Chapter V
.
Footnote 22:
Stukeley’s _Itinerary of Great Britain_ (2nd edit. 1776).
Footnote 23:
Some of the burnt MSS., regarded, until Mr. Forshall’s time, as hopelessly illegible, have been found very helpful to the preparation of the volume now in the reader’s hands.
Footnote 24:
I have dwelt, somewhat protractedly, on this one interesting point in Cotton’s history,—pressing as are the limits prescribed to this volume,—under the belief that many readers will bear in mind that Sir Robert’s misfortune beneath the recent disinterment of ambassadorial despatches, written to foreign courts, is _not_ an exceptional misfortune. Sir Walter Ralegh has fared still worse, in Mr. Gardiner’s able hands, by being held up to public scorn as a knavish liar, upon the uncorroborated testimony of certain avowed and bitter enemies of England. See _Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage_ (1869), vol. i, Chaps. 1 and 2, _passim_. Readers of the admirable _History of England_ by Mr. Froude—and who has not read that history?—will easily call to mind several not dissimilar instances. Nor is it at all surprising that it should be so. The most warily judicial of intellects can never be quite independent of that factitious charm which there will always be—over and above the legitimate charm—in telling an old story from an entirely new point of view. If, besides the attraction of mere novelty, there should chance to have been a keen burst of search over a difficult country, before the eager searcher could succeed in running down his quarry, he would be more than human if, in the moment of victory, he could weigh and balance with exact precision the real value of the hard-won spoil. At present, historians are too keenly chasing after new evidence to be able to estimate quite fairly its relative importance or net result. The most part both of writers and of readers are far too busy over newly-discovered materials to adjust with any approach to impartial fairness the vital question of comparative credibility. But the time for doing _that_ must needs come, by and bye. Meanwhile, the fame of not a few of our old and true worthies will—in all probability—suffer some degree of momentary eclipse; just as that of Ralegh and Cotton has suffered.
Footnote 25:
The word ‘hope’ or some like expression, seems here to have been intended, but omitted. The repetition of the word ‘shortlie’ will sufficiently indicate to the reader the haste with which this effusion was written,—just as the King was about to mount for the long looked-for journey southwards. The letter has been printed by Birch, but with amendments.
Footnote 26:
It was not strictly a ‘launch.’ The vessel had been built expressly for the Prince, at Chatham, and was brought thence to London to be named with the usual ceremonies.
Footnote 27:
He was removed to the Fleet Prison ten days afterwards.
Footnote 28:
In dealing with royal letters it is, of course, necessary to keep in mind how largely the vicarious element is apt to enter into their composition. Those, however, that are quoted in the text seem to have a plain stamp of individuality upon them.
Footnote 29:
That Llanthony, in Monmouthshire, the purchase of which in the present century gave rise to so singular a chapter in the history of Landor, and whose charms, in retrospect, prompted the lines—
‘Llanthony! an ungenial clime, And the broad wing of restless Time, Have rudely swept thy massy walls, And rockt thy Abbots in their palls. I loved thee, by thy streams of yore; By distant streams, I love thee more.’
Footnote 30:
Part of Lord Northampton’s large estates came eventually to Lord Arundel by bequest. He also inherited Northampton’s house at Greenwich, and occasionally resided there, until its destruction by fire in January, 1616. Chamberlain’s account of the incident, given to Sir Dudley Carleton, is worth quotation for the comment with which it ends: ‘There fell a great mischance to the Earl of Arundel by the burning of his house ... at Greenwich, where he lost a great deal of household stuff and rich furniture; the fury of the fire being such that nothing could be saved. No doubt the Papists will ascribe and publish it as a punishment for his deserting or falling from them.’ Ten days before the fire, Arundel had testified, publicly, his conformity with the Church of England. But he had shewn long before that his religious views and convictions differed widely from those in which he had been brought up.
Footnote 31:
The question was complicated by opposition offered by the Lord Keeper Williams to the terms in which Lord Arundel’s patent was originally drawn. The relations between Arundel and Buckingham were never cordial, and the Lord Keeper seems to have profited by that circumstance to make his opposition to the pension effectual. It is probable that he had good grounds for so much of his objection as related to certain powers proposed to be vested in the Earl Marshal’s court. But on that point Arundel’s views eventually prevailed—until the time of the Long Parliament. The Lord Keeper’s letter is printed in _Cabala_, p. 285.
Footnote 32:
‘In my deare lorde I long since placed my true affection and love.... Had I manie lives I would have adventured them all.’ _Lady Maltravers to the Earl of Arundel_, 6 Feb., 1626 (MS. Harl., 1581, f. 390).
Footnote 33:
It has been estimated, on competent evidence, that for every one thousand pounds which the Earl’s estates in England contributed towards his personal and household expenditure, in exile, twenty-seven thousand pounds were so contributed towards the maintenance, in one form or other, of the royalist cause. Such an estimate can, of course, only be approximative. But it has obvious significance and value.
Footnote 34:
See the details in Lords’ Report on Gregg’s case; reprinted in _State Trials_, vol. xiv, cols. 1378 seqq.
Footnote 35:
In the interval between June, 1707 (after the Union with Scotland), and February, 1708, the following entries occur in the Council Books:—
‘1 July, 1707. The Rt. Hon. Robert Harley, one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, delivered up the old signet of office—which was thereupon broken before Her Majesty—and received a new one by the Queen’s command.’ The entry is followed by the note:—‘This order was thus drawn by Mr. Harley’s particular direction.’ (_Register of Privy Council_, Anne, vol. iii, p. 395.)
‘8 January, 170⅞. The Rt. Hon. R. Harley, ... having this day presented to Her Majesty in her Privy Council a new signet with supporters, Her Majesty was pleased to deliver it back to him, whereupon he returned to Her Majesty the old signet, which was immediately defaced,’ &c. (Ib., p. 485.)
Footnote 36:
Swift’s account of their first interview after Harley’s partial recovery merits quotation:—‘I went in the evening,’ he notes on the 5th of April, ‘to see Mr. Harley. Mr. Secretary was just going out of the door, but I made him come back; and there was the old Saturday club, Lord Keeper [Harcourt], Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I; the first time since his stabbing. Mr. Secretary went away, but I stayed till nine, and made Mr. Harley show me his breast and tell all his story.... I measured and found that the penknife would have killed him, if it had gone but half the breadth of my thumb-nail lower; so near was he to death. I was so curious as to ask him what were his thoughts while they were carrying him home in the chair. He said he concluded himself a dead man.’—_Journal to Stella_, as before, pp. 255, 256.
Footnote 37:
The original letters of the Elector to Harley are in Lansdowne MS. 1236, ff. 272–294. They range, in date, from 15 December, 1710, to 15 June, 1714. There also are several letters (in autograph) of the Electress Sophia. The earliest of these bears date 26 May, 1707. The latest is undated, but was written in May, 1714, very few days before the writer’s death.
Footnote 38:
The chief passages in the Stuart Correspondence upon which a confident assertion has been based of his ultimate complicity in the Jacobite conspiracies are given, textually, in a note at the end of this chapter.
Footnote 39:
Thus, for example, at one stage of the proceedings before the Privy Council about Barbadoes, we find the Lord Keeper Coventry reporting to the Board upon an order of reference: ‘I am of opinion that Barbadoes is not one of the Caribbee Islands.... But ... I am also of opinion that the proof on Lord Carlisle’s part that Barbadoes was intended to be passed in his Patent is very strong.’—_Colonial Papers_, April 18, 1629, vol. v, § 11. See also The King to Wolverton, _Ib._, § 13.
Footnote 40:
His eldest son, Peter Courten, had married a daughter of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, and died without issue. Sir William Courten bought the widow’s jointure of £1200 a year by the present payment of £10,000, according to a statement in MS. Sloane, 3515.
Footnote 41:
‘Hoc excepto quod scilicet qui se jacturam passos dicunt in duabus navibus ... poterunt litem inceptam prosequi.’—_Treaty of Commerce_ of 1662.
Footnote 42:
After elaborate inquiries in the Admiralty Court the losses were certified as amounting to £151,612; and that assessment was adopted in a subsequent Commission under the Great Seal.
Footnote 43:
This, of course, is the statement, _ex parte_, of the claimants.
Footnote 44:
This allusion I am unable to explain. It is quite an exceptional phrase in the Courten correspondence. But, possibly, ‘station’ may be understood as meaning merely place of residence.
Footnote 45:
This volume undoubtedly passed into the Sloane Collection, but is not so described as to be identified quite satisfactorily.
Footnote 46:
The fact is unquestionably so, although upon his tomb it is said that his age was sixty-two years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days. The same inaccurate statement occurs also—and more than once—in papers written by Sir Hans Sloane. Courten was born on the 28th March, 1642. There is an entry of his baptism in the Register of St. Gabriel, Fenchurch, on the 31st of the same month; and a copy of it in MS. Sloane, 3515, fol. 53.
Footnote 47:
Staphorst was, by birth, a German. He is known in English literature as the translator of Rauwolf’s _Travels in Asia_. This task he undertook upon Sloane’s recommendation.
Footnote 48:
As, for example, under the words ‘_Lapathum_;’ _Poonnacai Malabarorum_; ‘_Ricinus_;’ ‘_Salix_;’ and several others. See _Almagesti Botanici Mantissa_, pp. 113; 143; 161; 165, &c.
Footnote 49:
Dr. Arthur Charlett’s long and intimate correspondence with Sir Hans Sloane began in this year (1696), and continued without interruption until 1720. It has much interest, and fills MS. Sloane 4040, from f. 193 to f. 285. That with John Chamberlayne was of nearly equal duration, and is preserved in the same volume (ff. 100–167). The correspondence with James Bobart contains much valuable material for the history of botanical study in England, and is preserved in MS. Sloane, 4037 (ff. 158–185). It began in 1685, and was continued until Bobart’s death, in 1716. Still more curious is the correspondence with John Burnet (1722–1738), who was originally a surgeon in the service of the East India Company, and afterwards Surgeon to the King of Spain. Burnet’s letters to Sloane, written from Madrid, contain valuable illustrations of Spanish society and manners as they were in the first half of the Eighteenth Century. This correspondence is in MS. Sloane, 4039.
Footnote 50:
_History of Europe_ [the precursor of the _Annual Register_], for 1712.
Footnote 51:
‘Here are great designs on foot for uniting the Queen’s Library, the Cotton, and the Royal Society’s, together. How soon they may be put in practice time must discover.’—_Sloane to Dr. Charlett, Master of University College_, April, 1707.
Footnote 52:
Besides those distinctions which I have noted already, he had been requested, in 1730, by the University of Oxford, to allow his portrait to be placed in the University Gallery. In 1733 his statue, by Rysbraeck, was placed in the Botanic Garden at Chelsea.
Footnote 53:
‘Walpole is your tyrant to-day; and any man His Majesty pleases to name—Horace or Leheup—may be so to-morrow.’—_Bolingbroke to Marchmont_, 22 July, 1739.
Footnote 54:
‘Our House of Commons—mere poachers—are piddling with the torture of Leheup, who extracted so much money out of the Lottery.’—_Horace Walpole to Richard Bentley_, 19 December, 1753.
Footnote 55:
The term ‘Librarian,’ as used at the British Museum, has never implied any _special_ connection with the Books, printed or manuscript. All the Keepers of Departments were, originally, called ‘Under Librarian.’ The General Superintendent or Warden has always been called ‘Principal Librarian.’
Footnote 56:
One of Cook’s many individual gifts was the first Kangaroo ever brought into Europe.
Footnote 57:
In a copy of this work now before me, the original drawings are bound up with the engravings, and later drawings are added. They serve to show that Sir William’s scientific interest in the subject lasted as long as his life.
Footnote 58:
That superiority, however, is only partial. The original Naples edition, along with many errors, contains much valuable matter omitted in the reprint.
Footnote 59:
I find that in this statement—made twenty-four years after the date of the transaction referred to—Sir William’s memory misled him. The amount of the Parliamentary vote was (as I have stated it, on a previous page) eight thousand four hundred pounds.
Footnote 60:
This John Towneley was sent first to Chester Castle, then to the Marshalsea in Southwark, then to York Castle, and to a block-house in Hull. From Yorkshire he was sent to the Gatehouse at Westminster, and thence to a jail in Manchester. From his Lancashire prison he was presently hustled into Oxfordshire, and sent thence to another prison at Ely. The gallant old recusant survived it all, to die at Towneley at last.
Footnote 61:
Lancastrian for ‘throw open.’
Footnote 62:
_Specimens of Ancient Sculpture._ Published by the Society of Dilettanti, Preface, § 61.
Footnote 63:
One of the metopes from the south side of the Parthenon, removed by the Count de Choiseul, during his embassy at the eve of the Revolution, was captured by an English ship when on its way to France, and had been purchased by Lord Elgin at a Custom House sale in London. By him it was returned to Choiseul, with a liberality too rare in such matters. When this metope came, after Choiseul’s death, to be sold at Paris, by auction, the Trustees of the British Museum sent a commission for its purchase. The commissioner went so far as to offer a thousand pounds, but was overbidden by the French Government.
Footnote 64:
_Curse of Minerva_, passim.
Footnote 65:
That my needful abridgment, in the text, of Mr. Payne Knight’s words may not misrepresent his meaning, I subjoin the whole of the passage:—‘Had this powerful engine of influence’ [namely, loss of caste] ‘been employed in favour of pure morality and efficient virtue, the Hindoos might have been the most virtuous and happy of the human race. But the ambition of a hierarchy has, as usual, employed it to serve its own particular interests instead of those of the community in general.... Should the pious labours of our missionaries succeed in diffusing among them a more pure and more moral, but less uniform and less energetic system of religion, they may improve and exalt the character of individual men, but they will for ever destroy the repose and tranquillity of the mass.... The prevalence of European religion will be the fall of European domination.... The incarnations which form the principal subject of sculpture in all the temples of India, Tibet, Tartary, and China, are, above all others, calculated to call forth the ideal perfections of the art, by expanding and exalting the imagination of the artist, and exciting his ambition to surpass the simple imitation of ordinary forms, in order to produce a model of excellence, worthy to be the corporeal habitation of the Deity. But this no nation of the East, nor indeed of the Earth, except the Greeks and those who copied them, ever attempted.’—_Analytical Inquiry_, &c., p. 80.]
Footnote 66:
_Carmina Homerica Ilias et Odyssea a rapsidorum interpolationibus repurgata, et in pristinam formam ... redacta; cum notis ac prolegomenis, ... opera et studio_ Richardi Payne Knight. 1808, 8vo.
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