GEORGE SELWYN.
The head was not held up nor its late owner denounced as a traitor. The Duke of Newcastle was displeased at the omission, but the Sheriffs justified themselves on the ground that the custom had not been observed at the execution of Lord Balmerino, and that the duke had not authorised them to act, in writing. A sample of the levity of the time is furnished in the accounts of the crowds that flocked to the trial as they might have done to some gay spectacle; and an example of its callousness may be found in what Walpole calls, ‘an excessive good story of George Selwyn.’ ‘Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution, and asked him how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off?’ “Nay,” says he, “if that be such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again!” When he was at the undertaker’s, Stephenson’s in the Strand, as soon as they had stitched him together, and were going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said, “My Lord Lovat, your Lordship may rise.”’
LOVAT’S BODY.
Lovat had expressed a passionate desire to be buried in his native country, under the shadow of its hills, his clansmen paying the last duty to their chief, and the women of the tribe keening their death-song on the way to the grave. The Duke of Newcastle consented. The evening before the day appointed for leaving the Tower, a coachman drove a hearse about the court of the prison, ‘before my Lord Traquair’s dungeon,’ says Walpole, ‘which could be no agreeable sight, it might to Lord Cromartie, who is above the chair.’ Walpole treats Lord Traquair with the most scathing contempt, as if he were both coward and traitor, ready to purchase life at any cost. After all, Lovat’s body never left the Tower. ‘The Duke of Newcastle,’ writes Walpole to Conway, 16th April, on which night London was all sky-rockets and bonfires for last year’s victory, ‘has burst ten yards of breeches-strings, about the body, which was to be sent into Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers to rise, to attend the most trivial burial. The Duke, who is always at least as much frightened at doing right as at doing wrong, was three days before he got courage enough to order the burying in the Tower.’
Lovat’s trial brought about a change in the law. On the 5th of May, Sir William Yonge, in the House of Commons, brought in a good-natured Bill, without opposition, ‘to allow council to prisoners on impeachment for treason, as they have on indictments. It hurt everybody at old Lovat’s trial, all guilty as he was, to see an old wretch worried by the first lawyers in England, without any assistance, but his own unpractised defence. This was a point struggled for in King William’s reign, as a privilege and dignity inherent in the Commons—that the accused by them should have no assistance of council. How reasonable that men chosen by their fellow-subjects for the defence of their fellow-subjects should have rights detrimental to the good of the people whom they are to protect. Thank God! we are a better-natured age, and have relinquished this savage principle with a good grace.’ So wrote Walpole in Arlington Street.
After Lovat’s death, the friends of the Happy Establishment ceased to have fears for the stability of the happiness or for that of the establishment. Walpole declined thenceforth to entertain any idea of Pretender, young or old, unless either of them got south of Derby. When Charles Edward ‘could not get to London with all the advantages which the ministry had smoothed for him, how could he ever meet more concurring circumstances?’ Meanwhile, the ‘Duke’s Head,’ as a sign, had taken place of Admiral Vernon’s in and about the metropolis, as Vernon’s had of the illustrious Jacobite’s—the Duke of Ormond.
THE WHITE HORSE, PICCADILLY.
There was in Piccadilly an inn, whose loyal host, Williams, had set up the then very loyal sign of ‘The White Horse’ (of Hanover). While Lovat’s trial was proceeding, that Whig Boniface had reason to know that the Jacobites were not so thoroughly stamped out as they seemed to be. Williams attended an anniversary dinner of the Electors of Westminster, who supported ‘the good old cause.’ He was observed to be taking notes of the toasts and speeches, and he was severely beaten and ejected. He laid an information against this Jacobite gathering, and he described one of the treasonable practices thus:—‘On the King’s health being drunk, every man held a glass of water in his left hand, and waved a glass of wine over it with the right.’ A Committee of the House of Commons made so foolish an affair of it as to be unable to draw up a ‘Report.’ If the enquiry had extended three years back, Walpole thinks, ‘Lords Sandwich and Grenville of the Admiralty would have made an admirable figure as dictators of some of the most Jacobite toasts that ever were invented. Lord Donerail ... plagued Lyttelton to death with pressing him to enquire into the healths of the year ’43.’
JACOBITE TOASTS.
On the first anniversary of Culloden, the celebration of the day was as universally joyous as when the news of the victory first reached town. The papers speak of a ‘numerous and splendid appearance of nobility,’ at St. James’s; of foreign ministers and native gentry, eager to pay their compliments to his Majesty on this occasion. At night, London was in a blaze of bonfires and illuminations. At the same time, in houses where Jacobites met, they drank the very enigmatical toast, ‘The three W’s,’ and talked of a private manifesto of the Chevalier to his faithful supporters, which stated that the late attempt was an essay, which would be followed in due time by an expedition made with an irresistible force. But there were also Jacobites who ‘mourned Fifteen renewed in Forty-five,’ and whose sentiments were subsequently expressed by Churchill’s Jockey in the ‘Prophecy of Famine’:—