London in the Jacobite times, Volume IDoran, Dr. (John)
History
London in the Jacobite times, Volume I
Doran, Dr. (John)
London (England) -- History -- 18th century
On the following day, loyal Londoners had their revenge. They
celebrated the national deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, and,
through William III., from popery, slavery, and wooden shoes. With
bands of music, flaunting of flags, and continued hurrahs from loyal
and thirsty throats, the procession moved or stumbled through the
city. The effigies borne along with them in derision were those of the
Pope, the Pretender, the Duke of Ormond, Lord Bolingbroke, and the
Earl of Mar. There were men who carried warming pans, in allusion to
the legend that the Pretender had been brought in one into the palace
on the day that the queen, his mother, believed she had borne him.
There were men who represented the prince’s nurses, and others who
carried nursery emblems. The music played ‘Lillibulero,’ and tunes of
similar quality. The effigies of Ormond and Mar rode together in the
same cart. ◆[Sidenote: _POPULAR DEMONSTRATIONS._]◆ The former wore
an extravaganza sort of uniform, with an emblematic padlock on his
sword. Ormond was in scarlet and gold. Mar was in blue and silver,
with a paper pinned to his staff. It bore this inscription: ‘I have
sworn sixteen times to the Protestant religion, and I ne’er deceived
you but once.’ Pope and Pretender followed, cheek by jowl, in another
cart. They were pontifically and royally decked out, in caricature.
Bolingbroke, in absurd court dress, sat at the tail of the cart, as
in dutiful attendance on both masters; and a paper above him bore the
words, ‘Perjury is no crime!’ All these personages rode backwards like
traitors. The lengthy procession passed westward, from the Roebuck in
Cheapside by Holborn to St. James’s Palace, returning by Pall Mall and
the Strand. For the time being they were in full possession of the
streets. They paused at the houses of celebrated personages, to hail
them with blessings or curses equally highly-pitched. ‘Sometime before
their arrival at the Roebuck, on their return, a sneaking Jacobite mob,
perceiving the pile for the bonfire unguarded, came up with a shout of
“King George for ever!” the better to deceive the people, and scower’d
off with the faggots into bye-lanes and corners.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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