the year ensuing, and
never imagined myself to be in danger, till this unexpected censure of
Mr. Palmer passed in the Star Chamber; so, having advised with my
friends, I resolved for a remove, being much troubled not only with my
separation from Recordes, but with my wife, being great with child,
fearing a winter journey might be dangerous to her."[242] He left
Islington and the records in the Tower to return to his country-seat, to
the great disturbance of his studies.

It is, perhaps, difficult to assign the cause of this marked anxiety of
the government for the severe restriction of the limits of the
metropolis, and the prosecution of the nobility and gentry to compel a
residence on their estates. Whatever were the motives, they were not
peculiar to the existing sovereign, but remained transmitted from
cabinet to cabinet, and were even renewed under Charles the Second. At a
time when the plague often broke out, a close and growing metropolis
might have been considered to be a great evil; a terror expressed by the
manuscript-writer before quoted, complaining of "this deluge of
building, that we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's
faces." The police of the metropolis was long imbecile, notwithstanding
their "strong watches and guards" set at times; and bodies of the idle
and the refractory often assumed some mysterious title, and were with
difficulty governed. We may conceive the state of the police, when
"London apprentices," growing in number and insolence, frequently made
attempts on Bridewell, or pulled down houses. One day the citizens, in
proving some ordnance, terrified the whole court of James the First with
a panic that there was "a rising in the city." It is possible that the
government might have been induced to pursue this singular conduct, for
I do not know that it can be paralleled, of pulling down new-built
houses by some principle of political economy which remains to be
explained, or ridiculed, by our modern adepts. It would hardly be
supposed that the present subject may be enlivened by a poem, the
elegance and freedom of which may even now be admired. It is a great
literary curiosity, and its length may be excused for several remarkable
points.

AN ODE,

BY SIR RICHARD FANSHAW,

_Upon Occasion of his Majesty's Proclamation in the Year 1630,
commanding the Gentry to reside upon their Estates in the Country._

Now war is all the world about,
And everywhere Erinnys rei