HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. (October, 1808.) 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. 4to. London, Longman and Co.: 1806. We have not often met with any thing more interesting and curious than this volume. Independent of its being a contemporary 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. By far the most important part of history, as we Lave 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 truly governing part of society was consequently the 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 regu lated piety. It was upon this side, accordingly, that they were most liable to error: and the extravagances into which a 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. acters of deep thought and steady enthusiasm, and the same principles of fidelity and selfcommand, which ennobled the better days of the Roman Republic, and have made every thing else appear childish and frivolous in the comparison. applause, on the violin,-stout esquires, at the same time, praying and quaffing October with their godly tenants, and noble lords disputing with their chaplains on points of theology in the evening, and taking them out a-hunting in the morning. There is nothing, In the middle of the reign of Charles I. al- in short, more curious and instructive, than most the whole nation was serious and devout. the glimpses which we here catch of the old Any licence and excess which existed was hospitable and orderly life of the country mostly encouraged and patronised by the gentlemen of England, in those days when Royalists; who made it a point of duty to the national character was so high and so deride the sanctity and rigid morality of their peculiar,-when civilization had produced all opponents; and they again exaggerated, out its effects, but that of corruption, and when of party hatred, the peculiarities by which serious studies and dignified pursuits had not they were most obviously distinguished from yet been abandoned to a paltry and effeminate their antagonists. Thus mutually receding derision. Undoubtedly, in reviewing the anfrom each other, from feelings of general nals of those times, we are struck with a hostility, they were gradually led to realize loftier air of manhood than presents itself in the imputations of which they were recipro-any after era; and recognize the same charcally the subjects. The cavaliers gave way to a certain degree of licentiousness; and the adherents of the parliament 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 auster-terpart to the Valerias and Portias of antiquity. ities and absurdities of the old Roundheads With a high-minded feeling of patriotism and and Presbyterians are greatly exaggerated, public honour, she seems to have been poswill probably be allowed by every one at all sessed by the most dutiful and devoted at: conversant with the subject; but we know tachment to her husband; and to have comof nothing so well calculated to dissipate the bined a taste for learning and the arts with existing prejudices on the subject, as this the most active kindness and munificent hosbook of Mrs. Hutchinson. Instead of a set pitality to all who came within the sphere of of gloomy bigots waging war with all the her bounty. To a quick perception of charelegancies and gaieties of life, we find, in this acter, she appears to have united a masculine calumniated order, ladies of the first birth force of understanding, and a singular capacity and fashion, at once converting their husbands for affairs; and to have possessed and exerto Anabaptism, and instructing their children cised all those talents, without affecting any in music and dancing,-valiant Presbyterian superiority over the rest of her sex, or aban colonels refuting the errors of Arminius, col-doning for a single instant the delicacy and lecting pictures, and practising, with great reserve which were then its most indispensa One of the most striking and valuable things in Mrs. Hutchinson'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 histories of public events are almost necessarily 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. Hutchinson, however, enters into no formal disquisition upon this subject. What we learn from her in relation to it, is learnt incidentally-partly on occasion of some anecdotes which it falls in her way to recite-but chiefly from what she is led to narrate or disclose as to her own education, conduct, or opinions. If it were allowable to take the portrait which she has thus indirectly given of herself, as a just representation of her fair contemporaries, we should form a most exalted notion of the republican matrons of England. Making a slight deduction for a few traits of austerity, 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 so worthy a coun ble ornaments. Education, certainly, is far more generally diffused in our days, and accomplishments infinitely more common; But the perusal of this volume has taught us to doubt, whether the better sort of women were not fashioned of old by a better and more exalted standard, and whether the most eminent female of the present day would not appear to disadvantage by the side of Mrs. Hutchinson. There is, for the most part, something intriguing and profligate and theatrical in the clever women of this generation; and if we are dazzled by their brilliancy, and delighted with their talent, we can scarcely ever guard against some distrust of their judgment or some suspicion of their purity. There is something, in short, in the domestic virtue, and the calm and commanding mind of our English matron, that makes the Corinnes and Heloises appear small and insignificant. quently charms us by a sort of antique simplicity and sweetness, admirably in unison with the sentiments and manners it is employed to represent. The fragment of her own history, with which the volume opens, is not the least interesting, and perhaps the most characteristic part of its contents. The following brief account of her nativity, will at once make the reader acquainted with the pitch of this lady's sentiments and expressions. "It was one the 29th day of January, in the yeare of our Lord 1648, that in the Tower of London, the principall citie of the English Isle, I was about 4 of the clock in the morning brought forth to behold the ensuing light. My father was Sr. Allen Apsley, leiftenant of the Tower of London; my mother, his third wife, was Lucy, the youngest daughter of Sr. John St. John, of Lidiard Tregoz, in Wiltshire, by his second wife. My father had then living a sonne and a daughter by his former wives, and by my mother three sonns, I being her eldest daughter. The land was then att peace (it being towards the latter end of the reigne of King James), if that quiettnesse may be call'd a peace, which was rather like the calme and smooth surface of the sea, whose darke womb is allready impreg nated of a horrid tempest."—pp. 2, 3. She then draws the character of both her parents in a very graceful and engaging manner, but on a scale somewhat too large to admit of their being transferred entire into our pages. We give the following as a specimen of the style and execution. The admirers of modern talent will not accuse us of choosing an ignoble competitor, if we desire them to weigh the merits of Mrs. Hutchinson against those of Madame Roland. The English revolutionist did not indeed compose weekly pamphlets and addresses to the municipalities;-because it was not the fashion, in her days, to print every thing that entered into the heads of politicians. But she shut herself up with her husband in the garrison with which he was intrusted, and shared his counsels as well as his hazards. She encouraged the troops by her cheerfulness and heroism-ministered to the sick-and dressed kind to his children; a most noble master; who "He was a most indulgen: husband, and no lesse with her own hands the wounds of the cap- thought it not enough to maintaine his servants tives, as well as of their victors. When her honourably while they were with him, but, for all husband was imprisoned on groundless sus- that deserv'd it, provided offices or settlements as picions, she laboured, without ceasing, for his for children. He was a father to all his prisoners, deliverance-confounded his oppressors by sweetning with such compassionate kindnesse their her eloquence and arguments-tended him restraint, that the affiction of a prison was not felt in his dayes. He had a singular kindnesse for all with unshaken fortitude in sickness and soli- persons that were eminent either in learning or tude-and, after his decease, dedicated her- armes; and when, through the ingratitude and vice self to form his children to the example of his of that age, many of the wives and children of virtues; and drew up the memorial which is Queene Elizabeth's glorious captaines were reduc'd now before us, of his worth and her own to poverty, his purse was their common treasury, and they knew not the inconvenience of decay'd genius and affection. All this, too, she did fortunes till he was dead: many of those valliant without stepping beyond the province of a seamen he maintain'd in prison; many he redeem'd private woman-without hunting after com- out of prison and cherisht with an extraordinary pliments to her own genius or beauty-with-bounty. He was severe in the regulating of his out sneering at the dulness, or murmuring at famely; especially would not endure the least imthe coldness of her husband-without hazard-modest behaviour or dresse in any woman under his roofe. There was nothing he hated more than ing the fate of her country on the dictates of an insignificant gallant, that could only make his her own enthusiasm, or fancying for a moment leggs and prune himself, and court a lady, but had that she was born with talents to enchant and not braines to employ himselfe in things more suteregenerate the world. With equal power of able to man's nobler sex. Fidelity in his trust, love discriminating character, with equal candour and loyalty to his prince, were not the least of his and eloquence and zeal for the general good, vertues, but those wherein he was not excell'd by any of his owne or succeeding times. He gave my she is elevated beyond her French competitor mother a noble allowance of 3001. a yeare for her by superior prudence and modesty, and by a owne private expence, and had given her all her certain simplicity and purity of character, of owne portion to dispose of how she pleas'd, as which, it appears to us, that the other was soone as she was married; which she suffer'd tr encrease in her friend's hands; and what my father unable to form a conception. allowed her she spent not in vanities, although she After detaining the reader so long with had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but these general observations, we shall only with- she lay'd most of it out in pious and charitable uses; hold him from the quotations which we mean Sr. Walter Rawleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners to lay before him, while we announce, that in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chimisMrs. Hutchinson writes in a sort of lofty, trie, she suffer'd them to make their rare expericlassical, translated style; which is occasion-ments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the ally diffuse and pedantic, but often attains to great dignity and vigour, and still more fre poore prisoners, and partly to gaine the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to helpe such poore people as were not able to seeke to phi sitians. By these means she acquir'd a greate deale of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life. She was not only to these, but to all the other prisoners that came into the Tower, as a mother. All the time she dwelt in the Tower, if any were sick she made them broths and restoratives with her owne hands, visited and took care of them, and provided them all necessaries: If any were aflicted she comforted them, so that they felt not the inconvenience of a prison who were in that place. She was not lesse bountifull to many poore widdowes and orphans, whom officers of higher and lower rank had left behind them as objects of charity. Her owne house was fill'd with distressed families of her relations, whom she supplied and maintained in a noble way."-pp. 12-15. For herself, being her mother's first daughter, unusual pains were bestowed on her education; so that, when she was seven years of age, she was attended, she informs us, by no fewer than eight several tutors. In consequence of all this, she became very grave and thoughtful; and withal very pious. But her early attainments in religion seem to have been by no means answerable to the notions of sanctity which she imbibed in her maturer years. There is something very innocent and natural in the Puritanism of the following passage. "It pleas'd God that thro' the good instructions of my mother, and the sermons she carried me to, I was convinc'd that the knowledge of God was the most excellent study; and accordingly applied myselfe to it, and to practise as I was taught. I us'd to exhort my mother's maides much, and to turne their idle discourses to good subjects; but I thought, when I had done this on the Lord's day, and every day perform'd my due taskes of reading and praying, that then I was free to anie thing that was not sin; for I was not at that time convinc'd of the vanity of conversation which was not scandalously wicked; I thought it no sin to learne or heare wittie songs and amorous sonnets or poems, and twenty things of that kind; wherein I was so apt that I became the confident in all the loves that were managed among my mother's young women: and there was none of them but had many lovers and some particular friends belov'd above the rest; among these I have."-p. 17, 18. "But while the incomparable mother shin'd in all the humane glorie she wisht, and had the crowne of all outward felicity to the full in the enjoyment of the mutuall love of her most beloved husband, God in one moment tooke it away, and alienated her most excellent understanding in a difficult childbirth, wherein she brought forth two daughters which liv'd to be married, and one more that died, I think assoone or before it was borne. But after that, all the art of the best physitians in England could never restore her understanding. Yet she was not frantick, but had such a pretty deliration, that her ravings were more delightful than other weomen's most rationall conversations. Upon this occasion her husband gave himselfe up to live reItired with her, as became her condition. The daughters and the rest of the children as soon as they grew up were married and disperst. I think I have heard she had some children after that childbirth which distemper'd her; and then my lady Hutchinson must have bene one of them. I marriage, she would steale many melancholy houres have heard her servants say, that even after her to sitt and weepe in remembrance of her. Meanewhile her parents were driving on their age, in no lesse constancy of love to each other, when even that distemper which had estrang'd her mind in all things elce, had left her love and obedience entire to her husband, and he retein'd the same fondnesse and respect for her, after she was distemper'd, as when she was the glory of her age! He had two beds in one chamber, and she being a little sick, died. It was his custome, as soon as ever he untwo weomen watcht by her, some time before she clos'd his eies, to aske how she did; but one night, he being as they thought in a deepe sleepe, she quietly departed towards the morning. He was for his health; and it was his custome to have his that day to have gone a hunting, his usuall exercise chaplaine pray with him before he went out: the women, fearfull to surprise him with the ill newes, knowing his deare affection to her, had him to informe him of it. Sr. John waking, did stollen out and acquainted the chaplaine, desiring not that day, as was his custome, ask for her; bat him, in the middst of the prayer, expir'd!-and call'd the chaplaine to prayers, and ioyning with both of them were buried together in the same would not take notice, or whether some strange grave. Whether he perceiv'd her death and sympathy in love or nature tied up their lives in one, or whether God was pleased to exercise an unusuall providence towards them, preventing them both from that bitter sorrow which such separations cause, it can be but conjectur'd," &c. -p. 26-28. Here the same spirit of austerity which dictated the preceding passage, had moved the fair writer, as the editor informs us, to tear away many pages immediately following The same romantic and suppressed sensithe words with which it concludes-and thus bility is discernible, we think, in her whole to defraud the reader of the only love story account of the origin and progress of her with which he had any chance of being husband's attachment to her. As the story regaled in the course of this narrative. is in many respects extremely characteristic Although Mrs. Hutchinson's abhorrence of of the times as well as the persons to which any thing like earthly or unsanctified love, it relates, we shall make a pretty large extract has withheld her on all occasions from the from it. Mr. Hutchinson had learned, it insertion of any thing that related to such seems, to "dance and vault" with great feelings, yet it is not difficult, we think, to agility, and also attained to "great mastery perceive that she was originally constituted on the violl" at the University; and, upon with an extraordinary sensibility to all power- his return to Nottingham, in the twentieth ful emotions; and that the suppression of year of his age, spent much of his time with those deep and natural impressions has given a licentious but most accomplished gentlea singular warmth and animation to her des- man, a witty but profane physician, and a criptions of romantic and conjugal affection. pleasant but cynical old schoolmaster. In In illustration of this, we may refer to the spite of these worldly associations, however, following story of her husband's grandfather we are assured that he was a most godly and grandmother, which she recounts with and incorruptible person; and, in particular, much feeling and credulity. After a very proof against all the allurements of the fair ample account of their mutual love and love-sex, whom he frequently "reproved, but in a "liness, she proceedshandsome way of raillery, for their pride and "Mr. Hutchinson considering this, resolv'd to accept his offer; and that day telling a gentleman of the house whither he was going, the gentleman bid him take heed of the place, for it was so fatall for love, that never any young disengag'd person went thither, who return'd again free. Mr. Hutchinson laught at him; but he, to confirme it, told him a very true story of a gentleman, who not long before had come for some time to lodge there, and found all the people he came in company with, bewailing the death of a gentle.vant, had made for her and whom she would bring, woman that had lived there. Hearing her so much deplor'd, he made enquiry after her, and grew so in love with the description, that no other discourse could at first please him, nor could he at last endure any other; he grew desperately melancholly, and would goe to a mount where the print of her foote was cutt, and lie there pining and kissing of it all the day long, till att length death in some months space concluded his languishment. This story was very true; but Mr. Hutchinson was neither easie to believe it, nor frighted at the example; thinking himselfe not likely to make another."-p. 37, 38. "This gentlewoman, that was left in the house with Mr. Hutchinson, was a very child, her elder sister being at that time scarcely past it; but a child of such pleasantnesse and vivacity of spiritt, and ingenuity in the quallity she practis'd, that Mr. Hutchinson tooke pleasure in hearing her practise, and would fall in discourse with her. She having the keyes of her mother's house, some halfe a mile distant, would some times aske Mr. Hutchinson, when she went over, to walk along with her: one day when he was there, looking upon an odde byshelf, in her sister's closett, he found a few Latine bookes; asking whose they were, he was told they were her elder sister's; whereupon, enquiring more after her, he began first to be sorrie she was gone, before he had seene her, and gone upon such an account, that he was not likely to see her; then he grew to love to heare mention of her; and the other gentleweomen who had bene her companions, used to talke much to him of her, telling him how reserv'd and studious she was, and other things which they esteem'd no advantage; but it so much inflam'd Mr. Hutchinson's desire of seeing her, that he began to wonder at himselfe, that his heart, which had ever had such an indiffer ency for the most excellent of weomenkind, should have so strong impulses towards a stranger he never saw." While he was exercis'd in this, many days past not, but a foote-boy of my lady her mothers came to young Mrs. Apsley as they were at dinner, bringing newes that her mother and sister would in few dayes return; and when they enquir'd of him, whether Mrs. Apsley was married, having before bene instructed to make them believe it, he smiled, and pull'd out some bride laces, which were given at a wedding in the house where she was, and gave them to the young gentlewoman and the gentleman's daughter of the house, and told them Mrs. Apsley bade him tell no news, but give them those tokens, and carried the matter so, that all the companie believ'd she had bene married. Mr. Hutchinson immediately turned pale as ashes, and felt a fainting to seize his spiritts, in that extraordinary manner, that finding himselfe ready to sinke att table, he was She faine to pretend something had offended his sto Here the lady breaks off her account of this romantic courtship, as of "matters that are to be forgotten as the vanities of youth, and not worthy mention among the greater transactions of their lives." The consent of parents having been obtained on both sides, she was married at the age of eighteen. "That day that the friends on both sides met to conclude the marriage, she fell sick of the smallpox, which was many ways a greate triall upon him; first her life was allmost in desperate hazard, and then the disease, for the present, made her the most deformed person that could be seene, for a |