By George Daniel

“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Shakspere.

In Two Volumes. Vol. I.

London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street. 1841

Original

Original

“Merrie England in the Olden Time” having found favour with the Public in “Bentley's Miscellany,” puts forth new attractions in the present volumes. It has received numerous and important corrections and additions; the story has been illustrated by those eminent artists Messrs. Leech and Robert Cruikshank; and fac-similes, faithfully executed by that “cunninge” limner Mr. Thomas Gilks, of rare and unique portraits of celebrated Players, Jesters, Conjurers, and Mountebanks, (preserved only in the cabinets of the curious,) exhibit “lively sculptures” of once popular drolls and wizards that shook the sides and “astonished the nerves” of our jovial-hearted and wondering ancestors.

To supply the antiquarian portion of Merrie England, a library and a collection of prints and drawings of a highly curious and recherche character have been resorted to; and, though the task of concentrating and reducing into moderate compass such ample materials has not been an easy one,

“The labour we delight in physics pain.”

This, and a large share of public approval, have made it a “labour of love.”

In that part which is purely fiction the characters can best speak for themselves.

Canonbury,

Oct. 1841.

CONTENTS

MERRIE ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

INTRODUCTION.

Youth is the season of ingenuousness and enjoyment, when we desire to please, and blush not to own ourselves pleased. At that happy period there is no affectation of wisdom; we look only to the bright and beautiful: we inquire not whether it be an illusion; it is sufficient that fairy land, with its flowers of every hue, is the path on which we tread. To youth succeeds manhood, with its worldly prudence: then we are taught to take nothing, not even happiness, upon trust; to investigate until we are lost in the intricacies of detail; and to credit our judgment for what is due only to our coldness and apathy. We lose all sympathy for the past; the future is the subject of our anxious speculation; caution and re serve are our guardian angels; and if the heart still throb with a fond emotion, we stifle it with what speed we may, as detrimental to our interests, and unworthy our new-born intelligence and philosophy. A short acquaintance with the world will convince the most sanguine that this stage is not the happiest; that

ambition and mercenary cares make up the tumultuous scene; and though necessity compel a temporary submission, it is good to escape from the toils, and breathe a purer air. This brings us to another period, when reflection has taught us self-knowledge, and we are no longer overwise in our own esteem. Then returns something of the simplicity that characterised our early days. We welcome old friends; have recourse to old amusements, and the fictions that enchained our youthful fancy resume their wonted spell.

We remember the time when just emerging from boyhood, we affected a disdain for the past. We had put on the man, and no urchin that put on for the first time his holiday suit, felt more inexpressible self-complacency. We had roared at pantomime, and gaped with delight at the mysteries of melodrame—but now becoming too sober to be amused, “puerile!”

“ridiculous!” were the critical anathemas that fulminated from our newly-imbibed absolute wisdom! It might be presumption to say that we have since grown wiser; certain it is, we are become less pleased with ourselves, and consequently more willing to be pleased.

Gentle Reader, we are old enough to have enjoyed, and young enough to remember many of the amusements, wakes, and popular drolleries of Merrie England that have long since submitted to “the tooth of time and razure of oblivion.” Like Parson Adams, we have also been a great traveller—in our books! Reversing the well-known epigram,

“Give me the thing that's pretty, smart, and new:

All ugly, old, odd things, I leave to you,”

we have all our life been a hunter after oddities. We have studied attentively the past. For the future we have been moderately solicitous; there being so many busy economists to take the unthankful task off our hands. We have lost our friend rather than our joke, when the joke has been the better of the two; and have been free of discourse where it has been courteously received, preferring (in the cant of pompous ignorance, which is dear at any price!) to make ourselves “cheap” rather than be set down as exclusive and unkind. Disappointments we have had, and sorrows, with ample experience of the world's ingratitude. But life is too short to harbour enmities; and to be resentful is to be unhappy. This may have cast a transient shade over our lucubrations, which let thy happier humour shine upon and dispel! Wilt thou accept us for thy Cicerone through a journey of strange sights? the curiosities of nature, and the whimsicalities of art. We promise thee faster speed than steam-boat and railroad: for thou shalt traverse the ground of two centuries in two

hours! With pleasant companions by the way, free from the perils of fire and flood,

“Fancy, like the finger of a clock,

Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.”

CHAPTER I.

Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” was the admirable reply of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio when he would have marred his Christmas * merrymaking with Sir Andrew and the Clown. And how beautiful is Olivia's reply to the self-same precisian when the searching apophthegms of the “foolish wise man, or wise foolish man,” sounded like discords in his ears. “O, you are sick of selflove, Malvolio, and taste all with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.”

* Christmas being the season when Jack Frost commonly takes us by the nose, the diversions are within doors, either in exercise, or by the fire-side. Viz. a game at blind-man's- buff, puss-in-the-corner, questions and commands, hoop-and- hide; stories of hobgoblins, Tom-pokers, bull-beggars, witches, wizards, conjurors, Doctor Faustus, Friar Bacon, Doctor Partridge, and such-like horrible bodies, that terrify and delight! “O you merry, merry souls, Christmas is a-coming: We shall have flowing bowls, Dancing, piping, drumming. Delicate minced pies, To feast every virgin; Capon and goose likewise, Brawn, and dish of sturgeon.

We hate to be everlastingly bewailing the follies and vices of mankind; and gladly turn to the pleasanter side of the picture, to contemplate something that we can love and emulate. We know

Then for Christmas-box,

Sweet plum-cake and money;

Delicate holland smocks,

Kisses sweet as honey.

Hey for Christmas ball,

Where we will be jolly;

Coupling short and tall,

Kate, Dick, Ralph, and Molly.

To the hop we go,

Where we'll jig and caper;

Cuckolds all a-row—

Will shall pay the scraper.

Tom must dance with Sue,

Keeping time with kisses;

We'll have a jolly crew

Of sweet smirking Misses!”—Old Song.

There are such things as opaque wits and perverse minds, as there are squinting eyes and crooked legs; but we desire not to entertain such guests either as companions or foils. We come not to the conclusion that the world is split into two classes, viz. those who are and those who ought to be hanged; that we should believe every man to be a rogue till we find him honest. There is quite virtue enough in human life to make our journey moderately happy. We are of the hopeful order of beings, and think this world a very beautiful world, if man would not mar it with his pride, selfishness, and gloom.

It has been a maxim among all great and wise nations to encourage public sports and diversions. The advantages that arise from them to a state; the benefit they are to all degrees of the people; the right purposes they may be made to serve in troublesome times, have generally been so well understood by the ruling powers, that they have seldom permitted them to suffer from the assaults of narrow-minded and ignorant reformers.

Our ancestors were wise when they appointed amusements for the people. And as religious services (which are the means, not the end—the road to London is not London) were never intended for a painful duty, the “drum ecclesiastic,” which in latter times called its recruits to pillage and bloodshed, often summoned Punch, Robin Hood, and their merry crew, to close the motley ceremonies of a holy-appointed day! Then was the calendar Devotion's diary and Mirth's manual! Rational pleasure is heightened by participation; solitary enjoyment is always selfish. Who ever inquires after a sour recluse, except his creditors and next heir? Nobody misses him when there are so many more agreeable people to supply his place. Of what use is such a negative, “crawling betwixt earth and heaven?” If he hint that Diogenes, * dying of the dumps, may be found at home in his tub, who cares to disinter him? Oh, the deep solitude of a great city to a morose and selfish spirit! The Hall of Eblis is not more terrible. Away, then, with supercilious exclusiveness! 'Tis the grave of the affections!

the charnel-house of the heart! What to us is the world, if to the world we are nothing?

We delight to see a fool ** administer to his brethren.

Diogenes, when he trod with his dirty cobbled shoes on the beautiful carpets of Plato, exclaimed triumphantly, “I tread upon the pride of Plato!”—“Yes,” replied Plato, “but with a greater pride!” * “A material fool,” as Jacques describes Touchstone. Such was Dr. Andrew Borde, the well-known progenitor of Merry Andrews; and the presumed author of the “Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham,” composed in the early part of the sixteenth century. “In the time of Henry VIII. and after,” (says Anthony à Wood,) “it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by the scholars and gentlemen.” It is thus referred to in an old play of 1560:— “Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! I must needs laughe in my slefe. The wise men of Gotum are risen againe.”

If merriment sometimes ran riot, it never exhibited itself in those deep-laid villanies so rife among the pretenders to sanctity and mortification. An appeal to “clubs” among the London apprentices; the pulling down of certain mansions of iniquity, of which Mrs. Cole, in after days, was the devout proprietress; a few broken heads at the Bear Garden; the somewhat opposite sounds of the “belles tolling for the lectorer, and the trumpets sounding to the stages,” * and sundry minor enormities, were the only terrible results of this national licence. Mark what followed, when masking, morris-dancing, ***

Foote's “Minor.” Act i. scene 1. * Harleian MSS. No. 286. *** The morris-dance was one of the most applauded merriments of Old England. Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May, the fool, the piper, to which were afterwards added a dragon, and a hobbyhorse, were the characters that figured away in that truly ancient and grotesque movement. Will Kempe, “the comical and conceited jest-monger, and vicegerent to the ghost of Dicke Tarleton,” who “raised many a roar by making faces and mouths of all sorts,” danced the morris with his men of Gotham, in his “Nine daies' wonder from London to Norwich.” Kempe's “new jigg,” rivalled in popularity his Peter in Romeo and Juliet; Dogberry, in “Much ado about nothing;” and Justice Shallow, of which he was the original performer. In “Jacke Drum's Entertainment,” 4to. 1601, is the following song: ON THE INTRODUCTION OF A WHITSUN MORRIS-DANCE. “Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it lustily, Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour,

Tickle it, tickle it, lustily. Let us be seene on Hygate Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway. Sing we are come hither, let us spare for no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway.”

May games, stage-plays, * fairs, and the various pastimes that delighted the commonalty, were sternly prohibited. The heart sickens at the cant and cruelty of these monstrous times, when fanaticism, with a dagger in one hand, and “Hooks and Eyes for an Unbeliever's Breeches,” in the other, revelled in the destruction of all that was intellectual in the land.

* Plays were suppressed by the Puritans in 1633. The actors were driven off the stage by the soldiers; and the only pleasantry that Messrs. “Praise-God-Barebones” and “Fight- the-good-fight,” indulged in, was “Enter red coat, exit hat and cloak;” a cant phrase in reference to this devout tyranny. Randolph, in “The Muses' Looking-glass,” makes a fanatic utter this charitable prayer: “That the Globe, Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice, Had been consum'd, the Phoenix burnt to ashes; The Fortune whipp'd for a blind—Blackfriars! He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing I' the time of Reformation: lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear Gardens, And there be soundly baited. In 1599 was published “The overthrow of Stage Playes, by way of controversie betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainolde, where- in all the Reasons that ean be made for them are notably refuted, the objections answered, and the case so clear and resolved as that the judgment of any man that is not froward and perverse may casilic be satisfied; wherein is

manifestly proved that it is not onely unlawfull to bee an actor, but a beholder of those vanities, &e. &c.”

When the lute, the virginals, the viol-de-gambo, were hushed for the inharmonious bray of their miserable conventicles, and the quaintly appropriate signs * of the ancient taverns and music shops were pulled down to make room for some such horrible effigy as we see dedicated to their high priest, John Knox, on a wall in the odoriferous Canongate of Modern Athens. ***

“What a poor pimping business is a Presbyterian place of worship; dirty, narrow and squalid: stuck in the corner of an old Popish garden such as Linlithgow, and much more, Melrose.”—Robert Burns. * Two wooden heads, with this inscription under it: “We three loggerheads be.” The third was the spectator. The tabor was the ancient sign of a music shop. Tarleton kept an eating-house with this sign. Apropos of signs—Two Irishmen beholding a hatchment fixed against a house, the one inquired what it was? “It's a bad sign!” replied the other mysteriously. Paddy being still at fault as to the meaning, asked for further explanation.—“It's a sign,” cried his companion with a look of immeasurable superiority, “that somebody is dead!” *** Those who would be convinced of the profaneness of the Cameronians and Covenanters have only to read “Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence displayed, or the Folly of their teaching discovered from their Books, Sermons, and Prayers,” 1738,—a volume full of ludicrous impieties. We select one specimen.

Mr. William Vetch, preaching at Linton, in Tiviotdale, said, “Our Bishops thought they were very secure this long time. “Like Willie Willie Wastel, I am in my castel. All the dogs in the town Dare nor ding me down. “Yea, but there is a doggie in Heaven that has dung them all down.”

Deep was the gloom of those dismal days! The kitchens were cool; the spits motionless. The green holly and the mystic mistletoe * were blooming abominations. The once rosy cheeks of John Bull looked as lean as a Shrove-Tuesday pancake, and every rib like the tooth of a saw.

* “The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster, and Ruleroast the Cook,” 4to. 1641. * The magical properties of the mistletoe are mentioned both by Virgil and Ovid; and Apuleius has preserved some verses of the poet Lelius, in which he mentions the mistletoe as one of the things necessary to make a magician. In the dark ages a similar belief prevailed, and even to the present day the peasants of Holstein, and some other countries, call the mistletoe the “Spectre's Wand,” from a supposition that holding a branch of mistletoe in the hand will not only enable a man to see ghosts, but to force them to speak to him! The mistletoe is peculiar to Christmas.

Rampant were those times, when crop-ear'd Jack Presbyter was as blythe as shepherd at a wake. Down tumbled the Maypoles *—no more music

“We'll break the windows which the whore Of Babylon hath planted, And when the Popish saints are down, Then Burges shall be sainted; We'll burn the fathers' learned books, And make the schoolmen flee; We'll down with all that smells of wit, And hey, then, up go we!” * The downfall of May-games, 4to. 1660. By Thomas Hall, the canting parson of King's-Norton.—Hear the caitiff, “There's not a knave in all the town, Nor swearing courtier, nor base clown, Nor dancing lob, nor mincing quean, Nor popish clerk, be't priest or dean, Nor Knight debauch'd nor gentleman, That follows drab, or cup, or can, That will give thee a friendly look, If thou a May-pole canst not brook.” On May 1, 1517, the unfortunate shaft, or May-pole, gave rise to the insurrection of that turbulent body, the London apprentices, and the plundering of the foreigners in the city, whence it got the name of Evil May-day. From that time the offending pole was hung on a range of hooks over the doors of a long row of neighbouring houses. In the 3rd of Edward VI. an over-zealous fanatic called Sir Stephen began

to preach against this May-pole, which inflamed his audience so greatly, that the owner of every house over which it hung sawed off as much as depended over his premises, and committed piecemeal to the flames this terrible idol! The “tall May-pole” that “onee o'erlooked the Strand,” (about the year 1717,) Sir Isaac Newton begged of the parish, and it was carried to Wanstead in Essex, where it was erected in the park, and had the honour of raising the greatest telescope then known. The New Church occupies its site. “But now (so Anne and piety ordain), A church collects the saints of Drury Lane.”

and dancing! * For the disciples of Stubbes and Prynne having discovered by their sage oracles, that May-games were derived from the Floralian Feasts and interludes of the pagan Romans, which were solemnised on the first of May; and that dancing round a May-pole, adorned with garlands of flowers, ribbons, and other ornaments, was idolatry, after the fashion of Baal's worshippers, who capered about the altar in honour of their idol; resolved that the Goddess Flora should no longer receive the gratulations of Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood's merry men, on a fine May morning; a superstition derived from the Sibyl's books, horribly papistical and pagan.

* “Good fellowes must go learne to daunce The brydeal is full near a: There is a brail come out of Fraunce, The fyrst ye harde this yeare a. For I must leape, and thou must hoppe, And we must turne all three a; The fourth must bounce it like a toppe, And so we shall agree a. praye the mynstrell make no stoppe, For we wyll merye be a.” From an unique black letter ballad, printed in 1569, “Intytuled, 'Good Fellowes must go learne to Daunce.'”

Nor was the “precise villain” less industrious in confiscation and sacrilege. Painted windows—Lucifer's Missal drawings!—he took infinite pains to destroy; and with his long pike did the devil's work diligently. He could endure no cross * but that on silver; hence the demolition of those beautiful edifices that once adorned Cheapside, and other remarkable sites in ancient times.