by Don Jordan
Following Charles’s death, Purcell wrote music for the coronation of James II. He continued to write prolifically, including music for the funeral of Queen Mary II – some of which, with verses by Dryden, was played at Purcell’s own funeral. Purcell was the first undoubted genius of British musical life. His music has stimulated, or been adapted by, composers including Michael Nyman and Benjamin Britten. It has been used for over a hundred film soundtracks and has inspired The Who, the Pet Shop Boys and Sting. This last should not surprise us too much, for Purcell was the quintessence of the baroque, the spiritual core of modern popular music’s exuberant appeal, with its soaring chords, synthesisers, string sections, sampling and fast-cut video.
Purcell died in his thirties, at the height of his powers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. By the time of his death, possibly of tuberculosis, he had changed the course of music. His resting place is dominated by the organ loft, where he spent so much of his professional life.
In the sphere of literature, John Dryden went on to publish his momentous translation of Virgil in 1697, a great public achievement for which he was paid £1400. Dryden’s translations made many Latin classics accessible to the average reader for the first time. And where would today’s rap or hip-hop artist be if Dryden had not made the heroic couplet (rhyming pairs of lines in iambic pentameter) the standard form in English poetry?
Without Dryden’s lead, we would have no plays by his greatest disciple, William Congreve, one of the first writers able to retire early on the proceeds of his work. Congreve had arrived in London determined to make his mark. He soon found his way to Will’s Coffee House in Covent Garden, where Dryden held court, and became a devotee. With London’s theatrical revival failing badly, it was 25-year-old Congreve who came to the rescue. The situation facing London’s premier playhouse, the United Company had become so precarious that the company tore itself apart, with the more talented actors anxious to break away to breathe life into the city’s theatrical heart while it still had a beat. Thomas Betterton, Mrs Barry and others set up their own company. They opened with Congreve’s Love for Love, which was a smash hit. Congreve wrote his play in the high style of the sexual comedies of manners he learned from Dryden. It was the last great hurrah for bawdy comedy dressed up in fine Restoration clothes.
Congreve had a knack of coining the phrase that lingered. In Love for Love, it was the line that described a daily staple of tabloid journalism, taken from the line ‘O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.’ His later play, The Mourning Bride, provided misanthropists everywhere with hell has no fury like a woman scorned’. And what would romantics everywhere do without ‘music has charms to soothe the savage breast?
Congreve was a Whig, a member of the Kit-Kat Club, a political and literary fraternity, and mixed in high society. He supposedly fathered a child by Henrietta Godolphin, the daughter of John Churchill, ist Duke of Marlborough, and gave up the theatre to live on his royalties. He took up politics with minor success. All his writing for the theatre was done in a five-year period from 1695 to 1700. After that, tastes changed, but today Congreve seems to epitomise the high style of comedy that we have come to associate with the sexualised court life under Charles II.
To many, the style of theatre that evolved during Charles’s reign was merely an abasement of the finer qualities of the Elizabethan and Jaçobean theatre. Whatever one’s taste, there is little doubt that Carolinian theatre lacked either the depth or poetry of the earlier theatre. And by 1698, time was being called on what some saw’ as the amoral excesses of the Restoration stage. The most powerful blast against the style of Dryden, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Congreve and the rest came from a renegade Anglican cleric named Jeremy Collier. Unlike previous panegyrics lambasting those opposed to the writer’s point of view, Collier went to great pains in giving examples drawn from the works in question. The main thrust of his argument was that in Restoration comedies the morally reprehensible were not punished for their licentious acts. Nor did he mince his words: ‘Being convinced,’ he wrote, ‘that nothing has gone farther in Debauching the Age than the Stage Poets, and PlayHouse, I thought I could not employ my time better than in writing against them.’2 There followed 280 pages of argument. Women were, said Collier, treated roughly on the stage, blasphemy went unpunished, and there was a lack of modesty and a general tone of profanity. Warming to his theme, Collier chastised the playwrights for cherishing passion and rewarding vice. Comedy, as known in the ancient world, he reminded his targets, Was no laughing matter; the writer who minds nothing but the matter of laughing, is himself ridiculous’. He ended by saying that playwrights had ‘the most need of repentance of all men living’.
John Vanbrugh laughed off Collier s attack. Dryden, who had survived Rochester’s goons, had little to fear from a renegade cleric’s words.* But Congreve took the criticism badly. Collier’s condemnation may have contributed to his decision to give up writing for the theatre, although it undoubtedly concerned Congreve and his contemporaries that public taste was turning away from the brittle, knowing Restoration wit towards a gentler commentary upon the passing scene. Charles himself would have smiled at Collier’s tirade – after all, he had once answered Bishop Burnet’s chiding by saying that God would not punish a man for having fun.
Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principle Mathematical (usually referred to simply as the Principia) was published in 1687, a distillation of work begun some years before. One of the most important works in the history of science, the Principle} set out Newton’s laws of gravitation and of motion, establishing the ground for the modern discipline of mechanics. In 1696 Newton left Cambridge and moved to London as Warden of the Royal Mint. In 1703 he became president of the Royal Society. Two years later, he was knighted by Queen Anne. Newton’s international prestige helped to rekindle interest in the society, which became a focus for the enhanced experimental abilities of researchers in the eighteenth century.
A row over Robert Hooke’s claims to earlier authorship of some of the ideas in the Principia was never resolved. But if one man represented the Royal Society’ in its early aims and aspirations it was Hooke. Many superlatives have been used to praise him, including the assertion that he was England’s Leonardo. After Hooke’s death in 1703, New’ton gained his revenge over his old sparring partner; it was said he destroyed the only known portrait of Hooke.† A In 1712, he further displayed his ruthlessness when he and Edmund Halley pilfered more work from their supposed friend John Flamsteed and published a pirated edition of his sky atlas, Flamsteed had only himself to blame, for upon his appointment he had been tasked with producing star charts useful in navigation and had then procrastinated for years, delivering nothing of practical value. Halley and Newton both produced the goods, as it were, and thereby justified their greed for Flamsteed’s figures.
London had another important advantage in the world of science: the German émigré Heinrich ‘Henry’ Oldenburg. It was largely thanks to Oldenburg that so many works, scientific, political and philosophical, were printed in English – one of the greatest innovations of the age in Europe. It is not known if he encouraged Robert Hooke to write his Micmgraphia in English, though he may well have done. Only a few decades before, all similar works had been published in Latin, the common language of Western learning. During the reign of Charles II, English became the chief language of international intellectual activity. This was the result of the deliberate policies of a few men. First, Oldenburg published his scientific newsletter in English and then funded what became the Transactions of the Royal Society, still published today in English. Second, a small group within the Royal Society, with John Wilkins at the centre, sought to find a form of language precise enough to express the technological exactitudes of the new mechanical science.3 After a few efforts, these attempts were discarded. Having more elasticity than Latin (which proved to be quite unsuited to scientific debate) and being found amenable to development in order to meet new challenges of expression, English became the
default scientific tongue.
With so many new observations being made, it is unsurprising that substantial numbers of words were coined, or first appeared in print, at this period. Although William Shakespeare holds the record for the highest number of newly coined English words (or at least for their first appearance in print), at 1582, John Evelyn coined no fewer than 491 new words, Robert Boyle 360, the botanist John Ray 342 and Hooke 684 The mercurial adaptability and the reactive fluidity of the English language helped to push science forward almost as much as the Baconian revelation of reductive investigation itself.
During the reign of Charles II the Royal Society’s importance first grew and then gradually decreased. After an initial flurry of excitement, the society to some extent lost its way, with many of its founders losing interest, failing to pay their subs, or simply not having experimental aptitude. There were too many dilettantes and gentlemen and not enough men like Hooke with the ability and inclination to engage fully in experimental work.
One of the contemporary criticisms made of the early mechanical experiments was that they seldom if ever had any practical value. A substantial proportion of the suggested experiments that Hooke was expected almost single-handed to set up were ludicrous, unnecessary or so ambitious as to be well nigh impossible. On one occasion he was asked to ‘develop an engine to kill whales’5. The idea of Hooke, a creature of the city, bent over a prototype harpoon gun at the prow of a ship lashed by wind and waves in whale-rich waters off the Azores is hard to resist.
Despite many drawbacks, some very significant advances of great practical use were made. Among the most important were Isaac Newton’s work on motion, gravity and light, Hooke’s law of springs, his universal joint, the anchor escapement‡ and the balance spring watch, developed independently by both Hooke and Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens. The other work to have immense significance, carried out by a variety of people, was on steam. Robert Boyle employed the French experimenter Denis Papin, who built on Boyle’s and Hooke’s vacuum pump to develop what he called his steam digester, in which the pressure of steam could be regulated. Experimental work on steam would reach fruition within a few years of Charles’s death. In 1698 Thomas Savary patented the first steam engine. Hooke lived on to correspond with Thomas Newcomen, who built the first steam-powered water pump, of huge importance to the development of the deep mine coal industry, which in turn powered the industrial revolution.
In 1689, with the absolutist Stuart brothers no longer in charge and the constitutionalist William on the throne, John Locke was able to publish Two Treatises of Government, refuting the promotion of absolutism and monarchy put forward by Robert Filmer in his influential Patriarcha of 1680. Locke laid out the natural rights of man to ‘life, health, liberty or possessions’. These ideas were to be discussed by Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson and would resurface in the American Declaration of Independence as ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
A few months later, Locke published his hugely influential An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, giving birth to the empiricist school of philosophy. The idea for the work had germinated during a meeting between Locke and Thomas Sydenham in Lord Shaftesbury’s house in 1671, shortly after Locke arrived in London. It was of immense importance for Enlightenment philosophers such as Berkeley, Hume, Kant and Rousseau.
London in the age of Charles II also gave us statistics. Despite its baleful reputation, the development of statistical analysis was of first-rank importance. Thanks to the pioneering work of John Graunt and William Petty, a new science developed that would allow other great changes to take place. Without a way of measuring social and physical events accurately and then holding them up to analysis, various occupations are impossible. Statistical analysis proved to be the key to running an economy, to keeping tabs on expenditure and estimating income via taxes. It was also the key to scientific work requiring careful comparison between groups of results, or packets of information. Along similar lines, huge advances were also made in surveying, which would have great utility in the redevelopment of London after the fire, and in the future layout of new towns and cities. Without accurate measurement, the perfect Vitruvian city could not be built.
When Charles took ill and died at the beginning of 1685, he left the country in an uncertain state, but London itself was secure. Although its ancient freedoms and privileges had been taken away by the Crowns tightening hold, such a state of affairs would not last long. The calamity of the Great Fire had been overcome by the vitality of the city’s people, making way for the future Georgian metropolis that epitomised the British Empire in its pomp. New ideas on trade, taxation and revenue were realised during Charles’s reign, leading London to become the dominant trading city of its time. ‘1 b this day, the City of London has remained a centre of trade rather than of industrial finance. In this rather odd way, the City stood outside and slightly apart from the industrial revolution. In Restoration London the system of using debt to finance trade grew radically, allowing London to expand its overseas trade at a rapid rate. State debt became commonplace – something that today causes palpitations among British politicians. The idea of starting up a national bank was edging closer. Despite the misgivings on all sides, the year before Charles’s death a bill to form such a bank went before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Commons. It was passed by twelve votes, and there the matter rested. It was never put before the House. Of course, debate did not stop there, but it would be another ten years before a national bank came into existence§
By 1685, other important institutions and policies were already in place that would help London and Britain become the pre-eminent international capitalist force. It had been a slow process, but mercantile capitalism finally reached its apogee in London during the mid-i6oos. International capitalism had grown from the novel supply of New World gold and silver bullion in the preceding century, with the tiny Italian city state of Genoa becoming the first state to use bullion in order to develop its mercantile activities.6 The baton of supremacy passed from the Genoese to the Dutch and thence to the East India Company. During the reign of Charles II, and under the guidance of Samuel Pepys, from the third Anglo-Dutch War onwards, the development of a large, well-armed navy ensured England’s dominance of international trade.7
During Charles’s reign, England’s role in the transatlantic slave trade also increased massively. The first decade of the Royal African Company’s existence saw the country’s share in the trade rise from one-third to three-quarters.8 Once the African Company’s monopoly was broken by Parliament after the accession of William III, the number of slave voyages increased massively.9 In the period 1685-9, number of exported slaves rose to 90,000.10 Even then, demand was so great that it became obvious London’s monopoly on slaving was holding the slave labour industry back. But it took until 1720 for Bristol to approach the capital in numbers of slaves embarked in Africa, before going on to eclipse it in the 1730s when over a five-year period Bristol traders shipped 106,532 slaves against London’s 64,905, By the 1750s, Liverpool had outgrown both London and Bristol, shipping 129,984 Africans in the decade.11 In fifty years, from its inception in 1672 until the 1720s, the Royal African Company shipped more African slaves than any other organisation in the dreadful history of the transatlantic slave trade.
The sea route that launched London into a dominant position in world trade and finance was not the transatlantic run. but the route east from London to Bombay. When the Portuguese gave Bombay as part of Queen Catherine’s dowry it was a little trading post on the western seaboard of India. Over time, the East India Company used this foothold to expand its trading in India and beyond. Within ten years the popvdation of Bombay had increased from 10,000 to 60,000, and it continued to expand thereafter.¶ The EIC, like the Royal African Company, was given the right by royal warrant to engage in war and take foreign land by force. By the end of the seventeenth century, the company was so powerful that it was able to undertake military action ag
ainst individual Indian rulers over trade agreements. This set the scene for the EIC to become a supra-national power with its own army and the ability to fight wars and eventually establish its rule over much of India. By this means Britain would go on to build up surplus capital and increase its domestic production. Out of this emerged the industrial revolution and the British Empire. Thanks to the instruments largely created or developed in London during Charles’s reign, Britain would become the world’s most important capitalist power until overtaken by the United States in the nineteenth century.
Today, it is possible to have an experience close to that of the intellectually curious seventeenth-century Londoner. To do so one has to begin with a tube ride to Chancery Lane. On emerging onto High Holborn the journey back in time begins. On the south side of High Holborn stands Staple Inn, one of the few remaining examples of Tudor architecture in London. Thanks to its location outside the area destroyed by fire, Staple Inn stands as a fine evocation of what London looked like before the conflagration.
From here it is a short walk east along High Holborn to Barnard’s Inn, an eighteenth-century office block for lawyers. Turning down an alleyway towards the back of the building, one comes to a half-timbered fifteenth-century hall. This is Gresham’s Hall, today home of the eponymous college, which long ago moved from its original site in Bishopsgate. The college still holds weekly free lectures as it did in the days of Wren, Hooke, Petty and the rest. If one doesn’t wish to make the journey, however, one can watch the lectures on the internet. Joseph Glanvill’s imagining of ‘magnetic waves that permeatse the ether’ comes instantly to mind. How the original members of the Royal Society would have loved that.