There was something about both lords which diminishes in a certain degree our pity for them. Kilmarnock and Balmerino were both brave men, each in his way. The first had a terror of death, but heroically concealed it. The latter had nothing to conceal, for he was insensible to fear. But both were void of lofty principles. Kilmarnock childishly pleaded that his poverty and not his will drove him to join the young Prince Charles Edward. This plea was put forth in his apologetic speech, as well as in private. ‘My lord,’ he said to the Duke of Argyle, who had expressed his sorrow at seeing Lord Kilmarnock in such an unhappy condition, ‘for the two kings and their rights, I cared not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving; and by God, if Mahomet had set up his standard in the Highlands, I had been a good Mussulman for bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat!’ This poor hungry and noble Scot was not nice as to the company with whom he dined. So miserable had been his condition in London that he was not above taking his dinner with a dealer in pamphlets sold in the street. This circumstance was told to Horace Walpole by an attendant at the Tennis Court in the Haymarket, where Kilmarnock occasionally showed himself. ‘He would often have been glad,’ said the professional tennis-player, ‘if I would have taken him home to dinner!’ The tennis-player was above stooping to take up with a Scotch lord who could condescend to dine with a dealer in ballads, broadsides, and pamphlets. And yet this Scottish peer had an estate, and a steward upon it, in Scotland. In neither was there much profit. Lady Kilmarnock once importuned the steward, for a whole fortnight, for money. All that she could obtain from him at last, to send to her lord in London, was three shillings! The steward seems an unnecessary luxury, and his place a sinecure. Horace Walpole’s father had settled a pension on Kilmarnock, which Lord Wilmington, on coming into power, had taken away. Thenceforth, in London, at least, he often wanted a dinner.
THE PRINCIPLES OF BALMERINO.
Balmerino had even less of noble principle than Kilmarnock. In the Rebellion year of 1715, he was on the Hanoverian side. The Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Argyle, was warned not to trust him; but the duke relied on him, and Balmerino did his duty under the duke at Sheriff-Muir. When that rather indecisive victory had been ‘snatched’ on the Whig side, Balmerino went off with his troops to the Pretender, ‘protesting,’ as Walpole says, ‘that he had never feared death but that day, as he had been fighting against his conscience.’ He was treated very leniently by the Government in London. They pardoned
LENIENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT.
a crime which, according to military men, made him infamous for ever. The pardon lost some of its grace from the fact that it was granted simply to engage the vote of Balmerino’s brother at the election of Scotch Peers! The deserter at Sheriff-Muir took up arms against the side that had pardoned his desertion. Like Lord Kilmarnock, he pleaded the pressure of poverty.
CHAPTER X.
(1746.)
etween condemnation and execution, Drury Lane, as if London had not had enough of trials and judgments, got up a showy spectacle, in one act, partly obtained from Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V.,’ called ‘The Conspiracy Discovered, or French Policy Defeated,’ with ‘a representation of the Trial of the Lords for High Treason, in the reign of Henry V.’ This was first acted on the 5th of August. But the populace knew where to find a ‘spectacle, gratis.’