Then Lady Nithisdale determined to effect her husband's escape. She communicated her design to a Mrs. Mills, and took another lady with her also. This lady was of tall and slender make, and she carried under her own riding-hood one that Lady Nithisdale had prepared for Mrs. Mills, as Mrs. Mills was to lend hers to Lord Nithisdale, so that in going out he might be taken for her. Mrs. Mills was also "not only of the same height, but nearly of the same size as my lord." On their arrival at the Tower, Mrs. Morgan was allowed to go in with {140} Lady Nithisdale. [Sidenote: 1716—Lord Nithisdale's escape] Only one at a time could be introduced by the lady. She left the riding-hood and other things behind her. Then Lady Nithisdale went downstairs to meet Mrs. Mills, who held her handkerchief to her face, "as was very natural for a woman to do when she was going to bid her last farewell to a friend on the eve of his execution. I had indeed desired her to do it, that my lord might go out in the same manner." Mrs. Mills's eyebrows were a light color, and Lord Nithisdale's were dark and thick. "So," says Lady Nithisdale, "I had prepared some paint of the color of hers to disguise his with. I also bought an artificial head-dress of the same color as hers, and I painted his face with white, and his cheeks with rouge to hide his long beard, which he had not time to shave. All this provision I had before left in the Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight liberality the day before had endeared me to, let me go quietly with my company, and were not so strictly on the watch as they usually had been, and the more so as they were persuaded, from what I had told them the day before, that the prisoners would obtain their pardon." Then Mrs. Mills was taken into the room with Lord Nithisdale, and rather ostentatiously led by Lady Nithisdale past several sentinels, and through a group of soldiers, and of the guards' wives and daughters. When she got into Lord Nithisdale's presence she took off her riding-hood, and put on that which Mrs. Morgan had brought for her. Then Lady Nithisdale dismissed her, and took care that she should not go out weeping as she had come in, in order, of course, that Lord Nithisdale, when he wont out, "might the better pass for the lady who came in crying and afflicted." When Mrs. Mills was gone, Lady Nithisdale dressed up her husband "in all my petticoats excepting one." Then she found that it was growing dark, and was afraid that the light of the candles might betray her. She therefore went out, leading the disguised nobleman by the hand, he holding his handkerchief pressed to his eyes, as Mrs. Mills had done when she came in. The {141} guards opened the doors, and Lady Nithisdale went down-stairs with him. "As soon as he had cleared the door I made him walk before me for fear the sentinels should take notice of his walk." Some friends received Lord Nithisdale, and conducted him to a place of security. Lady Nithisdale went back to her husband's prison, and "When I was in the room I talked to him as if he had been really present, and answered my own questions in my lord's voice as nearly as I could imitate it. I walked up and down, as if we were conversing together, till I thought they had time enough to clear themselves of the guards. I then thought proper to make off also. I opened the door, and stood half in it, that those in the outward chamber might hear what I said, but held it so close that they could not look in. I bid my lord a formal farewell for that night," and she added some words about the petition for his pardon, and told him, "I flattered myself that I should bring favorable news." Then she closed the door with some force behind her, and "I said to the servant as I passed by"—who was ignorant of the whole transaction—"that he need not carry any candles to his master till my lord sent for him, as he desired to finish some prayers first. I went down-stairs and called a coach, as there were several on the stand. I drove home to my lodgings." Soon after Lady Nithisdale was taken to the place of security where her husband was remaining. They took refuge at the Venetian ambassador's two or three days after. Lord Nithisdale put on a livery, and went in the retinue of the ambassador to Dover. The ambassador, it should be said, knew nothing about the matter, but his coach-and-six went to Dover to meet his brother; and it was one of the servants of the embassy who acted in combination with Lord and Lady Nithisdale. A small vessel was hired at Dover, and Lord Nithisdale escaped to Calais, where his wife shortly after joined him. It is said by nearly all contemporary writers that King George, when he heard of the escape, took it very good-humoredly, and even {142} expressed entire satisfaction with it. Lady Nithisdale does not seem to have believed this story of George's generosity. The statement made to her was that "when the news was brought to the King, he flew into an excess of passion and said he was betrayed, for it could not have been done without some confederacy. He instantly despatched two persons to the Tower to see that the other prisoners were well secured."
[Sidenote: 1716—Anti-Catholic legislation]
Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure were executed on Tower Hill on the 24th of February. The young and gallant Derwentwater declared on the scaffold that he withdrew his plea of guilty, and that he acknowledged no one but James Stuart as his king. Kenmure, too, protested his repentance at having, even formally, pleaded guilty, and declared that he died with a prayer for James Stuart. Lord Wintoun was not tried until the next month. He was a poor and feeble creature, hardly sound in his mind. "Not perfect in his intellectuals," a writer in a journal of the day observed of him. He was found guilty, but afterwards succeeded in making his escape from the Tower. Like Lord Nithisdale, he made his way to the Continent; and, like Lord Nithisdale, he died long after at Rome.
Humbler Jacobites could escape too. Forster escaped from Newgate through the aid of a clever servant, and got off to France, while the angry Whigs hinted at connivance on the part of persons in high places. The redoubted Brigadier Mackintosh, who figures in descriptions of the time as a "beetle-browed, gray-eyed" man of sixty, speaking "broad Scotch," succeeded in escaping, together with his son and seven others, in a rush of prisoners from the Newgate press-yard. Mr. Charles Radcliffe had an even stranger escape; for one day, growing tired, as well he might, of prison life, he simply walked out of Newgate under the eyes of his jailers, in the easy disguise of a morning suit and a brown tie-wig. Once some Jacobite prisoners, who were being sent to the West Indian plantations, rose against the crew, seized the ship, steered it to France, and quietly settled down {143} there. Later still some prisoners got out even more easily. Brigadier Mackintosh's brother was discharged from Newgate on his own prayer, and on showing that "he was very old, and altogether friendless."
Immediately after the execution of the rebel noblemen the ministry set to work to take some steps which might render political intrigue and conspiracy less dangerous in the future. One idea which especially commended itself to the statesmen of that time was to make the laws more rigorous against Roman Catholics. Law and popular feeling were already strongly set against the Catholics. On the death of Queen Anne, officers in the army, when informing their companies of the accession of the Elector of Hanover, carried their loyal and religious enthusiasm so far as to call upon any of their hearers who might be Catholics to fall forthwith out of the ranks. The writers who supported the Hanoverian succession, and were in the service of the Whig ministry, were not ashamed to declare that the ceremony of the Paternoster would infallibly cure a stranger of the spleen, and that any man in his senses would find excellent comedy in the recital of an Ave Mary. "How common it is," says the writer of the Patriot, "to find a wretch of this persuasion to be deluded to such a degree that he shall imagine himself engaged in the solemnity of devotion, while in reality he is exceeding the fopperies of a Jack-pudding!" So great was the distrust of Catholics that it was often the practice to seize upon the horses of Catholic gentlemen in order to impede them in the risings which they were always supposed to be meditating. But the condition of the Catholics in England was not bad enough to content the ministry. An Act was passed, in fact what would now be called "rushed," through Parliament, to "strengthen the Protestant interest in Great Britain," by making more severe "the laws now in being against Papists," and by providing a more effective and exemplary punishment for persons who, being Papists, should venture to enlist in the service of his Majesty.
{144}
The spirit of political freedom, as we now understand it, had not yet even begun to glimmer upon the counsels of statesmen. The idea had not yet arisen in the minds of Englishmen—even of men as able as Walpole—that liberty meant anything more than liberty for the expression of one's own opinions, and for the carrying into action of one's own policy. Those who were in power immediately made it their business to strengthen their own hands, and to prevent as far as possible the growth of opinions, the expression of ideas, unfavorable to themselves. Yet at such a time there were not wanting advocates of the administration to write that it was "indeed the peculiar happiness and glory of an Englishman that he must first quit these kingdoms before he can experimentally know the want of public liberty." Most people, even still, read history by the light of ideas which prevailed up to the close of George the First's reign. We are all ready enough to admit that in our time it would not be a free system which suppressed or prevented the expression of other men's opinions, or which attached any manner of penal consequence to the profession of one creed or the adhesion to one party. But most of us are, nevertheless, ready enough to describe one period of English history, the reign perhaps of one sovereign, as a period of religious liberty, and another season, or reign, as a time when liberty was suppressed. Some Englishmen talk with enthusiasm of the spirit of Elizabeth's reign, or the spirit of the reign of William the Third, and condemn in unmeasured terms the spirit which influenced James the Second, and which would no doubt have influenced James the Second's son if he had come to the throne. But any one who will put aside for the moment his own particular opinions will see that in both cases the guiding principle was exactly the same. Never were there greater acts of political and religious intolerance committed than during the reign of Elizabeth and during the reign of William the Third. The truth is that the modern idea of constitutional and political liberty did not {145} exist among English statesmen even so recently as the reign of William the Third. At the period with which we are now dealing it would not have occurred to any statesman that there could be a wiser course to take than to follow up the suppression of the insurrection of 1715 by making more stringent than ever the laws already in existence against the religion to which most of the rebels belonged.
[Sidenote: 1716—The Triennial Bill]
The Government made another change of a different kind, and for which there was better political justification. They passed a measure altering the period of the duration of parliaments. At this time the limit of the existence of a parliament was three years. An Act was passed in 1641 directing that Parliament should meet once at least in every three years. This Act was repealed in 1664. Another, and a different kind of Triennial Parliament Bill, passed in 1694. This Act declared that no parliament should last for a longer period than three years. But the system of short parliaments had not apparently been found to work with much satisfaction. The impression that a House of Commons with so limited a period of life before it would be more anxious to conciliate the confidence and respect of the constituencies had not been justified in practice. Indeed, the constituencies themselves at that time were not sufficiently awake to the meaning and the value of Parliamentary representation to think of keeping any effective control over those whom they sent to speak for them in Parliament. Bribery and corruption were as rife and as extravagant under the triennial system as ever they had been before, or as they ever were since. But no doubt the immediate object of repealing the Triennial Bill was to obtain a better chance for the new condition of things by giving it a certain time to work in security. If the new dynasty was to have any chance of success at all, it was necessary that ministers should not have to come almost immediately before the country again.
Shippen in the Commons and Atterbury in the Lords {146} were among the most strenuous opponents of the new measure. Both staunch Jacobites, they had everything to gain just then by frequent appeals to the country. Shippen urged that it was unconstitutional in a Parliament elected for three years to elect itself for seven years without an appeal to the constituencies. Steele defended the Bill on the ground that all the mischiefs which could be brought under the Septennial Act could be perpetrated under the Triennial, but that the good which might be compassed under the Septennial could not be hoped for under the Triennial. Not a few persons in both Houses seemed to be of one mind with the bewildered Bishop of London, who declared that he did not know which way to vote, for "he was confounded between dangers and inconveniences on one side and destruction on the other." It is not out of place to mention here that when a Bill was unsuccessfully brought in nearly twenty years after for the Repeal of the Septennial Act, many of those who had voted in favor of parliaments of seven years in 1716 voted the other way, while opponents in 1716 were turned into allies in 1734.