Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to a living

sufficient to support him; but he often found it necessary to purchase

his preferment by a species of Simony, which furnished an inexhaustible

subject of pleasantry to three or four generations of scoffers. With his

cure he was expected to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the

patron's service; and it was well if she was not suspected of standing

too high in the patron's favor. Indeed the nature of the matrimonial

connections which the clergymen of that age were in the habit of forming

is the most certain indication of the place which the order held in

the social system. An Oxonian, writing a few months after the death

of Charles the Second, complained bitterly, not only that the country

attorney and the country apothecary looked down with disdain on the

country clergyman but that one of the lessons most earnestly inculcated

on every girl of honourable family was to give no encouragement to a

lover in orders, and that, if any young lady forgot this precept, she

was almost as much disgraced as by an illicit amour. [80] Clarendon, who

assuredly bore no ill will to the priesthood, mentions it as a sign of

the confusion of ranks which the great rebellion had produced, that some

damsels of noble families had bestowed themselves on divines. [81] A

waiting woman was generally considered as the most suitable helpmate for

a parson. Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had given what seemed

to be a formal sanction to this prejudice, by issuing special orders

that no clergyman should presume to espouse a servant girl, without

the consent of the master or mistress. [82] During several generations

accordingly the relation between divines and handmaidens was a theme

for endless jest; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of the

seventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse

above the rank of cook. [83] Even so late as the time of George the

Second, the keenest of all observers of life and manners, himself

a priest, remarked that, in a great household, the chaplain was the

resource of a lady's maid whose character had been blown upon, and who

was therefore forced to give up hopes of catching the steward. [84]

In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a benefice and

a wife found that he had only exchanged one class of vexations for

another. Hardly one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up

a family comfortably. As children multiplied end grew, the household of

the priest became more and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more

plainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Often

it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by loading

dungcarts, that he could obtain daily bread; nor did his utmost

exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his concordance and

his inkstand in execution. It was a white day on which he was admitted

into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the servants with

cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the children of the

neighbouring peasantry. His boys followed the plough; and his girls went

out to service. [85] Study he found impossible: for the advowson of his

living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a good

theological library; and he might be considered as unusually lucky if

he had ten or twelve dogeared volumes among the pots and pans on his

shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might be expected to rust in

so unfavourable a situation.

Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English Church of

ministers distinguished by abilities and learning But it is to be

observed that these ministers were not scattered among the rural

population. They were brought together at a few places where the means

of acquiring knowledge were abundant, and where the opportunities of

vigorous intellectual exercise were frequent. [86] At such places were

to be found divines qualified by parts, by eloquence, by wide knowledge

of literature, of science, and of life, to defend their Church

victoriously against heretics and sceptics, to command the attention

of frivolous and worldly congregations, to guide the deliberations of

senates, and to make religion respectable, even in the most dissolute

of courts. Some laboured to fathom the abysses of metaphysical theology:

some were deeply versed in biblical criticism; and some threw light

on the darkest parts of ecclesiastical history. Some proved themselves

consummate masters of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric with such

assiduity and success that their discourses are still justly valued as

models of style. These eminent men were to be found, with scarcely a

single exception, at the Universities, at the great Cathedrals, or in

the capital. Barrow had lately died at Cambridge; and Pearson had gone

thence to the episcopal bench. Cudworth and Henry More were still living

there. South and Pococke, Jane and Aldrich, were at Oxford, Prideaux was

in the close of Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But it

was chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a class

apart, that the fame of their profession for learning and eloquence was

upheld. The principal pulpits of the metropolis were occupied about this

time by a crowd of distinguished men, from among whom was selected a

large proportion of the rulers of the Church. Sherlock preached at the

Temple, Tillotson at Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's

Inn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at Saint Paul's Cathedral,

Patrick at Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fowler at Saint Giles's,

Cripplegate, Sharp at Saint Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at Saint

Martin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at Saint Peter's in

Cornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high note in ecclesiastical

history, ten became Bishops, and four Archbishops. Meanwhile almost the

only important theological works which came forth from a rural parsonage

were those of George Bull, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's; and Bull

never would have produced those works, had he not inherited an estate,

by the sale of which he was enabled to collect a library, such as

probably no other country clergyman in England possessed. [87]

Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections, which, in

acquirements, in manners, and in social position, differed widely from

each other. One section, trained for cities and courts, comprised men

familiar with all ancient and modern learning; men able to encounter

Hobbes or Bossuet at all the weapons of controversy; men who could, in

their sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with

such justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent

Charles roused himself to listen and the fastidious Buckingham forgot

to sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of the world

qualified them to manage the consciences of the wealthy and noble; men

with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from

whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write. [88]

The other section was destined to ruder and humbler service. It was

dispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons not at

all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upper

servants. Yet it was in these rustic priests, who derived but a scanty

subsistence from their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not the

smallest chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that the

professional spirit was strongest. Among those divines who were the

boast of the Universities and the delight of the capital, and who had

attained, or might reasonably expect to attain, opulence and lordly

rank, a party, respectable in numbers, and more respectable in

character, leaned towards constitutional principles of government, lived

on friendly terms with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, would

gladly have seen a full toleration granted to all Protestant sects, and

would even have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the

purpose of conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But such

latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson. He took,

indeed, more pride in his ragged gown than his superiors in their lawn

and their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness that there was little in

his worldly circumstances to distinguish him from the villagers to

whom he preached led him to hold immoderately high the dignity of that

sacerdotal office which was his single title to reverence. Having

lived in seclusion, and having had little opportunity of correcting his

opinions by reading or conversation, he held and taught the doctrines

of indefeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience, and of

nonresistance, in all their crude absurdity. Having been long engaged in

a petty war against the neighbouring dissenters, he too often hated them

for the wrong which he had done them, and found no fault with the Five

Mile Act and the Conventicle Act, except that those odious laws had not

a sharper edge. Whatever influence his office gave him was exerted with

passionate zeal on the Tory side; and that influence was immense. It

would be a great error to imagine, because the country rector was in

general not regarded as a gentleman, because he could not dare to aspire

to the hand of one of the young ladies at the manor house, because he

was not asked into the parlours of the great, but was left to drink and

smoke with grooms and butlers, that the power of the clerical body

was smaller than at present. The influence of a class is by no means

proportioned to the consideration which the members of that class

enjoy in their individual capacity. A Cardinal is a much more exalted

personage than a begging friar: but it would be a grievous mistake to

suppose that the College of Cardinals has exercised greater dominion

over the public mind of Europe than the Order of Saint Francis. In

Ireland, at present, a peer holds a far higher station in society than

a Roman Catholic priest: yet there are in Munster and Connaught few

counties where a combination of priests would not carry an election

against a combination of peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpit

was to a large portion of the population what the periodical press now

is. Scarce any of the clowns who came to the parish church ever saw a

Gazette or a political pamphlet. Ill informed as their spiritual pastor

might be, he was yet better informed than themselves: he had every

week an opportunity of haranguing them; and his harangues were never

answered. At every important conjuncture, invectives against the Whigs

and exhortations to obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once from many

thousands of pulpits; and the effect was formidable indeed. Of all the

causes which, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, produced

the violent reaction against the Exclusionists, the most potent seems to

have been the oratory of the country clergy.

The power which the country gentleman and the country clergyman

exercised in the rural districts was in some measure counterbalanced by

the power of the yeomanry, an eminently manly and truehearted race. The

petty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands,

and enjoyed a modest competence, without affecting to have scutcheons

and crests, or aspiring to sit on the bench of justice, then formed a

much more important part of the nation than at present. If we may trust

the best statistical writers of that age, not less than a hundred and

sixty thousand proprietors, who with their families must have made up

more than a seventh of the whole population, derived their subsistence

from little freehold estates. The average income of these small

landholders, an income mace up of rent, profit, and wages, was estimated

at between sixty and seventy pounds a year. It was computed that the

number of persons who tilled their own land was greater than the number

of those who farmed the land of others. [89] A large portion of

the yeomanry had, from the time of the Reformation, leaned towards

Puritanism, had, in the civil war, taken the side of the Parliament,

had, after the Restoration, persisted in hearing Presbyterian and

Independent preachers, had, at elections, strenuously supported the

Exclusionists and had continued even after the discovery of the Rye

House plot and the proscription of the Whig leaders, to regard Popery

and arbitrary power with unmitigated hostility.

Great as has been the change in the rural life of England since the

Revolution, the change which has come to pass in the cities is still

more amazing. At present above a sixth part of the nation is crowded

into provincial towns of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. In the

reign of Charles the second no provincial town in the kingdom contained

thirty thousand inhabitants; and only four provincial towns contained so

many as ten thousand inhabitants.

Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood Bristol,

then the first English seaport, and Norwich, then the first English

manufacturing town. Both have since that time been far outstripped

by younger rivals; yet both have made great positive advances. The

population of Bristol has quadrupled. The population of Norwich has more

than doubled.

Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration, was struck

by the splendour of the city. But his standard was not high; for he

noted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in Bristol, a man might

look round him and see nothing but houses. It seems that, in no other

place with which he was acquainted, except London, did the buildings

completely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then

appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it

now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth

of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or

a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged

between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars.

Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in

trucks drawn by dogs; and the richest inhabitants exhibited their

wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by walking the streets

with trains of servants in rich liveries, and by keeping tables loaded

with good cheer. The pomp of the christenings and burials far exceeded

what was seen at any other place in England. The hospitality of the city

was widely renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugar

refiners regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the furnace,

and was accompanied by a rich beverage made of the best Spanish wine,

and celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol milk. This luxury was

supported by a thriving trade with the North American plantations and

with the West Indies. The passion for colonial traffic was so strong

that there was scarcely a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a

venture on board of some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Some

of these ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. There

was, in the Transatlantic possessions of the crown, a great demand for

labour; and this demand was partly supplied by a system of crimping and

kidnapping at the principal English seaports. Nowhere was this system

in such active and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the first

magistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich themselves by so

odious a commerce. The number of houses appears, from the returns of the

hearth money, to have been in the year 1685, just five thousand three

hundred. We can hardly suppose the number of persons in a house to have

been greater than in the city of London; and in the city of London we

learn from the best authority that there were then fifty-five persons

to ten houses. The population of Bristol must therefore have been about

twenty-nine thousand souls. [90]

Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It was the

residence of a Bishop and of a Chapter. It was the chief seat of the

chief manufacture of the realm. Some men distinguished by learning and

science had recently dwelt there and no place in the kingdom, except the

capital and the Universities, had more attractions for the curious. The

library, the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas

Browne, were thought by Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a

long pilgrimage. Norwich had also a court in miniature. In the heart

of the city stood an old palace of the Dukes of Norfolk, said to be the

largest town house in the kingdom out of London. In this mansion, to

which were annexed a tennis court, a bowling green, and a wilderness

stretching along the banks of the Wansum, the noble family of

Howard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling that of petty

sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets of pure gold. The very

tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures by Italian masters adorned

the walls. The cabinets were filled with a fine collection of gems

purchased by that Earl of Arundel whose marbles are now among the

ornaments of Oxford. Here, in the year 1671, Charles and his court were

sumptuously entertained. Here, too, all comers were annually welcomed,

from Christmas to Twelfth Night. Ale flowed in oceans for the populace.

Three coaches, one of which had been built at a cost of five hundred

pounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every afternoon round

the city to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances were always

followed by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of Norfolk came to

Norwich, he was greeted like a King returning to his capital. The bells

of the Cathedral and of St. Peter Mancroft were rung: the guns of

the castle were fired; and the Mayor and Aldermen waited on their

illustrious fellow citizen with complimentary addresses. In the year

1693 the population of Norwich was found by actual enumeration, to be

between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls. [91]

Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and importance, were some

other ancient capitals of shires. In that age it was seldom that a

country gentleman went up with his family to London. The county town was

his metropolis. He sometimes made it his residence during part of the

year. At all events, he was often attracted thither by business and

pleasure, by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters of militia,

festivals, and races. There were the halls where the judges, robed

in scarlet and escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the King's

commission twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the

cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were exposed

to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants came clown from

London, and where the rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar,

stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There were the shops at which the best

families of the neighbourhood bought grocery and millinery. Some of

these places derived dignity from interesting historical recollections,

from cathedrals decorated by all the art and magnificence of the middle

ages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates had dwelt, from

closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans and canons, and from

castles which had in the old time repelled the Nevilles or de Veres, and

which bore more recent traces of the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell.

Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, the capital

of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west. Neither can have

contained much more than ten thousand inhabitants. Worcester, the queen

of the cider land had but eight thousand; Nottingham probably as many.

Gloucester, renowned for that resolute defence which had been fatal to

Charles the First, had certainly between four and five thousand; Derby

not quite four thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief place of an extensive

and fertile district. The Court of the Marches of Wales was held there.

In the language of the gentry many miles round the Wrekin, to go to

Shrewsbury was to go to town. The provincial wits and beauties imitated,

as well as they could, the fashions of Saint James's Park, in the walks

along the side of the Severn. The inhabitants were about seven thousand.

[92]

The population of every one of these places has, since the Revolution,

much more than doubled. The population of some has multiplied sevenfold.

The streets have been almost entirely rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to

thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display

of wealth in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the

dwellings occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, have

seemed miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals of

counties by no means what it was. Younger towns, towns which are

rarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent no

representatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory

of persons still living, grown to a greatness which this generation

contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied by awe and

anxiety.

The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the seventeenth

century as respectable seats of industry. Nay, their rapid progress

and their vast opulence were then sometimes described in language which

seems ludicrous to a man who has seen their present grandeur. One of the

most populous and prosperous among them was Manchester. Manchester

had been required by the Protector to send one representative to his

Parliament, and was mentioned by writers of the time of Charles the

Second as a busy and opulent place. Cotton had, during half a century,

been brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was in

its infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material might be

furnished in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had not yet taught

how it might be worked up with a speed and precision which seem magical.

The whole annual import did not, at the end of the seventeenth century,

amount to two millions of pounds, a quantity which would now hardly

supply the demand of forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, which

in population and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned as

Berlin, Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town

containing under six thousand people. It then had not a single press. It

now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then had not a single

coach. It now Supports twenty coach makers. [93]

Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures of

Yorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember the time

when the first brick house, then and long after called the Red House,

was built. They boasted loudly of their increasing wealth, and of the

immense sales of cloth which took place in the open air on the bridge.

Hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, had been paid down in the course of

one busy market day. The rising importance of Leeds had attracted

the notice of successive governments. Charles the First had granted

municipal privileges to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one

member to the House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth money

it seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an extensive

district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the reign of Charles

the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841 there were more than a

hundred and fifty thousand. [94]

About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild moorland

tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation, then barren and

unenclosed, which was known by the name of Hallamshire. Iron abounded

there; and, from a very early period, the rude whittles fabricated there

had been sold all over the kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned by

Geoffrey Chaucer in one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture

appears to have made little progress during the three centuries which

followed his time. This languor may perhaps be explained by the fact

that the trade was, during almost the whole of this long period, subject

to such regulations as the lord and his court feet thought fit to

impose. The more delicate kinds of cutlery were either made in the

capital or brought from the Continent. Indeed it was not till the reign

of George the First that the English surgeons ceased to import from

France those exquisitely fine blades which are required for operations

on the human frame. Most of the Hallamshire forges were collected in a

market town which had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and

which, in the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserable

place, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a third were

half starved and half naked beggars. It seems certain from the parochial

registers that the population did not amount to four thousand at the

end of the reign of Charles the Second. The effects of a species of toil

singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of the human frame were

at once discerned by every traveller. A large proportion of the

people had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with its

dependencies, contains a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and which

sends forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthest

ends of the world. [95]

Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance to return a

member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manufacturers of Birmingham were

already a busy and thriving race. They boasted that their hardware was

highly esteemed, not indeed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and

Timbuctoo, but in London, and even as far off as Ireland. They had

acquired a less honourable renown as coiners of bad money. In allusion

to their spurious groats, some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues,

who hypocritically affected zeal against Popery, the nickname of

Birminghams. Yet in 1685 the population, which is now little less

than two hundred thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birmingham

buttons were just beginning to be known: of Birmingham guns nobody had

yet heard; and the place whence, two generations later, the magnificent

editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all the librarians

of Europe, did not contain a single regular shop where a Bible or an

almanack could be bought. On Market days a bookseller named Michael

Johnson, the father of the great Samuel Johnson, came over from

Lichfield, and opened stall during a few hours. This supply of

literature was long found equal to the demand. [96]

These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve especial

mention. It would be tedious to enumerate all the populous and opulent

hives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago, were hamlets

without parish churches, or desolate moors, inhabited only by grouse and

wild deer. Nor has the change been less signal in those outlets by which

the products of the English looms and forges are poured forth over

the whole world. At present Liverpool contains more than three hundred

thousand inhabitants. The shipping registered at her port amounts to

between four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom house has

been repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice as great as

the whole income of the English crown in 1685. The receipts of her post

office, even since the great reduction of the duty, exceed the sum

which the postage of the whole kingdom yielded to the Duke of York. Her

endless docks, quays, and warehouses are among the wonders of the world.

Yet even those docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice for

the gigantic trade of the Mersey; and already a rival city is growing

fast on the opposite shore. In the days of Charles the Second Liverpool

was described as a rising town which had recently made great advances,

and which maintained a profitable intercourse with Ireland and with the

sugar colonies. The customs had multiplied eight-fold within sixteen

years, and amounted to what was then considered as the immense sum of

fifteen thousand pounds annually. But the population can hardly have

exceeded four thousand: the shipping was about fourteen hundred tons,

less than the tonnage of a single modern Indiaman of the first class,

and the whole number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be estimated

at more than two hundred. [97]

Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is created and

accumulated. Not less rapid has been the progress of towns of a

very different kind, towns in which wealth, created and accumulated

elsewhere, is expended for purposes of health and recreation. Some of

the most remarkable of these gay places have sprung into existence since

the time of the Stuarts. Cheltenham is now a greater city than any which

the kingdom contained in the seventeenth century, London alone excepted.

But in the seventeenth century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth,

Cheltenham was mentioned by local historians merely as a rural parish

lying under the Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground both for

tillage and pasture. Corn grew and cattle browsed over the space now

covered by that long succession of streets and villas. [98] Brighton was

described as a place which had once been thriving, which had possessed

many small fishing barks, and which had, when at the height of

prosperity, contained above two thousand inhabitants, but which was

sinking fast into decay. The sea was gradually gaining on the buildings,

which at length almost entirely disappeared. Ninety years ago the ruins

of an old fort were to be seen lying among the pebbles and seaweed

on the beach; and ancient men could still point out the traces of

foundations on a spot where a street of more than a hundred huts had

been swallowed up by the waves. So desolate was the place after this

calamity, that the vicarage was thought scarcely worth having. A few

poor fishermen, however, still continued to dry their nets on those

cliffs, on which now a town, more than twice as large and populous

as the Bristol of the Stuarts, presents, mile after mile, its gay and

fantastic front to the sea. [99]

England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century, destitute of

watering places. The gentry of Derbyshire and of the neighbouring

counties repaired to Buxton, where they were lodged in low rooms under

bare rafters, and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the hosts

called mutton, but which the guests suspected to be dog. A single good

house stood near the spring. [100] Tunbridge Wells, lying within a

day's journey of the capital, and in one of the richest and most highly

civilised parts of the kingdom, had much greater attractions. At present

we see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, have

ranked, in population, fourth or fifth among the towns of England. The

brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the private dwellings far

surpasses anything that England could then show. When the court, soon

after the Restoration, visited Tunbridge Wells, there was no town:

but, within a mile of the spring, rustic cottages, somewhat cleaner and

neater than the ordinary cottages of that time, were scattered over the

heath. Some of these cabins were movable and were carried on sledges

from one part of the common to another. To these huts men of fashion,

wearied with the din and smoke of London, sometimes came in the summer

to breathe fresh air, and to catch a glimpse of rural life. During the

season a kind of fair was daily held near the fountain. The wives and

daughters of the Kentish farmers came from the neighbouring villages

with cream, cherries, wheatears, and quails. To chaffer with them,

to flirt with them, to praise their straw hats and tight heels, was a

refreshing pastime to voluptuaries sick of the airs of actresses and

maids of honour. Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came down from London,

and opened a bazaar under the trees. In one booth the politician might

find his coffee and the London Gazette; in another were gamblers playing

deep at basset; and, on fine evenings, the fiddles were in attendance

and there were morris dances on the elastic turf of the bowling green.

In 1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who frequented

the wells for building a church, which the Tories, who then domineered

everywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint Charles the Martyr. [101]

But at the head of the English watering places, without a rival. was

Bath. The springs of that city had been renowned from the days of the

Romans. It had been, during many centuries, the seat of a Bishop. The

sick repaired thither from every part of the realm. The King sometimes

held his court there. Nevertheless, Bath was then a maze of only four or

five hundred houses, crowded within an old wall in the vicinity of the

Avon. Pictures of what were considered as the finest of those houses are

still extant, and greatly resemble the lowest rag shops and pothouses of

Ratcliffe Highway. Travellers indeed complained loudly of the narrowness

and meanness of the streets. That beautiful city which charms even eyes

familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio, and which the

genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen,

has made classic ground, had not begun to exist. Milsom Street itself

was an open field lying far beyond the walls; and hedgerows intersected

the space which is now covered by the Crescent and the Circus. The poor

patients to whom the waters had been recommended lay on straw in a place

which, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covert

rather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries which were to be

found in the interior of the houses of Bath by the fashionable visitors

who resorted thither in search of health or amusement, we possess

information more complete and minute than can generally be obtained

on such subjects. A writer who published an account of that city about

sixty years after the Revolution has accurately described the changes

which had taken place within his own recollection. He assures us that,

in his younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in

rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied

by footmen. The floors of the dining rooms were uncarpeted, and were

coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hide

the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiece

was of marble. A slab of common free-stone and fire irons which had cost

from three to four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace.

The best-apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were

furnished with rushbottomed chairs. Readers who take an interest in the

progress of civilisation and of the useful arts will be grateful to the

humble topographer who has recorded these facts, and will perhaps wish

that historians of far higher pretensions had sometimes spared a few

pages from military evolutions and political intrigues, for the purpose

of letting us know how the parlours and bedchambers of our ancestors

looked. [102]

The position of London, relatively to the other towns of the empire,

was, in the time of Charles the Second, far higher than at present. For

at present the population of London is little more than six times the

population of Manchester or of Liverpool. In the days of Charles the

Second the population of London was more than seventeen times the

population of Bristol or of Norwich. It may be doubted whether any other

instance can be mentioned of a great kingdom in which the first city

was more than seventeen times as large as the second. There is reason to

believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a century, the

most populous capital in Europe. The inhabitants, who are now at least

nineteen hundred thousand, were then probably little more shall half a

million. [103] London had in the world only one commercial rival, now

long ago outstripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. English writers

boasted of the forest of masts and yardarms which covered the river from

the Bridge to the Tower, and of the stupendous sums which were collected

at the Custom House in Thames Street. There is, indeed, no doubt that

the trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater proportion than at

present to the whole trade of the country; yet to our generation the

honest vaunting of our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. The

shipping which they thought incredibly great appears not to have

exceeded seventy thousand tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third

of the whole tonnage of the kingdom, but is now less than a fourth of

the tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of the

steam vessels of the Thames.

The customs of London amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred and

thirty thousand pounds a year. In our time the net duty paid annually,

at the same place, exceeds ten millions. [104]

Whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards the

close of the reign of Charles the Second will see that only the nucleus

of the present capital then existed. The town did not, as now, fade

by imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas,

embowered in lilacs and laburnums, extended from the great centre of

wealth and civilisation almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and far

into the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense

line of warehouses and artificial lakes which now stretches from the

Tower to Blackwall had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one

of those stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble and

wealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than

forty thousand human beings, was a quiet country village with about

a thousand inhabitants. [105] On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmen

wandered with dogs and guns, over the site of the borough of Marylebone,

and over far the greater part of the space now covered by the boroughs

of Finsbury and of the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude;

and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din and

turmoil of the monster London. [106] On the south the capital is

now connected with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior in

magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the Caesars. In 1685,

a single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy

houses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of

Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of the

river.

Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the most important

division. At the time of the Restoration it had been built, for the most

part, of wood and plaster; the few bricks that were used were ill baked;

the booths where goods were exposed to sale projected far into the

streets, and were overhung by the upper stories. A few specimens of this

architecture may still be seen in those districts which were not reached

by the great fire. That fire had, in a few days, covered a space of

little less shall a square mile with the ruins of eighty-nine churches

and of thirteen thousand houses. But the City had risen again with a

celerity which had excited the admiration of neighbouring countries.

Unfortunately, the old lines of the streets had been to a great extent

preserved; and those lines, originally traced in an age when even

princesses performed their journeys on horseback, were often too narrow

to allow wheeled carriages to pass each other with ease, and were

therefore ill adapted for the residence of wealthy persons in an age

when a coach and six was a fashionable luxury. The style of building

was, however, far superior to that of the City which had perished. The

ordinary material was brick, of much better quality than had formerly

been used. On the sites of the ancient parish churches had arisen a

multitude of new domes, towers, and spires which bore the mark of the

fertile genius of Wren. In every place save one the traces of the great

devastation had been completely effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the

scaffolds, and the masses of hewn stone were still to be seen where the

noblest of Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the Old

Cathedral of Saint Paul. [107]

The whole character of the City has, since that time, undergone a

complete change. At present the bankers, the merchants, and the chief

shopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every week for the

transaction of business; but they reside in other quarters of the

metropolis, or at suburban country seats surrounded by shrubberies

and flower gardens. This revolution in private habits has produced

a political revolution of no small importance. The City is no longer

regarded by the wealthiest traders with that attachment which every man

naturally feels for his home. It is no longer associated in their minds

with domestic affections and endearments. The fireside, the nursery,

the social table, the quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street and

Threadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and accumulate.

They go elsewhere to enjoy and to expend. On a Sunday, or in an evening

after the hours of business, some courts and alleys, which a few hours

before had been alive with hurrying feet and anxious faces, are as

silent as the glades of a forest. The chiefs of the mercantile interest

are no longer citizens. They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal

honours and duties. Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who,

though useful and highly respectable, seldom belong to the princely

commercial houses of which the names are renowned throughout the world.

In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's residence. Those

mansions of the great old burghers which still exist have been turned

into counting houses and warehouses: but it is evident that they were

originally not inferior in magnificence to the dwellings which were then

inhabited by the nobility. They sometimes stand in retired and gloomy

courts, and are accessible only by inconvenient passages: but their

dimensions are ample, and their aspect stately. The entrances are

decorated with richly carved pillars and canopies. The staircases and

landing places are not wanting in grandeur. The floors are sometimes of

wood tessellated after the fashion of France. The palace of Sir Robert

Clayton, in the Old Jewry, contained a superb banqueting room wainscoted

with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and giants in fresco. [108]

Sir Dudley North expended four thousand pounds, a sum which would then

have been important to a Duke, on the rich furniture of his reception

rooms in Basinghall Street. [109] In such abodes, under the last

Stuarts, the heads of the great firms lived splendidly and hospitably.

To their dwelling place they were bound by the strongest ties of

interest and affection. There they had passed their youth, had made

their friendships, had courted their wives had seen their children grow

up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and expected

that their own remains would be laid. That intense patriotism which is

peculiar to the members of societies congregated within a narrow space

was, in such circumstances, strongly developed. London was, to the

Londoner, what Athens was to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what

Florence was to the Florentine of the fifteenth century. The citizen

was proud of the grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims to

respect, ambitious of her offices, and zealous for her franchises.

At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of the

Londoners was smarting from a cruel mortification. The old charter had

been taken away; and the magistracy had been remodelled. All the civic

functionaries were Tories: and the Whigs, though in numbers and in

wealth superior to their opponents, found themselves excluded from every

local dignity. Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipal

government was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this change.

For, under the administration of some Puritans who had lately borne

rule, the ancient fame of the City for good cheer had declined: but

under the new magistrates, who belonged to a more festive party, and

at whose boards guests of rank and fashion from beyond Temple Bar were

often seen, the Guildhall and the halls of the great companies were

enlivened by many sumptuous banquets. During these repasts, odes

composed by the poet laureate of the corporation, in praise of the King,

the Duke, and the Mayor, were sung to music. The drinking was deep and

the shouting loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in these

revels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing after drinking

healths dates from this joyous period. [110]

The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was almost

regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually admired by the

crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great occasions he appeared

on horseback, attended by a long cavalcade inferior in magnificence

only to that which, before a coronation, escorted the sovereign from the

Tower to Westminster. The Lord Mayor was never seen in public without

his rich robe, his hood of black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and

a great attendance of harbingers and guards. [111] Nor did the world

find anything ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. For

it was not more than became the place which, as wielding the strength

and representing the dignity of the City of London, he was entitled to

occupy in the State. That City, being then not only without equal in the

country, but without second, had, during five and forty years, exercised

almost as great an influence on the politics of England as Paris has,

in our own time, exercised on the politics of France. In intelligence

London was greatly in advance of every other part of the kingdom. A

government, supported and trusted by London, could in a day obtain such

pecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the rest

of the island. Nor were the military resources of the capital to be

despised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants exercised in other

parts of the kingdom was in London entrusted to a Commission of eminent

citizens. Under the order of this Commission were twelve regiments of

foot and two regiments of horse. An army of drapers' apprentices and

journeymen tailors, with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for

colonels, might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against

regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in the

kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an hour's notice,

thousands of men, abounding in natural courage, provided with tolerable

weapons, and not altogether untinctured with martial discipline, could

not but be a valuable ally and a formidable enemy. It was not forgotten

that Hampden and Pym had been protected from lawless tyranny by the

London trainbands; that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the

London trainbands had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that,

in the movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall

of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal part. In

truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the hostility of the

City, Charles the First would never have been vanquished, and that,

without the help of the City, Charles the Second could scarcely have

been restored.

These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that

attraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually drawn the

aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had continued, till a

very recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of the Exchange and of

the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham, while engaged in bitter and

unscrupulous opposition to the government, had thought that they could

nowhere carry on their intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under

the protection of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesbury

had therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still

be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of Inigo.

Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross, once the abode

of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down; and, while streets and

alleys which are still named after him were rising on that site, chose

to reside in Dowgate. [112]

These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble families of

England had long migrated beyond the walls. The district where most of

their town houses stood lies between the city and the regions which

are now considered as fashionable. A few great men still retained their

hereditary hotels in the Strand. The stately dwellings on the south and

west of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, Southampton

Square, which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in Soho

Fields, which is now called Soho Square, were among the favourite spots.

Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as one of the

wonders of England. [113] Soho Square, which had just been built, was to

our ancestors a subject of pride with which their posterity will hardly

sympathise. Monmouth Square had been the name while the fortunes of

the Duke of Monmouth flourished; and on the southern side towered his

mansion. The front, though ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned.

The walls of the principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit,

foliage, and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin.

[114] Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and no

aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical

quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the

pastures and corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each with

an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and

subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to make

room for a new city, which now covers with its squares, streets, and

churches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth century for peaches

and snipes. The other, Montague House, celebrated for its frescoes and

furniture, was, a few months after the death of Charles the Second,

burned to the ground, and was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent

Montague House, which, having been long the repository of such various

and precious treasures of art, science, and learning as were scarcely

ever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to an

edifice more magnificent still. [115]

Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had just

been built St. James's Square and Jermyn Street. St. James's Church had

recently been opened for the accommodation of the inhabitants of this

new quarter. [116] Golden Square, which was in the next generation

inhabited by lords and ministers of state, had not yet been begun.

Indeed the only dwellings to be seen on the north of Piccadilly were

three or four isolated and almost rural mansions, of which the most

celebrated was the costly pile erected by CIarendon, and nicknamed

Dunkirk House. It had been purchased after its founder's downfall by

the Duke of Albemarle. The Clarendon Hotel and Albemarle Street still

preserve the memory of the site.

He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded part

of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and, was sometimes so

fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. [117] On the north the Oxford

road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south were

the garden walls of a few great houses which were considered as quite

out of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which,

long afterwards, Conduit Street was named. On the east was a field not

to be passed without a shudder by any Londoner of that age. There, as in

a place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years before,

when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the dead carts had

nightly shot corpses by scores. It was popularly believed that the earth

was deeply tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed without

imminent risk to human life. No foundations were laid there till two

generations had passed without any return of the pestilence, and till

the ghastly spot had long been surrounded by buildings. [118]

We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the streets and

squares then bore the same aspect as at present. The great majority of

the houses, indeed have, since that time, been wholly, or in great part,

rebuilt. If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed

before us such as they then were, we should be disgusted by their

squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere.

In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the

dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage

stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the

Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham. [119]

The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where the rabble

congregated every evening, within a few yards of Cardigan House and

Winchester House, to hear mountebanks harangue, to see bears dance, and

to set dogs at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every part of the area. Horses

were exercised there. The beggars were as noisy and importunate as in

the worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was

a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms and liveries of every

charitably disposed grandee in the neighbourhood, and as soon as his

lordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in crowds

to persecute him. These disorders lasted, in spite of many accidents,

and of some legal proceedings, till, in the reign of George the Second,

Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was knocked down and nearly

killed in the middle of the Square. Then at length palisades were set

up, and a pleasant garden laid out. [120]

Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders,

for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At one time a cudgel

player kept the ring there. At another time an impudent squatter settled

himself there, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows of the

gilded saloons in which the first magnates of the realm, Norfolk,

Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke, gave banquets and balls. It was not till

these nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and till much had

been written about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for

permission to put up rails, and to plant trees. [121]

When such was the state of the region inhabited by the most luxurious

portion of society, we may easily believe that the great body of the

population suffered what would now be considered as insupportable

grievances. The pavement was detestable: all foreigners cried shame

upon it. The drainage was so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon

became torrents. Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury

with which these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill,

bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable filth from

the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood was profusely thrown

to right and left by coaches and carts. To keep as far from the carriage

road as possible was therefore the wish of every pedestrian. The

mild and timid gave the wall. The bold and athletic took it. If two

roisterers met they cocked their hats in each other's faces, and pushed

each other about till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If he

was a mere bully he sneaked off, mattering that he should find a time.

If he was pugnacious, the encounter probably ended in a duel behind

Montague House. [122]

The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have been little

advantage in numbering them; for of the coachmen, chairmen, porters,

and errand boys of London, a very small proportion could read. It was

necessary to use marks which the most ignorant could understand. The

shops were therefore distinguished by painted or sculptured signs, which

gave a gay and grotesque aspect to the streets. The walk from Charing

Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens'

Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs, which disappeared when

they were no longer required for the direction of the common people.

When the evening closed in, the difficulty and danger of walking about

London became serious indeed. The garret windows were opened, and pails

were emptied, with little regard to those who were passing below. Falls,

bruises and broken bones were of constant occurrence. For, till the last

year of the reign of Charles the Second, most of the streets were

left in profound darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with

impunity: yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as

another class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissolute

young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking windows,

upsetting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering rude caresses

to pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants had, since the

Restoration, domineered over the streets. The Muns and Tityre Tus had

given place to the Hectors, and the Hectors had been recently succeeded

by the Scourers. At a later period arose the Nicker, the Hawcubite, and

the yet more dreaded name of Mohawk. [123] The machinery for keeping the

peace was utterly contemptible. There was an Act of Common Council which

provided that more than a thousand watchmen should be constantly on the

alert in the city, from sunset to sunrise, and that every inhabitant

should take his turn of duty. But this Act was negligently executed.

Few of those who were summoned left their homes; and those few generally

found it more agreeable to tipple in alehouses than to pace the streets.

[124]

It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of Charles

the Second, began a great change in the police of London, a change which

has perhaps added as much to the happiness of the body of the people as

revolutions of much greater fame. An ingenious projector, named Edward

Heming, obtained letters patent conveying to him, for a term of years,

the exclusive right of lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderate

consideration, to place a light before every tenth door, on moonless

nights, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve of the

clock. Those who now see the capital all the year round, from dusk to

dawn, blazing with a splendour beside which the illuminations for La

Hogue and Blenheim would have looked pale, may perhaps smile to think of

Heming's lanterns, which glimmered feebly before one house in ten during

a small part of one night in three. But such was not the feeling of his

contemporaries. His scheme was enthusiastically applauded, and furiously

attacked. The friends of improvement extolled him as the greatest of

all the benefactors of his city. What, they asked, were the boasted

inventions of Archimedes, when compared with the achievement of the man

who had turned the nocturnal shades into noon-day? In spite of these

eloquent eulogies the cause of darkness was not left undefended. There

were fools in that age who opposed the introduction of what was called

the new light as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed the

introduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as the

fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history doubtless opposed the

introduction of the plough and of alphabetical writing. Many years after

the date of Heming's patent there were extensive districts in which no

lamp was seen. [125]

We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been the state of

the quarters of London which were peopled by the outcasts of society.

Among those quarters one had attained a scandalous preeminence. On the

confines of the City and the Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth

century, a House of Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their white

hoods. The precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been a

sanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of protecting

debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were to be found in every

dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these a large proportion were

knaves and libertines, and were followed to their asylum by women more

abandoned than themselves. The civil power was unable to keep order in a

district swarming with such inhabitants; and thus Whitefriars became the

favourite resort of all who wished to be emancipated from the restraints

of the law. Though the immunities legally belonging to the place

extended only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, and

highwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble so desperate no

peace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of "Rescue," bullies

with swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks,

poured forth by hundreds; and the intruder was fortunate if he escaped

back into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and pumped upon. Even the

warrant of the Chief Justice of England could not be executed without

the help of a company of musketeers. Such relics of the barbarism of the

darkest ages were to be found within a short walk of the chambers where

Somers was studying history and law, of the chapel where Tillotson was

preaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment on

poems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was examining

the astronomical system of Isaac Newton. [126]

Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had its

own centre of attraction. In the metropolis of commerce the point of

convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of fashion the Palace.

But the Palace did not retain influence so long as the Exchange. The

Revolution completely altered the relations between the Court and the

higher classes of society. It was by degrees discovered that the King,

in his individual capacity, had very little to give; that coronets

and garters, bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and

tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud and

bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his advisers.

Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he would consult his own

interest far better by acquiring the dominion of a Cornish borough, and

by rendering good service to the ministry during a critical session,

than by becoming the companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It

was therefore in the antechambers, not of George the First and of

George the Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowd

of courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the same

Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should use the

patronage of the state merely for the purpose of gratifying their

personal predilections, gave us several Kings unfitted by their

education and habits to be gracious and affable hosts. They had been

born and bred on the Continent. They never felt themselves at home in

our island. If they spoke our language, they spoke it inelegantly and

with effort. Our national character they never fully understood. Our

national manners they hardly attempted to acquire. The most important

part of their duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded

them: for they governed strictly according to law: but they could not be

the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If ever

they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an English face

was to be seen; and they were never so happy as when they could escape

for a summer to their native land. They had indeed their days of

reception for our nobility and gentry; but the reception was a mere

matter of form, and became at last as solemn a ceremony as a funeral.

Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he dwelt

there, was the focus of political intrigue and of fashionable gaiety.

Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis went on under

his roof. Whoever could make himself agreeable to the prince, or could

secure the good offices of the mistress, might hope to rise in the world

without rendering any service to the government, without being even

known by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate,

and that a company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth,

a lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his pleasure

that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that a libertine

baronet should be made a peer, the gravest counsellors, after a little

murmuring, submitted. [127] Interest, therefore, drew a constant press

of suitors to the gates of the palace; and those gates always stood

wide. The King kept open house every day, and all day long, for the good

society of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman

had any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee

was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every

morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his wig

was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his early walk

through the Park. All persons who had been properly introduced might,

without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup, dance, and

play at hazard, and might have the pleasure of hearing him tell stories,

which indeed he told remarkably well, about his flight from Worcester,

and about the misery which he had endured when he was a state prisoner

in the hands of the canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders

whom His Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This

proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father

or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most austere

republican of the school of Marvel to resist the fascination of so much

good humour and affability; and many a veteran Cavalier, in whose heart

the remembrance of unrequited sacrifices and services had been festering

during twenty years, was compensated in one moment for wounds and

sequestrations by his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my old

friend!"

Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever there was

a rumour that anything important had happened or was about to happen,

people hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain head.

The galleries presented the appearance of a modern club room at an

anxious time. They were full of people enquiring whether the Dutch mail

was in, what tidings the express from France had brought, whether John

Sobiesky had beaten the Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really

at Paris These were matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But

there were subjects concerning which information was asked and given

in whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to be a

Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland? Had Monmouth

really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to read the countenance

of every minister as he went through the throng to and from the royal

closet. All sorts of auguries were drawn from the tone in which His

Majesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with which His

Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the

hopes and fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all

the coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower. [128]

The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It might

indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most important

political institution. No Parliament had sat for years The municipal

council of the City had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens.

Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the modern

machinery of agitation had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resembling

the modern newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee houses

were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis

vented itself.

The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey merchant,

who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their favourite

beverage. The convenience of being able to make appointments in any part

of the town, and of being able to pass evenings socially at a very small

charge, was so great that the fashion spread fast. Every man of the

upper or middle class went daily to his coffee house to learn the news

and to discuss it. Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose

eloquence the crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what

the journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the

realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this

new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's

administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all parties

missed their usual places of resort so much that there was an universal

outcry. The government did not venture, in opposition to a feeling so

strong and general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality might

well be questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and during

those years the number and influence of the coffee houses had been

constantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was

that which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that

the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who wished to

find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street

or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow.

Nobody was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at the

bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious and

political opinion, had its own headquarters. There were houses near

Saint James's Park where fops congregated, their heads and shoulders

covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are

now worn by the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons.

The wig came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's

ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the tassel

which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that dialect which,

long after it had ceased to be spoken in fashionable circles, continued,

in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of theatres. [129]

The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other

form than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If

any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the

sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon

convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, would

he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee rooms reeked with

tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers sometimes expressed their

surprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to sit

in the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking more

constant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent

Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was

about poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was

a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the

ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not to have

been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster demonstrated that Venice

Preserved ought to have been hooted from the stage. Under no roof was

a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were Earls in stars and

garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads

from the Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats

of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden

sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire;

in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and to hear

his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epic

poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff box was an

honour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusaist. There were

coffee houses where the first medical men might be consulted. Doctor

John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in

London, came daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from

his house in Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital,

to Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and

apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee houses

where no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men discussed election and

reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee houses where darkeyed money

changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee

houses where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their

cups, another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.

[130]

These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the character of

the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a different being from the

rustic Englishman. There was not then the intercourse which now exists

between the two classes. Only very great men were in the habit of

dividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to the

capital thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all

citizens in easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields

and woods during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural

village, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal

of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire

or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily

distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. His

dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at the shops,

stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under the

waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the operations

of swindlers and barterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney

coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect

security the huge pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood

entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore

from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him

the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women,

the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on

him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to Saint

James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he

was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody

else would buy, of second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches

that would not go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he

became a mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery

of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion,

and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of his boon

companions, found consolation for the vexatious and humiliations which

he had undergone. There he was once more a great man, and saw nothing

above himself except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench

near the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord

Lieutenant.

The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of

society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors

found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet

and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge

distance have done most for the civilisation of our species. Every

improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and

intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the

interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to

remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all

the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century the

inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose,

farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh, and farther from

Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.

The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite

unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time, produced an

unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has enabled navies to

advance in face of wind and tide, and brigades of troops, attended by

all their baggage and artillery, to traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to

that of the fleetest race horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently

observed the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many

experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine, which

he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be an admirable

and most forcible instrument of propulsion. [131] But the Marquess was

suspected to be a madman, and known to be a Papist. His inventions,

therefore found no favourable reception. His fire water work might,

perhaps, furnish matter for conversation at a meeting of the Royal

Society, but was not applied to any practical purpose. There were no

railways, except a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from

the mouths of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne. [132]

There was very little internal communication by water. A few attempts

had been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with slender

success. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even projected. The

English of that day were in the habit of talking with mingled admiration

and despair of the immense trench by which Lewis the Fourteenth had

made a junction between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little

thought that their country would, in the course of a few generations,

be intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial rivers

making up more than four times the length of the Thames, the Severn, and

the Trent together.

It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passed

from place to place; and those highways appear to have been far worse

than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilisation

which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of

communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way

often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from

the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby,

the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the great North road,

between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between

Doncaster and York. [133] Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own

coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of

the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of

having to pass the night on the plain. [134] It was only in fine weather

that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles.

Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left; and only a narrow

track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. [135] At such times

obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimes

blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break

the way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until

a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to

tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to

encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the

habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded, in

his Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a

journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara. On one occasion

he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that

passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished

in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings he turned out

of the high road, and was conducted across some meadows, where it was

necessary for him to ride to the saddle skirts in water. [136] In the

course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an

inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford four

days, on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed

only because fourteen members of the House of Commons, who were going

up in a body to Parliament with guides and numerous attendants, took him

into their company. [137] On the roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in

constant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled to alight

and lead their beasts. [138] The great route through Wales to Holyhead

was in such a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five

hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to Conway. Between

Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part of the way; and

his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was, with much difficulty,

and by the help of many hands, brought after him entire. In general,

carriages were taken to pieces at Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of

stout Welsh peasants, to the Menai Straits. [139] In some parts of Kent

and Sussex, none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get through

the bog, in which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often

inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of the

earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in another

place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of the

demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this district, generally pulled

by oxen. [140] When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion

of Petworth in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles; and it

was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his

coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue

several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been

preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during

fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was

overturned or stuck fast in the mud. [141]

One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been the

defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair the

highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced to

give their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was not

sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was met by a

parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns, which have a

large and thriving trade with each other, should be maintained at the

cost of the rural population scattered between them is obviously unjust;

and this injustice was peculiarly glaring in the case of the great North

road, which traversed very poor and thinly inhabited districts, and

joined very rich and populous districts. Indeed it was not in the

power of the parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-way worn by the

constant traffic between the West Riding of Yorkshire and London. Soon

after the Restoration this grievance attracted the notice of Parliament;

and an act, the first of our many turnpike acts, was passed imposing

a small toll on travellers and goods, for the purpose of keeping some

parts of this important line of communication in good repair. [142] This

innovation, however, excited many murmurs; and the other great avenues

to the capital were long left under the old system. A change was at

length effected, but not without much difficulty. For unjust and absurd

taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more willingly

than the most reasonable impost which is new. It was not till many

toll bars had been violently pulled down, till the troops had in many

districts been forced to act against the people, and till much blood

had been shed, that a good system was introduced. [143] By slow degrees

reason triumphed over prejudice; and our island is now crossed in every

direction by near thirty thousand miles of turnpike road.

On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of Charles the

Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage waggons. In the

straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers, who could not

afford to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented by

infirmity, or by the weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The

expense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From

London to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to

Exeter twelve pounds a ton. [144] This was about fifteen pence a ton

for every mile, more by a third than was afterwards charged on turnpike

roads, and fifteen times what is now demanded by railway companies.

The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax on many useful

articles. Coal in particular was never seen except in the districts

where it was produced, or in the districts to which it could be carried

by sea, and was indeed always known in the south of England by the name

of sea coal.

On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of York and west

of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of packhorses. These strong

and patient beasts, the breed of which is now extinct, were attended by

a class of men who seem to have borne much resemblance to the Spanish

muleteers. A traveller of humble condition often found it convenient to

perform a journey mounted on a packsaddle between two baskets, under the

care of these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance was

small. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace; and in winter the cold

was often insupportable. [145]

The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at least four

horses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go from London to the

Peak with a single pair, but found at Saint Albans that the journey

would be insupportably tedious, and altered his Plan. [146] A coach

and six is in our time never seen, except as part of some pageant. The

frequent mention therefore of such equipages in old books is likely to

mislead us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a

very disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second,

travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great

danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses always

sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation, described with great

humour the way in which a country gentleman, newly chosen a member of

Parliament, went up to London. On that occasion all the exertions of six

beasts, two of which had been taken from the plough, could not save the

family coach from being embedded in a quagmire.