The life and times of Daniel De Foe: with remarks digressive and discursive

Front matter

LIFE AND TIMES

DANIEL DE FOE

THE

Contents

Chapter I. — Reasons for writing this book — Early years of Daniel De Foe — Dr. Eachard's account of the condition of the clergy — Roger L'Estrange — De Foe's Speculum Crape-gownorum — The Monmouth invasion — John Tutchin — Position of James II. — The Revolution — The modern education scheme— The Bill of

Rights— The Book of Sports 1

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Chapter I

When an inexperienced and untried writer presumes to take up pen on a subject so various and so complex as that involved in one of the most stirring lives of the most stirring characters of the most stirring times of English history, he may well crave time for investigating the charge of presumption which might fairly be brought against him for attempting such a task. How, it may be asked, came you to presume to write a Life of Daniel De Eoe ? How, indeed ! I ask that question to myself — How? Well, in September, 1856, my late worthy and lamented friend John Collinson and myself took one of our many excursions into the romantic district of Yorkshire known as Craven ; and arriving at Skipton in the evening, repaired to the Devonshire Hotel, had tea, and then sat down in the common room, where a gentleman of business related, for two hours together, how once, near Leicester, Splasher ran away with him in a gig. Being fairly run down with the tongue, evidently under less control than the horse, I left the company to visit an adjoining shop for the sale of old pictures, books, china, and the thousand et ceteras which are in request with the English collector. I found a lot of old trash, the sweepings of the shelves and floor of the library of the last of the Vavasours of Weston Underwood, in Wharfedale. I selected one work, of three volumes, in 12mo, a book of travels through England, by some party unknown. This work I read, and was struck with the ready talent of the writer, as well as his unscrupulousness ; for he appeared never at a loss in completing his task — his book. I read with admiration at the power of pen displayed in it, till admiration at pen ripened into wonder at other powers. I read till I came to page 102 : "This town" (Doncaster), Mr. Camden says, "was burnt entirely to the ground, anno 759/' and was hardly recovered in his time. " But," adds this mysterious author, u it now looks more decayed by time than accident, and the houses, which seem ready to fall, might rise again to more advantage after another conflagration ." The brief sentence just quoted, stimulated to inquiry as to the author — his pursuits, his character, his life, his times, his death ; and soon placed me in possession of seventy or more works written by the same ready pen; this was followed by deeper investigation into the erratic waywardness of this ingenious writer, and led me to take up pen myself, in order, if possible, to throw some additional ray of light on the character of one of Britain's greatest of geniuses — Daniel De Foe, the writer of Robinson Crusoe, and (may I add also ?) of the Complete Tradesman — a work which I consider second to none in the English language, and the work which formed the groundwork of the character of the great Benjamin Franklin, for that work is Franklin all over. Such is my apology for writing ; such is my Preface.1

The hero of these pages, Daniel Foe, or De Foe, as he chose to call himself when arrived at manhood, under the impression that a De, somehow or other, legitimately belonged to the Foes, or, as I would read the word, Vaux of the Vauxes or Fauxes of Northamptonshire, where his grandfather lived in comfortable circumstances

1 Since investigating and writing the life of Daniel De Foe, the supposed author of the above tour, I am led to believe that the work is not his, for he died in 1731, and there are facts and adventures narrated as having been seen and encountered in 1732, one year after De Foe was buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery. What must I say to this ? — that it does not come up to Mrs. Veal, whe died at Dover on Friday, and went to have an hour's chat with her old friend Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, on Saturday, the day following.

as a yeoman, at Elton, or Eltington, in the north-west corner of that county.

It is a singular coincidence with Foe and De Foe, that Devereux and Vaux or Faux are thoroughly Northamptonshire names of the highest antiquity, and also of the highest respectability ; and if Foe were right in the supposition that a De once constituted a part of his family name, we have no alternative but to fall back upon Devereux, without we suppose that the simple Foe was a Flemish or Dutch or French Protestant importation, along with the strawplat of Dunstable, or the bobbin-lace of Northampton or Bedford. Foe not being satisfactory, as not complete, according to the old custom or usage, in spelling the family name, the De must be added; so we have De Foe, a very humble imitation, no doubt, of the old Northamptonshire stock, Devereux. Well, then, James Foe, a butcher in Cripplegate St. Giles, came from Elton, or Eltington, where his father lived, and was, according to the investigation and discovery of George Chalmers, Esq., Daniel Foe, of that place, yeoman ; and this James had a son Daniel, who chose to add a De to his name, and thus became Daniel De Foe; and this individual is to form the subject of our writing.1

Daniel Foe, or De Foe as he called himself, was born in London, in the year 1661, and, being the son of dissenting parents, his name does not appear on the register of his father's parish ; for their minister, Dr.Annesley, had been rector of St. Giles's till ejected by Charles II., as one of the thousands ejected and persecuted even unto death in that thoughtless reign ; after which he preached in a conventicle or meeting-house in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street, to numbers of his former parishioners; among the rest was the sturdy, independent, self-relying family — the Foes. Dr.

1 With respect to De Foe's Northamptonshire origin, I am induced to believe, after various inquiries at Elton, Elkington, Etton, Welton, and their neighbourhoods, for Foes, Voes, or De Voes, or De Eoes, or any name from which Foe could be expected to be derived, that James Foe, butcher, of Cripplegate St. Giles, London, never had a Northamptonshire origin, but that his ancestor probably came, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the Spanish Netherlands, as a persecuted Protestant refugee, and that Daniel De Foe was of the genus and species of the London water-cress criers of our day.

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Annesley was much beloved by his flock, and by young Foe amongst the rest, for he wrote an elegy on him :—

'Twas spoke from heaven, the best of men must die ;

No patent 's sealed for immortality :

Not God's own favourites can shun the stroke ;

Even God himself can not the law revoke ;

He can't, unless he should at once repeal

The eternal laws of Nature ; change his will ;

Declare his works imperfect, life restore

To all that 's dead, and be a God no more.

The world, whose nature is to fade and die,

Must change, and take up immortality ;

And time, which to eternity rolls on,

Must change, and be eternity begun.

All things must ever live, or man must die ;

The law 's supreme, and Nature must obey.

How vain, then, and impertinent is grief,

Which nor to dead nor living gives relief !

Sighs for departed friends are senseless things,

Which them no help, nor us no comfort brings.

Tears on the graves, where breathless bodies lie,

Our ignorance or atheism imply ;

Ashes and sackcloth, cries and renting clothes,

Of folly more than our affection shows ;

For grief is nothing, properly, but rage,

And God himself 's the object we engage.

Of the boyhood of De Foe nothing is known, except that at the early age of fourteen he was placed in an academy at Newington Green, under the direction of the Rev. Charles Morton, an indefatigable instructor and profound scholar — as all the Mortons were likely to be, either as persecuting Catholics at Bawtry and Scrooby, where they rooted out the Pilgrim Fathers from the conventicle at Scrooby Inn, or educating Daniel De Foe, the father of John Wesley, Timothy Cruso (probably a schoolfellow of the writer of Selkirk's history), Hannot of Yarmouth, Nathaniel Taylor, Mr. Owen, and others, including Kitt Battersby, young Jenkins,

LIFE OF DE FOE.

Hew ling, and other Western martyrs, with Lawrence of Nantwich, who was with Mr. Morton nntil the time when, in the year 1685, he was driven by persecution from Newington Green, and obliged to seek shelter and safety in the wilds of America, where he became vice-president of Harvard College, New England. What De Foe learnt at Mr. Morton's is not known ; but, as he was fellow-student with some of the first men of the day, it is only fair to suppose that he went through a rigid course of mental discipline, at a time when Oliver Heywood, of North-Owram, used to preach sermons of five hours' duration, and once extended even to six hours, when a discovery was made that his watch had not been wound up, which threw the preacher out one hour. As to how many languages De Foe was master of, nothing is known ; for his boasting of his knowledge of this or that was only produced by the insulting taunts of Tutchin, Dunton, Oldmixon, Lesley, L'Estrange, and others, the hired tools of arbitrary power, and the slang writers of his day, who charged him with ignorance because he kept a hosier's shop. This imputation of hosier was the banter of the whole herd of hack scribes, the paid rabble of the pen, upon this man for years. Ignorant as he was, he was more than a match for the whole ignominious crew of these hired scribes, as many of his works, such as the Complete Tradesman, Robinson Crusoe, Jure Divino, the Tempest, and the Plague, with others, fully testify. De Foe had a singular mixture of wit, respectability, and even personal vanity, on the one hand, and high, fixed, courageous moral principle, on the other; and I could fancy that the father brought the wit and vanity along with the name, while the heavy principles of rigid virtue came by the mother, some fixed bright star of Dr. Annesley's conventicled members. De Foe's mother's name is never mentioned ; so that we know not w^ho she was ; but- Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Many of De Foe's biographers relate a variety of anecdotes connected with his early life, which 1 am obliged to omit for want of evidence of their truth ; those writers might have evidence, and on that evidence they may write, but for want of that evidence I can not write : — I regret this, but so it is. I know I shall write only a dull book, but so it must be — so let it be ; a dull book for want of materials, yes ! dull enough, for I will not write what is false. Now, we have a character of a servant, written by James Foe, the father of Daniel, when a very old man, living in lodgings in Broad Street, at the Bell, in 1705. This character appears to be written for a purpose, and bears in it all the precision of the style of the son, Daniel De Foe, whom I believe to have been the dictator or prompter of this certificate of good conduct. There was a brawl or contention at Pinners' Hall Meeting-house, on the conduct of the minister, and old James Foe had to write a testimonial as to the character of a young woman who had lived with him sixteen years before, and left with a good character, to Mr. Cave, the minister. This production I believe to be the work of Daniel the son, and not of James the father, which it professes to be.

Old James Foe ended his days in lodgings, and died without a will, and probably in needy circumstances ; and this certificate of good conduct of a servant, who had left his service sixteen years before with a character, is all that is recorded of him. Perhaps the records of Dr. Annesley's Chapel might throw some light on the subject of the marriage of James Foe, and bring to light the name of the woman who was the mother of Daniel. I have the impression that this woman, who has never been named by any of Daniel De Foe's biographers, was a truly great woman, pious, and of rigidly firm decision of character on all questions worthy of calling forth an opinion.

Daniel De Foe having been born in 1661, and having gone to Mr. Morton's academy at fourteen years of age, or in 1675, where he remained for five years, or until 1680, he left that academy in that year at the age of nineteen.

The first effort made by De Foe as an author, was on the Turkish war, on which he took the ground of argument very opposite to the popular feeling of the time, when all cried out for a British alliance with the revolted Hungarians, supported by the Turks, against the ruling power in Hungary, the Emperor of Austria ; while De Foe stood alone against that view of the question, and took nearly the same line of argument on the Turkish alliance of that time with Britain, that Mr. Cobden has taken at a later period on another Turkish war with a British alliance. De Foe maintained that any kind of Christianity, however corrupt, in Austria or Hungary, was to be preferred to Mahomedanism in any shape ; and that a support of the Turk against the Christian, was the support of the worse against the better.

The next effort of his pen in the same year, 1682, was a pamphlet in answer to Roger L'Estrange's Guide to the Inferior Clergy, entitled "Speculum Crape - gownorum ; or, a Looking- Glas3 for the Young Academicks, new Foyl'd: with Reflections on some of the late high-flown Sermons. To which is added, An Essay towards a Sermon of the Newest Fashion. By a Guide to the Inferior Clergy. Ridentem discere verum, Quis vetat? London: Printed for E. Rydal, 1682." This work was taken from Dr. John Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion enquired into. I have not a copy of De Foe's book, for it is one of the scarcest of his pamphlets. It is not, therefore, in my power to make extracts from De Foe, and I may be pardoned if I nse Eachard instead. The work is valuable and worth quoting ; and therefore I will make the best use of my judgment in choosing extracts, though I shall not pretend to make any alterations such as De Foe made, almost to the ruin of the Norwich crape trade; for his coupling crape gowns and clerical inferiority, at once discarded for ever the universal use of crape for waistcoats, cassocks, gowns, &c, among the inferior clergy of the Church of England ; and this he did by writing a burlesque on honest Dr. Eachard's valuable work of advice to the clergy of the English Church.

It should be stated, that after the year 1662, when the Act of Uniformity passed, and the Dissenters became as respectable as numerous, the high-flyers of the Church of England increased in force and in the venom of their malignity against them ; and the profligate press of a debased and bribed talent of a sold people, sold to France to all intents and purposes, by a degraded sovereign (Charles II.) poured out all its phials of wrath and unscrupulous malignity upon the heads of the only sound part of the population, the Dissenting priesthood, who refused compliance with the religious injunctions of the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Amongst this herd of violent unscrupulous malignity stood first, as a public writer in the pay of the priesthood, Roger L'Estrange, a man who, according to Bishop Burnet, was the chief manager of all those angry writings, which he published every week under the title of the Observator (a kind of newspaper of one or more sheets), written against the Dissenters, and published about the year 1681. He was a writer paid by the court and clergy, and drew considerable sums for the services he rendered to the party. His vile productions raised a violent ferment amongst the clergy, who, with great heat and indiscretion vented their rage, both in the pulpits and common conversation, but most particularly at the elections of members of Parliament, against the Dissenters: a course of procedure which drew much hatred and censure upon them. I/Estrange was very unscrupulous as a writer, but yet curious in searching after novelties in ages past. In him I find the religious sect of the " Smectymnuans, a sort of cattel whose task it was to pray and preach royalty and kingly government out of repute, to make room for their goodly Directory, since the whole tribe of Adonirams are cut off and extinct." And it was in answer to this I/Estrange that De Foe wrote his work, to show to all the world that the Dissenters did not alone possess all the preaching absurdities of the kingdom, nor yet all the ignorance; for the practice of sending lads from Northern schools to Cambridge, by the carrier with his packhorses, was a great evil in the university education in the reign of Charles II. Poor youths were sent as sizars without any previous calculation as to college expenses, long vacations, and all the et ceteras entailed upon a youth destined for a clergyman of the Church of England. Dr. Eachard, who had been master of Katharine Hall and vice-chancellor of the university, complains of this want of forethought as to money matters, and also of want of knowledge in the youths themselves, who had frequently to be sent back by the first carrier seated on the pack as returned goods for the North. Dr. Eachard's work is very severe, but yet the high-flyers, by their malignity in writing on the Dissenters, had themselves to thank for its severity. /

" I cannot foresee any other remedy/' he says, " but that most of those university youngsters must fall to the parish, and become a town charge, until they be of spiritual age. For philosophy is a very idle thing when one is cold ; and a small system of divinity (though it be Wollebius himself) is not sufficient when one is hungry. What, then, shall we do with them, and where shall we dispose of them, until they come to an holy ripeness ? May we venture them into the desk to read service ? That cannot be, because not capable; besides, the tempting pulpit usually stands too near. Or, shall we trust them in some good gentlemen's houses, there to perform holy things? With all my heart; so that they may not be called down from their studies to say grace to every health ; that they may have a little better wages than the cook or butler ; as also that there be a groom in the house, besides the chaplain (for sometimes, to the ten pounds a year, they crowd the looking after a couple of geldings) ; and that he may not be sent from table picking his teeth, and sighing with his hat under his arm, whilst the knight and my lady eat up the tarts and chickens. It may be also convenient if he were suffered to speak now and then in the parlour, besides at grace and prayer-time ; and that my cousin Abigail and he sit not too near one another at meals, nor be presented together to the little vicarage. All this, Sir, must be thought of; for in good earnest, a person at all thoughtful of himself and conscience, had much better choose to live with nothing but beans and pease-pottage (so that he may have the command of his thoughts and time), than to have his second and third courses, and to obey the unreasonable humours of some families.

" He, therefore, that foresees that he is not likely to have the advantage of a continued education, had much better commit himself to an approved of cobler or tinker, wherein he may be duly respected according to his office and condition of life, than to be only a disesteemed pettifogger or emperick in divinity." Speaking of language, the Doctor adds, "We know, the language that the very learned part of this nation must trust to live by, unless it be to make a bond or prescribe a purge (which possibly may not oblige or work so well in any other language as Latin), is the English.

" As for divinity, in this place I shall say no more, but that those usually that have been rope-dancers in the schools, oft-times prove jack -puddings in the pulpit.

"The world is now, especially in discourse, for one language ; and he that has somewhat in his mind of Greek or Latin, is requested nowadays to be civil, and translate it into English for the benefit of the company. And he that has made it his whole business to accomplish himself for the applause of a company of boys, schoolmasters, and the easiest of country divines, and has been shouldered out of the Cockpit for his wit, when he comes into the world is the most likely person to be kicked out of company for his pedantry, and overweening opinion of himself.

"Amongst the first things that seem to be useless may be reckoned the high tossing and swaggering preaching, either mountingly eloquent, or profoundly learned. For there be a sort of divines who, if they do but happen of an unlucky hard word all the week, they think themselves not careful of their flock if they lay it not up till Sunday, and bestow it amongst them in their next preachment. Or if they light upon some difficult and obscure notion, which their curiosity inclines them to be better acquainted with, how useless soever, nothing so frequent as for them, for a month or two months together, to tear and tumble this doctrine ; and the poor people once a week shall coine to gaze upon them by the hour, until they preach themselves, as they think, into a right understanding.

"If the minister's words be such as the constable uses, his matter plain and practical to such as come to the common market, he may pass possibly for an honest well-meaning man, but by no means for any scholar ; whereas, if he springs forth now and then in high raptures towards the uppermost heavens, dashing here and there an all -confounding word ; if he soars aloft in unintelligible huffs, preaches points deep and mystical, and delivers them as dark and phantastical : this is the way, say they, of being accounted a most able and learned instructor.

"This learned way of talking, though for the most part it is done merely out of ostentation, yet sometimes (which makes not the case much better) it is done in compliment and civility to the all- wise patron, or all-understanding justice of the peace in the parish ; who, by the common farmers of the town, must be thought to understand the most intricate notions, and the most difficult languages.

" I certainly know several of that disposition, who, if they chance to have a man of any learning or understanding, more than the rest in the parish, preach wholly at him, and level most of their discourse at his supposed capacity, and the rest of the good people shall have only a handsome gaze or view of the parson. As if plain words, useful and intelligible instructions, were not as good for an esquire, or one that is in commission from the king, as for him that holds the plough or mends hedges.

" To omit future reward — was it not always esteemed of old, that correcting evil practices, reducing people who lived amiss, was much better than making a high rant about a shuttlecock, and talking tara-tantaro about a feather ?

" Metaphors, though very apt and allowable, are intelligible but to some sorts of men, of this or that kind of life, of this or that profession. For example, perhaps one gentleman's metaphorical knack of preaching comes of the sea, and then we shall hear of nothing but starboard and larboard, of stems, sterns, and forecastles, and such-like saU-water language : so that one had need take a voyage to Smyrna or Aleppo, and very warily attend to all the sailor's terms, before I shall in the least understand my teacher. Now, although such a sermon may possibly do some good in a coast town, yet upward into the country, in an inland parish, it will do no more than Syriack or Arabick. Anc/tker he falls a fighting with his text, and makes a pitched battle of it, dividing it into the right ruing and left wing, then he rears it, flanks it, intrenches it, storms it ; then he musters all again, to see what word was lost or lamed in the skirmish ; and so, falling on again with fresh valour, he fights backward and forward, charges through and through, routs, kills, takes, and then, gentlemen — as you were, or, as the modern serjeant would say, ' When I say, as you were, be you as you was.'

' ' Now, to such of his parish as have been in the late wars, this is not very formidable ; for they do but suppose themselves at Marston Moor, Naseby, and Edgehill ; and they are not much scared at his doctrine. But as for others, who have not had such fighting opportunities, it is very lamentable to consider how shivering they sit without understanding, till the battle is over.

" As some are very high and learned in their attempts, so others there be who are of somewhat too mean and dirty imaginations. Such was he who goes by the name of Parson Slip-stocking : who, preaching about the grace and assistance of God, and that of ourselves we are able to do nothing, advised his beloved to take him in this plain similitude : — A father calls his child to him, saying, Child, pull off this stocking. The child, mightily joyful, that it should pull off father's stocking, takes hold of the stocking, and tugs, and pulls, and sweats, but to no purpose ; for stocking stirs not, for it is but a child that pulls. Then the father bids the child to rest a little, and try again ; so then the child sets on again, tugs again, and pulls again, and sweats again, but no stocking comes; for child is but a child still. Then, at last, the father, taking pity upon his child, puts his hand behind, and slips down the stocking, and off comes the stocking. Then how does the child rejoice ! for child hath pulled off father's stocking. Alas, poor child ! it was not child's strength, it was not child's sweating, that got off the stocking ; but it was the father's hand behind that slipped down the stocking. Even so

"Not much unlike to this was he, that, preaching about the sacrament and faith, makes Christ a shopkeeper, telling you, that Christ is a treasury of all wares and commodities. And therefore, opening his wide throat, cries aloud, Good people, what do you lack? What do you buy? Will you buy my balm of Gilead, any eye-salve, any myrrh, aloes, or cassia ? Shall I fit you with a robe of righteousness, or with a white garment ? See here f what is it you want ? Here }s a very choice armory : shall I show you an helmet of salvation ; a shield, or a breastplate of faith ? Or will you please to walk in, and see some precious stones? — a jasper, a saphyre, or a chalcedonit ? Speak ! What will you buy ?

11 Now, for my part, I must needs say, and I much fancy I speak the mind of thousands, that it had been much better for such an impudent and ridiculous bawler as this to have been condemned to have cried oysters or brooms, than to discredit after this unsanctified rate, his profession and our religion.

" One gets to his text thus : — As Solomon went up sice steps to come to the great throne of ivory, so must I ascend six degrees to come to the high top meaning of my text. Another, thus : — As Deborah arose and went along with Barak to Kedesh ; so if you will go along with him, and call in at the third verse of this chapter, he will shew you the meaning of his text.

" Another, he fancies his text to be extraordinarily like an orchard of pomgranates ; or like St. Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom ; or like the dove that Noah sent out of the ark. I believe there are above forty places of scripture that have been like Rachel and Leah ; and there is one in Genesis, as I well remember, that is like a pair of compasses stradling ; and, if I be not much mistaken, there is one somewhere else, that is like a man going — to Jericho.