London in the Jacobite times, Volume II

by Dr. Doran

Four days later, orders came for the troops to embark on the Thames. On that day about a hundred and fifty of the men failed to answer the morning roll call. They had not only disappeared, but with them their arms and several rounds of ball cartridge. ‘They did not care to go,’ says Walpole, in one of his May letters, ‘where it would not be equivocal for what King they fought.’ Sir Robert Munro, their Lieutenant-Colonel, before their leaving Scotland, asked some of the Ministry, ‘But suppose there should be any rebellion in Scotland, what should we do for these eight hundred men?’ It was answered, ‘Why, there would be eight hundred fewer rebels there!’ They were evidently mistrusted. The deserters, who justified the mistrust, had conceived that the review, for which they had marched to London, being over, they had a right to march back again. They concerted together, kept their own secret, were not betrayed by comrades who looked upon their military duty in another light, and they quietly left the camp at Highgate in the dead of night. They were under the command of a fine stalwart corporal named Macpherson, the corporal’s brother, and an intelligent private, Shaw. For what purpose they set out for Scotland was probably best known by the Jacobites of the metropolis. The object must have been far more serious than simply to return, because they conceived such action was within the limits of their legal right. This would have been the wildest folly, and the Macphersons and their men were neither fools nor savages. MARCH OF THE DESERTERS. However this may be, London was in uncontrollable alarm, and expected a record of plunder, murder, and incendiarism along the line of march, till the retreat was stopped and the deserters captured. On the contrary, the Highlanders, as they proceeded northward, injured neither man, woman, nor child—neither in person nor property. The most active measures were taken to pursue, meet, envelope, and destroy this most disloyal and yet much admired body. They were heard of everywhere; were scarcely seen anywhere. The reward for catching a single straggler was forty shillings; but there were no stragglers. The men understood the uses of solidarity, and kept compact in body as they were united in sentiment. Corporal Macpherson seemed to know the country perfectly, and to have a map of it ever under his eyes. Infantry, cavalry, volunteer mobs, and posses of constables scoured the districts on the line of march, but could not meet with those who were nearly successfully accomplishing this Xenophonian retreat. Macpherson, in fact, constantly changed his line. He led his men across country by night, always encamping in woods, by day, behind hastily constructed defences. Sometimes they made rapid marches by day, and took food and repose at night. THE HIGHLANDERS AT OUNDLE. On the morning of the 22nd, a Mr. Justice Creed heard of them as being encamped near his residence, about four miles from Oundle, in Northamptonshire. Like a brave and good man, he went down to them and got permission to address the famished and foot-sore band. He did this with such effect, as to obtain from them a sacred promise to surrender on condition of receiving a general pardon. Creed wrote in camp a letter to that effect to the Duke of Montagu, Master of the Ordnance. Macpherson undertook that the Highlanders should remain in their quarters till an answer was received. In the meantime, a Captain Ball, who had been despatched by General Blakeney with a force of cavalry from the northeastern district to intercept the march of the Highlanders, came upon them near Oundle, and demanded their immediate and unconditional surrender. The parties interchanged civilities. Macpherson informed the Captain that, through Creed, they were in negotiation with the Government. The Corporal also found means to let Creed know the exact state of affairs. The Justice advised them to surrender and hope for the best. Macpherson then invited the Captain to come and look at his entrenched position in the wood, as authorising him to hold out, and to defy any attack from Ball’s cavalry. The Captain confessed that they were unassailable by cavalry. Then, said the Corporal, here we will die like men, our arms in our hands. The Captain intimated that if they did not surrender, not a man should leave the place alive. Two of the Highlanders escorted Ball to the edge of the wood; but on the way he convinced both that the only thing left for them was to return unarmed to their regiment. One of these two remained with the persuasive cavalry officer. The other returned to the little fortress in the wood, where he laid before the corporal commander-in-chief and the body of Highlanders the Captain’s arguments and conclusions. MILITARY EXECUTION. This he did with such effect that the body of fugitives surrendered unconditionally to General Blakeney, who disarmed them and sent them, as captured deserters, to their old quarters at Highgate. London literally ‘turned out,’ to see them subsequently marched down to the Tower. Their uniforms were torn, and each man was tightly pinioned; but their bearing was so becoming that no voice insulted them. Their manliness was worthy of respect, and their offence was deserving of the issue which followed on the parade ground of the Tower. Justice was satisfied with the sacrifice of three victims. On the 22nd of July, the whole regiment was drawn out semi-circular on the ground. Some paces in front stood three groups of soldiers with loaded muskets—the firing parties. Presently Macpherson, his brother, and Shaw walked up, without fear or ostentation, but with great gravity, to places face to face with those comrades who had been told off for their swift destruction. As the three men were seen to kneel in prayer, the whole regiment simultaneously, unordered, followed the example, and prayed for their countrymen. After a brief silence, the doomed three stood firmly upright. A rattle of musketry from the respective firing parties rolled over the ground; and a minute or two later a few clansmen of the Macphersons and comrades of Shaw reverently covered their bodies, and removed them for interment near the spot where they had perished.

THREATENED INVASION.

The incident was not altogether apart from Jacobitism; nor probably was the subsequent fact, namely, that Lord John Murray, who afterwards was Colonel of the regiment, had the portraits of these three men hung up in his dining-room. The year closed with a threatening incident. Charles Edward left Rome in December for France, in order to accompany the expedition which was preparing in French ports for the invasion of England, under Marshal Saxe. There can be little doubt that the Government was well informed of the good intentions of France, by trustworthy agents abroad.

There is a tradition, however, that the first intelligence of a plot to restore the Stuarts was sent up to London from the Post office at Bath. Ralph Allen (the Squire Allworthy of Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’) had, since the year 1720, enjoyed a grant, or farm, of all the bye-way or cross-road letters in England and Wales, which grant he possessed till his death, in 1764. It is said that this Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, owed much of his large fortune to the result of his practice of opening letters; and it is added that by opening one of these cross-road letters he gained information of a plot for the Jacobite invasion of England,—and this information being sent to London, gave to its inhabitants the first announcement of an impending rebellion. In this same month of December, as was afterwards made known, a packet passed through the post, addressed to Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, hitherto a supposed friend of the Hanoverian dynasty. It contained matter which helped him to the scaffold on Tower Hill,—namely, his appointment to an important command in the Jacobite army about to be organised, and a flattering allusion to Lovat’s worthiness to wear a ducal title. Walpole was entitled to say, as he did:—‘We are in more confusion than we care to own.’

CONFUSION.

There was mirth enough in the opposition papers. Their columns crackled with epigrams against the king, court, and the Countess of Yarmouth. They were but slightly veiled and were still less slightly pointed. There was some regret perhaps that the reward offered by De Noailles, at Dettingen, to the troops that should capture George II., in that battle, had only resulted in the utter cutting to pieces of the Black Mousquetaires, who made the attempt.

It was on the 15th of February, 1744, after there had been some difficulty to persuade people of the impending danger, that the king informed Parliament and the nation, that this kingdom was about to be invaded by the French, with the design of overthrowing the present happy establishment, and the Protestant succession, and of restoring the Stuarts and the Romish religion. In the debates which ensued in both Houses, all the occasional references to Jacobites seemed to have come together in one heap. Lord Orford (Walpole) reminded the peers how he had been calumniated and ridiculed for repeating that the Jacobites had never ceased to plot, and that they would one day renew their attempt to destroy the present dynasty. PREPARATIONS. If England was not ready to meet this attempt, the fault would be with those who were now in power. Lord Chesterfield still maintained that the Jacobites in the metropolis were few, and that hostility to the Government was chiefly maintained there by the malicious and contemptible sect of Nonjurors. One Jacobite member in the Commons, Sir Francis Dashwood, was audacious, at least by inuendoes. Alluding to the harsh epithets flung at the Chevalier, he remarked that James II. had branded as an invader and usurper that William of Orange, who was afterwards hailed by the country as its glorious deliverer. He referred also to the incident in Roman history of the Roman soldiers refusing to march against foreign invaders till they had destroyed the tyranny which reigned at Rome. The application of these remarks was easy enough. They showed the spirit of the Jacobite party, particularly in London. The natural result ensued, namely, a proclamation to the justices to put in force the laws which had been framed against Papists and Nonjurors. The former were ordered to remove to a distance of at least ten miles from the metropolis, or to keep close within their habitations. Those persons who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration were to be deprived of their arms and horses; and every attempt at rioting was to be put down by armed force. Further, every person found corresponding with the Pretender or his sons were pronounced to be guilty of High Treason,—which involved forfeiture of life, title, and estates. If this seems stringent, it must be remembered that already had there been caught and caged in Newgate a Popish priest, who, putting in action the teaching of his Church that it only interfered with religion,—and with morals, which means everything else,—had, in the disguise of an imaginary captainship, been trying to enlist men into the service of the enemy.

DECLARATION OF WAR.

Then came the mutual declarations of war. That of France against England accused the latter power of every political enormity. That of England against France was equally explicit,—with the special addition that France had treacherously assisted Spain against England, when France was openly at peace with England, and that it was now aiding and abetting the Pretender who, through his son, was preparing to overthrow the royal family, government, and constitution of Great Britain.

What was the temper of the nation with regard to the present condition of things?