A full chorus of all that Acacia sung.

266 Ven. Behold what triumphs are prepared to grace
Thy glorious race,
Where love and honour claim an equal place;
Already they are fixed by fate,
And only ripening ages wait.

The Scene changes to a Walk of very high trees; at the end of the Walk is a view of that part of Windsor, which faces Eton; in the midst of it is a row of small trees, which lead to the Castle-Hill. In the first scene, part of the Town and part of the Hill. In the next, the Terrace Walk, the King's lodgings, and the upper part of St George's chapel, then the keep; and, lastly, that part of the Castle beyond the keep.

In the air is a vision of the Honours of the Garter; the Knights in procession, and the King under a canopy; beyond this, the upper end of St George's hall.

Fame rises out of the middle of the Stage, standing on a Globe, on which is the Arms of England: the Globe rests on a Pedestal; on the front of the Pedestal in drawn a Man with a long, lean, pale face, with fiends' wings, and snakes twisted round his body; he is encompassed by several fanatical rebellious heads, who suck poison from him, which runs out of a tap in his side.[11]

267 Fame. Renown, assume thy trumpet!
From pole to pole resounding
Great Albion's name;
Great Albion's name shall be
The theme of Fame, shall be great Albion's name,
Great Albion's name, great Albion's name.
Record the garter's glory;
A badge for heroes, and for kings to bear;
For kings to bear!
And swell the immortal story,
With songs of Gods, and fit for Gods to hear;
And swell the immortal story,
With songs of Gods, and fit for Gods to hear;
For Gods to hear.

A full Chorus of all the Voices and Instruments; trumpets and hautboys make Ritornello's of all Fame sings; and twenty-four Dancers, all the time in a chorus, and dance to the end of the Opera.

Footnotes:

  2. The reader must recollect the orders of the Rump parliament to general Monk, to destroy the gates and portcullises of the city of London; which commission, by the bye, he actually executed, with all the forms of contempt, although, in a day or two after, he took up his quarters in the city, apologized for what had passed, and declared against the parliament.
  4. Dr. Titus Oates, the principal witness to the Popish Plot, was accused of unnatural and infamous crimes. He was certainly a most ineffably impudent, perjured villain.
  6. The Chacon is supposed by Sir John Hawkins to be of Moorish or Saracenic origin. "The characteristic of the Chacone is a bass, or ground, consisting of four measures, wherein three crotchets make the bar, and the repetition thereof with variations in the several parts, from the beginning to the end of the air, which in respect of its length, has no limit but the discretion of the composer. The whole of the twelfth sonata of the second opera of Corelli is a Chacone." Hist. of Music, vol. iv. p. 388. There is also, I am informed, a very celebrated Chacon composed by Jomelli.
  8. By the White Boys or Property Boys, are meant the adherents of the Duke of Monmouth, who affected great zeal for liberty and property, and assumed white badges, as marks of the innocence of their intentions. When the Duke came to the famous Parliament held at Oxford, "he was met by about 100 Batchellors all in white, except black velvet caps, with white wands in their hands, who divided themselves, and marched as a guard to his person." Account of the Life of the Duke of Monmouth, p. 107. In the Duke's tour through the west of England, he was met at Exeter, by "a brave company of brisk stout young men, all cloathed in linen waistcoats and drawers, white and harmless, having not so much as a stick in their hands; they were in number about 900 or 1000." ibid. p. 103. See the notes on Absalom and Achitophel. The saints, on the other hand, mean the ancient republican zealots and fanatics, who, though they would willingly have joined in the destruction of Charles, did not wish that Monmouth should succeed him, but aimed at the restoration of the commonwealth. Hence the following dispute betwixt Tyranny and Democracy.
  10. The atrocious and blasphemous sentiment in the text was actually used by the fanatics who murdered Sharpe, the archbishop of St Andrews. When they unexpectedly met him during their search for another person, they exclaimed, that "the Lord had delivered him into their hands."
  12. It is easy to believe, that, whatever was the, nature of the schemes nourished by Monmouth, Russel, and Essex, they could have no concern with the low and sanguinary cabal of Ramsay, Walcot, and Rumbold, who were all of them old republican officers and commonwealth's men. The flight of Shaftesbury, whose bustling and politic brain had rendered him the sole channel of communication betwixt these parties, as well as the means of uniting them in one common design, threw loose all connection between them; so that each, after his retreat, seems to have acted independantly of, and often in contradiction to the other.
  14. The reader may judge, whether some distant and obscure allusion to the trimming politics of Halifax, to whom the Duke of York, our author's patron, was hostile, may not be here insinuated. During the stormy session of his two last parliaments, Charles was much guided by his temporising and camelion-like policy.
  16. That is by fire. See next note.
  18. The allegory of the one-eyed Archer, and the fire arising betwixt him and Albion, will be made evident by the following extracts from Sprat's history of the Conspiracy. In enumerating the persons engaged in the Rye-house plot, he mentions "Richard Rumbold, maltster, an old army officer, a desperate and bloody Ravaillac." After agitating several schemes for assassinating Charles, the Rye-house was fixed upon as a spot which the king must necessarily pass in his journey trom Newmarket, and which, being a solitary moated house, in the actual occupation of Rumbold, afforded the conspirators facility of previous concealment and subsequent defence. "All other propositions, as subject to far more casualties and hazards, soon gave place to that of the Rye, in Herefordshire, a house then inhabited by the foresaid Richard Rumbold, who proposed that to be the seat of the action, offering himself to command the party, that was to do the work. Him, therefore, as the most daring captain, and by reason of a blemish in one of his eyes, they were afterwards wont, in common discourse, to call Hannibal; often drinking healths to Hannibal and his boys, meaning Rumbold and his hellish crew.
  19. "Immediately upon the coaches coming within the gates and hedges about the house, the conspirators were to divide into several parties; some before, in the habit of labourers, were to overthrow a cart in the narrowest passage, so as to prevent all possibility of escape: others were to fight the guards, Walcot chusing that part upon a punctilio of honour; others were to shoot at the coachman, postillion, and horses; others to aim only at his Majesty's coach, which party was to be under the particular direction of Rumbold himself; the villain declaring beforehand, that, upon that occasion, he would make use of a very good blunderbuss, which was in West's possession, and blasphemously adding, that Ferguson should first consecrate it." ... "But whilst they were thus wholly intent on this barbarous work, and proceeded securely in its contrivance without any the least doubt of a prosperous success, behold! on a sudden, God miraculously disappointed all their hopes and designs, by the terrible conflagration unexpectedly breaking out at Newmarket. In which extraordinary event there was one remarkable passage, that is not so generally taken notice of, as, for the glory of God, and the confusion of his Majesty's enemies, it ought to be.
  20. "For, after that the approaching fury of the flames had driven the king out of his own palace, his Majesty, at first, removed into another quarter of the town, remote from the fire, and, as yet, free from any annoyance of smoke and ashes. There his Majesty, finding he might be tolerably well accommodated, had resolved to stay, and continue his recreations as before, till the day first named for his journey back to London. But his Majesty had no sooner made that resolution, when the wind, as conducted by an invisible power from above, presently changed about, and blew the smoke and cinders directly on his new lodging, making them in a moment as untenable as the other. Upon this, his Majesty being put to a new shift, and not finding the like conveniency elsewhere, immediately declared, he would speedily return to Whitehall, as he did; which happening to be several days before the assassins expected him, or their preparations for the Rye were in readiness, it may justly give occasion to all the world to acknowledge, what one of the very conspirators could not but do, that it was a providential fire."—Pages 51 et seq.
  21. The proprietor of the Rye-house (for Rumbold was but a tenant) shocked at the intended purpose, for which it was to have been used, is said to have fired it with his own hand. This is the subject of a poem, called the Loyal Incendiary, or the generous Boute-feu.
  23. The total ruin of those, who were directly involved in the Rye-house, was little to be regretted, had it not involved the fate of those who were pursuing reform, by means more manly and constitutional,—the fate of Russel, Essex, and Sidney.
  24. Rumbold, "the one-eyed archer," fled to Holland, and came to Scotland with Argyle, on his ill-concerted expedition. He was singled out and pursued, after the dispersion of his companions in a skirmish. He defended himself with desperate resolution against two armed peasants, till a third, coming behind him with a pitch-fork, turned off his head-piece, when he was cut down and made prisoner, exclaiming, "Cruel countryman, to use me thus, while my face was to mine enemy." He suffered the doom of a traitor at Edinburgh, and maintained on the scaffold, with inflexible firmness, the principles in which he had lived. He could never believe, he said, that the many of human kind came into the world bridled and saddled, and the few with whips and spurs to ride them. "His rooted ingrained opinion, says Fountainhall, was for a republic against monarchy, to pull down which he thought a duty, and no sin." At his death, he declared, that were every hair of his head a man, he would venture them all in the good old cause.
  26. "I must not," says Langbaine, "take the pains to acquaint my reader, that by the man on the pedestal, &c. is meant the late Lord Shaftesbury. I shall not pretend to pass my censure, whether he deserved this usage from our author or no, but leave it to the judgments of statesmen and politicians." Shaftesbury having been overturned in a carriage, received some internal injury which required a constant discharge by an issue in his side. Hence he was ridiculed under the name of Tapski. In a mock account of an apparition, stated to have appeared to Lady Gray, it says, "Bid Lord Shaftesbury have a care to his spigot—if he is tapt, all the plot will run out." Ralph's History, vol. i. p. 562. from a pamphlet in Lord Somers' collection. There are various allusions to this circumstance in the lampoons of the time. A satire called "The Hypocrite," written by Carryl, concludes thus:
  27. His body thus and soul together vie.
  28. In vice's empire for the sovereignty;
  29. In ulcers shut this does abound in sin,
  30. Lazar without and Lucifer within.
  31. The silver pipe is no sufficient drain
  32. For the corruption of this little man;
  33. Who, though he ulcers have in every part,
  34. Is no where so corrupt as in his heart.
  35. At length, in prosecution of this coarse and unhandsome jest, a sort of vessel with a turn-cock was constructed for holding wine, which was called a Shaftesbury, and used in the taverns of the royal party.

"Immediately upon the coaches coming within the gates and hedges about the house, the conspirators were to divide into several parties; some before, in the habit of labourers, were to overthrow a cart in the narrowest passage, so as to prevent all possibility of escape: others were to fight the guards, Walcot chusing that part upon a punctilio of honour; others were to shoot at the coachman, postillion, and horses; others to aim only at his Majesty's coach, which party was to be under the particular direction of Rumbold himself; the villain declaring beforehand, that, upon that occasion, he would make use of a very good blunderbuss, which was in West's possession, and blasphemously adding, that Ferguson should first consecrate it." ... "But whilst they were thus wholly intent on this barbarous work, and proceeded securely in its contrivance without any the least doubt of a prosperous success, behold! on a sudden, God miraculously disappointed all their hopes and designs, by the terrible conflagration unexpectedly breaking out at Newmarket. In which extraordinary event there was one remarkable passage, that is not so generally taken notice of, as, for the glory of God, and the confusion of his Majesty's enemies, it ought to be.

"For, after that the approaching fury of the flames had driven the king out of his own palace, his Majesty, at first, removed into another quarter of the town, remote from the fire, and, as yet, free from any annoyance of smoke and ashes. There his Majesty, finding he might be tolerably well accommodated, had resolved to stay, and continue his recreations as before, till the day first named for his journey back to London. But his Majesty had no sooner made that resolution, when the wind, as conducted by an invisible power from above, presently changed about, and blew the smoke and cinders directly on his new lodging, making them in a moment as untenable as the other. Upon this, his Majesty being put to a new shift, and not finding the like conveniency elsewhere, immediately declared, he would speedily return to Whitehall, as he did; which happening to be several days before the assassins expected him, or their preparations for the Rye were in readiness, it may justly give occasion to all the world to acknowledge, what one of the very conspirators could not but do, that it was a providential fire."—Pages 51 et seq.