There was great alarm in England when the news of Mar’s action travelled south. The persecuting policy of the Whigs had driven many moderate men over to the Jacobite cause, and the personal unpopularity of the King had taken the heart out of his adherents. So far as could be judged on the surface, popular feeling all over England was in favour of James. Mysterious toasts were proposed at dinners, like “Job,” whose name formed the initial letters of James, Ormonde and Bolingbroke; or “Kit,” because in the same way it stood for King James the Third; or the “Three B’s,” which was a synonym for the “Best Born Briton,” James, who had the advantage over George the German in having been born in England. The University of Oxford was especially disaffected, and burst forth into white roses, though owing to the time of the year they had mostly to be made of paper. The friends of the Hanoverian succession felt something like panic, which penetrated to the royal palaces, and even to the immediate _entourage_ of the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Hanoverian Ministers and mistresses were in great alarm, and Schulemburg renewed her former fears, and urged the King to pack up without ado, and make haste to Hanover for, as she had always said, the English were a false and fickle people, who chopped off their kings’ heads on the least pretext. And this was the view generally taken in Europe. “The English are so false,” wrote the Duchess of Orleans, “that I would not trust them a single hair, and I do not believe that they will long put up with a King who cannot speak their language”. She expressed herself in favour of an amicable settlement of the dispute by allowing James to keep Scotland, and George England, and her views probably represented those of the Court of France. But George the First remained unmoved, and scorned the idea of flight or compromise; perhaps he knew that the worst that would happen to him was that he would be sent back to Hanover under safe escort by his Stuart cousin, and he would not have been wholly sorry. The Prince and Princess of Wales also showed courage, and went about everywhere as usual, unattended by any but the ordinary escort.