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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of the chapel where Tillotson was
preaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment
on poems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was
examining the astronomical system of Isaac Newton.126
Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had
its own centre of attraction. In the metropolis of commerce the
point of convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of
fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so
long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the
relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It
was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual
capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters,
bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and
tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud
and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his
advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he
would consult his own interest far better by acquiring the
dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good service to
the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the
companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It was therefore in
the antechambers, not of George the First and of George the
Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowd of
courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the
same Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should
use the patronage of the state merely for the purpose of
gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several Kings
unfitted by their education and habits to be gracious and affable
hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent. They never
felt themselves at home in our island. If they spoke our
language, they spoke it inelegantly and with effort. Our national
character they never fully understood. Our national manners they
hardly attempted to acquire. The most important part of their
duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded them: for
they governed strictly according to law: but they could not be
the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If
ever they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an
English face was to be seen; and they were never so happy as when
they could escape for a summer to their native land. They had
indeed their days of reception for our nobility and gentry; but
the reception was a mere matter of form, and became at last as
solemn a ceremony as a funeral.
Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he
dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of
fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the
metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself
agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the
mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any
service to the government, without being even known by sight to
any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a
company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth, a
lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his
pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that
a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest
counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted.127 Interest,
therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the
palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open
house every day, and all day long, for the good society of
London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had
any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee
was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every
morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his
wig was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his
early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly
introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him
dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure
of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably
well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which
he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the
canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His
Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This
proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father
or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most
austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the,
fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many a
veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited
sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty years,
was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by
his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my old friend!"
Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever
there was a rumour that anything important had happened or was
about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence
from the fountain head. The galleries presented the appearance of
a modern club room at an anxious time. They were full of people
enquiring whether the Dutch mail was in, what tidings the express
from France had brought, whether John Sobiesky had beaten the
Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris These were
matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were
subjects concerning which information was asked and given in
whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to
be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland?
Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to
read the countenance of every minister as he went through the
throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of auguries were
drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord
President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a
jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and
fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all the
coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower.128
The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It
might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most
important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years
The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense
of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the
rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into
fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such
circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through
which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself.
The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey
merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their
favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make
appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass
evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the
fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went
daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it.
Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the
crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what the
journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the
realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this
new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's
administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all
parties missed their usual places of resort so much that there
was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in
opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a
regulation of which the legality might well be questioned. Since
that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the
number and influence of the coffee houses had been constantly
increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that
which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that
the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who
wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived
in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the
Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who
laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession,
and every shade of religious and political opinion, had its own
headquarters. There were houses near Saint James's Park where
fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or
flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the
Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig
came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's
ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the
tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that
dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in
fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington,
to excite the mirth of theatres.129 The atmosphere was like that
of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of
richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown,
ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the
sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters
soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor,
indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee
rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers
sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should
leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and
stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's.
That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow
Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about
poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a
faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and
the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not
to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster
demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from
the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be
seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in
cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the
Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of
frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John
Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook
by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the
Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last
preaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment
on poems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was
examining the astronomical system of Isaac Newton.126
Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had
its own centre of attraction. In the metropolis of commerce the
point of convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of
fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so
long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the
relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It
was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual
capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters,
bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and
tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud
and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his
advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he
would consult his own interest far better by acquiring the
dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good service to
the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the
companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It was therefore in
the antechambers, not of George the First and of George the
Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowd of
courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the
same Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should
use the patronage of the state merely for the purpose of
gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several Kings
unfitted by their education and habits to be gracious and affable
hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent. They never
felt themselves at home in our island. If they spoke our
language, they spoke it inelegantly and with effort. Our national
character they never fully understood. Our national manners they
hardly attempted to acquire. The most important part of their
duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded them: for
they governed strictly according to law: but they could not be
the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If
ever they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an
English face was to be seen; and they were never so happy as when
they could escape for a summer to their native land. They had
indeed their days of reception for our nobility and gentry; but
the reception was a mere matter of form, and became at last as
solemn a ceremony as a funeral.
Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he
dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of
fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the
metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself
agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the
mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any
service to the government, without being even known by sight to
any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a
company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth, a
lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his
pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that
a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest
counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted.127 Interest,
therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the
palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open
house every day, and all day long, for the good society of
London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had
any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee
was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every
morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his
wig was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his
early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly
introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him
dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure
of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably
well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which
he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the
canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His
Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This
proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father
or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most
austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the,
fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many a
veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited
sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty years,
was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by
his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my old friend!"
Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever
there was a rumour that anything important had happened or was
about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence
from the fountain head. The galleries presented the appearance of
a modern club room at an anxious time. They were full of people
enquiring whether the Dutch mail was in, what tidings the express
from France had brought, whether John Sobiesky had beaten the
Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris These were
matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were
subjects concerning which information was asked and given in
whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to
be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland?
Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to
read the countenance of every minister as he went through the
throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of auguries were
drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord
President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a
jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and
fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all the
coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower.128
The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It
might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most
important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years
The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense
of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the
rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into
fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such
circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through
which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself.
The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey
merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their
favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make
appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass
evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the
fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went
daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it.
Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the
crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what the
journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the
realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this
new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's
administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all
parties missed their usual places of resort so much that there
was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in
opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a
regulation of which the legality might well be questioned. Since
that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the
number and influence of the coffee houses had been constantly
increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that
which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that
the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who
wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived
in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the
Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who
laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession,
and every shade of religious and political opinion, had its own
headquarters. There were houses near Saint James's Park where
fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or
flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the
Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig
came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's
ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the
tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that
dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in
fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington,
to excite the mirth of theatres.129 The atmosphere was like that
of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of
richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown,
ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the
sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters
soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor,
indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee
rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers
sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should
leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and
stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's.
That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow
Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about
poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a
faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and
the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not
to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster
demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from
the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be
seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in
cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the
Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of
frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John
Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook
by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the
Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last
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