Volume Iii Part 33 (1/2)
The country too even chops for rain; You that exhale it by your power, Let the fat drops fall down again In a full shower.
And you bright beauties of the time, That waste yourselves here in a blaze, Fix to your orb and proper clime Your wandering rays.
Let no dark corner of the land Be unembellish'd with one gem, And those which here too thick do stand Sprinkle on them.
Believe me, ladies, you will find In that sweet light more solid joys, More true contentment to the mind Than all town-toys.
Nor Cupid there less blood doth spill, But heads his shafts with chaster love, Not feather'd with a sparrow's quill, But of a dove.
There you shall hear the nightingale, The harmless syren of the wood, How prettily she tells a tale Of rape and blood.
The lyric lark, with all beside Of Nature's feather'd quire, and all The commonwealth of flowers in 'ts pride Behold you shall.
The lily queen, the royal rose, The gilly-flower, prince of the blood!
The courtier tulip, gay in clothes, The regal bud; The violet purple senator, How they do mock the pomp of state, And all that at the surly door Of great ones wait.
Plant trees you may, and see them shoot Up with your children, to be served To your clean boards, and the fairest fruit To be preserved; And learn to use their several gums; 'Tis innocence in the sweet blood Of cherry, apric.o.c.ks, and plums, To be imbrued.
FOOTNOTES:
[238] _Morning Chronicle_, January 23, 1820.
[239] A proclamation was issued in the first year of King James, ”commanding gentlemen to depart the court and city,” because it hinders hospitality and endangers the people near their own residences, ”who had from such houses much comfort and ease toward their living.” The King graciously says:--”He tooke no small contentment in the resort of gentlemen, and other our subjects coming to visit us, holding their affectionate desire to see our person to be a certaine testimonie of their inward love;” but he says he must not ”give way to so great a mischiefe as the continuall resort may breed,” and that therefore all that have no special cause of attendance must at once go back until the time of his coronation, when they may ”returne until the solemnity be pa.s.sed;” but only for that time, for if the proclamation be slighted he shall ”make them an example of contempt if we shall finde any making stay here contrary to this direction.” Such proclamations were from time to time issued, and though sometimes evaded, were frequently enforced by fines, so that living in London was a risk and danger to country gentlemen of fortune.
[240] Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 288.
[241] From a ma.n.u.script letter from Sir George Gresley to Sir Thomas Puckering, Nov. 1632.
[242] Harl. MSS. 6. fo. 152.
ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS.
The satires and the comedies of the age have been consulted by the historian of our manners, and the features of the times have been traced from those amusing records of folly. Daines Barrinton enlarged this field of domestic history in his very entertaining ”Observations on the Statutes.” Another source, which to me seems not to have been explored, is the proclamations which have frequently issued from our sovereigns, and were produced by the exigencies of the times.
These proclamations or royal edicts in our country were never armed with the force of laws--only as they enforce the execution of laws already established; and the proclamation of a British monarch may become even an illegal act, if it be in opposition to the law of the land. Once, indeed, it was enacted under the arbitrary government of Henry the Eighth, by the sanction of a pusillanimous parliament, that the force of acts of parliament should be given to the king's proclamations; and at a much later period the chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, was willing to have advanced the king's proclamations into laws, on the sophistical maxim that ”all precedents had a time when they began;” but this chancellor argued ill, as he was told with spirit by Lord c.o.ke, in the presence of James the First,[243] who probably did not think so ill of the chancellor's logic. Blackstone, to whom on this occasion I could not fail to turn, observes, on the statute under Henry the Eighth, that it would have introduced the most despotic tyranny, and must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily repealed in the minority of his successor, whom he elsewhere calls an amiable prince--all our young princes, we discover, were amiable! Blackstone has not recorded the subsequent attempt of the lord chancellor under James the First, which tended to raise proclamations to the nature of an ukase of the autocrat of both the Russias. It seems that our national freedom, notwithstanding our ancient const.i.tution, has had several narrow escapes.
Royal proclamations, however, in their own nature are innocent enough; for since the manner, time, and circ.u.mstances of putting laws in execution must frequently be left to the discretion of the executive magistrate, a proclamation that is not adverse to existing laws need not create any alarm; the only danger they incur is that they seem never to have been attended to, and rather testified the wishes of the government than the compliance of the subjects. They were not laws, and were therefore considered as sermons or pamphlets, or anything forgotten in a week's time!
These proclamations are frequently alluded to by the letter-writers of the times among the news of the day, but usually their royal virtue hardly kept them alive beyond the week. Some on important subjects are indeed noticed in our history. Many indications of the situation of affairs, the feelings of the people, and the domestic history of our nation, may be drawn from these singular records. I have never found them to exist in any collected form, and they have been probably only accidentally preserved.[244]
The proclamations of every sovereign would characterize his reign, and open to us some of the interior operations of the cabinet. The despotic will, yet vacillating conduct of Henry the Eighth, towards the close of his reign, may be traced in a proclamation to abolish the translations of the scriptures, and even the reading of Bibles by the people; commanding all printers of English books and pamphlets to affix their names to them, and forbidding the sale of any English books printed abroad.[245] When the people were not suffered to publish their opinions at home, all the opposition flew to foreign presses, and their writings were then smuggled into the country in which they ought to have been printed. Hence, many volumes printed in a foreign type at this period are found in our collections. The king shrunk in dismay from that spirit of reformation which had only been a party business with him, and making himself a pope, decided that nothing should be learnt but what he himself deigned to teach!
The antipathies and jealousies which our populace too long indulged, by their incivilities to all foreigners, are characterised by a proclamation issued by Mary, commanding her subjects to behave themselves peaceably towards the strangers coming with King Philip; that n.o.blemen and gentlemen should warn their servants to refrain from ”strife and contention, either by outward deeds, taunting words, unseemly countenance, by mimicking them, &c.” The punishment not only ”her grace's displeasure, but to be committed to prison without bail or mainprise.”
The proclamations of Edward the Sixth curiously exhibit the unsettled state of the reformation, where the rites and ceremonies of Catholicism were still practised by the new religionists, while an opposite party, resolutely bent on an eternal separation from Rome, were avowing doctrines which afterwards consolidated themselves into puritanism, and while others were hatching up that demoralising fanaticism which subsequently shocked the nation with those monstrous sects, the indelible, disgrace of our country! In one proclamation the king denounces to the people ”those who despise the sacrament by calling it _idol_, or such other vile name.” Another is against such ”as innovate any ceremony,” and who are described as ”certain private preachers and other laiemen, who rashly attempt of _their own and singular wit and mind_, not only to persuade the people from the old and accustomed rites and ceremonies, but also themselves bring in _new and strange orders according to their phantasies_. The which, as it is an evident token of pride and arrogancy, so it tendeth both to confusion and disorder.”
Another proclamation, to press ”a G.o.dly conformity throughout his realm,” where we learn the following curious fact, of ”divers unlearned and indiscreet priests of a devilish mind and intent, teaching that a man may forsake his wife and marry another, his first wife yet living; likewise that the wife may do the same to the husband. Others, that a man may have _two wives or more_ at once, for that these things are not prohibited by G.o.d's law, but by the Bishop of Rome's law; so that by such evil and fantastical opinions some have not been afraid indeed to marry and keep _two wives_.” Here, as in the bud, we may unfold those subsequent scenes of our story which spread out in the following century; the branching out of the non-conformists into their various sects; and the indecent haste of our reformed priesthood, who, in their zeal to cast off the yoke of Rome, desperately submitted to the liberty of having ”two wives or more!” There is a proclamation to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days; exhorted on the principle, not only that ”men should abstain on those days, and forbear their pleasures and the meats wherein they have more delight, to the intent to subdue their bodies to the soul and spirit, but also for _worldly policy_. To use _fish_, for the benefit of the commonwealth, and profit of many who be _fishers_ and men using that trade, unto the which this realm, in every part environed with the seas, and so plentiful of fresh waters, be increased the nourishment of the land by saving flesh.” It did not seem to occur to the king in council that the butchers might have had cause to pet.i.tion against this monopoly of two days in the week granted to the fishmongers; and much less, that it was better to let the people eat flesh or fish as suited their conveniency. In respect to the religious rite itself, it was evidently not considered as an essential point of faith, since the king enforces it on the principle, ”for the profit and commodity of his realm.” Burnet has made a just observation on religious fasts.[246]
A proclamation against excess of apparel, in the reign of Elizabeth, and renewed many years after, shows the luxury of dress, which was indeed excessive.[247] There is a curious one against the _iconoclasts, or image-breakers and picture-destroyers_, for which the antiquary will hold her in high reverence. Her majesty informs us, that ”several persons, ignorant, malicious, or covetous, of late years, have spoiled and broken ancient monuments, erected only _to show a memory to posterity_, and not to nourish any kind of _superst.i.tion_.” The queen laments that what is broken and spoiled would be now hard to recover, but advises her good people to repair them; and commands them in future to desist from committing such injuries. A more extraordinary circ.u.mstance than the proclamation itself was the manifestation of her majesty's zeal, in subscribing her name with her own hand to every proclamation dispersed throughout England. These image-breakers first appeared in Elizabeth's reign; it was afterwards that they flourished in all the perfection of their handicraft, and have contrived that these monuments of art shall carry down to posterity the _memory of their_ SHAME _and of their age_. These image-breakers, so famous in our history, had already appeared under Henry the Eighth, and continued their practical zeal, in spite of proclamations and remonstrances, till they had accomplished their work. In 1641 an order was published by the Commons, that they should ”take away all scandalous pictures out of churches:” but more was intended than was expressed; and we are told that the people did not at first carry their barbarous practice against all Art to the lengths which they afterwards did, till they were instructed by _private information!_ Dowsing's Journal has been published, and shows what the _order_ meant! He was their giant destroyer! Such are the Machiavelian secrets of revolutionary governments; they give a _public_ order in moderate _words_, but the _secret_ one, for the _deeds_, is that of extermination! It was this sort of men who discharged their prisoners by giving a secret sign to lead them to their execution!
The proclamations of James the First, by their number, are said to have sunk their value with the people.[248] He was fond of giving them gentle advice; and it is said by Wilson that there was an intention to have this king's printed proclamations bound up in a volume, that better notice might be taken of the matters contained in them. There is more than one to warn the people against ”speaking too freely of matters above their reach,” prohibiting all ”undutiful speeches.” I suspect that many of these proclamations are the composition of the king's own hand; he was often his own secretary. There is an admirable one against private duels and challenges. The curious one respecting Cowell's ”Interpreter” is a sort of royal review of some of the arcana of state: I refer to the quotation.[249]
I will preserve a pa.s.sage of a proclamation ”against excess of lavish and licentious speech.” James was a king of words!