The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

century. There had then been a great increase within a

few years in the number of presses, and yet there were

thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those

counties being Lancashire.


168 Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter;

Nonconformist Memorial.


169 Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his

whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of

letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724,

circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the

booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North

in his life of his brother John.


170 One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of

James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a

Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very

eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the

Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she

was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these

words in her own hand, " This book was given the King and I, at

our crownation. Marie R."


171 Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek

professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general

neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.


172 Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,


"For, though to smelter words of Greek


And Latin be the rhetorique


Of pedants counted, and vainglorious,


To smatter French is meritorious."


173 The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem on

the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly

could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any

foreign tongue:-


"Hither in summer evenings you repair


To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."


174 Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his

usual force and keenness.


175 The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of

Dryden.


176 See the Life of Southern. by Shiels.


177 See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.


178 Some Account of the English Stage.


179 Life of Southern, by Shiels.


180 If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would

advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to

observe that it was spoken by a woman.


181 See particularly Harrington's Oceana.


182 See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.


183 Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.


184 "Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go,


And view the ocean leaning on the sky;


From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,


And on the lunar world secretly pry.'


Annus Mirabilis, 164


185 North's Life of Guildford.


186 Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667.


187 Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who,

between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity

to the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on

the Royal Society, and the Elephant in the Moon.


188 The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that age

tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described

by Aubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685.


189 Sprat's History of the Royal Society.


190 Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31,

1683; North's Life of Guildford.


191 The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in

Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.


192 Petty's Political Arithmetic.


193 Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4; Archaeologia, vol. xi.


194 Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer of

the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685;

2d edition, 1686.


195 Cullum's History of Hawsted.


196 Ruggles on the Poor.


197 See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the Dutch

Deputies dated August 2-12, 1653.


198 The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See

Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.


199 This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is

not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date

sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The

master clothier is introduced speaking as follows:


"In former ages we used to give,


So that our workfolks like farmers did live;


But the times are changed, we will make them know.


* * * * * * * * * *


"We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day,


Though a shilling they deserve if they kind their just pay;


If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small,


We bid them choose whether they'll work at all.


And thus we forgain all our wealth and estate,


By many poor men that work early and late.


Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave;


We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave.


Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease,


We go when we will, and we come when we please."


200 Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political

Arithmetic, chapter viii.; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method;

Firmin's Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to

be observed that Firmin was an eminent philanthropist.


201 King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly

estimated the common people of England at 880,0O0 families. Of

these families 440,000, according to him ate animal food twice a

week. The remaining 440,000, ate it not at all, or at most not

oftener than once a week.


202 Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, Appendix B.

No. 2, Appendix C. No 1, 1848. Of the two estimates of the poor

rate mentioned in the text one was formed by Arthur Moore, the

other, some years later, by Richard Dunning. Moore's estimate

will be found in Davenant's Essay on Ways and Means; Dunning's in

Sir Frederic Eden's valuable work on the poor. King and Davenant

estimate the paupers and beggars in 1696, at the incredible

number of 1,330,000 out of a population of 5,500,000. In 1846 the

number of persons who received relief appears from the official

returns to have been only 1,332,089 out of a population of about

17,000,000. It ought also to be observed that, in those returns,

a pauper must very often be reckoned more than once.


I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled

"Giving Alms no Charity," and the Greenwich tables which will be

found in Mr. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary under the head

Prices.


203 The deaths were 23,222. Petty's Political Arithmetic.


204 Burnet, i. 560.


205 Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit.


206 Tom Brown describes such a scene in lines which I do not

venture to quote.


207 Ward's London Spy.


208 Pepys's Diary, Dec. 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667.


209 Burnet, i, 606; Spectator, No. 462; Lords' Journals, October

28, 1678; Cibber's Apology.


210 Burnet, i. 605, 606, Welwood, North's Life of Guildford,

251.


211 I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever I

give only one date, I follow the old style, which was, in the

seventeenth century, the style of England; but I reckon the year

from the first of January.


212 Saint Everemond, passim; Saint Real, Memoires de la Duchesse

de Mazarin; Rochester's Farewell; Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 6, 1676,

June 11, 1699.


213 Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 28, 1684-5, Saint Evremond's Letter to

Dery.


214 Id., February 4, 1684-5.


215 Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170; The true

Patriot vindicated, or a Justification of his Excellency the E-of

R-; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Books prove that Burnet had good

intelligence.


216 Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683.


217 Dugdale's Correspondence.


218 Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713.


219 See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillon and Burnet

say that Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts of

Parliament made against priests; but this is a mistake.


220 Clark's Life of James the Second, i, 746. Orig. Mem.;

Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 1-18, 1685; Van Citters's Despatches

of Feb. 3-13 and Feb. 1-16. Huddleston's Narrative; Letters of

Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original

Letters, First Series. iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot

MS.; Burnet, i. 606: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 1684-5: Welwood's

Memoires 140; North's Life of Guildford. 252; Examen, 648;

Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's Threnodia Augustalis; Sir H.

Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See also a fragment

of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is printed in

the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnet an

impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any

candid and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I

have seen in the British Museum, and also in the Library of the

Royal Institution, a curious broadside containing an account of

the death of Charles. It will be found in the Somers Collections.

The author was evidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and must have

had access to good sources of information. I strongly suspect

that he had been in communication, directly or indirectly, with

James himself. No name is given at length; but the initials are

perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said that the

D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother by

P.M.A.C.F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last

five letters. It is some consolation that Sir Walter Scott was

equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first edition of this

work was published, several ingenious conjectures touching these

mysterious letters have been communicated to me, but I am

convinced that the true solution has not yet been suggested.

(1850.) I still greatly doubt whether the riddle has been solved.

But the most plausible interpretation is one which, with some

variations, occurred, almost at the same time, to myself and to

several other persons; I am inclined to read "Pere