60 



the difficulty about praying for King George. Tlie chancellor, 

 writing about what happened on that day at Carlisle, says : 



After the Rebels got possession I was detained in town till near night on 

 Sunday, the 17th, to try me whether I would allow prayers to be read in the 

 churches without naming the King [ib, p. 56). 



This, he says, he "absolutely refused", though he had "two 

 messages from the Pretender's son, and one from their Duke of 

 Perth, for that purpose". The prince, however, though he may 

 have sent a similar message to the vicar of Brampton, would 

 probably bear him no malice, even if he did pray for King George; 

 for when urged in Edinburgh to punish Mr. McVicar, minister of 

 the West church, for not only praying for King George, but for 

 stoutly asserting his right to the throne, he replied that "the man 

 was an honest fool, and he would not have him disturbed". Most 

 persons will probably say, with Sir Walter Scott, that they "do 

 not know whether it was out of gratitude for this immunity" that 

 Mr. McVicar, on the following Sunday, after praying as usual for 

 King George, continued : " As to this young person who has come 

 among us seeking an earthly crown, do Thou, in Thy great mercy, 

 grant him an heavenly one" {Tales of a Grandfather, ch. Ixxix). 



Some accounts of the '45 represent the prince as having made 

 his entry into Carlisle on November 17. But it is clearly shown 

 by his household book that he spent that Sunday in Brampton. It 

 may therefore have been on that day that he received the keys of 

 Carlisle from the deputy-mayor and the corporation. The late 

 Mr. G. Hetherington, of Brampton, who died in 188 1, aged eighty- 

 three, told me that he had often heard his grandmother, Elizabeth 

 Smith, who died in 1813, aged eighty-nine, describe the crowd 

 and commotion in High Cross Street, Brampton, on that 

 occasion. 



Among that crowd she said she well remembered having seen 

 one Margaret Ewing, a girl of sixteen, who had come with the 

 army from Scotland. That girls did accompany the army we 

 know h-om what is recorded as having happened at the crossing of 

 the river Esk, then much swollen from recent floods, on their way 

 back to Scotland : 



