The History of England, from the Accession of James II Volume I Part 28

[Footnote 145: Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse.]

[Footnote 146: Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw.]

[Footnote 147: Anthony a Wood's Life of himself.]

[Footnote 148: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list of stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, ent.i.tled Angliae Metropolis, 1690.]

[Footnote 149: John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1672. These reason were afterwards inserted in a tract, ent.i.tled "The Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted.]

[Footnote 150: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen, 105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.]

[Footnote 151: See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687, Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at Colchester in March, 1688, is highly curious.]

[Footnote 152: Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes sir, and at White's too.--Beaux' Stratagem.]

[Footnote 153: Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself thus before the Judge:

"What say you now, my honoured Lord What harm was there in this?

Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred By brave, freehearted Biss."]

[Footnote 154: Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I.]

[Footnote 155: See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.]

[Footnote 156: Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August 15, 1687.]

[Footnote 157: Lond. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.]

[Footnote 158: Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.]

[Footnote 159: Anglias Metropolis, 1690.]

[Footnote 160: Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9; Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.]

[Footnote 161: I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000.; and the net receipt was about 1,200,000. The number of letters conveyed by post was 478,000,000. (1857).]

[Footnote 162: London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680.]

[Footnote 163: There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique collection of these papers in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 164: For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops.]

[Footnote 165: Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of newsletters, see the Examen, 133.]

[Footnote 166: I take this opportunity of expressing my warm grat.i.tude to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compa.s.s, so n.o.ble a collection of extracts from public and private archives The judgment with which sir James in great ma.s.ses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same mine.]

[Footnote 167: Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.]

[Footnote 168: Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial.]

[Footnote 169: Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his life of his brother John.]

[Footnote 170: One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the t.i.tlepage are these words in her own hand, "This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R."]

[Footnote 171: Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.]

[Footnote 172: Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,

"For, though to smelter words of Greek And Latin be the rhetorique Of pedants counted, and vainglorious, To smatter French is meritorious."]

[Footnote 173: The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem on the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any foreign tongue:--

"Hither in summer evenings you repair To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."]

[Footnote 174: Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his usual force and keenness.]

[Footnote 175: The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden.]

[Footnote 176: See the Life of Southern. by Shiels.]

[Footnote 177: See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.]

[Footnote 178: Some Account of the English Stage.]

[Footnote 179: Life of Southern, by Shiels.]

[Footnote 180: If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to observe that it was spoken by a woman.]

[Footnote 181: See particularly Harrington's Oceana.]

[Footnote 182: See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.]

[Footnote 183: Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.]

[Footnote 184:

"Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world secretly pry.']

--Annus Mirabilis, 164]

[Footnote 185: North's Life of Guildford.]

[Footnote 186: Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667.]

[Footnote 187: Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity to the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the Royal Society, and the Elephant in the Moon.]

[Footnote 188: The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that age tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described by Aubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685.]

[Footnote 189: Sprat's History of the Royal Society.]