No More Learning

Yet it appears in an essentially
popular literary form, and shows how considerable a part of the
reading public was found among the common people.
Except in its form, The Wyll of the Devyll belongs mostly to
the attack on social and occasional evils which figured largely
in the works of Brinkelow, Crowley, Awdeley, Harman, Bullein and
others. Meanwhile, the literature of classified character continued
its own development uncoloured by contemporary events. To this
type belong several broadsides, such as the XX Orders of Callettes
or Drabbys and its counterpart the XX Orders of Fooles,
registered in 1569–70, and A New Ballad against Unthrifts. The
Galley late come into Englande from Terra Nova,laden with Phisi-
tiens, Apothecaries and Chirurgians is now lost. In 1575, Awdeley
printed the XXV Orders of Knaves, in which brief and sarcastic
catchwords out of the iminemorial bill of charges against those
that servel' are worked into condensed portraits of remarkable
distinctness. But the French Danses Macabres of the fifteenth
century had already shown that subjection to death was the most
effective classification of human types. The song of The Shaking
of the Sheets, first alluded to in Misogonus (c. 1560), exposes,
with malicious felicity, the futility of life's different pursuits in
the face of death. These verses were meant to accompany a
symbolic 'jigge' or masquerade, which seems to have been a
common practice since the performance of a danse macabre
in the Parisian cemetery of the Innocents in 1424. The subject
was even more frequently represented by woodcuts with ex-
planatory verses. One of the most curious is a broadside with-
out title or date containing a representation of Death pursuing
the Priest, the King, the Harlot, the Lawyer, the Clown (i. e.
countryman), followed by ten stanzas in which each type boasts of
the power he or she holds over the others, and Death of his power
over them all. Another early broadside entitled The Daunce and
Song of Death has four engravings of the Miser, the Prisoner,
the Judge and two Lovers, with a moral verse under each, the
whole concluding with an apologue. This spirit of type-satire
continued till the Civil War. Its last and most striking develop-
ment is the Theophrastian character, in which the sixteenth century
1 Herford, C. H. , Literary Relations of England and Germany, p. 363.


## p. 88 (#110) #############################################

88 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
view of society reappears in a form inspired by the fashionable
classicism of the Jacobean age.
As in previous centuries, the ale-house continued to figure
in popular literature as the scene where character, especially
female character, revealed itself in amusing and grotesque colours.
Jyl herself was
A widow of a homely sort,
Honest in substaunce and full of sport.
1
2
6
The out-of-door life which the middle-class husband led and
the primitive nature of the home drove the wife to seek the
society of her associates at the tavern. The fifteenth century
had produced some amusing scenes in these headquarters of
female conspiracy against men, and the sixteenth century fol-
lowed its lead. Skelton's Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng
contains a coarse, graphic picture of the manners and morals
of the low-class women who frequented that lady's establishment
near Leatherhead. Higher in the social scale, we find the
traditional character 2 (possibly suggested by the woman of
Samaria') who has married and cheerfully buried five husbands
in quick succession. An anonymous satirist has cleverly crowded
all the vices of the middle-class wife into a career of this type in
a half moral, half burlesque poem The boke of Mayd Emlyn.
Emlyn's character is vigorously portrayed. She is one of those
women who dress gaily, get drunk at taverns, dally with gallants
and fling the nearest articles at their husbands when they re-
monstrate. She is a female Bluebeard, driving her husbands to
suicide or disposing of them by direct murder and, between each
bereavement, she goes into deep mourning, on one occasion keep-
ing an onion in her handkerchief to stimulate tears. One of her
intrigues leads her and her paramour to the stocks, where, true to
her character, she immensely enjoys her publicity. Emlyn finally
takes up her residence at the stews, and the story closes with
a glimpse of the wretched woman begging her bread in her
old age.
Sometimes the career of the ale-house adventuress throws
light on the different types of society, as in the Widow Edith.
In twelve ‘mery gestys' this ingenious personage imposes on all
i See vol. II, chap. XVI.
The grief of newly bereaved wives and their readiness to be consoled was a
commonplace as early as Gautier Le Long's La Veuve (twelfth or thirteenth century),
and may, perhaps, help to explain the scene between the duke of Gloster and lady
Anne in Richard III (Act I, sc. 2). Cf. , also, The Wife of Bath.


## p. 89 (#111) #############################################

Satires and Disquisitions on Women 89
classes by appearing to be in temporary distress and announcing
that she is a lady of considerable wealth. The tale was evidently
written to please the commons, and it is full of the character
drawing they love. Edith lodges with poor people and we see
something of their homely cheer and good nature. She encounters
a doctor of divinity who holds forth on the covetousness of men
and most willingly absolves her when he hears of her wealth.
She meets two pilgrims; the satirist discloses their weakness,
which is not love of money but vainglorying in good works, so
Edith attempts suicide and gives them the satisfaction of saving
her. The career of the adventuress leads her into the house-
holds of great men, where the head servants fall in love with her
alleged fortune. There are admirable touches of character in
the scene in which the earl of Arundel's yeomen escort her to
her home and improve the occasion by courting her wealth. The
tract purports to be the disclosure of an adventuress actually
alive; but the author is far more interested in the humour and
dramatic interest of his narrative and has borrowed largely, in
treatment and spirit, from the jest-books. Each of Edith's victims
has his own individuality, which is developed by action as well as
by appropriate speeches. There is true narrative power in the
succession of events which, in the case of each imposture, lead up
to a disillusionment.
The literature of the Middle Ages is prolific in warnings against
marriage and in tales of domestic discord. Germany began the
sixteenth century with a number of learned indictinents against
female character. But the English literature of this period was
mostly influenced by a large number of French tracts, such as
Les souhaits des hommes, et les souhaiz et beautés des dames, and
Les quinze joyes de mariage. These poems accept the traditional
views held concerning women, but begin to penetrate more deeply
into the problems of domestic life and show a keener appreciation
of its dramatic humour. A large number of English tracts are
obviously inspired from these and similar sources. In every case we
see how the readers who still delight in coarse allusions and horse-
play are also attracted by character drawing and the creation of
situations. One of the most representative is The Schole-house of
women. The author begins with a prolix disquisition on the character
of women. He comes to the conclusion that the majority are fas-
tidious, sharp tongued, quick tempered, disputatious, fond of double
dealing, and, when married, querulous and more inclined to gossip
1 Sce vol. 11, chap. XVL
a


## p. 90 (#112) #############################################

90 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
than to mind the house. The writer then shows the real school of
women by means of an admirable dialogue in which a young wife
is drawn out by an experienced gossip to disclose the cruelty and
selfishness of her husband at home. The elder, out of the store-
house of her experience, counsels the younger the best way to
domesticate her consort, especially when he takes to beating.
Then the writer continues to expatiate on the subtlety, loquacity,
hypocrisy and versatility of the female mind, borrowing freely
from the Quinze joyes and the C. Mery Talys. After this comes
a list of Biblical and historical characters, all women and all bad,
supported by quotations from Solomon and Cicero. The tract
was written to please, and its author's object was attained : his
pamphlet was twice reprinted.
This popularity proved that the public were ready for two new
types of literature: the comedy of character, foreshadowed in the
dialogue of the old and young gossip, and the essay, with its discur-
sive appeals to ancient literature. So lively was the interest taken
in this type of popular reading that the Schole-house raised a
small controversy after the manner of medieval French literature'.
Edward Gosynhyll published in 1541 The Prayse of all women,
called Mulierum pacan, and, a few years later, Edward More
published The Defence of Women. Kynge eventually pub-
lished the Paean and the Schole-house side by side in the same
volume.
Another satire on women, which combined the dialogue with
the street ballad, is The Proude Wyves Paternoster. The idea of
giving piquancy to worldly sentiments by associating them with
divine service came from France. Thus, in La Paternostre à
l'userier and in La Credo à l'userier, the money-lender inter-
weaves the Latin of the missal with worldly reflections on
wealth and business. In the English tract, the scene opens at
church on a feast day, and amongst the women, all in their
best clothes, is one who intermingles each phrase of the Pater-
noster with secret prayers to gain ascendancy over her husband
and to rival her neighbours' finery. An accident leads her
into conversation with another gossip, and their chatter lasts
till the end of the service. But the wife has absorbed venomous
counsels from her companion. She returns home, asks her husband
for some money, is refused, breaks out into recriminations and
1 In the fourteenth century, Jean Le Fèvre had translated Matheolus and then refuted
him. Christine de Pisan had attacked Jean de Meun. In the fifteenth, the disputants
became far more numerous, but both factions are dominated by Martin de Franc.


## p. 91 (#113) #############################################

2
Satires on Women
91
leaves his presence with vague threats. The husband, in great
uneasiness, goes to consult the curate, who bids him trust in God's
grace. The man returns home comforted, only to find his house
rifled and his wife gone. There is here no poetic sentiment; but
the dramatic humour of the conversations, the characters of the
two women and especially those of the men, are admirable.
In the Middle Ages, domestic anarchy often took the form of a
fight for the breeches! In Germany, the city magistrates even
recognised and sanctioned a duel between the partners for life.
The Towneley and Chester Mysteries represented brawls between
Noah and his wife. In the sixteenth century, this view of the
relationship between husband and wife took the form of a Merry
Jeste of a Shrewde and Curste Wyfe lapped in Morelles skin,
compiled out of various sources, including The Geystes of Skoggan?
and two French fabliaux. This version of the domestic battle tells
how a young farmer, apparently kind-hearted and honourable,
marries the elder daughter of a man of substance. The bride soon
shows that she intends to rule her new home, but the yeoman
strips her, flogs her till she faints and sews her up in the salted
hide of an old horse. In this plight she capitulates, and peace
reigns in place of discord.
This view of the perversity, garrulousness and vanity of women
continued long after our period to influence those who preferred
satire to sentiment. It forms the basis of the Theophrastians' con-
ception of female character, and underlies much of the polite
humour of the eighteenth century essayists.
But the shrewd, ironical spirit of the sixteenth century required
something more than unchivalrous satire. The love of learning
was growing apace, but with the enthusiasm for scholarship came
depression from over-study. The melancholy which was con-
spicuous in Elizabethan and Jacobean times' was already beginning
to puzzle thoughtful men, and it was not without specific earnestness
that physicians recommended gaiety as a tonic foran exhausted body“.
Scholars found the surest relaxation then, as now, in conversation.
And their conversation took the form we should expect from men
2
a
1 Vide Wright, T. , History of Caricature and Grotesque, chap. VIII. Cf. De la Dame
qui fut corrigée.
? Cf. . How Scoggin caused his wife to be let blood. ' De la femme qui voulut éprouver,
son mari. Cf. also, The Taming of a Shrew.
3 Vide Andrew Boorde, Dyetary of Helth, 1542; Bright, T. , Treatise of Melan-
cholie, 1586; T(homas) Walkington), The Opticke Glasse of Humors, 1605.
Epistulae obscurorum Virorum, 1st series, Mugister Conradus ad magistrum
Ortuinum Gratium.


## p. 92 (#114) #############################################

92 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
1
in sympathy with Plutarch, Plautus and Cicero: that is to say, of
jokes, witticisms, repartees and clinches. Thus, a large number of
Latin Facetiae appeared in print from the pens of fifteenth and
sixteenth century scholars. The style of narrative is strikingly
similar to the collections of Exempla, with which the Lativists,
thanks to their semi-ecclesiastical education, would be familiar.
These bons-mots and anecdotes diverted the student and the con-
troversialist by touches of common life or, at the most, by flashes
of classical wit. Their triviality ensured relaxation, but the scholar's
attention was held by an appeal to his sense of paradox and epigram.
This interest in witticisms and anecdotes soon spread to the
middle classes, whose habit of mind had for centuries been formed
by story-telling. The jongleurs and trouvères had preserved
‘those popular tales, which from time immemorial had circulated
among nations of Indo-European descent' and which continued to
find a place in all subsequent miscellanies down to the eighteenth
century. Ever since the Franciscans and Dominicans had used
apologues to enforce their exhortations, collections of Exempla
had been compiled from such sources as Vitae Patrum and
the Legends of the Saints. Gesta Romanorum had supplied
tales, mostly romantic, from obsolete Latin chronicles and German
legends. The sixteenth century still encouraged the medieval
love of the marvellous and heroic, but it also gave great impulse
to the half cynical, half amused indulgence which had always
greeted the triumphs of the knave, the blunders of the fool, the
flashes of the quick-witted and the innumerable touches of often
undignified nature which make the whole world kin. This in-
creased interest in the vagaries of one's neighbour was partly due
to the spread of education, which brought into clearer relief the
different grades of intelligence and stupidity. It also arose from the
growth of the city population, where legal maladministration often
reduced daily intercourse to a trial of wits. Moreover, the townsman
felt, though in a less degree than the scholar, the need for the relaxa-
tion of social intercourse. The minstrel and jester made a livelihood
and sometimes rose to fame? by gratifying this unromantic curiosity
in life; but the publication of Latin Facetiae had shown how
their place could be taken by jest-books printed in the native tongue.
These jest-books, in Italy, France, England and Germany, drew
largely on each other and even more on the inexhaustible stores
of the past, eschewing romantic and religious sentiment and
1 Courthope, History of English Poetry, vol. I, p. 63.
E. g. Scogan, Tarlton and Archie.


## p. 93 (#115) #############################################

>
Jest-books
93
reproducing only wit, ribaldry, satire and realism. The earliest
English jest-book, previous to most of the German miscellanies,
was in print by about 1526 under the title of A C. Mery Talys. This
miscellany covers practically the same ground as the Fabliaux,
treating of the profligacy of married women, the meanness and
voluptuousness of the priesthood, the superstition and crassitude of
the peasant, the standing jokes against feminine loquacity and
obstinacy, the resources of untutored ingenuity and the comedy of
the fool outwitted by the knave. All the tales are narrated with
a pointedness and simplicity which show how well English narrative
prose had learnt its lesson from Latin. Some of the anecdotes, to
modern taste, are merely silly or obscene. But a certain number,
following in the footsteps of the Latin Facetiae, harbour a sense
of wit and subtlety beneath apparent crudity. A more pro-
nounced leaning towards the new humanism is seen in Mery Tales
and Quicke Answeres (1535). The compiler draws less on medieval
stories and puts some of Poggio's facetiae and the tales of Erasmus's
Convivium Fabulosum and a selection from his Apophthegmata?
within reach of English readers. Latin quotations illustrate some
of the anecdotes, and the reflections, with which ‘jests' are fre-
quently concluded (probably in imitation of Exempla) are, in
some cases, more discursive. The twenty-eighth story ends with a
disquisition on dreams which already anticipates the essay.
Anecdotes and repartees, closely related to conversation and
practical jokes, tended to be associated with a personality. Joci
et Sales . . . ab Ottomaro Luscinio had appeared in 1529, and Facetie
et motti arguti di alcuni eccellentissimi ingegni et nobilissimi
signori, collected by Lodovico Dominichi, was published in 1548.
Following the example of the continent, English compilers soon
found it advantageous to put their jests and cranks on the market
associated with some character famous for humour or knavery.
Thus, we have the Merie Tales of Master Skelton, in which a
collection of extravagant anecdotes, associated with the laureate's
personality and his rectorship of Diss, is used to introduce clerical
burlesque such as the people loved. But the most perfect type
of biographical jest-book was registered in 1565–6, under the
title The Geystes of Skoggan. The kind of exploit which the
Fabliaux attributed to the 'clerc' is now attributed to the house-
hold jester. Amazing tales of dishonesty, insolence, and knavery
are collected from native and foreign sources, including two from
1 Vide De Vocht, H. , De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche l'ooneelliteratur der
XVIe en XVIIe eeuwen. Ghent, 1908.
>


## p. 94 (#116) #############################################

94 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
the Markolf legend and one (in later editions) from Brantôme.
Several had already appeared in Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres.
These are skilfully woven into a continuous narrative, marking
definite progress in the scamp's career from his student days at
Oxford to a position at the courts of two monarchs, and thence
to his death. These licentious antics were probably not accept-
able, even in the rude and profligate court of Edward IV, in whose
reign the historic Scogan lived. But the jest-book was becoming
more democratic under German influence and pictured the priest-
hood and the nobility only as accessories to the buffoonery of low
life. So welcome was this coarser, more plebeian humour that
German jest-books were put on the market in English translations.
Der Pfarrer von Kalenberg was translated and adapted to English
ideas about 1510 and Eulenspiegell was translated from an
abridged Antwerp edition by William Copland under the title
of Howleglass, while the same printer produced an English
version of the old Danish tale of Rausch as Friar Rush. Such
tales as Skoggan's and Howleglass are a link between the jester
and the adventurer whose career was becoming a part of the
people's reading. Contempt for the routine of daily life is un-
mistakable. Howleglass's biographer goes so far as to say: 'Men
let alone and take no hede of cunning men yt dwel bi them; but
prefer them a litle or nought for ther labour nor be beloved: but
rural persones and vacabundes have all their desyre. ' In such
a sentiment, the levelling tendency of democracy has already
grown into sympathy with the picaro. But these gestes have no
literary kinship with Lazarillo de Tormes. Neither Howleglass,
The Parson of Kalenborowe, Skoggan nor Skelton has the in-
dividuality which suggests the novel. Moreover, they still move in
the distorted world of caricature, where the stupid are incredibly
stupid, and the lucky unnaturally lucky. In France, the jest-
book became a vehicle for all the wisdom and satire at Rabelais's
command. But in England, the fermentation of the age found
expression through other channels, and the jest-books only helped
to prepare the way for the detached literature of the seven-
teenth century by appealing to a sense of humour, wit and verbal
subtlety.
This sense found its fullest scope in criticism and ridicule.
Again, the literature of the sixteenth century, not yet conscious of
itself, had recourse to the past. Satires against certain localities
are among the features of the Middle Ages, when decentralisation
i Ste ante, p. 82. On the Eulenspiegel cycle, see Herford, C. H. , op. cit. chap. v.


## p. 95 (#117) #############################################

Riddles and Broadsides
95
gave counties and even towns the isolation of a separate country.
A monk of Peterborough in the twelfth or thirteenth century
satirised the inhabitants of Norfolk"; while satires are also found
concerning the people of Stockton and Rochester, and, at a later
period, on the inhabitants of Pevensey. 'Merry tales' were com-
posed or compiled on these lines for readers sufficiently intellectual
to laugh at folly. Germany set the example by producing, in the
sixteenth century, a collection of witticisms on Schildburg: the
inhabitants of this famous town are represented as experiencing
so much inconvenience from their far-famed wisdom that they
determine to establish a reputation for folly, a reputation which
still lives. A similar method of unifying anecdotes of stupidity
was adopted by the English in the reign of Henry VIII, when
Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam appeared. The same type
of humour took a slightly different form in The Sack-Full of News,
a collection, mostly of bucolic ineptitudes, compiled for city readers
in an age when Barclay could say to the countryman: 'even the
townsmen shall laugh you to scorn. '
Jest-books did not efface a kindred form of miscellany-books
of riddles.
Wynkyn de Worde printed Demaundes joyous, which
.
was chiefly an abridgment of Les demandes joyeuses; and the
Booke of Merry Riddles probably appeared before the earliest
known edition of 1600. These questions and answers enjoyed no
mean consideration as a mental training? , and, undoubtedly, helped
to form the standard of wit and conceit in later Elizabethau and
Jacobean times. The riddle books are full of such questions as:
"What is that that shineth bright of day and at night is raked up
in its own dirt? '—'The fire'; 'What is it that getteth his living
backward? '—'The ropemaker'; 'Of what faculty be they that
every night turn the skins of dead beasts? '—'The friars. ' In the
character writers, we meet with the same type of wit, only, in
them, it is reversed. Thus, in the Overbury collection, we read that
a serving man is a creature who, though he be not drunk, yet is not
his own man, and that the daily labour of a waterman teaches
him the art of dissembling because he goes not the way he looks.
In Micrologia, 'a player. . . is much like a counter in arithmetic and
may stand one while for a king, another while a beggar, many
times as a mute or cipher. In Butler, 'a melancholy man is one
that keeps the worst company in the world, that is, his own. '
1 Cf. Wright, T. , Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems, 1838.
This tendency begins to be marked before the sixteenth century by such books
as Mensa philosophica and Liber Paceti.


## p. 96 (#118) #############################################

96 Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
The primary object of these anecdotes, facetiae and riddles was
to occupy idle hours. The English miscellanies are always 'merry';
and the foreign jest-books have even more suggestive titles. This
natural inclination for amusement, in which even elderly students
took refuge from over-work, had come down to the sixteenth cen-
tury with a love of singing and dancing? By 1510, Erasmus
declared that Britanni, praeter alia, formam, musicam et lautas
mensas, proprie sibi vindicent. Miles Coverdale”, in 1538, testifies
that the taste for singing was universal among carters, ploughmen
and women 'at the rockes' and spinning wheel. Words in metre
were composed to give a fuller zest to music and dancing, but the
conditions of their production were quite different from those
which evolved the folk-lore balladº. The change was inevitable
from the time the minstrel left the baronial hall for the city square.
The transformation became complete so soon as the invention of
printing made it more profitable to sell ballads than to sing them.
These fly-leaves and broadsides, specially produced for the occasion
and sold for a penny, have nearly all perished. Popular ones
were pasted on the wall and the less valued were devoted to more
ephemeral purposes. Both destinies led to annihilation, but the
demand for them must have grown rapidly, for, in the second decade
of the sixteenth century, the author of the Interlude of the Nature
of the Four Elements complains of the toys and trifles' printed in
his time; so that, while in English there were scarcely 'any works
of connynge,' the most ‘pregnant wits' were employed in compiling
'ballads and other matters not worth a mite. ' Henry VIII encour-
aged such productions in the early part of his reign but suppressed
them wholesale when any part of his policy was attacked. In 1533,
a proclamation was issued to suppress ‘fond books, ballads, rimes
and other lewd treatises in the English tongue. ' In 1543, an act of
parliament was passed to put a stop to the circulation of 'printed
ballads, plays, rimes, songs and other fantasies. ' 'At the beginning
of Mary's reign, an edict was made against ‘books, ballads, rimes
and treatises' which had been 'set out by printers and stationers,
of an evil zeal for lucre and covetous of vile gain. These sup-
pressions, added to the perishable nature of the product, have
destroyed all but about fifty-six ballads of the reigns from
Henry VIII to Elizabeth. But, by 1556, the Stationers' company
was incorporated and the development and nature of this primitive
>
1 See Chappell, W. , Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. I, p. 253.
9 Encomium Moriae.
8 Address unto the Christian reader.
4 See vol. II, chap. XVII.


## p. 97 (#119) #############################################

Transition of Society
97
journalism is more easily traceable. From about 1560 to 1570,
about forty ballad-printers are registered, but, here again, the bulk
of their output has perished. The vast number of broadsides that
have come down to us belong to later periods, and owe their
existence to the labours of private collectors such as Selden,
Harley, Bagford and Pepys. Some of those still extant, which
date from the first two decades of Elizabeth's reign, continue the
spirit of the jest-books or reflect the sentiment of the 'botes'
and 'fraternityes,' but the greater number are akin to the new
spirit of Elizabethan and Jacobean times? .
We have seen in the foregoing summary how large a rearling
public still remained untouched by the renascence, and continued
to enjoy medieval literature, borrowing freely from France and
Germany. But, at the same time, the great social changes of the
sixteenth century were inspiring a large number of quite different
tracts. Trade was encouraged by both the Henrys, and the growing
taste for luxury, which ruined the gentry, enriched the commercial
classes. Moreover, the discovery of the New World added im-
mensely to the opportunities of making money. This commercial
activity seemed, to the moralists of the age, to be a rupture with
the good traditions of the past. In 1540–50, was printed
Charles Bansley’s Pryde and Abuse of Women, which belongs to
quite a different world of satire from that of The Schole-house of
Women or The Proude Wyves Paternoster. The coarse, picturesque
narrative is gone and, with it, the rough humour and caricature.
Bansley's invective is a sermon in verse.
He views female failings
in the light of the Seven Deadly Sins, and lashes their ostenta-
tion and vanity as Romish and inspired by the Devil. At
about the same time, a dialogue called The Booke in Meeter
of Robin Conscience was printed, in which Conscience remonstrates
first with his father, whose aim is to have abundance of worldly
treasure, then with his mother Neugise, who follows French
fashions and dresses like one nobly born, whereas the wife of
the previous century would never have ventured to rival the
gentlewoman's finery, and, lastly, with his sister, Proud Beauty,
who has mastered the essentials of cosmetics and delights to 'colly
and kis. '
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.


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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.