116 CHAPTER V. THE PRETENDER IN GLASGOW. "His amber-coloured locks in ringlets run With graceful negligence, and shone against the sun; Ruddy his lips, and fresh and fair his hue: THE recollection of that warlike pageant which passed through our country in 1745, still excites many feelings of a powerfully agitating nature in the bosoms of Scotsmen. Although the last remnants of the Jacobite party have now altogether disappeared from amongst us,—those votaries of a perished scheme, whose presence during the last half century might be likened to the last stars lingering on the gray selvage of morn,-there is yet a romantic grandeur associated with the Pretender and his fortune, imperishably connected with our part of the island. The principal facts connected with the Rebellion are well known to readers of Scottish history, and it would therefore be here somewhat out of place, to enter into a detail of all the various proceedings of a prince, who, guided only by his youthful ardour, could venture to throw himself upon the affections of those whom he considered his father's natural subjects, and peril his whole cause on the results of a civil war. The attempt was bold in the extreme, and involved a thousand chances of destruction to himself and those who should follow him. It was a game, in which, to use his own emphatic language, the stakes were "either a crown or a coffin." Yet it seemed to be, in some measure, countenanced by the circumstances of the country. Great Britain was then involved beyond its depth, in one of those destructive and expensive wars, which have so seldom ceased ever since it adopted a foreign race of sovereigns; the army had been almost cut to pieces in a recent defeat; the navy of England, generally so terrible, was engaged in distant expeditions; and the people were grumbling violently at the motives of the war, its progress, and the expense which it cost them.* Charles Edward Lewis Cassimir, the hero of "45," was born in the year 1720, and was the son of James, better known under his incognito title of the Chevalier St. George, who had headed the Rebellion of 1715. He was thus the grandson of James the Second, whose * Chambers' History of the Rebellion. abdication of the throne was followed by the revolution of 1688. His mother was the grand-daughter of John Sobieski, the famous king of Poland. While to the weakness and the natural imbecility of character of the Chevalier, the failure of the attempt of 1715 is mainly attributable, the blood of Sobieski seems to have corrected that quality in his son, whose daring and talent, displayed thirty years subsequently, did every thing but retrieve the fortune of his family. We do not, however, follow Charles from the first erection of his standard in the Highlands to his invasion of England, but join him when "the games are done," and he retreating, enters an unwelcome visitor the city of Glasgow. More, perhaps, than any other town in the country, had Glasgow reason to expect severe treatment at the hands of the insurgents. At that time newly sprung into importance, it had never required, nor received the means of defence, but was lying with its wide-spread modern streets and well stored warehouses, fully exposed to the license of the invaders. It had distinguished itself ever since the expulsion of the House of Stuart, by its sincere and invariable attachment to the new government. And since the Highlanders entered England, had, with gratuitous loyalty, raised no fewer than twelve hundred men for the suppression of the insurrection. This loyalty of the inhabitants of Glasgow, however, is not to be regarded in the present instance as a passion, but rather as a sentiment; deeply cherished and power fully influential, because it had descended to them from their immediate forefathers, whose characters they revered and whose actions they were proud to imitate: their love of liberty was a sacred principle, generated by the spirit of their rational institutions, moderated by a certain sober and philosophical cast of character, and associated with the name and interests of that family from the accession of which to the throne of Britain, they might date any prosperity they enjoyed. Religion we must regard as the great artificer of their political opinions. Detesting the intolerable tyranny that would have forced upon them a religion which they abhorred for its affinity in form, and, in a great measure, in character, to the spiritual despotism under which the country had so long groaned, and which had cost them many sacrifices, they took up arms against a family which had sought to govern either by dispensing with, or in direct opposition to, the laws. On many subsequent occasions they had shown an extreme jealousy of measures, which they believed favourable to the growth of popery, prelacy, and arbitrary power, and had gone all constitutional lengths in opposition to what they conceived subversive of, or injurious to, that form of ecclesiastical polity, which had been founded by the exertions and hallowed and endeared by the blood of their martyred forefathers; and which by its severe simplicity, and the utter absence of all pageantry and holy paraphernalia, was so congenial to the spirit which the Reformation had engendered in Scotland. Presbyterianism has, on every occasion of actual trial and need, proved itself an insurmountable and invincible bulwark to the throne, and has stood at equal distances from the wild and incalculating ebullitions of a generous and disinterested, but dangerous and destructive loyalty, which could only display itself by insurrection against the state, and the mad projects of visionary reformers and factious agitators. Thus it was, that in the "forty-five," the inhabitants of Glasgow to a man remained firm in their fidelity to the House of Hanover; and in spite of ancient recollections, and the powerful appeal made to their national feelings and individual sympathies, persevered in unshaken and unquestioned attachment to a family, which had been raised to the throne by a powerful and mighty people, resolved to emancipate themselves from tyranny and oppression, yet warmed with the strongest attachment to a limited monarchy. Obnoxious by its principles, therefore, and affording such prospects of easy and ample plunder, Glasgow was eagerly approached by the predatory bands of the Chevalier, who viewed it with feelings somewhat akin to the wolf in the fable. The first body of his forces entered Glasgow on Christmas day 1745, and on the following morning he himself came up with the remainder. The necessities of the army are described as having been at this time greater than at any other period of the campaign. It was now two months since they had left the land of tartan; their clothes were of course in a most dilapidated condition. The length and precipita |