Gazing at the heads above Temple Bar became a pastime. Pickpockets circulated among the well-dressed crowd, reaping rich harvest; but, when detected, they were dragged down to the adjacent river, and mercilessly ‘ducked,’ which was barely short of being drowned. A head, called ‘Layer’s,’ had been there for nearly a quarter of a century. An amiable creature, in a letter to a newspaper, thus refers to it, in connection with those recently spiked there:—‘Thursday, August 7.—Councillor Layer’s head on Temple Bar appears to be making a reverend Bow to the heads of Towneley and Fletcher, supposing they are come to relieve him after his long Look-out, but as he is under a mistake, I think it would be proper to put him to Rights again, which may be done by your means.—An Abhorrer of Rebellion.’
THE DUKE AT VAUXHALL.
About this time Walpole offers, with questionable alacrity, evidence against the character of the Duke of Cumberland. The duke had fixed an evening for giving a ball at Vauxhall, in honour of a not too reputable Peggy Banks. The evening proved to be that of the day on which the lords were condemned to death, the 1st of August. The duke immediately postponed the ball, but Walpole says he was ‘persuaded to defer it, as it would have looked like an insult to the prisoners.’ After all, the unseemly festivity was only deferred from the 1st of August to the 4th; and Walpole was one of the company. He saw the royalties embark at Whitehall Stairs, heard the National Anthem played and sung on board state city-barges; and saw the duke nearly suffocated by the crowds that greeted him on his landing at Vauxhall. He was got safely ashore, not being helped by the awkward officiousness of Lord Cathcart who, a few evenings previously, at the same place, stepping on the side of the boat to lend his arm to the duke, upset it; and the conqueror at Culloden and my lord were soused into the Thames up to their chins.
OPINION IN THE CITY.
In another letter Walpole declares that the king was inclined to be merciful to the condemned Jacobites, ‘but the Duke, who has not so much of Cæsar after a victory as in gaining it, is for the utmost severity.’ Walpole adds the familiar incident: ‘It was lately proposed in the city to present him with the freedom of some company;’ one of the aldermen said aloud: ‘Then let it be of the Butchers!’ If this alderman ever said so, he represented the minority among citizens. ‘Popularity,’ writes Walpole (August 12th, 1746), ‘has changed sides since the year ’15, for now, the city and the generality are very angry that so many rebels have been pardoned. Some of those taken at Carlisle dispersed papers at their execution, saying they forgave all men but three, the Elector of Hanover, the pretended Duke of Cumberland, and the Duke of Richmond, who signed the capitulation of Carlisle.’ This bravado in the North was not calculated to inspire mercy in the members of the administration (who were the real arbiters of doom) in London.
IN THE TOWER.
People of fashion went to the Tower to see the prisoners as persons of lower ‘quality’ went there to see the lions. Within the Tower, the spectator was lucky who, like Walpole, in August, ‘saw Murray, Lord Derwentwater (Charles Radcliffe), Lord Traquair, Lord Cromartie and his son, and the Lord Provost, at their respective windows.’ The two lords already condemned to death were in dismal towers; and one of Lord Balmerino’s windows was stopped up, ‘because he talked to the populace, and now he has only one which looks directly upon all the scaffolding.’ Lady Townshend, who had fallen in love with Lord Kilmarnock, at the first sight of ‘his falling shoulders,’ when he appeared to plead at the bar of the Lords, was to be seen under his window in the Tower. ‘She sends messages to him, has got his dog and his snuff-box, has taken lodgings out of town for to-morrow and Monday night; and then goes to Greenwich; foreswears conversing with the bloody English, and has taken a French master. She insisted on Lord Hervey’s promising her he would not sleep a whole night for Lord Kilmarnock! And, in return, says she, “Never trust me more if I am not as yellow as a jonquil for him!” She said gravely the other day, “Since I saw my Lord Kilmarnock, I really think no more of Sir Harry Nisbett than if there was no such man in the world.” But of all her flights, yesterday was the strongest. George Selwyn dined with her, and not thinking her affliction so serious as she pretends, talked rather jokingly of the executions. She burst into a flood of tears and rage, told him she now believed all his father and mother had said of him; and with a thousand other reproaches, flung upstairs. George coolly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and made her sit down to finish the bottle. “And pray, Sir,” said Dorcas, “do you think my mistress will be prevailed upon to let me go see the execution? I have a friend that has promised to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the night before.”—My lady has quarrelled with Sir Charles Windham, for calling the two lords, malefactors. The idea seems to be general, for ’tis said, Lord Cromartie is to be transported, which diverts me for the dignity of the peerage. The Ministry really gave it as a reason against their casting lots for pardon, that it was below their dignity.’ Walpole, who has thus pictured one part of London, in 1746, says, in a subsequent letter,—‘My Lady Townshend, who fell in love with Lord Kilmarnock, at his trial, will go nowhere to dinner, for fear of meeting with a rebel-pie. She says, everybody is so bloody-minded that they eat rebels.’
LORD CROMARTIE.
The Earl of Cromartie, the smallest hero of the Jacobite group, was among the most fortunate. He owed his comparative good luck to the energy of his countess who, having driven him into rebellion, moved heaven and earth to save him from the consequences. One Sunday, she obtained admission to St. James’s, and presented a petition to the king, for her husband’s pardon. The sovereign was civil, but he would not at all give her any hope. He passed on, and Lady Cromartie swooned away. On the following Wednesday, she presented herself at Leicester House, to procure the good offices of the Princess of Wales, accompanied by her four children. The princess, seeing the force and tendency of this argument, ‘made no other answer,’ says Gray, in a letter to Wharton, ‘than by bringing in her own children, and placing them by her; which, if true, is one of the prettiest things I ever heard.’ Lady Cromartie and her daughter, who was as actively engaged as her mother, prevailed in the end. Her lord was pardoned; and Walpole made this comment thereupon: ‘If wives and children become an argument for saving rebels, there will cease to be a reason against their going into rebellion.’ Walpole’s remarks are only the ebullition of a little ill-temper. Writing to Mann, in August, 1746, he says, ‘The Prince of Wales, whose intercession saved Lord Cromartie, says he did it in return for old Sir William Gordon (Lady Cromartie’s father), coming down out of his death-bed, to vote against my father in the Chippenham election. If His Royal Highness,’ adds Walpole, ‘had not countenanced inveteracy, like that of Sir Gordon, he would have no occasion to exert his gratitude now, in favour of rebels.’
LORD KILMARNOCK.