In the same year, the Queen, on her birthday, showed her devoted attachment to the Church of England by making a grant of her whole revenue, arising out of the first-fruits and tenths, for augmenting the livings of the poorer clergy. These first-fruits and tenths amounted to about £16,000 a year, and, in the time of Charles II. had been distributed chiefly among his concubines and his illegitimate children. There were now hundreds of clergymen whose livings were not worth more than £20 a year, and thousands whose livings did not exceed £50 a year. Of course, the Queen was well nigh overwhelmed with addresses, thanking her for her royal bounty, and it was difficult to tell whether she was prouder of the title “Queen of England,” than she was of “Nursing-mother to the Church.” This tender care for poor ministers, however, did not extend to other sects of the Protestant communion; for, just at the same time, this royal benefactress allowed the Irish Parliament to stop the paltry grant of £1200 per annum, which had been paid to the poor Presbyterian ministers in Ulster in the reign of her predecessor, King William.
In 1704, the “Occasional Conformity Bill” was a third time introduced into the House of Commons, though there was still not the slightest chance of its passing in the House of Lords.
In the year following, Lord Halifax moved, in the Upper House, that a day might be appointed to inquire into the “Dangers of the Church,” it being alleged that the rejection of the “Occasional Conformity Bill” was likely to ruin both Church and State, and especially when this was coupled with the liberty of the press and the licence of the times, wherein no restraint was laid upon those who vilified the established religion. Both Houses of Parliament, however, passed a resolution, to the effect, that the Church of England was in a most safe and flourishing condition, and the Queen ordered a proclamation to be issued accordingly.
All this created great excitement, which will have to be more fully noticed in another chapter. At present, we can only add that, in 1712, an act was passed by parliament, to the effect, that, if any person holding public office should attend a conventicle, at which more than ten persons were assembled, he should be fined £40, and should be adjudged incapable henceforth to hold such office, or any other office or employment whatsoever, unless he conformed to the Church of England for one year without being present at any conventicle, and received, during that year, the holy sacrament at least three times.
This intolerant Act of Parliament was followed by another of a kindred kind, in 1714, the year of Queen Anne’s decease—“An Act to prevent the growth of schism, and for the further security of the Churches of England and Ireland, as by law established.” By this statute, it was enacted that, if any person dared to keep any public or private school without subscribing a declaration to the effect that he would conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England, and without obtaining a licence from the ordinary of the place, such person, on conviction, should be committed to the common gaol for three months. The same penalty was to be inflicted upon a person who had duly qualified himself for the office of schoolmaster, and had obtained the necessary licence, if he dared to be present at any conventicle where prayer was not offered for Queen Anne.[[158]]
This was a fitting wind up of the reign of an ecclesiastical, though well-intentioned bigot. Anne was seized with apoplexy on the 28th of July 1714, and four days afterwards died, without being able either to receive the sacrament or to sign her will. This princess was remarkable neither for learning nor capacity, and yet “she was,” says John Wesley, “a good wife, a tender mother, a warm friend, an indulgent mistress, a munificent patron, and a merciful monarch; for, during her whole reign, no subjects’ blood was shed for treason. In a word, if she was not the greatest she was certainly one of the best and most unblemished sovereigns that ever sat upon the throne of England; and well deserved the expressive, though simple, epithet of ‘The good Queen Anne.’”[[159]]
Great efforts were made, during the reign of Anne, to multiply churches, but, at the same time, there was an enormous increase of places of public resort and public discussion. Club-houses, chocolate-houses, and coffee-houses became so numerous that, besides the large ones, there was one or more for almost every parish in the capital, in which citizens regaled themselves to their hearts’ content, and found fault with the management of public matters. On entering a coffee-house, the visitor had only to pay a penny at the bar, and for this he was not only served with a cup of coffee, but accommodated with the newspapers of the day, and with the newest pamphlets on morals and on politics. Tradesmen forsook their shops, and merchants their offices, to take care of the affairs of state, and to harangue upon the misconduct of the ministry, until, by neglecting their business, those oratorical financiers and disinterested patriots were, not unfrequently, seized by an ambushment of bumbailiffs, and, after having defrayed the debts of the nation, were ignominiously conducted to a sponging-house for not being able to pay their own.
While the middle and the lower classes were thus discussing politics, the fashionable orders were devoted to pleasure and to gallantry. From ten to twelve the beau received his visitors in bed, where he lay in state, his periwig, superbly powdered, lying beside him on the sheets; while his toilet-table was sprinkled with amorous poems, a canister of Spanish snuff, a smelling bottle, and a few fashionable trinkets. At twelve he rose, and after spending three hours in perfuming his clothes, in soaking his hands in washes to make them delicate and white, in tinging his cheeks with carminative to give them a gentle blush, in dipping his handkerchief in rose water, and in powdering his linen to banish from it the smell of soap—the self-indulgent exquisite then sat down to dinner. At four o’clock, he repaired to some place of public concourse, where he endeavoured to display his gallantry and wit. At five, he proceeded to the theatre, where, to give himself the air of a critic, he readjusted his cravat, and sprinkled his face with snuff. From the theatre he would wander to the park, buzzing and fluttering from lady to lady, and chattering to each a jargon made up of bad English, atrocious French, and undistinguishable Latin. And then, his lounge in the park being ended, he concluded the day by dropping into some fashionable party, where he chatted his empty nothings, played at ombre, and lost his money with an air of fashionable indifference.
Besides these fashionable beaus, there were those who, in the language of the day, were called bully-beaus,—fellows figuring in Ramillies’ perukes, laced hats, black cockades, and scarlet suits; and who maintained a reputation for courage, by empty swagger and violent assaults on the peaceable members of society. These gallants, instead of confining their follies and their fopperies within the compass of the metropolis, very often made country excursions to bamboozle fox-hunting squires, and to make love to their unsophisticated daughters. The fair rustics were dazzled by the surpassing finery of such manners, dress, and speech; while young clod-poll squires were set agog to emulate the captivating visitor. In this way many a youth, whose gayest party had been a country wake, was translated into a London fop. As soon as his father had broken his neck over a six-barred gate, or fairly drunk himself into his coffin, the rustic aspirant turned his back on the old mansion of his progenitors, and hied to London, dressed in his best leathern breeches tied at the knee with red taffeta, his new blue jacket, and his fashionable greatcoat, both adorned with buttons of the orthodox size and shape. Bully-beaus and sharpers took him into training; tailors, silk-mercers, and cabinetmakers hastened to his levees; whilst prize-fighters, horse-racers, fiddlers, and dancing-masters, pimps and parasites, soon transformed a raw country bumpkin into a finished gentleman of town.
Besides the fashionable and bully-beaus, already mentioned, there were the Darby-Captains, the Tash-Captains, the Cock-and-bottle Captains, and the Nickers. But of all the turbulent characters of the period, none were so distinguished as the Mohocks. These fellows, after drinking to an outrageous extent to qualify themselves for action, would rush into the streets with drawn swords, cutting, stabbing, and carbonading all the unlucky persons that happened to cross their path. Sometimes they “tipped the lion” on their victim, that is, flattened his nose and gouged out his eyes; sometimes they were “dancing-masters,” because they made people cut capers by thrusting swords into their legs; and sometimes they were “tumblers,” because they would place a woman topsy-turvy upon her head, or tumble her into an empty barrel, and send it rolling down Snow Hill. Rightly were they designated “Mohocks,” for they out-did the atrocities of the tribe of Indian savages whose name they used.