But they were not only poets. They had every kind of literature in far greater abundance, considering the small number of educated people, than exists in our own time, and in as great variety. Consider! There are now scattered over the whole world a hundred millions of English-speaking people, of whom at least five-sixths read something, if it is only a penny newspaper, and at least a half read books of some kind. In Elizabeth's reign there were about six millions, of whom more than half could not read at all. The reading public of Great Britain and Ireland, considered with regard to numbers, resembled what is now found in Holland, Norway, or Denmark. Yet from so small a people came this mass of literature, great, varied, and immortal.
In the matter of fiction alone they were already rich. There were knightly books: the Morte d'Arthur, the Seven Champions, Amadis of Gaul, Godfrey of Bouillon, Palmerin of England, and many more. There were story-books, as the Seven Wise Masters, the Gesta Romanorum, the Amorous Fiammetta, the jest books of Skogin, Tarleton, Hobson, Skelton, Peele, and others. There was the famous Euphues, Sidney's Arcadia, all the pastoral romances, and the "picaresque" novels of Nash and Dekker. Then there were the historians and chroniclers, as Stow, Camden, Speed, Holinshed; the essayists, as Sir Thomas Browne, Ascham, Bacon; the theologians, of whom there were hundreds; the satirists, as Bishop Hall and Marston; the writers of what we should call light literature – Greene, Nash, Peele, and Dekker. And there were translations, as from the Italian, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Biondello, Tasso, and others; from the French, Froissart, Montaigne, Plutarch (Amyot), the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (in the Hundred Merry Tales), and the stories of the Forest and the Palace of Pleasure. And there were all the dramatists. Never before or since has the country been better supplied with new literature and good books.
Remember, again, everything was new. All the books were new; the printing-press was new; you could almost count the volumes that had been issued. It was reckoned a great thing for Dr. Dee to have three thousand printed books. Every scholar found a classic which had not been translated, and took him in hand. Every traveller brought home some modern writer, chiefly Italian, previously unknown. Every sailor brought home the record of a voyage to unknown seas and to unknown shores. It was a time when the world had become suddenly conscious of a vast, an inconceivable widening, the results of which could not yet be foretold. But the knowledge filled men with such hopes as had never before been experienced. Scholars and poets, merchants and sailors, rovers and adventurers, all alike were moved by the passion and ecstasy of the time. Strange time! Wonderful time! We who read the history of that time too often confine our attention to the political history. We are able, with the help of Froude, quite clearly to understand the perplexities and troubles of the Maiden Queen; we see her, in her anxiety, playing off Spaniard against Frenchman, to avoid destruction should they act together. But the people know and suspect none of these things. State affairs are too high for them. They only see the brightness of the sky and the promise of the day; they only feel the quickening influence of the spring; their blood is fired; they have got new hopes, a new faith, new openings, new learning. And they bear themselves accordingly. That is to say, with extravagances innumerable, with confidence and courage lofty, unexampled. Why, it fires the blood of this degenerate time only to think of the mighty enlargement of that time. When one considers when they lived and what they talked, one understands Kit Marlowe and Robert Greene, and that wild company of scholars and poets; they would cram into whatever narrow span of life was granted them all – all – all – that life can give of learning and poetry, and feasting and love and joy. They were intoxicated with the ideas of their time. They were weighed down with the sheaves – the golden harvest of that wondrous reaping. Who would not live in such a time? The little world had become, almost suddenly, very large, inconceivably large. The boys of London, playing about the river stairs and the quays, listened to the talk of men who had sailed along those newly-discovered coasts of the new great world, and had seen strange monsters and wild people. In the taverns men – bearded, bronzed, scarred – grave men, with deep eyes and low voice, who had sailed to the Guinea coast, round the Cape to Hindostan, across the Spanish Main, over the ocean to Virginia, sat in the tavern and told to youths with flushed cheeks and panting, eager breath queer tales of danger and escape between their cups of sack. We were not yet advanced beyond believing in the Ethiopian with four eyes, the Arimaspi with one eye, the Hippopodes or Centaurs, the Monopoli, or men who have no head, but carry their faces in their breasts and their eyes in their shoulders. None of these monsters, it is true, had ever been caught and brought home; but many an honest fellow, if hard pressed by his hearers, would reluctantly confess to having seen them. On the other hand, negroes and red Indians were frequently brought home and exhibited. And there were crocodiles, alive or stuffed; crocodiles' skins, the skins of bears and lions, monkeys, parrots, flying-fish dried, and other curious things. And there were always the legends – that of the land of gold, the Eldorado; that of the kingdom of Prester John; that of St. Brandan's Island; and, but this was later, the theory – proved with mathematical certainty – of the great southern continent. Enough, and more than enough, to inflame the imagination of adventurers, to drive the lads aboard ship, to make them long for the sails to be spread and to be making their way anywhere – anywhere – in search of adventure, conquest, glory, and gold.
Such an enlargement, such hopes, can never again return to the world. That is impossible, save on one chance. We cannot make the world any wider; by this time we know it nearly all; the pristine mystery – the awfulness of the unknown – has wellnigh gone out of every land, even New Guinea and Central Africa. Yet there is this one chance. Science may and will widen the world – for her own disciples – in many new and unexpected ways. The sluggish imagination of the majority is little touched even by such marvels as the electric telegraph, the phonograph, the telephone. For them science in any form cannot enlarge their boundaries. Suppose, however, a thing to be achieved which should go right home to the comprehension, brain, and heart of every living man. Suppose that science should prevent, conquer, and annihilate disease. Suppose our span of life enlarged to two hundred, three hundred, five hundred years, and that suddenly. Think of the wild exaltations, the extravagances, the prodigalities, the omnivorous attempts of the scholar, the universal grasp of the physicist, the amazing and audacious experiments of chemist, electrician, biologist, and the long reach of the statesman! Think of these things, I say, and remember that in the age of Elizabeth, of Raleigh, Drake, Marlowe, Nash, Greene, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Spenser, Bacon, and the rest similar causes produced similar effects.
We have seen the development of the mediæval house from the simple common hall. The Elizabethan house shows an immense advance in architecture. I believe that the noblest specimen now remaining is Burghley House in Northamptonshire, built by Cecil, Lord Burghley and first Earl of Exeter. The house is built about a square court. The west front has a lofty square tower. Let us, with Burghley House before us, read what Bacon directs as to building. The front, he says, must have a tower, with a wing on either side. That on the right was to consist of nothing but a "goodly room of some forty feet high" – he does not give the length – "and under it a room for dressing or preparing place at times of triumphs." By triumphs he means pageants, mummings, and masques. "On the other side, which is the household side, I wish it divided at the first into a hall and a chapel (with a partition between), both of good state and bigness. And these not to go all the length, but to have at the further end a winter and a summer parlor, both fair." Here are to be the cellars, kitchens, butteries, and pantries. "Beyond this front is to be a fair court, but three sides of it of a far lower building than the front. And in all the four corners of the court fair staircases, cast into turrets on the outside, and not within the row of buildings themselves… Let the court not be paved, for that striketh up a great heat in summer and much cold in winter. But only some side alleys with a cross, and the quarters to graze being kept shorn, but not too near shorn." Stately galleries with colored windows are to run along the banquet side; on the household side, "chambers of presence and ordinary entertainments, with bedchambers." Beyond this court is to be a second of the same square, with a garden and a cloister. Other directions he gives which, if they were carried out, would make a very fine house indeed. But these we may pass over. In short, Bacon's idea of a good house was much like a college. That of Clare, Cambridge, for instance, would have been considered by Bacon as a very good house indeed, though the arrangement of the banqueting-room was not exactly as the philosopher would have it. The College of Christ's in its old form, with the garden square beyond, was still more after the manner recommended by Bacon.
It will be seen that we are now a good way removed from the Saxon Hall with the people sleeping on the floor, yet Bacon's house lineally descends from that beginning. All the old houses in London were built in this way, as may be illustrated by many which retain the old form, as well as by those which remain. Hampton Court, for instance, built by Wolsey; Northumberland House, recently taken down; Gresham House, taken down a hundred years ago; Somerset House, still standing, though much altered; the old Navy Office, the court of which still remains; some of the old almshouses, notably Trinity Almshouse, in the Whitechapel Road; Emanuel, Westminster; and the Norfolk Hospital, Greenwich, Gray's Inn, Clifford's Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn – which contains the oldest house in London – are admirable specimens of Bacon's house; while in the old taverns, of which a few imperfect specimens still exist, we have the galleries which Bacon would construct within his court.
In the reign of Elizabeth, while the merchants were growing richer and increasing in number and in wealth, the great nobles were gradually leaving the city. Those who remained kept up but a remnant of their former splendor. Elizabeth refused license for the immense number of retainers formerly allowed; she would suffer a hundred at the most. It was a time rather for the rise of new families than the continued greatness of the old. The nobles, as they went away, sold their London houses to the citizens. Thus Winchester House and Crosby Hall went to merchants; Derby House to the College of Heralds; Cold Harbor was pulled down in 1590, and its site built over with tenements; the Duke of Norfolk's house, on the site of Holy Trinity Priory, was shortly after destroyed, and the place assigned to the newly-arrived colony of Jews. Barnard's Castle alone among the city palaces remained in the possession of a great noble until the fire came and swept it away.
Great beyond all precedent was the advance of trade in this golden age. Elizabeth was wise and wisely advised in the treatment of the City and the merchants. Perhaps she followed the example of King Edward the Fourth. Perhaps she remembered (but this I doubt) that she belonged to the City by her mother's side, for her great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, had been Lord Mayor a hundred years before her accession. But the rapid growth of London trade seems to me chiefly due to the wisdom of one man – Sir Thomas Gresham.
This great man, even more than Whittington, is the typical London merchant. Not a self-made man at all, but coming of a good old country stock – always a master, always of the class which commands. Nearly all the great London merchants have, as has already been stated, belonged to that class. His family came originally from Gresham, in Norfolk; his father, Sir Richard, was Lord Mayor; his uncle, Sir John, also Lord Mayor, saved Bethlehem Hospital at the dissolution of the religious houses. Not a poor and friendless lad, by any means; from the outset he had every advantage that wealth and station can afford. He was educated at Gonville (afterwards Gonville and Caius) College, Cambridge. It was not until he had taken his degree that he was apprenticed to his uncle, and he was past twenty-four when he was received into the Mercers' Company.
When he was thirty-two years of age a thing happened to Thomas Gresham which proved to be the most fortunate chance that ever came to the City of London. He was appointed Royal Agent at Antwerp. The King's loans were at that time always offered at Antwerp or Bruges, and were taken up by merchants of the Low Countries at the enormous interest of 14 per cent. Sometimes a part of the advance had to take the form of jewels. At this time the annual interest on the debt amounted to £40,000; and while the exchange was sixteen Flemish shillings to the pound sterling, the agent had to pay in English money. The post, therefore, was not an easy one to fill.
Gresham, however, reduced the interest from 14 per cent. to 12, or even 10 per cent. He suppressed the jewels, and took the whole of the loan in money; and he continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward's ministers, of Queen Mary, and of Queen Elizabeth. In order to effect this, he must have been a most able and honest servant, or else a most supple courtier. He was the former. Now, had he done nothing more than played the part of Royal Agent better than any one who went before him, he might have been as much forgotten as his predecessors. But he did much more. The City owes to Gresham a debt of gratitude impossible to be repaid. This is a foolish sentence, because gratitude can never be repaid. You may always entertain and nourish gratitude, and you can do service in return, but gratitude remains. A great service once received is a possession forever, and generally a fruitful and growing possession.
When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne the commercial centre of the world was Antwerp; when she died, the commercial centre of the world was London. This transfer had been effected by the wisdom and foresight of one man taking advantage of the times and their chances. The religious wars of the Netherlands brought immense losses to Antwerp. These losses Gresham desired to make London's gains. But he was met with the initial difficulty that the merchants of London had not yet learned to act together. They had, it is true, the old trading company of merchant adventurers, but that stood alone; besides, its ambitions were modest. They had no experience in union; there was no central institution which should be the city's brain, the place where the merchants could meet and receive news and consult together. Now, at Antwerp there was a goodly Bourse. What if London could also have its Bourse?
Well, Gresham built a Bourse; he gave it to the city; he formed this place of meeting for the merchants; the Queen opened it, and called it the Royal Exchange. The possession of the Exchange was followed immediately by such a development of enterprise as had been unknown before in the history of the City. Next he persuaded the citizens to take up the Queen's loans themselves, so that the interest, at 12 per cent., should remain in the country. He showed his own people how to take advantage of Antwerp's disasters and to divert her trade to the port of London. As for his Bourse, it stood on the site of the present Royal Exchange, but the front was south in Cornhill. The west front was blocked up by houses. The building was of brick and mortar, three stories high, with dormer windows in the high-pitched roof. At every corner was a pinnacle surmounted by a grasshopper – the Gresham crest. On the south side rose a lofty tower with a bell, which called the merchants together at noon in the morning and at six in the evening. Within was an open court surrounded by covered walks, adorned with statues of kings, behind which were shops rented by milliners, haberdashers, and sellers of trifles. This was the lower pawne. Above, in the upper pawne, there were armorers, apothecaries, book-sellers, goldsmiths, and glass-sellers. The Bourse was opened by Queen Elizabeth on January 23, 1571. She changed its name from the Bourse to the Royal Exchange. When it was destroyed in the fire of 1666, it was observed that all the statues were destroyed, except that of Gresham himself.
To illustrate this increase in English trade, we have these facts: In the reign of Edward VI., a time of great decay, there were few Merchant Adventurers and hardly any English ships. When Elizabeth began to reign there were no more than 317 merchants in all, of whom the Company of Mercers formed ninety-nine. Before her reign it was next to impossible for the city to raise a loan of £10,000. Before she died the city was advancing to the Queen loans of £60,000. Before her reign the only foreign trade was a venture or two into Russia; everything came across from Antwerp and Sluys. During her reign the foreign trade was developed in an amazing manner. New commodities were exported, as beer and sea coal, a great many new things were introduced – new trades, new luxuries. For instance, apricots, turkeys, hops, tobacco were brought over and planted and naturalized. Fans, ladies' wigs, fine knives, pins, needles, earthen fire-pots, silk and crystal buttons, shoe-buckles, glass-making, nails, paper were made in this country for the first time. The Merchant Adventurers, who had been incorporated under Edward I., obtained fresh rights and larger powers; they obtained the abolition of the privileges enjoyed for three hundred years by the Hanseatic merchant; they established courts at Antwerp, Dordrecht, and Hamburg; they had houses at York, Hull, and Newcastle. Further, when we read that they exported wine, oil, silks, and fruits, in addition to the products of the country, it is clear that they had already obtained some of the carrying trade of the world. Of the trading companies founded under Elizabeth and her successors, only one now survives. Yet the whole trade of this country was created by these companies.
Who, for instance, now remembers the Eastland Company, or Merchants of Elbing? Yet they had a long existence as a company; and long after their commercial life was gone they used to elect their officers every year, and hold a feast. Perhaps they do still. Their trade was with the Baltic. Or the Russian Company? That sprang out of a company called the "Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Lands not before known to or frequented by the English."
This company sent out Sir Hugh Willoughby, with three ships, to find a north-east passage to China. But Sir Hugh was forced to put in at a port in Russian Lapland, where he and all his men were frozen to death. The Russian Company became whalers, and quarrelled with the Dutch over the fishing. It had a checkered career, and finally died, but, like the Eastland Company, it continued to elect officers and to dine together long after its work was over. Or the Turkey Company, which lasted from 1586 to 1825, when it dissolved? Or the Royal African Company, which lived from 1530 to 1821? There were, also, the Merchants of Spain; the French Merchants; the Merchants of Virginia; the East India Company, the greatest and most powerful of any trading company ever formed; the Hudson Bay Company, which still exists; the South Sea Company; the Guinea Company; the Canary Company. Some of these belong to a later period, but they speak of the spirit of the enterprise and adventure first awakened under Elizabeth.
In the Church of St. Martin Outwich, now pulled down, was a monument to the chief actor in the promotion of these trading companies. "Here," said the tombstone, "resteth the body of the worshipful Mr. Richard Staple, elected Alderman of this city 1584. He was the greatest Merchant in his time; the chiefest Actor in the Discovery of the Trade of Turkey and East India; a man humble in prosperity, painful and ever ready in affairs public, and discreetly careful of his private. A liberal house-keeper, bountiful to the Poor, an upright dealer in the world, and a devout inquirer after the world to come… Intravit ut exiret."
The increase of trade had another side. It was accompanied by protection, with the usual results. "In the old days," says Harrison, "when strange bottoms were suffered to come in, we had sugar for fourpence the pound that now is worth half a crown; raisins and currants for a pennie that now are holden at sixpence, and sometimes at eightpence and tenpence, the pound; nutmegs at twopence halfpenny the ounce; ginger at a pennie the ounce; prunes at a halfpenny farthing; great raisins, three pound for a pennie; cinnamon at fourpence the ounce; cloves at twopence; and pepper at twelve or sixteen pence the pound." He does not state the increase in price of the latter articles; but if we are to judge by that of sugar, the increase of trade was not an unmixed blessing to those whose incomes had not advanced with equal step.
The city associated the new prosperity with their Maiden Queen, for whom their love and loyalty never abated in the least. When she asked them for a certain number of ships they sent double the number, fully manned and provided; when the Queen's enemy, Mary of Scotland, was beheaded, they rang their bells and made bonfires; while the Queen was living they thanked God solemnly for her long reign; when she died, their lamentations were loud and sincere; her monument, until the fire, adorned many of the city churches. One of the Elizabeth statues yet remains outside the Church of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street. It is the statue which formerly stood on the west side of Lud Gate.
To return to Gresham. He not only gave the city a Bourse, but he also endowed it with a college, which should have been a rival of Trinity or Christ Church but for the mismanagement which reduced it for a long time to the level of a lecture institute. The idea of the founder will, no doubt, be revived some time or other, and Gresham College will become a place of learning worthy of the city.
The career of Sir Thomas Gresham strangely resembles that of Whittington. Both were favorites with successive sovereigns. If Gresham built an Exchange, Whittington, by his will, added to Guildhall; if Gresham founded a college for the London youth, Whittington founded a college for priests, and an almshouse; if Gresham restored the finances of his sovereign, Whittington gave back to his the bonds of all his debts. Both were mercers; both merchant adventurers; both kept a shop; both were of good descent.
Gresham's shop was in Lombard Street, at the Sign of the Grasshopper, his family crest. His shop contained gold and silver vessels; coins, ancient and modern; gold chains, gold and silver lace, rings, and jewels. He lent money, as most bankers do, on security, but he got 10 and 12 per cent. for it. He had correspondents abroad, and he gave travellers letters of credit; he bought foreign coin either to exchange or to melt down. And he lived in his own house, over his shop, until he was knighted, when he built a new house between Bishopsgate Street and Broad Street. Stow calls it "the most spacious of all thereabout; builded of brick and timber." This house became afterwards Gresham College.
Again, this was a great age for the foundation of grammar-schools. The education of London in the Middle Ages is a subject which has never yet been adequately treated. We know very well what was taught at the universities. But what did the merchant learn, the shopkeeper, the craftsman? To what school was the boy sent before he was apprenticed? There was a school, it is said, to every religious house. I think that latterly the monastic school was kept up with about as much sincerity as the monastic rule of poverty. Stow certainly says that when Henry V. dissolved the alien priories, their schools perished as well. On the other hand, consider the great number of religious houses in and around London. There should have been schools enough for the whole population. Yet Henry VI. founded four grammar-schools "besides St. Paul's," viz., at St. Martin's le Grand, St. Mary le Bow, St. Dunstan's in the west, and St. Anthony's. Why did he do this if there were already plenty of schools? And observe that one of his foundations was at a religious house – St. Martin's. The year after he created four more schools – at St. Anthony's (Holborn), All Hallows the Great, St. Peter's (Cornhill), and St. Thomas of Acon. All these schools perished in the Reformation, with the exception of St. Paul's and St. Anthony's. Why they perished, unless they were endowed with property belonging to some monastic house, is not clear.
For a time the city had no schools, no hospitals, no foundations for the poor, the sick, or the aged. These grievous losses were speedily amended. St. Paul's was presently newly founded by Dean Colet. The Blue-Coat School arose on the ruins of the Grey Friars. The Mercers' Company continued the School of St. Thomas as their own, and it still exists. The Merchant Taylors founded their school, which is now at the Charterhouse. At St. Olave's and St. Saviour's schools were established. A few years later was founded the Charterhouse School, which is now removed to Godalming.
In these narrow limits it is impossible to reproduce much of the Elizabethan daily life. Here, however, are certain details.
The ordering of the household was strict. Servants and apprentices were up at six in the summer and at seven in the winter. No one, on any pretence, except that of illness, was to absent himself from morning and evening prayers; there was to be no striking, no profane language. Sunday was clean-shirt day. Dinner was at eleven, supper at six. There was no public or private office which was not provided with a Bible. In the better classes there was a general enthusiasm for learning of all kinds. The ladies, imitating the example of the Queen, practised embroidery, wrote beautifully, played curious instruments, knew how to sing in parts, dressed with as much magnificence as they could afford, danced corantoes and lavoltas as well as the simple hey, and studied languages – Latin, Greek, and Italian. The last was the favorite language. Many collected books. Dr. John Dee had as many as four thousand, of which one thousand were manuscripts. They were arranged on the shelves with the leaves turned outward, not the backs. This was to show the gilding, the gold clasps, and the silken strings. The books were bound with great care and cost; everybody knows the beauty of the type used in the printing.
Tournaments were maintained until the end of Elizabeth's reign. But we hear little of them, and it is not likely that they retained much of their old popularity. One Sir Henry Lee entered the tilt-yard every year until age prevented him. They always kept up the sport of tilting at the Quintain in the water. But their favorite amusements were the pageant and the play. The pageant came before the play; and while the latter was performed on a rough scaffold, in an inn-yard, the former was provided with splendid dresses, music, songs, and properties of every kind. There were pageants for the reception of the King when he made a procession into the City; there were court pageants; there were private pageants in great men's houses; there were pageants got up by companies. The reception pageants, for instance, are very well illustrated by that invented for Queen Elizabeth on her visit to the city in the year 1558.
It was in January, but I think people felt cold weather less in those days. The Queen came by water, attended by the city barges, which were trimmed with targets and banners of their mysteries, from Westminster to the Tower, where she lay for two days. She then rode through the City, starting at two in the afternoon, when everybody had had dinner.
In Fenchurch Street there was a scaffold, where was a band of music, and a child who presented the Queen with a poetical address.
At the upper end of Gracechurch Street a noble arch had been erected, with a triple stage. On the lowest stood two children, representing Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York; on the second, two more, for Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn; and on the third, Queen Elizabeth herself. Music and a poetical address.
At Cornhill there was another pageant, representing the Queen placed on a seat supported by four figures, viz., Religion, Wisdom, Justice, and Love, each of which was treading under foot the opposite vice. Music and a poetical address.
At the entrance of Cheapside a third pageant represented the eight beatitudes.
At the Conduit a fourth pageant displayed two mountains; one, ragged and stony, with a withered tree, under which sat one in homely garb; over her head was a tablet with the legend, "Respublica ruinosa." The other hill was fair and green, with a flourishing tree, and the words, "Respublica bene instituta." Between the hills was a cave, out of which issued Time, with his wings, scythe, and forelock quite complete, leading a maiden in white silk, on whose head was written Temporis Filia, and on her breast Veritas. This fair damsel held a Bible in her hand, which she let down by a silken thread to the Queen.
At the Conduit in Fleet Street they had erected a stage with four towers, on which was a throne under a palm-tree. On the throne sat Deborah, "Judge and Restorer of the House of Israel." On the steps of the throne stood six personages, two of them representing the nobility, two the clergy, and two the commons. At Temple Bar they had two giants, Gogmagog and Albion, and Corineus, the Briton. On the south side was a "noise" of singing children, one of whom, attired as a poet, bade the Queen farewell in the name of the City.