On his return he spent a
notorious existence in London until the consequences of a tavern brawl
turned him out of Parliament. I might dwell for a moment on Hall's
curious account of this latter affair, because it is one of the few
utterances we have by an acknowledged Italianate Englishman - of a
certain sort.
Hall, apparently, was one of those gallants who ruffled about
Elizabethan London and used
"To loove to play at Dice
To sware his blood and hart
To face it with a Ruffins look
And set his Hat athwart."[123]
The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen." So
does Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, to whom they used to run when
they were arrested for debt, or for killing a carman, making as their
only apology, "I am a Jyntelman, and being a Jyntelman, I am not thus to
be used at a slave and a colion's hands."[124] Hall, writing in the
third person, in the assumed character of a friend, describes himself as
"a man not wholly unlearned, with a smacke of the knowledge of diverse
tongues ... furious when he is contraried ... as yourselfe is witnesse
of his dealings at Rome, at Florence, in the way between that and
Bollonia ... so implacable if he conceyve an injurie, as Sylla will
rather be pleased with Marius, than he with his equals, in a maner for
offences grown of tryffles.... Also spending more tyme in sportes, and
following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause,
I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for." [125]
This terrible person, on the 16th of December 1573, at Lothbury, in
London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants
and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and
in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate
to one of the players." "Hall sware (as he will not sticke to lende you
an othe or two), to throw Mallerie out at the window. Here Etna smoked,
daggers were a-drawing ... but the goodman lamented the case for the
slaunder, that a quarrel should be in his house, ... so ... the matter
was ended for this fitte."
But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester,
took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then
to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards." The
next day at "Poules"[126] came Mallerie to Hall and "charged him very
hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner of folkes at Mawe."
Hall, far from showing that fury which he described as his
characteristic, denied the charge with meekness. He said he was patient
because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the
past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.
Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of
gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable
that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back. There
was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a
moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a
great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of
stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall."
Hall, who had cut himself - and nobody else - nursed his wound indoors for
some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would
"shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret
and unlooked for mischief." Then, with "a mufle half over his face,"
Hall took post-horses to his home in Lincolnshire. Business called him,
he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he
fled in disguise.
After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He
dined at "James Lumelies - the son, as it is said, of old M. Dominicke,
born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales," - and
coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he
"fell to with the rest."
But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie - and with insufferably
haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter
around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again,
passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary
rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel
of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall." Hall mutters to
his servants, "Jesus can you not knocke the boyes head and the wall
together, sith he runnes a-bragging thus?" His three servants go out of
the church by the west door: when Mallerie stalks forth they set upon
him and cut him down the cheek.
We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought
by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder
Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde
Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate"
or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament. This is enough to show
the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were,
and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows.
Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge
with an Italian minde learned at Rome."
Among other Italianified Cambridge men whom Ascham might well have
noticed were George Acworth and William Barker. Acworth had lived abroad
during Mary's reign, studying civil law in France and Italy.
