The System of the World

Westminster Palace
9 JULY 1714

A Message from the Lords, by Mr. Holford and Mr. Lovibond:

Mr. Speaker,

We are commanded by the Lords to acquaint this House, That they, having this Day under their Examination Matters relating to the South Sea Company, which are of great Consequence to the Trade of this Kingdom, do desire that this House will give Leave to such Members of this House as are of the Committee of the South Sea Company for the Assiento; and William Lowndes Esquire; may have Leave to attend the House of Lords this Day.

And then the Messengers withdrew

Resolved, That this House doth give Leave to such Members…to go to the House of Lords, if they think fit.

And the Messengers were called in again, and Mr. Speaker acquainted them therewith.

Jovis, 8° die Julii;

Anno 13° Ann? Regin?, 1714

Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Lords, to desire, That they will direct the Painted Chamber, the Lobby, and the Passage to the House of Peers, to be cleared from any Crowd, when this House shall come up thither, by her Majesty’s Command, to attend her Majesty.

Ordered, That Mr. Campion do carry the said Message.

Ordered, That the Serjeant at Arms attending this House do clear the Lobby of this House, and Passage leading to the Painted Chamber, from the Persons therein, for the better Passage of this House to the House of Peers…

A Message from her Majesty, by Sir William Oldes, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod:

Mr. Speaker,

The Queen commands this honourable House to attend her Majesty in the House of Peers, immediately.

Accordingly, Mr. Speaker, with the House, went up to attend her Majesty, in the House of Peers: Where her Majesty was pleased to give the Royal Assent to several publick and private Bills:

After which her Majesty was pleased to make a most gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament:

And afterwards the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, by her Majesty’s Command, said

It is her Majesty’s Royal Will and Pleasure, That this Parliament be prorogued to Tuesday the Tenth Day of August next: And this Parliament is accordingly prorogued to Tuesday the Tenth Day of August next.

Veneris, 9° die Julii; Anno 13° Ann? Regin?, 1714

A PAIR OF RAVENSCAR’S strangely brawny aides had knocked Daniel up at Crane Court this morning, and bundled him into a sedan chair with such urgency that he could not discern whether he was being summoned or abducted. Encased in this box like a desiccated Specimen-a curious relic of the Cromwellian Epoch-he had been delivered up to Westminster’s Old Palace Yard, and ejected in front of Waghorn’s. A chap with a keen ear, if he’d sidled up close to Daniel about then, could have heard him muttering diverse outrageous calumnies and execrations against the Marquis of Ravenscar. For Daniel had been quite content at Crane Court with his pot of tea, one of Mrs. Arlanc’s pastries, and a stack of vile newspapers. This place was dirty, crowded, and riotous. Not with the merry riotousness of Hockley-in-the-Hole on the eve of a Hanging-Day, but the snitty, bitchy sort practiced by men who were animated by the same base passions but who had too much to lose by giving them free rein. Everyone was in a hurry save Daniel. Most were in a hurry to get inside. They hustled along at cross-purposes to a small but troublesome moiety who were trying to move laterally between Commons and Lords, using the Old Palace Yard as a short-cut to circumvent the galleries and chambers within-which, it could be inferred, were too crowded to permit movement. There were scattered outbreaks of courtesy. But the third time Daniel saw some outraged second-rate hanger-on reach, in a theatrical manner, for his sword, he concluded that the place was not merely unpleasant but dangerous. He turned on his heel and began to walk away. Once he broke free of the crowd he could be at the Kit-Cat Clubb in half an hour…but then this lovely phant’sy was shivered by the words: “Dr. Waterhouse! I feared I should never reach you! If you’d care to follow me, we have saved a place for you at Waghorn’s.”

Daniel knew the voice. He had forgotten the name; but no matter, the chap’s hairstyle was extremely memorable. He turned around expecting to see a young man coiffed as a Mohawk warrior. Alas, all he could make out were a lot of blokes in white periwigs. But one of them was staring right at him. If the wig were mentally subtracted, and the Mohawk added, the result was one of those young Whig gallants who were always prancing around on Roger-errands. Today’s errand: rescue the doddering Doctor, frogmarch him into the Palace.

In Waghorn’s, he sipped coffee and held a newspaper in front of his face, partly to read it, and partly as a barrier to conversation-for what he most dreaded was that the Mohawk had also been charged with keeping him company. Parliamentary babble surged and crashed about him like waves on rocks. They talked of everything save what was really going on. Mostly it was the Acts and Bills that had clogged their registers in recent weeks: Preventing the Growth of Schism (Bolingbroke’s pet bill), Finding the Longitude (Roger’s), the perennial issues of Woollen Manufacture, Quieting Corporations, endless Inclosures, and diverse Divorces, contested estates, and Insolvent Debtors; and what had come to be known as the Six R’s: Raising the Militia, Running Brandy, Reducing Interest, Revenues of Scotch Bishops, Restraining the Growth of Popery, and (awkwardly) laws Relating to Vagrants. It was all hogwash. Either that, or they were speaking in a substitution code wherein every Act mentioned was a veiled reference to its sponsor.

The smoke and babble became too much for him at about the same time that his bladder-never his strongest organ-began to complain of all the coffee. He dropped the paper to discover that his Mohawk had vanished on some other errand-perhaps called away to a raiding-party on the upper Hudson River. So Daniel went out and found a place he could urinate (which actually was easier than finding a place he couldn’t) and then took to strolling up and down the Painted Chamber and the Long Gallery. Consequently, he was swept up in the portentous series of room-clearings and gallery-evacuations ordered by Commons. Indeed, he was on the verge of being flushed clean off the Palace grounds when a different Mohawk found him, and escorted him, via circuitous back-passages, closets, and committee-rooms, into the House of Lords itself, and encouraged him to stand in Ravenscar’s cheering-section, and to act as if he belonged there.

This gave Daniel over to grave forebodings. He had seen Charles I’s head spurt and roll. He had attended Charles II almost to the moment of his death, fighting a bitter rear-guard action to keep the royal physicians at bay. He had watched, and been tempted to take part in, a tavern brawl that bloodied James II’s nose, and more or less signalled the end of his reign. Quite prudently, he had absented himself from the country during the deaths of William and of Mary. But now he was back, and they were bringing the Queen to him. If she chose this time and place to give up the ghost, would every wigged head in the room turn and look at him? Would they tear him limb from limb on the spot, or ship him downriver for a proper beheading at the Tower? Would it come out that he had lately been riding round town in a carriage with a certain foreign Princess who was here incognito and uninvited?

These and other broodings so preoccupied him that he scarce noted a sudden silence, and the entry into the House of a rather gaudy sedan chair. He (and, admittedly, as many others as could be packed into the room) was in the Presence! ’Twas a Historick Moment! Or, at least, the sort of moment so apt to be writ down in History-Books. Yet despite this-or perhaps because of it-Daniel was afflicted by a maddening inability to attend to it. His own broodings were of greater interest-a sign of unforgivable arrogance?

Other men seemed to’ve been blessed with the ability to live in the moment, and to have experiences (Daniel imagined) in the raw vivid way that animals did. But not he. How would the ceremony, the pageantry of the Queen’s visit to Parliament look, to one who could see them thus? Colorful, magnificent, mesmerizing, Daniel supposed. He’d never know. Daniel could only see this as a sick old lady paying a call on a room full of anxious blokes who hadn’t bathed in a while.