London in the Jacobite times, Volume II

by Dr. Doran

THE HAVOC OF WAR.

London Whig temper was irritated in another direction. There was not only a reckless assertion of Jacobitism on the part of the prisoners from the north, but there was abundance of sympathy manifested for them. Moreover, full permission was given to the practical application of this sympathy. Jacobite visitors poured into the prisons, and the captives ate, drank, and were merry with them, regardless of what the morrow might bring. Many of the prisoners had pockets well furnished with gold; and where this was wanting it was supplied by Jacobite outsiders. Scarcely a day passed without waggoners or porters depositing in the first lodge hampers of the richest wines and of the finest delicacies. The warders rejoiced, for they took toll of all; and the prison chaplains had some idea that this good time was the beginning of the Millennium.

On the other hand, there was much more misery in the loyal than in the Jacobite army. The Londoners saw nothing for the encouragement of loyalty in such a sight as the landing at the Tower wharf of some of the troops that had been with Cope at Preston Pans. ‘The poor men,’ say all the papers, ‘were in a most miserable shocking condition. Some without arms or legs, others their noses cut off and their eyes put out; besides being hacked and mauled in many parts of their bodies, after a most terrible and cruel manner.’ This ‘atrocity’ was forgotten in the news that roused London in April.

FLYING REPORTS.

The course of war in Scotland, from the beginning of the year to the 16th of April, was in this wise. On the 17th of January Hawley was defeated at Falkirk. On the 30th, the Duke of Cumberland arrived in Edinburgh. March 14th, news came that the Highland army had taken Fort Augustus and had blown up Fort George. The Ladies Seaforth and Mackintosh headed two rebel clans on the hills; but their husbands were with the duke’s army! About the same time old Lord Lovat stimulated the rebel resistance by proclaiming that it was the intention of the Duke of Cumberland to transport the Highlanders to America. On April 3rd, the rebels captured Blair Castle, and on the 16th the duke’s victory at Culloden proved decisive of the fate of the Stuarts.

Exactly a week after the Duke of Cumberland gained the victory, a report to that effect reached London, but there was no news from the duke himself till the 25th. His business-like account of the battle appeared in the ‘London Gazette’ next day. In the interim the London Jacobites in their places of resort asserted loudly that the duke was in full retreat; and it was whispered that if he was hopelessly beaten, the ‘Papists would rise all over the kingdom.’ But now ‘hope’ herself was beaten out of the souls of Papists and Jacobites. The military in London were in a vein of swaggering delight. They talked of the young duke’s briefly heroic address to a cavalry regiment on the point of charging. He patted the nearest man to him on the back, and cried aloud, ‘One brush, my lads, for the honour of old Cobham!’ NEWS OF CULLODEN. Then was curiosity stirred in London barracks as to which regiments were to get the prize for bravery, subscribed by the Corporation of London—namely 5,000l. The duke so wisely distributed it as to rebuke nobody. Veterans at Chelsea were looking at the vacant spaces where they should hang the captured flags, and were disappointed when they heard at the Horse Guards that the duke, considering that it was said how little honour was connected with such trophies, had sent the flags to Edinburgh to be burnt by the common hangman. The Chelsea veterans, however, envied the capturers of the (four) flags; for to each man the duke gave sixteen guineas. Medals and crosses were not yet thought of. His generosity was lauded as enthusiastically as his valour.

While the Jacobites were overwhelming him with charges of cruelty and meanness, the friends of ‘the present happy establishment’ were circulating stories in and about London of his humanity and liberality. Soldiers of the young Chevalier’s army had wreaked their vengeance upon Mr. Rose, the minister at Nairn—on himself and his house. He was a Whig and anti-Romanist, who had favoured the escape of some prisoners taken by the Jacobite army. The Highlanders burnt his house, and, tying the minister up, they gave him 500 lashes. The duke, on hearing of this outrage, fell into uncontrollable fury, and swore he would avenge it. If there was some savagery at and after Culloden, no wonder! Such, at least, was the London feeling among the duke’s friends. But the feeling generally was one of ecstacy at the decisive victory. Lord Bury, who had arrived on the 25th with the news direct from the duke to the king, could hardly walk along the then terraced St. James’s Street for the congratulations of the crowd. Nobody thought such a halcyon messenger was too highly rewarded with a purse of a thousand guineas, and with being nominated own aide-de-camp to King George.

A POPULAR HOLIDAY.

That 25th of April was indeed a gala day for the London mob. They had ample time for breakfast before they gathered at the ‘end of New Bond Street, in Tyburn Road’ (as Oxford Street was then called), to see the young footman, Henderson, hanged for the murder of his mistress, Lady Dalrymple. The culprit did not die ‘game,’ and the brutes were disappointed, but they found consolation in the fall of a scaffolding with all its occupants. Then they had time to pour into the Park and see four or five sergeants shot for trying to desert from King George’s service to King James’s. Moreover there was a man to be whipt somewhere in the City, and a pretty group of sight-seers assembled at Charing Cross in expectation of ‘a fellow in the pillory.’ What with these delights, and the pursuing Lord Bury with vociferations of sanguinary congratulation, the day was a thorough popular holiday.

The anxiety that had been felt in London before Culloden may be measured by the wild joy which prevailed when the news of the victory arrived. Walpole, in Arlington Street, on the evening of the 25th April, writes: ‘The town is all blazing around me as I write with fireworks and illuminations. I have some inclination to wrap up half a dozen sky-rockets to make you drink the duke’s health. Mr. Dodington, on the first report, came out with a very pretty illumination, so pretty that I believe he had it by him, ready for any occasion.’