Walpole was a first-rate man of craft; his sagacity was vigilant; his industry was indefatigable; his speech plausible, and his management of the uncouth and suspicious King dexterous in a remarkable degree. But he lowered the whole tone of public life. No act of magnanimous policy ever originated with Walpole. He made no attempt, or but of the feeblest order, to add to the national intelligence. He encouraged none of the higher provinces of the arts, learning, or science; and, though he gave mitres to Butler, Gibson, and Sherlock, yet the religion of England languished scarcely less than its philosophy. It was what Burke himself subsequently termed its succeeding period, “burgomaster age,” and parliament was scarcely more than a Dutch council, until Chatham came and startled it again into life. Walpole obtains credit with posterity for the moderation of his wealth. But, beginning as the son of a country gentleman, he purchased a fine estate; he built a magnificent mansion, Houghton; he collected one of the finest private picture-galleries in Europe; and he always lived, so far as we can learn, in great affluence and expenditure.
But the country was suddenly to be tried by a new and most formidable hazard. News arrived in London that the Prince Charles Edward, the eldest son of the Pretender, had landed in Scotland, had raised the standard of the Stuarts, had been joined by some of the clans, and was determined on marching to the metropolis. This part of the Memoir is peculiarly interesting, from its giving the private impressions of individuals of rank and importance, on the everyday movements of the time.
On the 1st of August, Lady Hardwicke, who was, of course, acquainted with all the opinions of government, writes to her son Philip Yorke, who was then out of town:—“My heart is very heavy. Our folks are very busy at this time, by fresh alarms of the Pretender being in Scotland. But I believe the ship Captain Bret fought was the ship he was in. If it be so, he is not yet got there; which may give a little more time to prepare for him. The French disclaim sending him there; but that is nothing. They are to take Ostend; while Spain sends troops thence, to the other end of the kingdom, to distract our measures. This is my opinion, God grant I may be in the wrong. In the mean time, our king’s abroad, and our troops also. There comes out a proclamation this day, offering a reward for the Pretender, as I am informed.”
Lord Hardwicke had been appointed one of the Regency, on the King’s absence in Germany. And his views of the crisis were gloomy enough. In a letter to Lord Glenorchy (August 15) he says, “On Tuesday last we received advice from the Duke of Argyle and my Lord Justice Clerk, that the young Pretender was landed in the north-west parts of the Highlands. He is said to have come in a single ship of 16 or 18 guns, attended by about 70 persons, among whom are Lord Tullibardine and old Lochiel. When I look round me, and consider our whole situation, our all appears to be at stake.”
“The yachts sailed this morning for the King, who has declared he will set out from Hanover, as soon as he has heard they have arrived on the other side.”
This was desponding language from so eminent a person, but it was produced by deeper feelings than alarm at the landing of a few people in the north, though with a prince at their head. The plain truth, and no man was better aware of it than Hardwicke, was, that the conduct of the late Cabinet had utterly disgusted the nation. The contempt justly felt for Walpole had spread to higher objects; and the nation looked with an ominous quietude on the coming struggle between the young Chevalier and the possessor of the throne. As if the factions of parliament had been preparing for the success of the Stuarts, all their efforts for the last ten years had been directed to dismantle the country; all their harangues were turned to extinguishing the army, which they described as at once ruinous to the finances, and dangerous to the liberties of the country. Probably there was not a man of all those declaimers who believed a single syllable which he uttered; but “Reduction” was the party cry. With France in immense military power; with the Stuarts living under its protection; with the whole force of Popery intriguing throughout the country; and with a great number of weak people, who thought that their consciences called for the return of the exiled dynasty in the person of the Pretender, the reduction of the national defences by the ministry fell little short of treason. But when the intelligence of the prince’s arrival was brought to London, the kingdom seems to have been left almost without a soldier; every battalion being engaged in the lingering war in Germany. The King had not added to the strength of his government; his passion for going to Hanover had occasioned obvious public inconvenience, and his absence at the moment of public peril was felt with peculiar irritability. The Chancellor, on this subject, after alluding to his recovery from a slight illness, says, “Would to God, the state of our affairs were as much mended; but the clouds continue as black as ever; and how soon the storm may burst on us, we know not.”
On the first news of the Chevalier’s landing, a message had been sent to the King, to return with all haste, which he did, as is mentioned in a letter of the Chancellor to the Archbishop of York. After speaking of the difficulties of government, the letter closes with, “I had writ thus far, when a messenger from Margate brought the good news that the King landed there about half an hour after three this morning, and would be at Kensington within two hours. Accordingly, his Majesty arrived there about two o’clock, in perfect health. I really think I never saw him look better in my life. He appears also to be in very good humour, and to value himself upon the haste he has made to us, when there was any apprehension of danger affecting this country.”
In another letter, he sadly laments the absence of all public interest in the event of the Rebellion. “Can you tell what will make double hearts true?... I have not slept these two nights; but sweat and prayed.... The Duke of Argyle is come to town, and done nothing; and Duke Athol is gone to a town in the Highlands, and does nothing neither. He has had Glengarrie with him, whose clan has joined the Pretender, and he is gone from him. In short, every thing is in a strange way, and nobody, hardly, is affected as they ought; at least as I am.... This is the real state of things, however they may be disguised, and I fear Sir J. Cope’s not equal to his business. God alone can save us, to whose merciful judgment we trust.”
The late Sydney Smith’s pleasantries on the novelty of invasion ideas in the brains of John Bull, and the difficulty of convincing him of the possibilities of such a thing, were fully exemplified in the cabinet, as well as in the people. The cabinet did little more than send for the King, and the King did little more than send an incompetent officer with a small detachment of troops to put down a rebellion which might have already enlisted the whole martial population of Scotland; even the Chancellor could not restrain himself from running down to one or other of his country houses, for two or three days at a time, while the government was actually trembling from hour to hour on the verge of the scaffold. This childish inability of self-control disparages the conduct of so distinguished a person. But with all his “sweating and praying,” he seems to have been totally incapable of denying himself this pitiful indulgence, when a week might see the Stuarts on the throne. At length troops were ordered from Germany, and six thousand arrived with General Ligonier. Some Dutch regiments followed; five men-of-war returned from the Mediterranean, and the British regiments were on their march through Holland. In the mean time came the startling announcement that the Pretender was in Edinburgh, that he was proclaimed there, and that he was royally lodged in Holyrood House. The Chancellor’s fears of Cope’s inefficiency were soon shown to have been prophetic. Cope had been sent to save Edinburgh,—the clans outmarched him, and Cope had no resource but to land at Dunbar. At Haddington he suddenly found the clans to the south of his force. They were about three thousand, half armed, to his two thousand two hundred disciplined troops; the Highlanders rushed upon him and routed him in a moment. The Chevalier returned to Edinburgh with a hundred pipers leading the march, and playing, “The king shall have his own again.”
The person who figures mainly at this period, and who appears to have shown alike good sense and courage, was Herring, Archbishop of York, an old friend of the Chancellor, who had recommended him to the government when but preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, obtained for him a bishopric, and pushed him forward into the Archbishopric of York. Herring was afterwards promoted to Canterbury, perhaps as a reward of his loyalty and manliness in this delicate and difficult time. Herring was evidently a sensible and high-minded man, and his letters to the Chancellor figure conspicuously among the mass of correspondence received by Hardwicke. On the battle of Prestonpans, this vigorous prelate thus wrote:—