“In 1696, Charles, Earl of Monmouth, ‘for having spoken disrespectfully of the king,’ and Henry Buckley, Esquire; Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury; Sir Philip Constable; Arthur, Lord Forbes; and Sir John Fenwick were imprisoned here on various charges of sedition and treason. Thomas, Lord Kerry, and Brigadier Richard Ingoldsby were committed, in the following year, for having challenged the Lord Chancellor of Ireland; as were, likewise, John Knight and Charles Duncombe, Esquires, members of the House of Commons, the former for having falsely endorsed exchequer bills, and the latter for aiding and assisting in his illegal practices. Two years afterwards, Sir Richard Levin was lodged in this fortress for aspersing the characters of four of the commissioners of Irish forfeitures; as were also Charles, Lord Mohun, and Edward, Earl of Warwick and Holland, on a charge of murdering Richard Coote, Esquire; but those noblemen were unanimously acquitted by their peers.”
The largeness of the number of prisoners is shown by a paper in the handwriting of Sir C. Wren in 1695. He was directed to examine the Bloody and Beauchamp Towers to see what additions could be made for the reception of prisoners, apparently with special reference to the arrivals from Ireland. He replies, “I have also viewed the place behinde the Chappell, and considered and do approve the annex’d draught proposed to be built wch I take to be as Large as ye place will afford containing 15 square and if it be well built in 3 storeys, Cellars and garretts it will cost £600. As to the number of Prisoners the place may hold I can only report wt number of rooms each place contains. Beauchamp Tower hath a large Kitching 2 large rooms and 2 small servants rooms. Bloody Tower hath a kitching one room and one closet. The new building may contain 9 single rooms, besides cellars and garrets and a kitching, all wch is humbly submitted.”
In the early years of Queen Anne’s reign there were a good many sent to the Tower, taken in the French wars, but no state prisoners. But in 1712 a notable attempt was made on a famous public man, Sir Robert Walpole. He had been in Parliament since the queen’s accession, and had displayed such brilliant ability as a financier as to induce the Duke of Marlborough to give him office in the Government. But his Whiggism, moderate as it was, offended Harley and Mrs. Masham, who gained continually more ascendency over the queen, and Harley intrigued shamefully against him, and brought a vague charge of breach of trust in office and of corruption. It was a thoroughly unjust charge, but on the strength of it he was sent to the Tower and expelled from the House of Commons. But public opinion was roused by the injustice, and largely withdrew its confidence from the Tory ministry. Whilst he remained in the prison he was visited by great people, and his constituency (King’s Lynn) returned him again as its member. He remained in confinement from February to July, and employed his time in writing political pamphlets.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER
Accession of George I—Impeachment of Harley—The Rebellion of 1715—Execution of Lords Derwentwater and Kenmuir—Escape of Nithisdale—Plots of Atterbury and others in 1722—Imprisonment of Lord Macclesfield—The “45”—Execution of Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, Charles Retcliff, and Lord Lovat—Imprisonment and Trial of Wilkes and his Friends on the Charge of Treason—of Alderman Oliver and Lord Mayor Crosby for alleged Condonation of Misdemeanour—of Horne Tooke and his Companions for Treason—of Sir Francis Burdett for Breach of Privilege—Of the Cato Street Conspirators—The Fire of 1841—The Fenian Conspiracy of 1885—Conclusion.
The accession of George I was at once marked by the ascendency of the Whigs, and they lost no time in showing this. Robert Harley, whom Queen Anne had made Earl of Oxford, and who had been a favourite minister of the nation, was impeached on the charge that during the French wars, in his hatred of the Duke of Marlborough, he had instructed the French king as to the best method of capturing Tournai. On June 10, 1715, the House of Commons, of which but a short time before he had been the idol, sent him to the Tower, where he languished for two years, never losing confidence. His continual petition to be tried was at last conceded, and he was acquitted in July, 1717.
But there was an influential party among the high Tories who were unmistakably anxious to restore the Stuarts, and even the Duke of Marlborough, who all his life through had a passion for intrigue, finding that he was not trusted by King George, seems to have entered into negotiations with the Pretender, “the Chevalier de St. George,” who in August, 1715, published from France a manifesto, asserting his right to the throne. When the Whig Government impeached Bolingbroke and the Duke of Ormond for complicity, they fled to France. But the rising incapable man; and though he was joined by other nobles in the North, and might have won most dangerous successes, he shrank before the Duke of Argyll, who had been sent by the king to oppose him. The result was the rebellion of 1715 and its failure. The most conspicuous character in this ill-starred attempt was James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, a young man of twenty-six who deserved a better fate, for all accounts describe him as singularly attractive and winning in person and manner. He was the only Englishman of note who joined the enterprize. His mother, Mary Tudor, was a natural daughter of Charles II, who brought him up as a Roman Catholic. He was very rich for those days. His home, from which he took his title, was an island in the most beautiful of English lakes, and his income from mines was nearly £40,000 a year. With him were six Scotch nobles, William Maxwell, Earl of Nithisdale; Robert Dalzell, Earl of Carnwarth; William Gordon, Lord Kenmure, brother-in-law of Carnwarth; George Seton, fifth Earl of Wintoun; William, Lord Nairn; and William, fourth Lord Widdrington. They were brought up to London tightly bound on horseback, and paraded through the streets to the prison. Much interest was made for them in Parliament, and a vote of petition for pardon was carried in the House of Lords. They were tried in February, 1716, and condemned. Wintoun was the only one who refused to plead guilty, but was convicted and sentenced. Next year Widdrington, Carnwarth and Nairn were pardoned, the others were left for death. So greatly was Derwentwater loved in his own home that it is said the peasantry drove his wife out of it because, as they alleged, she had driven him to rebel and so deprived them of a generous landlord. But when the crowds assembled on Tower Hill, they found, to their great amazement, that there were only three victims. For Lord Nithisdale had escaped the night before. His young wife had travelled up, through the winter snow, all the way from their home in Dumfriesshire to beg forgiveness for him. Failing in this, she formed her plans with great skill, and has left the narrative, which reads like an entrancing romance—the taking into the condemned cell a friend to whom she had confided her method as they walked along the street, the double dress which she persuaded the friend to put on at entrance, enduing the prisoner with the outer dress, and so deceiving the sentinels. They got away safely, hid for a few days in London, and then he went away to Rome, disguised as one of the footmen of the Venetian ambassador. Not content with this feat, she resolved to petition for the restoration of the estates, and made her way into St. James’s Palace, and into the king’s presence. He would have gone out without answering her, but she writes, “I caught hold of the skirt of his coat that he might stop and hear me. He endeavoured to escape out of my hands, but I kept such strong hold that he dragged me on my knees from the middle of the room to the very door. At last one of the Blue Ribands who attended his Majesty took me round the waist, while another wrested the coat from my hands.” They lived together at Rome till 1749, when he died, and she not long afterwards. How Wintoun escaped is not precisely known, but the probability seems to be that he bribed a warder and filed through the bars of a window.
The zeal for the house of Stuart was by no means quenched, and the failure of the South Sea project, the panic in the money market arising out of it, the downfall of great commercial houses, produced general discontent, which rekindled the hopes of the Jacobites. This time, in 1722, the movement was led by Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. Joined with him were the Duke of Norfolk, Lords North, Orrery and Grey, some commoners, and an Irish priest named Kelly. They planned to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest the king, and proclaim King James. But the plot became known to the regent Orleans, who was on terms of friendship with the English king, and told him of it. The conspirators were all sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason. They lay in prison for some months. Atterbury was deprived and banished the country. He died eight years later, just seventy years old, and was brought to England and buried in the abbey that he loved.