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THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

OCTOBER 1808.

N°. XXV.

ART. I. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle and Town, Representative of the County of Nottingham in the Long Parliament, and of the Town of Nottingham in the First Parliament of Charles II, &c.; with Original Anecdotes of many of the most distinguished of his Contemporaries; and a Summary Review of Public Affairs: Written by his widow, Lucy, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, &c. Now first published from the Original Manuscript, by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson, &c. &c. To which is prefixed, the Life of Mrs Hutchinson, written by herself, a fragment. pp. 446. Quarto. Longman & Co. London. 1806.

WE have not often met with any thing more interesting and Ε curious than this volume. Independent of its being a con

temporary narrative of by far the most animating and important part of our history, it challenges our attention as containing an accurate and luminous account of military and political affairs from the hand of a woman; as exhibiting the most liberal and enlightened sentiments in the person of a puritan; and sustaining a high tone of aristocratical dignity and pretension, though the work of a decided republican. The views which it opens into the character of the writer, and the manners of the age, will be to many a still more powerful attraction.

Of the times to which this narrative belongs-times to which England owes all her freedom and all her glory—we can never hear too much, or too often: and though their story has been transmitted to us both with more fulness of detail and more vivacity of colouring than any other portion of our annals, every reflecting reader must be aware that our information is still extremely defective, and exposes us to the hazard of great misconception. The work before us, we think, is calculated in a good degree to supply these deficiencies, and to rectify these errors. VOL. XIII. NO. 25. A

By

*

By far the most important part of history, as we have formerly endeavoured to explain, is that which makes us acquainted with the character, dispositions and opinions of the great and efficient population by whose motion or consent all things are ultimately governed. After a nation has attained to any degree of intelligence, every other principle of action becomes subordinate; and, with relation to our own country in particular, it may be said with safety, that we can know nothing of its past history, or of the applications of that history to more recent transactions, if we have not a tolerably correct notion of the character of the people of England in the reign of Charles I., and the momentous periods which ensued. This character depended very much on that of the landed proprietors and resident gentry; and Mrs Hutchinson's memoirs are chiefly valuable, as containing a picture of that class of the community.

Agriculture was at this period still the chief occupation of the people; and the form of the society was consequently that of a rustic aristocracy. The country gentlemen,-who have since been worn down by luxury and taxation, superseded by the activity of office, and eclipsed by the opulence of trade, were then all and all in England; and the nation at large derived from them its habits, prejudices, and opinions. Educated almost entirely at home, their manners were not yet accommodated to a general European standard, but retained all those national peculiarities which united and endeared them to the rest of their countrymen. Constitutionally serious, and living much with their families, they had in general more solid learning and more steady morality than the gentry of other countries. Exercised in local magistracies, and frequently assembled for purposes of national cooperation, they became conscious of their power, and jealous of their privileges and having been trained up in a dread and detestation of that popery which had been the recent cause of so many wars and persecutions, their religious sentiments had contracted somewhat of an austere and polemical character, and had not yet settled from the ferment of reformation into tranquil and regulated piety. It was upon this side, accordingly, that they were most liable to error: and the extravagances into which a great part of them was actually betrayed, has been the chief cause of the misrepresentations to which they were then exposed, and of the misconception which still prevails as to their character and principles of action.

:

In the middle of the reign of Charles I., almost the whole nation was serious and devout. The license and excess which is

* NO. XXIV. p. 282, &c.

in some degree inseparable from a state of war, fell chiefly upon the Royalists; who made it a point of duty indeed to deride the sanctity and rigid morality of their opponents; and they again exaggerated, out of party hatred, the peculiarities by which they were most obviously distinguished from their antagonists. Thus mutually receding from each other, from feelings of general hostility, they were gradually led to realize the imputations of which they were reciprocally the subjects. The cavaliers gave way to a certain degree of licentiousness; and the adherents of the parlia ment became, for the most part, really morose and enthusiastic. At the restoration, the cavaliers obtained a complete and final triumph over their sanctimonious opponents; and the exiled monarch and his nobles imported from the continent a taste for dissipation, and a toleration for debauchery, far exceeding any thing that had previously been known in England. It is from the wits of that court, however, and the writers of that party, that the succeeding and the present age have derived their notions of the puritans. In reducing these notions to the standard of truth, it is not easy to determine how large an allowance ought to be made for the exaggerations of party hatred, the perversions of witty malice, and the illusions of habitual superiority. It is certain, however, that ridicule, toleration, and luxury, gradually annihilated the puritans in the higher ranks of society; and after times seeing their practices and principles exemplified only among the lowest and most illiterate of mankind, readily caught the tone of contempt which had been assumed by their triumphant enemies; and found no absurdity in believing that the base and contemptible beings who were described under the name of puritans by the courtiers of Charles II., were true representatives of that valiant and conscientious party which once numbered half the gentry of England among its votaries and adherents.

That the popular conceptions of the aufterities and abfurdities of the old Roundheads and Prefbyterians are greatly exaggerated, will probably be allowed by every one at all converfant with the fubject; but we know of nothing fo well calculated to diffipate the exifting prejudices on the fubject as this book of Mrs Hutchinfon. Instead of a fet of gloomy bigots waging war with all the elegancies and gaieties of life, we find, in this calumniated order, ladies of the firft birth and fafhion, at once converting their hufbands to Anabaptifm, and inftructing their children in mufic and dancing, valiant Prefbyterian colonels refuting the errors of Arminius, collecting pictures, and practifing, with great applaufe, on the violin,-ftout efquires, at the fame time, praying and quaffing October with their godly tenants, and noble lords difputing with their chaplains on points of theology in the

A 2

evening,

evening, and taking them out a-hunting in the morning. There is nothing, in fhort, more curious and inftructive, than the glimpses which we here catch of the old hofpitable and orderly life of the country gentlemen of England, in thofe days when the national character was fo high and fo peculiar,-when civilization had produced all its effect but that of corruption,-and when ferious ftudies and dignified pursuits had not yet been abandoned to a paltry and effeminate derifion. Undoubtedly, in reviewing the annals of thofe times, we are ftruck with a loftier air of manhood than prefents itself in any after era; and recognize the fame characters of deep thought and steady enthusiasm, and the fame principles of fidelity and self-command which ennobled the better days of the Roman Republic, and have made every thing elfe appear childish and frivolous in the comparison.

One of the moft ftriking and valuable things in Mrs Hutchinfon's performance, is the information which it affords us as to the manners and condition of women in the period with which she is occupied. This is a point in which all hiftories of public events are almost neceffarily defective; though it is evident that, without attending to it, our notions of the state and character of any people must be extremely imperfect and erroneous. Mrs Hutchinfon, however, enters into no formal difquifition upon this fubject. What we learn from her in relation to it, is learnt incidentally-partly on occafion of fome anecdotes which it falls in her way to recite-but chiefly from what she is led to narrate or difclofe. as to her own education, conduct, or opinions. If it were allowable to take the portrait which the has thus indirectly finished of herself as a juft reprefentation of her fair contemporaries, we should form a moft exalted notion of the republican matrons of England. Making a flight deduction for a few traits of aufterity, borrowed from the bigotry of the age, we do not know where to look for a more noble and engaging character than that under which this lady presents herself to her readers; nor do we believe that any age of the world has produced fo worthy a counterpart to the Valerias and Portias of antiquity. With a high-minded feeling of patriotifm and public honour, the feems to have been poffeffed by the most dutiful and devoted attachment to her husband; and to have combined a taste for learning and the arts with the most active kindness and munificent hospitality to all who came within the sphere of her bounty. To a quick percep tion of character, the appears to have united a masculine force of understanding, and a fingular capacity for affairs; and to have poffeffed and exercised all those talents, without affecting any fuperiority over the reft of her sex, or abandoning for a fingle inftant the delicacy and referve which were then its most indifpenf

able

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