Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on this circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]

Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow his trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way, with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious supplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]

A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own no king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican; and I am so still." He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals. "Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not see." He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm." [450]

Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincial town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and courageously. [451]

A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers, William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished, and well connected. Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather," he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." The poor lad, who was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude, that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be proof against this." Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations, and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated intercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her. "I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This marble,"—and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,—"is not harder than the King." The prediction proved true. James was inexorable. Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain from joining. [452]

Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours, and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates had undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by half the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemned to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London; but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humane connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility of sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence was passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility from the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have been rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses with you." The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven years, and should, during that period, be flogged through every market town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord," said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven years." "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment is not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter it." Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the Chief Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild, was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to be known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the House of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]

The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage, and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during the insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers, however, were victorious. [454]

The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses. In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel, twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling them. [455]

Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by the agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of a goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of a truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government were pillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown. Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol and at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price of innocent blood. [457]

He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The office of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong terrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children. A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one of his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitable monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent some persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal clemency through channels independent of him. [458]

Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselves preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of the relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrich themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that she might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation. She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear adversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of being deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion. But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek and affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] The misfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object of some interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if it could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscription that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who were sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profit which she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants should have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchant of Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military chest of the rebel army. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly was one which it might have been thought that even the most ungentle natures would have spared. Already some of the girls who had presented the standard to Monmouth at Taunton had cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had been thrown into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had sickened and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar before Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler," vociferated the Judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouter hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her hood over her face, followed the gaoler out of the court, fell ill of fright, and in a few hours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walked in the procession were still alive. Some of them were under ten years of age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress, without knowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour asked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent down to Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and imprisoned. Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, was requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. He was charged to declare in strong language that the maids of honour would not endure delay, that they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless a reasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant seven thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William Penn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission. Yet it should seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out of place on this occasion. He probably silenced the remonstrances of his conscience by repeating to himself that none of the money which he extorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused to be the agent of the ladies they would find agents less humane; that by complying he should increase his influence at the court, and that his influence at the court had already enabled him, and still might enable him, to render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a third part of what they had demanded. [461]

No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel nature than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at the fate of the simple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, to whom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for what considerations he granted his pardon.

The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided in selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power and whose artifices have led the multitude into error, are the proper objects of severity. The deluded populace, when once the slaughter on the field of battle is over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently agreeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it was inverted. While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost rigour of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It was neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctly traced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either to thirst for money or to thirst for blood.

In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts and knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the state, and the high command which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him out to a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice Lisle, than William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorant peasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But Grey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life interest in his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was therefore suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers. [462]

Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank which had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane should be forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible. But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only by sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father, Lord Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests of the royal household; and a pardon was granted. [463]

Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to the rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshire by vehement harangues in which James had been described as an incendiary and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give important assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out of Prideaux. [464]

None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had fled together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast in safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where they had hoped to embark. They had then separated. Wade and Goodenough were soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been implicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among the chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffered to live, because they had it in their power to give information which enabled the King to slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he had never yet been able to bring home any crime. [465]

How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies of the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply criminal. He was the original author of the plot for assassinating the royal brothers. He had written that Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and mendacity, stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormy times. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then to usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of London that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with men who had excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that was heard of him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly suspected that he had been in constant communication with the government against which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging his associates to every excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much information about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own neck, and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape. [466]

And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning, and terror behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched by time or by political changes, was long transmitted from generation to generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he had been many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the western road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she could not safely venture herself among the descendants of those who had witnessed the Bloody Assizes. [467]

But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked of the havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a glee at which the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own hand he had penned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should be hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways without seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire was tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to the saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At Windsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and in the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had rendered to the crown. [468]

At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them. James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his own inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited obloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister. But neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in fact, is utterly worthless.

The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among the great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been a formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy; and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and rapacity at once; but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered. The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid to incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable among them was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: his religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was cautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he ever approached the verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, been very unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipled as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, great hopes were entertained at Whitehall that Cornish would appear to have been concerned: but these hopes were disappointed. One of the conspirators, indeed, John Rumsey, was ready to swear anything: but a single witness was not sufficient; and no second witness could be found. More than two years had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye of the tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospect of death, and still harbouring malice on account of the unfavourable opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master, consented to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting. Cornish was arrested while transacting business on the Exchange, was hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and was brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case against him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest pressure of hope end fear to criminate him. Evidence was produced which proved that Goodenough was also under the influence of personal enmity. Rumsey's story was inconsistent with the story which he had told when he appeared as a witness against Lord Russell. But these things were urged in vain. On the bench sate three judges who had been with Jeffreys in the West; and it was remarked by those who watched their deportment that they had come back from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. It is indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste which even men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire. The bar and the bench united to browbeat the unfortunate Whig. The jury, named by a courtly Sheriff, readily found a verdict of Guilty; and, in spite of the indignant murmurs of the public, Cornish suffered death within ten days after he had been arrested. That no circumstance of degradation might be wanting, the gibbet was set up where King Street meets Cheapside, in sight of the house where he had long lived in general respect, of the Exchange where his credit had always stood high, and of the Guildhall where he had distinguished himself as a popular leader. He died with courage and with many pious expressions, but showed, by look and gesture, such strong resentment at the barbarity and injustice with which he had been treated, that his enemies spread a calumnious report concerning him. He was drunk, they said, or out of his mind, when he was turned off. William Penn, however, who stood near the gallows, and whose prejudice were all on the side of the government, afterwards said that he could see in Cornish's deportment nothing but the natural indignation of an innocent man slain under the forms of law. The head of the murdered magistrate was placed over the Guildhall. [469]

Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which disgraced the sessions of that autumn at the Old Bailey. Among the persons concerned in the Rye House plot was a man named James Burton. By his own confession he had been present when the design of assassination was discussed by his accomplices. When the conspiracy was detected, a reward was offered for his apprehension. He was saved from death by an ancient matron of the Baptist persuasion, named Elizabeth Gaunt. This woman, with the peculiar manners and phraseology which then distinguished her sect, had a large charity. Her life was passed in relieving the unhappy of all religious denominations, and she was well known as a constant visitor of the gaols. Her political and theological opinions, as well as her compassionate disposition, led her to do everything in her power for Burton. She procured a boat which took him to Gravesend, where he got on board of a ship bound for Amsterdam. At the moment of parting she put into his hand a sum of money which, for her means, was very large. Burton, after living some time in exile, returned to England with Monmouth, fought at Sedgemoor, fled to London, and took refuge in the house of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel. Fernley was very poor. He was besieged by creditors. He knew that a reward of a hundred pounds had been offered by the government for the apprehension of Burton. But the honest man was incapable of betraying one who, in extreme peril, had come under the shadow of his roof. Unhappily it was soon noised abroad that the anger of James was more strongly excited against those who harboured rebels than against the rebels themselves. He had publicly declared that of all forms of treason the hiding of traitors from his vengeance was the most unpardonable. Burton knew this. He delivered himself up to the government; and he gave information against Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt. They were brought to trial. The villain whose life they had preserved had the heart and the forehead to appear as the principal witness against them. They were convicted. Fernley was sentenced to the gallows, Elizabeth Gaunt to the stake. Even after all the horrors of that year, many thought it impossible that these judgments should be carried into execution. But the King was without pity. Fernley was hanged. Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn on the same day on which Cornish suffered death in Cheapside. She left a paper written, indeed, in no graceful style, yet such as was read by many thousands with compassion and horror. "My fault," she said, "was one which a prince might well have forgiven. I did but relieve a poor family; and lo! I must die for it." She complained of the insolence of the judges, of the ferocity of the gaoler, and of the tyranny of him, the great one of all, to whose pleasure she and so many other victims had been sacrificed. In so far as they had injured herself, she forgave them: but, in that they were implacable enemies of that good cause which would yet revive and flourish, she left them to the judgment of the King of Kings. To the last she preserved a tranquil courage, which reminded the spectators of the most heroic deaths of which they had read in Fox. William Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally avoid seem to have had a strong attraction, hastened from Cheapside, where he had seen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn, in order to see Elizabeth Gaunt burned. He afterwards related that, when she calmly disposed the straw about her in such a manner as to shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burst into tears. It was much noticed that, while the foulest judicial murder which had disgraced even those times was perpetrating, a tempest burst forth, such as had not been known since that great hurricane which had raged round the deathbed of Oliver. The oppressed Puritans reckoned up, not without a gloomy satisfaction the houses which had been blown down, and the ships which had been cast away, and derived some consolation from thinking that heaven was bearing awful testimony against the iniquity which afflicted the earth. Since that terrible day no woman has suffered death in England for any political offence. [470]

It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his pardon. The government was bent on destroying a victim of no high rank, a surgeon in the City, named Bateman. He had attended Shaftesbury professionally, and had been a zealous Exclusionist. He may possibly have been privy to the Whig plot; but it is certain that he had not been one of the leading conspirators; for, in the great mass of depositions published by the government, his name occurs only once, and then not in connection with any crime bordering on high treason. From his indictment, and from the scanty account which remains of his trial, it seems clear that he was not even accused of participating in the design of murdering the royal brothers. The malignity with which so obscure a man, guilty of so slight an offence, was hunted down, while traitors far more criminal and far more eminent were allowed to ransom themselves by giving evidence against him, seemed to require explanation; and a disgraceful explanation was found. When Oates, after his scourging, was carried into Newgate insensible, and, as all thought, in the last agony, he had been bled and his wounds had been dressed by Bateman. This was an offence not to be forgiven. Bateman was arrested and indicted. The witnesses against him were men of infamous character, men, too, who were swearing for their own lives. None of them had yet got his pardon; and it was a popular saying, that they fished for prey, like tame cormorants, with ropes round their necks. The prisoner, stupefied by illness, was unable to articulate, or to understand what passed. His son and daughter stood by him at the bar. They read as well as they could some notes which he had set down, and examined his witnesses. It was to little purpose. He was convicted, hanged, and quartered. [471]

Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the condition of the Puritans been so deplorable as at that time. Never had spies been so actively employed in detecting congregations. Never had magistrates, grand jurors, rectors and churchwardens been so much on the alert. Many Dissenters were cited before the ecclesiastical courts. Others found it necessary to purchase the connivance of the agents of the government by presents of hogsheads of wine, and of gloves stuffed with guineas. It was impossible for the separatists to pray together without precautions such as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods. The places of meeting were frequently changed. Worship was performed sometimes just before break of day and sometimes at dead of night. Round the building where the little flock was gathered sentinels were posted to give the alarm if a stranger drew near. The minister in disguise was introduced through the garden and the back yard. In some houses there were trap doors through which, in case of danger, he might descend. Where Nonconformists lived next door to each other, the walls were often broken open, and secret passages were made from dwelling to dwelling. No psalm was sung; and many contrivances were used to prevent the voice of the preacher, in his moments of fervour, from being heard beyond the walls. Yet, with all this care, it was often found impossible to elude the vigilance of informers. In the suburbs of London, especially, the law was enforced with the utmost rigour. Several opulent gentlemen were accused of holding conventicles. Their houses were strictly searched, and distresses were levied to the amount of many thousands of pounds. The fiercer and bolder sectaries, thus driven from the shelter of roofs, met in the open air, and determined to repel force by force. A Middlesex justice who had learned that a nightly prayer meeting was held in a gravel pit about two miles from London, took with him a strong body of constables, broke in upon the assembly, and seized the preacher. But the congregation, which consisted of about two hundred men, soon rescued their pastor and put the magistrate and his officers to flight. [472] This, however, was no ordinary occurrence. In general the Puritan spirit seemed to be more effectually cowed at this conjuncture than at any moment before or since. The Tory pamphleteers boasted that not one fanatic dared to move tongue or pen in defence of his religious opinions. Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, however eminent for learning and abilities, could not venture to walk the streets for fear of outrages, which were not only not repressed, but encouraged, by those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Some divines of great fame were in prison. Among these was Richard Baxter. Others, who had, during a quarter of a century, borne up against oppression, now lost heart, and quitted the kingdom. Among these was John Howe. Great numbers of persons who had been accustomed to frequent conventicles repaired to the parish churches. It was remarked that the schismatics who had been terrified into this show of conformity might easily be distinguished by the difficulty which they had in finding out the collect, and by the awkward manner in which they bowed at the name of Jesus. [473]

Through many years the autumn of 1685 was remembered by the Nonconformists as a time of misery and terror. Yet in that autumn might be discerned the first faint indications of a great turn of fortune; and before eighteen months had elapsed, the intolerant King and the intolerant Church were eagerly bidding against each other for the support of the party which both had so deeply injured.

END OF VOL. I.

*****



[Footnote 1: In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom thought it necessary to cite authorities: for, in these chapters, I have not detailed events minutely, or used recondite materials; and the facts which I mention are for the most part such that a person tolerably well read in English history, if not already apprised of them, will at least know where to look for evidence of them. In the subsequent chapters I shall carefully indicate the sources of my information.]

[Footnote 2: This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam in the first chapter of his Constitutional History.]

[Footnote 3: See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be in Gardiner's handwriting. Ecclesiastical Memorials, Book 1., Chap. xvii.]

[Footnote 4: These are Cranmer's own words. See the Appendix to Burnet's History of the Reformation, Part 1. Book III. No. 21. Question 9.]

[Footnote 5: The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the cruelty with which she treated the sect to which he belonged, concludes thus: "However, notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth stands upon record as a wise and politic princess, for delivering her kingdom from the difficulties in which it was involved at her accession, for preserving the Protestant reformation against the potent attempts of the Pope, the Emperor, and King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and her Popish subjects at home.... She was the glory of the age in which she lived, and will be the admiration of posterity."—History of the Puritans, Part I. Chap. viii.]

[Footnote 6: On this subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkably clear and strong. He maintains, in his Answer to Martin Marprelate, printed in 1589, "that no form of church government is divinely ordained; that Protestant communities, in establishing different forms, have only made a legitimate use of their Christian liberty; and that episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, because the English constitution is monarchical." All those Churches," says the Bishop, "in which the Gospell, in these daies, after great darknesse, was first renewed, and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt not but have been directed by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty, that, in external government and other outward orders; they might choose such as they thought in wisedome and godlinesse to be most convenient for the state of their countrey and disposition of their people. Why then should this liberty that other countreys have used under anie colour be wrested from us? I think it therefore great presumption and boldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever they may think of themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take upon them to controlle the whole realme, and to binde both prince and people in respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie themselves to a certain platforme devised by some of our neighbours, which, in the judgment of many wise and godly persons, is most unfit for the state of a Kingdome."]

[Footnote 7: Strype's Life of Grindal, Appendix to Book II. No. xvii.]

[Footnote 8: Canon 55, of 1603.]

[Footnote 9: Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop of Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself, he says: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that honourable, grave, and reverend meeting." To high churchmen this humility will seem not a little out of place.]

[Footnote 10: It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the Restoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were, for the first time, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more zealous for this law than Clarendon. Yet he says: "This was new; for there had been many, and at present there were some, who possessed benefices with cure of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who had never received orders but in France or Holland; and these men must now receive new ordination, which had been always held unlawful in the Church, or by this act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which they enjoyed in the most flourishing and peaceable time of the Church."]

[Footnote 11: Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief Description of the late erected monastical Place called the Arminian Nunnery, at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.]

[Footnote 12: The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear out what I have said in the text. To transcribe all the passages which have led me to the conclusion at which I have arrived, would be impossible, nor would it be easy to make a better selection than has already been made by Mr. Hallam. I may, however direct the attention of the reader particularly to the very able paper which Wentworth drew up respecting the affairs of the Palatinate. The date is March 31, 1637.]

[Footnote 13: These are Wentworth's own words. See his letter to Laud, dated Dec. 16, 1634.]

[Footnote 14: See his report to Charles for the year 1639.]

[Footnote 15: See his letter to the Earl of Northumberland, dated July 30, 1638.]

[Footnote 16: How little compassion for the bear had to do with the matter is sufficiently proved by the following extract from a paper entitled A perfect Diurnal of some Passages of Parliament, and from other Parts of the Kingdom, from Monday July 24th, to Monday July 31st, 1643. "Upon the Queen's coming from Holland, she brought with her, besides a company of savage-like ruffians, a company of savage bears, to what purpose you may judge by the sequel. Those bears were left about Newark, and were brought into country towns constantly on the Lord's day to be baited, such is the religion those here related would settle amongst us; and, if any went about to hinder or but speak against their damnable profanations, they were presently noted as Roundheads and Puritans, and sure to be plundered for it. But some of Colonel Cromwell's forces coming by accident into Uppingham town, in Rutland, on the Lord's day, found these bears playing there in the usual manner, and, in the height of their sport, caused them to be seized upon, tied to a tree and shot." This was by no means a solitary instance. Colonel Pride, when Sheriff of Surrey, ordered the beasts in the bear garden of Southwark to be killed. He is represented by a loyal satirist as defending the act thus: "The first thing that is upon my spirits is the killing of the bears, for which the people hate me, and call me all the names in the rainbow. But did not David kill a bear? Did not the Lord Deputy Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of ours kill five bears?"-Last Speech and Dying Words of Thomas pride.]

[Footnote 17: See Penn's New Witnesses proved Old Heretics, and Muggleton's works, passim.]

[Footnote 18: I am happy to say, that, since this passage was written, the territories both of the Rajah of Nagpore and of the King of Oude have been added to the British dominions. (1857.)]

[Footnote 19: The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, on this subject, came from Sir William Coventry: "Our ancestors never did draw a line to circumscribe prerogative and liberty."]

[Footnote 20: Halifax was undoubtedly the real author of the Character of a Trimmer, which, for a time, went under the name of his kinsman, Sir William Coventry.]

[Footnote 21: North's Examen, 231, 574.]

[Footnote 22: A peer who was present has described the effect of Halifax's oratory in words which I will quote, because, though they have been long in print, they are probably known to few even of the most curious and diligent readers of history. "Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies who did assert the Bill; but a noble Lord appeared against it who, that day, in all the force of speech, in reason, in arguments of what could concern the public or the private interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himself and every other man; and in fine his conduct and his parts were both victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of that party was overthrown." This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of Peterborough, in a volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by Robert Halstead," fol. 1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious. The real authors were the Earl of Peterborough himself and his chaplain. The book is extremely rare. Only twenty-four copies were printed, two of which are now in the British Museum. Of these two one belonged to George the Fourth, and the other to Mr. Grenville.]

[Footnote 23: This is mentioned in the curious work entitled "Ragguaglio della solenne Comparsa fatta in Roma gli otto di Gennaio, 1687, dall' illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Conte di Castlemaine."]

[Footnote 24: North's Examen, 69.]

[Footnote 25: Lord Preston, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence to Halifax as follows: "I find that your Lordship lies still under the same misfortune of being no favourite to this court; and Monsieur Barillon dare not do you the honor to shine upon you, since his master frowneth. They know very well your lordship's qualifications which make them fear and consequently hate you; and be assured, my lord, if all their strength can send you to Rufford, it shall be employed for that end. Two things, I hear, they particularly object against you, your secrecy, and your being incapable of being corrupted. Against these two things I know they have declared." The date of the letter is October 5, N. S. 1683]

[Footnote 26: During the interval which has elapsed since this chapter was written, England has continued to advance rapidly in material prosperity, I have left my text nearly as it originally stood; but I have added a few notes which may enable the reader to form some notion of the progress which has been made during the last nine years; and, in general, I would desire him to remember that there is scarcely a district which is not more populous, or a source of wealth which is not more productive, at present than in 1848. (1857.)]

[Footnote 27: Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Captain John Graunt (Sir William Petty), chap. xi.]

[Footnote 28:

"She doth comprehend Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend Their days within."

—Great Britain's Beauty, 1671.]

[Footnote 29: Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius, as we learn from Saint Evremond, talked on this subject oftener and longer than fashionable circles cared to listen.]

[Footnote 30: King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696 This valuable treatise, which ought to be read as the author wrote it, and not as garbled by Davenant, will be found in some editions of Chalmers's Estimate.]

[Footnote 31: Dalrymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I, The practice of reckoning the population by sects was long fashionable. Gulliver says of the King of Brobdignag; "He laughed at my odd arithmetic, as he was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and politics."]

[Footnote 32: Preface to the Population Returns of 1831.]

[Footnote 33: Statutes 14 Car. II. c. 22.; 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 3., 29 & 30 Car. II. c. 2.]

[Footnote 34: Nicholson and Bourne, Discourse on the Ancient State of the Border, 1777.]

[Footnote 35: Gray's Journal of a Tour in the Lakes, Oct. 3, 1769.]

[Footnote 36: North's Life of Guildford; Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, Parish of Brampton.]

[Footnote 37: See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7, 1827, in his Life by Mr. Lockhart.]

[Footnote 38: Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns of the hearth money lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in the province of York were not a sixth of the hearths of England.]

[Footnote 39: I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; but I believe that whoever will take the trouble to compare the last returns of hearth money in the reign of William the Third with the census of 1841, will come to a conclusion not very different from mine.]

[Footnote 40: There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that age on the chimney money. I will give a specimen or two:

"The good old dames whenever they the chimney man espied, Unto their nooks they haste away, their pots and pipkins hide. There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through, But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or two."

Again:

"Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door, And make a distress on the goods of the poor. While frighted poor children distractedly cried; This nothing abated their insolent pride."

In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the same subject and in the same spirit:

"Or, if through poverty it be not paid For cruelty to tear away the single bed, On which the poor man rests his weary head, At once deprives him of his rest and bread."

I take this opportunity the first which occurs, of acknowledging most grateful the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and Vicemaster of Magdalei College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuable collections of Pepys.]

[Footnote 41: My chief authorities for this financial statement will be found in the Commons' Journal, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9.]

[Footnote 42: See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley's Dinerarium Curiosum.]

[Footnote 43: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 44: 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 3; 15 Car. II. c. 4. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 45: Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with his usual keenness and energy, the sentiments which had been fashionable among the sycophants of James the Second:—

"The country rings around with loud alarms, And raw in fields the rude militia swarms; Mouths without hands, maintained at vast expense, Stout once a month they march, a blustering band, And ever, but in time of need at hand. This was the morn when, issuing on the guard, Drawn up in rank and file, they stood prepared Of seeming arms to make a short essay. Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day."]

[Footnote 46: Most of the materials which I have used for this account of the regular army will be found in the Historical Records of Regiments, published by command of King William the Fourth, and under the direction of the Adjutant General. See also Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Abridgment of the English Military Discipline, printed by especial command, 1688; Exercise of Foot, by their Majesties' command, 1690.]

[Footnote 47: I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, dated Feb. 8/18. 1686. It was transcribed for Mr. Fox from the French archives, during the peace of Amiens, and, with the other materials brought together by that great man, was entrusted to me by the kindness of the late Lady Holland, and of the present Lord Holland. I ought to add that, even in the midst of the troubles which have lately agitated Paris, I found no difficulty in obtaining, from the liberality of the functionaries there, extracts supplying some chasms in Mr. Fox's collection. (1848.)]

[Footnote 48: My information respecting the condition of the navy, at this time, is chiefly derived from Pepys. His report, presented to Charles the Second in May, 1684, has never, I believe, been printed. The manuscript is at Magdalene College Cambridge. At Magdalene College is also a valuable manuscript containing a detailed account of the maritime establishments of the country in December 1684. Pepys's "Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy for Ten Years determined December, 1688," and his diary and correspondence during his mission to Tangier, are in print. I have made large use of them. See also Sheffield's Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March 1 and March 20. 1688-9.]

[Footnote 49: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Commons' Journals, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9. In 1833, it was determined, after full enquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder should constantly be kept in store.]

[Footnote 50: It appears from the records of the Admiralty, that Flag officers were allowed half pay in 1668, Captains of first and second rates not till 1674.]

[Footnote 51: Warrant in the War Office Records; dated March 26, 1678.]

[Footnote 52: Evelyn's Diary. Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal, dated May 17. 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony.]

[Footnote 53: James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark; yet in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more than 30,000L. a year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, 1688-9. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 54: Carte's Life of Ormond.]

[Footnote 55: Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, 1668-9.]

[Footnote 56: See the Report of the Bath and Montague case, which was decided by Lord Keeper Somers, in December, 1693.]

[Footnote 57: During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas, 1689, the revenues of the see of Canterbury were received by an officer appointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British Museum. (Lansdowne MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the three quarters was not quite four thousand pounds; and the difference between the gross and the net revenue was evidently something considerable.]

[Footnote 58: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The revenues of a House of Commons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs, Third Part.]

[Footnote 59: Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672.]

[Footnote 60: Commons' Journals, April 27,1689; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]

[Footnote 61: See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 62: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade.]

[Footnote 63: See the Itinerarium Angliae, 1675, by John Ogilby, Cosmographer Royal. He describes great part of the land as wood, fen, heath on both sides, marsh on both sides. In some of his maps the roads through enclosed country are marked by lines, and the roads through unenclosed country by dots. The proportion of unenclosed country, which, if cultivated, must have been wretchedly cultivated, seems to have been very great. From Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, and scarcely one enclosure between Biggleswade and Lincoln.]

[Footnote 64: Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum. See particularly the drawings of Exeter and Northampton.]

[Footnote 65: Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1675.]

[Footnote 66: See White's Selborne; Bell's History of British Quadrupeds, Gentleman's Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1685; Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712; Willoughby's Ornithology, by Ray, 1678; Latham's General Synopsis of Birds; and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in Norfolk.]

[Footnote 67: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade.]

[Footnote 68: See the Almanacks of 1684 and 1685.]

[Footnote 69: See Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, Part III. chap. i. sec. 6.]

[Footnote 70: King and Davenant as before The Duke of Newcastle on Horsemanship; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686. The "dappled Flanders mares" were marks of greatness in the time of Pope, and even later. The vulgar proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I suspect, in the preference generally given to the grey mares of Flanders over the finest coach horses of England.]

[Footnote 71: See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville's edition of Carew's Survey of Cornwall.]

[Footnote 72: Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 1758. The quantity of copper now produced, I have taken from parliamentary returns. Davenant, in 1700, estimated the annual produce of all the mines of England at between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds]

[Footnote 73: Philosophical Transactions, No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66. Dec. 1670, No. 103. May 1674, No 156. Feb. 1683-4]

[Footnote 74: Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1677; Porter's Progress of the Nation. See also a remarkably perspicnous history, in small compass of the English iron works, in Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire.]

[Footnote 75: See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687, Angliae, Metropolis, 1691; M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire Part III. chap. ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coal brought into London appeared, by the Parliamentary returns, to be 3,460,000 tons. (1848.) In 1854 the quantity of coal brought into London amounted to 4,378,000 tons. (1857.)]

[Footnote 76: My notion of the country gentleman of the seventeenth century has been derived from sources too numerous to be recapitulated. I must leave my description to the judgment of those who have studied the history and the lighter literature of that age.]

[Footnote 77: In the eighteenth century the great increase in the value of benefices produced a change. The younger sons of the nobility were allured back to the clerical profession. Warburton in a letter to Hurd, dated the 6th of July, 1762, mentions this change, which was then recent. "Our grandees have at last found their way back into the Church. I only wonder they have been so long about it. But be assured that nothing but a new religious revolution, to sweep away the fragments that Henry the Eighth left after banqueting his courtiers, will drive them out again."]

[Footnote 78: See Heylin's Cyprianus Anglicus.]

[Footnote 79: Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy; Oldham, Satire addressed to a Friend about to leave the University; Tatler, 255, 258. That the English clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, Appendix A.]

[Footnote 80: "A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine, ecclesiae rector aut vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. Gentis et familiae nitor sacris ordinibus pollutus censetur: foeminisque natalitio insignibus unicum inculcatur saepius praeceptum, ne modestiae naufragium faciant, aut, (quod idem auribus tam delicatulis sonat,) ne clerico se nuptas dari patiantur."—Angliae Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College Oxford 1686.]

[Footnote 81: Clarendon's Life, ii. 21.]

[Footnote 82: See the injunctions of 1559, In Bishop Sparrow's Collection. Jeremy Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this injunction with a bitterness which proves that his own pride had not been effectually tamed.]

[Footnote 83: Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull and the Nurse in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and Susan in Shadwell's Lancashire Witches, are instances.]

[Footnote 84: Swift's Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on the Clerical Residence Bill, he describes the family of an English vicar thus: "His wife is little better than a Goody, in her birth, education, or dress..... His daughters shall go to service, or be sent apprentice to the sempstress of the next town."]

[Footnote 85: Even in Tom Jones, published two generations later. Mrs. Seagrim, the wife of a gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour, a waitingwoman, boast of their descent from clergymen, "It is to be hoped," says Fielding, "such instances will in future ages, when some provision is made for the families of the inferior clergy, appear stranger than they can be thought at present."]

[Footnote 86: This distinction between country clergy and town clergy is strongly marked by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every person who has studied the ecclesiastical history of that age.]

[Footnote 87: Nelson's Life of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty which the country clergy found in procuring books, see the Life of Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.]

[Footnote 88: "I have frequently heard him (Dryden) own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson."—Congreve's Dedication of Dryden's Plays.]

[Footnote 89: I have taken Davenant's estimate, which is a little lower than King's.]

[Footnote 90: Evelvn's Diary, June 27. 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13. 1668; Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley North; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in drawing inferences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant, who, though not abler men than he, had the advantage of coming after him. As to the kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North's Life of Guildford, 121, 216, and the harangue of Jeffreys on the subject, in the Impartial History of his Life and Death, printed with the Bloody Assizes. His style was, as usual, coarse, but I cannot reckon the reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his crimes.]

[Footnote 91: Fuller's Worthies; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17,1671; Journal of T. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 1663-4; Blomefield's History of Norfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols. 1768.]

[Footnote 92: The population of York appears, from the return of baptisms and burials in Drake's History, to have been about 13,000 in 1730. Exeter had only 17,000 inhabitants in 1801. The population of Worcester was numbered just before the siege in 1646. See Nash's History of Worcestershire. I have made allowance for the increase which must be supposed to have taken place in forty years. In 1740, the population of Nottingham was found, by enumeration, to be just 10,000. See Dering's History. The population of Gloucester may readily be inferred from the number of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money, and from the number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns's History. The population of Derby was 4,000 in 1712. See Wolley's MS. History, quoted in Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population of Shrewsbury was ascertained, in 1695, by actual enumeration. As to the gaieties of Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's Recruiting Officer. Farquhar's description is borne out by a ballad in the Pepysian Library, of which the burden is "Shrewsbury for me."]

[Footnote 93: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Aikin's Country round Manchester; Manchester Directory, 1845: Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture. The best information which I have been able to find, touching the population of Manchester in the seventeenth century is contained in a paper drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson, and published in the Journal of the Statistical Society for October 1842.]

[Footnote 94: Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis; Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete; Wardell's Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds. (1848.) In 1851 Leeds had 172,000 Inhabitants. (1857.)]

[Footnote 95: Hunter's History of Hallamshire. (1848.) In 1851 the population of Sheffield had increased to 135,000. (1857.)]

[Footnote 96: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Dugdale's Warwickshire, North's Examen, 321; Preface to Absalom and Achitophel; Hutton's History of Birmingham; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birmingham were 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that the annual mortality was little less than one in twenty-five. In London it was considerably greater. A historian of Nottingham, half a century later, boasted of the extraordinary salubrity of his town, where the annual mortality was one in thirty. See Doring's History of Nottingham. (1848.) In 1851 the population of Birmingham had increased to 222,000. (1857.)]

[Footnote 97: Blome's Britannia; Gregson's Antiquities of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Part II.; Petition from Liverpool in the Privy Council Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the burials at Liverpool were 151, the baptisms 120. In 1844 the net receipt of the customs at Liverpool was 4,366,526L. 1s. 8d. (1848.) In 1851 Liverpool contained 375,000 inhabitants, (1857.)]

[Footnote 98: Atkyne's Gloucestershire.]

[Footnote 99: Magna Britannia; Grose's Antiquities; New Brighthelmstone Directory.]

[Footnote 100: Tour in Derbyshire, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas.]

[Footnote 101: Memoires de Grammont; Hasted's History of Kent; Tunbridge Wells, a Comedy, 1678; Causton's Tunbridgialia, 1688; Metellus, a poem on Tunbridge Wells, 1693.]

[Footnote 102: See Wood's History of Bath, 1719; Evelyn's Diary, June 27,1654; Pepys's Diary, June 12, 1668; Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum; Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr. Peirce's History and Memoirs of the Bath, 1713, Book I. chap. viii. obs. 2, 1684. I have consulted several old maps and pictures of Bath, particularly one curious map which is surrounded by views of the principal buildings. It Dears the date of 1717.]

[Footnote 103: According to King 530,000. (1848.) In 1851 the population of London exceeded, 2,300,000. (1857.)]

[Footnote 104: Macpherson's History of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the steamers belonging to the port of London was, at the end of 1847, about 60,000 tons. The customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845, very nearly averaged 11,000,000L. (1848.) In 1854 the tonnage of the steamers of the port of London amounted to 138,000 tons, without reckoning vessels of less than fifty tons. (1857.)]

[Footnote 105: Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea, between 1680 and 1690, were only 42 a year.]

[Footnote 106: Cowley, Discourse of Solitude.]

[Footnote 107: The fullest and most trustworthy information about the state of the buildings of London at this time is to be derived from the maps and drawings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian Library. The badness of the bricks in the old buildings of London is particularly mentioned in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. There is an account of the works at Saint Paul's in Ward's London Spy. I am almost ashamed to quote such nauseous balderdash; but I have been forced to descend even lower, if possible, in search of materials.]

[Footnote 108: Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 20. 1672.]

[Footnote 109: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North.]

[Footnote 110: North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserved a specimen of the sublime raptures in which the Pindar of the City indulged:—

"The worshipful sir John Moor! After age that name adore!"]

[Footnote 111: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Anglie Metropolis, 1690; Seymour's London, 1734.]

[Footnote 112: North's Examen, 116; Wood, Ath. Ox. Shaftesbury; The Duke of B.'s Litany.]

[Footnote 113: Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 114: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Pennant's London; Smith's Life of Nollekens.]

[Footnote 115: Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 10, 1683, Jan. 19, 1685-6.]

[Footnote 116: Stat. 1 Jac. II. c. 22; Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 7, 1684.]

[Footnote 117: Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast that he had shot birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, and the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1785.]

[Footnote 118: The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late as the end of George the First's reign.]

[Footnote 119: See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690, and engraved for Smith's History of Westminster. See also Hogarth's Morning, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza were still occupied by people of fashion.]

[Footnote 120: London Spy, Tom Brown's comical View of London and Westminster; Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor, 1678; Daily Courant and Daily Journal of June 7, 1733; Case of Michael v. Allestree, in 1676, 2 Levinz, p. 172. Michael had been run over by two horses which Allestree was breaking in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The declaration set forth that the defendant "porta deux chivals ungovernable en un coach, et improvide, incante, et absque debita consideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur eux faire tractable et apt pur an coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur ferocite, ne poientestre rule, curre sur le plaintiff et le noie."]

[Footnote 121: Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March 2, 1725-6; London Gardener, 1712; Evening Post, March, 23, 1731. I have not been able to find this number of the Evening Post; I therefore quote it on the faith of Mr. Malcolm, who mentions it in his History of London.]

[Footnote 122: Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign of William the Third; Swift's City Shower; Gay's Trivia. Johnson used to relate a curious conversation which he had with his mother about giving and taking the wall.]

[Footnote 123: Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682; Shadwell's Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities will readily occur to all who are acquainted with the popular literature of that and the succeeding generation. It may be suspected that some of the Tityre Tus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows shortly after the Restoration. I am confident that he was thinking of those pests of London when he dictated the noble lines:

"And in luxurious cities, when the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage, and when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown With innocence and wine."]

[Footnote 124: Seymour's London.]

[Footnote 125: Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, "Of the new lights"; Seymour's London.]

[Footnote 126: Stowe's Survey of London; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia; Ward's London Spy; Stat. 8 & 9 Gul. III. cap. 27.]

[Footnote 127: See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wright was made a judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir George Savile was made a peer.]

[Footnote 128: The sources from which I have drawn my information about the state of the Court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among them are the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, the works of Roger North, the Diares of Pepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and the Memoirs of Grammont and Reresby.]

[Footnote 129: The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in a large class of words, the O was pronounced like A. Thus Lord was pronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a great master of this court tune, as Roger North calls it; and Titus Oates affected it in the hope of passing for a fine gentleman. Examen, 77, 254.]

[Footnote 130: Lettres sur les Anglois; Tom Brown's Tour; Ward's London Spy; The Character of a Coffee House, 1673; Rules and Orders of the Coffee House, 1674; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675; A Satyr against Coffee; North's Examen, 138; Life of Guildford, 152; Life of Sir Dudley North, 149; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published by Curll in 1715. The liveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country Mouse. There is a remarkable passage about the influence of the coffee house orators in Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685.]

[Footnote 131: Century of inventions, 1663, No. 68.]

[Footnote 132: North's Life of Guildford, 136.]

[Footnote 133: Thoresby's Diary Oct. 21,1680, Aug. 3, 1712.]

[Footnote 134: Pepys's Diary, June 12 and 16,1668.]

[Footnote 135: Ibid. Feb. 28, 1660.]

[Footnote 136: Thoresby's Diary, May 17,1695.]

[Footnote 137: Ibid. Dec. 27,1708.]

[Footnote 138: Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, 1662; Cotton's Angler, 1676.]

[Footnote 139: Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30, 1685, Jan. 1, 1686.]

[Footnote 140: Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Roads; History of Hawkhurst, in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica.]

[Footnote 141: Annals of Queen Anne, 1703, Appendix, No. 3.]

[Footnote 142: 15 Car. II. c. 1.]

[Footnote 143: The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth in many petitions which appear in the Commons' Journal of 172 5/6. How fierce an opposition was offered to the new system may be learned from the Gentleman's Magazine of 1749.]

[Footnote 144: Postlethwaite's Dict., Roads.]

[Footnote 145: Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse.]

[Footnote 146: Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw.]

[Footnote 147: Anthony a Wood's Life of himself.]

[Footnote 148: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list of stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled Angliae Metropolis, 1690.]

[Footnote 149: John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1672. These reason were afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "The Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted.]

[Footnote 150: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen, 105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.]

[Footnote 151: See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687, Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at Colchester in March, 1688, is highly curious.]

[Footnote 152: Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes sir, and at White's too.—Beaux' Stratagem.]

[Footnote 153: Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself thus before the Judge:

"What say you now, my honoured Lord What harm was there in this? Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred By brave, freehearted Biss."]

[Footnote 154: Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I.]

[Footnote 155: See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 156: Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August 15, 1687.]

[Footnote 157: Lond. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.]

[Footnote 158: Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.]

[Footnote 159: Anglias Metropolis, 1690.]

[Footnote 160: Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9; Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.]

[Footnote 161: I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000L.; and the net receipt was about 1,200,000L. The number of letters conveyed by post was 478,000,000. (1857).]

[Footnote 162: London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680.]

[Footnote 163: There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique collection of these papers in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 164: For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops.]

[Footnote 165: Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of newsletters, see the Examen, 133.]

[Footnote 166: I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private archives The judgment with which sir James in great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same mine.]

[Footnote 167: Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.]

[Footnote 168: Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial.]

[Footnote 169: Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his life of his brother John.]

[Footnote 170: One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own hand, "This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R."]

[Footnote 171: Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.]

[Footnote 172: Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,

"For, though to smelter words of Greek And Latin be the rhetorique Of pedants counted, and vainglorious, To smatter French is meritorious."]

[Footnote 173: The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem on the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any foreign tongue:—

"Hither in summer evenings you repair To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."]

[Footnote 174: Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his usual force and keenness.]

[Footnote 175: The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden.]

[Footnote 176: See the Life of Southern. by Shiels.]

[Footnote 177: See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.]

[Footnote 178: Some Account of the English Stage.]

[Footnote 179: Life of Southern, by Shiels.]

[Footnote 180: If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to observe that it was spoken by a woman.]

[Footnote 181: See particularly Harrington's Oceana.]

[Footnote 182: See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.]

[Footnote 183: Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.]

[Footnote 184:

"Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world secretly pry.'] —Annus Mirabilis, 164]

[Footnote 185: North's Life of Guildford.]

[Footnote 186: Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667.]

[Footnote 187: Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity to the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the Royal Society, and the Elephant in the Moon.]

[Footnote 188: The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that age tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described by Aubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685.]

[Footnote 189: Sprat's History of the Royal Society.]

[Footnote 190: Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31, 1683; North's Life of Guildford.]

[Footnote 191: The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.]

[Footnote 192: Petty's Political Arithmetic.]

[Footnote 193: Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4; Archaeologia, vol. xi.]

[Footnote 194: Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer of the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685; 2d edition, 1686.]

[Footnote 195: Cullum's History of Hawsted.]

[Footnote 196: Ruggles on the Poor.]

[Footnote 197: See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the Dutch Deputies dated August 2-12, 1653.]