Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV.
THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION.
CONSTITUTION AND LAWS.
The final expulsion of the Stuarts constitutes a new era, at which it is necessary to pause and notice what has been the effect on the condition of the mass of the people, and what they themselves have been doing amid these extraordinary revolutions. We have, however, detailed the alterations in the constitution, the laws, and the church with so much minuteness, that little more is required of us on those heads in this review. From the commencement of the reign of Charles I. to 1640. the country was in a state of constant conflict betwixt the king and the parliament on the question of constitutional rights, which finally became actual warfare, and the country obeyed whichever power was in the ascendant by its armies, the nominal government, however, being chiefly in the parliament in the name of the king. On the death of Charles at the hands of his subjects, in 1649, the commons of England, then sitting as the Long parliament, became the supreme power in the state, declaring themselves so without king or house of lords. But Cromwell's victories enabled him to dismiss this parliament summarily, and from that time forward England was under the dictatorship of Cromwell, who endeavoured to rule by the assistance of a parliament, but found it impossible, and held the reins of government himself, with the aid of a small council.
All the ancient forms of the constitution were thus completely broken down; yet, in no period of our history, as we have seen, were the laws more efficiently administered, or the liberties of the subject more respected; never was the power of the nation more acknowledged abroad. Cromwell was, it is true, too much occupied with maintaining his novel power against a swarm of public and private opponents to be able to carry out all the reforms in the abuses of the state which he contemplated; but he made, or the Long Parliament made, some very sweeping ones. In 1650 the parliament ordered all the report books of the resolutions of judges and other law books to be translated into English, that every one might understand them; and though this was never carried out, yet the requirements of the same acts were that all writs, processes and their returns, all rules, pleadings, indictments, all patents, commissions, records, judgments, statutes, &c., and all proceedings in any courts of law, including courts-leet, courts-baron, and customary courts, should all be written in English, and not in Latin, French, or any other language, and in an ordinary hand and character, and not in what is called court-hand, which most people found difficult to read. This was a regulation received with great repugnance by the lawyers, and overthrown at the restoration.
In the same year certain oppressive fees, called damage-clear, or damna clericorum which had been paid to the clerks of the different law courts before judgment could be executed, were abolished; and this salutary reform was confirmed by a special act of 1665, that is, after the restoration, so that it became a perpetual gain.
In 1653 an act was passed, allowing marriages to be effected before a magistrate, and introducing the simple Scotch custom of a declaration of the parties that they took each other as husband and wife being sufficient. This very reasonable reform, which exempted dissenters from the necessity of going to the churches of the establishment to solemnise their marriages, was also done away with at the restoration, and never recovered by the public till 1830, when dissenters were also authorised to have their marriages effected by their own ministers. At the same time, August, 1653, an act was passed establishing registers of marriages, deaths, and births in every parish—a most important regulation.
In 1654 Cromwell and his council exerted themselves to put down those cruel and debasing sports which had been the delight of the English court as well as of the people—cock-fighting, bull and bear-baiting, and similar practices Colonels Pride and Hewson destroyed the bear gardens which had been so eagerly and constantly frequented by queen Elizabeth, and killed the bears—a circumstance which gave rise to the celebrated poem of "Hudibras," by Butler. And during the same year the protector and council also passed an act prohibiting duels, and making the delivering of a challenge to fight one punishable by six months imprisonment, and the production of securities for good behaviour for a year. So far was Cromwell beyond the spirit of his own and even of our times till within a very recent period. This act went so far as to make it punishable by fine, and by reparation to the party injured, to provoke any one to violence by provoking words or gestures—a measure introduced now into our police laws.
At the same time an act was issued to reform the court of chancery, expediting its dispatch of business by relieving it of a multitude of causes, which were distributed through the other courts, and regarding its fees, and fixing them by a table. In 1652 the Long Parliament had voted the abolition of this court altogether; but Cromwell opposed its entire suppression, believing it might be reformed to the advantage of the public, and this reform he now accomplished.
In 1656 that radical parliament nick-named the Barebones Parliament by the indignant lawyers, abolished all the chief feudal tenures by which lands had been held of the crown, and abolished the court of wards and liveries, taking away "all homages, fines, licences, seizins, pardons for alienation, incident or arising from, or by reason of wardship, livery, primer seizen, or oustre le main," &c.; and that all tenures in capite and knights' service should be abolished, and such tenures be turned into common soccage. Purveyance and composition for purveyance were done away with. These were such boons to the aristocracy, that they did not forget, as we have seen, to bargain for their continuance on the return of kingship, though they took care to leave their feudal claim of manorial rights and copyhold fees in force.
The very important practices of granting new trials on account of defective evidence, excessive damages, or provable partiality of juries, and of the introduction of special juries themselves, appear to have been introduced during the period of the commonwealth; under which those oppressive engines of royalty, the courts of High Commission and Star-chamber, wore also swept away.
One of the first acts of monarchy was to declare all the acts and proceedings of the parliaments and protectorate of the commonwealth null and void. The act, making it incumbent to call a fresh parliament within three years of the dissolution of another, was thrown into the common wreck; and all that Charles I. had perilled his head by insisting on was replaced in its tyrannous activity, except the courts of the Star-chamber and High Commission, which were too odious oven for those subservient times. Yet Mr. Hallam, in his constitutional history, has asserted that "the fundamental privileges of the subject were less invaded, the prerogative swerved into fewer excesses during the reign of Charles II. than perhaps in any former period of equal length. Thanks," he says, "to the patient energies of Selden and Elliot, of Pym and Hampden, the constitutional boundaries of royal power had been so well established, that no minister was daring enough to attempt any general and flagrant violation of them." These extraordinary assertions have been also copied by other historians. Extraordinary they must appear after the perusal of our preceding chapters of this monarch's reign. True, he and his ministers did not dare formally to abolish Magna Charta or the Petition of Rights, nor even to revive the courts of the Star-chamber and High Commission; but they discovered the means of leaving the securities of the constitution dead letters. It is true that Charles was compelled to call together parliaments more frequently to supply his necessities; but when they failed to do this, he had a resource in selling himself and all the best interests of his country to the French king for money. But admitting that he was more politic in his treatment of parliament than his father or grandfather, was he less tyrannic, or did he less invade the laws and liberties of the country? Have we forgotten that he enslaved every considerable corporation in the country, including that of London, by arbitrarily suppressing their ancient charters by writs of quo warranto, and thus compelled them to return such members to parliament as he chose? That he pursued a similar course in the counties, obtaining from venal and arbitrarily-appointed sheriffs similar returns? That with these packed parliaments he drained the country of money to spend on his parasites and mistresses, and to the neglect and damage of all the vital interests of the nation? Was this no invasion of the fundamental privileges of the subject? no exercise of excess in the prerogative? The fundamental privileges of the subject were swamped altogether in the substitution of mock parliaments for real representatives of the people.
Have we forgot, too, that judge after judge was set aside till Charles had found men subservient enough to pass such judgments as he pleased Mr. Hallam says, "There were no means of chastising political delinquencies except through the regular tribunals of justice, and through the verdict of a jury." Were those regular tribunals, when even the juries who were to try the regicides were notoriously to be packed, and the trials were not allowed to take place till new and subservient sheriffs were appointed? Ludlow, one of them who had escaped to Switzerland, says:—"This important business was delayed during the time that Mr. Love was to continue sheriff of London, he being no way to be induced, either by fear or hopes, to permit juries to be packed in order to second the designs of the court." By such juries, and before commissioners including such men as Monk and Shaftesbury, who had sworn that none of their old political friends should suffer by the restoration—before the renegades Denzell Hollis, Montague earl of Sandwich, Clarendon, Saye and Sele, and members of such, besides their declared enemies, the duke of Ormond, the earl of Berkshire, &c., were tried and condemned Harrison, Scrope, Vane, and the rest of them. What regular trials and what juries had the unfortunate catholics who perished under the base evidence of such men as Titus Oates, Bedloe, Prance, Dugdale, and that perjured crew? What constitutional protection under such judges as Jeffreys, and Treby, and Scroggs, with tory sheriffs and packed tory juries, had lord Russell and Algernon Sidney? "Convictions," says Macaulay, "were obtained without difficulty from tory juries, and rigorous punishments were inflicted by courtly judges. With these criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely less formidable."
With such means for modelling judges and constituting juries, there was no need to obstruct the operations of writs of habeas corpus (Charles even allowed the habeas corpus act to be passed); his judges and juries could deal as they pleased with any unfortunate that the court took offence at. But the chief directions which the infringement of the liberties of the subject took in the reign of Charles II. was that of the suppression of all rights of conscience, and the punishment and spoliation of those who dared to resist. Charles was not long in forgetting his promise of freedom of conscience in his famous "Declaration of Breda." The church, with all its old assumptions of exclusive dominance, was restored, as we have seen, and the most stringent acts passed for crushing every expression of departure from the established creed. Besides all presbyterians and independents being driven out of the pulpits of the state, a series of the most tyrannical acts were passed to drive all dissenters out of every office of trust and honour, and to punish them for assembling to worship in the most private manner according to their own form of worship. There was the corporation act passed in 1661, compelling every one, before being admitted to any office in any municipal corporation, to take the sacrament according to the fashion of the established church, and to subscribe the declarations abjuring the solemn league and covenant, and against the lawfulness of taking up arms against the king on any pretence whatever. This was followed by the act of uniformity, in 1662, compelling every one to declare his assent to everything in the book of common prayer before he could be admitted to any church preferment, and to be licensed by a bishop even before he could teach a school. Having thus barred the church and corporations effectually to every honest man who did not hold the faith of the predominant church party to the tittle, the dissenters were pursued to their own meetings and punished there. An act against seditious conventicles, commonly called the conventicle act, was passed in 1661, by which every person found at a dissenting meeting where above five persons were present, was punishable by fine, or three months' imprisonment; and for a third offence was transported for seven years! Nor was this deemed enough. Thoroughly to crush all teaching of religion except in churches, a new act, called the five-mile act, was passed the following year, 1665, by which every dissenting minister found within five miles of the place where he had ever preached was fined forty pounds! Besides these most oppressive enactments, which let loose the base tribe of spies and informers on the whole dissenting world— this very world to which Charles, in his declaration of Breda, had promised liberty of conscience—a still more atrocious act was passed in 1670 against conventicles, by which even children above sixteen years of age were fined five shillings for attendance at such meetings, and ten shillings for a second and every subsequent appearance there; and the preacher was fined twenty pounds for the first offence, and forty pounds for every subsequent one; the master of the house where the meeting was held being fined twenty pounds each time. Authority was given to break open any man's door where he was informed that such meeting was holding, and take all present into custody. Where, then, was Magna Charta? Where the boast that every man's house was his castle? Lastly, there was the test act passed in 1673, extending the disabilities of dissenters and catholics from corporations, to parliament, and every office under the crown. In fact, instead of Charles not stretching the prerogative, and not violating the privileges of the subject, as Mr. Hallam asserts, there never was a time when all the safeguards of the constitution were more completely prostrated; for, besides these acts aimed at the suppression of all freedom of opinion, there were two other acts passed in his reign, and at the very commencement of it, too, in 1661, which perfected the subjection of the people—one, the act against tumults and disorders, which made it an offence punishable with a penalty of one hundred pounds and three months imprisonment to even solicit a signature to a petition to king or parliament which had more than twenty such signatures, unless such petition was sanctioned by three justices of the peace, or the majority of the grand jury of the county; whoever presented such petition was liable to the same penalty, or whoever was present at the presentation of a sanctioned petition, if there were more than ten persons attending it; and that the military powers might be prepared to back up effectually these despotic regulations, another act declared the whole of the military and naval power of the kingdom, including the militia and all places of strength in the kingdom, to be in the sole and absolute power and possession of the crown.
Is it possible to conceive a people more thoroughly enslaved—tied up hand, foot, tongue, and pen, for the press at the same time was under the strictest censorship? Is it possible to depict or imagine a monarch more absolutely master of all the laws and liberties of a nation than this same Charles, whom Mr. Hallam declares to have been so tender of the national freedom, so moderate in the exercise of the prerogative? But what is more astonishing is to find "Knight's Pictorial History "—a history generally so impartial and judicious—echoing and extending this most palpable fallacy. Subscribing to Mr. Hallam's statement, the writer of Knight's History says:—"We must admit that, however dark might be the designs of Charles, there were no such general infringements of the public liberty in his reign as had occurred before the Long Parliament. And when," he says, "we add to this the effective abolition of illegal or arbitrary imprisonment by the habeas corpus act, and the extinction of the practice of torture, noticed in the last book, it will be perceived that the paring the talons of the prerogative had undergone in the period now under review was far from inconsiderable. The scandalous practice of coercing or intimidating judges by fines or imprisonment, which had been of occasional occurrence in former times, may be said to have been put down in the reign of Charles II."
Perhaps a more unfortunate string of assertions than this never was made. We have shown how entire was the suppression of the liberty of the subject in the enumeration of the seven celebrated acts of this reign. True, in 1679, the 31st of Charles II., the habeas corpus act was passed; but this, so far from proving that the writ of habeas corpus was treated with respect, clearly of itself indicates that the refusal and defiance of it was become so outrageous, that even the servile parliament of Charles was roused to endeavour to enforce that great safeguard of the popular liberty. Writs of habeas corpus were of very ancient date, and, says Hallam, "It is a very common mistake, and that not only amongst foreigners, but many from whom some knowledge of our constitutional laws might be expected, to suppose that the statute of Charles II. enlarged in a great degree our liberties, and forms an epoch in their history." He goes on very truly to show that this act " conferred no right upon the subject," but was only intended to enforce the due issue of the writs of habeas corpus according to ancient practice, "and cut off the abuses by which the government's lust of power, and the servile subtlety of crown lawyers, had impaired so fundamental a privilege."
Here, indeed, Hallam unconsciously concedes all that we have been asserting against him. It was this lust of power in Charles's government, and the servile subtlety of crown lawyers, which had so firmly extinguished the security of the subject in this reign, and rendered an effort necessary to check these evils. But, as we have shown, Charles rendered the habeas corpus act a dead letter in his time by his system of corrupt judges who then depended entirely on him, by corrupt sheriffs, extinction of corporation charters, and packed juries. The difference betwixt his reign and that of his father was simply this—that in his father's time the nation was resolute for its liberties, and contended with him step by step for them; in his own time the reaction of royalty had for a long period quelled the public spirit, and given him a grand advantage over both parliament and people. The despotism was not less, but the resistance was less.
With respect to not browbeating juries or coercing them, as asserted by Knight to have been rare, scarcely anything can be read with more astonishment, when we recolllect that this was in the days of Scroggs and Jeffreys. Perhaps in no reign, referring to Knight's own pages, was there a more frightful disregard to the independence of juries or of witnesses. Knight does admit that Penn and Meads jury were coerced and fined, but treats that as a rare case. It were easy to furnish, from Besse's "History of the Sufferings of the Friends,"' scores—we might almost say hundreds—of such cases, to say nothing of the trials of other dissenters and state prisoners. So far from Jeffreys desisting from the practice of coercing juries and browbeating witnesses, after judge Vaughan had reversed the decision of the court of Old Bailey in Penn's case in 1670, we find him, in 1685, in the succeeding reign, indulging in the utmost licence of that kind. Take, for example, the trial of Alice Lisle, for harbouring a refugee from the battle of Sedgemoor, one of Monmouth's officers, where, as Macaulay shows, he coerced and abused the jury till they gave a verdict contrary to their own convictions; and his treatment of one of the witnesses was such—threatening him with hell-fire and the like—that the man became dumb with terror.
But most unfortunate of all is the assertion of Knight that there was an "extinction of torture in Charles's reign." Why this is the reign of the battles of Rullion Green, Bothwell Bridge, and of Drumclog! This was the reign under which the covenanters were driven to desperation, and roused to rebellion by the indiscriminate disregard to every principle of civil or religious right in their cases, and this the period of the horrors perpetrated on them by Tweeddale, Lauderdale, James duke of York, Claverhouse, Turner, and other officers. This was the time when the thumbscrews and iron boot wore in infernal operation, and James sate and gloated on the agonies of the sufferers which drove from the scene the most hardened of the other persecutors. Torture extinguished in the reign of Charles II.! never was it in more general or more diabolical operation—torture, physical and mental, torture applied to the person, the conscience, and the estate. Such falsifications of history demand the fullest exposure; and for that we need only refer the reader to the very pages of those who would thus represent the fact.
Under James, when he came to the throne, tyranny assumed a new shape. His design was to establish popery, and therefore he withdrew the persecutions of the dissenters, and even attempted to repeal the test act. But his intentions wore too transparent; all parties took the alarm at the idea of the restored dominance of the catholics, and therefore all parties in the state, except a few of the dissenters who had groaned the most bitterly under the tortures of persecution, were united against him. It was a question of life or death to the Anglican church; and a church persecuting and the same persecuted were found to be two different things. The church and all its aristocratic supporters, presbyterians, independents, were all now united for one object—to drive out the popish king, and they did it. It was fortunate for liberty that James, within the short space of three years, crowded more uncompromising acts of arbitrary defiance of the constitution, and more of ferocious cruelty than had been exhibited in England since the reign of Henry VIII. The spirit of the nation and of parliament; which was beginning to show itself again even before the death of Charles, was now effectually roused to be rid of the Stuart dynasty altogether. It was then found, rather than in Charles's reign, that the spirit of Hampden, Cromwell, Selden, Pym, and the rest of the great men of the commonwealth, had rather slumbered than was dead, and that their acts were still destined to be the salvation of the nation.
Besides the passing of the habeas corpus act, as already referred to, during this period, parliament made some progress in defining the peculiar business and privileges of each house. On the lords resuming their legislative powers at the restoration, they resumed the right of appeal to them from the courts of common law and of the court of chancery, which they had long exercised as the supreme court of judicature as well as of legislation. But after the restoration the lords proceeded to receive appeals from the courts of equity, against which extension of privilege the commons remonstrated, and soon came into actual collision, from the circumstance that some of the parties appealed against were members of the commons' house. This the commons resented as a breach of their privileges, which exempted their members from legal process during the session of the house. In 1667 the lords went further than appeals, and entertained an original application to them from Thomas Skinner, a merchant of London, against the East India Company. This the commons resented as not only a breach of privilege—inasmuch as the lords had fined Sir Samuel Barnardiston, the governor of the East India Company, and imprisoned him, the said Sir Samuel being a member of their house—but they denied the right of the lords to entertain original suits at all. The collision was violent and prolonged, and was only got rid of by the king advising them to erase all proceedings on the subject from their respective journals. This settled the question of the lords entertaining original suits, but not the right of appeal from courts of equity; and in 1675 the lords again entertained an appeal of Dr. Thomas Shirley against Sir John Fagg, who being also a member of the house of commons, was resisted by the commons on the score of privilege. The contest was only got rid of by parliament being prorogued for upwards of a year, namely, from November, 1675, to February, 1677, after which this particular appeal was never revived, but the lords continued to exercise their claim to decide appeals from the courts of equity.
Another point which the commons at this period asserted and carried out was the right of originating all money bills, and everything which went to lay a charge on the people. Anciently grants of supply were made separately each house, and the clergy granted for themselves in convocation; but about the middle of the fourteenth century the two houses fell into the practice of granting supplies jointly. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James the form changed to that of the commons granting with consent of the lords. It began to be felt by the commons that, as they were the immediate representatives of the people, it was their particular duty to discharge this function. As the commons during the commonwealth became the sole legislative power, they were not likely afterwards to resign this right; and, accordingly, after the restoration they exercised that right as excessively their own, only introducing the name of the lords as consenting parties, as in all other statutes. So jealously did they protect this right, that they would not permit the lords to originate or to alter during the passage of a money bill through their house, any grant or amount of grant. In 1661 they threw out a bill which the lords sent down to them for the paving of Westminster, and in 1671 they protested against the lords altering the rate of a tax upon sugar. The lords made considerable resistance to this, but were compelled to give way, and the right of originating all taxation continues to reside in the commons, though ministers there propose those taxes to them.
The exercise of the function of taxation became more complete in the commons by the fact of the clergy, who had hitherto granted their own supplies in convocation, in the fourth year of Charles II. voluntarily giving up this right, and leaving the commons to tax them as part of the general community, being allowed in return to vote as well as the laity for knights of the shire—a privilege which they still retain.
The mode of appropriating the supplies to specific purposes became also general in Charles II.'s time. The more frequent practice previous to the Long Parliament had been to vote the money, and leave the monarch to expend it at his discretion; but the Long Parliament specified the objects for which they granted their money; and though Cromwell would not submit to any such restraints from his parliament, during Charles II.'s reign the practice became very common. James, who was as arbitrary as his father regarding taxation, rejected any appropriation clause in grants to him, but they were afterwards adopted under William II., and from that period it became the custom to appropriate every amount granted yearly to its specific object. During the reign of Charles II.—that is, in 1672 and 1673—the parliamentary franchise was extended to the county and city of Durham, and to the borough of Newark, by royal charter. These were the last alterations of the representation which took place till the union with Scotland.
A circumstance which has had a great effect on the maintenance of our liberties and the preservation of authentic records of public transactions, was the general resolution passed by the commons in 1680, for the printing of its votes and proceedings. This practice was introduced by the Long Parliament, but became regular and continued from this period. But the great event of this period, as it regards taxation, is that which we have already spoken of in considerable detail—the transfer of the burden of the land to the people, by giving the king the excise upon beer, ale, and other liquors sold within the kingdom for ever, in lieu of the old feudal services attached to the lands of the aristocracy. Hence this tax now became styled the hereditary excise. At the time of its being thus granted it produced only about £300,000 a year, but has now grown to more than £16,000,000. Contemporaneously with the easing of the landed aristocracy of their natural burdens, and transferring the burden to the people at large, commenced the national debt; the sum of £1,200,000 which Charles I. defrauded the London merchants of by the abrupt closing of the exchequer, standing as the first item.
Besides the excise, Charles received the grant of tonnage and poundage for life—that is, the customs' duties—which then only brought in about £400,000 a year; a tax on hearths, amounting to £170,000; on stamps, imposed for the first time in 1671; and he derived from crown lands about £100,000; from the forest of Dean, £5,000; from the duchy of Cornwall, £12,000; and from other sources, £55,000. He received large sums from the king of France, sold Dunkirk to France for £400,000, and, from one source or another, is calculated to have had about £1,800,000 per annum, which, however, did not suffice for his mistresses and other extravagances.
This is the period when the debtor and credit account of our revenue really commences, and the history of the revenue, therefore, properly dates from. At the time of the expulsion of James, the sources of revenue from the national taxation had wonderfully increased, showing a rapid advance in national prosperity. The customs now produced £600,000 per annum, the excise, £666,000; the hearth-money, £245,000; the post-offices, £65,000; wine licences, £10,000; new duties on wine and vinegar, £173,000; duties on sugar and tobacco, £149,000; and on French silks and foreign linens nearly £94,000. Altogether, James's income is calculated at more than two millions sterling. No monarch need have been more happy or powerful had he had the wisdom to see it, and remain contented with constitutional authority.
RELIGION.
The struggles of the church we have sufficiently traced in our recent chapters. With the restoration it came back to full power and possession of its revenues and honours, and held them firmly against all rivals till James menaced them with the recall of the Romish hierarchy, when, joining with the alarmed public, it compelled the monarch himself to fly, and continued on its own vantage-ground. The only notice of religious phenomena at this period demanded of us is rather what regards the sects which became conspicuous at this period.
The leading sects, the presbyterians the independents, and the baptists—then called anabaptists—differed little in their faith. They were all of the Calvinistic school, whilst the episcopal church was already divided by the contending parties of Calvinists and Arminians. We have related at full the struggles of the presbyterians, English and Scotch, for the possession of the establishment in England to the exclusion of all other faiths. The triumph of the independents, with more liberal views, through Cromwell and the army, and the expulsion of both these parties from the national pulpits following on the restoration. The baptists, though many of them were high in the army and the state during the commonwealth, never displayed the political ambition of the other two great denominations. They cut, indeed, no figure in the secular affairs of the nation, but they were most honourably distinguished by their assertion of the right of private opinion. They were as tolerant of religious liberty as the independents, or more so, from whom they differed only in their views of the rite of baptism. Their early history in this country was adorned by the appearance in their pulpits of one of the most extraordinary men of modern times—John Bunyan, whose "Pilgrim's Progress" continues to delight all classes of men, and will continue so long as the world stands.
John Bunyan and his Blind Child at the Gate of Bedford Gaol.
Bunyan, who was a tinker by trade, was serving in the parliamentary array at Leicester, at the time of the battle of Naseby; and when Charles I. fled to that town, he was ordered out as a sentinel, and his life was saved by another soldier volunteering to take his duty for some cause, who was shot at his post. Bunyan was soon thrown into prison for daring to preach under that liberal monarch, Charles II., as Mr. Hallam paints him, and lay in gaol twelve years and a half, solely because he had a conscience of his own; and was only liberated on the declaration of indulgence by James II. A Mr. Smyth, a clergyman of the church of England, who adopted their faith, was the first to open a chapel for the baptists in London, and, encouraged by his example, others were soon opened, and the views of the denomination soon spread over England and Wales, in later times to be eloquently expounded by Robert Robinson and Robert Hall.
But the most remarkable appearance of a religious body was that of the society of Friends, or, as they soon came to be nick-named, Quakers. We have introduced a short notice of the founder of this sect in defending him against the calumnies of Macaulay. George Fox was born at Drayton, in Leicestershire, in 1624. His father was a weaver, and George was apprenticed to a shoemaker, who also had a little farm. He informs us in his own journal that he preferred the farming, and chiefly devoted himself to it. When he was about nineteen he became deeply impressed with a religious feeling. It was a time when religious discussion was making rapid progress amongst the people from the more general access to the Bible, and many were dissatisfied with the different churches, which seemed too much engaged in attempts at worldly aggrandisement, and at achieving a dominance over each other. George was one of these. In seeking for clear views of religious faith, such as could set his mind at rest, he went to various clergymen of the established church first, but he found no light. One of them bade him take tobacco and sing psalms; and another, Cradock of Coventry, was beginning to speak comfortably to George as they walked in his garden, when the embryo reformer unluckily happened to set his foot on a flower-border, which threw the clergyman into such a rage that the discourse was abruptly brought to an end.
Finding no relief or illumination from professors, as he called them, he very wisely took his Bible, and used to retire into a hollow tree in the fields, where he read and prayed earnestly to God to enlighten his understanding to comprehend the sacred volume, and the genuine will of the Lord. The result was that he came to a clear and steadfast conviction that Christianity was strictly a spiritual thing, having nothing specifically to do with states and governments, with worldly pomp and power, and strivings after mortal honours and high places; that Christ simply and strictly defined it when he said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He saw that it was the grand principle by which the sole of man is intended to be regenerated—born again, in fact, and made fitting to enter into the kingdom of disembodied souls, in the presence of God and his angels. He found himself, in a word, called back from the conflicting views and empty ceremonies of the time to Christianity as it existed amongst the apostles—a perfectly spiritual, and holy, and disinterested thing, embodying the wisdom and the truth of God, and inhabiting, not formal creeds and outward ceremonies, but the heart of man, and thence influencing all his thoughts and actions for good. George perceived that all fixed creeds, all rites and ceremonies, all investments in state power, were but as cobwebs and old rags with which the self-interests and self-love of men had enveloped, encumbered, and degraded it; and he felt himself called to go forth and proclaim this, which he emphatically styled " the truth."
He perceived that he needed no call or authorisation of man for this purpose; that he had the assurance that Christ, according to his promise, had sent the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, into his church to all time, to lead his disciples into all truth. He found the most distinct assurances that the gifts of the Divine Spirit, with all the spiritual powers which Christ had promised to his church, had been conferred on it in the apostles' time, and by them were pronounced as not given to them alone, but to all men in all ages who were willing to receive them. It was therefore evident to him that no authority was required from man for the assumption of the ministry of the Gospel; that none could be given by him for that office; that it was the prerogative of God alone, as was the whole work of regeneration in the human spirit. "Wherever two or three are met together in my name, there will I be in the midst of them." These words of Christ were sufficient for Fox; they were the charter of Christian freedom and independence for ever, which no human power, however high, had any business to interfere with. "Whatever men might say to the contrary, the Holy Spirit, and it alone, was the great teacher and guide in the work of genuine religious life. That was "the light which enlighteneth every man which cometh into the world."
This became the grand foundation of Fox's religious system. True Christianity he believed to consist in living close to this Spirit incessantly and perpetually; in opening and keeping open an intimate walk and communion with this divine guide, and monitor, and moulder of the inward disposition and affections. In comparison with this, all outward rites and ceremonies were as dross and dust; and in forming his own system, which he fully believed he was led into by the Spirit, he abandoned all forms but that of simply sitting down in silence, and waiting for the promised influence of the eternal word. As no other power could sanction a man to stand up and preach, there was an end, if Fox's doctrine became prevalent, of what he called "man-made ministers." As the Divine Spirit had been promised to be in the midst of every congregation of even two or three individuals, and that it should lead them into all truth, in Fox's view there could be no other teacher except such as it should directly influence and inspire.
Now it was evident that here was an axe laid to the root of everything like church dominance, ecclesiastical dictation, and state interference. It was a reversion to the first of the essential spirituality of Christianity, independent of all outward rites, creeds, and formulas whatever. It revealed a religion which is alive and operative at every hour and in every corner of the universe; in the desert, on the hill-top, in the school, the closet, or the workshop, as fully and as absolutely existent as in any church, chapel, or cathedral whatever. The time was, in Fox's opinion, come "when men," in the words of the Saviour, "should no longer worship on the mountain or in Jerusalem," but that "all men should know God, from the greatest unto the least; "for he" is a spirit, and can be worshipped alone in spirit and in truth."
In Fox's doctrine lay, in fact, the most gigantic revolution in the world of mind which had ever been conceived, and which, spreading beyond the pale of his own society, is yet going on, leavening all forms of Christianity, and more and more imbuing the minds of sincere preachers, religious philosophers, and of the inquiring multitude.
Bancroft, the American historian, says:—"The rise of the people called quakers is one of the most remarkable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed unconditionally by the people as an inalienable birthright. It was the consequence of the moral warfare against corruption; the aspiration of the human mind after a perfect emancipation from the long reign of bigotry and superstition. Thus did the mind of George Fox arrive at the conclusion that truth is to be sought by listening to the voice of God in the sole. This principle contained a moral revolution; it established absolute freedom of mind, treading idolatry under foot, and entered the strongest protest against the power of the hierarchy. It was the principle for which Socrates died and Plato suffered; and now that Fox went forth to proclaim it among the people, he was everywhere resisted with vehemence; and priests and professors, magistrates and people, swelled against him like the raging waves of the sea.'"
Roger Williams' Departure for Salem Island.
And well they might; for there was no tyranny, imposition, fake ambition, or selfishness of any kind—whether wrapped in the lawn of the bishop, the purple of the prince, the ermine of the judge, whether assuming the mask of the priest, or the legislator, or the merchant, or the man in any profession who sought to indulge self at the expense of his neighbour, no rottenness, no stubble or chaff in the human system of canning forms and pretences—which this all-searching principle did not go to hurl down, expose to scorn, and blow away from the face of society. Despotism, slavery, war, tyranny of all kinds and hues fell before it. Nor are we to seek for the full effects of this principle within the narrow limits of the society which continues to own Fox as its founder. That society soon became influenced by the world around it; and the very means which Fox had adopted to cut them off from the world, by making them rich brought the spirit of the world in upon them in a flood; but the great principle—that the Divine Spirit must be and is the only and hourly teacher of the human soul, displaying there the uncompromising moral laws developed in the Gospel—has overleaped these narrow bounds, and is going on conquering and to conquer. It is now frequently remarked that Fox taught only what almost every Christian minister now acknowledges; but what was it in Fox's time? Where can we point to any one denomination which so fully and unequivocally based all religion on the direct teaching of the Divine Spirit, and so completely abandoned all forms and ceremonies as being neither part nor parcel of this divine work? Even the advanced and enlightened independents were willing in Cromwell's time to accept state pulpits and state pay for preaching the Gospel—a thing, in Fox's opinion, holy and unpurchasable, and which must stand apart from all mere human props and establishments. How many yet actually believe in the direct and conscious teaching and communion of the Holy Spirit? With Fox it was no principle of mere faith, but a thing of consciousness, and as palpable as his own bodily existence. Hence the ridicule which even professing Christians still often cast on the doctrine of "the Spirit moving the quakers," and of "the illuminating aid of the Holy Spirit, as Fox imagined," says Knight's History—as if yet it was folly to believe that the Holy Spirit is that which enlighteneth every man, and leads into all truth: or that the words of Christ to his disciples, "It is not you who speak, but your Father who speaketh in you," were more than a myth or a figure of speech.
Fox carried his great Christian test into every act and department of life. He was the first to elevate woman to her true place—an intellectual, moral, and political equality with man; basing his principle on the apostolic declaration that male and female are all one in Christ Jesus. Acting on this principle, the women of his society became preachers, and transacted their own affairs of association in their own meetings. He refused to take an oath before a magistrate, because Christ has expressly forbidden his disciples to swear at all under any circumstances; he refused to say "thou" to a poor man, and "you" to a rich one, as was then the odious custom; he refused to take off his hat as a mark of homage to the wealthy and great, on the same principle that it was a custom of pride and invidious distinction; and he addressed prince or magistrate with the respectful boldness which became a man sensible that the only true dignity was the dignity of truth. The sufferings which were brought upon him and his followers by these novel doctrines and practices from all parties were terrible. Above three thousand of them were imprisoned, even under the more liberal rule of the commonwealth, and as many under Charles II. Their property was spoliated, their meeting-houses pulled down, and their families grossly insulted in their absence. Yet the doctrine spread rapidly, and many eminent men embraced it; amongst others, William Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, and the learned Robert Barclay, who wrote the celebrated vindication of their faith.
At the same time the violent agitation of the period, and the enthusiasm of this new doctrine, led some of Fox's followers into considerable extravagance—perhaps inseparable from such a state of things—which, however, could not affect the scriptural and eternal doctrine of direct divine influence itself, any more than clouds can affect the reality of the sun's rays, though they may intercept them for a moment.
The most prominent case was that of James Naylor, who for a time was undoubtedly led into insanity by the effervescence of his mind under his religious zeal; and allowed women to lead his horse into Exeter, crying "Holy! holy! holy!" and spreading their scarfs and handkerchiefs in the way before him, as if he had been the Saviour come again. Naylor professed that this homage was not offered to him personally, but to Christ within him. His case occupied the house of commons for nearly two months altogether. There were violent debates on it from morning till night; but at length, on the 17th of December, 1656, it was voted that he should be set in the pillory in Palace Yard for two hours; then be whipped from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, twice, wearing a paper containing a description of his crimes; should have his tongue bored through with a hot iron by the hangman for his blasphemy; be branded on the forehead with the letter B; that he should be sent to Bristol, and there whipped through the city on a market-day; and paraded on a barebacked horse with his face backwards, and then sent back to Bridewell, in London, kept to hard labour, and debarred from the visits of his friends, and all access to pens, ink, and paper.
All this was rigidly inflicted upon him, and borne heroically. After two years' confinement in Bridewell he was dismissed, thoroughly cured of his hallucination, ready to admit it, but firm in his adhesion to the principles of quakerism as ever; and the society, pitying his fall, never withdrew from him their sympathy or the enjoyment of his membership. He died soon after his release.
In America, in New England, the quakers were more fiercely persecuted than in England, by the puritans, who had themselves fled from persecution. In Massachusetts and Connecticut they were ordered to have their ears cut off if men, to be publicly whipped if women and for a second offence to have their tongues bored through if they dared to come into these colonies; and this not deterring them, they hanged several men and women. Endicott, the governor of Connecticut, when one of them quoted the words of St. Paul, "for in him we live, and move, and have our being," irreverently replied, "And so does every cat and dog."
This intolerance of the puritans was equally exerted against one of their own members, the venerable Roger Williams, who was driven from Massachusetts for his boldly advocating the doctrine of perfect freedom of conscience. In fact, Roger Williams was one of the very first, if not the first man, who proclaimed this great doctrine; and therefore deserves to be held in eternal remembrance. The honour of being the earliest publisher of the right of spiritual freedom must, perhaps, be awarded to Leonard Busher, who published a work on the subject in 1614, and dedicated it to king James.
Roger Williams, expelled from Massachusetts, proceeded to Narragansett Bay, and became the founder of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, where the most perfect freedom of religious faith was allowed.
Besides the sects in England already enumerated, there were many minor ones. The "millenarians," or "fifth-monarchy men," whose views we have already explained. To this sect major-general Harrison belonged; and they created a riot under Venner, the wine-cooper. There was a sect called "the seekers," amongst whom Fox once fell, and many of them joined him, believing they had found what they sought. There were the "ranters," a body noted for their noise and vociferation; "Behmenists," or disciples of the German mystic, Jacob Böhme; "Vanists," followers of the religious views of Sir Harry Vane; and lastly, "Muggletonians," the disciples of one Ludovick Muggleton and John Reeve.
Muggleton was a journeyman tailor, who, with Reeve, pretended to be the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Revelations. They were fanatics of the wildest and most furious character. They professed to have power to save or damn all that they pleased, and they "dealt damnation round the land" with the utmost freedom. The quakers and Behmenists were the objects of their most violent denunciations, probably because Fox and Penn protested against their wild and fanatic doctrines, which were the antipodes of those of Fox; for, instead of representing God as a pure spirit, they asserted that he had a corporeal body, and came down to earth in it as Christ, leaving the prophet Elias in heaven to keep order in his absence. They contended that man's soul is inseparably united to his body, dies and rises again with it. They professed to have an especial knowledge of "the place and nature of heaven, and the place and nature of hell;" with the persons and natures of devils and angels. The truculent ravings of these fanatics may be seen in the works and letters of Muggleton, still extant. In one letter he delivers sentence of damnation on six-and-twenty quakers at once. "Inasmuch," he says, "as God hath chosen me on earth to be the judge of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, therefore, in obedience to my commission from the true God, I do pronounce all these twenty-six persons whose names are above written, cursed and damned in their souls and bodies from the presence of God, elect men, and angels in eternity." But this was little: he declared all quakers, and Behmenists, and numbers of other people damned and cursed for ever.
This repulsive apostle of perdition was tried at the Old Bailey, and convicted of blasphemy, in 1676, and died in 1697, at the age of eighty-eight.
But amid the muddy and gross fermentation of the public mind in those times on the subject of religion, the pure spirit was thus clearing itself; and from these impromising elements the great principles of religions truth and freedom elevated themselves, and have grown in our time into that splendid development of Christian knowledge and Christian tolerance which now distinguish the religious public in all its varieties in this country beyond almost any other.
SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND THE ARTS.
"We have seen with what a desolating sweep the bloody conflicts of the parliament against the encroachments of kingship prostrated the pursuits of literature and art. We might have expected that the return to established tranquillity under restored monarchy would have caused a now spring of genius. But monarchy came back drenched and dripping with the foetid stews of the continent; and the vile spirit and loathsome sensuality of the court rapidly infected the regions of literature. In no reign in this country, and in no country except France, have debauchery and the most hideous grossness so defiled the productions of poetry and the drama. Scarcely now could the rudest costermonger or the basest haunter of the most unclean retreats of infamy use the filthy language which then passed current in the palace, and was nightly uttered on the stage by the lips of the most beautiful young women. It was at this period that women were first introduced to enact feminine characters in the theatres; and it was a prurient attraction to those places to hear young and reputedly virtuous women uttering the grossest indecencies.
Amid the satyr crew of degraded men and women who then represented the literary world of England, some few, however, maintained a pure and dignified career. At the head of these, equally exalted above the rest by genius and purity of life and morals stood John Milton, our great epic poet, and one of the greatest, if not the greatest that the world has produced. Neither Virgil nor Dante can be compared with him; and Homer himself, surrounded as he is by all the solemn grandeur of an ancient fame, and nobly as he stands amid the magnificent shadows of his heroic world, fails when his subject is measured with that of Milton—the contest of heaven and hell for the possession of the world and the destinies of the whole human race. Compared with this—
Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us—
what is
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered?
How poor is the invocation of the ancient Greek—
Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour
Sprung the Fierce strife; from what offended power?
when placed side by side with that of the blind Tyresas of modern times—
Sing, heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heav'ns and earth
Rose out of chaos! Or, if Sion lull
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things attempted yet in prose or rhyme.And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th' upright height and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss.
And mad'st it pregnant. What in me is dark,
Iliumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men
That is a stupendous topic to dare, a prayer of infinite import to address to the infinite Creator; and to say that the poet rose, in the execution of his theme, to the full "height of that great argument," is, in fact, to place him far beyond any other genius which has yet visited this earth. In the words of a modern poet, his task led him to
tread on shadowy ground, to sink
Deep; and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
All strength, all terror, single or in bands.
That ever was put forth in personal form—
Jehovah, with his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones—
To pass them unalarmed.
Heaven, chaos, and the lowest pit of Erebus, the awful presence of the Supreme, of the Messiah, and the august princedoms of eternity; the mighty antagonist power of evil, and all the hosts of the damned—these were the regions and the personages that in this most daring scheme he proposed to exhibit in all their sublime or terrible aspect to the gaze of men. And this he has nobly accomplished. The splendour of imagination, the dignified strength and beauty of diction with which he had clothed "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," astonished even those who had seen the stately eloquence with which during the commonwealth he had defended the deeds and principles of its most daring leaders. He had found no mind capable of contending with his in the great warfare of politics, and now there stood no name equal with his in the realms of poetry except Shakespeare, who in every department of the art displayed wondrous and felicitous power. It may be safely asserted, however, that if Shakspeare surpassed him in fervour of dramatic passion, in the infinite variety of character which he seemed to create at will, in rhythmical harmony of lyric measures, and wondrous ease and grace of wit and repartee, or in touches of sententious wisdom and flashes of humour which irradiated all around him, even Shakspeare could not approach those sacred and sublime heights of every real vision and massive eloquence amid which Milton moved with all the majesty of an archangel.
It is only when we compare the strains of "Paradise Lost" with those of any other great poet, that we become conscious how far they transcend them in their august beauty and seraphic grandeur, which approach nearer to the lofty and fervid sublimity of the inspired Hebrew poets than those of any other mortal.
Milton had deeply imbued himself with the poetic spirit, imagery, and expression of the prophetic bards, as well as with the knowledge of those of Greece and Rome; and he brought to bear an immense mass of varied learning on his subject with a power of appropriation that gave to it a new and wonderful life instead of the aspect of pedantry. The names of people and places which he moulds into his diction seem to open up to the imagination regions of unimagined grandeur and beauty amid strains of solemnest music; and the descriptions of scenery, such as abound in Comus, Lycidas, and the Arcades, as well as those diffused through both the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," are like the most exquisite glimpses into the most fair and solitary landscapes, breathing every rural fragrance, and have with all rural sounds and harmonies.
Milton's Birthplace, Westminster.
Miltons Burial-place, Cripplegate.
But it was when he was old, and poor, and blind, and living among the hatred and the ribald obscenity of the restoration that he had scaled those sublime altitudes of genius, and seemed to walk rather on the celestial hills amid their pure and glorious inhabitants, than surrounded by the rankest impurities and basest natures of earth. It was when
His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,
when he had fallen on evil days, that he had alone allowed himself leisure to work out these the earliest of his aspirations. Long before, when he had returned from his pleasant sojourn in Italy, where he saw Galileo in his prison, and was himself received and honoured by the greatest men of the country, as in anticipation of his after glory, and was now engaged in defending the sternest measures of the republicans, that in his "Reasons of Church Government urged against Prelacy" he unfolded the grand design of his master work, but kept it self-denyingly in his soul till he had done his duty to his country. The views which he cherished in his literary ambition are as exalted in their moral grandeur as his genius was in its native character. These were, he said, "That what the greatest and choicest arts of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine, not caring to be named once abroad, though perhaps I could attain unto that, but content me with these British islands as my world." At this period, it seems, he had not made up his mind whether he should adopt "the epic form, as exemplified by Homer, Virgil, and Tasso; or the dramatic, wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign; or in the style of those magnificent odes and hymns of Pindarus and Callimachus, not forgetting that of all those kinds of writing the highest models are to be found in the Holy Scriptures in the book of Job, in the Song of Solomon, and the apocalypse of St. John, in the grand songs interspersed throughout the law and the prophets." But in one thing he was fixed—that the work should be one "not raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of some rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."
So he waited, fighting the battles of his country side by side with Cromwell and Hampden, Pym and Marvel; and when at length he found leisure to achieve his last great triumph, he was left alone in the field. He had outlived the great battle of king and people, in which extraordinary men and as extraordinary events had arisen, and shaken the whole civilised world. Charles I., Laud, and Strafford had fallen in their blood; the monarchy and the church had fallen; Pym, Hampden, Marvel, Vane, and the dictator Cromwell, had not only pulled down the greatest throne in Europe, but had made all others seem to reel by the terrific precedent. All these stern agents, with the generals Ireton, Harrison, Lambert, Fleetwood, and their compeers, who had risen from the people to fight for the people, were gone like the actors in an awful tragedy who had played their rôle. Some had perished in their blood, others had been torn from their graves; the monarchy and the church, the peerage, and all the old practices and maxims were again in the ascendant, and had taken bloody vengeance; yet this one man—he who had incited and applauded, who had defended and made glorious through his mighty talents, his unrivalled eloquence, and unapproachable learning, the whole republican cause—was left untouched. Blind, poor, and old, as if some special guardianship of Providence had shielded him, or as if the very foes who had dragged the dreaded Cromwell from his grave feared the imprecations of posterity, and shrunk from the touch of that sacred head,—there sat the sublime old man at his door, feeling, with grateful enjoyment, the genial sunshine falling upon him, making of his very darkness immortal harvest.So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the bard,
Holiest of men.
John Milton. From an authentic Picture.
Thee I revisit safe.
Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
And feed thy sov'reign, vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs.
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flow'ry brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
So were I equall'd with them in renown
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,
And Tyresias, and Phineas—prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note.
There he sate, undaunted as ever, like some superb column left amid the ruins of vast cities, erect, serene, calm, and trusting to God, the Father of mankind. Though all else that he and his august compeers had yearned after and striven for had perished for the time, he had lived to fulfil that long-deferred task of poetic glory; the vision of "Paradise Lost" had been song in faith in the most majestic strains that had ever made classical the English tongue, his trust in Providence had been justified; he had served his country, and yet had not missed his immortality. The great and wise came from every quarter and from foreign lands to visit him; and the wonderful passages through which he and his nation had lived became the theme of the world's perpetual wonder.
Much has been said of the small sum received for his "Paradise Lost," and the slow recognition which it received. But the only wonder is that it sold at all, for Milton was at the moment the most hated and dreaded man alive. It could not be soon forgotten that he had stimulated Cromwell and the republicans to the destruction of the monarchy; that he defended the death of the king in his famous "Eiconoclastes," a reply to the "Icon Basiliké"—supposed to be Charles I.'s own work—and in his "Defcusio Populi" in answer to "Salmatius." But it is not a fact that "Paradise Lost" was coolly received. Long before Addison gave his laudatory critique in the "Spectator," the glory of Milton's great poem had been attested by Barrow, Andrew Marvel, Lord Anglesca, who used often to visit him in Bunhill Fields, by the duke of Buckingham, and by many other celebrated men. Sir John Denham appeared in the house of commons with a proof-sheet of "Paradise Lost " in his hand, wet from the press, and, being asked what it was, replied, "part of the noblest poem that ever was written in any language or age." The poem went into two editions during the author's life, and he corrected it for a third, which was published soon after his death. In fact, Milton's fame had to rise from under piled heaps of hatred and ignominy on account of his politics and religion, for he had attacked the church as formidably as the state in his treatise on "The Best Mode of Removing Hirelings " out of it, as well as in his book against prelacy; but it flung off all that load of prejudice, and rose to universal acknowledgment.
We need not detain ourselves with much detail of his other poetical works, which are now familiar to all readers. They consist of his early poems, including the exquisite "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," his "Comus" and "Lycidas," a mask, and an elegy; his magnificent sonnets, his "Samson Agonistes," a sacred drama, but constructed strictly on the Grecian model. It has been often said that Milton had no genius for the drama; the "Samson" is a sufficient refutation of that opinion. It is full of dramatic power and interest; it is like some ancient piece of sculpture, unique, grand, massive, and solemn; and, indeed, had Milton devoted himself to the drama, it would have been rather in the style of Euripides than Shakespeare, for he was too lofty and earnest in his whole nature for real humour, or for much variation in mood and manner. He could never have been a comic poet, but, had he willed it, would undoubtedly have been a great tragic one. The epic character, however, prevailed in him, and decided his career.
Besides these poetical works, were his odes, including the splendid ones of the "Nativity" and the "Passion," and a great number of translations from the great poets of Greece, Rome, and Italy, original poems written in Latin and Italian, portion of the Psalms "done into metre," and "Paradise Regained." This last poem, though bearing no degree of equality to the "Paradise Lost," is yet a noble poem, and would have made a great reputation for any other man. It is clearly not so well thought out and elaborated as the "Paradise Lost," which was the dream of his youth, the love and the labour of his prime; whilst "Paradise Regained" was the chance suggestion of Thomas Elwood, his Latin reader, and closed with the temptation if Christ in the wilderness, instead of including the crucifixion and ascension, which might have given the poet a scope equal in magnificence to that of his former great epic. Of his prose works we shall speak anon.
The most popular of all poets of this period was Abraham Cowley. He is a striking example of those authors whom the critics of the time cry to the skies, and whom more discerning or less interested posterity are very willing to forget. Cowley, in his lifetime, had ten times the fame of Milton; and who now could wade through his poems, deformed by all the vapid conceits of the preceding age, and by the filth of the current period? Johnson, so unjust to many of our poets, can hardly be said to be so to Cowley. He says—"Though in his own time considered of unvalued excellence, and as having taken a flight beyond all that Went before him, Cowley's reputation could not last. His character of writing was not his own; he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel."
He, in fact, for popularity's sake, preferred art, or rather artifice, to nature. Yet there are many beautiful thoughts, much red fancy and wit scattered through his poems; but then they are so buried in outrageous conceits, distorted and even lumbering metre, and sheer indecency, that the gems are scarcely worth picking out of the reeking dunghill. He never seems really in earnest, but always playing with his subject, and constructing gewgaws instead of raising immortal structures. In his satirical lyric called "The Chronicle," in which he runs through a list of imaginary sweethearts, and in "The Inconstant," in the poem of "The Mistress," where he finds a charm in every kind of female beauty, though probably copied from the Spanish of Garcilasso do la Vega, there is much elegant badinage, but who could now wade through pages of such doggerel as this?—
Or, after a grand invocation, endure to drop into verses like these?—Since 'tis my doom, love's under-shrieve,
Why this reprieve?
Why doth my shc-advowson fly
Incumbency?
To sell thyself dost thou Intend,
By candle's end? &c.
But stop, my muse;
Hold thy Pindaric Pegusus closely in,
Which docs 10 rage begin—
'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouthed horse—
'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
But flings rider and reader too that sits not sure.
Cowley, in his "Dandies," aspired to the honours of the epopee, but what a contrast to Milton! Take a description of the costume of the angel Gabriel:—
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That e'er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread.
Washed from th' morning beauties' deepest red;
A harmless, fluttering meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleased the eyes;
This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime, ere they grow ripe and fall.
Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade.
The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made, &c.
Cowley was a zealous royalist; he went over to France when the queen of Charles I. retired thither, and became her secretary for her private correspondence with Charles. Afterwards he was sent over in the character of a spy on the republican party and its proceedings. "Under pretence of privacy and retirement, he was to take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation;" but became suspected, and was arrested. He then fawned on Cromwell, Wrote verses in his honour, which, however, were only shown in private; and, when the commonwealth began to show signs of dissolution, he again hastened to the exiled court in France, and came back in the crowd of royalists eager for promotion. But his flattering of Cromwell had been reported, and he was treated with coldness. Yet, after some time, through Buckingham and the earl of St. Albans, he obtained a lease of some lands, and, after the ill reception of his play of "The Cutler of Colman Street," he retired into the country, first to Barn Elms, and next to Chertsey, in Surrey, where he died in his forty-ninth year. No one who reads such dialogues as those from which these few lines are taken, will wonder at the utter failure of his "Cutler of Colman Street":—
Cutler. What health do we lack?
Worm. Confusion to the quack!
Both. Confound him, confound him
Diseases all around him
Cutler. And till again the sack;
Worm. That no man may lack.
Cutler. Confusion to the quack!
Both. Confusion to the quack!
Confound him, confound him!
Diseases all around him!
Worm. He's a kind of grave-maker.
Cutler. A urinal shaker.
Worm. A wretched groat-taker.
Cutler. A stinking close-stool raker.
Worm. He's a quack, that's worse than a quaker.
Both. He's a quack, &.c.
Worm. Hey, boys, gingo! &.c
We should be sorry to soil our pages with the least of the obscenities of Copley. Such are the men who are in almost every age the darlings of critics, and the popular luminaries of their little day. Such was Cowley in times which possessed a Milton, which had just seen a Shakspeare and a Ben Jonson, and which had a Dryden, a Butler, a Denham, an Otway, a Wither, and a Marvel!
The great satirist of the age was Samuel Butler, who in his "Hudibras" introduced a totally new kind of poetry—a most comic doggerel, now styled, as sui-generis, Hudibrastic. Butler was the son of a yeoman, who had been educated for the church without those connections which lead to promotion. With an immense accumulation of learning, and talent enough to have made half-a-dozen bishops, he became at one time a clerk to one Jeffreys, a justice of the peace, at Earl's Coomb, in Worcestershire, and afterwards to Sir Samuel Lake, at Woodend, in Bedfordshire. In these situations he gleaned up the characters and materials for his "Hudibras," a burlesque on the puritans. Sir Samuel Lake was the actual Hudibras, if we are to believe Butler himself, though some of his critics—of course, wiser than the author—will insist that it was a Sir Henry Rosewell, of Devonshire. The poem ridicules the puritans in every way, but especially for attempting to put down bear-baiting; and accordingly the first canto—
The adventure of the bear and fiddle
Is sung, but breaks off in the middle.
Hudibras and his man Ralpho attack the bear, but are defeated, and then Hudibras retires and makes love to a rich widow. He is a presbyterian, and Ralpho an independent; and in the course of the story all the leading characters of the commonwealth, Cromwell, Fleetwood, L'esborough, Lambert, are ridiculed by name, as are Pym, Calamy, Case, Byfield, Lentham, and the rest, as Ashley Cooper, under the name of "the politician," and John Lilbourne, under that of "brother haberdasher," &c. The first part was published in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third in 1678, fourteen years later. Still the poem remained unfinished. It did not require, however, even the second part to appear to make it famous. It was received with one universal burst of laughter and applause by the royalists. Charles II. and his courtiers were merrier over it than all, and Charles quoted it continually with unfading gusto. The earl of Dorset resolved to seize the opportunity, and introduce the author, through Buckingham, to Charles. Buckingham gave him an audience, but, just as they were entering on conversation, Buckingham saw some ladies of loose character going past, ran out after them, and the poet was not only forgotten, but could never get a second interview. Clarendon, however, promised to see him duly rewarded, but never kept his word, and Butler lived poor and died neglected, at the age of sixty-eight. This shameful neglect has been much commented on; but no one seems to have reflected that there may have been more in this than mere neglect. Butler, in his double-edged satire, made some very hard hits at the church, and, while ridiculing the puritans, gave some not very light back-strokes to the licentiousness of the royalists. He wrote an avowed "Satire on the Licentiousness of the Age;" and in his third part so far vented his resentment at his neglect as to satirise Charles himself for being led by the apron-strings of his numerous mistresses. He laughed at the sages of the newly-established Royal Society, by his "Elephant in the Moon;" and such a man is more frequently kicked than rewarded. The church did not forget his salies against it, and refused him burial in Westminster Abbey When he wrote the questions and answers betwixt the man disguised as a devil and Hudibras—
What makes a church a den of thieves?—
A dean, a chapter, and white sleeves.
What makes all points of doctrine clear?—
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again?—Two hundred more—
though the sting was intended for the puritans, the puritans laid hold on it, and quoted it against the church; and these and like blows rebounded, no doubt, on the poet's head.
Though time has removed the great interest of "Hudibras," and rendered many things in it obscure, yet its wit will always occasion it to be read and enjoyed, though, perhaps, no great poet was ever so destitute of those occasional touches of pathos and of natural beauty which other satirists have displayed, like breaks of sunlight in a storm, and of which so many of extraordinary fascination are interspersed in the otherwise objectionable pages of "Don Juan."
The most illustrious name of this period next to Milton is that of Dryden. He wrote almost every kind of poetry—satires, odes, plays, romantic stories, and translated Juvenal, Persius, the epistles of Ovid, and finally Virgil. It was unfortunate for the genius of Dryden that he was generally struggling with poverty, and by marrying an aristocratic and uncongenial wife, the sister of Sir Robert Howard, he was all the more compelled to exert his powers to live in the style which their circumstances demanded. Hence he produced an immense mass of writings, which added nothing to his fame. Foremost amongst these are his plays, which amount to nearly thirty in number, which were for the most part unsuccessful, and which abound with such gross indecencies, that, had they even high merit otherwise, would be found to be unperusable without cutting away their very vitals. He had the presumption to new-model Shakspeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and the "Tempest"—two of the most poetical compositions in existence—and blurred them with the foul leprosy of obscenity. He treated the "Paradise Lost" of Milton the same; nor did his necessities lead him only to these enormities; but there is little doubt they drove him to apostatise from his religion, and from his original political faith. His first poem of any note was a most eulogistic elegy on the death of Cromwell, in which, amongst many other such things, he said—
Heav'n in his portrait showed a workman's hand,
And drew it perfect, yet without a shade.
His very next poem, and that of some length, was "Astrea Redux; a Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty Charles II.," immediately followed by "A Panegyric on his Coronation," in which he heaps still more glowing praises on the young royal libertine, and flings dust as liberally at his late idol:—
While our cross stars denied us Charles's bed,
Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed,
For his long absence church and state did groan,
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne;
Experienced age in deep despair was lost,
To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crossed.
The accomplished sycophant received as his reward the office of poet laureate, with three hundred pounds a year; and he paid officiously more than his peppercorn of praise in the "Annus Mirabilis, or Year of Wonders, 1666," in which the sea fights with the Dutch and the fire of London were commemorated in elegiacal stanzas, and the most fulsome and almost impious adulation was poured in showers on both the king and his heir apparent, the duke of York—not forgetting an especial poetical address to the duchess on her husband's victories over the Hollanders. Who could recognise the reckless and libidinous Charles II. in lines like these, in which he is also complimented on forgiving his enemies whilst his throne stood deep in the blood of regicides and of persecuted covenanters:—
This I foretell from your auspicious care,
Who great in search of God and nature grow,
Who best your wise Creator's praise declare,
Since best to praise his works is best to know.
O truly royal! who behold the law
And rule of beings in your Maker's mind,
And thence, like limbecks, rich ideas draw
To fit the levellest use of human kind!
When this pious, God-studying, rich-idea drawing monarch died, the ready laureate wrote a most blasphemous ode on his death, taking care to pay due homage to the rising sun.
Our Atlas fell indeed, but Hercules was near.
His death was described to be like that of "the pious Hezekiah;" "God's image, God's anointed," lay amongst all sorts of miracles:—
Now miracles approached th' ethereal throne.
Such as his wondrous life had oft and lately shown.
The very fishes of the sea rose up amazed, and those who saw the prodigy exclaimed—
A king must fall, or kingdoms change their sway.
This pattern of all the virtues and all the wisdoms must die, but
That king who lived to God's own heart
Less serenely died than he.
But nature itself was illumined by his parting beams:—
Oh, truly good and truly great!
For glorious as he rose, benignly so he set.
The force of blasphemy could no further go, except to extend itself to the new monarch, James of blessed memory:—
His pious brother—sure the best
Who ever bore that name.
No doubt Dryden made himself sure that his laureate salary was safe, but he was mistaken. James, though "the best who ever bore the name," could forget benefits, and even flatteries; but he never forgot an ill turn, or anything that endangered his great design of restoring popery; and Dryden, to please the church and the late king, whom he did not know was at heart a papist, had written his "Religio Laici," in which he had pulled the catholic church all to pieces, and lauded superlatively the Anglican hierarchy. James first took away his butt of sack, and then his salary; whereupon Dryden directly turned catholic, and wrote "The Hind and Panther," to beslaver popery, kick down protestantism, and reconcile the public to James's invidious scheme of abolishing the test act for his own purposes. This succeeded, and Dryden continued to receive his pay and do his dirty work during James's reign. It was expected that he would wheel round again on William and Mary's success; but this was too much even for the impudence of "glorious John;" he lived and died catholic.
With all respect for the genius of Dryden, it is thus impossible for a truthful historian to take any but a melancholy view of his personal character, and of the mass of his writings. They are, in fact, mostly on subjects that do not fall within the legitimate province of true poetry; they would have boon more in place as prose political essays, and now-a-days would have figured as "Quarterly" articles. The "Absalom and Achitophel"—written to ridicule Monmouth and Shaftesbury, with their accomplice, Buckingham, under the name of "Zimri," and to damage the whig party generally—is transcendently clever; but even the highest satirical and political verse is not poetry—it is only cleverness in verse; and this is the grand characteristic of Dryden's poetry—it is masterly verse. There is no creative faculty in it; it is a matter of style rather than of soul and sentiment; and in style he is a great master. This made Milton say that Dryden was a good rhymster but no poet; and assuredly, in Milton's conception of poetry, and in that which has taught us to venerate Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, Wordsworth, Shelley, &c., he was no poet, or a very third-rate one. A modern critic has given him great credit for "creative power and genius" in his adaptations of some of Chaucer's tales; but this is a mistake. The creative genius is Chaucer's; Dryden has only remodelled them in modern language; the ideas, the invention, are all Chaucer's; Dryden's part in them consists of his wonderful, elastic, musical diction, in which he undoubtedly excels every English author in the heroic measure. Pope's is more artificial, but is for behind in musical rhythm and elastic vigour. His heroic verse is music itself, and music full of its highest elements. In it the trumpet sings, the drum boats, the organ blows in solemn thunder, the flute and fife shrill forth eloquence, and all mingled instruments seem to chorus in a combination of blissful sounds and feelings. In the latter part of his life Dryden, standing independent of all government drudgery, shows more worthily both in life and verse. His translation of Virgil yet remains the best in our language. He had done with his contemptible squabbles with Elkanah Settle and Shadwell, who won from him the honours and profits of the theatre; and his "Fables," as he called them—tales from Chaucer—seemed to inspire him with a more really poetic feeling. In them he seemed to grow purer, and to open his soul to the influences of classical and natural beauty, to the charms of nature, and of old romance. These tales will always remain the truest monuments of Dryden's fame. His odes, much as they have been praised, are rather feats of art than outpourings of poetic inspiration. His "Alexander's Feast" is but a description of the effects of music on a drunken conqueror and a courtesan. Who now would dream of placing it by the side of Coleridge's "Ode to France," or "Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality drawn from childhood." But any one turning to "Palamon and Arcite" will find himself in a real fairy-land of poetry, and perceive how much Keats, Leigh Hunt, and other modern poets have founded themselves on his style, and have even adopted his triplets. Compare the opening of "Rimini" with the opening of "Palamon and Arcite," when Theseus enters Athens with his Amazonian queen:—
With love to friend, and fortune for his guide.
And his victorious array at his side.
I pass their warlike pomp, their proud array,
Their shouts, their songs, their welcome on the way
But, were it not too long, I would recite
The feats of Amazons, the fatal fight
Betwixt the hardy queen and hero-knight;
The town besieged, and how much blood it cost
The female army and th' Athenian host;
The spousals of Hippolita the queen,
What tilts and tourneys at the feast were seen;
The storm at their return, the ladies' fear;
But those, and other things I must forbear.
The field is spacious I design to sow,
With oxen far unlit to draw the plough.
Or take as a specimen of delicious maiden beauty, Emilia, the queen's sister, going out a-Maying:—
Arose, and dressed herself in rich array;
Fresh as the morn, and as the morning fair,
Adown her shoulders fell her length of hair;
A riband did her braided tresses bind,
The rest was loose, and wantoned in the wind.
Aurora had but newly chased the night.
And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light,
When to the garden walk she took her way,
To sport and trip along in cool of day,
And offer maiden vows in honour of the May.
At ev'ry turn she made a little stand.
And thrust among the thorns her lily hand,
To draw the rose; and ev'ry rose she drew,
She shook the stalk, and brush'd away the dew;
Then party-colour'd flowers of white and red
She wove, to make a garland for her head;
This done, she sung and carolled out so clear,
That men and angels might rejoice to hear;
E'en wond'ring Philonel forgot to sing.
And learn'd from her to venerate the spring.
We have given so much space to these the greatest poets of this period, that we have little for the rest. We have noticed Andrew Marvel's satires and his beautiful ballad, "The Emigrants," and Wither's poems, in our previous review. Sir John Denham's descriptive poem, "Cooper's Hill," had great popularity, and is a good specimen of that class of verse. Waller was a reigning favourite for his lyrics, which are elegant, but destitute of any high principle or emotion, as the man was who wrote a panegyric on Cromwell and another on Charles II.; and when Charles told him plainly he thought that on Cromwell the best, replied, "Sir, we poets never excel so well in writing truth as in writing fiction." Amongst the courtiers of Charles, Buckingham and Rochester were poets. Buckingham's comedy, "The Rehearsal," which was written to ridicule the heroic drama copied by Dryden from the French, still finds admirers; and the genius of Rochester was unquestionable, but still inferior to his obscenity. Sir Charles Sedley, another courtier, wrote comedies and songs almost equally famous for their dissoluteness. Charles Cotton, the author of "Virgil Travestied," was a writer of much wit, but nearly equal grossness, though he was the intimate friend of Izaak Walton, who was also no mean poet. The earls of Roscommon and Dorset were popular, the first for his "Essay on Translated Verse," written in verse, and the other for his splendid ballad written at sea, commencing "To all you ladies now at land." Pomfret, a clergyman, wrote a didactic poem called "The Choice," which Dr. Johnson declared to be more frequently read than almost any poem in the language, and which Southey believed to be the most popular poem in the language. It is, in reality, one of the commonplaces gone by. Sir William Davenant, a reputed son of Shakespeare, wrote "Gondibert," an heroic poem in elegiac stanzas, which has good parts, but, as a whole, is intolerably dull. Sir Robert Fanshawe was celebrated as a translator, especially of Guarini's "Pastor Fido." Another translator from Greek and Spanish was Thomas Stanley, the learned editor of Æschylus, and the author of "The History of Philosophy."
Besides these may be mentioned Bulteel, a popular song write; Philip Ayres, a lyrical poet; Dr. Henry More, author of a poem, "The Life of the Soul," in Spenserian stanzas; Flatman, an imitator of Cowley; and some others.
The dramatic writing of the period was rather voluminous than first-rate. Davenant wrote above twenty plays, masks, &c.; but the most eminent dramatists were the unfortunate Otway, Nathaniel Lee, Sir George Etherege, Wycherley, Crowne, Southerne, and Jasper Mayne. Otway's "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" still maintain their fame; he wrote altogether ten plays. Nathaniel Lee wrote ten tragedies, a great mixture of talent and bombast. The most celebrated of them are his "Theodosius" and his "Rival Queens." Crowne wrote seventeen plays, in which the selections made by Charles Lamb in his "Dramatic Specimens," show that there exists perhaps the most pre-eminent dramatic genius of the age. Etherege is the author of three comedies of great polish and brilliancy, and set the pattern for Wycherley, and for Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh in the next period. Wycherley wrote four comedies equally remarkable for vigour and indecency. In fact, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that the whole of the dramatic literature of this period is perfectly measled and gangrened with the coarsest and most revolting sensuality and obscenity. Southerne belongs properly to the next era, as he produced only two of his plays during this period—his tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," and his comedy of "The Disappointment." Shadwell and Settle inundated the stage with worthless plays; and Mrs. Aphra Ben, a courtesan as well as writer, is the author of a whole host of comedies, novels, and poems. Of Jasper Mayne's two comedies—who, by-the-bye, was a clergyman—"The City Match" is the best. Perhaps we ought not to close this review of the poets without a mention of the most successful poetaster of the age, Nahum Tate, who was in such estimation as to be allowed to supply our churches with his most wretched version of the Psahns, and to be employed by Dryden to continue his satire of "Absalom and Acliitophel."
Scene from the Hudibras.
PROSE WRITERS.
At the head of the prose writers of this period as of the poets, we must place Milton. Though his writings are for the most part on controversial subjects, they were subjects of that immense importance that they acquired a lasting value. They bear a certain relation to his poetry. That in its highest exhibition celebrated the triumph of the Deity over the powers of evil; his prose writings again were employed to support the struggle of liberty against the advocates of all political evil—absolutism. Poetry seemed to have become the habitual expression of his mind, and, therefore, there is in his prose style a certain awkwardness and stiffness. He moves like David in armour that he had not well proved; and his utterance, solemn and full of deep thought and erudition, is, as it were, forced and formal. But when he warms up with the greatness of his subject, he runs into a strain of grave eloquence which has scarcely an canal in the language. As a specimen, we may take this passage from his celebrated "Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. "It includes the principle of all religious freedom:—"There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims. 'Tis their own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing, who neither will hear with meekness, nor can convince; yet all must be suppressed which is not found in their Syntagma. They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered pieces which are yet wanting to the body of truth. To be still searching what we know not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth, as we find it—for all the body is homogeneal and proportionate; this is the golden rule of theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly-divided minds."
Allegorical Figure of a Commonwealth, from Hobbes' "Leviathan."
He continues: some good men too are alarmed at it. "They fret, and out of their own weakness are in agony; but these divisions and sub-divisions will undo us. The adversary again applauds and waits the hour; 'When they have branched themselves out,' saith he, 'small enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time.' Fool! he sees not the firm root out of which we all grow, though into branches; nor will he wait until he sees our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all those supposed sects and schisms; and that we shall not need that solicitude—honest, perhaps, though over timorous—of them that rise in their behalf, but shall laugh in the end at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to persuade me: first, when a city shall be, as it were, besieged and blocked about, her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up even to her walls and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of, argues singular good-will, contentedness, and confidence in your prudent foresight and safe government of lords and commons, and from thence decides itself to a gallant bravery and well-grounded contempt of their enemies; as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us as his was who, when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of a happy success and victory, for, as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous—not only to vital but to rational faculties, and those in the correctest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety—it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it hath not only wherewith to bestow upon the solidest and the sublimest parts of controversy and new invention, it betokens as not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages, Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the tonight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms."
Never did prophet at the distance of two centuries foresee more precisely the object of his vaticination than Milton saw in this passage the relative positions of England freed and the continent enslaved, and wondering at our doings at this moment.
The great prose works of Milton comprise his "History of England " from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest, including all the old legends of the chroniclers, the arrival of Brute from Rome, the story of king Lear, and all those fine old fables which have been the grand storehouses of poets and dramatists. His "Tractate of Education;" his "Areopagitica"—just quoted; his "Tenure of livings and Magistrates;" the "Eikonoklastes;" the "Defensio Populi" and "Defensio Secunda"—vindicating the conduct of England in deposing impracticable kings; his "Treatise on the Best Manner of Removing Hirelings out of the Church;" his essay on "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Cases;" his "State Letters," written at the command of Cromwell; an "Art of Logic;" a "Treaty of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what Best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery;" and his "Familiar Letters," in Latin: besides these he left in manuscript a "Brief History of Muscovy," and a "System of Theology,"—both since published. It may be safely said that scarcely any other writer has left such a sound and profound body of knowledge of all that is necessary for the maintenance of freedom, civil and religious, in the state.
Dryden is also a vigorous prose writer; but nothing can be more characteristic of the two men than the prose of Milton and Dryden. The one is grave, solemn, independent, upholding the sacred interests of religion and liberty; the other, that of Dryden—besides short lives of Polybius, Lucian, and Plutarch, and an "Essay on Dramatic Literature," consists chiefly of a mass of his dramas, and other poems—couched in the most extravagant and unmanly terms of flattery. It is in vain to say that this was the spirit of the time; we have only to turn to Milton and behold that a great soul despised such creeping and licking the shoes of the aristocracy as much then as now.
Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion" and memoirs of his own life assume a permanent importance from the position which he occupied in the struggles of those times; but as literary compositions they are very defective in style, and as historical authority, the very circumstances of the writer as a partisan and a deserter of the side of freedom, make it necessary to read them with caution. Hobbes, the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury, was one of the most powerful minds of the age, but at the same time one of the most mischievous. By his works, called the "Leviathan," his treatise on "Human Nature," on "Liberty," and "Necessity," and his "Decameron Physiologicum," with others of the like kind, he became the head of the school of deistical if not atheistical writers, which has found such wide acceptance in France, Germany, and even in our own country. The admirers of Hobbes are very zealous in defending him from the charge of being the apostle of infidelity, and acccuse the advocates of Christianity and man's spiritual nature of maligning him; but the bast proof is that the Encyclopéedists of France, the Illuminati and Strausians of Germany, claim him as their groat Goliath, and draw their strongest shafts out of his quiver and those of his disciples, Tindal and Hume. They are the English skeptics, who are, in fact, the fathers of French and German skepticism with all its consequences. Mr. Mill says—"Hobbes is a great name in philosophy, on account both of what he taught, and the extraordinary impulse which he communicated to the spirit of free inquiry in Europe." It is this very influence which is to be deplored, for Hobbes's inquiries had a decided bias to ignore the very highest faculties and qualities of human nature, and his greatest discoveries were to discover nothing. Hobbes is no longer read, but his principles are distilled through a thousand atheistical alembics all over the world. It has been well observed by a modern writer that, "as for what is properly to be called his system of philosophy—and it is to be observed that in his own writings his views in metaphysics, in morals, in politics, are all bound and built up together into one consistent whole—the question of the truth or falsehood of that seems to be completely settled. Nobody now professes more than a partial Hobbism. If so much of the creed of the philosopher of Malmesbury as affirms the non-existence of any essential distinction between right and wrong, the non-existence of conscience or the moral sense, the non-existence of anything beyond mere sensation in either emotion or intelligence, and other similar negatives of his moral and metaphysical doctrine, has still its satisfied disciples, who is now a Hobbist either in politics or mathematics? Yet certainly it is in these latter departments that we must look for the greater part of what is absolutely original in the notions of this teacher. Hobbes's philosophy of human nature is not amiss as a philosophy of Hobbes's own human nature. Without passions or imagination self, and steering bis own course through life by the mere calculations of an enlightened selfishness, one half of the broad mass of humanity was to him nothing better than a blank."
That is precisely the secret of the whole of his philosophy—the evidence of an intense selfishness and pride of intellect, and the absence of the finer faculties of the soul. As if Providence would give a proof of it, Hobbes set himself to a labour which required all these faculties. He translated Homer, both "Iliad" and "Odyssey;" and a more meagre, soulless, miserable failure never appeared. As a far greater psychologist than Hobbes has said, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
Hobbes was as thorough an advocate of political despotism as of spiritual negation, as is testified by his "De Corpore Politico," his "Leviathan," and "Behemoth," which last is an absurd name for a history of the civil wars from 1640 to 1660. Hobbes lived to a great age, praised by his admirers as a specimen of independence, yet living the greater part of his life in a state of dependence in other men's houses, and at other men's cost. In fact, he appears to have been of a crabbed and overbearing temper. His arguments were ably answered by Cudworth, by Clarendon, bishops Cumberland, Bramhall, and Tenison, by Dr. Henry More—just mentioned—in his "History of Philosophy;" by Eachard, and others; yet the late Sir William Molesworth thought it wort while to rake up Hobbes's forgotten putrefactions, and to publish an expensive edition of his works.
A writer whose works have had a far different and more salutary influence was Richard Baxter. Baxter held the same position in the religious world as Halifax in the political one. Halifax gloried in the name of a "Trimmer."
He was constantly occupying the middle post in the world of party. Sometimes one party congratulated itself that it had him, but anon it found him defending measures of the opposite one. In fact, he was an independent thinker, and extending one hand to either party as he thought it right at the moment, he turned the balance of conflicting opinions. Exactly so with Richard Baxter; a clergyman of the church of England, he was yet a decided nonconformist. He was a monarchist in theory, but was so disgusted with the royalists for their licentiousness and notions of absolutism, that he went over to the camp of Cromwell and preached in it. But when Cromwell assumed the supreme power, again Baxter was on the other side, condemning to his face his usurpation. Baxter's mediating views led him to hope, on the return of Charles II., that nonconformity and the church might shake hands. He believed in Charles's "Healing Declaration," and drew an accommodating liturgy, but found himself deceived; the hierarchy rejected all such amalgamations. He became a sufferer from nonconformity, and yet remained an advocate of conformity to a certain extent. Just the same in his theological views, with one hand he embraced Calvin, with the other Arminius. He rejected Calvin's doctrine of reprobation, yet accepted his theory of election—that is, that certain persons are pre-ordained from all eternity as instruments for certain work by God; but yet agreed with Arminius's assertion that all men whatever are capable of salvation, for that Christ distinctly declared that he died for all, and that whoever believed should be saved. The views of Baxter were adopted by large numbers, who became a sect under the name of "Baxterians;" but they gradually became absorbed into the different denominations of the independents, baptists, &c., who may now be considered as generally holding Baxter's mild and amiable opinions. Drs. Watts and Doddridge were eminent professors of Baxter's creed. The chief works of Baxter are his "Methodus Theologise," his "Catholic Theology," and his "Saints' Everlasting Rest." The last is by far the most popular. It has been circulated by tens of thousands into all quarters where the English language reaches, and, like the "Pilgrim" of Bunyan, is to be found on the shelves of the cottage and the farm in the remotest nooks. Perhaps no book ever gave so much consolation to the spirits of so many simple and earnest seekers after religious rest as this work of the venerable Richard Baxter.
Bunyan was a contemporary of Baxter, but a man of a more robust and sturdy temper. Lying twelve years in Bedford gaol for his religious faith, he there produced his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress," a work which, as the production of an illiterate tinker, was contemptuously ignored by the critics and the learned of the time, till it had spread like a flood over the whole land, was become the delight of the whole nation, except their erudite selves, and at last forced even them to wonder and admire. Yet even now, whilst praising, they qualify the praise by its being "a wonderful work for a tinker," and place Bunyan amid the minor lights of the time. The "Pilgrim" is a wonderful work for any man, and Bunyan was undoubtedly a genius of the very first class. As an allegorist there is not another fit to carry his shoes after him—not even Spenser or Mrs. Tyghe.
With Baxter and Bunyan the gentle angler, Izaak Walton, claims a place for his "Lives of Religious Worthies," and not less for his "Complete Angler," one of the first works, along with "Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," which awoke the love of nature which now prevails, and where it does not prevail is affected.
Side by side with these worthies stands John Evelyn, a man who mixed with the court and higher circles in Charles II. 's reign without defiling himself by its filth. He was the model of a true English gentleman—pious, honourable, and exerting himself at once to maintain sound morals and to promote science. His memoirs present a lively picture of the dissolute age in which he lived; and he sought to draw men away from the sink of corruption by encouraging them to plant and cultivate their estates. For this he Wrote his "Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees," still a standard and most delightful work. He was one of the first members and promoters of the Royal Society, and wrote "Numismata, a Discourse upon Medals;" a "Parallel of Ancient and Modern Architecture;" a work on Theology, only recently published; and the first "Gardener's Almanac."
As a memoir writer of the same period Samuel Pepys is, however, much more popular than Evelyn. Pepys was secretary to the admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; and his inimitably-gossipping volumes of whatever he saw during those times have been of late reprinted and read everywhere with great unction. Pepys, besides this, continued a most invaluable collection of old ballads began by Selden, from which bishop Percy amply helped himself in constructing his "Reliques;" so that to Pepys and John Selden we really owe much of that great revolution in taste and poetry which we ascribe almost exclusively to Percy. Another memorialist of this period was Sir William Temple, a man who, like Evelyn, maintained a high moral status, and was held in great esteem for his philosophical essays. In Scotland Sir George Mackenzie stood conspicuous for his "Institution of the Laws of Scotland," and not less for various works of taste, as his "Aretina; or, the Serious Romance;" his "Religio Stoici; or, the Virtuoso," &c. Burnet, the author of "The Theory of the Earth," also lived now, but may be mentioned with his namesake the bishop, who belongs more properly to the reign of William and Wary.
The church at this period possessed great and eloquent men—Tillotson, Sherlock, Barrow, South, Stillingfleet, and others. Their sermons remain as great storehouses of religious argument and enunciation. They were nearly all of the Arminian school. Barrow was, besides, one of the ablest geometricians that have appeared.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE.
During the period now under review a great step in the progress of science was made by the foundation of the Royal Society. The honour of originating this famous society belongs to a Mr. Theodore Haak, a German, but resident in London. Through his suggestions a number of scientific gentlemen, including Dr. Goddard, a physician in Wood Street, but also a preparer of lenses for telescopes; Dr. Wallis, the great mathematician; Dr. Wilkins, afterwards bishop of Chester; Drs. Ent, Gisson, and Merrit, and Mr. Samuel Foster, professor of astronomy in Gresham college. They commenced their meetings in 1645, which used to be held at one of their houses, or in Gresham college, or at apartments in Cheapside. Though some of these gentlemen were removed by promotion, others continued to join it, as Boyle, Evelyn, Wren—afterwards Sir Christopher. In 1662 a royal charter was obtained, and in the following year additional privileges were granted under a second charter. The first president was lord Brouncker, and the first council consisted of Mr.—afterwards lord—Brereton, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Robert Moray, Sir William Petty, Sir Paul Neile, Messrs. Boyle, Slingsbey, Christopher and Matthew Wren, Balle, Areskine, Oldenburg, Henshaw, and Dudley Palmer, and Mrs. Wilkins, Wallis, Timothy Clarke, and Ent. Balle was the first treasurer, and Wilkins and Oldenburg the first secretaries. The society was pledged not to meddle with questions of theology or state, and their chief subjects of notice were the physical sciences, anatomy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, statistics, chemistry, magnetism, mechanics, and kindred topics. In the spring of the second year the society numbered a hundred and fifteen members; amongst them, besides many noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, we find the names of Aubrey, Dr. Barrow, Dryden, Cowley, Waller, and Spratt, afterwards bishop of Rochester. The society commenced its publication of its transactions in 1665, which became a record of the progress of physical and mathematical science for a long series of years.
During the short period over which the present review ranges—namely, from the restoration in 1660 to the revolution in 1688, that is, only twenty-eight years—some of the greatest discoveries in science were made which have occurred in the history of the world; namely, the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Dr. William Harvey, the construction of the tables of logarithms by Napier, improved by Briggs; the invention of fluxions by Newton, and the calculus of fluxions, or the differential calculus, by Leibnitz; the discovery of the perfected theory of gravitation, by Newton; the foundation of modern astronomy, by Flamstead, and the construction of a steam-engine by the marquis of Worcester, originally suggested by Solomon de Cans, a Frenchman.
Napier published his tables of logarithms in 1614, under the title of "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptia," and in the same or the following year he and his friend, Henry Briggs, gave them their improved, and, as it proved, perfect form, for from that time to the present they have been found to admit of no further improvement. They came from the hands of their author and his assisting friend perfect. The principle of their construction Napier did not declare; but this important revelation was made by Briggs and Napier's son in a publication in 1619 called "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio; una cum Annotationibus aliquot Dootissimi D. Henrici Briggii." By these tables Napier superseded the long and laborious arithmetical operations which all great calculators had previously to undergo, and which the most simple trigonometrical operations demanded. Without this wonderful aid even Newton could not have lived to accomplish the great principles that he drew from and established for ever upon the material accumulated by prior mathematicians. He in fact furnished by these tables a scale by which not only the advantages which he proposed of shortening arithmetical and trigonometrical labour were effected, but which enabled men to go infinitely farther, and enabled his successors to weigh the atmosphere and take the altitudes of mountains, compute the lengths and areas of all curves, and to introduce a calculus by which the most unexpected results should be reached. "By reducing to a few days the labour of many months," says Laplace, "it doubles, as it were, the life of an astronomer, besides freeing him from the errors and disgust inseparable from long calculations."
We are not, however, to suppose that Napier was the first who had a perception of the nature of logarithms. In almost all grand discoveries the man of genius stands upon the shoulders of preceding geniuses to reach that culminating point which brings out the full discovery. In very early ages it was known that if the terms of an arithmetical and geometrical series were placed in juxtaposition, the multiplication, division, involution, and evolution of the latter would answer to and might actually be affected by a corresponding addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of the former. Archimedes employed this principle in his "Arcnarius," a treatise on the number of the sands. Stifel, in his "Arithmetica Integra," published at Nurnberg in 1644, exhibits a still clearer notion of the use of this principle; but the merit of Napier was this—that whilst those who preceded him could only apply the principle to certain numbers, he discovered the means of applying it to all, and thus was enabled to construct and bring to perfection at once his admirable tables. There was an attempt to show that he had stolen the idea from Longomontanus, but that great mathematician settles this matter by himself attributing the whole invention to Napier.
Besides the Logarithms, Napier is also noted for his elegant theorems, called his "Analogies," and his theorem of "the five circular parts," which furnishes a ready solution of all the cases of right-angled spherical triangles. He also invented what are called "Napier's Bones," to facilitate the performance of multiplication and division; instruments of such value, that had he not discovered the logarithms, they would have, to a certain extent, supplied their place.
The discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, however, put the crown to the glories of this period. The extent of these discoveries can only be learnt by a perusal of his "Principia; or, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," containing his complete theory of the laws of the universe, based on the grand doctrine of gravitation, of which he published afterwards a popular view under the title of "De Mundi Systemate," enunciating the truths contained in the third book of the "Principia." His "Optics," containing his theories of light and colours, founded on a host of curious experiments; his "De Quadratura Curvarum," containing an exposition of his method of fluxions; his "Method of Fluxions and Analysis by Infinite Series;" or, in the Latin, "Analysis per Equationes Numero Terminorum Infinitas." A great many of those discoveries were communicated to the public through his communications to the Royal Society. The announcement of his binomial theory, by which he was able to determine the area and rectification of curves, the surface and contact of the solids formed by their revolution, and the position of their centre of gravity—a theory of infinite avail in his determination of the laws of the planetary bodies—is dated 1664, that of his "Method of Fluxions," 1665; but he did not claim this till 1669. He professed to have written a tract on the subject in 1664, but he did not produce this tract till he had seen some of the same results published in "Mercator's Logarithimotechnia," four years afterwards. In 1666 he demonstrated the great law of gravitation, and applied it to the planets, but was baffled in his attempts to apply it to the moon through a false estimate of the earth's diameter. This was corrected by Picard's measurement of an arc of the meridian, with which he became acquainted in 1682, and then after sixteen years' delay he completed his system. But his "Principia" was not published collectively till 1687; his "Optics" till 1704, together with his "De Quadratura Curvarum," containing his method of fluxions.
Unparalleled as were the achievements of Newton, these were not accomplished, any more than any other great performances, without substantial hints and assistance from previous or contemporary genius. The very principle of gravitation had been pointed out by Robert Hooke, and Newton was compelled to admit, and offered to publish a scolium admitting the fact, that Hooke, Wren, and Halley had already deduced this law—that the gravitation of the planets was as the curvic square of the distance from Kepler's second law of analogy, between the periodic times and the mean distances of the planets. Newton's defenders say that he probably made this concession for the sake of peace; but was Newton likely to surrender a great truth, vitally affecting his fame, for science and discovery, if there were not solid grounds for it?
Still less to the credit of Newton was his conduct towards Leibnitz in the dispute regarding the differential calculus. Leibnitz having heard through Oldenburg that Newton had made discoveries as to the measurement of tangents, in fact, as to his binomial theorem, and as to fluxions, desired to have some account of them, and Newton, through Oldenburg, communicated to Leibnitz his binomial theorem, but concealed his knowledge of fluxions under a most abstruse anagram, which was formed from the words, "Data Equatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates envolente fluxiones invenire, et vice versâ." It has been well observed that if Leibnitz could draw any light from that anagram, he must have possessed superhuman sagacity. Leibnitz, however, having himself made most important discoveries in fluxions, at once and candidly communicated the theory of what he called, and what is still called, the differential calculus, to Newton. This, Newton, in a scolium included in his "Principia," admitted to be a method hardly differing from his own except in his form of words and symbols. Yet in the third edition of the "Principia" he totally omitted this confession, claimed the exclusive invention of the differential calculus for himself, and branded Leibnitz as a plagiarist. The fact was, that Leibnitz had gone a step beyond Newton. Newton had discovered fluxions, but Leibnitz had discovered the fluxionary calculus, or, as he termed it, the differential calculus.
Still more disgraceful was the conduct of Newton to the astronomer Flamstead. Flamstead was the first astronomer royal. Charles II. established an observatory at Greenwich, one of the very best things he ever did. The observatory was, in fact, the queen's house in Greenwich Park, and Flamstead was appointed astronomical observator, with the magnificent salary of a hundred pounds a year, and not a single instrument, not even a telescope. It was in vain that he applied for instruments; and his appointment might have been a sinecure had he not procured instruments at his own expense, and taught pupils to maintain himself. But through all these difficulties he went on making his observations, and in time not only made a mass of the most valuable lunar observations, but had made a map and catalogue of the stars, such as there had never been before for completeness and accuracy. His catalogue included three thousand three hundred stars, "whose places," says the Penny Cyclopædia, "were more accurate than any determined in the next fifty years, and whose selection and nomenclature has served as a basis to every catalogue since that time." Mr. Bailey, Flamstead's biographer, claims, and, as it seems to us, very justly, that the commencement of modern astronomy dates from his observations, for no one would care to go beyond them to compare any made in our day.
Newton was very intimate with Flamstead, and with good cause, for he depended on his supplying him with the necessary observations, to enable him to establish his lunar theory, and it is on evidence that Flamstead furnished him with every lunar observation that he made. When Flamstead had completed his catalogue, he proposed to publish it, and prince Greorge of Denmark, knowing that Flamstead had expended on his instruments two thousand pounds more than his salary, offered to pay for the printing. A committee, consisting of Newton, Sir Christopher Wren, Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. Gregory, and Sir. Roberts, were appointed to superintend this publication. The whole story has been published by Mr. Bailey, founded on letters and documents of the time found at Greenwich observatory, which is too long to be detailed here; but the upshot of which was, that the catalogue and observations of Flamstead were printed and published, not as his own, but as those of Halley!
Sir Isaac Newton.
Multiple captions.
It is difficult to conceive more overbearing, unjust, and unworthy proceedings than those of Newton against Flamstead. Sir David Brewster, in a recent "Life of Newton," 1831, has endeavoured to defend him by asserting that Flamstead did not appreciate Newton's theory—as if Flamstead was not quite at liberty to have his own opinion, an opinion shared by many at the time, and which theory, in the first edition of the "Principia," the only one then out, was in some respects grossly incorrect—" rejected," as Flamstead termed it, "by the heavens." Secondly, that Flamstead showed unwillingness to furnish Newton with the requisite lunar observations. He was under no obligation whatever to do so; yet, as proved, he furnished him with all he had made. It is contended also that the committee had a right to break the seal of Flamstead to come at his catalogue—an assertion than which nothing can be more immoral.
On the whole view of this case, as it rests on broad facts, we are compelled, in justice betwixt man and man, to declare our opinion that Flamstead was not only one of the most illustrious astronomers which this country has produced, but also one of the most ill-used of men; and without derogating an iota from the scientific merits of Sir Isaac Newton, it is clear, from his conduct to both Leibnitz and Flamstead, that he adds another proof to that of Bacon, that intellectual greatness and moral greatness do not necessarily reside in the same mind.
Amongst the other men of mathematical note in this period we may mention Henry Briggs, the coadjutor of Napier. His "Trigonometrica Britannica" showed that he had had a near view of the binomial theorem afterwards discovered by Newton. This work was published after his death by his friend, Henry Gellibrand, also an able mathematician. Thomas Harriot, author of a work on algebra —"Artis Analyticoe Praxis"—is said to have discovered the solar spots before Galileo, and the satellites of Jupiter only a few days after Galileo. Samuel Horrocks was beforehand with Newton in the theory of the lunar motions, which Newton afterwards demonstrated to be the necessary consequence of gravitation. Dr. Wallis, Crabtree, Gascoine, Milbourn, Shakerley, and Gunter—the author of Gunter's scale—were all men of high merit in those branches of science. Barrow we have already mentioned as a distinguished geometrician as well as a theologian. He was only excelled in optics by; Newton himself; and in his "Sectiones Georaetricse" he nearly anticipated Newton's principle of fluxions. James Gregory, professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, the first, constructor of a reflecting telescope; and his nephew, David Gregory, of Oxford; John Collins, author of various philosophical works and papers; Roger Cotes, author of "Harmonia Mensurarum," &c.; and Dr. Brooke Taylor, author of "Methodus Incrementorum," were all substantial contributors to the higher sciences at this era. Halley, whose name occurs so unfavourably in the affair with Flamstead, succeeded him as astronomer royal, and is noted as being the first to find out the exact return of a comet which bears his name, and by a catalogue of the southern stars, published in 1679. Besides his profound astronomical talents, he added in various ways to the knowledge of the time. He was the first to construct tables of mortality, introduced improvements of the diving-bell; and wrote various treatises on the variations of the compass, on the trade-winds, and other subjects.
In pneumatics and chemistry the Honourable Robert Boyle made some discoveries, and considerably improved the air-pump; and Robert Hooke, already mentioned as one of the earliest theorists of gravitation, also had a pretty clear notion of the gas now termed oxygen. Thomas Sydenham is a great name in medicine of this time; and the department of natural history took a new start under the hands of Rae, Willoughby, Lester, and others. Rae published his "History Plantarum," and edited Willoughby's works on birds and fishes. Conchology was advanced by Martin Lester, and Woodward even opened up the new region of mineralogy. The two most extraordinary discoveries, however, next to those of Newton, remain yet to be mentioned—that of the circulation of the blood, by Harvey, and of the steam-engine, by Solomon de Cans, introduced into this country by the marquis of Worcester.
The theory of the circulation of the blood, like almost every other great theory founded on fact, was not left for Harvey to ponder out ab origine. That the blood flowed from the heart to the extremities was known to the ancients, and stated by Aristotle. Galen even had argued, from the discovery of valves in the pulmonary artery, that the blood was also returned to the heart. Servetus, of Geneva, the same who was put to death for heresy, had demonstrated the circulation through the lungs, and again this theory had been propounded by Rcaldus Columbus in 1559. In 1571 Cæsalpines of Arezzo came still nearer to the true theory, from observing the swelling of veins below a ligature—thence inferring that the blood flowed from the extremities as well as to them. It is clear, therefore, that all but positive demonstration was arrived at when Harvey appeared. But though this demonstration was all that was now needed, it was a work of no ordinary corn-age and genius. The few facts known were overlaid by such a heap of absurd and contradictory notions amongst medical men, that nothing but the nicest and completest experiments could establish the truth. This Harvey undertook to do, and accomplished it. He informed Boyle, as we learn irom that philosopher's "Treatise on Final Causes," that the idea of the true circulation was first suggested to him when studying under Fabricius Aquapendente, at Padua, by noticing the valves in the veins—the same that had attracted the attention of Galen. To ascertain the fact he made numerous and accurate experiments on both dead and living animals, and the result was the clearest proof of the fact that the blood is propelled from the heart through the arteries, and returned to it through the veins. Besides this his experiments threw a flood of light on the action of the heart, on its diastolic and systolic functions, as observed both in adult subjects and in the fœtus; on the true action of the lungs on the blood, and Other important points. his completed views were so opposed to the notions of the faculty at this time, that a stupendous prejudice was raised against him, and his practice fell off greatly from the clamour which was raised against what his follow practitioners called his wild speculations. It is a well-known fact that not one medical man who had passed his fortieth year ever admitted the discovery of Harvey. The most famous anatomists abroad joined in the outcry against his theory. Primirosius, Parisanus, Riolanus, professors of anatomy at Paris, and Plempius, professor at Louvain, were violent against it. Harvey very modestly permitted the storm to blow, certain that a truth built on positive facts would in the end prevail. He refused to answer the attacks of any one but Riolanus; but his friend. Dr. Ent, ably wielded the pen in his defence, and Harvey had the pleasure to see Plempius before long confess himself a convert, and many others then followed.
Besides Harvey's great discovery, he made many other anatomical investigations with great care and ability, and especially on a vital subject, detailed in his treatise "De Gencratione." His merit became so fully acknowledged that he was elected president of the college of physicians.
But the gifted men of this age who could determine the laws of worlds, and systems of worlds, and the vital principles of the living body, failed to perceive the wondrous capabilities of another invention destined to revolutionise society at a Later day The marquis of Worcester, whom we have seen figuring conspicuously, as the earl of Glamorgan, in the civil strife of Charles I.'s reign, constructed a steam-engine—a very rude one, of course—which Sorbiere, a Frenchman, saw at work at his lordship's house at Vauxhall in 1663. It was capable of throwing up water to a great height. This engine is described by the marquis in his "Century of Inventions," published this same year, 1663. It is the sixty-eighth in the catalogue, and entitled "An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire." He used a cannon for his boiler, and says he has seen "water run like a constant fountain-stream forty feet high. One vessel of water rarified by fire driveth up forty of cold water."
The marquis had learned this invention from the work of a Frenchman, Solomon de Cans, entitled "Les Raison de Forces Mouvantes." This De Caus had travelled in England, and had importuned his own countrymen to examine what he deemed a wonderful discovery—the power of steam; but, like Thomas Gray, when urging on this country a system of railroads, was treated as a bore and a maniac. The marquis found De Caus actually confined in the Bicêstre in Paris as a madman, for wanting to convince his countrymen of the marvellous powers of steam. The marquis's own notion appeared to be that the engine might be employed chiefly for the raising of water—a trait attributed to him by Stuart, in his "Anecdotes of Steam-Engines," published in 1651, in which the writer mentions a little engine at work at his house in Lambeth, which "might be applied to draw or hale ships, boates, &c., up rivers against the stream; to draw carts, wagons, &c., as fast without cattel; to draw the plough without cattel, to the same dispatch, if need be," &c.
The marquis's views were thus rapidly expanding on the subject; and it is wonderful that the invention should have been suffered to sleep a century and a half longer. Still more wonderful is it that the powers of steam slept so long when, according to Gibbon, the architect of St. Sophia, Constantinople, centuries ago, was so well aware of it that he used to shake the house of his neighbour, an enemy of his, with steam machinery.
PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND ENGRAVING.
Of architecture there was none belonging to this period. The glorious old gothic had closed for the time its career, and even the most eminent architects despised it. We have seen Inigo Jones introducing an Italian style, and committing the atrocity of erecting Grecian screens in Gothic cathedrals; and we shall in our next review find Wren, the architect of the noble classical fabric of St. Paul's, equally incapable of perceiving the beauty of Gothic. To him it was barbarian.
With Charles II. came in French taste, and almost all the professors of painting, sculpture, and engraving were foreigners. The whole art of painting was expended on the decorations of walls and ceilings after the fashion of Le Brun, but not with his genius, and in portrait. Verrio and Sir Peter Lely, both foreigners, engrossed the patronage of the court and the admiration of the public.
Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan painter, who transferred himself to France and then to England, covered immense spaces of wall and ceiling at Windsor Castle and other places, with his gods, goddesses, and similar figures, pouring them out, as Walpole observes, without much invention and as little taste, but certainly with a great show of colour. He painted most of the ceilings at Windsor, one side of the hall of St. George and the chapel, most of which works are now destroyed. On the ceiling of St. George's Hall he drew Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, as Faction dispereing rebels; and the housekeeper, Mrs. Marriott, as Fury, because she had offended him. He was paid enormously for these works, and spent it as freely in ostentation. He had a house in St. James's Park, and was also master gardener to the king. Walpole gives an extraordinary example of his freedom in demanding money of the king. He had just; received a thousand pounds, when he appeared at court, and found Charles in such a circle that he could not approach him; but, nothing daunted, he called out to him that he desired to speak to him. Being asked what he wanted, he replied, Money. The king smiled, and reminded him of the thousand pounds just had. "Yes," said he, "but pedlars and painters cannot give long credit; that was soon paid away, and I have no gold left." "At that rate," said Charles, "you would spend more than I do." "True," replied the impudent foreigner; "but does your majesty keep an open table as I do?"
Being a tory, at the revolution he refused to paint for king William; but was employed by the earl of Exeter at Burleigh House, and the earl of Devonshire at Chatsworth, where plenty of his works remain. Dr. Waagen says he received more from lord Exeter alone than Raphael or Michael Angelo received for all their immortal works. The earl paid him for twelve years one thousand five hundred pounds a year—that is eighteeen thousand pounds—besides his keep and equipage at his disposal. At length the earl persuaded him to work for King William at Hampton Court, where, besides other things, he painted the staircase so badly that he was suspected to have done it on purpose. In the wake of Verrio came Jacques Rousseau and Charles de la Fosse, the painters of the dome of the Invalides in Paris. Some few Englishmen, too, were employed in this department of fresco-painting. Isaac Fuller, a remains of whose performance may be seen in the dome of St. Mary Abchurch, in London; John Freeman, a scene painter for the theatre; and Robert Streater, a man of superior skill, who painted the ceiling of the theatre at Oxford, and many other ceilings, besides works of other kinds, historic, and even still life.
Lely, the painter of Charles's beauties, now at Hampton Court, was a native of Germany, but had studied chiefly in Holland, where Charles is supposed to have met with him. His ladies are certainly endowed with remarkable beauty and grace, but there is a certain likeness running through them all, especially in the complexion, the tone and tint of the flesh, as well as the disposal of the drapery, which gives one the inevitable impression that they are to a great degree got up, and made rather after his peculiar model than their own real appearance. "Whether they be striking likenesses, however, they are beautiful pictures His draperies are arranged in broad folds, and he relieves his figures by a landscape background, which made Walpole say, "His nymphs trail fringes and embroidery through meadows and purling streams." The essence of Lely's painting is court artifice. It is showy, affected, and meretricious. Besides his court portraits he occasionally attempted the historic, one of the best of this kind which he executed being "Susannah and the Elders," at Burleigh House. His portraits in crayons are also preferred by some to his paintings in oil.
Lely set the fashion for portraiture in his time; no painter could hope to succeed if he did not conform to his style. Amongst a crowd of foreigners who sought to share his popularity were Henry Gascar, James Huysman, and Sunman, from the Netherlands—all excellent portrait painters. Netscher also came hither for a short time; and William Wissing, of Amsterdam, an admirable artist, succeeded Lely at his death, and was only eclipsed by the rising fame of Kneller, a German, who afterwards became king William's court painter. Of the French school was Philip Duval, a pupil of the celebrated Le Brun's.
Amongst native portrait painters may be mentioned Hayls, Michael Wright, a Scotchman, who painted the Judges for the Guildhall of London, still remaining there; but more noted for his portrait of Lacy, the actor, in three characters; Henry Anderton, a pupil of Streater's, who became very popular; John Greenhill, and Thomas Flatman, also a poet of some note.
A number of Dutch and Flemish painters of still-life were also employed in England at this period, of whom the most celebrated were Vansoon, Hoogstraten, Roestraten, and Varelst, who also attempted portrait. There was also Abraham Hondius, animal painter, and Danker, Vosterman, Griffiere, Lankrink, and the two Vandeveldes, landscape painters. The Vandeveldes were justly in high esteem; Lankrink was the painter of Lely's backgrounds.
The two great sculptors were Caius Gabriel Cibber, a native of Holstein, and Grinling Gibbons, whom Macaulay calls a Dutchman, but who, though supposed to be of Dutch extraction, was an Englishman, born in Spur Alley, London. Cibber—who was the father of Colley Cibber, afterwards poet laureate, and immortalised by Pope in the "Dunciad"—is now chiefly known by his two figures of Raging and Melancholy Madness, which adorned the principal gate of old Bethlehem Hospital, and now standing in the hall of the modern hospital, a work of real genius. He also erected the bas-reliefs on the pedestal of the London Monument, and did much work at Chatsworth.
Grinling Gibbons was found by John Evelyn in a cottage at Deptford, carving his celebrated "Stoning of St. Stephen," after Tintoretto, and by him introduced at court. He executed a marble statue of Charles II. for the area of the late Royal Exchange, and another in bronze of James II. for the privy garden at the back of Whitehall, which fixed his high merit as a sculptor; but his unrivalled genius in carving soon drew him from sculpture, and he became extensively employed at Windsor, Chatsworth, Petworth, and other great houses, in carving of flowers, feathers, foliage, and the like ornaments, which rival in wood the lightness and accuracy of nature. In the chapel at Windsor he executed abundance of carving of doves, pelicans, palm-branches, &c. At St. Paul's he did much of the foliage and festoons of the stall-work and the side aisles of the choir. At Chatsworth there are feathers in lime-wood that rival those of the living goose; and he there executed in wood a point-lace cravat of marvellous delicacy. At Southwick, in Hants, he embellished an entire gallery, and a room at Petworth, which is generally regarded as amongst his very finest performances.
Engraving at this era fell also greatly into the hands of foreigners. Loggan, Booteling, Valek, Hollar, and Vanderbank were amongst the chief; but there were two Englishmen who were not less patronised by their countrymen. Robert White was a pupil of Loggan's, and, like his master, excelled in portraits. Walpole enumerates two hundred and fifty-five works of this artist, many of them heads drawn by himself, and striking likenesses. But William Faithorne was unquestionably at the head of his profession. Faithorne in his youth fought on the royal side, and was taken by Cromwell at the siege of Basing House along with Hollar.
Hollar left England during the commonwealth, and resided at Antwerp, where he executed his great portraits from Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, and other great masters. On the restoration he returned to England, and did the plates in Dugdale's "Monasticon," "History of St. Paul's," and "Scenery of Warwickshire," for Thoroton's "Nottinghamshire;" and he made drawings of the town and fortress of Tangier for Charles, which he engraved, some of these drawings still remaining in the British Museum. Faithorne in the meantime took refuge in France, and there studied under Nanteuil, and acquired a force, freedom, richness, and delicacy in portrait engraving which was unequalled in his own time, and scarcely surpassed in ours. He drew also in crayons.
The art of mezzo-tint was introduced at this period by prince Rupert, who was long supposed to have invented it; this, however, has since then been doubted; but its introduction by him is certain; and it became so much cultivated in this country as to become almost exclusively an English art.
COINAGE
The coins of this period were the work of the Roteri family. Of these there were John, Joseph, and Philip, and Norbert Roteri, the son of John. They were men of much taste and skill, as their coins show, though by no means equal to Simon, the coiner of Cromwell. Their father was a Dutch banker, who had obliged Charles during his exile by the loan of money, on condition that, in case of restoration, he should employ his sons. They, however, introduced some decided improvements into our coin, particularly that of graining or letters on the rims of the coin.
Silver Twopence of Charles II.
Charles called in all the commonwealth money, and coined fresh. In 1662 the gold coin called a guinea was first invented, from gold brought from the coast of Guinea, and had the stamp of an elephant under the king's head, in honour of the African company which imported it. In the last year of Charles's reign he coined farthings of tin, with only a bit of copper in the middle. The figure of Britannia still retained on our copper coinage was first introduced in the copper coinage of Charles, and was modelled from Miss Stuart, afterwards duchess of Richmond, of whom Charles was deeply enamoured, by Phihp Roteri—much to the scandal of all decent subjects.
Half-a-Crown of James II.—Silver.
James II. followed the fashion of Charles in coining tin halfpence and farthings with copper centres. After his abdication he was reduced in Ireland to coin money out of old brass cannon, and pots and pans, and, when that failed, out of pewter.
MUSIC.
Harry, whose tuneful and well-measur'd song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent.
But perhaps the royalists were all the more musical on their return to power to mark their contempt of the gloomy puritans, and music burst forth in church and chapel, in concert, and theatre, and private house with redoubled energy. The theatres and operas did not delay to draw the public by the charms of music as well as of representation. Even during the latter years of the commonwealth Sir Wilham Davenant opened a kind of theatre under the name of masque and concert, and enlivened it by music. The royalists at Oxford during the time Charles I.'s court was there, held weekly musical parties with the members of the university; and no sooner was the commonwealth at an end than the heads of houses, fellows, and other gentlemen renewed these parties, and furnished themselves with all necessary instruments, and the compositions of the best masters. But what marks the musical furore of this period more than all was the flocking of the aristocracy and the finest musical performers to the miserable house of a dealer in coal-dust in Clerkenwell, where musical parties were held. "It was," says Dr. John Hawkins, "in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell. The room of the performance was over the coal-shop; and, strange to tell, Tom Britton's concert was the weekly resort of the old, the young, the gay, the fair of all ranks, including the highest order of nobility." Dr. Pepusch and frequently Handel played the harpsichord—though this must have been at a later period, for he did not arrive in England till 1710. Mr. Needler, accountant-general of the excise; Hughs the poet, Woolaston the painter, and many other amateurs were among the performers. Walpole says Britton took money from his visitors, but Hawkins entirely denies it.
The example of Tom Britton was contagious, and similar places of musical entertainment, but on the principle of professional emolument, were soon opened east and west. Amongst the first of these was Sadler's Wells.
One of the finest composers for the theatre and opera was Matthew Locke. He was appointed composer in ordinary to Charles II., and composed a church service and some anthems; but he was much more famous for his setting of songs, and the music to plays. He wrote that to Davenant's alteration of "Macbeth," to Shadwell's opera, "Psyche," and various other dramas. He received a salary of two hundred pounds a year as director of the king's music. He became a convert to Catholicism, and was made organist to Catherine, the queen of Charles. But the rage for everything French was growing, and Locke was succeeded in his office by a Frenchman, Cambert, who produced an English opera; and he by Louis Grabut, another Frenchman, who set Dryden's "Albion and Albanias," a satire on Shaftesbury—a poor performance. After Charles quarrelled with Louis XIV., Italian taste superseded the French, and Italian music and musicians were patronised. Amongst the latter Nicola Matteis was a popular violinist.
But that which possessed the most decided merit was the church music of this period. It was not that which one would have expected in the reign of Charles II., but we must do him the justice to say that he seems to have encouraged greatly the musical services of the church. He united all the distinguished composers and performers, to assist in restoring this service to its former glory; and, amongst the survivors of his father's reign, reappeared Dr. Child, Dr. Christopher Gibbons, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Wilson, Henry Lawes, Milton's friend, Byrne, Lowe, and Cook, commonly called captain Cook, from his having borne a commission in the royalist army. Cook was made master of the children of the choir in the royal chapel; Child, Gibbons, and Low, organists; Lawes, clerk of the cheque, Rogers, organist at Eton, Byrne, organist at St. Paul's, and Wilson was attached to the service in Westminster Abbey. {{dhr}
Dr. William Harvey.
By these means the church musical service was speedily raised to a high pitch of excellence; a spirit was diffused through the whole kingdom from the king's chapel, and the cathedral service became as fine as ever. Captain Cook trained him boy-choristers to admiration, and out of them arose some of the best composers of sacred music that England possesses. Amongst them are Pelham Humphrey, Michael Wise, John Blow, and, superior to them all, Henry Purcell. Some of these produced anthems whilst mere striplings, which still remain in use. Amongst these Pelham Humphrey greatly distinguished himself; and was, therefore, sent by Charles to Paris, to study under the famous Lulli, and then made gentleman of his chapel. At the death of Cook, his master, he succeeded to his office. Michael Wise became, for a time, organist of Salisbury cathedral, but returned to the royal chapel as one of the gentlemen. His anthems are still greatly admired. Blow succeeded Humphrey as master of the children, and was organist of Westminster Abbey. He published various compositions, both sacred and secular, some of which are yet in much esteem, others have fallen into merited neglect.
Thomas Britton, the Musical Small-coal Man.
But the musical master of the age was Henry Purcell, who was for some time organist of Westminster Abbey, and afterwards of the king's chapel. His sacred music, especially his Te Deum and Jubilate, has never been surpassed. Dr. Burney declared him superior to all the foreign composers of the day—Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Keiser, Lulli, and Rameau; but others do not except any composers of any previous age. In his secular music he again surpassed himself. His music of the drama is voluminous. He set the songs in Nahum Tate's Dido," the music for Lee's "Theodosius;" that for the "Tempest," as altered by Dryden, which is still heard with delight; that for the "Prophetess," altered by Dryden and Betterton, from Beaumont and Fletcher; the songs of Dryden's "King Arthur," in which are the lovely air "Fairest Isle," the charming duet "Two Daughters of this aged Stream are We," and the inimitable frost-scene. He furnished the music for Howard and Dryden's "Indian Queen." In Dryden's altered "Boadicea," the duet and chorus "To Arms," and the air "Britons, strike home," are still heard with acclamations on all occasions of patriotic excitement. Besides these he wrote airs, overtures, and set tunes for numerous other dramas, as Dryden and Lee's "Timon of Athens," "Œdipus," "The Fairy Queen," altered from the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Dryden's "Tyrannic Love." He wrote many odes, glees, catches, rounds, many single songs and duets, twelve sonatas for two violins and a bass, &c. The air of "Lillibullero" is attributed to him. His widow published many of these after his death, in two folio volumes called "Orpheus Britannicus." The music of Purcell is national property, and, spite of more recent genius, will long continue to be heard with rapture.
Notwithstanding Charles II.'s restoration of church music, he endeavoured to degrade it by the introduction of French customs, and at one time introduced a band of twenty-four fiddlers into his chapel, in imitation of Louis XIV. Tom D'Urfey ridiculed it in the song, "Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a Row;" and Evelyn describes his disgust at witnessing this strange sight, "more fit for a tavern or play-house than a church." The public feeling, indeed, soon caused the king to Withdraw the Gallic innovation.
Amongst the musical productions of this time we may note Blow's "Amphion Anglicus," Roger North's "Memoir of Music," still in manuscript; Sir Francis; North's "Philosophical Essay on Music," Lord Brouncker's translation of Descartes' "Musicæ Compendium." Marsh, archbishop of Armagh, was the first to treat acoustics methodically, in a paper in the "Philosophical Transactions." Dr. Wallis, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and whom we have mentioned as an eminent mathematician, wrote much in the "Philosophical Transactions" on musical subjects, and published an edition of "Ptolemy's Harmonies." Thomas Mace, John Birchensha, Christopher Simpson, and John Playford are musical authors of that age.
DOMESTIC ARTS—FURNITURE.
The furniture of this period had the general characteristics of the last age. Cane backs and seats began to be used in chairs, and the beautiful marquetrie work—so called from its inventor, M. Marquet—adorned tables, cabinets, clock-cases, wardrobes, and other rich pieces of furniture. The Louis Quatorze style, with its rich sweeps and abundance of carving and gliding, began to appear in England, but did not attain to general use till a later period. The floors began to be covered with gay-coloured mats and carpets, but the richest pieces of Turkey carpet were still more frequently used for table-covers. Oil-cloth was now introduced from Germany, and manufactured in London. The Gobelin tapestry manufactory was established in France in 1677, and towards the end of this period began to cover the walls of our great mansions.
COSTUME.
The costume of gentlemen underwent rapid and various metamorphoses in Charles II.'s time From the rich and elegant costume of Charles I. it degenerated first into one with an exceedingly short doublet, without any under waistcoat, loose petticoat breeches, with long drooping lace ruffles at the knee. This costume, however, still retained much of the Vandyke style. It had the high-crowned hat and plume of feathers, the falling lace collar, and the natural hair. But soon came the monstrous peruke, or periwig, as it was corrupted to in England, copied from the fashion of the court of Louis XIV., which superseded the natural hair in both men and women, the women appearing to have adopted it first. Then speedily followed the square, long coat, and monstrous jack-boots, and cocked hat, which became the general dress of the next century. False hair had been worn by both sexes in the times of Elizabeth and James I., but never to the same preposterous extent as at present. Charles II., though adopting the periwig fashion himself, and thus confirming it, yet refused to allow the clergy to use it. He wrote a letter to the university of Cambridge, ordering the clergy neither to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, nor read their sermons; and, on a fellow of Clare Hall venturing to preach before him in a wig and holland sleeves,he ordered the statutes concerning decency of apparel to be put in force against him and similar offenders. The periwig did not accord well with the high-crowned hat or broad-leafed sombrero of Spain, and the crown was suddenly lowered, the brim turned up, and a drooping feather turned backwards over it. The petticoat breeches came in as early as 1658; and, in the following year, Randal Holmes thus describes a gentleman's dress:—"A short-waisted doublet and petticoat breeches, the lining being lower than the breeches, is tied above the knees; the breeches are ornamented with ribands up to the pocket, and half their breadth upon the thigh. The waistband is set round with ribands, and the shirt hanging out over them."
These petticoat breeches soon grew into actual skirts, and the doublet or jacket, which, at the beginning of the reign scarcely came below the breast, towards the end of it was so elongated that it was an actual coat, and had buttons and button-holes all down the front. In the earlier part of his transformation we see Charles and a courtier represented in a print of Faithorne's; and in the later period we see figures in the print of the funeral of general Monk, with the long, flowing periwigs, and little, flat, narrow-brimmed hats, like our sailors' glazed hats, stuck upon them.
Along with a particular costume described by Evelyn, which Charles adopted in 1666, consisting of a long close vest of black cloth or velvet pinked with white satin; a loose surcoat over it of an oriental character, and instead of shoes and stockings, buskins or brodequins; he also wore small buckles instead of shoestrings. Charles was so proud of this dress that he vowed he would never wear any other; but it did not last long, and buckles did not become the general fashion till the reign of queen Anne.
Long and short Kersey stockings were an article of export in this period, as well as stockings of leather, silk, or woollen, and worsted for men and children. Socks also occur under the name of "the lower end of stockings." Amongst the imports were hose of crewel, called Mantua hose, and stockings of wadmol. Neckcloths or cravats of Brussels and Flanders lace were worn towards the end of the reign, and tied in a knot under the chin, the ends hanging down square.
The costume of knights of the garter assumed its present shape, the cap of estate, with its ostrich and heron plume and the broad blue ribbon worn over the left shoulder and brought under the right arm, where the jewel or lesser George hangs, being introduced just before the publication of Ashmole's "History of the Order." The baron's coronet of the present fashion dates from this reign.
The costume of James II.'s reign varied little from that of Charles. The hats indeed assumed various cocks, according to the fancy of some leader or party. One cock was called the Monmouth cock.
The ladies in the voluptuous reign of Charles II. abandoned the straight-laced dresses with the straight-Laced manners of their puritan predecessors. Bare bosoms and bare arms to the elbows were displayed, and the hair, confined only by a single bandeau of pearls, or adorned by a single rose, fell in graceful profusion upon their snowy necks. The rounded arm reclined on the rich satin petticoat; whilst the gown of the same rich material extended its voluminous train behind. Lely's portraits are not to be regarded as representing the strict costume of the age, but they give us its spirit—a studied negligence, an elegant déshabille. The starched ruff, the steeple-crowned hat, the rigid stomacher, and the stately farthingale were, however, long retained by less fashionable dames of the country; and when the ruff was discarded, a rich lace tippet veiled the beauties of the bosom. The women of ordinary rank also still retained much of this costume, with the hood and tippet.
Furniture, &c., of the period of Charles II., copied from authentic sources.
In their riding-habits the ladies imitated the costume of the men as nearly as they could. Evelyn says that he saw the queen in September, 1666, going to take the air "in her cavalier riding-habit, hat, and feathers, and horseman's coat." As it seems to us a very rational dress for the occasion, yet the sight did not please Mr. Pepys, for he remarks about the same time—"Walking in the galleries at Whitehall, I find the ladies of honour dressed in their riding-garbs, with coats and doublets, with deep skirts—just for all the world like men, and buttoned in their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs and with hats. So that only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever, which was an odd sight, and a sight that did not please me."
Yet Mrs. Stuart, afterwards duchess of Richmond, did please him:—"But, above all, Mrs. Stuart, in her dress, with her hat cocked, and a rich plase, with her sweet eye, and little Roman nose, and excellent, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life."
The military costume of the period remained much the same as during the civil wars and commonwealth; but vambraces were abandoned by the harquebussiers, and defensive armour was gradually falling into disuse. The helmet and corset, or cuirass, or the gorget alone, worn over a buff coat, form the total defence of steel worn by the officers at this period. "The arms, offensive and defensive," says the statute of the 13th and 14th of Charles II., "are to be as follows:—The defensive armour of the cavalry to consist of a back, breast, and pot, and the breast and pot to be pistol proof. The offensive arms a sword and case of pistols, the barrels whereof are not to be under fourteen inches in length. For the foot a musketeer is ordered to have a musket, the barrels not under three feet in length; a collar of bandeliers with a sword. Pikemen to be armed with a pike of ash, sixteen feet long, with a back, breast, head-piece, and sword."
The present familiar names of the regiments comprising the British army commerce from this reign. The Life Guards were raised in 1661—composed and treated, however, like the Gardes du Corps of the French—being principally gentlemen of families of distinction, who themselves, or their fathers, had fought in the civil wars. In the same year the Blues were also embodied, and called the Oxford Blues, from their first conmiander, Aubrey, earl of Oxford. The Coldstream guards date their formation from 1660, and two regiments were added to the one raised about ten years previously by general Monk, at Coldstream, on the borders of Scotland.
To these were added the 1st Royal Scots, brought over from France at the restoration; the 2nd, or Queen's, raised in 1661; the 3rd, or Old Buffs, from their accoutrements being composed of buffalo leather, embodied in 1665; the Scotch Fusiliers, now the 21st, raised in 1678, and so called from their carrying the fusil, invented in France in 1630—being a firelock lighter than the musket, but about the same length; and the 4th, or King's Own, raised in 1680.
During this reign the bayonet—so called from Bayonne, where it was invented—was sometimes three-edged, sometimes flat, with a wooden hilt like a dagger, and was screwed or merely stuck into the muzzle of the gun. The bayonet superseded the sweyne's feather, or rapier attached to the musket-rest in James's reign. Even then the bayonet was a far inferior weapon to what it is now, as it had to be removed to fire and charge again. The Grenadiers were introduced in 1078, and were so called from being practised to fling hand-grenades, each man having a pouch full. To these James added the 1st or King's regiment of Dragoon Guards, in 1685, and the 2nd, or Queen's Dragoon Guards, in 1685; the 5th and 7th regiments, called the Royal Fusiliers, the same year; and in 1688, the year of the revolution, the 23rd, or Welsh Fusiliers.
Gentlemen of the reign of Charles II., from the engraving of the Funeral of General Monk.
Lawyers of the time of Charles II., from Hollar's print.
Gentleman and Serving-man of the time of Charles II., from Ogilby's Book on the Coronation.
Bishops of the time of Charles II.
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
We need not repeat what we have in the last chapters of our history said of the profligacy of the court and aristocracy in Charles II. 's reign, which soon polluted the spirit of the greater part of the country. However harsh and repulsive were the manners and social maxims of the puritans, they were infinitely preferable to the vile licentiousness and blasphemy of the cavaliers, who mistook vulgarity and obscenity for gentility. Notwithstanding the traditionary feeling left by the royalist writers of these times, and too faithfully taken up by such writers as Sir Walter Scott, it is now beginning to be perceived that the cavaliers were, in reality, the vulgar of the age. If to swear, gamble, bully, murder, and use the most indecent of language, and lead the most indecent of lives, be marks of vulgarity, these are the essentally-distinctive marks of the cavaliers. The puritans, with all their acerbity and intolerance, had a-reverence for sound and Christian principles at the core of their system. Virtue and moral piety were their admiration, however rudely they demonstrated it.
A Yeoman of the Guard.
But the cavaliers gloried in every opposite vice and vulgarity the more because the puritans, whom they thought vulgar, denounced them. We have seen the spirit of private assassination which animated them, and led them to the murder of Dorislaus, the commonwealth ambassador in Holland; of Ascam, its minister at Madrid; of Colonel Lisle, at Lausanne; and their repeated attempts on the life of Cromwell, in pursuance of their avowed doctrine of assassination shown in the tract called "Killing no Murder." This does anything but justify their high claim to the title of men of honour, and finds no parallel in the principles or practices of the puritans of England, though the Scotch covenanters stooped to this base practice in the murder of archbishop Sharpe.
Tradesman and his wife. James II.
Then, as to profane swearing, their conversation, larded with oaths, would have disgraced the most uncouth trooper of to-day. "The new band of wits and fine gentlemen," says Macaulay, "never opened their mouths without uttering a ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed; and without calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them." "No man," says lord Somers, "was accounted a gentleman, or person of any honour, that had not in two hours' sitting invented some new modish oath, or found out the late intrigue between the lord B. and the Lady P., laughed at the fopperies of priests, and made lampoons and drollery on the sacred Scriptures themselves.
Female Costume of the time of Charles II.
As to drinking and gambling, these vices were beyond conception; and the plunder of the people by the cavalier troopers was carried on as if they had been in an enemy's country. We have only to refer to the abandoned character of the women of Charles's court, and amongst the aristocracy, who imitated the monarch in selecting mistresses and even wives from the stage, to remind the reader of the immoral character of the age. As we have already said, any one who would convince himself of the sink of infamy and obscenity which society was then, has only to look at the plays which were acted; at their language, declaimed by women without a blush or any evidence of disgust; plays written even by such men as Dryden. "Whatever our dramatists touched," says Macaulay, "they tainted.
Boot of the time of Charles II.
In their imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and high-spirited Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's 'Viola' a procuress, Molière's 'Misanthrope' a ravisher, Molière's 'Agnes' an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and ignoble minds." The same writer, making a few exceptions—and a noble one in the case of Milton—says of the poets of that age that "from Dryden to D'Urfey the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman."
Whilst such was the condition of the court, the aristocracy, the theatre, and the literature of the country, we may imagine what was the condition of the lower orders. The state of London was little if anything improved in civilisation—by no means improved in its moral tone—since the days of James I. The city was rising in a more healthy and substantial form from the fire, with wider streets, and better drainage; but it was still badly lighted, and disgraced by filthy kennels.
St Stephen's, Walbrook, erected by Sir Christopher Wren.
Chelsea Hospital, from an old engraving.
Nell Gwynne's Looking Glass.
The aristocracy had evacuated the city—especially since the fire—and had located themselves along the Strand, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Bloomsbury, Soho, and all quarters tending towards Whitehall; others located themselves in Covent Garden; and in the fields now covered by the piles of Bedford Square and the British Museum stood the magnificent mansions of Bedford House and Montague House. But most of the sites of the splendid squares and streets of our now West End were open country, or the rubbish-heaps of the neighbourhood. Club-life was now beginning. There were numbers of political clubs; the most famous of which was the King's Head, or Green Ribbon Club, from the members wearing a green ribbon in their hats, to distinguish them from their opponents; there was the club of Shaftesbury and the whig party, which was engaged in the design of excluding the duke of York from the succession, and which raised all the Titus Oates' plots to accomplish their object. It met at the King's Head Tavern opposite to the Temple Gate. But coffee-houses, now become general, were in reality clubs; and every class and party had its coffee-house, where its members met. There was the literary coffee-house, called Will's, situate between Covent Garden and Bow Street, where Dryden was the great man, and where literary lords, literary lawyers, dramatists, players, and wits of all sorts met to settle the merits of literature and the stage. There were lawyers' coffee-houses, citizens' coffee-houses, doctors' coffee-houses, the chief of them Garraway's; Jesuits' coffee-houses, puritans' coffee-houses, and popish coffee-houses, where every man found his fellows, and partisans met and learned the news; and in these haunts the spirit of party and of religious antagonism was carried to its fiercest height. The chief place of public lounging was the New Exchange in the city, and Spring Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Mulberry Garden, which were continually occurring in the comedies of the day as the places of assignation, as well as the fashionable masquerades.
But whilst such were the most marked features of life in London at this day, we are not to suppose that there was not a large amount of the population who retained a love of virtue, purity, and domestic life. The religious were a numerous class; and the stern morality of the nonconformists beheld with pity and indignation the dissipated flutterings of the corrupt world around them. Besides these there was a numerous population of sober citizens, who, though they did not go with the puritans in religion, were disgusted with the French manners, maxims, houses, and cookery, and stood by their native modes and ideas with sturdy John Bullism. The musical taste of the age tended to draw them together to more rational enjoyments than debauchery and the tainted stage, and the increasing use of coffee and tea gave to musical and social parties a more homelike and refined character.
The popular sports and amusements still, however, maintained their usual character. All the old cruel sports of bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and cock-fights, which the puritans had suppressed, came back with royalty. Horse-racing was in vogue; and gambling was such a fever amongst the wealthy, that many great estates were squandered at cards, and the duke of St. Albans, when more than eighty years of age, and quite blind, used to sit at the gaming-table from day to day, with a man beside him to tell him the cards. Billiards, chess, backgammon, and cribbage were in great request; and bowls, ninepins, boat-racing, yacht-racing, running at the ring, were sports both with the people and the gentry. Ladies joined in playing at bowls; skating was introduced by the courtiers, who had spent much time in Holland. Swimming and foot-races were fashionable; and we have seen that colonel Blood had planned to shoot Charles once when he went to swim in the Thames near Chelsea, and that the duke of Monmouth in his popular tour ran races against all comers, first without boots, and then beat them running in his boots whilst the others ran without.
Charles prided himself on his pedestrian feats. The common people were as much delighted as their ancestors with all the exhibitions of Bartholomew Fair and Smithfield, of fire-eaters, jugglers, rope-dancers, dancing dogs and monkeys, Punch, feats of strength, and travelling theatres, where some Scripture story was represented, as is yet the case in France.
In the country, life continued to move on at its usual rate. Land had not reached more than a fourth of its present value, and education was an immense way further behind, so that a large amount of the aristocracy, including nearly the whole of the squirearchy, continued to live on their estates, and rarely made a visit to London. The ravages which the civil wars had made in all parts of the country had left traces on many a rental which were yet far from being obliterated; and the contempt into which the clerical office had fallen since the reformation, and absorption of the church lands, left one outlet for the sons of the squirearchy at this time little available. The landed gentry, therefore, for the most part continued to occupy a position of great local importance, but, with few exceptions, did not mingle much with the great world of London, or aspire to lead in social or political rivalry on the national arena. The squire was great on the bench and at the quarter sessions; he was often colonel of the militia, and knew his importance in the country; but beyond that he was little heard of except when civil strife called him out to defend the altar and the throne. But within his own little world he was all in all, proud of his power, and prouder of his pedigree; but if the squire Westerns of Fielding's time are faithfully portrayed, how much more rustic, toryfied, and confined in the range of their ideas and experience must they have been nearly two hundred years ago! Few of them had the ambition to distinguish themselves by literary attainments—such accomplishments they left to the Drydens and Danbys of the metropolis. Many heirs of estates, therefore, at this era never went to a university, or, if they did, made but a brief abode there, and returned little better for the sojourn, depending on their property to give them all the éclât they aspired to. To enjoy the sports of the field, attend the county race meeting and county ball, to live surrounded by huntsmen and gamekeepers, to keep a coarse but exuberant table, and to terminate the day's sport by a drunken carouse, included the pursuits and habits of three-fourths of this class. The excess of drunkenness was something that would astonish these teetotal days. The rude and boisterous merriment of sporting squires amid the fumes of tobacco were deemed the quintessence of true life. The height of hospitality was to lay your guest under the table; whilst in the servants' hall the coachman or groom was made quite as fuddled, and master and man were often only sobered by an overturn into a ditch or a wayside pool. These drinking notions came down even to our time, and so much infected not only the country gentry but the literary class, that not many years ago a man was regarded as a man of no spirit or genius who did not drink hard and boast of it. The magazines of our own time kept up this insensate swagger, and the "Noctes" of Blackwood were a roystering echo of the more profane bacchanalian rout of the restoration.
As these gentry went little to town, their manners were proportionably rustic, and their circle of ideas confined, but from their confinement the more sturdy. Toryism of the most ultra type was rampant amongst them. Church and state, and the most hearty contempt of everything like dissent and of foreigners, were regarded as the only maxims for Englishmen; and the most absolute submission of the peasantry to the despotic squirearchy was exacted. In a justice room if a man was poor it was taken for granted that he was wrong. Justice Shallows and Dogberrys were not the originals of the pages of Shakespeare, but of the country bench of magistrates and its constabulary. Ideas travelled slowly, for books were few. A bible, a common prayer-book, and a "Gwillim's Heraldry" were the extent of many a gentleman's library. Newspapers were suppressed by the restrictions on the press during the latter part of Charles's reign; and the news-letters which supplied the country contained a very meagre amount of facts, but no disquisition.
A Dramatic Performance in the Inn Yard, copied from authentic sources.
There were few coaches, except in the districts immediately round London, or to the distance of twenty or thirty miles, and the roads were in general impassable in winter. On all but the main lines of highway pack-horses carried the necessary merchandise from place to place through deep narrow tracks, some of which remain to our time. It required four or five days to reach London by coach from Chester, York, or Bristol, and that attended by perils and discomforts that made travellers loth to encounter such a journey, and often to make their wills before starting. Macaulay has summed up the terrors of the road, as given by our diarists, in the following passage:—"On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the ways often such that it was hardly possible to distinguish them in the dusk from the uninclosed heath and fen on both sides. Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the great north road between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York; Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way between Newberry and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the pass was frequently blocked up during a long time by carriers neither of whom would give way. It happened almost every day that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the travellers had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean, or to the desert of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road, and was conducted across some meadows, when it was necessary for him to ride to the skirts in water. In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the house of commons, who were going up in a body to parliament, with guides and numerous attendants, took him into their company. On the roads of Derbyshire travellers were in constant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their beasts. The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such a state that, in 1686, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five hours travelling fourteen miles—from Saint Asaph to Conway. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part of the way, and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was, with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at Conway and borne on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to the Menai Straits. In some parts of Kent and Sussex none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in which at every step they sunk deep. The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell short of the demand. The wheeled carriages in this district were generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather he was six hours going nine miles; and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud."
To avoid the nuisance of carriages on such roads the habit prevailed of travelling very much on horseback; but then it required to go well armed, and, if possible, in company, for the country was infested by highwaymen. The adventures of horsemen were commonly as numerous and exciting as those who used carriages, though mails and carriages were also frequently stopped by the Nevisons, Biases, and Claude Duvals of the day. To abate the difficulties of the road, on the restoration the turnpike system was adopted—a new era in road-making—and what were called flying coaches were put on the amended ways, which conveyed passengers at a better rate; but it was only in our time that Macadam made the highways really passable at all seasons.
During the commonwealth, travellers met equally provoking impediments in passing through towns, if they dared to travel on Sundays. There was a fine for such a breach of the Sabbath; and Elwood describes his ludicrous dilemma when riding to a Friends' meeting on Sunday, on a borrowed horse, with a borrowed hat and great coat; for his father had locked up his own horse, hat, and coat to keep him from the conventicle. Being stopped and brought before a magistrate, he was ordered to pay the fine; but he replied that he had no money. "You have a good horse, however," observed the magistrate. "That is borrowed," said Elwood. "Well, you have a good great coat." "That is borrowed, too," added Elwood. "Nay, then, we must have your hat, it is a good one." "That also is borrowed," continued the young quaker. At which the magistrate, declaring that he never saw such a traveller in his life, who had nothing but what was borrowed, ordered him to be detained till the morrow, and then sent back again.
In the times we are now reviewing the tables were turned, and the royalist churchmen and squirearchy were employing their country leisure in breaking up the conventicles of all sorts of dissenters, pulling down the meeting-houses of the obstinate quakers, and sending them to prison by shoals. Sir Christopher Wren, by order of the king, tried his hand at pulling down quakers' meeting-houses, before he built St. Paul's. The spirit of political and ecclesiastical party violence raged through the country, and formed a strange contrast, in the cruelties and oppression practised on the truly religious portion of the community, to the profligacy of the gentry and, above all, of the court. What rendered this condition of things more gloomy was the low position which the country clergy then occupied. The property of the church having fallen into the hands of the aristocracy, the generality of country livings were poor, and depended chiefly on the small tithes and a miserable glebe of a few acres. Whilst some few men of distinguished abilities, like Burnet, Tillotson, Barrow, and Stillingfleet, rose to distinction and occupied the few wealthy dignities and livings, the parish clergymen were too commonly men of low origin and little education. Men of family disdained the office, and the chaplain of a great house was looked on as little better than a servant; married the cook or the housekeeper, and became the hanger-on of some country hall, joining in the rude riot and the ruder jests of his patron. Even so late as Fielding's time, as we have already remarked, the relative position of the squire and the parson were those of Western and parson Adams.
Perhaps the most pleasing feature of country life was that of the position of the yeoman, or man of small independent property. This class had been increased by the various distributions of great estates; and it is calculated that at this time one-seventh at least of the population consisted of men with their families who lived on their own little demesnes producing from fifty to a hundred pounds a year. The number of men who farmed the lands of the aristocracy at that time is affirmed to have been much fewer than those who farmed their own. This independence of condition gave them independence of mind, and it was amongst this class that the strongest resistance to the dominance and intolerance of the squirearchy was found. Many of them during the civil wars and the commonwealth adopted the puritan faith, and continued to maintain it in defiance of five-mile acts, conventicle acts, and acts of uniformity. From them has descended the sturdy spirit which, uniting with the same in towns, has continued to vindicate the liberties and manly bearing of the British population.
Nor amid the corruptions and bitternesses of the times had all the ancient poetical customs of the people disappeared. Neither the asceticism of the puritan nor the profligacy of the cavalier had been able to utterly extinguish such customs as had a touch of nature in them. The Londoners made their swarming excursions to Greenwich, and Richmond, and Epping Forest, where they gave way to all their pent-up fun and frolic, and enlivened the banks of the Thames with their songs as they rowed to and fro. The old holidays of the departed church still survived. Valentine's day was still a day of love missives, and of presents of gloves, jewellery, silk stockings, and ornamental garters from gentlemen to their valentines. Mayday reassumed its jollity; may-poles, put down by the commonwealth, again lifted their heads; and Herrick's beautiful verses resumed their reality:—
There's not a budding boy or girl this day
But is got up and gone to bring in May;
A deal of youth ere this is come
Back, and with whitethorn laden, home
The puritans beheld the return of the custom with horror. In 1660, the year that Charles II. and may-poles came back again, a puritan, writing from Newcastle, says:— "Sir,—The country as well as he town abounds with vanities, now the reins of liberty and licentiousness are let loose. May-poles, and players, and jugglers, and all things else now pass current. Sin now appears with a brazen face." Just as Charles and James were landing, in the merry month of May, at Dover, Thomas Hall published his "Funebriæa Floræa, the Downfall of May-games "—a most inopportune moment. Yet he stoutly put into the mouth of the may-pole—for he assumed it to have a mouth—as well as the whole catalogue of mortal sins, the following confession:—
I have a mighty retinue,
The scum of all the rascal crew
Of fidlers, pedlars, jayle-'scaped slaves.
Of tinkers, turncoats, toss-pot knaves.
Of thieves and scapethrifts many a one,
With bouncing Bess and jolly Joan,
With idle boyes and journeymen.
And vagrants that their country run;
Yea, Hobby-horse doth hither prince.
Maid Marian, and the Morris-dance.
My summons fetcheth far and near
All that can swagger, roar, and swear;
All that can dance, and drab, and drink;
They run to me as to a sink.
These sin for their commander take,
And I do them my black-guard make
I tell them 'tis a time to laugh,
To give themselves free leave to quaff.
To drink their healths upon their knee.
And mix their talk with ribaldry.
Old crones, that scarce have tooth or eye.
But crooked back and lamed thigh.
Must have a frisk and shake their heel.
As if no stitch or ache they feel
I bid the servant disobey.
The child to say her parents nay.
The poorer sort that have no coin
I can command them to purloin.
All this and more I warrant good.
For 'tis to maintain neighbourhood.
The honour of the sabbath-day
My dancing-greens have ta'en away.
Let preachers prate till they grow wood,
Where I am they can do no good.
With equal horror the puritans beheld the old sports at village wakes and Whitsuntide, the jollity of harvest homes, and the mirthful uproar of Christmas, come back. New Year's day, with its gifts—a Roman custom as old as Romulus—not only reappeared as a means of expressing affection amongst friends, but as a source of great profit to the king and nobility. For as Numa ordered gifts to be given to the gods on that day, so gifts were now presented by the nobility to the king, and long after his time by the dependents of the nobility, and those who sought favour from them, to the nobles. Pepys says that the whole fortunes of some courtiers consisted in these gifts. But Christmas-boxes, which originate in New Year's gifts, and have become confounded with them in this country, have survived the New Year's gifts of the time we are reviewing, and become a senseless demand from tradesmen, journeymen, and apprentices, because you have obliged their masters with your custom.
GROWTH OF THE REVENUE AND OF COMMERCE.
The great evidences of the growth of a nation are the increase of its trade, its population, and its governmental revenue. When these three things continue to augment. pari passu, there can be no question of the substantial progress of a nation. Will these had been steadily on the increase during this period, and the advocates of royalty point to these circumstances to prove the mischiefs of the civil wars and the commonwealth. It would be enough in reply, even did we admit the reality of the alleged facts, to observe that the mischief, whatever it was, was necessitated by the crimes and tyrannies of royalty. But it is necessary only to look carefully at the whole case to see that the prosperity following the restoration had its source in the commonwealth. Spite of the violent changes and dislocations of society during the period of the conflict with Charles I., these upheavings and tempests threw down and swept away a host of things which cramped and smothered the free action of commerce and internal industry. The lava which burst in fiery streams from the volcano of revolution, though it might for a time destroy life and property only required a little more time to moulder and fertilise the earth. A host of mischievous monopolies were annihilated in this convulsion. The foreign commerce was carefully extended. Not only at home were Englishmen relived from the incubus of government, absolutism, and interference with private speculation, but the haughty fleets of Dutch, and French, and Spaniards were swept from the ocean, and English merchants were encouraged to extend their enterprises, not only by the greater security at sea, but by the act of the Long Parliament allowing the import of commodities from its colonies and possessions in America, Asia, and Africa, only in English bottoms. This, it has been contended, did us no good, because it compelled the Dutch to turn their attention to the Baltic trade, and enabled them there to get the precedence of us. But this is a mistake; for the removal of the overbearing fleets of the Dutch, and the stimulus given to our commerce by this privilege, led to a far greater amount of mercantile activity in England, and enabled us to assume a position in which at a later date we could safely introduce the principles of free navigation.
Cromwell encouraged our commerce by all the means in his power, and most successfully; and the commercial activity thus excited acquired power, and continued to increase ever afterwards. He encouraged and extended our colonies, especially by the acquisition of Jamaica, and the trade with the West Indies and American colonies added increasingly, during the period now under review, to our commercial wealth and navy. The writer of "The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell," published in the "Harleian Miscellany," says:—"When this tyrant, or protector, as some call him, turned out the Long Parliament in April 1653, the kingdom had arrived at the highest pitch of trade it ever knew. The riches of the nation showed itself in the high value of land and of all our native commodities, which are the certain marks of opulence." Besides this, the great quantity of land thrown into the hands of small proprietors, from time to time, and from a succession of causes, ever since the great breaking up of the Roman church and all its monasteries and convents by Henry VIII., was every day telling more markedly on the wealth and spirit of the people. We have just noticed what a powerful body the yeomanry had become; and, from the same causes, a large accession of capital had flowed into trade. The culture of these divided lands was enormously increased; instead of lying vast deserts and hunting grounds, they now were become fertile farms. The internal resources of the country were rapidly and constantly developing themselves; and, from the quiet transfer of the taxation from the aristocracy to the people at large, it had become the interest of the monarchs, if they did little positively to accelerate the growth of national wealth, at least to leave in freedom the capital-increasing exertions of the population. The more the people traded abroad, the greater were the proceeds of the customs; the more they consumed, the greater the proceeds of the excise; now the chief items of the royal revenue. All the sources of national wealth originated in the Long Parliament and the commonwealth, for the transfers of the customs and excise were first made then, and only resumed after the restoration.
Old London Water Carriers, copied from an old Engraving.
We may now notice the rapid growth of these items of revenue. In the first year of Charles I.'s reign—namely, 1660,—the proceeds of the customs were £361,356; in the last year of James's reign, 1688, they were £781,987. Thus, in twenty-eight years the customs had more than doubled themselves. We have not the same complete accounts of the proceeds of the excise, imports and exports, for the same period; but those which we have show the same progressive ratio. In 1663, the imports and exports together amounted to £6,038,831; in 1669, or only six years afterwards, they were £6,259,413; and, since 1613, they had risen up to that amount from £4,628,586. This showed a steady increase of consumption in the nation. During this time the imports exceeded the exports considerably; demonstrating the fact that the internal wealth was greater than the export of goods; but the balance of trade gradually adjusted itself, and, in 1699, the excess of exports over imports was £1,147,660; showing that even exportable articles of manufacture, of raw produce, or of commodities the growth of our colonies and settlements, had continued to increase. The proceeds of the excise in 1660, when Charles became possessed of it, amounted only to about one million; but continued to increase so rapidly that in little more than a century it netted ten millions. The value of land, and of all kinds of property, rose in proportion. Davenant, in his "Discourses on Trade," shows that the value of the whole rental of England, in 1660, was but £6,000,000; in 1688, it was £14,000,000. So that, in 1660, the whole land of England, at twelve years' purchase, was only worth £72,000,000; but, in 1688 at fourteen years' purchase, its then estimated worth, it was £254,000,000. As to the mercantile shipping of the country, old and experienced merchants all agreed that its tonnage in 1688 was nearly double what it was in 1666. Sir William Petty, in his "Political Arithmetic," published in 1676, states that, within the previous forty years, the houses in London had doubled themselves; the coal trade from Newcastle had quadrupled itself, being then 80,000 tons yearly; the Guinea and American trades had grown up from next to nothing to 40,000 tons of shipping; the customs were tripled; the postage of letters increased from one to twenty; the whole income of government, in short, was trebled; and the number and splendour of coaches, equipages, and household furniture were wonderfully increased.
Medal exhibiting a Man-of-war (time of Charles II.) Struck in commemoration of the appointment of James Duke, of York, as Lord High Admiral.
These effects were surely no results of the wise measures of such monarchs as Charles and James; they were traceable, as clearly as light to the sun, to the bold and able heads of the Long Parliament and commonwealth; to their victories over the enemies and rivals of the nation, and to the able regulations which they had made in all quarters for the honourable maintenance of our name and the prosperity of our commerce. What such men as Charles and James did may be seen by examining the condition of what fell under their own management. What the nation at large did by its native energy we have just seen; what these monarchs did let us now sec. The royal navy, in 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons; but in 1688, the last year of Charles, it amounted to 103,558 tons; and, though it fell off a little under James, in 1688, the last year of James, it still reached 101,892 tons. This looks admirable on the surface; but it is necessary to look under the surface, and then we perceive a marvellous difference. The nation had become justly proud of its navy, which had destroyed the great Armada, and, under Blake, had put down the supremacy of Holland and Spain at sea; and though the commons were averse to trusting Charles II. with money, after they saw that it all went to concubines, gamblers, and parasites, they were never appealed to on the subject of the navy in vain. When Danby was minister, they voted at once £600,000 for the building of thirty new men-of-war. On the evidence of Pepys, the secretary of the admiralty, we have it, that scarcely any of this magnificent array of ships were fit for use. The very thirty new vessels for which the £600,000 had been voted had been built of such villanous timber that they were absolutely unseaworthy; and the rest were so rotten and worm-eaten that they would have sunk if they were carried out of port. The same testimony was borne by the French ambassador, Bonrepaure, who, when Charles made a bluster as if he would go to sea, in 1686, examined our fleet, and reported to his government that it need not trouble itself about the English navy, for that both ships and men were merely nominal. In fact, the money which should have repaired the ships and paid the officers and men was gone the way of all Charles's money; and we have in our past chapters shown Pepys pursued in the streets by swarms of starving sailors, who demanded the redemption of their tickets; shoals of them lay in the streets, without food or means of procuring a shelter; many of them perished of hunger, and some officers are said to have shared the same fate. The whole was one most shameful scene of waste of the public money, neglect of vessels and of men, of utter indolence en the part of the crown, and consequent negligence on the part of the authorities; of scandalous corruption in many of them, and knavery and peculation in contractors. Such was the state of things that, in 1667, or seven years after the commonwealth, the Dutch, under De Ruyter, entered the Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, took and burned some of our largest ships, and threw the capital into paroxysms of terror. "Many English sailors," says Pepys, "were heard on board the Dutch ships crying, 'We did heretofore fight for tickets—now we fight for dollars!'"
Besides the causes already enumerated for the rapid progress of England in wealth and prosperity at this period, the persecutions of protestants abroad, which drove hither their weavers and artisans, and the union with Scotland, giving internal peace and security, had a wonderful influence. De Witt, the celebrated Dutch minister, refers to these causes in a remarkable passage of his work called "The Interest of Holland," published in 1669." "When," he says, "the compulsive laws of the Netherland Halls had first driven the cloth-weaving from the cities into our villages, and, by the cruelty of the duke of Alva, the say-weaving went also after it, the English by degrees began to send their manufactures throughout Europe; they became potent at sea, and no longer to depend on the Netherlands. Also by that discovery of the inexpressibly rich cod-bank of Newfoundland, those of Bristol in particular made use of that advantage. Moreover, the long persecution of puritans in England has occasioned the planting of many English colonies in America, by which they derive a very considerable foreign trade thither; be that this mighty island, united with Ireland under one king, seated in the midst of Europe, having a clear, deep coast, with good havens and bays, in so narrow a sea that all foreign ships that sail either to the eastward or the westward are necessitated, even in fair weather, to shun the dangerous French coast, and sail along that of England, and in stormy weather to run in and preserve their lives, ships, and merchandise in the bays—so that England now, by its conjunction with Scotland, being much increased in strength, as well as by manufactures as by a great navigation, will in all respects be formidable to all Europe."
The clear-sighted Dutch diplomatist has summed up the grand points of England's advantages at that and succeeding periods, and some of these deserve our particular attention. The union with Scotland, though yet dependent only on the crown of the two countries resting on the same head, was a circumstance of infinite advantage. It gave a settlement and security to all the northern portions of the island which they had never enjoyed before. Till James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, not only agriculture but all kinds of manufacturing and commercial enterprise were kept in check by the frequent hostile inroads of the Scotch. Even when there was peace betwixt the crowns, the fierce people inhabiting both sides of the borders were in continual bickerings with each other; and a numerous body of moss-troopers, whose only profession was plunder, harassed the rich plains of England by their predatory raids. The state of things described by Sir Walter Scott as existing in these legions only about a century ago, gives us a lively idea of what must have been the Siwagery of the borderers at the time we are describing. If he himself, as he tells us, was probably the first person who drove a gig into Liddesdale but about half a century ago. and if at that time the wilds and moorlands of the border were peopled by tribes of free-booters as wild and lawless as savages, what must have been the state of the northern counties whilst the two countries were at feud? We are told that even the judges and king's officers could not reach the towns on the borders without a strong military guard.
But as the union of the crowns became settled and consolidated, a new era commenced north of the Trent. These counties, full of coal and ironstone, abounding with streams and all the materials for manufacture, began to develop their resources, and to advance in population and activity at an unexampled rate. Birmingham and Sheffield extended their hardware trade; Leeds and its neighbouring villages, its cloth manufacturing; Manchester, its cotton-spinning, though yet little aided by machinery; and Liverpool was rapidly rising as a port by its trade with Ireland. The union of the crowns was, in fact, the beginning of that marvellous impetus which has at this day covered all the north with coal-works, iron-works, potteries, spinning and weaving factories, and towns which have grown up around them with their 230,000 people, like Birmingham; their 130,000, like Sheffield; their 170,000, like Leeds; their 310,000, like Manchester; and 375,000, like Liverpool. It was the same security amid attendant advantages which raised the immense commercial and manufacturing population of Glasgow, Paisley, Greenock, and neighbouring towns on the other side of the border—Glasgow alone now numbering its 330,000 people.
In the south and west, Norwich and Bristol were most flourishing towns. Norwich owed its growth and prosperity to the establishment of the worsted manufacture, brought thither by the Flemings as early as the reign of Henry I., in the thirteenth century, and to the influence of four thousand other Flemings, who fled from the cruelty of the duke of Alva in Elizabeth's time, bringing their manufacture of bombazines, which has now expanded itself into a great trade in bombazines, shawls, crapes, damasks, camlets, and imitations of Irish and French stuffs. Norwich had its fine old cathedral, its bishop's palace, its palace of the duke of Norfolk, adorned with the paintings of Italy—the gems of Greece and Rome, and where the duke used at this time to live with a state little less than royal. It had also a greater number of old churches than any town in England, except London: old hospitals and grammar-schools, and the finest market-place in the kingdom. Bristol, next to London, was the great trading port, and the growing commerce with America and the West Indies was fast swelling its importance. One of its most lucrative and at the same time infamous sources of commerce was the conveyance of convicts to the plantations of America and Jamaica. We have seen the eagerness of the courtiers of James II., and even the queen and ladies, for a share of this traffic, and the numbers of the unfortunate men implicated in the insurrection of Monmouth who were sent off thither and sold. Jeffreys himself condemned eight hundred and forty of them to this slavery, and calculated that they were worth ten pounds apiece to those who had to sell them to the British merchants, who probably made much more of them. That the profits were enormous is evident by the avidity with which victims were sought after, and with which innocent persons were kidnapped for the purpose. Bristol, in fact, at that time was engaged in a veritable white slave-trade, and the magistrates were deep in it—which coming to Jeffreys' knowledge, he made a pica for extorting money from them.
To understand, however, the immense difference betwixt the England of that day and of the present, we hare only to state that the population of neither of these pre-eminent towns amounted to thirty thousand, few county towns exceeded four or five thousand, and the whole population of England was, according to various calculations, at the most five millions and a half instead of twenty-two millions, as at present.
To protect the trade of England, Charles II. immediately passed an act, statute 12 Car. II., c. 18, commonly called the navigation act, carrying out the principle of the act of the commonwealth already referred to, confining the import of all commodities from Asia, Africa, or America to English bottoms, and also all goods from Europe to English ships, or the ships of the particular country. The next year a similar act was passed by the Scottish parliament. The act of the commonwealth had effected its purpose—the depression of the Dutch carrying trade, and it was now time to relax these restrictions; but we have seen that even in our own time it has required a struggle to repeal these laws, and convince the public, by the subsequent immense increase of foreign commerce, of their impolicy. Charles's government went further, and, in 1662, forbade any wine but Rhenish, or any spirits, grocery, tobacco, potashes, pitch, tar, salt, rosin, deals, firs, timber, or olive oil, to be imported from Germany or the Netherlands. In 1677, alarmed at the vast importation of French goods and produce, his government prohibited every French article for three years; but the act remained unrepealed till the 1st of James II., by which our merchants and shopkeepers were deprived of great profits on these silks, wines, fruits, and manufactured articles, and the public of the comfort of them.
Calcutta in the 17th Century.—From an Engraving of the Period.
Another evidence of the growth of the country was the growth of the business of the post-office. The origin of the English post-office is duo to Charles I., who, at the commencement of his disputes with the parliament, established system of posts and relays. This the civil war put an end to; but the commonwealth, in 1656, established the post-office, with correspondent improvements. At the accession of Charles, a new act. was passed, 12 Car. II., c. 25; and three years after, the proceeds of this office and of the wine duties were settled on the duke of York and his heirs male. The duke farmed it out at £21,500, but on his accession the revenue amounted to £65,000. By this post a single letter was carried eighty miles for twopence; beyond eighty miles threepence was charged, and there was an advance according to the weight of packets. The privilege of franking was allowed, though not expressly granted in the act, to peers and members of parliament. There were mails, however, only on alternate days, and in distant and difficult parts of the country, as on the borders of Cornwall and the fens of Lincolnshire, only once a week. Wherever the court went mails were sent daily; this was the case, also, to the Downs, and in the season to Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Where coaches did not run, men on horseback carried the bags. The increasing business of London soon demanded a more frequent delivery, and the penny post was first started by William Dockwray, which delivered letters six times a day in the city, and four times in the outskirts. At this time the post-office business included the furnishing of all post-horses, whence the name; and the governments on the continent generally retain more or less of this practice. The growth of England from the time of the Stuarts till now receives a significant proof in the present gross receipts for letters, letter-stamps, and other post-office business being upwards of a million and a half.
The transmission of the mails necessitated an improvement of the roads, and hence commenced the toll-bar system, by an act of 15 Car. II., which ordered the repairing of highways and the erection of bars upon them, in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, owing to the great north road being so much cut up by the heavy malt and barley wagons coming from Ware, whence their contents were forwarded by water to London and other towns. The system was found so advantageous that it gradually became general.
The extension and improvement of our manufactures was greatly promoted by the persecution of the protestants in France and the Spanish Netherlands. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, compelled thousands of citizens to seek refuge in England, who, as we have seen, were at first warmly patronised by James II., but afterwards as much discouraged. Their value to the country was, however, too obvious to suffer their neglect by the mercantile community. They settled in Spitalfields, and introduced the weaving of silks, brocades, and lutestrings; and the trade and the descendants of these refugees still distinguish the same quarter of London. It is supposed that they also brought with them the art of making the finest kinds of writing paper, which was previously imported from France.
Before this, and from the very beginning of this period, other foreigners, refugees, tempted by liberal offers, had introduced other manufactures. In 1660, the year of Charles's accession, the Anglo-French population of Jersey and Guernsey were allowed to import wool from England duty free, and pushed their manufacture—worsted hosiery— to great perfection. In 1660 some Flemings introduced the improved arts of dyeing and dressing woollen cloths, by which they raised our cloths to an equality with the continental ones. Other foreigners in the same year were encouraged to commence the manufacture of linen and tapestry. Some others settled at Ipswich, in 1669, and the Scotch, who had carried the linen-weaving to Ireland, were at this time making great progress with it there. In 1670 the duke of Backingham brought from Venice men skilled in the manufacturing of glass, the Dutch loom was brought over, and, in 1676, the printing of calicoes, now so vast a trade at Manchester, was commenced in London, in imitation of those brought from India. In 1680 machines for ribbon-weaving were introduced, to which Coventry owes so much of her trade. The art of tinning sheet-iron was brought over from Germany by natives of that country, at the instigation of Andrew Yarranton, the agent of an English company. A Dutchman erected the first wire-mill in England at Shene, near Richmond; and pinchbeck was introduced by its inventor under the patronage of Prince Rupert. In fact, the seeds of many of our greatest branches of manufactures were sown during this period.
One of our greatest trading companies also was fast growing, and was destined to lay the foundation of the greatest colonial territory which the world ever saw. Most of those companies which we noticed in our former reviews were now gone down, or were broken up by the increasing aversion of the nation to monopolies; but the East India Company was every day acquiring fresh life and power. The scene of its operations lay so distant from public observation, especially at that day when the means of communication were so tardy and partial, and the press did not maintain an instant and perpetual attention upon everything concerning the realm, that the government was only too glad to leave with the company the whole management of those remote affairs, especially as it poured so much profit into the country, of which the government had its share. Accordingly, Charles had scarcely seated himself on his throne than he renewed the charter of the company granted by Cromwell in 1657, with augmented powers. This charter, dated the 3rd of April, 1661, gave the company the most absolute and unconditional power. It was authorised to seize and send home any Englishman presuming to trade thither, and found so trading either in India or the Indian seas. They were empowered to appoint their own judges, and conduct the whole civil and military establishment; to make war or peace with any of the native powers, or any powers not Christian; to build any ports they pleased there or in St. Helena for their accommodation and defence. In short, the most complete absolutism was conferred on them in their territories, or such as they should gain, and the most complete secrecy of transactions, by shutting out every individual who might be disposed to pry into or criticise their proceedings.
Bombay, which Charles had received with Catherine from Portugal, as part of her marriage portion, was, in 1667, handed over to the company, and the effect of this addition of territory and of power was soon seen. In 1676 their accumulated profits had doubled their capital, and the price of their stock rose to 245 per cent. The following facts, drawn from a publication supposed to be written by Sir Josiah Child, entitled "The East-India Trade a most Profitable Trade to this Kingdom," which appeared in 1677, will show the extraordinary traffic of the company at that early period. They employed, the writer said, from thirty to thirty-five ships of from three hundred to six hundred tons burden. Their annual exports amounted to £430,000, and their imports to £860,000; consisting of silks, raw and wrought, calico, drugs, pepper, indigo, saltpetre, &c. They, moreover, licensed other traders, who brought from India diamonds, pearls, musk, ambergris, &c., to the amount of £150,000, and took out goods from England to double that amount.
The writer proceeds to show how profitable this trade was to the public as well as to the company:—"The pepper I reckon at eightpence a pound weight; so necessary a spice for all people, which formerly cost us three shillings and fourpence a pound, being nowhere to be had but in India; and were we obliged to have it from the Dutch, they would probably raise it as high as they do their other spices; yet, supposing it so low as one shilling and fourpence a pound, it would be a further expense of £6,000 to the nation. Saltpetre is of that absolute necessity that, without it, we should be like the Israelites under the bondage of the Philistines—without the means of defending ourselves. Possibly, if we had no Indian trade, we might, in time of peace, purchase it, though it would cost us double what it does now. But, in case of war, where could we have sufficient? Not surely from our enemies. Or would our gentlemen, citizens, and farmers be willing to have their collars and rooms dug up, as in Charles I.'s reign, and be deprived of freedom in their own houses, exposed and laid open to saltpetre-men? Which method would be, besides. by no means equal to the affording us the necessary supplies. Raw silk we might possibly be supplied with from other parts, though not so cheap as from India; and India wrought silks serve us instead of so much Italian or French silks, which would cost us almost treble the price of Indian silks, to the kingdom's loss of above £20,000 a year. Calicoes serve instead of the like quantity of French, Dutch, and Flemish linen, which would cost us thrice as much; hereby £200,000 or £300,000 is saved to the nation."
Amongst the articles of the greatest luxury which the company imported was tea. So long as we procured tea from the Dutch merchants it was too dear for general use. So late as 1666—that is, six years after the restoration—it cost fifty shillings a pound from the Dutch East India Company; but the English company soon after made its way to China, in 1678, and imported four thousand seven hundred pounds of it; and from this period we may date the more frequent use of it. It was long, however, before it became the formidable rival of beef and beer to breakfast, or supeseded these articles altogether at the afternoon meal. It was at first sold in the liquid state in London, and it was long in making its way through the country; many ladies, in their ignorance of its true use, committing the mistake of boiling the leaves, and serving them up as greens, throwing away the liquid.
In 1677, under the privilege of a new charter from Charles, the company began to earn money in their Indian territories. These privileges were again extended by a fresh charter from Charles in 1683, and by James in 1686. In 1687 they laid the foundations of Calcutta, and went on rapidly acquiring trade and territory, to be noticed in our future reviews.
Meantime, the trade with our American and West Indian colonies was becoming valuable. During the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, the exports to these colonies had risen to the amount of about £400,000 per annum, in different manufactures, provisions, household furniture, &c.; and the imports thence in tobacco, sugar, ginger, cotton wool, fustic, indigo, cocoa, fish, furs, and timber, to nearly a million. Thus the trade and wealth of England at the close of this period were in a condition of healthy and rapid development, and our colonial system beginning to attract the "envy and admiration of the world." What this has grown to by a steady progression in our time may be seen by comparing the revenue of the country now with what it was then. Then it amounted to about £1,500,000; now, including the revenue of India and the colonies, it amounts to £100,000,000.
CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
Notwithstanding the rapid growth of the country in commerce and internal wealth, it would be a false indication that the body of the working class was well off. They were a body without education, without political rights, and, consequently, without that intelligence and union which can alone insure the fair reward of their labour; nor was the humanity of the most civilised portion of the community at that period of a degree which regarded the sufferings of others with much feeling. All our accounts of it leave the impression that it was a hard and cruel age; as is generally the case, sensuality and barbarity went hand in hand. The sanguinary vengeance which Charles took on the leaders of the commonwealth, immediately on his restoration; the savage persecutions for religion in England and Scotland;
The Finger Pillory
the terrible use of the iron boot and the thumbscrew in the latter country; the bloody campaign of Jeffreys in England; the sale of convicts, and the kidnapping of innocent people for the plantations;
The Drunkard's Cloak.
public whippings, pilloryings, brandings, and tongue-borings, as in the case of James Naylor—all designate a brutal and unfeeling tone of society.
The Ducking Stool for Scolds.
Carving in wood of Gog and Magog set up after the Fire of London in Guildhall.
Fields. As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life, from the shower of brickbats and paving-stones. If he were tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl. Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell, on court days, for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there whipped. A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, or burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a galled horse, or an overdriven ox.
Players engaged in the old game of Pell Mell (from which Pall Mall derived its name) in the days of Charles II.
Fights, compared with which a boxing-match is a refined and humane spectacle, were the favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth—seminaries of every crime and every disease. At the assizes, the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on the bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked with profound indifference."
The Hall of an old English squire.
But we shall soon find that this conclusion is, on the whole, too sweeping. Even that age had its philanthropists, and we may cite the brutal crowds who still flock to witness the agonies of a hanging man to reduce in some degree the wide distance betwixt the mobs of this age and that. But, as it concerns the condition of the people, the important difference is that the humanity which has now pervaded the upper anf middle classes of our time was scarcely to be recognised then. The poor were treated with little tenderness. Though four-fifths of the working people were engaged in agriculture, agriculture was then extended over a wonderfully small portion of the country. There was a surplus of hands, and these, therefore, were poorly pail, whilst their clothing and provisions were comparatively high. Not more than half the area of the island was then, it is supposed, in cultivation, and the tillage was rude and slovenly. The rate of wages for agricultural labourers, wood-cutters, shepherds, and the like, differed in different parts of the country, but in the best it did not average more than four shillings a week with food, or six shillings without. In Essex, in 1661, the magistrates of Essex fixed the rate of wages from March to September at eightpence a day with food, and one shilling and twopence without; and for the other months, sixpence with food, and a shilling without Women had, of course, less. In most counties a similar scale was fixed by the magistrates; and an act of Elizabeth empowered them to punish whoever gave more or less, and the labourer who received more or less. Wheat at this time was seventy shillings a quarter—a far higher price than It generally is in our time. All kinds of clothing that they could make themselves were much higher than with us, because manufacturing was not so extensive.
The wages of artisans were but little better, except in London, where first-rate bricklayers and carpenters could earn two shillings or two-and-sixpence a day. In many counties, indeed, they were restricted to the same rate as that of the labourers. In 1685 this was the case in Warwickshire, where the daily wages of masons, bricklayers, carpenters, shinglers, and other handicraftsmen, are fixed with those of ploughmen, miners, ditchers, &c., at only sixpence a day. A shilling a day is quoted as extravagant wages. The consequence was that children were compelled to work as early as six years of age. This was very much the case at Norwich; and writers of the time refer with pride to the fact that before nine years of age children earned more than was necessary for their own support by twelve thousand pounds a year! The consequence of the miserable pay and the dearness of food and clothing was an amount of pauperism scarcely less than in the reign of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. The poor rates amounted at this period to from seven to nine hundred thousand pounds a year—that is, one-sixth of what they are now, with a population not one-third of the present one. One-tenth of the present population, or only one-thirteenth when trade is good, claims relief; but then it was asserted by writers of the day that one-fourth of the people were paupers.
The condition of the poor was rendered infinitely worse two years after the restoration of Charles II. than it had been, by an act which was passed to prevent poor people settling in any other place than the one where they had previously resided. This was the origin of the law of settlement, which continued down to our time to harass the poor, and to waste the parochial funds in litigation. In fact Sir Frederick Eden, in his work on "The State of the Poor," asserts that it has caused more litigation, and his been more profitable to the lawyers than any other act ever passed.
The preamble of the act of 1662 recounts the prevalence of pauperism, and at the same time professes that this enactment "is for the good of the poor!" "The necessity," it says, "number, and continued increase of the poor, not only within the circles of London and Westminster, with the liberties of each of them, but also through the whole kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, is very great and exceeding burdensome, being occasioned by reason of some defects in the law concerning the settlement of the poor, and for want of due provision of the regulations of relief and employment in such parishes or places where they are legally settled, which doth enforce many to turn incorrigible rogues, and others to perish for want, together with the neglect of the faithful execution of such laws and statutes as have formerly been made for the apprehension of rogues and vagabonds, and for the good of the poor."
It was therefore provided that any two justices of the peace should, on complaint made by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, within forty days after the arrival of any new comer in the parish, proceed to remove him by force to the parish where he had last a legal settlement, either as native, house-holder, sojourner, apprentice, or servant, unless he either rented a house of ten pounds a year, or could give such security against becoming chargeable as the judges should deem sufficient. This was made more stringent by a subsequent act 1 James II. c. 17, which, to prevent any one getting a settlement by the neglect or oversight of the parish authorities, only dated the day of his entrance into the parish from the time that he gave a written notice of his new abode and the number of his family.
These enactments, in fact, converted the free labourers of England into serfs. They were bound to the soil, and could not move from the spot unless by the will of the overseers and justices. It was not necessary that a man should become chargeable to the parish in order to effect his removal; it was enough that the authorities could assume that he might; become so; and it was not till 1795—in fact, till the reign of George III.—that this oppressive law was ameliorated, allowing working people to change their abode as they saw a better chance of employment elsewhere, so long as they did not come upon the parish.
The consequences of this new law of settlement were not long in showing themselves. In 1668, but six years after the passing of the act of Charles II., Sir Josiah Child, in his "New Discoveries of Trade," thus describes the condition of the poor under it. After showing the hardships which the industrious labourers suffered by being continually pushed back when they endeavoured to improve their state in a now place, he shows the uselessness of attempting to check vagrancy by it, and the trouble and expense it entailed on parishes for nothing. "A poor, idle person, that will not work, or that nobody will employ in the country, comes up to London to set up the trade of begging. Such a person, probably, may beg up and down the streets seven years, it may be seven-and-twenty, before anybody asketh why she doth so; and if at length she hath the ill-hap in some parish to meet with a more vigilant beadle than one in twenty of them are, all he does is but to lead her the length of five or six houses into another parish, and then concludes, as his masters the parishioners do, that he hath done the part of a most diligent officer. But suppose he should yet go further, to the end of his line, which is the end of the law, and the perfect execution of his office—that is, suppose he should carry this poor wretch to a justice of the peace, and he should order the delinquent to be whipped, and sent from parish to parish to the place of her birth or last abode, which not one justice of twenty, through pity or other cause, will do, even this is a great charge upon the country; and yet the business of the nation is itself wholly undone; for no sooner doth the delinquent arrive at the place assigned but, for shame or idleness she presently deserts it, and wanders directly back, or some other way, hoping for better fortune; whilst the parish to which she is sent, knowing her to be a lazy, and perhaps worse qualified person, is as wiling to be rid of her as she is to be gone thence."
The unsatisfactory state of pauperism to which the law of settlement brought the kingdom, set numbers of heads at work to plan schemes of employing the destitute poor, and Sir Josiah Child proposed that persons should be appointed for this purpose, to be called "the fathers of the poor." This, seems to be the origin of the modern guardians of the poor. It was too early in the history of endeavour to educate and employ the poor for these recommendations to receive any general attention; but there were some individuals who set themselves zealously to work to convert the swarming paupers into profitable workers and respectable members of society. The most eminent of these were two shopkeepers of London, Andrew Yarranton and Thomas Firmin. Yaranton was a linendraper; and, being employed by "twelve gentlemen of England" to bring over men from Saxony and Bohemia who understood the art of tinning sheet-iron, he there made close observation of the manufacture of linen, and conceived the idea of introducing the linen manufacture, and employing the unemployed poor upon it and the manufacture of iron. He went to Ipswich, to see whether the linen manufacture could not be established there; but he found the poor already so well employed in the stuff and say and Colchester trade, that he did not think it a suitable place. He calculated the paupers of England at that time at a hundred thousand; that by employing this number at fourpence a day each, would occasion a profitable outlay amongst them of upwards of six hundred thousand pounds: by which means almost the whole of the poor-rates would be saved. In 1677 he published a book containing his views on these heads, called "England's Improvement by Sea and Land:" how to set at work all the poor of England with the growth of our own lands; to prevent unnecessary suits at law, with the benefits of a voluntary register, where to procure vast quantities of timber for the building of ships, with the advantage of making the great rivers of England navigable. He gave rules for the prevention of fires in London and the great cities, and informed the several companies of handicraftsmen how they might always have cheap bread and drink. In short, Mr. Yarranton was a regularly speculative man, but one who had a good share of calculating common sense in the midst of his manufacturing and philanthropic schemes. He seems to have travelled the kingdom well, and made careful observations as to the best localities for carrying on his proposed trades; and he seems to have come to the conclusion that the midland counties would be the best for the linen manufactures, and that most people might be employed on it. The midland counties he regarded as admirably adapted for the growth of the flax from the fertility of the land, and for the trade, because of the easy conveyance of goods by water on the rivers Trent, Soar, Avon, and Thames, from the counties of Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, Northampton, and Oxford. He found many parts of England already so well supplied with manufactures, that he did not think the poor required more work there; and his descriptions of the manufactures going on in different parts of the island give a lively view of the manufacturing industry of the time. " In the west of England, he says, "clothing of all sorts, as in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and a small portion of Warwickshire; in Derby, Nottingham, and Yorkshire, the iron and woollen manufactures; in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex, the woollen manufacture; in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, some cloth, iron, and materials for shipping. Then the counties to raise provisions and to vend them at London, to feed that great mouth, are Cambridge, Huntingdon, Buckingham, Hertford, Middlesex, and Berks."
The Folly on the Thames; favourite place of resort in the time of Charles II.—From an Old Print.
He is very copious in his descriptions of the iron works, showing the material benefit to employers and employed, as well as the public at large, by their existence. "I will begin," he says, "in Monmouthshire, and go through the forest of Dean, and there take notice what infinite quantities of sow iron is there made with bar iron and wire; and consider the infinite number of men, horses, and carriages which are to supply these works, and also digging of iron-stone, providing of cinders, carrying to the works, making into sows and bars, cutting of wood, and converting it into charcoal. Consider, also, in these parts the woods are not worth the cutting and bringing home by the owners to burn in their houses; and it is because there are in all these places pit coals very cheap. Consider, also, the multitude of cattle and people thereabouts employed, that make the land dear; and what with the benefit made of the woods, and the people making the land dear, it is not inferior for riches to any place in England. And if these advantages were not there, it would be little less than a howling wilderness."
He adds:—"There is yet a most great benefit in the kingdom in general by the sow iron made of the ironstone and Roman cinders in the forest of Dean; for the metal is of a most gentle, pliable, and soft nature, easily and quickly to be wrought into manufacture over what any other iron is, and it is the best in the known world; and the greatest part of this sow iron is sent up the Severn to the forges in Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire,Warwickshire, and Cheshire, and there is made into bar iron; and, because of its kind and gentle nature to work, it is now, at Stourbridge, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Sedgeley, Walsall, and Birmingham, and thereabouts, wrought and manufactured into all small commodities and diffused all England over, and thereby great trade made of it; and, when manufactured, sent into most parts of the world. And I can very easily make it appear that, in the forest of Dean, or thereabouts, and about the materials that come from thence, there are employed and have their subsistence therefrom, no less than sixty thousand persons.
"And now, in Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Derbyshire, there are great and numerous quantities of iron-works; and there much iron is made of metal or ironstone of another nature, quite different from that of the forest of Dean. This iron is short, soft iron, commonly called cold-shore iron, of which all the nails are made, and infinite other commodities; in which work are employed many more persons, if not double, to what are employed in the forest of Dean. And in all those counties the gentlemen and others have monies for their woods at all times when they want it, which to them is a great benefit and advantage; and the lands in most of these places are double the rate they would be at if there were not ironworks there; and in all these counties now named there is an infinite of pit coals; and the pit coals being near the iron, and the ironstone growing with the coals, there it is manufactured very cheap, and sent all England over, and to most parts of the world. And if the iron-works were not there, the woods in all these counties to the owners thereof would not be worth the carting and carrying home, because of the cheapness of the coals, and duration thereof."
A publication like this of Andrew Yarranton was calculated to produce the most beneficial change in the condition of the people. It pointed out the true resources and wealth of the nation, and showed a way to get rid of pauperism, and at the same time to raise and enrich the whole realm. It made landowners aware of the extent to which their estates would be augmented in value by the introduction of these popular industries; and one of the most immediate effects seems to have been the calling out of his fellow London shopkeeper, Mr. Thomas Firmin.
By "The Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin, late citizen of London, written by one of his most intimate acquaintance," 1698, we learn that he was a shopkeeper of Leadenhall Street. We learn, moreover, that he was born at Ipswich in 1632, and began the world as a tradesman with a hundred pounds. His character for probity and ability was already such that he flourished, married a citizen's daughter with five hundred pounds, and in process of time occupied superior premises in Lombard Street. Here, though a confirmed unitarian, and entertaining the celebrated unitarian leader, Mr. Biddle, and procuring him an allowance of one hundred crowns from Cromwell whilst he was kept prisoner in Scilly, yet he was on intimate terms with Dr. Tillotson, and many other eminent churchmen. Though not bearing on our main subject, the following extract is worth diffusing amongst the religious of to-day "During the imprisonment of Mr. Biddle at Scilly, Mr. Firmin was settled in Lombard Street, where first Mr. Jacomb, then Dr. Outram was minister. With these two, being excellent preachers and learned men, he maintained a respectful and kind friendship. Now also he grew into intimacy with Dr. Whichcot, Dr. Worthington, Dr. Wilkins, afterwards bishop of Chester, Mr. Tillotson (for he was not yet doctor), archbishop of Canterbury; but in their dignity, and to their very last. Mr. Firmin had the same place and degree in their friendship and esteem that at any time formerly he had. While Dr. Tillotson preached the Tuesday's lecture at St. Lawrence, so much frequented by all the divines of the town, and by a great many persons^ of quality and distinction, when the doctor was obliged to be at Canterbury, where he was dean, or was out of town, either for diversion or health, he generally left it to Mr. Firmin to provide preachers for his lecture; and Mr. Firmin never failed to supply his place with some very eminent preacher, so that there never was a complaint on the account of Dr. Tillotson's absence; and this Mr. Firmin could easily do, for now there was hardly a divine of note, whether in London or in the country, that frequented London, but Mr. Firmin was become acquainted with him; which thing helped him much to serve the interests of many hopeful young preachers and scholars, candidates for lectures, schools, cures, or rectories, for whom he would solicit with as much affection and diligence as other men do for their sons or other near relations. See here a trader, who knew no Latin or Greek, no logic or philosophy, compassed about by an incredible number of learned friends, who differed so widely in opinion from him. "
The secret of it was the perfect freedom of the man from bigotry, and his perfectly benevolent character. When the plague broke out in 1665, which carried off near a hundred thousand people, and left vast numbers destitute from the flight of the employers, Firmin seized on the plan of manufacturing linen, so earnestly recommended by Yarranton, and that upon a plan first set on foot by Thomas Gouge, the clergyman of St. Sepulchre's. This was to buy up both flax and hemp rudely dressed, and give it out to the poor people to spin at their own homes. He built a house in Aldersgate, which he called his great work-house or spinning-house, and there he gave out the flax and hemp, and took in the yarn. The object of Firmin was not to make money by the speculation, but to allow the poor people all the profit; and, indeed, he allowed them more, for he sunk a considerable sum of money in it. But he was fast growing rich, and he was too wise to allow himself to become the slave of riches; and though from six hundred pounds his capital had grown to twenty thousand pounds, he determined not to leave more than five thousand pounds behind him. His object was to employ the people instead of giving them money as a charity; and he observed that he found it greatly to the relief of the poor; for that they could earn threepence or fourpence a day, working only such times as they could spare from any other occupations, who, being at work in their own homes, and where they could with convenience attend it, many of them became so much pleased with it, that so much money given them for doing nothing would not have done them half so much good as that which they got by their own labour in this employment."
SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN'S PLAN FOR REBUILDING LONDON AFTER THE GREAT FIRE OF 1666.
Reference:—The shaded port shows the extent of the ravages of the fire.
- A. St Paul's Cathedral.
- B. Ludgate Hill
- C. Fieet Bridge.
- D. Proposed Piazza.
- E. Fleet Ditch.
- F. The Grand Terrace, with the public halls.
- G. Queenhithe
- H. Dowgate.
- I. London Bridge
- J Proposed Quay.
- K. Billingsgate.
- M. The Royal Exchange, surrounded by the Bank, Excise Office, Post Office, Mint, and Goldsmths' Hall.
- N. Smithfield.
- O. Moorfields.
- P. Temple Gardens.
But Firmin had not studied the dry rules of political economy, and had, therefore, no objection to give money too where he saw it was needed. He had studied in the school of Christ, who said, "The poor ye have always with you;" and, "What you do to one of these little ones you do also unto me " He was not, like Miss Martineau, in her "Tales of Political Economy," opposed to all almshouses and hospitals, lest people should calculate on them and grow lazy. Concerning this work-house and the spinners, Mr. Firmin would often say that, " to pay the spinners, to relieve 'em with money begged for 'em, with coals and sheeting, was to him such a pleasure as magnificent buildings, pleasant walks, well-cultivated orchards and gardens, the jollity of music and wine, or the charms of love or study are to others."
The East India and Guinea Companies, as well as many other parties and persons, took his goods off his hands; and the fire of London following the plague, gave him plenty of work to do in the way of assisting the destitute. He added woollen spinning and weaving to that of flax and hemp; but after all he considered the making of linens the most adapted to employ the people in such circumstances. "I know of no commodity of the like value," he says, "that can be set up with less stock. Three parts of four, even of that cloth which comes not to above two shillings an ell, will be paid for work to the spinner and weaver; and many times a woman will spin a pound of flax, that cost but sixpence or sevenpence, to that fineness, that she will receive twelvepence or fourteenpence for her pains, which will make an ell of cloth worth three shillings; at which rate five parts of six will bo paid for labour; nay, sometimes I have seen a pound of flax, not worth above one and sixpence at most, spun to that fineness that it hath been worth ten shillings; and in other parts I have seen a pound of flax of not much higher value spun to that fineness that it hath been worth three or four pounds sterling."
Firmin next set children to work in schools of industry—a plan again introduced as new in our own day. The idea, he confesses, came from abroad, but he had the honour of introducing it here. "I have," he says, "at this time some children working for me, not above seven or eight years old, who are able to earn twopence a day, and some, that are a little older, two shillings a week; and I doubt not to bring any child about that age to do the like; and still, as they grow up and become proficients, even in this poor trade of spinning, they will be able to get more and spin better than older people. Neither would I have those schools confined only to spinning, but to take in knitting, and make lace or plain work, or any other work which children shall be thought most fit for." He then refers to the foreign practice, and to the fact of children being employed at Norwich, where it was computed that they had earned twelve thousand pounds more than they had spent in knitting fine Jersey stockings.
This was a plan admirable for teaching children all kinds of businesses and household work, but liable to enormous abuses; and the trading community seized on it and carried it into coal mines, and cotton and other factories, to that fearful extent of cruelty that compelled the legislature of our time to step in and protect the unhappy children. Firmin's honest and benevolent mind did not foresee this evil use of the idea; yet he was by no means incautious. He used to beg often as much as five hundred pounds a year, and distribute it amongst the poor; but he always took pains to inquire into cases of real necessity, and visited the sufferers in their own houses to convince himself of their actual necessities.
In Yarranton, Gouge, and Firmin we see the pioneers of that great host of philanthropists who have from time to time followed in their steps, till now the whole country is alive with schools, ragged schools, reformatories, schemes of industry, and the thousand institutions which are on foot to improve the condition of the poor. In this age we see the germs of that vast manufacturing system which has made one great workshop of the island, and caused its redundant population to overflow to the amount of nearly a quarter of a million a year into other countries and hemispheres, carrying their industrious habits and skill to found new nations. Indeed, taking altogether the age under review notwithstanding the dissoluteness of the government and hardness of the upper and middle classes, and the rudeness of the lower, it was an epoch in which the elements of future greatness were rife. The same rigour and independence which punished the tyranny of Charles I. and erected the commonwealth, though they seemed to recede again in Charles II.'s reign, again displayed themselves under James II., and, driving away the impracticable Stuarts, established an elective monarchy, the bill of rights, and exercise of religious freedom. In this period philanthropy became united with manufacturing and commercial enterprise, whence have sprung the glory and greatness of England; and at this period, too, in the writings of Child, Davenant, Petty, and others, dawn the first principles of political economy, afterwards elaborated into a system by Adam Smith, and still perfecting itself as a science by the correction of its errors, and the blending of a spirit of humanity with its original exactness of deduction. The great principles of the commonwealth moulding the monarchy at the close of this period to its demands, settled permanently the liberties and the ascendancy of the English race.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.