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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infraction
of his monopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour.159
The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly
increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the
House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net
receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the
reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of
fifty thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous
sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds. The
charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty
miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage
increased in proportion to the weight of the packet.160 At
present a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland
or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has
long ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the
department amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds,
and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds.
It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the number of
letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which
was so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the
Second.161
No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more
important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the London
daily paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the
necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found.
Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either
capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment under a
general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed soon
after the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any person might
therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem,
without the previous approbation of any officer; but the Judges
were unanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to
Gazettes, and that, by the common law of England, no man, not
authorised by the crown, had a right to publish political
news.162 While the Whig party was still formidable, the
government thought it expedient occasionally to connive at the
violation of this rule. During the great battle of the Exclusion
Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the Protestant
Intelligence, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic
Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury.163 None of these
was published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a
single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them
contained in a year was not more than is often found in two
numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs it was no
longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that
which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted
prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered
to appear without his. allowance: and his allowance was given
exclusively to the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out
only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a
royal proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two
or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the
imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description
of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two
persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward for a
strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size.
Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest
moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style.
Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify
the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a
broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found
in the Gazette: but neither the Gazette nor any supplementary
broadside printed by authority ever contained any intelligence
which it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The
most important parliamentary debates, the most important state
trials recorded in our history, were passed over in profound
silence.164 In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some
measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as
the Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether
there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig,
had been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what
horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the
torturing of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated
the crown in the Victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges
the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the
matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a distance
from the great theatre of political contention could be kept
regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of
newsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London,
as it now is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled
from coffee room to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed
himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an
interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the gallery
of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this
way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to
enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic magistrates.
Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest
provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy,
learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own
time. We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many
persons curious to know what was passing in the world as at
almost any place in the kingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge,
during a great part of the reign of Charles the Second, the
Doctors of Laws and the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of
news except through the London Gazette. At length the services of
one of the collectors of intelligence in the capital were
employed. That was a memorable day on which the first newsletter
from London was laid on the table of the only coffee room in
Cambridge.165 At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the
newsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had
arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the
neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October, and
the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against
Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might
doubtless still be detected by a diligent search in the archives
of old families. Some are to be found in our public libraries;
and one series, which is not the least valuable part of the
literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, will be
occasionally quoted in the course of this work.166
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no
provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the
two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.
The only press in England north of Trent appears to have been at
York.167
It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the
government undertook to furnish political instruction to the
people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without
comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of the
court, consisted of comment without news. This paper, called the
Observator, was edited by an old Tory pamphleteer named Roger
Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient in readiness and
shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a
mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit in the green
room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his
nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every
line that he penned. When the first Observators appeared there
was some excuse for his acrimony. The Whigs were then powerful;
and he had to contend against numerous adversaries, whose
unscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing
retaliation. But in 1685 all the opposition had been crushed. A
generous spirit would have disdained to insult a party which
could not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of
exiles, of bereaved families: but; from the malice of Lestrange
the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no
sanctuary. In the last month of the reign of Charles the Second,
William Jenkyn, an aged dissenting pastor of great note, who had
been cruelly persecuted for no crime but that of worshipping God
according to the fashion generally followed throughout protestant
Europe, died of hardships and privations at Newgate. The outbreak
of popular sympathy could not be repressed. The corpse was
followed to the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches.
Even courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinking King showed some
signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of savage
exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers,
proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most
righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the
death, but after death, with all the mock saints and martyrs.168
Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the
oracle of the Tory party, and especially of the parochial clergy.
Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed the
greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the
country divines and country justices. The difficulty and expense
of conveying large packets from place to place was so great, that
an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster
Row to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now is in reaching
Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was then furnished, even
with books the most necessary to a theologian, has already been
remarked. The houses of the gentry were not more plentifully
supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so good as may
now perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the back
parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his
neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's
Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of
Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and
fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then
existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students
who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The
shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard,
were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known
customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the
country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under
the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.169
As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary
stores generally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book. But
of his monopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour.159
The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly
increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the
House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net
receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the
reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of
fifty thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous
sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds. The
charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty
miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage
increased in proportion to the weight of the packet.160 At
present a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland
or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has
long ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the
department amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds,
and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds.
It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the number of
letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which
was so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the
Second.161
No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more
important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the London
daily paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the
necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found.
Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either
capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment under a
general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed soon
after the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any person might
therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem,
without the previous approbation of any officer; but the Judges
were unanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to
Gazettes, and that, by the common law of England, no man, not
authorised by the crown, had a right to publish political
news.162 While the Whig party was still formidable, the
government thought it expedient occasionally to connive at the
violation of this rule. During the great battle of the Exclusion
Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the Protestant
Intelligence, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic
Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury.163 None of these
was published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a
single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them
contained in a year was not more than is often found in two
numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs it was no
longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that
which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted
prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered
to appear without his. allowance: and his allowance was given
exclusively to the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out
only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a
royal proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two
or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the
imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description
of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two
persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward for a
strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size.
Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest
moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style.
Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify
the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a
broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found
in the Gazette: but neither the Gazette nor any supplementary
broadside printed by authority ever contained any intelligence
which it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The
most important parliamentary debates, the most important state
trials recorded in our history, were passed over in profound
silence.164 In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some
measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as
the Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether
there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig,
had been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what
horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the
torturing of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated
the crown in the Victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges
the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the
matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a distance
from the great theatre of political contention could be kept
regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of
newsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London,
as it now is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled
from coffee room to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed
himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an
interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the gallery
of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this
way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to
enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic magistrates.
Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest
provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy,
learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own
time. We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many
persons curious to know what was passing in the world as at
almost any place in the kingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge,
during a great part of the reign of Charles the Second, the
Doctors of Laws and the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of
news except through the London Gazette. At length the services of
one of the collectors of intelligence in the capital were
employed. That was a memorable day on which the first newsletter
from London was laid on the table of the only coffee room in
Cambridge.165 At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the
newsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had
arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the
neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October, and
the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against
Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might
doubtless still be detected by a diligent search in the archives
of old families. Some are to be found in our public libraries;
and one series, which is not the least valuable part of the
literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, will be
occasionally quoted in the course of this work.166
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no
provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the
two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.
The only press in England north of Trent appears to have been at
York.167
It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the
government undertook to furnish political instruction to the
people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without
comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of the
court, consisted of comment without news. This paper, called the
Observator, was edited by an old Tory pamphleteer named Roger
Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient in readiness and
shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a
mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit in the green
room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his
nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every
line that he penned. When the first Observators appeared there
was some excuse for his acrimony. The Whigs were then powerful;
and he had to contend against numerous adversaries, whose
unscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing
retaliation. But in 1685 all the opposition had been crushed. A
generous spirit would have disdained to insult a party which
could not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of
exiles, of bereaved families: but; from the malice of Lestrange
the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no
sanctuary. In the last month of the reign of Charles the Second,
William Jenkyn, an aged dissenting pastor of great note, who had
been cruelly persecuted for no crime but that of worshipping God
according to the fashion generally followed throughout protestant
Europe, died of hardships and privations at Newgate. The outbreak
of popular sympathy could not be repressed. The corpse was
followed to the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches.
Even courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinking King showed some
signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of savage
exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers,
proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most
righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the
death, but after death, with all the mock saints and martyrs.168
Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the
oracle of the Tory party, and especially of the parochial clergy.
Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed the
greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the
country divines and country justices. The difficulty and expense
of conveying large packets from place to place was so great, that
an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster
Row to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now is in reaching
Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was then furnished, even
with books the most necessary to a theologian, has already been
remarked. The houses of the gentry were not more plentifully
supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so good as may
now perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the back
parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his
neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's
Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of
Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and
fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then
existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students
who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The
shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard,
were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known
customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the
country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under
the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.169
As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary
stores generally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book. But
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