PART II.

Note I.

_That arts of foreign sway he did affect, And guilty Jebusites from law protect, Whose very chiefs, convict, were never freed; Nay, we have seen their sacrificers bleed._--P. 320.

It is certain, that, whatever the private wishes of Charles may have been, he neither did nor durst interfere, by his royal prerogative, to prevent the execution of Stafford, Coleman, Langhorne, Plunket, and other Catholics of rank, who were condemned on account of the Popish Plot. Ireland, Fenwic, Gavan, Turner, and Harcourt, Jesuits, with Whitebread, the provincial of the order, were all tried, sentenced, and executed for the same conspiracy; persisting, to their last breath, in the most solemn and deliberate asseverations of innocence: But their dying testimonies only irritated the populace the more against a religion, which taught its votaries to go down to the grave with a manifest lie, as they supposed, in their right hand.

Note II.

_Mere truth was dull, nor suited with the port Of pampered Corah, when advanced to court._

* * * * *

_Meanwhile a guard on modest Corah wait, If not for safety, needful yet for state._--P. 320.

The Parliament, before whom Oates was examined, did not confine themselves to simple approbation of his conduct. He was treated in a manner suitable to the sense they had of his merit and importance. The charge of his personal safety was recommended by the House of Commons to the Lord General, the care of his lodgings and accommodation to the Lord Chamberlain, and that of supplying him with money to the Lord High Treasurer of England.

The state of Oates, in his splendour, is very well described by North: "He was now in his trine exaltation; his plot in full force, efficacy, and virtue; he walked about with his guards, assigned for fear of the Papists' murdering him. He had lodgings at Whitehall, and L. 1200 _per annum_ pension; and no wonder, after he had the impudence to say to the House of Lords, in plain terms, that, if they would not help him to more money, he must be forced to help himself. He put on an episcopal garb, (except the lawn sleeves,) silk gown and cassock, great hat, sattin hatband and rose, long scarf, and was called, or blasphemously called himself, the Saviour of the Nation. Whoever he pointed at was taken up and committed; so that many people got out of his way as from a blast, and glad they could prove their last two years conversation. The very breath of him was pestilential; and if it brought not imprisonment or death over such on whom it fell, it surely poisoned reputation, and left good Protestants arrant Papists, and something worse than that, in danger of being put into the plot as traitors." _Examen._ p. 205.

Note III.

_To have told his knowledge of the intrigue in gross, Had been, alas! to our deponent's loss._--P. 322.

Oates never would say he had told all he knew, but always reserved some part of his evidence to be changed or altered with the shifting wind of faction or popularity. According to his first narrative, the plot was laid against the persons of the king and Duke of York; and their assassination was to take place during the fire of London. But he had the impudence to say, in his picture of King James, that both his brother and he were in that very plot for firing the city, a secret which, he alleges, he could not discover at the time, on account of a promise to Prince Rupert; and is pleased to add, that the prince heartily repented of giving, and he of taking, that counsel. When he was asked, in the House of Commons, whether he had told all he knew of the conspiracy? this cautious witness, who was determined to have the whole credit of saving the kingdom his own way, instead of entrusting the House with the secret, told them a parable of a fox, who, having occasion to cross a frozen stream with a goose, and being unwilling to hazard his spoil, first carried over a stone of equal weight with the goose, to see if the ice would bear it. In short, neither he, nor any of his imitators, would say more, than that their immediate evidence was all which they as yet thought meet to declare.

This would have been tolerated no where but in England, and during that period of terror, suspicion, and infatuation, when these perjured caitiffs were as dear to the people as those who tell stories of Rawhead and Bloody-bones are to their nursery audience. The author has said, and with much truth,

'Twas worse than plotting to suspect his plot.

The discovery of Coleman's letters, however irreconcileable with the tale of the witnesses, above all, the murder of Godfrey, gave such a bloody confirmation, that the people swallowed all that could be told them about the horrors of the conspiracy; and, to use the warm expression of the author of the "_Examen_," one might have denied his Redeemer with less contest than attainted the veracity of Oates.

This popular ferment began to abate after the execution of Lord Stafford; and, as the witnesses sunk in reputation, the king began by degrees to discountenance Oates. He expelled him from Whitehall, withdrew his guards, and reduced his pension to L.600. Upon this Oates altered his dress, assumed a sword, and associated with the more desperate of the popular faction, such as Rumbold, Colledge, and Fergusson. In the reign of James II., his fortunes suffered a yet more melancholy reverse; for, being most satisfactorily convicted of perjury, by upwards of eighty witnesses, he was sentenced to two fines of 1000 merks each; to be whipped, on two different days, from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn; to be imprisoned for life, and to be pilloried five times every year. James had the imprudence to exult in this cruel punishment. He told Sir John Reresby, that the Popish plot was now dead; and, when that courtier obsequiously answered, "and buried, please your majesty," he thought the jest worth repeating, which his brother would hardly have done. It is true, no punishment could be bad enough for the author of so many legal murders; but the severity of the sentence was an injury to the law of the land, though done through the person of so vile a criminal. The man's impudence supported him under the conviction; and his fortitude under the punishment was the means of regaining a share of his fallen credit. After the Revolution, he was pardoned, and received a pension of L.400, with the amount of which he was much dissatisfied, as well as with the refusal of the Parliament to reverse his sentence, and restore his capacity for his old trade of bearing evidence.

Note IV.

_Even Absalom------ Perceives the plot, too foul to be excused, To aid designs, no less pernicious, used._--P. 323.

North, and other Tory writers, have affected to consider Shaftesbury as the original author of the Popish plot. Of this there is no proof whatever; and the internal evidence derived from the account of the plot itself, is altogether inconsistent with the very idea. Shaftesbury could never have given birth to such a heap of inconsistent fables; a plan which he had forged would have been ingenious, consistent with itself, accommodated to the circumstances of parties, and the times, and therefore, in all probability, being less suited to the vulgar palate, would not have made half the impression on the public. But we can easily believe the truth of what he is alleged to have said, "that whoever started the game, he had the full advantage of the chase." In fact, this wonderful tale, probably at first invented by two or three obscure knaves, with the sordid view of profiting by the credulity of the English nation, would have fallen to the ground, had it not been fostered and cherished by Shaftesbury, who very soon perceived it could be made the means of turning out Lord Danby, and driving matters to extremity against the Catholic faction. He might well indeed exult in his management in the former particular, since Danby was the first to introduce into the House of Commons that very discussion about the plot, to which, as Shaftesbury managed it, he himself fell a sacrifice.[411] But it was chiefly as a means of bringing forward the Bill of Exclusion, and of crushing for ever the hopes of his mortal foe the Duke of York,[412] that Shaftesbury became the patron of all investigations connected with the plot, pushed them on with vigour and vehemence, and dipped himself deep in the blood of the innocent persons who fell sacrifices to the popular clamour he had excited, and to evidence, which much less than Shaftesbury's abilities might easily have discovered to be inconsistent and fabulous.

A humorous pamphlet, already quoted, represents Shaftesbury as abandoning his pretensions to the crown of Poland, for the purpose of following up the discovery of the Popish plot. "In the very height of all this expectation, one night as his majesty elect lay musing upon his bed, restless with the thoughts and expectation of the approaching empire, there appeared to him, by the light of a lamp that was burning in his chamber, a dreadful and most monstrous vision. The shape and figure of it was very confused and irregular: sometimes it looked like the whore of Babylon, naked, and of immense privities; presently, in the twinkling of an eye, the form was changed, and it appeared like a justice of the peace, strangled by a crew of ruffians, who afterwards ran him through the body with his own sword, that it might be thought he hanged himself; on a sudden it was altered again, and seemed a troop of pilgrims, armed with black bills, that came the Lord knows whence, landed the Lord knows where, and are gone the Lord knows whither. His majesty seeing it vary so often, and so terribly, calling up all the faith he had to his assistance, boldly demanded 'In the name of, &c. what art thou?' Instantly, after a terrible clap of thunder, accompanied with several flashes of lightning, it contracted itself into the shape of a doctor of Salamanca, and, in a hideous tone, cried out, 'I am a PLOT. Woe to England! farewell till 78;' and vanished. No sooner was it gone, but a stupid amazement seized upon the majesty of Poland, and cast him into a deep sleep, where he lay till morning, when, awakening, he found himself stript of all the high and aspiring thoughts that before had filled his mind; pity and compassion towards his native country utterly cooled his ambition, and from that moment he laid by all thoughts of converting the Turk, and resolved to stay at home for confounding the pope.

"Thus has this good man, (for he is no more his majesty,) again refused the highest promotion that perhaps any subject of England was ever raised to, merely to stand in a gap here, and slay the plague that was coming upon us."[413]

Note V.

_Have I for this------ Even when at helm, a course so dangerous moved, To land your hopes, as my removal proved._ P. 325.

In 1679, the national discontent running exceedingly high, both on account of the Popish plot, and for other reasons, the king, by the advice of Sir William Temple, summoned a council of thirty persons, fifteen of whom were the great officers of the crown, and fifteen chosen from the country party. Shaftesbury was made president of this council, against the opinion of Temple; and quickly found the means of pressing his favourite measure of the Exclusion Bill. Monmouth, upon whose interest in the king's affections he had great reliance, was the person whom he proposed to nominate as successor, either by a law to be passed for the purpose, or by prevailing on the king to declare him legitimate. For this purpose, the interest of Shaftesbury was exerted to have the duke sent down to Scotland, to oppose the insurgent Covenanters, whom he defeated at Bothwell Bridge. The king's illness, and the sudden revolution which took place in his councils, upon the unexpected return of the Duke of York from Flanders, ruined this project, and occasioned the disgrace of Monmouth, and the dismissal of Shaftesbury.

Note VI.

_Amongst these, extorting Ishban first appears, Pursued by a meagre troop of bankrupt heirs._ P. 328.

Sir Robert Clayton, alderman of London, and one of the representatives of the city during the two last parliaments of King Charles II., was warmly attached to the Whig party. He took an active concern, as a magistrate, in examining the sham-plotter, Fitz-Harris; and was charged by the Tories with an attempt to suborn that person to swear, that he had been hired by the court to fix a plot upon the Protestants. The examination of Fitz-Harris, who swore, and counter-swore, in many different ways, besides avouching that he was bribed to concoct a sham-plot, and to ascribe it to the Whigs, (a base manœuvre, too often played off by both parties to be incredible,) added a thousand improbable falsehoods about a Papist plot against the Protestants. When removed from the city jail, and committed to the Tower, he told another story: He was then in the power of the king, and alleged, that Howard, and others, were in a plot to seize the king's person, and that they had employed him to contrive the aforesaid sham-plot, in order to charge upon the court the crime of subornation, &c. He added, that Clayton, Bethel, Cornish, and Treby, the city-recorder, extorted from him, by threats, his previous declaration concerning the Popish plot, and used the most urgent means to compel him to impute the guilt of Godfrey's murder to Danby, and to fix an accession to the Popish conspiracy on the queen and Duke of York. The man was executed adhering to this last story. Clayton, and the others accused of such infamous practices, exculpated themselves in a pamphlet, entitled, "Truth Vindicated," in which they showed many objections to Fitz-Harris's final declaration. We must be contented to leave the affair in mystery; and to regret there ever was a time in England, when the character and common practices of both the leading parties in the kingdom were by no means pure enough to exempt either from such foul suspicions.

Sir Robert Clayton, with the other London members, all of whom were zealous Whigs, and whose re-election was hailed by the acclamations of their party,[414] attended the Oxford Parliament in formidable array; they were escorted by a numerous band of armed partizans, who wore on their hats ribbons, bearing the label, "No Popery, no Slavery," and were obviously prepared for something more than an usual attendance upon their duty in the House of Commons. According to Dugdale's evidence, Sir Robert Clayton was present at a carousal at Lord Lovelace's, near Oxford, where Colledge, one of their principal myrmidons, sung the unlucky ballad, which went so far towards his condemnation.[415]

The story, that Sir Robert Clayton wished to purchase a peerage, seems to have become popular. In the last will and testament of the Charter of London is this, among other jocular bequests; "To Sir Robert Clayton I bequeath all that the chamberlain has left of the common stock, to purchase Paddington manor, with the demesnes and appurtenances thereto, since there are now no _dukedoms_ to be purchased; and it is thought that Tyburn, paying his arrears next year to the city, will yield a better rate than 20l. _per cent._ in the banker's hands."--_Somers' Tracts_, p. 185. His usury is also hinted at in a poem called, "The Duke of Buckingham's Litany," and its consequences are enumerated among the other follies of that prodigal peer:

From learning new morals from Bedlam Sir Payton; And truth and modesty from Sir Ellis Layton; From making our heirs, to be Morrice and Clayton, _Libera nos, Domine._

It ought to be mentioned to Sir Robert Clayton's honour, that out of his wealth, howsoever procured, he dedicated a portion to found the mathematical school in Christ Church Hospital.

Note VII.

_Next him, let railing Rabsheka have place, So full of zeal, he has no need of grace; A saint, that can both flesh and spirit use, Alike haunt conventicles and stews._--P. 328.

Sir Thomas Player, chamberlain of the city of London, was, like Sir Robert Clayton, one of the city members, both in the Westminster and Oxford parliaments; and, being as zealous as his colleague in the popular cause, what has been said concerning their mode of marching to Oxford, applies to him as well as to the other. He is accused of libertinism, in the pasquinade quoted in the last note, where the Charter of London makes him this bequest: "To Sir Thomas Player, I leave all the manor of Moorfields, with all the wenches and bawdy-houses thereunto belonging, with Mrs Cresswells[416] for his immediate inheritance, to enjoy and occupy all, from the bawd to the whore downward, at nineteen shillings in the pound cheaper than any other person, because he may not exhaust the chamber by paying old arrears, nor embezzle the stock by running into new scores."[417]

Note VIII.

_Let David's brother but approach the town, Double our guards, he cries, we are undone._ P. 328.

When the Duke of York unexpectedly returned from Brussels, on the news of the king's illness, his arrival spread discomfiture through Shaftesbury's party in court, and rage and alarm among those in the city. Sir Thomas Player, at the head of a numerous body of citizens, or persons who called themselves so, made his appearance before the lord-mayor, and court of aldermen; and after having expatiated, in a set speech, upon the horrors of Popery, and upon the return of the Duke of York, whose religion had first led to the conspiracy, and whose recent arrival must necessarily give it new life, he gravely demanded, that the city-guards should be doubled, and that four companies, instead of two, should be appointed to duty every night. The lord-mayor, after some discussion, evaded Sir Thomas's request, by referring it to the livery. In the vehemence of the chamberlain's oratory, a remarkable expression, noticed in the text, chanced to escape him, "that he durst hardly go to sleep, for fear of awaking with his throat cut." In the pretended account of this interview, he is only made to say, that it was now out of doubt, that the Papists had burnt the city; "And if they had not been disappointed, would have cut our throats too at the same time, while we were endeavouring to save the small remainder of our goods." But the publisher acknowledges, he could give but an imperfect account of the "speech of this worthy and deserving knight, and the Lord Mayor's generous reply thereunto." "Cutting throats," indeed, appears to have been a frequent terror of the zealous knight. In the Westminster parliament, he made a speech on the Exclusion Bill, in which, after stating that he had read in Scripture of one man dying for a nation, but never of three nations dying for one man; he assured the House, that they "would be embroiled in blood before they were aware of it;" that he had "_no patience to think of sitting still while his throat was a cutting_;" and therefore prayed, they would endeavour to have laws that might enable them to defend themselves.[418] In the parliament of Oxford, Sir Thomas Player made a violent speech, upon Fitzharris being withdrawn from the city jail, and sent to the Tower, with a view, as he contended, of stifling his evidence against the Duke of York and the Papists; and concluded by making a motion, which was carried, that if any judge, justice, or jury, should proceed upon him, and he be found guilty, they be declared guilty of his murder, and betrayers of the rights of the commons of England. In short, Sir Thomas Player was a hot-headed violent factionary; but Rouse, one of his dependants who suffered for the Rye-house plot, with his dying breath cleared Sir Thomas of any accession to that conspiracy; and declared, that he broke with Lord Shaftesbury, upon perceiving the violent plans which he agitated after his being freed from the Tower. _State Trials_, p. 750.

Note IX.

_Judas, that keeps the rebels' pension-purse; Judas, that pays the treason-writer's fee; Judas, that well deserves his name-sake's tree; Who at Jerusalem's own gates erects His college for a nursery of sects._--P. 329.

Under the name of Judas, Dryden describes the famous Robert Ferguson, a native of Scotland, and, by profession, an independant preacher, and teacher of an academy at Islington.--_Ath. Ox._ Vol. II. p. 743. He was one of those dark, intriguing, subtile, and ferocious characters, that emerge into notice in times of turmoil and civil dissension, and whose appearance as certainly bodes revolution, as the gambols of the porpoise announce a tempest. Through the whole of his busy and desperate career, he appears to have been guided less by any principle, moral or political, than by the mere pleasure of dealing in matters deep and dangerous, and exerting his ingenuity to shake the quiet of the kingdom at the risk of his own neck. In organizing dark and bloody intrigues; in maintaining the courage of the zealots whom he engaged in them; in carrying on the mystic correspondence by which the different parts of the conspiracy were to be cemented and conjoined; in guarding against the risque of discovery, and, lastly, in effecting with nicety a hairbreadth escape when it had taken place,--all these perilous, dubious, and criminal manœuvres, at which the noble-minded revolt, and the peaceful are terrified, were the scenes in which the genius of Ferguson delighted to exert itself. When the magistracy of London was thrown into the hands of the crown, the charter annulled, and all means of accomplishing a revolution by the ancient existing authorities, were annihilated, such a character as Ferguson became of inestimable value to Shaftesbury, considering the new plans which he had in agitation, and the persons by whom they were to be accomplished. Accordingly, he shared much of that politician's confidence, while his influence, as a popular and violent preacher in the city, gave him every facility of selecting and training the persons fittest to assist in the meditated insurrection. His chapel, in Moorfields, was crowded with multitudes of fanatics, whom fired by his political sermons, and occasionally stimulated by libels and pamphlets, from a private press of which he had the management, as well as of a purse that maintained it. He distributed most of the pamphlets written on the Whig party, and was by no means averse to father even the most dangerous of them; his vanity, according to Burnet, getting the better of his prudence. Some notable pieces, however, of his composition, are still known; his style was of that diffuse, coarse, and periphrastic nature, best suited to the apprehension of the vulgar, upon whose dull intellects sentiments are always impressive, in proportion to the length of time they are forced to dwell on them. He wrote the "Appeal from the Country to the City," where, in plain words, he points out the Duke of Monmouth as successor to the crown, and that because he had a dubious, or rather no title at all to claim it. "No person is fitter than his Grace the Duke of Monmouth, as well for quality, courage, and conduct, as for that his life and fortune stand on the same bottom with yours. He will stand by you, and therefore you ought to stand by him. And remember the old rule is, _He, that has the worst title, ever makes the best king_; as being constrained, by a gracious government, to supply what he wants in title; that, instead of _God and my right_, his motto may be, _God and my people_." He proceeds to quote a historical example for putting Monmouth on the throne, under the tutelage of Shaftesbury, by stating that, after the death of Alexander, nothing would pacify the dissensions which ensued, "but the choosing of King Philip's illegitimate son, Aridæus, who, notwithstanding that he was a man but of reasonable parts himself, might, as they thought, perform the office well enough, by the help of his wise protector Perdiceas." This extraordinary piece is filled with the most violent declamations against the Papists, in that tawdry, bombastic, and inflammatory eloquence, wherewith, to speak according to Dryden's parable, he "tempted Jerusalem to sin."[419]

Ferguson also wrote the second part of "No Protestant Plot," another very violent pamphlet, and several treatises on the same subject. Meanwhile, other means were prepared to effect the desired change of government. It is not necessary to enter particularly into the well-known history of the Rye-house plot. Every body knows, that, while Russel, Sidney, Monmouth, and others, undertook to raise an insurrection in the country, Shaftesbury promised to head ten thousand brisk boys in the city of London. Among these brisk boys were a fanatic party, who agitated projects of assassinating the King and the Duke of York, unknown to the more generous nobles, who proposed only to secure the king's person. In all and each of these cabals, Ferguson acted a distinguished part. When Shaftesbury fled from his house into lurking places about Wapping, he trusted Ferguson with the secret of his residence, although concealed from the noble-minded Russel, and the generous Monmouth. By his intervention, he heartened and encouraged the associates to break forth into open insurrection. With the inferior conspirators, Ferguson was yet more intimate, and seems, in fact, to have given life to the vague and desperate plans of _lopping_, as they called the assassination of the royal brothers, by the countenance which he pretended to procure the conspirators from those of superior rank. He told West, he would procure the Duke of Monmouth's written consent to his father's murder; although he afterwards allowed, he durst not even mention such a plan to him. At length, when Shaftesbury, weary of the delays of the other conspirators, left England for ever, Ferguson and Walcot were the companions of his flight. By this the plan of insurrection was for a time confounded, for the higher order of the malcontents were ignorant of the lines of communication by which the city cabal was conducted. Ferguson was therefore recalled, and in an evil hour returned from Holland. His arrival gave new life both to the upper and inferior conspiracy: in the former, six of the leaders formed themselves into a regular committee, to extend their influence and correspondence through the kingdom, and unite measures with the disaffected in Scotland. The lower band of assassins matured and prepared their plan for assassinating the king and duke as they returned from Newmarket. Ferguson, who still acted in the capacity of treasurer, which Dryden has assigned him, paid for the arms provided for the enterprize; and, by his daring language, encouraged them to proceed. He offered, in mockery, to consecrate the blunderbuss with which Rumbold was to fire into the carriage; and when Sunday was fixed for the day of action, he quoted the old Scottish proverb, "the better day, the better deed." Even when, by the treachery of Keeling, the plot was finally discovered, and the conspirators were dispersing in dismay and terror, Ferguson took his leave of them with great gaiety, and, trusting to the plots of Argyle and Jerviswood, with which he was also intimate, told them, he hoped to meet them all at Dunbar. This indifference, at such a crisis, led to a supposition, that he had some secret correspondence with government: it was even said, that the messenger who arrested Ferguson suffered him to escape, but of this there seems no evidence. He retired to Holland, where he joined the unfortunate Monmouth, and was a principal agent in pushing him on to his western invasion, when, if left to himself, he would have remained in quiet. He drew the proclamation which Monmouth issued at his landing, a prolix, ill-worded production, stuffed with all the true, and all the false accusations against James II., and where the last so much drowned the others, that it was only calculated to make an impression on the lowest vulgar. He was always earnest with Monmouth, to take upon himself the title of king; and may be said to have contributed greatly to every false step which he made, and to the final destruction in which they ended. Of this Monmouth was so sensible, that he told the king in their last interview, "That Ferguson was chiefly the person who instigated him to set up his title of king, and had been a main adviser and contriver of the whole affair, as well to the attempting, as acting, what had been done;" but he had little to answer when Halifax expressed his surprise, that he should have given ear to him who, as he had long before told the late king, "was a bloody rogue, and always advised to the cutting of throats." Ferguson was taken, on this occasion, the third day after the battle of Sedgemore. Yet, when so much blood was spilt, both with, and without the forms of law, this man, who had been most active in the conspiracy against the king, when Duke of York, and had now organized an invasion and insurrection in his dominions, was, by the inexorable James, freely pardoned and dismissed, to council and assist the next conspiracy. Perhaps his life was saved by Sunderland, lest he had disclosed what he probably knew of his intercourse with the Prince of Orange, and even with Monmouth himself. Ferguson seems, on his liberation, to have returned to Holland; and did not fail to take a share in the intrigues which preceded the Revolution. He managed the dissenters for the interest of the Prince of Orange; and endeavoured to press upon William a sense of their importance. But other, and more important engines, were now at work; and Ferguson seems to have enjoyed but a subaltern consideration: Burnet, who made such a figure in the expedition, avers, he did not even know him by sight.[420] When the Prince of Orange was at Exeter, the dissenters refused him the keys of their meeting house. But Ferguson was accustomed to surmount greater obstacles. "I will take," said he, laughing, "the kingdom of heaven by storm," and broke open the door with his own hand. After the Revolution was accomplished, one would have thought Ferguson's machinations might have ended. He had seen his party triumphant; he had been rewarded with a good post;[421] and, what was probably dearer to him than either principle or profit, his intrigues had successfully contributed to the achievement of a great change of government. But it was not in his nature to be in repose; and, having spent all the former part of his life in caballing to drive James from the throne, he now engaged with the same fervour in every conspiracy for his restoration. In the very year which succeeded that of the Revolution, we find him deeply engaged with Sir James Montgomery, and the other Scottish presbyterians, who, discontented with King William, had united with the Jacobites. The Marquis of Anandale having absconded on account of his share in this conspiracy, Ferguson secreted him for several weeks; a kindness which the Marquis repaid, by betraying him to government.[422] With his usual good fortune, he was dismissed; either in consideration of former services, or because a full proof against him was not to be obtained. After this, he continued to engage in every plot against the government; and each year published one or two pamphlets, which put his ears, if not his neck, in peril. His last grand exhibition was an attack upon Trenchard, the secretary of state, for the use of blank and general warrants.[423] But that adventure, as the romance writers say, was reserved for another demagogue. Finally, Ferguson, who had in this remarkable manner kept his promise of being engaged in every conspiracy of his time, and, had gained the honourable epithet of "The Plotter," died quietly, and in peace, after having repeatedly seen the scaffold stream with the blood of the associates of his various machinations. One touch alone softens the character of this extraordinary incendiary. In all his difficulties, he is never charged with betraying his associates. His person is thus remarkably described in the proclamation for apprehending his person, among the other Rye-house assassins.

A description of several of the conspirators that are fled. London Gazette, from August 2d, to August 6th, 1683.

"Robert Ferguson, a tall lean man, dark-brown hair, a great Roman nose, thin jawed, heat in his face, speaks in the Scotch tone, a sharp piercing eye, stoops a little in the shoulders. He has a shuffling gait, that differs from all men; wears his periwig down almost over his eyes; about 45 or 46 years old."

Note X.

_Here Phaleg, the lay Hebronite, is come._--P. 329.

Of James Forbes I can give but a slight account. He was placed by the Duke of Ormond as travelling tutor to the young Earl of Derby, who had married his grand-daughter. Carte says, he was a gentleman of parts, virtue, and prudence, but of too mild a nature to manage his pupil. In Paris the earl addicted himself to the society of one Merrit, a worthless profligate; and the governor having cautioned his charge against this acquaintance, was assaulted at disadvantage by Merrit, and dangerously wounded. Lord Derby, it seems, not only countenanced Merrit's assault upon Mr Forbes, but, at the instigation of some young French rakes, consented to his governor's being tossed in a blanket. The Duke of Ormond, finding that the earl was wild and impatient of restraint, and that his tutor's sage remonstrances had but little effect, recalled Forbes, and sent in his stead Colonel Thomas Fairfax, a gallant and brave man, and roughly honest. Lord Derby was at first restiff; but Fairfax telling him plainly, that he was sent to govern him, and would govern him, and that his lordship must submit, and should do it, the young nobleman had the sense to comply, broke off his evil acquaintances, and behaved ever after with great propriety.[424] Forbes's misadventures in Paris, though, according to Carte, they inferred no real dishonour, are severely alluded to by Dryden in the text. I am not anxious to unrip the ancient chronicle of scandal, in order to trace Phaleg's amours. He appears to have become one of Monmouth's dependants.

Note XI.

_Let Hebron, nay let hell, produce a man, So made for mischief as Ben-Jochanan._--P. 330.

The Reverend Samuel Johnson, a party-writer of considerable merit. He was a native of Warwickshire, and took orders after a regular course of study at Cambridge. He obtained the small living of Curingham, in Essex, by the patronage of a Mr Biddolph. The emoluments of this benefice did not exceed eighty pounds a-year; and it was the only church preferment he ever enjoyed. Dryden alludes to his poverty in describing his original situation. Mr Johnson's patron, observing his turn for politics, exhorted him to study the English constitution in Bracton and Fortescue; but by no means to make his sermons the vehicle for his political sentiments. The opinions which he formed in the course of study, were such as recommended him as chaplain to the famous Lord Russell.

While he was in this situation, and during the dependance of the Bill of Exclusion, he endeavoured at once to show the danger to a national religion from a sovereign who held opposite tenets, and to explode the doctrine of passive obedience, in a work entitled, "Julian the Apostate; with a short Account of his Life, and a Parallel betwixt Popery and Paganism." In this performance, according to Wood, he was assisted by Thomas Hunt the lawyer. This book, which made a good deal of noise at the time, was answered by the learned Hickes, in a treatise called "Jovian," in which, according to Anthony a Wood, the doctor hath, with unquestionable clearness, laid open the folly, "ignorance, weakness, and pernicious drift of that traitorous scribbler." Without entering into the controversy, there can be little doubt, that, so far as the argument from the example of the primitive Christians is sound, Johnson has fairly made out his case. Indeed Dryden has little left to say, except, that if they did resist Julian, which he seems to admit, they were very wrong in so doing, and the less that is said about it, the more will be the credit of the ancient church. Johnson prepared a reply to "Jovian," called, the "Arts of Julian to undermine Christianity;" but the Rye-house Plot having intervened, he did not judge it prudent to publish it. He was called before the Privy Council, who insisted upon knowing why this book, which had been entered at Stationers Hall, was not published? His answer alleged, that the ferment of the nation was so great as to render the further discussion of the question imprudent. They then demanded a copy of the book; and added, that, if they approved it, it should be published. To this insidious proposal he boldly replied, that, having suppressed the book, it only contained his private thoughts, which he could be compelled to disclose to no man on earth. For this answer he was committed to prison, and his house searched for the copies, which had fortunately been bestowed elsewhere. The court finding themselves unable to reach Johnson for _not_ publishing his second work, determined to try him for publishing his first. Accordingly, he was brought to the bar and insulted by Jefferies, who told him, he would give him a text, "Let every man study to be quiet, and mind his own business."--"I minded my business as an Englishman," answered this spirited man, "when I wrote that book." All defence was in vain; he was condemned to a heavy fine, and to lie in jail till it was paid, which in his circumstances was equal to a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. Even from his prison house, where he lay for five years, amid the accumulated distresses of sickness and poverty, he let his countrymen hear his voice, and failed not to enter an animated and vigorous protest against each new encroachment upon the liberty and religion of England.[425] At length, having published "An humble and hearty Address to all the English Protestants in this present Army,"[426] exhorting them not to serve as instruments to eradicate their religion and enslave their country, he again fell under the grasp of power, was tried and sentenced to be thrice pilloried, and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn; having been previously degraded from his ecclesiastical orders. He bore both the previous ceremony of degradation, and the cruel punishment which followed, with the greatest magnanimity. When they disrobed him, he told the divines present, that he could not but grieve, since all he had written was to keep the gowns on their backs, they should nevertheless be the unhappy instruments to pull off his. When they put a Bible into his hand as a part of the formality of degradation, and again took it from him, he was much affected, and said with tears, they could not, however, deprive him of the use and benefit of that sacred deposit.[427] On the 1st of December, 1686, he suffered the remainder of his inhuman sentence; the pain being his, but the infamy that of the persons who imposed it.

After the Revolution, the proceedings against this staunch patriot were declared illegal; and he received a pension of L.300 yearly, with L.1000 in money, and a post for his son. Crewe, Bishop of Durham, who acted as one of the commissioners for discharging the duty of the Bishop of London, and as such was active in Mr Johnson's degradation, compounded with him against a suit at law, by payment of a handsome sum. Yet Johnson's dangers were not over; for, such was the enmity of the adherents of King James against him, that a party of desperate assassins broke into his house by night, beat, wounded, and threatened to pistol him, for the books he had written; but, upon his wife's intreaties, at length desisted from their bloody design. The latter part of his days were spent in quietness and independence.

The reader may contrast the character which Dryden has given of Johnson, with that of Hampden, who, in an account of him to the Duchess of Mazarine, says; "Being two years with him in the same prison, I had the opportunity to know him perfectly well; and, to speak my thoughts of him in one word, I can assure your Grace, that I never knew a man of better sense, of a more innocent life, nor of greater virtue, which was proof against all temptation, than Mr Johnson."--See Memorials of his Life prefixed to his Works in folio.

Note XII.

_If Balack should be called to leave his place, As profit is the loudest call of grace, His temple, dispossessed of one, would be Replenished with seven devils more by thee._--P. 331.

The famous Gilbert Burnet was then lecturer at St Clements, and preacher at the Rolls chapel, under the patronage of Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Master of the Rolls. King Charles was so anxious that he should be dismissed, as to make it his particular request to Sir Harbottle; but the Master excused himself. It was here he preached that famous sermon on the day of the Gunpowder Treason, 5th November, 1684, when he chose for his text, "Save me from the _lion's_ mouth, thou hast heard me from the horns of the _unicorns_;" which, in spite of the doctor's protestations to the contrary, certain suspicious persons considered as an allusion to the supporters of the king's arms. For this he was finally disgraced, and turned out of the chapel of the Rolls. See note on the Buzzard, in the "Hind and Panther."

Note XIII.

_Some in my speedy pace I must out-run, As lame Mephibosheth, the wizard's son._--P. 331.

Samuel Pordage, a minor poet and dramatist of the time, drew this passing sarcasm on his person and pedigree, by a stupid poem, called "Azariah and Hushai," published 1681-2; being an attempt to imitate or answer "Absalom and Achitophel:" with what success the reader may judge, from the following character of Dryden:

Shimei, the poet laureat of that age, The falling glory of the Jewish stage, Who scourged the priest, and ridiculed the plot, Like common men, must not be quite forgot. Sweet was the muse that did his wit inspire, Had he not let his hackney muse to hire: But variously his knowing muse could sing, Could Doeg praise, and could blaspheme the king; The bad make good, good bad, and bad make worse. Bless in heroics, and in satires curse. Shimei to Zabed's[428] praise could tune his muse, And princely Azaria could abuse. Zimri, we know, he had no cause to praise, Because he dubbed him with the name of Bayes: Revenge on him did bitter venom shed, Because he tore the laurel from his head; Because he durst with his proud wit engage, And brought his follies on the public stage. Tell me, Apollo, for I can't divine, Why wives he cursed, and praised the concubine; Unless it were, that he had led his life With a teeming matron, ere she was a wife; Or that it best with his dear muse did suit, Who was for hire a very prostitute.

He also stepped forward to break a lance with our author, on the subject of Shaftesbury's acquittal; and answered the "Medal" by a very stupid poem, called the "Medal Reversed." To all this scurrilous doggrel, Dryden only replied by the single couplet above quoted. He calls Mephibosheth "the wizard's son," because the Reverend John Pordage, vicar of Bradfield, in Berkshire, and father of the poet, Samuel, was ejected from his cure by the commissioners of Berkshire, for conversation with evil spirits, and for blasphemy, ignorance, scandalous behaviour, devilism, uncleanness, and heaven knows what. His case of insufficiency is among the State Trials, from which he seems to have been a crazy enthusiast, who believed in a correspondence with genii and dæmons.

Samuel Pordage was a member of the society of Lincoln's Inn. He wrote three plays, namely, the "Troades," translated from Seneca, "Herod and Mariamne," and "The Siege of Babylon." He also published a romance called "Eliana," and prepared a new edition of "God's Revenge against Murder," which was published after his death. Pordage was, moreover, author of "Heroic Stanzas on his Majesty's Coronation, 1661," and probably of other occasional pieces, deservedly doomed to oblivion.

Note XIV.

_Shun rotten Uzza as I would the pox._--P. 331.

Jack Hall, ranked as a sort of third-rate poet and courtier among the minor wits of the time. In the "Essay on Satire," he is mentioned as a companion of "little Sid, for simile renowned." Whether we suppose Sidley, or Sidney, to be represented under that character, as they were both at present in the country party, it is possible that Jack Hall went into opposition with his friend and admirer. See the note upon Hall, appended to the "Essay on Satire."

Note XV.

_Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody._--P. 331.

Elkanah Settle, whose original quarrel with our author is detailed in the introductory remarks to their prose controversy, had now further incensed him, by tergiversation in politics: For Elkanah, although originally a Tory, was induced, probably by his connections as poet-laureat for the city, to go over to the party of Monmouth and Shaftesbury.[429] His new friends made use of his talents in a two-fold capacity. Shaftesbury employed him to write a pamphlet in favour of the Exclusion, entitled, "The Character of a Popish Successor." When Settle afterwards recanted, he said, this piece, which made some noise at the time, was retouched by "his noble friend in Aldersgate Street," whose only objection was, that it was not sufficiently violent in favour of insurrection. Settle, having a mechanical turn, was also employed as chief engineer at the solemn pope-burning, which we have so often mentioned; in which charge he acquitted himself much to the satisfaction of his employers. On account of his literary and mechanical merits, Sir Roger L'Estrange allots him the double office of poet-laureat and master of the ordnance to the Whig faction, in the following passage of a dialogue between Jest and Earnest:

"_Jest._ For instance, I knew a lusty fellow, who would not willingly be thought valiant,[430] who has an indifferent hand at making of crackers, serpents, rockets, and the other playthings that are proper on the 5th of November; and has for such his skill received applause, and victuals, from the munificent gentlemen about Temple-bar.

"_Earnest._ And he, I'll warrant, is made master of the ordnance?

"_Jest._ True; and I think him very fit for it. But he's like to have another employment, of a strangely different nature; for, because this dull wretch, once upon a time, wrote a fulsomely nonsensical poem, in prose, being a character of a bugbear, he, forsooth, is designed poet-laureat too!

"_Earnest._ These two offices, as you say, one would think, should require diverse accomplishments: But then it may be said, that these may well enough be supplied by one man; the poet to make ballads in peace, and betake himself to his other business in war.

"_Jest._ Nay, his squibs and his poems have much what the same fortune; they crack and bounce, and the boys and girls laugh at them.

"_Earnest._ Well, how great are the advantages! I thought the author of the satyric work upon the "Observator," and Heraclitus, or the _Person of Honour_, that obliged the pie-folks with poetical reflections upon "Absalom and Achitophel;" I say, I thought these forsaken scribblers might have bid fairest for the evergreen twig.

"_Jest._ I thought so too; but hunger will break stone-walls. Elk. promises to vindicate Lucifer's first rebellion for a few guineas. Poor Absalom and Achitophel must e'en hide themselves in the Old Testament again; and I question whether they'll be safe there from the fury of this mighty Cacadoggin.

"_Earnest._ Silly chit! has he not learned the apologue of the Serpent and the File? But fare him well."--_Heraclitus Redens_, No. 50.

From the last part of this passage, it appears that Settle was then labouring upon his answer to "Absalom and Achitophel," for which Dryden condemned him to a disgraceful immortality. At length he came forth with "Absalom Senior, or Achitophel Transprosed."[431]

In this piece Dryden's plan is followed, by applying the names and history of scripture to modern persons and events. Thus, Queen Elizabeth is Deborah, and Sir Francis Drake, Barak; the Papists are the worshippers of Baal, and the Duke of York is Absalom. This circumstance did not escape the wit of Dryden, who says of Settle, in the text,

For almonds he'll cry whore to his own mother, Or call young Absalom King David's brother.

Indeed, Elkanah seems himself to have been sensible of the absurdity of this personification, by which the king's brother, almost as old as himself, was converted into the blooming son of David; and apologizes, in his preface addressed to the Tories, for "the freedom of clapping but about a score of years extraordinary on the back of Absalom. Neither is it," he continues, "altogether so unpardonable a poetical licence; since we find as great slips from the author of your own 'Absalom,' where we see him bring in a Zimri into the court of David, who, in the scripture story, died by the hand of Phineas, in the days of Moses.[432] Nay, in the other extreme, we find him, in another place, talking of the martyrdom of Stephen, so many ages after; and, if so famous an author can forget his own rules of unity, time, and place, I hope you'll give a minor poet some grains of allowance."

Sir E. Godfrey's murder is disguised under that of Amnon, Tamar's rape being explained the discovery of the plot:

Baal's cabinet intrigues he open spread; The ravish'd Tamar, for whose sake he bled.

As Settle's poems have long fallen into total oblivion, from which his name has only been rescued by the satirical pen of Dryden, and as he was once thought no unequal rival for that great poet, the reader may be curious to see a specimen of his style; I have therefore inserted the few of the leading characters of "Absalom Senior," in which he has "rhymed and rattled" with most tolerable success.

DUKE OF MONMOUTH.

In the first rank the youthful Ithream stood, His princely veins filled with great David's blood; With so much manly beauty in his face, Scarce his high birth could lend a nobler grace; And for a mind fit for this shrine of gold, Heaven cast his soul in the same beauteous mould, With all the sweets of prideless greatness blest, And affable as Abraham's angel guest.

SHAFTESBURY.

That second Moses' guide resolved to free Our Israel from her threatening slavery; Idolatry and chains, both from the rods Of Pharaoh masters and Egyptian gods.

* * * * *

Such our Barzillai; but Barzillai too, With Moses' fate does Moses' zeal pursue; Leads to that bliss which his own silver hairs Shall never reach, rich only to his heirs. Kind patriot, who, to plant us banks of flowers, With purling streams, cool shades, and summer bowers, His age's needful rest away does fling, Exhausts his autumn to adorn our spring; While his last hours in toils and storms are hurled, And only to enrich the inheriting world. Thus prodigally throws his life's short span, To play his country's generous pelican.

The ungainly appearance, uncouth delivery, and versatile politics of the famous Duke of Lauderdale, are thus described:

Let not that hideous bulk of honour 'scape, Nadab, that sets the gazing crowd agape; That old kirk-founder, whose coarse croak could sing The saints, the cause, no bishop, and no king; When greatness cleared his throat, and scoured his maw, Roared out succession, and the penal law.

* * * * *

To Absalom's side does his Old Covenant bring, With state razed out, and interlined with king.

JEFFERIES.

Of low-born tools we bawling Shimei saw, Jerusalem's late loud-tongued mouth of law; By blessings from almighty bounty given, Shimei, no common favourite of heaven, Whom, lest posterity should lose the breed, In five short moons indulgent heaven raised seed, Made happy in an early teeming bride, And laid a lovely heiress by her side.[433]

But, as was reasonably to be expected, Settle has exerted his whole powers of satire and poetry in the description of his antagonist Dryden: And here let me remark, that almost all the adversaries of our author commence their attack, by an unwilling compliment to his poetical powers:

But Amiel[434] had, alas! the fate to hear An angry poet play his chronicler; A poet raised above Oblivion's shade, By his recorded verse immortal made. But, sir, his livelier figure to engrave, With branches added to the _bays_ you gave, No muse could more heroic feats rehearse; Had with an equal all-applauding verse, Great David's sceptre, and Saul's javelin, praised, A pyramid to his saint, Interest, raised: For which, religiously, no change he mist, } From commonwealth's man up to royalist; } Nay, would have been his own loathed thing, called priest; } Priest, which with so much gall he does describe, 'Cause once unworthy thought of Levi's tribe. Near those bright towers, where Art has wonders done, } And at his feet proud Jordan's waters run, } Where David's sight glads the blest summer's sun, } A cell there stands, by pious founders raised, Both for its wealth and learned rabbins praised; To this did an ambitious bard aspire. To be no less than lord of that blest choir; Till wisdom deemed so sacred a command A prize too great for his unhallowed hand. Besides, lewd Fame had told his plighted vow To Laura's cooing love, perched on a drooping bough; Laura, in faithful constancy confined To Ethiop's envoy, and to all mankind; Laura, though rotten, yet of mould divine, He had all her ----, and she had all his coin; Her wit so far his purse and sense could drain. Till every ---- was sweetened to a strain; And if at last his nature can reform, As weary grown of love's tumultuous storm. 'Tis age's fault, not his, of power bereft,-- He left not whoring, but of that was left.

Settle's end was utterly inglorious. In 1683, he deserted the cause of the Whigs, and returned to that of the Tories; for whom he wrote several periodical tracts, in one of which, entitled, "A Narrative," he accused his old patron Shaftesbury of correcting the famous "Character of a Popish Successor;" and objecting, that it did not speak favourably enough of rebellion.[435] Whether compelled by poverty, or through zeal for the royal cause, he became a trooper in King James's army, when it was encamped on Hounslow-Heath.[436] Finally, he took the prophetic hint conveyed in Dryden's lines, and became, not indeed the master, but the assistant, to a puppet-show, kept by a Mrs Minns, in Bartholomew-fair. Thus, the expression, which Dryden had chiefly used in contemptuous allusion to the share which Settle had in directing the Pope-burning, and the fire-works which accompanied it, was literally fulfilled.[437] Nay, poor Elkanah, in his old age, was at length obliged not only to write for the puppet-show, but to appear in it as a performer, inclosed in a case representing a green dragon of his own proper device. There are few readers, who need to be reminded of Pope's famous lines,--

Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduced at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert it, heaven! that thou, my Cibber, e'er Should'st wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair!

In the close of life, this veteran scribbler found admission to the Charter-house; and in that hospital, in the year 1724, died the rival of Dryden.

In person, Elkanah Settle was tall, red-faced, and wore a satin cap over his short black hair.

Note XVI.

_Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, For here's a tun of midnight-work to come, Og from a treason-tavern rolling home._--P. 333.

Our author had very shortly before the publication of the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel," made his enemy, Shadwell, the subject of a separate and cutting personal satire, called "Mac Flecnoe." That poem, as we have noticed in the introductory remarks, has reference principally to the literary character of his adversary; while, in the lines which follow, he considers him chiefly as a political writer, and factionary of the popular party. Shadwell's corpulence, his coarse and brutal debauchery, his harsh and clumsy style of poetry, fell under the lash on both occasions; and it is astonishing, with what a burning variety of colours these qualities are represented. The history of his literary disputes with Dryden may be perused in the introduction to "Mac Flecnoe." In the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise," Dryden has also given a severe flagellation to his corpulent adversary, in which he says, "that although Shadwell has often called him an atheist in print, he believes more charitably of his antagonist, and that he only goes the broad way, because the other is too narrow for him."

Besides avenging abundance of personal abuse, Dryden, in the person of Shadwell, chastises a great supporter of the Whig cause and principles. Shadwell himself complains, that, in the days of Charles and James, he "was silenced for a non-conformist poet." He was the chief among the "corrector-men," as the authors and publishers of the Whig party were oddly entitled;[438] and received the reward of his principles at the Revolution, succeeding, as is well known, our author in the office of poet laureat. In the epilogue to the "Volunteers," a play of Shadwell's, acted after his death, the friends of the Revolution are called upon to applaud their favourite bard's last production:

Crown you his last performance with applause, Who love, like him, our liberties and laws; Let but the honest party do him right, And their loud claps will give him fame, in spite Of the faint hiss of grumbling Jacobite.

Note XVII.

_These, gloomy, thoughtful, and on mischief bent; While those for mere good fellowship frequent The appointed club, can let sedition pass, Sense, nonsense, any thing to employ the glass._--P. 335.

The reader will find some account of the King's Head Club, Vol. VII. p. 154. North gives the following lively account of the _vulgar_, as he calls them, of the popular faction. Their employ, according to him, was, "to run about whispering here and there, by which management they kept up the spirits of their fools, whose fire, without a continual _pabulum_ of fresh news, talks, and hopes, would go out. Amongst these, the cues and hints went about; honest, drunken, lying fellows, good company, and always dear friends. A nod, with a wink, had a notable signification, if it followed, 'Have patience, you shall see.'--'I know somewhat extraordinary will be done shortly and soon, which will secure all on our side.' And thus passively wicked were these underlings, or fry of the party: they knew of the intrigue no more, and were concerned as the wood of drums and the brass of trumpets are in the war."[439]--"The pastime of this meeting, called the Club, was very engaging to young gentlemen, and one, who had once tasted the conversation, could scarcely ever quit it. For some or others were continually coming and going, to import or export news or stories, as the trade required and afforded. There it was known in half an hour, what any member said at the committee of elections, or in the house, if it sat late. And every post carried the news and tales legitimated there, as also the malign constructions of all the good actions of the government, especially to places where elections were depending to shape men's characters into fit qualifications to be chosen or rejected. The Pope himself could not make saints so readily as they Papists, and so half-three-quarter Papists, as belief was prompt or difficult. And a lewd atheistical fellow was as readily washed clean, and made a zealous Protestant. For that genus of perfection was not wanted in this dispensation, where no vice, immorality, heresy, atheism, or blasphemous wit, had not professors ready to embrace willing disciples, who, for the sake of such sublimities of wit and sense as they were accounted, were ready to prostitute all principles of duty, and especially those that regarded allegiance to the crown."[440]

The well-known distinction of this famous club was a green ribband: in opposition to which, the Tories wore in their hats a scarlet ribband, with the motto, _Rex et Hæredes_. The prologue to "Anna Bullen" very sensibly expostulates against these party badges:

Was't not enough, vain men, of either side, Two roses once the nation did divide; But must it be in danger now agen, Betwixt the scarlet and green ribbon men?

Note XVIII.

_But in the sacred annals of our plot, Industrious Arod never be forgot; The labours of this midnight magistrate May vie with Corah's, to preserve the state._--P. 335.

Sir William Waller, son of the parliamentary general of the same name, distinguished himself during the time of the Popish plot, by an uncommon decree of bustling activity. He was a justice of peace; and, unawed by the supposed fate of his brother in the commission, and in knighthood, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, he stood forth the bold investigator of this bottomless conspiracy. It was he who had the fortune, by the assistance of Captain Dangerfield, to detect what was called the Meal-Tub Plot, which that fellow, who had been trafficking with both factions, and probably meant to cheat both, chose to represent as a sham conspiracy, contrived to ruin Shaftesbury and his friends. Upon this occasion, Sir William had much closeting with a magnanimous midwife, called Mrs Cellier, whom Dangerfield charged as an agent of the court, and who afterwards alleged, that the knight took some uncommon means to extort confessions from her. Sir William Waller was also the person who discovered Fitzharris's Plot; and he intimated, that the king, who intended to turn it upon the Protestants, was so much displeased with his blowing up the project, that he threatened to have him assassinated. The Tories alleged, that the pleasure of making these discoveries was not Sir William's sole reward, any more than zeal was his only motive for gutting the Popish chapels. "In which," says North, "he proceeded with such scandalous rigour, as to bring forth the pictures and other furniture of great value, and burn them publicly; which gave occasion to suspect, and some said positively, that, under this pretence, he kept good things for himself; in a word, he was called the priest-catcher."[441] Anthony Wood joins in the accusation of his rifling the Papists' houses of goods, and appropriating chapel ornaments as popish trinkets. I find that respectable person, Miles Prance, the witness, enters into a solemn vindication of the justice, from the practices alleged by North, Wood, and by the poet. "Another damnable scandal they have broached, which, though it be principally levelled at Sir William Waller, as if he, under pretence of searching for priests, and seizing popish trinkets, should take away money, plate, and other things of value from the owners, and necklaces of pearl for beads; yet, since I very frequently went along with him, it does obliquely reflect upon me, and I cannot but do that worthy gentleman the right to justify him against such a most false, groundless, and malicious slander: I do therefore declare, in the presence of God, and shall be ready to attest upon oath, that whensoever I attended him in searches, which was almost every day, I could never discover in him the least inclination to any such base practices; but that, to the contrary, he behaved himself as a good Christian and just magistrate; for, wherever we came, what money we found was left in the owner's possession; and as for chalices, and pieces of plate belonging to priests, and used in their mass, or for keeping of holy oil, we did indeed batter or break them to pieces, but always returned all the pieces to the proprietors. But their copes and priestly vestments, superstitious pictures, habits of monks belonging to their peculiar orders, and such like trumpery, we did sometimes take away, and cause them to be publicly burned, never making any advantage thereof. And as to any necklaces of pearl, reported to be by him taken away, I am more than confident the same is as arrand a lie, as that he thought one Bedingfield, whom he took at Newark, to have been the same Bedingfield, who died in the Gatehouse; for he well knew it was another man."[442] Prance confirms this attestation by a special case, in which Sir William returned to a priest, not only his money, but a silver tobacco-box.[443]

Derrick mentions Sir William standing candidate, in 1679, to be a member of Parliament, in which he failed; and adds, that the publicans, who trusted him, found much ado to get their money. When the court party gained an ascendance, Sir William Waller was first struck out of the commission, and afterwards committed to prison, to the great triumph of the Tories.[444] He afterwards went to Holland, and with Robert Ferguson and Bethel is specially excepted from the general pardon granted after Monmouth's defeat. RALPH, Vol. I. p. 918.

Note XIX.

_Who for their own defence give no supply, But what the crown's prerogatives must buy; As if their monarch's rights to violate More needful were, than to preserve the state!_--P. 336.

The Whigs of those days had constant recourse to the desperate remedy of refusing supplies, when dissatisfied with the court. This ultimate measure ought only to be adopted in cases of extremity; because the want of means to maintain the usual current expences for the law, and the defence of the country, gives a perilous shock to the whole system of government. At that time, however, it was held so effectual a check, and so necessary, that the Whig citizens, in a paper of instructions furnished to their representatives in 1680-1, having thanked them for their good service, more especially for their zeal for the Exclusion Bill, proceed to recommend, "that they would still literally pursue the same measures, and grant no supplies to the crown, till they saw themselves effectually secured from popery and arbitrary power."

Note XX.

_His absence David does with tears advise, To appease their rage; undaunted he complies._--P. 337.

In 1678-9, when the plot hung like a comet over England, the king thought it necessary to assent to the counsel of the Earl of Danby, and request the Duke of York to give way to the storm, and silence the popular clamour, by retreating for a season to the Continent. The Duke requested a particular order, lest it should be supposed he fled from a consciousness of guilt. The order was in these words: "I have already given you my resolution at large, why I think it fit that you absent yourself some time beyond the seas. As I am truly sorry for the occasion, so you may be sure I shall never desire it longer than it may be absolutely necessary for your good and my service. In the meantime, I think proper to give it you under my hand, that I expect this compliance from you, and desire it may be as soon as conveniently you can. You may easily perceive with what trouble I write this to you, there being nothing I am more sensible of than the kindness you have ever had for me. I hope you are as just to me, as to be assured, that no absence, nor any thing else, can ever change me from being truly and kindly yours, C. R. February 28th 1678-9." Superscribed, "For my most dear friend the Duke of York."

Authors differ concerning the "store of parting tears," which were shed on the separation of the royal brothers. Burnet says, that the duke wept much, but the king did not seem affected. Others affirm, that both brothers testified much emotion. The duke retired to Brussels, where he remained till the time of the king's illness, so often mentioned.

Note XXI.

_Dissembled patriots, bribed with Egypt's gold, Even sanhedrims in blind obedience hold._--P. 341.

That Charles II. was a pensioner of France, is now generally allowed. But, though Louis was willing to afford the king of England such supplies as to save him from the necessity of throwing himself on his parliament, it was equally his policy to foster such opposition to him in that assembly, as might totally engage the eyes of both parties upon domestic feuds, and withdraw them from marking his own ambitious strides towards universal power. For this it was necessary, that his minister Barillon should have an understanding with the leaders of the popular party. Hence each faction, as truly as loudly, accused the other of the unworthy dependence on France, to which both were in secret reduced. An account of the French intrigues with the popular party, and of the money distributed among their chiefs, may be found in _Dalrymple's Memoirs_.

Note XXII.

_From Hebron now the suffering heir returned, A realm that long with civil discord mourned; Till his approach, like some arriving god, Composed and healed the place of his abode._--P. 343.

In some respects, the presence of the Duke of York in Scotland was very acceptable to the nobles and gentry of that kingdom. There is, among Somers' Tracts, a letter from a person of quality in Scotland, who professes, that, although a zealous Protestant, he had been converted from his opinion in favour of the Bill of Exclusion, by "the personal knowledge of his very many excellencies and virtues." Doubtless, many circumstances drew the Scots to the faction and favour of the Duke. They saw the halls of their ancient palace again graced with the appearance of royalty, and occupied by a descendant of their long line of kings. The formal, grave, and stately decorum of James, was more suitable to the manners of a proud, reserved, and somewhat pedantic people, than the lighter manners of Charles. The proud, as well as the ingenious, know, and feel, the value of favours conferred by those who resemble them. York applied himself particularly to secure the personal attachment of the Highland chiefs, and to staunch the feuds by which their clans were divided. He, no doubt, reckoned upon the assistance of these ready warriors, in case the sword had been drawn in England; but he little foresaw, that the last hopes of his family were to depend on the generous attachment of the descendants of the chieftains whom he then cultivated, and that his race were to involve in their fall the ruin of the patriarchal and feudal power of these faithful adherents. But if the conduct of James in these particulars was laudable, on the other hand, by introducing an inconsistent and absurd test into the law, by making it the means of ruining a loyal and innocent nobleman, the Earl of Argyle, by satiating his own eyes with the tortures inflicted on the Covenanters,--he gave tokens of that ill-judged and bigotted severity, which was the cause of his being precipitated from the throne. Settle gives a juster, if a less poetical, account of the manner in which he spent his exile:

Whilst sweating Absalon, in Israel pent, For fresher air was to bleak Hebron sent,-- Cold Hebron, warmed by his approaching sight, Flushed with his gold, and glowed with new delight,-- Till sacred, all-converting interest, To loyalty their almost unknown guest, Oped a broad gate, from whence forth issuing come Decrees, tests, oaths, for well-soothed Absalom.

Note XXIII.

_'Mongst whom was Jothran, Jothran always bent To serve the crown, and loyal by descent._--P. 343.

Admiral Legge, created Earl of Dartmouth by Charles II., and a particular friend of the Duke of York. When James came to the throne, he loaded Dartmouth with favours, and paid a singular testimony to the family loyalty, celebrated in the text. In 1687, while the earl attended the king on his progress, the city of Coventry presented his majesty with a massive gold cup, which he instantly delivered to Lord Dartmouth, telling him, it was an acknowledgement from the city for the sufferings of his father, who had long lain in jail there, on account of his adherence to the king during the civil wars. In the succeeding year, Dartmouth was made admiral of the fleet of England. He was, perhaps, the worthiest man, and most faithful servant, in the court of King James, whom he truly loved and served, though he disapproved of his arbitrary encroachments, and spoke his mind on the subject without fear or scruple. Although a hereditary enemy of Lord Russell, Dartmouth had the generosity to interfere in his favour. He set sail from Torbay, with the English fleet, to intercept that of the Prince of Orange, at the time of the Revolution. Had they met, a bloody action must have been the consequence; but God ordered it otherwise. The same wind, which carried the Dutch fleet into Torbay, forced back the English to the Downs; and before Dartmouth could again put to sea, the officers and sailors were as unwilling to resist the Prince of Orange, as the nobles and land army. When Lord Dartmouth found it was entirely out of his power to serve King James, he called a council of war, and joined in an address to King William. In 1691-2, he was committed to the Tower, on suspicion of holding correspondence with his old master.

Note XXIV.

_Nor can Benaiah's worth forgotten lie, Of steady soul when public storms were high; Whose conduct, while the Moor fierce onsets made, Secured at once our honour and our trade._--P. 343.

General Edward Sackville, a gentleman of good quality, related to the Dorset family, who had served at Tangier with great reputation, both for courage and judgment. Being a particular friend of the Duke of York, he expressed himself very contemptuously concerning the Popish conspiracy, saying, "they were sons of whores who believed there was a plot, and he was a lying rogue that said it." The Commons, being then in the very height of their fermentation on this subject, not only expelled Sackville from the House, but prepared an address to the king, that he might be made incapable of holding any office. He was committed to the Tower, but shortly afterwards set free, and restored to his military rank, though not to his seat in the House. After noticing Dartmouth, Sackville, and the other real friends of the Duke of York, the poet stigmatizes those concealed enemies, who now affected to congratulate his return:

---- ----Those who sought his absence to betray, Press first their nauseous false respects to pay; Him still the officious hypocrites molest, And with officious duty break his rest.

A marginal note on Luttrell's copy points out the Earl of Anglesea as particularly concerned in this sarcasm. In a prologue, spoken before the duke at his first appearance at the theatre after his return, Dryden is equally severe on these time-serving courtiers:

Still we are thronged so full with Reynard's race, That loyal subjects scarce can find a place. Thus modest truth is cast behind the crowd, Truth speaks too low, hypocrisy too loud. Let them be first to flatter in success; Duty can stay, but guilt has need to press.

Note XXV.

_Who now an envious festival installs, And to survey their strength the faction calls, Which fraud, religious worship too, must gild; But oh how weakly does sedition build! For, lo! the royal mandate issues forth, Dashing at once their treason, zeal, and mirth._--P. 346.

The Duke of York maintained some interest in the city, by being captain-general of the Artillery Company, who invited him to dine at Merchant-Taylors' Hall, on April 21, 1682. The party of Monmouth and Shaftesbury resolved to have a meeting in opposition to that which was proposed; and tickets, at a guinea a piece, of which the following is a copy, were circulated among their adherents:

"It having pleased Almighty God, by his wonderful providence, to deliver and protect his majesties person, the Protestant religion, and English liberties, hitherto from the hellish and frequent attempts of their enemies the Papists; in testimony of thankfulness herein, and for the preserving and improving mutual love and charity among such as are sensible thereof, you are desired to meet many of the loyal Protestant nobility, gentry, clergy, and citizens, on Friday the 21st day of this instant April, 1682, at ten of the clock, at St Michael's Church, in Cornhill, there to hear a sermon, and from thence to go to Haberdashers' Hall, to dinner, and to bring this ticket with you."

A sermon was accordingly prepared for this great occasion;[445] and doubtless contained what is vulgarly called a touch of the times. All other preparations for this great entertainment were made with proper magnificence; but the design was utterly quashed by the following proclamation:

"Whitehall, April 19. His Majesty was pleased, this afternoon, to make the following order in council, at the court of Whitehall, this 19th day of April, 1682. By his Majesty, and the Lords of his Majesty's most honourable privy council.

"Whereas, the appointing of publique fasts and thanksgiving is matter of state, and belongs only to his majesty, by his prerogative, and his majesty being informed that, in the city of London, invitations have been made of great and unusual numbers, by printed tickets, one of which is hereunto annext; his majesty looks upon the same as an insolent attempt, in manifest derogation of his right, and of dangerous consequence: The matter of the said invitation being of a publique nature, and the manner of carrying it on, tending to sedition, and raising distinctions and confederacies among his subjects, against the known laws and peace of the kingdom, his majesty, therefore, by the advice of his council, hath thought fit, and doth hereby strictly charge and command the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, as they will answer the contrary at their peril, to take immediate and effectual care to prevent and hinder the said meeting, as an unlawful assembly; and all sheriffs, constables, and others his majesty's officers in the said city, are hereby commanded to be aiding and assisting therein."

This disappointment, trifling as it may seem, was of great disadvantage to the Whigs. It made them ridiculous; which is more fatal to a political party than any other misfortune; for few chuse to belong to the faction who have the laugh against them. The Tory poets exulted in the opportunity of showing their wit; and we have perpetual allusions to this ludicrous incident, in the fugitive pieces of the time. Thus, Otway, in the prologue to the "City Heiress, or Sir Timothy Treatall:"

This dæmon lately drew in many a guest, To part with zealous guinny for no feast; Who, but the most incorrigible fops, Forever doomed in dismal cells, called shops, To cheat and damn themselves to get their livings, Would lay sweet money out in sham thanksgivings? Sham-plots you may have paid for o'er and o'er, But who e'er paid for a sham treat before?

In a congratulatory poem on the Whigs entertainment, we have a similar strain of exultation, though, I believe, it is there ironical:

Hollow boys, hollow, hollow once again! 'Tother half crown shall then reward your pain; Alas! poor Whigg, where wilt thou sneaking go, Thy wine is spilt, thy pyes and cakes are dough; Down go the coppers, tables, shelves, and all, And so fare well to Haberdashers' Hall.

"The Loyal Feast, appointed to be kept in Haberdashers' Hall, on Friday the 21st of April, 1682, by his Majesty's most loyal true-blue Protestant Subjects, and how it was defeated."

The Whigs from north to south, from east to west, Did all contribute to a loyal feast; To this great work, a guiney was the least. They cleared the stalls of fish, flesh, fowl, and beast, Where Tony and brave Perkin was a guest; But what succeeded this, made up the jest.

* * * * *

Tony was small, but of noble race, And was beloved of every one; He broached his tap, and it ran apace, To make a solemn treat for all the town. He sent to yeoman, knight, and lord, The holy tribe to entertain, With all the nation could afford; But Tony will never be himself again.

* * * * *

With thanks and prayers for our good king, They vowed to solemnize the day; But royal Charles, he smoked the thing, And sent the rabble with a pox away. He sent his summons to the cit, Seditious meetings to refrain; The feast was broke, and the guests were beshit, And Tony will never be himself again.

And now the capons fly about, With fricassees of amber grice, And chickens ready dressed, they shout About the street for pence apiece. The Whigs did wish the counsel choked, Who did this noble feast restrain; All down in the mouth, to be thus bawked, Poor Tony will ne'er be himself again.

Note XXVI.

_First write Bezaliel, whose illustrious name Forestals our praise, and gives his poet fame: The Kenites rocky province his command._--P. 347.

The Marquis of Worcester, Lord President of Wales, was a keen opponent of the Bill of Exclusion; insomuch, that, by a vote of the Commons in 1680, he was declared a favourer of Popery, (then an imputation of tremendous import,) and an address was appointed to be preferred against him, Halifax, Clarendon, and others, as enemies to the king and kingdom. It may be supposed, that this was far from lowering the marquis in the king's esteem; on the contrary, in 1682, he was created Duke of Beaufort. At the Duke of Monmouth's invasion he commanded in Bristol, and was an effectual means of stopping his progress; for, when he approached that city, which contained many of his partisans, the Duke of Beaufort, finding there was great danger of an insurrection in the place, declared, that he would burn the town the instant he saw the slightest symptoms of disloyalty. When this was made known to Monmouth, he exclaimed, "God forbid I should be the means of exposing so noble a city to the double calamity of sword and fire!" Accordingly, he instantly altered the direction of his march, leaving behind him that rich and populous city, which, if he could have carried it, contained men to increase his forces, stores to supply them, arms to equip them, and money to pay them. This proved a fatal indulgence of compassion:

"Ambition should be made of sterner stuff."

The Duke of Beaufort continued to be a friend to James, after, by abdicating his throne, he had ceased to be a friend to himself. He voted against William in the Convention Parliament. Lord Herbert, of Ragland, the duke's eldest son, in whom he "saw all his glories copied," as the poet has it, was, according to Wood, entered at Christ Church, Oxford, and took the degree of Master of Arts in 1681.

An account of the Duke of Beaufort's noble house-keeping, and mode of educating his family, has been preserved by Roger North, and presents so curious a picture of the interior of a great family, in the end of the 17th century, that I think the reader will be pleased to see it:

"One year his lordship, (the Lord Chief Justice North, afterwards Lord Keeper Guilford,) concluding at Bristol, made a visit at Badminton to the Duke of Beaufort, and staid about a week. For the duke was descended from a North of his lordship's family, viz. one of the Lord Edward North's daughters, whom a lineal ancestor of his Grace married. So, besides conformity of principle, with respect to the public, they were, by this relation, qualified for mutual respect and honour. I mention this entertainment as an handle of shewing a princely way of living, which that noble duke used, above any other, except crowned heads, that I have had notice of in Europe; and, in some respects, greater than most of them, to whom he might have been an example. He had above L. 2000 per annum in his hands, which he managed by stewards, bailiffs, and servants; and, of that, a great part of the country, which was his own, lying round about him, was part, and the husbandmen, &c. were of his family, and provided for in his large expanded house. He bred all his horses, which came to the husbandry first colts, and, from thence, as they were fit, were taken into his equipage; and, as by age, or accident, they grew unfit for that service, they were returned to the place from whence they came, and there expired; except what, for plenty or unfitness, were sold or disposed of. He had about two hundred persons in his family, all provided for, and, in his capital house, nine original tables covered every day: and, for the accommodation of so many, a large hall was built, with a sort of alcove at one end, for distinction; but yet the whole lay in the view of him that was chief, who had power to do what was proper for keeping order amongst them; and it was his charge to see it done. The tables were properly assigned, as, for example, the chief steward with the gentlemen and pages; the master of the horse with the coachmen and liveries; an under steward with the bailiffs and some husbandmen; the clerk of the kitchen with the bakers, brewers, &c. all together; and other more inferior people, under these, in places apart. The women had their dining-room also, and were distributed in like manner: my lady's chief woman with the gentlewomen; the housekeeper with the maids, and some others. The method of governing this great family was admirable and easy, and such as might have been a pattern for any management whatever; for, if the Duke or Duchess (who concerned herself much more than he did; for every day of her life, in the morning, she took her tour, and visited every office about the house, and so was her own superintendant) observed any thing amiss or suspicious, as a servant riding out, or the like, nothing was said to that servant, but his immediate superior, or one of an higher order, was sent for, who was to enquire and answer if leave had been given, or not; if not, such servant was straight turned away. No fault of order was passed by; for it may be concluded, there are enough of them that pass undiscovered. All the provisions of the family came from foreign parts, as merchandize. Soap and candle were made in the house, so likewise the malt was ground there; and all the drink that came to the duke's table, was of malt sun-dried upon the leads of his house. Those are large; and the lanthorn is in the centre of an asterisk of glades, cut through the wood of all the country round, four or five in a quarter, almost _a perte de vue_. Diverse of the gentlemen cut their trees and hedges to humour his vistos; and some planted their hills in his lines, for compliment, at their own charge. All the trees, planted in his parks and about, were fenced with a dry wall of stone, taken out where the tree was set. And with all this menagery and provision, no one, that comes and goes for visits, or affairs with the duke, (who was lord-lieutenant of four or five counties, and Lord President of Wales,) that could observe any thing more to do there than in any other nobleman's house; so little of vain ostentation was to be seen there. At the entrance where coaches ordinarily came in, the duke built a neat dwelling-house; but pompous stables, which would accommodate forty horses, as well as the best stables he had. This was called the inn, and was contrived for the ease of the suitors, as I may call them; for, instead of half-a-crown to his servants at taking horse, sixpence there, for form, served the turn; and no servant of his came near a gentleman's horse; but they were brought by their own servants, except such as lodged, whose equipages were in his own stables.

"As for the duke and duchess, and their friends, there was no time of the day without diversion. Breakfast in her gallery, that opened into the gardens; then perhaps a deer was to be killed, or the gardens and parks, with the several sorts of deer, to be visited; and if it required mounting, horses of the duke's were brought for all the company. And so, in the afternoon, when the ladies were disposed to air, and the gentlemen with them, coaches and six came to hold them all. At half an hour after eleven, the bell rang to prayers, so at six in the evening; and, through a gallery, the best company went into an aisle in the church, (so near was it,) and the duke and duchess could see if all the family were there. The ordinary pastime of the ladies was in a gallery on the other side, where she had diverse gentlewomen commonly at work upon embroidery and fringe-making; for all the beds of state were made and finished in the house. The meats were very neat, and not gross; no servants in livery attended, but those called gentlemen only; and, in the several kinds, even down to the small beer, nothing could be more choice than the table was. It was an oblong and not an oval; and the duchess, with two daughters only, sat at the upper end. If the gentlemen chose a glass of wine, the civil offers were made either to go down into the vaults, which were very large and sumptuous, or servants, at a sign given, attended with salvers, &c. and many a brisk round went about; but no sitting at table with tobacco and healths, as the too common use is. And this way of entertaining continued a week, while we were there, with incomparable variety: for the duke had always some new project, building, walling, or planting, which he would show, and ask his friends their advice about; and nothing was forced or strained, but easy and familiar, as if it was, and really so I thought it to be, the common course and way of living in that family.

"One thing more I must needs relate, which the duke told us smiling, and it was this: When he was in the midst of his building, his neighbour, the Lord Chief Justice Hales, made him a visit; and observing the many contrivances the duke had for the disposing of so great a family, he craved leave to suggest one to him, which he thought would be much for his service, and it was, to have but one door to his house, and the window of his study, where he sat most, open upon that. This shows how hard it is for even wise and learned men to consider things without themselves. The children of the family were bred with a philosophical care. No inferior servants were permitted to entertain them, lest some mean sentiments, or foolish notions and fables, should steal into them; and nothing was so strongly impressed upon them as a sense of honour. Witness the Lord Arthur, who, being about five years old, was very angry with the judge for hanging men. The judge told him, that, if they were not hanged, they would kill and steal. 'No,' said the little boy, 'you should make them promise upon their honour they will not do so, and then they will not.' It were well if this institutionary care of parents were always correspondent in the manners of all the children; for it is not often found to prove so." _Life of the Lord Keeper Guilford_, p. 132.

Note XXVII.

_Brave Abdael o'er the prophet's school was placed; Abdael, with all his father's virtue graced._--P. 348.

Christopher, Duke of Albemarle, son to the restorer of the monarchy. He seems to have had no particular character of his own, excepting that he was fond of mechanics, and suggested some improvements on the diving-bell. The Whig writers seldom mention him without a sneer at his understanding.[446] His talents were, however, sufficient to recommend him to be chancellor of Cambridge, in place of the Duke of Monmouth, once the idol of the university, but whose picture they, in 1682, consigned to the flames, with all the solemnities of dishonour.[447] There is a Pindaric ode upon the election of the Duke of Albemarle to this presidency over the seat of the Muses, containing a suitable quantity of bombast and flattery; it concludes by promising his grace a poetical immortality:

Some happy favourite of the nine, Some Spenser, Cowley, Dryden, shall be thine; Happy bards, who erst did dream Near thy own Cam's inspiring stream; He midst the records of immortal fame, He midst the stars shall fix thy name, The muses safety, and the muses theme.

When Monmouth undertook his ill-fated expedition, Albemarle marched against him with the militia of Devon; but the ex-chancellor of Cambridge baffled the attempts of his successor to coop him up at Lyme, and compelled him to retreat with some disorder. Monmouth, after assuming the title of king, sent a summons to Albemarle to claim his allegiance, who returned a cold and contemptuous answer. In 1687, Albemarle was sent abroad as governor of Jamaica; in which island he died.

Note XXVIII.

_Eliab our next labour does invite, And hard the task to do Eliab right._--P. 348.

Sir Henry Bennet was the constant attendant of Charles II. during his exile: after the Restoration, he became a member of the Cabal administration, and secretary of state. He was finally Lord Chamberlain, and through many turns of politics retained the favour of Charles II., perhaps as much from making himself useful in his pleasures, as from the recollection of his faithful attachment. He was learned, and accustomed to business; but, being naturally of a slow understanding, and having acquired a formal manner during his stay in Spain, much enhanced by a black patch which he wore to conceal a wound on his nose, there was something ridiculously stiff in his demeanour. Charles II., who put no value upon a friend in comparison to a jest, is said to have had much delight in seeing the Duke of Buckingham, or any of his gay courtiers, by the help of a black patch and a white staff, enact Harry Bennet. Mulgrave thinks, that a ludicrous idea being thus associated with Arlington, and all that concerned him, he came to be generally thought a man of less abilities, than he really was. He adds, he was of a generous temper, and served his friends warmly. Being once ungratefully used by one whom he had benefited, he asked Mulgrave, what effect he thought it would have upon him; and prevented his answer, by saying, it should neither cool his present friendship, nor prevent him of the greatest happiness of his life, which was to serve the first deserving person that fell in his way.[448] Although the Duke of York disliked Arlington, yet he suffered him to retain his situation at court. His religion may have saved him from disgrace; for Arlington was privately a Catholic, and avowed himself to be so on his death-bed.[449] He died July, 1685.

Note XXIX.

_And blessed again, to see his flower allied To David's stock, and made young Othriel's bride._--P. 349.

Lady Isabella Bennet, only daughter and heiress of the Earl of Arlington, was married to Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, second son of Charles II. by the Duchess of Cleveland. This match was against the inclination of the duke's mother; for Derrick says, he saw a letter from her to Danby, dated at Paris, in 1675, thanking him for endeavouring to prevent the match. The Duke of Grafton was bred to the sea. After Monmouth had taken the popular courses which we have reviewed, the king endeavoured to set Grafton, though inferior in all personal accomplishments, in opposition to him, in the hearts of the people. He was appointed steward of the Loyal Apprentices' entertainment,[450] and otherwise placed in the public eye, as the rival of Monmouth. He also was admitted to share his more profitable spoils, getting one of the regiments of the guards, formerly under Monmouth's command, when the Duke of Richmond was made Master of the Horse.[451] Grafton was sent against Monmouth on his landing in the west, and attempted to beat up his rear with a body of horse, as he marched towards Frome; but was defeated, and very nearly made prisoner.[452] The Duke of Grafton participated in the general discontent which James II's measures excited through the kingdom, and remonstrated against them with professional frankness. The king ridiculed a seaman's pretensions to tenderness of conscience; and Grafton answered sturdily, that "if he had not much religion himself, he belonged to a party who had." He was with the king when he headed his army to march against the Prince of Orange, and joined with Churchill, in exhorting him to hazard a battle. We must hope, that they meant to share the risque which they recommended; and that it was only a consciousness that the king had deserted his own cause, which induced them to go over to the prince, when their counsel was rejected. On the 28th September, 1690, the Duke of Grafton was mortally wounded at the siege of Cork, as he commanded the squadron which covered the landing. He seems to have been a brave, rough, hardy-tempered man, and would probably have made a figure as a naval officer.

Note XXX.

_Even envy must consent to Helon's worth; Whose soul, though Egypt glories in his birth, Could for our captive ark its zeal retain, And Pharaoh's altars in their pomp disdain._--P. 349.

Lewis Duras, Earl of Feversham, brother of the French Marshals Duras and De Lorge, and nephew to the famous Marshal Turenne. He was born of a Huguenot family, and retained his religion, or the form of it, when both his brothers conformed to the Catholic church. The Duke of York's opportune return from Flanders is said, by Sir John Reresby, to have been planned by this nobleman; who is, therefore, introduced here with singular propriety. He is said to have been brave; but appears, from the only remarkable action in which he was ever engaged, to have been a bad general, and a cruel man. James II., who had a high esteem for Feversham, placed him at the head of that body of disciplined troops, which checked the career of Monmouth. He advanced to Bridgewater, of which Monmouth had got possession, with some of the finest regiments in the service, and 30 field pieces. The unfortunate adventurer seemed to have no refuge left, but to disperse his forces, and fly for his safety; when the mode in which Feversham conducted himself gave him a fair chance for victory and a crown. He encamped in the open country, three miles from the enemy, with only a dry ditch in his front; dispersed his cavalry in the neighbouring hamlets, and retired quietly to bed, without either sending out reconnoitering parties, or establishing advanced posts.[453] It is no wonder, that, that in such a careless state, he should have been completely surprised; it is only singular, that, even allowing for the cowardice of Lord Grey, who fled, instead of performing the safe and easy duty committed to him of firing the horse-quarters of Feversham's army, he should have been able to recover the consequences of his negligence. Monmouth's men fought for three hours after they had been deserted by their cavalry, with the innate courage of English peasants. Feversham was still hard pressed, notwithstanding the gallant assistance afforded him by Dumbarton; when the Bishop of Bath and Wells decided the day, by causing the artillery to be turned upon the flank of Monmouth's followers. When they had given way, Feversham exhibited more of the cold-blooded cruelty of his country, than he had done of their genius and fiery valour, while the battle lasted. The military bishop also proved himself a better lawyer than the general, as he had shewn himself in the fight a better soldier; but it was not till a warm expostulation was made on his part that the general ceased to execute the prisoners by martial law, and reserved them to a still more cruel fate from the forms of law, as administered by the brutal Jefferies. Neither Feversham's blunders, nor his brutality, seemed to lessen his merit in the eye of his sovereign. He received the order of the Garter, on the 31st July, 1685, probably on the vacancy occasioned by the Duke of Monmouth's death, whose memory was on this occasion treated with signal ignominy.[454] At the time of the Revolution, Lord Feversham was commander in chief, and proved himself incapable of taking any spirited steps for James's interest; for the army he commanded, though the officers were disaffected, would probably have fought, had they been once fairly committed in opposition to the Dutch. When the king resolved to abandon everything, and forsake his kingdom, he left behind, a letter to Feversham, stating that he should not expect his troops at present to expose themselves. The general might have secured a part of his forces, by retreating along with the high-spirited Viscount of Dundee, who marched back into Scotland with the Scottish regiments; but Feversham was a man of another mould, and rather chose to augment the general confusion, by disbanding the army. When James was detected by the fishermen of Kent, in his attempt to leave the kingdom, Feversham, with a party of his guards, was sent to conduct him back to his capital. James also chose him for the messenger, when, yielding to sad necessity, he sent a letter to the Prince of Orange, inviting him to St James's. With a view, doubtless, to increase the terror of the king's mind, and precipitate his intention of a second flight, the prince arrested the bearer of this humiliating embassy. This was the last public occasion on which James had occasion to employ the services of the unmilitary nephew of the great Turenne, whose name is connected with the most blame-worthy and most melancholy passages of his reign.

Note XXXI.

_Our list of nobles next let Amri grace, Whose merits claimed the Abethdin's high place; Who, with a loyalty that did excel, Brought all the endowments of Achitophel._--P. 349.

These lines, which sufficiently vouch their author to have been Tate, refer to Sir Heneage a Finch, an eminent lawyer, who was first attorney-general, and, upon Shaftesbury losing his seals, succeeded him as Lord Keeper. He was a most incorruptible judge, and could not be swayed in his decisions even by the king's interference, which upon all political occasions was omnipotent with him. He was a good lawyer, and a ready orator; but upon this last accomplishment, he set, as all lawyers do, rather too high a value: for they, whose profession necessarily leads them often to speak against their own opinion, and often to make much of trifles, are apt to lose, in the ingenuity of their arguments, the power of making a real impression upon the bosom of their hearers. North says, that the business, rather than the justice, of the court, flourished exceedingly under Finch; for he was a formalist, and took exceeding pleasure in encouraging and listening to nice distinctions of law, instead of taking a broad view of the equity of each case. He was a steady and active supporter of the Tory party on all occasions; in reward of which, he was created Earl of Nottingham. After a long and lingering disease, which terminated in a deep depression of spirits, this great lawyer died in 1682, and was succeeded by Lord Guilford, as Lord Keeper.

Note XXXII.

_Than Sheva none more loyal zeal have shown, Wakeful as Judah's lion for the crown._--P. 350.

Sir Roger L'Estrange was descended of a good family in Norfolk, and during the civil war was in arms for the king.[455] Being taken prisoner by the parliament, he was condemned to die, but found means to obtain a pardon. He was a good performer on the violin; a quality which recommended him to Cromwell, under whose government he lived, if we may trust one of his antagonists, in ease and affluence; a circumstance with which he was afterwards as often reproached as our author with his panegyric on the Protector. The instant, however, that the restoration of monarchy approached, L'Estrange was among the first to hail it, and stepped forth to answer a pamphlet of Milton, on the subject of a republic, by a retort, which he irreverently entitled, "No Blind Guides." After the Restoration, he was the great champion of the court, the high church, and the Tory party. His principal vehicle of political instruction was the "Observator," a paper published twice a week; but he also edited another, called "Heraclitus Ridens;" and, independently of both, published answers, replies, rebutters, and sur-rebutters, to every attack made upon him, besides quires of pamphlets on all popular subjects. For these good services, he was knighted by King James. His style is in the last degree mean, crabbed, and low; yet he possesses some power of argument and sarcasm. He appears to have first invented, or at least first practised to a great extent, the foolish custom of printing emphatic passages in a different type from the rest of the page, and thereby too often effecting a point, which the reader is unable to trace. For the other deeds of L'Estrange, and his numerous bead-roll of fugitive pieces, the reader may consult the article in the Biographia.

Note XXXIII.

_Calm were the elements, night's silence deep, The waves scarce murmuring, and the winds asleep; Yet fate for ruin takes so still an hour, And treacherous sands the princely bark devour._--P. 351.

The Duke of York, after a short visit to England, returned to Scotland by sea. The vessel unfortunately struck upon a bank, called the Lemman Ore; and the duke, with a few attendants, who crowded into the barge, were all who escaped from the wreck. Burnet says, that the duke showed no anxiety about the safety of any one save his dogs and his priests, whom the bishop maliciously classes together. Others say, he was principally interested about Churchill, who, at the Revolution, requited his anxiety but indifferently. The Gazette says, that when the barge put off, the poor sailors, who remained to perish, manned the sides in the usual honorary form, and, indifferent to their own fate, hailed the duke's safety with three cheers; a circumstance alluded to a few lines below, where it is said, the sufferers,

With last loud breaths, their master's 'scape applaud.

In this shipwreck perished the Earl of Roxburghe, Mr Hyde, a son of the great Clarendon, the Lord O'Brien, the Laird of Hoptoun, Sir Joseph Douglas, Colonel Macnaughton, and about 300 seamen, besides the persons of the duke's retinue.

The verses, which follow those concerning this lamentable accident, describe the return of the Duke of York with his Duchess to England; a voyage which they performed without any sinister accident, and landed there upon the 27th May, 1682. On this occasion, they received many poetical greetings, both on the duke's escape and their happy arrival; as, for example, Otway's "Prologue to the Duchess, on her return from Scotland, at the Duke's theatre, at Venice Preserved, &c. acted 31st May, 1682."

"A Pindarique Ode on their Royal Highnesses Return from Scotland, after their escape at Sea."

"To the Duke on his Return, 29th May, 1682, written by Nathaniel Lee."

"A Congratulatory Poem to her Royal Highness, upon the arrival of their Royal Highnesses in England, May 27th, 1682."

"To his Royal Highness at his happy Return from Scotland, written by a Person of Quality, 30th May, 1682."

Heaven, who declares, in wonders so divine, Care of succession in the rightful line, That it protects you, with a guardian hand, From Whiggish lemans, both of sea and land.

Also, "A Panegyric on their Royal Highnesses, and Congratulation on their Return from Scotland."

Note XXXIV.

_This year did Ziloah rule Jerusalem, And boldly all sedition's syrtes stem._--P. 353.

Sir John Moor, the tory Lord Mayor, an aged and respectable citizen, of a mild character, and even hesitating and cautious in forming his measures, though sufficiently determined when once satisfied of their propriety. "Which character," says North, "was cut out for this time and public occasion; for nothing but such firmness of mind, and manifest goodness, with a seeming passive disposition, could have protected from those rages of violence, as very often threatened him, and which, probably, had broke loose on any one in his post, that had carried matters with a stern and minatory behaviour."[456] He was proposed by the court-party in the city for Lord Mayor, and, being scarcely opposed by the other faction, easily carried his election. The Whigs were led into this blunder, by mistaking the principles, and under-rating the resolution, of the candidate. Sir John Moor had been bred a non-conformist; and, though he had taken the test with a view to civic honours, that was no more than had been done by Bethel, Cornish, and others, who retained in full vigour their sectarian principles. Besides, from the gentleness and softness of the new Lord Mayor's demeanour, his smooth and diffident way of talking in private, and his embarrassed elocution in public, they conceived that, even if completely gained by the court, he would prove too passive and timorous, to serve them essentially against active and energetic opponents. In both these particulars they were woefully mistaken. Sir John proved to be most keenly disposed to second all the court measures; and he was kept up to the pitch of resolution necessary for carrying them through, by the constant support, encouragement, and advice of the Duke of Ormond, whom the court employed to back him, and who, during the contests which followed, dined with the Lord Mayor two or three times every week.[457] This election, and its consequences, was a severe blow to the fanatical interest in the city; the jovial custom of banquets and feasting was revived; and the musicians, who had been long under restraint, were restored to their privilege, which they employed in chaunting forth the praises of Sir John the Restorer.[458] More, of Morehall, was not for a time more celebrated in song, than the Lord Mayor, his namesake; and a general revolution appeared to have taken place in the manners, as well as the principles, of the citizens, which, under the Whig government, had savoured not a little of the ancient days of fanatical severity.

Note XXXV.

_Howe'er encumbered with a viler pair Than Ziph or Shimei, to assist the chair; Yet Ziloah's loyal labours so prevailed, That faction, at the next election, failed._--P. 353.

Ziph and Shimei were the Whig sheriffs in 1681; concerning whom, see note upon Shimei in Part First. The _viler pair_ were Thomas Pilkington, and Samuel Shute, who followed out the practice of their predecessors, in the mode of packing the juries on political trials, and had the honour to arrange that which acquitted the Earl of Shaftesbury. They were much hated by the court; and, when they came with the recorder to invite the King to dine with the Lord Mayor, Charles forgot his usual politeness so far, as to answer sternly, "so agreeable was the city's invitation, that he would accept it, though brought by messengers so unwelcome to him as these two sheriffs."[464] Sir John Moor had a most violent contest with these two persons, concerning the election of sheriffs for the ensuing year, about which the court were exceedingly anxious.

It had been customary, when these elections were matters of little consequence, that the Lord Mayor designated a citizen to hold the office of sheriff, by the ceremony of drinking to him, and sending him the cup. It was agreed by the court, that this custom should be revived, as throwing the choice of one of the sheriffs into the hands of their partizan, Sir John Moor. This being settled, the Mayor, in full form, drank to Dudley North, brother of the Lord Keeper Guilford, a Levant merchant, who accepted of that expensive office, to please his brother, and to serve the court. The popular party determined to controvert this election; denying that a sheriff could be elected otherwise than by the Livery, and proposed Papillon and Dubois, sturdy Whigs, for their candidates. The court, on the other hand, contending that North was duly and incontrovertibly elected, by the jolly mode already mentioned, proposed a Mr Box for the other sheriff, whose office only they allowed to be vacant. The Common Hall, held on this occasion, was as tumultuary as a raging tempest. At length the Lord Mayor, with the party who denied there were two vacancies, withdrew; while the country party remained, and polled for Papillon and Dubois, under the direction of Shute and Pilkington, the last year's sheriffs. The court, affecting to consider this as a riot, interfered on that pretext, and a warrant was granted for committing the sheriffs to the Tower. Having found bail to answer for a misdemeanour, they returned to the charge with the same ardour as ever, and were actually about to complete their poll, when the hall was adjourned by the orders of the Lord Mayor. The whole weight of the court was necessary to keep up the Lord Mayor's heart at this crisis. He was sent for to the Privy Council, encouraged, soothed, schooled, and finally assured, by a writing under the Lord Keeper's hand, that he might adjourn the Common Hall, &c. as he thought proper. Thus heartened, the Lord Mayor assumed to himself the whole management of the poll, although the sheriffs opened books for another, and, denying the legality of any election, excepting his own, declared Box duly returned. This citizen, however, apprehensive of the consequences of acting under so dubious a nomination, fined off, and declined to serve. One Rich was found, with more zeal and courage; and, during the tumult of a Common Hall, which resounded with the cries of "no election," &c. this gentleman was elected sheriff by a few of the Lord Mayor's partizans, and declared duly returned by the Lord Mayor, who immediately proceeded to dissolve the Common Hall. North and Rich were accordingly sworn in as sheriffs for the year; but a guard of the Train Bands was necessary to protect them, while they thus qualified themselves for entering on their office.

This contest was followed by another, for the office of Lord Mayor. Gould, the popular candidate, was returned by a considerable majority; but, upon a scrutiny, the court-party, by dint of real or pretended disqualifications, gained such an advantage, that Pritchard, their candidate, was returned by a majority of fourteen voices.

The importance of these elections was soon visible. The popular party were utterly disheartened, and their leaders exposed to the same practices from packing juries, which they had themselves employed. The court used their victory remorselessly. Pilkington, the ex-sheriff, was found liable in 100,000l. damages, for having said that "the Duke of York had fired the city, and was now come to cut all their throats." Those concerned in carrying on the double poll, were severely fined, as guilty of a riot. Sir Patience Ward, an alderman of the popular party, was declared obnoxious to a charge of perjury, for an inconsistence in his evidence on Pilkington's trial.[465] In short, the royal vengeance was felt by all who had been active in opposition to the court.

But the extent of the court's victory was best evinced by the conduct of Shaftesbury; who, seeing his strong-hold, the magistracy of the city, thus invaded, and occupied by his enemies, fled from his house in Aldersgate-street, and for some time lay concealed in Wapping, trusting for his safety to the very lowest of mankind. From this hiding place, he sent forth messages to the other heads of the party, in which he urged the most desperate measures. But, finding it impossible to combine the various persons concerned in one plan of enterprize, and sensible of the danger of discovery, which each day's delay rendered more imminent, after a bitter contest between fear and rage, he fled to Amsterdam. His retreat was followed by the trial of the conspirators in the Rye-house Plot; and doubtless, the court, on that occasion, knew well how to avail themselves of the power of selecting juries so long possessed by their enemies, and now in their own hands. During the short remainder of this reign, the king's authority was paramount and supreme; his enemies were at his feet, and not a whisper of opposition disturbed his repose;--a deceitful and delusive calm, which his unfortunate successor soon saw changed into a tempest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 411: "An excellent new Ballad between Tom the Tory, and Toney the Whig. (Danby and Shaftesbury.) Scene, the Tower."

_Toney_. Thou wants not wickedness, but wit, To turn it to thy profit; Who but a sot would hatch a plot, And then make nothing of it? 'Twas I was fain to rear thy barn, And bring it to perfection; I made the frighted nation sue To me for my protection. ]

[Footnote 412: They were on such bad terms, that, while Shaftesbury was sitting as Chancellor, he had occasion to call the Duke of York to order; the Duke, as he passed the chair, told Shaftesbury, in a low voice, he was "an insolent scoundrel:" "I thank your Grace," retorted the Chancellor, with inimitable readiness, "for having called me neither a coward nor a Papist."]

[Footnote 413: "A modest Vindication of the Earl of Shaftesbury, in a Letter to a Friend, concerning his being elected King of Poland."--_Somers' Tracts_, p. 153.]

[Footnote 414: Witness an excellent ballad, which calls itself, "The Suburbs' Thanks for the City's Election:"

We gave commission, that our thanks should wait on The kind electors of Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Thomas Player, Pilkington, and Love; Thus we our joy by this return do prove.

* * * * *

Meekly and modestly they played their parts; I do not wonder that they won your hearts: Had you elected others in their stead, Sure you had done a very evil deed; For who could equalize the love and care Of Clayton, Pilkington, of Love, and Player? ]

[Footnote 415: See Vol. VII. p. 4.]

[Footnote 416: Who kept a noted bagnio.]

[Footnote 417: _Somers' Tracts_, p. 185.]

[Footnote 418: Debates of the Westminster and Oxford Parliaments, 1689. p. 39.]

[Footnote 419: The citizens are invited to go to the top of the Monument, and to fancy to themselves the following objects, which are sure to come to pass whenever popery prevails, _i. e._ when the Duke of York succeeds to the throne.

"First, imagine you see the whole town in a flame, occasioned this second time by the same popish malice that set it on fire before. At the same time fancy, that, among the distracted crowd, you behold troops of Papists ravishing your wives and daughters, dashing your little childrens' brains out against the wall, plundering your houses, and cutting your own throats, by the name of heretic dogs. Then represent to yourselves the Tower playing off its cannon, and battering down your houses about your ears. Also, casting your eye towards Smithfield, imagine you see your father, or your mother, or some of your nearest and dearest relations, tied to a stake, in the midst of flames, when, with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, they scream and cry out to that God, for whose cause they die, which was a frequent spectacle the last time Popery reigned amongst us. Fancy you behold those beautiful churches, erected for the true worship of God, abused and turned into idolatrous temples, to the dishonour of Christ, and scandal of religion; the ministers of God's word torn to pieces before their eyes, and their very best friends not daring even to speak in their behalf. Your trading's bad, and in a manner lost already, but then the only commodity will be fire and sword; the only object, women running with their hair about their ears, men covered with blood, children sprawling under horses feet, and only the walls of houses left standing; when those that survive this fatal day may sigh and cry, Here once stood my house, there my friend's, and there my kinsman's; but, alas! that time is past. The only noise will then be, O my wife, O my husband, O my dearest children! In fine, what the devil himself would do, were he upon earth, will, in his absence, infallibly be acted by his agents the Papists." See _State Tracts_, p. 102. Burnet mentions Ferguson being the author, in his "Letter occasioned by a Second Letter to Dr Burnet."]

[Footnote 420: Letter occasioned by a Second Letter to Dr Burnet, p. 7.]

[Footnote 421: House-keeper to the excise-office, worth 500l. a-year, with little trouble.]

[Footnote 422: _Balcarras' Account_, p. 524.]

[Footnote 423: _Ralph._ Vol. II.]

[Footnote 424: Carte's "Life of Ormond," vol. II. p, 444.]

[Footnote 425: After the Revolution these pieces were collected into a volume, and entitled, "A second five years Struggle against Popery and Tyranny." The preface bears, that "they were written, not out of harm's way, but in the enemy's quarters, with so great danger as well as difficulty, that I lived for many years together only from term to term. But no man ought to count his life dear to him in the cause of his country; for he that is bound to love one neighbour as himself, must in proportion love ten millions of neighbours so many times better than himself."]

[Footnote 426: That of James II., then encamped on Hounslow Heath.]

[Footnote 427: They omitted to strip off his cassock; and that slight circumstance rendered the degradation imperfect, and saved his benefice.]

[Footnote 428: Oliver Cromwell.]

[Footnote 429: He had not so totally lost his poetical reputation, but that a brother bard was left to bewail his apostacy, as a disgrace to his talents:

For one, who formerly stood candidate For wit and sense with men of highest rate. Apostatises from his former acts, And from his own Cambyses' fame detracts; No more in verse his mighty talent shows, But libels princes with malicious prose. This man in Cornhill if you chance to meet, Or near the middle of Threadneedle street, Know, 'tis to pay his homage to the sun, Or rather to the hot-brained Phæton, Whom Ovid blames; but he does more commend, Advising straight the chariot to ascend. _Loyalty Triumphant_, 1st _July_, 1681. ]

[Footnote 430: Elkanah had forfeited reputation for valour, by his conduct in a quarrel with Otway; as may be interred from the line,

Settle's a coward, because fool Otway fought him.

In an answer to "The Character of a Popish Successor," called, "A Character of the true-blue Protestant Poet," Settle is termed, "a fool, an arrant knave, a despicable coward, and a prophane atheist."]

[Footnote 431: The full title is, "Absalom Senior, or Achitophel Transprosed, a Poem. _Si populus vult decipi_, &c. Printed for S. E., and sold by Langley Curtis, at the sign of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, near Fleetbridge, 1682."]

[Footnote 432: This pithy objection would prove the impossibility of two persons bearing the same name, and existing at different periods of history. Elkanah did not observe, that, as there might have been an hundred, so there actually were at least two Zimris in scripture story; the second of whom rebelled against his master, Elah, king of Israel, and usurped the kingdom. If Dryden meant to apply either of these characters distinctly to the factious Duke of Buckingham, it was probably the last, whose treason had become proverbial: "Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?"]

[Footnote 433: Jefferies once, when recorder of London, called himself the Mouth of the city; and the name became attached to him, from the natural expansion of that feature. The scandalous circumstance, alluded to by Settle, is the subject of a libel in the "State Poems." But Settle lived to write, "A Panegyric on the Loyal and Honourable Sir George Jefferies, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1683."]

[Footnote 434: The Duke of Buckingham. See note on Zimri, p. 353.]

[Footnote 435: WOOD'S _Athenæ Oxonienses_, p. 1076. _et sequen._]

[Footnote 436: NORTH'S _Examen_, p. 96.--It does not appear, that the Tories welcomed the return of their lost sheep. It is talked lightly of in their ballads and libels. For instance, we have these two lines in "The Poet's Address to King James II., surnamed the _Just_:"

Character Settle, if you please to hate, Who, Judas-like, repented when too late. ]

[Footnote 437: At this time Bartholomew and Smithfield fairs exhibited many theatrical representations. From a letter of the facetious Tom Brown, we learn, that a variety of performers appeared upon temporary stages during these festive assemblies. To write drolls for them, and for the puppet-shows, though the last state of literary degradation, may have been attended with some scantling of profit. Dryden calls Settle "a Bartholomew-fair writer," in the "Vindication of the Duke of Guise," Vol. VII. p. 193.]

[Footnote 438: "The Whigs' Lamentation for the Death of their dear Brother Colledge, the Protestant Joiner:"

Brave Colledge is hanged, the chief of our hopes, For pulling down bishops, and making new popes. Our dear brother Property calls on the ground, In Poland, King Antony ne'er will be crowned; For now they're resolved that harts shall be trump, And the 'prentices swear they will burn the old rump.

* * * * *

Our case to the corrector-men we must refer, To Shadwell and Settle, to Curtis and Carr; To know who succeeds our late captain the joiner, He must be some artist, some carver, or coiner. ]

[Footnote 439: _Examen_, p. 394.]

[Footnote 440: _Examen_, p. 373.]

[Footnote 441: _Examen_. p. 277.]

[Footnote 442: See L'Estrange's "Narrative of the Plot." A similar, and still more strange, mistake of the worthy justice, is coupled with an allusion to the necklace, in a pasquinade called "Gate's Boarding School at Camberwell, writ by J. Dean, Author of the Wine Cooper, the Hunting of the Fox, the Badger in the Fox Trap, the Lord Russell's Farewell, the Loyal Conquest, the Dutch Miller, &c."

"Waller his pots of venison, He took for priests, may sell; His amber necklaces make known Our saints at Camberwell." ]

[Footnote 443: Mr Prance's "Answer to Mrs Cellier's Letter, containing also a Vindication of Sir William Waller, &c. with the Adventure of the Bloody Bladder, &c." The good justice was perhaps quite innocent of these aspersions; but the evidence of Mr Miles Prance is a little suspicious.]

[Footnote 444: As appears from numerous ballads upon his meeting Mrs Cellier in Newgate, &c. For example, we have "Dagon's Fall, or the Knight turned out of Commission;" (on Sir William Waller, printed 12th April, 1680, Luttrell's note;) which was answered by a Whig ballad, bearing in front this bold defiance; "An Answer to Dagon's Fall, being a Vindication of Sir William Waller", (printed 15th May, 1680, L.)

He that lately writ the fall of Dagon, Is a rigid Papist, or a Pagan. ]

[Footnote 445: "By the Reverend Thomas Jekyll," says Anthony a Wood; and adds, "it was published under the title of "True Religion makes the best Loyalty." But Anthony was not a man to detect the irony, which I rather think Mr Jekyll had in view; his text being xxiv. Proverbs, 21. I suspect the clergyman hung out false colours to delude the Whigs; for surely he could never have intended to preach before Monmouth and Shaftesbury upon the words, "fear God, and honour the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." _Athenæ_, p. 1075.]

[Footnote 446: The addressors for the county of Devon, are ironically said to have been "introduced by that _wise_ and _high-born_ prince, Christopher, Duke of Albemarle." _History of Addresses_, p. 47.]

[Footnote 447: In 1685. It is remarkable, that Goodman the actor, when a student at Cambridge, had been expelled for being concerned in cutting and defacing that same picture, which the university, by a solemn act, appointed to be burned in public. Stepney has a poem on this solemnity, with the apt motto, which applies to mobs, whether composed of the learned or ignorant:

_------Sed quid Turba Remi? Sequitur fortunam ut semper, et odit Damnatos._ ]

[Footnote 448: Sheffield Duke of Buckingham's character of the Earl of Arlington. See his works, Vol. II. p. 60.]

[Footnote 449: It is said, that, while he was abroad, Lord Colepepper saw Charles and him come together from mass, and expressed his resentment against Bennet in such terms, that he, not piquing himself on personal valour, did not chuse to visit Britain till after the death of that incensed and unceremonious protestant.]

[Footnote 450: "London, August 4th, 1681. This day the Loyal Apprentices of this city, who made lately the humble address to his majesty, dined at Sadler's Hall. The king had been pleased to give them a brace of bucks, and many of the principal nobility, and other persons of quality, did them the honour to dine with them; there was a very handsome entertainment, managed with great order; and they intending to keep an annual feast, desired his grace the Duke of Grafton, and some others of the nobility, to be stewards for the next year." _Gazette_, No. 1640. Accordingly, the next year, the Duke of Grafton presided on the 9th August, 1682. This was one of the devices by which the court endeavoured to strengthen their ground in the city against Shaftesbury and Monmouth, and was much canvassed in the pamphlets, &c. of the time. In Luttrell's Collection, are the following poems on the 'Prentices feast:

"To the Loyal Company of Citizens met at Merchant Taylors' Hall."

"A Poem on the 'Prentices Feast (satirical.)"

"A Rejoynder to the Whiggish Poem, upon the Tory 'Prentices Feast at Merchant Taylors' Hall (ironical.)"

"An Answer to the Whiggish Poem, on the Loyal Apprentices Feast."

"Loyalty Rewarded, or a Poem on the Brace of Bucks bestowed on the Loyal Apprentices by his Majesty", (3d August, 1681.) Answered by the Boys whipt Home, or a Rythme upon the Apprentices Poem.

Poor boys! a brace of bucks was made their cheer, To show their courage hearted like a deer, Whose spreading horns foretell the future fates, Their wives shall fix upon their spreading pates. ]

[Footnote 451: Ralph, Vol. I. p. 657.]

[Footnote 452: Ibid. 879.]

[Footnote 453: In Villiers Duke of Buckingham's works, Vol. II., is a little squib, called "The Battle," in which Feversham is introduced, giving, in broken English, a very ludicrous account of his campaign. It is in dialogue, and concludes thus:

_Lord._ I suppose, my lord, that your lordship was posted in a very strong place?

_General._ O begarra, very strong, vid de great river between me and de rebella, calla de Brooka de Gutter.

_Lady._ But they say, my lord, there was no water in that brook of the gutter?

_General._ Begar, madama, but dat no be my faulta; begar me no hinder de water from coma; if no will rain, begar me no can make de rain.

_Lady._ But did you not go to some other place?

_General._ O pardon me, madama, you no understand de ting.

_Lord._ And so your lordship, it seems, encamped with your horse and foot?

_General._ Ay vid de foota, no vid de horsa; begar me go vid de horsa on de gentlemen-officera, to one very good villash, where begar, be very good quartera, very good meta, very good drinka, and very good bedda.

_Lady._ But pray, my lord, why did you not stay with the foot?

_General._ Begarra, madama, because dire be great differentia between de gentlemen-officera and de rogua de sogiera; begarra de rogua de sogiera lye upon the grounda; but begar de gentlemen-officera go to bedda.]

[Footnote 454: There is amongst the records of the order of the Garter, written in Latin, and deposited in St George's chapel, an account of the manner in which the Duke of Monmouth's banner, which had been suspended over his stall, was taken down by the command of James the II.--Garter king at arms, the heralds, and all the officers of the Garter, attended; and, amidst a great concourse of people, took down the banner, treated it with every mark of indignity, and kicked it out of the western door of the church into a ditch, which at that time was near the church.]

[Footnote 455: William Symthies, curate at Cripplegate, intimates, that he kept his coach and six horses.--_Reply to the Observator_, p. 2.]

[Footnote 456: _Examen_, p. 596.]

[Footnote 457: Carte, Vol. II. p. 522.]

[Footnote 458: _Examen_, p. 616. North mentions a song having for burden,

--the worshipful Sir John Moor, Age after age that name adore.

Besides a congratulatory poem to Sir John Moor, Knight, Lord Mayor elect of London, 30th September, 1682, there is another in the Luttrell Collection, comparing the feats of Sir John with those of his predecessors in the government of the city, to the ancient tune of "St George for England," entitled, "Vive Le Roy, or London's Joy," a new song on the installation of the present Lord Mayor of London. (To the tune of 'St George for England.')

Sir Patience[459] calls for justice, and then the wretch will sham us; Sh. Bethel,[460] he packs a jury, well versed in Ignoramus; Sir Tom[461] would hang the Tory, and let the Whig go free; Sir Bob[462] would have a commonwealth, and cry down monarchy; While still the brave Sir George[463] did all their deeds record; But Sir John, Sir John, your loyalty restored. Sir John he is for justice, which rebels would destroy; Vive, vive, vive le roy. ]

[Footnote 459: Sir Patience Ward.]

[Footnote 460: Sheriff Bethel.]

[Footnote 461: Sir Thos. Player.]

[Footnote 462: Sir Robert Clayton.]

[Footnote 463: Sir George Jefferies.]

[Footnote 464: Ralph, Vol. I. p. 634.]

[Footnote 465: He fled to the Hague, as appears from a ballad called "The Hue and Song after Patience, (23 May, 1683.)"

Have but a little patience, and you shall hear, How Patience had the gift to lie and swear; How Patience could with patience stand a lie; But Patience wants to stand the pillory. Out of all patience, to the Hague he steers; To stay he had not patience for his ears. ]

THE MEDAL.

A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION.

_Per Graium populos, mediqæue per Elidis urbem Ibat ovans; Divumque sibi poscebat honores._

THE MEDAL.

The Medal was published in the beginning of March 1682, about four months after the appearance of the first part of "Absalom and Achitophel," and eight months before the publication of the second part of that poem. The circumstances, which led to it, require us to notice Shaftesbury's imprisonment and acquittal.

On the 2d July, 1681, the Earl of Shaftesbury was apprehended, by virtue of a warrant from council, and after his papers had been seized, and he himself had undergone an examination, was committed to the Tower. Upon the 24th November, 1681, a bill for high-treason was presented against him to the grand jury of Middlesex. When the witnesses were adduced, the jurors demanded, that they might be examined in private; and Pilkington, the Whig sheriff, required, that they should be examined separately. Both requests were refused by the court. One Booth was then examined, who swore, that Lord Shaftesbury had told him, he intended to carry down to the Oxford parliament a party of fifty gentlemen, and their servants, armed and mounted, to be commanded by a Captain Wilkinson; and that his Lordship stated this force to be provided, for the purpose of repelling any attack which the king's guards might make on the parliament, and, if necessary, to take the king from his bad advisers by force, and bring him to the city of London. The witness, said he, was invited by Wilkinson to be one of this band, and provided himself with a good horse and arms for the service; which was prevented by the sudden dissolution of the Oxford parliament. Seven other witnesses, Smith, Turberville, Haynes, and three persons called Macnamara, swore, that Shaftesbury had used to them, and each of them individually, the most treasonable expressions concerning the king's person; had declared he had no more title to the crown than the Duke of Buckingham; that he deserved to be deposed; and that he, Shaftesbury, would dethrone him, and convert the kingdom into a commonwealth. Here was enough of swearing at least to make a true bill. But the character of the witnesses was infamous; Booth was a swindler, and could never give an account of the stable in which he kept his pretended charger, or produce any one who had seen it. Smith, by his own confession, had changed his religion twice, was one of the evidences of the Popish plot, and intimate with the villain Oates. Turberville stood in the same predicament of an infamous fellow, and an evidence for the plot; he is said to have apologised for his apostacy, by saying plainly, that "the Protestant citizens had forsaken him, and, God damn him, he would not starve." The other witnesses were Irishmen, and there was something remarkable in their history. They had pretended to discover a Catholic plot in Ireland, which, if one had existed any where, was doubtless the place where it might have been found. Their evidence, however, contained pretty much such a raw-head and bloody-bones story as that of Oates, and equally unworthy of credit. Yet Shaftesbury constituted himself their protector, and had them brought over to England, where he doubtless intended, that their Irish plot should be as warmly agitated in the Oxford parliament, as the English conspiracy in that of 1679. Macnamara's "Narrative of the Conspiracy" is dedicated to his Lordship, because it was not only known to the dedicator, "but to the whole Christian world, how conspicuous his Lordship had been for his indefatigable zeal and vigilance over the safety of his majesty's most sacred person, and the welfare of the whole extent of his dominions." The sudden dissolution of the Oxford parliament, which had such important consequences in various respects, prevented the prosecution of the Irish plot. Besides, it seems to have escaped even Shaftesbury, that popular terror, the most powerful of engines, loses its excitability by too frequent alarms. The theme of a plot began to be listened to with indifference. That of Ireland fell to the ground, without exciting clamour or terror, but the witnesses remained. There is a story of some Irish recruits, who, being detected in a brawl, justified themselves, by saying, they were paid by the king for fighting, and it was quite the same to them where they fought, or with whom. The witnesses were equally sedulous in their vocation, and equally indifferent about the application of their labours; for, finding the court had obtained an ascendency, they readily turned with the tide, and bore evidence, as we have seen, against their original protector and encourager. The Tories basely availed themselves of the readiness with which this hungry pack of bloodhounds turned against their huntsman, and triumphantly claimed for them the same credit which the Whigs had demanded in former cases; although they must have been conscious, that they were employing the worst arts, as well as the most infamous implements, of their enemies. Besides the infamy of these men's character, their story was very improbable; as it could hardly be supposed, that Shaftesbury, the veteran leader of a party, should have committed himself so deeply in unnecessary and unreserved communication with these vulgar banditti, or expressed himself against the king in such low and gross language as they imputed to him.

Such being the oral testimony, and such its defects, the crown lawyers endeavoured to aid it, by founding upon certain papers found in Shaftesbury's study. One of these contained the names of the principal persons in the nation, divided into two lists, one titled, _Worthy Men_, and the other, _Men Worthy_; which last contained the principal Tories, and the legend was understood to mean, "men worthy to be hanged." This was too enigmatical to bear much argument. But there was also found a draught of an association against Popery, in which many dangerous topics were stated. It was thereby declared, that the Papist Plot was still advancing, and that the Catholics had been highly encouraged by James Duke of York; that mercenary forces had been levied, and kept on foot, contrary to law, and to the danger of the king's person: Therefore the persons associating were to bind themselves to defend, first the Protestant religion, and then the king's person and liberties of the subject, against all encroachment and usurpation of arbitrary power, and to endeavour to disband all such mercenary forces as were kept up in and about the city of London, to the great amazement and terror of all the good people of the land; also, never to consent that the Duke of York, or any professed Papist, should succeed to the crown, but by all lawful means, and by force of arms if necessary, to resist and oppose his so doing. By a still more formidable clause, it was provided, that the subscribers were to receive orders from the parliament if sitting; but if it should be dissolved, from the majority of the association itself. Lastly, that no one should separate from the rest of the association, on pain of being by the others prosecuted and suppressed, as a perjured person and public enemy. Much dangerous, and even treasonable, inference may be drawn from this model. But it was only an unsigned scroll, and did not appear to have been framed, or even revised and approved of, by Shaftesbury.

With such evidence against him, Shaftesbury might have gone safely before a jury of indifferent men, could such have been found. But the Whig sheriffs, Shute and Pilkington, left nothing to hazard, and took good care the assize should consist of men picked out of the very centre of their own party. We recognize the names of Godfrey, brother to Sir Edmondbury; of Papillon and Dubois, the Whig candidates for the shrievalty against North and Rich; of Sir Samuel Barnardiston, who maintained a furious action against the high-sheriff of Suffolk, for a double return; of Shepherd, the wine-merchant, at whose house the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Russel, &c. afterwards held their meetings; of Edwin, the presbyterian, and others less noted in history, but not less remarkable at the time for the violence of their party-zeal. After a short consideration, they returned the bill _Ignoramus_; upon which there was a shout of continued applause in the court, which lasted for an hour, and the city, in the evening, blazed with bonfires, to celebrate the escape of their Protestant leader. Such was the history of this noted trial, which took place at a time when the course of law had lost its deep still channel, and all causes were carried by a fierce impetuous torrent, which threatened to break down the banks, and become a general inundation. Accustomed to a pure administration of justice, we now look back with disgust and horror upon times, when, to bring in a just verdict, it was necessary to assemble a packed jury.

The triumph of the Whigs was unbounded; and, among other symptoms of exultation, it displayed itself in that which gave rise to this poem of Dryden. This was a medal of Lord Shaftesbury, struck by William Bower, an artist, who had executed some popular pieces allusive to the Roman Catholic plot.[466] The obverse presented the bust of the earl, with the legend, ANTONIO COMITI DE SHAFTESBURY; the reverse, a view of London, the bridge, and the Tower; the sun is rising above the Tower, and just in the act of dispersing a cloud; the legend around the exergue is LÆTAMUR, and beneath is the date of his acquittal, 24th NOVEMBER, 1681. The partizans of the acquitted patriot wore these medals at their breasts; and care was taken that this emblem should be made as general as possible.[467]

The success of "Absalom and Achitophel" made the Tories look to our author as the only poet whose satire might check, or ridicule, the popular triumph of Shaftesbury. If the following anecdote, which Spence has given on the authority of a Catholic priest, a friend of Pope, be absolutely correct, Charles himself engaged Dryden to write on this theme. "One day as the king was walking in the Mall, and talking with Dryden, he said, 'If I was a poet, and I think I am poor enough to be one, I would write a poem on such a subject, in the following manner.' He then gave him the plan of "The Medal." Dryden took the hint, carried the poem, as soon as it was written, to the king, and had a present of a hundred broad pieces for it."

The merits of "The Medal," as a satirical poem, are universally acknowledged; nor does it greatly suffer from being placed, as the subject naturally invites, in comparison with "Absalom and Achitophel." The latter, as a group of figures, presents greater scope and variety, and may be therefore more generally interesting than the portrait of an individual; but it does not more fully display the abilities of the artist. Nothing can be more forcibly described, than the whole of Shaftesbury's political career; and, to use the nervous language of Johnson, "the picture of a man, whose propensions to mischief are such, that his best actions are but inability of wickedness, is very skilfully delineated, and strongly coloured." The comparison of his best and most politic councils, to the cures affected by those called _white witches_, whom it was unlawful to consult, because, even in accomplishing innocent purposes, they used infernal arts, is poignantly severe. The succeeding lines, in which the poet ridicules bitterly that appeal to the people, which the demagogues of that, as of all periods, were desirous to represent as the criterion of truth, contains the essence of all that an hundred philosophers can say upon the topic. His stern and indignant picture of the citizens of London, unjust as it is, if meant to express their general character, is, in individual instances, too often verified. That looseness which habitual chicane in trade introduces into mercantile morality; that bustling activity, which, however meritorious when within its sphere, is so apt to extend itself where its exertion is only mischievous and absurd; and that natural turn to democracy, which arises from frequenting popular meetings and from ambition of civic honours; that half-acquaintance with the affairs of other countries, and half-intimacy with the laws of our own, acquired in the course of mercantile transactions,--all combine, but too often, to turn an useful sober citizen, into a meddling, pragmatical, opinionative politician. The strong and gloomy picture of the fanatics, which succeeds, describes a race of men now in a great measure extinct, of whom the influence, though declining, even in the poet's time, continued to be powerful, and which had, in the preceding generation, prostrated before them both the mitre and the throne. The comparison of the fanatical ideas of religion entertained by these dissenting teachers, with the supposed principles of the libertine and latitudinarian Shaftesbury, gave scope for some nervous satire, and led the author naturally to consider the probable result of the schemes of these incongruous allies. These he predicts, according to the progress of things after the great civil war, to be successively the dominion of presbytery, and depression of the gentry; the insurrection of the independents, and other sects, against their spiritual tyranny; quarrels between the civil and military leaders; the commons destroying the peerage; a democratical republic; a military tyranny; and, by the blessing of heaven, a restoration of the rightful heir. All these scenes had already passed at no distant period; and now, while the sword was yet in the sheath, though the hand was upon its hilt, the masterly and energetic language in which they are detailed may have tempted many to pause and think, whether the evils, of which they complained, deserved the risque of so desperate a remedy.

Such is the plan of this admirable poem. The language is as striking as the ideas and subject. The illustrations and images are short and apposite, such as give force to the argument, and flow easily into the diction, without appearing to have been laboured, or brought from a distance. I fear, however, some of the scriptural allusions are censurable, as too free, if not profane. The verse has all the commanding emphasis, with which Dryden, beyond any other poet, knew how to body forth and adorn his poetical arguments. One Alexandrine is prolonged two syllables beyond the usual length; a circumstance hardly worth notice, were it not to show the sharp-sighted malice of Dryden's enemies, who could discover this single inaccuracy, if, indeed, the licence was not intentional, amid so much sounding versification.[468]

As "The Medal" attracted immediate and extensive attention, the Whig champions stepped forth to the contest. "The Mushroom," by Edmund Hickeringell, first appeared; and, in succession, "The Medal Reversed," by Samuel Pordage, which procured its author a couplet in the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel;" "The Loyal Medal Vindicated," and the "Medal of John Bayes;" all of which, and perhaps many more, appeared in the summer and autumn of 1681. Two satires, of a more general nature, entitled, "Dryden's Satire to his Muse," and, "The Tory Poets," were also published against our author in the course of that year; a sufficient proof of the irritation of that party, whose chief he had now twice held up to public detestation.--The popularity of "The Medal" did not cease with the crisis which gave it birth; it went through many editions, and only became less known, when successive changes had totally worn away all remembrance of the intrigues of the eminent politician against whom it was directed. Johnson has said, "It is now not much read, nor perhaps generally understood; yet, a slight acquaintance with the history of the period removes all obscurity; and, though we cannot sympathize with the fervour of politics which it contains, the poetry has claims to popularity, widely independent of the temporary nature of the subject."

As the reader is now to take a long farewell of Lord Shaftesbury, it may not be unnecessary to remind him, that, when freed from the accusation of high treason, the earl continued to agitate plans of opposition to the government, which became more and more violent, as the ascendency of the court became more powerful, until open force seemed to be the only means left of accomplishing what undoubtedly he had at first hoped to carry through by political intrigue. At length he found it necessary to fly from his house in Aldersgate-Street, and take refuge in the suburbs of the city, from whence he sent messages to his associates, urging them to take arms. But he was now doomed to experience what his ardent temper had before prevented him from considering. When they came to the crisis, the different views and dispositions of the allies began to discover themselves. Russell limited his wishes to security for liberty; Monmouth stipulated his own succession on Charles' death; Sidney demanded a free commonwealth; and all dreaded Shaftesbury, who, they were sensible, was determined to be at the head of the kind of government adopted, whatever that might be. Nor were their tempers less discordant than their plans. While an inferior order of conspirators were organizing plans for assassinating the whole royal family, Monmouth was anxious for the life of his father, Russell averse to shedding the blood of his countrymen, Grey, Howard, and Trenchard, from meaner motives, unwilling to encounter the dangers of war. After a desperate threat to commence the rising, and make the honour and danger all his own, Shaftesbury at length fled to Holland, where he landed in November 1682. The magistrates of Amsterdam gave him welcome, and enrolled him among their citizens, to evade any claim by the court of England on his person; yet they failed not to remind him of his former declaration, of _Delenda est Carthago_, accompanying the freedom which they presented to him with these words: _Ab nostra Carthagine, nondum deleta, salutem accipe_. Here, while pondering the consequences of former intrigues, and perhaps adjusting new machinations, Shaftesbury was seized with the gout in his stomach, and expired on the 21st January, 1682-3.

To sift the character of this extraordinary man, and divide his virtues from his vices, his follies from his talents, would be a difficult, perhaps an impossible task. Charles is said to have borne testimony, that he had more law than all his judges, and more divinity than all his bishops. But his shining qualities were sullied by that inordinate ambition, which brought its own punishment, in an unworthy flight, an untimely, at least a precipitated, death, and a dubious reputation.

Sleep, thou most active of mankind! oh make Thy last low bed, and death's long requiem take, Thou who, whilst living, kept'st the world awake![469]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 466: One often occurs, struck generally in lead. It represents, on the obverse, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey walking, though strangled; on the reverse, St Dennis, with some such legend as this:

Godfrey walked up the hill after he was dead; Dennis went o'er the sea wanting his head.

Others are recorded by Evelyn.]

[Footnote 467: It is alluded to in an occasional epilogue, by Otway, to "Venice Preserved," acted on the Duke's return, April 21, 1682:

Nail all your medals on the gallow's post, In recompence the original was lost; At these illustrious repentance pay, In his kind hands your humble offerings lay.

Duke also, in an epistle to Otway, talking of his retirement from the political world, declares,

I have forgot whatever there I knew, Why men one stocking tie with ribbon blue; Why others medals wear, a fine gilt thing, That at their breasts hangs dangling by a string. ]

[Footnote 468: The line is this:

Thou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy pindaric way.

It seems to be alluded to by Hickeringell in the following lines on Dryden's challenge to the Whig poets, in his preliminary epistle:

If Whigs be silent, then the Tory says, They're silenced, cannot answer Mr Bayes, The poet laureat; and if we write, He swears we learn of him how to indite; Nay, he's so charitable, we so poor, He bids us take, and welcome, of his store; And lest our verses happen to want feet, He frankly proffers his; and 'tis most meet We should, in charity, accept his proffer now, For his, like that, has more than should by two.

The same circumstance is noticed by Tom Brown, who says, it is the longest line in Christendom, except one, which went round some old hangings, representing the history of Pharoah and Moses, and measured forty-six good feet of metre, running thus:

Why, was he not a rascal? Who refused to suffer the children of Israel to go into the wilderness, with their wives and families, to eat the pascal.

I notice this buffoonery, because it is common to ascribe this strange Alexandrine to the Rev. Zachary Boyd, whose scriptural poems are preserved in the University of Glasgow.]

[Footnote 469: Elegy on Shaftesbury, in _Raleigh Redivivus_.]

EPISTLE

TO

THE WHIGS.

For to whom can I dedicate this poem with so much justice as to you? 'Tis the representation of your own hero; 'tis the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of your Tower, nor the rising sun, nor the _anno domini_ of your new sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party; especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original. I hear the graver has made a good market of it; all his kings are bought up already, or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that many a poor Polander,[470] who would be glad to worship the image, is not able to go to the cost of him, but must be content to see him here. I must confess I am no great artist; but sign-post painting will serve the turn to remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had. Yet, for your comfort, the lineaments are true; and though he sat not five times to me, as he did to B,[471] yet I have consulted history; as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula: though they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one side of your medal; the head would be seen to more advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would then break out to better purpose.[472]

You tell us, in your preface to the "No-protestant Plot,"[473] that you shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty; I suppose you mean that little which is left you, for it was worn to rags when you put out this medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious impudence in the face of an established government. I believe, when he is dead, you will wear him in thumb-rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg, as if there were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy. Yet all this while you pretend not only zeal for the public good, but a due veneration for the person of the king. But all men, who can see an inch before them, may easily detect those gross fallacies. That it is necessary for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is granted you; for without them there could be no ground to raise a faction. But I would ask you one civil question, what right has any man among you, or any association of men, to come nearer to you, who, out of parliament, cannot be considered in a public capacity, to meet, as you daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of _loyal_, which is, "to serve the king according to the laws," allow you the licence of traducing the executive power with which you own he is invested? You complain that his majesty has lost the love and confidence of his people; and by your very urging it, you endeavour what in you lies to make him lose them. All good subjects abhor the thought of arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many: if you were the patriots you would seem, you would not at this rate incense the multitude to assume it; for no sober man can fear it, either from the king's disposition, or his practice; or even where you would odiously lay it, from his ministers. Give us leave to enjoy the government and benefit of laws under which we were born, and which we desire to transmit to our posterity. You are not the trustees of the public liberty: and if you have not right to petition in a crowd,[474] much less have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign what you do not like; which, in effect, is every thing that is done by the king and council. Can you imagine, that any reasonable man will believe you respect the person of his majesty, when it is apparent that your seditious pamphlets are stuffed with particular reflections on him? If you have the confidence to deny this, it is easy to be evinced from a thousand passages, which I only forbear to quote, because I desire they should die and be forgotten. I have perused many of your papers; and to show you that I have, the third part of your "No-protestant Plot" is much of it stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, called the "Growth of Popery;"[475] as manifestly as Milton's "Defence of the English People" is from Buchanan, "_De jure regni apud Scotos_:" or your first Covenant, and new Association, from the Holy League of the French Guisards.[476] Any one, who reads Davila, may trace your practices all along. There were the same pretences for reformation and loyalty, the same aspersions of the king, and the same grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will take the historian's word, who says it was reported, that Poltrot, a Huguenot, murdered Francis Duke of Guise, by the instigations of Theodore Beza, or that it was a Huguenot minister, otherwise called a Presbyterian, (for our church abhors so devilish a tenet,) who first writ a treatise of the lawfulness of deposing and murdering kings of a different persuasion in religion; but I am able to prove, from the doctrine of Calvin, and principles of Buchanan, that they set the people above the magistrate; which, if I mistake not, is your own fundamental, and which carries your loyalty no farther than your liking. When a vote of the House of Commons goes on your side, you are as ready to observe it, as if it were passed into a law; but, when you are pinched with any former, and yet unrepealed act of parliament, you declare, that, in some cases, you will not be obliged by it. The passage is in the same third part of the "No-protestant Plot," and is too plain to be denied. The late copy of your intended association, you neither wholly justify nor condemn;[477] but as the Papists, when they are unopposed, fly out into all the pageantries of worship, but, in times of war, when they are hard pressed by arguments, lie close intrenched behind the council of Trent, so now, when your affairs are in a low condition, you dare not pretend that to be a legal combination, but whensoever you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintained and justified to purpose, for, indeed, there is nothing to defend it but the sword; it is the proper time to say any thing when men have all things in their power.

In the mean time, you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this association, and that in the time of Queen Elizabeth.[478] But there is this small difference betwixt them, that the ends of the one are directly opposite to the other: one, with the queen's approbation and conjunction, as head of it; the other, without either the consent or knowledge of the king, against whose authority it is manifestly designed. Therefore you do well to have recourse to your last evasion, that it was contrived by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers that were seized, which yet you see the nation is not so easy to believe as your own jury; but the matter is not difficult, to find twelve men in Newgate who would acquit a malefactor.

I have only one favour to desire of you at parting; that, when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against "Absalom and Achitophel;" for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly; and, not to break a custom, do it without wit: by this method you will gain a considerable point, which is wholly to wave the answer of my arguments.[479] Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall severely on the miscarriages of government; for, if scandal be not allowed, you are no free-born subjects. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock, and welcome; let your verses run upon my feet; and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and, in utter despair of your satire, make me satirise myself.[480] Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but, above all the rest, commend me to the non-conformist parson, who writ the "Whip and Key." I am afraid it is not read so much as the piece deserves, because the bookseller is every week crying help, at the end of his Gazette, to get it off. You see I am charitable enough to do him a kindness, that it may be published as well as printed; and that so much skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for waste-paper in the shop: Yet, I half suspect he went no farther for his learning, than the index of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of some English bibles. If Achitophel signify "the brother of a fool," the author of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin; and perhaps, it is the relation that makes the kindness.[481] Whatever the verses are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service.[482]

Now, footmen, you know, have the generosity to make a purse for a member of their society, who has had his livery pulled over his ears; and even protestant socks[484] are bought up among you, out of veneration to the name. A dissenter in poetry from sense and English, will make as good a protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the church of England a protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who knows but he may elevate his style a little above the vulgar epithets of "profane, and saucy Jack," and "atheistic scribbler," with which he treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him; by which well-mannered and charitable expressions, I was certain of his sect before I knew his name. What would you have more of a man? He has damned me in your cause from Genesis to the Revelations; and has half the texts of both the Testaments against me, if you will be so civil to yourselves as to take him for your interpreter, and not to take them for Irish witnesses.[485] After all, perhaps, you will tell me, that you retained him only for the opening of your cause, and that your main lawyer is yet behind. Now, if it so happen he meet with no more reply than his predecessors, you may either conclude that I trust to the goodness of my cause, or fear my adversary, or disdain him, or what you please; for the short of it is, it is indifferent to your humble servant, whatever your party says or thinks of him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 470: See Note I.]

[Footnote 471: William Bower, who engraved the medal.]

[Footnote 472: See the engraving of Shaftesbury's medal where the sun breaks from a cloud over the Tower, in which he had lately been imprisoned. Dryden intimates, his head should have been placed there; and indeed the gory heads and members of Shaftesbury's adherents were shortly afterwards too common a spectacle on Tower-Hill, the Bridge, Temple-Bar, &c. Roger North mentions it as a very unpleasant part of his brother Dudley's office of sheriff, that the executioner came to him for orders, touching the disposal of the limbs of those who had suffered. "Once, while he was abroad, a cart, with some of them, came into the court-yard of his house, and frighted his lady almost out of her wits. And she could never be reconciled to the dog hangman's saying, 'he came to speak with his master." _Life of the Hon. Sir_ DUDLEY NORTH, p. 138.]

[Footnote 473: A tract, in three parts, written to prove the innocence of Shaftesbury, Colledge, and the Whigs, from the alleged machinations against the king at Oxford. The first part is said to have been written chiefly by the earl himself; the two last, by Robert Ferguson, the plotter.]

[Footnote 474: Alluding to the king's proclamation against tumultuous petitions, dated 12th December, 1679.]

[Footnote 475: A pamphlet written by Andrew Marvel, and reprinted in the State Tracts. It was published in 1677-8; and, as it traced the intrigues of the court of England with that of France, it made a great impression on the nation. I cannot help thinking, that it was upon the horror which this piece had excited for the progress of Popery, that Oates and Tongue grounded their legend, and that they found the people prepared to receive it by the previous tract of Marvel.]

[Footnote 476: See "The Defence of the Duke of Guise," and the "Postscript to the Translation of Maimbrurg's History of the League," where Dryden pursues this parallel.]

[Footnote 477: The Whig writers observed a prudent degree of ambiguity concerning the draught of the Association, found in Shaftesbury's study; for, while they endeavoured to defend the purpose and principles for which it was proposed, they insinuated, that it might possibly have been shuffled in amongst Lord Shaftesbury's papers, by the messenger who seized them. It was said, to strengthen this suspicion, that Wilson, the earl's secretary, was employed by him to indorse all the papers which the messengers seized and carried off, and that this scroll bore no such indorsement: it was even added, that Wilson himself was imprisoned, to deprive Shaftesbury of the benefit of his evidence to this point. There is, however, no reason to think the paper was not actually found in the earl's repositories.]

[Footnote 478: In 1584, there was a general association entered into by the subjects of Queen Elizabeth, for the defence of her person, supposed to be endangered by the plots of the Catholics and malcontents. Many of its most striking expressions are copied into the draught found in Shaftesbury's house. It was confirmed by act 27th of Queen Elizabeth, and cannot but be supposed as acceptable to the crown, as that of Shaftesbury would have been obnoxious.]

[Footnote 479: How literally Dryden's opponents adopted the licence here given, appears from the "Loyal Medal Vindicated," published in 1681, and addressed,

"To the Disloyal Tories.

"To all, I mean, except the author of the Medal; for he being a Tory of two editions, it seems impossible to appropriate his genius more to King Charles than Oliver Cromwell. And if Noll was so kind, though a saucy tenant, to leave him as a heriot of the muses, unto whomsoever should possess Whitehall, let none admire that he, that could so deify an usurper, does afterwards endeavour to expiate that crime by _Torifying_ the government of a legal monarch, &c. I have no more to say to him, and his Tory friends, by way of argument, but rather greet him, in conclusion, as poetically as he can pretend to deserve." The following introduction may suffice to shew how far the poetry was commensurate to the deserts of Dryden:

If nothing can the worth of men excuse, Thus meanly blasted by a sculking muse; If what's against humanity and sense, Finds from the world a horrid complaisance; If one must flout another's mould or face, Because discretion there has ancient place; Then let thy hireling verse such fictions raise, As long may fatten thy desertless praise, But may heaven stay thy much licentious pen, When to spite faces thou shall write again, Lest thou thy sovereign's image next should stain, Since looks, and men, thou darest traduce for gain; And all to allow thy forehead so much brass, As stiles thee there a stigmatized ass.

Conclusion to Shaftesbury:

Fame must be posed, unless you shall admit To leave your image written by your wit; Yet still by you memoirs are so designed, } Your medal does oblige, in which we find } The outward graces of so firm a mind; } Though, in this gift, best Protestants allow They're tempted even to superstition too, As hard 'tis such a patriot to admire, And not than common man to grant him higher. ]

[Footnote 480: One writer was so much incensed at this challenge, as to plead it for the apology of having degraded himself by a controversy with Dryden. "I have more honourable employ, than, like a schoolboy, to cap verses, or to blemish my larger name with that of Bayes or Laureat. Only, it moved my indignation, as well as scorn, when I read his challenge to the Whigs, p. 6. of his Epistle, and the bravado extorted from me this nimble check, but just rebuke, for such arrogance, opiniatry, and petulancy, to abate, if possible, his pride, and the contempt he seems to have of the Whigs, whom the hackney laureat does so magisterially despise at such a rate, that the Tory courtiers (poor hearts, they know no better) hug and admire the imbost rhodomontade."--_Mushroom_, p. 18. How far the author's talents were equal to the purpose of chastizing Dryden, and raising the renown of Whig poetry, may be seen by some curious specimens in Note XII. on the following poem.]

[Footnote 481: As I have not as yet been able to meet with the "Whip and Key," I subjoin the account which Mr Malone has given of it: "A Whip for the Fool's Back, who styles honourable marriage a cursed confinement, in his profane poem of Absalom and Achitophel;" and this was followed, on the 18th of January, by "A Key (with the Whip) to open the mystery and iniquity of the poem called Absalom and Achitophel, shewing its scurrilous reflections on both king and kingdom." In the latter piece, which was written by the same hand as the former, the author's principal object is to show, that Dryden's Jewish names were not well chosen. As probably very few of my readers have ever seen this poem, I will add a short extract:

"How well this Hebrew name with sense doth sound, _A fool's my brother_,[483] though in wit profound! Most wicked wits are the devil's chiefest tools, Which, ever in the issue, God befools. Can thy compare, vile varlet, once hold true, Of the loyal Lord, and this disloyal Jew? Was e'er our English Earl under disgrace, And, as unconscionable, put out of place? Hath he laid lurking in his country-house, To plot rebellions, as one factious? Thy bog-trot bloodhounds hunted have this stag, Yet cannot fasten their foul fangs,--they flag. Why did'st not thou bring in thy evidence, With them, to rectify the brave jury's sense, And so prevent the _Ignoramus_?--nay, Thou wast cock-sure he would be damn'd for aye, Without thy presence;--thou wast then employ'd To brand him 'gainst he came to be destroy'd: 'Forehand preparing for the hangman's axe, Had not the witnesses been found so lax."

MALONE'S _Life of Dryden_, Vol. I. p. 159.

It must also be noticed, that the author of the "Whip and Key" opens his poem with the ten first lines of "Absalom and Achitophel."]

[Footnote 482: Derrick is pleased to explain "the brother of Achitophel," by favouring us with an account of Shaftesbury's brother, George Cooper, Esq. This is a remarkable instance of a knavish speech sleeping in a foolish ear. For the benefit of any person of equally obtuse intellects, it may be necessary to say, the non-conformist parson is the party meant, whom Dryden styles "brother to Achitophel," if Achitophel, according to his own derivation, be brother to a fool; and truly the commentator seems to have been of the kindred.]

[Footnote 483: _Achi_, my brother, and _tophel_, a fool.--Orig. Note.]

[Footnote 484: The epithet was still more whimsically assumed by the famous Nell Gwyn, when her carriage was beset by the mob, who took it for that of the Duchess of Portsmouth, and loaded the inmate with all the opprobrious epithets which could be applied to a Papist, or a woman; Nell at length looked out, and convinced them of their mistake, by assuring them "she was the _Protestant whore_."]

[Footnote 485: Alluding to the Irish witnesses brought against Shaftesbury, to whom the Whigs refused credit as soon as they ceased to swear on their side; a great subject of complaint to the Tories.

Poor Teague and Rory, who renewed the story, Were babes of grace while swearing was in fashion; But when the Whig was charged by the true Tory, The joyner's flail did thresh them out of the nation; Then all was gospel-proof, and now all subornation; Against old Tony, perjured every mother's son, And now poor Teague and Rory, To his nation's glory, May plot at home, and sing, O hone! O hone! ]

RECOMMENDATORY VERSES.

UPON

THE AUTHOR

OF THE FOLLOWING POEM.

Once more our awful poet arms, to engage The threatning hydra-faction of the age: Once more prepares his dreadful pen to wield, And every muse attends him to the field: By art and nature for this task designed, Yet modestly the fight he long declined; Forbore the torrent of his verse to pour, Nor loosed his satire till the needful hour: His sovereign's right, by patience half betrayed, Waked his avenging genius to its aid. Blest muse, whose wit with such a cause was crowned, And blest the cause that such a champion found; With chosen verse upon the foe he falls, And black sedition in each quarter galls; Yet, like a prince with subjects forced to engage, Secure of conquest, he rebates his rage; His fury not without distinction sheds, Hurls mortal bolts but on devoted heads: To less infected members gentle found, Or spares, or else pours balm into the wound. Such generous grace the ungrateful tribe abuse, And trespass on the mercy of his muse; Their wretched doggrell rhimers forth they bring, To snarl and bark against the poet's king: A crew, that scandalize the nation more Than all their treason-canting priests before! On these he scarce vouchsafes a scornful smile, But on their powerful patrons turns his style: A style so keen, as even from faction draws The vital poison, stabs to the heart their cause. Take then, great bard, what tribute we can raise; Accept our thanks, for you transcend our praise.

TO

THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR[486]

OF THE FOLLOWING POEM,

AND THAT OF

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

Thus pious ignorance, with dubious praise, Altars of old, to gods unknown, did raise: They knew not the loved Deity, they knew Divine effects a cause divine did shew: Nor can we doubt, when such these numbers are, } Such is their cause, though the worst muse shall dare } Their sacred worth in humble verse declare. } As gentle Thames, charmed with thy tuneful song, Glides in a peaceful majesty along; No rebel stone, no lofty bank, does brave The easy passage of his silent wave; So, sacred poet, so thy numbers flow, Sinewy, yet mild, as happy lovers woo; Strong, yet harmonious too, as planets move, Yet soft as down upon the wings of love. How sweet does virtue in your dress appear! How much more charming, when much less severe! Whilst you our senses harmlessly beguile, With all the allurements of your happy style; You insinuate loyalty with kind deceit, And into sense the unthinking many cheat: So the sweet Thracian, with his charming lyre, Into rude nature virtue did inspire; So he the savage herd to reason drew, Yet scarce so sweet, so charmingly, as you. Oh that you would, with some such powerful charm, Enervate Albion to just valour warm! Whether much-suffering Charles shall theme afford, Or the great deeds of god-like James's sword; Again fair Gallia might be ours, again Another fleet might pass the subject main; Another Edward lead the Britains on, Or such an Ossory as you did moan: While in such numbers you, in such a strain, Inflame their courage, and reward their pain. Let false Achitophel the rout engage, Talk easy Absalom to rebel rage; Let frugal Shimei curse in holy zeal, Or modest Corah more new plots reveal; Whilst constant to himself, secure of fate, Good David still maintains the royal state; Though each in vain such various ills employs, Firmly he stands, and even those ills enjoys; Firm as fair Albion midst the raging main, Surveys encircling danger with disdain. In vain the waves assault the unmoved shore, } In vain the winds with mingled fury roar, } Fair Albion's beauteous cliffs shine whiter than before. } Nor shalt thou move, though hell thy fall conspire, Though the worse rage of zeal's fanatic fire, Thou best, thou greatest of the British race, Thou only fit to fill great Charles his place. Ah wretched Britons! ah too stubborn isle! Ah stiff-necked Israel on blest Canaan's soil! Are those dear proofs of heaven's indulgence vain, Restoring David and his gentle reign? Is it in vain thou all the goods dost know, } Auspicious stars on mortals shed below, } While all thy streams with milk, thy lands with honey flow? } No more, fond isle! no more thyself engaged, In civil fury, and intestine rage, No rebel zeal thy duteous land molest, But a smooth calm sooth every peaceful breast, While in such charming notes divinely sings The best of poets, of the best of kings.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 486: There seems to have been some uncertainty, both among Tories and Whigs, concerning the author of "The Medal." Settle, himself, did not recognize the hand of Dryden; for he thus expresses himself:--"I am not of opinion, that the author of "The Medal," and that of "Absalom and Achitophel," is one person, since the style and painting is far different, and their satires are of a different hue, the one being a much more slovenly beast than the other; yet, since they desire to be thought so, let the one bear the reproaches of the other."--_Preface to Medal Reversed._]

THE

MEDAL.

Of all our antic sights and pageantry, Which English idiots run in crowds to see, The Polish Medal[487] bears the prize alone; } A monster, more the favourite of the town } Than either fairs or theatres have shown. } Never did art so well with nature strive, Nor ever idol seemed so much alive; So like the man, so golden to the sight, So base within, so counterfeit and light. One side is filled with title and with face; And, lest the king should want a regal place, On the reverse a Tower the town surveys, O'er which our mounting sun his beams displays The word, pronounced aloud by shrieval voice, LÆTAMUR, which, in Polish, is _rejoice_;[488] The day, month, year, to the great act are joined, And a new canting holiday designed; Five days he sat for every cast and look, Four more than God to finish Adam took. But who can tell what essence angels are? Or how long Heaven was making Lucifer? Oh, could the style that copied every grace, And plowed such furrows for an eunuch face, Could it have formed his ever-changing will, The various piece had tired the graver's skill! A martial hero first, with early care, Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war; A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man; So young his hatred to his prince began.[489] Next this,--how wildly will ambition steer! A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear;[490] Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould; Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise.[491] There split the saint; for hypocritic zeal Allows no sins but those it can conceal: Whoring to scandal gives too large a scope; Saints must not trade, but they may interlope: The ungodly principle was all the same; But a gross cheat betrays his partner's game. Besides, their pace was formal, grave, and slack; His nimble wit outran the heavy pack; Yet still he found his fortune at a stay, Whole droves of blockheads choking up his way; They took, but not rewarded, his advice; Villain and wit exact a double price. Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence, } The wretch turned loyal in his own defence, } And malice reconciled him to his prince[492] } Him, in the anguish of his soul, he served; Rewarded faster still than he deserved.[493] Behold him now exalted into trust; His counsel's oft convenient, seldom just; Even in the most sincere advice he gave, He had a grudging still to be a knave. The frauds, he learned in his fanatic years, Made him uneasy in his lawful gears; At best, as little honest as he could, And, like white witches, mischievously good; To his first bias longingly he leans, And rather would be great by wicked means. Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold; Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold. From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe! Who helps a powerful friend, forearms a foe. What wonder if the waves prevail so far, When he cut down the banks that made the bar? Seas follow but their nature to invade; But he, by art, our native strength betrayed: So Samson to his foe his force confest, And, to be shorn, lay slumbering on her breast. But when this fatal counsel, found too late, Exposed its author to the public hate; When his just sovereign by no impious way Could be seduced to arbitrary sway; Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail, } Drives down the current with a popular gale, } And shows the fiend confessed without a veil.[494] } He preaches to the crowd, that power is lent, But not conveyed, to kingly government; That claims successive bear no binding force; That coronation oaths are things of course; Maintains the multitude can never err; And sets the people in the papal chair. The reason's obvious,--interest never lies; } The most have still their interest in their eyes; } The power is always theirs, and power is ever wise. } Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute; Power is thy essence, wit thy attribute! Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay; Thou leapst o'er all eternal truths in thy pindaric way! Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide, When Phocion and when Socrates were tried; As righteously they did those dooms repent; Still they were wise, whatever way they went: Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run; To kill the father, and recal the son. Some think the fools were most as times went then, But now the world's o'erstocked with prudent men. The common cry is even religion's test,-- The Turk's is at Constantinople best, Idols in India, popery at Rome, And our own worship only true at home; And true but for the time, 'tis hard to know How long we please it shall continue so; This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns; So all are God-almighties in their turns. A tempting doctrine, plausible and new; What fools our fathers were, if this be true! Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war, Inherent right in monarchs did declare; And, that a lawful power might never cease, Secured succession to secure our peace. Thus property and sovereign sway at last In equal balances were justly cast; But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mouthed horse, Instructs the beast to know his native force, To take the bit between his teeth, and fly To the next headlong steep of anarchy. Too happy England, if our good we knew, Would we possess the freedom we pursue! The lavish government can give no more; Yet we repine, and plenty makes us poor. God tried us once; our rebel fathers fought; He glutted them with all the power they sought, Till, mastered by their own usurping brave, The free-born subject sunk into a slave. We loath our manna, and we long for quails; Ah, what is man, when his own wish prevails! How rash, how swift to plunge himself in ill, Proud of his power, and boundless in his will! That kings can do no wrong, we must believe; None can they do, and must they all receive? Help, heaven! or sadly we shall see an hour, When neither wrong nor right are in their power! Already they have lost their best defence, The benefit of laws, which they dispense; No justice to their righteous cause allowed, But baffled by an arbitrary crowd; And medals graved their conquest to record, The stamp and coin of their adopted lord. The man, who laughed but once to see an ass Mumbling to make the cross-grained thistles pass,[495] Might laugh again to see a jury chew The prickles of unpalatable law. The witnesses, that leech-like lived on blood, Sucking for them were med'cinally good; But when they fastened on their festered sore, } Then justice and religion they forswore; } Their maiden oaths debauched into a whore. } Thus men are raised by factions, and decried, And rogue and saint distinguished by their side;[496] They rack even scripture to confess their cause, And plead a call to preach in spite of laws. But that's no news to the poor injured page, It has been used as ill in every age; And is constrained with patience all to take, For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? Happy, who can this talking trumpet seize; They make it speak whatever sense they please! 'Twas framed at first our oracle, to enquire; } But since our sects in prophecy grow higher, } The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire. } London, thou great emporium of our isle, O thou too bounteous, thou too fruitful Nile! How shall I praise or curse to thy desert? Or separate thy sound from thy corrupted part? I called thee Nile; the parallel will stand: Thy tides of wealth o'erflow the fattened land; Yet monsters from thy large increase we find, Engendered on the slime thou leav'st behind. Sedition has not wholly seized on thee, Thy nobler parts are from infection free. Of Israel's tribes thou hast a numerous band, But still the Canaanite is in the land; Thy military chiefs are brave and true, Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few; The head is loyal which thy heart commands, But what's a head with two such gouty hands?[497] The wise and wealthy love the surest way, And are content to thrive and to obey. But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave; None are so busy as the fool and knave. Those let me curse; what vengeance will they urge, Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge; Nor sharp experience can to duty bring, Nor angry heaven, nor a forgiving king! In gospel-phrase their chapmen they betray; Their shops are dens, the buyer is their prey: The knack of trades is living on the spoil; They boast even when each other they beguile. Customs to steal is such a trivial thing, That 'tis their charter to defraud their king. All hands unite of every jarring sect; They cheat the country first, and then infect. They for God's cause their monarchs dare dethrone, And they'll be sure to make his cause their own. Whether the plotting jesuit laid the plan Of murdering kings, or the French puritan, Our sacrilegious sects their guides outgo, And kings and kingly power would murder too. What means their traitorous combination less, Too plain to evade, too shameful to confess! But treason is not owned when 'tis descried; Successful crimes alone are justified. The men, who no conspiracy would find, Who doubts, but, had it taken, they had joined,-- Joined in a mutual covenant of defence, At first without, at last against, their prince? If sovereign right by sovereign power they scan, The same bold maxim holds in God and man: God were not safe, his thunder could they shun, He should be forced to crown another son. Thus, when the heir was from the vineyard thrown, The rich possession was the murderer's own.[498] In vain to sophistry they have recourse; } By proving their's no plot, they prove 'tis worse, } Unmasked rebellion, and audacious force; } Which, though not actual, yet all eyes may see, 'Tis working in the immediate power to be; For from pretended grievances they rise, First to dislike, and after to despise; Then, cyclop-like, in human flesh to deal, Chop up a minister at every meal; Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king, But clip his regal rights within the ring,[499] From thence to assume the power of peace and war, And ease him, by degrees, of public care: Yet, to consult his dignity and fame, } He should have leave to exercise the name, } And hold the cards while commons played the game. } For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think? These are the cooler methods of their crime, But their hot zealots think 'tis loss of time; On utmost bounds of loyalty they stand, } And grin and whet like a Croatian band, } That waits impatient for the last command. } Thus outlaws open villainy maintain; They steal not, but in squadrons scour the plain; And if their power the passengers subdue, The most have right, the wrong is in the few. Such impious axioms foolishly they show, For in some soils republics will not grow: Our temperate isle will no extremes sustain Of popular sway, or arbitrary reign; But slides between them both into the best, Secure in freedom, in a monarch blest; And though the climate, vexed with various winds, Works through our yielding bodies on our minds, The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds, To recommend the calmness that succeeds. But thou, the pandar of the people's hearts, O crooked soul, and serpentine in arts, Whose blandishments a loyal land have whored, And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord; What curses on thy blasted name will fall, } Which age to age their legacy shall call! } For all must curse the woes that must descend on all. } Religion thou hast none: thy mercury Has passed through every sect, or theirs through thee. But what thou givest, that venom still remains, And the poxed nation feels thee in their brains. What else inspires the tongues, and swells the breasts, Of all thy bellowing renegado priests,[500] That preach up thee for God, dispense thy laws, And with thy stum ferment their fainting cause; Fresh fumes of madness raise, and toil and sweat, To make the formidable cripple great? Yet should thy crimes succeed, should lawless power Compass those ends thy greedy hopes devour, Thy canting friends thy mortal foes would be, Thy God and theirs will never long agree; For thine, if thou hast any, must be one, That lets the world and human-kind alone; A jolly god, that passes hours too well, To promise heaven, or threaten us with hell; That unconcerned can at rebellion sit, And wink at crimes he did himself commit. A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints A conventicle of gloomy sullen saints; A heaven, like Bedlam, slovenly and sad, Fore-doomed for souls with false religion mad. Without a vision, poets can foreshow What all but fools, by common sense, may know: If true succession from our isle should fail, And crowds profane, with impious arms, prevail, Not thou, nor those thy factious arts engage, } Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage, } With which thou flatterest thy decrepid age.[501] } The swelling poison of the several sects, Which, wanting vent, the nation's health infects, Shall burst its bag, and, fighting out their way, The various venoms on each other prey. The presbyter, puffed up with spiritual pride, Shall on the necks of the lewd nobles ride; His brethren damn, the civil power defy, And parcel out republic prelacy. But short shall be his reign; his rigid yoke, And tyrant power, will puny sects provoke; And frogs and toads, and all the tadpole train, Will croak to heaven for help from this devouring crane. The cut-throat sword and clamorous gown shall jar, In sharing their ill-gotten spoils of war; Chiefs shall be grudged the part which they pretend; } Lords envy lords, and friends with every friend } About their impious merit shall contend. } The surly commons shall respect deny, And jostle peerage out with property. Their general either shall his trust betray, And force the crowd to arbitrary sway; Or they, suspecting his ambitious aim, } In hate of kings shall cast anew the frame, } And thrust out Collatine,[502] that bore their name. } Thus, inborn broils the factions would engage, } Or wars of exiled heirs, or foreign rage, } Till halting vengeance overtook our age; } And our wild labours, wearied into rest, Reclined us on a rightful monarch's breast.

_------Pudet hæc opprobria, vobis Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 487: Note I.]

[Footnote 488: Note II.]

[Footnote 489: Note III.]

[Footnote 490: Note IV.]

[Footnote 491: Note V.]

[Footnote 492: Note VI.]

[Footnote 493: Note VII.]

[Footnote 494: Note VIII.]

[Footnote 495: Crassus, according to Lucilius, only laughed once in his life, and that at the miserable joke in the text.]

[Footnote 496: Note IX.]

[Footnote 497: Note X.]

[Footnote 498: See the parable of the vineyard, in the gospel of St Matthew, chap. xxi. ver. 33.]

[Footnote 499: Note XI.]

[Footnote 500: Note XII.]

[Footnote 501: Note XIII.]

[Footnote 502: Collatinus was, after the expulsion of the Tarquins, exiled from Rome, in hatred to his surname of Rex.]

NOTES ON THE MEDAL.

Note I.

_The Polish medal._--P. 431.

It was a standing joke among the opponents of Shaftesbury, that he hoped to be chosen king of Poland at the vacancy, when John Sobieski was elected. This was probably only a revival and new edition of an improbable story, that he expected Cromwell would have made him king of England. His supposed election, its causes, and effects, are very humorously stated in a pamphlet republished among Lord Somers' Tracts, already quoted, pp. 263, 358.

The author complains ironically, that, among the advantages of court favour, which Lord Shaftesbury had renounced for his country, already enumerated by one of his adherents, he had omitted to mention a yet more dignified sacrifice:

"I suppose, there are very few in this kingdom, that do not very sensibly remember the late _inter-regnum_ in Poland, and how many illustrious candidates stood fair for the election. Sobieski, indeed, had done great things for that people; he had kept their potent enemy, the Turk, from entering any farther upon their frontier; was great and popular in the esteem and love of the best army, that, perhaps, they ever had; but, that was by much too little to entitle him to the succession of the throne, it appearing absolutely the interest of that nation, that the great Turk was not only to be beaten, but he must, in short, also be converted. And who so fit for such an enterprize as he that should be promoted to the regal authority? One that, from the high place he was to possess, might not only administer justice to them, but salvation to the greater part of Asia."--

"Upon these considerations, you may imagine quickly the eyes of the whole diet were cast upon little England, and thereupon whom so soon as the little Lord of Shaftesbury? Polish deputies were immediately sent, _post-incognito_, with the imperial crown and sceptre in a cloak-bag to him. Old Blood[503] smelled it from Bishopgate-street; and had it not been for an old acquaintance and friendship between King Anthony the Elect, for now I must call him so, and himself, I am credibly informed he had laid an ambush for it at the Cock ale-house, by Temple-Bar, where some thirty indigent bullies were eating stuffed beef, _helter-skelter_, at his charge, on purpose to stand by and assist him at carrying off the booty.

"But heaven, which I hope has ordained that no crown shall ever suffer damage for King Anthony's sake, took care to preserve this. For the sinister designs of the old Irish crown-monger being yet to be doubted, this prudent prince, as I am told, having tried and fitted it to his head, carefully sent it back again by a trusty messenger, concealed in the husk or shell of a Holland cheese, taken asunder merely for that purpose, and cemented again together by an art fit for no man to know, but a king presumptive of Poland.

"All things thus prepared, his election being carried in the diet so unanimously, and so _nemine contradicente_, that no man to this hour ever heard of it but himself, it is not to be imagined how this little Grig was transported with the thoughts of growing into a leviathan; he fancied himself the picture before Hobb's Commonwealth already; nay, he stopt up his tap, as I am told, on purpose that his dropsy might swell him big enough for his majesty, and of a sudden grew so utter an enemy to all republics and anti-monarchical constitutions, that from that hour he premeditated and laid the foundation of a worse speech than that famous one which he once uttered in our English senate--_Delenda est Carthago_.

"But now, upon deliberate and weighty consideration of the great change he was to undertake, many difficulties, and of an extraordinary nature, seemed to arise. A Protestant king being elected to a Popish kingdom, great were the debates within himself, which way he was to steer his course in the administration of his government, so as to discharge his conscience, as well in the case incumbent upon him of the souls of his people, as of the protection of their properties and persons.

"The Great Turk, you have heard before, was to be converted. Now, to bring so mighty a potentate over to the church of Rome, seemed altogether destructive of the Protestant interest, for which, he has been always so violent a champion; therefore it is resolved, Protestant, and _true Protestant_, the Ottoman Emperor must be, or nothing. But how, when that was done, to establish the same church in his dominions? There was the great question. Whereupon, after due consideration, he resolved, at his taking possession of that throne, which stood gaping for him, to carry over from hence such ministers, both of church and state, as might be proper to advise, assist, and support him in a design so pious, though so difficult."

A list is therefore made out of Shaftesbury's real or supposed adherents, with absurd Polish terminations attached to their names, to whom what the satirist deemed suitable offices in King Anthony's court, are respectively assigned. Among these, the reader will be startled to find our author himself under the following entry:

"_Jean Drydenurtziz._ Our poet laureat for writing panegyrics upon Oliver Cromwell, and libels against his present master, King Charles II. of England.

"_Tom Shadworiski._ His deputy."

From which it appears, that Dryden, at the time of this pasquinade's being written, was considered as disaffected to the court.

The joke of Shaftesbury's election to the Polish throne having been once thrown out, was echoed, and re-echoed, through an hundred ballads, till it ceased to be a joke at all. The reader must have frequently remarked such allusions; we have, for instance, the following songs:

"Dagon's Fall, or the Whigs Lament for Anthony, King of Poland." (3d February, 1682-3.)

"A New Song on the King of Poland, and the Prince of the Land of Promise."

"The Poet's Address to his most Sacred Majesty, 6th July, 1682."

The Polish prince is charmed, he scorns weak buff, Conscience's of impenetrable stuff.

Note II.

_Lætamur, which, in Polish, is rejoice._--P. 431.

It would seem, that the followers of Shaftesbury wore the medal attached to their breast. See "A Panegyrick on their Royal Highnesses, and congratulating his return from Scotland, 1682."

Lætamur is the word, a word which late As mighty hopes did mighty joy create; When the famed motto with applause was put To the effigy of the grand patriot. Nearest their heart where late their Georges hung, The pale-faced medal with its silver tongue Was placed, whilst every wearer still exprest His joy to harbour there so famed a guest: The wretch that stamped it got immortal fame, T'was coined by stealth, like groats at Brumichan; While each possessor, with exalted voice, Cries, "England's saved, and now let us rejoice."

Note III.

_A martial hero first, with early care, Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war; A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man; So young his hatred to his prince began._--P. 432.

Dryden does not here do justice to Shaftesbury, who certainly offered Charles I. the first fruits of his courage and address. Being heir to a plentiful fortune, a member of parliament, and high sheriff of the county of Dorset, he came to Oxford when the civil war broke out, and though then only twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, presented to the king a digested plan, for compromising matters between him and his subjects in arms against him: Charles observed, he was a very young man for so great an undertaking; to which, with the readiness which marked his character, he answered, that would not be the worse for the king's affairs, provided the business was done. He had, in consequence, a commission from the king, to promise indemnity and redress of grievances to such of the parliamentary garrisons as would lay down their arms. Accordingly, his plan seems to have taken some effect; for Weymouth actually surrendered to the king, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, as his stile then was, was made governor. Some delays occurred in the course of his obtaining this office; and whether disgusted with these, and giving scope to the natural instability of his temper, as is intimated by Clarendon, or offended, as Mr Locke states, at Weymouth having been plundered by Prince Maurice's forces, he made one of those sudden turns, of which his political career furnishes several instances, and went over to the other side. After this, Clarendon says, that he "gave up himself, body and soul, to the parliament, and became an implacable enemy to the royal family." He raised forces in Dorsetshire, with which he took Wareham by storm, in October 1644, and reduced the greater part of the county to the obedience of the parliament. He held various high charges under the authority of the republic. In 1645, he was sheriff of Norfolk; in 1646, sheriff of Wiltshire; and in 1651, one of that committee, which was named for the revisal and reform of the law.

Note IV.

_A vermin wriggling in the usurer's ear._--P. 432.

Shaftesbury was by no means in a hurry to submit to Cromwell's domination, any more than he had been to join the parliament; the uncontrouled authority of an individual, and of one too who was inaccessible to all arts of cajoling or management, and only acted upon his own opinions and impulses, presented to the art and ambition of our statesman a very unpromising field of exertion. Accordingly, he is said to have been active in opposing the dispossession of the long parliament; and, being a member of that convoked by the Protector in 1656, he signed the famous protestation against the personal usurpation of Cromwell, which occasioned a very sudden dissolution of that assembly. But notwithstanding this occasional opposition, he sat in all Cromwell's parliaments, was a member of his privy council, and was so far in his favour, that he is said by his enemies to have nourished hopes of succeeding him in his power, with which view he aimed to become his son-in-law. Hence he is called, in the "Dream of the Cabal,"

"A little bob-tailed lord, urchin of state, A _praise-god-bare-bone_ peer, whom all men hate." _State Poems_, Vol. I. p. 148.

Note V.

_He cast himself into the saint-like mould; Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise._--P. 432.

According to North, the Earl of Shaftesbury, "in all his ways and workings, held a concert with the antimonarchists and fanatics."[504] As to his dissipation, the well-known speech of Charles II., and his reply, are sufficient evidence. "I believe, Shaftesbury," said the gay monarch, "thou art the wickedest dog in England." "May it please your majesty," retorted the statesman, "of a _subject_ I believe I am." North, the recorder of all that was evil concerning him, says, "whether out of inclination, custom, or policy, I will not determine, it is certain, he was not behind hand with the court in the modest pleasures of the time, and to what excess of libertinism they were commonly grown, is no secret. There was a deformed old gentleman, called Sir Paul Neal, who, they say, sat for the picture of Sydrophel, in Hudibras; and about town was called the Lord Shaftesbury's groom, because he watered his mares (I forbear the vulgar word) in Hyde Park, with Rhenish wine and sugar, and not seldom a bait of cheese-cakes."[505]

Note VI.

_Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence, The wretch turned loyal in his own defence, And malice reconciled him to his prince._--P. 432.

Whatever Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's private political principles might be, he failed not to take a share of power upon the changes which so rapidly succeeded the death of Cromwell. Under the Rump parliament, he was one of the council of state, and a commissioner for managing the army, one of the committee to secure the Tower, and colonel of a regiment of horse. He made use of the influence which these situations afforded him, for hastening the Restoration. Sir Anthony had long held a secret correspondence with the loyal party, and was to have joined Sir George Booth at his rising, had he not been so suddenly crushed.[506]

He was taxed with this intended co-operation in parliament; but he was at least resolved not to bear witness against himself, for he made the highest professions of his innocence, and imprecated God's judgments on him and his posterity, if he had the slightest communication with the king, or his friends:[507] Nevertheless, he was one of those who invited Monk into England; was the first to supply him with a regiment of horse; was active in defeating the schemes of Lambert; and, in conclusion, was named one of the twelve members, who were deputed by the House of Commons to invite the king to return to his dominions.

Note VII.

_Him, in the anguish of his soul, he served; Rewarded faster still than he deserved. Behold him now exalted into trust._--P. 432.

"At the time of his majesty's restoration, as a most signal testimony of his majesty's good sentiments of his former actions, Shaftesbury was advanced to be one of the first rank in his majesty's most honourable privy council, and was placed above his majesty's royal brother, the Duke of Gloucester, and even General Monk himself, whom his majesty used to call his political father. And about three days before his majesty's coronation, he was in the Banquetting-house created Baron Ashley of Wimbourn, St Giles; and another addition of honour was conferred on him, Lord Cooper of Paulett; and at last, in the year 1672, he was made Earl of Shaftesbury, at the same time when Duke Lauderdale, the Earl of Arlington, and the Lord Clifford, were promoted."[508] To these honours were added substantial power and weight in the administration, called the _cabal_, from the initial letters of the ministers, names who composed it.[509] In this ministry, Shaftesbury was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, on the resignation of Lord Keeper Bridgeman, became Lord High Chancellor of England. In this high station, he furthered, with all his policy and eloquence, the union with France against Holland, and the breach of the triple league; fatal measures, which tended to the destruction of our natural barrier against the universal dominion of France. It is probable, that Shaftesbury's ardent spirit flattered itself with the hopes of conducting a popular and triumphant war. But whatever were his motives, let it be remembered, to his honour, that French bribery, so common among the British ministers of the period, had no influence with Shaftesbury. Whether he found the war, ill managed by the court, and ill relished by the nation, was likely to do very little honour to those who had pushed it on; or whether he was dissatisfied with the share he enjoyed of the king's favour; or, finally, whether distrusting the easiness and mutability of the king's temper, is absolutely uncertain; but, moved either by these, or more patriotic motives, Shaftesbury, in the parliament of 1672-3, although in office, showed himself prepared to join opposition on very short notice.

Note VIII.

_But when this fatal counsel, found too late, Exposed its author to the public hate; When his just sovereign by no impious way Could be seduced to arbitrary sway; Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail, } Drives down the current with a popular gale, } And shows the fiend confessed without a veil._--P. 433. }

Two circumstances seem chiefly to have influenced Shaftesbury in his change of politics in 1672. Some vacancies had occurred in the House of Commons, during a recess of parliament. These his lordship, as chancellor, had caused to be filled up, by issuing writs for election, of his own authority, without waiting for the speaker's warrant; a proceeding, which was deemed by the House an undue exertion of prerogative, and the elections were declared irregular and null. This greatly irritated Shaftesbury's haughty temper, who thought the crown did not support him with sufficient energy, in a step which he had taken to extend its influence. From this he judged, that the king had not energy sufficient to venture upon bold measures; and, consequently, that there was no room for the game of a minister, who delighted in bold and masterly strokes of policy. But this was yet more to be inferred from the king's conduct in the matter of the Indulgence. This was a declaration, which the king, by advice of Shaftesbury and his other ministers, had sent forth, on the 25th March, 1672, dispensing with the penal laws against non-conformists of every description, and indulging to Protestant dissenters the public, and to Catholics the private exercise of their religious worship. It is remarkable, that Shaftesbury, afterwards the champion for the test against popery, was made chancellor, chiefly for the purpose of affixing the great seal to this declaration, which the Lord Keeper Bridgeman refused to do. The House of Commons remonstrated against this exercise of prerogative. After an inefficient struggle, Charles recalled the declaration, and broke the seals with his own hand. From that moment Shaftesbury declared, that the king had forsaken himself, and deserved to be forsaken. Suspicious that a monarch, who preferred so evidently his peace and pleasures to his prerogative, would not hesitate to make the lesser sacrifice of an obnoxious minister; anxious also, on account of the preponderance of the Duke of York, who hated him, and whom he hated, the Chancellor probably foresaw, that, in making an apparent sacrifice of court favour, he would not only save himself, but become the leader, instead of being the victim, of the popular faction. Accordingly, he promoted the test act in the House of Commons, and stood forth in the House of Lords as the leader of the Protestant party, whom the declaration had grievously alarmed. From so unexpected a change, at this eventful period, his removal from office was a matter of course. But in the mode of accomplishing it, circumstances occurred, which strongly mark the character of Shaftesbury, who delighted in an opportunity of teasing and alarming his enemies, even in the very act of retreating before them. When he waited upon the king, to surrender the seals, he observed a circle of his enemies in the anti-chamber, anticipating, with triumph, his returning without these badges of his office. Upon obtaining his audience, the falling minister begged the king, that his dismissal might be so arranged, as not to appear as it he was thrown off with contempt. "Godsfish," replied the good-natured monarch, "I will not do it with any circumstance that looks like an affront." The earl then begged permission to carry the seals before the king to chapel, and return them afterwards from his house. His boon being granted, he carried on the conversation with much humour, upon such gay subjects as usually entertained the king, while his adversaries, upon the tenterhooks of anxiety, awaited the issue of so long an audience. But when they saw the king and the chancellor come out together smiling, and go in company to the chapel, the party concluded Shaftesbury's peace was made, and his expected successor was inconsolable. After enjoying this little triumph, Shaftesbury sent the seals to the king, and placed himself at the head of the country party, who, from the general and well-founded opinion of his talents, did not hesitate to adopt as their leader, one who had just deserted the banners of the enemy.

From this time, Shaftesbury must always be considered as in opposition to the court. For, although a number of the country party were admitted into the council of state, formed by the advice of Temple, and Shaftesbury himself was president, he was, in fact, no more united to the king's party, than a detachment of besiegers become a part of the garrison of a besieged town, because a bastion or redoubt has been surrendered to them by capitulation.

Note IX.

_Thus men are raised by factions, and decried, And rogue and saint distinguished by their side._--P. 435.

This was the argument concerning the credibility of the plot-witnesses, which was so triumphantly urged by the Tories, who asked, "Are not these men good witnesses, upon whose testimony Stafford, and so many Catholics, have been executed, and whom you yourselves have so long celebrated as men of credit and veracity? You have admitted them into your bosom; they are best acquainted with your treasons. They are determined in another shape to serve their king and country; and you cannot complain, that the same measure which you meted to others, should now, by a righteous doom of vengeance, be measured out to you."[510] To this there was but one answer: "We have been duped by our own prejudices, and the perjury of these men; but you, by employing against us witnesses whom you know to be forsworn villains, and whom their versatility has sufficiently proved to be such, are doing with your eyes open what we did in the blindness of prejudice, and are worse than us, as guilt is worse than folly." But this, though the Whigs' true defence, required a candid disavowal of the Popish plot, and reprobation of the witnesses; and that no true Protestant would submit to.

Note X.

_Thy military chiefs are brave and true, Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few; The head is loyal which thy heart commands, But what's a head, with two such gouty hands?_--P. 436.

As matters carried more and more the appearance of actual insurrection and civil war, the more wealthy of the citizens of London, to whom nothing could be more ruinous than such an event, began to draw to the royal party. They were grieved also, that the ancient course of feasting and hospitality, observed by former sheriffs, had given way for furious cabals in coffee-houses; and, by degrees, a large body of citizens, who had, according to North, good hearts, and good spirits, were formed for the purpose of restoring the ancient order and course of living in the city. By means of this party, Sir John Moor was elected Lord Mayor; for whose character and conduct, and that of Shute and Pilkington, the Whig sheriffs, whom Dryden here terms his "two gouty hands," see the two last notes on the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel," pp. 401, 403. It was a great advantage to the court, that the military chiefs of the city, _i. e._ the officers of the trained bands, &c. were attached to the royal cause; and it was very much by their emphatic interference, that the election of sheriffs for 1683 was carried against the Whig party.

Note XI.

_Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king, But clip his regal rights within the ring._--P. 437.

Until 1663, milled money was not struck in England; and the hammered coin, which continued to be in circulation long after that period, was liable to be clipped, which occasioned great frauds on the public, and loss to individuals. It is remarkable, that the verses which follow, describing the cypher-like state of royalty, to which the country party wished to reduce the king, agree accurately with what North believed to be Shaftesbury's real designs upon the authority and person of Charles. "If he was really a friend to any human kind, besides himself, I believe it was to King Charles the second; whose gaiety, breeding, wit, good-humour, familiarity, and disposition to enjoy the pleasures of society and greatness, engaged him very much, that had a great share of wit, agreeableness, and gallantry himself. But this same superiority spoiled all; his majesty would not always be influenced by him, but would take short turns on his toe, and so frustrate his projects; and finding by that he could not work under him, he strove, if possible, to reduce his authority, and get above him. It seems, by what was given out, that he would not have hurt the king personally, but kept him tame in a cage, with his ordinary pleasures about him. And if he was privy to the cruel stroke intended at the Rye, or any way concurring, it was the necessity of affairs, such as are laws to a politician, and superior to all human engagements, that obliged him. And of that sort, the chief was self-preservation; for, though he had found the king very easily reconciled, as not being in his nature vindicative, it was possible that humour, as age advanced, might spend; and he had launched so deep in treason, as it seemed necessary that either the king or he should fall." _Examen._ p. 119.

Note XII.

_What else inspires the tongues, and swells the breasts, Of all thy bellowing renegado priests._--P. 438.

The keen and violent attack made upon the dissenting and fanatical clergy, in these and the following lines, called forth the indignation of the famous Edmund Hickeringill, who had been originally one of Cromwell's fighting saints, was at this time rector of All-Saints, in Colchester, and was notorious for composing fanatical pamphlets, songs, and sermons.[511] This reverend gentleman did not let the sun go down without venting his ire; for, the very next day after the publication of "The Medal," he sent to the press an answer to it, entitled. "The Mushroom, or a Satire against libelling Tories and prelatical Tantivies; in answer to a Satire against Sedition, called the Medal, by the author of Absalom and Achitophel; and here answered by the author of the Black Nonconformist, the next day after the publication of the Medal, to keep the sale thereof." To this unintelligible title-page succeeds a prefatory epistle, and a poem almost equally unintelligible, as will appear from a few extracts:

Epistle to the Tories and Tantivies:

Instead of an epistle to you Tories, I'll only preface here with some old stories.

"About the year of our Lord 1218, at Paris, in a synod, or convocation of the clergy, one that was appointed to clerum, or preach the convocation sermon, was put to his trumps, and much troubled in his gizzard what to say or what subject to insist upon. Whereupon the devil, who always catches men napping, and observing the preacher to be melancholy and perplexed in mind, appears to him, as he sat in a brown study, and asked him why he was so careful what to preach? Say thus, quoth the devil--The princes of hell salute you, O the princes and prelates of the church, and gladly give you thanks, that, through your default and negligence, all souls go to hell, &c. &c. &c."

You call the Popes hard names, bears, wolves, and sherks: For mischief what is then; the bishop and his clerks, At the land's end of England? those dire stones On which ships, men, are lost, body and bones.

The poem itself begins thus:

Time was, John Lawreat, when thy pretty muse, Young, plump, and buxome, no man would refuse; Though thou did'st poorly prostitute her store, And, for vile pence, made her a hackney whore. Against the rules of art, Phœbus is just; Her former lovers does her now disgust; And I, that once in private loved her well, Nay, sometimes smiled at her Achitophel, I longed to kiss her kindly, and to greet Her loving airs, so charming, and so sweet: Nay, be not jealous, John, thou hast no cause, This was whilst she within the modest laws Of a true poet kept; she's nauseous grown, Thou needs must blush to own her for thine own. If thou has any grace; she's poor and spent, So far from witty, that grows impudent. O what a silly do, thou keep'st in vain, About a medal thus to break thy brain; The ancient Romans, so renowned for wars, Kept medals of their friends and ancestors; Art thou red-letter bred, of hopes from Rome; Yet against pictures speak'st, from whence they come? A satyr once, satyrs could speak ere thine, Why men did blow their nails, could not divine, Nor why they did their porridge blow, was told, One was to make them hot, the other cold: At which news, satyr set up skut and run, As if he had been frighted with a gun; How would he run from thee, in naked truth, Who blow'st both hot and cold from the same mouth!

"The Mushroom" concludes with the following awful threat; which, doubtless, must have greatly appalled Dryden:

I'll take thy laurells from thee, if I list, An honour to my fairer brow when mist; 'Tis a day thrown away, (no more) think I, No more it was, yet--_diem perdidi_, Unless it be to make thy Satyre fell, And Tonson begged this boon, which some think well. Thy Satyre, three months old, a cripple came This day to hand, I now return it lame. _London, March_ 17. 1681.

The ingenious author tacks to his poem some rants of inimitable nonsense and scurrility in prose, in which he is pleased to intimate, that there is, from the wonderful celerity of its production, some ground for believing, that he himself, the author, had received miraculous aid.

"And if any man think or say, that it is a wonder if this book and verses were composed and writ in one day, and sent to the press, since it would employ the pen of a ready writer to copy this book in a day--it may be so.

"But it is a truth, as certain and stable as the sun in the firmament, and which, if need be, the bookseller, printer, and other worthy citizens that are privy to it, can avouch for an infallible truth--_deo soli gloria_--when a divine hand assists, one of despicable, dull, and inconsiderate parts, may do wonders, which God usually performs by most weak and unlikely instruments."

A single extract more may be added, to shew the high popularity of "Absalom and Achitophel" among the country gentlemen of England. "What sport it is to see an old country justice, with his eager chaplain at his elbow, putting his barnacles on his nose; bless us, how he gapes and admires Nat. Thomson, the addresses in the Gazette, Abhorrences, Heraclitus, or the Observator! But shew him but--"Absalom and Achitophel"--oh--then the man's horn mad, there's no holding him; then he hunts up, and though in his dining-room, how he spends, with double mouth, and whoops and hallows, just as he hunts his dogs when at full cry. "That--that--that--that--Rattle--Towzer--Bulldog--Thunder--that--that--" while the little trencher-chaplain echoes to him, and cries, "_Amen_."

Note XIII.

_With which thou flatterest thy decrepid age._--P. 439.

Shaftesbury was at this period little above sixty years old. But he was in a state of premature decrepitude; partly owing to natural feebleness of body, and partly to an injury which he received by an overturn in a Dutch carriage when he was in Holland, in 1660, as one of the parliamentary committee. He received on this occasion a wound, or bruise in his side, which came to an internal exulceration; so that in the year 1672 he was opened by Mr Knolls the surgeon, under the direction of Dr Willis, and an issue inserted for the regular discharge of the humour. This one of his biographers has called the "greatest cure that ever was done on the body of man."[512] The royalists forgot the honourable cause in which this injury was received, nothing less than a journey undertaken to invite the king to repossession of his throne, when they made its consequences the subject of scurrilous jests.[513] Dryden had already called Shaftesbury "the formidable cripple;" and in the Essay of Satire, he sarcastically describes the contrast between the activity of his spirit, and the decrepitude of his person.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 503: Blood, famous for his attempt upon the crown jewels, and other ruffian adventures, was at this time a _true blue Protestant_. "And here the good Colonel Blood, (that stole the Duke of Ormond, and, if a timely rescue had not come in, had hanged him at Tyburn, and afterwards stole the crown, though he was not so happy as to carry it off,) no player at small games; he, even he, the virtuous colonel, was to have been destroyed by the Papists. It seems these Papists would let no eminent Protestant be safe. But some amends were made; the colonel, by the sale of the narrative, licensed Thomas Blood. It had been strange if so much mischief had been stirring, and he not come in for a snack."--_Examen_, p. 311. The narrative is now before me, in which I observe Colonel Blood very feelingly complains, "that those who are to deal with Jesuits and their disciples, had need to have as well the prudence of serpents, as the innocence of doves."]

[Footnote 504: _Examen._ p. 41.]

[Footnote 505: _Ibid._ p. 60.]

[Footnote 506: Note X. _on Astrea Redux_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 507: _Whitelock's Memorials_, p. 679.]

[Footnote 508: _Raleigh Redivicus_, p. 29.]

[Footnote 509: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, (_i. e._ Shaftesbury,) Lauderdale.]

[Footnote 510: Hume, Vol. VIII. p. 158.]

[Footnote 511: See Vol. VI. p. 148.]

[Footnote 512: _Raleigh Redivivus_, p. 48.]

[Footnote 513: See Albion and Albanius, Vol. VII. p. 266.]

THE END OF THE NINTH VOLUME.

EDINBURGH: Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.

* * * * *

+---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber notes: | | | | Tags that surround text: _true Protestant_ indicate italics. | | P.6. Footnote 3, 'Villians' changed to 'Villains'. | | P.37. 'Vote' changed to 'Note'. | | P.41. 'fidler' changed to 'fiddler'. | | P.119. 'grapling' changed to 'grappling'. | | P.164. 'Phænix' is 'Phœnix' changed. | | P.174. 'unparellelled' changed to 'unparalleled'. | | P.175. 'powderd' is 'powder'd'in other volume, changed. | | P.215. 'royal-bloud' is 'royal-blood'in other volume, changed.| | P.270. Footnote 321, 'fullfilled', leaving. | | P.278. 'run' is 'ran' in another volume, changed. | | p.379. 'sattin' changed to 'satin'. | | Fixed various punctuation. | +---------------------------------------------------------------+