Thomas Babington Macaulay - The History of England from the Accession of James II (Vol. 1-5)

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

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

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

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

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

"What say you now, my honoured Lord

What harm was there in this?

Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred

By brave, freehearted Biss."

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

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

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

157.Lond. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.

158.Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.

159.Anglias Metropolis, 1690.

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

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

162.London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

172.Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,

"For, though to smelter words of Greek

And Latin be the rhetorique

Of pedants counted, and vainglorious,

To smatter French is meritorious."

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

"Hither in summer evenings you repair

To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."

174.Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his usual force and keenness.

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

176.See the Life of Southern. by Shiels.

177.See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.

178.Some Account of the English Stage.

179.Life of Southern, by Shiels.

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

181.See particularly Harrington's Oceana.

182.See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.

183.Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.

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

185.North's Life of Guildford.

186.Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667.

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

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

189.Sprat's History of the Royal Society.

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

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

192.Petty's Political Arithmetic.

193.Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4; Archaeologia, vol. xi.

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

195.Cullum's History of Hawsted.

196.Ruggles on the Poor.

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

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

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

"In former ages we used to give,

So that our workfolks like farmers did live;

But the times are changed, we will make them know.

"We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day,

Though a shilling they deserve if they kind their just pay;

If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small,

We bid them choose whether they'll work at all.

And thus we forgain all our wealth and estate,