Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/625

] had all the ancient poetical customs of the people disappeared. Neither the asceticism of the puritan nor the profligacy of the cavalier had been able to utterly extinguish such customs as had a touch of nature in them. The Londoners made their swarming excursions to Greenwich, and Richmond, and Epping Forest, where they gave way to all their pent-up fun and frolic, and enlivened the banks of the Thames with their songs as they rowed to and fro. The old holidays of the departed church still survived. Valentine's day was still a day of love missives, and of presents of gloves, jewellery, silk stockings, and ornamental garters from gentlemen to their valentines. Mayday reassumed its jollity; may-poles, put down by the commonwealth, again lifted their heads; and Herrick's beautiful verses resumed their reality:—

The puritans beheld the return of the custom with horror. In 1660, the year that Charles II. and may-poles came back again, a puritan, writing from Newcastle, says:— "Sir,—The country as well as he town abounds with vanities, now the reins of liberty and licentiousness are let loose. May-poles, and players, and jugglers, and all things else now pass current. Sin now appears with a brazen face." Just as Charles and James were landing, in the merry month of May, at Dover, Thomas Hall published his "Funebriæa Floræa, the Downfall of May-games "—a most inopportune moment. Yet he stoutly put into the mouth of the may-pole—for he assumed it to have a mouth—as well as the whole catalogue of mortal sins, the following confession:—

With equal horror the puritans beheld the old sports at village wakes and Whitsuntide, the jollity of harvest homes, and the mirthful uproar of Christmas, come back. New Year's day, with its gifts—a Roman custom as old as Romulus—not only reappeared as a means of expressing affection amongst friends, but as a source of great profit to the king and nobility. For as Numa ordered gifts to be given to the gods on that day, so gifts were now presented by the nobility to the king, and long after his time by the dependents of the nobility, and those who sought favour from them, to the nobles. Pepys says that the whole fortunes of some courtiers consisted in these gifts. But Christmas-boxes, which originate in New Year's gifts, and have become confounded with them in this country, have survived the New Year's gifts of the time we are reviewing, and become a senseless demand from tradesmen, journeymen, and apprentices, because you have obliged their masters with your custom.

GROWTH OF THE REVENUE AND OF COMMERCE.

The great evidences of the growth of a nation are the increase of its trade, its population, and its governmental revenue. When these three things continue to augment. pari passu, there can be no question of the substantial progress of a nation. Will these had been steadily on the increase during this period, and the advocates of royalty point to these circumstances to prove the mischiefs of the civil wars and the commonwealth. It would be enough in reply, even did we admit the reality of the alleged facts, to observe that the mischief, whatever it was, was necessitated by the crimes and tyrannies of royalty. But it is necessary only to look carefully at the whole case to see that the prosperity following the restoration had its source in the commonwealth. Spite of the violent changes and dislocations of society during the period of the conflict with Charles I., these upheavings and tempests threw down and swept away a host of things which cramped and smothered the free action of commerce and internal industry. The lava which burst in fiery streams from the volcano of revolution, though it might for a time destroy life and property only required a little more time to moulder and fertilise the earth. A host of mischievous monopolies were annihilated in this convulsion. The foreign commerce was carefully extended. Not only at home were Englishmen relived from the incubus of government, absolutism, and interference with private speculation, but the haughty fleets of Dutch, and French, and Spaniards were swept from the ocean, and English merchants were encouraged to extend their enterprises, not only by the greater security at sea, but by the act of the Long Parliament allowing the import of commodities from its colonies and possessions in America, Asia, and Africa, only in English bottoms. This, it has been contended, did us no good, because it compelled the Dutch to turn their attention to the Baltic trade, and enabled them there to get the precedence of us. But this is a mistake; for the removal of the overbearing fleets of the Dutch, and the stimulus given to our commerce by this privilege, led to a far greater amount of mercantile activity in England, and enabled us to assume a position in which at a later date we could safely introduce the principles of free navigation.

Cromwell encouraged our commerce by all the means in his power, and most successfully; and the commercial activity thus excited acquired power, and continued to increase ever