(Place Book for the Year 1745.)
WESTMINSTER—THE TWO-SHILLING BUTCHER. 1747.
Lord Trentham’s selection as a lord of the admiralty occurred somewhat later (1749). The second candidate was Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who, as usual, was supported by a mob of Jack Tars, or of ruffians dressed in sailors’ clothes for the occasion, a common party subterfuge at the Westminster elections. The candidates put forward for the suffrages of the “Independent Electors,” and who came out of the contest ingloriously, were, as first announced, Sir Thomas Clarges (one of the stewards of the association) and Sir John Phillips (who was a steward in 1744); after a ten-days’ canvass the latter declined to proceed in his candidature, on the plea of ill health, and Sir Thomas Dyke was put up in his stead. Early in the contest a well-executed caricature, in the manner of Boitard or Gravelot, both artists being contemporary with Hogarth, was offered to the public under the title of “The Two-Shilling Butcher.” It was at this election that the highest personages canvassed. The Duke of Cumberland and the Prince of Wales appeared in support of the rival factions. In the pictorial view of this situation, Lord Trentham, a dandified person dressed in the extreme of French taste, is in conference with his “backer” the “Two-Shilling Butcher,” who has been supposed by Thomas Wright and other authorities to represent the “Culloden Butcher,” i.e. the Duke of Cumberland. Mr. F. G. Stephens, who has described all the early caricatures in the Hawkins Collections with the utmost pains and minutiæ, sets down this personage as Mr. Butcher, the agent to the Duke of Bedford, whose residence is introduced in the rear. However, the figure in the present version corresponds with similar representations of the stout Cumberland Butcher; moreover, an allusion to cattle put into the mouth of this personage strongly indicates, by analogy with other caricatures on “horned cattle,” that none other than the duke is meant. The results of the election were at this time uncertain. The affected lordling, also satirized as Sir Silkington, is drawling, “Curs me! you’d buy me, ye Brutes, at 2s. p. Head Bona fide?” to which the figure travestied as a butcher, with apron, knife, and steel, is responding, “My Lord, there being a Fatality in ye Cattle, that there is 3000 above my Cut, tho’ I offered handsome.” The “3000” presumably refers to the Association of Independent Electors, who, at the previous poll (1741), registered for the “patriot” candidates (Vernon and Edwin), but were found wanting in 1747, as the figures at the close of the poll demonstrated. The Duke of Bedford’s residence is introduced to recall the circumstance that he and the candidate were close matrimonial connections, the duke having married the eldest daughter of John, Earl Gower. In front of this building, with the “bustos” of sphinxes above the posts of the gateway, is another important personage, who is bribing rival canvassers with gold openly filched from the pockets of Britannia, who is highly indignant at the proceeding; she is made to exclaim, with reason, “Ye Gods, what pickpockets!” The people seen in the dark transaction of being bribed were defectors from “Phillips and Clarges,” demoralized by the spell of gold; another voter is hastening away, denouncing the venality of these persons. One of the sphinxes is exclaiming—“We can’t decoy them in!” while labels, carried through the air by pigeons, record “The Independent has it,” and “For Yorkshire.” On the opposite side is shown the front of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, with its dial and the motto “So passes ye glory of ye world.” Before its portals stand the rival candidates, Sir Thomas Clarges and Sir Thomas Dyke; they are showing their contempt for mere “placemen representatives” by trampling upon government bribes: “Places in Exchequer we tread on,” and “No lucrative Employment.” Near them are the poll clerks, and the returning officer, with the poll-book under his charge. Beside the “independent” candidates are shown their supporters: one of these, bearing in his hand the cap of liberty, is pressing the latter on the acceptance of the electors, and assuring them, “Those candidates will serve you!” while a scroll, borne above the heads of the voters, carries the warning, “No Trentham!”
THE HUMOURS OF THE WESTMINSTER ELECTION; OR, THE SCALD MISERABLE INDEPENDENT ELECTORS IN THE SUDS. 1747.
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Other caricatures appeared on the same subject, which excited, as usual, the largest share of public interest during the elections throughout the country. One of these first appeared, in compliment to the Scottish Rebellion, the latest novelty of the time, as “The Jaco-Independo-Rebello-Plaido.” In this version the business of the election is represented to take place before Westminster Hall, as a further allusion to the Jacobites and Lord Lovat’s trial there. The two parties and their respective head-quarters, established at taverns, are represented, and above all hovers the power of Destruction, always pictured as an important agent of “the other side,” according to the respective allegations of the contending parties. The Devil, in the present instance, is made “to take care of his own,” and has a stock of halters and axes for the rebels. “I have the Fee in my hands,” saith the Evil One. One side is appropriated to Ministerialists at the sign of Jolly Bacchus and the (Rabbit) Warren. Two persons are leaning from the first-floor window, and exhorting those with votes to “Give the Devil his due”—i.e. the Jacobites. The most prominent figure is a butcher; and no doubt, according to Mr. F. G. Stephens’s suggestion, the person thus implied is Mr. Butcher, the Duke of Bedford’s agent, and a less distinguished person than the “Cumberland Duke” pictured in the “Two-Shilling Butcher.” He is waving a scroll endorsed, “Trentham and Warren.” The butcher agent is surrounded by partisans; Admiral Sir Peter Warren’s sailors (a Lascar among them) are asserting “bludgeon law;” the people are pushing to the Governmental head-quarters, crying “No independency” and “No Pretender,” as if the terms were synonymous; a Frenchman may be identified in the crowd; and a person is offering the butcher a paper, “They squeak.” The head-quarters of the opposite party is shown as a Jacobite house. The flag displayed is adorned with the figure of an owl dressed in a full wig and a counsellor’s bands, and indicates “Morgan’s Ghost,” the Morgan thus favoured having been a Jacobite barrister who had the misfortune to be implicated in the abortive rising of 1745 in the interests of the Pretender, which cost Morgan his life. The adherents rallying round this questionable house, intended as a reflection upon the Association of Independent Electors of Westminster, who were stigmatized as friends of the Jacobites, are dressed for the most part in plaids, and wear Scotch bonnets, to imply their Jacobite sympathies. This caricature was republished, with the hustings at Covent Garden substituted for Westminster Hall, and the Devil very civilly giving place to the figure of an angel, with the legend “Faithful to King and country.” The title was changed to “The Humours of the Westminster Election; or, the Scald Miserable Independent Electors in the Suds,” 1747, with the following lines:—
“Britons brave are true and unconfin’d,
To lash the Coxcombs of the Age design’d;
Fixt to no Party, censure all alike,
And the distinguish’d Villain sure to strike;
Pleas’d we behold the great maintain the Cause,
And Court and Country join the loud applause.”
