Anonymous

THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION UNDER JAMES I., CHARLES I., AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

Manufactures and Commerce—Trade under the Stuarts—English Commerce and Dutch Competition—The East India Company—Vicissitudes of its Early History—Rival Companies—The American Colonies and West Indies—Growth of London—National Revenue—Extravagance of the Stuarts—Invention of the Title of Baronet—Illegal Monopolies—Cost of Government—Money and Coinage—Agriculture and Gardening—Dramatists of the Period—Shakespeare and his Contemporaries—Poets of the Occult School—Herbert, Herrick, Quarles—A Wealth of Poetry—Prose-Writers—Bacon's "Novum Organum"—Milton's Prose Works—Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and other Theological Writers—Harrington's "Oceana"—Sir Thomas Browne—Historians and Chroniclers—First Newspapers—Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood—Napier's Invention of Logarithms—Music—Painting, Engraving, and Sculpture—Architecture—Manners and Customs—Sports and Pastimes—Furniture and Domestic Embellishment—Costumes—Arms and Armour—Condition of the People.

In the reigns of James and Charles England neither maintained the reputation of her navy acquired under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, nor made great progress in foreign commerce. The character of James was too timid for maritime or any other war, and when he was forced into action it was only to show his weakness. He put to death the greatest naval captain of his time, Raleigh, who, if well employed by him, might have made him as much respected at sea as was Elizabeth. Nevertheless, he built ten ships of war, and for some years spent thirty-six thousand pounds annually on the navy. The largest ship which had yet been built in England was built by him, but it was only of fourteen hundred tons. As for commerce, he was too much engaged in theological disputations, in persecution of Papists, in wrangling with his Parliaments, and in following his hawks and hounds, to think of it, and consequently grievous complaints of the decay of trade were heard every session. The Dutch were fast engrossing both the commerce and the carrying trade of England. During James's reign they traded to England with six hundred ships, and the English traded to Holland with sixty.

The naval affairs of Charles were quite as inglorious as those of his father. As James beheaded the best admiral of England, so Charles chose for his the very worst in Europe, and the disgrace of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of RhÉ was the consequence. Charles's contests with his Parliaments, which terminated only with his life, destroyed all chance of his promotion of naval ascendency, and of the cultivation of commerce. All this was wonderfully changed by the vigorous spirits of the Commonwealth. The victories of Blake, by which the naval greatness of Holland and Spain was almost annihilated, raised the reputation of the British arms at sea as well as on land to the first place in the civilised world. St. John was no sooner despatched by Parliament to the Hague as ambassador, than, perceiving the immense advantage which Holland obtained from being the great carriers of Europe, he drew and got passed the celebrated Navigation Act, which—providing that no produce of Africa, Asia, or America, nor of any English colony should be imported into England except in English ships, and that the manufactures or merchandise of no country in Europe should be imported except in English ships, or the ships of the nation where they were produced—at once transferred an enormous maritime business to England.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in a treatise on the comparative commerce of England and Holland, endeavoured to draw the attention of James I. to the vast benefits that the Dutch were obtaining from our neglect. He showed that whenever there was a time of scarcity in England, instead of sending out our ships and supplying ourselves, we allowed the Dutch to pour in goods, and reap the advantage of the high prices; and he declared that in a year and a half they had taken from Bristol, Southampton, and Exeter alone, two hundred thousand pounds, which our merchants might as well have had. He reminded the king that the most productive fisheries in the world were on the British coasts, yet that the Dutch and people of the Hanse Towns came and supplied all Europe with their fish to the amount of two million pounds annually, whilst the English could scarcely be said to have any trade at all in it. The Dutch, he said, sent yearly a thousand ships laden with wine and salt, obtained in France and Spain, to the north of Europe, whilst we, with superior advantages, sent none. He pointed out equally striking facts of their enterprise in the timber trade, having no timber themselves; that our trade with Russia, which used to employ a large number of ships, had fallen off to almost nothing, whilst that of the Dutch had marvellously increased. What, he observed, was still more lamentable, we allowed them to draw the chief profit and credit even from our own manufactures, for we sent our woollen goods, to the amount of eighty thousand pieces, abroad undyed, and the Dutch and others dyed them and reshipped them to Spain, Portugal, and other countries as Flemish baizes, besides netting a profit of four hundred thousand pounds annually at our expense. Had James attended to the wise suggestions of Raleigh, instead of destroying him, and listening to such minions as Rochester and Buckingham, our commerce would have shown a very different aspect.

It is true that some years afterwards James tried to secure the profit pointed out by Raleigh from dyed cloths; but instead of first encouraging the dyeing of such cloths here, so as to enable the merchants to carry them to the markets in the South on equal or superior terms to the Dutch, he suddenly passed an Act prohibiting the export of any undyed cloths. This the Dutch met by an Act prohibiting the import of any dyed cloths into Holland; and the English not producing an equal dye to the Dutch, thus lost both markets, to the great confusion of trade; and this mischief was only gradually overcome by our merchants beginning to dye their yarn, so as to have no undyed cloth to export, and by improving their dyes.

During the reign of James commercial enterprise showed itself in the exertions of various chartered companies trading to distant parts of the world. The East India Company was established in the reign of Elizabeth, the first charter being granted by her in 1600. James was wise enough to renew it, and it went on with various success, ultimately so little in his time that at his death it was still a doubtful speculation; but under such a monarch it could not hope for real encouragement. In its very commencement he granted a charter to a rival company to trade to China, Japan, and other countries in the Indian seas, in direct violation of the East India Company's charter, which so disgusted that Company, as nearly to have caused them to relinquish their aim. In 1614 they obtained a charter from the Great Mogul to establish a factory at Surat, and the same year they obtained a similar charter from the Emperor of Japan. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe went as ambassador from England to the Great Mogul, and resided at his court for four years. By this time the Company had extensively spread its settlements. It had factories at Acheen, Zambee, and Tekoa, in Sumatra; at Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Ajmere, and Burampore in the Mogul's territories; at Firando, in Japan; at Bantam, Batavia, and Japara, in Java; and others in Borneo, the Banda Isles, Malacca, Siam, and Celebes; and at Masulipatam and Petapoli, on the Coromandel coast; and at Calicut, the original settlement of the Portuguese on the coast of Malabar. Their affairs were, in fact, extremely flourishing, and their stock sold at 203 per cent.; but this prosperity awoke the jealousy of the Dutch, who carried on a most profitable trade with Java and the Spice Islands, and, in spite of a treaty concluded between the two nations in 1619, the Dutch Governor-General attacked and took from the Company the island of Pulo Rangoon. This was only the beginning of their envious malice, for in 1623 they committed the notorious massacre of the English Company at Amboyna, and drove the English out of all the Spice Islands. Had this occurred in Cromwell's days, they would soon have paid a severe retribution; but James was just then anxious to secure the aid of the Dutch in restoring his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, and these atrocities were quietly smoothed over, and left unavenged. The consequence was, that the affairs of the Company fell into a most depressed condition, and though in 1616, when their stock was worth 200 per cent., they had raised a new stock of one million six hundred and twenty-nine thousand and forty pounds, which was taken by nine hundred and fifty-four individuals, principally of the higher aristocracy, at the close of James's reign the stock had fallen to half its value.

Charles was not a more far-sighted or a juster patron of the India Company than his father. In 1631 they managed to raise a new stock of four hundred and twenty thousand pounds, but whilst they were struggling with the hostilities of their rivals, the Dutch and Portuguese, the king perpetrated precisely the same injury on them that his father had done, by granting a charter to another company, which embroiled them with the Mogul and the Chinese, causing the English to be entirely expelled from China, and injuring the India Company to a vast extent. The Civil War in England then prevented the attention of the Government from being directed to the affairs of this great Company. At the end of Charles's reign the Company's affairs were at the worst, and its trade appeared extinct. In 1649, however, Parliament encouraged the raising of new stock, which was done with extreme difficulty, and only amounted to one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds. But in 1654, Parliament having humbled the Dutch, compelled them to pay a balance of damages of eighty-five thousand pounds and three thousand six hundred pounds to the heirs of the murdered men at Amboyna. It required years, however, to revive the prosperity of the Company, and it was only in 1657 that, obtaining a new charter from the Protector, and raising a new stock of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, it sprang again into vigour and traded successfully till the Restoration.

During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies—Turkey Merchants, or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery—were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.

These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions.

The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One, called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic (the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in England, as the New England States did of the Puritans.

These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against the Catholics, the Puritans, or the Episcopalians and Royalists, they got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and (in the West Indies) the sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and published his "Counterblast" against it, laying various restrictions upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed, and cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the Colonies. The Dutch had managed, under James and Charles, to engross the carrying trade to the English American and West Indian colonies, having a strong position at New Amsterdam, afterwards known as New York; but of this Parliament deprived them in 1646, and extended, as we have seen, the famous Navigation Act of 1651 to all the foreign trade of England. In 1655 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed English power in the West Indies.

The growth of English commerce was soon conspicuous by one great result, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh building of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them. From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid increase of the metropolis, so alarming to those kings, was more than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated by the crowds of Scots who followed the Court; and though St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Drury Lane, running from it to the Strand, before the Civil War it had become united to London and Westminster by new erections in Clare Market, Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson in his "History of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London at that period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," he observes, "are taken from the Royal family at this time, or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street. Of James and Charles I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, etc., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of much later date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury, and the streets at the Seven Dials, were built up somewhat later, as also Leicester Fields, since the restoration of Charles II., as also almost all of St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house, a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Those five streets of the south side of the Strand, running down to the river Thames, have all been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the sites of noblemen's houses and gardens, who removed farther westward, as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the City of London remained unbuilt within about a hundred and fifty years past, particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters, now Fetter, Lane, so called, says Howell in his 'Londonopolis,' from Fewters, an old appellation of idle people, loitering there, as in a way leading to gardens; which, in Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since, have been built up into streets, lanes, etc. Several other parts of the City have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility to Westminster, on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens, whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the City since the death of Queen Elizabeth."

CECIL, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.

The extension of the metropolis necessitated the introduction of hackney coaches, which first began to ply, but only twelve in number, in 1625. In 1634 sedan-chairs were introduced to relieve the streets of the rapidly increased number of hackney-coaches, and other carriages; and in 1635 a post-office for the kingdom was established, a foreign post having been for some years in existence. In 1653 the post was farmed for ten thousand pounds a year.

The annual revenue of James I. has been calculated at about six hundred thousand pounds, yet he was always poor, and died leaving debts to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds. He was prodigal to his favourites, and wasteful in his habits. He left the estates of the Crown, however, better than he found them, having raised their annual income from thirty-two thousand pounds to eighty thousand pounds, besides having sold lands to the amount of seven hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. He still prosecuted the exactions of purveyance, wardship, etc., to the great annoyance of his subjects. On the occasion of his son being made a knight, he raised a tax on every knight's fee of twenty shillings, and on every twenty pounds of annual rent from lands held directly of the Crown, thus raising twenty-one thousand eight hundred pounds. On the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, he levied an aid of twenty thousand five hundred pounds, the last of these odious impositions which were demanded. The Customs on his coming to the throne brought in one hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds a year; but towards the end of his reign, showing the great increase of commerce, they amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year. But this was the tonnage and poundage which was so hateful to the nation, and which James had greatly augmented by his own act and deed; an encroachment which caused Parliament to refuse to his son Charles the usual grant of those duties for life; and his persistence in levying them, in spite of Parliament, was one of the chief causes of his quarrel with that body, and the loss of his crown.

James was also a great trader in titles of nobility. His price for a barony was ten thousand pounds, for the title of viscount, twenty thousand pounds, and for that of earl, thirty thousand pounds. He also invented the new title of baronet, and raised two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds by it, at the rate of one thousand and ninety-five pounds each baronetcy. From so dignified a source do many of our aristocracy derive their honours.

Charles, though he was driven to such fatal extremities to extort money from his subjects, is calculated to have realised the enormous revenue from 1637 to 1641 inclusive, of eight hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds, of which two hundred and ten thousand pounds arose from Ship-money and other illegal sources. Both he and his father dealt in wholesale monopolies to their courtiers and others, the profits of which were so embezzled by those greedy and unprincipled men, that Clarendon says that of two hundred thousand pounds of such income in Charles's time, only one thousand five hundred pounds reached the royal treasury. Charles raised two hundred thousand pounds in 1626 by a forced loan, and another hundred thousand by exacting the fees or compensation for exemption from the assumption of knighthood by every person worth forty pounds a year.

The income and expenditure of the Commonwealth are stated to have far exceeded those of any monarch who ever sat before on the throne of England, and to have been not less than four million four hundred thousand pounds per annum. The post office, as already stated, brought in ten thousand pounds per annum. A singular tax, called the Weekly Meal, or the price of a meal a week from each person, produced upwards of one hundred thousand pounds a year, or six hundred and eight thousand four hundred pounds in the six years during which it was levied. There was a weekly assessment for the support of the war, which rose from thirty-eight thousand pounds to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds per week, which was continued as a land tax under the Protectorate, producing from 1640 to 1659 no less than thirty-two million one hundred and seventy-two thousand three hundred and twenty-one pounds. The Excise also owes its origin to this period, and produced, it is said, five hundred thousand pounds a year. Large sums were realised by the sales of Crown and Church lands,—from the sale of Crown lands, parks, etc., one million eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand pounds; from the sale of Church lands, ten million pounds; from sequestration of the revenue of the clergy for four years, three million five hundred thousand pounds; eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds from incomes of offices sequestered for the public service; four million five hundred thousand pounds from the sequestration of private estates or compositions for them; one million pounds from compositions with delinquents in Ireland; three million five hundred thousand pounds from the sale of forfeited estates in England and Ireland, etc. The ministers and commanders are asserted to have taken good care of themselves. Cromwell's own income is stated at nearly two million pounds, or one million nine hundred thousand pounds; namely, one million five hundred thousand pounds from England, forty-three thousand pounds from Scotland, and two hundred and eight thousand pounds from Ireland. The members of Parliament were paid at the rate of four pounds a week each, or about three hundred thousand pounds a year altogether; and Walker, in his "History of Independency," says that Lenthall, the Speaker, held offices to the amount of nearly eight thousand pounds a year; that Bradshaw had Eltham Palace, and an estate of one thousand pounds a year, as bestowed for presiding at the king's trial; and that nearly eight hundred thousand pounds were spent on gifts to adherents of the party. As these statements, however, are those of their adversaries, they no doubt admit of ample abatement; but after all deduction, the demands of king and Parliament on the country during the contest, and of the Protectorate in keeping down its enemies, must have been enormous. Notwithstanding this, the rate of interest on money continued through this period to decline. During James's reign it was ten per cent.; in 1625, the last year of his reign, it was reduced to eight per cent., and in 1651 it was fixed by the Parliament at six per cent., at which rate it remained.

James issued various coinages. Soon after his accession he issued a coinage of gold and one of silver. The gold was of two qualities. The first of twenty-three carats three and a half grains, consisting of angels, half-angels, and quarter-angels; value ten shillings, five shillings, and two-and-sixpence. The inferior quality, of only twenty-two carats, consisted of sovereigns, half-sovereigns, crowns, and half-crowns. His silver coinage (see Vol. II., p. 436) consisted of crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, twopences, pence, and halfpence. The gold coins, being of more value than that amount of gold on the Continent, were rapidly exported, and the value of the finest gold was then raised from thirty-three pounds ten shillings to thirty-seven pounds four shillings and sixpence. The next coinage at this value consisted of a twenty-shilling piece called the unit, ten shillings called the double crown, five shillings or the Britain crown, four shillings or the thistle crown, and two-and-sixpence, or half-crown. (See Vol. II., p. 432.) This value of the gold was not found high enough, and the next year, in a fresh coinage, it was valued at forty pounds ten shillings, and consisted of rose rials of thirty shillings each, spur rials fifteen shillings, and angels at ten shillings each. But gold still rising in value, in 1611 the unit was raised to twenty-two shillings, and the other coins in proportion. In 1612 there was a great rise in gold, and James issued fresh twenty-shilling, ten-shilling, and five-shilling pieces, known as laurels, from the king's head being wreathed with laurel. The unit and twenty-shilling pieces were termed hood pieces. Besides the royal coinage, shopkeepers and other retailers put out tokens of brass and lead, which in 1613 were prohibited, and the first copper coinage in England, being of farthings, was issued.

The coins of Charles were, for the most part, of the same nature as those of his father. During his reign silver rose so much in value that it was melted down and exported to a vast extent. Though between 1630 and 1643 some ten million pounds of silver were coined, it became so scarce that the people had to give a premium for change in silver. In 1637 Charles established a mint at Aberystwith, for coining the Welsh silver, which was of great value to him during the war. From 1628 to 1640 Nicholas Briot, a Frenchman, superintended the cutting of the dies, instituted machinery for the hammer in coining and his coins were of remarkable beauty. (See Vol. II., p. 540.) Charles erected mints at most of his headquarters during the war, as Oxford, Shrewsbury, York, and other places, the coiners and dies of Aberystwith being used, and these coins are distinguished by the Prince of Wales's feathers. Many of these coins are of the rudest character; and besides these there were issued siege pieces, so called from the besieged castles where they were made, as Newark, Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract. Some of these are mere bits of silver plate with the rude stamp of the castle on one side and the name of the town on the other. Others are octagonal, others lozenge-shaped, others of scarcely any regular shape. (See p. 29.)

The Commonwealth at first coined the same coins as the king, only distinguishing them by a P for Parliament. They afterwards adopted dies of their own, having on one side a St. George's cross on an antique shield encircled with a palm and laurel, and on the other two antique shields, one bearing the cross and the other the harp, surrounded by the words God with us. Their small silver coins had the arms only without any legend.

The coins of the Protectorate have on the obverse a bust of Cromwell, round which is this inscription: "Oliver D.G. R.P. Ang. Sco. Hib. &c. Pro." On the reverse they bear a shield, having in the first and fourth quarters St. George's cross, in the second St. Andrew's, in the third a harp, and in the centre a lion rampant on an escutcheon—Cromwell's own arms—surmounted by an imperial crown. The legend on this side is "Pax quÆritur bello" (Peace is sought by war). The larger silver pieces have this motto round the edge: "Has nisi periturus mihi adimat nemo" (i.e. "Let no one take from me these letters unless about to die"). In those days the penalty for clipping and filing money was death. (See p. 121.)

The coins of the Commonwealth were the same for Ireland and Scotland as for England. This was not the case in the reigns of James and Charles, and the coins, though bearing the same arms, had generally a very different value. For Ireland James coined silver and copper money of about three-quarters the value of English, and called in the base coinage used by Elizabeth in the time of the rebellion. Charles only coined some silver in 1641, during the government of Lord Ormond, and therefore called Ormonds. Copper halfpence and farthings of that period are supposed to have been coined by the rebel Papists of 1642.

In agriculture and gardening the English were excelled by their neighbours the Dutch and Flemings. Towards the latter part of this period, however, they began to imitate those nations, and to introduce their modes of drainage, their roots and seeds. In 1652 the advantage of growing clover was pointed out by Bligh, in his "Improver Improved," and Sir Richard Weston recommended soon afterwards the Flemish mode of cultivating the turnip for winter fodder for cattle and sheep. Gardening was more attended to, and both vegetables and flowers were introduced. Samuel Hartlib, a Pole, who was patronised by Cromwell, wrote various treatises on agriculture, and relates that in his time old men recollected the first gardener who went into Surrey to plant cabbages, cauliflowers, and artichokes, and to sow early peas, turnips, carrots, and parsnips. Till then almost all the supply of these things in London was imported from Holland and Flanders. About that time (1650), however, cherries, apples, pears, hops, cabbages, and liquorice were rapidly cultivated, and soon superseded the necessity of importation; but onions were still scarce, and the supply of stocks of apple, pear, cherry, vine, and chestnut trees was difficult for want of sufficient nurseries for them. There was a zealous endeavour to promote the production of raw silk, and mulberry trees and silkworms were introduced, but the abundant supply of silk from India, and the perfection of the silk manufactured in France, rendered this scheme abortive.

Whilst James was hunting and levying taxes without a Parliament, and Charles was in continual strife with his people for unconstitutional power and revenue, literature and art were still at work, and producing or preparing some of the noblest and choicest creations of genius. Shakespeare and Milton were the great lights of the age; but around and beside them burned a whole galaxy of lesser, but not less exquisite, luminaries, whose selected beauties are just as delightful now as they were to their contemporaries. The names of this period, to which we still turn with admiration, reverence, and affection, are chiefly Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Selden, Herrick, Herbert, Quarles, Bunyan, Bishop Hall, Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Raleigh, Sir Thomas Browne, Burton (of the "Anatomy of Melancholy"), and Drummond of Hawthornden. But there are numbers of others, more unequal or more scholastic, to whose works we can occasionally turn, and find passages of wonderful beauty and power.

As we come first to Shakespeare, who figured largely on the scene in the days of Queen Bess, and whose poetry we have already reviewed (Vol. II., pp. 373-5), we may take the drama of this period also in connection with him. A formal criticism on Shakespeare would be superfluous. There are whole volumes of comment on this greatest of our great writers, both in this language and others. The Germans, indeed, pride themselves on understanding him better than ourselves. The Scandinavians equally venerate him, and have an admirable translation of his dramas. Even the French, the tone and spirit of whose literature are so different from ours, have, of late years, begun to comprehend and receive him. The fact is, Shakespeare's genius is what the Germans term spherical, or many-sided. He had not a brilliancy in one direction only, but he seemed like a grand mirror, in which is truly reflected every image that falls on it. Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life—from the cottage to the throne—are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. The receptivity of his mind was as quick, as vast, as perfect, as his power of expression was unlimited. Every object once seen appeared photographed on his spirit, and he reproduced these lifelike images in new combinations, and mingled with such an exuberance of wit, of humour, of delicious melodies, and of exquisite poetry, as has no parallel in the whole range of literature.

It has been said that his dramas cast into the shade and made obsolete all that went before him; but, indeed, his great light equally overwhelms also all that has come after him. Where is the second Shakespeare of the stage? He still stands alone as the type of dramatic greatness and perfection, and is likely to continue so. When we recollect his marvellous characters—his Hamlet, his Macbeth, his Lady Macbeth, his Othello, his Shylock, his Lear, his Ophelia, his Beatrice, his Juliet, his Rosalind—the humours and follies of Shallow, Slender, Dogberry, Touchstone, Bottom, Launce, Falstaff—or his ideal creations, Ariel, Caliban, Puck, Queen Mab—we cannot hope for the appearance of any single genius who shall at once enrich our literature with such living and speaking characters, such a profound insight into the depths and eccentricities of human nature, and such a fervent and varied expression of all the sentiments that are dearest to our hearts. But when we survey in addition the vast extent of history and country over which he has roamed, gleaning thence the most kingly personages, the most tragic incidents, the most moving and thrilling as well as the most amusing sensations and fancies, our wonder is the greater. Greece has lent him its Pericles, its Timon, its Troilus and Cressida—Rome its CÆsar, Brutus, Antony, Coriolanus—Egypt its Cleopatra. Ancient Britain, Scotland, and Denmark; all the fairest cities of Italy—Venice, Verona, Mantua; the forests of Illyria and Belgium, and the isles of the Grecian seas, are made the perpetually shifting arena of his triumphs. Through all these he ranged with a free hand, and, with a power mightier than ever was wielded by any magician, recalled to life all that was most illustrious there, giving them new and more piquant effect from the sympathetic nearness into which he brought them with the spectator, and from the enchanting scenery with which he surrounded them. All this was done by the son of the woolcomber of Stratford—the youthful ranger of the woods of Charlecote, and the uplands of Clopton,—the merry frequenter of country wakes, and then the player of London, who, so far as we know, was never out of his native land in his life.

If we are to take it for granted that after the year 1597, when he bought one of the best houses in his native town for his residence, Shakespeare spent his life there, except during the theatrical season, the greater part of his last nineteen years would be passed in the quiet of his country home. We may then settle his Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, All's Well that Ends Well, Richard II. and Richard III., King John, Titus Andronicus (if his), the first part of Henry IV., and Romeo and Juliet, as produced in the bustle of his London life. But the far greater part, and the most magnificent and poetical, of his dramas were composed in the pleasant retirement of his native scenes; namely, the second part of Henry IV., Henry V., A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Merchant of Venice, in 1598 and 1600; the second and third parts of Henry VI., Merry Wives of Windsor, 1601; Hamlet, 1602; Lear, 1608; Troilus and Cressida and Pericles, 1609; Othello (not published till after the author's death, which was the case, too, with all his other plays, though brought on the stage in his lifetime), The Winter's Tale, As You Like It, King Henry VIII., Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius CÆsar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night. Shakespeare died in 1616. Of the envy which the unexampled splendour of Shakespeare's genius produced amongst inferior dramatic writers, we have an amusing specimen in the words of Robert Greene: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakscene in a country."

Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or those who immediately followed him, were Chapman, Ben Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Marston, Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. George Chapman (born, 1557; died, 1634) wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson and Marston, one more, as well as three in conjunction with Shirley. The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction, and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy of Bussy D'Ambois is his best, and next to that his Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. Of his comedies, the best are, Eastward Ho! partly composed by Jonson and Marston, Monsieur d'Olive, and his All Fools. But Chapman's fame now rests on his translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been declared to be the best translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" that we possess. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed from it almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him.

The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi, was revived by Richard Hengist Horne, and put on the stage at Sadler's Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of three tragedies, Appius and Virginia, Duchess of Malfi, and The White Devil, or, Vittoria Corombona; a tragic comedy, The Devil's Law Case, or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business, besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others in conjunction with Dekker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age, and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by his mother, which reminds one of the like simple homely ditties in Shakespeare:—

There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:—"To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable, so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."

Of Middleton, who wrote from twenty to thirty plays, in some of which, according to a very prevalent fashion of that age, he called in the aid of Rowley, Dekker, Fletcher, and Massinger; of Dekker, who wrote the whole or part of about thirty plays; of John Marston, who wrote eight plays; of Taylor, Tourneur, Heywood, and Ford, we can only say that their dramas abound with fine things, and would well repay a perusal. John Fletcher (born, 1576; died, 1625) and Francis Beaumont (born, 1586; died, 1616) require a more specific notice. They worked together on the same plays to the number of upwards of thirty, whilst John Fletcher wrote fourteen or fifteen himself. In fact, Fletcher, so far as can be known, was the more voluminous writer of the two, Beaumont having written little in his own name, except a masque, a few farces, dramatic pieces, and translations. The style of the two, however, was so much alike, that there is little to distinguish their productions from those of an individual mind. Beaumont and Fletcher were, as stated by Dryden, far more popular in their time than Shakespeare himself. The truth is, that they had less originality and were more compliant with the spirit of their age. They sought their characters more in the range of ordinary life, and therefore hit the tastes of a large and commoner class. They were extremely lively and forcible in dialogue, and had a flowery and dignified style which oftener approached the poetical than became it. We are everywhere met by admirable writing, and a finely-sustained tone, but we travel on without encountering those original characters that can never again be forgotten, and become a part of our world, or those exquisite gushes of poetry and poetic scenery which, like the music of Ariel, ring in the memory long afterwards. At the same time we are continually offended by extreme grossness and jarred by slovenliness and incongruity. They are of the class of great and able playwrights who command the popularity of their age, but whom future ages praise and neglect; and who are only read by the curious for the fragments of good things that they contain.

The fate of Ben Jonson (b., 1574; d., 1637) has been nearly the same. Excepting his comedies of Every Man in his Humour, Volpone, The Silent Woman, and The Alchemist, we are content to read the bulk of his dramas, and wonder at his erudition and his wit. His genius is most conspicuous in his masques and Court pageants, which were the delight of James's queen, Anne of Denmark, and the whole Court. In them the spirits of the woods seem to mingle with those of courts and cities; and fancy and a hue of romance give to royal festivities the impressions of Arcadian life. But the living poetry of the Midsummer Night's Dream or of Comus is yet wanting to touch them with perfection. Hence their chief charm died with the age which patronised them, and having once perused them, we are not drawn to them again by a loving memory, as we are to the Shakespearean woodlands and lyrical harmonies. In Jonson's graver dramas there is a cold classical tone which leaves the affections untouched and the feelings unmoved, while we respect the artistic skill and the learned dignity of the composition.

Philip Massinger (b., 1584; d., 1640), who wrote nearly forty dramatic pieces, is a vigorous writer, eloquent and effective. He is trenchant in his satire, and delights in displaying pride and meanness exposed and punished. Still he is greater as a dramatist than a poet. His New Way to Pay Old Debts and The Fatal Dowry are best known to lovers of the drama. The City Madam is a play which is full of strong features of the times. Dekker assisted him in The Virgin Martyr, and is supposed to have introduced a higher and richer vein of feeling than belonged to Massinger himself.

Altogether the dramatic writing of this period has never been surpassed, and in Shakespeare has never been equalled. There is mingled with much licentiousness and coarseness a manly and healthy strength in the writers of this department; and though the bulk of these compositions have vanished from the stage, they will be long studied with enjoyment by those who delight in living portraiture of past ages, and the strong current of genuine English sense and feeling. The arrival of the Commonwealth put down all theatres and scenic amusements. The solemn religion of the Puritans was death to what they called "the lascivious mirth and levity of players." After their suppression for six years, it was found that the ordinance of the Long Parliament was clandestinely and extensively evaded; and in 1648 an Act was passed ordering all theatres to be pulled down and demolished, and the players to be punished "as rogues according to law." Towards the end of the Protectorate, however, dramatic representations again crept in cautiously, and Sir William Davenant at first giving musical entertainments and declamations at Rutland House, Charterhouse Square, and afterwards in Drury Lane, calling his entertainments "operas," at length gave regular plays. The Restoration at last set the imprisoned drama altogether free.

Besides dramatic writers, poets abounded. It has been calculated that from the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration, no less than four hundred writers of verse appeared. Some of these, who attained a great reputation in their day, and whose works are still retained in our collections, were rather verse-wrights than poets, and would now tax the patience of poetical readers beyond endurance. Such were William Warner, the author of "Albion's England," a history of England in metre extending from Noah's flood to the reign of Elizabeth; Samuel Daniel, the author of the "Civil Wars of Lancaster and York," in eight books; and Michael Drayton, who also wrote the "Barons' Wars" in verse, "England's Heroical Epistles," and, above all, the "Polyolbion," a topography in Alexandrine verse, in thirty books, and thirty thousand lines. Next came Giles and Phineas Fletcher, who employed their strength in composing allegoric poems. Phineas, under the delusive appellation of "The Purple Island," wrote an anatomical description of the human body, with all its veins, arteries, sinews, and so forth. This was extended to twelve books, on which an abundance of very excellent language was wasted. Besides this, he composed "Piscatory Eclogues," and other poems; and Giles, choosing a worthier subject, wrote "Christ's Victory," in the Italian ottava rima, or eight-lined stanzas. To such perversion of the name of poetry had men arrived in the age of Shakespeare.

There were sundry poets who were also translators. Of these, Edward Fairfax, of the same family as Lord Fairfax, was the most distinguished. He translated with singular vigour and poetic feeling Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." It is still referred to with intense pleasure by the lovers of our old poetry. Joshua Sylvester—who wrote like King James against tobacco, but in verse, "Tobacco Battered"—translated, amongst other things, "The Divine Weeks and Works" of the French poet Du Bartas. Sir Richard Fanshawe translated the "Lusiad," by the Portuguese poet Camoens. Fanshawe, moreover, translated the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, from the Italian, the "Odes" of Horace, the fourth book of the "Æneid," and the "Love for Love's Sake," of the Spaniard Mendoza. Fanshawe seemed to have a peculiar taste for the European languages derived from the Latin as for the Latin itself; thus he translated from Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian poets, and from all with much taste and elegance.

Sir John Denham was a popular poet of the time, and his "Cooper's Hill" is still retained in our collections, and finds readers amongst admirers of descriptive poetry. Writers of much more sterling poetry were Sir John Davies, Drummond of Hawthornden, Bishop Hall, and Donne. Sir John Davies was long Attorney-General, and Chief-Justice of the King's Bench at the time of his death (b., 1570; d., 1626). He is author of a poem on dancing called the "Orchestra," but his great work is his "Nosce Teipsum," or "Know Thyself," a work which treats on human knowledge and the immortality of the soul. It is written in quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and is one of the finest philosophical poems in the language as it was one of the first. There are a life and feeling in the poem which make it always fresh, like the waters of a pure and deep fountain. Speaking of the soul, he says:—

Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, wrote, besides considerable prose, some exquisite poems and sonnets formed on the Italian model; and Bishop Hall, in his satires, presents some of the most graphic sketches of English life, manners, and scenery. Dr. Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's, and the most fashionable preacher of his day, was also the most fashionable poet—we do not except Shakespeare. He was the rage, in fact, of all admirers of poetry, and was the head of a school of which Cowley was the most extravagant disciple, and of which Crashaw, Wither, Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles had more or less of the characteristics. In all these poets there was deep feeling of spirituality, religion, and wit, and, in some of them, of nature, dashed and marred by a fantastic style, full of quaintnesses and conceits. In some of them these were so tempered as to give them an original and piquant air, as in Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles; in others, as in Donne and Cowley, they degenerated into disfigurement and absurdity. But Donne (b., 1573; d., 1631) had great and shining qualities, keen, bold satire, profound and intellectual thoughts, and a most sparkling fancy, embedding rich touches of passion and pathos, yet so marred by uncouth and strange conceits, that one scarcely knows how to estimate his compositions. In a word, they are the exact antipodes of the natural style, and this fashion was carried to its utmost extravagance by Cowley. A stanza or two from a parting address of a lover to his mistress may show something of Donne's quality and manner:—

George Wither (b., 1588; d., 1667) has much less of what a contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without study;" and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire, called "Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical poem, called "The Shepherds' Hunting," in which his description of Poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling:—

Two songs of Wither's, quoted in Percy's "Reliques"—"The Steadfast Shepherd," and the one beginning

are exquisite lines, that no reader ever forgets.

Crashaw (b., 1616; d., 1650) was of a deeply religious tone of mind, and became a Catholic. His finest poems are his religious ones, and they are full of music and passionate reveries, yet disfigured by the Donne fashion, which Dryden, and after him Johnson, inaccurately termed the Metaphysical School, instead of the Fantastic or Singularity School. His very first poem, called "The Weeper," shows how he treated even sacred subjects:—

Carew, Suckling, Lovelace are poets whose merits, in their various styles, would deserve a separate examination, but we must pass on to three other poets, who have been more known to modern readers, and who would of themselves have stamped their age as one of genuine inspiration—Herbert, Herrick, and Quarles. Herbert and Herrick, like Donne, were clergymen, and in their quiet country parsonages poured forth some of the most exquisite lyrics which enrich any language. Herrick may be said to be the born poet of nature—Herbert of devotion. Robert Herrick (b., 1591; d., 1674) was of an old family of Leicestershire. His lyrics, so full of grace, are the very soul of Nature's melody and rapture. He revels in all the charms of the country—flowers, buds, fairies, bees, the gorgeous blossoming May, the pathos and antique simplicity of rural life; its marriages, its churchyard histories, its imagery of awaking and fading existence. The free, joyous, quaint, and musical flow and rhythm of his verse have all that felicity and that ring of woodland cadences which mark the snatches of rustic verse which Shakespeare scatters through his dramas. His "Night Piece to Juliet," beginning—

is precisely of that character. His "Daffodils" express the beautiful but melancholy sentiment which he so frequently found in nature:—

Herrick's works are his "Hesperides" and his "Noble Numbers," the latter being religious, and not equal to the former.

In religious tone, intensity, and grandeur, George Herbert (b., 1593; d., 1633) is his superior. Herbert was in early life a courtier; his eldest brother being the celebrated sceptical writer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Herbert's hopes of Court preferment fortunately ceasing with the death of King James, he took orders, grew extremely religious, married an admirable wife, and retired to Bemerton parsonage, about a mile from Salisbury, where he died of consumption at the age of forty. Herbert was the very personification of Chaucer's "Good Parson." His life was one constant scene of piety and benevolence. Beloved by his parishioners, happy in his congenial wife, and passionately fond of music and his poetry, his days glided away as already in heaven. The music which he loved was poured into his poetry, which overflows with tender and profound feeling, the most chaste and seraphic imagination, and the most fervent devotion. James Montgomery, of later times, not a little resembled him in his pure and beautiful piety; but there is in Herbert a greater vigour, more dignity of style, and finer felicity of imagery. There is a gravity, a sublimity, and a sweetness which mingle in his devotional lyrics, and endear them for ever to the heart. His "Temple" is a poetic fabric worthy of a Christian minstrel, and stands as an immortal refutation of the oft-repeated theory, that religious poetry cannot be at once original and attractive. What can be more noble than the following stanzas from his poem entitled "Man"?—

Besides his "Temple," Herbert wrote a prose work, "The Priest to the Temple; or, the Country Parson," which is charmingly full of the simple, child-like piety of the author. He also collected a great number of proverbs, under the title of "Jacula Prudentum."

The third of the trio of poets who seem to class themselves together by their quaintness, their fancy, and their piety, is Francis Quarles, (b., 1592; d., 1644) a man who has been treated by many critics as a mere poetaster, but who is one of the most sterling poets which English genius has produced. Quarles was a gentleman and a scholar; in his youth he was cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and was finally ruined by taking the Royal side in the Civil Wars. He wrote various poetical works; "Argalus and Parthenia," "A Feast for Worms," "Zion's Elegies," and a series of elegies on the death of a friend, the son of Bishop Aylmer. But the great work of Quarles is his "Emblems," which originated in a Latin poem by Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, called "Pia Desideria." This book, condemned and overlooked by the great critics, like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," has, from generation to generation, adorned with curious woodcuts, circulated amongst the people in town and country, till it has won an extraordinary popularity: and that it has well deserved it, we need only read such verses as these to convince ourselves:—

William Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," written at this period, have been much and justly celebrated for their faithful transcripts of nature and country life. There are others, besides, that sue for recognition as among the genuine poets of those times—Raleigh, as a lyrical poet; Sir Henry Wotton; Henry Vaughan, the author of "Silex Scintillans" and "Olor Iscanus," a disciple of Herbert's, who would demand a notice were it only to show how freely Campbell borrowed the poem of "The Rainbow" from him:—

And so Campbell:—

Altogether, no age—not even our own—has produced such a constellation of poets, nor such a mass of exquisite, superb, and imperishable poetry. Whilst Shakespeare was fast departing, Milton was rising, and during this period wrote many of his inimitable smaller poems. Even honest Andrew Marvell, when freed from his labours in the great struggle for the Commonwealth, solaced himself with writing poetry, English and Latin, and some of it of no contemptible order, as in his boat-song of the exiles of the Bermudas:—

So he forgot occasionally polemics and politics in "a holy and a cheerful note" of his own. Even the saturnine Sir Thomas Overbury, whom Somerset and his wife had murdered in the Tower, could brighten up in poetry as in his "Choice of a Wife:"—

The prose of the age was equally remarkable. First and foremost stands Francis Bacon (b., 1561; d., 1626) with his "Novum Organum," a new instrument of discovery in philosophy, and other works of a kindred character. He tells us that in his youth he took a great aversion to the philosophy of Aristotle; being, he said, a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the life of man; and in this mind he continued through life. Besides other works of less note, in 1605 he published one of great importance on "The Advancement of Learning;" soon after he published the outline or groundwork of his "Organum," under the title of "Cogitata et Visa; or, Things Thought Out and Seen," and proudly boasted of it as the greatest birth of time. He afterwards published the "Wisdom of the Ancients," and it was not till 1621, and when he had reached the summit of his profession, and been made Viscount of St. Albans, that he brought out his great work, "The Instauration of the Sciences," of which the "Novum Organum" is the second part. No work was so little understood at the time or has occasioned such a variety of opinions since. Bacon was well aware that such would be the case, for in his will he says that he leaves his name and memory to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over. Bacon asserted that he had superseded the Aristotelian philosophy, and introduced a new and accurate method of inquiry, both into mind and matter, by experiment and induction. By one party he is declared to be the great renovator of true knowledge, and the father of the modern sciences by this method; by another, that he is nothing of the kind, and that modern discovery would have progressed as well without his New Instrument; that Aristotle pursued this method of induction himself, and that Galileo discovered the motion of the earth by the same means that Bacon taught at the same time. But whoever has acquainted himself with the system of Aristotle, and, still more, with the loose and absurd method by which it was taught in the schools before Bacon's time, must see that Bacon, if he did not altogether introduce the system, reduced it to precision and accuracy, and thus put an end to the windy logic and abortive practice of the schools. They were accustomed to assume false and visionary premises, and reason from them by syllogisms which, of course, proved nothing. Bacon, by proceeding by analysis and synthesis—by first extracting from a substance, or a topic, everything that did not really belong to it, and then bringing these expurgated matters into contrast—drew sure conclusions, and advanced towards positive discovery. True, Galileo worked by the same method; but Bacon taught it, and made it clear to all understandings. To say, therefore, that modern science owes nothing to Bacon is to utter a self-evident falsity. Both in experimental philosophy and in metaphysical inquiry, it is Bacon's light, and not Aristotle's, which is followed. That Bacon himself made no great discoveries in prosecuting his own method proves nothing; because, though he was not sufficiently advanced in the actual knowledge of the properties of Matter, he saw and taught clearly how such knowledge was to be acquired, and applied to the legitimate development of Science. How completely ignorant was the age of real experimental philosophy, is shown by the ridicule and contempt which was cast on the "Novum Organum." Such men as Ben Jonson and Sir Henry Wotton expressed their profound admiration of it, but by the wits of the time Bacon was laughed at as little better than a maniac. King James said, in his almost blasphemous way, that it was like the peace of God—passing all understanding; and Lord Coke said—

He was represented by men eminent in the world's opinion as "no great philosopher—a man rather of show than of depth, who wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor." Abroad, as Bacon had foreseen, his work was received in a different manner, and pronounced by the learned one of the most important accessions ever made to philosophy. Whoever will carefully study it, will find not merely the exposition of his method, but views stretching into the heights and depths, not only of our own nature but of the nature and life of the Universe in which we move, thoughts which stamp the mind of Bacon as one of the most capacious, many-sided, and profound that ever appeared.

Next to Bacon's we should place the prose writings of John Milton (b., 1608; d., 1674) in general importance and intellectual greatness. As Bacon's were directed to the advancement of true liberty in philosophy, Milton's were directed to the liberation of the Church and State from the tyranny of king and custom. His "Areopagitica," a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, is a grand plea for the freedom of the press; his "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," and the "Best Means of Removing Hirelings out of the Church," go to the root of all hierarchical corruption. Besides these, his "Defence of the People of England" in reply to Salmasius, his "Second Defence," in reply to Peter du Moulin, and his "Eikonoklastes" in refutation of the "Eikon BasilikÉ," attributed to Charles I., but written by Dr. Gauden, and others of his prose works, are written in a somewhat stiff but lofty and massive style. They foreshow the great national poet of "Paradise Lost;" and cannot be read without a deep veneration for the great Puritan champion of the liberties and fame of England.

Next to these we should name the great advocates of Protestantism, Hales and Chillingworth. The "Discourse on Schism" is the writing of Hales which brought him into notice, and led to the most important consequences. It struck at the very root of tradition and submission to the authority of the Fathers, which Laud and his party had exerted themselves to establish; and it was followed out by Chillingworth (b., 1602; d., 1644) in his "The Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation." In this work, which has since been styled the "bulwark of Protestantism," Chillingworth endeavoured to prove the Divine authority of the Bible on the basis of historic evidence, and having done that to his satisfaction, he declared that the religion of Protestants was the Bible, and nothing but the Bible. By this rule alone they are, in his opinion, to be judged; the Scriptures alone are to be the standard of their doctrines. He thus cut off all the claims of Popery built on tradition, and established the right of private judgment. In this he served not only the Established Church, to which he belonged, but every body of Christians whatever; for they had, according to his reasoning, the same right to interpret the Bible for themselves. This gave great scandal to the bigoted party in the Church. They declared that he had destroyed faith by reducing it to simple reason. He was violently attacked by both Catholics and Puritans. Knott, a Jesuit, and Dr. Cheynell, one of the Assembly of Divines, were his most determined opponents. Cheynell wrote against him, "Chillingworthi Novissima; or, the Sickness, Heresy, Death, and Burial of W. C., with a Profane Catechism selected out of his Works." Not satisfied with this, he attended his funeral, made a violent harangue against him, and flung the "Religion of Protestants" into his grave, crying, "Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious souls—get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book, earth to earth, dust to dust, go and rot with thy author." The Protestant Church has fully acknowledged the services of Chillingworth. Even those who deem that there are other evidences of Christianity than the historic evidences, or even the deductions of criticism, admit that his arguments go far to demonstrate the genuineness of the Bible records, and therefore of the Christian religion. The highest encomiums have been paid to the reasoning and eloquence of Chillingworth, by Locke, Clarendon, Gibbon, Dugald Stewart, and all our theological writers.

What Chillingworth did for Protestantism, Cudworth, in his great work, "The True Intellectual System of the Universe," did for religion in general, demolishing most completely the philosophy of atheism and infidelity. Barrow, Henry More, and Jeremy Taylor, added much wealth to the theological literature of the age. More and Barrow belong more properly to the next period. Taylor (b., 1613; d., 1677), who was the son of a barber, became one of the most celebrated preachers of that time, and both his sermons and his other works have received from many of our chief critics and historians the most encomiastic praises. He has been represented as a modern Chrysostom. Much of this praise he undoubtedly deserves, but readers coming to him after such extravagant laudation, experience a sensible disappointment. His "Holy Living and Dying" may be taken as the most favourable specimen of his writings; and though grave, pleasing, and consolatory, it does not strike us by any means as highly or brilliantly eloquent. His sermons, especially on the "Marriage Ring" and on the "House of Feasting," are of the same character. They are full of piety, sweetness, and grace, but they are not eloquence of the highest class. His sentences are often wearyingly long, his illustrations do not always appear very pertinent, and his manner is too much that of the father of the fourth century, whom he appears to have greatly formed himself upon.

The writings of Archbishop Ussher and the sermons of Bishop Andrews deserve mention; but the works of Thomas Fuller, the author of the "Worthies of England," "The Church History of Great Britain," "The Holy and Profane States," and other books, are undoubtedly the most witty and amusing of the whole period. Next to Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," a work, too, of this time, they have furnished to modern authors more original ideas, more frequent and pregnant sentiments and allusions than any others in the language. They have been rivers of thought to men who had very little of their own. Harrington's "Oceana"—a political romance, written to illustrate the opinion that the great power of nations consists in their property—has ideas to repay a reader who has leisure and patience. A writer who has always taken a high rank for originality is Sir Thomas Browne, the author of "Religio Medici," "Urn Burial," "The Garden of Cyrus," etc. Browne ranges freely from the "quincunx" of the gardens of the ancients to the highest flights of metaphysical speculation. He is quaint, abrupt, and singular, but at the same time he is extremely suggestive of thought, and extends the sphere of human inquiry and sympathy far beyond the physical limits of most writers of his class. There is also a school of historians of this age of eminent merit, at the head of which stands Sir Walter Raleigh with his "History of the World;" Knowles with his able "History of the Turks;" Daniel with his "History of England" to the reign of Edward III.; and Thomas May, with the "History of the Long Parliament," and his "Breviary of the History of Parliament," two invaluable works. Camden's "Britannia" and "Annals" appeared at this epoch. Various chronicles were also issued at this period—Hall's "Union of the Families of York and Lancaster," Grafton's "Chronicle," Holinshed's, and Baker's. The works of Stow and Speed appeared in the early part of it,—Stow's "Summary of the English Chronicles," in 1565; his "Annals," 1573; his "Flores Historiarum," an enlarged edition of his chronicle, 1600; his "Survey of London," 1598. Speed's "Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain" belongs to 1606; and his "History of Great Britain" to 1614. Besides these appeared the "Memoirs" of Rushworth. Thurloe's and Whitelock's were written, but did not appear till a later period. The commencement of the Long Parliament marked also a remarkable era, that of the first English newspapers, under the name of "Diurnals," or daily records of Parliamentary proceedings. The idea once started, newspapers rapidly spread, so that between the Civil War and the Restoration, nearly two hundred were published, but none more frequently than once a week for some time, nor afterwards oftener than twice or three times a week. It was, moreover, an age of political tracts and pamphlets. In science the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey, and the invention of logarithms by Napier, were the great events of that department. On the whole, the intellectual development of the age was as great and marvellous as was its political advance. To no other modern nation can we point, which in one and the same period has produced three such men as Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, amid a host of lesser, but scarcely less precious lights, at the same time that it was working out one of the most stupendous revolutions in human government, and the imperishable principles of it, that the world has seen. On reviewing this period, well might Wordsworth exclaim:—

And well did he add:—

Some of the eminent musical composers already mentioned (See Vol. II., pp. 378-9) continued to embellish the reign of James. Amongst these were Ford, Ward, Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons. The first three are distinguished for their madrigals, and Weelkes for ballads, which are unrivalled. Ward's "Die not, Fond Man," is still as popular as ever. Gibbons composed both madrigals and cathedral music. He was organist of the Royal Chapel, and was made Doctor of Music by the University of Oxford. The sacred music of Gibbons is enough of itself to exempt England from the often advanced charge of being unmusical. In 1622, Dr. Heyther, a friend of Camden, the antiquary, established a professorship of music at Oxford. Charles I. was not only fond of music, but played himself with considerable skill on the viol da gamba. Dr. William Child, himself an excellent composer, was the organist of his chapel, and Lawes, the friend of Milton, who is referred to in his sonnets and in "Comus," was patronised by him. Lawes was greatly admired, and justly, by other poets, especially Herrick and Waller. Charles I., however, set a bad example, by encouraging foreign musicians instead of his own subjects. He made Lanieri, an Italian, a man in real musical science far inferior to several Englishmen then living, "Master of our Music," and his example was only too diligently followed by princes and nobles in after times.

The rise of the Commonwealth was the fall of music in England. The stern Puritans, and especially the Scottish Presbyterians, who dubbed an organ "a kist o' whistles," denounced all music as profane, and drove organs and orchestras from the churches. Nothing was tolerated but a simple psalm tune. Cromwell, however, did not partake of this fanaticism. He was fond of music, and frequently had musical entertainments at Whitehall and Hampton Court. The great organ which had been pulled out of Magdalen College, Oxford, he had carefully conveyed to Hampton Court, where it was one of his greatest solaces. Under Cromwell the lovers of music brought out their concealed instruments, and there was once more not only domestic enjoyment of music, but open musical parties.

If the Civil War in England was auspicious to liberty, it was disastrous to art. From the time of Henry VIII. the British monarchs had shown a decided taste for the arts. Henry had munificently patronised Holbein, and had made various purchases of foreign chefs-d'oeuvre. Prince Henry inherited the taste of his mother, instead of the coarse buffoonery of his father, and showed a strong attachment to men of genius and to works of genius. He began a collection of paintings, bronzes, and medals, which fell to his brother Charles. Charles was an enthusiast in art, and had he not possessed his fatal passion for despotism, would have introduced a new era in England as regarded intellectual and artistic pursuits. The study of Italian models, both in literature and art, by the aristocracy, enabled the nobles to embrace the tastes of the monarch; and England would soon have seen the fine arts flourishing to a degree which they had never enjoyed before, and which would have prevented the dark ages that succeeded. During Charles's early rule the greatest artists of the Continent flocked over to England, and found a liberal reception there. Rubens, Vandyck, Jansen, Vansomer, Mytens, Diepenbeck, PÖlemberg, Gentileschi, and others visited London, and Vandyck, the greatest of them all, remained permanently. The works of Vandyck, in England, are numerous, and if we except his famous picture of "The Crucifixion" at Mechlin, we possess the best of his productions. At Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Blenheim, Wilton House, and Wentworth House, the bulk of his finest pictures are to be seen. His portraits of our princes and the chief nobility of the time are familiar to all English eyes, and place him only second to Titian in that department. At Wilton House alone there are twenty-five of Vandyck's paintings; the portrait of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, with his family, is declared by Walpole to be itself a school of this master. His dramatic portrait of Strafford and his secretary, Mainwaring, at Wentworth House, Walpole asserts to be his masterpiece. Charles had proposed to him to paint the history of the Order of the Garter on the walls of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, but the sum he demanded—said to be eighty thousand pounds, but more probably a misprint for eight thousand pounds—caused Charles to delay it, and his political troubles soon put an end to the scheme. He painted several pictures of Charles on horseback, one of which is at Windsor, and another at Hampton Court.

Rubens came to England only as an ambassador, but Charles seized the opportunity to get him to paint the apotheosis of James, on the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. This he, however, merely sketched whilst in London and painted it at Antwerp, receiving three thousand pounds for it. The Duke of Buckingham purchased Rubens's private collection of pictures, chiefly of the Italian school, but containing some of his own, for ten thousand pounds. These were sold by the Long Parliament, and now adorn the palaces of the Escurial at Madrid, and the Belvedere at Vienna. The large pictures in the latter gallery, "St. Francis Xavier preaching to the Indians," and "Loyola casting out Devils," are amongst the very finest of his productions.

Charles, besides making collections, and drawing round him great artists, projected the establishment of an academy of arts on a princely scale. But this remained only an idea, through the breaking out of the Revolution. Parliament, in 1645, caused all such pictures at Whitehall as contained any representation of the Saviour or the Virgin to be burnt, and the rest to be sold. Fortunately there were persons in power who had more rational notions, and much was saved. Cromwell himself secured the cartoons of Raphael for three hundred pounds, and thus preserved them to the nation, and as soon as he had the authority, he put a stop to the sale of the royal collections, and even detained many pictures that had been sold.

The native artists of this period were chiefly pupils of Rubens or Vandyck. Jamesone, called the Scottish Vandyck, was a pupil of Rubens at the same time with Vandyck—Charles sat to him. William Dobson, a pupil of Vandyck, was serjeant-painter to Charles, and Robert Walker, of the Vandyck school, was Cromwell's favourite painter, to whom we owe several admirable portraits of the Protector. There were also several miniature painters of the highest merit—the two Olivers, Hoskins, and Cooper.

Up to this period engravings had become by no means prominent in England. That there had been engravers we know from various books having been illustrated by them. Geminus and Humphrey Lloyd were employed by Ortelius, of Antwerp, on his "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum." Aggas had executed a great plan of London, and Saxon county maps. Various Flemish and French engravers found employment, as Vostermans, De Voerst, and Peter Lombard. Hollar, a Bohemian, was employed extensively till the outbreak of the Civil War, and illustrated Dugdale and other writers. But the chief English engraver of this period was John Payne.

Sculpture was by no means in great advance at this period. There were several foreign artists employed in England on tombs and monuments, but as they did not at that date put their names upon them, it is difficult to attribute to every man his own. Amongst these Le Soeur, who executed the equestrian statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross, Angier, and Du Val were the chief. John Stone, master mason to the king, was by far the most skilful native sculptor. Amongst his best efforts are the monuments of Sir George Holles at Westminster, and the statue of Sir Finnes Holles, also at Westminster. Sir Dudley Carleton's tomb at Westminster, and Sutton's tomb at the Charterhouse are also his. But the greatest boon to sculpture was the introduction at this period, by the Earl of Arundel, of the remains of ancient art, hence called the Arundel Marbles.

This was the epoch of the commencement of classical architecture. The grand old Anglo-Gothic had run its course. It fell with the Catholic Church, or continued only in a mongrel and degraded state, showing continually the progress of its decline. From Henry VIII. to James this state of things continued; the miserable tasteless style, which succeeded the downfall of the picturesque Tudor, being the only architecture. The change to the classical was destined to be made by Inigo Jones, whose is the great name of this period. Jones had studied in Italy, and became aware of the graceful style which Vitruvius had introduced by modulation of the ancient Greek and Roman, and which Palladio had raised to perfection. The merit of Jones is that he imported Palladio's style substantially and completely, ready as it was to his hands, and wholly unknown in England. By this means Jones acquired a reputation for genius to which nothing that he has left justifies his claim. He was first engaged in designing the scenery and machinery of the masques which Ben Jonson wrote for the queen of James I. He was appointed architect to the queen and Prince Henry. On the death of the prince he went back to Italy, but on his return to London he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Royal Buildings. The first thing which he planned was the design for an immense palace for James on the site of Whitehall. There is a simple grandeur in the drawings of it which are left, which may fairly entitle him to a reputation for the introduction of an elegant domestic architecture, although it does not warrant the extravagant terms of eulogy which have been lavished on him. The only portion of this palace which was built is the Banqueting House (afterwards the Chapel Royal) at Whitehall, being the termination of the great faÇade, and which contains nothing very remarkable. Jones added a chapel to Somerset House, and a west front to St. Paul's, neither of which remains. That he was far from having conceived the true principles of architecture was shown by the fact that his west front of Old St. Paul's was a classical one engrafted on a Gothic building, and this solecism he was continually repeating. One of the most glaring instances of the kind is a classical screen which he raised in the Norman Cathedral of Durham. Amongst the chief remaining buildings of Inigo Jones from which an idea of his talent may be drawn, are the Piazza and St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, of which Quatremere de Quincy says that the most remarkable thing about it is the reputation that it enjoys; Ashburnham House, Westminster; a house on the west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields originally built for the Earl of Lindsay; an addition to St. John's College, Oxford; and by far his finest work,—if his it be, which is doubtful—Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh. He also superintended the erection of Old Greenwich Palace.

The general aspect of the towns and streets remained the same at this period as in the former. James issued proclamation after proclamation, ordering the citizens to leave off the half-timbered style, and build the fronts, at least, entirely of brick or stone; but this was little attended to, and many a strange old fabric continued to show the fashions of past ages.

If we are to believe the memoir writers and dramatists of this period, the national manners and morals had suffered a decided deterioration. Licentious as was the court of Queen Elizabeth, there was a certain dignity and outward decorum preserved, but James introduced such coarseness and grossness of manner, such low debauch and buffoonery, that even the salutary restraint which fashion had imposed was stripped away, and all classes exhibited the most revolting features. In the reign of Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, we had such women as the daughters of Sir Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, Catherine Parr, and others, who cultivated literature and philosophy, the Queens Mary and Elizabeth themselves setting the example in reading and translating the most illustrious classical authors. But after James came in, notwithstanding all his learned pedantry, you hear nothing more of such tastes amongst the Court ladies, and it is very singular that amid that blaze of genius which distinguished the time under review, we find no traces of feminine genius there. On the contrary, both English dramatists and foreign writers describe the morals and manners of women of rank as almost destitute of delicacy and probity. They are described as mingling with gentlemen in taverns amid tobacco smoke, songs, and conversation of the most ribald character. They allowed liberties which would startle women of the lowest rank in these times, were desperate gamblers, and those who had the opportunity were wholesale dealers in political influence. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, boasts of the effect of the bribes that he was accustomed to distribute amongst them. Whilst such women as the infamous and murderous Countess of Essex and the Dowager Countess Villiers were the leading stars of the Court, the tone of morals must have been low indeed. Whilst the ladies were of this stamp, we cannot expect the gentlemen to have been better, and there is no doubt but that the honours and wealth and royal favour heaped on such men as Somerset, Hay, Ramsay, and Buckingham, made debauchery and villainy quite fashionable. The character of Englishmen on their travels, Howell tells us, was expressed in an Italian proverb:—

"An Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate." This was said of the debauched conduct of our young men on their travels. At home they were a contemptible mixture of foppery and profanity. Buckingham and the other favourites led the way. We have recorded the audacious behaviour of Buckingham at the courts of France and Spain, and the enormous foppery of his apparel. He had a dress of uncut white velvet, covered all over with diamonds, valued at eighty thousand pounds, a great feather of diamonds, another dress of purple satin covered with pearls, valued at twenty thousand pounds, and his sword, girdle, hatbands, and spurs were thickly studded with diamonds. He had, besides these, five-and-twenty other dresses of great richness, and his numerous attendants imitated him according to their means. They began now to patch their faces with black plaister, because the officers who had served in the German wars wore such to cover their scars; and the ladies did the same. Duelling was now introduced, cheating at play was carried to an immense extent, and the dandy effeminacy of the Cavaliers was unexampled. They had the utmost contempt of all below them, and any attempt to assume the style or courtesies of address which they appropriated to themselves was resented as actual treason. The term "Master" or "Mr." was used only to great merchants or commoners of distinction; and to address such as "gentlemen" or "esquires" would have roused all the ire of the aristocracy. In proceeding through the streets at night, courtiers were conducted with torches, merchants with links, and mechanics with lanthorns.

We may imagine the feeling with which the sober and religious Puritans beheld all this, and the proud contempt with which their strictures were received. When the Civil War broke out, which was a war of religious reform as much as of political, the Puritans displayed a grave manner, a sober dress, and chastened style of speech; and the Cavaliers, in defiance and contempt, swore, drank, and indulged in debauchery all the more, to mark their superiority to the "sneaking Roundhead dogs."

Charles endeavoured to restrain this loose and indecent spirit, but it was too strong for him; and though the Puritans put it effectually down during the Commonwealth, it came back in a flood with the lewd and ribald Charles II. Charles I. also introduced a more tasteful style of Court pageants and festivities. Under James all the old fantastic masques and pageantries—in which heathen gods, goddesses, satyrs, and giants figured—prevailed. Charles gave to his pageantries a more classical character, but when the Puritans came in they put them all down, along with Maypoles, and all the wakes, and church-ales, and the like, which James had encouraged by his "Book of Sports." The Court festivals, so long as the monarchy remained, were marked by all the profusion, displays of jewellery, and dresses of cloth of gold and embroidery, which prevailed in the Tudor times. The old-fashioned country life, in which the gentlemen hunted and hawked, and the ladies spent their leisure in giving bread to the poor and making condiments, preserves, and distilled waters, was rapidly deserted during the gay days of James and Charles, and the fortune-making of favourites.

Merchants and shopkeepers were growing rich, and though they still conducted their businesses in warehouses which would appear mean and miserable to City men of to-day, and in shops with open fronts, before which the master or one of his apprentices constantly paraded, crying, "What d'ye lack?" had stately suburban houses, and vied with the nobles in their furniture and mode of living. The moral condition of the people of London at this period, according to all sorts of writers, was something inconceivably frightful. The apprentices, as we have seen, were a turbulent and excitable race, who had assumed a right to settle political matters, or to avenge any imagined attack on their privileges. At the cry of "Clubs!" they seized their clubs and swords and rushed into the streets to ascertain what was amiss. They were easily led by their ringleaders against any body or any authority that was supposed to be invading popular rights. We have seen them surrounding the Parliament House, demanding such measures as they pleased, and executing their notions of suitable chastisement of offenders by setting fire to Laud's house, and breaking down the benches of the High Commission Court. They were equally ready to encounter and disperse the constabulary or the City Guard, and to fight out their quarrels with the Templars, or others with whom they were at feud.

The riots of the apprentices, however, had generally something of a John-Bullish assertion of right and justice in them; but the streets and alleys of London were infested with an equally boisterous and much more villainous crew of thieves and cut-purses. Pocket-picking was then, as now, taught as a science, and was carried to a wonderful perfection of dexterity. All kinds of rogueries were practised on country people, the memory of which remains yet in rural districts, and is still believed applicable to the metropolis. These vagabonds had their retreats about the Savoy and the brick-kilns of Islington, but their headquarters were in a part of Whitefriars called Alsatia, which possessed the right of sanctuary and swarmed with debtors, thieves, bullies, and every kind of miscreants, ready on an alarm, made by the sound of a horn, to turn out in mobs and defend their purlieus from constables and sheriffs' officers. Walking the streets in the daytime was dangerous from the affrays often going on between the apprentices and the students of the Temple, or between the butchers and weavers, or from the rude jostling and practical jokes of bullies and swashbucklers; but at night there was no safety except under a strong guard. Then Alsatia, the Savoy, and the numerous other dens of vice and violence, poured forth their myrmidons, and after nine o'clock there was no safety for quiet passengers. If we add to this description the narrowness of the roads and alleys, the unpaved and filthy state of the streets, and undrained and ill-ventilated houses, London was anything at this period but an attractive place. The plague was a frequent visitant, and we are told that kites and ravens were much kept to devour the offal and filth of the streets, instead of scavengers. In the country, things were not much better. The roads were terrible, and were infested by sturdy bands of robbers. In the neighbourhood of London, Finchley, Blackheath, Wimbledon, and Shooter's Hill were places of widespread fame for daring highwaymen. It was high time for the Puritans to come into power, and to put both town and country under a more wholesome discipline. Cromwell's soldiers, quartered in various parts of the metropolis, and his major-generals administering martial law in different parts of the country, soon altered the face of things. He shut up Spring Gardens, a place of nocturnal resort for assignations for traffickers in political corruption, and for various licentiousness; and instead of fellows prowling about the streets with sweetmeats in their pockets to kidnap children, and sell them to the plantations, he sent these scoundrels freely thither themselves. Amongst the gloomy features of this period was the relentless persecution of old women, under the belief that they were witches; a practice commenced by James, but continued by the Puritans, who sent out Hopkins, the notorious witchfinder, who, in the years 1645 and 1646, traversed the country, condemning and putting to death hundreds of them, till he himself was accused of being a wizard, and was subjected to the same fate. From 1640 to the Restoration, four thousand persons are said to have perished under charge of witchcraft. In Scotland this terrible practice was carried on with even aggravated cruelties, in order to extort confession.

The sports of the aristocracy, gentry, and merchants were much the same that they had been hitherto. Hunting was the favourite pastime of James, and therefore was not likely to be neglected by the country gentry. He was also fond of hawking, and kept alive that pastime, which was dying out, some time longer. Ball games had much superseded the jousts and tournaments of other days. Tennis retained its high favour, and billiards and pall-mall, or striking a ball through a ring suspended to a pole, were becoming fashionable. Bowling, cards, dice, dancing, masques, balls, and musical entertainments varied town life. The common people stuck to their foot-ball, quoits, pitching the bar, cricket, shovel-board, bull- and bear-baiting, and cock-fighting. The Puritans put down May-games, Whitsun-ales, morrice-dances, and all amusements that savoured of a Catholic origin. They also humanely suppressed, as far as they could, the savage sports of bear and bull-baiting. Pride and Hewson killed all the bears at the bear-garden to put an end to that cruel pastime, and thence originated Butler's "Hudibras." The bowling-greens of the English were famous, and horse-racing was much in vogue. In Scotland the Reformation put to flight all sorts of games, dancing, and merry-makings, as sinful and unbecoming of Christians, and polemic discussions were the only excitements which relieved the ascetic gloom.

The interiors of houses were in this period greatly embellished, and the splendour of hangings of beds and windows had strikingly increased. Rich velvets and silks embroidered with cloth of gold and cloth of silver, and coloured satins of the most gorgeous hues abounded. The cushions of couches and chairs were equally costly, and instead of the ancient tapestry, paper and leather hangings, richly stamped and gilt, covered the walls. The Flemish artists had been called in to paint the ceilings with historical or mythological scenes, and on the walls hung the masterpieces of Flemish and Italian art. Carpets were beginning to supersede rushes on the floors, but were more commonly used as coverings for tables. In addition to the carved cabinets of oak, ebony, and ivory, and the richly-covered cushioned and high-backed chairs of the Tudor dynasty, Flemish and Dutch furniture of somewhat formal but still elegant design abounded. Superb ornaments of ivory and china had found their way from the East, and became heirlooms in great mansions. Altogether, the houses of the wealthy of those times presented a scene of stately elegance and luxury that has not since been surpassed.

The costume of the reign of James was but a continuation of that of Elizabeth. The men still wore the stiff plated ruff, occasionally varied by a plain horizontal one with lace on its edges. The long peasecod-bellied doublet continued, and the large stuffed Gallic or Venetian hose, slashed and quilted, had assumed more preposterous dimensions from James's timidity; he having both these and the doublets quilted to resist the stabs of the stiletto. Towards the end of his reign a change was noticeable. Instead of the long-waisted doublet there were short jackets, with false hanging sleeves behind; the trunk hose were covered with embroidered straps, tucked short at the thigh, and the hose gartered below the knee. We are told how they covered their cloaks and dresses with jewels on State occasions. They wore feathers at such times in their hats. Taylor, the Water Poet, says the gallants of his time

The old cloth stockings were obsolete, and stockings of silk, thread, or worsted used.

The ladies of the Court were still in the stiff Elizabethan farthingale, elevated collar, and hair dressed in the lofty style. Anne of Denmark was Elizabeth over again. But in domestic life we find the ladies attired in a far more natural style, without the farthingale, with falling collars, plain or edged with lace, and the hair with ringlets falling on each side; and this simple and more elegant fashion became at length universal in Charles's reign.

The male costume of Charles's time was extremely elegant. At the commencement of the Civil War no contrast could be greater than that of the appearance of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. The Cavalier dress consisted of a doublet of silk, satin, or velvet, with large loose sleeves slashed up the front, the collar covered by a falling band of the richest point lace, with Vandyck edging. The long breeches, fringed or pointed met the tops of the wide boots, which were also commonly ruffled with lace or lawn. A broad Flemish beaver hat, with a rich hatband and plume of feathers, was set on one side of the head, and a Spanish rapier hung from a most magnificent baldrick, or sword belt, worn sash-wise over the right shoulder, and on one shoulder was worn a short cloak with an air of carelessness. In war this short cloak was exchanged generally for the buff coat, which was also richly laced, and sometimes embroidered with gold and silver, and round the waist was worn a broad silk or satin scarf tied in a large bow behind or over the hip; or a buff jerkin without sleeves was worn over the doublet, and the lace or lawn on the boots dispensed with. The beard was worn very peaked, with small upturned moustaches, and the hair long and flowing on the shoulders. In contrast to this the Parliamentarians wore their hair cut short—whence the name of Roundhead—and studied a sober cut and colour of clothes. The first appearance of Cromwell in Parliament, described by Sir Philip Warwick, has been taken as a sufficient specimen of his costume when Protector. But Cromwell was then but a gentleman-farmer, and appeared in careless rustic habit. "I came one morning into the House," says Warwick, "well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His hat was without a hatband." But no one knew better than Cromwell what was necessary to the decorum of station, and very different is the account of his appearance when going to be sworn Protector. "His Highness was in a plain but rich suit, black velvet, with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold."

The ladies' dresses of Charles's time rapidly changed from the stiff ruffs and farthingales to a more natural and elegant style. With Mrs. Turner, their introducer, went out in James's time the yellow starch ruffs and bands, for she appeared, when hanged for her share in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, in her own yellow ornaments at the gallows. But all ruffs grew obsolete in Charles's reign, and a lady of that day would scarcely be distinguished from a lady of this. The hair was dressed much as in modern manner, the dress fell naturally without hoops, and the broad collar lay gracefully on the shoulders. The citizens' and Puritans' wives, as well as country women, wore the broad high-crowned hat, and country women appeared still in plaited ruff, and a muffler over the mouth in cold weather, tied up to the back of the head. A lady had generally her feather fan in her hand, as the modern one has her parasol.

Armour was fast disappearing; it was of little use against cannon and matchlocks. James thought armour a very good invention, for it hindered a man as much from hurting his enemy as it defended himself. But in his time little but a cuirass for the body and a helmet or bonnet was used. To the rest for the heavy matchlock in this reign was affixed a long rapier blade, called a "swine's feather," or "bristle," and used as a soldier now uses the bayonet. In the Civil War most of the officers wore only a cuirass over a buff coat; and though some of the infantry were almost fully sheathed in armour, it was soon found to be too cumbersome for rapid movements, and with the exception of the cuirassiers, who were clad in armour except the legs, they were seldom defended by more than a back- and breast-plate, and a head-piece. During the war the cavalry was divided into cuirassiers, lancers, arquebusiers, carbineers, and dragoons, according to the different weapon or armour which they carried,—the cuirass, the lance, the musket, the heavy arquebus, the carbine, or the dragon, a sort of blunderbuss. At this period the firelock was introduced by the poultry-stealers of Holland, and called after them the snaphance, or hen-stealer. The superiority of the flint-lock over the match- or cumbrous wheel-lock was soon seen and adopted.

The moral condition of the people, as we have just seen, was at this period deplorable. The neglect of education left the bulk of the working class ignorant and depraved, and the long peace which the reigns of Elizabeth and James maintained had so greatly augmented the wealth and prosperity of the nation, that the insolence of illiterate abundance added to the public exhibition of rudeness and riot. In one respect, however, the whole people had become enlightened—they had learned very extensively their political rights. The rise and opulence of the merchants and middle classes, through commerce and through the confiscation of Church lands, had impressed them with a feeling of their importance, and led them no longer to bow and cringe before the nobles, but to claim their proper authority as the third, and, indeed, the greatest estate. From the time when Henry VIII. set agoing discussions regarding religious liberty, and permitted the Bible to appear in good plain English, the light which sprang up on the subject of human rights was wonderful, and could never be withdrawn or extinguished. The mistake, as regarded royal prerogative, was soon seen, and an endeavour was made to limit the reading of the Bible to the nobles and the learned only, but it was in vain. Those who had the Scriptures soon spread abroad knowledge of their great principles, and as the Stuart government was daily found to be weaker, the sense of popular right was growing stronger and more general. So soon as Parliament began to resist the encroachments of the Crown, and even to do it with arms in their hands, it became necessary to convince the people at large that their rights were at stake, and to explain what these rights were. Such knowledge as this could never be taken back again, and accordingly from this period the principle that all power proceeds from the people and exists for the people, became the great fixed sentiment of the nation.

The physical condition of the kingdom, therefore, during the reign of James, was evidently much improved, and almost justifies the glowing description of Clarendon, made to set off the mischiefs of resistance to royalty. "For twelve years before the meeting of the Long Parliament," he says, "the kingdom enjoyed the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people, in any age, for so long a time together, had been blessed with, to the wonder and envy of all other parts of Christendom." It was inevitable that much of this prosperity must be overthrown, or rather interrupted by a ten years' fierce contest, like that which arose between the Crown and the people. That the people were not only severely pressed by taxation to support this contest, but that they were harassed, plundered, and had their agricultural operations impeded, and their crops destroyed by the combatants is certain. Consequently, during the great struggle, the price of country produce rose extremely. Wheat, which in the early part of Charles's reign was as low as 44s. a quarter, rose after 1640 to 73s.; to 85s. in 1648; and in 1649 it was 80s.; but no sooner was the Commonwealth established, and peaceful operations were renewed, than it fell as rapidly, being, in 1650, 76s. 8d., and falling so much that in 1654 it was down to 26s. This was the lowest, and it averaged during the remainder of the Protectorate, 45s., as nearly as possible its price at the commencement of the war. Other articles of life rose and fell from the same causes in the same proportion; the prices of the following articles, except during the War, may be regarded as the average ones for this period:—A fat cygnet, about 8s.; pheasants, from 5s. to 6s.; turkeys, 3s. to 4s.; fat geese, 2s. each; ducks, 8d.; best fatted capons, 2s. 4d.; hens, 1s.; pullets, 1s. 6d.; rabbits, 7d.; a dozen pigeons, 6s.; eggs, three for 1d.; fresh butter, 6d. per pound. Vegetables, being so little cultivated, were very dear: cauliflowers, 1s. 6d. each; potatoes, 2s. per pound; onions, leeks, carrots, and potherbs, dear, but not quite so high-priced. Mutton and beef were about 3-1/2d. per pound. The wages of servants hired by the year and kept, were, for a farm servant man, from 20s. to 50s. a year, according to his qualifications; those obtaining more than 40s. were expected to be able to do all the skilled work, as mowing, threshing, thatching, making ricks, hedging, and killing cattle and pigs for daily consumption. Women servants, who could bake, brew, dress meat, make malt, etc., obtained about 26s. a year, and other women servants, according to age and ability, from that sum down to 14s. a year. A bailiff obtained 52s. Labourers, or artisans hired by the day, during harvest, had, a mower, 5d. a day and his food; a reaper, haymaker, hedger, or ditcher, 4d.; a woman reaper, 3d.; a woman haymaker, 2d.; if no food was given these sums were doubled. At other times labourers received from Easter to Michaelmas, 3d. a day with food, or 7d. without; and from Michaelmas to Easter, 2d. with food, and 6d. without. Carpenters and bricklayers received 8d. a day with meat, or 1s. without; sawyers, 6d. with meat, or 1s. without; and other handicrafts nearly the same, through the year till Michaelmas, after that much less.

The great extension of foreign commerce, and the introduction of coffee, spices, cottons, and other new tropical produce, increased the comfort of domestic life. Yet, with all this prosperity, there still abounded much pauperism and vagabondism. The war naturally had this consequence—great numbers of the dispersed Cavaliers and royal troopers taking to the highways, and to a loose and predatory life. Many parishes, too, were not disposed to burden themselves with the imposition of the poor laws, which had been strengthened by various enactments since the 43rd of Elizabeth, and they therefore drove out of their boundaries the unemployed to seek work elsewhere. This but increased the vagabondism and pilfering, and time alone could enable the Government to bring the poor-law into general operation.

GREAT SEAL OF CHARLES II.