CHAPTER I.

FAMILY LIFE AFTER THE FALL OF FEUDALISM.

Effect on Women of the fall of Feudalism--Characteristics of Tudor England--Observations of foreigners on Englishwomen--Greater liberty allowed to women in England than on the Continent--Social habits and amusements--Women’s education--English family life--Parents and children.

The fall of feudalism, which meant the break-up of the power of the nobles, had as great an influence on the position of women in England as the overthrow of the supremacy of the Roman Church. Women in everyday life are more affected by a social than a religious change. The king might refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Pope, monasteries might be stripped of their wealth and the Church of its endowments, but women who were not nuns, or destined for a religious life, did not feel the upheaval which was undermining the power of the priest as they felt the storm which shattered the power of the noble. Whatever the form of Church government might be, women did not cease to recognize the duty of obedience to spiritual directors. But when the family no longer owed obedience to a feudal lord, when personal service was at an end, when the labourer was free to work for his own profit, the change that was passing over social life was very distinctly felt by families in the humbler ranks. Of the third great force, the mental freedom given by the Renaissance, there are naturally fewer signs, for its influence was confined chiefly to the upper classes.

The dawn of the sixteenth century was the dawn of a new era, social, religious, and commercial. It was the beginning of a gradual transformation which with every century, with every generation, takes some new form, and is sometimes called progress, sometimes revolution, but which moves on with the same relentless persistence as the laws that govern the earth.

It was a rough world in which women found themselves at liberty to come and go, to taste new pleasures, enjoy fresh luxuries, hear new opinions, and think new thoughts. But, at least, it was a world of action, of striving, of pushing forward. Despotic as was the throne, oppressive as were the new landowning class, a freer spirit prevailed. Social changes work gradually, and their influence is not at once perceived; but the germ of modern England was working in those days of religious stress, intellectual activity, and commercial enterprise.

The visits of foreigners to England in the sixteenth century enable us to see ourselves as others saw us. The position of women and the relations of the sexes always excited comment from strangers.

“Wives,” writes a Dutchman, “are not kept so strictly as they are in Spain or elsewhere. Nor are they shut up, but they have the free management of the house or housekeeping, after the fashion of those of the Netherlands and others their neighbours. They go to market to buy what they like best to eat. They are well dressed, fond of taking it easy, and commonly leave the care of household matters and drudgery to their servants. They sit before their doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen by the passers-by. In all banquets and feasts they are shown the greatest honour. They are placed at the upper end of the table, where they are first served; at the lower end they help the men. All the rest of their time they employ in walking and riding, in playing at cards or otherwise, in visiting their friends and keeping company, conversing with their equals (whom they term gossips) and their neighbours, and making merry with them at child-births, christenings, churchings, and funerals; and all this with the permission and knowledge of their husbands, as such is the custom. Although the husbands often recommend to them the pains, industry, and care of the German or Dutch women, who do what the men ought to do both in the house and the shops, for which services in England men are employed, nevertheless the women usually persist in retaining their customs. This is why England is called the paradise of married women. The girls who are not yet married are kept much more rigorously and strictly than in the Low Countries.”

Another observer says--

“The women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other place.... The females have great liberty, and are almost like masters.”

Manners were very free, nowhere more so than among persons of quality, and language was very coarse to modern ears. But if women did not hesitate to use an oath, if their behaviour to men seems bold and their coquetry of a type too pronounced, it must be remembered that they only adopted the tone of the society in which they lived.

“In all the world,” says a sixteenth-century writer, “there is no regyon nor countrie that doth use more swearynge than is used in Englande, for a chylde that scarse can speake, a boy, a gyrle, a wenche, now-a-dayes wyl swere as great othes as an old knave and an olde drabbe.... As for swearers a man nede not to seke for theym, for in the Kynges courte and lordes courtes in cities, borowes and in townes, and in every house, in maner there is abbominable swerynge, and no man dothe go about to redresse it, but doth take swearyng as for no synne, whiche is a damnable synne; and they the which doth use it, be possessed of the Devill, and no man can helpe them but God and the kyng.”

The attitude of men towards women had undoubtedly changed. The old chivalric notions had died away, and with them a good deal of false sentiment. Tudor England did not set woman up on a pinnacle as a being endowed with supernatural virtues and charms. It did not make quests on her behalf, or court danger for the sake of a smile. Tudor England had something else to think about. It was busy with foreign enterprises, discovering new lands; with commerce and trade, building up a solid foundation of wealth; with new branches of knowledge, with fresh studies of old things, with reconstituting its religious beliefs, and with keeping up its head among the nations. Poets in the Middle Ages had sung of woman as an angel, ecclesiastical asceticism had treated her as little better than a demon, but the men of the sixteenth century were of a different mould. They had something of the modern spirit, and looked upon woman as a being to share in the common burdens and pleasures of life, not to be worshipped or shunned.

It is clear that in England women had attained to a greater degree of freedom in daily life than on the Continent. Frederick Duke of Wirtemberg, who was in England about the year 1592, writes--

“The women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other place; they also know well how to make use of it; for they go dressed out in exceedingly fine clothes, and give all their attention to their ruffs and stuffs by such a degree indeed that, as I am informed, many a one does not hesitate to wear velvet in the streets, which is common with them, whilst at home perhaps they have not a piece of dry bread.”

Increase of luxury had an injurious effect on certain industries. People were no longer satisfied with home-made products, but coveted the resources of the capital. Laments are uttered that the trade in certain towns is decaying--

“While men weare contented with suche thinges as weare made within the market townes next unto theim, then weare they of oure townes and cities well set aworke, as I knewe the time when men weare contented with cappes, hattes, girdelles and poyntes and all maner of (garmentes) made in the townes next adjoyninge; whereby the townes then weare well occupied and set aworke and yet the money paid for the same stuffe remayned in the countrie. Nowe the porest yonge man in a country can not be contented either with a lether girdle, or lether pointes, gloves, kynues or daggers made nighe home. And specially no gentleman can be content to have eyther cappe, coate, dublet, hose or shirt made in his countrey, but they must haue theire geare from London; and yet manye thinges thearof are not theare made, but beyonde the sea; whereby the artificers of oure townes are idle.”[37]

Queen Elizabeth made ineffectual attempts to circumscribe London, whose boundaries were rapidly enlarging under the pressure of the growing population and the constant influx of provincials and foreigners. About this time stone building began to be common, the old timber houses being replaced by more solid if less picturesque edifices.

Complaints were made of people flocking to London from the country, and wasting their substance in revels--

“When husband hath at play set up his rest, Then wife and babes at home a hungry goeth.”

“The maister may keepe revell all the yeere, And leave the wife at home like silly foule.”

Country dames did not often share in the jaunts to the capital made by their husbands. Until the seventeenth century it did not become customary for families to go to London for annual visits. Bad roads and the lack of public conveyances kept town and country apart. The squire’s lady knew nothing of the bustling life led in the sombre, substantial houses of the London burgesses, for whose wives there was plenty of occupation in looking after the servants and the apprentices who formed part of the household, in superintending the cooking of the bountiful meals, buying the household necessaries, and replenishing the family wardrobe. There were no newspapers, but there was abundance of gossip, a much more impressive medium of communicating news. Amusement took the form of spectacles chiefly, and the citizens and citizenesses flocked readily to a mask, a play, a procession, a cock-fight, or a bear-baiting. Women were not squeamish about unpleasant sights. They had not learnt to feel that the brutal sports so common then were degrading. It was hardly likely that they should. There were too many hangings and quarterings and burnings of human beings in London to make people sensitive about the pain of animals. The gallows were constantly working, and women had to accustom themselves to many revolting sights. Worse times were coming, but as yet the shadow of the great civil war had not darkened England.

With regard to the education of women in every-day life, there is no evidence to show that they shared in the higher learning cultivated so assiduously by the daughters of the aristocracy. What M. Paul Rousselot says in his “History of the Education of Women in France,” applies equally well to England. The majority of women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries profited little, he considers, by the great movement known as the Renaissance. To a large extent they were outside it--

“On ne les a pas en général volontairement introduites dans ce progrès, elles y sont entrées, un peu d’elles mêmes, beaucoup par la force des choses.”

When we read of women discoursing in Latin, writing in Greek, discussing philosophy and science, we must be on our guard, says M. Rousselot, from believing that the initiators of the modern spirit had any idea that the moment was come to institute for women a rational system of instruction and education.

Certainly in England there were no women of the burgess class who could discourse in Latin, and the wives and daughters of country squires were equally guiltless of any such accomplishments. No systematic attempt was made to raise the standard of women’s education in the middle ranks. The founders of the endowed grammar schools in the sixteenth century never thought of girls; they only provided for boys. Queen Elizabeth, excellent scholar as she was, and keen as was her appreciation of learning, did nothing for the intellectual advancement of her female subjects. The Virgin Queen only acted like her compeers.

“Scarcely has there ever appeared, in any period or in any nation, a legislator who has made it the subject of his serious attention, and the men who are greatly interested that women should be sensible and virtuous, seem, by their conduct towards that sex, to have entered into a general conspiracy to order it otherwise.”[38]

Sir Thomas Overbury’s poem, “A Wife,” expresses the sentiment of the age--

“Give me next Good, an understanding Wife, By nature wise, not learned by much Art. Some knowledge on her side will all my Life More scope of Conversation impart.

* * * * *

“A passive understanding to conceive, And judgment to discern, I wish to finde. Beyond that, all as hazardous I leave; Learning and pregnant wit in Woman-kinde, What it findes malleable maketh frail, And doth not adde more ballast, but more sail.

“Domesticke charge doth best that Sexe befit, Contiguous businesse so to fix the minde, That leasure space for fancies not admit, Their leasure ’tis corrupteth Womankinde. Else, being plac’d from many vices free, They had to Heav’n a shorter cut then we. Books are a part of Man’s Prerogative, In formall Ink they Thoughts and Voices hold, That we to them our Solitude may give, And make Time present travel that of old.”

Hitherto there had been two careers open to women--marriage and the conventual life. With the sweeping away of the religious houses there remained only the first. English family life has been lauded as the _beau idéal_ of domesticity, but, as far as women were concerned, it was a very narrow ideal. There seemed no place for the daughters who failed to find husbands. One wonders what became of the unmarried women. They were probably condemned to drudge for their relatives, like Samuel Pepys’ sister, who came into his household as a servant.

There was much severity exercised towards children among all classes. Poor Lady Jane Grey pathetically relates how glad she was to go to her tutor to escape the blows, pinches, and constant reprimands which she received when in the presence of her parents, and Lady Jane was by no means of a refractory disposition. After this it is less surprising to find, at an earlier period, one of the Paston family, whose well-known letters throw so much light on domestic life in the fifteenth century, ill treated and beaten as if she were an unruly slave.

“She [Elizabeth Paston, daughter of Agnes Paston] was never in so great sorrow as she is nowadays,” wrote one of the relatives in June, 1454; “for she may not speak with no man, whosoever come, ne not may see nor speak with any man, nor with servants of her mother’s, but that she beareth on her hand otherwise than she meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice on a day, and her head broken in two or three places.”

Dame Paston did not approve of having marriageable daughters about her at home. One she had sent to a certain Cousin Calthorp, who, when he was making changes in his household, wished to be rid of his charge. She writes in some perturbation to her son--

“He seth she waxeth hygh, and it wer tyme to purvey her a mariage. I marvell what causeth hym to write so now; outher she hath displeased hym or elles he hath takyn her with diffraught. Therfor I pray you comune with my Cosyn Clere at London, and wete how he is dysposyd to her ward, and send me word, for I shall be fayn to send for her, and with me she shall but lese her tyme, and with ought she will be better occupied she shall often tymes meve me and put me in gret inquietenesse. Remembr what labour I had with your suster, therfor do your parte to help her forth, that may be your wurchiep and myn.”

Girls married very young, and the poet who makes a daughter lament that at fifteen she had not found a husband, was probably not exaggerating.

“Good faith, before I came to this ripe groath, I did accuse the labouring time of sloath; Methought the yere did runne but slowe about, For I thought each yeere ten I was without. Being foreteene and toward the tother yeere, Good Lord, thought I, fifteene will nere be heere! For I have heard my mother say that then Prittie maidens were fit for handsome men.”

A Venetian noble who accompanied an ambassador from Venice to the English court in the sixteenth century writes--

“The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; for after having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years.”

On the other hand, we find children described as--

“most ongracious grafftes, ripe and redy in all lewd libertie,” through the fault of the parents and schoolmasters, “which do nother teach ther children good, nother yet chastice them when thei do evill.”

In the following century people looked back with regret to the time when daughters were--

“obsequious and helpful to their parents,” when “there was no supposed humiliation in offices which are now accounted menial, but which the peer received as a matter of course from ‘the gentlemen of his household,’ and which were paid to the knights or gentlemen by domestics chosen in the families of their own most respectable tenants; whilst in the humbler ranks of middle life it was the uniform and recognized duty of the wife to wait on her husband, the child on his parents, the youngest of the family on his elder brothers and sisters.”