Daily Life in Elizabethan England (44 page)

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Chorus

[B1] All face partners, fall back a double, then forward a double. Then face corners and turn your corner once around by the right hand.

[B2] Still facing corners, fall back a double, then forward a double. Then face partners and turn your partner once around by the left hand.

2nd Verse

[A1] Partners side right.

[A2] Face your corner. Corners side left.

[B] Chorus.

3rd Verse

[A1] Partners arm right.

[A2] Face your corner. Corners arm left.

[B] Chorus.

Positions of the dancers for Heartsease.

Entertainments 223

NOTES

1. Moryson, Fynes.
Shakespeare’s Europe
, ed. Charles Hughes (London: Sherratt and Hughes, 1903), 475–77.

2. P. Razzell, ed.,
The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart
England
(London: Caliban Books, 1995), 27–28.

3. Phillip Stubbes,
The Anatomie of Abuses
(London: Richard Jones, 1583), fol.

99r.

4. Stubbes,
Anatomie,
fols. 115v–116r.

5. Richard Mulcaster,
Positions Wherein Those Primitive Circumstances Be Examined Which Are Necessary for the Training Up of Children
(London: Thomas Chare, 1581), 104–5.

6. Randle Holme,
The Academy of Armory
[1688] (Menston: Scolar Press, 1972), 3.264.

7. The outdoor games and board games are taken from Francis Willughby,
Francis Willughby’s Book of Games: A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on Sports, Games,
and Pastimes
, eds. David Cram, Jeffrey L. Forgeng, and Dorothy Johnston (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2003). The dice games are from Holme,
Academy,
and Charles Cotton, “The Compleat Gamester [1674],” in
Games and Gamesters of the Restoration
(London: Routledge, 1930). The card games are from Cotton,
Gamester;
Holme,
Academy;
Willughby,
Book of Games;
and David Parlett,
The Oxford Guide to Card
Games
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

9

The Elizabethan

World

Elizabeth came to the throne in the middle of a century when the globe was being swiftly and radically transformed. European mariners had found their way to the Indian Ocean and the Americas at the end of the 1400s: in a very short time, societies separated by miles and millennia suddenly found themselves in direct contact with each other. Elizabethans became familiar with plants, places, and peoples undreamt of by their grandpar-ents. Even the shape of the universe was changing, as the astronomical theories of scientists like Copernicus found their way from the margin to the mainstream. Such alterations in the external world were mirrored by changes within the Elizabethan mind as individuals began to revise fundamental assumptions about their place in the world around them.

Then as now, people’s horizons were shaped by their participation in networks of travel and communication. Local Elizabethan society could be very insular. Farmers did not often need to travel, beyond visiting a nearby fair or market to sell produce or purchase supplies. When villagers contrasted their countrymen with foreigners, they were usually speaking of people from the village as contrasted with nonlocals.

Yet overall there was a surprising degree of mobility. In southeastern England, perhaps 70 to 80 percent of the population moved at least once in their lives. Some livelihoods required ongoing travel: servants in search of a new master, chapmen and factors plying their trades, and wage laborers following the market. Migration tended to be toward the south and east of the country, from the countryside to the towns, and from small towns toward larger ones. Prosperous landholders were unlikely to migrate: it
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was the poor, the landless, and the young who most often had to move.

The population of London was especially fluid: it was estimated in the 1580s that the population of any given parish was mostly changed over any given period of 12 years or so.

For those who moved only once in their lives, the move was probably local, as when young people left their parents’ house for a new household either through marriage or employment. Such moves often took the person to a new community, but not necessarily far from their place of birth. The distance was more likely to be significant if there was a major career move involved. Craftsmen, tradesmen, and professionals relocated to pursue advancement in their careers, and there was a constant migration of unskilled workers into the towns, especially London.

Although relocation was rare among the upper classes, travel was common: merchants traveled to oversee their enterprises; major landowners owned multiple estates in different parts of the country; and upper-class families from the provinces spent part of the year in London, pursuing the social contacts and cultural opportunities that the city afforded This mobility created networks of people that extended well beyond the travel ranges of any individual. A countryman who had never traveled beyond the nearest market town might have friends or relatives who had ended up in London. Urban con artists made a living by playing on these connections: seeing a prosperous but naive countryman on the city streets, they would introduce themselves and invent a personal connection to work their way into their victim’s trust, calling him
cousin
—so that
to cozen
came to mean “to cheat.”

These networks of travel and communication contributed to a sense of national identity that was unusually strong compared to other parts of Europe at the time. In spite of regional differences, most English people felt a deep sense of belonging to England. This nationalism was both expressed and perpetuated in popular culture (as in the song “Lord Willoughby” in the previous chapter); it was also fostered by the Queen’s impeccable tal-ent for public relations. As the reign progressed, it was heightened by a sense of national danger: war with Spain and the threat of invasion, rebellion in Ireland, and papal efforts to subvert English Protestantism. London played a crucial role in crystallizing this sense of national identity: few European capitals dominated national life or were as connected to their provinces as England’s. A constant stream of travelers to and from the city ensured a close connection between London and the rest of the nation.

LAND TRAVEL

Travel was an important part of Elizabethan life and the Elizabethan economy, yet Elizabethan systems of transportation were so haphazard that it is misleading to call them systems at all. The roads were problem-atic. Unpaved, and for the most part without foundations (with the excep-The Elizabethan World
227

tion of the roads left over from Roman days), they were difficult to use in adverse weather. Parliament passed Highways Acts in the mid-1500s requiring each parish to maintain its roads, but as with many ambitious reforms of the period, the goals outreached the capacity for enforcement.

In practice, conditions depended on local custom and initiative. Moreover, weak law enforcement left travelers vulnerable to the depredations of highwaymen. There were long stretches of lonely road even on major thoroughfares, with ample greenery by the wayside to conceal an ambush.

The main roads out of London were favored haunts of highway robbers, who preyed on the substantial wealth that passed in and out of the city on any given day.

Although the roads were bad, travel accommodations were surprisingly good. The better English inns had private rooms with fireplaces and food service; the lodger was given a key and could expect clean sheets on the bed. Of course, people traveling on a tight budget might not be so well accommodated, and most people could expect to share their bed with other wayfarers. If you weren’t close to a large town at nightfall, you might have to make arrangements at a village alehouse or a private home. The least fortunate had to take shelter under hedgerows as best they might.

Even a seemingly good inn might have its drawbacks. Inn staff sometimes collaborated with highway robbers, sending report of particularly promis-ing victims who stayed at their inn.

The speed of travel was a fraction of modern rates. A person journeying on foot could cover 15 miles a day by road in fair weather. On horseback one could travel twice or even three times as far, although a horse could not be pushed that fast indefinitely. Purchasing a horse could be expensive, but the cost could be reduced by renting or by buying the animal used. Horse dealers, called
horsecoursers,
had much the same reputation among Elizabethans as used-car salesmen today. Various tricks of the trade could make a horse seem younger or healthier than it was, and there was extensive trafficking in stolen mounts. Owners branded their horses or nicked them on the ear as a means of identification, but there were ways to obliterate or alter the markings. One could also fasten a large padlock (called a
fetterlock
) on the horse’s leg to prevent theft.

Riders by post, with regular changes of horses awaiting them at official post-houses, could cover 10 miles an hour and as much as 100 or even 160

miles in a day. Post-houses were kept by postmasters, typically innkeep-ers specially licensed by the Queen; the post-houses were located at about 10-mile intervals along major roads. They had originally been established as a network to ensure the speedy expedition of royal business, but private individuals were also allowed to hire post-horses, although they also had to hire a postboy or guide to bring the horses back.

Those who wished might travel by cart, wagon, or coach. Carts were two-wheeled vehicles, mostly used for carrying small quantities of goods.

Wagons had four wheels and might carry over 6,000 pounds. They mostly
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Daily Life in Elizabethan England

ENGLISH INNS DESCRIBED, 1577

Our inns are . . . very well furnished with napery, bedding, and tapestry.

. . . Each comer is sure to lie in clean sheets, wherein no man hath been lodged since they came from the laundress or out of the water wherein they were last washed. . . . The traveler . . . may carry the key with him, as of his own house, so long as he lodgeth there. If he lose aught whilst he abideth in the inn, the host is bound by a general custom to restore the damage, so that there is no greater security anywhere for travelers than in the greatest inns of England. . . .

Many an honest man is spoiled of his goods as he traveleth to and fro, in which feat also the counsel of the tapsters, or drawers of drink, and chamberlains is not seldom behind or wanting. Certes I believe not that chapman or traveler in England is robbed by the way without the knowledge of some of them; for when he cometh into the inn and alighteth from his horse, the hostler forthwith is very busy to take down his budget or capcase [traveling bag] in the yard from his saddlebow, which he peiseth [weighs] slyly in his hand to feel the weight thereof. . . . The tapster in like sort for his part doth mark his behavior and what plenty of money he draweth when he payeth. . . .

Each owner . . . contendeth with other for goodness of entertainment of their guests, as about fineness and change of linen, furniture of bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of drink, variety of wines, or well using of horses.

William Harrison,
The Description of England,
ed. Georges Edelen (Ithaca, NY: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1968), 397–99.

served for carrying goods, but travelers could also book passage—the coach might have an awning to provide some protection against sun and dust. Coaches were more expensive but more comfortable since they were fully enclosed vehicles designed specifically for passengers. Regular coach and wagon service was developing between major towns over the course of Elizabeth’s reign: by 1575 there was a weekly wagon between Oxford and London, leaving on Saturday and returning the following Wednesday. All of these vehicles were slower than riding, and none had springs, so the journey was a boneshaker. Overland transport of small volumes of goods could also be by packhorse: packhorses could carry only about 225

pounds each, but they were better on rough terrain or in bad weather.

The post system provided the royal government with an effective

means of transporting messages, but private citizens had to make shift as best they could. One might hire a courier; local letters might be entrusted to a servant (large aristocratic households had footmen who specialized in running these sorts of errands); over long distances, the letter might
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229