Here we are, then, brought as it were face to face with one of the brightest names in the brightest list of England’s poets. This work is almost swamped amid a host of quaintly and sometimes fiercely titled controversial works, with which the press at that time teemed. The poet seems to have known what was impending, and to have conscientiously put forth his protest. We can guess what weight it had with the hungering crowds anxiously awaiting the coming change, and ready to be or do anything so long as place was provided for them. In something like contrast with the foregoing is this we now select from a number of the same paper in December of the same year:—

This speaks volumes for the peculiarities of the times. Nowadays, in the event of war, anxious relatives are soon put out of their suspense by means of careful bulletins and regular returns of killed and wounded; but who can tell the amount of heart-sickness and hope deferred engendered by the “troubles” of the seventeenth century, or of anxious thought turned towards corpses mouldering far away, among whom was most likely George Weale, perhaps the only one of the obscure men slain in “some of those fights,” whose name has been rescued from oblivion.

In 1660 we find Milton again in the hands of his publisher, just at the time when the Restoration was considered complete, alone amid the pack that were ready to fall down before the young King, who was to do so much to prove the value of monarchy as compared with the Commonwealth. “The advertisements,” says a writer, referring to this period, “which appeared during the time that Monk was temporising and sounding his way to the Restoration, form a capital barometer of the state of feeling among political men at that critical juncture. We see no more of the old Fifth-Monarchy spirit abroad. Ministers of the steeple-houses evidently see the storm coming, and cease their long-winded warnings to a backsliding generation. Every one is either panting to take advantage of the first sunshine of royal favour, or to deprecate its wrath, the coming shadow of which is clearly seen. Meetings are advertised of those persons who have purchased sequestered estates, in order that they may address the King to secure them in possession; Parliamentary aldermen repudiate by the same means charges in the papers that their names are to be found in the list of those persons who ‘sat upon the tryal of the late King;’ the works of ‘late’ bishops begin again to air themselves in the Episcopal wind that is clearly setting in; and ‘The Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England’ appear in the advertising columns, in place of the sonorous titles of sturdy old Baxter’s works. It is clear there is a great commotion at hand; the leaves are rustling, and the dust is moving.” In the midst of this, however, there was one still faithful to the “old cause,” as Commonwealth matters had got to be called by the Puritans; and on the 8th of March, just when the shadow of the sceptre was once again thrown upon Great Britain, we find the following in the Mercurius Politicus:—

Facsimile of newspaper page

Who would think, while reading these calm corrections, that the poet knew he was in imminent danger, and that in a couple of months he was to be a proscribed fugitive, hiding in the purlieus of Westminster from Royalty’s myrmidons? Yet it was so, and the degradation to which literature may be submitted is proved by the fact that within the same space of time his works were, in accordance with an order of the House of Commons, burned by the hangman.

The excessive loyalty exhibited about this time by the lawyers, who were then, as now, quite able to look after their own interests, shows in rather a ludicrous light, viewed through the zealous officiousness of Mr Nicholas Bacon, who must have been the fountspring of the following effusion, which appears in a June, 1660, number of the Mercurius Politicus:—

The King does not seem to have enjoyed his own very long before he was subjected to loss by the dog-stealers, who, less ready to revere royalty than the lawyers, led to the publication of the following in the Mercurius Publicus of June 28, 1660:—

And one who could very probably afford to be despoiled still less—one of the poor Cavaliers who expected so much from the representative of Divine right, and who were to be so terribly disappointed—is also victimised, his whole stock of bag and baggage being annexed by some of those vagabonds who only see in any public excitement a means to their own enrichment at the expense of others. Fancy the state of mind of the elderly gentleman who is so anxious to present himself at Court, while waiting the return of the articles thus advertised in the Mercurius Publicus of July 5, 1660:—

This Mercurius Publicus from which we have just quoted is said to be the Politicus we have mentioned in reference to earlier advertisements, which turned courtier in imitation of the general example, and changed its name also in emulation of popular practice. All England seemed then to have gone mad with excessive loyalty, and it is no wonder that Charles was surprised that he could have been persuaded to stop away so long. The columns of the Mercurius Publicus were placed entirely under the direction of the King, and instead of the slashing articles against malignants, which were wont to appear before its change of title, it contains, under Restoration dates, virulent attacks upon the Puritans, and inquiries after his Majesty’s favourite dogs, which had a curious knack of becoming stolen or lost. In addition to the canine advertisement already given, we take the following, which appears during July, and which would seem to have been dictated, if not actually written, by Charles:—

This is evidently the dog advertised before, and seems to have been an especial favourite with the merry monarch, who, one might think, would have had so many dogs that he could not possibly have missed an individual from their number. Pepys about this time describes the King, with a train of spaniels and other dogs at his heels, lounging along and feeding the water-fowl in the Park; and on later occasions he was often seen talking to his favourite Nell Gwyn as she leaned from her garden wall in Pall Mall, whilst his four-footed favourites were grouped about. It was possibly on these occasions that the gentlemen who have such an extraordinary faculty for “finding” dogs, even unto this day, saw their opportunities, and marched off with the choicest specimens. Certainly the dogs were being constantly lost, and just as constantly advertised. In turn we find him inquiring after “a little brindled grey-hound bitch, having her two hinder feet white;” for a “white-haired spaniel, smooth-coated, with large red or yellowish spots;” and for a “black mastiff dog, with cropped ears and cut tail.” So it would seem that, fond as his Majesty was of dogs, he was not above their being cropped and trimmed in the manner which has of late years caused all the forces of a well-known society to be arrayed against the “fancy” and the “finders.” And not alone did the King advertise his lost favourites. As the fashion was set, so it was followed, and the dogmen’s lives must then have been cast in pleasant places indeed, for Prince Rupert, “my lord Albemarle,” the Duke of Buckingham, and many other potent seigniors, are constantly inquiring after strayed or stolen animals. The change in the general habits of the time is very clearly shown by these advertisements. The Puritans did not like sporting animals of any kind, and it has been said that no dog would have followed a Fifth-Monarchy man. Perhaps this dislike accounts for the total absence of all advertisements having reference to field-sports, or to animals connected therewith, until the return of the Court to England. With its return came in once more an aristocratic amusement which had faded out during the stern days of the Commonwealth, hawking, and we are reminded of this by the following advertisement for a lost lanner, which appears in the Mercurius Publicus of September 6, 1660:—

If it be true that the Mercurius changed its name from Politicus to Publicus out of compliment to the new King and his Court, second thoughts seem to have been taken, and the original name resumed, for there is a Mercurius Politicus in November 1660, from which is the following:—

It will be seen from this that quack medicines are by no means modern inventions—in fact, the wonder is, if our ancestors took a tithe of the articles advertised, that there is any present generation at all; so numerous and, even according to their own showing, powerful were the specifics advertised on every possible opportunity and in connection with every possible disease. As, however, we shall devote special space to charlatans further on, we will here simply pass to the following, which promises rather too much for the price. This is also in the Mercurius Politicus, and appears in December 1660:—

We can now mark the advent of those monstrous flowing wigs which were in fashion for nearly a century, and may be fairly assumed to have made their appearance about the date of this advertisement, which was published in the Newes of February 4, 1663:—

Pepys, in his quaint and humorous manner, describes how Chapman, a periwig-dresser, cut off his hair to make up one of these immense coverings for him, much to the trouble of his servants, Jane and Bessy. He also states that “two perriwiggs, one whereof cost me £3 and the other 40s.,” have something to do with the depletion of his ready money on the 30th of October 1663. On November 2nd, he says, “I heard the Duke [Buckingham] say that he was going to wear a perriwigg; and they say the King also will. I never till this day observed that the King is mighty gray.” And then on Lord’s day, November 8th, he says, with infinite quaintness, “To church, where I found that my coming in a perriwigg did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would, for I thought that all the church would presently have cast their eyes all upon me.” Pepys was, it seems, possessed of that rather unpleasant consciousness which prompts a man who wears anything new or strange for the first time to believe that all the world, even that portion of it which has never seen him before, knows he feels anxious and uncomfortable because he has got new clothes on. The price, ten shillings the ounce, shows that there must have been an exceptionally heavy demand for flaxen colour by the wearers of the new-fashioned wigs. Judging by the advertisements just quoted, as well as by those which follow, there can be no controverting the statement that the reign of Charles II. “was characterised by frivolous amusements and by a love of dress and vicious excitement, in the midst of which pestilence stalked like a mocking fiend, and the great conflagration lit up the masquerade with its lurid and angry glare. Together with the emasculate tone of manners, a disposition to personal violence stained the latter part of this and the succeeding reign. The audacious seizure of the crown jewels by Blood; the attack upon the Duke of Ormond by the same desperado, that nobleman having actually been dragged from his coach in St James’s Street in the evening, and carried, bound upon the saddle-bow of Blood’s horse, as far as Hyde Park Corner, before he could be rescued; the slitting of Sir John Coventry’s nose in the Haymarket by the King’s guard; and the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey on Primrose Hill, are familiar instances of the prevalence of this lawless spirit.” There is still one other memorable and dastardly assault to note, that on “Glorious John,” and we shall do so in due course.

The London Gazette now appears upon the scene, and this is noticeable, because of all the papers started before, or for a very considerable time after, this is the only one which has still an existence. It has been stated by some writers to have first appeared at Oxford during the time the Court took up its abode there, while the Great Plague was raging, but that this was not so is shown by the following, which is extracted from the London Gazette of January 22, 1664, nearly twelve months before the outbreak of the Plague. The fact is that during the residence of the King and Court at Oxford, the official organ changed its title, and was called the Oxford Gazette, to resume its original name as soon as it resumed its original publishing office.[26]

The ignorance of natural history at this time seems to have been somewhat marvellous, and anything in the way of a collection of curiosities was sure to attract a credulous multitude, as is shown by another notice, published in the News of a date close to that of the foregoing. The articles are rather scanty, to be sure, but probably the “huge thighbone of a giant,” whatever it was in reality, was in itself sufficient to attract, to say nothing of the mummy and torpedo.

Evidently something must have been known of mummies, or how could the exhibitor tell that his was a choice one? Our next item introduces us to one of those old beliefs which are still to be found in remote parts of the country. The King, like any mountebank or charlatan, advertises the time when he will receive, for the purpose of giving the royal touch, supposed to be sufficient to cure the horrible distemper. Surely he of all people must have known how futile was the experiment; and it is passing strange that a people who had tried, condemned, and executed one king like any common man, should have put faith in such an announcement as that published in the Public Intelligencer of May 1664, which runs as follows:—

Surely such men as Sedley, Rochester, Buckingham, and even Charles himself, must have laughed at the infatuation of the multitude; for if ever there was a king whose touch was less likely than another’s to cure the evil, that king was, in our humble opinion, “his Sacred Majesty” Charles II. But then people were prepared to go any lengths to make up for their shortcomings in the previous reign. There was possibly a political significance about these manifestations of royal ability and clemency, and some enthusiasts, who believe devoutly in the triumph of mind over matter, think there is reason to believe in the efficacy of the touch in scrofulous affections, and even believe that people did really recover after undergoing the process. Dr Tyler Smith, who has written on the subject, boldly states his belief that the emotion felt by these poor stricken people who came within the influence of the King’s “Sacred Majesty” acted upon them as a powerful tonic; though, as the King always bestowed a gold piece upon the patient, we think that if good was derived, it was derived from the comfort procured by that—for those who suffered and believed were generally in the lowest and poorest rank of life—and perhaps travelling and change of air had something to do with it as well. If the arguments of those who believe in the emotional effect are to be admitted, it must be allowed by parity of reasoning that where the touch failed, its failure would be likely to cause the sufferers to become rabid republicans, the Divine right having refused to exhibit itself. Maybe these latter symptoms, like the symptoms of other diseases, did not develop in the individual, but came out in course of generations, which may perhaps account for the large amount of democracy which has exhibited itself during the present century. There is certainly something rather ludicrous in the fact that the practice of touching for the evil ceased with the death of Anne; not because the people had become more enlightened, but because the sovereigns who followed her were supposed to have lost the medicinal virtue through being kings merely by Act of Parliament, and not by Divine right.

The reaction which set in from the strait-laced rule of the Puritans at the time of the Restoration, must have reached its height about 1664, if we may judge by the advertisements then constantly inserted, which reflect the love of pleasure and folly exhibited by all classes, as if they were anxious to make up for previous restrictions. In fact, the chief inquiries are after lacework, or valuables lost at masquerade or water party, announcements of lotteries at Whitehall, of jewels and tapestry, and other things to be sold. The following is a fair specimen of the advertisements of the time, and appears in the News of August 4, 1664:—

There are also about this time all sorts of quack and nostrum advertisements, an “antimonial cup,” by means of which every kind of disease was to be cured, being apparently very popular. Sir Kenelm Digby, a learned knight, who is said to have feasted his wife with capons fattened upon serpents for the purpose of making her fair, advertises a book in which is shown a method of curing the severest wounds by a sympathetic powder. But even the knight’s efforts pall before the following, which will go far to show the superstitious leaven which still hung about the populace:—

We see in the papers of 1665 an increased number of advertisements for lost and stolen animals, mostly those used in connection with sport; but this does not go to prove that more dogs, hawks, &c., were missing, so much as that the advantages of advertising were being discovered throughout the country; and as London was the only place in which at that time a newspaper was published, the cry after stray favourites always came up to town. Strange, indeed, are many of the advertisements about sports long since passed from amongst us, and the very phrases of which have died out of the language. It seems hard to imagine that hawks in all the glory of scarlet hoods were carried upon fair ladies’ wrists, or poised themselves when uncovered to view their prey, so late as the time of Charles II., but that it was so, an advertisement already quoted, as well as the following, shows. It is taken from the Intelligencer of November 6, 1665:—

Inquiries for hawks and goshawks are by no means scarce, and so we may imagine that these implements of hunting were hardly so much to be depended upon as those from the workshop of art and not of nature, which are in use in the present day. Indeed, the falcon seemed to care much less, when once set free, for his keeper, than writers of books are prone to imagine. The King was apparently no more fortunate than the rest of those who indulged in falconry, for in a copy of the London Gazette, late in 1667, the following is seen:—

Sir Allan Apsley was the brother-in-law of the celebrated Colonel Hutchinson, and brother of the devoted wife whose story everybody has read. The next advertisement we shall select is published in the London Gazette of May 10, 1666, and has reference to the precautions taken to prevent the spread of the Plague. Long before this all public notices of an idle and frivolous nature have ceased, amusements seem to have lost their charm, and it is evident from a study of the advertisements alone, that some great disturbing cause is at work among the good citizens. No longer does the authorised gambling under the roof of Whitehall go on; no more are books of Anacreontics published; stopped are all the assignations but a short time back so frequent; and no longer are inquiries made after lockets and perfumed bags, dropped during amorous dalliance, or in other pursuit of pleasure. Death, it is evident, is busy at work. The quacks, and the writers of semi-blasphemous pamphlets, have it all to themselves, and doubtless batten well in this time of trouble. The Plague is busy doing its deadly work, and already the city has been deserted by all who can fly thence, and only those who are detained by duty, sickness, poverty, or the want of a clean bill of health, remain. These bills or licences to depart were only granted by the Lord Mayor, and the greatest influence often failed to obtain them, as after the Plague once showed strength it was deemed necessary to prevent by all and every means the spread of the contagion throughout the country. The advertisement chosen gives a singular instance of the manner in which those who had neglected to depart early were penned within the walls:—

A great demand seems at this time to have been made for an electuary much advertised as a certain preventive of the Plague, which was to be drunk at the Green Dragon, Cheapside, at sixpence a pint. This is, however, only one among hundreds of specifics which continued to be thrust upon the public in the columns of the papers, until the real deliverer of the plague-stricken people appeared—a dreadful deliverer, it is true, but the only one. The Great Fire, which commenced on the 2nd of September 1666, and destroyed thirteen thousand houses, rendering myriads of people homeless, penniless, and forlorn, had its good side, inasmuch as by it the Plague was utterly driven out of its stronghold, but not until nearly a hundred thousand persons had perished. Imagine two such calamities coming almost together; but the purgation by fire was the only one which could fairly be expected to prove effectual, as it destroyed the loathsome charnel-houses which would long have held the taint, and removed a great part of the cause which led to the power of the fell epidemic. We have in the preceding chapter referred to the paucity of advertisements which appeared in reference to the new addresses of those who had been burnt out, and a writer a few years back makes the following remark upon the same subject: “Singularly enough, but faint traces of this overwhelming calamity, as it was considered at the time, can be gathered from the current advertisements. Although the entire population of the city was rendered houseless, and had to encamp in the surrounding fields, where they extemporised shops and streets, not one hint of such a circumstance can be found in the public announcements of the period. No circumstance could afford a greater proof of the little use made by the trading community of this means of publicity in the time of Charles II. If a fire only a hundredth part so destructive were to occur in these days, the columns of the press would immediately be full of the new addresses of the burnt-out shopkeepers; and those who were not even damaged by it would take care to ‘improve the occasion’ to their own advantage. We look in vain through the pages of the London Gazette of this and the following year for one such announcement: not even the tavern-keeper tells us the number of his booth in Goodman’s-fields, although quack medicine flourished away in its columns as usual.” We have already shown that one advertisement at least was published in reference to removal caused by the fire, but as it did not appear till six or seven years afterwards, it is a solitary exception to the rule, indeed. In 1667, notifications occurred now and then of some change in the site of a Government office, caused by the disturbances incident on the fire, or of the intention to rebuild by contract some public structure. Of these the following, which appears in the London Gazette, is a good specimen:—

As nothing occurs in the way of advertisements worthy of remark or collection for the next few years, we will take this convenient opportunity of obtaining a brief breathing space.

CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSION OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Let us commence here with the year 1674, a period when the rages and fashions, the plague and fire, and the many things treated of by means of advertisements in the preceding chapter, had plunged England into a most unhappy condition. The reaction from Puritanism was great, but the reaction from royalty and extravagance threatened to be still greater. Speaking of the state of affairs about this time, a famous historian, who has paid particular attention to the latter part of the seventeenth century, says: “A few months after the termination of hostilities on the Continent, came a great crisis in English politics. Towards such a crisis things had been tending during eighteen years. The whole stock of popularity, great as it was, with which the King had commenced his administration, had long been expended. To loyal enthusiasm had succeeded profound disaffection. The public mind had now measured back again the space over which it had passed between 1640 and 1660, and was once more in the state in which it had been when the Long Parliament met. The prevailing discontent was compounded of many feelings. One of these was wounded national pride. That generation had seen England, during a few years, allied on equal terms with France, victorious over Holland and Spain, the mistress of the sea, the terror of Rome, the head of the Protestant interest. Her resources had not diminished; and it might have been expected that she would have been, at least, as highly considered in Europe under a legitimate king, strong in the affection and willing obedience of his subjects, as she had been under an usurper whose utmost vigilance and energy were required to keep down a mutinous people. Yet she had, in consequence of the imbecility and meanness of her rulers, sunk so low, that any German or Italian principality which brought five thousand men into the field, was a more important member of the commonwealth of nations. With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety for civil liberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but perhaps the more alarming by reason of their indistinctness, imputed to the Court a deliberate design against all the constitutional rights of Englishmen. It had even been whispered that this design was to be carried into effect by the intervention of foreign arms. The thought of such intervention made the blood, even of the Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had always professed the doctrine of non-resistance in its full extent, were now heard to mutter that there was one limitation to that doctrine. If a foreign force were brought over to coerce the nation, they would not answer for their own patience. But neither national pride nor anxiety for public liberty had so great an influence on the popular mind as hatred of the Roman Catholic religion. That hatred had become one of the ruling passions of the community, and was as strong in the ignorant and profane as in those who were Protestants from conviction. The cruelties of Mary’s reign—cruelties which even in the most accurate and sober narrative excite just detestation, and which were neither accurately nor soberly related in the popular martyrologies—the conspiracies against Elizabeth, and above all, the Gunpowder Plot, had left in the minds of the vulgar a deep and bitter feeling, which was kept up by annual commemorations, prayers, bonfires, and processions. It should be added that those classes which were peculiarly distinguished by attachment to the throne, the clergy and the landed gentry, had peculiar reasons for regarding the Church of Rome with aversion. The clergy trembled for their benefices, the landed gentry for their abbeys and great tithes. While the memory of the reign of the Saints was still recent, hatred of Popery had in some degree given place to hatred of Puritanism; but during the eighteen years which had elapsed since the Restoration, the hatred of Puritanism had abated, and the hatred of Popery had increased.... The King was suspected by many of a leaning towards Rome. His brother and heir-presumptive was known to be a bigoted Roman Catholic. The first Duchess of York had died a Roman Catholic. James had then, in defiance of the remonstrances of the House of Commons, taken to wife the Princess Mary of Modena, another Roman Catholic. If there should be sons by this marriage, there was reason to fear that they might be bred Roman Catholics, and that a long succession of princes hostile to the established faith might sit on the English throne. The constitution had recently been violated for the purpose of protecting the Roman Catholics from the penal laws. The ally by whom the policy of England had during many years been chiefly governed, was not only a Roman Catholic, but a persecutor of the Reformed Churches. Under such circumstances, it is not strange that the common people should have been inclined to apprehend a return of the times of her whom they called Bloody Mary.” Such was the unhappy state of affairs at this period, and though its effect is soon shown in the advertisement columns of the papers, one would think times were piping and peaceful indeed to read the following, extracted from the London Gazette of October 15-19, 1674:—

Doubtless this Chiffinch, the degraded being who lived but to pander to the debauched tastes of his royal and profligate employer, thought nothing of politics or of the signs of the times, and contented himself with the affairs of the Backstairs, caring little for Titus Oates, and less for his victims. Some short time after the foregoing was published (March 20-23, 1675), Chiffinch published another loss in the Gazette. This is it:—

Whether the prince of pimps ever had to give the reward, we are not in a position to state; we should, however, think that his advertisement attracted little attention, for we are now in the midst of the excitement which led to the pretended plots and troubles that made every man suspect his neighbour, and when the cry of Recusant or Papist was almost fatal to him against whom it was directed. That this feeling once roused was not to be subdued even in death, is shown by a notice in the Domestick Intelligence of July 22, 1679:—