The life of alderman Julian.
“I now revisited England, and was born at London. My father was one of
the magistrates of that city. He had eleven children, of whom I was the
eldest. He had great success in trade, and grew extremely rich, but the
largeness of his family rendered it impossible for him to leave me
a fortune sufficient to live well on independent of business. I was
accordingly brought up to be a fishmonger, in which capacity I myself
afterwards acquired very considerable wealth.
“The same disposition of mind which in princes is called ambition is in
subjects named faction. To this temper I was greatly addicted from my
youth. I was, while a boy, a great partisan of prince John’s against his
brother Richard, during the latter’s absence in the holy war and in his
captivity. I was no more than one-and-twenty when I first began to make
political speeches in public, and to endeavor to foment disquietude and
discontent in the city. As I was pretty well qualified for this office,
by a great fluency of words, an harmonious accent, a graceful delivery,
and above all an invincible assurance, I had soon acquired some
reputation among the younger citizens, and some of the weaker and more
inconsiderate of a riper age. This, co-operating with my own natural
vanity, made me extravagantly proud and supercilious. I soon began to
esteem myself a man of some consequence, and to overlook persons every
way my superiors.
“The famous Robin Hood, and his companion Little John, at this time made
a considerable figure in Yorkshire. I took upon me to write a letter
to the former, in the name of the city, inviting him to come to London,
where I assured him of very good reception, signifying to him my own
great weight and consequence, and how much I had disposed the citizens
in his favor. Whether he received this letter or no I am not certain;
but he never gave me any answer to it.
“A little afterwards one William Fitz-Osborn, or, as he was nicknamed,
William Long-Beard, began to make a figure in the city. He was a bold
and an impudent fellow, and had raised himself to great popularity with
the rabble, by pretending to espouse their cause against the rich. I
took this man’s part, and made a public oration in his favor, setting
him forth as a patriot, and one who had embarked in the cause
of liberty: for which service he did not receive me with the
acknowledgments I expected. However, as I thought I should easily gain
the ascendant over this fellow, I continued still firm on his side, till
the archbishop of Canterbury, with an armed force, put an end to his
progress: for he was seized in Bowchurch, where he had taken refuge, and
with nine of his accomplices hanged in chains.
“I escaped narrowly myself; for I was seized in the same church with the
rest, and, as I had been very considerably engaged in the enterprise,
the archbishop was inclined to make me an example; but my father’s
merit, who had advanced a considerable sum to queen Eleanor towards the
king’s ransom, preserved me.
“The consternation my danger had occasioned kept me some time quiet, and
I applied myself very assiduously to my trade. I invented all manner
of methods to enhance the price of fish, and made use of my utmost
endeavors to engross as much of the business as possible in my own
hands. By these means I acquired a substance which raised me to some
little consequence in the city, but far from elevating me to that degree
which I had formerly flattered myself with possessing at a time when
I was totally insignificant; for, in a trading society, money must at
least lay the foundation of all power and interest.
“But as it hath been remarked that the same ambition which sent
Alexander into Asia brings the wrestler on the green; and as this same
ambition is as incapable as quicksilver of lying still; so I, who was
possessed perhaps of a share equal to what hath fired the blood of any
of the heroes of antiquity, was no less restless and discontented
with ease and quiet. My first endeavors were to make myself head of
my company, which Richard I had just published, and soon afterwards I
procured myself to be chosen alderman.
“Opposition is the only state which can give a subject an opportunity of
exerting the disposition I was possessed of. Accordingly, king John
was no sooner seated on his throne than I began to oppose his measures,
whether right or wrong. It is true that monarch had faults enow. He was
so abandoned to lust and luxury, that he addicted himself to the most
extravagant excesses in both, while he indolently suffered the king of
France to rob him of almost all his foreign dominions: my opposition
therefore was justifiable enough, and if my motive from within had been
as good as the occasion from without I should have had little to excuse;
but, in truth, I sought nothing but my own preferment, by making myself
formidable to the king, and then selling to him the interest of that
party by whose means I had become so. Indeed, had the public good been
my care, however zealously I might have opposed the beginning of his
reign, I should not have scrupled to lend him my utmost assistance in
this struggle between him and pope Innocent the third, in which he was
so manifestly in the right; nor have suffered the insolence of that
pope, and the power of the king of France, to have compelled him in
the issue, basely to resign his crown into the hands of the former, and
receive it again as a vassal; by means of which acknowledgment the pope
afterwards claimed this kingdom as a tributary fief to be held of
the papal chair; a claim which occasioned great uneasiness to many
subsequent princes, and brought numberless calamities on the nation.
“As the king had, among other concessions, stipulated to pay an
immediate sum of money to Pandulph, which he had great difficulty to
raise, it was absolutely necessary for him to apply to the city, where
my interest and popularity were so high that he had no hopes without my
assistance. As I knew this, I took care to sell myself and country
as high as possible. The terms I demanded, therefore, were a place, a
pension, and a knighthood. All those were immediately consented to. I
was forthwith knighted, and promised the other two.
“I now mounted the hustings, and, without any regard to decency or
modesty, made as emphatical a speech in favor of the king as before
I had done against him. In this speech I justified all those measures
which I had before condemned, and pleaded as earnestly with my
fellow-citizens to open their purses, as I had formerly done to prevail
with them to keep them shut. But, alas! my rhetoric had not the effect
I proposed. The consequence of my arguments was only contempt to
myself. The people at first stared on one another, and afterwards began
unanimously to express their dislike. An impudent fellow among
them, reflecting on my trade, cried out, ‘Stinking fish;’ which was
immediately reiterated through the whole crowd. I was then forced to
slink away home; but I was not able to accomplish my retreat without
being attended by the mob, who huzza’d me along the street with the
repeated cries of ‘Stinking fish.’
“I now proceeded to court, to inform his majesty of my faithful service,
and how much I had suffered in his cause. I found by my first reception
he had already heard of my success. Instead of thanking me for my
speech, he said the city should repent of their obstinacy, for that he
would show them who he was: and so saying, he immediately turned that
part to me to which the toe of man hath so wonderful an affection, that
it is very difficult, whenever it presents itself conveniently, to keep
our toes from the most violent and ardent salutation of it.
“I was a little nettled at this behavior, and with some earnestness
claimed the king’s fulfilling his promise; but he retired without
answering me. I then applied to some of the courtiers, who had lately
professed great friendship to me, had eat at my house, and invited me to
theirs: but not one would return me any answer, all running away from me
as if I had been seized with some contagious distemper. I now found by
experience, that as none can be so civil, so none can be ruder than a
courtier.
“A few moments after the king’s retiring I was left alone in the room to
consider what I should do or whither I should turn myself. My reception
in the city promised itself to be equal at least with what I found at
court. However, there was my home, and thither it was necessary I should
retreat for the present.
“But, indeed, bad as I apprehended my treatment in the city would be,
it exceeded my expectation. I rode home on an ambling pad through crowds
who expressed every kind of disregard and contempt; pelting me not
only with the most abusive language, but with dirt. However, with much
difficulty I arrived at last at my own house, with my bones whole, but
covered over with filth.
“When I was got within my doors, and had shut them against the mob, who
had pretty well vented their spleen, and seemed now contented to retire,
my wife, whom I found crying over her children, and from whom I
had hoped some comfort in my afflictions, fell upon me in the most
outrageous manner. She asked me why I would venture on such a step,
without consulting her; she said her advice might have been civilly
asked, if I was resolved not to have been guided by it. That, whatever
opinion I might have conceived of her understanding, the rest of the
world thought better of it. That I had never failed when I had asked
her counsel, nor ever succeeded without it;--with much more of the
same kind, too tedious to mention; concluding that it was a monstrous
behavior to desert my party and come over to the court.
“An abuse which I took worse than all the rest, as she had been
constantly for several years assiduous in railing at the opposition,
in siding with the court-party, and begging me to come over to it; and
especially after my mentioning the offer of knighthood to her, since
which time she had continually interrupted my repose with dinning in
my ears the folly of refusing honors and of adhering to a party and to
principles by which I was certain of procuring no advantage to myself
and my family.
“I had now entirely lost my trade, so that I had not the least
temptation to stay longer in a city where I was certain of receiving
daily affronts and rebukes. I therefore made up my affairs with the
utmost expedition, and, scraping together all I could, retired into the
country, where I spent the remainder of my days in universal contempt,
being shunned by everybody, perpetually abused by my wife, and not much
respected by my children.
“Minos told me, though I had been a very vile fellow, he thought my
sufferings made some atonement, and so bid me take the other trial.”