by Ian Mortimer
Violence
You won’t be surprised to hear that the society you are visiting is far more violent than the modern world. Britain has emerged from a prolonged period of civil war and bitter animosity. But still, with regard to England in particular, it is not as dangerous as you might think. The annual homicide rate is only about four deaths per 100,000: half the rate it was earlier in the century.61 Three times as many people are killed in Scandinavia and six times as many in Italy. In fact, you’re twice as likely to be murdered in late-seventeenth-century Belgium as you are in England.62
Nevertheless, you don’t want to take any chances. After all, that homicide rate of four per 100,000 is four times higher than that of modern Britain. What’s more, it does not reflect the greater level of non-fatal violence in society. As Monsieur Misson tells us:
Anything that looks like fighting is delicious to an Englishman. If two little boys quarrel in the street, the passengers stop, make a ring around them in a moment, and set them against one another, that they may come to fisticuffs. When ’tis come to a fight, each pulls off his neckcloth and his waistcoat and gives them to hold to some of the standers-by; then they begin to brandish their fists in the air. The blows are all aimed at the face, they kick one another’s shins, they tug one another by the hair, etcetera. He that has got the other down may give him one blow or two before he rises but no more; and let the boy get up ever so often, the other is obliged to box him again as often as he requires it. During the fight the ring of bystanders encourage the combatants with great delight of heart and never part them while they fight according to the rules. And these bystanders are not only other boys, porters and rabble but all sorts of men of fashion, some thrusting by the mob that they may see plain, others getting up on stalls, and all would hire places if scaffolds could be built.63
Given this propensity to violence, you need to be careful. Remember how easily that Welsh lord and the London cook come to blows. Don’t presume that the crowd is more given over to fighting than gentlemen: ‘the great’ and ‘the rich’ are just as eager to punch, thump and stab people. In fact, gentlemen are among the worst offenders of the lot. The well off tend to be rather taller and stronger than ordinary working men, on account of their better diet in youth; they thus grow up believing that they can bully their way to getting what they want. In 1665 Lord Morley takes exception to something said to him in a tavern by one Henry Hastings, so he beats him to death. In 1685 the earl of Morton has an argument about a dog with one of his footmen and runs him through with his sword. In 1666 the marquess of Dorchester and the duke of Buckingham end up shoving each other and pulling hair and wigs in an argument over who is going to sit where in the House of Lords. The same year the duke of Buckingham proposes in the House of Lords to ban the importation of Irish beef and is challenged to a duel by the earl of Ossory for insulting his countrymen. The duke accepts! Sadly, on this occasion, the king intervenes and sends both men to the Tower of London to calm down. Two days later the duke of Buckingham argues with the marquess of Dorchester about a patent and challenges him to a duel – and back to the Tower he goes.64
As you can tell, this is the golden age of the duel.65 Whereas most aspects of fisticuffs, fighting, brawling, wrestling, scrapping, skirmishing and rioting are self-explanatory and don’t differ that much down the ages, duelling is another story. Duels are private fights in which gentlemen may settle their personal differences with honour. The emphasis is heavily on the gentlemen: ordinary people do not fight duels. Tradesmen and labourers simply go outside to beat the living daylights out of each other – and sometimes don’t even bother leaving the room. For gentlemen, everything is governed by etiquette. And whereas most of the time tradesmen and labourers give each other sore heads and bloody noses, gentlemen frequently kill each other.
So why do men fight duels? The general answer seems to be: why not? Lord Chesterfield fights a duel over the price of a mare. The earl of Tankerville calls the duke of Albemarle’s new gun a ‘coxcomb’s fancy’, whereupon the latter challenges him to a duel – with swords (guns won’t be used for duels until 1711). Sherrington Talbot is killed in a duel that follows an argument about which side fought best during the rebellion of the duke of Monmouth. The duke of Buckingham is challenged to a duel by the earl of Sandwich about the duke’s refusal to pay his losses on a game of cards. Conyers Seymour is killed in a duel after being challenged by someone who doesn’t like the way he dresses. Robert Wolseley fights the Honourable William Wharton in 1689 on the grounds that he doesn’t like the man’s poetry: he kills him with a wound to the buttocks. (How very honourable.) But perhaps the prize for the most pointless duel ever goes to Henry Bellasis and his great friend and drinking partner Tom Porter, the playwright. While they are drinking in a coffee house and speaking a little too loudly, someone asks Bellasis if he and Porter are arguing. Bellasis says no, he is only giving Porter some advice, adding that ‘I never quarrel, I strike’. Porter carelessly quips that he doubts any man in England would dare strike him, whereupon Bellasis does exactly that: he punches Porter playfully on the ear. Porter is a bit put out by this and asks Bellasis to step outside with him. They do so, but Bellasis is so drunk he simply gets into his coach to go home. Porter stops the driver and invites Bellasis down to fight him. Having allowed Bellasis to descend in peace, Porter draws his sword. In the fight that ensues both men are injured – Bellasis fatally so. As he gushes blood, he urges Porter to flee quickly: he will endeavour to stand on his feet as long as he can so that Porter can get away. Bellasis is as good as his word. The coroner later returns a verdict of death ‘from unknown causes’.66
Traditionally a duel only involves the offended person and the offender; however, during this period the opponents appoint seconds to support them, and frequently the seconds fight too. Henry Jermyn (nephew of the man who built so much of the West End of London) entices a succession of well-to-do ladies into bed with him, including the countess of Shrewsbury. As a result, he is challenged to a duel by Colonel Thomas Howard. Each man chooses a second: Jermyn chooses Giles Rawlings and Howard selects Colonel Cary Dillon. They all meet in St James’s Park on 19 August 1662. In the ensuing fight, Jermyn is run through three times by Colonel Howard and left for dead; Rawlings is killed outright by Colonel Dillon. The victors flee on horseback. What is remarkable about this duel is that Jermyn and Rawlings don’t actually know what the duel is about; only later, after he has recovered, does Jermyn find out that Howard has also been sleeping with the countess of Shrewsbury. Another example of an extended duel is also the result of the countess of Shrewsbury’s intimate favours. Her husband challenges her new lover, the duke of Buckingham, to a duel. It takes place on 16 January 1668 in a field at Barn Elms. The duke chooses two seconds to fight alongside him, Sir Robert Holmes, a naval hero, and Captain William Jenkins, an officer in the Horse Guards. The earl of Shrewsbury is assisted by Sir John Talbot (father of the aforementioned Sherrington Talbot) and Bernard Howard. The earl is mortally wounded by the duke, who runs his sword through Shrewsbury’s right breast. Sir Robert wounds Sir John in the arm. On the duke’s side, Mr Howard kills Captain Jenkins. If you take my advice, I would steer clear of the countess of Shrewsbury’s many lovers, just in case you are asked to be a second. And certainly don’t get entangled with the lady herself.
Why does the government not stop duelling? Easier said than done. Ever since the practice was introduced in the sixteenth century (from its spiritual home, Italy) monarchs have been trying to ban it. However, men who are angry enough to fight to the death are not put off by the prospect of a heavy fine. Charles II issues proclamations against duelling in 1660 and 1680; otherwise he does nothing to stop it.67 He doesn’t want to alienate those aristocrats and gentlemen for whom honour is so important. Nor do Members of Parliament, who debate several Bills that would entail duellists forfeiting half, or all, of their estate to the Crown. The basic fact is that duelling with swords is dangerous – far more so than fighting with pistols
– and it requires enormous courage.68 That in turn commands respect. If men stare death in the face, overcome their fear and prove victorious – demonstrating many of the virtues that society admires – it seems churlish and ignoble to punish them.
Cruelty
Monsieur Misson thinks there is something soft about the English. He observes that they do not hurt criminals in the extreme ways they employ in France – that is, they do not break people on the wheel, they do not rip them apart by having their limbs tied to four horses, which are then driven in opposite directions, and they do not tear their flesh from their bones with red-hot pincers.69 And it is true that, if you have been watching the English for a very long time – say, the last 150 years – you will notice that society is not as brutal as it once was. As we have seen, the hanging of witches is in decline, they don’t burn heretics any more and they don’t boil poisoners to death (as they did in the reign of Henry VIII). In Halifax, the famous ‘gibbet’ or guillotine used to behead malefactors since the Middle Ages is employed for the last time in 1650. In 1661 the king offers fifty people condemned to death the option of being transported to Jamaica as indentured servants; they all accept.70 The Bill of Rights read to William III in 1689 specifically forbids the king from using ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ on his subjects, thereby practically outlawing torture. Some would say that no longer hanging women for many first felonies, from 1691, is a sign that Misson is right: the English really have gone soft.
You, however, will no doubt find this new, ‘softer’ England still incredibly barbaric. Even some of the clemency is not what it seems. The reason why the king offers transportation as an alternative to being hanged is the labour shortage in the Plantations. In England, you will see traitors cut down from the gallows and eviscerated alive. Heretics are no longer burnt at the stake, but women still are – for killing a husband or an employer, or for counterfeiting the coin of the realm. Every county town has its gallows and its droves of vagrants and thieves being flogged until their backs are bloody. Indeed, the liberal use of the whip is seen by many as merciful, for it inflicts a punishment from which the culprit will soon recover, whereas cutting off a man’s ears and branding him tends to be permanent.
Cruelty extends far beyond the methods of punishing people. You see it reflected in those who ‘spirit away’ men and women to become indentured servants in the West Indies – the fate that so nearly befalls Edward Barlow. These days Londoners have to worry that, when they walk down an alley, someone will bundle them down to the riverbank and put them in a boat bound for the West Indies. In 1670 a young apprentice called Roger Pym is seized by a mariner and forced on to a ship, sold to the captain and taken off to the Plantations, never to be seen again.71 Samuel Embry goes to court to prosecute Simon Harris ‘for spiriting away one Mary Embry his sister and selling her for 48s., to be transported beyond the seas to Barbados’. Some cases are utterly tragic. A man called Walter Scot loses his wife when she is kidnapped and put on board a ship bound for Barbados. Margaret Caser loses her only son Thomas and a two-month-old baby in her charge when Richard Specke, a waterman of Shadwell, abducts them and sells them to the boatswain of the John and Katherine to take to Barbados. Women can be just as cruel as men in this regard. Sarah Sharp is
a common taker up of children, and a setter to betray young men and maidens to be conveyed into ships … She confessed to one Mr Guy that she hath at this time four persons aboard a ship whereof one is a child about eleven years of age, all to be transported to foreign parts as Barbados and Virginia.72
In the home, behaviour that seems cruel to us is considered normal, even a moral duty. When Pepys discovers that one of his servant boys has stolen and drunk some whey from the kitchen, he
with my whip did whip him until I was not able to stir, and yet I could not make him confess … And last, not willing to let him go away a conqueror, I took him in task again and pulled off his frock to his shirt, and whipped him till he did confess that he did drink the whey, which he hath denied … So to bed with my arm very weary.73
The servant boy, Wayneman Birch, suffers considerably from Pepys’s repeated attempts to thrash him into an acceptable moral shape. And this is a boy whom Pepys claims to love, if only for the sake of his sister (for whom Pepys has a great fondness). Eventually, in the summer of 1663, Wayneman is dismissed. The following November, he is sent to Barbados.74
When men fight publicly to the death and privately beat their women, children and servants, you can imagine how they treat animals. As you will see in the final chapter of this book, cockfighting, bull baiting and bear baiting are all still extremely popular. The Commonwealth banned these games not because they are cruel sports, but because people enjoyed them too much – they were too much of an indulgence, in Puritan eyes. In 1656 all the bears at the Bear Garden in London were shot by a firing squad, with the sole exception of one cub. It is fair to say that most people are delighted to see blood sports back. Besides being popular entertainments, they form an important part of the ritual year. Schellinks records that on Shrove Tuesday 1662:
In London one sees in every street, wherever one goes, many apprentice boys running with, under their arms, a cock with a string on its foot, on which is a spike, which they push firmly into the ground between the stones. They always look for an open space and, for a penny, let the people throw their cudgel from a good distance at the cock, and he who kills the cock gets it. In the country or with country folk they bury a cock with only its head above the ground and blindfold a person and turn him two or three times round himself, and he then tries to hit the cock with a flail, and the one who hits it or comes closest to it gets the prize.75
It gets worse. Often on some of the steeper streets of the city, such as Fish Street, you’ll see carters and carriage drivers whipping their horses, and all the street boys and passers-by joining in, thrashing the poor beasts.76 Cats are rounded up and burnt alive on 5 November – the gruesome details follow in the next chapter. Across the country, hedgehogs, badgers, foxes and stoats are all killed on sight. So too are whales, especially when they swim up a river like the Thames, as they do in 1658 and 1699. In the modern world, we would try to guide a whale back to open sea. In the seventeenth century, people’s instinct is to kill it first, then consider what they are going to do with it. All that flesh and oil – it has to be good for something.
There are some signs that attitudes are changing. Cultivated men such as John Evelyn are disgusted by the restoration of baiting games:
I was forced to accompany some friends to the Bear Garden etcetera, where there was cock fighting, dog-fighting, bear & bull baiting, it being a famous day for all these butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties … There were two poor dogs killed & so all ended with the ape on horseback, & I most heartily weary of the rude & dirty pastime.77
The ‘ape on horseback’ refers to what is traditionally the final act at a bear-baiting show. A monkey is tied fast to an old horse and then the young dogs are released to bring it down; the monkey screams in panic as the dogs bite the horse and kill it. Most of the crowd loves the spectacle, but clearly not John Evelyn.
He is not alone. Chamberlayne declares in 1676 that ‘cock-fighting seems to all foreigners too childish and unsuitable for the gentry, and for the common people, bull-baiting and bear-baiting seem too cruel; and for the citizens football and throwing at cocks very uncivil, rude and barbarous’.78 I wonder if townsmen and -women are becoming more considerate towards animals through having pets, and thus thinking of creatures in terms of sentiment rather than as either food or vermin. King Charles keeps spaniels and allows them to roam wherever they want, even during state occasions. Elizabeth Pepys buys a pet dog to accompany her in her loneliness in 1660 (although her husband shuts it in the cellar as it is very poorly house-trained). At the end of 1660 the Pepys household also acquires a cat to control a mouse problem at home, and in January 1661 two canaries enter the small menagerie. A whistling blackbird later comes to joi
n them. Pepys also has a monkey but, when it escapes, he grows angry ‘and so I did strike her till she was almost dead’.79
So much for my theory about sentiment. Clearly, the shift away from cruelty to animals is a long, slow, complicated process.
The Spirit of Adventure
All the negative things you’ve heard about the character of the people in this chapter – the superstitions, witchcraft, religious hatred, xenophobia, violence and cruelty – might leave you with the impression that the British are a miserable, prickly, narrow-minded, selfish bunch. Only the rakes sound like any fun. But these people have a light side as well as a dark one. As we saw at the start of this chapter, they are driven by an intense curiosity. One of the ways in which this is manifested is through the travels of those who desire to see the world. The fruit of their exploits and enquiries inform and affect the whole population.
To appreciate their drive, you need to have an idea of how far people normally travel. Although ‘the poor’ and ‘the miserable’ at the very bottom of society might be permanently on the move – whether as beggars or as conscripts in the armed forces – generally speaking, crossing long distances is governed by wealth and necessity. Country folk regularly attend their local market, but in England that will always be within 6 or 7 miles of their home. On occasion, they may have to visit a church court in another town or cathedral city, forcing them to travel 10–20 miles. Some tradesmen, such as masons and ship’s carpenters, cover considerable distances on account of their work. A schoolmaster may travel to a different part of the country to serve as a tutor or take up a teaching position in a grammar school. Over the course of a year, a sought-after physician may be called to attend patients up to 30 or 40 miles away, depending on his reputation. The wealthier sorts undertake long journeys for education, to vote, to prove a will or to attend a law court. The families of the great and the rich tend to be spread across the nation, living in different counties. They and their servants frequently have to make long journeys for social visits and estate administration. They also have to travel to London for business affairs or to attend Parliament and the court. In the country, they have to move around their locality a great deal in order to fulfil their responsibilities as magistrates, lords lieutenant and military officers.
