Written during the fever of South Sea speculation, the skit of Jonathan Swift, known as the “Bank of Swearing,” was one exceedingly felicitous and well-timed. We are amused even now, as we read the prospectus of this preposterous undertaking, at the extreme audacity with which the would-be projector solemnly enumerates its advantages. Impossible and altogether ludicrous as was the enterprise, it is not improbable that many of the eager financiers of that speculative age fancied they saw solid reason in the scheme. It is only to be hoped that they did not too eagerly respond to the facilities for investment which the Swearers’ Bank was reputed to hold out.

The notion was simply that of a chartered bank established upon a novel basis and financing upon an original principle. Such bank was in fact to enjoy a monopoly of levying the fines which the laws of the country imposed upon swearing. Although these penalties had been rarely inflicted, the mere circumstance of their being warranted by the statute-book was regarded by the projector in the light of a mine of latent wealth. A profitable banking concern once fairly in operation, and backed by the security of these statutory imposts, what more could the investor require for his capital?

To convince the investing public of the merits of his scheme, he proceeds to calculate the sums that might be realised by fully putting the act into vigour. The neglected statute upon the basis of which the whole of this superstructure was to be raised and the Bank of Swearing endowed, was the act of the sixth and seventh year of William and Mary, inflicting a penalty at the rate of not less than a shilling an oath.[35]

“It is computed by geographers,”—so argues the promoter—“that there are two millions in the kingdom [Ireland], of which number there may be said to be a million of swearing souls. It is thought there may be five thousand gentlemen. Every gentleman, taken one with another, may afford to swear an oath every day, which will yearly produce one million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand oaths; which number of shillings makes the yearly sum of £91,250.

“The farmers of this kingdom, who are computed to be ten thousand, are able to spend yearly five hundred thousand oaths, which gives £25,000; and it is conjectured that from the bulk of the people twenty or five and twenty thousand pounds may be yearly collected.”

The swearing capacity of the army is no less minutely investigated. In the case of the militia, however, the promoter is disposed to recommend either a partial immunity from the tax or else a scale of fines considerably cheapened. To put the law in full force against militiamen, at least so opines the promoter, would only be to fill the stocks with porters and the pawnshops with accoutrements. So essential is this point with him, that he makes direct appeal to his Protestant countrymen, reminding them of the satisfaction it would afford the Papists to see a most useful body of soldiery actually swear themselves out of their Swords and muskets.

Inclined to a politic leniency towards the military classes, it would seem that this ingenious projector looked mainly for his revenue to the swearing dues that might be collected at wakes and fairings. The oaths of a single Connaught fair, he has calculated, amount to upwards of three thousand. “It is true,” he allows, “that it would be impossible to turn all of them into money, for a shilling is so great a duty on swearing, that if it were carefully exacted, the common people might as well pretend to drink wine as to swear, and an oath would be as rare among them as a clean shirt.” In this way the Reverend Dean rattles on. He is pointing his satire both at the epidemic of financial adventure then so fatally prevalent and at that incomprehensible leaning to the use of “bad language” of which even he was so ready to avail himself when it either suited his purpose or strengthened his style.

The Dean can scarcely be supposed to have known that one of the many proposals put before Lord Burghley in the very early days of political economy, bore a close resemblance to his manner of handling oaths. A Monsieur Rodenberg proposed to show how the revenue could be increased to twenty millions of crowns, and part of his plan consisted in a rigorous levy of fines on swearing. He further recommended that a council of twelve “grave persons” should have the disposal of the fund, which while unexpended should be put out to usury.[36]

A recommendation of this kind urged upon Queen Elizabeth’s ministers was very much in advance of English politics. It so far denotes a turning-point in the history of swearing, that we cannot do better than trace out what the future course of legislation was to be.

Previous to the period we are now entering, a person addicted to intemperate language might have been called to account by his church, or at the bar of his own conscience. He could not have been called to account by the State. The suggestion of State interference, so far as concerns the southern division of this island, seems not to have previously occurred, and we are consequently justified in inferring that the necessity for it had never seriously arisen. There is, indeed, complete cohesion and consistency in what was happening. We believe we have shown elsewhere whence it was, and when it was, that the English people first began to swear, and we are confirmed in our conclusions by finding that this was the precise period at which English law-makers began to legislate upon swearing.

Passing over barbarous and obsolete laws of a more imperfect civilisation, we find that the first essays in State control commenced in Scotland. A full half century before the question came before Elizabeth’s parliament, the sister kingdom had the benefit of a statute inflicting a monetary penalty upon the use of oaths. This enactment, passed by the Scottish parliament of 1551, calls for notice upon other grounds besides those of morality. If a legal document can be said to partake of a poetic character, it was certainly the case with this ordinance of Queen Mary, which seems to have been directly inspired by the metrical labours of William Dunbar, then lately the national poet.

The verses of Dunbar to which this result can be partially attributed are those known as ‘The Sweirers and the Devill.’ It is certainly remarkable that the framers of the Act would seem to have prepared its clauses with Dunbar’s poetry open before them. At all events, the statute literally recites the “ugsome oaths” that are used by the old versifier. There is a severity in the statute at which Dunbar himself would have been surprised had he lived down to Mary’s reign. In particular, it enacts that “a prelate of kirk, earl or lord,” shall for the first offence be fined to the extent of twelve pennies, but for the fourth the delinquent shall be banished or imprisoned for a year.Dunbar’s treatment of his subject is very similar to that of the nameless author of the ‘MoralitÉ des BlasphÉmateurs’ which we have previously noticed. He supposes the devil to have assumed human shape, an assumption which in those times would have been thought nothing out of the way, and in that guise to be conversing with the traders in a Lowland market. As is usual in these episodes, he invites them to join him in the use of the most delectable oaths that he can lay before them. The honest market-folk are so taken by his allurements that we have the maltman, the goldsmith, the “sowter,” and the “fleshor” vieing with one another in their choice of ribaldry. In this friendly contest, needless to say, it is the parish priest who carries off the prize. One hopes that his excuse was as valid as that of the monk in Rabelais. “How now,” exclaims Ponocrates, “you swear, Friar John!” “It is only,” replies the friar, “to grace and adorn my speech; it is the colour of a Ciceronian rhetoric.”

The place in literature left vacant by Dunbar was soon occupied by Lindsay, the

“Sir David Lindsay of the Mount
Lord Lion, king at arms,”

whose name and titles are so familiar to the readers of Scott. He likewise appears to have led up to the impending legislation, if not indeed to have been the immediate cause of it. His ‘Satyre of the Three Estaitis,’ performed at Coupar in 1535, besides containing other objectionable matter, is a wild medley of oaths.

Apart from what was passing in and near the capital, the local authorities from Glasgow to Aberdeen were up in arms against swearers before any movement of the kind had taken place in the other division of the island. To judge from the borough records of the former city,[37] the prevalency of the habit was a source of great scandal to the presbytery of that town. The number of Janet Andersons and William Crawfords who were arraigned before the high bailiff for offences of this character is something considerable. At Aberdeen[38] in 1592 the attention of the council was specially engaged in repressing the swearing of “horrible and execrable oaths.” They proceeded to put on foot a system of fines, and with a degree of confidence that is hardly commendable, they authorised the heads of families to keep a box in which to place the mulcts they were empowered to inflict in their households. Servants’ wages were liable to be taxed at the will of their masters, and wives’ pin-money at the instance of their lords. A few years later the presbytery went further than even the magistracy had already done. They directed the master of the house to keep a “palmer,” or instrument for inflicting pain upon the palm of the open hand. This we suppose to have been the last argument used against offenders whose wages or whose pin-money had been sworn away. Altogether the attempt to make people moral by Act of Parliament seems to have been productive of much strife in Scotland, without securing, so far as can be perceived, any positive gain. The Act of 1551, that under which the local and spiritual authorities derived their powers, was further supplemented by Acts of 1567 and 1581.

We now arrive at the point at which legislation upon the subject was to cross the border and take a prominent place in the counsels of King James’ reign.

We have seen that it was Queen Elizabeth’s godson Sir John Harington, who first recorded the positive introduction of the damnatory oath. A long time, however, must have elapsed before the bantling took heart of grace and found strength to run alone. An examination of Elizabethan writings does not conduce to the idea of the term having had a widespread acceptation. The reference we have given to the comedy of Nat Field, ‘Amends for Ladies,’ tends to show that the British shibboleth was still regarded as of exotic growth. The truth would seem to be that the literature of the country, gross and abusive as it often was, was singularly free from terms of this particular description, while the conversation of the humbler orders was not so unexceptionable. Already it had become a source of uneasiness to the Legislature. In 1601 a measure was introduced into the Commons “against usual and common swearing,” but, having been carried up to the Lords, it dropped after the first reading. This would appear to have been the first attempt at legislation on the subject.[39] On the accession of James I. the topic was again brought to the notice of the House, but the early Parliaments of this reign were too much occupied with the work thrown upon them in consequence of the Gunpowder Treason to formulate any code for the regulation of this abuse. Although no less than five separate bills, having the prevention of swearing for their object, were presented during the course of this reign, it was not until 1623 that an enactment was finally carried defining and controlling the offence. The statute of that year[40] provided that every offender should forfeit the sum of twelve pence. In default of payment the culprit was to be placed in the stocks for three hours, or if under the age of twelve years was to be severely whipped.

The attack made by the Puritans upon performances of a dramatic nature had resulted in a kindred piece of legislation especially affecting the stage. By an Act[41] passed in 1606 it was provided that a penalty of 10l. should be borne by every person who jestingly or profanely used the name “of God, or of Christ Jesus, or the Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity,” in any interlude, pageant or stage-play. It was in consequence of the rigour of this enactment that Ben Jonson narrowly escaped a prosecution for blasphemy. On the production of the ‘Magnetic Lady,’ the language employed upon the stage gave great offence in legal quarters, and the author was sent for from a sick-bed and severely questioned by the Master of the Revels. An examination of the play will show the charge, as against Jonson, to have been unfounded; even the author was at a loss to understand the occasion for the accusation being preferred. The actors in the piece were accordingly called together, and when confronted with the dramatist, were forced to admit that the objectionable expletives were those of their own supplying.

When some months later the play of ‘The Wits’ was presented to the licenser, previous to its production on the stage of the Blackfriars, that dignitary was particularly careful to expunge all such passages as struck him as unparliamentary. Sir William D’Avenant, the author of the comedy, complained to the king of this exercise of the censorship, and His Majesty, after reading the play for himself, negatived the decision of the licenser. He ruled that the words “s’death,” “s’light,” and such kindred terms, were asseverations merely, and not oaths. The court functionary does not appear to have been any the more satisfied, and has left an entry in his diary, submitting indeed to his master’s judgment, but maintaining his own opinion. The play was returned to D’Avenant, having the full sanction of the king, who on its first production took boat to the Blackfriars playhouse to witness the performance.[42]

The stage has continued to enjoy a species of traditional immunity from all the reprobation which swearing is presumed to incur. So long as the action passing on the boards is in ever so remote a degree in affinity with its supposed natural counterpart, and is suited with dialogue that is fairly appropriate, the use of expletives is not omitted in deference to the susceptibilities of an audience. The theatre may in some sense be called a school of swearing, and in that capacity has frequently brought upon itself the castigations of its appointed supervisors. Of all the censors who from time to time have made a stand against this traditional licence, George Colman is to be remembered as the most violent and the most inconsistent.

As a writer he had scandalised a whole generation of playgoers. The ‘Heir-at-Law’ and the ‘Poor Gentleman,’ comedies with which he has permanently benefited stage literature, do not certainly halt at any extreme. His very appointment as censor was due to the bottle-acquaintance that had sprung up with the regent Prince of Wales. Yet so squeamish did he become when once the official mantle had descended upon his shoulders, that even the exclamations “lud!” and “la!” were ruthlessly expunged from productions submitted to his censorship. The words “Oh, Providence!” were also rigidly excised, and the very names of heaven and hell were flatly condemned as savouring of irreverence.

Says Mr. Dutton Cook, in treating of this feature of the Georgian drama:—“Men swore in those days not meaning much harm or particularly conscious of what they were doing, but as a matter of bad habit, in pursuance of a custom certainly odious enough, but which they had not originated and could hardly be expected immediately to overcome. In this way malediction formed part of the manners of the time. How could these be depicted upon the stage in the face of Mr. Colman’s new ordinance? There was great consternation among actors and authors. Critics amused themselves by searching through Colman’s own dramatic writings and cataloguing the bad language they contained. The list was very formidable. There were comminations and anathemas in almost every scene. The matter was pointed out to him, but he treated it with indifference. He was a writer of plays then, but now he was Examiner of Plays.”The persecution under which Jonson suffered was due to the steady growth of Puritan principles. Measures of austerity were speedily generated by this ascetic philosophy; and among others we find that a scheme for bringing oaths, in a liquidated shape, to the aid of the national resources, was put into operation. Letters patent were granted in the month of July 1635, for establishing a public department for enforcing the laws against swearing. One Robert Lesley was appointed to the office of chief inquisitor, and was authorised to take all necessary steps for carrying out the act in every parish of the kingdom. Whatever moneys might be realised were to be paid over to the bishops for the benefit of the deserving poor. Lesley appointed deputies in the parishes, who, we notice, were at liberty to deduct 2s. 6d. in the £ for their pains. A copy of one of these appointments to a London parish appears among the State papers, but no balance-sheet from which we might learn something of the “turn-over” of the office appears to be forthcoming.[43]

With what feelings the army of the Parliament regarded this offence may be gathered from two sentences passed upon offenders convicted under military law. In March 1649, a quartermaster named Boutholmey was tried by council of war for uttering impious expressions. The man was found guilty and condemned to have his tongue bored with a red-hot iron, his sword broken over his head, and himself ignominiously dismissed the service. In the following year a dragoon was similarly sentenced by court-martial to be branded on the tongue.[44] Even in districts removed from martial severity the monetary tax on oath-taking was frequently demanded. We perceive from a recent writer,[45] who has collected the ancient records of quarter sessions, that swearing was severely visited upon the lieges of Somerset and Devon. John Huishe, of Cheriton, was convicted for swearing twenty-two oaths. Humfrey Trevitt, for swearing ten oaths, was adjudged to pay 33s. 4d. for the use of the poor. William Harding, of Chittlehampton, was held to be within the act of swearing for saying “Upon my life,” and Thomas Buttand was fined for exclaiming “On my troth!”

To glance at Scotland at this time, we find the governing body enacting laws of a more searching and stringent character than any that had preceded them. The Parliament of 1645 ordered that whoever should curse or blaspheme should upon a second conviction be “censurable” in the manner prescribed, that is, a nobleman should pay twenty pounds Scots, a baron twenty marks, a gentleman ten marks. The Act anticipates the case of a minister of religion coming under its provisions. The punishment in that case was the forfeit of the first part of his year’s stipend. In 1649 a further enactment was passed, the previous one being admittedly too lenient, and in the same session the offence of cursing a parent was made punishable by sentence of death. It is certainly curious to witness the extremes to which the Scottish nation were prepared to go in legislating against the commission of this offence. In 1650, when the country was rushing to arms to resist the invasion of Cromwell, an Act of Parliament was prepared which disqualified for command all officers who were addicted to swearing.

The code which, in this country, had proved sufficient for the Puritans remained in force until the manners of the Restoration had rendered further legislation imperative. This took the shape of the statute of William and Mary, by which, as we have seen, the Dean of St. Patrick’s was so greatly exhilarated. After an interval of some fifty years the interference of Parliament was again felt to be necessary, and an Act of George II. was passed which still regulates the law upon the subject of swearing.[46]

The preamble admits that the existing laws were not sufficiently powerful to meet the circumstances for which they were designed. A more onerous scale of penalties was to be prescribed, commencing with a fine of one shilling in the case of a labourer, and rising to five shillings in the case of a swearer of gentleman’s degree. That this measure should not want for publicity, it was ordered to be read quarterly in every church and chapel throughout the kingdom.

A curious instance of punishment for neglect of this saving provision, is noticed in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1772. In July of that year a rich vicar and a poor curate were condemned to pay into the hands of the proper officer a sum of 15l. for neglecting to read in church the Act against swearing. This clause was only repealed by an enactment of the present century.

We have some means of knowing whether the fines recoverable under this statute were in point of fact actually inflicted, and from the importance attached by the public prints to the decisions of magistrates on this head, we are justified in thinking that the statute was very rarely put into requisition. In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for July 1751 we read that a woman convicted of uttering a profane oath and unable to defray the shilling penalty, was sentenced to ten days’ hard labour in Bridewell. In December of the same year a tradesman was committed for a matter of three hundred and ninety oaths, the fines amounting to upwards of 20l., which he was unable to pay. Convictions under the statute were at this time seriously attracting public attention. That the calculations of Dean Swift should not be altogether lost to the world, one rigid economist practically entertained the notion of adding to the national resources by preaching a crusade against the opulent classes of swearers. There was a Mr. Matthew Towgood, who in 1746 prepared a treatise ‘Upon the Prophane and Absurd use of the Monosyllable Damn.’ It is enough to say that neither imagination nor research seem to have been the especial gift of Mr. Towgood. It is a whining piece of work, in which the author gravely informs us that he had taken up his residence at a seaport town in order the more closely to observe the impious language of the sailors. We should, however, do the author the justice to refer to the one distinctive experience he seems to have gathered in his marine retreat. He had discovered,—so at least he solemnly assures us,—that the monosyllable in question was a “hortatory expression” by which the chaplains in His Majesty’s navy were accustomed to summon British seamen to their prayers.

But much as it enters into the penal administration of the seventeenth century, there is little to indicate that the vice was countenanced in high places, or that it was seriously regarded as a pardonable incident pertaining to the enjoyments of men of rank. That crowning distinction seems to have been reserved for the age of Anne and the first sovereigns of the house of Brunswick. Then it was that the insular propensity grew impudent and headstrong, and soon became a power in the land. It is only probable that the moral relapse that followed the Restoration may have given the first impetus to the ascendancy of this invigorating habit. Charles II. is said to have taught his ladies to swear like parrots, but oaths were still only the plaything and not part of the serious business of the Court. The Foppingtons and Clumsys were scrupulously nice in their methods of affirmation, but it was publicly recognised that their swearing was a mere theatrical device, and that they either swore like cavaliers or swore like chambermaids. The acme had not even then been reached. That point was only attained in the age when Duchess Marlborough found disguise impossible by reason of her oaths. In the matter of swearing the courtiers of the Stuarts may have demeaned themselves like Mantalinis, but the giants of a later day swore home. An obscure American clergyman, having undertaken a voyage across the Atlantic to solicit alms for a pious foundation in Virginia, and urging that the people of that state had souls to be saved as well as their brethren in England, was met with the rejoinder from King William’s attorney-general, “Souls! damn your souls! make tobacco!”

In the year 1700 there was founded the Society for the Reformation of Manners. It had for one of its prime objects the entire suppression of oath-taking. The society seems to have enrolled members distinguished alike for a laxity of their own morals and a tender solicitude for the welfare of other people’s. The King Consort, “Est-il-possible,” was persuaded to become a fellow, and was induced to put forth a howling manifesto upon the iniquities of the age. This exordium was publicly read at Bow Church. What with openly declaiming against the hideousness of vice and proceeding criminally against its professors, the society convinced the diarist Evelyn that they were working a complete reformation in the habits of the community.

The building of Saint Paul’s Cathedral was proceeding at this time, and the work necessarily employed a large body of labourers and workmen, who, as things were and are, were not scrupulously delicate in the choice of words. Nevertheless, it was the particular care of the builders that not one offensive word should be used during the progress of the work.[47] Sir Christopher Wren framed rules which made a delinquency in this respect liable to be so summarily visited that it has been the boast of many earnest and slightly credulous people that the mighty fabric was piled up without an oath being spoken. The society certainly did good work if they had any hand in this result.

In spite of the society, the question of swearing and its prevalent grossness seems to have attracted the attention of the civil courts of law at this time. In a number of Applebee’s Journal for 1723, some account is given of a certain Abel Boyer, an infamous scribbler and notorious swearer of the day. It seems he had threatened some of his fellow journalists with the pains of libel because they had done him simple justice in referring to the comminations he was accustomed to use in speech. Before commencing his suit, Abel prudently sought the advice of counsel, contending that his trifling derelictions did not partake of the colour of blasphemy. The lawyers accordingly gave it against Mr. Boyer, advising that his “goddams” and kindred expletives came entirely within the prohibited pale. In March 1718, there is another instance of swearing being food for Westminster Hall, as appears from the Flying Post, the prominent Whig journal of the day. Mr. Richard Burridge, a scurrilous newsman attached to the British Gazetteer, had been tried at Hicks’s Hall for addiction to blasphemous expressions, too shocking, says the Post, to be named. Burridge was very properly convicted, although a strong presentation was made in his favour, that when sober a better conducted man did not exist. To account for this person’s unfortunate relapse, it was urged that he was “excessively drunk,” a consideration that so weighed with the tribunal, that they passed upon him what was admitted on all hands to be a most moderate sentence. Burridge was ordered to take up a position at the New Church in the Strand and to be from there publicly whipped to Charing Cross. Further, he was to pay a fine of twenty shillings and be imprisoned for a month. Thenceforward a paper war was waged between the two political divisions of journalism. The Tories professed to see the Whig journalists stigmatised by the disgrace of one of their number, and the great Daniel Defoe cast censure upon them and upon Burridge from Mist’s Journal, the Tory paper he conducted.

And so, pursued by judgments of court and branded with letters of infamy, it would seem to have been a very desperate time for these unfortunate swearers. The profession of the pen was likely enough to rankle under this load of aspersion, were it not that a more genial influence had arisen that was bent upon remedying rather than provoking offences. For while the leaders of opinion were playing their intensest game of political intrigue, while poets were occupied with the trade of admiration, and divines with the trade of subserviency, there arose in England a gentler and more captivating literature of reproval, that laid its generous laws upon men the most intolerant and the most prurient. We allude to that more benevolent code of morality inaugurated by Joseph Addison.