Internal troubles in Russia, such as the taking of Moscow by the Tartars, caused the Company a loss of 400,000 roubles. Pirates in the Baltic, and other misfortunes, greatly reduced the Company, but they persevered in their voyages of discovery, once more attempting the north-east passage, which was expected to do so much for them. They did not succeed, but they discovered the deep sea fisheries, and they brought home immense quantities of fish-oil and of dried salmon. They suffered from the Dutch, who followed in their wake; they obtained from the King of Denmark permission to put in at any of his seaports in Iceland or Norway; they lost their exclusive rights in Russia, but only for a time; they found themselves cut out by the Dutch, whose vessels carried more merchandise; with the authority of James the First, they sent armed vessels and seized on Spitzbergen in the King’s name, calling it King James’s Newland. They had to fight for their conquest, driving off Dutch, French, and Biscay sail with four English “interlopers.” The Dutch, however, would not admit the pretensions of Crown or Company, sending their ships protected by men-of-war to fish, despite the protests of the English. There was fighting in the high latitudes for some years, while even the English ports refused to recognise the exclusive right of the Company. Finally, the whales became so scarce about Spitzbergen that the trade ceased to be worth fighting about.

We will continue the history of the Company in brief, though it runs far beyond the limits of our period. In the year 1620 the route by the Caspian was reopened by Hobbs, an agent to the Company, who took that way from Moscow to Ispahan. In 1623 a new treaty was concluded between James the First and the Czar, in which privileges, but not exclusive rights, were conferred upon the Company. A deadly blow was inflicted on the Company by the execution of Charles, an event naturally viewed by all sovereigns with the deepest indignation. The English merchants, who were masters of the Russian trade, were driven out and supplanted by the Dutch; and it was not until the year 1669 that the Company was allowed to trade with Russia on the same footing as the Dutch.

The real importance of the Company was decaying when it admitted any one as a member on payment of a fine of £5. The conveyance of raw silk from Persia through Russia remained their privilege until troubles broke out in Persia in 1746, which stopped the trade; they still carried on their trade with Archangel, but when the Baltic became a peaceful highway, this shorter route to Russia destroyed the Archangel trade. The Russia Company did not, it is true, acquire for the British Empire any accession of territory; but its services in exploring new routes, opening up new lines of trade, putting Great Britain into communication with foreign powers previously strangers, can hardly be exaggerated, while it fostered and encouraged and developed that spirit of enterprise, adventure, and restlessness which, since the seventeenth century, has covered half the globe with one people and one religion.

A distinction must be drawn between “regulated companies” and Joint-Stock Companies. In the former, every man traded for himself, subject to the regulations of the Company, like a Guild. In the “Russia,” “Turkey,” and “Eastland” Companies no one but a member could carry on that kind of trade. In the Joint-Stock Companies shareholders need not be traders and could sell or transfer their shares.

The Eastland Company was first chartered in 1579. It was privileged to enjoy the sole trade over all those parts of the Baltic shore which did not belong to the Russia Company. Now there had been carried on, from time immemorial, a trade with the Baltic ports by private adventurers who wanted no charter. Many of these, no doubt, took up their membership with the new Company, but there were some who would not, or could not. These traders, driven away from their own markets, made loud complaints, in reply to which a proclamation was issued ordering that no one outside the Company was to export to these parts the merchandise in which the Eastland Company traded; provided always that the importation of corn and grain was left free. The provision looks like a compromise, but when we ask how corn and grain were to be imported except in ships, and that, if these ships were English, they would hardly go out in ballast, one fails to see that the enemies of the Eastlanders got much by their proclamation. In 1672 the whole of Scandinavia was thrown open to all comers; and the entrance-fee to the Company was reduced to £2. The opinion of Sir Josiah Child probably settled the fate of the Company. He said that the Eastland Company had only enabled the Dutch to get ten times as much trade in the Baltic as was carried on by the English.

In the year 1581 the Turkey Company received its Charter from Queen Elizabeth. It was a Charter for a limited time, seven years, and it could be revoked at a year’s notice. The Company began very well; they built large and strong ships to face the storms of the Bay, for which they received the thanks of the Council; they introduced eastern commodities at a much cheaper price; but they sometimes paid dearly for their cargoes when they had to fight the corsairs of Barbary and the galleys of Spain, and to face the fiercest animosity of the Venetians. In 1583 some of the agents of the Company, stationed at the Aleppo House, made their way with merchandise to Bagdad, to the Persian Gulf, and thence to India and the Far East. They obtained, therefore, a new Charter giving them power to trade over India as well as the Sultan’s dominions. The entrance-fee was fixed at £25 for persons under twenty-six years of age, at £50 for those over twenty-six, and at £1 for apprentices.

The Company now became extremely prosperous, carrying on a most extensive trade. This trade, by a later order under Charles II., was kept entirely in the hands of the City of London, no one, unless a resident and a freeman, being admitted into the Company. On the foundation of the East India Company there arose disputes as to the infringement of rights. This quarrel ended without any decision.

The trade of the Turkey Company declined during the seventeenth century from many causes, one of which was the rivalry of the French and their success in underselling the English goods. The Company finally closed its history in the year 1825.

The Levant Company was another trading Company established under Elizabeth. By opening up direct communication with the Levant, England procured all the productions of the East without the intervention of Venice. Only one more vessel was sent to London from Venice after the establishment of the Company, and this with a rich cargo and many passengers was wrecked and destroyed on the Isle of Wight.

For the repulse of the Spanish Armada, London contributed thirty-eight vessels, and the Society of Merchant Adventurers, ten. In 1591, or perhaps in 1589, the first voyage from London to the East Indies was undertaken. The expedition of 1591 consisted of three ships, of which one was never heard of again; and the other two lost many men from sickness. The expedition, however, led to the formation of the East India Company in a.d. 1600, with a capital of £72,000 in 1440 shares of £50 each. Their first fleet, consisting of five ships and 480 men, reached Sumatra and the Straits of Malacca, where they captured a Portuguese ship of 900 tons laden with calicoes. They settled a factory at Bantam and sailed homewards, returning to port in two years and seven months after starting.

The trade of the country was greatly advanced by the immigration of many Flemings, Dutch, Walloons, and French Huguenots, who brought over with them their own trades. They were judiciously distributed about the country, care being taken that they should neither interfere with the trade of the place nor crowd too much together. Thus at Sandwich alone there were 350 Flemish families in the year 1582; they carried on the manufactory of bags. In Norwich, Dutch and Walloons settled and made serges and silks and bombazines. Bone lace was taken to Honiton from Antwerp. In London the Flemings settled at Bermondsey, where they made felt hats and did joiners’ work; at Bow, where they had dye-works; at Wandsworth, where they worked in brass; at Mortlake and Fulham, where they made tapestry. In other places workers in steel and iron, window-glass painters, cloth fullers, cloth-makers, and many other craftsmen were planted and carried on profitable industries. Among other things, sail-making was introduced into England for the first time. The pawnbroker’s shop was also opened in this reign. It began with the establishment of seven banks in as many towns, to be known as “Banks for the relief of Common Necessity,” which should lend money on pledges. This Bank is alluded to by Shakespeare when Sir John Falstaff urges his hostess to pawn her cups and her hangings. “Glass,” he says, “glass is your only drinking: and for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal or the Germans hunting in water work, is worth a thousand of these bed hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries.”

The monopoly system by which the Court rewarded favourites at the expense of trade and the people was regarded by Elizabeth with favour, as an easy way of bestowing favours costing herself nothing. Many of her monopolies she withdrew as manifestly injurious to trade, yet she left many which weighed heavily upon the enterprise of the country. These monopolies were multiplied in the next two reigns, and greatly assisted to bring about the unpopularity of Charles.

Cunningham is of opinion that the borrowing of money for trading purposes was not a common practice; he bases this opinion on the very high rate of interest demanded by the usurer. There can be no doubt that usury was strictly forbidden by the Church, by the Ordinances of the City of London, and by public opinion. Yet a case quoted by him (Growth of Trade, p. 325) shows that men not only wanted to borrow from time to time, but that Christians, not Jews, were willing to lend on interest. In that case the lender wanted interest for a loan of £10 for three months, which amounted to 80 per cent per annum. The usurer could not get his claim allowed. Yet it is difficult to understand how business could be carried on at all except in an elementary way, if there was neither credit nor borrowing. But was the rate of interest too high for trading on borrowed money? There is every reason to believe that the profits of trade were enormous. Malyns, in his Centre of the Circle of Commerce, gives a table showing the profits of the trade in spices, silk, indigo, etc., early in the seventeenth century. They range from 150 to 250 per cent, i.e. goods bought at £100 would sell for £250 up to £350. Of course there must be set off against this apparently huge profit, losses by wrecks and pirates and the expense of the shipping. Borrowing, Cunningham thinks, was necessary to meet taxation. Since taxes were not regular, but irregular; and could not be provided for because no one knew when a tallage would be imposed or how large a percentage would be demanded, the merchant or the landowner, though perfectly solvent, might not be able to lay his hand at once on the amount demanded. A person of to-day whose estate might be worth £120,000 would find it, very possibly, difficult to meet, within a few days, the King’s demand of one-fifteenth, that is £8000. If he could not realise in time he must borrow. If all the usury was confined to the lending of money to meet a sudden tax, or to a monastery for the building of a church, or for a baron to raise a force, what becomes of the popular hatred of the Jews, first as money-lenders, and of the Caursini and the Italians who were licensed by the Pope, next? And if there was no borrowing by the merchants, what was the meaning of that crowd which, after the massacre of the Jews in York Castle, rushed to the Cathedral, where they brought out the Jews’ bonds—their own bonds—and burned them all? Cunningham, in a note, enumerates the demands of certain Russians against the Jews of the present day. These demands express the popular belief concerning their practice, not the truth. One would most unwillingly accept prejudice for proof, especially in the case of the race which has endured so much prejudice for so many centuries. Cunningham says, very justly, that the real objection against the Jews was that they made their money by lending it on security, which left them no risks which could be foreseen. The common people, however, did not understand the objection; they saw that the Jews practised a trade which the Church and the State would not allow to Christians; they saw that the Jews grew rich rapidly; that they were protected by the King; that they waxed insolent and sometimes insulted the Christian religion; and if they lent a Christian money they demanded an enormous, a ruinous, interest for it. Deep, indeed, must have been the popular hatred of the Jews, since Shakespeare could stir the blood of his audience by the spectacle of a Jewish usurer, three hundred years after there had been Jews in the land.

The business of the daily life, as well as that of the mercantile life, cannot, in fact, be carried on without money-lending. Works cannot be undertaken; credit cannot be secured; cargoes cannot be bought; ships cannot be laden; unless money can be obtained by advance. The banishment of the Jews; the disappearance of the Italians; took away the usurers and money-lenders by profession. There were as yet no banks to make advances on security; and money-lending was still, as it remains to this day, an occupation held in the greatest loathing. The money-lender, therefore, disguised his calling. Thus Hall (Society in the Elizabethan Age) furnishes a sketch of the usurer of the period. His name was George Stoddart; by trade he was ostensibly a grocer, but really a money-lender. His bargains took the form of bets. Thus he sends J. Klynt his furred nightgown for 4s. 5d., to be paid on the day of Klynt’s marriage: he gives R. Leds a ring called a ryboys, which he values at £1:13:4, to be paid on the day of his marriage or else at his hour of death. For a rapier he charges 40d., to be paid at his day of marriage or else not. He gives a man £400 on the condition that during his lifetime the borrower shall pay him £80 a year. He lived for ten years, and so doubled that small capital of £400. It would be interesting to know what, if any, great City fortunes were made by this style of money-lending.

The increase of trade and of shipping in the Port of London is indicated by a passage in Camden, when he speaks of the multitudes of ships “as a very wood of trees, disbranched to make glades and to let in the light: so shaded is it with masts and sails.”

The watermen of London were those who lived by the river and the port. John Taylor, the water poet, says that 40,000 people lived by the labour of the oar and scull. In 1613 there was a petition from the Company of Watermen against the erection of a theatre on the London or Middlesex side of the river, because it drew away so many people who otherwise would have been carried across the river to the theatres on the south bank. John Taylor shows us that many of these watermen had been sailors:—

“I did briefly declare part of the services that watermen had done in Queen Elizabeth’s reign of famous memory, in the voyage to Portugal with the right honourable and never to be forgotten Earl of Essex; then after that, how it pleased God, in that great deliverance in the year 1588, to make watermen good serviceable instruments with their loss of lives and limbs to defend their prince and country. Moreover, many of them served with Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Martin Frobisher, and others. Besides, in Cadiz action, the Island Voyage, in Ireland, in the Low Countries, and in the narrow seas they have been, as in duty they were bound, at continual command, so that every summer 1500 or 2000 of them were employed to the places aforesaid....

Afterwards the players began to play on the Bankside, and to leave playing in London and Middlesex, for the most part, then there went such great concourse of people by water that the small number of watermen remaining at home were not able to carry them, by reason of the court, the terms, the players, and other employments, so that we were enforced and encouraged, hoping that this golden stirring world would have lasted ever, to take and entertain men and boys ... so that the number of watermen, and those that live and are maintained by them, and by the only labour of the oar and the scull, betwixt the bridge of Windsor and Gravesend, cannot be fewer than forty thousand; the cause of the greater half of which multitude, hath been the players playing on the bankside, for I have known three companies besides the bear-baiting at once there, to wit, the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan.”

Loud complaints being made by the artificers of London that foreign goods were underselling theirs, the King in 1461 prohibited the importation or sale of the following articles—the list of which shows some of the manufactures at that time established in London:—

“Any manner girdles, nor any harness wrought for girdles, points, laces of lether, purses, pouches, pins, gloves, knives, hangers, tailors’ shears, scissors, andirons, cobordis, tongs, fire forks, gridirons; stocks, locks, keyes, hinges and garnets, spurs; painted papers, painted focers, paynted images, painted clothes, any between gold or between silver, wrought in papers for painters; saddles, saddle-trees, horse harness, boocis, bits, stirrups, buckles, chains, laten nails with iron shanks, terrets, standing candlesticks, hanging candlesticks, holy water stoops, chafing dishes, hanging lavers, curtain rings, cards for wool, clasps for gloves, buckles for shoes, brooches, bells (except bells for hawks), spoons of tin and lead, chains of wire as well as of laten as of iron, gratis, horns and lantern horns, or any of these aforesaid wares, ready and wrought, pertaining to the said crafts above specified or any of them uppon payne of forfeture of all the wares.” (Capper’s Port and Trade of London.) We have seen (p. 13) how Henry VII. passed an Act forbidding any stranger, i.e. foreigner, to buy or sell merchandise in the City; in his reign also was passed an Act to compel the country people to resort to the City. For it was ordered that no citizen should carry goods to any market or fair out of the City. The people of the country represented to Parliament the great hardship of being obliged to travel all the way to London in order to procure things that could only be bought in London, viz. chalices, books, vestments, and other church ornaments, victuals for Lent, linen cloths, woollen cloths, brass, pewter, bedding, iron, flax, wax, and other things. The Parliament interfered and the order was removed.

Under Henry VII. commercial treaties were concluded with the Danes and with the Florentines. There was a quarrel with Burgundy and a cessation of commercial relations for three years. In 1497 (12 Hen. VII.) was passed an Act entitled “Every Englishman shall have free recourse to certain foreign marts, without exaction to be taken by any English fraternity.” The meaning of the Act was this: the Merchant Adventurers’ Company had arrogated to themselves the right of refusing the right of trade in any foreign port until a fine or fee of £40 should first be paid to themselves. The Act defined the extent of English foreign trade at the time. The Merchant Adventurers sent their vessels to Spain, Portugal, Brittany, Flanders, Holland, Ireland, Normandy, France, Venice, Dantzic, Eastland, Friesland, and other parts. The Parliament allowed the fine, but limited it to ten marks, or £6:13:4. We have seen the jealousy and hatred of foreigners shown by the envious outbreak of “Evil May Day” in 1517 (p. 24). The complaints or the justification of the rioters was that there were so many foreigners employed as craftsmen that the English could get no work; that foreign merchants brought in all silk, cloth of gold, wine, etc., and that no one, almost, bought of an Englishman; that the foreign merchants exported so much wool, tin, and lead, that English adventurers could not make a living; that they forestalled the market, buying up everything all round the City, so that nothing of value came to the City markets, while some of them imported all kinds of goods that were made in this country, such as nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools, tables, chests, girdles, saddles, and printed cloths.

The earliest transcribers of MSS., that is to say, publishers of books, the monks, not only transcribed MSS., but they sold their copies, the sale of books forming part of the monastic revenues. These books were either plain copies for common use, as the service books and the school books, or they were illuminated, bound with decorations of gold and silver, costing very large sums. When, however, as happened in the fifteenth century, the demand for books increased, while the revenues, and therefore the numbers, of the religious in the monasteries decreased, the multiplication of books fell into the hands of laymen. In some cases the monks themselves employed laymen as transcribers. There grew up various branches of the book trade: the maker of parchment, pens, ink, colours for illumination; the writers, the binders, the illuminators, and the sellers. As regards the value of books at any time, it is impossible to estimate it, because we must first learn the purchasing power of money, which is very difficult to ascertain; e.g. the price of wheat, sheep, fowls, etc., is a very fallacious test, because we do not know the standards of the time. The wage test is the safest guide. For instance, six pounds a year was thought sufficient pay for the maintenance of a chantry priest—a man considered superior to the ordinary craftsman, yet not very high in the social scale. In addition we must know the whole conditions of production; the cost of materials, the time taken by transcribers for a page or a sheet, the demand, the competition, and everything else connected with the work. Some of these points have been cleared up, but most of them can never be cleared up. It must be sufficient to understand that there was a large demand for books, and that many collections of books were formed by princes and prelates and monasteries. It was a providential circumstance that the art of printing was well advanced at the time of the Dissolution of the Religious Houses. Otherwise the losses, which were great indeed, might have been very much greater, even irreparable.

The first printers in the City of London were Caxton’s workmen, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson. The former set up his press in Fleet Street, “over against the Conduit,” which stood at the end of Shoe Lane; the latter, outside Temple Bar. In the course of the century, however, the number of printers rapidly increased, and in the reign of Elizabeth the number of books published in any branch was extraordinary. Nothing can show more conclusively the general avidity for learning and for the possession of books in every branch of knowledge. When, indeed, we consider that the yearly output of books in Great Britain and America now amounts to some 10,000 (a large number of them new editions), which at an average of 1000 each means 10,000,000 volumes among a population of 120,000,000, who nearly all read, without counting India, which alone contains millions of readers, and when we remember that the whole reading public of England amounted to a few thousands, it is clear that the Elizabethan output was beyond comparison greater in proportion than our own.

It could not be long before a censorship of the Press was established. In 1526 the printing of books against the Catholic Faith was prohibited. Later on, that of books defending the Catholic Faith was in turn prohibited.

It was in 1557 that the very singular powers were conferred upon the Company of Stationers of suppressing and prohibiting books either seditious or heretical. These powers were absolute and subject to no appeal. Why the Company of Stationers was entrusted with powers which belonged to the Bishop of London and the Ecclesiastical Courts does not appear. However, the Company exercised this authority for two years, when Queen Elizabeth ordered that no book should be printed without a license being first obtained. She then, illogically, granted monopolies to certain printers and booksellers for the sale of certain books specified: to one for the sale of Bibles; to another for sale of catechism; to a third for that of music-books; and so on. To the Stationers she granted the monopoly of psalters, primers, almanacks, A B C, the “little Catechism,” and Nowell’s English and Latin Catechism. The printer, however, was already separating from the bookseller. As yet there was no such thing recognised as the author’s rights over his own property. In many cases he did not wish his name to appear; the publisher did what he pleased with the MS.

Among the early booksellers was Richard Grafton, who was printer, bookseller, and author as well. He reprinted and continued Hall’s Chronicles. Other publishers and booksellers of the sixteenth century were Robert Redman, who quarrelled with Richard Pynson; Henry Pepwell, who died in 1539; John Day, for whom John Foxe, who wrote the Book of Martyrs, worked. He issued a Church music book. He also published Bibles, Sermons, and A B C’s. Day had shops successively in Holborn, Aldersgate Street, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. William Middleton, whose shop was in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan’s Church, was both printer and bookseller. He published Heywood’s Four P’s, and an edition of Froissart.

Henry Smyth, Redman’s son-in-law, was the publisher of Littleton’s Tenures. Richard Tottell, whose shop was within Temple Bar, published Tusser’s Hundred Good Points of Agriculture, Grafton’s Abridgment of the Chronicles of England, and Stow’s Summary of the Chronicles of England. Harrison of St. Paul’s Churchyard published Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis in 1593, but it was printed by Richard Field, a fellow-townsman of the poet. In 1594 Harrison published The Rape of Lucrece. The publication of the plays, however, belongs mostly to the seventeenth century. But Romeo and Juliet, Richard II., Richard III, Henry IV. Part I., Love’s Labours Lost, were published at this time, and in 1600 Henry IV. Part II., Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, and Henry V. all came out. In all, eleven of the plays were published in the sixteenth and the rest in the seventeenth century.

There was an astonishing number of printers and booksellers. Thus, in addition to the names mentioned above, we may note those of Middleton, Richard Field, Harrison, father and son, William Leake, Wise, Aspley, Ling, and Nathaniel Butler, Ponsonby, Edward White, Cadman, Burby, Warde, William Barley, Humphrey Hooper, John Budge, Thorpe, and Norton.

Already the bitterness of the author against the publisher has begun. Drayton speaks of the booksellers as “a company of base knaves, whom I scorn and kick at.” Complaint was made concerning a book called A Petite Palace of Petties his Pleasure (1576), that the printer had suppressed the name of the author, and his preface, and had substituted his own name with a preface by himself. Again, the authors complained of the advertising tricks employed to increase the sale of a book. Thus, Ben Jonson addresses his bookseller:—

Unfortunately, also, the bitterness of the author against the bookseller was accompanied by bitterness against his fellow-craftsmen. Thus Barnaby Rich says:—

“‘One of the diseases of this age is the multitude of books, that doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought into the world, that are as divers in their forms as their authors be in their faces. It is but a thriftless and a thankless occupation, this writing of books: a man were better to sit singing in a cobbler’s shop, for his pay is certain a penny a patch, but a book-writer, if he gets sometimes a few commendations of the judicious, he shall be sure to reap a thousand reproaches of the malicious.’” (W. Roberts, Earlier History of English Bookselling.)

This brief view of bookselling in the sixteenth century may be taken to include also the first twenty years of the seventeenth, after which certain changes appear in the trade and in the relations of author and publisher.

Little has been said, so far, concerning the connection of London with literature. The history of literature belongs to the nation, not to London. Yet London could even before the Elizabethan age boast of Chaucer, Gower, Skelton, Lydgate, all of whom, at some time in their lives, resided in London. And what a list, what a splendid list, is presented of the London poets in the reign of Gloriana! This list alone, without counting the poets who went before or the poets who came after, is sufficient in itself to place England in the forefront of modern literature. Consider some of the names. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Massinger, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ford, Peele, Marston, Sackvile, Sylvester, Spenser, Raleigh—one could go on till the page became a catalogue. I have counted two hundred and forty Elizabethan poets whose names, with many of their works, have survived to the present day. In the same proportion we, who can hardly number sixty poets, ought to have now 5000. But in that time expression assumed the form of poetry first and the drama afterwards; men who had a thing to say, or a theory to state, said it in poetry, just as a man who had a tale to tell presented it in the form of a drama. Not that poetry or the drama were the only things. The Elizabethan age was rich in every form and branch of literature; it had books of chivalry, as The Seven Champions; story books, as The Gesta Romanorum; jest books, as Skogan’s, Tarleton’s, Skelton’s, Peele’s; pastoral romances, as The Arcadia; “picaresque” novels, as those of Nash and Dekker; histories, as those of Holinshed, Stow, Grafton; essays, as those of Bacon, Ascham, Sir Thomas Browne; satires, as those of Hall and Marston; translations from the French and the Italian. Not even in these days is there a better, larger, fresher supply of new literature. It was above all fresh; everything was new; people did not look backwards in literature; they lived in the present; at no other time in the history of the world was the present more delightful; more full of hope, more full of joy, more full of daring. There was a new religion, not yet crystallised into Puritanism: a religion in which every man, for the first time after more than a thousand years, stood up before his Maker without an interposing priest; there was a new learning, full of wonder and of delight; there were new arts; there was a new world, a larger world, full of mysteries and monsters and undiscovered marvels; there was a new pride sprung up among the people; new adventures were possible; there were new roads to riches; England held a nobler place among the nations; everything seemed possible; the wildest extravagance was permitted in talk, in song, in the drama, in enterprise. Companies could be formed to go anywhere, and to do everything. Countries there were everywhere to be conquered, or, at least, to trade with; no longer did ocean set bounds, no longer did continents stretch forth forbidding capes: the nobler spirits were arriving at a clearer grasp and understanding of what lay before them; the machinations of Spaniard, Pope, and Priest were, it seemed, finally defeated; everything was ready for the work of such men as Raleigh and Drake. Then, alas! Gloriana died, and the world of poetry sank sadly back into prose, and that for the most part of the tamest and the most creeping; an age followed when King and people were no longer in touch; when foreign politics were a betrayal and a surrender; when the whole dream of the King was not to extend and enrich his realm, but to encroach upon the people’s liberties, and the whole power of the people was required to resist the encroachments of the King. How mean and miserable is the policy of Charles compared with that of Elizabeth! How paltry are the pretensions of King and Archbishop! How wretched, save for the figure of the great Protector, is the history of the seventeenth century, compared with the history of the sixteenth under the great Queen!

Harrison furnishes a contemporary opinion on “the new veine of writing”:—

“This further is not to be omitted, to the singular commendation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are verie few of them, which have not the use and skill of sundrie speaches, beside an excellent veine of writing before time not regarded. Trulie it is a rare thing with us now, to hear of a courtier which hath but his owne language. And to saie how many gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the Greeke and Latine toongs, are thereto no lesse skilful in the Spanish, Italian, and French or in some one of them, it resteth not in me; sith I am persuaded, that as the noblemen and gentlemen do surmount in this behalfe, so these come verie little or nothing at all behind them for their parts, which industrie God continue, and accomplish that which otherwise is wanting.”... “The ladies of the court employ themselves in continuall reading either of the holie scriptures, or histories of our owne or forren nations about us, and diverse in writing volumes of their owne, or translating of other mens into our English and Latine toongs.”... “Finallie, to avoid idlenesse, and prevent sundrie transgressions, otherwise likelie to be committed and doone, such order is taken, that everie office hath either a bible, or the booke of the acts and monuments of the church of England, or both, beside some histories and chronicles lieing therein, for the exercise of such as come into the same; whereby the stranger that entereth into the court of England upon the sudden, shall rather imagine himselve to come into some public schools of the universities, where manie give eare to one that readeth, than unto a princes palace if you conferre the same with those of other nations. Would to God all honorable personages would take example of hir graces godlie, dealing in this behalfe, and shew their conformitie unto these hir so good beginnings which if they would, then should manie grievous offenses (wherewith God is highlie displeased) be cut off and restreined, which now doo reigne exceedinglie, in most noble and gentlemen’s houses, whereof they see no paterne within hur graces gates.” (Holinshed’s Chronicles.)

Leaving the great masters, let us consider a little the more popular literature of the day; the kind which has its run among the people and is forgotten; the current literature, the books of the time, the works which were bought and read by those of the citizens who read at all, probably as large a proportion as we should find at the present day, when the newspaper is the only reading of multitudes. It is not difficult to arrive at what constituted a library. There were religious books, such as Hooper’s Sermons; there were collections of songs, such as The Court of Venus, against which the clergy spoke vehemently; books of chivalry and novels in great numbers, such as Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Arthur of the Round Table, Huon of Bordeaux, Oliver of the Castle, Four Sons of Aymon, The Witless Devices of Gargantua and Howleglas. There were the English stories, Robin Hood, Adam Bell, Friar Rushe, The Foole of Gotham. There were satires and fables; Æsop, Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, The Schoolhouse of Women, The Defense of Women, Piers Plowman, Raynolde the Fox, The Palace of Pleasure. There were translations, as Virgil, Seneca, and Apulosius; there were books of instruction, as The Boke of Carvynge, The Boke of Cokerye, The Boke of Nurture for Men servants, The Boke of Fortune, The Boke of Curtesey, The Boke of Chesse, and The Hundred Points of Good Husserye. These titles are taken from actual lists before me; the presses were extremely active and the output of books was very considerable during the whole of Elizabeth’s long reign. In a word, there was as great a variety of books for the reader’s choice as there is now, setting aside the modern books in science; there were poets by the hundred, dramatists, novelists of all kinds, historians, preachers, moralists, and essayists. It would take too much space and time were I to attempt an estimate or an account of the Elizabethan literature.

There was, however, one form of literature then playing a very important part in the education of the people which has been too much neglected by those who write of the sixteenth century. It was the ballad. In the last century, if a man had a thing to say, he wrote a pamphlet; at present if he has a thing to say and desires that the people at large should hear it, he either casts it into the form of a novel, or he sends it to the papers as a letter or as a communication. The Elizabethan, on the other hand, cast it into the form of verse; the ballad expressed the popular opinion; by means of the ballad that opinion was formed and taught; by means of the ballad events were recorded and remembered. Every event produced its own ballad. I have before me a list of a hundred ballads, taken at random from the registers of the Stationers’ Company, published for the Shakespeare Society in 1849 by Payne Collier. From these registers it is evident that the ballad, as sung in private houses, in taverns, at fairs, and where people congregated; in the streets, in the markets, and at the Carrefours where stood the Cross and the Conduit, taught and led the people as the Press now teaches and leads them. There was a great competition in the production of new ballads; the printers vied with each other in getting the latest or the most striking event turned into ballad form and put upon the market. These ballads were written on every conceivable subject. In order to illustrate their importance I have compiled the following list roughly classified. The titles in almost all cases indicate the contents and aim of the ballad. Some of them are very well written.

(The Milkmaids did not like being called Malkins. The name Malkin is a diminutive of Mary, and was used in the sense of slattern or country wench.)

This list might be multiplied indefinitely. Enough has been given to show that the ballad was the principal medium by which the people were moved and taught. One would not underrate the power of the sermon. At no time, not even in the seventeenth century, was the sermon more powerful than under Elizabeth; but the sermon chiefly treated of doctrine and the ballads taught morals and the conduct of life. Nay, in these cases, which were many, when a ballad secular, amatory, scandalous, or immoral, had become popular, the clergy took it in hand and moralised it: i.e. presented a religious parody of it, which they persuaded the people to sing instead of the first version. For example, here is part of a “moralised” ballad:—

We must not forget to take account in this brief review of the topical writings of the day of the difference of dialect. It is not too much to say that a Norfolk countryman would not understand a Kentish lad; and that a Yorkshire man would talk a strange tongue to a man of the Midlands. Caxton says, writing a little earlier:—

“Englishe that is spoken in one shire varyeth from another; insomuch, that in my dayes happened, that certain merchaunts were in a ship in Tamyse, for to have sailed over the see into Zelande, and for lacke of wynde they taryed att Forland, and went to land for to refresh them; and one of them, named Sheffelde, a mercer, came into a hows, and axed for mete, and specially he axed for egges; the good wyfe answerde that she could speke no French. And the merchaunt was angry, for he also could speake no French; but wolde have egges, and she understode hym not. And thenne at last another sayd, that he would have ceyren; thenne the good wyfe said, that she understode him.”

In the year 1592 was published a book in prose and verse by Richard Johnson, entitled The Nine Worthies of London, inscribed to Sir William Webbe, Lord Mayor of London. Its wide popularity proves that it presents some, at least, of the ideas current among the people. To begin with, the “Nine Worthies” are not by any means, with one exception, those ancient citizens whom we should now consider of the greatest renown. We do not find here the names of Thomas À Becket, Whittington, Philpot, or Gresham. The things worthy to be remembered are neither enterprise in trade, nor vigilance in guarding the liberties of the City, nor the acquisition of wealth, nor charities and endowments. The only thing worthy to be remembered, even among citizens of London, is prowess of arms. The “Nine Worthies” come out, one after the other, and relate their own achievements. It is certain that Richard Johnson did not himself select these men for honourable mention, because they are clearly referred to in a passage of the Paradise of daintie Devices:—

The work is reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. viii., from which I take the following extracts: first, William Walworth (p. 443):—

Second, Henry Picard, or Pilchard, who entertained the four kings of England, Scotland, France, and Cyprus, with the Black Prince (p. 445):—

Third, William Sevenoake, who went over to France with Henry V. as a lad just out of his apprenticeship, and there fought with the Dauphin (p. 447):—

Fourth, Thomas White, who founded schools and almshouses (p. 449):—

Fifth, John Bonham, citizen and mercer, who went to Denmark with his merchandise, there was received at Court and distinguished himself at a tournament—the only occasion on record of a merchant fighting in a tournament—and finally led an army to victory over the Great Solyman, who made him a knight after the defeat of the Turk:—

Sixth, Christopher Croker. Alas! the world has forgotten Christopher. He was a vintner’s ’prentice. He was loved by Doll Stodie, his master’s daughter; and he burned to give her a better position; he joined the army of the Black Prince in France; distinguished himself there; went with him to Spain, and returned a knight:—

Seventh, John Hawkwood, the Prince of Mercenaries. He, too, belonged to the Black Prince and was knighted by him.

Eighth, Hugh Caverley, silk weaver, who also became a knight in France and signalised himself afterwards by slaying a monstrous wild boar which devastated Poland.

Ninth, and last, Henry Maleverer, grocer, Knight Crusader and Custodian of Jacob’s Well:—

It is a curious list, and shows what legends of former citizens had grown up in the minds of the people. They had clean forgotten the old Patron Saints of London, St. Erkenwald and St. Thomas À Becket; they had forgotten Philpot and his splendid achievement over the pirates of the North Sea; they had forgotten Waleys, Mayor of Bordeaux and of London; they had forgotten Dick Whittington; they had even forgotten Gresham, and in place of the men who had made London and brought wealth, prosperity, and freedom to the town, they remembered mythical adventures and traditions of battle and of victory. One would like to know more about the popular belief in “London Worthies.”

The wholesale destruction of MSS. and mediÆval libraries, at the Suppression of the Religious Houses, though doubtless a heavy loss from an artistic point of view, considering the loss of illuminated books, may be considered as compensated by the increased activity of the press and the reconstruction of the library. What was actually lost to literature? John Bale tells us, Manuscripts of the Fathers, Schoolmen, and Commentators. Was this a loss? It is quite certain that the monkish commentators regarded their text from a point of view no longer held: the Holy Scriptures, they said, were lost. The manuscript copies were very likely lost, but the press multiplied copies. I think that the greatest loss to literature was the loss of certain chronicles, of which we have so many left, which relate the history of current events as the monkish scribe heard and understood them. In any case, the destruction of so many books made it impossible, henceforward, to consider a library as made up chiefly of manuscripts; the press rapidly restored the books that were wanted; and gave the world a library filled with printed books, while the old commentators were clean forgotten.

The age of great folios and mighty scholars was the seventeenth, rather than the sixteenth, century. In the sixteenth, scholars were busy in putting forth new editions of the classics. Men like Dolet and Rabelais were not ashamed to correct for the press. The voluminous commentator came afterwards. Meantime, it is remarkable that we had no Rabelais among our writers. He, formerly a friar, came out of the cloister, his head filled with the old learning and eager for the new. His great book became at once popular, and was eagerly passed from hand to hand. The origins of his chapters have quite recently been explored and discovered in Mr. W. F. Smith’s excellent translation. They are shown to be chiefly extracts from gloss and commentary, burlesqued, imitated, and held up to the ridicule and scorn of scholars. The common people understood only the bubbling mirth and laughter, coupled with the spontaneous unseemliness of the page; the scholar understood the allegory and the purpose of the writer; the ecclesiastic alone, and one of the older type, understood the true nature of the overwhelming contempt and hatred of the order that was passing away—contempt and hatred thinly veiled and concealed except for those who knew the gloss and commentary of the past. We have no Rabelais; among all our friars there was no scholar; among our ejected monks, if there were scholars, they stuck by their order; among all the priests, monks, and friars, who joined in the Reformation, there was not one who so despised the old faith as to make it the theme of such a book as that of Rabelais. Hatred there was in plenty, after the fires of Smithfield: hatred which continued to flourish in our literature and still lingers; but not the full bitterness of hatred, fear, contempt, and restlessness which fill the pages of Rabelais, Étienne Dolet, and Bonaventure des Periers.

Painting in London practically began with the Tudors, and was brought over to the City by Flemish and Dutch painters. Among these we find the names of Lucas and Gerard Horenbout, Volpe, Gerbud Flick, Johannes Corvus, Levina Terling, Susanna Horenbout, and Alice Carmillion. But the great name of Holbein towers above all the rest. This painter was born at Augsburg about 1497, went to Basle in 1516, and came to London in 1526. He continued in London, with the exception of three visits to Basle, until his death in 1543, residing first in a lodging on London Bridge, and next in a house in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, where he died.

As regards his contemporaries and successors, we are indebted to the researches of the late John Gough Nichols for information on this point. They are embodied in a paper published by the Society of Antiquaries (xxxix. p. 19).

The earliest Court Painter to Henry VIII. was one John Browne. He was appointed in 1511 a Serjeant Painter with a salary of twopence a day and four ells of cloth, valued at 6s. 8d. an ell, annually. Three pounds a year is not a large salary, but probably he was paid in addition for any work which he might do; thus, he was paid forty shillings for a painted tabard of sarsenet provided by him for Nottingham Pursuivant. In 1522 he was elected Alderman for Farringdon Without, and in 1525 he was discharged from office without having been either Sheriff or Mayor. He gave by will to the Painter Stainers’ Company his house for their hall: the present Hall stands upon the site of Browne’s bequest.

John Browne was succeeded as Serjeant Painter by Andrew Wright. This painter received £30 for painting and decorating the King’s barge. He had a manufactory of “pink,” a vegetable pigment used by painters at that time; it was the Italian giallo santo and the French stel de grain. Wright died in 1543.

Vincent Volpe, a contemporary of the two preceding, supplied, in 1514, streamers and banners for the King’s great ship, the Henry Grace À Dieu. He is called in 1530 the “King’s Painter.” It is suggested that it was Volpe who painted some of the military pictures at Hampton Court. He also received money for the decoration of the King’s barge. The “King’s Painter” seems to have held a higher rank than the Serjeant Painter, for Volpe’s salary was £10 a year.

Two other Flemish artists, Lucas and Gerard Horenbout, were also in the receipt of salaries from the King; their father was also, perhaps, a painter and a Fleming. Their sister Susanna was a painter of miniatures. She was the wife, first, of Henry Parker the King’s bowman, and, secondly, of a sculptor named Worsley.

An Italian named Antonio Toto was a native of Florence, the son of a painter and the pupil of Ridolpho. He was architect as well as painter. His principal building was the strange palace of Nonsuch (see p. 89). Toto was, like Andrew Wright, a Serjeant Painter. For the coronation of Edward VI. he provided the tabards for the heralds; he also took charge of the masques.

Another Italian attached to Henry’s Court was Bartolomo Penni. The names of three women have been given above: Alice Carmillion was in Henry’s service; Levina Terling in Edward’s, Mary’s, and Elizabeth’s successively.

Holbein’s most illustrious successor among his contemporaries was Guillim Streets, or Strettes. Among other paintings by this admirable artist was one of the marriage of Queen Mary. The picture, however, is lost.

Nicholas Lyzarde was Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth. He died in 1571.

The names Antonio Moro and Joost van Cleef may also be added to those of the painters who lived in London during the sixteenth century.

The decay of the London schools and of learning in general, which undoubtedly began in the fifteenth century and continued until far into the following century, is difficult to understand. One can only form theories and make guesses. The fact cannot be disputed. There were forces at work which have not been recorded. The Lollardry of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries seems to have been in great measure forgotten. Yet, as I have pointed out and proved, the custom of making bequests to the Religious Houses declined and decayed until it quite died away, long before the Reformation. The old spirit of revolt left behind it a steady and persistent and growing spirit of dissatisfaction. Perhaps this spirit was shown in the decay of the monastic schools. We have seen how, in 1477, four of the London clergy asked, and obtained, permission to found additional schools in four parishes. The new schools could do little; the Reformation accelerated the decay of learning partly by the abolition of the monastic schools; partly by the vast reduction in the number of ecclesiastics; partly by the loss of the endowments by which learning had been encouraged and maintained: an increased trade, with foreign enterprise, also attracted the younger men in numbers continually increasing. So few were the undergraduates of Oxford that in Queen Mary’s reign only three took a degree in Divinity during the space of six years; in Civil Law only eleven; in Physic six; in Arts an average of about twenty-three. Anthony À Wood writes: “There were none that had any heart to put their children to any school, any farther than to learn to write—to make them Apprentices or Lawyers.”

I would enumerate among the causes of the general decay in learning: (1) the unsettled nature of religious opinions; (2) the changed ideas concerning education; (3) the destruction of the Houses, which, if they turned out few scholars, offered a quiet home for the studious; (4) the advance in trade and enterprise, which attracted the youth of London far more than study; (5) the contempt into which the mass of the Protestant clergy had fallen; (6) a feeling of uneasiness about scholarship, lest it should bring one to the stake, of which there had been presented many terrifying examples.

Of music there is a much nobler record. Never before had the people been such great lovers of music, and such admirable proficients. In every barber’s shop was hung a zither or a guitar; anybody played; everybody sang. Henry VIII. himself was a composer of no mean capability, and a performer equal to any. Elizabeth upon the virginals was unequalled. Many of the anthems and madrigals of the period survive to this day and are still sung. The music of the Chapel Royal was held to be better than anything of the kind in Western Europe. Would that the musical tastes and traditions of London had been preserved! They were destroyed by the Puritans. They were destroyed slowly but effectively. At the Restoration it was still the custom for gentlemen to play and sing; but not, apparently, for the trading and lower classes; during the last century, neither gentlefolk nor any other folk could play or sing; music ceased to be cultivated by the people. Nor have we yet, even, begun to be a people given to music; it is still comparatively rare to find boys who are taught to play any instrument; at no public school is it thought to be an essential part of education. Perhaps the twentieth century may witness a revival of the national love for music.

It seems impossible to ascertain why these names were bestowed upon the City Giants. The prophet Ezekiel (chs. xxxviii. and xxxix.) prophesies against “Gog, the land of Magog, the Chief Prince of Meshech, and Tubal.” In the Book of Revelation (xx. 8) Satan goes out “to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog.” How were these names applied to City Giants? It was a common thing to have a City Giant who was carried in processions; there were giants at Chester, Salisbury, and Coventry; there were giants at Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Douai, Lille, and Brussels. The giants were in every case connected in some way with the legendary history of the City. But while every city had its own giant, who was brought out on festive occasions, this did not prevent the construction of other giants. Thus, after the victory of Agincourt, when Henry V. was received by a pageant of extraordinary splendour, a giant and a giantess stood on the Southwark end of London Bridge to greet him. The giant carried in his right hand an axe, and in the left the City keys, as if he were the porter of the town. In 1432, when Henry VI. came to England after his Coronation in France, there was another giant at London Bridge. He stood with drawn sword, and had at his side the following verses written out large:—

In 1547, when the boy-king Edward passed through the City, among the figures presented to him were two representing Valentine and Orson.

In 1554, when Philip came to London, there was a great pageant to receive him with the Queen. At the drawbridge of the Tower there were placed the two giants, Corineus and Gogmagog, holding between them a scroll inscribed with Latin verses.

In January 1559, when Queen Elizabeth rode through the City she was received with a pageant of great splendour. At Temple Bar the last show was that of the two City Giants, Corineus and Gogmagog, who had between them a recapitulation of the whole pageant. Here the singing children made a “noise,” while one of them, attired like a poet, bade the Queen farewell in the name of the City.

The giants seem to have been omitted from the Royal pageants and processions of the seventeenth century.

In 1605 the Lord Mayor’s Pageant was adorned by the presence of the giants.

“The first Pageant was ‘The Shippe called the Royall Exchange,’ in which takes place a short poetical dialogue between the master, mate and boy, who congratulate themselves on the fortunate termination of their voyage at this auspicious time, the master ending the dialogue by a punning allusion to the Mayor’s name, when he declared his intention

Neptune and Amphitrite appear upon a lion and camel; and Corineus and Gogmagog, two huge giants, ‘for the more grace and beauty of the show,’ were fettered by chains of gold to ‘Britains Mount,’ the principal pageant; which they appeared to draw, and upon which children were seated, representing Britannia; ‘Brute’s divided kingdoms,’ Leogria, Cambria, and Albania; ‘Brute’ himself, his sons Locrine, Camber, and Albanact; Troya Nova, or London; and the Rivers Thames, Severn, and Humber, who each declaim in short speeches, the purport of which is that as England, Wales, and Scotland were first sundered by Brutus to supply his three sons with a kingdom each, they are now again happily united in ‘our second Brute,’ King James the first.” (Fairholt, Lord Mayor’s Pageants.)

The giants disappeared from the Lord Mayor’s Pageants soon after this. In 1633, Clod, a country-man, in Shirley’s Contention for Honour and Riches, says:—

“When the word is given, you march to Guildhall, with every man his spoon in his pocket, where you look upon the giants, and feed like Saracens, till you have no stomach to Paul’s in the afternoon.” (Ibid.)

In the Lord Mayor’s Pageant for 1673 the giants came out again. This pageant was designed by Thomas Jordan. It appears to have been their first appearance after the Fire.

“I must not omit to tell you, that marching in the van of these five pageants, are two exceeding rarities to be taken notice of; that is, there are two extreme great giants, each of them at least fifteen foot high, that do sit and are drawn by horses in two several chariots, moving, talking, and taking tobacco as they ride along, to the great admiration and delight of all the spectators; at the conclusion of the show they are to be set up in Guildhall, where they may be daily seen all the year, and I hope never to be demolished by such dismal violence as happened to their predecessors; which are raised at the peculiar and proper cost of the city.” (Ibid.)

It would seem that in many of the pageants it was not thought necessary to set down the fact that the giants formed part, for in Henley’s Orations (1730–1755) there is one on the Lord Mayor’s Show which contains the following passage: “On that day, the two giants have the priviledge, if they think it proper, to walk out and keep holiday; one on each side of the great horse would aggrandize the solemnity, shew consisting often in bulk.” (Ibid.)

In Stow’s description of the setting of the watch on Midsummer’s Eve, he says: “The Mayor had, beside his giants, three pageants, whereas the Sheriffs had only two, besides their giants.” In Marston’s Dutch Courtezan, acted 1605, an allusion is made to the giants: “yet all will scarce make me so high as one of the gyant’s stilts that stalks before my Lord Mayor’s Pageants.”

George Wither (1661) calls the giants “Big-boned Colbrant and great Brandsmore.”

The last appearance of the giants in a procession was in 1837, when they graced the Lord Mayor’s Show.

The legends of the City Giants were two in number. The first related how Brutus, one of the Trojan heroes, wandering after the Fall of Troy, like Æneas, came to Britain, which he found full of giants. He fought with these giants and destroyed them all except two, named Gog and Magog, whom he brought to his new City of London and chained to the palace gates. Another legend relates how Corineus, brother of Brutus, fought the giants Gog and Magog, and, being himself stronger than his unwieldy antagonists, threw them headlong into the sea. The two giants of Guildhall, according to this legend, were Corineus and Gogmagog. The names of Gog and Magog were certainly taken either from Ezekiel or the Book of Revelation, and were applied to the giants after Corineus had been forgotten, as the names of princes over an infidel people: they were represented, not as tutelary giants, but as conquered giants. It will be observed that one is represented as a Roman, with helmet and shield, sword, spear, and armour, while the other is apparelled, after the artist’s imagination, as an ancient Briton.

They were originally made of wicker-work; after the Great Fire, which destroyed them, they were reconstructed of the same materials, but in 1707 they were made of wood, as we now see them.