Chapter XI: Social State of England (1)

Οἶσθ᾽ οὖν ὅτι καὶ ἀνθρώπων εἴδη τοσαῦτα ἀνάγκη τρόπων εἶναι,
ὅσαπερ καὶ πολιτειῶν; ἢ οἴει ἐκ δρυός ποθεν ἢ ἐκ πέτρας τὰς
πολιτείας γίγνεσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχὶ ἐκ τῶν ἠθῶν τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν, ἃ
ἂν ὥσπερ ῥέψαντα τἆλλα ἐφελκύσηται.

You are doubtless aware that the varieties of human character
must involve a corresponding number of constitutions. Or do you
think that the constitutions we see are foundlings from the
woods and rocks, and not the legitimate offspring of the moral
dispositions of the members of each State which, so to speak,
turn the scale, carrying the whole balance with them?--PLATO,
REP., vii. 2.

The population of England, now over three and twenty millions, and increasing two more every decade, numbered, in the middle of the seventeenth century, but about five and a half millions. Commerce was too insufficiently extended, too little of the soil had been brought under cultivation, too little science introduced into the processes of manufacture and agriculture, for the country to provide food or employment for a large number of inhabitants.

The largest and most important trading towns were in the southern half of the kingdom. London contained about 500,000 inhabitants, a sixth of its present population. The population of Bristol, the next place to London in size, was not 30,000, The large manufacturing towns in the north were just beginning to rise into importance. Sheffield, where knives were made, contained between 2000 and 3000 inhabitants; Leeds, a great seat of the woollen manufacture, between 3000 and 4000; 5000 or 6000 formed the population of Manchester, where cotton, imported from Cyprus and Smyrna, had been manufactured for the last thirty or forty years.

%MONOPOLIES.%

It is now acknowledged that the result of granting to persons or classes special privileges for the conduct of any trade or manufacture can only be to destroy competition and so raise prices to the injury of the consumers, for the supposed or real advantage of a few. Nor is this the whole of the evil. Wages can only come out of capital, and when capital lies idle and is checked in its natural growth by a narrowing of the market and an artificial enhancement of price, then wages are checked as well. ♦Trade and commerce.♦ In the seventeenth century, however, these principles were not understood, and trade was shackled by restrictions, imposed sometimes by the Executive, sometimes by the Legislature. The monopolies granted by Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. were especially injurious, because the owners of each patent were so few, that they were enabled, by combining together, to force upon the consumer a bad article, and at the same time to raise its price and tax the public for their own benefit. Though the granting of monopolies was forbidden by statute law in James’ last Parliament (1623), the practice was continued until the Scotch war, when Charles recalled all patents, in the hope of regaining some of the popularity he had lost. Though, in this case, the evils of interference were very clearly felt and seen, yet there was no perception of the principle that trade flourishes most when left alone; and the interference of Parliament was often invoked to protect both producers and traders against their own countrymen and against foreigners. For instance, indigo was brought from the Indies to Europe, and was soon largely employed in the place of woad for dyeing cloth, as the dye was richer, and the process cheaper; but when farmers, merchants, and carriers, engaged in the woad trade, found their employment decreasing, they raised a loud outcry against the new dye, saying that it injured the material of the cloth: on this the governments in England, Germany, and France forbade the use of indigo, branding it with the name of the ‘Devil’s dye.’ An act, passed in England to this effect, under Elizabeth, remained in force until the reign of Charles II., so that the price of cloth was artificially raised, for nearly a century, through the interference of the government.

%MERCANTILE SYSTEM.%

Nations, like individuals, gain by being allowed to interchange their goods freely. Each can then expend its labour and capital upon those branches of industry for which it possesses special advantages, while it has its own wants supplied at the least possible cost, by taking from other nations those products which they can supply more cheaply than itself. For these imports the nation pays by exporting, in exchange, the superfluity of its own special products. Legislators of the seventeenth century believed, however in the mercantile system, which assumed that money was wealth, and that the more money a country contained, the more prosperous it would be. Money, however, is, of course, only one form of wealth, although the medium of exchange for all other wealth. If the amount of coin in a country was doubled, and none of it allowed to quit the country, its true wealth, its corn, stock, its mineral produce, and the like, would not be doubled also. A rise of prices would result. Where one shilling had been paid before, two shillings would now have to be paid. Everybody’s pocket would be heavier, but nobody would be any the richer. Governments, however, from a belief in the mercantile system, tried to prevent the importation of goods, in order to stop money from going out of the country, and encouraged their exportation, in order to bring money into the country; and the more exports and fewer imports of a people, the more prosperous they were supposed to be. Hence it followed that nations were jealous of one another’s trade, and it was thought a happy thing for England, that while she was at peace, the Continent was devastated by war, because she was likely to find fewer rivals to compete with in foreign markets. Heavy duties were laid on articles of importation, in order that the country, instead of buying them of foreigners, might, if possible, produce them at home. Such duties could only be pernicious. They compelled consumers to pay high prices; they did not provide extra employment for Englishmen, because the same amount of labour and capital, given to industries more suited to the climate, the soil, or the character of the people, would have served to buy the protected articles from foreigners, and left a surplus over, to be employed upon further production.

%TRADING COMPANIES--EAST INDIES.%

♦Foreign trade in hands of companies.♦ During the sixteenth century, merchants trading to foreign parts had generally obtained charters from the crown, incorporating them into companies with special privileges. Thus the trade with Russia was monopolized by a ‘Russian Company,’ incorporated in 1554; that with the Low Countries and Germany by the ‘Merchant Adventurers,’ who were incorporated as early as 1407. One company traded with Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; while the ‘Turkey Company’ engrossed the trade with the Levant. The fact that the members of these companies were generally Londoners, helps to explain the great size and wealth of the capital compared with other ports. In the year 1604, the sum received in the port of London for customs and imposts amounted to £110,000, while that collected from the same sources in all the rest of the kingdom only to £17,000. At the accession of James I., the French trade alone was open to merchants not members of the companies. This monopoly of the foreign trade excited great discontent among the excluded, and, in 1604, a bill to throw open foreign commerce passed the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords. An act, however, was passed in 1606, granting liberty of trade with France, Spain, and Portugal; and the Turkey Company was formed on a new footing, so that all who paid a certain subscription were allowed to become members. Commerce grew, and the long peace that lasted from the beginning of the century until the breaking out of the civil war, was so favourable to its extension, that, if the accounts of writers of the time may be believed, the progress of the present century has hardly been in a greater ratio than that which prevailed in all but the war decade.[154]

%JEALOUSY OF DUTCH.%

In the year 1600, three years before James’ accession, the first charter was granted to an East India Company, ‘freely and solely to trade into countries and parts of Asia, Africa, and America, beyond the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Magellan.’ Without the licence of this company, no merchant might trade in all this sea, upon pain of forfeiting ships and cargoes. The first trading stations or factories on the coasts of India, and in the West India islands, had been established by the Portuguese. Jealous of the appearance of strangers, the Portuguese starved and imprisoned Englishmen unfortunate enough to fall into their power, and, by blocking up the river mouths, prevented English vessels from approaching the trading town of Surat, which was then the emporium of the western coast of India (1606). English captains, however, by defeating the Portuguese with a smaller number of ships, greatly impressed the natives with an idea of English courage and seamanship. The enterprise of English merchants soon made its way inland to Agra, then the seat of government of the Great Mogul, and obtained from him a charter, granting their countrymen liberty to trade. English trading stations were established in Sumatra and Java, and at last, in spite of the opposition of the Portuguese, an English factory was founded at Surat (1612). In 1616, there were nine factories in India alone, one in Japan, besides many in Celebes, Borneo, and other of the East India islands. About the same time as the English, the Dutch also opened a trade with the East. The Portuguese had made themselves so detested through their cruelties, that the natives willingly joined with the newcomers in driving them from their stations. But by the time that they had quitted the field, commercial jealousy arose between the English and the Dutch. ♦Commercial prosperity of Holland.♦ The seven united provinces of Holland, ever since they had won their independence of Spain, had prospered to such an extent, that the number and activity of their inhabitants was the marvel of every traveller. The English merchant service could not cope in number with the vessels the Dutch sent annually to France, Spain, Norway, Russia, Germany, and the East. The herring fisheries off the English coasts were mostly carried on by Dutch fishing-boats, called busses. The most valuable export of England was wool in the raw or manufactured state; but the Dutch were so much the better workmen, that they imported large quantities of wool from England, and having worked it up into cloth, made their money by selling it again to foreigners, including the English themselves. They possessed further a large carrying trade; for, having the true instinct for business, and being content with a low rate of interest, when combined with security of payment and quickness of returns, they became the carriers of Europe, buying the produce of one country and selling it to another, requiring such a small profit in addition to the original cost of the goods, that merchants of other nations did not care to compete with them.[155]

%DUTCH IN EAST INDIES.%

As the English showed a more enterprising spirit, and an intention of extending their trade, they awoke the jealousy of their neighbours in Holland. The seamen of the two nations had already come into unfriendly contact off the coast of Spitzbergen, where whale fisheries were carried on. The English, the Dutch, and the Danes, each making a preposterous claim to the dominion of this island and the surrounding waters, used to demand toll of all foreign vessels in return for licence to fish. It was rare, however, for the demand to be enforced, as the merchants of each nation took the precaution of sending out a fleet sufficiently strong to resist the claims of all opponents. In the East Indies, the Dutch, relying on James’ well-known dislike to war, made outrageous aggressions on English merchants and traders. They drove the English out of the Molucca islands, and would have massacred them in Japan but for the interference of the natives (1619). At Amboyna, one of the Moluccas, they murdered ten Englishmen on a groundless charge of conspiracy (1623). From this time, though the two countries continued nominally at peace, constant fighting took place upon these Eastern waters between the sailors of the Dutch and English East India Companies. Little law prevailed at sea, and a merchant vessel, if a safe opportunity occurred, felt no shame in taking up the calling of a pirate. The English were finally driven from several of their settlements, and the affairs of the East India Company languished in consequence.

♦Imports.♦ The principal imports from the East were silk, indigo, and spices. From Turkey, besides gems, came silk, cotton, and yarn. Coffee was first brought to England by a merchant belonging to the Turkey Company, who set up a coffee-house in Cornhill (1652). From that time coffee-houses multiplied in London, and became favourite places of resort. Tea, though commonly drunk by Europeans in Surat, was not imported to England in any quantity before the end of the century. ♦Exports.♦ The principal exports which England exchanged for her imports were her wool and cloth, with tin and lead.

%AMERICA COLONIZED.%

♦Colonization of North American coast.♦ In 1606 James I. had incorporated by charter two companies for the colonization of America. The one called the South Virginian Company, or London Adventurers, was authorized to colonize the territory which now forms the States of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia; the second, or Plymouth Company, the territory which forms the modern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England States. Neither company was to form any settlement within a hundred miles of land previously colonized by the other. The first, or London Adventurers, indeed, set to work at once, and colonized Virginia (1607). Maryland, however, was not colonized by them, but through the exertions of Lord Baltimore, who obtained from Charles I. a charter, granting him the country to hold of the crown for himself and his heirs (1634). The Plymouth Company was simply obstructive. The earliest colonists in New England were the Pilgrim Fathers, a body of persecuted sectarians. Having obtained leave from the London Adventurers, on hard terms, to settle in Virginia, they were carried by a treacherous captain in the bleak months of winter to the coast of Massachusetts, where, fighting hard with cold, hunger, and disease, they founded Plymouth (1620). But though their endurance had conquered nature, it had still to struggle with the ‘laws in defence of trade.’ The fact that the original Plymouth Company had never succeeded in founding a single colony did not impair its exclusive rights; and, without the consent of that company, “not a ship might sail into a harbour from Newfoundland to the latitude of Philadelphia; not a skin might be purchased in the interior; not a fish caught on the coast; not an emigrant tread the soil.”[156] In 1624, the company was fiercely assailed in the House of Commons. “Your patent,” said Coke, to one of its members, “is a monopoly; and the ends of private gain are concealed under colour of planting a colony.... Shall none visit the sea-coast for fishing? This is to make a monopoly upon the seas, which wont to be free. If you alone are to pack and dry fish, you attempt a monopoly of wind and sun.” On the coast of Maine private adventurers were soon emboldened to plant fishing stations, which gradually ripened into colonies. The company, however, so far maintained its exclusive privileges, that it used to sell patents to individuals and companies, authorizing them to colonize vast tracts of country. Thus Charlestown was founded in 1628. A company bought Massachusetts and founded Salem (1629). Connecticut was colonized from Massachusetts (1636). By the middle of the century, the whole line of coast reaching from Newfoundland to Florida, and many of the West India islands, were studded with settlements. The principal imports from these colonies were tobacco, grain, and fish.

%EXTRAVAGANCE IN DRESS.%

The influx of wealth from these extensions of trade was enormous; but though wealth, where it falls on worthy shoulders, brings refinement, in many it breeds mere luxury and ostentation. There was immense extravagance in dress and style of living; this was especially displayed in London, before the ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Ladies, while they followed the fashions in wearing paint and patches upon their faces, vied with one another in the amount of gold they could show broidered on their silks and satins. Gentlemen would

‘Wear a farm in shoe-strings edged with gold,
And spangled garters worth a copyhold;
A hose and doublet which a lordship cost;
A gaudy cloak, three manors’ price almost;
A beaver band and feather for the head,
Prized at the Church’s tithe--the poor man’s bread.’[157]

The costume was picturesque enough. A broad-brimmed beaver hat, adorned with feathers; the long and curling hair shown off by a lace collar; a doublet of silk or satin, with slashed sleeves; a short cloak hanging over one shoulder; breeches reaching to the knee, and finished off with ribands; silk stockings and shoes adorned with rosettes; a sword-belt, with weapon attached; and the whole set off with jewels and gold lace.

%ART AND KNOWLEDGE.%

♦Upper classes cultivated.♦ In many the leisure which wealth gave was well employed. Intellectual activity, a love of music and of art, a spirit of enterprise and research, distinguished the upper and educated classes of society. Sir John Eliot’s previous studies enabled him to employ his years of captivity in writing a philosophical treatise. At that ‘college situated in purer air,’ as Hyde called Lord Falkland’s house near Oxford, men, who afterwards took different sides in the war, used to meet and discuss their different opinions, whether scientific or social, political or religious, with the happy freedom of friendly intercourse. Sir Robert Cotton formed an antiquarian and historical library, whence the popular leaders drew stores of precedents on which to base their defence of their country’s liberties, in their struggle with the prerogative. On a trivial excuse, Sir Robert was imprisoned by order of the Council, and his library put under lock and key. “I went several times to visit and comfort him,” wrote one of his friends in the year 1630. “He would tell me they had broken his heart that had locked up his library from him.” He remained in prison for several months, and died in the spring of the following year (1631). Though men such as Falkland, Eliot, and Cotton were the élite of their class, they were also its representatives. Noblemen and gentlemen commonly made collections of pictures, antiquities, ancient armour, bronzes, and medals; and took interest in scientific discoveries. The barometer, the microscope, the telescope, were all instruments newly invented. Glamorgan, Charles’ agent in Ireland, was renowned for his mechanical skill. In love of art, Charles was at one with some of the first of his enemies. He made a fine collection of pictures, medals, and curiosities of all kinds, and treated English and foreign artists liberally. Rubens, who was sent to Charles as the Spanish king’s envoy, painted for him the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, built by Inigo Jones for James I. Vandyke passed the best years of his life in England; and though Charles’ weakness may be read in eyes and mouth on his canvas, yet the painter has done much to foster the ideal conception of the cavalier-king. Walker, an English painter, has left several portraits of Cromwell. But love of knowledge, of art, of antiquities, would never have created the greatness which shone out in the English character during the great rebellion. The enterprise and patriotism of the Elizabethan age remained unimpaired, and was spiritualized by religion. Except the courtiers, all classes, lettered and unlettered, seemed inspired by fulness of belief and earnestness of purpose. Men were unselfish and faithful, ready to risk fortune and life in their cause. Hence the first New England colonies struggled into existence through a terrible ordeal of cold and want. Hence the appearance of men with the heroic qualities of Eliot, Hampden, Pym, Vane, and Cromwell, rising up one after another, to lead the way in defence of liberty. Hence the devotion with which the perilous cause of the Parliament was embraced by thousands, while the result of the war was yet doubtful; and the unquenched hope with which Cavaliers met the ruin of themselves and their families, clinging to the cause of their master after all was lost.

%THE STAGE AND COURT.%

Puritan tradesmen and yeomen had played a leading part in accomplishing the overthrow of the government of Church and State. These denounced the pursuit of pleasure as vanity, if not actual sin. Discarding jewels, lace, silks, and satins, they dressed themselves in plain black suits, long black cloaks, and high steeple-crowned hats. Many went so far as to exclaim against music, art, and profane learning, as temptations of the devil, that divert the thoughts from God. Yet their fanaticism, however exaggerated, had its apology in the exaggeration of the opposite principles, as well as in the grandeur of the religious movement from which their feelings sprang. The character of the stage had been deteriorating ever since the death of Elizabeth. The plays of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger, were far coarser in language and spirit than those of the earlier dramatists, and, from their low moral tone and the character of their plots, were but too often calculated to make the theatre a school of vice. The courtiers of James I. and Charles I., amongst the most constant of play-goers, were not only absurdly extravagant in their dress, but often outrageously profligate in their lives. The latest historian of English literature observes how at this period of the stage, ‘the noble chivalric paganism’ of the sixteenth century had degenerated into ‘a base and coarse sensuality.’ Elizabeth’s old courtiers, though by no means straitlaced, were astounded at the licence of James’ court, Sir John Harrington thus describes an entertainment given by James in honour of the King of Denmark. “The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication.... The lady who did play the queen’s part (in the masque of the Queen of Sheba) did carry most precious gifts to both their majesties; but, forgetting the steps arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish Majesty’s lap and fell at his feet, though I rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths and napkins were at hand to make all clean. His Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a bed of state, which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen, which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters.... Now did appear in rich dress Hope, Faith, and Charity; Hope did essay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew and hoped the king would excuse her brevity; Faith left the court in a staggering condition. Next came Victory, who after much lamentable utterance, was led away like a silly captive, and laid to sleep on the outer steps of the ante-chamber. As for Peace, she most rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming. I ne’er did see such lack of good order, discretion, and sobriety in our queen’s days.”[158] ♦Immorality amongst upper classes generated fanatics amongst lower.♦ Though Charles himself was not addicted to the coarser vices, and required the forms of propriety to be observed in his court, he had no such hatred of vice as to cause him to select his friends or companions from amongst men of pure lives, Neither Buckingham, the king’s favourite, nor Lord Jermyn, the queen’s favourite, made the least pretence to purity of morals.[159] The example of courtiers had its weight in influencing the conduct of the classes beneath them. Gentlemen from the country came up to London and ruined themselves in trying to keep pace with a fashionable life. Idlers of all ranks spent their days drinking, smoking, and gambling in taverns. When such was the order of the day amongst the pleasure-seeking classes of society, it was no matter of wonder that, by a revulsion of feeling, the more earnest amongst the uneducated should seek refuge from vice in austerity of life, and that amusements, constantly abused, should come to be regarded as wicked and demoralizing in themselves. It was a noble disgust at whatever was really lowering to human nature, that led the Puritans into the error of trying to suppress vice by discountenancing games and sports that had delighted many generations of Englishmen. Thus it was that theatrical exhibitions of all kinds were put down by ordinance of Parliament; spectators were ordered to be fined; actors to be whipped at the cart’s tail. The dance round the maypole, the wrestling match on the village green, were proscribed. Christmas-day, kept from time immemorial as a feast, was turned into a solemn fast. Music and art had been taken into the service both of Laud’s Church and of levity; they were therefore regarded as accessories to the spread of Popish superstitions and laxity of life, and against them a like war was waged. Paintings and sculptures were removed from churches, and organs were forbidden. Though, in many cases, the ravages done by time, war, spoliation, and neglect have been unfairly put down to the Puritans, yet in others there is little doubt that works of art which had been spared for their beauty and antiquity at the Reformation, were now wantonly defaced and destroyed by the ignorant and fanatical soldiers who fought in the armies of the Commonwealth, It would be unfair, however, to class all Puritans together as holding upon these points the same opinions. Like other great religious movements, Puritanism, beginning with the people, spread upwards, and in its course became subject to the influences of education and class feeling. Hence there were numbers of Puritan gentlemen, whose minds knowledge had rendered too liberal, or in whom the pride of birth was too strong to allow them to adopt the habits, language, and ideas of their more ignorant and fanatical companions. Rembrandt’s etching of the Dutch Anabaptist minister shows a face by no means wanting in intelligence, refinement, and capacity for enjoyment of life. Mrs. Hutchinson’s description of her husband, an Anabaptist officer, presents us with a picture of the Puritan English gentleman, as he appeared at the time when Puritanism was most in repute:--“He could dance admirably well, but neither in youth nor riper years made any practice of it; he had skill in fencing, such as became a gentleman; he had a great love of music, and often diverted himself with a viol, on which he played masterly; he shot excellently in bows and guns, and much used them for his exercise; he had great judgment in paintings, gravings, sculpture, and all liberal arts, and had many curiosities of value in all kinds; he took much pleasure in planting groves and walks and fruit-trees; he left off very early the wearing of anything that was costly, yet in his plainest negligent habit appeared very much a gentleman: upon occasions, though never without just ones, he would be very angry, yet he was never outrageous in passion. He hated persecution for religion, and detested all scoffs at any practice of worship, though such a one as he was not persuaded of it. Wherever he saw wisdom, learning, or other virtues in men, he honoured them highly. His conversation was very pleasant, for he was naturally cheerful. Scurrilous discourse even among men he abhorred. His whole life was the rule of temperance in meat, drink, apparel, pleasure.” Milton, the poet of the Puritans, was a Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Italian scholar. Fairfax and Cromwell both gave manuscripts and books to the newly-founded Bodleian Library at Oxford. The Presbyterians, indeed, during their ascendancy, passed an order in Parliament, that all superstitious pictures in the king’s collections should be burnt, the remainder sold. For the sale the Parliament has received more censure than it perhaps deserves. Charles himself would no doubt have denied that his valuable collection was in any sense the nation’s property; but, in the year 1643, when the exigencies of the war were very great, it was hardly to be expected that the Parliament should hesitate to confiscate and sell the king’s movables, more than those of any minor delinquent. It is said that Cromwell, on becoming Protector, tried to keep the remainder of the collection together, and put a stop to the sales.[160] Nor was this the only point in which his largeness of mind made him tread in opposite footsteps to the Presbyterians. Though unable to obtain the repeal of persecuting laws, yet when the executive came to lie in his own hand he often suffered them to be broken with impunity. Himself a lover of music, he placed an organ in the palace at Hampton Court, where he often retired for Sunday. Plays, written by Sir William Davenant, were performed at the cockpit in Drury Lane (1658), while strolling players again acted at country places, and in the houses of the nobility.[161]

%WANT OF HUMANITY.%

Much of the savage violence of the middle ages still remained in the midst of the increased refinements of life that wealth and knowledge were bringing in their train. The custom of society did not require that the smallest effort should be made to control passion. Every gentleman wore his sword by his side, and was ready to draw it on provocation, and it was no uncommon occurrence for a man to be wounded in the presence of ladies in consequence of some drunken brawl. Amusements were cruel; bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and cock-fighting delighted all classes in town and country, till they were suppressed by Cromwell. The greatest subsequent advance of morality and refinement has been in this question of cruelty. There was then a general callousness to the sight of pain. The humanity of those who have signalized our own age by carrying laws to check the ill-treatment of animals, would then have had first to check the brutalizing punishments which the law itself inflicted on men. The sight of human beings in torment failed to awaken feelings of indignation or of pain sufficiently strong to cause a reform of the criminal law. Women who had murdered their husbands were burned alive in Smithfield. Men were yearly hung by hundreds for paltry thefts. Prisoners were so neglected that they often died of disease and starvation before the time of their trial came on. Town and county gaols were miserable and filthy dens unfit for the habitation of man or beast. In the following century, Howard thus describes the gaol for the county of Cornwall at Launceston: “The prison is a room or passage 23½ feet by 7½ feet, with only one window 2 feet by 1½; and three dungeons or cages on the side opposite the window; these are about 6½ feet deep, one 9 feet long, one about 8 feet, one not five feet; the last for women. They are all very offensive; no chimney, no water, no sewers, damp earth floors, no infirmary. The court not secure, and prisoners seldom permitted to go out into it. Indeed, the whole prison is out of repair, and yet the gaoler lives distant. I once found the prisoners chained two or three together. Their provisions were put down to them through a hole (9 inches by 8) in the floor of the room above, and those who served them often caught the fatal fever. I found the keeper, his assistant, and one prisoner all sick of it, and heard that a few years before many prisoners had died of it, and the keeper and his wife in one night.” Though dungeons and fetters were, as a rule, reserved for felons, debtors were in some respects worse off than the highwayman, the housebreaker, and the murderer. To these last it was usual to allow a pennyworth or two-pennyworth of bread a day, but debtors and other offenders guilty of no criminal, often of no moral, offence were left to provide entirely for their own sustenance. In the London prisons a wealthy man, such as Sir John Eliot, by paying high fees could provide himself with the luxury of a bed and a separate room, but the ordinary prisoner slept on the floor in the common apartment, thankful if he could obtain of his keeper a little straw at a reasonable rate. As a rule, keepers and gaolers received no salaries, but made fortunes on the fees they extorted from prisoners. Men might be confined in prison for months, and then acquitted at the assizes, and, after acquittal, were still liable to be dragged back again and locked up because unable or unwilling to pay the exorbitant fees demanded. It was not seldom that the sufferings of the prison inmates were avenged in a fearful way. “The most pernicious infection,” says Bacon, “next the plague, is the smell of the gaol where the prisoners have been long and close and nastily kept, whereof we have had in our time the experience twice or thrice, when both the judges that sat upon the gaol and numbers of those who attended the business, sickened upon it and died.” Between the years 1573 and 1579, 100 prisoners died in the King’s Bench of ‘a certain contagion called the sickness of the house.’ Without knowledge of what the prison was, it is not possible fully to appreciate the cruelty of the sentences of the Star Chamber, nor yet the heroism of those who accepted an imprisonment of indefinite length, rather than pay an illegal fine. When this Court ordered Lilburne to be ‘laid alone, with irons on his hands and legs, in the wards of the Fleet, where the meanest sort of the prisoners are put,’ and forbade any to resort to him or give him money, the sentence was nothing short of a lingering death by disease and starvation. If it had been literally carried out for many months, the prisoner must have died.[162]

%SUPERSTITIONS.%

Credulity and ignorance walking, as they do, hand in hand, added to the cruelty of the age. Knowledge had not spread far enough to free the minds of men of a load of superstitious beliefs, handed down to them by their forefathers. The cavalier, afraid of no enemy in the field, would forebode evil to himself when a hare crossed his path, or the salt was overset. The clergyman of every parish was ready to exorcise the possessed. Ladies hung round the necks of the sick a charm, such as ‘a spider in a nutshell lapped in silk,’ with full belief in its efficacy to effect a cure. A belief in such amulets inspired hope, and probably saved many from falling by the hands of the country doctors of the time. An eclipse of the sun was so dreaded that hardly any would work or turn out of their doors for the day. During the war, astrologers on both sides published almanacs, foretelling events. King James prided himself on his learning in this subject, and had an old woman tortured and put to death in Scotland, for raising a storm as he came from Denmark. He afterwards wrote a book on purpose to support the common belief in witchcraft; and in the second year of his reign a law was passed, making it felony to consult or employ any evil spirit. On one occasion at the Lancashire assizes nineteen witches were arraigned, and ten executed. The history of the witchcraft laws is the strongest homily on the necessity of diffusing such an education as will stimulate the intellect to independent thought. The vagaries of independent thought may be corrected by the conflict of minds, but bigotry with its narrow zeal cramps the development of all, while it deals murder or terror broadcast. Any withered decrepit old woman was liable to be at once feared and abused by her neighbours as a witch. Perhaps in her irritation she might curse “sometimes one, sometimes another, and that from the master of the house, his wife and children, to the little pig that lyeth in the sty;” then, did a sick cow die, she had bewitched it; did a child languish, she was causing its death, for she had been seen by one of her neighbours with a clay or waxen image of the child in her hands. Such proofs of witchcraft were quite sufficient to convince a jury that the accused was guilty. Men conceived that because an object was disagreeable and revolting to the eye, it must therefore have a sinister influence on their fortunes, just as conversely the beautiful wise women of the Norsemen were held to have a beneficial power. It was the common fallacy of inferring facts from feelings--of judging that there was necessarily some reality in nature corresponding to a feeling in the mind. Special delusions arise, when men shut themselves up in some little world of their own, and the conceptions of the Puritans made them peculiarly liable to this error. During their ascendancy, hundreds suffered death for witchcraft, for just as they believed in special providences for good, that is in God’s continual interference with the ordinary course of the world for the support of His servants, so they believed in the immediate interposition of Satan with horn and hoof, and would as soon have denied the power of one man to make an agreement with another, as that of man or woman to form a compact with the devil. A common ordeal was to prick the witch with pins and needles, to find out if the devil had rendered any spot insensible: another was to throw her into a pond, and if she did not sink, it was held a clear proof that she was rejected by the baptismal element. In one year of the Presbyterian domination fourteen witches were found in a village of fourteen families, and twenty more were selected for burning in a place near.[163] About the same time, a man, by name Hopkins, travelled through the eastern counties in the character of a witch-finder, and caused sixty persons to be hung in Suffolk alone. His career at last was stopped short by some magistrate, who, wiser than his fellows, set the villain himself to the swimming ordeal. The belief in witchcraft was universal in Europe at the time. If a judge had no belief in witchcraft, he was obliged to conceal his opinion on the Bench, as otherwise the jury would have set him down as a man of no religion, and declared the accused guilty forthwith.[164]

%THE NOBLEMAN.%

Though the social system of the country showed a painful contrast between boundless wealth and hopeless poverty, and though the laws of debt and of trade caused a needless amount of misery, yet as compared with previous times, the barriers of privilege were not so unrelaxing, the lines between classes were not so hardly drawn. The Procrustean arrangement of the feudal system had long been gradually modified. The revolutionary spirit now tried to eliminate it from the law. The gentry were, in fact, eager themselves to change an honourable but irksome tenure into one that they had once looked upon as inferior, but the freedom of which they had now long coveted. The Long Parliament passed a resolution for the removal of feudal tenure (24th Feb.). Cromwell, when Protector, passed an Act of Parliament to the same effect. After the restoration, Cromwell’s acts were held invalid, but Charles II. gave his consent to a similar act, converting feudal tenure into common socage. The king was then, indeed, not merely a nominal landlord. Feudal tenants had to pay him fines before entering upon their estates. If the heirs were minors he appropriated their rents until they came of age. A female ward was required to marry any person of suitable rank, proposed by the sovereign, under penalty of paying a heavy fine; in fact this was one of the perquisites of favourites. Fines were exacted when the sovereign’s eldest son was knighted or his eldest daughter married.

The chief sources of the wealth of the nobles and richer gentry were the rents received from their tenantry and the wool of their sheep, which browsed by thousands on heaths and pasture lands. Their houses were large and commodious. Stag heads, muskets, swords, and coats of armour decorated the sides of their halls. The walls of their sitting-rooms were often painted with figures, hunting landscapes, or curious designs; tables, chairs, and cabinets, were richly carved. In the dining-room, the substitution of forks for fingers in eating was a notable advance in refinement. There were displays of plate for ornament, as well as for use. The households of some of the chief nobility consisted of as many as two hundred persons. At the Duke of Beaufort’s house at Badminton, soap, candles, beer, and beds were all home-made. Outside their mansions the owners formed terraces, bowling-alleys, and tennis-courts, planted groves of elms, oaks, and walnuts, and enclosed large parks, which they stocked with deer. They laid out gardens adorned with statues, fountains, and aviaries, and cultivated what were then rare flowers and fruits--lilies, roses, cherries, pomegranates, and grapes. The eldest son inherited his father’s dignities and estates. The younger passed into other employments, became barristers or merchants, held office at court, or sought their fortunes in foreign service. The girls were educated at home, and learnt, besides their letters, music, dancing, and painting.[165]

%THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN.%

The ordinary country gentleman held land by knights’ service of some superior lord, or of the crown. He lived the life of a farmer, looking after his corn and pigs and sheep. He seldom left his county, and a journey to London would be a leading event in his life. Besides cock-fighting and bull-baiting, hunting was his chief amusement. His table was plentifully supplied, and he was generally hospitable to his poorer neighbours. Sheep and cattle could not be fattened, as clover and turnips were not grown until the beginning of the next century, so that in winter time his fare consisted mainly of salted meat, fish, wild fowl, and rabbits. If he was justice of the peace, he had half the business of the parish upon his hands; to see that the peace was kept; to set children found growing up idle to work; to receive the accounts of the overseers of paupers; to punish rogues and vagabonds. But as in the army and the Parliament, so in the country parish, new men had risen into importance; and now, perhaps, some yeoman or Roundhead tradesman, a buyer of bishops’ lands, was justice of the peace, in place of the Royalist knight or squire, who, having fought for King Charles, had been obliged to compound for his estate, and returned to his home to find himself a comparatively poor and uninfluential man. This was felt bitterly, for the Cavaliers who swelled Charles’ armies, though not refined over their cups or in their amusements, were as proud of their descent as the greatest noble in the land. The children learnt their letters at home, or at the village school, some “little house by the churchyard side.” The eldest son inherited his father’s land; the younger became merchants, lawyers, sailors, and clergymen. The daughters, though getting a share of what education there was, for all that, often could barely read and write, but were brought up to be good housewives, to manage a dairy, to bake, to brew, to distil water from flowers and plants.

%THE YEOMAN.%

Small farmers, or freeholders, were numerous and independent. It was common for yeomen holding land by free socage[166] tenure to possess £40 or £50 a year. Of these petty proprietors, who farmed their few acres with their own hands, there were reported to be 180,000, a large proportion out of a population of 5,500,000. Their sons became tradesmen and lawyers, or entered the church. Sometimes very distinguished men rose out of their ranks. Thus the father of Selden, the lawyer and great Hebrew scholar, is said to have been a yeoman worth about £40 a year. The sectarian army, which conquered the Cavaliers, was mainly recruited from freeholders and their sons. Small farmers, proprietors of the soil, who once played this important part in English history, can no longer be said to exist as a class, large farms and hired labour having taken their place in the economy of the country. ♦Decrease in numbers of small farmers.♦ For more than a century preceding the time of the civil war, their numbers had been slowly decreasing. The demand for English wool in foreign parts was constantly rising, so that to keep sheep became a more profitable occupation than to grow corn. To convert arable into pasture land, landed proprietors would sometimes employ fraud, menace, or actual violence, in order to dispossess the small farmers of their Naboth’s vineyards. Whether these small farmers were tenants holding land for life or a stated number of years, or were copyholders, or even freeholders, it was no easy matter for the owner of a few acres to withstand the ‘little tyrant of the fields,’ who might possibly be justice of the peace, or even lord lieutenant of his county.

The following is an instance of landlord oppression in the reign of Charles I.:--Sir Edward Bullock, wishing to enclose land in Norfolk, informed his tenant, Blackhall, that unless he would consent to sell his lands and yield up his leases, he should be made to ‘run the country.’ Blackhall, in consequence of his refusal to part with his property, found his hedges broken down, his gates opened, and himself sued at law for trespass, because his cattle had strayed out upon the common. The verdict was given against Sir Edward, who vowed to be revenged upon Blackhall’s witnesses. He caused the house of one to be pulled down, so that the owner’s wife and children passed two nights in the streets, for nobody dared take them in; and they “being afterwards by a justice’s direction received into a house, Sir Edward so threatened the owner, that he turned them out of doors, and all the winter they lay in an outhouse, without fire, so that the witness himself, his wife, and one child died.” He caused a second witness, a woman, to be so beaten, that she could not put on her clothes for a month afterwards. The Star Chamber fined Sir Edward £1000 damages to the king, and £100 damages to Blackhall, ‘out of which something was to be given to the children of the man whose house was pulled down.’[167] After such a tale of wrong, it is cheering to find that substantial justice was done, even by the Star Chamber, though it may be said that now the offences would receive a much severer punishment than a fine, and that the records of the court show it was only too glad to fine any rich man, as a means of recouping the exchequer, when the king had dispensed with Parliaments.

%THE LABOURER.%

Although villeinage had long died out in England, and had been suppressed even in the western counties before the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign (1574), the condition of the hired labourer was such, that, from a modern point of view, he could not fairly be called a free man. His employers, the landowners, passed laws which kept him in a state of half-bondage to themselves. His wages were fixed by the justices of the peace, according to the price of food. If he refused to work at the wages offered, or went out of his county in search of higher wages, he became in the eye of the law a rogue and vagabond. The laws against such were exceedingly severe. Any person for the first time found ‘wandering or roguing about,’ was to be whipped on his naked back until his body was bloody, and then sent from parish to parish straightway to the place of his birth; or, if this was not known, then to ‘the parish where he last dwelt for the space of a year’ (49th Eliz., 1597). “Poor Tom,” says Edgar, in _King Lear_, when he plays the madman, “who is whipped from tything to tything, and stocked and punished and imprisoned.” In order that the vagrant might be recognized, he was to be branded on the left shoulder with the letter R, and if a second time found begging or wandering about was to be adjudged a felon and hanged (2nd James I., 1604). This barbarous law, though probably not often enforced to its whole extent, was quite in keeping with the criminal legislation of the time, which condemned the thief, who stole any article above ten shillings in value, to die as a felon on the gallows.

%POOR LAWS.%