London in the Jacobite times, Volume II

by Dr. Doran

THE ROYAL FAMILY.

Lord Harcourt, Prince George’s governor, was a pedantic man, having no sympathies with the young. My lord was not much of a Mentor for a young Telemachus. He bored the prince by enjoining him to hold up his head, and, ‘for God’s sake,’ to turn out his toes. The tutors of Prince George, after his father’s death, were in fact divided among themselves. Bishop Hayter, of Norwich, and Lord Harcourt were openly at war with Stone and Scott (the last put in by Bolingbroke), who were countenanced by the dowager princess and Murray, ‘so my Lord Bolingbroke dead, will govern, which he never could living.’ Murray, and Stone, and Cresset were Jacobites. Cresset called Lord Harcourt a groom, and the bishop an atheist. The princess accused the latter of teaching her sons, George and Edward, nothing. The bishop retorted by declaring that he was never allowed to teach them anything. His chief complaint was that Jacobite Stone had lent Prince George (or the Prince of Wales) a highly Jacobite book to read, namely, ‘The Revolutions of England,’ by Father D’Orléans; but the objectionable work had really been lent by ‘Lady Augusta’ to Prince Edward, and by him to his elder brother.

PARLIAMENTARY ANECDOTES.

Tindal, the historian, remarks that about this very year (1753) ‘a wonderful spirit of loyalty began to take place all over the kingdom.’ The debates in the two Houses at Westminster confirm this. The old anxious tone was no longer heard. Not a single reference to Jacobites and their designs can be found in the reports of the proceedings in the Legislature. ‘High Church,’ which was once a disloyal menace, became a subject of ridicule. Horace Walpole thus playfully illustrated the ignorance of the High Church party in a debate on the proposal to repeal the Jews’ Naturalization Bill. ‘I remember,’ he said ‘to have heard a story of a gentleman, a High Churchman, who was a member of this House, when it was the custom that candles could not be brought in without a motion regularly made and seconded for that purpose, and an order of the House pursuant thereto, so that it often became a question whether candles should be brought in or no, and this question was sometimes debated until the members could hardly see one another, for those who were against, or for putting off the affair before the House, were always against the question for candles. Now it happened, upon one of those occasions, that the High Church party were against the affair then depending, and therefore against the question for candles; but this gentleman, by mistake, divided for it, and when he was challenged by one of his party for being against them, “Oh Lord!” says he, “I’m sorry for it, but I thought that candles were for the church!”’

ATTEMPT TO MAKE ‘PERVERTS.’

Admiral Vernon, ‘the people’s man,’ supporting the popular prejudice against the emancipation of the Jews, said that if the Bill passed, rich Jews would insist upon the conversion of everyone employed by them, ‘and should they once get the majority of common people on their side, we should soon be all obliged to be circumcised. That this is no chimerical danger, Sir, I am convinced from what lately happened in my county. There was there a great and a rich Popish lady lived in it, who, by connivance, had publicly a chapel in her own house, where mass was celebrated every Sunday and Holiday. The lady, out of zeal for her religion, had every such day a great number of buttocks and sirloins of beef roasted or boiled, with plenty of roots and greens from her own garden, and every poor person who came to hear mass at her chapel was sure of a good dinner. What was the consequence? The neighbouring parish churches were all deserted, and the lady’s chapel was crowded, for as the common people have not learning enough, no more than some of their betters, to understand or judge of abstruse speculative points of divinity, they thought that mass, with a good dinner, was better than the church service without one, and probably they would judge in the same manner of a Jewish synagogue.’

DR. ARCHIBALD CAMERON.

In one sense Tindal’s view of the general increase of loyalty was not ill-founded. There was, however, an increase of Jacobite audacity also; but the Government were as well aware of it as they were that the Chevalier was hiding at Bouillon, and that the people there were heartily sick of him. One proof of their vigilance was made manifest in the spring of 1753. On the 16th of April, at 6 o’clock in the evening, a coach, with an escort of dragoons about it, and a captive gentleman within, was driven rapidly through the City towards the Tower. The day was the anniversary of Culloden. The time of day was that when the friends of the happy establishment were at the tipsiest of their tipsy delight in drunken honour of the victory. It was soon known who the prisoner was. He was Dr. Archibald Cameron, brother of Duncan Cameron, of Lochiel. Duncan had joined Charles Edward, in obedience to his sentimental prince, but with the conviction that the insurrection would be a failure. Archibald had followed his elder brother as in duty bound, and the prince from a principle of allegiance. After Culloden and much misery, they and others escaped to France by the skin of their teeth. The King of France gave Duncan the command of a regiment of Scots; Archibald was appointed doctor to it, and each pretty well starved on his appointment. Both were under attainder, and subject to death, not having surrendered before a certain date, or offered to do so after it.

Had Archibald remained quietly in France, his life at least would have been in no danger; but in the early part of 1753, he crossed to Scotland in the utmost secrecy, and when he landed he had not the remotest idea that the eye of Sam Cameron, a Government spy, was upon him, by whom his movements were made known to the Ministry at the Cockpit in Downing Street. There can be no doubt that the doctor went to his native land on a political mission. ‘He certainly,’ says Walpole, ‘came over with commission to feel the ground.’ He always protested that he was there on private business connected with the estate of Lochiel. His enemies declared that the private business referred to a deposit of money for the Jacobite cause, the secret of the hiding-place of which was known to Archibald, and that he intended to appropriate the cash to his own use. Had Cameron’s mission not been hostile to the established government, he probably would have asked permission to visit Scotland; and, more than probably, he would have been permitted to do so. Be this as it may, his namesake, the spy, betrayed him; and the Justice Clerk of Edinburgh, washing his hands of the business, sent the trapped captive to London, where he arrived on the seventh anniversary of the decisive overthrow of the Stuart cause, and while the ‘joyous and loyal spirits’ were getting preciously hysterical in memory thereof. The ‘quality,’ however, were supremely indifferent ‘Nobody,’ writes Walpole, ‘troubled their head about him, or anything else but Newmarket, where the Duke of Cumberland is at present making a campaign, with half the nobility, and half the money of England, attending him.’

BEFORE THE COUNCIL.