The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain

by Ian Mortimer

  Longvil: Have you ever tried [to swim] in the water, Sir?

  Gimcrack: No, Sir, but I swim most exquisitely on land.

  Bruce: Do you intend to practise in the water, Sir?

  Gimcrack: Never, Sir; I hate the water, I never come upon the water, Sir.

  Longvil: Then there will be no use of swimming.

  Gimcrack: I content myself with the speculative part of swimming, I care not for the practical. I seldom bring anything to use, ’tis not my way. Knowledge is my ultimate end.

  Bruce: You have reason, Sir; knowledge is like virtue, its own reward.

  In the end, Sir Nicholas has his estates seized in order to pay off the debts he has incurred in the pursuit of his scientific investigations. He is ruined. Shadwell isn’t, though; he does rather well out of it. Unfortunately, he suffers from gout and takes opium to control the pain: he dies of an overdose in 1692.

  • Thomas Otway is a writer of tragedies. True to his art, he dies in 1685 at the tender of age of thirty-three. The epitome of the struggling poetic genius, he begs for bread on Tower Hill and, when someone gives him the wherewithal to buy some, eats it so fast that he chokes on it and dies. By then he has written many tragedies, including two great ones, The Orphan or the Unhappy Marriage (1680) and Venice Preserv’d (1682).

  • John Vanbrugh is a name that you probably associate more with architecture than drama, as he sets out the plans for Castle Howard in 1699 and designs some of England’s greatest baroque masterpieces in the next century, including Blenheim Palace. However, the same hand is responsible for two sophisticated, yet popular, comedies of marriage and sex, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697).

  • William Congreve is the youngest, and arguably the greatest, playwright of those named in this selection. His first play, The Old Bachelor, is helped along by Dryden, has the best possible cast and is performed with incidental music by Purcell. Unsurprisingly, it is a great success when the United Company produces it in 1693. His second work, The Double Dealer (1694), makes less of a mark, but his third, Love for Love, is handed over to the star actors who break away from the United Company in 1695 and they do it more than justice. It runs for thirteen days and is so popular it lands Congreve a share in the ownership of the new company. It is followed by an even bigger hit, a tragedy called The Mourning Bride (1697). The first line will be familiar to you – ‘Music has charms to sooth a savage breast’ – as will the closing lines of Act Three: ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, / nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’ Finally, in 1700, you can see his fifth and last play, The Way of the World. And after that closes, that’s it, even though Congreve is not yet thirty. All you have left are his lines ringing in your memory – maybe you use some of them yourself:

  ‘You have such a winning way with you’ (Old Bachelor)

  ‘Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play’ (Old Bachelor)

  ‘She lays it on with a trowel’ (Double Dealer)

  ‘See how love and murder will out’ (Double Dealer)

  ‘No mask like open truth to cover lies, / as to go naked is the best disguise’ (Double Dealer)

  ‘Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, / which to admire, we should not understand’ (Love for Love)

  ‘Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved’ (Way of the World)

  Of course it is not all about the theatres and the scripts. Many people go to see a play simply because a particular fine actor is starring in it, or because the leading lady excites their passion. In this respect one name dominates and leaves all others trailing in its wake: that of Thomas Betterton. When the theatres reopen, Pepys initially thinks that Michael Mohun is ‘the best actor in the world’, but he revises this in 1661 when he sees Betterton play in The Bondman.84 When Betterton plays Hamlet in 1663, his performance gives Pepys ‘fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton’.85 Moreover, Betterton is still giving incredible performances thirty years later. One of the reasons for the acclaim of William Congreve’s first play in 1693 is that Betterton is playing the leading role, alongside the two leading ladies of the day. While there are other great male actors – Michael Mohun, William Wintershall, Charles Hart and Edward Kynaston – they all play second fiddle to Thomas Betterton.

  And the ladies?

  Actresses are a new phenomenon in Restoration Britain. In 1660, female roles still have to be played by men or boys. Edward Kynaston starts his career as a pretty boy-actress whom Pepys describes as ‘the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life – only her voice not very good’.86 Then, on 3 January 1661, Pepys sees a real woman on stage for the first time, in a performance of The Beggar’s Bush. He appreciates the change. Later that year he records that ‘a woman came afterward on the stage in man’s clothes, and had the best legs that ever I saw; and I was very well pleased with it’.87 He has seen his first ‘breeches role’. The theatre managers realise they can tantalise the audience by revealing the shapely figures of actresses in male clothing, consisting of stockings and tight breeches, instead of the voluminous long skirts or dresses they would normally be expected to wear. Dressed as men, they can behave in sexually confident and promiscuous ways, even making speeches of love to another woman. Such is the sexual tension created by actresses in these roles that men become obsessed with them, including rich and powerful lords, who make them their mistresses. Evelyn notes in 1666 that he sees ‘foul and undecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who inflaming several young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and to some, their wives’.88 If he hopes to remove women from the stage, he is fighting a losing battle; ‘breeches roles’ remain popular for the rest of the century.

  Of all the leading ladies you could watch, Elizabeth Barry takes the starring role. At the age of fifteen she enters the Duke’s Company and plays minor roles. She is hopeless. But she is also full of character, has a good voice and an expressive face, and the earl of Rochester has his eye on her. He wagers he can make her a leading actress within six months, and accordingly takes her off to the country where he forces her to play roles from Aphra Behn’s plays over and over again. When she comes back to London in March 1676, she takes a leading role in Etherege’s The Man of Mode – and scores her first big hit. The following year she gives birth to Lord Rochester’s daughter, but continues to deliver acclaimed performances while pregnant. In 1678 Lord Rochester casts her aside, blaming her for sharing her favours with others. (Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!) She goes on to have dalliances with Lord Buckhurst, George Etherege and Sir Henry St John. Delivering lines that allude to her uncorrupted virgin innocence, when everyone knows she has been repeatedly seduced, must be tough – the audiences laugh openly – and she is still only eighteen. But she manages to fight her way through the shame and wins hearts by the hundred. One of those hearts belongs to the impoverished playwright Thomas Otway, who swears undying love for her. She does not reciprocate but she does play the lead roles in his tragedies The Orphan and Venice Preserv’d. So adept is she at expressing emotion in these two plays that audiences are spellbound. She becomes the Famous Mrs Barry there and then. Thus she is the one for whose performances you should queue longest.

  In the 1690s Mrs Barry acquires a rival, Anne Bracegirdle. Anne has the good luck to grow up in the household of Thomas Betterton, and begins her stage career at about the age of six, playing a pageboy in Thomas Otway’s The Orphan. After a few minor parts, she plays her first ‘breeches role’ in 1689, at the age of eighteen. She has the figure for it. Moreover, she has the spirit. The actor-manager Colley Cibber later recalls that

  she had no greater claim to beauty than what the most desirable brunette might pretend to. But her youth and lively aspect threw out such a glow of health and cheerfulness, that on the stage few spectators that were not past it could behold her without desire.

  On top of that, she can sing beautifully too. The temptation grows too much for Cap
tain Richard Hill, who, together with his young friend Lord Mohun, attempts to abduct her in 1692. He is prevented from doing so by one of her fellow actors, William Mountfort. In the ensuing fight outside her house, Hill runs Mountfort through with his sword and kills him. That would put most ladies off acting in breeches for life, but not Anne. She carries on winning more hearts, developing her tragic roles and becoming an even finer comic actress. When in 1695 the United Company divides, it is largely because Anne, Mrs Barry and Thomas Betterton agree together that they do not want to be pushed around by Mr Rich any longer, and they know their audience will follow them wherever they go. Thus, when the three of them perform the premiere of William Congreve’s Love for Love, at the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre on 30 April 1695, you have the best actor and finest actresses of the age in one of the best plays of the period. They all take a leading role also in Congreve’s next two plays. Of all the nights to be at the theatre since the days of Burbage playing Shakespeare, these are surely the best.89

  There is one other actress you will make an effort to see while you are in Restoration London. She is, after all, the most famous by a long way. Nell Gwynn trades on her feminine charms from the outset, becoming the lover of the actor Charles Hart not long after she has been released from Newgate Gaol, where she has been imprisoned for theft. By the age of fifteen she has made it on to the stage and proves she can play comedy well. After Charles Hart throws her aside for Lady Castlemaine, she begins an affair with Lord Buckhurst. In 1668 she becomes the king’s mistress and gives up the stage: her first child by the king is born in May 1670. Later that year she returns to perform in Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada, but when it is over, so too is her acting career. Off she goes to play the more demanding role of the lowest-born of the king’s mistresses, without any script or prompt, in front a different critical audience each day, whose members are disposed to dislike her on the grounds of her wildness, indiscretion, religion, morality and low birth – and their envy. And yet Nell wins them over. What is more, she secures the king’s affections for longer than any of her rivals. When Charles lies dying, Bishop Burnett hears his last words: ‘Let not poor Nelly starve.’ To his credit, James II, to whom the message is passed, makes sure she is well looked after for the last two years of her life. She dies in her house in Pall Mall, in November 1687. Touchingly, in her will she leaves a bequest for the prisoners in Newgate Gaol.90

  So now the play is over. The applause has died down. People around you are rising from their seats and making their way to the exits along the galleries and at the back of the pit, shuffling along in the shadows of the candlelight. Boys and ushers wait to extinguish the lights as the audience leaves, smiling to the clientele. Outside there is a chill in the night air. The candle lanterns are bright, the mirror-backed lamps on the hackney carriages even brighter. The carriages queue for some distance back into the darkness, waiting to take people home, light after light after light. Boys scamper here and there, pestering the exiting theatregoers for a commission. Very well, it has been a long day. Let us pay one of them a sixpence to light our way. And let us reflect on how far we have come, how much this city of London has grown; how it has been riddled with plague, burnt down, rebuilt and seen all manner of men and women come and go. Let us think how much we have learnt. That play we saw this evening: it may have been bawdy, rude even, but in tearing away the veneer of respectability, the writer has spoken to us about real life. In Cromwell’s day, when there was no theatre, everything was about ideals and how good things should be in a godly world, yet many of us only paid lip service to such virtuous dreams. Some of the biggest idealists were rotten to the core, it turned out. Now we see the true morals of society laid bare. We talk about things. We laugh at ourselves. Look up at the stars: more of them are known to us than ever before. Do we know ourselves any better than we did before?

  At home, you close the door and take off your overcoat. The fire has dwindled to embers in the fireplace, the maidservant has already retired for the night. Only a lamp burning on a shelf lights the stairway. Perhaps you’d like to pour yourself a glass of wine from a bottle, before heading up to bed. Take the lamp with you and count the chimes as the longcase clock rings out in the parlour. A few seconds later the bell in the parish church tower a block away rings the hour. Then, up in your chamber, you sit. There is silence. Put the lamp down now and watch it glow against the wooden panelling. You undress and wash your face and hands in a bowl on a linen-covered table. Beside it stands the looking glass you’ll gaze into in the morning, and the combs your maidservant will use to dress your hair in preparation for the day ahead. But therein lies a question: what does the day ahead hold?

  So many things, so many.

  Envoi

  Oh eternity! Eternity! Eternity!

  What shallow conceptions we have of it!

  Mr Sharp, quoted by Ralph Thoresby, Diary, p. 238

  At the start of the Restoration period, approximately 1,560 of my direct ancestors were alive – not including any distant uncles, aunts or cousins.1 The same applies to you, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on your age. In marked contrast, I have only thirty-four blood relatives within five degrees of consanguinity alive today – and that includes uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, first cousins once removed and second cousins. In other words, my ancestors represented 500 times as great a proportion of the population in 1660 as my whole extended family does at the time of writing. I don’t know who all those ancestors were, and I don’t imagine that you know all of your late-seventeenth-century predecessors either, but that doesn’t matter. The point is this: as you look further and further back in time, your nation’s history increasingly becomes your family history. Go back to the eleventh century and every person then living in your country who has a descendant alive now is your ancestor.2 You could say that the more remote a period is, the more personal it is to each of us. At times, that can be alarming – especially when you consider that the common ancestors of the English include men like King John. But if you want to know what you and your countrymen are really like, take a good long look in the mirror of a thousand years.

  Seeing our ancestors up close, however, raises some very interesting questions – about us as well as them. Could you cope with spending months at sea in all weathers, soaked and cold for much of the time, as Edward Barlow did? I don’t think many of us could face that with equanimity, even if we were not called upon to fight naval battles on a regular basis. In fact, it would be a hard task adapting to the seventeenth century even if you were to live your whole life safely on land, in the comfort of a smart London house. Could you become inured to the constant cruelty to animals and the beating of children? Could you cope with the hardship and prejudices thrust upon Restoration women? What would you think if, as a judge, you had to pass a sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering on a fellow human being? Or if, as an executioner, you had to carry out the sentence of burning a young woman alive for stabbing her abusive husband? Could we, as members of the public, condone such things? Could we justify the extreme social inequality? Some of these questions might make you shift uncomfortably because, as you surely realise by now, the answer to them all is: yes, we could condone and justify such things, for our ancestors did so. We may regard them as inhumane atrocities now but, as outlined at the start of this Envoi, our character is more fully exposed in the mirror of a thousand years than it is in the sensitive politeness of the present day. If we were in the same position as our ancestors, under the same pressures, with the same traditions behind us and the same levels of ignorance and knowledge, then we would see ourselves behave in much the same ways as they did.

  Now factor into this reflection the environmental context in which these people lived. Consider the extreme cold, the famine of the ill years in Scotland, the unpredictability of the harvests, the brutality of the naval wars with the Dutch Republic, the French and the Jacobites, and the suffering caused by so many terrible diseases. How would you manage in a bo
arded-up house with the plague or smallpox, watching your children suffering in terror? How could you face the day ahead? Would you not simply sling a rope over a beam and do away with yourself?

  It is obvious that our ancestors suffered many hardships that do not affect us in the modern world. It is equally obvious that the vast majority of them enjoyed very few comforts and freedoms that we do not. Yet although life was so much harsher, only half as many people killed themselves as do today. To be precise, the suicide rate in England in 1700 was just 56 per million. It reached a peak of 303 per million in 1905 (in the middle of the supposedly halcyon days of the Edwardian period) and fell back to roughly 100–120 per million during the Second World War, at which level it has fluctuated over the last fifty years.3

  Herein lies a fascinating question: if the way of life we have observed in this book was so much worse than it is in the modern world, why did so few opt out of it?

  You might think that the make-up of the population provides an explanation: children under fifteen represented a greater proportion of the population in the seventeenth century than they do now, and children are less likely than adults to kill themselves. But that isn’t the answer. The proportion of the population aged under fifteen was even greater in the highly self-destructive Edwardian decade than it was during the Restoration period (about 34 per cent compared to 30 per cent). Also, it had only declined to about 25 per cent by the mid-1960s, when suicide rates stabilised at just over 100 per million. Some historical questions cannot be answered by historical research alone, and no doubt some people will argue that therefore they should not be asked in the first place. Yet the question of why people carry on living while suffering incredible hardship – and its corollary, why do more people kill themselves today, despite enjoying a far higher standard of living – is a profound issue indeed. It is the sort of problem for which historical evidence is of little use; instead you must get up from your desk and go for a very long walk.