Chapter 12

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 4,366,526£. 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 11,000,000£. (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 2,800,000£.; and the net receipt was about 1,200,000£. 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.]

[Footnote 198: The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.]

[Footnote 199: This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The master clothier is introduced speaking as follows:

"In former ages we used to give, So that our workfolks like farmers did live; But the times are changed, we will make them know.

"We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day, Though a shilling they deserve if they kind their just pay; If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small, We bid them choose whether they'll work at all. And thus we forgain all our wealth and estate, By many poor men that work early and late. Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave; We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave. Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease, We go when we will, and we come when we please."]

[Footnote 200: Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political Arithmetic, chapter viii.; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method; Firmin's Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to be observed that Firmin was an eminent philanthropist.]

[Footnote 201: King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly estimated the common people of England at 880,000 families. Of these families 440,000, according to him ate animal food twice a week. The remaining 440,000, ate it not at all, or at most not oftener than once a week.]

[Footnote 202: Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, Appendix B. No. 2, Appendix C. No 1, 1848. Of the two estimates of the poor rate mentioned in the text one was formed by Arthur Moore, the other, some years later, by Richard Dunning. Moore's estimate will be found in Davenant's Essay on Ways and Means; Dunning's in Sir Frederic Eden's valuable work on the poor. King and Davenant estimate the paupers and beggars in 1696, at the incredible number of 1,330,000 out of a population of 5,500,000. In 1846 the number of persons who received relief appears from the official returns to have been only 1,332,089 out of a population of about 17,000,000. It ought also to be observed that, in those returns, a pauper must very often be reckoned more than once. I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled "Giving Alms no Charity," and the Greenwich tables which will be found in Mr. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary under the head Prices.]

[Footnote 203: The deaths were 23,222. Petty's Political Arithmetic.]

[Footnote 204: Burnet, i. 560.]

[Footnote 205: Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit.]

[Footnote 206: Tom Brown describes such a scene in lines which I do not venture to quote.]

[Footnote 207: Ward's London Spy.]

[Footnote 208: Pepys's Diary, Dec. 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667.]

[Footnote 209: Burnet, i, 606; Spectator, No. 462; Lords' Journals, October 28, 1678; Cibber's Apology.]

[Footnote 210: Burnet, i. 605, 606, Welwood, North's Life of Guildford, 251.]

[Footnote 211: I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever I give only one date, I follow the old style, which was, in the seventeenth century, the style of England; but I reckon the year from the first of January.]

[Footnote 212: Saint Everemond, passim; Saint Real, Memoires de la Duchesse de Mazarin; Rochester's Farewell; Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 6, 1676, June 11, 1699.]

[Footnote 213: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 28, 1684-5, Saint Evremond's Letter to Dery.]

[Footnote 214: Id., February 4, 1684-5.]

[Footnote 215: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170; The true Patriot vindicated, or a Justification of his Excellency the E-of R-; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Books prove that Burnet had good intelligence.]

[Footnote 216: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683.]

[Footnote 217: Dugdale's Correspondence.]

[Footnote 218: Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713.]

[Footnote 219: See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillon and Burnet say that Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts of Parliament made against priests; but this is a mistake.]

[Footnote 220: Clark's Life of James the Second, i, 746. Orig. Mem.; Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 1-18, 1685; Van Citters's Despatches of Feb. 3-13 and Feb. 1-16. Huddleston's Narrative; Letters of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, First Series. iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot MS.; Burnet, i. 606: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 1684-5: Welwood's Memoires 140; North's Life of Guildford. 252; Examen, 648; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's Threnodia Augustalis; Sir H. Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See also a fragment of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is printed in the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnet an impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any candid and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I have seen in the British Museum, and also in the Library of the Royal Institution, a curious broadside containing an account of the death of Charles. It will be found in the Somers Collections. The author was evidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and must have had access to good sources of information. I strongly suspect that he had been in communication, directly or indirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length; but the initials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said that the D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother by P.M.A.C.F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last five letters. It is some consolation that Sir Walter Scott was equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first edition of this work was published, several ingenious conjectures touching these mysterious letters have been communicated to me, but I am convinced that the true solution has not yet been suggested. (1850.) I still greatly doubt whether the riddle has been solved. But the most plausible interpretation is one which, with some variations, occurred, almost at the same time, to myself and to several other persons; I am inclined to read "Pere Mansuete A Cordelier Friar." Mansuete, a Cordelier, was then James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it peculiarly belonged to remind James of a sacred duty which had been culpably neglected. The writer of the broadside must have been unwilling to inform the world that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to perish had been snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of loose character. It is therefore not unlikely that he would prefer a fiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could not fail to give scandal. (1856.)----It should seem that no transactions in history ought to be more accurately known to us than those which took place round the deathbed of Charles the Second. We have several relations written by persons who were actually in his room. We have several relations written by persons who, though not themselves eyewitnesses, had the best opportunity of obtaining information from eyewitnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast mass of materials into a consistent narrative will find the task a difficult one. Indeed James and his wife, when they told the story to the nuns of Chaillot, could not agree as to some circumstances. The Queen said that, after Charles had received the last sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewed their exhortations. The King said that nothing of the kind took place. "Surely," said the Queen, "you told me so yourself." "It is impossible that I have told you so," said the King, "for nothing of the sort happened."----It is much to be regretted that Sir Henry Halford should have taken so little trouble ascertain the facts on which he pronounced judgment. He does not seem to have been aware of the existence of the narrative of James, Barillon, and Huddleston.----As this is the first occasion on which I cite the correspondence of the Dutch ministers at the English court, I ought here to mention that a series of their despatches, from the accession of James the Second to his flight, forms one of the most valuable parts of the Mackintosh collection. The subsequent despatches, down to the settlement of the government in February, 1689, I procured from the Hague. The Dutch archives have been far too little explored. They abound with information interesting in the highest degree to every Englishman. They are admirably arranged and they are in the charge of gentlemen whose courtesy, liberality and zeal for the interests of literature, cannot be too highly praised. I wish to acknowledge, in the strongest manner, my own obligations to Mr. De Jonge and to Mr. Van Zwanne.]

[Footnote 221: Clarendon mentions this calumny with just scorn. "According to the charity of the time towards Cromwell, very many would have it believed to be by poison, of which there was no appearance, nor any proof ever after made."--Book xiv.]

[Footnote 222: Welwood, 139 Burnet, i. 609; Sheffield's Character of Charles the Second; North's Life of Guildford, 252; Examen, 648; Revolution Politics; Higgons on Burnet. What North says of the embarrassment and vacillation of the physicians is confirmed by the despatches of Van Citters. I have been much perplexed by the strange story about Short's suspicions. I was, at one time, inclined to adopt North's solution. But, though I attach little weight to the authority of Welwood and Burnet in such a case, I cannot reject the testimony of so well informed and so unwilling a witness as Sheffield.]

[Footnote 223: London Gazette, Feb. 9. 1684-5; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 3; Barillon, Feb. 9-19: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 6.]

[Footnote 224: See the authorities cited in the last note. See also the Examen, 647; Burnet, i. 620; Higgons on Burnet.]

[Footnote 225: London Gazette, Feb. 14, 1684-5; Evelyn's Diary of the same day; Burnet, i. 610: The Hind let loose.]

[Footnote 226: Burnet, i. 628; Lestrange, Observator, Feb. 11, 1684.]

[Footnote 227: The letters which passed between Rochester and Ormond on this subject will be found in the Clarendon Correspondence.]

[Footnote 228: The ministerial changes are announced in the London Gazette, Feb. 19, 1684-5. See Burnet, i. 621; Barillon, Feb. 9-19, 16-26; and Feb. 19,/Mar. 1.]

[Footnote 229: Carte's Life of Ormond; Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690; Memoirs of Ireland, 1716.]

[Footnote 230: Christmas Sessions Paper of 1678.]

[Footnote 231: The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, part v chapter