DA t/7 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 087 992 032 Date Due ^ T^/ll 1- I *'!» II (V I iv - - ■ '!<4 THE FIKST VOLUME. V Courtier and Templar. — Country Gentlemen. — Adventurers. — Duke Humphrey's Dinner. — Poor Curates — and Scholars. — Quack Doctor. — The Noise of Paul's. — Exchange of News. — The Lawyer's Pillar. — Thieves. ■ — History of St. Paul's. — Fire. — Paul's Cross. — Poet and Player. — Country Vicar. — Citizen and Wife. — Master. — Description of Paul's Walk. — Varieties of Ordinaries. — Characters. — Manners. — Cards. — Tavern Life. — Parting. — Watches. — Interior of a Prison. — Scenes at City Gates. — Bear Garden. — Baiting. — Names of Bears. — Bear- Baiting at Kenilworth. — Puritans attack the Abuse. — Whipping 'Blind Bears. — Ape on Horseback. — Allusions to Paris Gardens in Shakspere. — Gaming. — Tricks of Gamesters. — False Dice. — Bowling. — Fleet Prisoners. — Cock-Fighting. — Rules and Max- ims. — The Jugglers of the Day. — Plead of St. John the Baptist. — Various Tricks. — Banks and his Horse Morocco. — Jugglers' Language. — Bartholomew Fair. — Roast Pig and Bottle Ale. — Ballad Sellers. — Cries and Stalls. — Diversions. — Kindheart the Dentist. — Tarleton and Cuckoo. — Scenes in the Crowd. — A Tavern. — Stories jf the Plague, or " Stop Gallant." — Poor Tutor. — ■ The Apparitor. — Song Seller. — Smoking. — No Allusion to it in Shakspere. — Abuse of it. — Eulogies. — Methods of taking it. — King James's Pamphlet. — Extracts. - - Page 100 CHAP. IV. THE LAWS OF THE DUELLE. 'he Sands of Calais. — Fencing Masters. — Frequency of Duelling. — Introduction of the Rapier. — Duels at Taverns. — Saviolo's Books. — Causes of Duels. — Challenge. — Conditional Lie. — The Lie in General. — The Foolish Lie. — Proud and Civil Proof. — Causes that stayed Duels. — Time for the Duel. — The Combat. — The Apology. — Morality of the Duellists. — Art of Fence. — Parries. -^ Terms. — Language of the Schools. - - 180 VI CONTENTS Off CHAP. V. SERVING-MEN AND GENTLEWOMEN. — THE KITCHEN AND THE BDTTEET STILL-ROOM. Shakspere's Abuse of Servants. — Puritan Servants. — French Pages — Irish running Footmen. — Ordinances. — Horses. — Laws of Household. — Fines. — The Cook. — The Steward. — Petty Offi cers of the Court. — Servants' Dinners. — Duties of a Page. - The Serving-Man. — Their Manners. — The Chaplain. — Poo Tutor. — Laneham and his Duties. — An Archbishop's Servant! — Hiibits of the Jester. — The Dinner. — The Kitchen. — Mytho logical Pastry. — Cooking. — List of Dishes. — The Koyal Diet.- Eeoeipts. — Cock Ale. — The Queen's Dinners. , - Page 20 CHAP. VL ELIZABETHAN DIET. Elizabethan Diet. — The Dishes borne in Procession. — The Kitcher — Architecture of the Pastry and Sweetmeats. — Local Daintie — Curious Dishes. — Drinks. — Calculations of Time in old Cooker Books. — Cock Ale. — The Queen's Breakfast, Dinner, and Suj per - - - - - - - - 22 CHAP. Vll. DRESS. Picturesqueness of Dress. — Distinctions of Classes. — Brilliancy ( Colour. — Puritan Outcries. — Vain Queen, vain Nation. - Vanity peculiar Vice of the Day. — Luxury. — Elizabeth's Sta( Dress. — Her New Year Presents. — Allegorical Gowns. — Jewel • — Fans. — Tournament Dresses, — Male Dress. — Doublet an THE FIRST VOLUME. vii Cloak. — Foreign Fashions. — Armour. — Puritan Fables. — The Story of the Devil and the RufF. — Female Dress. — Hoods and Fardingales. — Cloaks and Shoes. — Hose. — Perfumes. — Sumptuary Laws. — City Dress. — Law Students. — Municipal Dress -----.. Pajje 231 CHAP. vin. CHEATS, THIEVES, AND BEGGARS. Elizabethan Thieves, desperate and daring. — Statutes of the Reign. — Severity of Law. — Cock Lorel. — Punishments. — The Egyptians. — Their Dress and Manners. — Moon Men. — Maun- derers and Clapper Dudgeons. — Haunts and Festivals. — Gipsy Gangs. — Priests and Kings. — Jugglers. — Oaths and Laws. — Language and Songs. — Orders of Rogues. — Banditti. — Dom- merers. — Hookers. — Anecdotes of each. — Tinkers. — Abram Men. — Sham Sores (Poor Tom). — Counterfeit Soldiers. — The Crank. — Story. — Freshwater Mariners. — Fraters. — Palliards. — Horse Stealers. — Rogues par excellence The Wild Rogue. — The Upright Man. — The Ruffler. — Female Thieves. — Sham Sick. — The Tavern Bully and Bravo. — The Farmer in Paul's Churchyard. — Cross Biting. — Gamester's Tricks. — The Travel- ling Conjuror. — The Composition of a Gang. — ^The Barnacle and his Dupe. — Welsh Men. — The avenging Shoemaker. — Gull- groping. — The Woodpecker and his Crew. — The Eagle and the Deluder. — Gil Bias Tricks. — Ferreting. — Usurers. — Falconers and Poor Scholars. — Jacks of the Clock House. — The Visitor. — The Shifter. —The Rank Riders. —The Horse Tricks of Smith- field. — Lamb Pie. — The Jingler. — The Jacks in the Box. — Tricks on Carriers. — Faun Guests. — Drappage. — Cut-Purses. — Foster's Lift. — Bat-Fowling. — Chop-Chain. — Spoon Drop- ping. — Stone Carrying. — Country Gentlemen at Paul's. — Cheap Travellers. — Quack Salvers. — Porters and their Thefts. — The Parasite. — Miscellaneous Tricks. — Courtesans. — Cruel Laws. — Burleigh and the Watchmen. — The Arrests. — Tricks of the VIU CONTENTS OF THE FIKST VOLUME. Bailiffs. — The Prisons and their Wards. — Gaolers' Cruelties. — Escapes. — The Prison Council. — Beadles and Watchmen.— Voluntary Prisoners. — Prison Doles - - - Page 25( CHAP. IX. HUNTING AND HAWKING. Romance of old Hunting. — Story of a Stag at Bay. — Elizabeth anc her Cross-Bow. — Jargon of the Hawking Field. — Brawls. — Passionate Love of the Chase. — Seven Sorts of Falcons. — Names &c. — The Barbary and Peregrine Falcons. — Saore and Laner. — Merlin and Hobby. — Hawks. — Duties of a Falconer. — Signs o: good and bad Hawks. — Flight of the Heron. ■ — Description of th( Mew. — Training of the Hawk. — Flight to the Field. — To make a Hawk bold. — Surgery. — Characters of Birds. — Sewing up th< Eyes. — How to recover a cowed Bird. — Falcon Training. — Th( Sparrow Hawk. — Flying at the Partridge. — Falconer's Duties — Bad Habits, and how to cure them. — Diseases of Hawks. — Hunting. — A Huntsman's Duties. — How to track a Hart. — Habits of the Deer. — Subtleties of the Deer. — Mode of Hunting — Breaking up the dead Deer. — Rewarding the Dogs. — Frencl and English Manner. — Royal Pic Kics. — Age of a Deer knowr by his Horns Hunters' Superstitions. — Hare Hunting. • — Sub- tleties of the Hare - - . . . . 37£ SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. The England to which we wish to introduce our readers is Shakspere's England, the England of the sixteenth century. We go back to days of gilt rapiers and roses on the shoe, of ruif and fardingale, of peaked starched beards and slashed hose, to days when forks were a novelty, and tobacco-smoking the last caprice of fashion. We want, in fact, to lead our readers a long, rambling, gossiping walk through Ludgate, up Cheap, and into Paul's, then away to the Bear Garden in Southwark, and the Globe, where As you like it is acting ; anon past the old cross at Charing to the presence-chamber at Greenwich or Richmond, and back to make a night of it at the Devil Tavern, where the players and poets meet, just under the chimes of St. Dunstan. We warrant you safe from all stabbing gamesters and quarrelsome serving- men, as we hurry from the tilt-yard to the pageant, — SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. from the farmer's dinner to the gipsy's pic-nic. We beg you to forget black coats or silk hats, and people the old streets with crowds of gallants in motley wavering silks, all fluttering with iris colours — matching so well the gay bonnet-feathers and the ribbons or jewels in the ear : mis in the mob a sprinkling of leather-jerkined 'prentices, sober clad, flat-capped citizens, players in faded satin, sturdy water-carriers, and noisy shopkeepers calling " What do you lack ? " all day under their penthouses and at their doors, — and you see the London of the Armada year 1588. Not that this sixteenth century world is a dead and buried one like Chaucer's world, with the men who donned hoods, and the itinerant showmen with their spurious relics ; or Pope's world, with the men who wore ruffles, carried clouded canes, and sported cocked hats and lace cravats. No : some of our dearest friends, and near-heart relations, live in Shakspere's London ; and if you follow us through old streets, we can find them all out without any Directory. Here is the Dagger Tavern in Cheapside, — a hostelrie well known by the 'prentices for its excellent pies. Look; m at the window : there are Sir John FalstafF and Sir Toby- Belch discussing a pot of sack; Dame Quickly is the hostess, and Maria the barmaid. As we pass on up Cheajn LONDON IN 1588. we see a fat pursy old lady, with a feather fan, and a lub- berly page dragging after her to hold up her train of satin. That is the Capulets' nurse, and that page was christened Peter; but we regret to see a band of mad-brained gallants, Romeo, Benedict, Claudio, Lorenzo, and some others, exchanging jokes with each other at the stately waddle of the faithful but corpulent nurse, or rather now house- keeper. Shylock, we hear, is turned scrivener, and lives near St. Paul's. Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and his warm-hearted but simple friend Master Slender, have just passed arm in arm with Dogberry and the watch, having been rather overtaken last night with malmsey at the Three Cranes in the Vintry. If you looked up at the gateway as you passed Ludgate, and observed the prisoners begging alms, you might have remembered one Bardolph, whose nose still shines like a meteor in spite of gaol fare and short commons. Wily Autolychus is shouting ballads at the door of the play- house in Blackfriars ; his companion, who also educates dancing dogs and cuts safe purses, is Master Parolles, now rather out at elbows. That brawny servingman in livery of blue and orange, with a silver badge on his arm, is little Moth, grown up to man's stature, and about to be married to Beatrice's waiting woman, who has jilted Mal- volio and refused Balthasar. Sir Topas preaches sour B 2 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. Puritan discourses at St. Antholins, and Mar-Text is his curate. But we must beg you to follow us, and view old scenes as well as old friends. You must come birding with Master Ford, break a blade with Gratiano, concoct medi- caments with Dr. Caius and Romeo's Italian 'pothe- cary, go to the Bear Garden with Slender, lose at shovel- board with Poins, and see Sir Andrew cozened by Shoetie the great traveller. To confound truth and fable, you may witness Burbage throned as Richard, at the Borough Theatre, look at Babbington's head on the spikes of London Bridge, mark the old Mother Pratt, whose gown Falstaff borrowed, tried for witchcraft ; and in fact, for a few hours, forget the nineteenth, and sympathise with the sixteenth century. In these scenes the reader must imagine himself seated side by side with Shaksperean characters ; at the tilt-yard with Mercutio, at the ale-house with Pistol, at the Ex- change with Antonio, at the fencing school with Claudio, at the ordinary with Lorenzo. As a complete antiquarian social history, we do not put this book forward, but confess it to be a series of elaborated groups, carefully studied from old plays and forgotten pamphlets, and illustrated by nearly all exist- OLD HISTORIANS NEGLECT DETAIL. ing contemporary literature. Charters, and MS S. remain untouched for another and more elaborate volume. Inadequate as these pages may be, no one acquainted with our historians can be ignorant that such a book is wanted. Hume and Smollett do not stop to paint the manners of the men whose actions they trace with philosophic brevity. History is full of abstract persons, shadowy as the figures of an allegory. We cannot learn from their dignified pictures how the men who fought the Armada dressed, or how they amused themselves. This detail has hitherto had to be principally won from rare books or scarce plays, but we trust we may have partly supplied the want. We lead the reader to the Elizabethan manor-house and palace, to the dining-hall and the ball-room. We guide him through old London, point out to him the oddities in the crowd, and look in at the shops; show him as tenderly as if he were a country cousin, the bear-garden and the theatre, introduce him to the gallants at the ordinary, and jostle him among the jugglers and showmen of the noisy city fairs. We do not forget to give him a peep into the smoky alchemist's laboratory, or the astrologer's study, we show him the murky London prisons, and recite to him all the amusing knaveries of their inmates. He will learn something, too, of every class of society, from the ruler on the throne to the captive in Newgate, from the B 3 SHAKSPERE S ENGLAND. farmer to the page, from the merchant to the beggar. In every line he will be reminded of Shakspere, and see how saturated that divine genius was with the thoughts and feelings of his own age ; though he could invoke at a word the dreams and visions of all conceivable past and futures ; how on a broad basis of experience and reality Shak' spere based even his most ethereal idealities. — A lion- hearted woman, and English- souled, sat on the throne. Burleigh was her counsellor, Raleigh her soldier, Frobisher her voyager, Drake her captain, Shakspere her dramatistj Sidney her courtier, Gresham her merchant. The times are great times, and patriotism is roused. Elizabeth is the acknowledged defender of Protestantism all over the world, and she declares the pope, the devil, and the Spaniard are her sworn enemies. Dying men on the stake turn their glazing eyes towards England. Pale men withering in the dark dungeons of the Inqui- sition, pray for England. The Dutch, battling beside the sea dykes, or on his low flat sandy downs, uses the name of England as the war-cry that scares the Spaniard* The Huguenot, bending to the axe, whispers " England." The times are great times, for the Reformation is still at work, and religion is a fervid vital impulse in all thoughtful hearts. There is much danger, for the troops of Alva are at the door, and while there is a Catholic queen PROGEESS OF THE DRAMA. in Scotland, Mary de Medici plots in France. The riches of America have given Spain a power alarming to Protest- antism. There are disaffected men in every street, but patriotism and loyalty are now warm passions, not merely cold abstractions. The discovery of printing is still affecting mankind, and the classical spirit is infusing fresh life into literature. Chivalry and feudalism are sinking below the horizon, and their setting only sheds a light on the country they once illumined ; classes, though not hostile to each other, are distinct and isolated. There is happiness in the country, and wealth in the city. The people have reached a degree of civilisation, when the drama is their best education, and the stage is now the resort of all literary men, amongst whom the son of a decayed Staffordshire gentleman is not the least celebrated. Dress is splendid, manners stately, and costumes pic- turesque. A gallant's amusements are not now, fox-hunt- ing, rat-killing, billiards, and the opera, but running at the ring and the glove, — hawking, the ordinary, and the play. There is no West End of London, but more sociality. The gentleman who is in the morning walking with the citizens in Finsbury or Moorfields, is at night to be seen stepping a Canary at Whitehall. Paul's, and not Eotten Row, is the great daily promenade. The Strand the nobleman's B 4 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND. quarter. Venice is the continental place of resort, and not Paris. Italian the fashionable language, and not French. America is still almost an unknown country, Africa untraversed, and Ireland a sort of Algiers, where we wage perpetual war with the cruel and revengeful tribes of a people little better than Bedouins or bar- barians. Small as England is, with no standing army, and but a few vessels, she is respected or feared by all the world. Her colonial empire is founding firmly and surely. We visit Newfoundland, trade with Russia, build forts in India, ravage South America, intimidate France, overthrow Spain, and influence Germany. With a few national weaknesses, Elizabeth proved the greatest queen that ever lived. Brave as Semiramis, undaunted as Catherine, she had neither the cruelty of the Babylonian, nor the evil passions of the Russian. We hope we do not claim too much for this book in trying to make it a sort of key to Shakspere, every page being indeed a comment on the manners and the people whom he paints. The records of his age are, we know, still existing, but torn in as many pieces as the body of Osiris was, and, hidden in dark and dusty tracts and plays, known to few but the dustmen and scavengers of litera- ture, men who grope in the sewers of the past, in hope of INDIVIDUALITY OF SHAKSPEBE'S CHAEACTEKS. 9 findiDg amongst the rubbish and the filth some stray ring or long-forgotten jewel. In every play of Shakspere there are a thousand allu- sions to manners unobserved by readers ignorant of the social history of his age. These manners are partially ex- plained in millions of contradictory notes and prefaces, but nowhere in any collective or interesting shape. The noisy, punning, quarrelsome gallants he sketches were not ab- stractions, but portraits from his daily life ; so were the mischievous pages, the witty servingwomen, the merry wives, and the fervent lovers. His Macbeth and Lear, Ssc, are indeed of no age ; but such characters as Cassio and Gratiano, Sir Toby and Malvolio, can only be un- derstood by comparing them with the originals whom the poet meant to ridicule or satirise. The pedant, the bully, the amoroso, the malcontent, the servingman, and the gaoler, of the sixteenth century, are all embalmed, like so many dried flowers, between his immortal and perennial pages. ANCIENT AND MODERN LONDON. U CHAPTER I. THE STREETS OF OLD LONDON. " The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples." Tempest, Act iv. Sc. 1. " Up Fish Street, down St. Magnus Comer." Henry VI. (Part II.), Act iv. Sc. 8. Ancient and Modern London. — The black Thames and the white Thames. — Suburb.s. — Fashion in Drury Lane. — Noblemen. — The Strand. — Gates and Walls. — Village of St. Giles. — Fleet Kiver. — Moorfields. — Whitehall. — Houses on London Bridge. — Gresham's Exchange. — City Gardens. — Fountains. — City Ta- verns. — Bedlam. — Thieves' Quarters. — Prisons. — Localities of Trade. — Wells and Springs. — Celebrated Tradesmen of the Day. — Processions. — Marriages. — Funerals. — Thieves going to Tyburn. — Royal Visits. — Ambassadors. — Pageants. — 'Prentice Eiots. — The old Street Cries. — A Citizen's Amusements. — Shops and Penthouses. — Sketch of the Crowds. — Barber and Apo- thecary. — Characters of the Day. — Street Rows. — Extinct Trades. — Foreign Shops. — Manners of the 'Prentices. — Apo- thecary's Shop. — System of Medicine. — Scenes in a Crowd. — Gaoler, Lawyer, and Informer. — The Pawnbroker. — The Barber- Surgeons. — The Tailor's Shop. — Bookseller's Shop. — The Tinker. — Foreign Workmen. — The Goldsmith — Vintner — Their Frauds. — Colliers. — The Thames Watermen. — The Saddler and Butcher. — Prices. — The Tanner and Shoemaker. — The Chirurgeon. — Puritans' Attacks on the Tricks of Trade. — Have we improved ? It is difficult to realise Old London, with its walls and gates ; its stainless, shining, and spotless river ; its 40,000 12 SHAKSPERE S ENGLAND. watermen ; its narrow streets, full of plumed and pon- derous coaches; its tide, alive with innumerable boats; the Thames river, not yet a concrete of coal-dust and mud, but a crystal flood, sheltered with palaces, shaded with trees, and perfumed with flowers. Imagine the Tower, not deserted and forgotten, but busy and frequented, and the citadel of the city; the Borough side a broad tract of green fields and thatched cottages. Whitehall is new and glittering, but one bridge only spans the river, with its lines of houses, its chapel, and its ghastly rows of shrivelled heads. Oxford Street is a muddy country road leading to Tyburn. Hyde Park is bare and open, Islington a village, and Marylebone a suburb. Noblemen are dwelling in Drury Lane and Al- dersgate, yes even in the oldest portions of the city, and the West End is unthought of. No distinctive grades of social position are yet known, and the tradesman lives at the very doors of the richest nobles in England. Every- where there are fields and gardens in the neighbourhood of the most crowded streets. St. Paul's is the gentleman's fashionable promenade, and Moorfields the favourite walk of the citizens. The gabled-ended shops are hung thick with signs ; foreign armour and tapestries are in the open stalls, and a perpetual cry of " What do you lack ? " re- sounds at every door and under every penthouse. SUBTTEBS OF LONDON. 13 We can scarcely imagine London a walled city, having gates like Thebes, and able to stand a siege like Troy. There was a deep, fond feeling of home when Ludgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate, Aldgate, &c., were shut at a certain hour, when Bow-bell rang, and citi- zens felt they were barred in for the night, guarded and watched over by men of their own appointing. London is too large now to love as a mother, and too dirty to honour as a father. At Ludgate was a gaol, where the prisoners clamoured for alms at the barred grate; and it was here that Sir Thomas Wyatt had been repulsed. The city wall that joined this gate to its other fellow gates ran from the Tower through the Minories to Aldgate, Houndsditch, and Bi- shopsgate, through Cripplegate to Aldersgate, and so past Christ Hospital by Newgate and Ludgate to the Thames. Pimlico was a country place where citizens used to re- pair to eat " pudding pies " on a Sunday, as they did to Islington or Hogsden to take tobacco and drink new milk, as Islington was famous for its dairy, where Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have lived in an old house still standing ; so HoUoway was famous for its cheese cakes ; and it is these peculiarities that, after all, confer immortality upon a place. Chelsea was the mere village of Chelsea, known from Sir Thomas More's house, where Henry VIII. 14 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. had walked with his arm rotind that great statesman'! doomed neck ; as Holborn was then a country road leading to the pleasant village of St. Giles, and trending on to th( way that led to Oxford, and to fatal Tyburn, so callec from its burn or brook, then well known to patient citj anglers. The triple tree or gallows stood at the cornei of the present Edgware Road. The same Oxford Streel led also, if you turned up one side of the Hampstead Road, to the Tottenham Court, which stood there alone far in the country, and Primrose Hill was an untrodden hillock, sur- rounded by wide paths and ditches, between this Court and Hampstead. A cheerful little stream, known by the pleasant name ol Eleet, rose near Hampstead Hill, and joined by the Old Bourne and recruited by sparkling Clerken Well, emptied itself in the Thames. Though even then merely a sewer it was open, and had four bridges of its own, while the Thames had but one ; and these were known as Holborr Bridge, Fleet-lane Bridge, Fleet Bridge, and Brideweli Bridge. Spitalfields was a grassy open space, with artillerj grounds and a pulpit and cross *, where fairs were held and sermons were preached. There were also Tothill Fields and Finsbury Fields, and Moorfields, just outside the citj * Cunningham's Guide Book to London, WHITEHALL. walls, laid out in walks, and planted, as far as Hoxton. Round these squares there were windmills and everything equally rural. As for Piccadilly, it was everywhere known as a road to Reading, and by many herbalists, as harbouring the small wild foxglove in its dry ditches. Outside Temple Bar, before the wooden gatehouse was built, lay the Strand, the road leading from the City to the houses of Court. This river bank was the chosen re- sidence of the nobility, whose gardens stretched to the edge of the undefiled river. The sky was then pure and bright, for our ancestors burnt wood fires, and the water was gay with thousands of boats. Each house had its terrace, its water stairs, and garden. The street houses were so scattered that the river could be seen between, and there were three water courses there traversed by bridges, besides two churches and a Maypole. Here stood York House, where Bacon was born, and Durham Place, where Raleigh lived, with his study in a turret overlooking the river ; there also was Arundel House and Essex House, where great men pined and plotted. At Whitehall stood Wolsey's Palace, enlarged by Henry VHI., and Elizabeth's favourite residence when not at Nonsuch in Surrey, Windsor, Greenwich, or Rich- mond. The tilt-yard stood where the Horse Guards now stands. St. James's Palace, also built by Henry VHI., 16 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. where the Queen's melancholy-bigot sister had died, was seldom inhabited by the Court; but the park was even then existing. As for the old palace of Richard III. (Baynard's Castle), that had been let to the Earl of Pem- broke, and the same King's dwelling of Crosby Hall had fallen into the hands of an alderman.* But the most characteristic erection in Old London was its pride, the bridge. It had a gatehouse and drawbridge at each end, and in the middle a chapel dedicated to that restless A'Beckett, in the crypt of which lay the body of the founder, Peter of Colechurch, who died in 1205, The bridge was lined with stately houses, with spaces here and there for travellers to rest and look at the fair- flowing river over the parapet, for suicides were not yet fashionable; the houses had gable-ends, platform roofs, small gardens, and arbours. Near the drawbridge, and overhanging the water, was the famed Nonesuch House, a carved and gilt building constructed in Holland entirely of timber and put together with wooden pegs.f The sober citizens believed the bridge to be one of the wonders of the world, and rejoiced that on the gate-house * Edward VI.'s old palace of Bridewell had been turned intct a workhouse. f Cunningham's Handbook for London, vol. ii. p. 496. (Hentzner) EOTAL EXCHAKGE GARDENS. 17 the heads of thirty priests and rebels might sometimes be counted at the same time.* The narrowness of the arches, and the broad stirlings or coffer-dams protecting the piers, produced a rapid that made it dangerous to shoot the bridge ; at high water and at low water the noise was deafening. The real glory of the city, however, was the Royal Exchange, built by Sir Thomas Gresham, with its qua- drangle, arcades, and merchants' walks ; with its ar- mourers', goldsmiths', and haberdashers' shops, and its change bell ringing at twelve and six. The rival New Exchange in the Strand was not opened till James I.'s reign. At this time there was a feeling of social pleasure over the whole city; Grocers', Drapers', Ironmongers', Salters', and Merchant Taylors' Halls had all their gardens and bowling alleys. Sir Paul Pindar, Gresham's contemporary, had gardens in Bishopsgate Street. There were gardens in Aldersgate Street and Westminster. There were gardens round Cornhill Market, and gardens in Clerkenwell. Smithfield was planted with trees ; trees waved in St. Giles's; and Ely Place was famous for flowers. Leicester Fields and Soho were open tracts ; and near Leather Lane the Queen's gardener lived, and lived to plant and sow. * Lupton's London and the Country (1632), p. 17. VOL. I. C 18 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. Fountains, with their pleasant and cooling, silver- rippling chime, were more common in Old than New London. Somerset House Palace, where Lord Hunsdon lived, had one; so had Whitehall; and the city mer- chants' houses and the centre of the companies' quadrangles frequently boasted the same ornament. The old streets must be imagined, with their gabled timber houses ; swinging, ponderous signs to every shop ; the streets badly paved ; the shops with mere penthoused sheds, beneath which the 'prentices cried unceasingly, " What d'ye lack, gentles ? what d'ye lack ? " before the goods laid out on bulkheads, just as a fishmonger now lays out his fish. Fleet Street, then a suburb, with its conduit opposite Shoe Lane, was famous for shows, and boasted of the Devil's Tavern, where Ben Jonson and the wits met. The Three Cranes in the Vintry, the Bear at Bridge Foot*, were the most noted inns. There still remain in London a few Elizabethan houses with their open courts and galleries, stuccoed roofs, carved chimney- pieces, rich porches, pannelled wainscoted rooms, and leaded casements. Some of the old hostelries also stand with their open balconies and paved courtyards, where our earliest plays were acted — the audience crowding in the windows above. * Cunningham's London, vol. i. p. 67. CHURCHES. 19 The richest families from the countrj thought it no disgrace, in this simple age, to lodge in Fleet Street or take rooms above some barber's shop. Bedlam in Moor- fields was a sight of the day ; the Tower lions and the tombs at Westminster were wonders to honest, wide- mouthed, red-cheeked countrymen. The Middle Temple garden boasted its avenue of limes, and Lincoln's Inn Fields its pleasant walk under the elms. Elizabethan London had its sanctuaries or thieves' quarters — Whitefriars, Whetstone Park, Ram Alley, St. Martin's, and such strange places as the Ber- mudas, Devil's Gap, and Damnation Alley.* There was a cross in Cheap and a very old one at Charing. Conduits were numerous in all parts of the city, and were generally surrounded by 'prentices carrying jugs, or water-bearers with their yokes and buckets. St. Paul's was the booksellers' quarter, and Houndsditch was the Frippery for secondhand clothes. The difference between ancient and modern London may be conceived from the fact that eighty-nine churches were burnt down by the Great Fire and only fifty-one rebuilt. Of these old churches some bore the names of saints now almost forgotten, as St. Bennet Sherehog, St. Michael Quern, * Cunningham's Handbook for London, vol. i. p. 255. c2 20 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. St. Vedast, St. Margaret Moses, St. Andrew Hubbard, and St. Anne in the Willows. In these old times deep-tongued Bow bell was nightly- rung at nine, as a signal to the 'prentice children of Chepe. This was the curfew, and was taken up at the same hour by Barking Church, St. Bride's, St. Giles's, and Cripplegate.* There were conduits in Chepe, Tyburn, and Bays- water ; there was Lamb's Conduit, besides others at Dalston and Islington. As Old London had churches, so had it many prisons : — the Clink, Marshalsea and Queen's Prison in Southwark, the latter for pirates ; Newgate ; the Poultry Compter, where the prisoners were fed with scraps from the Sheriff's' tables; the Savoy military prison; and West- minster Gatehouse, the state prison secondary to the Tower. Marylebone Park and Regent's Park, in Elizabeth's time, were a deer park and a tilt ground. St. Martins-le-Grand was peopled by foreign craftsmen, makers of copper lace and counterfeit jewels; Watling Street was devoted to clothiers. Long Lane to old-clothes men. Pie Corner to cookshops, Turnbull Street to thieves, * Cunningham's Handbook for London, vol. iv. p. 535. CELEBRITIES OF THE DAY. 21 Smithfield to horse coursers, and St. Paul's to servingmen out of place. Southwark was a bad quarter, though it was the site of Shakspere's Theatre and the Beargarden, and belonged to the Bishop of Winchester. Besides the clear streams that ran into the Thames, Old London boasted of innumerable wells, now lost, sul- lied, or bricked up. There was Holy-well, Clement's- well, Clerken-well, Skinners'-well, Fay-well, Fede-well, Leden-well, and Shad-well. West Smithfield had its Horse-pond, its pool of Dame Annis le Cleare, and the Perilous Pond. The duck-hunting in these pools and at Islington was a favourite amusement of the citizens. Of the celebrated tradesmen of the day we know but a few. There was John, the hatter, at Paul's ; William Clark, the newsmonger; and Johnson, the printer. Of celebrated street characters there was Woolner (a Wind- sor chorister), the glutton ; Kindheart, the dentist ; and Bankes, the showman. Forget not Tarleton, the clown, and Little Davy, the fighting-man. The money-changers are in Paul's; the clothiers in Birchin Lane; the shoe- makers in St. Martin's, and the old clothesman in Hounds- ditch. The city archers meet at Finsbury. The tripe of Pannier Alley, and the pies of Budge Row, are famous. The copper-workers are noisy in Lothbury. The Three C3 22 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. Pigeons is at Brentford ; the Woolsack and the King's Head in Fish Street; a windmill stands in Old Jewry, the Barbican is fashionable, and Mary-le-bone is the country. Take care of Pick-thatch in Clerkenwell, and the Bordello in Southwark, or your throat and pocket may suffer. A great feature of the streets of Old London were the frequent processions of the twelve great companies to and from their halls in Cheapside, the Poultry, or Throg- morton Street. These halls had open timber roofs, were hung with tapestry, and had often granaries and armou- ries of their own. They boasted rich stores of plate, the gift of dead men, more particularly the loving-cup, in which the Master and Wardens drank to the company, to the sound of trumpet and drum ; and, above all, the massive salt-cellars, that marked the rank of the guests. Ladies were present at the feasts ; new members were crowned with garlands, and pageants were performed. They had also funeral dinners, and processions to attend Divine service. Sometimes they rowed down the Thames in their gilded barges, the members in their liveries, bear- ing the banners of their trades, and their alms-people also attending to swell the train. It must have been impossible to keep the hot-blooded 'prentices quiet behind the counter, when such long troops of velvet gowns and golden chains were sweeping by; STREET PROCESSIONS. 23 when the Queen was passing from Whitehall to the city, or the Lord Mayor going to take water for Richmond. Much less when Elizabeth came to St. Paul's to return thanks to God for the defeat of the Armada, (when thanksgivings were not mere forms,) or trotted past to Tilbury. Then London was a youthful, happy town, and not such an old sin-blackened, care-worn city as now. The bright river we must imagine as when it supported 40,000 watermen, and floated 2000 small boats ; when the idler, tired of bowls or dice, had nothing to do but to step down to Queenhithe or the Temple and have an after- noon's salmon fishing*; when the water was gay with crowds going to the theatres, all silk and gold, and many colours ; with ladies returning to the Palace, or with the royal train rowing to the sound of flutes and trumpets past Richmond or Greenwich. The poet's Cleopatra on the Cydnus, is Elizabeth on the Thames, seen poetically, when silks trailed in the water and gathered no pollution, — when the river was neither a sewer, nor a dark, for- gotten back street. There was no noise then in London byeways ; no brain- shattering din ; no roar of wheels ; no selfish rush of ava- rice and fear. London was not too large to love; the * Decker's Knight Conjuring, 1607, p. 17. c4 24 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. local points were few and well marked; they could be retained in the mind like the scenes of youth, — like the Castle of Edinburgh, or the Acropolis of Athens. If the buildings were not impressive, they were picturesque; if not rich, they were quaint and individualised. There were no long miles of wearisome terraces and dull doors, that numb the senses and oppress the brain. The streets of Old London were always thronging with some procession or pageant. There is Alderman Gossin to be married, or the Lord Mayor to be inaugurated; an ambassador visiting Guildhall, or a rogue to be put in the pillory; a sermon at Paul's Cross, or a procla- mation to be read at the Cross in Chepe. Let us view some of these a little nearer, and draw our pictures from the life. A funeral train is passing to St. Andrew Undershaft : Sir Richard Watkins, knight and merchant tailor. There are funeral banners, torches, tapers, and 'scutcheons ; squires bearing coat-armour and pennons, servants in black gowns, and all the guild in their livery and hoods. Rest be to his ashes ! * He tailored well, and served God. Now it is the day for choosing sheriff, and the alder- * Diary of H. Mechyn, 1550, 1563 ; Camden Society, p. 237. SCENES POK IDLERS. 25 men's barges, gay with streamers, and noisy with trum- peters, are shooting London Bridge. The city waits are in red gowns ; the liveries wear their chains and velvet ; the ladies are in crimson. The streets are full of gilt coaches. There are two giants and a pageant at Temple Bar, and much noisy discharging of guns and '^chambers," and swaying clamour of bells. To-morrow there is a sad procession of ten felons up Holborn Hill towards Tyburn: one is a priest, and a cutpurse ; another the lame woman who stabbed " the proper young man " in Turn-again Lane. In the stocks there is a cheating fishmonger, wearing a chain of bad smelts. In the pillory, a Popish man is branded on the forehead for treasonable slander. On Wednesday a cut- purse is to be hung at the door of St. Paul's. On Thursday O'Neille, the wild Irishman, rides through the city to dine with the Mercers' Company. On Thursday too the pensioners muster in St. James's Park. On Friday a band of ruiBans threaten to break into Bridewell to release a prisoner. On Saturday the masters of fence fight before the Queen*; after which there is to be a tilt, and running at the ring. Here is work for idlers. But this is a mere sketch of * Camden Society ; Diary of H. Mechyn, p. 250. 26 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. Elizabethan sights, and drawn from a limited experience. To-day good old Bishop Jewel preaches at Paul's Cross to the aldermen ; to-morrow the Queen visits the Tower, or comes to St. Paul's to return thanks for a victory over Spain. Court and city often meet; they have common ties, and love the same queen and the same religion; walk in the same places, dine in the same rooms, see the same sights. The city, too, is small; and every event, such as a rich citizen's marriage, or a Guildhall pageant, is the talk of every house. There is sympathy, and a feeling of brotherhood and mutual dependence. The guild spirit produces friendship ; the trained bands bring people together; so do the city feasts, and the city pageants. Let us take another week. To-day there will be a man whipped through Fleet Street, and an ill-famed woman driven past with a brass basin beating before her. The same afternoon there is a grand christening at my Lord Mayor's, and a procession of the Queen's cooks, with gold chains and foot cloths, bears in carts*, and pikemen and gunners in bright harness. At the feast Apostle spoons will be given away, and much muscadel and Hippocras be drunk. The church is strewn with herbs, and the houses are hung with silks and tapestry. * Camden Society ; Diary of li. Mechyn, p. "lei SCENES FOE IDLEES. 27 In the same week there is a street light among the 'prentices and servingmen, or between the retainers of my Lord Mounteagle and my Lord Delaware. The sheriffs had to make peace ; two men were killed, and many heads broken. This all came of the Skinners' feast, the wrestling in Clerkenwell, and the Lord Mayor's opening Bartholomew fair and St. James's fair in the same week. The cups stirred too fast, and the wine was potent. Perhaps it is the Barber Surgeons' feast, and the trained bands in white, with red crosses, are to be mustered at Leadenhall ; the bachelors are in crimson hoods, and blue gowns, and red capes, with targets and javelins. At the banquet, there is much spiced bread, custards, suckets and portingales (as oranges were then called). Every day brings its sight to amuse and occupy the people after their labour. On Monday, the herald in a gorgeous coat, like the knave of diamonds, reads a procla- mation at Chepe-conduit, girt by maces and trumpeters * ; and on Tuesday there is a Skimmington riding, because some citizen's wife has beaten her husband. The Lincoln- shire bagpipe is blowing, and the shawms and recorders are sounding before the door. To-day there has been bloody work in the Tower ; there * Camden Society ; Diary of H. Mechyn, p. 138. 28 SHAKSPERES ENGLAND. are three new heads on London Bridge *, and traitors' quarters on every city gate ; yet still the crowd push on just as usual through the shops in the arch, and you hear the cries, " Have you any work for the tinker ?" " Brooms !", mixed with the noise of drums at the Beargarden, drums beating to announce a sale, a crier's bell ringing, and the shouts of a street fray in the distance ; while, if it is even- ing, there is the watchman going round bellowing at every door, "Hang out your lanthorn and candle light," for street lighting is now an individual matter, and much cared for by the provident government. The collier too cries " Coal ; any small coal ? " A citizen's leisure hours are well employed. If studious, he can go to lectures on science ; if gay, can learn to dance the French galliard, the Spanish pavin, or the Scottish jig ; can stiidy the pommado, or learn to vault on a horse without touching the stirrups with the foot ; at the Artillery Ground, learn to slope a musket, or trail a pike ; visit the tilt-yard, the Bear-garden, or the theatre ; or, at the cock-pit, watch the brave birds that will rather die than cry, and the mastiff hanging to Bruin's ears. The Elizabethan streets were filled by itinerant sales- * Camden Society ; Diary of H. Mechyn, p. 104. STREET CHAEACTEES. 29 men, many of whose trades have long since passed away ; charcoal sellers from the country, buyers of old lace, sellers of " hot peas," and Irish applemongers. The open stalls were piled with rapiers, and targets, and Italian armour and poignards, and silk points, and ruffs, and feathers, roses for shoes, scarves, and a thousand other articles of finery now mouldering in quiet country vaults, or treasured here and there with wrong dates attached to them in the wardrobes of old show mansions. The paths were filled by jostling servingmen, French pages, and watermen, and wounded soldiers from the Dutch wars, Spanish gallants, Greek merchants ; and here and there an astrologer or an alchemist come out for a moment to breathe a purer air than the poisonous atmo- sphere of his cellar or his turret, that reeked with fuming mercury. There were actors, and bear wards, masters of fence, bullies, and gentlemen pensioners, and gay citizens' wives, and bona robas, and falconers all bright, coloured, shifting, motley, and picturesque. There was no dull mo- notony and stereotype of dress, face, and manner ; but a never-ending variety, shifting and brilliant as the dyes of a kaleidoscope. There were beards of all classes and pro- fessions, — the spruce, the pointed, the round, grey, black, and cream-coloured. All dress marked class : the 'prentice passes with his round cap and truncheon ; the citizen with 30 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND. his trimmed gown and gold chain ; the noble with his silk cloak, and scented doublet, gold spurs, and spangled fea- ther; the needy adventurer with his rusty sword, and greasy buff, or half Indian robe ; the scrivener with his rusty black coat and unfailing bag ; the divine with his cassock and his bands ; the yeoman with his unbarked staff; and the court lady rolling by in her ponderous gilded coach. At Smithfield were the horse dealers ; at Paul's the discarded servants and hungry spendthrifts. In South- wark the bull baiters, at Whitehall the courtiers, and at Westminster the lawyers. Every class had its locality, for London was still a city to be traversed and learnt in a few days, with only its few principal streets and its quar- ters of pleasure and business. All the merchants were to be seen at a certain hour round Gresham, in the Exchange, discussing the Muscovy trade, or the prospects of Virginia ; the players at night meet in the Mermaid or the Devil ; the courtiers at the ordinaries, or at the promenade at Paul's, where politics and fashions were indifferently dis- cussed. The life was more social and genial out of doors than now. Every man met his friend daily at Paul's, the theatre, the ordinary, or the court. The great men of the day were known to everybody, and could be heard talking at the tilt-yard or at the pageant. The feeling of common danger heightened the patriotism of all ; so that, save by a A STREET SCENE. 31 few Roman Catholics and false-hearted traitorSj Elizabeth was universally beloved. Stand still for a moment in a doorway: here comes a parasite and his gull. If his dupe drinks, he calls it his infirmity; if he bawls, it is spirit, proving him a jovial boy, and a companion for princes ; if he is musical, declaring he plays better than Tomkins the organist, or Dowland the lutanist. Eventually he will, we know by his horo- scope, take to robbing at Mile End, and be suspected of murdering the two merchants of the Still-yard, who are found floating in the Thames. Once he was a poor poet, who used to beg for dedications in Paul's, and lived in Gunpowder Alley, Crutched Friars. Then he was a mer- cer, who sold musty three pile velvet, in a crafty dark shop ; but, turning bankrupt, fled to Ireland. He then turned broker, fencer, and sergeant; then returned, and sold face washes of burned hogs' bones, laid on with oil of poppy, to remove flushes from faces and prevent eruption. Then he was Puritan writing-master, with an apprentice who brushed his cloak and cap when he went out. Now he is pimp, pander, and parasite, and, between whiles, a thief. > His companion, whose pocket is full of crowns, rejoices in flame-coloured doublet, satin hose, and carnation silk socks. Let him beware, though he can play well at shovelboard, and take part in a court masque. 32 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. Go into that music-shop where they sell gitterns and citterns, lutes, orpharions, and handoras.* The first has six double gut strings, the second has wire cords, and the last differs from both the others. The man sells dances — the " Countess of Sussex's Galliard" and " Lady Vane's Fading" (Irish dance). He has swift corantos, bounding gavottas, stately pavins, not to mention Brawls. He sells also " Bellinger's Round," " Gillian of Croydon," " Yellow Stockings " and " Green Sleeves," and all such Tulgar tunes. Next door is a barber, with a brass basin shining on his pole, and strings of teeth rattling in the window. His friend and neighbour, the poulterer, is grumbling that hawks eat up the poultry and make it dear. He sells bustard, and quail, and dotterel ; and will tell you how the last-named foolish bird apes the hunter who pursues him, and so is caught. At the taverns you can buy red and white bastard, alicant, aqua solis, upsy freeze, and all sorts of pure and strong waters. The pastrycook sells botargo, and makes coffin pies and boar pasties. At the apothecaries dangerous men buy poison, stibium (antimony); for now gloves, girdles, knives, — everything is poisoned, so dreadful is the refinement of Italian art. * The Pathway to Music, 1596. PtTBLIC CHARACTERS. 33 But this is only for secret and rich customers ; for the public there is all innocence — silver tongs, juniper coals, small blocks for cutting the weed, clean pipes, and the best Virginia. If you listen to the gossip in the buzzing shops, his talk is all about Scanderbeg, the new pamphlet of Nash's, the new motion of London and Nineveh in Fleet Street, or about Drake's ship that is exhibiting at Deptford. One young customer wears his lady's colours on his arm, blue and silver. Another is laughing with the china-woman next door about the ceruse that she sells to produce com- plexion.* She has, she says, Italian scent too, and feather fans, and perfumed gloves, and is well known at Court, though only plain Mistress Overdone in the City. Her husband, poor man, with his shiny black shoes, of which citizens are so proud, never interferes in the shop, and is now just going abroad to duck hunt at Islington. The well-known characters in the street are numerous. There is Kit Woodroffe the supple vaulter, who did such wonders on the tower of St. Paul's ; there is Woolner the glutton, who can eat out the keeper of an ordinary ; and there is Monarcho, the madman, who fancies himself Emperor of both the Indies, and struts accordingly. The street cries were moving and numerous. At the * Decker's Honest Whore, Act i. Se. 1. TOL. I. D 34 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. prison gates the passer-by heard melancholy voices doling out: — " Bread and — meat — bread — and meat — for the — ten — der — mercy of God to the poor pris — ners of Newgate — foure score and ten — poor — prisners ! " Or, at another : — " Here lies a company of very poor women in the dark dungeon, hungry, cold, and comfortless, night and day. Pity the poor women in the dark dungeon ! " Then : — " Round and sound, all of a colour ; buy a very fine marking stone, marking stone ; round and sound, all of a colour ; buy a very fine marking stone ; very fine ! " With these came : — " Salt — salt — white — Wor — ster — spice salt." " Buy a very fine mousetrap, or a tormenter for your fleas." " Kitchen-stuff, maids." " I have white, moist, white hard lettuce ; white young onions." " I have rock samfire, rock samfire — (dreadful trade !)" " Buy a mat, a mil mat — mat or a hassock for your pew ; a stopple for your close stool, or a pouch to thrust your feet in." " Whiting, maids, whiting." " Hot fine oatcakes, hot." " Small coals here." " Will you buy any milk to-day ? " " Lanthorn, candle, light ho ! maid ho ! light here !" * * Shakspere Society (Registers of the Stationers' Company), 1586 —1587 ; Heywood's " Rape of Lucrece," 1608. LONDON SHOWS. 35 But the itinerant broom man was the most distinguished of all the street sellers by his songs and his loud cry of "New brooms, green brooms, will you buy any; come, maidens, come quickly, let me take a penny." His song is too characteristic to neglect : — " My brooms are not steeped, But very well bound, My brooms be not crooked, But smooth cut and round. I wish it should please you To buy of my broom. Then would it ease me If market were done. " Have you any old boots, Or any old shoes, Pouchings or buskins To cope with new brooms ; If so you have, maidens, I pray you bring hither, That you and I friendly May bargain together." * The shows of London are numerous ; there's the guinea hens and cassowary at St. James's, and the beaver in the park ; the giant's lance at the Tower ; the live dogfish ; the wolf, and Harry the Lion; the elephant; the steer * Shakspere Society (Registers of Stationers' Company) ; " Three Ladies of London," 1584—1592. d2 36 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND, with two tails ; the camel ; the motion of Eltham and the giant Dutchman. Nearly all these are in Fleet Street. The trades of this golden age were all in some degree diflFerent from those of our own days. The barber was a surgeon and a dentist as well; he healed your sword wounds and cut your hair, just as you needed his service ; young revellers stabbed at taverns were carried to such shops. The druggists sold poisons and strange substances more like charms than medicines. The shoemaker made kid shoes and roses for them. The saddler framed high- peaked war saddles, and sold velvet housings. At the inns poor citizens were handed Spanish wine, which was then as cheap as beer. The goldsmiths manufactured christening spoons and drinking flagons, and those rich chains which were worn by men of all ranks round their hats or necks. We will now proceed to sketch more in detail the tricks of these traders, less numerous and deadly than those of our own days, but equally shameful. The pro- fessional beggars and cheats we mention elsewhere. The juggler, the ballad-monger, the cut-purse, we touch upon in later pages. The wits deserve a more respectable place apart. The players are grouped round Shakspere. The boddice makers, the bowyers, and such obsolete FOREIGN SHOPS. 37 trades, we cannot stay to enumerate, but only to remind our readers that the greater part of the weavers are Flemish, the running footmen Irish, the milliners Milan-ers, and the armourers Italian. The foreign shops, Milanese tailors' and Italian ar- mourers!, are crowded with foreign goods, much to the disgust of true Englishmen. There are Venetian looking- glasses, German clocks, Spanish blades, French gloves, Flemish kerseys, Milan spurs, though forty years since there were not a dozen strangers' shops in London. Here are dials, tables, candles, balls, puppets, penners, ink-horns, tooth powder, buttons, pots, paints, hawks- bells, and paper, all foreign.* Our wool went abroad and returned as cloth ; our leather was sent to be tanned in Spain ; our tin came back in manufactured shapes, and our linen rags as paper. Every shop glitters and shines with Italian glass, painted cruses, and gay daggers. We brought home their cloth, leather, tallow, butter, and cheese ; and they bring us in return, to the horror of states- men, only perfumes, gloves, glass, dials, oranges, pippins, silk, spices, and salt. From all this luxury politicians say rents increase, and 300Z. a year does not go further than 200?. used to. Men come to London and give up * Staflford's Brief Conceipt of English Policy, p. 58. d3 38 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. their country households ; what used to be 8^. is now worth a shilling ; and an honest yeoman still gets his 40*. a year, when double would not suffice him. The times are out of joint, said the old politicians, just as old men say now, and as old men always will. Amongst the apprentices of London there were many abusive and quarrelsome youths, always using their bats at the play-houses or the taverns, and who, for a can of ale, would undertake to beat or lame any man's enemy, just as readily as a serving-man in Paul's could be hired to swear a false oath, or help to rob or stab. Like the shopmen of the present day, if a stranger re- fused to purchase their wares, the apprentices often turned as insolent as they had just been fawning. At first, with cap in hand, it was, " What lack you, gentlewoman ? What lack you, countryman ? See what you lack." But if men failed in purchasing, they would call out, " Will you buy nothing, gentlewoman? It's no marvell you should see such choice of good ware." * Countrymen were their peculiar butts. They were always asked double the value of the ware ; the cit sometimes taking their money and demanding more. If the clown then refused to buy, they would set a dog at * Dekker's Honest Whore, 1635, Act i. Sc. 2. MERKT ANDREW. 39 him, or cry after him, " Do you hear, countryman ? Leave your blue coat in pawn for the rest : " or advise him to sell his sword and buy a pair of shoes, making the abashed Corydon long to draw them into Finsbury fields, that he might have his revenge and a fair cudgel fight. The apothecary's shop we all know from Shakspere's own lips : — " And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shap'd fishes ; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses. Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show." In such places desperate men bought poisons, and blushing maidens with masked faces purchased love-charms and philtres of great price and small virtue. Here, too, was the smoker's haunt, for the apothecary sold tobacco, real Trinidado, nicotine, cane, and pudding. An old book of medicine*, written by Dr. Andrew Boorde, a popular physician of Henry VHI.'s reign, a book that Shakspere must often have seen, gives us a correct impression of the medical treatment of that day. It is a mixture of theory, religion, superstition, and white magic. * Boorde's Breviary of Health, 1575. d4 40 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. It should not be forgotten that from this Dr. Boorde's name our term of " Merry Andrew " is derived. There is great pretension of learning in his work, though it is simple, shrewd, and humorous. The preface professes to disclose the obscure terms of physic and chirurgie, whether in " Greek, Araby, Barbary, or English." The merry doctor has chapters on, "■ Man's mind ; " "Blood-shot eyes;" "Dogs' appetite;" " Privacion of wit;" " Sneasing out of measure," and other incongruous com- plaints ; and his book is, in fact, a collection of medical remarks on all the aspects of mind and body. The re- medies are frequently of the strangest kind, such as oil of scorpions, the grease of a fox, and juice of violets and lilies. Lettuce seed and mandragora are ingredients in some salves. For a bruised shin we are told to wash with white wine, and then plaister with an old oak leaf. His advice is often mere jesting ; as, for a scolding wife he tells us the only cure is, " God and great sickness ; " for itching he recommends long nails and scratching ; for gluttony, abstinence. He has a chapter on weariness : " If this is caused by too much riding," he says, " don't ride." He discourses wisely on strange diseases gone by like last year's fashions, or promoted to better names; as, morphew, green jaundice, four sorts of leprosy, and the falling sickness (epilepsy). He is often pious, and slips MERET ANDREW. 41 in a prayer between a receipt for the tertian fever and one for the " standing up of hair." The pestilence, or " stop gallant," as it was facetiously called by jocular sextons of the Hamlet kind, he attributes to foul air, dirty streets and neglected cleanliness, and recommends every man to sub- mit himself to God ; and yet, in another chapter, he says the face should be wiped daily with a scarlet cloth, but only washed once a week. Avoid dead cadavers, he says quaintly ; and then, in one of his mountebank fits, for he was an itinerant professor, we believe he defines loss of hearing thus : — " In Latin named surditas, in English it is named a man that cannot hear."* In speaking of diseases of the tongue, he says, " It hath many other impediments, but none worse than lying and slandering." He half believes that St. John's wort drives away spirits, but only half; and describes an abbess at St. Alban's who suffered from nightmare, which he will not allow is a mounted evil angel. He dilates on the four humours or complexions of man, phlegm, blood, choler, and melancholy. He plays with goutf as if it was a rich man's disease, and advises oil * Boorde's Breviary of Health, 1575 (35). t Ibid. (65). 42 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLANB. of roses, bread crumbs, yolk of eggs, cow's milk, and saffron seethed together and spread on clouts. If any one has the king's evil, he says he must make friends of the King's Majesty and get touched. Asthma and disma, the ptisan and ptisick, are terms in his sonorous voca- bulary. The gall of a hare mixed with the grease of a fox makes, he asserts, a salve of rare virtues ; and so he runs on. "A few simples," says Burton*, "well prepared and understood, are better than such a heap of nonsense confused compounds which are in apothecaries' shops ordinarily sold." He seems to have thought new and far-fetched medicines as merely used by doctors to show their learning. Every city had its own pharmacopoeia, and people perished by thousands all in consequence of the curse of Babel. For madness and melancholy wormwood was used. Tamarisk and bugloss wine were frequently taken. An- other remedy was clarified whey, with borage, bugloss, endive, succory, &c., a good draught of which was taken in the morning fasting for thirty days in the spring. For the spleen and liver syrups were frequently recommended, and were made of borage, thyme, epithyme, hops, scolo- * Burton's Anatomie of Melancholy, 1676, p. 228. THE druggist's SHOP. 43 pendra, fumitory, maiden hair, and bizantine. These sy- rups were mixed with distilled waters by the physicians or stirred into juleps. Of conserves or confections, such as are now sold as lozenges, there were innumerable varieties. They were formed of borage, bugloss, balm, fumitory, succory, maiden hair, violets, roses and wormwood ; cinnamon, ginger, camomile, violets, roses, almonds, poppies, cynthea, and mandrakes, were used after bathing or to procure sleep. Ointments of oil and wax were used for the same purpose, as well as liniments and plasters of herbs and flowers mixed and boiled with oil or spirits. Cataplasms and salves were frequently made of green herbs, sodden, pounded, and applied externally. Some physicians used frontals to take away pain or procure sleep, and epithemata or moist medicines laid on linen to cool and heal. The apothecary's shop, says our old friend Abel Drugger, is crowded by poor women buying worm seed for their children or treacle to drive out the measles, and country people who have come for drugs and drenches for their sick horses. There are serving-men waiting for their masters' purgatives and electuaries, or the fop's face-washes of oil of tartar, lac virginis and camphor dissolved in verjuice. Maids are buying conserves and YY' 44 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. suckets for their mistresses, or perfumes for my lady's chamber, Drugger sold philtres and antidotes, and had his room for taking tobacco, silver tongs and a maple block for cutting it. Here gallants met and gossiped, and learned tricks of smoking for so much a lesson of fashionable professors. Can we credit it that in 1614 there were 7000 tobacco shops in and near London alone ! * As we leave his shop and walk down the street we meet a lawyer, a grave, sour-faced man, in a black velvet coat and a black silk gown welted and faced, followed hj four serving-men, one of them an ill-favoured Serjeant, in a buff jerkin, greasy and beer-stained, muffled with a cloak that hides all but his red nose, and with a clumsy dagger like a brewer's bung knife hanging at his side. The rest follow at a distance in order not to appear to know him ; but the others are a summoner, a gaoler, and an informer. The first is a fat man, with a threadbare black coat unbuttoned to give him ease. The gaoler carries a staff and a whipcord, and the third wears a black coat faced with taffety, while the informer is dis- tinguished by a great side-pouch, big as a falconer's, crammed with informations. This Serjeant is as eager to * Eich's Honestie of this Age, 1614, p. 26. TOBACCO MEKCHANT. 45 catch a debtor as a dog is to seize a bear. These men were known, if their victim had money, to lead him with cap and knee to the nearest tavern, where for a brace of angels they would often summon his friend to bail. If he were a poor man, they would not allow him time to speak with his creditor or arrange a composition, but dragged him to the compter, unless he would purchase the right with some of his pewter, brass, or household stuff. That informer is always eaves-dropping to pick up scandal, but is easily bribed to silence. Women, such as the wife of Bath, whom he calls " his good dame," would feast him with flesh and fowl, and he in return would declare that all complaint against them proceeded from envy, and that they were wives of good behaviour. That gaoler is famous for extorting fees from his prisoners, who are many of them this lawyer's clients. In half an hour after a prisoner's entrance he will run up an angel charge for garnish, turning the key, feeing the jury, paying the chamberlain, and other items. The tobacco merchant *, in spite of his Winchester pipes, maple cutting blocks, silver tongs to hand the hot coals, fires of juniper wood, and all his scents and con- serves, was too often a monstrous cheat. He adulterated * Ben Jonson's Alchemist, Act v. Sc. 1. 'I 'T 46 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. the precious weed he sold with sack lees and oil, washed it in muscadel and grains, or kept it moist by burying it in gravel, wrapped up in greasy leather and oily rags. The " silver pitchfork " from Italy was a fashion reserved for the next reign ; but now to carry a pipe in shape like a woodcock's head, to have three sorts of tobacco, to learn to blow out the smoke in balls and rings, was indispensable to all men of fashion. The best tobacconists were known and received pupils, whom they taught the slights ; they would brag of being able to take three whiffs, drink three cups of canary, then take horse, and evolve the smoke, one whiff on Hounslow, the second at Staines, and a third at Bagshot.* Pages were kept half the day running about to buy tobacco. To blow the smoke out in a long tube was a triumph, but to bring it out through the nostrils procured a gallant two long days' immortality. A (pawn) broker wore a black taffeta doublet and a leather jerkin with crystal buttons, a cloak faced with velvet, a country cap of the finest wool, and a row of gold rings upon his fingers. These men bore as bad a character as they do now. The satirist dubbed them " blood-suckers of the poor, receivers of stolen goods, and * Every Man out of his Humour, Act iii. So. 1. THE barber's shop. 47 supporters of cut- purses ; men who lived by preying on spendthrifts and prodigals." For pawns worth ten pounds they would give three, requiring an interest of sixteen pence in the pound every month, or at the rate of eighty per cent., the bill to be monthly renewed and the pawn sold if the money was not ready. These cheats visited dining houses to advance money upon rings, chains, and cloaks. If they saw a young gentleman of fair living and assured possibility, they encouraged him to expense, and induced an accomplice usurer to lend him money, paying the dupe in useless commodities, and binding him down with penalties and forfeitures. Thieves' plunder they purchased without inquiry at the rate of a crown for a pound's worth. The poor they terribly oppressed, robbing them of their clothes and household stuff, their pewter, and their brass. They would sometimes make a poor woman pay a half-penny a week even for a silver thimble scarcely worth sixpence. The Elizabethan barber-surgeon was a great man, and his shop was the lounge of all idle gallants. He dressed sword wounds received in street frays, cut hair and starched beards, curled moustachios, and tied up love-locks. The gittern (guitar) that lay on his counter was always a resource, and the earliest news from Paul's or the court was sure to be circulating among the 48 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. gossiping customers round his arm-chair. The poor men who came to our barber to be polled for twopence were soon trimmed round like a cheese, or dismissed with scarce a " God speed you ! " But the courtier sat down in his fine laced clothes in the throne of a chair, while the shaver took his comb in one hand and snapped his scissors merrily in the other ; then, making a low congee, he would say*, " Sir, will you have your worship's hair cut after the Italian manner, short and round, and then frounst with the curling irons to make it look like a half moon in a mist ; or like a Spaniard, long at the ears and curled like to the two ends of an old cast periwig; or will you be Frenchified with a love-lock down to your shoulders, whereon you may wear your mistress's favour? The English cut is base, and gen- tlemen scorn it ; novelty is dainty. Speak the word, sir, my scissors are ready to execute your worship's will." In combing and dressing his ambrosial locks our young Apollo spends some two hours, and then, coming to the barber's basin, is washed with camphor soap. Having fairly reached his beard, the barber requests, with an- other congee, to know if his worship would wish it to be shaven ; " whether he would have his peak cut short, and * Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1592. BAEBEE'S fashions. 49 sharp, and amiable like an inamorato, or broad pendent like a spade, to be amorous as a lover or terrible as a warrior and soldado ; whether he will have his crates cut low like a juniper bush, or his subercles taken away with a razor ; if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primed, or his moustachios fostered to turn about his ears like vine tendrils, fierce and curling or cut down to the lip with the Italian lash ? — and with every ques- tion a snip of the scissors and a bow." The Puritans wondered at the strange fashions and monstrous manners of cutting, trimming, and shaving, introduced by the barbers. The talk was of the French cut, the Spanish cut, the Dutch and the Italian mode 5 the bravado fashion, and the mean fashion. Besides these, they had the gentleman's cut, the common cut, and the court and country fashion. They have also, says Stubbes, indignantly, "other kinds of cuts innumerable, and, therefore, when you come to be trimmed, they will ask you whether you will be cut to look terrible to your enemy, or amiable to your friend; grim and stem in countenance, or pleasant and demure; for they have diverse kinds of cuts for all these purposes, or else they lie ! Then when they have done all their feats, it is a world to consider how their mowchatows must be pre- served and laid out from one cheek to another, yea, almost VOL. I. E ^1^ 50 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. from one ear to another, and turned up like two horns towards the forehead. Besides that, when they come to the cutting of the hair, what tricking and trimming, what rubbing, what scratching, what combing and claw- ing, what trickling and toying, and all to tawe out money, you may be sure. And when they come to washing, oh, how gingerly they behave themselves therein ! For then shall your mouth be tossed with the lather or foam that riseth of the balls (for they have their sweet balls where- withall they use to wash); your eyes, closed, must be annointed therewith also. Then snap go the fingers full bravely, God wot I Thus this tragedy ended, comes the warm clothes to wipe and dry him withall ; next the ears must be picked, and closed together again artificially, forsooth 1 The hair of the nostrils cut away, and every thing done in order, comely to behold. The last action in the tragedy is the payment of money ; and least these cunning barbers might seem unconscionable in asking much for their pains, they are of such a shameful modesty as they will ask nothing at all, but standing to the cour- tesy and liberality of the giver, they will receive all that comes, how much soever it be, not giving any again, I warrant you; for take a barber with that fault, and strike ofi' his head ! No, no ; such fellows are Rara aves in terris, nigrisque simillimis cygnis, — ' Eare birds on the TAILORS AND WATCHMAKERS. 51 earth, and as scarce as black swans.' You shall have also your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you shall be all besprinkled, your musick again, and pleasant harmony shall sound in your ears, and all to tickle the same with rare delight, and in the end your cloak shall be brushed, and ' God be with you, gentlemen ! ' " / It were endless to describe the jargon of a tailor's shop ; the prattle of Italian cut wristbands, worth 51,, embossed girdles, laced satin doublets, peach-coloured stockings, short rufHes, silk russet cloaks laid about with lace, satin cut on taffety, the pointed yellow jerkins scented with benjamin, and such foolery. In 1584 watches began to come from Germany, and the watchmaker soon became a trader of importance. The watches were often of immense size, and hung in a rich case from the neck, and by fops wound up with great gravity and ceremony in Paul's or at the ordinary dinner. Catgut mainsprings must have been slightly affected by changes of weather, and sometimes a little out of time in wet Novembers ; but, Sessa, let the world live ! An early specimen of the watch that we have seen engraved was, however, not larger than a walnut, richly chased, and enclosed in a pear-shaped case. It had no minute hand, but was of beautiful workmanship. Coun- try people, like Touchstone, sometimes carried pocket X 2 52 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. dials, in the shape of brass rings, with a slide and aperture, to be regulated to the season.* The following is a scene at a bookseller's shop, of which we can give no more living description : — Prentice. What lack you, gentleman ? See a new book, new come forth, sir ? Buy a new book, sir ? Gentleman. New book, says't! Faith! I can see no prettie thing come forth to my humour's liking. Prentice. Troth, sir ; I think I can show you as many of all sorts as any in London, sir. Gentleman. Canst help me to all Greene's books in one volume? But I will have them every one, not any wanting. Prentice. Sir, I have most part of them, but I lack Coney Catching, and some half-dozen more ; but I think I could procure them. There be in the town, I am sure, can fit you. Have you all the parts of Pasquilt, sir? and look you here, a pretty book I'll answer for ; 'tis his Melancholy, sir ; and here his Moral Philosophy of the last edition. Gentleman. But where's the new book thou tell'st me of? Which is it? Prentice. Marye, look you, sir. This is a pretty odd * Knight's Shakspere ; Note to Twelfth Night and As You Like It. BOOKSELLERS. — ALE HOUSES. 53 conceit of a merrie meeting heere in London tetween a wife, a widdow, and a mayde.* Gentleman. Merrie meeting! Why that title is stale. There is a book called 'Tis Merry when Knaves Meet ; and there's a ballad, 'Tis Merry when Malt Men Meet ; and, therefore, I think now I have seen it. But if your book be of such excellent qualitie and rare operation, we must needs have some traffic together. Here, take your money ; is't sixpence ? Prentice. I'certain ; no lesse, sir. I thank ye, sir. Gentleman. What's this ? An Epistle dedicated to it ? Prentice. Yes, forsooth; and dedicated f to all the plea- sant, conceited, London gentlewomen that are friends to mirth, and enemies to over melancholy. Inns and ale-houses were known by their red lattices, a custom of which perhaps we have still some trace in the red curtains, the favourite ornaments of beer shops. The cross-bar ornament on the door-posts of taverns, to which antiquarians attribute a Roman origin, is said to have been an indication that draught boards were kept within. In the suburban roads the head boroughs and chief men * Shakspere Society ; Rowland's 'Tis Merry when Gossips Meet, 1602. t Shakspere Society's Papers, 1844; Rowland's 'Tis Merry when Gossips Meet, 1602. E 3 54 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. of the parish often kept the ale-houses — so profitable an exchequer was the tap. Among other ingenious in- ducements to revel, some landlords, whose ears were attuned to the sound of chinking silver, kept black leather jacks for their ale-bibbers tipped with metal and hung with little hawk's-bells. These were called fondly the " Gingle Boys." In other places they used brown, shallow bowls, or whiskins. The strongest ale they called Huff's ale, and of this even Christopher Sly would not have been allowed to drink more than a pot at one sitting. Wine was, however, cheap, and drunk by all classes. The lower sorts of taverns, up gardens and alleys, were not reputable. Here shifters and cheats resorted, and papists afraid of the statute sought refuge.* Here the highwayman came with his mask and cordf in his pocket, his . pistol still smoking at the touch-hole, and money, red and wet, shaking in his pocket. In the stables were horses with tails that moved on and off, and white and black skeins to hide the star or blaze in the forehead. Here a man could find bravoes of Rome and Naples who would kill your rival for a pottle of wine, butchering an enemy as they would do a beast.f In such places in White Friars conspiracies had been known to be hatched. * Whetstone's Mirror for Magistrates, 1584, p. 28. t Ibid. p. 35. J Ibid. p. 33. rOKEIGN CEAFTSMEN. 55 To higher sorts cheats brought men of court, men on whom they particularly preyed, finding out their fortunes and expectancies by means of directories. To a lower class resorted drovers and bankrupts who plundered merchants. In such places men stabbed themselves in the arm, and mixed their blood with wine, in honour of their mistresses, or drank down lighted almonds, which they called snap-dragons ; most of the men have false beards in their pockets, and wear cloaks of two colours, to be worn on either side. The tinker was half a cheat, and made more holes than he mended. The pedlar was a thief, whose pack was a mere excuse for his pickpocketing. The chandler dipped his wicks in dross, and merely coated them with tallow. The haberdashers sold hats made of old felt and lined with gummed tafieta that melted with the heat of the head. The grocer bought refuse from the garbellers of spices, and mixed bay berries with his pepper.* The tradesmen of this age had many competitors. There were Dutch and French chandlers, and drunken Dutch shoemakers, who made all the fashionable shoes. The English sempstresses of the Exchange could hardly sell their bands and shirts for the Milan-ers (Milan and * Green's Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1592. e4 56 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. French women) of St. Martin's, who also sold bracelets, jewels, fans, ouches, brooches, periwigs, rufFs, and cuffs. Of comparatively forgotten trades we must not forget the capper or the boddice-maker ; nor neglect to mention the Puritan feather-sellers of Blackfriars, the distillers of Bucklersburjr, the clothiers of Watling Street, or the goldsmiths of Cheap. The goldsmiths, mercers, and drapers were all noto- rious for lending money upon land at exorbitant rates of interest. The fraudulent draper lived purposely in a dark shop, where the customer could not well see the dye and the thread, the wool or the nap. His friend the clothworker stretched his cloth till it broke into holes, which were then artfully closed up, and had also various means of powdering and dressing his fabrics. The vintner spent half the night* mixing his wines. Claret that had lost its colour he dashed with red. Strong Gascoigne wine he alloyed with weak grape- juice of Rochelle; white wine he flavoured with sack; and all the rest he diluted with water. The blacksmith's worst fault was that he lifted the pot too often to his nose, and v/as somewhat of a gossip, like his friend the barber. The weaver cheated poor women by weaving * Green's Quip for an Upstart Courtier. CHARCOAL SELLEES. 57 thin and weak and stealing yam. The miller had false hoppers, and was so notorious a rogue that there was an old proverb, " An honest miller has a golden thumb." The cook bought bad meat, and made Sunday pies of the baked meats of Thursday's intended dinner. Colliers seem to have been the most knavish of all itinerant tradesmen. There were a certain number of them called legers, who, to escape the notice of the Lord Mayor and his officers, used to hire houses and yards in the suburbs, either at Shoreditch, Whitechapel, or South- wark. The leger rose early, and would go towards Croydon, Whetstone, Greenwich, and Romford to meet the country colliers who were bringing in charcoal for the London market, paying for every load of 36 sacks 15*., 16«., or 19s. and 20s., every sack containing four full bushels. These being brought into his own yard, he employed his three or four men to unload the coal into long and narrow sacks, holding about three bushels or two bushels and a half, the dust and small willow coal below, and large fillers to cover all above. Then, dirtying their shoes and hose to pass for country colliers, carrying two sacks a-piece, the men went out at the back gate to sell in the suburbs, selling the load in summer for 14 and 16 pence, in winter for 18 and 20. If the fraud was detected, the coals were forfeited to the . 58 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. poor, the sacks burnt, and the collier whipped at the cart's-tail or exposed in the pillory. Poor women were sometimes met in the streets, angrily- railing against these cozening knaves, comparing them, with their black faces, to devils who undid the poor whom God loved. On one occasion, as the story runs, a leger brought a load of coals (charcoal) that had come in barges from Kent to Billingsgate, and sold several sacks to a cook's wife on St. Mary's Hill for 14 pence the couple. The wife, seeing the cheat, called her little girl, and bade her run for the constable, to teach the cozening rogue to deal with false sacks, and to have him up before my Lord Mayor. On the collier trying to escape, the vii'ago snatched up a spit, and swore she would broach him if he stirred. The collier, afraid of the pillory, left the coals and the sacks as a pledge, and unpaid ran to his load, and so escaped. A flaxwife in the suburbs, being once deceived in the same way, said nothing, but ordered two more sacks, and against the cheat's coming collected sixteen of her neigh- bours, each with a cudgel under her apron. The collier, decoyed into the room, was locked in, and, surprised to see such a collection of his customers, all of whom he remembered to have cheated, cried, " God speed you all. WATERMEN S TRICKS. 59 shrews ! " " Welcome ! " they answered. One jolly dame, who had been appointed judge, then told him they had come as a grand jury, and that he was indicted of cozenage. On his trying to get out, five or six women started up and fell upon him with their cudgels, bidding him speak more reverently to their principal. The trial then began; a jury was appointed, the flaxwife gave evidence, and measured the coals before the jury, upon which the rogue was found guilty and condemned to the bastinado. Then, in spite of his struggles, they fell upon him, broke his head, and drove him out of doors without sacks, coals, or money. The watermen, or water-rats, as they were called in jest, were greater extortionists than our own cabmen, diligent and civil till they got a passenger into their boat, but scur- rilous and violent if their unjust charge of fare was re- fused. If the passenger were a servant or an apprentice, they would stop his hat or cloak for the money; their pay being twopence out of every twelve they could get. Sometimes they caught a tartar, got their heads broke, and their proper fee refused. They used to sit in noisy knots on the water stairs, waiting for fares, and disputing for them when they came. Their boats had not unfre- quently striped tilts, and their cry was " Westward, ho ! or. Eastward, ho ! " " Oars or sculls ? " according as they 60 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. were pulling up or down the river. Their great achieve- ment was shooting London Bridge ; their great har- vests, days of procession to Richmond or Greenwich, or the season of popularity of some new play, when Burhage was wonderful in Richard III., or Kemp irresistible in the fool of Twelfth Night. They were famous for their coarse wit, and were formidable by their number and spirit of cooperation. Their boats formed as fine a nursery for the navy as the colliers do now. The saddler, who sold rich embroidered housings and high-peaked war saddles and pillions, was in the habit of stuffing them with straw or hay, and making them of the leather of tanned sheep's instead of pigs' skin. The joiner put in green wood in parts of a building where soundness and strength were essentially requisite. The cutler would keep pliant blades that could be relied on for ruffians and bravoes, and to novices and gallants sold old blades new glazed, which he would swear had just come from Turkey or Toledo. The butcher's frauds were innumerable.* He would blow and stretch his meat, or wash stale joints with fresh blood. The fraudulent brewers and bakers, the one as pale as the other was fat, were often exhibited crop-eared * Green's Quip for an Upstart Courtier. BUTCHER. — TANNEK. 61 in the London pillories. The first would sometimes grow to be worth 40jO00Z. by selling sodden water with too much hop and too little malt ; the second in one dear year turned his daughter into a gentlewoman by making his bread heavy with salt and yeast, in spite of the daily visit of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, who went round the shops to weigh suspicious loaves. The tapster limed his sack, frothed his ale, gave short measure, and overscored the drunkard. The butchers' shops, however, astonish us by their prices : a fat ox, 26s. ; a fat wether, 3s. Ad. ; and the same price for a fat calf; a fat lamb, I2d. ; three pounds of beef, a penny. Everywhere the same cheapness : milk from a farm in the Minories, the three ale pints, l^d. in summer, and 2^d. in winter. Wine, too, is very cheap, and within the reach of any poor man, though not quite so much so as in Henry VIIL's time, when, by statute, Gascon wine was sold at 8s. the gallon, and the cheapest at Id. a pint, and Ad. the pottle. Malmsey and sack at 6a'. the gallon. The tanner, instead of allowing his skins to remain in soak nine months, ripened them prematurely with marl and ash bark *, so that they looked well, but remained soft and fibrous. He obtained the stamp of the Leadenhall * Green's Quip for an Upstart Courtier. 62 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. dealers by frequent bribes. The currier, who bought of the tanner, acted as a middleman, and extorted money from the poor shoemakers, selling them, at high prices, poor and ill-tanned leather. An Act was indeed passed to prevent this, but the tanner avoided it by pretending to use the curriers' rooms as a warehouse. The shoemaker, nothing behind his fellows, cheated in every way possible, joining neat leather vamps to calf leather heels ; and, as a race, they were considered drinkers and spendthrifts, just as London tailors were laughed at for their fondness for buttered toast, or butchers and tinkers thought turbulent. The skinner's fraud consisted in sell- ing the skins of the bellies of animals instead of that of the backs ; and if they obtained any unknown, worthless, or spotted fur, declaring it was a most precious skin from Muscovy or the furthest parts of Calabria, The chirurgeons, to sum up this catalogue of knaves, neglected the poor and robbed the rich. Quacks were universal; many physicians charged as high as IZ. for a single visit, and even then adulterated their medicines. The Puritans repeated all these charges. The drapers, they said, strained their cloth till all its strength was gone * ; the clothiers sheared the nap off, and thickened it * Stubbe's Display of Corruptions. MODEEN TRADE. 63 by the help of the fuller ; the goldsmiths sold half dross for pure metal ; the vintners mixed their wines, and brought the good only to the rich man ; the butchers let the blood lie in their meat to increase the weight, and pinned pieces of alien fat to lean and poor meat: the butchers complained of the graziers' prices ; the graziers of the butchers. The tailors stole lace and cloth, and were in league with the drapers ; the tanners only half tanned their hides ; the shoes were so bad that a man re- quired two pairs a year. " Oh, farewell former world," quoth Stubbes' father, when he got wet in his feet, " a pair of shoes in my young days would have kept a man as dry as a feather, though he had gone in water all day through, yea, all the week through, to the very last day, and would have served a man almost a whole year together without repairing." The brokers received stolen goods : their men tempted servants to steal, and bought old clothes and remnants of lace. The chandler sold butter, cheese, fagots, candles, and crockery, and was accused of false weights and using ingredients to keep the tallow soft. We have not improved much in these times : our tea is sloe-leaves, coloured with poison; our bread is alum, judiciously short weighted; our beer is drugged with tobacco and quassia ; our arrowroot is half meal ; our 64 SHAKSPEKE'S ENGLAND. calico is stiffened with flour. Trade is rotten to the root. Every thing is sham, dear, and had. The old Whittington spirit, the honest ambition, the patriotism, the public spirit, are all past. Restless, feverish avarice has taken their place. Riches are made the summum honum of life ; for them principle, honest charity, love, contentment, all are sacrificed. Trade is become a legal robbery, and in its essential nature dishonest. We have forgotten that hap- piness consists in the true performance of duties, in love and honour, not in wealth. Money cannot give taste, or bring affection, or purchase friends, or give wisdom, or inherit learning, or guard a man from misfortune, or make him beloved. It does not make one a good citizen, an honest shopkeeper, or a fervent friend. Those men who lived in Aldersgate and Ludgate knew this, and lived happily above their shops, and remained there to die. " Without turtle ? No, no ! impossible ! " says an Alderman of Portsoken. ELIZABETHAN HOUSES^ 65 CHAP. II. THE MANSIONS AND PALACES. " Falstaff. Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling and a rich." Henry IV. (Part II.)^Act v. Sc. 3. Characteristics of the Elizabethan House. — The Chase and Terrace. — Court- Yards. — Fountains. — Bowling-Greens. — Magnificence and Sense of Security. — Their Sanctity and Associations. — Individuality. — Romance. — Seen by Night. — Scenes in an old Mansion. — The Hall and Garden. — Fittings. — Tudor Building. — Somersetshire. — Henry VIH.'s Palace at Shene. — His Luxury. — Wolsey and Buckingham. — Existing Elizabethan Houses. — Ornamental Brick Work. — Italian Decoration. — Court Yards. — Oriels. — Cinque Cento. — Architectural Works. — Timber Work. — John Thorpe. — His Works. — Architects of the Age. — Palatial Houses. — Anecdote of Gresham. — James's Reign. — Description of Lord North's House at Kirtling. — Hawstead House. — Apart- ments of Elizabeth's Palace at Richmond. — Elizabethan Gardens. — Bacon's Description. — Aviaries. — Gardens at Theobald's. — The Gardens at Kenilworth. The aspect of the Elizabethan house is known to every Englishman. Who does not remember the gable end, the gilt vane, the stone-shafted oriel, the chimneys of moulded brick, with their rich ornaments, overgrown by the VOL. I. . *F 66 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. honeysuckle or the ivy. Outside is the old terrace, with its ivied statues and roses ; inside the old hall, with the lozenged floor, the stag's horns and quaint pictures. What recollections linger in the faded tapestry, the tall Flemish flagon, the shovelboard, and the worm-eaten cross-bows ! And then mark the chase, — still full of deer, and the gnarled elm where Elizabeth herself used to stand to wait for the stag of ten, with all her ladies round her, and the nobles, aijd the wits, and poets in the second ring, — Shak- spere calm and wise ; Sidney gay and ardent ; and Essex fiery and impatient; Leicester dark and smiling; Ben Jonson rugged and sullen ; and Raleigh proud and cold ; — such a band of great men as have never since met on earth, not with Johnson at his club, with Scott' at his claret, nor with Coleridge at a Highgate tea party. The houses, built for leisure days of magnificence and display, have generally their court-yards, where the bridal or the hunting train could wind and prance, the terrace where the ladies, with merlin in their fists, could pace in company with the mad lovers in the ruff and cloak, with roses in their shoes, and gilt rapiers by their side ; huge panelled rooms, stamped with heraldic devices, where grey- bearded men could entrance Shallows and Ague-cheeks with " excellent good conceited things," or perform ravish- ingly upon the viol or gambo. They have high clock FOUNTAINS AND TERRACES. 67 towers, bushed with ivy, where owls build among the bells, and from whence thundering vollies were discharged at the birth or marriage of heirs ; quaint gardens, with clipped hedges, where lovers watched the fountain god who weeps perpetually for some deed done long since in the flesh ; bowling-greens where the old knights and chaplains every day quarrelled and made friends ; huge halls for Christmas feasts and mummings, or a chapel for secret masses or early prayers ; long passages for voices at midnight and wind murmurings ; and burial vaults for the dead to lie in quietly and be forgotten. These old houses could only have been built by a nation fearing no enemy. They breathe an old secure religious grandeur and faith ; they boast a richness and a sense of permanence ; they were monuments- and shrines, added to and improved till they became objects of pride, of love, and of adoration. They had been sanctified by the residence of many ancestors ; they seem to have shared their joys and sorrows ; they had been the theatre of great actions and great crimes ; they were the visible type of the greatness and wealth of a family. The love of the soil, with our reserved cold natures, became a passion as deep as it was un- demonstrative. No wonder that poets and dramatists alike lamented the downfall of the patrimonial trees, the prodigal's f2 -T! 68 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. sale of the old mansion, and the arrival of the new heir, a stranger to the land. In the love for these old houses there was something unselfish and almost sacred ; it was no mere mean exultation in the power of riches; it was a pleasure mixed with pain at the thought of past generations, a thought which roused to exertion, spurred on drooping virtue, and stimulated even the noblest energy. No wonder that the American traveller visits these mansions still as the chief characteristics of the old country, looking upon them as contemporaries of Shakspere, places where Talstaff visited and the Two Gentlemen met. The Elizabethan houses are wonderful in their indivi- duality. They seem to share all the hopes, and joys, and passions of the builder. They have sunny spots, caves of shadow, bright clear quadrangles, and gloomy corridors. There is no mood in your mind they will not fit. They have about them a calm stately dignity, neither self con- scious nor arrogant. They do not oppress you with a sense of wealth, but greet you like old friends. They are neither flimsy nor tawdry, nor so massy and dark as to remind you of a workhouse and a gaol. They seem fit for all seasons. They are cool in summer and cheery in -winter. The terrace is for June, the porch for December. The bay window is so clear and airy that you could not believe the same house had that red cavern of a fire-place. GATEWAY SCENES. 69 the very shrine of comfort and of warmth, hallowed both by legend and recollection. Alas ! that one cannot order an avenue ready made, that one cannot purchase a genea- logy ! In these old houses, the portraits frown at a mere purchaser as a stranger ; the ghosts refuse to leave their churchyard beds to welcome or disturb you, and the very tenants look upon you as an upstart and an interloper. We never see one of tliose old gateways, arched and massive, without imagining a hawking party setting out, the gallant shouting below to the lady who leans from the raullioned window above ; feathers flying, hawks scream- ing, and dogs yelping. We love old places like Burleigh, with the steepled clock tower, the paved quadrangle, and pillared cloister: the broad staircases, the parapets and bossy capitals, the fan ceiling, the bartizans, the waggon roof pierced and pendant, the hall gallery for the musi- cians, and the heavy cornices, are all dear to us as the old familiar things of childhood. How we dwell on the feudal grandeur of the deep em- brasured windows, and the family pictures on the walls between the panelled and radiated ceilings, the broad heraldic panes, the rich fringed dais, and the stone figures that watch you from the fireplace ; and then we wander in dreams, following tip-toe after Beatrice up broad hall staircases, with carved balustrades and pillared images, f3 SHAKSPEEES ENGLAND. Cupids, and vine wreaths, suits of armour, and sheaves of weapons, and calm, watchful, ancestral pictures. The stair- case winds round, carved like a casket over head, past tapestried rooms and sounding corridors that echo even the velvet-footed maiden's step ; outside in the moonlight are the clipped yews black as coffin plumes, and the foun- tain splashing silver on the sleeping flowers, broad swards holy and calm in the glamour light, and gilded vanes shifting and changing ever to catch the stray moonbeams. The windows are shining like bright armour, and the brook where the deer drink is breaking like melting metal over the pebbles. The lions that support the great clock in the tower, I see, are staring stonily at the hour, and the two statues in the niches bide their time in the deep shadows that rest under the roof and projecting eaves. I step again into the hall, and see Lorenzo whispering to Jessica, and the faded banners over head whisper too, and the griffins in the oriel say nothing, but the wind is piping in the great twisted chimney-stalks where the swallow builds, and the moon glints on the great stone globes of the gateway, where the roses cling and the turf is striped with the ominous shadow as of prison bars. But this is but one scene : there is another chamber, with Corinthian columns and Grecian statues, where grave Capulet sits reading, his cap and sword lying on the table. ELIZABETHAN INTERIOES. 71 and there is a bullet hole near him in the panel, and there is a legend about it which I am not going to tell here. Well may he be proud when his genealogy stare at him from the windows and from the tapestry, and is gilded on the ceiling, when his crest is round the weather mould- ings, and over every gateway, and on the tiles in the hall floor. How can he, English Capulet, forget that he is of a very ancient and princely lineage ? There are rushes on the floor, and the fire-brands rest on the wings of brass pelicans; and there are old, dim mirrors on the wall, and oak bufiets and carved screens, and the walls are panelled with his badge; and there are stone seats round the room, and the door is huge and clamped, and the embrasures of immense thickness. Without, the deer are feeding in the sunlight, and the boys are running at the quintain, or trying their bows ; and there is a lady reading Plato at the window, where the rose struggles in. In the distance is a village of gable roofs and striped white walls ; and a wedding procession is passing out across the meadows : the bride also, and the favours, and the pipers, and the fiddlers, are all coming to the Hall. More palaces than churches had been built in England during the reign of the Tudors, — a sure proof that luxury F 4 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND. had more votaries than religion. The Reformation was approaching, and the nobles were increasing in power. Somersetshire alone, a county devoted to the Lancas- trian cause, is rich in perpendicular churches. The feudal power being crushed by the wars of the Eoses, the nobles, having no longer enemies to conquer, contented themselves with domestic grandeur, and turned their castles into sumptuous mansions. Hospitality increased as travelling and commerce increased, and more retainers rendered necessary more apartments. Henry VH. built a pleasant palace at Shene, in Surrey^ to which he gave his own title of Richmond : no vestige of it now remains. It was here Elizabeth frequently resided, — here she died ; and it was from one of its win- dows that the blue ring was dropped which Lord Gary gallopped with to Scotland, as a proof of the death of the Lion Queen. It abounded with bay windows and rect- angular and semicircular turrets ; its octangular towers were surmounted with small cupolas terminating in rich crockets and gilded vanes. The luxury of the times may be gathered from the fact that Henry VIII., rich with the abbey money, himself built or repaired no less than ten palaces : Beaulieu in Essex, Hunsdon in Herts, Ampthill in Bedfordshire, Nonsuch in Surrey, York Place at Whitehall; besides OLD HOUSES. Bridewell and Blackfriars, St. James's, Westminster, Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, and King's Langley, Herts. The Red Man, as his enemies called Wolsey, rivalled his royal master, by building his regal colleges of Christ- church and Ipswich ; he completed Hampton Court, re- built York House (Whitehall), and Esher in Surrey. The unfortunate Duke of Buckingham surpassed even the Cardinal in his still unfinished palace at Thornbury. The Duke of Suffolk built Grimsthorpe. The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey reared magnificent man- sions at Kenninghall (Norfolk), and Mount Surrey, near Norwich. Amongst other noble Tudor erections, we may also mention, for the yexj names call up a thousand associations, Haddon Hall, Derbyshire (in ruins); Cow- dray, Sussex, burnt in 1793; Hewer Castle, Kent; Gos- field Hall, Essex, still perfect ; Hengrave Hall, Suffolk ; Layes-Marney, Essex, now in ruins ; Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, destroyed by Fairfax; Hunsdon House, Herts, rebuilt ; South Wingfield, Derbyshire, dilapidated ; Hill Hall, Essex; Wolteston in East Basham, Norfolk, ruined ; Harlaxton, Lincolnshire ; and Westwood, Wor- cestershire, stijl perfect. Now that defence and strength were no longer the primary requisites of a building, gate-houses, bay-windows. 74 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. and quadrangular courtyards, were soon added to the old fortresses. Red brick was more used now that no cannon were to be feared; and towards the end of the Tudor period, Trevij and Holbein introduced the use of moulded terra cotta. Sometimes the brickwork was plaistered, pointed, and adorned with external alto-reliefs, generally the work of Italian workmen. Italian paintings began to enrich the rooms ; plate became a work of art, and not a mere display of wealth. The tapestry was richer and of finer workmanship. At Layes-Marney, and other places, bricks of two colours, highly glazed, were used for variegating the surface, and were worked in lozenge and geometric patterns. The chimney shafts, proud types of hospitality, were twisted, wreathed, dia- pered, and often decorated with busts, or the arms and cognizances of the founders. The gateways were justly made the prominent feature of the house. Those at Whitehall, designed by Holbein, were constructed with different coloured bricks, over which were appended four large circular medallions containing busts. The bay-window, invented a century before the Tudor age, was at first simply a projecting opening between two buttresses, generally placed at the end of a room, and occupying the bay of a building. At Thornbury Castle it consists of right angles intersected by circles. When PLANS OF BUILDING. 75 placed at the end of a great hall, it reached in a broad crystal sheet from the roof to the floor. It sometimes consisted of nine or ten stages, and at banquets was furnished with shelves of gold and silver plate. The walls were wainscoted with carved oak panels, and these were furnished with cipher mottoes. The court was quadrangular, and besides a great staircase near the hall had generally hexangular towers containing steps. Towers were often found at each angle of the great court, rising above the parapets, and grouping well with the lofty ornamented chimneys. The windows are flat-topped, and divided in the head by transoms, and crowned with embattled work. The vaultings are covered with stained stalactite pendants and fan tracery. The flying buttresses are highly or- namented. The walls are loaded with decorations: no plain stone is left to rest the eye. Fretwork figures, niches, canopies, pedestals, and traceries, complete the glory of this style. The old architects required that in this order of architec- ture the parlour should join the hall on one side, and the buttery and pantry on the other ; the kitchen joining the buttery, and the pastry-house and larder the kitchen. The gate-house was opposite the hall door; the privy 76 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. chamber joined the great chamber of estate, and many of the rooms had a prospect into the chapel. In Elizabeth's reign the Cinque-cento began to mingle with the Tudor style, and a strange, incongruous mixture was formed of Gothic and classical, — an unnatural union. It is characterised by orders, rudely profiled by arcades, with openings extravagantly wide ; the columns of the piers are as pedestals, and are frequently joined by square blocks at regular intervals. When square, they are de- corated with prismatic ornaments in imitation of precious stones. The entablatures are broken, and inscriptions are placed in twisted scrolls with curling ends. In tombs the figures were coloured, and various marbles and alabasters of different and confiicting tints were intermingled with much skill, but small art. The altar tombs were generally placed under an open arcade, with a rich and complicated entablature. The columns were of black and white mar- ble, of the Doric or Corinthian order. A favourite orna- ment of this age was formed by small pyramidal figures, whose sides are veneered with various coloured pieces disposed in ornamented squares or circles supporting globes. Armorial bearings, a mass of gold and vermilion, nauseate us by their repetition. When the monument is placed against the wall, the form is generally of an alcove with columns. The most interesting examples of this style THE TUDOR PLAN. are the monuments of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth ; those of Ratcliffe, Earl of Surrey, at Boreham, and his Countess at Westminster ; of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, at Warwick; and of Carey^ Lord Hunsdon, at West- minster. Architecture once under Italian auspices assumed a more scientific character.- The treatises of Lomazzo and Philibert de Lorme were translated into English ; and no building was constructed without a studied plan. John Shute, an architect sent by Dudley, Duke of North- umberland, to study in Italy, published a book on his return, on the subject of " Ancient and Famous Monu- ments." The Tudor plan now underwent many modifications. The parapets and porticoes were carved into fantastic and grotesque shapes ; the galleries were lofty and wide, and sometimes more than a hundred feet long : the staircases were spacious and magnificent, filling up half the hall. Elizabeth herself, always cautious and saving, like her grandfather, built nothing but the Eoyal Gallery at Windsor ; but Leicester expended 60,000/. on Kenil- worth alone. Timber frame-work became common in country manor- houses, and particularly in the counties of Salop, Chester, and Stafford. Wherever stone and brick were scarce 78 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. they increased and multiplied. The carved pendants, the barge boards of the roofs and gables, were executed in oak and chesnut, with much beauty of design and a, singularly pleasing effect. The corbels were formed by fantastic figures of extreme grotesqueness and curiosity. This fashion came from Flanders ; and on the Continent it was carried to perfection. Our architectural luxury is selfishly hid : Elizabethan architecture was intended to please the traveller, the neighbour, and the passer-by. Its inconveniences were, that the rooms in street houses were low and dark, the streets narrow and dim. One of the greatest architects of this age was John Thorpe. His plans generally consist of three sides of a quadrangle; the portico in the centre being an open arcade, finished by a turreted cupola. The quadrangles are frequently surrounded by an open corridor ; the win- dows are large and lofty, mostly alternated with bows, and always on the flanks ; the ornaments are Cinque-cento, and are debased, and mere imitations of the works of Lescot and Vignola. His chimneys are grouped and em- bellished with Roman Doric columns. His best works were Buckhurst House, in Sussex ; Sir Thomas Heneage's house at Copthall, in Essex ; the Willoughbys' house at Wollaton, Nottinghamshire ; Bur- leigh House, Sir Walter Coape's ; Holland House, Ken- THORPE AND ADAMS. sington; Sir Anthony Coke's, Gidden Hall, Essex; Sir Thomas Cecil's at Wimbledon; Sir Thomas George's, Longford Castle, Wilts; Sir Christopher Hatton's at Holdenby ; Audley End, Sir Walter Covert's, in Sussex ; Kirby Castle, Bethnal Green. For himself Thorpe designed a strange edifice. He formed his plan on the initial letters of his name, J and T, with this epitaph : — " These two letters, I and T Joyned together as you see, Make a dwelling-house for me." John Thoepe. The I was devoted to offices, and the T distributed into small and large apartments. A contemporary of Thorpe's was Robert Adams, sur- veyor of the queen's buildings, who was buried at Greenwich. He translated Ubaldini's account of the defeat of the Spanish Armada from Italian into Latin. Bernard Adams and Lawrence Bradshaw were also distinguished architects of this reign. Gerard Christmas and Bernard Jansen built Northampton, afterwards Suffolk, now Northumberland House. His cypher was visible in the street front, and the letters H. U. P. were worked into the balustrade, and pierced so that the day might shine through them. Bernard Jansen is supposed 80 SHAKSPBEE'S ENGLAND. to have been the architect who built Audley End for the Earl of Suffolk, and probably finished Sion House for the Earl of Northumberland. Robert and Huntingdon Smithson, father and son, were engaged in finishing Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire, and Bolsover in Derbyshire. In the Schools at Oxford Thomas Holle pedantically and incongruously introduced, united in one building, all the five orders. Terraces and flights of steps were the ornaments of all these houses. Sir Eobert Cecil's seat was a fine example of this. The building being on a slope rendered it ne- cessary to raise between the brick wall of the lower court and the tall door of the hall five ascents of three score and ten steps, varied by balustrades and other distinc- tions ; the platforms were of Flanders brick, the steps of well-wrought freestone. On the ground floor was the stone gallery, a room 108 feet long, pillared and arched with grey marble. The ceiling of the hall was of fret or farge work, in the middle a well-wrought landscape, and round the centre seven other framed pictures. The floor >vas of black and white marble. The following are a few of the palatial houses finished before 1600: — Catlege, Cambridgeshire, Lord North's, now taken down ; Basinghouse, Marquis of Winchester, Hunts, in ruins ; Kelston, Sir J. Harrington's, Somerset, ANECDOTE OE GRESHAM. 81 rebuilt ; Gorhambury, Sir N. Bacon's, Herts, in ruins ; Buckhurst, Lord Buckhurst's, Sussex, destroyed ; Knowle, Kent, Lord Buckhurst's, still perfect ; Penshurst, Kent, Sir H. Sidney's, perfect ; Kenilworth, Earl of Leicester's, in ruins ; Hunsdon, Lord Hunsdon's, Warwick, rebuilt ; Wanstead, Essex, Earl of Leicester's, destroyed ; Burleigh, Lincoln, Ijord Burleigh's, still perfect ; Osterly, Mid- dlesex, Sir Thomas Gresham's, rebuilt ; Longleat, Wilts, Sir J. Mynere's, still standing ; Stoke Pogis, Bucks, Earl of Huntingdon's, rebuilt ; Toddington, Beds, Lord Cheyne's, destroyed ; Theobald's, Herts, Lord Burleigh's, destroyed ; Wimbledon, Surrey, Sir T. Cecil's, rebuilt ; Westwood, Sir J. Pakington's, Worcester, perfect ; Hard- wicke, Derby, Countess of Shrewsbury's, in ruins. Of Osterly the following anecdote is told. Queen Elizabeth, when visiting Sir T. Gresham, remarked that the court should have been divided by a wall. He im- mediately collected so many artificers, that the wall was erected before the Queen had arisen the next morning. In James's reign the angular and circular windows disappeared; they grew square and tall, they then were generally divided by transoms and placed in lengthened rows. Battlements were omitted ; the effect of the pile becomes one of massive solidity, broken by a square central turret higher than those at the angles. They were more VOL. I. G 82 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. massive, more gloomy, and less picturesque than those of Elizabeth's reign, A more minute description of a mansion will not be uninteresting. Kirtling, Lord North's residence, was situated in the woody part of Cambridgeshire, about five miles from New- market. Queen Elizabeth visited him here in 1578, and is said to have once presented him with a scarf, as a victor in a tournament; and he afterwards fought with great courage at Zutphen. This house was built in Henry the Eighth's reign, for the first Lord North was Chancellor of the Court of Augmen- tations, and shared in the spoil of the monasteries. It was entered from a small lawn under a square brick tower with four turrets ; then up a flight of stone steps, you crossed a narrow paved terrace which led to the porch, and from thence passed to the ante-hall passage ; through this lies the great hall, where there is a screen gallery and an organ. The room has a high table and an oriel window at the upper end ; the side windows are very lofty, and opposite the old fireplace. The walls are hung with paintings ; a passage leads to the chapel, round which, in compartments, are the heads of the Twelve Apostles ; the family pew is entered from a room up stairs, and in the screen of the chapel is carved, — KOOMS AT KIETLING. 83 " Orate pro bono statu Edoardi Northe et Alice Northe : " the window is of stained glass. By a singular transition from heaven to the world, the chapel of Kirtling led to the ball-room, which was hung with portraits ; the windows were richly emblazoned with arms and heraldic badges ; the dining-room brought you to an apartment hung with tapestries of battles. The stairs were also adorned with pictures. On the top of the stairs is a small ante-chamber leading to the gallery of the chapel. In the next room, hung with tapestry, is a good Flemish painting of Susannah and the Elders ; and in an adjoining room, also adorned with arras, is a small balcony, which commands a view of the surrounding country. The next room was one where Queen Elizabeth was said to have been concealed during the persecuting reign of her sister ; in one corner of it is a door leading into an octagon closet in a tower, with an opening to the leads, where she used to take the air. Her old bed of crimson velvet fringed with gold is still to be seen. The old house was raised on a platform, and surrounded with a deep and broad moat filled with water. The arms of Lord Dudley are seen on the walls, which are all of brick, only the borders of the windows and the door cases being of stone. Let us visit another. G 2 84 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. In 1578 Elizabeth Tisited Sir William Drury at Haw- stead House, in Suffolk. This mansion seems to have been a beautiful example of Elizabethan architecture in all its most romantic and interesting features. It was seated on an eminence gently sloping towards the south. The design was a quadrangle, the enclosure of which was called the Base Court. Three of the sides consisted of barns, stables, a mill-house, slaughter-house, blacksmith's ship, and other offices, for these houses were complete villages in themselves; the entrance was by a gate- house in the centre of the south side, over which were chambers for servingmen. The mansion-house, also a quadrangle, formed the fourth side, standing higher than the other buildings, and detached from them by a wide moat, lined with brick, and sur- rounded by a handsome terrace commanding a fine view of the surrounding country. The approach to the house was by a flight of steps, and a strong brick arch of three arches, through a small jealous wicket formed in a great well-timbered gate. The first object that struck the visitor in the inner court was a stone figure of Hercules, with a club in one hand, and the other resting on his hip. Above the pedestal flowed the water, which came, by leaden pipes, from a pond three miles off, and passed into a stone basin CLOISTER GARDEN. beneath the statue. The inner court in which this figure stood included an area of about fifty-eight feet square. The walls of the house were covered with the Pyracanthus, once a very rare plant. Having passed the wicket, a door in the gateway on the right conducted the stranger to a small apartment called the smoking-room, a favourite appendage to old houses. Adjoining to this was a large wood closet, and a passage that led to a dining-room, which contained a large bufiet. These rooms occupied half the south front. At the end of the dining-room was a cloister forty-five feet long, fronting the east, and looking into a flower garden within the walls of the moat. The cloister terminated in a kitchen, well supplied with long oak tables and rows of pewter flagons and black jacks. On the left hand of the entrance and opposite the smoking-room was the chapel, and through this a door led to the drawing-room, or largest parlour, which filled up the rest of the south front. Adjoining the parlour was a large hall, with a screen of brown wainscot at one end, and a door leading to the buttery, which formed the west side of the square. Beneath these apartments were the cellars, vaulted with brick. The north side was occupied by the kitchen and other offices ; and at the back was the drawbridge. All g3 SHAKSPEKE'S ENGLAND. these rooms were raised twelve feet above the surface of the nioat. Over the gateway chapel and largest parlour were the royal apartments, which were approached by a staircase out of the hall. Bed chambers and the still room occu- pied the rest of the story. Amongst other chambers there was a small one, called the painted closet, intended for an oratory, (such rooms are no longer required). It was wainscoted, and the painted panels were covered with sentences, emblems, and mottoes : at the top ran the following legends : — " Quod sis esse velis, nihilque malis. Summam nee metuas diem, neque optes. Quse cupio baud capio, Parva sed apta mihi, neo tamen hie requies. Nunquam minus sola, cum quam sola. Amplior in coelo domus est, Frustra nisi Dominus." Amongst other emblems there were a bear in his den, with the motto " obscure, secure ;" a boar trampling on roses, " odi profanum valgus ;" a bucket descending into a well, " descendo ut implear ;" a blackamoor pointing to a room, " Jam sumus ergo pares ;" a blackamoor smoking a pipe, " Intus idem." The windows were spacious and high ; over the porches were the arms of Drury, gay and grand, with their sixteen RICHMOND PALACE. 87 quarterings. The walls of the house were of timber and plaster, and were stuck with fragments of glass that turned the walls to gold in the sun and to silver in the moonlight. We must remember too the internal fittings, — the high- backed chairs ; the carved oak chests ; the rich etymologies woven in the hangings ; the buffet with its silver posset cups and bright flagons ; the floors strewn with fresh rushes, or laid with carpets and matting ; the windows latticed ; wood fires on the hearth, and seats in the chimney corner. The mere enumeration of the apartments of Elizabeth's palace at Richmond may give the reader some idea of the multiplication of domestics in this reign. Below the great hall were the great buttery, the buttery chamber, the silver chamber, and the saucery. The hall was 100 feet long. . . . The brick hearth stood in the midst under a lanthorn roof; it was tiled, and adorned with eleven statues. At one end was a gallery, and under it a screen and a dais. At the north end of the hall was a small clock tower. The privy lodgings consisted of three stories, with twelve rooms on each story. The lower chambers were the waiters' chamber, the robe rooms, the four rooms of the master of horse, the servants' dining room, and the three rooms of the groom of the stole. In the middle story were the lobby, lit by the lanthorn g4 88 SHAKSPERE's ENGLAND. in the roof, the guard room, the presence chamber, the privy closet, the privy chamber, the passage, the bed chamber, the withdrawing chamber, the school cham- ber, and the room for the pages of the bed-chamber. The third story contained twelve chambers, and the whole building sixteen turrets. The courtyard was twenty-four feet broad, and forty feet long. The centre tower, four stories high, contained four rooms and a stone staircase 120 steps in ascent. The chapel building, three stories high, covered the cellar in the middle story, three rooms for the garner of the wine cellar, and two groom porters' rooms. The chapel was 96 feet long and 130 broad. The Queen's closet was two stories high, containing a kitchen, a poultry room, and the Queen's closet opening into the chapel. The Prince's closet, two stories high, com- prised the entry, two vestry rooms, and a closet opening into the chapel. The middle gate, two stories high, led to the hall and the lord chamberlain's lodgings. In the centre of the inner court stood a fountain. Three ranges of building, two stories, lying round a fair and spacious court, included the wardrobe, and were en- tered by a gate from the green. Here were rooms for th^ cup-bearer, carver, server, grooms of the privy chamber, the spicery, the chandlery, cofferer, the clerk of the green THE KITCHENS. 89 clothj the apothecary, the confectioner, the housekeeper, the porter, the chaplains, and the gentlemen of the bed- chamber. In another corner were the pantry and larders, and rooms for their attendants ; a tennis court, an open tiled gallery, led to the privy garden and orchards, with rooms for the gardeners. The Friars, another part of the palace, once a convent, was now a chandler's shop. Near the privy kitchen, with its iron racks, dressers, and cisterns, were eight rooms for the cooks. The " living " kitchen was surmounted by a turret. Two stories were devoted to the flesh, pastry, and fish larders. Over the flesh larder was the boiling-house ; over the second, three rooms for the yeomen of the pastry ; over the last, which was floored with stone, four rooms for the clerk of the kitchen ; these rooms stood round a court adjoining the water. Besides these there were the poultry house, the scalding house, the armoury room, and the ale buttery. The woodyard lodging, with the pitcher house and coal house, contained seven rooms for the scullery men and two rooms for the clerk of the woodyard. The plumbery contained rooms belonging to the clerk of the works : near the ar- moury and bakery the park-keeper lived. The privy garden was surrounded by a brick wall. In the middle it contained a round knot divided into 90 SHAKSPERE S ENGLAND. four quarters, with a jew in the centre, and sixty-two fruit trees on the wall. The great orchard was cut into one great square and one small triangle flanked with 283 cherry and other trees. The privy orchard contained thirty-nine fruit trees. In the housekeeper's yard stood a pigeon house ; in the great orchard an aviary, where doves were kept.* Here was a town contained under a single roof, a vast family held within the same walls ; all loving and hating, and wooing and fighting, within this network of courts, passages, towers, and chambers. Servingmen squabbling in the kitchen ; butlers drunk in the cellars ; pages steal- ing in the buttery ; wenches chattering and being kissed in the pastry room ; matrons busy in the still room ; stewards weighing money in the bursary; gallants duelling in the orchard ; lovers meeting on the staircase. Days of romance gone to the grave for ever. " God Almighty first planted a garden ; and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest refresh- ment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handy work^," says Bacon. A garden was man's first prison, replied Lamb or Hazlitt, and if man had no other then were despotism * Nictolis Properses, vol. ii. p. 412. ELIZABETHAN GARDENS. 91 easy to be borne, and a republic a useless Utopia. My Lord Bacon, with the stately methodical fervour of his language, gives us a pleasant perception of the Elizabethan gardens, with their alcoves, fountains, statues, clipped hedges, and leafy labyrinths. The borders were bright in all seasons, though half our present flowers were then unknown. In December and January there were fragrant herbs and evergreen trees ; the holly, ivy, bay, juniper, cypress, yew, pine, fir, rose- mary, and lavender, white and blue periwinkle, sweet marjoram in warm places, and in stoves, germander, flag, orange trees, and lemons, and myrtles. At the end of January and February came the flowering mezereon tree, the yellow and blue crocus, primroses, anemones, the early tulip, the hyacinth, the fritellaria. In March before the first swallow, the violets, the dafibdil, the daisy, the al- mond and peach trees, the cornelian tree, and the sweet briar. When winter melted into tears and died while April wept, there rose from the tears of that holy and repentant sorrow the wallflower, the stock giUiflower, the cowslip, flower-de-luce, lilies of all natures, rosemary flowers, the tulip, the double peony, the jonquil, the Trench honeysuckle, the cherry blossom, the damascene plum tree, the white thorn in leaf, and the lilac tree. In May and June the blush pink, roses of all kinds but the 92 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND. musk, honeysuckles, strawberries, bugloss, columbine, the French marigold, Flos Africanus, cherry in fruit, ribes, figs in fruit, rasps, vine flowers, lavender flower, sweet satyrian, herba muscaria, lilium convallium, and apple blossom. In July gilliflowers, musk roses, lime blossoms, early pears and plums, genittings and codlins. In August rich coloured fruits, pears, apricots, barberries, filberts, musk melons ; and in fiowers, monkshood. In September, poppies ; in fruits, grapes, apples, peaches, melocotones, nectarines, cornelians, wardens, and quinces. In October and November, services, medlars, bullace ; and in flowers, late roses and hollyoaks. But Bacon's great delight was, when he came out from the hot laboratory or sulphurous still-room, to smell the breath of flowers, coming and going in the air like the warbling of music. For this purpose he preferred the musk rose and the white double violet which flowered twice a year, about the middle of April and at Bar- tholomew tide. Strawberry leaves when dying give, he says, a cordial smell; and next to these he prefers the vine flowers and sweet briar under a parlour or lower chamber window : and after these the matted pink, close gilliflower, the lime flower, and honeysuckles for a distance. For the pleasure of their perfume Bacon bacon's plan. 93 recommends alleys of burnet, wild thyme, and water mints, which yield a perfume when crushed under foot. For a princely garden about thirty acres of ground was required, the whole being divided into three parts, of which one was the main plot with side alleys, another a green, and the third a heath. The green at the entrance required four acres of ground, six to the heath, twelve to the main garden, and four each to its two wings. The green was to be of grass finely shorn, with a covered walk about twelve feet in height of carpenters' work on either side, by which you might enter the garden on hot days. Borders of coloured earth in various shapes were not unfrequent, and were generally between the garden and the house. Bacon's model garden, with its recurrent flowers and " ver perpetuum" was a square, and encom- passed on four sides with a stately arched hedge, — the arches reared on wooden pillars ten feet high and six broad; over these arches were hedges four feet high, supported by wooden frames, and over every arch a turret hollowed so as to receive a bird-cage, and above this a figure with broad plates of round coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play on: and this hedge was raised on a gently sloping bank, six feet high, set with fiowers. On either side of the garden square were to be side walks, but no hedge on either end, lest the green or the 94 SHAKSPERe'S ENGLAND. heath should not be seen through the arches. Within were figures cut in juniper, although Bacon liked not such chil- dren's play ; in some places were fair columns upon wooden frames, and little low ledges and pyramids. In the very, middle stood a mount with three winding ascents to alleys wide enough for four to walk abreast. The hills were tliirty feet high, and crowned by a banqueting house with chimneys. Nor were fountains, the beauty and refreshment of a garden, ever forgotten. They were of two sorts, the jet and the basin ; the latter were often thirty or forty feet square, and were sometimes used as bathing pools. They were always paved, and had, like the others, marble or gilt images ; they were embellished with coloured glass, and encompassed with low rails. The water was kept in perpetual motion, and the basin was cleaned daily, lest it should grow muddy or discoloured. In some places the water was ingeniously made to rise in forms of feathers, drinking glasses, and canopies ; " pretty things to look on," says Bacon. The heath was made to resemble a natural wilderness, and was filled by thickets of sweet briar, honeysuckle, and wild vine; the ground set with violets, strawberries, and primroses, and all flowers that were sweet and prospered in the shade. There were also little hillocks GARDENS AT THEOBALD'S. 95 planted with wild thyme, and pinks, and germander; and low slopes of periwinkles, violets, strawberries, cowslips, daisies, red roses, lilium convallium, sweet-williams, bear's foot, and all low, sweet, and sightly looking flowers. Many of these humps have little standard bushes on their tops, roses, juniper, holly, barberries, red currants, gooseberries, rosemary, bays, sweet briar, which were kept thick and bushy. The side walks were kept shady, so as to furnish shelter for all hours and in the hottest sun. Some were like galleries for protection from the wind, hedged in at both ends and finely gravelled, without grass. In some walks there were fruit trees both on walls and on espaliers, and set with flowers among the trees. At each end were mounds breast high, many level with the wall, so as to overlook the fields. The main garden was small and more open, but also had its fruit trees, and seats, and arbours, and was reserved for the walk in the heat of summer, the morning, the evening, and overcast days. The aviaries were turfed, and were flanked with trees for the birds to nest and breed. The gardens at Theobald's (Lord Burleigh's) were en- tered through a gallery painted with a genealogy of the kings of England. They were encompassed by a moat, hedged with shrubs. They abounded with labyrinths, 96 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. jet-d'eaus, white marble fountain-bowls, and wooden columns and pyramids. The summer-house in the lower semicircle contained statues of the twelve Csesars, and a touchstone table. The upper part of the house was set round with leaden cisterns, in which, although fish were kept, were used in summer for bathing. A little bridge joined this to another arbour, which contained an oval table of red marble. In the Hampton Court gardens the rosemary was trained to cover the wall, a practice that surprised foreign visitors. Nonesuch Palace, at Cuddington in Surrey, was en- compassed with deer parks, delicious gardens and groves, ornamented with trees cut into shapes. There were columns of marble, and two fountains, shaped like a circle and like a pyramid, upon which sat birds that streamed water from their bills. In the Grove of Diana was a fountain with the figure of Actseon changing into a stag ; and another place full of concealed pipes, which spirted upon all who came within their reach. Gossiping Laneham is very eloquent about the Kenil- worth Garden, at which he took a timid and surreptitious peep. It was an acre or more in extent, and lay to the north of the stately castle : a pleasant terrace, ten feet high and twelve feet broad, ever iinder foot and fresh KENIL WORTH GARDEN. 97 with trim grass, ran beside it along the castle wall. It was set with a goodly show of obelisks and spheres, and white bears of stone, raised upon goodly bases. At each end was a fine arbour, redolent with sweet trees and flowers. The garden-plot near had fair alleys of turf, and others paved with smooth sand, pleasant to walk on as the sea shore when the wave has just retired. The enclosure was divided into four even quarters: in the midst of each, upon a base of two feet square, rose a porphyry square pilaster, with a pyramidical pinnacle fifteen feet high, pierced and hollowed and crowned with an orb. All around was covered with redolent herbs and flowers, varied in form, colour, and quantity, and mixed with fruit trees. In the midst, opposite the terrace, stood a square aviary, joined to the north wall, in height twenty feet, thirteen long, and fourteen broad ; it had four great windows, two in front and two at each end, and each five feet wide. These windows were arched, and separated by flat pilas- ters, which supported a cornice. The roof was of wire- net, of meshes an inch wide ; and the cornice was gilded and painted with representations of precious stones. This great aviary had also eaves in the wall, for shelter from sun and heat, and for the purpose of building. Fair holly trees stood at each end, on which the birds might VOL. I. H 98 SHAKSPERe's. ENGLAND. perch and pounce. They had a keeper to attend to their seeds and water, and to clean out their enclosure. The birds were English, French, arid Spanish. Some were from America ; and Laneham is " deceived " if some were not from the Canary Islands. In the centre of this miniature Paradise stood a fountain, with an octagonal basin rising four feet high; in the midst stood the figures of two Athletes, back to back, their hands upholding a fair marble bowl, from whence sundry fine pipes distilled continual streams into the re- servoir. Carp, tench, bream, perch, and eel, disported in the fresh falling water ; and on the top of all the ragged staff was displayed ; on one side Neptune guided his sea- horses with his trident, on another stood Thetis with her dolphins. Here Triton and his fishes, there Proteus and his herds, Doris and her daughter, and half the Nereids, disported in sea and sand, surrounded by whales ; stur- geons, tunnies, and conch shells, all engraven with ex- quisite device and skill. By the sudden turn of a tap, the spectator could be drenched at the pleasure of any wit, Laneham here gets so violently rhetorical, and yet so evidently labours to describe a real delight, that to give an impression of the scenes in which Viola mused or Rosalind wandered, we feel tempted to transcribe it. " A garden then so appointed, as wherein aloft upon LANEHAM'S EHETORIC. 99 sweet shadowed walk of terrace, in heat of summer, to feel the pleasant whisking wind above, or delectable coolness of the fountain spring beneath ; to taste of deli- cious strawberries, cherries, and other fruits, even from their stalks ; to smell such fragrancy of sweet odours breathing from the plants, herbs, and flowers; to hear such natural melodious music and tunes of birds ; to have in eye for mirth sometimes these under-springing streams ; then the woods, the waters (for both pool and chase were hard at hand in sight), the deer, the people (that out of the east arbour in the base court also at hand in view), the fruit trees, the plants, the herbs, the flowers, the change in colours, the birds flittering, the fountain stream- ing, the fish swimming, all in such delectable variety, order, and dignity, whereby at one moment, in one place at hand, without travel, to have so full fruition of so many of God's blessings, by entire delight unto all senses (if all can take) at once, for etymon of the word worthy to be called Paradise ; and though not so good as Paradise for want of the fair rivers, yet better a great deal by the lack of so unhappy a tree. Argument most certain of a right noble mind, that in this sort could have thus all contrived." u 2 100 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. CHAP. III. A day's amusement. " I am a fellow of the strangest mind in the world ; I delight in masques and revels sometimes altogether." Twelfth Night, Act i. Sc. 3. The Walk in Paul's. — The Ordinary. — Bear Garden and Bartholo- mew Fair. — Elizabethan Amusements. — Qualifications of a Cour- tier. — Hardy Training. — Versatility of Character. — Sociality of Elizabethan Life. — No Jealousy of Class. — Distinctions of Class. — The Gallant's Morning. — Promenade in St. Paul's. — Si quis ? Wall. — Serving-Man's Pillar. — Ordinary. — Dinner. — Theatre. — Seat on the Stage. — Characters in Paul's Walk. — Courtier and Templar. — Country Gentlemen. — Adventurers. — Duke Humphrey's Dinner. — Poor Curates — and Scholars. — Quack Doctor. — The Noise of Paul's. — Exchange of News. — The Lawyer's Pillar. — Thieves. — History of St. Paul's. — Fire. — Paul's Cross. — Poet and Player. — Country Vicar. — Citizen and Wife. — Master. — Description of Paul's Walk. — Varieties of Ordinaries. — Characters. — Manners. — Cards. — Tavern Life. — Parting. — Watches Interior of a Prison. — Scenes at City Gates. — Bear Garden. — Baiting. — Names of Bears. — Bear- Baiting at Kenilworth. — Puritans attack the Abuse. — Whipping Blind Bears. — Ape on Horseback. — Allusions to Paris Gardens in Shakspere. — Gaming, -r- Tricks of Gamesters. — False Dice. — Bowling. — Fleet Prisoners. — Cock-Fighting. — Rules and Max- EEQUISITES FOK A BEAU. 101 jms. — The Jugglers of the Day. — Head of St. John the Baptist. — Various Tricks. — Banks and his Horse Morocco. — Jugglers' Language. — Bartholomew Fair. — Roast Pig and Bottle Ale. — Ballad Sellers. — Cries and Stalls. — Diversions. — Kindheart the Dentist. — Tarleton and Cuckoo. — Scenes in the Crowd. — A Tavern. — Stories of the Plague, or " Stop Gallant." — Poor Tutor. — The Apparitor. — Song Seller. — Smoking. — No Allusion to it in Shakspere. — Abuse of it. — Eulogies. — Methods of taking it. — King James's Pamphlet. — Extracts. The Mercutios of the time of Shakspere had many ways of killing time. There was the promenade at Paul's, a duty and a pleasure; the ordinary and news-agents' at noon, by no means to be missed ; the theatre at two, and the court revels in the evening. For a lower class, there was archery and the quintain, the fencing-school and sword and buckler play, the dancing-school, the bear-garden, and the cock-pit; dice to fill up the leisure hours, and the last new juggler, or the newest motion (puppet-show) to visit and criticise. An accomplished squire of dames, in these days of re- fined gallantry, was required to play well on the viol de gambo, take part in a madrigal, dance all the complicated dances of the day, from the bounding lavolta to the stately pavin, fence like a master, and ride like a Centaur. He must know how to hamstring a wild deer when at bay, and to cut it up when he had killed it. He was compelled to learn how to pen a sonnet and an acrostic ; know Italian h3 102 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. and French ; to be read in the poets, and to parley with his mistress in the Euphuistic language of the day. Be- sides this, he was compelled to play at tennis, shovel-board, bowls, gleek, and primero ; was expected to have visited Venice, and floated in a gondola, if not, to have served a campaign or so in the Low Countries. This was the training that produced such characters as Gratiano and Benedick ; as gay, witty, brave, reckless, as staunch, loyal, and honest. If the character occasionally degenerated into such villains as lago, or foolish Quixotic fops as Sir Armado, the education that produced a Sidney and a Raleigh is not to be blamed. It must be allowed the gallants, though chivalric, were quarrelsome ; though courteous, somewhat stiff and fantastic, but at the same time, we must claim for them the reputation of loyalty, courage, imagination, and intellectual subtlety. Their friendships were more fervent than ours, and their religion more vital ; their faith stronger, and their patriotism more heroic. Many of these silken creatures that cut them- selves with daggers, kissed their hands to ideal ladies, and committed all sorts of extravagances in their honour, bore without a groan all the midnight tortures of the Inquisition, or threw themselves into the fires of Spain to perish beside a dying countryman. These men died at Zutphen, and bled at Cadiz. These men swept the Ar- SOCIABILITY. 103 mada from the seas, and laid the basis of our colonial empire. Their soft bodies turned to iron in the heat of combat: they grappled with Frenchman and Spaniard, Walloon and Indian, and in the long wrestle threw them all and won the palm. The peculiar feature of Elizabethan life was its socia- bility. Every day friends met at Paul's, the tavern, or the theatre. The life of the rich and poor, the higher and the middle classes, were more contrasted, and yet less isolated than at present. The one pursued pleasure always ; the other only at defined and well-known inter- vals. The courtier had his daily promenade, daily public dinner, daily theatre, and daily revels. The tradesman had his guild feast, his occasional play, his city pageant, his walk in Finsbury Fields, or excursion to Hogsden, Islington, or Pimlico. There was no intermingling, — let us never forget this, — little rivalry, and therefore no jea- lousy of class. The citizen in his rich stall by Paul's, or in Gracious Street, was happy with his pretty neat wife and his stout prentices : he could see the court masques, or ride to the common hunt, and there his ambition ended. Occa- sionally a knight, involved in debt, or entangled in love, would marry a citizen's daughter ; but when he did so it was an exception, and not a rule. The citizens' wives were ridiculed for their extravagance in dress, but never h4 104 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. mingled with ladies at revel or pageant. Their language was simply quaint, and larded with proverbs or collo- quial sayings. Reviewing a day's amusement, we will begin with Paul's, proceed to the one o'clock ordinary, passing on to the theatre, bull-ring, jugglers' booth, and tavern gam- bling-house, to end with the prison. In all these scenes there was more character, more piquancy, more adventure, and more danger than now. There were spies to be shunned, Jesuits to be detected, plotters of all classes to be avoided, armed stabbers to be trod under foot, and cheats to be detected and smitten on the mouth. For the ambitious there were trials of wit, jesting combats, challenges to rhyme, and competing descriptions of travel and peril. At the ordinary there were enemies to beard and daunt, at court rivals to out- shine and transplant, and at the revel hearts to win, or still harder task, to keep. The mind was perpetually called forth to the fullest exertion, and the courtier was compelled at the same time to be the student, the man of the world, and the champion and the adventurer. Those who lived outside this life at once fell back into a distinctive class, and could not advance and retire alter- nately, as men may do now. The bookworm was known at a glance; the provincial, the lawyer, or the divine MOKNING DUTIES. 105 had their distinctive courses and manners. The light shade of society was broad and strong ; the mere business of life was varied and amusing. The rose of fashion, in the days of cloak and dagger, seldom rose before he had heard it at least ring noon from Paul's or Bow. The fumes of canary perfumed the room like the odours of mandragora, and his brain was wearied with the wit-corabats at the Mermaid or the Devil. If a scholar, he had been perhaps waking the night owl with bird songs from Aristophanes ; if a courtier, he was wearied with numberless sarabands at last night's masque at the Palace, where he enacted a part ; and yet it has been a long night, for all good people go to rest at ten. He puts on all his silken bravery, his ash-coloured velvet and gold-laced cloak, or his cherry satin and blue taffety, and tying his points goes down to a solid breakfast of meat and ale. Then, mounting his Irish hobby, his Irish horseboy running at his side, and his French page behind, he hastens to the promenade at Paul's, it being now, we will suppose, not noon but only just gone eleven. Arriving at the door, he leaps off his horse, throws his bridle to the boy, and, giving him his cloak and sword, enters at the north door, and takes half a dozen turns down the "Mediterranean aisle," avoiding the servingman's pillar and the Si Quis (advertisement) wall, taking care to 106 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. display his jingling spurs, his gold-fringed garters, and the rich taffety lining of his cloak, which he snatches from the page. The gallant, after a few turns to prevent being taken for a hungry tenant of Duke Humphrey's house, repairs to the sempstresses' shops at the Exchange, and talks pretty euphuisms to the citizens' daughters ; to the booksellers', to see the last book that had been written against the " divine weed," to con the last new play ; or to the new tobacco office, to practise smoking tricks and purchase Trinidado. If it be now half-past eleven, and the gallant be still found chatting in Paul's Walk, he will at once repair to his ordinary, first pulling out his gilded watch, setting it by the minster clock, and arranging at what hour the friend with whom he parts should meet him at the door of the Rose or Fortune, mounting his Galloway nag or Spanish jennet, whichever it might be, and, followed by his French or Irish lad, he would then repair to a fashionable ordinary, say Tarleton's, the low comedian's, in Paternoster Eow. Arrived there, he enters the room, salutes his acquaintances, and, throwing off his cloak, walks up and down arm in arm with a friend. If he is a soldier, he talks of Drake's Portugal voyages or Essex's exploits at Cadiz, of the grave Maurice, or the French king, using some scraps of Italian or Spanish to proclaim himself a PAUL S WALK. 107 travelled man, but by all means avoiding Latin. If a courtier, he would boast of his influence at Whitehall, and talk of the last game of baloon he played at Hampton with Lord A , or how he broke a lance yesterday with Raleigh at the Tilt-yard. If a poet, he would, in drawing off his glove, drop a sonnet, and read it after much solicitation. If the meat were slow in coming, he inhaled snuff, or displayed his skill in " taking the tobacco." Dinner over, the gallant fell to dice or hastened to the presence. If a mere lounger, he would again repair to Paul's Walk, toothpick in hand, his dress being, per- haps, changed to one of a gayer and lighter colour than that of the morning. At three the theatres opened, and he hurries off to see the celebrated tragedian Burbage, Shakspere's friend, play Richard the Third. He pays his shilling, and goes into the lords' room (the stage box), or, hiring a stool for sixpence, sits upon the stage and smokes or plays at primero, till the three trumpets announce the advent of the prologue. If fond of the drama, he stays for some two hours till Kempe has sung the last verse of his jig, and then, after an hour at the Bear Garden, if he does not study fencing and dancing, or does not need the barber's aid to trim him for the night's banquet, ends the day with some friends at a tavern, and, lit home by a page, escapes the city watch, and so to bed. 108 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. To pursue our gallant's amusements in detail we must return to Paul's, and describe more fully the Rotten Row of the seventeenth century, and the church so irreverently turned into a lounging place for idlers, cut-purses, and servants out of place. From eleven till twelve, that is to say, an hour before the dinner was served up at the table of the city ordinaries, was the most fashionable period for the promenade in the middle aisle of Paul's. At three the Prado of old London began again to fill, and continued crowded till six. To this spot the fashionable men hurried like merchants to the Bourse. Here paced the actor conning his part, side by side with the pennyless adventurer. Hither came the politician to talk news, and the intelligencer (spy) to listen at his back. The alchemyst, still reeking with the fumes of his elixir, repaired to Paul's to get an appetite for his hasty meal, and the poor poet to muse over the dedication of his next poem. The Precisian and the young Seminary priest jostled in the crowd, Bur- leighs and Shallows, Varneys and Slenders, walked to- gether, arm in arm. The beggarly projector and the poor soldier, the rich citizen and the master of fence, the courtier fresh perfumed from the levee, and the prodigal with the straws of his prison pallet still clinging to his sleeve, rambled about Paul's, staring at the advertisements. SKETCH OF A CEO WD. 109 laughing at the epitaphs, or skipping up and down the steps that led into the choir. To the keen observer of that age of contrasts the trade or rank of every passer-by was at once known. There is the courtier, with his gold toothpick in his hat, his long caped cloak, enormous ruff and silk stockings, eyeing a ponderous watch or adjusting the jewel in his ear. The old citizen is mumbling over his sum total, the thumb of one hand under his girdle, as pompously in his furred gown he beckons to two smart little apprentices, who follow him swinging their bats. Behind them comes the young Templar and the Inn of Court man, trim in black silk stockings, beaver hat, and sad-coloured velvet cloak (he has a taffety one for summer) * ; he is of rank, for his rapier is gilt and his collar is of rich Italian lace. Holding his arm is an undoubted country gentleman, probably his father, pleased and good-humoured, surprised at everything, and looking round from each group of swaggerers to his son with a smile of pride as if not discouraged by the comparison. His dress is of somewhat ancient cut; though it is winter his cloak is of taffety, his stockings are actually yellow, and he wears pumps, which he thinks fashionable, though every one else has * Overbury's Characters, 1765, p. 150. 110 SHAKSPEEE's ENGLAND. boots ; he carries no rapier, but an ill-hung, heavy, Henry VIII. sword, with a ton of rusty iron in the hilt. The sheriff of the country (a proud man, suspected of Papist opinions, one who quotes Bellarmine at the sessions meetings, and seldom comes to church) just passed him, and, scarcely bending at all, watched him to see if he would vail low enough. He is followed by half a dozen blue-coated servingmen, all wearing his arms in silver on their sleeves, and who elbow their way through the crowd and enter the choir, although the service is half over and the psalms already finished, while the choristers nod and whisper. Round one pillar stand the servingmen who are waiting to be hired *, very lean, hungry, out-at-elbow fellows, discussing Drake's capture of the Cacafogo, brimming with silver, or the last news from the Low Countries f, while one Pistol amongst them vapours of the dozen Turks he slew at Buda with the " poor notched Toledo " he wants to sell. Amongst them are swindling Malvolios, and coney-catching Grumios, cheating trencher-scrapers, and sly, oily grooms tapping their legs with holly wands. Not far from them is the tomb of one of Edward III.'s paladins, now mistakenly called " Duke Humphrey's * Nasle's Pierce Pennyless, 1595. t Decker's Gull's Horn-Book (1812 ed.), p. 95. SCENES IN t!hE CIRCLE. Ill Tomb," and which is the very altai* and central shrine of the whole walks. This is the Duke Humphrey with whom dinnerless men are jocosely said to dine.* There's one yonder picking his teeth who we could bet a thou- sand angels has not touched hit to-day, but he takes care never to be seen in Paul's while the tavern dinners are toward, and if he can fix himself on a foolish or good- natured friend will revenge himself at supper for the want of breakfast. He walks affectedly on tip-toe, laughs as he looks at the tomb in pity of the poor guests of the dead Duke, and struts by with his gloved hand on his dagger-side. In the left alley are occasionally seen poor curates in threadbare cassocks, lingering in search of spiritual em- ployment t, their marriage with some beloved Abigail having apparently dragged them down into hopeless and learned poverty. Here in groups retired for quieter conversation are spectacled antiquarians, who use quaint words of Chaucer's time J, and talk of " swinking " and " for the nones." Here assemble country justices who have come up to London to see the bear-baiting : they think the Spaniards all Jesuits and villains ; captains out of * Decker's Gull's Horn-Book, p. 107. f Earle's Microcosmography, p. 23. J Hall's Satires, sect. v. b. 2. 112 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. service, who tell monstrous lies of Drake ; and threadbare sly scholars, with Greek testaments sticking out of their buttonless doublets, who din your ears with quotations from Seneca and Tacitus, Scaliger and Casaubon, Lipsius and Erasmus; and noisy controversialists who get red in the face railing at the Pope and Arminius, and despise any books not in MSS. And there is an alderman in his holiday satin doublet and gold chain, and a young city preacher, with a cloak with a narrow velvet cape and serge facings * ; his ruff as short as his hair, and he is a little sour and thin, as most Precisians are. And there is the quack physician watching for country patients, astonishing the russet wearers with quotations from Paracelsus and Alexis of Piemontf, holding a phial of clear gold- coloured liquid up to the light. Against the wall leans a Low Country ensign with his arm in an orange-tawney scarf; and, gliding serpentine through the throng, goes a cut-purse, too quick for you to see his short crooked knife and the horn tip that guards his busy thumb. | Here come men from taverns, and tilt-yards, and bear- baitings, and theatres, and rows upon the river, from the Court at Hampton or Greenwich, up or down from the * Earle's Microcosmography (1811), p. 13. t Ibid. p. 129. t Ibid. p. 4. THE MINSTEE WALK. 113 tobacco office and the news-shop, from the sempsters' stalls at Gresham's Exchange and the Rose theatre, from the fence-yard and the dancing-school, hot from the tavern and cold from the scornful presence. " It was a fashion of those times," * says a gentle writer of the day, " for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions, not merely merchants, to meet in Saint Paul's Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six. During this time some discoursed of business and others of news." Few events of the day but were heard of here, sooner or later. The Armada, and the bull that was so daringly nailed up at the door of a bishop's house, the Queen's new suitor, the rivalry of Essex and Raleigh, Kenil- worth and Theobalds, were all whispered about here amid nodding heads, crossed fingers, mysterious gestures, and pale faces. The noise of the voices in the Minster walk was like that of an avenue of limes when their yellow flowers grow black with the impatient and plundering bees. There was a strange buzz and deep unintermitting hum, mingled with the noise of feet, " a kind of still roar or loud whisper" that sometimes broke into a laugh or a * Osborn's Works, 1673, p. 501. VOL. I. I 114 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. shout of rage. The dark, moving, bowing, talking crowd moved on like a tide and ebbed and flowed without cessation, with the exception of certain intervals of un- natural silence. We have no doubt the national mood might have been augured from the comparative loudness and liveliness of the sound, deeper and stronger the day after the Armada was swallowed up, and hushed and lower the hour that rash Essex laid his head upon the block. Paul's was the Exchange of news, for news is among idlers a rich and precious merchandise. The wits and poets called it the " Thieves' Sanctuary," " Little Britain," the " World's epitome," a " Babel of stones and men," a " Synod of politic pates," the " Busy par- liament," the " Mint of lies." The newsmongers of Paul's were known as a peculiar race. Burleigh's and Walsh- ingham's spies came here to thrust themselves into men's companies and worm out secret conspiracies. Malcon- tents rambled about, careless and sneering. Some strolled hither to " get a stomach," as the phrase went ; and thrifty men to walk out their dinner, and purchase their board and meal cheap. Many made it their club, and only left the church to sleep. It was a lodging rent free, where society never failed, where the best company came, and where invitations to dinner could be got. CENTRE OF AMUSEMENT. 115 The Minster walk was the very centre of amusement. Several of the theatres were near; one in Shoreditch, one at Blackfriars, and one in Southwark. The Ex- change and all its shops, Cheap and all its goldsmiths, Watling Street and its clothiers, were all near. Outside the church laj the booksellers' shops. Tarleton's and some of the best ordinaries were close by. At no great distance were the choicest taverns: the Bear at Bridge Foot ; the Three Cranes in the Vintry ; the Devil and Apollo in Fleet Street ; the Mitre, and the Mermaid. There were the Motions, too, not far off, the Bear-garden, and the river. It was but a walk to take the air in Moor Fields ; and hackney coaches were at hand to rumble one off to ruralise at Tottenham, or regale on cakes and ale at Pimlico. It was to Paul's young scapegraces came to dazzle citizens with their new white satin suits, their gilt rapiers*, Italian scented doublets, taffety lace cloaks, embossed girdles, silver jingling spurs, peach-coloured stockings, Spanish leather rufBed boots, and net-work collars. Just as English travellers drag their portmanteaus through a German cathedral, " doing it " on their way to the rail- way station, so porters used to carry their burdens * Overbury's Characters, 1756, p. 82. 12 116 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. through Paul's Walk, and courtiers lead their pet Iceland (Sky) dogs. Here the very lawyers had a pillar at which they received clients, — loud-voiced, violent farmers, and crazed, greasy, litigious citizens. In the summer the barristers stood on the steps outside ; in the winter, round a particular pillar, their clients ringing down their un- willing rials upon the flat cover of the font. Solemn men were these aspirants for the coif, who quoted Plowden, and dated every event, like a statute, from the 3 Hen. Oc. 8( 4 Ed. Quin. Here, too, came gallants, and brisk pages behind them, carrying their silver-trimmed cloaks, to look for servants, or to borrow money of rich citizens who had fattened on the Muscovy trade, and had ventured cargoes to Virginia. Tailors lurked here to observe the last fashion of court cloak, the blush-coloured satin, cut upon cloth of gold, and framed with pearl ; while pimps came here to beg. Here, too, prowled desperadoes of the Black Will and Shakebag class, with ruffianly hair, who could relate, if they chose, many cases of sudden death at Gad's Hill and Hockley-i*-the-Hole, Newmarket, or Salisbury Plain ; and in Shakebag's pocket we can hear jingle four gold angels and fifteen shillings of white money, the pro- duce of his last robbery, in which he was aided by a band of Abram men and swarth Egyptians. This old church of St. Paul's was built, so the Eliza- OLD SAINT PAULS. 117 bethan antiquarians believed, on the site of a temple of Diana*; this opinion being formed on the tradition of some deer antlers having been dug up in an adjacent spot. The desecration of the church by the Protestant subjects of Elizabeth had a painful parallel in the heathenish festival annually permitted by her bigot sister. On these occasions the priests and choir walked in procession, bearing a pair of deer horns before them, in remembrance of the goddess who had been deposed by saints more Christian perhaps, but certainly less chaste. A Saxon King of Kent first founded a church upon this consecrated site, and many subsequent monarchs gave manors to sup- port its erection. The Conqueror added a castle to these bequests, and he willed the church " in all things to be as free as he would his soul should be in the day of judgment;" an adjuration solemn and imperious, worthy of the monarch who was wont to swear by " the brightness of God," and such regal oaths. In 1087 1 St. Paul's and half the city was destroyed by fire, and a new church was built of Caen stone, Henry I. permitting the Norman bishop to encompass the new work with a stone wall reaching as far as Bernard's Ca^le, his * Strype's Stow, vol. i. b. 3. p. 141. t Ibid. p. 142. I 3 118 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. residence beside the Thames. In Edward II.'s feeble reign many murders and robberies took place in this enclosure. In this churchyard the Saxons, mindful of their old guild spirit, assembled for their folk -motes * ; and here the armed citizens crowded at sound of the alarm bell of Sti Paul's. In the new steeple the relics of saints were de- posited by a solemn procession of rich-clad priests, who prayed that such relics might preserve the spire from wind and storm. In the thirteenth century Lacy, Con- stable of Chester, enlarged the church; and in 1444, in spite of the relics, the spire was burnt by lightning. On the new steeple Edward III. placed a dial, with an angel pointing to the hour. By a beautiful custom, still re- tained in one of the Oxford college chapels, it was usual for the choristers at certain feast days to ascend the tower and sing their orisons at daybreak. In Henry VI. 's reign a Dance of Death, with verses by Lidgate, was painted round St. Paul's cloister, in imitation of one at St. Innocent's in Paris, and over this cloister was a goodly library. In the old church there were chapels of our Lady St. Katherine, All Souls, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost; and under the choir the parish church of * Strype's Stow, vol. i. b. 3. p. 143, POETS AND PLATEES. 119 St. Faith, which the neighbouring booksellers used for warehouses. In the churchyard stood a bell tower, which was pulled down by Sir Miles Partridge, who was said to have won the bells of Henry VIII. at cards. In the middle of the churchyard stood the stone pulpit, roofed with lead and ascended by steps, where of old times bulls were read and meetings held. Many of the great reformers had preached here before the young King Edward, that Samuel of the Keformation. In rainy weather the sermon was delivered in a place called the shrouds, which was under cover. In 1561 the steeple was again burnt by lightning; in 1566 the church was reroofed, but the steeple remained unfinished till the time of the fire, in spite of rich donations from Elizabeth and much satirical writing. The Puritans were indifferent to its rebuilding, and their antagonists had not zeal enough to spend money for such an object. But we must take one more look at the crowds that desecrate the church. Here comes by musingly, with careless gait, a poor poet, clad in velvet and satin, somewhat greasy, and with boots a little out at the toe. By his frequent anxious glances over his shoulder he seems to fear a bailiff. Behind him follows a player, dressed in a murrey cloth gown, faced down the front with grey rabbit skins, and his sleeves I 4 120 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. barred thick with lace. He holds up his robe to show his white taffeta hose and black silk stockings, a huge ruff surrounds his head, a glass brooch as big as the great seal fastens his small brimmed hat, and two boys in cloaks follow him, carrying his rapier and sword. His companion is a musician and the usher of a dancing- school ; he wears a suit of watchet (blue) coloured taffety with a cloak daubed with coloured lace. Here stand a group of tradesmen, portly men in damask coats and gowns welted with velvet. They all bow as that old, white-headed, country gentleman passes, clad in russet and in a black coat, with five servingraen, strong and awkward, but dangerous to elbow, striding at his heels. After him — do not be startled, reader — is Sir John, an honest Windsor vicar, in company with the miller, glover, and smith of his village. They have come up to attend a trial, and have visited more than one tavern to drink luck to the suit, and, by a natural sequence, find the path too narrow for decent men. He is no Puritan or raiser of schisms ; he is none of the best scholars, and is oftener in the ale-house than the pulpit ; yet he reads a homily every Sunday and holiday, drinks with his neighbours, spends his money to make them friends, and sometimes on Sundays (misled by good fellows) says both Morning and Evening Prayer at once, and gives the villagers a CITIZENS AND THEIR WIVES. 121 ■whole afternoon to play in. He is rather testy too, and would not refuse a challenge from the village doctor if he sent it. That stealthy-looking man is a runaway bankrupt just returned from Ireland ; he is suspiciously watching a gaping yeoman who has come to London to see the sights — Guildhall, the two Exchanges, the wax -works, Paul's, Charing Cross, the Boar at Billingsgate, the Fleet, and London Bridge. That fellow in greasy satin sleeves, and spectacles hanging in a copper case round his neck, is a (pawn) broker * ; on his arm is his wife, who flutters her fan affectedly and begs him to carry Pearl, the dog. Poor wretch ! it is every moment, " Husband, pick up my glove," " Husband, carry my scarf ; " and this he calls a day's pleasure. The red-nosed fellow beyond is another country clergyman come up as a witness in a West- minster trial. He is well described by a satirist who knows him as — " An honest vicar, and a kind consort, That to the ale-house often would resort, To have a game at tables now and then, And drink his pot as soon as any man." f * Rowland's Letting of Humours' Blood in the Head Vaine, 2nd Satire, 1600. t Rowland's Humors Ordinarie, Ep. 37. 122 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. Already he is tired of London and sighs for his country ale and his game of bowls. Hear how harshly a satirist describes the motley scene : " What whispering is there in term times, how by some slight to cheat the poor country client of his full purse that is stucke under his girdle ! What plots are layde to furnish young gallants with readie money (which is shared afterward at a tavern, thereby to disfurnish him of his patrimony) ; what buying up of oaths out of the hands of knights of the Post, who for a few shillings doe daily sell their souls ! What layinge of heads is there together and sifting of the brains still and anon as it grows towards eleven of the clock (even amongst those who w^ear guilt rapiers by their sides), wherefor that noon they may shift from Duke Humfrey, and be furnished with a dinner at some meaner man's table ! What damnable bargains of unmerciful brokery and of unmeasurable usury are there clapt up ! What swearing is there ; yea, what swaggering, what facing and out-facing, what shuffling, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, what biting of thumbs to beget quarels, what holding up of fingers to remember drunken meetings, what braving with feasters, what bearding with mustachios, what casting open of cloaks to publish new cloths, what muffling in cloaks to hyde broken elbows ! So that when I hear such trampling up and down, such THE MEDITEEKANEAN AISLE. 123 spetting, such hacking, and such humming (ever man's lippes making a noise, yet not a word to be understoode), I verily believe that I am the tower of Babell newly to be builded up, but presentlie deapaire of ever being finished, because there is in me such a confusion of languages. For at one time, in one and the same ranke, foot by foot and elbow by elbow, shall you see walking the knight, the gull, the gallant, the upstart, the gentle- man, the clown, the captain, the appel-squire, the lawyer, the usurer, the citizen, the bankrupt, the scholar, the beggar, the doctor, the idiot, the ruffian, the cheater, the Puritan, the cut-throat, the hye men, the low men, the true man and the thief, — of all trades and professions some, of all countryes some. And thus doth my middle isle shew like the Mediterranean Sea, in which as well the merchant hoysts sayles to purchase wealth honestly as the rover to light upon prize unjustly. Thus am I like a common mart, where all commodities (both the good and bad) are to be bought and sold. Thus whilst de- votion kneels at her prayers doth profanation walk under her nose in contempt of religion." * Coupling this graphic picture with the fact of the great cathedral of London being left for so many years in ruins, ♦ Decker's Dead Term, 1608. 124 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. desecrated and trodden under foot, and remembering the degraded state of the clergy, we cannot help considering that religion was almost forgotten but by the Puritans. Having now sketched in outline the average morning's amusements of the Elizabethan gallant, let us follow him to the ordinary, dining being far too serious a thing to be so hastily dismissed. There were ordinaries for all ranks, the table-d'hote being almost the universal mode of dining among those who were visitors in London during the season, or term time as it was then called. There was the twelvepenny ordinary, where you might meet justices of the peace and young knights; and the threepenny ordinary, which was fre- quented by poor lieutenants and thrifty attorneys. At the one the rules of high society were maintained, and the large silver saltcellar indicated the rank of the guests. At the other, the diners were silent and unsociable, or the conversation, if any, was so full of " amercements and feoffments," that a mere countryman would have thought the people were conjuring. If a gallant entered the ordinary at about half-past eleven, or even a little earlier, he would find the room full of fashion-mongers, waiting for the meat to be served. There are men of all classes, titled men, who live cheap that they may spend more at court ; stingy men, who want SCENES AT AN OEDINART. 125 to save the charges of housekeeping ; courtiers, who come there for society and news; adventurers, who have no home; templars, who dine there daily; and men about town, who dine at whatever place is nearest to their hunger. Lords, citizens, concealed papists, spies, prodigal prentices, precisians, aldermen, foreigners, officers, and country gentlemen, all meet here. Some have come on foot, some on horseback, and some in those new caroches the poets laugh at. The well-bred courtier, on entering the room, saluted those of his acquaintance who were in winter gathered round the fire, in summer round the window, first throwing his cloak to his page, and hanging up his hat and sword. The parvenu would single out a friend, and walk up and down uneasily, with the scorn and carelessness of a gen- tleman usher, laughing rudely and nervously, or obtruding himself into groups of gentlemen gathered round a wit or a poet. Quarrelsome men paced about fretfully, fingering their sword hilts, and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers who are disputing over a card at gleek ; vain men, not caring whether it was Paul's, the Tennis Court, or the playhouse, published their clothes, and talked as loud as they could, in order to appear at ease, and laughed over 126 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. the Water poet's last epigram, or the last pamphlet of Marprelates. The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and the Low Countries, how they helped Drake to burn St. Domingo, and Grave Maurice to hold out Breda. Tom Coryatt, or such weak-pated travellers, would babble of the Rialto and Prester John, and exhibit specimens of unicorn's horns or palm leaves from the river Nilus. The courtier talked of the fair lady who gave him the glove which he wore in his hat as a favour; the poet of the last satire of Marston or Ben Jonson, or volunteered to read a trifle thrown off^ of late by "Faith, a learned gentleman, a very worthy friend;"* though if we were to inquire, this varlet poet might turn out after all to be the mere decoy duck of the hostess, paid to draw gulls and fools hither. The mere dullard sat silent, play- ing with his glove, or discussing at what apothecaries the best tobacco was to be bought. The dishes seem to have been served up at these hot luncheons or early dinners in much the same order as at the present day, — meat, poultry, game, and pastry. " To be at your woodcocks" implied that you had nearly finished dinner. The mere unabashable rapid adventurer, though but a beggarly captain, would often attack the capon while * Decker's Gull's Horn Book, p. 117. CARDS AND DICE. 127 his neighbour, the knight, was still encumbered with his stewed beef, and when the justice of peace opposite, who has just pledged him in sack, is knuckle deep in the goose, he falls stoutly on the long-billed game, while at supper, if one of the college of critics, our gallant praised the last play or put his approving stamp upon the new poem.* Primero, and a " pair " of cards, follow the wine. Here the practised player learnt to lose with coolness, and neither to tear the cards nor crush the dice with his heel. Per- haps the jest may be true, and that they sometimes played till they sold even their beards to cram tennis balls or stuff cushions. The patron often paid for the wine or disbursed for the whole dinner. Then the drawer came round with his wooden knife and scraped off the crusts and crumbs, or cleared off the parings of fruit and cheese into his basket ; the torn cards were thrown in the fire ; the guests rose, rapiers were rehung, and belts buckled on. The post news was heard, and the reckonings paid. The French lacky and Irish footboy led out the hobby horses, and some rode off to the play, and others to the river stairs to take a pair of oars to the Surrey side. Whoever our gallant is, whether a sour-faced steward with a great beard, a gold chain of office wound round his * Decker's Gull's Horn Book, p. 121. 128 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND, crape hat-band ; a young spark come to eat up his ances- tral oaks ; a country gentleman who has brought up his wife to learn the fashions, and see the tomb at Westmin- ster, and the lions at the Tower ; or a young farmer with a suit pending before the Courts, he will be sure to spend his night in loose company at a tavern, with the players, the fencers, or the dicers. He will go to old Sir Simon the King, at the Devil in Fleet Street, or join the great club of wits at the Apollo. He will hie him to the Mermaid in Bread Street, or the Mitre in Cheap. The reddest nosed landlord, and one who has been in his youth with bluff King Hal, her majesty's father, at the siege of Bullen, makes the best host. If our friend be an old visitant he will soon know the names of Jack, Will, and Tom, the drawers, and discourse with them of dogs or bears ; show them the last new parry of Caranza, or the new Lavolta; nimble fellows are Will and Tom, but their answer is generally " Anon," and their conversation is much interrupted by having to cry to the host " score a pint of sack in the Coney," and " score a pint of clary in the Unicorn." These are lads who have learnt to wear canvas doublets, and to lime sour sack. Having emptied his pocket of tobacco and pipes, laid down his fan, if he is such a fop as to carry one, and caressed his love-lock, if he is so, not willing, perhaps, TAVERN COMPLIMENTS. 129 like an honest gentleman to descend into the kitchen and order his supper *, he calls for a bill of fare, much to the disgust of the host, who hates such new-fangled nicety. If he were an epicure and curious in his salads, he or- dered one to precede the mutton with olives and capers, to ■whet the appetite, perhaps jaded by last night's carouse ; a noise of fiddlers soon beset the doors, and the fiddlers cannot be dismissed without atestoonfor " Green Sleeves," or " The Beggar of Bethnal Green." If any acquaintances' voices could be heard in the next room, the gallant would, as a compliment, send them in by the drawer a pottle of burnt wine, with two papers of sugar to sweeten it, or perhaps the beribboned page would carry it himself, with some euphuistic compliment, returning to the bar to boast, as he was ordered, of his master's successful gal- lantry, or his prowess at traytrip or primero. Taverns were favourite places for assignations in the numerous intrigues of court gallants and citizens' wives. To taverns the wild youth took their courtesans. At dice after supper the drawers would be allowed to stake their crowns. The real man of fashion would not dispute the items of a bill however unjust, for to confess a know- ledge of the prices of the market was held a disgrace. ♦ Decker's Gull's Horn Book, p. 156. VOL, I. K 130 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. At departure the gallant would kiss the hostess *, and having taken the stirrup-cup, (the courtesy of the cellar,) wished the vintner good night, and sallied home, lit by a drawer with a lanthorn, or a page with a torch. If our gallant was so unfortunate as not to escape the hands of the Dogberries in the rug gowns, amid curses and blows he was dragged, with torn ruff and broken sword, into one of the fourteen prisons of London, — The White Lion, the King's Bench, the Marshalsea, the Clink, or the Southwark Counter, on the one side of the then unsullied Thames, on the other the Gate House, Westminster, Lud- gate, Newgate, Wood Street Counter, Poultrey Counter, Finsbury, and Lobs Pound, the New Prison, and St. Ka- therine's, all gape for his carcase. There he awaits till the morning, in besmirched satin, muddy cloak and bruised feather, the arrival of Justice Shallow, his astonished friend. One hundred or two hundred forlorn and hungry wretches gather round him as he is thrown in. There is sighing, lamenting, praying and cursing, swearing at cre- ditors, drinking healths, swaggering, roaring, striking and stabbing, whetting knives, and scraping trenchers. Some are carrying platters up stairs, others running down for quart pots of beer. * Decker's Gull's Horn Book, p. 164. PRISON SCENES. 131 Keys are gingling, doors are banging, bolts clicking, gaolers bawling at prisoners, and prisoners cursing gaolers, — there thieves roaring for tobacco, and others cursing it for the devil's weed. If he is pent in Ludgate, where by day prisoners beg at the grate looking into the street, but are now penned up, if it be not midnight he will find some bankrupts playing at bowls, strutting up and down like Venetian magnificos on the Rialto, bravely dressed in spruce ruffs and gold embroidered night- caps. These are men who live better than their creditors, and look with contempt on poor Half Can and Potts, who beg at the grate. At the city gates, Aldgate or Ludgate it might be, the gallant was often stopped by the bellmen of the watch. They would bring him before the constable*, who, sitting on a bulkhead like a Solomon surrounded by his guard, would cry " stand," and demand the pass-word, or the reason of his late walking. If the gallants were fewer in number than the watch, and their bell (not rattle) began to alarm the neighbourhood, they would affect to be French or Dutch, and so escape, or declare that they were retainers of the reigning I'avourite, and so elude, or at worst get off for a bribe of a spur royal. When near the city gates, it * Decker's Gull's Horn Book, p. 169. k2 i32 SHAKSPEEE's ENGLAND. was the joke to call each other Sir Giles and Sir Abra- ham*, or Lord Littlewit and Earl of Bestbetrust, to astonish and quiet the bellmen of the night. Escaping, however, this fate, our hero may have strolled at four o'clock, after the theatre, to the Bear-garden in Southwark, and seen what Shakspere saw and describes, and what Elizabeth herself deigned to look at with all the gusto with which a Roman lady would have seen a dozen gladiators bleed, and then have gone laughing home to ccena. The comparison of a noisy house to " a bear-garden," still perpetuates the national amusement of Elizabeth's time. Spain yet glories in the cruel sport ; but England has long since grown too civilised to tolerate a savage diversion that Shakspere and Bacon, Raleigh and Sidney, may have watched with breathless eagerness. Dog-fight- ing, the last existing relic of the Roman fights in the arena, is now reserved for the recreation of our thieves and felons. Paris Garden, in Southwark, was a place of amusement in Henry VIII.'s time, and was then frequented by the nobles and gentry of the day. The garden derived its name from a nobleman of Richard II.'s time. After him * Rowland's Night Kaven, p. 9.- BEAR-BAITING. 133 it belonged to the monastery of St. Saviour's, in Ber- mondsey, a place in which, at present, anything but the odour of sanctity prevails. There were two separate rings in the garden, one for bulls, and the other for bears ; and the baitings often took place on Sundays. Plays, pro- bably of an inferior kind, were performed here ; and when the Globe was burnt down, a regular theatre was planned by Henslowe, with a portable stage that could be moved during the baitings. The bull-house and stable held six bulls and three horses.* In Charles I.'s time the dancing-masters of Paris Garden grew famous; and the baitings took place twice a week till Parliament sold the place with other church lands, com- pelled by religious scruples and the want of money. Be- sides the common bear and bull baiting, Henslowe and Alleyn, who were licensed by Sir John Davington, master of the Queen's bears, exhibited ponies ridden by monkeys and baited with dogs, and blind bears who were whipped, much to the horror of all Puritans : and let it be recorded to their credit that in this respect they were far beyond their age. The sports at Paris Garden were the great amusements * Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. ; Malone's Shakspere, p. 3. r3 134 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. to which foreign ambassadors were taken, just as they are now to the Opera, or a review. The Duke de Naxara, accompanied by his suite, having seen the lions at the Tower, was much delighted by the scenes at the Bankside, which must have reminded him of the glories of Madrid, that city from whence, as the proverb goes, there is but one stage up to Paradise ; and his gravity relented at the sight of the dogs leaping up at the monkey on the pony's back.* The French ambassadors were so amused with the ape that, having seen the baiting at Whitehall before Elizabeth, they went the next day with a guard of honour to the Paris Garden to see it repeated. Sometimes as many as seven bears were exhibited at once, each confined by a long rope, and baited with three or four large and courageous dogs, who rushed upon him with open jaws. The bears, ferocious and fretful with continual fighting, were of great strength, and not only defended themselves with their teeth, but hugged the dogs to death, or half suffocated them before their masters could release them. The bears bore generally the same names as their owners : Hunx, George Stone, Old Harry of Tame, and Great Ned, were well-known public characters ; and Shakspere men- tions Slender's friend, Saocarson.^ * Spanish MS., British Museum. f Hentzner's Account of England, 1598 ; Dekker's Satiromastix, 1602. THE BEAE-GAEDEN, 135 Sometimes the bear broke loose, to the terror of women and children. On one occasion a great blind bear broke his chain, and bit a piece out of a serving-man's leg, who died of the wound in three days. On such emergencies a daring gallant would often run up and seize the furious beast, entangled as he was with dogs, and secure him by his rope. Master Abraham Slender boasts that he thus braved the wrath of Saccarson. Fresh dogs were always instantly supplied as the first assailants were killed. The noise of the bear-garden was almost unbearable, what with the din of men eager to bet, and the loud partisans of dog or bull. The wit loved to compare the bear dragged to the stake to a damned soiil newly arrived in purgatory, and the dogs to the devils inflicting torments ; or the bull to the poor man going to law, and the dogs to his rich opponents. The mastiflfs, enraged by losing a little blood, were at last often crushed under foot, and carried away by their disconsolate owners, with ribs broken, and skins torn and hanging about their ears. Others losing heart, however fierce at their first attack, would then whine and bark at a distance at their strange adversary, when they no longer dared approach his teeth or paws.* * Rowland's Four Knaves (Percy Society), p. 77. k4 136 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. At Kenilworth, on Elizabeth's visit, thirteen great bears were worried by ban dogs. Laneham, that type of Malvolio, the officious, pert, tyrannical, fussy, groom of the chamber, grows warm in his description of the bear with pink eyes, leering at the approaching dogs, the hound nimble and watchful from vantage, and the bear prepared for the assault. If he was bitten in one place, he pressed the dog close till he got free. He says it was a " goodly relief" to see the clawing and roaring, the tossing and shaking, till he wound himself from them. Then would he shake his ears twice or thrice, and scatter the blood and froth over his tormentors ; the dogs seizing him by the throat, he clawing them on the scalp, with much plucking, tugging, howling and barking, growling and snarling ; some dogs limping to their masters, who kick them as curs ; some lying on their sides, licking their wounds. The grave Puritan, looking on, shaking his head, re- minds the mad and excited crowd of the scaffold falling- one Sunday in 1582-3, and killing seven people and injur- ing 150.* " What Christian," he says, (and that fiery faced Bardolph of a butcher laughs) " can take pleasure to see one poor beast rend, tear, and kill another for their foolish pleasure ? for, notwithstanding they be evil to us * Stubbe's Anatomie of Abuses, 1585, p. 118. WHIPPING THE BEAK. 137 and thirst for our blood, yet are they good creatures in their own nature, and kind, and made to set forth the glory, power, and majesty of our God ; and for our own use and for his sake, we should not abuse them." And so he goes on till a burly waterman proposes to bait the Puritan, and points a mastiff's head towards him. Then, shaking off the dust from his feet, Stubbes leaves the ring, and proudly feels himself to be a despised Jeremiah. The whipping a blind bear was performed by five or six men, who, armed with whips*, stood in a circle round the stake. They then laid on without mercy, and the sport was to see the agonised creature's furious efforts to seize them. The bear would defend himself with force and skill, throwing down all who came within reach of his chain and were not active enough to escape, tearing the whips from the men's hands with his jaws, and crush- ing them in his teeth. The whipping continued till the blood ran down the bear's shoulders and many of the men had had their legs torn and hands scratched. The crowd peculiarly delighted in this divertissement, because it resembled the gaoler's public whipping of strumpets at the cart's tail, a sight then frequently to be witnessed up Cheap or past Ludgate. * Decker's Seven Deadly Sins (Warres), p. 3. 138 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. The comedy to this tragedy appeared in the shape of an ape mounted on a pony, pursued by a couple of curs that leapt up at him as he rode round, frightened to see them lolling their tongues and snapping their jaws. The horse defended itself by kicks from the dogs, and the crowd shouted with laughter to see the monkey shrieking at his enemies hanging to the pony's ears and neck. The ape was generally dressed in a coat of some gay colour. These sports became so engrossing with the lower classes that some men kept a dozen or twenty good mastiffs merely for bear-baiting, often betting twenty, forty, or a hundred shillings at one fight. The encouraging cries were, " Fight dog," " Fight bear," and " Devil part all." The 'prentices delighted in a perilous exercise wherein a man's life was in danger every minute. Colliers, carters, and watermen were great frequenters of the garden : as at the theatre, apples, pears, and nuts were sold by noisy vendors, and even ale and wine were to be bought. The greater number of persons present smoked, and all howled and yelled. The bears were also, we believe, frequently taken round to attend provincial baitings, and their arrival in a place was announced by the furious barking of every dog in the town. Terrific fights sometimes took place at these arenas GAMBLING. 139 between bands of rival betters, the hostlers and tinkers, or the watermen and 'prentices. Shakspere, never forgetting his own age and its manners, has drawn not a few illustrations and metaphors from the rude boisterous sports of Paris Garden : in one place he speaks of the bearward's bears frightening the fell lurking curs by the very shaking of their chains, and describes a hot o'erweening dog running back and biting his master, who held him by a leash near the baiting- place, and yet when once suffered to get within reach of the fell paw, clapped his tail between his legs and howled.* Gambling was the great amusement of the Elizabethan gallant. It was then held no disgrace to throw dice in public ; and it was not necessary to build clubs in order that statesmen should break their own laws unobserved. Men stabbed each other over the cards face to face, while now they only sneer and slander back to back : so centu- ries differ, and so the world moves forward. Gaming has been well defined as a palsy that seizes on man, the most violent symptom being the shaking of the elbow. It was one of the great vices of Elizabeth's age, and every tavern was full of Huffs, Setters, Gilts, Pads, Biters, Droppers, and Filers, all of whom went Henry VI. (Part I.), Act v. Sc. 1. 140 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. under the general denomination of Rooks. Sometimes the box keeper was their accomplice to help them rob the young spendthrift, or, to use their own metaphorical language, " bite the lamb." Here, if a stranger escaped being plundered, he was sure to be robbed, his silver- hilted rapier and his cloak stolen, or the gold buttons cut off his doublet while he stared unsuspectingly at the game. The gambling rooms were generally thronged with bullies, who refused to pay if they lost, or would some- times snatch up a stake and offer to fight for it. If you escaped being run through by the adversary you had defeated, you were nearly sure to be beaten by him and his gang on your departure from the tavern at night. Sometimes the bullies, if they had lost, put out the candles, overset the tables, and scrambled for the money. On these occasions experienced men threw themselves from the stair-head or took shelter behind a table or in a chimney corner, not caring to have their souls pushed out of their bodies by a chance thrust from a red-handed desperado. It was generally late at night, and when the players grew tired, that false dice were introduced, and the box keeper would score up double against the incautious player. Then all the tricks of topping, slurring, and stabbing were put into operation. TEICKS WITH DICE. 141 The false dice were of three sorts ; High Fallams, Low Fallams, and Bristle dice. Some of these were loaded with quicksilver, and sold for as much as eight shillings a pair, when an ordinary bale fetched only sixpence. The bristle dice had a short hog's bristle stuck in one corner to prevent them ever lying on the high quarter. The moves of cheating were innumerable. Palming was by putting one die in the box and keeping the other in the hollow of the little finger. Topping was keeping one of the dice at the top of the box between the fore- fingers and rattling with the screw and the remaining bone. Slurring was taking up the dice as you would have them lie, and putting one on the top of the other so that the undermost should not turn ; but this required a smooth table without chinks. The skilful gamester, sure of his under dice, did not then care if the upper one "came a millstone," as they called it. Knapping was striking a die dead that it should not stir, but only the most dexterous could secure both dies. Stabbing was throwing the dice in such a manner one upon another into a smooth narrow box that both of them tumbled and came out as they went in, or rather were reversed, every gambler knowing that if four was above three was at bottom, that five faced two, and six one. 142 . SHAKSPERE S ENGLAND. Of that beautiful game of Italy, billiards, we need not speak, and cricket was not yet introduced. Bowling was another of the favourite sports both of the manor-house and the country tavern. The old dramatists, and Shakspere particularly, very frequently draw their metaphors from this game. Every sort of alley had its peculiar bowls ; flat for the enclosed alley, biased for open ground, and round for level green and sand. The players were ridiculed for the ridiculous bendings and grimaces with which they followed the bowl, cursing it, praising it, and running after it to the goal with exclamations of " Rub, rub I" "A mile, a mile ! " or " Short, short," " Near Jack ! " and " Near the mis- tress!" "A good cast!" were the exclamations of the bystanders. Cards were used by every one. The game of Gleek was played by three persons. The dealer dealt twelve cards and left eight on the table for stock, seven were bought and the ace turned up for the dealer; if it was Tiddy (four of trumps) such player gave four to the dealer. The ace was called Tib, the knave Tim, the fifth Towser, and the sixth Tumbler. 'i*he players then begin bidding for the stock in hopes of bettering their game, the buyer taking in seven cards and putting out seven. If Tib was turned up, it counted fifteen to the GAMES OP CARDS. 143 dealer. The players then picked for Rnff, the one having the most of a suit winning it — unless any one had four aces, which always carried it. The first then said " I'll vie the Ruff;" the next, " I'll see it; " the third, "I'll see it, and revie it ; " the first, again, " I'll see your revie ; " and the middle, " I'll not meddle with it." They then showed their cards, and he that had most of a suit won six of him that held out longest, and forty of him who said he could see it and then refused to meddle with it. Ombre, Basset, Whist, Costly Colours, and Five Cards were, we believe, of later introduction. Of our period are Ruff, Bone Ace, Pult. The great game in the West of England was Post and Pair, as All Fours was in Kent, and Five Cards in Ireland. In Post and Pair the ace of trumps was the best card ; at Post the best cards were one and two, but a pair of court cards won. The daring of the game consisted in the vye or the adventuring upon the goodness of your hand to intimidate your an- tagonist. At Tables the favourite games were Irish, Backgammon, Tick-tack, Doublets, Size-ace, and Ketch Dolt ; and with the dice alone In and In, Passage, and Hazard. Cock-fighting was a favourite and cruel sport of the day. In choosing a game cock the trainer paid particular attention to his shape, colour, courage, and heel. The 144 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. well-bred bird was of middling size, had a small head, a quick large eye and strong back, his leg was thick, and his spur long and sharp. The favourite colour was grey or yellow; the black -breasted red was one of the most esteemed pyles ; white and dun being colours seldom seen in the pit. A brave bird had generally wattles of a bright flushed scarlet, crowed frequently, and bore himself with a stately and kingly demeanour. A narrow, sharp heel was particularly sought after. The good breed depended more upon the hen than the cock. Great care was taken with their nests and food, which were kept perfumed with burnt herbs ; and the chickens were exercised in a grassy court. The comb or wattles were cut off as soon as they appeared, and as soon as the young game birds began to attack each other they were separated and trained for their military career. The flooring of their hatches was generally of board, that the champions might not weaken or hurt their beaks. They were not allowed to fight a battle till they were two years old, when they had become complete in every member. Chickens that crowed too soon or too fre- quently were generally condemned to the spit as birds of no promise or ability. An excellent sign in a game chicken was the closeness with which it sat upon its perch. COCK-FIGHTING. 145 Cock-fighting* took place generally between August and May. Six weeks before a battle the champions were confined in separate pens and fed with bread. Their spurs were then wrapped in leather, and they were allowed to spar, and sweated in straw baskets, and fed with sugar- candy, chopped rosemary, and butter, to strengthen them and give them wind, Koots dipped in wine, and oatmeal kneaded with ale and eggs, were also allowed them as purges and diaphoretics. Every day the feeder had to lick his bird's eye, and lead and encourage it to pursue a dvmghill fowl which he held in his arms and ran with before them. The last fortnight the sparring was dis- continued, and four days' rest allowed before the bird was brought into the pit, and always fasting. In matching birds it was necessary to consider their strength and length ; the weak long bird rising with more ease, and the short strong bird giving the surer and deadlier blow. The game-cocks were prepared for the battle by cutting off the mane all but a small ruff, and clipping off the feathers from the tail. The wings were cut short, and sharp points left to endanger the eye of the antagonist. The spurs were scraped and sharpened, but steel spurs were * The Compleat Gamester, 1709, p. 155. VOL. I. L 146 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. not used at this early period, though the sport was as old as the Athenians. The preparation was completed by re- moving all the feathers from the crown of the head; the feeder then licking his pupil all over, turned him into the pit to win the gold and move his fortune. The birds were generally brought into the arena in linen bags, in which they came from Norfolk or Wisbeach. They began the combat by whetting their beaks upon the ground, and continued the fight till they were both blind, or faint from loss of blood. The feeder had to suck the wounds of the winning bird, and powder them with the dust of the herb Robert. If the eye were hurt, the cocker chewed ground ivy, and applied the juice to the wound. The jugglers of the day were very dexterous. Their puppet-shows and trained horses were the amusement of all classes who were not too wise to laugh, nor so childish as to be always laughing. The following is a minute description of a performance of the day : — " A jugler knowing the common tradition and foolish opinion that a familiar spirit in some bodily shape must be had for the doing of strange things beyond the vulgar capacity, he therefore carrieth about him the skin of a mouse stopped with feathers, or some like artificial thing, and in the hinder part thereof sticketh a small springing wire of about a foot long, or longer ; and when he begins to THE JtTGGLEE, 147 act his part in a fayr or a market before vulgar people, he bringeth forth his impe, and maketh it spring from him once or twice upon the table, and then catcheth it up, saying, ' Would you be gone ? I will make you stay and play some tricks for me before you go ; ' and then he nimbly sticketh one end of the wire upon his waste, and maketh his impe spring up three or four times to his shoulder, and nimbly catcheth it and puUeth it down again, every time saying, ' Would you be gone? In troth, if you be gone, I can play no trick or feats of ac- tivity to-day ; ' and then holdeth it fast in one hand, and beateth it with the other, and slily maketh a squeeking noyse with his lips, as if his impe cried, and then putteth his impe in his breeches, or in his pocket, saying, ' I will make you stay; would you be gone?' Then begin the silly people to wonder and whisper; then he sheweth many slights of activity, as if he did them by the help of his familiar, which the sillier sort of believers do verily believe; amongst which he espyeth one or other young boy or wench, and layeth a tester or shilling in his hand wetted, and biddeth him hold it fast ; but while the said boy or silly wench thinketh to enclose the piece of silver fast in the hand, he nimbly taketh it away with his finger, and asketh the holder of it to close his hand, saying, ' Hold fast, or it will be gone ; ' and then mumbleth cer- l2 148 SHAKSPEBE'S ENGLAND. tain words, and crieth by the virtue of ' Hocus-pocus hay passe, presto, be gone! Now open your hand?' and the beholders stand amazed to see that there is nothing left in the hand. And then for the confirmation of the wonder, a confederate with the jugler standeth up among the crowd (in habit like some countryman or stranger that came in among the rest of the people), saying, • I will lay with you forty shillings you shall not convey a shilling out of my hand.' ' It is done ; ' saith the jugler. * Take you this shilling in your hand.' ' Yes, marry,' saith he ; ' and I will hold it so fast, as if you get it from me by words speaking, I will say you speak in the devil's name ; ' and with that he looketh into his hand in the sight of all the people, saying, ' I am sure I have it ; ' and then claspeth his hand very close, and layeth his other hand to it also, pretending to hold it the faster, but withal slily conveying away the shilling into his glove, or into his pocket; and then the jugler cryeth, ' Hey, passe-presto, vade-pubeo, by the virtue of Hocus-pocus, 'tis gone.' Then the confederate openeth his hand, and in a dissembling manner feineth himself much to wonder, that all that are present may likewise wonder. Then the jugler calleth to his boy, and biddeth him bring him a glass of claret wine, which he taketh in his hand and drinketh; and then he taketh out of his bag a tonnel JUCWILING TKICKS. 149 made of tin or latine (double), in which double device he hath formerly put so much claret wine as will almost fill the glass again, and stopping this tonnel at the little end within with his finger, turneth it up, that all may behold it to be empty, and then setteth it to his forehead, and taketh away his finger, and letteth the wine run into the glass, the silly spectators thinking it to be the same wine which he drank to come again out of his forehead ; and then he saith, • If this be not enough, I will draw good claret wine out of a post,' and then taketh out of his bagge a wine gimblet, and so he pierced the post quite through with his gimblet ; and there is one of his boys on the other side of the wall with a bladder and a pipe, and conveyeth the wine to his master, which his master, vintner-like, draweth forth into a pot, and filleth it into a glass, and giveth the company to drink. "Another way is very craftily done by a Spanish borachi, that is a leathern bottle as thin and little as a glove, the neck whereof is about a foot long, with a screw at the top instead of a stopple ; this bottle the jugler holdeth under his arm, and letteth the neck of it come along to his hand under the sleeve of his coat, and with the same hand taketh the tax in the garret that is in the foot, and yet holdeth the tax half in and half out, and crusheth the bottle with his arm, and with his other hand holdeth a wine pot to the 1,3 150 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. tax, SO that it seemeth to the beholders that the wine Cometh out of the tax, which yet cometh out of the bottle, and then he giveth it among the company to drink ; and being all drank up but one small glass at the least, he calleth to his boy, saying, ' Come, sirrah, you would faine have a cup ; ' but the boy maketh answer, in a disdainful manner, ' No, master, not I ; if that be good wine that is drawn out of a post, I will lose my head.' ' Yea, sirrah,' saith his master, ' then your head you shall lose ; come, sirrah, you shall go to pot for that word.' Then he layeth his boy down upon the table upon a carpet, with his face downwards, commanding him to lye still. Then he taketh a linnen cloth, and spreadeth it upon the boy's head, placed upon the table, and, by slight of hand, conveyeth under the cloth a head, with a face limned so like his boy's head and face, that it is not discerned from it. Then he draweth forth his sword or falchion, and seemeth to cut off the boy's head ; but withall it is to be noted, that the con- federating boy putteth his head through a slit in the carpet and through a hole in the table made on purpose, yet unknown to the spectators, and his master, also by slight of hand, layeth to the boy's shoulders a piece of wood, made concave at one end, like a surppit, and round at the other end like a man's neck with the head cut off. The concave end is hidden under the boy's shirt, and the other JUGGLING TRICKS. 151 end appeareth to the company very dismal (being lim- bered over by the cunning limner), like a bloody neck, so lively in shew that the very bone and marrow of the neck appeareth, in so much that some spectators have fainted at the sight thereof. Then he taketh up the false head aforesaid by the hair, and layeth it in a charger at the feet of the boy, leaving the bare bloody neck to the view of the deluded beholders; some gazing upon the neck; some upon the head, which looketh gashful ; some beholding the corps tremble like a body new slain. Then he walketh by the table, saying to the head and the seeming dead corps, ' Ah, ha, sirrah, you would rather lose your head than drink your drink ; ' but presently he smiteth, his hand upon his breast, saying, ' To speak the very truth in cool blood, the fault did not deserve death, therefore I had best set on his head again.' Then he spreadeth his broad linnen cloth upon the head, and taketh it out of the charger, and layeth it to the shoulders of the corps, and, by slight of hand, conveyeth both the head and the false neck into his bagge. The boy raiseth up his head from under the table ; then the master taketh away the linnen cloth that was sperad upon him, and saith, ' By the virtue of Hocus-pocus and Fortunatus his nightcap, I wish thou mayest live again.' Then the boy l4 152 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. ' riseth up safe and well, to the admiration of the deluded beholders. " These and the like jugling tricks, some whereof are done merely by sleight of hand, some have help from false instruments, as false knives, false boxes, false coates, false wastecoats, and are all done by common reason with- out the least Compact with the devil, and yet sometimes it happeneth that if there have been any university scholars at the beholding, and they have gone out and fallen into a dispute upon the matter, some saying, ' Sensus nunquam fallitur circa proprium objectum,' some have that the jugler by his familiars doth thicken the air, some again that he hurteth the eye-sight, and so deceiveth the be- holder, and in all their discourse they show themselves very philosophical but little capacious."* These tricks are more daring than any now practised, and were bold appeals to the credulity and imagination quite conceivable in the days of witches and alchemists. The descriptions of some of these tricks will be sufficient without any detailed description. To make a little ball swell in your hand. To consume many balls into one. * Ady's Candle in the Dark, 1655, p. 37. THE JUGGLING HOESE MOEOCCO. 133 To turn counters into money. To make a stone vanish from your hand. To send a card into a nut. To swallow a long tin pudding. How to make three eggs dance upon a staff. To blow a sixpence out of a man's hand.* Among the tricks of this age are to be found the modern deceptions of prick the garter, clairvoyance, the thimble rig, and the French trick of the magic bottle with its various liquors. The jugglers were also ventriloquists, and fellows who for money would eat red-hot charcoal ; sometimes exhibiting a toad which they called their fa- miliar. The most celebrated exhibitor of the day was a man named Banks, and his trained horse Morocco, afterwards burnt in Italy as a witch. This horse would tell how much money a gentleman had in his purse, and would pick up a handkerchief or a stick and return it to the owner. His master, on such occasions, would address him, "Now, sirrah, here be divers gentlemen that have lost divers things, and they hear say that thou canst tell them tidings of them where they are ; if thou canst, let's further shew thy learning, and tell them." * The Anatomy of Legerdemain, p. 2. 154 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. The horse then picks up the glove or stick, and, walking on his hind legs, returns it to the owner, whom his master indicated to him by some secret sign. The ordinary juggler indulged in much facetious jargon, of which the following is a sufficient specimen, " Let's look about us, my masters, and see whether we are all sons of one father, if there be no knaves among us. By'r lady ! sirs, you are most welcome. How does your stomach after your carousing banquet ? what gorge upon gorge, eggs upon eggs, and sack upon sack ! At these years, by the faith of my body, sir, we must provide a little kitchen ere we grow old. God bless good minds from the black enemy, say I. I know you have been piping like the devil from east to west. I prithee, sweet nature's darlings, expose not my tricks; for a worm that is trodden on turns again, and patience loves not to draw a layden cart."* Other jugglers, by means of a bladder of blood and a pasteboard painted bloody, would pretend to stab them- selves or suffer themselves to be stabbed.f This was a dangerous trick if the juggler was not sober or forgot * The Art of Juggling, 1614. t Ibid. TEICKS WITH CAEDS. 155 any of his plates or paddings : and one instance of death from it occurred at a tavern in Cheapside in 1584. These jugglers, if not as subtle as Jannes and Jambres, were at least quite equal to Philippe or Houdin. They performed feats with balls, conveyed money from one hand into another by legerdemain, turned coins into counters, made sixpences leap out of pint pots, sink through a table, or vanish from a handkerchief, with magical cries of ' Has fortuna. furie, nunquam credo, passe, passe ; when come you, sirrah ? ' with much cunning handling. We need scarcely say these tricks were per- formed by waxed-nails, horsehair, prepared boxes, and the help of confederates. The practices with cards were innumerable. They turned aces into knaves, told strangers what numbers they thought of: they used hollow nuts in which the name of the guesser at cards was written, and generally concluded by giving some butt of the party a nut full of ink to crack. They performed many tricks with knotted cords, pre- tending to undo them by spells ; and played at fast and loose with strings and beads. * Art of Legerdemain Discovered, 1658. 156 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. Their favourite tricks were performed by the help of confederates. By preconcerted words they would stand behind a door and tell if a man threw cross or pile by the ringing ; made pots fall from a cupboard at the sound of a spell ; made a " gaggle " of geese draw a timber-log ; compelled an accomplice to dance naked ; changed the colour of a cap; and foretold where stolen horses were hidden, using for their incantations certain quaint forms of words, as, Droch, myroch, senaroih, betu baroch, asse- naroih, sonusa, faronusu, leg pass, pass. They also, by using boxes with false bottoms, turned toads into corn, or wheat into flour. Sometimes they had little bladders full of meal, pepper, and ginger, which they spit out after eating some bread, at the same time they played with a rush, and balanced a trencher with three holes. They burnt threads, and drew out fresh ones from their ashes; they made whole laces that had been cut in half; or pulled yards of coloured ribbon from their mouths, and sold them at high prices to the au- dience. Frequently the juggler-clown showed a book of white leaves, which he shut and opened again, showing every leaf white, black, or yellow. This was done by having the coloured leaves a little higher than the others. THE DECOLLATION OP JOHK BAPTIST. 157 In the country they ran knives into a capon's head without injuring it, and healed the wound by repeating a charm.* They pretended to swallow swords, and by help of a confederate drew it from a spectator's pocket, or sent a boy to fetch it from a tree in the orchard, or from such a room; with blades and bodkins that slipped into their handles they pretended to run them into their heads or tongues, or through their arms, squeezing blood from a small secret sponge to form a simulated wound. Others affected to cut their noses in two, or put rings through their cheeks ; some to thrust pieces of lead in at one eye and out at the other, by means of a hollow stick, into which the lead slipped. But the great trick of the age was the one we have before described, and which is still practised, called the decollation of John Baptist, and was shown at Bartholomew Fair.f It required three people to perform, and was shown upon a table in a dark tent prepared for the pur- pose, with a hole, up which one of the boys could thrust his head, and another down ; a boy, whose body lay upon the table in sight of the audience, could hide a basin fitted round the boy's neck, which was generally sprinkled with * The Art of Juggling, t Hocus Pocus, 1686, p. 33. 158 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. red, and surrounded with a little kneaded dough dipped in blood, to represent flesh. This the juggler pricked with a hollow quill, upon which it would bleed ; a little brimstone was then sprinkled on a chafing-dish of coals, the smoke of which gave the face the appearance of death. The room was generally dark, and the spectators were hurried quickly out before they had time to grow critical. But let us hurry to Bartholomew Fair, and see the rude, sports of the age. If we push our way through the noisy crowd of laughing citizens, quarrelsome serving-men, keen-eyed horse-dealers, and smiling cheats, we come suddenly to a booth gay with glass, and displaying a sign on which is painted a pig's head, with the eccentric motto, " Here he the best pigs, and she does them as well as ever she did." This is Mistress Overdone's celebrated booth for the sale of roast pig and bottle ale. She charges 5s. for a pig's head, and not dear either. See her there, fat and perspiring, waving a ladle with which she bastes a pig already burnt a rich brown, and occasionally bastes the boys who teaze her. At the doors are some Banbury men, Puritans, looking on with reproachful eyes, while a ballad-singer is shouting out, " Ballads, ballads, fine new ballads. " Here's for your love, and song for your money, A delicate ballad of the ferret and cony. BAETHOLOMEW FAIE. 159 ' A dozen of Divine Points,' and ' The Goody Garters,' ' The Fairy of Good Counsel,' ' An Ell and Three Quarters.' " Beyond him is an itinerant corn-cutter, with his crj of, " Have you any corns on your feet and toes ? " or a rat- catcher with his, " Buy a mouse-trap, a mouse-trap, a tormentor for the fleas ! " Pass on through disguised justices, cut-purses, horse- coursers, bullies, clothiers, Somersetshire wrestlers, and gingerbread women, and we come to a toy booth, and it is worth while to stay and hear the shopman's cry, for he is a hobby-horse seller, and driving a larger business than the cunning man from Cow Lane in the next booth, or the " buy any gingerbread, any gilt gingerbread," in the next stall. His words are, " What do you lack ? What is it you buy ? What do you buy ? Rattles, drums, halberds, horses„ babies of the best, rattles of the finest ! " For a moment he is interrupted by a costermonger crying pears. " Buy any pears, pears fine, very fine pears ! " But he now breaks out again : — " What do you lack, gentlemen ? Maidens, see a fine hobby-horse for your young master ; cost but a token — worth his provender." Again he is drowned by the opposition : " Any com- 160 SHAKSPERES ENULAND. fortable bread, gentlemen? or the dame of the Pig's Head?"* " Gentlewomen, the weather's hot ; whither walk ye ? Take care of your fine velvet caps. The fair is dusty ; take a sweet delicate booth with boughs here in the way, and refresh yourselves with the best pig and bottle ale in the fair, sirs." Then again comes a sharp, quick, business voice : — " What do you lack ? A fine horse, a lion, a bull, a bear, a dog or cat, an excellent Bartholomew kid, or an instrument ? What do you lack ? What do you lack ? A fine hobby-horse, to make your son a tilter ? a drum, to make him a soldier ? a fiddle, to make him a reveller ? a little dog for your daughter ? or babies, male and female ? What do you lack ? " Then the shows. The bull with five legs, only a penny ; the great Leicestershire hog ; the eagle ; the black wolf; the calf from Uxbridge ; the dogs that dance a morris ; and the hare that plays the tabor : and above all, " The excellent motion, twopence a- piece, gentlemen ; the ancient and modern history of Hero and Leander ; and the most mirthful tragedy of the Don Hieronymo." For a diversion too there is a thief to be whipped, and * Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, Act iii. Sc. 1. KINDHEAKT, THE TOOTH-DEAWEE. 161 the two rogues in the stocks to look at, and public men to point out staringly.* Look at that crowd round the bal- lad seller, and watch his accomplices the cutpurses tickling the ears of the clowns with a straw, in order to make them pull their clumsy hands out of the pockets of their trunk hose, while another rogue twitches off that gallant's cloak of blush-coloured satin, and unblushingly runs off with it, in spite of the hue and cry at his heels. See that stern, pale-faced man, with deep brow and heavy fea- tures, watching him with a smile, — that is Master Ben Jonson, who is going to work the scene into a play. Raised on a high scaffold is Kindheart, the well-known tooth-drawer. He is the greatest cheat in Christendom ; for a crown he will cure any disease, — for 100 marks will put out both your eyes, and quite cure your inflamma- tion, with one drop of his " aqua mirabilis (1 2d. a drop) ; " he stops the dead palsy, and from his skill as an oculist he is called by his enemies Dr. Putout. His salve is only surpassed by his pills ; and his antidote of five marks preserves you from stab and bullet. By his side waves a banner, stuck over with horse teeth, to show his skill in the power of extracting — money. He is, moreover, a * Chettle's Kindheart's Dream, 1592. VOL. I. M 162 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. tooth-charmer, and cures you by writing mysterious words on a paper, which he burns; he sears your teeth with hot wires, or makes you inhale the hot vapour of henbane seeds, and then shows you the worms that he has con- jured out, and which are, certes, now wriggling in the water ; but they come from the henbane seeds, and that is a secret. He wears chains of teeth, and shakes them as he offers you a powder that will " refresh the spirits, purify the blood, and ease the pain." It is rather solemn to hear him repeat, — " In verbis et in herbis et in lapidibus sunt virtutes sub ilia Unguis Gibell et Chaldee, — These are the spirits that pass with the blood into the rheum to vex the teeth of men." That man next him with a beard is William Archer, the celebrated juggler; he wears a round, low-crowned, rent silk hat, the band knit in many knots, and two round sticks stuck in it. Hia jerkin is of cut leather, his cloak of three colours, his hose paned yellow and blue, and he plays the bagpipe. On the other side of him is Anthony Now-Now, the fiddler, who derives his name from a well-known song. He is a short man in a round cap, a side-skirted tawny coat*, and leather buskins. At the next stage is Bankes and his dancing horse, * Kindheart's Dream, p. 10. THE BALLAD-SINGEE. 163 Morocco*; this is the great sight of the fair called Bartholomew. This Bankes is a vintner in Cheapside, as well known as the ballad writer Elderton or Little Davj, the sword and buckler f man J, who offers to fight the whole world. The horse is an old, small-sized bay gelding, which he has shod with silver. It tells fortunes, selects cards, picks up your handkerchief; in fact, does every thing but speak. It has just been, for a wager, to the top of St. Paul's ; but poor Bankes is little thinking how next year he will be burnt with his horse at Rome as a witch. That odd smiling fellow in the russet coat and buttoned cap, standing on one toe, as he blows the pipe and beats the tabor, is the great comedian Tarleton. He is cele- brated as Touchstone, and is Shakspere's jester. He has come here to sing a song and dance a jig for Bankes's benefit. Outside is our friend the ballad-singer, driving a roaring trade in scurrilous ballads. His favourite tunes are, " Watkins's Ale," " Carman's "Whistle," " Fortune," " Death and the Lady," " Chopping Knives," " The Friar's * Percy Society, Maroccus Extaticus, Preface, f Dekker's Knight's Conjuring. J Dekker's Devil's Answer to Pierce Pennyless. M 2 164 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. Foxtail." What with selling and what with thieving, he has ere this made 20«. a day at Braintree Fair. To- morrow he is off to Stourbridge, and then to Bristol. Here are two Puritan citizens discussing the last sermon. One calls it " a good piece of work," and the other " an excellent article ; " they are both notorious usurers ; and that man they accost in a buttoned cap, short gown, and slippers, is Hobson, the wit, a haberdasher of small wares in the Poultry; with him are four aldermen, who are known everywhere as Rich Ramsay, Stout Bond, Gentle- man Beecher, and Stout Cooper. They are all friends of Gresham's, and sharers in the Muscovy Company. Hob- son stops to talk to a russet-coated pedlar ; he is a worthy man, and always severe in compelling his apprentices to follow him to church on Sunday, according to the old rule.* Now ihey all turn into a vintner's booth to have a flagon of sack and a luncheon. A fat host, not unlike Shak- spere's host of the Garter, accosts them with exultation, for the fair is the thirstiest fair that has been held for many a year. " What, gallants, are you come ? Well, gentlemen, I have news enough for you all, though I am so fat and prosy ; I can speak news enough, and I am sure you will hear * Hobson's Pleasant Conceits, 1607 (Percy Society). STOKIES ABOUT THE PLAGUE. 165 me, and shall hear me. Welcome, welcome, gentlemen ; I have tails- and quails for you ; seat yourselves, gentlemen ; dishes, fishes, boys- and beards ; I will be gone and look to the drawers and back anon in a trice ere you look for me, like the old vice, truly gallant, top of top-gallant bullies of five-and-twenty." Every third sentence he uses some catch-word which has become known all over London or some old proverb or snatch of a song. The talk is sad ; it turns on the plague, — 857 dead in the last week. Three crosses and " The Lord have mercy upon us " is over many doors in St. Laurence Lane and the cookshops of Pie Corner. Men are afraid to buy second-hand clothes or feather beds : gentlemen from the country return to London in their old taffety coats, afraid to order London clothes ; the public coaches are hung with rue. The sextons and doctors are praying that the sickness may last. The people of Hertford are hoping that the term will be held there and not at West- minster. Horrible stories are current: how a serving- man, buried alive, leapt out of his grave in St. Mary Overhouse ; and how one man fell sick from fright at seeing the searchers enter his room to carry him to the dead cart, thinking he was dead. Travellers fall off their horses in the country roads, and are buried by the 166 SHAKSPEEES ENGLAND. highway side. Husband and wife die in the same day : shopkeepers, afraid [of their houses being closed, send away sick apprentices in sacks to poor tenants' rooms in Whitechapel. A man in a country village has fallen from his horse drunk, and the villagers, taking him for one dead of the plague, build a bonfire over him; he rises up and leaps out, to their horror, just as the heap catches fire. The door of this tavern, the Angel and Trumpet, is a good place to watch the crowd. That old pinch-faced man, with a great leathern pouch, long stockings, and side-coat with crossbars of velvet*, is a usuirer on his way to sign a bond, and caring nothing for the fair, which he does not even observe as he looks at his tablets and casts up a sum. Next him, with a rain-beaten feather in his cap, a cloak hanging down to his ancles as he is hurried along by the watch, is a tavern bully, who declares, " if he could but find his Hamburgh knife," stabs should be dealt. He has just kicked the constable, beaten the watch, broken a tapster's head, kissed the landlady, and finally been knocked down by the landlord. That over- dressed man, all gilt and lace, staring about, is a country gentleman whose purse has already been stolen, though * Kqwland's Diogenes' Lanthorn and Candle Lighting. THE TUTOR IN A NOBLEMAN S FAMILY. 167 he does not yet know it. Next him is a spendthrift with no buttons to his doublet. That man in the threadbare blue coat, looking so rueful and kissing his hand to all that pass *, is a decayed serving-man, now a beggar. His companion, a scarred fellow leaning on a truncheon and offering a rusty rapier for sale, is an old soldier who lives by alms. Running past him, with a cloak tucked under his arm, is a prentice on an errand — a stout young lad, whose whole ambition is the alderman's foot- cloth and golden chain. That pale, abstracted-looking man, who stares with lack-lustre eyes and faint smile at the juggler, is a scholar: we know him by his black threadbare cloak. He is a tutor in a nobleman's family, for whom he writes sonnets, elegies, and pageants. He is lodged near the kitchen, and is kept awake all night by the scolding cooks; if he complains of this, he will be put in the haunted room or far up in some mouldy garret. He gets only five marks a year, and sits with the lower servants under the salt. He is snubbed by the steward and laughed at by the waiting creatures, though he Is a ripe scholar and a gentleman born. He gets only the scrap dishes, half bones, from the upper table, but is contented * Nixon's Strange Foot-Post. ii 4 168 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. SO he can get back to his quiet room and St. Chrysostom, his best friend. He is observed to draw his knife lei- surely, he wipes his beard gravely, breaks bread with his knife, but falls hotly on the porridge for fear of not being ready for the first dish of meat. His pupils are those ruddy boys, who long to get away to see Master Rupert feed the white falcon or John the groom back Black Sloven the gelding. That hang-dog fellow with a mischievous-looking parchment in his hand is a " parriter " of the Ecclesiastical Court : his friend in the brown bonnet, leather coat, broad dagger, and long sword, is a country client on his way to his lawyer with a buckram bag swollen with papers.* Here's a crowd of turbulent butchers and tinkers round a ballad-seller. Go near him and listen : he cries, " The Crown Garland of Golden Roses gathered out of England's Royal Garden. Here is the Red Rose and the White ; the lamentable Song of the Fair Maid of Duns- more ; the Complaint of Fair Isabel ; the Song of Sir Richard Whittington, a short and sweet sonnet ; the famous Life and Death of Thomas Stukeley, the London gallant ; the King and the Beggar ; Jane Shore and Fair Rosamund ; the Two Ladies of Finsbury ; the Battle * Nixon's Strange Foot-Post, 1613. °THE BREATH OP THE "WOODCOCK'S HEAD." 169 of Agincourt ; the Good Shepherd's Sorrow, and the tragic story of Henry VIII.'s Wives." Several cut- purses are busy in the crowd, with horn thimbles on their thumbs, and ready knife, — so take care ; a week hence they will be grinding in the mill at New- gate. Some lawyers pass towards Westminster, talking of ejectments and attachments. After them come a band of Irish sweeps, costermongers, and beggars, and a sailor with a brimless cap. They all stop at a stall, where the prentices are crying out, " Rich girdles, Spanish roses, silk stockings, gay garters ; what do you lack ? Draw near, and I can sell you a pennyworth." The shopkeeper is one of London's rich aldermen, and the 109 parishes shake at his nod, yet he does not disdain St. Bartholomew's fair ; no, nor yet St. James's, But we must not forget to notice that great amusement of the Elizabethan fashionable world, smoking. Those who loved the breath of the " woodcock's head," as the pipe * was called, sat on the stage-stools, with their three sorts of tobacco, and their lights by them, handing matches on the point of their swords, or sending out their pages for real Trinidado. They practised smoking under professors, * Every Man out of his Humour, Act iii. Sc. 3. 170 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. who taught them tricks. The intelligence offices were not more frequented, no, nor the pretty seamstresses' shops at the Exchange, than the new tobacco office. It has long been an object of special wonder with us that Shakspere's plays contain no mention of the new vice of smoking, while Ben Jonson, his younger contemporary, founds whole scenes upon the practice. Some commen- tators bring this forward as a proof of the comparative earliness of many of his dramas ; but this cannot suffice, as smoking was in full use long before " Will " left London. He does not either mention the introduction of forks from Italy. It cannot be answered that Grumio does not stoop to notice the follies of the day, since we have shown that Shakspere drew his manners entirely, and almost un- idealised, from his own age, and mentions false hair, masks, pomanders, fardingales, and all the latest novel- ties. The poets called it fit only for rotten-lunged chimney- sweeps *, the habit blackening the teeth and poisoning the breath, used by watermen, colliers, and carmen, who spit and beslaver every place. Cob epitomises this dislike with much humour, and in a manner that King James himself would have appreciated. * Decker's GuU'a Horn Book, p. 31. BOBADIL'S answer to king JAMES. 171 " Ods me ! " he says, " I marvell what pleasure and felicity they do have in taking this roguish tobacco. It goes far to choke a man and fill him full of smoke and embers. There were four died out of the house last week with taking it, and two more the bell went for yesterday ; one of them, they say, will never 'scape it, he voided a bushel of soot yesterday upwards and down- wards. But the stocks are for worser men ; I'd have it present whipping, man or woman, that have but dealt with a tobacco-pipe. Why, it should stifle them all in the end, as many as use it : it's little better than ratsbane and rosaker." * To which tirade Bobadil would answer by strongly exhaling a whiff of smoke and declaring that, by that air, it was the most divine tobacco he had ever drank. Gallants delighted to take tobacco in the lords' room over the stage, and then go and spit privately in Paul's.t Bobadil takes it, too, for economical purposes, to stop the orifice of his stomach till dinner time. He brags of the quantity he takes : — " Body o' me ! here's the remainder of seven packets * Every Man in his Humour, Act iii. Sc. 2. f Every Man out of his Humour, Act v. Sc. 1. 172 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. since yesterday was seven nights. 'Tis your right Trini- dado; did you never take any. Master Stephen?" Master Stephen has never taken any, but will learn to take it an Master Bobadil commend it. Bobadil believes much in its many virtues.* " Sir, believe me upon my relation, for what I tell you the world shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies where this herb grows; but neither myself nor a dozen more gentlemen of my knowledge have received or taken any other meat in the world for the space of one-and- twenty weeks but the fume of this simple plant ; therefore it cannot but be most divine. Further, take it in the nature in the true kind, so it makes an antidote had you taken the most deadly poison in. Nay, it would expel it and clarify you with as much ease as I speak ; and, for your wounds, your balsamum and your St. John's wort are mere juggeries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado nicotine. Go to, I could say what I know of it for the expulsion of rheums, sour humours, ob- structions, and things of this kind; but I profess my- self? no." Smoking was called by the indignant wit making one's * Giffoi'd. Bea Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, Act iii. Sc. 2. SNUFF AND TOBACCO FASHIONS. 173 nose an Indian chimney; and it was considered neces- sary for all true humorous gallants to be very curious in their tobacco. At the ordinary, before the meat came smoking upon the board, the gallant drew out his tobacco-box, and ladle for assisting the cold snuif into his nostrils, tongs for holding hot coals, and priming-iron ; all this artillery, if he were rich or foolish, of gold and silver *, was very useful to pawn when current coin ran low. His whole talk was of different varieties of tobacco, which he knew better than the merchants, and of the apothecary's shop where it could best be bought; then he would show several tricks in the way of taking it, as the whiff, the sniff fj ^^^ *^6 Euripus. At the theatre he smoked and displayed his cane and pudding and all his varieties of tobacco, and from thence would repair to the tobacco ordinary ; his talk there is whether nicotine or Trinidado is sweetest, which pipe has the best bore, which turns black, and which broke in browning. The poor laughed at this luxury of driving smoke through the nose and sealing up all with filthy roguish tobacco; they smiled to see the smoke come forth of * Decker's Gull's Horn Book, 1609 (1852), p. 119. t Ibid. p. 120. 174 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. a man's tunnels, little thinking that ! it was destined some day to be the favourite narcotic of the poorer classes. Pimps, like Bohadil, found it their interest to say- King James's Counterblast against Tobacco is the best written of all his works. It is a judicious and sensible attack on what he justly deemed an abuse produced by the growing luxury of the nation. " There cannot be," he says, " a more base yet hurtful corruption in a country than is the vile use, or rather abuse, of taking tobacco in this kingdom." The opening of the pamphlet upsets at once the old tradition of the introduction of the Indian weed by Raleigh: James says distinctly it was not brought in by a worthy, virtuous, or great personage, but ori- ginated in two or three savages arriving from America, and who died in England. It originated, he says, in poor, wild, barbarous men, sprung from corruption, and was practised from an inconsiderate and childish love of novelty. " Shall we," says the King, " who disdain to imitate the manners of the French or Spaniards, borrow a vile and stinking custom from the beastly, slavish Indians ? " * * Works of James I., 1616, p. 215. KING James's counteeblast. 175 His arguments against the weed are numerous : he first denies that the brains of man are naturally cold and wet ; therefore denies that fumigation is good for them, because, he says, as there are four complexions in men, and those complexions compounded of the four elements, different brains differ in constitution. He next denies that the quality of tobacco is simply dry and hot, as the hateful smell indicates a certain obnoxious faculty antagonistic to nature, all smoke, too, being humid. The second argument in its favour, i. e. that it purges the head and stomach, he refutes by saying that the rheum and purges are merely the smoke in another shape. A third argument of the new sect, its sudden popu- larity, he does not think worth answering. He then goes on to deny that tobacco could cure any disease, though many had smoked themselves to death. He laughs at the absurdity of those who declared it healed all complaints in the head and stomach, the gout, the acue, drunkenness, weariness, and hunger, or asserted that it made men sleep, and yet cured drowsiness and quickened the understanding. " omnipotent power of tobacco ! " he exclaims, " if its smoke could rouse devils, like the smoke of Tobias' fish, it would serve as a 176 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. precious relic both for superstitious priests and insolent Puritans." He argues, too, that even if a medicine, tobacco too often used must weaken and weary nature: to use this unsavoury smoke is to commit a filthy abuse, and to be guilty of a sinful and shameful lust as bad as the sin of drunkenness ; he laments that men should so enslave themselves as not to be able to go a Sabbath day's journey without sending for hot coals to kindle the tobacco ; and he asks how men so impatient for luxury could be expected to endure the privations of meat, drink, and sleep, in time of war. Lastly, he pleads the expense, since some gentlemen smoke buyers bestowed three or four hundred pounds a year upon this precious stink. The last page of this book, in which he sums up the abuses of the custom, is too interesting to bear abridg- ment.* " For the vanities," he says, " committed in this filthy custom, is it not both great vanity and uncleanness that at the table, a place of respect of cleanliness and of modesty, men should not be ashamed to sit tossing of tobacco pipes and puffing of the smoke of tobacco one to another, * Works of James I., p. 222. KING JAMES ON SMOKING. 177 making the filthy smoke and stink thereof," to exhale athwart the dishes, and infect the air where very often men that abhorre it are at their repast. Smoke becomes a kitchen farre better than a dining chamber, and yet it makes a kitchen also oftentimes, in the inward parts of men, soyling and infecting them with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco takers that after their death were opened. " The angry and fumy king goes on to loudly complain that no time or action was exempted from the public use of that uncivil brick, making our manners worse than those of the wives of Diepe. To avoid appearing singular, men of sound judgment and complexion were also drawn into imitation. But let him speak for himself, for we shall not interrupt him again. " Is it not a great vanity that a man cannot heartily welcome his friend now but straight they must be in hand with tobacco, for it has become, in place of a cure, a point of good fellowship — he that will refuse to take a pipe among his fellows (though by his own relation he would rather feel the savour of a snike) is accounted peevish, and no good companye, even as they do with tipling in the cold estern countreys. Yea, the mistress cannot in a more mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair hand a pipe of tobacco. But herein is not VOL. I. N 178 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts — that the sweetness of men's breath, being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke, wherein, I must confess, it hath too strong a virtue, and so that which is an ornament of nature and can neither by any artifice be at the first acquired nor once lost re- covered again, shall be filthily corrupted with an incurable stink, which vile quality is as directly contrary to that wrong opinion which is holden of the wholesomeness thereof, as the venime of putrefaction is contrary to the virtue preservative. " Moreover, which is a great iniquity and against all humanitie, the husband shall not be ashamed to reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome, and clean complexioned wife to that extremity that either she must also corrupt her sweet breath therein, or else resolve to live in a per- petually stinking torment. " Have you not reason, then, to be' ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly re- ceived, and so grossly mistaken the right use thereof? — to your abuse thereof, sinning against God, harming your- selves both in persons and goods, and taking also thereby the notes and marks of vanitie upon you, by the custom thereof, making yourselves to be wondered at by all for- reine civil nations, and by all strangers that come among KING JAMES ON SMOKING. 179 you, to be scorned and contemned, a custom both fulsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfuU to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smelle of the pit that is bottomless." n2 180 SflAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. CHAP. IV. THE LAWS OF THE DTJELLE. " Thou art like one of those fellows, that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table, and says, ' God send me no need of thee ! ' and, by the operation of the second cup, draws it on the drawer, when, • indeed, there is no need." Romeo and Juliet^ Act iii. Sc. 1. " He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion ; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom : the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, — of the first and second cause: ah! the immortal passado! the pirnto reverse! the hay! &c." Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc, 4. The Sands of Calais. — Fencing Masters. — Frequency of Duelling. — Introduction of the Eapier. — Duels at Taverns. — Saviolo's Books. — Causes of Duels. — Challenge. — Conditional Lie. — The Lie in General. — The Foolish Lie. — Proud and Civil Proof. — Causes that stayed Duels. — Time for-the Duel. — The Combat. — The Apology. — Morality of the Duellists. — Art of Fence. — Parries. — Terms. — Language of the Schools. When Bobadil ventured his " poor gentlemanlike car- cass," by the help of his nineteen special rules, his punto reverso, stoccata, imbrocatto passada, and montanto, to spare the entire lives of the Queen's subjects, and three parts of the yearly charge in holding war, by the mere THE PEEVALENCE OP DUELLING. 181 exertion of his own skill and nineteen others in the use of the rapier, he did but utter the ridiculous threats to be heard any day in the London fencing school. The sands of Calais were too often moistened with the blood of the hot-brained gallants of Elizabeth's reign, for on this spot the most formal duels were fought, to prevent interruption ; a chivalrous and warlike age, and the uni- versal wearing of swords by all classes, from the prentice boy to the duke, rendered street fights as common as stab- bings were among the lower classes, who all carried knives and daggers. Duelling had grown into a science, and the fencing school became the scene of an important part of every gentleman's education. Dancing, practising with the rapier, tennis, the theatre, aud the ordinary, took up the greater part of the London loungers' day. The fencing masters were chiefly Italians and Frenchmen, and the terms of the art were all borrowed from the language of the former nation. The courtier, if a man of letters, had then sometimes to handle the sword, just as the man of arms had sometimes to pen a sonnet ; the very country curate had his sword, and would not refuse a challenge ; and the slightest provocation at a ball-room or a party ended in an appeal to the sword. Duelling had grown fashionable, together with the habit of spending nights in taverns; there was much N 3 182 SHAKSPEEE's ENGLAND. lugging out of iron: "fall on" and "draw" were the general cries when the tables were upset, and the floor a red sea of spilled wine. Dead men, with holes in their breasts, were often found by the watchman, with their pale faces resting on the door-steps of merchants' houses, or, propped up and still bleeding, hid away in church porches. The rapier not only became the brave man's defence, but the refuge of the detected cheat and the angry gambler. Friendships were ended, and ambition interrupted by one thrust, and long lines of ancestry cruelly broken up by a single pass of arms. Hot bloods, fresh from peril in the Indies, were not respectful of the holiness of life. Madcaps broken from college had often to fight their way, sword in hand, through armed serving-men, the retainers of rivals or of enemies. Many a battle was less dangerous than one night spent at a tavern, when the wine had flowed somewhat faster than usual, and the dice, the representatives of castles and of mansions, had tumbled about too often. It was now all poking and thrusting, no broad red slashes that hurt, but did not kill. Just as the bowyer ridiculed the first hand guns, so did the English blade- smith despise the first Toledos. The rapier was called un- English, just as moustachios are now called so by those who do not wear them ; it was thought to be murderous. INTEODUCTION OP THE EAPIEE. 183 ruffianly, cowardly, and popish, not fit to pierce a buckler, and to be broken at a single blow of a broadsword. Prentices and citizens, farmers and country gentlemen, at first resisted the novelty, and were laughed at and billed for their pains, though sheer brute strength was thought more honest than Italian subtlety and art. Men chopped, and clove, and swashed, but all in vain, for the deadly insinuating steel crept under their guards, and slipped into their vitals. The new art became fashionable ; Italian professors taught the rapier ; and the old sword was at last hung up with the bills and bows in the manorial hall ; old men grumbled and adopted the change, the young hardly believed that anything else could ever have been used, and the bravo who introduced it became with them an im- mortal genius. The duellists of this age were not those sort of sham combatants who used to meet at Dalk Hill, having first taken good care to be duly interrupted by the police long before any of their discreet blood had been shed — these men fought a I'outrance, sometimes in their shirts, and with poignards; they were practised swordsmen, who would let no advantage slip, who stood keen eyed and watchful, knowing that death awaited a slip of the foot or a wrong turn of the wrist ; these were men nursed in a hundred N 4 184 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. street and tavern fights, accustomed to guard their throats from the Spanish swords and the bully's dagger, who scarcely passed a day without breathing themselves with a friend at the fencing school with all the eagerness of men whose pride and safety are both interested in their attain- ment of a difficulty. There was, perhaps, a pride in feeling that one's own life, and that of another, depended on the strength of a thin steel sword. A new parry was dis- cussed at court and in city, just as we now discuss a change of ministry. When the rapier superseded the sword and buckler, old men lamented that England had fallen, and that the days of manly fighting were gone for ever. The duel in England never reached the popularity that it did in France during Elizabeth's reign. For eighteen years of Henry IV. 's sway, 4000 gentlemen are said to have perished in private combat, in spite of his edict of Blois and other laws. The advice of the wise Sully at last perhaps induced the King to act more severely against ofi"enders, though he was always himself a secret approver of the mode of trial, which after all is less expensive and not much more uncertain than law ; many of these duels were fiercely fought by men in their shirts, armed with sword and dagger. Any accidental advantage was pressed to the uttermost, and all perhaps for a lady's glove or a stolen THE LAWS OF THE DUELLE. 185 ribbon. The trial by battle was once claimed, and the champions were summoned in 1571 to Tothill Fields, to fight before the Queen ; Spelman, who was present, men- tions the event. The dispute was about property in the island of Hastie in Kent; but the complainants not ap- pearing, the affair ended peaceably, much to the mortifi- cation of the crowd, who do not like reprieves, and think themselves wronged by such dull events. The laws of the duelle were regulated by the most wire- drawn and fantastical principles of honour, swelled into a woe by the subtleties and Jesuitisms of the masters o' fence and the regulations of their schools. Saviolo, the great master of this art, advises strongly that all quarrels arising from words spoken in choler and wine be made up, unless the injury was accompanied by villany for which no words could give satisfaction. Amongst other causes of quarrels, he mentions the habit of some men who would enter a room without any cour- tesie or salutation to the company, and taking a friend by the sleeve urge him to go with them : upon this some other "fantastical, mad, conceited fellow" ordinarily resented the rudeness, and blows and death would follow.* Sometimes, also, at weddings or great feasts, a man- * Vincentio Saviolo's Practise, 1575, p. 12. 186 SHAKSPEEE'S EN6LAKD. nerless* man would approach a gentlewoman talking to some friends and retired from the company, and solicit her to dance with him, without noticing those to whom she was conversing : a quarrel would follow, the friends and kinsfolk would fall to blows, and frays ensued wherein often many men lost their lives. Another cause of strife was a habit of staring at men's faces in the streets. At Trieste, Saviolo saw two brothers who being stared out of countenance by some young gentlemen of the City, asked the citizens if they knew them, and if not why they stared. The citizens replied, " Because we have eyes." " That," said the other, " is the crows' fault, in that they have not picked them out." Word grew from word and a hot fight ensued, in which one of the brothers was slain, and two of the gentlemen hurt : one of them being hurt in the leg and captured, although much beloved in the City, was soon after beheaded.f Many old soldiers considered it suspicious and uncourteous of any one to touch their swords, whether to admire the beauty of their temper or the richness of their hilt, as this feigned curiosity was sometimes resorted to by assassins. Still more dangerous was it to break coarse jokes, or * Vlncentio Saviolo's Practise, 1575, b. ii. t Ibid. b. ii. THE GIVING THE LIE, 187 suborn or strike another man's servants, for this was a continuous source of long rankling feuds. Calumny was sufficient cause for a challenge, unless the detractor dis- avowed his words. It was no uncommon thing for friends, under pretence of parting combatants, to disarm or wound their compa- nion's rival: for which reason many old duellists, when any one drew upon them, shouted that any one who ap- proached them armed, should be attacked as enemies. Cowards sometimes had bullies to stab or beat their adversaries, having first picked a quarrel with them on some slight pretence. Other men taunted an enemy, knowing that the company would back them, or run in and prevent a duel before swords could be drawn: the quarrels of this age were sudden and bloody. The gentleman to whom the lie was given was expected to become the challenger, although the lie might be in return to a charge of treason. Thus, if Caius says to Seius " he is a traitor," and Seius repHes by giving the lie, Caius challenges Seius to maintain what he said ; and again, if Caius strikes Seius, Seius replies " he hath dealt injuriously with him." Then Caius gives the lie, and Seius challenges him. The giving the lie in fact, as we see by Touch- stone, who quotes Caranza, became an abstruse study, and 188 SHAKSPEKE'S ENGLAND. the lie was divided into many branches, much ingenuity being used by either party to avoid giving the first chal' lenge. The lie certain when generalised turned upon the word therefore : " Thou hast spoken to my discredit and in prejudice of my honest reputation, and therefore dost lie ; " the special lie was more definite, as for example, " Alex- ander, thou hast said that I being employed by his High- ness in his service at Padua have had secret conference with the enemy, and therefore I say that thou hast lyed." The conditional lie *, Touchstone would say, was much used by cautious and diplomatic men, as it always gave the prudent opportunities to escape. It ran thus : " If thou hast said that I have ofiiered my lord abuse, thou lyest, and if thou sayest so hereafter thou shalt lie, and as often as thou hast or shall so say, so oft do I and will I say thou lyest." The answer to this was, '' Whereas thou chargest me that I should say that thou art a traitor, and thereupon sayest that I lye, I answer that I never spake such words, and therefore say that whosoever sayest I have spoken such words he lyeth." Another reply was, " Thou dost not pro- ceed in this case like a gentleman, neither according to the * Saviolo, b. ii. FOOLISH LIES. 189 honorable custom of knights, which when thou shalt do I will answer thee." The lie in general was divided by these professors * into two branches — the lye general in respect of the person, and the lye general in respect of the injury — the first was when one said " Whosoever hath reported of me that I have betrayed my lord doth lye falsely." This no gentleman was compelled to answer, though such challenges were rather dangerous in a hot-blooded age. The second ran thus, "Antony, thou hast spoken ill of me and prejudiced my reputation, and therefore I say that thou lyest." This lie was thought of no value till the angry duellist entered into particulars. This lie often drove the defendant to prove his charge by law, and so the duel was frustrated, and money and hot blood wasted. The lie in particular was the special lie of the brave man, and specified the charge and offence. This is an example : " Silvano, thou hast said that at the day of the battle of St. Quintin I did abandon the ensign, wherefore I say thou liest," and then produced his proof that his enemy had used such words. If the charge could not be denied, and the defendant refused to fight, he was disgraced. Foolish lies consisted in f manifest inconsistencies, as * Saviolo, b. ii. -j- Ibid. b. ii. 190 SHAKSPERE S ENGLAND. when a man lost his girdle and said, " Whoever had stolen it lyed in his throat : " a fool in his hurry to give the lie would often say before his adversary could speak, " If thou sayest I am not an honest man, thou lyest in thy throat," answer- ing what was not yet spoken. To delay giving the lie in return for an insult, even in presence of the prince, was thought degrading to a gentleman, unless the enemy were so accompanied as to render it dangerous to beard him. Other sources of quarrel were what were pedantically called " injuries requited " and " injuries redoubled," The first was, if you were called a thief to retort the charge ; the second, if you added fresh words of outrage, as when one said, " Thou art a false money maker," and you re- plied, " And thou too, and a homicide withall." Saviolo sums up that in these difficult cases a bare countercharge, without giving the lie, needed not necessarily produce a duel. The sword or civil proof (law *) followed according as a man valued his honour or reputation. Saviolo, with his usual high feeling and good principle, contends that it is no less the part of a cavalier to know how to sheathe his sword than it is to know how to draw it, and that the civil proof is the proof of reason, and fighting the * Saviolo, b. ii. ETJLES RESPECTING CHALLENGES. 191 proof of force; the one being doubtful, and the other uncertain. The real gentleman wrote his cartel (or challenge) briefly and clearly, indulging in no invective, deeming it noble to speak honourably of an enemy. The defendant had the choice of arms. Before the reign of Elizabeth gloves were sent as challenges, but were afterwards superseded by cartels first sent, and then published. After the day and hour were fixed, it was disgraceful for either combatant to strike or ofiend his adversary. If either do so, the offender was dubbed a breaker of faith, and was refused all further combats. The man who struck the actual blow was the person to be challenged. If the challenged had any reason to object to the duel, an arbitrator was chosen. If either disputed his judgment, they were supposed to be guilty, and held disgraced. The command of the prince, unless in cases of national importance, was held no honourable cause for declining a challenge. In war, however, a general prohibition was generally obeyed when the challenge was from any in the hostile army. Saviolo, however, declared that if a chal- lenged man were in a blockaded city, and could not obtain leave of absence from the governor, he should leap over the walls to go and defend his honour. 192 SHAKSPEKE'S ENGLAND, The most honourable duel was thought to he that in which both the combatants fought in their shirts with rapier and poniard ; but Saviolo condemns this as brutal and deadly. A right-handed man could not compel his adversary to fight left-handed. The padrion, or second, allowed no man, unless he had physical defectsj to wear rain-braces, or any such defences or armour. If one gentleman had lost an hand or eye, his adversary was muffled or bound in the same part: a maimed man, if compelled to fight with his defective hand, could decline the challenge. The time appointed for the duel* was between the rising and the setting of the sun. If, in that time, the challenger did not appear, the defendant was not compelled to fight on the day following without his own consent, and that of the lord who granted the field. The fight was continued till death or flight: sometimes the combatant who first touched the ground was declared prisoner, or the member that touched the rails was cut off. The first who went out of the lists became prisoner ; and if his horse was wounded or killed, or his armour broken, he was not supplied with fresh. If one was dis- armed, his adversary might stab him before he could rise, * Saviolo, b. ii. IMPEDIMENTS TO THE DUELLE. 193 although it was accounted a piece of romantic generosity to give him his sword again. The challenger gave the first assault : no man, under pain of death, was allowed either to speak a word or make any sign when the duellists entered the lists; and it was held a shame for either gentleman, when once in the meadow, to repent of the combat. It was also held dishonourable to change the ground of quarrel when once in the _ field, and if it hap- pened, the arbitrator could forbid the battle. Traitors, freebooters, deserters of their colours *, thieves, robbers, ruffians, tavern-haunters, excommunicated persons, usurers, and all other persons not living as gentlemen and soldiers, were refused the privilege of the duelle. In formal duels, when the defendant did not appear, the victor rides three times round the field with honourable pomp of horse and armour, and " sound of trumpet." Great infirmities, tempests, or floods, were allowed to be sufficient impediments. If a title or fortune rendered a man suddenly, after the challenge, of higher rank than his challenger, he was bound to find a champion.f When the combat lasted till sunset without any decisive result, the defendant was adjudged the vanquisher, and the challenger could be refused any further rights of the * Saviolo, b. ii. t Ib'^- ^- "• VOL. I. O 194 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND. duelle : he that was overcome in the lists surrendered his armour, garments, and horse, as trophies to the victor, paid the expenses of the combat, and a ransom just as if he had been a prisoner of war. So severe was the code of honour in this age that Saviolo, following a judgment of the Marquis of Vask, denies that a man once conquered could recover his honour by success in a second combat : a man becoming disgraced after the challenge had been sent him, might be refused as an adversary. Degrees of rank were also, on all occasions, taken into consideration. Sometimes the wrong-doer apologised to the man he had wronged, yielding up his sword and surrendering himself into his hands with all humility and sorrowfulness, upon which his former friend, with the manly tenderness which we should now, in our artificial state, be ashamed to own, would embrace and lift him up. The quarrels of maskers, or night-revellers, were often thus made up, merely to say, " I spoke not such ill words," was held an insufiicient apology unless he added, " And if I had, I had spoken falsely."* The full apology ran in the following form: the de- fendant first addressed his adversary : " I would be glad to know of you with what mind you gave me hard words * Saviolo, b. ii. THE FULL APOLOGY. 195 the other day, whereupon I gave you the lie ; I pray you resolve me herein ; " and the other replied, " To tell you the truth, I. spoke them in choler, and not upon any other occasion." Then the first answered, " Since you have spoken these words in choler, I assure you I meant not to have given you the lie unless you had spoken that with a deliberate mind to charge me ; and I say that my life doth not charge you, but rather I acknowledge you for a man of truth, and I pray you remember no discourteous words past betwixt us, but hold me for your friend." And the other answered, " And I do likewise judge you a man of honour, beseeching you also to account me your friend," and so they left the field.* The secrets of this noble art, says the professor gravely, are very great, and with great travell and pains a man must come to the knowledge and skill both to rightly understand and practise it ; for otherwise by very small error a man may come in danger of his life. The secrets are such, that unless a youth had a skilful master to instruct him, and one who loved him, he never could come to a right understanding of them : " The true sword and dagger men was fitted by God and nature, both in body and mind, for such excellence. Some skilful men, blinded * Saviolo, b. ii. o2 196 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. by rage, rushed upon their enemies' swords, and were hurt in spite of their skill; others were never able to master their weapons." Saviolo* inculcated lessons of morality and courtesy, teaching his pupils to be more gentle and courteous the more skill he obtained with his sword. He prefers right to might, law to arms, and never to take advan- tage of his skill to challenge or insult those weaker than himself. Others, we suspect, were great breeders of strife, and fomenters of daily brawls. The professors of rapier and dagger required in their pupil not merely that he should force and thrust well, and strike right and cross blows, but that he should be frudent, keen-sighted, and agile, and keep time with hand and foot. Some gallants fought with the rapier and dagger ; some with the rapier and cloak, like the Spaniards ; some with the rapier and buckler, and others with the rapier alone.f The parries were generally made with the left hand, protected by a gauntlet, and not by the sword, which was reserved entirely for thrusting and striking; the dagger was held out at arm's length horizontally, and seldom used to strike. Sometimes the rapier stroke and the blow of the dagger were simultaneous. * B. i. 6. t Ibid. b. i. 6. THE THIRD WAED. 197 Saviolo's description of " the third ward " will illustrate the language and subtleties of the fencing schools. " You must stand with your feet together, as if you were ready to sit down, and your rapier hand must he within your knee, and your point against the face of your enemy; and if your enemy put himself upon the same ward, you may give a stoccada at length between his rapier and his arm, which shall be best performed and reach furthest if you shift with your foot on the right side. Moreover, if you could deliver a long stoccata, and have perceived that your enemy would shrink away, you may, if you list, at that very instant give it him, or remove' with your right foot a little back towards his left side, and bearing back your body that his point may miss your belly, you may presently hit him on the breast with your hand, or on the face, a reverso, or on the legs ; but if your enemy would at that time free his point to give you an imbroccata, you may turn your body upon your right knee, so that the said knee bear towards the right side, and shifting with your body a little, keep your left hand ready upon a sudden to find the weapon of your enemy, and by this means you may give him a punta riversa, a stoccata, or a riversa to his legs." A stramazorm was a cut *, a stoccata a thrust : — but * Saviolo, b. i. 15. o3 198 SHAKSPEEES ENGLAND. enough of this jargon, as insufferably dull to describe as it was exciting when first used. In the cant of the professors, the love of virtue was necessarily followed by a love of the rapier. This science required a man to be able, strong, active, wise, skilful, easy-tempered and valiant. No man professing the military art, they boasted, could be called perfect in his profession without the knowledge of the rapier, and his life was at the mercy of the poorest swordsman. It made the brave man braver, and even the coward cour- ageous ; as no man but might quarrel, so there was no one who needed not to know how to defend himself and attack his enemy ; the hot-headed needed to know the use of weapons, and the cool to maintain their neutrality. If hunting and hawking strengthened the nerves and har- dened the body for war, how much the training of the rapier ? In the words of good Master Vincent : " It seemeth unto me that I may with great reason say that the art and exercise of the rapier and dagger is much more rare and excellent than any other military exercise of the body, because there is very great and necessary use thereof, not only in general wars, but also in particular combats and many other accidents, when a man having the perfect knowledge and practice of this art, although but small of stature and weak of strength, may with a THE FENCING- IIASTEE'S JARGON. 199 little removing of Ms foot, a sudden turning of his hands, a slight declining of his body, subdue and overcome the fierce braving pride of tall and strong bodies."* The jargon of the fencing-master was after this fashion : " A palpable stramazorm, by these hilts ! Now you come in bravely upon your reverse, and standing close and firm, and fair, save your retricato on the left leg, coming to the assault with the right. Now then, fol- lowing the great Caranza's rule, make the stoccata, making a passado full at my right pass, thus. Now, sir, come on, and twine your body more about that you may fall to a more sweet, comely, gentlemanlike guard f — so, indifferent well — hollow your body more, sir, as thus ; now, stand fast with your left leg, note your distance, and keep your due proportion of time — fie, sir, you disorder your point." f The pupils spoke of Vincentio, and the Burgonian ward, and the fencing mystery. Sometimes a band of gallants, bent on a duel or * Vincentio Saviolo, his Practise in two Books ; the first in treating of the use of the E. and D. ; the second, of Honor and Honorable Quarrels. London, 1595. Dedicated to the Earl of Essex, Master of Horse. Book I., Preface. f Every Man in his Humour, Act i. Sc. 4. I Marston's Stamp of Villanie, vol. ii. p. 63. o4 200 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. wanting amusement, would send for a fencer to a tavern to breathe tliem. The fencing-masters frequently fought matches on the public stage, sometimes before the Queen ; on one or two occasions death followed these encounters. ABUSE OF SERVANTS. 201 CHAR V. SERVING-MEN AND GENTLEWOMEN. THE KITCHEN AND THE BUTTERT STILL-ROOM. " Why you slaves, Created only to make legs and cringe, To carry in a dish and shift a trencher. That have not souls, only to hope a blessing Beyond black jacks or flagons. You that were born Only to consume meat, and drink and fatten Upon reversions I " Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act i. Sc. 3. " A serving-man, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, wore gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her ; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven ; one that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it ; were loved I deeply, once dearly ; and in women out-paramoured ; the Turk, false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey." King Lear, Act iii. Sc. 4. Shakspere's Abuse of Servants. — Puritan Servants. — French Pages, — Irish running Footmen. — Ordinances. — Horses. — Laws of a Household. — Fines. — The Cook. — The Steward. — Petty Offi- cers' of the Court. — Servants' Dinners. — Duties of a Page. — The Serving-Man. — Their Manners. — The Chaplain. — Poor Tutor. — Laneham and his Duties. — An Archbishop's Servants. — Habits of the Jester. — The Dinner. — The Kitchen. — Mytho- logical Pastry. — Cooking. — List of Dishes. — The Royal Diet. — Receipts. — Cock Ale The Queen's Dinners. The plays of Shakspere are filled with invectives against the servants of the sixteenth century ; only a few scenes 202 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. before the one which we have quoted, honest, irascible Kent (half Menenius and half Falconbridge) denounces Oswald, the steward, as " A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three- suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave ; a lily-livered, action- taking knave ; a whoreson, glass- gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk-inhe- riting slave; one that would be a bawd in way of good service, and nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar." Indeed, with the exception of the faithful steward of Timon and Orlando's trusty Adam, Shakspere's serving- men, always drawn from the age, are generally witty, quibbling, foolish, gaping domestics — sly and pilfering in Coriolanus, quarrelsome and turbulent in Romeo and Juliet, In the Taming of the Shrew and Merchant of Venice, they seem companions and confidantes of their masters. In Twelfth Night they are players of practical jokes and sworn enemies of pompous and meddling stewards. Malvolio and Dr. Caius's Simple, however, present us with a glimpse of a new phase in their cha- racter : we mean the austere puritanism that marked out, here and there, among a crowd of noisy pages, one indi- vidual as " something given to prayer, something peevish that way," and Malvolio as a precisian. EUNNING FOOTMEN, 203 The whole class of " serving creatures " may be briefly- divided into three principal classes, — serving-men or footmen, running footmen, and pages. The pages of fashionable men were generally French, and sometimes Irish. The running-footmen, chosen for their agility, were generally active "bog-trotters," who wore jackets, trimmed down the shoulder and skirt with orange-tawny or other coloured lace, and, like other footmen, the silver badge of their masters half-way down their left arms — much like the Thames watermen of the past and the railway porters of the present time. They were sent as messengers and couriers, or ran three or four of them by the side of the much-abused, ponderous, gilded "land-ships," as the Water Poet calls the then newly-imported Dutch coaches, carrying staves in their hands to act as levers to lift the vehicle out of the frequent slough with which the miserable country roads then abounded, or torches to guide the coachman by night. They were light-footed, nimble, tight-belted men, that could caper forty miles in the day to the tune of the coachman's whip and the chorus of his shouts and curses. Their jackets were sometimes velvet, silver-laced or embroidered back and side with gold twist. Their food was oat-bread, bacon, and buttermilk; and, like 204 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. Neapolitan fishermen, they could throw their dangerous skeans (knives) * to a hair's breadth. The favourite nicknames of the populace for the run- ning men were, " Pumps," " Linen-stocking," and " Dusty foot;" and jokes were not unfrequent at their speed of three score mile a day or their seven miles an hour. These Irish servants kept St. Patrick's day with great rejoicing, and decked their hats on that national festival with the green tuft of shamrocks that the London Celts still wear on the festival of that vermin-hunting saint. They were amorous and fond of dancing, and do not seem to have been notorious for any greater vice than a love of usquebaugh. They were generally called Denis, Daniel, Dermot, Patrick ; and were known by their broken English, which was a greater novelty to the happy Elizabethans than to us ; the old dramatist always made them speak in this manner, " Phair ish te King?" " By Chreesh, shave me thou lyesht ! " " Creesh plesS ty shweet faish!" Sometimes to humour their master they would dress in the long yellow mantle peculiar to the Irish chieftain and dance the fading (a national dance), or sing, as exiles, the songs of their bleeding and widowed country. * A Mad World, my Masters. The Water Poet's Works. HAEEINGTON'S EULES rOE SEEVANTS. 205 The favourite horse of our gallants was the Irish hobby- horse, and his attendant was most frequently an Irish horse boy, who stood shivering at the theatre door, while the gallant went warm into the play.* Erom Sir J. Harrington's (the translator of Ariosto) rules for servants, we obtain a very clear conception of the internal government of a country gentleman's house in 1566. A servant who is absent from prayers to be lined. For uttering an oath. Id ; and the same sum for leaving a door open. A fine of 2d., from Lady Day to Michaelmas, for all who are in bed after six, or out after ten. The same fine, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, for all who are in bed after seven, or out after nine. A fine of Id. for any bed unmade, fire unlit, or candle- box uncleaned after eight. A fine of 4:d. for any man detected teaching the children obscene words. A fine of Id. for any man waiting without a trencher or who is absent at a meal. For any one breaking any of the butler's glass 12d. A fine of 2d. for any one who has not laid the table for dinner by half past ten, or the supper by six. * Dekker's Gull's Horn Book, Ben Jouson's Irish Masque. 206 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. A fine of 4rf. for any one absent a day without leave. For any man striking another, a fine of Id, For any follower visiting the cook, Id. A fine of Id. for any man appearing in a foul shirt, broken hose, untied shoes, or torn doublet. A fine of Id. for any stranger's room left for four hours after he be dressed. A fine of Id. if the hall be not cleaned by eight in winter and seven in summer. The porter to be fined Id. if the court gate be not shut during meals. A fine of 3d. if the stairs be not cleaned every Friday after dinner.* All these fines were deducted by the steward at the quarterly payment of the men's wages. If these laws were observed, the domestic discipline must have been almost military in it. The red-faced white-capped cook ruled the roast in the kitchen; his sceptre was a rolling-pin, with which he bruised the marmazets and scullery boys as with a rod of iron ; he was frequently cholerick and thirsty, for the fire dried him up, and he was always chopping at pilfering fingers with his cleaver, or flinging hot broth at some * Harrington's Nugae Antiquae, p. 103. THE STEWARD. 207 rebellious subject. When the second course had gone up, at about half-past eleven, if it was summer, he could retire into the cool darkness of the inner cellar, and drink and sleep till four o'clock brought in the bustles and cares of supper. Men like Shallow had regular daily audiences with William, the cook, about what "kickshaws" the coming guests would like best. The marchpanes and the custards fell to the women's care: but we can imagine Shallow saying, after he had told, for the hundredth time, his well known and humorous story of his fight with Will the Warrener : — " My masters pray be wary And serviceable : look, see all your sauces Be sharp and poignant to the palate — than ever Commend you : Look to your roast and baked meats handsomely, And what new kickshaws and delicate made things." * The steward was known by his grave face of authority, his great starched beard, and the gold chain of office which either hung from his neck or was hoisted round his cypress crape hatband. If a wine-server, like Malvolio, he was often affected in manner, and spoke in pompous phrases conned out of plays or old dull books : the Kenilworth Laneham was a perfect specimen of this class of servant, * Beaumont and Fletcher, Elder Brother, Act iii. So. 2. 208 SHAKSPERES ENGLAND. vain of his scraps of language and his inkling of music, conceited of the bows or nods of some passing noble, who had mistaken him for a friend, and proud of his acquaint- ance with the great, — to the rich fawning, to the poor inso- lent.* Laneham, who was a gentleman usher to the privy council, describes himself as rising at seven and going to chapel ; then, after eight, entering his lord's chamber, and eating the manchet left of the previous night for livery; nothing can equal the foolish contented complacency with which he describes how he kept order in the ante-room on state occasions, with " Peace, sirs, wot ye where ye are ? " How he would be down upon unhappy listeners and pryers ; or, if the visitor happened to be a friend, how he would invite him into a seat upon his bench ; how, when the ambassadors' men came out, they would, he glories to say, ask him what it was o'clock, or bid him call for their lacquey. The steward was the master's confidant and the terror of pilfering servants. It was the steward's business, when his lord was ex- pected, to see that the supper was ready, the house trimmed, the rushes strewed, the cobwebs swept, the jacks and gills cleaned, and the carpets laid ; the serving-men in their new * Twelfth Night. Dekker's Gull's Horn Book. Laneham. THE PAGES. 209 fustian and white stockings, their heads combed sleek, and their coats brushed ; their garters of corresponding colour, their daggers neatly sheathed, and their shoes unpatched ; not to speak of the last new Diggory being duly taught to kiss his hand and make his cong^ as he held his master's stirrup. When his lord rose in the morning he brought in the grace cup, and was, in fact, the lieutenant and major domo of the Elizabethan mansion. On all great occasions the stewards provided dinner for their master's poor neighbours ; powdered beef and venison for the rich ; Poor John (salt fish) and apple pyes for the lower ; one board for those who came for love, and another for those who came with money.* The pages were little Pucks, smart Robin Goodfellows, that served a thousand purposes. They would present a cartel upon a rapier's point, carry a perfumed letter in a glove, or slip a keepsake jewel into a favoured mistress's hands, bear your cloak before you to the play, hold your horse, wait upon you at the tavern, fill your pipe when you lay upon the rushes of the stage, and light you from the tavern ; Will was your Argus and your Mercury ; he brushed your cloak and polished your rapier, fastened your love favour into your hat, and picked you up if you were unseated in the tilt-yard ; he spread your name and de- * Harrington's Nugse Antiquse, p. 155. VOL. I. P 210 SHAKSPEEE'S ENGLAND. fended your reputation, tied your scarf and knotted your points, perfumed your rooms and cleaned your tankard ; he was the hutt and playfellow of the blue-coated serving- man, and the pet of the ladies in waiting ; he led out your wife's Iceland dog, and carried her crossbow when she hunted; he was generally a scapegrace and crackrope, addicted to petty thefts, pert, malicious, and quarrelsome, affecting all the swagger of a man, and employed in masques to play the female parts. The common herd of serving-men were generally distin- guished by their blue coats and silver badges. A gentle- man who kept a good house maintained some twenty or thirty tall sword and buckler men, a dozen of whom, on great occasions, would follow, armed, at his heels ; these men, eager for their master's honour, were always as eager to draw swords upon the servants of a rival house as Sampson and Balthazar were in Romeo and Juliet. Every day in Cheap or Fleet Street there would be a repetition of the scene in Henry VI. between Gloster's men and the Cardinal's : a blue coat saw a tawny coat walking proudly down the opposite side of the road ; he gave a shout of the " bear," or the " swan," or whatever was his mas- ter's badge, and the iight began, till the prentices cried " clubs, clubs," or the watch, if it was night, stopped the fray. THE EEAL LONDON-BEED SERVANT. 211 If Sampson and Gregory came swinging past Paul's, just as Abram and Balthasar were stepping from the Si Quis door, one party or the other jostles for the wall, jeer and bite their thumbs till the least prudent or the hottest-blooded draws his sword and strikes a swashing blow, and the fray begins while the crowd look on ap- plaudingly. The real London-bred servant was famous for his good leg (bow), and for keeping his head uncovered in his master's presence ; at a tavern for his bragging and loose jests, and the use of hawking and racing terms, picked up from his better's conversation ; in the servants' hall for his neat foot and curly pate, his smart way of carrying his napkin on his shoulder, and the quick and clean shifting of trenchers. Sometimes his language was ridiculously affected and euphuistic, and he would say, for instance, " fructify " for enjoy, and " contentation " for content ; he was often thievish, and not unfrequently a spy and an informer. A writer of the day describes in glowing terms the gay crowds of serving-men that would throng the palace courts on days of reception ; small regiments, drawn up in lines, and exchanging mocks and insults, if their masters were rivals for the Queen's favours. The Elizabethan chaplain held an anomalous position : he was respected in the parlour for his mission, and de- p2 212 SHAKSPBEE'S ENGLAND. spised in the servants' hall for his slovenliness, he was often drunken, and frequently quarrelsome ; now the butler broke his head in a drinking bout, and now the Abigail pinned cards and cony tails to his cassock. To judge from Sir Oliver Martext and Sir Hugh Evans, the parish priests of Shakspere's day were no very shining lights; and the poet seems to love to fall back, as in Romeo and Juliet and the Two Gentlemen of Verona, to the ideal priest of an earlier age. It is indeed true that he always mentions the old faith with a certain yearning fondness ; but we cannot believe that this arose from any attachment to popery, when we remember his King John's masterly denunciation of papal tyranny, an allusion peculiarly felt, when the Pope's blessing had perhaps just wafted a Spanish fleet to our shores, or the papal bull had been lately affixed to the very gates of the bishop's palace. The poor tutor slept in a truckle bed at his master's feet, sat below the salt, never had but one clean trencher, seldom dared flog his pupil, and got five marks a year.* One of the most amusing sketches extant of the minor officials of the Court is to be found in Laneham's letter, describing the magnificent pageants presented before the Queen at Kenilworth Castle. The author. Master Robert Laneham, " as great a coxcomb as ever blotted paper," as * Beaumont and Fletcher, Scornful Lady. LANEHAM. 213 Scott terms him, was a mercer by profession, but preferred by the Earl of Leicester, the Black Prince, as he was called from his swarthy complexion, to be Clerk and Keeper of the Privy Council chamber door. His letter is writter to his good friend. Master Humphrey Martin, mercer, and is full of interest, as illustrative of Elizabethan manners. It begins, " After my hearty commendations, I commend me heartily to you. Understand ye, that since, through God and good friends, I am here placed at Court, as you know, in a worshipful room, whereby I am not only ac- quainted with the most, but well known to the best, and every officer glad of my company." Then, alluding to the entertainment given , by the " Right Honorable my singular good Lord, my Lord the Earl of Leicester," he says*, " where things for the persons, places, cost, devices, strangeness, and abundance of all that ever I saw, (and yet I have been, what under my master, and what in my own affairs while I occupied merchandise, both in France and Flanders long and many a day,) I saw none anywhere so memorable, I tell you plain." The amusing jack in office goes on then to describe his rise and progress, which enables us to conjecture the origin and career of many of his contemporaries. * An Archbishop's retinue was almost equal to royalty's, P 3 214 SHAKSPEEE S ENGLAND. Having compared Leicester to the Macedonian Alexander and the Roman Csesar, lie continues : — " It pleased his Honor to bear me good will at first, and so to continue, to give me apparel even from his back, to get me allowance in the stable, to advance me unto this worshipful office, so near the most honorable council, to help me in my licence of beans, though, indeed, I do not so much use it, for, I thank God, I need not to permit my good father to serve the stable, whereby I go now in my silks, that else might rufSe in my cut canvass. I ride now on horseback, that else might many times manage it on foot ; am known to their honors, and taken forth with the best, that else might be bidden to stand back myself: my good father, a good relief that he fares much better by, and none of these for my desert, either at first or since, God knows. What say you, my good friend Humphrey, should I not for ever honor and extol him in all the ways I can ? Yes, by your leave, while God lends me power to utter my mind, and having as good cause of his honor as Virgil had of Augustus Caesar, will I poet it a little with Virgil, and say, " ' Namque erit ille mihi semper Deus, illius aram Stepe tener nostris ab ovilibus imbuit agnis.' " ' For he shall be a God to me till death my life consumes, His altars will I sacrifice with incense and perfumes.' " LANEHAM. 215 Elsewhere lie bursts into Frencli to stagger his honest correspondent. He continues : — " But, Jesu, Jesu, whither am I drawn now? — but talk of my lord once, even thus it fares with me, I forget all my friends and myself too ; and yet you, being a mercer, a merchant, as I am, my countryman born (Notts), and my good friend withal, whereby I know you are compassioned with me ; methought it is my part somewhat to impart unto you how it is here with me, and how I lead my life, which, indeed, is this : — " A mornings I rise ordinarily at seven o'clock, then reads. I go into the chapel soon after eight ; I get me commonly into my lord's chamber or into my lord president's ; then at the cupboard, after I have eaten the manchet served over night for livery (for I dare be as bold, I promise you, as any of my friends the servants there ; and, indeed, I could have fresh if I would tarry; but I am of wont jolly and dry a mornings) ; I drink me up a good bowl of ale ; when in a sweet pot it is deficated by all night's standing, the drink is the better — take that of me ; and a morsel in a morning, with a sound draught, is very wholesome and good for the eyesight ; then I am as fresh all the forenoon after as I had eaten a whole piece of beef. Now, sir, if the council sit, I am at hand, wait an inch, I warrant you. If any make babbling, ' Peace ! say I ; wot ye where ye are ?' If I take a listener or a pryer in at the chinks of the lock- p4 216 SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. hole, I am by and by on the bones of him ; but now they keep good order, they know me well enough. If he be a friend, or such a one as I like, I make him sit down by me on a form or chest — let the rest walk in God's name. " And here doth my languages now and then stand me in good stead — my French, my Spanish, my Dutch, and my Latin ; sometimes among ambassadors' men, if their masters be within the council, sometime with the ambas- sador himself, often to call his lacquey or ask me what o'clock ; and I warrant you I answer him roundly, that they marvel to see such a man there ; then laugh I and say nothing. Dinner and supper, I have twenty places to go to, and heartily prayed to. Sometimes I get to Master Pinner, by my faith a worshipful gentleman, and as careful for his charge as any man her Majesty hath ; there found I very good viands ; we eat and be merry, thank God and the Queen. Himself, in feeding very temperate and moderate as you shall see any, and yet, by your leave, of a dish, as a cold pigeon or so, than hath come to him at meat more than he looked for, I have seen him even so by and by surfeit, as he hath plucked off his napkin, wiped his knife, and eat not a morsel more, like enough to stick in his stomach ; two days after, some hard message from the higher officer, perceive ye me, being a search, his faithful dealing and diligence had found him faultless." LANEHAM AS A MUSICIAK. 217 " In afternoons and nights sometime am I with the right worshipful Sir George Howard, as good a gentleman as any that lives ; and sometime at my good Lady Sidney's chamber, a noble woman, that I am as much bound unto as any poor man may be unto so gracious a lady, and sometime in some other place ; but always among the gentlewomen by my good will (you know that comes always of a gentle spirit). And sometimes when I see company accordingly, then can I be as lively too. Some- time I foot it with dancing, now with my gittern, or else with my cittern ; then at the virginals, — you know nothing comes amiss to me. Then carol I up a song withal, that by and by they come flocking about me like bees to honey ; and ever they cry another, good Laneham, another ! Shall I tell you when I see Mistress — (ah ! see a mad knave, and had almost told all) ; then she gives once but an eye or an ear, why then, man, am I blest : my pace, my courage, my cunning, is doubled. She says with sometime, 'She likes it,' and then I like it much the better ; it doth me good to hear how well I can do. And to say truth, what with mine eye, as I can amorously gloat it, with my Spanish sospiros, my French- heighs, mine Italian dulcets, my Dutch loves, my double release, my high reaches, my fine feignings, my deep diapason, my wanton warbles, my winning, my tuning, my timing. 218 SHAK8PERES ENGLAND. and my twinkling, I can pacify the matters as well as the proudest of them, and was yet never stained, I thank God. By my troth, countryman, it is sometimes nigh midnight ere I can get from them. Then have I told you most of my trade all the livelong day; what wUl you now ? God save the Queen and my Lord. Farewell. I thank you. " Herewith meaned I fully to bid you farewell, had not the doubt come into my mind that here remains a doubt in you which I ought (methought) in anywise to clear, which is ye marvel, perchance, to see me so bookish. Let me tell you, in few words, I went to school, forsooth, both at Paul's and also at St. Anthony's. In the fifth form passed .^sop's Fables, and was read in Terence, vos istac intro cumfeste, and began with my Virgil, Tityre tu patulce. I conned my rules, could construe and parse with the best of them ; since then, as partly you know, have I traded the feat of merchandise in sundry countries, and so got me languages, which do so little know my Latin, as I thank God have much increased it. I have leisure sometimes, when I tend not upon the Council, whereby now look I on one book never, another glories and delights in, — the more ancient and rare the more likesome tome. If I told you I liked William of Malmes- bury so well, because of his diligence and integrity, per- LANEHAM. 219 chance you would construe it because I love malmsey so well. But, i'faith, it is not so, for sipt I no more such sugar (and yet never but with company) than I do malm- sey, I should not thirst so much a days as I do; you know my mind. " Well now thus fare ye heartily well i'faith. I'faith, wishing it could have been ye had had a buck or two this summer ; but we shall come nearer shortly, and then shall we merrily meet, an grace o' God. In the meantime commend me, I beseech you, unto my good friends, almost most of them your neighbours. Master Alderman Pattison, a special friend of mine ; and in anywise to my good old friend Master Smith. Customer, by that same token, get my horse up to the rack, and then let's have a cup of sack. He knows the token well enough, and will laugh, and hold you a groat. To Master Thorogood, and to my merry companion, a mercer, you know, as we be. Master Denman, — mio fratello in Christe, — he is wont to sum- mon me by the name of Eo. La. of the county of Nos- ingham, Gent. ; a good companion, i'faith. Well, once again fare ye heartily well. From the Court at the city of Worcester, the twentieth day of August, 1575." In another place this Elizabeth Pepys does not forget to allude to his skill in music. " J'ai bien v