AWAKING OF JACOBITES.
It would seem that the term ‘Prime Minister’ was first applied to Walpole, and in a reproachful sense. Speaking in the House, in 1741, he said of his opponents: ‘Having invested me with a kind of mock dignity, and styled me a Prime Minister, they impute to me an unpardonable abuse of that chimerical authority, which only they created and conferred.’ Under the Earl of Wilmington as First Lord of the Treasury the better times, foretold by the ex-Prime Minister’s enemies, failed to come to pass. Meanwhile, every significant incident in Parliament, every detail of the domestic life of the king, was regularly transmitted from London to the Chevalier, at Rome. One of the Parliamentary incidents of the year was the appointment of the Duke of Argyle to the offices of Master-General of the Ordnance, and Commander-in-chief of the Forces, offices which he resigned, a month later, because of the exclusion of Tories from power, but especially because of the refusal to admit the Jacobite, Sir John Hynde Cotton, to a place in the Government. ‘The Pretender and all that set,’ wrote Mann, at Florence, to Horace Walpole, ‘are in high spirits and flatter themselves more than ever. I don’t know but they have reason. I confess to you I should be very sorry to see the Duke of Argyle with an army; then, might the Pretender, in my opinion, triumph.’
CHESTERFIELD’S OPINIONS.
The Jacobites found, perhaps, unconscious supporters of their cause in the writers who energetically denounced the reigning monarch’s partiality for Hanover, at the cost of England. Atterbury himself could not have turned this subject more profitably to the cause of the Chevalier than Chesterfield did in the first number of ‘Old England’ (Feb. 5th, 1743):—‘I am entirely persuaded that in the words, “our present happy establishment,” the happiness meant there is that of the subjects; and that if the “establishment” should make the Prince happy, and the subjects otherwise, it would be very justly termed “our present unhappy establishment.” I apprehend the nation did not think James unworthy of the Crown, merely that he might make way for the Prince of Orange; nor can I conceive that they ever precluded themselves from dealing by King William in the same manner as they had done by King James, if he had done as much to deserve such a treatment. Neither can I in all my search find that when the Crown was settled in an hereditary line upon the present Royal Family, the people of Great Britain ever signed any formal instrument of recantation by which they expressed their sorrow and repentance of what they had done against King James, and protested that they would never do so by any future Prince, though reduced to the same melancholy necessity.’ The ‘sacred right of insurrection’ was here maintained, as fully as any Jacobite could have maintained it, against a family whose possession of the Crown of England was not by right of blood, but because the nation ‘which gave the crown looked for the greatest amount of happiness from the recipients.’ In a subsequent number Chesterfield somewhat modified this tone, but without mutilating its sense. If he spoke treason, he said it should be treason within the law. He was loyal to the reigning family because he thought he could live free under it, and hoped that ‘we are determined to live free.’
KING AND ELECTOR.
Lord Chesterfield spoke in similar sense and spirit in the various fiery debates upon keeping Hanoverian troops in British pay, and that for Hanoverian interests solely, to further which the British people were taxed. It was even doubted whether the Elector of Hanover had any right to appear at the head of a British army, where such interests alone were concerned. Mr. Murray (afterwards Lord Mansfield) in the Commons denounced such sentiments as republican and Jacobitical. Lord Chesterfield, in a later discussion in the Lords, said: ‘It is said of a noble Lord in a late reign, that he turned Roman Catholic in order to overrule a Roman Catholic king then upon our throne. I hope we have not at present any reason to suspect that any British subject is now with the same view turned Hanoverian. But as such a thing is possible, as wolves sometimes appear “in sheeps” clothing, those who are truly jealous of our present happy establishment will always have a jealousy of a British Minister that savours too strong of the Hanoverian.’
A most unpleasant incident of the year was connected with two anonymous letters addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Carteret, in which the writer, ‘Wat Tyler,’ informed them that if the latter brought in Hanoverian troops that winter, there were two hundred men bound by oath who would tear him, and all who voted with him, limb from limb. The most significant incident of all, however, remains to be told.
HIGHLAND REGIMENT IN LONDON.
Early after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, a force consisting of six companies of Highlanders was formed, for the purpose of causing the peace to be kept in the northern portion of Scotland. In 1739, this force, known as the Black Watch, was embodied as a regiment, which, from its commander, was named ‘Lord Sempill’s.’ An idea prevailed among the men that they were embodied for home service only. In 1743 the regiment was ordered to London, for the purpose of joining the actively employed British army. The scene of this actively employed army was then in Germany. Sempill’s regiment marched to London with unconcealed aversion. They were in some degree calmed by assurances from their officers that the march to London was in order that the king might gratify his royal wish to review the regiment in person. Their pride was gratified; they reached Highgate in good order, and they were there encamped. The camp was visited by thousands of Londoners, who praised the good discipline and quiet disposition of the Highlanders. Among the most assiduous, insinuating, and seductive of the visitors were the London Jacobites. When the men heard that the king had left London for his army on the Continent, and that they were under orders to follow, their pride was wounded; and the Jacobites took care to inflame the wound and aggravate both the alleged slight and the anger of the offended soldiery. A review of Sempill’s regiment on the king’s birthday, 14th May 1743, by General Wade, on Finchley Common, was more gratifying to the spectators than to the men. The papers describe the Highlanders as making ‘a very handsome appearance. They went through their exercises and firing with the utmost exactness. The novelty of the sight drew together the greatest concourse of people ever seen on such an occasion.’
DESERTION OF THE MEN.