The secretary, however, views nothing but his master’s glory in the issue of this most difficult negotiation; and the triumph of Anjou over the youthful archduke, whom the Poles might have moulded to their will, and over the King of Sweden, who claimed the crown by his queen’s side, and had offered to unite his part of Livonia with that which the Poles possessed. He labours hard to prove that the palatines and the castellans were not pratiqués, i.e., had their votes bought up by Montluc, as was reported; from their number and their opposite interests, he confesses that the sieur evesque slept little, while in Poland, and that he only gained over the hearts of men by that natural gift of God which acquired him the title of the happy ambassador. He rather seems to regret that France was not prodigal of her purchase-money, than to affirm that all palatines were alike scrupulous of their honour.

One more fact may close this political sketch; a lesson of the nature of court gratitude! The French court affected to receive Choisnin with favour, but their suppressed discontent was reserved for “the happy ambassador!” Affairs had changed; Charles the Ninth was dying, and Catharine de’ Medici in despair for a son to whom she had sacrificed all; while Anjou, already immersed in the wantonness of youth and pleasure, considered his elevation to the throne of Poland as an exile which separated him from his depraved enjoyments! Montluc was rewarded only by incurring disgrace; Catharine de’ Medici and the Duke of Anjou now looked coldly on him, and expressed their dislike of his successful mission. “The mother of kings,” as Choisnin designates Catharine de’ Medici, to whom he addresses his memoirs, with the hope of awakening her recollections of the zeal, the genius, and the success of his old master, had no longer any use for her favourite; and Montluc found, as the commentator of Choisnin expresses in a few words, an important truth in political morality, that “at court the interest of the moment is the measure of its affections and its hatreds.”237

BUILDINGS IN THE METROPOLIS, AND RESIDENCE IN THE COUNTRY.

Recently more than one of our learned judges from the bench have perhaps astonished their auditors by impressing them with an old-fashioned notion of residing more on their estates than the fashionable modes of life and the esprit de société, now overpowering all other esprit, will ever admit. These opinions excited my attention to a curious circumstance in the history of our manners—the great anxiety of our government, from the days of Elizabeth till much later than those of Charles the Second, to preserve the kingdom from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. The people themselves indeed participated in the same alarm at the growth of the city; while, however, they themselves were perpetuating the grievance which they complained of.

It is amusing to observe, that although the government was frequently employing even their most forcible acts to restrict the limits of the metropolis, the suburbs were gradually incorporating with the city, and Westminster at length united itself to London. Since that happy marriage, their fertile progenies have so blended together, that little Londons are no longer distinguishable from the ancient parent; we have succeeded in spreading the capital into a county, and have verified the prediction of James the First, “that England will shortly be London, and London England.”

“I think it a great object,” said Justice Best, in delivering his sentiments in favour of the Game Laws, “that gentlemen should have a temptation to reside in the country, amongst their neighbours and tenantry, whose interests must be materially advanced by such a circumstance. The links of society are thereby better preserved, and the mutual advantages and dependence of the higher and lower classes on one another are better maintained. The baneful effects of our present system we have lately seen in a neighbouring country, and an ingenious French writer has lately shown the ill consequences of it on the continent.”238

These sentiments of a living luminary of the law afford some reason of policy for the dread which our government long entertained on account of the perpetual growth of the metropolis; the nation, like a hypochondriac, was ludicrously terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, and that it drew all the moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. Proclamations warned and exhorted; but the very interference of a royal prohibition seemed to render the crowded city more charming. In vain the statute against new buildings was passed by Elizabeth; in vain during the reigns of James the First and both the Charleses we find proclamations continually issuing to forbid new erections.

James was apt to throw out his opinions in these frequent addresses to the people, who never attended to them: his majesty notices “those swarms of gentry, who through the instigation of their wives, or to new-model and fashion their daughters (who if they were unmarried, marred their reputations, and if married, lost them), did neglect their country hospitality, and cumber the city, a general nuisance to the kingdom.”—He addressed the Star Chamber to regulate “the exorbitancy of the new buildings about the city, which were but a shelter for those who, when they had spent their estates in coaches, lacqueys, and fine clothes like Frenchmen, lived miserably in their houses like Italians; but the honour of the English nobility and gentry is to be hospitable among their tenants.” Once conversing on this subject, the monarch threw out that happy illustration, which has been more than once noticed, that “Gentlemen resident on their estates were like ships in port; their value and magnitude were felt and acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and importance were not duly estimated.”239

A manuscript writer of the times complains of the breaking up of old family establishments, all crowding to “upstart London.” “Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house, and an emperor in the streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a coach: giving that allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained houses full of men; pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and burying all the treasures of the kingdom into a few citizens’ coffers; their woods into wardrobes, their leases into laces, and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys.” Such is the representation of an eloquent contemporary; and however contracted might have been his knowledge of the principles of political economy, and of that prosperity which a wealthy nation is said to derive from its consumption of articles of luxury, the moral effects have not altered, nor has the scene in reality greatly changed.

The government not only frequently forbade new buildings within ten miles of London, but sometimes ordered them to be pulled down—after they had been erected for several years. Every six or seven years proclamations were issued. In Charles the First’s reign, offenders were sharply prosecuted by a combined operation, not only against houses, but against persons.240 Many of the nobility and gentry, in 1632, were informed against for having resided in the city, contrary to the late proclamation. And the Attorney-General was then fully occupied in filing bills of indictment against them, as well as ladies, for staying in town. The following curious “information” in the Star Chamber will serve our purpose.

The Attorney-General informs his majesty that both Elizabeth and James, by several proclamations, had commanded that “persons of livelihood and means should reside in their counties, and not abide or sojourn in the city of London, so that counties remain unserved.” These proclamations were renewed by Charles the First, who had observed “a greater number of nobility and gentry, and abler sort of people, with their families, had resorted to the cities of London and Westminster, residing there, contrary to the ancient usage of the English nation”—“by their abiding in their several counties where their means arise, they would not only have served his majesty according to their ranks, but by their housekeeping in those parts the meaner sort of people formerly were guided, directed and relieved.” He accuses them of wasting their estates in the metropolis, which would employ and relieve the common people in their several counties. The loose and disorderly people that follow them, living in and about the cities, are so numerous, that they are not easily governed by the ordinary magistrates: mendicants increase in great number—the prices of all commodities are highly raised, &c. The king had formerly proclaimed that all ranks who were not connected with public offices, at the close of forty days’ notice, should resort to their several counties, and with their families continue their residence there. And his majesty further warned them “Not to put themselves to unnecessary charge in providing themselves to return in winter to the said cities, as it was the king’s firm resolution to withstand such great and growing evil.” The information concludes with a most copious list of offenders, among whom are a great number of nobility, and ladies and gentlemen, who were accused of having lived in London for several months after the given warning of forty days. It appears that most of them, to elude the grasp of the law, had contrived to make a show of quitting the metropolis, and, after a short absence, had again returned; “and thus the service of your majesty and your people in the several counties have been neglected and undone.”

Such is the substance of this curious information, which enables us at least to collect the ostensible motives of this singular prohibition. Proclamations had hitherto been considered little more than the news of the morning, and three days afterwards were as much read as the last week’s newspapers. They were now, however, resolved to stretch forth the strong arm of law, and to terrify by an example. The constables were commanded to bring in a list of the names of strangers, and the time they proposed to fix their residence in their parishes. A remarkable victim on this occasion was a Mr. Palmer, a Sussex gentleman, who was brought ore tenus into the Star Chamber for disobeying the proclamation for living in the country. Palmer was a squire of 1000l. per annum, then a considerable income. He appears to have been some rich bachelor; for in his defence he alleged that he had never been married, never was a housekeeper, and had no house fitting for a man of his birth to reside in, as his mansion in the country had been burnt down within two years. These reasons appeared to his judges to aggravate rather than extenuate his offence; and after a long reprimand for having deserted his tenants and neighbours, they heavily fined him in one thousand pounds.241

The condemnation of this Sussex gentleman struck a terror through a wide circle of sojourners in the metropolis. I find accounts, pathetic enough, of their “packing away on all sides for fear of the worst;” and gentlemen “grumbling that they should be confined to their houses:” and this was sometimes backed too by a second proclamation, respecting “their wives and families, and also widows,” which was “durus sermo to the women. It is nothing pleasing to all,” says the letter-writer, “but least of all to the women.” “To encourage gentlemen to live more willingly in the country,” says another letter-writer, “all game-fowl, as pheasants, partridges, ducks, as also hares, are this day by proclamation forbidden to be dressed or eaten in any inn.” Here we find realized the argument of Mr. Justice Best in favour of the game-laws.

It is evident that this severe restriction must have produced great inconvenience to certain persons who found a residence in London necessary for their pursuits. This appears from the manuscript diary of an honest antiquary, Sir Symonds D’Ewes; he has preserved an opinion which, no doubt, was spreading fast, that such prosecutions of the Attorney-General were a violation of the liberty of the subject. “Most men wondered at Mr. Noy, the Attorney-General, being accounted a great lawyer, that so strictly took away men’s liberties at one blow, confining them to reside at their own houses, and not permitting them freedom to live where they pleased within the king’s dominions. I was myself a little startled upon the first coming out of the proclamation; but having first spoken with the Lord Coventry, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, at Islington, when I visited him; and afterwards with Sir William Jones, one of the King’s Justices of the Bench, about my condition and residence at the said town of Islington, and they both agreeing that I was not within the letter of the proclamation, nor the intention of it neither, I rested satisfied, and thought myself secure, laying in all my provisions for housekeeping for the year ensuing, and never imagined myself to be in danger, till this unexpected censure of Mr. Palmer passed in the Star Chamber; so, having advised with my friends, I resolved for a remove, being much troubled not only with my separation from Recordes, but with my wife, being great with child, fearing a winter journey might be dangerous to her.”242 He left Islington and the records in the Tower to return to his country-seat, to the great disturbance of his studies.

It is, perhaps, difficult to assign the cause of this marked anxiety of the government for the severe restriction of the limits of the metropolis, and the prosecution of the nobility and gentry to compel a residence on their estates. Whatever were the motives, they were not peculiar to the existing sovereign, but remained transmitted from cabinet to cabinet, and were even renewed under Charles the Second. At a time when the plague often broke out, a close and growing metropolis might have been considered to be a great evil; a terror expressed by the manuscript-writer before quoted, complaining of “this deluge of building, that we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another’s faces.” The police of the metropolis was long imbecile, notwithstanding their “strong watches and guards” set at times; and bodies of the idle and the refractory often assumed some mysterious title, and were with difficulty governed. We may conceive the state of the police, when “London apprentices,” growing in number and insolence, frequently made attempts on Bridewell, or pulled down houses. One day the citizens, in proving some ordnance, terrified the whole court of James the First with a panic that there was “a rising in the city.” It is possible that the government might have been induced to pursue this singular conduct, for I do not know that it can be paralleled, of pulling down new-built houses by some principle of political economy which remains to be explained, or ridiculed, by our modern adepts. It would hardly be supposed that the present subject may be enlivened by a poem, the elegance and freedom of which may even now be admired. It is a great literary curiosity, and its length may be excused for several remarkable points.

AN ODE,

BY SIR RICHARD FANSHAW,

Upon Occasion of his Majesty’s Proclamation in the Year 1630, commanding the Gentry to reside upon their Estates in the Country.

ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS.

The satires and the comedies of the age have been consulted by the historian of our manners, and the features of the times have been traced from those amusing records of folly. Daines Barrinton enlarged this field of domestic history in his very entertaining “Observations on the Statutes.” Another source, which to me seems not to have been explored, is the proclamations which have frequently issued from our sovereigns, and were produced by the exigencies of the times.

These proclamations or royal edicts in our country were never armed with the force of laws—only as they enforce the execution of laws already established; and the proclamation of a British monarch may become even an illegal act, if it be in opposition to the law of the land. Once, indeed, it was enacted under the arbitrary government of Henry the Eighth, by the sanction of a pusillanimous parliament, that the force of acts of parliament should be given to the king’s proclamations; and at a much later period the chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, was willing to have advanced the king’s proclamations into laws, on the sophistical maxim that “all precedents had a time when they began;” but this chancellor argued ill, as he was told with spirit by Lord Coke, in the presence of James the First,243 who probably did not think so ill of the chancellor’s logic. Blackstone, to whom on this occasion I could not fail to turn, observes, on the statute under Henry the Eighth, that it would have introduced the most despotic tyranny, and must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily repealed in the minority of his successor, whom he elsewhere calls an amiable prince—all our young princes, we discover, were amiable! Blackstone has not recorded the subsequent attempt of the lord chancellor under James the First, which tended to raise proclamations to the nature of an ukase of the autocrat of both the Russias. It seems that our national freedom, notwithstanding our ancient constitution, has had several narrow escapes.

Royal proclamations, however, in their own nature are innocent enough; for since the manner, time, and circumstances of putting laws in execution must frequently be left to the discretion of the executive magistrate, a proclamation that is not adverse to existing laws need not create any alarm; the only danger they incur is that they seem never to have been attended to, and rather testified the wishes of the government than the compliance of the subjects. They were not laws, and were therefore considered as sermons or pamphlets, or anything forgotten in a week’s time!

These proclamations are frequently alluded to by the letter-writers of the times among the news of the day, but usually their royal virtue hardly kept them alive beyond the week. Some on important subjects are indeed noticed in our history. Many indications of the situation of affairs, the feelings of the people, and the domestic history of our nation, may be drawn from these singular records. I have never found them to exist in any collected form, and they have been probably only accidentally preserved.244

The proclamations of every sovereign would characterize his reign, and open to us some of the interior operations of the cabinet. The despotic will, yet vacillating conduct of Henry the Eighth, towards the close of his reign, may be traced in a proclamation to abolish the translations of the scriptures, and even the reading of Bibles by the people; commanding all printers of English books and pamphlets to affix their names to them, and forbidding the sale of any English books printed abroad.245 When the people were not suffered to publish their opinions at home, all the opposition flew to foreign presses, and their writings were then smuggled into the country in which they ought to have been printed. Hence, many volumes printed in a foreign type at this period are found in our collections. The king shrunk in dismay from that spirit of reformation which had only been a party business with him, and making himself a pope, decided that nothing should be learnt but what he himself deigned to teach!

The antipathies and jealousies which our populace too long indulged, by their incivilities to all foreigners, are characterised by a proclamation issued by Mary, commanding her subjects to behave themselves peaceably towards the strangers coming with King Philip; that noblemen and gentlemen should warn their servants to refrain from “strife and contention, either by outward deeds, taunting words, unseemly countenance, by mimicking them, &c.” The punishment not only “her grace’s displeasure, but to be committed to prison without bail or mainprise.”

The proclamations of Edward the Sixth curiously exhibit the unsettled state of the reformation, where the rites and ceremonies of Catholicism were still practised by the new religionists, while an opposite party, resolutely bent on an eternal separation from Rome, were avowing doctrines which afterwards consolidated themselves into puritanism, and while others were hatching up that demoralising fanaticism which subsequently shocked the nation with those monstrous sects, the indelible, disgrace of our country! In one proclamation the king denounces to the people “those who despise the sacrament by calling it idol, or such other vile name.” Another is against such “as innovate any ceremony,” and who are described as “certain private preachers and other laiemen, who rashly attempt of their own and singular wit and mind, not only to persuade the people from the old and accustomed rites and ceremonies, but also themselves bring in new and strange orders according to their phantasies. The which, as it is an evident token of pride and arrogancy, so it tendeth both to confusion and disorder.” Another proclamation, to press “a godly conformity throughout his realm,” where we learn the following curious fact, of “divers unlearned and indiscreet priests of a devilish mind and intent, teaching that a man may forsake his wife and marry another, his first wife yet living; likewise that the wife may do the same to the husband. Others, that a man may have two wives or more at once, for that these things are not prohibited by God’s law, but by the Bishop of Rome’s law; so that by such evil and fantastical opinions some have not been afraid indeed to marry and keep two wives.” Here, as in the bud, we may unfold those subsequent scenes of our story which spread out in the following century; the branching out of the non-conformists into their various sects; and the indecent haste of our reformed priesthood, who, in their zeal to cast off the yoke of Rome, desperately submitted to the liberty of having “two wives or more!” There is a proclamation to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays; exhorted on the principle, not only that “men should abstain on those days, and forbear their pleasures and the meats wherein they have more delight, to the intent to subdue their bodies to the soul and spirit, but also for worldly policy. To use fish, for the benefit of the commonwealth, and profit of many who be fishers and men using that trade, unto the which this realm, in every part environed with the seas, and so plentiful of fresh waters, be increased the nourishment of the land by saving flesh.” It did not seem to occur to the king in council that the butchers might have had cause to petition against this monopoly of two days in the week granted to the fishmongers; and much less, that it was better to let the people eat flesh or fish as suited their conveniency. In respect to the religious rite itself, it was evidently not considered as an essential point of faith, since the king enforces it on the principle, “for the profit and commodity of his realm.” Burnet has made a just observation on religious fasts246

A proclamation against excess of apparel, in the reign of Elizabeth, and renewed many years after, shows the luxury of dress, which was indeed excessive.247 There is a curious one against the iconoclasts, or image-breakers and picture-destroyers, for which the antiquary will hold her in high reverence. Her majesty informs us, that “several persons, ignorant, malicious, or covetous, of late years, have spoiled and broken ancient monuments, erected only to show a memory to posterity, and not to nourish any kind of superstition.” The queen laments that what is broken and spoiled would be now hard to recover, but advises her good people to repair them; and commands them in future to desist from committing such injuries. A more extraordinary circumstance than the proclamation itself was the manifestation of her majesty’s zeal, in subscribing her name with her own hand to every proclamation dispersed throughout England. These image-breakers first appeared in Elizabeth’s reign; it was afterwards that they flourished in all the perfection of their handicraft, and have contrived that these monuments of art shall carry down to posterity the memory of their shame and of their age. These image-breakers, so famous in our history, had already appeared under Henry the Eighth, and continued their practical zeal, in spite of proclamations and remonstrances, till they had accomplished their work. In 1641 an order was published by the Commons, that they should “take away all scandalous pictures out of churches:” but more was intended than was expressed; and we are told that the people did not at first carry their barbarous practice against all Art to the lengths which they afterwards did, till they were instructed by private information! Dowsing’s Journal has been published, and shows what the order meant! He was their giant destroyer! Such are the Machiavelian secrets of revolutionary governments; they give a public order in moderate words, but the secret one, for the deeds, is that of extermination! It was this sort of men who discharged their prisoners by giving a secret sign to lead them to their execution!

The proclamations of James the First, by their number, are said to have sunk their value with the people.248 He was fond of giving them gentle advice; and it is said by Wilson that there was an intention to have this king’s printed proclamations bound up in a volume, that better notice might be taken of the matters contained in them. There is more than one to warn the people against “speaking too freely of matters above their reach,” prohibiting all “undutiful speeches.” I suspect that many of these proclamations are the composition of the king’s own hand; he was often his own secretary. There is an admirable one against private duels and challenges. The curious one respecting Cowell’s “Interpreter” is a sort of royal review of some of the arcana of state: I refer to the quotation.249

I will preserve a passage of a proclamation “against excess of lavish and licentious speech.” James was a king of words!

It seems that “the bold speakers,” as certain persons were then denominated, practised an old artifice of lauding his majesty, while they severely arraigned the counsels of the cabinet; on this James observes, “Neither let any man mistake us so much as to think that by giving fair and specious attributes to our person, they cover the scandals which they otherwise lay upon our government, but conceive that we make no other construction of them but as fine and artificial glosses, the better to give passage to the rest of their imputations and scandals.”

This was a proclamation in the eighteenth year of his reign; he repeated it in the nineteenth, and he might have proceeded to “the crack of doom” with the same effect!

Rushworth, in his second volume of Historical Collections, has preserved a considerable number of the proclamations of Charles the First, of which many are remarkable; but latterly they mark the feverish state of his reign. One regulates access for cure of the king’s evil—by which his majesty, it appears, “hath had good success therein;” but though ready and willing as any king or queen of this realm ever was to relieve the distresses of his good subjects, “his majesty commands to change the seasons for his ‘sacred touch’ from Easter and Whitsuntide to Easter and Michaelmas, as times more convenient for the temperature of the season,” &c. Another against “departure out of the realm without license.” One to erect an office “for the suppression of cursing and swearing,” to receive the forfeitures; against “libellous and seditious pamphlets and discourses from Scotland,” framed by factious spirits, and republished in London—this was in 1640; and Charles, at the crisis of that great insurrection in which he was to be at once the actor and the spectator, fondly imagined that the possessors of these “scandalous” pamphlets would bring them, as he proclaimed “to one of his majesty’s justices of peace, to be by him sent to one of his principal secretaries of state!”

On the Restoration, Charles the Second had to court his people by his domestic regulations. He early issued a remarkable proclamation, which one would think reflected on his favourite companions, and which strongly marks the moral disorders of those depraved and wretched times. It is against “vicious, debauched, and profane persons!” who are thus described:—

Surely the gravity and moral severity of Clarendon dictated this proclamation! which must have afforded some mirth to the gay, debauched circle, the loose cronies of royalty!

It is curious that, in 1660, Charles the Second issued a long proclamation for the strict observance of Lent, and alleges for it the same reason as we found in Edward the Sixth’s proclamation, “for the good it produces in the employment of fishermen” No ordinaries, taverns, &c., to make any supper on Friday nights, either in Lent or out of Lent.

Charles the Second issued proclamations “to repress the excess of gilding of coaches and chariots,” to restrain the waste of gold, which, as they supposed, by the excessive use of gilding, had grown scarce. Against “the exportation and the buying and selling of gold and silver at higher rates than in our mint,” alluding to a statute made in the ninth year of Edward the Third, called the Statute of Money. Against building in and about London and Westminster, in 1661: “The inconveniences daily growing by increase of new buildings are, that the people increasing in such great numbers, are not well to be governed by the wonted officers: the prices of victuals are enhanced; the health of the subject inhabiting the cities much endangered, and many good towns and boroughs unpeopled, and in their trades much decayed—frequent fires occasioned by timber-buildings.” It orders to build with brick and stone, “which would beautify, and make an uniformity in the buildings; and which are not only more durable and safe against fire, but by experience are found to be of little more if not less charge than the building with timber.” We must infer that, by the general use of timber, it had considerably risen in price, while brick and stone not then being generally used, became as cheap as wood!250

The most remarkable proclamations of Charles the Second are those which concern the regulations of coffee-houses, and one for putting them down;251 to restrain the spreading of false news, and licentious talking of state and government, the speakers and the hearers were made alike punishable. This was highly resented as an illegal act by the friends of civil freedom; who, however, succeeded in obtaining the freedom of the coffee-houses, under the promise of not sanctioning treasonable speeches. It was urged by the court lawyers, as the high Tory, Roger North, tells us, that the retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, when not used in the nature of a common assembly to discourse of matters of state news and great persons, as a means “to discontent the people.” On the other side, Kennet asserted that the discontents existed before they met at the coffee-houses, and that the proclamation was only intended to suppress an evil which was not to be prevented. At this day we know which of those two historians exercised the truest judgment. It was not the coffee-houses which produced political feeling, but the reverse. Whenever government ascribes effects to a cause quite inadequate to produce them, they are only seeking means to hide the evil which they are too weak to suppress.