LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES

VOL. II.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES
BY
Dᴿ DORAN, F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS’ ‘QUEENS OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER’
‘THEIR MAJESTIES’ SERVANTS’ ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1877
All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.

LONDON
IN
THE JACOBITE TIMES.

CHAPTER I.

(1724-’25-’26-’27.)

LOYAL AND DISLOYAL PRINTERS.

singular illustration of the still partially troubled times which followed is furnished by a proceeding of Samuel Negus, printer. In 1724 he published a list of all the printers then exercising their craft in London, and he most humbly laid it before Lord Viscount Townshend; no doubt, for his guidance. The list is divided into four parts. The first consists of those ‘known to be well affected to King George.’ There are thirty-four of these ultra-loyal fellows, with Negus, of course, among them. The second list is headed ‘Nonjurors;’ in this, three names are entered, one of which is ‘Bowyer.’ In the third list, headed, ‘said to be High Flyers,’ there are two and thirty names; among them are found Alderman Barber (the friend of Swift, of Bolingbroke and Pope), Richardson (the novelist), and Mist (the Jacobite and something more!). The fourth list consists of three names, ‘Roman Catholics.’ Negus was probably a malicious though loyal busy-body. His list harmed neither Nonjuror nor High Flyer. When, in 1729, Mr. Speaker Onslow was instrumental in procuring for Bowyer the printing of the votes of the House of Commons, an alarmed and loyal Whig asked Mr. Speaker if he was aware that he was employing a Nonjuror. ‘I am quite sure of this,’ said Onslow, ‘I am employing a truly honest man.’ There was no lack of them among Nonjurors, and it is pleasant to find that even the High Flyers came soon to be looked upon by reasonable Whigs as honourable men. In 1732 Alderman Barber was elected by his fellow citizens Lord Mayor of London; and he was the first printer who enjoyed that dignity. This is the more remarkable, as poor Mrs. Manley, mistress of the alderman’s house and of the alderman, had bitterly satirised the Whig Ministry in her ‘New Atalantis.’ But the lady was now dead, and the High-Flying Barber lost nothing by his old Jacobite opinions.

SACHEVEREL.

In the year 1724, the Nonjurors lost one who had been their foremost man till he took the oath of allegiance; namely Sacheverel. That act of homage to Brunswick was never forgotten or forgiven by the Jacobites. When Sacheverel died in the spring of 1724, Hearne could only acknowledge his boldness and good presence. ‘He delivered a thing better than a much more modest man, however preferable in learning, could do.’ Hearne sarcastically calls Sacheverel a ‘but,’ and says the best thing this but ever printed was the speech at his trial, ‘which was none of his own, but was penned by Dr. Francis Atterbury.’ Hearne’s hardest hit at this recreant parson is to be found in the following words: ‘He was but an indifferent scholar, but pretended to a great deal of honesty, which I could never see in him, since he was the forwardest to take the oaths, notwithstanding he would formerly be so forward in speaking for, and drinking the health of, King James III.’

HIS DEATH.

The once famous and audacious Nonjuror, the friend of Addison when both were young together, lost caste with the Jacobites without gaining the esteem of the Whigs. Mist’s High-Flying ‘Weekly Journal,’ of which Sacheverel was once the Magnus Apollo, recorded his death and burial with no more ceremony than if he had been an ordinary alderman of no particular political colour. Perhaps this great reserve showed that sureties binding Mist to keep the peace were not mere formalities. Not so with Read and his Whig ‘Weekly.’ On Saturday, June 20, Sacheverel received therein this charitable notice: ‘Yesterday night was buried, at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, Dr. Henry Sacheverel, whose virtues are too notorious to be enlarged upon. One of his most conspicuous excellences for many years last past was that he got his living in the high road to—which though through great Mercy he escaped here, yet some people are so very censorious as to judge,—but this we look upon to be barbarous and unchristian, and we say we hope the best, and yet we heartily wish our Hopes were a little better grounded. However, as there is a good old saying, De mortuis nil nisi bonum, i.e. “If you speak of the dead, speak in their praise,” and not being able, upon the strictest enquiry, to find the least commendable circumstance relating to the Deceased, from his cradle to his coffin, we choose rather to be silent than uncivil.’

The doctor seemed to recall his oath of allegiance, when he made a bequest in his will of 500l. to Atterbury. It was an approval, as far as the sum went, of the efforts of the ex-prelate to dethrone George I., and to bring in a Popish sovereign, who was not at all reluctant to promise especial favours to the Church of England! That Atterbury was watching events in London is now known, from his correspondence. In one of his letters from Paris to the Chevalier or ‘King,’ he refers with vexation to the conciliatory course the Government in London was adopting towards the Jacobites: ‘They are beginning,’ he says, ‘with Alderman Barber on this head, and have actually offered him his pardon here for 3,000l., which it shall not be my fault, if he accepts.’ The ex-Jacobite alderman ‘went over,’ in spite of the Jacobite ex-bishop.

The 30th of January sermons (1725) before the Lords, in the Abbey, and the Commons, in St. Margaret’s, had now almost ceased to be political. The former was preached by Waugh, Bishop of Carlisle, from the Book of Chronicles; the latter, by the Rev. Dr. Lupton, from 1 Samuel xii. 25, a text which had been much preached on by expounders on both sides: ‘If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king.’

A NEW TOAST.

Against the king in possession, the Jacobites now and then flung pointless darts. Mist’s Journal uttered sarcasms against the Westminster mounted Train Bands, complimenting the most of them for not tumbling out of their saddles. The same semi-rebel paper recorded with satisfaction, as a sign of the Duke of Wharton’s principles, that if the little stranger ‘expected by the Duchess, proved to be a boy, his name should be James; if a girl, Clementina;’ or, in other words, the child was to be called after the King or Queen of England, de jure. Not long after, the bold and roystering London Jacobites were rapturously drinking a health, which was given by one guest in the form of ‘Henry,’ to which another added, ‘Benedict,’ a third named ‘Maria,’ and a fourth raised his glass to ‘Clement.’ In this form, they greeted the birth of the second son of the Chevalier de St. George. Some ventured to (prematurely) speak of him as Duke of York. The Whigs looked upon this birth with more or less indifference; and their papers contain no unseemly jests on the occasion.

BOLINGBROKE.

But the especial attention of Londoners was drawn to more important matters. Whigs and Jacobites looked with equal interest to the attempt made by Bolingbroke’s friends to enable him to succeed to his father’s estates, notwithstanding the Act of Attainder to the contrary. Leave to bring in a Bill, with this object, was asked by Lord Finch, in the Commons, on April 20th, with the sanction of king and Government, whom Bolingbroke had petitioned to that effect. Lord Finch explained that the petitioner had been pardoned by his Majesty, for past treason, but that even a royal pardon could not ride over an Act of Attainder, to the extent asked, without an Act of Parliament. The petitioner had fully acknowledged his former great guilt, and had made promises, on which his Majesty confidently relied, of inviolable fidelity for the future. Walpole gave great significance to the words uttered in support by saying, ‘He has sufficiently atoned for all past offences,’ Then Mr. Methuen, of Corsham, Wilts, sprang to his feet to oppose the motion and denounce the traitor. He did both in the most violent and unmeasured terms. He lost no point that could tell against Bolingbroke, from the earliest moment of his political career,—ever hostile to true English interests,—down to that of the asking leave to absolve the traitor from the too mild penalties with which his treason had been visited. No expiation could atone for his crimes; and no trust could be placed in his promises. BOLINGBROKE’S ADVERSARIES. One after the other, Lord William Paulet, Arthur Onslow, Sir Thomas Pengelly and Gybbon smote Bolingbroke with phrases that bruised his reputation like blows on mail from battle-axes. They were all, however, surpassed in fierceness and argument by Serjeant Miller, who branded Bolingbroke as a traitor to the king, country, and Government; a villain who, if favoured as he now asked to be, would betray again those whom he had betrayed before, if he found advantage in doing so. Serjeant Miller said that he loved the king, country, and ministry more than he loved himself, and that he hated their enemies more than they did. To loosen the restraints on Bolingbroke was only to facilitate his evil action, and so forth; but Jacobite Dr. Freind, who had tasted of the Tower, extolled the royal clemency to Bolingbroke; and the assurance of Walpole that the traitor had rendered services which expiated all by-gone treason, weighed with the House, and the condoning Bill was ultimately passed, by 231 to 113.

IN THE LORDS HOUSE.

Public interest in London was only diverted for a moment from this measure, by the debate in the House of Lords, in May, on another Bill (from the Commons) for disarming the Highlanders in Scotland, which ended in the Bill being carried. Five peers signed a protest against it, partly on the ground that England now enjoyed ‘that invaluable blessing—a perfect calm and tranquility;’ that the Highlanders now manifested no spirit of disorder, and that it became all good patriots ‘to endeavour rather to keep them quiet than to make them so.’ The comment in all the Whig circles of London, as they heard of the protest, was to repeat the names of those who subscribed it,—Wharton, Scarsdale, Lichfield, Gower, and Orrery. Of them, the first was almost openly in the Chevalier’s service, and the other four were thorough Jacobites. But the interest in this Bill was as nothing compared with that renewed by the Bill (sent up by the Commons) which passed the House of Lords on May 24th, 1725, by 75 to 25, for restoring Bolingbroke to his estates. The protest against the Act was signed by the Earls of Coventry and Bristol, Lords Clinton, Onslow, and Lechmere. The articles of the protest are among the most explicit and interesting ever issued from Westminster, and are to this effect:—

The lands and other property of ‘the late Viscount Bolingbroke’ had been forfeited through his treason, and had been appropriated to public uses; therefore, say the protesters, it would be ‘unjust to all the subjects of this kingdom, who have borne many heavy taxes, occasioned, as we believe, in great measure by the treasons committed, and the rebellion which was encouraged by this person, to take from the public the benefit of his forfeiture.’

The treasons he committed were of ‘the most flagrant and dangerous nature’; they were ‘fully confessed by his flight from the justice of Parliament,’ and they were indisputably demonstrated by his new treasons when he ‘entered publicly into the counsels and services of the Pretender, who was then fomenting and carrying on a rebellion within these kingdoms for the dethroning his Majesty, into which Rebellion many subjects of his Majesty, Peers and Commoners, were drawn, as we believe, by the example or influence of the late Lord Bolingbroke, and for which reason many Peers and Commoners have since been attainted and some of them executed, and their estates become forfeited by their attainder.’

DENUNCIATIONS AGAINST HIM.

What services Bolingbroke had rendered to King George, since he was a convicted traitor, were not publicly known, but might justly be suspected. He had never expressed the slightest sorrow for his treason; and there was no security that he might not again betray the king and country, for no trust could be placed in his most solemn assurances. Supposing recent services justified reward, it was not such reward as could not be recalled. Persons who had rendered similar services had been rendered dependent on the Government for the continuance of those rewards, and so it should be, they thought, with Bolingbroke. The five peers further remarked that no pardon under the Great Seal could be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons, and that Bolingbroke had, in fact, no right or title to the benefits conferred upon him by a Bill which restored him to his estates, in spite of the Act of the Attainder.

The public discussed these matters with interest, and (except a few Jacobites) thought nothing of plots and pretenders. Atterbury, however, was as pertinaciously working as ever, to see his royal master James crowned at Westminster. In one of the numerous letters written by him this year, Atterbury suggests that James shall express his hopes to the Duke of Bourbon, then at the head of the French Government, that if the juncture at present will not suffer the Duke to do anything directly for him, yet at least that he will not so far act against him as to endeavour to draw off others from their designs and determinations to serve him—the King, James III.

AN EPIGRAM.

Among the ex-bishop’s friends in London was the Rev. Samuel Wesley, brother of John. The Tory journal ‘Mist’ had said of him that Mr. Wesley had refused to write against Pope, on the ground that ‘his best patron’ had a friendship for the poet. Thence arose the question, ‘Who was his best patron?’—a question which was answered by an epigrammatist (by some said to be Pope himself), who suggested that the patron was either the exiled Jacobite Bishop Atterbury, or the Earl of Oxford.

Wesley, if Wesley ’tis they mean,

They say, on Pope would fall,

Would his best patron let his pen

Discharge his inward gall.

What patron this, a doubt must be,

Which none but you can clear,

Or Father Francis ’cross the sea,

Or else Earl Edward here.

That both were good, must be confest,

And much to both he owes,

But, which to him will be the best,

The Lord (of Oxford) knows.

FRESH INTRIGUES.

The king’s speech, on opening Parliament in January, 1726, rather alarmed London (which was not dreaming of the recurrence of evil times), by assurances that in the City and in foreign Courts intrigues were then being carried on for the restoration of the Pretender. Additions to the armed force of the realm were suggested as advisable. A suspicion arose that in this suggestion the defence of Hanover from foreign aggression was more thought of than that of England against the Chevalier. However, the Lords dutifully replied:—

‘We can easily believe that at such a juncture, new schemes and solicitations are daily making by the most profligate and abandoned of them (the enemies of the King and Government), to revive the expiring cause of the Pretender; all which, we assure ourselves, can have no other effect than to hasten his destruction and the utter ruin of all his perjured adherents.’

The majority in the Commons, not a whit less loyal, used similar terms, adding, with reference to traitors near St. James’s: ‘The disaffected and discontented here have not been less industrious by false rumours and suggestions to fill the minds of the people with groundless fears and alarms, in order to affect the public credit, and, by distressing the government, give encouragement to the enemies of our peace.’

POLITICAL WRITERS.

Two notable persons who had, in their several ways, filled people’s minds with groundless alarms, now departed from the stage. On the 5th of February died the two great antagonistic news-writers of this Jacobite time, Abel Roper and George Ridpath. The former was proprietor of the Tory ‘Post Boy,’ the latter of the Hanoverian ‘Flying Post.’ Pope has pilloried both in the ‘Dunciad,’ and pelted them in an uncomplimentary note. The Whig ‘Weekly Journal’ says of Abel, that in the ‘Post Boy’ ‘he has left such abundant testimony for his zeal for indefeasible hereditary right, for monarchy, passive obedience, the Church, the Queen (Anne), and the Doctor (Sacheverel), that the public can be no strangers to his principles either in Church or State.’ Ridpath, Ropers celebrated antagonist, had been obliged in 1711 to fly to Holland, to escape the consequences of too severely criticising Queen Anne’s Ministry. In exile, he wrote ‘Parliamentary Right Maintained, or the Hanover Succession Justified.’ This was by way of a confuting reply to the ultra-Jacobite work of Dr. Bedford, ‘Hereditary Right to the Crown of England Asserted.’ Ridpath, having rendered such good service to the Hanoverian succession, appeared in London, as soon as George I., himself. He got his reward in an appointment to be one of the Patentees for serving the Commissioners of the Customs, &c., in Scotland, with stationery wares!

WHARTON, BOASTING.

Ridpath was a sort of public intelligencer for the Government. It is certain, on the other hand, that not only was the Government in London well served by its own private ‘Intelligencers,’ but it was equally well supplied through the folly of Jacobites at foreign Courts. From the British Envoys at those Courts dispatches reached London, which must have often made the Cockpit, where the Cabinet Ministers met, joyous with laughter. For example, towards the end of April, Mr. Robinson was reading a dispatch from Mr. Keen at Madrid, in which the latter described the Duke of Wharton, then a fugitive, as ever drinking and smoking; and such a talker in his cups as to betray himself, his party, and their designs. Keen encouraged his visits, accordingly. ‘The evening he was with me he declared himself the Pretender’s Prime Minister and Duke of Wharton and Northumberland. “Hitherto,” says he, “my master’s interest has been managed by the Duchess of Perth and three or four other old women who meet under the portal of St. Germain. He wanted a Whig and a brick van to put them in the right train, and I am the man. You may now look upon me, Sir Philip Wharton, Knight of the Garter, and Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the Bath, running a course, and by God, he shall be hard pressed. He bought my family pictures, but they will not be long in his possession; that account is still open. Neither he nor King George shall be six months at ease, as long as I have the honour to serve in the employ I am in.”’ Wharton was telling the Duke of Ormond that his master did not love foxhunting, but that he promised to go to Newmarket. To which Ormond answered, ‘he saw no great probability of it on a sudden, but wished the Pretender might take such care of his affairs that he might be able to keep his word.’

Besides a promise to go to Newmarket, there was shadowed forth another promise this year, which was, or was not, performed some years later—namely, the adhesion of the young Chevalier to the Church of England. Probably from some follower of the exiled family was derived the information, which was put into London newspaper shape in the following fashion, in the month of July:—

‘The Chevalier de St. George is at his last shifts, for now his eldest son is to be brought up in the principles of the Church of England. To give a proof of which he was led by a Church at Rome, by his Governor, who did not stop to let him kneel at the singing of the Ave Maria.’

PRINCE WILLIAM, DUKE OF CUMBERLAND.

This announcement was made, probably, to keep warm the interest of the Protestant Jacobites in the Stuart family generally, and in the person, particularly, of young Charles Edward, of whose equivocal Church-of-Englandism this is the equally equivocal foreshadowing. In the same month, little Prince William was created Duke of Cumberland. The future victor at Culloden was then five years old. The papers had at an earlier period recorded how he had cut his teeth, and they now noticed his military tendencies; but none could have conjectured how these were to be applied subsequently, at Fontenoy, and on the field near Inverness.

A simple act on the part of his father, the Prince of Wales, awoke the Whig muse to sing his praise. During the absence of the king in Hanover, a fire broke out in Spring Gardens. The Prince went down to it, not as an idle spectator in the way of the firemen, but as an active helper. This help was so effectively given as to induce a Whig poet to put the popular feeling in rhyme:—

Thy guardian, blest Britannia, scorns to sleep,

When the sad subjects of his father weep.

Weak Princes, by their fears, increase distress,

He faces danger, and so makes it less.

Tyrants, on blazing towers may smile with joy:

He knows to save is greater than destroy!

IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

When the king was this year in town, he risked his popularity among the Whig mobile, by adding a considerable portion of Hyde Park to the pretty but confined grounds—Kensington Gardens. There was an outcry, but grumblers were informed that they should rather rejoice, seeing that the whole would be laid out ‘after the fashion of the Elector of Hanover’s famous gardens at Herrenhausen.’ The Jacobites wished the Elector had never quitted that ancestral home of beauty. The present generation may be congratulated that the King of England created such another home of beauty here. It was, indeed, for himself and family: the public were not thought of. A few peers and peeresses, with other great personages, were allowed to have keys, in the absence of the royal family; but, at the present time, the gardens have become the inheritance of the nation; and the national heir may be proud of such a possession.

It was there, in the autumn of the year, that two pleasant acts of grace occurred. The Earl of Seaforth, attainted for his share in the rebellion of 1715, was there, by arrangement, presented to the king. The Jacobite peer went on his knees and confessed his treason. The king granted him his pardon, and gave him his hand to kiss; but the great Scottish earldom has never been restored to the noble house of Mackenzie. A similar scene took place when Sir Hugh Paterson, of Bannockburn, received the royal pardon.

SEAFORTH’S PARDON.

Nevertheless, who was serving or betraying King George at the Chevalier’s Court, or King James in London, is, among other official secrets, locked up in State papers. One illustration of the state of affairs in London was afforded, unpleasantly, to Atterbury, by the pardon of Lord Seaforth. That Jacobite peer had been made a Marquis by James III., and wished to be further made a Duke. At the same time Seaforth was negotiating with the British Government for his pardon and a grant out of his forfeited estate. Both were accorded, and the ex-Jacobite became a courtier at St. James’s. Mr. F. Williams, the apologist of Atterbury, says, that such Jacobites caused endless anxiety to the ex-bishop, and that their heart was not in the cause: all they had nearest at heart was their own pride, selfishness, and vanity!

The above acts of grace increased the general goodwill which was entertained towards the royal family. The Prince of Wales showed especial tact in obtaining popular suffrage. When the water-pageant of the Lord Mayor, Sir John Eyles, Bart., passed along the river, the Prince and Princess of Wales, with the little Duke of Cumberland, stood in the river-side gardens of old Somerset House, to see the procession pass. It was not pre-arranged; but when the family group was seen, the state barges pulled in towards the garden-terrace, and there the chief magistrate offered wine to the prince who, taking it, drank to ‘The Prosperity of the City of London.’ Colonel Exelbe, Chief Bailiff of the Weavers, brought up the company’s state barge, as the others were pulling out to the middle stream, and, say the daily chroniclers, ‘in a manly, hearty voice, drank to the health of the Prince, the Princess, and the little Duke.’ The prince delighted the weavers by drinking to them ‘out of the same bottle.’

The autumn brought pleasant news to London, namely, that the disarmament of the Highlands had been successfully accomplished by General Wade. This brings, in connection with London, a well-known personage on the stage.

ROBERT MACGREGOR CAMPBELL.

Robert Macgregor, having been compelled to drop the prohited surname, had taken that of Campbell, but he was familiarly known as Rob Roy. He was in arms against King George at Sheriff Muir, but he betrayed the Jacobite cause by refusing, at a critical moment, to charge and win a victory for King James. Romance has thrown a halo round this most contemptible rascal. He wrote to Wade, when the disarmament was going on: ‘I was forced to take part with the adherents of the Pretender; for, the country being all in arms, it was neither safe nor indeed possible for me to stand neuter. I should not, however, plead my being forced into this unnatural Rebellion against his Majesty, King George, if I could not at the same time assure your Excellency, that I not only avoided acting offensively against his Majesty’s forces, on all occasions, but, on the contrary, sent his Grace the Duke of Argyle all the intelligence I could, from time to time, of the strength and situation of the rebels, which I hope his Grace will do me the justice to acknowledge.... Had it been in my power as it was in my inclination, I should always have acted for the service of his Majesty King George; and the one reason of my begging the favour of your intercession with his Majesty, for the pardon of my life, is the earnest desire I have to employ it in his service, whose goodness, justice, and humanity are so conspicuous to all mankind.’ This precious letter, signed Robert Campbell, is quoted by Scott (Introduction to ‘Rob Roy,’ edit. 1831), from an authentic narrative, by George Chalmers, of Wade’s proceedings in the Highlands, which narrative is incorporated into the Appendix to Burt’s ‘Letters from the North of Scotland.’ ROB ROY’S LETTER TO WADE. Scott remarks on the letter from Rob Roy to Marshal Wade: ‘What influence his plea had on General Wade we have no means of knowing.... Rob Roy appears to have lived very much as usual.’ The London newspapers show, on the contrary, that the usual tenour of this thief and traitor’s life was very seriously interrupted. Of the disaffected chiefs of clans who had been ‘out and active’ on the Jacobite side in 1715, a good number at the time of the disarmament were seized and brought to London, with intimation that their lives would be spared. What became of them is told in the ‘Weekly Journal’ for January 24th, 1727, namely, that ‘His Majesty, with his usual clemency, had pardoned the following Jacobites who had been convicted capitally of high treason in the first year of his reign, for levying war against him.’ The pardoned traitors were: ‘Robert Stuart of Appin, Alexander Macdonald of Glencoe, Grant of Glenmorrison, Machinnin of that Ilk, Mackenzie of Fairburn, Mackenzie of Dachmalnack, Chisholm of Strathglass, Mackenzie of Ballumukie, MacDougal of Lorne,’ and two others, more notable than all the rest, ‘James, commonly called Lord, Ogilvie,’ and ‘Robert Campbell, alias MacGregor, commonly called Rob Roy.’ ROB ROY IN NEWGATE. They had been under durance in London, for it is added that ‘on Tuesday last, they were carried from Newgate to Gravesend, to be put on shipboard for transportation to Barbadoes,’ Rob Roy marching handcuffed to Lord Ogilvie through the London streets, from Newgate to the prison barge at Blackfriars, and thence to Gravesend is an incident that escaped the notice of Walter Scott and of all Rob’s biographers. The barge load of Highland chiefs and of some thieves seems, however, to have been pardoned, and allowed to return home.[1]

The Highland ‘Bobadil,’ MacGregor, is said to have appeared publicly in London, both in street and park, and that, as he was walking in front of St. James’s Palace, the Duke of Argyle pointed him out to George I., or according to another version, George II.; and that at the sight, the king declared, he had never seen a handsomer man in the Highland garb. This was probably one of the floating stories of the time, lacking foundation, save that a plaided Scotsman may have been seen near the palace; thence came the story. ROB ROY IN LONDON. With a fictitious story of Rob’s exploits, the Londoners, however, were familiar. This appeared in a history called the ‘The Highland Rogue.’ Scott describes it as ‘a catchpenny publication. In this book, Rob is said to be a species of ogre with a beard of a foot in length; and his actions are as much exaggerated as his personal appearance.’ It seems to have been made up of details in which there was much inaccuracy and still more invention. Seven years after the release from Newgate, Rob Roy died at Innerlochlarig-beg, on the 28th of December, 1734. He was buried in Balquhidder churchyard, half a dozen miles from where he died, and he was, at the time of his death, sixty-three years and some odd months old.

An honest man, one who served his country well, but who has not been celebrated in romance like Rob Roy, was missed from the Southwark side of the Thames, where his figure had been daily familiar for a long period to the inhabitants, namely, Sir Rowland Gwyn. On the last Monday in January, this venerable baronet died. The ultramontane Jacobites had little respect for him. When Sir Rowland was M.P. for Radnor, in King William’s reign, he brought in the Bill for settling the Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover. For some time Sir Rowland was our ‘Resident’ in Hanover; but he displeased Queen Anne’s Ministry, withdrew to Hamburg, and did not return to England till the accession of George I. After figuring in London for a time, hard circumstances drove him to live in the Liberties of the King’s Bench, and there, after having been familiarly known to, and diversely treated by, both Whigs and Tories, the old ultra-Protestant Baronet died, somewhat miserably.

A NOTE OF ALARM.

The king blew a loud note of alarm, with regard to the Chevalier, on the last occasion of the opening Parliament during his reign. Lord Chancellor King read the royal speech, in which the announcement was made that the Emperor and the King of Spain had entered into an offensive alliance, the object of which was to place the Pretender on the British throne and to destroy the established religion and government. The Emperor’s representative in London, Von Palm, made a bold comment on this speech. It was conveyed in a Latin letter to his British Majesty, in which the writer impertinently stated that there were many assertions in the speech which were misstatements, meant truthfully, perhaps, but much strained to make them wear a truthful appearance. Other assertions were (if well meant) based on erroneous grounds; but the declaration that the Emperor had joined, secretly or openly, with the King of Spain to effect the restoration of the Stuarts, was denounced by Von Palm as an unmitigated falsehood. For this audacity, the Imperial representative was ordered to leave the kingdom. The envoy’s great offence had been made greater by the publication of the Imperial Memorial (translated) in London, by the Emperor’s order. This appeal to the nation against the sovereign manifested a vulgar impudence on the part of his sacred, imperial, and catholic Majesty which thoroughly disgusted the people of these kingdoms. PATRIOTIC JACOBITES. To the great honour of the Jacobites in Parliament, they exhibited a true English spirit. They became, in fact, for the first time, ‘his Majesty’s Opposition.’ Shippen and Wyndham, especially, in Parliament, supported by their political colleagues, branded this ignoble attempt to put dissension between king and people as one which touched the honour of the nation, and which the nation would resent, to sustain the honour of its king. If this display of spirit led some to believe that Jacobitism, as a Stuart sentiment, was dead, the belief was erroneous. Soon after Palm was compelled to leave the kingdom, an outrage was committed on the recently erected double-gilt equestrian statue of George I., in Grosvenor Square. The statue, which was ‘by Nost,’ according to the papers, Van Ost was pulled down, horse and rider. The kings sword was broken, his truncheon beaten out of his hands, his legs and arms hammered off, and a significant hacking at his neck was a token of beheading him in effigy. A gross libel was stuck to the pedestal; and that unoccupied pedestal still remains as a monument of the Jacobite virulence of the time. A reward of 100l. was offered in vain for the discovery of the perpetrators.

VOLTAIRE.

At this moment there was a Frenchman in London who was sufficiently distinguished, even then, to have his name turned to account in a partisan political paragraph,—Voltaire. The Jacobites were probably not aware of Voltaire’s approval of the martyrdom of their king and saint, Charles I. ‘On the 30th of January,’ said Voltaire, ‘every King wakes with a crick in the neck.’ On January 28th, the ‘British Journal’ had the following well-turned paragraph: ‘Last week, M. Voltaire, the famous French poet, who was banished from France, was introduced to his Majesty who received him very graciously. They say he has received notice from France not to print his Poem of the League, “La Henriade,” a Prosecution still depending against him, by the Cardinal de Bissy, on the Account of the Praises bestowed in that Book on Queen Elizabeth’s behaviour in Matters of Religion, and a great many Strokes against the Abuse of Popery, and against Persecution in Matter of Faith.’ This allusion to religious liberty had, unconsciously, a startling comment. While Voltaire was kissing the royal hand, a soldier was being ‘whipt’ in the Park, for being a Papist! He was neither the first nor the last who suffered for no worse cause. At the same moment, the ultramontane authorities in France were hanging men for belonging to the reformed religion! What an excellent thing it is for Christian brethren to live together in love and unity!

THE NEW REIGN.

On the 3rd of June, the royal and imperial courts having become reconciled, and peace seeming established among nations, the king set out for Hanover. That day week he was lying dead on a sofa at Osnaburg. A heavy supper and much cold melon, the night before, had done the work which, as some thought, might prove a Jacobite opportunity. It proved otherwise. A paragraph of a few lines in the newspapers, unencumbered by any mourning border, told the people that a new reign had begun. The old king was soon forgotten. The younger one and his queen, Caroline, mourned officially, but they inaugurated their own accession, joyously. It may be added, ‘wisely,’ too. Their water-pageants made the then silver Thames glad and glorious. They went afloat in state, followed by gay Court barges full of high-born ladies and gallant gentlemen. The royal musicians in another vessel played the last new opera airs. According to the tide, these great folk went up the river to Chelsea or down to Shadwell. They received warm welcome whithersoever they went; more particularly when the royal barge pulled in near the shore, and the pleased occupants graciously took the flowers offered to them by good people, who might be hanged before the month was out, for stealing half of one of the nosegays. On these occasions, the broad river could hardly be seen for the compact mass of boats, fearfully laden, that drifted or were rowed upon it. As in the first George’s time, these popular pageants continued afloat long after the moon was up. Often on these occasions, the king and queen did not land at Whitehall, till after ten had struck. There, the sedan chairs were in waiting, and with one individual in each, gentlemen of the chamber and maids of honour being carried in the rear, and torchbearers, if need were, flanking the procession, the whole party were daintily lifted through the park to St. James’s palace.

CORONATION.

The coronation was to have taken place on the 4th of October. It was put off for a week. At this postponement, people speculated on the possibility of some Jacobite daring to take up the Champion’s gage. The Jacobite that was really feared was named Spring Tide. An invasion of Westminster Hall was both possible and probable; and thence, the postponement for a week. On the 11th the ceremony was performed with somewhat of maimed rites. The queen went in a close sedan to Westminster, with the Lord Chamberlain and a Maid of Honour in hack chairs; and they returned in the same unroyal fashion. There was no interruption in Abbey or Hall, as timid people anticipated, and at night all London was drunk, or nearly so, according to custom.

On the king’s birthday in October, there was a singular sort of rejoicing in one part of the metropolis. There were Jacobite and other prisoners in Newgate who ‘lay there for their fines,’—in fact, could not be discharged for lack of cash to pay their fees. They celebrated the day ‘by illuminating the windows of the gaol with candles;’ they drank the health of their Majesties who would do nothing to deliver them, the Judges who had condemned, and the Magistrates who had previously committed them. They forgave everybody, and went to bed almost as drunk as their keepers. It is due to the king however to say that when he with the queen and royal family dined with the Mayor and chief citizens in the Guildhall, he left a thousand pounds for the relief of poor debtors. Some ‘state prisoners’ in Newgate were also liberated on their recognizances.

PRINCE FREDERICK.

In December, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in obedience to his father’s commands, left Hanover suddenly in the night. He travelled to the coast, and embarked on board an ordinary packet-boat from Holland to Harwich. Thence, he went on his way posting to Whitechapel; there he hired a hackney-coach, drove to St. James’s, and walked by the back stairs to the queen’s room, where he was decently welcomed, though the greeting was neither affectionate nor enthusiastic.

Outwardly, there was an appearance of tranquility; but there was still an uneasiness in the Ministry, which seems to have led to the establishment of a spy system in private society. In the Atterbury correspondence of this year, there is a letter (written in December) from the Duchess of Buckingham to Mrs. Morrice, in which that illegitimate daughter of James II. says:—‘I have nothing passes in my family I would give three farthings to hide, yet I am sure the gossiping women and such kind of men send and invite my son to dinner and supper, to pick something from him of what passes in conversation either from me or my company.’

Walpole, however, had never experienced any difficulty in getting any information he required from the Jacobite duchess, whom he duped and flattered.

[1] Lord Ogilvie, son of the Earl of Airlie, did not assume the title borne by his father, when the latter died in 1717; but when Lord Ogilvie died childless, in 1731, his next brother, John, took the title of Earl. This John’s son, David, Lord Ogilvie, not profiting by experience, fell under attainder for acting with the Jacobites in arms, in 1745; but he too was ultimately pardoned by George III. The hereditary honours, however, were not confirmed by Act of Parliament till 1826, when David, who had called himself Earl of Airlie, could thenceforth do so without question.

CHAPTER II.

(1728 to 1732.)

he Court of George II. opened the new year with a reckless gaiety that reminds one of Whitehall in the time of Charles II., as described by Evelyn. Twelfth Night was especially dissipated in its character. There was a ball at St. James’s, and there were numerous gaming tables for those who did not dance. The king and queen lost 500 guineas at Ombre; the Earl of Sunderland, more than twice as much. General Wade lost 800 guineas, and Lord Finch half that sum. The winners were Lord William Manners, of 1,200 guineas; the Duchess of Dorset, of 900 guineas; the Earl of Chesterfield, of 550 guineas. The play was frantically pursued, and a madder scene could not have been exhibited by the Stuarts themselves. MIST’S JOURNAL. Mist’s Jacobite Journal referred sarcastically to the brilliant dissipation. On the wit and repartee which duly distinguished a royal masquerade at the opera-house, Mist made a remark by which he contrived to hit the Parliament. ‘They may be looked upon,’ he said, ‘as a Prologue to the Top Parts that are expected to be soon acted in another place.’ The death of an honest Scotch baronet, named Wallace, gave Mist another opportunity which he did not let slip. ‘Sir Thomas’ was declared to be ‘a lineal descendant of the famous Sir William Wallace of Eldersly, called the Restorer of the Liberties of Scotland, in whose days our distressed country wanted not a worthy patriot to assert her rights.’ On the anniversary of Queen Anne’s birthday, Mist eulogised her as ‘that great and good Queen,’ praised the lovers of Justice, Religion, and Liberty who kept the day; and added that she was the zealous defender of all three, ‘and therefore dear to the memory of all such whose hearts are entirely English.’ For less than this, men had stood in the pillory. Edmund Curll, the publisher, was standing there at this very time for nothing worse than publishing a ‘Memoir of John Ker of Kersland.’ The times and the manners thereof were, the first, miserable; the second, horrible. Robbery and murder were accounted for ‘by the general poverty and corruption of the times, and the prevalency of some powerful examples.’ In June, the ‘wasp sting’ takes this form: ‘There is no record of any robberies this week;—we mean, in the street.’

But for Mist, the general London public would have been ignorant of the movements of illustrious Jacobites, abroad. In that paper, they read of the huntings of the Chevalier de St. George and his boy, Charles Edward. Lord North and Grey, now a ‘Lieutenant-General in the army of England,’ and the Duke of Wharton, Colonel of the Spanish regiment, ‘Hibernia,’ with other honest gentlemen of the same principles, were helping to make Rouen one of the gayest of residences. At a later period, when Wolfe became the printer of this Jacobite ‘Weekly,’ and changed its name to ‘Fog’s Journal,’ canards were plentiful. The Duke of Wharton is described as having opened a school in Rouen, with a Newgate bird for an usher; Mist is said to have set up a hackney coach in the same city; and all three are congratulated on being able to earn a decent livelihood!

LOCKHART OF CARNWATH.

A much more honourable Jacobite than any of the above, was this year pardoned, namely, Lockhart of Carnwath; but, he was required by the English Government to pass through London, and present himself to the king. His return from exile was permitted only in case of his obedience. On the other hand, Lockhart stipulated that he should be asked no questions, and that he should be at full liberty to proceed home, unmolested. Sir Robert Walpole agreed to these terms. Lockhart left Rotterdam in May, and arrived safely in London.

GEORGE II. AND LOCKHART.

King George seems to have had a curiosity to see a man who had been plotting to set another in his place. ‘It was the more remarkable,’ says Lockhart, ‘in that he could not be persuaded or prevailed on to extend it’ (his gracious disposition) ‘to others, particularly my Lady Southesk, whose case was more favourable than mine; and so, to gratify him by my appearing in his Court, I was obliged to come to London. This was what did not go well down with me, and what I would gladly have avoided, but there was no eviting it; and as others, whose sincere attachment to the king’ (James III.) ‘had often preceded me on such like occasions, I was under a necessity of bowing my knee to Baal, now that I was in the house of Rimmon.’

Lockhart was kept waiting more than a fortnight for the interview. During the whole of that time, he was ordered to keep himself shut up in his house. Imagining he was to be put off, he boldly wrote to Walpole that he might be sent back to Rotterdam. ‘Whereupon, he sent for me next day, and introduced me to King George in his closet. After a little speech of thanks, he told me with some heat in his looks that I had been long in a bad way, and he’d judge, how far I deserved the favour he had now shown me, by my future conduct. I made a bow and went off and determined never to trust to his mercy, which did not seem to abound.’

Lockhart, however, did trust to King George’s mercy, and to his honour. He appeared in public, and was much questioned by Tories in private, or at dinners and assemblies, as to the affairs of the so-called James III. He told them just as much as he pleased to tell them. They knew too much, he said, already; but they evidently thought the Jacobite cause in a better condition than it really was. Lockhart adds the strange fact that all the members of the Government received him with great—Sir Robert Walpole with particularly great—civility. ‘Several insinuations were made that if I would enter into the service and measures of the Government I should be made very welcome. But I told them that I was heartily weary of dabbling in politics, and wanted only to retire and live privately at home.’

THE JACOBITE CAUSE.

Lockhart lingered in London, only to hear how well-informed the Government had been of his proceedings; they had read his letters, knew his cyphers, employed his own agents, and had a spy at the Chevalier’s side who enjoyed his confidence and betrayed it, for filthy lucre! Lockhart suspected Inverness, but he was doubtless not the only agent. The old Jacobite began to despair of the cause. Above a dozen years had elapsed since the outbreak of 1715, and while much had been done, the activity had been employed on doing nothing. There was now no party, and of course, no projects. Lockhart’s visit to London, where he associated with Whigs and Tories, taught him a sad truth to which he gives melancholy expression. ‘The old race drops off by degrees, and a new one sprouts up, that, having no particular bias to the king, as knowing little more of him than what the public newspapers bear, enter on the stage with a perfect indifference, at least coolness, towards him and his cause, which consequently must daily languish and, in process of time, be totally forgot. In which melancholy situation of the king’s affairs. I leave them in the year 1728.’

CHARACTER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

George Lockhart admired neither the English people nor their representatives in the House of Commons. Both he considered equally ignorant of the nature of true liberty and the principle of honest government. Speaking at one time of the members in Parliament assembled, he observes,—‘Though all of them are vested with equal powers, a very few, of the most active and pragmatical, by persuading the rest that nothing is done without them, do lead them by the nose and make mere tools of them, to serve their own ends. And this, I suppose, is owing to the manner and way of electing the members; for, being entirely in the hands of the populace, they, for the most part, choose those who pay best; so that many are elected who very seldom attend the House, give themselves no trouble in business and have no design in being chosen, even at a great expense, but to have the honour of being called Parliament men. On the other hand, a great many are likewise elected who have no concern for the interest of their country, and, being either poor or avaricious, aim at nothing but enriching themselves; and hence it is that no assembly under Heaven produces so many fools and knaves. The House of Commons is represented as a wise and august Assembly; what it was long ago I shall not say, but in our days, it is full of disorder and confusion. The members that are capable and mindful of business are few in number, and the rest mind nothing at all. When there is a party job to be done, they’ll attend, and make a hideous noise, like Bedlamites; but if the House is to enter on business, such as the giving of money or making of public laws, they converse so loud with one another in private knots, that nobody can know what is doing, except a very few who, for that purpose, sit near the clerks’ table; or they leave the House and the Men of Business, as they call them, to mind such matters.’

THE KING AND QUEEN.

In 1728, royalty continued to exhibit itself in a manner which, now, seems rather unedifying. On Sundays and Thursdays, in the summer, the city sent curious multitudes to Hampton Court, to see their Majesties dine in public. The sight-seers went freely into the gallery, where a strong barrier divided them from the royalties at table. On all occasions, the pressure against this barrier was immense; on one, it gave way, when scores of ladies and gentlemen were sent sprawling at the foot of the king’s table. Away went perukes and hats; for which there was a furious scramble, with much misappropriation, more or less accidental. While it lasted, king and queen held their sides and laughed aloud, regardless of etiquette, or indeed, of becomingness; but there was provocation to hilarity, when the worshippers were rolling and screaming at the feet of the national idols.

One of the latter showed how little he was prejudiced against Jacobites when they had qualities which outweighed their political defects. Dr. Freind, the Jacobite physician, whom the Prince of Wales had taken to St. James’s from the Tower, was, on the Prince’s accession to the throne, appointed physician to the queen. The doctor did not escape sneers and inuendoes from his old friends. ‘Dr. John Freind,’ writes Mr. Morrice (June, 1728), ‘is a very assiduous courtier, and must grow so more and more every day, since his quondam friends and acquaintances shun and despise him; and whenever he happens to fall in the way of them, he looks methinks very silly.’ ATTERBURY WEARY OF EXILE. Atterbury in exile, on hearing of Freind’s death, in 1728, remarked: ‘I dare say, notwithstanding his station at Court, he died with the same political opinions with which I left him.’ There was a talk in London of Atterbury himself being at least weary of exile. His later letters show some longing to die in his native land; and Walpole seems to have been aware of the fact. In October 1728, Atterbury’s son-in-law, Morrice, wrote to the bishop,—‘I was assured near two months ago, that Sir Robert Walpole had given out that you had entirely shaken off the affair of a certain person,—were grown perfectly weary of that drooping cause, and had made some steps, by means of the Ambassador at Paris, towards not being left out of the General Act of Grace which, it is every now and then talked, will pass the next Parliament; and that you desired above all things to come home, and end your days in your own country.’ The next Parliament, however, was not disposed to lenity.

In the king’s speech, on opening the Session in January, 1729, there was no reference to the Pretender. The king, however, attributed certain delays at the Courts of Vienna and Madrid to ‘hopes given from hence of creating discontents and division’ among his subjects; but if this hope encouraged these foreign Courts, ‘I am persuaded,’ said the king, ‘that your known affection for me, and a just regard for your own honour, and the interest and security of the nation, will determine you effectually to discourage the unnatural and injurious practices of some few who suggest the means of distressing their country, and afterwards clamour at the inconveniences which they themselves have occasioned.’ In the usual reply, the Lords lamented that the lenity of the constitution was daily abused, and that the basest and meanest of mankind ‘escape the infamous punishment due by the laws of the land to such crimes.’ The Commons, after some debate, employed terms equally strong. THE PRINCE OF WALES AT CHURCH. The Heir Apparent used the opportunity to illustrate his fidelity to the Protestant succession. Prince Frederick, to convince all good people of his Protestant orthodoxy, went a round of the London churches. He was accompanied by a group of young lords and gentlemen of good character, and, at this time, his reputation did not suffer by his being judged according to the company he kept. On the occasion of his dissipated church-going, the prince and his noble followers took the Sacrament in public: the doors of the church, whichever it might be, were set wide open, and the church itself was packed by a mob of street Whigs and Tories, who made their own comments on the spectacle, which was not so edifying and impressive as it was intended to be. Fog’s Jacobite paper hinted that a family not a hundred miles from St. James’s was split up with petty domestic quarrelling. The family, indeed, dined together twice a week in public; but people were reminded that outward appearances were exceedingly deceptive,—and sacramental partakings (it was said) proved nothing.

THE MORALS AND MANNERS OF THE TIME.

The papers of the year bear witness to the wickedness and barbarity of all classes of people, of both sexes. Half the highwaymen and footpads were members of his Majesty’s own guards. There was not a street or suburb of London that was free from their violence and villany. Small offences being as much a hanging matter as the most horrible crimes, lawless men found it as cheap to be murderers as petty-larcenists; and all looked to Tyburn as the last scene, in which they must necessarily figure. Three or four of these fellows, behind old Buckingham House, stopped the carriage of the Bishop of Ossory, who was on his way to Chelsea with his son. They took from the prelate’s finger his episcopal ring (of great value), and from his hand what seemed to be a pocket book, but which was a Book of Common Prayer. When the highwayman who held it saw that it was a Prayer Book, he handed it back to the bishop. ‘Had you not better keep it?’ said the prelate. ‘Thank you, no!’ rejoined the Pimlico Macheath, ‘we have no occasion for it at present, whatever may be the case at some time hereafter.’ The time alluded to was the hour of ‘hanging Wednesday,’ at Tyburn, when each patient was provided with a Prayer Book, which he often flung at someone in the crowd of spectators before he was pinioned. There was always a great variety of company at the triple tree in Tyburn field, built to accommodate a score. At a push a couple of dozen could be disposed of on a very busy hanging morning. The sufferers ranged,—from the most brutal murderers, men and women, down to timid pickpockets and shy shoplifters, boys and girls, to all of whom the bloody code of the time awarded the same measure of vengeance. The London mob were almost satiated with Tyburn holidays. It was an agreeable change for them to witness the public military funeral of old Mary Davis, who had served, both as sutler and soldier, in our wars in Flanders. In her later years, Mary kept a tavern in King Street, Westminster, bearing the curious sign of ‘Man’s worst ills.’ The crowd there, and about St. Margaret’s, where she was buried, was as great as at their Majesties’ coronation.

ATTERBURY, ON MIST.

The press prosecutions of this year were few. A vendor of some reprints of former very offensive numbers of Mist’s Journal lost his liberty for a while; and a poor servant girl, for delivering to a caller (who may have been a police agent) an obnoxious pamphlet, was sentenced to imprisonment in Bridewell, there to receive ‘the correction of the house,’—which meant a severe whipping.

No better proof of Atterbury’s sympathy with Mist and the enemies of the established Government can be given than in the following passage, from a letter written at Montpellier, in March, 1729-30. It is addressed to Sempill, who was a favoured resident at the Chevalier’s Court, but really a spy in the service of the Court in London.—‘I shall be concerned if so honest a man as Mr. Mist should have any just cause of uneasiness. His sufferings, that were intended to distress and disgrace him, ought to render him in the eyes of those for whom he suffered, more valuable; and I hope it will prove so that others may not be discouraged.’

THOMSON’S ‘SOPHONISBA.’

During the next ten years Jacobitisin in the capital made no manifestation, but the Whig poets were rather ostentatious in their loyalty; and the royal family patronised them accordingly. For instance, on the last day of February, 1730, Thomson produced at Drury Lane his tragedy, illustrating the virtue of patriotism, namely, ‘Sophonisba.’ The queen herself had attended the full-dress rehearsals, at which crowded audiences were not so much delighted as they were told they ought to be. However, the notice the queen condescended to take of this essay to keep alive the virtue of patriotism, led the author to dedicate it to Caroline. In that dedication the poet informed both Whigs and Jacobites that the queen ‘commands the hearts of a people more powerful at sea than Carthage, more flourishing in commerce than those first merchants, more secure against conquest, and under a monarchy more free than a commonwealth itself.’ In the prologue it was said of Britain,—

When freedom is the cause, ’tis her’s to fight,

And her’s, when freedom is the theme, to write.

In the play Mrs. Oldfield splendidly illustrated the spirit of patriotism, in the part of the heroine. Cibber acted the subordinate part of Scipio, in which he suffered at the hands of the Jacobites. These had not forgotten the offence in his ‘Nonjuror;’ and joining, hilariously savage with the critics who laughed at Cibber in tragedy, they hissed him off the stage and out of the part on the second night. Williams, a moderately good player, succeeded him as Scipio, and he, on the third night, looked so like the ultra-Whig actor, that the Jacobite spectators received him with groans and hisses, which, however, speedily turned to laughter and applause.

CIBBER MADE POET LAUREATE.

But Colley had his reward. The zeal he had displayed against Jacks and Nonjurors, by producing his famous comedy, now obtained its recompense, and his sufferings their consolation. In 1730, Cibber was appointed to the office of Laureate, with its annual butt of sack, or the equivalent, 50l. Every Jacobite who could pen a line, printed it against the laurelled minstrel. Apollo himself was pressed into the Nonjuring faction:—

‘Well,’ said Apollo, ‘still ’tis mine,

To give the real laurel,

For that, my Pope, my son Divine,

Of rivals end the quarrel.

But, guessing who should have the luck

To be the Birth-day fibber,

I thought of Dennis, Tibbald, Duck,

But never dreamed of Cibber.’

The year was one fruitful in plays; but it was observed that when nuts are plentiful, they are generally of poor quality; so it was with the plays of 1730. They are all clean forgotten, including ‘Sophonisba’ itself,—the epilogue to which tragedy had this advice to ladies who patronised foreign productions:—

To foreign looms no longer owe your charms,

Nor make their trade more fatal than their arms,

Each British dame who courts her country’s praise,

By quitting these outlandish modes, might raise

(Not from yon powder’d band, so thin, so spruce)

Ten able-bodied men, for public use.

JACOBITE HEARNE.

There was much meanness in the ill feeling of the Jacobites at even the little mischances that happened to the royal family. On a dark evening in November, the king and queen were returning from Kew to St. James’s, their footmen and grooms carrying torches. A storm of wind blew out the torches, and at Parson’s Green the carriage and its royal freight was overturned. Lord Peterborough’s people came to the rescue, with flambeaux, and the royal pair went on to town with nothing worse than an assortment of bruises. Such accidents were kindly attributed to the drunkenness of servants, but that bitter Jacobite Hearne thought that the mistress, if not the master, could be as drunk as they. Here is a sample of both thought and expression.—‘The present Duchess of Brunswick, commonly called Queen Caroline,’ says Hearne, in his ‘Reliquiæ,’ ‘is a very proud woman, and pretends to great subtlety and cunning. She drinks so hard that her spirits are continually inflamed, and she is often drunk. The last summer, she went away from Orkney House, near Maidenhead (at which she had dined), so drunk that she was sick in the coach all her journey, as she went along;—a thing much noted.’

A JACOBITE THREAT.

The Tories, on their side, were savagely mauled by the Whig press. The old Jacobite fire of Earbery was thereby inflamed, especially by the attacks on the old Tories in the ‘Craftsman.’ The former Stuart champion, who, in 1717, fled the country to avoid the consequences of publishing his ‘History of the Clemency of our English Monarchs,’ but whose sentence of outlawry was reversed in 1725, gave the ‘Craftsman’ warning, in the following advertisement, which was in the ‘Evening Post,’ of September 26, 1730,—‘Whereas the “Craftsman” has, for some time past, openly declared himself to be a root and branch man, and has made several unjust and scandalous reflections upon the family of the Stuarts, not sparing even King Charles I., this is to give notice, that if he reflects further upon any One of that line, I shall shake his rotten Commonwealth principles into atoms. Matthias Earbery.’ The writer kept his word in his ‘Occasional Historian.’

To decline to take the oath of abjuration was still a very serious matter, involving not merely temporary loss, but life-long professional ruin. Pope had a nephew, Robert Rackett, whose position affords a striking illustration of these Jacobite times. The story is thus told by Pope himself, in a letter to Lord Oxford, Nov. 16, 1730: ‘It happens that a nephew of mine, who, for his parents’ sins and not his own, was born a papist, is just coming, after nine or ten years’ study and hard service under an attorney, to practise in the law. Upon this depends his whole well-being and fortune in the world, and the hopes of his parents in his education, all which must inevitably be frustrated by the severity of a late opinion of the judges, who, for the major part, have agreed to admit no attorney to be sworn the usual oath which qualifies them to practise, unless they also give them the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. DIFFICULTIES IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE. This has been occasioned solely by the care they take to enforce an Act of Parliament, in the last session but one, against fraudulent practices of attornies, and to prevent men not duly qualified as attornies from practising as such. It is very evident that the intent of the Act is in no way levelled at papists, nor in any way demands their being excluded from practising more than they were formerly. Therefore, I hope the favour of a judge may be procured, so far as to admit him to take the usual attorney’s oath, without requiring the religious one.’ Pope hopes one of the judges will be good-natured enough to do this, and he suggests Judge Price for Lord Oxford’s manipulation. ‘In one word the poor lad will be utterly undone in this case, if this contrivance cannot be obtained in his behalf.’ Lord Oxford applied, not to Price, but to ‘Baron C.’ (Carter or Comyns, as Mr. Elwin suggests). This judge, says Pope (Dec. 1730), ‘showed him what possible regard he could, and lamented his inability to admit any in that circumstance, as it really is a case of compassion.’ Ultimately the obstacle seems to have been surmounted. Within a few months of half a century later, Pope’s nephew died in Devonshire Street, London, where he had ‘clerks’ in his employment. ‘He had, therefore,’ says Mr. Elwin in a note to the letter from which the above extract is taken, ‘managed to make his way in some line of business.’

DEATH OF DEFOE.

In the year 1731 died a popular and political writer, in the announcement of whose death neither his popular works nor his provocating agency in the service of Government is referred to. The event is thus recorded in Read’s ‘Weekly,’ for May 1st, 1731: ‘A few days ago died Mr. Defoe Sen., a person well known for his numerous and various writings. He had a great natural genius and understood very well the Trade and Interest of this Kingdom. His Knowledge of Men, especially of those in High Life, with whom he was formerly very conversant, had weakened his Attachment to any Party, but in the Main, he was in the Interest of Civil and Religious Liberty, in behalf of which he appeared on several remarkable Occasions.’

‘FALL OF MORTIMER.‘

In the month of July the Government began to look sharply after political offences on the stage. At the Haymarket Theatre, an historical tragedy, called ‘The Fall of Mortimer,’ was announced; and, in the announcement the Ministry saw an attack on Walpole, and probably on the queen. The grand jury of the County of Middlesex delivered a long ‘presentment’ to the Court of King’s Bench, in which the new play was described as ‘a false, infamous, scandalous, seditious, and treasonable libel, written, acted, printed, and published against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity.’ It is not clear that the play was ever more than rehearsed. On the night it was to have been regularly acted, a body of messengers and constables rushed through the stage door in order to make capture of the players. These were attired, and ready for the curtain to go up; Mullart, as Mortimer, stood plumed and gallant at the centre of the stage. At the first alarm, however, he and his mates took to flight, decked out as they were, and succeeded in escaping. This play, which some thirty years later was again turned to political purpose, grew out of the brief fragment and the sketched-out plot of a play designed by Ben Jonson. In the few lines he wrote, there are the following against upstarts and courtiers. These were held to be adverse to Walpole’s peace as well as the king’s. For example:—

Mortimer

Is a great Lord of late, and a new thing!

*    *    *    *    *

At what a divers price do divers men

Act the same things. Another might have had

Perhaps the hurdle, or at least the axe,

For what I have this crownet, robes, and wax.

There is a fate that flies with towering spirits

Home to the mark, and never checks at conscience.

*    *    *    *    *  We

That draw the subtle and more pleasing air

In that sublimed region of a Court,

Know all is good we make so, and go on,

Secured by the prosperity of our crimes.

This matter passed over. A press war sprang up in another direction.

DUELS AND SERMONS.

Lord Hervey published a pamphlet called, ‘Sedition and Defamation Displayed.’ An anonymous author speedily followed it up by ‘a Proper Reply to a late scandalous libel, called “Sedition and Defamation displayed.”’ Hervey challenged William Pulteney, the reputed author of the Proper Reply. The parties fought in the new walk in the upper part of St. James’s Park. Their respective friends, Sir John Rushout and Henry Fox looked on, while the adversaries made passes at each other; but, when they closed, the seconds rushed in, parted, and disarmed them. A little plaister was all the remedy required to cover all the damage done by a few scratches on Lord Hervey’s person. Pulteney’s name, however, was struck out of the Council Book, and he was ignominiously put out of the commission of the peace.

The royal family proceeded to show that there was no prejudice on their part against the noble art of printing. A printing press and cases were put up at St. James’s House (as the old palace used to be called), and the noble art of printing was exhibited before their majesties. The future victor of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland, worked at one of the cases. He set up in type a little book, of which he was the author, called ‘The Laws of Dodge Hare.’ The duke, at this time, also took lessons in ivory-turning, which was considered to be a ‘most healthful exercise.’ Generally on Sunday, while the king and queen were in the Chapel Royal, one of the Bishop of London’s chaplains preached to the young Duke and the Princesses Mary and Louisa in his royal highness’s apartment! As his royal highness had recently stood godfather, in person, to the son and heir of Lord Archibald Hamilton, he was supposed to be of importance enough to be thus preached to. The young princesses were thrown in to make up a juvenile congregation.

Very much seems to have been made of the young duke this year, as if he had a mission to perform. A little establishment was set up for him, and he became a ‘personage.’ The papers solemnly proclaimed how the Duke of Cumberland appeared in public, for the first time, with his own coach and livery servants. He paid a visit to Sir Robert Walpole, in Arlington Street, and went afterwards to Major Foubert’s Riding House (on the site of what is now called Major Foubert’s Passage, Regent Street), and there received his first lesson in riding.

The only manifestation of party feeling this year was made by the citizens of London. A subscription had been entered into for the casting of a statue of William III. When it was executed, the city, influenced by Jacobite feeling, refused to receive it. Bristol was more loyal. The citizens there bought the effigy that London despised, and William soon stood erect in the midst of Queen Square.

YOUNG LORD DERWENTWATER.

Among the miscellaneous chronicling of the year, there is one made by most of the Saturday papers to this effect: ‘Yesterday, Friday, August 19th, the Lord Derwentwater arrived at his house in Poland Street, from France.’ This was John, the late earl’s only son. He came to London to consult Chiselden, the great physician. He was hopelessly ill of dropsy; and a double sympathy attracted crowds of Jacobites to resort to Poland Street to manifest their respect for the suffering son of one of the martyrs to the cause of the Stuarts.

A STANDING ARMY.

When in 1732 the National Defences became a serious matter for consideration, the Jacobites affected to think that an army of 12,000 men would suffice for the protection of the realm. The Whigs insisted that at least 17,000 would be required for its defence. The London Whig papers asserted that 4,000 men would have all their work to do in keeping Scotland quiet. The fortified towns of England would require 2,000 men. The remainder would not be sufficiently strong in numbers, for sudden emergencies, if the total was only to be 12,000. Such insufficiencies would leave many places without defence. This would encourage Risings. Open insurrection would lead to foreign invasion, with the Pretender at the head of it. The wind that would bring over his hostile fleet would shut up our own in our harbours. Why had Jacobitism increased tenfold in the last four years of Queen Anne? Because the High Priests had been unmuzzled, and the necessary forces had been disbanded. The Preston Rebellion, as the outbreak of 1715 was contemptuously called, would never have happened at all if we had had 17,000 men under arms. As it was, it was crushed not by the bravery or ability of our troops and officers, but by the incapacity and timidity of the rebels themselves. So ran Whig comments in Parliament.

Unless the Government in London were sure that there were as many majorities in all Corporations against the Chevalier’s pretensions as there were ‘in certain places against King William’s statue,’ the administration was conjured to keep up the numbers of the army. While the Jacobites had hopes, England must entertain fears. Had Louis XIV. lived a few months longer, a French army would have been in full march to seat the Chevalier on a throne at Westminster. The Regent, Duke of Orleans, did not help the Pretender, simply because he needed our alliance against Spain which refused to recognise his Regency.

THE DUKE’S GRENADIERS.

At home there was a seeming fixed determination that the Duke of Cumberland should be a soldier, and be trained to the ability necessary to meet future emergencies. The youthful prince had military inclinations. That military spirit was stimulated by the formation of a company of youthful grenadiers out of a dozen sons of persons of quality. Their dress resembled the uniform of the 2nd Foot Guards. ‘His Royal Highness the Duke,’ say the journals of the day, ‘diverts himself with acting as corporal, choosing to rise regularly in Preferment. The number being but twelve, is to be increased.’ Fog’s Jacobite journal says maliciously,—‘increased in case of War.’

Observance of the solemn anniversary of the 30th of January used to be considered as a protest that all parties might make against ‘the sin of rebellion.’ However this may be, reverence for the Royal Martyr seems to have suffered some diminution in the year 1732.

GENERAL ROGUERY.

When Dr. Hare, Bishop of Chichester, preached before the House of Lords, in the Abbey, on the 30th of January, the only peers present were the Lord Chancellor, Lord Onslow, and the Bishops of Peterborough, Lincoln, Lichfield and Coventry, St. David’s, and Rochester. The sermon was thoroughly political. The text was from Proverbs xxiv. 21, ‘My son, fear thou the Lord and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change.’ The sermon was described as ‘most extraordinary; the preacher vindicated the King’s honour and sincerity in his concessions to the Parliament;’ and he insisted strongly on the uses of ‘keeping up the day.’

Later, the Jacobites found some little satisfaction in the smart reprimand delivered by the Speaker of the House of Commons to Sir John Eyles, for directing the secretary of the Commissioners for the sale of forfeited estates to set his name to an order for the disposal of the Earl of Derwentwater’s estates, in the sale of which, great frauds were discovered. But where was fraud not found at that time? From the benches of Parliament to the council-room of the Charity Commissioners, rogues abounded; the country was sold by the Senate, and the poor were plundered by their trustees. Yet, these things caused less emotion in the London coffee-houses than the report which came of the death of Bishop Atterbury at Paris, in February. The event was simply recorded in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ in these uncompromising words:—

DEATH OF ATTERBURY.

‘February 15, 1732.—The Revd. Dr. Francis Atterbury, late Bishop of Rochester, died at Paris, justly esteemed for his great learning and polite conversation.’ In what sense the Jacobites esteemed him may be seen in an expression in one of Salkeld’s letters, wherein the writer laments the loss of ‘that anchor of our hopes, that pillar of our cause.’

Pope, in a letter to Lord Oxford, referred to Atterbury’s death in these terms: ‘The trouble which I have received from abroad, on the news of the death of that much-injured man, could only be mitigated by the reflection your Lordship suggests to me—his own happiness, and return into his best country, where only honesty and virtue were sure of their reward.’ Pope could not have thought the ex-bishop innocent of the treason, of which he was undoubtedly guilty; for the poet had knowledge of the treachery before the Jacobite prelate’s death. Samuel Wesley must have known it too, but he ignored all but his patron’s virtues in a very long elegy on Atterbury’s decease, written in very strong language, of which these lines are a sample:—

Should miscreants base their impious malice shed,

To insult the great, the venerable, dead;

Let truth resistless blast their guilty eyes!

—which is a sort of malediction that is now quite discarded by moral and by fashionable poets.

The ‘Craftsman’ of May 6th announces the arrival of Mr. Morrice, the High Bailiff of Westminster, at Deal. On landing he was taken into custody and sent up prisoner to London, where, after being rigorously examined by one of the Secretaries of State, he was admitted to bail. The corpse of the ex-bishop was arrested as it came up the river. It was taken to the Custom House, where, the coffin being examined for papers, and nothing compromising being found, the body, according to the facetious ‘Craftsman,’ was discharged without bail. Great opposition was made to a request for burial in the Abbey; and when this was granted, the ‘Craftsman’ was ‘not certain as to the usual Church ceremony being read over the corpse.’

BURIAL OF ATTERBURY.

The public were, at all events, kept in the dark, lest Jacobite mobs should make riotous demonstrations at the ceremony. ‘On Friday, May 12th,’ says Sylvanus Urban, ‘the Corpse of Bishop Atterbury was privately interred in his Vault in Westminster Abbey. On the Urn which contained his Bowels, &c., was inscribed: “In hac Urnâ depositi sunt cineres Francisci Atterburi Episcopi Roffensis.” Among his papers brought over by Mr. Morrice was “Harmonia Evangelica,” in a new and clearer Method than any yet publish’d. ’Tis also said he translated Virgil’s “Georgics,” which he sent to a friend with the following Lines prefix’d,

Haec ego lusi

Ad Sequanæ ripas, Tamesino a flumine longe

Jam senior, fractusque, sed ipsa morte meorum

Quos colui, patriæque memor, neque degener usquam.’

They who were of the prelate’s way of thinking made him, in one sense, speak, or be felt, even in his grave. The body of the Jacobite Bishop of Rochester had scarcely been deposited at the west end of the south aisle of Westminster Abbey, of which he had been the Dean, when copies of an epigrammatic epitaph were circulating from hand to hand, and were being read with hilarity or censure in the various London coffee-houses and taverns. It ran to another tune than that made upon him by Prior, namely:—

His foes, when dead great Atterbury lay,

Shrunk at his corse, and trembled at his clay.

Ten thousand dangers to their eyes appear,

Great as their guilt and certain as their fear!

T’ insult a deathless corse, alas! is vain;

Well for themselves, and well employ’d their pain,

Could they secure him,—not to rise again!

The printsellers reaped a harvest by selling the Bishop’s portrait. The most popular was sold by Cholmondely in Holborn, but he was had up before the Secretary of State, and was terrified by that official into suppressing the sale.

AT SCARBOROUGH.

All London, that is, what Chesterfield called ‘the Quality,’ went seaward in August. The cream of them settled on the Scarborough sands. ‘Bathing in the sea,’ says Chesterfield, ‘is become the general practice of both sexes.’ He gives an amusing account of how ‘the Quality’ from London looked, at Scarborough, and he jokes, in his peculiar fashion, upon plots, Jacobites, and ministers. He writes to the Countess of Suffolk: ‘The ladies here are innumerable, and I really believe they all come for their healths, for they look very ill. The men of pleasure are Lord Carmichael, Colonel Ligonier, and the celebrated Tom Paget, who attend upon the Duke of Argyle all day, and dance with the pretty ladies at night. Here are, besides, hundreds of Yorkshire beaux, who play the inferior parts and, as it were, only tumble, while those three dance upon the high ropes of gallantry. The grave people are mostly malignants or, in ministerial language, “notorious Jacobites,” such as Lord Stair, Marchmont, Anglesea, and myself, not to mention many of the House of Commons of equal disaffection. Moreover, Pulteney and Lord Cartaret are expected here soon; so that if the Ministry do not make a plot of this meeting, it is plain they do not want one for this year.’

NOTORIOUS JACOBITES.

Chesterfield was branded as a ‘notorious Jacobite,’ because he had opposed Walpole’s famous Excise Bill, this year. As a consequence, he was deprived of his staff of office as Lord Steward of the Household. While Chesterfield was writing so airily to Lady Suffolk, the king was laying out 3,000l. in repairing the Palace of Holyrood. A dozen years later, when ‘news frae Moidart’ reached the London Jacobites, they laughed at the idea of the ‘Duke of Brunswick’ having made Holyrood suitable for the reception of Charles Edward, Prince of Wales.

In the meantime a voice here and there from the metropolitan pulpits ventured to hope the king would be kept by divine guidance, in a safe groove. The future hero of Culloden was taking lessons in philosophy from Whiston, and in mathematics from Hawksbee; and, at a funeral more public than Atterbury’s, the Jacobites assembled in Poland Street, to pay a last mark of respect to the ‘Earl of Derwentwater,’ the patient whom great Cheselden could not save, and whose

THE EARL OF DERWENTWATER.

corpse was carried to Brussels to be deposited by the side of that of his mother, Anne Webb. The so-called ‘Earl’ John, son of the attainted and beheaded peer, as a sick man, was left unmolested, though he called himself by a title unrecognised by the Government.

CHAPTER III.

(1733 to 1740.)

he feverish imagination of Tories who were decided Jacobites also, saw impossible reasons for every event. From the 23rd to the 30th of January, 1733, there raged in the metropolis what would probably now be called an influenza. The disease was then known as the ‘London head-ache and fever;’ and it was fatal in very many cases. Some of the Jacobites at once discovered and proclaimed the cause and the effect of this visitation, which carried off fifteen hundred persons in the metropolis. Observe the two dates. ‘On the 23rd of January, 1649, Charles denied the jurisdiction of his Judges, who, nevertheless, sent him to the block on the 30th.’ The week of mortal fever and headache was only an instalment of that former week’s work which ended in the martyrdom of the Chevalier de St. George’s grandfather! Horace Walpole asserts that George II. always attended Church on the 30th of January. The king and the whole Court went thither in mourning. All who had service to perform at Court, put on sables. The king’s sister, the Queen of Prussia, was a declared Jacobite, ‘as is more natural,’ says Walpole, ‘for all princes who do not personally profit by the ruin of the Stuarts.’[2]

APPROACHING STORM.

The royal speech on opening Parliament was of a peaceful character. The Lords re-echoed it in their address, but in the Commons, both Sir John Barnard and Shippen moved amendments to the address, from that House. The speech had recommended an avoidance of all heats and animosities. The theme of Barnard and Shippen was that the liberties and the trade of the nation were probably menaced; that a general terror was spreading of something being about to be introduced, perilous, nay destructive, to both. Men of all parties being subject to this terror, ‘they cannot,’ said Shippen, ‘be branded with the name of Jacobites or Republicans, nor can it be said that this opposition is made by Jacobites or Republicans. No, the whole people of England seem to be united in this spirit of jealousy and opposition.’ The address, of course, was carried. But a storm was approaching.

WYNDHAM IN PARLIAMENT.

This year, 1733, was the year of the famous debates on the motions for a permanent increase of the army, and on the Excise question introduced by Walpole, who proposed to transfer the duties on wine and tobacco from the Customs to the Excise. The two propositions set the country in a flame. The universal cry was that they were two deadly blows at trade and liberty. The first proposal was carried; Walpole, under pressure of large minorities against him in the House, and larger adverse majorities out of it, withdrew the Excise measure. All his opponents were branded by his partisans as Jacobites and something more. This gave opportunity to the Jacobites in Parliament, and increased the vigour of their opposition. It was against the motion for increasing the number of the Land Forces, that the ‘Patriot’ Sir William Wyndham spoke with almost fierce sarcasm. ‘As for the Pretender, he did not believe there was any considerable party for him in this nation. That pretence had always been a ministerial device made use of only for accomplishing their own ends; but it was a mere bugbear, a raw head and bloody bones fit only to frighten children; for he was very well convinced his Majesty reigned in the hearts and affections of his people, upon that his Majesty’s security depended; and if it did not depend on that, the illustrious family now on the throne could have little security in the present number, or in any number, of the standing forces.’

A few press prosecutions, a few imprisonments of Jacobite tipplers who would drink the health of King James in the streets, or call it out in church services; a weeding-out of disorderly soldiers from otherwise trustworthy regiments; and a little trouble arising from pulpit indiscretions, are the only symptoms of yet uncertain times, to be detected. The ‘Craftsman,’ of August 4th, chronicles the discharge of ‘several Private Gentlemen out of the Lord Albemarle’s troop of Life Guards, some as undersized, and others as superannuated, but such have been allowed fifty guineas each and their college. His Lordship proposes to give every Private Gentleman in his Troop a new Surtout and a pair of Buckskin breeches, at his own Expense.’

POLITICAL SERMON.

Later, in the autumn, preachers took for a subject the want of respect manifested, by the mass of people, for their ‘betters,’ including all that were in authority. On Saturday, October 13th, the ‘Craftsman’ had this paragraph, showing how the pulpit was lending itself to politics as well as to morals:—‘Last Sunday a very remarkable sermon was preached at a Great Church in the City, against speaking evil of dignities, in which the Preacher endeavoured to show the unparalleled wickedness and Impudence of Tradesmen meddling in Politicks, and particularly of their riotous Procession to Westminster to petition against the late Excise scheme (so evidently calculated for their good), which he placed among the number of Deadly Sins, and recommended Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, for which the Audience were so unkind as to laugh at him so much that he shut up his book before he had done and threatened them with a severe Chastisement.’

STORMY DEBATES.

The fear of the ‘Pretender,’ the recruiting in back parts of London for ‘foreign service,’ and the relations of England with Continental powers, kept up a troubled spirit among those who wished to live at home, at ease. One of the most remarkable debates of the session occurred in the House of Lords. The king had exercised, and wished to continue to exercise, a right (such as he supposed himself to possess) of dismissing officers from the army, without a court martial. The Duke of Marlborough (Spencer) brought in a Bill to prevent such summary expulsion, at the king’s pleasure. In the course of the debate the figure of the Pretender was brought forward. The Duke of Newcastle warmly supported the king’s ‘prerogative.’ There would be no safety, he said, unless the king held that right. ‘There is,’ he remarked, ‘at present a Pretender to the Crown of these realms, and we may conclude that there will always be plots and contrivances in this kingdom against the person in possession of the throne. While there is a Pretender, he may have his agents in the army as well as he has everywhere else.’ Officers (according to the duke) might be led away from their duty, and he held it to be unjust to the king to deprive him of the right to dismiss officers suspected of Jacobitism, or known to be disloyal, on evidence which a court martial might not think sufficient for cashiering them. The Bill was lost, and to the king was left the power of doing wrong.

In a portion of the Duke of Newcastle’s speech he asserted that the right claimed for the king was indispensable, on the ground that not only were private soldiers being recruited in London for ‘foreign service,’ but that officers might be tampered with, and that there was no real security that a general-in-chief might not be seduced into the enemy’s camp. This spread some alarm. The debates, indeed, were supposed to be delivered in private, but what was called ‘the impudence of some fellows’ gave all that was essential to the public. For defence of the nation, however, every precaution had been taken. Early in the spring, a fleet of twenty sail of the line was sent to the Downs. Eight regiments were brought from Ireland to England. It is certain that these precautions preserved the public tranquility of the kingdom. THE YOUNG CHEVALIER. Young Prince Charles Edward was serving ‘with particular marks of distinction’ in the army of Don Carlos; and the boy gave no obscure hints that he would, whenever it was in his power, favour the pretensions of his family. An exclamation of Sergeant Cotton, at a review in Hyde Park, that he would shoot the king; and the fact that the sergeant’s musket was loaded with ball, and that he had a couple of bullets in his pocket which had no right to be there, seemed to imply that Cotton was ready to favour the Stuart family’s pretensions.

The metropolis, moreover, was disturbed this year by the appearance of strangers in the streets, with more or less of a military air about many of them. These were, however, for the most part, Jacobites who were void of offence, and who had hastily come over from France. The Government there had given them a taste of what it was to live under such a system in Church and State as the Stuarts would establish in England, if they could get permanent footing there. A royal edict was published throughout France, peremptorily commanding all English, Irish, and Scotch, of the ages between eighteen and fifty, who were without employment, to enter the French army, within a fortnight. Disobedience to this edict was to be [punished]:—civilians, by condemnation to the galleys;—men who had formerly served, to be shot as deserters! Those who were not fortunate enough to get away from such a paternal Government found friends in the ministers of that George II. whom they still styled ‘Duke of Brunswick’ and ‘Elector of Hanover.’ Lord Waldegrave, the British Ambassador in France, sharply censured the edict, remonstrated against the injustice of treating the persons named in the edict worse than the natives of any other country, and pointed to the ingratitude of the French Government for various good service rendered to it by England on recent occasions. There was not a place in London where men met, but there Lord Waldegrave’s health was drunk. Whatever the politics of the drinkers were, all parties were glad to find a cause for drinking which carried unanimity with it.

LORD DUFFUS.

There was another Jacobite incident of the year, not without interest. Queen Anne’s old naval captain, the gallant Kenneth, Lord Duffus, when attainted for his share in the affair of 1715, was in safety in Sweden, but he gave formal notice of his intention to repair to England and surrender himself. On his way, the British Minister at Hamburg had him arrested, and he held Lord Duffus prisoner till after the limited time had elapsed for the surrender of attainted persons. Lord Duffus was brought captive to London, was shut up in the Tower, and, destitute of means, was maintained at the expense of Government. By the Act of Grace, of 1717, he obtained his liberty, and he subsequently entered the naval service of Russia. At his death, he left an only son, Eric Sutherland (whose mother was a Swedish lady) who, in this year, 1734, at the age of twenty-four, claimed the reversal of his father’s attainder (as Lord Duffus was forcibly prevented from obeying the statute), and his own right to succeed to the baronial title. The claim excited much interest while it was being pursued; and there was some disappointment in Jacobite circles when the Lords came to a decision that the claimant had no right to the honour, title, and dignity of Baron Duffus. Eric was, at this time, a loyal officer in the British army; he died in 1768. He left a son, James, born in 1747, who was restored to the title, by Act of Parliament, in 1826, when he was in his eightieth year. He enjoyed it only a few months. His successor, Benjamin, died in 1875, when the title became extinct.

THE CALVES’ HEAD CLUB.

The 30th of January 1735 was kept in memory by other means than ‘services’ before the Senate, and others in the parish churches. By a tradition which was founded in a lie, and which rooted itself and grew in the public mind by additional lying, there was a popular belief that a Calves’ Head Club, from the time of Cromwell, had a special meeting and dinner on every anniversary of the death of King Charles, to dishonour his memory. The calf’s head served at table was in derisive memory of the decollated head of that sovereign; and the ocean of liquor drunk was in joyous celebration of those who brought about the monarch’s death. The story was a pure invention, but the invention led to a sort of realisation of the story. Here and there, anti-Jacobites observed the 30th of January as a festival. THE CALVES’ HEAD RIOT. Hearne mentions a dinner given on that day by a number of young men at All Soul’s College, Oxford. They had ordered a calf’s head to be served up, but the cook refused to supply it. He unwittingly, however, gave the guests an opportunity of declaring their approval of the sentence executed on Charles, by sending them a dish of woodcocks, and these the audacious Oxford Whigs solemnly decapitated. In the present year, 1735, occurred the famous Calves’ Head riot at and in front of a tavern in Suffolk Street. According to the record, some noblemen and gentlemen had the traditional dinner on the above day, when they exhibited to the mob, which had assembled in the street, a calf’s head in a napkin dipped in claret to represent blood, and the exhibitors, each with a claret-stained napkin—in his hand and a glass of strong liquor in the other, drank anti-Stuart toasts, and finally flung the head into a bonfire which they had commanded to be kindled in front of the house. The Jacobite mob broke into the house and would have made ‘martyrs’ of the revellers but for the timely arrival of the guards. Now, with regard to this incident, there are two opposite and contemporary witnesses, whose testimony nevertheless is not irreconcilable. The first is ‘a lady of strong political tendencies and too busy in matters of taste to be ignorant of party movements.’ She is so described by a correspondent of the ‘Times,’ who, under the signature ‘Antiquus,’ sent to that paper a few years ago the following copy of a letter, written by the lady, and forming one of a collection of old letters in the possession of ‘Antiquus, of Lincoln’s Inn’:—

THE ‘30TH OF JANUARY.’

‘I suppose you have heard of the Suffolk-street Expedition on the Thirtieth of January, and who the blades were; they went and bespoke a dinner of calves’ heads at the Golden Eagle, and afterwards ordered a bonfire at the door, then came all to the window with handkerchiefs dipt in blood, and shook them out, and dress’d up a calf’s head in a nightcap and had it thrown into the bonfire. The mob gather’d about the door and were exceedingly inraged, so that they broke ye door open and broke all the windows, and threw fire into the house. The gentlemen were forc’d to take sanctuary in the garret, and had not the Guards been sent for the house would have been pull’d down and the actors, no doubt, pull’d to pieces.

‘Feb. 5, 1734-5.’

‘The list of the British worthies I formerly sent you an account of are as follows:—Lord Middlesex, Lord Harcourt, Lord Boyne, and Lord Middleton—Irish; Lord John Murray, Sir James Grey, Mr. Smith, Mr. Stroud, and, some say, Mr. Shirley. Lord A. Hamilton dined with them, but, I am told, went away before the riot began.

‘Feb. 16, 1734-5.’

OBJECTIONABLE TOASTS.

Unfortunately, the name of the writer of the above letter is not given. On the other hand, a letter written by one of the guests, a week earlier than the above, has often been published. Therein, Lord Middlesex informs Spence, then at Oxford, that he and seven others met at the Golden Eagle to dine, without any thought as to what the date of the month was. The eight included men of various political and religious principles. Lord Middlesex says nothing as to the dishes served up, but he states that all the guests had drunk hard and some were very drunk indeed, when, happening to go to the window, they saw a bonfire in the street, and straightway ordered fresh faggots, by which they had a bonfire of their own. Then, they remembered the day, and fearful of the consequences of this demonstration, the soberer part of the guests proposed, from the open windows, loyal toasts to be drunk by all. To a Jacobite mob this was an aggravation of insult, for to drink the king, the Protestant succession, and the administration, was to express affection for what they cordially hated. The mob besieged the house, and then made an ugly rush to get at the offenders, which, however, was checked by the arrival of the soldiers. Lord Middlesex says that the leader of the mob was ‘an Irishman and a priest belonging to Imberti, the Venetian Envoy.’

In the pulpits of the chapels of some of the foreign ambassadors,—most Christian, most Catholic, or most Apostolic,—the preachers, naturally enough, expounded Christianity in a politico-religious point of view. The Protestant-succession papers speak of them as a daring vanguard dashing forward to secure improved and fixed positions. Of course, the preachers, when supporting the Papacy, were advocating the Pretender by whom, were the Stuarts restored, the Papacy would be supported. This led to an outburst of anti-papal sermons from half the London pulpits. Secker, the ex-dissenter, ex-medical student, and now Bishop of Bristol, was at the head of this body. They preached sermons against Popery in a long and fiery series, in some cases to the extent of two or three dozen. Where, on one side doctrines were sincerely held which made the other side sincerely shudder, as at awful blasphemy, charity got sadly mauled and knocked about. FOSTER, IN THE OLD JEWRY. It occurred to James Foster, the celebrated Baptist who had passed through Arianism and Socinianism, before he became a Trinitarian, that good citizens of both churches and factions might be made even better by their understanding the excellence of charity. His pulpit in the Old Jewry became accordingly a point to which men of opposite opinions resorted,—just indeed as they did to the Popish ambassadorial chapel, where they could hear gratis the great tenor Farinelli sing mellifluously. In reference to Foster, the general ‘Evening Post,’ of March 25th, says that on the previous Sunday evening, ‘upwards of a hundred Gentlemen’s coaches came to the Rev. Mr. Foster’s lecture in the Old Jewry. It must give,’ adds the newswriter, ‘a great Satisfaction to that ingenious and polite Preacher, to see such an Audience at his Lectures, as well as to be a Reputation to his Hearers, in their discovering a disposition to be pleased with his useful and instructive Discourses, they turning upon the Truth, Excellency, and Usefulness of the grand Parts of Moral Science; not tending to support private or party egotism of Religion, or Rule of Conduct, but a Conduct founded on the most sacred Rights of Mankind, a universal Liberty, and a diffusive and extensive Benevolence.’

Another account states that ‘at his chapel there was a confluence of persons of every rank, station, and quality; wits, freethinkers, and numbers of the regular clergy who, while they gratified their curiosity, had their prepossessions shaken and their prejudices loosened.’

THE QUEEN AND THE ARTIST.

There was one Jacobite who died this year, whose prejudices were never in the least degree softened, namely, Hearne, the antiquary. Richardson the painter, when party spirit between Whig and Tory, Hanoverian and Jacobite raged bitterly, was as severe in a remark to Queen Caroline, as Hearne was in what he wrote upon her. The queen once visited Richardson’s studio to view his series of portraits of the kings of England. Her Majesty pointed to the portrait of a stern-looking individual between those of Charles I. and II. She very well knew the likeness was that of a man who had helped to dethrone the Stuarts on whose throne her husband was seated, and she therefore might have entertained a certain respect for him; but she asked the artist if he called that personage a king? ‘No, madam,’ answered the undaunted Richardson, ‘he is no King, but it is good for Kings to have him among them as a memento!’

The queen’s favourite painter, Anniconi, was more of a courtier than blunt Richardson. To that artist who, for a season, drew the ‘Quality’ to Great Marlborough Street, she gave an order to paint a picture, which was designed as a gift to the young Duke of Cumberland’s tutor, Mr. Poyntz. It was an allegorical composition, in which the queen herself was to be seen delivering her royal son to the Goddess of Wisdom,—who bore the features of Mrs. Poyntz.

CHESTERFIELD’S WIT.

The year 1736 may be said to have opened merrily, with Chesterfield’s paper in ‘Fog’s Journal,’ on ‘An Army in Wax Work.’ In the course of this lively essay, the writer argues that since the English army had not been of the slightest active use during many years, in time of war,—a waxen army (to be ordered of Mrs. Salmon, the wax-work woman) would be cheap and sufficient in time of peace. He then alludes to the Government cry against all who opposed it. ‘Let nobody put the “Jacobite” upon me, and say that I am paving the way for the Pretender, by disbanding the army. That argument is worn threadbare; besides, let those take the “Jacobite” to themselves who would exchange the affections of the people for the fallacious security of an unpopular standing army.’

SCENE IN WESTMINSTER HALL.

While there were, at this time, Nonjurors worthy of the esteem of honourable men of all parties, there were others who were contemptible for their spitefulness, and for the silliness with which they displayed it. Here is an example. Parliament had passed the Gin Act, the Mortmain Act, the Westminster Bridge Act, the Smugglers’ Act, and the Act for borrowing 600,000l. on the Sinking Fund. A difference of opinion might exist as to the merits of one or two of these Acts, but there was no justification for the method taken by one person to show his hostility. On July 14th, in Westminster Hall, while the Courts were sitting therein, a bundle, dropped in front of the Court of Chancery, suddenly exploded, and blew into the air a number of handbills, which announced that, on this, the last day of term, copies of the above-named Acts would be publicly burned in the hall during the afternoon! One of the bills was handed in to the judges in the Court of King’s Bench, where it was presented as a false and scandalous libel. Three days later a proclamation was issued for the discovery of the persons concerned in this outrage, and a reward of 200l. offered for the respective arrests of either the author, printer, or disperser of the handbills. This led to the arrest, trial, and conviction of the Rev. Mr. Nixon, a brainless Nonjuring clergyman, who was proved to be the author of the bills, and the blower-up of the bundle of crackers. On the 7th of December he was condemned to pay 200 marks, to be imprisoned for five years, and to be paraded before the different Courts, in the Hall, with a parchment round his head—a sort of foolscap—bearing a summary of his audacious offence. A portion of this sentence was fulfilled soon after, and, finally, this foolish Nonjuror was required to find security for his good behaviour during the remainder of his life.

This daring, yet stupid, act was supposed to be part of an organised Jacobite plot. In the month of April, when Frederick, Prince of Wales, was married to the Princess of Saxe-Gotha, Sir Robert Walpole had information which set him on his guard. After the explosion in Westminster Hall, he wrote a letter to his brother Horace, in which the following passage is to be found:—‘Since my coming to town I have been endeavouring to trace out the authors and managers of that vile transaction, and there is no reason to doubt that the whole was projected and executed by a set of low Jacobites, who talked of setting fire to the gallery built for the marriage of the Princess Royal, by a preparation which they call phosphorus, which takes fire from the air. Of this I have had an account from the same fellow that brought me these, and many such sorts of intelligencies.’

JACOBITES AND GIN-DRINKERS.

And again, in September, when it was decreed that unlicensed dealing in gin should cease, riots occurred, and more than mere rioting was intended, in the metropolis, about Michaelmas. On this occasion Sir Robert wrote to his brother:—‘I began to receive accounts from all quarters of the town that the Jacobites were busy and industrious, in endeavouring to stir up the common people and make an advantage of the universal clamour that prevailed among the populace at the expiration of their darling vice.’ The Jacobite idea was, according to the information received by Walpole, to make the populace drunk gratis by unlimited supplies of gin from the distilleries, and then turning them loose in London to do such work as such inspiration was likely to suggest to them; but an efficient display of the constitutional forces was sufficient to preserve the peace of the metropolis.

THE STAGE FETTERED.

The alleged abuse of the liberty of the press and of that of the stage was denounced, as all opposition to the Government was, as the work of Jacobites for the subversion ‘of our present happy establishment.’ The Government undoubtedly hoped, by suppressing the liberty of satire on the stage, to be enabled to go a step further, and to crush the liberty of comment in the press. Sir Robert made his own opportunity to ensure the success of his preliminary step. Mr. Giffard, of the theatre in Goodman’s Fields, waited on Sir Robert in 1737 with the MS. of a piece named ‘The Golden Rump,’ which had been sent to him, for performance, by the anonymous author. Its spirit was so licentiously manifested against the Ministry, and was so revolutionary in its speech, suggestions, and principles, that the prudent manager felt bound to place it at the discretion of the minister. Sir Robert put it in his pocket, went down to the House with it, and ultimately succeeded, by its means, in carrying the Licensing Act, by which the stage has been ever since fettered. The anonymous piece brought by Giffard was never acted, never printed, probably never seen by anyone except manager and minister; and the question remains,—Was it not written to order, to afford a plausible pretext for protecting the administration from all its antagonists? Chesterfield, in his speech in the Lords against the proposed Act, denounced it as a long stride towards the destruction of liberty itself. He declared that it would be made subservient to the politics and schemes of the Court only. In the same speech occurred the famous passage: ‘This Bill, my Lords, is not only an encroachment upon Liberty, but it is likewise an encroachment upon Property. Wit, my Lords, is a sort of property. It is the property of those who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is indeed but a precarious dependence. Thank God! we, my Lords, have a dependence of another kind.’

FEAR OF THE PRETENDER.

In 1738, when the Opposition proposed a reduction of the army, the Government manifested an almost craven spirit. They believed that if the number of armed men were diminished, the king would not be secure from assault in St. James’s, nor the country safe from foreign invasion.

WALPOLE, ON JACOBITES.

In the Commons, Sir Robert Walpole spoke as follows, on the Jacobites, their views, and their dealings at that period:—‘There is one thing I am still afraid of, and it is indeed I think the only thing at present we have to fear. Whether it be proper to mention it on this occasion, I do not know; I do not know if I ought to mention it in such an Assembly as this. I am sure there is no necessity for mentioning it, because I am convinced that every gentleman that hears me is as much afraid of it as I am. The fear I mean is that of the Pretender. Everyone knows there is still a Pretender to his Majesty’s crown and dignity. There is still a person who pretends to be lawful and rightful sovereign of these kingdoms; and what makes the misfortune much the more considerable, there is still a great number of persons in these kingdoms so deluded by his abettors, as to think in the same way. These are the only persons who can properly be called disaffected, and they are still so numerous that though this government had not a foreign enemy under the sun, the danger we are in from the Pretender and the disaffected part of our own subjects, is a danger which every true Briton ought to fear; a danger which every man who has a due regard for our present happy establishment, will certainly endeavour to provide against as much as he can.

‘I am sorry to see, Sir, that this is a sort of fear which many amongst us endeavour to turn into ridicule, and for that purpose they tell us that though there are many of our subjects discontented and uneasy, there are very few disaffected; but I must beg leave to be of a different opinion, for I believe that most of the discontents and uneasinesses that appear among the people proceed originally from disaffection. No man of common prudence will profess himself openly a Jacobite. By so doing he not only may injure his private fortune, but he must render himself less able to do any effectual service to the cause he has embraced; therefore there are but few such men in the kingdom. Your right Jacobite, Sir, disguises his true sentiments. He roars out for Revolution principles. He pretends to be a great friend of Liberty, and a great adviser of our ancient Constitution; and under this pretence there are numbers who every day endeavour to sow discontent among the people, by persuading them that the constitution is in danger, and that they are unnecessarily loaded with many and heavy taxes. These men know that discontent and disaffection are, like wit and madness, separated by thin partitions, and therefore hope that if they can once render the people thoroughly discontented, it will be easy for them to render them disaffected. These are the men we have the most reason to be afraid of. They are, I am afraid, more numerous than most gentlemen imagine; and I wish I could not say they have been lately joined, and very much assisted, by some gentlemen who, I am convinced, have always been, and still are, very sincere and true friends to our happy establishment.’

CURIOUS DISCUSSION.

Walpole went on to say that he hoped Jacobitism would die out. He was sure the Jacobites were daily decreasing; but if such a mad step were taken as that of reducing the army—‘I should expect to hear of the Pretender’s standards being set up in several parts of the island, perhaps in every part of the three kingdoms.’

SAFETY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY.

Wyndham ridiculed the idea that the army must not be reduced, because ‘a certain gentleman was afraid of the Pretender.’ Lord Polwarth (afterwards Earl of Marchment) went further. He could scarcely see the use of an army at all, and did not believe that there were Jacobites to be afraid of. ‘I am sure his Majesty, and all the rest of the Royal Family, might remain in St. James’s Palace, or in any other part of the kingdom, in the utmost safety, though neither of them had any such thing as that now called a soldier to attend them. Of this now we have a glaring proof every day before our eyes. His royal highness the Prince of Wales has now no guards to attend him. He passes every day to and fro in the streets of London, and travels everywhere about London without so much as one soldier to guard him. Nay, he has not so much as one sentry upon his house in St. James’s Square, and yet his Royal Highness lives, I believe, in as great security, at his house in St. James’s Square, without one sentry to guard him, as his Majesty can be supposed to do in St. James’s Palace with all the guards about him.’

The debate in the Lords was of much the same quality as that in the Commons. Farewell to liberty if there be a standing army. On the other side:—Freedom will perish if the king cannot back his will by force of bayonets. The Government, of course, succeeded.

‘AGAMEMNON.’

The debates encouraged the Jacobites to hope. They were evidently feared, and opportunity might yet serve them. The wise men at Westminster had declared it. Meanwhile, the stage recommended them to consider the difficulties of Government, and to make the best of the one under which they lived. Thomson put his tragedy ‘Agamemnon’ under the protection of the Princess of Wales, trusting she would ‘condescend to accept of it.’ In the tragedy itself, in which there is much blank verse that is only honest prose in that aspiring form, there are few political allusions; but the following passage was undoubtedly meant as incense for Cæsar, and instruction for his people—Whigs and Jacobites.

Agamemnon   .   .   .  —Know, Ægisthus,

That ruling a free people well in peace,

Without or yielding, or usurping, power;—

Maintaining firm the honour of the laws,

Yet sometimes soft’ning their too rigid doom,

As mercy may require, steering the state

Thro’ factious storms, or the more dangerous calms

Of Peace, by long continuance grown corrupt;

Besides the fair career which Fortune opens

To the mild glories of protected arts,

To bounty, to beneficence, to deeds

That give the Gods themselves their brightest beams;—

Yes, know that these are, in true glory, equal

If not superior to deluding conquest;

Nor less demand they conduct, courage, care,

And persevering toil.

Ægisthus answered with a slight rebuke to the Jacobites who denounced the merits of all government that had not their James III. at its head:—

Say, thankless toil,

Harsh and unpleasing, that, instead of praise

And due reward, meets oft’ner scorn, reproach,

Fierce opposition to the clearest measures,

Injustice, banishment, or death itself,

Such is the nature of malignant man.

THE KING, IN PUBLIC.

Quin, as Agamemnon, rolled his measured lines out with double emphasis, his anti-Stuart feelings adding to the force. The ‘fierce oppositions’ of Ægisthus were not to be found in factious shape, at least, in the next session of Parliament. The debates at the opening of the session had but the slightest touch of Jacobitism in them; and that was in a speech by Lord Gower,—whom Horace Walpole classed with the Prince of Wales himself as a thorough Jacobite! Lord Gower spoke ill of the ‘so-called’ King’s Speech as being no royal speech at all, but one which conveyed the dictates of the Ministry to the country. ‘The King,’ said Lord Gower, ‘has no more share in the councils of the country than I have.’ A faint allusion in the Commons to his Majesty and family being less popularly esteemed than formerly, Mr. Lyttelton remarked: ‘I’ve repeatedly seen proofs to the contrary. In the streets of London I’ve seen the people clinging to the wheels of his coach, so as almost to impede it;’—and the inference was that they would not have so affectionately clung to the chariot-wheels of the Pretender. Other proofs, during the session, were adduced of the satisfactory condition of things. Recruiting for his Majesty’s army was successfully going on in Scotland, and the last cargo of old firelocks, resulting from the disarming of the Highlanders, was just then being landed at the Tower. Nevertheless, there were Jacobites who were hoping for the best, and keeping their powder dry.

POLITICAL DRAMA.

Thomson made another effort in the year 1739 to introduce politics on the stage. His ‘Edward and Eleanora’ (after being publicly rehearsed) was advertised for representation, on March 29th, at Covent Garden; but, before the doors were open, the licenser withdrew his permission, and prohibited the performance absolutely. Thomson’s almost servile worship of the reigning family was manifested in the dedication of the tragedy to his patroness, the Princess of Wales. ‘In the character of Eleanora,’ he says, ‘I have endeavoured to represent, however faintly, a princess distinguished for all the virtues that render greatness amiable. I have aimed particularly to do justice to her inviolable affection and generous tenderness for a prince who was the darling of a great and free people.’ As Eleanora loved Edward, so, it was hinted, did Augusta love Frederick!

Dr. Johnson could not see why this play was ‘obstructed.’ Genest could no more see the reason than Dr. Johnson. Yet, the licenser may be easily justified in withdrawing a license which should never have been granted. The play touched nearly on the dissensions between George II. and his son Frederick, who were then living in open hostility. Such passages as the following would certainly have been hailed with hilarious sarcasm by the Jacobites, who dwelt with satisfaction on the unseemly antagonisms in the royal family:—

Has not the royal heir a juster claim

To share the Father’s inmost heart and Counsels,

Than aliens to his interest, those who make

A property, a market, of his honour?

The prince is urged to save the king from his ministers; England is represented as in peril from without as well as from within. Frederick, under the name of Edward, is described as one who ‘loves the people he must one day rule,’—Whigs and Jacobites equally, for:—

Yet bears his bosom no remaining grudge

Of those distracted times.

HENRY PELHAM AND THE JACOBITES.