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and well known to be such. It was feared by the Commons, now the Rump, that the elections of December to the Common Council would also be Royalist. Accordingly the House passed an ordinance excluding "malignants." In this way no citizen was admitted who had subscribed to any petition for a personal treaty with the King. When the new Council assembled, the Mayor ordered them to take the oath of allegiance, which had not yet been abolished. This they refused. The Commons ordered the Mayor to suspend the oath altogether. Under these conditions the Council met, and although the Mayor refused to acknowledge their authority, they proceeded to consider a petition asking the House "to execute justice impartially and vigorously upon all the grand and capital authors, contrivers of and actors in the late wars against Parliament and kingdom, from the highest to the lowest,' and to take steps, as the supreme power of the nation, for the preservation of peace and the recovery of trade and credit."

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

CHAPTER III

THE CITY AND THE CIVIL WAR

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

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

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

"I was lately come to London upon some occasions of mine own, and I had been divers times in Westminster Hall, where I conversed with many Parliamentmen of my Acquaintance, but one morning betimes there rushed into my Chamber five armed Men with Swords, Pistols, and Bills, and told me they had a warrant from the Parliament for me; I desired to see their Warrant, they denied it; I desired to see the date of it, they denied it; I desired to see my Name in the Warrant, they denied all. At last one of them pulled a greasy Paper out of his pocket, and shewed me only three or four names subscribed, and no more; so they rushed presently into my Closet, and seized on all my Papers and Letters, and anything that was Manuscript; and many printed Books they took also, and hurl'd all into a great hair Trunk which they carried away with them. I had taken a little Physic that morning, and with very much ado they suffered me to stay in my Chamber with two Guards upon me, till the evening; at which time they brought me before the Committee for examination, where I confess I found good respect; and being brought up to the Close Committee for examination, I was ordered to be forthcoming, till some papers of mine were perused, and Mr. Corbet was appointed to do it. Some days after, I came to Mr. Corbet, and he told me he had perused them,

and could find nothing that might give offence. Hereupon I desired him to make a report to the House, according to which (as I was told) he did very fairly; yet such was my hard Hap, that I was committed to the Fleet, where I am now under close restraint; and, as far as I see, I must lie at dead Anchor in this Fleet, a long time, unless some gentle Gale blow thence to make me launch out."

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

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

The other outrage, which with griefe I saw, was committed in Radcliffe Highway, Tuesday last, being the 23 of this instant August, where lived an ancient gentleman in good fashion, love and credit amongst his neighbours for many years space. I was informed, and might likewise guesse by his aspect, that he was above fourscore, and his wife not much distant from his time. This poor man was, like manner, assaulted by another company of souldiers, who are billeted thereabouts until the drum commands them to do service, where, having approached his doore,

they drew out a paper, which they read,-whether a pretense of authority or what else I cannot easily conjecture. And thereupon they rushed into the house, rifled him of all that was in the house, breaking and battering many of the goods, and, having brought them out, sold them to such persons as would buy them at any rates, and this at noone day, and in the sight of one thousand people: one feather-bed I saw sold for four shillings, and one flock-bed for one shilling; and many other things at I know not what prises, leaving him nothing but naked walls and one stoole, which the old man sate upon, he being lame and decrepit with old age. The head-borough of the place endeavoured to rescue some of the goods, which were afterwards violently taken againe out of his house. After the riot was thus ended, they marched away with a drum; and then I made bold to goe into this distressed man's house, where I found him sitting upon his only stoole, and with the teares falling downe his hoary beard, from whence, having administered the best comfort that I could, I departed."

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

To take instances of hardship. In 1642 the people in the Strand, who chiefly lived by letting lodgings, were in despair, having to pawn their furniture in order to pay the rent, their lodgings being all empty. The lawyers at the Guildhall were busy, but it was over the affairs of an incredible number of bankrupts; at the Royal Exchange there was no business transacted, nor any discourse all day long except about the news of the day. In the shops the keepers had nothing to do but to visit and to condole with each other. London, as it always had been, was a receiving house and a distributing house for the whole country, and in this time of civil war there was nothing to distribute and nothing to receive. As a finishing stroke, it is

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