The People for whom Shakespeare Wrote | Page 8

clergy of England were reputed on the Continent as learned
divines, skillful in Greek and Hebrew and in the Latin tongue.
There was, however, a scarcity of preachers and ministers in Elizabeth's
time, and their character was not generally high. What could be
expected when covetous patrons canceled their debts to their servants
by bestowing advowsons of benefices upon their bakers, butlers, cooks,
grooms, pages, and lackeys--when even in the universities there was
cheating at elections for scholarships and fellowships, and gifts were
for sale! The morals of the clergy were, however, improved by frequent
conferences, at which the good were praised and the bad reproved; and
these conferences were "a notable spur unto all the ministers, whereby
to apply their books, which otherwise (as in times past) would give
themselves to hawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the ale
house, shooting, and other like vanities." The clergy held a social rank
with tradespeople; their sons learned trades, and their daughters might
go out to service. Jewell says many of them were the "basest sort of
people" unlearned, fiddlers, pipers, and what not. "Not a few," says
Harrison, "find fault with our threadbare gowns, as if not our patrons
but our wives were the causes of our woe." He thinks the ministers will
be better when the patrons are better, and he defends the right of the
clergy to marry and to leave their goods, if they have any, to their
widows and children instead of to the church, or to some school or
almshouse. What if their wives are fond, after the decease of their
husbands, to bestow themselves not so advisedly as their calling
requireth; do not duchesses, countesses, and knights' wives offend in
the like fully so often as they? And Eve, remarks the old philosopher of
Radwinter--"Eve will be Eve, though Adam would say nay."
The apparel of the clergy, at any rate, was more comely and decent than
it ever was in the popish church, when the priests "went either in divers

colors like players, or in garments of light hue, as yellow, red, green,
etc.; with their shoes piked, their hair crisped, their girdles armed with
silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc., buckled with like metal; their
apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their caps laced
and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days, was to
behold a peacock that spreadeth his tail when he danceth before the
hen."
Hospitality among the clergy was never better used, and it was
increased by their marriage; for the meat and drink were prepared more
orderly and frugally, the household was better looked to, and the poor
oftener fed. There was perhaps less feasting of the rich in bishops'
houses, and "it is thought much peradventure, that some bishops in our
time do come short of the ancient gluttony and prodigality of their
predecessors;" but this is owing to the curtailing of their livings, and
the excessive prices whereunto things are grown.
Harrison spoke his mind about dignitaries. He makes a passing
reference to Thomas a Becket as "the old Cocke of Canturburie," who
did crow in behalf of the see of Rome, and the "young cockerels of
other sees did imitate his demeanour." He is glad that images, shrines,
and tabernacles are removed out of churches. The stories in glass
windows remain only because of the cost of replacing them with white
panes. He would like to stop the wakes, guilds, paternities, church-ales,
and brides-ales, with all their rioting, and he thinks they could get on
very well without the feasts of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, the
holy-days after Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and those of the
Virgin Mary, with the rest. "It is a world to see," he wrote of 1552,
"how ready the Catholicks are to cast the communion tables out of their
churches, which in derision they call Oysterboards, and to set up altars
whereon to say mass." And he tells with sinful gravity this tale of a
sacrilegious sow: "Upon the 23rd of August, the high altar of Christ
Church in Oxford was trimly decked up after the popish manner and
about the middest of evensong, a sow cometh into the quire, and pulled
all to the ground; for which heinous fact, it is said she was afterwards
beheaded; but to that I am not privy." Think of the condition of Oxford
when pigs went to mass! Four years after this there was a sickness in

England, of which a third part of the people did taste, and many
clergymen, who had prayed not to live after the death of Queen Mary,
had their desire, the Lord hearing their prayer, says Harrison, "and
intending thereby to give his church a breathing time."
There were four