“Honour in the Breech is lodg’d As wise philosophers have judged; Because a kick in that part more Hurts Honour than deep wounds before.” [Illustration: MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT ELECTORS OF WESTMINSTER: THE SPY DETECTED. MARCH, 1747. [_Page 109._] A few days later a second entry shows that it was seriously entertained at that emergency to carry the matter farther; in any case--although they do not seem to have eventually made anything of it--the complaint was taken up by the Commons, and referred to the managers of Lord Lovat’s trial, then just concluded. On the 24th of March-- “Complaint being made to the House that John Williams, keeper of the ‘White Horse Inn’ in Piccadilly, was on Thursday last, in a public assembly, assaulted and severely treated, upon a public assertion made by some persons in that assembly--‘_that_, Fraser, _said by them, to be one of the principal witnesses against the Lord Lovat, was in his custody_’ ORDER’D. That a committee be appointed to enquire into the matter of this complaint, and examine persons in the most solemn manner; that this committee be the managers against Lord Lovat.” The whole matter is obscured by party misrepresentations. One James Fraser, who was pronounced a Jacobite, was active against the Ministerial candidates at the Westminster contest of 1749, where all opponents of the Court were denounced as Jacobites, while the “patriots,” “country party,” and “independent electors of Westminster,”--as they indiscriminately christened themselves--retorted upon Earl Gower, through his son, Lord Trentham, the Ministerial candidate for that city, the accusation of Jacobite leanings:--“_Ask_ Lord Trentham _who had his foot in the stirrup_ in the year 1715.” The parliamentary dissolution followed in June, 1747, when the favourite manœuvre of those in power was to recklessly accuse their opponents of belonging to the Stuart faction. The odium attaching to the suspicion of Jacobite tendencies was sufficiently strong to place the “Independent party” in a smaller minority than at the previous election, and thus the outbreak in favour of the Pretender served to recruit the strength of the Court party, which had been jeopardized at the 1741 election, and had shown signs of declension before the rising in 1745. The Government candidates for Westminster, Admiral Sir Peter Warren and Lord Trentham, were again chosen from the Admiralty. Lord Trentham was the son of that Earl Gower who was for some time the head of the Opposition, and at this juncture was one of the recent recruits of the Court party. “See Gower, who the Court had opposed thick and thin; Was out, then was in, then was out and now in; He kiss’d hands, then look’d pensive--as much as to say, “I can’t judge which is best, to go or to stay. Derry Down.” (_Place Book for the Year 1745._)