Cumberland was near Coventry when he heard of Charles’s retreat. He at once began to pursue with his cavalry, while the country gentry supplied 1,000 horses to mount part of his infantry. He hurried northward through Cheshire and Lancashire, but the Highlanders had a long start, and were well in advance. At Preston General Oglethorpe joined with some of Wade’s cavalry. That weak old commander was still drifting ‘in the air,’ and Cumberland acted wisely in superseding him, though his own choice, Sir John Hawley, was hardly a success. On December 18 Charles was at Penrith, while Murray with the rearguard was strongly posted in enclosures at Clifton, two miles to the south. Here he was overtaken by Cumberland’s mounted infantry, and a brisk skirmish ensued. The fire of the infantry made little impression upon the well-posted Highlanders, and Murray, making a fine charge with the MacPhersons, drove them back with the loss of 100 men. By the morning Cumberland had his whole mounted force in hand, but Murray had already retired, and on the 20th joined the Prince at Carlisle. There the English sympathizers were left as a garrison, to surrender, as was inevitable, a few days later. Charles crossed the Border on the 20th, and continued his march to Glasgow, which he reoccupied on the 26th. So ended the bold adventure. The small Jacobite army, partly by good fortune, partly by skilful strategy, had penetrated to within a week’s march of London, and had returned to its advanced base in safety indeed, but without success, and with scarce an English recruit to swell its ranks. General Hawley’s stupidity was to give it one more victory, and then Jacobitism as a political factor was to be trampled out of existence on the bleak moor of Culloden. CHAPTER XVII FRENCH RAIDS 1690-1797 TEIGNMOUTH AND FISHGUARD. Aristophanes, in ‘The Acharnians,’ puts into the mouth of Dicæopolis some sarcastic observations as to what the Athenians would do if the Spartans manned a skiff and stole a pug-puppy from one of the islands. The poet’s imagined invasion of the Athenian Empire is very much on a par with the two French landings which have taken place in England since the year 1689.