Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century; Vol. 1 (of 2): Including the Charities, Depravities, Dresses, and Amusements etc.Malcolm, James Peller
History
Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century; Vol. 1 (of 2): Including the Charities, Depravities, Dresses, and Amusements etc.
Malcolm, James Peller
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 18th century
It would be extremely wrong not to include Dr. Sacheverell in the list.
This gentleman contrived to turn his talents in eccentricity to some
account, and was the cause of a wonderful acquisition of members to
the class of oddities. I shall leave the Doctor's "birth, parentage,
and education," to the biographers who have treated of the subject;
and introduce him as a _singular_ character, and a willing instrument
in the hands of faction, and as one that contrived to confound the
State, rouse the passions, and raise a mob wherever he chose to
exhibit himself; nay, even to animate the Rev. Mr. Palmer, preacher
at Whitehall, at the risk of suspension, to pray for him by name as
a patient sufferer under the persecution of the House of Lords, who
brought him to trial, Feb. 27, 1709-10, on charges of having maintained
that the necessary means used to bring about the Revolution were odious
and unjustifiable; that resistance to the Supreme Power was illegal
under any pretence whatever; that it was the duty of superior pastors
to thunder out their ecclesiastical anathema's against persons entitled
to the benefit of the toleration, &c. &c.; which they decreed the
Commons had substantiated, contents 69, non-contents 52. After this
event he became the idol of the mob, and of several well-meaning but
weak people. His vanity led him to make a kind of triumphal journey
through the country, where he was generally received as a conqueror,
and in some instances by Corporations and the Clergy with flags
displayed, ringing of bells, and bonfires. However disgraceful such
conduct, he furnished the industrious of many classes with the means
of enriching themselves: the Printers and Publishers fattened on his
Sermons and his Trial; the Engraver on his physiognomy; and even the
Fan-maker sold his "Emblematical fans with the true effigies of the
Rev. Dr. Henry Sacheverell done to the life, and several curious
hieroglyphicks in honour of the Church of England finely painted and
mounted on extraordinary genteel sticks." After this summary of the
Doctor's exploits, who will deny his claim to eccentricity, or that he
was a most unworthy son of the Church, a teacher of bigotry, not of
peace? But he is forgotten; and but one small marble lozenge shews his
present resting-place.
In 1711 Gustavus Parker entertained the publick with a specimen of his
eccentricity, exhibited in a "Monthly Weather-paper," or baroscopical
prognosticks of the description of Weather to happen a month _after_
his publication. He even pronounced whether there would be warm or cold
rain, or be clear, for the day and night, and from which point the wind
would blow. Though Mr. Parker entered into a laboured explanation of
the principles on which he founded his infallible judgment, they were
confuted most completely by the observations of an individual, who
placed the real state of the weather opposite the anticipated; from
which I pronounce him no conjurer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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