This was putting a bold face in front of peril. French emissaries were in London, and there was no knowing for what desperate ends they had been employed. Proclamations were despatched to Ireland for the arrest of all Tories, robbers, and raparees, of whom there were already too many concentrating for treasonable work about Dublin. The army itself was not free from the most audacious treason. One morning as the fourth troop of Horse Guards were about to turn out, an officer of the troop, named Smith, was arrested in Whitehall. He affected to be indignant, but the messengers produced the Secretary of State’s warrant for his capture on a charge of high treason. Smith was shocked, and certainly did not recover his coolness when the messengers took from his pockets a commission signed by the Chevalier. The popular report as Smith passed on his way to Newgate was, that on that very day he was to have sold his post at the Horse Guards! The king had no fear of assassination, but the ‘faction,’ as the Jacobites were called, did their best to render his life uncomfortable. There was natural indignation on the part of all moderate men when a reprint appeared of the nonjuring Rev. Dr. Bedford’s work, ‘The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England Asserted.’[4] This reprint was denounced as being equivalent to the Pretender’s declaration, in folio. The burthen of the book was, that to attempt the life of an usurper in aid of the rightful prince was not murder. ‘As the rightful prince’ was not the same personage in the eyes of Whigs and of Tories, those who put forth the book thought that neither party would be angry at the justification of the murder of the chief of the opposite party. While such publications were being printed, the metropolitan authorities narrowly watched the temper of the people. The Lord Mayor and Common Council were against the holding of Bartholomew Fair. One newspaper, nevertheless, announced that the festival would be held as usual. This step so smelt of sedition that the ‘author’ (as an editor was then called) was only too glad to be let off by an abject apology. It ended with:――‘We humbly beg his Lordship’s pardon for such an affront.’ [Sidenote: _THE CHEVALIER DE ST. GEORGE._]