The life of alderman Julian.

“I now revisited England, and was born at London. My father was one of the magistrates of that city. He had eleven children, of whom I was the eldest. He had great success in trade, and grew extremely rich, but the largeness of his family rendered it impossible for him to leave me a fortune sufficient to live well on independent of business. I was accordingly brought up to be a fishmonger, in which capacity I myself afterwards acquired very considerable wealth.

“The same disposition of mind which in princes is called ambition is in subjects named faction. To this temper I was greatly addicted from my youth. I was, while a boy, a great partisan of prince John’s against his brother Richard, during the latter’s absence in the holy war and in his captivity. I was no more than one-and-twenty when I first began to make political speeches in public, and to endeavor to foment disquietude and discontent in the city. As I was pretty well qualified for this office, by a great fluency of words, an harmonious accent, a graceful delivery, and above all an invincible assurance, I had soon acquired some reputation among the younger citizens, and some of the weaker and more inconsiderate of a riper age. This, cooperating with my own natural vanity, made me extravagantly proud and supercilious. I soon began to esteem myself a man of some consequence, and to overlook persons every way my superiors.

“The famous Robin Hood, and his companion Little John, at this time made a considerable figure in Yorkshire. I took upon me to write a letter to the former, in the name of the city, inviting him to come to London, where I assured him of very good reception, signifying to him my own great weight and consequence, and how much I had disposed the citizens in his favor. Whether he received this letter or no I am not certain; but he never gave me any answer to it.

“A little afterwards one William Fitz–Osborn, or, as he was nicknamed, William Long–Beard, began to make a figure in the city. He was a bold and an impudent fellow, and had raised himself to great popularity with the rabble, by pretending to espouse their cause against the rich. I took this man’s part, and made a public oration in his favor, setting him forth as a patriot, and one who had embarked in the cause of liberty: for which service he did not receive me with the acknowledgments I expected. However, as I thought I should easily gain the ascendant over this fellow, I continued still firm on his side, till the archbishop of Canterbury, with an armed force, put an end to his progress: for he was seized in Bowchurch, where he had taken refuge, and with nine of his accomplices hanged in chains.

“I escaped narrowly myself; for I was seized in the same church with the rest, and, as I had been very considerably engaged in the enterprise, the archbishop was inclined to make me an example; but my father’s merit, who had advanced a considerable sum to queen Eleanor towards the king’s ransom, preserved me.

“The consternation my danger had occasioned kept me some time quiet, and I applied myself very assiduously to my trade. I invented all manner of methods to enhance the price of fish, and made use of my utmost endeavors to engross as much of the business as possible in my own hands. By these means I acquired a substance which raised me to some little consequence in the city, but far from elevating me to that degree which I had formerly flattered myself with possessing at a time when I was totally insignificant; for, in a trading society, money must at least lay the foundation of all power and interest.

“But as it hath been remarked that the same ambition which sent Alexander into Asia brings the wrestler on the green; and as this same ambition is as incapable as quicksilver of lying still; so I, who was possessed perhaps of a share equal to what hath fired the blood of any of the heroes of antiquity, was no less restless and discontented with ease and quiet. My first endeavors were to make myself head of my company, which Richard I had just published, and soon afterwards I procured myself to be chosen alderman.

“Opposition is the only state which can give a subject an opportunity of exerting the disposition I was possessed of. Accordingly, king John was no sooner seated on his throne than I began to oppose his measures, whether right or wrong. It is true that monarch had faults enow. He was so abandoned to lust and luxury, that he addicted himself to the most extravagant excesses in both, while he indolently suffered the king of France to rob him of almost all his foreign dominions: my opposition therefore was justifiable enough, and if my motive from within had been as good as the occasion from without I should have had little to excuse; but, in truth, I sought nothing but my own preferment, by making myself formidable to the king, and then selling to him the interest of that party by whose means I had become so. Indeed, had the public good been my care, however zealously I might have opposed the beginning of his reign, I should not have scrupled to lend him my utmost assistance in this struggle between him and pope Innocent the third, in which he was so manifestly in the right; nor have suffered the insolence of that pope, and the power of the king of France, to have compelled him in the issue, basely to resign his crown into the hands of the former, and receive it ag............