Born: John Locke,
philosopher (Essay on the Human Understanding), 1632,
Wrinyton, Somersetshire; John Henry Lambert,
distinguished natural philosopher of Germany, 1728,
M�lhausen.
Died: St. John the
Baptist, beheaded, 30 A. D.; John Lilburne, zealous
parliamentarian, 1657, Eltham; Edmund Hoyle, author of
the book on Games, 1769, London; Joseph Wright,
historical painter, 1797, Derby; Pope Pius VI, 1799;
William Brockedon, painter, 1854.
Feast Day: The
Decollation of St. John the Baptist. St. Sabina,
martyr, 2nd century. St. Sebbi or Sebba, king of Essex,
697. St. Merri or Medericus, abbot of St. Martin's,
about 700.
LILBURNE THE
PAMPHLETEER
In the pamphleteering age of
Charles I and the Commonwealth, no man pamphleteered
like John Lilburne. The British Museum contains at
least a hundred and fifty brochures by him, all
written in an exaggerated tone�besides many faceiculi
which others wrote in his favour. Lilburne was
impartial towards Cavaliers and Roundheads; his great
aim was to advance his own opinions and defend himself
from the comments which they excited.
In 1637, ere the troubles
began, Lilburne was accused before the Star-Chamber of
publishing and dispersing seditious pamphlets. He
refused to take the usual oath in that court, to the
effect that he would answer all interrogatories, even
though they inculpated himself; and for this refusal
he was condemned to be whipped, pilloried, and
imprisoned. During the very processes of whipping and
pillorying, he harangued the populace against the
tyranny of the court-party, and scattered pamphlets
from his pocket. The Star-Chamber, which was sitting
at that very moment, ordered him to he gagged; but he
still stamped and gesticulated, to shew that he would
again have harangued the people if he could. The
Star-Chamber, more and more provoked, condemned him to be imprisoned in a
dungeon and ironed.
When the parliament gained ascendency over the king,
Lilburne, as well as Prynne,
Bastwick, and many other liberals, received their
liberty, and were welcomed with joyful acclamations by
the people. Then followed the downfall of the king,
the Protectorate of Cromwell, and the gradual
resuscitation of measures deemed almost as inimical to
liberty as those of Charles had been. Lilburne was at
his post as usual, fighting the cause of freedom by
means of pamphlets, with unquestioned honesty of
purpose, but with intemperate zeal. In 1649, he was
again thrown into prison, but this time by order of
the parliament instead of by that of the crown; even
the women of London petitioned for his release, but
the parliament was deaf to their arguments. When the
case was brought on for regular trial, a London jury
found him not guilty of the 'sedition' charged against
him by the parliament. Again, after Cromwell had
dissolved the Long Parliament, Lilburne was once more
imprisoned for his outspoken pamphlets; again was he
liberated when the voice of the people obtained
expression through the verdict of a jury; and again
was there great popular delight displayed at his
liberation.
There is reason to doubt
whether Lilburne was so steady and sagacious a
liberal, as to be able to render real services to the
cause which he so energetically advocated; but his
public life well illustrated the pamphleteering
tendencies of the age. One among the pamphlets
published in 1653, when Lilburne was opposing the
assumption of arbitrary power by Cromwell, was in the
form of a pretended catalogue of books, to be sold in
'Little Britain.' First came about forty books, every
one with some sarcastic political hit contained in the
title. Then came a series of pretended 'Acts and
Orders' of parliament, among which the following are
samples:
-
'An act for the speedy
suppressing all plays, the Fools being all termed
commanders or parliament-men.'
-
'An act for a speedy
drawing up of a petition to Lucifer on behalf of
Cromwell: that, seeing he bath done such eminent
services for him in this world, he may not want a
place of preferment in his dominions!'
-
'An act forbidding any to
stamp the Lord General's [Cromwell's] image on
ginger-bread, lest the valour of it should bite the
children by the tongue.'
-
'An act ordering that
Vavasour Powell shall preach the devil out of hell,
that there may be room for the members.'
-
'An act for the regulating
of names, that the well-affected may not be abased
by nicknames, but that every syllable may have its
full pronunciation�as General Monke must hereafter
be rightly called. General Monkey.'
And then follow a series of
'Cases of Conscience,' such as the following:
-
'Whether Whitehall may not
properly be called a den of thieves.'
-
'Whether the countenances
of Miles Corbet and Mr. Gurden do not speak their
mothers to be blackamoors and their fathers Jews.'
-
'Whether Alderman Atkins
his imbecility had ever been found out, if Sir
Walter Earl had not smelt it'
-
'Whether Balaam's beating
his own ass were a sufficient warrant for the
footman's cudgel-ling Sir Henry Mildmay.'
-
'Whether Cromwell bad not
gotten a patent for brimstone, which makes his nose
so fiery.'
-
'Whether there was not an
ironmonger spoil'd when Harry Walker was made a
priest; and whether he, being a priest, can tell
what stands for pillory in Hebrew.'
-
'Whether our Saviour's
riding into Jerusalem upon an ass's foal, were any
more than a type of our deliverer Cromwell's riding
into his throne, upon the backs of a hundred and
twenty asses, elected out of the several counties
for that purpose.'
It is not stated that these
audacious sarcasms were actually by Lilburne, for the
pamphlet has neither author nor editor, neither
printer nor publisher, named; but they will serve to
illustrate the spirit of the times, when such
pamphlets could be produced.
EDMUND HOYLE
Of this celebrated writer of
treatises on games of chance, including among others
whist, piquet, quadrille, and backgammon, and whose
name has become so familiar, as to be immortalised in
the well-known proverb, 'According to Hoyle,' little
more is known, than that he appears to have been born
in 1672, and died in Cavendish Square, London, on 29th
August 1769, at the advanced age of ninety-seven.
In
the Gentleman's Magazine of December 1742, we find
among the list of promotions 'Edmund Hoyle, Esq, made
by the Primate of Ireland, register of the Prerogative
Court, there, worth �600 per annum.' From another
source, we learn that he was a barrister by
profession. His treatise on Whist, for which the
received from the publisher the sum of �1000, was
first published in 1743, and attained such a
popularity that it ran through five editions in a
year, besides being extensively pirated. He has even
been called the inventor of the game of whist, but
this is certainly a mistake, though there can be no
doubt that it was indebted to him for being first
treated of, and introduced to the public in a
scientific manner. It first began to be popular in
England about 1730, when it was particularly studied
by a party of gentlemen, who used to assemble in the
Crown Coffee House, in Bedford Row. Hoyle is said to
have given instructions in the game, for which his
charge was a guinea a lesson.
BEQUESTS FOR THE GUIDANCE OF TRAVELLERS
Some of the old charitable
bequests of England form striking memorials of times
when travelling, especially at night, and even a
night-walk in the streets of a large city, was
attended with difficulties unknown to the present
generation. For example �the corporation of Woodstock,
Oxfordshire, pay ten shillings yearly, the bequest of
one Carey, for the ringing of a bell at eight o'clock
every evening, for the guide and direction of
travellers. By the bequest of Richard Palmer, in
1664,
the sexton of Wokingham, Berks, has a sum for ringing
every evening at eight, and every morning at four, for
this among other purposes, ' that strangers and others
who should happen, in winter-nights, within hearing of
the ringing of the said bell, to lose their way in the
country, might be informed of the time of night, and
receive some guidance into the right way.' There is
also an endowment of land at Barton, Lincolnshire, and
'the common tradition of the parish is, that a worthy
old lady, in ancient times, being accidentally
benighted on the Welds, was directed in .her course by
the sound of the evening-bell of St. Peter's Church,
where, after much alarm, she found herself in safety,
and out of gratitude she gave this land to the
parish-clerk, on condition that he should ring one of
the church bells from seven to eight o'clock every
evening, except Sundays, commencing on the day of the
carrying of the first load of barley in every year
till Shrove Tuesday next ensuing inclusive.'
By his will, dated 29th August
1656, John Wardall gave �4 yearly to the
churchwardens
of St. Botolph's, Billingsgate, 'to provide a good and
sufficient iron and glass lanthorn, with a candle, for
the direction of passengers to go with more security
to and from the water-side, all night long, to be
fixed at the north-east corner of the parish church,
from the feast-day of St. Bartholomew to Lady-Day; out
of which sum �1 was to be paid to the sexton for
taking care of the lanthorn.' A similar bequest of
John Cooke, in 1662, has provided a lamp�now of gas�at
the corner of St. Michael's Lane, next Thames Street.
The schoolmaster of the parish
of Corstorphine, Edinburghshire, enjoys the profits of
an acre of ground on the banks of the Water of Leith,
near Coltbridge. This piece of ground is called the
Lamp Acre, because it was formerly destined for the
support of a lamp in the east end of the church of
Corstorphine, believed to have served as 'a beacon to
direct travellers going from Edinburgh along a road,
which in those times was both difficult and
dangerous.'
EARL OF MARCH'S
CARRIAGE RACE
August 29, 1750, there was
decided a bet of that original kind for which the
noted Earl of March (subsequently fourth Duke of
Queensberry) shewed such a genius. It came off at
Newmarket at seven o'clock in the morning. The matter
undertaken by the earl, in conjunction with the Earl
of Eglintorm, on a wager for a thousand guineas
against Mr. Theobald Taafe, was to furnish a
four-wheeled carriage, with four horses, to be driven
by a man, nineteen miles within an hour. A
con-temporary authority thus describes the carriage:
'The pole was small, but lapped with fine wire; the
perch had a plate underneath; two cords went on each
side, from the back-carriage to the fore-carriage,
fastened to springs. The harness was of fine leather
covered with silk. The seat for the man to sit on was
of leather straps, and covered with velvet. The boxes
of the wheel were brass, and had tins of oil to drop
slowly for an hour. The breechings for the horses were
whalebone. The bars were small wood, strengthened with
steel springs, as were most parts of the carriage, but
all so light, that a man could carry the whole with
the harness.' Before this carriage was decided on,
several others had been tried. Several horses were
killed in the course of the preliminary experiments,
which cost in all about seven hundred pounds. The two
earls, however, won their thousand guineas, for the
carriage performed the distance in 53 minutes 27
seconds, leaving fully time enough to have achieved
another mile.
The Earl of
March's Racing Carriage
LOSS OF THE 'ROYAL
GEORGE'
Cowper's lines on this
disastrous event very well embody the painful feeling
which occupied the public mind in reference to it.
When Lord Howe's fleet returned to Portsmouth in 1782,
after varied service in the Atlantic, it was found
that the Royal George, 108 guns, commanded by Admiral
Kempenfeldt, required cleaning on the exterior and
some repairs near the keel. In order to get at this
portion of the hull, the ship was 'heeled over'�that
is, thrown so much on one side as to expose a good
deal of the other side above the surface of the water.
In recent times, the
examination is made in a less perilous way; but in
those days heeling was always adopted, if the defects
were not so serious as to require the ship to go into
dock. On the 29th of August, the workmen proceeded to
deal with the Royal George in this fashion; but they
heeled it over too much, water entered the port-holes,
the ship filled, and down she went with all on
board�the admiral, captain, officers, crew, about
three hundred women and children who were temporarily
on board, guns, ammunition, provisions, water, and
stores. So sudden was the terrible calamity, that a
smaller vessel lying along-side the Royal George was
swallowed up in the gulf thus occasioned, and other
vessels were placed in imminent danger.
Of the total number of eleven
hundred souls on board, very nearly nine hundred at
once found a watery grave; the rest were saved. The
ship had carried the loftiest masts, the heaviest
metal, and the greatest number of admirals' flags, of
any in the navy; it had been commanded by some of the
best officers in the service; and Admiral Kempenfeldt,
who was among those drowned, was a general favourite.
A court-martial on Captain Waghorn (who had escaped
with his life), for negligence in the careening
operation, resulted in his acquittal: a liberal
subscription for the widows and children of those who
had perished; and a monument in Portsea Churchyard to
Kempenfeldt and his hapless companions�quickly
followed. Cowper mourned over the event in a short
poem, monody, or elegy:
ON THE
LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE
(To the March in Scipio.)
WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED
Toll for the brave!
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!
Eight hundred of the
brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side;
A land-breeze shook the
shrouds,
And she was overset;
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.
Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfeldt is gone;
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.
It was not in the battle;
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon no rock;
His sword was in his
sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfeldt went down
With twice four hundred men.
Weigh the vessel up,
Once dreaded by our foes!
And mingle with our cup
The tear that England owes.
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,
Full charged with England's thunder,
And plough the distant main.
But Kempenfeldt is gone;
His victories are o'er;
And he and his eight hundred men
Shall plough the wave no more.'
Cowper also gave a Latin
translation of these stanzas, beginning:
'Plangimus fortes. Periere
fortes,
Patrium propter periere littus
Bis pater centum; subito sub alto
�quore mersi.'
The hapless Royal George has
been the subject of many interesting submarine
operations. During the three months which immediately
followed the disaster, several divers succeeded in
fishing up sixteen guns out of the ship, by the aid of
a diving-bell. In the next year, a projector brought
forward a scheme for raising the ship itself; but it
failed. In 1817, after the ship had been submerged
thirty-five years, it underwent a thorough examination
by men who descended in a divines bell. It was found
to be little other than a pile of ruinous
timber-work�the guns, anchors, spars, and masts having
fallen into a confused mass among the timbers. She was
too dilapidated to be raised in a body, by any
arrangement however ingenious. Twenty-two years
afterwards, in 1839, General (then Colonel) Pasley
devised a mode of discharging enormous masses of
gunpowder, by means of electricity, against the
submerged hull, so as to shatter it utterly, to let
all the timbers float that would float, and to afford
opportunity for divers to bring up the heavier
valuables. This plan succeeded completely. Enormous
submarine charges of powder, in metal cases containing
2000 lbs. each, were fired, and the anchorage was
gradually cleared of an obstruction which had lain
there nearly sixty years. The value of the brass guns
fished up was equal to the whole cost of the
operations.
