“It becometh not, therefore, the personnes religious to follow the manere of secular personnes, that in theyr congresses or commune metynges, or departyngs, done use to kysse, take hands, or such other touchings that good religious-personnes shulde utterly avoyde.”
In Collet’s “Relics of Literature” maybe found this suggestive paragraph:
“Dr. Pierius Winsemius, historiographer to their High Mightinesses the States of Friesland, in his Chronijck van Frieslandt, 1622, tells us that the pleasant practice of kissing was utterly ‘unpractised and unknown’ in England till the fair princess Ronix (Rowena), the daughter of King Hengist of Friesland, ‘pressed the beaker with her lipkens, and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a husjen (a little kiss).’”
But, whether this Anglo-Saxon incident be true or mythical, it is certain that in the time of Cardinal Wolsey, who lived cotemporaneously with Erasmus, from whom we have quoted, the osculatory reputation of the English was widely spread. Cavendish, the biographer of Wolsey, says, in reference to a visit at the château of M. Créqui, a distinguished French nobleman:
“Being in a fair great dining chamber, I awaited my Lady’s coming; and after she came thither out of her own chamber, she received me most gently, like one of noble estate, having a train of twelve gentlewomen. And when she with her train came all out, she said to me, ‘Forasmuch as ye be an Englishman, whose custom is in your country to kiss all ladies and gentlewomen without offence, and although it be not so here in this realm [France, temp. Henry VIII.], yet will I be so bold to kiss you, and so shall all my maidens.’ By means whereof, I kissed my lady and all her women.”
When Bulstrode Whitelock was at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, as ambassador from Oliver Cromwell, he waited on her on May-day, to invite her to “take the air, and some little collation he had provided as her humble servant.” She came with her ladies; and “both in supper-time and afterwards,” being “full of pleasantness and gayety of spirits, among other frolics, commanded him to teach her ladies the English mode of salutation, which, after some pretty defences, their lips obeyed, and Whitelock most readily.”
In a curious book published in London in 1694, entitled “The Ladies’ Dictionary; being a General Entertainment for the Fair Sex,” the author, who deals with the fashions of the time, remarks under the article “Kissing,” as follows:
“But kissing and drinking both are now grown (it seems) to be a greater custom amongst us than in those days with the Romans. Nor am I so austere to forbid the use of either, both which, though the one in surfeits, the other in adulteries, may be abused by the vicious; yet contrarily at customary meetings and laudable banquets, they by the nobly disposed, and such whose hearts are fixed upon honor, may be used with much modesty and continence.”
This osculatory custom seems to have disappeared about the time of the Restoration. Peter Heylin says it had for some time before been unfashionable in France. When he visited that country, in 1625, he thought it strange and uncivil that the ladies should turn away from the proffer of a salutation; and he indignantly exclaims “that the chaste and innocent kiss of an English gentlewoman is more in heaven than their best devotions.” Its abandonment in England might have formed part of that French code of politeness which Charles II. introduced on his return. Apropos of this, we may here quote a letter of Rustic Sprightly to the “Spectator” (No. 240):