1715 DEFENSIVE MEASURES IN ENGLAND. 249 XIV. known as Jacobites. Wyndham escaped from custody, but a CHAP. reward of £1,000 having been offered for his capture, he surrendered a few days later. After eight months' confinement in the Tower, he was liberated without being brought to trial. With the information in its possession the government was able to check the conspirators at every point. Bristol was securely garrisoned. Troops were transported from the Channel and Scilly islands to Southampton and Plymouth. Oxford was a notorious nest of disloyalty. The university had flung down a defiance to the government by the election, after Ormonde's flight, of his brother, the Earl of Arran, as chancellor on September 10. A number of dismissed Jacobite officers had sought a haven in society so congenial, and from Oxford maintained a correspondence with their confederates in Bath and Bristol. On October 5 General Pepper, a comrade-in-arms of Stanhope at Brihuega, at the head of a couple of dragoon regiments, occupied Oxford by a surprise march, arrested ten of the conspirators and secured further information of their plans. At Bath three cannon and other warlike stores were seized. So completely were the conspirators' plans frustrated that at the end of October Stanhope wrote to Stair that an attempt upon England by Ormonde and his new master would be welcome to the government. The events in England filled both Bolingbroke and the pretender with dejection. In France the prospect was not more cheering. When, at the close of September, Byng, at the head of a squadron, appeared before Havre, and pointed out, upon Stair's information, the vessels filled with munitions for the pretender, the regent ordered them to be unloaded into the royal magazines. The letter of September 9-20, in which Bolingbroke conveyed this information to Mar, also contained other bad news. The hostility of Charles XII. to George I., on account of their conflicting claims to Bremen and Verden, had led to negotiations for the support of Swedish troops. Twelve battalions, under a Scottish major-general, Hamilton, were in August in the neighbourhood of Gothenburg ready for transport to Newcastle.1 Charles now refused his assistance. In the belief of James and Bolingbroke the time had now arrived for action in unison with the expected rising in the 1 Stuart Papers, i., 413; cf. pp. 372, 373. XIV. CHAP. west. On October 17-28, James left Lorraine and, travelling secretly, reached St. Malo en the night of October 28-November 8. There he met Ormonde. The duke had sailed a few days before with fifty men and officers of Lord Nugent's Irish regiment of cavalry in the French service, had anchored in Torbay, had fired signal guns which met with no response, and together with a refugee from the shore had made his way back without attempting a landing. Dispatches which arrived about the same time from Mar, giving a favourable account of the progress of the rebellion in Scotland, and the news of risings in the north of England and the south-west of Scotland, decided James not to court in person another rebuff in Devonshire. Ormonde, whose presence in Scotland would have excited the jealousy of Mar, might try again in Lancashire, unless the wind should compel him to put into Cornwall. James did not conceal the poor opinion he entertained of Ormonde's capacity and spirit,1 and was plainly glad to be rid of him. Among the members of parliament whose arrest had been ordered on September 21 was Thomas Forster, junior, of Adderstone, Northumberland. He was the eldest son of a considerable landowner and sat for the county. Resolving to anticipate arrest, Forster on October 6 appeared in arms at Greenrig, near Rothbury, in company with the young Earl of Derwentwater, against whom a warrant was also out. Marching through Rothbury they were joined by Lord Widdrington, and then numbered ninety horse. Forster was proclaimed 2 general, not because he had the least military experience, but because he was the only protestant among the leaders. After spending some days in enlisting recruits, they marched with 300 horse upon Newcastle, where the colliers were reputed to be of Jacobite sympathies. The walls were in disrepair, but the government had thrown a small body of troops into the town. The rebels, therefore, prudently determined to effect a junction with Lord Kenmure, who on October 12, at the head of 200 horsemen, and in company of the Earls of Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Carnwath, had proclaimed the pretender at Moffat. 1 James III. to Lord [Bolingbroke], November 24, 1715, N.S., Stuart Papers, i., 461, 464, 467. 2 His commission from the pretender is dated 1715". Ibid., p. 448. Commercy, October, 24, 1715 MOVEMENTS OF THE REBELS. 251 XIV. Mar, instead of marching upon Stirling, where he could CHAP. have overwhelmed the forces of Argyll, detached a force to the west to seize the duke's castle of Inverary, and sent 2,000 men across the Firth of Forth with the object, to use his own expression, to enclose the duke "in a hose net". This latter force, under Brigadier MacIntosh, a veteran officer, succeeded for the most part in evading three English men-of-war which were guarding the channel, and, to the number of 1,600, reached the mainland at Aberlady and North Berwick. Edinburgh appeared within their grasp. But MacIntosh, judging his force insufficient for a successful assault, first occupied the citadel of Leith. This he presently evacuated and took upan intrenched position at Seton Palace, seven miles from the capital, to resist the reported advance of Argyll. Argyll's march from Stirling and the subtraction of 600 men from its slender garrison offered Mar his opportunity. He advanced at the head of 4,000 men and reached Dunblane. Argyll promptly turned back to the support of General Whetham, whom he had left in command. Within striking distance of the royalist camp and with Edinburgh as the prize of a successful action, Mar retired to his old position at Perth. MacIntosh was then free to advance southwards. On October 22 he effected a junction at Kelso with the rebels of Northumberland and south-west Scotland, who had united their forces at Rothbury. The total body numbered 1,400 horse and 600 foot. It is remarkable that when England became the scene of rebellion Marlborough, as captain-general, was not entrusted with the command. It may be that the omniscient Stair had detected his correspondence with Berwick. The arrest on September 2 of Captain Paul of his own regiment, the first foot guards (the grenadiers)—which had but recently shewn signs of disaffection-on a charge, subsequently disproved, of enlisting men in the pretender's service, can scarcely have added to the confidence of the government in the duke. The commander to whom Stanhope entrusted the safety of England was General George Carpenter, who had been his second in command at the battles of Almenara and Saragossa and at the defence of Brihuega. Among the Northumbrian rebels there was a conflict of counsels. The English disliked the prospect of advancing into the interior of Scotland, and the CHAP. Scots refused to commit themselves to indefinite adventures XIV. in England. After much wrangling, they decided by way of compromise to march south-westwards upon Dumfries. On their way from Jedburgh they were overtaken by Carpenter at the head of 900 dragoons; but two of his regiments were raw levies and "his horses and men were so fatigued and harrast,” says an anonymous writer in the Scottish army, "that we could not well have failed of routing them " The opportunity was lost, and, Carpenter being in no condition to attack, they continued their march. At Langholm news was brought that Dumfries had been garrisoned by 1,300 men, rendering an assault upon it impracticable. Upon this fresh altercations broke out. Widdrington produced letters assuring them that, in the event of their appearing in Lancashire, 20,000 men would take arms. Five hundred highlanders flatly refused to accompany them and marched away to the north. On November I the rebels entered England, and at Brampton, in Cumberland, Forster produced commissions which had been dispatched by the pretender to Mar, nominating him major-general commanding in chief, pending the arrival of Ormonde. At this time they were reported to number " 1,000 or 1,200 foot and 600 horse". At Penrith they found themselves opposed by a body of militia under Lord Lonsdale, variously estimated at from 6,000 to 10,000 men. These, says the writer already quoted, "fled like sheep before us, and by their expressions did not seem to wish ill to our cause". If this be so there may have been good reason, not mere remissness on the part of the war office, for the fact that they were mostly armed only with pikes. The advance of the rebels through Westmorland was slow, and so far were the people from flocking to their colours that they found themselves "not joyned by above five or six gentlemen and these papists, which 1 R. O., MS., State Papers, George I., Domestic, bundle 4, no. 47. 2 "Three hundred of our best highlanders left us" (ibid.). They went off in detached parties, so that the number adopted in the text from Tindal is perhaps accurate. Boyer gives 300. * Lord Lonsdale to [Lord Carlisle], October 29, 1715, Carlisle MSS., p. 18, Hist. MSS. Comm., 1897. Lord Stanhope (i., 250) says 10,000; but the Scottish writer already quoted, who was present and apparently a military man, says 6,000-7,000. Tindal says 12,000 (Cont., 1763, vi., 457). Lord Lonsdale to [Lord Carlisle], cited above. 1715 THE ENGLISH REBELS REACH PRESTON. 253 XIV. did us no great service". At Preston they received their first CHAP. important accession of strength, being reinforced by 200 Roman catholic gentlemen with their tenantry. The movement was beginning to wear the ominous aspect of a religious crusade. Carpenter had, in the meanwhile, by the ruse of a letter written to be intercepted, been diverted to relieve an imaginary attack upon Newcastle.2 Owing, however, to the riots of the previous year, a number of troops had been distributed through Lancashire, which on November II were assembled by General Wills, another of Stanhope's officers, at a rendezvous at Wigan. The next morning Wills, with six regiments of cavalry and a regiment of foot, advanced upon Preston. Upon the Wigan side Preston was protected by the Ribble, across which was a bridge affording an easy defence. But the 200 or 300 men posted here retired without resistance. Defensible though the approaches to the town were, they had not been fortified. Only four barricades, three of them furnished each with two pieces of cannon, had been constructed at the ends of the streets. Unsuccessful assaults were delivered against these and at nightfall the assailants retired after a skirmish of cavalry, in which the rebels claimed the advantage. But early on the 13th Carpenter arrived on the north side of the town with three regiments of dragoons. Forster, disheartened, without consulting any of his principal officers except Widdrington, sent Colonel Oxburgh to treat for an armistice. The news infuriated many of the insurgents. They begged to be allowed to attack the enemy whom they believed to have no heart to resist, "being mostly raw and new levied troops ". Forster's life was threatened. "The poor man had little to say but that he was not fit for the post he was in, 1 R. O., MS., State Papers, Dom., George I., bundle 4, no. 47. "Two hundred well armed but all papists joined us." Lord Stanhope says 1,200 (i., 251), but admits on p. 255 that only 1,400 prisoners were taken at Preston altogether, and no more than seventeen had been killed. 2 Hoffmann, November 19, 1715; Michael, p. 550. I have nowhere else found an explanation of the desistance of Carpenter from the pursuit. 3 The anonymous writer, who believes that Forster betrayed them, says upon orders from him. • Carpenter, who was jealous of Wills and quarrelled with him, censured him for "a rash attack, highly blameable," made to anticipate his superior's November 23, 1715, Townshend MSS., p. 170, Hist. arrival. Carpenter to MSS. Comm., 1887. |