CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DAYS OF "GOOD QUEEN BESS."

"A worthie woman judge, a woman sent for staie."

"When Fame resounds with thundring trump, which rends the ratling skies, And pierceth to the hautie Heavens, and thence descending flies Through flickering ayre: and so conjoines the sea and shore togither, In admiration of thy grace, good Queene, thou'rt welcome hither."

_The Receyving of the Queene's Maiestie into hir Citie of Norwich._

"We may justly wonder what has become of the industry of the English ladies; we hear no more of their rich embroiderings, and curious needlework. Is all the domestic simplicity of the former ages entirely vanished?"--Aikin.

The age of Elizabeth presents a never-failing field of variety through which people of all tastes may delightedly rove, gathering flowers at will. The learned statesman, the acute politician, the subtle lawyer, will find in the measures of her Burleigh, her Walsingham, her Cecil, abundant food for approbation or for censure; the heroic sailor will glory over the achievements of her time; the adventurous traveller will explore the Eldoradic regions with Raleigh, or plough the waves with Drake and Frobisher; the soldier will recal glorious visions of Essex and Sidney, while poesy wreathes a bay round the memory of the last, which shines freshly and bright even in the age which produced a Ben Jonson, and him "who was born with a star on his forehead to last through all time"--Shakspeare.

The age of Elizabeth was especially a learned age. The study of the dead languages had hitherto been confined almost exclusively to ecclesiastics and scholars by profession, but from the time of Henry the Seventh it had been gradually spreading amongst the higher classes. The great and good Sir Thomas More gave his daughters a learned education, and they did honour to it; Henry the Eighth followed his example; Lady Jane Grey made learning lovely; and Elizabeth's pedantry brought the habit into full fashion.

If a queen were to talk Sanscrit, her court would endeavour to do so likewise. The example of learned studies was given by the queen herself, who translated from the Greek a play of Euripides, and parts of Isocrates, Xenophon, and Plutarch; from the Latin considerable portions of Cicero, Seneca, Sallust, Horace, &c. She wrote many Latin letters, and is said to have spoken five languages with facility. As a natural consequence the nobility and gentry, their wives and daughters, became enthusiasts in the cause of letters. The novelty which attended these studies, the eager desire to possess what had been so long studiously and jealously concealed, and the curiosity to explore and rifle the treasures of the Greek and Roman world, which mystery and imagination had swelled into the marvellous, contributed to excite an absolute passion for study and for books. The court, the ducal castle, and the baronial hall were suddenly converted into academies, and could boast of splendid tapestries. In the first of these, according to Ascham, might be seen the queen reading "more Greeke every day than some prebendarie of this church doth read _Latin_ in a whole week;" and while she was translating Isocrates or Seneca, it may be easily conceived that her maids of honour found it convenient to praise and to adopt the disposition of her time. In the second, observes Warton, "the daughter of a duchess was taught not only to distil strong waters, but to construe Greek; and in the third, every young lady who aspired to be fashionable was compelled, in imitation of the greater world, to exhibit similar marks of erudition."

A contemporary writer says, that some of the ladies of the court employ themselves "in continuall reading either of the holie Scriptures, or histories of our owne or forren nations about us, and diverse in writing volumes of their owne, or translating of other mens into our English and Latine toongs. I might here (he adds) make a large discourse of such honorable and grave councellors, and noble personages, as give their dailie attendance upon the queene's majestie. I could in like sort set foorth a singular commendation of the vertuous beautie, or beautiful vertues of such ladies and gentlewomen as wait upon his person, betweene whose amiable countenances and costlinesse of attire there seemeth to be such a dailie conflict and contention, as that it is verie difficult for me to gesse whether of the twaine shall beare awaie the preheminence. This further is not to be omitted, to the singular commendation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are verie few of them which have not the use and skill of sundrie speaches, beside an excellent veine of writing before-time not regarded. Would to God the rest of their lives and conversations were correspondent to these gifts! for as our common courtiers (for the most part) are the best lerned and endued with excellent gifts, so are manie of them the worst men when they come abroad, that anie man shall either heare or read of. Trulie it is a rare thing with us now to heare of a courtier which hath but his owne language. And to saie how many gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the Greeke and Latine toongs, are thereto no lesse skilful in the Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me. Sith I am persuaded, that as the noblemen and gentlemen doo surmount in this behalfe, so these come verie little or nothing at all behind them for their parts, which industrie God continue, and accomplish that which otherwise is wanting!"[120]

At this time the practice (derived from the chivalrous ages, when every baronial castle was the resort of young persons of gentle birth, of both sexes) was by no means discontinued of placing young women, of gentle birth, in the establishment of ladies of rank, where, without performing any menial offices, they might be supposed to have their own understood duties in the household, and had in return the advantage of a liberal education, and constant association with the best company. Persons of rank and fortune often retained in their service many young people of both sexes of good birth, and bestowed on them the fashionable education of the time. Indeed their houses were the best, if not then the only schools of elegant learning. The following letter, written in 1595, is from a young lady thus situated:

"To my good mother Mrs. Pake, at Broumfield, deliver this.

"Deare Mother,

"My humble dutye remembred unto my father and you, &c. I received upon Weddensday last a letter from my father and you, whereby, I understand, it is your pleasures that I should certifie you what times I do take for my lute, and the rest of my exercises. I doe for the most part playe of my lute after supper, for then commonlie my lady heareth me; and in the morninges, after I am reddie, I play an hower; and my wrightinge and siferinge, after I have done my lute. For my drawinge I take an hower in the afternowne, and my French at night before supper. My lady hath not bene well these tooe or three dayes: she telleth me, when she is well, that she will see if Hilliard will come and teche me; if she can by any means she will, &c. &c.--As touchinge my newe corse in service, I hope I shall performe my dutye to my lady with all care and regard to please her, and to behave myselfe to everye one else as it shall become me. Mr. Harrisone was with me upone Fridaye; he heard me playe, and brought me a dusson of trebles; I had some of him when I came to London. Thus desiring pardone for my rude writinge, I leave you to the Almightie, desiringe him to increase in you all health and happines.

"Your obedient daughter,

"Rebecca Pake."

Could any thing afford a stronger contrast to the grave and certainly severe study to which Elizabeth had habituated herself, than the vain and fantastic puerility of many of her recreations and habits,--the unintellectual brutality of the bearbaits which she admired, or the gaudy and glittering pageants in which she delighted? She built a gallery at Whitehall at immense expense, and so superficially, that it was in ruins in her successor's time; but it was raised, in order to afford a magnificent reception to the ambassadors who, in 1581, came to treat of an alliance with the Duke of Anjou. It was framed of timber, covered with painted canvas, and decorated with the utmost gaudiness. Pendants of fruit of various kinds (amongst which cucumbers and even carrots are enumerated) were hung from festoons of flowers intermixed with evergreens, and the whole was powdered with gold spangles; the ceiling was painted like a sky with stars, sunbeams, and clouds, intermixed with scutcheons of the royal arms; and glass lustres and ornaments were scattered all around. Here were enacted masques and pageants chiefly remarkable for their pedantic prolixity of composition, and the fulsome and gross flattery towards the queen with which they were throughout invested.

Everything, in accordance with the rage of the day, assumed an erudite, or, more truly speaking, a pedantic cast. When the queen (says Warton) paraded through a country town, almost every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility, at entering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privy chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry cooks were expert mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionary; and the splendid iceing of an immense historic plum-cake was embossed with a delicious basso-relievo of the destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids; the pages of the family were converted into wood-nymphs, who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gambolled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs.

Scarcely we think could even the effusions of Euphues--a fashion also of this period--be more wearisome to the spirit than a repetition of these dull delights.

This predilection for learning, and the time perforce given to its acquisition, must necessarily have subtracted from those hours which might otherwise have been bestowed on the lighter labours and beguiling occupations of the needle. Nor does it appear that after her accession Elizabeth did much patronise this gentle art. She was cast in a more stirring mould. In her father's court, under her sister's jealous eye, within her prison's solitary walls, her needle might be a prudent disguise, a solacing occupation, "woman's pretty excuse for thought." But after her own accession to the throne _action_ was her characteristic.

Nevertheless we are not to suppose that, because needlework was not "a rage," it was frowned upon and despised. By no means. It is perhaps fortunate that Elizabeth did not especially patronise it; for so dictatorial and absolute was she, that by virtue of the "right divine" she would have made her statesmen embroider their own robes, and her warriors lay aside the sword for the distaff. But as, happily, it now only held a secondary place in her esteem, we have Raleigh's poems instead of his sampler, and Bacon's learning instead of his stitchery. But it was not in her nature to suffer any thing in which she excelled to lie quite dormant. She was an accomplished needlewoman; some exquisite proofs of her skill were then glowing in all their freshness, and her excellence in this art was sufficiently obvious to prevent the ladies of her court from entirely forsaking it. Many books, with patterns for needlework, were published about this time, and in a later one Queen Elizabeth is especially celebrated in a laudatory poem for her skill in it. That proficiency in ornamental needlework was an absolute requisite in the accomplishments of a country belle, may be inferred from the prominent place it holds in Drayton's description of the well-educated daughter of a country knight in Elizabeth's days:

"The silk well couth she twist and twine, And make the fine march pine, And with the needlework: And she couth help the priest to say His mattins on a holy day, And sing a psalm in kirk.

"She wore a frock of frolic green, Might well become a maiden queen, Which seemly was to see; A hood to that so neat and fine, In colour like the columbine, Ywrought full featously."

The march pine or counterpanes here alluded to, taxed in these days to the fullest extent both the purse of the rich and the fingers of the fair. Elizabeth had several most expensively trimmed with ermine as well as needlework; the finest and richest embroidery was lavished on them; and it was no unusual circumstance for the counterpane for the "standing" or master's bed to be so lavishly adorned as to be worth a thousand marks.

At no time was ornamental needlework more admired, or in greater request in the every-day concerns of life, than now. Almost every article of dress, male and female, was adorned with it. Even the boots, which at this time had immense tops turned down and fringed, and which were commonly made of russet cloth or leather, were worn by some exquisites of the day of very fine cloth (of which enough was used to make a shirt), and were embroidered in gold or silver, or in various-coloured silks, in the figures of birds, animals, or antiques; and the ornamental needlework alone of a pair of these boots would cost from four to ten pounds. The making of a single shirt would frequently cost 10_l._, so richly were they ornamented with "needleworke of silke, and so curiously stitched with other knackes."

"Woman's triflings," too, their handkerchiefs, reticules, workbags, &c., were decorated richly. We have seen within these few days a workbag which would startle a modern fair one, for, as far as regards _size_, it has a most "industrious look," but which, despite the ravages of near three centuries, yet gives token of much original magnificence. It is made of net, lined with silk; the material, the net itself, (a sort of honeycomb pattern, like what we called a few years ago the Grecian lace,) was made by the fair workwoman in those days, and was a fashionable occupation both in France and England. This bag is wrought in broad stripes with gold thread, and between the stripes various flowers are embroidered in different coloured silks. The bag stands in a sort of card-board basket, covered in the same style; it is drawn with long cords and tassels, and is large enough perhaps, on emergency, to hold a good sized baby.

It is more than probable that female skill was in request in various matters of household decoration. The Arras looms, indeed, had long superseded the painful fingers of notable dames in the construction of hangings for walls, which were universally used, intermingled and varied in the palaces and nobler mansions by "painted cloth," and cloth of gold and silver. Thus Shakspeare describes Imogen's chamber in Cymbeline:

"Her bed-chamber was hanged With tapestry of silk and silver."

We have remarked that Henry the Eighth's palaces were very splendid; Elizabeth's were equally so, and more consistently finished in minor conveniences, as it is particularly remarked that "easye quilted and lyned formes and stools for the lords and ladyes to sit on" had superseded the "great plank forms, that two yeomen can scant remove out of their places, and waynscot stooles so hard, that since great breeches were layd asyde men can skant indewr to sitt on." Her two presence chambers at Hampton Court shone with tapestry of gold and silver, and silk of various colours; her bed was covered with costly coverlids of silk, wrought in various patterns, by the needle; and she had many "chusions," moveable articles of furniture of various shapes, answering to our large family of tabourets and ottomans, embroidered with gold and silver thread.

But it was not merely in courts and palaces that arras was used; it was now, of a coarser fabric, universally adopted in the houses of the country gentry. "The wals of our houses on the inner sides be either hanged with tapisterie, arras-work,[121] or painted cloths, wherein either diverse histories, or hearbes, beasts, knots, and such like are stained, or else they are seeled with oke of our owne, or wainescot brought hither out of the east countries." The tapestry was now suspended on frames, which, we may infer, were often at a considerable distance from the walls, since the portly Sir John Falstaff ensconced himself "behind the arras" on a memorable occasion; Polonius too met his death there; and indeed Shakspeare presses it into the service on numerous occasions.

The following quotation will give an accurate idea of properties thought most valuable at this time; and it will be seen that ornamental needlework cuts a very distinguished figure therein. It is a catalogue of his wealth given by Gremio when suing for Bianca to her father, who declares that the wealthiest lover will win her, in the Taming of the Shrew.

_Gremio._ "First, as you know, my house within the city Is richly furnished with plate and gold; Basons and ewers, to lave her dainty hands; My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry; In ivory coffers I have stuff'd my crowns; In cypres chests my _arras_, counterpoints, Costly apparel, tents, and canopies, Fine linen, _Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl, Valence of Venice gold, in needlework_, Pewter and brass, and all things that belong To house or house-keeping."

The age of Elizabeth was one which powerfully appeals to the imagination in various ways. The æra of warlike chivalry was past; but many of its lighter observances remained, and added to the variety of life, and perhaps tended to polish it. We are told, for instance, that as the Earl of Cumberland stood before Elizabeth she dropped her glove; and on his picking it up graciously desired him to keep it. He caused the trophy to be encircled with diamonds; and ever after, at all tilts and tourneys, bore it conspicuously placed in front of his high crowned hat. Jousting and tilting in honour of the ladies (by whom prizes were awarded) continued still to be a favourite diversion. There were annual contentions in the lists in honour of the sovereign, and twenty-five persons of the first rank established a society of arms for this purpose, of which the chivalric Sir Henry Lee was for some time president.

The "romance of chivalry" was sinking to be succeeded by the heavier tomes of Gomberville, Scudery, &c., but the extension of classical knowledge, the vast strides in acquirement of various kinds, the utter change, so to speak, in the system of literature, all contributed to the downfall of the chivalric romance. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia introduced a rage for high-flown pastoral effusions; and now too was re-born that taste for metaphorical effusion and spiritual romance, which was first exhibited in the fourth century in the Bishop of Tricca's romance of "Barlaam and Josaphat," and which now pervaded the fast-rising puritan party, and was afterwards fully developed in that unaccountably fascinating work, "The Pilgrim's Progress." Nevertheless, as yet

"Courted and caress'd, High placed in hall, a welcome guest,"

the harper poured to lord and lady gay not indeed "his unpremeditated lay," but a poetical abridgment (the precursor of a fast succeeding race of romantic ballads) of the doughty deeds of renowned knights, so amply expatiated upon in the time-honoured folios of the "olden time." The wandering harper, if fallen somewhat from his "high estate," was still a recognised and welcome guest; his "matter being for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Topas, the reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bell, and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old romances or historical rhimes." Though the character of the minstrel gradually lost respectability, yet for a considerable part of Elizabeth's reign it was one so fully acknowledged, that a peculiar garb was still attached to the office.

"Mongst these, some bards there were that in their sacred rage Recorded the descents and acts of everie age. Some with their nimbler joynts that strooke the warbling string; In fingering some unskild, but onelie vsed to sing Vnto the other's harpe: of which you both might find Great plentie, and of both excelling in their kind."

The superstitions of various kinds, the omens, the warnings, the charms, the "potent spells" of the wizard seer, which

"Could hold in dreadful thrall the labouring moon, Or draw the fix'd stars from their eminence, And still the midnight tempest,"--

the supernatural agents, the goblins, the witches, the fairies, the satyrs, the elves, the fauns, the "shapes that walk," the

"Uncharnel'd spectres, seen to glide Along the lone wood's unfrequented path"--

the being and active existence of all these was considered "true as holy writ" by our ancestors of the Elizabethan age. On this subject we will transcribe a beautifully illustrative passage from Warton:--

"Every goblin of ignorance" (says he) "did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them _airs from heaven, or blasts from hell_; that the ghost was duly relieved from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfew, and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had not yet _broken and buried his staff_, nor _drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound_. It was now that the alchemist and the judicial astrologer conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendant lustre. The Shakspeare of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation."

It were endless, and indeed out of place here, to attempt to specify the numberless minor superstitions to which this credulous tendency of the public mind gave birth or continuation; or the marvels of travellers,--as the Anthropophagi, the Ethiops with four eyes, the Hippopodes with their nether parts like horses, the Arimaspi with one eye in the forehead, and the Monopoli who have no head at all, but a face in their breast--which were all devoutly credited. One potent charm, however, we are constrained to particularise, since its infallibility was mainly dependent on the needlewoman's skill. It was a waistcoat which rendered its owner invulnerable: we believe that if duly prepared it would be found proof not only against "silver bullets," but also against even the "charmed bullet" of German notoriety. Thus runs the charm:--

"On Christmas daie at night, a thread must be sponne of flax, by a little virgine girle, in the name of the divell; and it must be by hir woven, and also _wrought with the needle_. In the brest or forepart thereof must be made _with needleworke_ two heads; on the head at the right side must be a hat and a long beard, and the left head must have on a crowne, and it must be so horrible that it maie resemble Belzebub; and on each side of the wastcote must be _wrought_ a crosse."

The newspaper, that now mighty political engine, that "thewe and sinew" of the fourth estate of the realm, took its rise in Elizabeth's day. How would her legislators have been overwhelmed with amazement could they have beheld, in dim perspective, this child of the press, scarcely less now the offspring of the imagination than those chimeras of their own time to which we have been alluding; and would not the wrinkled brow of the modern politician be unconsciously smoothened, would not the careworn and profound diplomatist "gather up his face into a smile before he was aware," if the FIRST NEWSPAPER were suddenly placed before him? It is not indeed in existence, but was published under the title of "_The English Mercurie_," in April, 1588, on the first appearance near the shores of England of the Spanish Armada, a crisis which caused this innovation on the usual public news-letter circulated in manuscript. No. 50, dated July 23, 1588, is the first now in existence; and as the publication only began in April, it shows they must have been issued frequently. We have seen this No. 50, which is preserved in the British Museum.[122]

In it are no advertisements--no fashions--no law reports--no court circular--no fashionable arrivals--no fashionable intelligence--no murders--no robberies--no reviews--no crim. cons.--no elopements--no price of stocks--no mercantile intelligence--no police reports--no "leaders,"--no literary memoranda--no poets' corner--no spring meetings--no radical demonstrations--no conservative dinners--but

"The

"English Mercurie,

"Published by AUTHORITIE,

"For the Prevention of False Reportes,

"_Whitehall, July 23, 1588._"

Contains three pages and a half, small quarto, of matter of fact information.

Two pages respecting the Armada then seen "neare the Lizard, making for the entrance of the Channell," and appearing on the surface of the water "like floating castles."

A page of news from Ostend, where "nothing was talked of but the intended invasion of England. His Highnesse the Prince of Parma having compleated his preparationes, of which the subjoined Accounte might be depended upon as _exacte and authentique_."

Something to say--for a newspaper.

And a few lines dated "London, July 13, of the lord mayor, aldermen, common councilmen, and lieutenancie of this great citie" waiting on Her Majesty with assurances of support, and receiving a gracious reception from her.

Such was the newspaper of 1588.

* * * * *

The great events of Elizabeth's reign, in war, in politics, in legislation, belong to the historian; the great march of mind, the connecting link which that age formed between the darkness of the preceding ones (for during the period of the wars of the Roses all sorts of art and science retrograded), and the high cultivation of later days, it is the province of the metaphysician and philosopher to analyse; and even the lighter characteristics of the time have become so familiar through the medium of many modern and valuable works, that we have ventured only to touch very superficially on some few of the more prominent of them.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] Harrison.

[121] From this separate mention of _tapisterie_ and _arras-work_ by so accurate a describer as Harrison, it would seem that tapestry of the needle alone was not, even yet, quite exploded.

[122] Sloane MSS. No. 4106.