headed Jacobites, who were hanged, were freely circulated without hindrance. Political pamphlets were sharply looked after. There was in Aldersgate a widow, Matthews, with her two sons. The latter carried on for her the business of printing. All the family were Nonjurors, and the sons were members of a Jacobite club. The younger son, John Matthews, was then in his nineteenth year, and he recognised no king but James Stuart. A Nonjuring family of printers were sure to be subjects of suspicion. The widow and elder son were themselves fearful of what the indiscretion of John might bring upon them. Their fear was well founded, for the young Jacobite, at night, was privately putting in type a treasonable pamphlet, by a friend, entitled, ‘Out of thy Mouth will I judge thee; or, the Voice of the People, the Voice of God.’ The elder brother, on learning this fact, scattered the type, locked up the printing-office, and gave the key to Lawrence Vozey, the foreman, with the order to keep young Matthews locked out of the office after the usual working hours. Lawrence Vozey, however, was a rascal. He allowed the youthful Nonjuror to go back to his case at night, where he began again to print the dangerous pamphlet. When the young zealot was well advanced in his work, Vozey privately laid an information against him, and down came the police upon the office, smashing and destroying all in their way by virtue of a general warrant. The obnoxious sheets were found, and carried off as testimony against the offender. On Matthews’s trial the law was as severely pressed against him as if he had killed the king with all the royal family, and he was found guilty.