altar of the Abbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons,
[103]

On the whole the ceremony went off well, and produced something like
a revival, faint, indeed, and transient, of the enthusiasm of the
preceding December. The day was, in London and in many other places, a
day of general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning: the
afternoon was spent in sport and carousing; and at night bonfires were
lighted, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobites
however contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter for
scurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly, that the way from the
hall to the western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers.
Was it seemly that an English king should enter into the most solemn
of engagements with the English nation behind a triple hedge of foreign
swords and bayonets? Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant,
almost inevitably take place between those who are eager to see the show
and those whose business it is to keep the communications clear,
were exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the alien
mercenaries had backed his horse against an honest citizen who pressed
forward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudely
pushed back a woman with the but end of his musket. On such grounds as
these the strangers were compared to those Lord Danes whose insolence,
in the old time, had provoked the Anglo-saxon population to insurrection
and massacre. But there was no more fertile theme for censure than
the coronation medal, which really was absurd in design and mean in
execution. A chariot appeared conspicuous on the reverse; and plain
people were at a loss to understand what this emblem had to do with
William and Mary. The disaffected wits solved the difficulty by
suggesting that the artist meant to allude to that chariot which a
Roman princess, lost to all filial affection, and blindly devoted to the
interests of an ambitious husband, drove over the still warm remains of
her father, [104]

Honours were, as usual, liberally bestowed at this festive season. Three
garters which happened to be at the disposal of the Crown were given
to Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was created Duke of
Cumberland. Several eminent men took new appellations by which they
must henceforth be designated. Danby became Marquess of Caermarthen,
Churchill Earl of Marlborough, and Bentinck Earl of Portland. Mordaunt
was mad