PART I.
THE REIGNS OF HENRY VIII., EDWARD VI., AND MARY I.
n the following articles we propose to treat of home life in bygone days.
That being the case, our net will be spread wide enough to catch a very miscellaneous collection of facts. Nothing will come amiss to us that in any way illustrates the domestic existence of our ancestors, and every reader, whatever her turn of mind, will be sure to find something worth taking note of.
It will be a different sort of narrative from the history of great men, or a tale of battles, sieges, and such-like imposing circumstances. We shall speak of houses and furniture, food and clothing, etiquette and good manners, wages and prices, education and superstition, household industries and household amusements, old recipes and domestic medicines, the ways of the poor and the ways of the rich. We shall make as much of needles and pins as ordinary history-books do of swords and guns, and a girl singing an old song will have more attention than they give to an ambassador negotiating a foreign treaty.
The worst of it is that the subject is long, whilst our space is of necessity short. We shall try, however, to change that disadvantage into an advantage, by giving only those facts that appear most interesting. There is a pleasure, too, when reading about a subject, to know that the half has not been told, and that to all who care to pursue it on their own account a rich harvest remains yet unreaped.
We are not going to begin with the time “when wild in woods the noble savage ran,” and homes were in caves and under the shade of green trees; our starting-point is to be the reign of Henry VIII., and our first article will embrace that reign and the reigns of Edward VI. and Queen Mary—in other words, from 1509 to 1558.
In those far-back days many things were different from what they are now. There has been a great advance in material comfort. Our forefathers, no doubt, had just as much wit and wisdom as we have; but we can boast an advantage over them in possessing more of the conveniences of life. In that respect, at least, we are lucky to have been born so late.
Let us not imagine, however, that they had a bad time of it, or were discontented or miserable because they had not everything just like us. People do not sigh after what they have never either seen or heard of. We really find happiness in our affections—not in our material surroundings, which are of secondary importance; and it is not unreasonable to conclude that, as human nature is always the same, these ancestors of ours enjoyed life in their way quite as much as we do.
We start with the subject of houses and furniture. When Henry VIII. began to reign, well-to-do people in towns lived, as a rule, in houses built principally of timber, the fronts being often ornamented with rich carvings of fanciful and grotesque objects. The upper storeys projected; so much so, indeed, that in a street people in the attics on either side could almost shake hands. There was a reason for building in this way. As the houses were of perishable material, each storey gave protection from the weather to the storey beneath it.
Such a quantity of timber being used, there was a great danger of fire, and the warning of the bellmen who proclaimed the hours of the night in London was certainly needed, when, to their instructions to “be charitable to the poor, and pray for the dead,” they added, “Take care of your fire and candle.”
The labouring people in the country lived in houses constructed of the first things that came to hand—often nothing but wattle and mud or clay. When the mud or clay cracked, under the influence of summer’s heat or winter’s frost, it was a simple matter with the same material to “stop a hole to keep the wind away.” Ventilation was very defective, and Erasmus attributes the frequent sicknesses with which England was then visited in a great measure to the want of fresh air in the dwelling-houses.
The ideas that regulated the furnishing and decoration of the houses of the upper classes form a marked contrast to those prevailing nowadays. The furniture was more massive, and there was less of it. The bedchamber of Henry VIII. contained only a couple of joint cupboards, a joint stool, two hand-irons, a fire-fork, a pair of tongs, a fire-pan, and a steel mirror covered with yellow velvet.
Carpets came into use before the reign of Henry VIII. was far advanced, though in the reign of Queen Mary rushes still strewed the floor of the presence-chamber. Feather beds were used in Henry VIII.’s reign by the upper classes. When they went travelling, they were no longer content with the floor or a hard bench at halting-places, but generally carried portable beds (packed in leather cases) with them on horseback. In the lower ranks of life straw pallets, or rough mats with a round log for a pillow, formed the ordinary provision for sleeping.
Ladies’ dresses amongst the nobility in Henry VIII.’s reign had a certain formality, but in many points were elegant and becoming. Early in the sixteenth century they were made low and cut square about the neck: the sleeves were tight at the shoulder, but suddenly became very large and open, showing the puffed sleeves of the under-dress. The long skirts were worn open in front to the waist, showing the kirtle or petticoat. Sometimes, however, dresses were worn high, with short waists and a small falling collar.
At a little later date the sleeves of dresses were puffed at the shoulders, and when the dress was made open above the girdle, what was called a “partlet”—a kind of habit-shirt—was worn beneath it, and carried up to the throat.
Sleeves were one of the strong points of the ladies of those times. They were independent articles of clothing, and were attached at pleasure to the rest of the costume. “Much splendour,” says Mr. J. R. Planché, “was lavished on this part of the dress, and its various fashions were singularly quaint and elegant.” Amongst the inventories of Henry VIII.’s reign we find “three pair of purple satin sleeves for women; one pair of linen sleeves, paned with gold over the arm, quilted with black silk, and wrought with flowers between the panes and at the hands; one pair of sleeves of purple gold tissue damask wire, each sleeve tied with aglets of gold; one pair of crimson satin sleeves, four buttons of gold being set on each sleeve, and in every button nine pearls.”
Necklaces and other ornaments of jewellery were much worn. No dress was complete without a girdle, and from the girdle was suspended by means of chains such articles as tablets, knives and purses. Sometimes, in place of the chains, the girdles themselves had a long pendant, which was elaborately decorated.
We get a glimpse of the style of dress amongst commoner folk, in the history of a famous clothier known as “Jack of Newbury.” When Jack was married, the bride, in her wedding costume, must have cut quite a picturesque figure. “The bride,” we read, “being dressed in a gown of sheep’s russet and a kirtle of fine worsted, her head attired in a billiment (habiliment) of gold, and her hair, as yellow as gold, hanging down behind her, which was curiously combed and plaited, according to the manner of those days, was led to church by two boys with bride laces, and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves.”
Mrs. Jack became a widow, and after she had laid aside her weeds she is described as coming one day out of the kitchen “in a fair train gown stuck full of silver pins, having a white cap on her head, with cuts of curious needlework under the same, and an apron before her as white as driven snow.”
The ordinary costume for men of the upper ranks in the time of Henry VIII. was a full-skirted jacket or doublet, with large sleeves to the wrists, over which was hung a short cloak or coat, with loose hanging sleeves and a broad, rolling collar of fur. To these articles of dress was added a brimmed cap, jewelled and bordered with ostrich feathers; stockings and square-toed shoes.
A sumptuary law was passed in 1533, limiting the use of certain expensive stuffs and valuable personal ornaments to certain classes. Common people and serving men, for example, were confined to the use of cloth of a fixed price, and lamb’s fur only, and they were forbidden to wear any ornaments or even buttons of gold, silver, or gilt work, excepting the badge of their lord or master.
The apprentices of London wore blue cloaks in summer, and in winter gowns of the same colour. Blue cloaks or gowns were a mark of servitude.
Fourteen years before the beginning of Henry VIII.’s reign wages were settled by Act of Parliament. A free mason, master carpenter, rough mason, bricklayer, master tiler, plumber, glazier, carver or joiner, was allowed from Easter to Michaelmas to take 6d. a day, without meat or drink. Suppose he had meat and drink, he could only charge 4d. A master having under him six men was allowed a penny a day extra. From Michaelmas to Easter a penny a day was taken off these prices. Wages, however, gradually rose all through the sixteenth century.
In 1511, in the household of the Earl of Northumberland, the principal priest of the chapel had £5 a year; a chaplain graduate £3 6s. 8d.; a chaplain not a graduate, £2; a minstrel, £4; a serving boy, 13s. 4d. These payments were over and above food and lodging.
When wages and salaries were so low, compared with those of our own day, we must expect to find a corresponding difference in prices. In 1541 a hundred eggs sold for 1s. 2d., a dozen pigeons cost 10d., a good fat goose cost 8d., and you could buy a fat sheep for from 2s. 4d. to 4s., and an ox for about £2. In 1533 an Act was passed by which the price of beef and pork was fixed at ½d. a pound, and veal at ¾d.
Of the state of learning, in the houses at any rate of the upper classes, much is to be said that reflects credit on our ancestors. The royal court of Henry VIII., whatever might be its faults, did not neglect study. In the case of Prince Edward, afterwards Edward VI., devotion to his books no doubt had an injurious effect on his health, and there is no saying what might have been the result to England had he had less learning and more exercise. Bishop Burnet tells us that he was so forward in his education that “before he was eight years old he wrote Latin letters to his father, who was a prince of that stern severity that one can hardly think that those about his son durst cheat him by making letters for him.”
Mary had a good knowledge of classic authors, and wrote good Latin letters. Elizabeth began every day with an hour’s reading in the Greek Testament, the tragedies of Sophocles, and the orations of Isocrates and Demosthenes. She also was a good Latin scholar, spoke French and Italian as fluently as English, had a smattering of Dutch and German, and was a devourer of works on history.
These two princesses were the highest in station of the accomplished women of the time, but there were many who equalled, and some who surpassed, them in learning. The most remarkable of all for accomplishments was certainly Lady Jane Grey, afterwards the unfortunate queen of a ten-days’ reign. Lady Jane took so kindly to study that she became the marvel of the age for her acquirements. She excelled in needlework and in music, and, aided by her tutor, Dr. Elmer, or Aylmer, afterwards Bishop of London, had thoroughly mastered Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, and knew something of at least three Oriental tongues—Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic.
One of the most interesting passages—and a touching one it is, too—in the writings of Roger Ascham is that in “The Schoolmaster,” in which he describes a visit he paid to the home of Lady Jane’s parents in Leicestershire in 1550. She was then little over thirteen years old. It gives us a glimpse of the girl-life of the period in a high rank of society, and deserves to be quoted in full.
“Before I went into Germany,” says Ascham, “I came to Broadgate, in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholden. Her parents, the Duke and Duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber, reading Phædon Platonis, in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccaccio.
“After salutation and duty done with some other talk, I asked her why she would leave such pastime in the park?
“Smiling, she answered me, ‘I wis all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas, good folk! they never felt what true pleasure meant.’
“‘And how came you, madam,’ quoth I, ‘to this deep knowledge of pleasure, and what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women but very few men have attained thereunto?’
“‘I will tell you,’ quoth she, ‘and tell you a truth which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that God ever gave me is that He sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure, and number—even so perfectly as God made the world—or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes, with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways which I will not name for the honour I bear them; so without measure misordered that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and troubles unto me.’
“I remember this talk gladly,” Ascham adds, “both because it is so worthy of memory, and because, also, it was the last talk that ever I had and the last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady.”
However learning might flourish in the upper circles of society, it seems to have languished in the schools and among the people. But efforts were made in the direction of popular education, and more grammar schools it is said were founded in the latter part of Henry VIII.’s reign than in the three hundred years preceding.
Music was practised by all classes. Erasmus, who saw much of England in the beginning of the sixteenth century, speaks of the English as the most accomplished in the skill of music of any people. “It is certain,” says Mr. Chappell, “that the beginning of the sixteenth century produced in England a race of musicians equal to the best in foreign countries, and in point of secular music decidedly in advance of them.”
Henry VIII. was a great patron of music, and, more than that, he was himself a composer and performer. He played well on both the virginals and the lute, and could sing at sight. But to sing at sight was a common accomplishment amongst gentlemen; so common, indeed, that inability to do so was looked on as a serious drawback to success in life. Homes were rendered cheerful by the singing of madrigals and other part music. The first collection of songs in parts that was printed in England belongs to the year 1530.
Besides music, many other recreations were indulged in. These were the days of archery, casting of the bar, wrestling, and such martial sports as fighting with swords and battle-axes. For rural pastimes there were hunting and hawking—and in these the ladies were often as enthusiastic as the gentlemen. Card-playing was highly popular, and in the reign of Henry VIII. a prohibitory statute was found necessary to prevent apprentices from using cards, except in the Christmas holidays, and then only in their masters’ houses. The same statute forbade any householder to permit card-playing in his house, under the penalty of six shillings and eightpence for every offence.
May Day was a general holiday, and Maypoles were set up in every town and village. The observance of May Day differed no doubt in minor particulars in different places, but in general it consisted in people of all ranks going out early in the morning into the “sweet meadows and green woods,” where they broke down branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. “This done, they returned homewards with their booty, and made their doors and windows triumph in the flowery spoil.” The Maypole was set up, and the rest of the day was spent in dancing round it, and in sports of different kinds. When evening came, bonfires were lighted in the streets. Even the reigning sovereign joined in these amusements. On May Day, 1515, Henry VIII. and Queen Katherine, his wife, rode a-Maying from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooter’s-hill, accompanied by many lords and ladies.
There was a famous London Maypole in Cornhill before the parish church of St. Andrew, which thus got the name of St. Andrew Undershaft. The pole or shaft, Stow tells us, was set up by the citizens “every year, on May Day, in the morning, in the midst of the street, before the south door of the said church; which shaft, when it was set on end and fixed in the ground, was higher than the church steeple.” When its annual day of usefulness was over, the pole was taken down again and hung on iron hooks above the doors of the neighbouring houses.
This pole was destroyed in 1550, the fourth year of Edward VI.’s reign, in an outburst of Puritanism, after a sermon preached at St. Paul’s Cross against May games. The inhabitants of the houses against whose wall the pole had found shelter sawed it in pieces, and every man took a bit and made use of it to light his fire.
Mingled with the festivities of May Day there was a distinct set of sports, very popular in the early part of the sixteenth century, intended to represent the adventures of the renowned woodland hero, Robin Hood. The enthusiasm with which the common people entered into these sports may be seen from the reception Bishop Latimer met with when he once proposed to preach in a town on the 1st of May. He tells the incident himself in a sermon he preached in 1549 before Edward VI.
“I came once myself,” he says, “to a place, riding on a journey homeward from London, and I sent word overnight into the town that I would preach there in the morning because it was holy day, and methought it was an holy day’s work.” (It was the Feast of the Apostles Philip and James.) “The church stood in my way, and I took my horse and my company and went thither. I thought I should have found a great company in the church, and when I came there the church door was fast locked.
“I tarried there half an hour and more. At last the key was found, and one of the parish comes to me and says, ‘Sir, this is a busy day with us. We cannot hear you. It is Robin Hood’s Day. The parish are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood. I pray you forbid them not.’
“I was fain there to give place to Robin Hood. I thought my rochet”—or bishop’s surplice—“should have been regarded, though I were not; but it would not serve; it was fain to give place to Robin Hood.”
How did stay-at-home people amuse themselves then in the long winter evenings? No doubt they either made time seem short by going to sleep, or they sat by the fireside singing songs or telling oft-told stories, or exercising their wits by asking each other riddles or conundrums. Some of their fireside riddles are preserved in a little book called “Demands Joyous”—in modern English Merry Questions—which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1511.
The following are a few of the conundrums contained in this work, and at some of them the reader, who is well acquainted with the conundrums of the present day, will be tempted to exclaim with Solomon, that there is nothing new under the sun.
“What is it that never freezeth?—Boiling water.
“What is it that never was and never will be?—A mouse’s nest in a cat’s ear.
“How many straws go to a goose’s nest?—Not one, for straws, not having feet, cannot go anywhere.
“How many calves’ tails would it take to reach from the earth to the sky?—No more than one, if it be long enough.
“What man getteth his living backwards?—A ropemaker.
“Why doth a dog turn round three times before he lieth down?—Because he knoweth not his bed’s head from the foot thereof.
“Why do men make an oven in a town? Because they cannot make a town in an oven.
“How may a man discern a cow in a flock of sheep?—By his eyesight.
“What is the worst bestowed charity that one can give?—Alms to a blind man; for he would be glad to see the person hanged that gave it to him.”
An industry of considerable interest from a domestic point of view came to the front in 1542; this was the manufacture of pins. These useful articles were originally made abroad, but the English pinners took to making them, and on their engaging to keep the public well supplied at reasonable prices, an Act of Parliament was passed in the year just named, forbidding the sale of any sort of pins excepting “only such as shall be double-headed, and have the heads soldered fast to the shank of the pin, well smoothed, the shank well shaven, the point well and round filed, canted and sharped.”
The English pinmakers, however, either proved unable or unwilling to keep their part of the bargain, and complaints were so loudly made that the pins were not what they should be, that in 1545 the Act was declared “frustrate and annihilated, and to be repealed for ever.” Pins of good quality were of brass, but unscrupulous makers made pins of iron wire, blanched, and passed them off as brass ones.
People who went from home then had no choice—they must either ride or walk. Kings, queens, and gentlefolk all mounted to the saddle, the ladies being accustomed to ride on pillions fixed on the horse, and generally behind some relative or serving-man. Rude carriages, however, made their appearance in England in 1555.
Before the Reformation there were no poor’s rates. The poor had their wants supplied by charitable doles given at religious houses, and by contributions placed in the poor man’s box which stood in every church. In all parishes there was a church house supplied with dishes and cooking utensils. “Here,” says John Aubrey, “the housekeepers met, and were merry and gave their charity.”
Begging, under certain conditions, was regulated by an Act of Parliament passed in 1530. By this Act justices of the peace were required to give licences under their seals to such poor, aged, and impotent persons to beg within a certain precinct as they thought had most need. If anyone begged out of the district assigned to him he was to be set in the stocks two days and two nights; and if anyone begged without first obtaining a licence he was to be put in the stocks three days and three nights, and be fed with bread and water only.
Vagrants were very sternly dealt with; but in this Act, and in subsequent legislation on the same subject, we see that our sixteenth-century forefathers had an honest desire to do their duty in relieving such as were in “unfeigned misery.” In an Act passed in the first year of Edward VI.’s reign we find the curate of every parish required, “on every Sunday and holiday, after reading the Gospel of the day, to make (according to such talent as God hath given him) a godly and brief exhortation to his parishioners, moving and exciting them to remember the poor people, and the duty of Christian charity in relieving of them which be their brethren in Christ, born in the same parish and needing their help.”
One of the interesting households of the period was that of Sir Thomas More, the famous Lord Chancellor who was executed in 1535. More lived at Chelsea, and of his happy home there Erasmus, who knew him well, has given the following charming account:—“More,” he says, “has built, near London, upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion. There he lives, surrounded by his numerous family, including his wife, his son, and his son’s wife, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affectionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his disposition, that whatsoever happeneth that could not be helped, he is as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible had been done.
“In More’s house you would say that Plato’s Academy was revived again, only whereas in the Academy the discussion turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts; yet is their chief care of piety. There is never any seen idle. The head of the house governs it, not by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place, performing his duty with alacrity; nor is sober mirth wanting.”
Speaking of More’s home life in his “Short History of the English People,” Mr. J. R. Green says:—“The reserve which the age exacted from parents was thrown to the winds in More’s intercourse with his children. He loved teaching them, and lured them to their deeper studies by the coins and curiosities he had gathered in his cabinet. He was as fond of their pets and their games as the children themselves, and would take grave scholars and statesmen into the garden to see his girls’ rabbit-hutches or to watch the gambols of their favourite monkey.”
(To be continued.)