A Gentleman Player Part 38

NOTE 23. (Page 92.)

"The circuit of the wall of London on the land side" (writes Stow in 1598), "to wit, from the Tower of London in the east unto Aldgate, is 82 perches; from Aldgate to Bishopsgate, 86 perches; from Bishopsgate in the north, to the postern of Cripplegate, 162 perches; from Cripplegate to Aldersgate, 75 perches; from Aldersgate to Newgate, 66 perches; from Newgate in the west, to Ludgate, 42 perches; in all, 513 perches of a.s.size. From Ludgate to the Fleet Dike west, about 60 perches; from Fleet Bridge south, to the river Thames, about 70 perches; and so the total of these perches amounteth to 643, ... w hich make up two English miles, and more by 608 feet." The gates here mentioned, as Besant says, "still stood, and were closed at sunset, until 1760. Then they were all pulled down, and the materials sold." Even in Stow's time, the city had much outgrown its walls; of its outer part, the highways leading to the country had post-and-chain bars, which were closed at night.

NOTE 24. (Page 100.)

Plays of the time, notably Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," show in what contempt and ridicule the first Puritans were held. Shakespeare's Malvolio, as Maria says, is "sometimes a kind of Puritan." The att.i.tude of the obtrusive kind of Puritanism to the world, and of the world to that kind of Puritanism, is expressed once and forever in what Hazlitt terms Sir Toby's "unanswerable answer" to Malvolio, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Though fellow sufferers of governmental severity, the Catholics and Puritans were no less naturally antipathetic to each other. Ben Jonson, satirist of the Puritans, was, in his time, alternately Catholic and Anglican.

But if the government, in support of the established church, was outwardly severe against the Puritans, they had much covert protection at court, some of the chief lords and ministers inclining their way. As to the quality of voice affected by these early Puritans in their devotions, recall the clown's speech in the "Winter's Tale:" "Three-man songmen all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes."

NOTE 25. (Page 131.)

The Babington conspiracy gave the occasion for removing that constant menace to England's future peace,--Mary Stuart. The skill with which Sir Francis Walsingham possessed himself, one by one, of the secrets of the conspirators, and nursed the plot forward until he had complete evidence of every partic.i.p.ant's guilt, and of Mary's complicity, is fascinating to study. Mary of course, as an unwilling prisoner, had a perfect moral right to plot for herself; but she knew what she risked in doing so, and she and her adherents ran against their fatal rock in Walsingham. This man's journal is characteristic of himself: merely the briefest entries, of this messenger's arrival from France, or that one's departure for the Low Countries, or of a letter from X, or an order transmitted to B. What news the messengers brought, what the letters told, or the orders were, is not confided to the paper. In vigilance and craft, he was the Elizabethan predecessor of Richelieu and Fouche; yet a quiet, virtuous man, who loved his wife, died poor, and leaned toward Puritanism. His spy system has excited the righteous horror of certain historians who would never have ceased to admire it, had it been exercised for, not against, their heroine, Mary Stuart. His own direct instruments served him better than he was served by the rank and file of the law's servants, as this letter to him, from Lord Burleigh, August 10, 1586, shows: "As I came from London homeward in my coach, I saw at every town's end, a number of ten or twelve, standing with long staves, and until I came to Enfield I thought no other of them but that they had staid for the avoiding of the rain, or to drink at some ale-houses, for so they did stand under pentices at ale-houses; but at Enfield, finding a dozen in a plump, when there was no rain, I bethought myself that they were appointed as watchmen for the apprehending of such as are missing; and thereupon I called some of them to me apart, and asked them wherefore they stood there, and one of them answered, to take three young men; and, demanding how they should know the persons, one answered with the words, 'Marry, my lord, by intelligence of their favor.' 'What mean you by that?' 'Marry,' said they, 'one of the parties hath a hooked nose.' 'And have you,' quoth I,'no other mark?' 'No,' said they. And then I asked who appointed them, and they answered one Banks, a head constable, whom I willed to be sent to me. Surely, sir, whosoever had the charge from you hath used the matter negligently; for these watchmen stand so openly in plumps as no suspected person will come near them, and if they be no better instructed but to find three persons by one of them having a hooked nose, they may miss thereof. And this I thought good to advertise you, that the justices who had the charge, as I think, may use the matter more circ.u.mspectly." Harrison (writing 1577-87) complains of the laxity of these lesser arms of the law, saying: "That when hue and cry have been made even to the faces of some constables, they have said, 'G.o.d restore your loss! I have other business at this time.'"

NOTE 26. (Page 229.)

"But now of late years," writes Stow (1598), "the use of coaches, brought out of Germany, is taken up, and made so common, as there is neither distinction of time nor difference of persons observed; for the world runs on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot."

As to their rate of travel, Mr. Goadby instances that Mary, Queen of Scots, was from early morning to late evening of a January day, in going from Bolton Castle to Ripon, sixteen miles. Charles Dudley Warner (in "The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote") says that, in 1640. Queen Henrietta was four days on the way from Dover to London, the best road in England (distance, 71 miles); and quotes the Venetian amba.s.sador, whose journey to Oxford and back (in all, 150 miles, as he travelled) consumed six days, his coach often sticking in the mud, and once breaking down. Queen Mary had established a kind of postal service.

Elizabeth had a postmaster-general in 1581. After the Armada, a horse-post was ordered established in every town, a foot-post (to live near the church) in every parish. But letter-writers usually sent their own messengers, or relied on the slow carriers' wagons.

NOTE 27. (Page 255.)

In this reign, many were the cases wherein people took vengeance into their own hands, in true feudal fashion, whether from the heat of their impulses, or in view of that "bad execution of the laws" and "neglect of police," for which Hume found it not easy to account. Miss Aikin gives an instance, arising from a long-standing feud between two proud families. Orme, a servant of Sir John Holles, killed in a duel the master of horse to the Earl of Shrewsbury. "The earl prosecuted Orme, and sought to take away his life; but Sir John Holles caused him to be conveyed away to Ireland, and afterward obtained his pardon of the queen. For his conduct in this business, he was himself challenged by Gervase Markham, champion and gallant to the Countess of Shrewsbury; but Holles refused the duel, because the demand of Markham, that it should take place in a park belonging to the earl, his enemy, gave him ground to apprehend treachery. Anxious, however, to wipe away the aspersions cast upon his courage, he sought a reencounter which might wear the appearance of accident; and soon after he met Markham on the road, when the parties immediately dismounted and attacked each other with their rapiers; Markham fell, severely wounded; and the Earl of Shrewsbury lost no time in raising his servants and tenantry to the number of 120, in order to apprehend Holles, in case Markham's hurt should prove fatal.

On the other side Lord Sheffield, the kinsman of Holles, joined him with sixty men; and he and his company remained at Houghton till the wounded man was out of danger. We do not find the queen and council interfering to put a stop to this private war." Markham, who wrote the poem on the last fight of "The Revenge," is a minor but prolific figure in Elizabethan literature.

NOTE 28. (Page 266.)

Moll Cutpurse, whose real name was Mary Frith, a shoemaker's daughter, born probably in 1584, is described by her biographer as in her girlhood a "very tomrig or rumpscuttle" who "delighted and sported only in boy's plays and costume." She was put to domestic service, but her calling lay not in tending children. She donned man's attire and found true outlet for her talents as a "bully, pick-purse, fortune-teller, receiver, and forger." She is the heroine of Middleton and Dekker's breezy comedy, "The Roaring Girl" (1611), and of a work thus entered on the Stationers'

Register in August, 1610: "A Booke called the Madde Prancks of Merry Mall of the Bankside, with her walkes in Man's Apparel, and to what purpose. Written by John Day." Her career is set forth in the very interesting "Lives of Twelve Bad Women," recently published in a beautiful edition.

NOTE 29. (Page 314.)

The use of firearms was slow work in the earlier centuries. Concerning the wheel-lock, invented in 1515, at Nuremburg, Greener says: "When ready for firing, the wheel was wound up, the flash-pan lid pushed back, and the pyrites held in the c.o.c.k allowed to come in contact with the wheel. By pressure on the trigger a stop was drawn back out of the wheel, and the latter, turning round its pivot at considerable speed, produced sparks by the friction against the pyrites, and thus ignited the priming." "We find the greater portion of the pistols of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fitted with wheel-locks."

Wheel-locks being expensive, the old match-locks, as a rule, were still fitted to the longer firearms, such as the arquebus, of which Greener says: "The slow match is kept burning in a holder on the top of the barrel; the flash-pan and touch-hole are at the side. The serpentine is hung upon a pivot pa.s.sing through the stock, and continued past the pivot, forming a lever for the hand. To discharge the piece, the match in the serpentine is first brought into contact with the burning match on the barrel until ignited; then by raising the lever and moving it to one side, the serpentine is brought into the priming in the touch-hole, and the gun discharged,--though it is highly probable that the first arquebuses did not carry the fire in a holder on the barrel, but only the match in the serpentine." "All the early firearms were so slow to load, that, as late as the battle of Kuisyingen in 1636, the slowest soldiers managed to fire seven shots only during eight hours."

NOTE 30. (Page 374.)

In London the playhouses were allowed to be open in Lent on all days but sermon days,--Wednesday and Friday. In 1601, Lent began February 25th; Easter Sunday was April 12th. The historical year--conforming to our present calendar--is here meant. The civil year then began March 25th.