CHAPTER XXI.-HISTORY OF SOCIETY.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VII. (A.D. 1485), TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH (A.D. 1603).

Increase of the royal authority by the suppression of feudalism-Absolute rule of the Tudors-Their despotic enactments-Reaction on the succession of the Stuarts-The courts of Star Chamber and High CommissionProgress of the national commerce-Countries over which it extended-Commercial ports of England-Discovery of America-Its effects on English commercial enterprise-Introduction of foreign workmen and manufactures-Improvement of the national navy--Laws against usury-Trade with the Netherlands-Establishment of the Royal Exchange in London-English maritime discoveries-Colonization of new countries -State of commerce in the reign of Elizabeth-Internal traffic of the country-English fairs-Agricultural progress-Farms and their occupants-Modes of living among the agricultural classes-Improvement of their condition-Causes of the improvement-Architecture of the period-Introduction of the Tudor style-Its peculiarities-Noble mansions-Their chief characteristics-Mansions of the aristocracy-Their retinues and furniture-Meals and banquets-Increased refinement and splendour of a feast-Table observances-Introduction of coaches into England-Dress and personal ornaments of the Elizabethan period-Rich and extravagant style of aristocratic life-Rapiers as part of costume-Growth and state of London-Its streets-Its buildings-Furniture of the houses-London 'prentices-Civic banquets-Style of domestic life in LondonUse of tobacco-Public sports and games-Various modes of hunting-Horse-races-Cock-fighting-Bearbaiting-Bell-ringing-In-door sports-Dancing-Card-playing-Merelles-Games with dice, &c.-Festivals -Joyous observances of May-day-The Maypole-War of Puritanism against maypoles-The play of Robin Hood-Observances of St. Valentine's Day-Of New Year's Day-Anniversaries of the national saints-Other saints' days-Observances of Midsummer Eve-Ceremony of setting the watch-Defective lighting of the streets of London-London watchmen of the period-Celebration of Easter-Easter holidays-Christmas— Lord of Misrule-Christmas excesses- -King of the Bean-Pope of Fools-Boy Bishop-Plough Monday-Progress of learning-Establishment of new colleges-Effects of the Reformation on learning-Learned men of England-Learned ladies-English poets of this period-Stephen Hawes-Alexander Barklay-John Skelton William Roy-John Heywood-Lord Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt-Other poets-Edmund SpenserHis poetry. Condition of Scotland-State of its commerce-Of its ship-building-Style of living of the Scottish aristocracy-Their castles-Domestic life of the Scots-Costume-Slow progress of refinement in Scottish living-Sports of Scotland-Miracle and mystery plays-Active games-Football, &c.-Penny weddings -Funeral observances-Progress of learning in Scotland-Establishment of King's College, Aberdeen-Of Edinburgh university-High School of Edinburgh-Course of instruction at the universities-Learned Scots of the period-Erskine of Dun-John Knox-Andrew Melvil-George Buchanan-Scottish poets-William Dunbar-Gawin Douglas-Sir David Lindsay-James V. Condition of Ireland-Unchanged state of the people-Their barbarism confirmed by the English conquest-Continued rebellion of the Irish-Their love of news and gambling-Their modes of warfare-Sufferings endured in their revolts-Classes of Irish societyTheir chiefs-Mole of electing and inaugurating a chief-Brehon laws-The Eric-Style of living among the chiefs-Cosherings-Coign and livery-Patriarchal system of their government-Fosterships-Office of foster father-Fileas or bards-Their poetry-Irish schools-Priests-Gallowglasses and kerns-Their modes of warfare and their weapons-The tie of gossipred-Domestic life of the Irish-Their costume-Cookery and diet-Strange and barbarous dishes-Their drinks.

HE first effect of the suppression of feudalism in England was the increase of the royal authority. This was the inevitable result of the destruction, or, at least, the suspension, of that middle or balancing power by which the despotism of the king and the democracy of the people had been alternately held in check. The conflict now lay between the monarch and his subjects-between the one man who ruled with unchecked and unlimited authority, and the masses who had not yet fully learned their own power, or the mode of using it. In this way, the one man was more than a match for the many. But, besides this, the restoration of the old nobility, or the creation of a

new, was an exercise of regal authority of which the Tudor dynasty could largely avail themselves, in surrounding their throne, not with a hostile and rival, but a grateful and subservient aristocracy; for the new nobles were not slow to learn, that the same power which had made, could also unmake them at pleasure. But a third source of power which the new dynasty possessed, lay in the transition state which the religion of the country was now undergoing, and the apprehension of a coming change. Was the long established creed of England to be established in greater permanency than ever; or be left to struggle unaided against that formidable Lollardism, which was so soon, under the name of Protestantism, to shake every kingdom of

Europe, and effect a universal revolution? This throne; while failing these, Henry was empowquestion was of inferior importance in Scotland, ered to appoint a successor by letters-patent or where, as we have seen, the king was nothing by will-and that none might be ignorant that more than the chief nobleman of the state; and, Mary and Elizabeth were henceforth bastardized, accordingly, when the crisis arrived in that coun- it was made high treason to declare Henry's martry, the people could proscribe the old church riages with Catherine and Anne to have been and build up a new, not only without, but against good and lawful, or even directly or indirectly to the will of the sovereign. But very different accept, take, judge, or believe such a declaration. was the case in England. There, the regal power, These were but specimens of the despotic enactfounded in conquest and established by centu- ments which his several marriages occasioned. ries of rule, could still control every movement; Of a still more extravagant description were the and of this the two parties of religionists showed veering and contradictory statutes which he that they were conscious, by the solicitude with made in the articles of religious belief, by which which they watched the royal sentiments, and the Papist and Protestant suffered at the same price they were willing to pay for the royal con- stake; and the title he assumed of "Henry currence. This was especially the case when the VIII., by the grace of God, King of England, outburst of the Reformation brought the ques- France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and tion to full issue in England; and thus, while of the Church of England and also of Ireland, Henry VIII. was enabled to change the creed of on earth, the Supreme Head," while the attempt the country day after day according to his own to deprive him of this title amounted to the caprices, and punish every one who withheld his crime, and was to be visited with the penalties assent, Elizabeth was able to form and finish of high treason. To laws like these, the enactthat ecclesiastical polity, and those forms of wor-ments that were passed confirming his irresponship, which have continued in full authority to sible and unlimited right of rule, were nothing the present hour.

It is in these causes collectively that we are to understand the wondrous power of the Tudors, and the readiness of the nation to yield to it. Without these, general readers are unable to understand how the descendants of an obscure Welsh gentleman should have obtained, and that, too, so late as the sixteenth century, an amount of influence, and unrestrained authority of rule, which the English people had never accorded to the ablest and proudest of the Plantagenets. During the whole of the present period, the people sought a ruler, and even religious opinions a leader, and in both cases, the head of the state was recognized as the true and legitimate authority. As if this was not enough also, law was invoked to sanction what the crisis demanded, and the nation was so willing to concede; and these laws form a curious episode in the legislative history of England. Thus, when Henry VIII. divorced the unfortunate Catherine and married Anne Boleyn, it was enacted, that if any one by word, writing, or deed disturbed the royal rights of the king, or did anything derogatory to the rights of Queen Anne, or to her issue in their title to the crown, such offence should be high treason. Moreover, if any one by words only, should utter anything to the peril of the king, or the slander of his marriage with Queen Anne, or the slander or disherison of her issue by the marriage, he should be held guilty of misprision of treason. These statutes were repealed on the death of Anne, but they were renewed in favour of Jane Seymour, whose offspring by the king, should there be any, were now to succeed to the

more than natural consequents; and therefore it was decreed, that when the emergency was sudden, and a parliament could not be conveniently called, the king, with advice of his council, "might set forth proclamations, with pains and penalties in them, which were to be obeyed as if they were made by an act of parliament."

Amidst this spirit of abject adulation, it was fortunate for the kingdom that Elizabeth had neither husbands to behead, nor children to disinherit. Still, however, such was the despotism of her rule, and the success of her measures, that both parliament and people were willing to concede to her the same despotic authority that had been granted to her predecessor. This was shown in the parliament assembled A.D. 1601, when the propriety of certain patents granted to courtiers by royal gift was called in question. In this case, it was declared by the advocates of royal rule, that absolute princes, such as were the sovereigns of England, were a kind of divinities; that their prerogative was neither to be canvassed, nor disputed, nor examined, as from its nature alone it could admit of no limitation; and that the queen had two powers over the law, one restraining, and the other preventive, so that she might set free what was limited by statute, or restrain that which had been proclaimed to be free. Nay, it was even added, that this royal power could not only insert clauses in any statute, but make void any clause it had itself inserted. Fortunately for such a delicate discussion, the queen received this appeal against the patents favourably, and forthwith annulled them, upon which the gratitude of the parliament knew

pear to have been London, Coventry, Norwich, Chester, Worcester, Exeter, York, Bristol, Southampton, Boston, Hull, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The progress of commerce, indeed, which depends so much upon freedom of action, was so hampered at the outset by those corporate privileges that confined the carrying on of most trades and handicraft professions, to such as were free of the corporation or members of a guild, that some of the oldest of these towns were even already falling into decay. This was especially the case with Coventry, York, Chester and Lancaster, Lincoln and Winchester, where it was complained that the streets were deserted, and the houses falling to decay, in consequence of persons unprivileged repairing to other towns where no such restrictions existed. As an offset, however, to this evil, the hitherto obscure villages of Manchester and Liverpool were fast rising into that importance which was afterwards to distinguish them as the great commercial and manufacturing cities of England.

well have been otherwise, not only from the cha- | mercial towns in England during this time apracter of the sovereigns who had now succeeded to the English throne, but the new world that was opened up to commercial enterprise through the discoveries of Columbus and his successors. The peaceful reign of Henry VII., as well as his money-loving disposition, induced him to turn his attention to the important subject of national trade and manufactures, which he regarded as the best source for the supply of his own exchequer; and although some of his enactments, especially against usury, by which the taking of interest was meant, were marked by the inexperience and narrowness of the times, old commercial treaties were renewed, and new ones formed, by which the greater part of Europe was laid open to English traffic. This range of action comprised the following countries and ports:Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Pisa, Florence, Venice, Spain, Seville, Portugal, France, Brittany, Normandy, Danzig, Eastland, and Friesland. The chief English export to these places still continued to be wool, either in its natural state, or made into cloth. During this reign also, in addition to the woollen manufacture, that of silk was introduced into England, not however in the form of weaving, but knitting, and was carried on by females, who were called "silk-women." This kind of manufacture, besides, was extremely limited, and the chief articles made by it were "ribbons, laces, girdles, corses, cauls, and corses of tissues or points." The principal comconnection of the south of France with England in early times are still extant. In Depping's Histoire du Commerce entre le Levant et l'Europe, we learn that "a note is still preserved from the household of the King of England, Henry III., at Bordeaux, ordering at Montpellier, not only twenty pieces of silk stuffs and four of scarlet cloth, but further, three gourds of preserved ginger." M. Depping translates tres curdas de gyngibracco, trois gourdes de gingembre confit; but it seems more likely that three squares of ginger tablet are meant; so that the king had to send to Montpellier for what may now be had by the poorest children, either for halfpence, or in exchange for rags, bones, or broken glass. From the same author we learn that at a time when the coasts of France in general were dreaded by merchants, whose ships, in case of their running aground, were exposed to wreckers, and became the property of the lord of the manor, the whole coast was not thus forsaken. "Bordeaux long appertained to the English, and it was there that the wools of England arrived, for distribution in the south of France, and for embarkation in the Mediterranean ports, for other quarters. It is likely that Bordeaux was an entrepôt for the English of the productions of the Levant consigned to Great Britain. The wines of Bordeaux formed a considerable article of export. Edward I. favoured the introduction of them into England in 1302, asking only, as entry duty, a penny the pipe." And again: "England took no great part during the Middle Ages in the Levant trade, and people were far from foreseeing that one day she would lord it over India. For a long period she could furnish only raw materials, such as wools and peltry. Foreigners brought her the many objects she required, and took those two articles in return. Florentine merchants bargained with the monasteries for the purchase of all their clips of wool for one or more years. Considerable cargoes of these wools were sent to Guienne and Languedoc, from which, as I have said, they were transmitted to Italy" vol. ii. p. 337). Free trade flourished in England in the fourteenth century, but seemed to become more and more

It was during the reign of this king that an event occurred which might have had a fearful influence upon the commercial history of the country. This was the arrival in England of the brother of Columbus. When the great discoverer of America had convinced himself that immense regions were still in existence, and but awaited the search of a skilful and daring explorer, he not only repaired to different courts in the hope restricted under the Tudors and Stuarts. M. Depping notes the insigne privilegium granted by Edward I. in 1303, and confirmed by Edward III., permitting all foreigners (thirteen countries are named) to trade in England with the natives and each other, to retail mercer's wares and spices, and freely to export merchandise bought in England, on simple payment of customs dues. But a kind of voluntary tax was at the same time to be paid by these merchants, chiefly on wools and skins, and on imported wax, scarlet cloth, and other articles (vol. ii. p. 338). No doubt a law so favourable to strangers, must have drawn to England many of the persecuted Albigenses from Guienne and Languedoc.

This free trade, far from hurting the manufactures of England, as many of the earlier financiers were likely to predict, seems to have promoted them. "About the middle of the fourteenth century," says Depping, "an English company, which had taken the name of Thomas Becket, undertook the exportation of English cloths. Since Edward III. had sent for and protected the weavers of Flanders, the English cloth manufacture had been brought to perfection. Instead of continuing to sell raw wools to foreigners, and to buy from them the fine cloths they had made from those wools, the English themselves made fine cloths, which were exported by the German merchants along with the cloths of Flanders as far as to Russia. In the fifteenth century, the English cloths were even to be seen in the markets of Italy. Rome and Tuscany received them. . . . The English House of Commons never ceased to call for restrictions on foreign industry: they obtained the prohibition of the importation of foreign tissues; in 1381, exports and imports by foreign vessels were prohibited; and, finally, so far did Henry VII., Lord Bacon's model king, depart from the wise policy of Edwards I. and III., that he engaged by treaty to send to the port of Pisa, in English vessels, the wool required by the Florentine manufacturers, and to furnish them to no other nation excepting Venice."-See Hist. du Commerce, &c., vol. ii. pp. 338-310.

of obtaining royal aid to fit out an armament of discovery, but sent his brother Bartholomew to Henry VII. upon the same mission. Bartholomew was captured on his voyage to England by pirates, and did not reach London till after long delay; and during the interval, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain had acceded to the proposals of Christopher, and supplied him with the required aid. In this way, the paralysis of industry, as well as the terrible accumulation of national guilt which the useless gold of America entailed upon Spain, were happily escaped by England, and her own native energies left free and untrammelled. | The discovery of a new world, however, could not be effected without stirring up a kindred emulation, and Henry VII., as far as his parsimony would allow him, became a candidate in the competition. In 1496 he intrusted a small armament to John Cabot, a Venetian, and his three sons, for a voyage in quest of unknown countries, and the result was the discovery of the coast of Labrador. This was but a trifling achievement in an era so fraught with discoveries, more especially as the exploration of Cabot was never of any particular use to England. It was not indeed in this way that she was to be benefited by the nautical enterprise of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which she was left far behind. She had only to await her time, when her own superior industry and perseverance would win from their present possessors these fertile realms and islands, and turn them to their proper account.

only bitter complaints were the consequence, but desperate riots, in which the foreign workmen were exposed to the peril of a general massacre. As this hostile feeling on the part of the native manufacturers still continued, a soothing measure was attempted eight years afterwards, by which it was decreed, that no stranger, born out of the English dominions, should take any apprentice who was not a native, under a penalty of £10; and that he should not keep more than two foreign journeymen at the same time. In foreign trade, the Netherlands was still the great resort of the English merchants, the chief emporium of which was Antwerp, where English wool and cloths were sold, and every kind of foreign commodity purchased in return. As the continental wars of Henry VIII., however, subjected this communication to several interruptions, the English merchants endeavoured to repair the evil, not so much by attempting to discover new countries for themselves, as by trading to those already discovered. In this way, Guinea and Brazil became trading marts, in addition to the ports that were frequented in Europe and Asia; but these new experiments, which were afterwards to be so successful, were at first prosecuted with extreme caution. The English merchants also still continued to use foreign vessels and crews in preference to their own shipping, when the voyage was supposed to be attended with peculiar difficulty. The reign, however, of Heury VIII, unprofitable though it was to the kingdom in other respects, was signally advantageous in proIf the peaceful reign of Henry VII., and the moting naval skill and enterprise among his subcaution with which he avoided the search after jects-and for this, at least, he will ever deserve remote El Dorados in an age of such adventure, a grateful commemoration in our national history. were favourable to the development of natural He carried his ideas of stateliness and magnifiindustry and the healthful increase of manufac- cence into ship-building, so that the vessels contures and commerce, the result was more favour- structed by his orders were the largest that had able still under the administration of his succes-hitherto been launched from an English docksor. On his accession to the throne, Henry VIII. | yard. Of these, the Regent, built at Woolwich lost no time in squandering the immense hoard in 1512, has been particularly commemorated. which his father had so avariciously gathered; It was of 1000 tons burden, and carried 700 sailand although he sought nothing further in this ors, soldiers, and gunners; and when this ship proceeding than his own gratification, the circu- was blown up, with all its crew, in a naval enlation of such a capital gave that stimulus to gagement off Brest, only a few months after it trade which ready money is always sure to im- had put to sea, he caused another still larger to part. At the same time, the love of luxury and be built in its room, called the Henry Grace de rich attire which such an example introduced, Dieu. By the royal navy which he thus created, was naturally caught by his courtiers, from whom amounting to 12,500 tons, he was unconsciously it descended to the middle classes; and thus, preparing for that fearful tug of war which the while every kind of rich cloth was imported from Spanish Armada soon afterwards occasioned. abroad in quantities hitherto unprecedented, fo- But Henry in these important labours did not reign workmen in every kind of manufacture re-exclusively confine himself to ship-building. He paired to London, and introduced that skill in workmanship which our countrymen afterwards carried to such perfection. Of course, this introduction could not be effected in the first instance without rousing the national jealousy; and not

also instituted the first navy office with its various functionaries; established the "Corporation of the Trinity House of Deptford," which he also extended to Hull and Newcastle; and originated the naval store-houses and yards of Deptford