In considering loans we have passed away from necessities into the second half of the subject of cost,—its reasonable possibilities. These consist of the risks and difficulties to which the traveller was liable, nowhere summarised so well as in the English Litany, which was written at this period:—
"From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence and famine; from battle and murder; and from sudden death,
"Good Lord, deliver us."
Of the eight risks here mentioned, to most of which an Englishman at least was more liable abroad than at home, all but two have been minimised since. And if we note how in all other clauses of the Litany, only those troubles or desires which have affinity with each other are grouped together, it becomes significant in what company travellers are prayed for;—
"That it may please thee to preserve all that travel by land or water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons, and young children; and to shew thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord."
To take the risk of violence first, and, among the forms of violence, war, it has to be remembered that the United Provinces was the only State whose soldiers were paid punctually. An effect of this laxness may be traced in the experience of a tourist in Picardy when the latter had been reduced to such a state of destitution by war that the commandants could not wring anything further out of the inhabitants and therefore forced contributions from travellers who passed through. In 1594 Moryson wished to remit from Venice to Paris, but no one had any correspondence farther than Geneva on account of the civil wars, in spite of these being nominally at an end. And they assured him it was twenty to one he would be robbed by the disbanded soldiers (which came true), and, if robbed, would be killed, because if they took him for an enemy they would think him well killed; if a friend, they would kill him to avoid making restitution; and the marshals were so strictly looked after that they would kill anyone who seemed likely to make complaints. The effect on prices receives illustration by comparing Andrew Boorde's experience of Aquitaine after a long period of peace and prosperity,—that one pennyworth [say 10d.] of bread will feed a man a week, and they sell nine cakes a penny, each cake being enough to last a man a day, "except he be a ravener,"—with a letter from a Venetian gentleman,[143] fifty-four years later, by which time civil war had become chronic. He writes from England, where he found that a good meal could be had for ten soldi [2s. 6d.], comparing this with France, which he had just traversed, where the same could not be bought for less than sixty soldi, or even a whole gold crown [£1 13s.]. As to Germany, in 1623, only five years after the Thirty Years' War broke out, Wotton writes that prices have risen enormously, "insomuch as I am almost quite out of hope to find Conscience any more, since there is none among the very hills and deserts, whither I thought she had fled."
LITHGOW IN TROUBLE