George the Second, at St. James’s, began to reconsider his position at hearing of this signal failure of his sworn protectors, and many excellent, though time-serving, people in high places began to explain away the disagreeable things they had said of the Stuarts. But in a few weeks, as we know, the Highlanders were retreating; and, trimming their sails anew, politicians and witlings were repeating again their protestations of loyalty to the House of Hanover, and refurbishing that old quotation from Revelation, chapter xvii. verse 11, first current in 1715, by which they affected to believe that James the Second of England and Seventh of Scotland, and his son, the Pretender (_de jure_ James the Third and Eighth) were the subjects of prophecy: “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.”
An ingenious find, it must be allowed, and sufficient, providing no one else could refer to Revelation and find another quotation, a little destructive of the first. But such an one was actually to hand in the preceding verse, which very curiously says, “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” There were those excellent Whigs who, reading this, were not entirely happy until events demonstrated that the rebellion was absolutely hopeless.
The Duke of Cumberland with ease retook the city, and captured with it Prince Charlie’s devoted rear-guard: the brave Colonel Townely and his 120 men of the Manchester Regiment, together with over two hundred Highlanders, and some few Frenchmen. They were lodged in the Cathedral, and thence taken in a long melancholy procession to London, there, according to their degree, to be beheaded as gentlemen, or hanged like common malefactors. They rode, tied hand and foot, or walked, roped together, the whole bitter way.
The Duke was not greatly impressed with the military value of the castle. He called it “an old hen-coop,” but it held securely enough the other miserable prisoners who were sent into Carlisle after Culloden. Four hundred of them awaited their doom in the grim dungeons, throughout the hot weather of 1746, and in October the executions began. Ninety-six fell to the hangman, and others were transported beyond seas. In batches of half-a-dozen or a dozen at a time, they were called forth from their captivity and drawn on hurdles to that Hanoverian Golgotha, Gallows Hill, south of the city, where they were hanged and afterwards quartered, in the bloody-minded old way; their heads afterwards set upon poles over the Scotch Gate.