The government not only frequently forbade new buildings within ten miles of London, but sometimes ordered them to be pulled down—after they had been erected for several years. Every six or seven years proclamations were issued. In Charles the First's reign, offenders were sharply prosecuted by a combined operation, not only against houses, but against persons.[240] Many of the nobility and gentry, in 1632, were informed against for having resided in the city, contrary to the late proclamation. And the Attorney-General was then fully occupied in filing bills of indictment against them, as well as ladies, for staying in town. The following curious "information" in the Star Chamber will serve our purpose.

The Attorney-General informs his majesty that both Elizabeth and James, by several proclamations, had commanded that "persons of livelihood and means should reside in their counties, and not abide or sojourn in the city of London, so that counties remain unserved." These proclamations were renewed by Charles the First, who had observed "a greater number of nobility and gentry, and abler sort of people, with their families, had resorted to the cities of London and Westminster, residing there, contrary to the ancient usage of the English nation"—"by their abiding in their several counties where their means arise, they would not only have served his majesty according to their ranks, but by their housekeeping in those parts the meaner sort of people formerly were guided, directed and relieved." He accuses them of wasting their estates in the metropolis, which would employ and relieve the common people in their several counties. The loose and disorderly people that follow them, living in and about the cities, are so numerous, that they are not easily governed by the ordinary magistrates: mendicants increase in great number—the prices of all commodities are highly raised, &c. The king had formerly proclaimed that all ranks who were not connected with public offices, at the close of forty days' notice, should resort to their several counties, and with their families continue their residence there. And his majesty further warned them "Not to put themselves to unnecessary charge in providing themselves to return in winter to the said cities, as it was the king's firm resolution to withstand such great and growing evil." The information concludes with a most copious list of offenders, among whom are a great number of nobility, and ladies and gentlemen, who were accused of having lived in London for several months after the given warning of forty days. It appears that most of them, to elude the grasp of the law, had contrived to make a show of quitting the metropolis, and, after a short absence, had again returned; "and thus the service of your majesty and your people in the several counties have been neglected and undone."

Such is the substance of this curious information, which enables us at least to collect the ostensible motives of this singular prohibition. Proclamations had hitherto been considered little more than the news of the morning, and three days afterwards were as much read as the last week's newspapers. They were now, however, resolved to stretch forth the strong arm of law, and to terrify by an example. The constables were commanded to bring in a list of the names of strangers, and the time they proposed to fix their residence in their parishes. A remarkable victim on this occasion was a Mr. Palmer, a Sussex gentleman, who was brought ore tenus into the Star Chamber for disobeying the proclamation for living in the country. Palmer was a squire of 1000l. per annum, then a considerable income. He appears to have been some rich bachelor; for in his defence he alleged that he had never been married, never was a housekeeper, and had no house fitting for a man of his birth to reside in, as his mansion in the country had been burnt down within two years. These reasons appeared to his judges to aggravate rather than extenuate his offence; and after a long reprimand for having deserted his tenants and neighbours, they heavily fined him in one thousand pounds.[241]

The condemnation of this Sussex gentleman struck a terror through a wide circle of sojourners in the metropolis. I find accounts, pathetic enough, of their "packing away on all sides for fear of the worst;" and gentlemen "grumbling that they should be confined to their houses:" and this was sometimes backed too by a second proclamation, respecting "their wives and families, and also widows," which was "durus sermo to the women. It is nothing pleasing to all," says the letter-writer, "but least of all to the women." "To encourage gentlemen to live more willingly in the country," says another letter-writer, "all game-fowl, as pheasants, partridges, ducks, as also hares, are this day by proclamation forbidden to be dressed or eaten in any inn." Here we find realized the argument of Mr. Justice Best in favour of the game-laws.

It is evident that this severe restriction must have produced great inconvenience to certain persons who found a residence in London necessary for their pursuits. This appears from the manuscript diary of an honest antiquary, Sir Symonds D'Ewes; he has preserved an opinion which, no doubt, was spreading fast, that such prosecutions of the Attorney-General were a violation of the liberty of the subject. "Most men wondered at Mr. Noy, the Attorney-General, being accounted a great lawyer, that so strictly took away men's liberties at one blow, confining them to reside at their own houses, and not permitting them freedom to live where they pleased within the king's dominions. I was myself a little startled upon the first coming out of the proclamation; but having first spoken with the Lord Coventry, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, at Islington, when I visited him; and afterwards with Sir William Jones, one of the King's Justices of the Bench, about my condition and residence at the said town of Islington, and they both agreeing that I was not within the letter of the proclamation, nor the intention of it neither, I rested satisfied, and thought myself secure, laying in all my provisions for housekeeping for the year ensuing, and never imagined myself to be in danger, till this unexpected censure of Mr. Palmer passed in the Star Chamber; so, having advised with my friends, I resolved for a remove, being much troubled not only with my separation from Recordes, but with my wife, being great with child, fearing a winter journey might be dangerous to her."[242] He left Islington and the records in the Tower to return to his country-seat, to the great disturbance of his studies.

It is, perhaps, difficult to assign the cause of this marked anxiety of the government for the severe restriction of the limits of the metropolis, and the prosecution of the nobility and gentry to compel a residence on their estates. Whatever were the motives, they were not peculiar to the existing sovereign, but remained transmitted from cabinet to cabinet, and were even renewed under Charles the Second. At a time when the plague often broke out, a close and growing metropolis might have been considered to be a great evil; a terror expressed by the manuscript-writer before quoted, complaining of "this deluge of building, that we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces." The police of the metropolis was long imbecile, notwithstanding their "strong watches and guards" set at times; and bodies of the idle and the refractory often assumed some mysterious title, and were with difficulty governed. We may conceive the state of the police, when "London apprentices," growing in number and insolence, frequently made attempts on Bridewell, or pulled down houses. One day the citizens, in proving some ordnance, terrified the whole court of James the First with a panic that there was "a rising in the city." It is possible that the government might have been induced to pursue this singular conduct, for I do not know that it can be paralleled, of pulling down new-built houses by some principle of political economy which remains to be explained, or ridiculed, by our modern adepts. It would hardly be supposed that the present subject may be enlivened by a poem, the elegance and freedom of which may even now be admired. It is a great literary curiosity, and its length may be excused for several remarkable points.

AN ODE,

BY SIR RICHARD FANSHAW,

Upon Occasion of his Majesty's Proclamation in the Year 1630, commanding the Gentry to reside upon their Estates in the Country.

Now war is all the world about, And everywhere Erinnys reigns; Or of the torch so late put out The stench remains. Holland for many years hath been Of Christian tragedies the stage, Yet seldom hath she played a scene Of bloodier rage: And France, that was not long compos'd, With civil drums again resounds, And ere the old are fully clos'd, Receives new wounds. The great Gustavus in the west Plucks the imperial eagle's wing, Than whom the earth did ne'er invest A fiercer king. Only the island which we sow, A world without the world so far, From present wounds, it cannot show An ancient scar. White peace, the beautifull'st of things, Seems here her everlasting rest To fix and spread the downy wings Over the nest. As when great Jove, usurping reign, From the plagued world did her exile, And tied her with a golden chain To one blest isle, Which in a sea of plenty swam, And turtles sang on every bough, A safe retreat to all that came, As ours is now; Yet we, as if some foe were here, Leave the despised fields to clowns, And come to save ourselves, as 'twere In walled towns. Hither we bring wives, babes, rich clothes, And gems—till now my soveraign The growing evil doth oppose: Counting in vain His care preserves us from annoy Of enemies his realms to invade, Unless he force us to enjoy The peace he made, To roll themselves in envied leisure; He therefore sends the landed heirs, Whilst he proclaims not his own pleasure So much was theirs. The sap and blood of the land, which fled Into the root, and choked the heart, Are bid their quick'ning power to spread Through every part. O 'twas an act, not for my muse To celebrate, nor the dull age, Until the country air infuse A purer rage. And if the fields as thankful prove For benefits received, as seed, They will to 'quite so great a love A Virgil breed. Nor let the gentry grudge to go Into those places whence they grew, But think them blest they may do so. Who would pursue The smoky glory of the town, That may go till his native earth, And by the shining fire sit down Of his own hearth, Free from the griping scrivener's bands, And the more biting mercer's books; Free from the bait of oiled hands, And painted looks? The country too even chops for rain; You that exhale it by your power, Let the fat drops fall down again In a full shower. And you bright beauties of the time, That waste yourselves here in a blaze, Fix to your orb and proper clime Your wandering rays. Let no dark corner of the land Be unembellish'd with one gem, And those which here too thick do stand Sprinkle on them. Believe me, ladies, you will find In that sweet light more solid joys, More true contentment to the mind Than all town-toys. Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, But heads his shafts with chaster love, Not feather'd with a sparrow's quill, But of a dove. There you shall hear the nightingale, The harmless syren of the wood, How prettily she tells a tale Of rape and blood. The lyric lark, with all beside Of Nature's feather'd quire, and all The commonwealth of flowers in 'ts pride Behold you shall. The lily queen, the royal rose, The gilly-flower, prince of the blood! The courtier tulip, gay in clothes, The regal bud; The violet purple senator, How they do mock the pomp of state, And all that at the surly door Of great ones wait. Plant trees you may, and see them shoot Up with your children, to be served To your clean boards, and the fairest fruit To be preserved; And learn to use their several gums; 'Tis innocence in the sweet blood Of cherry, apricocks, and plums, To be imbrued.

FOOTNOTES:

[238] Morning Chronicle, January 23, 1820.

[239] A proclamation was issued in the first year of King James, "commanding gentlemen to depart the court and city," because it hinders hospitality and endangers the people near their own residences, "who had from such houses much comfort and ease toward their living." The King graciously says:—"He tooke no small contentment in the resort of gentlemen, and other our subjects coming to visit us, holding their affectionate desire to see our person to be a certaine testimonie of their inward love;" but he says he must not "give way to so great a mischiefe as the continuall resort may breed," and that therefore all that have no special cause of attendance must at once go back until the time of his coronation, when they may "returne until the solemnity be passed;" but only for that time, for if the proclamation be slighted he shall "make them an example of contempt if we shall finde any making stay here contrary to this direction." Such proclamations were from time to time issued, and though sometimes evaded, were frequently enforced by fines, so that living in London was a risk and danger to country gentlemen of fortune.

[240] Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 288.

[241] From a manuscript letter from Sir George Gresley to Sir Thomas Puckering, Nov. 1632.

[242] Harl. MSS. 6. fo. 152.



ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS.

The satires and the comedies of the age have been consulted by the historian of our manners, and the features of the times have been traced from those amusing records of folly. Daines Barrinton enlarged this field of domestic history in his very entertaining "Observations on the Statutes." Another source, which to me seems not to have been explored, is the proclamations which have frequently issued from our sovereigns, and were produced by the exigencies of the times.

These proclamations or royal edicts in our country were never armed with the force of laws—only as they enforce the execution of laws already established; and the proclamation of a British monarch may become even an illegal act, if it be in opposition to the law of the land. Once, indeed, it was enacted under the arbitrary government of Henry the Eighth, by the sanction of a pusillanimous parliament, that the force of acts of parliament should be given to the king's proclamations; and at a much later period the chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, was willing to have advanced the king's proclamations into laws, on the sophistical maxim that "all precedents had a time when they began;" but this chancellor argued ill, as he was told with spirit by Lord Coke, in the presence of James the First,[243] who probably did not think so ill of the chancellor's logic. Blackstone, to whom on this occasion I could not fail to turn, observes, on the statute under Henry the Eighth, that it would have introduced the most despotic tyranny, and must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily repealed in the minority of his successor, whom he elsewhere calls an amiable prince—all our young princes, we discover, were amiable! Blackstone has not recorded the subsequent attempt of the lord chancellor under James the First, which tended to raise proclamations to the nature of an ukase of the autocrat of both the Russias. It seems that our national freedom, notwithstanding our ancient constitution, has had several narrow escapes.

Royal proclamations, however, in their own nature are innocent enough; for since the manner, time, and circumstances of putting laws in execution must frequently be left to the discretion of the executive magistrate, a proclamation that is not adverse to existing laws need not create any alarm; the only danger they incur is that they seem never to have been attended to, and rather testified the wishes of the government than the compliance of the subjects. They were not laws, and were therefore considered as sermons or pamphlets, or anything forgotten in a week's time!

These proclamations are frequently alluded to by the letter-writers of the times among the news of the day, but usually their royal virtue hardly kept them alive beyond the week. Some on important subjects are indeed noticed in our history. Many indications of the situation of affairs, the feelings of the people, and the domestic history of our nation, may be drawn from these singular records. I have never found them to exist in any collected form, and they have been probably only accidentally preserved.[244]

The proclamations of every sovereign would characterize his reign, and open to us some of the interior operations of the cabinet. The despotic will, yet vacillating conduct of Henry the Eighth, towards the close of his reign, may be traced in a proclamation to abolish the translations of the scriptures, and even the reading of Bibles by the people; commanding all printers of English books and pamphlets to affix their names to them, and forbidding the sale of any English books printed abroad.[245] When the people were not suffered to publish their opinions at home, all the opposition flew to foreign presses, and their writings were then smuggled into the country in which they ought to have been printed. Hence, many volumes printed in a foreign type at this period are found in our collections. The king shrunk in dismay from that spirit of reformation which had only been a party business with him, and making himself a pope, decided that nothing should be learnt but what he himself deigned to teach!

The antipathies and jealousies which our populace too long indulged, by their incivilities to all foreigners, are characterised by a proclamation issued by Mary, commanding her subjects to behave themselves peaceably towards the strangers coming with King Philip; that noblemen and gentlemen should warn their servants to refrain from "strife and contention, either by outward deeds, taunting words, unseemly countenance, by mimicking them, &c." The punishment not only "her grace's displeasure, but to be committed to prison without bail or mainprise."

The proclamations of Edward the Sixth curiously exhibit the unsettled state of the reformation, where the rites and ceremonies of Catholicism were still practised by the new religionists, while an opposite party, resolutely bent on an eternal separation from Rome, were avowing doctrines which afterwards consolidated themselves into puritanism, and while others were hatching up that demoralising fanaticism which subsequently shocked the nation with those monstrous sects, the indelible, disgrace of our country! In one proclamation the king denounces to the people "those who despise the sacrament by calling it idol, or such other vile name." Another is against such "as innovate any ceremony," and who are described as "certain private preachers and other laiemen, who rashly attempt of their own and singular wit and mind, not only to persuade the people from the old and accustomed rites and ceremonies, but also themselves bring in new and strange orders according to their phantasies. The which, as it is an evident token of pride and arrogancy, so it tendeth both to confusion and disorder." Another proclamation, to press "a godly conformity throughout his realm," where we learn the following curious fact, of "divers unlearned and indiscreet priests of a devilish mind and intent, teaching that a man may forsake his wife and marry another, his first wife yet living; likewise that the wife may do the same to the husband. Others, that a man may have two wives or more at once, for that these things are not prohibited by God's law, but by the Bishop of Rome's law; so that by such evil and fantastical opinions some have not been afraid indeed to marry and keep two wives." Here, as in the bud, we may unfold those subsequent scenes of our story which spread out in the following century; the branching out of the non-conformists into their various sects; and the indecent haste of our reformed priesthood, who, in their zeal to cast off the yoke of Rome, desperately submitted to the liberty of having "two wives or more!" There is a proclamation to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays; exhorted on the principle, not only that "men should abstain on those days, and forbear their pleasures and the meats wherein they have more delight, to the intent to subdue their bodies to the soul and spirit, but also for worldly policy. To use fish, for the benefit of the commonwealth, and profit of many who be fishers and men using that trade, unto the which this realm, in every part environed with the seas, and so plentiful of fresh waters, be increased the nourishment of the land by saving flesh." It did not seem to occur to the king in council that the butchers might have had cause to petition against this monopoly of two days in the week granted to the fishmongers; and much less, that it was better to let the people eat flesh or fish as suited their conveniency. In respect to the religious rite itself, it was evidently not considered as an essential point of faith, since the king enforces it on the principle, "for the profit and commodity of his realm." Burnet has made a just observation on religious fasts.[246]

A proclamation against excess of apparel, in the reign of Elizabeth, and renewed many years after, shows the luxury of dress, which was indeed excessive.[247] There is a curious one against the iconoclasts, or image-breakers and picture-destroyers, for which the antiquary will hold her in high reverence. Her majesty informs us, that "several persons, ignorant, malicious, or covetous, of late years, have spoiled and broken ancient monuments, erected only to show a memory to posterity, and not to nourish any kind of superstition." The queen laments that what is broken and spoiled would be now hard to recover, but advises her good people to repair them; and commands them in future to desist from committing such injuries. A more extraordinary circumstance than the proclamation itself was the manifestation of her majesty's zeal, in subscribing her name with her own hand to every proclamation dispersed throughout England. These image-breakers first appeared in Elizabeth's reign; it was afterwards that they flourished in all the perfection of their handicraft, and have contrived that these monuments of art shall carry down to posterity the memory of their SHAME and of their age. These image-breakers, so famous in our history, had already appeared under Henry the Eighth, and continued their practical zeal, in spite of proclamations and remonstrances, till they had accomplished their work. In 1641 an order was published by the Commons, that they should "take away all scandalous pictures out of churches:" but more was intended than was expressed; and we are told that the people did not at first carry their barbarous practice against all Art to the lengths which they afterwards did, till they were instructed by private information! Dowsing's Journal has been published, and shows what the order meant! He was their giant destroyer! Such are the Machiavelian secrets of revolutionary governments; they give a public order in moderate words, but the secret one, for the deeds, is that of extermination! It was this sort of men who discharged their prisoners by giving a secret sign to lead them to their execution!

The proclamations of James the First, by their number, are said to have sunk their value with the people.[248] He was fond of giving them gentle advice; and it is said by Wilson that there was an intention to have this king's printed proclamations bound up in a volume, that better notice might be taken of the matters contained in them. There is more than one to warn the people against "speaking too freely of matters above their reach," prohibiting all "undutiful speeches." I suspect that many of these proclamations are the composition of the king's own hand; he was often his own secretary. There is an admirable one against private duels and challenges. The curious one respecting Cowell's "Interpreter" is a sort of royal review of some of the arcana of state: I refer to the quotation.[249]

I will preserve a passage of a proclamation "against excess of lavish and licentious speech." James was a king of words!

"Although the commixture of nations, confluence of ambassadors, and the relation which the affairs of our kingdoms have had towards the business and interests of foreign states have caused, during our regiment (government) a greater openness and liberty of discourse, even concerning MATTERS OF STATE (which are no themes or subjects fit for vulgar persons or common meetings), than hath been in former times used or permitted; and although in our own nature and judgment we do well allow of convenient freedom of speech, esteeming any over-curious or restrained hands carried in that kind rather as a weakness, or else over-much severity of government than otherwise; yet for as much as it is come to our ears, by common report, that there is at this time a more licentious passage of lavish discourse and bold censure in matters of state than is fit to be suffered: We give this warning, &c., to take heed how they intermeddle by pen or speech with causes of state and secrets of empire, either at home or abroad, but contain themselves within that modest and reverent regard of matters above their reach and calling; nor to give any manner of applause to such discourse, without acquainting one of our privy council within the space of twenty-four hours."

It seems that "the bold speakers," as certain persons were then denominated, practised an old artifice of lauding his majesty, while they severely arraigned the counsels of the cabinet; on this James observes, "Neither let any man mistake us so much as to think that by giving fair and specious attributes to our person, they cover the scandals which they otherwise lay upon our government, but conceive that we make no other construction of them but as fine and artificial glosses, the better to give passage to the rest of their imputations and scandals."

This was a proclamation in the eighteenth year of his reign; he repeated it in the nineteenth, and he might have proceeded to "the crack of doom" with the same effect!

Rushworth, in his second volume of Historical Collections, has preserved a considerable number of the proclamations of Charles the First, of which many are remarkable; but latterly they mark the feverish state of his reign. One regulates access for cure of the king's evil—by which his majesty, it appears, "hath had good success therein;" but though ready and willing as any king or queen of this realm ever was to relieve the distresses of his good subjects, "his majesty commands to change the seasons for his 'sacred touch' from Easter and Whitsuntide to Easter and Michaelmas, as times more convenient for the temperature of the season," &c. Another against "departure out of the realm without license." One to erect an office "for the suppression of cursing and swearing," to receive the forfeitures; against "libellous and seditious pamphlets and discourses from Scotland," framed by factious spirits, and republished in London—this was in 1640; and Charles, at the crisis of that great insurrection in which he was to be at once the actor and the spectator, fondly imagined that the possessors of these "scandalous" pamphlets would bring them, as he proclaimed "to one of his majesty's justices of peace, to be by him sent to one of his principal secretaries of state!"

On the Restoration, Charles the Second had to court his people by his domestic regulations. He early issued a remarkable proclamation, which one would think reflected on his favourite companions, and which strongly marks the moral disorders of those depraved and wretched times. It is against "vicious, debauched, and profane persons!" who are thus described:—

"A sort of men of whom we have heard much, and are sufficiently ashamed; who spend their time in taverns, tippling-houses and debauches; giving no other evidence of their affection to us but in drinking our health, and inveighing against all others who are not of their own dissolute temper; and who, in truth, have more discredited our cause, by the license of their manners and lives, than they could ever advance it by their affection or courage. We hope all persons of honour, or in place and authority, will so far assist us in discountenancing such men, that their discretion and shame will persuade them to reform what their conscience would not; and that the displeasure of good men towards them may supply what the laws have not, and, it may be, cannot well provide against; there being by the license and corruption of the times, and the depraved nature of man, many enormities, scandals, and impieties in practice and manners, which laws cannot well describe, and consequently not enough provide against, which may, by the example and severity of virtuous men, be easily discountenanced, and by degrees suppressed."

Surely the gravity and moral severity of Clarendon dictated this proclamation! which must have afforded some mirth to the gay, debauched circle, the loose cronies of royalty!

It is curious that, in 1660, Charles the Second issued a long proclamation for the strict observance of Lent, and alleges for it the same reason as we found in Edward the Sixth's proclamation, "for the good it produces in the employment of fishermen" No ordinaries, taverns, &c., to make any supper on Friday nights, either in Lent or out of Lent.

Charles the Second issued proclamations "to repress the excess of gilding of coaches and chariots," to restrain the waste of gold, which, as they supposed, by the excessive use of gilding, had grown scarce. Against "the exportation and the buying and selling of gold and silver at higher rates than in our mint," alluding to a statute made in the ninth year of Edward the Third, called the Statute of Money. Against building in and about London and Westminster, in 1661: "The inconveniences daily growing by increase of new buildings are, that the people increasing in such great numbers, are not well to be governed by the wonted officers: the prices of victuals are enhanced; the health of the subject inhabiting the cities much endangered, and many good towns and boroughs unpeopled, and in their trades much decayed—frequent fires occasioned by timber-buildings." It orders to build with brick and stone, "which would beautify, and make an uniformity in the buildings; and which are not only more durable and safe against fire, but by experience are found to be of little more if not less charge than the building with timber." We must infer that, by the general use of timber, it had considerably risen in price, while brick and stone not then being generally used, became as cheap as wood![250]

The most remarkable proclamations of Charles the Second are those which concern the regulations of coffee-houses, and one for putting them down;[251] to restrain the spreading of false news, and licentious talking of state and government, the speakers and the hearers were made alike punishable. This was highly resented as an illegal act by the friends of civil freedom; who, however, succeeded in obtaining the freedom of the coffee-houses, under the promise of not sanctioning treasonable speeches. It was urged by the court lawyers, as the high Tory, Roger North, tells us, that the retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, when not used in the nature of a common assembly to discourse of matters of state news and great persons, as a means "to discontent the people." On the other side, Kennet asserted that the discontents existed before they met at the coffee-houses, and that the proclamation was only intended to suppress an evil which was not to be prevented. At this day we know which of those two historians exercised the truest judgment. It was not the coffee-houses which produced political feeling, but the reverse. Whenever government ascribes effects to a cause quite inadequate to produce them, they are only seeking means to hide the evil which they are too weak to suppress.

FOOTNOTES:

[243] The whole story is in 12 Co. 746. I owe this curious fact to the author of Eunomus, ii. 116.

[244] A quarto volume was published by Barker, the king's printer, and is entitled "A Booke of Proclamations Published since the beginning of his Majestie's most happy Reign over England, until this present month of Feb. 1609." It contains 110 in all. The Society of Antiquaries of London possesses at the present time the largest and most perfect collection of royal proclamations in existence, brought together since the above was written. They are on separate broadsheets, as issued.

[245] In 1529 the king had issued a proclamation for resisting and withstanding of most dampnable heresyes sowen within the realme by the discyples of Luther and other "heretykes, perverters of Christes relygyon." In June, 1530, this was followed by the proclamation "for dampning (or condemning) of erronious bokes and heresies, and prohibitinge the havinge of holy scripture translated into the vulgar tonges of englishe, frenche, or dutche," he notes many bookes "printed beyonde the see" which he will not allow, "that is to say, the boke called the wicked Mammona, the boke named the Obedience of a Christen Man, the Supplication of Beggars, and the boke called the Revelation of Antichrist, the Summary of Scripture, and divers other bokes made in the Englishe tongue," in fact all books in the vernacular not issued by native printers. "And that having respect to the malignity of this present tyme, with the inclination of people to erronious opinions, the translation of the newe testament and the old into the vulgar tonge of englysshe, shulde rather be the occasion of contynuance or increase of errours amonge the said people, than any benefit or commodite toward the weale of their soules," and he determines therefore that the scriptures shall only be expounded to the people as heretofore, and that these books "be clerely extermynate and exiled out of this realme of Englande for ever."

[246] History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 96, folio.

[247] In June, 1574, the queen issued from her "Manour of Greenwich" this proclamation against "excesse of apparel, and the superfluitie of unnecessarye foreign wares thereto belonginge," which is declared to have "growen by sufferance to such an extremetie, that the manifest decay, not only of a great part of the wealth of the whole realme generally, is like to follow by bringing into the realme such superfluities of silkes, clothes of gold, sylver, and other most vaine devices, of so greate coste for the quantitie thereof; as of necessitie the moneyes and treasure of the realme is, and must be, yeerely conveyed out of the same." This is followed by three folio leaves minutely describing what may be worn on the dresses of every grade of persons; descending to such minutiae as to note what classes are not to be allowed to put lace, or fringes, or borders of velvet upon their gowns and petticoats, under pain of fine or punishment, because improper for their station, and above their means. The order appears to have been evaded, for it was followed by another in February, 1580, which recapitulates these prohibitions, and renders them more stringent.

[248] The list of a very few of those issued at the early part of his reign may illustrate this. In 1604 was published a "Proclamation for the true winding or folding of wools," as well as one "For the due regulation of prices of victuals within the verge of Kent." In 1605, "Against certain calumnious surmises concerning the church government of Scotland." In 1608, "A proclamation against making starch." In 1612, "That none buy or sell any bullion of gold and silver at higher prices than is appointed to be paid for the same." Another against dying silk with slip or any corrupt stuff. In 1613, for "Prohibiting the untimely bringing in of wines," as well as for "Prohibiting the publishing of any reports or writings of duels," and also "The importation of felt hats or caps." In 1615, "Prohibiting the making of glass with timber or wood," because "of late yeeres the waste of wood and timber hath been exceeding great and intolerable, by the glassehouses and glasseworkes of late in divers parts erected," and which his majesty fears may have the effect of depriving England of timber to construct her navy!

[249] I have noticed it in Calamities of Authors.

[250] Lilly, the astrologer, in his memoirs, notes that Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (the famous collector of the Arundelian marbles now at Oxford), "brought over the new way of building with brick in the city, greatly to the safety of the city, and preservation of the wood of this nation."

[251] This proclamation "for the suppression of coffee-houses" bears date December 20, 1675, and is stated to have been issued because "the multitude of coffee-houses, lately set up and kept within this kingdom, and the great resort of idle and dissipated persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects," particularly in spreading of rumours, and inducing tradesmen to neglect their calling, tending to the danger of the commonweal, by the idle waste of time and money. It therefore orders all coffee-house keepers "that they, or any of them, do not presume from and after the tenth day of January next ensuing, to keep any publick coffee-house, or utter, or sell by retail, in his, her, or their house, or houses (to be spent or consumed within the same), any coffee, chocolate, sherbett, or tea; as they will answer it at their utmost peril."



TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY.

This is a subject which has been hitherto but imperfectly comprehended even by some historians themselves; and has too often incurred the satire, and even the contempt, of those volatile spirits who play about the superficies of truth, wanting the industry to view it on more than one side, and those superficial readers who imagine that every tale is told when it is written.

Secret history is the supplement of history itself, and is its great corrector; and the combination of secret with public history has in itself a perfection, which each taken separately has not. The popular historian composes a plausible rather than an accurate tale; researches too fully detailed would injure the just proportions, or crowd the bold design, of the elegant narrative; and facts, presented as they occurred, would not adapt themselves to those theoretical writers of history who arrange events not in a natural, but in a systematic order. But in secret history we are more busied in observing what passes than in being told of it. We are transformed into the contemporaries of the writers, while we are standing on the "vantage ground" of their posterity; and thus what to them appeared ambiguous, to us has become unquestionable; what was secret to them has been confided to us. They mark the beginnings, and we the ends. From the fulness of their accounts we recover much which had been lost to us in the general views of history, and it is by this more intimate acquaintance with persons and circumstances that we are enabled to correct the less distinct, and sometimes the fallacious appearances in the page of the popular historian. He who only views things in masses will have no distinct notion of any one particular; he may be a fanciful or a passionate historian, but he is not the historian who will enlighten while he charms.

But as secret history appears to deal in minute things, its connexion with great results is not usually suspected. The circumstantiality of its story, the changeable shadows of its characters, the redundance of its conversations, and the many careless superfluities which egotism or vanity may throw out, seem usually confounded with that small-talk familiarly termed gossiping. But the gossiping of a profound politician or a vivacious observer, in one of their letters, or in their memoirs, often, by a spontaneous stroke, reveals the individual, or by a simple incident unriddles a mysterious event. We may discover the value of these pictures of human nature, with which secret history abounds, by an observation which occurred between two statesmen in office. Lord Raby, our ambassador, apologised to Lord Bolingbroke, then secretary of state, for troubling him with the minuter circumstances which occurred in his conferences; in reply, the minister requests the ambassador to continue the same manner of writing, and alleges an excellent reason: "Those minute circumstances give very great light to the general scope and design of the persons negotiated with. And I own that nothing pleases me more in that valuable collection of the Cardinal D'Ossat's letters, than the naive descriptions which he gives of the looks, gestures, and even tones of voice, of the persons he conferred with." I regret to have to record the opinions of another noble author, who recently has thrown out some degrading notions of secret history, and particularly of the historians. I would have silently passed by a vulgar writer, superficial, prejudiced, and uninformed, but as so many are yet deficient in correct notions of secret history, it is but justice that their representative should be heard before they are condemned.

His lordship says, that "Of late the appetite for Remains of all kinds has surprisingly increased. A story repeated by the Duchess of Portsmouth's waiting-woman to Lord Rochester's valet forms the subject of investigation for a philosophical historian; and you may hear of an assembly of scholars and authors discussing the validity of a piece of scandal invented by a maid of honour more than two centuries ago, and repeated to an obscure writer by Queen Elizabeth's housekeeper. It is a matter of the greatest interest to see the letters of every busy trifler. Yet who does not laugh at such men?" This is the attack! but as if some half truths, like light through the cranny in a dark room, had just darted in a stream of atoms over this scoffer at secret history, he suddenly views his object with a very different appearance—for his lordship justly concludes that "It must be confessed, however, that knowledge of this kind is very entertaining; and here and there among the rubbish we find hints that may give the philosopher a clue to important facts, and afford to the moralist a better analysis of the human mind than a whole library of metaphysics!" The philosopher may well abhor all intercourse with wits! because the faculty of judgment is usually quiescent with them; and in their orgasm they furiously decry what in their sober senses they as eagerly laud! Let me inform his lordship, that "the waiting-woman and the valet" of eminent persons are sometimes no unimportant personages in history. By the Memoires de Mons. de la Porte, premier valet-de-chambre de Louis XIV., we learn what before "the valet" wrote had not been known—the shameful arts which Mazarin allowed to be practised, to give a bad education to the prince, and to manage him by depraving his tastes. Madame de Motteville, in her Memoirs, "the waiting lady" of our Henrietta, has preserved for our own English history some facts which have been found so essential to the narrative, that they are referred to by our historians. In Gui Joly, the humble dependant of Cardinal de Retz, we discover an unconscious but a useful commentator on the memoirs of his master; and the most affecting personal anecdotes of Charles the First have been preserved by Thomas Herbert, his gentleman in waiting; Clery, the valet of Louis the Sixteenth, with pathetic faithfulness, has shown us the man in the monarch whom he served!

Of SECRET HISTORY there are obviously two species; it is positive, or it is relative. It is positive, when the facts are first given to the world; a sort of knowledge which can only be drawn from our own personal experience, or from contemporary documents preserved in their manuscript state in public or in private collections; or it is relative, in proportion to the knowledge of those to whom it is communicated, and will be more or less valued according to the acquisitions of the reader; and this inferior species of secret history is drawn from rare and obscure books and other published authorities, often as scarce as manuscripts.

Some experience I have had in those literary researches, where cusiosity, ever wakeful and vigilant, discovers among contemporary manuscripts new facts; illustrations of old ones; and sometimes detects, not merely by conjecture, the concealed causes of many events; often opens a scene in which some well-known personage is exhibited in a new character; and thus penetrates beyond those generalising representations which satisfy the superficial, and often cover the page of history with delusion and fiction.

It is only since the latter institution of national libraries that these immense collections of manuscripts have been formed; with us they are an undescribable variety, usually classed under the vague title of "state-papers."[252] The instructions of ambassadors, but more particularly their own dispatches; charters and chronicles brown with antiquity, which preserve a world which had been else lost for us, like the one before the deluge; series upon series of private correspondence, among which we discover the most confidential communications, designed by the writers to have been destroyed by the hand which received them; memoirs of individuals by themselves or by their friends, such as are now published by the pomp of vanity, or the faithlessness of their possessors; and the miscellaneous collections formed by all kinds of persons, characteristic of all countries and of all eras, materials for the history of man!—records of the force or of the feebleness of the human understanding, and still the monuments of their passions.

The original collectors of these dispersed manuscripts were a race of ingenious men, silent benefactors of mankind, to whom justice has not yet been fully awarded; but in their fervour of accumulation, everything in a manuscript state bore its spell; acquisition was the sole point aimed at by our early collectors, and to this these searching spirits sacrificed their fortunes, their ease, and their days; but life would have been too short to have decided on the intrinsic value of the manuscripts flowing in a stream to the collectors; and suppression, even of the disjointed reveries of madmen, or the sensible madness of projectors, might have been indulging a capricious taste, or what has proved more injurious to historical pursuits, that party-feeling which has frequently annihilated the memorials of their adversaries.[253]

These manuscript collections now assume a formidable appearance. A toilsome march over these "Alps rising over Alps!" a voyage in "a sea without a shore!" has turned away most historians from their severer duties; those who have grasped at early celebrity have been satisfied to have given a new form to, rather than contributed to the new matter of history. The very sight of these masses of history has terrified some modern historians. When Pere Daniel undertook a history of France, the learned Boivin, the king's librarian, opened for his inspection an immense treasure of charters, and another of royal autograph letters, and another of private correspondence; treasures reposing in fourteen hundred folios! The modern historian passed two hours impatiently looking over them, but frightened at another plunge into the gulf, this Curtius of history would not immolate himself for his country! He wrote a civil letter to the librarian for his "supernumerary kindness," but insinuated that he could write a very readable history without any further aid of such paperasses or "paper-rubbish." Pere Daniel, therefore, "quietly sat down to his history," copying others—a compliment which was never returned by any one: but there was this striking novelty in his "readable history," that according to the accurate computation of Count Boulainvilliers, Pere Daniel's history of France contains ten thousand blunders! The same circumstance has been told me by a living historian of the late Gilbert Stuart; who, on some manuscript volumes of letters being pointed out to him when composing his history of Scotland, confessed that "what was already printed was more than he was able to read!" and thus much for his theoretical history, written to run counter to another theoretical history, being Stuart versus Robertson! They equally depend on the simplicity of their readers, and the charms of style! Another historian, Anquetil, the author of L'Esprit de la Ligue, has described his embarrassment at an inspection of the contemporary manuscripts of that period. After thirteen years of researches to glean whatever secret history printed books afforded, the author, residing in the country, resolved to visit the royal library at Paris. Monsieur Melot receiving him with that kindness which is one of the official duties of the public librarian towards the studious, opened the cabinets in which were deposited the treasures of French history.—"This is what you require! come here at all times, and you shall be attended!" said the librarian to the young historian, who stood by with a sort of shudder, while he opened cabinet after cabinet. The intrepid investigator repeated his visits, looking over the mass as chance directed, attacking one side, and then flying to another. The historian, who had felt no weariness during thirteen years among printed books, discovered that he was now engaged in a task apparently always beginning, and never ending! The "Esprit de la Ligue" was however enriched by labours which at the moment appeared so barren.

The study of these paperasses is not perhaps so disgusting as the impatient Pere Daniel imagined; there is a literary fascination in looking over the same papers which the great characters of history once held and wrote on; catching from themselves their secret sentiments; and often detecting so many of their unrecorded actions! By habit the toil becomes light; and with a keen inquisitive spirit even delightful! For what is more delightful to the curious than to make fresh discoveries every day? Addison has a true and pleasing observation on such pursuits. "Our employments are converted into amusements, so that even in those objects which were indifferent, or even displeasing to us, the mind not only gradually loses its aversion, but conceives a certain fondness and affection for them." Addison illustrates this case by one of the greatest geniuses of the age, who by habit took incredible pleasure in searching into rolls and records, till he preferred them to Virgil and Cicero! The faculty of curiosity is as fervid, and even as refined in its search after truth, as that of taste in the objects of imagination; and the more it is indulged, the more exquisitely it is enjoyed!

The popular historians of England and of France have, in truth, made little use of manuscript researches. Life is very short for long histories; and those who rage with an avidity of fame or profit will gladly taste the fruit which they cannot mature. Researches too remotely sought after, or too slowly acquired, or too fully detailed, would be so many obstructions in the smooth texture of a narrative. Our theoretical historians write from some particular and preconceived result; unlike Livy, and De Thou, and Machiavel, who describe events in their natural order, these cluster them together by the fanciful threads of some political or moral theory, by which facts are distorted, displaced, and sometimes altogether omitted! One single original document has sometimes shaken into dust their Palladian edifice of history. At the moment Hume was sending some sheets of his history to press, Murdin's State Papers appeared. And we are highly amused and instructed by a letter of our historian to his rival, Robertson, who probably found himself often in the same forlorn situation. Our historian discovered in that collection what compelled him to retract his preconceived system—he hurries to stop the press, and paints his confusion and his anxiety with all the ingenuous simplicity of his nature. "We are all in the wrong!" he exclaims. Of Hume I have heard that certain manuscripts at the State Paper Office had been prepared for his inspection during a fortnight, but he never could muster courage to pay his promised visit. Satisfied with the common accounts, and the most obvious sources of history, when librarian at the Advocates' Library, where yet may be examined the books he used, marked by his hand, he spread the volumes about the sofa, from which he rarely rose to pursue obscure inquiries, or delay by fresh difficulties the page which every day was growing under his charming pen. A striking proof of his careless happiness I discovered in his never referring to the perfect edition of "Whitelocke's Memorials" of 1732, but to the old truncated and faithless one of 1682.

Dr. Birch was a writer with no genius for composition, but one to whom British history stands more indebted than to any superior author; his incredible love of labour, in transcribing with his own hand a large library of manuscripts from originals dispersed in public and in private repositories, has enriched the British Museum by thousands of the most authentic documents of genuine secret history. He once projected a collection of original historical letters, for which he had prepared a preface, where I find the following passage:—"It is a more important service to the public to contribute something not before known to the general fund of history, than to give new form and colour to what we are already possessed of, by superadding refinement and ornament, which too often tend to disguise the real state of the facts; a fault not to be atoned for by the pomp of style, or even the fine eloquence of the historian." This was an oblique stroke aimed at Robertson, to whom Birch had generously opened the stores of history, for the Scotch historian had needed all his charity; but Robertson's attractive inventions and highly-finished composition seduce the public taste; and we may forgive the latent spark of envy in the honest feelings of the man, who was profoundly skilled in delving in the native beds of ore, but not in fashioning it; and whose own neglected historical works, constructed on the true principles of secret history, we may often turn over to correct the erroneous, the prejudiced, and the artful accounts of those who have covered their faults by "the pomp of style, and the eloquence of the historian."

The large manuscript collections of original documents, from whence may be drawn what I have called positive secret history, are, as I observed, comparatively of modern existence. Formerly they were widely dispersed in private hands; and the nature of such sources of historic discovery but rarely occurred to our writers. Even had they sought them, their access must have been partial and accidental. Lord Hardwicke has observed, that there are still many untouched manuscript collections within these kingdoms, which, through the ignorance or inattention of their owners, are condemned to dust and obscurity; but how valuable and essential they may be to the interests of authentic history and of sacred truth, cannot be more strikingly demonstrated than in the recent publications of the Marlborough and the Shrewsbury Papers by Archdeacon Coxe.[254] The editor was fully authorised to observe, "It is singular that those transactions should either have been passed over in silence, or imperfectly represented by most of our national historians." Our modern history would have been a mere political romance, without the astonishing picture of William and his ministers, exhibited in those unquestionable documents. Burnet was among the first of our modern historians who showed the world the preciousness of such materials, in his "History of the Reformation," which he largely drew from the Cottonian collection. Our early historians only repeated a tale ten times told. Milton, who wanted not for literary diligence, had no fresh stores to open for his "History of England;" while Hume despatches, comparatively in a few pages, a subject which has afforded to the fervent diligence of my learned friend Sharon Turner volumes precious to the antiquary, the lawyer, and the philosopher.

To illustrate my idea of the usefulness and of the absolute necessity of SECRET HISTORY, I fix first on a public event, and secondly on a public character; both remarkable in our own modern history, and both serving to expose the fallacious appearances of popular history by authorities indisputably genuine. The event is the Restoration of Charles the Second; and the character is that of Mary, the queen of William the Third.

In history the Restoration of Charles appears in all its splendour—the king is joyfully received at Dover, and the shore is covered by his subjects on their knees—crowds of the great hurry to Canterbury—the army is drawn up, in number and with a splendour that had never been equalled—his enthusiastic reception is on his birthday, for that was the lucky day fixed on for his entrance into the metropolis—in a word, all that is told in history describes a monarch the most powerful and the most happy. One of the tracts of the day, entitled "England's Triumph," in the mean quaintness of the style of the times, tells us that "The soldiery, who had hitherto made clubs trump, resolve now to enthrone the king of hearts." Turn to the faithful memorialist, who so well knew the secrets of the king's heart, and who was himself an actor behind the curtain; turn to Clarendon, in his own Life, and we shall find that the power of the king was then as dubious as when he was an exile; and his feelings were so much racked, that he had nearly resolved on a last flight.

Clarendon, in noticing the temper and spirit of that time, observes, "Whoever reflects upon all this composition of contradictory wishes and expectations, must confess that the king was not yet the master of the kingdom, nor his authority and security such as the general noise and acclamation, the bells and the bonfires, proclaimed it to be."—"The first mortification the king met with as soon as he arrived at Canterbury, within three hours after he landed at Dover." Clarendon then relates how many the king found there, who, while they waited with joy to kiss his hand, also came with importunate solicitations for themselves; forced him to give them present audience, in which they reckoned up the insupportable losses undergone by themselves or their fathers; demanding some grant, or promise of such or such offices; some even for more! "pressing for two or three with such confidence and importunity, and with such tedious discourses, that the king was extremely nauseated with their suits, though his modesty knew not how to break from them; that he no sooner got into his chamber, which for some hours he was not able to do, than he lamented the condition to which he found he must be subject; and did, in truth, from that minute, contract such a prejudice against some of those persons." But a greater mortification was to follow, and one which had nearly thrown the king into despair.

General Monk had from the beginning to this instant acted very mysteriously, never corresponding with nor answering a letter of the king's, so that his majesty was frequently doubtful whether the general designed to act for himself or for the king: an ambiguous conduct which I attribute to the power his wife had over him, who was in the opposite interest. The general, in his rough way, presented him a large paper, with about seventy names for his privy council, of which not more than two were acceptable. "The king," says Clarendon, "was in more than ordinary confusion, for he knew not well what to think of the general, in whose absolute power he was—so that at this moment his majesty was almost alarmed at the demand and appearance of things." The general afterwards undid this unfavourable appearance, by acknowledging that the list was drawn up by his wife, who had made him promise to present it; but he permitted his majesty to act as he thought proper. At that moment General Monk was more king than Charles.

We have not yet concluded. When Charles met the army at Blackheath, 50,000 strong, "he knew well the ill constitution of the army, the distemper and murmuring that was in it, and how many diseases and convulsions their infant loyalty was subject to; that how united soever their inclinations and acclamations seemed to be at Blackheath, their affections were not the same—and the very countenances there of many officers, as well as soldiers, did sufficiently manifest that they were drawn thither to a service they were not delighted in. The old soldiers had little regard for their new officers; and it quickly appeared, by the select and affected mixtures of sullen and melancholic parties of officers and soldiers."—And then the chancellor of human nature adds, "And in this melancholic and perplexed condition the king and all his hopes stood, when he appeared most gay and exalted, and wore a pleasantness in his face that became him, and looked like as full an assurance of his security as was possible to put on." It is imagined that Louis the Eighteenth would be the ablest commentator on this piece of secret history, and add another twin to Pierre de Saint Julien's "Gemelles ou Pareiles," an old French treatise of histories which resemble one another: a volume so scarce, that I have never met with it.

Burnet informs us, that when Queen Mary held the administration of government during the absence of William, it was imagined by some, that as "every woman of sense loved to be meddling, they concluded that she had but a small portion of it, because she lived so abstracted from all affairs." He praises her exemplary behaviour; "regular in her devotions, much in her closet, read a great deal, was often busy at work, and seemed to employ her time and thoughts in anything rather than matters of state. Her conversation was lively and obliging; everything in her was easy and natural. The king told the Earl of Shrewsbury, that though he could not hit on the right way of pleasing England, he was confident she would, and that we should all be very happy under her." Such is the miniature of the queen which Burnet offers; we see nothing but her tranquillity, her simplicity, and her carelessness, amidst the important transactions passing under her eye; but I lift the curtain from a larger picture. The distracted state amidst which the queen lived, the vexations, the secret sorrows, the agonies and the despair of Mary in the absence of William, nowhere appear in history! and as we see, escaped the ken of the Scotch bishop! They were reserved for the curiosity and instruction of posterity; and were found by Dalrymple, in the letters of Mary to her husband, in King William's cabinet. It will be well to place under the eye of the reader the suppressed cries of this afflicted queen at the time when "everything in her was so easy and natural, employing her time and thoughts in anything rather than matters of state—often busy at work!"

I shall not dwell on the pangs of the queen for the fate of William—or her deadly suspicions that many were unfaithful about her; a battle lost might have been fatal; a conspiracy might have undone what even a victory had obtained; the continual terrors she endured were such, that we might be at a loss to determine who suffered most, those who had been expelled from, or those who had ascended the throne.

So far was the queen from not "employing her thoughts" on "matters of state," that every letter, usually written towards evening, chronicles the conflicts of the day; she records not only events, but even dialogues and personal characteristics; hints her suspicions, and multiplies her fears; her attention was incessant—"I never write but what I think others do not;" and her terrors were as ceaseless,—"I pray God send you back quickly, for I see all breaking out into flames." The queen's difficulties were not eased by a single confidential intercourse. On one occasion she observes, "As I do not know what I ought to speak, and when not, I am as silent as can be." "I ever fear not doing well, and trust to what nobody says but you. It seems to me that every one is afraid of themselves.—I am very uneasy in one thing, which is want of somebody to speak my mind freely to, for it's a great constraint to think and be silent; and there is so much matter, that I am one of Solomon's fools, who am ready to burst. I must tell you again how Lord Monmouth endeavours to frighten me, and indeed things have but a melancholy prospect." She had indeed reasons to fear Lord Monmouth, who, it appears, divulged all the secrets of the royal councils to Major Wildman, who was one of our old republicans; and, to spread alarm in the privy council, conveyed in lemon-juice all their secrets to France, often on the very day they had passed in council! They discovered the fact, and every one suspected the other as the traitor! Lord Lincoln even once assured her, that "the Lord President and all in general, who are in trust, were rogues." Her council was composed of factions, and the queen's suspicions were rather general than particular: for she observes on them, "Till now I thought you had given me wrong characters of men; but now I see they answer my expectation of being as little of a mind as of a body."—For a final extract, take this full picture of royal misery—"I must see company on my set days; I must play twice a week; nay, I must laugh and talk, though never so much against my will: I believe I dissemble very ill to those who know me; at least, it is a great constraint to myself, yet I must endure it. All my motions are so watched, and all I do so observed, that if I eat less, or speak less, or look more grave, all is lost in the opinion of the world; so that I have this misery added to that of your absence, that I must grin when my heart is ready to break, and talk when my heart is so oppressed that I can scarce breathe. I go to Kensington as often as I can for air; but then I never can be quite alone, neither can I complain—that would be some ease; but I have nobody whose humour and circumstances agree with mine enough to speak my mind freely to. Besides, I must hear of business, which being a thing I am so new in, and so unfit for, does but break my brains the more, and not ease my heart."

Thus different from the representation of Burnet was the actual state of Queen Mary: and I suspect that our warm and vehement bishop had but little personal knowledge of her majesty, notwithstanding the elaborate character of the queen which he has given in her funeral eulogium. He must have known that she did not always sympathise with his party-feelings: for the queen writes, "The Bishop of Salisbury has made a long thundering sermon this morning, which he has been with me to desire to print; which I could not refuse, though I should not have ordered it, for reasons which I told him." Burnet (whom I am very far from calling what an inveterate Tory, Edward Earl of Oxford, does in one of his manuscript notes, "that lying Scot") unquestionably has told many truths in his garrulous page; but the cause in which he stood so deeply engaged, coupled to his warm sanguine temper, may have sometimes dimmed his sagacity, so as to have caused him to have mistaken, as in the present case, a mask for a face, particularly at a time when almost every individual appears to have worn one!

Both these cases of Charles the Second and Queen Mary show the absolute necessity of researches into secret history, to correct the appearances and the fallacies which so often deceive us in public history.

"The appetite for Remains," as the noble author whom I have already alluded to calls it, may then be a very wholesome one, if it provide the only materials by which our popular histories can be corrected, and since it often infuses a freshness into a story which, after having been copied from book to book, inspires another to tell it for the tenth time! Thus are the sources of secret history unsuspected by the idler and the superficial, among those masses of untouched manuscripts—that subterraneous history!—which indeed may terrify the indolent, bewilder the inexperienced, and confound the injudicious, if they have not acquired the knowledge which not only decides on facts and opinions, but on the authorities which have furnished them. Popular historians have written to their readers; each with different views, but all alike form the open documents of history; like feed advocates, they declaim, or like special pleaders, they keep only on one side of their case: they are seldom zealous to push on their cross-examination; for they come to gain their cause, and not to hazard it!

Time will make the present age as obsolete as the last, for our sons will cast a new light over the ambiguous scenes which distract their fathers; they will know how some things happened for which we cannot account; they will bear witness to how many characters we have mistaken; they will be told many of those secrets which our contemporaries hide from us; they will pause at the ends of our beginnings; they will read the perfect story of man, which can never be told while it is proceeding. All this is the possession of posterity, because they will judge without our passions; and all this we ourselves have been enabled to possess by the secret history of the last two ages![255]

FOOTNOTES:

[252] The large mass of important documents in the National State-paper Office has recently been made available to the use of the historic student, with the best results, and cannot fail to have important influence on the future historic literature of the country.

[253] See what I have said of "Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manuscripts," vol. ii. p. 443.

[254] The "Conway Papers" remain unpublished. From what I have already been favoured with the sight of, I may venture to predict that our history may receive from them some important accession. The reader may find a lively summary of the contents of these Papers in Horace Walpole's account of his visit to Ragley, in his letter to George Montague, 20th August, 1758. The Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, with whom the Marquis of Hertford had placed the disposal of the Conway Papers, is also in possession of the Throckmorton Papers, of which the reader may likewise observe a particular notice in Sir Henry Wotton's will, in Izaak Walton's Lives. Unsunned treasures lie in the State-paper office.

[255] Since this article has been sent to press I rise from reading one in the Edinburgh Review on Lord Orford's and Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs. This is one of the very rare articles which could only come from the hand of a master long exercised in the studies he criticises. The critic, or rather the historian, observes, that "of a period remarkable for the establishment of our present system of government, no authentic materials had yet appeared. Events of public notoriety are to be found, though often inaccurately told, in our common histories; but the secret springs of action, the private views and motives of individuals, &c., are as little known to us as if the events to which they relate had taken place in China or Japan." The clear, connected, dispassionate, and circumstantial narrative, with which he has enriched the stores of English history, is drawn from the sources of SECRET HISTORY; from published memoirs and contemporary correspondence.



LITERARY RESIDENCES.

Men of genius have usually been condemned to compose their finest works, which are usually their earliest ones, under the roof of a garret; and few literary characters have lived, like Pliny and Voltaire, in a villa or chateau of their own. It has not therefore often happened that a man of genius could raise local emotions by his own intellectual suggestions. Ariosto, who built a palace in his verse, lodged himself in a small house, and found that stanzas and stones were not put together at the same rate: old Montaigne has left a description of his library; "over the entrance of my house, where I view my court-yards, and garden, and at once survey all the operations of my family!"

There is, however, a feeling among literary men of building up their own elegant fancies, and giving a permanency to their own tastes; we dwell on their favourite scenes as a sort of portraits, and we eagerly collect those few prints, which are their only vestiges. A collection might be formed of such literary residences chosen for their amenity and their retirement, and adorned by the objects of their studies; from that of the younger Pliny, who called his villa of literary leisure by the endearing term of villula, to that of Cassiodorus, the prime minister of Theodoric, who has left so magnificent a description of his literary retreat, where all the elegancies of life were at hand; where the gardeners and the agriculturists laboured on scientific principles; and where, amidst gardens and parks, stood his extensive library, with scribes to multiply his manuscripts:—from Tycho Brahe's, who built a magnificent astronomical house on an island, which he named after the sole objects of his musings Uranienburgh, or the Castle of the Heavens;—to that of Evelyn, who first began to adorn Wotton, by building "a little study," till many years after he dedicated the ancient house to contemplation, among the "delicious streams and venerable woods, the gardens, the fountains, and the groves, most tempting for a great person and a wanton purse; and indeed gave one of the first examples to that elegancy since so much in vogue."—From Pope, whose little garden seemed to multiply its scenes by a glorious union of nobility and literary men conversing in groups;—down to lonely Shenstone, whose "rural elegance," as he entitles one of his odes, compelled him to mourn over his hard fate, when

——EXPENSE Had lavish'd thousand ornaments, and taught CONVENIENCE to perplex him, ART to pall, POMP to deject, and BEAUTY to displease.

We have all by heart the true and delightful reflection of Johnson on local associations, when the scene we tread suggests to us the men or the deeds, which have left their celebrity to the spot. We are in the presence of their fame, and feel its influence!

A literary friend, whom a hint of mine had induced to visit the old tower in the garden of Buffon, where the sage retired every morning to compose, passed so long a time in that lonely apartment as to have raised some solicitude among the honest folks of Montbard, who having seen the "Englishman" enter, but not return, during a heavy thunder-storm which had occurred in the interval, informed the good mayor, who came in due form, to notify the ambiguous state of the stranger. My friend is, as is well known, a genius of that cast who could pass two hours in the Tower of Buffon, without being aware that he had been all that time occupied by suggestions of ideas and reveries, which in some minds such a locality may excite. He was also busied with his pencil; for he has favoured me with two drawings of the interior and the exterior of this old tower in the garden: the nakedness within can only be compared to the solitude without. Such was the studying-room of Buffon, where his eye, resting on no object, never interrupted the unity of his meditations on nature.

In return for my friend's kindness, it has cost me, I think, two hours in attempting to translate the beautiful picture of this literary retreat, which Vicq d'Azyr has finished with all the warmth of a votary. "At Montbard, in the midst of an ornamented garden, is seen an antique tower; it was there that Buffon wrote the History of Nature, and from that spot his fame spread through the universe. There he came at sunrise, and no one, however importunate, was suffered to trouble him. The calm of the morning hour, the first warbling of the birds, the varied aspect of the country, all at that moment which touched the senses, recalled him to his model. Free, independent, he wandered in his walks; there was he seen with quickened or with slow steps, or standing wrapped in thought, sometimes with his eyes fixed on the heavens in the moment of inspiration, as if satisfied with the thought that so profoundly occupied his soul; sometimes, collected within himself, he sought what would not always be found; or at the moments of producing, he wrote, he effaced, and rewrote, to efface once more; thus he harmonised, in silence, all the parts of his composition, which he frequently repeated to himself, till, satisfied with his corrections, he seemed to repay himself for the pains of his beautiful prose, by the pleasure he found in declaiming it aloud. Thus he engraved it in his memory, and would recite it to his friends, or induce some to read it to him. At those moments he was himself a severe judge, and would again re-compose it, desirous of attaining to that perfection which is denied to the impatient writer."

A curious circumstance, connected with local associations, occurred to that extraordinary oriental student, Fourmont. Originally he belonged to a religious community, and never failed in performing his offices: but he was expelled by the superior for an irregularity of conduct not likely to have become contagious through the brotherhood—he frequently prolonged his studies far into the night, and it was possible that the house might be burnt by such superfluity of learning. Fourmont retreated to the college of Montaign, where he occupied the very chambers which had formerly been those of Erasmus; a circumstance which contributed to excite his emulation, and to hasten his studies. He who smiles at the force of such emotions, only proves that he has not experienced what are real and substantial as the scene itself—for those who are concerned in them. Pope, who had far more enthusiasm in his poetical disposition than is generally understood, was extremely susceptible of the literary associations with localities: one of the volumes of his Homer was begun and finished in an old tower over the chapel of Stanton Harcourt;[256] and he has perpetuated the event, if not consecrated the place, by scratching with a diamond on a pane of stained glass this inscription:—

In the year 1718, ALEXANDER POPE Finished here the f.... fifth volume of HOMER.[257]

It was the same feeling which induced him one day, when taking his usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, to desire Harte to enter a little shop, where going up three pair of stairs into a small room, Pope said, "In this garret Addison wrote his Campaign!" Nothing less than a strong feeling impelled the poet to ascend this garret—it was a consecrated spot to his eye; and certainly a curious instance of the power of genius contrasted with its miserable locality! Addison, whose mind had fought through "a campaign!" in a garret, could he have called about him "the pleasures of imagination," had probably planned a house of literary repose, where all parts would have been in harmony with his mind.

Such residences of men of genius have been enjoyed by some; and the vivid descriptions which they have left us convey something of the delightfulness which charmed their studious repose.

The Italian, Paul Jovius, has composed more than three hundred concise eulogies of statesmen, warriors, and literary men, of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; but the occasion which induced him to compose them is perhaps more interesting than the compositions.

Jovius had a villa, situated on a peninsula, bordered by the Lake of Como. It was built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, and in his time the foundations were still visible. When the surrounding lake was calm, the sculptured marbles, the trunks of columns, and the fragments of those pyramids which had once adorned the residence of the friend of Trajan, were still viewed in its lucid bosom. Jovius was the enthusiast of literature, and the leisure which it loves. He was an historian, with the imagination of a poet, and though a Christian prelate, almost a worshipper of the sweet fictions of pagan mythology; and when his pen was kept pure from satire or adulation, to which it was too much accustomed, it became a pencil. He paints with rapture his gardens bathed by the waters of the lake; the shade and freshness of his woods; his green slopes; his sparkling fountains, the deep silence and calm of his solitude! A statue was raised in his gardens to Nature! In his hall stood a fine statue of Apollo, and the Muses around, with their attributes. His library was guarded by a Mercury, and there was an apartment adorned with Doric columns, and with pictures of the most pleasing subjects dedicated to the Graces! Such was the interior! Without, the transparent lake here spread its broad mirror, and there was seen luminously winding by banks covered with olives and laurels; in the distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre, blushing with vines, and the first elevation of the Alps, covered with woods and pasture, and sprinkled with herds and flocks.

It was in a central spot of this enchanting habitation that a cabinet or gallery was erected, where Jovius had collected with prodigal cost the portraits of celebrated men; and it was to explain and to describe the characteristics of these illustrious names that he had composed his eulogies. This collection became so remarkable, that the great men his contemporaries presented our literary collector with their own portraits, among whom the renowned Fernandez Cortes sent Jovius his before he died, and probably others who were less entitled to enlarge the collection; but it is equally probable that our caustic Jovius would throw them aside. Our historian had often to describe men more famous than virtuous; sovereigns, politicians, poets, and philosophers, men of all ranks, countries, and ages, formed a crowded scene of men of genius or of celebrity; sometimes a few lines compress their character, and sometimes a few pages excite his fondness. If he sometimes adulates the living, we may pardon the illusions of a contemporary; but he has the honour of satirising some by the honest freedom of a pen which occasionally broke out into premature truths.

Such was the inspiration of literature and leisure which had embellished the abode of Jovius, and had raised in the midst of the Lake of Como a cabinet of portraits; a noble tribute to those who are "the salt of the earth."

We possess prints of Rubens's house at Antwerp. That princely artist perhaps first contrived for his studio the circular apartment with a dome, like the rotunda of the Pantheon, where the light descending from an aperture or window at the top, sent down a single equal light,—that perfection of light which distributes its magical effects on the objects beneath.[258] Bellori describes it una stanza rotonda con un solo occhio in cima; the solo occhio is what the French term oeil de boeuf; we ourselves want this single eye in our technical language of art. This was his precious museum, where he had collected a vast number of books, which were intermixed with his marbles, statues, cameos, intaglios, and all that variety of the riches of art which he had drawn from Rome:[259] but the walls did not yield in value; for they were covered by pictures of his own composition, or copies by his own hand, made at Venice and Madrid, of Titian and Paul Veronese. No foreigners, men of letters, or lovers of the arts, or even princes, would pass through Antwerp without visiting the house of Rubens, to witness the animated residence of genius, and the great man who had conceived the idea. Yet, great as was his mind, and splendid as were the habits of his life, he could not resist the entreaties of the hundred thousand florins of our Duke of Buckingham, to dispose of this studio. The great artist could not, however, abandon for ever the delightful contemplations he was depriving himself of; and as substitutes for the miracles of art he had lost, he solicited and obtained leave to replace them by casts which were scrupulously deposited in the places where the originals had stood.

Of this feeling of the local residences of genius, the Italians appear to have been not perhaps more susceptible than other people, but more energetic in their enthusiasm. Florence exhibits many monuments of this sort. In the neighbourhood of Santa Maria Novella, Zimmerman has noticed a house of the celebrated Viviani, which is a singular monument of gratitude to his illustrious master, Galileo. The front is adorned with the bust of this father of science, and between the windows are engraven accounts of the discoveries of Galileo; it is the most beautiful biography of genius! Yet another still more eloquently excites our emotions—the house of Michael Angelo: his pupils, in perpetual testimony of their admiration and gratitude, have ornamented it with all the leading features of his life; the very soul of this vast genius put in action: this is more than biography!—it is living as with a contemporary!

FOOTNOTES:

[256] The room is a small wainscoted apartment in the second floor, commanding a pleasant view.

[257] The above inscription is a fac-simile of that upon the glass. The word fifth in the third line has been erased by Pope for want of room to complete it properly. It is scratched on a small pane of red glass, and has been removed to Nuneham Courtney, the seat of the Harcourt family, on the banks of the Thames, a few miles from Oxford.

[258] Harrewyns published, in 1684, a series of interesting views of the house, and some of the apartments, including this domed one. The series are upon one folio sheet, now very rare.

[259] Rubens was an ardent collector, and lost no chance of increasing his stores; in the appendix to Carpenter's "Pictorial Notices of Vandyke" is printed the correspondence between himself and Sir D. Carleton, offering to exchange some of his own pictures for antiques in possession of the latter, who was ambassador from England to Holland, and who collected also for the Earl of Arundel.



WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONESELF?

The political economist replies that it is!

One of our old dramatic writers, who witnessed the singular extravagance of dress among the modellers of fashion, our nobility, condemns their "superfluous bravery," echoing the popular cry—

"There are a sort of men, whose coining heads Are mints of all new fashions, that have done More hurt to the kingdom, by superfluous bravery, Which the foolish gentry imitate, than a war Or a long famine. All the treasure by This foul excess is got into the merchants', Embroiderers', silkmen's, jewellers', tailors' hands, And the third part of the land too! the nobility Engrossing titles only."

Our poet might have been startled at the reply of our political economist. If the nobility, in follies such as these, only preserved their "titles," while their "lands" were dispersed among the industrious classes, the people were not sufferers. The silly victims ruining themselves by their excessive luxury, or their costly dress, as it appears some did, was an evil which, left to its own course, must check itself; if the rich did not spend, the poor would starve. Luxury is the cure of that unavoidable evil in society—great inequality of fortune! Political economists therefore tell us that any regulations would be ridiculous which, as Lord Bacon expresses it, should serve for "the repressing of waste and excess by sumptuary laws." Adam Smith is not only indignant at "sumptuary laws," but asserts, with a democratic insolence of style, that "it is the highest impertinence and presumption in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense by sumptuary laws. They are themselves always the greatest spendthrifts in the society; let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will." We must therefore infer that governments by extravagance may ruin a state, but that individuals enjoy the remarkable privilege of ruining themselves without injuring society! Adam Smith afterwards distinguishes two sorts of luxury: the one exhausting itself in "durable commodities, as in buildings, furniture, books, statues, pictures," will increase "the opulence of a nation;" but of the other, wasting itself in dress and equipages, in frivolous ornaments, jewels, baubles, trinkets, &c., he acknowledges "no trace or vestige would remain; and the effects of ten or twenty years' profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed." There is, therefore, a greater and a lesser evil in this important subject of the opulent, unrestricted by any law, ruining his whole generation.

Where "the wealth of nations" is made the solitary standard of their prosperity, it becomes a fertile source of errors in the science of morals; and the happiness of the individual is then too frequently sacrificed to what is called the prosperity of the state. If an individual, in the pride of luxury and selfism, annihilates the fortunes of his whole generation, untouched by the laws as a criminal, he leaves behind him a race of the discontented and the seditious, who, having sunk in the scale of society, have to reascend from their degradation by industry and by humiliation; but for the work of industry their habits have made them inexpert; and to humiliation their very rank presents a perpetual obstacle.

Sumptuary laws, so often enacted and so often repealed, and always eluded, were the perpetual, but ineffectual, attempts of all governments to restrain what, perhaps, cannot be restrained—criminal folly! And to punish a man for having ruined himself would usually be to punish a most contrite penitent.

It is not surprising that before "private vices were considered as public benefits," the governors of nations instituted sumptuary laws—for the passion for pageantry and an incredible prodigality in dress were continually impoverishing great families—more equality of wealth has now rather subdued the form of private ruin than laid this evil domestic spirit. The incalculable expenditure and the blaze of splendour of our ancestors may startle the incredulity of our elegantes. We find men of rank exhausting their wealth and pawning their castles, and then desperately issuing from them, heroes for a crusade, or brigands for their neighbourhood!—and this frequently from the simple circumstance of having for a short time maintained some gorgeous chivalric festival on their own estates, or from having melted thousands of acres into cloth of gold; their sons were left to beg their bread on the estates which they were to have inherited.

It was when chivalry still charmed the world by the remains of its seductive splendours, towards the close of the fifteenth century, that I find an instance of this kind occurring in the Pas de Sandricourt, which was held in the neighbourhood of the sieur of that name. It is a memorable affair, not only for us curious inquirers after manners and morals, but for the whole family of the Sandricourts; for though the said sieur is now receiving the immortality we bestow on him, and la dame who presided in that magnificent piece of chivalry was infinitely gratified, yet for ever after was the lord of Sandricourt ruined—and all for a short, romantic three months!