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Updated: May 24, 2025
The idle story of the pretender's having been introduced in a warming pan into the queen's bed, though as destitute of all probability as of all foundation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause of Jacobitism than all that Mr. Locke and others have written, to show the unreasonableness and absurdity of the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, and unlimited passive obedience.
Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression that it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused and hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In October four Judges went down to Manchester.
He does not commit himself, however: he fears a 'spiteful interpretation. In short, he places the English Cabinet on the horns of a dilemma. 'Am I to resist Jacobitism? Then what becomes of your doctrine of Ireland's dependency? or, 'Am I to become a Jacobite, if England bids me? Then what becomes of your Protestant succession?
But it also involved the paradox that even a bad king is a good king, for his oppression weakens the nobility and relieves the pressure on the populace. If he is a tyrant he chiefly tortures the torturers; and though Nero's murder of his own mother was hardly perhaps a gain to his soul, it was no great loss to his empire. Bolingbroke had thus a wholly rationalistic theory of Jacobitism.
This was really the heart of Scotland, the home of heroes who fought and fell for their country, 'the abode of kings of other years. His sentimental attachment to Jacobitism became more pronounced as he looked on Holyrood.
Jacobitism and the Papacy had become in most people's minds closely connected ideas. Hence the opinions upon Church matters prevalent among Nonjurors and their ecclesiastical sympathisers in the Established Church became also unpopular, and tainted with an unmerited suspicion of leaning towards Rome. This was no gain to the Church of the Georgian era.
The open or half-concealed Jacobitism which, for many years after the Revolution, prevailed in perhaps the majority of eighteenth-century parsonages could scarcely fail of influencing the English Church at large, both in its general action, and in its relation to the State. This influence was in many respects a very mischievous one.
I take the liberty of transcribing it: "The manoeuvre by which Swift managed to associate a suspicion of Jacobitism with his opponents, is one peculiarly characteristic; and so is the skill with which, in the next letter, he meets the objections to this paragraph, by half offering an extent of submission that might equally be embarrassing a submission even to Jacobitism, if Jacobitism were to become strong enough.
Jacobitism and Laudism, a kind of half Popery, had at one time been very prevalent at Oxford, but both had been long consigned to oblivion there, and people at Oxford cared as little about Laud as they did about the Pretender.
Now, what these honest folks say is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the Popery which has overflowed the land during the last fourteen or fifteen years, has come immediately from Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism, Popish and Jacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else, having been taught at Oxford for about that number of years.
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