Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/67

Rh attempts in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. to erect a theatre within the jurisdiction of the city; and at no time had they ever encouraged the drama by their presence. The poets and actors lived by the King and court, while they repaid their opponents and gratified the courtiers by holding up every citizen as a cuckold and a fool. So long was this feeling perpetuated on the stage (it still lives in our literature), that Garrick, in his endeavour to supplant the usual performance of the "London Cuckolds" on the 9th of November (Lord Mayor's day), was reduced to play first to a noisy and next to an empty house.

Whilst Buckhurst and Nelly kept "merry house" at Epsom in the months of July and August, 1667, it was not altogether merry in England elsewhere. theThe [sic] plague of 1665 had been followed by the fire of 1666, and both plague and fire in 1667 by the national shame of a Dutch fleet insulting us in the Thames, burning some of our finest ships in the Medway at Chatham, and by the undeserved disgrace inflicted by the King and his imperious mistress, Castlemaine, on the great Lord Clarendon. Wise and good men, too, were departing from among us. Cowley finished the life of an elegant and amiable recluse at Chertsey in Surrey, and Jeremy Taylor that of a saint at Lisnegarry, in Ireland.