All military sights did not go off so pleasantly as the above. There is record of a soldier being shot by an undiscovered comrade in the new Culloden exercise. There is also the chronicling of the sentence of death having been passed on fifty-six deserters, who declined further service under King George. On being reprieved, they were paraded in St. James’s Park, for the public scorn, perhaps for the public sympathy. Thence, the Londoners saw them marched, under a strong guard, on their way to Portsmouth. They arrived there footsore, but the loyal folk refused to give them the refreshment which was generally offered to troops on the march and about to embark for war service abroad. These deserters were destined for Cape Breton, for ‘General Frampton’s regiment,’ a position celebrated for its power of using up all consigned to it. There were worse characters left behind. So disloyal and riotous were parts of the Westminster populace that the magistrates adorned several of the streets with new Whipping Posts. When constables heard a disloyal cry, or fancied they did, or had a loyal spite against a poor devil, they had him up to a Whipping Post, in a trice, dealt with him there in ruffianly fashion, and then took the patient before a magistrate to see if he deserved it. While too outspoken Jacobites and the ruffians of no particular politics were exhibited as patients at the Whipping Posts, the Pugilists took Whiggery by the arm and taught it the noble art of self-defence. Mr. Hodgkins, a great bruiser, fencer, and single-stick player of that day, loyally advertised that he was ‘fully resolved to maintain his school gratis to all well-wishers of King George and Duke William, that they may know how to maintain their cutlass against their enemies.’
All this while, arraigners and hangmen were kept in great professional activity. While rebel officers and men were being tried at Southwark and hanged at Kennington,—a process which went on to the end of the year,—so grand an episode was offered to the public in the trial of the rebel peers, that it took, in the public eye, the form of the chief spectacle, to which the Southwark butcheries were only accessories.
IN WESTMINSTER HALL.
When the day for the arraignment of the ‘rebel lords’ was fixed for July 28th, there was a general movement of ‘the Quality.’ All who belonged to it rushed to the country to get a preparatory breath of fresh air. Nobody, who was at all Somebody, or related thereto, was expected to remain there for the season. ‘You will be in town to be sure, for the eight and twentieth,’ wrote Walpole to George Montague (July 3rd). ‘London will be as full as at a Coronation. The whole form is settled for the trials, and they are actually building scaffolds (for spectators) in Westminster Hall.’
PREPARATIONS FOR THE NEW TRIALS.
The general public watched all the preliminaries of the trials of the lords with much interest. On the first Tuesday in July, late at night, the workmen began to enclose nearly two-thirds of Westminster Hall, ‘to build a scaffold for the trial of the lords now in the Tower.’ The mob watched its progress eagerly. By the next day, as we read in the papers, ‘the platform of the same scaffolding was laid, being even with the uppermost step of that leading to the Courts of Chancery and King’s Bench.’ All the colours that hung there since 1704, the trophies of Marlborough’s victories, were taken down, and all the canopies were removed from the shops or stations, in the hall, in order to make way for the galleries and scaffolding, which, it was said, would be kept up for some years, in case of future trials of Jacobites of lordly degree! All the following Sunday night, fifty workmen were plying saw, nail, and hammer; but the gates were shut to keep out a mob which, by pressure, noise, and drinking, impeded the work in hand. A favoured many, however, gazed at the royal box, for the Prince and Princess of Wales, on the right of the throne, and one on the left, for the Duke of Cumberland and his friends. Boxes were also erected for the foreign ministers next to the duke’s. No member of the royal family had the bad taste to be present, but the Duke of Cumberland took the oaths which would enable him to sit, as a peer, in Judgment on the lords whom he had captured. Happily, he thought better of it, or he was better advised, and he was becomingly absent from Westminster Hall, both as judge and as spectator.
At this juncture, when the feeling in London against the late Jacobite army was intensified by the accounts of the reckless and cruel acts which marked both the advance to Derby and the retreat, every Scotchman, and especially every Highlander, was looked upon as a horrible savage; but the Londoners got good counsel from the old seat of war itself. A letter from Fort Augustus, dated July 8th, appeared in most of the London papers, and it was well calculated to moderate the superabundant wrath of the metropolis. ‘We see,’ says the writer, ‘a good many letters here from London, that treat these people with the opprobrious name of savages, which is a term which I think they don’t deserve, for, excepting what relates to the rebellion, I can see nothing in their behaviour worse than other people, and, I am sorry to say, in many respects better, bringing rank to rank, and I only wish some fair measure was pursued, the better to understand their morals and dispositions by a friendly intercourse, which, I hope, when the rebellion is over, will be worth thinking on.’
THE LORD HIGH STEWARD.
On Monday, July 28th, the Lord High Steward set out in great pomp from his house in Great Ormond Street to open the proceedings in Westminster Hall. There were in the procession ’6 led coaches and six,’ and a stupendous state carriage, of which much had been previously said in the papers. The carriage was not so remarkable as the attendants upon it. Ten footmen, bareheaded, were clustered upon the platform which served for footboard in the rear. When the spectators had done admiring them, they turned to the vehicle itself, and rather contemptuously remarked that it was nothing more than the old faded state carriage of the mad Duchess of Buckingham, who used to go to Court in it, as a sprig of royalty, she being an illegitimate daughter of James II. However, there was mock splendour enough to satisfy reasonable spectators. The great Earl of Hardwicke, Lord High Steward, moved, according to the arrangements of the Master of the Ceremonies, with six maces before him as well as ten bareheaded footmen behind him; and less ceremony would not have suited the circumstance that was to begin at the bar, in the House of Lords, and end at the block, on Tower Hill.
THE SPECTATORS’ GALLERY.