English Travellers of the Renaissance Part 3

CHAPTER IV

PERILS FOR PROTESTANT TRAVELLERS

The quickening of animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the last quarter of the sixteenth century had a good deal to do with the censure of travel which we have been describing. In their fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic countries, Englishmen viewed with alarm any attractions, intellectual or otherwise, which the Continent had for their sons. They had rather have them forego the advantages of a liberal education than run the risk of falling body and soul into the hands of the Papists. The intense, fierce patriotism which flared up to meet the Spanish Armada almost blighted the genial impulse of travel for study's sake. It divided the nations again, and took away the common admiration for Italy which had made the young men of the north all rush together there. We can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling coming to the great Politian at Bologna and grappling him to his heart--"arctissima sibi conjunxit amic.u.m familiaritate,"[152] as the warm humanistic phrase has it. In the seventeenth century Politian would be a "contagious Papist," using his charm to convert men to Romanism, and Selling would be a "true son of the Church of England," railing at Politian for his "debauch'd and Popish principles." The Renaissance had set men travelling to Italy as to the flower of the world. They had scarcely started before the Reformation called it a place of abomination. Lord Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed him to go to Italy,[153] at the end of his long life left instructions to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pa.s.s the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat served on divers dishes."[154]

The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan distrust of going "beyond seas." She could by no means sympathize with her son Anthony's determination to become versed in foreign affairs, for that led him into intimacy with Roman Catholics. All through his prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of the greatest authorities in England on continental politics. He had a confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley. Lady Bacon, in her fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals, had the man arrested and detained in England. His anxious master sent another man to plead with his mother for Lawson's release; but in vain.

The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve to show the vehemence of anti-Catholic feelings in a British matron in 1589.

"Upon my arrival at G.o.dombery my Lady used me courteously until such time I began to move her for Mr Lawson; and, to say the truth, for yourself; being so much transported with your abode there that she let not to say that you are a traitor to G.o.d and your country; you have undone her; you seek her death; and when you have that you seek for, you shall have but a hundred pounds more than you have now.

"She is resolved to procure Her Majesty's letter to force you to return; and when that should be, if Her Majesty give you your right or desert, she should clap you up in prison. She cannot abide to hear of you, as she saith, nor of the other especially, and told me plainly she should be the worse this month for my coming without you, and axed me why you could not have come from thence as well as myself.

"She saith you are hated of all the chiefest on that side and cursed of G.o.d in all your actions, since Mr Lawson's being with you....

"When you have received your provision, make your repair home again, lest you be a means to shorten her days, for she told me the grief of mind received daily by your stay will be her end; also saith her jewels be spent for you, and that she borrowed the last money of seven several persons.

"Thus much I must confess unto you for a conclusion, that I have never seen nor never shall see a wise Lady, an honourable woman, a mother, more perplexed for her son's absence than I have seen that honourable dame for yours."[155]

It was not only a general hatred of Roman Catholics which made staunch Protestants anxious to detain their sons from foreign travel towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively and well-grounded fear of the Inquisition and the Jesuits. When England was at war with Spain, any Englishman caught on Spanish territory was a lawful prisoner for ransom; and since Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Rome was the territory of Spain's patron, the Pope, Italy was far from safe for Englishmen and Protestants. Even when peace with Spain was declared, on the accession of James I., the spies of the Inquisition were everywhere on the alert to find some slight pretext for arresting travellers and to lure them into the dilemma of renouncing their faith, or being imprisoned and tortured. There is a letter, for instance, to Salisbury from one of his agents on the Continent, concerning overtures made to him by the Pope's nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of note--young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne--into papal dominions, where he might be seized and detained, in hope of procuring a release for Baldwin the Jesuit.[156] William Bedell, about to go to Italy as chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton, the Amba.s.sador to Venice, very anxiously asks a friend what route is best to Italy. "For it is told me that the Inquisition is in Millaine, and that if a man duck not low at every Cross, he may be cast in prison.... Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief towns to be pa.s.sed through. I care not for seeing places, but to go thither the shortest and safest way."[157]

Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the very next year occurred the arrest of the unfortunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the sensations of the day. Fuller, in his _Church History_, under the year 1607, records how--

"About this time Mr Molle, Governour to the Lord Ross in his travails, began his unhappy journey beyond the Seas.... He was appointed by Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in Travail to his Grandchilde, the Lord Ross, undertaking the charge with much reluctance (as a presage of ill successe) and with a profession, and a resolution not to pa.s.se the Alpes.

"But a Vagari took the Lord Ross to go to Rome, though some conceive this notion had its root in more mischievous brains. In vain doth Mr Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, he would in some sort govern his Governour. What should this good man doe? To leave him were to desert his trust, to goe along with him were to endanger his own life.

At last his affections to his charge so prevailed against his judgment, that unwillingly willing he went with him. Now, at what rate soever they rode to Rome, the fame of their coming came thither before them; so that no sooner had they entered their Inne, but Officers asked for Mr Molle, took and carried him to the Inquisition-House, where he remained a prisoner whilest the Lord Ross was daily feasted, favoured, entertained: so that some will not stick to say, That here he changed no Religion for a bad one."[158]

No threats could persuade Mr Mole to renounce his heresy, and though many attempts were made to exchange him for some Jesuits caught in England, he lay for thirty years in the prison of the Inquisition, and died there, at the age of eighty-one.

It was part of the policy of the Jesuits, according to Sir Henry Wotton, to thus separate their tutors from young men, and then ply the pupils with attentions and flattery, with a view to persuading them into the Church of Rome. Not long after the capture of Mole, Wotton writes to Salisbury of another case of the same sort.

"My Lord Wentworthe[159] on the 18th of May coming towards Venice ...

accompanied with his brother-in-law Mr Henry Crafts, one Edward Lichefeld, their governor, and some two or three other English, through Bologna, as they were there together at supper the very night of their arrival, came up two Dominican Friars, with the sergeants of the town, and carried thence the foresaid Lichefeld, with all his papers, into the prison of the Inquisition where he yet remaineth.[160] Thus standeth this accident in the bare circ.u.mstances thereof, not different, save only in place, from that of Mr Mole at Rome. And doubtlessly (as we collect now upon the matter) if Sir John Harington[161] had either gone the Roman Journey, or taken the ordinary way in his remove thitherwards out of Tuscany, the like would have befallen his director also, a gentleman of singular sufficiency;[162] for it appeareth a new piece of council (infused into the Pope by his artisans the Jesuits) to separate by some device their guides from our young n.o.blemen (about whom they are busiest) and afterwards to use themselves (for aught I can yet hear) with much kindness and security, but yet with restraint (when they come to Rome) of departing thence without leave; which form was held both with the Lords Rosse and St Jhons, and with this Lord Wentworthe and his brother-in-law at their being there. And we have at the present also a like example or two in Barons of the Almaign nation of our religion, whose governors are imprisoned, at Rome and Ferrara; so as the matter seemeth to pa.s.s into a rule. And albeit thitherto those before named of our own be escaped out of that Babylon (as far as I can penetrate) without any bad impressions, yet surely it appeareth very dangerous to leave our travellers in this contingency; especially being dispersed in the middle towns of Italy (whither the language doth most draw them) certain nimble pleasant wits in quality of interceptors, who deliver over to their correspondents at Rome the dispositions of gentlemen before they arrive, and so subject them both to attraction by argument, and attraction by humour."[163]

Wotton did not overrate the persuasiveness of the Jesuits. Lord Roos became a papist.[164]

Wotton's own nephew, Pickering, had been converted in Spain, on his death-bed, although he had been, according to the Jesuit records, "most tenacious of the corrupt religion which from his tender youth he had imbibed."[165] In his travels "through the greater part of France, Italy, Spain and Germany for the purpose of learning both the languages and the manners, an ancient custom among northern nations, ... he conferred much upon matters of faith with many persons, led either by inclination or curiosity, and being a clever man would omit no opportunity of gaining information."[166] Through this curiosity he made friends with Father Walpole of the Jesuit College at Valladolid, and falling into a mortal sickness in that city, Walpole had come to comfort him.

Another conversion of the same sort had been made by Father Walpole at Valladolid, the year before. Sir Thomas Palmer came to Spain both for the purpose of learning the language and seeing the country. "Visiting the English College, he treated familiarly with the Fathers, and began to entertain thoughts in his heart of the Catholic religion." While cogitating, he was "overtaken by a sudden and mortal sickness.

Therefore, perceiving himself to be in danger of death, he set to work to reconcile himself with the Catholic Church. Having received all the last Sacraments he died, and was honourably interred with Catholic rites, to the great amazement also of the English Protestants, who in great numbers were in the city, and attended the funeral."[167]

There is nothing surprising in these death-bed conversions, when we think of the pressure brought to bear on a traveller in a strange land.

As soon as he fell sick, the host of his inn sent for a priest, and if the invalid refused to see a ghostly comforter that fact discovered his Protestantism. Whereupon the physician and apothecary, the very kitchen servants, were forbidden by the priest to help him, unless he renounced his odious Reformed Religion and accepted Confession, the Sacrament, and Extreme Unction. If he died without these his body was not allowed in consecrated ground, but was buried in the highway like a very dog. It is no wonder if sometimes there was a conversion of an Englishman, lonely and dying, with no one to cling to.[168]

We must remember, also, how many reputed Protestants had only outwardly conformed to the Church of England for worldly reasons. They could not enter any profession or hold any public office unless they did. But their hearts were still in the old faith, and they counted on returning to it at the very end.[169] Sometimes the most sincere of Protestants in sickness "relapsed into papistry." For the Protestant religion was new, but the Roman Church was the Church of their fathers. In the hour of death men turn to old affections. And so in several ways one can account for Sir Francis Cottington, Amba.s.sador to Spain, who fell ill, confessed himself a Catholic; and when he recovered, once more became a Protestant.[170]

The mere force of environment, according to Sir Charles Cornwallis, Amba.s.sador to Spain from 1605-9, was enough to change the religion of impressionable spirits. His reports to England show a constant struggle to keep his train of young gentlemen true to their national Church.[171]

The Spanish Court was then at Valladolid, in which city flourished an especially strong College of Jesuits. Thence Walpole, and other dangerous persuaders, made sallies upon Cornwallis's fold. At first the Amba.s.sador was hopeful:--

"Much hath that Creswell and others of that Societie" (the Jesuits) "bestir'd themselves here in Conference and Persuasion with the Gentlemen that came to attend his Excellencie[172] and do secretly bragg of their much prevailinge. Two of myne own Followers I have found corrupted, the one in such sorte as he refused to come to Prayers, whom I presently discharged; the other being an honest and sober young Gentleman, and one that denieth not to be present both at Prayers and Preachinge, I continue still, having good hope that I shall in time reduce him."[173]

But within a month he has to report the conversion of Sir Thomas Palmer, and within another month, the loss of even his own chaplain. "Were G.o.d pleased that onlie young and weak ones did waver, it were more tollerable," he laments, "but I am put in some doubte of my Chaplaine himself." He had given the chaplain--one Wadesworth, a good Cambridge Protestant--leave of absence to visit the University of Salamanca. In a week the chaplain wrote for a prolongation of his stay, making discourse of "a strange Tempest that came upon him in the way, of visible Fire that fell both before and behind him, of an Expectation of present Death, and of a Vowe he made in that time of Danger." This manner of writing, and reports from others that he has been a secret visitor to the College of the Jesuits, make Cornwallis fear the worst. "I should think him borne in a most unfortunate hower," he wails, "to become the occasion of such a Scandall."[174] But his fears were realized. The chaplain never came back. He had turned Romanist.

The reasons for the headway of Catholicism in the reign of James I. do not concern us here. To explain the agitated mood of our Precepts for Travellers, it is necessary only to call attention to the fact that Protestantism was just then losing ground, through the devoted energy of the Jesuits. Even in England, they were able to strike admiration into the mind of youth, and to turn its ardour to their own purposes. But in Spain and in Italy, backed by their impressive environment and surrounded by the visible power of the Roman Church, they were much more potent. The English Jesuits in Rome--Oxford scholars, many of them--engaged the attentions of such of their university friends or their countrymen who came to see Italy, offering to show them the antiquities, to be guides and interpreters.[175] By some such means the traveller was lured into the company of these winning companions, till their spiritual and intellectual power made an indelible impression on him.[176]

How much the English Government feared the influence of the Jesuits upon young men abroad may be seen by the increasing strictness of licences for travellers. The ordinary licence which everyone but a known merchant was obliged to obtain from a magistrate before he could leave England, in 1595 gave permission with the condition that the traveller "do not haunte or resorte unto the territories or dominions of any foreine prince or potentate not being with us in league or amitie, nor yet wittinglie kepe companie with any parson or parsons evell affected to our State."[177] But the attempt to keep Englishmen out of Italy was generally fruitless, and the proviso was too frequently disregarded.

Lord Zouche grumbled exceedingly at the limitations of his licence. "I cannot tell," he writes to Burghley in 1591, "whether I shall do well or no to touch that part of the licence which prohibiteth me in general to travel in some countries, and companioning divers persons.... This restraint is truly as an imprisonment, for I know not how to carry myself; I know not whether I may pa.s.s upon the Lords of Venis, and the Duke of Florens' territories, because I know not if they have league with her Majesty or no."[178] Doubtless Bishop Hall was right when he declared that travellers commonly neglected the cautions about the king's enemies, and that a limited licence was only a verbal formality.[179] King James had occasion to remark that "many of the Gentry, and others of Our Kingdom, under pretence of travel for their experience, do pa.s.s the Alps, and not contenting themselves to remain in Lombardy or Tuscany, to gain the language there, do daily flock to Rome, out of vanity and curiosity to see the Antiquities of that City; where falling into the company of Priests and Jesuits ... return again into their countries, both averse to Religion and ill-affected to Our State and Government."[180]

To come to our Instructions for Travellers, as given in the reign of James I., they abound, as we would expect, in warnings against the Inquisition and the Jesuits. Sir Robert Dallington, in his _Method for Travell_,[181] gives first place to the question of remaining steadfast in one's religion:

"Concerning the Traveliers religion, I teach not what it should be, (being out of my element;) only my hopes are, he be of the religion here established: and my advice is he be therein well settled, and that howsoever his imagination shall be carried in the voluble Sphere of divers men's discourses; yet his inmost thoughts like lines in a circle shall alwaies concenter in this immoveable point, not to alter his first faith: for that I knowe, that as all innovation is dangerous in a state; so is this change in the little commonwealth of a man. And it is to be feared, that he which is of one religion in his youth, and of another in his manhood, will in his age be of neither....

"I will instance in a Gentleman I knew abroade, of an overt and free nature Zealously forward in the religion hee carried from home, while he was in France, who had not bene twentie dayes in Italy, but he was as farre gone on the contrary Byas, and since his returne is turned againe.

Now what should one say of such men but as the Philosopher saith of a friend, 'Amicus omnium, Amicus nullorum,' A professor of both, a believer in neither.[182]

"The next Caveat is, to beware how he heare anything repugnant to his religion: for as I have tyed his tongue; so must I stop his eares, least they be open to the smooth incantations of an insinuating seducer, or the suttle arguments of a sophisticall adversarie. To this effect I must precisely forbid him the fellowship or companie of one sort of people in generall: these are the Jesuites, underminders and inveiglers of greene wits, seducers of men in matter of faith, and subverters of men in matters of State, making of both a bad christian, and worse subject.

These men I would have my Travueller never heare, except in the Pulpit; for[183] being eloquent, they speake excellent language; and being wise, and therefore best knowing how to speake to best purpose, they seldome or never handle matter of controversie."

Our best authority in this period of travelling is Fynes Moryson, whose _Precepts for Travellers_[184] are particularly full. Moryson is well known as one of the most experienced travellers of the late Elizabethan era. On a travelling Fellowship from Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1591-1595 he made a tour of Europe, when the Continent was bristling with dangers for Englishmen. Spain and the Inquisition infected Italy and the Low Countries; France was full of desperate marauding soldiers; Germany nourished robbers and free-booters in every forest. It was the particular delight of Fynes Moryson to run into all these dangers and then devise means of escaping them. He never swerved from seeing whatever his curiosity prompted him to, no matter how forbidden and perilous was the venture. Disguised as a German he successfully viewed the inside of a Spanish fort;[185] in the character of a Frenchman he entered the jaws of the Jesuit College at Rome.[186] He made his way through German robbers by dressing as a poor Bohemian, without cloak or sword, with his hands in his hose, and his countenance servile.[187] His triumphs were due not so much to a dashing and magnificent bravery, as to a nice ingenuity. For instance, when he was plucked bare by the French soldiers of even his inner doublet, in which he had quilted his money, he was by no means left penniless, for he had concealed some gold crowns in a box of "stinking ointment" which the soldiers threw down in disgust.[188]

His _Precepts for Travellers_ are characteristically canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he advises, because in case of shipwreck "others trusting therein take hold of you, and make you perish with them."[189]

Upon duels and resentment of injury in strange lands he throws cold common sense. "I advise young men to moderate their aptnesse to quarrell, lest they perish with it. We are not all like Amadis or Rinalldo, to incounter an hoste of men."[190] Very thoughtful is this paragraph on the night's lodging:

"In all Innes, but especially in suspected places, let him bolt or locke the doore of his chamber: let him take heed of his chamber fellows, and always have his Sword by his side, or by his bed-side; let him lay his purse under his pillow, but always foulded with his garters, or some thing hee first useth in the morning, lest hee forget to put it up before hee goe out of his chamber. And to the end he may leave nothing behind him in his Innes, let the visiting of his chamber, and gathering his things together, be the last thing he doth, before hee put his foote into the stirrup."[191]

The whole of the Precepts is marked by this extensive caution. Since, as Moryson truly remarks, travellers meet with more dangers than pleasures, it is better to travel alone than with a friend. "In places of danger, for difference of Religion or proclaimed warre, whosoever hath his Country-man or friend for his companion doth much increase his danger, as well for the confession of his companion, if they chance to be apprehended, as for other accidents, since he shall be accomptable and drawne into danger, as well as by his companion's words or deeds, as by his owne. And surely there happening many dangers and crosses by the way, many are of such intemperate affections, as they not only diminish the comfort they should have from this consort, but even as Dogs, hurt by a stone, bite him that is next, not him that cast the stone, so they may perhaps out of these crosses grow to bitterness of words betweene themselves."[192] Instead of a companion, therefore, let the traveller have a good book under his pillow, to beguile the irksome solitude of Inns--"alwaies bewaring that it treat not of the Commonwealth, the Religion thereof, or any Subject that may be dangerous to him."[193]

Chance companions of the road should not be trusted. Lest the traveller should become too well known to them, let him always declare that he is going no further than the next city. Arrived there, he may give them the slip and start with fresh consorts.

Moryson himself, when forced to travel in company, chose Germans, kindly honest gentlemen, of his own religion. He could speak German well enough to pa.s.s as one of them, but in fear lest even a syllable might betray his nationality to the sharp spies at the city gates, he made an agreement with his companions that when he was forced to answer questions they should interrupt him as soon as possible, and take the words out of his mouth, as though in rudeness. If he were discovered they were to say they knew him not, and flee away.[194]

Moryson advised the traveller to see Rome and Naples first, because those cities were the most dangerous. Men who stay in Padua some months, and afterwards try Rome, may be sure that the Jesuits and priests there are informed, not only of their coming, but of their condition and appearance by spies in Padua. It were advisable to change one's dwelling-place often, so to avoid the inquiries of priests. At Easter, in Rome, Moryson found the fullest scope for his genius. A few days before Easter a priest came to his lodgings and took the inmates' names in writing, to the end that they might receive the Sacrament with the host's family. Moryson went from Rome on the Tuesday before Easter, came to Siena on Good Friday, and upon Easter eve "(pretending great business)" darted to Florence for the day. On Monday morning he dodged to Pisa, and on the folowing, back to Siena. "Thus by often changing places I avoyded the Priests inquiring after mee, which is most dangerous about Easter time, when all men receive the Sacrament."[195]

The conception of travel one gathers from Fynes Moryson is that of a very exciting form of sport, a sort of chase across Europe, in which the tourist was the fox, doubling and turning and diving into cover, while his friends in England laid three to one on his death. So dangerous was travel at this time, that wagers on the return of venturous gentlemen became a fashionable form of gambling.[196] The custom emanated from Germany, Moryson explains, and was in England first used at Court and among "very n.o.ble men." Moryson himself put out 100 to receive 300 on his return; but by 1595, when he contemplated a second journey, he would not repeat the wager, because ridiculous voyages were by that time undertaken for insurance money by bankrupts and by men of base conditions.

Sir Henry Wotton was a celebrated product of foreign education in these perilous times. As a student of political economy in 1592 he led a precarious existence, visiting Rome with the greatest secrecy, and in elaborate disguise. For years abroad he drank in tales of subtlety and craft from old Italian courtiers, till he was well able to hold his own in intrigue. By nature imaginative and ingenious, plots and counterplots appealed to his artistic ability, and as English Amba.s.sador to Venice, he was never tired of inventing them himself or attributing them to others. It was this characteristic of Jacobean politicians which Ben Jonson satirized in Sir Politick-Would-be, who divulged his knowledge of secret service to Peregrine in Venice. Greatly excited by the mention of a certain priest in England, Sir Politick explains:

"He has received weekly intelligence Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries, For all parts of the world, in cabbages; And these dispensed again to amba.s.sadors, In oranges, musk-melons, apric.o.c.ks--, Lemons, pome-citrons, and such-like: sometimes In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey c.o.c.kles."[197]

Later on Sir Politick gives instructions for travellers:

"Some few particulars I have set down, Only for this meridian, fit to be known Of your crude traveller....