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

By many poor men that work early and late.

Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave;

We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave.

Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease,

We go when we will, and we come when we please."

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

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

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

203.The deaths were 23,222. Petty's Political Arithmetic.

204.Burnet, i. 560.

205.Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit.

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

207.Ward's London Spy.

208.Pepys's Diary, Dec. 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667.

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

210.Burnet, i. 605, 606, Welwood, North's Life of Guildford, 251.

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

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

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

214.Id., February 4, 1684-5.

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

216.Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683.

217.Dugdale's Correspondence.

218.Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713.

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

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

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