There were no Jacobites at Oxford now, but there was a new sect of Methodists there. Six of its members, students of Edmund Hall, were expelled for praying and expounding the Scripture in their own rooms! In another direction there was something like reconciliation. The Government at St. James’s allowed a Popish prelate to establish himself in Canada, on condition that France should entirely abandon the Jacobites; and now, for the first time, the king and royal family of the House of Hanover were prayed for in all the Roman Catholic chapels in Ireland, and in the Ambassadors’ chapels in London.
The king showed his respect for the principle of fidelity, on the part of the Jacobite leaders, by restoring some of the forfeited estates to the chiefs. He showed it also in another way. Having been told of a gentleman of family and fortune in Perthshire, who had not only refused to take the oath of allegiance to him, but had never permitted him to be named as king in his presence, ‘Carry my compliments to him,’ said the king, ‘but what?—stop!—no!—he may perhaps not receive my compliment as King of England; give him the Elector of Hanover’s compliments, and tell him that he respects the steadiness of his principles.’ Hogg, who tells this story in the introduction to the ‘Jacobite Relics,’ does not see that in this message there was an excess of condescension that hardly became the king, though the spirit of the message did. The story is told with some difference in the introduction to ‘Redgauntlet.’
A JACOBITE FUNERAL.
In October of the year 1761, there died a Jacobite of some distinction, who had the honour to be permitted to lie in Westminster Abbey; but, the spectators who had been at the lying in state, observed, with some surprise, that his coffin-plate bore only the initials K. M. L. F. The ‘Funeral Book’ of the Abbey is not more communicative, save that the age of the defunct was forty-three. As the coffin sank to its resting place in the South Aisle, curious strangers were told that it contained the body of Kenneth Mackenzie, Lord Fortrose—a dignity not sanctioned by the law; for, Kenneth was the only son of the fifth Earl of Seaforth, who suffered attainder and forfeiture for the part he played in the insurrection of 1715. But Kenneth left an only son, Kenneth (by Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of the Earl of Galloway). This son was not restored to his grandfather’s titles in the Scotch peerage, but he was created Viscount Fortrose and Earl of Seaforth in the peerage of Ireland. This transplantation was not fortunate. Lord Seaforth died, leaving no male heir, in 1781, when the old Jacobite title became extinct. The son of the attainted earl, restored as to his fortune, was in the army, and in Parliament in 1746, when he accompanied the Duke of Cumberland to Scotland, but his wife and clan, as Walpole remarks, went with the Rebels. The Irish peer but Scotch Earl of Seaforth well deserved his distinction, when in 1779, with seven hundred Mackenzies at his back, he repelled the invasion of Jersey by a French force.
DR. JOHNSON’S PENSION.
Other Jacobites were taken into favour, for which loyal service was rendered. One of the first gracious acts of George III. was to confer a pension on Dr. Johnson, of 300l. a year, equal now to twice that sum. Johnson had well earned it, and he was expressly told that it was conferred on him for what he had done, not for anything he was expected to do. He felt that he was not expected to be an apologist of the Stuarts, and the first act of the ex-Jacobite, after becoming a pensioner, was to write for the Rev. Dr. Kennedy’s ‘Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures,’ a dedication to the king who had pensioned him (and whom he had looked upon as the successor of two usurpers), which dedication is truly described as being in a strain of very courtly elegance. As to the granting of the pension by the king, Dr. Johnson, the once adherent to the Stuart, remarked, ‘The English language does not afford me terms adequate to my feelings on this occasion. I must have recourse to the French. I am pénétré with his Majesty’s goodness.’ Johnson was quite sensible that it would be right to do something more for his reward. The something was done in another dedication to the Queen, of Hoole’s translation of Tasso, ‘which is so happily conceived,’ says Boswell, ‘and elegantly expressed, that I cannot but point it out to the peculiar notice of my readers.’ Johnson soon became a partisan of the Hanoverian family. Speaking of some one who with more than ordinary boldness attacked public measures and the royal family, he said, ‘I think he is safe from the law, but he is an abusive scoundrel; and instead of applying to my Lord Chief Justice to punish him, I would send half-a-dozen footmen and have him well ducked.’ A semi-noyade was now thought fitting recompense for a Stuart apologist.
JOHNSON’S VIEW OF IT.
At a later period, when Johnson reviewed, in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine,’ Tyler’s Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, the Jacobitism quite as much as the generosity of his principles led him to say, ‘It has now been fashionable for near half a century to defame and vilify the House of Stuart.... The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the dead cannot pay for praise, and who will without reward oppose the tide of popularity?’
Johnson being accused of tergiversation, has a right to be heard in his own case. Much censured for accepting a pension which many a censurer would have taken with the utmost alacrity, ‘Why, Sir,’ said he with a hearty laugh, ‘it is a mighty foolish noise that they make. I have accepted a pension as a reward which has been thought due to my literary merit; and now that I have the pension, I am the same man in every respect that I have ever been. I retain the same principles. It is true that I cannot now curse (smiling) the House of Hanover, nor would it be decent of me to drink King James’s health in the wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, Sir, I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking King James’s health, are amply overbalanced by 300l. a year.’ To this may be added Boswell’s assurance that Johnson had little confidence in the rights claimed by the Stuarts, and that he felt, in course of time, much abatement of his own Toryism. HIS DEFINITION OF A JACOBITE. It was in his early days that he talked fierce Jacobitism, at Mr. Langton’s, to that gentleman’s niece, Miss Roberts. The Bishop of Salisbury (Douglas) and other eminent men were present. Johnson, taking the young lady by the hand, said, ‘My dear, I hope you are a Jacobite.’ Her uncle was a Tory without being a Jacobite, and he angrily asked why Johnson thus addressed his niece? ‘Why, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘I meant no offence to your niece, I mean her a great compliment. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the Divine Right of kings. He who believes in the Divine Right of kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the Divine Right of bishops. He that believes in the Divine Right of bishops believes in the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig, for Whiggism is a negation of all principle.’
DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND.