THE MEMOIRS OF SIR JOHN RERESBY.*
SIR JOI1N RERESBY reminds us in several respects of Sir Geoffrey Peveril. Scott's worthy knight belongs, like Reresby, to the seventeenth century, both were staunch supporters of monarchy, both possessed a fiery temper, both were ready to fight upon the slightest provocation, and both were as familiar with the bottle as with the sword. Reresby, however, possessed more worldly wisdom than Peveril, and instead of being forced to mortgage his estate, managed nearly to double its value. Before Sir John died he was in affluent circumstances, but his possessions were but scanty when he commenced life as a married man :— " I came," he writes, "with my family to Thrybergh, where I found my house in a ruinous condition, and all the furniture removed to Beverley, where my stepfather had built a house, and lived with my mother ; except four beds, six dishes, six pair of sheets, some furniture for the kitchen, six silver spoons, a large silver salt (given use by Sir Francis Foljambe, my godfather), and some old heirlooms, some eight old pictures, and as many books, with very little more ; and with this stack I began the w Later on in the Memoirs, the old family house at Thrybergh was better furnished, for we read that one Christmas there were seldom less than four-score people dining under his roof every day, and some days many more. "On New Year's Day chiefly there dined above three hundred, so that whole sheep were roasted and served so up to feed them. For music, I had five violins, besides bag- pipes, drums, and trumpet." If Sir John Reresby gave sumptuous banquets, he was also the guest at many, and writes of being as well treated at York as in London itself ; and here is a remarkable description of a feast at Sheffield :— " I went with my wife and family to the Cutlers' Feast at Sheffield, with some neighbours ; I took with me the number of near thirty horse. The Master and Wardens, attended by an infinite crowd, met me at the entrance of the town, with music and hautboys. I alighted from my coach, and went afoot with the Master to the Hall, where we had an extraordinary dinner ; but this was at the charge of the Corporation of Cutlers. In the afternoon, the burgesses of the town invited me and all my company to a treat of I% ins at a tavern, where we were very well
entertained."
Those were days in which men of quality about the Court were The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ef Thrybergh, Bart., If P. for York, ku, 1634-1689. 'Written by Himself. Edited from the Original Manuscript by James J. Cart- wright, MA., Cantab. London: Longmans. 1875.
apt to seek rather than to avoid occasions for quarrel, and Sir John, like his father before him, was singularly hot-tempered and
pugnacious. He tells his doughty deeds with evident satisfaction, as an example doubtless to his children, for whose benefit the Memoirs- were written. Thus he relates how, on receiving some rude words from a Mr. Calverley, who denied him satisfaction for them, be cudgelled him in Holborn; how, because a certain lord "that had a fine woman to his wife" wished to leave Scarborough when the lady had a mind to stay longer, he went to ,a friend of his lordship's, and told him "that except my lord stayed some few days longer, I should look upon him as the reason of his going, and should expect reparation from him for that neglect ;" how, he fought with an Irishman in Hyde Park, and was forced to abscond for some weeks, for the seconds fighting also, one of them received a dangerous wound, and was not expected to recover ; how another time he quarrelled with a gentleman in the pit at the King's play- house; and how, after charging the juryat Rotherham, he quarrelled' with one of the justices, a favourer of Dissenters, and taking up a leaden standish, threw it at his face, "where the edge, lighting upon his cheek, cut it quite through." If Sir John was on all occasions willing to fight, he was also ready to drink whenever an opportunity occurred. Thus under one date he writes :—" I dined with the Earl of Feversham, where we made a more than usual debauch." To drink "smartly at table" was the common. fault of the age, as it was fifty years later, and the following in- stance of it on the part of the infamous Jeffreys reminds us of similar passages in Swift's Journal to Stella :— "My Lord Chancellor had like to have died at this time of a fit of the stone, which he brought upon himself by a great debauch of wino at Alderman Duncomb's, where he and my Lord Treasurer, with others, drank to that height, as 'twas whispered, that they stripped unto their shirts, and had not an accident prevented, would have got upon a sign- post to drink the King's health, which gave occasion of derision, not to say more of the matter."
Reresby held more than one honourable position. ,He was Governor of Burlington Fort and York Castle, he held the office of High Sheriff, he was a captain of Militia, and Member of Par- liament for Oldborough, and afterwards for the city of York. He was a great frequenter of the Court, and his account of Charles IL,. with whom he seems to have been on familiar terms, agrees with the impression of him we derive from other sources. "I was at the- King's couch6e," he writes ; "I wondered to see him so cheerful amongst so many troubles ; but it was not his nature to think- much, or to perplex himself." And dating from Newmarket, whither be had gone to see the races (like Pepys, Reresby lost no chance of amusement), he says :—" The King was so much pleased with the country, and so great a lover of the diversions. which that place did afford, that he let himself down from majesty to the very degree of a country gentleman. He mixed himself amongst the crowd, allowed every man to speak to him that pleased ; went a-hawking in the mornings, to cock-matches in, the afternoons (if there were no horse-races), and to plays in the evenings, acted in a barn, and by very ordinary Bartlemew-fair comedians." The ' troubles ' to which Sir John alludes were by no means insignificant, but they do not appear to have affectect the comfort of the easy-tempered monarch. In addition to other causes of anxiety, he lacked even money enough to pay the officers. of the Crown and the household. "Sir Robert Howard, one of the chief officers of the Exchequer, said in the House of Commons that there was not money sufficient for bread for the King's. family ; there were no stores in the magazines, either for' sea or land forces ; the garrisons all out of repair, the- platforms decayed, the cannon unmounted ; the Army divided, some for the Duke of York, others against him, and the officers. of State the same thing." The faults of the King are fre- quently mentioned by the knight, who observes that the Court was never in so debauched a condition, and doubts whether he ought to allow his son to become a page of honour ; but "I considered,!" he observes, "it would prove a better provision for him than I was otherwise able to make, and that, if he inclined to be ill, he find opportunities for it in all conditions, and so resolved) to place him there if I could." Sir John Reresby appears to have generally succeeded in persuading himself that whatever was ex- pedient was also best, and his worldly wisdom is exemplified in a passage in which he says he dined with the Lord Chancellor, and complimented him upon some civilities, and particularly for the King's kindness to him, which he attributed to his friendliness ; but he adds, "I was not very much persuaded he was my friend to that degree, but the way to make friends at Court is to pretend you think them so already." Reresby was not a man of high character, but he was honest and sincere, and under the difficult circumstances of that time displayed steadfastness and loyalty. The Memoirs throw no new light upon the history of the period, but they con- firm the data we already possess. Reresby belonged to the Church of England, and had no tolerance for the double-dealing of James, but, nevertheless, at the time of the Revolution, he remained loyal to the King, and as Governor of York did his best to serve him. He believed that the heavy grievances of the nation might be re- dressed by Parliament, that the King would yield at the "plain discovery that Popery could never now he settled in England," and that nothing ought,to be exacted from him by force. Events moved too rapidly to be delayed by arguments like these, and Reresby was forced to yield without being able even to strike a blow for the monarch under whom be held his authority. James had few friends, he says, in that part of Yorkshire where he lived, nor indeed in any part of the North of England ; yet in the spring of 1689 he writes," I heard my Lord Privy Seal say that as the nation now stood, if the King (James) were a Protestant he could not be kept out four months ; but my Lord Danby went further, for he said that if he would give the satisfactions in point of religion, which he might, it would be bard to resist him as he was ; I thought these things looked strangely (falling from so great men) of the times." Reresby was present in the Abbey at the Coronation of William and Mary, but died a month later, and as it would seem, somewhat suddenly.
The Memoirs are not written with any remarkable ability and cannot be compared in interest to the delightful gossip of Pepys. We venture even to think that Sir John must have been rather a dull man, and there are portions of his narrative the reader will be content to pass over with a hasty glance ; but the volume is of considerable value, not only because in relating the events of the period it confirms the statements of our ablest his- torians, but because we are able to gather from it incidentally a number of curious particulars illustrative of English social life in the seventeenth century.
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