PRAYING FOR CHEESE AND BEER.
At divine service in the Beaufort Chapel, these old, broken-down looking men may be seen, on every festival, and on all occasions when services are held, praying for the reigning Sovereign of England. For this service they receive bread, cheese, beer, and meat, ten times a week. I saw these worn, meek-looking men, who seemed to glide rather than walk during service, but it seemed to me that very little prayers were uttered by them for the Sovereign, as they all had a vacant,absent look, with the exception of one or two who had the regular fixed John Bull stare, and were evidently awaiting the hour when bread, cheese, and beer, were to be announced.
castle
WINDSOR CASTLE.
In the Round Tower, which is 295 feet high, there were confined nearly all the State prisoners whom despotism found it necessary to secure in its dungeons, from Edward III to Charles II, and in the "Audience Chamber," which is hung with Gobelin Tapestry, representing the story of Queen Esther, are paintings of Mary, Queen of Scots, and William, Prince of Orange. This is an "Audience Chamber" only in name, for the Queen very seldom holds levees in this big, desolate-looking room.
The "Waterloo Chamber" is 47 feet in length and 45 in height, and has a gallery of magnificent portraits, by Lawrence, all of whom were, in some fashion, connected either in the closets of diplomacy, or the fields of strife, with the downfall of Napoleon; hence the name of "Waterloo Gallery." Hereare life-size portraits of Wellington, Lord Castlereagh, Humboldt, Alexander I, Count Nesselrode, Capo d'Istria, Prince Schwartzenburg, Archduke Charles, Blucher, Platoff, the Marquis of Anglesea, Francis II, of Austria, Pope Pius VII, and others equally famous.
In the Grand Chamber is a piece of ordnance, taken from Tippo Saib, at Seringapatam, a table made from the wreck of the Royal George, and an elaborately worked shield of silver, inlaid with gold, made by Benvenuto Cellini, which was presented by Francis I, of France, to Henry VIII, of England, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
The Throne Room has a fine ceiling, ornamented with the different emblems of the Order of the Garter. Here the Queen sits enthroned on occasions of State, and receives her guests habited in a scarlet velvet mantle, trimmed with miniver. On one occasion, when her Majesty took her seat here, her costume, including the jewels and Crown, was valued at £150,000, a vast sum to be thrown away on such heartless vanities, when it is recollected that myriads of people were dying of want and starvation in her Kingdom at the time.
The Throne is a very fine piece of work, and is covered with heavy hangings of red velvet, and is ornamented with the rose, shamrock and thistle.
IN THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER.
By special permission I had the pleasure of beholding the Queen's bed-room, or Private Closet. This is a favor seldom shown to any but foreign noblemen, or Embassadors, but by diligent efforts I had succeeded in getting permission to look at this sacred place.
On the day that I visited Windsor Castle, it luckily happened that very few visitors had called, and as I had a note from a most high personage, with permission to see the private apartments of Her Majesty, I was glad that there was not a crowd to witness the result of my mission. As a point of honor, I find it impossible to mention the name of the great personage who gave me permission to visit the Queen's Chamber, as I fear it might give him trouble, and perhaps deprive him of his lofty position.
Even the attendant, to whom I showed the note, was afraid to allow me to enter the apartments, as the Queen had only left them early that same morning to take a drive, and was expected back during the evening. It was now two o'clock in the afternoon, and I began to fear that I would not see the private saloons of her Majesty.
The attendant said, in answer to my request:
"I tell you, Sir, I'll lose my place and perkisites if I show the hapartments to you. I dare not do it."
"But," said I, "there is an order from Lord ——, will not that be sufficient?"
"Yes," said he, "his Lordship is a great friend of the Queen, but I'm afraid this order is a mistake, and only refers to the public apartments, which I have no hobjection, Sir, to your seeing."
I began to think I would fail if I did not find a weak spot in the gorgeous flunkey.
Suddenly a thought struck me. I asked myself "who has been the most popular and best loved American in England?"
Echo answered, "George Peabody."
And "why," the inward monitor asked.
Echo answered again, "because he gave so much money away," for I was positive that the English (servants at least) did not care for any of his less showy virtues, in comparison with that of bestowing millions from his private purse! Why, the Queen herself give him her portrait. Did she not?
The flunkey seemed to read my soul the while that I communed with myself.
I felt that I must throw myself in the breach. Suddenly I slipped a bright new sovereign into the man's hand. His fingers closed on the shining gold coin like the teeth of a vise and his eyes glistened. I knew then from his look that I would have to pistol the flunkey on the spot before I could get back my sovereign. We were going toward the private apartments of her Britannic Majesty, who is also Defender of the Faith.
A long corridor lay before us, and the flunkey stopped and said to me:
THE SECRETS OF ROYALTY.
"I'll try it, Sir. You are indeed very generous, and I honor you for it, but I don't know whether we can pass the Yeoman of the Guard. They are always about here guarding Her Majesty's private apartments. This is the Queen's Closet."
He pointed to a lofty doorway, and I saw a big, bloated Britisher, walking up and down with something on his shoulder that looked like a meat-axe fastened upon a clothes-pole. He had a red tunic, and wore a round flat hat, and his legs which were very noble and imposing, were clad in red hose.
The flunkey, who was also in tights, went up to him and spoke, and I assumed a business-like air. He was telling the red-faced Beef-Eater, as I afterwards ascertained, that I came to make some repairs in the closet, but the Beef-Eater did not seem willing to admit any one; but by some moral suasion he obviated his scruples, and I was allowed to enter. I think he divided the sovereign with him.
The flunkey beckoned to me, and I approached. The Beef-Eater—noble fellow—looked the other way, as I entered the imposing apartment.
The flunkey stood in silent awe, as I looked around on the splendors of the lofty room.
A magnificent bed stood in a corner of the apartment, hung with red velvet and yellow silk. The arms of Great Britain were emblazoned on the heavy red velvet, and the Lions and Unicorns, disported playfully all over the room in their usual attitudes. There were large oil paintings of George IV, King William IV, the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales as a Colonel of the British army, and the Princess Louise, a marriageable daughter of Queen Victoria.
The bed was large and would have held three persons of the size of Queen Victoria. Elegant lounges were arranged around the lofty apartment, covered with damask satin. A faint and delicious odor filled the room, and I seemed to sink in the soft and luxuriant carpets. Mystery, silence, and enchantment prevailed, and I trembled to think that I stood in the presence of Royalty unbidden, and without the permission of the Queen.
There was a sideboard of most intricate carving at one endof the room, with some green Venetian glasses on one of its shelves, but I saw no decanters. The room was filled with a glory and power, reflected in the possessor of three Kingdoms. From without, through the deeply embayed windows, also hung with satin of the color of a morning sky, I could hear the tramp of the sentinels on the battlements, and the hoarse cry of the warders, going their rounds, demanding the counter-sign of strangers.
The charmed silence was broken by the voice of the flunkey in answer to my enquiry as to how the aromatic odors of the chamber were procured.
"Her Majesty is werry fond of perfumes, Sir," said he. "The carpets has Cologne shook on them every morning, and if you will come here to the bed, you will also get the smell of Patshooly."
I walked to the bed and I found that there was an odor of cologne, otter of roses, and musk, proceeding from the counterpane, which was bordered with purple velvet and gold lace, and had the royal arms embroidered in the centre. The pillow slips had trimmings of Valenciennes lace, half a yard wide, hanging from their open ends. The counterpane was of quilted blue and pink satin, and inside of the velvet canopy that covered the bed, was a lining of blue and white satin, from which hung down heavy folds of Mechlin lace.
A little table of ivory, inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli, stood a few feet from the bed, supported by a tripod elegantly worked in solid silver.
The flunkey explained to me the use of this table. "Sometimes Her Majesty takes her breakfast in bed," said he, "when she is indisposed. Her Majesty is werry fond of coffee, and often takes two cups of a morning when she is stopping at Windsor. She is fond of veal cutlets, well done, and sweet breads, for breakfast. Yes, Sir, I have heard that Her Majesty, God bless her, when she had a good appetite, before Prince Albert died, would eat a pound of veal at breakfast. The lady in waiting places her coffee on that small table, and after handing Her Majesty her breakfast in bed, she stands off at arespectful distance, and waits until she is called again to offer Her Majesty a favorite dish. The Duchess of Athole, who is a relation of Lady Mordaunt, is greatly liked by Her Majesty, and when she waits on the Queen, Her Majesty allows her to sit down, but all the other ladies in waiting, excepting Lady Dianna Beauclerk, has to stand up. Sometimes, when the Prince of Wales comes here, God bless him, he is awfully screwed (drunk), and then the Queen makes a preshis row, and she wont speak to him for a week after.
"WOT A PEOPLE THE HAMERICANS ARE."
"You are the only American ever was allowed to enter this ere room, Sir; but I have heard that one of your countrymen once strayed in here, and was astonished to find that there was no 'spittoons,' I think he called them, in the Queen's bed-room. A preshis thing that would be, to have sich things as 'spittoons' in the Queen's bed-room," said the indignant and loyal flunkey.
I informed the man that the story was incredible, and that my countrymen were not such savages as he believed them to be. When I informed him that in the old times in America, any free and unwashed citizen might have inspected the President's bed-room at the White House at Washington, he was greatly astonished, and said:
"My God, what a strange people the Hamericans are! And they allowed them to look at his bed, did they? My heyes, wot a people!"
tailpiece
CHAPTER XL.
BEFORE THE MAGISTRATES.
THERE are two places well worth seeing in London. One is the Central Criminal Court or "Old Bailey" as it is usually called, situated next door to Newgate, and the "Lord Mayor's" Court, in the Mansion House.
The Old Bailey is a famous criminal Court, and has had an eventful history. The magistrates who sit here, are the Lord Mayor, who opens the Court, the sheriffs of Middlesex and London, the Lord Chancellor, who is never present excepting in a State trial, the Judges, Aldermen, and Recorder, the Common Sergeant of London, the Judge of the Sheriff's Court, or City Commissions, and others whom the Crown may appoint to assist them. Of these dignitaries the Recorder and Common Sergeant of London are most generally to be found presiding, as the common law judges only assist when knotty points are to be decided, or when conviction may affect the life of the prisoner.
At the Old Bailey are tried crimes of every kind, from treason to petty larceny, and even offences committed upon the high seas. The jurisdiction comprises every part of the metropolis of London, together with the county of Middlesex; the parishes of Richmond and Mortlake in Surrey, and the greater part of Essex county, adjoining Middlesex.
THE "OLD BAILEY" COURT.
The Old Bailey Court is a square hall with a gallery for visitors, below which is a large clock, that ticks in the prisoner's ears, like a bell of doom. Below it is the dock for the culprits, with stairs descending to the covered passage, by which they are conveyed to and from Newgate. Opposite the dock in which the wretched prisoner stands up to plead for mercy, is the bench for the judges, and here may be seen day after day the Recorder of London sitting to try offenders, in his blue cloth gown, with furred borders, and his neck encircled with a gold chain, listening listlessly to the testimony, and now and then making notes on a square piece of paper, while from the open window comes the chirruping of birds; and before him are arraigned poor wretches in rags and squalor, on trial for offences which may peril their lives, reputation and happiness.
There are three large square windows in this Court, through which appear the ridge of the gloomy walls of Newgate, having on their left a gallery close to the ceiling, with projecting boxes, and on the right the Bench extending the whole length of the wall, with desks at intervals, for the use of the judges, whilst in the body of the Court are the witness-box and the jury-box, below the windows of the Court, an arrangement that allows the jury to look clearly, and without turning, on the faces of the witnesses and the prisoners. The strong light from the windows enables the witness to identify the prisoner, who stands shivering in the dock, at the same time that it permits the judges on the Bench and the counsel below in the hollow space of the Court to keep jury, witnesses and prisoners all at once within the same perspective line.
In the upper seats are the double rows of reporters, smart, well-looking and well-dressed fellows, the majority of whom look bored and disgusted, as well they may, when it is taken into account that they have to sit here day after day, to look at the same horse-hair wigs of the jabbering lawyers, the same gowns, the same blank ceiling, the same stupid, harsh faced jurymen, and the same hard looking or wobegone wretches who stand up in the dock to listen to sentence or acquittal. Occasionally there is a little amusement for them when some ass of an alderman attempts in a pompous way, toshow the bearing of a statute in a criminal case, and only succeeds in exposing his turtle-fed ignorance to the merriment of the knowing ones.
Look there now. A youth well-dressed and cleanly-looking is brought into the dock and placed for trial on a charge of forgery on his employer, for the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. The young fellow has a weak, pallid face, and seems rather dazed at all the preparation and mysterious jabber on his account. A dozen of the counsel, in black stuff gowns and with white wigs of horse-hair look around for a minute at the dock, where the prisoner stands, merely out of curiosity, as if he were a sheep or a calf brought in for slaughter. Their curiosity satisfied, they turn away from him and dismiss his pale face from their thoughts almost instantaneously. The judge on the bench—who is flanked by a fat alderman on each side, in red robes—sits, looking at some documents, with a far-away, abstracted look, as if the prisoner at the bar was a thousand miles distant, and a free man.
And meanwhile the case progresses, the counsel for the Crown opening indignantly on the side of virtue and the law, and witness after witness is called up and kisses the book, and there is much making of affidavit and counter-affidavit, and through all this maze of swearing and mist of statement, it appears that the young lad at the bar has been wild and reckless, and has signed his master's name, beyond all doubt, to a check, which he had cashed, the proceeds of which were spent in the haunts of vice and shame. The case goes to the jury, who pronounce him guilty without leaving their seats, and the sun streams through the windows on the despairing face of the youth, and I am awakened from a sort of a trance into which I have fallen, to hear the voice of the Recorder of the good city of London, drone out at the prisoner:
"In this case I can find no extenuating circumstances. You are of age to know better, and the sentence of the Court is, therefore, that you suffer penal servitude, with hard labor, for the space of twelve years."
Good God! twelve years! He is not yet eighteen, and thetwelve best years of his life are erased from his span of existence, by the breath of the man in blue cloth gown and the fur tippet, and now the latter goes up stairs to eat his dinner, the jury are dismissed, and a young girl falls fainting in the Court as the prisoner is led out—however it is only his sister. There is a little stir among the horse-hair-wigged counsel and a buzz in the audience, and in three minutes another case comes on to excite new interest, and make us forget the convict and his sobbing, fair-haired sister.
Upon the front of the dock is placed a sprig of rue, which dissipates any infection that may proceed from the clothes of the prisoner, should he be suffering from illness. The origination of this custom is worthy of note.
In 1750, when the jail fever raged in Newgate, the effluvia entering the Court, caused the death of Baron Clarke, Sir Thomas Abney, the judge of the Common Pleas; and Pennant's "respected kinsman," Sir Samuel Pennant, Lord Mayor; besides members of the bar and of the jury, and other persons. This disease was also fatal to several persons in 1772. Since that time a sprig of rue has always been kept in the dock to drive away contagion.
THE JUDGES' DINNER.
Above the old Court is a stately dining-room, wherein, during the Old Bailey sittings, the dinners are given by the sheriffs to the judges and aldermen, the Recorder, Common Sergeant, city pleaders, and a few visitors. Marrow-puddings and rump-steaks are always provided. Two dinners, exact duplicates, are served each day, at 3 and 5 o'clock; and the judges relieve each other, but aldermen have eaten both dinners; and a chaplain, who invariably presided at the lower end of the table, thus ate two dinners a day for ten years. Theodore Hook admirably describes a Judges' Dinner in hisGilbert Gurney. In 1807-8, the dinners for three sessions, nineteen days, cost Sheriff Phillips £35 per day—£665; 145 dozen of wine, consumed at the above dinners, £450: total £1,115. The amount is now considerably greater, as the sessions are held monthly.
Outside in the lobbies and hall rooms, passages and corridorsadjacent to and connected with the Old Bailey Court there is always a crowd of lawyers, policemen, hangers-on, countrymen, cadgers, and persons anxious to become spectators, females of the poorer class, members of the aristocratic swell mob, sneak thieves and pickpockets, all curious to know how matters are going on inside with their friends or associates in crime or misfortune, and among them all, rushing hither and thither, chatting and joking, conferring with his clients, and nodding familiarly to the police and the officers of the Court, may be seen the sharpest legal bird in the world. I mean the regular Old Bailey practitioner, who could take a penny from a dead man's eyes, rob an altar, or cheat the widow and orphan, and still prove to his own satisfaction that it was done for a good and laudable purpose.
van
LOADING THE PRISON VAN.
A not uncommon sight in the vicinity of police offices and petty Courts, in London, is the noisy, brawling discharge ofprisoners, who are turned out on the streets in the morning, after having been locked up all night for trifling offences, or disorderly conduct and intoxication.
Their unlucky companions, who have received sentences of imprisonment, are taken from the Courts to the places of confinement in which they are to pay the penalty of their indiscretion or crime. Every morning there is a dreadful row and confusion at the Bow street police office, when the prisoners are brought out to be placed in the prison wagon or "van," in which they are transported to Holloway, Milbank or Newgate prisons. A large crowd assembles daily to witness the embarkation of these poor wretches for their new residences. Fighting women, squalling children, patient policemen, and drunken blackguards are among the details of these assemblages. There is a strong able bodied virago, with her dress hanging to her form in shreds, who has just tossed her soiled bonnet madly among the crowd, with a series of shrieks, and three policemen are hardly sufficient to restrain her, while she is being helped into the "Van." At last she is locked up with other unruly personages inside of the iron door, in a dark box, where she may swear away to her heart's content for a ride of five to ten miles.
And now let us take a look at the Justice Room of the Mansion House, which is only a few rods distant from the Old Bailey.
THE MANSION HOUSE.
Be it known to all my readers that the Mansion House, or Guildhall, is to London what the City Hall is to New York—the Hotel de Ville to Paris or Brussels—and the Stadt Haus to Amsterdam. It is here that the Lord Mayor of London lives and here he deals out justice to his constituents. The Guildhall or Mansion House of London is one of the finest public buildings in the city, and has a noble gallery, dining hall, and a service of municipal gold and silver plate, which is used by the Lord Mayor on state occasions, besides a splendid collection of paintings.
But it is of the Justice Court, a small room in the Mansion House, that we have to speak on this occasion, and not of the plate, or of the Lord Mayor's annual show.
The Mansion House is just opposite the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, in the very heart of moneyed London, Lombard street being but a very short distance around the corner, with its horde of money changers, bill discounters brokers, and bankers.
This Court is not opened before noonday, as the Lord Mayor of London is too mighty a magnate to be hurried in his daily duties for any command or Court of Justice.
Accordingly at noon, I find myself below the steps leading to the Mansion House, and presently I begin to ascend the broad staircase of stone, with a small crowd of policemen, officers of the Court, witnesses, and lawyers. I am questioned as to my business by an officer at the door, but being in company with detective Irving, of New York City (who is about to appear before the Lord Mayor, in the case of Clement Harwood, the celebrated forger, whom the former had captured at New York on board of an English steamer, before she had touched her dock, and had him brought back to London for trial), I am admitted, and after one or two turnings, find myself in a well-lighted room of moderate size, with a high ceiling and two windows looking out on the Poultry and Threadneedle street.
detective
DETECTIVE IRVING.
Between those two windows is a throne or dais, gorgeous enough for a monarch, and behind the throne are emblazoned the municipal mace and sword, and the motto of the City of London, "Domine Dirige Nos," surmounted by the lion andunicorn, the arms of Great Britain. This is the Lord Mayor's Chair of Justice, but the awful being to whom it appertains has not yet made his appearance, and I have leisure to look around me.
There are two rows of desks, for the reporters, and behind them sit representatives of theTimes,Daily News,Daily Telegraph,Standard,Morning Advertiser, and other leading journals, the evening papers, with the exception of theEcho,Pall Mall GazetteandGlobenot being represented, the others always copying their police reports from the morning journals.
THE RICH RASCAL.
There are two or three high desks in the centre of the room, a square iron railing, and a number of police waiting to make charges, but the prisoners are kept below in the lockup and will presently appear through a trap door in the floor when they are called to answer to the charges on the sheet.
The American detective has just finished his business regarding Harwood's case, and saunters in carelessly with his hat in his hand to take a look around him.
Presently there is a bustle and commotion, and a man looking like a drum major of a band, with scarlet and gold facings on his coat, whom I am informed enjoys the dignity of Mayor's Marshal, marches into the room like a peacock, with his big staff of office, and cries out:
"Make way there, for the Right Honorable the Lud Mayor."
Then enters the awful being himself, in a furred robe of heavy cloth, like one of Rembrandt's burgomasters, a blazing gold chain depending from his neck and covering his waistcoat, and having taken his seat, the charge sheet is examined by him in a dignified way, and the first case is called.
This is the case of the forger Harwood, a young man, the son of the senior partner of one of the largest banking firms in London, who has forged his father's name for the amount of £15,000.
The trap door opens and discloses a fashionably-dressed and good-looking young fellow, with a police officer on each side. The case had excited great interest in London, and the prisonerhaving fled to New York was captured before the steamer got to her dock, and brought back to London. Harwood had been brought to justice because the junior member of the firm, to protect its interests, had been compelled to the unwilling task of making the charge against his partner's son.
mayor
BEFORE THE "LORD MAYOR."
Harwood has the air of a languid and haughty "swell," or exquisite, and is most fashionably dressed. There is no flinching in his blonde and whiskered face as he is brought up for sentence, having been previously convicted. Out of £15,000, detective Irving recovered over £11,000 from the forger, and it seems the charge is to be hushed up. The father of the culprit is a wealthy citizen, and the counsel for the prisoner makes his point that the greater part of the money having been recovered, and the prisoner having "suffered much anguish of mind" for his crime, has offered to goto America if released, and make amends for his "fault" by leading a new and repentant life.
I looked at the exquisite, who stood there as cool as a cucumber, and it seemed to me rather doubtful that he had suffered much anguish of mind. I also doubted if he would be willing to lead a very virtuous life in America. As he stood there with his assured and rather contemptuous look and insolent face, he was quite a contrast to the pale, weak-looking lad, who stood the day before in the dock of the Old Bailey to receive with trembling lips his sentence of twelve long years penal servitude, and just as the thought struck me, Irving, the detective, whispered to me:
"He looks very sorry, don't he? Of course! Cheese things."
THE POOR RASCAL.
Then the Lord Mayor plucked up a proper spirit, threw back his furred sleeves, put on a look of profound wisdom, consulted with the prisoner's counsel, and making up his judicial mind that Harwood had "suffered enough,"—poor young man—the forger was released and set at liberty in order to allow him to become a virtuous citizen of the United States. Nothing was said about the deficit of two or three thousand pounds; the young man's family was wealthy and respectable. But who is this poor rascal at the bar now, who appears as the friends of the wealthy forger gather in a knot to congratulate him. Why it is a low ruffian of a pickpocket who has been caught in the act of abstracting a lady's reticule valued at fourteen shillings. The villain! He has no wealthy friends, so let him take eighteen months imprisonment at Hollaway prison, and there let him repent while on the treadmill.
I left the Lord Mayor's Court with mixed feelings, and the remarks of the detective failed to reassure me as to the honesty of the method of administering justice by his Worship, the Lord Mayor of London.
CHAPTER XLI.
TWO RIVALS—CANTERBURY AND ROME.
METROPOLITAN Life has its religious phases, also. London contains about 410,000 dwelling-houses, places of business, and public buildings, and in this vast agglomeration of brick, stone, and mortar—there are about seven hundred edifices devoted to public worship. In this number are comprised places of worship for all sects: Roman Catholics, Protestants of the Established Church of England, Baptists, Presbyterians, Independents, Jews, Greeks, Moravians, Quakers, Socinians, Wesleyan-Methodists, and even Hindoos, who have a temple of their own.
There are two hundred and eighteen parishes in the Metropolis, under the jurisdiction of vestries and parochial bodies who, in turn, are subject to the Bishop of London, sitting as a temporal and spiritual peer in the House of Lords. He is Provincial Dean of Canterbury, and Dean of the Chapels Royal at Whitehall and the Savoy.
The Bishop of London ranks next to the Archbishop of York and Canterbury, and has an income of £10,000, annually, and the free gift of one hundred and nine livings, ranging in value from £2,000 to £30 a year. As Dean of Canterbury his income amounts to £2,000 a year. The clergymen of the Established Church receiving the largest salaries in the City of London, whose livings are in the gift of the Bishop of London, are those of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, £2,290, St. Olave's, Hart street, Bloomsbury, £1,891, and St. Giles, Cripplegate, £1,580.
The smallest salary is that received by the pastor of St. Bartholomew the Less, who only gets £30 a year, although his work is far harder than that of the Dean of Westminster, who receives £4,000 a year. The salary of the Archbishop of Canterbury is £20,000, and he has half a dozen palaces throughout the country. The Archbishop of York receives about £15,000 a year, and has two Episcopal and palatial residences.
SPURGEON AND "APOCALYPSE" CUMMING.
Spurgeon, the great Baptist divine, who ranks somewhat like Henry Ward Beecher, receives a salary of $18,000 a year for his preaching, and his congregation, in 1860, erected for him a grand tabernacle at Newington, on the Surrey side of the Thames near the Elephant and Castle, and in one of the roughest districts of London, at a cost of £25,000. The design is simple; the dimensions 85 by 174 feet, and here, every Sunday evening, nearly six thousand persons assemble to listen to the vehement eloquence of Spurgeon, who has his congregation drilled like a company of infantry, and can move them to tears or laughter, as he chooses.
spurgeon
SPURGEON.
In Crown Court, Strand, is the Free Church of Scotland, a well-built and commodious edifice, where the Scottish Presbyterians attend. The pastor of this church is known all over the world by his writings and his prophetic denunciations of the coming destruction of the world, as "Apocalypse" Cumming. Thousands of pages have been written by this eminent divine, and hundreds of sermons have been preached by him, in which he has identifiedthe Pope of Rome with the "Scarlet Woman" and the "Beast," having the mark on her forehead, yet at the call of the Ecumenical Council, he was the first Protestant divine in England, who, in a manner acknowledged the Pope's jurisdiction by writing to him for admission to the Council as a Priest or "Presbyter." Dr. Cumming is a very energetic preacher, and his services are always well attended by the disciples of his church, as well as by strangers, in London, who manifest a great desire to hear the illustrious Scotch divine.
father
FATHER IGNATIUS.
One of the most talked-about people in London is the famous "Father Ignatius," whose design is to bring over English Episcopalians to the Roman Catholic Church, although he does not say so ostensibly. This man is evidently sincere in his efforts to bring back the English Church to the place of its departure, for the Reformation—as far as the ceremonial goes. It is very little different, that old-fashioned church of St. Mary-le-Strand—where I saw Father Ignatius officiating one Sunday afternoon, in the midst of incense, ringing of silver bells, and kneeling worshippers, who went through all the most devout genuflections of Roman Catholicism—from the Mother Church, in its ceremonial. Father Ignatius wore a vestment, with a huge cross down the back, his head was shaved on the top like that of a monk, and his face and eyes, as he descended the steps of the altar, which was surmounted with a Gothic cross, covered with flowers, and blazing with lights, had an ascetic aspect, which is not commonly seen in the features or eyes of a clergyman of the StateChurch. At every motion of the body he made a low reverence to the Crucifix over the altar. This Father Ignatius does not believe in a married Clergy, or in Lay or Congregational administration of a Church—in fact he does everything that a Roman Catholic Priest does, including the hearing of confessions, yet he dares not acknowledge the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, excepting in a negative sense. He is an advanced soldier of a large and growing party in the Church of England, who gravitate with tremendous strides daily towards the Church of Rome, but do not know that they are thus gravitating, or knowing, will not acknowledge the fact. This puny, slab-faced, and livid-looking Priest, has suffered, too, with steadiness, has been stoned and mobbed by angry crowds, yet he perseveres in his work, and has many thousand followers, male and female, among the brightest, best, bravest, and most cultivated of England's aristocracy.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
It is a strange, old-fashioned, and conservative Church, this State Church of Great Britain. It has lasted three hundred years, with its feasts and fasts, its liturgy, its prelates, spiritual peers, and Thirty-Nine Articles.
Englishmen have always, until of late days, been conservative, and this old-fashioned Church, with its grave ceremonial, its Canons, and Deaneries, with its Westminster Abbey, its St. Paul's Cathedral, and its Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, has, in every way, satisfied the English people—at any rate, it has served the purposes of the ruling classes.
But the Church of England, like all other things in this world, has received some heavy blows in the course of its existence.
First came the Great Civil War, in which Charles I lost his head, and with him the Church of England lost its revenues, and its great prestige departed when Laud ascended the scaffold.
Then came the Restoration, which brought with it a dissolute King, a dissolute nobility, and worst of all a dissolute clergy. The horse-riding, beer-drinking, and gambling parsons of the reigns of Queen Anne, William, and the Georges, such as Thackeray has so well described, in his Parson Sampson, were morally unfit to join issue, in a spiritual encounter, with suchearnest, plucky, and aggressive Christians as Wesley, Whitfield, and Bunyan, proved themselves, and consequently the Established Church lost its hold on half of the working men and the agricultural classes of England toward the first decade of the Nineteenth century. In particular, the manufacturing towns lost all respect for the faith of the King and court, and such places as Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Birmingham, became strongholds of Dissent, while the pews of the rural churches, where the poor of the parishes had never been welcome, since the days of the dissolution of the monasteries, by Henry VIII, were left untenanted, and a brutal ignorance took the place of implicit faith among the English masses.
And to cap the climax, a year ago a bill was brought into Parliament for the destruction of the Established Church of Ireland, a church which never had been accepted by the Irish people, and though the English Churchmen, the Ministers, and the Tory party, rallied to save the doomed edifice, yet it was swept away in a night, despite the maneuvers of the leaders of the House of Lords, who wisely fought the bill as long as they could, believing it to be the first great blow delivered at the Established Church and the English aristocracy since Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
At present there is a terrific struggle going on in the Established Church. One half of the clergy, among whom are the best educated and most scholarly divines, secretly lean to the Catholic Church, and belong to the "Ritualistic" party, with its incense, flowers, banners, and Protestant Sisters of Mercy and Nuns; and the other half are again divided into those who doubt the inspiration of the Scriptures, and openly denounce the entire books of the Bible as a tissue of fables, with Colenso, and a third party, who having sprung from the people, and having no connection with any of the great beneficed Church families, and being incumbents of £100 livings, or less, cannot support their families or educate their children properly. This last faction is a growing one, and though less educated than the other two parties, they are equally earnest, and eagerly await the day when they can join the ranks of the Baptists,Independents, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, or Methodists, for the purpose of forming a "Liberal" or "Broad" English Church, such as Dean Stanley is supposed to represent in his theories.
ROMAN CATHOLIC STATISTICS.
In the mean time the Roman Catholic Clergy are sleepless, indefatigable, and aggressive in their movements, and as they do not hope to convert the middle classes of the English people, who are all staunch Protestants, they have laid siege to the souls of the two extreme bodies, the aristocracy and the very poor and destitute, as well as the working classes. And they are making great progress—in fact alarming progress, as I will show here.
In 1380, when England and Wales had been Catholic countries for more than seven hundred and fifty years, there were more than 14,000 parish churches, and 2,000 religious houses in the kingdom; there was one parish church to every four square miles throughout the kingdom, and one religious house to every thirty square miles; and there were 40,000 priests, monks, and friars. The whole of these churches and convents were taken away or destroyed during the Reformation; and, as I have said, when the church was at last again set free, she had to commence her work anew. In the half century since her hands were fully untied, she has built more than 1,000 churches and chapels, and something like 300 monasteries and convents, and she has over 1,700 priests ministering at her altars. If this be the work of fifty years, how much less is it, proportionately, than the work accomplished by the same church in the first seven hundred and fifty years of her life.
Therefore, the Roman Catholics, while they held supreme sway in England, built 14,000 churches, which is less than twenty in each year, while during the last fifty years they have built 1,000 churches, which is also twenty in each year; but during this period, it must be remembered that the public sentiment of Great Britain had been overwhelmingly Protestant, while in the previous period referred to, a Protestant was unknown.
And now for the social status and influence of the Romanists in England.
There are, in the first place, 33 Catholic peers, 48 Catholic baronets, and 36 Catholic members of Parliament. There are lords and lords, and one lord differeth from another in glory as one star differeth from another. It is unquestionably true that the Roman Catholic peers and baronets are the representatives of the oldest, most noble, and most influential families in the kingdom. The reigns of Edward VI, Elizabeth, James I, and William and Mary, were marked by the extinction of the greater part of the Roman Catholic houses. The nobles, who clung to the ancient faith, were slain by the axe of the executioner, driven into exile, or beggared by the confiscation of their estates, which passed into the hands of the comparatively mushroom aristocracy that sprang up upon the ruins of these illustrious families. But a few of the old nobility contrived to escape the fate of the majority.
There are in the United Kingdom 27 dukes, 32 marquises, 194 earls, 55 viscounts, and 220 barons—in all, 528 noblemen. But as I have ascertained by dint of patiently reading through Burke's peerage, 228 of these are the holders of titles which are the "creations" of the present century; 163 date back only to the eighteenth century; 89 to the seventeenth century; 17 to the sixteenth century; 20 to the fifteenth century; 3 to the fourteenth century; 4 to the thirteenth century; and 1 to the twelfth century. This last is Baron Kingsale, whose title dates from 1181, and who is the twenty-ninth of his name.
The most ancient dukedom is that of the Duke of Norfolk, created in 1483. The Norfolks, throughout all their history, remained faithful to the Roman Catholic church. The present Duke is the fifteenth of the name, and is "Earl Marshal, Premier Duke, and Earl of England." Of the three nobles whose creation dates back to the fourteenth century, two are Roman Catholics; of the twenty who date from the fifteenth century, six are of that religion; and of the seventeen who date from the sixteenth century, three are of the old faith. Out of the four hundred and eighty whose titles are less than 270 years old, only twenty-two are Catholics. And of the forty-eight Roman Catholic baronets, about half of the number are thedescendants of gentlemen to whom this hereditary rank was given in the early part of the seventeenth century.
The ancient Roman Catholic hierarchy in England ended in 1584, with the death of Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in prison in that year. The hierarchy was not restored until Sept. 9, 1850, when the present Pope erected it by establishing all England as the "Province of Westminster," embracing thirteen dioceses, and presided over by an Archbishop. During this interval of 266 years, the Roman Catholic Clergy in England were at first under the direction of an Archpriest.
In Scotland the hierarchy has not yet been restored. It ended with the death of the last Archbishop of Glasgow, who died in exile at Paris in 1603. Since then the Catholic Church in Scotland has been under the charge of Vicars-apostolic.