Women of England Part 11

Another of the Puritans, who in his way was as great as Milton, Bunyan, the Bedford tinker, caught and set forth in magnificent allegory the meaning of the Puritan movement for the individual; but there is an absence of woman in the story of the pilgrimage of Christian to the Celestial City, excepting as she appears in the character of the temptress, as at Vanity Fair. The Christian Graces, who are represented as women, are not types of the s.e.x of the day, but are used to point the contrast the more sharply between woman in ideal and woman as the product of the times of the Puritans. It remained, however, for the Puritans to refine the s.e.x by the fires of relentless criticism and to produce the severer, but much n.o.bler, Christian woman, who became the normal type, not only for the middle cla.s.ses, but, to an extent, for the women of the higher circles as well.

The state of society was not favorable for intellectual expression on the part of woman, although it can hardly be said that it r.e.t.a.r.ded intellectual progress. The character of the English woman was being affected in a way to save it from becoming merely superficial and volatile, like that of her French sister, and her intellect was being sobered for literary production that should have worthier qualities than mere brilliancy to recommend it. When the women of the middle cla.s.ses stepped out into the arena of authorship, the value of the Puritan period as a corrective of the frivolity and false standards for women which had previously obtained becomes manifest in their writings.

The loss of opportunities of education for the women of the middle cla.s.ses, which was a result of the dissolution of the religious houses, had never quite been made good, and even down to the second half of the seventeenth century there was no adequate system of popular education. In the case of the children of the n.o.bility, suitable education and training for their station in life could be obtained only by sending them abroad to Italy, France, or Germany, or by bringing foreign teachers into the country. Girls were never sent abroad for their education; and in the case of the daughters of middle-cla.s.s society, all that was regarded as needful was training in the practical affairs of housewifery--to which, in the case of the Puritans, was added inculcation of the Scriptures and the reading of other devout books. The current opinion is well expressed in the following citation from _The Art of Thriving_: "Let them learne plaine workes of all kind, so they take heed of too open seeming. Instead of song and musick, let them learne cookery and laundry, and instead of reading Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_, let them read the grounds of huswifery. I like not a female poetesse at any hand: let greater personages glory their skill in musicke, the posture of their bodies, the greatnesse and freedome of their spirits, and their arts in arraigning of men's affections at their flattering faces: this is not the way to breed a private gentleman's daughter."

Even if higher education for women were not recognized as important in the seventeenth century--and the facilities were not at hand, even if the sentiment had existed--it would be captious criticism to construe this into a grievance against the s.e.x. In all that pertained to dignity and real worth, the women of the Commonwealth, with all the narrowness of their training, were much in advance of womankind at the beginning of the modern era, and their moral differentiation from the women of the same cla.s.s before the spread of Puritanism was most marked. Puritanism was a distinct gain for woman, for through that movement the process of raising women in the social scale received great impetus. A comparison with the girls of France of about the same period certainly shows that the low state of education among the s.e.x in England was not in any wise peculiar to English conditions.

Fenelon, in referring to the neglect of the education of the girls of his country, says: "It is shameful, but ordinary, to see women who have acuteness and politeness, not able to p.r.o.nounce what they read; either they hesitate or they intone in reading, when, instead, they should p.r.o.nounce with a simple and natural tone, but rounded and uniform. They are still more deficient in orthography, whether in the manner of composing their letters or in reading them when written."

The Civil War itself had a wide effect upon the state of education among the people. Families in which education had been fostered, with the turn of their fortunes found it impossible to continue it; families whose fortunes had risen by political changes felt their deficiency in this respect, and affected to despise accomplishments of which they themselves were dest.i.tute. Certain of the more enlightened Puritan women pretended to apply themselves to the study of Hebrew, on the ground that they looked upon it as necessary to eternal salvation.

Such pedantry brought no credit to those who affected it, but only served to heap odium upon the higher studies, which were now rejected with contempt on all sides. How effectually interest in education was suppressed by the civil disorders is shown by a remark of a traveller who visited the country after the Revolution. He says: "Here in England the women are kept from all learning, as the profane vulgar were of old from the mysteries of the ancient religions." It is amusing to note the theories which had arisen with regard to female education and which were used to extenuate its lack. Some apologists for feminine ignorance gravely a.s.serted and led others to believe that the women of England "were too delicate to bear the fatigues of acquiring knowledge," besides being by nature incapable of doing so, for, said they, "the moisture of their brain rendered it impossible for them to possess a solid judgment, that faculty of the mind depending upon a dry temperature." But the unanswerable argument of all was that death and sin had fallen upon the race of Adam solely in consequence of the thirst which Eve had manifested for knowledge.

In the face of such contentions, it was not difficult to lead people generally to accept the further conclusion as to the disastrous consequences which would certainly come upon society when woman became puffed up with her mental acquirements; the favorable opinion which she would then have of herself would not harmonize with that obedience to men for which she was created. Worthy of note is the fact that these views extended in some circles to the arresting of the progress of religious instruction, especially that of a public nature. Evelyn, in his _Diary_, says that while the saints inherited the earth under the Protectorate, it was his invariable custom to devote his Sunday afternoons to the catechising and instruction of his family; but, he remarks, these wholesome exercises "universally ceased in the parish churches, so as people had no principles, and grew very ignorant of even the common points of Christianity, all devotions being now placed in hearing sermons and discourses of speculative and national things."

There was a sterner side to the religious movement in England than its relation to matters intellectual or even moral. The Reformation under Henry VIII. had added the names of certain women to those of the n.o.ble army of martyrs of all the ages. To be false to conscience was to be false to the very principles of their being, and both Catholic and Protestant women became intensely strong in their convictions and intolerant of those of others. The Roman Church offered up its holocaust to the pa.s.sions and prejudices of the leaders of the Protestant movement, just as the Roman Church in turn exacted the tribute of their lives from many adherents of Protestantism. Woman was looked upon as inferior to man and less capable of responsible action, but in meting out persecutions there was no distinction as to s.e.x, the weaker suffering equally with the stronger. The history of religious persecutions in England is one of its least engaging chapters, and extends over a long period. Puritan, Prelatist, and Catholic alike darkened the annals of the times by deeds of violence. To recite the sufferings of women under the crossfires of persecution would be at best an ungracious task; and as such experiences form but a part of the history of the s.e.x during the period which we have broadly styled the period of the Commonwealth, an instance or two of the sufferings of notable women, irrespective of their party affiliations, will suffice for citation.

One of the most sorrowful of the judicial murders of which a woman was the victim, which occurred during the whole of this extended period, was that of Lady Lisle, who, because of her sympathies with Monmouth's rebellion against the king, was brutally executed, the specific charge being the harboring of fugitives. The king's project to hand over the nation to papacy nowhere aroused such outbursts of indignation as among the Covenanters of Scotland, who saw in it the destruction of all their hard-wrought-out religious liberties, and the endangering of their lives, besides the return of the nation to the chaos from which it was emerging. The address of Lady Lisle before her execution is an example of the sublimity to which woman's character may rise under persecution, when the spirit is buoyed by faith: "Gentlemen, Friends, and Neighbors, it may be expected that I should say something at my death, and in order thereunto I shall acquaint you that my birth and education were both near this place, and that my parents instructed me in the fear of G.o.d, and I now die of the Reformed Protestant Religion; believing that if ever popery should return into this nation, it would be a very great and severe judgment.... The crime that was laid to my charge was for entertaining a Non-conformist Minister and others in my house; the said minister being sworn to have been in the late Duke of Monmouth's army." Continuing, she said: "I have no excuse but surprise and fear, which I believe my Jury must make use of to excuse their verdict to the world. I have been also told that the Court did use to be of counsel for the prisoner; but instead of advice, I had evidence against me from thence; which, though it were only by hearing, might possibly affect my Jury; my defence being such as might be expected from a weak woman; but such as it was, I did not hear it repeated to the Jury, which, as I have been informed, is usual in such cases.

However, I forgive all the world, and therein all those that have done me wrong." Another victim of the same "b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.size" of Jeffreys, Mrs. Gaunt, of Wapping, pathetically says: "I did but relieve an unworthy, poor, distressed family, and lo, I must die!"

The age was the legatee of a spirit of venom and bigotry which expressed itself in deeds of violence more distressing than those incident to the religious wars. Deeds of blood, when connected with the defence of convictions, have about them something of the heroic, but there is absolutely no ray of glory to fall upon and lighten the dreary records of the war upon defenceless women charged with being witches, which broke out with fresh virulence with the increase of religious fervor under the Commonwealth. The charges were many and specious, but a very common form centred about the compa.s.sionate functions of women as the ameliorators of human distress.

The history of witchcraft is so intimately a.s.sociated with that of medicine, that to write an account of the one involves a recital of the other. The utter lack of knowledge of the anatomy of the human body and its functions, which continued down to quite recent times, accounts for the mystery and magic which surrounded the whole subject of medicine, not only earlier than and during the period of which we are speaking, but long subsequent to it. The one who could successfully treat disease was regarded as in league with the powers of darkness. Until the practice of medicine came to be established upon scientific principles, the care of the sick largely devolved upon women. Had it been men instead of women who performed the crude but often sincere service of nurse and physician, they would have come under the same ban with the effects of which the pract.i.tioners of the other s.e.x were visited. It is not probable, however, that the public odium would have gone to such lengths of violence in its expression.

Among savage peoples, as the primitive tribes of Africa and the American aborigines, the man who can dispel disease by a fetich--the great medicine-man of a tribe--has always been regarded with a feeling of combined jealousy, suspicion, and fear; but, because of the occult powers he is supposed to control, fear predominates and pa.s.ses into a form of reverence. Not so, however, in the case of woman, of whom we write; she was looked upon as having forfeited, to an extent, her claims upon humanity by her original alliance with Satan, and, being outside of the pale of G.o.d's grace, or sustaining only a permissive relationship to it, it was deemed a pious, a safe, and a creditable thing to mete out to her the divine dispensation of wrath. Thus again, amid numerous instances of woman's suffering as a penalty for her s.e.x, we have the occurrence of woman being persecuted unto death because of her compa.s.sion. It was not regarded as despicable for the very person who had been succored by her in the hour of sickness to turn informant and declare that he or she had been healed by diabolical agency, and, whether under the influence of an honest hallucination, or simply actuated by a malicious propensity, to declare that evil spirits had actually been conjured up in human form and been seen by the eyes of the sufferer.

Women were not blameless in the matter of their reputation for possessing occult knowledge and having diabolical relations; for there were many women who, being morally not beyond reproach, separated themselves from society as they grew older, and resorted to medicinal knowledge and magic for a living and to maintain in the public eye the position of unenviable notoriety of which they had become morbidly fond. It gratified such natures to be reputed to possess the power--which even philosophers ascribed to them--of, at certain seasons, turning milk sour, making dogs rabid, and producing other such freakish manifestations. They were considered to be able not only to heal sickness, but to cause it; and the presence in one's clothing of a pin whose irritant end was pointed in the wrong direction was sufficient to make the person believe that he was under a spell of witchcraft. If a cow or a horse fell lame, it was the village witch who did it; if a child developed as an imbecile, or anyone became bereft of reason, it was laid at the door of the witch; the failure of crops, a drought,--anything that interfered with the comfort or convenience of a person or a community,--was due to some such representative of Satan.

As the number of happenings of this sort increased, or there occurred an epidemic of disease, or a flood or famine of especial virulence, the number of alleged witches correspondingly increased; and so the persecution swelled in volume, each wave of malevolence receding only to rise in larger aspect on the next occasion of its arousing. Not until the reign of Henry VIII. were there any enactments against witchcraft in England; prior to the pa.s.sage of these acts, the persecution of a sorceress followed only upon an accusation of poisoning. During some parts of the Middle Ages the crime of poisoning was extensive, and certain women were adepts in making the deadly potions. To such abandoned characters resorted persons of state who desired to make away with hated rivals, or the men and women of the n.o.bility who sought to hide or to further their intrigues by the death of someone who stood in their way. As the women who practised the arts of the poisoner were also devotees of sorcery, the crime and the superst.i.tion came to be thought of together. One reason for the detestation of witches was the subtlety they displayed in concocting poisons which slowly sapped the vitality of a person, as if by a wasting illness. In 1541, conjuring, sorcery, and witchcraft were placed in the list of capital offences. Similar statutes were enacted during the succeeding reigns of Elizabeth and James I.

The curious matter of demoniacal possession called forth a great many books and pamphlets treating of its nature, history, methods of repression, and the dispossession of those under witches' spells. John Wier, a physician, wrote a treatise, in the last half of the sixteenth century, in which he described witches as but exaggerated types of the perversity which is found in women generally. In the easy subjection of the s.e.x to malign influences he saw a proof of its greater moral weakness.

The seventeenth century was as prolific of cases of persecution of women for demon possession as any of those of the less enlightened period of mediaevalism. In 1568, in a sermon before Queen Elizabeth, Bishop Jewell said: "It may please your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few last years are marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their knees are bereft. I pray G.o.d they never practise _further than upon the subjects_." The Bull of Innocent VIII., in 1484, did not do more for the furtherance of persecution of the unfortunates who came under suspicion of using magic than did the declaration of Luther: "I should have no compa.s.sion on these witches; I would burn all of them." As upon the continent, so in England reformers took up the persecution of witches with keen zest, as a contest with the powers of darkness working for the destruction of the peace and health of humanity in an open and flagrant manner. The same spirit of espionage which was one of the baleful effects of the outbreaks of persecution during the Middle Ages attended the persecution of witchcraft in England during the seventeenth century.

To save themselves from suspicion, persons informed against others, and even members of a household would give evidence leading to the trial of those of their own kin. When an unfortunate fell under suspicion,--which too frequently meant the animosity of an evil-disposed person,--the minister would denounce her by name from the pulpit, prohibit his parishioners from harboring her or in any way giving her succor, and exhort them to give evidence against her. The Puritans had conned well the story of the Witch of Endor, and, with their tendency to reproduce the Old Testament spirit, felt that the existence of witches was an abomination in the sight of the Lord, which would bring divine wrath upon the community that sheltered them unless the sin were purged from it by their death. In this they were but the inheritors of the faith of the Church from the early ages, and are liable to no more serious censure for their persecution of witches than that which they merit for the vindictive and splenetic spirit and the satisfaction in barbarities and cruelty which too often they evinced.

The persecutions attendant upon witchcraft are chargeable to no one division of the Church more than to another, for Protestant as well as Catholic, Puritan as well as Prelatist, felt that in this work he was fulfilling the will of G.o.d and safeguarding society. King James I., in his _Demonology_, asks: "What can be the cause that there are twentie women given to that craft where there is only one man?" He gives as his reason for the disparity in numbers the greater frailty of women, which he easily and satisfactorily proves by reference to the fall of Eve, as marking the beginning of Satan's dominance of the s.e.x.

In entering upon a crusade of persecution of witches, the Puritans were in harmony with the enactments of the sovereigns before the Commonwealth, and were in conformity with the temper of the times and the universally prevailing belief of the country. The austerity they a.s.sumed toward the s.e.x in general made it easy for them to believe that particular characters, given over to vagabondage, were by reason of their moral turpitude especial subjects of Satan for the temptation of men. With them, the persecution of witches was not solely a matter of superst.i.tion, but of public morals as well. They were often actuated by a sincere desire to raise the standard of morality, and to preserve order and decency. That the women rather than the men should have suffered for evil courses was due, of course, to the conception that moral reprobation is to be visited upon the weaker s.e.x.

In the second half of the seventeenth century the witchcraft superst.i.tion became a veritable epidemic, and persecution broke out in different sections of the country. Hardly had the stories of the execution of witches in one place ceased to be a nine days' wonder, when the tongues of the people were busy with stories of similar occurrences somewhere else. An angry sailor threw a stone at a boy; and the boy's mother roundly cursed the a.s.sailant of her offspring, and added the hope that his fingers would rot off. When, two years later, something of the sort actually did happen, her imprecation was remembered against her, and there was also brought to light the fact that a neighbor with whom she was at odds had been seized with severe pains and felt her bed rocking up and down. The evidence was conclusive, the woman must be a witch; such was the verdict, and death was her sentence. Two women who lived alone, and, probably partly because of their solitary existence, had developed irascible tempers and demeanors which enlisted the hearty dislike of the inhabitants of the fishing hamlet near by, were subjected to the petty persecutions in which children instigated by their parents are such adepts; finding existence too miserable to care very much for their reputations, they endangered their security by their att.i.tude toward their tormentors.

At last, n.o.body would even sell them fish, and their cursing and prophecies of evil for their enemies became increasingly violent. In the order of nature, some children were seized with fits, and, under the inspiration of their elders, declared that they saw the two women coming to torment them. After being eight years under accusation, the women were brought to trial, and Sir Matthew Hale, the presiding judge, after expressing his belief that the Scriptures proved the reality of witchcraft, decided against the unhappy women and condemned them to be hanged. This occurred in 1664, and const.i.tuted the celebrated witch trial of Bury St. Edmunds.

These instances serve to ill.u.s.trate the fate of a vast number of hapless women during the seventeenth century; it is said that during the sittings of the Long Parliament alone, as many as three thousand persons were executed on charges of witchcraft. Besides these unhappy wretches, a great many more suffered the terrible fate of mob violence. The frenzied populace were often too impatient to await legal procedure, and stoned the miserable women to death. In the minds of the great majority of the people, such women were not human beings at all, and so there was no cruelty in treating them with the greatest violence possible. Indeed, such earnestness of purpose against the adversaries of G.o.d could but redound, they thought, to their eternal advantage. After all, was it not a devil, who for the time being a.s.sumed human form, that they were treating with such violence?

to-morrow, the same demon might be found in a dog or in some other animal, or perhaps afflicting with cholera the swine of some peasant, to his severe loss. A description of a witch in the first half of the seventeenth century says: "The devil's otter-hound, living both on land and sea, and doing mischief in either; she kills more beasts than a licensed butcher in Lent, yet is ne'er the fatter; she's but a dry nurse in the flesh, yet gives such to the spirit. A witch rides many times post on h.e.l.lish business, yet if a ladder do but stop her, she will be hanged ere she goes any further." The penal statutes against witchcraft were not formally repealed until 1751, when there was closed for England one of the saddest chapters in the history of human mistakes. The last judicial executions for witchcraft in England were in 1716.

In pleasing contrast to the unhappy creatures who were the victims of fanatical persecutions during the Commonwealth period--the women executed for witchcraft--stand the n.o.ble women who were developed by the stern conditions of the Civil War--the heroines of internecine strife. The domestic incidents of the Civil War form an interesting commentary upon the character of the English woman, as they reveal her in brave defence of castle or homestead, patient in hardship, courageous in danger, and fertile in resources to avert misfortune.

Every important family was ranged on one side or the other, and the line of division often pa.s.sed through households. To all other issues which aroused human pa.s.sion, or touched the springs of human character and brought forth the reserve heroism of human life, was added that issue which stirs deepest the human heart,--the issue of religion. The contest was not merely between king and people: it was a contest as well between the people themselves as to the form of religion they desired as the expression of their faith.

Under such conditions women could not be kept out of the turmoil and the strife; perhaps one of the important ends which this distressful period brought about was the crystallizing of the convictions of many women, who otherwise would not have thought or felt deeply upon that subject which is fundamental to the welfare of a nation and the character of its people,--the subject of religion. Royalists and Puritans, the women were arrayed on each side. They followed the issues with an earnest alertness born of an intelligent understanding of the causes involved and their own vital relation to the contest in its results.

One of the Puritan women who literally entered into the fray was Mrs.

Hutchinson. Her father, Sir Allen Apsley, was governor of the Tower during Sir Walter Raleigh's incarceration. It is probable that Mrs.

Hutchinson had some knowledge of medicine, because during the siege of Nottingham she was actively engaged in dressing the soldiers' wounds and furnishing them with drugs and lotions suitable to their cases, and met with great success in her role of physician even in the cases of those of some who were dangerously wounded. But it was not solely in the character of nurse and physician that she was so active, for, in conjunction with the other women of the town, after the departure of the Royalist forces, she aided in districting the city for patrols of fifty, the courageous women thus taking an active share in the arduous duties of the town's defence. This intrepid woman later appeared in the character of peacemaker. The elections of 1660 were of a violent character, on account of the ill feeling between the Royalists of the town and the soldiers of the Commonwealth. At the critical moment, Mrs. Hutchinson arrived, and, being acquainted with the captains, persuaded them to countenance no tumultuous methods, whatever might be the provocation, but to make complaint in regular form to the general and let him a.s.sume the work of preserving the peace. This they consented to do; and the townsmen were equally amenable to her wise counsel, and contracted to restrain their children and servants from endangering the peace of the people.

Courage and initiative were not limited to the women on one side of the contest, as is well ill.u.s.trated by the conduct of the Countess of Derby, who, in 1643, made a remarkable defence of Latham House; the countess was of French birth and had in her veins the indomitable spirit of the Dutch, for she was a descendant of Count William of Na.s.sau. She was called upon either to yield up her home or to subscribe to the propositions of Parliament, and, upon her refusal to do either, was besieged in her castle and kept in confinement within its walls, with no larger range of liberty than the castle yard. Her estate was sequestered, and she was daily affronted with mocking and contemptuous language. When she was requested by Sir Thomas Fairfax to yield up the castle, she replied with quiet dignity that she wondered how he could exact such a thing of her, when she had done nothing in the way of offence to Parliament, and she requested that, as the matter affected both her religion and her life, besides her loyalty to her sovereign and to her lord, she might have a week's consideration of the demand. She declined the proposition of Sir Thomas Fairfax to meet him at a certain house a quarter of a mile distant from the castle for purposes of conference, saying that it was more knightly that he should wait upon her than she upon him. After further parleyings failed of conclusion, she finally sent a message that brought on a renewal of the siege. She said that she refused all the propositions of the Parliamentarians, and was happy that they had refused hers, and that she would hazard her life before again making any overtures: "That though a woman and a stranger, divorced from her friends and robbed of her estate, she was ready to receive their utmost violence, trusting in G.o.d for deliverance and protection."

The siege dragged on wearily for six or seven weeks, at the end of which time Sir Thomas Fairfax resigned his post to Colonel Rigby. The castle forces amounted to three hundred soldiers, while the besieging force numbered between two and three thousand men. In the contest five hundred of these were killed, while the countess lost but six of her soldiers, who were killed through their own negligence. The colonel manufactured a number of grenadoes, and then sent an ultimatum to the countess, who tore up the paper and returned answer by the messenger to "that insolent" [Rigby] that he should have neither her person, goods, nor house; and as to his grenadoes, she would find a more merciful fire, and, if the providence of G.o.d did not order otherwise, that her house, her goods, her children, and her soldiers would perish in flames of their own lighting, and so she and her family and defenders would seal their religion and loyalty. The next morning the countess caused a sally of her forces to be made, in which they got possession of the ditch and rampart and a very destructive mortar which had been used to bombard the besieged. Rigby wrote to his superiors, begging a.s.sistance and saying that the length of the siege and the hard duties it entailed had wearied all his soldiers, and that he himself was completely worn out. In the meanwhile, the Earl of Derby and Prince Rupert made their appearance, and Rigby made a hurried retreat; in his endeavor to escape the Royalist forces, he fell into an ambush and received a severe punishment before he reached the town of Bolton. Such were the deeds of women of spirit upon each side of the civil conflict; and because of their elements of character and loyalty to conviction, the women of the better cla.s.ses of England, irrespective of their affiliations, mark a high point of progress in the s.e.x toward the goal of independence and individuality which the civil strife aided them to secure.

The Society of Friends, or Quakers, was one of the religious communities of the Commonwealth, whose members suffered grievously on account of their religion. To the lot of their women fell an abundant share of persecutions and martyrdoms; they were scourged, and ill treated in every conceivable way. Their lives, inoffensive and pure, were a constant rebuke to those of the loose livers about them.

Although Charles II. had promised, on coming to the throne, that he would befriend them, their miseries were not greatly abated. The persecution of Quaker women had continued from the middle of the sixteenth century, when, in the west of England, Barbara Blangdon was imprisoned for preaching, and other Quakeresses were placed in the stocks by the Mayor of Evansham, and also treated with other indignities. Throughout the seventeenth century, cruel persecutions of women of the Quaker persuasion were often repeated.

With the Friends, the idea of the ministry of the Gospel was broadened so as to include in its preachers and teachers those who possessed the necessary gift, without regard to s.e.x. Whatever may be individual opinion as to woman's prerogative in this respect, there can be no manner of doubt but that the advance in the status of woman which was marked by the Society of Friends was a real contribution to the times and a gift of permanent value to the English women in general. Those women who claimed the right to preach were as ready to suffer on behalf of their ministry. They were scourged, and ill treated in every possible way; Bridewell Prison opened to receive many within its gloomy interior; but they remained steadfast to the cardinal articles of their belief, declaring: "As we dare not encourage any ministry but that which we believe to spring from the influence of the Holy Spirit, so neither dare we to attempt to restrain this ministry to persons of any condition in life, or to the male s.e.x alone; but as male and female are one in Christ, we hold it proper that such of the female s.e.x as we believe to be imbued with a right qualification of the ministry should exercise their gifts for the general edification of the Church."

Having considered the conditions which existed during the period of the Commonwealth in England, and particularly the rise of the Puritan spirit and its dominance, as related to the women of the times, it now remains to bring this period into connection with that of the Restoration, which offers to it such a strong contrast. It is not conceivable that, if the Puritan leaven had so thoroughly permeated the ma.s.s of the English people as appeared to be the case upon the surface of English society, there would have been so sudden and radical a reaction upon the return of Charles II. from his long sojourn abroad. That so many who cried "crucify him" should now be found with "all hail" upon their lips, that women who had a.s.sumed the Puritan tw.a.n.g and pious demeanor should throw off their a.s.sumed character and stand out in their true light under the glare of a court that was brilliant with revelry, is evidence of the futility of attempting to force ideals and standards upon a people who have not been gradually developed to the attainment of the qualities which they are commanded to a.s.sume.

Even those women who could not abide the insufferable weight of piety which spread over the period frequently found it politic not to antagonize that which formed the very atmosphere they had to breathe; but these women were not shameless profligates because they could not enter into the intense introspection and the outward circ.u.mspection of the Puritan dame. When the return of Charles II. brought to the front a code of manners which revealed the real morals of the people, many women who had walked "circ.u.mspectly," and were not under suspicion of playing a part, did not any longer conceal their real proclivities, but stood forth as women of pleasure. The Countess of Pembroke, Lady Crawshaw, and Mrs. Hutchinson, all ornaments of their s.e.x during the Puritan regime, were yet alive at the Restoration, and beheld with dismay the shameless performances of their countrywomen.

As marking an epoch, Puritanism is to be regarded as having destroyed the last relics of medievalism. "Under the Stuarts," says Creighton, "society became essentially modern, and many of the inst.i.tutions upon which the comfort of modern life depends had their origin."

CHAPTER XII

THE WOMEN OF THE RESTORATION PERIOD

"I stood in the Strand and beheld it and blessed G.o.d," wrote John Evelyn in his _Diary_, referring to the magnificent pageantry with which Charles II., on returning from his exile in France, was received by the London populace. With this pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, the courtly Royalist welcomed the presence in England of that scion of the house of Stuart whose reign of profligacy was to mark his period as one of the most reprehensible in the history of the country. It is little wonder that Charles was so affected by the great demonstration in his honor that he marvelled that he should have remained away from the country so long when the people were languishing for his return. The manner with which London threw off its garb of Puritanical gray and manners grave, and donned bright attire and a.s.sumed the airs of gayety and frivolity, showed how insincere and superficial was the religious seriousness which had been worn as suited to the temper and times of the austere Protector.

The change was not so sudden but that it had begun to appear during the weak rule of the second Cromwell--Richard. But the spontaneousness with which the people welcomed Charles in all the towns through which he pa.s.sed on his way, and the abandonment and joyousness which spread over the land, signalized one of the most important reactions which have occurred in public sentiment and public morals of any age. Music, dancing, revelry, and license suddenly wrenched the times from all their wonted decorum, and in the flood tide of pleasure and frivolity were borne away many who had long subsisted upon their reputations for peculiar piety. Not only did the leopard who had changed his spots, and the Ethiopian his skin, for political purposes when the Civil War bore the Puritans into power, return to their real markings, but great numbers of those who had sustained their Puritanical professions with greater or lesser degrees of sincerity and earnestness caught the maddening thrill of levity with which the very atmosphere seemed surcharged, and rapidly pa.s.sed down the gradations of character into recklessness and vice.

The Royalists were well prepared for the change from piety to profligacy, and hailed the advent of the light-hearted monarch as a veritable release of souls in prison. During the Commonwealth, the wretchedness of their condition had wrought the widespread depravity which existed among them. The uncertainty of their fortunes and the necessity of often meeting together made them _habitues_ of the taverns, which were the centres for social intercourse; and it may have been thus that the habit of excessive drinking, so prevalent in this period, was contracted. Upon the principle that no one gives serious heed to the doings of a drunkard, abandoned and dissolute habits were looked upon by the Royalist plotters as a safeguard for themselves and a security to their plans:

"Come, fill my cup, until it swim With foam that overlooks the brim.

Who drinks the deepest? Here's to him.

Sobriety and study breeds Suspicion in our acts and deeds; The downright drunkard no man heeds."

The very vices, however, which the Royalists acknowledged having been led to cultivate by their "pride, poverty, and pa.s.sion" were imitated by the baser element among the Puritans when the Cavaliers became triumphant. Those who formerly had boasted that they "would as soon cut a Cavalier's throat as swear an oath, and esteem it a less sin,"

now a.s.sumed the role of sinners as complacently as they had previously played the part of saints.

A period of industrial depression subtracts, in the estimation of the people, from the merits of a government, however n.o.ble may be its policy; and for twenty years previous to the Restoration the condition of the ma.s.ses of the people had steadily been growing worse, so that there was a widespread longing for more provisions and less piety.

Before the Civil War, the state of the people had reached high-water mark; so vast had been the increase of England's commerce, owing to the strife among the neighboring powers, that the revenue from customs had almost doubled, and the blessings of prosperity were felt among all cla.s.ses. Sir Philip Warwick even asks us to believe that there was scarcely any cobbler in London whose wife did not include a silver beaker among the furnishings of her modest sideboard. During the Commonwealth, pauperism increased to an alarming extent, so that at the time of the coming of Charles ten thousand men and women were languishing in the debtors' prisons, and thousands of others were living in continual dread of the sheriff's executions.

The condition of English society at the coming of Charles II. explains somewhat the tremendous outburst of popular enthusiasm with which that event was greeted. The people on the village green received him with morris dances to the music of pipe and tabor, and with other rustic festivities which for so long a time had been banished as sinful engagements. At some of the towns through which the triumphal procession pa.s.sed, young damsels to the number of hundreds lined the way and strewed flowers in the path of the king. The women were especially noticeable for their active partic.i.p.ation in all the popular demonstrations. It was as if they had felt so heavily the repression of the rigorous theocracy of Cromwell that they were ready to accept to the fullest the pledge of better times which the return of Charles gave them, and to pa.s.s from fuller liberty into the wildest license. The king himself, by his own example, lost no time in establishing the new standards of conduct. Even the reckless spirit of the Londoners was somewhat surprised when it was bruited abroad that the king, who was received as a Divine dispensation to a waiting people, had slunk out of the palace the first night after his return, under cover of darkness, in the furtherance of one of the unsavory intrigues which made his life and his court notorious in the annals of English history. The sensibilities of the English people were not seriously shocked, however,--we are speaking of the Royalist following and not of the Puritans,--and in the rebound from the first amazement at the revelation they received of the kingly character, they were ready to follow his lead; and so English social life during the reign of Charles was greatly corrupted. As the key to the times is to be sought in the tone of the court, the unwelcome task must be fulfilled in the interests of history, as it relates to woman, of setting forth the actual conditions which were inst.i.tuted and prevailed at the court of Charles II.

The king came to England fresh from the court of Louis XIV., and tainted by all the vices which made that court infamous. For the first time, England became widely affected by the gross iniquities which had for a long while been a familiar fact of the n.o.ble circles of French society. So long as England imported from France only its dress goods, jewelry, and novelties, the influence exerted upon it by its continental neighbor touched society in only a superficial way; but when England's "Merrie Monarch" brought over with him the low standard of French morals, England paid tribute to France in a more serious way and modelled its conduct after that of the more frivolous people. The reign of Charles brings to view as the princ.i.p.al fact of the times the personality of the monarch himself, not because he was a strong man, but because he was so thoroughly weak in his character and abandoned in his conduct. We have nothing to do with political or const.i.tutional measures, but, in pa.s.sing judgment upon the state of society, we are constrained to say that the reign of King Charles marked a distinct retrogression, and, in its effect upon the status of woman, is notable for the distinction it bestowed upon the courtesan cla.s.s. The honoring of such characters discounted greatly the gain for the higher ideals of womanhood which had been secured by the Puritans.

The woman whom Charles had signalized by his favor immediately upon his entrance into London was known simply as Barbara Palmer until, by the ratio of her decline in morals, she was elevated in honors and received the t.i.tles of Countess of Castlemaine and d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland. It needs not the saying that beauty and graces of manner and of form were her chief recommendations to the royal notice. This woman, who became notorious throughout England,--and who, upon the retirement of Clarendon, whose dismissal she had secured, stood upon the balcony of the palace in her night attire to rain down upon his head curses and vile epithets,--was the woman who, through her influence over Charles, occupied a commanding position in England.

Her amours before coming under the royal notice absolve the king from responsibility for her moral ruin, but the offence of thrusting her before the English people and the contamination exerted upon society by her presence and conduct at court are what make up the indictment of womanhood against him. Although many glimpses are afforded in the gossipy news of the corrupt court of this courtesan's imperious domination of Charles, nowhere is the story told more simply than by Pepys in his _Diary_. He says: "Mr. Pierce, the surgeon, tells me that, though the king and my Lady Castlemaine are friends again, she is not at White Hall, but at Sir D. Harvey's, whither the king goes to her; but she says she made him ask her forgiveness upon his knees, and promise to offend her no more so, and that indeed she hath nearly hectored him out of his wits."

Such incidents were not confined to the knowledge of the court circles, but percolated all cla.s.ses of society, and not only furnished the newsmongers with racy scandal, but set in a whirl the light heads of many foolish women who without such incitement from court example might have remained models of virtue.