The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

by Mortimer, Ian

  FINDING YOUR WAY

  You cannot carry a road map with you. Christopher Saxton’s stunning set of maps is printed in 1579 but it is bulky and costly. Even though it is the most advanced set of English county maps yet made, and will provide the basis for all other maps for more than a century, it is still not detailed enough to guide you. More practical guides take the form of printed tables that give distances between towns and the directions in which you need to travel. Some are arranged in a circular form, with London at the centre and all other cities and towns radiating out in a sequence of circles, with the distance from the preceding town given in brackets. Other versions are printed in French for the benefit of foreign visitors, such as La Guide des Chemins d’Angleterre (Paris, 1579).

  The other solution to finding your way, of course, is to ask directions:

  Traveller: I pray you set me a little in my right way out of the village.

  Ploughman: Keep still to the right hand until you come to the corner of a wood, then turn at the left hand.

  Traveller: Have we no thieves in the forest?

  Ploughman: No sir, for the provost-marshal hung the other day half a dozen at the gallows, which you see before you at the top of that hill.

  Traveller: Truly I fear lest we be here robbed. We shall spur a little harder for it waxeth night.38

  If travelling at night, it will be the moon you need to guide you, as Alessandro Magno finds out on a return journey from Richmond in 1562:

  Seeing that we were faring badly and not knowing what we ought to do – whether to go on or turn back – we were very frightened. Then one of my companions spoke up. He said that London lay to the east, and as the moon rises in the east we should follow it so as not to get lost … We could hear on all sides many owls hooting and my companion, who was greatly afraid, begged me to hurry saying that these were robbers who were calling to one another … Finally we came to a village where my companion wanted to remain. He reminded me that the way was unsafe, dark and extremely muddy and that we had to pass through places where, only a few days before, people had been murdered … Since we did not wish to stray from the way but had to admit that we did not know it, we hired a man as our guide and, having armed him sufficiently, we placed him on horseback. When we got back to the path which my companion had said was unsafe, he still wished to turn back. He argued also that it was dangerous to approach London at that hour for, although there were soldiers around at that time who had been ordered by the queen to help the Huguenots, one should not believe that the road would be safe.39

  We normally associate highwaymen with the eighteenth century, but there are just as many in Elizabethan England – if not more. Vagrancy has greatly inflated the numbers of desperate thieves who will lurk behind trees and bushes to take travellers by surprise. Notorious places for thieves are Gad’s Hill near Rochester, Shooter’s Hill by Blackheath, Salisbury Plain and Newmarket Heath.40 These are just the most famous. Between 1567 and 1602 suspected criminals are tried for the theft of more than £1,000 of money and jewels stolen on the highways in Essex – and that figure only represents the sixty cases that come to court.41 If you travel anywhere near Cambridge, watch out for Gamaliel Ratsey, a gentleman soldier who has become a notorious highwayman, complete with a mask and wicked sense of humour. He has been known to make a Cambridge scholar give an oration while being robbed, and has himself lectured a company of actors on their art, after relieving them of their valuables.

  Robberies often follow a pattern. After a night carousing in an inn with your fellow travellers you head off to bed. But the inn’s servants know that you have money to spend and which way you are heading. They watch to see how many are in your party when you set out in the morning and a messenger leaves the inn in a hurry. Your party makes its way beneath overhanging trees and around muddy stretches of road in jolly conversation, when you suddenly find yourselves confronted by men bearing swords, cudgels and possibly a caliver or arquebus (long-barrelled gun). You turn, only to find the path behind cut off. What do you do? You realise that you can either live without your cash and other valuables or fight to keep them. The highwaymen will normally take all your money and jewels, any expensive items of clothing and your horses, and leave you tied up away from the highway, but in such a manner that you can work yourself free after an hour or so. As you start to walk on to the next inn or town in nothing but your underclothes, you can take some small comfort from the fact that you are not the first and won’t be the last to experience this humiliation.

  And then it will start to rain.

  River Transport

  Small rivers are obstacles and, for the traveller, a nuisance. Large rivers, however, enhance your travel options. Where a river is significantly deep, you will normally find a ferry. In some places, such as along the River Witham between Lincoln and Boston, there are no bridges, but five established ferry routes. These will either transport you across the river or, one after the other, take you down the 24-mile stretch of water to Boston.42 Similarly the Long Ferry travels up the river from Gravesend to London. This picks up the passengers riding with the post from Dover and takes them up to the city. Catch it just after breakfast and it should deliver you into the city about 2 p.m., or sooner if the tide is in your favour.43

  In London, the River Thames is so crucial to transport that you will soon come to think of it as the city’s main highway. There are many alleys and lanes leading to stairs down to the water where you can pick up a wherry. This is a water-borne taxi system: each wherry normally has one waterman who will row his passengers directly to their destination, whether upstream, downstream or on the far bank. You will never have difficulty finding one: there are more than 2,000 on the river.44 In the mornings you will see them all tied up to the jetties and stairways, bobbing about on the tide. Each has an upholstered seat at the back wide enough for two people to sit side by side.45 Over this seat is a canopy, which can be raised or lowered according to the weather. The Venetian Alessandro Magno remarks on the wherries:

  They have no cabins but sometimes they put cloths up to act as canopies, when necessary, and one man alone can steer them with two oars. The boats are broad at the back but dart quickly hither and thither across the river, according to the whims of those inside. There are some river boats – as at the moorings in Venice – at various points that are used by groups of people to travel to various towns, or to cross the river, or to enjoy themselves in the evenings. It is just as pleasant as it is to go in summertime along the Grand Canal in Venice.46

  Crossing the river – for instance to go from the city to the playhouses on the south bank – will cost you a penny each way. Travelling upstream or downstream is more expensive: the fare from Temple to Westminster is 2d, and from Blackfriars to Westminster 3d. The fare also changes with the tide; a trip to Greenwich from the city costs 8d with the tide, but 12d if the tide is against you.47

  If there are many of you travelling together, you may consider hiring a barge or a tilt boat. Passenger barges are rowed by a team of oarsmen; many noblemen have their own, simply hiring watermen when they need them. A tilt boat is a barge with a canopy running its whole length and it has neither oarsmen nor a sail; rather it is pulled along by oarsmen in a separate steerage boat. It will cost you 10s to travel in one all the way from London to Windsor and back. The queen has an impressive glass-sided boat for such journeys, kept in a dock on the Thames and attracting many curious sightseers.

  Reference to barges may make you wonder whether there are any canals in England. Several Acts are passed in the sixteenth century permitting canals to be built, but the first actually to be dug is the Exeter Ship Canal. The original waterway, the River Exe, was blocked up by a weir built by the countess of Devon in the Middle Ages, forcing all the trade to go through her port at Topsham. Work begins on the canal in 1564 and is completed in early 1567, once again opening up direct trade between Exeter and the rest of the world. It is three feet deep, sixteen feet wide and re-enters the Exe just b
elow the old weir.48 Encouraged by its success, a few other Acts are passed, but actually building the canals is a very slow process.49 Throughout the country canals remain few and far between, and short in length, until the Industrial Revolution.

  Travelling by water is not without its dangers. In London and Rochester, where the great bridges are built on starlings, there is the problem of the tide. When the tide goes out, the Thames turns into rapids under London Bridge, rushing out with considerable force. This makes it impossible to row or sail upstream under the bridge and highly dangerous to attempt to go downstream: an exploit called ‘shooting the bridge’. In 1599 some Catholic fugitives are caught by the river at night:

  They rowed back towards the bridge but by now the tide had turned and was flowing strongly. It forced their little boat against the piles driven into the bed of the river, to break the force of the water. It stuck, and it was impossible to move it forwards or backwards. Meanwhile the water was rising and striking the boat with such force that with every wave it looked as if it would capsize and the occupants be thrown into the river. They could only pray to God and shout for help.50

  If you fear ending up in this situation, then make sure you have a life preserver with you. These are made from pigs’ bladders and inflated by blowing into them.51 If going anywhere near London Bridge it might be a good idea to have one or two blown up in advance.

  Seafaring

  We have seen at the beginning of the book that the appearance of an English town in 1558 is not hugely changed from the late Middle Ages. The same cannot be said for the docks in England. Most seagoing vessels need to be rebuilt every twenty-five or thirty years, but in the sixteenth century designs are developing so rapidly that ships built before the mid-1550s are regarded as too old-fashioned to be rebuilt and are simply broken up. Only one royal ship facing the Armada fleet in July 1588, the 200-ton Bull, is more than forty years old; the average age of the thirty-four vessels in the English navy is just fifteen years.

  TYPES OF SHIPS

  By modern standards, most seagoing ships are small. Only the big royal warships are over 400 tons burden.52 The largest of these is the Triumph, built in 1561. Her keel is 100ft long, she is 40ft in the beam and has a burden of 955 tons. In 1599 she carries a complement of 500 men and forty-four guns, including four cannon (firing 60lbs shot), three demi-cannon (firing 30lbs shot), seventeen culverins (long-barrelled, 18lbs shot), eight demi-culverins (9lbs), six sakers (6lbs) and six falconets (approximately 1lb).53 Unfortunately, great ships like her are too slow and difficult to manoeuvre easily. Sir John Hawkins therefore pioneers the ‘race-built’ galleon, so called because the castles are lowered or ‘razed’. Traditional warships have a high forecastle at the prow and an even higher sterncastle from which archers can shoot down on their enemy. However, the effective use of cannon has resulted in battles now being fought at a distance, so castles are more of a hindrance than an advantage. Race-built galleons have just an open area at the front of the vessel and a covered deck and the captain’s cabin at the stern. Cutting down on the weight of the superstructure makes the ships lighter and thus faster, more manoeuvrable and more stable. The earliest race-built galleon is the 368-ton Foresight, 78ft long and 28ft wide, launched at Deptford in 1570. It is soon followed by others, including the 460-ton Dreadnought, the 360-ton Swiftsure (1573) and the 500-ton Revenge (1577).

  It is these ships that constitute the famous ‘wooden walls of England’. The government builds more than thirty galleons over the course of the reign and a similar number of other ships to support them. The two master shipwrights Peter Pett and Mathew Baker compete to outdo each other; in 1586 Baker builds the 561-ton Vanguard at Woolwich (having moved to that shipyard from Deptford), and Pett, his replacement at Deptford, launches the 480-ton Rainbow. As preparations are made to defend England against the Armada, these ships are equipped with more weapons; each has fifty-four guns by May 1588. At the same time there are private projects such as the Ark Raleigh: a 700-ton galleon, with fifty-five guns, built in 1586 at Deptford for Sir Walter Raleigh at a cost of £5,000. Raleigh’s debts to the Crown force him to sell it to the queen, who renames it Ark Royal. Thomas Platter is allowed to inspect a similar vessel at Rochester in 1599: he counts fifty-four cannon and notes that it has five masts and thirteen sails; the ropes are covered with pitch to stop the rain rotting them, the hull is painted in bright colours and a lantern burns through the night at the very rear of the vessel.54

  Have a look at the fleet that chases the Spanish Armada up the Channel in July 1588. As mentioned above, thirty-four of the ships are from the royal navy, designed for war; the rest – no fewer than 163 of them – are privately owned vessels. The royal ships are not all as large as the Triumph or the race-built galleons; among them are small pinnaces, such as the 60-ton Moon, built in 1586; but nor are the privately owned vessels all small. Some are quite impressive: for instance, the Galleon Leicester and the Merchant Royal are both 400 tons; the Edward Bonaventure and Roebuck, 300 tons. Thirty-five other merchantmen have a burden of 140 tons or more, another hundred are over 100 tons, and another 656 over 40 tons.55 This is no accident: the government encourages the building of large ships in order to be able to co-opt them for defence, paying a bounty of 5s per ton. Thomas Wilson reports in 1600 that the navy has thirty-six warships and 14 pinnaces, but this

  is not the twentieth part of the strength of England … When there was a fleet of 240 ships of war sent into Spain and four other fleets of merchants sent to the Levant, to Russia, Barbary and Bordeaux, all at one time abroad, yet you should never see the Thames between London Bridge and Blackwall (four English miles in length) without two or three hundred ships or vessels, besides the infinite number of men of war that were then and ever roving abroad to the Indies and Spanish dominions to get purchase, as they call it, whereby a number grow rich.56

  The vast majority of seagoing ships are not glamorous galleons, but humble fishing vessels and traders. You do see many carvels, barques and other merchantmen of 40–100 tons in English ports, but they will be hugely outnumbered by smaller boats. On the lower reaches of the Thames there are sailing hoys, which ply the trade along the north coast of Kent and the south coast of Essex, and tide-barges going up to Billingsgate on the flood tide and returning to their Essex or Kent port on the ebb.57 If you look at the wharves of the main ports you will find substantial ketches (strongly built, two-masted coasting vessels with three triangular sails, used mainly for long-distance fishing), mongers (trading vessels not dissimilar to ketches), dredgers and crayers or half-ketches (smaller fishing boats) and lighters (flat-bottomed boats for river work as well as short sea journeys, like modern barges). Smaller than these are the cock boats (boats attached to ships, often used for fishing) and skiffs (clinker-built rowing boats, sometimes with a single small mast).58 At times these boats can play an important role: Sir Francis Drake receives news of the arrival of the Armada from a ketch off the coast of Devon.59

  SEAMANSHIP

  Your greatest hardship when travelling on small boats like these is likely to be inclement weather and a little nausea. Small boats tend not to go very far from land, so if the weather turns stormy you can simply head back into port. If you are contemplating a long voyage, however, things are more complicated. The very act of handling an ocean-going vessel is both demanding and dangerous. Setting and stowing the sails requires crew members to go aloft and suspend themselves along each yard – and the heights are dizzying. The Ark Royal has a main mast more than 100ft tall. Imagine being out in the Atlantic in a merchantman as a storm is building up and the rain comes down hard: the captain may order the sails to be furled, to protect them or to prevent the ship being blown off course. As the vessel pitches and tosses like a cork on the waves, you might be the one to have to climb forty or fifty feet up the mast and then clamber out along the yard, pull in the sailcloth as you balance on the pitching timber, thrust to and fro with the violent motion of the ship. If you fall from that height an
d land on the deck, you will break a limb at least. Fall from the topsail or topgallant on to the gunwales and that will be the end of you. Fall into the sea and you will almost certainly drown. Now imagine having to stow the sails in a gale in fading light, at nightfall.

  Even steering a boat can be dangerous. In heavy seas it might take six or seven men to control the tiller of a very large vessel, and they have to do this below deck, without being able to see the sea and the sky. You will not find a ship’s wheel anywhere – it has not been invented yet. Instead most Elizabethan ships are steered by the sails and the whipstaff: a long steering pole which pivots at a point below deck, controlling the rudder. This allows the helmsman to remain on deck where he can see the direction in which he is heading, but the pivot can increase the difficulty of holding the rudder steady in high seas. A sudden surge can tear it from his hands and even break the whipstaff.

  Then there are the problems of navigation. The time-honoured skills of a maritime pilot are of little use when it comes to crossing an ocean. A pilot knows the ports and the headlands, the currents and the phases of the moon and their tides; but he will rarely sail out of sight of land. He does not use a chart, but a compass, a plumb-line and his experience. When it comes to long-distance travel, these tools are not good enough, especially at night. Even if your pilot can read and write, and keeps a rutter telling him all the various soundings in, say, the Bay of Biscay, you would be unwise to entrust him with your life sailing round the world. Nor will your modern knowledge help much. For instance, you may know that St John’s, Newfoundland, has a latitude of 47° 34′ North, but how do you find your way there from Exeter (50° 43′ North)? How do you measure your latitude? How do you maintain a steady course when the wind will not blow you straight to your destination and the currents will counter any attempt to calculate where you are according to speed travelled in any given direction?