The Comic History of England

by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

These measures only added fuel to the fire that was now setting the country in a blaze; and even the University of Oxford was threatened with assault by Major-General Pepper, who was the first to make the now venerable joke about mustard, which, with all our courage, we confess we dare not chronicle.*

* The curious reader is referred to "Joe Miller." Perhaps
the edition brought out under the title of "The Family Joe
Miller," is the best for the student's purposes.

In the north, the insurrection took a very bold form, and Mr. Forster, a gentleman of great ability—a barrister, we believe—joined with the Earl of Derwentwater, who was ready with all his retainers, the only kind of retainers, by the way, with which his learned colleague was at all familiar. Being joined by some gentlemen in blue bonnets, who had come from over the border, they proclaimed the Pretender, and would have seized upon Newcastle, with the intention of sparing the coals and sacking only the city; but the gate had been shut, and the whole party was not strong enough to force it open. They retired therefore to Hexham, and a literary gentleman among them bewailed their failure as he sat in the coffee-room of the inn at Hexham, in doleful hexameters. They next retired by way of Lancaster to Preston, whose Pans they hoped would prove preserving pans to themselves; but General Wills being sent to attack them, proved the fact, that where there are the Wills there are always the ways of accomplishing an object.

Mr. Forster, hearing that there was no hope, despatched a trumpeter—a gentlemanly young man, who was quite equal to a solo of the kind—to negociate a treaty. He could get no other answer than an intimation that the rebels might expect to be slaughtered; and, being very much cut up by the news, they wisely resolved to surrender. The noblemen and officers of the party were sent to London, where they were led through the streets bound together and pinioned, which caused one of them to wish that his pinions were those of a bird, so that he might be enabled to fly away from his captivity. Though the Pretender must have known, or might have known, that his pretentions were about as hopeless as they could possibly be, he resolved on landing in Scotland, and he positively arrived with nothing more than a special train of six gentlemen. He came in disguise, and passed through Aberdeen without being known, till he came to Feterosse, where he was met by the Earl of Mar and thirty nobles of the first quality, though all their quality could not of course make up for their lamentable deficiency in quantity. When the Pretender saw his friend's beggarly show of adherents, he addressed Mar with great levity, telling him he had been "a sad Mar to his hopes," and indulged in other poor frivolities. "As I've come, however," he added, "I may as well be proclaimed." And the ceremony was gone through with mock gravity. He next proceeded to Scone, "for," said he, "we must have a coronation, you know." And he behaved altogether in such a manner as to lead us to believe that he relished the ludicrous points of his own very ridiculous position. Having gone so far in the mockery, he crowned the absurdity instead of being crowned himself, by making a speech to his grand council, intimating that he had no arms to fight with, no ammunition to load the arms with if he possessed any, and no money to purchase the ammunition if he felt disposed to try its effects upon his enemies. Under these circumstances, he intimated that his presence among them should be regarded as a flying visit, just to say "How d'ye do?" and "Good-bye"; after which, with the latter salutation on his lips, he popped into a boat, and was "off again" for the Continent.

Instead of allowing this miserable rebellion to die a natural death—we cannot say that it ended in smoke, for the rebels had no money to purchase gunpowder—the Government of the day had the rashness to keep the thing alive by prosecuting those who had been concerned in it. Half a dozen nobles were seized and put upon their trial, when the poor creatures whimpering out an acknowledgment of their guilt, were sentenced to death, and two were taken to the scaffold. A third, the Lord Nithesdale, had also been condemned; but his mother having come to see him in prison, they got up between them a dramatic incident, by effecting an exchange of dress; and while the lady remained in gaol like a man, the gentleman walked away in female attire.

The prosecutions were not limited to the chiefs of this rebellious movement—if that can be called a movement which stuck fast in its very first steps—but some of the humblest adherents, or suspected adherents, of the Pretender's cause were included in the proceedings taken by the Government. Several were hanged, and some hundreds experienced what was facetiously termed the "royal mercy," by undergoing transportation for life to North America. This unnecessary and injudicious rigour had the effect of making the Government so unpopular, that, although according to the Triennial Act the Parliament ought to have been dissolved, the ministers were afraid of appealing to the country, and formed the audacious determination to introduce a Septennial Act, which, by the force of perseverance and impudence combined, was positively carried. Though George resided personally in England, his heart had never quitted Hanover, and he was continually keeping his eye upon the aggrandisement of that paltry electorate. For this purpose, he made free use of English money; and having intelligence at all times of the small duchies that the poverty of their owners occasionally threw into the market, he picked up those of Bremen and Verden at a very low figure.

Among the inconveniences occasioned to this country by allowing the sceptre to get into foreign hands, was the involving of England in foreign quarrels about foreign interests. Spain being in an unpleasant predicament, called upon George the First to join a league in her favour, and threatened to repudiate his claims to his dismal little duchies of Bremen and Verden, if he did not take the step that was required of him. As he could not well commit himself thus far, a war was commenced against England, and a Spanish expedition under the Duke of Ormond was fitted out to make a descent upon Scotland. With that happy adroitness in ruling the waves for which Britannia has long been celebrated, she caused them to rise as one billow against the hostile fleet, which was rapidly dispersed by the ocean's uppishness. Though the buoyancy of Britain, assisted by the boisterous energy of the sea, defeated the attempts of foreign powers, the internal condition of the country was far from satisfactory. King George neither comprehended the character nor the language of his new subjects, and a good understanding between the prince and the people was therefore impossible. His majesty spent as much time and as much money as he could upon the Continent, leaving his ministers to propose what measures they pleased, while he transmitted by post his consent to them, without knowing, or caring to inquire their object.

Perhaps, however, the heaviest blow that England's prosperity ever received was the result of one of the most marvellous instances on record of a co-operation between knavery and folly. To add to the extraordinary character of the infatuation we are about to record, the scheme that led to it was not original, and the victims had consequently received a warning by which they failed to profit. A Scotchman of the name of Law had swindled the whole of France by starting a company to pick up fortunes in the Mississippi, which proved one of the most gigantic misses ever known; but as one batch of fools will make many, it was calculated, shrewdly enough, that the Mississippi hoax, instead of putting people on their guard against fraud, would have just the effect of preparing them to be taken in by it.

A scrivener named Blunt—a fellow of uncommon sharpness, whose name is emblematical of a great partiality for cash—suggested a concern called the South Sea Company, which was to purchase all the debts due from the Government to all trading corporations, and thus become the sole creditor of the State. The National Debt was in fact to be bought up, and as there is a pretty clear understanding that the National Debt never will, or never can be paid, the advantages of the project must, upon the slightest reflection, have appeared at best apocryphal. The scrip in this grand concern came out heavy, for the securities were flatter than the public, when a bright idea flashed across the mind of Blunt for raising the wind and puffing up the shares in the South Sea Scheme to the utmost height that could be desired. He spread a report through paid paragraphs in the newspapers, that Gibraltar and Minorca were about to be exchanged for Peru, and the whole world went mad at the peru-sal. The story of this monstrous piece of universal insanity would afford a fine subject for an article from the pen of Dr. Forbes Winslow; * and indeed had he lived in the eighteenth century, the whole population would have been worthy to become the patients of that able and experienced master of the science of mental pathology.

* See the "Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental
Pathology." Edited by Forbes Winslow, M.D.