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they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving subjects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the lands of this Realm from the occupying of the poor husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the great profit that cometh of sheep which be now come into a few persons' hands, in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects; it is hereby enacted that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own inheritance more than 2000 sheep; that no person shall occupy more than two farms; and that the 19th of the 4th of Henry VII., and those other acts obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be reënacted and enforced."

By these measures the money-making spirit was for a time driven back, and the country resumed its natural course. I am not concerned to defend the economic wisdom of such proceedings; but they prove, I think, conclusively that the laboring classes owed their advantages not to the condition of the labor market, but to the care of the State; and that when the State relaxed its supervision, or failed to enforce its regulations, the laborers being left to the market chances, sank instantly in the unequal struggle with capital.

The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground (excepting during the discreditable interlude of the reign of Edward VI.) for the first three quarters of the century; and until that time the working classes in this country remained in a condition more than prosperous. They enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to the lot of that order in long-settled countries; incomparably beyond what the same class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France. The laws secured them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct evidence of successive acts of the legislature justifying the general policy by its success and we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of the great body of the people at a time when, if they had been discontented, they held in their own hands the means of asserting what the law acknowledged to be their right. The government had no power to compel submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a "benevolence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a determination against which the

crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a good grace from an impossible position. If the peasantry had been suffering under any real grievances, we should not have failed to have heard of them when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press them forward. Complaint was loud enough when complaint was just, under the Somerset protectorate.

The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied probably as much as they vary now. Under Henry IV. the average income of an earl was estimated at £2000 a year. Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had £6000. And the income of the Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount. But the establishments of such men were enormous, their ordinary retinues in time of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties of a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers were paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a scale that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share of the expenses were paid often out of private purses. The Duke of Norfolk, in the Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but merely as a reason why he should receive support) that he had spent all his private means upon the army; and in the sequel of this history we shall find repeated instances of knights and gentlemen voluntarily ruining themselves in the service of their country. The people, not universally, but generally, were animated by a true spirit of sacrifice; by a true conviction that they were bound to think first of England, and only next of themselves; and unless we can bring ourselves to understand this, we shall never understand what England was under the reigns of the Plantagenets and Tudors.

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In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest, carrying their heart high, and having their hands full. The hour of rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the laborers went to work and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examinedif the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the

village cobbler made "unhonest" shoes, if servants and masters quarreled, all was to be looked to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm, or to what he pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but colored with a broad, rosy, English health.

THE DREAM.

BY SIR THOMAS WYATT.

[1503-1542.]

UNSTABLE dream, according to the place,
Be steadfast once, or else at least be true:
By tasted sweetness make me not to rue
The sudden loss of thy false feignèd grace.
By good respect, in such a dangerous case,

Thou brought'st not her into these tossing seas;
But mad'st my sprite to live, my care to increase,
My body in tempest her delight to embrace.

The body dead, the spirit had his desire;
Painless was the one, the other in delight.
Why then, alas, did it not keep it right,

But thus return to leap into the fire;

And when it was at wish, could not remain?
Such mocks of dreams do turn to deadly pain.

ON THE DEATH OF SIR THOMAS WYATT.

BY THE EARL OF SURREY.

[HENRY HOWARD, Earl of Surrey, was born probably in 1517; beheaded 1547 by Henry VIII., ostensibly for treason. His father was Duke of Norfolk.]

WYATT resteth here that quick could never rest:

Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,

And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;

Such profit he by envy could obtain.

A head where wisdom mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain,

As on a stithe where that some work of fame
Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain's gain.

A visage stern and mild: where both did grow
Vice to contemn, in virtue to rejoice;
Amid great storms whom grace assured so

To live upright, and smile at fortune's choice.

A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme; That reft Chaucèr the glory of his wit;

A mark, the which (unpérfected for time)

Some may approach, but never none shall hit.

A tongue that served in foreign realms his king;
Whose courteous talk to virtue did inflame
Each noble heart: a worthy guide to bring
Our English youth by travail unto fame.

An eye whose judgment none affect could blind,
Friends to allure and foes to reconcile,
Whose piercing look did represent a mind
With virtue fraught reposèd void of guile.

A heart where dread was never so imprest

To hide the thought that might the truth advance In neither fortune loft[y], nor yet represt,

To swell in wealth, or yield unto mischance.

A valiant corpse, where force and beauty met,
Happy alas, too happy but for foes,

Livèd, and ran the race that nature set;

Of manhood's shape where she the mold did lose.

But to the heavens that simple soul is fled,
Which left, with such as covet Christ to know
Witness of faith that never could be dead;

Sent for our health, but not receivèd so.

Thus for our guilt this jewel have we lost;
The earth his bones, the heavens possess his ghost.

IN PRAISE OF FOLLY.

BY ERASMUS.

[DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, the Dutch classical and theological scholar, was born at Rotterdam, Holland, October 28, 1465, the son of Gerhard de Praet. The old story of his illegitimacy, immortalized in "The Cloister and the Hearth,' is now doubted. In accordance with the fashion among scholars of the time, he exchanged the name of Gerhard for the Latin and Greek equivalents Desiderius Erasmus, each signifying "the well-beloved." Left an orphan at thirteen, he was induced by his guardians to enter a monastery, in order that they might defraud him of his inheritance. He then became priest and secretary to the Bishop of Cambray; spent some years at Paris as student and teacher; and visited the chief European countries, including England, where he formed the acquaintance of Sir Thomas More and held a Greek professorship at Cambridge. In 1521 he settled at Basel, whence he removed later to Freiburg and Breisgau. He died at Basel, July 12, 1536. Besides various philological and theological works, and an edition of the New Testament in Greek with a Latin translation, he wrote "Encomium Moria" (Praise of Folly), a satire on society, especially quack religionists; "Colloquia" (Colloquies); and much witty and influential correspondence. He was regarded as the foremost man of letters in Europe, and his skits to have been leading instruments in undermining popular reverence for the Church and thus precipitating the Reformation; it was said that he "laid the egg which Luther hatched."]

THE divines present themselves next; but it may perhaps be most safe to pass them by, and not to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be very hazardous; for they are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication, which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against them. It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, yet have they reason to confess themselves indebted for no small obligations. For it is by one of my properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, with their elder brother Paul, caught up into the third heaven, from whence, like shepherds indeed, they look down upon their flock, the laity, grazing, as it were, in the vales of the world below. They fence themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, that there is no falling in with them; or if they do chance to be urged to a seeming non-plus, yet they find out so many evasions that all the art of man can never bind them so fast but

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