Of his chapter on “Degrees of the People of England” the most interesting parts to me are those on the evil of sending young Englishmen to Italy; the anticipation of the modern J. S. Mill & Coöperative doctrine of the evil of too many middlemen in trade (the argument will cover distributors as well as importers), and lawyers in business; the improvement in the condition of yeomen; the often complaind-of evil[40] of “our great swarmes of idle seruing men;” and our husbandmen and artificers never being better tradesmen, tho’ they sometimes scamp their work.
Harrison’s chapter “Of the Food and Diet of the English” is very interesting, with its accounts of the dinners of the nobility “whose cookes are, for the most part, musicall-headed Frenchmen and strangers,” and who eat “delicates wherein the sweette hand of the seafaring Portingale is not wanting.” Then it notices the rage for Venice glass among all classes—as Falstaff says, A.D. 1598, in 2 Hen. IV., II. i. 154, “Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking.” This is followd by capital accounts of the diet of the gentlemen and merchants, and the artificers; the bread[41] and drink of all classes; and how Mrs. Wm. Harrison brewd the family beer, “and hereof we make three hoggesheads of good beere, such (I meane) as is meet for poore men as I am, to liue withall, whose small maintenance (for what great thing is fortie pounds a yeare, Computatis computandis, able to performe?) may indure no deeper cut;” with touches like Theologicum being the best wine of old, because “the merchant would haue thought that his soule should have gone streightwaie to the diuell, if he should haue serued them [the monks] with other than the best;” and this kindly opinion of working-men, for which one can’t help liking the old parson[42]:—
“To conclude, both the artificer and the husbandman are sufficientlie liberall, & verie freendlie at their tables; and when they meet, they are so merie without malice, and plaine without inward Italian or French craft and subtiltie, that it would doo a man good to be in companie among them.... This is moreouer to be added in these meetings, that if they happen to stumble vpon a peece of venison, and a cup of wine or verie strong beere or ale ... they thinke their cheere so great, and themselues to haue fared so well, as the lord Maior of London, with whome, when their bellies be full, they will not often sticke to make comparison, because that of a subject there is no publike officer of anie citie in Europe, that may compare in port and countenance with him during the time of his office.”
Chapter VII.[43] is the amusing one on the “Apparell and Atire” of English folk already referrd to (p. [xiii.] above); and though it’s not so bitter as Stubbes’s or Crowley’s, yet it’s fun, with its “dog in a doublet,” and its beard bit, if a man “be wesell becked [beakt], then much heare left on the cheekes will make the owner looke big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose, if Cornelis of Chelmeresford saie true.”
In the chapter on the Parliament the only personal bit is Harrison’s saying that he copies from Sir Thomas Smith,[44] “requiting him with the like borrowage as he hath vsed toward me in his discourse of the sundrie degrees of estates in the commonwealth of England.” But in the next chapter, “Of the Laws of England,” after a dull account of the Trial by Ordeal, etc., we get Harrison breaking out again against the Lawyers, their prosperity and rascality, and taking fees (as barristers often do still) and doing nothing for ’em, with a good bit about Welshmen’s love of law-suits. We also find a pleasant notice of John Stow, the hard-working chronicler so shamefully neglected in his own age: “my freend Iohn Stow, whose studie is the onelie store house of antiquities in my time, and he worthie therefore to be had in reputation and honour.”
The chapter “Of Prouision made for the Poore,” notes the weekly collection made in every parish for the deserving poor, and gives Harrison’s opinion on the Malthusians of his day:—
“Some also doo grudge at the great increase of people in these daies, thinking a necessarie brood of cattell farre better than a superfluous augmentation of mankind. But I can liken such men best of all vnto the pope and the diuell, who practise the hinderance of the furniture of the number of the elect to their vttermost, to the end the authoritie of the one upon earth, the deferring of the locking vp of the other in euerlasting chaines, and the great gaines of the first, may continue and indure the longer. But if it should come to passe that any forren inuasion should be made, which the Lord God forbid for his mercies sake!—then should these men find that a wall of men is farre better than stackes of corne and bags of monie, and complaine of the want when it is too late to seeke remedie.”
The sham beggars, he says, “are all theeues and caterpillers in the commonwealth, and by the word of God not permitted to eat.” Then he makes extracts from Harman about the rogues, among whom, by statute, are “plaiers and minstrels,” Shakspere and his fellows, etc.
In the chapter on the “Punishments appointed for Malefactors,” our author notes that “our condemned persons doo go ... cheerfullie to their deths, for our nation is free, stout, hautie, prodigall of life and bloud;” that the punishment for “robbing by the high waie” (like Sir John Falstaff’s), “cutting of purses,” “stealing of deere by night” (like Shakspere’s, if he ever stole deer from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had no park in his time), was death; and that the punishment for adultery and fornication was not sharp enough:—
“As in theft therfore, so in adulterie and whoredome, I would wish the parties trespassant, to be made bond or slaues vnto those that receiued the iniurie, to sell and giue where they listed, or to be condemned to the gallies: for that punishment would proue more bitter to them than halfe an houres hanging, or than standing in a sheet, though the weather be neuer so called.”