the features of these latter times that it is only in them that a man
of more than ordinary length of life has witnessed any remarkable
change. We meet with men still alive who were acquainted with Franklin
and Voltaire, who have been presented at the court of Louis the
Sixteenth and have visited President Pierce at the White House. But
the period we have now to examine is quite as varied in the contrasts
presented by the duration of a lifetime as in any other age of the
world. Of this we shall take a French chronicler as an example,--a
man who was as greedy of news, and as garrulous in relating it, as
Froissart himself, but who must take a very inferior rank to that
prose minstrel of "gentle blood," as he limited his researches
principally to the scandals which characterized his time. We mean the
truth-speaking libeller Brantôme. [A.D. 1616.] This man died within a
year or two of Shakspeare, and yet had accompanied Mary to Scotland,
and given that poetical account of the voyage from Calais, when she
sat in the stern of the vessel with her eyes fixed on the receding
shore, and said, "Adieu, France, adieu! I shall never see you more;"
and again, on the following morning, bending her looks across the
water when land was no longer to be seen, and exclaiming, "Adieu,
France! I shall never see you more." The mere comparison of these two
things--the return of Mary to her native kingdom, torn at that time
with all the struggles of anarchy and distress, and the death of the
greatest of earth's poets, rich and honoured, in his well-built house
at Stratford-on-Avon--suggests a strange contrast between the beginning
of Brantôme's literary career and its close: the events filling up
the interval are like the scarcely-discernible heavings in a dark
and tumultuous sea,--a storm perpetually raging, and waves breaking
upon every shore. In his own country, cruelty and demoralization
had infected all orders in the State, till murder, and the wildest
profligacy of manners, were looked on without a shudder. Brantôme
attended the scanty and unregretted funeral of Henry the Third, the
last of the house of Valois, who was stabbed by the monk Jacques
Clement for faltering in his allegiance to the Church. A sentence had
been pronounced at Rome against the miserable king, and the fanatic's
dagger was ready. Sixtus the Fifth, in full consistory, declared that
the regicide was "comparable, as regards the salvation of the world,
to the incarnation and the resurrection, and that the courage of the
youthful Jacobin surpassed that of Eleazar and Judith." "That Pope,"
says Chateaubriand, the Catholic historian of France, "had too little
political conviction, and too much genius, to be sincere in these
sacrilegious comparisons; but it was of importance to him to encourage
the fanatics who were ready to murder kings in the name of the papal
power." Brantôme had seen the issuing of a bull containing the same
penalties against Elizabeth, the death of Mary on the scaffold, and
the failure of the Armada. After the horrors of the religious wars,
from the conspiracy of Amboise in 1560 to the publication of the edict
of toleration given at Nantes in 1598, he had seen the comparatively
peaceful days of Henry the Fourth, till fanaticism again awoke a
suspicion of a return to his original Protestant leanings, as shown
in his opposition to the house of Austria, and Ravaillac renewed the
meritorious work of Clement in 1610. Last of all, the spectator of all
these changes saw England and Scotland forever united under one crown,
and the first rise of the master of the modern policy of Europe, for
in the year of Brantôme's death a young priest was appointed Secretary
of State in France, whom men soon gazed on with fear and wonder as the
great Cardinal Richelieu.
In England the alterations were as great and striking. After the
troubled years from Elizabeth's accession to the Armada, a period of
rest and progress came. Interests became spread over the whole nation,
and did not depend so exclusively on the throne. Wisdom and good
feeling made Elizabeth's crown, in fact, what laws and compacts have
made her successors',--a constitutional sovereign's. She ascertained
the sentiments of her people almost without the intervention of
Parliament, and was more a carrier-through of the national will than
the originator of absolute decrees. The moral battles of a nation in
pursuit of some momentous object like religious or political freedom
bring forth great future crops, as fields are enriched on which
mighty armies have been engaged. The fertilizing influence extends
in every direction, far and near. If, therefore, the intellectual
harvest that followed the final rejection of the Pope and crowning
defeat of the Spaniard included Shakspeare and Bacon, and a host of
lesser but still majestic names, we may venture also to remark, on the
duller and more prosaic side of the question, that in the first year
of the seventeenth century a patent was issued by which a commercial
speculation attained a substantive existence, for the East India
Company was founded, with a stock of seventy-two thousand pounds, and
a fleet of four vessels took their way from the English harbours, on
their first voyage to the realm where hereafter their employers, who
thus began as merchant adventurers, were to rule as kings. The example
set by these enterprising men was followed by high and low. During
the previous century people had been too busy with their domestic
and religious disputes to pay much attention to foreign exploration.
They were occupied with securing their liberties from the tyranny of
Henry the Eighth and their lives from the truculence of Mary. Then
the plots perpetually formed against Elizabeth, by domestic treason
and foreign levy, kept their attention exclusively on home-affairs.
But when the State was settled and religion secure, the long-pent-up
activity of the national mind found vent in distant expeditions. A
chivalrous contempt of danger, and poetic longing for new adventure,
mingled with the baser attractions of those maritime wanderings. The
families of gentle blood in England, instead of sending their sons
to waste their lives in pursuit of knightly fame in the service of
foreign states, equipped them for far higher enterprises, and sent
them forth to gather the riches of unknown lands beyond the sea.
Romantic rumours were rife in every manor-house of the strange sights
and inexhaustible wealth to be gained by undaunted seamanship and
judicious treatment of the natives of yet-unexplored dominions. Spain
and Portugal had their kingdoms, but the extent of America was great
enough for all. Islands were everywhere to be found untouched as yet by
the foot of European; and many a winter's night was spent in talking
over the possible results of sailing up some of the vast rivers that
came down like bursting oceans from the far-inland regions to which
nobody had as yet ascended,--the people and cities that lay upon their
banks, the gold and jewels that paved the common soil. Towards the
end of Elizabeth's reign, these imaginings had grown into sufficing
motives of action, and gentlemen were ready from all the ports of
the kingdom to sail on their adventurous voyages. In addition to the
chance those gallant mariners had of realizing their day-dreams by
the tedious methods of discovery and exploration, there was always
the prospect of making prize of a galleon of Spain; for at all times,
however friendly the nations might be in the European waters, a war
was carried on beyond the Azores. Not altogether lost, therefore,
was the old knightly spirit of peril-seeking and adventure in those
commercial and geographical speculations. There were articles of
merchandise in the hold, gaudy-coloured cloths, and bead ornaments, and
wretched looking-glasses, besides brass and iron; but all round the
captain's cabin were arranged swords and pistols, boarding-pikes, and
other implements of fight. Guns also of larger size peeped out of the
port-holes, and the crew were chosen as much with a view to warlike
operations as to the ordinary duties of the ship. The Spaniards had
made their way into the Pacific, and had established large settlements
on the shores of Chili and Peru. Scenes which have been reacted at the
diggings in modern times took place where the Europeans fixed their
seat, and ships loaded with the precious metals found their way home,
exposed to all the perils of storm and war. Drake had pounced upon
several of their galleys and despoiled them of their precious cargo.
Cavendish, a gentleman of good estate in Suffolk, had followed in his
wake, and, after forcing his way through the Straits of Magellan, had
reached the shores of California itself and there captured a Spanish
vessel freighted with a vast amount of gold. All these adventures of
the expiring sixteenth century became traditions and ballads of the
young seventeenth. Raleigh, the most accomplished gentleman of his
time, gave the glory of his example to the maritime career, and all
the oceans were alive with British ships. While Raleigh and others of
the upper class were carrying on a sort of cultivated crusade against
the monopoly of the Spaniards, others of a less aristocratic position
were busied in the more regular paths of commerce. We have seen the
formation of the India Company in 1600. Our competitors, the Dutch,
fitted out fleets on a larger scale, and established relations of trade
and friendship with the natives of Polynesia and New Holland, and even
of Java and India. But the zeal of the public in trading-speculations
was not only shown in those well-conducted expeditions to lands
easily accessible and already known: a company was established for
the purpose of opening out the African trade, and a commercial voyage
was undertaken to no less a place than Timbuctoo by a gallant pair of
seamen of the names of Thomson and Jobson. It was not long before these
efforts at honest international communication, and even the exploits
of the Drakes and Cavendishes, who acted under commissions from the
queen, degenerated into lawless piracy and the golden age of the
Buccaneers. The policy of Spain was complete monopoly in her own hands,
and a refusal of foreign intercourse worthy of the potentates of China
and Japan. All access was prohibited to the flags of foreign nations,
and the natural result followed. Adventurous voyagers made their
appearance with no flag at all, or with the hideous emblem of a death's
head emblazoned on their standard, determined to trade peaceably if
possible, but to trade whether peaceably or not. The Spanish colonists
were not indisposed to exchange their commodities with those of the
new-comers, but the law was imperative. The Buccaneers, therefore,
proceeded to help themselves to what they wanted by force, and at
length came to consider themselves an organized estate, governed
by their own laws, and qualified to make treaties like any other
established and recognised power. Cuba had been nearly depopulated by
the cruelties and fanaticism of its Spanish masters, and was seized on
by the Buccaneers. From this rich and beautiful island the pirate-barks
dashed out upon any Spanish sail which might be leaving the mainland.
Commanding the Gulf of Mexico, and with the power of crossing the
Isthmus of Panama by a rapid march, those redoubtable bandits held the
treasure-lands of the Spaniards in terrible subjection. And up to the
commencement even of the eighteenth century the frightful spectacle was
presented of a powerful confederacy of the wildest and most dissolute
villains in Europe domineering over the most frequented seas in the
world, and filling peaceful voyagers, and even well-armed men-of-war,
with alarm by their unsparing cruelty, and atrocities which it curdles
the blood to think of.
Eastward as far as China, westward to the islands and shores of the
great Pacific, up the rivers of Africa, and even among the forests of
New Holland and Tasmania, the swarms of European adventurers succeeded
each other without cessation. The marvel is, that, with such ceaseless
activity, any islands, however remote or small, were left for the
discovery of after-times. But the tide of English emigration rolled
towards the mainland of North America with a steadier flow than to
any other quarter. The idea of a northwest passage to India had taken
possession of men's minds, and hardy seamen had already braved the
horrors of a polar winter, and set examples of fortitude and patience
which their successors, from Behrens to Kane, have so nobly followed.
But the fertile plains of Virginia, and the navigable streams of the
eastern shore, were more alluring to the peaceful and unenterprising
settlers, whose object was to find a new home and carry on a
lucrative trade with the native Indians. In 1607, a colony, properly
so called,--for it had made provision for permanent settlement, and
consisted of a hundred and ten persons, male and female,--arrived at
the mouth of the Chesapeake. The river Powhatan was eagerly explored;
and at a point sufficiently far up to be secure from sudden attack from
the sea, and on an isthmus easily defended from native assault, they
pitched their tents on a spot which was hereafter known as Jamestown
and is still honoured as the earliest of the American settlements. Our
neighbour Holland was not behindhand either in trade or colonization,
and equally with England was excited to fresh efforts by its recovered
liberty and independence. In all directions of intellectual and
physical employment those two States went boundingly forward at the
head of the movement. The absolute monarchies lay lazily by, and
relied on the inertness of their mass for their defence against those
active competitors; and Spain, an unwieldy bulk, showed the intimate
connection there will always exist between liberal institutions at
home and active progress abroad. The sun never set on the dominions of
the Spanish crown, but the life of the people was crushed out of them
by the weight of the Inquisition and despotism. The United Provinces
and combined Great Britain had shaken off both those petrifying
institutions, and Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Dutchmen were ploughing
up every sea, presenting themselves at the courts of strange-coloured
potentates, in regions whose existence had been unknown a few years
before, and gradually accustoming the wealth and commerce of the world
to find their way to London and Amsterdam.
To go from these views of hardihood and enterprise, from the wild
heaving of unruly vigour which animated the traffickers and tyrants
of the main, to the peaceful and pedantic domestic reign of James the
First, shows the two extremes of European character at this time. The
English people were not more than four millions in number, but they
were the happiest and most favoured of all the nations. This was indeed
the time,
"Ere England's woes began,
When every rood of land maintain'd its man;"
for we have seen how the division of the great monastic properties had
created a new order in the State. All accounts concur in describing
the opening of this century as the period of the greatest physical
prosperity of the body of the people. A great deal of dulness and
unrefinement there must still have been in the boroughs, where such
sage officials as Dogberry displayed their pomp and ignorance,--a
great deal of clownishness and coarseness in country-places, where
Audreys and Autolycuses were to be found; but among townsmen and
peasantry there was none of the grinding poverty which a more unequal
distribution of national wealth creates. There were great Whitsun
ales, and dancings round the Maypole; feasts on village greens, and a
spirit of rude and personal independence, which became mellowed into
manly self-respect when treated with deference by the higher ranks,
the old hereditary gentry and the retired statesmen of Queen Bess,
but bristled up in insolence and rebellion when the governing power
thwarted its wishes, or fanaticism soured it with the bitter waters of
polemic strife. The sturdy Englishman who doffed his hat to the squire,
and joined his young lord in sports upon the green, in the beginning
of James's reign, was the same stout-hearted, strong-willed individual
who stiffened into Puritanism and contempt of all earthly authorities
in the unlovely, unloving days of the Rump and Cromwell. Nor should
we miss the great truth which lies hidden under the rigid forms of
that period,--that the same noble qualities which characterized the
happy yeoman and jocund squire of 1620--their earnestness, energy,
and intensity of home affections--were no less existent in their
ascetic short-haired descendants of 1650. The brimfulness of life
which overflowed into expeditions against the Spaniards in Peru, and
unravellings of the tangled rivers of Africa, and trackings of the wild
bears among the ice-floes of Hudson's Bay, took a new direction when
the century reached the middle of its course, and developed itself
in the stormy discussions of the contending sects and the blood and
misery of so many battle-fields. How was this great change worked
on the English mind? How was it that the long-surviving soldier,
courtier, landholder, of Queen Elizabeth saw his grandson grow up into
the hard-featured, heavy-browed, keen-sworded Ironside of Oliver? A
squire who ruined himself in loyal entertainments to King James on his
larder-and-cellar-emptying journey from Edinburgh to London in 1603 may
have lived to see his son, and son's son, rejoicing with unholy triumph
over the victory of Naseby in 1644 and the death of Charles in 1649.
Great causes must have been at work to produce this astonishing
change, and some of them it will not be difficult to point out.
Perhaps, indeed, the prosperity we have described may itself have
contributed to the alteration in the English ways of thought. While
the nation was trampled on by Henry the Eighth, with property and
life insecure and poverty universally diffused, or even while it
was guided by the strong hand of Elizabeth, it had neither power nor
inclination to examine into its rights. The rights of a starving and
oppressed population are not very great, even in its own eyes. It is
the well-fed, law-protected, enterprising citizen who sees the value
of just and settled government, because the blessings he enjoys depend
upon its continuance. The mind of the nation had been pauperized along
with its body by the life of charitable dependence it had led at the
doors of church and monastery in the olden time. It little mattered
to a gaping crowd expecting the accustomed dole whether the great man
in London was a tyrannical king or not. They did not care whether he
dismissed his Parliaments or cut off the heads of his nobility. They
still found their "bit and sup," and saw the King, and Parliament, and
nobility, united in obedience to the Church. But when this debasing
charity was discontinued, independence came on. The idle hanger-on of
the religious house became a cottager, and worked on his own land; by
industry he got capital enough to take some additional acres; and the
man of the next generation had forgotten the low condition he sprang
from, and had so sharpened his mind by the theological quarrels of the
time that he began to be able to comprehend the question of general
politics. He saw, as every population and potentate in Europe saw with
equal clearness, that the question of civil freedom was indissolubly
connected with the relation between Church and State; he perceived
that the extent of divergence from the old faith regulated in a great
measure the spirit, and even the constitution, of government where it
took place,--that adhesion to Rome meant absolutism and dependence,
that Calvinism had a strong bias towards the republican form, and that
the Church he had helped to establish was calculated to fill up the
ground between those two extremes, and be the religious representative
of a State as liberal as Geneva by its attention to the interests of
all, and as monarchical as Spain by its loyalty to an hereditary crown.
Now, the middle ground in great and agitating affairs is always the
most difficult to maintain. Both sides make it their battle-field,
and try to win it to themselves; and according as one assailant seems
on the point of carrying his object, the defender of that disputed
territory has to lean towards the other. Both parties are offended at
the apparent inconsistency; and we are therefore not to be surprised if
we find the Church accused of looking to both the hostile camps in turn.
James was a fatal personage to every cause he undertook to defend. He
had neither the strength of will of Henry, nor the proud consistency of
Elizabeth; but he had the arrogance and presumption of both. Questions
which the wise queen was afraid to touch, and left to the ripening
influence of time, this blustering arguer dragged into premature
discussion, stripped them of all their dignity by the frivolousness
of the treatment he gave them, and disgusted all parties by the
harshness and rapidity of his partial decisions. Every step he took
in the quelling of religious dissension by declarations in favour of
proscription and authority which would have endeared him to Gregory the
Seventh, he accompanied with some frightful display of his absolutist
tendencies in civil affairs. The same man who roared down the modest
claims of a thousand of the clergy who wished some further modification
of the Book of Common Prayer threw recusant members of Parliament into
prison, persecuted personal enemies to death, with scarcely a form of
law, punished refractory towns with loss of franchises and privileges,
and made open declaration of his unlimited power over the lives and
properties of all his subjects. People saw this unvarying alliance
between his polemics and his politics, and began to consider seriously
whether the comforts their trade and industry had given them could be
safe under a Church calling itself reformed, but protected by such a
king. If he was only suspected in England, in his own country he was
fully known. Dearer to James would have been a hundred bishops and
cardinals seated in conclave in Holyrood than a Presbyterian Synod
praying against his policy in the High Kirk. He had even written to
the Pope with offers of accommodation and reconcilement, and made no
secret of his individual and official disgust at the levelling ideas
of those grave followers of Knox and Calvin. Those grave followers
of Knox and Calvin, however, were not unknown on the south side of
the Tweed. The intercourse between the countries was not limited to
the hungry gentry who followed James on his accession. A community of
interest and feeling united the more serious of the Reformers, and
visits and correspondence were common between them. But, while a regard
for their personal freedom and the security of their wealth attracted
the attention of the English middle class to the proceedings of King
James, events were going on in foreign lands which had an immense
effect on the development of the anti-monarchic, anti-episcopal spirit
at home. These events have not been sufficiently considered in this
relation, and we have been too much in the habit of looking at our
English doings in those momentous years,--from the end of James's reign
to the Restoration,--as if Britain had continued as isolated from her
Continental neighbours as before the Norman Conquest. But a careful
comparison of dates and actions will show how intimate the connection
had become between the European States, and how instantaneously the
striking of a chord at Prague or Vienna thrilled through the general
heart in Edinburgh and London.