[55] Thomas Scot and Luke Robinson were sent by the Parliament to expostulate with Monk, but without effect.
[56] Pepys gives the following description of the rejoicings in the city on the evening of the eleventh of February:—“In Cheapside there were a great many bonfires, and Bow bells and all the bells in all the churches as we went home were a-ringing. Hence we went homewards, it being about ten at night. But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of bonfires! there being fourteen between St Dunstan’s and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires. In King-street seven or eight; and all along burning, and roasting, and drinking for Rumps, there being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a peal with their knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill there was one turning of a spit that had a rump tied upon it, and another basting of it. Indeed it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep on the further side.”
[57] In a satirical tract, entitled “Free Parliament Quæries,” 4to, April 10, 1660, it is inquired “Whether Sir Arthur did not act the Raging Turk in Westminster Hall, when he saw the admission of the secluded members?” Pepys gives the following account of the reception of Monck’s letter from the city on the 11th of February:—“So I went up to the lobby, where I saw the Speaker reading of the letter; and after it was read Sir A. Haselrigge came out very angry, and Billing, standing by the door, took him by the arm and cried, ‘Thou man, will thy beast carry thee no longer? thou must fall!’”
[58] Haselrigge was accused of having been a dupe to Monck’s cunning intrigues.
[59] The celebrated Praise-God Barebone, at the head of a body of fanatics, had (February 9th) presented a strong petition to the House in support of the Good old Cause, which gave great offence to the Presbyterian party and the citizens, although it was received with thanks. According to Pepys, one of Monck’s complaints against the Parliament was, “That the late petition of the fanatique people presented by Barebone, for the imposing of an oath upon all sorts of people, was received by the House with thanks.” The citizens did not omit to show their hostility against the presenter of the petition. On the 12th, Pepys says, “Charles Glascocke . . . told me the boys had last night broke Barebone’s windows.” And again, on the 22nd, “I observed this day how abominably Barebone’s windows are broke again last night.”
[60] Miles Corbet, as well as Tichbourn, had sat upon the King in judgment. In a satirical tract, published about the same time as the present ballad, Tichbourn is made to say, “They say I am as notorious as Miles Corbet the Jew.” In another, entitled “The Private Debates, etc., of the Rump,” 4to, April 2, 1660, we read, “Call in the Jews, cryes Corbet, there is a certain sympathy (quoth he), methinks, between them and me. Those wandering pedlers and I were doubtless made of the same mould; they have all such blote-herring faces as myself, and the devil himself is in ’um for cruelty.” He was one of those who fled on the Restoration, but he was afterwards taken treacherously in Holland, and, being brought to London, was executed as a regicide. In another satirical tract, entitled “A Continuation of the Acts and Monuments of our late Parliament” (Dec. 1659), it is stated that, “July 1, This very day the House made two serjeants-at-law, William Steele and Miles Corbet, and that was work enough for one day.” And, in a fourth, “Resolved, That Miles Corbet and Robert Goodwin be freed from the trouble of the Chief Register Office in Chancery.” Mercurius Honestus, No. 1. (March 21, 1659–60.)
[61] William Lord Monson, Viscount Castlemaine, was member for Ryegate in the Long Parliament. He was degraded from his honour at the Restoration, and was condemned to be drawn on a sledge with a rope round his neck from the Tower to Tyburn, and back again, and to be imprisoned there for life. It appears, by the satirical tracts of the day, that he was chiefly famous for being beaten by his wife. In one, entitled “Your Servant, Gentlemen,” 4to, 1659, it is asked, “Whether that member who lives nearest the church ought not to ride Skimmington next time my Lady Mounson cudgels her husband?” And in another (“The Rump Despairing,” 4to, London, March 26, 1660) we find the following passage:—“To my Lord Monson. A sceptre is one thing, and a ladle is another, and though his wife can tell how to use one, yet he is not fit to hold the other.”
[62] Pudding John, or Jack Pudding, was a proverbial expression of the times for a Merry Andrew. In an old English-German Dictionary it is explained thus:—“Jack-Pudding, un buffon de theatre, deliciæ populi, ein Hanswurst, Pickelhering.” The term was applied as a soubriquet to any man who played the fool to serve another person’s ends. “And first Sir Thomas Wrothe (Jack Pudding to Prideaux the post-master) had his cue to go high, and feele the pulse of the hous.” History of Independency, p. 69 (4to, 1648).
[63] An allusion to James Harrington’s “Oceana.”
[64] James Harrington, a remarkable political writer of this time, had founded a club called the Rota, in 1659, for the debating of political questions. This club met at Miles’s Coffee-house, in Old Palace Yard, and lasted a few mouths. At the beginning of the present year was published the result of their deliberations, under the title of “The Rota: or, a Model of a Free State, or Equall Commonwealth; once proposed and debated in brief, and to be again more at large proposed to, and debated by, a free and open Society of ingenious Gentlemen.” 4to, London, 1660 (Jan. 9).