CHAP. VII. this is the opinion of one who looks with too partial an eye upon all the acts of Henry VIII.'s government, and, indeed, of that age generally.* 24. Poor and poor laws. A much safer estimate of the condition of the labouring classes, and of the great mass of the population, may be gathered from the history of the poor and poor laws. The pauperism and mendicancy which arose out of the abolition Increase of of villeinage, became, in the sixteenth century, more pauperism; formidable than ever. not caused This was not owing to the dissolution of the monasteries, so much as has generally been alleged; for the monasteries seldom troubled themselves with relieving by dissolution of the poor that did not immediately belong to their own domains; and monasteries they were more burdened by the rich than by the poor, the great men who travelled from house to house not contenting themselves with having their numerous retinues lodged and luxuriously feasted at the expense of their hosts, but often extorting a considerable present of money and provisions from the abbot at their departure. That the charity of the monks was not very lively, may be inferred from their conduct with respect to the appropriate livings. By masses and obits, and other religious observances, they had possessed themselves of a large number of the richest benefices in England; but, instead of applying their incomes to the purposes of religion and charity, they perverted them to the enriching of their own fraternities; and a compulsory act of the legislature (15 Richard II.) was necessary to compel them to restore to the poor a portion of their rights, and allow a decent maintenance to the parish priest. Again, there was much vagrant mendicancy in England long before the Reformation, and, as early as the fourteenth century, it had engaged the attention of the legislature. After the reign of Henry IV., parliament suspended its efforts in grappling with pauperism; but very soon renewed them, after the restoration of a settled government under Henry VII. In 1530, an act was passed dividing the poor into vagabonds, begging. and impotent poor. The latter were licensed to beg within certain districts; their names were to be registered and certified at the quarter sessions; and all beggars found without a license, or out of their districts, were to be imprisoned, or placed in the stocks, and fed on bread and water. Vagabonds were to be flogged at the cart's tail, and then sent to their native places. This system of authorised begging was soon found to be pernicious; and, in 1535, another.act was passed, in which we find the first allusion to the levy of a regular rate. System of authorised The act obliged the chief officer in every parish, under a penalty of 20s. a month, Voluntary to cause alms to be collected, so that none should "go openly a begging." relief. The alms were to be collected on Sundays, holidays, and festivals; all ministers, in their sermons, collations, biddings of the beads, confessions, and at the making of wills, were required to exhort the people to give liberally; and certain of the poor were directed to go round and collect from each householder, twice or * Froude, I., 21-25. † Eden's State of the Poor, I., 95. 1485-1603 thrice a week, his broken meat and refuse drink, for equal distribution among the indigent. Severe punishments were enacted against any officers who embezzled the alms and doles. Relics of this custom are still kept up, in the Sunday doles of bread, at most of our parish churches. With regard to vagrants, the act directed that if they had already been whipped, they were not only to be whipped again, but to have the upper half of their ears cut off. But the propensity to vagrancy was little affected by this statute, and severer laws were enacted in the reign of Edward VI. All who refused to labour, and lived idly three days, were to be branded on the breast with the letter V, and be adjudged the slaves, for two years, of the persons who informed against them. The master was directed to feed his slave with bread and water, or refuse meat and drink, and to cause him to work by beating or chaining him. If the slave absconded for fourteen days, he was condemned to slavery for life; and, if he ran away a second time, he became liable to death as a felon. The latter part of the statute provided that certain of the poor should be employed by the town, or by any one who was willing to engage them. By this mode, the poor in many parishes in the south of England were maintained prior to the Poor-law Amendment Act. They were called roundsmen, from going round the town from house to house to solicit employment.* compulsory The system of voluntary relief established by the act of 1535 was found to be as defective as the former system of The authorised begging was pernicious; the sums collected system. were insufficient, and the collectors were dishonest. The 5 Elizabeth was, therefore, enacted, giving power to bishops to send collectors to gaol till they settled their accounts; and to bind over those who refused to give alms to appear at the quarter sessions, where the justices should tax them in a weekly sum, and commit them to prison till they paid. Thus was introduced the compulsory system, which was further established by many subsequent statutes. Overseers of the poor were appointed to set beggars to work; justices were ordered to levy a rate by distress; churchwardens and overseers were to build poor-houses; parents were bound to support their impotent children; and all begging, except for victuals, was forbidden. At length, all these enactments were concentrated in one great statute, the celebrated 43 Elizabeth; which was continued by subsequent statutes, and by the 16 Charles I. made perpetual. It was the foundation of our old poor law system. The description of persons who came under the definition of rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, were, idle persons going about using subtle crafts and unlawful * Wade, ch. iv.; Pict. Hist., II., 905-906. CHAP. VII. games, or feigning themselves to have knowledge in physiognomy, palmistry, and other occult sciences; all fencers, bearwards, common players in interludes, and minstrels not belonging to any peer of the realm, jugglers, pedlars, linkers, and petty chapmen, wandering abroad without a license. The scholars, also, of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were also included, and they were expressly forbidden to beg except they had the authority of the chancellor.* against 25. Moral condition of the people. The poor laws and statutes against vagabonds thus furnish us with a sufficient proof, that the condition of society in England, in the sixteenth century, was of a most extraordinary character. There was a demand for labour, but the lowest of the rural population, who had been long accustomed to an unsettled and irregular industry, which had about it a sort of wild independence, would not work for the masters who pulled down their hovels, and made the waste lands profitable. The wise and better-minded emigrated to other countries; but those who remained became stark thieves, and Offences went about the country destroying private possessions, property. burning houses, carts laden with charcoal, and heaps of felled wood; barking fruit trees, cutting off the ears of the King's subjects, and cutting out the tongues of cattle. It was a war against civilisation, the war of the savage against the settler. The world, in fact, was being remodelled; and vast numbers were shifting about on the outskirts of civilisation. Hence, the laws against vagrants and vagabonds were necessarily severe; thieves and robbers were hanged without mercy; though the generally accepted statement, that 72,000 thieves and vagabonds were Executions hanged in the reign of Henry VIII. is founded upon a loose numerous. estimate, and is, no doubt, an exaggeration. But the number of thefts, robberies, and other felonies committed, was always large for vagabonds went about in troops, and terrified the magistrates, who did not dare to enforce the law against them; people were taken up daily by dozens, especially in London, and yet robberies and murders never ceased in the streets. Under the two Henries, crime was the prevailing sin; under Elizabeth, fraud. It was an age of stews and ale-houses, of dice and cards; all which temptations produced their usual effects, when gross ignorance, low morals, and unsettled employment were the characteristics of English social life. This is the black side of * Pict. Hist., II., 396; Thornbury's Shakspere's England, I., ch. viii. 1485-1603 the picture: the bright one is lit up by the courtly and literary splendour of the Elizabethan age. SECTION III.-NOBILITY, GENTRY, AND WEALTHY CLASSES. 26. Their houses. The style of architecture which prevailed in the sixteenth century was the Tudor style, which was essentially domestic in its character. The Gothic style had now degenerated; the Italian artists whom Henry VIII. employed, having no feeling for it, constructed public buildings upon debased designs of the classic styles; Bath Abbey is an illustration of this. In a Tudor mansion, the windows were made so large that they A Tudor became the most important part of the building; so that mansion. the rooms were hot in summer and cold in winter.* Towers and turrets were used only for ornament, and were finished with ornamental roofs, richly crocketed, and ending in gay weathervanes or armorial bearings. Chimneys, also, became an important feature of ornament, especially in brick buildings. They consisted of large stacks of tall, slender shafts, issuing from a square stone basement; they were richly moulded and twisted, and decorated over their whole surface with various diaper patterns, and armorial bearings. The use of brick and stone in the same building was very common in this case, tracery was almost entirely laid aside, and carving was sparingly introduced; moulded bricks being the only ornament. The pattern of these mouldings was generally that of the Tudor flower, armorial bearings and badges, letters, flowers, and medallions. A Tudor mansion of this kind retained the castellated form outwardly, and had a moat and gate-house; such are Richmond Palace, Henry VII.'s Chapel, Hengrave Hall, Westow Hall, and Wollerton Manor House, Norfolk; all which belong to the Late Perpendicular or Tudor Gothic Style, before its admixture with foreign details. This castellated form had entirely disappeared before the end of the reign of Henry VIII., An Elizaand was succeeded by the Elizabethan Style, in which the mansion. Gothic features were gradually replaced by Italian. The windows retained their mullions and transoms, but were increased in size, so that the walls became little more than window frames, as at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire. Banquets and pageants were the chief displays in a noble mansion now; hence, splendid apartments approached by grand staircases, and a gallery for dancing, were to be found in every house of pretension. The ceilings were richly and profusely ornamented with flowers, foliage, and arabesques, figures and classic allusions. The chimney pieces were large and * Bacon's Essays on Building. bethan An Elizabethan manor CHAP. VII. massive, frequently reaching to the top of the room; they were of carved oak or marble, and most elaborate in design. Wainscot, which was carved and panelled in the former style, was now plain, and covered with tapestry, which was removed from house to house as the family changed residence. Handsome balustrades and terraces, leading to the garden, formed the front of every Elizabethan palace. Burghley House, Northamptonshire; Hatfield House; Hardwick Hall; Oxburgh, Norfolk; the Palace of Nonsuch; Somerset House; Wollaton, Nottinghamshire; the Duke's House, Bradford, may be mentioned in illustration of this style.* But the Elizabethan manor house is more completely identified with the prevailing character of society than house. the noble mansion. It was built generally in the form of the letter E, having two projecting wings, and a porch in the middle; the windows and doors were large, and in the ornamental pointed style. The framework was of oak; the spaces between were filled up with brick, or lath and plaster; the timbers between the principal bearers were arranged in various devices; and the gables were finished with finials and other ornaments. The upper storeys generally projected over the lower ones, and thus protected the perishable materials of which the building was constructed. The manor house, like the mansion, had its hall, dining room, chapel, kitchens, buttery, and other apartments; its flower garden, also; and it was generally surrounded by a moat. Lancashire and Cheshire abound in these old timber manor houses. Town houses, for the most part, were highly picturesque; but health and safety were sacrificed. The materials used were as favourable to fire, as the denseness of the houses and the closeness of the rooms were to disease; while the streets were foul and full of pits and sloughs; being narrow and crooked, they were gloomy by day, and were pits of darkness by night, relieved only by casual lights in the houses, or by the passing torches or cresset lights that attended the progress of passengers of consequence.† Town houses. 27. Furniture. Articles of furniture, even in noble mansions, were still rude and defective; and while the lofty halls and banqueting rooms exhibited abundance of plate, gilding, carved wainscots, rich arras, and massive tables, the apartments for daily use were scantily furnished. Henry VIII.'s bed-chamber contained only two joint cupboards, a joint stool, a steel mirror, a couple of andirons, a fire pan, a pair of tongs, and a fire fork. *Pict. Hist., II., 841-849: Comprehensive Hist., II., 246-249; Shakspere's England, Is chapter ii. + Old England, II., 106. |