The same cannot be said of other Celtic regions. In Ireland and the independent kingdom of Scotland, an exchangeable Gaelic is spoken by the majority. Consequently a Scots Gaelic Prayer Book is published in Edinburgh in 1567 and a Gaelic translation of the New Testament appears in Dublin in 1602. The Cornish language is still holding on – but only just. Shortly before the start of the reign Andrew Boorde comments that ‘In Cornwall is two speeches; the one is naughty English and the other Cornish speech. And there be many men and women the which cannot speak one word of English, but all Cornish.’6 The Cornish rebels of 1549, protesting against the introduction of the new English Prayer Book, declare, ‘We the Cornishmen (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English.’7 But it seems the language collapses like the Prayer Book Rebellion. No Cornish translations of the Bible and the Prayer Book appear; in fact, nothing at all is published in Cornish and the language quickly withers away. In addition, Cornish gentlemen and scholars are keen to demonstrate their sophistication by distancing themselves from spoken Cornish. By the end of the reign you will have to travel westwards of Truro to hear it spoken regularly.8 Even there the language is fast dying, as Carew reports:
English speech doth still encroach upon it, and hath driven the same into the uttermost skirts of the shire. Most of the inhabitants can [speak] no word of Cornish but very few are ignorant of English: and yet some so affect their own as to a stranger they will not speak it; for, if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way or any such matter, your answer shall be mees navidua cowzs sawzneck (I can speak no Saxonage).9
To a traveller, this is not very helpful. You might want to respond in like manner, with a suitable riposte in Cornish: perhaps a sarcastic da durdalathawhy (well, I thank you) or the pointed molla tuenda laaz (ten thousand mischiefs in thy guts).10 These phrases appear alongside the above passage in Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, where he also points out the closeness of the Cornish for ‘sister’ (whoore) and for prostitute (whorra). One wonders if his dislike of the Cornish language might be rooted in some embarrassing confusion between those two words.
The other languages still spoken in the realm, Latin and French, have fairly specific uses nowadays. Elizabethan courts still record everything in Latin, and some parish registers are kept in Latin too; so to some extent the language is still used throughout the country. Boys learn Latin at grammar school; you may recall Claudius Hollyband’s private school, where Latin is taught in the morning and French in the afternoon. However, it is unusual to find anyone speaking Latin outside the rarefied circles of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Inns of Court in London, some senior members of the clergy and the odd occasion, such as conversations with foreign ambassadors or addresses to the queen. While it will stand you in good stead if you can speak Latin, as most well-educated people will understand you, it will not be a hindrance if you can’t.
Many aristocrats and members of the gentry still use French in daily discourse. Hollyband himself publishes popular tuition books in French and Italian, and even one in four languages: Italian, French, Latin and English.11 Interestingly, many educated Englishmen feel obliged to learn one of these tongues. In London and the other southern towns and cities there are a great many French and Italian immigrants, and for many the easiest way to earn a living in England is to teach their native tongue. When the Italian humanist Giordano Bruno visits England in 1584 he does not bother to learn more than a handful of words in English. As he puts it (writing of himself in the third person): ‘All gentlemen of any rank with whom he holds conversations can speak Latin, French, Spanish or Italian. They are aware that the English language is only used in this island and would consider themselves uncivilised if they knew no other tongue than their own.’12 Therefore, if you can’t understand a regional accent on your journey, you could take a leaf out of Bruno’s book and try to make use of your French or Italian.
Writing
When it comes to written communication you need to bear in mind that there are several forms of script commonly used. Least common, but by no means unimportant, are the scripts of government. Letters patent, charters and other formal documents of public record are written in ‘court hand’, a descendant of the medieval scripts used within Chancery. These documents will look ‘gothic’ to you: the script seems like an array of up-and-down lines, or minims, which all look the same. Yet as long as you understand the language in which the document is written (mostly Latin, but sometimes English) these scripts are easy to read, for they are so carefully set down. The same cannot be said for most people’s handwriting. If you care to glance over the shoulder of an Elizabethan clerk as he notes down the proceedings of a quarter-session hearing, you will be baffled. You will see that he is hastily writing a series of notes in abbreviated Latin, as required by law, even though he probably does not speak the language. The result is frequently an almost unintelligible mess of flourishes that look as if someone has squashed a thousand small, brown-legged spiders between the pages of the book.
It is not just the haste which makes a court clerk’s writing so different from ‘court hand’; the entire script is different. Like most people, clerks write in ‘secretary hand’ and the shapes of the letters are constantly changing. Old men born in the last decade of the fifteenth century still write in the 1550s with a long ‘r’ that reaches well below the line, and an ‘h’ that looks more like an old-fashioned ‘z’, again reaching below the line. They still use the old letter ‘thorn’, pronounced ‘th’ and originally written ‘Þ’ but now more regularly appearing like a ‘y’ (hence the frequent appearance of ‘ye’ for ‘the’). Younger men educated in the 1530s or later will use a short ‘r’. Most people write ‘v’ and ‘u’ interchangeably, although ‘v’ is normally used at the start and ‘u’ in the middle of the word, e.g. ‘vsually’ (usually). About half of the letters of the secretary-hand alphabet have no relation to the form of lettering with which you are familiar. Many symbols are squiggles above and below the line, which have been taken from abbreviated medieval Latin script. Two forms of the letter ‘p’, for example, stand for ‘per’ (or ‘par’) and ‘pro’; a line above a letter means an ‘m’ has been omitted; a long curling flourish below the line at the end of a word represents a terminal ‘s’.
Curiously, although it is in universal use in the sixteenth century, secretary hand is never printed. Printed books make use of italic and black-letter type. The former is not all slanting one way, but is called ‘italic’ because it is developed in Italy. It is the script with which you are most familiar – because all modern typefaces descend from it – and is used for most general-interest books by the end of the reign. Black-letter is a printed version of the court hand of official documents. It is normally used for bibles, formal texts and some history and literary books. Horn books, used to teach people to read, are also printed in black-letter script. For this reason, the italic that you are used to will not be the easiest type for everyone to read. Some people who learnt with a horn book never learn to read any of the other forms of writing. This is why you have some books printed in both italic and formal ‘black-letter’ – such as Isabella Whitney’s poetical works: the titles pages and dedications are in the more educated italic and the actual poems are in black-letter type, to make them easier for people with a limited education, especially women, to read.
As for numbers, Arabic figures are increasingly used for dates, which can be very long in Roman numerals – it is far easier to engrave ‘1588’ on a coin die or a date stone than ‘MDLXXXVIII’ – but accounting is still frequently done in Roman numerals. Some well-educated people simply can’t ‘think’ in Arabic numbers: Sir William Cecil translates all the figures supplied to him in Arabic back into Roman numerals when forming government policy.13
When you want to write something, first you need to decide what you are going to write on. This depends on how long the document is supposed to last. A charter or official document, a deed to some land or a cou
rt roll, will always be written on good-quality vellum or parchment made from sheep skins. After treatment that removes all the hair, these need to be degreased by adding ‘pounce’ (powdered pumice or cuttlefish bone) into the skin, smoothed with an animal’s tooth, and ‘sized’ by coating with gelatine from the hooves of horses. If what you intend to write is more ephemeral, like a letter that can be discarded after being read once, or a series of accounts that you would not expect to last more than a year, you will write on paper. This can be cheap to purchase, although low-quality paper does not bear writing on both sides, as the ink is absorbed and shows through; it is made for pedlars to wrap their goods in and for toilet paper. High-quality products, such as ‘paper imperial’, is used to print lavish books, and some prefer its smooth qualities for handwriting too. Shopping lists or school exercises will not normally be written on paper, but on ‘tables’: these are wax-coated leaves of ivory, boxwood and cypress which can be written on with a metal point, then scraped and reused.14
Metal pens are called ‘pontayles’. They are made of iron, silver or brass and have one great virtue: they last a long time. However, they are also scratchy, so most people use a quill. Elizabeth prefers to use swan feathers; the most popular alternatives are a goose quill and a reed. You’ll need to keep your penknife handy to trim it every so often, a spare piece of paper to test each newly cut nib, and probably a good few spare quills if you intend writing a book. You will also need an inkhorn. In towns you will be able to buy ready-made ink from an apothecary or a scrivener’s shop, but most people in the country make their own. To do this you will need a quart of wine, five ounces of oak galls, three ounces of copperas and two ounces of gum arabic. To make it last, add bay salt. To make it really black, add ground lampblack. If the ink is too thick, water it down with vinegar.15
Identity and Forms of Address
If you are visiting the sixteenth century you are not going to be greeting many close relatives, so formal modes of address are important. You can refer to a common man – called, say, Smith – as ‘Goodman Smith’ or ‘my goodman’; don’t use ‘Sirrah’ unless you yourself are particularly superior and want to remind him of his lowliness. The goodman’s wife you might call ‘Goodwife Smith’ or ‘my goodwoman’. You may hear her neighbours call her ‘Goody Smith’, but this is only for those who know her well. Likewise you shouldn’t call her ‘Madam’ or ‘Mrs’ or anything else reflecting a status she does not enjoy. ‘Widow Smith’ is self-explanatory. When it comes to more socially elevated persons, forms of address get a little more complicated. A gentleman who is neither a lord nor a knight should be called ‘Mister’. If he is knighted, he should always be addressed in speech by his Christian name, ‘Sir Francis’. The word ‘Esquire’ is a much lower acknowledgement of official status, but is principally used for men who have the right to bear a coat of arms (i.e. they are descended in the male line from a knight) and, in towns, for those who serve as magistrates. Do not say ‘Squire Brown’, however, just ‘Mr Brown’. The female equivalent of ‘Mr’ is ‘Mistress’ – abbreviated to ‘Mtrs or ‘Mrs’ – hence you will find young girls and unmarried ladies described as ‘Mrs’ (the term ‘Miss’ for unmarried ladies will not come into use until the next century). When speaking to a ‘Mistress Johnson’, rather than about her, you should generally call her ‘Madam’. Note that ‘Madam’ is only used when directly addressing a woman who is socially equal or superior to you. ‘My lady’ and ‘your ladyship’ are less specific, but are generally reserved only for the nobility and the upper levels of the gentry. Physicians are not called ‘Doctor’ unless they have a doctorate in medicine from a university: most gentlemen physicians, like gentlemen surgeons, are simply addressed as ‘Mister’. Otherwise men referred to as ‘Dr’ are so called because they have a doctorate in law or theology. You may still call clergymen ‘Father’, and in the first half of the reign it is still customary to address the rector or vicar in the same way as you would a knight: ‘Sir Richard’, ‘Sir Peter’, and so on.16
As for the names themselves, more than half the men you meet will be called John, William or Thomas. Half the women will be Mary, Elizabeth, Agnes, Joan or Margaret. Most of the common Christian names are ones with which you are already familiar, but don’t be surprised if you meet women called ‘Urith’, ‘Charity’, ‘Patience’, ‘Purity’ and ‘Lettice’; women born at Whitsun may well be called ‘Pentecost’. Some women are given names later associated with men, such as ‘Julian’, ‘Timothy’ and ‘Richord’. It is very rare indeed to find anyone with a middle name. Having said that, in Cornwall there is a variation on the Welsh system of naming boys after the father’s line (e.g. Rhys ap Gruffydd ap Llywelyn …), which gives the appearance of a middle name; in Cornwall, the ‘ap’ is dropped and the father’s name and place appended, ‘John son of Thomas of Pendaris’ becomes ‘John Thomas Pendaris’. While surnames are ubiquitous, a man’s family name can be exchangeable with his occupation or abode, so that a tanner called John Beard might also be called John Tanner. This is one reason why there are so many people with an alias or two – written as ‘John Tanner alias Neville alias Westcott’. Another reason for an alias is to record the fact that a family member was sired out of wedlock. If an unmarried woman called Jones is made pregnant by a gentleman called Raleigh, her offspring may well be baptised as ‘John Jones alias Raleigh’, especially if the gentleman acknowledges the child.
Time
Walking through the fields of a country estate you may well hear the bell of the manor-house chapel ring the hours for the workers. For many people, this is the only formal regulation of time that they know. In towns, the time is set by the church bells ringing; if there is more than one church, one sets the time for the others. Hence you will sometimes find people in towns referring to ‘hours of the bell’ instead of ‘hours of the clock’. But this informality masks an important change: in the Elizabethan age time has become standardised. The medieval system of dividing the daylight and night time into twelve equal sections – so that an hour of daylight in summer is twice as long as in winter – is a thing of the past. People now count a day like we do: twelve hours each of sixty minutes from midnight and from noon. Townsmen listen out for the bell that indicates the hour when the markets open or close, when the curfew is rung for all travellers to be indoors or when the town gates are shut. Those in rural parishes listen for the ringing of the church bell when they need to attend a service or a session of the manorial court. Those clocks that have faces normally have only one hand, pointing to the hour; if you need to count minutes, you will use an hourglass, not a clock. Few people do so, however, except mariners, alchemists, astrologers, natural philosophers and the clergy. Why the clergy, you ask? A good clergyman will expect to preach for two or even three hours at a time.
Announced by bells, time is therefore a very public thing in Elizabeth’s reign. Only the gentry have ‘small clocks for a chamber to wake a man out of his sleep’. A ‘clock with a dial’ is likely to cost you £5 in the 1580s.17 Even fewer people have watches like Elizabeth’s diamond-encrusted one, worn on the end of a silver chain. When away from home, most people will either estimate the time in the old style – by the passage of the sun across the sky – or use a ring dial. This is a sundial in the form of a brass ring which you can wear on your finger. When you want to tell the time, you adjust it to the correct date (some of them have sliding bands to do this) and check the sunlight penetrating a hole in the top of the ring against the scale engraved inside it. The most elaborate time-telling rings also have a calendar, a table of Christian feasts and the latitudes of major European cities so that they can be used abroad. If you want one of these sophisticated time pieces, enquire at Humphrey Cole’s shop in London, where the best examples are made.18
‘A-mornings I rise ordinarily at seven o’clock,’ writes Robert Laneham in 1575. ‘Then ready, I go into chapel. Soon after eight, I get me commonly into my lord’s chamber … There at the cupboard, after I have eate
n the manchet [an allowance of bread] … I drink me up a good bowl of ale …’19 His start to the day is typical. Claudius Hollyband expects his pupils to be with him at school at about eight; his dialogue books have a household servant berating her young master for still being in bed at seven. Hugh Rhodes urges his young charges to be up ‘at six o’clock, without delay’. For craftsmen and labourers the working day starts before 5 a.m. from mid-March until mid-September, as laid out in a statute of Henry VIII; they are expected not to take more than half an hour for breakfast (at about 7 a.m.) and an hour and a half for dinner, and to go on working until between 7 and 8 p.m. From mid-September to mid-March labourers are expected to be working from dawn until dusk.20 If it were not for Sundays and religious feast days – about twenty-seven holy days or ‘holidays’ survive the Reformation – there would be little respite from toil.
Most Elizabethans tell the date in two ways: the year of the reign and the year since Christ’s birth, Anno Domini. The former is calculated from 17 November 1558, so that ‘1 January 1560’ is written as 1 January in the second year of the reign, or ‘2 Reginae Elizabethae’. The latter is measured not from New Year’s Day but from Lady Day, 25 March each year, so ‘1 January 1560’ is actually in 1561 by modern calculations. Awkwardly, the change of the year on 25 March is not universally accepted. In France the various dioceses use different dates: some use 25 March, but others Christmas or Easter. To put an end to this confusion, in 1564 the king of France issues the edict of Rousillon declaring that henceforth the year will always begin on 1 January. Venice, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden have already shifted to this system by 1560; the Low Countries follow suit in the 1570s and 1580s; and Scotland also does so in 1600. This is most confusing for those living in Berwick, on the English–Scottish border: between 1 January and 25 March each year, the Scottish date is one year greater than the English one.
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England Page 18
