here, in this Plotters' Parlour, in the Revolution House, on the moor near Chesterfield, that the great change of 1688 was deliberated upon and arranged. For this reason, the esteemed antiquary, Mr Pegge, wrote an account of the house, and had a drawing of it published. When the story is carefully sifted, we find that a meeting of some importance to the forthcoming Revolution did take place here in the summer of 1688. The Earl of Danby (after the Revolution, Duke of Leeds), who had been minister to Charles II. some years before, but had since suffered a long imprisonment under Whig influence in the Tower, was now anxious to see some steps taken by which the Protestant religion might be saved from King James II. He was disposed for this purpose to associate with his former enemies, the Whigs. It was necessary, in the first place, that he should be reconciled to the leaders of that party. With this view it appears to have been that he, in company with Mr John D'Arcy, held a meeting in the public-house at Whittington with the Duke of Devonshire. The date of the meeting is not known, but it must have been some time before the 7th of June, when, according to any authority we have on the subject, Mr John D'Arcy died. At that time, most certainly, no definite design of bringing in the Prince of Orange had been formed, excepting in one mind, that of Edward Russell; nor was it till after the birth of the Prince of Wales (June 10, 1688), that overtures were made on the subject to various nobles, including Danby and Devonshire. The meeting of these two grandees at Whittington was entirely preliminary-limited to the private explanations by which they were enabled soon after to associate in the enterprise. In a narrative left by Danby himself, it is stated that the Duke of Devonshire afterwards came to Sir Henry Goodricke's house in Yorkshire to meet him for a second time, and concert what they should each do when the prince should land. It was there agreed that, on the landing of the Prince of Orange, the duke should take possession of Nottingham, while Danby seized upon York. The paper inviting the prince over, signed by seven persons, Devonshire, Danby, Shrewsbury, Lumley, Compton (Bishop of London), Edward Russell, and Henry Sidney, was sent away to Holland in the hands of Mr Herbert, in an open boat, on the Friday after the acquittal of the seven bishops-an event which took place on the 30th of June. When it was subsequently known that the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl of Danby were among the chiefs who had brought about the Revolution, the country people about Whittington could not but recall the mysterious private meeting which these two nobles had held in the parlour of the village inn early in the preceding summer; and it was of course very natural for them, imperfectly informed as they were, to suppose that the entire affair of the Revolution had then and there been concerted. REVOLUTION HOUSE, Even on the view of a more restricted connexion with the event, the house must be considered as an interesting one, and its portraiture is here accordingly given. The Plotters' Parlour is in the centre of the range of buildings, immediately REVOLUTION HOUSE. to the left of a projecting piece of building seen conspicuously in the view.* There is another house which is supposed to have been connected in a remarkable manner with the Revolution-Lady Place; an Elizabethan mansion situated on a beautiful bend of the Thames, between Maidenhead and Henley. A crypt, of more ancient date than the house, is considered as the place where the secret meetings were held of those who invited over the Prince of Orange, as is expressed on a mural tablet inserted in one of the walls. Here it is first stated that the crypt is part of a Benedictine monastery founded at the time of the Norman Conquest; then the inscription proceeds: Be it remembered that in this place, six hundred years afterwards, the Revolution of 1688 was begun. This house was then in the possession of the vault; and it is said that several consultations for calling in the Prince of Orange were held in this recess; on which account this vault was visited by that powerful prince after he had ascended the throne.' All such traditionary stories, unsupported by evidence, must of course be treated with some degree of suspicion; yet it has been thought worth while to give in this paper a print exhibiting the interior of the crypt, with the mural tablet containing the inscription. In connexion with this period of our history, the reader will readily recall the striking chapter in which Lord Macaulay recites the trial of the bishops, which occurred in the very month here under notice, and, as is well known, operated powerfully in effecting the change of dynasty. The noble historian makes a good point of the zeal of the people of Cornwall in behalf of their fellow-countryman, Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, who was one of the seven. This dignitary was the son of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, of Trelawny, in Cornwall, baronet, and his successor in the baronetcy. Mr Davies Gilbert, in his Parochial History of Cornwall, says that the bishop enjoyed high popularity in his native district, and an intense excitement arose there when his danger was known, insomuch that the prompt acquittal of the bishops alone prevented the people from rising in arms. A song,' he adds, was made on the occasion, of which all the exact words, except those of what may be called the burden, were lost; but the whole has recently been restored, modernized, and improved by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, of Whitstone, near Stratton. The original song is said to have resounded in every house, in every highway, and in every street. The reader will probably be gratified to see the restored ballad, which the kindness of Mr Hawker has enabled us here to reproduce. 'TRELAWNY. 'A good sword and a trusty hand! King James's men shall understand What Cornish lads can do! And have they fix'd the where and when? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Out spake their captain brave and bold; "If London Tower were Michael's Hold, We'll cross the Tamar, land to land, With one and all, and hand to hand, And when we come to London Wall, Come forth! come forth! ye cowards all, But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold It is worthy of notice that the opposition which Trelawny had presented to the arbitrary acts of THE 'NO POPERY' RIOTS. King James did not prevent his Majesty from afterwards advancing him to the see of Exeter, an event which happened just before the Revolution. By Queen Anne he was afterwards translated to Winchester, in which see he died in 1721, LONDON, ON THE 7TH OF JUNE 1780, Was in the almost unchecked possession of a mob composed of the vilest of the populace, in consequence of a singular series of circumstances. A movement for tolerance to the small minority of Catholics-resulting in an act (1778) for the removal of some of their disabilities in England, and the introduction of a bill (1779) for a similar measure applicable to the mere handful of that class of religionists in Scotland-had roused all the intolerant Protestant feeling in the country, and caused shameful riots in Edinburgh. A socalled Protestant Association, headed by a half insane member of the House of Commons-Lord George Gordon, brother of the Duke of Gordon busied itself in the early part of 1780 to besiege the Houses of Parliament with petitions for the repeal of the one act and the prevention of the other. On the 2nd of June a prodigious Protestant meeting was held in St George's Fields on a spot since, with curious retribution, occupied by a Catholic cathedral-and a monster petition,' as it would now be called, was carried in procession through the principal streets of the city, to be laid before Parliament. Lord George had by this time, by his wild speeches, wrought up his adherents to a pitch bordering on frenzy. In the lobbies of the Houses scenes of violence occurred, resembling very much those which were a few years later exhibited at the doors of the French Convention, but without any serious consequences. The populace, however, had been thoroughly roused, and the destruction of several houses belonging to foreign Catholics was effected that night. Two days after, a Sunday, a Catholic chapel in Moorfields was sacked and burned, while the magistrates and military presented no effective resistance. The consignment of a few of the rioters next day to Newgate roused the mob to a pitch of violence before unattained, and from that time till Thursday afternoon one destructive riot prevailed. On the first evening, the houses of several eminent men well affected to the Catholies and several Catholic chapels were destroyed. Next day, Tuesday, the 6th, there was scarcely a shop open in London. The streets were filled with an uncontrolled mob. The Houses of Parliament assembled with difficulty, and dispersed in terror. The middle-class inhabitants—a pacific and innocent set of people-went about in consternation, some removing their goods, some carrying away their aged and sick relations. Blue ribbons were generally mounted, to.give assurance of sound Protestantism, and it was a prevalent movement to chalk up 'No POPERY,' in large letters on doors.* In the evening, Newgate was attacked and set fire to, and 300 A foreign Jew in Houndsditch inscribed on his door, This house is a sound Protestant.' Grimaldi, an Italian actor newly come to England, with on his door, 'NO RELIGION." exquisite satire, put prisoners let loose. The house of Lord Mansfield, at the north-east corner of Bloomsbury Square, was gutted and burnt, the justice and his lady barely making their escape by a backdoor. The house and distillery of a Mr Langdale, a Catholic, at the top of Holborn Hill, were destroyed, and there the mob got wildly drunk with spirits, which flowed along the streets like water. While they in many various places were throwing the household furniture of Catholics out upon the street, and setting fire to it in great piles, or attacking and burning the various prisons of the metropolis, there were bands of regular soldiery and militia looking on with arms in their hands, but paralysed from acting for want of authority from the magistrates. Mr Wheatley's famous picture, of which a copy is annexed, gives us a faint idea of the scenes thus presented; but the shouts of the mob, the cries of women, the ring of forehammers breaking open houses, the abandonment of a debased multitude lapping gin from the gutters, the many scenes of particular rapine carried on by thieves and murderers, must be left to the imagination. Thirty-six great conflagrations raged that night in London; only at the Bank was the populace repelled-only on Blackfriars Bridge was there any firing on them by the military. Day broke upon the metropolis next day as upon a city suddenly taken possession of by a hostile and barbarous army. It was only then, and by some courage on the part of the king, that steps were taken to meet violence with appropriate measures. The troops were fully empowered to act, and in the course of Thursday they had everywhere beaten and routed the rioters, of whom 210 were killed, and 248 ascertained to be wounded. Of those subsequently tried, 59 were found guilty, and of these the number actually executed was twenty. The leader of this strange outburst was thrown into the Tower, and tried for high treason; but a jury decided that the case did not warrant such a charge, and he was acquitted. The best condemnation that could be administered to the zealots he had led was the admission generally made of his insanity-followed up by the fact, some years later, of his wholly abandoning Christianity, and embracing Judaism. It is remarkable that Lord George's family, all through the seventeenth century, were a constant trouble to the state from their tenacity in the Catholic faith, and only in his father's generation had been converted to Protestantism, the agent in the case being a duchess-mother, an Englishwoman, who was rewarded for the act with a pension of £1000 a-year. Through this Duchess of Gordon, however, Lord George was great-grandson of the half-mad Charles Earl of Peterborough, and hence, probably, the maniacal conduct which cost London so much. THE DUNMOW FLITCH OF BACON. Far back in the grey dimnesses of the middle ages, while as yet men were making crusades, and the English commons had not a voice in the state, we see a joke arise among the flats of Essex. What makes it the more remarkable is, it arose in connexion with a religious house-the priory of Dunmow-showing that the men who then devoted themselves to prayers could occasionally make play out of the comicalities of human nature. The subject of the jest here was the notable liability of the married state to trivial janglements and difficulties, not by any means detracting from its general approvableness as a mode of life for a pair of mutually suitable persons, but yet something sufficiently tangible and real to vary what might otherwise be a too smooth surface of affairs, and, any how, a favourite subject of comment, mirthful and sad, for bystanders, according to the feeling with which they might be inclined to view the misfortunes of their neighbours. How it should have occurred to a set of celibate monks to establish a perennial jest regarding matrimony we need not inquire, for we should get no answer. It only appears that they did so. Taking it upon themselves to assume that perfect harmony between married persons for any considerable length of time was a thing of the greatest rarity—so much so as to be scarce possible-they ordered, and made their order known, that if any pair could, after a twelvemonth of matrimony, come forward and make oath at Dunmow that, during the whole time, they had never had a quarrel, never regretted their marriage, and, if again open to an engagement, would make exactly that they had made, they should be rewarded with a flitch of bacon. It is dubiously said that the order originated with Robert Fitzwalter, a favourite of King John, who revivified the Dunmow priory about the beginning of the thirteenth century; but we do not in truth see him in any way concerned in the matter beyond his being a patron of the priory, and as we find the priors alone acting in it afterwards, it seems a more reasonable belief that the joke from the first was theirs. And that the joke was not altogether an illbased one certainly appears on an e facie view of the history of the custom, as far as it has been preserved, for between the time of King John and the Reformation-in which upwards of three centuries slid away-there are shown but three instances of an application for the flitch by properly qualified parties. The first was made in 1445 by one Richard Wright, of Badbury, in the county of Norfolk, a labouring man; his claim was allowed, and the flitch rendered to him. The second was made in 1467 by one Stephen Samuel, of Ayston-parva, in Essex, a husbandman. Having made the proper oaths before Roger Bulcott, prior, in presence of the convent and a number of neighbours, he, too, obtained the bacon. The third application on record came from Thomas le Fuller, of Cogshall, in Essex, before John Tils, prior, in the presence of the convent and neighbours. This person also made good his claim, and carried off a gammon of bacon. We cannot, however, suppose that there was no application before 1445. It is more reasonable to surmise that the records of earlier applications have been lost. Of this, indeed, we may be said to have some evidence in the declaration of Chaucer's THE DUNMOW FLITCH OF BACON. Wife of Bath regarding one of her many husbands: 'The bacon was not fet for [t]hem, I trow, That some men have in Essex, at Dunmow.' It seems very probable that the offer held out by the prior of Dunmow was not at all times equally prominent in the attention of the public. Sometimes it would be forgotten, or nearly so, accidental circumstances, it would be revived, for a generation or two, and then, through some and a qualified claimant would come forward. Such a lapse from memory may be presumed to have taken place just before 1415, when a poet, bewailing the corruption of the times, declared that he could find no man now that will enquire The perfect ways unto Dunmow, For they repent them within a year, And many within a week, I trow.' But see the natural consequence of this public notice of the custom. Immediately comes honest Richard Wright, all the way from Norfolk, to show that matrimonial harmony and happiness were not so wholly extinct in the land." claimed the flitch, and had his claim allowed.' He The priory of Dunmow was of course amongst the religious establishments suppressed by the Defender of the Faith. The old religion of the place was gone; but the bacon was saved. To the honour of the secular proprietors be it said, they either held it as a solemn engagement which they had inherited with the land, or they had the sense to appreciate and desire the continuance of the ancient joke. Doubtless, the records of many applications during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are lost to us; but at length, in 1701, we are apprized of one which seems to have been conducted and acted upon with all due state and ceremony. The record of it in the court roll of Dunmow is as follows: At a Court Baron of the Right Worshipful Sir Thomas May, Knight, there holden upon Friday the 7th day of June, in the 13th year of the reign of our sovereign Lord William III., by the grace of God, &c., and in the year of our Lord 1701, before Thomas Wheeler, Gent., Steward of the said Manor. It is thus enrolled: 'Dunmow, Nuper Priorate. 'Be it remembered, that at this court, in full and open court, it is found and presented by the homage aforesaid, that William Parsley, of Much Easton, in the county of Essex, butcher, and Jane his wife, have been married for the space of three years last past, and upward; and it is likewise found, presented, and adjudged by the homage aforesaid, that the said William Parsley and Jane his wife, by means of their quiet, peaceable, tender, and loving cohabitation for the space of time aforesaid (as appears by the said homage), are fit and qualified persons to be admitted by the court to receive the ancient and THE DUNMOW FLITCH OF BACON. THE BOOK OF DAYS. THE DUNMOW FLITCH OF BACON. accustomed oath, whereby to entitle themselves to have the bacon of Dunmow delivered unto them, according to the custom of the Manor. Whereupon, at this court, in full and open court, came the said William Parsley, and Jane his wife, in their proper persons, and humbly prayed they might be admitted to take the oath aforesaid. Whereupon the said Steward with the jury, suitors, and other officers of the court, proceeded with the usual solemnity to the ancient and accustomed place for the administration of the oath, and receiving the gammon aforesaid, (that is to say) the two great stones lying near the church door, within the said Manor, when the said William Parsley and Jane his wife, kneeling down on the said two stones, the said Steward did administer unto them the abovementioned oath, in these words, or to the effect following, viz.: 'You do swear by custom of confession, Or since the church clerk said Amen, As when you joined hands in holy quire.' And immediately thereupon, the said William Parsley and Jane his wife claiming the said gammon of bacon, the court pronounced the sentence for the same, in these words, or to the effect following: 'Since to these conditions, without any fear, And accordingly a gammon of bacon was delivered unto the said William Parsley and Jane his wife, with the usual solemnity. Examined per THOMAS WHEELER, Steward.'* At the same time Mr Reynolds, Steward to Sir Charles Barrington of Hatfield, Broad Oaks, received a second gammon. Exactly half a century afterwards, John Shakeshaft, woolcomber, of Weathersfield, Essex, appeared with his wife at the Court Baron, and, after satisfying a jury of six maidens and six bachelors, received the prize, and the lucky pair were duly chaired through the town, attended by the Steward and other officers of the manor, the flitch being carried before them in triumph. The woolcomber showed himself as shrewd a man as he was a good husband, realizing a considerable sum by selling slices of the well-won bacon among the five thousand spectators of the show. A picture of the procession was painted by David Osborne [from an engraving of which our representation of the scene is taken]. The bacon was again presented in 1763; but the name of the recipient has escaped record. After this the custom was discountenanced by the lord |