No More Learning

'
A class which increases in wealth and importance does not
1 Broadside ballads are still sung in the streets of Paris during public holidays, and
can be heard any night at Les quat-z-arts and Le Grillon. As in former tinies, they
are the best indication of popular sentiment. The same survival is found in London
in the nineteenth century. Vide Hindley, C. , History oj the Cutnach Press, 1886.
E. L. III.
7
CH. V.


## p. 98 (#120) #############################################

98 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
stand still. Burghers began to marry their sons and daughters to
insolvent nobility, and Henry, who aimed at creating an aristocracy
dependent on himself, frequently recruited the diminished ranks of
the old peers from among burghers, lawyers and borough magis-
trates. This growth of the royal court at the expense of the
feudal castle filled London with raw courtiers", drawn from all
classes, who attached themselves to men of influence, partly to see
the world, and partly to advance their own fortunes under shelter
of a great name. Such a suddenly enriched or ennobled society
was not likely to be reconciled to the simple, rough life of their
forefathers. Luxury and excitement became necessities and re-
ceived their comment in contemporary literature. In 1530, the
Address in verse to new-fanglers was prefixed to Chaucer's
Assembly of Fowls. Wynkyn de Worde issued three editions of
A Treatise of a Gallant, which laments the pride, avarice and
ambition of the new fledged courtier and his love of quarrel. , The
tract deplores the influx of foreigners, whose phraseology was
corrupting the purity of the English idiom, and censures the
Englishman's admiration for French customs and French vices. At
this time, the example of Henry VIII and his sister Margaret made
dice and card-playing fashionable and the pleasures of gambling
gave great opportunities to the gentleman thief, who now became
a perpetual menace to society, and, in 1532, apparently, was
printed a Manifest detection of the most vyle and detestable
use of dice play and other practices like the same. This tract is
one of the first great exposures of the age, throwing into relief the
practices and resources of those who fall 'from the hardness of
virtuous living to the delicacy and boldness of uncareful idleness
and gainfull deceit. ' We learn how the provincial is met at Paul's
by a gentleman with three or four servants in gay liveries, an
acquaintance is cleverly established, the 'couzin' is unwittingly intro-
duced to the gaming-house and, eventually, he is fleeced. Elaborate
tricks to entice the 'couzin' with different kinds of cogged dice,
even the name of the most reliable maker, canting terms, the mode
of making cards and other forms of imposture and thievery, are all
made public. These disclosures are presented in a lively dialogue,
in clear, simple English. The sixteenth century love of anecdote
is gratified and the conversation is carried on between two well-
defined characters, the one a raw courtier, the other an ex-
perienced man of the world.
1 Cf. a poem by Richard Edwards in The Paradyse of Daynty Devises, beginning
In Youthfull yeares when first my young desires began
To pricke me forth to serve in court.


## p. 99 (#121) #############################################

Brinkelow's Complaynt of Roderyck Mors 99
as
The triumph of the reformation under Henry VIII and the
suppression of the monasteries had raised great hopes in those
churchmen who looked on Rome as the root of all evil. But the
disorganisation of society always brings abuses to the surface and
the venality of judges, the chicanery and delays of law-suits, the
tyranny of the powerful and the oppression of the poor and
defenceless now became doubly apparent. The prevailing clear-
sightedness as to the evils of both past and present found vigorous
expression in Brinkelow's Complaynt of Roderyck Mors. Brinke-
low's sectarian hatred of popery precludes the slightest regret for
the abolition of the old religion; in fact, he laments that the ‘body
and tayle of the pope is not banisshed with his name. ' At the
same time, his sense of justice and righteousness keeps his eyes
open to the fact that ecclesiastical and state administration' are no
better under the new order and that the social conditions are a great
deal worse. A marked feature of the tract is the constant appeal
to the king's divine authority to rectify social and legal abuses.
Henry's practice differed greatly from the ideas of his conscientious
supporters. The riches he appropriated from the monasteries
were not devoted to the relief of the economic situation,
Brinkelow urged him to use them (chap. XXII). Part went to the
king's middle class favourites, who now availed themselves of the
fall of noble families and the eviction of abbey-lands, to speculate
in agriculture and buy country estates. This upstart squirearchy
knew nothing of the old baronial practice of hospitality, and the
passing away of the ancient ideal added, in some measure, to the
pessimism of the times. Some ballads have come down to us
lamenting the new order, such as John Barker's, printed 1561,
with the burden :
Neibourhed nor love is none,
Treu dealyng now is fled and gone.
Besides neglecting the claims of good fellowship, the nouveau
riche introduced methods of commercial competition into land
speculation. The rearing of cattle was found to be more profitable
than the leasing of farms? . Thus, neither the lords of the manor
nor freehold tenants hesitated, when it was advantageous, to
abolish the small homesteads that had supported the yeomanry
1 Chap. XII, That kynges and lordes of presons should fynd their presoners suffycyent
fode at their charge : and of men that have lyen long in preson, &cete, is one of the first
signs of a literature which, in the next century, was to include The Blacke Dogge of
Newgate (c. 1600), The Compters Common-Wealth (1617), Essayes and Characters of a
Prison and Prisoners (1618), by Mynshul, and Wil Bagnal's Ghost (1655).
2 Traill, Social England, vol. II, chap. IX.


## p. 100 (#122) ############################################

100 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
of baronial England. Evicted tenants were forced to become
vagabonds or seek a livelihood in manufacturing industries, thus
further disorganising the labour market; and, all this while, the
reckless extravagance of the court raised the general cost of living,
and the debasement of the currency and increase of taxation made
poverty more acute.
Amid such disorder and suffering the modern spirit of com-
petition was ushered into the world, and contemporary literature
could see little but evil in the period of transition. It was especially
the spectacle of men trampling on one another in the struggle for
wealth which roused Robert Crowley from the production of con-
troversial and religious tracts. Crowley was a printer, a puritan
and a famous preacher. Most of his pamphlets, sermons and
answers are composed for theologians; but the reading public was
sufficiently large and the influence of the press sufficiently universal
to make it worth his while to address the whole commons of the
realm in five popular tracts. In 1550, he boldly exposed the more
glaring social and moral abuses of the time in a series of short
verse essays, arranged in alphabetical order and entitled The
one and thirty epigrams. But, in spite of these devices, his
standpoint remains that of a Hebrew prophet and his style that of
a preacher. In The Voice of the Last Trumpet, which appeared in
the same year, he shows even more clearly how far his sectarian
training had unfitted him to handle problems of progress or social
reform. The tract is a methodical appeal to the different classes to
lay aside their peculiar sins; his view is still that of the Middle Ages,
and God is supposed to have placed barriers between the classes?
which no individual can cross without sin. Crowley warns his
readers not to stray from their class, but to let the gentry cultivate
learning, the commons obedience, and all will be well. In 1550, he
also printed The way to wealth, a graphic and searching enquiry
into the mutual hatred and distrust which existed between the rich
and the poor, showing how peasants attribute the late seditions to
farmers, graziers, lawyers, merchants, gentlemen, knights and lords,
while the upper classes—'the gredie cormerauntes ’-point to the
wealth and insolence of the peasantry. But he sternly warns the
lower classes against disobedience and covetousness, bidding them
be patient and not usurp the functions of their rulers. He rebukes
the clergy—“the shephardes of thys church'—for their lust of wealth,
11
1 Even in Dances of Death, such as that painted on the wall of the church of
La Chaise Dieu in Auvergne, and that at Basel, each individual takes precedence
according to his class. Wright, T. , History of Caricature and Grotesque, chap. XIII.


## p. 101 (#123) ############################################

6
The Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous IOT
but reserves his sharpest censure for the rich men who tyrannise
over the commons. In the following year he produced Pleasure
and pain, heaven and hell, an even more direct protest against
competition or, as Crowley calls it, the gredy rakeyng togyther of
the treasures of this vayne worlde,' which was widening the gulf
between rich and poor. Still writing for the large reading public,
he couched his expostulation in the attractive form of a poem
representing Christ's address to the world on the Last Judgment
Day. But the most interesting of Crowley's tracts is the In-
formacion and Peticion agaynst the oppressours of the pore
commons of this realme. In this address to the parliament of
Edward VI, the preacher fulminates against the rich in the language
of the Psalms and Isaiah. He draws a powerful picture of the
misery caused by the aggressions of the wealthy: how poverty makes
slaves of men and drudges or prostitutes of women, how youths are
reduced to beggary and, in the end, 'garnysh the galowe trees. '
Crowley had neither the intellectual equipment nor the literary
talent necessary to illuminate the perplexity and suffering of his
age. His five tracts simply give voice to the thoughts of those who
looked backward and cried 'order,' when they felt that the times
were out of joint.
In these and similar pamphlets one thing particularly arrests
the attention—the continual references to the ever increasing class
of beggars and vagabonds. As early as 1528, Simon Fish begins his
Supplication with these tremendous words :
Most lamentably compleyneth theyre wofull mysery unto youre highnes
youre poore daily bedemen, the wretched hidous monstres (on whome scarcely
for horror any yie dare loke), the foule unhappy sorte of lepres and other sore
people, nedy, impotent, blinde, lame and sike, that live onely by almesse, howe
that theyre nombre is daily so sore encreased that all the almesse of all the
weldisposed people of this youre realme is not halfe ynough for to susteine
theim.
The historic class of outlaws, vagabonds and pilgrims had
been enormously increased by the victims of falling prices and
decaying guilds. The phenomenon forces itself on the attention of
Robert Copland, who printed and probably composed The Hye Way
to the Spyttel Hous, after 1531. No work more clearly illustrates
the transitional state of English literature. Copland describes
himself as taking shelter from the rain in the porch of a spyttel
house and interrogates the porter on the inmates. The author
really wishes to describe the different types of fools and knaves;
but, instead of grouping them under a fraternity, boat or testament,
he chooses the spyttel house to serve as a frame, the picture con-
a


## p. 102 (#124) ############################################

102 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
taining those who knock for entrance. Under this heading, nearly
all the lower types of humanity are classed, not only the idle and
the lascivious, but busybodies and those who refuse to forgive their
neighbours or discipline their servants; even idle and domineering
wives are also among those who visit the hospital. Thus, in its
main conception, the book belongs to the general body of early
sixteenth century satire. But the tract is profoundly coloured by
the element of beggary. A hospital would not have been chosen as a
substitute for the traditional background unless poverty was a very
general curse, and we have a ghastly picture of the destitute
wretches who crave admission. In the first part of the dialogue,
the porter gives some amusing and graphic anecdotes of the tricks
of sham beggars, thus showing that Copland had caught a glimpse
of the boundless fields of comedy and humour which form part of
the realm of roguery.
Such was the state of the poor while the religious houses still
stood, but the suppression of the monasteries added to the army
of the unemployed and, at the same time, deprived the destitute of
the alms which had been expressly given in trust for them. Those
who had formerly looked to the religious houses for help were now
thrown upon society ; mendicancy became a recognised fact; and
legislation, while suppressing vagabondism, instituted compulsory
relief for the poor and needy. Such a system, badly administered
in a time of social disorganisation, led to inevitable abuse.
Pauperism became a profession exercised by ingenious impostors,
who perverted the administration of charity and, when occasion
offered, robbed travellers, stole horses out of pastures and hooked
linen out of house windows.
Vagabondism was a menace to society, and the curiosity which
people feel in anything alarming was satisfied in 1561 by Awdeley's
Fraternitye of vacabones. Again we see the power of literary
tradition. Awdeley, apparently, found no more appropriate title
than one as old as Wireker; but those who expected a satire on
social types assembled under this denomination were disappointed.
Under an old name, he followed up the idea of the German
Liber Vagatorum, and produced an anatomy of vagabond life
and vagrancy. The tract is divided into two parts; the first
consists of a series of concise definitions of thieves' cant and
contains startling revelations, how the “Abraham man' walks this
earth feigning madness and calling himself Poor Tom', how the
washman' lies in the highway with artificial sores produced by
i Compare King Lear, Act 11, sc. 4.
6


## p. 103 (#125) ############################################

Awdeley and Harman
103
spickwort or ratsbane and how these and suchlike impostors have
not only their own language but are organised into an independent
community with the 'upright man’ at their head, who domineers
over the society and takes the lion's share of the booty.
The most jejune of descriptions would be welcome when ac-
companied, as these were, by sensational disclosures of a mysterious
and dangerous class. But, in the second part—the company of
‘cousoners' and shifters-Awdeley deals with three types of the
gentleman thief. Here, the definitions which reveal the insidious
refinements of the well dressed adventurer necessarily expand into
narrative; but Awdeley was quite unconscious that he had found a
vein of humour and episode which has not even yet been exhausted.
His tales are concise explanations of a process of deception; his
only object is to give information.
All the opportunities which Awdeley missed are turned to the
fullest account by Thomas Harman. The writer, who describes
himself as a 'poore gentleman,' sought to supply the place of the sup-
pressed monasteries by keeping open house for mendicants. In
this charitable spirit, he came into personal contact with almost
every type of pauper, and gradually discovered that his compassion
was generally lavished on professional impostors. Having pene-
trated their depe dissimulation and detestable dealynge, beinge
marvellous suttle and craftye in their kynde,' he gave his dis-
coveries to the world in A Caveat or Warening for Commen
Corsetors, vulgarely called Vagabones. The book is put forward
as an 'alarum' to forewarn honest citizens; but, in reality, it
contains the researches of a sociologist. Harman alludes rather
ungratefully to Awdeley's superficial outline as 'A small breefe. . .
that made a lytle shewe of there names and usage, and gave a
glymsinge lyghte, not sufficient to perswade of their pevishe
peltinge. ' In twenty-four chapters, varying in length from a few
lines to several pages, Harman accumulated important data out of
which the character of thesixteenth century thief may be constructed.
We learn something as to their dress, food, origin, training and sexual
relations. The different departments of a highly specialised profes-
sion are explained. Their complicated frauds are fully investigated,
and we catch glimpses of the dark shallows of their private life. With
the instinct of a scientist, the author appends a list of the chief thieves
then living, and gives specimens and translations of their slang.
This spirit of philosophical enquiry is the first sign of modern
thought in a popular tract. But, in other respects, Harman's
work has the characteristics of his own age. He was writing for


## p. 104 (#126) ############################################

104 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
the public which read A C. Mery Tales and The Geystes of Skoggan;
so his book is enlivened with curious stories in illustration of thieves'
practices. The principle of recommending exposures to the masses
has been formulated by Erasmus quoniam autem rudis ac simplex
aetas huiusmodi fraudibus potissimum est obnoxia, visum est
exemplo non inamoeno depingere modum imposturae'. But
Harman has his full share of sympathy for a piece of successful
knavery, and he loves an episode which hinges on a trial of wits.
His anecdotes mark a pronounced advance on the stories of the
jest-books. The actors are no longer chessmen, who automatically
bring about a situation; they are living characters, and the author
adds to the interest of his book by interweaving personal ex-
periences with his pictures of mendicant life. In such stories as
that of the 'Roge' (cap. IV) and the 'Walking Morte' (cap. XIX), his
curiosity as to the eccentricities and humour of villainy effaces his
mission as an exposer of abuses.
Awdeley's and Harman's books, together with Liber Vagatorum,
have influenced a whole class of literature, from Greene's 'conny-
catching pamphlets' to The Prince and the Pauper. And yet
the Caveat does not anticipate the spirit of the picaresque novel.
Though attracted by knavery, Harman has no toleration for the
knave. 'Lewtering Luskes, lasy Lorells, rowsey ragged rabblement
of rakehells' are amongst his designations for this class, and his only
methods for 'reforming the criminal' are the stocks and the whip.
It is worth noticing that this work, a pamphlet of unquestioned
merit, is free from the literary ideals of the court. Harman
alludes contemptuously to this delycat age, and disclaims all
pretensions to eloquence, declaring that he has set forth his work
‘symplye and truelye, with such usual words and termes as is
among us wel known and frequented.
While the social miseries of England were inspiring a whole
literature of narrative and exposure, the sixteenth century spirit of
cosmopolitanism was also finding popular expression. Curiosity with
regard to other countries was by no means a creation of the age. The
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries produced short Latin descrip-
tions of the characteristics of different nations, and a series of pen
and ink caricatures of the Irish, Welsh and Gascons are found in
the margin of a document of the time of Edward I. But popular
interest in the continent received a new impulse during the sixteenth
century. The immigration of foreigners had, by 1517, become a
marked feature of Euglish commercial life, and the period from 1512
1 Preface to Colloquia familiaria.


## p. 105 (#127) ############################################

Cosmopolitanism. Andrew Boorde
Boorde 105
>
to 1558 is one of tentative exploration, which, though it produced no
startling mercantile discoveries, accustomed England to the idea of
the expansion of Europe, and helped to produce a revolt against
insnlarity. As early as The Nature of the Four Elements, de-
claringe many proper poynts of philosophy naturall and of dyvers
strange landys and of dyvers straunge effects and causes,' we have
a conception of cosmography serving as a basis for a morality
play. The production, apparently, found no imitators. But the
broadening of the national outlook is proved by the ever-increasing
number of allusions to foreign countries, in the tracts of the
timel.
The growth of cosmopolitan ideas found its expression in a
collection of essays on the chief nationalities and kingdoms of
Europe composed by the traveller and physician Andrew Boorde.
This work was finished by 1542, but was not published until 1547,
under the significant title of The Fyrste Boke of the Introduction
of Knowledge. Again we find a work of considerable merit pro-
bably intended to preface a universal encyclopaedia and yet
produced for a public which had not completely dissociated
popular literature from the grotesqueries of the former age.
Each chapter begins with a prologue in doggerel verse, spoken
by a typical member of the country under discussion, and illus-
trated by one of Copland's stock woodcuts. These verses are
intended to portray, and, in some cases, to caricature, what is
typical of each nation. Thus, the Englishman stands naked,
musing on what clothes he shall wear; the Fleming cheerfully
admits that he is sometimes 'drunken as a rat'; the Cornishman
expresses himself in half intelligible English; the Bohemian stands
by Wyclif and cares nothing for the pope; the Venetian is repre-
sented with money to pacify the Turks and the Jews. But the
Introduction is not merely a forerunner of the modern cartoon.
Verse and prose are intermingled as in Thomas's Historye of
Italye ; the doggerel prologues are followed by prose descriptions
in which the author discusses the geographical situation, the
produce and the ‘naturall dysposicion, that is to say, the culture,
religion and customs, of the inhabitants. He ends each enquiry
with information on the coinage, sometimes with a few specimens
of the language, and, in one or two cases, with directions for travel.
Like much of the popular literature of the sixteenth century, the
2
>
>
1 Such as Supplication for the Beggars, Complaynt of Roderyck Mors, Dialogue
between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset (n. d. ), Rede me and be not wrothe (1528), The
Boke named the Governour (1531), eto. , eto.


## p. 106 (#128) ############################################

106 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
Introduction stands between two ages ; it still retains the coarse
laughter and credulity of the past. Boorde believes that Merlin
built Stonehenge, and gravely records the legend of the White
Cock and Hen of St Domingo. But, at the same time, he has the
observation of an age conscious of progress. He notices the
advance of civilisation in different lands, and he understands
the importance of a country's natural resources. The economical
situation interests him; he observes that England is the land of
capital, and that Spain depends on her sea trade for wealth. He
has an eye for the poverty of people who, like the Welsh, are
still sunk in the squalor and ignorance of the Middle Ages. Any-
thing striking about the government attracts him, and the religious
situation frequently receives comment. And yet he has the indi-
vidualist's love of peculiarities. He notices the Irishman's device
for cooking, he reads that the Flemings eat frogs' legs and that
the Genoese are high in the instep.
Besides satisfying men’s curiosity in foreign lands, Boorde put
his medical knowledge and experience within reach of the unin-
itiated, by A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Helth. This
treatise on the cultivation of health, one of the earliest composed in
English, shows how quickly knowledge was spreading through the
middle classes. It was an age when the government insisted on
quarantine but neglected sanitation, and when Harrison believed
that the soot and smoke of chimneyless houses hardened the con-
stitution. Boorde was one of the first to see how greatly sanitation
influenced the well-being of man. The first part of his Dyetary,
really a separate treatise, shows how the secret of health is to
choose a convenient site or one's house. But the most striking
feature of his system deals with the reaction of the mind on the
body? In placing his house, a man should choose a congenial
prospect,
for and the eye be not satysfyed, the mynde cannot be contented. And the
mynde cannot be contented the herte cannot be pleased: if the herte and
mynde be not pleased nature doth abhor. And yf nature do abhor, morty-
fycacyon of the vytall and anymall and spyrytuall powers do consequently
foiowe.
In the second part of his treatise, Boorde gives practical advice
on such matters as sleeping, exercise and dress. He includes
an exhaustive examination of diet; but most of his purely
medical knowledge is still traditional. Yet, in scope and method,
>
Epistolae
1 Cf. Medici dicunt etiam quod sanum est quando aliquis est laetus.
Obscurorum Virorum, vol. I, ep. 9. Magister Conradus de Zuiccavia.


## p. 107 (#129) ############################################

William Bullein
107
the book is an effort to shake off the ignorance of the past and
apply to practical life the learning gathered in universities.
Boorde was not the only physician who advanced the culture
of his age. In those days, chirurgeons and doctors were, men of
general knowledge. Thomas Vicary insists that, besides his pro-
fessional training, a chirurgeon should be versed in natural
philosophy, grammar, rhetoric and abstract science. John Halle
adds astronomy, natural history and botany to the list. These
sciences were needed to equip the practitioner with the skill and
ability to put his own art to the fullest use. And thus the
physician kept in touch with the knowledge of his time. Robert
Recorde, said to have been physician to Edward VI and Mary,
wrote dialogues on arithmetic, geography, mensuration, astrology,
astronomny and algebra. But no writer has embodied so much
sentiment, learning, eloquence and dramatic power in his scientific
treatises as William Bullein. In his first book, The Gouvernement
of Healthe, we find a reflection generally considered the property
of Shakespeare:
In dede the poore sylly shepehard doth pleasantly pipe with his shepe,
whan mighty princes do fight amonge their subjectes, and breake manye
slepes in golden beds, whan bakers in bags and brewers in bottels, do snorte
upon hard strawe, fearing no sodaine mishappe.
In 1562, he produced Bullein's Bulwarke of Defence againste
Sicknes, Sorues, etc. , obviously modelling his title on Elyot's success-
ful Castel of Helth. Bullein's attitude to his subject can best be
expressed in the words of his own dedication ;
I beyng a child of the Commonwealthe am bounde unto my mother, that
is, the lande, in whom I am borne: to pleasure it with any good gift that it
hath pleased God to bestowe upon me, not to this ende to instructe the learned
but to helpe the ignoraunt, that thei maie resort to this little Bulwarke.
The book is divided into four separate treatises, the second in
the form of a dialogue, and it contains what he had learnt from
travel and study about herbs, surgery, the cultivation of health and
the practical part of a physician's work. But the scholars who were
carrying on this work of enlightenment had many other things of
which to tell the people besides remedies for their bodies. Although
the College of Physicians had been incorporated as early as 1518, the
position of medical men was far from established. Bullein ascribes
their low estate to the impostures and frauds of empirics and mounte-
banks? Here, again, the curtain is lifted which bides the low life of
1 Cf. Ep. Obsc. Virorum, vol. I, epp. 33 and 34.


## p. 108 (#130) ############################################

108 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
>
the Middle Ages, and, in a passage of bitter eloquence, we hear of
the escaped criminals, idle labourers and runaway serving-men
that sell worthless or poisonous drugs, practise witchcraft and
necromancy, doing more harm, according to Bullein, than limitours,
pardoners or vagabonds. The whole work has many digressions
and touches of autobiography. But the personal note is sounded to
most effect when the physician who had undergone the insult of a
prosecution for murder and was then languishing in prison for
debt, utters the lamenta beginning : ‘Truely there is none other
purgyng place or purgatorie but this'-not only in bodily suffer-
ing but in anguish of soul,
continuall thought, sometyme wishyng that Death might conquere life,
broken hart and vexed spirite, full of sondrie inwarde affections and alteracions
of minde, small rest or quietnes, sorowful for the death of kindred, or frendes,
being changed into bitter enemies, whiche is a greate plague.
The most important of Bullein's works, from a literary point of
view, is A Dialogue both pleasaunte and pieti full wherein is a
goodly regiment against the fever Pestilence with a Consolacion
and Comfort against death, of which the earliest extant copy is
dated 1564. Although no great plague had visited England for
many years, the congestion of the poor in cities made smaller visita-
tions a frequent occurrence. Yet none of the great physicians
before Gilbert Skene wrote anything that has come down to us
on the epidemics. But Bullein's tract is a great deal more than
one of the earliest treatises to suggest remedies for the plague. In
his hands, the Dialogue is hardly less than a drama of death. He
sketches twelve types of society as a physician would satirise them
in an age when death was rampant. The action is twofold. At
the beginning, the interest centres round the grasping money
maker Antonius, who is sinking fast, but keeps off the thought of
death by attaching Medicus to his person. Antonius, heretofore,
had contented himself with an otiose observance of religion, but is
now troubled by visions of hell. Medicus, unlike Halle's ideal
physician, is a cynical atheist, but, like Chaucer's prototype, makes
a fortune by attending the wealthy and neglecting the poor.
Between these two, the causes and cures of the fever are discussed.
This part of the Dialogue illustrates the transitional stage of the
science, which attributes fever to infected air and the ill health of
the patient, but also accepts eclipses of the moon as a probable
1A Dialogue betwene Sores and Chyrurgi, fol. vi.
Booke of Compoundes, fol. liiij. (Both the Dialogue and the Booke of Compoundes
are sections of the Bulwarke. )


## p. 109 (#131) ############################################

A Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence 109
cause, and varies such practical safeguards as cleanliness, gaiety
and avoidance of emotion with the most extravagant quackeries.
Two lawyers, Avarus and Ambodexter, hover round the fortune of
Antonius, speculating on his death and scheming to influence his
will. The scene then shifts to the home of a prosperous, self-
satisfied burgher, who with his wife and servant Roger are
travelling into the country to escape from the plague stricken
city, with its ringing bells and sounds of woe. The tedium of the
journey is beguiled by discussions on portents and comments on
the dishonesty of lawyers. Roger, a country wit, with the liberty
of the household jester, full of rustic wisdom and folklore, con-
tributes quaint stories and anecdotes after the manner of A C.
Mery Talys. They reach an inn where the wife's admiration
for the wall-paintings discloses a series of emblems passing in
review the abuses and evils of the age. Another traveller, Mendax,
joins them at dinner, and, through his extravagant accounts of
foreign lands, Bullein satirises not only Utopia but books of travel
and legend from Pliny, Isidore and Strabo to Sebastian Münster
and Boiastuau. They proceed on their journey, but black clouds
gather, thunder is heard, Roger flees, the wife hides and Mors
appears. Civis is warned in terrible words that his last hour has
come, and, after fruitless parleyings, is left with a mortal thrust to
write his will and, with the help of Theologus, to prepare his soul
for death. When the danger is past, Roger reappears, infinitely
disgusted that his own name does not appear in his master's will.
As the household is now broken up, he thinks of joining the
cozeners and vagabonds, but fears the gallows. If only he had
Civis's money he would soon make a sumptuous living by usury.
Thus, in one episode, Bullein satirises moneylenders and points out
the vagabonds' recruiting ground.
No summary can give an idea of the learning contained in the
Dialogue. The discussions range from Aristotle's theory of the
elemental forces to symbolic sketches of the chief English poets? .
Its satire reaches nearly every abuse of the age, and there are
passages of unmistakable eloquence and power. The influence of
the morality plays is obvious, but the true historical significance of
the tract consists in the fact that the thought has outgrown the
literary form. The dialogue was a medieval device to convey
1 This idea was far older than Bullein. Cf, the maxim of the school of Salernum :
Si tibi deficiant Medici, Medici tibi fiant
Haec tria : mens hilaris, requies, moderata dieta.
2 Cf. Bouge of Courte, in which Skelton represents the poets laureate (i. e. learned
men) both ancient and modern assembled by Pallas.


## p. 110 (#132) ############################################

110 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
instruction in an attractive form, and, as the reading public in-
creased during the sixteenth century, this means of sugaring the
pill was constantly resorted to. But the exchange of argument
between two or more persons loses its effectiveness unless confined
to the discussion of a single thesis, or the conflict of two characters.
The detached essay and the Theophrastian character are needed to
supersede the dialogue when ideas become more varied and the
picture of life less simple.
We have seen how the great changes of the sixteenth century-
the increase of luxury, the rise of the middle class, the growth of
competition, the suppression of the monasteries, the expansion of
Europe, the frequency of pestilence—inspired a vigorous litera-
ture, quite distinct from the theological and aesthetic movements
of the time. But, while the popular printing presses were thus
exposing fraud and enlightening ignorance, the superstitions of
an earlier age were reappearing in an aggravated form. The belief
in fetishes, totems, the evil eye, luck-bones, folk-remedies, love
charms and nefarious magic was rampant in England. Christ-
ianity and paganism were, among the unthinking and untaught
peasantry, inextricably mingled. Jugglery and legerdemain had
still the glamour of the miraculous, and magic was used to dis-
cover lost things, bring back wayward lovers and cure disease.
Astrologers still foretold events by studying the position of the
stars, and sold information as to the auspicious hour for all kinds of
human enterprise, from the founding of cities to the taking of
medicine. Waldegrave, in 1580, published an attack on prognosti-
cations in the Foure Great Lyers, Striving who shall win the Silver
Whetstone. The writer quotes the Biblical injunction against
taking thought for the morrow, and appends a list of the 'absurd,
unknowne and insolent wordes' used by prognosticators to im-
press the inexperienced. But he still adinits, on the authority of
Scripture, that national benefits or calamities are foreshadowed in
the heavens, and will not definitely deny that stars influence
the fortunes of the individual. Mankind had not yet given up the
search for the philosopher's stone, and the debasement of coinage
during Henry's and Edward's reigns was an additional inducement
to search for wealth by means of alchemy. Such superstition
offered limitless opportunities for ‘alcumysticall cousenages,' in
which the unwary, beguiled by a specious manner and by the
tricks of the trade, invested money in experiments, or entrusted it
to be multiplied. These practices were exposed from time to time
and added to the general sense of corruption and wickedness which
1


## p. 111 (#133) ############################################

Superstition in the XVIth Century II
oppressed mankind. The temper of the age is illustrated by the
belief that the heresies, vanities and worldliness of the nation
would shortly cause some awful manifestation of divine anger.
No sooner was this vague terror established than the old
heathen belief in portents and prodigies made itself felt. Conrad
Lycosthenes closed his Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon,
in 1557, with the warning that these miracles and strange
sights 'were the certain prognostications of changes, revolutions,
and calamities and the veritable tokens of God's wrath. The
popular presses were already making a profitable business out
of news sheets, in verse or prose, publishing sensational reports
from all the world. They now profited by this religious terror
to publish broadsides announcing prodigies and portents. We
read of children born without arms and legs, a monstrous pig with
a dolphin's head, a child born with ruffs, and another having 'the
mouth slitted on the right side like a libarde's (leopard's) mouth,
terrible to beholde. ' These fly-leaves, beginning with a most
circumstantial description of the portent, end with an exhortation
to the people of England to take warning at the manifestations of
God's wrath and to repent. Many of them relate to the year 1562,
which Holinshed and Stow record as especially fertile in monsters.
But the superstitious excitability of the people reached its
most harmful phase in the revival of witch persecutions. To
the medieval mind, heaven and hell were two tremendous powers
fighting for the supremacy of man. The church was, indeed,
master, but the devil was not destroyed. From time to time, his
influence was felt, and now, in this age of pestilence, blasphemous
controversy and schism, men thought that the Evil One was re-
asserting his power. His activity was most clearly discovered in
witchcraft. All sorcery was a voluntary alliance with the powers
of evil. In the case of witches, a carnal union with the devil was
supposed to have taken place. Men who believed themselves
at war with the invisible fiend would not be long in assailing his
confederates on earth. In 1541, Henry VIII passed the first act
against sorcery and magic; in 1562, the law was revived; and, in
1575 and 1576, persecutions were renewed. Terror was increased
by the diseases of insanity and hypochondria being misunderstood.
It was an age of monstrous hallucinations; men believed that they
were wolves and fled to the mountains ; nuns imagined they were cats
and began to mew; maidens vomited pins; men believed they had
snakes in their vitals. Remedies were no less monstrous. People
rubbed themselves with magic ointment to produce dreams and


## p. 112 (#134) ############################################

112 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
}
cured diseases by drinking water out of a murdered man's skull.
This ‘nightmare of superstition' did not obsess everybody; there
were enough readers to call for three editions of a burlesque
rbapsody which ridiculed sorcery, spells and cat-legends under the
title Beware the Cat. The tract, with its new fashioned arti-
ficialities of style, was, probably, designed for the rapidly increasing
class of exquisites, and it did not appeal to the majority of
Englishmen, whose minds were unsettled by the momentous changes
of the age.
This species of fanaticism was now no longer confined to the
vulgar and uneducated. The theology and science of Germany
had already been brought to bear on the subject. As early as
1487, Malleus Maleficarum, which established such fantasies as
the incubus and succubus, the initiation of magicians, the black
art and the counter-charms of the church, bad received the
sanction of the theological faculty and a patent from Maximilian I.
Johannes Trithemius produced, in 1508, Antiphonus Maleficiorum,
which accepted witchcraft as a fact, and taught the Christian how
to defend himself against it. Cornelius Agrippa, on the other
hand, argued against the persecution of witches in his De Occulta
Philosophia, and his pupil, the physician Johann Weier, exposed
the superstition and cruelty of that practice in De Praestigiis
Demonum et Incantationibus ac Beneficiis. Weier still believed
in a certain magic worked by the devil, but he discovered how
much the imagination had to do with witchcraft, and how much of
sorcery can be explained by a knowledge of natural phenomena.
The book provoked the keenest opposition, especially from Jean
Bodin, who put all his experience as a judge in witch trials and
all his theoretic knowledge of magic and sorcery into his Traité
de la Démonomie des Sorciers.
Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, in 1584, is the first
great English contribution to this European controversy. He had
already given proof of the qualities of foresight, reflectiveness and
common sense in a work on hops, designed to improve one of the
industries of his country. The Discoverie, also, was primarily in-
tended as a humanitarian protest—'A Travell in the behalfe of the
poore, the aged and the simple. But the primitive belief in magic
and witchcraft had now become a matter for academic discussion,
and Scot's work is inevitably coloured by continual restatement of
Agrippa’s and Weier's arguments, and by counterblasts to Malleus
and Jean Bodin.
It is essentially a work of investigation and exposition. In that
1
1


## p. 113 (#135) ############################################

Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft
113
uncritical and pedantic age, the great sources of knowledge seemed
to confirm man's natural belief in magic and sorcery. It was
argued that Deuteronomy, the Twelve Tables, the Justinian code,
recognised the existence of witches. Among profane literature,
no lesser authorities than Manilius, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus
and Lucan had given credence to sorcery. A refutation of such
contentions hinged on the interpretation of texts. Thus, much of
the Discoverie is devoted to an academic examination of Hebrew
and Latin words. But Scot was not only a scholar. In the ad-
ministration of his inherited estates, he came into contact with the
unprogressive population of rural districts, and he also seems to
have acquired at Oxford a sound knowledge of law. He boldly
criticises the legal methods of procedure with accused witches,
and shows how melancholy and old age often cause women to
incur the suspicion of sorcery. One feature of his book is its
thoroughness. Witchcraft was involved in other forms of credulity;
to believe in one manifestation of supernatural power was to
admit all to be possible. So Scot explains the legerdemain which
beguiled the simple; he detects the frauds and impostures of friars
and priests who encouraged the belief in invisible spirits. Borrow-
ing from the keen humour and intelligence of Erasmus, he exposes
the tricks of alchemists, and discredits the practice of incantation
and devil-conjuring by merely enumerating at full length the
ludicrously elaborate charms then in use. With admirable skill
he attributes the superstitions of witch-mongers to the influence
of the Roman Catholic religion. He sums up the conclusions of
his work in these words:
Witchcraft is in truth a cousening art, wherin the name of God is abused,
propbaned and blasphemed, and his power attributed to a vile creature. In
estimation of the Vulgar people it is a supernaturall worke, contrived betweene
a Corporall old woman and a spirituall divell. The maner thereof is so secret,
mysticall and strange, that to this daie there hath never beene any credible
witnes thereof. It is incomprehensible to the wise, learned or faithfull, a
probable matter to children, fooles, melancholike persons and papists.
But Scot's Discoverie produced no permanent effect on the
beliefs of his time. The treatise is too diffuse and ill-constructed
to be read with pleasure. Furthermore, science was not suffici-
ently advanced to substitute reason for superstition. Melanchthon's
Initia Doctrinae physicae was based on a belief that the devil
bore sway over natural phenomena. Paracelsus was infected
with the same error; Reuchlin believed in witches. Cardanus
contended that certain complaints and affections must be the
result of magic and the workyng of cursed sciences,' since
8
8
E. L. III.
CH. V.


## p. 114 (#136) ############################################

114 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
physic and chirurgery knew of no remedy. Scot, also, had the
limitations of his contemporaries. He still believed in a 'naturall
magicke' and he accepted many of the legends of classic lore, such
as the belief that a certain river in Thrace makes white sheep
produce black lambs, and a large number of folk-remedies, such as
the belief that the bone of a carp's head staunches blood.
We have seen how prominent a part the middle classes
played in forming the literature of the sixteenth century. While
accepting the stories, satire and learning of the Middle Ages,
they created a demand for English books that should reflect
the tendencies of the present and embody the humour and wisdom
of the past. One feature of their reading is its assimilation of
French, Italian and German thought; another, its attractive-
ness for 'clerks' and 'gentlemen' as well as for the commons. '
This popular literature was not obscured by the 'melodious bursts'
of Elizabeth's reign. On the contrary, social and fugitive tracts
continued to develop along the same lines till the Civil War.
Satires on folly and domestic discord, character studies, jest-books,
broadside ballads, beggar books, treatises on cosmography, the culti-
vation of health, universal knowledge and witchcraft continued to
flourish throughout the Jacobean period, and the great work of
exposing abuses was bequeathed to not incompetent hands. Never-
theless, a change in the temper of the people begins to be noticeable
during the last twenty years of the sixteenth century. Puritanism,
which had long made itself felt, now became prominent; national
sentiment took possession of the people; the conceits of pseudo-
classicism became an almost universal fashion; style preoccupied
readers and writers; the essay was developed; the gulf between
popular and court literature began to widen; above all, London
grew into a centre-or, rather, a hotbed-of professional writers.
These changes were felt at once in the people's literature. The
tracts of Churchyard, Gilbert, Greene, Nashe, Gifford, Lodge,
Chettle, Dekker, Thynne, Overbury, Jonson, Earle, Parrot, Wye
Saltonstall, Breton, Brathwait, Peacham, Parker and Rowlands
belong to a different era. Reginald Scot has been classed with
Tudor writers because his work is a résumé of the thoughts of
that time and his treatment has the rather clumsy earnestness of
an earlier period. But the others mark a subsequent stage in
popular English literature and are dealt with in later chapters of
the present work.
a


## p. 115 (#137) ############################################

CHAPTER VI
SIR DAVID LYNDSAY
AND THE LATER SCOTTISH MAKARIS'
ALTHOUGH Sir David Lyndsay, properly the last inheritor
in Scotland of the Chaucerian tradition, was, evidently, well
read in the great English master and his successors, and was
influenced both in his poetic form and method by Dunbar and
Douglas, his verse is informed by a spirit radically different
from that of previous 'makaris. ' Like Dunbar, he was largely
a satirist; he was a satirist of the political, social and ecclesiastical
corruptions of his age, just as Dunbar was of those of the previous
age. But, in Lyndsay's time, the sentiment against social and
ecclesiastical corruptions had become much stronger. It was
rapidly becoming national; and its more absorbing character was
ultimately to have a fatal effect on poetry. The character of
Lyndsay's verse was symptomatic of the approach of a period
of poetic decline. The artistic purpose is not so supreme in
him as in Dunbar. He is less poetical and more didactic.
While by no means so polished and trenchant, he is much more
special and precise. The gilded coarseness of gentlewomen, the
hypocrisy and worldliness of churchmen, the greedy covetousness
of courtiers, were to Dunbar, according to his mood, subjects for
bitter or humorous mirth. To his mirth, blended with humour,
or wrath or contempt, he gave expression in biting and brilliant
verse, without any very definite purpose beyond that of finding
vent for his emotions and scope for his art. To Lyndsay, on the
contrary, the definite purpose was almost everything; he was,
primarily, less a poet than a political and social reformer; and
he made use of the literary medium that would best achieve his
moral purpose. Had he lived in modern times, he might have
been either a prominent and successful statesman, or a brilliant
writer on the burning questions of the hour; and, had the period
of his literary activity fallen only a few years later than it did-
when the advantages of the invention of printing were more
842


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116
Sir David Lyndsay
.
utilised, and had begun to create a demand for vernacular prose-
he might have indulged in admonitions, exhortations and blasts,
somewhat after the manner of Knox: he had no mastery, like
Buchanan, of either Latin verse or prose, even had his particular
purpose not been better served by utilising different forms of
vernacular verse.
Sometimes, like Douglas, Lyndsay employed allegory, and he,
also, employed it for a moral purpose; but, unlike Douglas,
he was not content to deal with the virtues and vices in the
abstract, or merely in meditatively pictorial fashion; his primary
aim was to point out, and hold up to scorn, the definite political,
social and moral scandals of the time. In his early manhood he
may have written a variety of verse with a merely artistic purpose, ,
but the earliest of his poetical pieces which has come down
to us is The Dreme, which internal evidence seems to show was
written shortly after the escape of the young king, James V, from
the tutorship of the Douglases in 1528. From the time of the
birth of James V, in 1512, Lyndsay had been, as he records in
the introductory Epistil to the Kingis Grace, the king's personal
attendant-his sewer arranger of his table), cupbearer, carver,
treasurer, usher and cubicular. Being the king's chief companion
in his more solitary hours, he had been accustomed to entertain
him with all kinds of ancient tales; and, now that James had
come to years of discretion, and had personally to undertake the
responsibilities of government, Lyndsay proposed to show him
'a new story'-one of a different kind from any told to him before,
and more suited to the graver character of his new circumstances.
The poem was intended for the king's perusal, and thus the pill
had to be gilded in order that it might be accepted. This accounts
for the introductory display of the poet's accomplishments as a
master of terms aureate, and for his resolve to make known his
revelations in the elaborate allegorical fashion that was a poetic
convention of the time.
The Dreme of Lyndsay may have been suggested by The Dreme
of Dunbar; but it is about ten times as long, and it has nothing
in common with it beyond the name and the description of a
dream for its theme. Certain stanzas in Lyndsay's prologue are,
however, very similar in manner and substance to some of the
introductory stanzas of Dunbar's The Thrissil and the Rois, and,
like the latter poem, it is written in the rime royal of Chaucer,
all except the epilogue, which is in the nine-lined stave used
by Dunbar in The Goldyn Targe, by Chaucer in Anelida and
а


## p. 117 (#139) ############################################

The Dreme
117
Arcite and by Gavin Douglas in part of The Palice of Honour.
The general form of Lyndsay's poem seems to have been sug-
gested rather by The Palice of Honour than by any poem of
Dunbar, who did not intermeddle with extended allegory. Like
The Palice of Honour, it records an adventurous journey, but of
a less purely imaginative or allegorical character, for Lyndsay is
made to visit what he regards as actual realities—the lowest
hell, purgatory, the seven planets, heaven and paradise. The
character of the journey may have been suggested to him by
Chaucer's House of Fame; but other-world scenes had, generally,
much attraction for the imagination of medieval poets. This
portion of the poem was, also, largely a conventional excrescence.
It was chiefly introductory to his main theme. He was here
intent partly on displaying his poetic paces with a view to arouse
the literary interests of the king and secure his attention, partly
on putting him in such a frame of mind as would induce him
to give serious consideration to the succeeding exposure of the
poverty, wrongs and miseries of his subjects.
As revealed to Lyndsay by Dame Remembrance, Scotland is
described as possessing within itself all that is needful for the
highest prosperity: abundant rivers and lochs for fish, many lusty
vales for corn, fruitful hills and green meadows for the pasturage
of sheep and cattle, forests swarming with deer and other animals
of the chase, various rich metals and precious stones, and, if none
of the finer fruits of the warmer climates, from which spices and
wines are made, various sorts of fruit of a thoroughly good and
wholesome kind. This description tallies with actual fact; in the
Scotland of Lyndsay's time, there was an abundant supply of food
for the limited number of its inhabitants. It possessed all the
essential resources for comfort and prosperity, and it was inhabited,
as Dame Remembrance points out, by a strong, ingenious and
courageous people. Why, then, he asks, has there come to be
such evident poverty, such great unhappiness, such a lack of
virtuous well-doing? And the answer of Dame Remembrance
is that the cause is lack of policy, lack of proper administration
of justice and lack of peace. This is further revealed in detail
by John the Commoun Weill, whose arrival as he is hastening to
leave the country, and whose ragged costume, lean looks and
dejected bearing are described with vivid picturesqueness. In
reply to Lyndsay's query as to the cause of the miserable and
poverty-stricken appearance of one whose life was exemplary,
and whose aims high and honourable, John the Commoun Weill


## p. 118 (#140) ############################################

118
Sir David Lyndsay
informs him of the banishment from the country of all his best
friends, of the unrighteous triumph of his enemies and of his evil
treatment in every part of the country where he sought refuge-
the borders rampant with theft and murder and mischief; the
highlands peopled by lazy sluggards; the islands and the western
regions a prey to unthrift, laziness, falsehood and strife; and the
more civilised portions of the lowlands, from which 'singular
profit' (selfish greed), after doing him great injury and offence,
expelled him with opprobrious epithets. He then proceeds to
describe in detail, and with much terse vigour, the corruptions
and inefficiency both of the civil and spiritual rule during the
king's minority, and intimates his determination not again to give
Scotland the comfort of his presence, until she is guided by the
wisdom of 'ane gude and prudent Kyng. '
With the departure of John the Commoun Weill, the visions
vouchsafed to the poet come to a close. He is brought again
by Dame Remembrance to the cove where he had laid him down
to sleep; and, after being awakened by the shot of a cannon from
a ship in the offing, he proceeds to his home, where, after a good
dinner, he sits himself down to record the events of his vision. To
this record he finally appends an epilogue entitled An Exhorta-
tion to the King, which takes the form of shrewd advice, and
serious and solemn warning.
The Complaynt—in the octosyllabic couplet, and of rather
later date-records, in a brisk, mocking fashion, the methods
adopted by the Douglases to enrich themselves at the king's ex-
pense, and to make him the passive instrument of their ambition ;
describes the generally scandalous condition both of church and
state under their rule; and congratulates him on his escape from
the clutches of such false friends, and on the marked improvement
in social order and general well-being throughout the kingdom,
except as regards the spiritualitie. ' On the doings of the
ecclesiastics he advises him to keep a watchful eye, and see that
they preach with ‘unfeyneit intentis,' use the sacraments as
Christ intended and leave such vain traditions as superstitious
pilgrimages and praying to images. Finally, Lyndsay-as poets
were then accustomed to do-ventures to suggest that the king,
now that his affairs were prosperous, might do worse than
bestow on him some token of his regard, either by way of loan
or gift.