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

of the chapel where Tillotson was

preaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment

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

examining the astronomical system of Isaac Newton.126


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

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

point of convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of

fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so

long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the

relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It

was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual

capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters,

bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and

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

and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his

advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he

would consult his own interest far better by acquiring the

dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good service to

the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the

companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It was therefore in

the antechambers, not of George the First and of George the

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

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

same Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should

use the patronage of the state merely for the purpose of

gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several Kings

unfitted by their education and habits to be gracious and affable

hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent. They never

felt themselves at home in our island. If they spoke our

language, they spoke it inelegantly and with effort. Our national

character they never fully understood. Our national manners they

hardly attempted to acquire. The most important part of their

duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded them: for

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

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

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

English face was to be seen; and they were never so happy as when

they could escape for a summer to their native land. They had

indeed their days of reception for our nobility and gentry; but

the reception was a mere matter of form, and became at last as

solemn a ceremony as a funeral.


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

dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of

fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the

metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself

agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the

mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any

service to the government, without being even known by sight to

any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a

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

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

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

a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest

counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted.127 Interest,

therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the

palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open

house every day, and all day long, for the good society of

London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had

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

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

morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his

wig was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his

early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly

introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him

dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure

of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably

well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which

he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the

canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His

Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This

proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father

or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most

austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the,

fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many a

veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited

sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty years,

was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by

his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my old friend!"


Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever

there was a rumour that anything important had happened or was

about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence

from the fountain head. The galleries presented the appearance of

a modern club room at an anxious time. They were full of people

enquiring whether the Dutch mail was in, what tidings the express

from France had brought, whether John Sobiesky had beaten the

Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris These were

matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were

subjects concerning which information was asked and given in

whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to

be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland?

Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to

read the countenance of every minister as he went through the

throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of auguries were

drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord

President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a

jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and

fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all the

coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower.128


The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It

might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most

important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years

The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense

of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the

rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into

fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such

circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through

which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself.


The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey

merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their

favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make

appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass

evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the

fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went

daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it.

Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the

crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what the

journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the

realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this

new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's

administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all

parties missed their usual places of resort so much that there

was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in

opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a

regulation of which the legality might well be questioned. Since

that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the

number and influence of the coffee houses had been constantly

increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that

which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that

the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who

wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived

in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the

Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who

laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession,

and every shade of religious and political opinion, had its own

headquarters. There were houses near Saint James's Park where

fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or

flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the

Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig

came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's

ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the

tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that

dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in

fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington,

to excite the mirth of theatres.129 The atmosphere was like that

of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of

richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown,

ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the

sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters

soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor,

indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee

rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers

sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should

leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and

stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's.

That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow

Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about

poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a

faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and

the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not

to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster

demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from

the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be

seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in

cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the

Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of

frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John

Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook

by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the

Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last