Critics, who long have scorn’d, must now admire,
For who can say his Ode now wants its fire!
THE JACOBITE MUSE.
The laureate’s odes could neither make people loyal, nor keep them so. On the other hand, the Jacobite Muse, with her petticoat busked up to her knee, was as brisk and winning as Maggie Lauder, especially in Scotland. She gave much concern to the people at St. James’s and the Cockpit, from the beginning to the end of the year. She was working mischief in the north. How matters were going on there, and how different was the treatment of the Scotch Muse, in December, from that of England before the throne of George, at St. James’s, in the preceding January, is told in the London papers. Captain Stafford, of Pulteney’s Foot, was stationed in Aberdeen, where the Jacobite Muse was rampant. The captain seized the singers of treasonable ballads in the streets, and brought them, with ballads and publishers, before the magistrates. These were Jacobites, and they could see no harm in the minstrels or the muse; and they discharged the peripatetic singing agents of the young Chevalier. They would not even confiscate the ballads. This the loyal captain took upon himself to do; he brought the whole mass of harmonious treason from the printer’s to the Market Place, and set fire to the ton of songs that was intended to raise one. While they were burning he made a speech, of which this is one of the flowers:—‘May all the enemies of His Most Sacred Majesty, King George, our rightful and lawful King, be consumed off the face of the earth, as the fire consumeth these vile and treasonable ballads.’ For which the captain was much commended in and about St. James’s.
PRISONS AND PRISONERS.
The disloyal muse was not silent in London. Macdonald, ‘said to be an Irish priest,’ made the echoes of a Jacobite tavern in George Street, Bloomsbury, reecho with treasonable songs till he was flung into Newgate,—which then was a sentence of death. The gaol-fever was then destroying prisoners, judges, and witnesses, and sweeping life out of hundreds of homes in the vicinity. While suppressing chords of a lyre which was soon re-strung, a certain sort of service was not forgotten. ‘We hear,’ says the ‘Penny Post,’ ‘that a pension of 400l. per annum is settled on a person eminently concerned in the late Rebellion, for services done by him.’ The Government treated Lovat’s son with justice,—gave him a free pardon, he having been an unwilling rebel. As for emptying the London prisons of convicted rebels, they seemed to be filled as fast as they were emptied. Some of the captives were sent over the Atlantic, others were allowed to transport themselves, and many were set free altogether. A little matter, however, could cast a man into a dungeon. The ‘Daily Post’ (in July) records that ‘A Person of Note has arrived in Town, in the Custody of a Messenger, from Scotland. He is accused of seditious Practises, particularly in encouraging the use of the Highland Dress.’ A good look-out was kept at the Tower, which was undergoing repair, and sentinels showed much alacrity in firing on, or over, people who approached too near the Tower ditch after sun-set.
This year is one of several assigned to a secret visit of the young Chevalier and a friend to the exterior of the Tower. As very few people really knew where he was residing, this story was probably invented. The London papers said of Charles Edward, in the spring, ‘It is currently reported that the young Pretender, who lately made such a disturbance in these kingdoms, died a few days ago in Switzerland.’ However, the prince was alive again in June. In that month the London and Paris journals were treating of a trade riot which was being turned to political purposes. In June, soon after the king left London for Hanover, the metropolis was disturbed by a report that a body of Northumberland colliers, to the amount of six thousand, had left the pits and had scattered themselves among the hills and about the border. Out of what seems to have been a mere strike, the ‘Gazette de Hollande’ made an incipient insurrection. On the faith of its Jacobite correspondent in London, it announced that one of the leaders of the colliers had ascended a hill, and in presence of his followers had proclaimed Charles Edward as ‘King of England, France, and Ireland,’ and ‘Defender of the Faith,’ to which the devout pitmen had replied with a fervent ‘Amen!’
‘DEFENDER OF THE FAITH.’
‘Defender of the Faith!’ What could this mean? It is the first ‘inkling’ of the young Chevalier’s playing with his ‘orthodoxy.’ The ‘fermentation’ puzzled a French journalist, who, at the close of June, wrote thus: ‘Prince Edward (sic) keeps up an intercourse with secret correspondents in England; and one does not absolutely know in what corner of Europe he is residing. He is said to have gone over the whole of the North. He is an extraordinary and indefatigable man; and travels twenty leagues a-foot, with a couple of confidential followers. If he were daring enough to pass into Scotland, during the King of England’s absence, what, without a party on which he can depend, will he be able to accomplish, wanting (as he does) arms and money, and especially without having publicly embraced the Anglican religion?’
NEWS FOR LONDON.