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One of the particular ways of serving one's country was the writing of "Observations on his Travels. They were also a guarantee that the tourist had been virtuously employed. The Earl of Salisbury writes severely to his son abroad:. One of a family of Elizabethan travellers. Edward, third Earl of Rutland, received a letter of instruction from Lord Burleigh concerning what to observe in France in Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, was directed by Bacon as to his travels in This narrative was one of the chief burdens of a traveller.
Gilbert Talbot is no sooner landed in Padua than he must write to his impatient parents and excuse himself for the lack of that "Relation. In reply to his father's complaints of his extravagance, he declares: "My promised relation of Tuscany your last letter hath so dashed, as I am resolved not to proceed withal.
Besides writing his observations, the traveller laboured earnestly at modern languages. Many and severe were the letters Cecil wrote to his son Thomas in Paris on the subject of settling to his French. For Thomas's tutor had difficulties in keeping his pupil from dog-fights, horses and worse amusements in company of the Earl of Hertford, who was a great hindrance to Thomas's progress in the language.
To live in the household of a learned foreigner, as Robert Sidney did with Sturm, or Henry Wotton with Hugo Blotz, was of course especially desirable. For there were still, in the Elizabethans, remnants of that ardent sociability among humanists which made Englishmen traverse dire distances of sea and land to talk with some scholar on the Rhine--that fraternizing spirit which made Cranmer fill Lambeth Palace with Martin Bucers; and Bishop Gardiner, meanwhile, complain from the Tower not only of "want of books to relieve my mind, but want of good company--the only solace in this world.
Essex tells Rutland "your Lordship should rather go an hundred miles to speake with one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town. There are signs that the learned men were not always willing to shine upon admiring strangers who burst in upon them. The renowned Doctor Zacharias Ursinus at Heidelberg marked on his doorway these words: "My friend, whoever you are, if you come here, please either go away again, or give me some help in my studies.
Truly, in few words: either much expense or much humbleness. If one had not the means to live with famous scholars, it was a good plan to take up lodgings with an eminent bookseller.
For statesmen, advocates and other sorts of great men came to the shop, from whose talk much could be learned. By and by some occasion would arise for insinuating oneself into familarity and acquaintance with these personages, and perhaps, if some one of them, "non indoctus," intended journeying to another city, he might allow you to attach yourself to him. Of course, for observation and experience, there was no place so advantageous as the household of an ambassador, if one was fortunate enough to win an entry there.
The English Ambassador in France generally had a burden of young gentlemen more or less under his care. Sometimes they were lodged independently in Paris, but many belonged to his train, and had meat and drink for themselves, their servants and their horses, at the ambassador's expense.
Sir Amias Paulet's Letter-Book of testifies that an ambassador's cares were considerably augmented by writing reports to parents. Mr Speake is assured that "although I dwell far from Paris, yet I am not unacquainted with your sonne's doing in Paris, and cannot commend him enough to you as well for his diligence in study as for his honest and quiet behaviour, and I dare assure you that you may be bold to trust him as well for the order of his expenses, as for his government otherwise.
Among these troublesome charges of Paulet's was Francis Bacon. But to his father, the Lord Keeper, Paulet writes only that all is well, and that his son's servant is particularly honest, diligent, discreet and faithful, and that Paulet is thankful for his "good and quiet behaviour in my house"--a fact which appears exceptional. Sir Dudley Carleton, as Ambassador to Venice, was also pursued by ambitious fathers.
For I perceive he means to make him a statesman, and is very well persuaded of him, If you can do it conveniently, it will be a favour; but I know what a business it is to have the breaking of such colts, and therefore will urge no more than may be to your liking. Besides gaining an apprenticeship in diplomacy, another advantage of travelling with an ambassador was the participation in ambassadorial immunities. It might have fared ill with Sir Philip Sidney, in Paris at the time of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, if he had not belonged to the household of Sir Francis Walsingham.
Many other young men not so glorious to posterity, but quite as much so to their mothers, were saved then by the same means. When news of the massacre had reached England, Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham: "I am glad yet that in these tumults and bloody proscriptions you did escape, and the young gentlemen that be there with you Yet we hear say that he that was sent by my Lord Chamberlain to be schoolmaster to young Wharton, being come the day before, was then slain.
How fearful and careful the mothers and parents be here of such young gentlemen as be there, you may easily guess by my Lady Lane, who prayeth very earnestly that her son may be sent home with as much speed as may be. The dangers of travel were of a nature to alarm mothers. As well as Catholics, there were shipwrecks, pirates, and highway robbers. Moors and Turks lay waiting "in a little port under the hill," to take passenger vessels that went between Rome and Naples.
A man dared not make any display of money for fear of being murdered in the night. It was a rare treat to have a bed to oneself. More probably the traveller was obliged to share it with a stranger of disagreeable appearance, if not of disposition. The third Lord North was ill for life because of the immoderate quantities of hot treacle he consumed in Italy, to avoid the plague.
But it was not really the low material dangers of small-pox, quartain ague, or robbers which troubled the Elizabethan. Such considerations were beneath his heroical temper. Sir Edward Winsor, warned against the piratical Gulf of Malta, writes: "And for that it should not be said an Englishman to come so far to see Malta, and to have turned backe againe, I determined rather making my sepulker of that Golfe.
So far we have not mentioned in our description of the books addressed to travellers any of the reminders of the trials of Ulysses, and dark warnings against the "Siren-songs of Italy. The traveller newly returned from foreign lands was a great butt for the satirists. In Elizabethan times his bows and tremendous politeness, his close-fitting black clothes from Venice, his French accent, his finicky refinements, such as perfumes and pick-tooths, were highly offensive to the plain Englishman.
One was always sure of an appreciative audience if he railed at the "disguised garments and desperate hats" of the "affectate traveller" how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried "behold me! Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap. Naught else have they profited by their travell, save learnt to distinguish of the true Burdeaux Grape, and know a cup of neate Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance; yea, and peradventure this also, to esteeme of the poxe as a pimple, to weare a velvet patch on their face, and walke melancholy with their armes folded.
The Frenchified traveller came in for a good share of satire, but darker things were said of the Italianate Englishman. He was an atheist--a creature hitherto unknown in England--who boldly laughed to scorn both Protestant and Papist. He mocked the Pope, railed on Luther, and liked none, but only himself.
Vanitie and vice and any licence to ill living in England was counted stale and rude unto them. It is likely that some of these accusations were true. Italy more than any other country charmed the Elizabethan Englishman, partly because the climate and the people and the look of things were so unlike his own grey home. Particularly Venice enchanted him. The sun, the sea, the comely streets, "so clean that you can walk in a Silk Stockin and Sattin Slippes," [] the tall palaces with marble balconies, and golden-haired women, the flagellants flogging themselves, the mountebanks, the Turks, the stately black-gowned gentlemen, were new and strange, and satisfied his sense of romance.
Besides, the University of Padua was still one of the greatest universities in Europe. Students from all nations crowded to it. William Thomas describes the "infinite resorte of all nacions that continually is seen there. And I thinke verilie, that in one region of all the worlde againe, are not halfe so many straungers as in Italie; specially of gentilmen, whose resorte thither is principallie under pretence of studie This last wynter living in Padoa, with diligent serche I learned, that the noumbre of scholers there was little lesse than fiftene hundreth; whereof I dare saie, a thousande at the lest were gentilmen.
The life of a student at Padua was much livelier than the monastic seclusion of an English university. He need not attend many lectures, for, as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been elected by the rectors, "He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to. Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by excursions to Venice, in one of those passenger boats which plied daily from Padua, of which was said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it carries neither Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan In the renowned freedom of that city where "no man marketh anothers dooynges, or meddleth with another mans livyng," [] it was no wonder if a young man fresh from an English university and away from those who knew him, was sometimes "enticed by lewd persons:" and, once having lost his innocence, outdid even the students of Padua.
For, as Greene says, "as our wits be as ripe as any, so our willes are more ready than they all, to put into effect any of their licentious abuses. Hence the warnings against Circes by even those authors most loud in praise of travel. Lipsius bids his noble pupil beware of Italian women: " It was necessary also to warn the traveller against those more harmless sins which we have already mentioned: against an arrogant bearing on his return to his native land, or a vanity which prompted him at all times to show that he had been abroad, and was not like the common herd.
Perhaps it was an intellectual affectation of atheism or a cultivated taste for Machiavelli with which he was inclined to startle his old-fashioned countrymen. No doubt there was in the returned traveller a certain degree of condescension which made him disagreeable--especially if he happened to be a proud and insolent courtier, who attracted the Queen's notice by his sharpened wits and novelties of discourse, or if he were a vain boy of the sort that cumbered the streets of London with their rufflings and struttings.
In making surmises as to whom Ascham had in his mind's eye when he said that he knew men who came back from Italy with "less learning and worse manners," I guessed that one might be Arthur Hall, the first translator of Homer into English. Hall was a promising Grecian at Cambridge, and began his translation with Ascham's encouragement.
It would have irritated Ascham to have a member of St John's throw over his task and his degree to go gadding. Certainly Hall's after life bore out Ascham's forebodings as to the value of foreign travel.
On his return he spent a notorious existence in London until the consequences of a tavern brawl turned him out of Parliament. I might dwell for a moment on Hall's curious account of this latter affair, because it is one of the few utterances we have by an acknowledged Italianate Englishman--of a certain sort. The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen. Also spending more tyme in sportes, and following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause, I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for.
This terrible person, on the 16th of December , at Lothbury, in London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate to one of the players.
Here Etna smoked, daggers were a-drawing But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester, took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards.
He said he was patient because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.
Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back.
There was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall.
Hall, who had cut himself--and nobody else--nursed his wound indoors for some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would "shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret and unlooked for mischief. Business called him, he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he fled in disguise. After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He dined at "James Lumelies--the son, as it is said, of old M.
Dominicke, born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales,"--and coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he "fell to with the rest.
But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie--and with insufferably haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again, passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall. We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate" or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament.
This is enough to show the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were, and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows. Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge with an Italian minde learned at Rome.
Acworth had lived abroad during Mary's reign, studying civil law in France and Italy. When Elizabeth came to the throne he was elected public orator of the University of Cambridge, but through being idle, dissolute, and a drunkard, he lost all his preferments in England. It was then that the Duke bitterly dubbed him an "Italianfyd Inglyschemane," equal in faithlessness to "a schamlesse Scote"; [] i.
Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, famous for his rude behaviour to Sir Philip Sidney, whom he subsequently tried to dispatch with hired assassins after the Italian manner, [] might well have been one of the rising generation of courtiers whom Ascham so deplored.
In Ascham's lifetime he was already a conspicuous gallant, and by , at the age of twenty-two, he was the court favourite. The friends of the Earl of Rutland, keeping him informed of the news while he was fulfilling in Paris those heavy duties of observation which Cecil mapped out for him, announce that "There is no man of life and agility in every respect in Court, but the Earl of Oxford. At the very time when the Queen "delighted more in his personage and his dancing and valiantness than any other," [] Oxford betook himself to Flanders--without licence.
Though his father-in-law Burghley had him brought back to the indignant Elizabeth, the next year he set forth again and made for Italy. From Siena, on January 3rd, , he writes to ask Burghley to sell some of his land so as to disburden him of his debts, and in reply to some warning of Burghley's that his affairs in England need attention, replies that since his troubles are so many at home, he has resolved to continue his travels.
In another letter also [] he assures Cecil that he means to acquaint himself with Sturmius--that educator of youth so highly approved of by Ascham.
He did not know this till his late return to Venice. He has been grieved with a fever. The letter concludes with a mention that he has taken up of Baptista Nigrone crowns, which he desires repaid from the sale of his lands, and a curt thanks for the news of his wife's delivery. From Paris, after an interval of six months, he declares his pleasure at the news of his being a father, but makes no offer to return to England.
Rather he intends to go back to Venice. He "may pass two or three months in seeing Constantinople and some part of Greece. However, Burghley says, "I wrote to Pariss to hym to hasten hym homewards," and in April , he landed at Dover in an exceedingly sulky mood. He refused to see his wife, and told Burghley he might take his daughter into his own house again, for he was resolved "to be rid of the cumber. Certain results of his travel were pleasing to his sovereign, however. For he was the first person to import to England "gloves, sweete bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other pleasant things.
Arthur Hall and the Earl of Oxford will perhaps serve to show that many young men pointed out as having returned the worse for their liberty to see the world, were those who would have been very poor props to society had they never left their native land. Weak and vain striplings of entirely English growth escaped the comment attracted by a sinner with strange garments and new oaths. For in those garments themselves lay an offence to the commonwealth.
I need only refer to the well-known jealousy, among English haberdashers and milliners, of the superior craft of Continental workmen, behind whom English weavers lagged: Henry the Eighth used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of cloth--on that leg of which he was so proud--unless "by great chance there came a paire of Spanish silke stockings from Spaine.
Wrapped up with economic acrimony there was a good deal of the hearty old English hatred of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner, which was always finding expression. Either it was the 'prentices who rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and "rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going on and laughing at it," [] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed.
Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in that they wanted judgement. There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts, the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in Elizabethan England.
But the popular voice was loud against the nobles who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier parodies what the new and refined Englishman would say Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as they should be: not like gluttons as their fathers did, in chines of beefe and almes to the poore, but in velvets, satins, cloth of gold, pearle: yea, pearle lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his birthday.
On the whole, we may say that the objections to foreign travel rose from a variety of motives. Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young men spoiled by too much liberty, and there were surely many obnoxious boys who bragged of their "foreign vices.
Lastly, there was another element in the protest against foreign travel, which grew more and more strong towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of James the First's, the hatred of Italy as the stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church, and fear of the Inquisition.
Warnings against the Jesuits are a striking feature of the next group of Instructions to Travellers. The quickening of animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the last quarter of the sixteenth century had a good deal to do with the censure of travel which we have been describing.
In their fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic countries, Englishmen viewed with alarm any attractions, intellectual or otherwise, which the Continent had for their sons. They had rather have them forego the advantages of a liberal education than run the risk of falling body and soul into the hands of the Papists. The intense, fierce patriotism which flared up to meet the Spanish Armada almost blighted the genial impulse of travel for study's sake.
It divided the nations again, and took away the common admiration for Italy which had made the young men of the north all rush together there. We can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling coming to the great Politian at Bologna and grappling him to his heart--"arctissima sibi conjunxit amicum familiaritate," [] as the warm humanistic phrase has it.
In the seventeenth century Politian would be a "contagious Papist," using his charm to convert men to Romanism, and Selling would be a "true son of the Church of England," railing at Politian for his "debauch'd and Popish principles.
They had scarcely started before the Reformation called it a place of abomination. Lord Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed him to go to Italy, [] at the end of his long life left instructions to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism.
And if by travel they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat served on divers dishes. The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan distrust of going "beyond seas.
All through his prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of the greatest authorities in England on continental politics.
He had a confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley.
Lady Bacon, in her fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals, had the man arrested and detained in England. His anxious master sent another man to plead with his mother for Lawson's release; but in vain.
The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve to show the vehemence of anti-Catholic feelings in a British matron in She cannot abide to hear of you, as she saith, nor of the other especially, and told me plainly she should be the worse this month for my coming without you, and axed me why you could not have come from thence as well as myself.
It was not only a general hatred of Roman Catholics which made staunch Protestants anxious to detain their sons from foreign travel towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively and well-grounded fear of the Inquisition and the Jesuits. When England was at war with Spain, any Englishman caught on Spanish territory was a lawful prisoner for ransom; and since Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Rome was the territory of Spain's patron, the Pope, Italy was far from safe for Englishmen and Protestants.
Even when peace with Spain was declared, on the accession of James I. There is a letter, for instance, to Salisbury from one of his agents on the Continent, concerning overtures made to him by the Pope's nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of note--young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne--into papal dominions, where he might be seized and detained, in hope of procuring a release for Baldwin the Jesuit.
Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief towns to be passed through. I care not for seeing places, but to go thither the shortest and safest way. Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the very next year occurred the arrest of the unfortunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the sensations of the day. Fuller, in his Church History , under the year , records how He was appointed by Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in Travail to his Grandchilde, the Lord Ross, undertaking the charge with much reluctance as a presage of ill successe and with a profession, and a resolution not to passe the Alpes.
In vain doth Mr Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, he would in some sort govern his Governour. What should this good man doe? To leave him were to desert his trust, to goe along with him were to endanger his own life.
At last his affections to his charge so prevailed against his judgment, that unwillingly willing he went with him. Now, at what rate soever they rode to Rome, the fame of their coming came thither before them; so that no sooner had they entered their Inne, but Officers asked for Mr Molle, took and carried him to the Inquisition-House, where he remained a prisoner whilest the Lord Ross was daily feasted, favoured, entertained: so that some will not stick to say, That here he changed no Religion for a bad one.
No threats could persuade Mr Mole to renounce his heresy, and though many attempts were made to exchange him for some Jesuits caught in England, he lay for thirty years in the prison of the Inquisition, and died there, at the age of eighty-one. It was part of the policy of the Jesuits, according to Sir Henry Wotton, to thus separate their tutors from young men, and then ply the pupils with attentions and flattery, with a view to persuading them into the Church of Rome.
Not long after the capture of Mole, Wotton writes to Salisbury of another case of the same sort. And doubtlessly as we collect now upon the matter if Sir John Harington [] had either gone the Roman Journey, or taken the ordinary way in his remove thitherwards out of Tuscany, the like would have befallen his director also, a gentleman of singular sufficiency; [] for it appeareth a new piece of council infused into the Pope by his artisans the Jesuits to separate by some device their guides from our young noblemen about whom they are busiest and afterwards to use themselves for aught I can yet hear with much kindness and security, but yet with restraint when they come to Rome of departing thence without leave; which form was held both with the Lords Rosse and St Jhons, and with this Lord Wentworthe and his brother-in-law at their being there.
And we have at the present also a like example or two in Barons of the Almaign nation of our religion, whose governors are imprisoned, at Rome and Ferrara; so as the matter seemeth to pass into a rule. And albeit thitherto those before named of our own be escaped out of that Babylon as far as I can penetrate without any bad impressions, yet surely it appeareth very dangerous to leave our travellers in this contingency; especially being dispersed in the middle towns of Italy whither the language doth most draw them certain nimble pleasant wits in quality of interceptors, who deliver over to their correspondents at Rome the dispositions of gentlemen before they arrive, and so subject them both to attraction by argument, and attraction by humour.
Wotton did not overrate the persuasiveness of the Jesuits. Lord Roos became a papist. Wotton's own nephew, Pickering, had been converted in Spain, on his death-bed, although he had been, according to the Jesuit records, "most tenacious of the corrupt religion which from his tender youth he had imbibed.
Another conversion of the same sort had been made by Father Walpole at Valladolid, the year before. Sir Thomas Palmer came to Spain both for the purpose of learning the language and seeing the country. Therefore, perceiving himself to be in danger of death, he set to work to reconcile himself with the Catholic Church.
Having received all the last Sacraments he died, and was honourably interred with Catholic rites, to the great amazement also of the English Protestants, who in great numbers were in the city, and attended the funeral. There is nothing surprising in these death-bed conversions, when we think of the pressure brought to bear on a traveller in a strange land. As soon as he fell sick, the host of his inn sent for a priest, and if the invalid refused to see a ghostly comforter that fact discovered his Protestantism.
Whereupon the physician and apothecary, the very kitchen servants, were forbidden by the priest to help him, unless he renounced his odious Reformed Religion and accepted Confession, the Sacrament, and Extreme Unction. If he died without these his body was not allowed in consecrated ground, but was buried in the highway like a very dog. It is no wonder if sometimes there was a conversion of an Englishman, lonely and dying, with no one to cling to.
We must remember, also, how many reputed Protestants had only outwardly conformed to the Church of England for worldly reasons. They could not enter any profession or hold any public office unless they did.
But their hearts were still in the old faith, and they counted on returning to it at the very end. In the hour of death men turn to old affections. And so in several ways one can account for Sir Francis Cottington, Ambassador to Spain, who fell ill, confessed himself a Catholic; and when he recovered, once more became a Protestant.
The mere force of environment, according to Sir Charles Cornwallis, Ambassador to Spain from , was enough to change the religion of impressionable spirits. His reports to England show a constant struggle to keep his train of young gentlemen true to their national Church. The Spanish Court was then at Valladolid, in which city flourished an especially strong College of Jesuits.
Thence Walpole, and other dangerous persuaders, made sallies upon Cornwallis's fold. At first the Ambassador was hopeful Two of myne own Followers I have found corrupted, the one in such sorte as he refused to come to Prayers, whom I presently discharged; the other being an honest and sober young Gentleman, and one that denieth not to be present both at Prayers and Preachinge, I continue still, having good hope that I shall in time reduce him. But within a month he has to report the conversion of Sir Thomas Palmer, and within another month, the loss of even his own chaplain.
In a week the chaplain wrote for a prolongation of his stay, making discourse of "a strange Tempest that came upon him in the way, of visible Fire that fell both before and behind him, of an Expectation of present Death, and of a Vowe he made in that time of Danger. The chaplain never came back. He had turned Romanist. The reasons for the headway of Catholicism in the reign of James I. To explain the agitated mood of our Precepts for Travellers, it is necessary only to call attention to the fact that Protestantism was just then losing ground, through the devoted energy of the Jesuits.
Even in England, they were able to strike admiration into the mind of youth, and to turn its ardour to their own purposes. But in Spain and in Italy, backed by their impressive environment and surrounded by the visible power of the Roman Church, they were much more potent. The English Jesuits in Rome--Oxford scholars, many of them--engaged the attentions of such of their university friends or their countrymen who came to see Italy, offering to show them the antiquities, to be guides and interpreters.
How much the English Government feared the influence of the Jesuits upon young men abroad may be seen by the increasing strictness of licences for travellers. The decline of the courtier--Foundation of chairs of Modern History and Modern Languages at Oxford and Cambridge--Englishmen become self-sufficient--Books of travel become common--Advent of the Romantic traveller who travels for scenery. Of the many social impulses that were influenced by the Renaissance, by that "new lernynge which runnythe all the world over now-a-days," the love of travel received a notable modification.
This very old instinct to go far, far away had in the Middle Ages found sanction, dignity and justification in the performance of pilgrimages. It is open to doubt whether the number of the truly pious would ever have filled so many ships to Port Jaffa had not their ranks been swelled by the restless, the adventurous, the wanderers of all classes. Towards the sixteenth century, when curiosity about things human was an ever stronger undercurrent in England, pilgrimages were particularly popular.
In , Henry VI. Among the earliest books printed in England was Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the Holy Londe, by Wynkin de Worde, one which ran to three editions, [4] an almost exact copy of William Wey's "prevysyoun" provision for a journey eastwards.
The advice given shows that the ordinary pilgrim thought, not of the ascetic advantages of the voyage, or of simply arriving in safety at his holy destination, but of making the trip in the highest possible degree of personal comfort and pleasure.
He is advised to take with him two barrels of wine "For yf ye wolde geve xx dukates for a barrel ye shall none have after that ye passe moche Venyse" ; to buy orange-ginger, almonds, rice, figs, cloves, maces and loaf sugar also, to eke out the fare the ship will provide.
And this although he is to make the patron swear, before the pilgrim sets foot in the galley, that he will serve "hote meete twice at two meals a day. Far from being encouraged to exercise a humble and abnegatory spirit on the voyage, he is to be at pains to secure a berth in the middle of the ship, and not to mind paying fifty ducats for to be in a good honest place, "to have your ease in the galey and also to be cherysshed. But while this book was being published, new forces were at hand which were to strip the thin disguise of piety from pilgrims of this sort.
The Colloquies of Erasmus appeared before the third edition of Informacon for Pylgrymes , and exploded the idea that it was the height of piety to have seen Jerusalem. It was nothing but the love of change, Erasmus declared, that made old bishops run over huge spaces of sea and land to reach Jerusalem. The noblemen who flocked thither had better be looking after their estates, and married men after their wives. Young men and women travelled "non sine gravi discrimine morum et integritatis.
Some people went again and again and did nothing else all their lives long. And people could spend their time, money and pains on something which was truly pious. But a new object for travel was springing up and filling the leading minds of the sixteenth century--the desire of learning, at first hand, the best that was being thought and said in the world.
Humanism was the new power, the new channel into which men were turning in the days when "our naturell, yong, lusty and coragious prynce and sovrayne lord King Herre the Eighth entered into the flower of pleasaunt youthe. All through the fifteenth century the universities of Italy, pre-eminent since their foundation for secular studies, had been gaining reputation by their offer of a wider education than the threadbare discussions of the schoolmen. The discovery and revival in the fifteenth century of Greek literature, which had stirred Italian society so profoundly, gave to the universities a northward-spreading fame.
Northern scholars, like Rudolf Agricola, hurried south to find congenial air at the centre of intellectual life. That professional humanists could not do without the stamp of true culture which an Italian degree gave to them, Erasmus, observer of all things, notes in the year to the Lady of Veer:. For people do not straightway change their minds because they cross the sea, as Horace says, nor will the shadow of an impressive name make me a whit more learned Although Erasmus despised degree-hunting, it is well known that he felt the power of Italy.
He was tempted to remain in Rome for ever, by reason of the company he found there. There was, for instance, the Cardinal Grimani, who begged Erasmus to share his life We get a glimpse of the Venetian printing-house when Aldus and Erasmus worked together: Erasmus sitting writing regardless of the noise of printers, while Aldus breathlessly reads proof, admiring every word. It was this charm of intellectual companionship which started the whole stream of travel animi causa.
Whoever had keen wits, an agile mind, imagination, yearned for Italy. There enlightened spirits struck sparks from one another. Young and ardent minds in England and in Germany found an escape from the dull and melancholy grimness of their uneducated elders--purely practical fighting-men, whose ideals were fixed on a petrified code of life.
I need not explain how Englishmen first felt this charm of urbane civilization. As for Italian journeys of Selling, Grocyn, Latimer, Tunstall, Colet and Lily, of that extraordinary group of scholars who transformed Oxford by the introduction of Greek ideals and gave to it the peculiar distinction which is still shining, I mention them only to suggest that they are the source of the Renaissance respect for a foreign education, and the founders of the fashion which, in its popular spreadings, we will attempt to trace.
They all studied in Italy, and brought home nothing but good. For to scholarship they joined a native force of character which gave a most felicitous introduction to England of the fine things of the mind which they brought home with them. By their example they gave an impetus to travel for education's sake which lesser men could never have done. Rich churchmen, patrons of letters, launched promising students on to the Continent to give them a complete education; as Richard Fox, Founder of Corpus Christi, sent Edward Wotton to Padua, "to improve his learning and chiefly to learn Greek," [16] or Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester, supported Richard Pace at the same university.
Shunning all implication in the tumult of the political world, he slipped back to Padua, and there surrounded himself with friends,--"singular fellows, such as ever absented themselves from the court, desiring to live holily. There were other elements that contributed to the growth of travel besides the desire to become exquisitely learned. It was soon found that a special combination of qualities was needed in the ambassadors to carry out his aspirations.
Churchmen, like the ungrateful Pole, for whose education he had generously subscribed, were often unpliable to his views of the Pope; a good old English gentleman, though devoted, might be like Sir Robert Wingfield, simple, unsophisticated, and the laughingstock of foreigners. On one of his visits to Oxford he was impressed with the comely presence and flowing expression of John Mason, who, though the son of a cowherd, was notable at the university for his "polite and majestick speaking.
King Henry disposed of him in foreign parts, to add practical experience to his speculative studies, and paid for his education out of the king's Privy Purse, as we see by the royal expenses for September Another educational investment of the King's was Thomas Smith, afterwards as excellent an ambassador as Mason, whom he supported at Cambridge, and according to Camden, at riper years made choice of to be sent into Italy.
This again merged into the pursuit of a still more informal education--the sort which comes from "seeing the world. With any ambassador went a bevy of young gentlemen, who on their return diffused a certain mysterious sophistication which was the envy of home-keeping youth.
According to Hall, when they came back to England they were "all French in eating and drinking and apparel, yea, and in the French vices and brags: so that all the estates of England were by them laughed at, the ladies and gentlewomen were dispraised, and nothing by them was praised, but if it were after the French turn. There was still another contributory element to the growth of travel, one which touched diplomats, scholars, and courtiers--the necessity of learning modern languages.
By the middle of the sixteenth century Latin was no longer sufficient for intercourse between educated people. In the most civilized countries the vernacular had been elevated to the dignity of the classical tongues by being made the literary vehicle of such poets as Politian and Bembo, Ronsard and Du Bellay. A vernacular literature of great beauty, too important to be overlooked, began to spring up on all sides.
One could no longer keep abreast of the best thought without a knowledge of modern languages. More powerful than any academic leanings was the Renaissance curiosity about man, which could not be satisfied through the knowledge of Latin only. Hardly anyone but churchmen talked Latin in familiar conversation with one.
When a man visited foreign courts and wished to enter into social intercourse with ladies and fashionables, or move freely among soldiers, or settle a bill with an innkeeper, he found that he sorely needed the language of the country. So by the time we reach the reign of Edward VI. Brown after G. This favourite of Queen Elizabeth introduced many Italian fashions to her Court. We have noted how Italy came to be the lode-stone of scholars, and how courtiers sought the grace which France bestowed, but we have not yet accounted for the attraction of Germany.
Germany, as a centre of travel, was especially popular in the reign of Edward the Sixth. France went temporarily out of fashion with those men of whom we have most record. For in Edward's reign the temper of the leading spirits in England was notably at variance with the court of France. It was to Germany that Edward's circle of Protestant politicians, schoolmasters, and chaplains felt most drawn--to the country where the tides of the Reformation were running high, and men were in a ferment over things of the spirit; to the country of Sturm and Bucer, and Fagius and Ursinus--the doctrinalists and educators so revered by Cambridge.
Cranmer, who gathered under his roof as many German savants as could survive in the climate of England, [35] kept the current of understanding and sympathy flowing between Cambridge and Germany, and since Cambridge, not Oxford, dominated the scholarly and political world of Edward the Sixth, from that time on Germany, in the minds of the St John's men, such as Burleigh, Ascham and Hoby, was the place where one might meet the best learned of the day.
We have perhaps said enough to indicate roughly the sources of the Renaissance fashion for travel which gave rise to the essays we are about to discuss. The scholar's desire to specialize at a foreign university, in Greek, in medicine, or in law; the courtier's ambition to acquire modern languages, study foreign governments, and generally fit himself for the service of the State, were dignified aims which in men of character produced very happy results.
It was natural that others should follow their example. In Elizabethan times the vogue of travelling to become a "compleat person" was fully established. And though in mean and trivial men the ideal took on such odd shapes and produced such dubious results that in every generation there were critics who questioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier.
And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige to a young man. Besides, underneath worldly ambition was the old curiosity to see the world and know all sorts of men--to be tried and tested. More powerful than any theory of education was the yearning for far-off, foreign things, and the magic of the sea.
The love of travel, we all know, flourished exceedingly in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. All classes felt the desire to go beyond seas upon. The explorer and the poet, the adventurer, the prodigal and the earl's son, longed alike for foreign shores. What Ben Jonson said of Coryat might be stretched to describe the average Elizabethan: "The mere superscription of a letter from Zurich sets him up like a top: Basil or Heidelberg makes him spinne.
And at seeing the word Frankford, or Venice, though but in the title of a Booke, he is readie to breake doublet, cracke elbowes, and overflowe the roome with his murmure. Sad it was to be a court favourite like Fulke Greville, who four times, thirsting for strange lands, was plucked back to England by Elizabeth. At about the time when some of the most prominent courtiers--Edward Dyer, Gilbert Talbot, the Earl of Hertford, and more especially Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Philip Sidney--had just returned from abroad, book-publishers thought it worth while to print books addressed to travellers.
At least, there grew up a demand for advice to young men which became a feature of Elizabethan literature, printed and unprinted.
It was the convention for a young man about to travel to apply to some experienced or elderly friend, and for that friend to disburden a torrent of maxims after the manner of Polonius. John Florio, who knew the humours of his day, represents this in a dialogue in Second Frutes. Hence arose manuals of instruction--marvellous little books, full of incitements to travel as the duty of man, summaries of the leading characteristics of foreigners, directions for the care of sore feet--and a strange medley of matters.
Among the first essays of this sort are translations from Germanic writers, with whom, if Turler is right, the book of precepts for travel originated. For the Germans, with the English, were the most indefatigable travellers of all nations. Like the English, they suddenly woke up with a start to the idea that they were barbarians on the outskirts of civilization, and like Chicago of the present day, sent their young men "hustling for culture.
Since both Germany and England were somewhat removed from the older and more civilized nations, it was necessary for them to make an effort to learn what was going on at the centre of the world. It was therefore the duty of gentlemen, especially of noblemen, to whom the State would look to be directed, to search out the marts of learning, frequent foreign courts, and by knowing men and languages be able to advise their prince at home, after the manner set forth in Il Cortegiano.
It must be remembered that in the sixteenth century there were no schools of political economy, of modern history or modern languages at the universities.
A sound knowledge of these things had to be obtained by first-hand observation. From this fact arose the importance of improving one's opportunities, and the necessity for methodical, thorough inquiry, which we shall find so insisted upon in these manuals of advice.
Hieronymus Turlerus claims that his De Peregrinatione Argentorati, is the first book to be devoted to precepts of travel. It was translated into English and published in London in , under the title of The Traveiler of Jerome Turler , and is, as far as I know, the first book of the sort in England.
Not much is known of Turler, save that he was born at Leissnig, in Saxony, in , studied at Padua, became a Doctor of Law, made such extensive travels that he included even England--a rare thing in those days--and after serving as Burgomaster in his native place, died in His writings, other than De Peregrinatione , are three translations from Machiavelli. Turler addresses to two young German noblemen his book "written on behalf of such as are desirous to travell, and to see foreine cuntries, and specially of students Mee thinkes they do a good deede, and well deserve of al men, that give precepts for traveyl.
Which thing, althoughe I perceive that some have done, yet have they done it here and there in sundrie Bookes and not in any one certeine place. Not only does Turler say so himself, but Theodor Zwinger, who three years later wrote Methodus Apodemica , declares that Turler and Pyrckmair were his only predecessors in this sort of composition. Pyrckmair was apparently one of those governors, or Hofmeister, [44] who accompanied young German noblemen on their tours through Europe.
He drew up a few directions, he declares, as guidance for himself and the Count von Sultz, whom he expected shortly to guide into Italy. He had made a previous journey to Rome, which he enjoyed with the twofold enthusiasm of the humanist and the Roman Catholic, beholding "in a stupor of admiration" the magnificent remnants of classic civilization and the institutions of a benevolent Pope.
From Plantin's shop in Antwerp came in a narrative by another Hofmeister--Stephen Vinandus Pighius--concerning the life and travels of his princely charge, Charles Frederick, Duke of Cleves, who on his grand tour died in Rome. Pighius discusses at considerable length, [46] in describing the hesitancy of the Duke's guardians about sending him on a tour, the advantages and disadvantages of travel. The expense of it and the diseases you catch, were great deterrents; yet the widening of the mind which judicious travelling insures, so greatly outweighed these and other disadvantages, that it was arranged after much discussion, "not only in the Council but also in the market-place and at the dinner-table," to send young Charles for two years to Austria to the court of his uncle the Emperor Maximilian, and then to Italy, France, and Lower Germany to visit the princess, his relations, and friends, and to see life.
Theodor Zwinger, who was reputed to be the first to reduce the art of travel into a form and give it the appearance of a science, [47] died a Doctor of Medicine at Basel. He had no liking for his father's trade of furrier, but apprenticed himself for three years to a printer at Lyons.
Somehow he managed to learn some philosophy from Peter Ramus at Paris, and then studied medicine at Padua, where he met Jerome Turler.
Even more distinguished in the academic world was the next to carry on the discussion of travel--Justus Lipsius. His elegant letter on the subject, [49] written a year after Zwinger's book was published, was translated into English by Sir John Stradling in Philip Jones took no such liberties with the "Method" of Albert Meier, which he translated two years after it was published in The Pervigilium Mercurii of Georgius Loysius, a friend of Scaliger, was never translated into English, but the important virtues of a traveller therein described had their influence on English readers.
Loysius compiled two hundred short petty maxims, illustrated by apt classical quotations, bearing on the correct behaviour and duties of a traveller. For instance, he must avoid luxury, as says Seneca; and laziness, as say Horace and Ovid; he must be reticent about his wealth and learning and keep his counsel, like Ulysses.
He must observe the morals and religion of others, but not criticise them, for different nations have different religions, and think that their fathers' gods ought to be served diligently. He that disregards these things acts with pious zeal but without consideration for other people's feelings "nulla ratione cujusque vocationis". Loysius reflects the sentiment of his country in his conviction that "Nature herself desires that women should stay at home.
Adding to these earliest essays the Oration in Praise of Travel , by Hermann Kirchner, [54] we have a group of instructions sprung from German soil all characterized by an exalted mood and soaring style. They have in common the tendency to rationalize the activities of man, which was so marked a feature of the Renaissance.
The simple errant impulse that Chaucer noted as belonging with the songs of birds and coming of spring, is dignified into a philosophy of travel. It had the negative value of providing artificial trials for young gentlemen with patrimony and no occupation who might otherwise be living idly on their country estates, or dissolutely in London.
Knight-errantry, in chivalric society, had provided the hardships and discipline agreeable to youth; travel "for vertues sake, to apply the study of good artes," [55] was in the Renaissance an excellent way to keep a young man profitably busy.
For besides the academic advantages of foreign universities, travel corrected the character. The rude and arrogant young nobleman who had never before left his own country, met salutary opposition and contempt from strangers, and thereby gained modesty. By observing the refinements of the older nations, his uncouthness was softened: the rough barbarian cub was gradually mollified into the civil courtier. And as for giving one prudence and patience, never was such a mentor as travel.
The tender, the effeminate, the cowardly, were hardened by contention with unwonted cold or rain or sun, with hard seats, stony pillows, thieves, and highwaymen. Any simple, improvident, and foolish youth would be stirred up to vigilancy by a few experiences with "the subtelty of spies, the wonderful cunning of Inn-keepers and baudes and the great danger of his life.
Only experience could teach him how to be cunning, wary, and bold; how he might hold his own, at court or at sea, among Elizabeth's adventurers. However, this development of the individual was only part of the benefit of travel.
Far more to be extolled was his increased usefulness to the State. That was the stoutest reason for leaving one's "owne sweete country dwellings" to endure hardships and dangers beyond seas.
For a traveller may be of the greatest benefit to his own country by being able to compare its social, economic, and military arrangements with those of other commonwealths.
He is wisely warned, therefore, against that fond preference for his own country which leads him to close his eyes to any improvement--"without just cause preferring his native country," [57] but to use choice and discretion, to see, learn, and diligently mark what in every place is worthy of praise and what ought to be amended, in magistrates, regal courts, schools, churches, armies--all the ways and means pertaining to civil life and the governing of a humane society. For all improvement in society, say our authors, came by travellers bringing home fresh ideas.
Examples from the ancients, to complete a Renaissance argument, are cited to prove this. What is the greatest vice in both nacions? After what manner the subjects in both countries shewe their obedience to their prince, or oppose themselves against him? An ambassador to Paris must know what was especially pleasing to a Frenchman. Even a captain in war must know the special virtues and vices of the enemy: which nation is ablest to make a sudden sally, which is stouter to entertain the shock in open field, which is subtlest of the contriving of an ambush.
Evidently, since there is so varied a need for acquaintance with foreign countries, travel is a positive duty.
This summary, of course, cannot reproduce the style of each of our authors, and only roughly indicates their method of persuasion. Especially it cannot represent the mode of Zwinger, whose contribution is a treatise of four hundred pages, arranged in outline form, by means of which any single idea is made to wend its tortuous way through folios.
Every aspect of the subject is divided and subdivided with meticulous care. He cannot speak of the time for travel without discriminating between natural time, such as years and days, and artificial time, such as festivals and holidays; nor of the means of locomotion without specifying the possibility of being carried through the air by: I Mechanical means, such as the wings of Icarus; or 2 Angels, as the Apostle Philip was snatched from Samaria. That the idea of travel as a duty to the State had permeated the Elizabethans from the courtier to the common sailor is borne out by contemporary letters of all sorts.
Even William Bourne, an innkeeper at Gravesend, who wrote a hand-book of applied mathematics, called it The Treasure for Travellers [63] and prefaced it with an exhortation in the style of Turler. Here are the same reminders to have the welfare of the commonwealth constantly in mind, to waste no time, to use order and method in observation, and to bring home, if possible, valuable information.
Sidney bewails how much he has missed for "want of having directed my course to the right end, and by the right means. Your purpose is, being a gentleman born, to furnish yourself with the knowledge of such things as may be serviceable to your country.
Davison urges the value of experience, scorning the man who thinks to fit himself by books: "Our sedentary traveller may pass for a wise man as long as he converseth either with dead men by reading, or by writing, with men absent.
But let him once enter on the stage of public employment, and he will soon find, if he can but be sensible of contempt, that he is unfit for action. For ability to treat with men of several humours, factions and countries; duly to comply with them, or stand off, as occasion shall require, is not gotten only by reading of books, but rather by studying of men: yet this is ever held true.
The best scholar is fittest for a traveller, as being able to make the most useful observations: experience added to learning makes a perfect man. Both Essex and Fulke Greville are full of warnings against superficial and showy knowledge of foreign countries: "The true end of knowledge is clearness and strength of judgment, and not ostentation, or ability to discourse, which I do rather put your Lordship in mind of, because the most part of noblemen and gentlemen of our time have no other use nor end of their learning but their table-talk.
But God knoweth they have gotten little that have only this discoursing gift: for, though like empty vessels they sound loud when a man knocks upon their outsides, yet if you pierce into them, you shall find that they are full of nothing but wind. Lord Burghley, wasting not a breath, tersely instructs the Earl of Rutland in things worthy of observation. Among these are frontier towns, with what size garrison they are maintained, etc. At Court, what are the natural dispositions of the king and his brothers and sisters, what is the king's diet, etc.
So much for the attitude of the first "Subsidium Peregrinantibus. But biography is not lacking in evidence that the recipients of these directions did take their travels seriously and try to make them profitable to the commonwealth.
Among the Rutland papers [68] is a plan of fortifications and some notes made by the Edward Manners to whom Cecil wrote the above letter of advice. Sir Thomas Bodley tells how full he was of patriotic intent: "I waxed desirous to travel beyond the seas, for attaining to the knowledge of some special modern tongues, and for the increase of my experience in the managing of affairs, being wholly then addicted to employ myself, and all my cares, in the public service of the state.
Essex says: "Being now entered into my travels, and intending the end thereof to attain to true knowledge and to better my experience, I hope God will so bless me in my endeavours, that I shall return an acceptable servant unto your Highness.
One of the particular ways of serving one's country was the writing of "Observations on his Travels. They were also a guarantee that the tourist had been virtuously employed.
The Earl of Salisbury writes severely to his son abroad:. One of a family of Elizabethan travellers. Edward, third Earl of Rutland, received a letter of instruction from Lord Burleigh concerning what to observe in France in Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, was directed by Bacon as to his travels in This narrative was one of the chief burdens of a traveller. Gilbert Talbot is no sooner landed in Padua than he must write to his impatient parents and excuse himself for the lack of that "Relation.
In reply to his father's complaints of his extravagance, he declares: "My promised relation of Tuscany your last letter hath so dashed, as I am resolved not to proceed withal. Besides writing his observations, the traveller laboured earnestly at modern languages.
Many and severe were the letters Cecil wrote to his son Thomas in Paris on the subject of settling to his French. For Thomas's tutor had difficulties in keeping his pupil from dog-fights, horses and worse amusements in company of the Earl of Hertford, who was a great hindrance to Thomas's progress in the language.
To live in the household of a learned foreigner, as Robert Sidney did with Sturm, or Henry Wotton with Hugo Blotz, was of course especially desirable. For there were still, in the Elizabethans, remnants of that ardent sociability among humanists which made Englishmen traverse dire distances of sea and land to talk with some scholar on the Rhine--that fraternizing spirit which made Cranmer fill Lambeth Palace with Martin Bucers; and Bishop Gardiner, meanwhile, complain from the Tower not only of "want of books to relieve my mind, but want of good company--the only solace in this world.
Essex tells Rutland "your Lordship should rather go an hundred miles to speake with one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town. There are signs that the learned men were not always willing to shine upon admiring strangers who burst in upon them. The renowned Doctor Zacharias Ursinus at Heidelberg marked on his doorway these words: "My friend, whoever you are, if you come here, please either go away again, or give me some help in my studies.
Truly, in few words: either much expense or much humbleness. If one had not the means to live with famous scholars, it was a good plan to take up lodgings with an eminent bookseller.
For statesmen, advocates and other sorts of great men came to the shop, from whose talk much could be learned. By and by some occasion would arise for insinuating oneself into familarity and acquaintance with these personages, and perhaps, if some one of them, "non indoctus," intended journeying to another city, he might allow you to attach yourself to him.
Of course, for observation and experience, there was no place so advantageous as the household of an ambassador, if one was fortunate enough to win an entry there. The English Ambassador in France generally had a burden of young gentlemen more or less under his care.
Sometimes they were lodged independently in Paris, but many belonged to his train, and had meat and drink for themselves, their servants and their horses, at the ambassador's expense. Sir Amias Paulet's Letter-Book of testifies that an ambassador's cares were considerably augmented by writing reports to parents.
Mr Speake is assured that "although I dwell far from Paris, yet I am not unacquainted with your sonne's doing in Paris, and cannot commend him enough to you as well for his diligence in study as for his honest and quiet behaviour, and I dare assure you that you may be bold to trust him as well for the order of his expenses, as for his government otherwise.
Among these troublesome charges of Paulet's was Francis Bacon. But to his father, the Lord Keeper, Paulet writes only that all is well, and that his son's servant is particularly honest, diligent, discreet and faithful, and that Paulet is thankful for his "good and quiet behaviour in my house"--a fact which appears exceptional. Sir Dudley Carleton, as Ambassador to Venice, was also pursued by ambitious fathers.
For I perceive he means to make him a statesman, and is very well persuaded of him, If you can do it conveniently, it will be a favour; but I know what a business it is to have the breaking of such colts, and therefore will urge no more than may be to your liking.
Besides gaining an apprenticeship in diplomacy, another advantage of travelling with an ambassador was the participation in ambassadorial immunities. It might have fared ill with Sir Philip Sidney, in Paris at the time of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, if he had not belonged to the household of Sir Francis Walsingham. Many other young men not so glorious to posterity, but quite as much so to their mothers, were saved then by the same means.
When news of the massacre had reached England, Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham: "I am glad yet that in these tumults and bloody proscriptions you did escape, and the young gentlemen that be there with you Yet we hear say that he that was sent by my Lord Chamberlain to be schoolmaster to young Wharton, being come the day before, was then slain. How fearful and careful the mothers and parents be here of such young gentlemen as be there, you may easily guess by my Lady Lane, who prayeth very earnestly that her son may be sent home with as much speed as may be.
The dangers of travel were of a nature to alarm mothers. As well as Catholics, there were shipwrecks, pirates, and highway robbers. Moors and Turks lay waiting "in a little port under the hill," to take passenger vessels that went between Rome and Naples. A man dared not make any display of money for fear of being murdered in the night. It was a rare treat to have a bed to oneself. It was necessary also to warn the traveller against those more harmless sins which we have already mentioned: against an arrogant bearing on his return to his native land, or a vanity which prompted him at all times to show that he had been abroad, and was not like the common herd.
Perhaps it was an intellectual affectation of atheism or a cultivated taste for Machiavelli with which he was inclined to startle his old-fashioned countrymen. No doubt there was in the returned traveller a certain degree of condescension which made him disagreeable--especially if he happened to be a proud and insolent courtier, who attracted the Queen's notice by his sharpened wits and novelties of discourse, or if he were a vain boy of the sort that cumbered the streets of London with their rufflings and struttings.
In making surmises as to whom Ascham had in his mind's eye when he said that he knew men who came back from Italy with "less learning and worse manners," I guessed that one might be Arthur Hall, the first translator of Homer into English. Hall was a promising Grecian at Cambridge, and began his translation with Ascham's encouragement. It would have irritated Ascham to have a member of St John's throw over his task and his degree to go gadding. Certainly Hall's after life bore out Ascham's forebodings as to the value of foreign travel.
On his return he spent a notorious existence in London until the consequences of a tavern brawl turned him out of Parliament. I might dwell for a moment on Hall's curious account of this latter affair, because it is one of the few utterances we have by an acknowledged Italianate Englishman--of a certain sort.
The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen. Also spending more tyme in sportes, and following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause, I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for.
This terrible person, on the 16th of December , at Lothbury, in London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate to one of the players. Here Etna smoked, daggers were a-drawing But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester, took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards.
He said he was patient because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward. Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back.
There was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall.
Hall, who had cut himself--and nobody else--nursed his wound indoors for some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would "shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret and unlooked for mischief.
Business called him, he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he fled in disguise. After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He dined at "James Lumelies--the son, as it is said, of old M. Dominicke, born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales,"--and coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he "fell to with the rest.
But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie--and with insufferably haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again, passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall.
We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate" or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament.
This is enough to show the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were, and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows. Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge with an Italian minde learned at Rome. Acworth had lived abroad during Mary's reign, studying civil law in France and Italy. When Elizabeth came to the throne he was elected public orator of the University of Cambridge, but through being idle, dissolute, and a drunkard, he lost all his preferments in England.
It was then that the Duke bitterly dubbed him an "Italianfyd Inglyschemane," equal in faithlessness to "a schamlesse Scote"; [] i.
Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, famous for his rude behaviour to Sir Philip Sidney, whom he subsequently tried to dispatch with hired assassins after the Italian manner, [] might well have been one of the rising generation of courtiers whom Ascham so deplored.
In Ascham's lifetime he was already a conspicuous gallant, and by , at the age of twenty-two, he was the court favourite. The friends of the Earl of Rutland, keeping him informed of the news while he was fulfilling in Paris those heavy duties of observation which Cecil mapped out for him, announce that "There is no man of life and agility in every respect in Court, but the Earl of Oxford.
At the very time when the Queen "delighted more in his personage and his dancing and valiantness than any other," [] Oxford betook himself to Flanders--without licence.
Though his father-in-law Burghley had him brought back to the indignant Elizabeth, the next year he set forth again and made for Italy. From Siena, on January 3rd, , he writes to ask Burghley to sell some of his land so as to disburden him of his debts, and in reply to some warning of Burghley's that his affairs in England need attention, replies that since his troubles are so many at home, he has resolved to continue his travels.
In another letter also [] he assures Cecil that he means to acquaint himself with Sturmius--that educator of youth so highly approved of by Ascham. He did not know this till his late return to Venice. He has been grieved with a fever. The letter concludes with a mention that he has taken up of Baptista Nigrone crowns, which he desires repaid from the sale of his lands, and a curt thanks for the news of his wife's delivery.
From Paris, after an interval of six months, he declares his pleasure at the news of his being a father, but makes no offer to return to England. Rather he intends to go back to Venice.
He "may pass two or three months in seeing Constantinople and some part of Greece. However, Burghley says, "I wrote to Pariss to hym to hasten hym homewards," and in April , he landed at Dover in an exceedingly sulky mood. He refused to see his wife, and told Burghley he might take his daughter into his own house again, for he was resolved "to be rid of the cumber.
Certain results of his travel were pleasing to his sovereign, however. For he was the first person to import to England "gloves, sweete bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other pleasant things. Arthur Hall and the Earl of Oxford will perhaps serve to show that many young men pointed out as having returned the worse for their liberty to see the world, were those who would have been very poor props to society had they never left their native land.
Weak and vain striplings of entirely English growth escaped the comment attracted by a sinner with strange garments and new oaths. For in those garments themselves lay an offence to the commonwealth.
I need only refer to the well-known jealousy, among English haberdashers and milliners, of the superior craft of Continental workmen, behind whom English weavers lagged: Henry the Eighth used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of cloth--on that leg of which he was so proud--unless "by great chance there came a paire of Spanish silke stockings from Spaine. Wrapped up with economic acrimony there was a good deal of the hearty old English hatred of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner, which was always finding expression.
Either it was the 'prentices who rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and "rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going on and laughing at it," [] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed.
Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in that they wanted judgement. There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in the pleasures of metropolitan life.
The theatre, the gambling resorts, the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to be spent on roast beef for their retainers.
Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier parodies what the new and refined Englishman would say Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as they should be: not like gluttons as their fathers did, in chines of beefe and almes to the poore, but in velvets, satins, cloth of gold, pearle: yea, pearle lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his birthday.
On the whole, we may say that the objections to foreign travel rose from a variety of motives. Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young men spoiled by too much liberty, and there were surely many obnoxious boys who bragged of their "foreign vices. Lastly, there was another element in the protest against foreign travel, which grew more and more strong towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of James the First's, the hatred of Italy as the stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church, and fear of the Inquisition.
Warnings against the Jesuits are a striking feature of the next group of Instructions to Travellers. The quickening of animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the last quarter of the sixteenth century had a good deal to do with the censure of travel which we have been describing. In their fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic countries, Englishmen viewed with alarm any attractions, intellectual or otherwise, which the Continent had for their sons.
They had rather have them forego the advantages of a liberal education than run the risk of falling body and soul into the hands of the Papists. The intense, fierce patriotism which flared up to meet the Spanish Armada almost blighted the genial impulse of travel for study's sake.
It divided the nations again, and took away the common admiration for Italy which had made the young men of the north all rush together there. We can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling coming to the great Politian at Bologna and grappling him to his heart--"arctissima sibi conjunxit amicum familiaritate," [] as the warm humanistic phrase has it.
In the seventeenth century Politian would be a "contagious Papist," using his charm to convert men to Romanism, and Selling would be a "true son of the Church of England," railing at Politian for his "debauch'd and Popish principles. They had scarcely started before the Reformation called it a place of abomination.
Lord Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed him to go to Italy, [] at the end of his long life left instructions to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism.
And if by travel they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat served on divers dishes. The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan distrust of going "beyond seas. All through his prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of the greatest authorities in England on continental politics.
He had a confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley. Lady Bacon, in her fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals, had the man arrested and detained in England.
His anxious master sent another man to plead with his mother for Lawson's release; but in vain. The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve to show the vehemence of anti-Catholic feelings in a British matron in She cannot abide to hear of you, as she saith, nor of the other especially, and told me plainly she should be the worse this month for my coming without you, and axed me why you could not have come from thence as well as myself.
It was not only a general hatred of Roman Catholics which made staunch Protestants anxious to detain their sons from foreign travel towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively and well-grounded fear of the Inquisition and the Jesuits. When England was at war with Spain, any Englishman caught on Spanish territory was a lawful prisoner for ransom; and since Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Rome was the territory of Spain's patron, the Pope, Italy was far from safe for Englishmen and Protestants.
Even when peace with Spain was declared, on the accession of James I. There is a letter, for instance, to Salisbury from one of his agents on the Continent, concerning overtures made to him by the Pope's nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of note--young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne--into papal dominions, where he might be seized and detained, in hope of procuring a release for Baldwin the Jesuit. Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief towns to be passed through. I care not for seeing places, but to go thither the shortest and safest way.
Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the very next year occurred the arrest of the unfortunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the sensations of the day. Fuller, in his Church History , under the year , records how He was appointed by Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in Travail to his Grandchilde, the Lord Ross, undertaking the charge with much reluctance as a presage of ill successe and with a profession, and a resolution not to passe the Alpes.
In vain doth Mr Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, he would in some sort govern his Governour. What should this good man doe? To leave him were to desert his trust, to goe along with him were to endanger his own life. At last his affections to his charge so prevailed against his judgment, that unwillingly willing he went with him.
Now, at what rate soever they rode to Rome, the fame of their coming came thither before them; so that no sooner had they entered their Inne, but Officers asked for Mr Molle, took and carried him to the Inquisition-House, where he remained a prisoner whilest the Lord Ross was daily feasted, favoured, entertained: so that some will not stick to say, That here he changed no Religion for a bad one.
No threats could persuade Mr Mole to renounce his heresy, and though many attempts were made to exchange him for some Jesuits caught in England, he lay for thirty years in the prison of the Inquisition, and died there, at the age of eighty-one.
It was part of the policy of the Jesuits, according to Sir Henry Wotton, to thus separate their tutors from young men, and then ply the pupils with attentions and flattery, with a view to persuading them into the Church of Rome. Not long after the capture of Mole, Wotton writes to Salisbury of another case of the same sort.
And doubtlessly as we collect now upon the matter if Sir John Harington [] had either gone the Roman Journey, or taken the ordinary way in his remove thitherwards out of Tuscany, the like would have befallen his director also, a gentleman of singular sufficiency; [] for it appeareth a new piece of council infused into the Pope by his artisans the Jesuits to separate by some device their guides from our young noblemen about whom they are busiest and afterwards to use themselves for aught I can yet hear with much kindness and security, but yet with restraint when they come to Rome of departing thence without leave; which form was held both with the Lords Rosse and St Jhons, and with this Lord Wentworthe and his brother-in-law at their being there.
And we have at the present also a like example or two in Barons of the Almaign nation of our religion, whose governors are imprisoned, at Rome and Ferrara; so as the matter seemeth to pass into a rule. And albeit thitherto those before named of our own be escaped out of that Babylon as far as I can penetrate without any bad impressions, yet surely it appeareth very dangerous to leave our travellers in this contingency; especially being dispersed in the middle towns of Italy whither the language doth most draw them certain nimble pleasant wits in quality of interceptors, who deliver over to their correspondents at Rome the dispositions of gentlemen before they arrive, and so subject them both to attraction by argument, and attraction by humour.
Wotton did not overrate the persuasiveness of the Jesuits. Lord Roos became a papist. Wotton's own nephew, Pickering, had been converted in Spain, on his death-bed, although he had been, according to the Jesuit records, "most tenacious of the corrupt religion which from his tender youth he had imbibed.
Another conversion of the same sort had been made by Father Walpole at Valladolid, the year before. Sir Thomas Palmer came to Spain both for the purpose of learning the language and seeing the country. Therefore, perceiving himself to be in danger of death, he set to work to reconcile himself with the Catholic Church.
Having received all the last Sacraments he died, and was honourably interred with Catholic rites, to the great amazement also of the English Protestants, who in great numbers were in the city, and attended the funeral.
There is nothing surprising in these death-bed conversions, when we think of the pressure brought to bear on a traveller in a strange land. As soon as he fell sick, the host of his inn sent for a priest, and if the invalid refused to see a ghostly comforter that fact discovered his Protestantism. Whereupon the physician and apothecary, the very kitchen servants, were forbidden by the priest to help him, unless he renounced his odious Reformed Religion and accepted Confession, the Sacrament, and Extreme Unction.
If he died without these his body was not allowed in consecrated ground, but was buried in the highway like a very dog. It is no wonder if sometimes there was a conversion of an Englishman, lonely and dying, with no one to cling to. We must remember, also, how many reputed Protestants had only outwardly conformed to the Church of England for worldly reasons.
They could not enter any profession or hold any public office unless they did. But their hearts were still in the old faith, and they counted on returning to it at the very end. In the hour of death men turn to old affections.
And so in several ways one can account for Sir Francis Cottington, Ambassador to Spain, who fell ill, confessed himself a Catholic; and when he recovered, once more became a Protestant. The mere force of environment, according to Sir Charles Cornwallis, Ambassador to Spain from , was enough to change the religion of impressionable spirits. His reports to England show a constant struggle to keep his train of young gentlemen true to their national Church.
The Spanish Court was then at Valladolid, in which city flourished an especially strong College of Jesuits. Thence Walpole, and other dangerous persuaders, made sallies upon Cornwallis's fold. At first the Ambassador was hopeful Two of myne own Followers I have found corrupted, the one in such sorte as he refused to come to Prayers, whom I presently discharged; the other being an honest and sober young Gentleman, and one that denieth not to be present both at Prayers and Preachinge, I continue still, having good hope that I shall in time reduce him.
But within a month he has to report the conversion of Sir Thomas Palmer, and within another month, the loss of even his own chaplain. In a week the chaplain wrote for a prolongation of his stay, making discourse of "a strange Tempest that came upon him in the way, of visible Fire that fell both before and behind him, of an Expectation of present Death, and of a Vowe he made in that time of Danger.
The chaplain never came back. He had turned Romanist. The reasons for the headway of Catholicism in the reign of James I. To explain the agitated mood of our Precepts for Travellers, it is necessary only to call attention to the fact that Protestantism was just then losing ground, through the devoted energy of the Jesuits.
Even in England, they were able to strike admiration into the mind of youth, and to turn its ardour to their own purposes. But in Spain and in Italy, backed by their impressive environment and surrounded by the visible power of the Roman Church, they were much more potent.
The English Jesuits in Rome--Oxford scholars, many of them--engaged the attentions of such of their university friends or their countrymen who came to see Italy, offering to show them the antiquities, to be guides and interpreters.
How much the English Government feared the influence of the Jesuits upon young men abroad may be seen by the increasing strictness of licences for travellers. The ordinary licence which everyone but a known merchant was obliged to obtain from a magistrate before he could leave England, in gave permission with the condition that the traveller "do not haunte or resorte unto the territories or dominions of any foreine prince or potentate not being with us in league or amitie, nor yet wittinglie kepe companie with any parson or parsons evell affected to our State.
Lord Zouche grumbled exceedingly at the limitations of his licence. This restraint is truly as an imprisonment, for I know not how to carry myself; I know not whether I may pass upon the Lords of Venis, and the Duke of Florens' territories, because I know not if they have league with her Majesty or no.
To come to our Instructions for Travellers, as given in the reign of James I. Sir Robert Dallington, in his Method for Travell , [] gives first place to the question of remaining steadfast in one's religion:.
And it is to be feared, that he which is of one religion in his youth, and of another in his manhood, will in his age be of neither Now what should one say of such men but as the Philosopher saith of a friend, 'Amicus omnium, Amicus nullorum,' A professor of both, a believer in neither.
To this effect I must precisely forbid him the fellowship or companie of one sort of people in generall: these are the Jesuites, underminders and inveiglers of greene wits, seducers of men in matter of faith, and subverters of men in matters of State, making of both a bad christian, and worse subject. These men I would have my Travueller never heare, except in the Pulpit; for [] being eloquent, they speake excellent language; and being wise, and therefore best knowing how to speake to best purpose, they seldome or never handle matter of controversie.
Our best authority in this period of travelling is Fynes Moryson, whose Precepts for Travellers [] are particularly full. Moryson is well known as one of the most experienced travellers of the late Elizabethan era. On a travelling Fellowship from Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in he made a tour of Europe, when the Continent was bristling with dangers for Englishmen.
Spain and the Inquisition infected Italy and the Low Countries; France was full of desperate marauding soldiers; Germany nourished robbers and free-booters in every forest. It was the particular delight of Fynes Moryson to run into all these dangers and then devise means of escaping them. He never swerved from seeing whatever his curiosity prompted him to, no matter how forbidden and perilous was the venture.
Disguised as a German he successfully viewed the inside of a Spanish fort; [] in the character of a Frenchman he entered the jaws of the Jesuit College at Rome. For instance, when he was plucked bare by the French soldiers of even his inner doublet, in which he had quilted his money, he was by no means left penniless, for he had concealed some gold crowns in a box of "stinking ointment" which the soldiers threw down in disgust.
His Precepts for Travellers are characteristically canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he advises, because in case of shipwreck "others trusting therein take hold of you, and make you perish with them. We are not all like Amadis or Rinalldo, to incounter an hoste of men. And to the end he may leave nothing behind him in his Innes, let the visiting of his chamber, and gathering his things together, be the last thing he doth, before hee put his foote into the stirrup. The whole of the Precepts is marked by this extensive caution.
Since, as Moryson truly remarks, travellers meet with more dangers than pleasures, it is better to travel alone than with a friend. And surely there happening many dangers and crosses by the way, many are of such intemperate affections, as they not only diminish the comfort they should have from this consort, but even as Dogs, hurt by a stone, bite him that is next, not him that cast the stone, so they may perhaps out of these crosses grow to bitterness of words betweene themselves.
Lest the traveller should become too well known to them, let him always declare that he is going no further than the next city. Arrived there, he may give them the slip and start with fresh consorts. Moryson himself, when forced to travel in company, chose Germans, kindly honest gentlemen, of his own religion.
He could speak German well enough to pass as one of them, but in fear lest even a syllable might betray his nationality to the sharp spies at the city gates, he made an agreement with his companions that when he was forced to answer questions they should interrupt him as soon as possible, and take the words out of his mouth, as though in rudeness.
If he were discovered they were to say they knew him not, and flee away. Moryson advised the traveller to see Rome and Naples first, because those cities were the most dangerous. Men who stay in Padua some months, and afterwards try Rome, may be sure that the Jesuits and priests there are informed, not only of their coming, but of their condition and appearance by spies in Padua.
It were advisable to change one's dwelling-place often, so to avoid the inquiries of priests. At Easter, in Rome, Moryson found the fullest scope for his genius. A few days before Easter a priest came to his lodgings and took the inmates' names in writing, to the end that they might receive the Sacrament with the host's family.
Moryson went from Rome on the Tuesday before Easter, came to Siena on Good Friday, and upon Easter eve " pretending great business " darted to Florence for the day. On Monday morning he dodged to Pisa, and on the folowing, back to Siena. The conception of travel one gathers from Fynes Moryson is that of a very exciting form of sport, a sort of chase across Europe, in which the tourist was the fox, doubling and turning and diving into cover, while his friends in England laid three to one on his death.
So dangerous was travel at this time, that wagers on the return of venturous gentlemen became a fashionable form of gambling. Sir Henry Wotton was a celebrated product of foreign education in these perilous times. As a student of political economy in he led a precarious existence, visiting Rome with the greatest secrecy, and in elaborate disguise. For years abroad he drank in tales of subtlety and craft from old Italian courtiers, till he was well able to hold his own in intrigue.
By nature imaginative and ingenious, plots and counterplots appealed to his artistic ability, and as English Ambassador to Venice, he was never tired of inventing them himself or attributing them to others. It was this characteristic of Jacobean politicians which Ben Jonson satirized in Sir Politick-Would-be, who divulged his knowledge of secret service to Peregrine in Venice.
Greatly excited by the mention of a certain priest in England, Sir Politick explains:. Sir Henry Wotton's letter to Milton must not be left out of account of Jacobean advice to travellers. It is brief, but very characteristic, for it breathes the atmosphere of plots and caution. Admired for his great experience and long sojourn abroad, in his old age, as Provost of Eton, Sir Henry's advice was much sought after by fathers about to send their sons on the Grand Tour.
Forty-eight years after he himself set forth beyond seas, he passed on to young John Milton "in procinct of his travels," his favourite bit of wisdom, learned from a Roman courtier well versed in the ways of Italy: "I pensieri stretti e il viso sciolto. So much for the admonitory side of instructions for travellers at the opening of the seventeenth century.
Italy, we see, was still feared as a training-ground for "green wits. Parents could be easily alarmed by any possibility of their sons' conversion to Romanism. For the penalties of being a Roman Catholic in England were enough to make an ambitious father dread recusancy in his son. Though a gentleman or a nobleman ran no risk of being hanged, quartered, disembowelled and subjected to such punishments as were dealt out to active and dangerous priests, he was regarded as a traitor if he acknowledged himself to be a Romanist.
At any moment of anti-Catholic excitement he might be arrested and clapped into prison. Drearier than prison must have been his social isolation. For he was cut off from his generation and had no real part in the life of England. Under the laws of James he was denied any share in the Government, could hold no public office, practise no profession.
Neither law nor medicine, nor parliament nor the army, nor the university, was open to him. Banished from London and the Court, shunned by his contemporaries, he lurked in some country house, now miserably lonely, now plagued by officers in search of priests. At last, generally, he went abroad, and wandered out his life, an exile, despised by his countrymen, who met him hanging on at foreign Courts; or else he sought a monastery and was buried there.
To be sure, the laws against recusants were not uniformly enforced; papistry in favourites and friends of the king was winked at, and the rich noblemen, who were able to pay fines, did not suffer much. But the fact remains that for the average gentleman to turn Romanist generally meant to drop out of the world. The admonitions of their elders did not keep young men from going to Italy, but as the seventeenth century advanced the conditions they found there made that country less attractive than France.
The fact that the average Englishman was a Protestant divided him from his compeers in Italy and damped social intercourse. He was received courteously and formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the sake of his political uncle or cousin in England, but inner distrust and suspicion blighted any real friendship.
Unless the Englishman was one of those who had a secret, half-acknowledged allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in the age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection between him and the Italians.
The beautiful youth, John Milton, as the author of excellent Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life of Florence, to be sure, and there were other unusual cases, but the typical traveller of Stuart times was the young gentleman who was sent to France to learn the graces, with a view to making his fortune at Court, even as his widowed mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polishing of their parts" continued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but it was rather in the mood of the sight-seer. Only malcontents, at odds with their native land, like Bothwell, or the Earl of Arundel, or Leicester's disinherited son, made prolonged residence in Italy.
Aspiring youth, seeking a social education, for the most part hurried to France. For it was not only a sense of being surrounded by enemies which during the seventeenth century somewhat weakened the Englishman's allegiance to Italy, but the increasing attractiveness of another country.
By it was said of France that "Unto no other countrie, so much as unto this, doth swarme and flow yearly from all Christian nations, such a multitude, and concourse of young Gentlemen, Marchants, and other sorts of men: some, drawen from their Parentes bosoms by desire of learning; some, rare Science, or new conceites; some by pleasure; and others allured by lucre and gain But among all other Nations, there cometh not such a great multitude to Fraunce from any Country, as doth yearely from this Isle England , both of Gentlemen, Students, Marchants, and others.
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