CHAPTER II

Condition of England. The Puritans and the Cavaliers. Insecurity of Commerce. The British Coast infested by Pirates. The Dutch attack a Spanish Fleet in the Downs.

IN seeking to gather all the nation into one church, the Tudor rulers were influenced both by religious and political considerations. They saw that if Protestant dissent split into a number of rival sects, it would be difficult to make head against the united front of Romanism. The division of ranks in the episcopal hierarchy was agreeable to their own notions of political inequality. From the beginning the more energetic amongst the Protestants wished to push on the work of the Reformation; the more conservative wished to hold back and preserve much of the old ritual and church government. The Reformers proclaimed that the bible was the religion of Protestants. They circulated translations of the scriptures, which they declared to be infallibly inspired, and thus put it in the power of every thinking man to form his own creed. Naturally, some thought for the rest, and framed creeds which they presented as true, absolute and final, with as much assurance as the pope and councils had done. King James, escaping from the austere control of the Scottish Presbyterian clergy, was pleased to find the bishops willing to admit his pre

THE CAVALIERS AND PURITANS

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tensions to unlimited power. He took a zest in prompting the people to disregard the sabbatical observation of the Sunday, and offended many serious people by ordering the ministers to read his proclamation of the book of sports, in which it was declared that people might lawfully amuse themselves after service on Sunday afternoons. The opposition was strong enough to deter James; but his son, less cautious and more wilful, pushed through the order in 1634. In opposition, the keeping of the Lord's day with a strictness approaching to the Jewish Sabbath became distinctive of the English Puritan and Scottish Presbyterian. The Puritan affected a solemn deportment, and regarded life as too serious for frivolous amusements. The most extreme kept their hair short, dressed plainly, and spoke with a nasal twang. The courtiers and Cavaliers were distinguished by their long hair and jaunty air, swearing, drinking, and fighting. In the present age men have a less dismal faith, take their pleasures, but take them more quietly. They no longer affect the sanctimoniousness of the Puritan, or the coarseness of the Cavalier. They keep their hair short, and dress with uniform plainness; swearing and drinking are no longer used by those who affect gentility, and duelling is a mere tradition.

No

Historians on the Cavalier side have asserted that the condition of England during the reign of Charles I. was one of great prosperity and commercial wealth, which was destroyed by the civil wars. doubt the long peace following the union of England and Scotland under King James was favourable to the greater accumulation of wealth. To one who had witnessed the desolation of Germany during the

Thirty Years' War and the exhaustion of Spain, England in the midst of her cornfields and meadows must have appeared a happy land; yet there were many evils which a good government might have prevented or alleviated. Following upon the increase of the population there was a movement towards the towns, which the government vainly tried to check by turning the people back. Manufactures were started in the midland counties; the commercial towns kept on increasing, and old sanitary arrangements were insufficient. New ones were not attempted disease became rife, plague and fevers were common. Even the wealthy lived in London at great danger to their health.

What prosperity was in the country came through circumstances which Charles did his best to hinder. The country suffered from both the king's action and from his inaction, and many people were aware of it. Abroad, Charles was looked upon as a weak and untrustworthy prince. At home, his sole aim was not to give justice to his people or to defend their interests, but to satisfy his taste for arbitrary power and petty regulations. All his efforts tended to repress the spirit of the people, to stem the tide of the Reformation, and to stifle every noble aspiration. The rapid rise and falls in the money value of the cereals and other necessary articles must have caused the people swiftly to pass from plenty to famine. Within a few years the price of wheat and other grains had risen threefold.' The price

1 Sir Simonds D'Ewes (Life, vol. i., p. 180), notes that in 1621 the best wheat was sold for 2s. 8d. and 2s. 6d. the bushel, the ordinary sort at 2s., barley and rye at Is. 4d. and Is. 3d. the bushel, and the worser of

SEASONS OF PLENTY AND WANT

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of corn differed much in various markets, so that in a season of plenty farmers did not reap the gain, nor could the scarcity in one county be readily relieved by supplies from another, where there was a better harvest. This was owing to the difficulty from bad roads and imperfect means of conveying goods from one market to another, a hindrance which has in our own days been the cause of dreadful famines in various parts of India.

In Sussex the poorer classes bought chiefly barley. In some places the reduction of that grain into malt was forbidden. In Lincolnshire and the West Riding oatmeal was principally eaten. In some markets grain was sold to the poor at under prices; fines taken as penalties for small offences went for this purpose. The sea transit was so insecure that commerce was carried on with enormous risks, which prevented supplies from other countries where corn was cheaper, and much enhanced the price of all foreign commodities. The numerous monopolies granted by the king to greedy conthose grains at a meaner rate, and malt also after that proportion. Nor were horse-corns, as oats and peas, at any higher price. All farmers of land generally murmured at this plenty and cheapness, and the poorer sorts that would have been glad but a few years before of the coarse ryebread, did now usually traverse the markets to find out the finer wheats, as if nothing else would serve their use, or please their palates. Which unthankfulness and daintiness was soon after punished by the high prices and dearness of all sorts of grain everywhere, which never since much abated of that rate, though at some times it were cheaper than at others, so as in the year 1630, wheat was above 8s. the bushel, rye at 4s. 6d., and malt and barley about that rate; and this present year (1637) malt and barley are now sold at 5s. the bushel, though wheat be under that price, and rye at 4s. the bushel. There are many notes of the prices of grain in various counties in the documents preserved in the Public Record Office. Corn was sometimes dearer than in our own days. Many other commodities cost more while wages were much lower.

tractors, who purchased the exclusive right of supplying articles of common use, brought much loss to the people with small gain to the crown. As the commodities supplied were always dear and generally bad in quality, the monopolies brought irritation into every household, whether Episcopalian, Puritan, or Catholic; families who kept their minds easy about Laud's vestments and posturings fretted against his holiness's monopoly of bad soap. Culpepper, addressing the Long Parliament in 1641, called the monopolies "a swarm of vermin which have overcropt the law. Like the frogs of Egypt, they have gotten possession in our dwellings; they dip in our cup; they dip in our dish; they sit on our fire; we find them in our dye-fat, wash-bowl, and powdering-tub; they share with the butler in his box; they have marked and sealed us from head to foot; we may not buy our cloth without their brokerages."

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Other methods of extorting money were used, irritating and oppressive. Tonnage and poundage were raised against the course of law, and large sums were exacted for default of knighthood under the shadow of an obsolete statute. The ingenuity of lawyers was stretched to revive obsolete claims and lapsed exactions or to invent new ones. Servile courts were called to sustain them. To awe the judges who might be unwilling to comply with the

Guizot gives the following as a list, though not warranted complete, of the wares made monopolies of: salt, soap, coals, iron, wine, leather, starch, feathers, cardsand, dice, beaver, lace, tobacco, barrels, beer, distilled liquors, the weighing of hay and straw in London and Westminster, red herrings, butter, potash, linen, cloth, paper, rags, hops, buttons, catgut, spectacles, combs, saltpetre, gunpowder, etc.--History of the English Revolution, translation, London, 1845, p. 46.