threat the only thing to be feared. Once word reached London that a rebellion had begun or an invasion force had landed, there was certain to be a financial panic. There would be a run on the National Bank, stocks would fall until they became virtually worthless. Gold would be the only asset worth having, and with public credit collapsed, the government itself would soon come to a halt.
It was a horrifying prospect, particularly to the substantial Whigs who owed their wealth to investment. And as Walpole hoped, the more he increased the public's fear of plots and plotters, the more they would tend to forget how much they disliked the aloof, prosaic kings from Hanover. Anything was better, they were inclined to think, than the ''popish Pretender." The constant fear of a "wicked Jacobite conspiracy" also had the effect of turning public opinion toward the government, which kept them informed about and protected against the danger from abroad. The City, which had been a center of opposition to Walpole, became loyal to him; the London crowd, which had been known to storm the lobby and corridors of the House of Commons, tearing the coats of officials and threatening M.P.'s, turned its fury against the Jacobites instead.
Walpole used the situation to make a profit for the government. He taxed the estates of Roman Catholics, taking in a hundred thousand pounds which otherwise, he claimed, would have been used to finance rebellion. According to Walpole, English Catholics were in the habit of making "ill use" of their savings, laying out money "in maintaining the Pretender and his adherents abroad, and fomenting discord and rebellion at home." It was far better that the money go into government coffers.
And in fact James did ask his supporters in England to send as much money as they could spare to help his cause, soliciting twenty or thirty thousand pounds apiece from the wealthiest of them. He supplied his agents with signed receipts, with the amount of the contribution and the interest to be paid on it left blank, to be given out in return for cash.
The government's first line of defense against having large sums of money leave the country was to search the mails, and warrants were issued to postmasters telling them to open all "suspected treasonable correspondence," read it, copy it and then reseal it so that the tampering could not be detected. Copies of all diplomatic correspondence, all letters in the French and Flanders mails, anything going to or from a suspicious person were to be transmitted immediately to the authorities for evaluation. Boxes, packages and chests were opened—even coffins were not spared. When the body of the Bishop of Rochester, Francis Atterbury, exiled for his role in the 1722 Jacobite conspiracy, was returned to England from France for burial in Westminster Abbey, the government ordered the coffin opened. Only the bishop's corpse was found in it, but as an extra precaution the body was slit open and searched to make certain no important documents had been slipped inside.
Suspect correspondence was forwarded to the Deciphering Branch, where a highly paid chief decipherer and four assistants combed through it, breaking codes that were at times intricate and complex. One foreign minister sent his dispatches abroad from London written in a code employing at least two thousand different characters—and even the simpler codes were challenging, especially as they were altered frequently. The Jacobites had a private nomenclature, referring in their documents to "N" (Lord Lovat), or 'T" (Lord Nairne), "Lord of the Manor" (the Earl of Strathmore) and "Mr. Piercy" (the Duke of Argyll). The decipherers were kept busy scratching their heads over who "Mr. Acorn" was, or "The Sexton," or "Jack Caesar," and when symbols were used in lieu of false names their puzzlement deepened.
In Gulliver's Travels , published at the height of the anxiety over "wicked Jacobite conspiracies" in 1726, Jonathan Swift made fun of
It was a horrifying prospect, particularly to the substantial Whigs who owed their wealth to investment. And as Walpole hoped, the more he increased the public's fear of plots and plotters, the more they would tend to forget how much they disliked the aloof, prosaic kings from Hanover. Anything was better, they were inclined to think, than the ''popish Pretender." The constant fear of a "wicked Jacobite conspiracy" also had the effect of turning public opinion toward the government, which kept them informed about and protected against the danger from abroad. The City, which had been a center of opposition to Walpole, became loyal to him; the London crowd, which had been known to storm the lobby and corridors of the House of Commons, tearing the coats of officials and threatening M.P.'s, turned its fury against the Jacobites instead.
Walpole used the situation to make a profit for the government. He taxed the estates of Roman Catholics, taking in a hundred thousand pounds which otherwise, he claimed, would have been used to finance rebellion. According to Walpole, English Catholics were in the habit of making "ill use" of their savings, laying out money "in maintaining the Pretender and his adherents abroad, and fomenting discord and rebellion at home." It was far better that the money go into government coffers.
And in fact James did ask his supporters in England to send as much money as they could spare to help his cause, soliciting twenty or thirty thousand pounds apiece from the wealthiest of them. He supplied his agents with signed receipts, with the amount of the contribution and the interest to be paid on it left blank, to be given out in return for cash.
The government's first line of defense against having large sums of money leave the country was to search the mails, and warrants were issued to postmasters telling them to open all "suspected treasonable correspondence," read it, copy it and then reseal it so that the tampering could not be detected. Copies of all diplomatic correspondence, all letters in the French and Flanders mails, anything going to or from a suspicious person were to be transmitted immediately to the authorities for evaluation. Boxes, packages and chests were opened—even coffins were not spared. When the body of the Bishop of Rochester, Francis Atterbury, exiled for his role in the 1722 Jacobite conspiracy, was returned to England from France for burial in Westminster Abbey, the government ordered the coffin opened. Only the bishop's corpse was found in it, but as an extra precaution the body was slit open and searched to make certain no important documents had been slipped inside.
Suspect correspondence was forwarded to the Deciphering Branch, where a highly paid chief decipherer and four assistants combed through it, breaking codes that were at times intricate and complex. One foreign minister sent his dispatches abroad from London written in a code employing at least two thousand different characters—and even the simpler codes were challenging, especially as they were altered frequently. The Jacobites had a private nomenclature, referring in their documents to "N" (Lord Lovat), or 'T" (Lord Nairne), "Lord of the Manor" (the Earl of Strathmore) and "Mr. Piercy" (the Duke of Argyll). The decipherers were kept busy scratching their heads over who "Mr. Acorn" was, or "The Sexton," or "Jack Caesar," and when symbols were used in lieu of false names their puzzlement deepened.
In Gulliver's Travels , published at the height of the anxiety over "wicked Jacobite conspiracies" in 1726, Jonathan Swift made fun of
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