The People for whom Shakespeare Wrote | Page 7

in neat turns and conceits; it
was a compliment then to be called a "conceited" writer.
Of all the guides to Shakespeare's time, there is none more profitable or
entertaining than William Harrison, who wrote for Holinshed's
chronicle "The Description of England," as it fell under his eyes from
1577 to 1587. Harrison's England is an unfailing mine of information
for all the historians of the sixteenth century; and in the edition
published by the New Shakespeare Society, and edited, with a wealth
of notes and contemporary references, by Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, it
is a new revelation of Shakespeare's England to the general reader.
Harrison himself is an interesting character, and trustworthy above the
general race of chroniclers. He was born in 1534, or, to use his
exactness of statement, "upon the 18th of April, hora ii, minut 4,
Secunde 56, at London, in Cordwainer streete, otherwise called bowe-
lane." This year was also remarkable as that in which "King Henry 8
polleth his head; after whom his household and nobility, with the rest
of his subjects do the like." It was the year before Anne Boleyn, haled
away to the Tower, accused, condemned, and executed in the space of
fourteen days, "with sigheing teares" said to the rough Duke of Norfolk,
"Hither I came once my lord, to fetch a crown imperial; but now to
receive, I hope, a crown immortal." In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul's
school; the litany in the English tongue, by the king's command, was
that year sung openly in St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison
with the other children, enforced to buy those books, walking in
general procession, as was appointed, before the king went to Boulogne.
Harrison was a student at both Oxford and Cambridge, taking the
degree of bachelor of divinity at the latter in 1569, when he had been an

Oxford M.A. of seven years' standing. Before this he was household
chaplain to Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham, who gave him, in
1588-89, the rectory of Radwinter, in Essex, which he held till his
death, in 1593. In 1586 he was installed canon of Windsor. Between
1559 and 1571 he married Marion Isebrande,--of whom he said in his
will, referring to the sometime supposed unlawfulness of priests'
marriages, "by the laws of God I take and repute in all respects for my
true and lawful wife." At Radwinter, the old parson, working in his
garden, collected Roman coins, wrote his chronicles, and expressed his
mind about the rascally lawyers of Essex, to whom flowed all the
wealth of the land. The lawyers in those days stirred up contentions,
and then reaped the profits. "Of all that ever I knew in Essex," says
Harrison, "Denis and Mainford excelled, till John of Ludlow, alias
Mason, came in place, unto whom in comparison these two were but
children." This last did so harry a client for four years that the latter,
still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within four days made
an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness." And after
his death the lawyer so handled his son "that there was never sheep
shorn in May, so near clipped of his fleece present, as he was of many
to come." The Welsh were the most litigious people. A Welshman
would walk up to London bare-legged, carrying his hose on his neck, to
save wear and because he had no change, importune his countrymen till
he got half a dozen writs, with which he would return to molest his
neighbors, though no one of his quarrels was worth the money he paid
for a single writ.
The humblest mechanic of England today has comforts and
conveniences which the richest nobles lacked in Harrison's day, but it
was nevertheless an age of great luxury and extravagance; of brave
apparel, costly and showy beyond that of any Continental people,
though wanting in refined taste; and of mighty banquets, with service
of massive plate, troops of attendants, and a surfeit of rich food and
strong drink.
In this luxury the clergy of Harrison's rank did not share. Harrison was
poor on forty pounds a year. He complains that the clergy were taxed
more than ever, the church having become "an ass whereon every man

is to ride to market and cast his wallet." They paid tenths and first-fruits
and subsidies, so that out of twenty pounds of a benefice the incumbent
did not reserve more than L 13 6s. 8d. for himself and his family. They
had to pay for both prince and laity, and both grumbled at and
slandered them. Harrison gives a good account of the higher clergy; he
says the bishops were loved for their painful diligence in their calling,
and that the