The familiar names of several of the regiments of the British army commence from Charles II.'s reign. The Life Guards were raised in 1661—composed and treated, however, like the Gardes du Corps of the French,—being principally gentlemen of families of distinction, who themselves, or their fathers, had fought in the Civil War. In the same year the Blues were embodied, and called the Oxford Blues, from their first commander, Aubrey, Earl of Oxford. The Coldstream Guards date their formation from 1660, and two regiments were added to the one raised about ten years previously by General Monk at Coldstream, on the borders of Scotland. To these were added the 1st Royal Scots, brought over from France at the Restoration; the 2nd, or Queen's, raised in 1661; the 3rd, or Old Buffs, so named from their accoutrements being composed of buffalo leather, embodied in 1665; the Scottish Fusiliers, afterwards the 21st, raised in 1678, and so called from their carrying the fusil, invented in France in 1630—being a firelock lighter than the musket, but about the same length; and the 4th, or King's Own, raised in 1680.
During this reign the bayonet—so called from Bayonne, where it was invented—was sometimes three-edged, sometimes flat, with a wooden hilt like a dagger, and was screwed or merely stuck into the muzzle of the gun. The bayonet superseded the rapier attached to the musket-rest in James's reign. Even then the bayonet was a far inferior weapon to what it subsequently became, as it had to be removed to fire and charge again. The Grenadiers were introduced in 1678, and were so called from being practised to fling hand grenades, each man having a pouch full. To these James added, in 1685, the 1st, or King's regiment of Dragoon Guards, the 2nd, or Queen's Dragoon Guards, and the 5th and 7th regiments, called the Royal Fusiliers; and in 1688, the year of the Revolution, the 23rd, or Welsh Fusiliers, were raised.
We need not repeat what has been so frequently stated in these pages about the profligacy of the Court and aristocracy in Charles II.'s reign, which soon polluted the spirit of the greater part of the country. However harsh and repulsive were the manners and social maxims of the Puritans, they were infinitely preferable to the licentiousness and blasphemy of the Cavaliers, who mistook vulgarity and obscenity for gentility. Notwithstanding the traditionary feeling left by the Royalist writers of these times, and too faithfully taken up by such writers as Sir Walter Scott, it is now beginning to be perceived that the Cavaliers were, in reality, the vulgar of the age. If to swear, gamble, bully, murder, and use the most indecent language, and lead the most indecent lives, be marks of vulgarity, these were the distinctive marks of too many of the Cavaliers. The Puritans, with all their acerbity and intolerance, had a reverence for sound and Christian principles at the core of their system. Virtue and moral piety were their admiration, however rudely they demonstrated it. But the Cavaliers gloried in every opposite vice the more, because the Puritans, whom they despised, denounced them. We have seen the spirit of private assassination which animated them, and led them to the murder of Dorislaus, the Commonwealth ambassador in Holland; of Ascam, its minister at Madrid; of Colonel Lisle, at Lausanne; and their repeated attempts on the life of Cromwell, in pursuance of their avowed doctrine of assassination shown in the tract called "Killing no Murder." This does anything but justify their high claim to the title of men of honour, and finds no parallel in the principles or practices of the Puritans of England, though the Scottish Covenanters stooped to this base practice in the murder of Archbishop Sharp.
Then as to profane swearing, their conversation, larded with oaths, would have disgraced the most uncouth trooper of to-day. "The new band of wits and fine gentlemen," says Macaulay, "never opened their mouths without uttering a ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them." "No man," says Lord Somers, "was accounted a gentleman, or person of any honour, that had not in two hours' sitting invented some new modish oath, or found out the late intrigue between the Lord B. and the Lady P., laughed at the fopperies of priests, and made lampoons and drollery on the sacred Scriptures themselves." As to drinking and gambling, these vices were beyond conception; and the plunder of the people by the Cavalier troopers was carried on as if they had been in an enemy's country.
We have only to refer to the abandoned character of the women of Charles's Court, and amongst the aristocracy, who imitated the monarch in selecting mistresses and even wives from the stage, to remind the reader of the immoral character of the age. As we have already said, any one who would convince himself of the sink of infamy and obscenity which society was then, has only to look at the plays which were acted; at their language, declaimed by women without a blush or any evidence of disgust; plays written even by such men as Dryden. "Whatever our dramatists touched," says Macaulay, "they tainted. In their imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and high-spirited Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakespeare's 'Viola' a procuress, Molière's 'Misanthrope' a ravisher, Molière's 'Agnes' an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic, but that it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and ignoble minds." The same writer, making a few exceptions—and a noble one in the case of Milton—says of the poets of that age that "from Dryden to D'Urfey the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman."
Whilst such was the condition of the Court, the aristocracy, the theatre, and the literature of the country, we may imagine what was the condition of the lower orders. The state of London was little, if anything, improved in civilisation—by no means improved in its moral tone—since the days of James I. The city was rising in a more healthy and substantial form from the fire, with wider streets, and better drainage; but it was still badly lighted, and disgraced by filthy kennels.
At the close of Charles II.'s reign London was lighted, by contract, by one Herring, who engaged to place a lamp at every tenth door, when there was no moon, from six to twelve o'clock at night, from Michaelmas to Lady-Day; and this was thought to be a wonderful advance. To us it would appear just darkness visible; and vast tracts of population were destitute of even this feeble glimmer. Whitefriars still continued the haunt of thieves, bullies, desperate debtors, and abandoned women, who rushed out and defended themselves from any visitations of duns or constables. The neighbourhood of Whitehall itself was little better, from the resort of the bully-mob of those who called themselves gentlemen. These young men, often belonging to good families, or the sons of wealthy citizens, assembled for noise and mischief in theatres and in the streets. They had been successively known as the "Darr Hearts," "the Heroics," "the Muns," "Tityre Tu's," "the Hectors," "the Roaring Boys," and "Bonaventors," so continually figuring in the comedies of the time. They now bore the name of "the Scourers," and frequented the theatres to damn plays, and the coffee-houses to pick up the last sayings of the wits, which were commonly not very cleanly, when such men as Rochester, Sedley, Dryden, and Wycherley were the stars there. They then sallied into the streets in bands, breaking windows, tearing off knockers, defacing signs, upsetting stalls, fish- or fruit-sellers, storming taverns, beating quiet passengers, and rudely insulting respectable women. Frequently they came to a regular fight with some other mob of "Scourers," and then rushed headlong, knocking down all whom they met. The watchmen carefully kept out of their way, and the military had to disperse them when they became particularly riotous. One great delight of these genteel ruffians was to hustle passengers into the kennel, or into Fleet Ditch and its tributaries, which ran then in open Styx-like blackness along the streets. To add to these dangers of walking the City in the evening thieves and pickpockets assaulted the passers by from dark entries below; and it was the common practice to empty all sorts of filth out of chamber windows. The City apprentices still kept up their riotous character. On one occasion, having attacked and beaten their masters, they were some of them put into the pillory; whereupon they tore down the pillory, and when set up again they again pulled it down. There were feuds and street encounters everywhere. The weavers and butchers, the frequenters of bear-gardens and theatres, or sword-players, were continually falling into parties and ending the dispute by a general mêlée.
The aristocracy had evacuated the City-especially since the fire—and had located themselves along the Strand, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Bloomsbury, Soho, and all quarters tending towards Whitehall; others located themselves in Covent Garden; and in the fields now covered by the piles of Bedford Square and the British Museum stood the magnificent mansions of Bedford House and Montague House. But most of the sites of the splendid squares and streets of our now West End were open country, or the rubbish-heaps of the neighbourhood. Club-life was just beginning. There were numbers of political clubs, the most famous of which was the King's Head, or Green Ribbon Club, from the members wearing a green ribbon in their hats, to distinguish them from their opponents. There was the club of Shaftesbury and the Whig party, which was engaged in the design of excluding the Duke of York from the succession, and which raised all the Titus Oates plots to accomplish their object. It met at the King's Head Tavern opposite to the Temple Gate. But coffee-houses, now become general, were in reality clubs; and every class and party had its coffee-house, where its members met. There was the literary coffee-house, called Will's, situate between Covent Garden and Bow Street, where Dryden was the great man, and where literary lords, literary lawyers, dramatists, players, and wits of all sorts met to settle the merits of literature and the stage. There were lawyers' coffee-houses, citizens' coffee-houses, doctors' coffee-houses, the chief of them Garraway's; Jesuits' coffee-houses, Puritans' coffee-houses, and Popish coffee-houses, where every man found his fellows, and partisans met and learned the news; and in these haunts the spirit of party and of religious antagonism was carried to its fiercest height. The chief place of public lounging was the New Exchange in the City, and Spring Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Mulberry Garden, which were continually occurring in the comedies of the day as the places of assignation, as well as the fashionable masquerades.
But whilst such were the most marked features of life in London at that day, we are not to suppose that there was not a large number of the population who retained a love of virtue, purity, and domestic life. The religious were a numerous class; and the stern morality of the Nonconformists beheld with pity and indignation the dissipated flutterings of the corrupt world around them. Besides these there was a numerous population of sober citizens, who, though they did not go with the Puritans in religion, were disgusted with the French manners, maxims, houses, and cookery, and stood by their native modes and ideas with sturdy John Bullism. The musical taste of the age tended to draw them together to more rational enjoyments than debauchery and the tainted stage, and the increasing use of coffee and tea gave to musical and social parties a more homelike and refined character.
