Abstract
This Introduction, dealing inevitably with the Restoration, the Great Plague and the Great Fire (and the subsequent rebuilding of the City), considers this period as the beginning of the transformation of London into the great commercial, financial and imperial capital it became in the nineteenth century, with the development of great public buildings like new St Paul’s Cathedral and the rebuilt Royal Exchange, the establishment of broad thoroughfares, public parks and fashionable districts such as Mayfair, and the foundation of the Royal Society and (later) the British Museum. It was the new Royal Exchange and the unprecedented founding of the Bank of England that marked the emergence of London as the hub of global capitalism that it still is, generating a flood of money into the economy that seemed to some contemporaries to be a channel of moral corruption, as exemplified by the South Sea Bubble, an early manifestation of what has recently been termed “irrational exuberance” in the stock market. It is no coincidence that this period saw a rapid growth in legislative concern with crimes of property, and the introduction ends with a consideration of crime and punishment in Georgian London, and its somewhat ambivalent treatment in the literature of the time.
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Notes
- 1.
Putney Bridge: replaced by the current stone bridge in the 1880s; since 1845 it has represented the start of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
- 2.
Hyde Park: 340 acres of open land to the north-west of Westminster, seized by Henry VIII from the monks of Westminster at the dissolution of the monasteries; it was originally used as a royal hunting-ground, and opened to the public in the early seventeenth century.
- 3.
Montagu House: eventually proved too cramped for the expanding collection, and was gradually replaced during the first half of the C19th by the building we know, with its imposing classical portico.
- 4.
Defoe was a child in 1666, but he had access to first-hand accounts from his own family and others.
- 5.
It is probable, as historians have pointed out, that rather more deaths occurred than were recorded, given the likelihood that many elderly and infirm people may have been surprised and trapped in their homes by the conflagration, whose fierce wind-fanned temperatures (high enough to melt iron) would have annihilated their bodies.
- 6.
The satirist Ned Ward takes a more sardonic and xenophobic view of this cosmopolitan crowd in [2.15].
- 7.
Arabia: famous for its perfumes.
- 8.
2018 money: this comparison, together with all later ones, is derived from https://www.measuringworth.com, and is broadly indicative only, given the huge complexity (see website) of comparing different kinds of monetary value between widely separated periods.
- 9.
As exemplified by the surprisingly favourable response (£2000–ca £285,000 in 2018—invested in one day) to the floating of a company in 1720 “for carrying on an undertaking of Great Advantage, but no one to know what it is” (Cowles 1960, 126).
- 10.
box: i.e. of dice.
- 11.
job, and … bite: buy and sell stock, and … swindle.
- 12.
pack cards: cheat in a card-game by fraudulent shuffling; half-a-crown: two shillings and sixpence, about £15 in 2018.
- 13.
benefit of clergy: originally a medieval ruling that excluded clerics from the judgment of secular courts, it became a way of mitigating the savagery of the laws for first-time offenders. If such offenders could recite part of Psalm 51 in Latin, they were deemed to be clergy through a legal fiction, and branded on the thumb to obviate a second claim. By means of this so-called ‘neck-verse’ Ben Jonson escaped the noose for manslaughter in 1598.
- 14.
By no means all those hanged at Tyburn were celebrated as heroes, however: Elizabeth Brownrigg (1720–1767), for example, who whipped to death Mary Clifford, her fifteen-year-old apprentice, was sent on her way with exultant jeers and curses by a huge crowd of outraged citizens.
- 15.
Nore: a hazardous sandbank in the Thames estuary.
- 16.
Royal Sovereign: a 100-gun first-rate ship of the line, decommissioned in 1768.
- 17.
by plots … lighted: This was a common misbelief. The part of the inscription on the Monument blaming the Papists (mentioned below) was added in 1681 and finally erased in 1831.
- 18.
Popish plot: The (purely imaginary) Catholic plot invented by Titus Oates 1678–1681.
- 19.
Gun Power Treason: the (real) Catholic plot by Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and others in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament; see [2.31], n.144.
- 20.
London, as a city only: i.e. the City of London by itself.
- 21.
liberties: adjacent districts which for historical reasons did not form part of a self-governing borough like the City of London. Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, for example, though geographically part of London, was conveniently situated in the Liberty of the Clink, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, not the Puritan theatre-hating City of London.
- 22.
The Roman emperor Trajan (98–117 ce) undertook a huge public building programme in the capital. Its population at the time is (pace Defoe) usually reckoned at about one million, a size London only reached in 1800.
- 23.
a fine new church: St Paul’s, Deptford, a splendid baroque church designed by Thomas Archer, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren.
- 24.
circumvallation … communication line: military terms (perimeter wall or defence … route of communication).
- 25.
his birthday: Charles was born 29 May 1630.
- 26.
the return … Babylonish captivity: See [1.28], n.169.
- 27.
Cromwell… usurper: Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658); John Bradshaw (1602–1659); Henry Ireton (1611–1651). The date (30 January) was the 12th anniversary of Charles I’s execution.
- 28.
22 November 1658: Cromwell’s funeral; he died on 3 September, but the funeral was delayed to give time to prepare for the magnificent (and very costly) ceremony.
- 29.
100 pounds: over £13,000 in 2018 money.
- 30.
passage: a game of dice.
- 31.
luxury: lascivious behaviour, hanky-panky.
- 32.
sennight: week (1.e. a seven-night).
- 33.
Portsmouth … Mazarin: Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth (1649–1734) (a “young wanton,” wrote Evelyn); Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland (1640–1709) (“an impudent woman,” “curse of our nation”); Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin (1646–1699) (a “famous beauty and errant lady”).
- 34.
basset: a card game.
- 35.
confitures voided: confections taken away.
- 36.
£600: worth about £87,000 in 2018.
- 37.
Alderman Hooker: Sir Richard Hooker, who became Lord Mayor in 1673.
- 38.
the child … of a friend: This “passionate” [moving] anecdote formed the subject of a painting by Frank Topham, “Lord Have Mercy Upon Us” (1898), held in the Guildhall Art Gallery, London.
- 39.
my Lord: Sir Edward Montagu (1625–1672), first Earl of Sandwich, Pepy’s patron.
- 40.
Bill: the Bill of Mortality, a periodically published official report of the deaths in a given district.
- 41.
Dagenhams: near Romford, Essex, seat of Lady Wright, sister-in-law of Sir Edward Montagu.
- 42.
Brainford: Brentford, in Essex, where Pepys had a country house.
- 43.
Captain Lambert and Cuttle: David Lambert and John Cuttle, both friends of Pepys, were killed in the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
- 44.
Mr Sidney Montagu … Scott’s Hall: Montagu was the son of Lord Sandwich; Scott’s Hall, Kent was the home of Sir Thomas Scott, son-in-law of Sir George Carteret and Lady Carteret.
- 45.
W. Hewer: William Hewerwas Pepys’s chief clerk.
- 46.
Tom Edwards: A servant of Pepys, who refers to him as ‘my boy’; they were close companions.
- 47.
St Sepulchres: See [2.28], n.137.
- 48.
bulk: a counter projecting from a shop into the street.
- 49.
more late: later to bed than honest tradesmen.
- 50.
Big: pregnant.
- 51.
insulting: (1) leaping friskily; (2) attacking.
- 52.
The ghosts … Bridge: The heads of traitors were displayed on spikes on London Bridge.
- 53.
Sabbath: (1) Sunday, when the fire broke out, just after midnight; (2) “A midnight meeting of demons, sorcerers and witches, presided over by the Devil” (OED).
- 54.
Vestal: Vesta was the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth.
- 55.
To dews obnoxious: exposed to [harmful] damp.
- 56.
Though made … song: Referring to Edmund Waller’s poem “Upon His Majesty’s Repairing of Paul’s” (1645).
- 57.
And poets’ songs … raise: Referring to the harpist Amphion in Greek mythology, whose music drew stones together to build the walls of Thebes.
- 58.
profaned by Civil War: Cromwell used the nave as cavalry barracks; the iconoclastic Parliamentarians severely damaged effigies, woodwork, and windows.
- 59.
Thrones and Dominions: two of the nine orders of angels.
- 60.
Genius: tutelary deity.
- 61.
Lares: gods of the household in Roman mythology.
- 62.
Iron Gate: Irongate Stairs in Lower Thames Street, near the Tower.
- 63.
Sir W. Pen: William Pen (or Penn) (1621–1670) was Vice-Admiral in the Commonwealth and an Admiral thereafter; he was Commissioner of the Navy Board under Pepys.
- 64.
Mr Howell: a turner in the employ of the Navy Board.
- 65.
Sir W. Batten: Sir William Batten (d. 1667), a naval officer and Surveyor of the Navy.
- 66.
parmesan cheese (from Parma in Italy) was much rarer and dearer than it is now.
- 67.
Founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, Gresham College is London’s first institution of higher learning, where professors (who hold temporary tenure) give public lectures. Originally the subjects were confined to astronomy, geometry, medicine, law, divinity, rhetoric and music, but since 1985 they have expanded to include commerce, the environment, and information technology.
- 68.
Hooke’s Law defines the amount of force required to deform an elastic body such as a spring, and Boyle’s Law defines the relation between the volume of a gas and the pressure exerted on it.
- 69.
Monsieur Papin’s Digesters: Denis Papin (1647–?1712) was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1680. His book (see below) was A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones (1681).
- 70.
in balneo: in a bath (an alchemical term).
- 71.
the late Resident here: the Venetian Paolo Sarotti, who was in London 1675–1681; he and his son Giovanni Sarotti, who was elected a Fellow in 1679, set up an academy in Venice with brief success.
- 72.
parcel: group, bunch (contemptuous).
- 73.
blowing their nails: blowing on their fingers to warm them (since they are not being warmed by exercise).
- 74.
at a national charge: There was a tax on coal to pay for the rebuilding.
- 75.
High Change: the Exchange when trade is most active.
- 76.
the Great Mogul: the emperor of Delhi, who ruled Hindustan in the north of the Indian subcontinent.
- 77.
walks: “each of the portions of the ambulatory [arcade] formerly allotted to different classes of merchants and designated by special names, as East India, Virginia, Jamaica, Spanish walk, etc.”, OED 10.b.
- 78.
the old philosopher: Diogenes the Cynic (C4th bce).
- 79.
portico: the formal entrance, consisting of columns supporting a pediment.
- 80.
mandrake-sellers: The ground-up root of mandragora officinarum was a soporific (and thought to promote fertility in women).
- 81.
swarthy buggerantoes: swarthy because they (and their tastes) are foreign (as opposed to true-bred English whoremasters). Ward may have coined the term buggeranto, which was “often used as a term of abuse applied to foreigners” (OED).
- 82.
preternatural: sodomy was felt to be outside the ordinary course of nature.
- 83.
diapason: a swelling sound.
- 84.
drone: “the bass pipe of a bagpipe, which emits only one continuous tone” (OED).
- 85.
quacks’ bills: advertisements for medical charlatans.
- 86.
empiric: fraudulent practitioner of what we would now call ‘alternative medicine’.
- 87.
physic for a clap: treatment for gonorrhœa, almost certainly worthless: as a physician wrote 150 years later, “We do not know of any substance, which, taken into the system, is an antidote to the infection of gonorrheal matter” (Bostwick 215).
- 88.
firking: “beating, whipping” but also a fudged version of “fucking” (c.p. “gang bang,” “knocking shop,”). They are thus practitioners either of flagellation (like the “flogging-cullies” Ward mentions in Part 2) or of anal sex, or perhaps both (both for Ward were “classes in the black-school of sodomy”).
- 89.
straitlaced: uncommunicative, morose (a stereotypical characteristic of the Dutch).
- 90.
thrum-caps: coarse knitted woollen caps, as worn by Dutch sailors.
- 91.
loggerheads: heads disproportionately large; fools.
- 92.
effeminate: self-indulgent, voluptuous.
- 93.
buttocks like a Flanders mare: enormous buttocks. The Dutch were held to be gluttonous.
- 94.
turd-coloured: because of all the snuff they take.
- 95.
A caricature of the Dutch language to English ears.
- 96.
water-rats: pirates (with a pun on the last syllable). Despite the current reign of the Dutch King William III (the nephew of Charles II), England and the Netherlands had traditionally been naval, colonial and mercantile rivals, who fought three wars between 1652 and 1674, both sides having resorted at times to piracy.
- 97.
in upholding and repairing it: Restoration work was undertaken 1698–1723 by Christopher Wren. Nicholas Hawksmoor designed the West Towers, which were not completed until 1745.
- 98.
pile: a large imposing building.
- 99.
King James II: the last Catholic monarch of England, 1685–1688 (see [2.6]).
- 100.
the family … above: Queen Anne died in 1714, her death ending the Stuart dynasty.
- 101.
inrailed: enclosed by railings.
- 102.
Theseus: mythical founder of Athens. He entered the baffling maze or ‘Labyrinth’ of Crete to slay its occupant, the Minotaur, a fearsome bull-man monster to whom Athenian virgins were being sacrificed.
- 103.
wandering passes forced his stay: winding passages brought him to a halt.
- 104.
clue: or ‘clew’; a ball of yarn or thread. The Cretan princess Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread with which (by unravelling it) he traced his way into (and thus safely out of) the Labyrinth. This story is the origin of the modern sense of clue as “guide, pointer, hint.”
- 105.
fob: “A small pocket formerly made in the waistband of the breeches and used for carrying a watch, money, or other valuables” (OED).
- 106.
chairs: sedan chairs, enclosed litters carried on horizontal poles by two bearers; they were either private (a lady could be carried about the crowded streets in privacy and cleanliness by her servants) or for public hire. As status-symbols they were supports of … Pride, having right of way over mere pedestrians.
- 107.
save in wine: i.e. more than the money you save on wine (as someone else’s guest) will be spent on a coach to transport you through the rain.
- 108.
aches: pronounced “aitches” in C18th.
- 109.
spleen: a kind of fashionable melancholy or “nerves”.
- 110.
South … dabbled: south wind … wetted by splashing.
- 111.
Roughen the nap: make the fibres on the surface of the coat stand up.
- 112.
templar: law student at the Inns of Court (the Middle Temple or the Inner Temple [3.28, n.93]); he seems to call a coach yet cannot afford one and must wait for the rain to stop.
- 113.
Triumphant … Whigs: The Tories won the general election in 1710; Swift had by this time become a Tory.
- 114.
Boxed in a chair: enclosed in a sedan (see [2.19], n.106).
- 115.
leather: roof of the sedan-chair.
- 116.
So when … for fear: Referring to the Greek warriors in the Trojan War huddled inside their wooden horse, waiting to be let out; Laocoon, a Trojan prince, tried to dissuade the Trojans from admitting the horse and flung his spear at it; see Vergil, Aeneid 2.13–56. bully … moderns do: The heroic Greeks are ironically likened to the contemporary ruffians (known as Mohocks) who terrorised the London streets.
- 117.
each torrent drives … Holborn bridge: Drains from Smithfield meat market (see General Introduction, n.5) met those from the area around St Sepulchre’s Church (see [2.28], n.137), running down Snow Hill, at Holborn Bridge (which spanned the Fleet River), and thence to the Thames.
- 118.
Tenducci: Giusto Fernando Tenducci (?1736–1790), Italian-born castrato who sang opera in London and elsewhere.
- 119.
a wherry: “a light rowing-boat used chiefly on rivers to carry passengers” (OED).
- 120.
Nestor: an elderly counsellor to Agamemnon in the Iliad.
- 121.
Mrs Boscawen: Frances Boscawen (?1722–1805), one of the Circle’s hostesses.
- 122.
Braganza: a tragedy by Robert Jephson (1736–1803) first performed in February 1775.
- 123.
Palmer’s: Samuel Palmer 1695–1732, printer in Bartholomew Close.
- 124.
Watts’s: John Watts, died 1762, printer at Wild Court.
- 125.
working at press: mechanically operating the machine that presses the inked type onto the paper.
- 126.
composing: the fiddly but less strenuous work of assembling metal type into rows in the forms or wooden cases.
- 127.
strongbeer: as opposed to ‘small beer,’ a weaker beverage that could be drunk all day without impairment. In 1770 Britain brewed over 80 million gallons of small beer, about fourteen gallons for every man, woman and child.
- 128.
bienvenu: “A fee exacted from a new workman” (OED).
- 129.
chapel: association or union of workers in a printing workshop.
- 130.
St. Monday: An absentee from work on a Monday.
- 131.
work of dispatch: urgent business.
- 132.
Lincoln’s Inn, wide space: Lincoln’s Inn Fields was for centuries London’s largest square. While there were fashionable houses beyond its surrounding railings, robbers and petty criminals made the open space unsafe.
- 133.
link man’s call: men with torches offered to light people’s way in dark areas for a fee.
- 134.
Whocap-à-pie… walks: in her alluring make-up and attire she is like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, who is armed for combat cap-à-pie (‘from head to foot’, Hamlet 1.2.200), and whose walking makes “night hideous” (1.4.54).
- 135.
monster: unnatural creature.
- 136.
half a crown: two shillings and sixpence, or about £15 in 2018 terms.
- 137.
St Sepulchre’s-without-Newgate was a large Gothic church just outside the city wall, near Newgate. These “bells of Old Bailey” tolled as the condemned were escorted to Tyburn [2.29HN].
- 138.
The figure is from Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law (New York, 1948–1956), vol. I, p. 175, n.45.
- 139.
bell-man: the clerk of St Sepulchre’s (see [2.28], n.137), known as the bell-man, was responsible for ringing a handbell outside the condemned prisoner’s cells the night before their execution, and chanting a poem to encourage penitent meditation (“Examine well yourselves: in time repent”).
- 140.
peace-officers: parish officers or constables appointed to preserve the public peace.
- 141.
in the way: ready and/or willing.
- 142.
Tar is a preservative and antiseptic: perhaps they were attempting to preserve the body in case the wife later decided to reclaim it.
- 143.
at a tatter’d cloak: i.e. on seeing a sign of poverty.
- 144.
From 1550 to 1834 the meeting place of the House of Commons was somewhat makeshift: the (deconsecrated) Royal Chapel of St Stephen in the palace of Westminster. The Lords met in the nearby White Chamber, in the cellars of which the Catholic would-be terrorist Guy Fawkes was arrested on November 5, 1605, curating dozens of barrels of gunpowder. In 1834 the buildings were destroyed by fire and replaced by the fine neo-Gothic edifice we are familiar with today.
- 145.
Mr Akerman: Richard Akerman (?1722–1792) had been Head Gaoler of Newgate for many years. His humane treatment of prisoners was remarked on by Johnson and others in 1780.
- 146.
the Park: Hyde Park (see Introduction 2, n.2).
- 147.
New Bridewell: a prison.
References
Boswell, James. Boswell’s Column: Being His Seventy Contributions to The London Magazine, ed. Margaret Bailey. London: William Kimber, 1951.
Cowles, Virginia. The Great Swindle: The Story of the South Sea Bubble. London: Harper, 1960.
Fielding, Henry. An Enquiry into the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), in The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, Vol. 13, ed. W. E. Henley. London: Frank Cass, 1967.
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera (1728), in Dramatic Works, Vol. 2, ed. John Fuller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
Pope, Alexander. Pope: Poetical Works, ed. Herbert Davis. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels, ed. Herbert Davis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965.
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Hiller, G.G., Groves, P.L., Dilnot, A.F. (2019). Period 2: London in the Enlightenment (1660–1780). In: Hiller, G.G., Groves, P.L., Dilnot, A.F. (eds) An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558–1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05609-4_2
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