Piety and the Italian vice
Every schoolboy, the book says, knew Roger Ascham's warning about 'Italianate Englishmen' in The Scholemaster (the text gives 1563). He thought going to Italy very dangerous: once, virtue and chastity had made that land the lady of the world, but now corruption had made it a slave to those who once served it gladly. He knew many innocent, learned men who went from England to Italy and came back unwilling to live as orderly as before or to speak as learnedly. He cited the Italian proverb that an Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate, and said that in nine days in one Italian city he had heard more of sin than in nine years in noble London.
Ascham was not alone. Stephen Gosson wrote in The School of Abuse (1579) that licentiousness had been stolen from Italy and that the theaters of Rome and the vices of Italy abounded among the English. Cecil advised his son Robert never to let his own son cross the Alps, for there he would learn only pride, irreligion and atheism. The Puritan Philip Stubbes, in The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), called English men wicked, pleasure-loving and proud of their sins. Bishop Jewel, preaching before the queen, lamented that Londoners mocked the Gospel and grew ever more wicked and sensual, and that if our lives bore witness to our religion they would cry out that there is no God.
Much of this lament came from the exaggerations of moralists scolding people who no longer feared hell. Most people were probably neither better nor worse than before. But as the Puritan minority grew stricter in morals, spending and speech, an unbelieving minority agreed with many Italians that it is better to enjoy life than to fuss about death. Italian wines, popular in England, may have loosened moral fibers as well. Italy, France and the classics may also have led people to enjoy beauty more freely, even as they grieved more over its passing.
Love and marriage
Beauty, including that of young men, stirred spirits and pens in that age. Marlowe had Mephistophilis lead Faustus to prize a vision fairer than the heavens, and Shakespeare's sonnets speak sometimes of love for men and sometimes for women. Love of women was not only for poets: it was a kind of intoxication rooted in blood, literature and court, turning pirates into sonneteers. At court women added makeup to wit and stole hearts as well as minds. Modesty itself was a form of allure that doubled beauty's power. Prayers once offered to the Virgin Mary fell away under mockery of virginity, and the lovelorn began to write sonnets, stirred by longing. Women were glad to see men contend for them and ready to marry, or yield to, the victor. As a sign of religion's weakening hold, no church ceremony or consent was needed for a valid marriage, though this was thought harmful to public morals. Most marriages were arranged by parents after a mutual review of family property, and the bewildered bride became a housewife, as if just waking from a dream, devoting her life to children and daily work as the generations went on.
Corruption in public life
The decline in morals showed most in national affairs. Making money dishonestly, large or small, was common in public offices. Elizabeth looked the other way, since it spared her from raising officials' salaries. The treasurer of war, besides his salary, drew 16,000 pounds a year, according to the book. Through a fraud whose shame faded with time, captains kept dead soldiers on the pay roll, pocketed their wages and sold the clothing issued to them, so that a dead soldier was worth more than a living one. Men of high rank took large sums from Philip II to steer English policy his way. Admirals practiced piracy and the slave trade at sea. Clergy sold offices. Apothecaries were tempted to make poisons, and some physicians prescribed them. Merchants adulterated goods so notoriously that in 1585, we read, England made more counterfeit cotton and wool cloth than any other country in Europe. Morals in the army were primitive, and unconditional surrenders often led to the killing of soldiers and civilians. Witches were put to death and Jesuits were executed with ferocity. In Elizabeth's reign the scent of humanity was faint.
Justice and the law
Human nature, despite centuries of religion and government, still resented civilization and voiced its protest in sin and crime, which laws and penalties seldom checked. In the heart of London stood four law schools, Middle Temple, Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn, together called the Inns of Court. Law students lived there like those at Oxford and Cambridge. Only gentlemen's sons were admitted, and all graduates swore to serve the queen. Their leaders, and some who were influenced earlier, became judges in the royal courts. Judges and lawyers wore striking robes at work, since half the majesty of law lay in dress.
The courts were unanimously corrupt. A member of Parliament called one justice of the peace an animal that would overlook a dozen offenses for half a dozen chickens, though Francis Bacon thought higher motives were needed. In Shakespeare's King Lear the grieving king says to plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice breaks without harm. Since judges could be dismissed at the queen's pleasure, they weighed her views in their verdicts, and the queen's favorites took bribes to induce her to meddle in court decisions. Trial by jury survived except for traitors, though judges and court officers often intimidated juries. In general any act that threatened the queen's life or throne was deemed treason, and the traitor was brought before the Star Chamber (a hall in Westminster Palace where the king's council met, named for the stars painted on its ceiling, which served as a criminal court under the Tudors until abolished in 1641). It was in effect the Privy Council in judges' robes. The defendant was denied a jury and told no reason for his arrest, was closely questioned or even subjected to coercion, and was usually jailed or handed over to the executioner.
The criminal code relied more on terror than on policing, and despite weak enforcement its penalties were severe. Some two hundred offenses, among them extortion, cutting down saplings and stealing more than a shilling, carried the death penalty, and on average about eight hundred people a year, the book says, were put to death for crimes in Merry England. Offenders were put in the pillory, on the stool, or tied to the cart's tail, and harsh bodily punishments were common.
When the Puritan lawyer John Stubbs wrote a pamphlet treating the proposed marriage of the queen to Alencon as surrender to Catholicism, the court sentenced him to a savage punishment. Holding up his bleeding arm, he removed his hat with his left hand and cried, 'God save the Queen!' When Philip Sidney sent the queen a letter protesting such brutality, Cecil was ashamed and found Stubbs an easy government post. Torture was not legal, but the Star Chamber used it. Despite the age's rich and deep literature, then, its level of civilization did not match that of Italy in Petrarch's day or of Avignon, and fell far below the Rome of Augustus.