The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
Excerpt from the book:
Read free book Β«The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) πΒ» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
Download in Format:
- Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
Read book online Β«The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) πΒ». Author - Thomas Babington Macaulay
luxury. The style of building
was, however, far superior to that of the City which had
perished. The ordinary material was brick, of much better quality
than had formerly been used. On the sites of the ancient parish
churches had arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and spires
which bore the mark of the fertile genius of Wren. In every place
save one the traces of the great devastation had been completely
effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the scaffolds, and the masses
of hewn stone were still to be seen where the noblest of
Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the Old
Cathedral of Saint Paul.107
The whole character of the City has, since that time, undergone a
complete change. At present the bankers, the merchants, and the
chief shopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every week
for the transaction of business; but they reside in other
quarters of the metropolis, or at suburban country seats
surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens. This revolution in
private habits has produced a political revolution of no small
importance. The City is no longer regarded by the wealthiest
traders with that attachment which every man naturally feels for
his home. It is no longer associated in their minds with domestic
affections and endearments. The fireside, the nursery, the social
table, the quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street and
Threadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and
accumulate. They go elsewhere to enjoy and to expend. On a
Sunday, or in an evening after the hours of business, some courts
and alleys, which a few hours before had been alive with hurrying
feet and anxious faces, are as silent as the glades of a forest.
The chiefs of the mercantile interest are no longer citizens.
They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and duties.
Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who, though useful
and highly respectable, seldom belong to the princely commercial
houses of which the names are renowned throughout the world.
In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's residence.
Those mansions of the great old burghers which still exist have
been turned into counting houses and warehouses: but it is
evident that they were originally not inferior in magnificence to
the dwellings which were then inhabited by the nobility. They
sometimes stand in retired and gloomy courts, and are accessible
only by inconvenient passages: but their dimensions are ample,
and their aspect stately. The entrances are decorated with richly
carved pillars and canopies. The staircases and landing places
are not wanting in grandeur. The floors are sometimes of wood
tessellated after the fashion of France. The palace of Sir Robert
Clayton, in the Old Jewry, contained a superb banqueting room
wainscoted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and
giants in fresco.108 Sir Dudley North expended four thousand
pounds, a sum which would then have been important to a Duke, on
the rich furniture of his reception rooms in Basinghall
Street.109 In such abodes, under the last Stuarts, the heads of
the great firms lived splendidly and hospitably. To their
dwelling place they were bound by the strongest ties of interest
and affection. There they had passed their youth, had made their
friendships, had courted their wives had seen their children grow
up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and
expected that their own remains would be laid. That intense
patriotism which is peculiar to the members of societies
congregated within a narrow space was, in such circumstances,
strongly developed. London was, to the Londoner, what Athens was
to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what Florence was to the
Florentine of the fifteenth century. The citizen was proud of the
grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims to respect,
ambitious of her offices, and zealous for her franchises.
At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of the
Londoners was smarting from a cruel mortification. The old
charter had been taken away; and the magistracy had been
remodelled. All the civic functionaries were Tories: and the
Whigs, though in numbers and in wealth superior to their
opponents, found themselves excluded from every local dignity.
Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipal government
was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this change.
For, under the administration of some Puritans who had lately
borne rule, the ancient fame of the City for good cheer had
declined: but under the new magistrates, who belonged to a more
festive party, and at whose boards guests of rank and fashion
from beyond Temple Bar were often seen, the Guildhall and the
halls of the great companies were enlivened by many sumptuous
banquets. During these repasts, odes composed by the poet
laureate of the corporation, in praise of the King, the Duke, and
the Mayor, were sung to music. The drinking was deep and the
shouting loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in these
revels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing after drinking
healths dates from this joyous period.110
The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was
almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually
admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great
occasions he appeared on horseback, attended by a long cavalcade
inferior in magnificence only to that which, before a coronation,
escorted the sovereign from the Tower to Westminster. The Lord
Mayor was never seen in public without his rich robe, his hood of
black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and a great attendance
of harbingers and guards.111 Nor did the world find anything
ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. For it was
not more than became the place which, as wielding the strength
and representing the dignity of the City of London, he was
entitled to occupy in the State. That City, being then not only
without equal in the country, but without second, had, during
five and forty years, exercised almost as great an influence on
the politics of England as Paris has, in our own time, exercised
on the politics of France. In intelligence London was greatly in
advance of every other part of the kingdom. A government,
supported and trusted by London, could in a day obtain such
pecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the
rest of the island. Nor were the military resources of the
capital to be despised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants
exercised in other parts of the kingdom was in London entrusted
to a Commission of eminent citizens. Under the order of this
Commission were twelve regiments of foot and two regiments of
horse. An army of drapers' apprentices and journeymen tailors,
with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels,
might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against
regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in
the kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an
hour's notice, thousands of men, abounding in natural courage,
provided with tolerable weapons, and not altogether untinctured
with martial discipline, could not but be a valuable ally and a
formidable enemy. It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pym had
been protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands;
that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the London trainbands
had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the
movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal
part. In truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the
hostility of the City, Charles the First would never have been
vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the
Second could scarcely have been restored.
These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that
attraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually
drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had
continued, till a very recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of
the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham,
while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous opposition to the
government, had thought that they could nowhere carry on their
intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under the protection
of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesbury had
therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still
be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of
Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross,
once the abode of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down;
and, while streets and alleys which are still named after him
were rising on that site, chose to reside in Dowgate.112
These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble
families of England had long migrated beyond the walls. The
district where most of their town houses stood lies between the
city and the regions which are now considered as fashionable. A
few great men still retained their hereditary hotels in the
Strand. The stately dwellings on the south and west of Lincoln's
Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, Southampton Square,
which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in Soho
Fields, which is now called Soho Square, were among the favourite
spots. Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as
one of the wonders of England.113 Soho Square, which had just
been built, was to our ancestors a subject of pride with which
their posterity will hardly sympathise. Monmouth Square had been
the name while the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth flourished;
and on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though
ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the
principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage,
and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin.114
Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and no
aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical
quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the
pastures and corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each with
an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and
subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to
make room for a new city, which now covers with its squares,
streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth
century for peaches and snipes. The other, Montague House,
celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was, a few months
after the death of Charles the Second, burned to the ground, and
was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent Montague House,
which, having been long the repository of such various and
precious treasures of art, science, and learning as were scarcely
ever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to
an edifice more magnificent still.115
Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had
was, however, far superior to that of the City which had
perished. The ordinary material was brick, of much better quality
than had formerly been used. On the sites of the ancient parish
churches had arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and spires
which bore the mark of the fertile genius of Wren. In every place
save one the traces of the great devastation had been completely
effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the scaffolds, and the masses
of hewn stone were still to be seen where the noblest of
Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the Old
Cathedral of Saint Paul.107
The whole character of the City has, since that time, undergone a
complete change. At present the bankers, the merchants, and the
chief shopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every week
for the transaction of business; but they reside in other
quarters of the metropolis, or at suburban country seats
surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens. This revolution in
private habits has produced a political revolution of no small
importance. The City is no longer regarded by the wealthiest
traders with that attachment which every man naturally feels for
his home. It is no longer associated in their minds with domestic
affections and endearments. The fireside, the nursery, the social
table, the quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street and
Threadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and
accumulate. They go elsewhere to enjoy and to expend. On a
Sunday, or in an evening after the hours of business, some courts
and alleys, which a few hours before had been alive with hurrying
feet and anxious faces, are as silent as the glades of a forest.
The chiefs of the mercantile interest are no longer citizens.
They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and duties.
Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who, though useful
and highly respectable, seldom belong to the princely commercial
houses of which the names are renowned throughout the world.
In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's residence.
Those mansions of the great old burghers which still exist have
been turned into counting houses and warehouses: but it is
evident that they were originally not inferior in magnificence to
the dwellings which were then inhabited by the nobility. They
sometimes stand in retired and gloomy courts, and are accessible
only by inconvenient passages: but their dimensions are ample,
and their aspect stately. The entrances are decorated with richly
carved pillars and canopies. The staircases and landing places
are not wanting in grandeur. The floors are sometimes of wood
tessellated after the fashion of France. The palace of Sir Robert
Clayton, in the Old Jewry, contained a superb banqueting room
wainscoted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and
giants in fresco.108 Sir Dudley North expended four thousand
pounds, a sum which would then have been important to a Duke, on
the rich furniture of his reception rooms in Basinghall
Street.109 In such abodes, under the last Stuarts, the heads of
the great firms lived splendidly and hospitably. To their
dwelling place they were bound by the strongest ties of interest
and affection. There they had passed their youth, had made their
friendships, had courted their wives had seen their children grow
up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and
expected that their own remains would be laid. That intense
patriotism which is peculiar to the members of societies
congregated within a narrow space was, in such circumstances,
strongly developed. London was, to the Londoner, what Athens was
to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what Florence was to the
Florentine of the fifteenth century. The citizen was proud of the
grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims to respect,
ambitious of her offices, and zealous for her franchises.
At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of the
Londoners was smarting from a cruel mortification. The old
charter had been taken away; and the magistracy had been
remodelled. All the civic functionaries were Tories: and the
Whigs, though in numbers and in wealth superior to their
opponents, found themselves excluded from every local dignity.
Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipal government
was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this change.
For, under the administration of some Puritans who had lately
borne rule, the ancient fame of the City for good cheer had
declined: but under the new magistrates, who belonged to a more
festive party, and at whose boards guests of rank and fashion
from beyond Temple Bar were often seen, the Guildhall and the
halls of the great companies were enlivened by many sumptuous
banquets. During these repasts, odes composed by the poet
laureate of the corporation, in praise of the King, the Duke, and
the Mayor, were sung to music. The drinking was deep and the
shouting loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in these
revels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing after drinking
healths dates from this joyous period.110
The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was
almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually
admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great
occasions he appeared on horseback, attended by a long cavalcade
inferior in magnificence only to that which, before a coronation,
escorted the sovereign from the Tower to Westminster. The Lord
Mayor was never seen in public without his rich robe, his hood of
black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and a great attendance
of harbingers and guards.111 Nor did the world find anything
ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. For it was
not more than became the place which, as wielding the strength
and representing the dignity of the City of London, he was
entitled to occupy in the State. That City, being then not only
without equal in the country, but without second, had, during
five and forty years, exercised almost as great an influence on
the politics of England as Paris has, in our own time, exercised
on the politics of France. In intelligence London was greatly in
advance of every other part of the kingdom. A government,
supported and trusted by London, could in a day obtain such
pecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the
rest of the island. Nor were the military resources of the
capital to be despised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants
exercised in other parts of the kingdom was in London entrusted
to a Commission of eminent citizens. Under the order of this
Commission were twelve regiments of foot and two regiments of
horse. An army of drapers' apprentices and journeymen tailors,
with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels,
might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against
regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in
the kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an
hour's notice, thousands of men, abounding in natural courage,
provided with tolerable weapons, and not altogether untinctured
with martial discipline, could not but be a valuable ally and a
formidable enemy. It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pym had
been protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands;
that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the London trainbands
had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the
movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal
part. In truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the
hostility of the City, Charles the First would never have been
vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the
Second could scarcely have been restored.
These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that
attraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually
drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had
continued, till a very recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of
the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham,
while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous opposition to the
government, had thought that they could nowhere carry on their
intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under the protection
of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesbury had
therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still
be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of
Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross,
once the abode of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down;
and, while streets and alleys which are still named after him
were rising on that site, chose to reside in Dowgate.112
These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble
families of England had long migrated beyond the walls. The
district where most of their town houses stood lies between the
city and the regions which are now considered as fashionable. A
few great men still retained their hereditary hotels in the
Strand. The stately dwellings on the south and west of Lincoln's
Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, Southampton Square,
which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in Soho
Fields, which is now called Soho Square, were among the favourite
spots. Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as
one of the wonders of England.113 Soho Square, which had just
been built, was to our ancestors a subject of pride with which
their posterity will hardly sympathise. Monmouth Square had been
the name while the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth flourished;
and on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though
ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the
principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage,
and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin.114
Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and no
aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical
quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the
pastures and corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each with
an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and
subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to
make room for a new city, which now covers with its squares,
streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth
century for peaches and snipes. The other, Montague House,
celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was, a few months
after the death of Charles the Second, burned to the ground, and
was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent Montague House,
which, having been long the repository of such various and
precious treasures of art, science, and learning as were scarcely
ever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to
an edifice more magnificent still.115
Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had
Free e-book: Β«The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) πΒ» - read online now on website american library books (americanlibrarybooks.com)
Similar e-books:
Comments (0)