Chapter VII: Part 7

The most delightful songs of this nature would naturally be found among a people whose climate and whose labours alike inspire a general hilarity; and the vineyards of France have produced a class of songs, of excessive gaiety and freedom, called _Chansons de Vendange_. Le Grand-d'Assoucy describes them in his _Histoire de la Vie privée des Français_. "The men and women, each with a basket on their arm, assemble at the foot of the hill; there stopping, they arrange themselves in a circle. The chief of this band tunes up a joyous song, whose burthen is chorused: then they ascend, and, dispersed in the vineyard, they work without interrupting their tasks, while new couplets often resound from some of the vine-dressers; sometimes intermixed with a sudden jest at a traveller. In the evening, their supper scarcely over, their joy recommences, they dance in a circle, and sing some of those songs of free gaiety, which the moment excuses, known by the name of _vineyard songs_. The gaiety becomes general; masters, guests, friends, servants, all dance together; and in this manner a day of labour terminates, which one might mistake for a day of diversion. It is what I have witnessed in Champagne, in a land of vines, far different from the country where the labours of the harvest form so painful a contrast."

The extinction of those songs which formerly kept alive the gaiety of the domestic circle, whose burthens were always chorused, is lamented by the French antiquary. "Our fathers had a custom to amuse themselves at the dessert of a feast by a joyous song of this nature. Each in his turn sung--all chorused." This ancient gaiety was sometimes gross and noisy; but he prefers it to the tame decency of our times--these smiling, not laughing days of Lord Chesterfield.

On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui;
Et nos plaisirs sont voisins de l'ennui.

These are the old French _Vaudevilles_, formerly sung at meals by the company. Count de Grammont is mentioned by Hamilton as being

Agréable et vif en propos;
Célèbre diseur de bon mots,
_Recueil vivant d'antiques Vaudevilles_.

These _Vaudevilles_ were originally invented by a fuller of _Vau de Vire_, or the valley by the river _Vire_, and were sung by his men as they spread their cloths on the banks of the river. They were songs composed on some incident or adventure of the day. At first these gay playful effusions were called the songs of _Vau de Vire_, till they became known as _Vaudevilles_. Boileau has well described them:--

La liberté franchise en ses vers se déploie;
Cet enfant de plaisir veut naître dans la joie.

It is well known how the attempt ended, of James I. and his unfortunate son, by the publication of their "Book of Sports," to preserve the national character from the gloom of fanatical puritanism; among its unhappy effects there was however one not a little ludicrous. The Puritans, offended by the gentlest forms of mirth, and every day becoming more sullen, were so shocked at the simple merriment of the people, that they contrived to parody these songs into spiritual ones; and Shakspeare speaks of the Puritan of his day "singing psalms to hornpipes." As Puritans are the same in all times, the Methodists in our own repeated the foolery, and set their hymns to popular tunes and jigs, which one of them said "were too good for the devil." They have sung hymns to the air of "The beds of sweet roses," &c. Wesley once, in the pulpit, described himself, in his old age, in the well known ode of Anacreon, by merely substituting his own name![64] There have been Puritans among other people as well as our own: the same occurrence took place both in Italy and France. In Italy, the Carnival songs were turned into pious hymns; the hymn _Jesu fammi morire_ is sung to the music of _Vaga bella e gentile_--_Crucifisso a capo chino_ to that of _Una donna d'amor fino_, one of the most indecent pieces in the _Canzoni a ballo_; and the hymn beginning

Ecco 'l Messia
E la Madre Maria,

was sung to the gay tune of Lorenzo de' Medici,

Ben venga Maggio,
E 'l gonfalon selvaggio.

Athenæus notices what we call slang or flash songs. He tells us that there were poets who composed songs in the dialect of the mob; and who succeeded in this kind of poetry, adapted to their various characters. The French call such songs _Chansons à la Vadé_; the style of the _Poissardes_ is ludicrously applied to the gravest matters of state, and convey the popular feelings in the language of the populace. This sort of satirical song is happily defined,

Il est l'esprit de ceux qui n'en ont pas.

Athenæus has also preserved songs, sung by petitioners who went about on holidays to collect alms. A friend of mine, with taste and learning, has discovered in his researches "The Crow Song" and "The Swallow Song," and has transfused their spirit in a happy version. I preserve a few striking ideas.

The collectors for "The Crow" sung:

My good worthy masters, a pittance bestow,
Some oatmeal, or barley, or wheat for _the Crow_.
A loaf, or a penny, or e'en what you will;--
From the poor man, a grain of his salt may suffice,
For your Crow swallows all, and is not over-nice.
And the man who can now give his grain, and no more,
May another day give from a plentiful store.--
Come, my lad, to the door, Plutus nods to our wish,
And our sweet little mistress comes out with a dish;
She gives us her figs, and she gives us a smile--
Heaven send her a husband!--
And a boy to be danced on his grandfather's knee,
And a girl like herself all the joy of her mother,
Who may one day present her with just such another.
Thus we carry our Crow-song to door after door,
Alternately chanting we ramble along,
And we treat all who give, or give not, with a song.

Swallow-singing, or Chelidonising, as the Greek term is, was another method of collecting eleemosynary gifts, which took place in the month Boedromion, or August.

The Swallow, the Swallow is here,
With his back so black, and his belly so white,
He brings on the pride of the year,
With the gay months of love, and the days of delight.
Come bring out your good humming stuff,
Of the nice tit-bits let the Swallow partake;
And a slice of the right Boedromion cake.
So give, and give quickly,--
Or we'll pull down the door from its hinges:
Or we'll steal young madam away!
But see! we're a merry boy's party,
And the Swallow, the Swallow is here!

These songs resemble those of our own ancient mummers, who to this day, in honour of Bishop Blaize, the Saint of Woolcombers, go about chanting on the eves of their holidays.[65] A custom long existed in this country to elect a Boy-Bishop in almost every parish;[66] the Montem at Eton still prevails for the Boy-Captain; and there is a closer connexion, perhaps, between the custom which produced the "Songs of the Crow and the Swallow," and our Northern mummeries, than may be at first suspected. The Pagan Saturnalia, which the Swallow song by its pleasant menaces resembles, were afterwards disguised in the forms adopted by the early Christians; and such are the remains of the Roman Catholic religion, in which the people were long indulged in their old taste for mockery and mummery. I must add in connexion with our main inquiry, that our own ancient beggars had their songs, in their old cant language, some of which are as old as the Elizabethan period, and many are fancifully characteristic of their habits and their feelings.

INTRODUCERS OF EXOTIC FLOWERS, FRUITS, ETC.

There has been a class of men whose patriotic affection, or whose general benevolence, have been usually defrauded of the gratitude their country owes them: these have been the introducers of new flowers, new plants, and new roots into Europe; the greater part which we now enjoy was drawn from the luxuriant climates of Asia, and the profusion which now covers our land originated in the most anxious nursing, and were the gifts of individuals. Monuments are reared, and medals struck, to commemorate events and names, which are less deserving our regard than those who have transplanted into the colder gardens of the North the rich fruits, the beautiful flowers, and the succulent pulse and roots of more favoured spots; and carrying into their own country, as it were, another Nature, they have, as old Gerard well expresses it, "laboured with the soil to make it fit for the plants, and with the plants to make them delight in the soil."

There is no part of the characters of PEIRESC and EVELYN, accomplished as they are in so many, which seems more delightful to me, than their enthusiasm for the garden, the orchard, and the forest.

PEIRESC, whose literary occupations admitted of no interruption, and whose universal correspondence throughout the habitable globe was more than sufficient to absorb his studious life, yet was the first man, as Gassendus relates in his interesting manner, whose incessant inquiries procured a great variety of jessamines; those from China, whose leaves, always green, bear a clay-coloured flower, and a delicate perfume; the American, with a crimson-coloured, and the Persian, with a violet-coloured flower; and the Arabian, whose tendrils he delighted to train over "the banqueting-house in his garden;" and of fruits, the orange-trees with a red and parti-coloured flower; the medlar; the rough cherry without stone; the rare and luxurious vines of Smyrna and Damascus; and the fig-tree called Adam's, whose fruit by its size was conjectured to be that with which the spies returned from the land of Canaan. Gassendus describes the transports of Peiresc, when, the sage beheld the Indian ginger growing green in his garden, and his delight in grafting the myrtle on the musk vine, that the experiment might show us the myrtle wine of the ancients. But transplanters, like other inventors, are sometimes baffled in their delightful enterprises; and we are told of Peiresc's deep regret when he found that the Indian cocoa-nut would only bud, and then perish in the cold air of France, while the leaves of the Egyptian papyrus refused to yield him their vegetable paper. But it was his garden which propagated the exotic fruits and flowers, which he transplanted into the French king's, and into Cardinal Barberini's, and the curious in Europe; and these occasioned a work on the manuring of flowers by Ferrarius, a botanical Jesuit, who there described these novelties to Europe.

Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his "Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees," his name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in the dedication to Charles II. prefixed to one of the later editions. "I need not acquaint your majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement." And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the "Sylva" of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who, casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted!

Animated by a zeal truly patriotic, De Serres in France, 1599, composed a work on the art of raising silk-worms, and dedicated it to the municipal body of Paris, to excite the inhabitants to cultivate mulberry-trees. The work at first produced a strong sensation, and many planted mulberry-trees in the vicinity of Paris; but as they were not yet used to raise and manage the silk-worm, they reaped nothing but their trouble for their pains. They tore up the mulberry-trees they had planted, and, in spite of De Serres, asserted that the northern climate was not adapted for the rearing of that tender insect. The great Sully, from his hatred of all objects of luxury, countenanced the popular clamour, and crushed the rising enterprise of De Serres. The monarch was wiser than the minister. The book had made sufficient noise to reach the ear of Henry IV.; who desired the author to draw up a memoir on the subject, from which the king was induced to plant mulberry-trees in all the royal gardens; and having imported the eggs of silk-worms from Spain, this patriotic monarch gave up his orangeries, which he considered but as his private gratification, for that leaf which, converted into silk, became a part of the national wealth. It is to De Serres, who introduced the plantations of mulberry-trees, that the commerce of France owes one of her staple commodities; and although the patriot encountered the hostility of the prime minister, and the hasty prejudices of the populace in his own day, yet his name at this moment is fresh in the hearts of his fellow-citizens; for I have just received a medal, the gift of a literary friend from Paris, which bears his portrait, with the reverse, "_Société de Agriculture du Département de la Seine_." It was struck in 1807. The same honour is the right of Evelyn from the British nation.

There was a period when the spirit of plantation was prevalent in this kingdom; it probably originated from the ravages of the soldiery during the civil wars. A man, whose retired modesty has perhaps obscured his claims on our regard, the intimate friend of the great spirits of that age, by birth a Pole, but whose mother had probably been an Englishwoman, Samuel Hartlib, to whom Milton addressed his tract on education, published every manuscript he collected on the subjects of horticulture and agriculture. The public good he effected attracted the notice of Cromwell, who rewarded him with a pension, which after the restoration of Charles II. was suffered to lapse, and Hartlib died in utter neglect and poverty. One of his tracts is "A design for plenty by an universal planting of fruit-trees." The project consisted in inclosing the waste lands and commons, and appointing officers, whom he calls fruiterers, or wood-wards, to see the plantations were duly attended to. The writer of this project observes on fruits, that it is a sort of provisions so natural to the taste, that the poor man and even the child will prefer it before better food, "as the story goeth," which he has preserved in these ancient and simple lines:--

The poor man's child invited was to dine,
With flesh of oxen, sheep, and fatted swine,
(Far better cheer than he at home could find,)
And yet this child to stay had little minde.
"You have," quoth he, "no apple, froise, nor pie,
Stewed pears, with bread and milk, and walnuts by."

The enthusiasm of these transplanters inspired their labours. They have watched the tender infant of their planting, till the leaf and the flowers and the fruit expanded under their hand; often indeed they have ameliorated the quality, increased the size, and even created a new species. The apricot, drawn from America, was first known in Europe in the sixteenth century: an old French writer has remarked, that it was originally not larger than a damson; our gardeners, he says, have improved it to the perfection of its present size and richness. One of these enthusiasts is noticed by Evelyn, who for forty years had in vain tried by a graft to bequeath his name to a new fruit; but persisting on wrong principles this votary of Pomona has died without a name. We sympathise with Sir William Temple when he exultingly acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to have equalled those of Fontainebleau and Gascony, while the Italians agreed that his white figs were as good as any of that sort in Italy; and of his "having had the honour" to naturalise in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distributions of cuttings from them, because "he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are the better."

The greater number of our exotic flowers and fruits were carefully transported into this country by many of our travelled nobility and gentry;[67] some names have been casually preserved. The learned Linacre first brought, on his return from Italy, the damask rose; and Thomas Lord Cornwall, in the reign of Henry VIII., enriched our fruit gardens with three different plums. In the reign of Elizabeth, Edward Grindal, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, returning from exile, transported here the medicinal plant of the tamarisk: the first oranges appear to have been brought into England by one of the Carew family; for a century after, they still flourished at the family seat at Beddington, in Surrey. The cherry orchards of Kent were first planted about Sittingbourne, by a gardener of Henry VIII.; and the currant-bush was transplanted when our commerce with the island of Zante was first opened in the same reign. The elder Tradescant, in 1620, entered himself on board of a privateer, armed against Morocco, solely with a view of finding an opportunity of stealing apricots into Britain: and it appears that he succeeded in his design. To Sir Walter Raleigh we have not been indebted solely for the luxury of the tobacco-plant, but for that infinitely useful root, which forms a part of our daily meal, and often the entire meal of the poor man--the potato, which deserved to have been called a _Rawleigh_. Sir Anthony Ashley, of Winburne St. Giles, Dorsetshire, first planted cabbages in this country, and a cabbage at his feet appears on his monument: before his time we had them from Holland. Sir Richard Weston first brought clover grass into England from Flanders, in 1645; and the figs planted by Cardinal Pole at Lambeth, so far back as the reign of Henry VIII., are said to be still remaining there: nor is this surprising, for Spilman, who set up the first paper-mill in England, at Dartford, in 1590, is said to have brought over in his portmanteau the two first lime-trees, which he planted here, and which are still growing. The Lombardy poplar was introduced into England by the Earl of Rochford, in 1758. The first mulberry-trees in this country are now standing at Sion-house. By an Harleian MS. 6884, we find that the first general planting of mulberries and making of silk in England was by William Stallenge, comptroller of the custom-house, and Monsieur Verton, in 1608. It is probable that Monsieur Verton transplanted this novelty from his own country, where we have seen De Serres' great attempt. Here the mulberries have succeeded better than the silk-worms.

The very names of many of our vegetable kingdom indicate their locality, from the majestic cedar of Lebanon, to the small Cos-lettuce, which came from the isle of Cos; the cherries from Cerasuntis, a city of Pontus; the peach, or _persicum_, or _mala Persica_, Persian apples, from Persia; the pistachio, or _psittacia_, is the Syrian word for that nut. The chestnut, or _chataigne_ in French, and _castagna_ in Italian, from Castagna, a town of Magnesia. Our plums coming chiefly from Syria and Damascus, the damson, or damascene plum, reminds us of its distant origin.

It is somewhat curious to observe on this subject, that there exists an unsuspected intercourse between nations, in the propagation of exotic plants. Lucullus, after the war with Mithridates, introduced cherries from Pontus into Italy; and the newly-imported fruit was found so pleasing, that it was rapidly propagated, and six-and twenty years afterwards Pliny testifies the cherry-tree passed over into Britain. Thus a victory obtained by a Roman consul over a king of Pontus, with which it would seem that Britain could not have the remotest interest, was the real occasion of our countrymen possessing cherry-orchards. Yet to our shame must it be told, that these cherries from the king of Pontus's city of Cerasuntis are not the cherries we are now eating; for the whole race of cherry-trees was lost in the Saxon period, and was only restored by the gardener of Henry VIII., who brought them from Flanders--without a word to enhance his own merits, concerning the _bellum Mithridaticum_!

A calculating political economist will little sympathise with the peaceful triumphs of those active and generous spirits, who have thus propagated the truest wealth, and the most innocent luxuries of the people. The project of a new tax, or an additional consumption of ardent spirits, or an act of parliament to put a convenient stop to population by forbidding the banns of some happy couple, would be more congenial to their researches; and they would leave without regret the names of those whom we have held out to the grateful recollections of their country. The Romans, who, with all their errors, were at least patriots, entertained very different notions of these introducers into their country of exotic fruits and flowers. Sir William Temple has elegantly noticed the fact. "The great captains, and even consular men, who first brought them over, took pride in giving them their own names, by which they ran a great while in Rome, as in memory of some great service or pleasure they had done their country; so that not only laws and battles, but several sorts of apples and pears, were called Manlian and Claudian, Pompeyan and Tiberian, and by several other such noble names." Pliny has paid his tribute of applause to Lucullus, for bringing cherry and nut-trees from Pontus into Italy. And we have several modern instances, where the name of the transplanter, or rearer, has been preserved in this sort of creation. Peter Collinson, the botanist, to "whom the English gardens are indebted for many new and curious species which he acquired by means of an extensive correspondence in America," was highly gratified when Linnæus baptized a plant with his name; and with great spirit asserts his honourable claim: "Something, I think, was due to me for the great number of plants and seeds I have annually procured from abroad, and you have been so good as to pay it, by giving me a species of eternity, botanically speaking; that is, a name as long as men and books endure." Such is the true animating language of these patriotic enthusiasts!

Some lines at the close of Peacham's Emblems give an idea of an English fruit-garden in 1612. He mentions that cherries were not long known,[68] and gives an origin to the name of filbert.

The Persian Peach, and fruitful Quince;[69]
And there the forward Almond grew,
With Cherries knowne no longer time since;
The Winter Warden, orchard's pride;
The _Philibert_[70] that loves the vale,
And red queen apple,[71] so envide
Of school-boies, passing by the pale.

USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

A person whose history will serve as a canvass to exhibit some scenes of the arts of the money-trader was one AUDLEY, a lawyer, and a great practical philosopher, who concentrated his vigorous faculties in the science of the relative value of money. He flourished through the reigns of James I., Charles I., and held a lucrative office in the "court of wards," till that singular court was abolished at the time of the Restoration.[72] In his own times he was called "The great Audley," an epithet so often abused, and here applied to the creation of enormous wealth. But there are minds of great capacity, concealed by the nature of their pursuits; and the wealth of Audley may be considered as the cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, and which, had it been thrown into a nobler sphere of action, the "greatness" would have been less ambiguous.

Audley lived at a time when divines were proclaiming "the detestable sin of Usury," prohibited by God and man; but the Mosaic prohibition was the municipal law of an agricultural commonwealth, which being without trade, the general poverty of its members could afford no interest for loans; but it was not forbidden the Israelite to take usury from "the stranger." Or they were quoting from the Fathers, who understood this point, much as they had that of "original sin," and "the immaculate conception;" while the scholastics amused themselves with a quaint and collegiate fancy which they had picked up in Aristotle, that interest for money had been forbidden by nature, because coin in itself was barren and unpropagating, unlike corn, of which every grain will produce many. But Audley considered no doubt that money was not incapable of multiplying itself, provided it was in hands which knew to make it grow and "breed," as Shylock affirmed. The lawyers then, however, did not agree with the divines, nor the college philosophers; they were straining at a more liberal interpretation of this odious term "Usury." Lord Bacon declared, that the suppression of Usury is only fit for an Utopian government; and Audley must have agreed with the learned Cowell, who in his "Interpreter" derives the term ab _usu_ et _ære_, quasi _usu æra_, which in our vernacular style was corrupted into _Usury_. Whatever the _sin_ might be in the eye of some, it had become at least a _controversial sin_, as Sir Symonds D'Ewes calls it, in his manuscript Diary, who, however, was afraid to commit it.[73] Audley, no doubt, considered that _interest_ was nothing more than _rent_ for _money_; as _rent_ was no better than _Usury_ for _land_. The legal interest was then "ten in the hundred;" but the thirty, the fifty, and the hundred for the hundred, the gripe of Usury, and the shameless contrivances of the money-traders, these he would attribute to the follies of others, or to his own genius.

This sage on the wealth of nations, with his pithy wisdom and quaint sagacity, began with two hundred pounds, and lived to view his mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments so numerous, that it was observed his papers would have made a good map of England. A contemporary dramatist, who copied from life, has opened the chamber of such an Usurer,--perhaps of our Audley.

---- Here lay
A manor bound fast in a skin of parchment,
The wax continuing hard, the acres melting;
Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town,
If not redeem'd this day, which is not in
The unthrift's power; there being scarce one shire
In Wales or England, where my monies are not
Lent out at usury, the certain hook
To draw in more.
MASSINGER'S _City Madam_.

This genius of thirty per cent. first had proved the decided vigour of his mind, by his enthusiastic devotion to his law-studies: deprived of the leisure for study through his busy day, he stole the hours from his late nights and his early mornings; and without the means to procure a law-library, he invented a method to possess one without the cost; as far as he learned, he taught, and by publishing some useful tracts on temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library. He appears never to have read a book without its furnishing him with some new practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own particular advantage. Such devoted studies was the way to become a lord-chancellor; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that of a money-trader.

When yet but a clerk to the Clerk in the Counter, frequent opportunities occurred which Audley knew how to improve. He became a money-trader as he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to furnish him with a trading capital. The fertility of his genius appeared in expedients and in quick contrivances. He was sure to be the friend of all men falling out. He took a deep concern in the affairs of his master's clients, and often much more than they were aware of. No man so ready at procuring bail or compounding debts. This was a considerable traffic then, as now. They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was required, and contrived to give false addresses, which is now called leg-bail. They dressed themselves out for the occasion; a great seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper gilt, and they often assumed the name of some person of good credit. Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landowners, with their treble amount secured on their estates. The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon entangled in the usurer's nets; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended in Audley's obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at all times out-knave a knave. One of these incidents has been preserved. A draper, of no honest reputation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of £200, Audley bought the debt at £40, for which the draper immediately offered him £50. But Audley would not consent, unless the draper indulged a sudden whim of his own: this was a formal contract, that the draper should pay within twenty years, upon twenty certain days, a penny doubled. A knave, in haste to sign, is no calculator; and, as the contemporary dramatist describes one of the arts of those citizens, one part of whose business was

To swear and break: they all grow rich by breaking!

the draper eagerly compounded. He afterwards "grew rich." Audley, silently watching his victim, within two years, claims his doubled pennies, every month during twenty months. The pennies had now grown up to pounds. The knave perceived the trick, and preferred paying the forfeiture of his bond for £500, rather than to receive the visitation of all the little generation of compound interest in the last descendant of £2000, which would have closed with the draper's shop. The inventive genius of Audley might have illustrated that popular tract of his own times, Peacham's "Worth of a Penny;" a gentleman who, having scarcely one left, consoled himself by detailing the numerous comforts of life it might procure in the days of Charles II.

Such petty enterprises at length assumed a deeper cast of interest. He formed temporally partnerships with the stewards of country gentlemen. They underlet estates which they had to manage; and anticipating the owner's necessities, the estates in due time became cheap purchases for Audley and the stewards. He usually contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers pay for the goose." He had, however, such a tenderness of conscience for his victim, that, having plucked the live feathers before he sent the unfledged goose on the common, he would bestow a gratuitous lecture in his own science--teaching the art of making them grow again, by showing how to raise the remaining rents. Audley thus made the tenant furnish at once the means to satisfy his own rapacity, and his employer's necessities. His avarice was not working by a blind, but on an enlightened principle; for he was only enabling the landlord to obtain what the tenant, with due industry, could afford to give. Adam Smith might have delivered himself in the language of old Audley, so just was his standard of the value of rents. "Under an easy landlord," said Audley, "a tenant seldom thrives; contenting himself to make the just measure of his rents, and not labouring for any surplusage of estate. Under a hard one, the tenant revenges himself upon the land, and runs away with the rent. I would raise my rents to the present price of all commodities: for if we should let our lands, as other men have done before us, now other wares daily go on in price, we should fall backward in our estates." These axioms of political economy were discoveries in his day.

Audley knew mankind practically, and struck into their humours with the versatility of genius: oracularly deep with the grave, he only stung the lighter mind. When a lord borrowing money complained to Audley of his exactions, his lordship exclaimed, "What, do you not intend to use a conscience?" "Yes, I intend hereafter to use it. We moneyed people must balance accounts: if you do not pay me, you cheat me; but, if you do, then I cheat your lordship." Audley's moneyed conscience balanced the risk of his lordship's honour against the probability of his own rapacious profits. When he resided in the Temple among those "pullets without feathers," as an old writer describes the brood, the good man would pule out paternal homilies on improvident youth, grieving that they, under pretence of "learning the law, only learnt to be lawless;" and "never knew by their own studies the process of an execution, till it was served on themselves." Nor could he fail in his prophecy; for at the moment that the stoic was enduring their ridicule, his agents were supplying them with the certain means of verifying it. It is quaintly said, he had his _decoying_ as well as his _decaying_ gentlemen.

The arts practised by the money-traders of that time have been detailed by one of the town-satirists of the age. Decker, in his "English Villanies," has told the story: we may observe how an old story contains many incidents which may be discovered in a modern one. The artifice of covering the usury by a pretended purchase and sale of certain wares, even now practised, was then at its height.

In _Measure for Measure_ we find,

"Here's young Master Rash, he's in for a commodity of _brown
paper and old ginger_, nine score and seventeen pounds; of
which he made five marks ready money."

The eager "gull," for his immediate wants, takes at an immense price any goods on credit, which he immediately resells for less than half the cost; and when despatch presses, the vender and the purchaser have been the same person, and the "brown paper and old ginger" merely nominal.[74]

The whole displays a complete system of dupery, and the agents were graduated. "The Manner of undoing Gentlemen by taking up of Commodities," is the title of a chapter in "English Villanies." The "warren" is the cant term which describes the whole party; but this requires a word of explanation.

It is probable that rabbit-warrens were numerous about the metropolis, a circumstance which must have multiplied the poachers. Moffet, who wrote on diet in the reign of Elizabeth, notices their plentiful supply "for the poor's maintenance."--I cannot otherwise account for the appellatives given to sharpers, and the terms of cheatery being so familiarly drawn from a rabbit-warren; not that even in that day these cant terms travelled far out of their own circle; for Robert Greene mentions a trial in which the judges, good simple men! imagined that the coney-catcher at the bar was a warrener, or one who had the care of a warren.

The cant term of "warren" included the young coneys, or half-ruined prodigals of that day, with the younger brothers, who had accomplished their ruin; these naturally herded together, as the pigeon and the black-leg of the present day. The coney-catchers were those who raised a trade on their necessities. To be "conie-catched" was to be cheated. The warren forms a combination altogether, to attract some novice, who in _esse_ or in _posse_ has his present means good, and those to come great; he is very glad to learn how money can be raised. The warren seek after a _tumbler_, a sort of hunting dog; and the nature of a London tumbler was to "hunt dry-foot," in this manner:--"The tumbler is let loose, and runs snuffing up and down in the shops of mercers, goldsmiths, drapers, haberdashers, to meet with a _ferret_, that is, a citizen who is ready to sell a commodity." The tumbler in his first course usually returned in despair, pretending to have out-wearied himself by hunting, and swears that the city ferrets are so coaped (that is, have their lips stitched up close) that he can't get them to open to so great a sum as £500, which the warren wants. "This herb being chewed down by the rabbit-suckers, almost kills their hearts. It irritates their appetite, and they keenly bid the tumbler, if he can't fasten on plate, or cloth, or silks, to lay hold of _brown paper_, _Bartholomew babies_, _lute-strings_, or _hob-nails_. It hath been verily reported," says Decker, "that one gentleman of great hopes took up £100 in hobby-horses, and sold them for £30; and £16 in joints of mutton and quarters of lamb, ready roasted, and sold them for three pounds." Such commodities were called _purse-nets_.--The tumbler, on his second hunt, trots up and down again; and at last lights on a _ferret_ that will deal: the names are given in to a scrivener, who inquires whether they are good men, and finds four out of the five are wind-shaken, but the fifth is an oak that can bear the hewing. "Bonds are sealed, commodities delivered, and the tumbler fetches his second career; and their credit having obtained the purse-nets, the wares must now obtain money." The _tumbler_ now hunts for the _rabbit suckers_, those who buy these _purse-nets_; but the _rabbit-suckers_ seem greater devils than the _ferrets_, for they always bid under; and after many exclamations the _warren_ is glad that the seller should repurchase his own commodities for ready money, at thirty or fifty _per cent._ under the cost. The story does not finish till we come to the manner "How the warren is spoiled." I shall transcribe this part of the narrative in the lively style of this town writer. "While there is any grass to nibble upon, the rabbits are there; but on the cold day of repayment they retire into their caves; so that when the _ferret_ makes account of _five_ in chase, four disappear. Then he grows fierce, and tears open his own jaws to suck blood from him that is left. Serjeants, marshalmen, and bailiffs are sent forth, who lie scenting at every corner, and with terrible paws haunt every walk. The bird is seized upon by these hawks, his estate looked into, his wings broken, his lands made over to a stranger. He pays £500, who never had but £60, or to prison; or he seals any bond, mortgages any lordship, does anything, yields anything. A little way in, he cares not how far he wades; the greater his possessions are, the apter he is to take up and to be trusted--thus gentlemen are _ferretted_ and undone!" It is evident that the whole system turns on the single novice; those who join him in his bonds are stalking horses; the whole was to begin and to end with the single individual, the great coney of the warren. Such was the nature of those "commodities" to which Massinger and Shakspeare allude, and which the modern dramatist may exhibit in his comedy, and be still sketching after life.

Another scene, closely connected with the present, will complete the picture. "The Ordinaries" of those days were the lounging places of the men of the town, and the "fantastic gallants," who herded together.[75] Ordinaries were the "exchange for news," the echoing places for all sorts of town-talk: there they might hear of the last new play and poem, and the last fresh widow, who was sighing for some knight to make her a lady; these resorts were attended also "to save charges of housekeeping." The reign of James I. is characterised by all the wantonness of prodigality among one class, and all the penuriousness and rapacity in another, which met in the dissolute indolence of a peace of twenty years. But a more striking feature in these "Ordinaries" showed itself as soon as "the voyder had cleared the table." Then began "the shuffling and cutting on one side, and the bones rattling on the other." The "Ordinarie," in fact, was a gambling-house, like those now expressively termed "Hells," and I doubt if the present "Infernos" exceed the whole _diablerie_ of our ancestors.

In the former scene of sharping they derived their cant terms from a rabbit-warren, but in the present their allusions partly relate to an aviary, and truly the proverb suited them, "of birds of a feather." Those who first propose to sit down to play are called the _leaders_; the ruined gamesters are the _forlorn-hope_; the great winner is the _eagle_; a stander-by, who encourages, by little ventures himself, the freshly-imported gallant, who is called the _gull_, is the _wood-pecker_; and a monstrous bird of prey, who is always hovering round the table, is the _gull-groper_, who, at a pinch, is the benevolent Audley of the Ordinary.

There was, besides, one other character of an original cast, apparently the friend of none of the party, and yet in fact, "the Atlas which supported the Ordinarie on his shoulders:" he was sometimes significantly called the _impostor_.

The _gull_ is a young man whose father, a citizen or a squire, just dead, leaves him "ten or twelve thousand pounds in ready money, besides some hundreds a-year." Scouts are sent out, and lie in ambush for him; they discover what "apothecarie's shop he resorts to every morning, or in what tobacco-shop in Fleet-street he takes a pipe of smoke in the afternoon;" the usual resorts of the loungers of that day. Some sharp wit of the Ordinarie, a pleasant fellow, whom Robert Greene calls the "taker-up," one of universal conversation, lures the heir of seven hundred a-year to "The Ordinarie." A _gull_ sets the whole aviary in spirits; and Decker well describes the flutter of joy and expectation: "The _leaders_ maintained themselves brave; the _forlorn-hope_, that drooped before, doth now gallantly come on; the _eagle_ feathers his nest; the _wood-pecker_ picks up the crumbs; the _gull-groper_ grows fat with good feeding; and the _gull_ himself, at whom every one has a pull, hath in the end scarce feathers to keep his back warm."

During the _gull's_ progress through Primero and Gleek,[76] he wants for no admirable advice and solemn warnings from two excellent friends; the _gull-groper_, and at length, the _impostor_. The _gull-groper_, who knows, "to half an acre," all his means, takes the _gull_ when out of luck to a side-window, and in a whisper talks of "dice being made of women's bones, which would cozen any man:" but he pours his gold on the board; and a bond is rapturously signed for the next quarter-day. But the _gull-groper_, by a variety of expedients, avoids having the bond duly discharged; he contrives to get a judgment, and a serjeant with his mace procures the forfeiture of the bond; the treble value. But the "impostor" has none of the milkiness of the "_gull-groper_"--he looks for no favour under heaven from any man; he is bluff with all the Ordinarie; he spits at random; jingles his spurs into any man's cloak; and his "humour" is, to be a devil of a dare-all. All fear him as the tyrant they must obey. The tender _gull_ trembles, and admires this roysterer's valour. At length the devil he feared becomes his champion; and the poor _gull_, proud of his intimacy, hides himself under this _eagle's_ wings.

The _impostor_ sits close by his elbow, takes a partnership in his game, furnishes the stakes when out of luck, and in truth does not care how fast the gull loses; for a twirl of his mustachio, a tip of his nose, or a wink of his eye, drives all the losses of the gull into the profits of the grand confederacy at the Ordinarie. And when the impostor has fought the gull's quarrels many a time, at last he kicks up the table; and the gull sinks himself into the class of the forlorn-hope; he lives at the mercy of his late friends the gull-groper and the impostor, who send him out to lure some tender bird in feather.

Such were the _hells_ of our ancestors, from which our worthies might take a lesson; and the "warren" in which the Audleys were the conie-catchers.

But to return to our Audley; this philosophical usurer never pressed hard for his debts; like the fowler, he never shook his nets lest he might startle, satisfied to have them, without appearing to hold them. With great fondness he compared his "bonds to infants, which battle best by sleeping." To battle is to be nourished, a term still retained at the University of Oxford. His familiar companions were all subordinate actors in the great piece he was performing; he too had his part in the scene. When not taken by surprise, on his table usually lay open a great Bible, with Bishop Andrews's folio Sermons, which often gave him an opportunity of railing at the covetousness of the clergy; declaring their religion was "a mere preach," and that "the time would never be well till we had Queen Elizabeth's Protestants again in fashion." He was aware of all the evils arising out of a population beyond the means of subsistence, and dreaded an inundation of men, spreading like the spawn of cod. Hence he considered marriage, with a modern political economist, as very dangerous; bitterly censuring the clergy, whose children, he said, never thrived, and whose widows were left destitute. An apostolical life, according to Audley, required only books, meat, and drink, to be had for fifty pounds a year! Celibacy, voluntary poverty, and all the mortifications of a primitive Christian, were the virtues practised by this puritan among his money bags.

Yet Audley's was that worldly wisdom which derives all its strength from the weaknesses of mankind. Everything was to be obtained by stratagem; and it was his maxim, that to grasp our object the faster, we must go a little round about it. His life is said to have been one of intricacies and mysteries, using indirect means in all things; but if he walked in a labyrinth, it was to bewilder others; for the clue was still in his own hand; all he sought was that his designs should not be discovered by his actions. His word, we are told, was his bond; his hour was punctual; and his opinions were compressed and weighty: but if he was true to his bond-word, it was only a part of the system to give facility to the carrying on of his trade, for he was not strict to his honour; the pride of victory, as well as the passion for acquisition, combined in the character of Audley, as in more tremendous conquerors. His partners dreaded the effects of his law-library, and usually relinquished a claim rather than stand a latent suit against a quibble. When one menaced him by showing some money-bags, which he had resolved to empty in law against him, Audley then in office in the court of wards, with a sarcastic grin, asked "Whether the bags had any bottom?" "Ay!" replied the exulting possessor, striking them. "In that case, I care not," retorted the cynical officer of the court of wards; "for in this court I have a constant spring; and I cannot spend in other courts more than I gain in this." He had at once the meanness which would evade the law, and the spirit which could resist it.

The genius of Audley had crept out of the purlieus of Guildhall, and entered the Temple; and having often sauntered at "Powles" down the great promenade which was reserved for "Duke Humphrey and his guests,"[77] he would turn into that part called "The Usurer's Alley," to talk with "Thirty in the hundred," and at length was enabled to purchase his office at that remarkable institution, the court of wards. The entire fortunes of those whom we now call wards in chancery were in the hands, and often submitted to the arts or the tyranny of the officers of this court.

When Audley was asked the value of this new office, he replied, that "It might be worth some thousands of pounds to him who after his death would instantly go to heaven; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory: and nobody knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thousand pounds he left behind him, how can a sceptical biographer decide? Audley seems ever to have been weak when temptation was strong.

Some saving qualities, however, were mixed with the vicious ones he liked best. Another passion divided dominion with the sovereign one: Audley's strongest impressions of character were cast in the old law-library of his youth, and the pride of legal reputation was not inferior in strength to the rage for money. If in the "court of wards" he pounced on incumbrances which lay on estates, and prowled about to discover the craving wants of their owners, it appears that he also received liberal fees from the relatives of young heirs, to protect them from the rapacity of some great persons, but who could not certainly exceed Audley in subtilty. He was an admirable lawyer, for he was not satisfied with _hearing_, but _examining_ his clients; which he called "pinching the cause where he perceived it was foundered." He made two observations on clients and lawyers, which have not lost their poignancy. "Many clients in telling their case, rather plead than relate it, so that the advocate heareth not the true state of it, till opened by the adverse party. Some lawyers seem to keep an assurance-office in their chambers, and will warrant any cause brought unto them, knowing that if they fail, they lose nothing but what was lost long since--their credit."

The career of Audley's ambition closed with the extinction of the "court of wards," by which he incurred the loss of above £100,000. On that occasion he observed that "His ordinary losses were as the shavings of his beard, which only grew the faster by them; but the loss of this place was like the cutting off of a member, which was irrecoverable." The hoary usurer pined at the decline of his genius, discoursed on the vanity of the world, and hinted at retreat. A facetious friend told him a story of an old rat, who having acquainted the young rats that he would at length retire to his hole, desiring none to come near him; their curiosity, after some days, led them to venture to look into the hole; and there they discovered the old rat sitting in the midst of a rich Parmesan cheese. The loss of the last £100,000 may have disturbed his digestion, for he did not long survive his court of wards.

Such was this man, converting wisdom into cunning, invention into trickery, and wit into cynicism. Engaged in no honourable cause, he however showed a mind resolved; making plain the crooked and involved path he trod. _Sustine et abstine_, to bear and forbear, was the great principle of Epictetus, and our moneyed Stoic bore all the contempt and hatred of the living smilingly, while he forbore all the consolations of our common nature to obtain his end. He died in unblest celibacy,--and thus he received the curses of the living for his rapine, while the stranger who grasped the million he had raked together owed him no gratitude at his death.

CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.

I have already drawn a picture of Jewish history in our country; the present is a companion-piece, exhibiting a Roman Catholic one.

The domestic history of our country awakens our feelings far more than the public. In the one, we recognise ourselves as men; in the other, we are nothing but politicians. The domestic history is, indeed, entirely involved in the fate of the public; and our opinions are regulated according to the different countries, and by the different ages we live in; yet systems of politics, and modes of faith, are, for the individual, but the chance occurrences of human life, usually found in the cradle and laid in the grave: it is only the herd of mankind, or their artful leaders, who fight and curse one another with so much sincerity. Amidst these intestine struggles, or, perhaps, when they have ceased, and our hearts are calm, we perceive the eternal force of nature acting on humanity; then the heroic virtues and private sufferings of persons engaged in an opposite cause, and acting on different principles than our own, appeal to our sympathy, and even excite our admiration. A philosopher, born a Roman Catholic, assuredly could commemorate many a pathetic history of some heroic Huguenot; while we, with the same feeling in our heart, discover a romantic and chivalrous band of Catholics.

Chidiock Titchbourne is a name which appears in the conspiracy of Anthony Babington against Elizabeth, and the history of this accomplished young man may enter into the romance of real life. Having discovered two interesting domestic documents relative to him, I am desirous of preserving a name and a character which have such claims on our sympathy.