The cover image was created by the transcriber from a scan of the original book cover and is placed in the public domain.

M. Morelli.

CHARLES I (1600–1649)

From the painting by van Dyck in the National Gallery, London.

LONDON
IN THE TIME OF THE STUARTS

BY
SIR WALTER BESANT

LONDON
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1903

PREFACE

Abundant as is the mass of material for the study of history and manners in the sixteenth century,[1] there is even a greater abundance for the history, political and social, of the century of the Stuarts. There are, however, two difficulties to be faced in such an inquiry. The first is that the history of London is far more closely connected with the history of the nation during the seventeenth than during the sixteenth century. It may, indeed, be advanced that at no time, not even when London deposed Richard II. and set up Henry IV., was the City so closely involved in all the events of the time as in the seventeenth century. The City at that time reached the highest point of its political importance, an importance which vanished in the century that followed.

Therefore the historian of London has before him the broad fact that for sixty years, viz. from the accession of Charles I. to the expulsion of James II., he should be pursuing the history of the country. In this place, however, there is not space for such a history; it has already been well told by many historians; and I have neither the time nor the competence to write the history of this most eventful period. I have therefore found it necessary to assume a certain knowledge of events and to speak of their sequence with reference especially to the attitude of the City; the forces which acted on the people; their ideas; their resolution and tenacity under Charles I.; their servility and obedience under Charles II.; and their final rejection of the doctrines of passive resistance, Divine right, and obedience which made the departure of James possible, and opened the door for constitutional government and the liberties of the people.

The second difficulty is, that while the century contains an immense mass of material in the shape of plays, poems, fiction, pamphlets, sermons, travels, sketches, biographies, trials, reports, proclamations, ordinances, speeches, and every other conceivable document for the restoration of the century, the period was sharply divided into two by the Civil Wars and the Protectorate, the latter being at best a stop-gap, while events were following each other and the mind of the nation was developing. It was, in fact, a revolutionary change which took place. The change was deepened by the Great Fire of 1666, after which a new London arose, not so picturesque, perhaps, as the former London, but reflecting the ideas of the time in its churches, which, from Mass houses became preaching rooms; and in its houses, which offered substantial comfort, more light, loftier rooms, standing in wider and better ordered streets, agreeing with the increase of wealth and the improvement in the general conditions of life. The first half of the century is, in fact, a continuation of the Elizabethan period with decay in literature and development in religion; the second half belongs to the eighteenth century, where we find a development of the last forty years of the seventeenth.

I have endeavoured to meet this difficulty by making such a selection from the things belonging to the daily life as have not been dwelt upon in the study of the sixteenth century with those points which, while they were developed or dropped in the eighteenth, have not been in that volume considered at length.

The events of the greatest importance to the City, apart from those which belong to the whole nation, were the repeated visitations of Plague, and the Great Fire. The former came and went; it destroyed the people, chiefly the common people, by thousands; its immediate effect was a dearth of craftsmen and servants, a rise in wages, and an improvement in the standard of life in the lower levels. The lessons which it taught and continually enforced were learned most imperfectly. They were simple—the admission into the courts and lanes of the crowded City of light and air; the invention of some system of sanitation which would replace the old cesspool and the public latrine; and the introduction of a plentiful supply of water for the washing of the people, as well as for their drink and for the flooding of the streets. Somewhere or other—it must be between Dowgate and Mincing Lane—there is still existing under ground the great Roman Cloaca; it is an additional proof of the desertion and desolation of the City after the Romans went away that the Cloaca was forgotten, choked up, and its mouth covered over; the creation of the foreshore covered it up. Had it been found, say, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the whole modern sanitary system might have been invented and developed by its means, and so the Plague would have been stayed. I have attempted to present an adequate account of the Plague from contemporary evidence. As regards the Fire I have essayed a restoration of the City before and after that event.

Turning to events political, I have already stated the difficulties which confront the historian of London in this century. The reader will not look here for a detailed history of the Civil War or the Protectorate. I hope, however, that he will find some indication of the way in which the people of London regarded the events which were working out their redemption for them, in ways which were unexpected, by trials which were hard to bear, and after a time when all seemed lost.

Considering London alone, the Restoration seems to me to have been a natural, a wholesome, and a most fortunate reaction against the successive rule of Presbyterian, Independent, and Captain or Colonel. It must have become quite clear even to men like Milton, who was one of the last to lift his voice against the return of a king, that a Commonwealth was too far in advance of the people, and that a military despotism was intolerable.

In the same way the Revolution was a swing back of the pendulum; it was quite as natural and as salutary as the rebellion against Charles and the Restoration of his son. I read this lesson clearly in the history of London, and I assume it for the history of the country.

Meantime let it be remembered that the seventeenth century secured the country for two hundred years, i.e. to the present day at least, and, so far as can be prophesied, for an indefinite period yet to come, from the personal interference of the sovereign. That is an enormous gain to the country. We are no longer called upon to discuss the Prerogative. The attempted encroachments of George III. appear as mere trifles compared with the monstrous claims of Charles the First and the almost incredible acts of tyranny recorded of his son and successor. And in the achievement of this great result London in the seventeenth century played a noble part and earned the deepest gratitude of all those who came, or shall come, after.

WALTER BESANT.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

SOVEREIGNS

CHAPTER I
JAMES I

James found the City, after a hundred years of Tudor rule, reduced to an admirable condition of submission and loyalty. He was proclaimed in the City and by the City, the citizens of London claiming once more a voice in electing an accessor to the crown. The King returned thanks to the Mayor and Aldermen in a letter which lacks, one perceives at once, the royal style of Elizabeth.

JAMES I. (1566–1625)

After the portrait by Paul von Somer.

Trustie and Wel-beloved, wee greet you hartily well: being informed of your great forwardnesse in that just and honourable action of proclaiming us your sovereigne Lord and King, immediately after the decease of our late dearest Sister, the Queen; wherein you have given a singular good proofe of your ancient fidelitie (a reputation hereditary to that our Citie of London), being the chamber of our imperial crowne, and ever free from all shadowes of tumultes, and unlawful courses; we could not omit, with all the speed possible we might, to give you hereby a taste of our thankful Mind for the same: and with all assurance, that you cannot crave anything of us fit for the Maintenance of you all in general, and every one of you in particular, but it shall be most willingly performed by us, whose speciall care shall ever be to provide for the continuance and increase of your present happines, desiring you in the mean time to go constantly forward in all doing, in and whatsoever things you shall find necessary and expedient for the good Government of our sayde city, in execution of justice, as you have been used to doe in our sayde deceased Sister’s tyme, till our pleasure be known to you in the contrary. Thus not doubting but you will doe, as you may be fully assured of our gratious favours towards you, in the first degree, we bid you hartily farewell. Haly Roodhouse, the 28th of March, 1603.

TRIUMPHAL ARCH ERECTED AT THE TIME OF THE CORONATION OF JAMES I.

From a contemporary print. E. Gardner’s collection.

James left Edinburgh on the 5th of April, arriving at Theobalds, where he rested for four days, on May the 7th; it had taken more than a month to ride from Edinburgh, i.e. he had ridden about twelve miles a day. At Waltham he was met by one of the sheriffs with sixty servants; at Stamford Hill by the Mayor and Aldermen in velvet and gold chains and 500 citizens richly apparelled. At that moment the Plague broke out; the Coronation was shorn of its splendour; the pageants and shows were laid aside; only the Mayor, Aldermen, and twelve citizens were present in Westminster Abbey; and James had to postpone his public entry into the City for a twelvemonth.

With the accession of James revived the hopes of the Catholics; they built upon the inexperience and the ignorance of the King; perhaps upon his fears; they magnified their own strength and numbers; and they quite misunderstood the feeling of the country, which grew more and more in distrust and hatred of the Catholics. They began, moreover, just as they had done in the reign of Elizabeth, by plots and conspiracies. The first of these plots was that called the “Main,” in which Raleigh, unfortunately for himself and his own reputation, was concerned. With him was Lord Cobham. As to Raleigh’s guilt, this is not the place to inquire. As is well known, after twelve years he was suffered to come out of the Tower, and was allowed to command a fleet bound for the coast of South America in quest of gold-mines. The story of his voyage, of his ill success, of his son’s death, of his return, of his arrest, may be read in the history of England. But the tragedy of October 29, 1618, when at eight o’clock in the morning Sir Walter Raleigh was led out to die, moved to the depths every English heart, and should not be passed over in any history of London. It was remembered by all that he was the lifelong enemy of Spain, nor could the attacking of a friendly power in time of peace appear as any other than a laudable act to the English mind. That the traitor who arrested and betrayed him, his kinsman who became a paid spy, who also took money from the very man he was watching, that this man, Sir Lewis Stukeley, afterwards fell into misery and madness appeared to everybody an open and visible punishment inflicted by God Himself.

Let us consider the meaning of the fines which play so large a part in the history of these times. If a man is a Roman Catholic he is on no account allowed to attend a church or assembly where any kind of service other than the Catholic is performed. That rule is never, I believe, relaxed under any circumstances. It is a rule, therefore, which can be easily used for the discovery of Catholics. Thus (23 Elizabeth) it was enacted that every person over sixteen years of age who should refrain from attending at church, chapel, or some usual place of common prayer, against the tenor of a certain statute of the first year of her Majesty’s reign, for uniformity of common prayer, and should be lawfully convicted thereof, should forfeit, for each month in which he or she should so refrain, the sum of twenty pounds of lawful money. The convictions under this statute illustrate to some extent the proportion of Roman Catholics to Protestants then existing in the country. Thus in the Middlesex Session Rolls (Middlesex County Record Society) may be found a long list of persons brought before the Middlesex magistrates charged with this offence. During the last twenty-four years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign there were 408 convictions of this offence in Middlesex alone. They were gentlemen and gentlewomen, clerks, yeomen, tradesmen, wives, widows, and spinsters. They came from many parts of Middlesex, but especially from Westminster, Clerkenwell, Tottenham, Stepney, and Holborn. A fine of twenty pounds a month—about £100 of our money—would be far beyond the means of most of the persons convicted. For instance, on one page of the Rolls there are the names of twenty-six persons all convicted of not going to church for two or three months. Of these, twelve are gentlemen, three are wives of gentlemen, five are yeomen, one is a spinster, four are clerks, and one is a cook. What happened when the fine could not be paid? The number of convictions proves, first, that there were some, but not, in proportion to the whole, many Roman Catholics left in London and the parts around; next, that they were easily detected by their absence from church; thirdly, that there was a hot search after them; and fourthly, that though we find, here and there, a person following a trade or a craft, the Catholics were for the most part gentlefolk.

The secret professors of the ancient faith knew of places where a priest was concealed, and where Mass was sung or whispered with closed doors. There were five or six of these priests tried and condemned before the Middlesex magistrates. Thus John Welden in March 1587, William Hartley in 1588, Robert Walkinson in 1598 were tried and found guilty simply for being priests, i.e. because, “being subjects of the Queen, they were ordained by authority derived from the See of Rome, in contempt of the Crown and Dignity of the said Queen.” They were executed as traitors with the cruelties of detail which we know. Other persons were charged with receiving, comforting, and maintaining priests. Thus George Glover and Mary Baylie his wife maintained and comforted Thomas Tycheburne, clerk and priest, and they received the pardon of the Queen; Catharine Bellamy, wife of Richard Bellamy, gentleman, moved and seduced by instigation of the devil, received and entertained Robert Southwell—it does not appear whether she was punished for the offence; and Dorothea White, either sister or wife of Humphrey White of Westminster, gentleman, thus received and entertained William Tedder, priest. Dorothea was hanged—one supposes—because she did not make submission.

If we inquire into the comparative importance of the recusants, it seems that it must have been too small to constitute a real danger. The number, 408, convicted in a quarter of a century over the whole of Middlesex—London not included—that is, no more than an average of sixteen in a year, at a time when the search after them was keen and untiring—hardly warrants the fears which were entertained by the Queen’s Council as to the power and numbers of the secret Catholics, or the hopes of support from the south which were entertained during the rising of the north; or the expectations at Rome and at the Court of Spain of a widespread insurrection all over England and a return to the ancient faith. At the same time it is reasonable to believe that there were many thousands who, while they adhered outwardly, went to church and heard the sermon, would have welcomed the return of the Mass and the Romish form.

THE GUNPOWDER CONSPIRATORS

From title-page of Warhafftige Beschreibung der Verrätherei, etc. (De Bry), Frankfurt, 1606.

Action in the case of the recusants was followed by the famous Gunpowder Plot. There can be no doubt that the Catholics were maddened by disappointment, by persecution, by the failure to obtain toleration, and by the fines to which they were subjected. The conspirators proposed, as is well known, to blow up the King, the Lords, and the Commons when the Parliament should assemble. This plot, like that of Raleigh, belongs to the history of the country.

Gunpowder Treason.

From a contemporary print. E. Gardner’s collection.

When the Common Council established a Court of Conscience in the City, it was with the design of saving poor debtors from the costs of being sued in the superior courts. But this Court was confined to debtors who were Citizens and Freemen of London and the Liberties. Some persons, intending to subvert the good and charitable intent of the Court, took hold of certain ambiguous words and endeavoured by means of these to render the intentions of the Court useless. A new and amending Act was passed which cleared up these difficulties and put the Court of Conscience on a sounder footing. The Act was well meant, but for more than two hundred years after it the miserable annals of the Debtors’ Prisons are filled with stories of the exorbitant and extortionate costs charged by attornies, and with the sufferings of the debtors in consequence.

The honour in which the City was held was illustrated when the King joined the Clothworkers’ Company, and when the Merchant Taylors, in jealousy, showed him their roll of members containing seven kings, one queen, seventeen princes and dukes, two duchesses, one archbishop, thirty earls, five countesses, one viscount, fourteen bishops, sixty-six barons, two ladies, seven abbots, seven priors, and an immense number of knights and esquires. The King gave them his son Henry as a member.

The New River was completed after eight years of work. The length of the canal was 60 miles; it was crossed by 800 bridges, and five years were spent in the construction; the people were slow in taking their water from the new supply, probably because they detested changing their ways. The City was at first supplied with water from the Walbrook and the Fleet; there were also wells and springs on the rising ground of the Strand; in Moorfields, at Shoreditch, and elsewhere there were wells sunk within the City walls; and there were “bosses” or taps of fresh water brought in from Tyburn. All this, however, was not enough; the principal sources of supply, the Fleet and Walbrook, had long since ceased to be of any use. Powers therefore were sought to bring more water into the City, and were granted to bring water from Hampstead and from the river Lea; these powers were not, however, used. Improved works were set up at Tyburn; water mills were placed in the Thames, by which water was forced up and conveyed as far as Leadenhall. Finally, after a great deal of hesitation the City made use of these powers to construct a canal from springs at Chadwell and Amwell in Herts, and accepted the office of Hugh Middleton, a goldsmith, to execute the work. Middleton would have failed, however, but for the help of James, who agreed to pay half the cost of the work if Middleton gave him half the property. This was done in an assignment of thirty-six “King’s shares.” Charles parted with them for an annuity of £500. A few years ago an undivided share sold for £94,900. Yet Middleton died in reduced circumstances, unable to pay a loan which the City had advanced him on the progress of his work.

The flight of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel in 1607 left without an owner a large tract of land in the north of Ireland which was confiscated to the Crown. It was proposed to colonise the district, and a scheme was drawn up for the “Plantation of Ulster.” The King proposed that the City should take part in this work; the citizens were assured that their own City was dangerously overcrowded with workmen and traders of all kinds, that the plantation would be an outlet much wanted, that the country was well watered and fertile, good for breeding cattle, well stocked with game and with fisheries; they were even told to consider how great a work had been done by the people of Bristol in settling Dublin. A fuller account of the Irish Estates will be found later on (p. 206).

The conduct of a State Banquet at the Court of King James is minutely related in the following account of the Banquet presented to the Spanish Ambassador by the King.

KING JAMES I. ENTERTAINING THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR AT WHITEHALL, 1623

From a contemporary print. E. Gardner’s Collection.

“The Audience Chamber was elegantly furnished, having a buffet of several stages, filled with various pieces of ancient and modern gilt plate of exquisite workmanship. A railing was placed on each side the room in order to prevent the crowd from approaching too near the table. At the right hand upon entering was another buffet, containing rich vessels of gold, agate, and other precious stones. The table might be about five yards in length, and more than one yard broad. The dishes were brought in by gentlemen and servants of the King, who were accompanied by the Lord Chamberlain, and before placing them on the table they made four or five obeisances. The Earls of Pembroke and Southampton officiated as gentlemen-ushers. Their Majesties, with the Prince Henry, entered after the Constable and the others, and placed themselves at their throne, and all stood in a line to hear the grace said; the Constable being at the King’s side, and the Count de Villamediana on the Queen’s. Their Majesties washed their hands in the same basin, the Lord Treasurer handing the towel to the King, and the High Admiral to the Queen. The Prince washed in another basin, in which water was also taken to the Constable, who was waited upon by the same gentlemen. They took their seats in the following manner: their Majesties sat at the head of the table, at a distance from each other, under the canopy of state, the Queen being on the right hand, on chairs of brocade with cushions; and at her side, a little apart, sat the Constable, on a tabouret of brocade with a high cushion of the same, and on the side of the King the Prince was seated in like manner. On the opposite side of the table and on the right sat Count Villamediana, and next to him the Senator Rovida opposite the Constable; and on the same side with the senator, nearly fronting the Prince, were seated the President Richardot and the Audiencier, a space in front being left vacant owing to the absence of the Count d’Arembergue, who was prevented by the gout from attending. The principal noblemen of the kingdom were likewise at the table, in particular the Duke of Lennox; the Earl of Arundel; the Earl of Suffolke, Lord Chamberlain; the Earl of Dorset, Lord Treasurer; the Earl of Nottingham, High Admiral; the Earls of Devonshire, of Southampton, and of Pembroke; the Earl of Northumberland; the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse; the Earls of Shrewsbury, of Sussex, of Derby, and of Essex, and the Lord Chancellor—all being Knights of the Garter; also Barons Cecil and Wotton and the Lord Kinross, a privy councillor; Sir Thomas Erskine, Captain of the Guard; Sir John Ramsay and James Lindsay, Scotchmen; and other barons and gentlemen of quality. There was plenty of instrumental music and the banquet was sumptuous and profuse. The first thing the King did was to send the Constable a melon and half-a-dozen oranges on a very green branch, telling him that they were the fruit of Spain transplanted into England; to which the latter, kissing his hand, replied that he valued the gift more as coming from his Majesty than as being the fruit of his own country; he then divided the melon with their Majesties, and Don Blasco de Aragon handed the plate to the Queen, who politely and graciously acknowledged the attention. Soon afterwards the King stood up, and with his head uncovered drank to the Constable the health of their Spanish Majesties, and may the peace be happy and perpetual. The Constable pledged him in like manner, and replied that he entertained the same hope and that from the peace the greatest advantages might result to both crowns and to Christendom. The toast was then drunk by the Count Villamediana and the others present, to the delight and applause of their Majesties. Immediately afterwards, the Constable, seeing that another opportunity might not be afforded him, rose and drank to the King the health of the Queen from the lid of a cup of agate of extraordinary beauty and richness, set with diamonds and rubies, praying his Majesty would condescend to drink the toast from the cup, which he did accordingly, and ordered it to be passed round to the Prince and the others; and the Constable directed that the cup should remain in his Majesty’s buffet. At this period the people shouted out, ‘Peace, peace, peace! God save the King! God save the King! God save the King!’ and a king at arms presented himself before the table, and after the drums, trumpets, and other instruments had sounded, with a loud voice said in English: ‘That the kingdom returned many thanks to his Majesty for having concluded with the King of Spain so advantageous a peace, and he prayed to God that it might endure for many ages, and his subjects hoped that his Majesty would endeavour with all his might to maintain it so that they might enjoy from it tranquillity and repose, and that security and advantage might result to all his people; and therefore they prayed him to allow the same to be published in the kingdoms and dominions of his Majesty.’ At length, after other healths and messages from the King and Queen, it was brought to a conclusion, having lasted about three hours. The cloth having been removed, every one immediately rose up; the table was placed upon the ground, and their Majesties standing upon it, proceeded to wash their hands, which is stated to be an ancient ceremony. The Constable invited Count Villamediana to wash in his basin, and the other Commissioners washed in others. Their Majesties then withdrew to their apartment, and the Constable and Count were conducted to a handsome gallery, adorned with various paintings, where they remained more than an hour. In the meantime dancing had begun in the said Audience Chamber, and the Constable and Count were informed in the name of their Majesties that they were then waiting for them to go and see it.

Walker & Cockerell.

HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES (1594–1612)

From the painting by Paul von Somer.

After a little while the Prince Henry was commanded by his parents to dance a galliard, and they pointed out to him the lady who was to be his partner; and this he did with much sprightliness and modesty, cutting several capers in the course of the dance.... The ball ended, and then all took their places at the windows of the room, which looked out upon a square where a platform was raised, and a vast crowd had assembled to see the King’s bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs. After this certain tumblers came, who danced upon a rope and performed curious feats of agility and skill on horseback. With this ended the entertainment and the day, and their Majesties now retired, being accompanied by the Constable and the other noblemen to their apartment, before entering which, many compliments passed on both sides, and their Majesties and the Prince shook hands with the Constable and the Count; and the other Spanish cavaliers kissed hands and took their departure. The Constable and the others, upon quitting the ball-room, were accompanied by the Lord Chamberlain to the farthest room, and by the Earl of Devonshire and other gentlemen to their coaches, more than fifty halberdiers lighting them with torches until they reached home, where as many others were waiting their arrival. Being fatigued, the Constable and the Count supped that night in private, and the others at the ordinary table.”

The mind of the City in 1607 was greatly exercised with a question of precedence. The question, which was submitted to the King, and by him submitted to the Court Marshal, was as follows:—

“Whether a Commoner dignified with knighthood, without any other advantage of honour by employment or otherwise, and using trade and keeping shop in the City, should take place of an Alderman Knight within the same City, contrary to this beautified order, of ancient time settled and confirmed, with such charters and grants from his Majesty; or whether any other Bachelor Knight shall take place of any Alderman within this City?”

The question was decided in favour of the precedency of the Aldermen.

In the year 1606 one is surprised to find an order for the cleansing of the town ditch—the last of such orders. In 1598 Stow wrote that it was stopped up and choked:—

“Now of late neglected and forced either to a very narrow, and the same a filthy channel, or altogether stopped up for gardens planted, and houses built thereon; even to the very wall, and in many places upon both ditch and wall houses to be built; to what danger of the City, I leave to wiser consideration, and can but wish that reformation might be had.”

It had been cleansed in 1519, 1540, 1569, and 1595, but apparently only in part. Thus in 1519 between Aldgate and the Tower postern, the same part in 1540, the same part again in 1569, and the part between Bishopsgate and the postern of Moorgate in 1595. I do not understand the reason of these repeated cleansings of parts.

In 1614 Smithfield, which had now become the cattle-market of the City, and was therefore a place of very great resort, continued to be without pavement of any kind, so that during or after rainy weather it was absolutely impassable for mud and mire. King James called the attention of the Mayor to this scandal, and ordered that the place should be paved. This was done. The paving was the old-fashioned cobble; it took six months to lay down, and cost £1600.

At the same time the laying down of broad freestones instead of the old cobbles was commenced. Those of the inhabitants who chose laid down the stones before their own doors. We must understand, therefore, that all the important streets at this time were paved with cobbles; that in a few of the principal thoroughfares there was a pavement of flat stones, but not uniform; and that there were many courts and alleys where there was no kind of pavement at all. We may further understand that this was the London of Hogarth as well as of James I.

On July 8, 1614, the Lord Mayor sent a communication to the Lord Chamberlain detailing the steps he had taken in reforming disorderly practices (Remembrancia, p. 358):—

Firstly.—He had freed the streets of a swarm of loose and idle vagrants, providing for the relief of such as were not able to get their living, and keeping them at work in Bridewell, not punishing any for begging, but setting them on work, which was worse than death to them.

Secondly.—He had informed himself, by means of spies, of many lewd houses, and had gone himself disguised to divers of them, and finding these nurseries of villany, had punished them according to their deserts, some by carting and whipping, and many by banishment.

Thirdly.—Finding the gaol pestered with prisoners, and their bane to take root and beginning at ale-houses, and much mischief to be there plotted, with great waste of corn in brewing heady strong beer, many consuming all their time and sucking that sweet poison, he had taken an exact survey of all victualling-houses and ale-houses, which were above a thousand, and above 300 barrels of strong beer in some houses, the whole quantity of beer in victualling-houses amounting to above 40,000 barrels; he had thought it high time to abridge their number and limit them by bonds as to the quantity of beer they should use, and as to what orders they should observe, whereby the price of corn and malt had greatly fallen.

Fourthly.—The Bakers and Brewers had been drawn within bounds, so that, if the course continued, men might have what they paid for, viz. weight and measure.

He had also endeavoured to keep the Sabbath day holy, for which he had been much maligned.

Fifthly.—If what he had done were well taken, he would proceed further, viz. to deal with thieving brokers or broggers, who were the receivers of all stolen goods.

And lastly, the inmates of infected houses would require before summer to be discharged of all superfluities for avoiding infection, etc.

A FACSIMILE OF THE ORDER FOR THE BURNING OF THE BOOK OF SPORTS

E. Gardner’s Collection.

[Go to transcription of text]

Returning from Scotland in 1618 James observed that certain persons of Lancashire, whom he called Puritans, and precise people, had interfered by prohibiting such “lawful recreations and honest exercises upon Sundays and other holidays after the afternoon sermon or service” as the peasantry had been accustomed to indulge in; he therefore issued a declaration setting forth that this prohibition “barreth the common and meaner sort of people from using such exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, when we or our successors shall have occasion to use them; and in place thereof sets up filthy tiplings and drunkenness, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their ale-houses: for when shall the common people have leave to exercise, if not upon the Sundays and holidays, seeing they must apply their labour, and win their living, in all working days?”

The King therefore commanded that no recreations should be denied to his subjects which did not militate against the laws and the canons of the Church. “And as for our good people’s lawful recreation, our pleasure likewise is that after the end of divine services our good people may not be disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation: nor from having of May games, Whitsun ales, and Morris dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith used, as the same be had in due and convenient time without impediment or neglect of divine service; and that women shall have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decorating of it, according to their old custom. But withall, we do here account still as prohibited all unlawful games to be used upon Sunday only, as bear and bull-baiting, interludes, and, at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited, bowling.”

The famous Book of Sports, which laid down rules as to games and sports lawful to be played on the Sunday, was ordered to be read in every parish church throughout the country. The reception of the proclamation, especially in the City, seems to have surprised the King’s advisers. Neither James nor his son could ever understand the extent or the depth of the new ideas in religion. Sunday, in the eyes of most people who thought about religion at all—that is, in the eyes of all responsible persons in London, which was a hot-bed of religious controversy—had become the Jewish Sabbath. Most of the City clergy refused absolutely to read the Book of Sports in their churches, choosing to be fined or suspended and imprisoned rather than obey. These punishments they endured. But the feeling in the City ran very high, insomuch that the Lord Mayor refused permission for the King’s carriages to be drawn through the City on Sunday during Divine Service. There was, naturally, great indignation at Court. The King made the customary observation about two Kings in the country. However, he sent his carriages back with a warrant to let them pass. This the Mayor obeyed, saying that he had done his duty, but that what one in higher authority commanded, he must obey. So no more was said, and the City, in the matter of the Book of Sports, had peace.

The story of the settlement of Virginia is a pleasing episode of this reign. It shows the City at its best, wise, patriotic, generous, and far-seeing. Taking this history with that of the plantation of Ulster, we have a proof that the City was at this time overcrowded and congested. When the latter scheme was first set afoot the citizens were reminded that the City was so crowded that one tradesman was hardly able to live by another, and when the Virginian colony was mooted it was proposed to relieve the streets by sending out all the idle children.

THE DESTRUCTION OF CHEAPSIDE CROSS AND THE BURNING OF THE BOOK OF SPORTS, MAY 1643

[Go to transcription of text]

The Company for colonising Virginia was founded in 1609. The promoters assured the Mayor, then Sir Humphry Wild, that if the surplus population of London could be transferred to Virginia there would be far less danger of pestilence and famine. By way of attracting people willing to emigrate, meat, drink, and clothing, with a house, orchard, and garden, and an allotment of land, were offered. Any alderman subscribing £50 would be reckoned an original member of the Council. “Bills of Association” were given to all who subscribed, entitling them to a pro rata share in the profits. Fifty-six of the Companies agreed to take ventures in the plantations. On May 23, 1609, the Company received a second charter, and in the same month the first fleet of seven ships was dispatched. The ships took three months to get across; yellow fever broke out among their crews and passengers, the number of whom were sadly reduced when they landed.

In two years’ time the Company had got through all their money, though they had raised £18,000 since their first fleet went out. They obtained, however, a third charter, with the addition of the Bermudas, and they held a public lottery. It is remarkable to find the City Companies and the City churches, or vestries, taking shares in this lottery.

Two years later a second lottery was set on foot. In 1618 it was decided to take up vagrant boys and girls in the streets and to transport them to Virginia. This was done. A beginning was made with 100, who were shipped across so successfully that the Corporation sent over another hundred. The children cost £5 each, including their voyage and their clothing. The Common Council paid for both shiploads by a rate levied on the City.

Next, the King complained that whole companies of lazy rogues and masterless men followed the Court. The Virginia Company laid hands on all, put them into Bridewell, and as soon as possible packed them off for the Plantation. But the infant colony suffered in 1622 from a treacherous attack made upon the people by the Indians, in which 350 of the settlers perished. The Court of Common Council voted another £500 for another shipload of boys and girls. The question of beggars, vagrants, and disorderly persons was constantly before the authorities. The difficulty has always been the same. If they are suppressed one day, they gather again the next.

In the year 1614 the City began a very mean and unworthy practice; that, namely, of electing to the office of Sheriff those who would rather pay the fine than serve. In this year nearly a dozen were elected, all of whom declined to serve.

In the same year the Mayor and Corporation received a reminder that the City was expected to keep a force of militia always equipped and drilled. They therefore resolved on raising a force of 6000 men; the Aldermen were provided with precepts stating the number of men wanted from each ward, with the kind of arms and armour which they were to bring with them. A list of prices at which the arms could be procured was appended to the precept:—

“Jerome Heydon, described as ‘iremonger at the lower end of Cheapeside,’ was ready to sell corslets, comprising ‘brest, backe, gorgett, taces and headpiece,’ at 15s.; pikes with steel heads at 2s. 6d.; swords, being Turkey blades, at 7s.; ‘bastard’ muskets at 14s.; great muskets with rests, at 16s.; a headpiece, lined and stringed, at 2s. 6d., and a bandaleer for 1s. 6d. Henry White and Don Sany Southwell were prepared to do corslets 6d. cheaper, and the same with swords, but their swords are described as only ‘Irish hilts and belts to them.’ Their bastard muskets, ‘with mouldes,’ could be had for 13s., or 1s. cheaper than those of Jerome Heydon. The Armourers’ Company were ready to supply corslets at 15s., but for the same ‘with pouldrons’ they asked 4s. more. The Cutlers’ Company would furnish ‘a very good turky blade and good open hilts’ for 6s., thus underselling the private firms.”

The interference of James with the Merchant Adventurers in 1615 is difficult to understand. He suppressed the Company, withdrew all licences for the exportation of undyed and undressed cloth, and formed a new company. The Dutch threatened to set up looms for themselves and to destroy the English trade in cloth, but the new company proved a failure, and the old company was restored.

The charter granted by James in the sixth year of his reign confirmed all the ancient rights, liberties, and immunities of the citizens, and added to the bounds of the City and its jurisdiction, the precincts of Duke’s Place, St. Bartholomew’s the Great and Less, Black and White Friars, and Cold Harbour.

Yet the same anxiety which possessed the Government in the reign of Elizabeth as to the increase of London was shown by that of James in his very first year, when he issued a proclamation putting a stop to the building of new houses in the suburbs. It was ordered that no one should build on new foundations, and that all houses so built should be pulled down. The frequency of these proclamations shows that the Government was in earnest on the subject. No doubt the ordinance was evaded because the suburbs were actually increasing, and that rapidly, but a great many persons would be deterred by fear of breaking the law, and would either remain in the City, which was greatly overcrowded, or go across the river and occupy Southwark, which began to fill up fast, along the causeway and embankment, and to grow also by putting out new streets on either side of the former and along the road to Bermondsey. The year after a third proclamation was issued to the same effect; no one was to build on new foundations within two miles of the City. The people paid no attention to this proclamation, and building went on without molestation for some years, when the builders were called upon either to buy their own houses at an extravagant price or to pull them down. This mode of enforcing the law would not be approved at the present day; in 1617 it put money into James’s pocket.

Six years later another proclamation was published to the same effect, acknowledging the futility of the former law.

On a certain Sunday afternoon, the 26th of October 1623, occurred a disaster, called the Fatal Vespers, which was long remembered as a signal proof of Heaven’s wrath against those who followed Popish worship. The French Ambassador at that time had a house in Blackfriars, adjoining which there was a large upper chamber, sometimes used as the Ambassador’s chapel, about 60 feet long and 20 feet broad. Roman Catholics in London frequented the chapels at the various embassies. But this was not the French Ambassador’s chapel, which was within his house. Perhaps the occasion demanded a larger room.

On this afternoon about 300 persons were assembled to celebrate evensong and to hear a sermon from a Jesuit named Father Drury, a person held in great repute for his learning, his blameless life, and laudable conversation. The congregation consisted of English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh. The sermon began between three and four in the afternoon. The text was the parable of the king and the servant whom he forgave.

In the midst of the sermon the beams and side timbers of the floor suddenly gave way and fell with all the people upon the floor of the room below. This in its turn being broken through, all fell upon the lowest floor, where they lay piled together with the beams and broken planks. The only persons who did not fall were some thirty sitting or standing in a corner where the beams held fast. These people with their knives cut a hole in the wall, and so got safely into the Ambassador’s house.

Meanwhile people came running with spades and pickaxes to extricate the sufferers from the ruins.

It took the whole of that day and night to bring out all the people. Out of the 300 who were assembled in the evening some thirty we have said did not fall with the rest. Ninety-five were found to be dead, including the preacher, Father Drury, and a great many were maimed and bruised.

The story of a tumult by the City ’prentices suggests the fourteenth century. It began with one of them crying out when Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, was being carried down Fleet Street in his chair, “There goes the devil in a dung-cart.” Upon which one of the suite retorted sharply. Then the apprentice knocked down the Spaniard. For this offence he with his companions was ordered to be whipped through the City. Thereupon the apprentices rose, 300 strong, and released their companions. However, it could not be endured that an Ambassador should be insulted, and the sentence was carried out. One of the apprentices died, presumably from the severity of his punishment; the others were released, and when it was known, later on, that the Spanish match had fallen through, the Londoners expressed the liveliest joy, bonfires were lit, bells rung, tables were spread in the streets, casks were broached, and all because the Prince was coming home—without the Infanta.

All that precedes concerning the reign of James I. touches the surface of things. These events might have been observed by any casual by-stander, and understood by him as possessing no significance as to the mind of the people and the City.

We have now to consider the influence of James, not on the country at large, where opinion was slow in coming to a head, so much as in the City, where, with 100,000 gathered closely together, and that within hearing of Whitehall, suspicion and jealousy, once awakened, became rapidly opinion, and opinion became conviction, and the settled conviction of the City, once known and formulated, proved the most important weapon of all those forged by the pedantry and obstinacy of James, and the equal obstinacy and wrongheadedness of Charles. In other words, it is necessary in this place to show, if possible, that in a closer sense than is usual the years 1603–1625 were a preparation for the appeal to arms, by which the liberties of the country were secured. I prepare, therefore, to pass in very brief review some of the leading political events of the time, in order to show how the City was affected by them.

To begin with, the City was fiercely Protestant. The Catholic reaction, which had stayed the spread of Continental Protestantism, only made England more doggedly Protestant. That a new life had been imparted to the Catholic Church by the Jesuits and the new orders made the Englishman only the more hostile to a church which threatened his nationality, his liberties, everything that he held most sacred. Again, to the Protestant spirit belonged the right of free thought and free doctrine as against authority. Scholars and divines were satisfied with the purely personal relations between God and man, which they had substituted for the priest and the sacerdotal authority. What the Protestant clergy wanted, what they asked of James in the Millenary Petition was a reform in the ecclesiastical courts, the removal of certain superstitious usages from the Prayer Book, the more rigorous observance of Sunday, and the training of preachers. “Why,” asked Bacon—he might have asked the same question to-day—“should the civil state be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every three years in Parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief, and contrariwise the ecclesiastical state still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration these forty-five years and more?”

However, James had not the least intention of making any change in the ecclesiastical courts.

Moreover, he had already declared his views as to the rights of the sovereign. “A king, he said, is not bound to frame his actions according to law, but of his own free will, and for giving an example to his people.” Convocation was quick to adopt this view and to denounce as a fatal error the doctrine that all power is derived from the people. Later on, the University of Oxford proclaimed the doctrine of passive resistance. It is difficult to speak with moderation of these two opinions, or to estimate how far they are responsible for the bloodshed of the Civil War.

How James carried on his government for seven years without a Parliament belongs to national history. We may, however, picture the wrath and exasperation of the City at the encroachments of the spiritual courts, the subserviency of the lawyers and judges, the extortions, the sale of peerages, and the dismissal of the Chief Justice. We can also imagine the whispers that went round concerning the Court, its extravagance, the shameless promotion of favourites, the scandals, the attempt to form a Spanish alliance.

We may sum up this ignoble reign, so far as concerns London, by saying that the attitude of the City during the whole of it was one of observation and endurance. We have seen something of what was observed. There were, however, other things of which the City took silent note. To begin with, James, while he proclaimed the Royal prerogative, threw away the Royal dignity. He was extravagant and in foolish ways; he loved favourites and they were unworthy; his son was the idol of the people, but James affected no grief for him, nay, it was even whispered that the young Prince was poisoned, and with the guilty knowledge of his father; he hated Puritans and persecuted Catholics; he spent most of his time in hunting; it was commonly reported that he drank heavily; his servants were left without their wages; his purveyors refused supplies until they were paid; he was always preaching the Royal prerogative; he was anxious to enter upon a marriage with Spain, the arch-enemy of the Protestant religion; he tried to bully the House of Commons, but got nothing from them; he granted monopolies, a thing abhorrent to the commercial mind. All these things London observed and marked, and they bore their fruit in the reign of James’s son, and those of his two grandsons. But as yet resistance—armed resistance—was not even thought of. Plots and conspiracies there were, but of small account. Of armed resistance on behalf of the liberties of the country as yet there was no idea.

CHAPTER II
CHARLES I

The history of Charles shows, if we consider nothing more than his dealings with the City of London, a wrongheadedness which is most amazing. It is true that two at least of the Tudor sovereigns had ruled the City with a strong hand, but they knew how to make themselves loved as well as feared, and they knew, further, how timely concessions in small things may overcome resistance in great things. Moreover, we have seen how James had endeavoured to make himself an absolute monarch, and the results which followed. As the event proved, the side taken by London in this reign was once more the winning side; as it was with Richard the Second and Henry the Sixth, so it was with Charles the First.

CHARLES I. (1600–1649)

From the replica of the portrait by Van Dyck painted by Sir Peter Lely.

CHEAPSIDE—QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA’S ENTRY INTO LONDON

From a contemporary print.

I have attempted to indicate something of the effect produced upon the City by the reign of James I. I have now to show the fruits of that reign, followed by another even more obstinately arbitrary; even blinder to the threatening wave that was rising and swelling before the King’s feet, so that it was impossible, one would have thought, not to see it and to understand it. The unbroken contumacy of the House of Commons, whenever it had a chance of speaking, was not that a sign which might have been read by the King and his Ministers? The sullen attitude of the City—was not that a sign? Charles, however, saw nothing, or, if he saw, then he thought the opposition feeble compared with the forces at his own disposal. Nothing, however, seems to have been further from his thoughts than armed resistance. Let us remember, however, that at the outset Charles had to face an angry and discontented City; angry on account of the ecclesiastical courts and the impossibility of redress; discontented on account of the late King’s deliberate trampling upon all its liberties.

On the 28th of April, Charles was proclaimed King at Ludgate Hill, himself being present. On the 1st of May he was married by proxy in Paris to Henrietta Maria. The new Queen came over at once, and received a kindly welcome from the citizens. The public entry, which was arranged for June 18, was postponed on account of another outbreak of plague. The number of deaths from this visitation is returned at 35,417, about one-third of the whole population. As in 1603, and later on in 1665, the richer sort hurried out of the town on the first outbreak, leaving behind them the population which cannot leave the place of work, namely, the apprentices, craftsmen, servants, and porters. The rich carried away what they could, but they were refused entrance into the villages, even the barns being closed to them. Many of them died on the highway, their pockets stuffed with money.

In the midst of this terrible time Charles called upon the City to raise and equip 1000 men for the new expedition. This was done, and the men were raised somehow, and marched down to Plymouth, where they awaited the arrival of the Fleet with no pay and no provisions. Finally the Fleet arrived, and they went on board, bound for Cadiz, there to experience failure.

The Parliament of 1626 refused to grant supplies until grievances had been considered. Charles therefore dissolved it. This was like his father. He would get on without the Parliament. He began by calling upon the City to lend him £100,000. The City refused, they had no money, they were just recovering from the Plague; they lent, however, £20,000 on good security. Next came a demand for 4000 men and 20 ships, the first for the defence of Sheppey, and the second in order to carry the war into the enemy’s country. To the first the City replied that the order came from some of the lords and not from the King, and that by charter their soldiers were for the defence of the City and must not go farther than the Mayor himself may go. As we have seen in the past, this right was always put forward when the City did not want to obey the King, and always neglected when the City was willing that its troops should go anywhere, as, for instance, in the deposition of Richard the Second, in the siege of Winchester under Stephen, and in the defence of the country against the Spanish Armada.

As for the ships, the Mayor was instructed to reply that the City was in a most impoverished condition, that they could not get the ships ready in the time, and that the merchants would far rather have letters of mark and go out privateering. However, the City gave way. It is an indication of the poverty of the City at this time that the small sum of £18,000 wanted for fitting out the ships could not be raised. Many of the people steadfastly refused to pay their rate; the constables refused to distrain; the people helped one another when the constables tried to do their duty. Meantime the streets of the City were thronged with sailors clamouring for their pay; they mobbed the Duke of Buckingham, who put them off with promises. Charles had no money to give them. He endeavoured to get supplies by the “Forced Loan” of 1626. The City was left for a time, but when in 1627 war broke out between France and England it became necessary to press for the loan. Some persons refused to give any money and were committed to prison; the judges declared the loan illegal. The City, however, after long discussions, resolved on lending the King another sum of £120,000, provided it was amply secured.

The following is part of the assessment, showing the demands divided among the leading companies:—

The masters and wardens of the plumbers, saddlers, founders, joiners, and glaziers were sent to prison for neglecting to collect the company’s quota.

The unpopularity of Buckingham, upon whom was laid the odium of failure, is shown in the very strange story of the murder of Dr. Lambe. Lambe was an astrologer and a creature of Buckingham’s. The account of his death is told in three ways. First, that of Dr. Reginald Sharpe (London and the Kingdom, ii. p. 105). He says that Lambe was set upon by some of the people in the City on his way home after supper, that they did him nearly to death, and that no one would receive the wounded man, who was taken to the compter, and died the next day. The other accounts are more elaborate and more unreal. They are as follows:—

1. He was insulted by a few boys, who were joined by the rabble, so that he took refuge in a tavern in the Old Jewry. The vintner, for his own safety, turned him out, whereupon the mob beat him to death before the Mayor’s guard could reach the spot.

HENRIETTA MARIA (1609–1669)

From an engraving by Voerts, after Van Dyck.

2. He was in Cheapside, where he was insulted by the boys, who were joined by the mob; he ran into a house of Wood Street, where the people broke all the windows. He was forced to leave his refuge, and was then seized by the mob, who dragged him along, striking and kicking him. The account goes on to say that the news of the tumult reaching the King, he rode, accompanied by a small guard, into the City, and found in St. Paul’s Churchyard the mob, still beating and kicking the man; that he addressed the mob and bade them desist; that they replied that they had already judged him; and in fact they had so dislocated his limbs that he was dead. Charles, having so small a guard, was obliged to retire.

The second of these two accounts is clearly false, because Wood Street is only a few minutes’ walk from St. Paul’s Churchyard; the noise of a City disturbance would not reach Whitehall; when the news of it did reach Whitehall, the thing must have been over, unless the kicking and striking lasted for an hour; it would take quite an hour for the riot to be reported to the King, and for him to get ready his escort and to ride to St. Paul’s.

In any case there is no doubt that the man Lambe was murdered by the London mob; also that the King was greatly incensed at the matter, for he wrote an angry letter to the Mayor calling for the punishment of the murderers. The Mayor replied that he could not find any; the City was therefore fined £6000, which, on their arresting a few men, was reduced to 1500 marks or £1000. It has been suggested that the money was all that Charles wanted. If so, why did he reduce the fine? It is much more probable that he was personally concerned at the murder.

There are many indications that the people were getting beyond the control of the Mayor and Aldermen. The murder of Lambe was only one of the many riotous affairs which occurred during this reign. In 1630 the Sheriff’s officers having arrested a man in Fleet Street, the populace rose and attempted a rescue. The Sheriff’s officers were supported by watchmen, constables, and some of the citizens who joined them; a fight ensued, in which many were killed and wounded. The Mayor, with a company of the trained bands, arrived upon the scene and stopped the battle. Several ringleaders were arrested, and one, Henry Stamford by name, was executed.

Again, in 1640, the City being greatly enraged against the Archbishop of Canterbury, a body of five hundred ’prentices gathered together by night and ran to Lambeth, intending to sack and destroy the Palace; the Archbishop, however, had got wind of their design, and was strong enough to beat them off. The ’prentices also broke up the sittings of the High Commissioner of St. Paul’s.

Another pestilence visited the City in 1629, remaining till 1631. It was followed, as usual, by distress and scarcity of provisions. Doggerel rhymes (Sharpe, ii. 109) appeared showing the temper of the people:—

“The corne is so dear,

I doubt many will starve this year;

If you see not to this

Some of you will speed amiss.

Our souls they are dear,

For our bodies have some care.

Before we arise

Less will suffice.”

One of the advantages of keeping all the shops of one trade in the same quarter is illustrated by the story of the Queen’s loss by robbery. It was in the year 1631 that a part of her plate and jewels was stolen. The purchasers of the stolen property must have been the goldsmiths, and unless the stolen plate had been sent abroad, it might be recovered by finding to what goldsmith it had been offered on purchase. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century all the goldsmiths lived together in Cheapside. As early as 1623 it was observed that many of them were leaving their old quarters and setting up shops elsewhere. They were ordered to go back to their old quarters, but, as generally happened with such orders, there were no means of enforcing them, and the goldsmiths continued to scatter themselves about the town. Then came the Queen’s loss, and it was found that the order had been entirely neglected. The Lords in Council, therefore, renewed the order on the ground that by leaving Cheapside and setting up their shops in other places, they offered facilities for “passing away of stolen plate.” This order of Council was issued in 1635. As very little attention was paid to the order, which was certainly vexatious, it was renewed on May 24, 1637, and was followed by an order of the Court of Star Chamber that if any other tradesmen besides goldsmiths should keep shop in Cheapside or Lombard Street, the Alderman should be imprisoned for permitting it. As little attention was paid to this order, a fourth, to the same effect, was issued in January 1638. In the last the names of some offenders were given; there were two stationers, a milliner, a bandseller, a drugster, a cook, and a girdler. This interference with the conduct of trade was part of a general and systematic attempt to make the King master in everything. He could not possibly have made a greater mistake than to interfere with the trading interests or to meddle with the way in which a money-making community conducted its affairs. The goldsmiths who had left Cheapside had done so in their own interests; by scattering, each shop formed its own circle; to give up that circle would be to give up the shopkeeper’s livelihood; they had found out by this time that in a great city of 150,000 people, trade is more successful when the shops of the same kind are scattered. Imagine the wrath of Cheapside at the present day if all the shops except those of one trade were ordered to depart!

The business of the ship money is by some historians considered the greatest of all the King’s mistakes; but that of the Cheapside tradesmen touched a lower level, and therefore a wider area. To bleed the rich merchants was one thing, to deprive an honest tradesman of his shop was more serious, because of tradesmen there were more than of merchants. A charter confirming the City liberties produced no change in the King’s policy. It was signed while the disputes concerning ship money, Irish Estates, and interference with trade were at their height, and it cost the City £12,000.

When we read of ships being fitted out by London, of the fleet equipped by Sir John Philpott, of the solid support given to the fleet which engaged the Spanish Armada, and of other occasions, it is difficult to understand the objections of London to raise the ship money, save on the supposition that they now perceived that the King meant to go as far as he could in the way of despotic power, and that it behoved them to make a stand and to fight every inch of ground. This they prepared to do. First they set their law officers to hunt up charters and Acts of Parliament. The case complete, they presented a petition to the King, stating that by certain Acts recited the City was exempt from such obligations. However, the City got nothing by its petition except a peremptory order to raise the £30,000 wanted, and to raise it at once. The City gave way and proceeded to obey and to fit out seven ships.

The impost of ship money, which ultimately caused Charles I. so much trouble, was suggested to him in 1631 by Sir William Noye, Attorney-General, who had found among the records in the Tower, not only writs compelling the ports on certain occasions to provide ships for the use of the King, but others obliging their neighbours of the maritime counties to contribute to the expense. Writs were issued to London and the different ports, October 20, 1634, ordering them to supply a certain number of ships of a specified tonnage, sufficiently armed and manned, to rendezvous at Portsmouth on the 1st of March 1635. The writ is set out in Howell’s State Trials, vol. iii. pp. 830–832, and also the proceedings of the Common Council, and their petition to the King against it. By this contrivance the King obtained a supply of £218,500, which he devoted to providing a fleet. Twelve of the judges decided that the King had the right to make the levy. In the speech of Lord Keeper Coventry to the judges assembled in the Star Chamber on the 14th of February 1636 he stated that, “In the first year, when the writs were directed to the ports and the maritime places, they received little or no opposition; but in the second year, when they went generally throughout the kingdom, although by some well obeyed, have been refused by some, not only in some inland counties, but in some of the maritime places.”

Charles then called upon the whole nation to provide ship money. London was ordered to equip two more ships of 800 tons apiece. One, Robert Chambers by name, brought the question of the King’s right into the Court of the King’s Bench. Mr. Justice Berkeley, with amazing servility, refused to allow the case to be argued, because, he said, “there is a rule of law, and another of government,” thus actually separating the law and government. It was by this time fully evident that the King and Council were resolved upon the humbling of the City. If there was any doubt left in men’s minds, that doubt was surely dispelled by the action of the Star Chamber concerning the Irish Estates. The Star Chamber, after hearing a suit against the City charging them with mal-administration of their Irish property, condemned the City to forfeiture of all their lands in Ireland—lands which, as we have seen, the City had been forced to take up by James the First, and on which they had spent very large sums of money. In addition to losing their estates the citizens were fined £70,000. As for the fine, it was easier to inflict it than to levy it. The City let the Irish Estates go for the present, and paid the sum of £12,000 in full discharge of the fine. But the thing remained in their minds, and one of the first acts of Parliament, when it was called, was to reconsider the whole question (see [p. 209]).

Walker & Cockerell.

GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE (SECOND CREATION) OF BUCKINGHAM (1592–1628)

From the portrait by Gerard Honthorst.

I purpose in this place to interrupt the direct course of events in order to show, by reference to certain political events of the time, the mind of London.

In 1626 occurred the famous impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham by Sir John Eliot, when the Commons pronounced their first refusal to grant subsidies till grievances had been redressed. Eliot was arrested and confined to the Tower; after ten days he was released, but the Parliament was dissolved. The King appealed to the country to grant as a free gift what the Commons had refused.

The answer to this appeal should have left no doubt in the minds of the King’s friends that the words of Sir John Eliot stated the mind of the whole country. As regards London and Westminster they replied to those who would collect the subsidy with cries of “A Parliament! A Parliament!”

Charles then tried the expedient of a forced loan with equal want of success. It was found impossible to collect it.

In 1628 a new Parliament was called. In this House the Petition of Right was drawn up, in which, among other things, it was claimed that no man should be compelled to pay any kind of tax without the consent of Parliament.

Charles gave way, secretly, after his manner, reserving certain rights of his own, as that of imprisonment without appeal. The City knew nothing of this duplicity; bells were rung; bonfires lighted; it was assumed that the King had honestly given way, and the House granted a subsidy. Then came the news of Buckingham’s murder.

There were two of Charles’s friends, and only two, for whom the City afterwards entertained a hatred equal to that they felt for Buckingham. But at that moment there was no one whose death was so ardently desired. When the news was brought to London, grave citizens drank the health of Felton. When the murderer was brought to London, the crowd followed praying that the Lord would comfort him. Such was the mind of the City towards the man whom Eliot had impeached; they received the news of his murder with savage exultation. Then Charles made Laud Bishop of London—the third of the three men whose death a few years later the City welcomed with shouts of joy. It was not enough to trample on the liberties of the people, he must now proceed to deprive them of their religion. The memorable sitting in the House when the Speaker was held in his chair while the Commons passed resolution after resolution against innovations in religion and the illegal levy of taxes, belongs to national history. It was with passionate excitement, hardly restrained from tumult, that the news of this sitting and these resolutions was received in the City. There were as yet no newspapers to furnish day by day a report of the proceedings in the House, but the tidings of each protest of the Commons and each arbitrary measure of the King flew through the streets of the City as quickly as if by means of the daily paper, so that every house was filled with the angry murmurs of the citizens, and men in the streets and on ’Change looked at each other and asked what would happen next.

Yet no word of armed resistance. The old time when one King could be put down and another set up in his place was forgotten. Rebellion was not yet even thought of. The Parliament was dissolved.

Laud, free to do what he pleased, proceeded whither his pleasure led him. What he did is national history. The people of London, of whom nine-tenths were Puritans (see [p. 137]), or, at least, strong Protestants, saw with rage the severance of the ties connecting the Church of England with the foreign Protestant churches; they saw the forcible introduction of rites and ceremonies offensive to Puritan feeling; the expulsion of Puritan clergy; the suppression of Puritan lectures; the prohibition of the Geneva Bible, loved by all the people; the desecration, as they thought, of their so-called Sabbath; the restoration of ritualism; the return, as they believed, to Rome.

There seemed no hope of redress. The High Church party were in power; the return to Rome seemed certain.

It was at this time (1629–1640) that the first great emigration to America took place. It was an emigration of men and women of every station and every trade; there were men of family and property among them; there were also husbandmen and humble craftsmen; 1700 emigrants went out in one year, 1630; in eleven years (1629–1640) 20,000 went away. It seems as if the magnitude of the emigration should have caused uneasiness, but probably the exodus of 2000 people a year, many of whom went abroad to better themselves without regard to religion, was considered to be useful to the plantations, and, so far as they departed for the sake of religion, in no way prejudicial to the State.

The lists published in The Original Emigrants to America show that from the Port of London—the only port we need mention here—in the year 1635 there were embarked and were transported—not in a criminal sense—no fewer than 4890 emigrants, a fourth part of the whole number mentioned above. There must have been some special reason for the departure of so many in one year. We may find it, perhaps, in the tyrannical and oppressive proceedings of Laud. He had deprived the French and Flemish refugees of their right to worship after their own manner, and thousands emigrated in consequence; he had assumed a censorship of the Press which forbade such books as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; he restored the “wakes” or dedication feasts, the church ales, the Sunday sports, the surplice, kneeling at the Communion; he insisted on uniformity of worship; these are sufficient causes for the great emigration of 1635. The book in which I find the names of the emigrants gives them in separate lists according to the ships in which they sailed; in most cases it gives their ages, in a few cases their occupation and station—unfortunately in very few cases. Again, in some cases the list gives the name of the parish where the statutory declaration was made, viz. the oaths of allegiance, that of conformity to the Church of England, and the assurance that the emigrant was not a “subsidy man”—that is to say, a person owing money to the State on account of subsidy due. One need not attach much importance to this declaration, as yet no one had begun to dispute the duty of allegiance; the Church of England included the Puritans, and as regards the subsidy, those who were of humble rank owed nothing; those of the better sort may very well have protested that they owed nothing—as by a strictly legal view they did not.

It is a great pity that the names of the places from which the emigrants came are not always indicated. We cannot, for instance, learn how far this movement affected London. Certain City parishes are given in which the emigrants made the statutory declaration, but in the majority of cases the parishes are not indicated. I have compiled a table, manifestly very incomplete, of those parishes which are mentioned. It is quite evident that many of the lists belong to London, though the fact is not stated. Thus there seems no reason why St. Katherine’s—is it St. Katherine Cree or St. Katherine Coleman, or St. Katherine’s by the Tower?—should have sent out 157 emigrants; St. Mildred’s, Bread Street, 27; and other London parishes two or three only.

• St. Andrew, 1
• St. Alphege, 4
• All Hallows, Staining, 6
• St. Botolph, Billingsgate, 1
• St. Mildred, Bread Street, 27
• St. Katherine’s, 157
• St. Giles, Cripplegate, 6
• Minories, 4
• Stepney, 33
• Tower Precinct, 2
• St. Saviour, Southwark, 3
• St. Olave, Southwark, 5
• “Westminster,” 3
• “Wapping,” 6
• “Lombard Street,” 8
• “Cheapside,” 3
• “Fenchurch,” 1

The greatest contributor, however, to the 5000 was Gravesend, from which place 1875 persons took the oaths and were sent on to the Port of London to be shipped.

The sight of these crowds flocking to the Port of London to embark on the ships bound for America; the provisioning of the ships for the voyage; the talk about the places whither these persons were to be carried; the reasons why they went; the escape for some from the Laudian persecution; the hope, for others, of a new country where the divine right of Kings would not be a subject of discussion; the grave and serious divines who went on board these ships; the gentlemen who joined them; the humble craftsmen who went with them, the Geneva Bible in hand; can we doubt that these sights sank deep into the hearts of the people? Can we doubt that the example, the prayers, the touching farewells of these emigrants were sowing seeds which should produce fruit eventful and terrible? “Our hearts,” said Winthrop, “shall be fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness.”

Doubt not that the people of London knew very well what a wilderness this New England was; how hard and barren was its coast; how cruel was its winter; how deadly and implacable were the Indians; they had heard of seasons when the shell-fish of the sea-shore were the food of the emigrants, when in the evening they knew not where they would find their food in the morning, and when they assembled to worship under escort and with armed sentinels.

We must not be led away to believe that after the first rush, when divines, scholars, country gentlemen, and lawyers joined the list of emigrants, the same class was continued. The lists before us point rather in the other direction, as if in 1635, five years after the first movement began, by far the larger number were craftsmen and rustics. The age of the emigrants points to this conclusion. I have taken a few consecutive pages at random. I find that out of 409 names there were 106 under twenty; of these many were children and boys, but the majority were eighteen and nineteen years old; 259 were men and women—the men far outnumbering the women—in the full vigour of early manhood, namely, over twenty and under thirty. There were only thirty-four over forty and under fifty, and ten only of fifty and upwards. In other words, I conclude from these lists that while religion may have had a good deal to do with the emigration of this year, a very large part of the attraction was the thought of adventure, change, and better meat, which has always made the Englishman restless and enterprising.

Where did the emigrants go? There were six places open to the emigrant of the seventeenth century. And he went to them in the following proportion during the year 1635:—

Let us return to the constitutional part of the history.

Charles called no Parliament for eleven years. During that time, as he could get no subsidies, he was compelled to practise every kind of extortion; he enforced the old obligation to take the honour of knighthood; he imposed fines for encroachments, for defective title deeds, for recusancy.

Where he touched the City was, first, in reviving the old laws against building in the suburbs, and in fining those living in houses built twenty years before in assurance that the law was a dead letter; next, in the levy of illegal and extortionate customs duties, which were resisted by the City merchants, but at their peril. One of them said that it was better to be a merchant in Turkey than in London; for this he was sent to the Tower and fined £2000: thirdly, by the system of monopolies, against which the City had protested under Elizabeth. Everything became the subject of a monopoly. As was said afterwards in the Long Parliament, “They sup in our cup; they dip in our dish; they sit by our fire; we find them in the dye-fat, the wash bowls, and the powdering tub. They have marked and sealed us from head to foot.”

All these grievances continued to roll up like a snowball, as silently and as rapidly; yet it was an invisible snowball. Outwardly the King and his friends were deceived by the general tranquillity; there was offered very little resistance; there were manifested few open signs of discontent; a general prosperity prevailed; trade was better than it had been for many years; the English flag was flying over new seas and in ports hitherto unknown; agriculture was advancing; the country gentry were growing more easy in their means; every one seemed quiet. In fact it was felt by the better class that there was no hurry. Sooner or later there must be a Parliament; sooner or later the makeshifts of the King would come to an end; there was no hurry. And the bill kept rolling up. But the King, and Laud, and the Court party were deceived. They mistook the quiet of the people, and especially of the City, for submission and subjection; they thought that the spirit of resistance was quelled.

Perhaps enough has been said to show the temper of the City. One or two notes more.

We find a London clergyman calling on all Christians to “resist the Bishops as robbers of souls, limbs of the Beast, and fathers of Antichrist.” One pays very little heed to ecclesiastical censure, which is generally cursing, at any time, but the vehemence of this language seems worthy of remark.

When Prynne was carried from Palace Yard after the sentence which deprived him of his ears, he was escorted by a hundred thousand Londoners with prayers and cries of encouragement and of comfort.

In 1638 Hampden’s judges laid down the principle that “no statute prohibiting arbitrary taxation could be pleaded against the King’s will.” To this monstrous doctrine the City said nothing, the people said nothing; they waited; sooner or later there must be a Parliament.

Next year began the Scotch troubles, the beginning of the end for Charles.

In 1640 the King found himself compelled to call a Parliament; he must have money.

This was the Short Parliament. I am quite sure that the news of the summons was received on ’Change and wherever the merchants and citizens of London met together with the quiet laughter of those who saw that the day of redemption was drawing nigh. At last after eleven years the Parliament was called together. Would the members prove staunch? No fear of that. The City knew—no other institution or place knew so well—the feeling of the country. The City always knew the feeling of the country; there were a thousand correspondents between the City and the country; the merchants had no doubt that the country was sound. Laud’s clergy marked the change in the defiant air of the City, in the exulting looks of the people; there were changes close at hand.

The House did prove staunch. Once more the Commons refused a subsidy till grievances were redressed, and until security was obtained for religion, for property, and for the liberties of the country. The House was dissolved. Then the City laughed again and its people rubbed their hands. For the King must have money, and without a Parliament he could not get money. The Scotch business went on, and the snowball of discontent and of grievances was now visible even to Charles the Blind.

Then began an interesting and an exciting time. The King tried to persuade the City to lend him £100,000. The City steadfastly refused. The Mayor and Aldermen were summoned to Whitehall; the King addressed them; they were ordered to make out lists of the wealthier citizens; they were dismissed, but were summoned again, and told that if they did not pay £100,000 they would have to pay £200,000; and that if they still refused that they would have to pay £300,000. They were again dismissed, and told to prepare the list of rich citizens by the following Sunday.

KING CHARLES I. THROWN OVERBOARD

From a satirical print in the British Museum.

By this time the temper of London was roused. The Mayor and Aldermen came on the following Sunday, but without that list. Instead they brought a petition asking for redress. Some of them refused absolutely to make out such a list, and were committed to prison, viz. Sir Nicholas Rainton to the Marshalsea, Alderman Somers to the Fleet, Alderman Atkins to the King’s Bench, and Alderman Gayre to the Gatehouse. It was on Sunday, the 10th of May, that the Aldermen went to prison. The reply of the City was a tumult, in which the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth was attacked and the Archbishop’s life was threatened. A royal warrant was issued commanding the Lord Mayor to raise as many men as might be needed for the suppression of riots. At the same time it was thought best to let the Aldermen go.

In June the Mayor was again summoned to show cause why the ship money was not collected. He replied, plainly, that no one would pay it. Here we see the secret of the City’s strength; the people only had to sit down; they could not be forced to pay, either by the King, who had no force at his disposal, or by the Aldermen, who had no police. The people sat down and refused to pay. There were threats of debasing the coinage unless the City yielded; the answer was that the Common Council had no power to dispose of the citizens’ money. Charles then endeavoured to raise £120,000 from the livery companies; they replied—it was impossible to let go so fine an opportunity—that their “stocks” had all been consumed in the Irish Estates—confiscated by the King.

On the 3rd of November 1640 Charles, evidently suffering under great depression of spirits, opened the Long Parliament.

Between the dissolution of the Short Parliament and the assembling of the Long the City petitioned the King to call a Parliament for the redress of grievances. Laud and the Privy Council tried to frighten the City against signing it, but in vain. It was signed by 10,000 citizens. Maitland gives it in full:—

“Most Gracious Sovereign—

Being moved with the Duty and Obedience, which by the Laws your Petitioners owe unto your sacred Majesty, they humbly present unto your princely and pious Wisdom the several pressing Grievances following, viz.—

1. The pressing and unusual Impositions upon Merchandize, importing and exporting, and the urging and levying of Ship-Money, notwithstanding both which, Merchants’ Ships and Goods have been taken and destroyed both by Turkish and other Pirates.

2. The Multitude of Monopolies, Patents, and Warrants, whereby Trade in the City, and other Parts of the Kingdom is much decayed.

3. The sundry Innovations in Matters of Religion.

4. The Oath and Canons lately enjoined by the late Convocation, whereby your Petitioners are in Danger to be deprived of their Ministers.

5. The Great Concourse of Papists, and their Inhabitations in London, and the Suburbs, whereby they have more Means and Opportunity of plotting and executing their designs against the Religion established.

6. The seldom Calling, and sudden Dissolutions of Parliaments, without the redress of your Subjects’ Grievances.

7. The Imprisonment of divers Citizens for Non-payment of Ship-Money, and Impositions; and the prosecution of many others in the Star-Chamber, for not conforming themselves to Committees in Patents of Monopolies, whereby Trade is restrained.

8. The great Danger your sacred Person is exposed unto in the present War, and the various fears that seized upon your Petitioners and their Families by reason thereof; which Grievances and Fears have occasioned so great a stop and distraction in Trade, that your Petitioners can neither buy, sell, receive, or pay as formerly, and tends to the utter Ruin of the Inhabitants of this City, the Decay of Navigation, and Clothing, and the Manufactures of this Kingdom.

From a contemporary print in the British Museum.

[Go to transcription of text]

Your humble Petitioners conceiving that the said Grievances are contrary to the Laws of this Kingdom, and finding by Experience that they are not redressed by the ordinary Course of Justice, do therefore most humbly beseech your most sacred Majesty to cause a Parliament to be summoned with all convenient Speed, whereby they may be relieved in the Premises.

And your Petitioners and loyal Subjects shall ever pray, etc.”

The fanatical temper of the people as regards the Catholics was shown in their attack upon the Spanish Ambassador’s house in Bishopsgate Street:—

“Upon the twenty-ninth of April the first tumultuous disorder (of these Times) happened in London, when a great number of Apprentices and others beset the Spanish Ambassador’s house in Bishopsgate Street, threatening to pull it down, and to kill the Ambassador, for permitting English papists to frequent his Chapel. For the appeasing of this Commotion, the Lord-Mayor immediately repaired to the Ambassador’s, where with much difficulty he prevailed upon the Populace to disperse and return home. His Lordship had no sooner allayed the fury of the Multitude, than he entered the Ambassador’s House, and, being met by that Minister, was desired to drop the point of the City Sword that was carried before him, acquainting him, That he was then in a Place where the King of Spain, his Master, had Jurisdiction; which the Mayor complying with, the Ambassador told him that he had never seen so barbarous an attempt; and desired to know whether this could justly be called a civilized Nation, where the Laws of Nations and Hospitality were so horribly violated? The Mayor replied, That the Rioters were the very Refuse of the People, therefore entreated his Excellency not to impute the Sedition to the City: to which the Ambassador smartly answered, That he hardly knew how to call that a City, or even a Society of Rational Creatures, which was seemingly divested both of Humanity and Government.

The true maner of the execution of thomas earle of strafford. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. upon Towerhill, the 12^th of May, 1641.

From a contemporary Dutch print. E. Gardner’s Collection.

Walker & Cockerell.

THOMAS WENTWORTH, FIRST EARL OF STRAFFORD (1593–1641)

From the portrait by Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

The Mayor, to extenuate the Crime as much as possible, told the Ambassador, That the People were enraged because Mass was publicly said in his Chapel. To which he replied, That the English Minister at Madrid enjoyed the free Exercise of his Religion without the least Disturbance; and that he would rather choose to lose his Life than the Privileges due to him by Contract and the Law of Nations: the Mayor returned, That the People were the more incensed against him because the Citizens of the Popish Communion were permitted to frequent his House at Mass, contrary to Law: The Ambassador answered, That if the Mayor would prevent their coming, he would not fend for them; but, if they came, he could neither in Conscience to his Religion, nor his Master’s Honour, deny them Access to their Devotions, or Protection to their Persons, while they were with him. Wherefore a Guard was placed at his House, which not only protected him from further Insults, but likewise the Popish Citizens from frequenting Mass.

A Plan of London and Westminster
Shewing the Forts erected by Order of the Parliament in 1643 & the Desolation by the Fire in 1666

From a contemporary print.

This Storm was no sooner over than another far more impetuous began; for a Discovery being made of some desperate Designs both at home and abroad, of bringing up the Army to London to surprise the Tower, and favour the Earl of Strafford’s escape, divers Ministers from their Pulpits, on the Sunday following, shewed to their several Auditories the Necessity of having Justice speedily executed upon some great Delinquents; which so greatly irritated and inflamed the Citizens, that the Day after they, to the Number of Six Thousand, armed with Swords, Staves, and Cudgels, ran to Westminster; and posting themselves in the Avenues leading to the House of Lords, stopped all Coaches, and incessantly cried out for Justice against Strafford.”

We now come to events which belong to the national history. We may therefore pass them over except where they specially touch upon London.

The discovery of the “Army Plot” made Strafford’s fate certain, and his death was the cause of savage exultation in the City; a countless multitude assembled to see him die; the people ran and rode from the scene waving their hats and crying “His head is off.”

The Grand Remonstrance laid before the House called forth the opposition of a small Royalist party, which only strengthened the cause. London was zealous for the cause; associations were formed in every county. I pass over the events which followed.

Civil War began in July 1642. Marston Moor in 1644 and Naseby in 1645 practically finished it.

The importance of the City in making the war possible can hardly be overestimated. They began with a force of 8000 trained bands, well drilled and well handled. When the breach between King and Commons could no longer be averted, the City raised £100,000 with alacrity at the request of the latter. An immense quantity of plate was brought in, and a levy of £50,000 was laid upon all strangers and aliens residing in the City. That was in June 1642. When in the autumn it was reported that Prince Rupert was marching on London, the City became a huge camp; nothing went on but arming, training, practising, marching. The whole City was Roundhead; those few who remained loyal—the “malignants”—were arrested and clapped into prison as soon as they could be caught. This unanimity did not continue. The Royalists presently plucked up heart and, appearing with their badges, found out how strong they were. A reaction set in when it was discovered that the war would not be finished in a single campaign and that it entailed heavy sacrifices, including the shutting of shops and the temporary ruin of trade. A stormy gathering was held in the Guildhall, at which there were loud cries for peace. The Common Council therefore drew up two petitions, one for the King and one for the Parliament, advocating peace, or at least a truce for deliberation.

They even sent a deputation to the King, who received the members graciously and promised a reply, which quickly followed. It is a very long document, in which the King pointed out the wickedness of fighting against him; and he ordered his loyal subjects to begin the cause of peace by arresting the Mayor.

On the 21st of November 1642, about a month after the battle of Edgehill, a suspicious-looking boat was discovered by the pinnace guarding the Thames for the City and Parliament. She was a Gravesend boat and should have put in at Billingsgate. Instead of this, the tide being favourable, she continued her course and shot the bridge. The pinnace gave chase, and presently caught up with her and seized her. The only passenger on board was a gentleman, who was carrying from Colonel Goring a letter—it is not stated to whom—containing lists of the supplies of men expected by the King from Holland and Denmark. Nothing could have been more opportune than such a capture; the City was still lukewarm in the cause; to afford them clear proof that the King intended to fight them with Danes and Dutchmen would fire their blood as nothing else would do, not even defeat and disaster. Pennington, who was Mayor and a Parliamentarian heart and soul, joyfully received the letter, ordered copies to be made and to be read in every church on Sunday, the very next day, and a subscription to be opened at once for carrying on the war. In the church of St. Bartholomew by the Exchange, twenty-seven persons subscribed various sums, amounting in all to £290. In St. Margaret’s, Lothbury, about £350 were subscribed. Mr. Edwin Freshfield, who relates this story (Archæologia, xlv.), is of opinion that the whole business was invented by the Mayor. He wanted money, he wanted to rouse the citizens, he wanted them to be committed openly. In this he succeeded perfectly; he raised £30,000, he fired their passions, he made them commit themselves in writing. From this moment there was no looking back for the City of London.

In February 1643, as the attack upon London by the Royalist army seemed threatening, the Common Council passed an Act for the defence of the City by a line of redoubts and fortifications, which were taken in hand and executed without delay. It has been assumed that this work consisted of a wall with redoubts and bastions at intervals. A plan of the wall shows an enormous work, eleven miles long, running all round London. This view has been adopted by later writers. No one seems to have remarked on the impossibility of so colossal a fortification being constructed in the brief space of three or four weeks even if the whole population worked day and night; and no one seems to have discovered that it was absurd to construct such a wall where the enemy could not possibly attack it, or that it should have been thought desirable to construct a wall which it would have required at least 200,000 men to defend. The historian also might have thought it still more remarkable that such enormous earth-works, with stone bastions, entailing such enormous labour, should have been undertaken with so much zeal and unanimity; and, finally, he might have asked himself how it came to pass that not a vestige of the work should have remained, even though the greater part of the ground covered was free from buildings down to the beginning of this century.

Sharpe, however (London and the Kingdom, iii. 431), gives the actual “Resolution of the Common Council for putting the City and Suburbs into a posture of defence, 23rd February 1643:”—

“Journal 40, fo. 52.

That a small fort conteyning one bulwark and halfe and a battery in the reare of the flanck be made at Gravell lane end. A horne worke with two flanckers be placed at Whitechapell windmills. One redoubt with two flanckers betwixt Whitechapel Church and Shoreditch. Two redoubts with flanckers neere Shoreditch church with a battery. At the windmill in Islington way, a battery and brestwork round about. A small redoubt neere Islington pound. A battery and brestwork on the hill neere Clarkenwell towards Hampstead way. Two batteries and a brestworke at Southampton House. One redoubt with two flanckers by St. Giles in the Fields, another small worke neere the turning. A quadrant forte with fower halfe bulwarks crosse Tyborne highway at the second turning that goeth towards Westminster. At Hide parke corner a large forte with flanckers on all sides. At the corner of the lord Gorings brick wall next the fields a redoubt and a battery where the Court of Guard now is at the lower end of the lord Gorings wall, the brestwork to be made forwarder. In Tuttle fields a battery brestworke, and the ditches to be scowred. That at the end of every street which is left open to enter into the suburbs of this citty, defenceable brestworks be made or there already erected, repayred with turnepikes muskett proof, and that all the passages into the suburbs on the north side the river except five, viz.: the way from St. James towards Charing Crosse, the upper end of Saint Giles in Holborne, the further end of St. John Street towards Islington, Shoreditch church, and Whitechapell be stopped up. That the courtes of guard and the rayles or barrs at the utmost partes of the freedome be made defensible, and turnpikes placed there in lieu of the chaynes all muskett proof. And that all the shedds and buildings that joyne to the outside of the wall be taken downe. And that all the bulwarkes be fitted at the gates and walls soe that the flanckes of the wall and streets before the gates may be cleared and that the gates and bulwarkes be furnished with ordnance.”

It will be seen that there is not one word about a new wall round London. The so-called fortifications were simply small redoubts and bastions at certain fixed points.

How the London trained bands went out to fight, how well they stood their ground, in what actions they took their part, will be found in the many histories of that war which still claims its fierce adherents and still awakens the passions of a partisan, whoever relates it. The constancy of the City was rewarded by the stoppage of trade and the ruin of many merchants, while the soldiers in the trained bands were shopkeepers and skilled craftsmen, to whom long continuance in the field was ruin. In 1644 the disaffection of the men amounted almost to mutiny.

On the temper and discipline of the City trained bands Sharpe thus speaks:—

“That the city trained bands had done good service in their day no one will deny, but the time was fast approaching when it would be necessary to raise an army of men willing to devote themselves to the military life as a profession. For permanent service in the field the London trained bands were not to be relied on. ‘In these two days’ march,’ wrote Waller (2 July) to the Committee of Both Kingdoms, ‘I was extremely plagued with the mutinies of the City Brigade, who are grown to that height of disorder that I have no hope to retain them, being come to their old song of “Home! Home!”’ There was, he said, only one remedy for this, and that was a standing army, however small:—‘My lords, I write these particulars to let you know that an army compounded of these men will never go through with your service, and till you have an army merely your own, that you may command, it is in a manner impossible to do anything of importance.’ The junction of his forces with those under Browne, who had been despatched (23 June) to protect the country between London and the royalist army, served only to increase the general discontent. ‘My London regiments,’ he wrote (8 July), ‘immediately looked on his [i.e. Browne’s] forces as sent to relieve them, and without expectation of further orders, are most of them gone away; yesterday no less than 400 out of one regiment quitted their colours. On the other side, Major-General Browne’s men, being most of them trained band men of Essex and Hertfordshire, are so mutinous and uncommandable that there is no hope of their stay. They are likewise upon their march home again. Yesterday they were like to have killed their Major-General, and they have hurt him in the face.... I am confident that above 2000 Londoners ran away from their colours.’ The same spirit of insubordination manifested itself again when Waller threw himself (20 July) into Abingdon. Most of his troops were only too anxious to leave him, whilst the Londoners especially refused to stir ‘one foot further, except it be home.’”

A SOLDIER OF THE TIME OF KING JAMES THE FIRST ARMED WITH A CALIVER

From a contemporary print.

The City, however, despite these rules, remained staunch to the Parliamentary cause; in spite of hard times, London raised the money to carry on the war; and, as in former cases, the winning side proved to be that which London had espoused.

Early in 1645 the army was remodelled on a more permanent footing, in which the men were to receive regular pay and the officers to be appointed for efficiency alone. Parliament resolved on borrowing £80,000 of the City; the Committee of Militia raised a sufficient number of men to guard the new redoubts and forts, and the City regiments were brought up to their full strength.

In June 1645 the Common Council presented a petition to Parliament calling attention to what they considered the causes of their ill success, and asking, among other things, that Fairfax might have a free hand and not be hampered by orders from Westminster. This view was favourably received. Fairfax chose his own tactics; he marched in pursuit of the Royal army, which he met—and fought—at Naseby on June 14.

After Naseby the City entertained both Houses of Parliament with a Thanksgiving sermon in Christ Church, Newgate. This was the old Grey Friars Church, a splendid building then still standing, though its monuments and fine carved work were gone. After the sermon there was a banquet in Grocers’ Hall; the Hall was not large enough for everybody, therefore the Common Council dined at another Company’s hall. The day after the dinner the Council had to consider what was to be done with the 3000 Royalist prisoners. They confined them in the south cloister and the Convocation House of St. Paul’s. How long they were kept there; how they were fed; what became of them ultimately, one knows not. Perhaps they were treated as Cromwell afterwards treated the Scotch prisoners taken at Worcester (see [p. 68]).

The City also raised £31,000 for the pay of the Scots who were marching south. In July of the same year they raised 1000 light horse and 500 dragoons, and in September 500 light horse and the same number of dragoons.

The events which followed Naseby until the trial and execution of the King would not concern us but for the part played by the City. They constitute a chapter in which the completion of the Civil War is mixed up with the dissension of the Presbyterians and the Independents, two sects equally intolerant and equally determined to obtain the supremacy. I have abridged the business so far as the City is concerned in the paragraph which follows. The whole story, when one reads it in detail, makes one almost inclined to condone the crimes of the King against the civil liberties of the people, since his enemies were themselves so determined against their religious liberties.

The Parliament desired to force a Presbyterian form of worship on the City, and to lay down laws for the election of elders. This was not at all the view of the City, which desired freedom from Parliamentary control in matters of religion. The ministers of the City parish churches drew up their own list of reforms; the citizens themselves sent a petition to Parliament giving their views. The House of Commons returned an answer of an ungracious character. They knew their own duties and would carry them through.

TRIAL OF KING CHARLES I., JANUARY 1648

From an engraving of the painting by William Fisk.

The City at the same time came to a quarrel with Parliament on the governing of the militia raised within the weekly bills of mortality. Parliament was ready to allow them the command over the militia within the Liberties, but the City wished to include within the area of command all the parishes and parts covered by the weekly bills of mortality.

The three years preceding the execution of Charles were a troubled and an uneasy time for the City.

On September the 7th, 1646, the City was asked by Parliament to consider ways and means for raising £200,000, being half of the sum claimed by the Scots for their expenses. On the 9th they reported a scheme for raising money by the excise and by the sale of the Bishop’s lands.

On December 19th the City sent a petition to Parliament for the redress of grievances. They demanded the disbandment of the army, the suppression of heresy, the union of the two kingdoms, the free election of members of Parliament, and the command of their own militia. The “disbandment of the army” is a point that must be especially noted because it marks the growing terror of the army.

It was necessary, before the army could be disbanded, to settle the arrears of pay. The men were invited to volunteer for service in Ireland. They asked for their pay. Parliament proposed to raise £200,000, not for the arrears, but for service in England and Ireland.

At the same time application was made to the City for ways and means to raise this large sum. And the City was put into good temper by an ordinance for a new Militia Committee.

But the disbanded army had to look on while they themselves could get no pay, and the City militia received their pay regularly. Riots took place; companies of the disbanded besieged the House of Commons demanding their arrears. These riots took place early in June 1647.

On the 11th of June the City was informed that Fairfax, with the army, was on his way to London. The Mayor replied that they had no quarrel with the army; that they had themselves presented a humble address to Parliament in favour of the just demands of the army; and that if Fairfax would kindly keep at a distance of thirty miles, the City would be much obliged.

Fairfax declared that the last demand was impossible so long as enlistments were continued in the trained bands and auxiliaries, and that the movements of the army depended very much on the reception that might be given to certain papers just laid before the House of Lords. The “papers,” in fact, asserted the right of the army to speak in the name of the people, and demanded the expulsion from the House of eleven members who had misrepresented the army and raised forces for a new war. Among them was Glyn, the City Recorder.

The Mayor, Sir John Gayre, on finding that the army was really marching south, called out the newly-enlisted trained bands. It appeared that they only existed on paper; in many companies not ten men appeared; in many others none but officers. It became evident that a different tone must be adopted. Fairfax was assured that the new enlistments had been stopped. Even then that general was not satisfied. He now said that he could not stop his army until the Parliament had returned a satisfactory answer to the “papers” already mentioned. The sending of these letters backwards and forwards produced little effect for a time—except tumults of apprentices and disturbances by reformadoes, or disbanded soldiers.

SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX (1612–1671) AND HIS WIFE

From the painting by William Dobson in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

On July 9th the Parliament agreed to the demands of Fairfax, and ordered all disbanded soldiers to quit the City. On July 11th the Army Council recommended the Parliament to take into their own hands again the command of the City militia. This was done, but the City had their say in the matter. Petitions to the House were drawn up; they were carried to Westminster by the sheriffs and members of the Common Council, followed by an enormous crowd of angry and excited apprentices and citizens. There was a long debate; the Commons refused to give way; the crowd grew more threatening; at last, at eight o’clock in the evening, the Commons yielded.

It was now time for the City to consider measures of defence. The trained bands were sent to man the works, and all the citizens who could carry arms were ordered to attend at a general muster. It became obvious, however, that armed resistance to the army was out of the question, and the City made haste to submit and to hope for favourable terms. The City forts were surrendered. Fairfax entered the lines of fortification and marched upon Westminster. On the following day the army marched through the City doing no kind of harm to any one. Fairfax and his officers were invited to a grand banquet at Grocers’ Hall, and so the business ended amicably, as it seemed.

TRIAL OF KING CHARLES I. JANUARY 20–27, 1648
“It was remarkt y^t the Gold Head dropt of y^e King’s Cane y^t day w^thout any visible cause.”

From a contemporary print. E. Gardner’s Collection.

The banquet did not interfere, however, with the projects of Fairfax and the army. The City was called upon for £50,000 towards the arrears of pay; the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gayre, Thomas Cullons, one of the Sheriffs, and three Aldermen were impeached for threatening the Commons and for inciting to fresh war. They were all sent to the Tower. When they were brought for trial before the Lords, they refused to kneel, took exception to the jurisdiction of the Houses, and were all fined and committed again to the Tower, where they lay for two months more, when they were liberated.

In 1648 the City carried one point and gained the command of their own militia. A deputation of Lords and Commons attended the Court of Common Council, and assured them that not only did they cheerfully commit to them the command of the militia, but that they had resolved on making no change in the constitution of the country with King, Lords, and Commons. The City at this juncture resolved to stand by the Parliament; they asked for the return of the Recorder, the Aldermen, and the other citizens who were imprisoned in the Tower.

The miserable condition of trade naturally brought about discontent, which turned to disaffection. The Royalist party made an excuse of a rising in Kent to petition the Parliament for a personal treaty with the King; the same people also called upon the Court of Common Council to summon a Common Hall—that is, a meeting of the whole body of freemen. The Court took time to consider the matter: in other words, to see their way to refusing it, which they did at last, on the ground of the distraction of the times. The longing for peace was shown by petition after petition from the City, all in the same strain, that the King should be approached personally; the City offered to assure his safety if he were placed in their hands.

In addition to the other troubles, the mob was now growing more Royalist. They insulted the Speaker; they rescued war prisoners; they secretly enlisted and sent out horses for the Royalist enemy. The Council asked the House that a death penalty should be inflicted on any person who caused a tumult or riot, and that no man who had ever fought against the Parliament should be allowed to reside within thirty miles of London. These two requests reveal a time of great uneasiness and general suspicion.

The end of this state of things was now rapidly approaching. The Parliament sent fifteen commissioners to open the Treaty of Newport in September. At the end of November the army declared that the Parliament must be dissolved. Fairfax marched into London (November 30, 1648) and demanded a sum of £40,000 to be paid the next day. The Council sent him £10,000 and promised the rest; Fairfax took up his quarters at Whitehall, and sent into the City for 3800 beds. A week later, neither money nor beds having been provided, Fairfax arrested Major-General Browne, one of the sheriffs, with certain others, on a charge of having joined in calling upon the Scots to invade England. He also seized on the sum of £27,000 lying in Goldsmiths’ and Weavers’ Halls. This money, he told the City, he intended to keep until they sent him the £40,000. He refused meantime to withdraw his troops who were quartered on the City. The money was found. In the municipal elections the new Mayor, Abraham Reynardson, was a Royalist, and well known to be such. It was feared by the Commons, now the Rump, that the elections of December to the Common Council would also be Royalist. Accordingly the House passed an ordinance excluding “malignants.” In this way no citizen was admitted who had subscribed to any petition for a personal treaty with the King. When the new Council assembled, the Mayor ordered them to take the oath of allegiance, which had not yet been abolished. This they refused. The Commons ordered the Mayor to suspend the oath altogether. Under these conditions the Council met, and although the Mayor refused to acknowledge their authority, they proceeded to consider a petition asking the House “to execute justice impartially and vigorously ‘upon all the grand and capital authors, contrivers of and actors in the late wars against Parliament and kingdom, from the highest to the lowest,’ and to take steps, as the supreme power of the nation, for the preservation of peace and the recovery of trade and credit.”

ENGLANDS ROYAL PATTERN or the Execution of KING CHARLES y^e 1^st Jan^y 30.

EXECUTION OF CHARLES I., JANUARY 30, 1648

From a contemporary print. E. Gardner’s Collection.

The Royalist Lord Mayor with his Aldermen—only two being present—rose and left the Court rather than sanction such a petition by their presence. It must be remembered that the date of this meeting was the 18th of January 1648, and that the Court for the trial of Charles had been already determined. When the Mayor and Aldermen had left there was no Court. But those present proceeded with their petition. Among the judges of King Charles were nominated five Aldermen, viz. Isaac Pennington, Thomas Andrews, Thomas Atkins, Rowland Wilson, and John Fowke. Only the two first took part in the trial, and Wilson refused to serve. Bradshaw, the President, had been judge of the Sheriffs’ Court in the Wood Street Compter. Two citizens, Tichborne and Row, were on the Commission. The trial of Charles—the most momentous in its consequences of any event since the Conquest or the granting of the Great Charter—belongs to the national history. It began on the 20th of January; it concluded on the 27th; and on the 30th the King was beheaded.

CHAPTER III
THE CITY AND THE CIVIL WAR

The City entered upon a war which was to linger on for eight years, in the firm conviction that it would be finished in a few months. The men who went out to fight expected to be back again in their shops and their workrooms before long. This belief, while it stimulated the enlistment of fighting men and forbade the contemplation of distress and bankruptcy in case the war should continue, caused very grave discontent when it became evident that a long struggle was before the country.

I propose in this chapter to illustrate the condition of the City during this period from contemporary authorities not, I hope, already too well known.

As is natural at such a time, the City was full of dangers on account of suspicion. The experiences of James Howell when he was arrested as a spy show how perilous it was to go abroad in the streets:—

“I was lately come to London upon some occasions of mine own, and I had been divers times in Westminster Hall, where I conversed with many Parliament-men of my Acquaintance, but one morning betimes there rushed into my Chamber five armed Men with Swords, Pistols, and Bills, and told me they had a warrant from the Parliament for me; I desired to see their Warrant, they denied it; I desired to see the date of it, they denied it; I desired to see my Name in the Warrant, they denied all. At last one of them pulled a greasy Paper out of his pocket, and shewed me only three or four names subscribed, and no more; so they rushed presently into my Closet, and seized on all my Papers and Letters, and anything that was Manuscript; and many printed Books they took also, and hurl’d all into a great hair Trunk which they carried away with them. I had taken a little Physic that morning, and with very much ado they suffered me to stay in my Chamber with two Guards upon me, till the evening; at which time they brought me before the Committee for examination, where I confess I found good respect; and being brought up to the Close Committee for examination, I was ordered to be forthcoming, till some papers of mine were perused, and Mr. Corbet was appointed to do it. Some days after, I came to Mr. Corbet, and he told me he had perused them, and could find nothing that might give offence. Hereupon I desired him to make a report to the House, according to which (as I was told) he did very fairly; yet such was my hard Hap, that I was committed to the Fleet, where I am now under close restraint; and, as far as I see, I must lie at dead Anchor in this Fleet, a long time, unless some gentle Gale blow thence to make me launch out.”

How the war affected quiet and peaceful citizens may be gathered from two cases, instanced by Dugdale:—

“The miseries and calamities which of late have happened in this confused place of England are so many that they furnish the discourse both of this and of other nations, who, notwithstanding, are not able to express them all. I shall now relate you only two, befalling within these few days, and to this end, that, by the true report of these (which, by men of sundry passions, may be prevented), others of the like nature, if it please God, may be prevented. Of the one, I have certaine information; of the other, I myselfe was an eye-witness. The first happened, at Acton, some six miles distant from London, where lived a gentleman, reported and believed to be different in religion (as too many nowadays are, which we know to be the cause of all our evils) from the Church of England; but in the voice of most of his neighbours, a sober, moderate, and charitable-minded man. This gentleman, having in his house no more but one ancient gentlewoman, his kinswoman, whom he intrusted as his housekeeper, with one serving man and maide, had his house besett with divers companies of soldiers, who had listed themselves for the service of the King and Parliament, and were in pay and command under officers; where, after they had forced him to open the gates by threatning words, they entered the house, and so strangely despoiled him that they left him not a bed, bedstead, table, doore, or glasse window, chest, trunk, or the smallest utensil, but sold all for very small prices before his servants’ faces, some of them having forced him before on foote to London; and for his bills, bonds, letters, and other writings the most part they tore in pieces, and strewed them about the house; others some they sent up to London. He hath, with much industry and long time, rarely furnished a plot of ground with the choicest flowers and outlandish trees which he could procure, which they plucked up by the roots, as many as they could, and the rest left so desolate that, whereas it was thought the finest and most curious garden in all those parts, there is now left nothing but the ruines of Art and Nature.

The other outrage, which with griefe I saw, was committed in Radcliffe Highway, Tuesday last, being the 23 of this instant August, where lived an ancient gentleman in good fashion, love and credit amongst his neighbours for many years space. I was informed, and might likewise guesse by his aspect, that he was above fourscore, and his wife not much distant from his time. This poor man was, like manner, assaulted by another company of souldiers, who are billeted thereabouts until the drum commands them to do service, where, having approached his doore, they drew out a paper, which they read,—whether a pretense of authority or what else I cannot easily conjecture. And thereupon they rushed into the house, rifled him of all that was in the house, breaking and battering many of the goods, and, having brought them out, sold them to such persons as would buy them at any rates, and this at noone day, and in the sight of one thousand people: one feather-bed I saw sold for four shillings, and one flock-bed for one shilling; and many other things at I know not what prises, leaving him nothing but naked walls and one stoole, which the old man sate upon, he being lame and decrepit with old age. The head-borough of the place endeavoured to rescue some of the goods, which were afterwards violently taken againe out of his house. After the riot was thus ended, they marched away with a drum; and then I made bold to goe into this distressed man’s house, where I found him sitting upon his only stoole, and with the teares falling downe his hoary beard, from whence, having administered the best comfort that I could, I departed.”

Before long it became manifest that the war was pressing very severely upon the City. The complaints of all classes were deep and loud; there arose the inevitable reaction. It seemed at one time as if history was about to repeat itself and that the desertion of London by the Britons in the fifth century, owing to the stoppage of supplies, was about to be repeated in the seventeenth. There was no foreign trade; the Royalist ships commanded the German Ocean; the west of England sent up no wool; the east sent up no provisions; the north sent up no coal; there was no money; the shops stood open, but the master was away with the trained bands; the craftsman’s children wanted bread, but the breadwinner was away with Fairfax. The industries ceased, for the markets were closed; after every battle, soldiers, either disbanded or deserters, swarmed into London as a place of refuge; the Royalist minority was a constant source of danger; there were religious differences innumerable, each as intolerant as the Church of Rome; the citizens were, for the most part, Presbyterian; but they desired not to have a national, but a free, Church; they wanted the Church to be governed by herself, and not by Parliament; they petitioned Parliament in this sense; they also petitioned the House for intolerance pure and simple; they would have no freedom of thought, or speech, or doctrine in religion.

To take instances of hardship. In 1642 the people in the Strand, who chiefly lived by letting lodgings, were in despair, having to pawn their furniture in order to pay the rent, their lodgings being all empty. The lawyers at the Guildhall were busy, but it was over the affairs of an incredible number of bankrupts; at the Royal Exchange there was no business transacted, nor any discourse all day long except about the news of the day. In the shops the keepers had nothing to do but to visit and to condole with each other. London, as it always had been, was a receiving house and a distributing house for the whole country, and in this time of civil war there was nothing to distribute and nothing to receive. As a finishing stroke, it is added that the ladies who formed the greater part of the population of Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and Long Acre were reduced to a condition which is described in a tract of the time as a “lump of amazement.” For this quarter and these ladies existed not by the citizens, though the morals of the City were by no means without reproach, but by the visitors who in quiet times flocked to London.

Amid a confused babble of petitions and letters, and imprisonments and fines, one episode stands out clear and strong. It is the petition of the women, calling themselves “many civilly disposed women,” to the Parliament, praying for a peace. The petition was cleverly drawn up—one suspects a masculine hand:—

“That your Petitioners (tho’ of the weaker Sex) do too sensibly perceive the ensuing Desolation of this Kingdom, unless by some timely Means your Honours provide for the Speedy Recovery thereof. Your Honours are the Physicians that can, by God’s special and miraculous Blessing (which we humbly implore), restore this languishing Nation, and our bleeding Sister the kingdom of Ireland, which hath now almost breathed her last Gasp.

We need not dictate to your Eagle-eyed Judgements the Way; Our only Desire is, that God’s Glory, in the true Reformed Protestant Religion, may be preserved, the just Prerogatives and Privileges of King and Parliament maintained, the true Liberties and Properties of the Subject, according to the known Laws of the Land, restored, and all honourable Ways and Means for a speedy Peace endeavoured.

May it therefore please your Honours, that some speedy Course may be taken for the Settlement of the true Reformed Protestant Religion, for the Glory of God, and the Renovation of Trade, for the Benefit of the Subject, they being the Soul and Body of the Kingdom.

And your Petitioners, with many Millions of afflicted Souls, groaning under the Burden of these Times of Distress, shall (as bound) pray, etc.”

It was taken to Westminster by two or three thousand women with white ribbons in their hats. The Commons received and heard the petition; they even gave them an answer. They had no doubt of speedily arriving at a peace; meantime the petitioners were enjoined to return to their own homes. By this time their numbers were swollen to five thousand and more, among them being men dressed as women. They flocked round the door of the House of Commons, crying “Peace! Peace!” and presently, “Give us those Traitors that are against Peace, that we may tear them to pieces! Give us that dog Pym!” The trained bands were sent for, but were received by these Amazons with brick-bats, whereupon the soldiers fired upon the women, killed some, and dispersed the rest.

The violence and insolence of the mob during this unhappy time shows the want of executive strength in the City. Measures are passed; no one heeds them; a riot is suppressed and it breaks out again; disbanded soldiers swarm in the streets and rob and plunder as they please. We have seen how the mob murdered Dr. Lamb. On another occasion the mob had forced its way into the Court of High Commission. They had assembled at Westminster, crying “No Bishops!” They had been driven down King Street by officers with drawn swords. After the war broke out the mob was divided between the two factions, each having its own badge. When the war brought the usual troubles, with want of money and of trade, both sides joined and riotously clamoured for peace. As early as 1643, with six years of war before it, the mob besieged the House of Commons, clamouring for peace. The most remarkable effort of the mob was that of the “Solemn Engagement” in 1647 related by Sharpe:—

“A week later (21 July) a mob of apprentices, reformadoes, watermen and other disaffected persons met at Skinner’s Hall, and one and all signed a solemn Engagement pledging themselves to maintain the Covenant and to procure the king’s restoration to power on the terms offered by him on the 12th May last, viz. the abandonment of the episcopacy for three years and the militia for ten. An endeavour was made to enlist the support of the municipal authorities to this engagement, but a letter from Fairfax (23 July) soon gave them to understand that the army looked on the matter as one ‘set on foot by the malice of some desperate-minded men, this being their last engine for the putting all into confusion when they could not accomplish their wicked ends by other means.’ On the 24th both Houses joined in denouncing the Solemn Engagement of the City, their declaration against it being ordered to be published by beat of drum and sound of trumpet through London and Westminster, and within the lines of communication. Any one found subscribing his name to the engagement after such publication would be adjudged guilty of high treason.”

Another serious outbreak took place later, on Sunday, April 10, 1648. A multitude was assembled in Moorfields to drink and play. A company of trained bands endeavoured to suppress the profanation of the day, and were themselves set upon and dispersed. The mob, gathering greater strength, went off to Whitehall, where they were driven back by the troops. Returning to the City, they broke open houses and magazines, seized the gates and chains, attacked the Lord Mayor’s house, and called upon everybody to join them for God and King Charles. General Fairfax let them alone one night, and in the morning sent out troops, and after some resistance dispersed them.

Every success or partial success made the Royalist party in the City more fearless and undisguised; sometimes they mounted cockades; sometimes they burned bonfires; sometimes they openly cried for the King; the ’prentices, who had been so ready to petition against the Bishops, turned round. Though the actual weight of numbers and of opinions was in favour of the Parliament, there was a very strong party who were always looking for an opportunity to demonstrate, if not to rise, for the King. One has only to consult the pages of Evelyn in order to understand the strength of the Royalist party even in times of the deepest adversity.

I have already quoted from Howell. Let him speak again concerning the condition of the City at this time:—

“Touching the condition of Things here, you shall understand that our Miseries lengthen with our Days; for tho’ the Sun and the Spring advance nearer us, yet our Times are not grown a whit the more comfortable. I am afraid this City has fooled herself into a Slavery; the Army, tho’ forbidden to come within ten Miles of her by order of Parliament, quarters now in the Bowels of her; they threaten to break her Percullies, Posts, and Chains, to make her previous upon all occasions; they have secured also the Tower, with Addition of Strength for themselves; besides a famine doth insensibly creep upon us, and the Mint is starved for want of Bullion; Trade, which was ever the Sinew of this Island, doth visibly decay, and the insurance of ships is risen from two to ten in the hundred; our Gold is engrossed in private hands, or gone beyond Sea to travel without License; and much I believe of it is returned to the Earth (whence it first came) to be buried where our descendants may chance to find it a thousand years hence, if the world lasts so long; so that the exchanging of white earth into red (I mean Silver into Gold) is now above six in the hundred; and all these, with many more, are the dismal effects and concomitants of a Civil War. ’Tis true, we have had many such black days in England in former Ages; but those paralleled to the present are as a Shadow of a Mountain compared to the Eclipse of the Moon.”

The weaker side always takes refuge in epigrams. I have before me a little book called Two Centuries of Paul’s Churchyard, which contains (1) a list of imaginary books, (2) questions for tender consciences. The following extracts will show the temper of the Royalists in London during the Civil War:—

“Σϵληναρχία. A discourse proving the World in the Moon is not governed by States because her Monthly Contributions do still decrease as much as increase, but Ours increase and never decrease.”

“Ecclesiasticus. A plain demonstration that Col. Pride (alias Bride) was Founder of St. Bride’s Church, and not found in the Porch, because the Porch was built before the Church, that is, not behind it.”

“Severall Readings on the Statute of Magna Charta by John Lylburn; with a Treatise of the best way of boiling Soap.”

“Domesday Book. A clear manifesto that more Roundheads go to heaven than Cavaliers, because Roundheads on their death-beds do repent of their former cause and opinions, but not Cavaliers.”

“An Act for expunging the word King, and inserting the word —— in all text of Scripture, beginning at Isa. xxx. 33. ‘Tophet is prepared for the ——’”

“An Act concerning the Thames, that whereas at Westminster it ebbs six hours and flows but four, it shall henceforth ebb four hours and flow six.”

“An Act for Canonizing those for Saints that die in the State’s service; who, since there are but two Worlds, ought at least to be honoured in one.”

“An Act commanding all malignants to use onely their surnames, their proper Names (with all other properties) being forfeit to the State.”

“That the Army ought to march but two abreast, since all creatures at Noah’s Ark went by Couples.”

“A Vindication of the Citizens of London, that as yet they want nothing but wit and honesty.”

“Whether that Text (they are all become abominable; there is none that doeth good, no not one) doth concern Committee men?”

“Whether we (as well as Seneca) may call a common woman Respublica?”

“Whether now more bodies and souls are saved when every man doth either practise Physick or preach.”

“Whether the Parliament had not cause to forbid Christmas when they found their printed Acts under so many Christmas Pies?”

“An Act for admitting Jews into England, with a short proviso for banishing the Cavaliers.”

“An Act of oblivion for malignants to forget that ever they had estates.”

“The humble petition of the City of London that those Citizens who can raise no Horse may raise a troop of Oxen.”

“Sepelire Mortuos. A List of those Scots who, dying in prison, were denied Christian Burial and (left in the Fields) were eaten by Hogs, which now makes Pork so cheap in London.”

“Whether it is not a horrible imprecation against the state to wish that every man might have his due.”

“Whether there now live more men or women in the Inns of Court?”

“Whether it is not clearly proved that there are Witches, since England hath been bewitched eleven years together?”

“Why Lucian makes Hell governed by a Committee?”

“Whether Major-General Harrison be bound to give no quarter because his Father is a Butcher?”

“Vox Populi, or the joynt opinion of the whole kingdom of England, That the Parliament is hell, because the torments of it are like to everlasting.”

“An Act for reforming divers texts of Scripture, as being of dangerous consequence and contrary to the very being of this present State, beginning at Rom. xiii., where it is said, ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher Power,’ which words are thus to be reformed, ‘Let every soul be subject to the Lower House.’”

“Whether when Colonel Pride goes to quarter with old Nick, the Proverb will not be verified, ‘Pride feels no cold’?”

Although the Royalists ventured to proclaim their opinions, though they openly wore ribbons or badges in their hats, they were not so strong as the Parliamentary party; they had to take their part in the fortification of the avenues and approaches to London, and they had to pay their share in the weekly tax of £10,000 imposed upon the City.

In “A True Relation of two Merchants of London who were taken prisoners by the Cavaliers and of the Misery they and the other Puritans endured”—a pamphlet of 1642—I think we have one of those documents, of which Napoleon so well understood the use, which were meant to stimulate enmity and provoke wrath. It is an interesting paper, but one remarks that the only cruelty endured by the two merchants was due to a smoky chimney; that they report various hangings, but they were not themselves hanged; and various slashings of ears, but they brought their own away with them; and, as is common in such documents, they report the evil case of the enemy and their resolution to destroy the City of London when they get in.

I take an extract from it as follows:—

“Warre hath seemed alwayes sweet to those who have been unexperienced with it, who, blinded with its flourish and its glory, observe not the tragicall events that doe attend it. Of all war the civill is most grievous, where all the obligations of friendship and nature lye cancelled in one another’s blood, and violated by their hands who should bee most carefull to preserve them. In civill warres there hath been no greater stickler than religion, whose innocent and sacred garment hath been too often traduced to palliate all dissolute and bloody acts, and (as if heaven suffered flatterers as well as Princes) religion and loyalty have been induced to beleeve they are protected most by those men who most dangerously and most closely doe oppose them, and who, while both are trampled on them by them, doe still cry out, For God and the King.

Every day brings in many sad demonstrations concerning this subject; the burning of houses, the pillaging of goods, the violating of all lawes, both divine and humane, have been arguments written in blood by too many swords. What I shall now relate concerning the sufferings of these two Gentlemen, who were taken by the Cavaliers, and what outrages they have performed in the time of their durance, will bee a compendious mixture of all distresses in one story, wherein I shall bee carefull to satisfie the reader with the manner of it, as myselfe with the truth, not doubting but it will find as much beliefe in the reader as it hath done compassion in the writer.

Two Citizens of London, Gentlemen of good repute and quality (who will be ready upon their oaths to give an attestation of what is here reported), travelling not many days towards Hartly Row, concerning some private occasions of their owne, were taken in their way at Hounsloe, at the sign of the Katharine Wheele, by a party of some fifty Cavaliers, who had then been forraging up and downe the County of Middlesex, to see what good booty and pillage they could bring.

PRINCE RUPERT (1619–1682)