married priests were driven from their livings, and the old system was re-established, with one notable exception: Parliament would not consent to giving up a single acre of the church property which its own members had acquired. For forms of religion they cared nothing, and so were ready enough to humor their monarch; but this was a practical question in which there was no room for sentiment.

In 1554, Mary marries Philip of Spain. Some of her nobles at first objected to the match, but their consent was obtained through bribes furnished by Philip's father.* The future King of Spain was anxious to obtain the alliance of England, with her two or three million inhabitants, all of whose able-bodied men were soldiers by birthright; but he went to England for his bride with little apparent pleasure. The Spanish minister advised him to wear a shirt of mail under his doublet, and to bring his own cook, for fear of being poisoned. Arriving in the country, his luggage was plundered, and the property stolen could not be recovered, nor the thieves detected.‡

He remained in England just long enough to discover that his marriage was a barren one. His wife tried to cheer him by burning some heretics, against which act his father's minister protested, but only on the ground of policy. But even this could not detain him. It is charitable to believe that his departure drove Mary into

*Froude, vi. 188.

+ Idem, vi. 222.

Idem, vi. 242.

§ Idem, vi. 211, 212. This same faithful minister pointed out to Philip, who wished to leave England after six weeks, that however much his wife might be deficient in "refinement," she was infinitely virtuous, which she certainly was. Froude, vi. 311. "Politesse" is the French word used by the minister, the meaning of which the English historian hardly gives by translating it "agreeability."

BLOODY MARY-CONDITION OF ENGLAND

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madness. In the three years thereafter she earned the title of the "Bloody" queen by the atrocities which she committed in the name of the Catholic religion. Archbishop and bishop, priest and layman, women, children, and babes just born, all perished in the flames; and yet the people made no sign. The tale of the Martyrs is a fit close to the roll of horror which begins with the Wars of the Roses. Truly the valley into which we have descended is very deep and dark.

"Never," says Green, "had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower ebb than at the moment when Elizabeth mounted the throne." But it was not alone the fortunes of the State which had gone down. Society was demoralized, and remained so during her entire reign, in some respects becoming worse instead of better. Still, it is hardly fair to charge these results, as some would do, to the religious teachings of the Reformers. We see in modern times that some savage nations shrivel up morally before our civilization, but do not attribute this calamity to the teachings of Christianity. A rude people will generally copy the vices of their superiors in education long before they imitate the virtues. This was the case with the English when first brought into contact with the intellectual movement upon the Continent, of which the Reformation was only the religious feature, and among them, too, the Reformation in time did good work.

But, however all this may be, and whatever the causes which brought about its moral and social condition, we have ample material for a study in its every aspect of the England of Elizabeth, which gave birth to English and American Puritanism.

CHAPTER VI

ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

PRIVATE LIFE, EDUCATION, RELIGION, AND MORALS

Ir a person acquainted with the appearance of the country to-day could be carried back to the England of three centuries ago, he would find himself well-nigh a stranger in a strange land. Almost nothing before him would appear familiar. We see now highly cultivated fields, trim hedges, fat cattle, smooth hard roads, neat cottages, and lordly mansions; not to mention the vast manufactories which have revolutionized the North. When Elizabeth ascended the throne, only about one fourth of the arable land was under cultivation, and that of the rudest character; the remainder was still covered with fen and forest, or was devoted to the pasturing of sheep. Through the forest the red deer wandered in thousands, while the wolf, the wild cat, the wild bull, and the wild boar were not uncommon.* None of the hedges which now form so charming a feature of the landscape then lined the roads. The cattle in the fields and the horses on the highway were small and of little value.

*The German traveller Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, saw a wild wolf which had been captured there. Macaulay says that the last one on the island was slain in the reign of Charles II. He also tells us that the wild bull and the wild cat were found in the forest in 1685. "History of England," chap. iii.

ENGLAND LARGELY A PASTORAL LAND

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In fact, England, which is now an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing, was then largely a pastoral land. Almost the sole industry of the people in the rural districts was the raising of sheep and cattle. Time and again Parliament had passed laws to check the devotion to this one pursuit, which was considered injurious to the general welfare; but all in vain. The advance of the world in wealth created more and more of a demand for woven fabrics. The English wool was of a superior quality, and for many years had commanded high prices in the Netherlands. Under such conditions. legislation could do nothing. Individual flocks had numbered as high as twenty thousand sheep; a law passed in the reign of Henry VIII. limited them to two thousand, but this meant only a subdivision and fictitious transfers. So long as it was profitable wool-raising was continued.

During the reign of Elizabeth there was a vast increase in the commerce and manufactures of the Netherlands. This raised still further the price of English wool, pouring a constant stream of wealth into the country. In addition, the English increased their own manufactures of coarse woollen cloth, and this added to the general disturbance of industrial conditions which had begun many years before. More land was turned into pasturage, more small farms were given up; men with newlyacquired wealth developed a mania for acquiring land and becoming country gentlemen; rents were raised enormously; the dispossessed tenants and unemployed farm laborers flocked into the towns; while the new landlords cultivated grain only for their own consump tion, selling their wool to the manufacturers, and exporting wool and cheese to the Continent.

In time, under a Netherland influence which will be

described hereafter, all kinds of manufactures were introduced, England's commerce was developed, and, with markets at home and abroad for the general produce of the farm, scientific agriculture finally came in, and the laborer again found employment on the land. But these results came about long after Elizabeth had passed away. Her reign was a period of social disturbance, caused largely by industrial transition, in which the rich became richer and the poor poorer. This is one of the central facts, unnoticed by many writers, which should always be kept in mind by any one who would understand the history of this era.*

The first thing which struck the Spaniards who accompanied Philip II. on his nuptial tour, in 1554, was the appearance of the English dwellings. These, they said, were built of "sticks and dirt." This description might seem inspired by ill-humor, or one might think it applicable only to the hovels of the very poor, but for the survival of some of the residences of the time. They are constructed of a timber frame filled in with a

* See Froude, passim, and more particularly "Society in the Elizabethan Age," by Hubert Hall, of H. M. Public Record Office (London, 1886), a work the material for which was gathered from official docuuments, many of which are printed in the appendix, supplementing those given by Froude and Strype. I shall refer to it frequently hereafter, and take this opportunity to make my acknowledgments to the author for his valuable contribution to the social history of this period. Prof. Thorold Rogers expresses the opinion that the condition of the English working classes was more miserable during the larger part of the seventeenth century than at any other period in their history, except that of the Napoleonic wars. See Time, March, 1890. This is probably true of the agricultural laborer, whose condition had been getting worse and worse from the beginning of the sixteenth century.