A history of England

by Charles Oman

These successive blows at Spain gave England the complete command of the seas. Hence it is not strange that we find the beginnings of colonial enterprise appearing. An attempt to found a settlement on the bleak shore of Newfoundland was a failure. But Sir Walter Raleigh planted a promising colony in the more clement district about the river Roanoke, which he named Virginia, after his mistress, the "Virgin-Queen," as she loved to be called. The first Virginian scheme came to naught—the Indians were hostile, and the improvident settlers planted tobacco instead of corn, and so starved themselves (1590). It was not till seventeen years later that the colony was founded for the second time, and began to flourish. It was from thence that Raleigh brought to England the two products that are always connected with his name, tobacco and potatoes.

Growth of foreign trade.—Chartered companies.

Colonial enterprise was accompanied by increased trade with distant lands. The English ships began to appear as far afield as India, China, and even Japan. The merchants who worked the more difficult and dangerous routes, banded themselves into chartered companies, of which the Turkey Company, founded in 1581, the Russian Company, dating from 1566, and the far more famous East India Company (1600) were the most important. By the end of the queen's reign, English commerce had doubled and tripled, and the steady stream of wealth which it poured into the land had done much to end the social troubles and dangers which had marked the middle years of the century.

Rural distress.

But nearly all the profit went to the town populations. Ports and markets flourished, merchants and skilled artisans grew rich, and a certain proportion of the wretched vagrant hordes, which had been the terror of the middle years of the century, were absorbed into the new employments which were springing up in the towns. But in the countryside, neither the landholder nor the peasant had nearly such a good position as in the days before the Reformation. The prices both of food and of manufactured goods had gone up about threefold, but rents had not risen perceptibly, and the wages of agricultural labour had only increased about 50 percent. The country gentleman, therefore, was no longer so opulent in comparison to the town-dwelling merchant, and the peasant stood far worse compared with the artisan than in the previous century. We may place in the time of Elizabeth the beginning of that rise of the importance of the urban as compared with the rural population, which has been going on ever since, till, in our own day, England is entirely dominated by her towns. It will be noticed that in the great political struggle of the next century, under the Stuarts, the party which represented the wealth and activity of the cities completely beat that which drew its strength from the peerage and gentry of the purely agricultural districts.

The Poor Law.

It would be wrong to leave the field of social change without mentioning the celebrated Poor Law of Queen Elizabeth (1601). All attempts to cope with pauperism by voluntary charity having failed, it was finally resolved to make the maintenance of the aged and invalid poor a statutory burden on the parishes. The new law provided that the able-bodied vagrant should be forced to work, and, if he refused, should be imprisoned, but that the impotent and deserving should be fed and housed by overseers, who were authorized to levy rates on the parish for their support. The system seems to have worked well, and we hear no complaints on the subject for three or four generations.

Growth of poetry and philosophy.

It is most noteworthy to mark the way in which the expansion of England in the spheres of political and commercial greatness was accompanied by a corresponding growth in the realms of intellect. The second half of Elizabeth's reign, a mere period of twenty years, was more fertile in great literary names than the two whole centuries which had preceded it. The excitement of the long religious wars, the sudden opening up of the dark places of the world by the great explorers, the free spirit of individual inquiry which accompanied the growth of Protestantism, all conspired to stir and develop men's minds. The greatest English dramatist, William Shakespeare, born in 1564, and the greatest English philosopher, Francis Bacon, born in 1561, were both children of the days of the long struggle with Spain, and had watched the final crisis of the Armada in their early manhood. Edmund Spenser, a few years older than his mightier contemporaries, shows even more clearly the spirit of the times. All through his lengthy epic of the Faërie Queene he is inspired by the enthusiasm of the struggles of England, and tells in allegory the glories of the great Elizabeth. We have but space to allude to Sir Philip Sydney and his pastoral romances, to Hooker's works on political philosophy, to Marlowe and other dramatists whose fame is half eclipsed by Shakespeare's genius. Never before or since has England produced in a few short years such a crop of great literary names.

The two main subjects of domestic importance in the last years of Elizabeth were the development of fresh forms of division in the English Church, and the troubles caused by the new conquest of Ireland. Both of these movements had begun in the earlier years of the reign, but did not fully expand till its end.