London in the Jacobite times, Volume II

by Dr. Doran

THE YOUNG CHEVALIER.

After the prorogation of Parliament which followed in May, the king went abroad. He did not return till the end of July, more than a fortnight after the young Chevalier had sailed from Port St. Nazaire, with a band of Scotch and Irish adventurers, who, after much peril, arrived in the Hebrides. The Regency, in London, offered a reward of 30,000l. to anyone who should capture him on British ground. On the 4th of June King James III. was proclaimed, at Perth, King of Great Britain. On the 10th a similar proclamation was made at Edinburgh. Five days later the Highland army attacked, and in ten minutes, utterly routed Sir John Cope, seven miles from Edinburgh, near Preston Pans, and Gladsmuir. This victory left almost the whole of Scotland in possession of the Jacobites,—and the road open to them to invade England. They did not reach Carlisle till the 15th of November. On the 24th they were in Lancaster. On the 28th they entered Manchester, imposed a heavy requisition on the town, and were joined by some bold spirits among the younger men. On the 1st of December, Charles Edward entered Macclesfield. On the 4th that young prince, with 7,000 men, entered Derby, and losing heart, left it on the 6th, in retreat northward. On the 9th they were again in Manchester. On Christmas day, they entered Glasgow;—‘a very indifferent Christmas-box to the inhabitants,’ according to Ray; and on the 30th of December, Carlisle, in which a rebel garrison was stationed, surrendered at discretion to the young Duke of Cumberland. Therewith ended the rebel invasion of England. This succession of events greatly influenced the metropolis.

When the storm was threatening, and also when it burst, clergymen in town, and probably in the country also, opened their Bibles, questioning them as oracles, and interpreting the answers, according to their respective temperaments. One good man, whose eye fell upon the words of Jeremiah,—‘Evil appeareth out of the North, and great destruction,’ proclaimed to his congregation that the words had reference to the Pretender and his invasion of England. This application of the text has been pronounced to be as absurd as that of the ‘casting down of Mount Seir’ to the overthrow of the French.

FEELING IN LONDON.

For what London was feeling and saying in this eventful year, 1745, search must be made in the correspondence of the time. The letters of Walpole, for instance, begin the year with the expression of a fear, if Marshal Belleisle, who had been made a prisoner at Hanover, where he was travelling without a passport, should be allowed to go at large, on his word, in England, as it was reported he would be, that mischief would come of it. ‘We could not have a worse inmate! HOPES AND FEARS. So ambitious and intriguing a man, who was the author of this whole war, will be no bad general to head the Jacobites on any insurrection.’ The marshal was, at first, kept ‘magnificently close’ at Windsor, but as he cost the country there 100l. a day, he was sent to Nottingham, to live there as he pleased, and for the Jacobites to make what they could of him. For the moment, the Duke of Beaufort was more dangerous than the marshal. The duke was a declared, determined and an unwavering Jacobite, and led the party against Court and Ministry. At the end of April there was ‘nothing new.’ In May came the honourable catastrophe of Fontenoy, and the dishonourable sarcastic song made by Frederick, Prince of Wales, on his brother, the Duke of Cumberland’s glorious failure. Alluding to the duke, Walpole writes, ‘All the letters are full of his humanity and bravery. He will be as popular with the lower class of men as he has been for three or four years with the low women. He will be the soldiers’ ‘Great Sir,’ as well as theirs. I am really glad; it will be of great service to the family if any one of them come to make a figure.’ Walpole saw the necessity of having a hero opposed to the young Chevalier. One was sorely needed. Belleisle must have enchanted the Jacobites by his publicly asserting that this country was so ill-provided for defence, he would engage, with five thousand scullions of the French army, to conquer England. Walpole owned his fears. He was depressed by our disasters in Flanders, the absence of the king from England, that of ministers from London, ‘not five thousand men in the island, and not above fourteen or fifteen ships at home. Allelujah!’

HORACE WALPOLE’S IDEAS.

The Ministry released Belleisle, who went incog. about London, and was entertained at dinner by the Duke of Newcastle at Claremont, and by the Duke of Grafton at Hampton Court. Walpole compares the idle gossip about the French coming over in the interest of the Pretender, and the neglect of all defence, with the conduct of the Londoners on a report that the plague was in the city. ‘Everybody went to the house where it was, to see it!’ If Count Saxe, with ten thousand men, were to come within a day’s march of London, ‘people will be hiring windows at Charing Cross and Cheapside to see them pass by.’ Walpole, in truth, was as indifferent as he accused his contemporaries of being. If anything happened to the ship, what was that to him, he was only a passenger. He playfully described himself as learning scraps from ‘Cato,’ in case of his having to depart in the old, high, Roman fashion. Recollecting that he is writing on the anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick, he tacks a joyous P.S. to one of his letters, in the words, ‘Lord! ’tis the first of August, 1745, a holiday that is going to be turned out of the almanack!’ When the Government did begin to prepare for serious contingencies, Walpole expressed his belief of their being about as able to resist an invasion as to make one.

DIVISIONS IN FAMILIES.

When the young Chevalier, stealing a march upon Cope, was approaching Edinburgh, Walpole wrote from London, that people there had nothing to oppose, ‘scarcely fears.’ Lord Panmure, who had got his title through the attainder of his elder brother, for the ’15 affair, and the Duke of Athol, who owed his dukedom to the attainder of his elder brother, the Marquis of Tullibardine (who was then with Prince Charles Edward), for the same affair, left London, in order to raise forces in Scotland for the defence of the Hanoverian succession. Panmure, with other Scotch lords, raised a few men. Athol returned to London to announce his inability to get together a force for such a purpose; and when it was proposed to send the Duke of Argyle, Maccullummore excused himself on the singular ground that there was a Scotch Act of Parliament against arming without authority. There was a scene in a London house that might furnish a subject to a painter. The young Whig Duke of Gordon, at an interview with his Jacobite uncle, told the latter that he must go down to Scotland and arm his men. ‘They are in arms,’ was the reply. ‘You must lead them against the rebels.’ ‘They will wait on the Prince of Wales,’ rejoined the uncle, who alluded to the young Chevalier. The duke flew in a passion, but the uncle pulled out a pistol, and said it was in vain to dispute. As Walpole here drops the curtain over this scene, we may suppose that the little domestic drama was carried no further.

COURT AND CITY.