The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
Page 4
The fields, commons and rivers are the most striking features of the landscape as you travel towards the city of London. But such a journey will also bring many other agricultural practices to your attention. The area of woodland is now rapidly shrinking. One man in Durham has already started his long career felling trees – by 1629 he will have chopped down more than 30,000 oaks single-handedly.23 As these take more than a century to grow to maturity, this is clearly unsustainable; but many landlords do not regret the permanent loss of their woods because the cleared land can be used for other agricultural purposes. The widespread felling is thus doubly drastic: being permanent, it leads to higher prices of wood, encouraging landlords to fell yet more timber. Add the increase in the population and the extra wood needed for all the extra tools, cupboards, tables, beds and chests for all the extra people, not to mention the materials needed for the building (and rebuilding) of their houses, and you can see why there is not very much wood left. On top of all this, the wars with France and Spain have led to increased demand for timber – more than 600 oak trees are needed to build a warship – further adding to the demand for wood.24 Firewood is thus expensive and in short supply, and many people have started talking about a ‘fuel famine’. The government tries to take action, passing Acts of Parliament in 1558, 1581 and 1585 to prevent wood being used for unnecessary purposes; but demand still massively outstrips supply. The price of timber effectively doubles over the course of the reign.25
Timber felling is not the only substantial change being wrought on the countryside. A second one is enclosure. Many landlords evict their tenants and level their homes, replacing the good arable land with fields for their sheep. Others create deer parks where there used to be villages. Some landowners even deem it necessary to have two parks adjacent to their country seat, one for red deer and one for fallow. In some respects this is an attempt to hold back the pace of change and to re-create a lost ‘natural world’, where men are free to hunt their food in a wooded Elysium. In other respects, it is just a status symbol. But whether done for sheep farming or for hunting, the destruction of arable fields and villages is a profound worry to the families who are evicted. It is equally worrying to the authorities in those towns where the homeless husbandmen go begging. The gradual loss of land to the working man and his family may fairly be described as the second-greatest single cause of unrest during the reign, second only to religion. By 1600, in some counties, one in six villages that existed in 1450 has been destroyed by enclosure. As we have seen, Oxfordshire and Berkshire are still almost entirely unenclosed, but they are not the norm. Fifty-eight villages have disapperared in Warwickshire, sixty in Leicestershire.26
Not all of England’s landscape is the same. Large open fields dominate the heart of the kingdom, from Yorkshire down to the south coast, but they are not found along the Welsh border, nor in the north-west, East Anglia or Kent, where enclosed field systems are the norm. Similarly you are unlikely to come across any large open fields anywhere further west than Braunton, in north Devon. The villages in these regions are also different. Rather than being nucleated – gathered closely around a church, as they are in open-field farming counties – the houses are more spread out, often quite isolated from the centre of the community.
Different types of corn are grown in the various regions. Oxfordshire is mainly champaign country, growing high-quality wheat. Go to Norfolk, however, and you will find more rye in the fields. In Wiltshire, wheat and barley are equally popular. Further west, barley thrives better in the wet conditions. In Lancashire and the north, oats are the most common crop. In Yorkshire three times as much rye is grown as wheat. In Kent – the garden of England – there are more orchards than anywhere else, producing the finest apples and cherries. Indeed, Kent is particularly well provisioned, for the Kentish inheritance system of gavelkind means that yeomen’s estates are divided equally between their sons. Thus extensive farms are often broken up and turned into smaller units, and these are carefully tended by the next generation of yeomen, who are owner-occupiers and more efficient in their use of land.
Another rapidly changing area of the countryside is its perimeter – the coast. Ports have existed since Roman times, of course, but changing attitudes to the sea are observable in the way people are now prepared to live on the coast in smaller communities. The dangers of the early Middle Ages, when any coastal community was prey to Norse and Danish marauders, or Irish and Scots pirates, are long gone. People across England have started to build much closer to the sea, and fishing villages have sprung up all round the coast. Some of these are deliberately planted by the lord of the manor. George Cary builds a stone pier at Clovelly in north Devon in this reign, emulating earlier piers such as those at Port Isaac (early sixteenth-century) and Lyme Regis (medieval). Sir Richard Grenville likewise builds a harbour at Boscastle in 1584. The opportunities provided by the sea are particularly exploited by the Cornish: they start exporting pilchards in huge quantities to Spain. They are closely followed by the people of Sussex, where fishing transforms many villages. Brighton has been home to a modest fishing community since Domesday, but now it is fast becoming a prosperous town on the strength of the industry. Despite the French burning it to the ground in 1514, it has been rebuilt and has eighty fishing vessels by 1580, catching plaice, mackerel, conger eel, cod and herring in local waters, the Channel and the North Sea.27 Whereas in 1519 William Horman could expect his pupils to recite ‘It is not good living on the sea coasts’, by Elizabeth’s reign more and more families are finding that quite the opposite is true.28
Many labourers’ cottages in the countryside are still open halls, or two-room structures of a single storey. Houses made of cob are common in the rural parts of the West Country – in areas too far from the moorland granite or the red sandstone of the Exe estuary. Villages and farmsteads reflect the geological make-up of the country far more than the towns: constructed by the local community and designed with practicality in mind, they are made only of local materials. Running across the country, from the East Riding of Yorkshire down through Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire to Wiltshire and east Somerset, is a wide belt of limestone; so naturally the local farmhouses and cottages are built of that. Many houses in Cheshire, the Welsh border and the Midlands are timber-framed, due to the lack of stone. Houses in the north are predominantly built with large blocks of limestone or sandstone. In the south-east, Kent can boast more than a thousand timber-framed houses of two storeys, these being part of a gradual rebuilding that started in the late fifteenth century. Here chimneys have already become the norm, although glass windows are still scarce. But in every region there is a social distinction. The wealthier sort, the gentlemen and the richer yeomen, are busy rebuilding their substantial houses in much the same ways as the merchants in the towns. It is the rural workers who are still living in the same conditions as their forefathers, in old single-storey, draughty, dark, small cottages.
Any village is much more than just a series of houses. There are the communal structures of the church and church house. All across the surrounding parish there are barns, byres, corn lofts, henhouses, stables, cart houses and mills. Watermills are far more common than windmills, but you will find a good many of the latter in the south-east, situated on the tops of hills. Marked out with flags on top of them, they are otherwise largely unchanged from the windmills of the late Middle Ages. They have cloth-covered sails and may be two or three storeys high; but the most remarkable thing about them is that they are built on a pivot so that the whole building can be turned to face the direction of the wind.29 In most villages you will also come across sawpits, timber piles, dungheaps, haycocks, beehives and, of course, gardens. A statute of 1589 decrees that every new house is to be provided with four acres of land: this is the minimum thought to be appropriate for the needs of a family. All domestic buildings are positioned so as to avoid frost pockets and flooding, with further provision for the best juxtaposition of buildings. ‘A hay house near a st
able breedeth peril,’ declares William Horman, indicating just how much thought you need to put into the location of your barns and outhouses.
However much thought goes into the planning of a village, the simple fact of people living in close proximity leads to sanitation problems. Many villages have common drains or sewers, which are regularly blocked by faeces and detritus. Walk through Ingatestone in Essex in the 1560s, for example, and you will find that people have built privies over the common gutter or sewer. In 1562 the manor court has to forbid people from leaving dead pigs, dogs and other carcases in the lanes. In 1564 a local man is ordered to remove a dunghill he has created in a public place, to cease leaving dung and the gore of slaughtered animals on the highway, and to stop doing things that block the common drain and make terrible stinking odours. That same year a general order is passed to prevent villagers building ‘jakes’ or privies above the common gutter, due to the stench thus created. Further orders to that effect are made in 1565 and 1569. But do not let these incidents give you the impression that Ingatestone is a particularly noisome place; rather these entries in the manor court roll indicate that the manorial officers are particularly sensitive to the fact that their community is built alongside the main highway between London and Chelmsford, and the lord of the manor, Sir William Petre, has no wish to be associated with a village that stinks. Sir William’s own house, Ingatestone Hall, has one of the most highly developed drainage systems in the country. Mind you, in Chelmsford you regularly find people urinating on the market cross; and in nearby Moulsham various people have been known to empty their chamber pots in the garden of a house known as the Friary, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants.30
London
London is not like any other city or town in England. As we have already noted, it is vastly more populous and geographically larger than anywhere else in the kingdom. Its social organisation is also different: it is far more cosmopolitan and its role in the government of the realm, including that of Westminster, is unique. Even at the start of the reign, when its population is about 70,000, the taxable wealth of its citizens is ten times that of the second-largest city, Norwich, which has about 10,600 inhabitants.31 It is thus not only more populous, it is proportionally more prosperous. By 1603, when London’s population has reached 200,000 people, there is simply no comparison. But forget statistics: long before you reach the city, the tangible social differences will strike you. Just look at the large numbers of people you meet on the highway. Travelling along the old Roman road known as Watling Street, you will come across messengers in their riding gear and farmers driving their animals to the city’s suburbs, physicians riding out of the city to treat patients in the country, and foreign travellers in their carriages on the way to Oxford. So much wealth and variety of life are compacted into the city that in 1599 the Swiss traveller Thomas Platter declares: ‘London is not in England but England is in London.’32 Most Londoners would agree. The historian John Stow describes it in his great Survey of London as ‘the fairest, largest, richest and best inhabited city in the world’.
All cities are places of contrast – and you will be harshly reminded of this when you get to the junction of Watling Street and the long road that is, in more recent times, Oxford Street. This point is known as Tyburn; here stand the gallows for hanging thieves. Executions normally involve several people being hanged at once. The crowds from the city come to watch the killing as if it were a great entertainment. Afterwards the naked bodies may be left turning in the breeze for a day or two. When they have gone, and the gallows are ominously empty, a haunting atmosphere remains. As the leaves of the tall elm trees that grow here rustle in the wind, you cannot help but contemplate this ancient place of death.
Turn east. In the distance you can see the city. If you make this journey on the day of Elizabeth I’s accession, 17 November 1558, you will hear the church bells of all the parishes in the city and the surrounding villages ringing out across the fields. The road from here into London is more or less straight, leading from Tyburn to Newgate, about 2¾ miles away. In the distance, towering above the city, stands the immensely tall medieval spire of St Paul’s Cathedral, more than 500ft high. If you stand here three years later, on 3 June 1561, you might see a bolt of lightning strike the cathedral spire and set light to the roof. The spire collapses, taking with it the bells and the lead of the roof, leaving just the tower.33 One of the glories of the medieval cathedral builders is left like a smile with a broken tooth. The church itself is re-roofed, but the spire is never rebuilt: a visible symbol to Londoners and visitors of the uncertainty of the times.
The road along which you are travelling is bordered by fields on both sides until the crossroads with St Martin’s Lane and Tottenham Court Road. Beyond this junction, behind a large copse of trees, is the church of St Giles in the Fields. Further on the road turns into a street, with about a dozen houses on each side. The next turning on the right is Drury Lane, which leads between the fields to the Aldwych and Fleet Street. If you don’t take this, but keep on going straight, a moated building called Southampton House appears on your left. The road turns slightly and enters the village of Holborn. From here to the city walls the street is lined with houses on both sides. This is where several of the Inns of Court are situated – Gray’s Inn, Bath Inn and Furnival’s Inn on your left; Clement’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard’s Inn and Thavie’s Inn on your right. In these places law students live and study in close proximity to Chancery Lane. The parish church of St Andrew’s Holborn is next, on the right, and facing it is the imposing medieval residence of the bishop of Ely. After that you pass the turning into Shoe Lane, cross the bridge over the Fleet River (Holborn Bridge) and find yourself in the sprawling mass of houses that have erupted from the city. Still you have not reached the city wall, although you can see it ahead: 18ft high, with the crenellated gatehouse of Newgate guarding the entrance. But you are already within the jurisdiction of the lord mayor and sheriffs of London.
Return this way at the end of the reign and you will see the city has spread even further west. Although the queen has it proclaimed in 1580 that there should be no development of the suburbs, London carries on expanding. In 1593 the government passes an Act prohibiting any new housing within three miles of the city; this too only slightly slows development. In 1602 the queen issues orders that all unauthorised developments in the suburbs are to be removed, but the spread of housing cannot be stopped: the houses on either side of the main road through St Giles and Holborn are one continuous stretch by 1603.34 Within twenty years of Elizabeth’s death, Drury Lane will have been entirely developed, with 897 houses along it.
Suppose you do not rush straight into London this way. Let us assume that, at Tyburn, you turn right along the country lane that leads south, alongside the queen’s private hunting ground, called Hyde Park. This brings you down to a junction with a road to the city known by Londoners as ‘the Way to Reading’. One day, in the next century, this will be Piccadilly, lined with aristocratic houses. For now, though, it is a unmade track between the fields. If you come this way on a fine day, you will see washerwomen laying out clothes, bed linen and tablecloths on the grass to dry. But it is not to see the washerwomen that you should come this way: rather it is to admire the palaces. If you turn off and follow the track that will later become Haymarket, this leads you down to the tall medieval cross at Charing Cross. From here you will see the sparkling Thames straight ahead and, along its bank to your right, the royal palaces of Whitehall and Westminster.
What will you make of the nearer palace, Whitehall? None of the buildings will be known to you; the only one standing in modern times (the Banqueting House) has not yet been built, so it will appear as an unintelligible mass of houses and roofs. It lacks all harmony or structural unity. Although the full scale of the 23½ acres of building that will one day come to be known as ‘the largest and ugliest palace in Europe’ has not yet materialised, it will probably leave you with that same impres
sion. If you walk towards the great gatehouse you will see the tiltyard on your right: a narrow enclosure with a barrier down the middle for ceremonial jousts. Next to it is the royal tennis court. On your left are the apartments and great hall of the original building, York House, which forms the nucleus of this so-called palace. Do not get me wrong: these buildings are lavish in the extreme, with great care and attention spent on their construction and no expense spared on their internal decoration. But the whole palace is just ‘a heap of houses’, as one French visitor later puts it.35
Go on under the arch of the great gatehouse and into King’s Street. On your left is the queen’s privy garden: a large square courtyard with formal flowerbeds. The stately-looking apartments on the far side, which overlook the river, are where she spends much of her time. Carry on, under the King’s Street gatehouse, and go past all the houses of Whitehall. Ahead there is the gatehouse of the old Palace of Westminster. Here, beside the great abbey church, is the old hall of William II. That is now used by the offices of Chancery. The other buildings of the medieval royal palace that were not destroyed in the fire of 1512 have similarly been transformed into bureaucratic offices or halls of government. The great royal chapel of St Stephen is now the place where the House of Commons meets. Members of the House of Lords convene in the old Queen’s Chamber. However, as Elizabeth only summons ten parliaments, and these only sit for a total of about two-and-a-half years of her forty-five-year reign, these huge rooms are normally left cold and empty. That is true of most of the royal palaces in Elizabeth’s reign. If you go upriver and visit Hampton Court Palace, you will find that the walls are bare whitewashed plaster with empty wooden frames, for the tapestries are taken down when the queen is not in residence. Rather than servants scurrying about, carrying food for a feast or logs for a hearth, you will see dust blowing across the empty courtyards.