Walter Besant

“ Who were the Dissenters? They were Puritans; they were the people, who, when they had the power, forbade the old sports, and persecuted those who would still play them; they were the masters who commanded the way of their people in matters of religion as in matters of politics; they had turned merry London into morose London. It is generally believed that the common people did not go to church, and therefore had no love for the church. ”

“ It was wonderful how the great mass of the people sank back contentedly into their old form of faith, relieved to find at last that they might leave the dogmas of religion to divines and scholars and be free themselves to illustrate in their private lives the virtues of religion by the exercise of faith, hope, and charity, which, for twenty years and more, seemed to have deserted the City of London. ”

“ PLACES OF RESORT The places of resort in this century, and especially in the reign of Charles the Second, reveal the existence of a new class: that of the fashionable class, the people who live for amusement. They have grown up by degrees; they inhabit a new town lying between the Inns of Court and Hyde Park, which they have built for themselves; they have made a society composed entirely of themselves, frequenting the same coffee-houses and taverns, belonging to the same sets, and following the same kind of life. They have invented the fashionable saunter; they have made the theatre their own ”

“ Let us go on to repeat an observation forced upon us in every age, that London has always been a great place for good living. We learn from Pepys what a profusion of food was offered at a dinner given at his own house. The quantity of food habitually taken was much greater then than now. People got up earlier; though they took little exercise for the sake of exercise, yet they were in the open air a great deal; on the river quiescent; in the gardens sitting, strolling, or playing bowls; they all grew sleek and fat. ”

“ The Stuart kings, who could learn nothing and forget nothing, were gone, never to return; in future it would be quite as impossible for the sovereign to rob London of her liberties as to reign without a Parliament. Out of the arbitrary acts of the two Charleses, the elder and the younger, out of the civil wars, out of the expulsion of James, came to London the secure possession, henceforth unquestioned, of her charters, just as to the three kingdoms came constitutional government and a sovereign bound by the will of the people. ”

“ Sorrow and truth, sit you on each side of me, whilst I am delivered of this deadly burden: prompt me that I may utter ruthfull and passionate condolement: arme my trembling hand, that I may boldly rip up and anatomize the ulcerous body of this Anthropophagized Plague: lend me art (without any counterfeit shadowing) to paint and delineate to the life the whole story of this mortall and pestiferous battaile. ”

“ With a decaying trade, a city divided against itself, religious quarrels without religious peace, the young folk longing for the restoration of the old sports, every tavern full of discontented men, every church a brawling place, what wonder if, after ten years and more, the City suddenly turned round and cried for the King and the Church to come back again. ”

“ On the 30th day of January 1661, the anniversary of King Charles’s execution, in the year following the Restoration, a remarkable procession took place through the streets of London to Tyburn. Horsemen led the way and brought up the rear; there were trumpets and drums; guards marched on either side; in the middle, one behind the other, on their sledges, sat Lord Munson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Robert Wallop with ropes about their necks. The Act of Indemnity had spared their lives, but it had not spared them other penalties, and they went through the form of being drawn to execution. ”

“ One in the company having the fork in his hand to light his pipe, would needs make trial of a long dresser that stood there, which, upon the first touch, made a great noise and groaning, more than ever the board that was shewed did, and when they touched it three or four times, and found it far beyond the other. They all having seen it, the house is almost filled with spectators day and night, and any company calling for a glass of wine may see it: which, in the judgment of all, is far louder, and makes a longer groan, than the other, which to report, unless seen, would seem incredible. ”

“ Almighty eternal God, who by the most copious gifts of thy grace, flowing from the unexhausted fountain of thy bounty, hast been graciously pleased for the comfort of mankind, continually to grant us many and various meanes to relieve us in our miseries; and art willing to make those the instruments and channels of thy gifts, and to grace those persons with more excellent favours, whom thou hast raised to the Royal dignity; to the end that as by Thee they reign and govern others: so by Thee they may prove beneficial to them ”

“ Nay, the blow was far greater, because London two hundred years ago was far, far less wealthy than at present, not only actually, but in proportion to its population. Looking on London only as a trading community it is quite certain that such a blow could never be forgiven. When the opportunity should arise it would be remembered. It was not his religion only that drove James from Whitehall, it was the memory of this act of confiscation and the other acts of oppression which followed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the fugitives were the physicians, whose place was taken by quacks; and in the City there perished many thousands, sometimes whole families dying in a single house; sometimes poor wretches lying down to die in the street or under a stall; in a word, all the horrors of such a visitation with which Defoe has made the world familiar.
Twenty-one years later, on the accession of Charles, the Plague returned, and, continuing for a year, carried off 35,417 persons in London alone. ”

“ The clergy were only too ready, one and all, to join in the prosecution of the Nonconformists, in the suppression of free thought, and in the corresponding doctrines of non-resistance. It was most certainly desirable, above all things, if the Protestant succession were to be secured, that these doctrines should be placed before the people in their true light; whatever the mob might bawl, whatever ecclesiastics might preach, the men of sense and understanding must not only go on their way, but must show the world the reason of their action. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In June all those who could escape to the country left the town in whatsoever vehicles they could get—coaches, carriages, waggons, and carts. There was a general stampede, until the villagers stopped it, driving back the people with pitch-forks, and the Lord Mayor stopped it by refusing certificates of health. Then, the mortality rising daily by leaps and bounds, the people sat down in their houses to die, or wandered disconsolately about the desolate streets, marking the crosses on the doors with sinking hearts. ”

“ 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 frays and feuds between the crafts, which constantly arose during the earlier centuries, had almost become things of the past: but in 1664 the weavers and the butchers reminded the elders of the good old days by one more burst of brawling and fighting. It seems strange that so peaceful a creature as the weaver came oft victorious. The weavers marched triumphantly about the streets offering a hundred pounds for the production of a butcher, and the blue smocks stayed at home in the shambles of Newgate, inglorious and defeated. And a butcher, too! a man of blood and slaughter! ”

“ Were so great and overwhelming a calamity to befall a City in our times, we should have abundant materials for estimating not only the total value of the destruction, but also its effect upon individuals. We learn next to nothing of the Fire as it affected classes, such as merchants, shopkeepers, or craftsmen. The Plague ruined its thousands by slaying the breadwinner; the Fire ruined its tens of thousands by destroying everything that the breadwinner possessed, warehouse, goods, and all. ”

“ In the seventeenth century was begun the fatal neglect of the populace, formerly living in the City under surveillance and discipline, taught, trained, and kept in their place. This was the creating cause of the terrible London mob of the next century. What could be expected, when a vast population was allowed to grow up without guidance, without instruction, without religion, and without even a police? We observe also that outside the City there was a great number of market gardens, with gardens at the back of every house until the space is wanted, when courts and alleys are run into them. ”

“ The general belief concerning the Court of Charles II. is that it presented to the world nothing but a long-continued pageant of profligacy, extravagance, luxury, waste, and open contempt of morals. We remember Evelyn’s often-quoted account of the last Sunday evening before the fatal seizure; Pepys tell us what he saw and heard; De Grammont’s book is well known to all; the name and the fame and the shame of the King’s mistresses are notorious; the men seem devoid of honour, and the women match the men. ”

“ On one occasion two ministers, one after the other, engaged the attention of the House of Commons for seven long hours. The people presently grew weary of the incessant wranglings over doctrine; sane persons began to understand that the task of making ignorant men and women agree in matters of creed was hopeless; it became understood that divergence of opinion would be no more tolerated by Independents than it was by Presbyterians; at this point of weariness it was extremely fortunate for the country that the reaction restored them to the Church of England instead of the Church of Rome. ”

“ II. THE FIRE OF LONDON If, as some hold, the cause of the long-continued Plague, which lasted, with intervals of rest, from the middle of the sixteenth century to 1665, was nothing but the accumulated filth of London, so that the ground on which it stood was saturated many feet in depth with poisonous filtrations, the Fire of 1666 must be regarded in the light of a surgical operation absolutely essential if life was to be preserved, and as an operation highly successful in its results. ”

“ Everybody who studies London possesses among his collection pictures of the street cries. These drawings generally belong to the later years of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth. They establish the fact that the streets were filled with a never-ending procession of men and women with baskets, carts, wheel-barrows, trays, boxes, all bawling their wares at the top of the voice. ”

“ In the City itself the favourite resorts were, for the young men, the galleries of the Royal Exchange, which were occupied by shops for the sale of gloves, ribbons, laces, fans, scent, and such things. The shops were served by girls, whose pretty faces and ready tongues were the chief attraction for the young fellows, who went there to flirt rather than to buy. Some of the younger citizens also found the Piazza of Covent Garden a convenient place to lounge and saunter. ”