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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difference between London in an
ordinary year and London in a year of cholera.
Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society,
and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying
influence of civilisation on the national character. The
groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through
many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the
character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is
a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and
accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public mind
of England has softened while it has ripened, and that we have,
in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a
kinder people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter
literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some
proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity.
The discipline of workshops, of schools, of private families,
though not more efficient than at present, was infinitely
harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of
beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting
knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent
station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability
of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs
were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die
without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled
and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.204 As little mercy was shown by
the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was
put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life from
the shower of brickbats and paving stones.205 If he was tied to
the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the
hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl.206
Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days
for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there
whipped.207 A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman
burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a
galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a
boxing match is a refined and humane spectacle were among the
favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes
assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly
weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost
a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries
of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes the lean and
yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an
atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them
signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society
looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that
sensitive and restless compassion which has, in our time,
extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the
Hindoo widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and
watercasks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every lash
laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the
thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked, and which has
repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer. It
is true that compassion ought, like all other feelings, to be
under the government of reason, and has, for want of such
government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects.
But the more we study the annals of the past, the more shall we
rejoice that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which
cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when deserved, is
inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every class
doubtless has gained largely by this great moral change: but the
class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent,
and the most defenceless.
The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to
the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of
evidence, many will still image to themselves the England of the
Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we
live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while
constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly
looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities,
inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the
same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in
which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to
surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their
happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in
us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is
constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant
improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we
were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to
contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And
it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we
should form a too favourable estimate of the past.
In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads
the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is
dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the
semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and
find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a lake.
They turn their eyes and see a lake where, an hour before, they
were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt
nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and
barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilisation.
But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it
recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is
now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when
noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be
intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers
breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot
in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was
a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men
died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the
most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in
the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.
We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be
envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the
peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with
twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may
receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little
used to dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that
sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several
more years to the average length of human life; that numerous
comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a
few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty
working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the
increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the
few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen
Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when
all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the
rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did
not envy the splendour of the rich.
CHAPTER IV.
THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise.
His frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to have
suffered from excess. He had always been mindful of his health
even in his pleasures; and his habits were such as promise a long
life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was on all occasions
which required tension of the mind, he was active and persevering
in bodily exercise. He had, when young, been renowned as a tennis
player,208 and was, even in the decline of life, an indefatigable
walker. His ordinary pace was such that those who were admitted
to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up with
him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a
day in the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the
grass in St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with
his spaniels, and flinging corn to his ducks; and these
exhibitions endeared him to the common people, who always love to
See the great unbend.209
At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented,
by a slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling
as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he
amused himself with experiments on the properties of mercury. His
temper seemed to have suffered from confinement. He had no
apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: he was not
in pressing want of money: his power was greater than it had ever
been: the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down;
but the cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse
fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A trifle now
sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up
against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently
showed itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been
expected from a man so eminently distinguished by good humour and
good breeding. It was not supposed however that his constitution
was seriously impaired.210
His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous
appearance than on the evening of Sunday the first of February
1685.211 Some grave persons who had gone thither, after the
fashion of that age, to pay their duty to their sovereign, and
who had expected that, on such a day, his court would wear a
decent aspect, were struck with astonishment and horror. The
great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and
gamblers. The king sate there chatting and toying with three
women, whose charms were the boast, and whose vices were the
disgrace, of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland,
was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of
that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before
overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the Duchess of
Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of
Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group.
She had
ordinary year and London in a year of cholera.
Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society,
and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying
influence of civilisation on the national character. The
groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through
many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the
character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is
a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and
accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public mind
of England has softened while it has ripened, and that we have,
in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a
kinder people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter
literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some
proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity.
The discipline of workshops, of schools, of private families,
though not more efficient than at present, was infinitely
harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of
beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting
knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent
station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability
of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs
were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die
without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled
and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.204 As little mercy was shown by
the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was
put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life from
the shower of brickbats and paving stones.205 If he was tied to
the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the
hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl.206
Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days
for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there
whipped.207 A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman
burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a
galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a
boxing match is a refined and humane spectacle were among the
favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes
assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly
weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost
a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries
of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes the lean and
yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an
atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them
signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society
looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that
sensitive and restless compassion which has, in our time,
extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the
Hindoo widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and
watercasks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every lash
laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the
thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked, and which has
repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer. It
is true that compassion ought, like all other feelings, to be
under the government of reason, and has, for want of such
government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects.
But the more we study the annals of the past, the more shall we
rejoice that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which
cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when deserved, is
inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every class
doubtless has gained largely by this great moral change: but the
class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent,
and the most defenceless.
The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to
the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of
evidence, many will still image to themselves the England of the
Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we
live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while
constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly
looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities,
inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the
same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in
which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to
surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their
happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in
us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is
constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant
improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we
were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to
contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And
it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we
should form a too favourable estimate of the past.
In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads
the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is
dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the
semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and
find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a lake.
They turn their eyes and see a lake where, an hour before, they
were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt
nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and
barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilisation.
But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it
recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is
now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when
noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be
intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers
breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot
in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was
a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men
died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the
most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in
the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.
We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be
envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the
peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with
twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may
receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little
used to dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that
sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several
more years to the average length of human life; that numerous
comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a
few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty
working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the
increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the
few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen
Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when
all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the
rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did
not envy the splendour of the rich.
CHAPTER IV.
THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise.
His frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to have
suffered from excess. He had always been mindful of his health
even in his pleasures; and his habits were such as promise a long
life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was on all occasions
which required tension of the mind, he was active and persevering
in bodily exercise. He had, when young, been renowned as a tennis
player,208 and was, even in the decline of life, an indefatigable
walker. His ordinary pace was such that those who were admitted
to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up with
him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a
day in the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the
grass in St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with
his spaniels, and flinging corn to his ducks; and these
exhibitions endeared him to the common people, who always love to
See the great unbend.209
At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented,
by a slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling
as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he
amused himself with experiments on the properties of mercury. His
temper seemed to have suffered from confinement. He had no
apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: he was not
in pressing want of money: his power was greater than it had ever
been: the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down;
but the cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse
fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A trifle now
sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up
against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently
showed itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been
expected from a man so eminently distinguished by good humour and
good breeding. It was not supposed however that his constitution
was seriously impaired.210
His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous
appearance than on the evening of Sunday the first of February
1685.211 Some grave persons who had gone thither, after the
fashion of that age, to pay their duty to their sovereign, and
who had expected that, on such a day, his court would wear a
decent aspect, were struck with astonishment and horror. The
great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and
gamblers. The king sate there chatting and toying with three
women, whose charms were the boast, and whose vices were the
disgrace, of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland,
was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of
that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before
overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the Duchess of
Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of
Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group.
She had
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