At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire

had not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels

had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, a

Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been

outlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had sought refuge at

the house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long

Parliament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of

the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and had been created

a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been

recognised by any government which had ruled England since the downfall

of his house; but they appear to have been often used in conversation

even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known as

the Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble,

families; and she was generally esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of

her country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regretted

some violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had

shed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected and

relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly kindness,

which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble,

would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place to the wretched

men who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house,

set meat and drink before them, and showed them where they might take

rest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict

search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and

Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have been

concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of what in

strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory,

as respects high treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state

disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinction

founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and the

accessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice one whom he knows

to be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of

murder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a

traitor is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It

is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which

includes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty,

offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt. The

feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought of

giving up to a shameful death the rebel who, vanquished, hunted down,

and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel of bread and a cup of water, may

be a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied to

virtue, a weakness which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardly

eradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent

sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction

this weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very

tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye.

Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heir

of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own time was justified in

assisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuists

may differ: but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and

Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such, however, is

the classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient

administration could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is

just to say that, during many generations, no English government,

save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring

defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been granted,

by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the midst of

havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of

all their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war, numerous

rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have

been protected from the severity of victorious governments by female

adroitness and generosity. But no English ruler who has been thus

baffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had the

barbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death

for so venial and amiable a transgression.

Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroying

Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine laid down by the

highest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebels

whom she had harboured. [443] She was, however, set to the bar before

either Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was no easy matter in such

a case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated.

The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank

from the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct

which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys was

beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason on the

circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his prey would

escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred

man would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne,

partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from fright at the

threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head,

and at last stood silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to

come out of a lying Presbyterian knave." The witness, after a pause

of some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"

exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain on

the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thou

believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I never

saw thy fellow." Still the poor man, scared out of his senses, remained

mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury,

that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can

one help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saint

to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh

blessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among!" "I cannot

tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forth

into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent

rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You,

gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an information

for perjury be preferred against this fellow." After the witnesses had

been thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. She

began by saying, what may possibly have been true, that though she

knew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know or

suspect that he had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine,

a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could

have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that he

wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him for

field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I will tell you.

There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians but,

one way or another, had a hand in the rebellion. Presbytery has all

manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunne

such a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave."

He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs

and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had

borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had not

been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been proved, would

have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired, and

remained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could not

conceive, he said, how, in so plain a case, they should even have

left the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not

instantly return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night.

Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted

whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them

vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a reluctant

verdict of Guilty.

On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave

directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very afternoon.

This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of the

class which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of Winchester

Cathedral remonstrated with the Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was,

was not mad enough to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so

much respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution

five days. During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James

to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose

recent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is

said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in her

favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all

was vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence

should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on a

scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate with

serene courage. [444]

In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following

her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of the

county in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre began.

The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and

this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose.

It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the assize

sermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was

distorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what

was to follow. [445]

More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed

heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be

understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to

plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country

and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The

remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two

received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire

amounted to seventy-four.

From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely

grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few

persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the

rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance.

In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few

days hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met,

on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which had

furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind,

or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the

traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could not

assemble in the house of God without seeing the ghastly face of a

neighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was all

himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He

laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him

drunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguish

the madness produced by evil passions from the madness produced by

brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him

were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and

another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to

reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already

with the halter round thy neck." Another produced testimony that he was

a good Protestant. "Protestant!" said Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian.

I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles."

One wretched man moved the pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord,"

they said, "this poor creature is on the parish." "Do not trouble

yourselves," said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden." It

was not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen

and noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who ventured

to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sure

to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned in

the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with the rough side of his tongue.

Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at the

remorseless manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, was

punished by having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate. [446]

In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told

over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire.

Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew the

accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset. [447]

Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his

predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number

of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very

much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been

put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of

1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more

formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has

not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or

after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of

clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will

appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced

the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on

this circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]

Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been

generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless

life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by

themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as

wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the

Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance

for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met

death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain

that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt

of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of

the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the

clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter

scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the

dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while

they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion

and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow his

trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had

been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted

down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way,

with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious

supplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]

A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer

of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own no

king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been

frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was

at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried

up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no

submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life

is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican;

and I am so still." He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people

remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to

the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not

that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword

in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals.

"Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this

than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not

see." He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a

smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist

and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology

for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm."

[450]

Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar

of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincial

town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the

model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was

believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady

of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at

the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from

him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence

against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and

courageously. [451]

A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers,

William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished,

and well connected. Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was

one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as

the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling

on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather,"

he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." The poor lad, who

was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude,

that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made

himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and

said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be

proof against this." Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be

pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to

furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The

truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,

and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated

intercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed

for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall

with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among

whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her.

"I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood

together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes.

This marble,"--and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,--"is not

harder than the King." The prediction proved true. James was inexorable.

Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in

which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain

from joining. [452]

Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than

some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to

bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours,

and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates

had undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by

half the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemned

to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She

suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London;

but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humane

connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility

of sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence was

passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He

was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility

from the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have been

rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses

with you." The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven

years, and should, during that period, be flogged through every market

town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into

tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord,"

said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in

our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven

years." "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue.

Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment is

not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter

it." Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity,

that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this

conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed

highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the Chief

Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the

prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild,

was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to be

known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the

House of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]

The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and

forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered

death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed

favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts

should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be

emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should

be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for

the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or

New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them

and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was

therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a

Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born

in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the

state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage,

and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It

was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all

charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was

therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West

conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during the

insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been

eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers,

however, were victorious. [454]

The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now

carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which

is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were

shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human

cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space

was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by

unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one

another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was

constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses.

In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease

and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel,

twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was

performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their

house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit

and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that

any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned

to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom

they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling

them. [455]

Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and

of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun,

was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law

a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law

was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel

and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the

labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by

the agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of a

goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of

a truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government were

pillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice

was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of

Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of

this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that

Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable

that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his

father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the

Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown.

Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear

evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol and

at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen

thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by

Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name

of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price

of innocent blood. [457]

He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites

who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The office

of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong

terrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children.

A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one

of his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor

across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any

intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitable

monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent

some persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal

clemency through channels independent of him. [458]

Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this

traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselves

preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which

they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of

the relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrich

themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that

she might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she

encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation.

She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear

adversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an

exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of being

deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners

conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion.

But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek and

affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] The

misfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object of

some interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if it

could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even

tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscription

that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known

to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who

were sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profit

which she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those

who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated

at less than a thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants

should have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly

cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchant

of Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military chest of the rebel

army. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly was one which it

might have been thought that even the most ungentle natures would have

spared. Already some of the girls who had presented the standard to

Monmouth at Taunton had cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had

been thrown into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had

sickened and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar before

Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler," vociferated the Judge,

with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouter

hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her hood over her face,

followed the gaoler out of the court, fell ill of fright, and in a few

hours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walked

in the procession were still alive. Some of them were under ten years

of age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress, without

knowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour

asked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the

poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent down to

Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and imprisoned.

Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, was

requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. He was charged

to declare in strong language that the maids of honour would not endure

delay, that they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless a

reasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant

seven thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a

transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William

Penn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission. Yet it should

seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often

shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out of

place on this occasion. He probably silenced the remonstrances of his

conscience by repeating to himself that none of the money which he

extorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused to be

the agent of the ladies they would find agents less humane; that by

complying he should increase his influence at the court, and that his

influence at the court had already enabled him, and still might enable

him, to render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of

honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a third

part of what they had demanded. [461]

No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel nature

than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious than his

mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his

cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at

the fate of the simple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, to

whom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for

what considerations he granted his pardon.

The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided in

selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The ringleaders,

the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power and whose artifices

have led the multitude into error, are the proper objects of severity.

The deluded populace, when once the slaughter on the field of battle

is over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently

agreeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it was

inverted. While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by

hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost

rigour of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed

some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It was

neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctly

traced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either

to thirst for money or to thirst for blood.

In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts and

knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the state, and the high

command which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him out

to a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice

Lisle, than William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorant

peasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But

Grey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life

interest in his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he

had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he

were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was therefore

suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty thousand pounds to

the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers. [462]

Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank which

had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane should be

forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible.

But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only

by sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father, Lord

Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests of the

royal household; and a pardon was granted. [463]

Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to the

rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshire

by vehement harangues in which James had been described as an incendiary

and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give

important assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out

of Prideaux. [464]

None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade,

Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had fled

together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast in

safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where they

had hoped to embark. They had then separated. Wade and Goodenough

were soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been

implicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among the

chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffered to live, because

they had it in their power to give information which enabled the King

to slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he had

never yet been able to bring home any crime. [465]

How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies of

the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply criminal. He was

the original author of the plot for assassinating the royal brothers.

He had written that Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and

mendacity, stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormy

times. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then

to usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search

would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a

search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have

eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of London

that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with men who had

excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that was

heard of him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly

suspected that he had been in constant communication with the government

against which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging his

associates to every excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much

information about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own

neck, and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape. [466]

And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He

arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning, and terror

behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of

Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched

by time or by political changes, was long transmitted from generation to

generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he

had been many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his

granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the western

road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she could not safely

venture herself among the descendants of those who had witnessed the

Bloody Assizes. [467]

But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after

his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and

delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked of

the havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a glee

at which the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own hand he had

penned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's

campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the

Hague, had been condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should

be hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no

purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and

described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his diocese.

He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways without

seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire

was tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to the

saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At

Windsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and

in the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour

was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had

rendered to the crown. [468]

At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of

the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to

vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in

the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond

his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them.

James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his

own inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited

obloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister. But

neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the

other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to

be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in fact, is

utterly worthless.

The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to

begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among the

great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been a

formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy;

and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country

gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey

and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and

rapacity at once; but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered.

The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery

and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid to

incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable among them

was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of

the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the

Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: his

religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was

cautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he

ever approached the verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, been

very unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipled

as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, great hopes

were entertained at Whitehall that Cornish would appear to have been

concerned: but these hopes were disappointed. One of the conspirators,

indeed, John Rumsey, was ready to swear anything: but a single witness

was not sufficient; and no second witness could be found. More than two

years had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye of

the tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospect

of death, and still harbouring malice on account of the unfavourable

opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master,

consented to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting.

Cornish was arrested while transacting business on the Exchange, was

hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and

was brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case

against him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both

were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they

charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest pressure of

hope end fear to criminate him. Evidence was produced which proved that

Goodenough was also under the influence of personal enmity. Rumsey's

story was inconsistent with the story which he had told when he appeared

as a witness against Lord Russell. But these things were urged in vain.

On the bench sate three judges who had been with Jeffreys in the West;

and it was remarked by those who watched their deportment that they had

come back from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. It

is indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste which even

men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire. The bar and

the bench united to browbeat the unfortunate Whig. The jury, named by a

courtly Sheriff, readily found a verdict of Guilty; and, in spite of the

indignant murmurs of the public, Cornish suffered death within ten days

after he had been arrested. That no circumstance of degradation might

be wanting, the gibbet was set up where King Street meets Cheapside, in

sight of the house where he had long lived in general respect, of the

Exchange where his credit had always stood high, and of the Guildhall

where he had distinguished himself as a popular leader. He died with

courage and with many pious expressions, but showed, by look and

gesture, such strong resentment at the barbarity and injustice with

which he had been treated, that his enemies spread a calumnious report

concerning him. He was drunk, they said, or out of his mind, when he was

turned off. William Penn, however, who stood near the gallows, and whose

prejudice were all on the side of the government, afterwards said that

he could see in Cornish's deportment nothing but the natural indignation

of an innocent man slain under the forms of law. The head of the

murdered magistrate was placed over the Guildhall. [469]

Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which disgraced the

sessions of that autumn at the Old Bailey. Among the persons concerned

in the Rye House plot was a man named James Burton. By his own

confession he had been present when the design of assassination was

discussed by his accomplices. When the conspiracy was detected, a reward

was offered for his apprehension. He was saved from death by an ancient

matron of the Baptist persuasion, named Elizabeth Gaunt. This woman,

with the peculiar manners and phraseology which then distinguished her

sect, had a large charity. Her life was passed in relieving the unhappy

of all religious denominations, and she was well known as a constant

visitor of the gaols. Her political and theological opinions, as well as

her compassionate disposition, led her to do everything in her power for

Burton. She procured a boat which took him to Gravesend, where he got

on board of a ship bound for Amsterdam. At the moment of parting she

put into his hand a sum of money which, for her means, was very large.

Burton, after living some time in exile, returned to England with

Monmouth, fought at Sedgemoor, fled to London, and took refuge in the

house of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel. Fernley was very poor.

He was besieged by creditors. He knew that a reward of a hundred pounds

had been offered by the government for the apprehension of Burton. But

the honest man was incapable of betraying one who, in extreme peril, had

come under the shadow of his roof. Unhappily it was soon noised abroad

that the anger of James was more strongly excited against those who

harboured rebels than against the rebels themselves. He had publicly

declared that of all forms of treason the hiding of traitors from his

vengeance was the most unpardonable. Burton knew this. He delivered

himself up to the government; and he gave information against Fernley

and Elizabeth Gaunt. They were brought to trial. The villain whose

life they had preserved had the heart and the forehead to appear as

the principal witness against them. They were convicted. Fernley was

sentenced to the gallows, Elizabeth Gaunt to the stake. Even after

all the horrors of that year, many thought it impossible that these

judgments should be carried into execution. But the King was without

pity. Fernley was hanged. Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn on

the same day on which Cornish suffered death in Cheapside. She left a

paper written, indeed, in no graceful style, yet such as was read by

many thousands with compassion and horror. "My fault," she said, "was

one which a prince might well have forgiven. I did but relieve a poor

family; and lo! I must die for it." She complained of the insolence of

the judges, of the ferocity of the gaoler, and of the tyranny of him,

the great one of all, to whose pleasure she and so many other victims

had been sacrificed. In so far as they had injured herself, she forgave

them: but, in that they were implacable enemies of that good cause which

would yet revive and flourish, she left them to the judgment of the King

of Kings. To the last she preserved a tranquil courage, which reminded

the spectators of the most heroic deaths of which they had read in Fox.

William Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally avoid seem

to have had a strong attraction, hastened from Cheapside, where he had

seen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn, in order to see Elizabeth Gaunt burned.

He afterwards related that, when she calmly disposed the straw about her

in such a manner as to shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burst

into tears. It was much noticed that, while the foulest judicial murder

which had disgraced even those times was perpetrating, a tempest burst

forth, such as had not been known since that great hurricane which had

raged round the deathbed of Oliver. The oppressed Puritans reckoned up,

not without a gloomy satisfaction the houses which had been blown down,

and the ships which had been cast away, and derived some consolation

from thinking that heaven was bearing awful testimony against the

iniquity which afflicted the earth. Since that terrible day no woman has

suffered death in England for any political offence. [470]

It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his pardon. The

government was bent on destroying a victim of no high rank, a surgeon in

the City, named Bateman. He had attended Shaftesbury professionally, and

had been a zealous Exclusionist. He may possibly have been privy to the

Whig plot; but it is certain that he had not been one of the leading

conspirators; for, in the great mass of depositions published by the

government, his name occurs only once, and then not in connection with

any crime bordering on high treason. From his indictment, and from the

scanty account which remains of his trial, it seems clear that he was

not even accused of participating in the design of murdering the royal

brothers. The malignity with which so obscure a man, guilty of so slight

an offence, was hunted down, while traitors far more criminal and

far more eminent were allowed to ransom themselves by giving evidence

against him, seemed to require explanation; and a disgraceful

explanation was found. When Oates, after his scourging, was carried into

Newgate insensible, and, as all thought, in the last agony, he had been

bled and his wounds had been dressed by Bateman. This was an offence not

to be forgiven. Bateman was arrested and indicted. The witnesses against

him were men of infamous character, men, too, who were swearing for

their own lives. None of them had yet got his pardon; and it was a

popular saying, that they fished for prey, like tame cormorants, with

ropes round their necks. The prisoner, stupefied by illness, was unable

to articulate, or to understand what passed. His son and daughter stood

by him at the bar. They read as well as they could some notes which he

had set down, and examined his witnesses. It was to little purpose. He

was convicted, hanged, and quartered. [471]

Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the condition of the

Puritans been so deplorable as at that time. Never had spies been so

actively employed in detecting congregations. Never had magistrates,

grand jurors, rectors and churchwardens been so much on the alert. Many

Dissenters were cited before the ecclesiastical courts. Others found it

necessary to purchase the connivance of the agents of the government by

presents of hogsheads of wine, and of gloves stuffed with guineas. It

was impossible for the separatists to pray together without precautions

such as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods. The

places of meeting were frequently changed. Worship was performed

sometimes just before break of day and sometimes at dead of night. Round

the building where the little flock was gathered sentinels were posted

to give the alarm if a stranger drew near. The minister in disguise was

introduced through the garden and the back yard. In some houses there

were trap doors through which, in case of danger, he might descend.

Where Nonconformists lived next door to each other, the walls were often

broken open, and secret passages were made from dwelling to dwelling. No

psalm was sung; and many contrivances were used to prevent the voice

of the preacher, in his moments of fervour, from being heard beyond the

walls. Yet, with all this care, it was often found impossible to elude

the vigilance of informers. In the suburbs of London, especially, the

law was enforced with the utmost rigour. Several opulent gentlemen were

accused of holding conventicles. Their houses were strictly searched,

and distresses were levied to the amount of many thousands of pounds.

The fiercer and bolder sectaries, thus driven from the shelter of roofs,

met in the open air, and determined to repel force by force. A Middlesex

justice who had learned that a nightly prayer meeting was held in a

gravel pit about two miles from London, took with him a strong body of

constables, broke in upon the assembly, and seized the preacher. But

the congregation, which consisted of about two hundred men, soon rescued

their pastor and put the magistrate and his officers to flight. [472]

This, however, was no ordinary occurrence. In general the Puritan spirit

seemed to be more effectually cowed at this conjuncture than at any

moment before or since. The Tory pamphleteers boasted that not one

fanatic dared to move tongue or pen in defence of his religious

opinions. Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, however

eminent for learning and abilities, could not venture to walk the

streets for fear of outrages, which were not only not repressed, but

encouraged, by those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Some

divines of great fame were in prison. Among these was Richard Baxter.

Others, who had, during a quarter of a century, borne up against

oppression, now lost heart, and quitted the kingdom. Among these was

John Howe. Great numbers of persons who had been accustomed to frequent

conventicles repaired to the parish churches. It was remarked that the

schismatics who had been terrified into this show of conformity might

easily be distinguished by the difficulty which they had in finding out

the collect, and by the awkward manner in which they bowed at the name

of Jesus. [473]

Through many years the autumn of 1685 was remembered by the

Nonconformists as a time of misery and terror. Yet in that autumn might

be discerned the first faint indications of a great turn of fortune;

and before eighteen months had elapsed, the intolerant King and the

intolerant Church were eagerly bidding against each other for the

support of the party which both had so deeply injured.

END OF VOL. I.

*****

[Footnote 1: In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom

thought it necessary to cite authorities: for, in these chapters, I have

not detailed events minutely, or used recondite materials; and the facts

which I mention are for the most part such that a person tolerably well

read in English history, if not already apprised of them, will at least

know where to look for evidence of them. In the subsequent chapters I

shall carefully indicate the sources of my information.]

[Footnote 2: This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam in the first chapter

of his Constitutional History.]

[Footnote 3: See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be in

Gardiner's handwriting. Ecclesiastical Memorials, Book 1., Chap. xvii.]

[Footnote 4: These are Cranmer's own words. See the Appendix to Burnet's

History of the Reformation, Part 1. Book III. No. 21. Question 9.]

[Footnote 5: The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the cruelty

with which she treated the sect to which he belonged, concludes thus:

"However, notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth stands

upon record as a wise and politic princess, for delivering her kingdom

from the difficulties in which it was involved at her accession, for

preserving the Protestant reformation against the potent attempts of the

Pope, the Emperor, and King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and

her Popish subjects at home.... She was the glory of the age in which

she lived, and will be the admiration of posterity."--History of the

Puritans, Part I. Chap. viii.]

[Footnote 6: On this subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkably

clear and strong. He maintains, in his Answer to Martin Marprelate,

printed in 1589, "that no form of church government is divinely

ordained; that Protestant communities, in establishing different forms,

have only made a legitimate use of their Christian liberty; and

that episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, because the English

constitution is monarchical." All those Churches," says the Bishop,

"in which the Gospell, in these daies, after great darknesse, was first

renewed, and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt not

but have been directed by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty,

that, in external government and other outward orders; they might choose

such as they thought in wisedome and godlinesse to be most convenient

for the state of their countrey and disposition of their people. Why

then should this liberty that other countreys have used under anie

colour be wrested from us? I think it therefore great presumption and

boldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever they may think

of themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take upon

them to controlle the whole realme, and to binde both prince and people

in respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie themselves

to a certain platforme devised by some of our neighbours, which, in the

judgment of many wise and godly persons, is most unfit for the state of

a Kingdome."]

[Footnote 7: Strype's Life of Grindal, Appendix to Book II. No. xvii.]

[Footnote 8: Canon 55, of 1603.]

[Footnote 9: Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop

of Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself, he

says: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that

honourable, grave, and reverend meeting." To high churchmen this

humility will seem not a little out of place.]

[Footnote 10: It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the

Restoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were, for the first

time, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more zealous for

this law than Clarendon. Yet he says: "This was new; for there had been

many, and at present there were some, who possessed benefices with cure

of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who had never received

orders but in France or Holland; and these men must now receive new

ordination, which had been always held unlawful in the Church, or by

this act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which they

enjoyed in the most flourishing and peaceable time of the Church."]

[Footnote 11: Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief

Description of the late erected monastical Place called the Arminian

Nunnery, at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.]

[Footnote 12: The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear

out what I have said in the text. To transcribe all the passages

which have led me to the conclusion at which I have arrived, would be

impossible, nor would it be easy to make a better selection than has

already been made by Mr. Hallam. I may, however direct the attention of

the reader particularly to the very able paper which Wentworth drew up

respecting the affairs of the Palatinate. The date is March 31, 1637.]

[Footnote 13: These are Wentworth's own words. See his letter to Laud,

dated Dec. 16, 1634.]

[Footnote 14: See his report to Charles for the year 1639.]

[Footnote 15: See his letter to the Earl of Northumberland, dated July

30, 1638.]

[Footnote 16: How little compassion for the bear had to do with the

matter is sufficiently proved by the following extract from a paper

entitled A perfect Diurnal of some Passages of Parliament, and from

other Parts of the Kingdom, from Monday July 24th, to Monday July 31st,

1643. "Upon the Queen's coming from Holland, she brought with her,

besides a company of savage-like ruffians, a company of savage bears,

to what purpose you may judge by the sequel. Those bears were left about

Newark, and were brought into country towns constantly on the Lord's

day to be baited, such is the religion those here related would settle

amongst us; and, if any went about to hinder or but speak against their

damnable profanations, they were presently noted as Roundheads

and Puritans, and sure to be plundered for it. But some of Colonel

Cromwell's forces coming by accident into Uppingham town, in Rutland,

on the Lord's day, found these bears playing there in the usual manner,

and, in the height of their sport, caused them to be seized upon, tied

to a tree and shot." This was by no means a solitary instance. Colonel

Pride, when Sheriff of Surrey, ordered the beasts in the bear garden

of Southwark to be killed. He is represented by a loyal satirist as

defending the act thus: "The first thing that is upon my spirits is the

killing of the bears, for which the people hate me, and call me all the

names in the rainbow. But did not David kill a bear? Did not the Lord

Deputy Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of ours kill five

bears?"-Last Speech and Dying Words of Thomas pride.]

[Footnote 17: See Penn's New Witnesses proved Old Heretics, and

Muggleton's works, passim.]

[Footnote 18: I am happy to say, that, since this passage was written,

the territories both of the Rajah of Nagpore and of the King of Oude

have been added to the British dominions. (1857.)]

[Footnote 19: The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, on

this subject, came from Sir William Coventry: "Our ancestors never did

draw a line to circumscribe prerogative and liberty."]

[Footnote 20: Halifax was undoubtedly the real author of the Character

of a Trimmer, which, for a time, went under the name of his kinsman, Sir

William Coventry.]

[Footnote 21: North's Examen, 231, 574.]

[Footnote 22: A peer who was present has described the effect of

Halifax's oratory in words which I will quote, because, though they

have been long in print, they are probably known to few even of the

most curious and diligent readers of history. "Of powerful eloquence and

great parts were the Duke's enemies who did assert the Bill; but a noble

Lord appeared against it who, that day, in all the force of speech, in

reason, in arguments of what could concern the public or the private

interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himself

and every other man; and in fine his conduct and his parts were

both victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of that party was

overthrown." This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of

Peterborough, in a volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by Robert

Halstead," fol. 1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious. The real

authors were the Earl of Peterborough himself and his chaplain. The book

is extremely rare. Only twenty-four copies were printed, two of which

are now in the British Museum. Of these two one belonged to George the

Fourth, and the other to Mr. Grenville.]

[Footnote 23: This is mentioned in the curious work entitled "Ragguaglio

della solenne Comparsa fatta in Roma gli otto di Gennaio, 1687, dall'

illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Conte di Castlemaine."]

[Footnote 24: North's Examen, 69.]

[Footnote 25: Lord Preston, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence to

Halifax as follows: "I find that your Lordship lies still under the same

misfortune of being no favourite to this court; and Monsieur Barillon

dare not do you the honor to shine upon you, since his master frowneth.

They know very well your lordship's qualifications which make them

fear and consequently hate you; and be assured, my lord, if all their

strength can send you to Rufford, it shall be employed for that end. Two

things, I hear, they particularly object against you, your secrecy, and

your being incapable of being corrupted. Against these two things I know

they have declared." The date of the letter is October 5, N. S. 1683]

[Footnote 26: During the interval which has elapsed since this chapter

was written, England has continued to advance rapidly in material

prosperity, I have left my text nearly as it originally stood; but I

have added a few notes which may enable the reader to form some notion

of the progress which has been made during the last nine years; and,

in general, I would desire him to remember that there is scarcely a

district which is not more populous, or a source of wealth which is not

more productive, at present than in 1848. (1857.)]

[Footnote 27: Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Captain John

Graunt (Sir William Petty), chap. xi.]

[Footnote 28:

"She doth comprehend

Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend

Their days within."

--Great Britain's Beauty, 1671.]

[Footnote 29: Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685.

Vossius, as we learn from Saint Evremond, talked on this subject oftener

and longer than fashionable circles cared to listen.]

[Footnote 30: King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696 This

valuable treatise, which ought to be read as the author wrote it, and

not as garbled by Davenant, will be found in some editions of Chalmers's

Estimate.]

[Footnote 31: Dalrymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I, The practice of

reckoning the population by sects was long fashionable. Gulliver says

of the King of Brobdignag; "He laughed at my odd arithmetic, as he

was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by

a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and

politics."]

[Footnote 32: Preface to the Population Returns of 1831.]

[Footnote 33: Statutes 14 Car. II. c. 22.; 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 3., 29 &

30 Car. II. c. 2.]

[Footnote 34: Nicholson and Bourne, Discourse on the Ancient State of

the Border, 1777.]

[Footnote 35: Gray's Journal of a Tour in the Lakes, Oct. 3, 1769.]

[Footnote 36: North's Life of Guildford; Hutchinson's History of

Cumberland, Parish of Brampton.]

[Footnote 37: See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7, 1827, in his Life

by Mr. Lockhart.]

[Footnote 38: Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns of

the hearth money lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in the

province of York were not a sixth of the hearths of England.]

[Footnote 39: I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; but

I believe that whoever will take the trouble to compare the last returns

of hearth money in the reign of William the Third with the census of

1841, will come to a conclusion not very different from mine.]

[Footnote 40: There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that age

on the chimney money. I will give a specimen or two:

"The good old dames whenever they the chimney man espied,

Unto their nooks they haste away, their pots and pipkins hide.

There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through,

But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or two."

Again:

"Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door,

And make a distress on the goods of the poor.

While frighted poor children distractedly cried;

This nothing abated their insolent pride."

In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the

same subject and in the same spirit:

"Or, if through poverty it be not paid

For cruelty to tear away the single bed,

On which the poor man rests his weary head,

At once deprives him of his rest and bread."

I take this opportunity the first which occurs, of acknowledging most

grateful the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and Vicemaster

of Magdalei College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuable

collections of Pepys.]

[Footnote 41: My chief authorities for this financial statement will be

found in the Commons' Journal, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9.]

[Footnote 42: See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough,

in Stukeley's Dinerarium Curiosum.]

[Footnote 43: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 44: 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 3; 15 Car. II. c. 4. Chamberlayne's

State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 45: Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with his

usual keenness and energy, the sentiments which had been fashionable

among the sycophants of James the Second:--

"The country rings around with loud alarms,

And raw in fields the rude militia swarms;

Mouths without hands, maintained at vast expense,

Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,

And ever, but in time of need at hand.

This was the morn when, issuing on the guard,

Drawn up in rank and file, they stood prepared

Of seeming arms to make a short essay.

Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day."]

[Footnote 46: Most of the materials which I have used for this

account of the regular army will be found in the Historical Records of

Regiments, published by command of King William the Fourth, and under

the direction of the Adjutant General. See also Chamberlayne's State of

England, 1684; Abridgment of the English Military Discipline, printed by

especial command, 1688; Exercise of Foot, by their Majesties' command,

1690.]

[Footnote 47: I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, dated

Feb. 8/18. 1686. It was transcribed for Mr. Fox from the French

archives, during the peace of Amiens, and, with the other materials

brought together by that great man, was entrusted to me by the kindness

of the late Lady Holland, and of the present Lord Holland. I ought to

add that, even in the midst of the troubles which have lately agitated

Paris, I found no difficulty in obtaining, from the liberality of

the functionaries there, extracts supplying some chasms in Mr. Fox's

collection. (1848.)]

[Footnote 48: My information respecting the condition of the navy,

at this time, is chiefly derived from Pepys. His report, presented to

Charles the Second in May, 1684, has never, I believe, been printed. The

manuscript is at Magdalene College Cambridge. At Magdalene College is

also a valuable manuscript containing a detailed account of the maritime

establishments of the country in December 1684. Pepys's "Memoirs

relating to the State of the Royal Navy for Ten Years determined

December, 1688," and his diary and correspondence during his mission

to Tangier, are in print. I have made large use of them. See also

Sheffield's Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of

Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March 1 and March 20.

1688-9.]

[Footnote 49: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Commons' Journals,

March 1, and March 20, 1688-9. In 1833, it was determined, after full

enquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder should

constantly be kept in store.]

[Footnote 50: It appears from the records of the Admiralty, that Flag

officers were allowed half pay in 1668, Captains of first and second

rates not till 1674.]

[Footnote 51: Warrant in the War Office Records; dated March 26, 1678.]

[Footnote 52: Evelyn's Diary. Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal,

dated May 17. 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony.]

[Footnote 53: James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and

Denmark; yet in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more

than 30,000£. a year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, 1688-9.

Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 54: Carte's Life of Ormond.]

[Footnote 55: Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, 1668-9.]

[Footnote 56: See the Report of the Bath and Montague case, which was

decided by Lord Keeper Somers, in December, 1693.]

[Footnote 57: During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas,

1689, the revenues of the see of Canterbury were received by an officer

appointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British

Museum. (Lansdowne MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the three quarters

was not quite four thousand pounds; and the difference between the gross

and the net revenue was evidently something considerable.]

[Footnote 58: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on

the Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The revenues of a House of

Commons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs,

Third Part.]

[Footnote 59: Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672.]

[Footnote 60: Commons' Journals, April 27,1689; Chamberlayne's State of

England, 1684.]

[Footnote 61: See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 62: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the

Balance of Trade.]

[Footnote 63: See the Itinerarium Angliae, 1675, by John Ogilby,

Cosmographer Royal. He describes great part of the land as wood, fen,

heath on both sides, marsh on both sides. In some of his maps the roads

through enclosed country are marked by lines, and the roads through

unenclosed country by dots. The proportion of unenclosed country, which,

if cultivated, must have been wretchedly cultivated, seems to have been

very great. From Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of

forty or fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, and scarcely one

enclosure between Biggleswade and Lincoln.]

[Footnote 64: Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in

the noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum.

See particularly the drawings of Exeter and Northampton.]

[Footnote 65: Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1675.]

[Footnote 66: See White's Selborne; Bell's History of British

Quadrupeds, Gentleman's Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's Natural History

of Wiltshire, 1685; Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712;

Willoughby's Ornithology, by Ray, 1678; Latham's General Synopsis of

Birds; and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in Norfolk.]

[Footnote 67: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the

Balance of Trade.]

[Footnote 68: See the Almanacks of 1684 and 1685.]

[Footnote 69: See Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British

Empire, Part III. chap. i. sec. 6.]

[Footnote 70: King and Davenant as before The Duke of Newcastle on

Horsemanship; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686. The "dappled Flanders mares"

were marks of greatness in the time of Pope, and even later. The vulgar

proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I suspect,

in the preference generally given to the grey mares of Flanders over the

finest coach horses of England.]

[Footnote 71: See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville's

edition of Carew's Survey of Cornwall.]

[Footnote 72: Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 1758. The quantity

of copper now produced, I have taken from parliamentary returns.

Davenant, in 1700, estimated the annual produce of all the mines of

England at between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds]

[Footnote 73: Philosophical Transactions, No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66.

Dec. 1670, No. 103. May 1674, No 156. Feb. 1683-4]

[Footnote 74: Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1677;

Porter's Progress of the Nation. See also a remarkably perspicnous

history, in small compass of the English iron works, in Mr. M'Culloch's

Statistical Account of the British Empire.]

[Footnote 75: See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687, Angliae,

Metropolis, 1691; M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire

Part III. chap. ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coal

brought into London appeared, by the Parliamentary returns, to be

3,460,000 tons. (1848.) In 1854 the quantity of coal brought into London

amounted to 4,378,000 tons. (1857.)]

[Footnote 76: My notion of the country gentleman of the seventeenth

century has been derived from sources too numerous to be recapitulated.

I must leave my description to the judgment of those who have studied

the history and the lighter literature of that age.]

[Footnote 77: In the eighteenth century the great increase in the value

of benefices produced a change. The younger sons of the nobility were

allured back to the clerical profession. Warburton in a letter to

Hurd, dated the 6th of July, 1762, mentions this change, which was then

recent. "Our grandees have at last found their way back into the Church.

I only wonder they have been so long about it. But be assured that

nothing but a new religious revolution, to sweep away the fragments that

Henry the Eighth left after banqueting his courtiers, will drive them

out again."]

[Footnote 78: See Heylin's Cyprianus Anglicus.]

[Footnote 79: Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy; Oldham,

Satire addressed to a Friend about to leave the University; Tatler, 255,

258. That the English clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in the

Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, Appendix A.]

[Footnote 80: "A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine,

ecclesiae rector aut vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. Gentis et

familiae nitor sacris ordinibus pollutus censetur: foeminisque natalitio

insignibus unicum inculcatur saepius praeceptum, ne modestiae naufragium

faciant, aut, (quod idem auribus tam delicatulis sonat,) ne clerico se

nuptas dari patiantur."--Angliae Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College

Oxford 1686.]

[Footnote 81: Clarendon's Life, ii. 21.]

[Footnote 82: See the injunctions of 1559, In Bishop Sparrow's

Collection. Jeremy Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this

injunction with a bitterness which proves that his own pride had not

been effectually tamed.]

[Footnote 83: Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull

and the Nurse in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and Susan in Shadwell's

Lancashire Witches, are instances.]

[Footnote 84: Swift's Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on the

Clerical Residence Bill, he describes the family of an English vicar

thus: "His wife is little better than a Goody, in her birth, education,

or dress..... His daughters shall go to service, or be sent apprentice

to the sempstress of the next town."]

[Footnote 85: Even in Tom Jones, published two generations later. Mrs.

Seagrim, the wife of a gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour, a waitingwoman,

boast of their descent from clergymen, "It is to be hoped," says

Fielding, "such instances will in future ages, when some provision is

made for the families of the inferior clergy, appear stranger than they

can be thought at present."]

[Footnote 86: This distinction between country clergy and town clergy is

strongly marked by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every person

who has studied the ecclesiastical history of that age.]

[Footnote 87: Nelson's Life of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty which

the country clergy found in procuring books, see the Life of Thomas

Bray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.]

[Footnote 88: "I have frequently heard him (Dryden) own with pleasure,

that if he had any talent for English prose it was owing to his having

often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson."--Congreve's

Dedication of Dryden's Plays.]

[Footnote 89: I have taken Davenant's estimate, which is a little lower

than King's.]

[Footnote 90: Evelvn's Diary, June 27. 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13.

1668; Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley

North; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in

drawing inferences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant,

who, though not abler men than he, had the advantage of coming after

him. As to the kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North's

Life of Guildford, 121, 216, and the harangue of Jeffreys on the

subject, in the Impartial History of his Life and Death, printed with

the Bloody Assizes. His style was, as usual, coarse, but I cannot reckon

the reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his

crimes.]

[Footnote 91: Fuller's Worthies; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17,1671; Journal

of T. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 1663-4; Blomefield's

History of Norfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols.

1768.]

[Footnote 92: The population of York appears, from the return of

baptisms and burials in Drake's History, to have been about 13,000 in

1730. Exeter had only 17,000 inhabitants in 1801. The population of

Worcester was numbered just before the siege in 1646. See Nash's History

of Worcestershire. I have made allowance for the increase which must be

supposed to have taken place in forty years. In 1740, the population of

Nottingham was found, by enumeration, to be just 10,000. See Dering's

History. The population of Gloucester may readily be inferred from the

number of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money,

and from the number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns's

History. The population of Derby was 4,000 in 1712. See Wolley's MS.

History, quoted in Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population of Shrewsbury

was ascertained, in 1695, by actual enumeration. As to the gaieties of

Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's Recruiting Officer. Farquhar's description

is borne out by a ballad in the Pepysian Library, of which the burden is

"Shrewsbury for me."]

[Footnote 93: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Aikin's Country round Manchester;

Manchester Directory, 1845: Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture.

The best information which I have been able to find, touching the

population of Manchester in the seventeenth century is contained in

a paper drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson, and published in the

Journal of the Statistical Society for October 1842.]

[Footnote 94: Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis; Whitaker's Loidis and

Elmete; Wardell's Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds. (1848.) In

1851 Leeds had 172,000 Inhabitants. (1857.)]

[Footnote 95: Hunter's History of Hallamshire. (1848.) In 1851 the

population of Sheffield had increased to 135,000. (1857.)]

[Footnote 96: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Dugdale's Warwickshire, North's

Examen, 321; Preface to Absalom and Achitophel; Hutton's History of

Birmingham; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birmingham

were 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that the annual

mortality was little less than one in twenty-five. In London it was

considerably greater. A historian of Nottingham, half a century later,

boasted of the extraordinary salubrity of his town, where the annual

mortality was one in thirty. See Doring's History of Nottingham. (1848.)

In 1851 the population of Birmingham had increased to 222,000. (1857.)]

[Footnote 97: Blome's Britannia; Gregson's Antiquities of the County

Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Part II.; Petition from Liverpool in

the Privy Council Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the burials at Liverpool

were 151, the baptisms 120. In 1844 the net receipt of the customs at

Liverpool was 4,366,526£. 1s. 8d. (1848.) In 1851 Liverpool contained

375,000 inhabitants, (1857.)]

[Footnote 98: Atkyne's Gloucestershire.]

[Footnote 99: Magna Britannia; Grose's Antiquities; New Brighthelmstone

Directory.]

[Footnote 100: Tour in Derbyshire, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas.]

[Footnote 101: Memoires de Grammont; Hasted's History of Kent; Tunbridge

Wells, a Comedy, 1678; Causton's Tunbridgialia, 1688; Metellus, a poem

on Tunbridge Wells, 1693.]

[Footnote 102: See Wood's History of Bath, 1719; Evelyn's Diary, June

27,1654; Pepys's Diary, June 12, 1668; Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum;

Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr. Peirce's History and Memoirs of the Bath,

1713, Book I. chap. viii. obs. 2, 1684. I have consulted several

old maps and pictures of Bath, particularly one curious map which is

surrounded by views of the principal buildings. It Dears the date of

1717.]

[Footnote 103: According to King 530,000. (1848.) In 1851 the population

of London exceeded, 2,300,000. (1857.)]

[Footnote 104: Macpherson's History of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate;

Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the steamers

belonging to the port of London was, at the end of 1847, about 60,000

tons. The customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845, very nearly averaged

11,000,000£. (1848.) In 1854 the tonnage of the steamers of the port of

London amounted to 138,000 tons, without reckoning vessels of less than

fifty tons. (1857.)]

[Footnote 105: Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea,

between 1680 and 1690, were only 42 a year.]

[Footnote 106: Cowley, Discourse of Solitude.]

[Footnote 107: The fullest and most trustworthy information about the

state of the buildings of London at this time is to be derived from the

maps and drawings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian Library.

The badness of the bricks in the old buildings of London is particularly

mentioned in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. There is an account of

the works at Saint Paul's in Ward's London Spy. I am almost ashamed to

quote such nauseous balderdash; but I have been forced to descend even

lower, if possible, in search of materials.]

[Footnote 108: Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 20. 1672.]

[Footnote 109: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North.]

[Footnote 110: North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserved

a specimen of the sublime raptures in which the Pindar of the City

indulged:--

"The worshipful sir John Moor!

After age that name adore!"]

[Footnote 111: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Anglie Metropolis,

1690; Seymour's London, 1734.]

[Footnote 112: North's Examen, 116; Wood, Ath. Ox. Shaftesbury; The Duke

of B.'s Litany.]

[Footnote 113: Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 114: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Pennant's London;

Smith's Life of Nollekens.]

[Footnote 115: Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 10, 1683, Jan. 19, 1685-6.]

[Footnote 116: Stat. 1 Jac. II. c. 22; Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 7, 1684.]

[Footnote 117: Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast

that he had shot birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, and

the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1785.]

[Footnote 118: The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late as

the end of George the First's reign.]

[Footnote 119: See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690,

and engraved for Smith's History of Westminster. See also Hogarth's

Morning, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza were still

occupied by people of fashion.]

[Footnote 120: London Spy, Tom Brown's comical View of London and

Westminster; Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor, 1678;

Daily Courant and Daily Journal of June 7, 1733; Case of Michael v.

Allestree, in 1676, 2 Levinz, p. 172. Michael had been run over by

two horses which Allestree was breaking in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

The declaration set forth that the defendant "porta deux chivals

ungovernable en un coach, et improvide, incante, et absque debita

consideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur eux faire tractable

et apt pur an coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur ferocite, ne

poientestre rule, curre sur le plaintiff et le noie."]

[Footnote 121: Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March

2, 1725-6; London Gardener, 1712; Evening Post, March, 23, 1731. I have

not been able to find this number of the Evening Post; I therefore

quote it on the faith of Mr. Malcolm, who mentions it in his History of

London.]

[Footnote 122: Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign of

William the Third; Swift's City Shower; Gay's Trivia. Johnson used to

relate a curious conversation which he had with his mother about giving

and taking the wall.]

[Footnote 123: Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682;

Shadwell's Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities will readily occur

to all who are acquainted with the popular literature of that and the

succeeding generation. It may be suspected that some of the Tityre

Tus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows shortly after the

Restoration. I am confident that he was thinking of those pests of

London when he dictated the noble lines:

"And in luxurious cities, when the noise

Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,

And injury and outrage, and when night

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

Of Belial, flown With innocence and wine."]

[Footnote 124: Seymour's London.]

[Footnote 125: Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, "Of the new

lights"; Seymour's London.]

[Footnote 126: Stowe's Survey of London; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia;

Ward's London Spy; Stat. 8 & 9 Gul. III. cap. 27.]

[Footnote 127: See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wright

was made a judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir George

Savile was made a peer.]

[Footnote 128: The sources from which I have drawn my information about

the state of the Court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among them

are the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, the

Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, the works of Roger North, the Diares of

Pepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and the Memoirs of Grammont and Reresby.]

[Footnote 129: The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in

a large class of words, the O was pronounced like A. Thus Lord was

pronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a great

master of this court tune, as Roger North calls it; and Titus Oates

affected it in the hope of passing for a fine gentleman. Examen, 77,

254.]

[Footnote 130: Lettres sur les Anglois; Tom Brown's Tour; Ward's London

Spy; The Character of a Coffee House, 1673; Rules and Orders of the

Coffee House, 1674; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675; A Satyr against

Coffee; North's Examen, 138; Life of Guildford, 152; Life of Sir Dudley

North, 149; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published by Curll in 1715. The

liveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country Mouse. There

is a remarkable passage about the influence of the coffee house orators

in Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685.]

[Footnote 131: Century of inventions, 1663, No. 68.]

[Footnote 132: North's Life of Guildford, 136.]

[Footnote 133: Thoresby's Diary Oct. 21,1680, Aug. 3, 1712.]

[Footnote 134: Pepys's Diary, June 12 and 16,1668.]

[Footnote 135: Ibid. Feb. 28, 1660.]

[Footnote 136: Thoresby's Diary, May 17,1695.]

[Footnote 137: Ibid. Dec. 27,1708.]

[Footnote 138: Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas

Browne, 1662; Cotton's Angler, 1676.]

[Footnote 139: Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30, 1685,

Jan. 1, 1686.]

[Footnote 140: Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Roads; History of Hawkhurst,

in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica.]

[Footnote 141: Annals of Queen Anne, 1703, Appendix, No. 3.]

[Footnote 142: 15 Car. II. c. 1.]

[Footnote 143: The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth

in many petitions which appear in the Commons' Journal of 172 5/6. How

fierce an opposition was offered to the new system may be learned from

the Gentleman's Magazine of 1749.]

[Footnote 144: Postlethwaite's Dict., Roads.]

[Footnote 145: Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England,

In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse.]

[Footnote 146: Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw.]

[Footnote 147: Anthony a Wood's Life of himself.]

[Footnote 148: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list

of stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled Angliae

Metropolis, 1690.]

[Footnote 149: John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches,

1672. These reason were afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "The

Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage

coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted.]

[Footnote 150: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen,

105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.]

[Footnote 151: See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687,

Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of

an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at

Colchester in March, 1688, is highly curious.]

[Footnote 152: Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's

coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes sir, and at White's too.--Beaux' Stratagem.]

[Footnote 153: Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same

description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad

which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself

thus before the Judge:

"What say you now, my honoured Lord

What harm was there in this?

Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred

By brave, freehearted Biss."]

[Footnote 154: Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the

execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I.]

[Footnote 155: See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's

Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's

account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English

inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 156: Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England,

1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August

15, 1687.]

[Footnote 157: Lond. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.]

[Footnote 158: Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3,

1680.]

[Footnote 159: Anglias Metropolis, 1690.]

[Footnote 160: Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9;

Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.]

[Footnote 161: I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year

1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000£.; and

the net receipt was about 1,200,000£. The number of letters conveyed by

post was 478,000,000. (1857).]

[Footnote 162: London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680.]

[Footnote 163: There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique

collection of these papers in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 164: For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about

the important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the

trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops.]

[Footnote 165: Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of

newsletters, see the Examen, 133.]

[Footnote 166: I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude

to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh

for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he

meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I have never

seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same

compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private

archives The judgment with which sir James in great masses of the

rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was

worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him

in the same mine.]

[Footnote 167: Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing

houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the

eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few

years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties

in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.]

[Footnote 168: Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of

Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial.]