82

THE PORTEOUS RIOTS.

[1736. muskets, halberds, and Lochaber axes, which they there found. Edinburgh had suddenly fallen into the complete possession of a lawless multitude. The city-walls on the east and south sides had gates, which, after sunset, were shut and guarded. The mob had secured the West-port, the Cowgate, and the Netherbow-port, nailing them up, and barricading them, to prevent military aid coming from the suburbs. A loch closed the city on the north On the west was the Castle, from which the garrison might have descended upon the High street. In the Canongate was a regiment under the command of major-general Moyle. It was given in evidence that the Provost, when he sallied forth from his tavern, requested Mr. Lyndsay to carry a verbal order to major-general Moyle to send a force to his aid. The member for Edinburgh executed his commission, but the general, seeing how a jury of Edinburgh had convicted a military officer of murder, when he acted without explicit orders from the civil magistrate, refused to move upon receiving only a verbal message. The governor of the Castle did not choose to act on his own responsibility. Thus secure, the multitude went about their work with a calm resolution which was long attributed to an organization proceeding from leaders much above the ordinary directors of mobs. No point was neglected. Magistrates rushed out to ring the alarm-bell; the tower in which the bell hung was in the possession of the insurgents. Onward they marched, in numbers rapidly increasing, to the Tolbooth. Here they make a solemn demand that captain John Porteous should be delivered up to them. Being refused, as they expected, they proceeded to batter the outer gate. Crowbars and sledge-hammers were employed in vain. Fire accomplished what bodily strength could not effect. The rioters rushed to the apartment of the unhappy man. He was concealed in the chimney; but they dragged him down, and bade him prepare for death. Struggling ineffectually, he was carried to the Grass-market, the usual place of execution. He was carried on men's hands, as two boys carry a third, by grasping each other's wrists. This stern multitude went on in silence, the glare of torches lighting up their lowering brows and the pallid features of their victim. Near the spot where the gallows had stood on which Wilson was hanged, a pole projected from a dyer's shop. A rope was fastened round the neck of Porteous; and then the subordination of the rioters to some recognized authority was manifest. "Walker, the town-officer, whom the mob had so pelted that he was obliged to throw off his livery-coat, declared he was by when they murdered Porteous; and that one more forward than the rest was checked by the others, and desired to wait for orders: that he thereupon quitted the end of the rope, which by this time being about Porteous's neck, he was ready to have hoisted him up, and went about to another, who very composedly gave him orders; and that he returned and drew the rope up, and hanged Porteous." * He was not hanged quickly. There was a terrible scene of butchery. Mr. Lyndsay gave in evidence, that he returned [from major-general Moyle's house] about five in the morning; and, with several who had been with the Provost all night, went to the Grass-market, where the body of Porteous yet hung, and a number of people standing about it. But he further declared, that, as he returned from his fruitless mission, "the

"Parliamentary History," vol. x. col. 271.

1736.]

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS ON THESE RIOTS.

83

mob was pouring in vast shoals out of the town into the country; and that he did not remember any one face of the many hundreds he met with, though he had lived and borne the highest offices in the city for many years." The organizers of this daring act were never discovered, after the most rigid investigation. Duncan Forbes, who had conducted an inquiry, as Lord Advocate, into the circumstances of the case, could fix upon no leader of the rioters, and he ascribed the deed to the impulse of one of "the headstrong mobs" with which Scotland was formerly too well acquainted. General Wade, who had been sent down to assist Forbes in the inquiry, stated in his place in Parliament, that the servant of an artisan in Edinburgh had been told, three or four days before the murder, that Tuesday night was appointed for revenging innocent blood, and he was to attend when he heard "the ruff of a drum." General Wade maintained that there was nothing in the whole proceeding that looked like the precipitate measures of a giddy mob; and that he never saw, or ever heard of, any military disposition better laid down, or more resolutely executed, than the murderous plan of these rioters. It would appear that the Porteous mob were not without precedents for their guidance. Major-general Moyle, in relating the circumstances to the duke of Newcastle, thus wrote: "I cannot but mention to your grace that this is the third prisoner, within the memory of man, that has been taken out of a tolbooth here, and barbarously murdered by the mob." Mr. Patrick Lyndsay combated the notion that any above the lowest class of the people were concerned in the Porteous murder, or looked with approbation upon it. He drew a distinction between an English and a Scotch mob. The English did not “do mischief with their eyes open." The lowest class of people in Scotland, he said, "have generally speaking a turn to enthusiasm; and so strong is the influence, such is the force of delusion, that they can work themselves up to a firm persuasion and thorough belief that any mischief they are to do is not only lawful but laudable; that it is their duty to do it; and, from a religious principle, to do it at any risk, even at the risk of their lives." + The earl of Isla reported to Walpole, that "all the lower ranks of the people who had distinguished themselves by pretences to a superior sanctity, talk of the murder as the hand of God doing justice."

The Porteous outrage took place whilst queen Caroline was regent in the absence of the king. She felt it as an insult to her authority, and the ministry were inclined to visit the apparent neglect of the magistracy of Edinburgh with serious humiliation. A Bill was brought in for disabling the Lord Provost from ever holding office, and for imprisoning him; for abolishing the town-guard of Edinburgh; for taking away the gates of the Netherbow-port. The Scottish peers, and the Scottish members of the Commons, fired up at this supposed assault upon the national honour. In the course of the parliamentary inquiry, the Scottish judges were summoned to give evidence upon some legal points. It was contended by the duke of Argyle and other peers that these judges ought to sit on the Woolsack as do the English judges, when their presence is wanted in the House of Peers. There was no precedence for such a course, and the Scottish judges were required to stand at the bar. Scotland was outraged by this distinction. The debate in both

"Parliamentary History," vol. x. col. 272.

Ibid., col. 252.

84

UNPOPULARITY OF THE KING.

66

[1736.

Houses upon the proposed measure of pains and penalties assumed the character of a national controversy. Unequal dealing," "partial procedure," "oppression to be resisted," and an independent nation "forced back into a state of enmity," were expressions which showed the danger to which this affair was tending. Walpole hinted that when the Bill was com mitted he should not object to amendments founded on reason and equity. When it finally went to the Lords, it merely disqualified the Lord Provost from holding office, and imposed a fine upon the city of Edinburgh of £2000, for the benefit of the widow of Porteous. The impartial author of the modern History of Scotland has remarked, that "no one can read these debates without seeing reasons why the conduct of Scotland was so different from that of England in the insurrection which broke out eight years afterwards." Although the modified Statute upon the Porteous riot could scarcely be a reasonable cause for national irritation, a supplementary measure produced a violent opposition from the Presbyterian Clergy. It was enacted that they should read from their pulpits, once a month, a proclamation for discovering the murderers of captain Porteous. This was held to be an Erastian measure, interfering with the spiritual authority of the Kirk. That proclamation also contained the offensive words, "the Lords Spiritual in Parliament assembled." This was held to be a recognition of that church-government which Scotland had rejected. At this period there was a schism amongst the Scottish clergy, and this measure had not a healing tendency. Some read the proclamation; some refused to do so. Compliance with the order of the Government was held to be faithlessness to the Church.

The state of popular feeling in regard to the highest personages in the realm was, in 1736, seriously alarming. The king during the whole summer and autumn had remained in Germany. The queen was little seen as the winter advanced, for she lived a retired life at Kensington; and, strange as it may seem, we find in a letter from lord Hervey to his mother, written in November, that the road between London and Kensington "is grown so infamously bad that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean." The roads to Kensington through the park were equally impassable. People of all ranks were indignant at the king's long stay in Germany. The national ill-humour was expressed in pasquinades. On the gate of St. James's Palace this notice was stuck up: "Lost or strayed out of this house, a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish. Whoever will give any tidings of him to the churchwardens of St. James's parish, so as he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B. This reward will not be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a Crown." The prince of Wales was a favourite of the people. It was well known that he was disliked by the king and queen, and that was enough to make him popular. He had been disappointed in the Prussian match; and at the beginning of 1736, being impatient to marry, he had been told that a bride would be found for him in the person of the princess of Saxe Gotha. The lady arrived in England on the 25th of April, and was married two days after. She was only seventeen years of age; could speak no English, and little French; but she had good sense; and in the Ibid., p. 191,

Burton, yol. ii., p. 278.

Hervey, vol. ii. p. 190.

1736.] MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES-ROYAL ANIMOSITIES.

85

difficult circumstances of her subsequent life had to exercise much prudence and sagacity. On the prince's marriage, the Houses of Parliament addressed the king. On this occasion an orator, who is mentioned by lord Hervey as "Cornet Pitt," contrived, in his first speech, to throw so much covert sarcasm into his praise of the king for consenting to the prince's demand that a wife should be found for him, that "Cornet Pitt" was broke at the end of the Session. The prince became "parliamentary fireship to his majesty's opposition.' He was beloved in the city and hated at St. James's. His good deeds won no favour from his family. There was a fire in the Temple, and he worked all night in helping to put it out. The court said he was of no use there; and that he only pretended to have been struck on the head by a falling beam. He was liberal to public charities. This it was held was not benevolence but popularity-hunting. He was certainly a weak young man; he had been notoriously dissolute. But he advantageously contrasted with his father, whose irregularities of life were not controlled by his advancing years. In December the king came home, after the public hopes rather than fears had been excited by the belief that he was at sea, during a terrible storm in which many ships were wrecked. The differences between the prince of Wales and his father soon became notorious. The allowance which the king made to the prince was £50,000 per annum. Private advisers of the prince called this allowance mean, and recommended him to apply boldly to Parliament for an annual grant of £100,000 out of the king's Civil List, and be no longer dependent on his father. Some wiser persons earnestly counselled forbearance. But the prince was obstinate; and he had the indelicacy to make promises to peers and commoners of what he would do for them when he came to the throne, if they would support him now. One of the most intriguing of politicians has left a minute account of his own share in this affair. He took great credit for having laboured to dissuade the prince from persevering in his rash course; and really seems to have honestly set forth the danger of a family quarrel, and the alternative to which Frederick was driving both Houses of Parliament,—that of supporting the prince who wore the Crown, or of siding with the heir-apparent. The prince of Wales was obstinate. Contrary to expectation the ministry had a majority of thirty in the Commons. The question was subsequently tried in the Lords, and there also the prince failed.

Such a rupture between a passionate father and a flighty son could not pass off without some lasting effects. The king wanted to turn the prince and his household out of St. James's; but Walpole dissuaded his majesty from that step. At last, one of the most extraordinary events in the private annals of royal houses separated the king and his son for years. The prince and princess of Wales were residing with the king and queen at Hampton Court, the princess being far advanced in pregnancy. The royal family had dined together in public on Sunday, the 31st of July. In the evening the princess was taken ill. The prince, against all remonstrance, insisted that his wife should not be confined at Hampton Court. She was forced into a coach, with the prince and three ladies; was driven at full gallop to St.

Carlyle. Friedrich, vol. ii. p. 577.

Appendix to Diary of George Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe.

86

BIRTH OF A PRINCESS.

[1737. James's; and there gave birth to a girl within an hour of her arrival. Only two of the great officers of state were present. The king and queen at Hampton Court went to bed, in entire ignorance of the piece of insanity which their son had perpetrated. They were awakened by a messenger from London about two o'clock; and by four o'clock the queen was at St. James's. No apology was then made by the prince--no explanation given. Horace Walpole very sensibly asks, " Had he no way of affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir to the crown?" A correspondence ensued between George II. and his rash son; of which the issue was, that although the prince confessed that he had been in the wrong, the harsh father issued this peremptory command to him-"It is my pleasure that you leave St. James's, with all your family." Frederick quitted the palace, and took up his residence at Norfolk House, in St. James's Square. The people rejoiced in the birth of a princess; for they said, "if ever she came to the Crown, what had been so much wished ever since the Hanover family came to the throne, by every one who understood and wished the interest of England, must happen,-which was the disjoining the Electorate of Hanover from the Crown of England." *

In his quarrel with the king and queen, the prince of Wales managed to add to his own popularity. The general dislike towards the father made the son who opposed him a public favorite. The prince, however, contrived to make it appear, that not to the sovereign, but to the chief minister, what he considered as injustice was to be imputed. When the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London addressed their congratulations to him on the birth of a princess, Frederick said he knew the value of their friendship, and should never look upon them as "beggars." The "sturdy beggars" of Walpole's rash speech in the Excise year was never to be forgotten. The prince went to the performance of Cato. At the lines.

manner.

"When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,

The post of honour is a private station,"

the audience huzzaed, and the prince joined in the applause in a very marked In the midst of these unseemly exhibitions queen Caroline was taken dangerously ill, on the 9th of November. She had long been afflicted with a serious complaint, which she bore with heroic fortitude, concealing from every one, even from her physicians, the real nature of her malady. The prince of Wales expressed great anxiety to see his mother. He was forbidden by the king to come to St. James's. The queen herself said to the king, according to lord Hervey, "I am so far from desiring to see him, that nothing but your absolute commands should ever make me consent to it." This was on the second day of her serious illness. On the third day the king, who for fourteen years had been aware of her dangerous affliction, but who had promised never to mention it, thought it his duty to send for a surgeon and disclose what was so repugnant to the queen's false delicacy. It was soon found that the disease had gone too far to allow of hope. On the 14th, sir Robert Walpole arrived from Houghton. He was conducted by the king to her majesty's bedside. "The interview was short,

Lord Hervey's "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 412.