The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (17 page)

How to Survive in a Religious World

As you can see, religion is a matter of life and death in Elizabethan England. If you want to avoid unwelcome attention, observe the routine details of orthodox religion. Kneel and say prayers when you rise in the morning, before dinner, in the evening and at bedtime (remember your servants may well be listening). Do not forget to say grace at dinner. Attend church regularly – every Sunday and every
holy day – and, if in London, attend the sermons preached at St Paul’s Cross from time to time.
³³
Pay attention to your Bible and other religious works: Sir William Cecil exhorts his son to read the whole psalter once a month.
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Avoid arguments with your neighbours lest they inform on you and report you for sedition or, worse, heresy. Do not predict the future or make ‘fantastic prophecies’ which could bring you into conflict with the authorities. In short, unless you are prepared to be tortured and die for your beliefs, keep your head down. Take the Portuguese Jews of London as an example. Although all the Jews were expelled from England in the Middle Ages, a small Portuguese Jewish community of eighty to ninety people lives quietly in the city, largely untroubled by the authorities.
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Whatever you do, don’t join any of the more extreme Protestant sects that come from the Continent. In particular, the radical reformers called Anabaptists, who refuse to accept civil government or infant baptism, are persecuted. In England, Catholics are not burnt as heretics, but Anabaptists are. In 1575 a community of Dutch Anabaptists is discovered living near Aldgate, in London. They are tried. Five recant, fifteen are returned to the Low Countries and five are sentenced to death. For two of them, the authorities relight the bonfires of religion: they are burnt alive at the stake ‘in great horror, with roaring and crying’.
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For the love of God.

4

Character

Oscar Wilde once quipped that ‘the old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything and the young know everything’. Apply that remark to Elizabethan England and you will begin to understand the bold, abrasive character of the people. It is the self-confidence of youth that gives Elizabethan society much of its arrogance and determination. Hand a man in his twenties command of a ship and the chance to make himself rich, and despite the difficulties of navigation and the huge dangers that beset him when a thousand miles from land, you may well see him sail round the world. Give a similar man a commission to keep the peace and constables to enforce local justice, and you will see the disruptive elements of society ruthlessly put down. To control such self-righteous individuals requires older men to show no less self-confidence – and a will as strong as that of the queen herself.

That, of course, is a simplification of things. Elizabethan people aren’t determined in an unquestioning sort of way. It is precisely the level to which Elizabethans
do
question their place in the world that sets them apart from their medieval forebears. From the top of society to the barely literate, individuals are reorientating their conception of God, the world and themselves. In the medieval world view, the most important subject in a person’s life is not the individual himself, but God; most medieval autobiographies are personal reflections on the will of God and the sinful life of the author, not a boastful list of personal achievements. In Elizabethan England the focus begins to shift on to the individual: the responsibility for a man’s achievements is increasingly attributed to the person himself. God is more of a facilitator than the architect of that person’s successes and failures.

One of the clearest manifestations of how this growing
individualism permeates the lives of ordinary people can be found in personal writing. There is practically no such thing as a diary in 1500; people write chronicles about major events, which are structured predominantly to reflect the will of God. But by 1558 the old tradition of the chronicle is beginning to give way to a new literary genre. The ‘cronacle’ of Henry Machyn is a good example. Henry arrives in London from Leicestershire in the early sixteenth century with his brother Christopher, both hoping to make their fortunes in the time-honoured fashion. They serve apprenticeships and become members of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. They do moderately well. Henry teaches himself to read and becomes the clerk of Little Trinity parish. This is when he starts writing his ‘cronacle’. He thinks he is continuing the old tradition of Londoners recording the major events of their city; but because he is personally so deeply involved in the life of the city, he actually records what is going on around him, day by day. He describes the processions he witnesses, he lists the executions of those he sees being carted off to Tyburn, and the deaths he records are those of his friends and clients. Unwittingly Henry has started to write a diary. Although he hardly ever mentions himself or his family by name, his ‘cronacle’ is about
his
life. Coincidentally, in the same years as Henry is writing one of the very first diaries, Edward VI is doing the same thing. Although still only a boy, Edward writes a chronicle of the events going on around him and, of course, as he is the king, everything he is aware of concerns him personally. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign many people are writing diaries and autobiographies, pioneering the personal narratives that are still with us today.

Another character trait that will strike you is the depth of people’s courage. When you look at an ocean-going vessel moored in London, Plymouth or Bristol – no more than 100ft from stern to prow – it is hard to believe that anyone dares to set off in one of them. Yet men do, knowing they might face waves 30ft or 40ft high, which can easily capsize a ship and smash it to pieces. Tens of thousands of boys and young men sail with the likes of Frobisher, Drake and Raleigh. Nor are these pioneering sea captains themselves any less bold. Consider the case of Sir Richard Grenville, captain of the
Revenge
. In 1591, after fighting for a whole day single-handedly against a Spanish fleet, with forty men dead on deck, no gunpowder left, gaping holes in the side of his ship and six feet of water in the hold, you might think he would
surrender. Nothing of the sort: Sir Richard vows to fight on, to the death.

Violence and Cruelty

Violence is endemic throughout the kingdom. ‘The English are universally partial to novelty, hostile to foreigners and not very friendly amongst themselves,’ writes the Venetian Michiel Soriano in 1559, adding, ‘they attempt to do everything that comes into their heads, just as if all that the imagination suggests could be easily executed; hence more insurrections have broken out in this country than in all the rest of the world.’
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The Dutch merchant and diplomat Emanuel van Meteren agrees, declaring that the English ‘are bold, courageous, ardent and cruel in war, fiery in attack, and have little fear of death’.
²
Whether England is truly more hostile to foreigners than other countries is debatable; but you will certainly be appalled by the violence. Not until the eighteenth century will English society start to become recognisably law-abiding.
³

At the top end of society, fewer lords take arms and fight than in the past. Even though they are in command of armies, they themselves have become more gentrified – more ‘gentle’. They rarely even fight duels. At the bottom end, however, murder, rape and robbery are as common as they were two hundred years earlier. Fights often break out in alehouses, with the inevitable result that someone draws a knife and stabs his assailant. Killing a man in self-defence is legal under a law of 1532, but most people caught up in a fight will not hang around to stand trial; rather they will take flight and evade justice.
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Over and over again you will find instances of hot-headedness resulting in murder, violent affray being seemingly more common than logical argument. You will also come across calculated killings. Rather than face the humiliation of being named by a maidservant as the father of an illegitimate child, or being accused of rape, some men will murder the pregnant girl before she gives birth. A tailor of Maldon, for instance, kills a girl whom he has impregnated by beating her around the belly, trying to induce a miscarriage; he is hanged for it. You will hear rare but true accounts of starving vagabonds breaking into houses and smashing the skulls of the occupants with an axe, just so that they can look for food. Then there are the unprovoked,
cold-blooded murders. A London painter-stainer, wishing to relieve a Barking widow of £8 12s, persuades one of the widow’s maidservants to steal it for him and, when she brings him the money, he breaks the girl’s neck.
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Some of the extreme cruelty that we usually associate with the medieval world is in reality more common in Elizabeth’s reign. Medieval English kings used to pride themselves on the fact that they did not employ torture except in extraordinary circumstances. As we have seen in the last chapter, Elizabethan society has no such qualms: torture is not just accepted as a necessary evil, but officially recognised as an instrument of government. It is used against women as well as men. When Margaret Ward helps a Catholic priest to escape from prison in 1588, she is kept in irons for eight days and suspended by her hands for long periods before being taken to Tyburn and executed. Unlike their medieval ancestors, Elizabethans maim and hang people for vagrancy and burn them for heresy (as we have seen in the case of the Anabaptists). Whether these punishments are more barbaric than being hanged, disembowelled and quartered is debatable; but both suggest strongly that Elizabethans are no soft touch.

You do occasionally come across official acts of mercy, but they are rare. Some women condemned to death for witchcraft are let off by sheriffs, unwilling to kill them for such dubious crimes.
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More commonly, when children under the age of fourteen are found guilty of theft, they are sentenced to hang, but then shown mercy; they are flogged instead. Perhaps it is also worth noting that the cruellest method of execution – being boiled alive – has been repealed as the statutory punishment for poisoning. Nevertheless it is a salutary thought that this punishment was only recently introduced by Henry VIII. It was enacted at least twice in his reign, the last victim being a young woman, Margaret Davy, who was boiled alive in 1542 for poisoning her employer.

Violence and cruelty permeate all areas of life in Elizabethan England. At home it is a father’s duty to whip his sons in order to instil in them respect for authority. Similarly at school a schoolmaster will see it as part of his duty to beat his pupils with a birch, or to rap their hands with a wooden rod. When schooldays are over, the boys will fight in the street, preparing for the disputes of later years, in the tavern or aboard ship. Young men are trained to serve in the
militia, to defend the shores in case of invasion, and that training further sharpens their readiness to draw blood. Thus the Elizabethan character is an amalgam of rashness, boldness, resolution and violence – all mixed in a heady brew of destructive intolerance. And this behaviour in turn feeds back into the harsh rhetoric and pitiless sentiments of society. Enemies of the state, such as Mary, queen of Scots, are regularly described as ‘enemies of God and friends of Antichrist’. When the news that Mary has been beheaded arrives in London on 9 February 1587, church bells ring out, bonfires are lit and there is feasting and dancing in the streets for a week. The killing allows Elizabethan society a savage release which, to the modern visitor, has more in common with tribal warfare than civilised society.

Bribery and Corruption

As you have probably gathered by now, there is no equality of opportunity in Elizabethan England. It is taken for granted that everything is hierarchical. Cast your mind back to the beginning of this book and the story of William Hacket, the man who was proclaimed the risen Christ. His two supporters suffer very different fates: one dies in prison and the other is released due to his having friends on the privy council. That a man in office might intervene to save a personal friend is considered normal. You might think it corrupt but the whole of society is a network of people helping each other to get by, and that includes helping to get men out of prison. Therefore it is not stretching things to say that your life might depend on whom you know.

Friends in high places do not just act out of the kindness of their hearts. Any sort of preferment in society is generally in somebody’s power, and that power is used as much for the benefit of the patron as the candidate. As we have seen in
chapter 2
, if you are a prospective Member of Parliament you will need the support of a lord who can secure your ‘election’. However, once elected, you will be expected to adhere to your patron’s policies or you can expect to lose your seat at the next so-called ‘election’. A similar system prevails in almost every walk of life. Clergymen are appointed to livings by those who have rights of patronage. It goes without saying that
gentlemen are advanced to lucrative offices in government through their connections; education and ability are of relatively minor importance.

If you don’t know the right people, there is only one other option open to you: bribery. The practice of paying men to deviate from the line of duty is probably as common as paying them wages to stick to it. Sheriffs and magistrates are notoriously open to bribes – and if they are not bribed, they are regularly found extorting sums of money from those they have arrested. Even the election of fellows to university colleges is open to bribery, so much so that an Act of Parliament has to be passed in 1589 to ensure that fellows have some academic merit, not just deep pockets. Bribery is practised all the way to the top of society. Sir William Cecil has to swear an oath as the queen’s principal secretary not to accept any bribes or presents in the performance of his office. Other members of the privy council have fewer scruples. When members of the Vintners’ Company try to stop legislation that would restrict their business, they give out presents and hold lavish dinners for their friends in parliament. Sir William Cecil does not accept any such presents of course; he is far too circumspect. And the Vintners know better than to try and tempt him. Instead they present his wife with high-quality table linen worth £40.
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