The post-house, in 1653, was farmed at ten thousand pounds a year, which was deemed a considerable sum for the three kingdoms. Letters paid only about half the present postage.
From 1619 to 1638, there had been coined six millions nine hundred thousand and forty-two pounds. From 1638 to 1657, the coinage amounted to seven millions seven hundred and thirty-three thousand five hundred and twenty-one pounds.[v]
* Journal, 7th April, 1659.
** Strafford’s Letters, vol. i. p. 421, 423, 430, 467.
*** Clarendon.
**** Lewis Roberts’s Treasure of Traffick.
v Happy Future State of England
Dr. Davenant has told us, from the registers of the mint, that, between 1558 and 1659, there had been coined nineteen millions eight hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-six pounds in gold and silver.
The first mention of tea, coffee, and chocolate, is about 1660.[*] Asparagus, artichokes, cauliflower, and a variety of salads, were about the same time introduced into England.[**]
The colony of New England increased by means of the Puritans, who fled thither in order to free themselves from the constraint which Laud and the church party had imposed upon them; and, before the commencement of the civil wars, it is supposed to have contained twenty-five thousand souls.[***] For a like reason, the Catholics, afterwards, who found themselves exposed to many hardships, and dreaded still worse treatment went over to America in great numbers, and settled the colony of Maryland.
Before the civil wars, learning and the fine arts were favored at court, and a good taste began to prevail in the nation. The king loved pictures, sometimes handled the pencil himself, and was a good judge of the art. The pieces of foreign masters were bought up at a vast price; and the value of pictures doubled in Europe by the emulation between Charles and Philip IV. of Spain, who were touched with the same elegant passion. Vandyke was caressed and enriched at court. Inigo Jones was master of the king’s buildings; though afterwards persecuted by the parliament, on account of the part which he had in rebuilding St. Paul’s, and for obeying some orders of council, by which he was directed to pull down houses, in order to make room for that edifice. Laws, who had not been surpassed by any musician before him, was much beloved by the king, who called him the father of music. Charles was a good judge of writing, and was thought by some more anxious with regard to purity of style than became a monarch.[****]
* Anderson, vol. ii. p. 111.
** Anderson, vol. ii. p. 111.
*** British Empire in America, vol. i. p. 372.
**** Purnet.
Notwithstanding his narrow revenue, and his freedom from all vanity, he lived in such magnificence, that he possessed four and twenty palaces, all of them elegantly and completely furnished; insomuch that, when he removed from one to another, he was not obliged to transport any thing along with him.
Cromwell, though himself a barbarian was not insensible to literary merit. Usher, notwithstanding his being a bishop, received a pension from him. Marvel and Milton were in his service. Waller, who was his relation, was caressed by him. That poet always said, that the protector himself was not so wholly illiterate as was commonly imagined. He gave a hundred pounds a year to the divinity professor at Oxford; and an historian mentions this bounty as an instance of his love of literature.[*] He intended to have erected a college at Durham for the benefit of the northern counties.