So Much For The Attitude Of The First "Subsidium Peregrinantibus." It
Will Be Seen That It Was Something Of A Trial And An Opportunity To Be A
Traveller In Elizabethan Times.
But biography is not lacking in evidence
that the recipients of these directions did take their travels seriously
and try to make them profitable to the commonwealth.
Among the Rutland
papers[68] is a plan of fortifications and some notes made by the Edward
Manners to whom Cecil wrote the above letter of advice. Sir Thomas
Bodley tells how full he was of patriotic intent: "I waxed desirous to
travel beyond the seas, for attaining to the knowledge of some special
modern tongues, and for the increase of my experience in the managing of
affairs, being wholly then addicted to employ myself, and all my cares,
in the public service of the state."[69] Assurances of their object in
travelling are written from abroad by Sir John Harington and the third
Earl of Essex to their friend Prince Henry. Essex says: "Being now
entered into my travels, and intending the end thereof to attain to true
knowledge and to better my experience, I hope God will so bless me in my
endeavours, that I shall return an acceptable servant unto your
Highness."[70] And Harington in the same vein hopes that by his travels
and experience in foreign countries he shall sometime or other be more
fit to carry out the commands of his Highness.[71]
One of the particular ways of serving one's country was the writing of
"Observations on his Travels." This was the first exercise of a young
man who aspired to be a "politicke person." Harington promises to send
to Prince Henry whatever notes he can make of various countries. Henry
Wotton offers Lord Zouche "A View of all the present Almagne
princes."[72] The keeping of a journal is insisted upon in almost all
the "Directions." "It is good," says Lord Burghley to Edward Manners,
"that you make a booke of paper wherein you may dayly or at least weekly
insert all things occurent to you,"[73] the reason being that such
observations, when contemporary history was scarce, were of value. They
were also a guarantee that the tourist had been virtuously employed. The
Earl of Salisbury writes severely to his son abroad:
"I find every week, in the Prince's hand, a letter from Sir John
Harington, full of the news of the place where he is, and the countries
as he passeth, and all occurents: which is an argument, that he doth
read and observe such things as are remarkable."
This narrative was one of the chief burdens of a traveller. Gilbert
Talbot is no sooner landed in Padua than he must write to his impatient
parents and excuse himself for the lack of that "Relation." "We fulfil
your honour's commaundement in wrytynge the discourse of our travayle
which we would have sent with thes letres but it could not be caryed so
conveniently with them, as it may be with the next letres we wryte."[74]
Francis Davison, the Secretary's son, could not get on, somehow, with
his "Relation of Tuscany." He had been ill, he writes at first; his
tutor says that the diet of Italy - "roots, salads, cheese and such like
cheap dishes" - "Mr Francis can in no wise digest," and after that, he is
too worried by poverty.
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