A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume I Part 6

James Stuart seemed as if he were determined still further to imperil the chances of his family, and to embarra.s.s his adherents. The right moment for a movement in his favor had been allowed to pa.s.s away, and now, with characteristic blundering and ill fortune, he seized upon the most unsuitable time that could possibly have been employed for such an attempt. Something might have been done, perhaps, a temporary alteration in the dynasty might have been obtained, if energy and decision had been shown in that momentous interval when Queen Anne lay dying. But when that time had been allowed to pa.s.s, the clear policy of the Pretender was to permit the fears of Englishmen to go to sleep for a while, to endeavor to reorganize his plans and his party; to wait until a certain reaction should set in, a reaction very likely to come about because of the apparent incapacity and the unattractive character of George the First, and then at some timely hour, with well-matured preparations, to strike an energetic blow. George the First was only a year on the throne when the adherents of James got up a miserable attempt at an insurrection.

There were three conditions under which, and under which alone, an insurrection just then would have had a reasonable chance of success.

These conditions were fully recognized and understood by the Jacobite leaders {119} in England, Scotland, and France. The first was that a rising should take place at once in England and in Scotland, the second that the Chevalier in person should take the field, and the third that France should give positive a.s.sistance to the enterprise. The Jacobite cause was strong in the south-western counties of England, and there the influence of the Duke of Ormond was strong likewise. The general arrangement, therefore, in the minds of the Jacobite chiefs was that James Stuart should make his appearance in Scotland, that at the same moment the Duke of Ormond should raise the standard of revolt in some of the south-western counties, and that France should a.s.sist the expedition with men, money, and arms. When James, acting against the advice of his best counsellors, resolved on striking a blow at once, two of the necessary conditions were clearly wanting. France was not willing to give any actual a.s.sistance, and Ormond was not ready to raise the standard of rebellion in England.

Ormond's sudden appearance in Paris struck dismay into the hearts of the Jacobite counsellors, men and women, there. It had been distinctly understood that he was to remain in England, and that, if threatened with arrest, he was to hasten to one of the western counties, where he and his friends were strong, and strike a sudden blow. He was to seize Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and other towns, and set the Stuart flag flying all over that part of England. When he appeared in France, a mere solitary fugitive, all men of sense saw that the game was up.

Bolingbroke at once sent through safe hands a clear statement of the condition of things, to be laid before Lord Mar. Bolingbroke's object was to restrain Mar from any movement in the altered state of affairs.

The letter, however, came too late. Mar had already made his movement towards the Highlands: there was no stopping the enterprise then; the rebellion had taken fire. James was determined more than ever to go.

His arguments were the arguments of mere desperation. "I cannot but {120} see," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that affairs grow daily worse and worse by delays, and that, as the business is now more difficult than it was six months ago, so these difficulties will, in all human appearance, rather increase than diminish. Violent diseases must have violent remedies, and to use none has, in some cases, the same effect as to use bad ones." Indeed, it was impossible that the Chevalier himself or the Duke of Ormond could hold back. Both had personal courage quite enough for such an attempt. On the 28th of October James Stuart, after many delays, set out in disguise, and travelled westward to St. Malo. Ormond sailed from the coast of Normandy to that of Devons.h.i.+re, but found there no sign of any arrangement for a rising.

His plans had long been known to the English Government, and measures had been taken to frustrate them. In that little Jacobite Parliament sitting in Paris, which Bolingbroke spoke of with such contempt, and from which, as he puts it, "no s.e.x was excluded," there was hardly any secret made of the projects they were carrying on. Before the sudden appearance of Ormond in Paris they had counted, with the utmost confidence, on a full success, and were already talking of the Restoration as if it were an accomplished fact. Every word they uttered which it was of the least importance for the British Government to hear was instantly made known to Lord Stair, the new English Amba.s.sador--a resolute and capable man, a brilliant soldier, an astute and bold diplomatist, equal to any craft, ready for any emergency, charming to all, dear to his friends, very formidable to his enemies.

Ormond found that, as he had let the favorable moment slip when he fled from England to France, there was now no means whatever of recalling the lost opportunity. He returned to Brittany, and there he found the Chevalier preparing to start for Scotland. After various goings and comings the Chevalier was at last enabled to embark at Dunkirk in a small vessel, with a few guns and half a dozen Jacobite officers to attend him, and he made for the Scottish coast.

{121}

[Sidenote: 1715--The camp in Hyde Park]

About the same time, and as if in obedience to some word of command from France, there was a general and almost simultaneous outburst of Jacobite demonstration in England, amounting in most places to riot.

In London, and all over England, so far as one can judge, the popular feeling appears to have been rather with the Jacobites than against them. Stout Jacobites toasted a mysterious person called Job, who had no connection with the prophet, but whose name contained the initial letters of James, Ormond, and Bolingbroke; and "Kit" was no less popular, because it stood for "King James III.," while the mysterious symbolism of the "Three B's" implied "Best Born Briton," and so the Chevalier de St. George. The Chevalier's birthday--the 10th of June--was celebrated with wild outbursts of enthusiasm in several places. Stuart-loving Oxford in especial made a brave show of its white roses. The Loyalists, who endeavored to do a similar honor to the birthday of King George, were often violently a.s.sailed by mobs. In many places the windows of houses whose inmates refused to illuminate in honor of the Chevalier were broken; William the Third was burned in effigy in various parts of London, and in many towns throughout the country. So serious at one period did the revulsion of Jacobite feeling appear to be, that it was thought necessary to form a camp in Hyde Park, and to bring together a large body of troops there. The Life Guards and Horse Grenadiers, three battalions of the Foot Guards, the Duke of Argyll's regiment, and several pieces of cannon were established in the camp. By a curious coincidence the troops were reviewed by King George, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Marlborough, on the 25th of August, 1715, the very day on which, as we shall presently see, the Highland clans set up the standard of the Stuarts at Braemar, in Scotland. The camp had a certain amount of practical advantage in it, independently of its supposed political necessity--it made Hyde Park safe at night. Before the camp was established, and after it was broken up, the Park appears to {122} have been little better than Bagshot Heath or Hounslow Heath. It was the favorite parade-ground of highway robbers and murderers. The soldiers themselves were occasionally suspected of playing the part of highwaymen. "A man in those days," says Scott, "might have all the external appearance of a gentleman, and yet turn out to be a highwayman;" and "the profession of the polite and accomplished adventurer who nicked you out of your money at White's, or bowled you out of it at Marylebone, was often united with that of the professed ruffian who, on Bagshot Heath or Finchley Common, commanded his brother beau to stand and deliver." "Robbers--a fertile and alarming theme--filled up every vacancy, and the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household words." The revulsion of Jacobite feeling actually showed itself sometimes among the soldiers in the camp. Accounts published at the time tell us of men having been flogged and shot for wearing Jacobite emblems in their caps. Perhaps in mentioning this Hyde Park camp it may not be inappropriate to notice the fact that General Macartney, who had figured in a terrible tragedy in the Park two or three years before, returned to England, and obtained the favor of George by bringing over six thousand soldiers from Holland to a.s.sist the King. General Macartney was the man who had acted as second to Lord Mohun in the fatal duel in Hyde Park on the 15th of November, 1712, when both Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton were killed. Macartney escaped to Holland, and was charged by the Duke of Hamilton's second with having stabbed the Duke through the heart while Colonel Hamilton was endeavoring to raise him from the ground.

Macartney came back and took his trial, but was only found guilty of manslaughter--that is to say, found guilty of having taken part in the duel, and escaped without punishment. Probably Macartney, and Hamilton, and Mohun, and the Duke are best remembered in our time because of the {123} effect which that fatal meeting had upon the fortunes of Beatrix Esmond.

[Sidenote: 1715--John Erskine of Mar]

The insurrection had already broken out in Scotland. John Erskine, eleventh Earl of Mar, set himself up as lieutenant-general in the cause of the Chevalier. Lord Mar was a man of much courage and some capacity. He had held high office under Queen Anne. One of the biographers of that period describes Mar as a devoted adherent of the Stuarts. His career is indeed a fair ill.u.s.tration of the sort of thing which then sometimes pa.s.sed for devoted adherence to a cause. When King George reached England he dismissed Mar from office, suspecting him of sympathy with the Jacobite movement. Mar had expected something of the kind, and had written an obsequious and a grovelling letter to George, in which he spoke of the king's "happy accession," professed unbounded devotion to the house of Hanover, and promised that "You shall ever find in me as faithful a subject as ever any king had." The new king, however, declined to trust to the faithfulness of this subject; and a year after the faithful subject had returned to his Jacobite convictions, and was gathering the Highland clans in James Stuart's name.

The clans were got together at Braemar. The white c.o.c.kade was mounted there by clan after clan, the Macintoshes being the first to display it as the emblem of the Stuart cause. Inverness was seized. King James was proclaimed at several places, notably at Dundee, by Graham, the brother of "conquering Graham," Bonnie Dundee, the fearless, cruel, clever Claverhouse who fell at Killiecrankie. Perth was secured. The force under Mar's leaders.h.i.+p grow greater every day. He had begun with a handful of men. He had now a little army. He had set up his standard almost at hap-hazard at Braemar, and now nearly all the country north of the Tay was in the hands of the Jacobites.

The Duke of Argyll was put in command of the royal forces, and arrived in Scotland in the middle of September 1716. He hastened to the camp, which had been got {124} together somehow at Stirling. He came there almost literally alone. He brought no soldiers with him. He found few soldiers there to receive him. Under his command he had altogether about a thousand foot and half as many dragoons, the latter consisting in great measure of the famous and excellent Scots Grays. His prospect looked indeed very doubtful. He could expect little or no a.s.sistance from his own clan. They had work enough to do in guarding against a possible attack from some of the followers of Lord Mar. Glasgow, Dumfries, and other towns were likewise in imminent danger from some of the Highland clans, and were kept in a continual agony of apprehension.

It seemed likely enough that Argyll might soon be surrounded at Stirling. If Mar had only made a forward movement it is impossible to say what degree of success he might not have accomplished. It seems almost marvellous, when we look back and survey the state of things, to see what a miserable force the Government had to rely upon. In the whole country they had only about eight thousand men. They had more men abroad than at home, and in the critical condition of things which still prevailed upon the Continent, it did not seem clear that they could, except in the very last extremity, bring home many of the men whom they kept abroad. Of that little force of eight thousand soldiers they did not venture to send a considerable proportion up to the North.

They had, perhaps, good reason. They did not know yet where the serious blow was to be struck for the Stuart cause. Many of George's counsellors still looked upon the movement in Scotland as something merely in the nature of a feint. They believed that the real blow would yet be struck by Ormond in the West of England.

[Sidenote: 1715--Sheriffmuir]

But the evil fortune which hung over the Stuart cause in all its later days clung to it now. There was no conceivable reason why Mar should not have marched southward. The forces of the King were few in number, and were not well placed for the purpose of making any considerable resistance. But in an enterprise like that of {125} Mar all depends upon rapidity of movement. What we may call the ultimate resources of the country were in the hands of the King and his adherents. Every day's delay enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay beyond a certain time discouraged and weakened the invaders. Mar might, at one critical moment, have swept Argyll's exhausted troops before him, but he was feeble and timorous; he dallied; he let the time pa.s.s; he allowed Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack him. It was then that one of the Gordon clan broke into that memorable exclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dundee!"--the exclamation which Byron has paraphrased in the line,

Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo!

Certainly one hour of Dundee might, at more than one crisis in this melancholy struggle, have secured for the time the cause of the Stuarts, and won for James at least a temporary occupation of the throne of his ancestors. Mar's little force remained motionless long enough to allow the Duke of Argyll to get sufficient strength to make an attack upon it at Sheriffmuir. Sheriffmuir was not much of a victory. Each side, in fact, claimed the conqueror's honor. Mar was not annihilated, nor Argyll driven back. The Duke of Argyll probably lost more of his men, but, on the other hand, he captured many guns and standards, and he re-appeared on the same field the next day, while Mar showed there no more. Tested in the only practical way, it is clear that the Duke of Argyll had the better of it. Lord Mar wanted to do something, and was prevented from doing it at a time when to him everything depended on advance and on success. The Duke of Argyll successfully interposed between Mar and his object, and therefore was clearly the victor.

It is on record that no small share of Mar's ill-success was due to the action, or rather the inaction, of the famous Highland outlaw, Rob Roy.

He and his clan had joined Mar's standard, but his sympathies seem to have been with Argyll. He had an unusually large body of {126} men under his command, for many of the clan Macpherson had been committed to his leaders.h.i.+p, in consequence of the old age of their chief; but at a critical moment he refused to lead his men to the charge, and stood on a hill with his followers unconcernedly surveying the fight. It is said that had he kept faith he could have turned the fortunes of the day.

[Sidenote: 1715--"If he will die like a prince"]

Argyll and the cause he represented could afford to wait, and Mar could not. The insurrection already began to melt. James Stuart himself made his appearance in Scotland. He was characteristically late for Sheriffmuir, and when he did throw himself into the field he seemed unable to take any decisive step, or even to come to any clear decision. He did not succeed in making himself popular, even for the moment, among his followers in Scotland. The occasion was one in which gallant bearing and kingly demeanor would have gone for much, and indeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a different stamp from James might even then have so inspired the Highland clansmen, and so made use of his opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and the Hanoverian forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But James was peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He had graceful manners, a mild, serene temper, and great power of application to work.

His personal courage was undoubted, and he was willing enough to risk his own life on any chance; but he had none of the spirit of a commander. He was sometimes weak and sometimes obstinate. His very appearance was not in his favor among the Highland men, to whom he had previously been unknown. He was tall and thin, with pale face, and eyes that wanted fire and expression. His words were few, his behavior always sedate and somewhat depressed. Here, among the Scottish clansmen on the verge of rebellion, he seemed utterly borne down by the greatness of the enterprise. He was wholly unable to infuse anything like spirit or hope into his followers. On the contrary, his appearance among them, when he did show {127} himself, had a dispiriting and a depressing effect on almost every mind. Those who remember the manner and demeanor of the late Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French, the silent shyness, the appearance of almost constant depression, which were characteristic of that sovereign, will, we think, be easily able to form a clear idea of the effect that James Stuart produced among his followers in Scotland. He did not care to see the soldiers exercise, and handle their arms; he avoided going among them as much as possible. The men at last began to feel a mistrust of his courage--the one great quality which he certainly did not lack. A feeling of something like contempt began to spread abroad.

"Can he speak at all?" some of the soldiers asked. He was all ice; his very kindness was freezing. A man like Dundee called to such an enterprise would have set the clans of Scotland aflame with enthusiasm.

James Stuart was only a chilling and a dissolving influence. His more immediate military counsellors were like himself, and their only policy seemed to be one of postponement and delay. They advised him against action of every kind. The clansmen grew impatient. At Perth, one devoted Highland chief actually suggested that James should be taken away by force from his advisers, and brought among men who were ready to fight. "If he is willing to die like a prince," said this man, "he will find there are ten thousand gentlemen in Scotland who are willing to die with him." If James had followed the bent of his own disposition, he might even then have died like a prince, or gone on to a throne. His opponents were as little inclined for action as his own immediate advisers. The Duke of Argyll himself delayed making an advance until peremptory orders were sent to him from London. So long, and with so little excuse, did he delay, that statesmen in London suspected, not unreasonably, that Argyll was still willing to give James Stuart a chance, or was not yet quite certain whether the cause of the Stuarts was wholly lost. It is characteristic of the time that so long as there seemed any possibility of James {128} redeeming his crown Argyll's own colleagues suspected that Argyll was not willing to put himself personally in the way. At last, however, the peremptory order came that Argyll must advance upon Perth. The moment the advance became apparent, the counsellors of James Stuart insisted on a retreat.

On a day of ill omen to the Stuart cause, the 30th of January, 1716, the anniversary of the day when Charles the First was executed, the retreat from Perth was resolved on. That retreat was the end of the enterprise. Many Jacobites had already made up their minds that the struggle was over, that there was nothing better to be done than to disperse before the advancing troops of King George, that the sooner the forces of James Stuart melted away, and James Stuart himself got back to France, the better. James Stuart went back to France, and the clansmen returned to their homes. Some of the Roman Catholic gentlemen rose in Northumberland, and endeavored to form a junction with a portion of Mar's force which had come southward to meet them. The English Jacobites, however, were defeated at Preston, and compelled to surrender. After a voyage of five days in a small vessel, James succeeded in reaching Gravelines safely on the 8th of February, 1716.

His whole expedition had not occupied him more than six weeks.

[Sidenote: 1715--Marlborough's counsels]

It was believed at the time that the counsels of the Duke of Marlborough were mainly instrumental in bringing about the prompt suppression of the rebellion. Marlborough's advice was asked with regard to the military movements and dispositions to be made, and the belief of the day was that it was his counsel, and the manner in which the Government followed it out, which led to the utter overthrow of James Stuart and the dispersion of his followers. Marlborough is said to have actually told in advance the very time at which, if his advice were followed, the rebellion could be put down. Nothing is more likely than that Marlborough's advice should have been sought and should have been given. It would not in the {129} least degree militate against the truth of the story that the outbreak took place so soon after Marlborough had been professing the most devoted attachment to the cause of the Stuarts, and had declared, as we have said already, that he would rather cut off his right hand than do anything to injure the claims of the Chevalier St. George. But it would not seem that any advice Marlborough might have given was followed out very strictly in the measures taken to put down the rebellion. We may be sure that Marlborough's would have been military counsel worthy of the greatest commander of his age. But in the measures taken to put down the rebellion we can see nothing but incapacity, vacillation, and even timidity. An energetic man in Argyll's position, seeing how James Stuart halted and fluctuated, must have made up his mind at once that a rapid and bold movement would finish the rebellion, and we find no such movement made, until at last the most peremptory orders from London compelled Argyll at all hazards to advance. If then Marlborough gave his advice in London, which is very likely, it would seem that, for some reason or other, the advice was not followed by the commanders in the field. The whole story reminds one of the belief long entertained in France, and which we suppose has some votaries there still, that the great success of the Duke of Wellington, in the latter part of the war against Napoleon, was due to the military counsels of Dumouriez, then an exile in London.

There was a plan for the capture of Edinburgh Castle, which, like other Stuart enterprises, would have been a great thing if it had only succeeded. Edinburgh Castle was then full of arms, stores, and money.

Some eighty of the Jacobites, chiefly Highlanders, contrived a well-laid scheme by which to get possession of the Castle. They managed by bribes and promises to win over three soldiers in the Castle itself. The arrangement was that these men were to be furnished with ladders of a peculiar construction suited to the purpose, which, at a certain hour of the night, they were to lower down the Castle rock on the {130} north side--the side looking on the Prince Street of our day.

By these ladders the a.s.sailants were quietly to ascend, and then overpower the little garrison, and possess themselves of the Castle.

When the stroke had been done, they were to fire three cannon, and men stationed on the opposite coast of Fife were thereupon to light a beacon; and the flash of that light would be the signal for other beacons from hill to hill to bear the news to Mar--as the lights along the Argive hills carried the tale of Troy's fall to Argos. The plan was an utter failure. It broke down in two places. One of the conspirators told his brother; the brother told his wife; the lady took alarm, and sent an anonymous letter disclosing the whole plot to the Lord Justice Clerk. Yet even then, had the conspirators been in time, their plan might have succeeded; for the anonymous letter did not reach its destination till an hour after the time appointed to make the attempt on the Castle. But the conspirators were not punctual. Some of them were in a tavern in Edinburgh, drinking to the success of their enterprise. Every one in the neighborhood seems to have known what their enterprise was, to have had some sympathy with it, to have talked freely about it. Eighteen of these heroes kept up their conviviality in the tavern till long after the appointed time. The hostess of the place was heard to say that they were powdering their hair to go to the attack on the Castle. "A strange sort of powder," Lord Stanhope remarks, "to provide on such an occasion." Lord Stanhope evidently takes the hostess's words in a literal sense, and believes that the lady really meant to say that the jovial conspirators were actually powdering their locks as if for a ball. We may a.s.sume that the hostess spoke as Hamlet did, "tropically." Whether she did or not--whether they were really adorning their locks, or simply draining the flagon--the result was all the same. They came too late; the plot was discovered; the sympathizing soldiers from the Castle were already under arrest. The conspirators had to disperse and fly; a few of them were arrested; {131} their neighbors were only too willing to help them to escape. It cannot be doubted that there was sympathy enough in Edinburgh to have made their plan the beginning of a complete success--if it had only itself been allowed to succeed. But the disclosure to the lady, and the powder for the hair, brought all to nothing. The whole story might almost be said to be an allegorical ill.u.s.tration of the fortunes of the Stuarts. The pint and the petticoat always came in the way of a success to that cause.

[Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke's dismissal]

When James reached Gravelines, he hurried on to St. Germains. There, the next morning, Bolingbroke came to see him. Bolingbroke, to do him justice, had done all in his power to dissuade James from making his fatal expedition at such a time, and under such untoward circ.u.mstances.

He had shown judgment, prudence, and, in the true sense, courage. He had shown himself a statesman. He might very well have met James in the mood and with the remonstrances of the counsellors who, after the event, are able to say, "I told you so." But Bolingbroke appears to have had more discretion and more manliness. He advised James to withdraw once again from the dominions of the King, and take refuge in Lorraine. Bolingbroke knew well, by this time, that there was not the slightest chance of any open a.s.sistance from the French Court; and even that the French Court would be only too ready to throw James over, and sacrifice him, if, by doing so, they could strengthen the bonds of good feeling between France and England. James professed to take Bolingbroke's counsel in very friendly fas.h.i.+on, and parted from Bolingbroke with many expressions of confidence and affection. Yet it is certain that at this time he had made up his mind not to see Bolingbroke any more. He went for a time to a house near Versailles, a kind of headquarters of intriguing political women, and thence immediately despatched a letter to Bolingbroke, relieving him of all his duties as Secretary of State. Bolingbroke affects to have taken his dismissal very composedly, but it cannot be doubted that his heart burned within him at what he, {132} doubtless, believed to be the ingrat.i.tude of the prince for whom he had done and sacrificed so much.

For Bolingbroke had that unlucky gift of fancy which enables a man to see himself, and his own doings, and his own merits, in whatever light is most gratifying to his personal vanity. He had, in truth, never risked nor sacrificed anything for the sake of James or the Stuart cause. He never had the least idea of risking or sacrificing anything for that cause, or for any other. It was only when his fortunes in England became desperate, when impeachment, and, as he believed, a scaffold threatened him, when he had no apparent alternative left but to join the Pretender or stay at home and lose all--it was only then that he took any decided step as an adherent of the cause of the Stuarts. We cannot doubt that James Stuart knew to the full the part that Bolingbroke had played. He knew that he owed Bolingbroke no favor, and that he could have no confidence in him. Still, it remains to the present hour a mystery why James should then, and in that manner, have got rid of Bolingbroke forever. Bolingbroke himself does not appear to have known the cause of his dismissal. It may be that James had grown tired of the whole fruitless struggle, and was glad to get rid of a minister whose restless energy and genius would always have kept political intrigue alive, and political enterprises going.

Or it may be that just then there had fallen into James's hands some new and recent evidences of Bolingbroke's willingness to treat, on occasion, with either side. However this may be, James made up his mind to dismiss his great follower, and Bolingbroke at once made up his mind to endeavor to ingratiate himself into the favor of the House of Hanover, and to secure his restoration to London society. Almost at the very moment of his dismissal he made application to some of his friends in London to endeavor to obtain for him a permission to return.

[Sidenote: 1715--"Banished Bolingbroke repeats himself"]

We do not absolutely say a farewell to Bolingbroke now and here, as he stands dismissed from the service of {133} the Stuarts and disqualified for the service of the Hanoverians. Nearly forty years of life were yet before him, but his work as a statesman was done. Never again had his genius a chance of s.h.i.+ning in the service of a throne. The master-politician of the age was out of employment forever. We do not know if history anywhere supplies such another example of a great political career snapped off so suddenly at its midst, hardly even at its midst, and never put together again. Bolingbroke re-appeared again and again in England. He even took more than once a certain kind of part in politics--that is in pamphleteering; he tried to be the inspiration and the guiding-star of Pulteney and other rising men who had come, for one reason or another, to detest Walpole. But even these soon began to find Bolingbroke rather more of a hinderance than a help, and were glad to shake him off and be rid of him. He becomes everything by turns; plays at cool philosophy and philosophic retreat; is always a.s.suring the world in tones of highly suspicious eagerness that he is done forever with it and its works and pomps; and he is always yearning and striving to get back to the works and pomps again.

He plays at farming, actually puts on countrified manners, and dines ostentatiously off homely farmer-like fare, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of some of his friends. He undertakes to settle the whole question of religion, of this world and the next, including the entire code of human ethics; and at the same time he is very fond of expatiating to young men concerning the most effective ways for the seduction of women, the course to be followed with a lady of quality, the different course in dealing with an actress, the policy of a long siege, and the policy of an attack by storm. He marries again and gets money with his wife, a French _marquise_, once beautiful, somewhat older than himself, and seems to be fond of her and happy with her, and discourses to her as to others about the variety of his successful amours. Through long, long years his shadow, his ghost, for in the political sense it is {134} nothing else, keeps revisiting the glimpses of the moon in England.

For all the influence he is destined to have on the realities of political life, he might as well be already lying in that tomb in the old church on the edge of the Thames at Battersea where his strangely brilliant, strangely blighted career is to come to an end at last.

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CHAPTER VIII.

AFTER THE REBELLION.

[Sidenote: 1715--Conflicts of parties]

All this time the Jacobite demonstrations were still going on in London and in various parts of England with as much energy as ever. Green boughs and oak apples were worn, and even flaunted, about the streets, by groups of persons on May 29th, the anniversary of Charles the Second's restoration. We read of the riots in London, of Whigs of the "Loyal Society" going about with little warming-pans as emblems of their hostility to the Stuart cause, and being met by other mobs bearing white roses as badges of the Stuart cause. There was a continual battle of pamphleteers and of ballad-writers. "High-Church and Ormond!" were shouted for and sung on one side of the political field, and the "Pope and Perkin," that is to say, James Stuart, were as liberally denounced on the other. The scandals about King George's mistresses were freely alluded to in the Jacobite songs. The public of all parties seem to have very cordially detested the ill-favored ladies whom George had brought over from Hanover. The coa.r.s.est and grossest abuse was poured forth in ballads and in pamphlets against the King's favorites and courtiers, and was sung and shouted day and night in the public streets.

Then, and for long after, these public streets were battle-grounds on which Whigs and Tories, Hanoverians and Jacobites, fought out their quarrel. Men carried turnips in their hats in mockery of the German elector who had threatened to make St. James's Park a turnip-field, and were prepared to fight l.u.s.tily for their bucolic emblem. Women fanned the strife, wore white roses for the King {136} over the water, or Sweet William in compliment to the "immortal memory" of William of Na.s.sau.

Sometimes even women were roughly treated. On one occasion we read of a serving-girl, who had made known the hiding-place of a Jacobite, being attacked and nearly murdered by a Jacobite mob, and rescued by some Whig gentlemen. On another occasion a Whig gentleman seeing a young lady in the street with a white rose in her bosom, jumped from his coach, tore out the disloyal blossom, lashed the young lady with his whip, and handed her over to a gang of Whigs, who would have stripped and scourged her but for the timely appearance of some Jacobite gentry, by whom she was carried home in safety. The "Flying Post" warns all "he-Jacobites" and "she-Jacobites" that if they are not careful they will meet with more severe treatment than hitherto, and then alludes to some pretty severe treatment the poor "she-Jacobites" had already received.

[Sidenote: 1715--"All for our rightful King"]

To do the King and his family justice, they behaved with courage and composure through this long season of popular excitement. They went everywhere as they pleased, braving the dangers that certainly existed.

Once a man named Moor spat in the face of the Princess of Wales as she was going through the streets, and he was scourged till he cried "G.o.d bless King George!" In 1718 a youth named Sheppard was hanged for planning King George's death. This led a Hanoverian fanatic named Bowes to suggest to the ministry that in return he should go to Italy and kill King James. His proffer of political retaliation only resulted in his being shut up as a madman. At last the temper of the times and the frequent threats of a.s.sa.s.sination compelled the King to take more care of himself. Though he walked in Kensington Gardens every day, the gardens were first searched, and then carefully watched by soldiers.

When the rebellion was over, the Government found they had a large number of prisoners on their hands, many of them of high rank. Several officers taken on {137} the field had already been treated as deserters and shot, after a trial by drum-head court-martial. Some of the prisoners of higher rank were brought into London in a manner like that of captives dragged along in an old Roman triumph, or like that of actual convicts taken to Tyburn. They were marched in procession from Highgate through London, each man sitting on a horse, having his arms tied with cords behind his back, the horses led by soldiers, with a military escort drumming and fifing a march of triumph. The men of n.o.ble rank were confined in the Tower; others, many of them men of position, such as Mr.

Thomas Forster, a Northumberland gentleman, and member for his county, were thrust into Newgate, whose horrors have been so well described in Scott's "Rob Roy." The Rev. Robert Patten, who had been a conspicuous Jacobite, played a t.i.tus Oates part in betraying his companions, and his name figures for King's evidence incessantly in the political trials.

When he tired of treachery he retired to the obscurity of his parish of Allendale, in Northumberland, and gave the world his history of the rebellion in which he had played so base a part.

Among the chief prisoners were Lord Widdrington, the Earl of Nithisdale, the Earl of Wintoun, the Earl of Carnwath, the Earl of Derwent.w.a.ter, Viscount Kenmure, and Lord Nairn. These n.o.blemen were impeached before the House of Lords, and all, except Lord Wintoun, pleaded guilty, and prayed for the mercy of the King. Every effort was made to obtain a pardon for some of the condemned n.o.blemen. Women of rank and beauty implored the King's mercy. Audacious attempts were made to bribe the ministers. Some eminent members of the Whig party in the House of Commons spoke up manfully and courageously in favor of a policy of mercy.