We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate" or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament. This is enough to show the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were, and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows. Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge with an Italian minde learned at Rome."
Among other Italianified Cambridge men whom Ascham might well have noticed were George Acworth and William Barker. Acworth had lived abroad during Mary's reign, studying civil law in France and Italy. When Elizabeth came to the throne he was elected public orator of the University of Cambridge, but through being idle, dissolute, and a drunkard, he lost all his preferments in England.[127] Barker, or Bercher, who was educated at St John's or Christ's, was abroad at the same time as Ascham, who may have met him as Hoby did in Italy.[128] Barker seems to have been an idle person--he says that after travels "my former fancye of professenge nothinge partycularly was verye muche encreased"[129]--and a papistical one, for on the accession of Mary he came home to serve the Duke of Norfolk, whose Catholic plots he betrayed, under torture, in 1571. It was then that the Duke bitterly dubbed him an "Italianfyd Inglyschemane," equal in faithlessness to "a schamlesse Scote";[130] i.e. the Bishop of Ross, another witness.
Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, famous for his rude behaviour to Sir Philip Sidney, whom he subsequently tried to dispatch with hired assassins after the Italian manner,[131] might well have been one of the rising generation of courtiers whom Ascham so deplored. In Ascham's lifetime he was already a conspicuous gallant, and by 1571, at the age of twenty-two, he was the court favourite. The friends of the Earl of Rutland, keeping him informed of the news while he was fulfilling in Paris those heavy duties of observation which Cecil mapped out for him, announce that "There is no man of life and agility in every respect in Court, but the Earl of Oxford."[132] And a month afterwards, "Th' Erle of Oxenforde hath gotten hym a wyffe--or at the leste a wyffe hath caught hym--that is Mrs Anne Cycille, whearunto the Queen hath gyven her consent, the which hathe causyd great wypping, waling, and sorowful chere, of those that hoped to have hade that golden daye."[133] Ascham did not live to see the development of this favorite into an Italianate Englishman, but Harrison's invective against the going of noblemen's sons into Italy coincides with the return of the Earl from a foreign tour which seems to have been ill-spent.
At the very time when the Queen "delighted more in his personage and his dancing and valiantness than any other,"[134] Oxford betook himself to Flanders--without licence. Though his father-in-law Burghley had him brought back to the indignant Elizabeth, the next year he set forth again and made for Italy. From Siena, on January 3rd, 1574-5, he writes to ask Burghley to sell some of his land so as to disburden him of his debts, and in reply to some warning of Burghley's that his affairs in England need attention, replies that since his troubles are so many at home, he has resolved to continue his travels.[135] Eight months afterwards, from Italy, he begs Burghley's influence to procure him a licence to continue his travels a year longer, stating as his reason an exemplary wish to see more of Germany. (In another letter also[136] he assures Cecil that he means to acquaint himself with Sturmius--that educator of youth so highly approved of by Ascham.) "As to Italy, he is glad he has seen it, but cares not ever to see it again, unless to serve his prince or country." The reason they have not heard from him this past summer is that his letters were sent back because of the plague in the passage. He did not know this till his late return to Venice. He has been grieved with a fever. The letter concludes with a mention that he has taken up of Baptista Nigrone 500 crowns, which he desires repaid from the sale of his lands, and a curt thanks for the news of his wife's delivery.[137]
From Paris, after an interval of six months, he declares his pleasure at the news of his being a father, but makes no offer to return to England. Rather he intends to go back to Venice. He "may pass two or three months in seeing Constantinople and some part of Greece."[138]
However, Burghley says, "I wrote to Pariss to hym to hasten hym homewards," and in April 1576, he landed at Dover in an exceedingly sulky mood. He refused to see his wife, and told Burghley he might take his daughter into his own house again, for he was resolved "to be rid of the cumber."[139] He accused his father-in-law of holding back money due to him, although Burghley states that Oxford had in one year £5700.[140] Considering that Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl of Leicester, had only £1OO a year for a tour abroad,[141] and that Sir Robert Dallington declares £200 to be quite enough for a gentleman studying in France or Italy--including pay for a servant--and that any more would be "superfluous and to his hurte,"[142] it will be seen that the Earl of Oxford had £5500 "to his hurte."
Certain results of his travel were pleasing to his sovereign, however. For he was the first person to import to England "gloves, sweete bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other pleasant things."[143] The Queen was so proud of his present of a pair of perfumed gloves, trimmed with "foure Tufts or Roses of coloured Silk" that she was "pictured with those Gloves upon her hands, and for many yeeres after, it was called the Earle of Oxford's perfume."[144] His own foreign and fashionable apparel was ridiculed by Gabriel Harvey, in the much-quoted description of an Italianate Englishman, beginning:
"A little apish hat couched faste to the pate, like an oyster."[145]
Arthur Hall and the Earl of Oxford will perhaps serve to show that many young men pointed out as having returned the worse for their liberty to see the world, were those who would have been very poor props to society had they never left their native land. Weak and vain striplings of entirely English growth escaped the comment attracted by a sinner with strange garments and new oaths. For in those garments themselves lay an offence to the commonwealth. I need only refer to the well-known jealousy, among English haberdashers and milliners, of the superior craft of Continental workmen, behind whom English weavers lagged: Henry the Eighth used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of cloth--on that leg of which he was so proud--unless "by great chance there came a paire of Spanish silke stockings from Spaine."[146] Knit worsted stockings were not made in England till 1554, when an apprentice "chanced to see a pair of knit worsted stockings in the lodging of an Italian merchant that came from Mantua."[147] Harrison's description of England breathes an animosity to foreign clothes, plainly founded on commercial jealousy: "Neither was it ever merrier in England than when an Englishman was known abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself at home with his fine carsey hosen, and a mean slop: his coat, gown, and cloak of brown, blue, or puke, with some pretty furniture of velvet or of fur, and a doublet of sad tawny, or black velvet, or other comely silk, without such cuts and garish colours, as are worn in these days, and never brought in but by the consent of the French, who think themselves the gayest men when they have most diversities of rags and change of colours about them."[148]
Wrapped up with economic acrimony there was a good deal of the hearty old English hatred of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner, which was always finding expression. Either it was the 'prentices who rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and "rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going on and laughing at it,"[149] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed. "He was in a great fury.... Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in that they wanted judgement."[150]