"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.
