No More Learning

1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13.
1668; Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley
North; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in
drawing inferences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant,
who, though not abler men than he, had the advantage of coming after
him. As to the kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North's
Life of Guildford, 121, 216, and the harangue of Jeffreys on the
subject, in the Impartial History of his Life and Death, printed with
the Bloody Assizes. His style was, as usual, coarse, but I cannot reckon
the reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his
crimes. ]

[Footnote 91: Fuller's Worthies; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17,1671; Journal
of T. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 1663-4; Blomefield's
History of Norfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols.
1768. ]

[Footnote 92: The population of York appears, from the return of
baptisms and burials in Drake's History, to have been about 13,000 in
1730. Exeter had only 17,000 inhabitants in 1801. The population of
Worcester was numbered just before the siege in 1646. See Nash's History
of Worcestershire. I have made allowance for the increase which must be
supposed to have taken place in forty years. In 1740, the population of
Nottingham was found, by enumeration, to be just 10,000. See Dering's
History. The population of Gloucester may readily be inferred from the
number of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money,
and from the number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns's
History. The population of Derby was 4,000 in 1712. See Wolley's MS.
History, quoted in Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population of Shrewsbury
was ascertained, in 1695, by actual enumeration. As to the gaieties of
Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's Recruiting Officer. Farquhar's description
is borne out by a ballad in the Pepysian Library, of which the burden is
"Shrewsbury for me. "]

[Footnote 93: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Aikin's Country round Manchester;
Manchester Directory, 1845: Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture.
The best information which I have been able to find, touching the
population of Manchester in the seventeenth century is contained in
a paper drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson, and published in the
Journal of the Statistical Society for October 1842. ]

[Footnote 94: Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis; Whitaker's Loidis and
Elmete; Wardell's Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds. (1848. ) In
1851 Leeds had 172,000 Inhabitants. (1857. )]

[Footnote 95: Hunter's History of Hallamshire. (1848. ) In 1851 the
population of Sheffield had increased to 135,000. (1857. )]

[Footnote 96: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Dugdale's Warwickshire, North's
Examen, 321; Preface to Absalom and Achitophel; Hutton's History of
Birmingham; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birmingham
were 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that the annual
mortality was little less than one in twenty-five. In London it was
considerably greater. A historian of Nottingham, half a century later,
boasted of the extraordinary salubrity of his town, where the annual
mortality was one in thirty. See Doring's History of Nottingham. (1848. )
In 1851 the population of Birmingham had increased to 222,000. (1857. )]

[Footnote 97: Blome's Britannia; Gregson's Antiquities of the County
Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Part II. ; Petition from Liverpool in
the Privy Council Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the burials at Liverpool
were 151, the baptisms 120. In 1844 the net receipt of the customs at
Liverpool was 4,366,526£. 1s. 8d. (1848. ) In 1851 Liverpool contained
375,000 inhabitants, (1857. )]

[Footnote 98: Atkyne's Gloucestershire. ]

[Footnote 99: Magna Britannia; Grose's Antiquities; New Brighthelmstone
Directory. ]

[Footnote 100: Tour in Derbyshire, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas. ]

[Footnote 101: Memoires de Grammont; Hasted's History of Kent; Tunbridge
Wells, a Comedy, 1678; Causton's Tunbridgialia, 1688; Metellus, a poem
on Tunbridge Wells, 1693. ]

[Footnote 102: See Wood's History of Bath, 1719; Evelyn's Diary, June
27,1654; Pepys's Diary, June 12, 1668; Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum;
Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr. Peirce's History and Memoirs of the Bath,
1713, Book I. chap. viii. obs. 2, 1684. I have consulted several
old maps and pictures of Bath, particularly one curious map which is
surrounded by views of the principal buildings. It Dears the date of
1717. ]

[Footnote 103: According to King 530,000. (1848. ) In 1851 the population
of London exceeded, 2,300,000. (1857. )]

[Footnote 104: Macpherson's History of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate;
Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the steamers
belonging to the port of London was, at the end of 1847, about 60,000
tons. The customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845, very nearly averaged
11,000,000£. (1848. ) In 1854 the tonnage of the steamers of the port of
London amounted to 138,000 tons, without reckoning vessels of less than
fifty tons. (1857. )]

[Footnote 105: Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea,
between 1680 and 1690, were only 42 a year. ]

[Footnote 106: Cowley, Discourse of Solitude. ]

[Footnote 107: The fullest and most trustworthy information about the
state of the buildings of London at this time is to be derived from the
maps and drawings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian Library.
The badness of the bricks in the old buildings of London is particularly
mentioned in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. There is an account of
the works at Saint Paul's in Ward's London Spy. I am almost ashamed to
quote such nauseous balderdash; but I have been forced to descend even
lower, if possible, in search of materials. ]

[Footnote 108: Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 20. 1672. ]

[Footnote 109: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North. ]

[Footnote 110: North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserved
a specimen of the sublime raptures in which the Pindar of the City
indulged:--

"The worshipful sir John Moor!
After age that name adore! "]

[Footnote 111: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Anglie Metropolis,
1690; Seymour's London, 1734. ]

[Footnote 112: North's Examen, 116; Wood, Ath. Ox. Shaftesbury; The Duke
of B. 's Litany. ]

[Footnote 113: Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. ]

[Footnote 114: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Pennant's London;
Smith's Life of Nollekens. ]

[Footnote 115: Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 10, 1683, Jan. 19, 1685-6. ]

[Footnote 116: Stat. 1 Jac. II. c. 22; Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 7, 1684. ]

[Footnote 117: Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast
that he had shot birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, and
the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1785. ]

[Footnote 118: The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late as
the end of George the First's reign. ]

[Footnote 119: See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690,
and engraved for Smith's History of Westminster. See also Hogarth's
Morning, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza were still
occupied by people of fashion. ]

[Footnote 120: London Spy, Tom Brown's comical View of London and
Westminster; Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor, 1678;
Daily Courant and Daily Journal of June 7, 1733; Case of Michael v.
Allestree, in 1676, 2 Levinz, p. 172. Michael had been run over by
two horses which Allestree was breaking in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
The declaration set forth that the defendant "porta deux chivals
ungovernable en un coach, et improvide, incante, et absque debita
consideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur eux faire tractable
et apt pur an coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur ferocite, ne
poientestre rule, curre sur le plaintiff et le noie. "]

[Footnote 121: Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March
2, 1725-6; London Gardener, 1712; Evening Post, March, 23, 1731. I have
not been able to find this number of the Evening Post; I therefore
quote it on the faith of Mr. Malcolm, who mentions it in his History of
London. ]

[Footnote 122: Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign of
William the Third; Swift's City Shower; Gay's Trivia. Johnson used to
relate a curious conversation which he had with his mother about giving
and taking the wall. ]

[Footnote 123: Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682;
Shadwell's Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities will readily occur
to all who are acquainted with the popular literature of that and the
succeeding generation. It may be suspected that some of the Tityre
Tus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows shortly after the
Restoration. I am confident that he was thinking of those pests of
London when he dictated the noble lines:

"And in luxurious cities, when the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage, and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown With innocence and wine. "]

[Footnote 124: Seymour's London. ]

[Footnote 125: Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, "Of the new
lights"; Seymour's London. ]

[Footnote 126: Stowe's Survey of London; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia;
Ward's London Spy; Stat. 8 & 9 Gul. III. cap. 27. ]

[Footnote 127: See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wright
was made a judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir George
Savile was made a peer. ]

[Footnote 128: The sources from which I have drawn my information about
the state of the Court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among them
are the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, the
Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, the works of Roger North, the Diares of
Pepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and the Memoirs of Grammont and Reresby. ]

[Footnote 129: The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in
a large class of words, the O was pronounced like A. Thus Lord was
pronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a great
master of this court tune, as Roger North calls it; and Titus Oates
affected it in the hope of passing for a fine gentleman. Examen, 77,
254. ]

[Footnote 130: Lettres sur les Anglois; Tom Brown's Tour; Ward's London
Spy; The Character of a Coffee House, 1673; Rules and Orders of the
Coffee House, 1674; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675; A Satyr against
Coffee; North's Examen, 138; Life of Guildford, 152; Life of Sir Dudley
North, 149; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published by Curll in 1715. The
liveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country Mouse. There
is a remarkable passage about the influence of the coffee house orators
in Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685. ]

[Footnote 131: Century of inventions, 1663, No. 68. ]

[Footnote 132: North's Life of Guildford, 136. ]

[Footnote 133: Thoresby's Diary Oct. 21,1680, Aug. 3, 1712. ]

[Footnote 134: Pepys's Diary, June 12 and 16,1668. ]

[Footnote 135: Ibid. Feb. 28, 1660. ]

[Footnote 136: Thoresby's Diary, May 17,1695. ]

[Footnote 137: Ibid. Dec. 27,1708. ]

[Footnote 138: Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas
Browne, 1662; Cotton's Angler, 1676. ]

[Footnote 139: Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30, 1685,
Jan. 1, 1686. ]

[Footnote 140: Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Roads; History of Hawkhurst,
in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica. ]

[Footnote 141: Annals of Queen Anne, 1703, Appendix, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 142: 15 Car. II. c. 1. ]

[Footnote 143: The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth
in many petitions which appear in the Commons' Journal of 172 5/6. How
fierce an opposition was offered to the new system may be learned from
the Gentleman's Magazine of 1749. ]

[Footnote 144: Postlethwaite's Dict. , Roads. ]

[Footnote 145: Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England,
In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse. ]

[Footnote 146: Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw. ]

[Footnote 147: Anthony a Wood's Life of himself. ]

[Footnote 148: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list
of stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled Angliae
Metropolis, 1690. ]

[Footnote 149: John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches,
1672. These reason were afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "The
Grand Concern of England explained, 1673. " Cresset's attack on stage
coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted. ]

[Footnote 150: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen,
105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671. ]

[Footnote 151: See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687,
Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of
an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at
Colchester in March, 1688, is highly curious. ]

[Footnote 152: Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's
coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes sir, and at White's too. --Beaux' Stratagem. ]

[Footnote 153: Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same
description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad
which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself
thus before the Judge:

"What say you now, my honoured Lord
What harm was there in this?
Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred
By brave, freehearted Biss.
"]

[Footnote 154: Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the
execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I. ]

[Footnote 155: See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's
Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's
account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English
inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. ]

[Footnote 156: Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England,
1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August
15, 1687. ]

[Footnote 157: Lond. Gaz. , Sept. 14, 1685. ]

[Footnote 158: Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3,
1680. ]

[Footnote 159: Anglias Metropolis, 1690. ]

[Footnote 160: Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9;
Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV. ]

[Footnote 161: I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year
1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000£. ; and
the net receipt was about 1,200,000£. The number of letters conveyed by
post was 478,000,000. (1857). ]

[Footnote 162: London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680. ]

[Footnote 163: There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique
collection of these papers in the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 164: For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about
the important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the
trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops. ]

[Footnote 165: Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of
newsletters, see the Examen, 133. ]

[Footnote 166: I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude
to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh
for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he
meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I have never
seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same
compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private
archives The judgment with which sir James in great masses of the
rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was
worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him
in the same mine. ]

[Footnote 167: Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing
houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the
eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few
years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties
in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire. ]

[Footnote 168: Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of
Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial. ]

[Footnote 169: Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his
whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even
when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were
unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is
mentioned by Roger North in his life of his brother John. ]

[Footnote 170: One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of
James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop,
was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as a
superior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English
Bible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster
Abbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own hand, "This book was
given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R. "]

[Footnote 171: Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek
professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of
the Greek tongue among the academical clergy. ]

[Footnote 172: Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,

"For, though to smelter words of Greek
And Latin be the rhetorique
Of pedants counted, and vainglorious,
To smatter French is meritorious. "]

[Footnote 173: The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem
on the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly could
not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any foreign
tongue:--

"Hither in summer evenings you repair
To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air. "]

[Footnote 174: Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his
usual force and keenness. ]

[Footnote 175: The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition
of Dryden. ]

[Footnote 176: See the Life of Southern. by Shiels. ]

[Footnote 177: See Rochester's Trial of the Poets. ]

[Footnote 178: Some Account of the English Stage. ]

[Footnote 179: Life of Southern, by Shiels. ]

[Footnote 180: If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would
advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to
observe that it was spoken by a woman. ]

[Footnote 181: See particularly Harrington's Oceana. ]

[Footnote 182: See Sprat's History of the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 183: Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 184:

"Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world secretly pry. ']
--Annus Mirabilis, 164]

[Footnote 185: North's Life of Guildford. ]

[Footnote 186: Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667. ]

[Footnote 187: Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who,
between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity to
the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the Royal
Society, and the Elephant in the Moon. ]

[Footnote 188: The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that
age tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described by
Aubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685. ]

[Footnote 189: Sprat's History of the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 190: Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31,
1683; North's Life of Guildford. ]

[Footnote 191: The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned
in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting. ]

[Footnote 192: Petty's Political Arithmetic. ]

[Footnote 193: Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4; Archaeologia, vol. xi. ]

[Footnote 194: Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer
of the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685; 2d
edition, 1686. ]

[Footnote 195: Cullum's History of Hawsted. ]

[Footnote 196: Ruggles on the Poor. ]

[Footnote 197: See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the
Dutch Deputies dated August 2-12, 1653. ]

[Footnote 198: The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple.
See Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii. ]

[Footnote 199: This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year
is not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date
sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The master
clothier is introduced speaking as follows:

"In former ages we used to give,
So that our workfolks like farmers did live;
But the times are changed, we will make them know.

"We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day,
Though a shilling they deserve if they kind their just pay;
If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small,
We bid them choose whether they'll work at all.
And thus we forgain all our wealth and estate,
By many poor men that work early and late.
Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave;
We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave.
Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease,
We go when we will, and we come when we please. "]

[Footnote 200: Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political
Arithmetic, chapter viii. ; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method; Firmin's
Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to be observed that
Firmin was an eminent philanthropist. ]

[Footnote 201: King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly
estimated the common people of England at 880,000 families. Of these
families 440,000, according to him ate animal food twice a week. The
remaining 440,000, ate it not at all, or at most not oftener than once a
week. ]

[Footnote 202: Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, Appendix
B. No. 2, Appendix C. No 1, 1848. Of the two estimates of the poor rate
mentioned in the text one was formed by Arthur Moore, the other, some
years later, by Richard Dunning. Moore's estimate will be found in
Davenant's Essay on Ways and Means; Dunning's in Sir Frederic Eden's
valuable work on the poor. King and Davenant estimate the paupers
and beggars in 1696, at the incredible number of 1,330,000 out of a
population of 5,500,000. In 1846 the number of persons who received
relief appears from the official returns to have been only 1,332,089 out
of a population of about 17,000,000. It ought also to be observed that,
in those returns, a pauper must very often be reckoned more than once.
I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled "Giving
Alms no Charity," and the Greenwich tables which will be found in Mr.
M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary under the head Prices. ]

[Footnote 203: The deaths were 23,222. Petty's Political Arithmetic. ]

[Footnote 204: Burnet, i. 560. ]

[Footnote 205: Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit. ]

[Footnote 206: Tom Brown describes such a scene in lines which I do not
venture to quote. ]

[Footnote 207: Ward's London Spy. ]

[Footnote 208: Pepys's Diary, Dec. 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667. ]

[Footnote 209: Burnet, i, 606; Spectator, No. 462; Lords' Journals,
October 28, 1678; Cibber's Apology. ]

[Footnote 210: Burnet, i. 605, 606, Welwood, North's Life of Guildford,
251. ]

[Footnote 211: I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever
I give only one date, I follow the old style, which was, in the
seventeenth century, the style of England; but I reckon the year from
the first of January. ]

[Footnote 212: Saint Everemond, passim; Saint Real, Memoires de la
Duchesse de Mazarin; Rochester's Farewell; Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 6,
1676, June 11, 1699. ]

[Footnote 213: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 28, 1684-5, Saint Evremond's Letter
to Dery. ]

[Footnote 214: Id. , February 4, 1684-5. ]

[Footnote 215: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170; The true
Patriot vindicated, or a Justification of his Excellency the E-of
R-; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Books prove that Burnet had good
intelligence. ]

[Footnote 216: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683. ]

[Footnote 217: Dugdale's Correspondence. ]

[Footnote 218: Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713. ]

[Footnote 219: See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillon
and Burnet say that Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts of
Parliament made against priests; but this is a mistake. ]

[Footnote 220: Clark's Life of James the Second, i, 746. Orig. Mem. ;
Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 1-18, 1685; Van Citters's Despatches of Feb.
3-13 and Feb. 1-16. Huddleston's Narrative; Letters of Philip, second
Earl of Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, First
Series. iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot MS. ; Burnet, i. 606:
Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 1684-5: Welwood's Memoires 140; North's Life of
Guildford. 252; Examen, 648; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's Threnodia
Augustalis; Sir H. Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See
also a fragment of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is
printed in the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnet
an impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any candid
and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I have seen in
the British Museum, and also in the Library of the Royal Institution, a
curious broadside containing an account of the death of Charles. It will
be found in the Somers Collections. The author was evidently a zealous
Roman Catholic, and must have had access to good sources of information.
I strongly suspect that he had been in communication, directly or
indirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length; but the
initials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said
that the D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother
by P. M. A. C. F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last
five letters. It is some consolation that Sir Walter Scott was
equally unsuccessful. (1848. ) Since the first edition of this work
was published, several ingenious conjectures touching these mysterious
letters have been communicated to me, but I am convinced that the true
solution has not yet been suggested. (1850. ) I still greatly
doubt whether the riddle has been solved. But the most plausible
interpretation is one which, with some variations, occurred, almost at
the same time, to myself and to several other persons; I am inclined to
read "Pere Mansuete A Cordelier Friar. " Mansuete, a Cordelier, was
then James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it peculiarly belonged
to remind James of a sacred duty which had been culpably neglected. The
writer of the broadside must have been unwilling to inform the world
that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to perish had
been snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of
loose character. It is therefore not unlikely that he would prefer a
fiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could not
fail to give scandal. (1856. )----It should seem that no transactions in
history ought to be more accurately known to us than those which
took place round the deathbed of Charles the Second. We have several
relations written by persons who were actually in his room. We have
several relations written by persons who, though not themselves
eyewitnesses, had the best opportunity of obtaining information from
eyewitnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast mass of materials
into a consistent narrative will find the task a difficult one. Indeed
James and his wife, when they told the story to the nuns of Chaillot,
could not agree as to some circumstances. The Queen said that, after
Charles had received the last sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewed
their exhortations. The King said that nothing of the kind took place.
"Surely," said the Queen, "you told me so yourself. " "It is impossible
that I have told you so," said the King, "for nothing of the sort
happened. "----It is much to be regretted that Sir Henry Halford should
have taken so little trouble ascertain the facts on which he pronounced
judgment. He does not seem to have been aware of the existence of the
narrative of James, Barillon, and Huddleston. ----As this is the first
occasion on which I cite the correspondence of the Dutch ministers
at the English court, I ought here to mention that a series of their
despatches, from the accession of James the Second to his flight,
forms one of the most valuable parts of the Mackintosh collection.
The subsequent despatches, down to the settlement of the government in
February, 1689, I procured from the Hague. The Dutch archives have been
far too little explored. They abound with information interesting in the
highest degree to every Englishman. They are admirably arranged and they
are in the charge of gentlemen whose courtesy, liberality and zeal for
the interests of literature, cannot be too highly praised. I wish to
acknowledge, in the strongest manner, my own obligations to Mr. De Jonge
and to Mr. Van Zwanne. ]

[Footnote 221: Clarendon mentions this calumny with just scorn.