Books: The History of John Bull
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John Arbuthnot >> The History of John Bull
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* The manners and sentiments of the nation at that time.
CHAPTER VIII. How John discovered that Hocus had an Intrigue with
his Wife;* and what followed thereupon.
John had not run on a madding so long had it not been for an
extravagant wife, whom Hocus perceiving John to be fond of, was
resolved to win over to his side. It is a true saying, that the
last man of the parish that knows of his cuckoldom is himself. It
was observed by all the neighbourhood that Hocus had dealings with
John's wife that were not so much for his honour; but this was
perceived by John a little too late: she was a luxurious jade,
loved splendid equipages, plays, treats and balls, differing very
much from the sober manners of her ancestors, and by no means fit
for a tradesman's wife. Hocus fed her extravagancy (what was still
more shameful) with John's own money. Everybody said that Hocus had
a month's mind to her; be that as it will, it is matter of fact,
that upon all occasions she ran out extravagantly on the praise of
Hocus. When John used to be finding fault with his bills, she used
to reproach him as ungrateful to his greatest benefactor; one that
had taken so much pains in his lawsuit, and retrieved his family
from the oppression of old Lewis Baboon. A good swinging sum of
John's readiest cash went towards building of Hocus's country
house.** This affair between Hocus and Mrs. Bull was now so open,
that all the world was scandalised at it; John was not so
clod-pated, but at last he took the hint. The parson of the parish
preaching one day with more zeal than sense against adultery, Mrs.
Bull told her husband that he was a very uncivil fellow to use such
coarse language before people of condition;*** that Hocus was of the
same mind, and that they would join to have him turned out of his
living for using personal reflections. How do you mean, says John,
by personal reflections? I hope in God, wife, he did not reflect
upon you? "No, thank God, my reputation is too well established in
the world to receive any hurt from such a foul-mouthed scoundrel as
he; his doctrine tends only to make husbands tyrants, and wives
slaves; must we be shut up, and husbands left to their liberty?
Very pretty indeed! a wife must never go abroad with a Platonic to
see a play or a ball; she must never stir without her husband; nor
walk in Spring Garden with a cousin. I do say, husband, and I will
stand by it, that without the innocent freedoms of life, matrimony
would be a most intolerable state; and that a wife's virtue ought to
be the result of her own reason, and not of her husband's
government: for my part, I would scorn a husband that would be
jealous, if he saw a fellow with me." All this while John's blood
boiled in his veins: he was now confirmed in all his suspicions;
the hardest names, were the best words that John gave her. Things
went from better to worse, till Mrs. Bull aimed a knife at John,
though John threw a bottle at her head very brutally indeed: and
after this there was nothing but confusion; bottles, glasses,
spoons, plates, knives, forks, and dishes, flew about like dust; the
result of which was, that Mrs. Bull received a bruise in her right
side of which she died half a year after. The bruise imposthumated,
and afterwards turned to a stinking ulcer, which made everybody shy
to come near her, yet she wanted not the help of many able
physicians, who attended very diligently, and did what men of skill
could do; but all to no purpose, for her condition was now quite
desperate, all regular physicians and her nearest relations having
given her over.****
* The opinion at that time of the General's tampering with the
Parliament.
** Blenheim Palace.
*** The story of Dr. Sacheverel, and the resentment of the House of
Commons.
**** The opinion of the Tories about that House of Commons.
CHAPTER IX. How some Quacks undertook to cure Mrs. Bull of her
ulcer.*
There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will
undertake; nothing so incredible but they will affirm: Mrs. Bull's
condition was looked upon as desperate by all the men of art; but
there were those that bragged they had an infallible ointment and
plaister, which being applied to the sore, would cure it in a few
days; at the same time they would give her a pill that would purge
off all her bad humours, sweeten her blood, and rectify her
disturbed imagination. In spite of all applications the patient
grew worse every day; she stunk so, nobody durst come within a
stone's throw of her, except those quacks who attended her close,
and apprehended no danger. If one asked them how Mrs. Bull did?
Better and better, said they; the parts heal, and her constitution
mends: if she submits to our government she will be abroad in a
little time. Nay, it is reported that they wrote to her friends in
the country that she should dance a jig next October in Westminster
Hall, and that her illness had been chiefly owing to bad physicians.
At last, one of them was sent for in great haste, his patient grew
worse and worse: when he came, he affirmed that it was a gross
mistake, and that she was never in a fairer way. Bring hither the
salve, says he, and give her a plentiful draught of my cordial. As
he was applying his ointments, and administering the cordial, the
patient gave up the ghost, to the great confusion of the quack, and
the great joy of Bull and his friends. The quack flung away out of
the house in great disorder, and swore there was foul play, for he
was sure his medicines were infallible. Mrs. Bull having died
without any signs of repentance or devotion, the clergy would hardly
allow her a Christian burial. The relations had once resolved to
sue John for the murder, but considering better of it, and that such
a trial would rip up old sores, and discover things not so much to
the reputation of the deceased, they dropped their design. She left
no will, only there was found in her strong box the following words
written on a scrip of paper--"My curse on John Bull, and all my
posterity, if ever they come to any composition with the Lord
Strutt."
She left him three daughters, whose names were Polemia, Discordia,
and Usuria.**
* Endeavours and hopes of some people to hinder the dissolution of
that Parliament.
** War, faction, and usury.
CHAPTER X. Of John Bull's second Wife, and the good Advice that she
gave him.*
John quickly got the better of his grief, and, seeing that neither
his constitution nor the affairs of his family, could permit him to
live in an unmarried state, he resolved to get him another wife; a
cousin of his last wife's was proposed, but John would have no more
of the breed. In short, he wedded a sober country gentlewoman, of a
good family and a plentiful fortune, the reverse of the other in her
temper; not but that she loved money, for she was saving, and
applied her fortune to pay John's clamorous debts, that the unfrugal
method of his last wife, and this ruinous lawsuit, had brought him
into. One day, as she had got her husband in a good humour, she
talked to him after the following manner:--"My dear, since I have
been your wife, I have observed great abuses and disorders in your
family: your servants are mutinous and quarrelsome, and cheat you
most abominably; your cookmaid is in a combination with your
butcher, poulterer, and fishmonger; your butler purloins your
liquor, and the brewer sells you hogwash; your baker cheats both in
weight and in tale; even your milkwoman and your nursery-maid have a
fellow feeling; your tailor, instead of shreds, cabbages whole yards
of cloth; besides, leaving such long scores, and not going to market
with ready money forces us to take bad ware of the tradesmen at
their own price. You have not posted your books these ten years.
How is it possible for a man of business to keep his affairs even in
the world at this rate? Pray God this Hocus be honest; would to God
you would look over his bills, and see how matters stand between
Frog and you. Prodigious sums are spent in this lawsuit, and more
must be borrowed of scriveners and usurers at heavy interest.
Besides, my dear, let me beg of you to lay aside that wild project
of leaving your business to turn lawyer, for which, let me tell you,
Nature never designed you. Believe me, these rogues do but flatter,
that they may pick your pocket; observe what a parcel of hungry
ragged fellows live by your cause; to be sure they will never make
an end of it. I foresee this haunt you have got about the courts
will one day or another bring your family to beggary. Consider, my
dear, how indecent it is to abandon your shop and follow
pettifoggers; the habit is so strong upon you, that there is hardly
a plea between two country esquires, about a barren acre upon a
common, but you draw yourself in as bail, surety, or solicitor."
John heard her all this while with patience, till she pricked his
maggot, and touched him in the tender point. Then he broke out into
a violent passion: "What, I not fit for a lawyer? let me tell you,
my clod-pated relations spoiled the greatest genius in the world
when they bred me a mechanic. Lord Strutt, and his old rogue of a
grandsire, have found to their cost that I can manage a lawsuit as
well as another." "I don't deny what you say," replied Mrs. Bull,
"nor do I call in question your parts; but, I say, it does not suit
with your circumstances; you and your predecessors have lived in
good reputation among your neighbours by this same clothing-trade,
and it were madness to leave it off. Besides, there are few that
know all the tricks and cheats of these lawyers. Does not your own
experience teach you how they have drawn you on from one term to
another, and how you have danced the round of all the courts, still
flattering you with a final issue; and, for aught I can see, your
cause is not a bit clearer than it was seven years ago." "I will be
hanged," says John, "if I accept of any composition from Strutt or
his grandfather; I'll rather wheel about the streets an engine to
grind knives and scissors. However, I'll take your advice, and look
over my accounts."
* A new Parliament: the aversion of a Tory House of Commons to war.
CHAPTER XI. How John looked over his Attorney's Bill.*
* Looking over the accounts.
When John first brought out the bills, the surprise of all the
family was unexpressible at the prodigious dimensions of them; they
would have measured with the best bale of cloth in John's shop.
Fees to judges, puny judges, clerks, prothonotaries, philisers,
chirographers, under-clerks, proclamators, counsel, witnesses,
jurymen, marshals, tipstaffs, criers, porters; for enrollings,
exemplifications, bails, vouchers, returns, caveats, examinations,
filings of words, entries, declarations, replications, recordats,
nolle prosequies, certioraries, mittimuses, demurrers, special
verdicts, informations, scire facias, supersedeas, habeas corpus,
coach-hire, treating of witnesses, etc. "Verily," says John, "there
are a prodigious number of learned words in this law; what a pretty
science it is!" "Ay but, husband, you have paid for every syllable
and letter of these fine words. Bless me, what immense sums are at
the bottom of the account!" John spent several weeks in looking
over his bills, and, by comparing and stating his accounts, he
discovered that, besides the extravagance of every article, he had
been egregiously cheated; that he had paid for counsel that were
never fee'd, for writs that were never drawn, for dinners that were
never dressed, and journeys that were never made; in short, that the
tradesmen, lawyers, and Frog had agreed to throw the burden of the
lawsuit upon his shoulders.
CHAPTER XII. How John grew angry, and resolved to accept a
Composition; and what Methods were practised by the Lawyers for
keeping him from it.*
Well might the learned Daniel Burgess say, "That a lawsuit is a suit
for life. He that sows his grain upon marble will have many a
hungry belly before harvest." This John felt by woeful experience.
John's cause was a good milch cow, and many a man subsisted his
family out of it. However, John began to think it high time to look
about him. He had a cousin in the country, one Sir Roger Bold,
whose predecessors had been bred up to the law, and knew as much of
it as anybody; but having left off the profession for some time,
they took great pleasure in compounding lawsuits among their
neighbours, for which they were the aversion of the gentlemen of the
long robe, and at perpetual war with all the country attorneys.
John put his cause in Sir Roger's hands, desiring him to make the
best of it. The news had no sooner reached the ears of the lawyers,
but they were all in an uproar. They brought all the rest of the
tradesmen upon John.** Squire South swore he was betrayed, that he
would starve before he compounded; Frog said he was highly wronged;
even lying Ned the chimney-sweeper and Tom the dustman complained
that their interest was sacrificed; the lawyers, solicitors, Hocus
and his clerks, were all up in arms at the news of the composition:
they abused him and his wife most shamefully. "You silly, awkward,
ill-bred country sow," quoth one, "have you no more manners than to
rail at Hocus that has saved that clod-pated numskulled ninny-hammer
of yours from ruin, and all his family? It is well known how he has
rose early and sat up late to make him easy, when he was sotting at
every alehouse in town. I knew his last wife: she was a woman of
breeding, good humour, and complaisance--knew how to live in the
world. As for you, you look like a puppet moved by clockwork; your
clothes hang upon you as they were upon tenter-hooks; and you come
into a room as you were going to steal away a pint pot. Get you
gone in the country, to look after your mother's poultry, to milk
the cows, churn the butter, and dress up nosegays for a holiday, and
not meddle with matters which you know no more of than the sign-post
before your door. It is well known that Hocus has an established
reputation; he never swore an oath, nor told a lie, in all his life;
he is grateful to his benefactors, faithful to his friends, liberal
to his dependents, and dutiful to his superiors; he values not your
money more than the dust under his feet, but he hates to be abused.
Once for all, Mrs. Minx, leave off talking of Hocus, or I will pull
out these saucer-eyes of yours, and make that redstreak country face
look as raw as an ox-cheek upon a butcher's-stall; remember, I say,
that there are pillories and ducking-stools."*** With this away
they flung, leaving Mrs. Bull no time to reply. No stone was left
unturned to frighten John from his composition. Sometimes they
spread reports at coffee-houses that John and his wife were run mad;
that they intended to give up house, and make over all their estate
to Lewis Baboon; that John had been often heard talking to himself,
and seen in the streets without shoes or stockings; that he did
nothing from morning till night but beat his servants, after having
been the best master alive. As for his wife, she was a mere
natural. Sometimes John's house was beset with a whole regiment of
attornies' clerks, bailiffs, and bailiffs' followers, and other
small retainers of the law, who threw stones at his windows, and
dirt at himself as he went along the street. When John complained
of want of ready-money to carry on his suit, they advised him to
pawn his plate and jewels, and that Mrs. Bull should sell her linen
and wearing clothes.
* Talk of peace, and the struggle of the party against it.
** The endeavours made use of to stop the Treaty of Peace,
*** Reflections upon the House of Commons as ignorant, who know
nothing of business.
CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Bull's vindication of the indispensable duty
incumbent upon Wives in case of the Tyranny, Infidelity, or
Insufficiency of Husbands; being a full Answer to the Doctor's
Sermon against Adultery.*
* The Tories' representation of the speeches at Sacheverel's trial.
John found daily fresh proofs of the infidelity and bad designs of
his deceased wife; amongst other things, one day looking over his
cabinet, he found the following paper:--
"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract,
whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature
in favour of the husband, by which he acquires the property of all
her posterity. But, then, the obligation is mutual; and where the
contract is broken on one side it ceases to bind on the other.
Where there is a right there must be a power to maintain it and to
punish the offending party. This power I affirm to be that original
right, or rather that indispensable duty lodged in all wives in the
cases above mentioned. No wife is bound by any law to which herself
has not consented. All economical government is lodged originally
in the husband and wife, the executive part being in the husband;
both have their privileges secured to them by law and reason; but
will any man infer from the husband being invested with the
executive power, that the wife is deprived of her share, and that
she has no remedy left but preces and lacrymae, or an appeal to a
supreme court of judicature? No less frivolous are the arrangements
that are drawn from the general appellations and terms of husband
and wife. A husband denotes several different sorts of magistracy,
according to the usages and customs of different climates and
countries. In some eastern nations it signifies a tyrant, with the
absolute power of life and death. In Turkey it denotes an arbitrary
governor, with power of perpetual imprisonment; in Italy it gives
the husband the power of poison and padlocks; in the countries of
England, France, and Holland, it has a quite different meaning,
implying a free and equal government, securing to the wife in
certain cases the liberty of change, and the property of pin-money
and separate maintenance. So that the arguments drawn from the
terms of husband and wife are fallacious, and by no means fit to
support a tyrannical doctrine, as that of absolute unlimited
chastity and conjugal fidelity.
"The general exhortations to fidelity in wives are meant only for
rules in ordinary cases, but they naturally suppose three conditions
of ability, justice, and fidelity in the husband; such an unlimited,
unconditioned fidelity in the wife could never be supposed by
reasonable men. It seems a reflection upon the Church to charge her
with doctrines that countenance oppression.
"This doctrine of the original right of change is congruous to the
law of Nature, which is superior to all human laws, and for that I
dare appeal to all wives: It is much to the honour of our English
wives that they have never given up that fundamental point, and that
though in former ages they were muffled up in darkness and
superstition, yet that notion seemed engraven on their minds, and
the impression so strong that nothing could impair it.
"To assert the illegality of change, upon any pretence whatsoever,
were to cast odious colours upon the married state, to blacken the
necessary means of perpetuating families--such laws can never be
supposed to have been designed to defeat the very end of matrimony.
I call them necessary means, for in many cases what other means are
left? Such a doctrine wounds the honour of families, unsettles the
titles to kingdoms, honours, and estates; for if the actions from
which such settlements spring were illegal, all that is built upon
them must be so too; but the last is absurd, therefore the first
must be so likewise. What is the cause that Europe groans at
present under the heavy load of a cruel and expensive war, but the
tyrannical custom of a certain nation, and the scrupulous nicety of
a silly queen in not exercising this indispensable duty, whereby the
kingdom might have had an heir, and a controverted succession might
have been avoided. These are the effects of the narrow maxims of
your clergy, 'That one must not do evil that good may come of it.'
"The assertors of this indefeasible right, and jus divinum of
matrimony, do all in their hearts favour the pretenders to married
women; for if the true legal foundation of the married state be once
sapped, and instead thereof tyrannical maxims introduced, what must
follow but elopements instead of secret and peaceable change?
"From all that has been said, one may clearly perceive the absurdity
of the doctrine of this seditious, discontented, hot-headed,
ungifted, unedifying preacher, asserting 'that the grand security of
the matrimonial state, and the pillar upon which it stands, is
founded upon the wife's belief of an absolute unconditional fidelity
to the husband;' by which bold assertion he strikes at the root,
digs the foundation, and removes the basis upon which the happiness
of a married state is built. As for his personal reflections, I
would gladly know who are those 'wanton wives' he speaks of? who are
those ladies of high stations that he so boldly traduces in his
sermon? It is pretty plain who these aspersions are aimed at, for
which he deserves the pillory, or something worse.
"In confirmation of this doctrine of the indispensable duty of
change, I could bring the example of the wisest wives in all ages,
who by these means have preserved their husband's families from ruin
and oblivion by want of posterity; but what has been said is a
sufficient ground for punishing this pragmatical parson."
CHAPTER XIV. The two great Parties of Wives, the Devotos and the
Hitts.*
*Those who were for and against the doctrine of nonresistance.
The doctrine of unlimited fidelity in wives was universally espoused
by all husbands, who went about the country and made the wives sign
papers signifying their utter detestation and abhorrence of Mrs.
Bull's wicked doctrine of the indispensable duty of change. Some
yielded, others refused to part with their native liberty, which
gave rise to two great parties amongst the wives, the Devotos and
the Hitts. Though, it must be owned, the distinction was more
nominal than real; for the Devotos would abuse freedoms sometimes,
and those who were distinguished by the name of Hitts were often
very honest. At the same time there was an ingenious treatise came
out with the title of "Good Advice to Husbands," in which they are
counselled not to trust too much to their wives owning the doctrine
of unlimited conjugal fidelity, and so to neglect a due watchfulness
over the manners of their wives; that the greatest security to
husbands was a good usage of their wives and keeping them from
temptation, many husbands having been sufferers by their trusting
too much to general professions, as was exemplified in the case of a
foolish and negligent husband, who, trusting to the efficacy of this
principle, was undone by his wife's elopement from him.
CHAPTER XV. An Account of the Conference between Mrs. Bull and Don
Diego.*
* A Tory nobleman who, by his influence upon the House of Commons,
endeavoured to stop the Treaty.
The lawyers, as their last effort to put off the composition, sent
Don Diego to John. Don Diego was a very worthy gentleman, a friend
to John, his mother, and present wife, and, therefore, supposed to
have some influence over her. He had been ill used himself by
John's lawyers, but because of some animosity to Sir Roger was
against the composition. The conference between him and Mrs. Bull
was word for word as follows:--
DON DIEGO.--Is it possible, cousin Bull, that you can forget the
honourable maxims of the family you are come of, and break your word
with three of the honestest, best-meaning persons in the world--
Esquires South, Frog, and Hocus--that have sacrificed their
interests to yours? It is base to take advantage of their
simplicity and credulity, and leave them in the lurch at last.
MRS. BULL--I am sure they have left my family in a bad condition, we
have hardly money to go to market; and nobody will take our words
for sixpence. A very fine spark this Esquire South! My husband
took him in, a dirty boy. It was the business of half the servants
to attend him.* The rogue did bawl and make such a noise:
sometimes he fell in the fire and burnt his face, sometimes broke
his shins clambering over the benches, and always came in so dirty,
as if he had been dragged through the kennel at a boarding-school.
He lost his money at chuck-farthing, shuffle-cap, and all-fours;
sold his books, pawned his linen, which we were always forced to
redeem. Then the whole generation of him are so in love with
bagpipes and puppet-shows! I wish you knew what my husband has paid
at the pastry-cook's and confectioner's for Naples biscuits, tarts,
custards, and sweetmeats. All this while my husband considered him
as a gentleman of a good family that had fallen into decay, gave him
good education, and has settled him in a good creditable way of
living--having procured him, by his interest, one of the best places
of the country. And what return, think you, does this fine
gentleman make us? he will hardly give me or my husband a good word,
or a civil expression. Instead of Sir and Madam (which, though I
say it, is our due), he calls us "goody " and "gaffer" such-a-one;
says he did us a great deal of honour to board with us; huffs and
dings at such a rate, because we will not spend the little we have
left to get him the title and estate of Lord Strutt; and then
forsooth, we shall have the honour to be his woollen-drapers.**
Besides, Esquire South will be Esquire South still; fickle, proud,
and ungrateful. If he behaves himself so when he depends on us for
his daily bread, can any man say what he will do when he is got
above the world?
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