The Journal of Richard Bere1
In the course of a recent search amongst the Sloane MSS. at the British Museum for a document of an entirely different character I chanced upon a manuscript which, so far as I have been able to discover, has never yet been described in print or received the attention it appears to deserve. It is a long, narrow book like an account book, in the Sloane binding, containing 244 pages of cramped and crowded little writing in faded ink on rough paper, recording the daily—almost hourly—movements of a man for eleven years, from the 1st of January, 1692-3, to the middle of April, 1704. It is written in Spanish—Englishman’s Spanish, full of solecisms and English idioms, but fair and fluent Castilian for all that, and the diarist, thinking no doubt his secrets were safe in a language comparatively little known at the time, has set down for his own satisfaction alone, and often in words that no amount of editing would render fit for publication, the daily life of one of the dissolute men about town, who roistered and ruffled in the coffee-houses and taverns of London at the end of the seventeenth century. Few men could hope to possess the keen observation and diverting style of Samuel Pepys, or the sober judgment and foresight of stately John Evelyn, and this last contemporary diarist of theirs certainly cannot lay claim to any such qualities. He rarely records an impression or an opinion, and as a rule confines himself to a bald statement of his own movements and the people he meets day by day; but still, even such as it is, the diary is full of quaint and curious suggestions of the intimate life of a London widely different from ours. The familiar names of the streets, nay, the very signs of the taverns, are the same now as then, but in every line of the fading brown ink may be gathered hints of the vast chasm that separates the busy crowded life of to-day from the loitering deliberation with which these beaux in swords and high-piled periwigs sauntered through their tavern-haunting existence. It strikes the imagination, too, to think that the man who thus sets down so coarsely and frankly the acts of his life must have listened, with however little appreciation, to the luminous talk of wondrous John Dryden at Will’s coffee-house, most certainly knew the rising Mr. Addison, and probably met Matthew Prior at his old home at the “Rummer” tavern, which the diarist frequented.
There is nothing in the manuscript directly to identify the writer, and probably the indirect clues furnished by references to his relatives have never before been followed up to prove exactly who the author was. The task has not been an easy one, and has started me on more than one false scent ending in a check, but at last I stumbled on evidence that not only absolutely identified the diarist, but also explained many obscure passages in the manuscript.
From the first page to the last the writer refers to Danes Court, near Deal, as the home of his brother, and he himself passes the intervals of his dissolute life in London in visits to his Kentish kinsman. Now Danes Court had been for centuries in the possession of the ancient family of Fogge, and I at once concluded that the writer of my diary was a younger member of the house. Indeed, encouraged therein by Hasted, the great authority on Kentish history, I went so far as to establish to my own entire satisfaction that the diarist was a certain Captain Christopher Fogge, R.N., who died in 1708, and was buried in Rochester Cathedral, and I was confirmed in this belief by the fact that the wind and weather of each day is carefully recorded as in a sailor’s log-book. But somehow it did not fit in. Constant reference is made to a brother Francis, and no amount of patient investigation in county genealogies and baptismal certificates could unearth any one named Francis Fogge. So I had to hark back and try another clue. Brother Francis was evidently a clergyman and a graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, and towards the end of the diary the author visits him at the village of Prescot, near Liverpool.
Sure enough the rich living of Prescot was in the gift of King’s College, Cambridge, and further inquiry soon showed that a certain Francis Bere, M.A., was rector from 1700 until his death in 1722. This of itself was not much, but it led to further clues which proved the monumental Hasted (“History of Kent”) to be hopelessly wrong about the Fogge pedigree and the ownership of Danes Court at the time, and the whole question was settled more completely than I could have hoped by the discovery, in the “Transactions of the Kent Archæological Society for 1863,” of a copy of the copious memoranda in the old family Bible, written by the stout cavalier, Richard Fogge, and his son John, with the notes attached thereto by Warren, the Kentish antiquary in 1711, in which the family history is made clear. This was good as far as it went, and proved the surname and parentage of the author of the diary, but did not identify him personally. Certain references in the manuscript, however, sent me searching amongst the Treasury Papers in the Record Office, and there I found a set of papers written in the same cramped, finnicking hand as the diary, which set my mind at rest, and proved beyond doubt or question who was the methodical rake that indiscreetly confided the secret of his “goings on” to the incomplete oblivion of the Spanish tongue.
The writer of the diary was one Richard Bere, whose father was rector of Ickenham, near Uxbridge, and who was born at Cowley, near there, on the 28th of August, 1653. His sister Elizabeth had married in 1679 John Fogge, who subsequently succeeded to the Danes Court Estate, and, on the fly-leaf of the Fogge family Bible referred to, John Fogge, who was evidently proud of the connection, sets forth that his wife’s grandfather had been “Receiver General of ye Low Countries; her uncles, one of them was in a noble imploy in ye C Clarke’s office, ye other being one of ye clarkes of ye signet to King Charles II., a man acquainted with all Xtian languages. Ye other now alive is rector of Bendropp in Gloucestershire, who has an Estate. Her mother was one of ye family of Bland, of London, eminent merchants at Home and Abroad.” Richard Bere was born only a year after his sister, so that the statement as to her relatives will hold good for him also. He had been Collector of Customs at Carlisle, but apparently had allowed his Jacobite leanings to be too evident, and had been dismissed from his office a short time before he began the diary, leaving his accounts at Carlisle still unbalanced and in arrear. How he learnt Spanish I do not know, but he had evidently been in Spain before his appointment to Carlisle, probably in the navy, or in some way connected with shipping, as, in addition to the careful noting of the wind and weather all through the diary, he shows great interest in the naval events of his time. His uncle’s remarkable proficiency in “all Xtian tongues” may also perhaps partly explain his own knowledge of the Spanish language. His family in old times had been a wealthy and powerful one, seated at Gravesend, Dartford, and Greenhithe in Kent, but had lost its county importance long before the date of the diary. The widow of one of his uncles, however, still lived at Gravesend at the time he wrote, and one of his father’s sisters, who had married a man named Childs, also lived in the neighbourhood, and on her husband’s death went to live with her niece at Danes Court.
The diary commences on the 1st of January, 1692-3, when Bere was living at Mr. Downe’s in London, but the detailed entries begin on the 9th of the month, when he went by tilboat from Billingsgate to Gravesend. Here, after visiting his aunt Bere and his kinsman Childs at Northfleet, he slept at the inn, and started the next morning in a coach to Canterbury. The next day he continued his journey to Danes Court on a hired mare, and then after a few days rest, “without seeing anybody,” begins a round of visits and carouses with the neighbouring gentry. All the squires and their families for miles round march through the pages of the diary. Mr. Paramour, of Stratenborough; Mr. Boys, of Betshanger, “my uncle Boys,” who was probably Christopher Boys, of Updowne, uncle by marriage to John Fogge; “my uncle Pewry,” who was rector of Knowlton, but whose relationship with the diarist is not clearly discoverable; Mr. Burville, rector of the Fogge Church of Tilmanston, and a host of other neighbours come and go, dine and drink, often staying the night, and in a day or two entertain John Fogge and his brother-in-law in return. The latter records the fact, but unfortunately does no more, and little is gathered of the manner of their lives at this period of the diary, except that they did a prodigious deal of visiting and dining at each others’ houses. One of the most constant visitors to Danes Court is the aged Lady Monins, of Waldershare Park, the widow of the last baronet of the name, and Richard Bere appears to be as often her guest at Waldershare. The round of dining and visiting is broken in upon by a visit on horseback with brother John Fogge to the assizes at Maidstone, where the latter has a lawsuit which he loses, and Richard returns to Danes Court alone, leaving his defeated brother at Canterbury. On the 12th of April the diarist records that he first saw the swallows, and on the 20th, as instancing the uneventful life in this remote part of the country, it is considered worth while to register the fact that “whilst I was digging in the garden with Carlton a man passed on horseback.” A few days afterwards neighbour Carlton’s daughter is married, and then “my nephew Richard was first sent to school at Sandwich, Timothy Thomas being master.” Richard, the heir of Danes Court, was about twelve years old at the time, and, as we shall see later on, turned out badly and completed the ruin of the fine old family, of which he was the last male representative in the direct line. Timothy Thomas, who was a distinguished scholar and M.A. of Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, was headmaster of the Sandwich Free School and brother to the rector of St. Paul and St. Mary, Sandwich. He seems to have been always ready for a carouse at the hostelry of the “Three Kings” at Sandwich or elsewhere with the father or uncle of his pupil.
On the 28th of April “the fleet entered the Downs, the wind blowing a gale at the time. A ship called the Windsor was lost. I went to Deal to see the ships, and saw five ensigns.” Small details of ablutions—rare enough they seem nowadays—bed-warming, and quaint remedies for trifling ailments sound queerly enough to us coming faintly across the gloom of two centuries, but in the midst of the chronicles of this small beer of visits paid and received, of the stomach-ache, and so on, brother John receives a writ, and we feel that we are witnesses of the process by which all this feasting and revelry is completing the ruin of the ancient family that once owned broad lands and far manors all over Kent, which founded hospitals and colleges, and was closely allied to the regal Plantagenets, but whose possessions had even now shrunken to one poor mansion house of Danes Court and the few farms around it. John Fogge’s father, Richard, whose pompous Latin epitaph is still in Tilmanston Church, written by his eldest son, Edward, and scoffed at in the family Bible by the degenerate John, had been true to the King’s side during the civil war. His near neighbour, Sir John Boys of Betshanger, had hunted and harried the cavalier and sacked his house after the mad Kentish rising in 1648, and had frightened his favourite child to death, and for the whole of the Commonwealth period poor Richard had been plundered and well-nigh ruined. His sons Edward and John had been captured at sea by the Dutch, and Christopher had been taken prisoner by the Turks, and all three had had to be bought off with ransom. Stout old Richard Fogge therefore had left Danes Court sadly embarrassed at his death in 1680. His eldest son, Edward, died soon after, and John Fogge, the brother-in-law of our diarist, was rapidly continuing the ruin at the date of the diary. By the 30th of May Richard Bere had had enough of Danes Court, and started to Canterbury “with my brother’s horse and servant, and so to Northfleet, where I visited my kinsman Childs.” He mounted his horse at five o’clock in the morning and arrived at Northfleet at five in the evening, staying on the way only a short time at Canterbury to rest and drink with friend Best, at whose house he always alights when he passes through the ancient city. The distance by road is a good fifty-five miles, so Richard no doubt thought he had earned his night’s rest at Uncle Childs’ before starting, as he did next day, by tilboat to London. The first thing he did when he arrived was to “drink with Higgs” and send for Benson to meet him at Phillips’ mug-house. Benson appears to have been a humble friend or foster-brother, as Bere calls Benson’s father “my father Benson,” who went on all his errands, pawned his valuables, and faced his creditors. When Benson came they started out together and took a room, where they both slept, “at the sign of the ‘Crown,’ an inn in Holborne,” and the record thereafter for some time consists mainly of such entries as “Dined with Sindry at the ‘Crown,’ and drank with him all the afternoon and evening at Phillips’. Slept at Mrs. Ward’s;” “Dined with Dr. Stockton, Haddock, and Simpson at the ‘Pindar of Wakefield’;” “Dined at the sign of the ‘Castle,’ a tavern in Wood Street, with many friends from the North; drank there all the afternoon, and all night drinking with usual friends at Phillips’,” only that these daily entries usually wind up with the record of a debauch which need not be described, but which Richard does not hesitate to set down in such cold blood as his orgy has left him.
He appears to have had as a friend one Westmacott, who was a prison official, and a standing amusement was apparently to go and see the prisoners, who sometimes fall foul of Westmacott and his friend and abuse them. Richard also has a quaint way of drawing a miniature gallows in the margin of his manuscript on the days that he records the execution of malefactors. On the 15th of June, for instance, after giving his usual list of friends and taverns, he writes: “Seven men hanged to-day; fine and warm. Drinking at Phillips’ at night; Westmacott there again.” A day or two afterwards the bailiffs walk in during his dinner at the tavern and hale his boon companion, Pearce, off to jail; but Richard thinks little of it, for he goes off to drink straightway with Colonel Legge, and then passes a merry evening with Dr. Stockton and Mr. Rolfe at the sign of the “Ship,” near Charing Cross.
On the 29th of June “a new sword-belt, some woollen hose, and a rosette for my hat,” were bought; and soon after he leaves his lodgings at Mrs. Ward’s, and thenceforward seems to sleep in taverns or inns for some time, very often winding up the entries in the diary by confessing that he was “drunk” or “very drunk.”
On the 18th of July, 1693, he visits “the house of the Princess of Denmark with Mr. Wooton,” and thence goes to see a fashionable friend of his called Captain Orfeur, who had a fine house at Spring Gardens, where he meets his brother, and they all make a night of it at the “Ship.” By the beginning of August it is not surprising that he is ill, and decides to visit his brother Francis in the country. On the 3rd he takes horse to Biggleswade and thence to Oundle, “where I met my brother and Mr. Rosewell” (he was a fellow of “King’s,” and apparently a great friend of Francis Bere’s). “Dined at Caldwell’s, and slept at the sign of the ‘Dog.’”
He stays at the “Dog” at Oundle for some days, still ill, and visits Northampton, where he is struck with the curious church, town-hall, prison, and courts of justice, and slept at the “George.” From there he rides to the “Angel” at Wellingboro’, and so home to London by Dunstable, where he stays at the “Saracen’s Head,” Watford, Rickmansworth, and Uxbridge, where he puts up at the “Swan.” Being now well again, he recommences the old round of the “Horns,” the “Red Cow,” the “Mermaid,” the “Crown,” and so on, usually winding up with a roaring carouse at Phillips’, and occasionally relieved by trips to Islington-wells to walk in the fields with friend Stourton, who lives near there, and who later on becomes his inseparable companion. To illustrate the methodical character of this roistering blade, it is curious to note that, as he could not well carry his cumbrous diary with him on his journey to Oundle, he has made his daily entries on a small loose leaf and has afterwards carefully transcribed them in the book, the loose leaf, however, being also bound up with the rest. On the reverse side, in English, Richard has copied the following couplet of Lord Thomond’s, which seems to have struck him:—
“Whatever Traveller doth wicked ways intend,
The Devill entertains him at his journey’s end,”
and to this he adds several little remedies which some travelling companion seems to have told him on the road. He scrupulously records the fact that the day is his birthday on each succeeding 28th of August, and the occasion appears to be an excuse for a burst of deeper drinking than ever, but on this first birthday mentioned in the diary, 1693, he is evidently getting hard up. He lodges with a man named Nelson, who ceaselessly duns him for his rent, and we soon learn that the faithful Benson has pawned his two rings for eighteen shillings. On the 27th of September his friend Dr. Stockton tells him “that Mr. Addison told him that I lost my place because I was against the Government, and was foolish enough to talk about it, which,” says indignant Richard, “is a lie.”
It sounds curious nowadays to read that he and his friends, Westmacott and others, sometimes walk out in the fields to shoot with bows and arrows, and usually return thence to the “Hole-in-the-Wall” to pass the evening.
As a specimen of the entries at this period, I transcribe that for the 30th of September, 1693, at least so much of it as can well be published. “With Metham and Stourton to the City, and dined at the ‘Ship’ in Birchin Lane. Vickers there, and we went together to the Exchange and met Mr. Howard; with him to the ‘Fountain,’ Mr. Coxum there. At five o’clock went to Sir James Edwards’, and drank there two flasks of wine. Then to the ‘King’s Head,’ where I left them and went to Mr. Pearce’s house and received ten pounds. Found Stourton very drunk. Went and paid Jackson and Squires. Slept at Pearce’s—drunk myself.” With the ten pounds received from Mr. Pearce Richard seems to have set about renewing his wardrobe, and duly records the days upon which his various new garments are worn. On the 26th of October “Aspin, the tailor, brought my new white breeches in the morning, and we went out to drink at the ‘Bull’s Head’ in Mart Lane.” On the second of November he recites the names of six taverns at which he drank during the day, namely, the “Bull’s Head,” the “Red Cow,” the “Ship,” the “Horns,” the “Cheshire Cheese,” and the “Crown,” and on the 7th of the same month a dreadful thing happens to him. The constables walk off his dulcinea, Miss Nichols, to jail, and Richard is left to seek such consolation as he can find at the “Chequers,” the “Three Cranes,” and the “Sugar Loaf.” The next day he seeks out his friend Westmacott at the “King’s Head,” and is taken to the prison to see the incarcerated fair one. Whilst there he “meets the man who has done the mischief.” But he winds up at the “Sugar Loaf” in Whitefriars, and Phillips’ mug-house, and is carried home thence in a coach too much overcome by his grief and potations to walk. On the 14th, after several more visits to the prison, he bewails that he can do nothing for Nichols, and on visiting a Mrs. Hill, that kind matron tells him that his great friend, Dr. Stockton, had told her that “I had squandered all I had over a worthless wench, and thought now to live at the expense of my friends,” but the entry, unfortunately, winds up with the words: “Borrowed two pounds of Simons on my watch.”
After this Richard thinks that quiet Danes Court might suit him for a time, and starts the next day, the 15th of November, as before to Gravesend by the tilboat, and, after a duty visit to his relatives, stays two nights at the sign of the “Flushing,” and dines there merrily with “a clergyman named Sell and another good fellow from the North.” The same companions and others go with him in the coach to Canterbury, where he stays at the “Fleece,” gets gloriously drunk, and is cheated out of half-a-crown, and lies in bed until mid-day next morning, his niece, Jane Fogge, who lived with the Bests at Canterbury, coming to visit him before he was up. In the afternoon he continues his road more soberly to Danes Court on a hired horse, and the old round of visiting and feasting begins afresh. On the first of December he meets Parson Burville, of Tilmanston, and drinks Canary wine till he is drunk. On the 12th Captain Christopher Fogge meets his brother John at a friend’s house and they quarrel; Uncle Childs dies, the cat is drowned in the well, three East Indiamen captains dine at Danes Court, Ruggles’ wife is confined, and the daily small events of a remote village happen and are recorded much as they might happen to-day. Uncle Boys had a kinsman, presumably a brother, Captain Boys, R.N., who was Constable of Walmer Castle, where he lived. and Richard and his friends often go there to dine and visit the ships in the Downs. On the 26th of February, 1694, they all go to dinner on board the Cornwall, and “they gave us a salute of seven guns.” They all went back to the castle to sleep, and John Fogge made a bargain with his weak-witted younger brother William about Danes Court, presumably with regard to his reversionary interest or charge upon the property. But whatever it was it did not matter much, for William Fogge died soon after. On the 25th of March, after going to Betsanger church and to the rectory to see Thomas Boys, “Ruggles threw a poor boy out of the cart and seriously injured him,” and on the next day a curt entry says: “The poor lad died at nine o’clock this morning, and was buried in the evening,” but not a word about any enquiry or the punishment of the offending Ruggles.
But after five months Richard sighs again for the taverns of Fleet Street, and on the 4th of April, 1694, returns to London by the usual road by Canterbury and Gravesend, and again haunts the taverns and night-houses of the metropolis. He tries hard to borrow money from his friends, and is evidently getting anxious about his Customs accounts left in arrear at Carlisle. He is a pretty constant visitor to Whitehall about a certain petition of his, which petition, although he often mentions it in his diary, he of course does not describe or explain in a document written for his own eye alone. I have, however, been fortunate enough to find the actual document itself in the Treasury Papers at the Record Office, with all the voluminous reports and consultations founded upon it during the seven years it lingered in the Government offices. It appears that in August, 1689, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Secretary of State, had addressed a letter (the original of which is attached to Richard Bere’s petition) to the Mayor or Collector of Customs of Carlisle, directing them to provide for the maintenance of certain “papist Irish soldier prisoners” who were to be kept in the castle there. The mayor refused to find the money, and Richard Bere, as Collector of Customs, had to do so, expecting to be reimbursed out of the Secret Service Fund, as provided by the Secretary of State. The prisoners were kept at Carlisle until December, 1690, and Richard spent £74 4s. on their maintenance. He was soon after suddenly dismissed from his post, and was unable to balance his accounts for want of this money, and shortly before beginning the diary had presented his petition to the Lords of the Treasury for the reimbursement of the sum, or at least that it should be handed to the Receiver-General of Customs on his account. But whilst the petition was lying in the pigeon-holes in one office, another office was only conscious that Richard was behindhand in his accounts, and on the 11th of May, 1694, there is an entry as follows in the diary: “Alone to dine at the ‘Spotted Bull.’ Then to Phillips’, where one Petitt told me about the tolls of Carlisle, and said that the bailiffs from Appleby had a warrant to arrest me.” Richard did not wait long for the bailiffs, and in less than a week had signed and sealed a bond, apparently for borrowed money to settle his toll accounts, bought a horse and a Bible, had gone to Westminster Hall “about his brother’s affairs,” and started off for Carlisle. He rode through Oundle, where the Rev. Francis Bere appeared still to be living, and so by Stamford, Grantham, Newark, Doncaster, Ferrybridge, and Appleby to Carlisle. Two days before he arrived at the city some choice spirits came out to meet him, and a host of friends received him with open arms after his ten days’ ride. He dines fourteen times with Dick Jackson, drinks often and deeply with the Mayor of Carlisle, collects money owing to him, buys a fine new periwig of Ned Haines, and a new sword, settles up his accounts of tolls, and begs a holiday for the schoolboys, whom he treats all round, and winds up in a burst of jubilation by receiving a present of two kegs of brandy from his friend Bell, which had not paid much to the King probably, and of which, no doubt, the late Collector and his jovial companions gave a very good account. And then, after a six weeks’ stay at Carlisle, he wends his way back to London again by the same road, his horse falling lame at Stamford, and the rider having to post from Grantham to Ware, and thence to London by coach. He alights at the “Bell,” in Bishopsgate Street, where Benson soon seeks him with fresh clothes and a sedan chair, and takes him to his old quarter of London again.
But poor Richard’s prosperity is of short duration. The borrowed money soon comes to an end, with the able and constant assistance of a certain Catherine Wilson, who has now supplanted the vanished Nichols, and by the beginning of September, 1694, Benson is taking one article after the other to the pawnshop, and bringing back sums which Richard regards as very unsatisfactory in amount. On the 6th of that month he attends what must have been rather a curious marriage at the church of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, where one of Catherine Wilson’s companions, named Early, was married “to a young man named James Carlile, between nine and ten in the morning.” The whole of the party adjourn to the fields, and at one o’clock return to drink at the “Feathers” in Holborn, “but the knavish constables disturbed us and we went to Whitefriars; at two I went to seek Benson, but he could only bring me 5s. on my pistols.” With this sum Richard finds his way back to Whitefriars, where he remained drinking till evening with the “newly married pair, Catherine Wilson, a gentleman and his wife, and a marine.” He then attends a coffee-house, and winds up with a carouse at the “Rising Sun.” The unfortunate bridegroom soon disappears from the diary, but the “bride” takes part in the drinking bouts for some time to come. By the middle of October Richard has apparently come to the end of his tether, and, after borrowing a halfcrown on his knives, quarrels with and separates for a time from Catherine Wilson; but brother Francis and sister Fogge are appealed to for money, and when it arrives Catherine is to the fore again. A great scheme is hatched about this time with a Captain Sales and Mr. Butler, apparently relating to the tobacco duties, and the Commissioners of Customs and other officials are being constantly petitioned and visited. Sometimes the tobacco business is considered hopeful, and sometimes the contrary, but on the 7th of January, 1695, it looks very bright when the Lords of the Treasury and the Commissioners of Customs sitting together at Whitehall receive Richard and his two friends, who lay the case before them, but “Mr. Culliford spoke against us,” and nothing was decided, so the trio and others who joined them go to the “Rummer” tavern at Charing Cross, and drink confusion to Mr. Culliford. A day or two days after this “a knave came to betray me to the bailiffs,” and poor Richard and his friend Sales seek the shady retreat of a tavern in Fulwood’s Rents. For the next few days he dodges the bailiffs from tavern to tavern, and sleeps at Bell Court, Whitefriars, and elsewhere. The “knavish” bailiffs even follow friend Sales in the hope of tracking Richard. On the 14th of January the faithful Benson brings his clothes to the new lodging in Whitefriars, and Richard ventures out “to the ‘Anchor’ in Coleman Street, about the business of Andrew Lloyd and the widow. Then the ‘St. John the Baptist’s Head’ in Milk Street, where I found Butler meeting the citizens about the tobacco business.” A few days after, the business of “Andrew Lloyd and the widow” is settled somehow at the “Mermaid” in Ram Alley, and on the 26th Benson pawns all Richard’s silver for £5 7s., and Richard slips out of Whitefriars at night, sleeps at the “Star,” and escapes to the quiet of Danes Court, where the bailiffs cease from troubling and the spendthrift is at rest.
On the 2nd of February, 1695, scapegrace little nephew Dick Fogge comes home with a story that the small-pox had appeared at the school at Sandwich, “but it is all a lie,” and the youngster is led back ignominiously the next day by his father and Tim Thomas the schoolmaster, and when John Fogge returns to Danes Court he brings news that the French are capturing English boats in the Channel. Richard is still uneasy in his mind, for on the 15th of February he dreams that the bailiffs have caught him at last, and soon afterwards begins seriously to put his Customs accounts in order. Then early in April he starts for London again, but as soon as he was on board the tilboat at Gravesend he caught sight of a bailiff ashore seeking him. It takes four hours to reach London, and the city is in a turmoil, for during the night “the mob knocked down a house in Holborn.” He takes a room at the “Green Dragon” for a day or two, and the next night the mob burn down two houses in the Coal Yard, Drury Lane. A false friend named Fowler accompanies him in his search for lodgings, which he eventually takes at the house of a cheese-monger named Tilley in Fetter Lane, and also goes with him to the Custom House “about my accounts,” and then on the 13th of April, after carousing with him half the day, “the hound betrayed me to the bailiffs,” and poor Richard is caught at last. He is at once haled off to a spunging-house, called the “King’s Head,” in Wood Street, and the first thing the prisoner does is, of course, to send for Benson, who comes with Sales and other friends, and they have a jovial dinner of veal with the keeper. The next day Benson brings some money, and Richard holds a perfect levee of friends. Some of them go off to soften the creditors, in which they fail, and other to apply for a writ of habeas corpus. A good deal of dining goes on at the spunging-house, but on the 16th the carouse is cut short by the removal of Richard to the Fleet. He has a good deal of liberty, however, for he still occasionally haunts the taverns in Fleet Street, probably within the “rules” of the prison or under the ward of a keeper. Brother Francis is appealed to daily by letter, and pending his reply all the old boon companions come in and out of the prison, dine there, drink there, and get drunk in the vaults, Benson and Catherine Wilson coming every day with clothes, books, and comfort. At the end of the month of May the parson brother, Francis, arrives, and after a month of negotiation at the Custom House and the law courts, and much drinking and dining as usual, a bond is signed and sealed at the “Three Tuns” tavern, “Sales standing my friend,” and Richard Bere is free again.
But imprudent Richard, after a sharp fit of the gout, soon falls into his old habits again, and on the 6th of September confesses that he got into a row at the “Dog” Tavern in Drury Lane “about drinking the Prince of Wales’ health,” an indiscreet thing enough considering that his Custom House accounts were still unsettled, and his own petition to the Treasury unanswered. On the 1st of July, whilst he and his friend Sales are dining at the “Crown,” the constables walk Sales off to prison, “and then go to the ‘Globe’ Tavern and arrest his landlady, and Andrew Lloyd the author.” And so the diary goes on; his accounts still unpaid, but Richard full of the tobacco business, with petitions to the King and interviews with Treasury officials. Then there is some great Irish wool scheme, which necessitates much dancing attendance on the Duke of Ormond, but does not seem to result in much. His boon companions evidently do not think much of his chance of recovering anything from the Treasury, for “they made me promise B. Skynner a new wig if ever I received my £74 4s. on the King’s order.”
However much Richard may drink, he is frugal enough in his eating, for from this period to the end of the diary he constantly records that for days together he has eaten nothing but a little bread and cheese, and the “one poor halfpennyworth of bread to all this intolerable amount of sack” is as applicable to Richard Bere as it was to the fat knight. And he needs to be sparing in his expenditure, for he is poor enough just now, notwithstanding his drinkings with the Duke of Richmond’s steward, with Stourton at the “Rose” in Pall Mall, and his visits to Lord James Howard in Oxenden Street, for he is reduced to pawning his new lace ruffles for six shillings, and Benson could borrow nothing on his new wig, for which he had just paid (or not paid) thirty-five shillings to Rolfe, the barber. But Benson pawns his linen for ten shillings and brother Francis sends funds, so after borrowing nine shillings and sixpence on “my Bezoar stone,” and going to the Temple to receive “my pension” Richard starts on the 1st of September, 1696, by hoy for Sandwich. The voyage is long and tedious, the weather being bad, but after a day and a night at sea they drop anchor, and Richard solaces himself with punch and good fellowship at the “Three Kings” at Sandwich.
On his arrival at Danes Court “John gives me a bad account of my nephew Richard, who went back to school to-day.” But John certainly does not set his son a good example, for he soon breaks out himself, and on the 21st of October, “after dining with my aunt,” threatens to cut his wife’s throat. For months after this the diary constantly records that “John came home raving drunk”; “John from Sandwich to-day, very violent”; “John mad drunk all day”; “to Tilmaston Church twice, John there reiving drunk,” and so on. On Christmas Day, 1696, Richard, who as befits a parson’s son, is all through an indefatigable church-goer, takes the Sacrament at Tilmanston Church, as he generally does on special days, John through all the Christmastide remaining drunk as usual. On the 18th of January, 1697, he gives his wife a black eye, and the next day it is Richard’s turn, and he goes on a great drinking bout with Captain Whiston, and “got drunk and lost my white mare,” whereupon the immaculate “John is very angry with me.” On the 10th of February nephew Richard runs away from school again, and gets soundly whipped by his father, who remains drunk all the month. On the 15th of March tidings comes to Danes Court that the master has been lodged in Dover jail, and his wife and her brother start off next morning to find him. He has escaped somehow, and gets back to Danes Court mad drunk just as his household are returning from afternoon service at Tilmanston Church. This goes on all March, and on the 26th John borrows money from an attorney named Lynch, and seals a bond at Danes Court conveying all his goods to the lender as security, “being rabid drunk at the time.” A few days afterwards “the bailiffs nearly took John, but he escaped by the quickness of his mare.” Echoes of more important events occasionally reach Danes Court. On the 6th of April, 1697, news comes that the French have taken Jamaica, and that they have captured a merchant fleet and convoys off Bilbao. Soon after we hear of “French pirates infesting the Downs, and they had taken two of our ships,” but the domestic troubles of the old Kentish manor house occupy most of the diary at this period; incorrigible young Richard runs away from school again and cannot be found for days; with some difficulty drunken John’s accounts with Hill and Dilnot, of Sandwich, are arranged, but on the 24th of April he is lodged in jail at Canterbury on another suit, and is only released by more borrowing from Lynch, and at once goes back to his drunken career again. An entry on the 29th of April, 1697, gives another inkling of Richard’s Jacobite leanings. “Walking to Eythorne I met Petitt the parson and Captain March. We drank together and went to Walker’s, where a Mr. Kelly defended the bad opinion that it was lawful for people to rise against the King if he violated his coronation oath.”
All through May John Fogge continued drunk, and one day falling foul of his brother-in-law, calls him a scurvy knave, and threatens to kick him out of his house. So Richard, having worn out his welcome at Danes Court, starts for town again, taking with him nephew Dick, who has just run away from school once more for the last time.
He lodges henceforward at Stokes’ in Short’s Gardens, and pays ten shillings a month for his room. Every morning two or three taverns are visited with Stourton, Churchill, and others, where unfortunately they are sometimes imprudent enough to drink deep to the health of King James. Metheglin and mum are occasional drinks, but brandy the most usual, and black puddings seem a favourite dish for dinner. On the 19th of October, 1697, peace is proclaimed with France, and on the 16th of the following month the King enters the City in state, and on the 2nd of December the peace rejoicings were crowned by a great display of fire-works, and a banquet given by the Earl of Romney to the King. Richard’s petition after five years’ waiting is favourably reported upon by the Commissioners of Customs, and during all the winter he haunts Whitehall and the ante-room of Lord Coningsby to get the recommendation carried out by the Treasury. But one obstacle after the other is raised, the papers are sent backwards and forwards, and it is fully two years longer before Richard at last receives his money. On the 2nd of December, 1697, he records the consecration of St. Paul’s, and on the 15th of February, 1698, he attends his first service in the Cathedral, “from thence to the Temple Church, and so to the ‘Trumpet,’ where I supped on black puddings and cheese. Home at eight, when my landlady besought me to pay the rent.” On the 18th of April he sees Prince George, and on the 16th of May visits the ship Providence from New England, and thence to the “Dolphin” tavern until three in the morning. On the 9th of June, apparently fired by the example of some of the wits he meets in the coffee-houses of Covent Garden, or in his favourite promenade at Gray’s Inn Gardens, he records the fact that he wrote some satirical verses. The next day a fine new suit of clothes comes home, and he dons them with great pride. But alas! a sad thing happens. Drinking at the “Sun” with his friends, some of the latter “threw some beer over my fine garments,” much to Richard’s disgust. The quaint little gallowses on the margin are pretty frequent now, and the names of the wretches who are hanged are often given. On the 29th of June, 1698, Richard visits the Duke of Norfolk at St. James’s House with his friends Stourton and Orfeur. “Thence to St. James’s Park, to see a race between youths, where I met Churchill.”
Richard becomes certainly more respectable as he gets older, and beyond a slight flirtation with his landlady, Mrs. Stokes, of Short’s Gardens, we hear little of his gallantries henceforward. He is certainly more prosperous, too, in some mysterious way, owing to a voyage he makes, apparently in an official capacity, from Gosport to Flanders, for which a sum of ninety-five guineas is handed to him. He says nothing of his adventures in Flanders, where, however, he only lands at Ostend for a few days from his ship the Good Hope. The voyage, however, is evidently an important one for him, as he has spoken of it on and off for many months, and takes a special journey to Cambridge to see brother Francis before setting out. On the 19th of October, 1698, he anchors in Dover Roads on his return, and goes thence to Danes Court, where he stays over Christmas, and returns to London in January, 1699. His friend Churchill has now taken the Treasury matter in hand, and after many months of hope deferred Richard Bere gets his £74 4s. at last in October. But Churchill wanted paying, and on the morrow of the payment “Churchill came to me drunk, and quarrelled with me because I would not give him the money he wanted.” I suspect the money was all spent long ago, for Richard has often enough gone into the City to borrow five or ten pounds “on the King’s order.” He is very methodical about money matters, too, for all his apparent improvidence. He has a boon companion named Henry Johnson, who during the autumn and winter of 1699 drank mainly at his expense. Every penny thus spent is noted against the date in the diary, and a neat account of the whole. headed “Expenditure on account of Henry Johnson,” is bound up with the diary. From this it appears that Johnson consumed over seven pounds’ worth of brandy at various taverns with Richard in about five months. On the 27th of January, 1700, Richard again visits the Duke of Norfolk; but it is rather a falling off to be told that he goes straight from the Duke’s to eat black puddings at Smith’s. In July of the same year he goes to see a witch called Anna Wilkes, a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and the same day he learns in the Tilt Yard that his boon companion Stourton is made Deputy-Governor of Windsor. On the 30th of July the young Duke of Gloucester dies, and one day next week Richard, after drinking punch with Mr. Van Dyk, tries to see the body of the young prince at the lying-in-state, but fails. His brother Francis is in town about the firstfruits and fees of his new fat living of Prescot, and Richard is his surety for £48 1s. 5d. to the King, and when Francis has got comfortably settled in his new rectory in July, 1701, Richard takes the ship Providence for Liverpool to visit him. They take a fortnight to get there; and when he arrives a gentleman comes on board and announces that brother Francis has married his (the gentleman’s) sister, whereupon Richard is much surprised, and promptly borrows some money from his new connection. There are high jinks at Prescot, and Richard is in his element. He dines and carouses with everybody, from his brother’s glebe-tenants to the Earl of Derby at Knowsley, gets drunk constantly, breaks his nose, loses his horse and money, quarrels in his cups with a good many of his friends, toasts King James III., and enjoys himself greatly. It is to be noted that his brother’s curate generally shaved him during his stay. On the 13th of June 1702, King William’s death is recorded, and soon after the diarist returns to London by road, taking up his quarters at Stokes’, Short’s Gardens, again. In the autumn he goes to Danes Court, where John Fogge is still usually drunk; and in October of that year a most important thing happens to Richard Bere. On the 23rd of that month he visits the aged Lady Monins at Waldershare, the next mansion to Danes Court. His sister, Mrs. Fogge, is with him; and staying with Lady Monins is a certain Lucy Boys, presumably a daughter of Captain Boys, the Constable of Walmer Castle. After dinner Richard, who was then forty-nine years of age, whispered soft words of love to this young lady, and the next day he records the fact that he sent her a tender love letter. The maiden, nothing loath, sends him an answer next day, and a few days afterwards comes herself to visit Mrs. Fogge at Danes Court. Of course Richard improves the occasion, and, as he says, “makes love again.” For the next week a lively interchange of notes takes place between Danes Court and Waldershare; and on the 8th of November Lucy Boys thinks it time to go home to Walmer Castle. It is not quite in the direct road, but she called to say good-bye to Mrs. Fogge at Danes Court, and, of course, Mr. Richard Bere thought well to go in the coach with her to Walmer. “We pledged,” he says, “to marry each other, and solemnly promised to marry no one else.” On the 16th of December he again goes to Waldershare, and they again renew their pledge, and Lady Monins promised all her influence with her grandson-in-law, the great Earl Poulet, to forward Richard’s fortunes. Early in January, 1703, Richard speeds to London with a letter from Lucy Boys to Lord Poulet in his pocket. The peer welcomes him warmly, promises him great things at the Treasury and elsewhere, and loving letters still speed backward and forward between London and Walmer. Richard is constant at Lord Poulet’s levees, and at last, on the 25th of March, 1703, Richard is introduced to the all-powerful Lord Godolphin, who promises him a good office, upon strength of which he “borrows another £5 of Gawler.”
But Richard complains of lameness on the very day that he saw Godolphin, and the next entry in the diary is carefully traced with a trembling hand at the bottom of the page nearly three months afterwards. Richard had fallen ill of gout, fever, and rheumatism, and had not left the room for ten weeks, “attended by Mr. Sheppery of Drury Lane, my surgeon Mr. Williams, and my housekeeper Mrs. Cockman.” In July he was well enough to go to Danes Court, and on the 11th of August visited Waldershare with his sister. There, walking in the grotto, he again pledged his troth to Lucy Boys. On the 2nd of September Lucy Boys came to dine at Danes Court, and the vows were repeated. On this occasion Miss Boys showed her sincerity by handing to Richard “95 guineas, one pistole, and six shillings in silver,” presumably for investment or expenditure on fitting up a home. Soon afterwards Lord Poulet came and took his wife’s grandmother away on a visit to Hinton, where she died in six weeks. Richard Bere returns to London a happy man, but in a few weeks his lady love herself comes on a visit to Lord Poulet, and then, on the 20th of November, a great change comes over the tone of the entries. “The strumpet Boys came to London. I saw her at Lord Poulet’s and gave her five guineas, besides five guineas I gave her on the 26th to go to the Exchange, five guineas more I paid on her account at Mr. Stow’s, and another ten pounds on account of the slut.” Another entry on the 30th is still more disheartening. “I went to see the slut Boys at Lord Poulet’s, and the baggage denied ever having promised to marry me at all, and now she has gone and married a stuttering parson called Woodward.” Then Lord Poulet said he had never promised to do anything for him, and “treated me vilely,” and the whole romance was ended.
At this time there are two entries in English as follows: “November 27, 1703. From 12 o’clock in ye morning till 7 was ye most violent storm of wind yt ever was known in England, and ye damage done at land and sea not to be estimated.”
“On ye 15th, 16th, and 17th of January, 1703-4, was a very violent storm, which forced back ye fleet bound to Lisbon wth ye Archduke Charles, under Rooke, separating them, and did a great deale of damage.”
In March, 1704, Richard is evidently making great preparations for another sea voyage. He often visits Bear Quay, and is much in the City. Trunks and new clothes seem to be brought now without much difficulty, and Benson’s services are not apparently so needful for raising the wind. Richard’s friend, old Mrs. Feltham, who keeps a shop in the Exchange, invites him to come and see her and drink-mum, in order to ask him about making her son purser. Richard seems also to have quite a friendly correspondence with the “stuttering parson Woodward,” and one is tempted to believe that Lord Poulet may after all have done something for the jilted lover. Richard’s circumstances must be a good deal changed, for he can afford to leave twenty guineas with T. Bell to keep for him when he departs for Danes Court, after a merry dinner at the “Blue Posts” in the Haymarket (which he quaintly translates as “los Postes ceruleos en la Feria de feno”) with Churchill and others. On the 23rd of March, 1704, he starts for Danes Court, and there the usual life of visiting and feasting is recommenced. On the 11th of April, 1704, there is an entry to the effect that he went to visit Lady Barret, and wrote to Mr. Woodward, and then the curtain drops and all is darkness, which swallows up Richard Bere and all his friends for ever. Where he went and what became of him I have been unable to discover, and the transient gleam thrown across his trivial history by his own folly, in writing down his most secret actions in a language known to many, will in all probability be the only light ever thrown upon his life. John Fogge died soon after, but his widow, Richard Bere’s sister, lived at Danes Court in straitened circumstances for many years after. Warren, the antiquary, writing in 1711 (Fausett MS. Kent Archæological Society), deplores that the once fine estate was reduced even then to about fifty pounds a year only, and says that it was uncertain whether any male heir was living—thus soon had scapegrace nephew Dick drifted away from his friends. Warren says that he had been last heard of at Lisbon some years before, but on his mother’s death he turned up a common sailor, sold Danes Court to the Harveys in 1724, married a certain Elizabeth Rickasie, a sister of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at Sandwich, and died on board the fleet at Gibraltar in 1740, leaving, says Hasted, an only daughter, married to a poor shepherd named Cock, and living in a lowly hovel near the manor house of which her ancestors had for centuries been masters.
Notes
1 The Gentleman’s Magazine, November, 1891.