THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION UNDER JAMES I., CHARLES I., AND THE
COMMONWEALTH.
Manufactures and Commerce--Trade under the Stuarts--English
Commerce and Dutch Competition--The East India
Company--Vicissitudes of its Early History--Rival Companies--The
American Colonies and West Indies--Growth of London--National
Revenue--Extravagance of the Stuarts--Invention of the Title
of Baronet--Illegal Monopolies--Cost of Government--Money
and Coinage--Agriculture and Gardening--Dramatists of the
Period--Shakespeare and his Contemporaries--Poets of the
Occult School--Herbert, Herrick, Quarles--A Wealth of
Poetry--Prose-Writers--Bacon's "Novum Organum"--Milton's
Prose Works--Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and
other Theological Writers--Harrington's "Oceana"--Sir Thomas
Browne--Historians and Chroniclers--First Newspapers--Harvey's
Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood--Napier's
Invention of Logarithms--Music--Painting, Engraving, and
Sculpture--Architecture--Manners and Customs--Sports and
Pastimes--Furniture and Domestic Embellishment--Costumes--Arms and
Armour--Condition of the People.
In the reigns of James and Charles England neither maintained the
reputation of her navy acquired under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, nor
made great progress in foreign commerce. The character of James was too
timid for maritime or any other war, and when he was forced into action
it was only to show his weakness. He put to death the greatest naval
captain of his time, Raleigh, who, if well employed by him, might have
made him as much respected at sea as was Elizabeth. Nevertheless, he
built ten ships of war, and for some years spent thirty-six thousand
pounds annually on the navy. The largest ship which had yet been built
in England was built by him, but it was only of fourteen hundred tons.
As for commerce, he was too much engaged in theological disputations,
in persecution of Papists, in wrangling with his Parliaments, and
in following his hawks and hounds, to think of it, and consequently
grievous complaints of the decay of trade were heard every session. The
Dutch were fast engrossing both the commerce and the carrying trade of
England. During James's reign they traded to England with six hundred
ships, and the English traded to Holland with sixty.
The naval affairs of Charles were quite as inglorious as those
of his father. As James beheaded the best admiral of England, so
Charles chose for his the very worst in Europe, and the disgrace
of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Rhé was the consequence.
Charles's contests with his Parliaments, which terminated only with his
life, destroyed all chance of his promotion of naval ascendency, and
of the cultivation of commerce. All this was wonderfully changed by
the vigorous spirits of the Commonwealth. The victories of Blake, by
which the naval greatness of Holland and Spain was almost annihilated,
raised the reputation of the British arms at sea as well as on land
to the first place in the civilised world. St. John was no sooner
despatched by Parliament to the Hague as ambassador, than, perceiving
the immense advantage which Holland obtained from being the great
carriers of Europe, he drew and got passed the celebrated Navigation
Act, which--providing that no produce of Africa, Asia, or America, nor
of any English colony should be imported into England except in English
ships, and that the manufactures or merchandise of no country in Europe
should be imported except in English ships, or the ships of the nation
where they were produced--at once transferred an enormous maritime
business to England.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in a treatise on the comparative commerce of
England and Holland, endeavoured to draw the attention of James I. to
the vast benefits that the Dutch were obtaining from our neglect. He
showed that whenever there was a time of scarcity in England, instead
of sending out our ships and supplying ourselves, we allowed the Dutch
to pour in goods, and reap the advantage of the high prices; and
he declared that in a year and a half they had taken from Bristol,
Southampton, and Exeter alone, two hundred thousand pounds, which our
merchants might as well have had. He reminded the king that the most
productive fisheries in the world were on the British coasts, yet that
the Dutch and people of the Hanse Towns came and supplied all Europe
with their fish to the amount of two million pounds annually, whilst
the English could scarcely be said to have any trade at all in it. The
Dutch, he said, sent yearly a thousand ships laden with wine and salt,
obtained in France and Spain, to the north of Europe, whilst we, with
superior advantages, sent none. He pointed out equally striking facts
of their enterprise in the timber trade, having no timber themselves;
that our trade with Russia, which used to employ a large number of
ships, had fallen off to almost nothing, whilst that of the Dutch had
marvellously increased. What, he observed, was still more lamentable,
we allowed them to draw the chief profit and credit even from our own
manufactures, for we sent our woollen goods, to the amount of eighty
thousand pieces, abroad undyed, and the Dutch and others dyed them
and reshipped them to Spain, Portugal, and other countries as Flemish
baizes, besides netting a profit of four hundred thousand pounds
annually at our expense. Had James attended to the wise suggestions
of Raleigh, instead of destroying him, and listening to such minions
as Rochester and Buckingham, our commerce would have shown a very
different aspect.
It is true that some years afterwards James tried to secure the
profit pointed out by Raleigh from dyed cloths; but instead of
first encouraging the dyeing of such cloths here, so as to enable
the merchants to carry them to the markets in the South on equal or
superior terms to the Dutch, he suddenly passed an Act prohibiting the
export of any undyed cloths. This the Dutch met by an Act prohibiting
the import of any dyed cloths into Holland; and the English not
producing an equal dye to the Dutch, thus lost both markets, to the
great confusion of trade; and this mischief was only gradually overcome
by our merchants beginning to dye their yarn, so as to have no undyed
cloth to export, and by improving their dyes.
During the reign of James commercial enterprise showed itself in the
exertions of various chartered companies trading to distant parts
of the world. The East India Company was established in the reign
of Elizabeth, the first charter being granted by her in 1600. James
was wise enough to renew it, and it went on with various success,
ultimately so little in his time that at his death it was still a
doubtful speculation; but under such a monarch it could not hope for
real encouragement. In its very commencement he granted a charter to
a rival company to trade to China, Japan, and other countries in the
Indian seas, in direct violation of the East India Company's charter,
which so disgusted that Company, as nearly to have caused them to
relinquish their aim. In 1614 they obtained a charter from the Great
Mogul to establish a factory at Surat, and the same year they obtained
a similar charter from the Emperor of Japan. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe
went as ambassador from England to the Great Mogul, and resided at
his court for four years. By this time the Company had extensively
spread its settlements. It had factories at Acheen, Zambee, and Tekoa,
in Sumatra; at Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Ajmere, and Burampore in the
Mogul's territories; at Firando, in Japan; at Bantam, Batavia, and
Japara, in Java; and others in Borneo, the Banda Isles, Malacca, Siam,
and Celebes; and at Masulipatam and Petapoli, on the Coromandel coast;
and at Calicut, the original settlement of the Portuguese on the
coast of Malabar. Their affairs were, in fact, extremely flourishing,
and their stock sold at 203 per cent.; but this prosperity awoke the
jealousy of the Dutch, who carried on a most profitable trade with Java
and the Spice Islands, and, in spite of a treaty concluded between the
two nations in 1619, the Dutch Governor-General attacked and took from
the Company the island of Pulo Rangoon. This was only the beginning of
their envious malice, for in 1623 they committed the notorious massacre
of the English Company at Amboyna, and drove the English out of all
the Spice Islands. Had this occurred in Cromwell's days, they would
soon have paid a severe retribution; but James was just then anxious to
secure the aid of the Dutch in restoring his son-in-law, the Elector
Palatine, and these atrocities were quietly smoothed over, and left
unavenged. The consequence was, that the affairs of the Company fell
into a most depressed condition, and though in 1616, when their stock
was worth 200 per cent., they had raised a new stock of one million
six hundred and twenty-nine thousand and forty pounds, which was taken
by nine hundred and fifty-four individuals, principally of the higher
aristocracy, at the close of James's reign the stock had fallen to half
its value.
Charles was not a more far-sighted or a juster patron of the India
Company than his father. In 1631 they managed to raise a new stock
of four hundred and twenty thousand pounds, but whilst they were
struggling with the hostilities of their rivals, the Dutch and
Portuguese, the king perpetrated precisely the same injury on them that
his father had done, by granting a charter to another company, which
embroiled them with the Mogul and the Chinese, causing the English to
be entirely expelled from China, and injuring the India Company to a
vast extent. The Civil War in England then prevented the attention
of the Government from being directed to the affairs of this great
Company. At the end of Charles's reign the Company's affairs were at
the worst, and its trade appeared extinct. In 1649, however, Parliament
encouraged the raising of new stock, which was done with extreme
difficulty, and only amounted to one hundred and ninety-two thousand
pounds. But in 1654, Parliament having humbled the Dutch, compelled
them to pay a balance of damages of eighty-five thousand pounds and
three thousand six hundred pounds to the heirs of the murdered men at
Amboyna. It required years, however, to revive the prosperity of the
Company, and it was only in 1657 that, obtaining a new charter from
the Protector, and raising a new stock of three hundred and seventy
thousand pounds, it sprang again into vigour and traded successfully
till the Restoration.
During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies--Turkey Merchants,
or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to
Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the
North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery--were in active
operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and
other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean
English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian
produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported
thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and
cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms,
and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from
Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of
the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by
the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their
king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.
These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary
to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic
monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which
had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both
James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries
against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public
spirit to make temporary concessions.
The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible
increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the
West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of
two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One,
called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered
to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude,
which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.
The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to
plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the
States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612
a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded
by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the
French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes
was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West
India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee
Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by
Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama
Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North
and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In
1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic
(the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord
Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in
England, as the New England States did of the Puritans.
These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of
crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against
the Catholics, the Puritans, or the Episcopalians and Royalists, they
got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians
were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and (in the West Indies) the
sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and
published his "Counterblast" against it, laying various restrictions
upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very
profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed,
and cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the Colonies.
The Dutch had managed, under James and Charles, to engross the carrying
trade to the English American and West Indian colonies, having a strong
position at New Amsterdam, afterwards known as New York; but of this
Parliament deprived them in 1646, and extended, as we have seen, the
famous Navigation Act of 1651 to all the foreign trade of England. In
1655 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed English power in the West
Indies.
The growth of English commerce was soon conspicuous by one great
result, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and
Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh building
of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on
their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such
extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them.
From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid
increase of the metropolis, so alarming to those kings, was more
than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and
Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated
by the crowds of Scots who followed the Court; and though St.
Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open
country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Drury Lane, running
from it to the Strand, before the Civil War it had become united to
London and Westminster by new erections in Clare Market, Long Acre,
Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson in his "History
of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London
at that period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent
Garden," he observes, "are taken from the Royal family at this time,
or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York
Street. Of James and Charles I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street,
Henrietta Street, etc., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo
Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where
stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of much later
date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury,
and the streets at the Seven Dials, were built up somewhat later, as
also Leicester Fields, since the restoration of Charles II., as also
almost all of St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part
of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons
in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house,
a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's
Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square,
Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side
of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn
and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and
gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Those five streets of the
south side of the Strand, running down to the river Thames, have all
been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the
sites of noblemen's houses and gardens, who removed farther westward,
as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the City of
London remained unbuilt within about a hundred and fifty years past,
particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters, now Fetter,
Lane, so called, says Howell in his 'Londonopolis,' from Fewters, an
old appellation of idle people, loitering there, as in a way leading
to gardens; which, in Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since,
have been built up into streets, lanes, etc. Several other parts of the
City have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility to
Westminster, on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens,
whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the City since the
death of Queen Elizabeth."
[Illustration: CECIL, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.]
The extension of the metropolis necessitated the introduction of
hackney coaches, which first began to ply, but only twelve in number,
in 1625. In 1634 sedan-chairs were introduced to relieve the streets of
the rapidly increased number of hackney-coaches, and other carriages;
and in 1635 a post-office for the kingdom was established, a foreign
post having been for some years in existence. In 1653 the post was
farmed for ten thousand pounds a year.
The annual revenue of James I. has been calculated at about six
hundred thousand pounds, yet he was always poor, and died leaving
debts to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds. He was prodigal
to his favourites, and wasteful in his habits. He left the estates of
the Crown, however, better than he found them, having raised their
annual income from thirty-two thousand pounds to eighty thousand
pounds, besides having sold lands to the amount of seven hundred and
seventy-five thousand pounds. He still prosecuted the exactions of
purveyance, wardship, etc., to the great annoyance of his subjects. On
the occasion of his son being made a knight, he raised a tax on every
knight's fee of twenty shillings, and on every twenty pounds of annual
rent from lands held directly of the Crown, thus raising twenty-one
thousand eight hundred pounds. On the marriage of his daughter
Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, he levied an aid of twenty thousand
five hundred pounds, the last of these odious impositions which were
demanded. The Customs on his coming to the throne brought in one
hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds a year; but towards the end
of his reign, showing the great increase of commerce, they amounted to
one hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year. But this was the tonnage
and poundage which was so hateful to the nation, and which James had
greatly augmented by his own act and deed; an encroachment which caused
Parliament to refuse to his son Charles the usual grant of those duties
for life; and his persistence in levying them, in spite of Parliament,
was one of the chief causes of his quarrel with that body, and the loss
of his crown.
James was also a great trader in titles of nobility. His price for a
_barony_ was ten thousand pounds, for the title of _viscount_, twenty
thousand pounds, and for that of _earl_, thirty thousand pounds. He
also invented the new title of _baronet_, and raised two hundred and
twenty-five thousand pounds by it, at the rate of one thousand and
ninety-five pounds each baronetcy. From so dignified a source do many
of our aristocracy derive their honours.
Charles, though he was driven to such fatal extremities to extort
money from his subjects, is calculated to have realised the enormous
revenue from 1637 to 1641 inclusive, of eight hundred and ninety-five
thousand pounds, of which two hundred and ten thousand pounds arose
from Ship-money and other illegal sources. Both he and his father dealt
in wholesale monopolies to their courtiers and others, the profits of
which were so embezzled by those greedy and unprincipled men, that
Clarendon says that of two hundred thousand pounds of such income in
Charles's time, only one thousand five hundred pounds reached the
royal treasury. Charles raised two hundred thousand pounds in 1626 by
a forced loan, and another hundred thousand by exacting the fees or
compensation for exemption from the assumption of knighthood by every
person worth forty pounds a year.
The income and expenditure of the Commonwealth are stated to have
far exceeded those of any monarch who ever sat before on the throne
of England, and to have been not less than four million four hundred
thousand pounds per annum. The post office, as already stated, brought
in ten thousand pounds per annum. A singular tax, called the Weekly
Meal, or the price of a meal a week from each person, produced
upwards of one hundred thousand pounds a year, or six hundred and
eight thousand four hundred pounds in the six years during which it
was levied. There was a weekly assessment for the support of the war,
which rose from thirty-eight thousand pounds to one hundred and twenty
thousand pounds per week, which was continued as a land tax under the
Protectorate, producing from 1640 to 1659 no less than thirty-two
million one hundred and seventy-two thousand three hundred and
twenty-one pounds. The Excise also owes its origin to this period, and
produced, it is said, five hundred thousand pounds a year. Large sums
were realised by the sales of Crown and Church lands,--from the sale
of Crown lands, parks, etc., one million eight hundred and fifty-eight
thousand pounds; from the sale of Church lands, ten million pounds;
from sequestration of the revenue of the clergy for four years, three
million five hundred thousand pounds; eight hundred and fifty thousand
pounds from incomes of offices sequestered for the public service; four
million five hundred thousand pounds from the sequestration of private
estates or compositions for them; one million pounds from compositions
with delinquents in Ireland; three million five hundred thousand
pounds from the sale of forfeited estates in England and Ireland, etc.
The ministers and commanders are asserted to have taken good care of
themselves. Cromwell's own income is stated at nearly two million
pounds, or one million nine hundred thousand pounds; namely, one
million five hundred thousand pounds from England, forty-three thousand
pounds from Scotland, and two hundred and eight thousand pounds from
Ireland. The members of Parliament were paid at the rate of four pounds
a week each, or about three hundred thousand pounds a year altogether;
and Walker, in his "History of Independency," says that Lenthall, the
Speaker, held offices to the amount of nearly eight thousand pounds a
year; that Bradshaw had Eltham Palace, and an estate of one thousand
pounds a year, as bestowed for presiding at the king's trial; and
that nearly eight hundred thousand pounds were spent on gifts to
adherents of the party. As these statements, however, are those of
their adversaries, they no doubt admit of ample abatement; but after
all deduction, the demands of king and Parliament on the country during
the contest, and of the Protectorate in keeping down its enemies, must
have been enormous. Notwithstanding this, the rate of interest on money
continued through this period to decline. During James's reign it was
ten per cent.; in 1625, the last year of his reign, it was reduced to
eight per cent., and in 1651 it was fixed by the Parliament at six per
cent., at which rate it remained.
James issued various coinages. Soon after his accession he issued a
coinage of gold and one of silver. The gold was of two qualities.
The first of twenty-three carats three and a half grains, consisting
of angels, half-angels, and quarter-angels; value ten shillings,
five shillings, and two-and-sixpence. The inferior quality, of only
twenty-two carats, consisted of sovereigns, half-sovereigns, crowns,
and half-crowns. His silver coinage (_see_ Vol. II., p. 436) consisted
of crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, twopences, pence, and
halfpence. The gold coins, being of more value than that amount of
gold on the Continent, were rapidly exported, and the value of the
finest gold was then raised from thirty-three pounds ten shillings
to thirty-seven pounds four shillings and sixpence. The next coinage
at this value consisted of a twenty-shilling piece called the unit,
ten shillings called the double crown, five shillings or the Britain
crown, four shillings or the thistle crown, and two-and-sixpence,
or half-crown. (_See_ Vol. II., p. 432.) This value of the gold was
not found high enough, and the next year, in a fresh coinage, it was
valued at forty pounds ten shillings, and consisted of rose rials
of thirty shillings each, spur rials fifteen shillings, and angels
at ten shillings each. But gold still rising in value, in 1611 the
unit was raised to twenty-two shillings, and the other coins in
proportion. In 1612 there was a great rise in gold, and James issued
fresh twenty-shilling, ten-shilling, and five-shilling pieces, known
as laurels, from the king's head being wreathed with laurel. The unit
and twenty-shilling pieces were termed hood pieces. Besides the royal
coinage, shopkeepers and other retailers put out tokens of brass and
lead, which in 1613 were prohibited, and the first copper coinage in
England, being of farthings, was issued.
The coins of Charles were, for the most part, of the same nature as
those of his father. During his reign silver rose so much in value that
it was melted down and exported to a vast extent. Though between 1630
and 1643 some ten million pounds of silver were coined, it became so
scarce that the people had to give a premium for change in silver. In
1637 Charles established a mint at Aberystwith, for coining the Welsh
silver, which was of great value to him during the war. From 1628 to
1640 Nicholas Briot, a Frenchman, superintended the cutting of the
dies, instituted machinery for the hammer in coining and his coins were
of remarkable beauty. (_See_ Vol. II., p. 540.) Charles erected mints
at most of his headquarters during the war, as Oxford, Shrewsbury,
York, and other places, the coiners and dies of Aberystwith being used,
and these coins are distinguished by the Prince of Wales's feathers.
Many of these coins are of the rudest character; and besides these
there were issued siege pieces, so called from the besieged castles
where they were made, as Newark, Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract.
Some of these are mere bits of silver plate with the rude stamp of the
castle on one side and the name of the town on the other. Others are
octagonal, others lozenge-shaped, others of scarcely any regular shape.
(_See p._ 29.)
The Commonwealth at first coined the same coins as the king, only
distinguishing them by a P for Parliament. They afterwards adopted dies
of their own, having on one side a St. George's cross on an antique
shield encircled with a palm and laurel, and on the other two antique
shields, one bearing the cross and the other the harp, surrounded by
the words GOD WITH US. Their small silver coins had the arms only
without any legend.
The coins of the Protectorate have on the obverse a bust of Cromwell,
round which is this inscription: "_Oliver D.G. R.P. Ang. Sco.
Hib. &c. Pro._" On the reverse they bear a shield, having in the
first and fourth quarters St. George's cross, in the second St.
Andrew's, in the third a harp, and in the centre a lion rampant on an
escutcheon--Cromwell's own arms--surmounted by an imperial crown. The
legend on this side is "_Pax quæritur bello_" (Peace is sought by war).
The larger silver pieces have this motto round the edge: "_Has nisi
periturus mihi adimat nemo_" (_i.e._ "Let no one take from me these
letters unless about to die"). In those days the penalty for clipping
and filing money was death. (_See p._ 121.)
The coins of the Commonwealth were the same for Ireland and Scotland
as for England. This was not the case in the reigns of James and
Charles, and the coins, though bearing the same arms, had generally a
very different value. For Ireland James coined silver and copper money
of about three-quarters the value of English, and called in the base
coinage used by Elizabeth in the time of the rebellion. Charles only
coined some silver in 1641, during the government of Lord Ormond, and
therefore called Ormonds. Copper halfpence and farthings of that period
are supposed to have been coined by the rebel Papists of 1642.
In agriculture and gardening the English were excelled by their
neighbours the Dutch and Flemings. Towards the latter part of this
period, however, they began to imitate those nations, and to introduce
their modes of drainage, their roots and seeds. In 1652 the advantage
of growing clover was pointed out by Bligh, in his "Improver Improved,"
and Sir Richard Weston recommended soon afterwards the Flemish mode
of cultivating the turnip for winter fodder for cattle and sheep.
Gardening was more attended to, and both vegetables and flowers were
introduced. Samuel Hartlib, a Pole, who was patronised by Cromwell,
wrote various treatises on agriculture, and relates that in his time
old men recollected the first gardener who went into Surrey to plant
cabbages, cauliflowers, and artichokes, and to sow early peas, turnips,
carrots, and parsnips. Till then almost all the supply of these
things in London was imported from Holland and Flanders. About that
time (1650), however, cherries, apples, pears, hops, cabbages, and
liquorice were rapidly cultivated, and soon superseded the necessity of
importation; but onions were still scarce, and the supply of stocks of
apple, pear, cherry, vine, and chestnut trees was difficult for want
of sufficient nurseries for them. There was a zealous endeavour to
promote the production of raw silk, and mulberry trees and silkworms
were introduced, but the abundant supply of silk from India, and the
perfection of the silk manufactured in France, rendered this scheme
abortive.
[Illustration: CHEAPSIDE AND THE CROSS IN 1660.]
Whilst James was hunting and levying taxes without a Parliament, and
Charles was in continual strife with his people for unconstitutional
power and revenue, literature and art were still at work, and producing
or preparing some of the noblest and choicest creations of genius.
Shakespeare and Milton were the great lights of the age; but around and
beside them burned a whole galaxy of lesser, but not less exquisite,
luminaries, whose selected beauties are just as delightful now as
they were to their contemporaries. The names of this period, to which
we still turn with admiration, reverence, and affection, are chiefly
Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Selden,
Herrick, Herbert, Quarles, Bunyan, Bishop Hall, Hales, Chillingworth,
Jeremy Taylor, Raleigh, Sir Thomas Browne, Burton (of the "Anatomy
of Melancholy"), and Drummond of Hawthornden. But there are numbers
of others, more unequal or more scholastic, to whose works we can
occasionally turn, and find passages of wonderful beauty and power.
[Illustration: THE "GLOBE" THEATRE, SOUTHWARK (WITH THE "ROSE" THEATRE
IN THE DISTANCE), IN 1613.
(_From a Contemporary Print._)]
As we come first to Shakespeare, who figured largely on the scene in
the days of Queen Bess, and whose poetry we have already reviewed
(Vol. II., pp. 373-5), we may take the drama of this period also
in connection with him. A formal criticism on Shakespeare would be
superfluous. There are whole volumes of comment on this greatest of our
great writers, both in this language and others. The Germans, indeed,
pride themselves on understanding him better than ourselves. The
Scandinavians equally venerate him, and have an admirable translation
of his dramas. Even the French, the tone and spirit of whose literature
are so different from ours, have, of late years, begun to comprehend
and receive him. The fact is, Shakespeare's genius is what the
Germans term spherical, or many-sided. He had not a brilliancy in one
direction only, but he seemed like a grand mirror, in which is truly
reflected every image that falls on it. Outward nature, inner life
and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as
exhibited in every grade of life--from the cottage to the throne--are
in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in
us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. The receptivity of
his mind was as quick, as vast, as perfect, as his power of expression
was unlimited. Every object once seen appeared photographed on his
spirit, and he reproduced these lifelike images in new combinations,
and mingled with such an exuberance of wit, of humour, of delicious
melodies, and of exquisite poetry, as has no parallel in the whole
range of literature.
It has been said that his dramas cast into the shade and made
obsolete all that went before him; but, indeed, his great light
equally overwhelms also all that has come after him. Where is the
second Shakespeare of the stage? He still stands alone as the type of
dramatic greatness and perfection, and is likely to continue so. When
we recollect his marvellous characters--his Hamlet, his Macbeth, his
Lady Macbeth, his Othello, his Shylock, his Lear, his Ophelia, his
Beatrice, his Juliet, his Rosalind--the humours and follies of Shallow,
Slender, Dogberry, Touchstone, Bottom, Launce, Falstaff--or his ideal
creations, Ariel, Caliban, Puck, Queen Mab--we cannot hope for the
appearance of any single genius who shall at once enrich our literature
with such living and speaking characters, such a profound insight into
the depths and eccentricities of human nature, and such a fervent and
varied expression of all the sentiments that are dearest to our hearts.
But when we survey in addition the vast extent of history and country
over which he has roamed, gleaning thence the most kingly personages,
the most tragic incidents, the most moving and thrilling as well as the
most amusing sensations and fancies, our wonder is the greater. Greece
has lent him its Pericles, its Timon, its Troilus and Cressida--Rome
its Cæsar, Brutus, Antony, Coriolanus--Egypt its Cleopatra.
Ancient Britain, Scotland, and Denmark; all the fairest cities of
Italy--Venice, Verona, Mantua; the forests of Illyria and Belgium, and
the isles of the Grecian seas, are made the perpetually shifting arena
of his triumphs. Through all these he ranged with a free hand, and,
with a power mightier than ever was wielded by any magician, recalled
to life all that was most illustrious there, giving them new and more
piquant effect from the sympathetic nearness into which he brought
them with the spectator, and from the enchanting scenery with which
he surrounded them. All this was done by the son of the woolcomber of
Stratford--the youthful ranger of the woods of Charlecote, and the
uplands of Clopton,--the merry frequenter of country wakes, and then
the player of London, who, so far as we know, was never out of his
native land in his life.
If we are to take it for granted that after the year 1597, when he
bought one of the best houses in his native town for his residence,
Shakespeare spent his life there, except during the theatrical season,
the greater part of his last nineteen years would be passed in the
quiet of his country home. We may then settle his _Two Gentlemen of
Verona_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Love's Labours Lost_, _All's Well
that Ends Well_, _Richard II._ and _Richard III._, _King John_, _Titus
Andronicus_ (if his), the first part of _Henry IV._, and _Romeo and
Juliet_, as produced in the bustle of his London life. But the far
greater part, and the most magnificent and poetical, of his dramas
were composed in the pleasant retirement of his native scenes; namely,
the second part of _Henry IV._, _Henry V._, _A Midsummer Night's
Dream_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _The Merchant of Venice_, in
1598 and 1600; the second and third parts of _Henry VI._, _Merry
Wives of Windsor_, 1601; _Hamlet_, 1602; _Lear_, 1608; _Troilus and
Cressida_ and _Pericles_, 1609; _Othello_ (not published till after
the author's death, which was the case, too, with all his other
plays, though brought on the stage in his lifetime), _The Winter's
Tale_, _As You Like It_, _King Henry VIII._, _Measure for Measure_,
_Cymbeline_, _Macbeth_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _Julius Cæsar_,
_Antony and Cleopatra_, _Coriolanus_, _Timon of Athens_, _The Tempest_,
and _Twelfth Night_. Shakespeare died in 1616. Of the envy which the
unexampled splendour of Shakespeare's genius produced amongst inferior
dramatic writers, we have an amusing specimen in the words of Robert
Greene: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that,
with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is
as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and,
being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only
_Shakscene_ in a country."
Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or
those who immediately followed him, were Chapman, Ben Jonson, Webster,
Middleton, Dekker, Marston, Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood,
Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. George Chapman (_born_, 1557;
_died_, 1634) wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson
and Marston, one more, as well as three in conjunction with Shirley.
The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction,
and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not
calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable
life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy
of _Bussy D'Ambois_ is his best, and next to that his _Conspiracy
and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron_. Of his comedies, the best
are, _Eastward Ho!_ partly composed by Jonson and Marston, _Monsieur
d'Olive_, and his _All Fools_. But Chapman's fame now rests on his
translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme
quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been
declared to be the best translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" that
we possess. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed from it
almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him.
The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, _The Duchess of Malfi_,
was revived by Richard Hengist Horne, and put on the stage at Sadler's
Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of
three tragedies, _Appius and Virginia_, _Duchess of Malfi_, and _The
White Devil, or, Vittoria Corombona_; a tragic comedy, _The Devil's
Law Case, or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business_,
besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others
in conjunction with Dekker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of
language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond
of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age,
and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in
him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by
his mother, which reminds one of the like simple homely ditties in
Shakespeare:--
"Call for the robin red-breast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And when grey tombs are robbed, sustain no harm."
There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:--"To see
what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have
unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable,
so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the
shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."
Of Middleton, who wrote from twenty to thirty plays, in some of which,
according to a very prevalent fashion of that age, he called in the aid
of Rowley, Dekker, Fletcher, and Massinger; of Dekker, who wrote the
whole or part of about thirty plays; of John Marston, who wrote eight
plays; of Taylor, Tourneur, Heywood, and Ford, we can only say that
their dramas abound with fine things, and would well repay a perusal.
John Fletcher (_born_, 1576; _died_, 1625) and Francis Beaumont
(_born_, 1586; _died_, 1616) require a more specific notice. They
worked together on the same plays to the number of upwards of thirty,
whilst John Fletcher wrote fourteen or fifteen himself. In fact,
Fletcher, so far as can be known, was the more voluminous writer of the
two, Beaumont having written little in his own name, except a masque,
a few farces, dramatic pieces, and translations. The style of the
two, however, was so much alike, that there is little to distinguish
their productions from those of an individual mind. Beaumont and
Fletcher were, as stated by Dryden, far more popular in their time than
Shakespeare himself. The truth is, that they had less originality and
were more compliant with the spirit of their age. They sought their
characters more in the range of ordinary life, and therefore hit the
tastes of a large and commoner class. They were extremely lively and
forcible in dialogue, and had a flowery and dignified style which
oftener approached the poetical than became it. We are everywhere met
by admirable writing, and a finely-sustained tone, but we travel on
without encountering those original characters that can never again be
forgotten, and become a part of our world, or those exquisite gushes of
poetry and poetic scenery which, like the music of Ariel, ring in the
memory long afterwards. At the same time we are continually offended by
extreme grossness and jarred by slovenliness and incongruity. They are
of the class of great and able playwrights who command the popularity
of their age, but whom future ages praise and neglect; and who are only
read by the curious for the fragments of good things that they contain.
The fate of Ben Jonson (_b._, 1574; _d._, 1637) has been nearly the
same. Excepting his comedies of _Every Man in his Humour_, _Volpone_,
_The Silent Woman_, and _The Alchemist_, we are content to read the
bulk of his dramas, and wonder at his erudition and his wit. His
genius is most conspicuous in his masques and Court pageants, which
were the delight of James's queen, Anne of Denmark, and the whole
Court. In them the spirits of the woods seem to mingle with those
of courts and cities; and fancy and a hue of romance give to royal
festivities the impressions of Arcadian life. But the living poetry of
the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ or of _Comus_ is yet wanting to touch
them with perfection. Hence their chief charm died with the age which
patronised them, and having once perused them, we are not drawn to them
again by a loving memory, as we are to the Shakespearean woodlands and
lyrical harmonies. In Jonson's graver dramas there is a cold classical
tone which leaves the affections untouched and the feelings unmoved,
while we respect the artistic skill and the learned dignity of the
composition.
Philip Massinger (_b._, 1584; _d._, 1640), who wrote nearly forty
dramatic pieces, is a vigorous writer, eloquent and effective. He is
trenchant in his satire, and delights in displaying pride and meanness
exposed and punished. Still he is greater as a dramatist than a poet.
His _New Way to Pay Old Debts_ and _The Fatal Dowry_ are best known to
lovers of the drama. The _City Madam_ is a play which is full of strong
features of the times. Dekker assisted him in _The Virgin Martyr_, and
is supposed to have introduced a higher and richer vein of feeling than
belonged to Massinger himself.
Altogether the dramatic writing of this period has never been
surpassed, and in Shakespeare has never been equalled. There is
mingled with much licentiousness and coarseness a manly and healthy
strength in the writers of this department; and though the bulk of
these compositions have vanished from the stage, they will be long
studied with enjoyment by those who delight in living portraiture of
past ages, and the strong current of genuine English sense and feeling.
The arrival of the Commonwealth put down all theatres and scenic
amusements. The solemn religion of the Puritans was death to what
they called "the lascivious mirth and levity of players." After their
suppression for six years, it was found that the ordinance of the Long
Parliament was clandestinely and extensively evaded; and in 1648 an
Act was passed ordering all theatres to be pulled down and demolished,
and the players to be punished "as rogues according to law." Towards
the end of the Protectorate, however, dramatic representations again
crept in cautiously, and Sir William Davenant at first giving musical
entertainments and declamations at Rutland House, Charterhouse Square,
and afterwards in Drury Lane, calling his entertainments "operas," at
length gave regular plays. The Restoration at last set the imprisoned
drama altogether free.
Besides dramatic writers, poets abounded. It has been calculated that
from the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration, no less than four
hundred writers of verse appeared. Some of these, who attained a great
reputation in their day, and whose works are still retained in our
collections, were rather verse-wrights than poets, and would now tax
the patience of poetical readers beyond endurance. Such were William
Warner, the author of "Albion's England," a history of England in
metre extending from Noah's flood to the reign of Elizabeth; Samuel
Daniel, the author of the "Civil Wars of Lancaster and York," in eight
books; and Michael Drayton, who also wrote the "Barons' Wars" in verse,
"England's Heroical Epistles," and, above all, the "Polyolbion," a
topography in Alexandrine verse, in thirty books, and thirty thousand
lines. Next came Giles and Phineas Fletcher, who employed their
strength in composing allegoric poems. Phineas, under the delusive
appellation of "The Purple Island," wrote an anatomical description of
the human body, with all its veins, arteries, sinews, and so forth.
This was extended to twelve books, on which an abundance of very
excellent language was wasted. Besides this, he composed "Piscatory
Eclogues," and other poems; and Giles, choosing a worthier subject,
wrote "Christ's Victory," in the Italian _ottava rima_, or eight-lined
stanzas. To such perversion of the name of poetry had men arrived in
the age of Shakespeare.
There were sundry poets who were also translators. Of these,
Edward Fairfax, of the same family as Lord Fairfax, was the most
distinguished. He translated with singular vigour and poetic feeling
Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." It is still referred to with intense
pleasure by the lovers of our old poetry. Joshua Sylvester--who
wrote like King James against tobacco, but in verse, "Tobacco
Battered"--translated, amongst other things, "The Divine Weeks and
Works" of the French poet Du Bartas. Sir Richard Fanshawe translated
the "Lusiad," by the Portuguese poet Camoens. Fanshawe, moreover,
translated the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, from the Italian, the "Odes"
of Horace, the fourth book of the "Æneid," and the "Love for Love's
Sake," of the Spaniard Mendoza. Fanshawe seemed to have a peculiar
taste for the European languages derived from the Latin as for the
Latin itself; thus he translated from Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Italian poets, and from all with much taste and elegance.
Sir John Denham was a popular poet of the time, and his "Cooper's
Hill" is still retained in our collections, and finds readers amongst
admirers of descriptive poetry. Writers of much more sterling poetry
were Sir John Davies, Drummond of Hawthornden, Bishop Hall, and Donne.
Sir John Davies was long Attorney-General, and Chief-Justice of the
King's Bench at the time of his death (_b._, 1570; _d._, 1626).
He is author of a poem on dancing called the "Orchestra," but his
great work is his "_Nosce Teipsum_," or "Know Thyself," a work which
treats on human knowledge and the immortality of the soul. It is
written in quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and is one of the finest
philosophical poems in the language as it was one of the first. There
are a life and feeling in the poem which make it always fresh, like
the waters of a pure and deep fountain. Speaking of the soul, he
says:--
"Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught,
That with her heavenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be.
"For who did ever yet in honour, wealth,
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who ever ceased to wish when he had wealth,
Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind?
"Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall,
Which seem sweet flowers with lustre fresh and gay,
She lights on that and this and tasteth all,
But pleased with none, doth rise and soar away."
[Illustration: HAWTHORNDEN IN 1773. (_After an Etching by John Clerk of
Eldin._)]
Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, wrote, besides considerable
prose, some exquisite poems and sonnets formed on the Italian model;
and Bishop Hall, in his satires, presents some of the most graphic
sketches of English life, manners, and scenery. Dr. Donne, who was
Dean of St. Paul's, and the most fashionable preacher of his day,
was also the most fashionable poet--we do not except Shakespeare. He
was the rage, in fact, of all admirers of poetry, and was the head
of a school of which Cowley was the most extravagant disciple, and
of which Crashaw, Wither, Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles had more
or less of the characteristics. In all these poets there was deep
feeling of spirituality, religion, and wit, and, in some of them, of
nature, dashed and marred by a fantastic style, full of quaintnesses
and conceits. In some of them these were so tempered as to give them
an original and piquant air, as in Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles; in
others, as in Donne and Cowley, they degenerated into disfigurement and
absurdity. But Donne (_b._, 1573; _d._, 1631) had great and shining
qualities, keen, bold satire, profound and intellectual thoughts, and
a most sparkling fancy, embedding rich touches of passion and pathos,
yet so marred by uncouth and strange conceits, that one scarcely
knows how to estimate his compositions. In a word, they are the exact
antipodes of the natural style, and this fashion was carried to its
utmost extravagance by Cowley. A stanza or two from a parting address
of a lover to his mistress may show something of Donne's quality and
manner:--
"As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go;
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, no;
"So let us melt and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys,
To tell the laity of our love.
"Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent."
George Wither (_b._, 1588; _d._, 1667) has much less of what a
contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that
he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions
for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without
study;" and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years
in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire, called
"Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical
poem, called "The Shepherds' Hunting," in which his description of
Poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling:--
"By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least boughs rustling,
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man."
Two songs of Wither's, quoted in Percy's "Reliques"--"The Steadfast
Shepherd," and the one beginning
"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?"--
are exquisite lines, that no reader ever forgets.
Crashaw (_b._, 1616; _d._, 1650) was of a deeply religious tone of
mind, and became a Catholic. His finest poems are his religious ones,
and they are full of music and passionate reveries, yet disfigured by
the Donne fashion, which Dryden, and after him Johnson, inaccurately
termed the Metaphysical School, instead of the Fantastic or Singularity
School. His very first poem, called "The Weeper," shows how he treated
even sacred subjects:--
"Hail, sister springs!
Parents of silver-forded rills,
Ever-bubbling things!
Thawing crystal, snowy hills,
Still spending, never spent, I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.
"Heavens thy fair eyes be,
Heavens of ever-falling stars;
'Tis seed-time still with thee,
And stars thou sow'st, whose harvest dares
Promise the earth to countershine,
Whatever makes heaven's forehead shine."
Carew, Suckling, Lovelace are poets whose merits, in their various
styles, would deserve a separate examination, but we must pass on
to three other poets, who have been more known to modern readers,
and who would of themselves have stamped their age as one of genuine
inspiration--Herbert, Herrick, and Quarles. Herbert and Herrick,
like Donne, were clergymen, and in their quiet country parsonages
poured forth some of the most exquisite lyrics which enrich any
language. Herrick may be said to be the born poet of nature--Herbert
of devotion. Robert Herrick (_b._, 1591; _d._, 1674) was of an old
family of Leicestershire. His lyrics, so full of grace, are the very
soul of Nature's melody and rapture. He revels in all the charms of the
country--flowers, buds, fairies, bees, the gorgeous blossoming May,
the pathos and antique simplicity of rural life; its marriages, its
churchyard histories, its imagery of awaking and fading existence. The
free, joyous, quaint, and musical flow and rhythm of his verse have
all that felicity and that ring of woodland cadences which mark the
snatches of rustic verse which Shakespeare scatters through his dramas.
His "Night Piece to Juliet," beginning--
"Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee,
And the elves also
Whose little eyes glow
Like sparks of fire, befriend thee!"
is precisely of that character. His "Daffodils" express the beautiful
but melancholy sentiment which he so frequently found in nature:--
"Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hastening day
Has run
But to the evensong,
And having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
"We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring,
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours do; and dry
Away
Like to the summer rain,
Or as the pearls of morning dew,
Ne'er to be found again."
Herrick's works are his "Hesperides" and his "Noble Numbers," the
latter being religious, and not equal to the former.
In religious tone, intensity, and grandeur, George Herbert (_b._, 1593;
_d._, 1633) is his superior. Herbert was in early life a courtier; his
eldest brother being the celebrated sceptical writer, Lord Herbert of
Cherbury. Herbert's hopes of Court preferment fortunately ceasing with
the death of King James, he took orders, grew extremely religious,
married an admirable wife, and retired to Bemerton parsonage, about a
mile from Salisbury, where he died of consumption at the age of forty.
Herbert was the very personification of Chaucer's "Good Parson." His
life was one constant scene of piety and benevolence. Beloved by his
parishioners, happy in his congenial wife, and passionately fond of
music and his poetry, his days glided away as already in heaven. The
music which he loved was poured into his poetry, which overflows with
tender and profound feeling, the most chaste and seraphic imagination,
and the most fervent devotion. James Montgomery, of later times, not a
little resembled him in his pure and beautiful piety; but there is in
Herbert a greater vigour, more dignity of style, and finer felicity of
imagery. There is a gravity, a sublimity, and a sweetness which mingle
in his devotional lyrics, and endear them for ever to the heart. His
"Temple" is a poetic fabric worthy of a Christian minstrel, and stands
as an immortal refutation of the oft-repeated theory, that religious
poetry cannot be at once original and attractive. What can be more
noble than the following stanzas from his poem entitled "Man"?--
"For us the winds do blow;
The earth doth rest, heavens move, and fountains flow.
Nothing we see but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure:
The whole is either our cupboard of food
Or cabinet of pleasure.
"The stars have us to bed;
Night draws the curtain which the sun withdraws,
Music and light attend our head.
All things to our _flesh_ are kind
In their _descent_ and _being_; to our _mind_
In their _ascent_ and _cause_.
"Each thing is full of duty:
Waters united are our navigation;
Distinguished, our habitation;
Below, our drink--above, our meat:
Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty?
Then how are all things neat!
"More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of: in every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh! mighty love! man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him."
Besides his "Temple," Herbert wrote a prose work, "The Priest to the
Temple; or, the Country Parson," which is charmingly full of the
simple, child-like piety of the author. He also collected a great
number of proverbs, under the title of "Jacula Prudentum."
The third of the trio of poets who seem to class themselves together
by their quaintness, their fancy, and their piety, is Francis Quarles,
(_b._, 1592; _d._, 1644) a man who has been treated by many critics
as a mere poetaster, but who is one of the most sterling poets which
English genius has produced. Quarles was a gentleman and a scholar; in
his youth he was cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and was finally
ruined by taking the Royal side in the Civil Wars. He wrote various
poetical works; "Argalus and Parthenia," "A Feast for Worms," "Zion's
Elegies," and a series of elegies on the death of a friend, the son
of Bishop Aylmer. But the great work of Quarles is his "Emblems,"
which originated in a Latin poem by Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, called "Pia
Desideria." This book, condemned and overlooked by the great critics,
like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," has, from generation to generation,
adorned with curious woodcuts, circulated amongst the people in town
and country, till it has won an extraordinary popularity: and that
it has well deserved it, we need only read such verses as these to
convince ourselves:--
"I love, and have some cause to love, the earth:
She is my Maker's creature--therefore good;
She is my mother--for she gave me birth;
She is my tender nurse--she gives me food.
But what's a creature, Lord, compared with Thee?
Or what's my mother, or my nurse, to me?
"I love the air: her dainty sweets refresh
My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me;
Her shrill-mouthed quires sustain me with their flesh
And with their Polyphonian notes delight me.
But what's the air, or all the sweets that she
Can bless my soul withal, compared to Thee?
"I love the sea: she is my fellow-creature--
My careful purveyor; she provides me store;
She walls me round, she makes my diet greater;
She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore.
But, Lord of oceans, when compared to Thee,
What is the ocean, or her health to me?
"To heaven's high city I direct my journey,
Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye;
Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney,
Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky.
But what is heaven, great God, compared to Thee?
Without Thy presence, heaven's no heaven to me.
"Without Thy presence, earth gives no refection;
Without Thy presence, sea affords no treasure;
Without Thy presence, air's a rank infection;
Without Thy presence, heaven itself's no pleasure.
If not possessed, if not enjoyed in Thee,
What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?"
William Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," written at this period,
have been much and justly celebrated for their faithful transcripts
of nature and country life. There are others, besides, that sue for
recognition as among the genuine poets of those times--Raleigh, as a
lyrical poet; Sir Henry Wotton; Henry Vaughan, the author of "Silex
Scintillans" and "Olor Iscanus," a disciple of Herbert's, who would
demand a notice were it only to show how freely Campbell borrowed the
poem of "The Rainbow" from him:--
"How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burning, flaming arch did first descry!
When Zerah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
_The youthful world's grey fathers_ in one knot,
Did with attentive looks _watch every hour
For thy new light_."
And so Campbell:--
"When on the green, undeluged earth,
Heaven's covenant, thou didst shine;
How came _the world's grey fathers_ forth
_To watch thy sacred sign_."
Altogether, no age--not even our own--has produced such a constellation
of poets, nor such a mass of exquisite, superb, and imperishable
poetry. Whilst Shakespeare was fast departing, Milton was rising,
and during this period wrote many of his inimitable smaller poems.
Even honest Andrew Marvell, when freed from his labours in the great
struggle for the Commonwealth, solaced himself with writing poetry,
English and Latin, and some of it of no contemptible order, as in his
boat-song of the exiles of the Bermudas:--
"Thus they sang in the English boat
A holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way, to guide the chime,
They with the falling oars kept time."
So he forgot occasionally polemics and politics in "a holy and a
cheerful note" of his own. Even the saturnine Sir Thomas Overbury, whom
Somerset and his wife had murdered in the Tower, could brighten up in
poetry as in his "Choice of a Wife:"--
"If I were to choose a woman,
As who knows but I may marry,
I would trust the eye of no man,
Nor a tongue that may miscarry;
For in way of love and glory
Each tongue best tells his own story."
The prose of the age was equally remarkable. First and foremost stands
Francis Bacon (_b._, 1561; _d._, 1626) with his "Novum Organum," a new
instrument of discovery in philosophy, and other works of a kindred
character. He tells us that in his youth he took a great aversion
to the philosophy of Aristotle; being, he said, a philosophy only
strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production
of works for the life of man; and in this mind he continued through
life. Besides other works of less note, in 1605 he published one of
great importance on "The Advancement of Learning;" soon after he
published the outline or groundwork of his "Organum," under the title
of "Cogitata et Visa; or, Things Thought Out and Seen," and proudly
boasted of it as the greatest birth of time. He afterwards published
the "Wisdom of the Ancients," and it was not till 1621, and when he
had reached the summit of his profession, and been made Viscount of
St. Albans, that he brought out his great work, "The Instauration of
the Sciences," of which the "Novum Organum" is the second part. No
work was so little understood at the time or has occasioned such a
variety of opinions since. Bacon was well aware that such would be
the case, for in his will he says that he leaves his name and memory
to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be
passed over. Bacon asserted that he had superseded the Aristotelian
philosophy, and introduced a new and accurate method of inquiry, both
into mind and matter, by experiment and induction. By one party he is
declared to be the great renovator of true knowledge, and the father
of the modern sciences by this method; by another, that he is nothing
of the kind, and that modern discovery would have progressed as well
without his New Instrument; that Aristotle pursued this method of
induction himself, and that Galileo discovered the motion of the earth
by the same means that Bacon taught at the same time. But whoever has
acquainted himself with the system of Aristotle, and, still more, with
the loose and absurd method by which it was taught in the schools
before Bacon's time, must see that Bacon, if he did not altogether
introduce the system, reduced it to precision and accuracy, and thus
put an end to the windy logic and abortive practice of the schools.
They were accustomed to assume false and visionary premises, and reason
from them by syllogisms which, of course, proved nothing. Bacon, by
proceeding by analysis and synthesis--by first extracting from a
substance, or a topic, everything that did not really belong to it,
and then bringing these expurgated matters into contrast--drew sure
conclusions, and advanced towards positive discovery. True, Galileo
worked by the same method; but Bacon taught it, and made it clear to
all understandings. To say, therefore, that modern science owes nothing
to Bacon is to utter a self-evident falsity. Both in experimental
philosophy and in metaphysical inquiry, it is Bacon's light, and not
Aristotle's, which is followed. That Bacon himself made no great
discoveries in prosecuting his own method proves nothing; because,
though he was not sufficiently advanced in the actual knowledge of the
properties of Matter, he saw and taught clearly how such knowledge was
to be acquired, and applied to the legitimate development of Science.
How completely ignorant was the age of real experimental philosophy,
is shown by the ridicule and contempt which was cast on the "Novum
Organum." Such men as Ben Jonson and Sir Henry Wotton expressed their
profound admiration of it, but by the wits of the time Bacon was
laughed at as little better than a maniac. King James said, in his
almost blasphemous way, that it was like the peace of God--passing all
understanding; and Lord Coke said--
"It deserveth not to be read in schools,
But to be freighted in the ship of fools."
[Illustration: SCENE AT THE FUNERAL OF CHILLINGWORTH. (_See p._ 182.)]
He was represented by men eminent in the world's opinion as "no great
philosopher--a man rather of show than of depth, who wrote philosophy
like a lord chancellor." Abroad, as Bacon had foreseen, his work was
received in a different manner, and pronounced by the learned one of
the most important accessions ever made to philosophy. Whoever will
carefully study it, will find not merely the exposition of his method,
but views stretching into the heights and depths, not only of our own
nature but of the nature and life of the Universe in which we move,
thoughts which stamp the mind of Bacon as one of the most capacious,
many-sided, and profound that ever appeared.
Next to Bacon's we should place the prose writings of John Milton
(_b._, 1608; _d._, 1674) in general importance and intellectual
greatness. As Bacon's were directed to the advancement of true liberty
in philosophy, Milton's were directed to the liberation of the Church
and State from the tyranny of king and custom. His "Areopagitica," a
speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, is a grand plea for the
freedom of the press; his "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," and
the "Best Means of Removing Hirelings out of the Church," go to the
root of all hierarchical corruption. Besides these, his "Defence of
the People of England" in reply to Salmasius, his "Second Defence,"
in reply to Peter du Moulin, and his "Eikonoklastes" in refutation of
the "Eikon Basiliké," attributed to Charles I., but written by Dr.
Gauden, and others of his prose works, are written in a somewhat stiff
but lofty and massive style. They foreshow the great national poet of
"Paradise Lost;" and cannot be read without a deep veneration for the
great Puritan champion of the liberties and fame of England.
Next to these we should name the great advocates of Protestantism,
Hales and Chillingworth. The "Discourse on Schism" is the writing of
Hales which brought him into notice, and led to the most important
consequences. It struck at the very root of tradition and submission
to the authority of the Fathers, which Laud and his party had exerted
themselves to establish; and it was followed out by Chillingworth
(_b._, 1602; _d._, 1644) in his "The Religion of Protestants, a Safe
Way to Salvation." In this work, which has since been styled the
"bulwark of Protestantism," Chillingworth endeavoured to prove the
Divine authority of the Bible on the basis of historic evidence, and
having done that to his satisfaction, he declared that the religion
of Protestants was the Bible, and nothing but the Bible. By this rule
alone they are, in his opinion, to be judged; the Scriptures alone
are to be the standard of their doctrines. He thus cut off all the
claims of Popery built on tradition, and established the right of
private judgment. In this he served not only the Established Church,
to which he belonged, but every body of Christians whatever; for they
had, according to his reasoning, the same right to interpret the
Bible for themselves. This gave great scandal to the bigoted party in
the Church. They declared that he had destroyed faith by reducing it
to simple reason. He was violently attacked by both Catholics and
Puritans. Knott, a Jesuit, and Dr. Cheynell, one of the Assembly of
Divines, were his most determined opponents. Cheynell wrote against
him, "Chillingworthi Novissima; or, the Sickness, Heresy, Death, and
Burial of W. C., with a Profane Catechism selected out of his Works."
Not satisfied with this, he attended his funeral, made a violent
harangue against him, and flung the "Religion of Protestants" into his
grave, crying, "Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so
many precious souls--get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book, earth
to earth, dust to dust, go and rot with thy author." The Protestant
Church has fully acknowledged the services of Chillingworth. Even
those who deem that there are other evidences of Christianity than the
historic evidences, or even the deductions of criticism, admit that his
arguments go far to demonstrate the genuineness of the Bible records,
and therefore of the Christian religion. The highest encomiums have
been paid to the reasoning and eloquence of Chillingworth, by Locke,
Clarendon, Gibbon, Dugald Stewart, and all our theological writers.
What Chillingworth did for Protestantism, Cudworth, in his great work,
"The True Intellectual System of the Universe," did for religion in
general, demolishing most completely the philosophy of atheism and
infidelity. Barrow, Henry More, and Jeremy Taylor, added much wealth
to the theological literature of the age. More and Barrow belong more
properly to the next period. Taylor (_b._, 1613; _d._, 1677), who was
the son of a barber, became one of the most celebrated preachers of
that time, and both his sermons and his other works have received from
many of our chief critics and historians the most encomiastic praises.
He has been represented as a modern Chrysostom. Much of this praise he
undoubtedly deserves, but readers coming to him after such extravagant
laudation, experience a sensible disappointment. His "Holy Living and
Dying" may be taken as the most favourable specimen of his writings;
and though grave, pleasing, and consolatory, it does not strike us by
any means as highly or brilliantly eloquent. His sermons, especially
on the "Marriage Ring" and on the "House of Feasting," are of the same
character. They are full of piety, sweetness, and grace, but they are
not eloquence of the highest class. His sentences are often wearyingly
long, his illustrations do not always appear very pertinent, and his
manner is too much that of the father of the fourth century, whom he
appears to have greatly formed himself upon.
The writings of Archbishop Ussher and the sermons of Bishop Andrews
deserve mention; but the works of Thomas Fuller, the author of the
"Worthies of England," "The Church History of Great Britain," "The
Holy and Profane States," and other books, are undoubtedly the most
witty and amusing of the whole period. Next to Burton's "Anatomy of
Melancholy," a work, too, of this time, they have furnished to modern
authors more original ideas, more frequent and pregnant sentiments
and allusions than any others in the language. They have been rivers
of thought to men who had very little of their own. Harrington's
"Oceana"--a political romance, written to illustrate the opinion that
the great power of nations consists in their property--has ideas to
repay a reader who has leisure and patience. A writer who has always
taken a high rank for originality is Sir Thomas Browne, the author of
"Religio Medici," "Urn Burial," "The Garden of Cyrus," etc. Browne
ranges freely from the "quincunx" of the gardens of the ancients to the
highest flights of metaphysical speculation. He is quaint, abrupt, and
singular, but at the same time he is extremely suggestive of thought,
and extends the sphere of human inquiry and sympathy far beyond the
physical limits of most writers of his class. There is also a school of
historians of this age of eminent merit, at the head of which stands
Sir Walter Raleigh with his "History of the World;" Knowles with his
able "History of the Turks;" Daniel with his "History of England" to
the reign of Edward III.; and Thomas May, with the "History of the
Long Parliament," and his "Breviary of the History of Parliament,"
two invaluable works. Camden's "Britannia" and "Annals" appeared at
this epoch. Various chronicles were also issued at this period--Hall's
"Union of the Families of York and Lancaster," Grafton's "Chronicle,"
Holinshed's, and Baker's. The works of Stow and Speed appeared in the
early part of it,--Stow's "Summary of the English Chronicles," in 1565;
his "Annals," 1573; his "Flores Historiarum," an enlarged edition of
his chronicle, 1600; his "Survey of London," 1598. Speed's "Theatre of
the Empire of Great Britain" belongs to 1606; and his "History of Great
Britain" to 1614. Besides these appeared the "Memoirs" of Rushworth.
Thurloe's and Whitelock's were written, but did not appear till a
later period. The commencement of the Long Parliament marked also a
remarkable era, that of the first English newspapers, under the name of
"Diurnals," or daily records of Parliamentary proceedings. The idea
once started, newspapers rapidly spread, so that between the Civil War
and the Restoration, nearly two hundred were published, but none more
frequently than once a week for some time, nor afterwards oftener than
twice or three times a week. It was, moreover, an age of political
tracts and pamphlets. In science the discovery of the circulation of
the blood by Harvey, and the invention of logarithms by Napier, were
the great events of that department. On the whole, the intellectual
development of the age was as great and marvellous as was its political
advance. To no other modern nation can we point, which in one and
the same period has produced three such men as Shakespeare, Milton,
and Bacon, amid a host of lesser, but scarcely less precious lights,
at the same time that it was working out one of the most stupendous
revolutions in human government, and the imperishable principles of
it, that the world has seen. On reviewing this period, well might
Wordsworth exclaim:--
"Great men have been amongst us; hands that penned,
And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none;
The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington,
Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend.
These moralists could act and comprehend;
They knew how genuine glory is put on;
Taught us how rightfully a nation shone
In splendour."
And well did he add:--
"We must be free, or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spoke: the faith and morals hold
That Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth's best blood--have titles manifold."
Some of the eminent musical composers already mentioned (_See_ Vol.
II., pp. 378-9) continued to embellish the reign of James. Amongst
these were Ford, Ward, Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons. The first three
are distinguished for their madrigals, and Weelkes for ballads, which
are unrivalled. Ward's "Die not, Fond Man," is still as popular as
ever. Gibbons composed both madrigals and cathedral music. He was
organist of the Royal Chapel, and was made Doctor of Music by the
University of Oxford. The sacred music of Gibbons is enough of itself
to exempt England from the often advanced charge of being unmusical.
In 1622, Dr. Heyther, a friend of Camden, the antiquary, established
a professorship of music at Oxford. Charles I. was not only fond
of music, but played himself with considerable skill on the _viol
da gamba_. Dr. William Child, himself an excellent composer, was
the organist of his chapel, and Lawes, the friend of Milton, who is
referred to in his sonnets and in "Comus," was patronised by him.
Lawes was greatly admired, and justly, by other poets, especially
Herrick and Waller. Charles I., however, set a bad example, by
encouraging foreign musicians instead of his own subjects. He made
Lanieri, an Italian, a man in real musical science far inferior to
several Englishmen then living, "Master of our Music," and his example
was only too diligently followed by princes and nobles in after times.
[Illustration: WILLIAM HARVEY.]
The rise of the Commonwealth was the fall of music in England. The
stern Puritans, and especially the Scottish Presbyterians, who dubbed
an organ "a kist o' whistles," denounced all music as profane, and
drove organs and orchestras from the churches. Nothing was tolerated
but a simple psalm tune. Cromwell, however, did not partake of
this fanaticism. He was fond of music, and frequently had musical
entertainments at Whitehall and Hampton Court. The great organ which
had been pulled out of Magdalen College, Oxford, he had carefully
conveyed to Hampton Court, where it was one of his greatest solaces.
Under Cromwell the lovers of music brought out their concealed
instruments, and there was once more not only domestic enjoyment of
music, but open musical parties.
[Illustration: REDUCED FACSIMILE OF FRONT PAGE OF NO. 26 OF "A PERFECT
DIURNALL." (_About three-fourths the size of the original._)]
If the Civil War in England was auspicious to liberty, it was
disastrous to art. From the time of Henry VIII. the British monarchs
had shown a decided taste for the arts. Henry had munificently
patronised Holbein, and had made various purchases of foreign
_chefs-d'œuvre_. Prince Henry inherited the taste of his mother,
instead of the coarse buffoonery of his father, and showed a strong
attachment to men of genius and to works of genius. He began a
collection of paintings, bronzes, and medals, which fell to his brother
Charles. Charles was an enthusiast in art, and had he not possessed
his fatal passion for despotism, would have introduced a new era in
England as regarded intellectual and artistic pursuits. The study of
Italian models, both in literature and art, by the aristocracy, enabled
the nobles to embrace the tastes of the monarch; and England would
soon have seen the fine arts flourishing to a degree which they had
never enjoyed before, and which would have prevented the dark ages that
succeeded. During Charles's early rule the greatest artists of the
Continent flocked over to England, and found a liberal reception there.
Rubens, Vandyck, Jansen, Vansomer, Mytens, Diepenbeck, Pölemberg,
Gentileschi, and others visited London, and Vandyck, the greatest of
them all, remained permanently. The works of Vandyck, in England, are
numerous, and if we except his famous picture of "The Crucifixion" at
Mechlin, we possess the best of his productions. At Windsor Castle,
Hampton Court, Blenheim, Wilton House, and Wentworth House, the bulk of
his finest pictures are to be seen. His portraits of our princes and
the chief nobility of the time are familiar to all English eyes, and
place him only second to Titian in that department. At Wilton House
alone there are twenty-five of Vandyck's paintings; the portrait of
Philip, Earl of Pembroke, with his family, is declared by Walpole to
be itself a school of this master. His dramatic portrait of Strafford
and his secretary, Mainwaring, at Wentworth House, Walpole asserts to
be his masterpiece. Charles had proposed to him to paint the history
of the Order of the Garter on the walls of the Banqueting House at
Whitehall, but the sum he demanded--said to be eighty thousand pounds,
but more probably a misprint for eight thousand pounds--caused Charles
to delay it, and his political troubles soon put an end to the scheme.
He painted several pictures of Charles on horseback, one of which is at
Windsor, and another at Hampton Court.
Rubens came to England only as an ambassador, but Charles seized the
opportunity to get him to paint the apotheosis of James, on the ceiling
of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. This he, however, merely sketched
whilst in London and painted it at Antwerp, receiving three thousand
pounds for it. The Duke of Buckingham purchased Rubens's private
collection of pictures, chiefly of the Italian school, but containing
some of his own, for ten thousand pounds. These were sold by the Long
Parliament, and now adorn the palaces of the Escurial at Madrid, and
the Belvedere at Vienna. The large pictures in the latter gallery,
"St. Francis Xavier preaching to the Indians," and "Loyola casting out
Devils," are amongst the very finest of his productions.
Charles, besides making collections, and drawing round him great
artists, projected the establishment of an academy of arts on a
princely scale. But this remained only an idea, through the breaking
out of the Revolution. Parliament, in 1645, caused all such pictures at
Whitehall as contained any representation of the Saviour or the Virgin
to be burnt, and the rest to be sold. Fortunately there were persons
in power who had more rational notions, and much was saved. Cromwell
himself secured the cartoons of Raphael for three hundred pounds, and
thus preserved them to the nation, and as soon as he had the authority,
he put a stop to the sale of the royal collections, and even detained
many pictures that had been sold.
The native artists of this period were chiefly pupils of Rubens or
Vandyck. Jamesone, called the Scottish Vandyck, was a pupil of Rubens
at the same time with Vandyck--Charles sat to him. William Dobson, a
pupil of Vandyck, was serjeant-painter to Charles, and Robert Walker,
of the Vandyck school, was Cromwell's favourite painter, to whom we owe
several admirable portraits of the Protector. There were also several
miniature painters of the highest merit--the two Olivers, Hoskins, and
Cooper.
Up to this period engravings had become by no means prominent in
England. That there had been engravers we know from various books
having been illustrated by them. Geminus and Humphrey Lloyd were
employed by Ortelius, of Antwerp, on his "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum."
Aggas had executed a great plan of London, and Saxon county maps.
Various Flemish and French engravers found employment, as Vostermans,
De Voerst, and Peter Lombard. Hollar, a Bohemian, was employed
extensively till the outbreak of the Civil War, and illustrated Dugdale
and other writers. But the chief English engraver of this period was
John Payne.
Sculpture was by no means in great advance at this period. There were
several foreign artists employed in England on tombs and monuments,
but as they did not at that date put their names upon them, it is
difficult to attribute to every man his own. Amongst these Le Sœur, who
executed the equestrian statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross, Angier,
and Du Val were the chief. John Stone, master mason to the king, was
by far the most skilful native sculptor. Amongst his best efforts are
the monuments of Sir George Holles at Westminster, and the statue of
Sir Finnes Holles, also at Westminster. Sir Dudley Carleton's tomb at
Westminster, and Sutton's tomb at the Charterhouse are also his. But
the greatest boon to sculpture was the introduction at this period, by
the Earl of Arundel, of the remains of ancient art, hence called the
Arundel Marbles.
This was the epoch of the commencement of classical architecture. The
grand old Anglo-Gothic had run its course. It fell with the Catholic
Church, or continued only in a mongrel and degraded state, showing
continually the progress of its decline. From Henry VIII. to James
this state of things continued; the miserable tasteless style, which
succeeded the downfall of the picturesque Tudor, being the only
architecture. The change to the classical was destined to be made by
Inigo Jones, whose is the great name of this period. Jones had studied
in Italy, and became aware of the graceful style which Vitruvius had
introduced by modulation of the ancient Greek and Roman, and which
Palladio had raised to perfection. The merit of Jones is that he
imported Palladio's style substantially and completely, ready as it
was to his hands, and wholly unknown in England. By this means Jones
acquired a reputation for genius to which nothing that he has left
justifies his claim. He was first engaged in designing the scenery and
machinery of the masques which Ben Jonson wrote for the queen of James
I. He was appointed architect to the queen and Prince Henry. On the
death of the prince he went back to Italy, but on his return to London
he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Royal Buildings. The first
thing which he planned was the design for an immense palace for James
on the site of Whitehall. There is a simple grandeur in the drawings
of it which are left, which may fairly entitle him to a reputation
for the introduction of an elegant domestic architecture, although
it does not warrant the extravagant terms of eulogy which have been
lavished on him. The only portion of this palace which was built is
the Banqueting House (afterwards the Chapel Royal) at Whitehall, being
the termination of the great façade, and which contains nothing very
remarkable. Jones added a chapel to Somerset House, and a west front
to St. Paul's, neither of which remains. That he was far from having
conceived the true principles of architecture was shown by the fact
that his west front of Old St. Paul's was a classical one engrafted
on a Gothic building, and this solecism he was continually repeating.
One of the most glaring instances of the kind is a classical screen
which he raised in the Norman Cathedral of Durham. Amongst the chief
remaining buildings of Inigo Jones from which an idea of his talent may
be drawn, are the Piazza and St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, of which
Quatremere de Quincy says that the most remarkable thing about it is
the reputation that it enjoys; Ashburnham House, Westminster; a house
on the west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields originally built for the Earl
of Lindsay; an addition to St. John's College, Oxford; and by far his
finest work,--if his it be, which is doubtful--Heriot's Hospital at
Edinburgh. He also superintended the erection of Old Greenwich Palace.
The general aspect of the towns and streets remained the same at this
period as in the former. James issued proclamation after proclamation,
ordering the citizens to leave off the half-timbered style, and build
the fronts, at least, entirely of brick or stone; but this was little
attended to, and many a strange old fabric continued to show the
fashions of past ages.
If we are to believe the memoir writers and dramatists of this period,
the national manners and morals had suffered a decided deterioration.
Licentious as was the court of Queen Elizabeth, there was a certain
dignity and outward decorum preserved, but James introduced such
coarseness and grossness of manner, such low debauch and buffoonery,
that even the salutary restraint which fashion had imposed was
stripped away, and all classes exhibited the most revolting features.
In the reign of Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, we had such women as
the daughters of Sir Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, Catherine Parr, and
others, who cultivated literature and philosophy, the Queens Mary and
Elizabeth themselves setting the example in reading and translating
the most illustrious classical authors. But after James came in,
notwithstanding all his learned pedantry, you hear nothing more of such
tastes amongst the Court ladies, and it is very singular that amid
that blaze of genius which distinguished the time under review, we
find no traces of feminine genius there. On the contrary, both English
dramatists and foreign writers describe the morals and manners of women
of rank as almost destitute of delicacy and probity. They are described
as mingling with gentlemen in taverns amid tobacco smoke, songs, and
conversation of the most ribald character. They allowed liberties which
would startle women of the lowest rank in these times, were desperate
gamblers, and those who had the opportunity were wholesale dealers in
political influence. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, boasts of the
effect of the bribes that he was accustomed to distribute amongst them.
Whilst such women as the infamous and murderous Countess of Essex and
the Dowager Countess Villiers were the leading stars of the Court, the
tone of morals must have been low indeed. Whilst the ladies were of
this stamp, we cannot expect the gentlemen to have been better, and
there is no doubt but that the honours and wealth and royal favour
heaped on such men as Somerset, Hay, Ramsay, and Buckingham, made
debauchery and villainy quite fashionable. The character of Englishmen
on their travels, Howell tells us, was expressed in an Italian
proverb:--
"_Inglese Italianato
E Diavolo incarnato._"
"An Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate." This was said of the
debauched conduct of our young men on their travels. At home they were
a contemptible mixture of foppery and profanity. Buckingham and the
other favourites led the way. We have recorded the audacious behaviour
of Buckingham at the courts of France and Spain, and the enormous
foppery of his apparel. He had a dress of uncut white velvet, covered
all over with diamonds, valued at eighty thousand pounds, a great
feather of diamonds, another dress of purple satin covered with pearls,
valued at twenty thousand pounds, and his sword, girdle, hatbands,
and spurs were thickly studded with diamonds. He had, besides these,
five-and-twenty other dresses of great richness, and his numerous
attendants imitated him according to their means. They began now to
patch their faces with black plaister, because the officers who had
served in the German wars wore such to cover their scars; and the
ladies did the same. Duelling was now introduced, cheating at play was
carried to an immense extent, and the dandy effeminacy of the Cavaliers
was unexampled. They had the utmost contempt of all below them, and
any attempt to assume the style or courtesies of address which they
appropriated to themselves was resented as actual treason. The term
"Master" or "Mr." was used only to great merchants or commoners of
distinction; and to address such as "gentlemen" or "esquires" would
have roused all the ire of the aristocracy. In proceeding through the
streets at night, courtiers were conducted with torches, merchants with
links, and mechanics with lanthorns.
We may imagine the feeling with which the sober and religious Puritans
beheld all this, and the proud contempt with which their strictures
were received. When the Civil War broke out, which was a war of
religious reform as much as of political, the Puritans displayed a
grave manner, a sober dress, and chastened style of speech; and the
Cavaliers, in defiance and contempt, swore, drank, and indulged in
debauchery all the more, to mark their superiority to the "sneaking
Roundhead dogs."
Charles endeavoured to restrain this loose and indecent spirit, but
it was too strong for him; and though the Puritans put it effectually
down during the Commonwealth, it came back in a flood with the lewd and
ribald Charles II. Charles I. also introduced a more tasteful style
of Court pageants and festivities. Under James all the old fantastic
masques and pageantries--in which heathen gods, goddesses, satyrs,
and giants figured--prevailed. Charles gave to his pageantries a
more classical character, but when the Puritans came in they put them
all down, along with Maypoles, and all the wakes, and church-ales,
and the like, which James had encouraged by his "Book of Sports." The
Court festivals, so long as the monarchy remained, were marked by all
the profusion, displays of jewellery, and dresses of cloth of gold
and embroidery, which prevailed in the Tudor times. The old-fashioned
country life, in which the gentlemen hunted and hawked, and the ladies
spent their leisure in giving bread to the poor and making condiments,
preserves, and distilled waters, was rapidly deserted during the gay
days of James and Charles, and the fortune-making of favourites.
Merchants and shopkeepers were growing rich, and though they still
conducted their businesses in warehouses which would appear mean
and miserable to City men of to-day, and in shops with open fronts,
before which the master or one of his apprentices constantly paraded,
crying, "What d'ye lack?" had stately suburban houses, and vied with
the nobles in their furniture and mode of living. The moral condition
of the people of London at this period, according to all sorts of
writers, was something inconceivably frightful. The apprentices, as
we have seen, were a turbulent and excitable race, who had assumed a
right to settle political matters, or to avenge any imagined attack
on their privileges. At the cry of "Clubs!" they seized their clubs
and swords and rushed into the streets to ascertain what was amiss.
They were easily led by their ringleaders against any body or any
authority that was supposed to be invading popular rights. We have
seen them surrounding the Parliament House, demanding such measures
as they pleased, and executing their notions of suitable chastisement
of offenders by setting fire to Laud's house, and breaking down the
benches of the High Commission Court. They were equally ready to
encounter and disperse the constabulary or the City Guard, and to fight
out their quarrels with the Templars, or others with whom they were at
feud.
[Illustration: SHOPKEEPER AND APPRENTICE IN THE TIME OF CHARLES I.
(_See p._ 188.)]
The riots of the apprentices, however, had generally something of a
John-Bullish assertion of right and justice in them; but the streets
and alleys of London were infested with an equally boisterous and
much more villainous crew of thieves and cut-purses. Pocket-picking
was then, as now, taught as a science, and was carried to a wonderful
perfection of dexterity. All kinds of rogueries were practised on
country people, the memory of which remains yet in rural districts,
and is still believed applicable to the metropolis. These vagabonds
had their retreats about the Savoy and the brick-kilns of Islington,
but their headquarters were in a part of Whitefriars called Alsatia,
which possessed the right of sanctuary and swarmed with debtors,
thieves, bullies, and every kind of miscreants, ready on an alarm,
made by the sound of a horn, to turn out in mobs and defend their
purlieus from constables and sheriffs' officers. Walking the streets
in the daytime was dangerous from the affrays often going on between
the apprentices and the students of the Temple, or between the butchers
and weavers, or from the rude jostling and practical jokes of bullies
and swashbucklers; but at night there was no safety except under a
strong guard. Then Alsatia, the Savoy, and the numerous other dens
of vice and violence, poured forth their myrmidons, and after nine
o'clock there was no safety for quiet passengers. If we add to this
description the narrowness of the roads and alleys, the unpaved and
filthy state of the streets, and undrained and ill-ventilated houses,
London was anything at this period but an attractive place. The plague
was a frequent visitant, and we are told that kites and ravens were
much kept to devour the offal and filth of the streets, instead of
scavengers. In the country, things were not much better. The roads
were terrible, and were infested by sturdy bands of robbers. In the
neighbourhood of London, Finchley, Blackheath, Wimbledon, and Shooter's
Hill were places of widespread fame for daring highwaymen. It was
high time for the Puritans to come into power, and to put both town
and country under a more wholesome discipline. Cromwell's soldiers,
quartered in various parts of the metropolis, and his major-generals
administering martial law in different parts of the country, soon
altered the face of things. He shut up Spring Gardens, a place of
nocturnal resort for assignations for traffickers in political
corruption, and for various licentiousness; and instead of fellows
prowling about the streets with sweetmeats in their pockets to kidnap
children, and sell them to the plantations, he sent these scoundrels
freely thither themselves. Amongst the gloomy features of this period
was the relentless persecution of old women, under the belief that
they were witches; a practice commenced by James, but continued by the
Puritans, who sent out Hopkins, the notorious witchfinder, who, in the
years 1645 and 1646, traversed the country, condemning and putting to
death hundreds of them, till he himself was accused of being a wizard,
and was subjected to the same fate. From 1640 to the Restoration, four
thousand persons are said to have perished under charge of witchcraft.
In Scotland this terrible practice was carried on with even aggravated
cruelties, in order to extort confession.
The sports of the aristocracy, gentry, and merchants were much the
same that they had been hitherto. Hunting was the favourite pastime
of James, and therefore was not likely to be neglected by the country
gentry. He was also fond of hawking, and kept alive that pastime,
which was dying out, some time longer. Ball games had much superseded
the jousts and tournaments of other days. Tennis retained its high
favour, and billiards and pall-mall, or striking a ball through a ring
suspended to a pole, were becoming fashionable. Bowling, cards, dice,
dancing, masques, balls, and musical entertainments varied town life.
The common people stuck to their foot-ball, quoits, pitching the bar,
cricket, shovel-board, bull- and bear-baiting, and cock-fighting.
The Puritans put down May-games, Whitsun-ales, morrice-dances,
and all amusements that savoured of a Catholic origin. They also
humanely suppressed, as far as they could, the savage sports of
bear and bull-baiting. Pride and Hewson killed all the bears at the
bear-garden to put an end to that cruel pastime, and thence originated
Butler's "Hudibras." The bowling-greens of the English were famous,
and horse-racing was much in vogue. In Scotland the Reformation put
to flight all sorts of games, dancing, and merry-makings, as sinful
and unbecoming of Christians, and polemic discussions were the only
excitements which relieved the ascetic gloom.
The interiors of houses were in this period greatly embellished, and
the splendour of hangings of beds and windows had strikingly increased.
Rich velvets and silks embroidered with cloth of gold and cloth of
silver, and coloured satins of the most gorgeous hues abounded. The
cushions of couches and chairs were equally costly, and instead of the
ancient tapestry, paper and leather hangings, richly stamped and gilt,
covered the walls. The Flemish artists had been called in to paint the
ceilings with historical or mythological scenes, and on the walls hung
the masterpieces of Flemish and Italian art. Carpets were beginning
to supersede rushes on the floors, but were more commonly used as
coverings for tables. In addition to the carved cabinets of oak, ebony,
and ivory, and the richly-covered cushioned and high-backed chairs of
the Tudor dynasty, Flemish and Dutch furniture of somewhat formal but
still elegant design abounded. Superb ornaments of ivory and china had
found their way from the East, and became heirlooms in great mansions.
Altogether, the houses of the wealthy of those times presented a scene
of stately elegance and luxury that has not since been surpassed.
The costume of the reign of James was but a continuation of that of
Elizabeth. The men still wore the stiff plated ruff, occasionally
varied by a plain horizontal one with lace on its edges. The long
peasecod-bellied doublet continued, and the large stuffed Gallic or
Venetian hose, slashed and quilted, had assumed more preposterous
dimensions from James's timidity; he having both these and the doublets
quilted to resist the stabs of the stiletto. Towards the end of his
reign a change was noticeable. Instead of the long-waisted doublet
there were short jackets, with false hanging sleeves behind; the trunk
hose were covered with embroidered straps, tucked short at the thigh,
and the hose gartered below the knee. We are told how they covered
their cloaks and dresses with jewels on State occasions. They wore
feathers at such times in their hats. Taylor, the Water Poet, says the
gallants of his time
"Wore a farm in shoestrings edged with gold,
And spangled garters worth a copyhold;
A hose and doublet which a lordship cost,
A gaudy cloak, three mansions' price almost;
A beaver band and feather for the head,
Prized at the church's tithe, the poor man's bread."
The old cloth stockings were obsolete, and stockings of silk, thread,
or worsted used.
The ladies of the Court were still in the stiff Elizabethan
farthingale, elevated collar, and hair dressed in the lofty style. Anne
of Denmark was Elizabeth over again. But in domestic life we find the
ladies attired in a far more natural style, without the farthingale,
with falling collars, plain or edged with lace, and the hair with
ringlets falling on each side; and this simple and more elegant fashion
became at length universal in Charles's reign.
The male costume of Charles's time was extremely elegant. At the
commencement of the Civil War no contrast could be greater than that
of the appearance of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. The Cavalier
dress consisted of a doublet of silk, satin, or velvet, with large
loose sleeves slashed up the front, the collar covered by a falling
band of the richest point lace, with Vandyck edging. The long breeches,
fringed or pointed met the tops of the wide boots, which were also
commonly ruffled with lace or lawn. A broad Flemish beaver hat, with a
rich hatband and plume of feathers, was set on one side of the head,
and a Spanish rapier hung from a most magnificent baldrick, or sword
belt, worn sash-wise over the right shoulder, and on one shoulder was
worn a short cloak with an air of carelessness. In war this short cloak
was exchanged generally for the buff coat, which was also richly laced,
and sometimes embroidered with gold and silver, and round the waist was
worn a broad silk or satin scarf tied in a large bow behind or over the
hip; or a buff jerkin without sleeves was worn over the doublet, and
the lace or lawn on the boots dispensed with. The beard was worn very
peaked, with small upturned moustaches, and the hair long and flowing
on the shoulders. In contrast to this the Parliamentarians wore their
hair cut short--whence the name of Roundhead--and studied a sober cut
and colour of clothes. The first appearance of Cromwell in Parliament,
described by Sir Philip Warwick, has been taken as a sufficient
specimen of his costume when Protector. But Cromwell was then but a
gentleman-farmer, and appeared in careless rustic habit. "I came one
morning into the House," says Warwick, "well clad, and perceived a
gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for
it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill
country tailor. His hat was without a hatband." But no one knew better
than Cromwell what was necessary to the decorum of station, and very
different is the account of his appearance when going to be sworn
Protector. "His Highness was in a plain but rich suit, black velvet,
with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold."
The ladies' dresses of Charles's time rapidly changed from the stiff
ruffs and farthingales to a more natural and elegant style. With Mrs.
Turner, their introducer, went out in James's time the yellow starch
ruffs and bands, for she appeared, when hanged for her share in Sir
Thomas Overbury's murder, in her own yellow ornaments at the gallows.
But all ruffs grew obsolete in Charles's reign, and a lady of that
day would scarcely be distinguished from a lady of this. The hair was
dressed much as in modern manner, the dress fell naturally without
hoops, and the broad collar lay gracefully on the shoulders. The
citizens' and Puritans' wives, as well as country women, wore the broad
high-crowned hat, and country women appeared still in plaited ruff, and
a muffler over the mouth in cold weather, tied up to the back of the
head. A lady had generally her feather fan in her hand, as the modern
one has her parasol.
Armour was fast disappearing; it was of little use against cannon and
matchlocks. James thought armour a very good invention, for it hindered
a man as much from hurting his enemy as it defended himself. But in
his time little but a cuirass for the body and a helmet or bonnet was
used. To the rest for the heavy matchlock in this reign was affixed
a long rapier blade, called a "swine's feather," or "bristle," and
used as a soldier now uses the bayonet. In the Civil War most of the
officers wore only a cuirass over a buff coat; and though some of
the infantry were almost fully sheathed in armour, it was soon found
to be too cumbersome for rapid movements, and with the exception
of the cuirassiers, who were clad in armour except the legs, they
were seldom defended by more than a back- and breast-plate, and a
head-piece. During the war the cavalry was divided into cuirassiers,
lancers, arquebusiers, carbineers, and dragoons, according to the
different weapon or armour which they carried,--the cuirass, the
lance, the musket, the heavy arquebus, the carbine, or the dragon, a
sort of blunderbuss. At this period the firelock was introduced by
the poultry-stealers of Holland, and called after them the snaphance,
or hen-stealer. The superiority of the flint-lock over the match- or
cumbrous wheel-lock was soon seen and adopted.
The moral condition of the people, as we have just seen, was at this
period deplorable. The neglect of education left the bulk of the
working class ignorant and depraved, and the long peace which the
reigns of Elizabeth and James maintained had so greatly augmented the
wealth and prosperity of the nation, that the insolence of illiterate
abundance added to the public exhibition of rudeness and riot. In
one respect, however, the whole people had become enlightened--they
had learned very extensively their political rights. The rise and
opulence of the merchants and middle classes, through commerce and
through the confiscation of Church lands, had impressed them with a
feeling of their importance, and led them no longer to bow and cringe
before the nobles, but to claim their proper authority as the third,
and, indeed, the greatest estate. From the time when Henry VIII. set
agoing discussions regarding religious liberty, and permitted the Bible
to appear in good plain English, the light which sprang up on the
subject of human rights was wonderful, and could never be withdrawn
or extinguished. The mistake, as regarded royal prerogative, was soon
seen, and an endeavour was made to limit the reading of the Bible to
the nobles and the learned only, but it was in vain. Those who had the
Scriptures soon spread abroad knowledge of their great principles,
and as the Stuart government was daily found to be weaker, the sense
of popular right was growing stronger and more general. So soon as
Parliament began to resist the encroachments of the Crown, and even to
do it with arms in their hands, it became necessary to convince the
people at large that their rights were at stake, and to explain what
these rights were. Such knowledge as this could never be taken back
again, and accordingly from this period the principle that all power
proceeds from the people and exists for the people, became the great
fixed sentiment of the nation.
The physical condition of the kingdom, therefore, during the reign
of James, was evidently much improved, and almost justifies the
glowing description of Clarendon, made to set off the mischiefs of
resistance to royalty. "For twelve years before the meeting of the
Long Parliament," he says, "the kingdom enjoyed the greatest calm and
the fullest measure of felicity that any people, in any age, for so
long a time together, had been blessed with, to the wonder and envy
of all other parts of Christendom." It was inevitable that much of
this prosperity must be overthrown, or rather interrupted by a ten
years' fierce contest, like that which arose between the Crown and the
people. That the people were not only severely pressed by taxation to
support this contest, but that they were harassed, plundered, and had
their agricultural operations impeded, and their crops destroyed by
the combatants is certain. Consequently, during the great struggle,
the price of country produce rose extremely. Wheat, which in the early
part of Charles's reign was as low as 44s. a quarter, rose after 1640
to 73s.; to 85s. in 1648; and in 1649 it was 80s.; but no sooner was
the Commonwealth established, and peaceful operations were renewed,
than it fell as rapidly, being, in 1650, 76s. 8d., and falling so much
that in 1654 it was down to 26s. This was the lowest, and it averaged
during the remainder of the Protectorate, 45s., as nearly as possible
its price at the commencement of the war. Other articles of life rose
and fell from the same causes in the same proportion; the prices of
the following articles, except during the War, may be regarded as the
average ones for this period:--A fat cygnet, about 8s.; pheasants,
from 5s. to 6s.; turkeys, 3s. to 4s.; fat geese, 2s. each; ducks, 8d.;
best fatted capons, 2s. 4d.; hens, 1s.; pullets, 1s. 6d.; rabbits,
7d.; a dozen pigeons, 6s.; eggs, three for 1d.; fresh butter, 6d.
per pound. Vegetables, being so little cultivated, were very dear:
cauliflowers, 1s. 6d. each; potatoes, 2s. per pound; onions, leeks,
carrots, and potherbs, dear, but not quite so high-priced. Mutton and
beef were about 3-1/2d. per pound. The wages of servants hired by the
year and kept, were, for a farm servant man, from 20s. to 50s. a year,
according to his qualifications; those obtaining more than 40s. were
expected to be able to do all the skilled work, as mowing, threshing,
thatching, making ricks, hedging, and killing cattle and pigs for
daily consumption. Women servants, who could bake, brew, dress meat,
make malt, etc., obtained about 26s. a year, and other women servants,
according to age and ability, from that sum down to 14s. a year. A
bailiff obtained 52s. Labourers, or artisans hired by the day, during
harvest, had, a mower, 5d. a day and his food; a reaper, haymaker,
hedger, or ditcher, 4d.; a woman reaper, 3d.; a woman haymaker, 2d.;
if no food was given these sums were doubled. At other times labourers
received from Easter to Michaelmas, 3d. a day with food, or 7d.
without; and from Michaelmas to Easter, 2d. with food, and 6d. without.
Carpenters and bricklayers received 8d. a day with meat, or 1s.
without; sawyers, 6d. with meat, or 1s. without; and other handicrafts
nearly the same, through the year till Michaelmas, after that much less.
The great extension of foreign commerce, and the introduction of
coffee, spices, cottons, and other new tropical produce, increased
the comfort of domestic life. Yet, with all this prosperity, there
still abounded much pauperism and vagabondism. The war naturally had
this consequence--great numbers of the dispersed Cavaliers and royal
troopers taking to the highways, and to a loose and predatory life.
Many parishes, too, were not disposed to burden themselves with the
imposition of the poor laws, which had been strengthened by various
enactments since the 43rd of Elizabeth, and they therefore drove out
of their boundaries the unemployed to seek work elsewhere. This but
increased the vagabondism and pilfering, and time alone could enable
the Government to bring the poor-law into general operation.
[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF CHARLES II.]