Examine the two large caricatures, "Rome's Monster" and "Spayne and Rome Defeated," in the light of a mere catalogue of dates. The Field of the Cloth of Gold, which we may regard as the splendid close of the old state of things, occurred in 1520, three years after Luther nailed up his theses. Henry VIII. defied the Pope in 1533; and twenty years after, Bloody Mary, married to Philip of Spain, was burning bishops at Smithfield. Elizabeth's reign began in 1558, which changed, not ended, the religious strife in England. The massacre of St. Bartholomew occurred in 1572, on that 24th of August which, as Voltaire used to say, all the humane and the tolerant of our race should observe as a day of humiliation and sorrow for evermore. In 1579 began the long struggle between the New and the Old, which is called the Thirty Years' War. The Prince of Orange was assassinated in 1584, in the midst of those great events which Mr. Motley has made familiar to the reading people of both continents. Every intelligent Protestant in Europe felt that the weapon which slew the prince was aimed at his own heart. The long dread of the Queen of Scots' machinations ended only with her death in 1587. Soon after, the shadow of the coming Spanish Armada crept over Great Britain, which was not dispelled till the men of England defeated and the storm scattered it in 1588. In 1605 Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot struck such terror to the Protestant mind, that it has not, in this year, 1877, wholly recovered from it, as all may know who will converse with uninstructed people in the remoter counties of Great Britain. Raleigh was beheaded in 1618. The civil war began in 1642. In 1665 the plague desolated England, and in the next year occurred the great fire of London, good Protestants not doubting that both events were traceable to the fell influence of the Beast. The accession of James II., a Roman Catholic, filled the Puritans with new alarm in 1685, and during the three anxious years of his reign their brethren, the Huguenots, were fleeing into all the Protestant lands from the hellish persecution of the priests who governed Louis XIV.
Upon looking back at this period of agitation and alarm, it startles the mind to observe in the catalogue of dates this one: "Shakspeare died 1616." It shows us, what the ordinary records do not show, that there are people who retain their sanity and serenity in the maddest times. The rapid succession of the plays—an average of nearly two per annum—proves that there was a public for Shakspeare when all the world seemed absorbed in subjects least akin to art and humor. And how little trace we find of all those thrilling events in the plays! He was a London actor when the Armada came; and during the year of the Gunpowder Plot he was probably meditating the grandest of all his themes, "King Lear!"
The picture entitled "Spayne and Rome Defeated"[16] was one of the most noted and influential broadsheets published during the Puritan period. It may properly be termed a broadsheet, since the copy of the original in the British Museum measures 20-2/3 inches by 13. The Puritans of England saw with dismay the growing cordiality between James I. and the Spanish court, and watched with just apprehension the visit of Prince Charles to Spain, and the prospect of a marriage between the heir-apparent and a Spanish princess. At this alarming crisis, 1621, the sheet was composed in England, and sent over to Holland to be engraved and printed, Holland being then, and for a hundred and fifty years after, the printing-house and type-foundry of Northern Europe. Some of the Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts, then residing at Leyden, and still waiting to hear the first news of the Mayflower company, who had sailed the year before, may have borne a hand in the work. Pastor Robinson, we know, gained part of his livelihood by co-operating with brethren in England in the preparation of works designed for distribution at home.
Besides being one of the most characteristic specimens of Puritan caricature which have been preserved, it presents to us a résumé of history, as Protestants interpreted it, from the time of the Spanish Armada to that of Guy Fawkes—1588 to 1605. It appears to have been designed for circulation in Holland and Germany as well as in England, as the words and verses upon it are in English, Dutch, and Latin. The English lines are these:
"In Eighty-eight, Spayne, arm'd with potent might,
Against our peacefull Land came on to fight;
But windes and waves and fire in one conspire,
To help the English, frustrate Spaynes desire.
To second that the Pope in counsell sitts,
For some rare stratagem they strayne their witts;
November's 5th, by powder they decree
Great Brytanes state ruinate should bee.
But Hee, whose never-slumb'ring Eye did view
The dire intendments of this damned crew,
Did soone prevent what they did thinke most sure.
Thy mercyes, Lord! for evermore endure."
This interesting sheet was devised by Samuel Ward, a Puritan preacher of Ipswich, of great zeal and celebrity, who dedicated it, in the fashion of the day, thus:
"To God. In memorye of his double deliveraunce from ye invincible Navie and ye unmatcheable powder Treason, 1605."
It was a timely reminder. As we occasionally see in our own day a public man committing the absurdity of replying in a serious strain to a caricature, so, in 1621, the Spanish embassador in London, Count Gondomar, called the attention of the British Government to this engraving, complaining that it was calculated to revive the old antipathy of the English people to the Spanish monarchy. The obsequious lords of the Privy Council summoned Samuel Ward to appear before them. After examining him, they remanded him to the custody of their messenger, whose house was a place of confinement for such prisoners; and there he remained. As there was yet no habeas corpus act known among men, he could only protest his innocence of any ill designs upon the Spanish monarchy, and humbly petition for release. He petitioned first the Privy Council; and they proving obdurate, he petitioned the king. He was set free at last, and he remained for twenty years a thorn in the side of those who dreaded "Spayne and Rome" less than they hated Puritans and Parliaments.
This persecution of Samuel Ward gave his print such celebrity that several imitations or pirated editions of the work speedily appeared, of which four are preserved in the great collection of the British Museum, each differing from the original in details. Caricatures aimed directly at the Spanish embassador followed, but they are only remarkable for the explanatory words which accompany them. In one we read that the residence of Count Gondomar in England had "hung before the eyes of many good men like a prodigious comet, threatening worse effects to Church and State than this other comet," which had recently menaced both from the vault of heaven. "No ecclipse of the sunne," continues the writer, "could more damnifie the earth, to make it barraine and the best things abortive, than did his interposition." We learn also that when the count left England for a visit to his own country, in 1618, "there was an uproare and assault a day or two before his departure from London by the Apprentices, who seemed greedy of such an occasion to vent their own spleenes in doing him or any of his a mischiefe." Another picture exhibits the odious Gondomar giving an account of his conduct in England to the "Spanishe Parliament," in the course of which he attributes the British abhorrence of Spain to such men as "Ward of Ipswich," whom he describes as "light and unstayed wits," intent on winning the airy applause of the vulgar, and to raise their desperate fortunes. Nor does he refrain from chuckling over the penalty inflicted upon that enemy of Spayne and Rome: "And I think that Ward of Ipswich escaped not safely for his lewed and profane picture of '88 and their Powder Treason, one whereof, my Lord Archbishop, I sent you in a letter, that you might see the malice of these detestable Heretiques against his Holiness and the Catholic Church." This broadsheet being entitled "Vox Populi," the writer concludes his explanation by styling the embassador "Fox Populi, Count Gondomar the Great."