The Elizabethan World page 2

Fynes Moryson, a traveller, gives a pleasant account of his journeyings: "The world affords not such Innes as England hath, either for good and cheap entertainment after the guests' own pleasure, or for humble attendance upon passengers. For as soon as a traveller comes to an Inne, the servants run to him, and one takes his horse and walks him till he be cold, then rubs him and gives him meat. Another servant gives the traveller his private chamber and kindles his fire: the third pulls off his boots and makes them cleane. Then the Host or Hostess visits him; and if he will eat with the Host, or at a common table with others, his meal will cost him six pence, or in some places but four pence: but if he will eat in his chamber, the which course is more honourable, he commands what meat he will, according to his appetite, and when he sits at table the Host or Hostess will visit him, taking it for courtesie to be bid sit downe: while he eats he shall have musicke offered him: if he be solitary the musicians will give him the good day with musicke in the morning. It is the custom to set up part of supper for his breakfast. Ere he goeth he shall have a reckoning in writing, which the Host will abate, if it seem unreasonable. At parting, if he give some few pence to the chamberlain and ostler they wish him a happy journey."

We may add that folk did not use night-gowns, as we see from George Cavendish's "Life of Wolsey": "My master went to his naked bed." But a night-gown in those days meant a dressing-gown. Hentzner gives us a description of the life at Court, from which we will take a few passages. He was at Greenwich Palace, being admitted to the presence-chamber, which was hung with rich tapestry and strewn with hay, or rushes. After noticing the small hands and tapering fingers of the Queen, her stately air and pleasing speech, he says: "As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one foreign Minister, then to another: for, besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, and French, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling: now and then she will pull off her glove and give her hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels. The Ladies of the Court that followed her, very handsome and well-shaped, were dressed in white, while she was guarded on either side by her gentlemen Pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt battle-axes."

What a marvellous lady was this Queen, so taught by suffering to dissemble and deceive, so trained by her tutors, Ascham and others, that she could make a speech in Latin to the Doctors of Cambridge and Oxford, or converse with a Dutchman, nay, even with a Scot in his own tongue.

We rather suspect that Hentzner may have been mistaken about the Scot; for surely she could not speak with a Highlander in Gaelic, and to understand a Lowland Scot could not have taxed her royal powers much.

England was a strange mixture of richness and poverty, of learning and superstition, of refined luxury and brutal amusements at that age. Hentzner describes how in a theatre built of wood he one day sat to listen to excellent music and noble poetry of tragedy or comedy, the next time he witnessed the cruel baiting of bulls and bears by English bull-dogs. "To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men standing around in a circle with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them because of his chain: he defends himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his reach, and tearing the whips out of their hands and breaking them. At these spectacles" (he writes in 1598) "the English are constantly smoking tobacco, and in this manner: they have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the farther end of which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder; putting fire to it they draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils, like to funnels."

The writer has one of these Elizabethan pipes: it is made with an exceedingly small bowl, showing how precious was the weed which Raleigh had recently introduced. The pipes have been found by workmen employed on the banks of the Thames in Southwark.

We must remember, in criticising the conduct of Elizabethan heroes, that they lived in a cruel age; that torture was still employed by the law, even to delicate ladies; that much of their sport was brutal, and much of their merriment gross and indelicate. There is, and there has been, a decided progress in the manners of Europeans; so that it is with a moral effort that we try to see things with their eyes and judge them with discrimination. For instance, many of their great seamen may in one aspect be regarded as pirates; for the great Queen sometimes did not sanction their raids over western waters until they had brought her some priceless spoil. The pirate was then knighted and commended for his valiant deeds of patriotism. Even along the coasts of England local jealousy set the galleys of the Cinque Ports in the south at making reprisals upon the traders of Yarmouth, When these depredations were made upon foreigners there were few who denounced them; for it became a kind of sport, an adventure well worth the attention of any squire's son, to snatch some rich prize from the wide ocean and distribute largesse on safely coming to port.

These men were the Robin Hoods of the sea, and when from selfish plunderings they rose to be champions of religious freedom as well, their career seemed in most men's minds to be worthy of all admiration. But in order to understand fully the motives which induced the more noble spirits to go forth and do battle with Spain on private grounds, and at their own expense, we ought to have sat at the Mermaid, or other taverns, and heard the mariners' tales as they told them fresh from the salt sea. We should have listened to stories of cruel wrongs inflicted on the brave Indians of South America, which would have stirred any dormant spirit of chivalry within us, and made us long to champion the weak.

We should have heard the story of the Indian chief who was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and suffered the penalty of losing his hands because he had fought so strenuously for his mother-land. This Indian returned to his people, and devoted the rest of his life to encouraging and heartening his countrymen to the great work of fighting for life and liberty, showing his maimed arms, and calling to mind how many others had had half a foot hacked off by the Spaniards that they might not sit on horseback. Then, when a battle was being fought, we should have been told how this chief loaded his two stumps with bundles of arrows and supplied the fighters with fresh store, as they lacked them. Surely men so brave as this man challenged admiration and deserved succour.

The young Queen of England had suffered herself, and these stories must have stirred her heart to say with the Dido of Virgil -

"Haud ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco."

Raleigh and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, Shakespeare and Spenser may have sat by a coal-fire and heard or told such stories; for Raleigh writes: "Who will not be persuaded that now at length the great Judge of the world hath heard the sighs, groans, and lamentations, hath seen the tears and blood of so many millions of innocent men, women, and children, afflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot irons, roasted, dismembered, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked, scalded with hot oil, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, famished, devoured by mastiffs, burned, and by infinite cruelties consumed, - and purposeth to scourge and plague that cursed nation, and to take the yoke of servitude from that distressed people, as free by nature as any Christian."

It was not the massacres under Cortez and Pizarro, earlier in this century, which roused the deepest indignation; it was the tales of inhuman cruelty perpetrated by Spanish colonists in time of peace, and of the noble conduct of the conquered Indians under the degrading conditions of their slavery, which most moved pity and wrath and feelings of revenge.

Men told the story of the Cacique who was forced to labour in the mines with his former subjects, how he called the miners together - ninety-five in all - and with a dignity befitting a prince made them the following speech: -

"My worthy companions and friends, why desire we to live any longer under so cruel a servitude? Let us now go unto the perpetual seat of our ancestors, for we shall there have rest from these intolerable cares and grievances which we endure under the subjection of the unthankful. Go ye before, I will presently follow." So speaking, the Indian chief held out handfuls of those leaves which take away life, prepared for the purpose; so they disdainfully sought in death relief from the cruel bondage of their Spanish masters.

Again, an officer named Orlando had taken to wife the daughter of a Cuban Cacique; but, because he was jealous, he caused her to be fastened to two wooden spits, set her before the fire to roast, and ordered the kitchen servants to keep her turning. The poor girl, either through panic, fear, or the torment of heat, swooned away and died. Now the Cacique her father, on hearing this, took thirty of his men, went to the officer's house and slew the woman whom he had married after torturing his former wife, slew her women and all her servants; then he shut the doors of the house and burnt himself and all his companions. Tales such as these might well sting a generous and kindly people into doing harsh actions. Froude says in his "Forgotten Worthies": "On the whole, the conduct and character of the English sailors present us all through that age with such a picture of gallantry and high heroic energy as has never been over matched." So, when we feel inclined to pass judgment upon our "heroes" for their misdeeds, we must remember the spirit of the time, and the wrongs of the weaker, and the promptings of generosity and religion.