London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

The gentry and citizens had little learning of any kind and their way of breeding up their children was suitable to the rest. They were as severe to their children as their schoolmasters, and their schoolmasters as severe as masters of the house of correction. The child perfectly loathed the sight of his parent as the slave to his torture. Gentlemen of thirty or forty years old were to stand like mutes and fools bareheaded before their parents, and the daughters (well grown women) were to stand at the cupboard-side during the whole time of the proud mother’s visits unless (as the fashion was) leave was forsooth desired that a cushion should be given them to kneel upon, brought them by the serving man, after they had done sufficient penance in standing.

The boys (I mean young fellows) had their foreheads turned up, and stiffened: they were to stand mannerly forsooth, thus—the foretop ordered as before, with one hand at the band-string, the other behind.

The gentlemen then had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures, like that instrument which is used to drive feathers: and it had a handle at least half as long with which their daughters oftentimes were corrected.

Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice, rode the circuit with such a fan: Sir William Dugdale told me he was an eye-witness of it.

The Earl of Manchester also used such a fan: but the fathers and mothers slasht their daughters, in the time of their besom discipline, when they were perfect women.

At Oxford (and I believe also at Cambridge), the rod was frequently used by the tutors and deans: and Dr. Potter of Trinity College, I knew right well, whipt his pupil with his sword by his side, when he came to take leave of him to go to the Inns of Court.”

Misson, whose travels in England were published at the Hague in 1698, and a few years later were translated into English, says that he “sometimes”—as if the thing was common—met in London a procession consisting of a woman bearing the effigy of a man in straw with horns upon his head, preceded by a drum and followed by a mob making a noise with tongs, gridirons, frying-pans, and saucepans. What should we understand if we met a procession at Charing Cross consisting of four men carrying another man, bagpipes and a shawm played before him, a drum beating, and twenty links burning around him? The significance of this ceremony would be wholly lost and thrown away upon us. It was, however, one of many processions which survived from Mediæval London, and were understood by everybody. The meaning of it was that a woman had given her husband a sound beating for accusing her of infidelity, and that upon such occasions, some kind neighbour of the poor innocent injured creature—which?—“performed this ceremony.”

Again, when Prynne rode up to London to join the Long Parliament, he was accompanied by many thousands of horse and foot wearing rosemary and bay in their hats and carrying them in their hands, and this was considered the greatest affront possible to the judges who had questioned him. Why?

Of Horn Fair I have elsewhere spoken. This fair kept up to the end its semi-allegorical character. No one seems to have known why it was kept on October 18, which is St. Luke’s Day, but the Evangelist is always figured with a bull’s head in the corner of his portrait. The common people, however, associated horns, for some unknown reason, with the infidelity of the wife. They therefore assembled at Cuckold’s Point opposite Ratcliffe, coming down the river from London, and there forming themselves into a procession, marched through Deptford and Greenwich to Charlton with horns upon their heads. At the fair horns of all kinds, and things made out of horn, were sold; the staple of the fair was work in horn, just as the staple of Bartholomew Fair was cloth. Besides the casual processions of the mob, a more formal procession was organised in London itself, especially at certain inns in Bishopsgate. This procession, which seems to have been arranged with some care and to have been interesting, consisted of a king, a queen, a miller, and other personages; they wore horns in their hats, and on arriving at Charlton, walked round the church three times. The occasion gave rise to many coarse and ribald jokes, and to much unseemliness of all kinds—hence a proverb, “All’s fair at Horn Fair.”

In this place the fair is mentioned as one of the last places where processions were organised, having meanings which were well understood at that time, but which would be now forgotten. The City procession, which everybody could read and understand like a printed book, lingered long, falling steadily into disuse and disrepute, until the wedding march was abandoned; the funeral, stripped of its coats of arms, the black gowns, and its torches, and even at last, the march of the milkmaids and the Mayday Jack in the Green, were seen no more.