No More Learning

Schelling's The Queen's Progress and other Elizabethan Sketches, p. 249.
3 Cf. post, vol. VI, chap. xiv, and see as to the replies and retorts to Prynne's
Histrio-Mastix, Ward, vol. 11, p. 275 note.


## p. 344 (#368) ############################################

344 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
period under survey, their own protestantism, where it obtrudes
itself with unmistakable intention, still wears a militant and
aggressive aspect, and is of the demonstrative anti-papist and
anti-Jesuit variety"; this character it exhibits even in later times,
on occasions when there was a sudden revival of the old dread of
the machinations of Rome in association with the designs of Spain
Nothing is more notable in Shakespeare than his detachment, even
in a play which, like King Henry VIII, brought him into near
contact with it, from this kind of popular current of feeling;
though, on the other hand, nothing could be more futile than to
seek in his plays for signs of a positive leaning towards the church
of Rome, such as, in different ways and degrees, is shown by
Chapman, Massinger and Shirley.
But, to go back for a moment to the days when Elizabeth's
personal fate hung in the balance, together with the political
independence of the nation which she ruled and the form of faith
for which she stood. Both the queen and her counsellors long
shrank from hastening the decision, and, for herself, it was part of
her statecraft that she could never be induced to choose her side
till she was quite certain of the support of the nation. When,
in 1568—the year in which Alva set foot in the Low Countries in
order to reduce their population to submission-Mary queen of
Scots had taken refuge on English soil, the struggle for the English
throne really became inevitable; but it was not till nineteen years
later, when the head of the prisoner was laid on the block, and
Philip. of Spain had become the inheritor of her claims, that
Elizabeth finally took up the challenge. That interval of time
had witnessed the launching of the papal bull excommunicating
Elizabeth; the massacre which, whether or not she would acknow-
ledge it, had cut through her alliance with France; the invasion
of Ireland ; the participation by English volunteers in the rising
of the Netherlands, of which, at a later date, the queen formally
1 For a brief survey of plays displaying this spirit or colour, see Creizenach, vol. IV,
parti, pp. 115–6. They extend from The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, and
Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, to Samuel Rowley's When you see me, You know me and
Thomas Heywood's If you know not me, etc. , and include several of the works of Munday,
2 So, in the instance of the wave of public excitement marked by Middleton's A
Game at Chesse, and its anti-Jesuit polemics.
3 Cf. Creizenach, u. s. pp. 116—7, where it is justly observed that Jonson's tem.
porary conversion had no perceptible influence on him as a writer.
4 Whether one of these, George Gascoigne, who, in more ways than one, is prominent
in the early history of the English drama, was the author of the prose tract The Spoyle
of Antwerp, on which was founded the play, A Larum for London or The Siedge of
Antwerpe, printed in 1602, is more than doubtful. R. Simpson thought Shakespeare's
hand visible in the play.


## p. 345 (#369) ############################################

The New Generation of Elizabethans 345
assumed the protection; the Jesuit missions for the conversion
of England, and the executions of priests and seminarists; the
legalisation of the Association for the protection of the queen's
person; Parry's plot”; the expedition of Drake, this time with the
queen's permission, into the Spanish main ; and the maturing of
the Babyngton conspiracy, nursed by Walsingham with remorse-
less craft into the proportions which it bore in the final proceedings
against Mary. Her execution was the signal for the formal
declaration of a rupture which had long yawned wide. In 1588,
the Armada sailed, and was dissipated %.
In these years of suspense, preparation and contest, there
had grown into manhood the generation which included the
statesmen, soldiers and sailors, and various types of adventurers
declining to be classified, who came to the front in the later
years of the reign of queen Elizabeth. It was a new England on
which she looked-full of men eager for glory as well as for gain,
self-confident as well as self-seeking, ready to plunder the wealth
of the Spanish coast and to go shares with the Dutch in appro-
priating the profits of the trade of the far east. And the character
of the leaders seemed to have changed as the outlook of the country
had become more ambitious and impatient. Burghley, indeed, who
survived till 1598, was followed in his chief offices (sooner or later)
by his son, a lesser man than himself, but one who proved able,
before long, to command the confidence not only of the queen but
of her probable successor. Walsingham, a puritan at hearts, but
(like the greatest of the parliamentary puritans of a later genera-
tion, Pym) not afraid of plunging his foot into the maze of court
intrigues, passed away in 1590; and another partisan and affecter
of puritanism“, Leicester, the people's 'violent hate,' if he was the
queen’s chosen companion, died two years earlier, on the very
morrow of the great victory. The men to whom, together with the
indispensable Robert Cecil, the queen granted her confidence in
her declining years, or on whom, when that confidence was but
imperfectly given, she bestowed at least the waning sunshine of her
* Commemorated on the stage by John Dekker and Thomas Heywood.
2 It is certainly curious that, as Creizenach notes, the name of Drake should not
occur in any contemporary play, and that (with the exception of an allusion in Lyly's
Midas, and the treatment of the subject, such as it is, in Heywood's If you know not me)
the references to the Armada in the Elizabethan drama should be few and slight.
3 Walsingham appears to have been, if not a friend of the theatre, at least fair.
minded in his treatment of actors and plays. See post, vol. vi, chap. XIV; and cf. the
reference to Harington ap. Creizenach, vol. rv, part 1, p. 39.
* 'I never yet,' writes Sir Robert Naunton, . saw a stile or phrase more seemingly
religious' (than Leicester's). (Fragmenta Regalia. )
6


## p. 346 (#370) ############################################

346 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
smiles, were true children of their age. Instead of circumspectly
and silently choosing their path between dangers on the right and
on the left, they pressed forward in the race for honour and wealth
'outspoken and turbulent, overflowing with life and energy? '
Of these men, by far the most conspicuous was Essex, whom
his kinsman Leicester, disquieted by the fear of being supplanted
by some stranger, had introduced into the royal presence.
Although Essex could hardly be said to have been born to
greatness, and certainly in no sense achieved it, the peripeteia
of his fate was tragic, and was recognised as such by more than
one English dramatic poet? Undoubtedly, there was much in the
generous character and impetuous conduct of Essex to make him
not only a favourite of the populace, but an object of attraction
and interest to aspiring minds among his contemporaries, while
there were many for whose speculative purposes his rapidity of
action seemed to promise a multiplication of opportunities. He
was a friend to letters and their votaries, and a hereditary patron
of players: As a Maecenas, and, perhaps, in real intellectual
ability and insight, Essex was surpassed by his friend and fellow-
plotter Southampton, a man, like him, self-willed and impatient of
restraint both in his outbursts of high temper and in his serious
passions. Southampton was fortunate or, perhaps, astute enough
to escape the doom of Essex, and when, with the advent of the
new reign, 'peace proclaimed olives of endless age,' he passed
from prison into new prosperity and influence. His liberal
patronage of men of letters, of books and of plays, blossomed out
afresh ; but he was of the new age, full of eager ambition and
intent upon increasing the abundance of his wealth. Thus, he
* See bishop Creighton's monograph, Queen Elizabeth, p. 241.
Shakespeare unmistakably referred to Essex's Irish expedition as in progress,
in the chorus before act v of Henry V. He cannot, of course, be brought into any
direct connection with the significant performance, on the eve of the outburst of
Essex’s rebellion, of a play which (as J. W. Hales established beyond reasonable doubt)
was no other than Shakespeare's Richard II; but the dying speech of Essex was certainly
worked up in Buckingham's speech on the way to execution in King Henry VIII (cf.
Ward, vol. 11, pp. 104, 125, 203 ; also p. 133). Daniel denied before the privy council that
the story or the chief character of his Philotas referred to Essex, and 'apologised'in
the printed edition (Schelling, vol. 11, p. 10). The Unhappy Favourite, by John Banks
(1682, again a ticklish 'date), treats the story of Essex, with which Heinrich Laube
familiarised the modern German stage.
3 The first earl of Essex died in 1576, when his eldest son was nine years of age;
but, in 1578, the earl of Essex's company seem to have played at Whitefriars, though
they did not perform at Christmas in that year at court. See Fleay, History oj' the
Stage, pp. 40 and 34. This is the more curious, as the first earl's affairs were in
disorder at the time of his death.
1


## p. 347 (#371) ############################################

Leading Spirits of the New Age 347
became one of the chief directors—one might almost use the word
in its modern technical sense-of early colonial activity; and there
can be little doubt that the story of the play with which Shakespeare
bade farewell to the stage was suggested by the narrative of an
expedition organised by the earls of Southampton and Pembroke? .
William Herbert earl of Pembroke, and his brother and successor
Philip (Montgomery), nephews of Sir Philip Sidney, and the
incomparable pair of brethren’ to whom the first folio was
dedicated, were alike warmly interested in colonial undertakings;
and, in their case also, the love of enterprise and an impatience
of restraint which gave rise to many a scandal was united
to a generous patronage of scholarship, literature or art, though
it is in the elder of the pair only that an actual love of letters
seems traceable. Among other young nobles exemplifying the
ambitious unrest characteristic of the last period of Elizabeth's
reign and the inrush of the tide of the Elizabethan drama, may
be mentioned here Charles Blount lord Mountjoy (earl of
Devonshire), rival of Essex in the favours of the aging queen,
and, with more signal success, in the subjection of rebellious
Ireland. Blount's life, like the lives of many of these men,
had its episode of tempestuous passion. He, too, was in close
touch with several men of letters of his days. Finally, there had
stood forth among the most typical representatives of the spirit of
adventure and ambition which pervaded the last years of the
Elizabethan age, a man of action both intense and diverse, who,
at the same time, was himself a man of letters and an intimate of
the literary leaders of his times? . Long, however, before the many
variations of Ralegh's career ended in his being sacrificed to the
resentment of Spain, the Jacobean age had set in. The policy of the
crown had now become that of a Cabbala, to which the nation and
the parliament which sought to represent it were refused a key; and
those who were admitted to the intimacy of the sovereign, wrapped
up as he was in his shortsighted omniscience, either did not care,
or, as in the case of Buckingham, the fruits of whose policy were as
1 The expedition of the adventurers and company of Virginia, which was wrecked
on the Bermudas in 1609. Fletcher's Sea Voyage (which Dryden unjustly described
as a copy of Shakespeare's Tempest) is supposed by Meissner, Untersuchungen über
Shakespeare's Sturm (1872), to have made use of the same source.
2 Both brothers were patrons of Massinger.
3 As to Ford's elegy on Mountjoy's death, see post, vol. vi, chap. VIII, where reference
is also made to the connection between the story of Stella and the plot of The Broken
Heart.
* As to Ralegh's intimacy with Ben Jonson and Beaumont, and his reported inter-
course with Marlowe, of. ante, vol. iv, chap. III, p. 55.


## p. 348 (#372) ############################################

348 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
dust and ashes in patriotic mouths, did not know how to guide
him in the ways in which England still aspired to be led. It would
serve no purpose to carry the present line of comment further.
Its object has been to indicate how, at the height of the Elizabethan
age and that immediately ensuing, the main course of the national
history imparted to the national life a new fulness of ideas and
purposes certain to find reflection in the English drama, first and
foremost among the direct manifestations of the national genius.
6
Queen Elizabeth's court, designated by William Harrison as
‘one of the most renowm'd in Europe,' and, in a more full and
pregnant sense in which the description could have applied to the
English court at any other period of the national history, as 'the
very centre of the land, 'drawing all things to it,' was anything
but a stationary institution; and, in this respect, king James did
his best to follow his predecessor's example. As the same authority
puts it, every gentleman's house in England was the sovereign’s
for her progresses; and her unflagging love of display and
adulation combined with her inbred frugality to impose upon
her subjects-greater and lesser nobles, and corporations both
learned and unlearned-a constant endeavour to outdo each other
in costly exhibitions of their loyalty. In her own palaces-many
of them ‘worthy the owner, and the owner it',' others built with
a view to appearance rather than endurance, and most of them
surrounded by those vast parks which were among the most
distinctive inheritances of English royalty-she maintained a
becoming splendour and dignity. And, with this, her court united
an openness to intellectual interests such as only her unfailing
regard for learning and letters could have long maintained in
an atmosphere swarming with germs of greedy ambition and
frivolous self-indulgence. No similar effort was made by king
James, whose literary tastes, like most of his thoughts and impulses,
were self-ended ; and it was only in the reign of Charles, who sin-
cerely loved art, and of his refined though fanciful French consort,
that the English court might, in more propitious circumstances, have
recovered something of its former distinction. In the great days
of Elizabeth, the outward and visible fact of its central position in
English life corresponded to what may be called an ethical, as well
as a political, conception which still held possession of the age, and
might almost be described as the last afterglow of chivalry. The
1 See the felicitous reference to Windsor castle in The Merry Wives, actv,
so. 5.


## p. 349 (#373) ############################################

The Elizabethan
Courtier
349
2
ideal which the famous Cortegiano of Baldassare Castiglionel had
spread far and wide through the higher spheres of European
civilisation—the ideal of a high-minded Christian gentleman-was
directly or indirectly commended in many 'an Elizabethan or
Jacobean treatise, often at the expense of less elevated 'plans of life. '
On the same principle, a popular Elizabethan dialogue belonging
to this group admonishes its readers that arms and learning are
alone fit professions for a gentleman, and that, for such a one, the
proper course of life, after passing through school and university, is
to qualify himself for the service of his country by the study of the
common law, or, if that service is to take an official and, more
especially, a diplomatic form, by the study of the civilians, or
again, if it is to be cast in the form of military service at home or
abroad, by application to the mathematical sciences. Such was
the training thought fittest for those desirous of giving of their
best for the noblest of purposes and of leading that 'higher life
which ‘Astrophill' and the few who were capable of following in
his footsteps were (nor altogether unjustly) credited with leading.
Numberless heroes of tragedy and comedy dazzled the imagination
of their public by the semblance of similar perfection; and, though
never completely presented, the ideal, in some of the very noblest
creations of the Elizabethan drama, might seem to have almost
reached realisation :
The courtiers, scholars, soldiers, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers.
In this sketch of the complete training of an English gentleman,
as in the early life of the actual Sidney and the Hamlet of the
tragedy, the element of foreign travel must not be overlooked.
There was not much travelling at home (partly in consequence of
1 Cf. ante, vol. iv, p. 7 et al.
On Cityle and uncivyle life (1579), afterwards (1583) reprinted under the title
The English Courtier and the Countrey-gentleman.
3 Much might be added in illustration of these lines—inter alia-on the subject of
duelling, long an integral part of the courtier's code, and, in its several aspects, the
theme of celebrated treatises. The duel and the problems connected with it play a
considerable part in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; see, for the most striking
example, Middleton and William Rowley's A Faire Quarrell in vol. vi, chap. In, post.
As to the decline of the practice, see a note in Ward, vol. II, pp. 226–7. In general,
it is noticeable how this court ideal sank under James I-never to recover itself.
See, for instance, Barnabe Rich, The Honestie of this Age (p. 23, in Percy Soc. Publ. ,
vol. x): •It hath bene holden for a maxime that a proud court doth make a poore
countrey, and that there is not so hatefull an enemie to the common wealth as those
that are surnamed the Moathes of the court. '


## p. 350 (#374) ############################################

350 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
the state of the roads, which forced even the queen to make most
of her progresses on horseback). Even more than in the earlier
days of the English renascence, Italy, with all its great memories
and treasures, and with all its charms and seductions, was the
favourite resort of English travellers, and such it remained during
the long reach of years which bridge the interval between the
times of Ascham and those of Milton? The frequency with which
the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists lay the scenes of their
plays in Italy, no doubt, was originally due to the use made by
them of Italian fiction; but we often find a play localised in Italy
for no better reason than deference to custom, or the possibility of
greater freedom of movement
The perfect courtier (we are apprised in the same dialogue),
who has put such a training as the above to the proof, should quit
the court which has been the scene of his self-devotion after his
fortieth year, having by that time reached the decline of his age.
Instead of making himself a laughing-stock by lingering in livelier
scenes, and among more aspiring companions, he should now
withdraw among everyday experiences and responsibilities, and
become a country gentleman. The range of his duties has now
been narrowed to that of looking after his property, doing his
duty as justice of the peace and quorum—it is to be hoped after
the originally equitable fashion of Mr Justice Clement: rather than
in the 'countenancing' ways of Mr Justice Shallow-attending
to musters and surveys of arms, perhaps occasionally riding up to
Westminster as a parliament man. His years do not permit of
his taking much share in the sports of younger country gentlemen
-among which hawking holds the first place, hare-hunting or, in
some places, stag-hunting coming next; but he can lend his
countenance to the various country feasts which, from Shrove
Tuesday to Martinmas or Christmas even in protestant England
still dot the working year.
Although the contrast between court and country which has
served us as a text is rhetorically overstated, yet there can be no
doubt that the increasing sense of the more intense, and more
diversified, ways of life and thought now characteristic of the court
1 Harrison repeats Ascham's lament over the dangers of the seductions of Italy.
Coryate, to whose travels there are many allusions in later Elizabethan drama-
tists (e. g. Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, act iv, sc. I, and Shirley, The Ball, act u,
80. 1), is an admirable example of a traveller conscientiously intent upon seeing and
describing everything.
? So, the scene of the first version of Every Man in his Humour is laid at Florence.
3 See Every Man in his Humour.


## p. 351 (#375) ############################################

Relations of Classes
351
and of the capital in or near which was its ordinary residence,
as well as of the classes of society finding in that court and
capital the natural centres of their wider interests and more
ambitious projects, had contributed largely to the gradual change
in the social conditions of Elizabethan England. As yet it had
by no means lost its insular character; it was still completely
isolated from the rest of Europe so far as its language was con-
cerned, together with its literature, of which the continent knew
nothing-unless it were through the violently coloured glass of
the performances of English comedians. At home, the people was
gradually losing the character of a mainly agricultural community,
of which the several classes, though not differing very much in
their standard of tastes, amusements and, to some extent, even
of daily toil, were broadly marked off from one another by
traditional usage, and in which society still largely rested on a
patriarchal basis. Necessarily, it was an informal line, and one
to be effaced with very great rapidity by the revolving years
which divided what remained of the old nobility from the new
that had sprung up by their side or taken their place. The de-
marcation between nobility and gentry, which, in England (where
the contention between the armed nobility and the commons had
come to an end with the conflict between the two races), had long
since ceased to be definite, now retained little social significance.
More striking was what has been justly recognised as one of the
distinctive phenomena of this age—the growth of closer relations
between the nobility and gentry, on the one hand, and the wealthier
class of burgesses, the merchants, on the other. As a matter of
course, this tendency to the removal of traditional distinctions was
deplored by contemporary observers, anxious to escape the stigma
of a tacit assent to the inevitable processes of social evolution.
In this case, the change was hastened partly by intermarriage,
partly by the custom according to which younger sons of noble
or gentle families frequently took to trade, when they did not
prefer to enter the service of their elder brothers'. It was further
advanced by the fact that it was becoming not unusual for
i That mercantile venture of one sort or another thus often meant something very
like an opportunity of social emancipation for younger sons seems clear from a
comparison of such statements as that in The English Courtier, p. 66, according
to which even gentlemen of good descent were found toiling as farm labourers
(cf. Thomas Heywood's English Traveller), and the assertion of the author of The
Serving-man's Comfort (1598) (query Gervase Markham ? ), that he knew at this
day, Gentlemen younger brothers that weares the elder brothers Blew coate and Badge,
attending him with as reverend regard and dutifull obedience, as if he were their
Prince or Soveraign. '


## p. 352 (#376) ############################################

352. Political and Social Aspects of the Age
6
gentlemen landowners to seek to make industrial and commercial
profits out of their estates (instead of valuing them, as in the old
warlike days, for the number of retainers furnished forth by them),
‘turning farmers and graziers for money? ,' and, like other farmers
and graziers, making the soil do something besides sustain them-
selves and their families. Class interests and habits thus met half-
way, so that the upper and the upper middle class, as we might call
them in our ugly terminology, tended to amalgamate, and a practical
stratification of society was introduced, destined to a long-enduring
existence in English life. And there was also set up that form
of social pride which an acrimonious moralist like Stubbes could
denounce as a capital instance of the vice which he regarded as
the 'verie efficient cause of all evills. ' Everyone, he says, vaunts
''
himself, 'crying with open mouth, I am a Gentleman, I am worshipful,
I am Honourable, I am noble, and I can not tell what: my father
was this, my father was that; I am come of this house, and I am
come of that? ' It need hardly be said that a powerful impulse
was added to this widespread desire to claim the distinction of
gentility by the practice introduced under James I of the sale of
peerages and baronetcies—the latter an honour specially invented
for the purpose. The general movement of the well-to-do classes
of society towards equalisation on the basis of exclusiveness
manifested itself, among other ways, in the wearing by many
persons not belonging to the nobility of the sumptuous apparel
which had hitherto been held appropriate to that class only. In
the Elizabethan age, though merchants still dressed with fit gravity,
their young wives were said to show more extravagance in the
adornment of their persons than did ladies of the court. So
far, however, as landowners in a large part of the country were
>
1 Harrison, p. 243.
a see the instructive section on Elizabethan commercialism by Prothero, R. E. , in
Traill, H. D. , Social England, vol. III, pp. 352 ff. The break-up of the old agricultural
system is there explained, and the effects of the process of enclosure, of legal chicane
worked in the spirit of Sir Giles Overreach and of the growth of the wool trade up to
the middle of Elizabeth's reign, when arable farming once more became profitable, are
succinctly traced.
3 The Anatomie of Abuses (Part 1) (New Shakspere Society's Publ. , 1876), p. 29.
• Cf. Sheavyn, Phoebe, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age, p. 2. The
tendency noted in the text continued even when political and religious reasons were
beginning once more to deepen class distinctions. Cf. & passage in Shirley's Gamester
(1634), act 1, sc. 1:
• We. . . cits, as you call us,
Though we hate gentlemen ourselves, yet are
Ambitious to make all our children gentlemen. '
6 Harrison, pp. 172--3.
6


## p.
353 (#377) ############################################

2
1
1
Rise of Prices
353
concerned, the infusion of the new element must have overthrown
many cherished traditions of life and manners, and, while bringing
the country into closer contact with court and town, have con-
tributed to substitute, for the easy-going and quiet conditions of
the past, a régime in which 'lawyers, monopolists and usurers'
became founders of some of the county families of the future!
The general increase of commercial and industrial activity had
led to a rise of prices, which, as a matter of course, benefited the
money-making part of the community, though not the whole of it
in the same degree. Primarily, this rise was to the advantage of
the great merchants of London and of the other chief ports of the
country, and persons engaged in large farming operations, such as
landlords of the old style had shrunk from undertaking. Smaller
tradesmen, and the middle classes in general, to some extent
profited by the change-chiefly by obtaining more comfortable con-
ditions of life. Not so the labourers, whose wages long continued
stationary, while the cost of necessaries advanced. This rise of
prices, although partly due to the influx of silver from 'old Philip's
treasury? ,' may, no doubt, be dated from the time when protective
2.
restrictions were applied to the importation of foreign goods, and
was advanced by the buying-up processes of the 'bodgers' and
other tricks and frauds of the corn market*. The price of corn
rose wildly, and, no doubt, it was more than once thought that
“there will soon be no wheat- or rye-bread for the poor? A serving-
man is cited, about 1598, as declaring that, in his lifetime, ordinary
articles of wear have trebled in price,' and yet my wages not more
then my great grandfathers, [he] supplying the same place and
office I doe. '
Usury-a remedial process in times of dearth which rapidly
accommodates itself to the needs of any and every class-had
become a crying evil of the age which Greene and Lodge ser-
6
了​。
Es
6
be
1 See the section The Landlord' in Hall, Hubert, Society in the Elizabethan Age
(3rd ed. 1901).
2 Doctor Faustus, 8C. I.
3 Harrison, who recalled with something like regret the times when strange
bottoms were suffered to come in' (p. 131), was an imperialist as well as a free-trader,
and could hardly believe that com exported from England served to relieve the
enemies as well as the friends of church and state (ibid. p. 297). As to exportation,
that of sheep was strictly prohibited, while, as a matter of course, that of wool was
open,
See Symes, J. E. , ap. Traill, 4. 8. vol. III, where a summary is given of the
Elizabethan regulation of trade, industry and labour.
4 Harrison, pp. 297–301.
5 Ibid. p. 163.
6 The Serving-man's Comfort.
E. L. V. CH. XIV.
23


## p. 354 (#378) ############################################

354 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
monised in A Looking Glasse for London and England', and
established itself as one of the ordinary themes of the satire of
English comedy? Of old, loans had usually been made without
interest being demanded, and any demand of this sort had been
illegal; but, after the principle of the illegality of interest had
been abrogated by parliament in 1545, Elizabeth's government had
proved unable to revive it. About the middle of her reign, ten per
.
cent. was the legal rate; but twelve per cent. was quite common.
Under James I, the ordinary rate sank to eight per cent. 3
Though the general condition of the labouring classes does not
appear to have changed very much for the worse during the reign
of Elizabeth, it was, on the other hand, not materially raised from
the low point to which it had sunk by the sixth decade of the
century. In some parts of the country, the poor were so much at
the mercy of the rich that small houses seem to have been almost
swept off the face of the ground; and a general decay of towns
set in, of which, however, the statistics, as is frequently the case
in the matter of depopulation, hardly admit of being either accepted
or rejected". Yet, in defiance of such phenomena, mercantile
enterprise swept forward on its course, made possible, in the first
instance, by the wise initial policy of the queen's government in
establishing coinage on a sound basis, and continuously expanded,
thanks to the farsighted intelligence of those who watched over both
the emancipation and the development of English trade. Crown and
city cooperated, with a notable concurrence of insight, in this policy,
which, during a considerable part of the queen's reign, was under
the guidance of Thomas Gresham, as great a minister (though
without a portfolio) as has at any time taken charge of the com-
mercial interests of a modern states Largely under the influence,
i See, especially, the scene in which the usurer's poor client Alcon is on the point of
losing both cow' and 'gown’unless he resorts to corruption, and the tirade of Oseas:
When hateful usury,
Is counted husbandry, etc.
2 Among the usurers of Elizabethan comedy, there were several who, like Sordido
in Every Man out of His Humour, 'never pray'd but for a lean dearth, and ever wept
in a fat harvest. '
* Cf. Symes, u. s. , and see Harrison, p. 272.
They are given in Harrison, pp. 257—8.
5 Hubert Hall, who has chosen “the great master of exchange, the useful agent of
the Crown, the financial advisor of ministers, the oracle of the city, the merchant
prince, patron and benefactor,' as the type of «The Merchant' in Society of the
Elizabethan Age, pp. 58 ff. , has, while maintaining the proportion necessary in
the treatment of such a theme, shown how unscrupulously Sir Thomas Gresham
also took charge of his own interests. Heywood, in Part I of lj you know not me, etc. ,
appends to the imposing figure of the great nerchant a good deal of what may
probably be set down as idle fiction about his family troubles.
*
<


## p. 355 (#379) ############################################

2
fc
a
CES
Advance of Trade and Industry 355
or through the personal agency, of this ‘merchant royall*,' English
trade had been freed from subjection to that of the Hanseatic
league, and to that of the great Flemish towns; colonial enterprise
on a comprehensive scale was encouraged, and great merchant com-
panies were established, which came, it was said, to absorb the whole
English trade except that with France. At the same time, the
home trade and the home industries on which that trade depended
were actively advanced-especially those which, like the crafts of
the clothier, the tanner and the worsted-maker, might be trusted to
bring money into the country. Companies of craftsmen under the
authority of the crown took the place of the old municipal guilds;
attempts at a better technical education (not for the first time)
were set afoot; and a select immigration of skilled foreign work-
men in special branches of production was encouraged. English
trade abroad, so far as possible, was protected, and a vigorous
banking system—the sovereign instrument for the facilitation of
commercial and industrial activity at home and abroad-was
called into life. Thus, while English merchants became familiar
visitors in distant lands, the goods, domestic or imported, with
which the English market abounded were countless in their mere
names—'all men's ware?
The point which we have reached in this fragmentary survey
seems to allow of a brief digression concerning one of the causes
of that engrossing love of wealth in which many observers recog-
nised one of the most notable signs of the times. Among these
observers were the comic dramatists, and those of them-Ben
Jonson above all-who wrote with a didactic purpose recognised
in this master passion one of the most dangerous, as from an
ethical point of view it was one of the most degrading, of the
tendencies of the age. Yet, even the love of wealth for its own
sake has aspects less ignoble than those which belong to the
pursuit of it for the sake of a luxurious way of living unknown
to earlier generations or less affluent neighbours. In his whole
tis
wala
các
tur
1 As a technical term, this designation seems to have superseded that of merchant
venturer. See the passage from Tell-Trothes New Yeares Gift, ed. Furnivall, F. J. , Publ.
of New Shaksp. Soc. , ser. VI, No. 4, cited by Vatke, T. , Culturbilder aus Alt-England,
p. 201. Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice, is more than once called a 'royal merchant. '
2 Cf. Symes, u. s. p. 370.
8 See the interesting series of dialogues by William Stafford, A Briefe Conceipt of
English Policy (1683), p. 71.
* So early as 1563, the great variety of the articles of English trade and manufao-
ture is illustrated by A Book in English Metre of the rich merchant-man called Dives
Pragmaticus (rptd in Huth's Fugitive Tracts, 1875), an enumerative effort of
extraordinary virtuosity.
232


## p. 356 (#380) ############################################

356 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
conception of luxury, as well as in the names which he bears,
Sir Epicure Mammon is the consummate type of the man whose
existence is given up to this worship of the unspiritual.
The two favourite kinds of luxury in Elizabethan and Jacobean
England, needless to say, were those associated with diet and with
dress respectively. Already in queen Mary's day, her Spanish
visitors were astonished by the excellent table usually kept by
Englishmen, as much as by the inferiority of the houses in which
they were content to dwell. The building of English houses seems
to have struck foreign observers as more or less unsubstantial;
but, thongh the sometimes fantastic and sometimes slight style
of house architecture in vogue may have been partly due to the
influence of Italian example, even magnates of the land had
ceased to care much for residing in castles. For the houses of
the gentry, brick and stone were coming into use in the place
of timber, although most English dwelling houses were still of the
latter material. One of the most attractive features in English
houses was to be found in the rich hangings usual in the houses
of the nobility, and the less costly tapestry in those of the gentry,
and even of farmers? . Noticeable, too, was the store of plate,
kept, in proportionate quantities, of course, in both upper and
middle class houses, and even in the cupboards of many artisans.
On the other hand, a sufficient number of chimneys was still
wanting to many houses, where logs were piled up in the halls
--stoves of course were not ordinarily used-and though the
general quality of household furniture was imposing, bedding was
still sparse in many houses, and a day bed or 'couch' a quite
exceptional indulgence.
The greatest charm of an English house, its garden, might
almost be described as an Elizabethan addition to English domestic
life: previously to this period, private horticulture had chiefly
directed itself to the production of kitchen vegetables and
medicinal herbs. Flowers were now coming to be much prized,
and the love of them and care for them displayed by several
Elizabethan dramatists, and, pre-eminently, by Shakespeare, was,
i In The Alchemist.
2 Paul Hentzner's Travels, p. 64. Of course, the "arras' plays a part, both tragic
and comic, in the Elizabethan drama corresponding to that which it must have played
in real life ; cf. Hamlet and King John, and both parts of Henry IV.
: Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, act v.
• Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife And have a Wife, act 11, 80. I. The
last two illustrations are borrowed from Vatke, T. , u. 8. , where a large number of others
Are to be found.
a


## p. 357 (#381) ############################################

e her
Toni
6
Dube
Per
7,267
Diet and Drink
357
no doubt, fostered by a desire to gratify a widespread popular
tastel.
Even from the few facts given above, it will appear how
simply, even in these days of material advance, Englishmen
were still lodged, and how small a part was played, in their
daily life, by its household gear, as, on the stage (which repre-
sented that life), by its 'properties. ' On the other hand, even
the rector of Radwinter, whom we may safely conclude to have
been temperate in habit as well as in disposition, and who calls
special attention to the fact that excess in eating and drinking
is considered out of place in the best society, avers that 'our
bodies doo crave a little more ample nourishment, than the
inhabitants of the hotter regions are accustomed withall,' and that
'it is no marvell therefore that our tables are oftentimes more
plentifullie garnished than those of other nations? ' Stubbes's
assertion that, whereas in his father's day, one or two dishes
of good wholesome meat were thought sufficient for a man of
worship to dine withal,' nowadays it had become necessary to have
the table 'covered from one end to the other, as thick as one dish
can stand by the other,' seems to point in the direction of un-
necessary display rather than of gluttony. Harrison notes that
the ordinary expenditure on food and drink had diminished, and
that the custom which has been succinctly described as 'eating
and drinking between meals'--'breakefasts in the forenoone,
beverages, or nuntions after dinner'-had fallen into disuse. But,
of course, there was a great deal of gross feeding and feasting in
all spheres of life, and illustrations of the habit are not far to
seek in our comic dramatists 5. That excess in drink was not
uncommon in Elizabethan England, is, to be sure, a fact of which
evidence enough and to spare could be adduced from contemporary
drama ; but the impression conveyed by what we learn on the
subject, from this and other sources, is that in no section of English
society was intemperance, at this time, the fiagrant vice which
it afterwards became, except in that 'fringe' of tipplers, among
* See, especially, of course, friar Laurence's soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet, act 11,
sc. 3. As to early English herbals, see ante, vol. iv, pp. 394—5, and cf. ibid. p. 542 (bibl. )
for a list of these and of works on gardening. Bacon's essay Of Gardens was, no
doubt, in part suggested by the interest taken in the gardens of Gray's inn by the
benchers and other members.
? Harrison, p. 142.
3 Anatomie, pp. 102—3.
6 See, for instance, the beginning of the sheriff's dinner to which the gentle craft'
is summoned by the Pancake bell,' in Dekker's Shomakers Holiday, and the elaborate
description of a more elaborate city feast in Massinger's City-Madam, act II,
TAS
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## p. 358 (#382) ############################################

358 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
a
whom 'ancients' and other officers and soldiers without pay or
record were prominent, and of whom, in Falstaff's crew, Shakespeare
has drawn perennial types. Heavy drinking was not customary at
ordinary repasts; indeed, much talking at meals was avoided by those
who studied good tone, and the well known custom of encouraging
guests to 'call a cup' when they chose was introduced in order to
avoid a continuous supply of liquor to any one person at table. On
the other hand, there was much drinking at the 'ale-houses,' which,
for this purpose, took the place of the old-established taverns, and
increased in number so largely as to make their licences a profitable
source of general income; and, doubtless, there was not a little
drunkenness in the streets, notwithstanding the five shilling fine 1.
It would take us too far to enquire how far the change of taste
noticeable in this period from light French to Spanish and other
sweet and heavy wines increased the tendency to intemperance ;
Harrison, who reckons that, besides homegrown, there are 56 sorts
of light wines and 30 of strong, insinuates that the stronger they
are the more they are desired? There is every reason for con-
cluding that, in the days of James I, the intemperate habits in
vogue at court spread into other classes of society, and that the
drinking houses of this period deserved the description given of
them by Barnabe Rich%.
Long after its introduction, the use of tobacco was regarded as
a fashionable, rather than a popular, indulgence, but its consump-
tion must have increased with extraordinary speed, if Barnabe
Rich had been correctly informed 'that there be 7000 shops in
and about London, that doth vent tobacco. ' Shakespeare never
mentions this article of Elizabethan luxury.
In the Elizabethan and early Stewart ages, an excessive care
9
1
1 See Vatke's note (u. 8. p. 170) on a well known passage in Much Ado about Nothing,
Act III, sc. 3.
? pp. 149 ft.
He also mentions, besides march and home-brewed beer, me-
theglin and a kind of swish swash' called mead. He does not mention. oburni' (a
spiced drink) or 'hum' (ale and spirits). See The Divel is an Asse, act I, sc. 1. For a
fairly complete account of the favourite drinks of the Elizabethan age, cf. Sandys, W. ,
introduction to Festive Songs, principally of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
(Percy Soc. Publ. , 1848, vol. xxin), where see especially as to the aristocratic beverage
sack. As to the change of taste in wines, and the bonus on heavy sorts which en.
couraged it, see Hall, H. , u. 8. chap. vi ("The Host'), where there is much information
on the whole subject.
* Cf. The Honestie of this Age, etc. (Percy Soc. Publ. , 1844, vol. XI), pp. 18–19.
• Cf. the well known passage as to the scientific training of tobacconists' in Every
Man out of His Humour, act III, EC. I.
As to the date of the introduction of tobacco,
see Mary Bateson, ap. Traill, H. D. , vol. III, pp. 571-2, where Shakespeare's silence on
the subject of the herb and its use is noted.
9


## p. 359 (#383) ############################################

Dress
359
6
for dress was at least as marked a characteristic of large sections
of English society as a fondness for the pleasures of the table.
Neither sumptuary laws nor moral injunctions proved effectual
preventives, though it may be asserted that, among social failings,
the love of fine dress, on the whole, was that which puritans
visited with their sternest censure. Andrew Boorde (who was by no
means a puritan), a generation earlier, had dwelt on the fickleness
exhibited by Englishmen in connection with this particular foible,
and the mutability of the extravagance continued to remain one
of its most constant features. “Falconbridge, the young baron of
England,' we remember! , ‘bought his doublet in Italy, his round
hose in France, his bonnet in Germany. But Spain and France
were long the rival schools of apparel for young Englishmen of
fashion, though, of the pair, notwithstanding the strong predilection
for things Spanish which long prevailed at the court of James I,
the French model, on the whole, maintained its ascendancy. In
accordance with the general tendency, noticed above, of luxurious
habits of life to efface class distinctions, censure of all this
extravagance is found accompanied by regret that “it is difficult
to know who is a gentleman and who is not from his dress? . As
a matter of course, it was inevitable that, in the matter of dress, the
extravagance of men should be far outdone by that of the other sex,
more especially in the way of those artificial supplements to the
attractions of nature, which left women, in the severe words of
Stubbes, “the smallest part of themselves.