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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plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette, that
several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen,
but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be
paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be
shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to
inspect this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon
was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough
diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he stopped
the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another
proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the
government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it was
affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity.
That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved by
the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who
appear to have received from the innkeepers services much
resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to Gibbet.151
It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the
highwayman that he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that
his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of
a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in the
community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and
gaming houses, and betted with men of quality on the race
ground.152 Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and
education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps
still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The
vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of
their occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their
amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate
struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart.
Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber of
Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern
drovers, and, in return, not only spared them himself, but
protected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses
in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely to the poor
what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once spared by
the royal clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at
length died, in 1685, on the gallows of York.153 It was related
how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took
to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the
honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against
notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a
lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds;
how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to
ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how
his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how
his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men;
how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by
wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with
tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a
pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of
highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law
were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the
corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights,
black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had
intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the
obsequies.154 In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large
mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of
being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an important fact
that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our
ancestors with eagerness and faith.
All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were
greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore commonly desirous
of having the shelter of a roof during the night; and such
shelter it was not difficult to obtain. From a very early period
the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had
described the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the
pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty persons, with
their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the
Tabard in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines such
as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later,
under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively
description of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries.
The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them.
There were some in which two or three hundred people, with their
horses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding,
the tapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen
was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables.
Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In
the seventeenth century England abounded with excellent inns of
every rank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted
on a public house such as Walton has described, where the brick
floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with
ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing
fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the
neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the
larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with
silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was
drunk in London.155 The innkeepers too, it was said. were not
like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the
tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a
servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took
his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own
mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of
passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house
of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort
and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal
perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to be
a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long
furnished matter to our novelists and dramatists. Johnson
declared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity;
and Shenstone gently complained that no private roof, however
friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as that which was
to be found at an inn.
Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and
Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels.
Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses
of public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the
improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this
strange; for it is evident that, all other circumstances being
supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of
locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the
less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable
resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a
person who came up to the capital from a remote county generally
required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for
five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals
and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At present we
fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single
winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller seldom
interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and
refreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns
have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of
that description will be found, except at places where strangers
are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.
The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant
places may excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was
such as might have moved the admiration and envy of the polished
nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and
Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of posts for the
conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles the First, and
had been swept away by the civil war. Under the Commonwealth the
design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of the Post
Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on the
Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came
in only on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of
Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland,
letters were received only once a week. During a royal progress a
daily post was despatched from the capital to the place where the
court sojourned. There was also daily communication between
London and the Downs; and the same privilege was sometimes
extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those
places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on
horseback day and night at the rate of about five miles an
hour.156
The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the
charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was
entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which
this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found
profitable.157 If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour
without being supplied he might hire a horse wherever he could.
To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and
another was not originally one of the objects of the Post Office.
But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen
of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny
post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a
day in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four
times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This improvement
was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that
their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards in
which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement
caused by Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's
papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised that
the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates,
it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion that the Jesuits were at
the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would
be found full of treason.158 The utility of the enterprise was,
however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved
fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would
be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an
plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette, that
several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen,
but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be
paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be
shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to
inspect this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon
was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough
diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he stopped
the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another
proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the
government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it was
affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity.
That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved by
the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who
appear to have received from the innkeepers services much
resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to Gibbet.151
It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the
highwayman that he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that
his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of
a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in the
community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and
gaming houses, and betted with men of quality on the race
ground.152 Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and
education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps
still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The
vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of
their occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their
amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate
struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart.
Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber of
Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern
drovers, and, in return, not only spared them himself, but
protected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses
in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely to the poor
what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once spared by
the royal clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at
length died, in 1685, on the gallows of York.153 It was related
how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took
to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the
honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against
notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a
lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds;
how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to
ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how
his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how
his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men;
how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by
wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with
tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a
pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of
highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law
were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the
corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights,
black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had
intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the
obsequies.154 In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large
mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of
being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an important fact
that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our
ancestors with eagerness and faith.
All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were
greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore commonly desirous
of having the shelter of a roof during the night; and such
shelter it was not difficult to obtain. From a very early period
the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had
described the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the
pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty persons, with
their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the
Tabard in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines such
as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later,
under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively
description of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries.
The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them.
There were some in which two or three hundred people, with their
horses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding,
the tapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen
was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables.
Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In
the seventeenth century England abounded with excellent inns of
every rank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted
on a public house such as Walton has described, where the brick
floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with
ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing
fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the
neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the
larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with
silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was
drunk in London.155 The innkeepers too, it was said. were not
like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the
tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a
servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took
his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own
mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of
passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house
of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort
and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal
perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to be
a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long
furnished matter to our novelists and dramatists. Johnson
declared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity;
and Shenstone gently complained that no private roof, however
friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as that which was
to be found at an inn.
Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and
Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels.
Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses
of public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the
improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this
strange; for it is evident that, all other circumstances being
supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of
locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the
less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable
resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a
person who came up to the capital from a remote county generally
required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for
five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals
and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At present we
fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single
winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller seldom
interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and
refreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns
have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of
that description will be found, except at places where strangers
are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.
The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant
places may excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was
such as might have moved the admiration and envy of the polished
nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and
Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of posts for the
conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles the First, and
had been swept away by the civil war. Under the Commonwealth the
design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of the Post
Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on the
Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came
in only on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of
Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland,
letters were received only once a week. During a royal progress a
daily post was despatched from the capital to the place where the
court sojourned. There was also daily communication between
London and the Downs; and the same privilege was sometimes
extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those
places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on
horseback day and night at the rate of about five miles an
hour.156
The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the
charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was
entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which
this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found
profitable.157 If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour
without being supplied he might hire a horse wherever he could.
To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and
another was not originally one of the objects of the Post Office.
But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen
of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny
post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a
day in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four
times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This improvement
was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that
their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards in
which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement
caused by Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's
papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised that
the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates,
it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion that the Jesuits were at
the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would
be found full of treason.158 The utility of the enterprise was,
however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved
fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would
be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an
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