[Illustration: Drop-T]he feverish imagination of Tories who were decided Jacobites also, saw impossible reasons for every event. From the 23rd to the 30th of January, 1733, there raged in the metropolis what would probably now be called an influenza. The disease was then known as the ‘London head-ache and fever;’ and it was fatal in very many cases. Some of the Jacobites at once discovered and proclaimed the cause and the effect of this visitation, which carried off fifteen hundred persons in the metropolis. Observe the two dates. ‘On the 23rd of January, 1649, Charles denied the jurisdiction of his Judges, who, nevertheless, sent him to the block on the 30th.’ The week of mortal fever and headache was only an instalment of that former week’s work which ended in the martyrdom of the Chevalier de St. George’s grandfather! Horace Walpole asserts that George II. always attended Church on the 30th of January. The king and the whole Court went thither in mourning. All who had service to perform at Court, put on sables. The king’s sister, the Queen of Prussia, was a declared Jacobite, ‘as is more natural,’ says Walpole, ‘for all princes who do not personally profit by the ruin of the Stuarts.’[2] [Sidenote: _APPROACHING STORM._] The royal speech on opening Parliament was of a peaceful character. The Lords re-echoed it in their address, but in the Commons, both Sir John Barnard and Shippen moved amendments to the address, from that House. The speech had recommended an avoidance of all heats and animosities. The theme of Barnard and Shippen was that the liberties and the trade of the nation were probably menaced; that a general terror was spreading of something being about to be introduced, perilous, nay destructive, to both. Men of all parties being subject to this terror, ‘they cannot,’ said Shippen, ‘be branded with the name of Jacobites or Republicans, nor can it be said that this opposition is made by Jacobites or Republicans. No, the whole people of England seem to be united in this spirit of jealousy and opposition.’ The address, of course, was carried. But a storm was approaching. [Sidenote: _WYNDHAM IN PARLIAMENT._]