Anti-Jacobitism and the English People, 17141746 by Jonathan Oates;

Author:Jonathan Oates; [Oates, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000624717
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2022-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

The response to this was immediate, as Marchioness Grey wrote,

I never saw anything more solemn (Considering the Occasion) nor more animating. These Things are of Great Use, I am sure, and send People home ten times more eager to preserve the blessings they enjoy… I was never more pleased nor touched in my life.383

Another loyalist example of journalism was Henry Fielding’s True Patriot, whose first issue was launched, appropriately, on 5 November. He called for calm in the face of adversity, ‘Cool and temperate Councils will be of singular use at this time, when the rashness of inconsiderate tho’ well meaning Men may do Injury to the Cause they desire to support with their All, and on which their All depends.’ He also assured his readers that ultimate victory was probable, ‘Let us however keep in our Remembrance that the odds are greatly on our side so greatly that nothing but Contempt, Neglect, the most absurd Folly or most abject Pusillamity can destroy us’.384

It should be noted that the press was not always so supportive of the monarchy and government in previous years. As one journal noted, ‘The pen which has often been drawn against the corruption, the mismanagement and the influence of office, is now resumed against the madness, the impiety and danger of civil rage.’ After all, ‘there is the same difference between opposition and rebellion, as there is between wholesome medicine and deadly poison’.385

The impact of the messages from press and pulpit are impossible to discern with accuracy, but there are indications that they created a very negative impression of the Jacobite Highlanders from elite to popular standpoints. Tucker wrote that ‘people say that the Rebels have cut them to pieces, giving no quarter’, as regards the British troops at Prestonpans, and similarly, a month later, wrote ‘They commit all kinds of Rapine and disorder for many miles round their camp… give many people great apprehensions’.386 When the Jacobite army arrived in Cumberland, John Murray of Broughton, Charles’ secretary related the following tale, ‘To shew how incredibly ignorant the Country People of England are, and industrious the friends of the government were to impose upon their ignorance and credulity.’ Charles and his staff were occupying a little house when they found a six-year-old girl hiding and her mother cried ‘for God’s sake to spare her Child, for she was the only remaining one of Seven she had bore’. The Jacobites enquired about this and she replied, ‘She had been assured from Creditable people that the highlanders were a Savage Sett of people and eat all the young Children.’387 Possibly the ‘Creditable people’ might have included the clergy.

The Newcastle Political Club discussed the rebellion at a meeting on 28 October and concluded that it was a ‘most notable and apparent injury to the Publick’. They also discussed whether an enquiry should be made into whether the ministry had been neglectful in allowing the crisis to develop, but decided that now, before it had been resolved, was not the time for such discussion.

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