A Short History of Social Life in England/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
Circa 1660—1688
THE RESTORATION
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
WHEN Charles II., the Merry Monarch, came to his own again in 1660 and once more occupied the throne of his ancestors, the whole country burst into unrestrained joy. But if Englishmen had eleven years previously swept away a Court and its vices, they now had unwittingly restored a Court with worse vices. Deplorable indeed were the morals of the newly-restored Court. The age was one of "coarse wit and loud laughter, of clever talk, of dancing, duelling, dining, theatre-going, card-playing, horse-racing, and of amusement raised to the dignity of a fine art." Passions sternly repressed by the Puritans burst forth unrestrained as soon as the check was withdrawn. The desire for amusement was indulged to the full, little or no restraint being imposed. Cock-fighting and bull-baiting, "butcherly sports," were once more freely witnessed by all classes of society. Ladies and gentlemen, disguised with masks, mixed with the common people at crowded fairs and low entertainments. Cards and gambling passed away the precious hours, and "cursing, swearing, grumbling, and rejoicing were heard to an accompanying rattle of guineas." Women joined enthusiastically; night after night they sat at the card-table indulging in this fashionable folly, heedless of rebuke and warning:
"Yet sitting up so late, as I am told,
You'll lose in beauty what you gain in gold."
The game of Gleek, popular in Queen Elizabeth's time, sprang into favour at the Restoration. Pepys learnt the game in the winter of 1662: "My Aunt Wright and my wife and I to cards, she teaching of us to play at Gleek, which is a pretty game." Whist was played towards the close of the reign of Charles II. In 1674 a book appeared called "The Compleat Gambler; or, Instructions how to Play at Billiards, Bowls, and Chess, together with all Manner of Gentile Games either in Cards or Dice." One chapter is devoted to "English Ruff and Honours and Whist," which apparently every child of eight years old was expected to play. That a good deal of cheating took place we may infer from the following significant passage: "He that can by craft overlook his adversary's game hath a great advantage, for by that means he may partly know what to play securely. There is a way to discover to their partners what honours they have; as the wink of one eye or putting one finger on the nose or table, it signifies one honour; shutting both the eyes, two; placing three fingers or four on the table, four honours." Billiards, one of the few games allowed through the gloomy Commonwealth, now grew in popularity, till in 1688 there were few towns in England without a public billiard table. The game at this time differed very considerably from our modern game. The balls were very small, the cues were tipped with ivory, the bed of the table was made of oak or marble, the pockets or hazards were merely wooden boxes.
Once more the bear-gardens and cock-pits, practically deserted during the Commonwealth, were daily packed. Every class resorted thither to gamble and bet, quarrel and thieve.
"To Shoe Lane," writes Pepys in 1663, "to see a Cocke-fighting at a new pit there, a spot I was never at in my life: but Lord! to see the strange variety of people, from Parliament man … to the poorest prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, draymen and what not; and all these fellows are cursing and betting. I soon had enough of it." To render the cocks fit for this horrid sport their crests and spurs were cut off, while their food was mixed with pepper, cloves, and the yolks of eggs, to heat them and render them more vigorous for battle, which ended only with the death of one or the other. Play-going was enthusiastically revived, but the drama was very different to what it had been in the glorious days of Shakspere. True, we hear of revivals of "Henry IV.," "Hamlet," and "Henry VIII.," but for the most part the new comedies to which our forefathers flocked at this time were of the coarsest nature, a clear reflection of their ideas and manners. We see them crowding the theatres with noisy enjoyment, roaring applause to brilliant dialogue, sparkling wit and repartee. Love, marriage, immorality were treated with coarse freedom; virtue was at a discount; humanity, noble sentiments, manly courage and high achievement no longer represented Englishmen on the stage. For the moment these things had passed away!
Trivial enough, too, were the indoor amusements of grown-up folk. "I love my love with an A," was a favourite game. It was played after dinner by "all the great ladies sitting upon a carpet," with much wit and personal indelicacy. "Drawing characters," too, opens up a terrible vista of possibilities. "Crambo," "Hunt the Slipper," "Blind Man's Buff," and "Hot Cockles," were all favourite amusements of the day.
An enormous amount of time and thought was lavished upon dress by men as well as by women. Pepys never wearies of describing to us his fine clothes; he tells us of new suits of silk and cloth trimmed with scarlet ribbons, of velvet coats and cloaks shining with silver buttons, of high-crowned beaver hats adorned with plumes of feathers and worn indoors as well as out, of lace ruffles and rich falling collars of lace, high-heeled shoes, and the introduction into England of the famous wig. This was in the year 1664, when the large periwig or peruke found its way, like all other fashions, from the Court of the French King. One by one men and women succumbed to the prevailing mode. At once arose a great demand for hair to make wigs, and we get a despairing letter from the North of England, to which fashions penetrated slowly: "Peg can hear of no hair at any barber's."
Women now began to use paint for their faces and to wear little black patches, so popular in the reign of Queen Anne. Paris still dictated English fashions. While powder and patches were among ordinary toilet necessaries, tooth-brushes were yet costly luxuries, and only obtainable in France. These little "brushes for making cleane of the teeth" were for the most part covered with gold and silver. Not only were friends commissioned to buy these rarities abroad, but others travelling to London were given lists of commissions which were drawn up in the greatest detail: "If you would please to employ somebody to choose me out a lace that hath but very little silver in it and not above a spangle or two in a peak," writes a lady of high degree; "I would not have it too heavy a lace; about the breadth of a threepenny ribbon, very little border, will be enough, and I pray you to choose me out some ribbon to make strings; six yards will be enough; some shaded satin ribbon will be the best, of fourpenny breadth, and I would fain have some very little edging lace, as slight as may be, to edge the strings, and but little silver in it; ten yards will be enough."
The close summer of 1665 brought our ancestors something else to think of besides dress and recreation. After a dry winter and spring, June dawned with unusual heat, and the twelfth and last plague swept over England, carrying off hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children of every class, deadening all effort, paralysing all commerce, and defeating all attempts to stay it.
Walking in the streets of London, men suddenly became aware that an ever-increasing number of houses were marked with the fatal red cross on the door, accompanied by the pathetic prayer, "Lord, have mercy upon us." The sign was familiar enough to those who had lived through the terrible visitation of 1603, and that of 1625, which had devastated so many homes. Since those days the population of London had almost doubled, and it was little short of half a million when the plague broke out. But if the population of England had increased, one condition throughout the large towns remained the same. They were all badly drained; the streets were narrow, dark, and dirty; the water was insufficient for the needs of the people. Cleanliness was little considered in these days. Rubbish from the houses was shot into the street, where it lay about in heaps with rotten fruit, ashes, dead cats and dogs, and other filth, till kindly rains swept all together into the nearest stream or river.
"Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud.
Dead cats and turnip tops, came tumbling down the flood."
And if gross ignorance prevailed with regard to sanitary matters, gross ignorance likewise prevailed with regard to medical precautions. This is amply illustrated by the very inadequate remedies suggested to allay the plague when Englishmen were dying by hundreds, till "the nights were too short to bury the dead."
One lady beseeches her young nephew "to wear a quill as is filled up with quicksilver and sealed up with hard wax and served up in a silk thing with a string to wear about the neck; this is as sartine as anything is to keep from taking the Plague." "The quicksilver," she adds, "must be corked up fust and then sealed, for itt tis nitty for ones teth and eies." Further she recommends "Lente figs in readiness in case any of the family should have a swelling, for when roast and mashed together with a little mustard they will heal the sores." "Take the mistletoe which grows upon a oak-tree," advises another amateur, "dry it and beat it to powder and give as much of it as will lie upon a sixpence three mornings together."
This, at any rate, must be harmless. Very unpleasing is this cure against the infection: "Take of mummie (man's flesh hardened) cut small 4 ozs., spirit of wine 10 ozs. Put them into a glazed vessel and set in Horse dung to digest for the space of one month," or "Take the Brains of a young man that hath died a violent death together with its membranes, Arteries, Veins, Nerves and all the pith of the Back bone; bruise these in a stone mortar till they become a kind of pap, then put as much of the Spirits of wine as will cover three fingers' breadth, digest for half a year in Horse dung and take a drop or two in water once a day." The College of Physicians prescribed for the stricken people: "Take a great onion, hollow it and put into it a fig, rue cut small and a dram of Venice treacle (consisting of vipers, white wine, opium, liquorice, red roses, &c.) close stopt in a wet paper, roasted in the embers." This poultice was to be applied to the great tumours which were such a distinctive feature of the plague. For "Goddard's Drops" the King paid £6,000, but men fell to disputing whether they were made from the skull of a hanged man and dried viper or from volatile spirit of raw silk rectified with oil of cinnamon. Tobacco was considered a preventive of the plague, and Eton boys were ordered to smoke every morning while it lasted. But when all was said and done, still the great remedy lay in flight. The King, Queen, and Court, doctors and clergy, for the most part, left the stricken city. So passed the melancholy summer of 1665.
When the disease had carried away some hundred thousand of London's inhabitants, it stopped, shops reopened, trade revived, and slowly Londoners returned to their homes. The coaches, which had only been running for the past few years from the "George Inn, Aldersgate," every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, reaching Salisbury in two days and York in four days, once more started with passengers. Travelling by coach was no unmixed pleasure in these early days of the Restoration. Like other innovations, it was strongly opposed. "These coaches," wrote a contemporary, "are one of the greatest mischiefs that hath happened of late years to the kingdom, mischievous to the public, destructive to trade, and prejudicial to lands." Despite opposition the coaches increased both in number and in speed, till, attaining the breakneck speed of fifty miles a day, they were dignified by the name of "Flying Coaches." The roads were very bad, the ruts deep and dangerous; not infrequently the whole coach and its occupants was upset; the difficulties and discomforts were inconceivably great. But even these were as nothing compared to the very real danger which beset the travellers of the seventeenth century. To-day the mounted and masked highwayman is an unknown personage, except in romance; then, he was a genuine terror to the stoutest-hearted Englishman, for whom he lay in wait on every main road or lonely common in the country. The waste tracts which bordered the highways from London to the provinces were haunted by these robbers and thieves. Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, Epping Forest, were famous for highwaymen even in broad daylight Hence the drivers of stage-coaches, as well as the occupants, were fully armed, and no traveller ventured forth without pistols, blunderbuss, swords, bullets, and a horn of gunpowder. Every danger was increased as darkness came on, and all were glad to seek the friendly shelter of the wayside inns, famous for their comfort, freedom, and hospitality. Here, too, the mounted postman was sometimes forced to seek refuge, though he was supposed to journey through the night with his mail-bags at the rate of five miles an hour. He carried the famous news-letters, published twice a week in London, to the distant towns, where they were eagerly devoured. The news which filled two small pages was for the most part collected in the coffee-houses, which were an innovation of this age. It has been said that the "history of coffee-houses, ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the morals, and the politics of a people."
In the year 1656 a Turkish merchant introduced coffee as a novelty into London, but wearying of the constant intrusion of curious people wishing to taste the new beverage, he deputed to an attendant the sale of his coffee to those who liked to pay for it. Roset set up his coffee-house in Lombard Street with a portrait of himself as a sign over the door. Other drinks were soon admitted besides coffee, and we get this advertisement in a current news-letter of the day: "That excellent and by all physicians approved China Drink called the Chinaman's Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee is sold at the Sultanes Head, a cophee house by the Royal Exchange, London." But as yet this newly imported tea was very expensive, costing in 1660 as much as from £5 to £10 a pound. "I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink) of which I had never drank before," said Pepys in this same year, adding two years later, "Home, and there find my wife making of tea, a drink which the Pothicary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions."
The coffee-houses soon increased mightily in number and in importance. "Jonathan's" was opened by an apprentice of that name; the "Rainbow," by a barber in Fleet Street, and many others were crowded with customers from morning to night. It was not long before they departed from their first uses, and each was patronised by a distinct and separate class of society. Thus all the physicians would collect at one to consult together about their profession, at another the Puritans would assemble to discuss their views of life.
There was the Quaker's coffee-house, where no healths were drunk, no oaths uttered, no colours to be seen. There was "Will's," frequented by our friend Pepys.
"'As I remember,' said the sober Mouse,
'I've heard much talk of the Wits' coffee-house';
'Thither,' says Brindle, 'thou shalt go and see
Priests sipping coffee. Sparks and Poets tea.'"
Though most coffee-houses could produce supplies of brandy and such old-world beverages as "mum," "red streak," "black cordial," spiced ale, &c., yet there was seldom any riotous drinking, swearing, or quarrelling. This was reserved for the taverns, where constantly disgraceful scenes took place, not infrequently ending in bloodshed. Many and various were the drinks sold here. Spanish wines were very popular; there were the well-known drinks canary, sack, sack-posset, sherry, Burgundy, claret. Spirits were expensive and little drunk. But the taverns were running with "mum," which was ale brewed with wheat instead of hops; "buttered ale," which contained no hops, but was warm and flavoured with sugar and cinnamon; "lamb's wool," made of roast apple pulp, &c. Here is an old receipt for one of their favourite drinks called "Cock Ale": "Take 10 gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flea him and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken. Put the cock into 2 quarts of sack and put to it 3 lbs. of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, put the ale and bag together in the vessel; In a week or nine days' time bottle it up and leave the same to ripen."
Hard drinking was the fashion. Members of Parliament found it hard to keep sober. Pepys rarely passed a day without resorting to some tavern for a morning drink or a pint of wine after dinner. We find him, being slightly more sober than Sir William Penn, undertaking to conduct that gentleman safely through the streets of London. And thus these merry, careless days passed away. The short and troubled reign of James II. brought little change in social affairs, and as the Stuart Dynasty drew to its close, "costume, manners, the whole tone of society, went on a downward course with breakneck speed."