The Jacobites failed to keep their temper, even before their hopes were disappointed. In their eyes it was almost sacrilege for the Prince of Wales to occupy, even by purchase, the Duke of Ormond’s forfeited White House at Richmond. When the duke’s confiscated town house in St. James’s Square was for sale, they went to it like pilgrims to a shrine, and saw it pass away, for 7,500_l._, to an Irish gentleman, named Hackett, with unconcealed regret. ‘The Duke of Ormond is in good health,’ said the Jacobite papers vauntingly. The ‘Post’ scorned the idea that the duke had died at sea of fear or fever, as was reported by Whig writers of known veracity. The Jacobite press exasperated the Jacobites themselves into dangerous speech, and, in one instance, to dastardly action. On an afternoon in April, the Princess of Wales was being conveyed in her chair from Leicester Fields to St. James’s. She was unprotected. A chairman of one of the foreign ambassadors, named Moor, took advantage of the opportunity, and, like the beast that he was, he spat three times in the lady’s face before he could be seized. At his trial the ruffian tried to justify the act for which he ultimately suffered. Through a dense mass of people, Moor was whipt from Somerset House to the Haymarket. The mob encouraged the sufficiently active hangman, as cart, victim, and executioner passed along, by cries of ‘Whip him!’ ‘Whip him!’ Moor, wearing a cross from his neck, suffered stolidly; but at the bottom of the Haymarket the hangman continued to ply his whip till Moor was compelled to cry, ‘God bless King George!’ for which result the Whig mob hugged and caressed the hangman as if he had been a public benefactor. [Sidenote: _THE KING AND HIS LADIES._]