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 436 MRS. HUTCHINSON-STATE OF ENGLAND IN HER TIME. 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 have 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 co-operation, they became conscious of CHARACTER OF COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 437 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 regulated piety. It was upon this side, accordingly, that they were most liable to error: and the extravagancies 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. In the middle of the reign of Charles I. almost the whole nation was serious and devout. Any licence and excess which existed was mostly encouraged and patronised by the Royalists; who made it a point of duty to deride the sanctity and rigid morality of their opponents; and they again exaggerated, out of party hatred, the peculiarities by which they were most obviously distinguished from their antagonists. Thus mutually receding from each other, from feelings of general hostility, they were gradually led to realize the imputations of which they were reciprocally 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, |