(1776-1826.)
A PLEBISCITE FOR THE STUARTS.
very fair instance of Jacobite sentiment in London, in the year 1777, presents itself in a record by Boswell, in his ‘Life of Dr. Johnson.’ The doctor, in argument with the Whig Dr. Taylor, insisted that the popular inclination was still for the Stuart family, against that of Brunswick, and that if England were fairly polled, the present king would be sent away to-night, and his adherents hanged to-morrow!’ Taylor demurred, and Johnson gave this as the ‘state of the country.’—‘The people, knowing it to be agreed on all hands, that this king has not the hereditary right to the crown, and there being no hope that he who has it can be restored, have grown cold and indifferent upon the subject of loyalty and have no warm attachment to any king. They would not, therefore, risk anything to restore the exiled family. They would not give twenty shillings a piece to bring it about; but if a mere vote could do it, there would be twenty to one; at least, there would be a very great majority of voices for it. But, Sir, you are to consider that all those who consider that a king has a right to his crown, as a man has to his estate, which is the just opinion, would be for restoring the king who certainly has the hereditary right, could he be trusted with it; in which there would be no danger now, when laws and everything else are so much advanced, and every king will govern by the laws.’ It was in the same year, 1777, that Johnson called the design of the young Chevalier to gain a crown for his father ‘a noble attempt;’ and Boswell expressed his wish that ‘we could have an authentic history of it.’ More than a generation had passed away since the attempt had failed, but Johnson thought the history might be written: ‘If you were not an idle dog, you might write it by collecting from everybody what they can tell, and putting down your authorities.’ It was shortly after that, hearing of a Mr. Eld, as being a Whig, in Staffordshire, Johnson remarked, ‘There are rascals in all counties.’ It was then he made his celebrated assertion that ‘the first Whig was the Devil;’ but this Jacobite definition was provoked by Eld’s coarse description of a Tory as ‘a creature generated between a nonjuring parson and one’s grandmother.’ Lord Marchmont thought Johnson had distinguished himself by being the first man who had brought ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ into a dictionary.
‘Nonjuring parsons’ still existed; but the hierarchy was all but extinguished.
THE LAST OF THE NONJURING BISHOPS.
In the last week of November 1779, reverential groups were assembled in Theobald’s Road, to witness the passing to the grave of the last nonjuring bishop of the regular succession—Bishop Gordon. There was no demonstration but of respect. Yet there must have been some Jacobites of the old leaven among the spectators; though many Nonjurors were not Jacobites at all. To this record may be added here the fact that in St. Giles’s churchyard, Shrewsbury, lie the remains of another nonjuring bishop, William Cartwright, who is commonly called ‘the Apothecary,’ because, like other bishops of the sturdy little community, he practised medicine. Cartwright (who came of the ‘Separatists,’ a division which started about 1734, with one bishop) always dressed in prelatic violet cloth. Hoadley once surprised a party at Shrewsbury by saying, ‘William Cartwright is as good a bishop as I am.’ Cartwright hardly thought so himself, for in 1799, in which year he died, he was reconciled to the established church, at the Abbey in Shrewsbury, by a clergyman who in his old age revealed the fact to a writer who made it public in 1874, in the ‘Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, and Schools of Thought,’ edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt. No reason is given why the alleged fact was made a mystery of for so long a period.
The very last of all the nonjuring bishops, one of the irregular succession, died in Ireland in 1805, namely, Boothe. He was irregularly consecrated by Garnet, who had been consecrated by Cartwright, who had been consecrated by Deacon. Nonjuring congregations, in London and elsewhere,—they generally met in private houses,—diminished and dissolved. Here and there, a family or an individual might be met with who would use no Prayer Books but those published before the Revolution of 1688. Probably, the last Nonjuror (if not the last Jacobite) in England died in the Charter House, London, in 1875—the late Mr. James Yeowell, for many years the worthy and well-known sub-editor of ‘Notes and Queries.’ To him, the true church was that of Ken, and his true sovereign was to be looked for in the line of Stuart; but Mr. Yeowell acknowledged the force of circumstances, and was as honest a subject of Queen Victoria as that royal lady could desire to possess.
THE JACOBITE MUSE.
The Jacobite and Nonjuring pulpits were unoccupied and silent, but the Muses manifested vitality. The tenacity, and one might almost say, the audacity of Jacobite loyalty was well illustrated in 1779 by the publication of a collection of songs, under the title of ‘The True Loyalist, or Chevalier’s Favourite.’ In one of the ballads both Flora Macdonald and Charles Edward are alluded to:—