The king’s speech, on opening Parliament in January, 1726, rather alarmed London (which was not dreaming of the recurrence of evil times), by assurances that in the City and in foreign Courts intrigues were then being carried on for the restoration of the Pretender. Additions to the armed force of the realm were suggested as advisable. A suspicion arose that in this suggestion the defence of Hanover from foreign aggression was more thought of than that of England against the Chevalier. However, the Lords dutifully replied:—
‘We can easily believe that at such a juncture, new schemes and solicitations are daily making by the most profligate and abandoned of them (the enemies of the King and Government), to revive the expiring cause of the Pretender; all which, we assure ourselves, can have no other effect than to hasten his destruction and the utter ruin of all his perjured adherents.’
The majority in the Commons, not a whit less loyal, used similar terms, adding, with reference to traitors near St. James’s: ‘The disaffected and discontented here have not been less industrious by false rumours and suggestions to fill the minds of the people with groundless fears and alarms, in order to affect the public credit, and, by distressing the government, give encouragement to the enemies of our peace.’
POLITICAL WRITERS.
Two notable persons who had, in their several ways, filled people’s minds with groundless alarms, now departed from the stage. On the 5th of February died the two great antagonistic news-writers of this Jacobite time, Abel Roper and George Ridpath. The former was proprietor of the Tory ‘Post Boy,’ the latter of the Hanoverian ‘Flying Post.’ Pope has pilloried both in the ‘Dunciad,’ and pelted them in an uncomplimentary note. The Whig ‘Weekly Journal’ says of Abel, that in the ‘Post Boy’ ‘he has left such abundant testimony for his zeal for indefeasible hereditary right, for monarchy, passive obedience, the Church, the Queen (Anne), and the Doctor (Sacheverel), that the public can be no strangers to his principles either in Church or State.’ Ridpath, Ropers celebrated antagonist, had been obliged in 1711 to fly to Holland, to escape the consequences of too severely criticising Queen Anne’s Ministry. In exile, he wrote ‘Parliamentary Right Maintained, or the Hanover Succession Justified.’ This was by way of a confuting reply to the ultra-Jacobite work of Dr. Bedford, ‘Hereditary Right to the Crown of England Asserted.’ Ridpath, having rendered such good service to the Hanoverian succession, appeared in London, as soon as George I., himself. He got his reward in an appointment to be one of the Patentees for serving the Commissioners of the Customs, &c., in Scotland, with stationery wares!
WHARTON, BOASTING.
Ridpath was a sort of public intelligencer for the Government. It is certain, on the other hand, that not only was the Government in London well served by its own private ‘Intelligencers,’ but it was equally well supplied through the folly of Jacobites at foreign Courts. From the British Envoys at those Courts dispatches reached London, which must have often made the Cockpit, where the Cabinet Ministers met, joyous with laughter. For example, towards the end of April, Mr. Robinson was reading a dispatch from Mr. Keen at Madrid, in which the latter described the Duke of Wharton, then a fugitive, as ever drinking and smoking; and such a talker in his cups as to betray himself, his party, and their designs. Keen encouraged his visits, accordingly. ‘The evening he was with me he declared himself the Pretender’s Prime Minister and Duke of Wharton and Northumberland. “Hitherto,” says he, “my master’s interest has been managed by the Duchess of Perth and three or four other old women who meet under the portal of St. Germain. He wanted a Whig and a brick van to put them in the right train, and I am the man. You may now look upon me, Sir Philip Wharton, Knight of the Garter, and Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the Bath, running a course, and by God, he shall be hard pressed. He bought my family pictures, but they will not be long in his possession; that account is still open. Neither he nor King George shall be six months at ease, as long as I have the honour to serve in the employ I am in.”’ Wharton was telling the Duke of Ormond that his master did not love foxhunting, but that he promised to go to Newmarket. To which Ormond answered, ‘he saw no great probability of it on a sudden, but wished the Pretender might take such care of his affairs that he might be able to keep his word.’
Besides a promise to go to Newmarket, there was shadowed forth another promise this year, which was, or was not, performed some years later—namely, the adhesion of the young Chevalier to the Church of England. Probably from some follower of the exiled family was derived the information, which was put into London newspaper shape in the following fashion, in the month of July:—
‘The Chevalier de St. George is at his last shifts, for now his eldest son is to be brought up in the principles of the Church of England. To give a proof of which he was led by a Church at Rome, by his Governor, who did not stop to let him kneel at the singing of the Ave Maria.’
PRINCE WILLIAM, DUKE OF CUMBERLAND.