CHAPTER VI.
LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
From Maitland, who published his History of London in 1739, we learn that there were at that time, within the bills of mortality, 5,099 streets, 95,968 houses, 207 inns, 447 taverns, and 551 coffee-houses. In 1681, the bills included 132 parishes; 147 are found in those for the year 1744. Judging from the bills of mortality, which however cannot be trusted as accurate, population considerably increased in that portion of the century included in Maitland's history. During the seventeen years from 1703 to 1721, the total number of burials was 393,034. During the next seventeen years, to 1738, they amounted to 457,779. The extension of London was still towards the west. In the Weekly Journal of 1717 it is stated, the new buildings between Bond-street and Marylebone go on with all possible diligence, and the houses even let and sell before they are built. In 1723, the duke of Grafton and the earl of Grantham purchased the waste ground at the upper end of Albemarle and Dover-streets for gardens, and turned a road leading into May Fair another way. (London, vol. i, p. 310.) Devonshire House remained for some time the boundary of the buildings in Piccadilly, though farther on, by the Hyde Park Corner, there were several habitations. Lanesborough House stood there by the top of Constitution-hill, and was, in 1773, converted into an infirmary, since rebuilt, and now known as St. George's Hospital. It may be added, that Westminster Hospital, the first institution of the kind supported by voluntary contributions, was founded in 1719. Several churches were erected in the early part of the eighteenth century. In the year 1711, an act was passed for the erection of no less than fifty, but only ten had been built on new foundations when Maitland published his work. These ecclesiastical edifices exhibit the architectural taste of the age. The finest specimen of the period is the church of St. Martin-in-the-fields, built by Gibbs. It was commenced in 1721, and finished in 1726, at a cost of nearly £37,000. In spite of the drawback in the ill-placed steeple over the portico, without any basement tower, the building strikes the beholder with an emotion of delight. St. George's, Hanover-square, and St. George's, Bloomsbury, (the latter exhibiting a remarkable campanile,) were also built about the same time, the one in 1724, the other in 1731. Almost all the churches built after the fire are in the modern style, imported from Italy. In its colonnades, porticoes, architraves, and columns, this style presents elements of the Greek school of design, but differently arranged, more complicated in composition, more florid and ambitious in detail. Taste must assign the palm of superiority to the Grecian temple, with its severe beauty and chastened sublimity. The one style indicates the era of original genius, and exhibits the fruits of masterminds in that line of invention, while the other marks an epoch of mere imitation, supplying only the degenerate produce of transplanted taste.
Feeble attempts were made to improve the state of the streets, but they remained pretty much in their former condition till the Paving Act of 1762. Stalls, sheds, and sign-posts obstructed the path, and the pavement was left to the inhabitants, to be made "in such a manner, and with such materials, as pride, poverty, or caprice might suggest. Curb stones were unknown, and the footway was exposed to the carriage-way, except in some of the principal streets, where a line of posts and chains, or wooden paling, afforded occasional protection. It was a matter of moment to go near the wall; and Gay, in his Trivia, supplies directions to whom to yield it, and to whom to refuse it."—Handbook, by Cunninghame, xxxi. "In the last age," says Johnson, "when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people—those who gave the wall and those who took it, the peaceable and the quarrelsome. Now it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; and if one is taking the wall another yields it, and it is never a dispute." The lighting, drainage, and police, were all in a wretched condition.
To attempt to give anything like a detailed chronological account of events in London during the first half of the eighteenth century, is neither possible nor desirable in a work like this. Indeed, the far greater part of the incidents recorded in the city chronicles relates to royal visits, city feasts, celebration of victories, local tumults, and remarkable storms and frosts. All that can be done, or expected, in this small volume, is to fix upon a few leading and important scenes and events, illustrative of the times.
In the reign of queen Anne, the chief matter of interest in connection with London was the political excitement which prevailed. It turned upon questions relating to the Church and the toleration of dissenters. Dean Swift, in a letter dated London, December, 1703, tells a friend, that the occasional Conformity Bill, intended to nullify the Toleration Act, was then the subject of everybody's conversation. "It was so universal," observes the witty dean, "that I observed the dogs in the street much more contumelious and quarrelsome than usual; and the very night before the bill went up, a committee of Whig and Tory cats had a very warm debate upon the roof of our house." Defoe, the well-known author of Robinson Crusoe, and a London citizen, rendered himself very conspicuous by his advocacy of the rights of conscience; and in consequence of writing an ironical work, which then created great excitement, entitled, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," he was doomed to stand three successive days in the pillory, at the Royal Exchange by the Cheapside Conduit, and near Temple Bar. Immense crowds gathered to gaze on the sufferer; but "the people, who were expected to treat him ill, on the contrary pitied him, and wished those who set him there were placed in his room, and expressed their affections by loud shouts and acclamations when he was taken down."—Life of Defoe, by Chalmers, p. 28.
The political excitement of London reached its height during the trial of Dr. Sacheverell. He had preached two sermons, one of which was delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 5th of November, 1709, in which he inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance, and inveighed with great bitterness against all nonconformists. The drift of his sermon was to undermine the principles of the Revolution, though he professed to approve of that event, pretending to consider it as by no means a case of resistance to the supreme power. The ministry, considering that his doctrine struck a fatal blow at the constitution, as established in 1688, prosecuted him accordingly. With Sacheverell numbers of the clergy sympathized, especially Atterbury, the leader of his party. It was supposed that the queen was not unfriendly to the arraigned divine. He was escorted to Westminster Hall, the place of his trial, by immense crowds of people, who rent the air with their huzzas. The queen herself attended at the proceedings, and was hailed with deafening shouts, as she stepped from her carriage, "God bless your majesty; we hope your majesty is for Dr. Sacheverell." The spacious building in which he was tried, the scene of so many state trials, was fitted up for the occasion, benches and galleries being provided for peers and commoners, peeresses and gentlewomen, who crowded every seat; the lower classes squeezing themselves to suffocation into the part of the old building allotted to their use. The London rabble were so much excited by what took place, or were so completely swayed by more influential malcontents, that on the evening of the second day of the trial they attacked a meeting-house in New-Court, tearing away doors and casements, pews and pulpit, and proceeding with the spoil to Lincoln's-inn-fields. In the open space—where was then no fair garden inclosed with palisades, it being a rendezvous for mountebanks, dancing bears, and baited bulls—the populace kindled a bonfire, and consumed the ruins of the conventicle. They went forth in quest of the minister, Mr. Burgess, in order to burn him and his pulpit together. Happily disappointed of their victim, they wreaked their vengeance upon six other dissenting places of worship. An episcopal church in Clerkenwell shared the same fate, being mistaken for one of the hated structures through want of a steeple; for steeple and no steeple probably constituted the only difference in religion appreciable by these infatuated mortals. The advocates of toleration, even though they might be good Churchmen, as Bishop Burnet for example, were also in danger. Indeed, the tumult became of such grave importance, that queen and magistrates, court and city, felt it a duty to combine in order to quell the disgraceful outbreak. A few sword cuts, and the capture of several prisoners, put down the insurrection; but ecclesiastical politics still ran high in London, and whigs and dissenters were in low estimation in many quarters, till the Hanoverian succession brightened the prospects of the liberal party. While Queen Anne lay ill, deep anxiety pervaded the political circles in London. It is not generally known, but it is stated on the authority of tradition, that the first place in which the decease of Anne was publicly announced, and the accession of George I. proclaimed, was the very meeting-house in New Court which had been formerly attacked by the mob. The day on which the queen died was a Sunday; and as Bishop Burnet was riding in his coach through Smithfield, he met Mr. Bradbury, then the minister of the chapel, and told him that immediately upon the royal demise, then momentarily expected, he would send a messenger to give tidings of the event. Before the morning service was over a man appeared in the gallery, and dropped a handkerchief, being the preconcerted signal; whereupon the preacher, in his last prayer, alluded to the removal of her majesty, and implored a blessing on King George and the house of Hanover.
The most striking feature in the history of London in the reign of George I., was the extraordinary spirit of speculation which then existed. The moderate gains of trade and commerce did not satisfy the cupidity of the human breast, which then, as it has done since, burst out into a fever, that consumed all reason, prudence, and principle. Men made haste to be rich, and consequently fell into temptation and a snare. In 1717, an unprecedented excitement pervaded the money market. Every one familiar with the city knows the plain-looking edifice of brick and stone which stands in Threadneedle-street, not far from the Flower-pot, and which is so well described by one whose youth was passed within it, as "deserted or thinly peopled, with few or no traces of comers-in or goers-out, like what Ossian describes, when he says, I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." That grave-looking edifice, now like some respectable citizen retired from business, was at one time the busiest place in the world. A scheme was planned and formed for making fortunes by the South Sea trade. A company was incorporated by government for the purpose, and the house in Threadneedle-street was the scene of business. Stock rapidly doubled in value, and went on till it reached a premium of nine hundred per cent. People of all ranks flocked to Change-alley, and crowded the courts in riotous eagerness to purchase shares. The nobleman drove from the West-end, the squire came up from the country, ladies of fashion, and people of no fashion, swarmed round the new El Dorado, to dig up the sparkling treasure. Swift compares these crowds of human beings to the waters of the South Sea Gulf, from which their imagination was drawing such abundant draughts of wealth.
"Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down,
Each paddling in her leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold, and drown.
Now buried in the depths below,
Now mounted up to heaven again;
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wits' end like drunken men."