The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

by Mortimer, Ian

  Meanwhile I was praying fervently to God that He would avert the danger. At the same time I reflected that it would be better to surrender myself into the enemy’s hands than be dragged out ignominiously. I believed that some Judas had given information and betrayed me but, to cover up the traitor, they wanted my discovery to appear accidental, and not the result of treachery.

  While I was reflecting in this way, one of the men, either by mistake or on purpose, or at the prompting of a good angel, shouted out: ‘Why waste time getting hammers and hatchets? There’s not enough space here for a man. Look at the corners: you can see where everything leads to. There can’t be a hiding place here …’

  The whole of that day I lay in hiding, and the night and day following it as well, almost till sunset. The cellar was dark, dank and cold, and so narrow that I was forced to stand the entire time. Also I had to stay completely quiet, without coughing or making the smallest noise. If they failed to find me, I thought they would probably surround the house and cut off my escape. During those long hours not a servant came to open the door and this confirmed my suspicion that the enemy was still in possession of the house … The servant who had shut me in this place had been taken off to prison; those left behind did not know of it and had no idea what had happened to me.26

  Father Weston is eventually caught in August 1586 and imprisoned with a number of other Catholics in Wisbech Castle. In 1599 he is transferred to the Tower of London, and only released after Elizabeth’s death, whereupon he is sent into exile.

  The Tower is the most feared place of confinement for Catholics. Seven types of torture are used there to extract confessions from Jesuits and seminary priests like Weston. Another English Catholic internee, Edward Rishton, describes them as follows:

  The first is the Pit: a subterranean cave, twenty feet deep and entirely without light;

  The second is a cell or dungeon, so small as to be incapable of allowing a person to stand erect. From its effect on its inmates it is called the ‘Little Ease’;

  The third is the rack, on which, by means of wooden rollers and other machinery, the limbs of the sufferer are drawn in opposite directions;

  The fourth, I believe from the inventor, is called The Scavenger’s Daughter. It consists of an iron ring that brings the head, hands and feet together until they form a circle;

  The fifth is the iron gauntlet, which encloses the hand with the most excruciating pain;

  The sixth consists of chains or manacles, attached to the arms;

  The seventh consists of fetters, by which the feet are contained.27

  In view of all this, it is quite surprising that William Harrison can blithely state in his Description of England:

  To use torment also or question by pain and torture in these common cases with us is greatly abhorred, since we are found always to be such as despise death and yet abhor to be tormented, choosing rather frankly to open our minds than to yield our bodies unto such servile hauling and tearings as are used in other countries.28

  Clearly there is a huge gulf between the complacency of a Protestant writer in 1577 and the experiences of Catholic priests in the 1580s and 1590s.

  Few Catholics have left first-hand accounts of being tortured. However, one compelling account is that of Father John Gerard, who is taken to the Tower in 1597.

  We went to the torture room in a kind of solemn procession, the attendants walking ahead with lighted candles. The chamber was underground and dark, particularly near the entrance. It was a vast place and every device and instrument of human torture was there. They pointed out some of them to me and said I would try them all. Then they asked me again whether I would confess.

  ‘I cannot,’ I said.

  I fell on my knees for a moment’s prayer. Then they took me to a big upright pillar, one of the wooden posts that supported the roof of this huge underground chamber. Driven into the top of it were iron staples for supporting heavy weights. Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps. My arms were lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, through the staple, and through the rings of the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it slipping, and then, removing the wicker steps one by one from beneath my feet, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head. The tips of my toes, however, still touched the ground and they had to dig away the earth from under them …

  Hanging like this, I began to pray. The gentlemen standing around me asked whether I was willing to confess now.

  ‘I cannot and I will not,’ I answered.

  But I could hardly utter the words, such a gripping pain came over me. It was worst in my chest and belly, my hands and arms. All the blood in my body seemed to rush up into my arms and hands, and I thought that blood was oozing from the ends of my fingers and the pores of my skin. But it was only a sensation caused by my flesh swelling above the irons holding them. The pain was so intense that I thought I could not possibly endure it, and, added to it, I had an inward temptation. Yet I did not feel any inclination or wish to give them the information they wanted. The Lord saw my weakness with the eyes of His mercy, and did not permit me to be tempted beyond my strength. With the temptation He sent me relief. Seeing my agony and the struggle going on in my mind, He gave me this most merciful thought: the utmost and worst they can do is to kill you, and you have often wanted to give your life for your Lord God. The Lord God sees all you are enduring – He can do all things. You are in God’s keeping. With these thoughts, God in His infinite goodness and mercy gave me the grace of resignation, and with a desire to die and a hope (I admit) that I would, I offered Him myself to do with me as He wished. From that moment the conflict in my soul ceased, and even the physical pain seemed much more bearable than before, though it must, in fact, I am sure, have been greater with the growing strain and the weariness of my body …

  Sometime after one o’clock, I think, I fell into a faint. How long I was unconscious I don’t know, but I think it was long, for the men held my body up or put the wicker steps under my feet until I came to. Then they heard me pray and immediately let me down again. They did this every time I fainted – eight or nine times that day – before it struck five …29

  Confrontation with Puritanism, 1570–1603

  You need to bear in mind that the religious divide in England is not just a two-way battle between Anglicans and Catholics. In most respects, Anglicanism is a middle way, a series of compromises between the two extremes of Roman Catholicism and more radical Protestant positions such as Calvinism and Puritanism. While there is as much conflict with Puritans as with Catholics, there is an important difference, however. The pope and England’s Catholic enemies pose a political threat; the conflict with Puritanism remains almost entirely religious.

  The narrow defeat in 1563 of the Bill to abolish religious vestments and symbols does not mean that all those who would have a ‘purer’ form of worship simply acquiesce and start supporting the orthodox line from Westminster. Discontent simmers away throughout the 1560s. The triumph in Scotland of John Knox and his Presbyterianism – based on the ideas of Jean Calvin – encourages some people to think that such radical agendas should be adopted in England too. They find a leader in Dr Thomas Cartwright, professor of divinity at Cambridge, who uses his position to preach that the current system of church administration has no basis in the scriptures. He advocates abolishing archbishops, archdeacons and most of the higher clergy, and returning bishops to their original function of preaching and teaching, while deacons should administer to the poor. Such radical views incur the anger of John Whitgift, who becomes vice-chancellor of the university in 1570. Cartwright is deprived of his professorial chair and in 1574 he is driven into exile when he hears that orders for his arrest have been issued.

  With a cause célèbre like this, Puritanism finds a new focus and gains vitality. It has a number of influential supporters, such as the queen’s favourite, Robert
Dudley, earl of Leicester, who is an advocate of preaching (which the queen is not) and even subscribes to some Calvinist ideas. At a lower social level, among the gentry, Puritans argue that Elizabeth remains too close to the Catholics. In 1574 a gentleman from Essex, Thomas Bedell, declares, ‘They are not papists who say that the queen is a papist but rather divers others who call themselves Puritans.’30 Bedell is fined £100 for this remark, even after withdrawing it and repenting (by which he saves himself a few hours in the pillory and the loss of both of his ears). Most Puritans would agree with Bedell; it is just that saying such things is beyond the pale.

  Herein lies the problem for the Puritans. They are religious thinkers who question the current state of the Church; yet for the queen, all such doubt is treasonable. She has made her mind up on religion, and wants to maintain the Settlement of 1559 as far as possible. When Puritan preachers continue to raise questions in people’s minds, the queen takes action: one or two preachers in each diocese will be sufficient, she declares, and they will have to be authorised by her. The archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, rebukes her in a letter in December 1576:

  Alas, Madam! Is the scripture more plain in any one thing than that the gospel of Christ should be plentifully preached and that plenty of labourers should be sent in to the Lord’s harvest, which being great and large, standeth in need not of a few but many workmen?’31

  For this rebuke Grindal is suspended. The queen’s strong will to act against the Puritans also influences her selection of his successor in 1583: she chooses John Whitgift. In the year of his appointment Whitgift publishes three articles which emphasise that the queen has complete supremacy over everyone born within her realms; that the Book of Common Prayer and the church hierarchy are not contrary to scripture; and that the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 are agreeable to God. This last point goes straight to the heart of the disagreements between Anglicans and Puritans, and more than two hundred clergymen refuse to accept it and are immediately suspended. William Cecil compares Whitgift’s actions to those of the Catholic Inquisition, but his articles are exactly what the queen wants. Four years later Anthony Cope, MP, boldly introduces a Bill for the repeal of all previous ecclesiastical laws and the introduction of a new Puritan-friendly form of common prayer. The queen immediately despatches him to the Tower.

  For Puritans, like Catholics, the most difficult years of Elizabeth’s rule are the last. Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, dies in 1588 and although the queen weeps for him, his death allows her to take sterner measures against his friends. The Puritans respond in the same year with a series of pamphlets, signed by ‘Martin Marprelate’, which lampoons the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The printer John Penry is forced to flee to Scotland, but is caught on a visit to London and hanged. In 1593, the theologian Richard Hooker publishes Of the laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which gives the Church of England a stronger theological basis than that provided by John Jewel thirty years earlier and heavily criticises Puritanism. The queen is most satisfied. Resigned to a lack of reform in the Church, the Puritans bide their time for the rest of the reign, before emerging as a powerful force in the seventeenth century.32

  How to Survive in a Religious World

  As you can see, religion is a matter of life and death in Elizabethan England. If you want to avoid unwelcome attention, observe the routine details of orthodox religion. Kneel and say prayers when you rise in the morning, before dinner, in the evening and at bedtime (remember your servants may well be listening). Do not forget to say grace at dinner. Attend church regularly – every Sunday and every holy day – and, if in London, attend the sermons preached at St Paul’s Cross from time to time.33 Pay attention to your Bible and other religious works: Sir William Cecil exhorts his son to read the whole psalter once a month.34 Avoid arguments with your neighbours lest they inform on you and report you for sedition or, worse, heresy. Do not predict the future or make ‘fantastic prophecies’ which could bring you into conflict with the authorities. In short, unless you are prepared to be tortured and die for your beliefs, keep your head down. Take the Portuguese Jews of London as an example. Although all the Jews were expelled from England in the Middle Ages, a small Portuguese Jewish community of eighty to ninety people lives quietly in the city, largely untroubled by the authorities.35

  Whatever you do, don’t join any of the more extreme Protestant sects that come from the Continent. In particular, the radical reformers called Anabaptists, who refuse to accept civil government or infant baptism, are persecuted. In England, Catholics are not burnt as heretics, but Anabaptists are. In 1575 a community of Dutch Anabaptists is discovered living near Aldgate, in London. They are tried. Five recant, fifteen are returned to the Low Countries and five are sentenced to death. For two of them, the authorities relight the bonfires of religion: they are burnt alive at the stake ‘in great horror, with roaring and crying’.36

  For the love of God.

  4

  Character

  Oscar Wilde once quipped that ‘the old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything and the young know everything’. Apply that remark to Elizabethan England and you will begin to understand the bold, abrasive character of the people. It is the self-confidence of youth that gives Elizabethan society much of its arrogance and determination. Hand a man in his twenties command of a ship and the chance to make himself rich, and despite the difficulties of navigation and the huge dangers that beset him when a thousand miles from land, you may well see him sail round the world. Give a similar man a commission to keep the peace and constables to enforce local justice, and you will see the disruptive elements of society ruthlessly put down. To control such self-righteous individuals requires older men to show no less self-confidence – and a will as strong as that of the queen herself.

  That, of course, is a simplification of things. Elizabethan people aren’t determined in an unquestioning sort of way. It is precisely the level to which Elizabethans do question their place in the world that sets them apart from their medieval forebears. From the top of society to the barely literate, individuals are reorientating their conception of God, the world and themselves. In the medieval world view, the most important subject in a person’s life is not the individual himself, but God; most medieval autobiographies are personal reflections on the will of God and the sinful life of the author, not a boastful list of personal achievements. In Elizabethan England the focus begins to shift on to the individual: the responsibility for a man’s achievements is increasingly attributed to the person himself. God is more of a facilitator than the architect of that person’s successes and failures.

  One of the clearest manifestations of how this growing individualism permeates the lives of ordinary people can be found in personal writing. There is practically no such thing as a diary in 1500; people write chronicles about major events, which are structured predominantly to reflect the will of God. But by 1558 the old tradition of the chronicle is beginning to give way to a new literary genre. The ‘cronacle’ of Henry Machyn is a good example. Henry arrives in London from Leicestershire in the early sixteenth century with his brother Christopher, both hoping to make their fortunes in the time-honoured fashion. They serve apprenticeships and become members of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. They do moderately well. Henry teaches himself to read and becomes the clerk of Little Trinity parish. This is when he starts writing his ‘cronacle’. He thinks he is continuing the old tradition of Londoners recording the major events of their city; but because he is personally so deeply involved in the life of the city, he actually records what is going on around him, day by day. He describes the processions he witnesses, he lists the executions of those he sees being carted off to Tyburn, and the deaths he records are those of his friends and clients. Unwittingly Henry has started to write a diary. Although he hardly ever mentions himself or his family by name, his ‘cronacle’ is about his life. Coincidentally, in the same years as Henry is writing one of the very first diaries, Edward VI is doing the same th
ing. Although still only a boy, Edward writes a chronicle of the events going on around him and, of course, as he is the king, everything he is aware of concerns him personally. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign many people are writing diaries and autobiographies, pioneering the personal narratives that are still with us today.

  Another character trait that will strike you is the depth of people’s courage. When you look at an ocean-going vessel moored in London, Plymouth or Bristol – no more than 100ft from stern to prow – it is hard to believe that anyone dares to set off in one of them. Yet men do, knowing they might face waves 30ft or 40ft high, which can easily capsize a ship and smash it to pieces. Tens of thousands of boys and young men sail with the likes of Frobisher, Drake and Raleigh. Nor are these pioneering sea captains themselves any less bold. Consider the case of Sir Richard Grenville, captain of the Revenge. In 1591, after fighting for a whole day single-handedly against a Spanish fleet, with forty men dead on deck, no gunpowder left, gaping holes in the side of his ship and six feet of water in the hold, you might think he would surrender. Nothing of the sort: Sir Richard vows to fight on, to the death.

  Violence and Cruelty

  Violence is endemic throughout the kingdom. ‘The English are universally partial to novelty, hostile to foreigners and not very friendly amongst themselves,’ writes the Venetian Michiel Soriano in 1559, adding, ‘they attempt to do everything that comes into their heads, just as if all that the imagination suggests could be easily executed; hence more insurrections have broken out in this country than in all the rest of the world.’1 The Dutch merchant and diplomat Emanuel van Meteren agrees, declaring that the English ‘are bold, courageous, ardent and cruel in war, fiery in attack, and have little fear of death’.2 Whether England is truly more hostile to foreigners than other countries is debatable; but you will certainly be appalled by the violence. Not until the eighteenth century will English society start to become recognisably law-abiding.3