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I will preserve a passage of a proclamation against excess of lavish and licentious speech.' James was a king of words!

'Although the commixture of nations, confluence of ambassadors, and the relation which the affairs of our kingdoms have had towards the business and interests of foreign states, have caused, during our regiment (government,) a greater openness and liberty of discourse, even concerning MATTERS OF STATE (which are no themes or subjects fit for vulgar persons or common meetings) than hath been in former times used or permitted; and although in our own nature and judgment we do well allow of convenient freedom of speech, esteeming any over-curious or restrained hands carried in that kind rather as a weakness, or else over-much severity of government than otherwise; yet for as much as it is come to our ears, by common report, that there is at this time a more licentious passage of lavish discourse and bold censure in matters of state than is fit to be suffered: We give this warning, &c, to take heed how they intermeddle by pen or speech with causes of state and secrets of empire, either at home or abroad, but contain themselves within that modest and reverent regard of matters above their reach and calling; nor to give any manner of applause to such discourse, without acquainting one of our privy council within the space of twentyfour hours.'

It seems that the bold speakers,' as certain persons were then denominated, practised an old artifice of lauding his majesty, while they severely arraigned the counsels of the cabinet; on this JAMES observes, 'Neither let any man mistake us so much as to think that by giving fair and specious attributes to our person, they cover the scandals which they otherwise lay upon our government, but conceive that we make no other construction of them but as fine and artificial glosses, the better to give passage to the rest of their imputations and scandals.'

This was a proclamation in the eighteenth year of his reign; he repeated it in the nineteenth, and he might have proceeded to the crack of doom' with the same effect!

Rushworth, in his second volume of Historical Collections, has preserved a considerable number of the proclamations of CHARLES the First, of which many are remarkable; but latterly they mark the feverish state of his reign. One regulates access for cure of the king's evil-by which his majesty, it appears, 'hath had good success therein;' but though ready and willing as any king or queen of this realm ever was to relieve the distresses of his good subjects, his majesty commands to change the seasons for his "sacred touch" from Easter and Whitsuntide to Easter and Michaelmas, as times more convenient for `the temperature of the season,' &c. Another against 'departure out of the realm without licence.' One to erect an office for the suppression of cursing and swearing,' to receive the forfeitures; against 'libellous and seditious pamphlets and discourses from Scotland,' framed by factious spirits, and republished in London - this was in 1640; and Charles, at the crisis of that great insurrection in which he was to be at once the actor and the spectator, fondly imagined that the possessors of these scandalous' pamphlets would bring them, as he proclaimed, 'to one of his majesty's justices of peace, to be by him sent to one of his principal secretaries of state!'

On the Restoration, CHARLES the Second had to court his people by his domestic regulations. He early issued a remarkable proclamation, which one would think reflected on his favourite companions, and which strongly marks the moral disorders of those depraved and wretched times. It is against vicious, debauched, and profane persons!' who are thus described.

'A sort of men of whom we have heard much, and are sufficiently ashamed; who spend their time in taverns, tipling-houses and debauches; giving no other evidence of their affection to us

but in drinking our health, and inveighing against all others who are not of their own dissolute temper; and who, in truth, have more discredited our cause, by the license of their manners and lives, than they could ever advance it by their affection or courage. We hope all persons of honour, or in place and authority, will so far assist us in discountenancing such men, that their discretion and shame will persuade them to reform what their conscience would not; and that the displeasure of good men towards them may supply what the laws have not, and, it may be, cannot well provide against; there being by the license and corruption of the times, and the depraved nature of man, many enormities, scandals, and impieties in practice and manners, which laws cannot well describe, and consequently not enough provide against, which may, by the example and severity of virtuous men, be easily discountenanced, and by degrees suppressed.'

Surely the gravity and moral severity of Clarendon dictated this proclamation! which must have afforded some mirth to the gay, debauched circle, the loose cronies of royalty!

It is curious that in 1660 CHARLES the Second issued a long proclamation for the strict observance of Lent, and alleges for it the same reason as we found in Edward the Sixth's proclamation, for the good it produces in the employment of fishermen.' No ordinaries, taverns, &c, to make any supper on Friday nights, either in Lent or out of Lent.

CHARLES the Second issued proclamations to repress the excess of gilding of coaches and chariots,' to restrain the waste of gold, which, as they supposed, by the excessive use of gilding, had grown scarce. Against the exportation and the buying and selling of gold and silver at higher rates than in our mint,' alluding to a statute made in the ninth year of Edward the Third, called the Statute of Money. Against building in and about London and Westminster in 1661 The inconveniences daily growing by increase of new buildings are, that the people increasing in

such great numbers, are not well to be governed by the wonted officers; the prices of victuals are enhanced; the health of the subject inhabiting the cities much endangered, and many good towns and boroughs unpeopled, and in their trades much decayed - frequent fires occasioned by timber-buildings. It orders to build with brick and stone, which would beautify, and make an uniformity in the buildings; and which are not only more durable and safe against fire, but by experience are found to be of little more if not less charge than the building with timber.' We must infer that by the general use of timber, it had considerably risen in price, while brick and stone not then being generally used, became as cheap as wood!

The most remarkable proclamations of CHARLES the Second are those which concern the regulations of coffee-houses, and one for putting them down; to restrain the spreading of false news, and licentious talking of state and government, the speakers and the hearers were made alike punishable. This was highly resented as an illegal act by the friends of civil freedom; who, however, succeeded in obtaining the freedom of the coffee-houses, under the promise of not sanctioning treasonable speeches. It was urged by the court lawyers, as the high Tory, Roger North tells us, that the retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, when not used in the nature of a common assembly to discourse of matters of state news and great persons, as a means to discontent the people;' on the other side Kennet asserted that the discontents existed before they met at the coffee-houses, and that the proclamation was only intended to suppress an evil which was not to be prevented. At this day we know which of those two historians exercised the truest judgment. It was not the coffee-houses which produced political feeling, but the reverse. When

ever government ascribes effects to a cause quite inadequate to produce them, they are only seeking means to hide the evil which they are too weak to suppress.

TRUE SOURCES OF SECRET HISTORY.

THIS is a subject which has been hitherto but imperfectly comprehended even by some historians themselves; and has too often incurred the satire, and even the contempt, of those volatile spirits who play about the superficies of truth, wanting the industry to view it on more than one side; and those superficial readers who imagine that every tale is told when it is written.

SECRET HISTORY is the supplement of History itself, and is its great corrector; and the combination of secret with public history has in itself a perfection, which each taken separately has not. The popular historian composes a plausible rather than an accurate tale; researches too fully detailed would injure the just proportions, or crowd the bold design of the elegant narrative; and facts, presented as they occurred, would not adapt themselves to those theoretical writers of history who arrange events not in a natural, but in a systematic, order. But in secret history we are more busied in observing what passes than in being told of it. We are transformed into the contemporaries of the writers, while we are standing on 'the 'vantage ground' of their posterity; and thus what to them appeared ambiguous, to us has become unquestionable; what was secret to them has been confided to us. They mark the beginnings, and we the ends. From the fulness of their accounts we recover much which had been lost to us in the general views of history, and it is by this more intimate acquaintance with per