"We sit now in parliament, and therefore must take his majesty's word no otherwise than in a parliamentary way; that is, of a matter agreed on by both houses—his majesty sitting on his throne in his robes, with his crown on his head, and sceptre in his hand, and in full parliament; and his royal assent being entered upon record, in perpetuam rei memoriam. This was the royal word of a king in parliament, and not a word delivered in a chamber, and out of the mouth of a secretary at the second hand; therefore I motion, that the House of Commons, more majorum, should draw up a petition, de droict, to his majesty; which, being confirmed by both houses, and assented unto by his majesty, will be as firm an act as any. Not that I distrust the king, but that I cannot take his trust but in a parliamentary way."[311]

In this speech of Sir Edward Coke we find the first mention, in the legal style, of the ever-memorable "Petition of Right," which two days after was finished. The reader must pursue its history among the writers of opposite parties.

On Tuesday, June 5, a royal message announced that on the 11th the present sessions would close. This utterly disconcerted the commons. Religious men considered it as a judicial visitation for the sins of the people; others raged with suppressed feelings; they counted up all the disasters which had of late occurred, all which were charged to one man: they knew not, at a moment so urgent, when all their liberties seemed at stake, whether the commons should fly to the lords, or to the king. Sir John Eliot said, that as they intended to furnish his majesty with money, it was proper that he should give them time to supply him with counsel: he was renewing his old attacks on the duke, when he was suddenly interrupted by the Speaker, who, starting from the chair, declared that he was commanded not to suffer him to proceed; Eliot sat down in sullen silence. On Wednesday, Sir Edward Coke broke the ice of debate. "That man," said he of the duke, "is the grievance of grievances! As for going to the lords," he added, "that is not via regia; our liberties are impeached—it is our concern!"

On Thursday, the vehement cry of Coke against Buckingham was followed up; as, says a letter-writer, when one good hound recovers the scent, the rest come in with a full cry.[312] A sudden message from the king absolutely forbade them to asperse any of his majesty's ministers, otherwise his majesty would instantly dissolve them.

This fell like a thunderbolt; it struck terror and alarm; and at the instant the House of Commons was changed into a scene of tragical melancholy! All the opposite passions of human nature—all the national evils which were one day to burst on the country seemed, on a sudden, concentrated in this single spot! Some were seen weeping, some were expostulating, and some, in awful prophecy, were contemplating the future ruin of the kingdom; while others, of more ardent daring, were reproaching the timid, quieting the terrified, and infusing resolution into the despairing. Many attempted to speak, but were so strongly affected that their very utterance failed them. The venerable Coke, overcome by his feelings when he rose to speak, found his learned eloquence falter on his tongue; he sat down, and tears were seen on his aged cheeks. The name of the public enemy of the kingdom was repeated, till the Speaker, with tears covering his face, declared he could no longer witness such a spectacle of woe in the commons of England, and requested leave of absence for half an hour. The speaker hastened to the king to inform him of the state of the house. They were preparing a vote against the duke, for being an arch-traitor and arch-enemy to king and kingdom, and were busied on their "Remonstrance," when the Speaker, on his return, after an absence of two hours, delivered his majesty's message, that they should adjourn till the next day.

This was an awful interval of time; many trembled for the issue of the next morning: one letter-writer calls it "that black and doleful Thursday!" and another, writing before the house met, observes, "What we shall expect this morning, God of heaven knows; we shall meet timely."[313]

Charles probably had been greatly affected by the report of the Speaker, on the extraordinary state into which the whole house had been thrown; for on Friday the royal message imported that the king had never any intention of "barring them from their right, but only to avoid scandal, that his ministers should not be accused for their counsel to him; and still he hoped that all Christendom might notice a sweet parting between him and his people." This message quieted the house, but did not suspend their preparations for a "Remonstrance," which they had begun on the day they were threatened with a dissolution.

On Saturday, while they were still occupied on the "Remonstrance," unexpectedly, at four o'clock, the king came to parliament, and the commons were called up. Charles spontaneously came to reconcile himself to parliament. The king now gave his second answer to the "Petition of Right." He said—"My maxim is, that the people's liberties strengthen the king's prerogative; and the king's prerogative is to defend the people's liberties. Read your petition, and you shall have an answer that I am sure will please you."[314] They desired to have the ancient form of their ancestors, "Soit droit fait come il est desyre," and not as the king had before given it, with any observation on it. Charles now granted this; declaring that his second answer to the petition in nowise differed from his first; "but you now see how ready I have shown myself to satisfy your demands; I have done my part; wherefore, if this parliament have not a happy conclusion, the sin is yours,—I am free from it!"

Popular gratitude is at least as vociferous as it is sudden. Both houses returned the king acclamations of joy; everyone seemed to exult at the happy change which a few days had effected in the fate of the kingdom. Everywhere the bells rung, bonfires were kindled, an universal holiday was kept through the town, and spread to the country: but an ominous circumstance has been registered by a letter-writer; the common people, who had caught the contagious happiness, imagined that all this public joy was occasioned by the king's consenting to commit the duke to the Tower!

Charles has been censured, even by Hume, for his "evasions and delays" in granting his assent to the "Petition of Right;" but now, either the parliament had conquered the royal unwillingness, or the king was zealously inclined on reconciliation. Yet the joy of the commons did not outlast the bonfires in the streets; they resumed their debates as if they had never before touched on the subjects: they did not account for the feelings of the man whom they addressed as the sovereign. They sent up a "Remonstrance" against the duke,[315] and introduced his mother into it, as a patroness of popery. Charles declared, that after having granted the famous "Petition," he had not expected such a return as this "Remonstrance." "How acceptable it is," he afterwards said, "every man may judge; no wise man can justify it." After the reading of the Remonstrance, the duke fell on his knees, desiring to answer for himself; but Charles no way relaxed in showing his personal favour.[316]

The duke was often charged with actions and with expressions of which, unquestionably, he was not always guilty; and we can more fairly decide on some points relating to Charles and the favourite, for we have a clearer notion of them than his contemporaries. The active spirits in the commons were resolved to hunt down the game to the death: for they now struck at, as the king calls it, "one of the chief maintenances of my crown," in tonnage and poundage, the levying of which, they now declared, was a violation of the liberties of the people. This subject again involved legal discussions, and another "Remonstrance." They were in the act of reading it, when the king suddenly came down to the house, sent for the Speaker, and prorogued the parliament. "I am forced to end this session," said Charles, "some few hours before I meant, being not willing to receive any more Remonstrances, to which I must give a harsh answer." There was at least as much of sorrow as of anger in this closing speech.

Buckingham once more was to offer his life for the honour of his master—and to court popularity! It is well known with what exterior fortitude Charles received the news of the duke's assassination; this imperturbable majesty of his mind—insensibility it was not—never deserted him on many similar occasions. There was no indecision—no feebleness in his conduct; and that extraordinary event was not suffered to delay the expedition. The king's personal industry astonished all the men in office. One writes that the king had done more in six weeks than in the duke's time had been done in six months. The death of Buckingham caused no change; the king left every man to his own charge, but took the general direction into his own hands.[317] In private, Charles deeply mourned the loss of Buckingham; he gave no encouragement to his enemies: the king called him "his martyr," and declared "the world was greatly mistaken in him; for it was thought that the favourite had ruled his majesty, but it was far otherwise; for that the duke had been to him a faithful and an obedient servant."[318] Such were the feelings and ideas of the unfortunate Charles the First, which it is necessary to become acquainted with to judge of; few have possessed the leisure or the disposition to perform this historical duty, involved as it is in the history of our passions. If ever the man shall be viewed, as well as the monarch, the private history of Charles the First will form one of the most pathetic of biographies.[319]

All the foreign expeditions of Charles the First were alike disastrous: the vast genius of Richelieu, at its meridian, had paled our ineffectual star! The dreadful surrender of Rochelle had sent back our army and navy baffled and disgraced; and Buckingham had timely perished, to save one more reproach, one more political crime, attached to his name. Such failures did not improve the temper of the times; but the most brilliant victory would not have changed the fate of Charles, nor allayed the fiery spirits in the commons, who, as Charles said, "not satisfied in hearing complainers, had erected themselves into inquisitors after complaints."

Parliament met. The king's speech was conciliatory. He acknowledged that the exaction of the duties of the customs was not a right which he derived from his hereditary prerogative, but one which he enjoyed as the gift of his people. These duties as yet had not indeed been formally confirmed by parliament, but they had never been refused to the sovereign. The king closed with a fervent ejaculation that the session, begun with confidence, might end with a mutual good understanding.[320]

The shade of Buckingham was no longer cast between Charles the First and the commons. And yet we find that "their dread and dear sovereign" was not allowed any repose on the throne.

A new demon of national discord, Religion, in a metaphysical garb, reared its distracted head. This evil spirit had been raised by the conduct of the court divines, whose political sermons, with their attempts to return to the more solemn ceremonies of the Romish church, alarmed some tender consciences; it served as a masked battery for the patriotic party to change their ground at will, without slackening their fire. When the king urged for the duties of his customs, he found that he was addressing a committee sitting for religion. Sir John Eliot threw out a singular expression. Alluding to some of the bishops, whom he called "masters of ceremonies," he confessed that some ceremonies were commendable, such as "that we should stand up at the repetition of the creed, to testify the resolution of our hearts to defend the religion we profess, and in some churches they did not only stand upright, but with their swords drawn." His speech was a spark that fell into a well-laid train; scarcely can we conceive the enthusiastic temper of the House of Commons at that moment, when, after some debate, they entered into a vow to preserve "the articles of religion established by parliament in the thirteenth year of our late Queen Elizabeth!" and this vow was immediately followed up by a petition to the king for a fast for the increasing miseries of the reformed churches abroad. Parliaments are liable to have their passions! Some of these enthusiasts were struck by a panic, not perhaps warranted by the danger, of "Jesuits and Armenians." The king answered them in good-humour; observing, however, on the state of the reformed abroad; "that fighting would do them more good than fasting." He granted them their fast, but they would now grant no return; for now they presented "a Declaration" to the king, that tonnage and poundage must give precedency to religion! The king's answer still betrays no ill temper. He confessed that he did not think that "religion was in so much danger as they affirmed." He reminds them of tonnage and poundage; "I do not so much desire it out of greediness of the thing, as out of a desire to put an end to those questions that arise between me and some of my subjects."

Never had the king been more moderate in his claims, or more tender in his style; and never had the commons been more fierce, and never, in truth, so utterly inexorable! Often kings are tyrannical, and sometimes are parliaments! A body corporate, with the infection of passion, may perform acts of injustice equally with the individual who abuses the power with which he is invested. It was insisted that Charles should give up the receivers of the customs, who were denounced as capital enemies to the king and kingdom; while those who submitted to the duties were declared guilty as accessories. When Sir John Eliot was pouring forth invectives against some courtiers—however they may have merited the blast of his eloquence—he was sometimes interrupted and sometimes cheered, for the stinging personalities. The timid Speaker, refusing to put the question, suffered a severe reprimand from Selden: "If you will not put it, we must sit still, and thus we shall never be able to do anything!" The house adjourned in great heat; the dark prognostic of their next meeting, which Sir Symonds D'Ewes has remarked in his Diary as "the most gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England that happened for five hundred years!"

On this fatal day,[321] the Speaker still refusing to put the question, and announcing the king's command for an adjournment, Sir John Eliot stood up! The Speaker attempted to leave the chair, but two members, who had placed themselves on each side, forcibly kept him down—Eliot, who had prepared "a short declaration," flung down a paper on the floor, crying out that it might be read! His party vociferated for the reading—others that it should not. A sudden tumult broke out; Coriton, a fervent patriot, struck another member, and many laid their hands on their swords.[322] "Shall we," said one, "be sent home as we were last sessions, turned off like scattered sheep?" The weeping, trembling Speaker, still persisting in what he held to be his duty, was dragged to and fro by opposite parties; but neither he nor the clerk would read the paper, though the Speaker was bitterly reproached by his kinsman, Sir Peter Hayman, "as the disgrace of his country, and a blot to a noble family." Eliot, finding the house so strongly divided, undauntedly snatching up the paper, said, "I shall then express that by my tongue which this paper should have done." Denzil Holles assumed the character of Speaker, putting the question: it was returned by the acclamations of the party. The doors were locked and the keys laid on the table. The king sent for the serjeant and mace, but the messenger could obtain no admittance—the usher of the black rod met no more regard. The king then ordered out his guard—in the meanwhile the protest was completed. The door was flung open, the rush of the members was so impetuous that the crowd carried away among them the serjeant and the usher in the confusion and riot. Many of the members were struck by horror amidst this conflict, it was a sad image of the future! Several of the patriots were committed to the Tower. The king on dissolving this parliament, which was the last till the memorable "Long Parliament," gives us, at least, his idea of it:—"It is far from me to judge all the House alike guilty, for there are there as dutiful subjects as any in the world; it being but some few vipers among them that did cast this mist of undutifulness over most of their eyes."[323]

Thus have I traced, step by step, the secret history of Charles the First and his early Parliaments. I have entered into their feelings, while I have supplied new facts, to make everything as present and as true as my faithful diligence could repeat the tale. It was necessary that I should sometimes judge of the first race of our patriots as some of their contemporaries did; but it was impossible to avoid correcting these notions by the more enlarged views of their posterity. This is the privilege of an historian and the philosophy of his art. There is no apology for the king, nor any declamation for the subject. Were we only to decide by the final results of this great conflict, of which what we have here narrated is but the faint beginning, we should confess that Sir John Eliot and his party were the first fathers of our political existence; and we should not withhold from them the inexpressible gratitude of a nation's freedom! But human infirmity mortifies us in the noblest pursuits of man; and we must be taught this penitential and chastising wisdom. The story of our patriots is involved; Charles appears to have been lowering those high notions of his prerogative, which were not peculiar to him, and was throwing himself on the bosom of his people. The severe and unrelenting conduct of Sir John Eliot, his prompt eloquence and bold invective, well fitted him for the leader of a party. He was the lodestone, drawing together the looser particles of iron. Never sparing, in the monarch, the errors of the man, never relinquishing his royal prey, which he had fastened on, Eliot, with Dr. Turner and some others, contributed to make Charles disgusted with all parliaments. Without any dangerous concessions, there was more than one moment when they might have reconciled the sovereign to themselves, and not have driven him to the fatal resource of attempting to reign without a parliament![324]

FOOTNOTES:

[286] From manuscript letters of the times.

[287] Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 317.

[288] The king had said in his speech to parliament, "I must let you know I will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you, much less such as are of eminent place, and near unto me;" hence the security of Buckingham, who showed the most perfect contempt for the speakers who thus violently attacked him.

[289] Our printed historical documents, Kennett, Frankland, &c., are confused in their details, and facts seem misplaced for want of dates. They all equally copy Rushworth, the only source of our history of this period. Even Hume is involved in the obscurity. The king's speech was on the eleventh of May. As Rushworth has not furnished dates, it would seem that the two orators had been sent to the Tower before the king's speech to the lords.

[290] The king attended the House of Lords to explain his intentions verbally, taking the minister with him, though under impeachment. "Touching the matters against him," said the king, "I myself can be a witness to clear him in every one of them."

[291] They decided on stopping all business till satisfaction was given them, which ended in the release of Digges and Eliot in a few days.

[292] Frankland, an inveterate royalist, in copying Rushworth, inserts "their pretended liberties;" exactly the style of catholic writers when they mention protestantism by "la religion pretendue reformee." All party writers use the same style!

[293] The strength of the popular hatred may be seen in the articles on Buckingham and Felton in vol. ii. Satires in manuscript abounded, and by their broad-spoken pungency rendered the duke a perfect bete noir to the people.

[294] Manuscript letter.

[295] Rushworth, i. 400. Hume, vi. 221, who enters widely into the views and feelings of Charles.

[296] The Radicals of that day differed from ours in the means, though not in the end. They at least referred to their Bibles, and rather more than was required; but superstition is as mad as atheism! Many of the puritans confused their brains with the study of the Revelations; believing Prince Henry to be prefigured in the Apocalypse, some prophesied that he should overthrow "the beast." Ball, our tailor, was this very prophet; and was so honest as to believe in his own prophecy. Osborn tells, that Ball put out money on adventure; i.e., to receive it back double or treble, when King James should be elected pope! So that though he had no money for a loan, he had to spare for a prophecy.

This Ball has been confounded with a more ancient radical, Ball, a priest, and a principal mover in Wat Tyler's insurrection. Our Ball must have been very notorious, for Jonson has noticed his "admired discourses." Mr. Gifford, without any knowledge of my account of this tailor-prophet, by his active sagacity has rightly indicated him.—See Jonson's Works, vol. v. p. 241.

[297] It is curious to observe that the Westminster elections, in the fourth year of Charles's reign, were exactly of the same turbulent character as those which we witness in our days. The duke had counted by his interest to bring in Sir Robert Pye. The contest was severe, but accompanied by some of those ludicrous electioneering scenes which still amuse the mob. Whenever Sir Robert Pye's party cried—"A Pye! a Pye! a Pye!" the adverse party would cry—"A pudding! a pudding! a pudding!" and others—"A lie! a lie! a lie!" This Westminster election of two hundred years ago ended as we have seen some others; they rejected all who had urged the payment of the loans; and, passing by such men as Sir Robert Cotton, and their last representative, they fixed on a brewer and a grocer for the two members for Westminster.

[298] Extract from a manuscript letter:—"On Friday last I hear, but as a secret, that it was debated at the council-table whether our Essex men, who refused to take press-money, should not be punished by martial-law, and hanged up on the next tree to their dwellings, for an example of terror to others. My lord keeper, who had been long silent, when, in conclusion, it came to his course to speak, told the lords, that as far as he understood the law, none were liable to martial law but martial men. If these had taken press-money, and afterwards run from their colours, they might then be punished in that manner; but yet they were no soldiers, and refused to be. Secondly, he thought a subsidy, new by law, could not be pressed against his will for a foreign service; it being supposed, in law, the service of his purse excused that of his person, unless his own country were in danger; and he appealed to my lord treasurer, and my lord president, whether it was not so, who both assented it was so, though some of them faintly, as unwilling to have been urged to such an answer. So it is thought that proposition is dashed; and it will be tried what may be done in the Star-chamber against these refractories."

[299] A member of the house, in James the First's time, called this race of divines "Spaniels to the court and wolves to the people." Dr. Mainwaring, Dr. Sibthorpe, and Dean Bargrave were seeking for ancient precedents to maintain absolute monarchy, and to inculcate passive obedience. Bargrave had this passage in his sermon: "It was the speech of a man renowned for wisdom in our age, that if he were commanded to put forth to sea in a ship that had neither mast nor tackling, he would do it:" and being asked what wisdom that were, replied, "The wisdom must be in him that hath power to command, not in him that conscience binds to obey." Sibthorpe, after he published his sermon, immediately had his house burnt down. Dr. Mainwaring, says a manuscript letter-writer, "sent the other day to a friend of mine, to help him to all the ancient precedents he could find, to strengthen his opinion (for absolute monarchy), who answered him he could help him in nothing but only to hang him, and that if he lived till a parliament, or, &c., he should be sure of a halter." Mainwaring afterwards submitted to parliament; but after the dissolution got a free pardon. The panic of popery was a great evil. The divines, under Laud, appeared to approach to Catholicism; but it was probably only a project of reconciliation between the two churches, which Elizabeth, James, and Charles equally wished. Mr. Cosins, a letter-writer, is censured for "superstition" in this bitter style: "Mr. Cosins has impudently made three editions of his prayer-book, and one which he gives away in private, different from the published ones. An audacious fellow, whom my Lord of Durham greatly admireth. I doubt if he be a sound protestant: he was so blind at even-song on Candlemas-day, that he could not see to read prayers in the minster with less than three hundred and forty candles, whereof sixty he caused to be placed about the high altar; besides he caused the picture of our Saviour, supported by two angels, to be set in the choir. The committee is very hot against him, and no matter if they trounce him." This was Cosins, who survived the revolution, and returning with Charles the Second, was raised to the see of Durham: the charitable institutions he has left are most munificent.

[300] Rushworth's Collections, i. 514.

[301] I deliver this fact as I find it in a private letter; but it is noticed in the Journals of the House of Commons, 23 Junii, 4to. Caroli Regis. "Sir Edward Coke reporteth that they find that, enclosed in the letter, to be unfit for any subject's ear to hear. Read but one line and a half of it, and could not endure to read more of it. It was ordered to be sealed and delivered into the king's hands by eight members, and to acquaint his majesty with the place and time of finding it; particularly that upon the reading of one line and a half at most, they would read no more, but sealed it up, and brought it to the House."

[302] I have since discovered, by a manuscript letter, that this Dr. Turner was held in contempt by the king; that he was ridiculed at court, which he haunted, for his want of veracity; in a word, that he was a disappointed courtier!

[303] This circumstance is mentioned in a manuscript letter; what Cooke declared to the House is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 525.

[304] I refer the critical student of our history to the duke's speech at the council-table as it appears in Rushworth, i. 525: but what I add respecting his personal sacrifices is from manuscript letters. Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c.

[305] On this subject, see note to the brief article on Buckingham in vol. i.

[306] Curiosities of Literature, First Series, vol. iii. p. 438, ed. 1817; vol. v. p. 277, ed. 1823; vol. iii. p. 429, ed. 1824; vol. iv. p. 148 ed. 1834; p. 301, ed. 1840, or vol. ii. p. 357, of this edition.

[307] I find this speech, and an account of its reception, in manuscript letters; the fragment in Rushworth contains no part of it. I. 526. Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c.

[308] Modern history would afford more instances than perhaps some of us suspect. I cannot pass over an illustration of my principle, which I shall take from two very notorious politicians—Wat Tyler and Sir William Walworth!

Wat, when in servitude, had been beaten by his master, Richard Lyons, a great merchant of wines, and a sheriff of London. This chastisement, working on an evil disposition, appears never to have been forgiven; and when this Radical assumed his short-lived dominion, he had his old master beheaded, and his head carried before him on the point of a spear! So Grafton tells us, to the eternal obloquy of this arch-jacobin, who "was a crafty fellow, and of an excellent wit, but wanting grace." I would not sully the patriotic blow which ended the rebellion with the rebel; yet there are secrets in history! Sir William Walworth, "the ever famous mayor of London," as Stowe designates him, has left the immortality of his name to one of our suburbs; but having discovered in Stowe's "Survey," that Walworth was the landlord of the stews on the Bank-side, which he farmed out to the Dutch vrows, and which Wat had pulled down, I am inclined to suspect that private feeling first knocked down the saucy ribald, and then thrust him through and through with his dagger; and that there was as much of personal vengeance as patriotism, which crushed the demolisher of so much valuable property!

[309] I have formed my idea of Sir Francis Nethersole from some strange incidents in his political conduct, which I have read in some contemporary letters. He was, however, a man of some eminence, had been Orator for the University of Cambridge, agent for James I. with the Princes of the Union in Germany, and also Secretary to the Queen of Bohemia. He founded and endowed a free-school at Polesworth in Warwickshire.

[310] Manuscript letter.

[311] These speeches are entirely drawn from those manuscript letters to which I have frequently referred. Coke's may be substantially found in Rushworth, but without a single expression as here given.

[312] The popular opinion is well expressed in the following lines preserved in Sloane MS. 826:—

When only one doth rule and guide the ship, Who neither card nor compass knew before, The master pilot and the rest asleep, The stately ship is split upon the shore; But they awaking start up, stare, and cry, "Who did this fault?"—"Not I,"—"Nor I,"—"Nor I." So fares it with a great and wealthy state Not govern'd by the master, but his mate.

[313] This last letter is printed in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 609.

[314] The king's answer is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 613.

[315] This eloquent state paper is in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 619.

[316] This interview is taken from manuscript letters.

[317] Manuscript Letters: Lord Dorset to the Earl of Carlisle.—Sloane MSS. 4178. Letter 519.

[318] Manuscript Letter.

[319] I have given (vol. ii. p. 336) the "Secret History of Charles the First and his Queen," where I have traced the firmness and independence of his character. In another article will be found as much of the "Secret History of the Duke of Buckingham" as I have been enabled to acquire.

[320] "To conclude," said the king; "let us not be jealous one of the other's actions."

[321] Monday, 2nd of March, 1629.

[322] It was imagined out of doors that swords had been drawn; for a Welsh page running in great haste, when he heard the noise, to the door, cried out, "I pray you let hur in! let hur in! to give hur master his sword!"—Manuscript Letter.

[323] At the time many undoubtedly considered that it was a mere faction in the house. Sir Symonds D'Ewes was certainly no politician—but, unquestionably, his ideas were not peculiar to himself. Of the last third parliament he delivers this opinion in his Diary: "I cannot deem but the greater part of the house were morally honest men; but these were the least guilty of the fatal breach, being only misled by some other Machiavelian politics, who seemed zealous for the liberty of the commonwealth, and by that means, in the moving of their outward freedom, drew the votes of those good men to their side."

[324] Since the publication of the present article, I have composed my "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First," in five volumes.



482 THE RUMP.

Text and commentary! The French Revolution abounds with wonderful "explanatory notes" on the English. It has cleared up many obscure passages—and in the political history of Man, both pages must be read together.

The opprobrious and ludicrous nickname of "the Rump," stigmatised a faction which played the same part in the English Revolution as the "Montagne" of the Jacobins did in the French. It has been imagined that our English Jacobins were impelled by a principle different from that of their modern rivals; but the madness of avowed atheism, and the frenzy of hypocritical sanctity, in the circle of crimes meet at the same point. Their history forms one of those useful parallels where, with truth as unerring as mathematical demonstration, we discover the identity of human nature. Similarity of situation, and certain principles, producing similar personages and similar events, finally settle in the same results. The Rump, as long as human nature exists, can be nothing but the Rump, however it may be thrown uppermost.

The origin of this political by-name has often been inquired into; and it is somewhat curious, that, though all parties consent to reprobate it, each assigns for it a different allusion. In the history of political factions there is always a mixture of the ludicrous with the tragic; but, except their modern brothers, no faction like the present ever excited such a combination of extreme contempt and extreme horror.

Among the rival parties in 1659, the loyalists and the presbyterians acted as we may suppose the Tories and the Whigs would in the same predicament; a secret reconciliation had taken place, to bury in oblivion their former jealousies, that they might unite to rid themselves from that tyranny of tyrannies, a hydra-headed government; or, as Hume observes, that "all efforts should be used for the overthrow of the Rump; so they called the parliament, in allusion to that part of the animal body." The sarcasm of the allusion seemed obvious to our polished historian; yet, looking more narrowly for its origin, we shall find how indistinct were the notions of this nickname among those who lived nearer to the times. Evelyn says that "the Rump parliament was so called as containing some few rotten members of the other." Roger Coke describes it thus: "You must now be content with a piece of the Commons called 'the Rump.'" And Carte calls the Rump, "the carcass of a house," and seems not precisely aware of the contemptuous allusion. But how do "rotten members" and "a carcass" agree with the notion of "a Rump?" Recently the editor of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson has conveyed a novel origin. "The number of the members of the Long Parliament having been by seclusion, death, &c., very much reduced,"—a remarkable &c. this! by which our editor seems adroitly to throw a veil over the forcible transportation by the Rumpers of two hundred members at one swoop,—"the remainder was compared to the rump of a fowl which was left, all the rest being eaten." Our editor even considers this to be "a coarse emblem;" yet "the rump of a fowl" could hardly offend even a lady's delicacy! Our editor, probably, was somewhat anxious not to degrade too lowly the anti-monarchical party, designated by this opprobrious term. Perhaps it is pardonable in Mrs. Macaulay, an historical lady, and a "Rumper," for she calls the "Levellers" a "brave and virtuous party," to have passed over in her history any mention of the offensive term at all, as well as the ridiculous catastrophe which they underwent in the political revolution, which, however, we must beg leave not to pass by.

This party-coinage has been ascribed to Clement Walker, their bitter antagonist; who, having sacrificed no inconsiderable fortune to the cause of what he considered constitutional liberty, was one of the violent ejected members of the Long Parliament, and perished in prison, a victim to honest, unbending principles. His "History of Independency" is a rich legacy bequeathed to posterity, of all their great misdoings, and their petty villanies, and, above all, of their secret history. One likes to know of what blocks the idols of the people are sometimes carved out.

Clement Walker notices "the votes and acts of this fag end; this RUMP of a parliament, with corrupt maggots in it."[325] This hideous, but descriptive image of "The Rump" had, however, got forward before, for the collector of "the Rump Songs"[326] tells us, "If you ask who named it Rump, know 'twas so styled in an honest sheet of prayer, called 'The Bloody Rump,' written before the trial of our late sovereign; but the word obtained not universal notice, till it flew from the mouth of Major-General Brown, at a public assembly in the days of Richard Cromwell." Thus it happens that a stinging nickname has been frequently applied to render a faction eternally odious; and the chance expression of a wit, when adopted on some public occasion, circulates among a whole people. The present nickname originated in derision on the expulsion of the majority of the Long Parliament by the usurping minority. It probably slept; for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate? and finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting "Rump," to witness its own ridiculous extinction.

Our Rump passed through three stages in its political progress. Preparatory to the trial of the sovereign, the anti-monarchical party constituted the minority in "the Long Parliament:" the very name by which this parliament is recognised seemed a grievance to an impatient people, vacillating with chimerical projects of government, and now accustomed, from a wild indefinite notion of political equality, to pull down all existing institutions. Such was the temper of the times, that an act of the most violent injustice, openly performed, served only as the jest of the day, a jest which has passed into history. The forcible expulsion of two hundred of their brother members, by those who afterwards were saluted as "The Rump," was called "Pride's Purge," from the activity of a colonel of that name, a military adventurer, who was only the blind and brutal instrument of his party; for when he stood at the door of the Commons, holding a paper with the names of the members, he did not personally know one! And his "Purge" might have operated a quite opposite effect, administered by his own unskilful hand, had not Lord Grey of Groby, and the door-keeper,—worthy dispersers of the British senate!—pointed out the obnoxious members, on whom our colonel laid his hand, and sent off by his men to be detained, if a bold member, or to be deterred from sitting in the house, if a frightened one. This colonel had been a drayman; and the contemptible knot of the Commons, reduced to fifty or sixty confederates, which assembled after his "Purge," were called "Colonel Pride's Dray-Horses."

It was this Rump which voted the death of the sovereign, and abolished the regal office, and the House of Peers—as "unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous!" Every office in parliament seemed "dangerous," but that of the "Custodes libertatis Angliae," the keepers of the liberties of England! or rather "the gaolers!" "The legislative half-quarter of the House of Commons!" indignantly exclaims Clement Walker—the "Montagne" of the French revolutionists!

The "Red-coats" as the military were nicknamed, soon taught their masters, "the Rumpers," silence and obedience: the latter having raised one colossal man for their own purpose, were annihilated by him at a single blow. Cromwell, five years after, turned them out of their house, and put the keys into his pocket. Their last public appearance was in the fleeting days of Richard Cromwell, when the comi-tragedy of "the Rump" concluded by a catastrophe as ludicrous as that of Tom Thumb's tragedy!

How such a faction used their instruments to gather in the common spoil, and how their instruments at length converted the hands which held them into instruments themselves, appears in their history. When "the Long Parliament" opposed the designs of Cromwell and Ireton, these chiefs cried up "the liberty of the people," and denied "the authority of parliament:" but when they had effectuated their famous "purge," and formed a House of Commons of themselves, they abolished the House of Lords, crying up the supreme authority of the House of Commons, and crying down the liberty of the people. Such is the history of political factions, as well as of statesmen! Charles the Fifth alternately made use of the Pope's authority to subdue the rising spirit of the Protestants of Germany, or raised an army of Protestants to imprison the Pope! who branded his German allies by the novel and odious name of Lutherans. A chain of similar facts may be framed out of modern history.

The "Rump," as they were called by every one but their own party, became a whetstone for the wits to sharpen themselves on; and we have two large collections of "Rump Songs," curious chronicles of popular feeling![327] Without this evidence we should not have been so well informed respecting the phases of this portentous phenomenon. "The Rump" was celebrated in verse, till at length it became "the Rump of a Rump of a Rump!" as Foulis traces them to their dwindled and grotesque appearance. It is pourtrayed by a wit of the times—

The Rump's an old story, if well understood, 'Tis a thing dress'd up in a parliament's hood, And like it—but the tail stands where the head shou'd! 'Twould make a man scratch where it does not itch! They say 'tis good luck when a body rises With the rump upwards; but he that advises To live in that posture, is none of the wisest.

Cromwell's hunting them out of the House by military force is alluded to—

Our politic doctors do us teach, That a blood-sucking red-coat's as good as a leech To relieve the head, if applied to the breech.

In the opening scene of the Restoration, Mrs. Hutchinson, an honest republican, paints with dismay a scene otherwise very ludicrous. "When the town of Nottingham, as almost all the rest of the island, began to grow mad, and declared themselves in their desires of the king;" or, as another of the opposite party writes, "When the soldiery, who had hitherto made clubs trumps, resolved now to turn up the king of hearts in their affections," the rabble in town and country vied with each other in burning the "Rump;" and the literal emblem was hung by chains on gallowses, with a bonfire underneath, while the cries of "Let us burn the Rump! Let us roast the Rump!" were echoed everywhere. The suddenness of this universal change, which was said to have maddened the wise, and to have sobered the mad, must be ascribed to the joy at escaping from the yoke of a military despotism; perhaps, too, it marked the rapid transition of hope to a restoration which might be supposed to have implanted gratitude even in a royal breast! The feelings of the people expected to find an echo from the throne!

"The Rump," besides their general resemblance to the French anarchists, had also some minuter features of ugliness, which Englishmen have often exulted have not marked an English revolution—sanguinary proscriptions![328] We had thought that we had no revolutionary tribunals! no Septembrisers! no noyades! no moveable guillotines awaiting for carts loaded with human victims! no infuriated republican urging, in a committee of public safety, the necessity of a salutary massacre!

But if it be true that the same motives and the same principles were at work in both nations, and that the like characters were performing in England the parts which they did afterwards in France, by an argument a priori we might be sure that the same revolting crimes and chimerical projects were alike suggested at London as at Paris. Human nature, even in transactions which appear unparalleled, will be found to preserve a regularity of resemblance not always suspected.

The first great tragic act was closely copied by the French: and if the popular page of our history appears unstained by their revolutionary axe, this depended only on a slight accident; for it became a question of "yea" and "nay!" and was only carried in the negative by two voices in the council! It was debated among "the bloody Rump," as it was hideously designated, "whether to massacre and to put to the sword all the king's party!"[329] Cromwell himself listened to the suggestion; and it was only put down by the coolness of political calculation—the dread that the massacre would be too general! Some of the Rump not obtaining the blessedness of a massacre, still clung to the happiness of an immolation; and many petitions were presented, that "two or three principal gentlemen of the royal party in EACH COUNTY might be sacrificed to justice, whereby the land might be saved from blood-guiltiness!" Sir Arthur Haslerigg, whose "passionate fondness of liberty" has been commended,[330] was one of the committee of safety in 1647—I too would commend "a passionate lover of liberty," whenever I do not discover that this lover is much more intent on the dower than on the bride. Haslerigg, "an absurd, bold man," as Clarendon, at a single stroke, reveals his character, was resolved not to be troubled with king or bishop, or with any power in the state superior to "the Rump's." We may safely suspect the patriot who can cool his vehemence in spoliation. Haslerigg would have no bishops, but this was not from any want of reverence for church lands, for he heaped for himself such wealth as to have been nicknamed "the Bishop of Durham!" He is here noticed for a political crime different from that of plunder. When, in 1647, this venerable radical found the parliament resisting his views, he declared that "Some heads must fly off!" adding, "the parliament cannot save England; we must look another way;"—threatening, what afterwards was done, to bring in the army! It was this "passionate lover of liberty" who, when Dorislaus, the parliamentary agent, was assassinated by some Scotchmen in Holland, moved in the house, that "six royalists of the best quality" should be immediately executed! When some northern counties petitioned the Commons for relief against a famine in the land, our Maratist observed, that "this want of food would best defend those counties from Scottish invasion!"[331] The slaughter of Drogheda by Cromwell, and his frightening all London by what Walker calls "a butchery of apprentices," when he cried out to his soldiers, "to kill man, woman, and child, and fire the city!"[332] may be placed among those crimes which are committed to open a reign of terror—but Hugh Peters's solemn thanksgiving to Heaven that "none were spared!" was the true expression of the true feeling of these political demoniacs. Cromwell was cruel from politics, others from constitution. Some were willing to be cruel without "blood-guiltiness." One Alexander Rigby, a radical lawyer, twice moved in the Long Parliament, that those lords and gentlemen who were "malignants," should be sold as slaves to the Dey of Algiers, or sent off to the new plantations in the West Indies. He had all things prepared; for it is added that he had contracted with two merchants to ship them off.[333] There was a most bloody-minded "maker of washing-balls," as one John Durant is described, appointed a lecturer by the House of Commons, who always left out of the Lord's Prayer, "As we forgive them that trespass against us," and substituted, "Lord, since thou hast now drawn out thy sword, let it not be sheathed again till it be glutted in the blood of the malignants." I find too many enormities of this kind. "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently, and keepeth back his sword from blood!" was the cry of the wretch, who, when a celebrated actor and royalist sued for quarter, gave no other reply than that of "fitting the action to the word."[334] Their treatment of the Irish may possibly be admired by a true Machiavelist: "they permitted forty thousand of the Irish to enlist in the service of the kings of Spain and France"—in other words, they expelled them at once, which, considering that our Rumpers affected such an abhorrence of tyranny, may be considered as an act of mercy! satisfying themselves only with dividing the forfeited lands of the aforesaid forty thousand among their own party, by lot and other means. An universal confiscation, after all, is a bloodless massacre. They used the Scotch soldiers, after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, a little differently—but equally efficaciously—for they sold their Scotch prisoners for slaves to the American planters.[335]

The Robespierres and the Marats were as extraordinary beings, and in some respects the Frenchmen were working on a more enlarged scheme. These discovered that "the generation which had witnessed the preceding one would always regret it; and for the security of the Revolution, it was necessary that every person who was thirty years old in 1788 should perish on the scaffold!" The anarchists were intent on reducing the French people to eight millions, and on destroying the great cities of France.[336]

Such monstrous persons and events are not credible—but this is no proof that they have not occurred. Many incredible things will happen!

Another disorganising feature in the English Rumpers was also observed in the French Sans-culottes—their hatred of literature and the arts. Hebert was one day directing his satellites towards the Bibliotheque Nationale, to put an end to all that human knowledge had collected for centuries on centuries—in one day! alleging, of course, some good reason. This hero was only diverted from the enterprise by being persuaded to postpone it for a day or two, when luckily the guillotine intervened; the same circumstance occurred here. The burning of the records in the Tower was certainly proposed; a speech of Selden's, which I cannot immediately turn to, put a stop to these incendiaries. It was debated in the Rump parliament, when Cromwell was general, whether they should dissolve the universities? They concluded that no university was necessary; that there were no ancient examples of such education, and that scholars in other countries did study at their own cost and charges, and therefore they looked on them as unnecessary, and thought them fitting to be taken away for the public use!—How these venerable asylums escaped from being sold with the king's pictures, as stone and timber, and why their rich endowments were not shared among such inveterate ignorance and remorseless spoliation, might claim some inquiry.

The Abbe Morellet, a great political economist, imagined that the source of all the crimes of the French Revolution was their violation of the sacred rights of property. The perpetual invectives of the Sans-culottes of France against proprietors and against property proceeded from demoralised beings who formed panegyrics on all crimes; crimes, to explain whose revolutionary terms, a new dictionary was required. But even these anarchists, in their mad expressions against property, and in their wildest notions of their "egalite," have not gone beyond the daring of our own "Rumpers!"

Of those revolutionary journals of the parliament of 1649, which in spirit so strongly resemble the diurnal or hebdomadal effusions of the redoubtable French Hebert, Marat, and others of that stamp, one of the most remarkable is, "The Moderate, impartially communicating Martial Affairs to the Kingdom of England;" the monarchical title our commonwealth men had not yet had time enough to obliterate from their colloquial style. This writer called himself, in his barbarous English, The Moderate! It would be hard to conceive the meanness and illiteracy to which the English language was reduced under the pens of the rabble-writers of these days, had we not witnessed in the present time a parallel to their compositions. "The Moderate!" was a title assumed on the principle on which Marat denominated himself "l'Ami du Peuple." It is curious that the most ferocious politicians usually assert their moderation. Robespierre, in his justification, declares that Marat "m'a souvent accuse de Moderantisme." The same actors, playing the same parts, may be always paralleled in their language and their deeds. This "Moderate" steadily pursued one great principle—the overthrow of all property. Assuming that property was the original cause of sin! an exhortation to the people for this purpose is the subject of the present paper:[337] the illustration of his principle is as striking as the principle itself.

It is an apology for, or rather a defence of, robbery! Some moss-troopers had been condemned to be hanged for practising their venerable custom of gratuitously supplying themselves from the flocks and herds of their weaker neighbours: our "Moderate" ingeniously discovers that the loss of these men's lives is to be attributed to nothing but property. They are necessitated to offend the laws in order to obtain a livelihood!

On this he descants; and the extract is a political curiosity in the French style! "Property is the original cause of any sin between party and party as to civil transactions. And since the tyrant is taken off, and the government altered in nomine, so ought it really to redound to the good of the people in specie; which, though they cannot expect it in few years, by reason of the multiplicity of the gentlemen in authority, command, &c. who drive on all designs for support of the old government, and consequently their own interest and the people's slavery, yet they doubt not but in time the people will herein discern their own blindness and folly."

In September, he advanced with more depth of thought. "Wars have ever been clothed with the most gracious pretences—viz., reformation of religion, the laws of the land, the liberty of the subject, &c.; though the effects thereof have proved most destructive to every nation; making the sword, and not the people, the original of all authorities for many hundred years together, taking away each man's birthright, and settling upon a few A CURSED PROPRIETY; the ground of all civil offences, and the greatest cause of most sins against the heavenly Deity. This tyranny and oppression running through the veins of many of our predecessors, and being too long maintained by the sword upon a royal foundation, at last became so customary, as to the vulgar it seemed most natural—the only reason why the people of this time are so ignorant of their birthright, their only freedom," &c.

"The birthright" of citoyen Egalite to "a cursed propriety settled on a few," was not, even among the French Jacobins, urged with more amazing force. Had things proceeded according to our "Moderate's" plan, "the people's slavery" had been something worse. In a short time the nation would have had more proprietors than property. We have a curious list of the spoliations of those members of the House of Commons, who, after their famous self-denying ordinances, appropriated among themselves sums of money, offices, and lands, for services "done or to be done."

The most innocent of this new government of "the Majesty of the People," were those whose talents had been limited by Nature to peddle and purloin; puny mechanics, who had suddenly dropped their needles, their hammers, and their lasts, and slunk out from behind their shop-counters; those who had never aspired beyond the constable of the parish, were now seated in the council of state; where, as Milton describes them, "they fell to huckster the commonwealth:" there they met a more rabid race of obscure lawyers, and discontented men of family, of blasted reputations; adventurers, who were to command the militia and navy of England,—governors of the three kingdoms! whose votes and ordinances resounded with nothing else but new impositions, new taxes, excises, yearly, monthly, weekly sequestrations, compositions, and universal robbery!

Baxter vents one deep groan of indignation, and presciently announces one future consequence of Reform! "In all this appeared the severity of God, the mutability of worldly things, and the fruits of error, pride, and selfishness, to be charged hereafter upon reformation and religion." As a statesman, the sagacity of this honest prophet was narrowed by the horizon of his religious views; for he ascribes the whole as "prepared by Satan to the injury of the Protestant cause, and the advantage of the Papists!" But dropping his particular application to the devil and the Papists, honest Richard Baxter is perfectly right in his general principle concerning "Rumpers,"—"Sans-culottes," and "Radicals."

FOOTNOTES:

[325] History of Independency, Part II. p. 32.

[326] First collected and published in 1661, and afterwards reprinted in two small vols. 1731.

[327] The first collection ever formed of these political satires was printed in 1660, with the quaint title of "Ratts rhimed to Death; or, the Rump-parliament hang'd up in the Shambles."

[328] In one of the popular political songs of the day, "The Rump" is aptly compared to

"The foxes of Samson, that carried a brand In their tails, to destroy and to burn up the land."

[329] Clement Walker's History of Independency, part II. p. 130. Confirmed by Barwick in his Life, p. 163.

[330] The Rev. Mark Noble's Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, i. 405.

[331] Clement Walker's History of Independency, Part II. 173.

[332] Ib., Part I. 160.

[333] Mercurius Rusticus, xii. 115. Barwick's Life, p. 42.

[334] This actor was a comedian named Robinson, of the Blackfriars Theatre; the performers there being termed "the king's servants." In the civil wars most of the young actors, deprived of living by their profession, all theatres being closed by order of the Parliament, went into the king's army. Robinson was fighting at the siege of Basing House, in Hampshire, October, 1645, when after an obstinate defence his party was defeated, he laid down his arms, suing for quarter, but was shot through the head by Colonel Harrison, as he repeated the words quoted above.

[335] The following account is drawn from Sir William Dugdale's interleaved Pocket-book for 1648.—"Aug. 17. The Scotch army, under the command of Duke Hamilton, defeated at Preston in Lancashire. 24th. The Moorlanders rose upon the Scots and stript some of them. The Scotch prisoners miserably used; exposed to eat cabbage-leaves in Ridgley (Staffordshire), and carrot-tops in Coleshill (Warwickshire). The soldiers who guarded them sold the victuals which were brought in for them from the country."

[336] Desodoard's Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de France, iv. 5. When Lyons was captured in 1793, the revolutionary army nearly reduced this fine city to a heap of ruins, in obedience to the decree of the Montagne, who had ordered its name to be effaced, that it should henceforth be termed, "Commune affranchie," and upon its ruins a column erected and inscribed, "Lyon fit la guerre a la liberte; Lyon n'est plus."

[337] The Moderate, from Tuesday, July 31, to August 7, 1649.



LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY.—OLDYS AND HIS MANUSCRIPTS.

Such a picture may be furnished by some unexpected materials which my inquiries have obtained of Oldys. This is a sort of personage little known to the wits, who write more than they read, and to their volatile votaries, who only read what the wits write. It is time to vindicate the honours of the few whose laborious days enrich the stores of national literature, not by the duplicates but the supplements of knowledge. A literary antiquary is that idler whose life is passed in a perpetual voyage autour de ma chambre; fervent in sagacious diligence, instinct with the enthusiasm of curious inquiry, critical as well as erudite; he has to arbitrate between contending opinions, to resolve the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at the remote; so busied with other times, and so interested for other persons than those about him, that he becomes the inhabitant of the visionary world of books. He counts only his days by his acquisitions, and may be said by his original discoveries to be the CREATOR OF FACTS; often exciting the gratitude of the literary world, while the very name of the benefactor has not always descended with the inestimable labours.

Such is the man whom we often find leaving, when he dies, his favourite volumes only an incomplete project! and few of this class of literary men have escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers. Voluminous works have been usually left unfinished by the death of the authors; and it is with them as with the planting of trees, of which Johnson has forcibly observed, "There is a frightful interval between the seed and timber." And he admirably remarks, what I cannot forbear applying to the labours I am now to describe: "He that calculates the growth of trees has the remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and where he rejoices to see the stem rise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down." The days of the patriotic Count Mazzuchelli were freely given to his national literature; and six invaluable folios attest the gigantic force of his immense erudition; yet these only carry us through the letters A and B: and though Mazzuchelli had finished for the press other volumes, the torpor of his descendants has defrauded Europe of her claims.[338] The Abbe Goujet, who had designed a classified history of his national literature, in the eighteen volumes we possess, could only conclude that of the translators, and commence that of the poets; two other volumes in manuscript have perished. That great enterprise of the Benedictines, the "Histoire Literaire de la France," now consists of twelve large quartos, and the industry of its successive writers has only been able to carry it to the twelfth century. David Clement designed the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared; but the diligent life of the writer could only proceed as far as H. The alphabetical order, which so many writers of this class have adopted, has proved a mortifying memento of human life! Tiraboschi was so fortunate as to complete his great national history of Italian literature. But, unhappily for us, Thomas Warton, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, in planning the map of the beautiful land, of which he had only a Pisgah-sight, expired amidst his volumes. The most precious portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.

Oldys, among this brotherhood, has met perhaps with a harder fate; his published works, and the numerous ones to which he contributed, are now highly appreciated by the lovers of books; but the larger portion of his literary labours have met with the sad fortune of dispersed, and probably of wasted manuscripts. Oldys's manuscripts, or O. M. as they are sometimes designated, are constantly referred to by every distinguished writer on our literary history. I believe that not one of them could have given us any positive account of the manuscripts themselves! They have indeed long served as the solitary sources of information—but like the well at the wayside, too many have drawn their waters in silence.

Oldys is chiefly known by the caricature of the facetious Grose; a great humourist, both with pencil and with pen: it is in a posthumous scrap-book, where Grose deposited his odds and ends, and where there is perhaps not a single story which is not satirical. Our lively antiquary, who cared more for rusty armour than for rusty volumes, would turn over these flams and quips to some confidential friend, to enjoy together a secret laugh at their literary intimates. His eager executor, who happened to be his bookseller, served up the poignant hash to the public as "Grose's Olio!"[339] The delineation of Oldys is sufficiently overcharged for "the nonce." One prevalent infirmity of honest Oldys, his love of companionship over too social a glass, sends him down to posterity in a grotesque attitude; and Mr. Alexander Chalmers, who has given us the fullest account of Oldys, has inflicted on him something like a sermon, on "a state of intoxication."

Alas! Oldys was an outcast of fortune,[340] and the utter simplicity of his heart was guileless as a child's—ever open to the designing. The noble spirit of a Duke of Norfolk once rescued the long-lost historian of Rawleigh from the confinement of the Fleet, where he had existed, probably forgotten by the world, for six years. It was by an act of grace that the duke safely placed Oldys in the Heralds' College as Norroy King of Arms.[341] But Oldys, like all shy and retired men, had contracted peculiar habits and close attachments for a few; both these he could indulge at no distance. He liked his old associates in the purlieus of the Fleet, whom he facetiously dignified as "his Rulers," and there, as I have heard, with the grotesque whim of a herald, established "The Dragon Club." Companionship yields the poor man unpurchased pleasures. Oldys, busied every morning among the departed wits and the learned of our country, reflected some image from them of their wit and learning to his companions: a secret history as yet untold, and ancient wit, which, cleared of the rust, seemed to him brilliant as the modern!

It is hard, however, for a literary antiquary to be caricatured, and for a herald to be ridiculed about an "unseemly reeling with the coronet of the Princess Caroline, which looked unsteady on the cushion, to the great scandal of his brethren,"—a circumstance which could never have occurred at the burial of a prince or princess, as the coronet is carried by Clarencieux, and not by Norroy. Oldys's deep potations of ale, however, give me an opportunity of bestowing on him the honour of being the author of a popular Anacreontic song. Mr. Taylor informs me that "Oldys always asserted that he was the author of the well-known song—

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!

and as he was a rigid lover of truth, I doubt not that he wrote it." My own researches confirm it: I have traced this popular song through a dozen of collections since the year 1740, the first in which I find it. In the later collections an original inscription has been dropped, which the accurate Ritson has restored, without, however, being able to discover the writer. In 1740 it is said to have been "made extempore by a gentleman, occasioned by a fly drinking out of his cup of ale;"—the accustomed potion of poor Oldys![342]

Grose, however, though a great joker on the peculiarities of Oldys, was far from insensible to the extraordinary acquisitions of the man. "His knowledge of English books has hardly been exceeded." Grose, too, was struck by the delicacy of honour, and the unswerving veracity which so strongly characterised Oldys, of which he gives a remarkable instance.[343] We are concerned in ascertaining the moral integrity of the writer, whose main business is with history.

At a time when our literary history, excepting in the solitary labour of Anthony Wood, was a forest, with neither road nor pathway, Oldys, fortunately placed in the library of the Earl of Oxford, yielded up his entire days to researches concerning the books and the men of the preceding age. His labours were then valueless, their very nature not yet ascertained, and when he opened the treasures of our ancient lore in "The British Librarian," it was closed for want of public encouragement. Our writers, then struggling to create an age of genius of their own, forgot that they had had any progenitors; or while they were acquiring new modes of excellence, that they were losing others, to which their posterity or the national genius might return. (To know, and to admire only, the literature and the tastes of our own age, is a species of elegant barbarism.)[344] Spenser was considered nearly as obsolete as Chaucer; Milton was veiled by oblivion, and Shakspeare's dramas were so imperfectly known, that in looking over the play-bills of 1711, and much later, I find that whenever it chanced that they were acted, they were always announced to have been "written by Shakspeare." Massinger was unknown; and Jonson, though called "immortal" in the old play-bills, lay entombed in his two folios. The poetical era of Elizabeth, the eloquent age of James the First, and the age of wit of Charles the Second, were blanks in our literary history. Bysshe, compiling an Art of Poetry in 1718, passed by in his collection "Spenser and the poets of his age, because their language is now become so obsolete that most readers of our age have no ear for them, and therefore Shakspeare himself is so rarely cited in my collection." The best English poets were considered to be the modern; a taste which is always obstinate!

All this was nothing to Oldys; his literary curiosity anticipated by half a century the fervour of the present day. This energetic direction of all his thoughts was sustained by that life of discovery which in literary researches is starting novelties among old and unremembered things; contemplating some ancient tract as precious as a manuscript, or revelling in the volume of a poet whose passport of fame was yet delayed in its way; or disinterring the treasure of some secluded manuscript, whence he drew a virgin extract; or raising up a sort of domestic intimacy with the eminent in arms, in politics, and in literature in this visionary life, life itself with Oldys was insensibly gliding away—its cares almost unfelt!

The life of a literary antiquary partakes of the nature of those who, having no concerns of their own, busy themselves with those of others. Oldys lived in the back ages of England; he had crept among the dark passages of Time, till, like an old gentleman usher, he seemed to be reporting the secret history of the courts which he had lived in. He had been charmed among their masques and revels, had eyed with astonishment their cumbrous magnificence, when knights and ladies carried on their mantles and their cloth of gold ten thousand pounds' worth of ropes of pearls, and buttons of diamonds; or, descending to the gay court of the second Charles, he tattled merry tales, as in that of the first he had painfully watched, like a patriot or a loyalist, a distempered era. He had lived so constantly with these people of another age, and had so deeply interested himself in their affairs, and so loved the wit and the learning which are often bright under the rust of antiquity, that his own uncourtly style is embrowned with the tint of a century old. But it was this taste and curiosity which alone could have produced the extraordinary volume of Sir Walter Rawleigh's life—a work richly inlaid with the most curious facts and the juxtaposition of the most remote knowledge; to judge by its fulness of narrative, it would seem rather to have been the work of a contemporary.[345]

It was an advantage in this primaeval era of literary curiosity, that those volumes which are now not even to be found in our national library, where certainly they are perpetually wanted, and which are now so excessively appreciated, were exposed on stalls, through the reigns of Anne and the two Georges.[346] Oldys encountered no competitor, cased in the invulnerable mail of his purse, to dispute his possession of the rarest volume. On the other hand, our early collector did not possess our advantages; he could not fly for instant aid to a "Biographia Britannica," he had no history of our poetry, nor even of our drama. Oldys could tread in no man's path, for every soil about him was unbroken ground. He had to create everything for his own purposes. We gather fruit from trees which others have planted, and too often we but "pluck and eat."

Nulla dies sine linea, was his sole hope while he was accumulating masses of notes; and as Oldys never used his pen from the weak passion of scribbling, but from the urgency of preserving some substantial knowledge, or planning some future inquiry, he amassed nothing but what he wished to remember. Even the minuter pleasures of settling a date, or classifying a title-page, were enjoyments to his incessant pen. Everything was acquisition. This never-ending business of research appears to have absorbed his powers, and sometimes to have dulled his conceptions. No one more aptly exercised the tact of discovery; he knew where to feel in the dark: but he was not of the race—that race indeed had not yet appeared among us—who could melt into their Corinthian brass the mingled treasures of Research, Imagination, and Philosophy!

We may be curious to inquire where our literary antiquary deposited the discoveries and curiosities which he was so incessantly acquiring. They were dispersed, on many a fly-leaf, in occasional memorandum-books; in ample marginal notes on his authors—they were sometimes thrown into what he calls his "parchment budgets," or "Bags of Biography—of Botany—of Obituary"—of "Books relative to London," and other titles and bags, which he was every day filling.[347] Sometimes his collections seem to have been intended for a series of volumes, for he refers to "My first Volume of Tables of the eminent Persons celebrated by English Poets"—to another of "Poetical Characteristics." Among those manuscripts which I have seen, I find one mentioned, apparently of a wide circuit, under the reference of "My Biographical Institutions. Part third; containing a Catalogue of all the English Lives, with Historical and Critical Observations on them." But will our curious or our whimsical collectors of the present day endure without impatience the loss of a quarto manuscript, which bears this rich condiment for its title—"Of London Libraries; with Anecdotes of Collectors of Books; Remarks on Booksellers; and on the first Publishers of Catalogues?" Oldys left ample annotations on "Fuller's Worthies," and "Winstanley's Lives of the Poets," and on "Langbaine's Dramatic Poets." The late Mr. Boswell showed me a Fuller in the Malone collection, with Steevens's transcriptions of Oldys's notes, which Malone purchased for 43l. at Steevens's sale; but where is the original copy of Oldys? The "Winstanley," I think, also reposes in the same collection. The "Langbaine" is far-famed, and is preserved in the British Museum, the gift of Dr. Birch; it has been considered so precious, that several of our eminent writers have cheerfully passed through the labour of a minute transcription of its numberless notes. In the history of the fate and fortune of books, that of Oldys's Langbaine is too curious to omit. Oldys may tell his own story, which I find in the Museum copy, p. 336, and which copy appears to be a second attempt; for of the first Langbaine we have this account:—

When I left London in 1724, to reside in Yorkshire, I left in the care of the Rev. Mr. Burridge's family, with whom I had several years lodged, among many other books, goods, &c., a copy of this "Langbaine," in which I had wrote several notes and references to further knowledge of these poets. When I returned to London, 1730, I understood my books had been dispersed; and afterwards becoming acquainted with Mr. T. Coxeter, I found that he had bought my "Langbaine" of a bookseller who was a great collector of plays and poetical books: this must have been of service to him, and he has kept it so carefully from my sight, that I never could have the opportunity of transcribing into this I am now writing in the notes I had collected in that.[348]

This first Langbaine, with additions by Coxeter, was bought, at the sale of his books, by Theophilus Cibber: on the strength of these notes he prefixed his name to the first collection of the "Lives of our Poets," which appeared in weekly numbers, and now form five volumes, written chiefly by Shiels, an amanuensis of Dr. Johnson. Shiels has been recently castigated by Mr. Gifford.

These literary jobbers nowhere distinguished Coxeter's and Oldys's curious matter from their own. Such was the fate of the first copy of Langbaine, with Oldys's notes; but the second is more important. At an auction of some of Oldys's books and manuscripts, of which I have seen a printed catalogue, Dr. Birch purchased this invaluable copy for three shillings and sixpence.[349] Such was the value attached to these original researches concerning our poets, and of which, to obtain only a transcript, very large sums have since been cheerfully given. The Museum copy of Langbaine is in Oldys's handwriting, not interleaved, but overflowing with notes, written in a very small hand about the margins, and inserted between the lines; nor may the transcriber pass negligently even its corners, otherwise he is here assured that he will lose some useful date, or the hint of some curious reference. The enthusiasm and diligence of Oldys, in undertaking a repetition of his first lost labour, proved to be infinitely greater than the sense of his unrequited labours. Such is the history of the escapes, the changes, and the fate of a volume which forms the groundwork of the most curious information concerning our elder poets, and to which we must still frequently refer.

In this variety of literary arrangements, which we must consider as single works in a progressive state, or as portions of one great work on our modern literary history, it may, perhaps, be justly suspected that Oldys, in the delight of perpetual acquisition, impeded the happier labour of unity of design and completeness of purpose. He was not a Tiraboschi—nor even a Niceron! He was sometimes chilled by neglect, and by "vanity and vexation of spirit," else we should not now have to count over a barren list of manuscript works; masses of literary history, of which the existence is even doubtful.

In Kippis's Biographia Britannica we find frequent references to O. M., Oldys's Manuscripts. Mr. John Taylor, the son of the friend and executor of Oldys, has greatly obliged me with all his recollections of this man of letters; whose pursuits, however, were in no manner analogous to his, and whom he could only have known in youth. By him I learn, that on the death of Oldys, Dr. Kippis, editor of the Biographia Britannica, looked over these manuscripts at Mr. Taylor's house. He had been directed to this discovery by the late Bishop of Dromore, whose active zeal was very remarkable in every enterprise to enlarge our literary history. Kippis was one who, in some degree, might have estimated their literary value; but, employed by commercial men, and negotiating with persons who neither comprehended their nature, nor affixed any value to them, the editor of the Biographia found Oldys's manuscripts an easy purchase for his employer, the late Mr. Cadell; and the twenty guineas, perhaps, served to bury their writer! Mr. Taylor says—"The manuscripts of Oldys were not so many as might be expected from so indefatigable a writer. They consisted chiefly of short extracts from books, and minutes of dates, and were thought worth purchasing by the doctor. I remember the manuscripts well; though Oldys was not the author, but rather recorder." Such is the statement and the opinion of a writer whose effusions are of a gayer sort. But the researches of Oldys must not be estimated by this standard; with him a single line was the result of many a day of research, and a leaf of scattered hints would supply more original knowledge than some octavos fashioned out by the hasty gilders and varnishers of modern literature. These discoveries occupy small space to the eye; but large works are composed out of them. This very lot of Oldys's manuscripts was, indeed, so considerable in the judgment of Kippis, that he has described them as "a large and useful body of biographical materials, left by Mr. Oldys." Were these the "Biographical Institutes" Oldys refers to among his manuscripts? "The late Mr. Malone," continues Mr. Taylor, "told me that he had seen all Oldys's manuscripts; so I presume they are in the hands of Cadell and Davies." Have they met with the fate of sucked oranges?—and how much of Malone may we owe to Oldys?

This information enabled me to trace the manuscripts of Oldys to Dr. Kippis; but it cast me among the booksellers, who do not value manuscripts which no one can print. I discovered, by the late Mr. Davies, that the direction of that hapless work in our literary history, with its whole treasure of manuscripts, had been consigned by Mr. Cadell to the late George Robinson, and that the successor of Dr. Kippis had been the late Dr. George Gregory. Again I repeat, the history of voluminous works is a melancholy office; every one concerned with them no longer can be found! The esteemed relict of Dr. Gregory, with a friendly promptitude, gratified my anxious inquiries, and informed me, that "she perfectly recollects a mass of papers, such as I described, being returned, on the death of Dr. Gregory, to the house of Wilkie and Robinson, in the early part of the year 1809." I applied to this house, who, after some time, referred me to Mr. John Robinson, the representative of his late father, and with whom all the papers of the former partnership were deposited. But Mr. John Robinson has terminated my inquiries, by his civility in promising to comply with them, and his pertinacity in not doing so. He may have injured his own interest in not trading with my curiosity.[350] It was fortunate for the nation that George Vertue's mass of manuscripts escaped the fate of Oldys's; had the possessor proved as indolent, Horace Walpole would not have been the writer of his most valuable work, and we should have lost the "Anecdotes of Painting," of which Vertue had collected the materials.

Of a life consumed in such literary activity we should have known more had the Diaries of Oldys escaped destruction. "One habit of my father's old friend, William Oldys," says Mr. Taylor, "was that of keeping a diary, and recording in it every day all the events that occurred, and all his engagements, and the employment of his time. I have seen piles of these books, but know not what became of them." The existence of such diaries is confirmed by a sale catalogue of Thomas Davies, the literary bookseller, who sold many of the books and some manuscripts of Oldys, which appear to have been dispersed in various libraries. I find Lot "3627, Mr. Oldys's Diary, containing several observations relating to books, characters, &c.;" a single volume, which appears to have separated from the "piles" which Mr. Taylor once witnessed. The literary diary of Oldys could have exhibited the mode of his pursuits, and the results of his discoveries. One of these volumes I have fortunately discovered, and a singularity in this writer's feelings throws a new interest over such diurnal records. Oldys was apt to give utterance with his pen to his most secret emotions. Querulous or indignant, his honest simplicity confided to the paper before him such extemporaneous soliloquies, and I have found him hiding in the very corners of his manuscripts his "secret sorrows."

A few of these slight memorials of his feelings will exhibit a sort of Silhouette likeness traced by his own hand, when at times the pensive man seems to have contemplated his own shadow. Oldys would throw down in verses, whose humility or quaintness indicates their origin, or by some pithy adage, or apt quotation, or recording anecdote, his self-advice, or his self-regrets!

Oppressed by a sense of tasks so unprofitable to himself, while his days were often passed in trouble and in prison, he breathes a self-reproach in one of these profound reflections of melancholy which so often startle the man of study, who truly discovers that life is too limited to acquire real knowledge, with the ambition of dispensing it to the world:—

I say, who too long in these cobwebs lurks, Is always whetting tools, but never works.

In one of the corners of his note-books I find this curious but sad reflection:—

Alas! this is but the apron of a fig-leaf—but the curtain of a cobweb.

Sometimes he seems to have anticipated the fate of that obscure diligence which was pursuing discoveries reserved for others to use:—

He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.

Fond treasurer of these stores, behold thy fate In Psalm the thirty-ninth, 6, 7, and 8.

Sometimes he checks the eager ardour of his pen, and reminds himself of its repose, in Latin, Italian, and English.

——Non vi, sed saepe cadendo. Assai presto si fa quel che si fa bene.

Some respite best recovers what we need, Discreetly baiting gives the journey speed.

There was a thoughtless kindness in honest Oldys; and his simplicity of character, as I have observed, was practised on by the artful or the ungenerous. We regret to find the following entry concerning the famous collector, James West:—

I gave above threescore letters of Dr. Davenant to his son, who was envoy at Frankfort in 1703 to 1708, to Mr. James West,[351] with one hundred and fifty more, about Christmas, 1746: but the same fate they found as grain that is sown in barren ground.

Such is the plaintive record by which Oldys relieved himself of a groan! We may smile at the simplicity of the following narrative, where poor Oldys received manuscripts in lieu of money:—

Old Counsellor Fane, of Colchester, who, in forma pauperis, deceived me of a good sum of money which he owed me, and not long after set up his chariot, gave me a parcel of manuscripts, and promised me others, which he never gave me, nor anything else, besides a barrel of oysters, and a manuscript copy of Randolph's poems, an original, as he said, with many additions, being devolved to him as the author's relation.

There was no end to his aids and contributions to every author or bookseller who applied to him; yet he had reason to complain of both while they were using his invaluable but not valued knowledge. Here is one of these diurnal entries:—

I lent the tragical lives and deaths of the famous pirates, Ward and Dansiker, 4to, London, 1612, by Robt. Daborn, alias Dabourne, to Mr. T. Lediard, when he was writing his Naval History, and he never returned it. See Howell's Letters of them.

In another, when his friend T. Hayward was collecting, for his "British Muse," the most exquisite commonplaces of our old English dramatists, a compilation which must not be confounded with ordinary ones, Oldys not only assisted in the labour, but drew up a curious introduction with a knowledge and love of the subject which none but himself possessed. But so little were these researches then understood, that we find Oldys, in a moment of vexatious recollection, and in a corner of one of the margins of his Langbaine, accidentally preserving an extraordinary circumstance attending this curious dissertation. Oldys having completed this elaborate introduction, "the penurious publisher insisted on leaving out one third part, which happened to be the best matter in it, because he would have it contracted into one sheet!" Poor Oldys never could forget the fate of this elaborate Dissertation on all the collections of English poetry; I am confident that I have seen some volume which was formerly Oldys's, and afterwards Thomas Warton's, in the possession of my intelligent friend Mr. Douce, in the fly-leaf of which Oldys has expressed himself in these words:—"In my historical and critical review of all the collections of this kind, it would have made a sheet and a half or two sheets; but they for sordid gain, and to save a little expense in print and paper, got Mr. John Campbell to cross it and cramp it, and play the devil with it, till they squeezed it into less compass than a sheet." This is a loss which we may never recover. The curious book-knowledge of this singular man of letters, those stores of which he was the fond treasurer, as he says with such tenderness for his pursuits, were always ready to be cast into the forms of a dissertation or an introduction; and when Morgan published his Collection of Rare Tracts, the friendly hand of Oldys furnished "A Dissertation upon Pamphlets, in a Letter to a Nobleman;" probably the Earl of Oxford, a great literary curiosity; and in the Harleian Collection he has given a Catalogue raisonne of six hundred. When Mrs. Cooper attempted "The Muse's Library," the first essay which influenced the national taste to return to our deserted poets in our most poetical age, it was Oldys who only could have enabled this lady to perform that task so well.[352] When Curll, the publisher, to help out one of his hasty compilations, a "History of the Stage," repaired, like all the world, to Oldys, whose kindness could not resist the importunity of this busy publisher, he gave him a life of Nell Gwynn; while at the same moment Oldys could not avoid noticing, in one of his usual entries, an intended work on the stage, which we seem never to have had, "Dick Leveridge's History of the Stage and Actors in his own Time, for these forty or fifty years past, as he told me he had composed, is likely to prove, whenever it shall appear, a more perfect work." I might proceed with many similar gratuitous contributions with which he assisted his contemporaries. Oldys should have been constituted the reader for the nation. His Comptes Rendus of books and manuscripts are still held precious; but his useful and curious talent had sought the public patronage in vain! From one of his "Diaries," which has escaped destruction, I transcribe some interesting passages ad verbum.

The reader is here presented with a minute picture of those invisible occupations which pass in the study of a man of letters. There are those who may be surprised, as well as amused, in discovering how all the business, even to the very disappointments and pleasures of active life, can be transferred to the silent chamber of a recluse student; but there are others who will not read without emotion the secret thoughts of him who, loving literature with its purest passion, scarcely repines at being defrauded of his just fame, and leaves his stores for the after-age of his more gifted heirs. Thus we open one of Oldys's literary days:—

I was informed that day by Mr. Tho. Odell's daughter, that her father, who was Deputy-Inspector and Licenser of the Plays, died 24 May, 1749, at his house in Chappel-street, Westminster, aged 58 years. He was writing a history of the characters he had observed, and conferences he had had with many eminent persons he knew in his time. He was a great observator of everything curious in the conversations of his acquaintance, and his own conversation was a living chronicle of the remarkable intrigues, adventures, sayings, stories, writings, &c., of many of the quality, poets, and other authors, players, booksellers, &c., who flourished especially in the present century. He had been a popular man at elections, and sometime master of the playhouse in Goodman's Fields, but latterly was forced to live reserved and retired by reason of his debts. He published two or three dramatic pieces, one was the Patron, on the story of Lord Romney.

Q. of his da. to restore me Eustace Budgell's papers, and to get a sight of her father's.

Have got the one, and seen the other.

July 31.—Was at Mrs. Odell's; she returned me Mr. Budgell's papers. Saw some of her husband's papers, mostly poems in favour of the ministry, and against Mr. Pope. One of them, printed by the late Sir Robert Walpole's encouragement, who gave him ten guineas for writing and as much for the expense of printing it; but through his advice it was never published, because it might hurt his interest with Lord Chesterfield, and some other noblemen who favoured Mr. Pope for his fine genius. The tract I liked best of his writings was the history of his playhouse in Goodman's Fields. (Remember that which was published against that playhouse, which I have entered in my London Catalogue. Letter to Sir Ric. Brocas, Lord Mayor, &c., 8vo, 1730.)

Saw nothing of the history of his conversations with ingenious men; his characters, tales, jests, and intrigues of them, of which no man was better furnished with them. She thinks she has some papers of these, and promises to look them out, and also to inquire after Mr. Griffin, of the Lord Chamberlain's office, that I may get a search made about Spenser.

So intent was Oldys on these literary researches that we see, by the last words of this entry, how in hunting after one sort of game, his undivided zeal kept his eye on another. One of his favourite subjects was the realising of original discoveries respecting Spenser and Shakspeare; of whom, perhaps, to our shame, as it is to our vexation, it may be said that two of our master-poets are those of whom we know the least! Oldys once flattered himself that he should be able to have given the world a Life of Shakspeare. Mr. John Taylor informs me, that "Oldys had contracted to supply ten years of the life of Shakspeare unknown to the biographers, with one Walker, a bookseller in the Strand; and as Oldys did not live to fulfil the engagement, my father was obliged to return to Walker twenty guineas which he had advanced on the work." That interesting narrative is now hopeless for us. Yet, by the solemn contract into which Oldys had entered, and from his strict integrity, it might induce one to suspect that he had made positive discoveries which are now irrecoverable.

We may observe the manner of his anxious inquiries about Spenser:—

Ask Sir Peter Thompson if it were improper to try if Lord Effingham Howard would procure the pedigrees in the Herald's office, to be seen for Edmund Spenser's parentage or family? or how he was related to Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, in Northamptonshire? to three of whose daughters, who all married nobility, Spenser dedicates three of his poems.