Born: Ralph Thoresby,
antiquary, author of Ducatus Leodiensis, 1658, Leeds;
Catharine Cockburn, dramatist and moral writer, 1679,
London; Pierre Mechain, mathematician and astronomer,
1744, Laon; Frederick, Duke of York, second son of
George III, 1763.
Died: Dr. Thomas
Fuller, celebrated divine and author, 1661, Cranford,
Middlesex; Jacques Bernouilli, mathematician and
natural philosopher, 1705, Basel; Dr. Matthew Tindal,
freethinking writer, 1733, London; Bartholomew Joubert,
French general, killed at Novi, 1799; John Palmer,
post-reformer, 1818.
Feast Day: St.
Hyacinth, confessor, 1257. St. Roch, confessor, 14th
century.
ST. ROCH OR ROQUE
Was a French gentleman,
possessing estates near Montpelier, which, however, he
abandoned in order to devote himself to a religious
life. The date of his death is stated with some
uncertainty as 1327. In consequence of working
miraculous cures of the plague, while himself stricken
with the disease at Placentia, in Italy, Roque was
held as a saint specially to be invoked by persons so
afflicted. There were many churches dedicated to him
in Germany and other countries, and it seems to have
been a custom that persons dying of plague should be
buried there.
St. Roch's Day was celebrated
in England as a general harvest-home.
TINDAL AND BUDGEL
Dr. Matthew Tindal, a
clergyman's son, and a fellow of All Souls' College,
Oxford, made himself notable, in the early part of the
eighteenth century, by a series of books and pamphlets
assailing the pretensions of High Church, and latterly
endeavouring to take away the supernatural element
from Christianity itself. His writings gave rise to
prodigious controversies, which whizzed and sputtered
and fumed about the ears of mankind for a good many
years, and by and by subsided into the silence of
oblivion, in which for fully a hundred years past they
have remained.
Tindal cannot be mentioned
without some notice of Eustace Budgel, his friend and
follower as far as regards religious ideas. Budgel was
a relation of Addison, a man of fair talents, and a
contributor to the Spectator and Guardian. Through
Addison's influence, when secretary of state, Budgel
obtained confidential and lucrative political offices,
and his abilities as a writer and speaker promised his
speedy rise to distinction. But, cursed with an
unhappy temper, an irregular ambition, and an
inability to control splenetic, revengeful passions,
he lost his official position; and
the
bursting of the South-sea Bubble left him, in
the prime of life, ruined alike in fortune and
political influence. His reputation was to follow. At
Tindal's death, it was found that he had made Budgel
his heir, to the exclusion of his nephew. Budgel was
accused of forging the will, which was written by an
alleged female accomplice, a Mrs. Price; and whether
innocent or otherwise, there can be no doubt that he
was guilty of dishonesty regarding a considerable sum
he had borrowed from Tindal, just previous to his
death, and the receipt of which he strenuously denied,
till the notes were traced to his possession. The
subject was a fruitful one for the wits of the day.
Pope writes
'Let Budgel charge all
Grub Street on my quill,
And write whate'er he please, except my will.'
The best epigram on Tindal's
will, however, is the following:
Hundreds of years, th' Old
Testament and New
By general consent have passed for true;
In this learn'd age, a doctor, 'god-like great!'
By dint of reason proved them both a cheat:
A third he made, which, sinking nature's share,
Gave more than he died worth to Reason's heir.
Mal-practice to prevent, of his last thought,
A female scribe engrossed the genuine draught.
But, oh! 'gainst Testaments such reasons shown,
Have taught the world to question e'en his own.
Those seventeen centuries old he scarce could
raze,
His own remained unshook not seventeen days.
Yet all perhaps are true; if none, the third,
Of three forged Testaments, seems most absurd.'
Budgel boldly attempted to
outface the obloquy of this affair, and for a while
seemed to have succeeded; but at length, succumbing to
popular indignation, he committed suicide. The evils
of undisciplined temper and passions are nowhere more
clearly evinced than in the unhappy career of Eustace
Budgel.
PALMER, THE
POST-REFORMER
Three hundred years ago,
travellers had no choice but to ride on horseback or
walk. Kings, queens, and gentlefolk all mounted to the
saddle. The practice had existed for generations and
centuries. Chaucer's ride to
Canterbury is made famous
by his own lucid account of that celebrated journey.
Ladies were accustomed to ride on pillions fixed on
the horse, and generally behind some relative or
serving-man. In this way Queen Elizabeth, when she
rode into the city from her residence at Greenwich,
placed herself behind her lord-chancellor. Judges rode
the circuit in jack-boots for centuries, and continued
to do so long after other means of conveyance were in
general use.'
The first improvement
consisted in a kind of rude wagon, which was, in
reality, nothing but a cart without springs, the body
of it resting solidly upon the axle. In such a vehicle
did Elizabeth drive to the opening of her fifth
parliament. Mr. Smiles, in his interesting Lives of
the Engineers, relates that:
'that valyant knyght,
Sir Harry Sydney, on a certain day in 1583, entered
Shrewsbury in his wagon, with his trompeter blowynge,
verey joyfull to behold and see.'
Bad as these conveyances must
have been, they had scarcely fair-play on the
execrable roads of the period. Even up to the end of
the seventeenth century, the roads in most parts of
the country were not unlike broad ditches, much
water-worn and carelessly strewn with loose stones. It
is on record, that on one occasion eight hundred
horses were taken prisoners by Cromwell's forces while
sticking in the mud! During the seventeenth century,
it was common, when a long journey was contemplated,
for servants to be sent on beforehand, to investigate
the country, and report upon the most promising tract.
In 1640, the road from Dover to London was the best in
England, owing, of course, to the amount of
continental traffic continually kept up, and yet the
journey of Queen Henrietta and household occupied four
long weary days over that short distance.
It was not till towards the
close of the sixteenth century that the wagon became
used as a public conveyance, and only very rarely
then. Fifty years after, we find that a string of
stage-wagons travelled regularly between London and
Liverpool, each one starting from the Axe Inn,
Alderman-bury, every Monday and Thursday, and
occupying ton days on the road during summer, and
generally about twelve days during winter. About the
same time, three men started every Friday morning for
Liverpool, from Lad's Lane, London, with a gang of
horses for the conveyance of light goods and
passengers, usually reaching Liverpool on the Monday
evening following.
Stage-coaches were great
improvements on all the then existing conveyances, and
were destined to work great changes in travelling. A
kind of stage-coach was first used in London early in
the seventeenth century. Towards the middle of the
same century, they were generally adopted in the
metropolis, and on the better highways around London,
travelling at the rate of two or three miles an hour.
Before 1698, stage-coaches were placed on three of the
principal roads in the kingdom. The original
announcement for that between London and York still
exists, and runs as follows:
'Whoever is desirous of
going between London and York or York and London, Let
them Repair to the Black Swan in Holboorn, or the
Black Swan in Coney Street, York, where they will be
conveyed in a Stage Coach if God permits, which starts
every Thursday at Five in the morning.'
This was only, however, for
the summer season; during winter, they did not run at
all, but were laid up for the season like ships during
arctic frosts. Even in summer, the passengers very
frequently got out and walked long distances, the
state of the roads in some places compelling them to
do so. With the York coach especially, the
difficulties were really formidable.
Passing through the low
Midland counties was sometimes entirely impracticable,
and during the time of floods, it was nothing unusual
for passengers to remain at some town en route for
days together, until the roads were dry again.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, stage-coaches
increased in number and in popularity, and so
decidedly was travelling on the increase, that they
now became the subjects of grave discussion;
news-letters encouraged or reviled them, and pamphlets
were written concerning them.
For instance, in one entitled
The Grand Concern of England Explained in Several
Proposals to Parliament, these same stage-coaches
are denounced as the greatest evil that had happened
of late years to the kingdom, mischievous to trade,
and destructive to the public health. Curious to know
in what way these sad consequences are brought about,
we read on, and find it stated that 'those who travel
in these coaches contracted an idle habit of body;
became weary and listless when they rode a few miles,
and were then unable or unwilling to travel on
horseback, and not able to endure frost, snow, or
rain, or to lodge in the field!'
Opinions on even such a
subject as this differed most materially. In the very
same year that produced the book to which we have just
referred, another writer, descanting on the
improvements which had been brought about in the
postal arrangements of the country, goes on to say,
that, 'besides the excellent arrangement of conveying
men and letters on horseback, there is of late such an
admirable commodiousness, both for men and women, to
travel from London to the principal towns in the
country, that the like hath not been known in the
world, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein any one
may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul
weather and foul ways; free from endamaging of one's
health and one's body by the hard jogging or
over-violent motion; and this not only at a low price
(about a shilling for every five miles), but with such
velocity and speed in one hour, as that the posts in
some foreign country's make in a day.'
From the information which we
have been able to gather on the subject, it would
appear that at first stage-coaches were not regarded
as very great improvements upon the old stage-wagons.
M. Soubriere, a Frenchman of letters, who landed at
Dover in the reign of Charles II, alludes to the
existence of stage-coaches, but he would seem to have
been well acquainted with their demerits, as we may
learn from an account which he has left 'that I might
not take post, or again be obliged to use the
stage-coach, I went from Dover to London in a wagon. I
was drawn by six horses placed in a line, one after
another, and driven by a wagoner, who walked by the
side of it. He was clothed in black, and appointed in
all things like another
St. George. He had a brave monteror on his
head, and was a merry fellow, fancied he ade a figure,
and seemed mightily pleased with himself.'
The speed at which the coaches
travelled was a great marvel at that time. In 1700,
York was a week distant from the metropolis. Between
London and Edinburgh, even so late as 1763, a
fortnight was consumed, the coach only starting once a
month. The intermediate Sunday was quietly spent at
Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, as much for the sake of
relief to exhausted nature as from motives of piety.
The first vehicle which plied between Edinburgh and
Glasgow was started in 1749. It was called 'The
Edinburgh and Glasgow Caravan,' and performed the
journey of forty-four miles in two days. Ten years
after, another vehicle was started, and called the
'Fly,' because it contrived to perform this same
journey in a day and a half. Latterly, it took the
daylight of one day. It is a perfectly authentic
anecdote that, about 1780, a gentleman, anxious to
make favour with a young lady, learning that she was
to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh, on a particular
day, took the whole remaining inside-seats, had her
all to himself of course, and succeeded in winning her
as his wife. Mr. Smiles tells us that, during the last
century, the Fly coach from London to Exeter stopped
at the latter place the fifth night from town; the
coach proceeded next morning to Axminster, and there a
woman-barber 'shaved the coach.'
The fact was that, on any of
the roads, the difference of half a day, or even a
day, was a small matter. Time was of less consequence
than safety. The coaches were advertised to start 'God willing,' or about such
and such an hour as shall
seem good to the majority of the passengers. Thoresby
tells us, that he was even accustomed to leave the
coach (on the journey from London to York) and go in
search of fossil shells in the fields, on either side
of the road, while making the journey between these
two places. Whether or not the coach was to stop at
some favourite inn, was determined, in most cases, by
a vote of the passengers, who would generally appoint
a chairman at the beginning of the journey.
Under such circumstances, we
cannot wonder that disputes, especially about stopping
at wayside-inns, should be of frequent occurrence.
Perhaps the driver had a pecuniary interest in some
particular posting-house, and would exert an
influence, some-times tyrannical, to obtain the
consent of the passengers to a place of his choosing.
In 1760, an action was tried before the Court of
King's Bench to recover damages, on the plea that,
during a stage-coach journey, the driver wished to
compel the passengers to dine at some low inn on the
road. They preferred to walk on to a respectable inn
at some little distance, and desired the driver to
call for them, as he must pass the place. Instead of
doing so, he drove past the inn at full speed, leaving
them to get up to London as best they could. The jury
found for the passengers in �20 damages. On another
occasion, a dispute arose, which resulted in a quarrel
between the guard and a passenger, the coach stopping
to see the two fight it out on the road!
While yet the ordinary
stage-coach was found equal to all the requirements on
most of the old coach-roads, the speed at which it
travelled did not at all satisfy the enterprising
merchants of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 1754, a
company of merchants in Manchester started a new
vehicle, called the 'Flying Coach,' which seems to
have earned its designation by the fact, that it
proposed to travel at the rate of four or five miles
an hour! The proprietors, at the commencement, issued
the following remarkable prospectus: 'However
incredible it may appear, this coach will actually
(barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and
a half after leaving Manchester.' Three years
after-wards, the Liverpool merchants established
another of these 'flying machines on steel springs,'
as the newspapers of the period called them, which was
intended to eclipse the Manchester one in the matter
of speed. It started from Warrington (Liverpool
passengers reaching the former place the night
previous to starting), and only three days had to be
taken up in the journey to London. 'Each passenger to
pay two guineas�one guinea as earnest, and the other
on taking coach; 14 lbs. of luggage allowed, and 3d.
per pound for all luggage in excess.' About as much
more money as was required for the fare was expended
in living and lodgings on the road, not to speak of
fees to guard and driver. Sheffield and Leeds followed
with their respective ' flying coaches,' and before
the last century closed, the whole of them had
acquired the respectable velocity of eight miles an
hour.
These flying-coaches were the
precursors of a great reform effected by a man of
energetic nature in 1784. John Palmer, a person of
substance at Bath, having been pleased to establish
and conduct a theatre there, became strongly impressed
with a sense of the antiquated system for both sending
human beings and letters along the road between his
town and the metropolis. He often desired to have
occasional assistance from a London star, but was
balked by the dilatoriness of the coach-travelling.
Even to communicate with the London houses was
insufferably tedious, for then the post starting in
London on Monday did not reach Bath till Wednesday.
Palmer travelled all over the
country, and found everywhere the same insufficiency;
he memorialised the government; he took means to
inform the public; he clearly shewed how easy it would
be to effect vast improvements tending to economise
the time and money of the public. As usual, he was set
down as a half-crazed enthusiast and bore; the
post-office authorities were against him to a man;
even those who saw and admitted his data, could not be
brought to say more than that, while sure on the whole
to fail, his system might give a slight impulse in the
right direction. It was only through the enlightened
judgment of Pitt, that he was able to commence, in the
year mentioned, that system of rapid mail-coaches
which lasted up to the days of railways. The first
mail-coach in accordance with Mr. Palmer's plan, was
one from London to Bristol, which started at eight in
the morning of the 8th of August 1784, and reached its
destination at eleven at night. The benefits to the
public quickly became too manifest to be denied even
by the most inveterate of his opponents, and�mark the
national gratitude! The government had entered into a
regular contract with him, engaging to give him
two-and-a-half per cent. upon the saving effected in
the transmission of the letters. It was clearly shewn
soon after that this saving amounted to �20,000 a
year. Parliament, however, would not vote the
fulfilment of the bargain, and Mr. Palmer was cheated
with a grant of only �50,000.
The history of Palmer's reform
was precisely that of
Rowland Hill fifty years
later�the same enlightened energy in one man, the same
official conservatism of antiquated absurdities, the
same sluggishness on the part of the public whose
benefit was sought�not exactly the same reward, for,
apart from taking Mr. Hill into service at a salary
which he would have been worthy of in any department
of business, public or private, the nation has allowed
a quarter of a century to elapse without conferring
upon him any reward whatever!
EUGENE ARAM
Seldom has there been a robber
and murderer, in the middle station of society,
unconnected with great political movements, whose life
has become the theme both of a novel and a poem.
Eugene Aram is among these few. His case has attracted
the attention of writers of fiction, both from the
extraordinary circumstances connected with it, and the
cultivated mind of the man himself.
Eugene Aram was born in
Yorkshire. He received a fair school education; then
became clerk in a London counting-house; then returned
to his native place, set up a school, and married
unfortunately. He next lived at Knaresborough, where,
by great application, he obtained an extensive
knowledge of the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin languages
and literature. All this took place before 1744. In
that year he came again to London, and was engaged as
usher at a school in Piccadilly. Here he worked
laboriously, and added a considerable knowledge of Chaldee and Arabic to his
previous store of
information, intending to apply it to the production
of a lexicon. During his subsequent engagement at
various other schools, he studied Celtic, and also
acquired a very extensive knowledge of botany.
Such a man appeared to be
among the last who would commit a robbery and a
murder; and hence the intense surprise and pain that
followed certain disclosures. In 1758, some workmen,
digging about St. Robert's Cave, near Knaresborough,
found the remains of a man who appeared to have been
murdered. Fourteen years before, a shoemaker, named
Daniel Clark, had mysteriously disappeared from
Knaresborough, and had not since been seen or heard
of. It was recollected that one Richard Housman was
the last person seen in his company; and the finding
of the dead body (which was believed to be that of
Clark) led to the apprehension of Housman. On his
examination, Housman stated that the body was not
Clark's, but that Clark's body, nevertheless, lay
buried at a spot which he named.
This admission led to further
inquiries, which implicated Eugene Aram; and about the
middle of August, Housman and Aram were committed for
trial. The trial, which did not take place till the
following year, disclosed a strange history. Clark
married in 1744. Aram was living at Knaresborough at
the time, poor, and united to a wife with whom he
appears to have lived very unhappily. Three needy
men�Clark, Aram, and Housman�entered into a conspiracy
for borrowing as much valuable property as possible,
as if for Clark's wedding, and then dividing the spoil
amongst them. Clark was soon afterwards missing, and
suspicion fell upon the other two, but nothing
definite was found out. Aram deserted his wife, who
had some suspicion of what he had done. Housman, at
the inquest, stated that Aram murdered Clark, to
conceal the evidence about the robbery; but Aram (who
owned to the fraud) denied all knowledge of the
murder.
At the trial, Housman was
acquitted of murder, and was admitted as king's
evidence against Aram. Everything told heavily
against the unhappy usher. He made a most elaborate defence, which could only
have proceeded from an
educated man; it was delivered extempore, but was
evidently got by heart; and in it he endeavoured to
shew that all the facts against him had the usual
defect of mere circumstantial evidence. He was found
guilty, and condemned to death; he made a partial
confession, then attempted to end his existence with a
razor, and was finally brought to London, and hanged
at Tyburn (August 16, 1759).
This almost inexplicable
history has attracted many pens, as we have said. In
1828, the late Thomas Hood wrote The Dream of
Eugene Aram, a poem of thirty-six stanzas. In a
preface to the poem, Hood described how the subject
was suggested to his mind by a horrible dream.
'A lifeless body, in love
and relationship the nearest and dearest, was
imposed upon my back, with an overwhelming sense of
obligation, not of filial piety merely, but some
awful responsibility, equally vague and intense, and
involving, as it seemed, inexpiable sin, horrors
unutterable, torments intolerable�to bury my dead,
like Abraham, out of my sight. In vain I attempted,
again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate; by
some dreadful process the burden was replaced with a
more stupendous weight of imagination, and an
appalling conviction of the impossibility of its
fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable; the
mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural
racks of sleep, are not to be penned.'
Eugene Aram, it was known,
when an usher in a school at Lynn, was accustomed to
talk to the boys frequently on the subject of murder
� for a reason which they could not understand, but
which was probably the result of remorse in his own
heart. Hood's horrible dream, and this fact, together
suggested the idea of the poem. School-boys are
represented at sport in the evening. Near them was the
usher, 'a melancholy man,' alternately reading and
brooding. He sees a gentle lad reading a book, and
asks what it is: The Death of Abel. The usher started,
and then said that he himself had dreamed, on the
preceding night, that he had committed a murder. He
narrated the dream, and a terrible one it is. Once in
the course of his narration, he felt that his manner
was too intensely earnest, and said
'My gentle boy, remember
this
Is nothing but a dream!'
And again he said
'Oh, God! that horrid, horrid dream
Besets me now awake!
Again, again with busy brain,
The human life I take;
And my red right hand grows raging hot,
Like Cranmer's at the stake.'
Sir E. B. Lytton (when Mr.
Bulwer) published his romance of Eugene Aram in 1831,
and dedicated it to Sir Walter Scott. In his preface
he said:
'During Aram's residence at Lynn, his
reputation for learning had attracted the notice of my
grandfather�a country gentleman living in the same
county, and of more intelligence and accomplishments
than, at that day, usually characterised his class.
Aram frequently visited at Heydon, my grandfather's
house, and gave lessons, probably in no very elevated
branches of erudition, to the younger members of the
family.' Sir Edward expresses a belief, that though
there cannot be much moral doubt of the guilt of
Eugene Aram, the legal evidence was not such as would
suffice to convict him at the present day. He at first
intended his Eugene Aram for the stage, but made it
into a romance instead of a drama. Mr. Godwin, author
of Caleb Williams, once told Sir Edward that 'he had
always thought the story of Eugene Aram peculiarly
adapted for fiction, and that he had more than once
entertained the notion of making it the foundation of
a novel.'