Shrewsbury: A Romance

  CHAPTER XI

  In a word, my master was a writer of Newsletters, and in that capacitypossessed of so excellent a style and so great a connection in theWestern Counties that, as he was wont to boast, there was hardly asquire or rector from Bristol to Dawlish that did not owe what he knewof His Majesty's gout, or Mr. Dryden's last play, to his weeklyepistles. The Popish Plot which had cost the lives of Lord Staffordand so many of his persuasion, no less than the Rye House Plot, whichby placing the Whigs at the mercy of the Government had at onceafforded those their revenge, and illustrated the ups and downs ofcourt life, had given so sharp a stimulus to the appetite for news,that of late he had found himself unable to cope with it. In thisunsettled condition, and meditating changes which should belittle SirRoger and _The London Mercury_, and oust print from the field, he fellin with me; and where another man would have selected a bachelor whosecassock and scarf might commend him at Wills' or Childs', hiseccentric kindness snatched me from the gutter, and set me on a tallstool, there to write all day for the delectation of country housesand mayors' parlours.

  I remember that at first it seemed to me so easy a trick (this notingthe news of the day in plain round hand) that I wondered they paid himto do it, more than another. But besides that I then had knowledge ofone side of the business only, I mean the framing the news, but noneof the manner in which it was collected at Garraway's and the Cockpit,the Sessions House, the Mall, and the Gallery at Whitehall. Ipresently learned that even of the share that fell to my lot I knewonly as much as a dog that turns the spit knows of the roasting ofmeat. For when my employer, finding me docile and industrious--as Iknow I was, being thankful for such a haven, and crushed in spirit notonly by the dangers through which I had passed, but also by mymistress's treachery--when I say, he left me one day to my devices,merely skimming through a copy and leaving me to multiply it, with,for sole guide, the list of places to which the letters were to go, asBridgewater, Whig; Bath, Tory; Bridport, Tory; Taunton, Whig; Frome,Whig; Lyme, Whig, and so on, I came very far short of success. True,when he returned in the evening I had my packets ready and neatlyprepared for the mail, which then ran to the West thrice a week andleft next morning; and I had good hopes that he would send themuntouched. But great was my dismay when he fell into a rage over thefirst he picked up, and asked me bluntly if I was quite a fool.

  I stammered some answer, and asked in confusion what was the matter.

  "Everything," he said. "Here, let me see! Why, you dolt anddunderhead, you have sent letters in identical terms to Frome andBridport."

  "Yes," I said faintly.

  "But the one is Whig and the other is Tory!" he cried.

  "But the news, sir," I made bold to answer, "is the same."

  "Is it?" he cried in fine contempt. "Why you are a natural! I thoughtyou had learned something by this time. Here, where is the Fromeletter? '"_The London Gazette_" _announces that His Majesty has beengraciously pleased to reward my Lord Rochester's services at theTreasury Board by raising him to the dignity of Lord President of theCouncil, an elevation which renders necessary his resignation of hisseat at the Board_.' Tut-tut! That is the Court tone. Here, out withit, and write:--

  "'_The Earl of Rochester's removal from the Treasury Board to thePresidency of the Council, which is announced in_ "_The Gazette_," _isvery well understood. His lordship made what resistance he could, butthe facts Were plain, and the King could do no otherwise. Rumour hasit that the sum lost to the country in the manner already hintedexceeds fifty thousand guineas_.'

  "There, what comes next? '_Letters from the Continent have it thatstrong recommendations have been made to the Court at the Hague todismiss the D---- of M----, and it is confidently expected that thenext packet will bring the news of his departure_.' Pooh, out with it.Write this:--

  "'_The D---- of M---- is still at the Hague, where he is beingsumptuously entertained. Much is made of His Majesty's anger, but theD---- is well supplied with money from an unknown source, which sometake to be significant. At a ball given by their Highnesses on theeleventh, he danced an English country dance with the Lady Mary,wherein his grace and skill won all hearts_.'

  "That is better. And now what next? '_This day an Ambassador from theKing of Siam in the East Indies waited on His Majesty with great marksof respect_.' Umph! Well leave it, but add, 'Ah, _si sic propius_.'

  "And then, '_There are rumours that His Majesty intends to call aparliament shortly, in which plan he is hindered only by the state ofhis gout_.'

  "Out with that and write this:--'_In the city is much murmuring that aparliament is not called. Though His Majesty has not played lately attennis, he showed himself yesterday in Hyde Park, so that some whomaintain his health to be the cause deserve no weight. In his companywere His Highness the Duke of York and the French Ambassador_.'

  "There, you fool," my master continued, flinging two-thirds of thepackets back to me. "You will have to amend these, and another timeyou will know better."

  Which showed me that I had still something to learn; and that as thereare tricks in all trades, so Mr. Timothy Brome, the writer, did notenjoy without reason the reputation of the most popular newsvendor inLondon. But as I addressed myself to the business with zeal, Ipresently began to acquire a mastery over his methods; and myknowledge of public affairs growing with each day's work, as in suchan employment it could not fail to grow, I was able before very longto take the composition of the letters in a great measure off hishands; leaving him free to walk Change Alley and the coffee-houses,where his snuff-coloured suit and snappish wit were as well known ashis secret charity was little suspected.

  In private, indeed, he was of so honest a disposition, his faults oftemper notwithstanding, as to cause me at first some surprise; since Ifancied an incompatibility between this and the laxity of his publicviews; which he carried so far that he was not only a politicalskeptic himself, but held all others to be the same; maintaining thatthe best public men were only of this or that colour because it suitedtheir pockets or ambitions, and that, of all, he respected most LordHalifax and his party, who at least trimmed openly, and never criedloudly for either extreme.

  But as his actions in other matters bettered his professions, so Ipresently found that in this too he belied himself; which was madeclear when he came to the test. For the death of King Charles theSecond occurring soon after I came to serve him--so soon that I stillwinced when my former life was probed, and hated a woman and trembledat sight of a constable, and wondered if this were really _I_,who went to and fro daily from my garret in Bride Lane to St.Dunstan's--the death, I say, of the King occurring just at that time,we were speedily overwhelmed by a rush of events so momentous andfollowing so quickly one on another that they threw the old see-saw ofCourt and Country off its balance; and upset with it the minds of manywho had hitherto clung firmly to a party. For the King had beenscarcely laid very quietly--some thought, meanly--in his grave and theDuke of York been proclaimed by the title of James the Second, whenthose who had fled the country in the last reign, either after the RyeHouse Plot, or later with Monmouth, returned and kindled two greatinsurrections, that of the Marquess of Argyle in the north, and thatof the Duke of Monmouth in the west. Occurring almost simultaneously,it was wonderful to see how, in spite of the cry of a Popish King, andthe Protestant religion in danger, which the rebels everywhere raised,these outbreaks rallied all prudent folk to the King; whose popularitynever, before or afterwards, stood so high as on the day of the battleof Sedgmoor.

  And doubtless he might have retained the confidence and affection ofhis people, and by these means attained to the utmost of hislegitimate wishes--I mean the relief of the papists from penal clausesif not from civil disabilities--had he gone about it discreetly, andwith the moderation which so delicate a matter required. But in theoutset the severity with which the western rebels were punished, bothby the military after the rout and by the Lord Chief Justice at theAssizes which followed, gave check to his popularity; and thencefor
thfor three years all went one way. The Test Acts, abrogated at thefirst in a case here and there (yet ominously in such, in particular,as favoured the admission of papists to the army), were presentlynullified, with other acts of a like character, by a generaldeclaration of indulgence; and that, to the disgust of the clergy, tobe read in the churches. To this main assault on the passive obediencewhich the Church had so often preached, and to which it still fondlyclung, were added innumerable meaner attacks perhaps more humiliating;as the expulsion of the Protestant Fellows from Magdalene College,the conversion of University College into a Romish Seminary, andthe dismissal of my Lords Rochester and Clarendon, the King'sbrothers-in-law, from all their places because--as was everywhererumoured--they would not resign the creed in which they had been born.

  It were long to recount all the other errors into which the King fell;but I may lay stress on the dissolution of a most loyal Parliament,because it would not legalise his measures; on the open and shamelessattempt to pack its successor, on the corruption of the Judges, and onthe trial of the seven bishops for sedition. It were shorter andequally to the point to say that an administration conducted for threeyears on these lines, sufficed not only to sap the patient loyalty ofthe nation, but to rouse from its rest the political conscience of myemployer. Mr. Brome, after much muttering and many snappishcorrections and alterations, all tending (as I soon perceived) toWhiggery, resigned, on the day the Fellows of Magdalene were expelled,his time-honoured system of duplicity; and thenceforward, until theend, issued the same letter to Tory squire and Whig borough alike.

  What was more remarkable, and, had the King known, it might haveserved his obstinate Majesty for a warning, we lost no patrons by thestep; but rather increased our readers; the whole nation by this timebeing of one mind. When the end came therefore, and in answer to thefamous Invitation signed by the Seven, the Deliverer, as the Whigparty still love to call him, landed at Torbay, and with scarcely ablow, and no life lost, entered London, there were few among those whoruffled it in his train, as he rode to St. James's, who had done asmuch to bring him to his throne as my master; though he, good honestman, wore neither spurs nor sword, and stood humbly a-foot in themouth of an alley to see the show go by.