And put them upon poles;
Poor de’il, ’twas all that he could do,
When God had ta’en their souls.”
Further quotations would be useless and wearisome. Many of the poetical scraps strongly resemble the poetry of Dr. Byrom, an undoubted Jacobite and a friend of Clayton. His three poems,—“A Dialogue, occasioned by the March of the Highlanders into Lancashire, in the Year 1745”; “A Dialogue about compelling a Person to take the Oaths to the Government”; and “A Genuine Dialogue, between a Gentlewoman at Derby and her Maid, in the beginning of December, 1745,” are ample proofs of his sympathy with the non-jurors, and of his ardent attachment to the Stuarts; and, though it might be rash to assert with positiveness that he was actually the author of the Jacobite versicles in the Chester Courant, it is not unwarrantable to affirm that they bear a striking similitude to his well-known lines:—
“God bless the King, and bless the Faith’s Defender!
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender!
But who Pretender is, and who is King,
Why, bless us all, that’s quite another thing.”
Of Clayton’s participation in this Jacobinical controversy there can be little doubt. In fact, he is said to have assisted in procuring a printing press for Joseph Harrop, who had been one of Whitworth’s apprentices. Harrop began the publication of a paper, in opposition to that of his late master, and to that paper Clayton was an important contributor.[44] Clayton’s Jacobite leanings were notorious. In Whitworth’s Magazine, for November 20, 1746, he was publicly rebuked, because one of his senior scholars had recently affronted a lady at the close of public service in the church by shouting, “Down with the Rump;” an affront, however, which was “very pardonable in the scholar, since that was a health at the master’s table.”
Clayton’s praying for the Pretender, in the public streets of Salford, has been already mentioned. It is also said, by one who knew him personally,[45] that he visited Prince Charles at the Palace Inn, paid him profound respect, and was regarded as a sort of royal chaplain. Wheeler, in his “History of Manchester,” asserts that when the government sent to Manchester to search for those who had shown disloyalty to the House of Brunswick, Clayton absconded. Be that as it may, he was placed under suspension by his bishop, and was subjected to the painful penalty of a long-continued silence in the church.[46] On resuming his ministerial duties, after his inhibition was ended, he displayed considerable keenness, and, perhaps, some degree of irreverence in the selection of his text. The Bishop of Chester, having commanded him to preach before him, the bold Jacobite, who had so long been silent, but was now again allowed to speak, somewhat startled both the bishop and the congregation by reading as his text, “I became dumb, and opened not my mouth, for Thou didst it.”[47]