Another of the same date, six o'clock at night, says, "The Tower guns have not fired to-day. A letter has been received, stating that the rebels had retreated towards Ashbourne."
Walpole, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, on the 9th repeats the news, and says, "The Highlanders got nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the books brought to them, and obliged everybody to give them what they had subscribed against them. They then retreated a few miles, but returned again to Derby, got £10,000 more, and plundered the town; they are gone again, and got back to Leake in Staffordshire, but miserably harassed; they have left all their cannon behind them, and twenty waggons of sick."
Nothing can give a stronger example of the changes which may take place in a country, than the different state of preparation for an invader, exhibited by England in 1745, and in little more than half a century after. On the threat of Napoleon's invasion, England exhibited an armed force of little less than a million, which would have been quadrupled in case of an actual descent. In 1745, the alarm was extravagant, and almost burlesque. The Pretender, with but a few thousand men—brave undoubtedly, but almost wholly unprovided for a campaign—marched into the heart of England, and reached within a hundred and thirty miles of the capital. But the enterprise was then felt to be wholly beyond his means. A powerful force under the Duke of Cumberland was already thrown between him and London. What was more ominous still, no man of English rank had joined him, London was firm, the Protestant feeling of the nation, though slowly excited, was beginning to be roused, by its recollection of the bigotry of James, and in England, this feeling will always be ultimately victorious. Even if Charles Edward had arrived in London, and seized the throne, he would have only had to commence a civil war against the nation. His retreat to the north saved England from this great calamity, and probably saved himself, and his adherents in both countries, from a more summary fate than that which drove his miserable and bigoted father from the throne.
One of the chief contributors to this correspondence is George James Williams, familiarly styled Gilly Williams; a man of high life, uncle by marriage to the minister Lord North, and lucky in the possession of an opulent office—that of receiver-general of the excise. He, with George Selwyn and Dick Edgecumbe, who met at Strawberry Hill at certain seasons, formed what Walpole termed his out-of-town party. Life seems to have glided smoothly with him, for he lived till 1785, dying at the ripe age of eighty-six.
He thus begins:—
"Dear George—I congratulate you on the near approach of Parliament, and figure you before a glass at your rehearsals. I must intimate to you not to forget to begin closing your periods with a significant stroke of the breast, and recommend Mr Barry as a pattern, (the actor.)
"You must observe, in letters from the country, every sentence begins with being either sorry or glad. Apropos, I am glad to hear B. Bertie (son of the Duke of Ancaster) is returned from Scarborough, having laid in such a stock of health and spirits by the waters, as to dedicate the rest of his days altogether to wine."
In another letter he says—"I had almost forgot to tell you, that I rode near ten miles on my way home with the ordinary of Gloucester, and have several anecdotes of the late burnings and hangings, which I reserve for your own private ear. I do not know whether he was sensible you had a partiality for his profession; but he expressed the greatest regard for you, and I am sure you may command his services."
Gilly writes from Crome, Lord Coventry's seat in Worcestershire—
"Our life here for a while would not displease you, for we eat and drink well, and the Earl (Coventry) holds a faro-bank every night to us, which we have as yet plundered considerably.