The statue in London had an extremely long history of its making. The statue was ordered for St James’s Square in 1697 and eventually commissioned to Henry Cheere in 1739. He produced a lead statue, but for unknown reasons this was not installed. It could be that this was the statue that he later sold to Petersfield. It was not until 1794 that this statue in London was commissioned to John Bacon, who most probably designed the statue that was produced by his son John Bacon junior after the death of John senior. Under one of the horse’s hooves is the molehill that indirectly led to William’s death. For the Jacobites, this was a reason to raise a toast to the ‘Gentleman in Black Velvet’.
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