The impeachment and attainder of the Duke in 1715 was a cruel and malicious act. When he was in the Netherlands acting in concert with Prince Eugene, he was hindered from prosecuting the war by secret instructions from Queen Anne. When Quesnoy was on the point of capitulating, he was forced to withdraw, as he had received orders to proclaim a cessation of arms for two months. After the death of Queen Anne, the new Whig Ministry was resolved on his destruction, and he fled to France, where, although he had been loyal to William of Orange, and had fought under him at the Boyne, and had also been one of the first to welcome George I., he threw himself into the cause of the Pretender, in a fit of resentment at the treatment he had received. He died on 16th November 1745 at Avignon, but his body was brought to England and buried in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Swift, writing in the hour of his persecution, gives his character at great length. "The attainder," says he, "now it is done, looks like a dream to those who will consider the nobleness of his birth; the great merits of his ancestors, and his own; his long, unspotted loyalty; his affability, generosity, and sweetness of nature.... I have not conversed with a more faultless person; of great justice and charity; a true sense of religion, without ostentation; of undoubted valour; thoroughly skilled in his trade of a soldier; a quick and ready apprehension; with a good share of understanding, and a general knowledge of men and history."
Mackay, in his "Characters of the Court of Great Britain," says of him when Governor in Ireland:—"He governs in Ireland with more affection from the people, and his court is in the greatest splendour ever known in that country. He certainly is one of the most generous, princely, brave men that ever was, but good-natured to a fault."
[14.] John Barleycorn. This famous old song has gone through several recastings. The earliest known copy is of the age of James I. in the Pepysian Collection, i. 426, printed in black letter by H. Gosson (1607-1641). Other copies of Charles II.'s reign in the same Collection, i. 470, and the Ewing Collection, by the publishers Clarke, Thackeray, and Passenger, to the tune of "Shall I lye beyond thee." Chappell concludes that this was a very early ballad. "The language is not that of London and its neighbourhood during James's reign. It is either northern dialect—which, according to Puttenham, would commence about 60 miles from London—or it is much older than the date of the printers," Roxburgh Ballads, ii. p. 327.
This ballad begins—
"As I went through the North Country
I heard a merry greeting,
A pleasant toy and full of joy—
Two noblemen were meeting."
These two noblemen are Sir John Barleycorn and Thomas Goodale.
The sixth verse runs—
"Sir John Barlycorne fought in a boule
Who wonne the victorie,
And made them all to fume and sweare
That Barlycorne should die.
"Some said kill him, some said drowne,
Others wisht to hang him hie;
For as many as follow Barlycorne
Shall surely beggars die.
"Then with a plough they plow'd him up,
And thus they did devise,
To burie him quicke within the earth,
And sware he should not rise.
"With harrowes strong they combèd him
And burst clods on his head,
A joyfull banquet then they made
When Barlycorne was dead."
Then the ballad runs on the same as ours. Burns got hold of this ballad, and tinkered it up into the shape in which it appears in his collected works, altering some expressions, and adding about six stanzas. He in no way improved it. Jameson, in his "Popular Ballads," Edinburgh, 1806, tells us that he had heard it sung in Morayshire before that Burns' songs were published.