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

tragedy or of

Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch

from his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a

young enthusaist. There were coffee houses where the first

medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in

the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came

daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in

Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to

Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and

apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee

houses where no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men

discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew

coffee houses where darkeyed money changers from Venice and

Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as

good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups,

another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.130


These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the

character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a

different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then

the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. Only

very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between

town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in

their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in easy

circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods

during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village,

was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of

Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or

Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily

distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar.

His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at

the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters,

and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent

subject for the operations of swindlers and barterers. Bullies

jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from

head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge

pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the

splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the

cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him

the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted

women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed

themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked

his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If

he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit

purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of

second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not

go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a

mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of

Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion,

and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of

his boon companions, found consolation for the vexatious and

humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a

great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the

assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at

the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.


The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements

of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our

ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all

inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted,

those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the

civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of

locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as

materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the

various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove

national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the

branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century

the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical

purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh,

and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.


The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite

unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time,

produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has

enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide, and brigades

of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to

traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race

horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed the

expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many

experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine,

which he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be

an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion.131 But

the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a

Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception.

His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish matter for

conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not

applied to any practical purpose. There were no railways, except

a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the mouths

of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.132 There was

very little internal communication by water. A few attempts had

been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with

slender success. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even

projected. The English of that day were in the habit of talking

with mingled admiration and despair of the immense trench by

which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between the

Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their

country would, in the course of a few generations, be

intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial

rivers making up more than four times the length of the Thames,

the Severn, and the Trent together.


It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally

passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have

been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of

wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained.

On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the

descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly

possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath

and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, 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.133 Pepys and his wife, travelling in their

own coach, lost their way between Newbury 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.134 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.135 At such times obstructions and quarrels

were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a

long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the 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 traveller 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, where it was necessary for

him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.136 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.137 On the

roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for their

necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their

beasts.138 The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such

a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five

hours in 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.139 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 sank deep. The markets were often

inaccessible during several months. It is said that 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 far

short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this

district, generally pulled by oxen.140 When Prince George of

Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather,

he was six hours in 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.141


One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been

the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair

the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced

to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was

not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was

met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns,

which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be

maintained at the cost