The latter half of the year was not a cheerful one in London. An epidemic distemper carried off hundreds, especially young persons. Women who ventured in the streets in calico gowns had them torn from their backs by the weavers, who hung the shreds on the gibbets in the suburbs. For many weeks the Jacobites were busy in collecting subscriptions for the Spaniards who had surrendered at Glenashiel, and the Whigs went day after day to the northern road to see the foreign captives led in to the Savoy, but they were disappointed. There was something wrong about Lord Forrester’s troop of Horse Guards, the gentlemen of which were ordered to dispose of their places. Even the jollity of the time had a demoniacal quality about it; and it was not edifying to see young gentlemen of large fortunes and ‘coaches and six,’ distributing gin and brandy to the basket-women in Covent Garden, and dancing country dances with them ‘under the piazza.’ One young gentleman, to show his joy at the Jacobite defeat, dressed as a baker and cried pies and tarts through the whole length of Long Acre, followed by two of his footmen in laced liveries. This sort of affability was perhaps the result of example given in higher quarters; example which set on the same level royal princesses and vendors of pipkins. On one night in this popularity-hunting year, the Prince of Wales went to a masquerade in the Haymarket; and the Princess was carried in a sedan chair into the City, where, as the papers said: ‘Her royal Highness supped with Mrs. Toomes who keeps a great china-warehouse in Leadenhall Street.’ The Prince of Wales had so upheld his popularity by visiting Bartholomew Fair, without ceremony, seeing the best of the shows, that when he made the first bid for the Duke of Ormond’s confiscated house at Richmond――6,000_l._――nobody bid against him. One Jacobite Surrey magistrate had the pluck, however, to withstand him. The prince announced that, on a certain day, he would have a bull baited on Kew Green. The justice publicly announced that he would order the arrest of the chief persons present――on the ground that the meeting put in peril the public peace; and the Lord Chancellor (Macclesfield) turned the justice out of the commission! Jacobitism turned up in various directions, and the pluck of the prince at going among the populace at ‘Bartlemy Fair’ was to be admired, since, at Epsom, a Jack lad came close to him, and shouted ‘Ormond and Seaforth for ever!’――to be sure, the gentlemen near the prince caned the fellow till their arms grew weary of the work! [Sidenote: _THE KING’S GOOD NATURE._]