WAR CRITICISM.
Carlisle being recaptured, London breathed again, and considered its past perils and future prospects. The fire-side critics of the war concluded, as the Earl of Shaftesbury did with his friends in London, ‘that eminus, we exceeded the ancients, but cominus we fell below them; and this was the result of our having, it was said, learnt the art of war from the Spaniards. We never used bayonets in our service till after the battle of Steinkirk, in King William’s time. Now the Highlanders by their way of attacking (new to our troops) make a quick impression and throw our men into confusion. This I imagine to be the principal reason of the Highlanders gaining such repeated advantages.’ Walpole wrote from Arlington Street: ‘With many other glories, the English courage seems gone too.’ Yet the old spirit was not extinct. When the Ministry tried to prevent Mr. Conway going as aide-de-camp with the Duke of Cumberland, on the ground of his being in Parliament, the duke informed the young soldier of the fact. ‘He burst into tears,’ says Walpole, ‘and protested that nothing should hinder his going—and he is gone.’
BREAKING AN OFFICER.
Without being uneasy at the idea of invasion the Government took precautions in case of emergency. It was announced that at the firing of seven guns at the Tower, answered by the same number in St. James’s Park, soldiers and officers should repair to previously named places of rendez-vous. No crowds were allowed to assemble. A race between two pairs of chairmen, carrying their chairs, round the Park, having caused a large mob to gather within hail of the palace, was stopped in mid career by a file of musqueteers, who drove competitors and spectators into the neighbouring streets. When the park was pretty well cleared, Captain Stradwick was brought out and ‘broke,’ for desertion. Why he was not shot, as the king said he deserved to be, was owing to some influence which seemed to be stronger than the king himself. Perhaps, as a consequence, the common rank and file who had deserted were allowed their lives, but at dear cost. They got a thousand lashes, administered half at a time, in Hyde Park; and on the off days the mob were regaled with the sight of soldiers getting their five hundred stripes for speaking evil of his Majesty in their drink.
REBEL PRISONERS.
Meanwhile, the river one day suddenly swarmed with galleys, which picked up numbers of ‘useful fellows to serve the king.’ Even the City taverns were broken into, and there similar seizure was made, but not without occasional mortal frays, in which there was much promiscuous shooting, and a forcible carrying off of other ‘useful fellows,’ who were hurried on board tenders, and thence sent to sea. There was hardly time for sympathy. A few women in the streets and by the river side filled the air with shrieks and clamour, but they were not much heeded. London became full of expectancy of the renewal of an old and a rare spectacle. The Carlisle prisoners were on their road to town. There were nearly four hundred of them, including about threescore officers. Those who were able to march were tied in couples, and two dragoons had charge of ten prisoners, one leading them by a rope from his saddle, the other ‘driving them up.’ The captured officers were mounted, but their arms and legs were tied. Batches of other captive men were sent by sea; some seem to have been exceptionally treated. The papers announced the arrival of ‘six coaches and six,’ filled with rebel prisoners, under an escort of horse and foot. The London gaols were emptied of felons, who were transferred to distant prisons, in order to ‘accommodate’ the captives till they were otherwise disposed of. But the most important arrival was that of the hero himself. The Duke of Cumberland, fresh from Carlisle, reached London on a dark January morning, at seven o’clock. Much was made of his having passed only ‘one night in bed,’ in that now easy day’s journey. The duke came with modesty and great becomingness. Shortly after reaching St. James’s he went straight to the little Chapel Royal. At the subsequent usual Sunday drawing-room, there was brilliancy with the utmost gaiety, such as had not been witnessed for many a year. After a few days the duke returned northward, departing with the same modesty that had marked his arrival. He left at one in the morning, but even at that ghostly hour, and in that inclement season, he was done honour to by a crowd which he could scarcely penetrate, whose torches were flashed to their brightest, and whose voices were pitched to the loudest, as their last ‘God speed!’ The temper of London may be seen in one of Walpole’s letters, in which he alludes to the too great favour which had been always shown towards Scotland since the last rebellion; and he expresses a hope that the duke will make an end of it.
LONDON MOBS.
In the meantime, old rancour against the Jacobites was embittered by the publication of various ‘provocating pamphlets;’ and the month came to a conclusion with the preachings of the 30th of January, and the comments made on the sermons next day. Bishop Mawson, of Chichester, preached before the Lords at St. Peter’s, Westminster; Dr. Rutherford before the Commons at St. Margaret’s; while a reverend gentleman, who is variously called ‘Pursack’ and ‘Persover,’ aroused the echoes of St. Paul’s in the ears of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Finally, an anonymous poet swept the lyre in laudation of the duke. How he made the chords ring may be gathered from a single line:—
Blast, gracious God, th’ assassins’ hell-bred scheme!
The London mob, on the Whig side of politics, cannot be said to have been more civilised than the same mob of thirty years earlier. One of its favourite sights was to see Jacobite prisoners brought into London. The captives were invariably ill-used; but there was a much more humane feeling manifested for such of them as might end their career by the axe or the halter. One day in February upwards of forty officers (including a French colonel of Engineers and four Frenchmen of lower grade) were brought into London in four waggons and a coach. The more dignified vehicle carried the French colonel. They were guarded by a strongly-armed escort. Some were taken to the New Prison in Southwark, some to Newgate. The French colonel in the coach, and his four countrymen in a cart, were driven to the Marshalsea. ‘They were very rudely treated by the populace,’ say the newspapers, ‘who pelted them with dirt, and showed all other marks of abhorrence of their black designs.’ Foreigners were just then looked upon with great suspicion. AMBASSADORS’ CHAPELS. Two servants of the Portuguese and Sardinian envoys, respectively, having let their tongues wag too saucily at a tavern, under the shield, as they thought, of ambassadorial protection, had been seized by the constables and clapped into irons. The envoys demanded their release; and much correspondence ensued between the Home Office and the envoys. It was settled that the legation could not shelter an offender against the law, even though the offender were a fellow-countryman of the legate. Some attempt was made to compel the foreign representatives to abstain from employing Popish priests of English birth in the chapels annexed to the ambassadors’ private residences. The answer was reasonable enough. As their Excellencies could bring no foreign priests of the Romish Church with them, they were obliged to employ English ecclesiastics who were priests of that Church, in the chapels of the respective embassies. These were the only ‘mass houses’ to which English Papists, it was said, could resort, and the Whigs denounced them as the smithies where red hot conspiracy was beaten into shape between foreign hammers and a British anvil.