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THE CITY OF LONDON

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the result of the growth of the general well-being of the community. The population of England now exceeded 5,000,000. Rents were rising, and commerce was rapidly on the increase. Fresh colonies-amongst them Pennsylvania and Carolina-were founded in America. In England itself the growth of London was an index to the general prosperity. In those days the City was the home of the merchants, who did not then leave the place where their

Coach of the latter half of the seventeenth century: from Loggan's
Oxonia Illustrata.

business was done to spend the evening and night in the suburbs. Living side by side, they clung to one another, and their civic ardour created a strength which weighed heavily in the balance of parties. The opposition of the City to Charles I. had given the victory to Parliament in the civil war, and its dislike of military government had done much to bring about the Restoration. The favour of the City had been the chief support of Shaftesbury, and it was only by

Wagon of the second half of the seventeenth century: from Loggan's Oxonia Illustrata. overthrowing its municipal institutions that Charles II. had succeeded in crippling its power to injure him. In the meantime a new forest of houses was springing up on sites between Lincoln's Inn and what is now known as Soho Square, and round St. James's Church. The Court and the frequent meetings of Parliament attracted to London many families which, a generation earlier, would have lived entirely in the country.

16. The Coffee Houses.-Nothing has made a greater change in the material habits of Europeans than the introduction of warm beverages. Chocolate first made its way into England in the time of the Commonwealth, but it was for some time regarded merely as a medicine, not to be taken by the prudent except under a physician's orders, though those interested in its sale declared that it was suitable for all, and would cure every possible complaint. Chocolate was soon followed by coffee, and coffee soon became fashionable, not as a medicine, but as a pleasant substitute for beer and wine. The introduction of tea was somewhat later.

Reaping and harvesting in the second half of the seventeenth century; Cambridge in the distance: from Loggan's Cantabrigia Illustrata.

It was in the reign of Charles II. that coffee-houses arose in London, and became places of resort, answering the purposes of the modern clubs. They soon acquired political importance, matters of state being often discussed in them, and the opinion of their frequenters carrying weight with those who were directly concerned with Government. The gathering of men of intellectual prominence to London was a marked feature of the time, and, except at the universities, there was scarcely a preacher or a theological writer of note who was not to be found either in the episcopate or at the head of a London parish.

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PROGRESS OF THE COUNTRY

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17. Condition of London. The arrangements for cleanliness did not keep pace in London with the increased magnificence of the dwellings. The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields, for instance, was a place where rubbish was shot, and where beggars congregated. St. James's Square was just as bad, whilst filthy and discoloured streams poured along the gutters, and carts and carriages splashed mud and worse than mud over the passengers on foot. At the beginning of the reign of Charles II. the streets were left in darkness, and robbers made an easy prey of those who ventured out after dark. Young noblemen and gentlemen when drunk took pleasure in knocking down men and insulting women. These were they of whom Milton was thinking when he declared that

In luxurious cities, when the noise

Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,

And injury, and outrage: and when night

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

Something was, however, done before the end of the reign to mitigate the dangers arising from darkness. One man obtained a patent for lighting London, and it was thought a great thing that he placed a lantern in front of one door in every ten in winter only, between six and midnight.

18. Painting. The art of the time, so far as painting was concerned, was entirely in the hands of foreigners. Van Dyck, a Fleming, from Antwerp, had left to the world numerous representations of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, of Strafford and Laud, and of the ladies and gentlemen who thronged the Court. An Englishman, Samuel Cooper, made posterity acquainted with the features of Cromwell (see p. 567). Charles II. again called in the services of a foreigner, whose real name was Van der Goes, but who called himself Lely, because his father's house on the borders of Germany and the Netherlands was known by the sign of the Lily. Lely painted Court beauties and Court gentlemen. He had far less power than Van Dyck of presenting on canvas the mind which lies behind the features, and in many cases those who sat to him had minds less worthy of being presented than those with which Van Dyck had to do. When Charles II. wished for a painting of the sea and of shipping he had to send for a Dutch painter, Vandevelde; whilst an Italian, Verrio, decorated his ceilings with subjects taken from heathen mythology.

19. Architecture. In architecture alone English hands were

found to do the work required; but the style in which they built was not English but Italian. The rows of pillars and round arches, with the meaningless decorations which bespoke an age preferring sumptuousness to beauty, superseded the quaint Elizabethan and early Jacobean houses, which seemed built for comfort rather than for display, such as Ingestre Hall (see p. 471) and Hatfield House

(see p. 485). In the reign of James I., Inigo Jones planned the great banqueting hall at Whitehall (see p. 493), and so contemptuous was he of the great architecture of the middle ages, that he fitted on an Italian portico to the west front of the old St. Paul's. This style of building culminated in the work of Sir Christopher Wren. The fire of London gave him an opportunity which he did not throw away. The steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow is an example of his powers of design (see p. 614), but his greatest achievement, the new St. Paul's, was, when Charles II. died, only slowly rising from the ground, and it remained uncompleted till long after Charles II. had been laid in the grave.

20. Science. The foundation of the Royal Society (see p. 598) had borne ample fruit. Halley and Flamsteed were the astronomers of the time till their fame was eclipsed by that of Isaac Newton, who before the end of the reign

of Charles II. was already meditating on the views contained in his 'Principia,' in which the law of gravitation was set forth, though that work was not written till after the death of that king.

21. Difficulties of Communication.-Difficulties of communication served both to encourage town life and to hinder the increase of manufactures at any considerable distance from the sea. The roads were left to each parish to repair, and the parishes usually did as little as possible. In many places a mere quagmire took the

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THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN

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place of the road. Young and active men, and sometimes ladies, travelled on horseback, and goods of no great weight were transmitted on packhorses. The family coach, in which those who were too dignified or too weak to ride made their way from one part of the country to another, was dragged by six horses, and often sank so deeply in the mud as only to be extricated by the loan of additional plough horses from a neighbouring farm, whilst heavy goods were conveyed in lumbering waggons, still more difficult to move even at a moderate speed. For passengers who could not afford to keep a coach the carrier's waggon served as a slow conveyance; but before the end of the reign of Charles II. there had been introduced a vehicle known as The Flying Coach, which managed to perform a journey at the rate of fifty miles a day in summer and thirty in winter, in districts in which roads were exceptionably good.

22. The Country Gentry and the Country Clergy. These difficulties of communication greatly affected the less wealthy of the country gentry and the country clergy. A country gentleman of large fortune, indeed, would occasionally visit London and appear as a visitor at the house of some relative or friend to whom he was specially attached. The movements, however, even of this class were much restricted, whilst men of moderate estate seldom moved at all. The refinements which at present adorn country life were not then to be found. Books were few, and the man of comparatively slender means found sufficient occupation in the management of his land and in the enjoyment of field sports. His ideas on politics were crude, and, because they were crude, were pertinaciously held. The country clergyman was relatively poorer than the country squire; and had few means of cultivating his mind or of elevating the religion of his parishioners. The ladies of the houses of even the richest of the landed gentry were scarcely educated at all, and, though there were bright exceptions, any one familiar with the correspondence of the seventeenth century knows that, if he comes across a letter particularly illegible and uninteresting, there is a strong probability that the writer was a woman.

23. Alliance between the Gentry and the Church.—A common life passed in the country under much the same conditions naturally drew together the squire and the rector or vicar of his parish. A still stronger bond united them for the most part in a common Toryism. They had both suffered from the same oppression: the squire, or his predecessor, had been heavily fined by a Puritan