The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. Volume 2

I answered that I knew not enough of seamanship to take the place of an officer, and that I considered the condition of a common sailor as too base for one of my bringing up.

"Ay, ay! you shall be an officer in time, my hearty," answered the Coxswain – "Lord High Admiral, for a certainty; but you must creep through the hawse-holes first. There's nothing like half-a-dozen cruises before the mast for taking the conceit out of a maple-faced hobbledehoy."

Whether I was maple-faced or not, I did not stay to argue; but there was something about the mahogany face of the coxswain that misliked me much. Now that I inspected him closely I recognised in him something of that mangonising or slave-dealing expression which is burnt in as with a Red-hot Iron upon the countenances of all those whose trade is kidnapping and man-stealing. So without more ado I rose to go, thanking him for his treat, and saying that if I went to sea it should be at my own pleasure and in my own way.

"Stop abit," he answered, rising with me, and putting his back against the door – "not so fast, my hearty! King George doesn't allow likely young blades to slip through his fingers in this fashion. As you're in such a deuce of a hurry, I think we'd better see the Midshipmite."

I measured him with my eye, but at once gave up all thoughts of mastering him if I attempted violence in leaving the room. He was taller than I, broader across the chest, older, his limbs better knit, and in every way the more powerful. He too, I saw, was taking stock of me, and marking from my Frame and my Mien that, although young, I was likely to prove an Ugly Customer, he outs with a pistol from under his jerkin, and holds it to my head with one hand, while with the other he blows a smart call upon a silver whistle suspended by a lanyard round his neck.

In a moment the room was full of blue-frocked ruffians; a dozen pistols were levelled at my head, a dozen cutlasses drawn menacingly against me. Before I knew where I was I was tripped up, knocked down from behind, a gag forced into my mouth, and a pair of handcuffs slipped on to my wrists.

"No offence, shipmate," said a big fellow with black whiskers, as he knelt on my chest and screwed the manacles on so tightly that I gave a scream of pain. "We always begin in this here way – we crimps our cod before we cooks it. To-morrow morning, when you've had your grog, you'll be as gentle as a lamb, and after your first cruise you'll be as ready as ere a one of us to come cub-hunting."

Upon this there entered the room he whom the coxswain had spoken of as the , and who I rightly conjectured to be in authority over these dare-devils. He was a young man wearing his own hair, which was bright red. His face was all covered with pimples, and his mouth was harelipped from a sword cut. He had canvas bags and grey ribbed hose like a common sailor, but his hat was bound with a scrap of dirty gold lace; he had a hanger at his side, and on his threadbare blue coat I could see the King's button. Withal he was a very precise gentleman, and would listen to nothing but facts. He bade his men remove the gag from my mouth, and then addressed me.

"The fact of the matter is," says he, "that you've been kicking up a devil of a row, and that you'd much better have gone quietly with the coxswain."

"Why am I kidnapped? why have you put these footpad bracelets on me?" I cried out, passionately.

"The fact of the matter is that we always do it to save time and trouble," answered the Midshipmite – "Easy and quiet is the word at the 'Admiral Benbow.'"

"I'll have the law of you!" I exclaimed, in a rage.

"Exactly so," quoth the Midshipmite, quite politely. "May I ask if you're a free-man of the City of London?"

"I am not."

"Precisely so. Are you a waterman, duly entered at your Hall, and all arrears paid up, or an apprentice, carrying your indentures with you?"

"I am not, and I don't know what you mean."

"Then the fact of the matter is," said the Midshipmite, with a chuckle, "that we've got the law of you. The King, God bless him, wants stout and gallant hearts to man his fleet, and you're about the likeliest young fellow I've seen this week; so the best thing you can do is to go willingly on board the Tower Tender, of which I have the honour to be second in command. If you won't, the fact of the matter is that we must make you."

"But why should I go with you?" I urged.

"The fact of the matter is that you're Pressed," coolly answered the Midshipmite, or midshipman, "and if you want to see the warrant, you may ask Davy Jones for it, who keeps it under three seals in his locker to prevent accidents."

Between listing for a soldier and being pressed for a sailor there was not, I take it, much difference. Either way, the chance of a livelihood offered itself. But I did not like this violent way of doing things, and I told the midshipman so. He merely ordered his blue-frocks to take me away. Then I attempted to burst my bonds, and bit, kicked, and struggled, so that it took half-a-dozen men to drag me to the door.

"The fact of the matter is," remarked the midshipman, filling himself a glass of punch, "that there's always this hullabaloo at the first going off, and that you'd better give him One for peace and quietness."

Somebody immediately followed the officer's advice, and gave me One with the butt end of a pistol, which nearly clove my skull in twain, and certainly made me peaceable and quietness, for it stunned me.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

JOHN DANGEROUS IS IN THE SERVICE OF KING GEORGE

It now becomes expedient for me to pass over no less than Fifteen Years of my momentous Career. I am led to do this for divers cogent Reasons, two of which I will forthwith lay before my Reader. For the first, let me urge a Decent Prudence. It is not, Goodness knows, that I have any thing to be ashamed of which should hinder me from giving a Full, True, and Particular Account of all the Adventures that befell me in these same fifteen Years, with the same Minute Particularity which I bestowed upon my Unhappy Childhood, my varied Youth, and stormy Adolescence. I did dwell, perhaps, with a fonder circumspection and more scrupulous niceness upon those early days, inasmuch as the things we have first known and suffered are always more vividly presented to our mind when we strive to recall 'em, sitting as old men in the ingle-nook, than are the events of complete manhood. Yet do I assure those who have been at the pains to scan the chapters that have gone before, that it would be easy for me to sit down with the Fidelity of a Ledger-Keeper all the things that happened unto me from my year, when I last bade them leave, and the year 1747, when I had come to be three-and-thirty years of age. I remember all: the Ups and Downs; the Crosses and the Runs of Luck; the Fortunes and Misfortunes; the Good and the Bad Feasts I sat me down to, during an ever-changing and Troublous Period. But, as I have said, I have been moved thus to skip over a vast tract of time through Prudence. There may have been certain items in my life upon which, now that I am respectable and prosperous, I no more care to think of. There may be whole pages, close-written and full of Stirring Matter, which I have chosen to cancel; there may be occurrences treated of which it is best, at this time of Day, to draw a Veil over. Finally, there may be Great Personages still Living who would have just cause to be Offended were I to tell all I know. The dead belong to all the World, and their Bones are oft-times Dug up and made use of by those who in the Flesh knew them not; but Famous Persons live to a very Great Age, and it is sometimes scandalous to recount what adventures one has had with 'em in the days of their hot and rash Youth. Had I permission to publish all I am acquainted with, the very Hair upon your Head might stand up in Amazement at some of the Matters I could relate: – how Mean and Base the Great and Powerful might become; how utterly Despisable some of the most Superb and Arrogant Creatures of this our Commonwealth might appear. But I am prudent and Hold my Tongue.

Again, and for the Second Reason, I am led to pass over these fifteen years through a feeling that is akin to Mercy and Forbearance towards my Reader. For I well know how desperately given is John Dangerous to a wordy Garrulity – how prone he is to make much of little things, and to elevate to the dignity of Important and Commanding Events that which is perchance only of the very slightest moment. By Prosing and Amplifying, by Moralizing and Digressing, by spinning of yarns and wearing of reflections threadbare, I might make a Great Book out of the pettiest and most uneventful career; but even in honestly transcribing my actual adventures, one by one, – the things I have done, and the Men and Women I have known, – I should imperceptibly swell a Narrative, which was at first meant to attain no great volume, to most deplorable dimensions. And the World will no longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to Voyages and Travels, or even to Philosophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. The world wants smart, dandy little volumes, as thin as a Herring, and just as Salt. For these two reasons, then, do I nerve myself to a sudden leap, and entreat you now to think no longer of John Dangerous as a raw youth of eighteen summers, but as a sturdy, well-set man of thirty-three.

Yet, lest mine Enemies and other vile Rascal Fellows that go about the town taking away the characters of honest people for mere Envy and Spitefulness' sake, lest these petty curmudgeons should, in their own sly saucy manner, Mop and Mow, and Grin and Whisper, that If I am silent as to Fifteen Years of my Sayings and Doings, I have good cause for holding my peace, – lest these scurril Slanderers should insinuate that during this time I lay in divers Gaols for offences which I dare not avow, that I was concerned in Desperate and Unlawful Enterprises which brought upon me many Indictments in the King's Courts, or that I was ever Pilloried, or held to Bail for contemptible misdemeanours, – I do here declare and affirm that for the whole of the time I so pass over I earned my bread in a perfectly Honest, Legal, and Honourable Manner, and that I never once went out of the limits of the United Kingdom. I have heard, indeed, a Ridiculous Tale setting forth that, finding myself Destitute in London after the Chaplain, Mr Pinchin, and I had parted company, and after escaping from the Pressgang, I enlisted in the Foot Guards. The preposterous Fable goes on to say that quickly mastering my Drill, and being a favourite with my officers, whom I much pleased with my Alacrity and Intelligence, although they were much given to laugh at my assumptions of superior Birth, and nicknamed me "Gentleman Jack," – I was promoted to the rank of Corporal, and might have aspired to the dignity of a Sergeant's Halbert, but that in a Mad Frolic one night I betook myself to the road as a Footpad, and robbed a Gentleman, coming from the King's Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh House at Knightsbridge, of fourteen spade guineas, a gold watch, and a bottle-screw. And that being taken by the Hue and Cry, and had before Justice de Veil then sitting at the Sun Tavern in Bow Street, I should have been committed to Newgate, tried, and most likely have swung for the robbery, but for the strong intercession of my Captain, who was a friend of the Gentleman robbed. That I was indeed enlarged, but was not suffered to go scot-free, inasmuch as, being tried by court-martial for absence without leave on the night of the gentleman's misfortune, I was sentenced to receive three hundred lashes at the halberts. Infamous and Absurd calumnies!

Behold me, then, in the beginning of the year 1747 in the Service of his Sacred Majesty King George the Second. Behold me, further, installed in no common Barrack, mean Guard-house, or paltry Garrison Town, but in one of the most famous of his Majesty's Royal Fortresses: – a place that had been at once and for centuries (ever since the days of Julius Cæsar, as I am told) a Palace, a Citadel, and a Prison. In good sooth, I was one of the King's Warders, and the place where I was stationed was the Ancient and Honourable Tower of London.

Whether I had ever worn the King's uniform before, either in scarlet as a Soldier in his armies, or of blue and tarpaulin as a Sailor in his Fleets, or of brown as a Riding Officer in his customs, – under which guise a man may often have doughty encounters with smugglers that are trying to run their contraband cargoes, or to hide their goods in farmers' houses, – or of green, as a Keeper in one of the Royal Chases, – I absolutely refuse to say. Here I am, or rather here I was, a Warder and in the Tower.

I was bravely accoutred. A doublet of crimson cloth, with the crown, the Royal Cipher G. R., and a wreath of laurel embroidered in gold, both on its back and front; a linen ruff, well plaited, round my neck, sleeves puffed with black velvet, trunk-hose of scarlet, rosettes in my slashed shoes, and a flat hat with a border of the red and white roses of York and Lancaster in satin ribbon, – these made up my costume. There were forty of us in the Tower, mounting guard with drawn swords at the portcullis gate and at the entrances to the lodgings of such as were in hold, and otherwise attending upon unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen who were in trouble. On state occasions, when taking prisoners by water from the Tower to Westminster, and in preceding the Lieutenant to the outward port, we carried Halberts or Partisans with tassels of gold and crimson thread. But although our dress was identical, as you may see from the prints, with that of the Beef-Eaters, we Tower Warders were of a very different kidney to the lazy hangers-on about St. James's. Those fellows were Anybodies, Parasites of Back-Stairs favourites, and spies and lacqueys, transformed serving-men, butlers past drawing corks, grooms and porters, even. They had nothing to do but loiter about the antechambers and staircases of St. James's, to walk by the side of his Majesty's coach when he went to the Houses of Parliament, or to fight with the Marshalmen at Royal Funerals for petty spoils of wax-candles or shreds of black hangings. The knaves actually wore wigs, and powdered them, as though they had been so many danglers on the Mall. They passed their time, when not in requisition about the Court, smoking and card-playing in the taverns and mug-houses about Scotland Yard and Spring Gardens. They had the run of a few servant-wenches belonging to great people, but we did not envy them their sweethearts. Some of them, I verily believe, were sunk so low as, when they were not masquerading at court, to become tavern-drawers, or ushers and cryers in the courts of law about Westminster. A very mean people were these Beef-eaters, and they toiled not, neither did they spin, for the collops they ate.

But we brave boys of the Tower earned both our Beef and our Bread, and the abundant Beer and Strong Waters with which we washed our victuals down. We were military men, almost all. Some of us had fought at Blenheim or Ramilies – these were the veterans: the very juniors had made the French Maison du Roy scamper, or else crossed bayonets with the Irish Brigade (a brave body of men, but deplorably criminal in carrying arms against a Gracious and Clement Prince) in some of those well-fought German Fields, in which His Royal Highness the Duke and my Lord George Sackville (since Germaine, and my very good friend and Patron) covered themselves with immortal glory. Nay some of us, One of us at least, had fought and bled, to the amazement of his comrades and the admiration of his commanders, – never mind where. 'Tis not the luck of every soldier to have had his hand wrung by the Great Duke of Cumberland, or to have been presented with ten guineas to drink his health withal by Field-Marshal Wade. We would have thought it vile poltroonery and macaronism to have worn wigs – to say nothing of powder – unless, indeed, the peruke was a true Malplaquet club or Dettingen scratch.

Our duties were no trifling ones, let me assure you. The Tower, as a place of military strength, was well looked after by the Regiment of Foot Guards and the Companies of Artillery that did garrison duties on its ramparts and the foot of its drawbridges; but to us was confided a charge much more onerous, and the custody of things much more precious. We had other matters to mind besides seeing that stray dogs did not venture on to the Tower Green, that dust did not get into the cannon's mouths, or that Grand Rounds received proper salutes. Was not the Imperial Crown of England in our keeping? Had we not to look after the Royal diadem, the orb, the sceptre, the Swords of Justice and of Mercy, and the great parcel-gilt Salt Cellar that is moulded in the likeness of the White Tower itself? Did it not behove us to keep up a constant care and watchfulness, lest among the curious strangers and country cousins who trudged to the Jewel House to see all that glittering and golden finery, and who gave us shillings to exhibit them, there might be lurking some Rogue as dishonest and as desperate as that Colonel Blood who so nearly succeeded in getting away with the crown and other valuables in King Charles the Second's time. Oh! I warrant you that we kept sharp eyes on the curious strangers and the country cousins, and allowed them not to go too near the grate behind which were those priceless baubles.

But another charge had we, I trow. Of all times had this famous fortress of the Tower of London been a place of hold for the King's prisoners. Felons, nor cutpurses, nor wantons suffered we indeed in our precincts, nor gave we the hospitality of dungeons to; but of state prisoners, noblemen and gentlemen in durance for High Treason, or for other offences against the Royal State and Prerogative, had we always a plentiful store. Some of the greatest Barons – the proudest names in England – have pined their lives away within the Tower's inexorable walls. Walls! why there were little dungeons and casemates built in the very thickness of those huge mural stones. In ancient days I have heard that foul deeds were common in the fortress – that princes were done to Death here – notably the two poor Royal infants that the wicked Richard of Gloucester bid his hell-hounds smother and bury at the foot of the stairs in that building which has ever since gone by the name of the Bloody Tower. So, too, I am afraid it is a true bill that Torture was in the bad old days indiscriminately used towards both gentle and simple in some gloomy underground places in this said Tower. I have heard of a Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the agonies used upon 'em should be too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery, rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show. Of "Scavenger's Daughters," Backs, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and wedges, and other horrible engines of pain, I have heard many dismal tales told; but all had long fallen into disuse before my time. The last persons tortured within the Tower walls were, I believe, Colonel Faux (Guido) and his confederates, for their most abominable Gunpowder Plot, which was to put an end to the Protestant Religion and the illustrious House of Stuart at one fell blow; but happily came to nothing, through the prudence of my Lord Monteagle, and the well-nigh superhuman sagacity of his Majesty King James the First. Guy and his accomplices they tortured horribly; and did not even give 'em the honour of being beheaded on Tower Hall, – they being sent away as common traitors to Old Palace Yard (close to the scene of their desperately meditated but fortunately abortive crime), and there half-hanged, cut down while yet warm, disembowelled, their Hearts and Inwards taken out and burnt by Gregory (that was hangman then, and that, as Gregory Brandon, had a coat-of-arms given him as a gentleman, through a fraud practised upon Garter King), and their mangled bodies – their heads severed – cut into quarters, well coated with pitch, and stuck upon spikes over London Bridge, east Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort, according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews, boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England, recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; but it is certain that when Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at Portsmouth, and was taken red-handed, the Courtiers, Parasites, and other cruel persons that were about the King, would fain have had him racked; but the public, – which by this time had begun to inquire pretty sharply about Things of State, – cried out that Felton should not be tormented (their not loving the Duke of Bucks too much may have been one reason for their wishing some degree of leniency to be shown to the assassin), and the opinion of the Judges being taken, those learned Persons, in full court of King's Bench assembled, decided that Torture was contrary to the Law of England, and could not legally be used upon any of the King's subjects howsoever guilty he might have been.

But I confess that when I first took up service as a Tower Warder, and gazed upon those horrible implements of Man's cruelty and hard-heartedness collected in the Armoury, I imagined with dismay that, all rusty as they had grown, there might be occasions for them to be used upon the persons of unfortunate captives. For I had lived much abroad, and knew what devilish freaks were often indulged in by arbitrary and unrestrained power. But my comrades soon put my mind at ease, and pointed out to me that few, very few, of these instruments of Anguish were of English use or origin at all; but that the great majority of these wicked things were from among the spoils of the Great Armada, when the proud Spaniards, designing to invade this free and happy country with their monstrous Flotilla of Caravels and Galleons, provided numerous tools of Torture for despitefully using the Heretics (as they called them) who would not obey the unrighteous mandates of a foreign despot, or submit to the domination (usurped) of the Bishop of Rome. And so tender indeed of the bodies of the King's prisoners had the Tower authorities become, that the underground dungeons were now never used, commodious apartments being provided for the noblemen and gentlemen in hold: and a pretty penny they had to pay for their accommodation; five guineas a day, besides warder and gentlemen gaolers' fees, being the ordinary charge for a nobleman, and half that sum for a knight and private esquire. Besides this, the Lieutenant of the Tower had a gratuity of thirty pounds from every peer that came into his custody, and twenty pounds for every gentleman writing himself Armiger, and in default could seize upon their cloaks: whence arose a merry saying – "best go to the Tower like a peeled carrot than come forth like one."

There were even no chains used in this state prison; of fetters and manacles we had indeed a plenitude, all of an antique pattern and covered with rust; but no irons such as are put upon their prisoners by vulgar gaolers in Newgate and elsewhere. I have heard say, that when poor Counsellor Layer, that was afterwards hanged, drawn, and quartered as a Jacobite, and his head stuck atop of Temple Bar hard by his own chambers, – was first brought for safer custody to the Tower, breakings out of Newgate having been common, the Government sent down word that, as a deep-dyed conspirator and desperate rebel, he was to be double-ironed. Upon this Mr. Lieutenant flies into a mighty heat, and taking boat to Whitehall, waits on Mr. Secretary at the Cockpit, and tells him plainly that such an indignity towards his Majesty's prisoners in the Tower was never heard of, that no such base modes of coercion as chains or bilboes had ever been known in use since the reign of King Charles I., and that the King's warders were there to see that the prisoners did not attempt Evasion. To which Mr. Secretary answered, with a grim smile, that notwithstanding all the keenness of the watch and ward, he had often heard of prisoners escaping from durance in the Tower, notably mentioning the case of my Lord Nithesdale, who escaped in his lady's clothes, and without more ado informed the Lieutenant that Counsellor Layer must be chained as directed, even if the chains had to be forged expressly for him. Upon which Mr. Lieutenant took a very surly leave of the Great Man, cursing him as he comes down the steps for a Thief-catcher and Tyburn purveyor, and sped him to Newgate, where he borrowed a set of double-irons from the Peachum or Lockit, or whatever the fellow's name it was that kept that Den of Thieves. And even then, when they had gotten the chains to the Tower, none of the warders knew how to put them on, or cared to sully their fingers with such hangman's work; and so they were fain to have a blacksmith with his anvil, and a couple of turnkeys down from Newgate, to rivet the chains upon the poor gentleman's limbs; he being at the time half dead of a Strangury; but so cruel was justice in those days.

When I first came to the Tower, we had but few prisoners; for it was before the Great Rebellion of the 'Forty-five; and a few years previous the times had been after a manner quiet. Now and then some notorious Jacobite, Seminarist, or seditious person was taken up; but he was rarely of sufficient importance to be confined in our illustrious Prison; and was either had to Newgate, or else incarcerated in the lodgings of a King's Messenger till his examinations were over, and he was either committed or Enlarged. These Messengers kept, in those days, a kind of Sponging Houses for High Treason, where Gentlemen Traitors who were not in very great peril lived, as it were, at an ordinary, and paid much dearer for their meat and lodging than though they had been at some bailiffs lock-up in Cursitor Street, or Tooke's Court, or at the Pied Bull in the Borough. We had, it is true, for a long time a Romanist Bishop that was suspected of being in correspondence with St. Germain's, and lay for a long time under detention. He was a merry old soul, and most learned man; would dine very gaily with Mr. Lieutenant, or his deputy, or the Fort Major, swig his bottle of claret, and play a game of tric-trac afterwards; and it was something laughable to watch the quiet cunning way in which he would seek to Convert us Warders who had the guarding of him to the Romanist faith. They let him out at last upon something they called a Nolle prosequi of the Attorney-General, or some suchlike dignitary of the law – which nolle prosequi I take to be a kind of habeas corpus for gentlefolks. He was as liberal to us when he departed as his means would allow; for I believe that save his cassock, his breviary, a gold cross round his neck, and episcopal ring, and a portmantel full of linen, the old gentleman had neither goods nor chattels in the wide world: indeed, we heard that the Lieutenant lent him, on leaving, a score of gold pieces, for friendship-sake, to distribute among us. But he went away – to foreign parts, I infer – with flying colours; for every body loved the old Bishop, all Romanist and suspected Jacobite as he was.

Then came that dreadful era of rebellion of which I have spoken, and we Tower Warders found that our holiday time was over. Whilst the war still raged in Scotland, scarcely a day passed without some person of consequence being brought either by water to Traitor's Gate, or by a strong escort of Horse and Foot to the Tower Postern; not for active participation in the Rebellion, but as a measure of safety, and to prevent worse harm being done. And many persons of consequence, trust me, saved their heads by being laid by the heels for a little time while the hue and cry was afoot, and Habeas Corpus suspended. Fast bind, safe find, is a true proverb; and you may thank your stars, even if your enemies have for a time bound you with chains and with links of iron, if, when the stormy season has gone past, you find your head still safe on your shoulders. Now it was a great Lord who was brought to the Tower, and from whom Mr. Lieutenant did not forget to claim his thirty-pound fee on entrance; for "here to-day, gone to-morrow," he reasoned, and so shot his game as soon as he had good parview of the same. Now it was some Cheshire or Lancashire Squire, snatched away from his Inn, at the Hercules' Pillars, or the Catherine Wheel in the Borough, as being vehemently suspected of Jacobitism. These gentlemen mostly took their captivity in a very cheerful and philosophical manner. They would call for a round of spiced beef, a tankard of ale, and a pipe of tobacco, so soon as ever they were fairly bestowed in their lodgings; drank to the King – taking care not to let us know whether his name began with a G or a J, with many jovial ha-has, and were as happy as the day was long, so it seemed to us, if they had but a pack of cards and a volume of the Gentleman's Recreation, or Academy of Field Sports. What bowls of punch, too, they would imbibe o' nights, and what mad carouses they would have! Such roaring Squires as these would have been much better bestowed in the Messengers' Houses; but these were all full, likewise the common gaols; nay, the debtors' prisons and vile sponging-houses were taken up by Government for the temporary incarceration of suspected persons.

How well do I remember the dreadful amazement and consternation which broke over this city when the news came that the Prince – I mean the Pretender – had utterly routed the King's troops commanded by Sir John Cope at Prestonpans; that the Misguided Young Man had entered Edinborough at the head of a furious mob of Highlandmen, whose preposterous style of dress I never could abide, and who in those days we Southrons held as being very little better than painted Savages; that the ladies of the Scottish capital had all mounted the white cockade, and were embroidering scarves for the Pretender and his officers, and that the Castle of Edinborough alone held out 'gainst this monstrous uprising to destroy authority! But how much greater was the Dismay in London when we learnt that the Rebels, not satisfied with their conquests in his Majesty's Scottish Dominions, had been so venturous as to invade England itself, and had actually advanced so far as the trading town of Derby! Then did those who had been long, albeit obscurely, suspected of Jacobitism, come forth from their lurking holes and corners, and almost openly avow their preference for the House of Stuart. Then did very many respectable persons, formerly thought to be excellently well affected towards King George's person and Government, become waverers, or prove themselves the Turncoats they had always, in secret, been, and seditiously prophesy that the days of the Hanoverian dynasty were numbered. Then did spies and traitors abound, together with numbers of alarming rumours, that the Chevalier had advanced as far as Barnet on the Great North Road; that his Majesty was about to convey himself away to Hanover; that the Duke of Cumberland was dead; that barrels of gunpowder had been discovered in the Crypt beneath Guildhall, and in the vaults of the Chapel Royal; that mutiny was rife among the troops; that the Bank of England was about to break, with sundry other distracting reports and noises.

Of course authority did all it could to reassure the public mind, tossed in a most tempestuous manner as it was by conflicting accounts. Authority bestirred itself to put down seditious meetings by proclamation, and to interdict residence in the capital to all known Papists; whereby several most estimable Catholic gentlemen (as many there be of that old Faith) were forced to leave their Town Houses, and betake themselves to mean and inconvenient dwellings in the country. The gates of Temple Bar were now shut, on sudden alarms, two or three times a week; as though the closing of these rotten portals could in any way impede the progress of rebellion, or do any thing more than further to hamper the already choked-up progress of the streets. The Lord Mayor was mighty busy calling out the Train-bands, and having them drilled in Moorfields, for the defence of the City; and a mighty fine show those citizen soldiers would have made no doubt to the bare-legged Highlandmen, had they come that way. The Guards at all the posts at the Court end of the town were doubled, and we at the Tower put ourselves into a perfect state of defence. Cannon were run out; matches kept lighted; whole battalions maintained under arms; munitions and provisions of war laid in, as though to withstand a regular siege; drawbridges pulled up and portcullises lowered, with great clanking of chains and gnashing of old iron teeth; – and rich sport it was to see those old rust-eaten engines once more brought into gear again.

But, as the Wise Man saith that a soft answer turneth away wrath, so do we often find that a merry word spoken in season will do more than all your Flaming Ordinances, and Terrific Denunciations of Fire and Sword. And although at this time (beginning of the year 1746) authority very properly exerted itself to procure obedience to the constitution, by instilling Awe into men's minds, and did breathe nothing in its official documents but heading, hanging, and quartering, with threats of bombardments, free quarters, drum-head courts-martial, chains, gags, fines, imprisonment, and sequestration, – yet I question whether so much good was done by these towards the stability of the cause of the Protestant Religion and King George, or so much harm to that of the Pretender, Popery, brass money, and wooden shoes, as by a little series of Pamphlets put forth by the witty Mr. Henry Fielding, a writer of plays and novels then much in vogue; but a sad loose fish, although he afterwards, as I am told, did good service to the State as one of the justices of peace for Middlesex, and helped to put down many notorious gangs of murderers, highwaymen, and footpads infesting the metropolis. This Mr. Fielding – whom his intimates used to call Harry, and whom I have often seen lounging in the Temple Gardens, or about the gaming-houses in St. James's Street, and whom I have often met, I grieve to say, in the very worst of company under the Piazzas in Covent Garden much overtaken in liquor, and his fine Lace clothes and curled periwig all besmirched and bewrayed after a carouse – took up the Hanoverian cause very hotly, – having perhaps weighty reasons for so doing – and, making the very best use of his natural gifts and natural weapons, namely, a very strong and caustic humour, with most keen and trenchant satire, did infinite harm to the Pretender's side by laughing at him and his adherents. He published, probably at the charges of authority, – for he was a needy gentleman, always in love, in liquor, or in debt, – a paper called the True Patriot, in which the Jacobites were most mercilessly treated. Notably do I recall a sort of sham diary or almanack, purporting to be written by an honest tradesman of the City during the predicted triumph of the Pretender, and in which such occurrences were noted down as London being at the mercy of Highlanders and Friars; Walbrook church and many others being razed to the ground; Father O'Blaze, a Dominican, exulting over it; Queen Anne's statue at Paul's taken away, and a large Crucifix erected in its place; the Bank, South-Sea, India Houses, &c. converted into convents; Father Macdagger, the Royal confessor, preaching at St. James's; three Anabaptists hung at Tyburn, attended by their ordinary, Mr. Machenly (a grotesque name for the ranting fellow who was wont to be known as Orator Henley); Father Poignardini, an Italian Jesuit, made Privy-Seal; four Heretics burnt in Smithfield; the French Ambassador made a Duke, with precedence; Cape Breton given back to the French, with Gibraltar and Port Mahon to the Spaniards; the Pope's nuncio entering London, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen kissing his feet; an office opened in Drury Lane for the sale of papistical Pardons and Indulgences; with the like prophecies calculated to arouse the bigotry of the lower and middle orders, and to lash them into a religious as well as a political frenzy. For a cry of "No Popery" has ever acted upon a true-born Englishman as a red rag does on a bull. Perhaps the thing that went best down of all Mr. Fielding's drolleries, and tickled the taste of the town most amazingly, was the passage where he made his honest London tradesman enter in his diary to this effect: "My little boy Jacky taken ill of the itch. He had been on the parade with his godfather the day before to see the Life Guards, and had just touched one of their plaids." One of the King's Ministers said long afterwards that this passage touching the itch was worth two regiments of horse to the cause of Government. At this distance of time one doesn't see much wit in a scurrilous lampoon, of which the gist was to taunt one's neighbours with being afflicted with a disease of the skin: and, indeed, the lower ranks of English were, in those days, anything but free from similar ailments, and, in London at least, were in their persons and manners inconceivably filthy. But 'tis astonishing what a mark you can make with a coarse jest, if you only go far enough, and forswear justice and decency.

Strange but true is it to remark that, in the midst of all such tremendous convulsions as wars, battles, sieges, rebellions, and other martial conflagrations, men and women and children do eat and drink, and love and marry, and beget other babes of humanity, and at last Die and turn to dust, precisely as though the world – or rather the concerns of that gross Orb – were all going on in their ordinary jog-trot manner. Although from day to day we people in London knew not whether before the sun set the dreaded pibroch of the Highland Clans might not be heard at Charing Cross, and the barbarian rout of Caterans that formed the Prince, – I mean the Chevalier, – I mean the Pretender's Army, scattered all about the City, plundering our Chattels, and ravaging our fair English homes; although, for aught men knew, another month, nay another week, might see King George the Second toppled from his Throne, and King James the Third installed, with his Royal Highness Charles Edward Prince of Wales as Regent; although it was but a toss-up whether the Archbishop of Canterbury should not be ousted from Lambeth by a Popish Prelate, and the whole country reduced to Slavery and Bankruptcy; – yet to those who lived quiet lives, and kept civil tongues in their heads, all things went on pretty much as usual: and each day had its evil, and sufficient for the day was the evil thereof. That the Highlandmen were at Derby did not prevent the Hostess of the Stone Kitchen – that famous Tavern in the Tower – from bringing in one's reckoning and insisting on payment. That there was consternation at St. James's, with the King meditating flight and the Royal Family in tears and swooning, did not save the little schoolboy a whipping if he knew not his lesson at morning call. It will be so, I suppose, until the end of the world. We must needs eat and drink, and feel heat and cold, and marry or be given in marriage, whatsoever party prevail, and whatsoever King carries crown and sceptre; and however dreadful the crisis, we must have our Dinners, and fleas will bite us, and corns pinch our Feet. So while all the Public were talking about the Rebellion, all the world went nevertheless to the Playhouses, where they played loyal Pieces and sang "God save great George our King" every night; as also to Balls, Ridottos, Clubs, Masquerades, Drums, Routs, Concerts, and Pharaoh parties. They read Novels and flirted their fans, and powdered and patched themselves, and distended their coats with hoops, just as though there were no such persons in the world as the Duke of Cumberland and Charles Edward Stuart. And in like manner we Warders in the Tower, though ready for any martial emergency that might turn up, were by no means unnecessarily afeard or distraught with anxiety; but ate and drank our fill, joked the pretty girls who came to see the shows in the Tower, and trailed our halberts in our usual jovial devil-me-care manner, as true Cavaliers, Warders in the service of his Majesty the King, should do.

By and by came the news of Stirling and Falkirk, after the disastrous retreat of the Highlandmen back into England. And then happened that short but tremendous fight of Drummossie Moor, commonly called the Battle of Culloden, where claymores and Lochaber axes clashed and glinted for the last time against English broadswords and bayonets. After this was what was called the pacification of the Highlands, meaning that the Duke and his dragoons devastated all before them with fire and sword; and then "retributive justice" had its turn, and the work of the Tower Warders began in earnest.

Poor creatures! theirs was a hard fate. At Carlisle, at Manchester, at Tyburn, and at Kennington Common, London, how many unhappy persons suffered death in its most frightful form, to say nothing of the unspeakable ignominy of being dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution, and mangled in the most horrible manner by the Hangman's butcherly knife, merely because they held that King James, and not King George, was the rightful sovereign of these realms! Is there in all History – at least insomuch as it touches our sentiments and feelings – a more lamentable and pathetic narration than the story of Jemmy Dawson? This young man, Mr. James Dawson by name, – for by the endearing aggravative of Jemmy he is only known in Mr. William Shenstone's charming ballad (the gentleman that lived at the Leasowes, and writ the Schoolmistress, among other pleasing pieces, and spent so much money upon Ornamental Gardening), – this Mr. James Dawson, I say, was the son of highly reputable parents, dwelling, by some, 'tis said, in the county of Lancashire, by others, in the county of Middlesex. At all events, his father was a Gentleman of good estate, who strove hard to bring up his son in the ways of piety and virtue. But the youth was wild and froward, and would not listen to the sage Counsels that were continually given him. After the ordinary grammar-school education, during which course he much angered his teachers, – less by his reckless and disobedient conduct than by his perverse flinging away of his opportunities, and manifest ignoring of the parts with which he had been gifted by Heaven, – he was sent to the University of Oxford to complete the curriculum of studies necessary to make him a complete gentleman. And I have heard, indeed, that he was singularly endowed with the properties requisite for the making of that very rare animal: – that he was quick, ready, generous, warm-hearted, skilful, and accomplished, – that he rode, and drove, and shot, and fenced, and swam, and fished in that marvellously finished manner only possible to those who seem to have been destined by a capricious Fate to do so well that which they have never learned to do. And at college, who but Jemmy Dawson – who but he? For a wicked prank, or a mad carouse; for a trick to be played on a proctor, or a kiss to be taken by stealth, – who such a Master of Arts as our young Undergraduate? But at his lectures and chapels and repetitions he was (although always with a vast natural capacity) an inveterate Idler; and he did besides so continually violate and outrage the college rules and discipline, that his Superiors, after repeated admonitions, gatings, impositions, and rustications (which are a kind of temporary banishment), were at last fain solemnly to expel him from the University. Upon which his father discarded him from his house, vowing that he would leave his broad acres (which were not entailed) to his Nephew, and bidding him go to the Devil; whither he accordingly proceeded, but by a very leisurely and circuitous route. But the young Rogue had already made a more perilous journey than this, for he had fallen in Love with a young Madam of exceeding Beauty, and of large Fortune in her own right, the daughter of a neighbouring Baronet. And she, to her sorrow, poor soul, became as desperately enamoured of this young Scapegrace, and would have run away with him, I have no doubt, had he asked her, but for a spark of honour which still remained in that reckless Heart, and forbade his linking the young girl, all good and pure as she was, to so desperate a life as his. And so he went wandering for a time up and down the country, swaggering with his boon companions, and pawning his Father's credit in whatsoever inns and pothouses he came unto, until, in the beginning of that fatal year '46, he must needs find himself at Manchester without a Shilling in his pocket, or the means of raising one. It was then the time that the town of Manchester had been captured, in the Pretender's interest, by a Scots Sergeant and a Wench; and the notorious Colonel Towneley was about raising the Manchester Regiment of Lancashire Lads to fight for Prince Charlie. Desperate Jemmy Dawson enlisted under Towneley; and soon, being a young fellow of good figure and shining talents, was made a Captain. But the ill-fated Manchester Regiment was ere long broken up; and Jemmy Dawson, with Colonel Towneley himself, and many other of the officers, were captured. They were all tried at the Assizes held after the Assizes at St. Margaret's Hill, Southwark; and James Dawson, being convicted of high treason, was sentenced to the usual horrible punishment for that offence. He was drawn on a hurdle to Kennington Common; he was hanged, disembowelled, and quartered; but the young Madam of whom I have spoken was true to him unto the last. For many days following the sentence she vainly solicited his pardon; but finding all useless, she on the fatal morning (having trimmed a shroud for him overnight, in which, poor Soul, his mangled remains were not to rest) followed him in a Mourning Coach to Kennington Common. She saw the Dreadful Tragedy played out to its very last Act; and then she just turned on her Side in the Coach, and with a soft Murmur, breathing Jemmy's Name, she Died. Surely a story so piteous as this needs no comment. And by Heaven it is True!

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

REBELLION IS MADE AN END OF, AND AFTER SOME FURTHER SERVICE WITH HIS MAJESTY I GO INTO BUSINESS ON MY OWN ACCOUNT

Memorandum. – About a year before the Rebellion, as the Earl of Kilmarnock was one day walking in his Garden, he was suddenly alarmed with a fearful Shriek, which, while he was reflecting on with Astonishment, was soon after repeated. On this he went into the House, and inquired of his Lady and all the Servants, but could not discover from whom or whence the Cry proceeded; but missing his Lady's Woman, he was informed that she was gone into an Upper Room to inspect some Linen. Whereupon the Earl and his Lady went up and opened the Door, which was only latched. But no sooner did the Gentlewoman within set eyes on his Lordship's face than she fainted away. When, proper aid being given to her, she was brought to herself, they asked her the meaning of what they had heard and seen. She replied, that while she sat sewing some Linen she had taken up to mend, the Door opened of itself, and a Bloody Head entered the Room, and rolled upon the Floor; that this dreadful Sight had made her cry out, and then the Bloody Head disappeared; that in a few Moments she saw the same frightful Apparition again, on which she repeated her Shrieks; and at the third time she fainted away, but was just recovered when she saw his Lordship coming in, which had made the Impression on her they had been witness of.

This Relation given by the affrighted Gentlewoman was only laughed at and ridiculed as the Effect of Spleen-Vapours, or the Frenzy of a deluded Imagination, and was thought no more of, till one Night, when the Earl of Kilmarnock, sitting round a Bowl by the Winter Fire with my Lord Galloway, – and it is at such a Time that men are most prone to fall-to telling of Ghost Stories, – and their Lordships' conversation turning on Spectres and Apparitions, the vulgar notions of which they were deriding, the terrible tale of the Bloody Head was brought up, and then dismissed as the idle fancy of a Hoity-toity Tirewoman. But after Kilmarnock had engaged in the Rebellion, and Lord Galloway was told of it, he instantly recollected this Story, and said, "I will wager a dozen Magnums of Claret, and my best Silver-laced Justaucorps, that my Lord Kilmarnock will lose his Head."

Nobody took his bet, not daring thus to trifle with the lives of the Quality; but that Scots Lord lost his Head, notwithstanding; and I saw it cut off on Tower Hill in the latter summer of the year '46.

This story of the Bloody Head was common Talk among us Warders at the time, – who were full as superstitious as other Folks, you may be sure. Many such Legends are there, too, current of Persons who were to die Violent Deaths at the hands of the Public Executioner, being forewarned many years before of their Impending Fate. And sometimes hath the Monition come nearer to the Catastrophe, as in the case of K. C. the 1

, who, entering Westminster Hall at that Unnatural Assize presided over by Bradshaw, the Gold Head fell off his Walking-Staff, and rolled on the Pavement of the Hall among the Soldiers; nor, when it was restored to him, could any Efforts of his make it remain on. Also it is said of my Lord Derwentwater, that the last time he went a hunting in the north, before he joined the Old Chevalier of St. George, his whippers-in unearthed a litter of Fox-cubs, every one of which Vermin had been born without Heads. And as well authenticated is it, that when my Lord Balmerino (that suffered on Tower Hill with the Earl of Kilmarnock) was coming back condemned to Death from his Trial before his Peers at Westminster, his Lordship being of a merry, Epicurean temper, and caring no more for Death than a Sailor does for a wet Shirt, stopped the coach at a Fruiterer's at Charing Cross, where he must needs ask Mr. Lieutenant's Attendant to buy him some Honey-Blobbs, which is the Scottish name for ripe Gooseberries.