Introduction to the Second Volume of the Second Series of Roxburghe Ballads. "Ancient libels and contraband books, I assure ye, One volume more, my friends, one volume more; -Sir Walter Scott's Bannatyne-Club Song, 1823. HE ENTIRE CAREER OF immediately preceding. Here, for the first time reprinted, are many of the choice broadsides gathered by SAMUEL PEPYS, and bequeathed by him to Magdalen College, Cambridge: treasures of the Bibliotheca Pepysiana; for the use of which we duly record our thanks to the learned and reverend the Master, the Fellows, and the Librarian of that venerable foundation. Here are, also for the first time gathered, and re-arranged, all reprinted in extenso, a much larger number of similar ballads from the original Harleian, Pearson, or Roxburghe Collection, and from the Benjamin Heywood Bright Supplementary-volume; from the purchases made by Narcissus Luttrell (marked occasionally by himself with the date when he obtained them); and from others, X Bicentenary of Monmouth's Insurrection. including Ant. á Wood's at Oxford, and in the Editor's private store of rarities, Trowbesh Manuscripts and printed broadsides. From State Papers at the Record Office, and in the rich garner of the British Museum, we have culled many things that help to make the past intrigues more clear. The character of the actors in the tragi-comedy of two hundred years ago can now be studied accurately by those who are unprejudiced, and not too soon disgusted at human weakness or vice. Ours is a BICENTENARY VOLUME OF MONMOUTH'S INSURRECTION, issued in 1885, but finished beforehand. Surely not without interest or historical value are our copies of all the original woodcuts, such as the Trial and the Execution of Algernon Sydney (on pp. 426, 429); and of Lord W. Russell: even the inappropriate hap-hazard introduction of long-earlier civil-war engravings; such as that of John Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, being ferried across the Styx, to meet his predecessor, William Noy, on the farther shore (see p. 463); or the mediaval battle-piece which was brought into service to represent Sobieski's victory over the Turks at the Siege of Vienna in 1683 (see p. 372). These woodcuts include several that were by no means due to subscribers, because not belonging to the Roxburghe Collection, e.g. the contemporary pourtrayal of "Frost-Fair on the Thames," in the winter of 1683-1684; which forms the frontispiece to Part XIV., being the Third Group of Monmouth Ballads; also the Beheading of Monmouth and the Hanging of his Followers in the West (on pp. 699, 701); or the picture of the moated Rye-House, where King Charles II. was to have been assailed by the conspirators (Frontispiece to the present Vol. V.). They have, one and all, been given single-handedly by the Editor, at his own cost of ungrudged toil, without repayment of a penny from the funds of the Society, which are left wholly devoted to the payment of printing and paper. This task, voluntarily accepted, necessarily long protracted, and in his present failing health by no means light, is being wrought out in the hope of securing a speedy completion of the entire work, a full reproduction of The Rörburghe Ballads. It seems to be an insult and a degradation that subscribers. omit to do their duty by affording the required assistance to this desired work, while the Editor conquers a three-fold amount of labour freely in their behalf. Were the printing Necessity of full Annotation. XI of final parts rapidly paid for, by accelerated subscriptions, another year might see the completion of the series. When supplemented by a General Index and Catalogue of the existing Ballads, The Rorburghe Ballads will rise in value as a library book of reference, an historical record, and unfailing fund of amusement for Students of the Past. Many original members have died: hence our funds are diminished. The two volumes now completed by the present Editor of the Ballad Society's Borburghe Ballads have a distinct character from that of the three volumes edited by Mr. WILLIAM CHAPPELL; by far the greater number of the present contents being political or historical documents. We have already explained what consideration governed our choice, to keep the whole of these satirical poems thus bound closely together in chronological order. It is surely a great gain that so large a collection has now been secured permanently, and exhibited with such advantages of accurate reproduction and illustration as we were able to bestow. No one can desire better printers than our Hertford friends (Messrs. Stephen Austin and Sons), and we have not scrupled to task their patience. No apologies are offered for the comparative fullness with which we have annotated these interesting and valuable documents. Some few individual students might have easily dispensed with the Editorial comments, no doubt, owing to the richness of their own individual knowledge; but even these few readers may admit it to have been unlikelywithout considerable outlay of time-that they could have hunted the dispersed and almost-forgotten links of many a dissevered chain, here reunited for the first time since it was broken two centuries ago. There are many obscure persons and events glanced at incidentally in these ballads, satires, and lampoons, concerning whom annotation is indispensable, if an intelligible view be desired of Old England in 1678-1685. During these seven years, between the time when Titus Oates calumniated the Papists and the date of Monmouth's insurrection, the bitter strife of so-called religious zeal had become the chief excitement in the kingdom. Ever and anon the same battle has been since renewed, under partially changed conditions, even until our own days; and that the future will see it repeated is by no means improbable. To avoid any misconstruction, as to the present Editor having XII The Church of England abstained from intrigues. 'Romanizing tendencies,' let it here be clearly stated that his denunciation of the anti-Popish slanders, and his exposure of the many infamous devices of Shaftesbury's "brisk boys," with the political and sordid trickery of Slingsby Bethel, Patience Ward, and other factious demagogues, have been made from honest conviction, after careful study of evidence, and are in no degree the result of any weak-minded delusion concerning the faultlessness of what is called Ultramontanism or Popery. At the time under consideration, the sober Church of England kept herself for the most part outside of all the plots, the controversies, and the foul-mouthed misrepresentations that were rife among the sectaries and nonconformists. Few of our divines joined in un-Christian vituperation against the persecuted Jesuits, who were falsely accused of having set fire to London, and of having plotted the murder of King Charles II. From the schismatics, and from people devoid of any religious principle, the agitation almost invariably arose. From the bitter sectaries came the chief support to all the seditious schemes for reviving the Good Old Cause of rebellion against Church and State. By the Rye-House Plot, and by Monmouth's Insurrection in the West, the dissenters, the fanatics, enthusiasts, and atheists' supported England's Darling' as a 'True Blue Protestant!' He had little love for the Established Church, or indeed for religion of any kind; although he believed it to be for his interest to accept the disguise and rank of a "Protestant Hero." There was no sincerity in him. He was merely playing the part that promised to advance him into a better position for claiming the sovereignty. We have no sympathy with James the Second, in his bigotry and folly; neither have we with Monmouth, in his culpable duplicity, weakness, and vice. But there are persons who denounce as "Romanizing" and "unsound" any honest confession that grievous wrongs had been perpetrated against those professors of the ancient Catholic faith, who had stayed in the Church from which our own took its origin: worshippers who remained steadfast, and refused to waver in the midst of perils. Although the falsehood and villainy of Titus Oates leave his every statement open to doubt, even when no positive disproof of some few individual assertions may be at once producible, we are far from doubting that there had been precisely so much of a real "Popish Plot" in 1678 as The Perjuries of Oates and Bedloe. XIII originated in a widely-spread desire of the Romanist Churchmen to obtain some amelioration of their condition in England. They sought a repeal of the iniquitous penal laws, under which they had long been suffering; they hoped that better days were drawing near for them, seeing that James, the Duke of York, was presumptive heir to the Crown, a declared convert to their ancient Catholic faith, and zealous for their advancement. They believed that his brother, the reigning King Charles, might be led to avow a willingness to protect them, and extend their religious privileges. All the sworn depositions or pamphlets wherewith Titus Oates and William Bedloe tried to incite the mob to fury, declaring the complicity of the Catholics in the burning of London in 1666; in the pretended conspiracy to assassinate the King, as he walked through St. James's Park; and in the guilt of murdering the magistrate Sir EdmondBury Godfrey, who had officially received some of the early evidence; we hold to be a tissue of lies, and a very transparent tissue, such as ought never to have obscured the sight of any sensible investigator. But that Edward Coleman, and a few other busy intriguers, had been secretly engaged in scheming and corresponding with foreign ecclesiastics in the pay of France, to advance the supposed interest of their Church, and to make way for a restoration of England into the Catholic fold, without feeling scrupulous as to the means so long as they could attain the result, is sufficiently proved by the letters produced at his trial. It was said that other letters had been hastily destroyed by him, and those which were found were left by inadvertence. But of this there was no certain evidence. Many of the Jesuits had been enthusiastically watching the signs of the times. Those who remained in their foreign seminaries felt more hopeful of England's re-conversion (in their ignorance of the deep underlying Puritanism and antagonism to Rome, which swayed the middle classes, as well as the populace), than did the active emissaries who flitted. about from one hiding-place to another, ministering the rites of religion at grievous peril to themselves and to their entertainers. These men felt too much of the active persecution, the bitter intolerance, and the terrified fanaticism of people who styled themselves "True Blue Protestants," to rest in confidence that a victory of their own cherished faith |