Meanwhile, in the same month that the trial of the bishops took place, the queen was delivered of a fine healthy boy. The Lord Mayor of London was commanded to provide bonfires and other public rejoicings; but there were no bonfires now except for persecuted bishops, and the alleged birth of a prince, instead of being honoured, was pronounced to be a gross imposture.
The Protestants, Tories as well as Whigs, turned to the Prince of Orange as their only hope, and an invitation was sent to him to come from Holland, with an armed force, to call in question the legitimacy of the pretended new born prince, and to redress the grievances of the nation. Before the month expired, Prince William had collected 15,000 land troops, a fleet of seventy ships, and a large train of artillery.
James began to apprehend danger, and attempted to disarm the animosity of the people by concessions. He even condescended to consult with the seven bishops whom he had so recently harassed. He replaced the Protestant deputy-lieutenants and magistrates. He gave back to the city of London its old charter, and restored Compton to his Episcopal office.
On the 3d of October, the primate and eight bishops waited upon the king, and endeavoured to bring him back “to the religion in which he had been baptized and educated;” but, just at that time, the infant, whose birth had helped to increase the storm, was baptized, with great pomp, according to the rites of the Church of Rome. The Pope, represented by his nuncio, was godfather to the child, and the baptism of James Francis Edward, with full particulars of the ceremony, was published in the Gazette. This added fresh elements to the storm which was already raging, and the bastardy of the unlucky child was sung in scurrilous songs in the streets of London.
On October 16th, William of Orange set sail, his ship bearing the British flag, which was emblazoned with the motto, “I will maintain the Protestant religion, and the liberties of England.” James soon found that his game was ended, and that there was nothing left for him but an ignominious flight. William came safe to anchor at Torbay, and landed on the 5th of November, the anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Exactly five weeks after, the queen, disguised as an Italian lady, fled with the infant prince across the Thames to Lambeth, being lighted on her dolorous way by the flames of burning popish chapels. From Lambeth, she and her child were conveyed in a coach to Gravesend, where they entered a yacht, which landed them at Calais. In less than twenty-four hours the stupified king fled after them, throwing the great seal of England into the river as he crossed to the Surrey side. At Faversham[Faversham] he embarked in a custom-house hoy. The boat encountered a storm, and was obliged to put in at the Isle of Sheppy. There the people seized the disguised monarch, under the idea that he was a fugitive Jesuit, treated him with rudeness, and dragged him back a prisoner to Faversham. At Faversham he was subjected to further indignities, the mob calling him a “hatchet-faced Jesuit.” At length he was rescued by Lord Winchelsea out of the rude hands of sailors, smugglers, and fishermen, and actually came back to London, and invited his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, to meet him, for the purpose of amicably settling the distractions of the nation. The invitation was declined; and, on December 23d, James again set sail for France, where he landed two days after; and thus was England happily delivered from the popish, perfidious, dissolute, and despotic dynasty of the Stuarts.[[37]] Seven weeks afterwards both Houses of Parliament agreed to the resolution, “That William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared, King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging.”
It was in the midst of this national revolution that Samuel Wesley left the University of Oxford, and became an ordained clergyman of the Church of England.
Perhaps this digression may be thought too long, and yet, at the risk of wearying the reader’s patience still further, a few more sketches of the state of the country, at this momentous period of its history, are added. They are chiefly taken from Macaulay, and it is hoped that they may help to convey some idea of the condition of affairs when Samuel Wesley commenced his ministry. Things at that time were widely different from what they are at present, and that must be borne in mind if the reader wishes rightly to understand the difficulties and discouragements of a Christian minister like the subject of this biography.
London, where Wesley first entered upon the duties of his sacred office, was, comparatively speaking, a small, dirty, ill-built town. In the east, no part of the immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes, which now spreads from the Tower to Blackwall, had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one of those stately piles of building, which are inhabited by the noble and the wealthy, was in existence; and Chelsea, now peopled by tens of thousands of human beings, was then a quiet country village. On the north cattle fed, and sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns over the site of the borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude; and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din and turmoil of the monster London. On the south, the capital was connected with its suburbs by a single line of irregular arches, impeding the navigation of the river, and overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses. In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, and cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham. The centre of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields was an open space, where the rabble congregated every evening to hear mountebanks harangue, to see bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. St James’s Square was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, and for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. The pavement of London was detestable, and the drainage so bad that, in rainy weather, the gutters soon became torrents. The houses were not numbered. The shops were distinguished by painted signs, gay and grotesque. The walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens’ Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs. When the evening closed in, garret windows were opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to those who walked on the path below. Most of the streets were left in profound darkness, where thieves plied their trade with impunity, and dissolute young gents broke windows, upset sedans, beat quiet men, and offered rude caresses to pretty women.
Nothing like the London daily newspaper of our time existed, or could exist. Both the necessary capital and the necessary skill were wanting. No newspaper was published oftener than twice a week; and none exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the Times. There were no provincial newspapers whatever. Indeed, except in the capital and at the two universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom; and the only printing press in England, north of the river Trent, appears to have been at York.
In the country, many thousands of square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. The peasant kept a flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fen which has long since been drained, and divided into corn and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor, which is now a meadow, bright with clover, and renowned for its butter and its cheese. The market-place, which the rustic can now reach with his cart in an hour, was then a day’s journey from his home. On the best lines of communication, the ruts of the roads were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available; for, in wet, the mud lay deep both on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire on each hand. Almost every day coaches stuck fast, until teams of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug them out of the slough in which they were imbedded. On the best highways, heavy goods were generally conveyed by stage waggons, in the straw of which nestled a crowd of passengers, who were not able to ride on horseback, and could not afford to indulge in the luxury of a coach. The expense of transmitting heavy goods was enormous. From London to Birmingham, the charge was £7 a ton; and from London to Exeter it was £12. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax on many useful articles; and coal, in particular, was never seen except in the districts where it was produced, or in the districts to which it was conveyed by water. On by-roads, and generally throughout the country north of York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of pack-horses; and a traveller of humble condition often found it convenient to perform a journey, mounted on a pack-saddle, and seated between two baskets. The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, drawn by at least four horses, and often by six, because, with a less number, there was great danger of sticking fast. Flying coaches ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns; but no stage-coach, indeed no stage-waggon, appears to have proceeded further north than York, or further west than Exeter. The ordinary day’s journey of a flying coach was about fifty miles in summer; and in winter, when the roads were bad and the nights were long, a little more than thirty. In Cornwall, in the fens of Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland, letters were received only once a-week; the letter-bags being carried on horseback, day and night, at the rate of about five miles an hour. Travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran considerable risk of being stopped and plundered; for the mounted highwayman was to be found on every main road, held an aristocratic position in the community of thieves, appeared in fashionable coffee-houses in the capital, and betted with men of quality on the race grounds of the country.