O that the muse might call, without offence,
The gallant soldier back to his good sense,
His temp’ral field so cautious not to lose;
So careless quite of his eternal foes.
Soldier! so tender of thy prince’s fame,
Why so profuse of a superior name?
For the King’s sake the brunt of battles bear;
But, for the King of King’s sake do not swear.
In his early youth Byrom had manifested strong Jacobite tendencies, but in the interval between the two rebellions—the Sacheverel riots of ’15 and the rising of ’45—his political opinions, if in no degree modified, had become much less demonstrative, and his Jacobitism was under the control of a possessor sufficiently cautious to prevent its imperilling his family interests or endangering his personal safety. His daughter “Beppy” was then a young lady of three-and-twenty; following her father’s example she had set up a diary, and some of the entries in her journal, with a letter written by Byrom to his kinsman and friend, Mr. Vigor, furnishes the most circumstantial and entertaining accounts of the Pretenders visit to Manchester extant. The doctor’s gossiping daughter was an ardent Jacobite, though a very prudent one, her sentimental devotion to the Stuart cause being most pronounced when personal danger was remote, the fair young diarist having little scruple in designating the wearers of the white cockade “rebels” when peril was at hand. For all that, her “Diary” is very entertaining. Apart from the vivid portraiture of the excitement and consternation into which the Manchestrians were thrown by the presence of the rebel army, it is impossible to read it without feeling that you are listening to the sprightly chat of the lively and unsophisticated writer.