EVERY-DAY LIFE IN THE STUART PERIOD.
Puritan influence--Neglect of women’s education--The boarding-out
system for girls--Sir Matthew Hale on the education of
girls--Manners and customs--Diversions of great ladies--Rules
for behaviour--John Evelyn on manners--Effects of the Civil
War--Simplicity of home life--Lady Anne Halkett--Position of
wives--A contemporary writer on husbands.
The Civil War had raised up two parties in England, divided as much
upon ethics as upon politics. With the extremists on either side, women
fared badly. They were between two camps, both equally noxious in their
way--the libertines and the ascetics.
“Under the Commonwealth society assumed a new and stern
aspect. Women were in disgrace; it was everywhere declared
from the pulpit that woman caused man’s expulsion from
Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of
the greatest temptations of Satan. ‘Man,’ said they, ‘is
conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity; it was his
complacency to women that caused his first debasement; let
man not therefore glory in his shame; let him not worship the
fountain of his corruption.’ Learning and accomplishments
were alike discouraged, and women confined to a knowledge of
cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible theological
discussions of the day.”
If Cromwell’s “Saints,” with their deadly hatred of Roman Catholicism,
had been told that their views coincided with certain portions of the
early teaching of the abhorred Church, they would have vehemently
repelled the accusation. But the Puritans, in their revolt against
beauty and pleasure, in their cramped conception and distorted views of
the position of women, were only following the lead of the Fathers and
the monks of the fourth century, who made of Christianity a revolting
and immoral form of asceticism.
A kind of moral dislocation was going on, forming a canker in
social life. With the excesses of the court on the one hand and
the austerities of the Puritans on the other, there was a constant
interaction going on, each party goading the other into greater
extremes. The deterioration of moral tone on the one side, and the
perversion of thought on the other, affected the national life
injuriously, and retarded the intellectual progress of women.
There was, to begin with, an unstable throne. The Stuarts were weak
rulers, and the people felt the relaxing of the strong hand of the
Tudors. James I., untrained for his position, was a very undesirable
sovereign, and earned for himself ridicule and dislike. One of his
peculiarities was to affect a great contempt for women, and to scoff
at men who treated them with respect. No wonder that he was held in
abhorrence by the court ladies, and that there were loud complaints of
his Majesty’s want of gallantry.
Then there was a tendency to listlessness, and especially to mental
inertia, after the revival of learning in the sixteenth century. The
tension could not be sustained. And there were special difficulties
arising from the circumstances of the time. The destruction of so
many seats of learning by the dissolution of the Religious Houses
was a blow to education. Nothing had arisen to take the place of the
monastic schools. How little provision there was may be judged by the
following remarks, made on the establishment of a school for the sons
of gentlemen in the second half of the seventeenth century:--
“It is sufficiently known that the subjects of his Majestie’s
dominions have, naturally, as noble minds and as able
bodies as any nation of the earth, and therefore deserve
all accommodations for the advancing of them either in
speculation or action. Neverthelesse such hath been the neglect
or undervalueing of ourselves and our own abilities, and
over-valueing of forreigne teachers, that hitherto no such
places for the education and trayning up of our own young
nobilitie and gentrie in the practise of arms and arts have
been instituted here in England as are in Italy, France, and
Germany, but that by a chargeable and sometimes an unfortunate
experience we, to our own losse and disgrace, doe finde the
noble and generous youth of this kingdome is sent beyond the
seas, to learn such things at excessive rates, from strangers
abroad, wherein they might be as well, and with lesse expense
and danger, instructed here at home.”
If little attention were given to providing for the training of youths,
still less was paid to that of girls, for whom there was not the
compensation of being “sent beyond the seas.” Even for a gentleman’s
daughters it was not thought necessary that they should learn anything
thoroughly except housewifery.
“Let them learne plaine workes of all kind so they take heed
of too open seeming. Instead of song and musick let them learn
cookery and laundry, and instead of reading Sir Philip Sidney’s
‘Arcadia,’ let them read the grounds of good huswifery. I like
not a female poetesse at any hand: let greater personages glory
their skill in musicke, the posture of their bodies, their
knowledge in languages, the greatnesse and freedome of their
spirits, and their arts in arraigning of men’s affections at
their flattering faces: this is not the way to breede a private
gentleman’s daughter.”[41]
The author of the above remarks suggests that where there were several
daughters, one should be left with the mother, and the others drafted
off into some other household, such as that of a merchant, or lawyer,
or country gentleman, to gain experience and multiply their matrimonial
chances.
It is obvious that the custom of sending children away to board
in families was still common in the seventeenth century, and that
the domestic ideal had not much enlarged. Women are still to study
housewifery before all else, and to shun learning as an unprofitable
thing. The profession of marriage is the only one proper to women.
“Loke to thi doughten,” advises an early English poet--
“And geve hem to spowsynge as soone as thei ben ablee.”
In France the education of girls was much neglected.
“Il est honteux, mais ordinaire de voir des femmes qui ont
de l’esprit et de la politesse, ne savoir bien prononcer
ce qu’elles lisent; ou elles hesitent, ou elles chantent
en lisant: au lieu qu’il faut prononcer d’un ton simple
et naturel, mais forme et uni. Elles manquent encore plus
grossièrement pour l’ortogrape, ou pour la manière de former ou
de lier les lettres en écrivant.”
Fénélon goes on to suggest that girls should learn something of the
laws and regulations of their country--
“ce que c’est qu’un contrat, une substitution, un partage des
cohéritiers ... ce que c’est biens meubles et immeubles. Si
elles se marient toutes leurs principales affaires rouleront
la-dessus.”
In every age there is always some one to act the part of _laudator
temporis acti_. Sir Matthew Hale, the celebrated Lord Chief Justice,
bemoans the degeneracy of his own period. He says--
“In former times the education and employment of young
gentlewomen was religious, sober, and serious, their carriage
modest, and creditable was their habit and dress. When they
were young they learned to read and to sew; as they grew up
they learned to spin, to knit, to make up their own garments;
they learned what belonged to housewifery.... And now the world
is altered; young gentlewomen learn to be bold, talk loud and
more than comes to their share, think it disparagement for
them to know what belongs to good housewifery or to practise
it.... They know the ready way to consume an estate and to ruin
a family quickly, but neither know nor can endure to learn or
practise the ways and methods to save it or increase it; and it
is no wonder that great portions are expected with them, for
their portions are commonly all their value.... If a fit of
reading come upon them, it is some romance, or play book, or
love story; and if they have at any time a fit of using their
needle, it is some such unprofitable or costly work that spends
their friends or husbands more than it is worth when it is
finished.”
Domestic life was changing, and the habits and customs of former times
were being modified. The simple ways of old did not suffice. There
were too many distractions, at least in London, for women to sit
down contentedly with the resources of their grandmothers. Among the
well-to-do country gentlemen it was becoming customary to bring their
families to London for the season, which was then the winter, and
this greatly altered the tone of domestic life. To women confined to
a country village with little change of scene or occupation, it meant
as much as the “grand tour” in the next century. A rebound naturally
followed the gloomy days of the Commonwealth, when--
“there were no comedies or other diversions (which were
forbidden not only as ungodly but for fear of drawing company
or number together), and there was no business for any man that
loved monarchy or the family of Stuart; so that the nobility
and gentry lived most in the country.”
The Puritan movement retarded the intellectual advance of women. The
clearer thought which the Renaissance brought was obscured, the ideals
that were beginning to enlarge the purpose of life were narrowed, and
a check was put upon mental growth. As by the Roman Catholic Church
women were taught to submit their minds and consciences to the priest,
so under the sway of Puritanism they were taught that all nature’s
gifts to mind or body were so many snares, that true life consisted in
a crushing out of all aims and desires not connected with the saving
of the soul, a process that was apparently facilitated by a constant
contemplation of never-ending tortures supposed to be in reserve for
the greater portion of mankind.
With all its tyranny and its perverted teaching on the subject of
women’s position, the Roman Church was a great civilizing, educating
power, the only one for centuries. Puritanism was the reverse. It
aimed at undoing what had been accomplished, at checking progress. At
a time when the nation needed every stimulus that could be applied to
mental exertion, when political strife was choking the path of culture,
Puritanism stepped in with a denunciation of learning and art as perils
to humanity.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that Puritanism, with its
uncompromising treatment of vice, helped to raise the standard of
social purity and the ideal of womanhood. Like the fire which followed
the plague, Puritanism came as a great cleansing force. But, like the
fire, it destroyed while it purified. Under its teaching many attained
to a high ideal of life. Every religion has its saints, and the stress
and suffering of the age were calculated to bring out the qualities
that go to the making of heroes and martyrs. The Puritan maiden and
the Puritan wife stand for some of the noblest types of womanhood.
After the Restoration, the standard of living went up, and luxury
increased as the nation righted itself after the turmoil and loss
occasioned by war.
“In 1688 there were on the ‘Change more men worth £10,000 than
there were in 1650 worth £1000; that £500 with a daughter was,
in the latter period, deemed a larger portion than £2000 in
the former; that gentlewomen in those earlier times thought
themselves well clothed in a serge gown which a chambermaid
would, in 1688, be ashamed to be seen in; and that besides the
great increase of rich clothes, plate, jewels, and household
furniture, coaches were in that time augmented a hundredfold.”
In dealing with the position of women during this period, it has to be
taken into account that what would be called society was stamped with
the manners of the court of Charles II. The court party forgot its
former troubles and revelled in gaieties. The example was infectious,
and the general laxity and extravagance were so marked that even
the king himself referred to it in his speech at the close of the
Parliamentary Session of 1661-2.
“I cannot but observe,” he said, “that the whole nation seems
to be a little corrupted in their excess of living; sure all
men spend much more in their clothes, in their diet, and all
other expences than they have been used to do; I hope it
has been only the excess of joy after so long suffering that
has transported us to these other excesses, but let us take
heed that the continuance of them does not indeed corrupt our
natures. I do believe I have been faulty myself; I promise you
I will reform, and if you will join with me in your several
capacities, we shall by our example do more good both in city
and country than any new laws would do.”
It was the reign of the senses. Beauty was the road to greatness
for women, and to beauty and wit all other qualities yielded. The
great ladies who stand out most prominently on the canvas are the
royal favourites, the exquisite frail beauties who dazzle the vision
and eclipse the women of sterner mould. Women forgot that they had
any other _rôle_ to play but one--that of syren. Those who had no
power to captivate dropped into the background, were pushed aside,
and forgotten. The greatest lady was she who could sell herself at
the highest price, whose charms drew the largest number of bidders.
What she gloried in was the rank and number of her lovers, and her
ambition was to flaunt her conquests in the eyes of other women. Lady
Castlemaine, Francis Stuart, Louise de Querouaille, and Nell Gwynn
of immortal memory, together with many others whose task was the
subjugation of man, represent the society of the Restoration period.
The disintegration of the times no doubt militated against high
ideals, although the Civil War itself gave rise to the display of
heroic virtues on the part of both men and women. The stern and awful
discipline of the sword, far from degrading, produced a nobler type of
womanhood. Through the trials entailed by ruined fortunes and blasted
careers, through the agonies of bereavement, women passed triumphant,
but they were not proof against the war of social forces. The conflict
of feeling between the opposing parties on other than State questions
sent both to extremes. The Royalists, in their hearty hatred of
austerity, rushed into a wild worship of the senses. The Puritans,
to express their horror of the worldliness of their foes, assumed
virtues they did not possess. It has been averred that if we study
the characters and lives of the great ladies of the Puritan party, we
shall find much laxity under the guise of strictness. It would not be
matter of surprise if, in some cases, this were so, though the bulk of
the party seem free from such a reproach. The general tone of society
was lowered from various causes. It is seen in everything, in the
literature, on the stage, in the habits of the day. The coarse tastes
of the upper classes show that the standard of public propriety was not
at all commensurate with the degree of enlightenment which that age
enjoyed. Wanting higher intellectual interests, women in fashionable
life filled up their time with cards and dice, and if they read
anything they read romances of very poor quality. This condition of
things continued through the century.
“Were the men,” wrote Mary Astell in 1694, “as much neglected
and as little care taken to cultivate and improve them, perhaps
they would be so far from surpassing those whom they now
despise, that they themselves would sink into the greatest
stupidity and brutality. The preposterous returns that the most
of them make to all the care that is bestow’d on them renders
this no uncharitable nor improbable conjecture.”
John Evelyn speaks of great ladies suffering themselves to be treated
in taverns--
“where a courtesan in other cities would scarcely vouchsafe to
be entertain’d; but you will be more astonish’d when I shall
assure you that they drink their crowned cups roundly, strain
healths through their smocks, daunce after the fiddle, kiss
freely and team it an honourable treat.”
And this, he goes on to say, was not confined to the lower or the more
“meretricious” circles, but was a common spectacle in good houses where
such sports were the afternoon diversion.
The following letter from that lively young lady of fashion, Bridget
Noel, to her sister, the Countess of Rutland, in April, 1687, shows
what sort of diversions occupied the aristocracy.
“I am extreme sory it is not poseble for us to wat of my deare
sister suner than the 28 of May, for hear is a coking and hors
matches which we have promesed to be at. My Lord Toumand will
be at the great coking, and Barney and Lord Grandson and a
great many more lords that I doe not know ther name, it is sade
hear that it will be as great a match as ever has been. Barney
intends to back our coks with thousands, for he is of our
side.... The great coking dos not begin tell the 29 and twenty
of June, but we have a letel wan begins of Whesen Monday.”
In 1663, among the rules laid down for the behaviour of men who wish to
be considered well-bred, occurs the following recommendation--
“It is not becoming a person of quality when in the company of
ladies to handle them roughly ... to kiss them by surprize; to
pull off their hoods; to snatch away their handkerchiefs; to
rob them of their ribbands and put them in his hat; to force
their letters or books from them; to look into their papers,
etc. You must be very familiar to use them at that rate; and
unless you be so nothing can be more indecent or render you
more odious.”
Such admonitions now would be considered an impertinence if addressed
to a club of factory hands.
We must give the seventeenth century credit for introducing some
refinements which undoubtedly had an influence on the position of
women. Social customs are useful indices to national character, and
daily habits often give the key to the moral standard. As long as
coarse feeding and heavy drinking prevailed, there was a barrier to
social intercourse between the sexes. When the ale and wine, which had
been habitually drunk at every meal, were replaced by coffee and tea,
it was an undoubted gain to both health and manners. The taste became
more refined, repasts ceased to be orgies unfit for the presence of
women. John Evelyn considered the custom of gentlemen leaving ladies
to themselves after dinner, or rather of the ladies quitting the
gentlemen, as barbarous, and it certainly had its origin in barbarous
manners. He would doubtless have been astonished if he could have
foreseen that the custom continued in force for more than two hundred
years after his time, when regular drinking-bouts had ceased.
Evelyn’s complaint of the indelicacy of ladies speaking of gentlemen
by their Christian names is a little hypercritical. It was the manners
that needed alteration more than the speech. He is shocked to hear such
talk as--
“Tom P. was here to-day. I went yesterday to the Cours with
Will R., and Harry M. treated me at such a tavern.”
Surely what Evelyn calls, with a fine scorn, this “particular idiom”
and these “gracefull confidences” were not inconsistent with the
character of ladies who consented to be treated at taverns. De
Cominges, ambassador from France in the reign of Charles II., observes
that--
“excesses in taverns and brothels pass among people of note
merely for gallantries, and even women of good condition do not
refuse a gallant to accompany him to drink Spanish wine.”
It hardly becomes a Frenchman to comment on the coarseness of the
English, considering the licentiousness among his own people. In
France marriage was a constant subject of satire,[42] and much of the
profligacy of our court and society was due to French influence. The
French nobility hated the bourgeoisie, and could not forgive them for
their higher moral tone.[43]
The Puritans, in their war against vice, endeavoured to lay waste
the fields of culture and learning. Everything which ministered to
the pleasure of the senses they treated as a snare to be avoided.
The remedy which they applied to the ills of society was in itself a
disease. George Fox, declaiming against the schoolmistresses who teach
young women “to play of instruments and music of all kinds,” shows the
attitude of the Puritan party in the matter of ordinary education. A
catch, a song, or a dance, Fox looked upon as destructive of modesty,
things leading to wantonness, and only fitted “for them that live in
the lusts of the world.” It was little wonder that, with learning
at a discount and accomplishments denounced as sinful, women became
frivolous and narrow. The light-hearted, in rebellion against the
austerities of their Puritan neighbours, plunged into excesses, and the
more serious subsided into a round of domestic drudgery.
To men of the old order the times seemed sadly out of joint.
“All relations were confounded by the _several sects in
religion_ which discountenanced all forms of reverence and
respect as reliques and marks of superstition. Children asked
not blessing of their parents; nor did they concern themselves
in the education of their children, but were well content that
they should take any course to maintain themselves that they
might be free from that expense. The young women conversed
without any circumspection or modesty, and frequently met at
taverns and common eating houses; and they who were stricter
and more severe in their comportment became the wives of the
seditious preachers or of officers of the army. The daughters
of noble and illustrious families bestowed themselves upon the
_divines of the time_ or other low and unequal matches. Parents
had no manner of authority over their children, nor children
any obedience or submission to their parents; but every one did
that which was good in his own eyes.”[44]
The loss of property occasioned by the Civil War caused great domestic
upheavals. Many a family was brought to the brink of ruin. It was
then that the women bestirred themselves. The daughters of men whose
estates had been confiscated, the wives who had brought their husbands
dowers, finding themselves denuded, made strenuous efforts to recover
their possessions, in the absence through death or enforced exile of
their male protectors. The Duchess of Newcastle, who was herself a
sufferer,[45] looked with grave disapprobation upon the more energetic
of her sex at this juncture. She complains that--
“women become pleaders, attornies, petitioners and the like,
running about with their several causes, complaining of their
several grievances, exclaiming against their several enemies,
bragging of their several favours they receive from the
powerful; thus trafficing with idle words, bringing in false
reports and vain discourse.”
There were, of course, pretenders among the numerous claimants, people
who, as the duchess avers, “made it their trade to solicit.”
As a rule, however, women in everyday life were secluded from the
bustle of public affairs. According to Walpole, after the Restoration,
the really respectable, well-conducted members of the female sex
were neither seen nor heard outside their own home circle. That they
led very dull lives seems pretty obvious, for they had neither the
resources of learning and culture nor the distractions of society. But
they enjoyed more personal freedom than women on the Continent. The
Prince of Tuscany, who visited England, observes of the women--
“They live with all the liberty that the custom of the country
authorizes. This custom dispenses with that rigorous constraint
and reservedness which are practised by the women of other
countries, and they go whithersoever they please, either alone
or in company.”
Gentlewomen of good position were accustomed, in the seventeenth
century, to live in a simple way, within the four walls of their home,
occupied with domestic affairs. The wife of Sir John Coke, who was
Secretary of State in the reign of Charles I., when she writes to her
husband from the country, discourses to him of the children and of the
needlework she is doing for the baby in homely fashion, and thanks
him for sending her a new gown and hat, as if she were unused to fine
clothes. Lady Anne Halkett, who played a notable part in the political
troubles of her day, lived a quiet life enough when public affairs did
not demand her attention, and spent her time like any good housewife.
She was fond of gathering herbs and compounding powders and conserves
for the sick poor.
“She was ever imployed either in doing or reaping good: in the
summer season she vyed with the bee or ant, in gathering herbs,
flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or limbeck, for the
mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily then in a dress
fitted for her still-house; making preparations of extracted
waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders, etc.,
which she ministred every Wednesday to a multitude of poor
infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons
of all ranks who consulted her in their maladies.”
Mary Astell, however, who was so anxious about the intellectual
advancement of her sex, blames Englishwomen for not excelling in the
domestic talents, and upholds the example of the Dutch women, who, she
says, not only manage all the household affairs, but--
“keep the books, balance the accounts, and do all the business
with as much dexterity and exactness as their own or our men
can do.”
Englishwomen could certainly not have coped with accounts if their
arithmetic were on a par with their spelling. But they appear to have
had complete control over domestic matters, or at least to have
impressed foreigners with that belief.
“So great,” wrote one visitor, “is the respect which the
English entertain for their women, that in their houses the
latter govern everything despotically, making themselves feared
by the men, courageous as they are on other occasions.”
In the opinion of a contemporary English writer,[46] husbands were by
no means free agents--
“There is also the want of halfe a man’s liberty in marriage;
for he is not absolutely himselfe, though many believe when
they are going to Church upon their wedding day they are going
into the land of liberty.... For my part I am not married; if I
were I should finde my wings clipt and the collar too streight
for my neck.”