[104]This is a minor error, Canterbury having assumed the functions of St. David’s archiepiscopate over a century before Archbishop Lanfranc of the Conquest came to assert the primacy over York, which was doubtless in Harrison’s mind here.—W.
[105]Harrison had doubtless a special antipathy to Saint Dunstan, because that great autocrat of Canterbury, along with his busy labours of humbling kings, enforcing celibacy on the priesthood, building the “church triumphant” over the whole body politic, found time to usurp the archiepiscopal functions of Saint David’s in the year 983, thus bringing Welshmen for the first time under English ecclesiastical rule, where (much to their disgust) they remain to our own time.—W.
[106]The details of the well-known story of Earl Godwin, as rendered by Harrison, here follow. The great interest of these recapitulations of English clerical history is in the utterance of a mind fresh from the great wrench of the Reformation.—W.
[107]The last clause was significantly deleted in the edition of 1587. The Armada was looming in the horizon, and the poor printer was obliged to mind his Protestant p’s and q’s for the nonce.—W.
[108]“As appeareth by these letters.” Giving letter of Pope Eugenius to King Stephen.—W.
[109]“Calf,” meaning a fool (as witness Cotgrave’s definition of “Veau, a calfe or veale; also a lozell, hoydon, dunce, jobbernoll, doddipole”), had divers owners put before it, of whom Waltham seems to have been the best known: “Waltham’s calf. As wise as Waltham’s calf—i.e., very foolish. Waltham’s calf ran nine miles to suck a bull.” (Hallwell’s Glossary.)—F.
[110]“As appeareth by the same letter here ensuing.” Companion letter to Maud of Boulogne.—W.
[111]Ostia, referring to Leo Marsicanus, cardinal-archbishop of Ostia.—W.
[112]The letter of Marsicanus is given in full.—W.
[113]Thomas Fitzalan, son of the Earl of Arundel, and great-grandson of Edmund Crouchback, and third cousin of the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, fathers of the king and his rival Bolingbroke, but closely allied to the latter, being cousin-german of John of Gaunt’s first wife, Bolingbroke’s mother. The printers misprinted his name as “John.” He has been handed down as the great persecutor of the Lollards, whom John of Gaunt patronised.—W.
[114]
“Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me backWhile gold and silver beck me to come on,”
blurts out the Bastard inKing John. Shakespeare was not above taking a hint from Harrison.—W.
[115]William the Lion, who at Cœur de Lion’s death came into England to do feudal homage for his English lands to the wily John Lackland, a visit which John, after his fashion, turned to account by imposing on William the impossible task of following him across the Channel and making war upon Philip Augustus, and, on King William’s refusal to drag Scotland into a quarrel which was not evenEnglish, John declared the English lands of William forfeited, and started a feud which had momentous issue in after years.—W.
[116]Harrison has here shown less than his usual broad-mindedness. All agree in praising John de Stratford as being gentle enough to match his illustrious townsman yet to be, Avon apparently breeding nothing but “sweet swans.” The archbishop’s quarrel with Edward about his friendship for the Spencers has always been his glory, not his disgrace.—W.
[117]The “vain prophecy of Nicholas Hopkins” was not the only outbreak of that soul-stirring century, Harrison here alluding to the great birth of the Puritans, who (contrary to usual belief, and as their historian particularly insisted upon) were a party in the Church of England—its whole life, in fact—for one generation, and not by any meansnon-conformistsordissenters.—W.
[118]Writing on March 25, 1574, to one Matchet, his chaplain, parson of Thurgarton, in the diocese of Norwich, Archbishop Parker requested him to repair to his ordinary, and to show him how the Queen willd the Archbishop to suppress thosevain prophesyings, and requird the ordinary, in her Majesty’s name, to stop them. This not being acceptable to the Bishop of Norwich, an altercation between the Archbishop and the Bishop ensu’d. But eventually the prophesyings were stopt,—the following order being sent by the Bishop of Norwich to his Chancellor on the 7th of June, 1574:—“After my hearty commendations: whereas by the receipt of my Lord of Canterbury’s letter, I am commanded by him, in the Queen her Majesty’s name, that the prophesyings throughout my diocese should be suppressed; these are therefore to will you, that, as conveniently as you may, you give notice to every of my Commissaries, that they, in their several circuits, may suppress the same. And so I leave you to God.”—Strype’sLife of Abp. Parker, vol. ii. p. 362. See more about them in these references to Strype’s Works, from the Index:—“Prophesyings, certain exercises expounding the Scriptures, so called, P. II. 358, A. II. i. 133; orders respecting their use in the church of Northampton, 136, G. 260; this exercise set up at Bury, A. II. i. 325; Bishop Parkhurst’s letter of permission, ii. 494; generally used by the clergy, i. 472; Bishop Cooper’s regulations and allowance for them in Herefordshire,ib.476; Bishop Parkhurst stops them in the diocese of Norwich, 477-480, P. II. 358-362; some privy counsellors write to him in their favour,ib.; he communicates with Archbishop Parker and some bishops upon the matter,ib.; they are suppressed,ib.; the contentions of the ministers, the occasion thereof,ib.; directions for this exercise in the diocese of Chester, A. II. i. 481, ii. 544; III. i. 476; the permission of Bishop Chaderton, II. ii. 546; III. i. 477; Bishop Cox’s opinion of them, II. ii. 13; the Queen’s letter to the Bishop of Lincoln to stop them in his diocese, 114, 612; abuses of these exercises, G. 326; Archbishop Grindal’s orders for their reformation, 327; the Queen orders the Archbishop to put a stop to them, 328; his expostulations with her on the subject, 329, 558; the Queen’s letter for their suppression, 574, W. I. 163.”—Index to Strype’s Works, vol. ii. p. 208 (1828 edit.). There are frequent allusions to theProphesyings“in the Bishops’ Injunctions and Questions, the whole of which are printed in the Appendix to the2nd Report of the Ritual Commission. See page 432, par. 25; p. 435, par. 20; p. 445, par. 26; p. 447, par. 18.”—F.
[119]John Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, writing to his friend Henry Bullinger, on April 28, 1562, says:—“And that you might not think I had forgotten you (since I was unable to write through illness), I sent you a small present.Whenever I shall have paid my first fruits, and extricated myself from debt, you shall know who and what kind of a man is your friend Parkhurst.”—Parker Society’sZürich Letters, i. 107.—F.
[120]The Act of Henry VIII. for restraining pluralities contains a clause making employment at court an excuse for non-residence and pluralities; see Tyndale’sExpositions,etc., 256, 336. Bradford contends that they are hurtful to the Church,Writings, ii. 395; so does Jewel, ii. 984; Whitgift defends them, i. 528, etc. See also Bullinger’sDecades, iv. 144; Hutchinson’sWorks, 5; Latimer’sWorks, i. 122; Whitgift’sWorks, i. 506, etc., Parker Society (Index).—F.
[121]See W. Stafford’s argument against pluralities in hisCompendious Examination, 1581, fol. 53. “What reason is it that one man should haue two mens liuinges and two mens charge, when he is able to discharge but one? Then, to haue more, and discharge the cure of neuer a one, is to farre agaynst reason. But some percase will say, ‘there be some of vs worthy a greater preferment then others, and one benefice were to litle for such a one.’ Is there not as many degrees in the variety of benefices as there is in mens qualities? Yes, forsooth, there is yet in this realme (thanked be God) benefices from M. markes to XX. markes a yeare of sundry value to endow euery man with, after his qualities and degree. And if a meane benefice happen to fal, let euery man be contented therewith til a better fal,” etc., etc.—F.
[122]“It would pytye a mans heart to heare that that I heare of the state of Cambridge: what it is in Oxforde I can not tell. Ther be few do study diuinitie, but so many as of necessiti must furnishtheColledges. For their lyuynges be so small, and vytaylee so dere, that they tarry not ther, but go other where to seke lyuynges, and so they go aboute. Nowe there be a fewe gentylmen, and they studye a little diuinitie.... There be none nowe but greate mens sonnes in Colledges, and theyr fathers loke not to haue them preachers, so euerye waye thys offyce of preachynge is pyncht at.”—Latimer’s 5th Sermon before Edward IV.,A.D.1549, p. 140, ed. Arber. The scarcity of preachers in the time of Queen Elizabeth is lamented by Jewel in hisWorks, ii. 999, 1000, and by Archbp. Sandys,Works, p. 154 (Parker Soc.). He also complains of the ignorance of ministers in Elizabeth’s time,Works, ii. 1012 (Parker Soc).—F.
[123]Here follows a story about the bootless errand of a pope’s legate in 1452.—W.
[124]“But what do you patrons? Sell your benefices, or give them to your servants for their service, for keeping of hounds or hawks, for making of your gardens. These patrons regard no souls, neither their own nor other men’s. What care they for souls, so they have money, though they [souls] perish, though they go to the devil?” (Latimer’s Sermon at Stamford, 9th Nov. 1550,Works, i. 290).—On the general character of the ministers of England, see the Parker Society’sZürich Letters, ii. 63. Harding calls them tinkers, tapsters, fiddlers and pipers, Jewel’sWorks, iv. 873, 209; Jewel admits their want of learning,ib.910; many of them were made of “the basest sort of the people,” Whitgift’sWorks, i. 316; artificers and unlearned men were admitted to the ministry, Archbp. Parker’sCorrespondence, p. 120; many had come out of the shop into the clergy, Fulke’sWorks, ii. 118; an order was given to ordain no more artificers, Archbp. Grindal’sRemains, p. 241, note; some beneficed ministers were neither priests nor deacons, Archbp. Parker’sCorr., pp. 128, 154, 308; laymen were presented to benefices, and made prebendaries,ib.371, 312; and an Archdeacon was not in orders,ib.142, note.—Parker Society’s Index, p. 537—F.
[125]“I will not speak now of them that, being not content with their lands and rents, do catch into their hands spiritual livings, as parsonages and such like; and that under the pretence to make provision for their houses. What hurt and damage this realm of England doth sustain by that devilish kind of provision for gentlemen’s houses, knights’ and lords’ houses, they can tell best that do travel in the countries, and see with their eyes great parishes and market towns, with innumerable others, to be utterly destitute of God’s word; and that, because that these greedy men have spoiled the livings, and gotten them into their hands; and instead of a faithful and painful preacher, they hire a Sir John, which hath better skill in playing at tables, or in keeping of a garden, than in God’s word; and he for a trifle doth serve the cure, and so help to bring the people of God in danger of their souls. And all those serve to accomplish the abominable pride of such gentlemen, which consume the goods of the poor (the which ought to have been bestowed upon a learned minister) in costly apparel, belly-cheer, or in building of gorgeous houses.” 1562. A. Bernher’s Dedication to Latimer’s Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer ofA.D.1552.Latimer’s Works, i. 317 (Parker Soc.).—F.
[126]On the neglect of their duties by the Elizabethan clergy, and shifting the consequences of it on to the laity, see the Doctor’s speech, on leaves 51-53 of Wm. Stafford’sCompendious Examination, 1581A.D.—F.
[127]See Chaucer, description of his Monk, Prologue toCanterbury Tales, lines 165-207, and myBallads from Manuscripts, vol. i. pp. 193, 194.—F.
[128]SeeBallads from Manuscripts, vol. i. pp. 59-78.—F.
[129]Long side-note here in edition of 1577, as follows:—“The very cause why weauers pedlers & glouers haue been made Ministers, forthe learned refuse such matches, so that yf the Bishops in times past hadde not made such by oversight friendship I wote not howe such men should haue done wyth their aduousons, as for a glouer or a tayler will be glad of an augmentationof 8 or 10 pound by the yere, and well contented that his patrone shall haue all the rest, so he may be sure of this pension.”—F.
[130]Such a classical expert as Harrison makes a curious error here. Cæsar, in hisCommentaries, tells of the way in which the Britons instantly apprehended his weakness, perceiving during the truce his army’s lack of corn, and thereupon plotting to secretly break the truce and annihilate the Mightiest Julius and his little following (teaching all future invaders a lasting lesson to beware the chalk cliffs of Albion). Cæsar also notes how he himself quietly neutralised these efforts by gathering in corn from the country thereabouts. The Britons, just as much as himself, understood corn as the staff of life, the mainstay of war as well as of peace. The fact is that Harrison thought with two brains, his Welsh one and his Latin one, and, lost in the mists of Welsh fictions, sometimes forgot the most incontrovertible of Latin authorities. Man’s written records of things British start with Cæsar.—W.
[131]By omitting a comma (upon which the fate of empires may sometimes turn), our brother printers of 1587 (for this Scotch paragraph is not in the edition of 1577) have made pope Harrison bestow a mitre upon Hector Boece. That remarkable native of Dundee (who may be said to have invented Macbeth as we moderns know him) was a doctor of theology, and learned in every art, as becomes the first implanter of the tough fibres of Aberdonian scholarship (for, when one has the rare fortune to overcome the capacious skull and strong brain of a son of Aberdeen, the victor well may cry—
“Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain”),
but was never much of an ecclesiastic, although he held a canonry. Note, by the way, that Harrison (and not John Bellendon, as generally stated) was the channel through which Boece’sHistory of Scotlandcame into the magic cauldron of Shakespearian transformation. Cardinal Wardlaw, the founder of the oldest of Scottish schools, was a very different man from Boece, being the glow-worm to the grub.—W.
[132]There was no Parliament at Perth in 1433. The short session of that year was at Stirling. No official record of this remarkable law remains. In fact, Boece (from whom Harrison evidently quotes by memory) does not say either 1433 or that a law was made. He simply records the immediate effect of Cardinal Wardlaw’s speech. However, it had a short shift. Fate was against the patriotic Scot. James Stuart took matter more important than “divers English gentlemen” into Scotland: the royal troubadour carried something beside his batch of love rondels away from Windsor Castle as the fruit of his long captivity. He had not sung nor sighed in vain. The “mistress’ eyebrow” of his “woeful ballad” belonged to Joan of Somerset, one of the three fair Joans of the house of Plantagenet whose marriages were so wonderfully
“Auspicious to these sorrowing isles.”
From Joan of Kent, Princess of Wales, Joan of Beaufort, Countess of Warwick, and Joan of Somerset, Queen of Scotland, are descended most of our English, Irish, Welsh, as well as Scotch families. We may be said to owe most of our Joans, Johannas, Janes, Jeans, and Janets to these three women “big with the fate” of nations.—W.
[133]One would suppose Harrison himself had been “conserving the honour of Orestes” when he penned this passage. He doubtless quoted from the lost works of the Greek physician by means of his favourite Athenæus.—W.
[134]“As loathing those metals because of the plenty” sounds strangely to modern ears. Yet Harrison in this one phrase, by mere accident, lets in more light upon the secret of the towering supremacy of the Elizabethan age than have all the expounders, historians, and philosophers from that day to this. The comparative plenty of gold in the time of Elizabeth was brought about by the Spanish invasions of Peru and Mexico. England had far more gold than it had hitherto understood any use for, and she fortunately escaped being seized with that insatiable gold thirst which swiftly sapped the foundations of Spanish dominion as it had that of Rome and other empires of the past. We need seek no further for a reason why the England of Elizabeth surpassed all other communities. Having all material wealth beyond any other people, at no time has the doctrine of universal labour and repudiation of the fictitious riches of metallic hordes or usurious accumulations been so invariably denounced. Harrison’s simple evidence is supported by all the records of the time.—W.
[135]Roger Bacon.—H. [The philosopher’s stone is yet missing which is to accomplish this miracle of making malleable glass, something which has had a strange fascination as an inventor’s dream in all ages. The account of Tiberius Cæsar dashing out the brains of the all-too-clever mechanic (who had actually accomplished this feat), so as to prevent the Roman world from emancipating itself from the rule ofiron(orof gold), is the most startling legend in the imperial annals. Old Friar Bacon, who devoted so much attention to optics, naturally put this feat in the forefront of the list of wonders to be accomplished by his great elixir; and Harrison’sslipyet remains beyond the eager grasp of men, though the grand desideratum has been again and again announced in our own time.—W.]
[136]This was the first English idea of the potato as instanced in the last scene of theMerry Wives of Windsor. This was not what is now generally understood as the potato, but the sweet potato of Virginia brought home by Raleigh. The common potato (which has been onlycommoneven in North America for less than a century) is often mixed historically with this other tuber. As a fact, our familiar vegetable of to-day is largely a creature of artificial development, and nowhere grows in the same quality wild, whereas the yam or sweet potato is very little altered from its native state.—W.
[137]Sweet cicely, sometimes miscalled myrrh. Mure is the Saxon word. At one time the plant was not uncommon as a salad.—W.
[138]Crosby Ravensworth in Westmorland is misnamed. It is eitherRaven’s thwaiteorRaven’s swarth, but neverworth, which is here meaningless.Swarthstill lingers on the tongues of the mowers, andthwaitewas the form adopted by a once famous family from this mountain fastness. The parish is notable as the home of the Addisons.—W.
[139]A famine at hand is first seen in the horse-manger, when the poor do fall to horse corn.—H.
[140]The size of bread is very ill kept or not at all looked unto in the country towns or markets.—H.
[141]The wine which Scott has (from the Gallic tinge to everything Caledonian) buried for all modern literature in the French form ofmalvoisie—
“Come broach me a pipe of malvoisie!”
It is evident from Harrison that a good English form was used.—W.
[142]Holinshed. This occurs in the last of Harrison’s prefatory matter.—W.
[143]This word is not obsolete. South-coast countrymen still eatnuntionsand notluncheons.—W.
[144]Harrison must have got some of these out-of-the-way references at second hand—a valuable trick of the trade among learned pundits. The “Sophists” of Athenæus of Naucratis has never even to our day been handled by an English printer, a modern translation in a classical series excepted, but the Aldine edition was a favourite of European scholars long before the time of Harrison.—W.
[145]It was very wrong of Harrison to crib from the copy which Newberry, the printer, had in his office—that is, unless Sir Henry Savile gave permission. Henry of Huntingdon’sHistory of Englandwas not issued until eight years after this, but the printers had it evidently in hand. It is not likely that Harrison used the original at Oxford.—W.
[146]Here follows a disquisition upon the table practices of the ancients.—W.
[147]Lettuce was brought over from the Low Countries along with various new notions in the days of Luther. Harrison does not seem to mention it as an English institution as yet however.—W.
[148]After three centuries we have not yet plucked up courage to spell this pet phrase of the bill-of-fare writers as an English word.Entry, as a tangible object, means something between, and not at the beginning; and if we contractentremetsthere is no reason why we should for ever talk French and sayentrée, and use superfluous signs, meaningless to English eyes.—W.
[149][Cut.]
“I am an English man and naked I stand here,Musying in my mynde what rayment I shall were;For now I will were thys, and now I will were that;Now I will were I cannot tell what.All new fashyons be plesaunt to me;I wyl haue them, whether I thryve or thee.”
From Andrew Boorde’sIntroduction(1541), andDyetary(1542), edited by F. J. F. for Early English Text Society, 1870, p. 116. (A most quaint and interesting volume, though I say so.).—F.
[150]This is too harsh a character for Boorde; for a juster one, as I hope, see my preface to hisIntroduction, p. 105.—F.
[151]Almaine; seeHalle, pp. 516-527.—F.
[152]There is no reason to suppose thatCollywestonwas ever in general English use. It is a Cheshire side-hit (and not common there), and all the Cheshire students cannot unravel the mystery. I have no doubt it belongs to one of the great baronial family of Weston, who were geniuses, and therefore of course “to madness near allied,” wits and cloaks awry.—W. [Weston Colvil is eleven miles from Cambridge, north of the Gogmagog Hills.—F.]
[153]See Wynkin de Worde’sTreatise of this Galaunt(? about 1520A.D.) in myBallads from Manuscripts(1520-54), vol. i., pp. 438-453 (Ballad Society, 1868 and 1872), a satire on the gallant or vicious dandy of the day.—F.
[154]Of the many of Shakespeare’s happiest hits which can be traced to Harrison’s fertile suggestion, this is one of the most apparent. Who can fail to appreciate that Petruchio’s side-splitting bout with the tailor had its first hint here?—W.
[155]Shakespeare complains of women painting their faces, and wearing sham-hair, inLove’s Labour’s Lost, IV. iii., and the locks from “the skull that bred them in the sepulchre,” inMerchant, III. ii.—F.
[156]The extravagant variety of woman’s attire in the days of the Virgin Queen (whose own legendary allowance of different habit for each day in the year is still a fondly preserved faith amongst the women and children) was the subject of rebuke from far more famous pulpits than Harrison’s modest retreat. No choice morsel of the “English Chrysostom” surpasses the invective against feminine vanities in his “Wedding Garment” of almost this very year. For instance: “Thus do our curious women put on Christ, who, when they hear the messengers of grace offering this garment, and preparing to make the body fit to be garnished with so glorious a vesture (as Paul did the Romans, first washing away drunkenness and gluttony, then chamberings and wantonness, then strife and envy, and so sin after sin), they seem like the stony ground to receive it with joy, and think to beautify their head with this precious ornament; but when he tells them that there is no communion between Christ and Belial, that if this garment be put on all other vanities must be put off, they then turn their day into darkness, and reject Christ, that would be an eternal crown of beauty to their heads, and wrap their temples in the uncomely rags of every nation’s pride.”—W.
[157]The etymology of the word is not known. Baret describes the colour as between russet and black.—Alvearie,A.D.1586.—F. [In the Middle Ages country housewives mostly made their own colours, and this was most likely made from bilberries, which children still sometimes call “poke-berrys” or “puckers,” because of their astringent effect upon the lips.—W.]
[158]Ajagwas first a notch, a chink, then perhaps any ornamental pendant, ribbon, or other, to one’s dress. A saddler was ajagger.—W.
[159]Ver d’oye.Goose-turd greene; a greenish yellow; or a colour which is between a green and a yellow.—Cotgrave.—F.
[160]Verd gay.A popinjay greene.—Cotgrave.—F.
[161]For Chaucer’s complaints of the men and women’s dress of his day see hisParson’s Tale, Part II., of Confession,De Superbia. For a ballad on the fantastic dresses of Charles I.’s time seeRoxburgh Collections, I. 476; Ballad Society’s Reprint, ii. 117 and 97. And on the point generally see the Percy Society’sPoems on Costume.—F.
[162]See Andrew Boorde’sDyetary of Helth, 1542, Early English Text Society, 1870, for a description of how to build houses, and manage them and men’s income, and what food folk should eat.—F.
[163]Moss, in the Gawthorp Accounts.—F.
[164]This was in the time of general idleness.—H.
[165]See the interesting account inHolinshed, iii. 1081-82, of how the good young King Edward VI., mov’d by a sermon of Bishop Ridley’s, talkt with him about means for relieving the poor, and on his suggestion resolvd to begin with those of London, and wrote to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Dobs, about it. Dobs, Ridley, two aldermen, and six commoners, got up a committee of twenty-four. “And in the end, after sundrie meetings (for by meane of the good diligence of the bishop it was well followed), they agreed vpon a booke that they had deuised, wherein first they considered of nine speciall kinds and sorts of poore people, and those same they brought in these three degrees:
For these sorts of poore were prouided three seuerall houses. First for the innocent and fatherlesse, which is the beggers child, and is in deed the seed and breeder of beggerie, they prouided the house that was late Graie friers in London, and now is called Christes hospitall, where the poore children are trained in the knowledge of God, and some vertuous exercise to the ouerthrowe of beggerie. For the second degree, is prouided the hospitall of saint Thomas in Southworke, & saint Bartholomew in west Smithfield, where are continuallie at least two hundred diseased persons, which are not onelie there lodged and cured, but also fed and nourished. For the third degree, they prouided Bridewell, where the vagabond and idle strumpet is chastised, and compelled to labour, to the ouerthrow of the vicious life of idlenes. They prouided also for the honest decaied housholder, that he should be relieued at home at his house, and in the parish where he dwelled, by a weekelie reliefe and pension. And in like manner they prouided for the lazer, to keepe him out of the citie from clapping of dishes, and ringing of bels, to the great trouble of the citizens, and also to the dangerous infection of manie, that they should be relieued at home at their houses with seuerall pensions.”—Holinshed, iii. 1082. The rest of the page should be read about “blessed king” Edward VI., and his thanking God that he’d given him life to finish “this worke” of relief to the poor “to the glorie of thy name”: two days after, the good young king died.—F.
[166]At whose hands shall the blood of these men be required?—H.
[167]Objection 2, sign. e. i. “I praie you shewe me by what occasion or meanes, this huge nomber of Beggers and Vacaboundes doe breede here in Englande. And why you appointe twelue of them to euery Shipp: I thinke they maie carie the Shippe awaie, & become Pirates. [Answer.] If you consider the pouerty that is and doth remaine in the Shire tounes, and Market tounes, within this Realme of England and Wales, which tounes, being inhabited with greate store of poore householders, who by their pouertie are driuento bring vp their youth idlely; and if they liue vntil they come to mans state, then are they past all remedie to be brought to woorke. Therfore, at suche tyme as their Parentes fayles them, they beginne to shifte, and acquainte them selues with some one like brought vppe, that hath made his shifte, with dicyng, cosenyng, picking or cutting of purses, or els, if he be of courage, plaine robbing by the waie side, which they count an honest shift for the time; and so come they daiely to the Gallowes. Hereby growes the greate and huge nomber of Beggers and Vacaboundes, which by no reasonable meanes or lawes could yet be brought to woorke, being thus idely brought vp. Whiche perilous state and imminent daunger that they now stande in, I thought it good to auoide, by placeyng twelue of these poore people into euery fishynge Shippe, accordyng to this Platte.” 1580.Robert Hitchcok’s Pollitique Platt.—F.
[168]See the earliest known specimen of the Gipsy language, the “Egyptian rogues’” speech, in my edition of Andrew Boorde, Early English Text Society, first series, 1870, p. 218.—F.
[169]Thomas Harman. See the edition of his book, and Audeley’s prior one, by Mr. Viles and myself, in the Early English Text Society’s extra series, 1869, No. IX.—F.
[170]See Appendix.
[171]Law of the Marshal.—F.
[172]See myBallads from MSS., 121-123, Ballad Society.—F.
[173]Harrison has confounded two very similar Keltic words. It should be a “d” in place of the second “c.”—W.
[174]Here lacks.—H.
[175]Principes longè magis exemple quàm culpa peccare solent.—H.
[176]The Lord Mountjoy.—H.
[177]Here ends the chapter entitled “Minerals,” and the one on “Metals” begins.—W.
[178]Here follow two stories about crows and miners. See Appendix.—W.
[179]Some tell me that it is a mixture of brass, lead, and tin.—H.
[180]Harrison substitutedinklein 1587 forpackthreadin 1577, a curious flight backward for modern readers. The inkle was a favourite pedlar-sold tape of the day, probably more at hand and more to the purpose than packthread.—W.
[181]Though boars are no longer bred, but only bred by, in Elizabethan days and before then the rearing of them for old English braun (not the modern substitute) was the chief feature of swine-herding; thus in “Cheape and Good Husbandry,” the author says: “Now, lastly, the best feeding of a swine for Lard or of a Boare for Braune, is to feed them the first week with Barley, sodden till it breake, and sod in such quantity that it may ever be given sweete: then after to feed them with raw Mault from the floore, before it be dried, till they be fat enough: and then for a weeke after, to give them drie Pease or Beanes to harden their flesh. Let their drinke be the washing of Hoggesheads, or Ale Barrels, or sweete Whay, and let them have store thereof. This manner of feeding breeds the whitest, fattest, and best flesh that may be, as hath beene approved by the best Husbands.” After this, Harrison’s maltbugs well might ask: “Who would not be a hog?”—W.
[182]The proper English name of the bird which vulgar acceptance forces us to now callbittern.—W.
[183]See more in the second chapter of the Description of Scotland.—H.
[184]Here ends the first chapter of “fowls,” that which follows being restricted to “hawks and ravenous fowls.”—W.
[185]This on “venomous beasts” will be found included in the “savage beasts” of the following.
[186]Here follows an account of the extermination of wolves, and a reference to lions and wild bulls rampant in Scotland of old.—W.
[187]Misprints for “pricket” and “sorel”; see Shakespeare’sLove’s Labour’s Lost, IV. ii. 58-63;The Return from Parnassus, etc., etc.—F.
[188]Here follows a discourse on ancient boar-hunting, exalting it above the degenerate sports of the day. This ends the chapter on “savage beasts.”—W.
[189]Galenus,De Theriaca ad Pisonem; Pliny, lib. 10, cap. 62.—H.
[190]Salust, cap. 40; Pliny, lib. 37, cap. 2.—H.
[191]See Diodorus Siculus.—H.
[192]The like have I seen when hens do feed upon the tender blades of garlic.—H.
[193]This gentleman caught such an heat with this sore load that he was fain to go to Rome for physic, yet it would not save his life; but he must needs hie homewards.—H.
[194]CompareStubs’s Anatomie, p. 218. Turnbull.—F.
[195]See Percy Folio,Loose and Humorous Songs, p. 86, l. 31-4.—F.
[196]We’ve unluckily lost the distinction betweenrabbitandconey.—F.
[197]Called “suckers” inBabees Bookand Henry VIII.’sHousehold Ordinances.—F.
[198]See Andrew Boorde’s amusing bit about venison in hisDyetary(my edition, p. 275).—F.
[199]Harrison was not quite up to the Dignity of Labour.—F.
[200]The decay of the people is the destruction of a kingdom: neither is any man born to possess the earth alone.—H.
[201]The fact is well known. See instances in W. de Worde’s “Kerving,” second edition, inBabees Book.—F.
[202]See the curious tract on this in Mr. John Cowper’sFour Supplications, Early English Text Society, extra series.—F.
[203]The chapter ends with the forest laws of Canute. Born Londoner though he be, Harrison dwells lovingly upon the least point connected with his country home. His Saffron Walden is ever a fruitful source of discourse, Saffron being a prolific theme in other places of the work, and Walden here made to “point the moral and adorn the tale.”—W.
[204]For her household in 1600-1601 seeHousehold Ordinances, p. 281.—F.
[205]I suppose that Sir Thomas More, and Henry VIII., and Lady Jane Grey’s parents began “the higher education of women” in England by having their daughters properly taught. On “Education in Early England” see my Forewords (tho’ sadly imperfect) to theBabees Book(Early English Text Society).—F.
[206]Compare Chaucer’sPrologue: The Squire. On the evils of serving-men see Sir T. More’sUtopia, and myBallads from MSS., i.—F.
[207]The chapter concludes with the special penal regulations for disturbers in the court precincts.—W.
[208]See Ascham’sToxophilus. When our folk and government come to their senses every English boy and man’ll be taught rifle-shooting; ranges will be provided by compulsory powers; and every male over sixteen be made sure of his man in any invading force. If then any foreign force wants to come, let it, and find its grave.—F.
[209]“Our peaceable days” were on the eve of the greatest struggle for life ever known to England, but never before or since could she put a million men armed to the teeth into the field, and have still a reserve to fall back on. People who dream that the Spaniards would have fared better on land than sea are grievously out in their reckoning.—W.
[210]See the amusing extract from William Bulleyn in myBabees Book, pp. 240-243.—F.
[211]Here follows an account of Roman and Carthaginian galleys which “did not only match, but far exceed” in capacity our ships and galleys of 1587.—W.
[212]See myBallads from MSS., i. 120, on this and Henry VIII.’s navy. There’s an engraving of thisGreat Henry, orHenry Grace(burnt August 27, 1553), in the British Museum.—F.
[213]Surely this statement was justified by facts. And Nelson, Dundonald, and their successors have shown that English sailors since have not degenerated.—F.
[214]See inHousehold Ordinances, pp. 267-270, “An account of all the Queen’s Ships of War; the musters taken in 1574 and 1575; the warlike stores in the Tower and aboard the Navy in 1578; theCustodes Rotolorumof every county in England and Wales, and the names of all the English fugitives.”—F.
[215]A name devised by her grace in remembrance of her own deliverance from the fury of her enemies, from which in one respect she was no less miraculously preserved than was the prophet Jonas from the belly of the whale.—H.
[216]So called of her exceeding nimbleness in sailing and swiftness of course.—H.
[217]The list of twenty-four ships (with their men and arms) in the 1578 list inHousehold Ordinances, pp. 267-270, contains all these in the note here except the Cadish, and adds to them the Primrose, and the Faulcon, Aibates (for Achates), and George, named above. The 1578 list has not the Revenge above. It calls the White Boare and Dreadnot the White Bear and Dreadnought (as above); and the Genet, Jenett. And adds, “The sum of all other, as well merchant shipps as other, in all places in England, of 100 tunns and upwards, 135. The sum of all barkes and shippes of 40 tunne and upward to an 100 tunne, 656. There are besides, by estimation, 100 saile of hoyes. Also of small barkes and fishermen an infinite number. So as the number of ... through the realme cannot be lesse than 600, besides London.” No doubt Mrs. Green’s Calendar of State Papers, temp Elizabeth, gives further details.—F. [The “note” to which Dr. Furnivall refers is one collating the 1577 text where the Cadish is inserted between the Forresight and Swift sute, and the last four above are not given.—W.]
[218]My friend, Mr. H. H. Sparling (who has made a special study of the English navy archives from Henry VIII.’s time downward) kindly furnishes the following navy list of the Armada year, dividing the boats into classes with wages descending in scale from these I have retained: