An absurd law had been made in the preceding reign, by which every one was prohibited from making cloth unless he had served an apprenticeship of seven years. The law was repealed in the first year of the queen; and this plain reason given, that it had occasioned the decay of the woollen manufacture, and had ruined several towns.[**] It is strange that Edward’s law should have been revived during the reign of Elizabeth; and still more strange that it should still subsist.
A passage to Archangel had been discovered by the English during the last reign; and a beneficial trade with Muscovy had been established. A solemn embassy was sent by the czar to Queen Mary. The ambassadors were shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland; but being hospitably entertained there, they proceeded on the journey, and were received at London with great pomp and solemnity.[***] This seems to have been the first intercourse which that empire had with any of the western potentates of Europe.
A law was passed in this reign,[****] by which the number of horses, arms and furniture, was fixed which each person, according to the extent of his property, should be provided with for the defence of the kingdom. A man of a thousand pounds a year, for instance, was obliged to maintain at his own charge six horses fit for demi-lances, of which three at least to be furnished with sufficient harness, steel saddles, and weapons proper for the demi-lances; and ten horses fit for light horsemen, with furniture and weapons proper for them: he was obliged to have forty corselets furnished; fifty almain revets, or, instead of them, forty coats of plate, corse, etc. or brigandines furnished; forty pikes, thirty long bows, thirty sheafs of arrows, thirty steel caps or skulls, twenty black bills or halberts, twenty harquebuts, and twenty morions or sallets. We may remark that a man of a thousand marks of stock was rated equal to one of two hundred pounds a year; a proof that few or none at that time lived on their stock in money, and that great profits were made by the merchants in the course of trade. There is no class above a thousand pounds a year.
* Rymer, vol. xv. p. 364.
** 1 Mar. Parl. 2, cap, 7.
*** Holingshed, p. 732. Heylin, p. 71.
**** 4 and 5 Phil. and Mar. cap. 2.
We pay form a notion of the little progress made in arts and refinement about this time, from one circumstance; a man of no less rank than the comptroller of Edward VI.‘s household paid only thirty shillings a year of our present money for his house in Channel Row;[*] yet labor and provisons, and consequently houses, were only about a third of the present price. Erasmus ascribes the frequent plagues in England to the nastiness, and dirt, and slovenly habits among the people. “The floors,” says he, “are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and every thing that is nasty.”[**]
Holingshed, who lived in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, gives a very curious account of the plain, or rather rude way of living of the preceding generation. There scarcely was a chimney to the houses, even in considerable towns; the fire was kindled by the wall, and the smoke sought its way out at the roof, or door, or windows: the houses were nothing but watling plastered over with clay; the people slept on straw pallets, and had a good round log under their head for a pillow; and almost all the furniture and utensils were of wood.[***] [22]
In this reign we find the first general law with regard to highways, which were appointed to be repaired by parish duty all over England.[****]
* Nicholson’s Historical Library.
** Erasm. Epist. 482.
*** See note V, at the end of the volume.
**** 2 and 3 Phil. and Mar. cap. 8.