1745.] STATE OF PUBLIC INTELLIGENCE. 143 pregnant one by far than any of the London ones), and talks as familiarly of kings and princes as ever Master Shallow did of John of Gaunt. Indeed it is no bad thing that they do so; for I cannot conceive that the people want so much to be convinced by sermons of the absurdity of popery, as they do by newspapers that it may possibly prevail. The reasons and arguments, too, in favour of the present government are so strong and obvious, that even I, and every country squire, and every country clerk, and Sam Shaw the tailor, seem to be as much masters of them as the bishops themselves. I must not say we could express them so politely." Secker and Sherlock and Warburton were preaching like sensible divines against the mischiefs which a change of dynasty would produce; and the newspapers, London and provincial, gave little encouragement to the enterprise of a family that had not been distinguished for a regard to the freedom of the press. A few years later than this, Dr. Johnson, who saw without much favour the fact that "almost every large town has its weekly historian," makes this admission of the utility of newspapers, even in this early period of the development of their mighty influence: "All foreigners remark that the knowledge of the common people in England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence which are continually trickling among us, which every one may catch, and of which every one partakes." † The possession of Carlisle appears to have somewhat influenced the decicision of Charles's council to march onward towards London. Some, accord * Shenstone's Works, vol. iii. p. 103. "Idler," No. 7. 144 THE CONTINUED MARCH INTO ENGLAND [1745. ing to lord George Murray, proposed returning to Scotland. The cause of the Stuarts was not flourishing there. Although lord Strathallan, who had been left in command at Perth, had received a considerable accession of force, from clans who had taken arms under the son of lord Lovat and other chiefs, the large commercial towns had given the most decided manifestations in favour of the established government. Glasgow, Paisley, and Dumfries had raised their militia for the reigning House. Edinburgh had renewed its allegiance. Even at Dundee and Perth, "the populace had insisted on celebrating king George's birthday, and a few shots or blows had been exchanged between them and their Jacobite garrisons." * "The populace" may here have a wider significance than "the mob." Lord George Murray (the project for marching back to Scotland not being approved) says that some were for quartering in the country about Carlisle. "Others were for marching forward the west road, and that now we had Carlisle, at worst we had a safe retreat. His Royal Highness declared for this." His own opinion being asked, lord George said he could not venture to advise "to march far into England without more encouragement from the country than we had hitherto got; " but he added that, if the prince was resolved to make a trial, the army, though small, would follow him. "Upon this he immediately said he would venture." + Murray at that time had resigned his commission, and was determined to serve only as a volunteer. There had been differences between him and the duke of Perth, who was in especial favour with Charles. But the experience and knowledge of the plain-speaking general could not be safely dispensed with. He soon, he says, as all the other officers were very pressing with me," laid aside the thought of serving only as a volunteer. On the 20th of November, the van of the Highland army marched from Carlisle ; and the main body, in a second division commanded by the prince, followed shortly after. The whole force did not reach five thousand men, according to some accounts; it amounted nearly to seven thousand, upon other estimates. At Penrith the main body halted on the 22nd for a day, the van having marched to Kendal. Home says that the second division," coming to Penrith, occupied the quarters which the van had left." The chaplain, from whose MS. we have already quoted, says, under the date of the 22nd, "the van marched to Kendal, and the main body halted at Penrith." These accounts, corroborated by De Johnstone, refute the statement that "the whole army re-united at Penrith, and halted there one day, in the expectation that Wade was advancing to attack them; but on learning the retreat of that doughty veteran from Hexham they pursued their progress."§ On the 27th the two divisions were united at Preston. "Last night they were to be at Preston," writes Walpole, on the 29th. He adds, "The country is so far from rising for them that the towns are left desolate on their approach, and the people hide and bury their effects, even to their pewter." We must not cease to bear in mind that the towns, then left desolate, were essentially different from the towns of half a century later-mere hamlets compared with the vast abodes of manufacturing industry into whose localities Charles * Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 395. "History of the Rebellion," Works, vol. iii. p. 122. + Jacobite Memoirs," p. 48. § Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 397. 66 145 Edward was now entering. Manchester," says Volunteer Ray," was taken by a sergeant, a drum, and a woman, about two o'clock in the afternoon [of the 28th], who rode up to the Bull's Head on horses with hempen halters, where they dined. After dinner they beat up for recruits, and in less than an hour listed about thirty." This seemingly apocryphal story is confirmed by letters given by lord Mahon, but more circumstantially by a very interesting narrative of the Chevalier de Johnstone. One of his sergeants, he says, a young Scotsman named Dickson, who had been enlisted from the prisoners of war at Gladsmuir, asked his permission to go forward to Manchester to make sure of some recruits before the arrival of the army. The general laughed at the notion of the adventurous youth, "as bold and intrepid as a lion." But Dickson was not to be baulked in this way. He went off with a horse, and with his commander's portmanteau and blunderbuss; and on the evening of the 29th atoned for his insubordination by presenting himself at Manchester with a hundred and eighty recruits. De Johnstone gives with considerable narrative power the history of the surrender of Manchester to Dickson and his blunderbuss: "He had quitted Preston, in the evening, with his mistress, and my drummer; and having marched all night, he arrived next morning at Manchester, which is about twenty miles distant from Preston, and immediately began to beat up for recruits for the yellow-haired laddie.' The populace, at first, did not interrupt him, conceiving our army to be near the town; but as soon as they knew that it would not arrive till the evening, they surrounded him in a tumultuous manner, with the intention of taking him prisoner, alive or dead. Dickson presented his blunderbuss, which was charged with slugs, threatening to blow out the brains of those who first dared to lay hands on himself or the two who accompanied him; and by turning round continually, facing in all directions, and behaving like a lion, he soon enlarged the circle which a crowd of people had formed round them. Having continued for some time to manœuvre in this way, those of the inhabitants of Manchester who were attached to the house of Stuart took arms, and flew to the assistance of Dickson, to rescue him from the fury of the mob; so that he soon had five or six hundred men to aid him, who dispersed the crowd in a very short time. Dickson now triumphed in his turn; and putting himself at the head of his followers, he proudly paraded, undisturbed, the whole day, with his drummer, enlisting for my company all who offered themselves. On presenting me with a list of one hundred and eighty recruits, I was agreeably surprised to find that the whole amount of his expenses did not exceed three guineas. This adventure of Dickson gave rise to many a joke at the expense of the town of Manchester, from the singular circumstance of its having been taken by a sergeant, a drummer, and a girl. The circumstance may serve to show the enthusiastic courage of our army, and the alarm and terror with which the English were seized." The "alarm and terror" were perhaps as much produced by "those of the inhabitants of Manchester who, attached to the house of Stuart, took arms," as by the enthusiastic courage of the sergeant, the drummer, and the girl, as the representatives of our army." The Manchester recruits were formed into a regiment. It 66 never exceeded three hundred men," says De Johnstone, "of whom the Ray, p. 132. "Memoirs of the Rebellion," p. 64. 146 ROMAN CATHOLIC FAMILIES IN MANCHESTER. [1745. recruits furnished by my sergeant formed more than the half. These were all the English who ever declared themselves openly in favour of the prince ; and the chiefs of the clans were not far wrong, therefore, in distrusting the pretended succours on which the prince so implicitly relied." The bellringing, the illuminations, the bonfires, which are described as "signs of popular favour upon the entry of the prince," lose a little of their value, when we learn, from one source, that "the bellman has been ordering us to illuminate our houses to-night, which must be done;"* and from Volunteer Ray, that the bellman, who, in the morning, " had been sent about the town requiring all such as had any public money in their hands to bring it in," was, in the evening, "again sent about to order the town to be illuminated." The probability is that the inhabitants generally of Manchester, thriving as they were upon their manufactures of fustians, dimities, laces, and the various small articles of dress known as Manchester ware, and having extensive dealings with distant places, would not very gladly have seen property destroyed and credit suspended by the near prospect of insurrection and civil war. But the ancient and wealthy Roman Catholic families who dwelt among them were in general harmless; and if the bellman ordered illuminations, it was not for the industrious and loyal majority to break the Papist windows. The Protestants of this busy town were not likely to be more disaffected than their neighbours. "In every place we passed through," says De Johnstone, "we found the English very ill-disposed towards us, except at Manchester, where there appeared some remains of attachment to the House of Stuart." + The Jacobite sympathy, "the old spirit of loyalty," that displayed itself in kissing the hands of the tall young prince—and which in one instance went so far as to make an ancient lady somewhat irreverently employ the sacred words of the Nunc dimittis-is a pretty object to contemplate through the haze of a century. But we cannot join in the historian's sneer at the reasoning loyalty which has taken the place of the old prostration before every wearer of a crown: "How greatly have we now improved upon those unphilosophical times! How far more judicious to value kings and governments, like all other articles, only according to their cheapness and convenience!"‡ Having been in Manchester two days, the rebel army marched on the 1st of December to Macclesfield, fording the Mersey near Stockport. It was determined to proceed to Derby; but lord George Murray, with the van, moved from Macclesfield to Congleton, "which was the straight road to Lichfield; so that the enemy would have reason to think we intended to come upon them, which would make them gather together in a body, and readily advance upon that road, so that we could get before them to Derby."§ The manœuvre succeeded. The duke of Cumberland, who was at Newcastleunder-Line with his army, thought the object of the rebels was to get to Wales, where Jacobitism had its adherents. He therefore marched to Stone; and left the road to London open. Murray suddenly altered his course, and passing through Leek and Ashbourn, reached Derby at noon on the 5th. The prince, with the main body, arrived there the same evening. The duke of *Letter given by Lord Mahon. + "Memoirs," p. 81. 1745.] THE REBEL ARMY REACHES DERBY. 147 Cumberland's spies had been taken prisoners, especially "the famous captain Weir, well known to all about court," who fell in the way of lord George Murray. "He was sent to the prince to be examined," writes the Highland officer in his Account; * and whether it was clemency or prudence in the prince, Weir was saved from hanging to reveal all he knew of the movements of the English forces. In Derby the rebels obtained only three recruits; and, as was their usual course, they possessed themselves of the money collected for the taxes, which here amounted to 2500l. Without these resources, it is difficult to understand how this army contrived to subsist by paying for the necessaries which it wanted. The plunder was really inconsiderable. But the wants of the hardy Highlanders were easily supplied. They could march for a whole day upon a little oatmeal, which they carried in bags, mixed with the water of the streams through which they waded. It is highly honourable to these poor men, who in their own country were not averse to depredations upon a large scale which looked like warfare, that in their march through a rich land they plundered very little, and committed no wanton mischief. William Hutton justly appreciated this behaviour: "They frequently," he said, "paid their quarters-more frequently it was not expected." He has an excuse for their petty depredations: "If they took people's shoes, it was because they had none of their own; and no voice speaks so loud as that of necessity." The general expectation in Derby was that the rebels had determined to march on. The same belief prevailed in the surrounding districts. Gray has an amusing anecdote of the temper in which this possible advance was regarded: "I heard three people, sensible middle-aged men, when the Scotch were said to be at Stamford, and actually were at Derby, talking of hiring a chaise to go to Caxton, a place in the high road, to see the Pretender and the Highlanders as they passed."+ This has been called "indifference," an unconcern to the interests of the reigning family." It was simply curiosity mixed with a good deal of contempt. The unconcern at the advance into the kingdom of a small army of strangely clad and irregularly armed mountaineers, was produced by the certainty that there were in arms a very powerful force of disciplined soldiers moving to attack them, or to intercept their march to the metropolis; concentrating to put down an insane enterprise by some signal vengeance. Lord George Murray has clearly described the dangers which surrounded the adventurous prince and his men when they had reached Derby: "We did not doubt but that the duke of Cumberland would be that night at Stafford, which was as near to London as Derby. Mr. Wade was coming up by hard marches the east road; and we knew that an army, at least equal to any of these, would be formed near London, consisting of guards and horse, with troops which they would bring from the coast where they were quartered; so that there would be three armies made up of regular troops, that would surround us, being above thirty thousand men, whereas we were not above five thousand fighting men, if so many."‡ It is scarcely necessary to believe that, in the face of this danger, there were any especial reasons, which time has not yet devoleped, to determine "Lockhart Papers," p. 458. Letter to Walpole, February 3, 1746. Works, vol. ii. p. 181-Pickering's edit. |