scarcely ceased to be the theme of comment, before the general elections
excited all the ill blood and fanaticism which such struggles at any
critical era of our history have always produced. Riots, which have been
hastily touched upon in the histories of the period, but which the
minute descriptions of memoirs of that period show to have been attended
with an unusual display of violence and brutality on both sides, broke
out upon every anniversary which could recall the Stuarts to
recollection. On St. George's day, in compliment to the Chevalier, who,
according to an observer of those eventful days, "had assumed the name
of that far-famed Cappadocian Knight, though every one knew he has
nothing of the valour, courage, and other bright qualities of the
saint," a tumult was raised in London, and among other outrages,
passengers through the streets of the City were beaten if they would not
cry "God bless the late Queen and the High Church!" Sacheverel and
Bolingbroke were pledged in bumpers by a mob, who burnt, at the same
time, King William in effigy.[66] A similar contagion spread throughout
the country; Oxford took the lead in acts of destruction; her streets
were filled with parties of Whigs and Tories, both of them infuriated,
until their mad rage vented itself in acts of murder, under the
pretence, on the one hand, of a dread of popery, on the other, on a
similar plea of religious zeal. A Presbyterian meetinghouse was pulled
down, and cries of "An Ormond!" "A Bolingbroke!" "Down with the
Roundheads!" "No Hanover!" "A new Restoration!" accompanied the
conflagration. On the same day similar exclamations were again heard in
the streets of London; and all windows not illuminated were broken to
pieces. The tenth of June, the anniversary of the Chevalier's birthday,
was the signal for a still more decisive manifestation. On that day
three Scottish magistrates went boldly to the Cross at Dundee, and there
drank the Pretender's health, by the name of King James the Eighth, for
which they were immediately apprehended and tried.

The impeachment of Lord Oxford still further exasperated the country,
which rang with the cry, "No George, but a Stuart." The peaceable
accession of the first monarch of the Brunswick line has been greatly
insisted upon by historians; but that stillness was ominous; it was the
stillness of the air before a storm; and was only indicative of
irresolution, not of a diminished dislike to the sway of a for