If Bradshaw excited some interest in the City aldermen, there was a Sir John Wedderburn, Bart., who found sympathy in men of both parties. His father, a stout Whig, had been at the head of the excise, in the Port of Dundee. Old Sir John had an ample estate, but being of a liberal and generous spirit, as the contemporary press remarks, his liberality and generosity utterly ruined his family. At his death there was no estate for his heirs to inherit. The new baronet, with his wife and family, took up his residence near Perth, in a thatched hut, with a clay floor, and no light except what came through the doorway. It was placed on a very small bit of land from which Sir John could not be ousted. He tilled his half acre with ceaseless industry, and he made what was described as ‘a laborious but starving shift’ to support his wife and nine children. They all went about barefoot. To the head of this family, a proposal was made, when the Jacobites occupied Perth, that he should collect all dues and imposts for Prince Charles Edward. Sir John’s poverty consented. He collected the taxes, but he never joined the Jacobite army. Nevertheless, when the army under the Duke of Cumberland came that way, Sir John was seized and sent south. Put upon his trial, he pleaded his poverty, his starving family, and his light offence. He was however condemned, though more guilty offenders had unaccountably escaped. He bore himself with a calm dignity till the adverse verdict was pronounced, and then he could not completely control an emotion which sprung rather from thoughts of his family, than for himself. The lowest and loyalest of the Londoners acknowledged that Sir John Wedderburn was a gentleman and deserving of pity. After his death, the king afforded pecuniary relief to his wife and family.
‘BISHOP’ COPPOCK.
Some of these unfortunate Jacobites manifested a dauntless bravery which almost amounted to absence of proper feeling. Coppock was one of them. Charles Edward had nominated this reverend gentleman to the bishopric of Carlisle. Leaving the bar, after sentence of death, with a doomed and somewhat terrified fellow prisoner,—‘What the devil are you afraid of?’ said the prelate; ‘we sha’n’t be tried by a Cumberland Jury in the next world.’
CHAPTER IX.
(1746.)
uring the summer, the parks had special attractions for the public. The tactics which were supposed to have won Culloden were ordered to be followed in the army. Consequently, the twenty-eight companies forming the First Regiment of Foot Guards were exercised in Hyde Park, by General Folliot, half of idle London looking on. ‘They went through their firing,’ as the papers reported, ‘four deep, with their bayonets fixed, as at the late battle near Culloden House, and performed the exercise, though quite new to them, exceeding well.’ Then, there was a little spectacle in the presentation to General St. Clair of a sword which had been taken from the Earl of Cromartie. When the earl possessed this weapon, the blade bore two inscriptions: ‘God preserve King James VIII. of Scotland!’ and ‘Prosperity to Scotland, and No Union!’ For these were substituted ‘God preserve King George II., King of Great Britain, France and Ireland!’ and ‘Prosperity to England and Scotland!’
AT THE WHIPPING POSTS.