In a word, my master was a writer of Newsletters, and in that capacity
possessed of so excellent a style and so great a connection in the
Western Counties that, as he was wont to boast, there was hardly a
squire or rector from Bristol to Dawlish that did not owe what he knew
of His Majesty's gout, or Mr. Dryden's last play, to his weekly
epistles. The Popish Plot which had cost the lives of Lord Stafford
and so many of his persuasion, no less than the Rye House Plot, which
by placing the Whigs at the mercy of the Government had at once
afforded those their revenge, and illustrated the ups and downs of
court life, had given so sharp a stimulus to the appetite for news,
that of late he had found himself unable to cope with it. In this
unsettled condition, and meditating changes which should belittle Sir
Roger and _The London Mercury_, and oust print from the field, he fell
in with me; and where another man would have selected a bachelor whose
cassock and scarf might commend him at Wills' or Childs', his
eccentric kindness snatched me from the gutter, and set me on a tall
stool, there to write all day for the delectation of country houses
and mayors' parlours.
I remember that at first it seemed to me so easy a trick (this noting
the news of the day in plain round hand) that I wondered they paid him
to do it, more than another. But besides that I then had knowledge of
one side of the business only, I mean the framing the news, but none
of the manner in which it was collected at Garraway's and the Cockpit,
the Sessions House, the Mall, and the Gallery at Whitehall. I
presently learned that even of the share that fell to my lot I knew
only as much as a dog that turns the spit knows of the roasting of
meat. For when my employer, finding me docile and industrious--as I
know I was, being thankful for such a haven, and crushed in spirit not
only by the dangers through which I had passed, but also by my
mistress's treachery--when I say, he left me one day to my devices,
merely skimming through a copy and leaving me to multiply it, with,
for sole guide, the list of places to which the letters were to go, as
Bridgewater, Whig; Bath, Tory; Bridport, Tory; Taunton, Whig; Frome,
Whig; Lyme, Whig, and so on, I came very far short of success. True,
when he returned in the evening I had my packets ready and neatly
prepared for the mail, which then ran to the West thrice a week and
left next morning; and I had good hopes that he would send them
untouched. But great was my dismay when he fell into a rage over the
first he picked up, and asked me bluntly if I was quite a fool.
I stammered some answer, and asked in confusion what was the matter.
"Everything," he said. "Here, let me see! Why, you dolt and
dunderhead, you have sent letters in identical terms to Frome and
Bridport."
"Yes," I said faintly.
"But the one is Whig and the other is Tory!" he cried.
"But the news, sir," I made bold to answer, "is the same."
"Is it?" he cried in fine contempt. "Why you are a natural! I thought
you had learned something by this time. Here, where is the Frome
letter? '"_The London Gazette_" _announces that His Majesty has been
graciously pleased to reward my Lord Rochester's services at the
Treasury Board by raising him to the dignity of Lord President of the
Council, an elevation which renders necessary his resignation of his
seat at the Board_.' Tut-tut! That is the Court tone. Here, out with
it, and write:--
"'_The Earl of Rochester's removal from the Treasury Board to the
Presidency of the Council, which is announced in_ "_The Gazette_," _is
very well understood. His lordship made what resistance he could, but
the facts Were plain, and the King could do no otherwise. Rumour has
it that the sum lost to the country in the manner already hinted
exceeds fifty thousand guineas_.'
"There, what comes next? '_Letters from the Continent have it that
strong recommendations have been made to the Court at the Hague to
dismiss the D---- of M----, and it is confidently expected that the
next packet will bring the news of his departure_.' Pooh, out with it.
Write this:--
"'_The D---- of M---- is still at the Hague, where he is being
sumptuously entertained. Much is made of His Majesty's anger, but the
D---- is well supplied with money from an unknown source, which some
take to be significant. At a ball given by their Highnesses on the
eleventh, he danced an English country dance with the Lady Mary,
wherein his grace and skill won all hearts_.'
"That is better. And now what next? '_This day an Ambassador from the
King of Siam in the East Indies waited on His Majesty with great marks
of respect_.' Umph! Well leave it, but add, 'Ah, _si sic propius_.'
"And then, '_There are rumours that His Majesty intends to call a
parliament shortly, in which plan he is hindered only by the state of
his gout_.'
"Out with that and write this:--'_In the city is much murmuring that a
parliament is not called. Though His Majesty has not played lately at
tennis, he showed himself yesterday in Hyde Park, so that some who
maintain his health to be the cause deserve no weight. In his company
were His Highness the Duke of York and the French Ambassador_.'
"There, you fool," my master continued, flinging two-thirds of the
packets back to me. "You will have to amend these, and another time
you will know better."
Which showed me that I had still something to learn; and that as there
are tricks in all trades, so Mr. Timothy Brome, the writer, did not
enjoy without reason the reputation of the most popular newsvendor in
London. But as I addressed myself to the business with zeal, I
presently began to acquire a mastery over his methods; and my
knowledge of public affairs growing with each day's work, as in such
an employment it could not fail to grow, I was able before very long
to take the composition of the letters in a great measure off his
hands; leaving him free to walk Change Alley and the coffee-houses,
where his snuff-coloured suit and snappish wit were as well known as
his secret charity was little suspected.
In private, indeed, he was of so honest a disposition, his faults of
temper notwithstanding, as to cause me at first some surprise; since I
fancied an incompatibility between this and the laxity of his public
views; which he carried so far that he was not only a political
skeptic himself, but held all others to be the same; maintaining that
the best public men were only of this or that colour because it suited
their pockets or ambitions, and that, of all, he respected most Lord
Halifax and his party, who at least trimmed openly, and never cried
loudly for either extreme.
But as his actions in other matters bettered his professions, so I
presently found that in this too he belied himself; which was made
clear when he came to the test. For the death of King Charles the
Second occurring soon after I came to serve him--so soon that I still
winced when my former life was probed, and hated a woman and trembled
at sight of a constable, and wondered if this were really _I_,
who went to and fro daily from my garret in Bride Lane to St.
Dunstan's--the death, I say, of the King occurring just at that time,
we were speedily overwhelmed by a rush of events so momentous and
following so quickly one on another that they threw the old see-saw of
Court and Country off its balance; and upset with it the minds of many
who had hitherto clung firmly to a party. For the King had been
scarcely laid very quietly--some thought, meanly--in his grave and the
Duke of York been proclaimed by the title of James the Second, when
those who had fled the country in the last reign, either after the Rye
House Plot, or later with Monmouth, returned and kindled two great
insurrections, that of the Marquess of Argyle in the north, and that
of the Duke of Monmouth in the west. Occurring almost simultaneously,
it was wonderful to see how, in spite of the cry of a Popish King, and
the Protestant religion in danger, which the rebels everywhere raised,
these outbreaks rallied all prudent folk to the King; whose popularity
never, before or afterwards, stood so high as on the day of the battle
of Sedgmoor.
And doubtless he might have retained the confidence and affection of
his people, and by these means attained to the utmost of his
legitimate wishes--I mean the relief of the papists from penal clauses
if not from civil disabilities--had he gone about it discreetly, and
with the moderation which so delicate a matter required. But in the
outset the severity with which the western rebels were punished, both
by the military after the rout and by the Lord Chief Justice at the
Assizes which followed, gave check to his popularity; and thenceforth
for three years all went one way. The Test Acts, abrogated at the
first in a case here and there (yet ominously in such, in particular,
as favoured the admission of papists to the army), were presently
nullified, with other acts of a like character, by a general
declaration of indulgence; and that, to the disgust of the clergy, to
be read in the churches. To this main assault on the passive obedience
which the Church had so often preached, and to which it still fondly
clung, were added innumerable meaner attacks perhaps more humiliating;
as the expulsion of the Protestant Fellows from Magdalene College,
the conversion of University College into a Romish Seminary, and
the dismissal of my Lords Rochester and Clarendon, the King's
brothers-in-law, from all their places because--as was everywhere
rumoured--they would not resign the creed in which they had been born.
It were long to recount all the other errors into which the King fell;
but I may lay stress on the dissolution of a most loyal Parliament,
because it would not legalise his measures; on the open and shameless
attempt to pack its successor, on the corruption of the Judges, and on
the trial of the seven bishops for sedition. It were shorter and
equally to the point to say that an administration conducted for three
years on these lines, sufficed not only to sap the patient loyalty of
the nation, but to rouse from its rest the political conscience of my
employer. Mr. Brome, after much muttering and many snappish
corrections and alterations, all tending (as I soon perceived) to
Whiggery, resigned, on the day the Fellows of Magdalene were expelled,
his time-honoured system of duplicity; and thenceforward, until the
end, issued the same letter to Tory squire and Whig borough alike.
What was more remarkable, and, had the King known, it might have
served his obstinate Majesty for a warning, we lost no patrons by the
step; but rather increased our readers; the whole nation by this time
being of one mind. When the end came therefore, and in answer to the
famous Invitation signed by the Seven, the Deliverer, as the Whig
party still love to call him, landed at Torbay, and with scarcely a
blow, and no life lost, entered London, there were few among those who
ruffled it in his train, as he rode to St. James's, who had done as
much to bring him to his throne as my master; though he, good honest
man, wore neither spurs nor sword, and stood humbly a-foot in the
mouth of an alley to see the show go by.