of fearful carnage-for no quarter was given1-the Stuart cause was effectually crushed, and about one thousand of its faithful adherents left dead upon the battle-field. This victory relieved the nation from all anxiety on the score of Jacobitism, and prevented any further manifestations of hostility to the reigning dynasty.

The summer after the rebellion many piteous spectacles were witnessed in the metropolis, and the unhappy men who were a few months before regarded with so much terror and indignation, became the objects of a deep and generous compassion. In the punishment of its rash but brave assailants, the government of George II. displayed a degree of inhumanity which admits of no excuse. detestable cruelties which were practised in Scotland after the rout of Culloden3 soon found a parallel in the proceedings taken in England against the traitors who had been

The

(1) It is said to have been on this occasion that the Duke of Cumberland wrote a hasty order to General Campbell, to refuse quarter, on a playing cardthe nine of diamonds-hence and since called the curse of Scotland.

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(2) Horace Walpole, after describing with great minuteness the behaviour of Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino on their trial, in a letter to Sir H. Mann, observes: “The King is much inclined to some mercy, but the Duke, who has not so much of Cæsar after a victory as in gaining it, is for the utmost severity. It was lately proposed in the city to present him with the freedom of some company; one of the aldermen said aloud, 'Then let it be the butchers."" To Lord Kilmarnock, especially, mercy would have been judiciously shown. He was miserably poor, and, according to Horace Walpole, thus replied to the Duke of Argyle, who expostulated with him for engaging in such a cause: "My lord," said he, "for the two kings and their rights I cared not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving, and if Mahomet had set up his standard in the Highlands, I had been a good Mussulman for bread, and had stuck close to his party." These were the sentiments, no doubt, of many of the luckless combatants.

(3) "Quarter was seldom given to the stragglers and fugitives, except to a few considerately reserved for public execution. No care or compassion was shown to their wounded; nay more, on the following day most of them were put to death in cold blood, with a cruelty such as never perhaps before or since has disgraced a British army. Some were dragged from the thickets or cabins where they had sought refuge, drawn out in line, and shot, while others were dispatched by the soldiers with the stocks of their muskets. One farm-building, into which some twenty disabled Highlanders had crawled, was deliberately set on fire the next day, and burnt with them to the ground."-Lord Mahon's History of England.

captured in arms. A special commission was held in July for the trial of the rebel prisoners, when eight persons who had held commissions in the Pretender's army were condemned to die; and in the same month suffered on Kennington Common the punishment then awarded to the crime of high-treason, which was executed on them with disgusting barbarity. Amongst these victims were Mr. Townley,' a gentleman of ancient family in Lancashire, and James Dawson, the hero of Shenstone's pathetic ballad. The fearful scene was witnessed by a

(1) The execution of Mr. Townley is thus described in the "State Trials" (vol. xviii. p. 351): "After he had hung six minutes he was cut down, and having life in him, as he lay upon the block to be quartered, the executioner gave him several blows on his breast, which not having the effect desired, he immediately cut his throat; after which he took his head off; then ripped him open and took out his bowels and heart, and threw them into a fire, which consumed them; then he slashed his four quarters, and put them with the head into a coffin." Except in the case of some of the gunpowder-plot conspirators, there is no other instance recorded in which the barbarities inflicted under the old sentence of high-treason was executed on the living body, it being usual for the executioner to take care that every sign of life had departed before he commenced his disgusting operations. The government appears to have had a fit instrument for the perpetration of these cruelties in the person of the hangman, John Thrift, who, in 1750, was tried and condemned for murdering a man in a quarrel. He was afterwards pardoned, on condition of resuming his odious office, and the "Old England" (a Tory print) insinuated, that "having become obnoxious to the Jacobites for his celebrated operations on Tower Hill and Kennington Common, he was pardoned in terrorem, and to mortify them."Gentleman's Magazine, September, 1750.

(2) There is a letter extant (and preserved in the "State Trials," vol. xviii. p. 375) which gives an account of Dawson's execution, far more touching than the ballad. It is dated July 31, 1746, and contains the following melancholy particulars: "A young lady of a good family and handsome features had, for some time, extremely loved, and been equally beloved by, Mr. James Dawson, one of those unhappy gentlemen who suffered yesterday at Kennington Common for high-treason; and had he been either acquitted, or, after condemnation, found the royal mercy, the day of his enlargement was to have been that of their marriage. ... Not all the persuasions of her kindred could prevent her from going to the place of execution; she was determined to see the last of a person so dear to her, and accordingly followed the sledge in a hackney-coach, accompanied by a gentleman nearly related to her, and one female friend. She got near enough to see the fire kindled which was to consume that heart she knew so much devoted to her, and all the other dreadful preparations for his fate, without being guilty of any of those extravagancies her friends had apprehended. But when all was over, and that she found he was no more, she

...

large multitude, who looked on with awe and silence. No manifestation of feeling took place; but the predominant sentiment in the mind of the spectators must have been that of pity. The execution of the rebel lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino followed in August, both of whom laid their heads upon the block with great dignity, and calmly suffered the punishment which their rashness had incurred.

During a great part of this eventful year Fielding continued to conduct "The True Patriot," and derived from it both profit and reputation. The paper maintained its popularity, not only on account of the constitutional information which it displayed, but also for its occasional "sallies of humour." Of these "humorous sallies" there are some very favourable specimens in the twenty-third number (April 8, 1746), where the following illustrations are given of the different meanings attached to particular expressions by different persons:

"I remember to have supped last winter at a surgeon's, where were present some others of the faculty. The gentleman of the house declared he had a very good subject above in the garret. As the gentleman who said this was, I knew, himself as good a subject as any in the kingdom, I could not avoid surprise at his choosing to confine such a person in a cold night in such a place: but I soon found my mistake, and that the good subject had been hanged the day before for a most heinous felony. An error of the same kind once happened to me amongst some gentlemen of the army, who all agreed that one Mr. Thunderson was the best man in England. I own I was somewhat staggered when I heard he was a corporal of

drew her head back into the coach, and crying out, 'My dear, I follow thee-I follow thee !-sweet Jesus, receive both our souls together!' fell on the neck of her companion, and expired the very moment she was speaking. The excess of grief, which the force of her resolution had kept smothered within her breast, it is thought, put a stop to the vital motion, and suffocated at once all the animal spirit."

(1) Murphy's Essay on Fielding's Life, &c. It may be here stated that a few select numbers of "The True Patriot are contained in Murphy's edition of Fielding's Works.

grenadiers but how much more was I astonished when I found that he had half-a-dozen wives, and was the wickedest fellow in the whole regiment."

As an instance of the "selfish attention" paid by persons to minute circumstances connected with their own occupations or position in life, the journalist, in the same paper, narrates the following anecdote :

"I knew a gentleman who had a great delight in observing the humours of the vulgar, and for that purpose used frequently to mount into the upper gallery. There, as he told me, he once seated himself between two persons, one of whom he soon discovered to be a broken tailor, and the other a servant in a country family, just arrived in town. The play was 'Henry the Eighth,' with that august representation of the coronation. The former of these, instead of admiring the great magnificence exhibited in that ceremony, observed, with a sigh, 'That he believed very few of these clothes were paid for.' And the latter, being asked how he liked the play (being the first he had ever seen), answered, 'It was all very fine, but nothing came up, in his opinion, to the ingenuity of snuffing the candles.""

Somewhere about this time Fielding contracted a second marriage. Foolishly enough, most of those who have professed to give the particulars of his life, have refrained (as it would appear from a vulgar notion that the fact might lower him in the world's esteem) from stating who succeeded the first Mrs. Fielding as the mistress of his heart and home. "His biographers," writes one who has happily supplied the information so unwisely withheld,' "seem to have been shy of disclosing, that after the death of this charming woman he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his

(1) Letters, &c., of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Edited by Lord Wharncliffe. Introductory Anecdotes, vol. i. pp. 80, 81.