Read The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England Online
Authors: Ian Mortimer
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Renaissance, #Ireland
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
Contents
10.
Hygiene, Illness and Medicine
Abbreviations used in the Notes
About the Book
The past is a foreign country – this is your guidebook.
We think of Queen Elizabeth I as ‘Gloriana’: the most powerful English woman in history. We think of her reign (1558–1603) as a golden age of maritime heroes like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Francis Drake, and of great writers, such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 15902, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the poverty, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of that time?
In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a prospective traveller to late sixteenth-century England would ask. Applying the groundbreaking approach he pioneered in his bestselling
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England
, the Elizabethan world unfolds around the reader.
He shows a society making great discoveries and achieving military victories and yet at the same time being troubled by its new-found self-awareness. It is a country in which life expectancy is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are being persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language and some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth’s subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world.
About the Author
Ian Mortimer is the author of the bestselling
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England
, eight other books and many peer-reviewed articles on English history between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) for his work on the social history of medicine in seventeenth-century England. In June 2011, the University of Exeter awarded him a higher doctorate (D.Litt) by examination, on the strength of his historical work. He also writes historical fiction, published under his middle names (James Forrester). He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon.
Also by Ian Mortimer
The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer
The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III
The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King
1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England
List of Illustrations
1.
George Gower, Queen Elizabeth I: The Armada Portrait,
c
.1588, © Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire; The Bridgeman Art Library.
2.
Marcus Gheeraedts the Elder, portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, © Private Collection.
3.
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg,
London
, first published in
Civitates Orbis Terrarum
, vol. 1, 1572, © The British Library Board, Maps.C.29.e.1, A.
4.
Claes Janszoon Visscher,
Visscher’s view of London
, 1616, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
5.
Joris Hoefnagel, A
Fête at Bermondsey, c
.1569, reproduced by permission of Lord Salisbury/Hatfield House.
6.
Robert Peake, portrait of Elizabeth Buxton (née Kemp),
c
.1588–90, © Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery; The Bridgeman Art Library.
7.
Bess of Hardwick as a Young Woman
, 1550s, English School, © Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire; The Devonshire Collection National Trust Photographic Library; Angelo Hornak; The Bridgeman Art Library.
8.
Hans Ewoutsz, portrait of Lady Mary Fitzalan, © His Grace The Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle; The Bridgeman Art Library.
9.
George Gower, portrait of Elizabeth Knollys, Lady Layton, 1577, © Montacute House, Somerset; The Phelips Collection National Trust Photographic Library; Derrick E. Witty; The Bridgeman Art Library.
10.
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg,
Nonsuch Palace
, first published in
Civitates Orbis Terrarum
, vol. 5, 1598, based on a 1582 drawing by Joris Hoefnagel.
11.
Anthuenis Claeissins,
A Family Saying Grace Before the Meal
, 1585, © Private Collection; The Bridgeman Art Library.
12.
Robert Peake,
Queen Elizabeth I being carried in Procession (Eliza Triumphans)
,
c
.1601, © Private Collection; The Bridgeman Art Library.
13.
Portrait of Lord Burghley, English School, © Burghley House Collection, Lincolnshire; The Bridgeman Art Library.
14.
Court of Wards and Liveries, Presided Over by the Master of the Court, Lord Burghley
,
c
.1598, English School, © Private Collection; The Bridgeman Art Library.
15.
Isaac Oliver,
A Party in the Open Air. Allegory on Conjugal Love
, 1590–5, held at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, © SMK Photo.
16.
Isaac Oliver,
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, c
.1585, © Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge; The Bridgeman Art Library.
17.
William Segar, portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, 1598, © National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; The Bridgeman Art Library.
18.
Isaac Oliver,
Portrait of a Young Man, c
.1590–5, The Royal Collection, © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; The Bridgeman Art Library.
19.
Nicholas Hilliard, portrait of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; The Bridgeman Art Library.
20.
Portrait of Christopher Marlowe, © The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.
21.
Dancers and musicians from the
Album of Johannes Cellarius, c
.1600–6, German School, © British Library; The Bridgeman Art Library.
22.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Interior of a Farmhouse
, © Musée Municipal, Bergues; Giraudon; The Bridgeman Art Library.
23.
A True Description of the Naval Expedition of Francis Drake, who with Five Ships Departed from the Western Part of England on 13th December 1577, Circumnavigated the Globe and Returned on 26th September 1580 with One Ship Remaining, the Others Having been Destroyed by Waves of Fire, c
.1587, © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; The Bridgeman Art Library.
24.
Theodor de Bry,
How They Dance at Important Celebrations
, © Paris, Musée de la Marine; akg-images.
25.
The Spanish Armada which Threatened England in July 1588
, English School, © National Maritime Museum; IAM; akg-images.
26.
The
Ark Raleigh
, the flagship of the English Fleet, from
Leisure Hour
, 1888, English School, © Private Collection; The Bridgeman Art Library.
27.
Queen Elizabeth I Receives Dutch Ambassadors
, Dutch School, Neue Galerie, Kassel, © Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel; The Bridgeman Art Library.
28.
The Thames at Richmond, with the Old Royal Palace,
c
.1620, Flemish School, © Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge; The Bridgeman Art Library.
29.
‘Old Houses in the Butcher Row’,
Smith’s Antiquities of London
, 1791.
30.
Treswell Survey of 1–6 Fleet Lane, by kind permission of The Clothworkers’ Company.
31.
Jan Siberechts, Wollaton Hall and Park, Nottingham, 1697, © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; The Bridgeman Art Library.
32.
Washerwomen at a river
, illustration to the alchemic treatise
Splendor Solis
, © The British Library Board, Harley 3469, f.32v.
33.
Leg amputation, sixteenth-century woodcut, from Walter H. Riff,
Die große Chirurgi oder vollkommene Wundarznei
, © akg-images.
34.
Vagrant being whipped out of town, from Raphael Holinshed,
The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande
, 1577.
35.
Marguerite de Valois dancing
la volta
at the Valois Court, French School, © Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes; akg-images; Erich Lessing.
36.
Four Gentlemen of High Rank Playing Primero
, © The Right Hon. Earl of Derby; The Bridgeman Art Library.
37.
Manuscript of the May Day scene from the play by Sir Thomas More, © The British Library Board, Harley 7368, f.9.
This book is dedicated to my daughter, Elizabeth Rose Mortimer.
But when memory embraces the night
I see those days, long since gone,
like the ancient light of extinguished stars
travelling still, and shining on.
from ‘Ghosts’,
Acumen
24 (1996), p.
17
Introduction
It is a normal morning in London, on Friday 16 July 1591. In the wide street known as Cheapside the people are about their business, going between the timber-covered market stalls. Traders are calling out, hoping to attract the attention of merchants’ wives. Travellers and gentlemen are walking along the recently repaired pavements of the street, going in and out of the goldsmiths’ and moneylenders’ shops. Servants and housewives are making their way through the market crowds to the Little Conduit near the back gate to the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral, some with leather water vessels in their arms, others with casks suspended from a yoke across their shoulders. The morning sun is reflected by the glass in the upper windows of the rich merchants’ houses. A maid looks down on those in the street as she cleans her master’s bedchamber.
Suddenly there is a great commotion near the market. ‘Repent, England! Repent!’ yells a man at the top of his voice. He is dressed in black, handing out printed leaflets as he strides along. ‘Repent!’ he shouts again and again, ‘Christ Jesus is come with his fan in his hand to judge the Earth!’ This man is no mean fool; he is a prosperous London citizen, Mr Edmund Coppinger. Another gentleman, Mr Henry Arthington, also dressed in black, is following him, striding from the alley called Old Change into Cheapside. He too calls out, declaring that ‘Judgement Day has come upon us all! Men will rise up and kill each other as butchers do swine, for the Lord Jesus has risen.’ The printed bills they hand out declare that they are intent on a complete reformation of the Church in England. For the illiterate majority in the crowd, they call out their message: ‘The bishops must be put down! All clergymen should be equal! Queen Elizabeth has forfeited her crown and is worthy to be deprived of her kingdom. Jesus Christ has come again. The reborn Messiah is even now in
London, in the form of William Hacket. Every man and woman should acknowledge him as a divine being and lord of all Christendom.’