[306] Curiosities of Literature, First Series, vol. iii. p. 438, ed. 1817; vol. v. p. 277, ed. 1823; vol. iii. p. 429, ed. 1824; vol. iv. p. 148 ed. 1834; p. 301, ed. 1840, or vol. ii. p. 357, of this edition.
[307] I find this speech, and an account of its reception, in manuscript letters; the fragment in Rushworth contains no part of it. I. 526. Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 490, &c.
[308] Modern history would afford more instances than perhaps some of us suspect. I cannot pass over an illustration of my principle, which I shall take from two very notorious politicians—Wat Tyler and Sir William Walworth!
Wat, when in servitude, had been beaten by his master, Richard Lyons, a great merchant of wines, and a sheriff of London. This chastisement, working on an evil disposition, appears never to have been forgiven; and when this Radical assumed his short-lived dominion, he had his old master beheaded, and his head carried before him on the point of a spear! So Grafton tells us, to the eternal obloquy of this arch-jacobin, who “was a crafty fellow, and of an excellent wit, but wanting grace.” I would not sully the patriotic blow which ended the rebellion with the rebel; yet there are secrets in history! Sir William Walworth, “the ever famous mayor of London,” as Stowe designates him, has left the immortality of his name to one of our suburbs; but having discovered in Stowe’s “Survey,” that Walworth was the landlord of the stews on the Bank-side, which he farmed out to the Dutch vrows, and which Wat had pulled down, I am inclined to suspect that private feeling first knocked down the saucy ribald, and then thrust him through and through with his dagger; and that there was as much of personal vengeance as patriotism, which crushed the demolisher of so much valuable property!
[309] I have formed my idea of Sir Francis Nethersole from some strange incidents in his political conduct, which I have read in some contemporary letters. He was, however, a man of some eminence, had been Orator for the University of Cambridge, agent for James I. with the Princes of the Union in Germany, and also Secretary to the Queen of Bohemia. He founded and endowed a free-school at Polesworth in Warwickshire.
[310] Manuscript letter.
[311] These speeches are entirely drawn from those manuscript letters to which I have frequently referred. Coke’s may be substantially found in Rushworth, but without a single expression as here given.
[312] The popular opinion is well expressed in the following lines preserved in Sloane MS. 826:—
| When only one doth rule and guide the ship, Who neither card nor compass knew before, The master pilot and the rest asleep, The stately ship is split upon the shore; But they awaking start up, stare, and cry, “Who did this fault?”—“Not I,”—“Nor I,”—“Nor I.” So fares it with a great and wealthy state Not govern’d by the master, but his mate. |
[313] This last letter is printed in Rushworth, vol. i. p. 609.