The Mr. Hooper here referred to was the recently-appointed librarian to Chetham’s Library, and the chaplain to Lady Anne Bland, of Hulme Hall, lady of the manor of Manchester. Massey Malyn was a son of Dr. Malyn, who had acquired by his marriage the Sale Hall Estate, in Cheshire, and was himself the rector of Ashton-upon-Mersey; Robert Malyn, his younger brother, was an undergraduate of Cambridge; Peter Mainwaring was a well-known medical practitioner in the town, who subsequently married one of the sisters and co-heiresses of Massey Malyn; and John Haddon was the rector of Warrington. Hulme Hall was at that time the centre in which gathered the wit and learning and intellectuality of the neighbourhood. Lady Anne Bland, the widowed owner, and the foundress of St. Ann’s, was accounted the leader of fashion among the Hanoverian and Whig party, and the rival of Madam Drake, who carried the palm among the Jacobite and Tory fashionables; the former deeming it not inconsistent with her dignity to resent the exuberant display of Stuart tartan at the newly-built Assembly-rooms, in King Street, by arraying her party in orange-coloured ribbons, and dancing a minuet with them by moonlight in the open street. Byrom was always a welcome guest at Hulme, where his sprightliness and epigrammatic humour was highly appreciated, and with the pious, if somewhat imperious, owner he was, in spite of his Jacobite proclivities, an especial favourite. He was a frequent worshipper at St. Ann’s, the “new church” as it was called, in contradistinction to the “old” or parish church, oftentimes occupying Lady Bland’s seat, and occasionally going back to tea with her in her own coach:—

1725.—Wednesday, Twelfth-day (January 6th), went to the new church in the morning with Beppy (his eldest daughter Elizabeth, then a child of three years), and sat in Lady Bland’s seat; dined at Father Byrom’s; called to see the Wild Irishman in Smithy-door.

Tuesday, 12th,—Young Tarboc called on me, and we went to Hulme to take the inscription off the stone (a Roman altar found in Castle Field). I came home with Lady Bland in the coach, and went with Mr. Cattel and Mr. Brettargh to dinner. I went to Hulme again with young Tarboc.

Wednesday.—Lady Bland sent to invite me to the dancing to-night. I walked to Hulme in the evening, when I found them dancing. We came home between twelve and one in Lady Bland’s coach and father Byrom’s chariot, which sister Ann had ordered.

Sunday.—New church; sat with Mr. Mynshull (of Chorlton Hall); took leave with Dr. Malyn, Mr. Chetham, and Lady Bland.

It is pleasant to think that at this time, when in Manchester political and religious feeling was at fever heat, and the place had become little else than a hot-bed of contending factions, there was a disposition to observe the amenities of life, and people of the most conflicting political opinions were able to meet in social intercourse with every appearance of complaisant good humour.

When Byrom married he obtained the consent of his bride’s father, but he obtained little else; his own means were scanty, and with the increasing demands of an increasing family he was compelled to follow some occupation as a means of earning a livelihood. While pursuing his studies at Cambridge he had invented a system of shorthand, the leading principle of which was to denote the different sounds of language by strokes of the shortest and simplest form. Reporting, as a profession, was all but unknown, but in private life stenography was much more generally practised than at the present time, especially among students and the better educated members of society, who, before the age of cheap literature, had recourse to it to reduce the labour of frequent transcription. Cypher-writing had long been in vogue, the “Diary” of Pepys being a notable illustration, but the system which Byrom introduced was the first that was based upon any clearly defined principle, and, though now out of date, may be said to be the parent of all subsequent and “improved” systems. Unfortunately for him the men of Manchester a century and a half ago thought more of looms than of literature, and were more intent on manufactures than on metaphysics; hence the place afforded little scope for the practice of the art which he had invented. London was a more promising field, and during several years he made lengthened visits to the metropolis, where he met with very encouraging support, his patrons and pupils including some of the most eminent statesmen and divines of the day—the Duke of Devonshire, the Archbishop of York, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Hartington, Hoadley, Bishop of Salisbury, Horace Walpole, Pope, and others of equal celebrity. In his Journal he records:—“Proposals printed May 27, 1723, for printing and publishing a new method of shorthand;” and on the 30th January, 1724, he writes to his wife:—

I told you I was to see the Archbishop of York. I did so on Tuesday morning, and talked with him and his son about our art. They entered into the notion of it very readily, and his grace promised to recommend it wherever he had an opportunity. New proposals are now printing off, dated February 1st, 1724, that is, Saturday, on which day I intend to advertise in the Daily Post, Evening Post, and London Journal. They are the same as the old proposals, only Mr. Leycester’s (of Toft) approbation is added to Mr. Smith’s. Now the thing receives a formal publication I shall see what I am likely to expect from my friend Mr. Public, and whether he will have a true relish for clever things or no.

“Mr. Public” had the desired “relish,” and the “clever things” obtained for their inventor the honour of admission into the Royal Society.

“Thursday, March 19th (1724).—This day I was admitted Fellow of the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane, and Mr. Robert Ord at the same time. He and I went there together, gave Mr. Hawkshee two guineas, and signed bond to pay fifty-two shillings a year.”

Byrom found a competitor in the person of a Mr. James Weston, who claimed to be the inventor of a superior method of stenography, and the journalist thus writes of his “furious antagonist”:—

Mr. Hooper and Jo. Clowes have been to pay Mr. Weston a visit, and we have had good diversion with the account of it.... He describes me seven foot high,[44] tolerably dressed in a tie-wig, spent my fortune, and a little light-headed, and showed ’em all his challenge, and how he had frightened me from dispersing my proposals publicly, but seemed at the bottom to be plaguily afraid. He says I come to Dick’s coffee house almost every night when he intends to come and challenge me before the company; when he does, I shall let you know in what manner he (de)molishes me.

During his visits to London Byrom became associated with the leading literary and political characters of the day—with Sir Hans Sloane, Bentley, the great Newton, the Wesleys, and others—over whom his great intellectual ability and ceaseless industry, blended as it was with a high tone of religious and moral feeling, enabled him to exercise considerable influence. His “Journal,” in which from day to day he records the trifling occurrences of his life, contains many references to his literary friends, and embraces a variety of information interesting as illustrative of the manners and habits of the age. In his long absences, however, he never forgot the ties of home and family. His letters addressed “To Mrs. Eliz. Byrom, near the Old Church, in Manchester,” relating his daily doings, are full of entertaining gossip, and couched in terms of the fondest endearment. Here is a passage taken at random:—

Kent’s Coffee House, May 20, 1729.—I am sorry to hear of Nelly’s being so ill and weakly; but I am not able to add anything to the care which you take of her by any physic of mine. The diet of children is the only thing to look after.... My dearest love, as thou takest all possible care of thy infants, make not thyself uneasy about them; but secure thine own health for the sake of them, and thy most affectionate husband and friend.

A week later he writes:—

I promise myself that you are all pretty well at Kersall and Nelly better, not having any letter last post.... Prithee let the children have some sort of things that will keep the sun off ’em. Why should one let their faces be spoiled when a little custom might prevent it? Oh, dear! that I was with ye all. I long to jump into Kersall river.

If he could revisit his dearly-loved haunt at Kersall he would find the river now not quite so inviting.

---

In one of his letters to Mrs. Byrom he speaks of meeting with Whitefield, the great preacher and founder of the Calvinistic Methodists, who had then just returned from a visit to the American settlement of Georgia, when it was proposed to sing a hymn; and he remarks, “If I was to sing with ’em, it must (be) nearer homeward than Georgia. The tune that I should sing would be something like this, I believe:—

It was during the time of these visits to London that the wordy war arose between the admirers of Handel and his great Italian rival Bononcini, which Byrom ridiculed in a witty epigram that will remain famous for all time:—

Its publication created quite a sensation in the literary world; the wits of the day attributed it to Swift, and he has been often credited with it in later times. Handel’s biographer, M. Victor Schoelcher, thus refers to it—“Swift, who admired nothing, and who had no ear, wrote an epigram upon the subject,” and adds, “the angry injustice of the nobles” who were in league against the great composer was “far preferable to the empty eclecticism of the Dean of St Patrick’s.” The question of authorship is, however, easily disposed of by a reference to Byrom’s journal, in which, writing under date, Saturday, June 5, 1725, he says:—

“We went to see Mr. Hooper, who was at dinner at Mr. Whitworth’s; he came over to us to Mill’s Coffee House, told us of my epigram upon Handel and Bononcini being in the papers.... Bob came to supper; said that Glover had showed him the verses in the Journal, not knowing that they were mine.”

And so the years went round. The summer months he usually spent with his family and kindred in Lancashire; looking in now and then at the “College;” discussing learnedly with Dr. Deacon, Clayton, Thyer, and other of the local literati; paying court to Lady Bland; spending the day with “Mother Byrom” at Kersall; dining with “brother Byrom at the Cross” (Edward Byrom’s, in the Market Place); “drinking a dish of tea with sister Brearcliffe” at her stately house in Spring Gardens; or taking an evening walk “after sermon by the river side by Strangeways with Mr. Leycester and Dr. Mainwaring;” for Strangeways Walk, as it was called, was then a pleasant tree-shaded lane, with the pleasaunce belonging to Hunt’s Bank Hall, the residence of Mr. Clowes, and the stately woods of Strangeways Park on the one hand, and verdant meadows and pastures reaching down to the banks of the pure and sparkling Irwell on the other. In London his time was pretty well occupied with his pupils, the brief intervals of leisure being spent in social intercourse with his Lancashire and Cambridge friends, writing epigrams, disputing on religious doctrines, attending meetings at the (Royal) “Society,” “making merry at the Mitre,” and lamenting the shortcomings of his laundress.

The practice of reporting was not then universally popular, and Byrom occasionally met with a humorous adventure. “Orator” Henley, whom Pope has immortalised—

objected to his sermons being reported on the ground that “he might have his discourses printed against him.” He threatened to turn out the “chiel amang them takin notes,” and when Byrom would not desist, even when the “manager” offered to return the shilling he had paid for admission, “went on so much faster than usual that he took the only way to stop me,” thus effectually getting rid of the unwelcome attentions of the inexorable shorthand writer. On another occasion when Byrom exercised his talents in assisting the High Church party to oppose the application to Parliament for an Act to establish a workhouse in Manchester for the employment of the poor, a scene occurred which is best related in his own words. A subscription had been raised in the town to defray the cost of erection, and it was proposed that the house should be managed by twenty-four guardians, eight to be nominated by the Whigs, eight by the Tories, and the remainder by the Presbyterians. Dr. Peploe, the Whig Bishop of Chester, who was also warden of Manchester, undertook to present the Bill for forming the guardians into a corporation; but the Tory and High Church party offered a strong opposition to the scheme. Through some delay the measure was defeated in the first session of Parliament, and on being reintroduced in the succeeding year it was opposed by Sir Oswald Mosley, of Ancoats, who, fearing that his interests as lord of the manor might be prejudiced, had, in the meantime, caused a large building to be erected for the purpose near Miller’s Lane—the present Miller Street. Byrom, whom the Whigs denounced as an incendiary and threatened to pull to pieces, was very active in supporting the Tory opposition, and gave evidence before the Commissioners. He appears on the same occasion to have occupied himself in taking shorthand notes, when the scene occurred which he thus describes in a letter dated February 20, 1731:—

I must tell you to get another petition ready to offer to the House that a body may write shorthand in the cause of one’s country. I have ventured to stand the threats of a complaint and the danger of a committee in defence of that natural right of exercising the noble art which I have acquired. At the last committee but one I was threatened by a Scotch knight (Sir James Campbell) whom I provoked to execution of his said valiant threatening yesterday, for in the midst of Serjt. Darnel’s reply out he comes at the instigation of one Brereton, and suddenly and loud pronounces these terrible words—To oadur, oardur, I speak to oadur; I desair to knaw if any mon shil wrait here that is nut a clairk or solicitur? and an universal silence ensuing I was going to speak for myself but a member of my acquaintance winking that I had better not, I repressed my rising indignation. Nobody said anything to the knight’s query, only Sir Ed. Stanley (M.P. for the county of Lancaster, and afterwards eleventh Earl of Derby) hinted that there was no great harm done; and my friend the serjeant himself said that the gentleman was famous for writing shorthand, and for his part he was under no apprehension by his taking down anything he should say, and so returned to his matter; and the apparition of danger vanished; but if these attacks upon the liberty of shorthand men go on I must have a petition from all countries where our disciples dwell, and Manchester must lead ’em on.

On the 12th May, 1740, Byrom’s elder brother, Edward, the “Brother Byrom at the Cross,” died unmarried, when John, the poet and stenographer, became the head of the family and owner of the estates at Kersall.

Mr. Espinasse, in the first of his admirable series of “Lancashire Worthies,” says that Byrom’s biographers “do not give the precise date of the death of his elder brother, Edward.” The information is supplied in the stenographer’s “Shorthand Journal,” in which occurs this entry:—

May 12th (1740).—Edward Byrom, of Kersall, elder son of Edward Byrom, of Manchester, and Dorothy, daughter of John Allen, of Redivales, near Bury. He was born March 4th, 1686, and died May 12th, 1740.

By his acquisition of the family estates at Kersall, Byrom was placed in a position of comfortable independence, and able to relax from the drudgery of teaching shorthand, though it was some time before he could be induced to withdraw from London and its pleasant society to settle down in quiet retirement in Manchester. Two years after this addition to his fortune he received the welcome intelligence from Lord Morton that the crowning act of all his anxieties—the Act securing to him for a period of twenty-one years the exclusive right of publishing his “Art and Method of Shorthand”—the nation’s testimony to the merits of the system—had passed the House of Lords and received the royal assent; an Act which, singular to say, appears to have been obtained without any cost.

From this time his journeyings to London became less and less frequent, and his life seems to have been passed for the most part in his native town in a calm round of social and domestic enjoyment, his playful fancy finding vent in squib and pasquinade, and in sparkling epigrams, an easy and unshackled style of versification for which he had a special aptitude. Not the least popular of his effusions was the one directed against the farmers or tenants of the Grammar School Mills, Messrs. Yates and Dawson, who had involved the town in the costs of a lawsuit because the inhabitants had refused to observe the old feudal monopoly and grind all their corn, grain, and malt at the mills:—

The point of the epigram was in the allusion to the professions of Yates and Dawson, Skin being Joseph Yates, a barrister, the father of Sir Joseph Yates, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas; and Bone, Dr. Dawson (Byrom’s relative), a well-known medical practitioner in the town, and the father of the ill-fated “Jemmy Dawson,” the hero of Shenstone’s pathetic ballad. He also, on the occasion of the Pretender’s visit to Manchester, wrote the lines which have since become almost as famous as his epigram on Handel and Bononcini:—

The period was one of great political excitement. The men of Manchester, who a century previously had barricaded their town and defied the soldiers of Charles the First, became jubilant on the restoration of monarchy in the person of his son, and, to prove their loyalty, caused the conduit in the market place to flow with claret and the gutters to swell with strong beer; their sons were noted for their Jacobite proclivities, and nowhere did the young Pretender receive a heartier welcome than in the old Puritan town where, as has been said by a popular writer (Dr. Halley), “the orange plumes seemed to have grown pale and faded into white feathers before the bright colours of the Stuart tartan.” The barbarous severities with which the rebellion of 1715 was crushed had only served to perpetuate and increase the feeling of bitterness against the Whig Government, and this feeling was intensified by the religious feuds that sprang up in the town. The Tories and High Churchmen, though they had taken the oath to King George and desired to maintain the Protestant succession, were for the most part Jacobites, while the Low Churchmen and Nonconformists were staunch partisans of the house of Brunswick—the one proclaimed the divine right of kings, and the other was equally zealous in upholding the “Glorious Revolution.”

Byrom’s intimate friend, Dr. Deacon, a nonjuring minister, who had incurred the suspicions of the Government through his supposed connection with the former rebellion, and on that account had removed to Manchester, where he combined the profession of theology with the practice of physic, assembled a congregation of nonjurors at his house in Fennel Street, adjoining the present “Dog and Partridge”—the “Schism Shop,” as it was irreverently called—while Joseph Owen, a fierce Presbyterian polemic, declaimed with angry invective against the clergy of the “Old Church” for their alleged sympathy with the nonjuring divine. The quarrel became fiercer than ever, and the coarse sermons of Owen were answered by the satire and clever epigrams of Byrom:—

Meetings of the rival factions were regularly held at the different taverns in the town, the “Angel” in Market Street Lane being the head-quarters of the Whigs, and the “Bull’s Head,” opposite Phœbe Byrom’s in the Market Place, the resort of those disaffected to the reigning family; “John Shaw’s,” too, a “public” in the Old Shambles, kept by a veteran trooper, who in his campaigns abroad had acquired the art of brewing punch of unrivalled quality, and who was as famed for the discipline and the autocratic rule he maintained as for the excellence of the beverage he brewed, received under its hospitable roof the more thorough-going Church and King men and supporters of the Stuart cause.[45] Byrom was a frequent attender at the convivial gatherings at “John Shaw’s,” and the only portrait of him in the later years of his life that has been preserved, was one taken by stealth by his friend Dorning Rasbotham, “after spending an evening at Shawe’s Coffee House,” prefixed to the Leeds edition of his poems, and reproduced in Gregson’s “Fragments.”

Byrom’s pen was ever at the service of his political friends, and the “Laureate of the Jacobites,” the “Master Tool of the Faction,” as he was indifferently styled, was more than a match for his Whig antagonists. Imbued, however, with strong religious feelings, there was little of bitterness in his compositions; the shaft of ridicule was never envenomed, his playful wit and genial good-humoured satire telling with far greater effect than the coarse and angry invectives with which he was at times assailed. If he was ready to lampoon a foe, he never lacked the courage to rebuke a friend. This is evidenced by his well-timed admonition against swearing, “addressed to an officer in the army,” Colonel Townley, the commander of the regiment raised in Manchester in the service of the Pretender:—

In his early youth Byrom had manifested strong Jacobite tendencies, but in the interval between the two rebellions—the Sacheverel riots of ’15 and the rising of ’45—his political opinions, if in no degree modified, had become much less demonstrative, and his Jacobitism was under the control of a possessor sufficiently cautious to prevent its imperilling his family interests or endangering his personal safety. His daughter “Beppy” was then a young lady of three-and-twenty; following her father’s example she had set up a diary, and some of the entries in her journal, with a letter written by Byrom to his kinsman and friend, Mr. Vigor, furnishes the most circumstantial and entertaining accounts of the Pretenders visit to Manchester extant. The doctor’s gossiping daughter was an ardent Jacobite, though a very prudent one, her sentimental devotion to the Stuart cause being most pronounced when personal danger was remote, the fair young diarist having little scruple in designating the wearers of the white cockade “rebels” when peril was at hand. For all that, her “Diary” is very entertaining. Apart from the vivid portraiture of the excitement and consternation into which the Manchestrians were thrown by the presence of the rebel army, it is impossible to read it without feeling that you are listening to the sprightly chat of the lively and unsophisticated writer.

On Tuesday, the 25th of November, news came that Prince Charles Edward had marched his forces into Lancashire. The town was in a state of great excitement. The Presbyterians and Whigs deemed it prudent to get out of the way; the militia, which had been very valiant before the approach of the rebels, followed the example; the wealthier householders removed their families into the country; and even furniture and provisions were conveyed to places of more assured safety. On the afternoon of Friday, the 28th, Sergeant Dickson, a dashing young Scotchman, with his sweetheart and a drummer, entered the town and proclaimed the Chevalier King; and on the following morning the Prince with the main body of his army joined them, and encamped in St. Ann’s Square. “Manchester,” says Ray, in his “History of the Rebellion,” “was taken by a sergeant, a drum, and a woman, who rode to the market cross on horses with hempen halters on, where they proclaimed their King.” Here is “Beppy” Byrom’s version:

Tuesday (November) 28.—About three o’clock to-day came into town two men in Highland dress, and a woman behind one of them with a drum on her knee, and for all the loyal work that our Presbyterians have made they took possession of the town, as one may say, for immediately after they were ’light they beat up for volunteers for P(rince) C(harles).... They were directly joined by Mr. J. Bradshaw, Mr. Tom Sydall, Mr. Tom Deacon, Mr. Fletcher, Tom Chaddock; and several others have listed, about 80 men by eight o’clock, when my papa came down to tell us there was a party of horse come in. He took care of me to the Cross, when I saw them all. It is a very fine moonlight night.... My papa and uncle are gone to consult with Mr. Croxton, Mr. Fielden, and others how to keep themselves out of any scrape, and yet behave civilly (a very prudent procedure in such a crisis). All the justices fled, and lawyers too, but coz. Clowes.

Friday, 29th.—They are beating up for the P.; eleven o’clock we went up to the Cross to see the rest come in; then came small parties of them till about three o’clock, when the P. and the main body of them came; I cannot guess how many.... Then came an officer up to us at the Cross, and gave us the manifesto and declarations. The bells they rung, and P. Cotterel made a bonfire, and all the town was illuminated, every house except Mr. Dickinson’s (the house in Market-street-lane, where the Prince took up his quarters, and thenceforward known as the Palace). My papa, mama, and sister, and my uncle and I walked up and down to see it. About four o’clock the King was proclaimed, the mob shouted very cleverly, and then we went up to see my aunt Brearcliffe, and stayed eleven o’clock making St Andrew’s crosses for them; we sat up making till two o’clock.

Colonel Townley, a member of the great Catholic family of that name, who had arranged for the Prince’s reception in Manchester, and had engaged several of the principal residents for officers, speedily mustered and enrolled a regiment in the service of the Prince. Each recruit received a white St Andrew’s cross, which cost little, and a promise of five guineas, which, as they were never paid, cost less. In the next entry the enthusiastic young Jacobite describes her impressions of the “yellow-hair’d laddie,” and the way in which her father made homage to him:—

Saturday, 30th (St. Andrew’s Day).—More crosses making till twelve o’clock; then I dressed up in my white gown and went up to my aunt Brearcliffe’s, and an officer called on us to go see the prince. We went to Mr. Fletcher’s and saw him get a horseback, and a noble sight it is [no wonder that amid such excitement the young lady got a little “mixed” in her moods and tenses]. I would not have missed it for a great deal of money. His horse had stood an hour in the court without stirring, and as soon as he got on he [i.e. the horse, not the prince] began a dancing and capering as if he was proud of the burden, and when he rid out of the court he was received with as much joy and shouting almost as if he had been King, indeed I think scarce anybody that saw him could dispute it. As soon as he was gone the officer and us went to prayers at the old church at two o’clock by their orders, or else there has been none since they came. Mr. Shrigley read prayers; he prayed for the King and Prince of Wales, and named no names. Then we called at our house and eat a queen cake, and a glass of wine, for we got no dinner; then the officer went with us all to the Camp Field to see the artillery; called at my uncle’s and then went up to Mr. Fletcher’s, stayed there till the prince was at supper, then the officer introduced us into the room, stayed awhile and then went into the great parlour where the officers were dining, sat by Mrs. Stark(ey); they were all exceeding civil and almost made us fuddled with drinking the P. health, for we had had no dinner; we sat there till Secretary Murray came to let us know that the P. was at leisure and had done supper, so we were all introduced and had the honour to kiss his hand; my papa was fetched prisoner to do the same [another testimony to the doctor’s discretion], as was Dr. Deacon; Mr. Cattell and Mr. Clayton [two of the Old Church clergy who were less cautious] did it without; the latter said grace for him; then we went out and drank his health in the other room, and so to Mr. Fletcher’s, where my mamma waited for us (my uncle was gone to pay his land tax) and then went home.

December 1st.—About six o’clock the P. and the foot set out, went up Market-street Lane and over Cheadle ford; the horse was gathering together all forenoon; we went up to the Cross to see them, and then to Mr. Starkey’s, they were all drawn up in the Square and went off in companies, Lord Elcho’s horse went past Baguley.

What follows is matter of history.

The Pretender’s cause was soon lost, the progress of his army being as brief as it was disastrous. Hearing, on their arrival at Derby, that the Duke of Cumberland with an army of veterans was in the neighbourhood, and distrusting the skill of their own officers, they returned northwards, their vanguard reaching Manchester on the 9th of December, where the regiment which Colonel Townley had raised only a few days before was disbanded, though some of the more resolute supporters of the Prince pushed on to Carlisle, where, after a feeble effort to hold the city, they were compelled to surrender. Chaplain Coppock was executed in the border city, wearing his canonicals; ten of the others, including a son of Dr. Deacon, and the adjutant, Syddal, whose father had given up his life in the same cause thirty years previously, and Beppy Byrom’s cousin, Jemmy Dawson, were executed on Kennington Common. The heads of Deacon and Syddal were sent to Manchester and fixed upon spikes on the top of the Exchange,[46] to be reverenced by friends and execrated by foes, an exhibition that called forth the following lines:—

In Manchester the suppression of the rebellion of ’45 was hailed with delight by the partisans of the house of Brunswick; the church bells rang throughout the day, bonfires blazed at night, and orange-coloured ribbons were flaunted in the streets as gaily as the Stuart tartan had been only a few months before. That day must have been a sorrowful one for Byrom and his enthusiastic daughter, for they could hardly have escaped the insults of the Hanoverian mob when Dr. Deacon’s house was attacked and that of poor widow Syddal demolished.

The ill-feeling engendered by these events was of long duration, and the toast of “The King” was not unfrequently a cause of angry disputation. The adherents of the exiled dynasty continued their meetings, though they usually assembled in secret, and their movements were carefully watched by the local authorities, suspected persons being required to take the oath of allegiance to the reigning monarch and abjure Popery and the Pretender. Some of the more prominent sympathisers took alarm and fled, among them being Clayton, the chaplain of the Collegiate Church, who was said to have offered public prayers for Prince Charles in one of the streets of Salford. Byrom, in describing this period, says—

We ourselves were many of us fugitives; and had we not met with some kind asylum towns, might have wandered among the inhospitable hills, like the present mountaineer rebels.

His Journal shows that at this time he was frequently away from Manchester, and not unfrequently endeavouring through the influence of his former patrons to obtain a mitigation of the punishment of such of the Manchester rebels as had survived the thirst of Whiggish vengeance, but were yet undergoing imprisonment. Thus he wrote to his wife (June 18, 1748):—

On Friday the 10th of June I had been asked to meet Mr. Folkes at Mr. Ch. Stanhope’s, where I found likewise Lord Linsdale, D(uk)e of Mountague, and Mr. Stanhope’s brother, Lord Harrington, with whom we passed the dinner and an hour or two after very agreeably. They asked me a great many questions about the Pretender, and circumstances when he was at Manchester, &c., and I told them what I knew and thought without any reserve, and took the opportunity of setting some matters in a truer light than I suppose they had heard them placed in, and put in now and then a word in favour of the prisoners, especially Charles D, (Charles, youngest son of Dr. Deacon, who had acted as secretary, and superintended the recruiting of the Manchester regiment). They were all very free and good natured, and did not seem offended with anything that I took the liberty to enlarge upon. When Mr. Folkes came away, about seven o’clock, I came with him, and he said that what had passed might possibly occasion young D.’s liberty, that they were not violent in their tempers, and that he took notice that they listened very much to what I had been telling them of Manchester affairs. I was much pleased with the openness of conversation which we had upon several subjects; and as Mr. St(anhope) had made me promise him some verses that I had lately writ, I added a Latin copy to his brother the Viceroy of Ireland, which I brought him yesterday, for he had sent a servant for me to dine with again, and then we had Lord Harrington, Lord Baltimore, D. of Richmond and a lady—Lady Townshend—and somebody else—oh, Sir John Cope. The Duchess of R. should have been there, but the Duke made an excuse for her. As we had a lady, however, and one (as Mr. St. had hinted to me) of great wit and politeness, who stayed the afternoon, complaisance to her turned the conversation upon suitable subjects, so that I could not well introduce the fate of Ch. D. &c. before the D. of R. who is one of our present kings,[47] as I wanted to do. Mr. St. had read the Latin verses and given them before dinner, and the Duke might have seen them if he would, but the lady and the Latin did not suit politely enough, and there was no urging anything untimely, or else I could have been glad to have heard what he would have said about the lot of the imprisoned.... One can only try as occasion offers, what mercy can be got from trying.

He did try, and on the 23rd July he again writes:—

I have heard nothing new about Ch. Deacon. I sent him (Mr. Stanhope) a copy of the petition representing his case, and some further urging of my own. By a report not being made, I understand that the judges have made no report, which I am surprised at if that be the real meaning.

In a subsequent letter (August 4, 1748) to his “Dear Dolly” (his younger daughter, Dorothy, then a maiden of 18) he sends a translation of the verses, that young lady, as he says, not being “so book-learned as to understand them in the original.” They are as creditable to the heart as to the head of the writer for the evidence they afford of his unswerving fidelity to a friend in adversity. The following lines are a fair specimen:—

In the letter accompanying the English verses, he says:—

I have not such good hopes as I had of the young boy being set at liberty upon whose account they were made; he has some enemies or other that have represented him in so ill a light that I much question at present if he will meet with the favour which has been so long expected except affairs shall take a turn with relation to him (other) than I was told they had done. But I am not sorry I have spoken my thoughts about him as opportunity offered.

On “Prince Charles’s Birthday” (November 30th), he writes to his daughter Beppy:—

Mr. Nanny, a Welsh gentleman, told me he had heard that Ch. Deacon was set at liberty; but such a world of false reports have gone about him that I can only wish this may prove true.

And on the 3rd of January following, writing to his wife, he remarks:—

I was taken ill so that I could not go into Southwark to enquire after Charles Deacon as I thought of, nor have I had any opportunity since, nor can I learn anything of the truth or falsehood of the report of his going abroad.

The report was unfortunately but too true, for the Gentleman’s Magazine (v. xix., p. 41) records that on the 11th January Charles Deacon, with William Brettargh, also of the Manchester regiment, were conveyed from the new gaol, Southwark, to Gravesend, for transportation during life.

With the expatriation of this hapless youth may be said to have closed the darkest and most sorrowful page in Manchester’s annals. In that sanguinary chronicle of ruthless savagery there was perhaps no more melancholy episode than the misfortunes of the nonjuring divine of Fennel Street, who lost three of his sons in the Pretender’s cause. Thomas Theodorus, the eldest, as already stated, was executed, and his head fixed on the Manchester Exchange; Robert Renatus died in prison while awaiting trial, and Charles Clement, as we have seen, was sent beyond seas. The father passed into his rest on the 16th February, 1753. He lies in the north-east corner of St. Ann’s Churchyard, where his raised altar-tomb may still be seen with an inscription setting forth that he was “the greatest of sinners and most unworthy of primitive bishops.”

There is a tradition current that the heads of Thomas Deacon and Tom Syddal, after being exposed for some time on the Exchange, were one night surreptitiously removed by Mr. Hall, a son of Dr. Richard Edward Hall, who resided in a large house at the top of King Street, and that they were secretly buried in the garden behind his residence. This garden with the rookery in it, which reached down to the present Chancery Lane, existed within the recollection of the present generation, and it is said that on the death of Mr. Hall’s last surviving sister, Miss Frances Hall, in 1828, the grim relics of mortality were by her expressed desire exhumed and buried in St. Ann’s Churchyard. It was to Dr. Hall, the father, whilst paying his addresses to the lady whom he afterwards married, that Byrom sent the following epigram:—