pox: This usually meant smallpox rather than French pox or swinepox (the Tudor name for chicken pox). Smallpox was a disease new to England in the sixteenth century, but it became more widespread and increasingly virulent with each passing decade. One of the worst epidemics was in 1562, when Queen Elizabeth nearly died of smallpox. There was about a 30% fatality rate. Doctors recommended hanging the patient’s bed with red curtains. The worst seventeenth-century outbreak was in 1634-1635. To fumigate Woburn after the countess of Bedford’s recovery from smallpox in 1641, pitch and frankincense were burned in both house and yard.
putrid throat (diphtheria): Epidemic in 1517.
scaldhead: A skin disease, possibly ringworm (which was also called tetters).
scurvy: Mentioned in Chapter Two as a diet-related ailment, scurvy resulted from a lack of vitamin C. It was common at sea (see Chapter Twelve) but also prevalent as “land scurvy.” Symptoms included a cough, shortness of breath, lack of strength, swollen limbs, loose teeth, and pains in the loins, stomach, and bowels. Fresh air and fresh food helped and most people believed the coming of spring was the cure. One early seventeenth-century medical guide advised frequent gargling with lemon juice and the “honest company” of one’s lawful wife as remedies. The juice of limes also helped. In the mistaken belief that the more sour the taste, the more effective the cure, vinegar (which had no beneficial effect on scurvy) was substituted for juices in the seventeenth century.
spleen: This term could refer to either migraine or severe depression. Depression, anxiety, or concern was also described as “taken in a thought” and was listed as the cause of death in twenty-one cases in the parish of St. Botolph-without-Aldgate from 1583 to 1599.
stone: Kidney, bladder, or gallstones. One early Tudor remedy was made of white wine and salad oil followed by “carp’s eyes in powder with the bone in the carp’s head.” This was followed by toasted cake buttered with sugar and nutmeg, taken with two draughts of ale. Another cure for the stone was saxifrage root (the “stone breaker”), steeped in the blood of a hare, baked, powdered and taken morning and night. Dried samphire (seaweed) was another remedy.
stytche: Probably appendicitis.
sweating sickness (the English sweat): Possibly a viral infection, but probably not a form of typhus or influenza (which was epidemic in 1557-1559 and 1579-1580). Epidemics of the mysterious disease called “the sweat” afflicted England in 1485, 1507-8, 1517, 1528, and 1551 with a 40% mortality rate, then never appeared again. Only in 1528-9 did it affect any other country. All the outbreaks began in summer. Victims might be dead in as little as two hours. Sleep was believed to be fatal, so sufferers were kept awake, usually in a closed room with a fire, until the sweat ran its course. The only food they were allowed was a crust of bread soaked in ale, whole mace, and sugar. Among the preventives for the sweat, all of which could be kept in glass boxes up to thirty years and improved with age, were:
1. A mixture of endive, sowthistle, marigold, mercury, and nightshade
2. Three large spoonfuls of water of dragons and half a nutshell of
unicorn’s horn
3. Philosopher’s egg (“crushed egg, its white blown out, mixed shell
and all with saffron, mustard seed, herbs, and unicorn’s horn”)
toothache: Believed to be caused by worms, or by unbalanced humours. Chewing horehound root was recommended.
tympany (gas): To avoid wind after meals, it was recommended that one take, one hour before eating, a draught of sugar, coriander, conserve of roses, margaret, galanza root, aniseed, and cinnamon. Tympany could also refer to a more serious condition that developed from excessive gas in the abdomen. This was thought to be a form of dropsy and was also called wind colic.
watery humours: Inflammation of the kidneys.
MEDICINES
One apothecary list included preservative lozenges, cinnamon comfits, liquorice pastilles, suppositories made from olive oil ointment, a lozenge cordial, plasters for the spleen, sponges for fomentation, and pills of mastick and of Elsham ginger. The physic border recommended for a kitchen garden included eringoe (sea-holly), mandrake, blessed thistle, wormwood, plantain, and valerian. The kitchen garden itself would probably include harefoot, blood-wort (or bloody dock), pennyroyal, marigolds, sea-blite, burnet, and tansy. Thomas Tusser’s mid-sixteenth-century “Essential Home Remedies” included aqua vitae, tart vinegar, rosewater, treacle, cold herbs, white endive, succory, “water of fumitory,” and conserves of barberry and quince.
The new “chemical medicines,” metals and mineral salts introduced in the late sixteenth century (such things as oil of vitriol) included many poisons, such as arsenic. The Grocers and Apothecaries’ Act of 1557 specified that no one could sell poison unless he was sure of the honesty of the buyer. Buyers’ names and the dates of their purchases were to be recorded.
Theriacs were any herbal compounds effective as antidotes to poison. They were also used as cures for other ailments. Mithridate or mithridatium was a compound of seventy-two ingredients and was itself an ingredient in many medicines. Oliver Cromwell took mithridatium as a preventive for plague and it had the happy side effect of clearing up his acne.
Home remedies which were widely known and used included taking “purging beer” in the spring for general health. This drink was made of scurvy grass, watercress, liverwort, rhubarb (Andrew Boorde sent the first rhubarb seeds hack to England from the Barbary Coast around the year 1540), red dock, raisins, and oranges. Hazelnuts, rue, and garlic mashed with treacle and taken in beer were believed to rid a person of the venom of an adder bite or that from the bite of a mad dog. Also, the key to a church door was said to he effective against a mad dog. For a bad bruise, tradition urged the prompt application of fried horse dung.
HERBAL CURES
comfrey (Saracen’s root): Together with calamint, liquorice, enula campana, and hyssop, comfrey was good for the lungs. Its juice was used to wash wounds, and as a bone setter.
lavender: Good for catalepsy, “a light megrim,” the falling sickness, and swooning. It was also prescribed for apoplexy, with dire results.
lettuce: Supposed to cure both insomnia and gonorrhea. Those who believed eating lettuce interfered with sexual intercourse and weakened eyesight mixed it with celery to avoid those side effects.
periwinkle: Holding two leaves between the teeth would stanch the blood flowing from a wound.
saffron: Believed to cure stomach problems and strengthen the heart, dried saffron was also an antidote for poison and a cure for smallpox. It grew at Saffron Waldron and other locations. The leaves and flowers were most potent if they were gathered between Lady Day (March 25) and Midsummer (June 24), the stalks and fruits between Midsummer and Michaelmas (September 29), and the roots between Michaelmas and Lady Day.
sassafras: A sovereign remedy for the pox, this should not be confused with saxifrage. Sassafras was native to North America and unknown in Europe before 1528.
MAGICAL STONES
amethyst: Counteracts drunkenness.
bezoar stone: A stony mass found in stomach of goats; used in a variety of medicines.
chelidonius: Found in the belly of a swallow, this stone was wrapped in a fair cloth and tied to the right arm to cure lunatics and madmen of their lunacy and madness and make them “amiable and merry.”
coral: Used for diagnostic purposes, it turned pale when the person wearing it was sick and returned to its former color as the patient recovered.
jet: A hard, compact black form of lignite (a fossil deposit), jet was polished to a high gloss and worn to ward off phantasms due to melancholy.
sapphire: Held in the hand, sapphire was effective against the sweating sickness.
toad-stone: The stone in the marrow of the head of the earth toad. Also called borax and lapis bufon, this was taken when the moon was waning and put in a linen cloth for forty days, then cut from the cloth. The stone was a powerful amulet, hung at the girdle to cure dropsy and the spleen. It was also,
when swallowed, a remedy against all sorts of poison.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cook, Judith. Dr. Simon Forman, a most notorious physician. London: Chatto & Windus, 2001.
Copeman, W.S.C. Doctors and Disease in Tudor Times. London: Dawson’s of Pall Mall, 1960.
Evans, Joan. Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, particularly in England. New York: Dover Publications, 1976.
Slack, Paul. The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.
Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. New York: Scribner, 1976.
Webster, Charles, ed. Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Woolley, Benjamin. The Queen's Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Advisor to Queen Elizabeth. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
PART TWO: GOVERNMENT AND WAR
CHAPTER SEVEN: GOVERNMENT
England was a personal monarchy in Tudor and Stuart times. English men and women were subjects, not citizens. Civil servants worked for the Crown, not the state. In fact, the term “state” in its modern sense did not even exist much before 1540.
Although England claimed Ireland (English-Irish relations will be discussed in Chapter Eleven) and was, after 1603, united with Scotland, only with Wales was there a real blending of government and legal systems. With the Act of Union of 1536, all distinctions were abolished between the old principality and the marches (border lands). English law was extended into Wales, and Welsh counties were thereafter represented in the English parliament.
In 1603, 20% of England’s people were living in the Thames valley, most of them in London. Those counties close to the center of government tended to be more closely regulated. Those at some distance, such as Lancashire and Northumberland, with small populations and little wealth, were often neglected by the central government and consequently allowed to go their own way. Everywhere in England, however, keeping “order” was the most important function of government. Until the Book of Orders of 1630 attempted to reorganize the administration of counties into a divisional system, a fairly straightforward pecking order prevailed.
THE PRIVY COUNCIL
The power of the realm was centered in this body. What had been a large, unwieldy King’s Council was reduced under Henry VIII to the Privy Council, rarely numbering more than twenty. It was essentially a cabinet made up of experts chosen by the monarch. Usually only eight to ten key members regularly attended meetings. Decisions were actually made by only two or three trusted advisors. The Principal Secretary was the most influential Privy Council post under Elizabeth I. Her Privy Council of 1601 consisted of one archbishop, five peers, five knights, one judge, and one gentleman. Of those, six held offices of state, including Lord Chancellor, Lord Admiral, and Lord Treasurer.
DEPARTMENTS OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
Four departments handled government business for the monarch. Chancery drafted royal grants, treaties, appointments, and acts. This office was headed by the Lord Chancellor, who was Speaker of the House of Lords, head of the law courts, presiding judge in the Star Chamber and the Court of Chancery and, frequently, also Keeper of the Great Seal. The functions of Chancery and Star Chamber as law courts will be covered in Chapter Nine. Chancery also made documents official with the Great Seal. The Privy Seal office, which employed four clerks and several deputies, drew up and sent instructions to royal officials and used the Privy Seal. The Signet office handled personal correspondence for the monarch and the Signet was held by the Principal Secretary. The fourth department was the Exchequer, which handled royal revenue and also served as an income tax tribunal.
Offices in the central government were distributed through a system of patronage. Elizabeth I had about 2,500 offices at her disposal, of which about 1,200 were “worth a gentleman’s having.” Those eligible to serve by reason of being gentlemen, knights, or peers numbered above 20,000.
PARLIAMENT
Parliaments were summoned and dissolved at the monarch’s pleasure, and were usually summoned only when the monarch needed them to approve taxes, legislate on a specific topic (such as declaring that Elizabeth possessed supreme authority in all matters ecclesiastical), or to give advice on policy. Under Henry VII there were eleven sessions, most at the beginning of the reign. Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary called another thirty-nine parliaments, but one, the Reformation Parliament of Henry VIII, stayed in session from 1529 to 1536. Under Elizabeth, Parliament met thirteen times. The Stuarts were even less fond of Parliament, particularly because by then statutes (acts of Parliament) had been established as the highest form of law and could even override a royal proclamation. This was not the case in Scotland, where James I had already been king (as James VI) since 1567. The English Civil War was immediately preceded by eleven years without Parliament, Charles I’s “personal rule.” The long Parliament of 1640 was overwhelmingly opposed to the king’s policies and by Christmas 1641, hostilities were imminent. On August 22, 1642, King Charles formally declared war on Parliament. When he was later tried and condemned to death, he refused to acknowledge Parliament’s right to do either, but in spite of his objections to the proceedings, he was executed on January 30, 1649.
During the Tudor period there was a gradual shift in importance away from the House of Lords (predominantly a lay assembly after the break with Rome) to the House of Commons. At the same time, the size of Commons grew. There were still only two members for each county, each city, and each borough, but the number of municipalities increased. When Wales was incorporated into England, twelve counties and eleven boroughs were added, each returning one member, and two new English counties (Monmouthshire and Cheshire) were formed. Only one “county” had no representation, the Palatinate of Durham. After that the number of county members was fixed at ninety, but the number of borough members continued to increase. Henry VIII added fourteen borough seats, Edward VI thirty-four, Mary twenty-five and Elizabeth sixty-two. Between 1547 and 1584, 119 new borough seats were added, some created at the request of courtier peers.
Although M.P.s were supposed to be residents of the constituency they represented, this was one of those laws that was ignored. Gentlemen were regularly elected at the request of the local nobility to represent boroughs they might never even have visited.
The Speaker of the House of Commons was formally elected by the House, but was in reality selected by the Crown. There were two Clerks of Parliament, the senior clerk, who served the House of Lords, and the underclerk, who served the Commons. They compiled journals, kept custody of draft bills, and read the texts to the House.
LOCAL (COUNTY) GOVERNMENT
William the Conqueror divided England into forty-two counties. There were thirty-eight counties (also called shires) in 1515. William Harrison’s Description of England (first published in 1577 but written in the 1560s) names forty shires in England and thirteen in Wales (see list below). In 1630, Bristol, Durham, Gloucester, and Worcester were all county boroughs; in other words, each was a county as well as a city.
Each county had certain local officials who were appointed by the Crown. Sheriffs, justices of the peace, chief constables, and petty constables will be discussed in Chapter Nine. In addition, the monarch chose a Lord Lieutenant and a Deputy Lieutenant.
The Lord Lieutenant was a Tudor invention and served as the monarch’s personal representative. One Lord Lieutenant might have more than one county to oversee, and he might also be a Privy Councillor. The Lord Lieutenants and Deputy Lieutenants were responsible for supervising the trained bands, a county militia officially established in 1573. Between 1605 and 1614, the trained bands numbered about 5,850 men and 150 horses, but only 2,000 were armed with muskets and pikes.
Deputy Lieutenants oversaw the impressment of men for service in expeditionary forces, provisioning these men with a good coat and eightpence a day for food
while they were marched to the nearest port. Troops for service abroad were levied on an ad hoc basis and taken from the bottom of society. About 10% deserted and another 50% were found to be unfit for service. A total of 106,000 men were sent to Ireland, the Netherlands, France, and Spain during the reign of Elizabeth, 12,600 of them in 1601 alone.
COUNTIES UNDER ELIZABETH I:
1. Anglesey
2. Bedfordshire
3. Berkshire
4. Breconshire
5. Bristol
6. Buckinghamshire
7. Caernarfonshire
8. Cambridgeshire
9. Cardiganshire
10. Carmarthenshire
11. Cheshire
12. Cornwall
13. Cumberland
14. Denbighshire
15. Derbyshire
16. Devonshire
17. Dorset
18. Durham
19. Essex
20. Flintshire
21. Glamorganshire
22. Gloucestershire
23. Hampshire
24. Herefordshire
25. Hertfordshire
26. Huntingdonshire
27. Kent
28. Lancashire
29. Leicestershire
30. Lincolnshire
31. Merionethshire
32. Middlesex
33. Monmouthshire
34. Montgomeryshire
35. Norfolk
36. Northamptonshire
37. Northumberland
38. Nottinghamshire
39. Oxfordshire
40. Pembrokeshire
41. Radnorshire
42. Rutland
43. Shropshire (Salop)
44. Somerset
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