Chapter VI (1)

THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION UNDER JAMES I., CHARLES I., AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

Manufactures and Commerce--Trade under the Stuarts--English
Commerce and Dutch Competition--The East India
Company--Vicissitudes of its Early History--Rival Companies--The
American Colonies and West Indies--Growth of London--National
Revenue--Extravagance of the Stuarts--Invention of the Title
of Baronet--Illegal Monopolies--Cost of Government--Money
and Coinage--Agriculture and Gardening--Dramatists of the
Period--Shakespeare and his Contemporaries--Poets of the
Occult School--Herbert, Herrick, Quarles--A Wealth of
Poetry--Prose-Writers--Bacon's "Novum Organum"--Milton's
Prose Works--Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and
other Theological Writers--Harrington's "Oceana"--Sir Thomas
Browne--Historians and Chroniclers--First Newspapers--Harvey's
Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood--Napier's
Invention of Logarithms--Music--Painting, Engraving, and
Sculpture--Architecture--Manners and Customs--Sports and
Pastimes--Furniture and Domestic Embellishment--Costumes--Arms and
Armour--Condition of the People.

In the reigns of James and Charles England neither maintained the reputation of her navy acquired under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, nor made great progress in foreign commerce. The character of James was too timid for maritime or any other war, and when he was forced into action it was only to show his weakness. He put to death the greatest naval captain of his time, Raleigh, who, if well employed by him, might have made him as much respected at sea as was Elizabeth. Nevertheless, he built ten ships of war, and for some years spent thirty-six thousand pounds annually on the navy. The largest ship which had yet been built in England was built by him, but it was only of fourteen hundred tons. As for commerce, he was too much engaged in theological disputations, in persecution of Papists, in wrangling with his Parliaments, and in following his hawks and hounds, to think of it, and consequently grievous complaints of the decay of trade were heard every session. The Dutch were fast engrossing both the commerce and the carrying trade of England. During James's reign they traded to England with six hundred ships, and the English traded to Holland with sixty.

The naval affairs of Charles were quite as inglorious as those of his father. As James beheaded the best admiral of England, so Charles chose for his the very worst in Europe, and the disgrace of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Rhé was the consequence. Charles's contests with his Parliaments, which terminated only with his life, destroyed all chance of his promotion of naval ascendency, and of the cultivation of commerce. All this was wonderfully changed by the vigorous spirits of the Commonwealth. The victories of Blake, by which the naval greatness of Holland and Spain was almost annihilated, raised the reputation of the British arms at sea as well as on land to the first place in the civilised world. St. John was no sooner despatched by Parliament to the Hague as ambassador, than, perceiving the immense advantage which Holland obtained from being the great carriers of Europe, he drew and got passed the celebrated Navigation Act, which--providing that no produce of Africa, Asia, or America, nor of any English colony should be imported into England except in English ships, and that the manufactures or merchandise of no country in Europe should be imported except in English ships, or the ships of the nation where they were produced--at once transferred an enormous maritime business to England.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in a treatise on the comparative commerce of England and Holland, endeavoured to draw the attention of James I. to the vast benefits that the Dutch were obtaining from our neglect. He showed that whenever there was a time of scarcity in England, instead of sending out our ships and supplying ourselves, we allowed the Dutch to pour in goods, and reap the advantage of the high prices; and he declared that in a year and a half they had taken from Bristol, Southampton, and Exeter alone, two hundred thousand pounds, which our merchants might as well have had. He reminded the king that the most productive fisheries in the world were on the British coasts, yet that the Dutch and people of the Hanse Towns came and supplied all Europe with their fish to the amount of two million pounds annually, whilst the English could scarcely be said to have any trade at all in it. The Dutch, he said, sent yearly a thousand ships laden with wine and salt, obtained in France and Spain, to the north of Europe, whilst we, with superior advantages, sent none. He pointed out equally striking facts of their enterprise in the timber trade, having no timber themselves; that our trade with Russia, which used to employ a large number of ships, had fallen off to almost nothing, whilst that of the Dutch had marvellously increased. What, he observed, was still more lamentable, we allowed them to draw the chief profit and credit even from our own manufactures, for we sent our woollen goods, to the amount of eighty thousand pieces, abroad undyed, and the Dutch and others dyed them and reshipped them to Spain, Portugal, and other countries as Flemish baizes, besides netting a profit of four hundred thousand pounds annually at our expense. Had James attended to the wise suggestions of Raleigh, instead of destroying him, and listening to such minions as Rochester and Buckingham, our commerce would have shown a very different aspect.

It is true that some years afterwards James tried to secure the profit pointed out by Raleigh from dyed cloths; but instead of first encouraging the dyeing of such cloths here, so as to enable the merchants to carry them to the markets in the South on equal or superior terms to the Dutch, he suddenly passed an Act prohibiting the export of any undyed cloths. This the Dutch met by an Act prohibiting the import of any dyed cloths into Holland; and the English not producing an equal dye to the Dutch, thus lost both markets, to the great confusion of trade; and this mischief was only gradually overcome by our merchants beginning to dye their yarn, so as to have no undyed cloth to export, and by improving their dyes.

During the reign of James commercial enterprise showed itself in the exertions of various chartered companies trading to distant parts of the world. The East India Company was established in the reign of Elizabeth, the first charter being granted by her in 1600. James was wise enough to renew it, and it went on with various success, ultimately so little in his time that at his death it was still a doubtful speculation; but under such a monarch it could not hope for real encouragement. In its very commencement he granted a charter to a rival company to trade to China, Japan, and other countries in the Indian seas, in direct violation of the East India Company's charter, which so disgusted that Company, as nearly to have caused them to relinquish their aim. In 1614 they obtained a charter from the Great Mogul to establish a factory at Surat, and the same year they obtained a similar charter from the Emperor of Japan. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe went as ambassador from England to the Great Mogul, and resided at his court for four years. By this time the Company had extensively spread its settlements. It had factories at Acheen, Zambee, and Tekoa, in Sumatra; at Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Ajmere, and Burampore in the Mogul's territories; at Firando, in Japan; at Bantam, Batavia, and Japara, in Java; and others in Borneo, the Banda Isles, Malacca, Siam, and Celebes; and at Masulipatam and Petapoli, on the Coromandel coast; and at Calicut, the original settlement of the Portuguese on the coast of Malabar. Their affairs were, in fact, extremely flourishing, and their stock sold at 203 per cent.; but this prosperity awoke the jealousy of the Dutch, who carried on a most profitable trade with Java and the Spice Islands, and, in spite of a treaty concluded between the two nations in 1619, the Dutch Governor-General attacked and took from the Company the island of Pulo Rangoon. This was only the beginning of their envious malice, for in 1623 they committed the notorious massacre of the English Company at Amboyna, and drove the English out of all the Spice Islands. Had this occurred in Cromwell's days, they would soon have paid a severe retribution; but James was just then anxious to secure the aid of the Dutch in restoring his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, and these atrocities were quietly smoothed over, and left unavenged. The consequence was, that the affairs of the Company fell into a most depressed condition, and though in 1616, when their stock was worth 200 per cent., they had raised a new stock of one million six hundred and twenty-nine thousand and forty pounds, which was taken by nine hundred and fifty-four individuals, principally of the higher aristocracy, at the close of James's reign the stock had fallen to half its value.

Charles was not a more far-sighted or a juster patron of the India Company than his father. In 1631 they managed to raise a new stock of four hundred and twenty thousand pounds, but whilst they were struggling with the hostilities of their rivals, the Dutch and Portuguese, the king perpetrated precisely the same injury on them that his father had done, by granting a charter to another company, which embroiled them with the Mogul and the Chinese, causing the English to be entirely expelled from China, and injuring the India Company to a vast extent. The Civil War in England then prevented the attention of the Government from being directed to the affairs of this great Company. At the end of Charles's reign the Company's affairs were at the worst, and its trade appeared extinct. In 1649, however, Parliament encouraged the raising of new stock, which was done with extreme difficulty, and only amounted to one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds. But in 1654, Parliament having humbled the Dutch, compelled them to pay a balance of damages of eighty-five thousand pounds and three thousand six hundred pounds to the heirs of the murdered men at Amboyna. It required years, however, to revive the prosperity of the Company, and it was only in 1657 that, obtaining a new charter from the Protector, and raising a new stock of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, it sprang again into vigour and traded successfully till the Restoration.

During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies--Turkey Merchants, or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery--were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.

These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions.

The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One, called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic (the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in England, as the New England States did of the Puritans.

These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against the Catholics, the Puritans, or the Episcopalians and Royalists, they got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and (in the West Indies) the sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and published his "Counterblast" against it, laying various restrictions upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed, and cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the Colonies. The Dutch had managed, under James and Charles, to engross the carrying trade to the English American and West Indian colonies, having a strong position at New Amsterdam, afterwards known as New York; but of this Parliament deprived them in 1646, and extended, as we have seen, the famous Navigation Act of 1651 to all the foreign trade of England. In 1655 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed English power in the West Indies.

The growth of English commerce was soon conspicuous by one great result, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh building of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them. From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid increase of the metropolis, so alarming to those kings, was more than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated by the crowds of Scots who followed the Court; and though St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Drury Lane, running from it to the Strand, before the Civil War it had become united to London and Westminster by new erections in Clare Market, Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson in his "History of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London at that period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," he observes, "are taken from the Royal family at this time, or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street. Of James and Charles I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, etc., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of much later date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury, and the streets at the Seven Dials, were built up somewhat later, as also Leicester Fields, since the restoration of Charles II., as also almost all of St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house, a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Those five streets of the south side of the Strand, running down to the river Thames, have all been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the sites of noblemen's houses and gardens, who removed farther westward, as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the City of London remained unbuilt within about a hundred and fifty years past, particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters, now Fetter, Lane, so called, says Howell in his 'Londonopolis,' from Fewters, an old appellation of idle people, loitering there, as in a way leading to gardens; which, in Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since, have been built up into streets, lanes, etc. Several other parts of the City have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility to Westminster, on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens, whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the City since the death of Queen Elizabeth."

The extension of the metropolis necessitated the introduction of hackney coaches, which first began to ply, but only twelve in number, in 1625. In 1634 sedan-chairs were introduced to relieve the streets of the rapidly increased number of hackney-coaches, and other carriages; and in 1635 a post-office for the kingdom was established, a foreign post having been for some years in existence. In 1653 the post was farmed for ten thousand pounds a year.

The annual revenue of James I. has been calculated at about six hundred thousand pounds, yet he was always poor, and died leaving debts to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds. He was prodigal to his favourites, and wasteful in his habits. He left the estates of the Crown, however, better than he found them, having raised their annual income from thirty-two thousand pounds to eighty thousand pounds, besides having sold lands to the amount of seven hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. He still prosecuted the exactions of purveyance, wardship, etc., to the great annoyance of his subjects. On the occasion of his son being made a knight, he raised a tax on every knight's fee of twenty shillings, and on every twenty pounds of annual rent from lands held directly of the Crown, thus raising twenty-one thousand eight hundred pounds. On the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, he levied an aid of twenty thousand five hundred pounds, the last of these odious impositions which were demanded. The Customs on his coming to the throne brought in one hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds a year; but towards the end of his reign, showing the great increase of commerce, they amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year. But this was the tonnage and poundage which was so hateful to the nation, and which James had greatly augmented by his own act and deed; an encroachment which caused Parliament to refuse to his son Charles the usual grant of those duties for life; and his persistence in levying them, in spite of Parliament, was one of the chief causes of his quarrel with that body, and the loss of his crown.

James was also a great trader in titles of nobility. His price for a _barony_ was ten thousand pounds, for the title of _viscount_, twenty thousand pounds, and for that of _earl_, thirty thousand pounds. He also invented the new title of _baronet_, and raised two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds by it, at the rate of one thousand and ninety-five pounds each baronetcy. From so dignified a source do many of our aristocracy derive their honours.

Charles, though he was driven to such fatal extremities to extort money from his subjects, is calculated to have realised the enormous revenue from 1637 to 1641 inclusive, of eight hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds, of which two hundred and ten thousand pounds arose from Ship-money and other illegal sources. Both he and his father dealt in wholesale monopolies to their courtiers and others, the profits of which were so embezzled by those greedy and unprincipled men, that Clarendon says that of two hundred thousand pounds of such income in Charles's time, only one thousand five hundred pounds reached the royal treasury. Charles raised two hundred thousand pounds in 1626 by a forced loan, and another hundred thousand by exacting the fees or compensation for exemption from the assumption of knighthood by every person worth forty pounds a year.

The income and expenditure of the Commonwealth are stated to have far exceeded those of any monarch who ever sat before on the throne of England, and to have been not less than four million four hundred thousand pounds per annum. The post office, as already stated, brought in ten thousand pounds per annum. A singular tax, called the Weekly Meal, or the price of a meal a week from each person, produced upwards of one hundred thousand pounds a year, or six hundred and eight thousand four hundred pounds in the six years during which it was levied. There was a weekly assessment for the support of the war, which rose from thirty-eight thousand pounds to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds per week, which was continued as a land tax under the Protectorate, producing from 1640 to 1659 no less than thirty-two million one hundred and seventy-two thousand three hundred and twenty-one pounds. The Excise also owes its origin to this period, and produced, it is said, five hundred thousand pounds a year. Large sums were realised by the sales of Crown and Church lands,--from the sale of Crown lands, parks, etc., one million eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand pounds; from the sale of Church lands, ten million pounds; from sequestration of the revenue of the clergy for four years, three million five hundred thousand pounds; eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds from incomes of offices sequestered for the public service; four million five hundred thousand pounds from the sequestration of private estates or compositions for them; one million pounds from compositions with delinquents in Ireland; three million five hundred thousand pounds from the sale of forfeited estates in England and Ireland, etc. The ministers and commanders are asserted to have taken good care of themselves. Cromwell's own income is stated at nearly two million pounds, or one million nine hundred thousand pounds; namely, one million five hundred thousand pounds from England, forty-three thousand pounds from Scotland, and two hundred and eight thousand pounds from Ireland. The members of Parliament were paid at the rate of four pounds a week each, or about three hundred thousand pounds a year altogether; and Walker, in his "History of Independency," says that Lenthall, the Speaker, held offices to the amount of nearly eight thousand pounds a year; that Bradshaw had Eltham Palace, and an estate of one thousand pounds a year, as bestowed for presiding at the king's trial; and that nearly eight hundred thousand pounds were spent on gifts to adherents of the party. As these statements, however, are those of their adversaries, they no doubt admit of ample abatement; but after all deduction, the demands of king and Parliament on the country during the contest, and of the Protectorate in keeping down its enemies, must have been enormous. Notwithstanding this, the rate of interest on money continued through this period to decline. During James's reign it was ten per cent.; in 1625, the last year of his reign, it was reduced to eight per cent., and in 1651 it was fixed by the Parliament at six per cent., at which rate it remained.

James issued various coinages. Soon after his accession he issued a coinage of gold and one of silver. The gold was of two qualities. The first of twenty-three carats three and a half grains, consisting of angels, half-angels, and quarter-angels; value ten shillings, five shillings, and two-and-sixpence. The inferior quality, of only twenty-two carats, consisted of sovereigns, half-sovereigns, crowns, and half-crowns. His silver coinage (_see_ Vol. II., p. 436) consisted of crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, twopences, pence, and halfpence. The gold coins, being of more value than that amount of gold on the Continent, were rapidly exported, and the value of the finest gold was then raised from thirty-three pounds ten shillings to thirty-seven pounds four shillings and sixpence. The next coinage at this value consisted of a twenty-shilling piece called the unit, ten shillings called the double crown, five shillings or the Britain crown, four shillings or the thistle crown, and two-and-sixpence, or half-crown. (_See_ Vol. II., p. 432.) This value of the gold was not found high enough, and the next year, in a fresh coinage, it was valued at forty pounds ten shillings, and consisted of rose rials of thirty shillings each, spur rials fifteen shillings, and angels at ten shillings each. But gold still rising in value, in 1611 the unit was raised to twenty-two shillings, and the other coins in proportion. In 1612 there was a great rise in gold, and James issued fresh twenty-shilling, ten-shilling, and five-shilling pieces, known as laurels, from the king's head being wreathed with laurel. The unit and twenty-shilling pieces were termed hood pieces. Besides the royal coinage, shopkeepers and other retailers put out tokens of brass and lead, which in 1613 were prohibited, and the first copper coinage in England, being of farthings, was issued.

The coins of Charles were, for the most part, of the same nature as those of his father. During his reign silver rose so much in value that it was melted down and exported to a vast extent. Though between 1630 and 1643 some ten million pounds of silver were coined, it became so scarce that the people had to give a premium for change in silver. In 1637 Charles established a mint at Aberystwith, for coining the Welsh silver, which was of great value to him during the war. From 1628 to 1640 Nicholas Briot, a Frenchman, superintended the cutting of the dies, instituted machinery for the hammer in coining and his coins were of remarkable beauty. (_See_ Vol. II., p. 540.) Charles erected mints at most of his headquarters during the war, as Oxford, Shrewsbury, York, and other places, the coiners and dies of Aberystwith being used, and these coins are distinguished by the Prince of Wales's feathers. Many of these coins are of the rudest character; and besides these there were issued siege pieces, so called from the besieged castles where they were made, as Newark, Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract. Some of these are mere bits of silver plate with the rude stamp of the castle on one side and the name of the town on the other. Others are octagonal, others lozenge-shaped, others of scarcely any regular shape. (_See p._ 29.)

The Commonwealth at first coined the same coins as the king, only distinguishing them by a P for Parliament. They afterwards adopted dies of their own, having on one side a St. George's cross on an antique shield encircled with a palm and laurel, and on the other two antique shields, one bearing the cross and the other the harp, surrounded by the words GOD WITH US. Their small silver coins had the arms only without any legend.

The coins of the Protectorate have on the obverse a bust of Cromwell, round which is this inscription: "_Oliver D.G. R.P. Ang. Sco. Hib. &c. Pro._" On the reverse they bear a shield, having in the first and fourth quarters St. George's cross, in the second St. Andrew's, in the third a harp, and in the centre a lion rampant on an escutcheon--Cromwell's own arms--surmounted by an imperial crown. The legend on this side is "_Pax quæritur bello_" (Peace is sought by war). The larger silver pieces have this motto round the edge: "_Has nisi periturus mihi adimat nemo_" (_i.e._ "Let no one take from me these letters unless about to die"). In those days the penalty for clipping and filing money was death. (_See p._ 121.)

The coins of the Commonwealth were the same for Ireland and Scotland as for England. This was not the case in the reigns of James and Charles, and the coins, though bearing the same arms, had generally a very different value. For Ireland James coined silver and copper money of about three-quarters the value of English, and called in the base coinage used by Elizabeth in the time of the rebellion. Charles only coined some silver in 1641, during the government of Lord Ormond, and therefore called Ormonds. Copper halfpence and farthings of that period are supposed to have been coined by the rebel Papists of 1642.

In agriculture and gardening the English were excelled by their neighbours the Dutch and Flemings. Towards the latter part of this period, however, they began to imitate those nations, and to introduce their modes of drainage, their roots and seeds. In 1652 the advantage of growing clover was pointed out by Bligh, in his "Improver Improved," and Sir Richard Weston recommended soon afterwards the Flemish mode of cultivating the turnip for winter fodder for cattle and sheep. Gardening was more attended to, and both vegetables and flowers were introduced. Samuel Hartlib, a Pole, who was patronised by Cromwell, wrote various treatises on agriculture, and relates that in his time old men recollected the first gardener who went into Surrey to plant cabbages, cauliflowers, and artichokes, and to sow early peas, turnips, carrots, and parsnips. Till then almost all the supply of these things in London was imported from Holland and Flanders. About that time (1650), however, cherries, apples, pears, hops, cabbages, and liquorice were rapidly cultivated, and soon superseded the necessity of importation; but onions were still scarce, and the supply of stocks of apple, pear, cherry, vine, and chestnut trees was difficult for want of sufficient nurseries for them. There was a zealous endeavour to promote the production of raw silk, and mulberry trees and silkworms were introduced, but the abundant supply of silk from India, and the perfection of the silk manufactured in France, rendered this scheme abortive.

Whilst James was hunting and levying taxes without a Parliament, and Charles was in continual strife with his people for unconstitutional power and revenue, literature and art were still at work, and producing or preparing some of the noblest and choicest creations of genius. Shakespeare and Milton were the great lights of the age; but around and beside them burned a whole galaxy of lesser, but not less exquisite, luminaries, whose selected beauties are just as delightful now as they were to their contemporaries. The names of this period, to which we still turn with admiration, reverence, and affection, are chiefly Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Selden, Herrick, Herbert, Quarles, Bunyan, Bishop Hall, Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Raleigh, Sir Thomas Browne, Burton (of the "Anatomy of Melancholy"), and Drummond of Hawthornden. But there are numbers of others, more unequal or more scholastic, to whose works we can occasionally turn, and find passages of wonderful beauty and power.

(_From a Contemporary Print._)]

As we come first to Shakespeare, who figured largely on the scene in the days of Queen Bess, and whose poetry we have already reviewed (Vol. II., pp. 373-5), we may take the drama of this period also in connection with him. A formal criticism on Shakespeare would be superfluous. There are whole volumes of comment on this greatest of our great writers, both in this language and others. The Germans, indeed, pride themselves on understanding him better than ourselves. The Scandinavians equally venerate him, and have an admirable translation of his dramas. Even the French, the tone and spirit of whose literature are so different from ours, have, of late years, begun to comprehend and receive him. The fact is, Shakespeare's genius is what the Germans term spherical, or many-sided. He had not a brilliancy in one direction only, but he seemed like a grand mirror, in which is truly reflected every image that falls on it. Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life--from the cottage to the throne--are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. The receptivity of his mind was as quick, as vast, as perfect, as his power of expression was unlimited. Every object once seen appeared photographed on his spirit, and he reproduced these lifelike images in new combinations, and mingled with such an exuberance of wit, of humour, of delicious melodies, and of exquisite poetry, as has no parallel in the whole range of literature.

It has been said that his dramas cast into the shade and made obsolete all that went before him; but, indeed, his great light equally overwhelms also all that has come after him. Where is the second Shakespeare of the stage? He still stands alone as the type of dramatic greatness and perfection, and is likely to continue so. When we recollect his marvellous characters--his Hamlet, his Macbeth, his Lady Macbeth, his Othello, his Shylock, his Lear, his Ophelia, his Beatrice, his Juliet, his Rosalind--the humours and follies of Shallow, Slender, Dogberry, Touchstone, Bottom, Launce, Falstaff--or his ideal creations, Ariel, Caliban, Puck, Queen Mab--we cannot hope for the appearance of any single genius who shall at once enrich our literature with such living and speaking characters, such a profound insight into the depths and eccentricities of human nature, and such a fervent and varied expression of all the sentiments that are dearest to our hearts. But when we survey in addition the vast extent of history and country over which he has roamed, gleaning thence the most kingly personages, the most tragic incidents, the most moving and thrilling as well as the most amusing sensations and fancies, our wonder is the greater. Greece has lent him its Pericles, its Timon, its Troilus and Cressida--Rome its Cæsar, Brutus, Antony, Coriolanus--Egypt its Cleopatra. Ancient Britain, Scotland, and Denmark; all the fairest cities of Italy--Venice, Verona, Mantua; the forests of Illyria and Belgium, and the isles of the Grecian seas, are made the perpetually shifting arena of his triumphs. Through all these he ranged with a free hand, and, with a power mightier than ever was wielded by any magician, recalled to life all that was most illustrious there, giving them new and more piquant effect from the sympathetic nearness into which he brought them with the spectator, and from the enchanting scenery with which he surrounded them. All this was done by the son of the woolcomber of Stratford--the youthful ranger of the woods of Charlecote, and the uplands of Clopton,--the merry frequenter of country wakes, and then the player of London, who, so far as we know, was never out of his native land in his life.

If we are to take it for granted that after the year 1597, when he bought one of the best houses in his native town for his residence, Shakespeare spent his life there, except during the theatrical season, the greater part of his last nineteen years would be passed in the quiet of his country home. We may then settle his _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Love's Labours Lost_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Richard II._ and _Richard III._, _King John_, _Titus Andronicus_ (if his), the first part of _Henry IV._, and _Romeo and Juliet_, as produced in the bustle of his London life. But the far greater part, and the most magnificent and poetical, of his dramas were composed in the pleasant retirement of his native scenes; namely, the second part of _Henry IV._, _Henry V._, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _The Merchant of Venice_, in 1598 and 1600; the second and third parts of _Henry VI._, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, 1601; _Hamlet_, 1602; _Lear_, 1608; _Troilus and Cressida_ and _Pericles_, 1609; _Othello_ (not published till after the author's death, which was the case, too, with all his other plays, though brought on the stage in his lifetime), _The Winter's Tale_, _As You Like It_, _King Henry VIII._, _Measure for Measure_, _Cymbeline_, _Macbeth_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _Julius Cæsar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Coriolanus_, _Timon of Athens_, _The Tempest_, and _Twelfth Night_. Shakespeare died in 1616. Of the envy which the unexampled splendour of Shakespeare's genius produced amongst inferior dramatic writers, we have an amusing specimen in the words of Robert Greene: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only _Shakscene_ in a country."

Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or those who immediately followed him, were Chapman, Ben Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Marston, Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. George Chapman (_born_, 1557; _died_, 1634) wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson and Marston, one more, as well as three in conjunction with Shirley. The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction, and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy of _Bussy D'Ambois_ is his best, and next to that his _Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron_. Of his comedies, the best are, _Eastward Ho!_ partly composed by Jonson and Marston, _Monsieur d'Olive_, and his _All Fools_. But Chapman's fame now rests on his translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been declared to be the best translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" that we possess. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed from it almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him.

The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, _The Duchess of Malfi_, was revived by Richard Hengist Horne, and put on the stage at Sadler's Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of three tragedies, _Appius and Virginia_, _Duchess of Malfi_, and _The White Devil, or, Vittoria Corombona_; a tragic comedy, _The Devil's Law Case, or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business_, besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others in conjunction with Dekker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age, and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by his mother, which reminds one of the like simple homely ditties in Shakespeare:--

"Call for the robin red-breast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And when grey tombs are robbed, sustain no harm."

There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:--"To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable, so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."

Of Middleton, who wrote from twenty to thirty plays, in some of which, according to a very prevalent fashion of that age, he called in the aid of Rowley, Dekker, Fletcher, and Massinger; of Dekker, who wrote the whole or part of about thirty plays; of John Marston, who wrote eight plays; of Taylor, Tourneur, Heywood, and Ford, we can only say that their dramas abound with fine things, and would well repay a perusal. John Fletcher (_born_, 1576; _died_, 1625) and Francis Beaumont (_born_, 1586; _died_, 1616) require a more specific notice. They worked together on the same plays to the number of upwards of thirty, whilst John Fletcher wrote fourteen or fifteen himself. In fact, Fletcher, so far as can be known, was the more voluminous writer of the two, Beaumont having written little in his own name, except a masque, a few farces, dramatic pieces, and translations. The style of the two, however, was so much alike, that there is little to distinguish their productions from those of an individual mind. Beaumont and Fletcher were, as stated by Dryden, far more popular in their time than Shakespeare himself. The truth is, that they had less originality and were more compliant with the spirit of their age. They sought their characters more in the range of ordinary life, and therefore hit the tastes of a large and commoner class. They were extremely lively and forcible in dialogue, and had a flowery and dignified style which oftener approached the poetical than became it. We are everywhere met by admirable writing, and a finely-sustained tone, but we travel on without encountering those original characters that can never again be forgotten, and become a part of our world, or those exquisite gushes of poetry and poetic scenery which, like the music of Ariel, ring in the memory long afterwards. At the same time we are continually offended by extreme grossness and jarred by slovenliness and incongruity. They are of the class of great and able playwrights who command the popularity of their age, but whom future ages praise and neglect; and who are only read by the curious for the fragments of good things that they contain.

The fate of Ben Jonson (_b._, 1574; _d._, 1637) has been nearly the same. Excepting his comedies of _Every Man in his Humour_, _Volpone_, _The Silent Woman_, and _The Alchemist_, we are content to read the bulk of his dramas, and wonder at his erudition and his wit. His genius is most conspicuous in his masques and Court pageants, which were the delight of James's queen, Anne of Denmark, and the whole Court. In them the spirits of the woods seem to mingle with those of courts and cities; and fancy and a hue of romance give to royal festivities the impressions of Arcadian life. But the living poetry of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ or of _Comus_ is yet wanting to touch them with perfection. Hence their chief charm died with the age which patronised them, and having once perused them, we are not drawn to them again by a loving memory, as we are to the Shakespearean woodlands and lyrical harmonies. In Jonson's graver dramas there is a cold classical tone which leaves the affections untouched and the feelings unmoved, while we respect the artistic skill and the learned dignity of the composition.

Philip Massinger (_b._, 1584; _d._, 1640), who wrote nearly forty dramatic pieces, is a vigorous writer, eloquent and effective. He is trenchant in his satire, and delights in displaying pride and meanness exposed and punished. Still he is greater as a dramatist than a poet. His _New Way to Pay Old Debts_ and _The Fatal Dowry_ are best known to lovers of the drama. The _City Madam_ is a play which is full of strong features of the times. Dekker assisted him in _The Virgin Martyr_, and is supposed to have introduced a higher and richer vein of feeling than belonged to Massinger himself.

Altogether the dramatic writing of this period has never been surpassed, and in Shakespeare has never been equalled. There is mingled with much licentiousness and coarseness a manly and healthy strength in the writers of this department; and though the bulk of these compositions have vanished from the stage, they will be long studied with enjoyment by those who delight in living portraiture of past ages, and the strong current of genuine English sense and feeling. The arrival of the Commonwealth put down all theatres and scenic amusements. The solemn religion of the Puritans was death to what they called "the lascivious mirth and levity of players." After their suppression for six years, it was found that the ordinance of the Long Parliament was clandestinely and extensively evaded; and in 1648 an Act was passed ordering all theatres to be pulled down and demolished, and the players to be punished "as rogues according to law." Towards the end of the Protectorate, however, dramatic representations again crept in cautiously, and Sir William Davenant at first giving musical entertainments and declamations at Rutland House, Charterhouse Square, and afterwards in Drury Lane, calling his entertainments "operas," at length gave regular plays. The Restoration at last set the imprisoned drama altogether free.

Besides dramatic writers, poets abounded. It has been calculated that from the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration, no less than four hundred writers of verse appeared. Some of these, who attained a great reputation in their day, and whose works are still retained in our collections, were rather verse-wrights than poets, and would now tax the patience of poetical readers beyond endurance. Such were William Warner, the author of "Albion's England," a history of England in metre extending from Noah's flood to the reign of Elizabeth; Samuel Daniel, the author of the "Civil Wars of Lancaster and York," in eight books; and Michael Drayton, who also wrote the "Barons' Wars" in verse, "England's Heroical Epistles," and, above all, the "Polyolbion," a topography in Alexandrine verse, in thirty books, and thirty thousand lines. Next came Giles and Phineas Fletcher, who employed their strength in composing allegoric poems. Phineas, under the delusive appellation of "The Purple Island," wrote an anatomical description of the human body, with all its veins, arteries, sinews, and so forth. This was extended to twelve books, on which an abundance of very excellent language was wasted. Besides this, he composed "Piscatory Eclogues," and other poems; and Giles, choosing a worthier subject, wrote "Christ's Victory," in the Italian _ottava rima_, or eight-lined stanzas. To such perversion of the name of poetry had men arrived in the age of Shakespeare.

There were sundry poets who were also translators. Of these, Edward Fairfax, of the same family as Lord Fairfax, was the most distinguished. He translated with singular vigour and poetic feeling Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." It is still referred to with intense pleasure by the lovers of our old poetry. Joshua Sylvester--who wrote like King James against tobacco, but in verse, "Tobacco Battered"--translated, amongst other things, "The Divine Weeks and Works" of the French poet Du Bartas. Sir Richard Fanshawe translated the "Lusiad," by the Portuguese poet Camoens. Fanshawe, moreover, translated the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, from the Italian, the "Odes" of Horace, the fourth book of the "Æneid," and the "Love for Love's Sake," of the Spaniard Mendoza. Fanshawe seemed to have a peculiar taste for the European languages derived from the Latin as for the Latin itself; thus he translated from Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian poets, and from all with much taste and elegance.

Sir John Denham was a popular poet of the time, and his "Cooper's Hill" is still retained in our collections, and finds readers amongst admirers of descriptive poetry. Writers of much more sterling poetry were Sir John Davies, Drummond of Hawthornden, Bishop Hall, and Donne. Sir John Davies was long Attorney-General, and Chief-Justice of the King's Bench at the time of his death (_b._, 1570; _d._, 1626). He is author of a poem on dancing called the "Orchestra," but his great work is his "_Nosce Teipsum_," or "Know Thyself," a work which treats on human knowledge and the immortality of the soul. It is written in quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and is one of the finest philosophical poems in the language as it was one of the first. There are a life and feeling in the poem which make it always fresh, like the waters of a pure and deep fountain. Speaking of the soul, he says:--

"Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught,
That with her heavenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be.

"For who did ever yet in honour, wealth,
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who ever ceased to wish when he had wealth,
Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind?

"Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall,
Which seem sweet flowers with lustre fresh and gay,
She lights on that and this and tasteth all,
But pleased with none, doth rise and soar away."

Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, wrote, besides considerable prose, some exquisite poems and sonnets formed on the Italian model; and Bishop Hall, in his satires, presents some of the most graphic sketches of English life, manners, and scenery. Dr. Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's, and the most fashionable preacher of his day, was also the most fashionable poet--we do not except Shakespeare. He was the rage, in fact, of all admirers of poetry, and was the head of a school of which Cowley was the most extravagant disciple, and of which Crashaw, Wither, Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles had more or less of the characteristics. In all these poets there was deep feeling of spirituality, religion, and wit, and, in some of them, of nature, dashed and marred by a fantastic style, full of quaintnesses and conceits. In some of them these were so tempered as to give them an original and piquant air, as in Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles; in others, as in Donne and Cowley, they degenerated into disfigurement and absurdity. But Donne (_b._, 1573; _d._, 1631) had great and shining qualities, keen, bold satire, profound and intellectual thoughts, and a most sparkling fancy, embedding rich touches of passion and pathos, yet so marred by uncouth and strange conceits, that one scarcely knows how to estimate his compositions. In a word, they are the exact antipodes of the natural style, and this fashion was carried to its utmost extravagance by Cowley. A stanza or two from a parting address of a lover to his mistress may show something of Donne's quality and manner:--

"As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go;
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, no;

"So let us melt and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys,
To tell the laity of our love.

"Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent."

George Wither (_b._, 1588; _d._, 1667) has much less of what a contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without study;" and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire, called "Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical poem, called "The Shepherds' Hunting," in which his description of Poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling:--

"By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least boughs rustling,
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man."

Two songs of Wither's, quoted in Percy's "Reliques"--"The Steadfast Shepherd," and the one beginning

"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?"--

are exquisite lines, that no reader ever forgets.

Crashaw (_b._, 1616; _d._, 1650) was of a deeply religious tone of mind, and became a Catholic. His finest poems are his religious ones, and they are full of music and passionate reveries, yet disfigured by the Donne fashion, which Dryden, and after him Johnson, inaccurately termed the Metaphysical School, instead of the Fantastic or Singularity School. His very first poem, called "The Weeper," shows how he treated even sacred subjects:--

"Hail, sister springs!
Parents of silver-forded rills,
Ever-bubbling things!
Thawing crystal, snowy hills,
Still spending, never spent, I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.

"Heavens thy fair eyes be,
Heavens of ever-falling stars;
'Tis seed-time still with thee,
And stars thou sow'st, whose harvest dares
Promise the earth to countershine,
Whatever makes heaven's forehead shine."