About the author
Frank Moore was a journalist and Revolutionary historian. He published a number of books on the American Revolution during his career in the mid-19th century, including Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, Diary of the American Revolution and The Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution.
This song was transposed by a refugee, and intended for the loyalists without the lines, while D’Estaing was in Georgia; but it was not published until sometime after the French fleet had left the coast. It was adapted to the tune “The Cut-Purse,” and became very popular with the friends of royalty, during the latter part of the war.
The Old English Cause Knocks at Every Man’s Door
THE old English cause knocks at every man’s door,
And bids-him stand up for religion and right;
It addresses the rich as well as the poor;
And fair liberty, bids them, like Englishmen fight.
And suffer no wrong,
From a rebel throng,
Who, if they’re not quelled, will enslave us ere long;
Most bravely then let us our liberty prize,
Nor suffer the Congress to blind all our eyes;
Or each rebel cut-purse, will soon give us law,
For they are as bad as a Tyler or Straw.
From France, D’Estaing to America has come.
The French banditti will rob our estates;
These robbers -are all protected by Rome;*
Consult but their annals, record but their dates,
It’s their politics
To burn heretics,
Or poison by water that’s fetch’d from the Styx.
Let Frenchified rebels, in vain then attempt
To bring our own church, or our king to contempt;
For no rebel cut-purse shall e’er give us law,
Should they prove as daring as Tyler or Straw.
The farces of Rome, with carrying her hosts,
Are laugh’d at and jeer’d by the learnèd and wise,
And all her thin tinsels apparently lost,
Her stories of relies, and sanctifled lies.
Each ignorant joke
Believe, or you smoke,
And if we are conquer’d we receive the Pope’s yoke;
But despising the counsels of Adams and Lee,
As loyal Americans, we’ll die or be free.
For no rebel cut-throat shall e’er give us law,
Should they prove as daring as Tyler or Straw.
Let curses most vile, and anathemas roar,
Let half-ruin’d France, to the Pope tribute pay;
Britain’s thundering cannon, shall guard safe our shore;
Great George shall defend us, none else we’ll obey. Then France, join’d by Spain,
May labor in vain,
For soon the Havana shall be ours again.
The French then will scamper and quit every state,
And find themselves bubbled, when morbleu it’s too late.
For no Frenchman, or rebel imp of the law,
In our old constitution can point out a flaw.
- *These robbers are all protected by Rome. The loyal writers used every effort to frighten the patriots into a return to their allegiance to the king of Great Britain. Among these, they pictured the supremacy of the Pope as a sure consequence upon the success of the French in America, and invented many absurd stories about the “inevitable destruction of life, liberty and property, that must ensue if the rebel Congress should have its sway.” The following appeared in Rivington’s Gazette: “The clergy and selectmen of Boston paraded through the streets after a crucifix, and joined in a procession in praying for a departed soul out of purgatory; and for this, they gave the example of Congress, and other American leaders, on a former occasion at Philadelphia, some of whom in the height of their zeal, even went so far as to sprinkle themselves with what they call holy water.”At another time Rivington published: “On the receipt of the last manifesto from the English commissioners, one of the Congress had the resolution to make the following short speech: ‘I have listened to this manifesto with great attention, and am not ashamed to acknowledge that it breathes a spirit of candor and resolution by which I am considerably influenced. No man in this august assembly will dare to express a doubt of my sincere attachment to the true interest of my country. I am convinced that the interest of America is inseparable from that of Britain, and that our alliance with France is unnatural, unprofitable, and absurd. I therefore move that this phantom of Independence may be given up.’
“He had hardly uttered the words before the president sent a messenger to fetch the Polish Count Pulaski, who happened to be exercising a part of his legion in the court-yard below. The Count flew to the chamber where the Congress sat, and with his sabre in an instant severed from his body the head of this honest delegate. The head was ordered by the Congress to be fixed on the top of the liberty pole of Philadelphia, as a perpetual monument of the freedom of debate in the Continental Congress of the United States of America.”
