DEFEAT OF COPE.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, Sept. 27, 1745.

I can’t doubt but the joy of the Jacobites has reached Florence before this letter.  Your two or three Irish priests, I forget their names, will have set out to take possession of abbey lands here.  I feel for what you will feel, and for the insulting things that will be said to you upon the battle we lost in Scotland; but all this is nothing to what it prefaces.  The express came hither on Tuesday morning, but the Papists knew it on Sunday night.  Cope lay in face of the rebels all Friday; he scarce two thousand strong, they vastly superior, though we don’t know their numbers.  The military people say that he should have attacked them.  However, we are sadly convinced that they are not such raw ragamuffins as they were represented.  The rotation that has been established in that country, to give all the Highlanders the benefit of serving in the independent companies, has trained and disciplined them.  Macdonald (I suppose, he from Naples), who is reckoned a very experienced able officer, is said to have commanded them, and to be dangerously wounded.  One does not hear the Boy’s personal valour cried up; by which I conclude he was not in the action.  Our dragoons most shamefully fled without striking a blow, and are with Cope, who escaped in a boat to Berwick.  I pity poor him, who with no shining abilities, and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight for a crown!  He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he got his red ribbon:  Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to his misfortune.  We have lost all our artillery, five hundred men taken—­and three killed, and several officers, as you will see in the papers.  This defeat has frightened everybody but those it rejoices, and those it should frighten most; but my Lord Granville still buoys up the King’s spirits, and persuades him it is nothing.  He uses his Ministers as ill as possible, and discourages everybody that would risk their lives and fortunes with him.  Marshal Wade is marching against the rebels; but the King will not let him take above eight thousand men; so that if they come into England, another battle, with no advantage on our side, may determine our fate.  Indeed, they don’t seem so unwise as to risk their cause upon so precarious an event; but rather to design to establish themselves in Scotland, till they can be supported from France, and be set up with taking Edinburgh Castle, where there is to the value of a million, and which they would make a stronghold.  It is scarcely victualled for a month, and must surely fall into their hands.  Our coasts are greatly guarded, and London kept in awe by the arrival of the guards.  I don’t believe what I have been told this morning, that more troops are sent for from Flanders, and aid asked of Denmark.