ephemeral literature, the more their productions were purchased. These men, who lived amongst the irregular frequenters of taverns and play-houses, had a keen eye for observing the various forms of crime and imposture which presented themselves in London; and their racy descriptions of "Coneycatching," and of the more daring "Villainies," were amongst the most popular of pamphlets. We should do great injustice to the morals of the community if we were to conclude from these representations that society was then mainly composed of two classes-the rogues and the gulls. The natural attraction of the subject led to the production of such descriptions in an age before police-reports; and the amplitude of the details has induced some in recent times to assign far too large a proportion of folly and roguery to the composition of Elizabethan society. Cutpurses there were in abundance. There were gangs of thieves "under Pancras " and at “Hyde Park Corner."* Fleetwood, the recorder, is wearied out of his equanimity by the multitude of rogues for whom he has to make search. When he catches them, and the gallows is ready, gentlemen of the court can baulk justice by reprieves.† Within the city walls there is watch and ward, not altogether ineffectual; but the suburbs are wholly unprotected. The northern side of London and Westminster is almost wholly fields and woods; and the "ways over the country," from Finsbury-field, covered with trees and windmills, to Kilburn, with its solitary priory, surrounded by a real "St. John's Wood," are familiar to robbers by day and night. The "Marribone justice," who lives in these rural parts far away from city magistrates, is the warrant-granter of the district. But the metropolis and its suburbs of the days of Fielding could match their robbers for numbers and audacity against those of Fleetwood. Let us not imagine chat the times of Elizabeth were marked by more than usual enormities. The gallows then consumed about three hundred annual victims; but the hangmen of Henry VIII. had to operate upon two thousand in each average year. Hanging was the one remedy; and its efficacy did not begin to be much doubted till the present century. The increase of London through the rapid progress of commerce, and of Westminster as the seat of government and of legal administration, constantly brought thither a large class of "valiant and sturdy rogues, masterless men, vagrants, and maimed Norden's" Essex," Camden Society. ↑ See Ellis, First Series, vol. ii. pp. 283, 291, 299. STATUTES AGAINST INCREASE OF BUILDINGS. 203 soldiers."* Splendid houses connected the City with Westminster, some of which, in the Strand, were standing at the beginning of the present century. But a dense population was beginning to crowd into obscure alleys. In 1580 a proclamation was issued against the erection of new buildings in London. The number of beggars, it alleged, was increased; there was greater danger of fire and of the plague; the old open spaces for walking and for sports were enclosed; the trouble of governing so great a multitude was become too great. By a statute of 1593 it was provided that no new buildings should be erected in London and Westminster, or within three miles, unless they were fit for the habitation of persons assessed at 57. in goods or 37. in land. Houses were not to be converted into separate dwellings. By the increase of buildings, it is said, "great infection of sickness, and dearth of victuals and fuel, hath grown and ensued, and many idle, vagrant, and wicked persons have harboured there." In 1602, the Act had been so ineffectual, that a proclamation was issued for pulling down newly-built houses. "Little was done," says Stow," and small effect followed." The increase of the poorer classes was sought to be prevented in the country districts upon the same principle. By a statute of 1589, no cottage was to be erected, unless four acres of land were perpetually annexed to the holding; and one family only was to occupy the tenement. The system might be a temporary expedient; but long experience, and in the case of Ireland bitter adversity, have shown how incompatible is the principle of small holdings of land with the proper cultivation of the country, and the inevitable increase of population as a generation succeeds that must be driven forth into irregular means of subsistence. the It was in the merciful spirit which produced the Act for the relief of the Poor of the 39th Elizabeth, that, in the same year, Legislature placed the endowment of hospitals,or alms-houses, upon a new footing. By a special Act of Parliament the earl of Leicester had been enabled to found his hospital at Warwick,-an institution which still remains to make the observer doubt whether the favourite of the great queen was altogether so bad a man as historians have chosen to represent. Other hospitals had been founded by special license under the Great Seal. By this Act any person might, within twenty years, found and establish, with an adequate provision of land, "hospitals, maisons de Dieu, abiding • Stow. places, or houses of correction, as well for the sustentation and relief of the maimed poor, needy, or impotent people, as to set the poor to work; and from time to time place therein such head and members, and such number of poor, as to him shall seem convenient."* By an Act of the 21st James I., this statute was made perpetual. Such foundations, which are numerous throughout the land, are enduring monuments of the kindly spirit of our ancestors; and others have been established in the same spirit by associations in modern times. The purposes of many of the old endowments have been abused; their funds have been misapplied; but the value of such institutions has been universally felt as decent retreats for the unprosperous-resting-places, before the final restingplace, where poverty may exist without degradation. As early as 1563 the Legislature had declared that the Statutes for the regulation of 'Wages could not be enforced, on account of the advancement of prices. The unnatural advances that had been produced by the depreciation of the currency, in previous reigns, had been wisely remedied in 1560 by reducing the coin of the realm to a just standard. But there were causes in operation which tended to a steady rise in the market-rate of all commodities. The influx of the precious metals had begun decidedly to produce this effect; and concurrently with that increase the condition of the great body of the people was greatly improving, so that there was a more universal demand for every necessary of life. This demand produced a consequent rise of price. In the half century from 1550 to 1599, the average price of wheat had risen 100 per cent. This advance of prices is no indication of a more impoverished condition of the labourers, but the contrary. The increase of the market rate gave an impulse to production; and the cultivation of the land necessarily went on improving. But the improvements were too slow,-the amount of agricultural produce too entirely dependent upon good or bad seasons,-so that the utmost misery was occasionally produced by excessive fluctuations in price. Wheat was at a famine price in 1573, in 1586 and 1587, in 1596 the price per quarter in those terrible seasons of scarcity being as high, or higher, than the average prices of the present times. Temporary relief was given, in some places, by buying up corn, and selling it at a reduced rate. The necessity in the summer of 1587 was so extreme, that some foreign hulks, belonging to the subjects of a friendly power, were seized by English vessels, and brought † See ante, p. 40. * 39 Eliz. c. 5. INCIDENTAL CAUSES OF INDIGENCE. 205 into Weymouth, being laden with corn and provisions for Spain. The Council held that they might be compelled to sell their corn; but wisely did not attempt to enforce such a violation of commercial freedom. The mayor of Weymouth had hoped that a compulsory sale of these stores would relieve the distresses of that part of the country.* Such fluctuations of price were amongst the most bitter inflictions that poverty had to bear. The plague was a necessary attendant upon any dearth approaching to famine, The general health of the people was habitually inferior to the sanitory condition of our own days. Medical knowledge was to a great extent empirical. The universal system of blood-letting twice a year was likely to produce more maladies than it averted. Those who lived in detached cottages and small villages were subject to fevers, from the ill-drained lands by which they were surrounded. Those who lived in towns had to endure the pestilent nuisances of the streets, which no magisterial power could keep clean. The scarcity of fuel made the mud-built cottages, in which chimneys were still rare, miserably cold in winter. The thatched cottages of the towns were often on fire; and the rapid destruction of whole streets produced the greatest misery, when the protection of fire insurance was unknown. Such were some of the many causes that reduced the poor to helpless indigence, and which sometimes prostrated even the comparatively wealthy. It was a state of society in which a merciful provision for the relief of the poor was one of the great exigencies of the time. The old laws which equally consigned crime and misery to the fetter and the whip had happily died out. Roberts's "Southern Counties," p. 212. CHAPTER XI. Death of lord Burleigh.-Death of Philip II.-Condition of Ireland.-Rebellion of Tyrone.-Essex appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.-His bootless campaign.— Essex suddenly returns to England.-He is committed to free custody, and then suspended from his offices.-His discontent, and schemes for redress.-Armed assembly at Essex-House.-Attempt at insurrection.-Essex and Southampton tried for high-treason.-Conduct of Bacon on that trial.-Essex executed.-Scotland.-The Gowrie conspiracy.—The last parliament of Elizabeth.-Debates on a subsidy.-Bill for abating monopolies.--The queen's wisdom in yielding to public opinion.-Death of Elizabeth.-Note on the story of Essex's ring. In August, 1598, died William Cecil, lord Burleigh, the faithful counsellor of Elizabeth for forty years. He was the acknowledged head, by character as well as by office, of that illustrious band, whom Mr. Macaulay terms "the first generation of statesmen by profession that England produced." His consummate prudence, his large experience, his perfect adaptation to the nature of his royal mistress, made his long tenure of power almost as much a political necessity as the security of the throne itself. In his last illness Elizabeth sent him a cordial, saying "that she did entreat Heaven for his longer life; else would her people, nay herself, stand in need of cordials too." * Months after his death, it was written of the queen that her highness “doth often speak of him in tears, and turn aside when he is discoursed of."† Burleigh, like Elizabeth herself, had a deep and abiding sense of responsibili- · ty. Walsingham, seeing him come in from prayers, wished he were as good a servant of God as the lord treasurer, "but that he had not been at church for a week past." The reply of Burleigh is worthy to be held in remembrance: "I hold it meet for us to ask God's grace to keep us sound at heart who have so much in our power; and to direct us to the well-doing of all the people, whom it is easy for us to injure and ruin." Cecil, Walsingham, Smith, Mildmay, Nicholas Bacon, were themselves of the people. They were English gentlemen-the best depositaries of political power that our country has produced; with broader views for the common welfare than the views of the intriguing churchmen, and ↑ Ibid., p. 244. * Harrington,, "Nugæ Antiquæ,” p. 237. |