There was great alarm in England when the news of Mar’s action travelled south. The persecuting policy of the Whigs had driven many moderate men over to the Jacobite cause, and the personal unpopularity of the King had taken the heart out of his adherents. So far as could be judged on the surface, popular feeling all over England was in favour of James. Mysterious toasts were proposed at dinners, like “Job,” whose name formed the initial letters of James, Ormonde and Bolingbroke; or “Kit,” because in the same way it stood for King James the Third; or the “Three B’s,” which was a synonym for the “Best Born Briton,” James, who had the advantage over George the German in having been born in England. The University of Oxford was especially disaffected, and burst forth into white roses, though owing to the time of the year they had mostly to be made of paper. The friends of the Hanoverian succession felt something like panic, which penetrated to the royal palaces, and even to the immediate entourage of the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Hanoverian Ministers and mistresses were in great alarm, and Schulemburg renewed her former fears, and urged the King to pack up without ado, and make haste to Hanover for, as she had always said, the English were a false and fickle people, who chopped off their kings’ heads on the least pretext. And this was the view generally taken in Europe. “The English are so false,” wrote the Duchess of Orleans, “that I would not trust them a single hair, and I do not believe that they will long put up with a King who cannot speak their language”. She expressed herself in favour of an amicable settlement of the dispute by allowing James to keep Scotland, and George England, and her views probably represented those of the Court of France. But George the First remained unmoved, and scorned the idea of flight or compromise; perhaps he knew that the worst that would happen to him was that he would be sent back to Hanover under safe escort by his Stuart cousin, and he would not have been wholly sorry. The Prince and Princess of Wales also showed courage, and went about everywhere as usual, unattended by any but the ordinary escort.
The Government were in a tight place; they had only eight thousand soldiers in Great Britain, and with this slender force they had to grapple with conspiracies, open disaffection and threatened landings in many places; moreover, they had to keep the peace, which was in hourly danger of being broken. Disturbances in London were so many and so great that it was thought advisable to form a camp in Hyde Park, and a large body of troops were established there and many pieces of cannon. These troops were reviewed by the King, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Marlborough, and the establishment of the camp certainly had effect, for it not only quelled the rising spirit of disaffection, but frightened those lawless spirits who found in a time of national disquiet an opportunity to rob, murder and outrage.
The Government, advised in military matters by Marlborough, acted promptly and vigorously. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the Riot Act was frequently read. Six thousand Dutch troops were sent for, twenty-one new regiments were raised, and a reward of £100,000 was offered for seizing James alive or dead. The principal Jacobites, and even those Tories who without any suspicion of Jacobitism opposed the Government, were arrested; Lords Lansdowne and Dupplin and other noblemen were sent to the Tower, and six members of the House of Commons, including Sir William Wyndham, were also imprisoned. Wyndham had great influence in the western counties, and his arrest was followed up by troops being marched into that quarter of the kingdom, and Bristol and Plymouth were garrisoned. Thus Ormonde’s attempt, as we have seen, was forestalled. The University of Oxford also felt the iron hand of power; several suspected persons were seized, and a troop of horse was quartered there. On the other hand, the University of Cambridge testified its loyalty to the House of Hanover, which the King rewarded later by a valuable gift of books to the university library. This gave rise to Dr. Trapp’s Oxford epigram:—
Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes,
The wants of his two Universities,
Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why
That learned body wanted loyalty;
But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning
How that right loyal body wanted learning.
Sir William Browne smartly retorted for Cambridge:—