The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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county town was his metropolis. He sometimes made it his
residence during part of the year. At all events, he was often
attracted thither by business and pleasure, by assizes, quarter
sessions, elections, musters of militia, festivals, and races.
There were the halls where the judges, robed in scarlet and
escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the King's commission
twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the
cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were
exposed to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants
came clown from London, and where the rural dealer laid in his
annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There
were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood
bought grocery and millinery. Some of these places derived
dignity from interesting historical recollections, from
cathedrals decorated by all the art and magnificence of the
middle ages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates had
dwelt, from closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans
and canons, and from castles which had in the old time repelled
the Nevilles or de Veres, and which bore more recent traces of
the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell.
Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, the
capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west.
Neither can have contained much more than ten thousand
inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider land had but eight
thousand; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester, renowned for
that resolute defence which had been fatal to Charles the First,
had certainly between four and five thousand; Derby not quite
four thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief place of an extensive and
fertile district. The Court of the Marches of Wales was held
there. In the language of the gentry many miles round the Wrekin,
to go to Shrewsbury was to go to town. The provincial wits and
beauties imitated, as well as they could, the fashions of Saint
James's Park, in the walks along the side of the Severn. The
inhabitants were about seven thousand.92
The population of every one of these places has, since the
Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of some has
multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely
rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The
pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal
shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by
the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed
miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals of
counties by no means what it was. Younger towns, towns which are
rarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent no
representatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory
of persons still living, grown to a greatness which this
generation contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied
by awe and anxiety.
The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the
seventeenth century as respectable seats of industry. Nay, their
rapid progress and their vast opulence were then sometimes
described in language which seems ludicrous to a man who has seen
their present grandeur. One of the most populous and prosperous
among them was Manchester. Manchester had been required by the
Protector to send one representative to his Parliament, and was
mentioned by writers of the time of Charles the Second as a busy
and opulent place. Cotton had, during half a century, been
brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was
in its infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material
might be furnished in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had
not yet taught how it might be worked up with a speed and
precision which seem magical. The whole annual import did not, at
the end of the seventeenth century, amount to two millions of
pounds, a quantity which would now hardly supply the demand of
forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, which in population
and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned as Berlin,
Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town
containing under six thousand people. It then had not a single
press. It now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then
had not a single coach. It now Supports twenty coach. makers.93
Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures of
Yorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember the
time when the first brick house, then and long after called the
Red House, was built. They boasted loudly of their increasing
wealth, and of the immense sales of cloth which took place in the
open air on the bridge. Hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, had
been paid down in the course of one busy market day. The rising
importance of Leeds had attracted the notice of successive
governments. Charles the First had granted municipal privileges
to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one member to the
House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth money it
seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an
extensive district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the
reign of Charles the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841
there were more than a hundred and fifty thousand.94
About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild
moorland tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation,
then barren and unenclosed, which was known by the name of
Hallamshire. Iron abounded there; and, from a very early period,
the rude whittles fabricated there had been sold all over the
kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in
one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture appears to have
made little progress during the three centuries which followed
his time. This languor may perhaps be explained by the fact that
the trade was, during almost the whole of this long period,
subject to such regulations as the lord and his court feet
thought fit to impose. The more delicate kinds of cutlery were
either made in the capital or brought from the Continent. Indeed
it was not till the reign of George the First that the English
surgeons ceased to import from France those exquisitely fine
blades which are required for operations on the human frame. Most
of the Hallamshire forges were collected in a market town which
had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and which, in
the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserable
place, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a third
were half starved and half naked beggars. It seems certain from
the parochial registers that the population did not amount to
four thousand at the end of the reign of Charles the Second. The
effects of a species of toil singularly unfavourable to the
health and vigour of the human frame were at once discerned by
every traveller. A large proportion of the people had distorted
limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with its dependencies,
contains a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and which sends
forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthest
ends of the world.95
Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance to
return a member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manufacturers of
Birmingham were already a busy and thriving race. They boasted
that their hardware was highly esteemed, not indeed as now, at
Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo, but in London, and even
as far off as Ireland. They had acquired a less honourable renown
as coiners of bad money. In allusion to their spurious groats,
some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically
affected zeal against Popery, the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in
1685 the population, which is now little less than two hundred
thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons
were just beginning to he known: of Birmingham guns nobody had
yet heard; and the place whence, two generations later, the
magnificent editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all
the librarians of Europe, did not contain a single regular shop
where a Bible or an almanack could be bought. On Market days a
bookseller named Michael Johnson, the father of the great Samuel
Johnson, came over from Lichfield, and opened stall during a few
hours. This supply of literature was long found equal to the
demand.96
These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve especial
mention. It would be tedious to enumerate all the populous and
opulent hives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago,
were hamlets without parish churches, or desolate moors,
inhabited only by grouse and wild deer. Nor has the change been
less signal in those outlets by which the products of the English
looms and forges are poured forth over the whole world. At
present Liverpool contains more than three hundred thousand
inhabitants. The shipping registered at her port amounts to
between four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom
house has been repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice
as great as the whole income of the English crown in 1685. The
receipts of her post office, even since the great reduction of
the duty, exceed the sum which the postage of the whole kingdom
yielded to the Duke of York. Her endless docks, quays, and
warehouses are among the wonders of the world. Yet even those
docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice for the
gigantic trade of the Mersey; and already a rival city is growing
fast on the opposite shore. In the days of Charles the Second
Liverpool was described as a rising town which had recently made
great advances, and which maintained a profitable intercourse
with Ireland and with the sugar colonies. The customs had
multiplied eight-fold within sixteen years, and amounted to what
was then considered as the immense sum of fifteen thousand pounds
annually. But the population can hardly have exceeded four
thousand: the shipping was about fourteen hundred tons, less than
the tonnage of a single modern Indiaman of the first class, and
the whole number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be
estimated at more than two hundred.97
Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is created
and accumulated. Not less rapid has been the progress of towns of
a very different kind, towns in which wealth, created and
accumulated elsewhere, is expended for purposes of health and
recreation. Some of the most remarkable of these gay places have
sprung into existence since the time of the Stuarts. Cheltenham
is now a greater city than any which the kingdom contained in the
seventeenth century, London alone excepted. But in the
seventeenth century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth,
Cheltenham was mentioned by local historians merely as a rural
parish lying under the Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground
both for tillage
county town was his metropolis. He sometimes made it his
residence during part of the year. At all events, he was often
attracted thither by business and pleasure, by assizes, quarter
sessions, elections, musters of militia, festivals, and races.
There were the halls where the judges, robed in scarlet and
escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the King's commission
twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the
cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were
exposed to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants
came clown from London, and where the rural dealer laid in his
annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There
were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood
bought grocery and millinery. Some of these places derived
dignity from interesting historical recollections, from
cathedrals decorated by all the art and magnificence of the
middle ages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates had
dwelt, from closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans
and canons, and from castles which had in the old time repelled
the Nevilles or de Veres, and which bore more recent traces of
the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell.
Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, the
capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west.
Neither can have contained much more than ten thousand
inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider land had but eight
thousand; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester, renowned for
that resolute defence which had been fatal to Charles the First,
had certainly between four and five thousand; Derby not quite
four thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief place of an extensive and
fertile district. The Court of the Marches of Wales was held
there. In the language of the gentry many miles round the Wrekin,
to go to Shrewsbury was to go to town. The provincial wits and
beauties imitated, as well as they could, the fashions of Saint
James's Park, in the walks along the side of the Severn. The
inhabitants were about seven thousand.92
The population of every one of these places has, since the
Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of some has
multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely
rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The
pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal
shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by
the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed
miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals of
counties by no means what it was. Younger towns, towns which are
rarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent no
representatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory
of persons still living, grown to a greatness which this
generation contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied
by awe and anxiety.
The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the
seventeenth century as respectable seats of industry. Nay, their
rapid progress and their vast opulence were then sometimes
described in language which seems ludicrous to a man who has seen
their present grandeur. One of the most populous and prosperous
among them was Manchester. Manchester had been required by the
Protector to send one representative to his Parliament, and was
mentioned by writers of the time of Charles the Second as a busy
and opulent place. Cotton had, during half a century, been
brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was
in its infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material
might be furnished in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had
not yet taught how it might be worked up with a speed and
precision which seem magical. The whole annual import did not, at
the end of the seventeenth century, amount to two millions of
pounds, a quantity which would now hardly supply the demand of
forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, which in population
and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned as Berlin,
Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town
containing under six thousand people. It then had not a single
press. It now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then
had not a single coach. It now Supports twenty coach. makers.93
Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures of
Yorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember the
time when the first brick house, then and long after called the
Red House, was built. They boasted loudly of their increasing
wealth, and of the immense sales of cloth which took place in the
open air on the bridge. Hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, had
been paid down in the course of one busy market day. The rising
importance of Leeds had attracted the notice of successive
governments. Charles the First had granted municipal privileges
to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one member to the
House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth money it
seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an
extensive district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the
reign of Charles the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841
there were more than a hundred and fifty thousand.94
About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild
moorland tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation,
then barren and unenclosed, which was known by the name of
Hallamshire. Iron abounded there; and, from a very early period,
the rude whittles fabricated there had been sold all over the
kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in
one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture appears to have
made little progress during the three centuries which followed
his time. This languor may perhaps be explained by the fact that
the trade was, during almost the whole of this long period,
subject to such regulations as the lord and his court feet
thought fit to impose. The more delicate kinds of cutlery were
either made in the capital or brought from the Continent. Indeed
it was not till the reign of George the First that the English
surgeons ceased to import from France those exquisitely fine
blades which are required for operations on the human frame. Most
of the Hallamshire forges were collected in a market town which
had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and which, in
the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserable
place, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a third
were half starved and half naked beggars. It seems certain from
the parochial registers that the population did not amount to
four thousand at the end of the reign of Charles the Second. The
effects of a species of toil singularly unfavourable to the
health and vigour of the human frame were at once discerned by
every traveller. A large proportion of the people had distorted
limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with its dependencies,
contains a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and which sends
forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthest
ends of the world.95
Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance to
return a member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manufacturers of
Birmingham were already a busy and thriving race. They boasted
that their hardware was highly esteemed, not indeed as now, at
Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo, but in London, and even
as far off as Ireland. They had acquired a less honourable renown
as coiners of bad money. In allusion to their spurious groats,
some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically
affected zeal against Popery, the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in
1685 the population, which is now little less than two hundred
thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons
were just beginning to he known: of Birmingham guns nobody had
yet heard; and the place whence, two generations later, the
magnificent editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all
the librarians of Europe, did not contain a single regular shop
where a Bible or an almanack could be bought. On Market days a
bookseller named Michael Johnson, the father of the great Samuel
Johnson, came over from Lichfield, and opened stall during a few
hours. This supply of literature was long found equal to the
demand.96
These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve especial
mention. It would be tedious to enumerate all the populous and
opulent hives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago,
were hamlets without parish churches, or desolate moors,
inhabited only by grouse and wild deer. Nor has the change been
less signal in those outlets by which the products of the English
looms and forges are poured forth over the whole world. At
present Liverpool contains more than three hundred thousand
inhabitants. The shipping registered at her port amounts to
between four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom
house has been repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice
as great as the whole income of the English crown in 1685. The
receipts of her post office, even since the great reduction of
the duty, exceed the sum which the postage of the whole kingdom
yielded to the Duke of York. Her endless docks, quays, and
warehouses are among the wonders of the world. Yet even those
docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice for the
gigantic trade of the Mersey; and already a rival city is growing
fast on the opposite shore. In the days of Charles the Second
Liverpool was described as a rising town which had recently made
great advances, and which maintained a profitable intercourse
with Ireland and with the sugar colonies. The customs had
multiplied eight-fold within sixteen years, and amounted to what
was then considered as the immense sum of fifteen thousand pounds
annually. But the population can hardly have exceeded four
thousand: the shipping was about fourteen hundred tons, less than
the tonnage of a single modern Indiaman of the first class, and
the whole number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be
estimated at more than two hundred.97
Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is created
and accumulated. Not less rapid has been the progress of towns of
a very different kind, towns in which wealth, created and
accumulated elsewhere, is expended for purposes of health and
recreation. Some of the most remarkable of these gay places have
sprung into existence since the time of the Stuarts. Cheltenham
is now a greater city than any which the kingdom contained in the
seventeenth century, London alone excepted. But in the
seventeenth century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth,
Cheltenham was mentioned by local historians merely as a rural
parish lying under the Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground
both for tillage
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