The appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury settled the question. The crisis was virtually over. The Whig statesmen at once sent out summonses to all the members of the Privy Council living anywhere near London. That same afternoon another meeting of the council was held. Somers himself, the great Whig leader whose {47} services had made the party illustrious in former reigns, and whose fame sheds a lustre on them even to this hour—Somers, aged, infirm, decaying as he was in body and in mind—hastened to attend the summons, and to lend his strength and his authority to the measures on which his colleagues had determined. The council ordered the concentration of several regiments in and near London. They recalled troops from Ostend, and sent a fleet to sea. General Stanhope, a soldier and statesman of whom we shall hear more, was prepared, if necessary, to take possession of the Tower and clap the leading Jacobites into it, to obtain possession of all the outports, and, in short, to act as military dictator, authorized to anticipate revolution and to keep the succession safe. In a word, the fate of the Stuarts was sealed. Bolingbroke was checkmated; the Chevalier de St. George would have put to sea in vain. Marlborough was on his way to England, and there was nothing to do but to wait till the breath was out of Queen Anne's body, and proclaim George the Elector King of England.

The time of waiting was not long. Anne sank into death on August 1, 1714, and the heralds proclaimed that "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Brunswick and Luneburg, is, by the death of Queen Anne of blessed memory, become our lawful and rightful liege lord, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith." This "King of France" was lucky enough not to come to his throne until the conclusion of a long war against the King of France who lived in Versailles. The "Defender of the Faith" was just now making convenient arrangements that his mistresses should follow him as speedily as possible when he should have to take his unwilling way to his new dominions.

On August 3d Bolingbroke wrote a letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48} words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze of light over the unconquerable levity of the man. "I have lost all by the death of the Queen but my spirit; and, I protest to you, I feel that increase upon me. The Whigs are a pack of Jacobites; that shall be the cry in a month, if you please." No sooner is one web of intrigue swept away than Bolingbroke sets to work to weave a new one on a different plan. Nothing can subdue those high animal spirits; nothing can physic that selfishness; nothing can fix that levity to a recognition of the realities of things. Bolingbroke has not a word now about the cause of the Stuarts; for the moment he cannot think of that. His new scheme is to make out that his enemies were, after all, the true Jacobites; he will checkmate them that way—"in a month, if you please." On the very same day Mr. John Barber, the printer of some of Swift's pamphlets, afterwards an Alderman and Lord Mayor, writes to Swift and tells him, speaking of Bolingbroke, that "when my lord gave me the letter" (to be enclosed to Swift) "he said he hoped you would come up and help to save the constitution, which, with a little good management, might be kept in Tory hands." The chill, clear common-sense of Swift's answer might have impressed even Bolingbroke, but did not.

[Sidenote: 1714—Simon Harcourt]

One among the Tories, indeed, would have had the courage to forestall the Whigs and their proclamation. This one man was a priest, and not a soldier. Atterbury, the eloquent Bishop of Rochester, came to Bolingbroke, and urged him to proclaim King James at Charing Cross, offering himself to head a procession in his lawn sleeves if Bolingbroke would only act on his advice. But for the moment Bolingbroke could only complain of fortune's banter, and plan out new intrigues for the restoration, not of the Stuarts, but of the Tory party—that is to say, of {49} himself. His refusal wrung from Atterbury the declaration that the best cause in England was lost for want of spirit.

Parliament assembled, and on August 5th the Commons were summoned to the Bar of the House of Lords, and the Lord Chancellor made a speech in the name of the Lords of the Regency. He told the Lords and Commons that the Privy Council appointed by George, Elector of Hanover, had proclaimed that prince as the lawful and rightful sovereign of these realms. Both Houses agreed to send addresses to the King, expressing their duty and affection, and the House of Commons passed a bill granting to his Majesty the same civil list as that which Queen Anne had enjoyed, but with additional clauses for the payment of arrears due to the Hanoverian troops who had been in the service of Great Britain. The Lord Chancellor, who had just addressed the House of Lords and the Commoners standing at the Bar, was himself a remarkable illustration of the politics and the principles of that age. Simon Harcourt had been Lord Chancellor in the later years of Queen Anne's life. His appointment ended with her death, but he was re-appointed by the Lords of the Regency in the name of the new sovereign, and he was again sworn in as Lord Chancellor on August 3, 1714, "in Court at his house aforesaid, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Anno Primo, Georgii Regis." He was one of the Lords Justices by virtue of his office, and as such had already taken the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign, and of abjuration to James. Lord Harcourt had been throughout his whole career not only a very devoted Tory, but in later years a positive Jacobite. He was a highly accomplished speaker, a man of great culture, and a lawyer of considerable, if not pre-eminent, attainments. He was still comparatively young for a public man of such position. Born in 1660, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1675, was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1676, and called to the Bar in 1683. He became member of Parliament for Abingdon in 1690, and soon rose to great distinction in the {50} House of Commons as well as at the Bar. He conducted the impeachment of the great Lord Somers, and was knighted and made Solicitor-General by Anne in 1702. He became Attorney-General shortly after. He conducted, in 1703, the prosecution of Defoe for his famous satirical tract, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters." Harcourt threw himself into the prosecution with the fervor and the bitterness of a sectary and a partisan. He made a most vehement and envenomed speech against Defoe; he endeavored to stir up every religious prejudice and passion in favor of the prosecution. Coke had scarcely shown more of the animosity of a partisan in prosecuting Raleigh than Simon Harcourt did in prosecuting Defoe. In 1709-10 Harcourt was the leading counsel for Sacheverell, and received the Great Seal in 1710, becoming, as the phrase then was, "Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Great Britain." A whole year, wanting only a few days, passed before he was raised to the peerage as Lord Harcourt. He acted as Speaker of the House of Lords before he became a peer and a member of the House, and even had on one occasion to express on behalf of the Peers their thanks to Lord Peterborough for his services in Spain. In 1713 he became Lord Chancellor of England. During all this time he had been a most devoted adherent of the Stuarts, and during the later period he was an open and avowed Jacobite. He had opposed strongly the oaths of abjuration which now, as Lord Chief Justice, he had both taken and administered. Almost his first conspicuous act as a member of Parliament was to protest against the Bill which required the oath Of abjuration of James and his descendants, and he maintained consistently the same principles and the same policy till the death of Queen Anne. There can be no doubt that if just then any movement had been made on behalf of the Stuarts, with the slightest chance of success, Lord Chancellor Harcourt would have thrown himself into it heart and soul. Nevertheless, he took the oath of allegiance and the oath of abjuration; he professed to be a loyal subject of the King, {51} whose person and principles he despised and detested, and he swore to abjure forever all adhesion to that dynasty which with all his heart he would have striven, if he could, to restore to the throne of England. Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Lord Chancellors," says of Harcourt, "I do not consider his efforts to restore the exiled Stuarts morally inconsistent with the engagements into which he had entered to the existing Government; and although there were loud complaints against him for at last sending in his adhesion to the House of Hanover, it should be recollected that the cause of the Stuarts had then become desperate, and that instead of betraying he did everything in his power to screen his old associates." The cause of the Stuarts had not become, even then, so utterly desperate as to prevent many brave men from laying down their lives for it. Thirty years had to pass away before the last blow was struck for that cause of the Stuarts which Harcourt by solemn oath abjured forever. Such credit as he is entitled to have, because he protected rather than betrayed his old associates, we are free to give him, and it stands a significant illustration of the political morality of the time that such comparative credit is all that his enthusiastic biographer ventures to claim for him.

[Sidenote: 1714—Lords and Commons]

The House of Lords had then two hundred and seven members, many of whom, being Catholics, were not permitted to take any part in public business. That number of Peers is about in just proportion to the population of England as it was then when compared with the Peers and the population of England at present. In the House of Commons there were at the same time five hundred and fifty-eight members. England sent in five hundred and thirteen, and Scotland, which had lately accepted the union, returned forty-five. It need hardly be said that at that time Ireland had her own Parliament, and sent no members to Westminster. A great number of the county family names in the House of Commons were just the same as those which we see at present. The Stanhopes, the Lowthers, the Lawsons, the Herberts, the Harcourts, {52} the Cowpers, the Fitzwilliams, the Cecils, the Grevilles; all these, and many others, were represented in Parliament then as they are represented in Parliament now. Then, as more lately, the small boroughs had the credit of returning, mostly of course through family influence, men of eminence other than political, who happened to sit in the House of Commons. Steele sat for Stockbridge, in "Southampton County," as Hampshire was then always called, Addison for Malmesbury, Prior for East Grinstead. There were no reports of the debates, nor printed lists of the divisions. Questions of foreign policy were sometimes discussed with doors strictly closed against all strangers, just as similar questions are occasionally, and not infrequently, discussed in the Senate of the United States at present. The pamphlet supplied in some measure the place of the newspaper report and the newspaper leading article. Some twelve years later than this the brilliant pen of Bolingbroke, who, if he had lived at a period nearer to our own, might have been an unrivalled writer of leading articles, was able to obtain for the series of pamphlets called "The Craftsman" a circulation greater than that ever enjoyed by the Spectator. Pulteney co-operated with him for a time in the work. Steele, as we have said, had been expelled from the House of Commons for his pamphlet "The Crisis." The caricature which played so important a part in political controversy all through the reigns of the Georges had just come into recognized existence. Countless caricatures of Bolingbroke, of Walpole, of Shrewsbury, of Marlborough, began to fly about London. Scurrilous ballads were of course in great demand, nor was the supply inadequate to the demand.

[Sidenote: 1714—Malbrouck de Retour]

One of the most successful of these compositions described the return of the Duke of Marlborough to London. On the very day of the Queen's death Marlborough landed at Dover. He came quickly on to London, and there, according to the descriptions given by his admirers, he was received like a restored sovereign returning to his throne. A procession of two hundred gentlemen on {53} horseback met him on the road to London, and the procession was joined shortly after by a long train of carriages. As he entered London the enthusiasm deepened with every foot of the way; the streets were lined with crowds of applauding admirers. Marlborough's carriage broke down near Temple Bar, and he had to exchange it for another. The little incident was only a new cause for demonstrations of enthusiasm. It was a fresh delight to see the hero more nearly than he could be seen through his carriage-windows. It was something to have delayed him for a moment, and to have compelled him to stand among the crowd of those who were pressing round to express their homage. This was the Whig description. According to Tory accounts Marlborough was more hissed than huzzaed, and at Temple Bar the hissing was loudest. The work of the historian would be comparatively easy if eye-witnesses could only agree as to any, even the most important, facts.

Enthusiastic Whig pamphleteers called upon their countrymen to love and honor their invincible hero, and declared that the wretch would be esteemed a disgrace to humanity, and should be transmitted to posterity with infamy, who would dare to use his tongue or pen against him. Such wretches, however, were found, and did not seem in the least to dread the infamy which was promised them. The scurrilous ballad of which we have already spoken was by one Ned Ward, a publican and rhymester, and it pictured the entry of the duke in verses after the fashion of Hudibras. It depicted the procession as made up of

Frightful troops of thin-jawed zealots, Curs'd enemies to kings and prelates;

and declared that those "champions of religious errors" made London seem

As if the prince of terrors Was coming with his dismal train To plague the city once again.

The memory of what the Plague had done in London was still green enough to give bitter force to this allusion.

{54}

Marlborough could have afforded to despise what Hotspur calls the "metre-ballad-mongers," but his pride received a check and chill not easily to be got over. When fairly rid of his enthusiastic followers and admirers he went to the House of Lords almost at once, and took the oaths; but he did not remain there. In truth, he soon found himself bitterly disappointed; not with the people—they could not have been more enthusiastic than they were—but with the new ruling power. Immediately after the death of the Queen, and even before the proclamation of the new sovereign had taken place, the Hanoverian resident in London handed to the Privy Council a letter from George, in George's own handwriting, naming the men who were to act in combination with the seven great officers of State as lords justices. The power to make this nomination was provided for George by the Regency Act. This document contained the names of eighteen of the principal Whig peers; the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Argyll were among them; so, too, were Lords Cowper, Halifax, and Townshend. It was noted with wonder that the illustrious name of Somers did not appear on the list, nor did that of Marlborough, nor that of Marlborough's son-in-law, Lord Sunderland. It is likely that the omission of these names was only made in the first instance because George and his advisers were somewhat afraid of his getting into the hands of a sort of dictatorship—a dictatorship in commission, as it might be called, made up of three or four influential men. The King afterwards hastened to show every attention to Marlborough and Somers and Sunderland, and he soon restored Marlborough to all his public offices. But George seems to have had a profound and a very well-justified distrust of Marlborough. Though he honored him with marks of respect and attention, though he restored him to the great position he had held in the State, yet the King never allowed Marlborough to suppose that he really had regained his former influence in court and political life. Marlborough was shelved, and he already knew it, and bitterly complained of it.



{55}

CHAPTER IV.

THE KING COMES.

[Sidenote: 1714—Hanover]

"The old town of Hanover," says Thackeray, "must look still pretty much as in the time when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Herrenhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout old Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but by a few weeks to the tomb James the Second's daughter, whose death made way for the Brunswick Stuarts in England. . . . You may see at Herrenhausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and performed masks and sang before the Elector and his sons. There are the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through the brandies, still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as in the days when painted nymphs hung garlands round them, appeared under their leafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns, descended from 'machines' in the guise of Diana or Minerva, and delivered immense allegorical compliments to the princes returned home from the campaign." Herrenhausen, indeed, is changed but little since those days of which Thackeray speaks. But although not many years have passed since Thackeray went to visit Hanover before delivering his lectures on "The Four Georges," Hanover itself has undergone much alteration. If one of the Georges could now return to his ancestral capital he would indeed be bewildered at the great new squares, the rows of tall vast shops and warehouses, the spacious railway-station, penetrated to every corner at night by the keen electric light. But in passing from Hanover to Herrenhausen one goes back, in a short drive, from the {56} days of the Emperor William of Germany to the days of George the Elector. Herrenhausen, the favorite residence of the Electors of Hanover, is but a short distance from the capital. Thackeray speaks of it as an ugly place, and it certainly has not many claims to the picturesque. But it is full of a certain curious half-melancholy interest, and well fitted to be the cradle and the home of a decaying Hanoverian dynasty. In its galleries one may spend many an hour, not unprofitably, in studying the faces of all the men and women who are famous, notorious, or infamous in connection with the history of Hanover. The story of that dynasty has more than one episode not unlike that of the unfortunate Sophia Dorothea and Koenigsmark, her lover. A good many grim legends haunt the place and give interest to some of the faces, otherwise insipid enough, which look out of the heavy frames and the formal court-dresses of the picture-gallery.

[Sidenote: 1714—The entry into London]

On the evening of August 5, 1714, four days after Queen Anne's death, Lord Clarendon, the lately appointed English Minister at the Court of Hanover, set out for the palace of Herrenhausen to bear to the new King of Great Britain the tidings of Queen Anne's death. About two o'clock in the morning he entered the royal apartments of the ungenial and sleepy George, and, kneeling, did homage to him as King of Great Britain. George took the announcement of his new rank without even a semblance of gratification. He had made up his mind to endure it, and that was all. He was too stolid, or lazy, or sincere to affect the slightest personal interest in the news. He lingered in Hanover as long as he decently could, and sauntered for many a day through the prim, dull, and orderly walks of Herrenhausen. He behaved very much in the fashion of the convict in Prior's poem, who, when the cart was ready and the halter adjusted,

Often took leave but seemed loath to depart.

August 31st had arrived before George began his journey to England. But he did one or two good-natured things {57} before leaving Hanover; he ordered the abolition of certain duties on provisions, and he had the insolvent debtors throughout the Electorate discharged from custody. On September 5th he reached the Hague, and here another stoppage took place. The exertion of travelling from Hanover to the Hague had been so great that George apparently required a respite from September 5th until the 16th. On the 16th he embarked, and reached Greenwich two days after. He was accompanied to England by his two leading favorites—the ladies whose charms we have already described. For many days after his arrival in London the King did little but lament his exile from his beloved Herrenhausen, and tell every one he met how cordially he disliked England, its people, and its ways. Fortunately, perhaps, in this respect, for the popularity of his Majesty, George's audience was necessarily limited. He spoke no English, and hardly any of those who surrounded him could speak German, while some of his ministers did not even speak French. Sir Robert Walpole tried to get on with him by talking Latin. Even the English oysters George could not abide; he grumbled long at their queer taste, their want of flavor, and it was some time before his devoted attendants discovered that their monarch liked stale oysters with a good strong rankness about them. No time was lost, when this important discovery had been made, in procuring oysters to the taste of the King, and one of George's objections to the throne of England was easily removed.

There was naturally great curiosity to see the King, and a writer of the time gives an amusing account of the efforts made to obtain a sight of him. "A certain person has paid several guineas for the benefit of Cheapside conduit, and another has almost given twenty years' purchase for a shed in Stocks Market. Some lay out great sums in shop-windows, others sell lottery tickets to hire cobblers' stalls, and here and there a vintner has received earnest for the use of his sign-post. King Charles the Second's horse at the aforesaid market is to carry double, {58} and his Majesty at Charing Cross is to ride between two draymen. Some have made interest to climb chimneys, and others to be exalted to the airy station of a steeple."

[Sidenote: 1714—"Under which King?"]

The princely pageant which people were so eager to see lives still in a print issued by "Tim. Jordan and Tho. Bakenwell at Ye Golden Lion in Fleet Street." We are thus gladdened by a sight of the splendid procession winding its way through St. James's Park to St. James's Palace. There are musketeers and trumpeters on horseback; there are courtly gentlemen on horse and afoot, and great lumbering, gilded, gaudily-bedizened carriages with four and six steeds, and more trumpeters, on foot this time, and pursuivants and heralds—George was fond of heralds, and created two of his own, Hanover and Gloucester—and then the royal carriage, with its eight prancing horses, and the Elector of Hanover and King of England inside, with his hand to his heart, and still more soldiers following, both horse and foot, and, of course, a loyal populace everywhere waving their three-cornered hats and huzzaing with all their might.

The day of the entry was not without its element of tragedy. In the crowd Colonel Chudleigh called Mr. Charles Aldworth, M.P. for New Windsor, a Jacobite. There was a quarrel, the gentlemen went to Marylebone Fields, exchanged a few passes, and Mr. Aldworth was almost immediately killed. This was no great wonder, for we learn, in a letter from Lord Berkeley of Stratton, preserved in the Wentworth Papers, describing the duel, that Mr. Aldworth had such a weakness in his arms from childhood that he could not stretch them out; a fact, Lord Berkeley hints, by no means unknown to his adversary.

Horace Walpole has left a description of King George which is worth citation. "The person of the King," he says, "is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him yesterday; it was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat and breeches of snuff-colored cloth, with stockings of the {59} same color, and a blue ribbon over all." George was fond of heavy dining and heavy drinking. He often dined at Sir Robert Walpole's, at Richmond Hill, where he used to drink so much punch that even the Duchess of Kendal endeavored to restrain him, and received in return some coarse admonition in German. He was shy and reserved in general, and he detested all the troublesome display of royalty. He hated going to the theatre in state, and he did not even care to show himself in front of the royal box; he preferred to sit in another and less conspicuous box with the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham. On the whole, it would seem as if the inclination of the English people for the Hanoverian dynasty was about to be tried by the severest test that fate could well ordain. A dull, stolid, and profligate king, fond of drink and of low conversation, without dignity of appearance or manner, without sympathy of any kind with the English people and English ways, and without the slightest knowledge of the English language, was suddenly thrust upon the people and proclaimed their king. Fortunately for the Hanoverian dynasty, the English people, as a whole, had grown into a mood of comparative indifference as to who should rule them so long as they were let alone. It was impossible that a strong feeling of loyalty to any House should burn just then in the breast of the great majority of the English people. Those who were devoted to the Stuarts and those who detested the Stuarts felt strongly on the subject this way or that, and they would therefore admire or detest King George according to their previously acquired political principles. But to the ordinary Englishman it only seemed that England had lately been trying a variety of political systems and a variety of rulers; that one seemed to succeed hardly better than the other; that so long as no great breakdown in the system took place, it mattered little whether a Stuart or a Brunswick was in temporary possession of the throne. Within a comparatively short space of time the English Parliament had deposed Charles the First; the Protectorate had been {60} tried under Cromwell; the Restoration had been brought about by the adroitness of Monk; James the Second, a Catholic, had come to the throne, and had been driven off the throne by William the Third; William had established a new dynasty and a new system, which was no sooner established than it had to be succeeded by the introduction to the throne of one of the daughters of the displaced House of Stuart. England had not had time to become attached, or even reconciled, to any of these succeeding rulers, and the English people in general—the English people outside the circle of courts and Parliament and politics—were well satisfied when George came to the throne to let any one wear the crown who did not make himself and his system absolutely intolerable to the nation.

[Sidenote: 1714—"A King and no King."]

The old-fashioned romantic principle of personal loyalty, unconditional loyalty—the loyalty of Divine right—was already languishing unto death. It was now seen for the last time in effective contrast with what we may call the modern principle of loyalty. The modern principle of loyalty to a sovereign is that which, having decided in favor of monarchical government and of an hereditary succession, resolves to abide by that choice, and for the sake of the principle and of the country to pay all respect and homage to the person of the chosen ruler. But the loyalty which still clung to the fading fortunes of the Stuarts was very different from this, and came into direct contrast with the feelings shown by the majority of the people of England towards the House of Hanover. Though faults and weaknesses beyond number, weaknesses which were even worse than actual faults, tainted the character and corroded the moral fibre of every successive Stuart prince, the devotees of personal loyalty still clung with sentiment and with passion to the surviving representatives of the fallen dynasty. Poets and balladists, singers in the streets and singers on the mountain-side, were, even in these early days of George the First, inspired with songs of loyal homage in favor of the son of James the Second. Men {61} and women in thousands, not only among the wild romantic hills of Scotland, but in prosaic North of England towns, and yet more prosaic London streets and alleys, were ready, if the occasion offered, to die for the Stuart cause. Despite the evidence of their own senses, men and women would still endow any representative of the Stuarts with all the virtues and talents and graces that might become an ideal prince of romance. No one thought in this way of the successors of William the Third. No one had had any particular admiration for Queen Anne, either as a sovereign or as a woman; nobody pretended to feel any thrill of sentimental emotion towards portly, stolid, sensual George the First. About the King, personally, hardly anybody cared anything. The mass of the English people who accepted him and adhered to him did so because they understood that he represented a certain quiet homely principle in politics which would secure tranquillity and stability to the country. They did not ask of him that he should be noble or gifted or dignified, or even virtuous. They asked of him two things in especial: first, that he would maintain a steady system of government; and next, that he would in general let the country alone. This is the feeling which must be taken into account if we would understand how it came to pass that the English people so contentedly accepted a sovereign like George the First. The explanation is not to be found merely in the fact that the Stuarts, as a race, had discredited themselves hopelessly with the moral sentiment of the people of England. The very worst of the Stuarts, Charles the Second, was not any worse as regards moral character than George the First, or than some of the Georges who followed him. In education and in mental capacity he was far superior to any of the Georges. There were many qualities in Charles the Second which, if his fatal love of ease and of amusement could have been kept under control, might have made him a successful sovereign, and which, were he in private life, would undoubtedly have made him an {62} eminent man. But the truth is that the old feeling of blind unconditional homage to the sovereign was dying out; it was dying of inanition and old age and natural decay. Other and stronger forces in political thought were coming up to jostle it aside, even before its death-hour, and to occupy its place. A king was to be in England, for the future, a respected and honored chief magistrate appointed for life and to hereditary office. This new condition of things influenced the feelings and conduct of hundreds of thousands of persons who were not themselves conscious of the change. This was one great reason why George the First was so easily accepted by the country. The king was in future to be a business king, and not a king of sentiment and romance.



{63}

CHAPTER V.

WHAT THE KING CAME TO.

[Sidenote: 1714—Estimate of population]

The population of these islands at the close of the reign of Queen Anne was probably not more than one-fifth of its present amount. It is not easy to arrive at a precise knowledge with regard to the number of the inhabitants of England at that time, because there was no census taken until 1801. We have, therefore, to be content with calculations founded on the number of houses that paid certain taxes, and on the register of deaths. This is of course not a very exact way of getting at the result, but it enables us to form a tolerably fair general estimate. According to these calculations, then, the population of England and Wales together was something like five millions and a half; the population of Ireland at the same time appears to have been about two millions; that of Scotland little more than one. But the distribution of the population of these countries was very different then from that of the present day. Now the great cities and towns form the numerical strength of England and Scotland at least, but at that time the agricultural districts had a much larger proportion of the population than the towns could boast of. London was then considered a vast and enormous city, but it was only a hamlet when compared with the London which we know. Even then it absorbed more than one-tenth of the whole population of England and Wales. At the beginning of the reign of King George the First, London had a population of about seven hundred thousand, and it is a fact worthy of notice, that rapidly as the {64} population of England has grown between that time and this, the growth of the metropolis has been even greater in proportion. The City and Westminster were, at the beginning of George's reign, and for long after, two distinct and separate towns; between them still lay many wide spaces on which men were only beginning to build houses. Fashion was already moving westward in the metropolis, obeying that curious impulse which seems to prevail in all modern cities, and which makes the West End as eagerly sought after in Paris, in Edinburgh, and in New York, as in London. The life of London centred in St. Paul's and the Exchange; that of Westminster in the Court and the Houses of Parliament. All around the old Houses of Parliament were lanes, squares, streets, and gate-ways covering the wide spaces and broad thoroughfares with which we are familiar. Between Parliament Buildings and the two churches of St. Peter and St. Margaret ran a narrow, densely crowded street, known as St. Margaret's Lane. The spot where Parliament Street now opens into Bridge Street was part of an uninterrupted row of houses running down to the water-gate by the river. The market-house of the old Woollen Market stood just where Westminster Bridge begins. The Parliament Houses themselves are as much changed as their surroundings. St. Stephen's Gallery now occupies the site of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons used to sit. Westminster Hall had rows of little shops or booths ranged all along each wall inside; they had been there for generations, and they certainly did not add either to the beauty or the safety of the ancient hall. In the early part of the seventeenth century some of them took fire and came near to laying in ashes one of the oldest occupied buildings in the world. Luckily, however, the fire was put out with slight damage, but the dangerous little shops were suffered to remain then and for long after.

[Sidenote: 1714—Old London]

The Lesser London of that day lives for us in contemporary engravings, in the pages of the Spectator and the {65} Tatler, in the poems of Swift and Pope, in the pictures of Hogarth. Hogarth's men and women belong indeed to a later generation than the generation which Bolingbroke dazzled, and Marlborough deceived, and Arbuthnot satirized, and Steele made merry over. But it is only the men and women who are different; the background remains the same. New actors have taken the parts; the costumes are somewhat altered, but the scenes are scarcely changed. There may be a steeple more or a sign-board less in the streets that Hogarth drew than there were when Addison walked them, but practically they are the same, and remained the same for a still later generation. Maps of the time show us how curiously small London was. There is open country to the north, just beyond Bloomsbury Square; Sadler's Wells is out in the country, so is St. Pancras, so is Tottenham Court, so is Marylebone. At the east Stepney lies far away, a distant hamlet. Beyond Hanover Square to the west stretch fields again, where Tyburn Road became the road to Oxford. There is very little of London south of the river.

The best part of the political and social life of this small London was practically lived in the still smaller area of St. James's, a term which generally includes rather more than is contained within the strict limits of St. James's parish. If some Jacobite gentleman or loyal Hanoverian courtier of the year 1714 could revisit to-day the scenes in which he schemed and quarrelled, he would find himself among the familiar names of strangely unfamiliar places. St. James's Park indeed has not altered out of all recognition since the days when Duke Belair and my Lady Betty and my Lady Rattle walked the Mall between the hours of twelve and two, and quoted from Congreve about laughing at the great world and the small. There were avenues of trees then as now. Instead of the ornamental water ran a long canal, populous with ducks, which joined a pond called—no one knows why—Rosamund's Pond. This pond was a favorite trysting-place for happy lovers—"the sylvan deities and rural {66} powers of the place, sacred and inviolable to love, often heard lovers' vows repeated by its streams and echoes"—and a convenient water for unhappy lovers to drown themselves in, if we may credit the Tatler. St. James's Palace and Marlborough House on its right are scarcely changed; but to the left only Lord Godolphin's house lay between it and the pleasant park where the deer wandered. Farther off, where Buckingham Palace now is, was Buckingham House. It was then a stately country mansion on the road to Chelsea, with semicircular wings and a sweep of iron railings enclosing a spacious court, where a fountain played round a Triton driving his sea-horses. On the roof stood statues of Mercury, Liberty, Secrecy, and Equity, and across the front ran an inscription in great gold letters, "Sic Siti Laetantur Lares." The household gods might well delight in so fair a spot and in the music of that "little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales," which the bowl-playing Duke who built the house lovingly describes to his friend Shrewsbury.

[Sidenote: 1714—Old London]

Most of the streets in the St. James's region bear the names they bore when King George first came to London. But it is only in name that they are unchanged. The street of streets, St. James's Street, is metamorphosed indeed since the days when grotesque signs swung overhead, and great gilt carriages lumbered up and down from the park, and the chairs of modish ladies crowded up the narrow thoroughfares. Splendid warriors, fresh from Flanders or the Rhine, clinked their courtly swords against the posts; red-coated country gentlemen jostled their wondering way through the crowd; and the Whig and Tory beaux, with ruffles and rapiers, powder and perfume, haunted the coffee-houses of their factions. Not a house of the old street remains as it was then; not one of the panelled rooms in which minuets were danced by candle-light to the jingle of harpsichord and tinkle of spinet, where wits planned pamphlets and pointed epigrams, where statesmen schemed the overthrow of {67} ministries and even of dynasties, where flushed youth punted away its fortunes or drank away its senses, and staggered out, perhaps, through the little crowd of chairmen and link-boys clustered at the door, to extinguish its foolish flame in a duel at Leicester Fields. All that world is gone; only the name of the street remains, as full in its way of memories and associations as the S. P. Q. R. at the head of a municipal proclamation in modern Rome.

The streets off St. James's Street, too, retain their ancient names, and nothing more—King Street, Ryder Street, York Street, Jermyn Street, the spelling of which seems to have puzzled last century writers greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and even "Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all that remains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple," says Strype, fondly, "lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to this end of the town, and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes served as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily to the home in "Berry" Street, where his beloved Prue awaited him. St. James's Square has gone through many metamorphoses since it was first built in 1665, and called the Piazza. In 1714 there was a rectangular enclosure in the centre, with four passages at the sides, through which the public could come and go as they pleased. In a later generation the inhabitants railed the enclosure round, and set in the middle an oval basin of water, large enough to have a boat upon it. In old engravings we see people gravely punting about on the quaint little pond. The fulness of time filled in the pond, and set up King William the Third instead in the middle of a grassy circle. It would take too long to enumerate all the changes that our Georgian gentleman would find in the London of his day. Some few, however, are especially worth recording. He would seek in vain for the "Pikadilly" he knew, with its stately houses and fair gardens. It was almost a country road to the left of St. James's Street, between the Green Park and Hyde Park, {68} with meadows and the distant hills beyond. Going eastward he would find that a Henrietta Street and a King Street still led into Covent Garden; but the Covent Garden of his time was an open place, with a column and a sun-dial in the middle. Handsome dwellings for persons of repute and quality stood on the north side over those arcades which were fondly supposed by Inigo Jones, who laid out the spot, to resemble the Piazza in Venice. Inigo Jones built the church, too, which is to be seen in the "Morning" plate of Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day." This church was destroyed by fire in 1795, and was rebuilt in its present form by Hardwick.

[Sidenote: 1714—Anne's London]

Charing Cross was still a narrow spot where three streets met; what is now Trafalgar Square was covered with houses and the royal mews. St. Martin's Church was not built by Gibbs for a dozen years later, in 1726. Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable neighborhoods; Mrs. Theresa Cornelys's house of entertainment, of which we hear so much from the writers of the time of Anne, was considered to be most fashionably situated; ambassadors and peers dwelt in Gerrard Street; Bolingbroke lived in Golden Square. Traces of former splendor still linger about these decayed neighborhoods; paintings by Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth's master and father-in-law, and elaborate marble mantel-pieces, with Corinthian columns and entablatures, still adorn the interiors of some of these houses; bits of quaint Queen Anne architecture and finely wrought iron railings still lend an air of faded gentility to some of the dingy exteriors. Parts of London that are now fashionable had not then come into existence. Grosvenor Square was only begun in 1716, and it was not until 1725 that the new quarter was sufficiently advanced for its creator, Sir Richard Grosvenor, to summon his intending tenants to a "splendid entertainment," at which the new streets and squares were solemnly named.

Though we of to-day have seen a good deal of what are called Anne and Georgian houses, of red brick, {69} curiously gabled, springing up in all directions, we must not suppose that the London of 1714 was chiefly composed of such cheerful buildings. Wren and Vanbrugh would be indeed surprised if they could see the strange works that are now done, if not in their name, at least in the name of the age for which they built their heavy, plain, solid houses. We can learn easily enough from contemporary engravings what the principal London streets and squares were like when George the Elector became George the King. There are not many remains now of Anne's London, but Queen Anne's Gate, some few houses in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and here and there a house in the City preserve the ordinary architecture of the age of Anne. Marlborough House bears witness to what it did in the way of more pretentious buildings.

The insides of these houses were scarcely less like the "Queen Anne revival" of our time than the outsides. The rooms were, as a rule, sparingly furnished. There would be a centre-table, some chairs, a settee, a few pictures, a mirror, possibly a spinet or musical instrument of some kind, some shelves, perhaps, for displaying the Chinese and Japanese porcelain which every one loved, and, of course, heavy window-curtains. Smaller tables were used for the incessant tea-drinking. Large screens kept off the too frequent draughts. Handsomely wrought stoves and andirons stood in the wide fireplaces. The rooms themselves were lofty; the walls of the better kind wainscoted and carved, and the ceilings painted in allegorical designs. Wall-papers had only begun to come into use within the last few years of Anne's reign; windows were long and narrow, and small panes were a necessity, as glass-makers had not yet attained the art of casting large sheets of glass. The stairs were exceedingly straight; it was mentioned as a recommendation to new houses that two persons could go up-stairs abreast. The rents would seem curiously low to Londoners of our time; houses could be got in Pall Mall for two hundred a year, and in good parts of the town for thirty, forty, and {70} fifty pounds a year. Lady Wentworth, in 1705, describes a house in Golden Square, with gardens, stables, and coach-house, the rent of which was only threescore pounds a year. Pretty riverside houses let at from five to ten pounds a year. Lodgings would seem cheap now, though they were not held so then, for Swift complains of paying eight shillings a week, when he lodged in Bury Street, for a dining-room and bedroom on the first floor.

[Sidenote: 1714—"Not without danger walk these streets"]

There was no general numbering of houses in 1714; that movement of civilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by their signs, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars," "Black Swans," and "Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice," or over against the "Pestle." The Tatler tells a story of a young man seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in a sign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is the Bear." Another tried to get into a house at Stocks Market, under the impression that he was at his own lodgings at Charing Cross, being misled by the fact that there was a statue of the King on horseback in each place. Signs were usually very large, and jutted so far out from the houses that in narrow streets they frequently touched one another. As it was the fashion to have them carefully painted, carved, gilded, and supported by branches of wrought iron, they were often very costly, some being estimated as worth more than a hundred guineas.

The ill-paved streets were too often littered with the refuse which careless householders, reckless of fines, flung into the open way. In wet weather the rain roared along the kennel, converting all the accumulated filth of the thoroughfare into loathsome mud. The gutter-spouts, which then projected from every house, did not always cast their cataracts clear of the pavement, but sometimes soaked the unlucky passer-by who had not kept close to the wall. Umbrellas were the exclusive privilege of women; men never thought of carrying them. Those whose business or pleasure called them abroad in rainy {71} weather, and who did not own carriages, might hire one of the eight hundred two-horsed hackney carriages; jolting, uncomfortable machines, with perforated tin sashes instead of window-glasses, and grumbling, ever-dissatisfied drivers. There were very few sedan chairs; these were still a comparative novelty for general use, and their bearers were much abused for their drunkenness, clumsiness, and incivility.

The streets were always crowded. Coaches, chairs, wheelbarrows, fops, chimney-sweeps, porters bearing huge burdens, bullies swaggering with great swords, bailiffs chasing some impecunious poet, cutpurses, funerals, christenings, weddings, and street fights, would seem from some contemporary accounts to be invariably mixed up together in helpless and apparently inextricable confusion. The general bewilderment was made more bewildering by the very babel of street cries bawled from the sturdy lungs of orange-girls, chair-menders, broom-sellers, ballad-singers, old-clothes men, and wretched representatives of the various jails, raising their plaintive appeal to "remember the poor prisoners." The thoroughfares, however, would have been in still worse condition but for the fact that so much of the passenger traffic of the metropolis was done by water and not by land. The wherries on the Thames were as frequent as the gondolas on the canals of Venice. Across the river, down the river, up the river, passengers hurried incessantly in the swift little boats that plied for hire, and were rowed by one man with a pair of sculls, or two men with oars. Despite the numbers of the river steamers at present, and the crowds who take advantage of them, it may well be doubted whether so large a proportion of the passenger traffic of London is borne by the river in the days of Queen Victoria as there was in the days of Queen Anne.

Darkness and danger ruled the roads at night with all the horrors of the Rome of Juvenal. Oil lamps flickered freely in some of the better streets, but even these were not lit so long as any suggestion of twilight served for {72} an excuse to delay the illumination. When the moon shone they were not lit at all. Link-boys drove a busy trade in lighting belated wanderers to their homes, and saving them from the perils of places where the pavement was taken up or where open sewers yawned. Precaution was needful, for pitfalls of the kind were not always marked by warning lanterns. Footpads roamed about, and worse than footpads. The fear of the Mohocks had not yet faded from civic memories, and there were still wild young men enough to rush through the streets, wrenching off knockers, insulting quiet people, and defying the watch. Indeed the watch were, as a rule, as unwilling to interfere with dangerous revellers as were the billmen of Messina, and seem to have been little better than thieves or Mohocks themselves. They are freely accused of being ever ready to levy black-mail upon those who walked abroad at night by raising ingenious accusations of insobriety and insisting upon being bought off, or conveying their victim to the round-house.

[Sidenote: 1714—Clubs]

The Fleet Ditch, which is almost as much of a myth to our generation as the stream of black Cocytus itself, was an unsavory reality still in the London which George the First entered. It was a tributary of the Thames, which, rising somewhere among the gentle hills of Hampstead, sought out the river and found it at Blackfriars. At one time it was used for the conveyance of coals into the city, and colliers of moderate size used to ascend it for a short distance. But towards the end of Anne's reign, and indeed for long before, it had become a mere trickling puddle, discharging its filth and refuse and sewage into the river, and poisoning the air around it.

May Fair was still, and for many years later, celebrated in the now fashionable quarter which bears its name. The fair lasted for six weeks, and left about six months' demoralization behind it. "Smock races"—that is to say, races run by young women for a prize of a laced chemise, the competitors sometimes being attired only in their smocks—were still to be seen in Pall Mall and {73} various other places. This popular amusement was kept up in London until 1733, and lingered in country places to a much later time. Bartholomew Fair was scarcely less popular, or less renowned for its specialty of roast sucking-pig, than in the days when Ben Jonson's Master Little-Wit, and his wife Win-the-Fight, made acquaintance with its wild humors. There is a colored print of about this time which gives a sufficiently vivid presentment of the fair. At Lee and Harper's booth the tragedy of "Judith and Holofernes" is announced by a great glaring, painted cloth, while the platform is occupied by a gentleman in Roman armor and a lady in Eastern attire, who are no doubt the principal characters of the play. A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite the attention of the passers-by. In another booth rope-dancing of men and women is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels. A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar allures the patriotic. Toy-shops, presided over by attractive damsels, lure the light-hearted, and the light-fingered too, for many an intelligent pickpocket seizes the opportunity to rifle the pocket of some too occupied customer. There is a revolving swing, and go-carts are drawn by dogs for the delight of children. Hucksters go about selling gin, aniseed, and fruits, and large booths offer meat, cider, punch, and skittles. The place is thronged with visitors and beggars. A portly figure in a scarlet coat and wearing an order is said to be no less a person than Sir Robert Walpole, who is rumored to have occasionally honored the fair with his presence.

Few of the clubs that play so important a part in the history of last-century London had come into existence in 1714. The most famous of them either were not yet founded, or lived only as coffee or chocolate houses. There had been literary associations like the "Scriblerus" Club, which was started by Swift, and was finally dissolved by the quarrels of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The {74} "Saturday" and "Brothers" Clubs had been political societies, at both of which Swift was all powerful, but they, too, were no more. The "Kit-Kat" Club, of mystic origin and enigmatic name, with all its loyalty to Hanover and all its memories of bright toasts, of Steele, Addison, and Godfrey Kneller, had passed away in 1709, and met no more in Shire Lane, off Fleet Street, or at the "Upper Flask" Inn at Hampstead. It had not lived in vain, according to Walpole, who declared that its patriots had saved the country. Within its rooms the evil-omened Lord Mohun had broken the gilded emblem of the crown off his chair. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who was secretary to the club, querulously insisted that the man who would do that would cut a man's throat, and Lord Mohun's fatal career fully justified Tonson's judgment. If the Kit-Kat patriots had saved the country, the Tory patriots of the October Club were no less prepared to do the same. The October Club came first into importance in the latest years of Anne, although it had existed since the last decade of the seventeenth century. The stout Tory squires met together in the "Bell" Tavern, in narrow, dirty King Street, Westminster, to drink October ale, under Dahl's portrait of Queen Anne, and to trouble with their fierce, uncompromising Jacobitism the fluctuating purposes of Harley and the crafty counsels of St. John. The genius of Swift tempered their hot zeal with the cool air of his "advice." Then the wilder spirits seceded, and formed the March Club, which retained all the angry Jacobinism of the parent body, but lost all its importance. There were wilder associations, like the Hell-fire Club, which, under the presidency of the Duke of Wharton, was distinguished for the desperate attempts it made to justify its name. But it was, like its president, short lived and soon forgotten. There are fantastic rumors of a Calves' Head Club, organized in mockery of all kings, and especially of the royal martyrs. It was said by obscure pamphleteers to be founded by John Milton; but whether the body ever had any real existence seems now to be uncertain.

{75}

[Sidenote: 1714—Coffee-houses]

Next to the clubs came the "mug-houses." The mug-houses were political associations of a humbler order, where men met together to drink beer and denounce the Whigs or Tories, according to their convictions. But at this time the coffee-houses occupied the most important position in social life. There were a great many of them, each with some special association which still keeps it in men's memories. At Garraway's, in Change Alley, tea was first retailed at the high prices which then made tea a luxury. The "Rainbow," in Fleet Street, the second coffee-house opened in London, is mentioned in the Spectator; the first was Bowman's, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. Lloyd's, in Lombard Street, was dear to Steele and Addison. At Don Saltero's, by the river at Chelsea, Mr. Salter exhibited his collection of curiosities and delighted himself, and no one else, by playing the fiddle. At the "Smyrna" Prior and Swift were wont to receive their acquaintances. From the "St. James's," the last house but one on the south-west corner of St. James's Street, the Tatler dated its foreign and domestic news, and conferred fame on its waiter, Mr. Kidney, "who has long conversed with and filled tea for the most consummate politicians." It was the head-quarters of Whigs and officers of the Guards; letters from Stella were left here for Swift, and here in later years originated Goldsmith's "Retaliation." Will's, at the north corner of Russell Street and Bow Street, famous for its memories of Dryden and for the Tatler's dramatic criticisms, had ceased to exist in 1714. Its place was taken by Button's, at the other side of Russell Street, started by Addison in 1712. Here, later, was the lion-head letter-box for the Guardian, designed by Hogarth. At Child's, in St. Paul's Church-yard, the Spectator often smoked a pipe. Sir Roger de Coverley was beloved at Squire's, near Gray's Inn Gate. Slaughter's, in St. Martin's Lane, was often honored by the presence first of Dryden, and then of Pope. Serle's, near Lincoln's Inn, was cherished by the law. At the "Grecian," in Devereux Court, Strand, learned men met and {76} quarrelled; a fatal duel was once fought in consequence of an argument there over the accent on a Greek word. At the "Grecian," too, Steele amused himself by putting the action of Homer's "Iliad" into an exact journal and planning his "Temple of Fame." From White's chocolate-house, which afterwards became the famous club, came Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff's "Accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment." The "Cocoa Tree" was the Tory coffee-house, in St. James's Street. Ozinda's chocolate-house, next to St. James's Palace, was also a Tory resort, and its owner was arrested in 1715 for supposed complicity in Jacobite conspiracy.

[Sidenote: 1714—Humors of the time]

To these coffee and chocolate houses came all the wit and all the fashion of London. Men of letters and statesmen, men of the robe and men of the sword, lawyers, dandies, poets, and philosophers, met there to discuss politics, literature, scandal, and the play. There were often very strange figures among the motley crowd behind the red-curtained windows of a St. James's coffee-house. The gentleman who made himself so agreeable to the bar-maid or who chatted so affably about the conduct of the allies or the latest news from Sweden, might meet you again later on if your road lay at all outside town, and imperiously request you to stand and deliver. But of all the varied assembly the strangest figures must have been the beaux and exquisites, in all their various degrees of "dappers," "fops," "smart fellows," "pretty fellows," and "very pretty fellows." They made a brave show in many-colored splendor of attire, heavily scented with orange-flower water, civet-violet, or musk, with large falbala periwigs, or long, powdered duvilliers, with snuff-boxes and perspective glasses perpetually in their hands, and dragon or right Jamree canes, curiously clouded and amber headed, dangling by a blue ribbon from the wrist or the coat-button. The staff was as essential to an early Georgian gentleman as to an Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the cane-carrying custom incurred the frequent attacks of the satirists. Cane-bearers are made to declare {77} that the knocking of the cane upon the shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it in the mouth, were such reliefs to them in conversation that they did not know how to be good company without it. Some of these young men appear to have affected effeminacy, like an Agathon or a Henri Trois. Steele has put it on record that he heard some, who set up to be pretty fellows, calling to one another at White's or the St. James's by the names of "Betty," "Nelly," and so forth.

Servants play almost as important parts as their masters in the humors of the time. Rich people were always surrounded by a throng of servants. First came the valet de chambre, who was expected to know a little of everything, from shaving and wig-making to skill in country sports, and had as much experience in all town matters as a servant out of Terence or Moliere. Last came the negro slave, who waited on my lord or my lady, with the silver collar of servitude about his neck.

Servants wore fine clothes and aped fine manners. The footmen of the Lords and Commons held mimic parliament while waiting for their masters at Westminster, parodying with elaborate care the proceedings of both Houses. They imitated their masters in other ways, too, taking their titles after the fashion made famous by Gil Blas and his fellow valets, and familiar by the farce of "High Life Below Stairs." The writer of the Patriot of Thursday, August 19, 1714, satirizes misplaced ambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the pan." Presently after another assured the company of the illness of my lord bishop. "The information had doubtless continued had {78} not a fellow in a blue livery alarmed the rest with the news that Sir Edward and the marquis were at fisticuffs about a game at chuck, and that the brigadier had challenged the major-general to a bout at cudgels."

[Sidenote: 1714—Principal towns]

It is only fair, after enumerating so many of the eccentricities and discomforts of early Georgian London, to mention one proof of civilization of which Londoners were able to boast. London had a penny-post, of which it was not unreasonably proud. This penny-post is thus described in Strype's edition of Stow's "Survey of London." "For a further convenience to the inhabitants of this city and parts adjacent, for about ten miles compass, another post, and that a foot-post, commonly called the penny-post, was erected, and though at first set up by a private hand, yet, bring of such considerable amount, is since taken into the post-office and made a branch of it. And in this all letters and parcels not exceeding a pound weight, and also any sum of money not above 10 pounds or parcel of 10 pounds value is safely conveyed, and at the charge of a penny, to all parts of the city and suburbs, and but a penny more at the delivery to most towns within ten miles of London, and to some towns at a farther distance. And for the better management of this office there are in London and Westminster six general post-offices . . . at all which there constantly attend . . . officers to receive letters and parcels from the several places appointed to take them in, there being a place or receiving house for the receipt thereof in most streets, with a table hung at the door or shop-window, in which is printed in great letters 'Penny-post Letters and Parcels are taken in Here.' And at those houses they have letter-carriers to call every hour. . . . All the day long they are employed, some in going their walks to bring in, and others to carry out."

The next town in population to London was Bristol, and Bristol had then only one-seventeenth of London's population. The growth of the manufacturing industry, which has created such a cluster of great towns in the North of England, had hardly begun to show itself when {79} George the First came to the throne. Bristol was not only the most populous place after London at this time, but it was the great English seaport. It had held this rank for centuries. Even at the time when "Tom Jones" was written, many years after the accession of George the First, the Bristol Alderman filled the same place in popular imagination that is now assigned to the Alderman of London. Fielding attributes to the Bristol Alderman that fine appreciation of the qualities of turtle soup with which more modern humorists have endowed his metropolitan fellow.

Liverpool was hardly thought of in the early Georgian days. It was only made into a separate parish a few years before George came to the throne, and its first dock was opened in 1709. Manchester was comparatively obscure and unimportant, and had not yet made its first export of cotton goods. At this time Norwich, famous for its worsted and woollen works and its fuller's earth, surpassed it in business importance. By the middle of the century the population of Bristol is said to have exceeded ninety thousand; Norwich, to have had more than fifty-six thousand; Manchester, about forty-five thousand; Newcastle, forty thousand; and Birmingham, about thirty thousand; while Liverpool had swelled to about thirty thousand, and ranked as the third port in the country. York was the chief city of the Northern Counties; Exeter, the capital of the West. Shrewsbury was of some account in the region towards the Welsh frontier. Worcester, Derby, Nottingham, and Canterbury were places of note. Bath had not come into its fashion and its fame as yet. Its first pump-room had been built only a few years before George entered England. The strength of England now, if we leave London out of consideration, lies in the north, and goes no farther southward than a line which would include Birmingham. In the early days of the Georges this was just the part of England which was of least importance, whether as regards manufacturing energy or political power.

{80}

Ireland just then was quiet. It had sunk into a quietude something like that of the grave. Civil war had swept over the country; a succession of civil wars indeed had plagued it. There was a time just before the outbreak of the parliamentary struggle against Charles the First when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becoming a highly prosperous country, growing vigorously in trade, manufacture, letters, and arts, and beginning to be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustre in the royal diadem." But civil war and religious persecution had blighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming from political proscription and religious persecution the statesmen of the time could think of no remedy but new proscription and fresh persecution. Roman Catholics were excluded from the legislature, from municipal corporations, and from the liberal professions; they were not allowed to teach or be taught by Catholics; they were not permitted to keep arms; the trade and navigation of Ireland were put under ruinous restrictions and disabilities. In the reign of Anne new acts had been passed by the Irish Parliament, and sanctioned by the Crown "to prevent the further growth of Popery." Some of these later measures introduced not a few of the very harshest conditions of the penal code against Catholics. The Irish Parliament at that time was merely in fact what has since been called the British garrison; it consisted of the conquerors and the settlers. The Irish people had no more to do with it, except in the way of suffering under it, than the slaves in Georgia thirty years ago had to do with the Congress at Washington.

[Sidenote: 1714—Old Dublin]

Dublin has perhaps changed less than London since 1714, but it has changed greatly notwithstanding. The Irish Parliament was already established in College Green, but not in the familiar building which it afterwards occupied. It met in Chichester House, which had been built as a hospital by Sir George Carew at the close of the sixteenth century. From him it passed into the possession of Sir Arthur Chichester, an English soldier of {81} fortune, who had distinguished himself in France under Henry the Fourth, and who afterwards came to Ireland and played an active part in the plantation of Ulster. It was not until 1728 that Chichester House was pulled down and the new building erected on its site. Trinity College, of course, stood on College Green, so did two other stately dwellings, Charlemont House and Clancarty House, both of which have long since passed away. There were several book-shops on the Green as well, and a great many taverns and coffee-shops. The statue of King William the Third had been set up in 1701. The collegians professed great indignation at the manner in which the statue turned its back to the college gates, and the effigy was the object of many indignities, for which the students sometimes got into grave trouble with the authorities.

St. Patrick's Well was one of the great features of Dublin in the early part of the last century. It stood in the narrow way by Trinity College, the name of which had not long been altered from Patrick's Well Lane to Nassau Street. The change had been made in compliment to a bust of William the Third, which adorned the front of one of the houses, but for long after the place was much more associated with the well than with the House of Orange. The waters of the well were popularly supposed to have wonderful curative and health-giving properties, and it was much used. It dried up suddenly in 1729, and gave Swift the opportunity of writing some fiercely indignant national verses. But the water was restored to it in 1731, and it still exists in peaceful, half-forgotten obscurity in the College grounds.

Dawson Street, off Nassau Street, had only newly come into existence. It was called after Joshua Dawson, who had just built for himself a handsome mansion with gardens round it. He sold the house in 1715 to the Dublin Corporation, to be used as a Mansion House for their Lord Mayors. Where Molesworth and Kildare Streets now stand there was at this time a great piece of waste {82} land called Molesworth Fields. Chapelizod, now a sufficiently populous suburb, was then the little village of Chappell Isoud, said to be so called from that Belle Isoud, daughter of King Anguish of Ireland, who was beloved by Tristram. The General Post-office in Sycamore Alley had for Postmaster-general Isaac Manley, who was a friend of Swift. Manley incurred the Dean's resentment in 1718 by opening letters addressed to him. The postal arrangements were, as may be imagined, miserably defective. Owing to the carelessness of postmasters, the idleness of post-boys, bad horses, and sometimes the want of horses, much time was lost and letters constantly miscarried.

[Sidenote: 1714—Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast]

The amusements of Dublin were those of London on a small scale. Dublin was as fond of its coffee-houses as London itself. Lucas's, in Cork Street, was the favorite resort of beaux, gamesters, and bullies. Here Talbot Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's ancestor, whom Swift called the "prince of puppies," displayed his follies, his fine dresses, and his handsome face, and believed himself to be the terror of men and the adoration of women, till he died mad in the Dublin Bridewell. The yard behind Lucas's was the theatre of numerous duels, which were generally witnessed from the windows by all the company who happened to be present. These took care that the laws of honorable combat were observed. Close at hand was the "Swan" Tavern, in Swan Alley, a district devoted chiefly to gambling-houses. On Cork Hill was the cock-pit royal, where gentlemen and ruffians mingled together to witness and wager on the sport. Cork Hill was not a pleasant place at night. Pedestrians were often insulted and roughly treated by the chairmen hanging about Lucas's and the "Eagle" Tavern. Even the waiters of these establishments sometimes amused themselves by pouring pailfuls of foul water upon the aggrieved passer-by. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that an Irish edition of the Hell-fire Club was set up at the "Eagle" in 1735. The roughness of the time found its way into {83} the theatre in Smock Lane, which was the scene of frequent political riots. Dublin had its Pasquin or Marforio in an oaken image, known as the "Wooden Man," which had stood on the southern side of Essex Street, not far from Eustace Street, since the end of the seventeenth century.

Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Belfast were the only considerable towns in Ireland after the Irish capital. Not many years had passed since Cork was besieged by Marlborough himself, and taken from King James. The Duke of Grafton, one of the sons of Charles the Second, was killed then in a little street or lane, which still commemorates the fact by its name. The same year that saw Marlborough besieging Cork saw Limerick invested by the forces of King William, under William's own command. The Irish general, Sarsfield, held out so gallantly that William had to give up the attempt, and it was not until the following year, and after the cause of James had gone down everywhere else, that Sarsfield consented to accept the terms, most honorable to him, of the famous Treaty of Limerick. There was but little feeling in Ireland in favor of the Chevalier at the time of Queen Anne's death. Any sympathy with the Stuart cause that still lingered was sentimental merely, and even as such hardly existed among the great mass of the people. To these, indeed, the change of masters could matter but little; they had had enough of the Stuarts, and the conduct of James the Second during his Irish campaign had made his name and his memory despised. Rightly or wrongly he was charged with cowardice—he who in his early days had heard his bravery in action praised by the great Turenne—and the charge was fatal to him in the minds of the Irish people. The penal laws of Anne's days were not excused because of any strong Jacobite sympathies or active Jacobite schemes in Ireland.

The Union between England and Scotland was only seven years old when George came to the throne of these kingdoms, and already an attempt had been made by a {84} powerful party in Scotland to obtain its repeal. The union was unquestionably accomplished by Lord Somers and other English statesmen, with the object of securing the succession much rather than the national interests of the Scottish people. It was for a long time detested in Scotland. The manner of its accomplishment, mainly by bribery and threats, made it more odious. Yet it was based on principles which secured the dearest interests of Scotland and respected the religious opinions of the population. Scottish law, Scottish systems, and the Scotch Church were left without interference, and constitutional security was given for the maintenance of the Presbyterian Establishment. In plain words, the Union admitted and maintained the rights and the claims of the great majority of the Scotch people, and therefore, when the first heat of dislike to it had gone out, Scotland began to find that she could be old Scotland still, even when combined in one constitutional system with England. She soon accepted cordially the conditions which opened new ways to her industrial and trading energy, and did not practically interfere with her true national independence.

[Sidenote: 1714—Life in Edinburgh]

Edinburgh was then, and remained for generations to come, much the same as it appeared when Mary Stuart first visited it. Historians like Brantome, and poets like Ronsard, lamented for their fair princess exiled in a savage land. But the daughter of the House of Lorraine might well have been content with the curious beauty of her new capital. Even now, more than three centuries since Mary Stuart landed in Scotland, and more than a century and a half since her descendant raised the standard of rebellion against the Elector of Hanover, Edinburgh Old Town retains more of its antique characteristics than either of the capitals of the sister kingdoms. It is true that the Northern Athens has followed the example of its Greek original in shifting the scene of its social life. The Attic Athens of to-day occupies a different site from that of the city of Pericles. New Edinburgh {85} has reared itself on the other bank of that chasm where once the North River flowed, and where now the trains run. Edinburgh, however, more fortunate than the city of Cecrops, while founding a new town has not lost the old. But at the time of the Hanoverian accession, and for generations later, not a house of the new town had been built. Edinburgh was still a walled city, with many gates or "ports," occupying the same ground that she had covered in the reign of James the Third, along the ridge between the gray Castle on the height at the west and haunted Holyrood in the plain at the east. All along this ridge rose the huge buildings, "lands," as they were called, stretching from peak to peak like a mountain-range—five, six, sometimes ten stories high—pierced with innumerable windows, crowned with jagged, fantastic roofs and gables, and as crowded with life as the "Insulae" of Imperial Rome. Over all rose the graceful pinnacle of St. Giles's Church, around whose base the booths of goldsmiths and other craftsmen clustered. The great main street of this old town was, and is, the Canongate, with its hundred or so of narrow closes or wynds running off from it at right angles. The houses in these closes were as tall as the rest, though the space across the street was often not more than four or five feet wide. The Canongate was Edinburgh in the early days of the last century far more than St. James's Street was London. Its high houses, with their wooden panellings, with the old armorial devices on their doors, and their common stair climbing from story to story outside, have seen the whole panorama of Scottish history pass by.

Life cannot have been very comfortable in Edinburgh. There were no open spaces or squares in the royalty, with the exception of the Parliamentary close. The houses were so well and strongly built that the city was seldom troubled by fire, but they were poor inside, with low, dark rooms. We find, in consequence, that houses inhabited by the gentry in the early part of the eighteenth century were considered almost too bad for very humble {86} folk at its close, and the success of the new town was assured from the day when its first foundation-stone was laid. But if not very comfortable, life was quiet and simple. People generally dined at one or two o'clock in Edinburgh when George the First was king. Shopkeepers closed their shops when they dined, and opened them again for business when the meal was over. There was very little luxury; wine was seldom seen on the tables of the middle classes, and few people kept carriages. There were not many amusements; friends met at each other's houses to take tea at five o'clock, and perhaps to listen to a little music; for the Edinburghers were fond of music, and an annual concert which was established early in the century lingered on till within three years of its close. But this simplicity was not immortal, and we hear sad complaints as the century grows old concerning the decadence of manners made manifest in the luxurious practice of dining as late as four or five, the freer use of wine, and other signs of over-civilization.

[Sidenote: 1714—Lowland agriculture]

Glasgow, in the Clyde valley, ranked next to Edinburgh in importance among Scotch towns. More than twenty years later than the time of which we treat, the author of a pamphlet called "Memoirs of the Times" could write, "Glasgow is become the third trading city in the island." But in 1714 the future of its commercial prosperity, founded upon its trade with the West Indies and the American colonies, had scarcely dawned. The Scotch merchants had not yet been able, from want of capital, and, it was said, the jealousy of the English merchants, to make much use of the privileges conferred upon them by the union, and Glasgow was on the wrong side of the island for sharing in Scotland's slight Continental trade. Still, Glasgow was fairly thriving, thanks to the inland navigation of the Clyde. Some of its streets were broad; many of its houses substantial, and even stately. Its pride was the great minster of St. Mungo's, "a solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld keep hands and gunpowther aff it," to quote the {87} enthusiastic words of Andrew Fairservice. The streets were often thronged with the wild Highlanders from the hills, who came down as heavily and as variously armed as a modern Albanian chieftain, to trade in small cattle and shaggy ponies.

At this time the average Englishman knew little about the Lowlands and nothing about the Highlands of Scotland. The Londoner of the age of Anne would have looked upon any traveller who had made his way through the Highlands of Scotland with much the same curiosity as his descendants, a generation or two later, regarded Bruce when he returned from Abyssinia, and would probably have received most of his statements with a politer but not less profound disbelief. It was cited, as a proof of the immense popularity of the Spectator, that despite all the difficulties of intercommunication it found its way into Scotland. George the First had passed away, and George the Second was reigning in his stead, before any Englishman was found foolhardy enough to explore the Scottish Highlands, and lucky enough to escape unhurt, and publish an account of his experiences, and put on record his disgust at the monstrous deformity of the Highland scenery. But the Londoner in 1714 was scarcely better informed about the Scotch Lowlands. What he could learn was not of a nature to impress him very profoundly. Scotland then, and for some time to come, was very far behind England in many things; most of all, in everything connected with agriculture. In the villages the people dwelt in rude but fairly comfortable cottages, made chiefly of straw-mixed clay, and straw-thatched. Wearing clothes that were usually home-spun, home-woven, and home-tailored; living principally, if not entirely, on the produce of his own farm, the Lowland farmer passed a life of curious independence and isolation. To plough his land, with its strange measurements of "ox-gate," "ploughgate," and "davoch," he had clumsy wooden ploughs, the very shape of which is now almost a tradition, but which were certainly at least as primitive in {88} construction as the plough Ulysses guided in his farm at Ithaca. Wheeled vehicles of any kind, carts or wheelbarrows, were rarities. A parish possessed of a couple of carts was considered well provided for. Even where carts were known, they were of little use, they were so wretchedly constructed, and the few roads that did exist were totally unfit for wheeled traffic. Roads were as rare in Scotland then as they are to-day in Peloponnesus. An enterprising Aberdeenshire gentleman, Sir Archibald Grant, of Monymusk, is deservedly distinguished for the interest he took in road-making about the time of the Hanoverian accession. Some years later statute labor did a little—a very little—towards improving the public roads, but it was not until after the rebellion of 1745, when the Government took the matter in hand, that anything really efficient was done. A number of good roads were then made, chiefly by military labor, and received in popular language the special title of the King's highways. But in the early part of the century there was little use for carts, even of the clumsiest kind. Such carriage as was necessary was accomplished by strings of horses tethered in Indian file, like the lines of camels in the East, and laden with sacks or baskets. The cultivation of the soil was poor; "the surface was generally unenclosed; oats and barley the chief grain products; wheat little cultivated; little hay made for winter; the horses then feeding chiefly on straw and oats." "The arable land ran in narrow slips," with "stony wastes between, like the moraines of a glacier." The hay meadow was an undrained marsh, where rank grasses, mingled with rushes and other aquatic plants, yielded a coarse fodder. About the time when George the First became King of England, Lord Haddington introduced the sowing of clover and other grass seeds. Some ten years earlier an Englishwoman, Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough, and wife of the Duke of Gordon, introduced into her husband's estates English ploughs, English ploughmen, the system of fallowing up to that time {89} unknown in Scotland, planted moors, sowed foreign grasses, and showed the Morayshire farmers how to make hay.

[Sidenote: 1714—Famines in Scotland]

As a natural result of the primitive and incomplete agriculture, dearth of food was frequent, and even severe famine, in all its horrors of starvation and death, not uncommon. When George the First came to the throne the century was not old enough for the living generation of Scotchmen to forget the ghastly seven years that had brought the seventeenth century to its close—seven empty ears blasted with east-wind. So many died of hunger that, in the grim words of one who lived through that time, "the living were wearied with the burying of the dead." The plague of hunger took away all natural and relative affections, "so that husbands had not sympathy for their wives, nor wives for their husbands; parents for their children, nor children for their parents." The saddest proof of the extent of the suffering is shown in the irreligious despair which seized upon the sufferers. Scotland then, as now, was strongly marked for its piety, but want made men defiant of heaven, prepared, like her who counselled the man of Uz, to curse God and die by the roadside. Warned by no dream of thin and ill-favored kine, the Pharaohs of Westminster had passed an Act, enforced while the famine was well begun, against the importation of meal into Scotland. At the sorest of the famine, the importation of meal from Ireland was permitted, and exportation of grain from Scotland prohibited. But, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the famine had but just subsided, a Government commission ordered that all loads of grain brought from Ireland into the West of Scotland should be staved and sunk.

The empire over which King George came to rule was as yet in a growing, almost a fluid condition. In North America, England had, by one form of settlement or another, New York, but lately captured; New Jersey, the New England States, such as they then were, Virginia—an old possession—Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania—settled {90} by William Penn, whose death was now very near.

Louisiana had just been taken possession of by the French. The city of New Orleans was not yet built. The French held the greater part of what was then known of Canada; Jamaica, Barbadoes, and other West Indian islands were in England's ownership. The great East Indian Empire was only in its very earliest germ; its full development was not yet foreseen by statesman, thinker, or dreamer. The English flag had only begun to float from the Rock of Gibraltar.