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.
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