shifting path of orthodoxy. "The spirit of Calvinistic Presbyterianism, says Green, "excluded all toleration of practice or belief...... For heresy there was the punishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind and reckless ferocity." 1 The Government inquisitors were authorized to use "such torture as is usual for the better understanding of the truth." 2 They did so, and the acts that resulted challenge comparison with the iniquities of Nero and Torquemada. Limbs were racked, and legs were pulped; men were nailed to the pillory and left to free themselves by cutting off their ears with their own hands; needles were driven into the finger-tips between the nails and the flesh, and abominations too horrible for detail were widely practiced. Those who suffered death for their convictions were executed under fiendish conditions. Heretics were burnt alive "with roaring and crying." For the offence of refusing to plead on being charged with harbouring priests, permitting Mass to be said in her husband's house, and sending her son abroad to be educated in a foreign seminary, a lady of thirty was condemned to death in the following form: "Margaret Clitheroe. Having refused to put yourself to the country, this must be your sentence. You must return from whence you came, and there in the lowest part of the prison be stripped naked, laid down with your back upon the ground and as much weight 1 Short History, p. 469. 2 State Papers Domestic (Elizabeth), vol. ccxxx, p. 646. laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue three days without meat or drink except a little barley-bread and puddlewater; and the third day, your hands and feet being tied to posts and a sharp stone being put under your back, you are to be pressed to death." The more usual method of execution was, however, to hang the victim by the neck, cut him down, and, while yet alive and conscious, rake out his heart and entrails, and fling them into a cauldron of boiling tar, or water. As a special privilege the condemned man sometimes begged that he "might not be bowelled ere he was dead." On the gateways and bridges were collected the loathsome trophies of human heads, boiled, tarred, and weatherworn. In 1582 executions were so frequent that complaint was made that London was "but as one shambles for human flesh." CHAPTER V RELIGION I have dilated enough on these "stupend and exquisite torments. Amid such a conflict the waters of Truth were necessarily churned and trampled into a repulsive mud. Men's doctrines were as monstrous as their actions. "Give me but a little leave," says Robert Burton, "and I will set before your eyes in brief a stupend, vast, infinite Ocean of incredible madness and folly; a sea full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfs, Euripuses, and contrary tides, full of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, and Siren calms, Halcyonian Seas, unspeakable misery, such Comedies and Tragedies, such absurd and ridiculous, feral and lamentable fits, that I know not whether they are more to be pitied or dirided, "" 1 Truth and Purity, being exiled from their birthright, seem to have taken refuge on what Taine referring to the Elizabethan Stage, truly characterises as a "dunghill. "Stage plays, says a contemporary, "serve for nothing but to nourish filthyness, and where they are most used there filthyness is most practised. 1 Part. III. Sec. Iv. Mem. 1. Subs 1. 2 Exposition of Ten Commandments, R. Cleaver, 1615, p. 299. "In plays and interludes," says Stubbes, 1 "there is nothing but blasphemy scurrility and whoredom maintained." "The blessed word of God is to be handled reverently, gravely and sagely, not scoffingly, floutingly and gibingly as it is upon stages without any reverence, worship or veneration. The Word of our Salvation.... were not given to be derided and jested at as they be in these filthy plays." Bishop Babington in 1588, described stage plays as "most horrible spectacles," adding, "these players behaviour polluteth all things, their plays feasts of Satan and inventions of the Devil.' The author of A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plays and Theatres (1580) alludes to the playhouses as "Chappels of Satan." "The stagers are," says he, "commonly such kind of men in their conversation as they are in profession," mockers and flowters of the Deity, exercised in practising wickedness, "making that an art to the end they might the better gesture it in their parts. For who can better play the ruffian than the verie ruffian ?" We might suspect this and other testimony but for its unanimity and for the fact that the players, to a considerable extent on their own shewing, were "verie ruffians." "No figure," says a modern historian, better paints the debauchery and scepticism of the group of young playwrights than Robert Greene. "Hell and the afterworld were the butts of his ceaseless mockery. If he had not feared the judges of the Queen's Courts 1 Anatomy of Abuses. 2 N. S. Society's Publications vi. 6., p. 83 more than he feared God, he said in bitter jest, he should often have turned cutpurse. 1 Yet, if they led the lives of ghouls, it is nevertheless clear that the players spoke with the tongues of Archangels. Alluding to Shakespeare, a modern writer has observed, "He taught the Divineness of Forgiveness, perpetual Mercy, constant Patience, endless Peace, perpetual Gentleness. If you can show me one who knew things better than this man, show him! I know him not! If he had appeared as a Divine they would have burned him; as a Politician they would have beheaded him; but Destiny made him a Player. No one knew things "better than " Shakespeare, but many others were at work at the same task and were insinuating the same lessons. They began with the fundamental verity THOUGHT IS FREE. Thought is free. SHAKESPEARE (Twelfth Night 1. 3.) 1623 and (The Tempest III. 2.) 1623. Thought is free. HEYWOOD (1 Edward IV.) 1600. Thought is free. RANDOLPH (Muses Looking Glass IV. 3) 1638. Thought is free. BEAUMONT & FLETCHER (Honest Man's Fortune Thoughts are free. MARSTON (Insatiate Countess III. 3.) 1613. WEBSTER & ROWLEY (Cure for a Cuckold 11. 2.) 1 Short History of English People. J. R. Green. p. 459. |