The History of England (Vol. 1-5). Томас Бабингтон Маколей

149. John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1672. These reason were afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "The Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted.

      150. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen, 105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.

      151. See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687, Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at Colchester in March, 1688, is highly curious.

      152. Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes sir, and at White's too.—Beaux' Stratagem.

      153. Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself thus before the Judge:

      "What say you now, my honoured Lord

       What harm was there in this?

       Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred

       By brave, freehearted Biss."

      154. Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I.

      155. See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.

      156. Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August 15, 1687.

      157. Lond. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.

      158. Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.

      159. Anglias Metropolis, 1690.

      160. Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9; Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.

      161. I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000£.; and the net receipt was about 1,200,000£. The number of letters conveyed by post was 478,000,000. (1857).

      162. London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680.

      163. There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique collection of these papers in the British Museum.

      164. For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops.

      165. Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of newsletters, see the Examen, 133.

      166. I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private archives The judgment with which sir James in great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same mine.

      167. Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.

      168. Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial.

      169. Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his life of his brother John.

      170. One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own hand, "This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R."

      171. Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.

      172. Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,

      "For, though to smelter words of Greek

       And Latin be the rhetorique

       Of pedants counted, and vainglorious,

       To smatter French is meritorious."