It was probably by accident that, on the Pretender’s birthday, June 10th, a special free pardon passed the Great Seal for Mr. John Murray, of Boughton, and Hugh Fraser, gentleman (king’s witnesses against Lord Lovat). Murray obtained a pension of 200_l._ a year. The pardon cleared them of all treason committed before 1st May, 1748. On Saturday, the 11th, they were both at large, and were to be seen, two pale men, trying to get a complexion in the parks. At the same time small parties of men left London for Scotland, for the purpose of fortifying various points of that kingdom, an invasion of which by the French was vaguely talked of in all taverns and coffee-houses in London. There was certainly an undefined fear from the beginning of the year of something being intended there in the interest of the Pretender. [Sidenote: _THE STATUE IN LEICESTER SQUARE._] In 1742, the Prince of Wales had promised the mob greeting him on his birthday, with roaring cheers, from the front of Leicester House, that he would put up a statue of his father in the centre of the square. Since that promise was made and forgotten, the famous ducal mansion of the Duke of Chandos had been knocked to pieces by the auctioneer’s hammer. On the princess’s birthday, 19th November, 1748, there was again a mob in front of the prince’s ‘palace’ in Leicester Square, not only to congratulate him, but to witness the uncovering of an equestrian statue of George I. This statue was one of the many which had adorned the duke’s house, Canons, near Edgeware. Nobody seems to know now at whose cost it was purchased and put up. It is suggested that the prince, or his semi-Jacobite friends, bought it, with the thought that, irritated as George II. might be by having a statue erected to him by his son, he would be still more irate at having one erected of his father. The fact is that the statue was bought and set up by subscriptions of the inhabitants of the square. The unveiling of the ‘Golden Horse and Man’ was witnessed by a brilliant company at the windows of Leicester House, among whom was the Duke of Chandos himself, Groom of the Stole to the Prince. Hogarth and other celebrities, doubtless, looked on, from other windows of houses in the square. This was the statue which in later days so ignominiously perished; which dropt its arms, lost its limbs, fell from its horse; and which ultimately was swept away, horse and rider, in 1874, under a storm of sarcasm and contempt. [Sidenote: _AN ECCENTRIC JACOBITE._]