These domestic and political allusions pervade the play. Its production would probably have led to riot, and the Lord Chamberlain, or his deputy, did well in prohibiting the play and thus keeping the peace.
In January, 1740, Mr. Sandys moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the better securing the freedom of Parliament, by limiting the number of Government officers to sit in the House of Commons. Among the opponents was Mr. Henry Pelham, who was convinced that the Bill would help the Jacobites to carry out their designs. ‘We know,’ he said, ‘how numerous the disaffected still are in this kingdom; and they, we may suppose, are not insensible to the prejudice that has been done to their faction, by the places and offices which are at the disposal of the crown. These places and offices are of great use to the crown and, I think, to the nation, in preventing gentlemen from joining with a faction, or winning them away from it; and the Jacobites are sensible they have lost many by this means, some, perhaps, after they had got a seat in this House.’
JACOBITE PROSPECTS.
Mr. Pulteney, alluding to the assertion that if most placemen were excluded from the House, there would soon be a majority of Jacobites in it, said this was supposing that there was a majority of Jacobites among the people, a supposition which he denied, and which he stigmatised as very uncomplimentary to the king and his family. ‘But,’ he added, ‘if there should once come to be a majority of placemen and officers in this House, that majority would soon create a majority of Jacobites in the nation.’ The consequences, he was sure, would be an insurrection, the army joining with the insurgents. This motion, in the debate on which the Jacobites figured as both a dangerous and a mercenary people, was lost by 222 to 206. Sixteen placemen saved Sir Robert, who had spoken with much plausibility and cunning against the leave asked for. The Bishop of Salisbury in the House of Lords, in the discussion in March on the Pension Bill, could only express a hope that faction would not foster insurrection. The opposition papers maintained that no such thing as faction existed, and that Jacobitism was a name now utterly unknown to the mass of the people. The opposition to Sir Robert was increasing in strength, and this was taken to be a proof that the Jacobites were increasing in number; but everything was done to sustain the minister. ‘’Tis observable,’ says the ‘Craftsman,’ ‘that St. Stephen’s Chapel was never attended with more devotion than at present, the very lame and the blind hardly being excused; and both Parties seeming to indicate by their conduct that nobody knows what a day or an hour may bring forth.’
DEATH OF WYNDHAM.
The opposition, rather than the Jacobite party, experienced an immense loss this year, by the death of Sir William Wyndham. This able man ceased to be a Jacobite after he gave in his allegiance to the accomplished fact of the established supremacy of the House of Hanover. Wyndham became simply a ‘patriot,’ never ceasing his fierce, but polished, hostility to Walpole, yet lending himself to no measure likely to disturb the ‘happy establishment.’ Two years before his death he took for second wife the widowed Marchioness of Blandford, whose relatives opposed a match with an ex-Jacobite. ‘She has done quite right,’ said the old Dowager Duchess of Marlborough. ‘I’d have had him myself, if he’d only asked me sometime ago!’
The camp pitched at Hounslow this year reminded quidnuncs of the one formed by James II., to overawe London. Londoners themselves expressed a hope that the army would sweep ‘the infamous road’ of its mounted highwaymen and its brutal footpads. But by the presence of soldiers there was only an addition to the number of robbers and of victims.
[2] ‘Last Journals of Horace Walpole,’ vol. i. p. 41.
