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In considering the manners and customs of London during the seventeenth century we are met with the difficulty that a long civil war, followed by a visitation of Plague and a dreadful Fire, cuts the periods into two parts, and that after the war is over and the King restored we find great changes, in religious thought and ideas, in manners and customs, in society and fashions. The seventeenth corresponds in this respect with the nineteenth century; in our own time we have emerged out of eighteenth-century ideas, which prevailed until displaced by the silent though rapid revolution of the Victorian age. In the seventeenth century there is a similar revolution, but violent and created by the sword.

The City of 1670, as we have seen by our study of the map, resembled in very few details the London of 1640. We must endeavour to bear that point very carefully in mind. And if we take the latter, rather than the former half of the century for consideration, it is because the former half offers little change from the London of Queen Elizabeth.

The rents of houses varied, of course, with the site and the size. It would appear that for £30 a year one could rent a house of moderate size in any but the most expensive parts of the town. On Ludgate Hill or in Cheapside the rents were a great deal higher.

Of the furniture in such a house I have an inventory belonging to the year 1680. There were four bedrooms. One of these, the principal room, was furnished with a carved bedstead, which had a canopy and a valence; curtains, a looking-glass, and four chairs. The other three bedrooms were less splendidly furnished. There was, however, a plentiful supply of blankets, pillows, bolsters, and feather beds. There were two parlours. One of these was hung with tapestry; curtains of green cloth and a green carpet adorned it; it contained two tables, a clock case, a leather chair, a plush chair, six green cloth chairs, and two green stools. There was a cupboard and one of the tables had a drawer. The other parlour was more simply furnished, and was hung with grey linsey woolsey and gilt leather.

Carpets were advertised for sale in 1660; they were Turkey carpets and intended for the cover of tables; for the floors there was matting in those houses where rushes were not still used. Oil-cloth was introduced about the same time; made “after the German manner” either of linen, cloth, taffeta, or wool.

Hangings of leather and of velvet were commonly used; the furniture with tables not laid on trestles but provided with carved and decorated supports; chairs with inlaid work and carving richly upholstered; couches, sideboards, stools, all carved; paintings richly framed hanging from the walls show a great advance on the Tudor time.

The inventory of the kitchen shows that pewter was the material commonly used for plates and dishes. There is no mention of china ware. Probably it was kept for the use of the master and mistress in the parlour cupboard. There are wooden platters, pewter candlesticks and pewter pint pots. And there is no mention of forks. Yet forks by that time were well known. In 1652 Heylin speaks of “the use of silver forks which is by some of our spruce gallants taken up of late.” It would seem, therefore, that twenty-five years later they had not got into general use.

The family took breakfast at eight. The meal consisted of cold meat, small beer, and oat cake. This was not an invariable rule. Pepys once breakfasts off bread and butter, sweetmeats, and strong wine; on another occasion he has oysters, anchovies, and neats’ tongues. When Cosmo, Duke of Tuscany, visited England he had breakfast with a country gentleman, and it consisted almost entirely of Italian wine. Archbishop Sancroft used to take two cups of coffee and a pipe of tobacco. A learned physician recommended for breakfast two poached eggs, bread and butter, and a cup of claret.

The amount of small beer consumed in every household was enormous. It must be remembered that it was not only the national beverage, but, for a great many people, the only beverage. Children drank it as well as adults; tea was as yet only a luxury or a fashion. The household of which I am speaking drank three quarts of beer a day for every member. It seems impossible. We must remember, however, that people drank a great deal more then than now—a thing of which I have no direct proof, yet of which I am perfectly satisfied; that breakfast, dinner, and supper would easily account for two quarts, and the remaining quart was spread over the rest of the day. Benjamin Franklin’s fellows in the printing office drank each his three quarts a day.

Ale, of which there were various kinds, and wine were served in the best parlour at dinner. On the variety of drinks Chamberlayne speaks:—

“Since the late Rebellion, England hath abounded in variety of Drinks (as it did lately in variety of Religions) above any nation in Europe. Besides all sorts of the best wines from Spain, France, Italy, Germany, there are sold in London above twenty sorts of other Drinks, as Brandy, Coffee, Chocolate, Tee, Aromatick, Mum, Sider, Perry, Mede, Metheglin, Beer, Ale, many sorts of Ales, very different, as Cock, Stepony, Stich-back, Hull, North-Devon, Sambidge, Betony, Scurvy-grass, Sage-Ale, Colledge-Ale, etc., a piece of wantonness whereof none of our Ancestors were ever guilty.”

Howell sends a bottle of Metheglin to a friend with a recommendation to use it for a morning draught. What were the heads of our seventeenth-century ancestors made of that they could drink this heavy, powerful stuff before breakfast?

“To inaugurate a good and jovial New Year to you, I send you a morning’s draught, viz. a bottle of Metheglin. Neither Sir John Barleycorn or Bacchus had anything to do with it; but it is the pure juice of the Bee, the laborious Bee, and King of Insects. The Druids and old British Bards were wont to take a Carouse hereof before they entered into their Speculations; and if you do so when your Fancy labours with any thing, it will do you no Hurt, and I know your Fancy to be very good.

But this Drink always carries a kind of State with it, for it must be attended with a brown Toast; nor will it admit but of one good Draught, and that in the morning; if more, it will keep a-humming in the head, and so speak too much of the House it comes from, I mean the Hive, as I gave a caution elsewhere.”

Let us go on to repeat an observation forced upon us in every age, that London has always been a great place for good living. We learn from Pepys what a profusion of food was offered at a dinner given at his own house. The quantity of food habitually taken was much greater then than now. People got up earlier; though they took little exercise for the sake of exercise, yet they were in the open air a great deal; on the river quiescent; in the gardens sitting, strolling, or playing bowls; they all grew sleek and fat. These people had probably taken very little breakfast, a few radishes, a draught of small ale or claret, a piece of bread. The hour of dinner had advanced; it was now served at one o’clock, or sometimes at two; it was the principal event of the day. Food was simpler and less composed of made dishes than in the days of Whittington and Picard. We find served roast chicken, veal, mutton and beef, tongue, salmon, stewed carp, pies of goose, fish, turkey, eels, and everything else. The people served their dinner in courses, each course being, in fact, after the ancient custom, a complete dinner in itself. There was a great deal of dining together, as Pepys lets us see continually, and after dinner they sat and talked and drank. In the matter of drink they were catholic. It does not seem that the merchants did much business after dinner, for then began the time of rest, recreation, and drinking; then came the theatre or the tavern, later on the coffee-house, though in the evening Pepys, who was an industrious official, got through a good deal of work.

Fresh meat was scarce, and even impossible to get, in the winter. In the country, and perhaps in town as well, housewives had to lay in a great stock of beef for pickling; it was bought in pieces and in quantities of 70 lbs. at a time for the pickling tub; salt beef was the standard winter dish, garnished with a great quantity of parsnips as a corrective. Children and servants had no forks; small beer was brewed at home, and gentlemen thought no more of a pint of wine than working men think now of a pint of beer.

The fashion of putting the dinner on the table at once began to be changed soon after the Restoration, when the dishes were presented one after the other in some sort of order; but I find in boarding-houses and in private houses, long after this, the custom of putting everything on the table at the same time.

At dinner the women sat together at the upper end and helped every one, conversing freely the while.

We find some excellent specimens of dinners in the Diary of Pepys. Here is the menu of a grand dinner (April 4, 1665):—

“A Fricasse of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps on a dish, a great dish of a side of a lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content.”

About prices I find that a leg of mutton cost half-a-crown; a hand of pork eighteenpence; butter was eightpence a pound; sugar, sixpence; candles, fivepence; bacon, sevenpence; rice, sevenpence; tea was sixty shillings a pound. They seem to have had all our vegetables, all our fruit, and all our spices. But the fruit lasted only a short time; oranges appeared at Christmas, but were then unripe and sour; they lasted till April or May; strawberries lasted three or four weeks; cherries about the same time. They knew how to preserve fruit for a short time; and they pickled everything, including nasturtium buds, lime-tree buds, and elder roots. In the stillroom the housewife made wine out of cowslips, gooseberries, raspberries, and any kind of fruit; she also made certain cordials and strong waters; and she made plague water, hysterical water, fever water, and many other efficacious remedies in case of need.

The supper, of which very little is said, was served at five or six; it was, like breakfast, a mere informal stay. Cold meat with a “sallet,” a tankard of strong ale, and a pipe of tobacco generally formed this meal.

As additional notes on food, one may note that asparagus was common, but as yet very dear; goose-pie was a favourite dish; buttered shrimps were also much in demand; vinegar and pepper were taken with roast beef; the potato was in use since the year 1586, but as yet by no means universally known; roast mutton was stuffed with oysters; young peacock was a stately dish, served only on great occasions; oysters were stewed with white wine; pigeons were stuffed, in the season, with green gooseberries; radishes were taken with meat as a salad; grapes were boiled in butter and served with sips of bread and sugar; turkey was stuffed with cloves; hot salmon was thought unwholesome; dates were put into broth; they used habitually mushrooms, sorrel, capers, and snails.

When a man gave a great dinner, he did not expect it to be prepared at home but ordered it at the cooks’ shops, whence it was carried through the streets in a kind of triumphal procession, a server with an apron and a white cap going before. The fiddlers and the trumpeters went the round of the cooks’ shops every day in order to learn where their services might be accepted.

In Howell’s Letters we read how, on one occasion, he finds a cook for a lady, and thus describes his qualities:—

“You spoke to me for a Cook who had seen the World abroad, and I think the Bearer hereof will suit your Ladyship’s Turn. He can marinate Fish, make Gellies; he is excellent for a piquant Sauce and the Haugot; besides, Madam, he is passing good for an Olla. He will tell your Ladyship that the reverend Matron the Olla Podrida hath Intellectuals and Senses; Mutton, Beef, and Bacon are to her as the Will, Understanding, and Memory are to the Soul; Cabbage, Turneps, Artichokes, Potatoes and Dates are her five senses, and Pepper the Common-sense; she must have Marrow to keep Life in her, and some Birds to make her light; by all means she must go adorned with Chains of Sausages. He is also good at larding Meat after the Mode of France.”

The reign of the tavern still continued. Most of the citizens frequented the tavern every day. It was complained that the tradesman, who ought to have been in his shop, too often spent his mornings in the tavern, leaving his shop to the care of his ’prentices. There were many men in London who, being visitors, strangers, unmarried, or houseless, habitually took their dinner at the tavern.

The ordinary price for dinners at a tavern was a shilling, but one might pay a great deal more; dinners could be ordered for five shillings, or even ten shillings a head. The most fashionable tavern was Locket’s at Charing Cross, where is now Drummond’s Bank. Adam Locket started his tavern in the reign of Charles the Second; he died in 1688, and was succeeded by his son, Edward Locket. It was a very famous tavern. Cunningham quotes a column and a half of contemporary mention of Locket’s house. Here is one from Price and Montague, The Hind and Panther, Transversed:—

It can hardly be pretended that tea was a national drink in the seventeenth century. It was not even a fashionable beverage. It was offered as a curious foreign drink, being prepared with great care and according to rule, and taken with a certain amount of anxiety as to the possible consequences. Precautions were taken against these consequences. Thus in Congreve’s Way of the World, Mrs. Millicent’s lover allows her to be “Sole Empress of her tea-table,” a reservation which sufficiently indicates the want of confidence in the beverage, and she must promise to banish from the table “orange brandy, aniseed, cinnamon, citron and Barbadoes water, together with ratafia and the most noble spirit of clary.” The price of tea, which was then about fifty shillings a pound, though it rapidly went down, prevented any but the rich from taking it. Long after this it is noticed that the City ladies took brandy after their tea as a corrective. The earliest mention of tea in this country is an advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus of 1658, which is as follows:—

“That excellent, and by all physicians approved, China drink, called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations Tay, alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head Coffee-House, in Sweeting’s Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London.”

And Thomas Garway or Garraway at the same time issued a broadside in which he offers tea to the public at sixteen shillings to fifty shillings the pound and proclaims its virtues:—

“The Quality is moderately hot, proper for winter or summer. The drink is declared to be most wholesome, preserving in perfect health until extreme old age. The particular virtues are these. It maketh the body active and lusty. It helpeth the headache, giddiness and heaviness thereof. It removeth the obstructions of the spleen. It is very good against the stone and gravel.... It taketh away the difficulty of breathing, opening obstructions. It is good against lippitude distillations, and cleareth the sight. It removeth lassitude, and cleanseth and purifieth adust humours and a hot liver. It is good against crudities, strengthening the weakness of the stomach, causing good appetite and digestion, and particularly for men of a corpulent body, and such as are great eaters of flesh. It vanquisheth heavy dreams, easeth the brain, and strengtheneth the memory. It overcometh superfluous sleep, and prevents sleepiness in general, a draught of the infusion being taken, so that, without trouble, whole nights may be spent in study without hurt to the body. It prevents and cures agues, surfeits, and fevers by infusing a fit quantity of the leaf, thereby provoking a most gentle vomit and breathing of the pores, and hath been given with wonderful success. It (being prepared and drunk with milk and water) strengtheneth the inward parts and prevents consumptions.... It is good for colds, dropsies, and scurvies, and expelleth infection.... And that the virtue and excellence of the leaf and drink are many and great is evident and manifest by the high esteem and use of it (especially of late years) by the physicians and knowing men of France, Italy, Holland, and other parts of Christendom, and in England it hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds the pound-weight; and in respect of its former scarceness and dearness, it hath been only used as a regalia in high treatments and entertainments, and presents made thereof to princes and grandees till the year 1657” (Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. ii. p. 666).

Rugge’s Diurnal says that tea was sold in every street in London in 1659. That statement we cannot believe, especially when we are reminded that a couple of pounds was a present fit for the King to receive. A couple of pounds of a commodity sold in every street in London? On the contrary, there is every kind of evidence that in the seventeenth century tea was perhaps the fashion, but never became a national beverage. Pepys mentions it once or twice, but tea formed no part of his ordinary diet. Evelyn, I believe, does not mention it at all. In the winter of 1683–1684 the Thames was frozen over, and in the fair that was held upon the river, tea, among other things, was sold. No one, I think, ever imagined that tea would become the national beverage, excluding beer from breakfast and from the afternoon meal. A learned physician, Dr. Lister, writing at the close of the century, says that tea and coffee “are permitted by God’s Providence for lessening the number of mankind by shortening life, as a kind of silent plague.” Many attacks were made upon the tea-table. It took men away from the pipe and bottle; it brought together men and women inclined for vice and gave them an opportunity; it was very costly; it offered a drink only fit for women; it destroyed the strength of man and the beauty of woman. The hostility to tea lingered during the whole of the eighteenth century.

In 1652 the first coffee-house was opened in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, by one Pasqua Rosee, a native of Ragusa, servant to a Turkey merchant who brought him from Smyrna. Coffee had been introduced into Oxford a little earlier. The following is a copy of Rosee’s handbill (see Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. i. p. 170):—

THE VERTUE OF THE COFFEE DRINK

First made and publickly sold in England by Pasqua Rosee.

“The grain or berry called coffee, groweth upon little trees only in the deserts of Arabia. It is brought from thence, and drunk generally throughout all the Grand Seignour’s dominions. It is a simple, innocent thing, composed into a drink, by being dried in an oven, and ground to powder, and boiled up with spring water, and about half a pint of it to be drunk fasting an hour before, and not eating an hour after, and to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the skin off the mouth, or raise any blisters by reason of that heat.

The Turks’ drink at meals and other times is usually water, and their diet consists much of fruit; the crudities whereof are very much corrected by this drink.

The quality of this drink is cold and dry; and though it be drier, yet it neither heats, nor inflames more than hot posset. It so incloseth the orifice of the stomach, and fortifies the heat within, that it is very good to help digestion; and therefore of great use to be taken about three or four o’clock afternoon, as well as in the morning. It much quickens the spirits, and makes the heart lightsome; it is good against sore eyes, and the better if you hold your head over it and take in the steam that way. It suppresseth fumes exceedingly, and therefore is good against the headache, and will very much stop any defluxion of rheums, that distil from the head upon the stomach, and so prevent and help consumptions and the cough of the lungs.

It is excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout, and scurvy. It is known by experience to be better than any other drying drink for people in years, or children that have any running humours upon them, as the king’s evil, etc. It is a most excellent remedy against the spleen, hypochondriac winds, and the like. It will prevent drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one have occasion to watch, and therefore you are not to drink of it after supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for three or four hours.

It is observed that in Turkey, where this is generally drunk, that they are not troubled with the stone, gout, dropsy, or scurvy, and that their skins are exceeding clear and white. It is neither laxative nor restringent.

Made and sold in St. Michael’s Alley in Cornhill, by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.”

Evelyn (writing of the year 1637) says:—

“There came in my tyme to the Coll: one Nathaniel Couopios out of Greece from Cyrill the Patriarch of Constantinople who, returning many years afterwards was made (as I understand) Bishop of Smyrna. He was the first man I ever saw drink coffee, which custom came not into England for thirty years after.”

The coffee-houses, thus begun, multiplied rapidly. The new drink, which did not intoxicate, became popular; the coffee-houses were places where men could sit and talk without getting drunk; it was a cheap amusement, and, in a time of great political agitation and excitement, the coffee-house became a power of immense influence. For this reason the Government became alarmed, and, in 1675, endeavoured to suppress the new institution. The attempt was a failure. The coffee-houses were already the favourite meeting-places of men of all professions and of all opinions. In the graver places where physicians, divines, and responsible merchants met, the conversation was serious over coffee and tobacco. In other coffee-houses the company were diverted with songs, music, and even tumbling.

Some of the coffee-houses offered the attraction of a museum of curiosities, probably things brought from the East by sailors.

I have before me one of the earliest tracts on the subject of coffee. It is a doggerel poem dated 1665, called “The Character of a Coffee-House.” How is one to know a coffee house? By the signs:—

What are the benefits conferred by coffee? The coffee-man tells you:—

The company are next treated at length. There are the usurer, the furiosol, the virtuoso, the player, the country clown, the pragmatick, the phanatick, the knight, the mechanick, the dealer in old shoes, one in an ague, the Frenchman, the Dutchman, the Spaniard:—

The chocolate-house was another place of resort. It was noted for its decorations, being not only beautifully painted and gilt, but also provided with looking-glasses all round the room. But as yet the people were afraid of taking even a cup of chocolate without a dram to fortify the stomach. “Bring in,” says the gallant, “two dishes of chocolate and a glass of cinnamon water.” And the City ladies, if they invited friends to a tea-drinking, finished with cordials to counteract any bad effects.

The use of tobacco had by this time become universal. SorbiÈre says that men spent half their time over tobacco. Even women and children smoked pipes; some men took tobacco and pipes to bed with them in case of being sleepless. I find in one of Howell’s Letters a dissertation on the use of tobacco, which is more instructive than any other contemporary document:—

“To usher in again old Janus, I send you a parcel of Indian perfume, which the Spaniard calls the Holy Herb, in regard of the various Virtues it hath; but we call it Tobacco; I will not say it grew under the King of Spain’s Window, but I am told it was gathered near his Gold-Mines of Potosi (where they report, that in some Places there is more of that Ore than Earth), therefore it must needs be precious Stuff; if moderately and seasonably taken (as I find you always do) ’tis good for many Things; it helps Digestion, taken a-while after Meat; a leaf or two being steeped o’er Night in a little White-wine is a Vomit that never fails in its Operations; it is a good Companion to one that converseth with dead Men; for if one hath been poring long upon a book, or is toil’d with the Pen, and stupify’d with study, it quickeneth him, and dispels those Clouds that usually o’erset the Brain. The smoke of it is one of the wholesomest scents that is, against all contagious Airs, for it o’er-masters all other smells, as King James, they say, found true, when being once a Hunting, a Shower of Rain drove him into a Pigsty for Shelter, where he caus’d a Pipeful to be taken on purpose; It cannot endure a Spider or a Flea, with such like Vermin, and if your Hawk be troubled with any such being blown into his feathers, it frees him; it is good to fortify and to preserve the sight, the smoke being let in round about the Balls of the Eyes once a week, and frees them from all rheums, driving them back by way of Repurcussion; being taken backward ’tis excellent good against the Cholic, and taken into the Stomach, it will heat and cleanse it; for I could instance in a great Lord (my Lord of Sunderland, President of York) who told me that he taking it downward into his Stomach, it made him cast up an Imposthume, Bag and all, which had been a long time engendering out of a Bruise he had received at Foot-ball, and so preserv’d his life for many years. Now to descend from the substance of the smoke to the ashes, ’tis well known that the medicinal virtues thereof are very many; but they are so common, that I will spare the inserting of them here; but if one would try a pretty conclusion, how much smoke there is in a Pound of Tobacco, the Ashes will tell him; for let a pound be exactly weighed, and the ashes kept charily, and weighed afterwards, what wants of a Pound Weight in the Ashes cannot be deny’d to have been smoke, which evaporated into Air. I have been told that Sir Walter Raleigh won a Wager of Queen Elizabeth upon this Nicety.

The Spaniards and Irish take it most in powder or smutchin, and it mightily refreshes the Brain, and I believe there’s as much taken this way in Ireland, as there is in Pipes in England; one shall commonly see the serving-maid upon the washing-block, and the swain upon the plough-share, when they are tired with Labour, take out their boxes of Smutchin, and draw it into their Nostrils with a Quill, and it will beget new spirits in them, with a fresh Vigor to fall to their Work again. In Barbary, and other parts of Africk, it is wonderful what a small pill of Tobacco will do; for those who used to ride post through the sandy Deserts, where they meet not with anything that’s potable or edible, sometimes three Dayes together, they use to carry small Balls or Pills of Tobacco, which being put under the Tongue, it affords them a perpetual Moisture, and takes off the Appetite for some days.”

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On the homely subject of washing an excellent little paper may be found in Chambers’s Book of Days. What were the “things” put out for the lavender or laundress? The common people wore neither shirts nor socks nor any under-clothing at all. Towels, napkins, table-cloths, sheets, pillow-cases, were the things that were washed, in all houses except the very poorest; the mediÆval inventories of furniture show that pillows and cushions were much used in every house. Of personal things linen shirts were not anciently worn even by great and rich nobles; they wore their splendid velvets and silks next to the skin; the poor man was dressed in black coarse woollen with, if he were fortunate, some kind of cloak: there were no night-shirts. When ladies began to use night-dresses they were of costly material which would not wash. Anne Boleyn slept in a night-dress of black satin, bound with black taffeta and edged with black velvet. Queen Elizabeth slept in velvet lined in fur.

A “Washing Tally” preserved at Haddon Hall, supposed to be of Charles the First’s time, enumerates all the different articles then sent to the wash. They were ruffles, bandes, cuffes, “handkercher,” caps, shirts, half-shirts, boot-hose, tops, socks, sheets, pillow-cases, table-cloths, napkins, and towels.

Most of these names require no explanation. The band was the white collar round the neck, which was either starched to stand up or else it lay upon the shoulders. The box that kept them was called a band-box. Boot-hose were like “tights” of the present day, drawn up the whole length of the leg. The sock, sometimes embroidered, was drawn over the hose to the calf of the leg. It was customary when the washing was done at home for the women to begin at midnight or very early in the morning. Pepys complains of being disturbed in the night by the laundresses. The basket in which the linen was thrown was called the “buck” or the “buck-basket.”

The Puritanic fashions of dress, manners, and speech still continued in the City. While the Court party wore their hair long and curled, the Puritans cropped theirs close; they drawled in their speech; they interlarded their discourse with texts and allusions to Scripture; they still, though the power had gone from them, denounced all sorts of merry-makings, all sports, all festivals and games as damnable; still they continued to find their chief joy and solace at a sermon. There was reason for this; for while their thoughts were mainly occupied with twisting texts into the support of their favourite doctrines, the preacher, who was engaged in exactly the same pursuit, gave them materials for the maintenance of their doctrines, or for discussion and controversy afterwards. The women, it is said, took down the principal points in shorthand, being as much interested and as keen in controversy as the men.

I do not know any period in which it could not be said that the dress of the gallants and courtiers, as well as that of the ladies, was not extravagant and costly. Certainly the dress of the gallants in the seventeenth century, except for the fifteen years of Puritan austerity, was costly and extravagant enough to please any one. It does not appear, however, that the extravagance in dress descended to the City or to the City madams. In the time of Elizabeth the excessive adornment of the latter was the subject of many satirical pens. Under Charles II. the sobriety of the men, still more or less under Puritan influence, was reflected in the quiet dress of the women. As for the Court ladies, Evelyn observes that they paint; Pepys finds patches coming in with the Restoration; he also notices, but without admiration, the hair frizzed up to the ears; in 1662 he says they began to wear perukes—by which I understand some addition to their own hair; next year he observes the introduction of the vizard. In July 1663 he witnesses the riding of the King, Queen, and Court in Hyde Park. “The King and the Queen, who looked in this dress, a white-laced waistcoat and a crimson short petticoat, with her hair dressed À la nÉgligence, mighty pretty, and the King rode hand in hand with her. Here was also my Lady Castlemaine [who] rode among the rest of the ladies: but the King took, methought, no notice of her.... She looked mighty out of humour, and had a yellow plume in her hat, which all took notice of, and yet is very handsome.... I followed them up into Whitehall and into the Queen’s presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another’s by one another’s head and laughing.... But above all Mrs. Stewart in this dress, with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life.”

I do not propose to dwell upon the changes of fashion, because the alterations in a sleeve, or in the length of a lady’s waist, would carry us too far and would be of little profit. But there was one change in fashion which one must not pass over, because it exercised an influence upon the whole national character. This was the introduction of the peruke, perruque, or wig. Ladies began to wear wigs, presumably, as they do now, to conceal the ravages of time, and the falling off of the natural hair. Malcolm is of opinion that the wig was a natural reaction against the Roundhead rule. For the Roundheads cropped their hair and the Cavaliers wore it long in curls. Therefore, he who had a scanty supply of curls, or was bald, to escape being taken for one of the opposite camp, put on a wig; next he excited envy by the fulness and length of his curls; finally all wore wigs, and the fashion set in which lasted a hundred years, and, as regards the clergy, for nearly two hundred years. A good deal might be said for the use of a wig. It was, to begin with, an age when the heads of all the lower classes, servants and working people, were always filled with vermin—one learns that even so late as a hundred years ago it was almost impossible to keep the children of quite respectable people clean in this respect. Next, the time and trouble of having the head dressed and the curls twisted—for not even a Cavalier could always depend upon a natural curl—were saved by sending the wig to the hairdresser. Again, when everybody wore a shaven face, the adoption of the wig went far to conceal and disguise one’s age. Baldness there was none, nor any grey hairs. A man generally had two wigs; a new wig of ordinary make cost about three guineas, but one might pay a great deal more for a superior wig. “Forty guineas a year,” cries an indignant writer, “for periwigs, and but ten to a poor chaplain.” The wigs were at first an imitation of a man’s own hair in colour, with some exaggeration in length; and although cleanliness was one reason for their introduction, they had to be sent to the barbers occasionally in order to be freed from vermin. After the Plague, for a long time, nobody would buy a wig for fear of infection. The fashion was, of course, carried to ridiculous lengths; Lord Foppington, in the Relapse, is said to have a periwig down to his knees; he also says that a periwig should be to a man like a mask to a woman; nothing should be seen but his eyes.” The various kinds of wig belong to the eighteenth century, in which they are treated more fully.

The following are a few more scattered notes on fashion:—

Both men and women carried pocket mirrors; the women had these dangling from their girdles; the men carried them in their hands or in their pockets, and sometimes stuck them in their hats.

It was one of the affectations of the time for the gallants to go abroad with their faces half covered by their cloaks and their hats drawn down. Hence the stage custom of throwing the cloak across from the right to the left.

The coats of inferior functionaries, such as bailiffs or catchpoles, were adorned with pewter buttons.

A country gentleman’s dress consisted of Devonshire Kersey suit, coarse cloth coat, Dutch felt hat, worsted stockings, and neat leather shoes.

All craftsmen wore aprons, but these were different; the blacksmith had a leathern apron, the grocer a white apron, the vintner a blue apron, and so on. One could formerly recognise a man’s trade by his dress and appearance.

I find that this century introduced the use of the nightcap, perhaps for the sake of quiet, because, with the bawling of the watchman, the cry of the chimney-sweep, and the noise of the laundresses, who began about midnight, there was almost as much noise at night as by day.

If men disfigured themselves with wigs, the women heightened their charms, as they believed, by sticking little bits of black taffeta on their faces. The fashion began in the Commonwealth, when ladies began to cut out stars, circles, and even figures representing a coach and four, and stick them upon their cheek, forehead, or chin:—

Like the fashion of the wig, the patch lasted more than a hundred years. Indeed, it lasted even into the nineteenth century. And in 1826, a lady, speaking of a toilet-table, speaks of the patch-boxes upon it. This proves, I take it, that the patch-box still retained its position on the table, though the use of it had been abandoned. I have one of these patch-boxes; it is of silver, about the same size as a snuff-box, but a great deal deeper.

Ladies painted as well as patched. They prepared their faces for the paint with oil. The page—The Silent Woman—says that “my lady kisses me with her oil’d face and puts a peruke on my head.” They seem all to have worn a peruke. Mrs. Otter, according to her husband, has a peruke “like a pound of hemp, made up in shoe threads.” They understood the art of making up. “Her teeth were made on the Blackfriars, both her eyebrows in the Strand, and her hair in Silver Street.... She takes herself asunder when she goes to bed into some twenty boxes; and about noon next day is put together again like a great German clock.”

In walking with a lady the custom was to take her fan and play with it for her. A fine gentleman displayed his fashion and his grace by the way he handled and waved the fan.

There was a pretty custom observed by gentlefolk on the 1st of May. The maypoles had been restored, but the old dances were well-nigh forgotten. The people on this day flocked to Hyde Park; but gentlemen escorted their mistresses into the country to bid welcome to the spring. There was always a collation in the seventeenth century to mark the day or the function, whichever it was.

Kissing was as common as shaking hands. When a man was introduced to a lady he kissed her; men kissed each other. In 1667 Pepys, having made a successful speech, was complimented by Mr. Montagu, who kissed him. It appears that husbands and lovers were not always pleased at this indiscriminate kissing, and there are instances where the ladies rebelled against the custom.

The day of St. Valentine was universally observed. Everybody chose, or received by lot, a valentine. On the eve of the 14th of February the bachelors and maidens assembled together in equal companies; each wrote his or her name on a paper. These were rolled up; the men drew the girls’ names, the girls the men’s. This arrangement gave an opening for some choice, because everybody had the girl whose name he had drawn and the girl who had drawn his name. These matters settled, and every man having his Valentine chosen or assigned, it became the duty of the man to make a present to the girl and to treat her as if she was indeed his mistress. In Pepys’s Diary, however, it is apparent that married men might have their wives for Valentines and that children might have married women. Pepys had his wife for a Valentine two years running. In the first he gave her £5, in the second a Turkey stone set with diamonds. Poets wrote Valentines. Thus in 1629 J. Howell wrote the following pretty lines to his Valentine:—

The May Day observances, revived with the Restoration, were duly honoured. The milkmaids and the sweeps paraded the streets with music. The old custom of going out into the fields to gather May dew was kept up, though one imagines in a formal way only, and not to let good old customs decay. On New Year’s Day presents were made by inferiors to their patrons, by tenants to the nobles, by the nobles to the King.

The observance of Queen Elizabeth’s Day is described in the following letter from John Verney to Sir Ralph Verney, November 20, 1679:—

“Monday being Queen Elizabeth’s coronation day there were vast quantities of bonfires about town, but chief of all was at Temple Bar, over which gate Queen Elizabeth was deck’t up with a Magna Charta and the Protestant religion; there was a devil in a pageant and 4 boys in surplices under him, 6 Jesuits, 4 bishops, 4 archbishops, 2 patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople, several cardinals, besides Franciscans, black and grey friars; there was also a great crucifix, wax candles, and a bell, and 200 porters hired at 2s. a man to carry lights along with the show, which came from the Green Yard in great order thro’ Moor (or Cripple) Gate, and so along London Wall, then up Houndsditch, and so on again at Aldgate, from whence to Temple Bar, where they were disrobed and burnt. ’Tis believed there were above 100,000 spectators, and most say the King was at Townes’ the goldsmith’s; £10 was an ordinary price for a room at Temple Bar” (Walker’s MS. xi. 186).

People of position still maintained a great many servants. In 1634 Evelyn’s father was appointed Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. He had 116 servants in livery, every one in green satin doublets. Several gentlemen and persons of quality waited on him in the same habit. He says, however, that thirty or forty was the usual retinue of a Sheriff. Pepys, in his modest house in the City, apparently had a cook and housemaid, a lady’s maid, and a “girl,” or general assistant. The ’prentice in the tradesman’s house was as we have seen a servant, and did some of the housework. A footman followed a lady who went out into the streets in the daytime; a ’prentice escorted his mistress when she went out to a card party in the evening, or when she went to an evening lecture at her parish church.

When a man was rich enough to set up his coach, part of the furniture was a pair of running footmen; these ran before the coach. The velocity of the machine did not make this exercise a great strain upon their activity; they stopped at the next stage and proclaimed the coming of the great man. Generally they were dressed in white; they carried a cane with a hollow ball at the end, in which was an orange or a lemon to refresh themselves with. When the roads became smooth and the carriages began to run much faster, the running footmen were gradually abolished. They remained, however, till late in the eighteenth century. Howell sends a running footman to a friend. He says:—

“You writ to me lately for a Footman, and I think this Bearer will fit you; I know he can run well, for he hath run away twice from me, but he knew the way back again. Yet tho’ he had a running head as well as running heels (and who will expect a footman to be a stay’s man?) I would not part with him were I not to go post to the north. There be some things in him that answer for his Waggeries; he will come when you call him, go when you bid him, and shut the door after him; he is faithful and stout and a lover of his master; he is a great enemy to all dogs if they bark at him in his running, for I have seen him confront a huge mastiff and knock him down; when you go a country journey, or have him with you a hunting, you must spirit him with liquor.”

The City tradesman kept one kitchenmaid. His wife and daughters made the pies and cakes, and the preserves and the pickles. We have seen the work put upon the apprentice already (p. 186).

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At weddings wheat was scattered on the head of the bride; scarves, gloves, and ribbons of the bride’s colours were presented to the bridesmen; at the church the company carried rosemary; after the ceremony the bride handed the cup around; it contained “sops in wine” hallowed, and was called the knitting cup; afterwards was presented the bride cake, but not in the church; there was a great feast, as sumptuous as the bride’s father could afford; the bride wore her hair on this, her last appearance as a maiden, down her back. She distributed at her wedding, bride laces. At the better houses an epithalamium was pronounced; in the case of rich people there was a masque; in all houses, rich or poor, there was music, there was bride-ale, and there was feasting. There was also fooling of various kinds, with jests not the most seemly, and forms and ceremonies not the most refined, which have long since been abandoned. Even in that time voices were lifted up against the licence of the wedding sports.

Flowers, herbs, and rushes were strewed before the footsteps of the bride on her way to church. It was unlucky if the rain fell upon a wedding, and equally unlucky if the bride failed to weep during the ceremony. The lucky days for weddings were as follows:—

It was unlucky to have the banns called at the end of one quarter and the marriage at the beginning of the next.

The superstitions, indeed, connected with weddings were innumerable. Let it suffice to quote Herrick in the concluding ceremony:—

The funeral customs are described in the following (Antiq. Rep. iv. 585):—

“I met nothing more pleasing to me than the funeral ceremonies at the interment of a My Lord, which mine host procured me the sight of. The relations and friends being assembled in the house of the defunct, the minister advanced into the middle of the chamber, where, before the company, he made a funeral oration, representing the great actions of the deceased, his virtues, his qualities, his titles of nobility, and those of the whole family; so that nothing more could be said towards consoling every one of the company for the great loss they had sustained in this man, and principally the relations, who were seated round the dead body, and whom he assured that he was gone to heaven, the seat of all sorts of happiness, whereas the world that he had just left was replete with misery. It is to be remarked that during this oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of wine, out of which every one drank to the health of the deceased, hoping that he might surmount the difficulties he had to encounter in his road to Paradise, where, by the mercy of God, he was about to enter; on which mercy they founded all their hope, without considering their evil life and that God is just. This being finished, six men took up the corpse, and carried it on their shoulders to the church: it was covered with a large cloth, which the four nearest relations held each by a corner with one hand, and in the other carried a bough. The other relations and friends had in one hand a flambeau, and in the other a bough, marching thus through the street, without singing or saying any prayer, till they came to the church, where, having placed the body on trestles and taken off the cloth from the coffin (which is ordinarily made of fine walnut-tree, handsomely worked and ornamented with iron bandages, chased in the manner of a buffet), the minister then ascended his pulpit, and, every one being seated round about the coffin, which is placed in a kind of parade in the middle of the church, he read a portion of Holy Scripture, concerning the resurrection of the dead, and afterwards sang some psalms, to which all the company answered. After this he descended, having his bough in his hand like the rest of the congregation; this he threw on the dead body when it was put into the grave, as did all the relations, extinguishing their flambeaux in the earth with which the corpse was to be covered. This finished, every one retired to his home without farther ceremony.”

Poor people seem to have been lowered into the grave either quite naked or wrapped in a shroud without any coffin.

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The places of resort in this century, and especially in the reign of Charles the Second, reveal the existence of a new class: that of the fashionable class, the people who live for amusement. They have grown up by degrees; they inhabit a new town lying between the Inns of Court and Hyde Park, which they have built for themselves; they have made a society composed entirely of themselves, frequenting the same coffee-houses and taverns, belonging to the same sets, and following the same kind of life. They have invented the fashionable saunter; they have made the theatre their own; they have introduced the salon and the reception. They gamble a great deal; they lounge a great deal; they make love a great deal; they drink; they dress extravagantly; they practise affectations; they lay bets; they run races; they live, in a word, exactly the same careless, useless, mischievous life which their successors have continued ever since.

Among the other things which we owe to them is the Park.

The old maps of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries represent the area which is now the Green Park and Hyde Park as green fields; these fields formed part of the manors known as Neyte and Hyde, which belonged to the Abbey of Westminster until the reign of Henry the Eighth, when they fell to the Crown, being exchanged for the Priory of Hurley in Berkshire. Henry the Eighth either stocked the fields with deer, or found deer there and ran a fence round the fields so as to enclose them. During the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth centuries Hyde Park was a Royal hunting-ground. In the reign of Charles the First it was also a racecourse. In Cromwell’s time it was a place for driving and for carriage races; under Charles the Second it became a promenade and a drive, just as it is at the present day.

St. James’s Park came into existence later than Hyde Park.

It began with Spring Gardens, named after a spring which here issued from the ground, but was not enough to feed the fountain which ornamented the gardens. They were not public gardens, though many people were admitted; they contained orchards of fruit-trees, lawns and bowling greens, a bathing pond, and a butt for archery practice. James the First kept some of his menagerie in these gardens. In Charles the First’s reign an ordinary was allowed to be kept here; it was six shillings a head, and all day long there was tippling under the trees with frequent quarrels. Charles was much offended by these unseemly broils and shut up the place. An enterprising barber, however, came to the rescue of the players, and set up a large establishment between St. James’s Street and the Haymarket, where were two bowling greens, a tavern, an ordinary, card tables, and rooms for gaming of all kinds.

Spring Gardens were opened again during the Civil War, with the old customs of drinking; it was, however, provided that the Gardens should be closed on public fast days. In 1654 they were closed altogether; Evelyn (May 10) has an entry:—

“My Lady Gerrard treated us at Mulberry Garden, now the only place of refreshment about the towne for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at, Cromwell and his partisans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which, till now, had been the usual rendezvous for the ladies and gallants at this season.”

In 1658 it was open again, for Evelyn “collation’d” there on his way to see a coach race in Hyde Park.

The best account of the Garden is one quoted by Larwood from A Character of England[11]:—

“The inclosure is not disagreeable, for the solemness of the grove, the warbling of the birds, and as it opens into the spacious walks of St. James’s. But the company walk in it at such a rate as you would think all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers; and there was no appearance that I should prove the Hippomenes who would with very much ado keep pace with them. But, as fast as they run, they stay there so long as if they wanted not time to finish the race; for it is usual here to find some of the young company till midnight; and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry, after they have been refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats-tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish (wine); for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses throughout England; for they think it a piece of frugality beneath them to bargain or account for what they eat in any place, however unreasonably imposed upon. But thus those mean fellows are enriched—beggar and insult over the gentlemen. I am assured that this particular host has purchased within few years 5000 livres of annual rent, and well he may, at the rate these prodigals pay” (J. Larwood, The Story of the London Parks).

A more detailed description shows us a garden laid out in square beds, each twenty or thirty paces in length and breadth, and surrounded with hedges of red currants, roses, and shrubs; in the beds were growing strawberries and vegetables, the borders were lined with flowers, and fruit-trees were growing up the walls. Pepys took his wife, his two servants, and his boy there on the King’s birthday, 1662.

Visitors could help themselves, apparently, for the servants gathered pinks from the borders. The building of houses about Charing Cross destroyed the rural charm of these gardens; part of them were built upon; a small part still remains at the back of the street now called Spring Gardens.

Evelyn has mentioned the Mulberry Gardens. This place was on the site of Buckingham Palace. James the First in 1609, following the example of Henry the Fourth of France, endeavoured to establish a silk-growing industry. With this object he sent out to the various counties mulberry-trees by the hundred thousand. He enclosed four acres of St. James’s Park, and planted them with mulberry-trees. In Cromwell’s time the Gardens were sold; at the Restoration they returned to the King, who threw them open. They became for a time the fashionable resort; by day the non-decorous took cheese-cakes in their summer houses; at night they were the haunt of “gentlemen and ladies that made love together, till twelve o’clock at night, the pretty leest.” There were arbours for supper parties; there were also dark paths in the “Wilderness.” Dryden used to take Mrs. Reeve, an actress of Killigrew’s Company, to the Mulberry Gardens. The place was closed about the year 1675.

St. James’s Park began as a marshy piece of ground overflowed by the river at high tides, stretching out between St. James’s Hospital and Thorney Island. The Hospital, founded by the citizens of London “before the time of any man’s memory,” was intended to receive fourteen poor sisters, maidens, who were leprous; they were placed in this house to live chastely and honestly in divine service. It was endowed with land sufficient to maintain these unfortunate women in comfort; they possessed as well a brotherhood of six chaplains and two laymen. And in 1290 Edward the First gave them a fair, to be held for seven days, beginning on St. James’s Eve, July 24.

The house is said to be mentioned in an MS. in the Cottonian Library of the year 1100; it was, therefore, certainly the oldest hospital belonging to London.

It was rebuilt in the reign of Henry the Third. In 1450, after there had been many disputes with the Abbey of Westminster over alleged rights of visit, Henry the Sixth placed the house in the perpetual custody of Eton College. Henry the Eighth acquired it by purchase in 1537 and, according to Stow, compounded with the inmates. It has been stated that only one sister received a pension. I think the two statements may be reconciled. Thus the dread of leprosy had by this time vanished. There were very few lepers left in the country, if any. At the hospital of Sherburn, Durham, which originally contained five convents of lepers, of both sexes, i.e. sixty-five persons, in 1593 the house contained only men; “sick, or whole, Lepers, or wayfaring.” Surtees, History of Durham, says that it would have been difficult, long before, to find a single leper in the country.

What, then, happened at St. James’s? One of two things. Either the sisters were reduced to one, and only one, who would be considered a leper; or that the house, like so many others, had been allowed to depart from its foundation, and had admitted as sisters, women who were not lepers at all.

However, Henry enclosed the ground belonging to the hospital, stocked it with deer, and turned it into a pleasure garden for himself.

James the First kept his menagerie here. Henry, Prince of Wales, ran at the ring and practised horsemanship here.

During the Commonwealth the Park was not sold, but preserved, though the deer seem to have run away. A certain number of people were privileged to walk in the Park.

Then Charles came back, and began at once to improve the Park. He constructed the canal, or ornamental water; he laid out the Mall; he made a rising ground beside Rosamond’s pond; he erected beautiful avenues of trees. More than this, he opened the Park and gave a new place of resort, much finer than it had ever before enjoyed, to the fashionable world of London. The literature of the period is full of the Park and its frequenters.

New Spring Gardens at Vauxhall were formed in imitation of the old, and were named after them. Evelyn mentions the place in 1661, Pepys 1665; he calls it Foxhall. He went there in June and in July; on the latter day he did not find a single guest there. There were, however, plenty of guests at other times. Pepys observes how the young fellows take hold of every woman in the place. He heard the nightingale sing; he heard the fiddles, and the harp, and the Jew’s trump; he heard the talk of the young men—“Lord, their mad talk did make my heart ake.” He had cheese-cakes, syllabubs, and wine in the gardens; and, as at the theatre, he and his wife were not ashamed to be seen when the company was notoriously profligate, and the women notoriously devoid of virtue.

Gray’s Inn Gardens was another place of resort, probably for lawyers and their ladies. For the people of Holborn and Fleet Street there were the Lamb’s Conduit Fields. These spacious fields extended from Tottenham Court Road to Gray’s Inn Road, and as far to the north as what is now the Euston Road. There were no houses upon them in the seventeenth century except Lamb’s Conduit, erected in 1577. For the City there were the Moor fields, then enclosed, planted with trees and surrounded by shops; there were the Hoxton Fields, the Spa Fields of Clerkenwell, and the White Conduit Fields. It was the especial happiness of London at this time that from any part of the City the open country was accessible within a quarter of an hour. All around these fields sprang up places of amusement, pleasure gardens, and taverns, which I have described fully in considering the eighteenth century.

In the City itself the favourite resorts were, for the young men, the galleries of the Royal Exchange, which were occupied by shops for the sale of gloves, ribbons, laces, fans, scent, and such things. The shops were served by girls, whose pretty faces and ready tongues were the chief attraction for the young fellows, who went there to flirt rather than to buy. Some of the younger citizens also found the Piazza of Covent Garden a convenient place to lounge and saunter. There were attractions in the Piazzas, too, of the other sex. There was also the interior of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The coffee-houses quickly became a place of resort for the graver citizen in the evening. He would not go to the theatre, where the exhibition of actresses still offended his sense of propriety; he had formerly gone to the tavern, but a dish of coffee was far more wholesome than a bowl of punch, and discourse among men who were sober was much more instructive than that of men who were drunk.

Of course, there were still left plenty of those who stuck to the tavern and despised these new inventions of tea and coffee. Indeed, for business purposes the tavern continued to be used. Transactions of all kinds were conducted in a private room at a tavern, over a bottle. If a customer came up to London, the shopkeeper took him to the tavern when, in the Rose or the Sun, they performed their business. The coffee-house never took the place of the tavern in that respect. The most extraordinary secrecy was expected and maintained on either side over the smallest matter of trade. The number of taverns was then very great. They literally lined the two most important arteries, that from St. George’s, Southwark, to Bishopsgate Street Without, and that between the Royal Exchange and the Strand.

I have before me a pamphlet in doggerel verse of the year 1671 called The Search after Claret Wine: A Visitation of the Vintners.

The following is the dedication which enumerates the favourite wines:—

The searchers after claret spend two days visiting the taverns and find none. I suppose that the war with France had caused a stoppage of the supply. In the same way, during the long war with France, 1793–1815, the people forgot their old taste for claret; when they drank it at all, it was heavy stuff. They visit eighty-eight taverns between Whitechapel and Temple Bar and at Westminster, and this without going out of the main streets. Many of these taverns are still remembered by the tokens which they issued for copper money. Most of these taverns were not hostels, and did not provide lodgings; they were taverns and nothing more; they were frequented, as has been said, by tradesmen during the day; in the evening there were societies, clubs, and trades, which held their meetings in the taverns. For instance, in the Mitre, Cheapside, afterwards called the Goose and Gridiron, the Society of Musicians met and gave their concerts. At the Cock and the Devil of Fleet Street the lawyers thronged.

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On December 8, 1660, a great change was effected at the theatre. For the first time, to the exasperation of the Puritans, a woman’s part was taken by a woman. The place was the theatre of Vere Street. The part first performed was that of Desdemona. The prologue written “to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage” was as follows (Leigh Hunt, The Town):—

And the epilogue, much shorter, was as follows:—

This change altered the whole character of the theatre. At the beginning it lowered the tone of the stage, which was already bad enough. When the spectators became accustomed to the appearance of women on the stage, it began perhaps to have a refining influence, but certainly not at first.

In Wycherley’s Country Wife, Pinchwife takes his wife to the “eighteen-penny place” so that she shall not be seen. This place was the tier called the upper boxes. Ladies sometimes went into the Pit, but not alone. In the same play Alithea says to her lover, “I will not go if you intend to leave me alone in the Pit as you used to do.” Ladies, however, for the most part, went into the first tier or dress circle, where they received visits from their friends. Lord Foppington says, “After dinner I go to the play, where I amuse myself till nine o’clock with looking upon the company, and usually dispose of an hour more in leading them out.”

The tickets were, to the boxes, 4s.; to the Pit, half-a-crown; to the upper boxes, 1s. 6d.; and to the gallery, 1s. There were only two theatres, the King’s and the Duke of York’s; the seats were simple benches without backs.

Pepys, a great lover of the stage, commends the improvement of the theatre since the Restoration:—

“The stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3 lbs. of tallow: now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden: then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best: then, nothing but rushes upon the ground, and everything else mean; and now, all otherwise: then, the Queen seldom, and King never would come; now, not the King only for state, but all civil people do think they may come as well as any. He tells me that he hath gone several times, eight or ten times, he tells me, hence to Rome, to hear good musique; so much he loves it, though he never did sing or play a note. That he hath ever endeavoured in the late King’s time, and in this, to introduce good musique, but he never could do it, there never having been any musique here better than ballads. Nay, says, ‘Hermitt poore’ and ‘Chevy Chese’ was all the musique we had; and yet no ordinary fiddlers get so much money as ours do here, which speaks our rudenesse still” (Pepys, vol. vi. pp. 171, 172).

Bankside had long since ceased to be the chosen seat of the drama. The Globe, after being burned down and rebuilt, was finally pulled down in 1644; the Rose, the Swan, and the Bear Garden had met the same fate; the Fortune Theatre was destroyed by soldiers in 1549; the Curtain had become, before it was pulled down, a place for prize fights; Blackfriars Theatre, after standing empty for some years, in accordance with the law, was pulled down in 1655.

In 1642 the Parliament commanded the cessation of plays on the ground “that public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage plays with the seasons of humiliation.” So the houses were closed. Then, as always happened, the law was timidly and tentatively broken; the theatres began again. In 1647, however, a second ordinance appeared calling upon the magistrates to enter houses where performances were going on and to arrest the performers. This ordinance proving of more effect, a third and more stringent law was passed denouncing stage plays, interludes, and common plays as the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God’s wrath and displeasure, ordered the destruction of all galleries, seats, and stages of the theatre. This settled the question for the time. Most of the actors went off to fight for the King; a few remained and gave private performances at the residences of noblemen. In 1658 Davenant opened the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane for performances of declamation and music without being molested. Probably he ascertained beforehand what the Protector would do. On the Restoration a bookseller of dramatic propensities took possession of the Cockpit, where he played with his two apprentices, Betterton and Kynaston. Killigrew and Davenant obtained patents for opening theatres, Killigrew’s company to be called the King’s servants, Davenant’s to be called the Duke of York’s servants. Davenant associated with himself the dramatic booksellers, and after a season at the Phoenix went to the new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and from there to the larger theatre in Dorset Garden, Fleet Street, a place more commodious because it was on the river, the great highway of London. Killigrew began at the Red Bull in St. John’s Street, going from that place, which seems to have been out of the way, to Gibbon’s Tennis Court in Clare Market. He then proceeded to build a new theatre in Drury Lane, not far from the Phoenix. The new theatre opened with Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedy of the Humourous Lieutenant on April 8, 1663. Ten of the company were in the Royal household, and had allowances of scarlet cloth and lace for liveries; did they wear the livery on the stage? It was here that Charles fell in love with Nell Gwynne; she was playing Valeria in Dryden’s Tyrannic Love. She died on the stage and then jumped up and spoke the epilogue:—

Here Pepys saw her, was presented to her, and kissed her, “and a mighty pretty soul she is.” And again he mentions how he saw her in a part called Florimell, “a comical part done by Nell that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman.”

It is sometimes stated that the theatres of the time were still without a roof. This appears to be incorrect. Pepys mentions the inconvenience of rain. “To the King’s house and saw the Silent Woman. Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the pit were fain to rise and all the house in disorder.” A few years later, however, he notes (May 1, 1668) another visit to the same theatre, where he saw the Surprizall, and mentions “a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top, it being a very foul day.” There was, therefore, some kind of dome or cupola open at the side.

The time of commencing the performance was three, so that the theatre, at all events for the first part of Charles’s reign, was an afternoon amusement. The doors were thrown open soon after noon. Pepys, on one occasion, went to the theatre a little after noon; the doors were not then open, but they were thrown open shortly afterwards. On entering the Pit he found many people there already, having got in by private ways. As he had had no dinner he found a boy to keep his seat, and went outside to get some dinner at the Rose Tavern (Wills’s, Russell Street).

The play was constantly changed, and the popularity of the rival houses continually varied. On one occasion, on arriving at Drury Lane at three, the hour for beginning, Pepys found not one single person in the Pit. However, some came late, and there was a performance after all. The new fashion of having women instead of boys for the female parts was so popular, that plays acted by women alone were actually presented. One of the plays then performed, Killigrew’s Parsons Wedding, is described as “obscene and loose,” for which reason it was thought fittest for women to play.

The wearing of masks at the theatre, which was common among ladies, was due to the disgraceful licence of the dramatist. One would think, however, that if ladies disliked the grossness, they might stay away; perhaps it was rather due partly to the desire of not attracting public attention, partly to the charm of the mysterious. As for women disliking the coarseness of the play, we may simply remember that though women are in every age better than men in that respect, they are not always very much better. Like the clergy, the best we can expect of them is that they should be a little better than the men.

The seventeenth century witnessed the splendour and the death of the masque. For fifty years, if one sought for fine stage scenery, splendid dresses, curious stage effects, it was not at the theatre that it was to be found, but at the masque.

It was a very costly form of entertainment. Private persons could not attempt it. No manager of a theatre could attempt it, because the fullest house could not pay for producing it. Only great noblemen, rich bodies, and the Court could present a masque. There was orchestral music of the finest; there were songs, madrigals, choruses; there were long speeches; there was dancing, both singly and in groups; there were most costly dresses, and there were transformation scenes managed with a dexterity worthy of a modern theatre. It is remarkable that the theatre never tried to vie with the masque in scenery or dresses or music. Ben Jonson was the principal writer of the libretti; Henry Lawn was the musician; Gills the inventor of the dances; Inigo Jones the machinist and scene painter.

James the First and his Queen delighted in the masque. So did Charles and Henrietta; the Civil War put a stop to this beautiful and courtly entertainment; after the Restoration, when an attempt was made to revive it, the taste for it had gone; it had played its part and was dead.

Let me present, greatly abbreviated, one of Ben Jonson’s masques:—

The masque of Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion is a favourable specimen of the scenic effects of the masque. It was played on Twelfth Night, 1624.

The scene at first showed nothing but two pillars with inscriptions; on the one NEP. RED., and on the other SEC. JOV. The masque opens with a long and tedious dialogue between a cook and a poet; in the course of it the latter explains the purpose of the masque, which is to celebrate the safe return of the Prince from Spain:—

The ground thus cleared, the cook brings in persons representing the various ingredients of an Olla Podrida. This was intended for the comic part. Then a comic anti-masque is danced by these mummers. After this the scene opens, and discloses the Island of Delos. The masquers are sitting in their “sieges.” Then the heavens open and disclose Apollo, Mercury, the Muses, and the Goddess Harmony. Below, Proteus is sitting. Apollo sings:—

The island moves forward and joins the mainland. There is a grand chorus of Proteus and the others while the masquers land. While they prepare for their entry the chorus sings another verse:—

Then the masquers “danced their entry.” The dance was performed by the courtiers and the Queen’s ladies. It was a dance invented for the occasion, with stately figures, arranged groups, and active “capers.” Then the scene was changed and disclosed a maritime palace, the home of Oceanus, “with loud music.” “And the other above is no more seen.”

“Then follows the main dance, after which the second prospect of the sea is shown, to the former music.”

Then Proteus and the others advance to the ladies with another song:—

The revels follow, which ended, the fleet is discovered, while the three cornets play.

After a little more foolish talk between the cook and the poet, the sailors of the fleet come in and dance, and the whole is concluded with a song by ten voices accompanied by the “Whole music, five lutes, three cornets”:—

It is sometimes stated that music was killed by the Puritans. If Pepys is to be considered as an average London citizen in this respect, their music was very far from being killed by the Puritans. We find him, his household and his friends, all singing, playing, taking a part; we find parties on the river singing part songs as they glided down the stream; we hear of the singing in church; at Court the evenings were always provided with singing boys; at the theatre songs were plentifully scattered about the plays. The Elizabethan custom of music at dinner had apparently vanished, yet the power of playing some instrument was far more general than it was later. As soon as possible after the Restoration the choral service was re-established in the cathedrals and the Royal chapels. Cooke, Lawn, Rogers, Wilson, and other composers were engaged in forming and teaching the choirs; new anthems were composed by Pelham Humphrey or Humfrey, Michael Wise, John Blow, and Henry Purcell. The last of these, one of the greatest of English composers, was born in 1658 and died in 1695.

It was common for people of rank to attend the service of the Chapel Royal at Whitehall or that of St. Paul’s Cathedral. At Oxford an association was formed, consisting of the leading scholars and professors of the University, for the purpose of promoting the study and practice of music, vocal and instrumental. It is true that in the eighteenth century music seems to have deserted the English household; perhaps in the seventeenth it lingered only among the better sort, and had already been killed in the circles affected by the sour Puritanism of the time.

The condition and advancement of painting in the century may be briefly considered. The soil was prepared for the development of the fine arts by the learning, scholarship, and travel of the English nobles and scholars. About the year 1615 the Earl of Arundel began to collect pictures, statues, vases, and gems. Prince Henry began a collection which at his death passed to his brother Charles. On his accession Charles began to increase the Royal collections begun by Henry the Eighth, and continued slowly by his successors. Charles bought the whole of the cabinet of the Duke of Milan for £18,000. The cartoons of Raffaelle were acquired in Flanders by the agency of Rubens. Whitehall Palace contained four hundred and sixty pictures, of which twenty-eight were by Titian, eleven by Correggio, sixteen by Julio Romano, nine by Raffaelle, four by Guido, and seven by Parmigiano. Vandyke, the greatest among the pupils of Rubens, came over to this country and remained here for life. In 1630 Rubens himself came over, not as a painter but as an ambassador. However, he consented to paint the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. Charles planned an Academy of Arts, but, like everything else, it had to be set aside.

Among lesser painters of the century were William Dobson, John Hoskins, Samuel Cooper, John Peiletot, and Geuteleschi, all of whom lived and painted in London.

Lely of course belongs to the first Restoration period. So also do Hayls, Michael Wright, Henry Anderton, the two Vandeveldes, and many others. Grinling Gibbons belongs to the latter years of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth century.

The greatest invention of the century was, without doubt, the newspaper. As far as this country is concerned, setting aside the apocryphal history of the English Mercury, its first newspaper was started in London by Nathaniel Butter, with whom were associated Nicholas Bonner, Thomas Archer, Nathaniel Newberry, William Sheppard, Bartholomew Dounes, and Edward Allor. The sheet was called the Weekly News, and it is believed to have begun on May 23, 1622. In the same year the London Weekly Courant also began. Twenty years later the Mercurius Clericus (1641) was started in the interests of the clergy; the Mercurius Britannicus (1642), the Mercurius Civicus (1643), the Mercurius Politicus, a Parliamentary paper, and Mercurius Pragmaticus, a Royalist paper.

About the year 1663 the Kingdom’s Intelligence was started, and this was incorporated with the London Gazette when that was founded in 1665.

Of course it was not long before the power of the Press was discovered. The Government began to subsidise the papers; private persons began to pay for notices in them; and trade advertisements began to appear. All these papers were weekly. In 1695, however, the Post Boy appeared—the first daily paper.

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A list of sports in 1600 is quoted in Furnivall’s notes to Stubbes (Part I. Series vi. No. 6, p. 316).

The prohibition of games on Sunday by the Puritans led to the abolition of the working-class’s amusements altogether, and was therefore answerable for much of that hideous brutality which possessed that class during the latter part of the eighteenth century. They were not to wrestle, shoot, play at bowls, ring bells, hold masques, wakes, play games of any kind, dance, or exercise any other pastime on Sunday. Now, as Sunday was the only day when the working people could play games or have any recreation, this prohibition destroyed the knowledge of these games, the old delight in them, the desire for them, the skill in them. After eighteen years of Puritan rule a new type of working man grew up, one who knew no games and could practise none; a duller creature, heavy witted, slow of sight, and clumsy of hand; one who would yield to the temptation of drink without resistance; one who was capable of sinking lower and lower still. This is one of the many blessings which have been bestowed upon London by the Puritans.

For winter amusements the better class had a variety of games, such as “cards, tables, dice, shovelboard, chess, the philosophers game, small trunks, shuttlecock, billiards, music, masks, singing, dancing, all games, frolicks, jests, riddles, catches, purposes, questions and commands, merry tales of knights errant, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, friars”—Malcolm[12] has picked this list out of Burton.

The shows and performances at the fairs were extremely popular. There were puppet shows, at which scriptural pieces were represented, or the Patient Grizzle, or the Lady Godiva; there were tight-rope dancers; there were performing dogs or monkeys; there were strong men and cunning men; jugglers, and conjurers.

Athletic sports were in vogue. Many of the young nobles were expert swimmers; others, among whom was the Duke of Monmouth, were fast runners, so that foot-races were a favourite amusement. Two of them once ran down a buck. Tennis was a favourite game, as was also pall-mall; skating, when there was ice, was extensively practised; bowl-racing and horse-racing were common. Bowls continued as a game which never goes wholly out of fashion. Baiting of the bull and the bear were resumed after the Restoration, but the lust for this brutal sport seems to have gone out.

The evening amusements of James the First, which seem stupid and coarse enough, may be perhaps regarded as the natural swing of the pendulum after a day spent in the maintenance of the Royal dignity by a king in whom there was naturally very little of dignity. The passage also shows the kind of amusement which rich men who could afford to keep buffoons were pleased to adopt:—

“The Monarch, it is said, would leave his dining or supping room to witness the pastimes and fooleries performed by Sir Edward Zouch, Sir George Goring, and Sir John Finit. The first sung indecent songs and related tales of the same description, the former of which were written by Finit, who procured fiddlers as an accompanyment to Zouch; and Goring was master of the game for fooleries, sometimes presenting David Droman and Archee Armstrong, the King’s fool, on the back of the other fools, to tilt one at another, till they fell together by the ears; sometimes antick dances; but Sir John Millisent, who was never known before, was commended for notable fooling, and so he was the best extempore fool of them all.”

Chamberlayn’s Present State of England presents the most complete picture of the sports of this century:—

“For variety of Devertisements, Sports and Recreations, no Nation doth excel the English.

The King hath abroad his Forests, Chases, and Parks, full of variety of Game; for Hunting Red and Fallow Deer, Foxes, Otters; Hawking, his Paddock-Courses, Horse-Races, etc., and at home, Tennis, Pelmel, Billiard, Comedies, Opera, Mascarades, Balls, Ballets, etc. The Nobility and Gentry have their Parks, Warrens, Decoys, Paddock-Courses, Horse-Races, Hunting, Coursing, Fishing, Fowling, Hawking, Setting-Dogs, Tumblers, Lurchers, Duck-hunting, Cock-fighting, Guns for Birding, Low-Bells, Bat-Fowling, Angling, Nets, Tennis, Bowling, Billiards, Tables, Chess, Draughts, Cards, Dice, Catches, Questions, Purposes, Stage-Plays, Masks, Balls, Dancing, Singing, all sorts of Musical Instruments, etc. The citizen and peasants have Hand-Ball, Foot-Ball, Skittles, or Nine Pins, Shovel-Board, Stow-Ball, Goffe, Trol Madams, Cudgels, Bear-baiting, Bull-baiting, Shuttlecock, Bowling, Quoits, Leaping, Wrestling, Pitching the Bar, and Ringing of Bells, a Recreation used in no other Country of the World.

Amongst these, Cock-fighting seems to all Foreigners too childish and unsuitable for the Gentry, and for the Common People Bull-baiting and Bear-baiting seem too cruel; and for the Citizens, Foot-Ball, and Throwing at Cocks, very uncivil, rude, and barbarous within the City.”

In the Directory of London, 1761, there are fifteen streets, lanes, and alleys, which are named after the game of bowls. This simple fact proves the popularity of the bowling green. These places were licensed by James the First. They were allowed to have tennis courts, rooms for cards and dice, and such diversions besides bowling greens. They were all in the suburbs; there had formerly, however, been a bowling green in Thames Street. Twenty-four were allotted to the suburbs of London and Westminster; four to Southwark; one to St. Katherine’s by the Tower; two to Lambeth; one to Shoreditch; and one to every town, village, or hamlet within two miles of London or Westminster. In Charles’s reign a barber set up a place provided with two bowling greens in Piccadilly, between the Haymarket and St. James Street; nothing is said about any licence being required for this venture.

Fencing schools were much frequented. The terms used in fencing, which are enumerated by Ben Jonson, were all Italian. The masters granted degrees to their disciples, Master, Provost, Scholar. These schools became haunts of vice, and attempts were made to suppress them, but without success.

Duke Cosmo says that the fencing masters, in order to gain reputation, give a general challenge, offering twenty or thirty jacobuses or more to any one who has a mind to fight with them.

Josevin de Rochefort, whose travels in England were published in 1672, gives a long account of a fencing match:—

“We went to see the Bergiardin, which is a great amphitheatre, where combats are fought between all sorts of animals, and sometimes men, as we once saw. Commonly, when any fencing masters are desirous of shewing their courage and their great skill, they issue mutual challenges, and before they engage, parade the town with drums and trumpets sounding, to inform the public there is a challenge between two brave masters of the science of defence, and that the battle will be fought on such a day. We went to see this combat, which was performed on a stage in the middle of this amphitheatre, where, on the flourishes of trumpets and the beat of drums, the combatants entered, stripped to their shirts. On a signal from the drum, they drew their swords, and immediately began the fight, skirmishing a long time without any wounds. They were both very skilful and courageous. The tallest had the advantage over the least: for, according to the English fashion of fencing, they endeavoured rather to cut than push in the French manner, so that by his height he had the advantage of being able to strike his antagonist on the head, against which the little one was on his guard. He had in his turn an advantage over the great one, in being able to give him the jarnac stroke, by cutting him on his right ham, which he left in a manner quite unguarded. So that, all things considered, they were equally matched. Nevertheless, the tall one struck his antagonist on the wrist, which he almost cut off: but this did not prevent him from continuing the fight, after he had been dressed, and taken a glass of wine or two to give him courage, when he took ample vengeance for his wound: for a little afterwards, making a feint at the ham, the tall man, stooping in order to parry it, laid his whole head open, when the little one gave him a stroke, which took off a slice of his head, and almost all of his ear. For my part I think there is an inhumanity, a barbarity and cruelty, in permitting men to kill each other for diversion. The surgeons immediately dressed them, and bound up their wounds: which being done, they resumed the combat, and both being sensible of their respective disadvantages, they therefore were a long time without giving or receiving a wound, which was the cause that the little one, failing to parry so exactly, being tired with this long battle, received a stroke on his wounded wrist, which dividing the sinews, he remained vanquished, and the tall conqueror received the applause of the spectators. For my part I should have had more pleasure in seeing the battle of the bears and dogs, which was fought the following day on the same theatre.”

Just as, early in the eighteenth century, there was a scare about the Mohocks, so in the reign of Charles II. there was a scare about the so-called “Scowerers.” There were “Roreres,” in the thirteenth century; “Roaring Boys,” in the sixteenth; “Scowerers,” in the seventeenth; Mohocks in the eighteenth; and Corinthian Tom in the nineteenth century. And the facts and achievements of their young bloods are always exaggerated. We are now told that the Scowerers assembled in bands, stormed taverns, broke windows, upset apple carts, and generally showed their indomitable spirit. Shadwell wrote a comedy about them. I record the common belief, but doubt the fact.

Wrestling, and the sight of wrestling, was a favourite amusement of the time:—

“In 1681,” (Manners and Customs) “the King witnessed a wrestling match where the abettors were the Monarch and the Duke of Albemarle: a meadow below the castle was the scene of action, and the match was composed of twelve men on each side: the King’s party wore red waistcoats, and the Duke’s blue: a ring or inclosure was formed, and a space in it admitted the Royal coach: the Queen and her ladies viewed the contest from the terrace, but the Duke mixed with the crowd. The activity displayed on this occasion excited great applause, and only one of the number offered foul play, which the Duke punished by tripping up his heels.

The victory was gained by the blues: and they thus procured their employer 200 guineas, the wager depending: the sum of 10s. each was given to the King’s men, and 20s. to the victors. After which the King’s men challenged the Duke’s at back-sword: in which exercise some being unskilful, others were taken in to complete the number. This was performed with great skill and courage, but not attended with those barbarous circumstances which were usual with the Roman gladiators, who, to shew the Emperor sport, sheathed their swords in one another’s bowels: our most clement and gracious King abominating all acts of cruelty. The issue of this was only some broken pates, and the palm was again given to the blues. The King’s men being heated, and unwilling that the Duke’s should thus carry a victory, resolved to have another trial with them, and challenged them at football, which being accepted, the goals staked out, and the ball placed in the middle, the Duke held up an handkerchief over the ball, the letting fall of which was the signal to give the start, and the handkerchief a reward to him that got the first kick, which was one of the Duke’s men, who (in all three exercises) behaved himself so singularly active, that his Majesty took particular notice of him, and gave him a guinea. And, notwithstanding fortune still appeared on the Duke’s side, his Majesty seemed highly pleased with that day’s divertisement.”

“One of the most curious and ingenious amusements” ever offered to the public ear was contrived in the year 1682, when an elm plank was exhibited to the King and the credulous of London, which, being touched by a hot iron, invariably produced a sound resembling deep groans.

“This sensible and very irritable board received numbers of noble visitors: and other boards, sympathising with their afflicted brother, demonstrated how much affected they might be by similar means. The publicans in different parts of the City immediately applied ignited metal to all the woodwork of their houses, in hopes of finding sensitive timber: but I do not perceive any one so successful as the landlord of the Bowman tavern in Drury Lane, who had a mantle tree so extremely prompt and loud in its responses, that the sagacious observers were nearly unanimous in pronouncing it part of the same trunk which had afforded the original plank.”

The following paragraph is from the Loyal London Mercury, October 4, 1682:—

“Some persons being this week drinking at the Queen’s Arms tavern in St. Martin’s le Grand, in the kitchen, and having laid the fire-fork in the fire to light their pipes, accidentally fell a discoursing of the groaning board, and what might be the cause of it. One in the company having the fork in his hand to light his pipe, would needs make trial of a long dresser that stood there, which, upon the first touch, made a great noise and groaning, more than ever the board that was shewed did, and when they touched it three or four times, and found it far beyond the other. They all having seen it, the house is almost filled with spectators day and night, and any company calling for a glass of wine may see it: which, in the judgment of all, is far louder, and makes a longer groan, than the other, which to report, unless seen, would seem incredible.”

The subject of fairs is treated very fully in the volume on the eighteenth century; nevertheless, they cannot be here altogether omitted, as they formed one of the chief amusements of the seventeenth century.

Fairs began by being serious markets, but later became a place of less important trade, where lace, gold and silver embroidery, jewellery, and finery of every kind were exposed for sale. A further decline took place when people of fashion ceased to attend the fair for the purchase of these things. Then the fair became frankly a place of amusement and pleasure with booths. These are the several stages of a fair: first, the exhibition and sale of its staple as wool; next, or in addition, its ordinary trade; thirdly, a catering for children and the lower class. All this time its shows and amusements are growing of more and more importance, until at length they become the principal object of the fair. Paul Hentzner, writing in 1598, describes St. Bartholomew’s Fair as follows:—

“Every year upon St. Bartholomew’s Day, when the Fair is held, it is usual for the Mayor, attended by the twelve principal Aldermen, to walk into a neighbouring field dressed in his scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, to which is hung a Golden Fleece, and besides, that particular ornament (the collar of SS.) which distinguishes the most noble Order of the Garter. During the year of his magistracy he is obliged to live so magnificently that foreigner or native, without any expense, is free, if he can find a chair empty, to dine at his table, where there is always the greatest plenty. When the Mayor goes out of the precincts of the City a sceptre, a sword, and a cap are borne before him, and he is followed by the principal Aldermen in scarlet gowns with gold chains, himself and they on horseback. Upon their arrival at a place appointed for that purpose, where a tent is pitched, the mob begin to wrestle before them, two at a time; the conquerors receive rewards from the Mayor. After this is over a parcel of live rabbits are turned loose among the crowd, which boys chase with great noise. While we were at this show one of our company, Tobias Salander, Doctor of Physic, had his pocket picked of his purse, with nine crowns (ecus du soleil), which, without doubt, was so cleverly taken from him by an Englishman, who always kept very close to him, that the Doctor did not in the least perceive it” (England, as seen by Foreigners, p. 107).

Hentzner might have observed also that by the law of England the cut-purse was liable to execution. In 1612 one John Pelman, a cut-purse, was actually hanged for stealing a purse containing forty shillings in the King’s Chapel of Whitehall. It is said of him that he came in “good and seemly apparel like a Gentleman, a fair black coat laced and either lined thorow, or faced, with velvet.” What says and sings Nightingale in the play?—

The following was the Proclamation made before the fair (Morley[13]):—

“The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of the City of London and his right worshipful brethren the aldermen of the said city, streightly charge and command, on the behalf of our sovereign lady the Queen, that all manner of persons, of whatsoever estate, degree, or condition they be, having recourse to this Fair, keep the peace of our said sovereign lady the Queen.

That no manner of persons make any congregation, conventicles, or affrays, by which the same peace may be broken or disturbed, upon pain of imprisonment and fine, to be made after the discretion of the lord mayor and aldermen.

Also, that all manner of sellers of wine, ale, or beer, sell by measures ensealed, as by gallon, pottle, quart, and pint, upon pain that will fall thereof.

And that no person sell any bread, but if it keep the assize, and that it be good and wholesome for man’s body, upon pain that will fall thereof.

And that no manner of person buy or sell, but with true weights and measures, sealed according to the statute in that behalf made, upon pain that will fall thereof.

And that no manner of person, or persons, take upon him, or them, within this Fair, to make any manner of arrest, attachment, summons, or execution, but if it be done by the officer of this City thereunto assigned, upon pain that will fall thereof.

And that no person or persons whatsoever, within the limits and bounds of this Fair, presume to break the Lord’s Day in selling, showing, or offering to sale, or in buying or offering to buy, any commodities whatsoever, or in sitting, tippling, or drinking in any tavern, inn, ale-house, or cook’s-house, or in doing any other thing that may lead to the breach thereof, upon the pain and penalties contained in several acts of Parliament, which will be severely inflicted upon the breakers thereof.

And finally, that whatever person soever find themselves aggrieved, injured, or wronged by any manner of person in this Fair, that they come with their plaints before the stewards in this Fair, assigned to hear and determine pleas, and they will minister to all parties justice, according to the laws of this land, and the customs of this city. God save the Queen!”

The mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen sitting on horseback, robed in their violet gowns, having made this proclamation at a point between the city Fair and that owned by the Warwick or Holland family, as the rest of the official rule details, “the proclamation being made, they ride through the Cloth Fair, and so return back again, through the Churchyard of Great St. Bartholomew’s to Aldersgate, and so ride home again to the Lord Mayor’s house.”

“It is remarkable,” to quote from a scarce tract of 1641, which is given at length by Morley, “and worth your observation, to behold and hear the strange sights and confused noises in the fair. Here a Knave in a Fool’s Coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drum beating, invites you and would fain persuade you to see his puppets; there a Rogue like a Wild Woodman, or in an antick shape like an Incubus, desires your company to view his motion; on the other side, Hocus Pocus with three yards of tape or ribbon in’s hand, showing his art of Legerdemain to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cockaloaches. Amongst these you shall see a gray goose-cap (as wise as the rest), with a What do ye lack? in his mouth, stand in his booth shaking a rattle or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are so taken, that they presently cry out for these fopperies; and all these together make such a distracted noise, that you would think Babel were not comparable to it. Here there are also your gamesters in action; some turning of a whimsey, others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into a three-halfpenny saucer.

Long Lane at this time looks very fair, and puts out her best clothes with the wrong side outward, so turned for their better turning off; and Cloth Fair is now in great request; well fare the Ale houses therein; yet better many a man fare (but at a dearer rate) in the Pig market, alias Pasty nook or Pie Corner, where pigs are all hours of the day on the stalls piping hot, and would cry (if they could speak), ‘Come eat me’; but they are dear, and the reckonings for them are saucy.”

D’Urfey’s verses, written in 1655, do not present a fair quite without attractions:—

Henry III. proclaimed a fifteen days’ fair to begin on the 13th of October 1248, the Day of the Translation of St. Edward ( Matthew Paris, ii. p. 272)—

“On the 13th of October in this year, in the fortnight of Michaelmas, the king proceeded to London, to keep the feast of St. Edward, that is, of the translation of that saint, and sent word to a great number of the prelates and nobles, begging them, out of their friendship and devotion to him, to make their appearance at Westminster, to join with him in solemnly and devoutly celebrating the feast of St. Edward. At this summons, therefore, there came thither Earl Richard, Roger Bigod, earl marshal, the Earl of Hereford, some select barons, and certain knights, the bishops of Winchester, London, Ely, Worcester, and Carlisle, and a great number of abbots and priors. The king then declared it as his pleasure, and ordered it to be proclaimed by herald throughout the whole city of London and elsewhere, that he instituted a new fair to be held at Westminster, to continue for a fortnight entire. He also strictly interdicted, under penalty of heavy forfeiture and loss, all fairs which usually lasted for such a length of time in England; for instance, that of Ely and other places, and all traffic usually carried on at London, both in and out of doors, in order that by these means the Westminster fair might be more attended by people, and better supplied with merchandise. In consequence of this, innumerable people flocked thither from all quarters, as to the most famous fair, and the translation of St. Edward was celebrated, and the blood of Christ worshipped to an unexampled degree by the people there assembled. But all the merchants, in exposing their goods for sale there, were exposed to great inconveniences, as they had no shelter except canvas tents; for, owing to the changeable gusts of wind assailing them, as is usual at that time of the year, they were cold and wet, and also suffered from hunger and thirst; their feet were soiled by the mud, and their goods rotted by the showers of rain; and when they sat down to take their meals in the midst of their family by the fireside knew not how to endure this state of want and discomfort. The bishop of Ely, in consequence of the loss of his fair at Ely, which was suspended by the king’s warrant, made a heavy complaint to him in the matter for introducing such novelties, but he gained nothing but words of soothing promises of future consolation.”

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The seventeenth century witnessed the invention of the stage coach, and therefore the improvement of the roads. The horse litter was still used in the first half of the century. Marie de Medici, when she visited her daughter Henrietta in 1638, entered London in a litter. In 1640 Evelyn travelled in a litter from Bath to Wootton with his father, who was suffering from a dropsy, which killed him. The first stage coach was a waggon. A service of waggons was established between London and Liverpool; there were waggons also between London and York, and between London and other towns. M. de SorbiÈre, visiting London in the reign of Charles II., says that rather than use the stage coach he travelled in a waggon drawn by a team of six horses. Therefore the Dover stage coach had already begun to run, and it was not thought more convenient than the waggon. Probably it was more liable to be upset. In 1663 one Edward Parker of Preston wrote to his father saying that he had got to London in safety on the coach, riding in the boot; that the company was good, “Knightes and Ladyes,” but the journey tedious.

Coaches at first had no springs, so that the occupants were tossed about. “Men and women are so tossed, tumbled, jumbled, and rumbled.”

Stow attributes the introduction of coaches into England to one Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, who became the Queen’s coachman in 1564. He is wrong about the introduction of coaches, but he is right in saying that within the next twenty years there grew up a great trade in coachbuilding, to the jealousy of the watermen.

“Coaches and sedans (quoth the waterman), they deserve both to be thrown into the Theames, and but for stopping the channell I would they were, for I am sure where I was woont to have eight or tenne fares in a morning I now scarce get two in a whole day: our wives and children at home are readie to pine, and some of us are faine for meanes to take other professions upon us.”

Taylor, the water-poet, thus speaks of coaches:—

In the year 1601 the attention of Parliament was called to the increase of coaches, and a Bill was brought in “to restrain the excessive use of coaches.” This, however, was rejected on the second reading.

Attacked or defended, the stage coach, once started, could never be abolished. The first stage coach of the City was the hackney coach, which was established by one Captain Busby in 1625. He posted four coaches at the Maypole in the Strand, with instructions to his men to carry people to any part of the town. Twelve years later there were fifty; in 1652 there were two hundred; in 1694, seven hundred. The coach hire was eighteenpence the first hour, one shilling afterwards. The first coaches had no windows, but, in their place, perforated metal shutters; the glass coach was introduced about the year 1667. Lady Peterborough forgot that there was glass over the door and ran her head through it.

The sedan chair was introduced by Sir Saunders Duncombe in 1634. As for stage vehicles there were at first “long waggons,” and these as early as 1564. The following extracts from Journals (ArchÆologia) show that there were many stage coaches as early as 1659 and 1660:—

“1659. May 2nd, I set forwards towards London by Coventre Coach: 4th I came to London.

1660. March 13th, my daughter Lettice went towards London in Coventre Waggon.

1662. June 28th, given 16s. in earnest, and for my passage with my man in Aylesbury Coach on Thursday next.

1663. January 27th, I went to Baginton [with his own horses, it would appear], 28th to Towcester: 29th to St. Albans, 30th by St. Albans Coach to London.

1677. April 8th, I went to Coventre: 9th thence to Woburne by Chester Coach: 10th to London.

1679. July 16th, I came out of London by the Stage Coach of Bermicham to Banbury.

1680. June 30th, I came out of London in the Bedford Stage Coach to the Earle of Aylesburie’s house at Ampthill.”

From the diary of a Yorkshire clergyman, lent by the Rev. Mr. Hunter, one gathers that in the winter of 1682 a journey from Nottingham to London in a stage coach occupied four whole days. One of this gentleman’s fellow-travellers was Sir Ralph Knight, of Langold in Yorkshire (an officer in Monk’s army), so that Mr. Parker was not singular in having as his companion in such a conveyance “persons of great quality, as Knights and Ladyes.”

In 1661 there was a stage coach running between Oxford and London, taking two days, i.e. thirty miles a day, or about three miles an hour. The fare was two shillings. A coach with four horses carried six passengers, a long waggon with four or five horses twenty to twenty-five.

In 1663 there was a stage coach between London and Edinburgh once a month, taking twelve days for the journey, i.e. thirty-three miles a day. In 1697 the stage coach from York to London took six days.

Charles II. instituted tolls for the repair of the roads, but they were not extended over the whole of the country till 1767. In 1675 Lady Russell writes that it is not possible to describe the badness of the roads between Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells.

Post horses were threepence a mile, riding horses 2s. the first day, and 1s. a day afterwards, the hirer to pay for food and to bring back the horse.

The fare for travelling in a stage coach was a shilling for every five miles; therefore, for the journey from London to York it would be forty shillings.

There were pamphlets for and against the use of the stage coach; it caused those who travelled in it to contract “an idle habit of body; they became heavy and listless when they rode a few miles, and were not able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the field.” This seems a very sound objection; there can be no doubt that when everybody rode or walked, people were much hardier to stand against cold or heat. On the other hand the stage coach had its defenders. One of them says that “there is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place sheltered from foul weather and foul ways.”

The writer of a pamphlet in 1675 thus denounces them:—

“There is not the fourth part of saddle-horses either bred, or kept, now in England, that was before these coaches were set up, and would be again, if they were suppressed, nor is there any occasion for breeding, or keeping such horses, whilst the coaches are continued. For, will any man keep a horse for himself and another for his man, all the year, for to ride one or two journeys: that at pleasure, when he hath occasion, can slip to any place where his business lies, for two, three or four shillings, if within twenty miles of London: and so proportionately into any part of England: No: there is no man: unless some noble soul, that scorns and abhors being confined to so ignoble, base, and sordid a way of travelling as these coaches oblige him unto. For formerly every man that had occasion to travel many journeys yearly, or to ride up and down, kept horses for himself and servants, and seldom rid without one or two men: but now, since every man can have a passage into every place he is to travel unto, or to some place within a few miles of that part he designs to go unto, they have left keeping of horses, and travel without servants; and York, Chester, and Exeter stage-coaches, each of them, with forty horses apiece, carry eighteen passengers a week from London to either of these places: and, in like manner, as many in return from these places to London: which come, in the whole, to eighteen hundred and seventy-two in the year. Now take it for granted that all that are carried from London to those places are the same that are brought back: yet are there nine hundred and thirty-six passengers carried by forty horses: whereas, were it not for these coaches, at least five hundred horses would be required to perform this work.”

We have already considered the complaint of the watermen. The stage coaches having begun to carry passengers as far as Windsor and Maidenhead up the river, and to Greenwich and Gravesend down the river, who will take a boat, which is far slower and less comfortable than the coach?

The next point of consideration is that of His Majesty’s Excise. Formerly every traveller of quality rode with his servants, who consumed a great quantity of beer and wine on the journey. When coaches began, the passengers travelled without any servants at all, to the great loss of the inns on the road and the corresponding injury to the Excise. And consider the losses inflicted on trade:—

“For before these coaches were set up, travellers rode on horseback, and men had boots, spurs, saddles, bridles, saddle-cloths, and good riding-suits, coats and clokes, stockings and hats: whereby the wool and leather of the kingdom was consumed, and the poor people set at work by carding, combing, spinning, knitting, weaving, and fulling. And your cloth-workers, drapers, tailors, saddlers, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spurriers, lorimers, and felt-makers had a good employ: were full of work, got money, lived handsomely, and helped, with their families, to consume the provisions and manufactures of the kingdom: but by means of these coaches, these trades, besides many others depending upon them, are become almost useless: and they, with their families, reduced to great necessity: insomuch that many thousands of them are cast upon the parishes, wherein they dwell, for a maintenance. Besides, it is a great hurt to the girdlers, sword-cutlers, gunsmiths, and trunk-makers: most gentlemen, before they travelled in their coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases: which, in these coaches, they have little or no occasion for. For, when they rode on horseback, they rode in one suit, and carried another to wear, when they came to their journey’s end; or lay by the way: but in coaches, a silk suit and an Indian gown with a sash, silk stockings and beaver-hats men ride in, and carry no other with them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they cannot avoid: whereas, in two or three journeys on horseback these clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled: which done, they were forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption of the manufactures, and the employment of the manufacturer: which travelling in coaches doth no way do. And if they were women that travelled, they used to have safeguards and hoods, side-saddles, and pillions, with strappings, saddle or pillion-cloths, which, for the most part, were either laced or embroidered: to the making of which there went many several trades: seeing there is not one side-saddle with the furniture made, but, before it is furnished, there are at least thirty-seven trades have a share in the making thereof: most of which are either destroyed, or greatly prejudiced, by the abatement of their trade: which being bread unto, and having served seven years’ apprenticeship to learn, they know not what other course to take for a livelihood. And, besides all these inferior handy-craftsmen there are the mercers, silkmen, lacemen, milliners, linen and woollen drapers, haberdashers, and divers other eminent trades, that receive great prejudice by this way of travelling. For the mercers sold silk and stuff in great quantities for safeguards, hoods, and riding clothes for women: by which means the silk-twisters, winders, throwsters, weavers, and dyers, had a fuller employment: the silkmen sold more lace and embroidery, which kept the silver wire-drawers, lace-makers, and embroiderers: and at least ten trades more were employed. The linen-draper sold more linen, not only to saddlers to make up saddles, but to travellers for their own use: nothing wearing out linen more than riding. Woollen-drapers sold more cloth than now: saddlers used before these coaches were set up, to buy three or four hundred pounds worth of cloth a-piece in a year: nay, some five hundred and a thousand pounds worth, which they cut out into saddles and pillion-cloths: though now there is no saddler can dispose of one hundred pounds worth of cloth in a year in his trade. The milliners and haberdashers, they also sold more ribbons, and riding on horseback, spoiling and wearing them out, much more than travelling in a coach: and, on horseback these things were apter to be lost than in a coach.”

And the expense:—

“Men do not travel in these coaches with less expence of money, or time, than on horseback: for, on horseback, they may travel faster: and, if they please, all things duly considered, with as little if not less charges. For instance: from London to Exeter, Chester, or York, you pay forty shillings a-piece in summer-time, forty-five shillings in winter, for your passage: and as much from those places back to London. Besides, in the journey they change coachmen four times: and there are few passengers that give twelve-pence to each coachman at the end of his stage: which comes to eight shillings in the journey backward and forward, and at least three shillings comes to each passenger’s share to pay for the coachmen’s drink on the road: so that in summer-time the passage backward and forward to any of these places costs four pounds eleven shillings, in the winter five pounds one shilling. And this only for eight days riding in the summer, and twelve in the winter. Then, when the passengers come to London, they must have lodgings: which, perhaps, may cost them five or six shillings a week, and that in fourteen days amounts unto ten or twelve shillings, which makes the four pounds eleven shillings either five pounds one shilling, or five pounds three shillings: or the five pounds one shilling, five pounds eleven shillings, or five pounds thirteen shillings: beside the inconvenience of having meat from the cooks, at double the price they might have it for in inns. But if stage coaches were down and men travelled as formerly, on horseback, then when they came into their inns they would pay nothing for lodgings: and as there would excellent horses be bred and kept by gentlemen for their own use, so would there be by others that would keep them on purpose to let: which would, as formerly, be let at ten or twelve shillings per week, and in many places for six, eight, or nine shillings a week. But admitting the lowest price to be twelve shillings, if a man comes from York, Exeter, or Chester, to London: be five days coming, five days going, and say twelve days in London to dispatch his business (which is the most that country chapmen usually do stay) all this would be but three weeks: so that his horse-hire would come but to one pound sixteen shillings, his horse-meat at fourteen pence a day, one with another, which is the highest that can be reckoned upon, and will come but to one pound five shillings, in all three pounds one shilling: so that there would be, at least, forty or fifty shillings saved of what coach-hire and lodgings will cost him: which would go a great way in paying for riding-clothes, stockings, hats, boots, spurs, and other accoutrements for riding: and, in my poor opinion, would be far better spent in the buying of these things, by the making whereof the poor would be set at work, and kept from being burthensome to the parish, than to give it to those stage-coachmen, to indulge that lazy, idle habit of body, that men, by constant riding in these coaches have brought upon themselves.”

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In the following chapter will be found certain notes on crime and criminals. There is little difference between the crimes of the Elizabethan and those of the Stuart period. I have added two or three stories of the period which seem to affect the manners of London. Hundreds of such stories might be found scattered up and down the annals of the seventeenth century. I have made these meagre selections with sparing hand. The crime of Lord Sanquhar; the cruelty of the Puritan in his punishments; an example of the honest citizen; the treachery of a noble lord; the origin of General Monk’s wife, and one or two more persons and episodes may be taken as illustrations of the times.

The punishment of criminals under the English law remained all through the century cruel and vindictive. High treason continued to be punished with the old barbarities; we have seen what these were. The coiner, if a man, was drawn on a hurdle and hanged; if a woman, she was burned alive. For petty treason, which is the murder of a master, a husband, or a superior officer, the offender was hanged if a man; burned if a woman. For felony of all kinds, hanging. If a man refused to plead he was pressed to death. After death, the body was sometimes hung in chains. In felonies where Benefit of Clergy was still allowed, the offender was branded on the left hand. For petty larceny, the punishments were the loss of an ear, or a whipping. Perjury was punished with pillory, with branding on the forehead, while the offender’s trees were pulled up in his garden and his goods confiscated. Forgery, cheating, libelling, using false weights and measures, forestalling the market, offending against the statutes in bakery and brewery, were punished with pillory, and sometimes by nailing one or both ears to the pillory, or cutting them off, or boring through the tongue with a hot iron. For striking in the King’s Court the right hand was struck off. For striking in Westminster Hall while the judges were sitting, the punishment was imprisonment for life and confiscation of the offender’s goods.

If a jury bought in a verdict contrary to evidence they were liable to lose the franchise; to be incapable of acting as witness or on a jury, to lose their lands and property, and to be imprisoned.

The stocks were for drunkards and vagabonds. Scolding women were to be ducked in the ducking stool.

This goodly array of punishments was in full practice during the seventeenth century.

There were other crimes not dealt with in this list, especially the crime of witchcraft. James has been held up to ridicule for believing in witchcraft. This is unjust, because there were very few in the country who had the strength of mind to disbelieve it. Fortunately the wave of superstitious terror hardly touched London.

The practice of duelling could be defended on the ground of its being a survival, in a sense, of the old ordeal by battle. James I. was the first who made an effort to restrict and abolish the practice.

Under the Commonwealth incest and adultery were made felonies. Incontinence for the first time was made a criminal offence, to be punished by three months’ imprisonment.

These few notes on crime and criminal law might seem incomplete without mention of the two greatest criminals of the century, Titus Oates and Judge Jeffreys. Their crimes, however, have little or nothing to do with London save that those of the former were committed for the most part in London, and that the latter died in London.

The roguery, vice, cheateries, and thieveries practised in the City have always been on the grand scale. Perhaps there were no more of these things in King Charles’s reign than in our own time. But it seems so. To begin with, there were the professed and professional sharps, men who lived by their wits. The names by which they were known under Queen Bess had been changed; these terms of endearment or of opprobrium do not last long. They were now known as Huffs, Rooks, Pads, Pompinios, Philo Puttonists, Ruffons, Shabbaroons, and Rufflers. Many of them were of good birth and of excellent manners. When one of them extorted all his money from a flat it was with an air so engaging that he could not resent it; nor could he believe that he had been cheated by loaded dice and by marked cards. Not all of them were gentlemen. Thus there was the Angler, who carried a stick with a hook at the end, which was useful in passing an open shop; there was the Ruffler, who pretended to be an old soldier of Marston Moor or Naseby; there was the Wild Rogue, a boy or girl who cut off the gold or silver buttons from people in a crowd; the Clapper Doyen, who begged about the streets with stolen children; the Abram man, a sham madman; the Whip Jack, a sham shipwrecked sailor; the Mumper, a decayed merchant; and the Dommerer, who pretended to be dumb.

If we are to believe the revelations of Meritio Latron, the City ’prentices contained among them a considerable number of young fellows who were common rogues and thieves; they robbed their masters as much as they dared, both of money and of goods; they met on Saturday nights when the masters were in the country, exchanged the goods, and feasted together in company with other rogues of the town. In the same edifying work we are instructed concerning the sharp practices and cheateries of the various shopkeepers. It is hardly worth while to spend any time in enumerating these. They are much the same in every age.

The case of Alexander Leighton is one of Royal cruelty. It may be placed beside that of Prynne. There are others of Puritanic cruelty quite as bad, as will be seen presently.

Leighton, a Doctor of Divinity, in 1630, was accused of framing, publishing, and dispersing a scandalous book against King, peers, and prelate.

He was brought before the Star Chamber, where he received his sentence.

First, he was degraded. He was then whipped and put in pillory. Being taken out, his right ear was cut off and the right side of his nose slit, and he was branded on the right cheek with the letters S.S., i.e. Stirrer up of Sedition. He was then taken back to the Fleet for a week, after which, his wounds still fresh, he was again whipped, again set in pillory, and was then deprived of his remaining ear, had the left side of his nose slit, and the left cheek branded.

The Puritan was stern and unrelenting in his punishment. Perhaps this fact may account for something of the hatred with which he came to be regarded by the populace. Take, for instance, the case of Francis Prideaux, a poor little petty thief, who would now be let off with a month’s imprisonment:—

“Francis Prideaux is now convicted of a trespas for unlawfully ripping up and taking away lead from the house of Richard Rothwell and is fined 12d., and must bee stripped naked from the middle upwards on Monday the fourteenth day of this instant January betweene the houres of 9 and 11 of the clocke in the forenoone and then openly whipped on his back untill his body be bloddy at the hinder part of a cart from the Old Gatehouse through Long Ditch, Duke Street, and Charles Street in the parish of St. Margaret’s Westminster, and back againe, from the said Charles Street, through Duke Street and Long Ditch, to the said Old Gatehouse. Hee is committed to the New Prison of the Gatehouse, ther to remayne in safe custody untill he shall undergoe his said punishment, and pay his said fine, and then be delivered paying his fees iiis. viiid.”

The following history of heartless duplicity in high places is told in the memoirs of De Grammont. The victim was one of the earliest actresses on the stage:—

“The Earl of Oxford fell in love with a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke’s theatre, who performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very fashionable new play: insomuch that she ever after retained that name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his passion: he had recourse to invectives and even spells: but all in vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he could neither eat nor drink: this did not signify to him: but his passion at length became so violent that he could neither play nor smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, as you know, a very handsome man: he is of the Order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you would suppose he was really possessed of some sense: but as soon as ever you hear him speak you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage in due form, signed with his own hand: she would not, however, rely upon this: but the next day she thought there could be no danger, when the Earl himself came to her lodgings attended by a clergyman and another man for a witness: the marriage was accordingly solemnized with all due ceremonies, in the presence of one of her fellow-players, who attended as a witness on her part. You will suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to appear at court according to her rank, and to display the earl’s arms upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When examination was made concerning the marriage, it was found to be a mere deception: it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my lord’s trumpeters, and the witness his kettle-drummer. The parson and his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over, and as for the other witness, he endeavoured to persuade her that the Sultana Roxana might have supposed in some part or other of a play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of God and man: both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this infamous imposition: in vain did she throw herself at the king’s feet to demand justice: she had only to rise up again without redress: and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Roxana, instead of Countess of Oxford.”

The strange story of Lord Sanquhar’s revenge belongs to the reign of James the First; it is the story of a madman: a man who went mad with brooding over a sense of shame. He was a Scottish nobleman, and he came to Whitefriars to practise fencing with one or other of the fencing-masters who had lodgings in Alsatia. He was playing with a master named Turner, and in the course of their play he received the point or the button of his adversary’s foil in his eye, the result of which accident was the loss of that eye altogether. The accident, it is said, was much regretted by Turner; considering how much it reflected upon his professional skill, this is not surprising. Lord Sanquhar, however, sometime visited the court of the French King Henry IV. When the King was in discourse with him he observed the loss of the eye and asked how that occurred. “By a sword,” said Sanquhar. “Does the man live?” asked the King.

This question set Lord Sanquhar brooding over the thing until he persuaded himself that his honour demanded the death of Turner. It is, however, wonderful that he should have perversely believed that his honour demanded the murder of Turner by two hired assassins. It was five years after the accident of the foil. The two men went to Whitefriars about seven in the evening. They found Turner sitting before his house with a friend. Apparently Turner knew them, for he invited them to drink; whereupon one of them, Carliel, turning round to cock the pistol, presented it and fired, the bullet entering the man’s heart, so that he fell back, dead. They then fled; one of them ran up a cul de sac and was taken on the spot; the other tried to escape into Scotland; and Lord Sanquhar tried to hide himself in the country.

They were all three caught. The two murderers were hanged opposite the great gate of Whitefriars—now the entrance to Bouverie Street; the noble lord was hanged in New Palace Yard.

We hear a great deal about debtors’ prisons in the course of the eighteenth century. Some effort was made in the seventeenth century to investigate their condition.

In 1677 a committee was appointed to examine into the security, not the proper treatment, of the prisoners of the King’s Bench and Fleet Street. Joseph Cooling, Marshal of the Marshalsea, deposed that he had given, for his office, security for £10,000 and paid, besides, a rent of £1400 a year. He said that he gave no liberty to the prisoners to go out; that those who would not find security were not allowed even to leave the Rules unless attended by his servants; that his servants saw that everybody was in his lodging at nightfall; that some prisoners had a whole house to themselves; that the reason of the Rules was that the prison would not hold all the prisoners; that there was a table of fees, and that he never took more than the table allowed.

Manlove, Warden of the Fleet, deposed that his office was taxed at £600 a year; that he took security from the prisoners before he suffered them to go into the Rules, and so on.

Then came the evidence of ten prisoners. They swore that when the Commissioners of Bankrupts went to the prison in order to examine one Farrington, the Marshal could only produce him twice out of eleven times that he was wanted; that when the Commissioners’ messenger entered the prison, the prisoners jumped upon him. The evidence on this point is not clear. Robert Black, another prisoner, gave evidence as to the Marshal’s exactions and tyranny. He himself had signed a petition against these exactions, and was in consequence forcibly removed to the poor side, where the exercise yard was encumbered with sheds and where he had to sleep in a damp cellar 4 feet underground, 18 feet square, with nineteen others: that prisoners had been locked up day and night, their friends refused admission to them. This evidence of Robert Black was confirmed by others.

Anne Moseley, another prisoner, gave evidence as to the filthy condition of the place where she had to sleep; she also accused the Marshal of taking £10 from her for permission to live at home and then putting her on the poor side. George Phillips, another prisoner, swore that he, with three others, was put into a room 16 feet by 15 feet, for which they had to pay a rent of £24:6:6 a year, though it was worth no more than £4 a year; that the Marshal let a number of such rooms, some of them worth no more than £6 a year, at rents of £24, £36, £46, and £62 a year.

Other prisoners deposed that whereas a table of fees had been laid down by a commissioner in the third year of Queen Elizabeth and exhibited in a frame hung up in the common hall of the prison; and whereas the scale of fees had been further established by the 22nd and 23rd Charles II., the warden of the Fleet, Richard Manlove, levied larger fees and threatened to put the prisoners in irons if they were not paid.

There does not appear, however, to have been any redress of these grievances. The difficulty in the minds of the judges was not as to the treatment of the prisoner by the wardens, but as to their safe custody and the keepers’ court before which the wardens should be tried in case of allowing the prisoners to escape. In other words, a prisoner for debt was regarded partly as a criminal who was rightly punished by being kept in a damp dungeon, and nearly starved to death, and partly as an obstinate person who refused to pay his just debts and was therefore very properly maltreated.

In the year 1613 Mr. R. J., moved by the consideration of the wickedness to be found in this City, and of the dangers and temptations to which young men are exposed, completed a pamphlet of warning and exposure. It is entitled “Looke on me London.” The title page goes on:—

The pamphlet shows, what one might have suspected, the protection afforded by the suburbs and parts of London outside the City and the liberties where the Lord Mayor had no jurisdiction. It was at an innocent-looking ordinary that the young man first met the companion who led him to destruction. He was a handsome, well-dressed, well-spoken gentleman; he was free with his money; his manners were easy and courteous; he laughed readily; he was known at the house, where the drawers ran to fetch him all he wanted; it was an act of courtesy when he spoke to the young gentleman come up from the country to study law, as becomes one who will be a country gentleman and will live on his estate. This brave gentleman not only condescended to speak to the stranger, but he began to talk to him of the sights and pleasures of the town. Would he see the play? The Curtain Theatre was open that afternoon. Would he cross the river to see a famous fencing match at which two would fight till one was disabled? Would he choose rather a bear-baiting? There would be one in Paris Gardens, or, if he liked it better, the gentleman knew where a gaming table could be found, or a quiet hour could be spent over the dice. Or—and here he whispered—would the young gentleman like to visit a certain bona roba of his acquaintance? Upon her and her friends this friendly person enlarged with so much eloquence that the young gentleman was inflamed, and, forgetting his principles and his virtue, begged his friend to take him to the house of these celestial beings.

Now this gallant of such worshipful appearance was nothing but a “shifter” who lived by picking up such simple persons, enticing them into the company of disorderly women, cheating at cards and dice.

“Yet for all this, my brave Shifter hath a more costly reckoning to give him, for being thus growne into acquaintance, hee will in a familiar kinde of courtesie accompany him up and downe the Citty, and in the end will come unto a Mercer’s or Gold-smith’s shoppe, of whom the young Gentleman is well knowne; there will he cheapen velvet, satten, jewels, or what him liketh, and offer his new friend’s credit for the payment; he will with so bold a countenance aske this friendship, that the Gentleman shall bee to seeke of excuse to deny him: well, although the penyworths of the one bee not very good, yet the payment of the other is sure to bee currant.

Thus, by prodigall ryots, vaine company, and rash suretiship many of our English yong Gentlemen are learned to say—

Presently the young gentleman falls into the hands of the money-lender:—

“After all this there seizeth upon the needy Gentleman thus consumed another Devouring Caterpillar, which is the Broker for money: one that is either an old Banker-out citizen, or some smooth-conditioned unthrifty Gentleman farre in debt, some one of these will helpe him to credit with some of their late creditors with a single protestation of meere curtesie. But by your favour, they will herein deale most cunningly. For the citizen Broker (after money taken out for his paines, considering for the time given, and losse in selling of the wares put together) will bring the yong Gentleman fifty pounds currant money for a hundred pounds good debt.

Mary, the Gentleman broker will deale more gallanter, for he will be bounde with his fellow Gentleman for a hundred pound, sharing the money equally betweene them, not without solemne promise to discharge his owne fifty, and if need be, the whole hundred pounds assurance.”

The worst places are the gaming houses.

“Thus one mischiefe drawes on another, and in my opinion gaming houses are the chiefe Fountaines thereof; which wicked places first nourisheth our yong men of England in pride, then acquainteth them with sundry shifting companions, whereof one sort cozeneth them at dice, cardes, another sort consume them with riotous meetings, another sort by Brokage bringeth them in debt, and out of credite, and then awaiteth covetousnesse and usury to cease upon their livings, and the officious sergiant upon their liberties: and all this (as I said before) principally proceeds by the frequenting of gaming houses.”

Where do the rogues of all kinds haunt and find refuge?

“Now remaineth the discovery of the third sort of these haunts, which are placed in the suburbs of the Citty, in Allies, Gardanes, and other obscure corners, out of the common walkes of the magistrates. The daily Guestes of these privy houses are maister-lesse men, needy Shifters, Theeves, Cut-purses, unthrifty servants, both serving-men and Prentises: Here a man may picke out mates for all purposes save such as are good: here a man may finde out fellowes, that for a bottle of wine will make no more conscience to kill a man than a butcher a beast: Here closely lie Saint Nicholas Clearkes, that with a good Northerne Gelding, will gaine more by a Halter, than an honest yeoman will with a teame of good horses: Here are they that will not let to deceive their father, to rob their brother, and fire their neighbour’s house for an advantage. These brave companions will not sticke to spend frankly though they have neither lands nor goods by the dead, nor honestly by nature. But how will this hold out; Fire will consume wood without maintenance, and Ryot make a weake purse without supply.

Gentlemen (for the most part) have lands to make money, and the yong citizens way to get credite: but these idle fellowes have neither lands nor credite, nor will live by any honest meanes or occupation: yet have they hands to filtch, heads to deceive, and friends to receive, and by these helpes, most commonly shift they badly well.

The other upon currant assurance, perhaps, get money for twenty pounds in the hundred, but these that worst may hold the candle: they upon their owne, or upon their maisters apparell, Brasse, Pewter, Linnin, Wollen, or such like, will find Brokers or Friperers, that for eight pence in the pound for every monthe’s use, will boldly for halfe the value take these pawnes.”

The writer goes on to describe some of the tricks of usurers. They are so hard-hearted—but he does not consider that the profession must begin with a flinty heart— that they neither fear God nor reverence man; that they will neither pardon their own father nor acknowledge their mother, nor regard their brothers, and will even make merchandise of their own children. They bear false evidence, “offend the widow and oppress the orphan. Oh, how great is this folly of theirs! to lose life, to seek death, and to banish themselves from heaven eternally.” As for the various tricks that are practised:—

“I know a Broker that will take no interest for his money, but will have the lease of your house, or your land, in use, receiving rent for the same till you pay your principall againe, which will come to a greater gaine than threescore in the hundred. I knowe another that will take no interest money, but will have Pewter, Brasse, Sheetes, Plate, Table-Clothes, Napkins, and such like things, to use in his house, till his money come home, which will loose more in the wearing than the interest of the money will come to.

I know another that will take a pawne twice worth the money that hee lends, and agree with the Borrower to redeeme it at a day, or loose it, by which meanes the poore borrower is forced sometimes for want of money to loose his pawne for halfe the valew.

I know another that will not lend, but buy at small prices, and covenant with the borrower to buy the same againe, at such a price, at such a day, or loose it. This is a fellow that seekes to cozen the Law, but let him take heed lest the devill his good maister cozens not him, and at the last carry him post into hell.

I know another that will lend out his money to men of occupations, as to Butchers, Bakers, and such like, upon conditions to bee partners in their gaines but not in their losses, by which meanes hee that takes all the paines and ventures all is forced to give the Broker halfe the profit for his money.

I know another, for his money lending to a Carpenter, a Brick-layer, or a Plaisterer, will agree with them for so many daies worke, or so many weekes, for the loane of his money, which if all reckonings bee cast will come to a deere interest.

I know many about this citty that will not bee seene to be Brokers themselves, but suffer their wives to deale with their money, as to lend a shilling for a peny a weeke. To Fish-wives, Oister-women, Oringe-wenches and such like, these be they that looke about the citty like rats and weasels, so gnaw poore people alive, and yet go invisible.

This if it be well considered of, is a Jewish Brokage, for indeed the Jewes first brought usury and brokage into England, which now by long sufferance have much blemished the ancient vertues of this Kingdome: let us but remember this one example, how that in the time of King Henry the Third, the good cittizens of London, in one night slew five hundred Jewes, for that a Jew took a Christian penny in the shilling usury, and ever after got them banished the city: but surely those Brokers aforesaid deserve worse than Jewes, for they be like unto Strumpets, for they receive all men’s money, as well the Beggar’s as the Gentleman’s: nay, they will themselves take money upon Brokage, to bring their trade into a better Custome, which in my minde is a wicked custome to live only by sinne.”

In the New Exchange, Strand, at the sign of the “Three Spanish Gypsies,” lived from 1632 to 1649 Thomas Ratford and Ann his wife. They kept a shop for the sale of washballs, powder, gloves, and such things; the wife taught girls plain work, and about the year 1667 she became sempstress to Monk, then a Colonel, and carried linen to his place. Her father was one John Clarges, a farrier at the Savoy, and farrier to Colonel Monk in 1632. He was a man of some success in trade, because he promoted a Maypole on the site of the Strand Cross. He died in 1648. In 1649 Mrs. Ratford and her husband “fell out and parted.” In 1652 she married General Monk.

Years afterwards the question arose in a court of law whether Ratford was dead at the time of the marriage. Witnesses swore they had seen him, but as he had never turned up to receive money due to him, which was inconceivable if he were living, nor had he visited any of his friends, nor was there any occasion why he should have kept out of the way, unless it could be proved that the Duchess paid him for silence, and as the question was only raised after all were dead, the verdict of the jury was in favour of the legality of the marriage. The story which represents Ann Clarges as the daughter of a washerwoman who carried the linen which her mother had washed to Monk’s house is thus completely disproved. Since her father was farrier to Monk in 1632, it is possible that he noticed the girl before her marriage; it is also quite possible that some kind of liaison was carried on between Monk and Mrs. Ratford; this perhaps was the reason of the separation, and the marriage took place, one thinks, as soon as the death of Ratford was known.

Thomas Bancroft, grandson of Archbishop Bancroft, was for many years one of the Lord Mayor’s officers of the City, who in the execution of his office, by information and summoning the citizens before the Lord Mayor upon the most trifling occasions, and for many things not belonging to his office, not only pillaged the poor, but likewise many of the rich, who, rather than lose time in appearing before the said magistrate, gave money to get rid of this common pest of citizens, which, together with his numerous quarterages from brokers, annually amassed a considerable sum of money. By these and other mercenary practices he effectually incurred the hatred and ill-will of the citizens of all denominations, that the persons who attended his funeral obsequies with great difficulty saved his corpse from being jostled off the bearers’ shoulders in the church by the enraged populace, who, seizing the bells, rang them for joy at his unlamented death, a deportment heretofore unheard of among the London rabble.

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In 1679 the Lord Mayor issued a Proclamation in favour of religion, morality, and cleanliness which ought to have converted and convinced a whole City. It did not, because sinners observed with satisfaction that there was no possibility of the pains and penalties being enforced. This instructive document deserves to be set forth at length:—

“The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, having taken into his serious consideration the many dreadful afflictions which this City hath of late years suffered, by a raging plague, a most unheard-of devouring fire, and otherwise: and justly fearing that the same have been occasioned by the many hainous crying sins and provocations to the Divine Majesty: and his Lordship also considering the present dangers of greater mischiefs and misery which seem still to threaten this City, if the execution of the righteous judgments of God Almighty be not prevented by an universal timely repentance and reformation: hath, therefore, thought it one duty of his office, being intrusted to take all possible care for the good government, peace, and welfare of this City, first, to pray and persuade all and every the inhabitants thereof to reform, themselves and families, all sins and enormities whereof they know themselves to be guilty: and if neither the fear of the Great God, nor of His impending judgments shall prevail upon them, he shall be obliged to let them know that, as he is their chief Magistrate, he ought not to bear the sword in vain: and therefore doth resolve, by God’s grace, to take the assistance of his brethren the Aldermen, and to require the aid of all the Officers of this City in their several places, to punish and suppress according to the laws of the land, and the good customs of this City, those scandalous and provoking sins which have of late increased and abounded amongst us, even without shame, to the dishonour of Christianity, and the scandal of the government of this City, heretofore so famous over the world for its piety, sobriety, and good order.

To the end therefore that the laws may become a terror unto evil-doers, and that such, in whose hearts the fear of God and the love of virtue shall not prevail, being forewarned, may amend their lives for fear of punishment, his Lordship hath thought fit to remember them of several penalties provided by law against notorious offenders: as also of all Constables and Public Officers (who are to put the said laws in execution) of their duty therein.

First, every profane curser and swearer ought to be punished by the payment of twelve pence for every oath: and if the same cannot be levied upon the offender’s goods, then he is to sit three hours in the stocks.

Secondly, every drunkard is to pay for the first offence five shillings: and in default thereof to sit six hours in the stocks, and for the second offence to find sureties for the good behaviour or to be committed to the common gaol: and the like punishment is to be inflicted upon all common haunters of ale-houses and taverns, and common gamesters, and persons justly suspected to live by any unlawful means, having no visible living. And no person is to sit or continue tipling or drinking more than one hour, unless upon some extraordinary occasion, in any tavern, victualling-house, ale-house, or other tipling-house, upon the penalty of ten shillings for every offence upon the master of such house: and upon the person that shall so continue drinking, three shillings four pence.

Thirdly, every person maintaining houses suspected of common bawdry, by the law, is to find sureties for their good behaviour: likewise all night-walkers, and persons using that impudent and insufferable practice of attempting others’ modesty in the streets, are to be punished at the House of Correction, and find sureties for their good behaviour.

Fourthly, all persons using any unlawful exercises on the Lord’s Day, or tipling in taverns, inns or ale-houses, and coffee-houses, during divine service on that day, are to forfeit three shillings four pence for every offence, to be levied by distress, and where none can be had to sit three hours in the stocks: and every vintner, inn-keeper, or ale-house keeper that shall suffer any such drinking or tipling in his house is to forfeit ten shillings for every offence: and no person may sit in the streets with herbs, fruits, or other things, to expose them to sale, nor no hackney coachman may stand or ply in the streets on that day.

And therefore all Constables and other officers, whom it doth or may concern, are required according to their oaths solemnly taken in that behalf, to take care for discovering and bringing to punishment whosoever shall offend in any of the premises: and for that end they are to enter into any suspected houses before mentioned to search for any such disorderly persons as shall be found misbehaving themselves, or doing contrary to the said laws, and to levy the penalties, and bring the offenders before some of his Majestie’s Justices of the Peace of this City, to be dealt withall according to law.

And whereas there are other disorders of another nature very dishonourable, and a great scandal to the government of this City, and very prejudicial to the trade and commerce of the same: his lordship, therefore, is resolved by God’s blessing, with the assistance of his brethren the Aldermen, to use his utmost endeavour to prevent the same, by putting in execution the good and wholesome laws in force for that purpose, with all strictness and severity: some of which he hath thought fit to enumerate, with the duties and penalties upon every Constable and other officers concerned therein.

At first the great resort of rogues, vagrants, idle persons, and common beggars, pestring and anoying the streets and common passages, and all places of publick meetings and resort, against whom very good provision is made by the law, viz.:—

That all such persons shall be openly whipped, and forthwith sent from parish to parish to the place where he or she was born, if known: if not, to the place where he or she last dwelt for the space of one year, to be set to work: or not being known where he or she was born or dwelt, then to be sent to the parish where he or she last passed through without punishment.

That every Constable that shall not do his best endeavour for the apprehension of such vagabond, rogue, or sturdy beggar, and cause him or her to be punished or conveyed according to law, shall forfeit ten shillings for every default.

Secondly, the not paving and cleansing of the streets: the redressing whereof being by a late act of Parliament put into Commissioners appointed by Common Council, his Lordship doth hereby recommend the same to the Deputies and Common Council of the several wards within this City, to use their utmost diligence in that affair, and especially to mind their respective Commissioners of the duty incumbent upon them, and of the daily damage which the City suffers by the neglect thereof. And his Lordship doth declare he will appear at the said Commission of Sewers as often as his more urgent occasions will give him leave, and doth expect such attendance of the other Commissioners as may render the act more effectual than hitherto it hath been.

Thirdly, the neglect of the inhabitants of this City in hanging and keeping out their lights at the accustomed hours, according to the good and ancient usage of this City, and acts of Common Council in that behalf.

Fourthly, the not setting and continuing the watches at such hours, and in such numbers, and in such sober and orderly manner in all other respects, as by the acts of Common Council in that behalf is directed and appointed.

And his Lordship doth strictly require the Fellowship of Carmen to be very careful in the due observance of the good and wholesale rules and orders which have been made for their regulation: his Lordship intending severely to inflict the penalties imposed in default thereof.

And to the end that no Constable or other Officers or Ministers of Justice may be any ways discouraged in their lawful, diligent, and vigorous prosecution of the premises, it is provided, that if they or any of them shall be resisted, in the just and lawful execution of their charge and duty, or in any wise affronted or abused, they shall be encouraged, maintained, and vindicated by the justice, order, and authority of his Lordship and the Court of Aldermen, and the offenders prosecuted and punished according to law.”

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Aubrey, writing in 1678, gives some curious notes on the changes of manners and customs. Some of his notes refer to the sixteenth century:—

“Antiently ordinary men’s houses and copyholders, and the like had no chimneys, but flues like louver holes: some of ’em were in being when I was a boy.

In the halls and parlours of great houses were wrote texts of scripture on the painted cloths.

Before the last civil wars, in gentlemen’s houses, at Christmas, the first dish that was brought to table was a boar’s head, with a lemon in his mouth.

The first dish that was brought up to table on Easter day was a red herring riding away on horseback, i.e. a herring ordered by the cook something after the likeness of a man on horseback set in a corn sallad.

The custom of eating a gammon of bacon at Easter (which is still kept up in many parts of England) was founded on this, viz. to show their abhorrence of Judaism at that solemn commemoration of our Lord’s resurrection.

The use of your humble servant came first into England on the marriage of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry IV. of France, which is derived from votre trÈs humble serviteur. The usual salutation before that time was, God keep you, God be with you, and among the vulgar How dost do? with a thump on the shoulder.

Till this time the Court itself was unpolished and unmannered: King James’s court was so far from being civil to women, that the ladies, nay, the Queen herself, could hardly pass by the king’s apartment without receiving some affront.

Heretofore noblemen and gentlemen of fine estates had their heralds, who wore their coats of arms at Christmas and at other solemn times, and cried ‘Largesse’ thrice.

A neat built chapel, and a spacious hall, were all the rooms of note: the rest were small. At Tomarton, in Gloucestershire, antiently the seat of the Rivers, is a dungeon 13 or 14 feet deep: about 4 feet high are iron rings fastened in the wall, which was probably to tye offending villains to, as all lords of manors had this power over their villains (or socage tenants), and had all of them no doubt such places for punishment.

It was well that all castles had dungeons, and so, I believe, had monasteries: for they had often within themselves power of life or death.

In days of yore lords and gentlemen lived in the country like petty kings, had jura regalia belonging to Seignories, had castles and boroughs, had gallows within their liberties where they could try, condemn and execute: never went to London but in Parliament time, or once a year, to do their homage to the king. They always eat in their Gothic Halls at the high table or orsille (which is a little room at the upper end of the hall where stands a table) with the folks at the side table. The meat was served up by watchword. Jacks are but of late invention: the poor boys did turn the spit, and licked the dripping for their pains: the beds of the men servants and retainers were in the hall, as now in the guard or privy chamber here. In the hall mumming and loaf stealing and other Christmas sports were performed.

The Hearth was commonly in the middle, whence the saying Round about our coal fire.

The halls of the Justice of Peace were dreadful to behold. The skreen was garnished with corslets and helmets, gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, launces, pikes, halberts, brown bills, bucklers.

Public inns were rare: travellers were entertained at religious houses for three days together, if occasion served. The meetings of the gentry were not at taverns but in the fields or forests with their hawks and hounds, and their bugle horns in silken bawderies.

Before the Reformation there were no poor’s rates: the charitable doles given at the religious houses, and the church ale in every parish, did the business.

In every parish there was a church-house, to which belonged spits, potts, etc., for dressing provision. Here the housekeepers met, and were merry and gave their charity. The young people came there too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc. Mr. A. Wood assures me there were few or no alms-houses before the time of Henry VIII.: that at Oxon, opposite Christ Church, was one of the most ancient in England.

In every church there was a poor’s box, and the like at great inns.

Before the wake or feast of the dedication of the church, they sat there all night, fasting and praying, viz. on the eve of the wake.

The solemnity attending processions in and about churches, and the perambulations in the fields were great diversions also of those times.

Glass windows in churches and gentlemen’s houses were rare before the time of Henry VIII. In my own remembrance, before the civil wars, copyholders and poor people had none. In Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, and Salop, it is so still. About 90 years ago, noblemen’s and gentlemen’s coats were of the fashion of the beadles and yeomen of the guard, (i.e.) gather’d at the middle. The benchers in the Inns of Court yet retain that fashion in the make of their gowns.

Captain Silas Taylor says, that, in days of yore, when a church was to be built, they watched and prayed on the vigil of the dedication, and took that part of the horison when the sun arose for the East, which makes that variation, so that few stand true except those built between the two equinoxes.

From the time of Erasmus to about 20 years last past the learning was downright pedantry. The conversation and habits of those times were as starcht as their bands and square beads, and gravity was then taken for wisdom. The doctors in those days were but old boys, when quibbles passed for wit even in their sermons.

The gentry and citizens had little learning of any kind and their way of breeding up their children was suitable to the rest. They were as severe to their children as their schoolmasters, and their schoolmasters as severe as masters of the house of correction. The child perfectly loathed the sight of his parent as the slave to his torture. Gentlemen of thirty or forty years old were to stand like mutes and fools bareheaded before their parents, and the daughters (well grown women) were to stand at the cupboard-side during the whole time of the proud mother’s visits unless (as the fashion was) leave was forsooth desired that a cushion should be given them to kneel upon, brought them by the serving man, after they had done sufficient penance in standing.

The boys (I mean young fellows) had their foreheads turned up, and stiffened: they were to stand mannerly forsooth, thus—the foretop ordered as before, with one hand at the band-string, the other behind.

The gentlemen then had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures, like that instrument which is used to drive feathers: and it had a handle at least half as long with which their daughters oftentimes were corrected.

Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice, rode the circuit with such a fan: Sir William Dugdale told me he was an eye-witness of it.

The Earl of Manchester also used such a fan: but the fathers and mothers slasht their daughters, in the time of their besom discipline, when they were perfect women.

At Oxford (and I believe also at Cambridge), the rod was frequently used by the tutors and deans: and Dr. Potter of Trinity College, I knew right well, whipt his pupil with his sword by his side, when he came to take leave of him to go to the Inns of Court.”

Misson, whose travels in England were published at the Hague in 1698, and a few years later were translated into English, says that he “sometimes”—as if the thing was common—met in London a procession consisting of a woman bearing the effigy of a man in straw with horns upon his head, preceded by a drum and followed by a mob making a noise with tongs, gridirons, frying-pans, and saucepans. What should we understand if we met a procession at Charing Cross consisting of four men carrying another man, bagpipes and a shawm played before him, a drum beating, and twenty links burning around him? The significance of this ceremony would be wholly lost and thrown away upon us. It was, however, one of many processions which survived from MediÆval London, and were understood by everybody. The meaning of it was that a woman had given her husband a sound beating for accusing her of infidelity, and that upon such occasions, some kind neighbour of the poor innocent injured creature—which?—“performed this ceremony.”

Again, when Prynne rode up to London to join the Long Parliament, he was accompanied by many thousands of horse and foot wearing rosemary and bay in their hats and carrying them in their hands, and this was considered the greatest affront possible to the judges who had questioned him. Why?

Of Horn Fair I have elsewhere spoken. This fair kept up to the end its semi-allegorical character. No one seems to have known why it was kept on October 18, which is St. Luke’s Day, but the Evangelist is always figured with a bull’s head in the corner of his portrait. The common people, however, associated horns, for some unknown reason, with the infidelity of the wife. They therefore assembled at Cuckold’s Point opposite Ratcliffe, coming down the river from London, and there forming themselves into a procession, marched through Deptford and Greenwich to Charlton with horns upon their heads. At the fair horns of all kinds, and things made out of horn, were sold; the staple of the fair was work in horn, just as the staple of Bartholomew Fair was cloth. Besides the casual processions of the mob, a more formal procession was organised in London itself, especially at certain inns in Bishopsgate. This procession, which seems to have been arranged with some care and to have been interesting, consisted of a king, a queen, a miller, and other personages; they wore horns in their hats, and on arriving at Charlton, walked round the church three times. The occasion gave rise to many coarse and ribald jokes, and to much unseemliness of all kinds—hence a proverb, “All’s fair at Horn Fair.”

In this place the fair is mentioned as one of the last places where processions were organised, having meanings which were well understood at that time, but which would be now forgotten. The City procession, which everybody could read and understand like a printed book, lingered long, falling steadily into disuse and disrepute, until the wedding march was abandoned; the funeral, stripped of its coats of arms, the black gowns, and its torches, and even at last, the march of the milkmaids and the Mayday Jack in the Green, were seen no more.

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