The “tall May-pole” that “onee o'erlooked the Strand,”
(about the year 1717,) Sir Isaac Newton begged of the
parish, and it was carried to Wanstead in Essex, where it
was erected in the park, and had the honour of raising the
greatest telescope then known. The New Church occupies its
site.
“But now (so Anne and piety ordain),
A church collects the saints of Drury Lane.”
and dancing! * For the disciples of Stubbes and Prynne having discovered by their sage oracles, that May-games were derived from the Floralian Feasts and interludes of the pagan Romans, which were solemnised on the first of May; and that dancing round a May-pole, adorned with garlands of flowers, ribbons, and other ornaments, was idolatry, after the fashion of Baal's worshippers, who capered about the altar in honour of their idol; resolved that the Goddess Flora should no longer receive the gratulations of Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood's merry men, on a fine May morning; a superstition derived from the Sibyl's books, horribly papistical and pagan.
* “Good fellowes must go learne to daunce
The brydeal is full near a:
There is a brail come out of Fraunce,
The fyrst ye harde this yeare a.
For I must leape, and thou must hoppe,
And we must turne all three a;
The fourth must bounce it like a toppe,
And so we shall agree a.
praye the mynstrell make no stoppe,
For we wyll merye be a.”
From an unique black letter ballad, printed in 1569,
“Intytuled, 'Good Fellowes must go learne to Daunce.'”
Nor was the “precise villain” less industrious in confiscation and sacrilege. * Painted windows—Lucifer's Missal drawings!—he took infinite pains to destroy; and with his long pike did the devil's work diligently. He could endure no cross ** but that on silver; hence the demolition of those beautiful edifices that once adorned Cheapside, and other remarkable sites in ancient times.
* Sir Robert Howard has drawn an excellent picture of a
Puritan family, in his comedy of “The Committee.” The
personages are Mr. Day, chairman to the committee of
sequestrations; Mrs. Day, “the committee-man's utensil,”
with “curled hair, white gloves, and Sabbath-day's cinnamon
waistcoat;” Abel, their booby son, a fellow “whose heart is
down in his breeches at every turn and Obadiah, chief clerk,
dull, drawling, and heinously given to strong waters. We are
admitted into the sanctum sanctorum, of pious fraud, where
are seated certain honourable members, whose names cannot
fail to enforce respect. Nehemiah Catch, Joseph Blemish,
Jonathan Headstrong, and Ezekiel Scrape! The work of plunder
goes bravely on. The robbing of widows and orphans is
“building up the new Zion.” A parcel of notched rascals
laying their heads together to cheat is “the cause of the
righteous prospering when brethren dwell together in unity
and when a canting brother gives up lying and the ghost, Mr.
Day remarks that “Zachariah went off full of exhortation!”
It was at the sacking of Basing House, the seat of the
venerable Marquis of Winchester, that Harrison, the regicide
and butcher's son, shot Major Robinson, exclaiming as he did
the deed, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord
negligently.” Hugh Peters, the buffooning priest, was of the
party.
** The erection of upright stone crosses is generally
supposed to have dated its origin from the custom which the
first Christians in this island adopted of inscribing the
Druid stones with a cross, that the worship of the converted
idolator might be transferred from the idol to the emblem of
his faith; and afterwards the Saxon kings frequently erected
crosses previously to a battle, at which public prayers were
offered up for victory. After the Norman conquest crosses
became common, and were erected in market-places, to induce
honesty by the sanction of religion: in churchyards, to
inspire devout and pious feelings; in streets, for the
deposit of a corpse when borne to its last home; and for
various other purposes. Here the beggar stationed himself,
and asked alms in the name of Him who suffered on the cross.
They were used for landmarks, that men might learn to
respect and hold sacred the boundaries of another's
property. Du Cange says that crosses were erected in the
14th Richard II. as landmarks to define the boundaries
between Kesteven and Holland. They were placed on public
roads as a check to thieves, and to regulate processions. At
the Reformation (?!! ) most of the crosses throughout the
kingdom were destroyed, when the sweeping injunction of
Bishop Horne was formally promulgated at his Visitation in
1571, that all images of the Trinity in glass windows, or
other places of the church, be put out and extinguished,
together with the stone cross in the churchyard! We devoutly
hope, as Dr. Johnson hoped of John Knox, that Bishop Horne
was buried in a cross-road.
The sleek rogue read his Bible * upside down, and hated his neighbour: his piety was pelf; his godliness gluttony.
* “They like none but sanctified and shuttle-headed weavers,
long-winded boxmakers, and thorough-stitching cobblers,
thumping felt-makers, jerking coachmen, and round-headed
button-makers, which spoyle Bibles while they thumb over the
leaves with their greasie fingers, and sit by the fireside
scumming their porridge-pot, while their zeal seethes over
in applications and interpretations of Scripture delivered
to their ignorant wives and handmaids, with the name and
title of deare brethren and especially beloved sisters.”—
The doleful Lamentation of Cheapside Crosse, or Old England
sick of the Staggers, 1641.
His grace * was as long as his face. The gnat, like Macbeth's “Amen,” stuck in his throat; but the camel slid down merrily. What a weary, working-day world would this have been under his unhospitable dominion! ** How unlovely and lachrymose! how sectarian and sinister! A bumper of bitters, to be swallowed with a rising gorge, and a wry face! All literature would have resolved itself into—
* One Lady D'Arcy, a well-jointured, puritanical