DIGRESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH.
RESULTS PRODUCED BY THE AGE OF FAITH.
_Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries._
_Condition of England at the close of the seventeenth
Century.--Locomotion, Literature, Libraries.--Social and private Life of
the Laity and Clergy.--Brutality in the Administration of
Law.--Profligacy of Literature.--The Theatre, its three
Phases.--Miracle, Moral, and Real Plays._
_Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith.--Comparison with that
already made in the Age of Reason._
[Sidenote: Results of the Age of Faith.] Arrived at the commencement of
the Age of Reason, we might profitably examine the social condition of
those countries destined to become conspicuous in the new order of
things. I have not space to present such an examination as extensively
as it deserves, and must limit my remarks to that nation which, of all
others, is most interesting to the English or American reader--that
England which we picture to ourselves as foremost in civilization, her
universities dating back for many centuries; her charters and laws, on
which individual, and therefore social, liberty rests, spoken of as the
ancient privileges of the realm; her people a clear-headed race, lovers
and stout defenders of freedom. [Sidenote: The social condition produced
in England.] During by far the greater part of the past period she had
been Catholic, but she had also been Reformed--ever, as she will always
be, religious. A correct estimate of her national and individual life
will point out to us all that had been done in the Age of Faith. From
her condition we may gather what is the progress made by man when guided
by such theological ideas as those which had been her rule of life.
The following paragraphs convey an instructive lesson. They dissipate
some romantic errors; they are a verdict on a political system from its
practical results. What a contrast with the prodigious advancement made
within a few years when the Age of Reason had set in! How strikingly are
we reminded of the inconsequential, the fruitless actions of youth, and
the deliberate, the durable undertakings of manhood!
For many of the facts I have now to mention the reader will find
authorities in the works of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Froude on English
history. My own reading in other directions satisfies me that the
picture here offered represents the actual condition of things.
[Sidenote: Condition at the suppression of the monasteries.] At the time
of the suppression of the monasteries in England the influences which
had been in operation for so many centuries had come to an end. Had they
endured a thousand years longer they could have accomplished nothing
more. The condition of human life shows what their uses and what their
failures had been. There were forests extending over great districts;
fens forty or fifty miles in length, reeking with miasm and fever,
though round the walls of the abbeys there might be beautiful gardens,
green lawns, shady walks, and many murmuring streams. In trackless woods
where men should have been, herds of deer were straying; the sandy hills
were alive with conies, the downs with flocks of bustards. The peasant's
cabin was made of reeds or sticks plastered over with mud. His fire was
chimneyless--often it was made of peat. In the objects and manner of his
existence he was but a step above the industrious beaver who was
building his dam in the adjacent stream. There were highwaymen on the
roads, pirates on the rivers, vermin in abundance in the clothing and
beds. The common food was peas, vetches, fern roots, and even the bark
of trees. There was no commerce to put off famine. Man was altogether at
the mercy of the seasons. The population, sparse as it was, was
perpetually thinned by pestilence and want. Nor was the state of the
townsman better than that of the rustic; his bed was a bag of straw,
with a hard round log for his pillow. If he was in easy circumstances,
his clothing was of leather, if poor, a wisp of straw wrapped round his
limbs kept off the cold. It was a melancholy social condition when
nothing intervened between reed cabins in the fen, the miserable wigwams
of villages, and the conspicuous walls of the castle and monastery. Well
might they who lived in those times bewail the lot of the ague-stricken
peasant, and point, not without indignation, to the troops of pilgrims,
mendicants, pardoners, and ecclesiastics of every grade who hung round
the Church, to the nightly wassail and rioting drunkenness in the
castle-hall, secure in its moats, its battlements, and its warders. The
local pivots round which society revolved were the red-handed baron,
familiar with scenes of outrage and deeds of blood, and the abbot,
indulging in the extreme of luxury, magnificent in dress, exulting in
his ambling palfrey, his hawk, his hounds. Rural life had but little
improved since the time of Caesar; in its physical aspect it was
altogether neglected. As to the mechanic, how was it possible that he
could exist where there were no windows made of glass, not even of oiled
paper, no workshop warmed by a fire. For the poor there was no
physician, for the dying the monk and his crucifix. The aim was to
smooth the sufferer's passage to the next world, not to save him for
this. Sanitary provisions there were none except the paternoster and the
ave. In the cities the pestilence walked unstayed, its triumphs numbered
by the sounds of the death-crier in the streets or the knell for the
soul that was passing away.
Our estimate of the influence of the system under which men were thus
living as a regulator of their passions may at this point derive much
exactness from incidents such as those offered by the history of
syphilis and the usages of war. For this purpose we may for a moment
glance at the Continent.
[Sidenote: Moral state indicated by the spread of syphilis,] The
attention of all Europe was suddenly arrested by a disease which broke
out soon after the discovery of America. It raged with particular
violence in the French army commanded by Charles VIII. at the siege of
Naples, A.D. 1495, and spread almost like an epidemic. It was syphilis.
Though there have been medical authors who supposed that it was only an
exacerbation of a malady known from antiquity, that opinion cannot be
maintained after the learned researches of Astruc. That it was something
recognized at the time as altogether new seems to be demonstrated by the
accusations of different nations against each other of having given
origin to it. Very soon, however, the truth appeared. It had been
brought by the sailors of Columbus from the West Indies. Its true
character, and the conditions of its propagation, were fully established
by Fernel.
[Sidenote: and by the usages of war.] Now, giving full weight to the
fact that the virulence of a disease may be greatest at its first
invasion, but remembering that there is nothing in the history of
syphilis that would lead us to suppose it ever was, or indeed could be
infectious, but only contagious, or communicated by direct contact from
person to person; remembering also the special circumstances under
which, in this disease, that contagion is imparted, the rapidity of its
spread all over Europe is a significant illustration of the fearful
immorality of the times. If contemporary authors are to be trusted,
there was not a class, married, or unmarried, clergy or laity, from the
holy father, Leo X., to the beggar by the wayside, free from it. It
swept over Europe, not as Asiatic cholera has done, running along the
great lines of trade, and leaving extensive tracts untouched, settling
upon and devastating great cities here and there, while others had an
immunity. The march of syphilis was equable, unbroken, universal, making
good its ground from its point of appearance in the south-west, steadily
and swiftly taking possession of the entire Continent, and offering an
open manifestation and measure of the secret wickedness of society.
If thus the sins man practises in privacy became suddenly and
accidentally exposed, that exposure showing how weak is the control that
any system can exercise over human passions, we are brought to the same
melancholy conclusion when we turn to those crimes that may be
perpetrated in the face of day. The usages of war in the civil contests
of the fifteenth century, or in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth
and seventeenth, are perfectly appalling; the annals of those evil days
are full of wanton and objectless barbarities, refusal of quarter,
murder in cold blood, killing of peasants. Invading armies burnt and
destroyed everything in their way; the taking of plunder and ransom of
prisoners were recognized sources of wealth. Prosperous countries were
made "a sea of fire;" the horrible atrocities of the Spaniards in
America were rivalled by those practised in Europe; deliberate
directions were given to make whole tracts "a desert." Attempts had been
made to introduce some amelioration into warfare again and again, either
by forbidding hostilities at certain times, as was the object of the
"truces of God," repeatedly enforced by ecclesiastical authority, or by
establishing between the combatants themselves courtesies which are at
once the chief grace and glory of chivalry; but, to judge by the result
as offered, even so late as the eighteenth century, those attempts must
be regarded as having proved altogether abortive.
[Sidenote: Backward condition of England.] England, at the close of the
Age of Faith, had for long been a chief pecuniary tributary to Italy,
the source from which large revenues had been drawn, the fruitful field
in which herds of Italian ecclesiastics had been pastured. A wonderful
change was impending. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the
island was far more backward intellectually and politically than is
commonly supposed. Its population hardly reached five millions, and was
stationary at that point, not so much because of the effects of civil
and foreign war as merely through the operation of ordinary economical
causes. There was no reason to call more men into existence. It was
regarded as good statesmanship to maintain the population at a constant
standard. The municipal policy corresponded to the national; it was not
so much advanced as that contemporaneously existing in Peru. [Sidenote:
Apparent decline of her prosperity.] Swarms of idle ecclesiastics had
set such a pernicious example that the indisposition among common people
to work had become quite a formidable difficulty. In every village there
were stocks for the punishment of "valiant beggars," as they were
termed. By the act of 1531, vagrants "whole and mighty in body" caught
begging for the first time might be whipped at the cart-tail; the second
time their ears were to be slit; by the act of 1536, if caught the third
time they were to be put to death. In all directions large towns were
falling into decay, a misfortune popularly attributed to the laziness of
the lower orders, but in reality due to causes of a very different kind.
Hitherto land had been the representative of authority and the source of
power. Society had been organized upon that imperfect basis; a
descending scale of landed proprietors had been established, and in that
system every man had a place assigned to him, just as in Peru, though
less perfectly. It was a system of organized labour, the possession of
land being a trust, not a property. But now commerce was beginning to
disturb the foundations on which all these arrangements had been
sustained, and to compel a new distribution of population; trading
companies were being established; men were unsettled by the rumours or
realities of immense fortunes rapidly gained in foreign adventure.
Maritime enterprise was thus not only dislocating society, but even
destroying its spirit, substituting self-interest for loyalty.
[Sidenote: It is imputed to the clergy.] A nation so illiterate that
many of its peers in Parliament could neither read nor write, was hardly
able to trace the troubles befalling it to their proper source; with one
voice it imputed them to the bad example and shortcomings of the clergy.
Long before Henry VIII., England was ready for the suppression of the
monasteries. She regarded them as the very hot-beds of her evils. There
were incessant complaints against the clergy for their scandalous lusts,
for personal impurities such as in modern times we do not allude to, for
their holding livings in plurality, for their extortion of exorbitant
profits, and neglect in the discharge of their duty. [Sidenote: Causes
of irritation of the laity against the clergy.] In public opinion, to so
great an extent had these immoralities gone that it was openly asserted
that there were one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by
the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in London for
their use. It was affirmed that the confessional was shamefully abused,
and, through it, advantage taken of females; that the vilest crime in an
ecclesiastic might be commuted for money, six shillings and eightpence
being sufficient in the case of mortal sin. Besides these general causes
of complaint, there were some which, though of a minor, were not of a
less irritating kind; such for instance, as the mortuary, soul-shot, or
corpse present, a claim for the last dress worn by persons brought to a
priest for burial, or some exaggerated commutation thereof.
[Sidenote: Accusation against the clergy by the House of Commons.] That
such was the demoralized condition of the English Church, and such its
iniquitous relations to the people, we have the most unimpeachable
evidence, under circumstances of an imposing and solemn character. The
House of Commons brought an accusation against the clergy before the
king. When Parliament met A.D. 1529, that House, as its very first act,
declared to the sovereign that sedition and heresy were pervading the
land, and that it had become absolutely necessary to apply a corrective.
It affirmed that the troubles into which the realm had fallen were
attributable to the clergy; that the chief foundation, occasion, and
cause thereof was the parallel jurisdiction of the Church and State;
that the incompatible legislative authority of convocation lay at the
bottom of the mischief. Among other specific points it alleged the
following:--That the houses of convocation made laws without the royal
assent, and without the consent or even the knowledge of the people;
that such laws were never published in the English language, and that,
nevertheless, men were daily punished under them without ever having had
an opportunity to eschew the penalties; that the demoralization extended
from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the lowest priest, that
dignitary having tampered with the despatch of justice in his Court of
Arches; that parsons, vicars, priests, and curates were in the habit of
denying the administration of the sacraments save upon the payment of
money; that poor men were harrassed without any legal cause in the
spiritual courts for the mere purpose of extortion, and exorbitant fees
were exacted from them; that the probate of wills was denied except on
the gratification of the appetite of prelates and ordinaries for money;
that the high ecclesiastics extorted large sums for the induction of
persons into benefices, and that they did daily confer benefices on
"young folk," their nephews and relatives, being minors, for the purpose
of detaining the fruits and profits in their own hands; that the bishops
illegally imprisoned, sometimes for a year or more, persons in their
jails, without informing them of the cause of their imprisonment or the
name of their accuser; that simple, unlearned men, and even
"well-witted" ones, were entrapped by subtle questions into heresy in
the ecclesiastical courts, and punishment procured against them.
These are serious charges; they imply that the Church had degenerated
into a contrivance for the extortion of money. The House of Commons
petitioned the king to make such laws as should furnish a remedy. The
king submitted the petition to the bishops, and required of them an
answer.
[Sidenote: Reply of the bishops to that accusation.] In that answer the
ecclesiastical manner of thought is very striking. The bishops insist
that the laws of the realm shall give way to the canon law, or, if
incompatible, shall be altered so as to suit it; they identify attacks
on themselves with those on the doctrine of the Church, a time-honoured
and well-tried device; they affirm that they have no kind of enmity
against the laymen, "their ghostly children," but only against the
pestilent poison of heresy; that their authority for making laws is
grounded on the Scriptures, to which the laws of the realm must be made
to conform; that they cannot conscientiously permit the king's consent
to the laws, since that would be to put him in the stead of God, under
whose inspiration they are made; that, as to troubling poor men, it is
the Holy Ghost who inspireth them to acts tending to the wealth of his
elect folk, that, if any ecclesiastic hath offended in this respect,
though "in multis offendimus omnes," as St. James hath it, let him bear
his own fault, and let not the whole Church be blamed; that the
Protestants, their antagonists, are lewd, idle fellows, who have
embraced the abominable opinions recently sprung up in Germany; that
there are many advantages in commuting Church penances and censures for
money; that tithes are a divine institution, and that debts of money
owing to God may be recovered after one hundred or seven hundred years
of non-payment, since God can never lose his rights thereto; that,
however, it is not well to collect a tithe twice over; that priests may
lawfully engage in secular occupations of a certain kind; that the
punishments inflicted on the laymen have been for the health of their
souls, and that, generally, the saints may claim powers to which common
men are not entitled.
[Sidenote: The House passes the Clergy Discipline Act.] A fierce
struggle between the Commons and the bishops ensued; but the House was
firm, and passed several bills, and among them the Clergy Discipline
Act. The effect was to cut down ecclesiastical incomes, probate and
legacy duties were defined, mortuaries were curtailed, extortionate fees
for burial terminated, clergymen were forbidden to engage in farming,
tanning, brewing, or to buy merchandise for the purpose of selling it
again. It was made unlawful any longer to hold eight or nine benefices,
or to purchase dispensations for not doing duty. They were compelled to
reside in the parishes for the care of which they were paid, under
penalty of L10 a month; and it was made a high penal offence to obtain
dispensations from any of the provisions of this Act from Rome.
[Sidenote: The Church is compelled to submit.] Nothing could be more
significant of the position of the parties than the high-toned, the
conservative moderation of these Acts. The bishops did not yield,
however, without a struggle. In all directions from the pulpits arose a
cry of "atheism," "lack of faith," "heresy." But the House resolutely
stood to its ground. Still more, it sent its speaker to the king with a
complaint against the Bishop of Rochester, who had dared to stigmatize
it as "infidel." The bishop was compelled to equivocate and apologize.
[Sidenote: The king is sustained by his people.] The English nation and
their king were thus together in the suppression of the monasteries;
they were together in the enforcing of ecclesiastical reforms. It was
nothing but this harmony which so quickly brought the clergy to reason,
and induced them, in 1532, to anticipate both Parliament and the people
in actually offering to separate themselves from Rome. In the next year
the king had destroyed the vast power which in so many centuries had
gathered round ecclesiastical institutions, and had forced the clergy
into a fitting subordination. Henceforth there was no prospect that they
would monopolize all the influential and lucrative places in the realm;
henceforth, year by year, with many vicissitudes and changes, their
power continued to decline. Their special pursuit, theology, was
separated more and more perfectly from politics. In the House of Lords,
of which they had once constituted one-half, they became a mere shadow.
[Sidenote: Religious feeling of the nation changed.] Henry VIII. cannot,
therefore, be properly considered as the author of the downfall of
ecclesiasticism in England, though he was the instrument by which it was
ostensibly accomplished. The derisive insinuation that the Gospel light
had flashed upon him from Anna Boleyn's eyes was far from expressing all
the truth. The nullity of papal disciplines, excommunications,
interdicts, penances, proved that the old tone of thought was utterly
decayed. This oblivion of old emotions, this obsoleteness of old things,
was by no means confined to England. On the Continent the attacks of
Erasmus on the monks were everywhere received with applause. In 1527 one
printer issued an edition of 24,000 copies of the Colloquies of Erasmus,
and actually sold them all. He understood the signs of the times.
[Sidenote: State of England at the close of the seventeenth century.]
From this digression on parties and policy in England, let us again
return to special details, descending for that purpose to the close of
the seventeenth century. For a long time London had been the most
populous capital in Europe; yet it was dirty, ill built, without
sanitary provisions. The deaths were one in twenty-three each year; now,
in a much more crowded population, they are not one in forty. Much of
the country was still heath, swamp, warren. [Sidenote: Wild state of the
country.] Almost within sight of the city was a tract twenty-five miles
round nearly in a state of nature; there were but three houses in it.
Wild animals roamed here and there. It is incidentally mentioned that
Queen Anne, on a journey to Portsmouth, saw a herd of five hundred red
deer. With such small animals as the marten and badger, found
everywhere, there was still seen occasionally the wild bull.
[Sidenote: Locomotion: the roads and carriages.] Nothing more strikingly
shows the social condition than the provisions for locomotion. In the
rainy seasons the roads were all but impassable, justifying the epithet
often applied to them of being in a horrible state. Through such
gullies, half filled with mud, carriages were dragged, often by oxen,
or, when horses were used, it was as much a matter of necessity as in
the city a matter of display to drive half a dozen of them. If the
country was open the track of the road was easily mistaken. It was no
uncommon thing for persons to lose their way, and have to spend the
night out in the air. Between places of considerable importance the
roads were sometimes very little known, and such was the difficulty for
wheeled carriages that a principal mode of transport was by pack-horses,
of which passengers took advantage, stowing themselves away between the
packs. We shall probably not dissent from their complaint that this
method of travelling was hot in summer and cold in winter. The usual
charge for freight was fifteen pence per ton per mile. Toward the close
of the century what were termed "flying coaches" were established; they
could move at the rate of from thirty to fifty miles in a day. Many
persons thought the risk so great that it was a tempting of Providence
to go in them. [Sidenote: The mails; penny-post disliked.] The mail-bag
was carried on horseback at about five miles an hour. A penny-post had
been established in the city, but with much difficulty, for many
long-headed men, who knew very well what they were saying, had denounced
it as an insidious "popish contrivance."
Only a few years before the period under consideration Parliament had
resolved that "all pictures in the royal collection which contained
representations of Jesus or the Virgin Mother should be burnt; Greek
statues were delivered over to Puritan stone-masons to be made decent."
[Sidenote: Lewis Muggleton; his doctrines.] A little earlier, Lewis
Muggleton had given himself out as the last and greatest of the
prophets, having power to save or damn whom he pleased. It had been
revealed to him that God is only six feet high, and the sun only four
miles off. The country beyond the Trent was still in a state of
barbarism, and near the sources of the Tyne there were people scarcely
less savage than American Indians, their "half-naked women chanting a
wild measure, while the men, with brandished dirks, danced a war-dance."
[Sidenote: Printing-presses and private libraries.] At the beginning of
the eighteenth century there were thirty-four counties without a
printer. The only press in England north of the Trent was at York. As to
private libraries, there were none deserving the name. "An esquire
passed for a great scholar if 'Hudibras,' 'Baker's Chronicle,'
'Tarleton's Jests,' and the 'Seven Champions of Christendom' lay in his
hall-window." It might be expected that the women were ignorant enough
when very few men knew how to write correctly or even intelligibly, and
it had become unnecessary for clergymen to read the Scriptures in the
original tongues.
[Sidenote: Social discipline; its barbarity.] Social discipline was very
far from being of that kind which we call moral. The master whipped his
apprentice, the pedagogue his scholar, the husband his wife. Public
punishments partook of the general brutality. It was a day for the
rabble when a culprit was set in the pillory to be pelted with
brickbats, rotten eggs, and dead cats; when women were fastened by the
legs in the stocks at the market-place, or a pilferer flogged through
the town at the cart-tail, a clamour not unfrequently arising unless the
lash were laid on hard enough "to make him howl." In punishments of
higher offenders these whippings were perfectly horrible; thus Titus
Oates, after standing twice in the pillory, was whipped, and, after an
interval of two days, whipped again. A virtuoso in these matters gives
us the incredible information that he counted as many as seventeen
hundred stripes administered. So far from the community being shocked at
such an exhibition, they appeared to agree in the sentiment that, "since
his face could not be made to blush, it was well enough to try what
could be done with his back." Such a hardening of heart was in no little
degree promoted by the atrocious punishments of state offenders; thus,
after the decapitation of Montrose and Argyle, their heads decorated the
top of the Tolbooth; and gentlemen, after the rising of Monmouth, were
admonished to be careful of their ways, by hanging in chains to their
park gate the corpse of a rebel to rot in the air.
[Sidenote: Private life in different classes of society.] To a debased
public life private life corresponded. The houses of the rural
population were huts covered with straw-thatch; their inmates, if able
to procure fresh meat once a week, were considered to be in prosperous
circumstances. One-half of the families in England could hardly do that.
Children six years old were not unfrequently set to labour. The lord of
the manor spent his time in rustic pursuits; was not an unwilling
associate of pedlars and drovers; knew how to ring a pig or shoe a
horse; his wife and daughters "stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry
wine, cured marigolds, and made the crust for the venison pasty."
Hospitality was displayed in immoderate eating, and drinking of beer,
the guest not being considered as having done justice to the occasion
unless he had gone under the table. The dining-room was uncarpeted; but
then it was tinted with a decoction of "soot and small beer." The chairs
were rush-bottomed. In London the houses were mostly of wood and
plaster, the streets filthy beyond expression. After nightfall a
passenger went at his peril, for chamber windows were opened and
slop-pails unceremoniously emptied down. There were no lamps in the
streets until Master Heming established his public lanterns. As a
necessary consequence, there were plenty of shoplifters, highwaymen, and
burglars.
[Sidenote: General immorality and brutality.] As to the moral condition,
it is fearfully expressed in the statement that men not unfrequently
were willing to sacrifice their country for their religion. Hardly any
personage died who was not popularly suspected to have been made away
with by poison, an indication of the morality generally supposed to
prevail among the higher classes. If such was the state of society in
its serious aspect, it was no better in its lighter. We can scarcely
credit the impurity and immodesty of the theatrical exhibitions. What is
said about them would be beyond belief if we did not remember that they
were the amusements of a community whose ideas of female modesty and
female sentiment were altogether different from ours. Indecent jests
were put into the mouths of lively actresses, and the dancing was not
altogether of a kind to meet our approval. The rural clergy could do but
little to withstand this flood of immorality. [Sidenote: Degraded
condition of the lower clergy.] Their social position for the last
hundred years had been rapidly declining; for, though the Church
possessed among her dignitaries great writers and great preachers, her
lower orders, partly through the political troubles that had befallen
the state, but chiefly in consequence of sectarian bitterness, had been
reduced to a truly menial condition. It was the business of the rich
man's chaplain to add dignity to the dinner-table by saying grace "in
full canonicals," but he was also intended to be a butt for the mirth of
the company. "The young Levite," such was the phrase then in use, "might
fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots, but as soon as the
tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance he quitted his seat, and
stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast," the
daintiest part of which he had not tasted. If need arose, he could curry
a horse, "carry a parcel ten miles," or "cast up the farrier's bill."
The "wages" of a parish priest were at starvation-point. The social
degradation of the ecclesiastic is well illustrated by an order of Queen
Elizabeth, that no clergyman should presume to marry a servant-girl
without the consent of her master or mistress.
The clergy, however, had not fallen into this condition without in a
measure deserving it. Their time had been too much occupied in
persecuting Puritans and other sectaries, with whom they would have
gladly dealt in the same manner as they had dealt with the Jews, who,
from the thirteenth century till Cromwell, were altogether interdicted
from public worship. [Sidenote: Burning of books and persecution of
preachers.] The University of Oxford had ordered the political works of
Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly burnt in the court of the
schools. The immortal vagabond, Bunyan, had been committed to jail for
preaching the way of salvation to the common people, and had remained
there twelve years, the stout old man refusing to give his promise not
to offend in that manner again. The great doctrine inculcated from the
pulpit was submission to temporal power. Men were taught that rebellion
is a sin not less deadly than witchcraft. [Sidenote: The Puritan's
hatred of orthodoxy.] On a community thirsting after the waters of life
were still inflicted wearisome sermons respecting "the wearing of
surplices, position at the Eucharist, or the sign of the cross at
baptism," things that were a stench in the nostrils of the lank-haired
Puritan, who, with his hands clasped on his bosom, his face corrugated
with religious astringency, the whites of his eyes turned upward to
heaven, rocking himself alternately on his heels and the tips of his
toes, delivered, in a savoury prayer uttered through his nose, all such
abominations of the Babylonish harlot to the Devil, whose affairs they
were.
[Sidenote: Brutal administration of the law.] In administering the law,
whether in relation to political or religious offences, there was an
incredible atrocity. In London, the crazy old bridge over the Thames was
decorated with grinning and mouldering heads of criminals, under an idea
that these ghastly spectacles would fortify the common people in their
resolves to act according to law. The toleration of the times may be
understood from a law enacted by the Scotch Parliament, May 8, 1685,
that whoever preached or heard in a conventicle should be punished with
death and the confiscation of his goods. That such an infamous spirit
did not content itself with mere dead-letter laws there is too much
practical evidence to permit any one to doubt. A silly labouring man,
who had taken it into his head that he could not conscientiously attend
the Episcopal worship, was seized by a troop of soldiers, "rapidly
examined, convicted of non-conformity, and sentenced to death in the
presence of his wife, who led one little child by the hand, and it was
easy to see was about to give birth to another. He was shot before her
face, the widow crying out in her agony, 'Well, sir, well, the day of
reckoning will come.'" Shrieking Scotch Covenanters were submitted to
torture by crushing their knees flat in the boot; women were tied to
stakes on the sea-sands and drowned by the slowly advancing tide because
they would not attend Episcopal worship, or branded on their cheeks and
then shipped to America; gallant but wounded soldiers were hung in
Scotland for fear they should die before they could be got to England.
In the troubles connected with Monmouth's rising, in one county alone,
Somersetshire, two hundred and thirty-three persons were hanged, drawn
and quartered, to say nothing of military executions, for the soldiers
amused themselves by hanging a culprit for each toast they drank, and
making the drums and fifes play, as they said, to his dancing. It is
needless to recall such incidents as the ferocity of Kirk's lambs, for
such was the name popularly given to the soldiers of that colonel, in
allusion to the Paschal lamb they bore on their flag; or the story of
Tom Boilman, so nicknamed from having been compelled by those veterans
to seethe the remains of his quartered friends in melted pitch. Women,
for such idle words as women are always using, were sentenced to be
whipped at the cart's-tail through every market town in Dorset; a lad
named Tutching was condemned to be flogged once a fortnight for seven
years. Eight hundred and forty-one human beings judicially condemned to
transportation to the West India islands, and suffering all the horrible
pains of a slave-ship in the middle passage, "were never suffered to go
on deck;" in the holds below, "all was darkness, stench, lamentation,
disease, and death." One fifth of them were thrown overboard to the
sharks before they reached their destination, and the rest obliged to be
fattened before they could be offered in the market to the Jamaica
planters. The court ladies, and even the Queen of England herself, were
so utterly forgetful of womanly mercy and common humanity as to join in
this infernal traffic. That princess requested that a hundred of the
convicts should be given to her. "The profit which she cleared on the
cargo, after making a large allowance for those who died of hunger and
fever during the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a thousand
guineas."
[Sidenote: Profligate condition of literature.] It remains to add a few
words respecting the state of literature. This, at the end of the
seventeenth century, had become indescribably profligate, and, since the
art of reading was by no means generally cultivated, the most ready
method of literary communication was through theatrical representation.
It was for that reason that play-writing was the best means of literary
remuneration, if we except the profit derived from the practice which,
to some extent, survives, though its disgraceful motive has ceased, of
dedicating books to rich men for the sake of the fee they would give. It
is said that books have actually been printed in consideration of the
profits of the dedication. Especially in the composition of plays was it
judged expedient to minister to the depraved public taste by indecent
expressions, or allusions broad and sly. The playwright was at the mercy
of an audience who were critical on that point, and in a position, if he
should not come up to the required standard, to damn him and his work in
an instant. [Sidenote: Milton's "Paradise Lost."] From these remarks
must be excepted the writings of Milton, which are nowhere stained by
such a blemish. And yet posterity will perhaps with truth assert that
"Paradise Lost" has wrought more intellectual evil than even its base
contemporaries, since it has familiarized educated minds with images
which, though in one sense sublime, in another are most unworthy, and
has taught the public a dreadful materialization of the great and
invisible God. A Manichean composition in reality, it was mistaken for a
Christian poem.
[Sidenote: The English theatre.] The progress of English literature not
only offers striking proofs of the manner in which it was affected by
theatrical representations, but also furnishes an interesting
illustration of that necessary course through which intellectual
development must pass. It is difficult for us, who live in a reading
community, to comprehend the influence once exercised by the pulpit and
the stage in the instruction of a non-reading people.
As late as the sixteenth century they were the only means of mental
access to the public, and we should find, if we were to enter on a
detailed examination of either one or the other, that they furnish a
vivid reflexion of the popular intellectual condition. Leaving to others
such interesting researches into the comparative anatomy of the English
pulpit, I may, for a moment, direct attention to theatrical exhibitions.
[Sidenote: Its successive phases.] There are three obvious phases
through which the drama has passed, corresponding to as many phases in
the process of intellectual development. These are respectively the
miracle play, corresponding to the stage of childhood; the moral,
corresponding to that of youth; the real, corresponding to that of
manhood. In them respectively the supernatural, the theological, the
positive predominates. The first went out of fashion soon after the
middle of the fifteenth century, the second continued for about one
hundred and fifty years, the third still remains. By the miracle play is
understood a representation of Scripture incidents, enacted, however,
without any regard to the probabilities of time, place, or action, such
subjects as the Creation, the fall of man, the Deluge, being considered
as suitable, and in these scenes, without any concern for chronology,
other personages, as the Pope or Mohammed, being introduced, or the
Virgin Mary wearing a French hood, or Virgil worshipping the Saviour.
Our forefathers were not at all critical historians; they indulged
without stint in a highly pleasing credulity. They found no difficulty
in admitting that Mohammed was originally a cardinal, who turned heretic
out of spite because he was not elected Pope; that, since the taking of
the true cross by the Turks, all Christian children have twenty-two
instead of thirty-two teeth, as was the case before that event; and that
men have one rib less than women, answering to that taken from Adam. The
moral play personifies virtues, vices, passions, goodness, courage,
honesty, love. The real play introduces human actors, with a plot free
from the supernatural, and probability is outraged as little as
possible. Its excellence consists in the perfect manner in which it
delineates human character and action.
[Sidenote: Miracle plays, their character.] The miracle play was
originally introduced by the Church, the first dramas of the kind, it is
said, having been composed by Gregory Nazianzen. They were brought from
Constantinople by the Crusaders; the Byzantines were always infatuated
with theatrical shows. The parts of these plays were often enacted by
ecclesiastics, and not unfrequently the representations took place at
the abbey gate. So highly did the Italian authorities prize the
influence of these exhibitions on the vulgar, that the pope granted a
thousand days of pardon to any person who should submit to the pleasant
penance of attending them. All the arguments that had been used in
behalf of picture-worship were applicable to these plays; even the
Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension were represented. Over illiterate
minds a coarse but congenial influence was obtained; a recollection,
though not an understanding of sacred things. In the play of "the Fall
of Lucifer," that personage was introduced, according to the vulgar
acceptation, with horns, and tail, and cloven hoof; his beard, however,
was red, our forefathers having apparently indulged in a singular
antipathy against hair of that colour. There still remain accounts of
the expenses incurred on some of these occasions, the coarse quaintness
of which is not only amusing, but also shows the debased ideas of the
times. For instance, in "Mysteries," enacted at Coventry, are such
entries as "paid for a pair of gloves for God;" "paid for gilding God's
coat;" "dyvers necessaries for the trimmynge of the Father of Heaven."
In the play of the "Shepherds" there is provision for green cheese and
Halton ale, a suitable recruitment after their long journey to the
birthplace of our Saviour. "Payd to the players for rehearsal: imprimis,
to God, ii_s._ viii_d._; to Pilate his wife, ii_s._; item, for keeping
fyer at hell's mouth, iii_d._" A strict attention to chronology is not
exacted; Herod swears by Mohammed, and promises one of his councillors
to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it appears, was a termagant, swears
by the Virgin Mary that she will not go into the ark, and, indeed, is
only constrained so to do by a sound cudgelling administered by the
patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience being particularly
directed to the point that such a flogging should not be given with a
stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The sentiment of modesty seems
not to have been very exacting, since in the play of "the Fall of Man"
Adam and Eve appear entirely naked; one of the chief incidents is the
adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such circumstances might be related,
impressing us perhaps with an idea of the obscenity and profanity of the
times. But this would scarcely be a just conclusion. As the social state
improved, we begin to find objections raised by the more thoughtful
ecclesiastics, who refused to lend the holy vestments for such purposes,
and at last succeeded in excluding these exhibitions from consecrated
places. After dwindling down by degrees, these plays lingered in the
booths at fairs or on market-days, the Church having resigned them to
the guilds of different trades, and these, in the end, giving them up to
the mountebank. And so they died. Their history is the outward and
visible sign of a popular intellectual condition in process of passing
away.
[Sidenote: Moral plays, their character.] The mystery and miracle plays
were succeeded by the moral play. It has been thought by some, who have
studied the history of the English theatre, that these plays were the
result of the Reformation, with the activity of which movement their
popularity was coincident. But perhaps the reader who is impressed with
the principle of that definite order of social advancement so frequently
referred to in this book, will agree with me that this relation of cause
and effect can hardly be sustained, and that devotional exercises and
popular recreations are in common affected by antecedent conditions. Of
the moral play, a very characteristic example still remains under the
title of "Everyman," It often delineates personification and allegory
with very considerable power. This short phase of our theatrical career
deserves a far closer attention than it has hitherto obtained, for it
has left an indelible impression on our literature. I think that it is
to this, in its declining days, that we are indebted for much of the
machinery of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." Whoever will compare that
work with such plays as "Everyman" and "Lusty Juventus," cannot fail to
be struck with their resemblances. Such personages as "Good Council,"
"Abominable Living," "Hypocrasie," in the play, are of the same family
as those in the Progress. The stout Protestantism of both is at once
edifying and amusing. An utter contempt for "holy stocks and holy
stones, holy clouts and holy bones," as the play has it, animates them
all. And it can hardly be doubted that the immortal tinker, in the
carnal days when he played at tipcat and romped with the girls on the
village green at Elstow, indulged himself in the edification of
witnessing these dramatic representations.
[Sidenote: Real plays, Shakespeare.] As to the passage from this
dramatic phase to the real, in which the character and actions of man
are portrayed, to the exclusion or with the subordination of the
supernatural, it is only necessary to allude with brevity--indeed, it is
only necessary to recall one name, and that one name is Shakespeare. He
stands, in his relations to English literature, in the same position
that the great Greek sculptors stood with respect to ancient art,
embodying conceptions of humanity in its various attributes with
indescribable skill, and with an exquisite agreement to nature.
[Sidenote: The pulpit and the stage.] Not without significance is it
that we find mystery in the pulpit and mystery on the stage. They
appertain to social infancy. Such dramas as those I have alluded to, and
many others that, if space had permitted, might have been quoted, were
in unison with the times. The abbeys were boasting of such treasures as
the French hood of the Virgin, "her smocke or shifte," the manger in
which Christ was laid, the spear which pierced his side, the crown of
thorns. The transition from this to the following stage is not without
its political attendants, the prohibition of interludes containing
anything against the Church of Rome, the royal proclamation against
preaching out of one's own brain, the appearance of the Puritan upon the
national stage, an increasing acerbity of habit and sanctimoniousness of
demeanour.
With peculiar facility we may, therefore, through an examination of the
state of the drama, determine national mental condition. The same may be
done by a like examination of the state of the pulpit. Whoever will take
the trouble to compare the results cannot fail to observe how remarkably
they correspond.
Such was the state of the literature of amusement; as to political
literature, even at the close of the period we are considering, it could
not be expected to flourish after the judges had declared that no man
could publish political news except he had been duly authorized by the
crown. [Sidenote: Newspapers and coffee-houses.] Newspapers were,
however, beginning to be periodically issued, and, if occasion called
for it, broadsides, as they were termed were added. In addition,
newsletters were written by enterprising individuals in the metropolis,
and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them; they then circulated
from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which has not
descended to their printed contemporary, the newspaper, of never
becoming stale. Their authors compiled them from materials picked up in
the gossip of the coffee-houses. The coffee-houses, in a non-reading
community, were quite an important political as well as social
institution. They were of every kind, prelatical, popish, Puritan,
scientific, literary, Whig, Tory. Whatever a man's notions might be, he
could find in London, in a double sense, a coffee-house to his taste. In
towns of considerable importance the literary demand was insignificant;
thus it is said that the father of Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer,
peddled books from town to town, and was accustomed to open a stall in
Birmingham on market-days, and it is added that this supply of
literature was equal to the demand.
[Sidenote: Liberty of the press slowly secured.] The liberty of the
press has been of slow growth. Scarcely had printing been invented when
it was found necessary everywhere to place it under some restraint, as
was, for instance, done by Rome in her "Index Expurgatorius" of
prohibited books, and the putting of printers who had offended under the
ban; the action of the University of Paris, alluded to in this volume,
p. 198, was essentially of the same kind. In England, at first, the
press was subjected to the common law; the crown judges themselves
determined the offence, and could punish the offender with fine,
imprisonment, or even death. Within the last century this power of
determination has been taken from them, and a jury must decide, not only
on the fact, but also on the character of the publication, whether
libellous, seditious, or otherwise offensive. [Sidenote: Its present
condition.] The press thus came to be a reflector of public opinion,
casting light back upon the public; yet as with other reflectors, a
portion of the illuminating power is lost. The restraints under which it
is laid are due, not so much to the fear that liberty will degenerate
into license, for public opinion would soon correct that; they are
rather connected with the necessities of the social state.
[Sidenote: Contrast between progress in the ages of Faith and Reason.]
Whoever will examine the condition of England at successive periods
during her passage through the Age of Faith will see how slow was her
progress, and will, perhaps, be surprised to find at its close how small
was her advance. The ideas that had served her for so many centuries as
a guide had rather obstructed than facilitated her way. But whoever will
consider what she has done since she fairly entered on her Age of Reason
will remark a wonderful contrast. There has not been a progress in
physical conditions only--a securing of better food, better clothing,
better shelter, swifter locomotion, the procurement of individual
happiness, an extension of the term of life. There has been a great
moral advancement. Such atrocities as those mentioned in the foregoing
paragraphs are now impossible, and so unlike our own manners that
doubtless we read of them at first with incredulity, and with difficulty
are brought to believe that these are the things our ancestors did. What
a difference between the dilatoriness of the past, its objectless
exertions, its unsatisfactory end, and the energy, and well-directed
intentions of the present age, which have already yielded results like
the prodigies of romance.