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On Sundays, the general excitement nowhere abated. At church, political rather than religious spirit rendered congregations attentive. They listened with all their ears to a clergyman, when he referred to the king's supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, and when he had to enumerate the royal titles in the prayer before the sermon. If he omitted to note the supremacy, and the congregation were Whiggish, there was a loyal murmur of disapproval. If he happened to speak of his Majesty, not as 'King by the Grace of God,' but as 'King by Divine Permission,' the more sensitive loyalists would make a stir, withdraw from the church; and certain of the papers would be full of a holy horror at such proceedings on the part of the minister.

When the discourse was ended, the congregation fell upon the note-taker. They demanded his papers, and were not enlightened by his exclamation:--'Ah! you've spoilt my design!' Each party took him for an adversary, and the man would have been murdered had not Sacheverel ordered his clerk and servant to go to his rescue. When it was discovered that the victim was 'one Mologni , an Irish Papist,' the Whigs were probably sorry that they had not rolled him in the gutter that then ran down the centre of Holborn Hill.

On similar occasions in London there were similar manifestations in an opposite sense. 'On the eve of the Pretender's birthday , they make great boasts of what they will do to-morrow,' said the Whig papers, 'which, they say, is the anniversary of his birth. But it is believed that the High Church wardens, who pretend a right to the bells, will not be very fond of hanging in the ropes. A serenade of warming pans will be more suitable for the occasion, and brickbats may serve instead of clappers for a brickmaking brat.'

In March, London had been called from personal to national considerations. There was a phrase in the king's speech, on opening Parliament in this month, which sounded like a trumpet-call to battle. 'The Pretender,' said the Prince who had leapt into his place, 'who still resides in Lorraine, threatens to disturb us, and boasts of the assistance he still expects here, to repair his former disappointments.' The national prosperity was said to be obstructed by his pretensions and intrigues. In reply to this, the faithful Parliament expressed all becoming indignation; and Jacobites who felt unsafe in London began to take measures for securing a refuge. On the 18th of March, or as some reports say, the 5th of April, a nobleman seemed to court notice at Drury Lane Theatre. He was now with one friend, now with another, among the audience. He was quite as much among the actors, having a word with Booth anon, gossiping smartly with Wilks, and exchanging merry passages of speech with delicious Mrs. Oldfield. All who saw him felt persuaded that the Viscount Bolingbroke had reason to be above all fear, or he would not have been there, and in such bright humour, too. Bolingbroke ordered a play for the next night, left the house, and half an hour after, having darkened his eyebrows, clapped on a black wig, and otherwise disguised himself, was posting down to Dover under the name of La Vigne, without a servant, but having a Frenchman with him who acted as courier. The fugitive reached Dover at six in the morning, but he was detained by tempestuous weather till two, when, despite the gale, the wind being fair, the master of a Dover hoy agreed to carry him over to Calais, where Bolingbroke landed at six in the evening. An hour later, he was laughing over the adventure with the governor of the town, who had invited him to dinner. At the same hour the next night, all London was in a ferment with the news of this flight of Bolingbroke. The Privy Council was immediately summoned. They were alarmed, but powerless; and finding themselves helpless, they had nothing better to do than to commit to Newgate the honest man who had brought the intelligence to London!

In the meantime, I hope The mist will clear up, That the thunder you'll hear May soon purge the air, And then that the coast May be clear at the last.

Meanwhile, Lady St. John, Bolingbroke's mother, was showing to everybody at Court a letter from her son to his father, in which he protested that he was perfectly innocent of carrying on any intrigue with the Pretender. Of which letter, says Lady Cowper, 'I have taken a copy, but I believe it won't serve his turn.'

Court and parliament being agitated, the lackeys imitated their betters. The footmen, in waiting for their masters, who were members of Parliament, had free access to Westminster Hall. For six and thirty years they had imitated their masters, by electing a 'Speaker' among themselves, whenever the members made a more exalted choice within their own House. The Whig lackeys were for Mr. Strickland's man. The Tory liveried gentry resolved to elect Sir Thomas Morgan's fellow. A battle-royal ensued in place of an election. The combatants were hard at it, when the House broke up, and the members wanted their coaches. Wounds were then hastily bandaged, but their pain nursed wrath. On the next night, the hostile parties, duly assembled, attacked each other with fury. The issue was long uncertain, but finally the Tory footmen gained a costly victory, in celebration of which Sir Thomas Morgan's servant, terribly battered, was carried three times triumphantly round the Hall. There was no malice. The lackeys clubbed together for drink at a neighbouring ale-house, where the host gave them a dinner gratis. The dinner was made expressly to create insatiable thirst, and before the banquet came to a close, every man was as drunk as his master.

In March, 1715, Bishop Burnet, the man more hated by the Jacobites than any other, died. These perhaps further indulged their hatred of the very name, by attributing to his youngest son, Thomas Burnet, the authorship of a famous Tory ballad, which was long praised, condemned, quoted or sung in London coffee-houses,--it was named

BISHOP BURNET'S DESCENT INTO HELL.

The devils were brawling at Burnet's descending, But at his arrival they left off contending; Old Lucifer ran his dear Bishop to meet, And thus the Archdevil, th' Apostate did greet:-- 'My dear Bishop Burnet I'm glad beyond measure, This visit, unlook'd for, gives infinite pleasure. And, oh! my dear Sarum, how go things above? Does George hate the Tories, and Whigs only love?'

'This night we'll carouse in spite of all pain. Go, Cromwell, you dog, and King William unchain, And tell him his Gilly is lately come down, Who has just left his mitre, as he left his crown. Whose lives till they died, in our service were spent; They only come hither who never repent. Let Heralds aloud then our victories tell; Let George reign for ever!'--'Amen!' cried all hell.

This laxity of moral practice, at Court, was made capital of by the Jacobites. Throughout April and May, they proclaimed that there was not a man about St. James's who was not noted for disaffection or lukewarmness to Church principles. There was a report that a 'new Academy was to be erected at Hampstead, for instructing youths in principles agreeable to the present times.' The existing Parliament was declared to be as capable of burning Articles, Homilies, and Liturgies, as 'Sacheverel's Parliament' was of burning the Oxford decree. Episcopalian clergymen were said to be looked on with such small favour by the Government, that a prelatic military chaplain in Scotland was removed by the authorities in London on the sole ground of his being an Episcopalian. This, the Duke of Montrose told the Archbishop of York, 'could not be got over.' Presbytery would be more perilous to England than Popery; but both menaces would disappear, if George and his hopeful family were 'sent back to their own German dominions, for which Nature seems to have much better fitted them.' This was said to be the opinion of the most sensible Whigs, as well as of all the Tories in England.

There is little doubt that the Tories in London were exasperated to the utmost by the disregard which the Whig and the Dissenting preachers manifested for the decree in the 'Gazette' which forbade the meddling with State affairs in the pulpit. Bradbury made his chapel echo again with demands for justice against traitors. Tories called him the 'preaching Incendiary.' They had previously treated Bishop Burnet as 'a lay preacher who takes upon him, after a series of lewdness and debauchery, in his former life, to set up for an instructor of Ministry, and impudently tells the Ministers of State, the King's Majesty, and all, that he expects the last Ministry should be sacrificed to his resentments, and their heads be given to him in a charger, as that Lewd Dancer did to John the Baptist.'

Humble Jacobites, on the other hand, were often mercilessly treated. Ill words spoken of the king brought the hangman's lash round the loins of the speaker. Half the Whig roguery of London went down to Brentford in May, to see a well-to-do Tory butcher whipped at the cart's tail from Brentford Bridge round the Market Place. That roguery was very much shocked to see wicked Tory influence at work in favour of the High Church butcher; for, he not only was allowed refreshment, but the cart went so fast and the lash so slowly, that the Hanoverian cockneys swore it was not worth while going so far to see so little.

To their loyal souls, ample compensation was afforded soon after. There was a Jacobite cobler of Highgate who, on the king's birthday, was seen in the street in a suit of mourning. On the Chevalier's natal day, he boldly honoured it by putting on his state dress, as holder of some humble official dignity. Jacobites who, on the same occasion, wore an oaken sprig or a white rose, well-known symbols, could easily hide them on the approach of the authorities, but a beadle who came out in his Sunday livery, to glorify the 'Pretender,' was courting penalties by defying authority. The magnanimous cobler went through a sharp process of law, and he was then whipped up Highgate Hill and down again. To fulfil the next part of his punishment, the cobler was taken to Newgate, to which locality he was condemned for a year. People in those days went to see the prisoners in Newgate as they did the lions in the Tower, or the lunatics in Bedlam, and parties went to look at the cobler. If they were Tories, they were satisfied with what they saw, but Whigs turned away in disgust. 'Why,' said they, 'the villain lives in the press-yard like a prince, and lies in lodgings at ten or twelve shillings a week!' The disgusted Whig papers remarked that 'he was not whipped half as badly as he deserved.' They were not always thus dissatisfied. A too outspoken French schoolmaster, one Boulnois, was so effectually scourged for his outspokenness, from Stocks Market to Aldgate, that he died of it. The poor wretch was simply flogged to death. The Stuart party cried shame on the cruelty. The Hanoverians protested that there was nothing to cry at. The man was said to be not even a Frenchman, only an Irish Father Confessor in disguise! What else could he have been, since the Jacobites, before Boulnois was tied up, gave him wine and money. Such gifts to suffering political criminals were very common. ?? An offender was placed in the pillory in Holborn, for having cursed the Duke of Marlborough and the ministry. He must have been well surrounded by sympathisers. Not a popular Whig missile reached him; and when, with his head and arms fixed in the uprights, his body being made to turn slowly round to the mob, he deliberately and loudly cursed Duke and ministry, as he turned, the delight of that mob, thoroughly Tory, knew no bounds. They even mounted the platform and stuffed his pockets with money.

'Letter, from Perth to a gentleman in Stirling.'

'Confederacy of the Press and the Pulpit for the blood of the last Ministry.'

The papers proved both the watchfulness and uneasiness which existed with respect to the army. One day it is recorded that a Colonel of the Guards was dismissed. As danger seemed to increase, a camp was formed in Hyde Park, whither a strong force of artillery was brought from the Tower. A sweep was made at the Horse Guards of suspected men, on some of whom commissions were said to have been found signed by the 'Pretender!' All absent officers were ordered to return at once to their posts in the three kingdoms. An important capture was supposed to have been made of a certain Captain Campbell. London was full of the news that Mr. Palmer, the messenger, was bringing the Captain to town; but the messenger arrived alone. He had let the Captain escape, and people who expected that Palmer would be hanged were disappointed that he was only turned out of his place.

At this period, Fountain Court, in the Strand, was a quiet spot, with good houses well-inhabited. In one of these lodged two Captains, Livings and Spencer, and a Lieutenant, John Kynaston. The last had got his appointment through sending 'information,' under the pseudonym of 'Philo-Brittannus' to the Secretary of War. The Lieutenant looked for further promotion if he could only discover something that the Government might think worth a valuable consideration. Kynaston lounged in coffee-houses, listened to gossip on the parade, and was very much at home among the Captains of all services, and especially of some who assembled in the little room behind the kitchen at the 'Blew Postes,' in Duke's Court. But his well-regulated mind was so shocked at what he heard there that he unbosomed himself to the two Captains, his fellow-lodgers in Fountain Court. Loyalty prompted Kynaston to let King George know that his Majesty had dangerous enemies within his own capital. The Captains approved. But then, the idea of being an informer was hateful to Kynaston's noble soul! The Captains thought it might be. On the other hand, to be silent would be to share the crime. His sacred Majesty's life might be in peril. It was not acting the part of a base informer to put his Majesty on his guard. The Captains endorsed those sentiments as their own; and when Lieut. Kynaston went to make an alarming revelation to Mr. Secretary Pulteney, he carried in his pocket the certificates of the Captains that the bearer was a loyal and disinterested person, and that it gave them particular pleasure in being able to say so. Pulteney heard what the gallant gentleman, the principal in the affair, had to say, and he, forthwith, called together a Board of General Officers, with General Lumley for president, before which Kynaston and the naughty people whom he accused were brought face to face.

This was not the ordinary style of Major John Oneby's acting. He was an accomplished and too successful duellist. A few years after the above scene in the Park, he killed Mr. Gower in a duel fought in a room of a Drury Lane tavern--the result of a drunken quarrel--over a dice-board. The Major was found guilty of wilful murder, and condemned to be hanged; but he opened a vein with a penknife, as he lay in bed in Newgate, and so 'cheated the hangman.'

Other informers were more profitable to listen to than Kynaston. Marlborough, who dismissed the ex-Lieutenant so cavalierly, was one day giving ear, with deep interest, to a sergeant in the Foot Guards. The staple of the fellow's news was, that his captain, Paul, had in his desk a commission as Colonel of a regiment of cavalry, from the Pretender; and that he had promised a lieutenant's commission to the sergeant, who had accepted the same, and now, out of remorse or fear, or hopes of getting a commission in a safer way, came and told the whole story to the great Duke. Marlborough dismissed him, bade him be of good cheer, and keep silent. An hour or two afterwards, Captain Paul was at the Duke's levee. The Commander-in-Chief greeted him with a cordial 'Good morning, Colonel!' , 'I am very glad to see you!'--and then, as if it had just occurred to him--'By-the-by, my Lord Townshend desires to speak with you; you had better wait on him at the office.' Paul, unsuspecting, rather hoping that some good chance was about to turn up for him, took his leave, ran down-stairs, jumped into a chair, and cried, 'To the Cock-pit!' When his name was announced to the Secretary of State, Lord Townshend sent a message of welcome, and a request that Paul would wait in the anteroom, till some important business with some of the Ministers should be concluded. Paul was still waiting when the Duke of Marlborough arrived, and passed through the room to the more private apartment. As he passed, the Colonel rather familiarly greeted him, but Marlborough confined his recognition to a very grave military salute, and disappeared through the doors. Paul looked the way that the Commander-in-Chief had gone, felt perplexed, and then, addressing the door-keeper who was within the room, said, 'I think I need not wait longer. I shall go now, and wait on my Lord another time.' The door-keeper, however, at once took all the courage out of him by civilly intimating that the gallant officer must be content to stay where he was, as Lord Townshend had given stringent orders that he was not to be permitted to depart on any account. The sequel was rapidly arrived at. Paul was taken before the Council, where he found that the knaves' policy was best--to avow all. He alleged that he got his commission at Powis House, Ormond Street, and it was found in his desk. He purchased comparative impunity by betraying all his confederates.

Conspirators who betrayed their confederates, like Colonel Paul, yielded such information that Parliament readily granted power to the king to seize suspected persons. His Majesty had grounds for getting within safe-keeping half a-dozen members of the Lower House. The suspected persons were, Sir William Wyndham, Sir John Packington, Edward Harvey of Combe, Thomas Forster, and Corbet Kynaston. King George, however, would not put a finger on them, without going through the form of asking leave. The Commons gave consent, with alacrity, thanking his Majesty, at the same time, for the tender regard he had manifested for the privileges of the House. Before five o'clock the next morning, Mr. Wilcox, a messenger, knocked at the door of Mr. Barnes, the bookseller in Pall Mall. The sight of the silver greyhound on his arm was as sufficient as if he had displayed his warrant in the face of the Bibliopole, himself. ?? Wilcox was in search of Harvey, who lodged there, when in town, but he was not there on that morning. The messenger looked over his papers, sealed them up, and then went post-haste down to Combe, in Surrey. He arrived just in time to meet Mr. Harvey going out hawking. Harvey welcomed Wilcox as if he had been a favoured guest, and went up to London with him, as if it were a pleasure-excursion. Taken immediately before the Council, he was good-humouredly bold, till he was shown what he did not expect to see, a damaging treasonable letter in his own handwriting. He faltered, turned pale, complained of sudden illness, and asked for permission to withdraw, which was granted. Harvey, shut up in his room, stabbed himself with a pruning knife, and when he was found by his servant, almost unconscious from loss of blood, the unlucky Jacobite refused to have medical aid. He only consented, at the urgent prayer of his kinsman, the Earl of Nottingham, Lord President of the Council, to at least see those who had been sent for. Mead, Harris, and Bussiere restored him to a condition of capability to take the sacrament. A Whig Lecturer, the Rev. Mr. Broughton, was at hand, but that worthy man declined to administer, even after Mr. Harvey had made a general confession of his sins. When the Jacobite had expressed some measure of sorrow for his latest iniquities, the Whig clergyman performed the rite, but not till he had fortified himself with a warrant from the Council to give Harvey the comfort he desired.

Meanwhile, Sir William Wyndham had secretly fled from London, as soon as he knew the peril he would incur by tarrying there. Sir William's flight took him to Orchard Wyndham, his house in Somersetshire, where, surrounded by partisans, he deemed himself safe at least till he could devise means for putting a greater distance between himself and the Tower. One morning, in September, at five o'clock, before it was yet full daylight, two gentlemen arrived at the house, express from London, with letters for him, which were of the utmost importance. Sir William himself admitted them, in his night gear. They had scarcely crossed the threshold, when one of the visitors informed the Baronet that the two gentlemen he had admitted were Colonel Huske and a messenger, bearing a warrant to arrest and carry him up to town. 'That being the case,' said Sir William, 'make no noise to awake Lady Wyndham, who is in a delicate condition of health.' The Colonel had received orders that Lady Wyndham, being the Duke of Somerset's daughter, was 'on that account to be put in as little disorder as possible.' ?? Accordingly, Colonel and messenger quietly followed Sir William to his dressing-room, where the Colonel told him that he was ordered to search his papers, and seize all that might be suspicious. Wyndham produced his keys, readily; and he expressed such alacrity in recommending a thorough search of drawers, desks, chests, &c., that the wary Colonel, thought it might be as well to look elsewhere, first. His eye fell on the Baronets garments, as they lay carefully flung over a chair, and the astute agent, judging that the unlikeliest place was the likeliest for treasonable matter to be stowed away in, took up Sir William's coat, with a 'what may we have here?' thrust his hands into one of the capacious pockets, and drew thence a bundle of papers. The emotion of Sir William was warrant of their importance. The Colonel read it all in his confusion and disorder, and urged the instant departure of his prisoner. 'Only wait,' said Sir William, 'till seven o'clock, and I will have my carriage and six horses at the door. The coach will accommodate us all.' Huske made no objection. Sir William proceeded to dress; and, finally, he remarked, 'I will only go into my bed-room to take leave of my lady, and will shortly wait on you again.' The Colonel allowed Sir William to enter the bed-room, and quietly waited till the leave-taking should be accomplished. As the farewell, however, seemed unusually long in coming to an end, the Colonel and messenger began to look at each other with some distrust. They had supposed that Wyndham was on his honour to return to them, but Sir William had supposed otherwise. Whether he stopped to kiss his sleeping wife or not, he never told, but he made no secret of what the Colonel discovered for himself, on entering the room, namely, that Wyndham had escaped by a private door, and perhaps his lady was not half so much asleep as she seemed to be. Her husband, at all events, lacked no aids to flight, the incidents leading to which were the common talk of the town, soon after the Colonel had come back to Secretary Stanhope. A reward of one thousand pounds was offered for the recapture of the Jacobite whom the Colonel had been expected to take, keep, and deliver up, in the ordinary discharge of his duty.

On the morrow of Wyndham's escape, Lord William Paulet and Paul Burrard were seated at a window in Winton market-place. From an inn-window opposite a parson was seen staring at them rather boldly, and both the gentlemen agreed that they had seen that face before, but could not well tell where. It was Wyndham in disguise; and in that clerical garb he contrived to get into Surrey, a serving-man riding with him. There, at an inn, his servant wrote, in Sir William's name, to a clerical friend of the fugitive, asking for an asylum in his house. If the friend's fears were too great to allow him to grant such perilous hospitality, he was urged to procure a resting place for the fugitive in the residence of the rector of the parish, who might receive an inmate in clerical costume without exciting suspicion. This letter chanced to reach the house of the person to whom it was addressed, during his absence. His wife had no scruples as to opening the missive; perhaps she suspected there was mischief in it. Having read its contents, and being anxious to serve and save her husband before all the Sir Williams in the world, she promptly sent the letter to the Earl of Aylesford, who as promptly submitted it to the Ministry. Meanwhile Wyndham felt that the delay in answering his request was the consequence of a discovery of his whereabouts. He at once set forth again, and the magistrates being too late to seize the master, laid hands upon the servant. There was found upon him a cypher ring containing a lock of hair, at sight of which a Whig magistrate exclaimed, 'It's the Pretender's hair. Lord! I know the man and his principles. It cannot be nobody's else!' On examination, however, it was seen that the ring bore the cypher and carried the hair of Queen Anne. While the other magistrates were jeering their too confident colleague, Wyndham was quietly escaping from them.

Passing on his way to London, Sir William encountered Sir Denzil Onslow on horseback, escorted by two grooms. 'Hereupon,' says a pamphlet of the period, 'the knight, as it is customary for those of the black robe to do to Men of Figure, very courteously gave him the salute of his hat and the right hand of the road, which the said Mr. Onslow, being some time after apprised of, acknowledged to be true, with this circumstance, that he well remembered that he met a smock-faced, trim parson on such an occasion, but that his eyes were so taken up, and his attention wholly employed, with the beauties of the fine horse he rode upon, that he had no time to make a true discovery of his person at that juncture.'

Wyndham, finding the pursuit grow too hot for him, rode to Sion House, Isleworth, one of the seats of his father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset. The two went up to the Duke's town residence, Northumberland House, whence Wyndham's brother-in-law, the Earl of Hertford, sent notice of the presence of such a guest to Secretary Stanhope. That official dispatched a messenger, by whom Wyndham was carried before the Council Board. It was said in London that he there denied all knowledge of a plot; but the Council, nevertheless, committed him to the Tower. The next day all London was astir with reporting the news that the Duke of Somerset, having been refused as bail for his son-in-law, had at once resigned his office of Master of the Horse.

Before Wyndham surrendered, the carriage of the Duke of Somerset, his father-in-law, was seen standing at the door of the famous lawyer, Sir Edward Northey. After the surrender, Government suspected that this interview was for the purpose of a consultation as to whether the proofs against Sir William could convict him of treason. Ministers resolved that the Duke should be deprived of his places, and Lord Townshend called upon him, with a sorrowful air, and a message from the king that his Majesty had no further occasion for the Duke's services. 'Pray, my Lord,' said Somerset, 'what is the reason of it?' Lord Townshend answered, 'I do not know!' 'Then,' said the Duke, 'by G--, my Lord, you lie!' 'You know that the king puts me out for no other cause, but for the lies which you, and such as you, have invented and told of me!' Such were the amenities which passed between noblemen in those stirring Jacobite times. The duke asked leave to wait upon the king, but he was curtly told to wait till he was sent for.

Still the plotters at large plotted on. The reiteration on the part of the Whigs that they were powerless and on the road to destruction, betrayed more fear than confidence. 'If the Party were not under a judicial infatuation,' says one paper, 'they might plainly see that Heaven has declared against them, by depriving them of their Chief Supporters, and discovering their treasonable plots, which, when set in a true light, will appear so treacherous and barbarous against their lawful sovereign, King George, and so bloody against their fellow subjects, as must make the memory of the Party execrable to latest Posterity.' This seemed to have little influence on the Jacobites. The plot became so serious, there was so much uncertainty as to where it might break out, that officers were hurrying from London to assume command, in various directions, to Chester and to Dover, to Newcastle and to Portsmouth, to Berwick and to Plymouth, to Hull, to Carlisle, to York, to Edinburgh--east, west, north, south--there was a general hurrying from London to whatever point seemed likely to prove dangerous.

Case of Lieut. John Kynaston.

ightly or wrongly, the Tory mob in London were in no wise daunted. They listened to street preachers of sedition. The listeners were generally called 'scum,' and the orator was often designated 'as a Tory cobler.' Powder and arms were discovered on board ships in the Thames, and persons, accused of giving information to the Government, posted bills in the City affirming their innocence. Often the information was intended to mislead. Mr. Harvey, of Combe, was said to be expressing his contrition to a divine. The police messengers could not believe he was either so sick or so sorry as his friends affirmed. Their opinion was justified when they found him attempting to escape from his house through the tiles--an attempt which they frustrated.

Both the Whig and the Tory press exasperated the Government. From the former was issued a pamphlet, called 'The necessity of impeaching the late ministry.' The pamphlet took the form of a letter to the Earl of Halifax, and was written by Thomas Burnet. The amiable author, after such vituperation as was then much enjoyed by those who admired the flinger of it and were out of reach of the missiles, mildly remarks that,--'having commenced an enemy to the late ministry even from their first entrance into power, he cannot forbear from pursuing them with his resentment even to their graves, the only place, indeed, where their crimes can be forgotten!' This was a Whig cry for blood. '"England expects it," as the saying is,' rang out from the throats of the ultra Whigs.

A still more perplexing pamphlet was sold in the streets, despite the constables, namely, 'The Soldiers' humble address for the impeachment of the late ministry.' Political soldiers were felt to be as out of place as militant parsons. It rained pamphlets; and the embarrassment caused thereby was increased by the circumstance that some of them bore on the title-page the names of eminent men as authors, whose sentiments were directly opposed to those set forth in the pamphlet. Great confusion ensued, and a fear of impending calamity fell upon many. So marked was this fear, that two months before the eclipse of April, the astronomers, Dr. Halley and Mr. Whiston, 'thought it necessary to caution people against being surprised or interpreting it as any ill omen, wherein there is nothing but what is natural, or than the necessary result of Sun and Moon.' 'It is all very well,' said the Tories, 'but there has been no such eclipse in England, since the days of Stephen the Usurper.'

In the Mug Houses bets began to be laid as to the length of time King George was likely to be on the throne. Daring men, with their thoughts over the water, wagered a hundred guineas he would not be king a month longer. The next day, on the information of some of the company, they would find themselves in peril of going to Tyburn in half that time. The Tory mob had a way of their own to show their sentiments. They kept the anniversary of Queen Anne's coronation-day, and made the most of their opportunity. They assembled at the Conduit on Snow Hill, with flag and hoop, and drum and trumpet. They hoisted the queen's picture over the Conduit, and a citizen having flung to them a portrait of King William, they made a bonfire and burnt it. They displayed a legend, the contribution of a Mob Muse, which ran thus, alluding to the queen:--

Imitate her who was so just and good, Both in her actions and her royal word!

They smashed the windows that were not illuminated, and they pelted with flints the people who were lighting the candles intended to propitiate them. They stopped coaches, robbed those who rode in them, even of their wigs, and if the victims would not shout for Queen Anne, the rascalry stript them nearly naked. Right into a Sunday morning in April, this orthodox crew of incendiaries went about plundering, while they shouted God bless the Queen and High Church! They drank horribly the whole time, and toasted Bolingbroke frequently, but never King George. High Churchmen would not blame riot when it took the shape of burning down dissenters' chapels, and the pious villains danced to the accompaniment of 'High Church and Ormond.' At Oxford, town and gown overstepped limits observed in London. In one of the many tumults there, before they burnt in the street the furniture of one of the dissenting 'meeting houses,' they fastened a Whig Beadle in the pulpit and rolled him about the town till he was bruised in every limb. The Whig papers, thereupon, significantly pointed out to their friends, that there was a nonjuring congregation who met over a coffee-house in Aldersgate Street. These people, it was said, prayed for 'the rightful king,' and such wretches, of course, merited all that a Whig mob could inflict on them. One of the most dangerous symptoms of the time occurred on the arrest of some strapping young ballad wenches, who were taken into custody, opposite Somerset House, for singing ballads of a licentious nature against King George. The soldiers on guard rescued the fair prisoners; and when much indignation was expressed at this fact, the officers excused the men on the ground that they did not interfere on political grounds, but out of gallantry to the ladies.

Young Jemmy is a lad that's royally descended, With ev'ry virtue clad, by ev'ry tongue commended.

Among the gentlemen of the laity whose fortunes were seriously affected by the times and their changes was Colonel Granville. His brother George, Lord Lansdowne, was shut up in the Tower, with Lord Oxford and other noblemen. The colonel simply wished to get quietly away, and live quietly in the country. He ordered horses for two carriages to be at his door, in Poland Street, at six in the morning. The horse-dealer, finding that the colonel was making a secret of his movements, lodged an information against him with the Secretary of State. The spy accused him of being about to leave the kingdom, privately. Early in the morning, the two young ladies of the family, Mary and Anne Granville, were awoke in their beds, by the rough voices of a couple of soldiers with guns in their hands, crying out, 'Come, Misses, make haste and get up, for you are going to Lord Townshend's' . Hastily dressed, by their maid, the young ladies were conducted below, where the colonel and his wife were in the custody of two officers and two messengers, supported by sixteen soldiers. Colonel Granville devoted himself to consoling his wife, who went off into a succession of hysterical fits, which could not have been cheering to the daughters, the elder of whom was fifteen, the younger nine years of age.

Colonel Granville did not come to harm, but there was a general scattering of high-class Tories. Some fled in disguise; some were ordered, others had leave, to depart. The Earl of Mar found his offer to serve King George promptly rejected. Whereupon he galloped through Aldersgate Street, and went northward, to serve King James.

This was putting a bold face in front of peril. French emissaries were in London, and there was no knowing for what desperate ends they had been employed. Proclamations were despatched to Ireland for the arrest of all Tories, robbers, and raparees, of whom there were already too many concentrating for treasonable work about Dublin. The army itself was not free from the most audacious treason. One morning as the fourth troop of Horse Guards were about to turn out, an officer of the troop, named Smith, was arrested in Whitehall. He affected to be indignant, but the messengers produced the Secretary of State's warrant for his capture on a charge of high treason. Smith was shocked, and certainly did not recover his coolness when the messengers took from his pockets a commission signed by the Chevalier. The popular report as Smith passed on his way to Newgate was, that on that very day he was to have sold his post at the Horse Guards!

The king had no fear of assassination, but the 'faction,' as the Jacobites were called, did their best to render his life uncomfortable. There was natural indignation on the part of all moderate men when a reprint appeared of the nonjuring Rev. Dr. Bedford's work, 'The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England Asserted.' This reprint was denounced as being equivalent to the Pretender's declaration, in folio. The burthen of the book was, that to attempt the life of an usurper in aid of the rightful prince was not murder. 'As the rightful prince' was not the same personage in the eyes of Whigs and of Tories, those who put forth the book thought that neither party would be angry at the justification of the murder of the chief of the opposite party.

While such publications were being printed, the metropolitan authorities narrowly watched the temper of the people. The Lord Mayor and Common Council were against the holding of Bartholomew Fair. One newspaper, nevertheless, announced that the festival would be held as usual. This step so smelt of sedition that the 'author' was only too glad to be let off by an abject apology. It ended with:--'We humbly beg his Lordship's pardon for such an affront.'

On September 13th news reached London that the Chevalier de St. George had at last set out from Lorraine 'in a Post Calash,' in order to travel incognito and so the more easily reach a seaport where he could embark unobserved for some point in Great Britain. The Calash, it was said, had not gone far before it was overturned. The august traveller was reported as being generally hurt and bruised, but particularly about the neck. This last was especially pointed out, as if it were very significant. James was, at all events, so shaken that his attendants had to carry him back. The Whigs eagerly longed for confirmation of this news. 'If it only proved true to the letter, then,' cried the Whigs, 'it will give his party a further occasion to remember the month of August, and furnish them with an opportunity to drink as liberally to the Confusion of some other horses as they drank to the "health of Sorrel," the name of the horse that stumbled with King William, and gave him the fall of which he died.'

There was growing uneasiness in London, despite the general confidence. When the king prorogued Parliament in September, he was described in the papers as being 'pleased to take notice of the rebellion in Scotland.' He roundly laid that rebellion and the intended invasion to the tumults and riots which had prevailed in the capital and in various parts of the kingdom. Protestants, he said, had been deluded into seditiously joining with Papists by false reports of the Church of England being in danger under his administration. The king thought this step was both unjust and ungrateful, considering what he had done and what he had undertaken to do for her. The king naturally sneered at the idea that a Popish Pretender was likely to be a better head of the Church of England than a Protestant king. That informers were not lacking may be perceived in a curious advertisement for a minister to have put into the papers. It was to this effect:--'Whereas a letter was directed to the Right Hon. Robert Walpole, Esq., proposing to discover matters of great importance, signed G. D., Notice is hereby given that the said letter is received, and that if the person who wrote it will come to Mr. Walpole's lodgings at Chelsea any morning before nine o'clock and make out what he therein proposes, he shall receive all due encouragement and protection.'

On September 20th the 'Daily Courant' made no allusion whatever to the troubled and anxious state of the nation, but it gave the satisfactory intelligence that 'All is in tranquility in France.' On the same day, however, a proclamation in the king's name was issued, wherein it was stated that 'a most horrid and treacherous conspiracy' was afoot, and 'an invasion' intended for the establishing of the Pretender.

Citizens and fathers must have stared in a sort of dismay. Lambe might well say that if any disloyal man was present, he hoped such person had been cured of his malady. Jones, probably, went home thinking of a pavement made out of the carcasses of Brown and Robinson; and the ladies of citizen families walked behind them in a flutter of speculation as to what part of the force those undistinguishing soldiers belonged.

London may be called the head-quarters of the rebels, before actual war broke out. Captain John Shafto , an ex-Captain John Hunter, and an Irish Papist who had served in the brigade in France, were among the more active and daring agents. The leaders of the party kept their secret tolerably well. They met, debated, provided all things needful for their success, and carried on a correspondence with friends at a distance. While agents moved quietly away from London to teach the 'Rurals' the sacred duty of rebellion, more trusty messengers, still, rode or walked through and away from town, bearing letters and despatches which, if discovered, might cost a dozen lives. These trusty gentlemen were sent into various parts of the kingdom. They rode from place to place as travellers, pretending a curiosity to view the country; and they performed their dangerous duty with a success which perplexed the king's messengers. The most dexterous of these agents were Colonel Oxburgh, Nicholas and Charles Wogan, and James Talbot, all Irish and Papists. There were others, men of quality too, and occasionally a clergyman, who were entrusted with important but still dangerous duties. 'All these,' says Patten in his 'History,' 'rid like Gentlemen, with Servants and Attendants, and were armed with swords and pistols. They kept always moving, and travelled from place to place, till things ripened for action.'

Meanwhile, the otherwise curious part of the public might be seen wandering in troops to Duke Street, Westminster, to gaze at the house, the master of which, the Earl of Scarsdale, was there put under confinement. There was, elsewhere, a good look-out kept for perils ahead; there was no indulgence of any mean spite. His Majesty's ship 'Ormond' was then lying at Spithead. The Government did not stoop to the little vindictiveness of painting out the name of the great rebel who was then aiding and fostering rebellion, abroad. Sedition at home was hottest very close to the Royal Palace. There was quite a commotion at the bottom of St. James's Street, at seeing messengers and guards enter Mr. Ozinda's chocolate-house, next door to the palace. Ozinda himself was brought out captive, and when the mob saw him followed by Sir Richard Vivyan and Captain Forde, also captives, they began to smell a new gunpowder plot, and to surmise that the blowing up of the royal family was to be one of the means for restoring the Stuarts.

The authorship of this pamphlet, first published in 1713, for which Bedford was condemned to pay a fine of 1,000 marks, and to be imprisoned three years, was subsequently assumed by another nonjuring clergyman--the Rev. George Harbin.

The Guards, while encamped in Hyde Park, were preached to, on Sundays, with an earnestness which stood for an apology. It seemed necessary to persuade them, as the preachers did, that the happiness of Great Britain, in having a wise and just Protestant king, was beyond all conception.

The 'Friends,' too, lifted their voice. In November the Quaker spirit was moved to uplift a shout against the Jacobites. A Ministering Friend of the people so called gave a blast through the press of 'a trumpet blown in the North and sounded in the ears of John Ereskine, called by the Men of the World Duke of Mar.' At the Cheshire coffee-house, in King's Arms Court, Ludgate Hill, this pamphlet might be bought, or read over the aromatic cup which was sold in that locality.

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