Weak And Vain Striplings Of
Entirely English Growth Escaped The Comment Attracted By A Sinner With
Strange Garments And New Oaths.
For in those garments themselves lay an
offence to the commonwealth.
I need only refer to the well-known
jealousy, among English haberdashers and milliners, of the superior
craft of Continental workmen, behind whom English weavers lagged: Henry
the Eighth used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of cloth - on that
leg of which he was so proud - unless "by great chance there came a paire
of Spanish silke stockings from Spaine."[146] Knit worsted stockings
were not made in England till 1554, when an apprentice "chanced to see a
pair of knit worsted stockings in the lodging of an Italian merchant
that came from Mantua."[147] Harrison's description of England breathes
an animosity to foreign clothes, plainly founded on commercial jealousy:
"Neither was it ever merrier in England than when an Englishman was
known abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself at home with his
fine carsey hosen, and a mean slop: his coat, gown, and cloak of brown,
blue, or puke, with some pretty furniture of velvet or of fur, and a
doublet of sad tawny, or black velvet, or other comely silk, without
such cuts and garish colours, as are worn in these days, and never
brought in but by the consent of the French, who think themselves the
gayest men when they have most diversities of rags and change of colours
about them."[148]
Wrapped up with economic acrimony there was a good deal of the hearty
old English hatred of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner,
which was always finding expression. Either it was the 'prentices who
rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the
Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and
"rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going
on and laughing at it,"[149] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed
to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador
because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed. "He was in a
great fury.... Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in
that they wanted judgement."[150]
There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the
fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who
scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family
servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in
the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts,
the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the
streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in
Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles
who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on
improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to
be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's Quip for an
Upstart Courtier parodies what the new and refined Englishman would
say: -
"The worlds are chaungde, and men are growne to more wit, and their
minds to aspire after more honourable thoughts: they were dunces in
diebus illis, they had not the true use of gentility, and therefore they
lived meanely and died obscurely: but now mennes capacities are refined.
Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as
they should be: not like gluttons as their fathers did, in chines of
beefe and almes to the poore, but in velvets, satins, cloth of gold,
pearle: yea, pearle lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his
birthday."[151]
On the whole, we may say that the objections to foreign travel rose from
a variety of motives. Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young men
spoiled by too much liberty, and there were surely many obnoxious boys
who bragged of their "foreign vices." Insular prejudice, jealousy and
conservatism, hating foreign influence, drew attention to these bad
examples. Lastly, there was another element in the protest against
foreign travel, which grew more and more strong towards the end of the
reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of James the First's, the hatred of
Italy as the stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church, and fear of the
Inquisition. Warnings against the Jesuits are a striking feature of the
next group of Instructions to Travellers.
* * * * *
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 amicum 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:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 15 of 54
Words from 14243 to 15277
of 55513
