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"Stop abit," he answered, rising with me, and putting his back against the door – "not so fast, my hearty! King George doesn't allow likely young blades to slip through his fingers in this fashion. As you're in such a deuce of a hurry, I think we'd better see the Midshipmite."

I measured him with my eye, but at once gave up all thoughts of mastering him if I attempted violence in leaving the room. He was taller than I, broader across the chest, older, his limbs better knit, and in every way the more powerful. He too, I saw, was taking stock of me, and marking from my Frame and my Mien that, although young, I was likely to prove an Ugly Customer, he outs with a pistol from under his jerkin, and holds it to my head with one hand, while with the other he blows a smart call upon a silver whistle suspended by a lanyard round his neck.

In a moment the room was full of blue-frocked ruffians; a dozen pistols were levelled at my head, a dozen cutlasses drawn menacingly against me. Before I knew where I was I was tripped up, knocked down from behind, a gag forced into my mouth, and a pair of handcuffs slipped on to my wrists.

"No offence, shipmate," said a big fellow with black whiskers, as he knelt on my chest and screwed the manacles on so tightly that I gave a scream of pain. "We always begin in this here way – we crimps our cod before we cooks it. To-morrow morning, when you've had your grog, you'll be as gentle as a lamb, and after your first cruise you'll be as ready as ere a one of us to come cub-hunting."

Upon this there entered the room he whom the coxswain had spoken of as the , and who I rightly conjectured to be in authority over these dare-devils. He was a young man wearing his own hair, which was bright red. His face was all covered with pimples, and his mouth was harelipped from a sword cut. He had canvas bags and grey ribbed hose like a common sailor, but his hat was bound with a scrap of dirty gold lace; he had a hanger at his side, and on his threadbare blue coat I could see the King's button. Withal he was a very precise gentleman, and would listen to nothing but facts. He bade his men remove the gag from my mouth, and then addressed me.

"The fact of the matter is," says he, "that you've been kicking up a devil of a row, and that you'd much better have gone quietly with the coxswain."

"Why am I kidnapped? why have you put these footpad bracelets on me?" I cried out, passionately.

"The fact of the matter is that we always do it to save time and trouble," answered the Midshipmite – "Easy and quiet is the word at the 'Admiral Benbow.'"

"I'll have the law of you!" I exclaimed, in a rage.

"Exactly so," quoth the Midshipmite, quite politely. "May I ask if you're a free-man of the City of London?"

"I am not."

"Precisely so. Are you a waterman, duly entered at your Hall, and all arrears paid up, or an apprentice, carrying your indentures with you?"

"I am not, and I don't know what you mean."

"Then the fact of the matter is," said the Midshipmite, with a chuckle, "that we've got the law of you. The King, God bless him, wants stout and gallant hearts to man his fleet, and you're about the likeliest young fellow I've seen this week; so the best thing you can do is to go willingly on board the Tower Tender, of which I have the honour to be second in command. If you won't, the fact of the matter is that we must make you."

"But why should I go with you?" I urged.

"The fact of the matter is that you're Pressed," coolly answered the Midshipmite, or midshipman, "and if you want to see the warrant, you may ask Davy Jones for it, who keeps it under three seals in his locker to prevent accidents."

Between listing for a soldier and being pressed for a sailor there was not, I take it, much difference. Either way, the chance of a livelihood offered itself. But I did not like this violent way of doing things, and I told the midshipman so. He merely ordered his blue-frocks to take me away. Then I attempted to burst my bonds, and bit, kicked, and struggled, so that it took half-a-dozen men to drag me to the door.

"The fact of the matter is," remarked the midshipman, filling himself a glass of punch, "that there's always this hullabaloo at the first going off, and that you'd better give him One for peace and quietness."

Somebody immediately followed the officer's advice, and gave me One with the butt end of a pistol, which nearly clove my skull in twain, and certainly made me peaceable and quietness, for it stunned me.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
JOHN DANGEROUS IS IN THE SERVICE OF KING GEORGE

It now becomes expedient for me to pass over no less than Fifteen Years of my momentous Career. I am led to do this for divers cogent Reasons, two of which I will forthwith lay before my Reader. For the first, let me urge a Decent Prudence. It is not, Goodness knows, that I have any thing to be ashamed of which should hinder me from giving a Full, True, and Particular Account of all the Adventures that befell me in these same fifteen Years, with the same Minute Particularity which I bestowed upon my Unhappy Childhood, my varied Youth, and stormy Adolescence. I did dwell, perhaps, with a fonder circumspection and more scrupulous niceness upon those early days, inasmuch as the things we have first known and suffered are always more vividly presented to our mind when we strive to recall 'em, sitting as old men in the ingle-nook, than are the events of complete manhood. Yet do I assure those who have been at the pains to scan the chapters that have gone before, that it would be easy for me to sit down with the Fidelity of a Ledger-Keeper all the things that happened unto me from my year, when I last bade them leave, and the year 1747, when I had come to be three-and-thirty years of age. I remember all: the Ups and Downs; the Crosses and the Runs of Luck; the Fortunes and Misfortunes; the Good and the Bad Feasts I sat me down to, during an ever-changing and Troublous Period. But, as I have said, I have been moved thus to skip over a vast tract of time through Prudence. There may have been certain items in my life upon which, now that I am respectable and prosperous, I no more care to think of. There may be whole pages, close-written and full of Stirring Matter, which I have chosen to cancel; there may be occurrences treated of which it is best, at this time of Day, to draw a Veil over. Finally, there may be Great Personages still Living who would have just cause to be Offended were I to tell all I know. The dead belong to all the World, and their Bones are oft-times Dug up and made use of by those who in the Flesh knew them not; but Famous Persons live to a very Great Age, and it is sometimes scandalous to recount what adventures one has had with 'em in the days of their hot and rash Youth. Had I permission to publish all I am acquainted with, the very Hair upon your Head might stand up in Amazement at some of the Matters I could relate: – how Mean and Base the Great and Powerful might become; how utterly Despisable some of the most Superb and Arrogant Creatures of this our Commonwealth might appear. But I am prudent and Hold my Tongue.

Again, and for the Second Reason, I am led to pass over these fifteen years through a feeling that is akin to Mercy and Forbearance towards my Reader. For I well know how desperately given is John Dangerous to a wordy Garrulity – how prone he is to make much of little things, and to elevate to the dignity of Important and Commanding Events that which is perchance only of the very slightest moment. By Prosing and Amplifying, by Moralizing and Digressing, by spinning of yarns and wearing of reflections threadbare, I might make a Great Book out of the pettiest and most uneventful career; but even in honestly transcribing my actual adventures, one by one, – the things I have done, and the Men and Women I have known, – I should imperceptibly swell a Narrative, which was at first meant to attain no great volume, to most deplorable dimensions. And the World will no longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to Voyages and Travels, or even to Philosophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. The world wants smart, dandy little volumes, as thin as a Herring, and just as Salt. For these two reasons, then, do I nerve myself to a sudden leap, and entreat you now to think no longer of John Dangerous as a raw youth of eighteen summers, but as a sturdy, well-set man of thirty-three.

Yet, lest mine Enemies and other vile Rascal Fellows that go about the town taking away the characters of honest people for mere Envy and Spitefulness' sake, lest these petty curmudgeons should, in their own sly saucy manner, Mop and Mow, and Grin and Whisper, that If I am silent as to Fifteen Years of my Sayings and Doings, I have good cause for holding my peace, – lest these scurril Slanderers should insinuate that during this time I lay in divers Gaols for offences which I dare not avow, that I was concerned in Desperate and Unlawful Enterprises which brought upon me many Indictments in the King's Courts, or that I was ever Pilloried, or held to Bail for contemptible misdemeanours, – I do here declare and affirm that for the whole of the time I so pass over I earned my bread in a perfectly Honest, Legal, and Honourable Manner, and that I never once went out of the limits of the United Kingdom. I have heard, indeed, a Ridiculous Tale setting forth that, finding myself Destitute in London after the Chaplain, Mr Pinchin, and I had parted company, and after escaping from the Pressgang, I enlisted in the Foot Guards. The preposterous Fable goes on to say that quickly mastering my Drill, and being a favourite with my officers, whom I much pleased with my Alacrity and Intelligence, although they were much given to laugh at my assumptions of superior Birth, and nicknamed me "Gentleman Jack," – I was promoted to the rank of Corporal, and might have aspired to the dignity of a Sergeant's Halbert, but that in a Mad Frolic one night I betook myself to the road as a Footpad, and robbed a Gentleman, coming from the King's Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh House at Knightsbridge, of fourteen spade guineas, a gold watch, and a bottle-screw. And that being taken by the Hue and Cry, and had before Justice de Veil then sitting at the Sun Tavern in Bow Street, I should have been committed to Newgate, tried, and most likely have swung for the robbery, but for the strong intercession of my Captain, who was a friend of the Gentleman robbed. That I was indeed enlarged, but was not suffered to go scot-free, inasmuch as, being tried by court-martial for absence without leave on the night of the gentleman's misfortune, I was sentenced to receive three hundred lashes at the halberts. Infamous and Absurd calumnies!

Behold me, then, in the beginning of the year 1747 in the Service of his Sacred Majesty King George the Second. Behold me, further, installed in no common Barrack, mean Guard-house, or paltry Garrison Town, but in one of the most famous of his Majesty's Royal Fortresses: – a place that had been at once and for centuries (ever since the days of Julius Cæsar, as I am told) a Palace, a Citadel, and a Prison. In good sooth, I was one of the King's Warders, and the place where I was stationed was the Ancient and Honourable Tower of London.

Whether I had ever worn the King's uniform before, either in scarlet as a Soldier in his armies, or of blue and tarpaulin as a Sailor in his Fleets, or of brown as a Riding Officer in his customs, – under which guise a man may often have doughty encounters with smugglers that are trying to run their contraband cargoes, or to hide their goods in farmers' houses, – or of green, as a Keeper in one of the Royal Chases, – I absolutely refuse to say. Here I am, or rather here I was, a Warder and in the Tower.

I was bravely accoutred. A doublet of crimson cloth, with the crown, the Royal Cipher G. R., and a wreath of laurel embroidered in gold, both on its back and front; a linen ruff, well plaited, round my neck, sleeves puffed with black velvet, trunk-hose of scarlet, rosettes in my slashed shoes, and a flat hat with a border of the red and white roses of York and Lancaster in satin ribbon, – these made up my costume. There were forty of us in the Tower, mounting guard with drawn swords at the portcullis gate and at the entrances to the lodgings of such as were in hold, and otherwise attending upon unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen who were in trouble. On state occasions, when taking prisoners by water from the Tower to Westminster, and in preceding the Lieutenant to the outward port, we carried Halberts or Partisans with tassels of gold and crimson thread. But although our dress was identical, as you may see from the prints, with that of the Beef-Eaters, we Tower Warders were of a very different kidney to the lazy hangers-on about St. James's. Those fellows were Anybodies, Parasites of Back-Stairs favourites, and spies and lacqueys, transformed serving-men, butlers past drawing corks, grooms and porters, even. They had nothing to do but loiter about the antechambers and staircases of St. James's, to walk by the side of his Majesty's coach when he went to the Houses of Parliament, or to fight with the Marshalmen at Royal Funerals for petty spoils of wax-candles or shreds of black hangings. The knaves actually wore wigs, and powdered them, as though they had been so many danglers on the Mall. They passed their time, when not in requisition about the Court, smoking and card-playing in the taverns and mug-houses about Scotland Yard and Spring Gardens. They had the run of a few servant-wenches belonging to great people, but we did not envy them their sweethearts. Some of them, I verily believe, were sunk so low as, when they were not masquerading at court, to become tavern-drawers, or ushers and cryers in the courts of law about Westminster. A very mean people were these Beef-eaters, and they toiled not, neither did they spin, for the collops they ate.

But we brave boys of the Tower earned both our Beef and our Bread, and the abundant Beer and Strong Waters with which we washed our victuals down. We were military men, almost all. Some of us had fought at Blenheim or Ramilies – these were the veterans: the very juniors had made the French Maison du Roy scamper, or else crossed bayonets with the Irish Brigade (a brave body of men, but deplorably criminal in carrying arms against a Gracious and Clement Prince) in some of those well-fought German Fields, in which His Royal Highness the Duke and my Lord George Sackville (since Germaine, and my very good friend and Patron) covered themselves with immortal glory. Nay some of us, One of us at least, had fought and bled, to the amazement of his comrades and the admiration of his commanders, – never mind where. 'Tis not the luck of every soldier to have had his hand wrung by the Great Duke of Cumberland, or to have been presented with ten guineas to drink his health withal by Field-Marshal Wade. We would have thought it vile poltroonery and macaronism to have worn wigs – to say nothing of powder – unless, indeed, the peruke was a true Malplaquet club or Dettingen scratch.

Our duties were no trifling ones, let me assure you. The Tower, as a place of military strength, was well looked after by the Regiment of Foot Guards and the Companies of Artillery that did garrison duties on its ramparts and the foot of its drawbridges; but to us was confided a charge much more onerous, and the custody of things much more precious. We had other matters to mind besides seeing that stray dogs did not venture on to the Tower Green, that dust did not get into the cannon's mouths, or that Grand Rounds received proper salutes. Was not the Imperial Crown of England in our keeping? Had we not to look after the Royal diadem, the orb, the sceptre, the Swords of Justice and of Mercy, and the great parcel-gilt Salt Cellar that is moulded in the likeness of the White Tower itself? Did it not behove us to keep up a constant care and watchfulness, lest among the curious strangers and country cousins who trudged to the Jewel House to see all that glittering and golden finery, and who gave us shillings to exhibit them, there might be lurking some Rogue as dishonest and as desperate as that Colonel Blood who so nearly succeeded in getting away with the crown and other valuables in King Charles the Second's time. Oh! I warrant you that we kept sharp eyes on the curious strangers and the country cousins, and allowed them not to go too near the grate behind which were those priceless baubles.

But another charge had we, I trow. Of all times had this famous fortress of the Tower of London been a place of hold for the King's prisoners. Felons, nor cutpurses, nor wantons suffered we indeed in our precincts, nor gave we the hospitality of dungeons to; but of state prisoners, noblemen and gentlemen in durance for High Treason, or for other offences against the Royal State and Prerogative, had we always a plentiful store. Some of the greatest Barons – the proudest names in England – have pined their lives away within the Tower's inexorable walls. Walls! why there were little dungeons and casemates built in the very thickness of those huge mural stones. In ancient days I have heard that foul deeds were common in the fortress – that princes were done to Death here – notably the two poor Royal infants that the wicked Richard of Gloucester bid his hell-hounds smother and bury at the foot of the stairs in that building which has ever since gone by the name of the Bloody Tower. So, too, I am afraid it is a true bill that Torture was in the bad old days indiscriminately used towards both gentle and simple in some gloomy underground places in this said Tower. I have heard of a Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the agonies used upon 'em should be too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery, rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show. Of "Scavenger's Daughters," Backs, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and wedges, and other horrible engines of pain, I have heard many dismal tales told; but all had long fallen into disuse before my time. The last persons tortured within the Tower walls were, I believe, Colonel Faux (Guido) and his confederates, for their most abominable Gunpowder Plot, which was to put an end to the Protestant Religion and the illustrious House of Stuart at one fell blow; but happily came to nothing, through the prudence of my Lord Monteagle, and the well-nigh superhuman sagacity of his Majesty King James the First. Guy and his accomplices they tortured horribly; and did not even give 'em the honour of being beheaded on Tower Hall, – they being sent away as common traitors to Old Palace Yard (close to the scene of their desperately meditated but fortunately abortive crime), and there half-hanged, cut down while yet warm, disembowelled, their Hearts and Inwards taken out and burnt by Gregory (that was hangman then, and that, as Gregory Brandon, had a coat-of-arms given him as a gentleman, through a fraud practised upon Garter King), and their mangled bodies – their heads severed – cut into quarters, well coated with pitch, and stuck upon spikes over London Bridge, east Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort, according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews, boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England, recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; but it is certain that when Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at Portsmouth, and was taken red-handed, the Courtiers, Parasites, and other cruel persons that were about the King, would fain have had him racked; but the public, – which by this time had begun to inquire pretty sharply about Things of State, – cried out that Felton should not be tormented (their not loving the Duke of Bucks too much may have been one reason for their wishing some degree of leniency to be shown to the assassin), and the opinion of the Judges being taken, those learned Persons, in full court of King's Bench assembled, decided that Torture was contrary to the Law of England, and could not legally be used upon any of the King's subjects howsoever guilty he might have been.

But I confess that when I first took up service as a Tower Warder, and gazed upon those horrible implements of Man's cruelty and hard-heartedness collected in the Armoury, I imagined with dismay that, all rusty as they had grown, there might be occasions for them to be used upon the persons of unfortunate captives. For I had lived much abroad, and knew what devilish freaks were often indulged in by arbitrary and unrestrained power. But my comrades soon put my mind at ease, and pointed out to me that few, very few, of these instruments of Anguish were of English use or origin at all; but that the great majority of these wicked things were from among the spoils of the Great Armada, when the proud Spaniards, designing to invade this free and happy country with their monstrous Flotilla of Caravels and Galleons, provided numerous tools of Torture for despitefully using the Heretics (as they called them) who would not obey the unrighteous mandates of a foreign despot, or submit to the domination (usurped) of the Bishop of Rome. And so tender indeed of the bodies of the King's prisoners had the Tower authorities become, that the underground dungeons were now never used, commodious apartments being provided for the noblemen and gentlemen in hold: and a pretty penny they had to pay for their accommodation; five guineas a day, besides warder and gentlemen gaolers' fees, being the ordinary charge for a nobleman, and half that sum for a knight and private esquire. Besides this, the Lieutenant of the Tower had a gratuity of thirty pounds from every peer that came into his custody, and twenty pounds for every gentleman writing himself Armiger, and in default could seize upon their cloaks: whence arose a merry saying – "best go to the Tower like a peeled carrot than come forth like one."

There were even no chains used in this state prison; of fetters and manacles we had indeed a plenitude, all of an antique pattern and covered with rust; but no irons such as are put upon their prisoners by vulgar gaolers in Newgate and elsewhere. I have heard say, that when poor Counsellor Layer, that was afterwards hanged, drawn, and quartered as a Jacobite, and his head stuck atop of Temple Bar hard by his own chambers, – was first brought for safer custody to the Tower, breakings out of Newgate having been common, the Government sent down word that, as a deep-dyed conspirator and desperate rebel, he was to be double-ironed. Upon this Mr. Lieutenant flies into a mighty heat, and taking boat to Whitehall, waits on Mr. Secretary at the Cockpit, and tells him plainly that such an indignity towards his Majesty's prisoners in the Tower was never heard of, that no such base modes of coercion as chains or bilboes had ever been known in use since the reign of King Charles I., and that the King's warders were there to see that the prisoners did not attempt Evasion. To which Mr. Secretary answered, with a grim smile, that notwithstanding all the keenness of the watch and ward, he had often heard of prisoners escaping from durance in the Tower, notably mentioning the case of my Lord Nithesdale, who escaped in his lady's clothes, and without more ado informed the Lieutenant that Counsellor Layer must be chained as directed, even if the chains had to be forged expressly for him. Upon which Mr. Lieutenant took a very surly leave of the Great Man, cursing him as he comes down the steps for a Thief-catcher and Tyburn purveyor, and sped him to Newgate, where he borrowed a set of double-irons from the Peachum or Lockit, or whatever the fellow's name it was that kept that Den of Thieves. And even then, when they had gotten the chains to the Tower, none of the warders knew how to put them on, or cared to sully their fingers with such hangman's work; and so they were fain to have a blacksmith with his anvil, and a couple of turnkeys down from Newgate, to rivet the chains upon the poor gentleman's limbs; he being at the time half dead of a Strangury; but so cruel was justice in those days.

When I first came to the Tower, we had but few prisoners; for it was before the Great Rebellion of the 'Forty-five; and a few years previous the times had been after a manner quiet. Now and then some notorious Jacobite, Seminarist, or seditious person was taken up; but he was rarely of sufficient importance to be confined in our illustrious Prison; and was either had to Newgate, or else incarcerated in the lodgings of a King's Messenger till his examinations were over, and he was either committed or Enlarged. These Messengers kept, in those days, a kind of Sponging Houses for High Treason, where Gentlemen Traitors who were not in very great peril lived, as it were, at an ordinary, and paid much dearer for their meat and lodging than though they had been at some bailiffs lock-up in Cursitor Street, or Tooke's Court, or at the Pied Bull in the Borough. We had, it is true, for a long time a Romanist Bishop that was suspected of being in correspondence with St. Germain's, and lay for a long time under detention. He was a merry old soul, and most learned man; would dine very gaily with Mr. Lieutenant, or his deputy, or the Fort Major, swig his bottle of claret, and play a game of tric-trac afterwards; and it was something laughable to watch the quiet cunning way in which he would seek to Convert us Warders who had the guarding of him to the Romanist faith. They let him out at last upon something they called a Nolle prosequi of the Attorney-General, or some suchlike dignitary of the law – which nolle prosequi I take to be a kind of habeas corpus for gentlefolks. He was as liberal to us when he departed as his means would allow; for I believe that save his cassock, his breviary, a gold cross round his neck, and episcopal ring, and a portmantel full of linen, the old gentleman had neither goods nor chattels in the wide world: indeed, we heard that the Lieutenant lent him, on leaving, a score of gold pieces, for friendship-sake, to distribute among us. But he went away – to foreign parts, I infer – with flying colours; for every body loved the old Bishop, all Romanist and suspected Jacobite as he was.

Then came that dreadful era of rebellion of which I have spoken, and we Tower Warders found that our holiday time was over. Whilst the war still raged in Scotland, scarcely a day passed without some person of consequence being brought either by water to Traitor's Gate, or by a strong escort of Horse and Foot to the Tower Postern; not for active participation in the Rebellion, but as a measure of safety, and to prevent worse harm being done. And many persons of consequence, trust me, saved their heads by being laid by the heels for a little time while the hue and cry was afoot, and Habeas Corpus suspended. Fast bind, safe find, is a true proverb; and you may thank your stars, even if your enemies have for a time bound you with chains and with links of iron, if, when the stormy season has gone past, you find your head still safe on your shoulders. Now it was a great Lord who was brought to the Tower, and from whom Mr. Lieutenant did not forget to claim his thirty-pound fee on entrance; for "here to-day, gone to-morrow," he reasoned, and so shot his game as soon as he had good parview of the same. Now it was some Cheshire or Lancashire Squire, snatched away from his Inn, at the Hercules' Pillars, or the Catherine Wheel in the Borough, as being vehemently suspected of Jacobitism. These gentlemen mostly took their captivity in a very cheerful and philosophical manner. They would call for a round of spiced beef, a tankard of ale, and a pipe of tobacco, so soon as ever they were fairly bestowed in their lodgings; drank to the King – taking care not to let us know whether his name began with a G or a J, with many jovial ha-has, and were as happy as the day was long, so it seemed to us, if they had but a pack of cards and a volume of the Gentleman's Recreation, or Academy of Field Sports. What bowls of punch, too, they would imbibe o' nights, and what mad carouses they would have! Such roaring Squires as these would have been much better bestowed in the Messengers' Houses; but these were all full, likewise the common gaols; nay, the debtors' prisons and vile sponging-houses were taken up by Government for the temporary incarceration of suspected persons.

How well do I remember the dreadful amazement and consternation which broke over this city when the news came that the Prince – I mean the Pretender – had utterly routed the King's troops commanded by Sir John Cope at Prestonpans; that the Misguided Young Man had entered Edinborough at the head of a furious mob of Highlandmen, whose preposterous style of dress I never could abide, and who in those days we Southrons held as being very little better than painted Savages; that the ladies of the Scottish capital had all mounted the white cockade, and were embroidering scarves for the Pretender and his officers, and that the Castle of Edinborough alone held out 'gainst this monstrous uprising to destroy authority! But how much greater was the Dismay in London when we learnt that the Rebels, not satisfied with their conquests in his Majesty's Scottish Dominions, had been so venturous as to invade England itself, and had actually advanced so far as the trading town of Derby! Then did those who had been long, albeit obscurely, suspected of Jacobitism, come forth from their lurking holes and corners, and almost openly avow their preference for the House of Stuart. Then did very many respectable persons, formerly thought to be excellently well affected towards King George's person and Government, become waverers, or prove themselves the Turncoats they had always, in secret, been, and seditiously prophesy that the days of the Hanoverian dynasty were numbered. Then did spies and traitors abound, together with numbers of alarming rumours, that the Chevalier had advanced as far as Barnet on the Great North Road; that his Majesty was about to convey himself away to Hanover; that the Duke of Cumberland was dead; that barrels of gunpowder had been discovered in the Crypt beneath Guildhall, and in the vaults of the Chapel Royal; that mutiny was rife among the troops; that the Bank of England was about to break, with sundry other distracting reports and noises.