CHAPTER IX.THE CITY.

OLD SCOTLAND YARD.

The banquet, thus cheered by compliments, toasts, and the shouts of the onlookers, lasted three hours. At its conclusion, which would be three o’clock in the afternoon, a singular ceremony took place. “The table was placed upon the ground, and their Majesties, standing upon it, proceeded to wash their hands.” The King and Queen then retired to their own apartments, while the Spanish guests were taken to the picture gallery. In an hour’s time they returned to the Audience Chamber, where dancing had begun.

Fifty ladies of honor were present, “richly dressed and extremely beautiful.” Prince Henry danced agalliard;the Queen, with the Earl of Southampton, danced abrando;the Prince danced anothergalliard—“con algunas cabriolas,” with certain capers; then anotherbrandowas performed; the Queen with the Earl of Southampton, and Prince Henry with another lady of the Court, danced acorrenta. This ended the ball. They then all took their places at the windows, which looked out upon a court of the Palace. There they had the pleasure of seeing the King’s bears fight with greyhounds, and there was very fine baiting of the bull. Then followed tumblers and rope-dancers. With these performances ended the entertainment and the day. The Lord Chamberlain accompanied the Constable to the farthest room; the Earl of Devonshire and other gentlemen went with them to their coaches, and fifty halberdiers escorted them on their way home with torches. On the morrow, one is pained to read, the Constable had an attack of lumbago.

There are other notes on the Court which one finds in the descriptions of foreign travelers. Thus, the King was served on one knee; while he drank his cupbearer remained on one knee; he habitually drank Frontignac,a sweet, rich French wine; when Queen Elizabeth passed through the street men fell on their knees (this practice seems to have been discontinued at her death); servants carried their masters’ arms on the left sleeve; the people, within or without the Court, were noisy and overbearing (all travelers agree on this point); they hated foreigners and laughed at them; they were magnificent in dress; they allowed their wives the greatest liberty, and spent all they could afford upon their dresses; the greatest pleasure the wives of the citizens had was to sit in their doorways dressed in their best for the passers-by to admire; they were accustomed to eat a great quantity of meat; they loved sweet things, pouring honey over mutton and mixing sugar with their wine; they ardently pursued bull and bear baiting, hunting, fishing, and sport of all kinds; they ate saffron cakes to bring out the flavor of beer; they spent great sums of money in tobacco, which was 18s. a pound, equal to more than £6 of our money; their great highway was the river, which was covered with boats of all kinds plying up and down the stream, and was also covered with thousands of swans. The river, indeed, maintained as watermen, fishermen, lightermen, stevedores, etc., as many as forty thousand men. When we read of James kissing his favorites—a practice nauseous to the modern Englishman—we must remember that it was then not an uncommon thing, but quite the contrary, for friends to kiss each other. In France and Germany men have always greeted each other with a kiss. On entering a room a visitor kissed all the ladies present. Thus it was reckoned unusual when the Duchess of Richmond (1625) admitted the Duke of Brunswick to Ely House on the proviso that he must not kiss her. He did not, but he kissed all her ladies

ROSAMOND’S POND, ST. JAMES’S PARK.

twice over in a quarter of an hour. And the Constable of Castile, the day before the great banquet, kissed all the Queen’s ladies of honor. Erasmus remarks that the English have a custom “never to be sufficiently commended. Wherever you go, you are received with a kiss from all; when you take your leave, you are dismissed with kisses; you return—kisses are repeated; they come to visit you—kisses again.”

Those who read—and trust—the gossiping and scandalous memoirs of the day acquire a very imperfect idea of King James’s Court. The physical defects and weaknesses of the King are exaggerated: we are told that his legs were weak, and that he rolled in his gait; the foreign ambassadors, however, speak of him as a man of great strength and strong constitution: we are told that he spoke thickly; there is nothing said of this defect in the letters written by these visitors. That he lived privately, and went not abroad, as Queen Elizabeth had done, is acknowledged; that his Court was in any way ridiculous does not appear, except in such a writer as Anthony Welldon. In this place, happily, we have not to consider his foreign or domestic policy, or his lofty ideas on Divine Right; but only his Court. In the fierce light which beats upon a throne every weakness is made visible and appears out of proportion. We must remember, however, that the blemishes are not visible to him who only occasionally visits the Court, or witnesses a Court function. We, for instance, are only outsiders: we know nothing of the whispers which run round the inner circle. Those who are about the person of the sovereign must experience, one would think, something of degradation when they make the inevitable discovery that the King’s most excellent Majesty, whom they have been wont to serve on bended

THE WATER GATE, NEW PALACE YARD.

knee, is afflicted, like the meanest of his servants, with human infirmities, and with weaknesses physical and mental. There are, however, two kings; the one as he appears to the outer world, which only sees him at Court functions; the other as he appears to his servants and those about his person. If one of these servantsreveals to the world that the sovereign in hours of privacy was wont to relax from the cares of state in the company of persons little better than buffoons, we may acknowledge that the dignity maintained by the King in public and before the eyes of the world was greater than James could always sustain. He relaxed, therefore, too much in the opposite direction. Why parade the fact? When one of his servants describes a drunken orgy at the Palace, we remark that James was king for more than twenty years, that there is no mention of any other drunken orgy, and that this deplorable evening was in honor of the Queen’s brother, King of Denmark, who probably thought that general excess of wine was part of the honor paid to him. When we are told that James was afraid of a drawn sword, and turned his eyes away when he knighted a certain person, we remark that this outward and visible sign of fear is only recorded of him once and by one writer, that no one else speaks of it, and that there is no proof whatever that on this occasion he turned his head in sign of fear. That he loved hunting excessively is only saying that he joined in the sports of his time, and that he was always pleased to escape the cares and fatigues of his place. That saint whom English Catholics still revere, Edward the Confessor, was also excessively fond of hunting. When all this is said we may add that this King, who loved buffoonery so much, was a good scholar and a diligent student, a lover of literature and of scholars, a writer of considerable power, a disputant of no mean order. King James wrote theDoron Basilikon; he wrote a book on Dæmonology (who can expect a king to be in advance of his age?); he wrote against the use of tobacco; he translated many of the Psalms; he was constantly saying things witty, unexpected, shrewd, and epigrammatic; he was as tolerant as could be expected in matters of religion.

[Larger view (189)][Largest view (1mb)]

Lastly, James made the Court of Whitehall magnificent during the whole of his reign, by the splendor of the Masques.

When we think of this vanished Palace our thoughts turn to the Masques, which belong especially to Whitehall—there were none at Westminster and none at St. James’s. The Masque is of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a play performed on one night only; not by professional actors, but by lords and ladies of the Court. The jewels worn were real jewels; the dresses were of velvet and silk, embroidered with gold and pearls; the scenery was costly and elaborate; the music was new and composed for the occasion; the dances were newly invented for that night only; the scene-painter and stage manager was the greatest architect of the day; the words were written by the poet who, in his lifetime, was esteemed by many the first of living poets. The Masque was a costly, splendid thing,—a thing of courtly pomp,—a fit plaything for queen and princess; a form of drama perfected by Ben Jonson, not disdained by Milton, put upon the stage by Inigo Jones. As for the play itself, themotifwas always simple, sometimes allegorical, generally grave; the treatment was classical. The Masques of Ben Jonson would be wearisome for the length of the speeches and the slowness of the movement, did we not keep before our eyes the scenery and the grouping of the figures. Their tedium in the reading is also retrieved by the lovely verses and songs scattered freely over the piece; the acting, the music, the scenes, the singing, the dancing kept up the life and action and interest of the piece. There was an immense amount of stage management, stage machinery, and decorations. Shakespeare and his actors at the Globe and Fortune could neither afford these splendors nor did they attempt even a distant imitation of them. When the King commanded a play, it was put on the stage with none of the accessories which belonged to the Masque. At Whitehall, as at Bankside, the back of the stage represented a wall, a palace, or a castle; the hangings—black or blue—showed whether it was night or day. But the Masque was not a show for the people; it is certain that the “groundlings” of the Globe would not have understood the classical allusions with which it was crammed. At the present day a masque would only be endured as a spectacle for the picturesque grouping, the beauty of the actresses, the splendor of the dresses, the perfection of the dancing, the lovely songs, and the admirable skill and discipline of the company. When the principal actress was no other than the Queen herself, who led off a dance, followed by ladies representing mythological characters perfectly well understood by a Court of scholars, when the scenery, new and beautiful, was changed again and again, even though the fable was no great thing, the entertainment was delightful.

The general care of these and other shows was intrusted to the Master of Revels. This office is described in an official book compiled by Edmund Tylney, a Master of Revels, 1579-1610. He says: “The office of yᵉ Revels consisteth of a Wardropp and other several Roomes, for Artificers to worke in—viz., Taylors, Imbrotherers, Property-makers, Paynters, Wyer drawers and Carpenters, togeather with a convenient place for yᵉ rehearsals and setting forthe of Playes and other Showes for those Services.”

The first Master of Revels was Sir Thomas Cawerden, appointed in 1546. He was followed by Sir Thomas Benger, Edmund Tylney, Sir George Busk, Sir John Astley, and Sir Henry Herbert. With him the importance of the post ceased; the office, however, was still continued. It survives—or lingers—in the Licenser of Plays.

So few read Ben Jonson’s Masques that I ask no excuse for presenting one. We will take the masque called “The Hue and Cry after Cupid.” It was written as a wedding entertainment.

The scene represented a high, steep red cliff mounting to the sky, a red cliff because the occasion was the wedding of one of the Radcliffs. The cliff was also “a note of height, greatness, and antiquity.” Before the cliff on the two sides were two pilasters charged with spoils and trophies of Venus and Cupid: hearts transfixed, hearts burning, young men and maidens buried with roses, garlands, arrows, and so forth—all of burnished gold. Over the pillars hovered thefigures of Triumph and Victory, twice the size of life, completing the arch and holding a garland of myrtle for the key.

Beyond the cliff, cloud and obscurity.

Then music began; the clouds vanished; two doves followed by two swans drew forth a triumphant chariot, in which sat Venus crowned with her star, and beneath her the three Graces, “all attired according to their antique figures”—which is obscure and doubtful.

Venus descends from the chariot, and is followed by the Graces:

“It is no common cause, you will conceive,My lovely Graces, makes your goddess leaveHer state in Heaven to-night, to visit earth.Love late is fled away, my eldest birth,Cupid, whom I did joy to call my son;And whom long absent, Venus is undone.Spy, if you can, his footsteps on the green;For here, as I am told, he late hath been.. . . . . . . . . .Find ye no track of his stray’d feet?”1st. G.Not I.2d. G.Not I.3d. G.Not I.Venus.Stay, nymphs;we then will tryA nearer way. Look at these ladies’ eyes,And see if there he not concealèd lies.Perchance he hath some simple heart to hideHis subtle shape in .... . . . . . . . . .Begin, soft Graces, and proclaim rewardTo her that brings him in. Speak to be heard.

1st. G.Not I.

2d. G.Not I.

3d. G.Not I.

Venus.Stay, nymphs;we then will tryA nearer way. Look at these ladies’ eyes,And see if there he not concealèd lies.Perchance he hath some simple heart to hideHis subtle shape in .... . . . . . . . . .Begin, soft Graces, and proclaim rewardTo her that brings him in. Speak to be heard.

Then the Graces begin, and one after the other for nine verses sing the “Hue and Cry for Cupid”:

1st G.Beauties,have ye seen this toyCallèd Love, a little boy,Almost naked, wanton, blind;Cruel now, and then as kind?If he be amongst ye, say?He is Venus’ runaway.. . . . . . . . . .2d G.Trusthim not; his words, though sweet,Seldom with his heart do meet.All his practice is deceit;Any gift it is a bait;Not a kiss but poison bears,And most treason in his tears.. . . . . . . . . .1st G.Ifby these ye please to know him,Beauties, be not nice, but show him.2d G.Thoughye had a will to hide him,Now, we hope, ye’ll not abide him.3d G.Sinceyou hear his falser play,And that he’s Venus’ runaway.

2d G.Thoughye had a will to hide him,Now, we hope, ye’ll not abide him.

3d G.Sinceyou hear his falser play,And that he’s Venus’ runaway.

After this Cupid himself comes running out from behind the trophies: he is armed; he is followed by twelve boys “most antickly” attired, representing the Sports and pretty Lightnesses that accompany Love under the titles of Joci and Risus.

Cupid.Come, my little jocund sports,Come away; the time now sortsWith your pastime; this same nightIs Cupid’s day. Advance your light,With your revel fill the room,That our triumphs be not dumb.

Then the boys “fall into a subtle, capricious” dance, bearing torches with ridiculous gestures. Venus all the time stands on one side, the Graces grouped around her. Can we realize what a pretty picture this would make? When the dance is over, Venus and hermaidens surround Cupid and apprehend him. What has he been doing?

“Have you shot Minerva or the Thespian dames?Heat agèd Ops again with youthful flames?Or have you made the colder Moon to visit,Once more, a sheepcote? Say what conquest is itCan make you hope such a renown to win?Is there a second Hercules brought to spin?Or, for some new disguise, leaves Jove his thunder?”

At this point Hymen entered, and the manner of his entry was thus: He wore a saffron-colored robe, his under-vesture white, his socks yellow, a yellow veil of silk on his left arm, his head crowned with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a torch of pine tree. After him came a youth in white, bearing another torch of white thorn; behind him two others in white, the one bearing a distaff and the other a spindle. Then followed the Auspices, those who “handfasted” the pair and wished them luck—i. e., prayed for them. Then one who bore water and another who bore fire; and lastly musicians.

Cupid at sight of Hymen breaks off:

“Hymen’s presence bids away;’Tis already at his night:He can give you further light.You, my Sports, may here abide,Till I call to light the bride.”

Hymen addresses Venus, paying the most charming compliments to King James under the name of Æneas. He tells her that he is come to grace the marriage of a noble virgin styled the Maid of the Redcliffe, and that Vulcan with the Cyclopes are at that moment forging something strange and curious to grace thenuptials; and indeed, at that moment Vulcan himself, dressed like the blacksmith that he is, comes upon the stage. He has completed the work:

“Cleave, solid rock, and bring the wonder forth!”

Then, with a burst of music, the cliff falls open and discloses “an illustrious concave filled with an ample and glistering light in which an artificial sphere was made of silver, eighteen feet in diameter, that turned perpetually; thecoluriwere heightened with gold; so were the arctic and the antarctic circles, the tropics, the equinoctial, the meridian, and horizon; only the zodiac was of pure gold, in which the masquers under the characters of the twelve signs were placed, answering them in number.”

This is the description. The system of the Zodiac seems a strange thing to present as part of a wedding entertainment; but such a thing was not then part of school work, and when Vulcan called out at the masquers, Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, and the rest, explaining how they apply to the conjugal condition, no doubt there was much delight. This done, Venus, Vulcan, Hymen, and their trains sat or stood while the masquers, assisted by the Cyclopes, alternately sang and danced. There are seven verses to the song, and there were four dances. The dances were invented by Master Thomas Giles and Master Hieronymus Herne; the tunes were composed by Master Alphonso Ferrabosco; the scenes by Master Inigo Jones; and the verse, with the invention of the whole, by Ben Jonson himself. “The attire,” says the poet, “of the masquers throughout was most graceful and noble; partaking of the best, both ancient and later figure. The colours, carnation and silver, enriched with embroidery and lace. The dressing of their heads, feathers and jewels.” The names of the masquers were the Duke of Lenox, the Earls of Arundell, Pembroke, and Montgomery, Lords D’Aubigny, Walden, Hay, and Sankre, Sir Robert Rothe, Sir Joseph Kennethir, and Master Erskine. Here are two of the verses:

“What joy or honours can compareWith holy nuptials when they areMade out of equal partsOf years, of states, of hands, of hearts!When in the happy choiceThe spouse and spousèd have the foremost voice!Such, glad of Hymen’s war,Live what they areAnd long perfection see:And such ours be—Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wishèd star!“Love’s common wealth consists of toys:His council are those antic boys.Games, laughter, sports, delights,That triumph with him on these nights,To whom we must give way,For now their reign begins and lasts till day.They sweeten Hymen’s war,And, in that jar,Make all, that married be,Perfection see.Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wishèd star!”

“Love’s common wealth consists of toys:His council are those antic boys.Games, laughter, sports, delights,That triumph with him on these nights,To whom we must give way,For now their reign begins and lasts till day.They sweeten Hymen’s war,And, in that jar,Make all, that married be,Perfection see.Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wishèd star!”

The Masque was short-lived. It was stately and dignified; it was courtly; it was classical; it was serious; nobody laughed much, except perhaps at the “antic” dances which were sometimes introduced. It required fine, if not the finest, poetic work. It could not be adequately presented without lavish expenditure. It demanded the performance of amateurs.When the troubles of the next reign began there was little desire for such entertainments, and no money to spare for the production of a Masque on the old scale of splendor. When Charles II. returned all the world wanted to laugh and to sing; the Masque, slow and stately, was out of fashion. Charles made an attempt to revive it, but without success. It was quite forgotten; the old properties were stowed away and molded in the cellars till the fire came and burned them all. And the stage effects, the sudden changes of scene, the clouds and the rocks and streams were all forgotten, until they were revived in the present century.

There are many memories of Whitehall on which we might enlarge; scenes in the later life of Henry VIII.; scenes in the Court of Queen Mary; tilts, feasts, and entertainments by Queen Elizabeth; the death of Charles; the occupation by Cromwell; the mistresses of Charles the Deplorable—with a great many more. These, however, belong to the things already narrated. I have endeavored to recall certain associations which have hitherto belonged to the Book of the Things Left Out; and among them there are none so pleasing and so characteristic as the Masque in the reign of James I.

Now there is nothing left of Elizabeth’s Palace at all; of Charles’s Palace, only the latest and last construction, the Banqueting Hall. When the fires of 1691 and 1697 swept all away except this building, there perished a collection of courts and houses for the most part dingy, without the picturesque appearance of the old Palace, which, if it was crowded and huddled together, was full of lovely mediæval towers, gables, and carved work. Whitehall as a building was without dignity and without nobility. Yet one wishes thatit had remained to the present day. Hampton Court, as I have said above, remains to show the world what Whitehall Palace was like.

William III. talked of rebuilding the place; but he died. Queen Anne took up her residence in St. James’s. And Whitehall Palace vanished.

THE Houses of Parliament—their history, their buildings, their constitution—belong to the history of the Empire. They happen to stand in the City of Westminster; but their history does not form part of the City history. The House of Commons has been called to Westminster almost without interruption for six hundred years. It sat for three hundred years in the Chapter House of the Abbey; then for three hundred years more in the Chapel of St. Stephen; when that was burned down the site was preserved and set apart for the New House, which arose when the ashes of the old had been cleared away. That site must not be considered a part of Westminster; it is part of the Island—part of the Empire.

In a certain special sense, however, the House of Commons did belong to the City of Westminster for a long time. A great many of the country members lodged in the narrow streets round the Abbey. The reason is plain: there were no streets or houses in the meadows lying north and west of the Houses of Parliament; either the members must lodge in the City of London and take boat for St. Stephen’s, or they mustlodge in Westminster itself. It is stated by a writer of the last century that the principal means of support for the people of Westminster were the lodging and entertainment of the members. The monks were gone; Sanctuary was gone; the Court was gone; but the members remained, and so the taverns remained, too, and the ancient reputation of Westminster as a thirsty city was happily uninjured.

In another way Westminster created for itself a new distinction. As a borough it became notorious for the turbulence and the violence of the elections. Its central position, the King’s House always lying within its boundaries, the City of London its near neighbor, naturally caused an election at Westminster to attract more attention than an election at Oxford, say, or Winchester. Again, the electors of Westminster were not, probably, fiercer partisans than those of any other place, nor were their candidates always of greater importance; yet it is certain that for downright bludgeon rowdiness and riot, the rabble at Westminster, when it turned out at election time, was equaled by few towns, and surpassed by none.

Let us observe one point, which is instructive: the rabble had no votes; the butchers, those patriotic thinkers, who paraded the streets with clubs to the music of marrow-bones and cleavers; the chairmen, equal patriots of opposite convictions, who marched to the Way of War and the breaking of heads with their poles—formidable as pike or spear; the jolly sailors, convinced as to the foundations of order, who came along with bludgeons, thirsting for the display of their political principles—none of these brave fellows had any vote. Yet the share they took, the part they played, the influence they exercised in everyelection, cannot be disputed. The vote, you see, about which nowadays we make such a fuss, is by no means everything; in those days one stout fellow with a cudgel at the bottom of the steps of the hustings might be worth to his party fifty votes a day; he might represent as many voters sent home discouraged, or even persuaded, by a broken head, to a radical change of political principles.

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND WESTMINSTER HALL FROM THE RIVER IN 1798 (FROM A CONTEMPORARY DRAWING).

In the year 1710, Swift says that the rabble surrounded his coach, and he was afraid of having dead cats thrown in at the window, or getting his glass broken. The part played by the dead cat in all eighteenth-century functions, elections, pillories, and outdoor speeches, was quite remarkable. In times of peace and quiet we hear of no dead cats. The streets did not then, and do not now, provide a supply of dead cats to meet all demands. It would seem as if all the cats of all the slums were slaughtered for the occasion.Throughout the last century the elections of Westminster became more and more riotous; there were riots and ructions in 1711 and in 1721; in 1741 these were quite surpassed by the contested election in which Lord Sundon and Sir Charles Wager were candidates on the one side,—the Court side,—and Admiral Vernon and Mr. Charles Edwin on the other. Lord Sundon, a newly created Irish peer, took upon himself to close the poll by the help of a detachment of Guards before it was finished. One vote an hour was supposed to keep the poll open. The returning officer, however, disregarding this convention, and, by Lord Sundon’s order, declared the poll closed and Lord Sundon with Sir Charles Wager duly elected. There was indignation; there was a question, which led to a debate in the House; and finally the election was declared illegal. The victory thus obtained by the populace against the Court party was celebrated long afterward by an annual dinner of the “Independent Electors.” It marks the change in our management of these things that there should have been a Court party, and that the Court should think it consistent with its dignity to take an active part in any election. That the king should openly side with this or that candidate shows that the sovereign, a hundred and fifty years ago, stood on a much lower level than the sovereign of to-day.

The longest and fiercest contest, the one with the most doubtful issues, the most violent of all the Westminster elections, was that of the year 1784. Of this election there was published a most careful record from day to day. I suppose there is no other election on record of which such a daily diary has been preserved. It appeared toward the end of the same

OAK DOORWAY DISCOVERED IN THE SPEAKER’S DINING-ROOM AFTER THE FIRE.

year, and was published by Debrett, a Piccadilly bookseller. The anonymous authors, who modestly call themselves “Lovers of Truth and Justice,” begin the work with a narrative of the events which led to the Dissolution of March 25, 1784; they then proceed to set down the story of the Westminster election from day to day; they have reproduced many of the caricatures, rough, coarse, and vigorous, with which Rowlandson illustrated the contest; they have published all the speeches; they have collected the whole of the Election literature, with the poems, squibs, epigrams, attacks, and eulogies, which appeared on either side. Not only is there no other record, so far as I know, of any election so complete as this, but there has never been any other election, so far as I know, where the fight was fiercer, moredetermined, more unscrupulous, and of longer duration. The volume is, I believe, somewhat scarce and difficult to procure. Its full title is “The History of the Westminster Election, containing every Material Occurrence, from its Commencement, on the First of April, to the Final Close of the Poll, on 17th of May, to which is Prefixed a Summary Account of the Proceedings of the Late Parliament, so far as they appear Connected with the East India Business and the Dismission of the Portland Administration, with other Select and Interesting Occurrences at the Westminster Meetings, Previous to its Dissolution on the 25th Day of March 1784.”

This long title-page promises no more than the volume performs. It is proposed, therefore, to reproduce in these pages, with the assistance of the “Lovers of Truth and Justice,” the history of an election as it was conducted a hundred years ago.

The Dissolution of March, 1784, and the causes which led to it, belong to the history of the country and to the life of Charles James Fox. Let us accept the fact that the General Election was held in April; that the candidates for Westminster were Admiral Lord Hood and Sir Cecil Wray on the Ministerial side, and Fox for the Opposition. The former was also the Court side; the candidates on that side were called the King’s friends; the King himself took the keenest interest in the daily progress of the poll; he peremptorily ordered all the Court servants, the Court tradesmen, and the Court dependents to vote for Hood and Wray; and he actually sent a body of two hundred and eighty Guards to vote on that side. No king, in fact, ever interfered with an election more openly, more actively, or with less dignity. The

THE HOUSE OF LORDS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY.

struggle, remember, of Kingv.Commons was not completed when William of Orange succeeded James. The lesson taught by the struggle of the seventeenth century was most imperfectly grasped by King George the Third. On the other hand, the Prince of Wales,with the filial loyalty which characterized him as well as his grandfather, used all his influence on the side of Fox.

The temper of the City of Westminster, and the certain prospect of a stormy time, was shown two months before the Dissolution, when a document purporting to be a humble address to the King from the Dean, the High Steward, and the Burgesses assembled at the Guildhall, Westminster, was passed about for signature. It was accepted for what it pretended to be, and was signed by twenty-eight hundred people, among whom were a great many electors. Lastly, it was presented by Sir Cecil Wray, one of the members, as from the Dean and High Steward.

A few days later, a meeting of the electors was called at the Shakespeare Tavern, Covent Garden, at which this document was very severely handled. It was affirmed that the Dean and the High Steward actually knew nothing of the address, and that their names had been most improperly affixed without their sanction. This was the beginning of a great cataract of lies. Whether the names had been used with or without sanction, mattered little; the allegation presented an excuse for a resolution of confidence in Fox, which was passed with acclamation.

On February 10, another meeting, with Sir Cecil Wray in the chair, adopted an address to his Majesty expressing confidence in the Ministry. This meeting was, of course, described by one side as “very numerous and most respectable,” and by the other as exactly the reverse: “Never was there, perhaps, in the annals of all the meetings ever held in England, so motley a group, so noisy an assembly, or one less respectable for its company.”

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY.

Then followed handbills for distribution. The struggle, it must be remembered, was one which could hardly occur in these days: it was, in fact nothing short of a declaration of confidence in the King or the opposite; for or against secret influence; for or against Court direction, and the extension of prerogative. Here is a specimen of what was written at the outset:

“Of all the features which mark the political character of the English nation the most striking and remarkable is a perpetual jealousy of prerogative.... Ask an Englishman what sort of Judge, Crown Lawyer, or Minister, he most dreads: his uniform answer is aprerogativeJudge, aprerogativeLawyer, aprerogativeMinister. Is then aprerogativeKing of so little danger to us that we are all at once to forget these jealousies, which seem to have been twisted with our existence, and to fall into a miraculous fondness for that prerogative which our ancestors have shed their dearest blood to check and limit? Let the people of England once confederate with the Crown and the Lords insucha conflict, and who is the man that will answer for one hour of legal liberty afterwards?

“Can the people confide in His Majesty’s secret advisers? I sayNO. And I demand one instance, in the twenty-three years of this wretched reign, when a regard to the liberty of the people can be traced in any measure to thesecret system.”

This document, which went on in a similar strain to a great length, was handed about from house to house; no doubt a copy was given to the King.

A general meeting of all the electors was called on March 14, in Westminster Hall. This assemblage proved everything that could be desired; the hall was completely packed with an uproarious mob, chiefly on the King’s side; the hustings were made a battlefield for the possession of the chair, which was pulled to pieces in the struggle; then the hustings broke down, and a good many on either side were trampled upon and injured. Nobody could be heard; when it was understood that the meeting was asked to express an opinion on the Address to the King, nearly all the

THE ENTRANCE TO SPEAKER’S YARD AS IT APPEARED BEFORE THE FIRE.

hands went up. Fox tried to speak; a bag of asafetida was thrown in his face; his friends carried him out on their shoulders; finally he addressed the crowd from the bow-window of the King’s Head Tavern, in Palace Yard. After the speech they took the horses from his carriage and dragged him all the way to Devonshire House, in Piccadilly, with shouts and cheers.

A so-called report of the meeting was then drawn up by Fox’s friends, stating that the chair had been taken by Fox and that a new Address to the King had been unanimously adopted. At the outset, therefore, neither side was in the least degree desirous to present the bald, bare, cold, unsatisfying truth.

On March 19 the Friends of Liberty held a great banquet at Willis’s Rooms. They numbered five hundred; the dinner was fixed for half-past five, but such was the ardor of the company, so great their determination to do justice to the feast, that they began to assemble at half-past three.

It is pleasant to read of civic and electioneering banquets—to see pictures of the patriots enjoying some of the rewards of virtue. The dinner was spread on six tables; and in order to prevent confusion, everything was put on the table at once, so that when the covers—if there were any covers—were removed, the company “saw their dinner.” Then friends and neighbors helped each other with loving zeal from the dishes before them; the waiters looked to the bottles, while the guests handed the plates to each other. Only to think of this dinner makes one hear the clatter of knives and forks, the buzz of talk—serious talk, because the average elector of Westminster in 1784 was not a person who laughed much; indeed, one

“THEMISTOCLES” (LORD HOOD), FROM “THE RIVAL CANDIDATES.”

imagines that, after the humiliations and disgraces of the American war, there could be very little laughter left in the country at all, even among the young and the light-hearted. Music there was, however,—music to uplift the hearts of the despondent,—violins and a ’cello, with perhaps flutes and horns. Singing there was, also, after dinner. During the banquet there was not much drinking; it would be sinful, with the whole night before one, to destroy a generous thirst at the outset. Men of that age were very powerful performers at the table; we neither eat nor drink with the noble, copious, and indiscriminate voracity of our ancestors; without any scientific observance of order these Friends of Liberty tackled all that stood before them: beef and mutton, fish and apple pie, turkey, tongue, ham, chicken, soup, and jelly—“plentifully dispersed and fashionably set out.” Faces grew shiny with long-continued exercise; those who wore wigs pushed them back; those who wore powder found it slipping from their hair on their shoulders; bones—the succulent bones of duck and chicken—were freely gnawed and sucked, as was still the custom evenin circles much higher than that which these Friends of Liberty adorned.

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