Tally ho to the Fox

‘On June 27, 1806, Scott wrote his “Health to Lord Melville”, the Tory governing spirit of Scotland, whom the Whigs were impeaching.  James Ballantyne sang this lay at a public dinner on Lord Melville’s acquittal.  The Princess of Wales was saluted in this song, which contained the words “Tally ho to the Fox” (C.J. Fox).  This does not appear an amazing indiscretion, in a parcel of party verses, but the Whigs were greatly shocked…’

Walter Scott’s Tory sentiment is evident in the text above, which comes from Andrew Lang’s “Sir Walter Scott”.  Whig Charles James Fox did not last much past June of 1806, dying the following September (13^th).  Fox was opposed to the war with Napoleon, who he met three times in 1798.  Fox was, therefore, at odds with William Pitt (the younger) who had pushed for war with France.  Pitt died earlier, in January of the same year. 

Book Review: Elizabeth de Bruce

January 27.[1827]—Read Elizabeth de Bruce; it is very clever, but does not show much originality. The characters, though very entertaining, are in the manner of other authors, and the finished and filled up portraits of which the sketches are to be found elsewhere. One is too apt to feel on such occasions the pettish resentment that you might entertain against one who had poached on your manor. But the case is quite different, and a claim set up on having been the first who betook himself to the illustration of some particular class of characters, or department of life, is no more a right of monopoly than that asserted by the old buccaneers by setting up a wooden cross, and killing an Indian or two on some new discovered island. If they can make anything of their first discovery, the better luck theirs; if not, let others come, penetrate further into the country, write descriptions, make drawings or settlements at their pleasure.

Not a very popular read today.  Elizabeth de Bruce was published in 1827.  Author Christian Isobel Johnstone was a journalist who founded several periodicals with her husband.  The text above is from Scott's Journal.

Trial of Gunpowder Plot Conspirators

The Gunpowder Plot was uncovered on November 5, 1605.  Conspirator Guy Fawkes was caught with approximately 1,800 pounds of gunpowder in a basement under the House of Lords.  After mastermind Robert Catesby and other conspirators were rounded up or killed, a trial began - on Janaury 27, 1606.  The punishment imposed by the court was death by being drawn and quartered.  Fawkes himself escaped this form of death by leaping from the scaffold, and breaking his neck.

Walter Scott sets his "The Fortunes of Nigel" during the reign of James I, and after the Gunpowder Plot:

"...In James's reign, on the contrary, the

coarsest pleasures were publicly and unlimitedly indulged, since,
according to Sir John Harrington, the men wallowed in beastly
delights; and even ladies abandoned their delicacy and rolled about in
intoxication. After a ludicrous account of a mask, in which the actors
had got drunk, and behaved themselves accordingly, he adds, "I have
much marvelled at these strange pageantries, and they do bring to my
recollection what passed of this sort in our Queen's days, in which I
was sometimes an assistant and partaker: but never did I see such lack
of good order and sobriety as I have now done. The gunpowder fright is
got out of all our heads, and we are going on hereabout as if the
devil was contriving every man should blow up himself by wild riot,
excess, and devastation of time and temperance. The great ladies do go
well masqued; and indeed, it be the only show of their modesty to
conceal their countenance, but alack, they meet with such countenance
to uphold their strange doings, that I marvel not at aught that
happens."