He also complains of the robberies by unthrift young gentlemen, and “seruing-men whose wages cannot suffice so much as to find them breeches;” and that selfish men, and even constables, in the country, won’t leave their work to follow up thieves and take them to prison:[45] this “I haue knowne by mine owne experience.”
The chapter, “Of the manner of Building and Furniture of our Houses,” is perhaps the best, and the best-known, in the book. It describes how English houses were built, and notes these new things, 1. that rich men were beginning to use stoves for sweating baths; while, 2. all men were using glass for windows; 3. that timber-houses were giving way to brick and stone; and that though our workmen were excellent, their demands for high wages often causd strangers to be employd in building; 4. the increast richness of furniture, not only in rich men’s houses, but in those of “the inferiour artificers and manie farmers,” who “now garnish their cupbords with plate, their ioined beds with tapistrie and silke hangings, and their tables with carpets & fine naperie, whereby the wealth of our countrie ... dooth infinitelie appear;”
[5.] “the multitude of chimnies latelie erected;” [6.] “the great (although not generall) amendment of lodging, for (said they) our fathers (yea, and we our selues also) haue lien full oft vpon straw pallets, on rough mats couered onelie with a sheet, vnder couerlets made of dagswain or hopharlots (I vse their owne termes), and a good round log vnder their heads in steed of a bolster or pillow.... Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed. As for seruants, if they had anie sheet aboue them, it was well, for seldome had they anie vnder their bodies, to keepe them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canuas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides.”... [7.] “The exchange of vessell, as of treene[46] platters into pewter, and woodden spoones into siluer or tin. For so common were all sorts of treene stuffe in old time, that a man should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was peraduenture a salt) in a good farmers house, and yet for all this frugalitie (if it may so be iustly called) they were scarse able to liue and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow, or an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure pounds at the vttermost by the yeare.”
The farmer was very poor too; and yet now, though his £4 rent is raised to £40, he can not only buy plate, and featherbeds, etc., but can purchase a renewal of his lease, 6 years before the expiration of the old one; and the paying the money “shall neuer trouble him more than the haire of his beard, when the barber hath washed and shaued it from his chin.” Against these signs of prosperity, these fat kine, are 3, nay 4, lean kine, which eat up their plump brethren,
“three things ... are growen to be verie grieuous vnto them, to wit, the inhansing of rents, latelie mentioned; the dailie oppression of copiholders, whose lords seeke to bring their poore tenants almost into plaine seruitude and miserie, dailie deuising new meanes, and seeking vp all the old, how to cut them shorter and shorter, doubling, trebling, and now & then seuen times increasing their fines; driuing them also for euerie trifle to loose and forfeit their tenures (by whome the greatest part of the realme dooth stand and is mainteined), to the end they may fleece them yet more, which is a lamentable hering. The third thing they talke of is vsurie, a trade brought in by the Jewes, now perfectlie practised almost by euerie christain, and so commonlie, that he is accompted but for a foole that dooth lend his monie for nothing.”
Interest has run up to 12 per cent.; wherefore, “helpe I praie thee in lawfull maner to hang vp such as take Centum pro cento, for they are no better worthie as I doo iudge in conscience.” The 4th grievance is that Gentlemen (!) have actually “themselves become grasiers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, woodmen, and denique quod non!”
The chapter, “Of Cities and Townes in England,” is dull, but has a short account of the antiquities found in old Verulam, and Harrison’s visit there in the summer of 1586 or 1585; and his groan over the decay of houses, their destruction by greedy land-owners, and the hard fare of poor men. He evidently would have put a limit to the land that one man might hold. In “Of Castles and Holds,” he wants the East coast fortified (p. 265), notes the frequency of old camps “in the plaine fields of England,” and says:—
“I need not to make anie long discourse of castles, sith it is not the nature of a good Englishman to regard to be caged vp as in a coope, and hedged in with stone wals, but rather to meet with his enimie in the plaine field at handstrokes, where he may trauaise his ground, choose his plot, and vse the benefit of sunne shine, wind and weather, to his best aduantage & commoditie.”
In the next chapter he describes the Queen’s palaces, but prefers the Henry VIII. buildings to the Elizabethan:
“Certes masonrie did neuer better flourish in England than in his time. And albeit that in these daies there be manie goodlie houses erected in the sundrie quarters of this Iland; yet they are rather curious to the eie, like paper worke,[47] than substantiall for continuance: whereas such as he did set vp, excell in both, and therefore may iustlie be preferred farre aboue all the rest.”