The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  Peace, peace there in the belfry: service begins. Upon their knees before they join falls John Leiden and his fraternity very devoutly. They pray, they howl, they expostulate with God to grant them victory, and use such unspeakable vehemence a man would think them the only well-bent men under heaven. Wherein let me dilate a little more gravely than the nature of this history requires or will be expected of so young a practitioner in divinity: that not those that intermissively121 cry ‘Lord, open unto us, Lord, open unto us’ enter first into the Kingdom; that not the greatest professors have the greatest portion in grace; that all is not gold that glisters. When Christ said ‘The Kingdom of Heaven must suffer violence’ he meant not the violence of long babbling prayers, nor the violence of tedious invective sermons without wit, but the violence of faith, the violence of good works, the violence of patient suffering. The ignorant snatch the Kingdom of Heaven to themselves with greediness, when we with all our learning sink into hell.

  Where did Peter and John, in the third of the Acts, find the lame cripple but in the gate of the temple called Beautiful? In the beautifullest gates of our temple, in the fore-front of professors, are many lame cripples, lame in life, lame in good works, lame in everything. Yet will they always sit at the gates of the temple. None be more forward than they to enter into matters of reformation, yet none more behindhand to enter into the true temple of the Lord by the gates of good life.

  You may object that those which I speak against are more diligent in reading the Scriptures, more careful to resort unto sermons, more sober in their looks, more modest in their attire than any else. But I pray you let me answer you: doth not Christ say that before the Latter Day the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood? Whereof what may the meaning be but that glorious sun of the Gospel shall be eclipsed with the dim cloud of dissimulation; that that which is the brightest planet of salvation shall be a means of error and darkness? And the moon shall be turned into blood: those that shine fairest, make the simplest show, seem most to favour religion, shall rent out the bowels of the Church, be turned into blood, and all this shall come to pass before the notable day of the Lord, whereof this age is the eve?

  Let me use a more familiar example, since the heat of a great number hath outraged so excessively. Did not the devil lead Christ to the pinnacle or highest place of the temple to tempt him? If he led Christ, he will lead a whole army of hypocrites to the top or highest part of the temple, the highest step of religion and holiness, to seduce them and subvert them. I say unto you that which this our tempted Saviour with many other words besought his disciples: ‘Save yourselves from this froward generation. Verily, verily, the servant is not greater than his master.’ Verily, verily, sinful men are not holier than holy Jesus, their maker. That holy Jesus again repeats this holy sentence: ‘Remember the words I said unto you: the servant is not holier nor greater than his master’; as if he should say: ‘Remember them, imprint in your memory, your pride and singularity will make you forget them, the effects of them many years hence will come to pass.’ ‘Whosoever will seek to save his soul shall lose it’: whosoever seeks by headlong means to enter into heaven and disannul God’s ordinance shall, with the giants122 that thought to scale heaven in contempt of Jupiter, be overwhelmed with Mount Ossa and Pelion, and dwell with the devil in eternal desolation.

  Though the High Priest’s office was expired when Paul said unto one of them ‘God rebuke thee, thou painted sepulchre’, yet when a stander-by reproved him saying ‘Revilest thou the High Priest?’ he repented and asked forgiveness.

  That which I suppose, I do not grant. The lawfulness of the authority they oppose themselves against is sufficiently proved. Far be it my under-age arguments should intrude themselves as a green weak prop to support so high a building. Let it suffice, if you know Christ you know his Father also; if you know Christianity you know the fathers of the Church also. But a great number of you, with Philip, have been long with Christ and have not known him, have long professed yourselves Christians and have not known his true ministers. You follow the French and Scottish fashion and faction, and in all points are like the Switzers, Qui quaerunt cum qua gente cadunt,123 ‘that seek with what nation they may first miscarry’.

  In the days of Nero there was an odd fellow that had found out an exquisite way to make glass as hammerproof as gold. Shall I say that the like experiment he made upon glass, we have practised on the Gospel? Ay, confidently will I. We have found out a sleight to hammer it to any heresy whatsoever. But those furnaces of falsehood and hammerheads of heresy must be dissolved and broken as his was, or else I fear me the false glittering glass of innovation will be better esteemed of than the ancient gold of the Gospel.

  The fault of faults is this: that your dead-born faith is begotten by too-too infant fathers. Cato,124 one of the wisest men in Roman histories canonized, was not born till his father was fourscore years old. None can be a perfect father of faith and beget men aright unto God, but those that are aged in experience, have many years imprinted in their mild conversation, and have, with Zachaeus, sold all their possessions of vanities to enjoy the sweet fellowship, not of the human, but spiritual Messias.

  Ministers and pastors, sell away your sects and schisms to the decrepit Churches in contention beyond sea. They have been so long inured to war, both about matters of religion and regiment, that now they have no peace of mind but in troubling all other men’s peace. Because the poverty of their provinces will allow them no proportionable maintenance for higher callings of ecclesiastical magistrates, they would reduce us to the precedent of their rebellious persecuted beggary: much like the sects of philosophers called Cynics, who when they saw they were born to no lands or possessions, nor had any possible means to support their estates, but they must live despised and in misery, do what they could, they plotted and consulted with themselves how to make their poverty better esteemed of than rich dominion and sovereignty. The upshot of their plotting and consultation was this: that they would live to themselves, scorning the very breath or company of all men. They professed, according to the rate of their lands, voluntary poverty, thin fare and lying hard, contemning and inveighing against all those as brute beasts whatsoever whom the world had given any reputation for riches or prosperity. Diogenes was one of the first and foremost of the ringleaders of this rusty morosity, and he, for all his nice dogged disposition and blunt deriding of worldly dross and the gross felicity of fools, was taken notwithstanding a little after very fairly a-coining money in his cell. So fares it up and down with our cynical reformed foreign Churches. They will digest no grapes of great bishoprics forsooth, because they cannot tell how to come by them. They must shape their coats, good men, according to their cloth, and do as they may, not as they would; yet they must give us leave here in England that are their honest neighbours, if we have more cloth than they, to make our garment somewhat larger.

  What was the foundation or groundwork of this dismal declining of Müister, but the banishing of their Bishop, their confiscating and casting lots for Church livings, as the soldiers cast lots for Christ’s garments, and, in short terms, their making the house of God a den of thieves? The house of God a number of hungry Church-robbers in these days have made a den of thieves. Thieves spend loosely what they have gotten lightly; sacrilege is no such inheritance; Dionysius was ne’er the richer for robbing of Jupiter of his golden coat – he was driven in the end to play the schoolmaster at Corinth. The name of religion, be it good or bad that is ruinated, God never suffers unrevenged. I’ll say of it as Ovid said of eunuchs:

  Qui primus pueris genitalia membra recidit,

  Vulnera quae fecit debuit ipse pati.

  Who first deprived young boys of their best part,

  With self-same wounds he gave he ought to smart.125

  So would he that first gelt126 religion or church-livings had been first gelt himself or never lived. Cardinal Wolsey is the man I aim at: Qui in suas poenas ingeniosus erat,127 ‘first gave others a light to his
own overthrow’. How it prospered with him and his instruments that after wrought for themselves, chronicles largely publish, though not apply; and some parcel of their punishment yet unpaid I do not doubt but will be required of their posterity.

  To go forward with my story of the overthrow of that usurper John Leiden. He and all his army, as I said before, falling prostrate on their faces and fervently given over to prayer, determined never to cease or leave soliciting of God till He had showed them from heaven some manifest miracle of success.

  Not that it was a general received tradition both with John Leiden and all the crew of Cnipperdollings and Müncers,128 if God at any time at their vehement outcries and clamours did not condescend to their requests, to rail on Him and curse Him to His face, to dispute with Him and argue Him of injustice for not being so good as His word with them, and to urge His many promises in the scripture against Him: so that they did not serve God simply, but that He should serve their turns. And after that tenure are many content to serve as bondmen to save the danger of hanging. But he that serves God aright, whose upright conscience hath for his mot Amor est mihi causa sequendi129 (‘I serve because I love’), he says Ego te potius, Domine, quam tua dona sequar130 (‘I’ll rather follow thee, Oh Lord, for thine own sake than for any covetous respect of that thou canst do for me’).

  Christ would have no followers but such as forsake all and follow him, such as forsake all their own desires, such as abandon all expectations of reward in this world, such as neglected and contemned their lives, their wives and children in comparison of him, and were content to take up their cross and follow him.

  These Anabaptists had not yet forsook all and followed Christ. They had not forsook their own desires of revenge and innovation. They had not abandoned their expectation of the spoil of their enemies. They regarded their lives. They looked after their wives and children. They took not up their crosses of humility and followed him, but would cross him, upbraid him and set him at nought if he assured not by some sign their prayers and supplications. Deteriora sequuntur:131 they followed God as daring Him. God heard their prayers, Quod petitur poena est:132 ‘it was their speedy punishment that they prayed for’. Lo, according to the sum of their impudent supplications, a sign in the heavens appeared, the glorious sign of the rainbow, which agreed just with, the sign of their ensign that was a rainbow likewise.

  Whereupon, assuring themselves of victory (Miseri quod volunt, facile credunt:133 ‘That which wretches would have they easily believe’), with shouts and clamours they presently ran headlong on their well-deserved confusion.

  Pitiful and lamentable was their unpitied and well-performed slaughter. To see even a bear, which is the most cruellest of all beasts, too too bloodily overmatched and deformedly rent in pieces by an unconscionable number of curs, it would move compassion against kind, and make those that, beholding him at the stake yet uncoped with, wished him a suitable death to his ugly shape, now to re-call their hard-hearted wishes and moan him suffering as a mild beast, in comparison of the foul-mouthed mastiffs, his butchers. Even such comparsion did those overmatched ungracious Münsterians obtain of many indifferent eyes, who now thought them, suffering, to be sheep brought innocent to the shambles, whenas before they deemed them as a number of wolves up in arms against the shepherds.

  The Emperials themselves that were their executioners, like a father that weeps when he beats his child, yet still weeps and still beats, not without much ruth and sorrow prosecuted that lamentable massacre. Yet drums and trumpets sounding nothing but stern revenge in their ears made them so eager that their hands had no leisure to ask counsel of their effeminate eyes. Their swords, their pikes, their bills, their bows, their calivers slew, empierced, knocked down, shot through and overthrew as many men every minute of the battle as there falls ears of corn before the scythe at one blow. Yet all their weapons so slaying, empiercing, knocking down, shooting through, overthrowing, dis-soul-joined not half so many as the hailing thunder of the great ordinance. So ordinary at every footstep was the imbrument of iron in blood, that one could hardly discern heads from bullets, or clottred hair from mangled flesh hung with gore.

  This tale must at one time or other give up the ghost, and as good now as stay longer. I would gladly rid my hands of it cleanly if I could tell how, for what with talking of cobblers, tinkers, rope-makers, botchers and dirt-daubers, the mark is clean out of my muse’s mouth, and I am as it were more than duncified twixt divinity and poetry. What is there more as touching this tragedy that you would be resolved of? Say quickly, for now is my pen on foot again. How John Leiden died, is that it? He died like a dog: he was hanged and the halter paid for. For his companions, do they trouble you? I can tell you, they troubled some men before, for they were all killed and none escaped; no, not so much as one to tell the tale of the rainbow. Hear what it is to be Anabaptists, to be Puritans, to be villains. You may be counted illuminate botchers134 for a while, but your end will be ‘Good people, pray for us.’

  With the tragical catastrophe of this Münsterian conflict did I cashier the new vocation of my cavaliership. There was no more honourable wars in Christendom then towards. Wherefore, after I had learned to be half-an-hour in bidding a man bonjour in German sunonimas,135 I travelled along the country towards England as fast as I could.

  What with wagons and bare ten-toes having attained to Middleborough (good Lord, see the changing chances of us knights-arrant infants136), I met with the Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,137 my late master. Jesu, I was persuaded I should not be more glad to see heaven than I was to see him. Oh, it was a right noble lord, liberality itself, if in this iron age there were any such creature as liberality left on the earth, a prince in content because a poet without peer.

  Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet die. If there be any spark of Adam’s paradised perfection yet embered up in the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed that His perfectest image on poets. None come so near to God in wit, none more contemn the world. Vatis avarus non temere est animus, saith Horace, versus amat, hoc studet unum: ‘Seldom have you seen any poet possessed with avarice, only verses he loves, nothing else he delights in.’ And as they contemn the world, so contrarily of the mechanical world are none more contemned. Despised they are of the world, because they are not of the world: their thoughts are exalted above the world of ignorance and all earthly conceits.

  As sweet angelical quiristers they are continually conversant in the heaven of arts. Heaven itself is but the highest height of knowledge. He that knows himself and all things else knows the means to be happy; happy, thrice happy, are they whom God hath doubled His spirit upon and given a double soul unto to be poets.

  My heroical master exceeded in this supernatural kind of wit He entertained no gross earthly spirit of avarice, nor weak womanly spirit of pusillanimity and fear that are feigned to be of the water, but admirable, airy and fiery spirits, full of freedom, maganimity and bountihood. Let me not speak any more of his accomplishments for fear I spend all my spirits in praising him, and leave myself no vigour of wit or effects of a soul to go forward with my history.

  Having thus met him I so much adored, no interpleading was there of opposite occasions, but back I must return and bear half-stakes with him in the lottery of travel I was not altogether unwilling to walk along with, such a good purse-bearer, yet musing what changeable humour had so suddenly seduced him from his native soil to seek out needless perils in those parts beyond sea, one night very boldly I demanded of him the reason that moved him thereto.

  ‘Ah,’ quoth he, ‘my little page, full little canst thou perceive how far metamorphosed I am from myself since I last saw thee. There is a little god called love, that will not be worshipped of any leaden brains, one that proclaims himself sole king and emperor of piercing eyes, and chief sovereign of soft hearts. He it is that, exercising his empire in my eyes, hath exorcised and clean conjured me from my content.

  ‘Thou know
est stately Geraldine,138 too stately, I fear, for me to do homage to her statue or shrine. She it is that has come out of Italy to bewitch all the wise men of England. Upon Queen Catherine Dowager139 she waits, that hath a dowry of beauty sufficient to make her wooed of the greatest kings in Christendom. Her high exalted sunbeams have set the phoenix nest of my breast on fire, and I myself have brought Arabian spiceries of sweet passions and praises to furnish out the funeral flame of my folly. Those who were condemned to be smothered to death by sinking down into the soft bottom of an high-built bed of roses, never died so sweet a death as I should die if her rose-coloured disdain were my death’s-man.140

  ‘Oh, thrice imperial Hampton Court, Cupid’s enchanted castle, the place where I first saw the perfect omnipotence of the Almighty expressed in mortality, tis thou alone that, tithing all other men solace in thy pleasant situation, affordest me nothing but an excellent-begotten sorrow out of the chief treasury of all thy recreations.

  ‘Dear Wilton, understand that there it was where I first set eye on my more than celestial Geraldine. Seeing her, I admired her; all the whole receptacle of my sight was unhabited with her rare worth. Long suit and uncessant protestations got me the grace to be entertained. Did never unloving servant so prenticelike obey his never-pleased mistress as I did her. My life, my wealth, my friends, had all their destiny depending on her command.

  ‘Upon a time I was determined to travel. The fame of Italy and an especial affection I had unto poetry, my second mistress, for which Italy was so famous, had wholly ravished me unto it. There was no dehortment141 from it, but needs thither I would. Wherefore, coming to my mistress as she was then walking with other ladies of estate in paradise at Hampton Court, I most humbly besought her of favour that she would give me so much gracious leave to absent myself from her service, as to travel a year or two into Italy. She very discreetly answered me that if my love were so hot as I had often avouched, I did very well to apply the plaster of absence unto it, for absence, as they say, causeth forgetfulness. “Yet nevertheless, since it is Italy, my native country, you are so desirous to see, I am the more willing to make my will yours. I, pete Italiam: ‘Go and seek Italy’, with Aeneas. But be more true than Aeneas: I hope that kind wit-cherishing climate will work no change in so witty a breast. No country of mine shall it be more, if it conspire with thee in any new love against me. One charge I will give thee, and let it be rather a request than a charge: when thou comest to Florence, the fair city from whence I fetched the pride of my birth, by an open challenge defend my beauty against all comers.