JACOBITE HEARNE.
There was much meanness in the ill feeling of the Jacobites at even the little mischances that happened to the royal family. On a dark evening in November, the king and queen were returning from Kew to St. James’s, their footmen and grooms carrying torches. A storm of wind blew out the torches, and at Parson’s Green the carriage and its royal freight was overturned. Lord Peterborough’s people came to the rescue, with flambeaux, and the royal pair went on to town with nothing worse than an assortment of bruises. Such accidents were kindly attributed to the drunkenness of servants, but that bitter Jacobite Hearne thought that the mistress, if not the master, could be as drunk as they. Here is a sample of both thought and expression.—‘The present Duchess of Brunswick, commonly called Queen Caroline,’ says Hearne, in his ‘Reliquiæ,’ ‘is a very proud woman, and pretends to great subtlety and cunning. She drinks so hard that her spirits are continually inflamed, and she is often drunk. The last summer, she went away from Orkney House, near Maidenhead (at which she had dined), so drunk that she was sick in the coach all her journey, as she went along;—a thing much noted.’
A JACOBITE THREAT.
The Tories, on their side, were savagely mauled by the Whig press. The old Jacobite fire of Earbery was thereby inflamed, especially by the attacks on the old Tories in the ‘Craftsman.’ The former Stuart champion, who, in 1717, fled the country to avoid the consequences of publishing his ‘History of the Clemency of our English Monarchs,’ but whose sentence of outlawry was reversed in 1725, gave the ‘Craftsman’ warning, in the following advertisement, which was in the ‘Evening Post,’ of September 26, 1730,—‘Whereas the “Craftsman” has, for some time past, openly declared himself to be a root and branch man, and has made several unjust and scandalous reflections upon the family of the Stuarts, not sparing even King Charles I., this is to give notice, that if he reflects further upon any One of that line, I shall shake his rotten Commonwealth principles into atoms. Matthias Earbery.’ The writer kept his word in his ‘Occasional Historian.’
To decline to take the oath of abjuration was still a very serious matter, involving not merely temporary loss, but life-long professional ruin. Pope had a nephew, Robert Rackett, whose position affords a striking illustration of these Jacobite times. The story is thus told by Pope himself, in a letter to Lord Oxford, Nov. 16, 1730: ‘It happens that a nephew of mine, who, for his parents’ sins and not his own, was born a papist, is just coming, after nine or ten years’ study and hard service under an attorney, to practise in the law. Upon this depends his whole well-being and fortune in the world, and the hopes of his parents in his education, all which must inevitably be frustrated by the severity of a late opinion of the judges, who, for the major part, have agreed to admit no attorney to be sworn the usual oath which qualifies them to practise, unless they also give them the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. DIFFICULTIES IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE. This has been occasioned solely by the care they take to enforce an Act of Parliament, in the last session but one, against fraudulent practices of attornies, and to prevent men not duly qualified as attornies from practising as such. It is very evident that the intent of the Act is in no way levelled at papists, nor in any way demands their being excluded from practising more than they were formerly. Therefore, I hope the favour of a judge may be procured, so far as to admit him to take the usual attorney’s oath, without requiring the religious one.’ Pope hopes one of the judges will be good-natured enough to do this, and he suggests Judge Price for Lord Oxford’s manipulation. ‘In one word the poor lad will be utterly undone in this case, if this contrivance cannot be obtained in his behalf.’ Lord Oxford applied, not to Price, but to ‘Baron C.’ (Carter or Comyns, as Mr. Elwin suggests). This judge, says Pope (Dec. 1730), ‘showed him what possible regard he could, and lamented his inability to admit any in that circumstance, as it really is a case of compassion.’ Ultimately the obstacle seems to have been surmounted. Within a few months of half a century later, Pope’s nephew died in Devonshire Street, London, where he had ‘clerks’ in his employment. ‘He had, therefore,’ says Mr. Elwin in a note to the letter from which the above extract is taken, ‘managed to make his way in some line of business.’
DEATH OF DEFOE.
In the year 1731 died a popular and political writer, in the announcement of whose death neither his popular works nor his provocating agency in the service of Government is referred to. The event is thus recorded in Read’s ‘Weekly,’ for May 1st, 1731: ‘A few days ago died Mr. Defoe Sen., a person well known for his numerous and various writings. He had a great natural genius and understood very well the Trade and Interest of this Kingdom. His Knowledge of Men, especially of those in High Life, with whom he was formerly very conversant, had weakened his Attachment to any Party, but in the Main, he was in the Interest of Civil and Religious Liberty, in behalf of which he appeared on several remarkable Occasions.’
‘FALL OF MORTIMER.‘
In the month of July the Government began to look sharply after political offences on the stage. At the Haymarket Theatre, an historical tragedy, called ‘The Fall of Mortimer,’ was announced; and, in the announcement the Ministry saw an attack on Walpole, and probably on the queen. The grand jury of the County of Middlesex delivered a long ‘presentment’ to the Court of King’s Bench, in which the new play was described as ‘a false, infamous, scandalous, seditious, and treasonable libel, written, acted, printed, and published against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity.’ It is not clear that the play was ever more than rehearsed. On the night it was to have been regularly acted, a body of messengers and constables rushed through the stage door in order to make capture of the players. These were attired, and ready for the curtain to go up; Mullart, as Mortimer, stood plumed and gallant at the centre of the stage. At the first alarm, however, he and his mates took to flight, decked out as they were, and succeeded in escaping. This play, which some thirty years later was again turned to political purpose, grew out of the brief fragment and the sketched-out plot of a play designed by Ben Jonson. In the few lines he wrote, there are the following against upstarts and courtiers. These were held to be adverse to Walpole’s peace as well as the king’s. For example:—
Mortimer