During the year 1668, 69, 70, the public business becoming continually more pressing, and the King's wants more urgent, Marvell's letters bear more and more on the history of the period, and have less and less of biographical interest. Parliament refusing to grant more than £40,000, to be raised on wines (an imposition very grievous to a monarch who sympathized with the privations of his wine-bidding subjects), the King, dissatisfied with so scanty a supply, and yet more with the curious inquiries instituted as to the manner in which former grants had been applied, prorogued the House on the 11th of December, on which occasion Andrew piously prays, "God direct his Majesty further in so weighty resolutions." Parliament met again on the 14th of February, 1669-70. About this time there occur several epistles from Marvell to his friend William Ramsden, which, though almost wholly political, express his observations on public affairs with a circumstantiality, and his opinions with a freedom, which the nature of his official correspondence precluded. It may not be unamusing to compare a few passages referring to the same occurrences: the businesslike brevity and caution of the public document is admirable. If ever he takes a little flight, it is to pay a compliment to Majesty, which no one need understand ironically. Thus of the King's gracious recommendation to put a stop to the differences of the Houses in Skinner's business-To Mr. Humphrey Duncalf, Mayor:-"Our House thereupon did unanimously vote the entry of this speech in our journal, and to go in a body on foot to give the King thanks, and to erase the records in our journal. A message was forthwith sent to desire leave to wait on the King, so that we have been twice at Whitehall in one morning, all infinitely satisfied with the King's justice, prudence, and kindness in this matter, and I doubt not but all good Englishmen will be of the same mind." To Mr. William Ramsden :-" When we began

passed in the session of 1668-9, Marvell mentions a "bill for grazing and tillage, giving licence to export all corn, and setting an high custom upon foreign corn when ours is at a good marketable rate." April 9, 1670 :—"We have sent them up this morning the bill for prohibition of all foreign brandy, which, though it goes up so late, I believe will pass before our rising. The Lords have agreed with the bill of retrospect upon brandy, to pay 8 pence since 1666. The Lords have, we fear, thrown out that part of our bill which provided against men of war trading in merchandise, truly at an ill season, when so many merchants complain, and the Turks take prizes in our channels." The term Turk may here be used as in the Collect for Good Friday, as synonymous with Mussulman; for it does not appear that the Ottoman Emperors or their natural subjects ever practised piracy so far northward.

August 13, 1671 :"The Lords and we have agreed on an address to his Majesty, that he wear no foreign manufactures, and discountenance, whether man or woman, that shall wear them."

to talk of the Lords, the King sent for us alone, and recommended an erasure of all proceedings; the same thing you know that we proposed at first. We presently ordered it, and went to tell him so the same day. At coming down (a pretty ridiculous thing), Sir Thomas Clifford carried speaker and mace, and all members there, to drink the King's health, into the King's cellar. The King sent to the Lords more peremptorily, and they, with much grumbling, agreed to the rasure." Writing to the corporation, he gives the heads of the conventicle bill minutely, in the style of one who saw nothing objectionable in them. To his friend he says, "The terrible bill against conventicles is sent up to the Lords. They are making mighty alterations in the conventicle bill (which, as we sent it up, is the quintessence of arbitrary malice), and sit whole days, and yet proceed but by inches, and will, at the end, probably affix a Scotch clause of the King's power in externals;” (i. e. give the King a dispensing power to make the Parliament malice nugatory). "So the fate of the bill is uncertain, but must probably pass, being the price of money." During the spring session of 1670, Charles, under pretence of seeking amusement, thought fit to frequent the debates at the House of Lords. This, though not expressly against rule, was against recent custom, and supposed to be a restraint on the freedom of speech. Marvell announces the circumstance to his constituents with some surprise, but without comment, in his letter of the 26th March:-"That which is most extraordinary is, that his Majesty hath for this whole week come every day in person to the House of Lords, and sat there during their debates and resolutions; and yesterday the Lords went in a body to Whitehall, to give their thanks for the honour he did them therein." To Mr. Ramsden he tells the story more at large:"The King, about ten o'clock, took boat with Lauderdale only, and two ordinary attendants, and rowed awhile, as towards the bridge, but soon turned back to the Parliament stairs, and so went up into the House of Lords, and took his seat. Almost all of them were amazed, but all seemed so; and the Duke of York especially was very much surprised. Being sat, he told them it was a privilege he claimed from his ancestors to be present at their deliberations; that therefore they should not, for his coming, interrupt their debates, but proceed, and be covered. They did so. It is true that this has been done long ago; but it is now so old, that it is new, and so disused, that at any other but so bewitched a time as this, it would have been looked upon as a high usurpation, and breach of privilege. After three or four days' continuance, the Lords were very well used to the King's presence. The King has ever since continued his session among them, and says it is better than going to a play."

The prospect of public affairs was then sufficiently bad; for Charles, who, like all men whose amiable qualities are not grounded in sound principles, grew worse as he grew old, had now given himself up to the notorious Cabal, and to a set of creatures besides,-French, Scotch, Irish, and, alas, some English, priests and laymen, bigots and atheists, male and female, among whom it is no injustice to say, that Nell Gwyn was considerably the best. But a patriot should never despair of the Republic. He should "brook no continuance of weak-mindedness,"* but should "hope even against hope." No wonder, however, if sometimes his jaded spirits give way, and he utter the language of despondency. Andrew Marvell more than once verges on this extreme. Many a man, under such circumstances, would have concluded that "the world was made for Cæsar," and since he could do no good for his country, think of doing the best he could for himself. In the private communication from which we have borrowed so much, he gives a character to his fellow representatives which, considering their stern frugality, and bold defence of their own privileges, they do not appear, as a body, to have deserved :-" In this session the Lords sent down to us a proviso for the King, that would have restored him to all civil or ecclesiastical privileges which his ancestors had enjoyed at any time since the conquest. There never was so compendious a piece of absolute universal tyranny. But the Commons made them ashamed of it, and retrenched it. The Parliament was never so embarrassed beyond recovery. We are all venal cowards except some few." Now the successful opposition to the Lords' proviso should have convinced him that, though there were some few venal cowards, there were more bold and honest men.t

66

Wordsworth.

+ Extracts from an extraordinary black book," said to have been published by Marvell himself, which was perhaps the model of the various muster-rolls of a similar kind that have since appeared.

A Seasonable Argument to persuade all the Grand Juries in England to Petition for a New Parliament; or, a List of the Principal Labourers in the Great Design of Popery and Arbitrary Power :

Launceston.-Sir Charles Harbord, surveyor-general, has got £100,000 of the king and the kingdom: he was formerly a solicitor of Staples Inn, till his lewdness and poverty brought him to court.

Devonshire.-Sir Capelston Bamfield, Baronet, much addicted to tippling, presented to the King by his pretended wife, Betty Roberts, the Pall Mall.

Weymouth.-Sir Winston Churchill, was a commissioner of the court of claims in Ireland, now one of the clerks of the green cloth. He profered his own daughter to the Duke of York, and has got in boons £10,000. He has published in print that the king may raise money without his Parliament.

The Parliament, which was prorogued before the end of April, met again on the 2nd of October, 1670. The King, who was now the contented, though concealed, instrument of the French court, partly won over by the arts of the Duchess of Orleans, and her ally Louisa de Queroüaille,* (the Duchess of Portsmouth,) partly by money in hand, and the promise of French troops, in case that the people's patience should be worn out. A second Dutch war was meditated with the secret purpose of aiding the French to overrun and subjugate the United Provinces. But these designs were not yet ripe for disclosure. A supply was first to be had: £800,000 were demanded and granted, and more would have been granted, but fresh dissension between the upper and lower Houses, owing to the Lords taking upon them to make amendments in the money bills, occasioned a sudden prorogation, April 22, 1671. If these facts be kept in mind, the following passages, from Marvell's public and private correspondence, will be sufficiently intelligible. October 25.

Newton, in the Isle of Wight.—Sir John Holmes, Sir Ross's brother, a cowardly, baffled, sea captain, twice boxed, and once whipped with a dog whip, as many gentlemen can testify: chosen in the night, without the head officer of the town, and but one burgess, yet voted well elected this last session.

Cambridge Town.-Sir William Hartop, a pension of £200 per annum, and promised to be clerk of the Kitchen: threatens to sue his town for his wages, because he hears they will choose him no more.

Middlesex.-Sir Lancellot Lake, much in debt, has a promise that his elder brother's son shall not be naturalized; a notorious cuckold.

Castle Rising. Samuel Pepys, Esquire, once a taylour, then serving man to the Lord Sandwitch, now secretary to the admiralty, got by passes and other illegal wages £40,000.

Bath. Sir William Basset, Henry Seymour's son-in-law, £1,000 given him by Clifford: he has a promise of a place in the law act: always drunk when he can get money.

"The publisher begs pardon of those gentlemen here named, if he has, for want of better information, undervalued the price and merit of their voices, which he shall be ready, upon their advertisement, to amend ; but more particularly he must beg the excuse of many more gentlemen, no less deserving, whom he hath omitted, not out of any malice, or for want of good will, but of timely notice; but, in general, the House was, if they please to remember, this last session, by three of their own members told, that there were several Papists, fifty outlaws, and pensioners without number; so that upon examination, they may arrive at a better knowledge among themselves, and do one another more right, than we (howsoever well affected) can possibly do without doors.'

The English, whose organs of speech are notoriously inhospitable to foreign names, found Mademoiselle de Queroüaille's so unacceptable, that they anglicised it into Carwell, under which abbreviation she is frequently mentioned both in prose and verse. Surely they ought not to complain at King Charles giving her a title so much more accommodated to English pronunciation.

He gives at some length, the preamble of the Lord Keeper's opening speech, (for Charles had still grace enough left to be ashamed of appearing personally as a beggar for money on false pretences,) the most remarkable feature of which is, that the increased power of France is alleged to justify a grant which was to be used in increasing the power of France. Then comes an enumeration of the advantageous treaties which the King had concluded, particularly with Sweden and Holland, (while he knew that the money was wanted to make war upon Holland,) with Spain, whereby we had gained the sovereignty of Jamaica, &c., with Denmark, Savoy, &c. Next his Lordship prepares a spell for that national vanity, which in time past has cost us so dear, alleging " in short that all the Princes of Christendom sought at present to his Majesty, if not for their security, yet as to one without whose friendship they could not promote their affairs." Andrew Marvell was no orator; it does not appear upon record that he ever made a set speech at all; yet one might almost wonder that neither he nor any other Englishman got up to remind my Lord Keeper that whatever consideration his master might have obtained from foreign powers, was taken up solely on old Oliver's credit. But now comes the drift. "After touching on the insufficiency of the wine duties to the public occasions; the expense of the navy since 1660, (£500,000 per annum,) and the King's debts, which were immense and at heavy interest, he desired that the Parliament would supply him (the King) with £800,000 for his navy, as also that they would pay off all those debts which he owed at interest, and that they would finish this before Christmas, as well that he might have time in hand to mature his preparations for the season of the year as that men might attend their own occasions in the country, and make their neighbours taste of their hospitality, and keep up their authority and interest there, which is so useful and necessary to the public." It is a proof that the promises contained in this speech were never intended to be performed; that neither it nor the King's short introductory address were allowed to be printed.

Several letters follow, containing nothing but lists of the commodities it was proposed to tax, and other devices, for raising the supplies. One of these proposals produced effects so ludicrously characteristic of the brutality of even the highest orders in that reign, that we must extract the passage of Andrew's private correspondence, which contains the story:

"An accident happened which had like to have spoiled all. Sir John Coventry having moved for an imposition on the play-houses, Sir John Berkenhead, to excuse them, said they had been of great service to the King. Upon which Sir John Coventry desired that gentleman to