field-marshal and
commander-in-chief of the forces in South-Britain. Some Romish priests
were apprehended; the militia of London and Middlesex were kept in
readiness to march; double watches were posted at the city-gates, and
signals of alarm appointed. The volunteers of the city were incorporated
into a regiment; the practitioners of the law, headed by the judges,
weavers of Spitalfields, and other communities, engaged in associations;
and even the managers of the theatres offered to raise a body of their
dependents for the service of the government. Notwithstanding these
precautions and appearances of unanimity, the trading part of the city,
and those concerned in the money corporations, were overwhelmed with
fear and dejection. They reposed very little confidence in the courage
or discipline of their militia and volunteers; they had received
intelligence that the French were employed in making preparations
at Dunkirk and Calais for a descent upon England; they dreaded an
insurrection of the Roman-catholics, and other friends of the house of
Stuart; and they reflected that the highlanders, of whom by this time
they had conceived a most terrible idea, were within four days' march of
the capital. Alarmed by these considerations, they prognosticated their
own ruin in the approaching revolution; and their countenances exhibited
the plainest marks of horror and despair. On the other hand, the
Jacobites were elevated to an insolence of hope, which they were at
no pains to conceal; while many people, who had no private property to
lose, and thought no change would be for the worse, waited the issue of
this crisis with the most calm indifference.

THE REBELS RETREAT INTO SCOTLAND.

This state of suspense was of short duration. The young pretender found
himself miserably disappointed in his expectations. He had now advanced
into the middle of the kingdom, and except a few that joined him at
Manchester, not a soul appeared in his behalf; one would have imagined
that all the Jacobites of England had been annihilated. The Welch took
no step to excite an insurrection in his favour; the French made no
attempt towards an invasion; his court was divided into factions; the
highland chiefs began to murmur, and their clans to be unruly; he saw
himself with a handful of men hemmed in between two considerable armies,
in the middle of winter, and in a country disaffected to his cause. He
knew he could not proceed to the metropolis w