Pepys describes, with amusing minuteness, how Chapman the periwig-maker cut off his hair to make up one of these portentous head-dresses for him, much to the trouble of his servants, Jane and Bessy; and on the Lord’s day, November 8th, 1663, he relates, with infinite naïveté, his entrance into church with what must evidently have been the perruquier’s latest fashion. “To church, where I found that my coming in a periwig did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would; for I thought that all the church would presently have cast their eyes upon me, but I find no such thing.” Ten shillings the ounce for long flaxen hair shows the demand for this peculiar colour by “persons of eminent condition and quality.” We have shown, from the advertisements of the time of Charles II., what was indeed well known, that the age was characterized by frivolous amusements, and by a love of dress and vicious excitement, in the midst of which pestilence stalked like a mocking fiend, and the great conflagration lit up the general masquerade with its lurid and angry glare. Together with the emasculate tone of manners, a disposition to personal violence and a contempt of law stained the latter part of this and the succeeding reign. The audacious seizure of the crown jewels by Blood; the attack upon the Duke of Ormond by the same desperado, that nobleman actually having been dragged from his coach in St. James’s Street in the evening, and carried, bound, upon the saddle-bow of Blood’s horse, as far as Hyde Park Corner, before he could be rescued; the slitting of Sir John Coventry’s nose in the Haymarket by the king’s guard; and the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey on Primrose Hill, are familiar instances of the prevalence of this lawless spirit.
We catch a glimpse of one of these street outrages in the following announcement of an assault upon glorious John:—
Whereas John Dryden, Esq., was on Monday, the 18th instant, at night, barbarously assaulted and wounded, in Rose Street in Covent Garden, by divers men unknown; if any person shall make discovery of the said offenders to the said Mr. Dryden, or to any Justice of the Peace, he shall not only receive Fifty Pounds, which is deposited in the hands of Mr. Blanchard, Goldsmith, next door to Temple Bar, for the said purpose, but if he be a principal or an accessory in the said fact, his Majesty is graciously pleased to promise him his pardon for the same.—The London Gazette, Dec. 22, 1679.
And here is another of a still more tragic character:—
Whereas a Gentleman was, on the eighteenth at night, mortally wounded near Lincoln’s Inn, in Chancery Lane, in view, as is supposed, of the coachman that set him down: these are to give notice that the said coachman shall come in and declare his knowledge of the matter; if any other person shall discover the said coachman to John Hawles, at his chamber in Lincoln’s Inn, he shall have 5 guineas reward.—London Gazette, March 29th, 1688.
To this period also may be ascribed the rise of that romantic felon, the highwayman. The hue and cry after these genteel robbers is frequently raised during the reign of James II. In one case we have notice of a gentleman having been stopped, robbed, and then bound, by mounted men at Islington, who rode away with his horse; another time these daring gentry appeared at Knightsbridge; and a third advertisement, of a later date it is true, offers a reward for three mounted Macheaths, who were charged with stopping and robbing three young ladies in South Street, near Audley Chapel, as they were returning home from visiting. The following is still more singular, as showing the high social position of some of these gentlemen who took to the “road” for special purposes:—
Whereas Mr. Herbert Jones, Attorney-at-law in the town of Monmouth, well known by being several years together Under-Sheriff of the same County, hath of late divers time robbed the Mail coming from that town to London, and taken out divers letters and writs, and is now fled from justice, and supposed to have sheltered himself in some of the new-raised troops. These are to give notice, that whosoever shall secure the said Herbert Jones, so as to be committed in order to answer these said crimes, may give notice thereof to Sir Thomas Fowles, goldsmith, Temple-bar, London, or to Mr. Michael Bohune, mercer, in Monmouth, and shall have a guinea’s reward.
The drinking tendencies of these Jacobite times are chiefly shown by the numberless inquiries after lost or stolen silver tankards, and by the sales of claret and canary which constantly took place. The hammer was not apparently used at that time, as we commonly find announcements of sales by “inch of candle,” a term which mightily puzzled us until we saw the explanation of it in our constant book of reference, the Diary of Pepys:—
“After dinner we met and sold the Weymouth, Successe, and Fellowship hulkes; where pleasant to see how backward men are at first to bid; and yet, when the candle is going out, how they bawl, and dispute afterwards who bid the most. And here I observed one man cunninger than the rest, that was sure to bid the last man and to carry it; and inquiring the reason he told me that, just as the flame goes out, the smoke descends, which is a thing I never observed before, and by that he do know the instant when to bid last.” (Sept. 3rd, 1662).
The taste for auctions, which became such a rage in the time of Anne, had its beginning about this period. Books and pictures are constantly advertised to be disposed of in this manner. The love of excitement born in the gaming time of the Restoration might be traced in these sales, and in the lotteries, or “adventures” as they were sometimes termed, which extended to every conceivable article capable of being sold. The rising taste of the town was, however, checked for the time by the Revolution, which was doubtless hastened on by such announcements as the following, which appeared in the Gazette of March 1, 1688:—