its notes, and it only escaped bankruptcy by the following
stratagem. Those who came first being entitled to priority of payment,
the managers of the bank took care to be surrounded by agents with
notes, to whom their pretended claims were paid in sixpences to gain
time. These agents went out by one door and came back by another, so
that the _bona fide_ holders of notes could never get near enough to
present them; and the bank stood out by these means until the panic had
died away. King George even embarked all his most precious effects on
his yachts, which were stationed in the Tower-quay, in readiness to
convey him away, should the dreaded Highlanders, as it now began to be
generally expected, march to London in a few days. The "moneyed
corporations," according to Smollett, were all in the deepest dejection;
they reflected that the Highlanders, of whom they had conceived a most
terrible idea, were within four days' march of the capital; they
anticipated a revolution ruinous to their own prosperity, and were
overwhelmed with dismay.

"I was assured," writes the Chevalier Johnstone, (who differed from his
General, Lord George,) "on good authority, when I was in London, some
time after our unfortunate defeat, that the Duke of Newcastle, then
Secretary of State for the War Department, remained inaccessible in his
own house the whole of the 6th of December, weighing in his mind the
part which it would be most prudent for him to take, and even uncertain
whether he should not instantly declare himself for the Pretender. It
was even said at London, that fifty thousand men had actually left that
city to meet the Prince and join his army, and every body in the capital
was of opinion, that, if we had beaten the Duke of Cumberland, the army
of Finchley Common would have dispersed of its own accord, and that by
advancing rapidly to London, we might have taken possession of that city
without the least resistance from the inhabitants, and without
exchanging a single shot with the soldiers. Thus a revolution would have
been effected in England, so glorious for the few Scotchmen by whom it
was attempted, and altogether so surprising, that the world would not
have comprehended it. It is true, the English were altogether ignorant
of the number of our army, from the care we took in our marches to
conceal it; and it was almost impossible for their spies ever to
discover it, as we generally arrived in the towns at nightfall, and left
them