Elizabethan England Part 19

[131] By omitting a comma (upon which the fate of empires may sometimes turn), our brother printers of 1587 (for this Scotch paragraph is not in the edition of 1577) have made pope Harrison bestow a mitre upon Hector Boece. That remarkable native of Dundee (who may be said to have invented Macbeth as we moderns know him) was a doctor of theology, and learned in every art, as becomes the first implanter of the tough fibres of Aberdonian scholarship (for, when one has the rare fortune to overcome the capacious skull and strong brain of a son of Aberdeen, the victor well may cry--

"Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain"),

but was never much of an ecclesiastic, although he held a canonry. Note, by the way, that Harrison (and not John b.e.l.l.e.n.don, as generally stated) was the channel through which Boece's _History of Scotland_ came into the magic cauldron of Shakespearian transformation. Cardinal Wardlaw, the founder of the oldest of Scottish schools, was a very different man from Boece, being the glow-worm to the grub.--W.

[132] There was no Parliament at Perth in 1433. The short session of that year was at Stirling. No official record of this remarkable law remains.

In fact, Boece (from whom Harrison evidently quotes by memory) does not say either 1433 or that a law was made. He simply records the immediate effect of Cardinal Wardlaw's speech. However, it had a short shift. Fate was against the patriotic Scot. James Stuart took matter more important than "divers English gentlemen" into Scotland: the royal troubadour carried something beside his batch of love rondels away from Windsor Castle as the fruit of his long captivity. He had not sung nor sighed in vain. The "mistress' eyebrow" of his "woeful ballad" belonged to Joan of Somerset, one of the three fair Joans of the house of Plantagenet whose marriages were so wonderfully

"Auspicious to these sorrowing isles."

From Joan of Kent, Princess of Wales, Joan of Beaufort, Countess of Warwick, and Joan of Somerset, Queen of Scotland, are descended most of our English, Irish, Welsh, as well as Scotch families. We may be said to owe most of our Joans, Johannas, Janes, Jeans, and Janets to these three women "big with the fate" of nations.--W.

[133] One would suppose Harrison himself had been "conserving the honour of Orestes" when he penned this pa.s.sage. He doubtless quoted from the lost works of the Greek physician by means of his favourite Athenaeus.--W.

[134] "_As loathing those metals because of the plenty_" sounds strangely to modern ears. Yet Harrison in this one phrase, by mere accident, lets in more light upon the secret of the towering supremacy of the Elizabethan age than have all the expounders, historians, and philosophers from that day to this. The comparative plenty of gold in the time of Elizabeth was brought about by the Spanish invasions of Peru and Mexico. England had far more gold than it had hitherto understood any use for, and she fortunately escaped being seized with that insatiable gold thirst which swiftly sapped the foundations of Spanish dominion as it had that of Rome and other empires of the past. We need seek no further for a reason why the England of Elizabeth surpa.s.sed all other communities. Having all material wealth beyond any other people, at no time has the doctrine of universal labour and repudiation of the fict.i.tious riches of metallic hordes or usurious acc.u.mulations been so invariably denounced. Harrison's simple evidence is supported by all the records of the time.--W.

[135] Roger Bacon.--H. [The philosopher's stone is yet missing which is to accomplish this miracle of making malleable gla.s.s, something which has had a strange fascination as an inventor's dream in all ages. The account of Tiberius Caesar dashing out the brains of the all-too-clever mechanic (who had actually accomplished this feat), so as to prevent the Roman world from emanc.i.p.ating itself from the rule of _iron_ (or _of gold_), is the most startling legend in the imperial annals. Old Friar Bacon, who devoted so much attention to optics, naturally put this feat in the forefront of the list of wonders to be accomplished by his great elixir; and Harrison's _slip_ yet remains beyond the eager grasp of men, though the grand desideratum has been again and again announced in our own time.--W.]

[136] This was the first English idea of the potato as instanced in the last scene of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_. This was not what is now generally understood as the potato, but the sweet potato of Virginia brought home by Raleigh. The common potato (which has been only _common_ even in North America for less than a century) is often mixed historically with this other tuber. As a fact, our familiar vegetable of to-day is largely a creature of artificial development, and nowhere grows in the same quality wild, whereas the yam or sweet potato is very little altered from its native state.--W.

[137] Sweet cicely, sometimes miscalled myrrh. Mure is the Saxon word. At one time the plant was not uncommon as a salad.--W.

[138] Crosby Ravensworth in Westmorland is misnamed. It is either _Raven's thwaite_ or _Raven's swarth_, but never _worth_, which is here meaningless. _Swarth_ still lingers on the tongues of the mowers, and _thwaite_ was the form adopted by a once famous family from this mountain fastness. The parish is notable as the home of the Addisons.--W.

[139] A famine at hand is first seen in the horse-manger, when the poor do fall to horse corn.--H.

[140] The size of bread is very ill kept or not at all looked unto in the country towns or markets.--H.

[141] The wine which Scott has (from the Gallic tinge to everything Caledonian) buried for all modern literature in the French form of _malvoisie_--

"Come broach me a pipe of malvoisie!"

It is evident from Harrison that a good English form was used.--W.

[142] Holinshed. This occurs in the last of Harrison's prefatory matter.--W.

[143] This word is not obsolete. South-coast countrymen still eat _nuntions_ and not _luncheons_.--W.

[144] Harrison must have got some of these out-of-the-way references at second hand--a valuable trick of the trade among learned pundits. The "Sophists" of Athenaeus of Naucratis has never even to our day been handled by an English printer, a modern translation in a cla.s.sical series excepted, but the Aldine edition was a favourite of European scholars long before the time of Harrison.--W.

[145] It was very wrong of Harrison to crib from the copy which Newberry, the printer, had in his office--that is, unless Sir Henry Savile gave permission. Henry of Huntingdon's _History of England_ was not issued until eight years after this, but the printers had it evidently in hand.

It is not likely that Harrison used the original at Oxford.--W.

[146] Here follows a disquisition upon the table practices of the ancients.--W.

[147] Lettuce was brought over from the Low Countries along with various new notions in the days of Luther. Harrison does not seem to mention it as an English inst.i.tution as yet however.--W.

[148] After three centuries we have not yet plucked up courage to spell this pet phrase of the bill-of-fare writers as an English word. _Entry_, as a tangible object, means something between, and not at the beginning; and if we contract _entremets_ there is no reason why we should for ever talk French and say _entree_, and use superfluous signs, meaningless to English eyes.--W.

[149] [CUT.]

"I am an English man and naked I stand here, Musying in my mynde what rayment I shall were; For now I will were thys, and now I will were that; Now I will were I cannot tell what.

All new fashyons be plesaunt to me; I wyl haue them, whether I thryve or thee."

From Andrew Boorde's _Introduction_ (1541), and _Dyetary_ (1542), edited by F. J. F. for Early English Text Society, 1870, p. 116. (A most quaint and interesting volume, though I say so.).--F.

[150] This is too harsh a character for Boorde; for a juster one, as I hope, see my preface to his _Introduction_, p. 105.--F.

[151] Almaine; see _Halle_, pp. 516-527.--F.

[152] There is no reason to suppose that _Collyweston_ was ever in general English use. It is a Cheshire side-hit (and not common there), and all the Cheshire students cannot unravel the mystery. I have no doubt it belongs to one of the great baronial family of Weston, who were geniuses, and therefore of course "to madness near allied," wits and cloaks awry.--W.

[Weston Colvil is eleven miles from Cambridge, north of the Gogmagog Hills.--F.]

[153] See Wynkin de Worde's _Treatise of this Galaunt_ (? about 1520 A.D.) in my _Ballads from Ma.n.u.scripts_ (1520-54), vol. i., pp. 438-453 (Ballad Society, 1868 and 1872), a satire on the gallant or vicious dandy of the day.--F.

[154] Of the many of Shakespeare's happiest hits which can be traced to Harrison's fertile suggestion, this is one of the most apparent. Who can fail to appreciate that Petruchio's side-splitting bout with the tailor had its first hint here?--W.

[155] Shakespeare complains of women painting their faces, and wearing sham-hair, in _Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. iii., and the locks from "the skull that bred them in the sepulchre," in _Merchant_, III. ii.--F.

[156] The extravagant variety of woman's attire in the days of the Virgin Queen (whose own legendary allowance of different habit for each day in the year is still a fondly preserved faith amongst the women and children) was the subject of rebuke from far more famous pulpits than Harrison's modest retreat. No choice morsel of the "English Chrysostom" surpa.s.ses the invective against feminine vanities in his "Wedding Garment" of almost this very year. For instance: "Thus do our curious women put on Christ, who, when they hear the messengers of grace offering this garment, and preparing to make the body fit to be garnished with so glorious a vesture (as Paul did the Romans, first washing away drunkenness and gluttony, then chamberings and wantonness, then strife and envy, and so sin after sin), they seem like the stony ground to receive it with joy, and think to beautify their head with this precious ornament; but when he tells them that there is no communion between Christ and Belial, that if this garment be put on all other vanities must be put off, they then turn their day into darkness, and reject Christ, that would be an eternal crown of beauty to their heads, and wrap their temples in the uncomely rags of every nation's pride."--W.

[157] The etymology of the word is not known. Baret describes the colour as between russet and black.--_Alvearie_, A.D. 1586.--F. [In the Middle Ages country housewives mostly made their own colours, and this was most likely made from bilberries, which children still sometimes call "poke-berrys" or "puckers," because of their astringent effect upon the lips.--W.]

[158] A _jag_ was first a notch, a c.h.i.n.k, then perhaps any ornamental pendant, ribbon, or other, to one's dress. A saddler was a _jagger_.--W.

[159] _Ver d'oye._ Goose-t.u.r.d greene; a greenish yellow; or a colour which is between a green and a yellow.--_Cotgrave._--F.

[160] _Verd gay._ A popinjay greene.--_Cotgrave._--F.

[161] For Chaucer's complaints of the men and women's dress of his day see his _Parson's Tale_, Part II., of Confession, _De Superbia_. For a ballad on the fantastic dresses of Charles I.'s time see _Roxburgh Collections_, I. 476; Ballad Society's Reprint, ii. 117 and 97. And on the point generally see the Percy Society's _Poems on Costume_.--F.

[162] See Andrew Boorde's _Dyetary of Helth_, 1542, Early English Text Society, 1870, for a description of how to build houses, and manage them and men's income, and what food folk should eat.--F.

[163] Moss, in the Gawthorp Accounts.--F.

[164] This was in the time of general idleness.--H.

[165] See the interesting account in _Holinshed_, iii. 1081-82, of how the good young King Edward VI., mov'd by a sermon of Bishop Ridley's, talkt with him about means for relieving the poor, and on his suggestion resolvd to begin with those of London, and wrote to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Dobs, about it. Dobs, Ridley, two aldermen, and six commoners, got up a committee of twenty-four. "And in the end, after sundrie meetings (for by meane of the good diligence of the bishop it was well followed), they agreed vpon a booke that they had deuised, wherein first they considered of nine speciall kinds and sorts of poore people, and those same they brought in these three degrees:

{ The poore by impotencie.

Three degrees of poore { Poor by casualtie.

{ Thriftlesse poore.

1. The poore by impotencie { 1. The fatherlesse poore mans child.

are also diuided into { 2. The aged, blind, and lame.

three kinds, that is to { 3. The diseased person, by leprosie, saie: dropsie, etc.

2. The poore by casualtie are { 4. The wounded souldier.