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

/> chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that the

professional spirit was strongest. Among those divines who were

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

who had attained, or might reasonably expect to attain, opulence

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

respectable in character, leaned towards constitutional

principles of government, lived on friendly terms with

Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, would gladly have seen

a full toleration granted to all Protestant sects, and would even

have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the

purpose of conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But

such latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson.

He took, indeed, more pride in his ragged gown than his superiors

in their lawn and their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness

that there was little in his worldly circumstances to distinguish

him from the villagers to whom he preached led him to hold

immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal office which was

his single title to reverence. Having lived in seclusion, and

having had little opportunity of correcting his opinions by

reading or conversation, he held and taught the doctrines of

indefeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience, and of

nonresistance, in all their crude absurdity. Having been long

engaged in a petty war against the neighbouring dissenters, he

too often hated them for the wrong which he had done them, and

found no fault with the Five Mile Act and the Conventicle Act,

except that those odious laws had not a sharper edge. Whatever

influence his office gave him was exerted with passionate zeal on

the Tory side; and that influence was immense. It would be a

great error to imagine, because the country rector was in general

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

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

because he was not asked into the parlours of the great, but was

left to drink and smoke with grooms and butlers, that the power

of the clerical body was smaller than at present. The influence

of a class is by no means proportioned to the consideration which

the members of that class enjoy in their individual capacity. A

Cardinal is a much more exalted personage than a begging friar:

but it would he a grievous mistake to suppose that the College of

Cardinals has exercised greater dominion over the public mind of

Europe than the Order of Saint Francis. In Ireland, at present, a

peer holds a far higher station in society than a Roman Catholic

priest: yet there are in Munster and Connaught few counties where

a combination of priests would not carry an election against a

combination of peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpit was

to a large portion of the population what the periodical press

now is. Scarce any of the clowns who came to the parish church

ever saw a Gazette or a political pamphlet. Ill informed as their

spiritual pastor might be, he was yet better informed than

themselves: he had every week an opportunity of haranguing them;

and his harangues were never answered. At every important

conjuncture, invectives against the Whigs and exhortations to

obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once from many thousands of

pulpits; and the effect was formidable indeed. Of all the causes

which, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, produced

the violent reaction against the Exclusionists, the most potent

seems to have been the oratory of the country clergy.


The power which the country gentleman and the country clergyman

exercised in the rural districts was in some measure

counterbalanced by the power of the yeomanry, an eminently manly

and truehearted race. The petty proprietors who cultivated their

own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a modest competence,

without affecting to have scutcheons and crests, or aspiring to

sit on the bench of justice, then formed a much more important

part of the nation than at present. If we may trust the best

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

sixty thousand proprietors, who with their families must have

made up more than a seventh of the whole population, derived

their subsistence from little freehold estates. The average

income of these small landholders, an income mace up of rent,

profit, and wages, was estimated at between sixty and seventy

pounds a year. It was computed that the number of persons who

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

farmed the land of others.89 A large portion of the yeomanry had,

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

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

the Restoration, persisted in hearing Presbyterian and

Independent preachers, had, at elections, strenuously supported

the Exclusionists and had continued even after the discovery of

the Rye House plot and the proscription of the Whig leaders, to

regard Popery and arbitrary power with unmitigated hostility.


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

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

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

nation is crowded into provincial towns of more than thirty

thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles the second no

provincial town in the kingdom contained thirty thousand

inhabitants; and only four provincial towns contained so many as

ten thousand inhabitants.


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

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

first English manufacturing town. Both have since that time been

far outstripped by younger rivals; yet both have made great

positive advances. The population of Bristol has quadrupled. The

population of Norwich has more than doubled.


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

struck by the splendour of the city. But his standard was not

high; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in

Bristol, a man might look round him and see nothing but houses.

It seems that, in no other place with which he was acquainted,

except London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods

and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a

very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few

churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow

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

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

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

the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost

exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs; and the richest inhabitants

exhibited their wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by

walking the streets with trains of servants in rich liveries, and

by keeping tables loaded with good cheer. The pomp of the

christenings and burials far exceeded what was seen at any other

place in England. The hospitality of the city was widely

renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugar

refiners regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the

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

Spanish wine, and celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol

milk. This luxury was supported by a thriving trade with the

North American plantations and with the West Indies. The passion

for colonial traffic was so strong that there was scarcely a

small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a venture on board of

some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Some of these

ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. There was,

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

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

crimping and kidnapping at the principal English seaports.

Nowhere was this system in such active and extensive operation as

at Bristol. Even the first magistrates of that city were not

ashamed to enrich themselves by so odious a commerce. The number

of houses appears, from the returns of the hearth money, to have

been in the year 1685, just five thousand three hundred. We can

hardly suppose the number of persons in a house to have been

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

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

persons to ten houses. The population of Bristol must therefore

have been about twenty-nine thousand souls.90


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

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

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

learning and science had recently dwelt there and no place in the

kingdom, except the capital and the Universities, had more

attractions for the curious. The library, the museum, the aviary,

and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas Browne, were thought by

Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a long pilgrimage.

Norwich had also a court in miniature. In the heart of the city

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

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

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

wilderness stretching along the banks of the Wansum, the noble

family of Howard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling

that of petty sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets

of pure gold. The very tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures

by Italian masters adorned the walls. The cabinets were filled

with a fine collection of gems purchased by that Earl of Arundel

whose marbles are now among the ornaments of Oxford. Here, in the

year 1671, Charles and his court were sumptuously entertained.

Here, too, all comers were annually welcomed, from Christmas to

Twelfth Night. Ale flowed in oceans for the populace. Three

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

pounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every afternoon

round the city to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances

were always followed by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of

Norfolk came to Norwich, he was greeted like a King returning to

his capital. The bells of the Cathedral and of St. Peter Mancroft

were rung: the guns of the castle were fired; and the Mayor and

Aldermen waited on their illustrious fellow citizen with

complimentary addresses. In the year 1693 the population of

Norwich was found by actual enumeration, to be between

twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls.91


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

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

that a country gentleman went up with his family to London. The