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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tragedy or of
Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch
from his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a
young enthusaist. There were coffee houses where the first
medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in
the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came
daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in
Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to
Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and
apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee
houses where no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men
discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew
coffee houses where darkeyed money changers from Venice and
Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as
good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups,
another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.130
These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the
character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a
different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then
the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. Only
very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between
town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in
their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in easy
circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods
during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village,
was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of
Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or
Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily
distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar.
His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at
the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters,
and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent
subject for the operations of swindlers and barterers. Bullies
jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from
head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge
pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the
splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the
cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him
the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted
women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed
themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked
his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If
he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit
purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of
second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not
go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a
mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of
Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion,
and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of
his boon companions, found consolation for the vexatious and
humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a
great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the
assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at
the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.
The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements
of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our
ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all
inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted,
those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the
civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of
locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as
materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the
various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century
the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical
purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh,
and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.
The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite
unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time,
produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has
enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide, and brigades
of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to
traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race
horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed the
expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many
experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine,
which he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be
an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion.131 But
the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a
Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception.
His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish matter for
conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not
applied to any practical purpose. There were no railways, except
a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the mouths
of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.132 There was
very little internal communication by water. A few attempts had
been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with
slender success. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even
projected. The English of that day were in the habit of talking
with mingled admiration and despair of the immense trench by
which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their
country would, in the course of a few generations, be
intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial
rivers making up more than four times the length of the Thames,
the Severn, and the Trent together.
It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally
passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have
been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of
wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained.
On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the
descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly
possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath
and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, the antiquary,
was in danger of losing his way on the great North road, between
Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between
Doncaster and York.133 Pepys and his wife, travelling in their
own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the
course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and
were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain.134 It
was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was
available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the
right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose
above the quagmire.135 At such times obstructions and quarrels
were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a
long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It
happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team
of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug
them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to
encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in
the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has
recorded, in his Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as
might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert
of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out
between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their
lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross.
In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road,
and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for
him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.136 In the course of
another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an
inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford
four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then
ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of
Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament with guides
and numerous attendants, took him into their company.137 On the
roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for their
necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their
beasts.138 The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such
a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five
hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to Conway.
Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part
of the way; and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was,
with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought
after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at
Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants, to
the Menai Straits.139 In some parts of Kent and Sussex, none but
the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in
which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often
inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of
the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in
another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far
short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this
district, generally pulled by oxen.140 When Prince George of
Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather,
he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a
body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in
order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue
several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party
has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains
that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when
his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud.141
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been
the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair
the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced
to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was
not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was
met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns,
which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be
maintained at the cost
Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch
from his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a
young enthusaist. There were coffee houses where the first
medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in
the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came
daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in
Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to
Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and
apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee
houses where no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men
discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew
coffee houses where darkeyed money changers from Venice and
Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as
good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups,
another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.130
These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the
character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a
different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then
the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. Only
very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between
town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in
their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in easy
circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods
during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village,
was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of
Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or
Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily
distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar.
His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at
the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters,
and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent
subject for the operations of swindlers and barterers. Bullies
jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from
head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge
pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the
splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the
cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him
the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted
women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed
themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked
his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If
he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit
purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of
second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not
go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a
mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of
Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion,
and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of
his boon companions, found consolation for the vexatious and
humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a
great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the
assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at
the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.
The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements
of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our
ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all
inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted,
those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the
civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of
locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as
materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the
various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century
the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical
purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh,
and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.
The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite
unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time,
produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has
enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide, and brigades
of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to
traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race
horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed the
expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many
experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine,
which he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be
an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion.131 But
the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a
Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception.
His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish matter for
conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not
applied to any practical purpose. There were no railways, except
a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the mouths
of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.132 There was
very little internal communication by water. A few attempts had
been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with
slender success. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even
projected. The English of that day were in the habit of talking
with mingled admiration and despair of the immense trench by
which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their
country would, in the course of a few generations, be
intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial
rivers making up more than four times the length of the Thames,
the Severn, and the Trent together.
It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally
passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have
been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of
wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained.
On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the
descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly
possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath
and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, the antiquary,
was in danger of losing his way on the great North road, between
Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between
Doncaster and York.133 Pepys and his wife, travelling in their
own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the
course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and
were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain.134 It
was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was
available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the
right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose
above the quagmire.135 At such times obstructions and quarrels
were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a
long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It
happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team
of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug
them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to
encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in
the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has
recorded, in his Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as
might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert
of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out
between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their
lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross.
In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road,
and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for
him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.136 In the course of
another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an
inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford
four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then
ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of
Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament with guides
and numerous attendants, took him into their company.137 On the
roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for their
necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their
beasts.138 The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such
a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five
hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to Conway.
Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part
of the way; and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was,
with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought
after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at
Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants, to
the Menai Straits.139 In some parts of Kent and Sussex, none but
the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in
which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often
inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of
the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in
another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far
short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this
district, generally pulled by oxen.140 When Prince George of
Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather,
he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a
body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in
order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue
several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party
has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains
that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when
his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud.141
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been
the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair
the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced
to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was
not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was
met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns,
which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be
maintained at the cost
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