September 2, 2025 • 30 mins
Step back into the dawn of American history with Elizabethan Sea-Dogs, where the spirit of the citizen, colonist, and pioneer comes alive! This captivating exploration reveals the daring adventurers of the Elizabethan era who paved the way for future generations in the New World. Under the brilliant leadership of Sir Francis Drake, the first of the modern admirals, English sailors claimed their dominion over the sea. Known as Sea-Dogs, they opened the gateway for explorers and settlers seeking their fortunes in America. Discover how this century of maritime quests and naval warfare laid the foundations for Anglo-American history and secured the path for countless pioneers eager to carve out their destinies.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter four of Elizabethan Sea Dogs by William Wood. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter four Elizabethan England.
Elizabethan England is the motherland, the true historic home of
(00:22):
all the different peoples who speak the Sea born English tongue.
In the reign of Elizabeth there was only one English
speaking nation. This nation consisted of there five million people,
fewer than their art to day in London or New York.
But hardly had the Great Queen died before Englishmen began
(00:43):
that colonizing movement which has carried their language the whole
world round and established their civilization in every quarter of
the globe. Within three centuries after Elizabeth's day, the use
of English as a native speech had grown quite thirtyfold.
Within the same three centuries, the number of those living
(01:03):
under laws and institutions derived from England had grown one hundredfold.
The England of Elizabeth was in England of great deeds,
but of greater dreams. Elizabethan literature, take it for all
in all, has never been surpassed. Myriad minded Shakespeare remains unequaled. Still.
Elizabethan England was indeed a nest of singing birds. Prose
(01:27):
was often far too pedestrian for the exultant life of
such a mighty generation. As new worlds came into their
expectant can the glowing Elizabethan's wished to fly there on
the soaring wings of verse. To them, the tide of
fortune was no ordinary stream, but the white mained proud neck,
(01:50):
arching tide that bore adventures to sea with pomp of
waters unwithstood. The goodly heritage that England gave her offspring
overseas included Shakespeare and the English Bible. The Authorized Version
entered into the very substance of early American life. There
(02:10):
was a marked difference between Episcopaalian Virginia and Puritan New England,
but both took their stand on this version of the
English Bible, in which the springs of holy writ rejoiced
to run through channels of Elizabethan prose. It is true
that Elizabeth slept with her father's before this book of
books was printed, and that the first of the Stewarts
(02:33):
reigned in her stead. Nevertheless, the Authorized Version is pure Elizabethan.
All its translators were Elizabethans, as their dedication to King
James still printed with every copy gratefully acknowledges in its
reference to the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen
(02:54):
Elizabeth of most happy memory. These words of the Reverend
Scholars contained no empty compliment. Elizabeth was a great sovereign
and in some essential particulars a very great national leader.
This daughter of Henry the eighth and his second wife,
Anne Bolin the Debonair, was born a heretic in fifteen
(03:15):
hundred and thirty three. Her father was then defying both
Spain and the Pope. Within three years after her birth,
her mother was beheaded, and by act of Parliament, Elizabeth
herself was declared illegitimate. She was fourteen when her father died,
leaving the kingdom to his three children in succession, Elizabeth
(03:36):
being the third. Then followed the Protestant reign of the
boy king Edward the sixth, during which Elizabeth enjoyed security,
then the Catholic reign of her Spanish half sister, Bloody Mary,
during which her life hung by the merest thread. At first, however,
Mary concealed her hostility to Elizabeth because she thought the
(03:58):
two daughters of Henry v. S eighth ought to appear
together in her triumphal entry into London from one point
of view, and a feminine one at that. This was
a fatal mistake on Mary's part, for never did Elizabeth
show to more advantage. She was just under twenty, while
Mary was nearly twice her age. Mary had indeed provided
(04:19):
herself with one good foil in the person of Anne
of Cleaves, the Flemish mare whose flat, coarse face and
lumbering body had disgusted King Henry thirteen years before when
Cromwell had foisted her upon him as his fourth wife.
But with poor, fat straw colored Anne on one side,
(04:39):
in black and sallow formed looking man voice Mary on
the other, the thairly English Princess Elizabeth took London by
storm on the spot. Tall and majestic, she was a
magnificent example of the finest Anglo Norman type, always the
glass of fashion and then the very mold of form.
Her splendid figure looked equally well on horseback or on foot.
(05:03):
A little full in the eye, and with a slightly
aquiline nose, she appeared as she really was, keenly observant
and commanding, though these two features just prevented her from
being a beauty. The bright blue eyes and the finely
chiseled nose were themselves quite beautiful enough. Nor was she
less taking to the ear than to the eye, for
(05:25):
a marked contrast to gruff Mary and wheezy Foreign, and
she had a rich, clear, though rather too loud, English voice.
When the court reined up and dismounted, Elizabeth became even
more at the center of attraction. Mary marched stiffly on
and plodded after. But as for Elizabeth, perfect in dancing, riding, archery,
(05:49):
and all the sports of chivalry, she trod the line
like a buck in spring, and looked like a lance
in rest. When Elizabeth succeeded in the Autumn Fifth eighteen
hundred and fifty eight, she had died need of all
she had learned in her twenty five years of adventurous life.
Fortunately for herself and on the whole, most fortunately for
(06:11):
both England and America, she had a remarkable power of
inspiring devotion to the service of their Queen and country
in men of both the cool and ardent types. And
this long after her personal charms had gone. Government, religion, finance, defense,
and foreign affairs were in a perilous state of flux,
(06:33):
besides which they have never been more distractingly mixed up
with one another. Henry the seventh had saved money for
twenty five years, his three successors had spent it lavishly
for fifty. Henry the eighth had kept the church Catholic
and ritual, while making it purely national. In government, the
Lord Protector Somerset had made it as Protestant as possible.
(06:57):
Under Edward the sixth, Mary had done her to bring
it back to the pope. Home affairs were full of
doubts and dangers, though the great mass of the people
were ready to give their handsome young queen a fair
chance and not a little favor. Foreign affairs were worse.
France was still the hereditary enemy, and the loss of
Calais under Mary had exasperated the whole English nation. Scotland
(07:22):
was a constant menace in the North. Spain was gradually
changing from friend to foe. The Pope was disinclined to
recognize Elizabeth at all. To understand how difficult her position was,
we must remember what sort of constitution England had when
the German of the United States was forming. The Roman
Empire was one constituent whole, from the emperor down. The
(07:44):
English speaking peoples of today formed constituent holes from the
electorate up. In both cases, all parts were and are
in constant relation to the whole. The case of Elizabeth
in England, however, it was very different. There was neither
spoted unity from above nor democratic unity from below, but
a mixed and fluctuating kind of government in which Crown, nobles,
(08:08):
Parliament and people formed certain parts which had to be
put together for each occasion. The accepted general idea was
that the Sovereign Supreme as an individual, looked after the
welfare of the country in peace and war so far
as the Crown estates permitted, but that whenever the crown
resources would not suffice, then the Sovereign could call on
(08:30):
nobles and people for whatever the common wheel required. No
bless obleege in return for the estates or monopolies which
they had acquired. The nobles and favored commoners were expected
to come forward with all their resources at every national crisis,
precisely as the Crown was expected to work for the
(08:52):
common will. At all times. When the resources of the
Crown and favored courtiers sufficed, no Parliament was called, but
whenever they had to be supplemented, then Parliament met and
voted whatever it approved. Finally, every English freeman was required
to do his own share towards defending the country in
(09:13):
time of need, and he was further required to know
the proper use of arms. The great object of every
European court during early modern times was to get both
the old feudal nobility and the newly promoted commoners to
revolve round the throne as round the center of their
solar system, by sheer force of character. For the tutors
(09:38):
had no overwhelming army like the Roman conquerors. Henry the
eighth had succeeded wonderfully well. Elizabeth now had to piece
together what had been broken under Edward the sixth and Mary.
She too succeeded, and with the hearty goodwill of nearly
all her subjects. Mary had left the royal treasury deeply
(09:59):
in debt. Yet Elizabeth succeeded in paying off all arrears
and meeting new expenditure for defense and for the court.
The royal income rose. England became immensely richer and more
prosperous than ever before. Foreign trade increased by leaps and bounds.
Home industries flourished and were stimulated by new arrivals from
(10:22):
abroad because England was a safe asylum for the craftsman
whom Philip was driving from the Netherlands to his own
great loss and his rivals gained. English commercial life had
been slowly emerging from medieval ways throughout the fifteenth century.
With the beginning of the sixteenth the rate of emergence
(10:43):
had greatly quickened. The soil bound peasant, who produced enough
food for his family from his thirty acres, was being
gradually replaced by the well to do yeomen who tilled
one hundred acres and upwards. Such holdings produced a substantial
surplus for the market. This increased the national wealth, which
in its turn increased both home and foreign trade. The
(11:06):
peasant milly raised a little wheat and barley, kept a
count perhaps some sheep. The youngan or tenant farmer had
sheep enough for the wool trade, besides some butter, cheese,
and meat for the nearest growing town. He began to
garnish his cupboards with pewter, and his joined beds with
tapestry and silk hangings, and his tables with carpets and
(11:27):
fine napery. He could even feast his neighbors and servants.
After a sharing day with new fangled foreign luxuries like dates, mace, raisins,
currants and sugar. But Elizabethan's society presented striking contrasts. In
parts of England, the practice of engrossing and enclosing holdings
(11:48):
was increasing as sheep raising became more profitable than farming.
The tenants thus dispossessed either swelled the ranks of the
vagabonds who infested the highways, or sought their life glihood
at sea or in London, which provided the two best
openings for adventurous young men. The smaller provincial towns afforded
them little opportunity, for there the trades were largely in
(12:12):
the hands of close corporations descended from the medieval craft guilds.
These were eventually to be swept away by the general
trend of business. Their dissolution had indeed already begun, for
smart village craftsmen were even then forming the new industrial
settlements from which most of the great manufacturing towns of
(12:32):
England have sprung. Camden the historian found Birmingham full of
ringing anvils. Sheffield a town of great name for the
smiths therein Leeds, renowned for cloth and Manchester already a
sort of cottonopolis, though the cottons of those days were
still made of wool. There was a wage's question than
(12:54):
is now. There were demands for a minimum living wage.
The influx of gold and silver from Las America had
sent all prices soaring. Meat became almost prohibitive for the
submerged tenth. There was a rapidly submerging tenth. Beef rose
from once cent a pound in the forties to four
in fifteen hundred and eighty eight, the year of the Armada.
(13:16):
How would the lowest paid of craftsmen fare on twelve
cents a day with butter at ten cents a pound.
Efforts were made again and again to readjust the ratio
between prices and wages, but as a rule, prices increased
much faster than wages. All these things, the increase of
(13:36):
surplus hands, the high cost of living, grievances about wages
and interests, tended to make the farms and workshops of
England recruiting grounds for the sea, and the young men
would strike out for themselves as freighters, traders, privateers, or
downright pirates, lured by the dazzling chance of great and
(13:56):
sudden wealth, the gamble of it was as potent than
as now, probably more potent still. It was an age
of wild speculation, accompanied by all the usual evils that
follow frenzied ways. It was also an age of monopoly.
Both monopoly and speculation sent recruits into the sea dog ranks.
(14:19):
Elizabeth would grant, say to Sir Walter Raleigh, the monopoly
of sweet wines. Raleigh would naturally want as much sweet
wine imported as England could be induced to swallow. So too, Elizabeth,
who got the duty crews, would be wanted for the
monopolistic ships. They would also be wanted for free trading vessels,
(14:41):
that is, for the ships of the smugglers who underbid, undersold,
and tried to overreach the monopolists who represented law, though
not quite justice, but speculation ran to greater extremes than
either monopoly or smuggling. Shakespeare's Putter out of Fire, for one,
was a typical Elizabethans speculator, exploiting the riskiest form of
(15:06):
sea dog trade for all, and sometimes for more than
all that it was worth. A merchant adventurer would pay
a capitalist, say one thousand pounds as a premium to
be forfeited if his ship should be lost, but to
be repaid by the capitalist fivefold to the merchant if
it returned. Incredible as it may seem to us, there
(15:27):
were shrewd money lenders always ready for this sort of deal.
In life or life and death insurance an eloquent testimony
to the risks encountered in sailing unknown seas in the
midst of well known dangers. Marine insurance of the regular
kind was, of course a very different thing. It was
(15:49):
already of immemorial age, going back certainly to medieval and
probably too very ancient times. All forms of insurance on
land are mere mushroom by comparison. Lloyd's had not been
heard of, but there were plenty of smart Elizabethan underwriters
already practicing the general principles which were to be formally
(16:11):
adopted two hundred years later in seventeen hundred and seventy
nine at Lloyd's coffee House. A policy taken out on
the Tiger immortalized by Shakespeare would serve as a model still,
and what makes it all the more interesting is that
the Elizabethan underwriters calculated the tiger's chances at the very
(16:32):
spot where the association known as Lloyd's transacts its business
today the Royal Exchange in London. This in turn brings
elizabeth herself upon the scene, for when she visited the Exchange,
which Sir Thomas Gresham had built to let the merchants
do their street work undercover, she immediately grasped its full
(16:54):
significance and caused it, by a harold and a trumpet,
to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, the name it bears today,
and Elizabethan might well be astonished by what he would
see at any modern Lloyds, yet he would find the
same essentials. For the British Lloyds, like most of its
foreign imitators, is not a gigantic insurance company at all,
(17:18):
but an association of cautiously elected members who carry on
their completely independent private business in daily touch with each other,
precisely as Elizabethans did. Lloyd's method differs wholly from ordinary insurance.
Instead of insuring vessel and cargo with a single company
(17:39):
or man, the owner puts his case before Lloyd's, and
any member can then write his name underneath for any
reasonable part of the risk. The modern underwriter all the
world over is the direct descendant of the Elizabethan who
wrote his name under the conditions of a given risk.
At Sea. Stock companies were in one sense old when
(18:03):
Elizabethan men of business were young, but the Elizabethans developed
them enormously. Going shares was doubtless prehistoric. It certainly was ancient,
medieval and Elizabethan, but those who formerly went shares generally
knew each other and something of the business too. The
favorite number of total shares was just sixteen. There were
(18:26):
sixteen land shares in a Celtic household, sixteen shares in
Scottish vessels not individually owned, sixteen shares in the theater
by which Shakespeare made his pile. But sixteenth and even
hundreds were put out of date when speculation on the
grander scale began and the area of investment grew. The
(18:48):
New River Company for supplying London with water had only
a few shares then, as it continued to have down
to our own day, when they stood at over a
thousand times par The ulster plantation in Ireland was more
remote and appealed to more investors, and on wider grounds,
sentimental grounds both good and bad, and included. The Virginia
(19:12):
plantation was still more remote and risky, and appeal to
an ever increasing number of the speculating public. Many an
investor put money on America in much the same way
as a factory hand today puts money on a horse
he has never seen or has never heard of, otherwise
than as something out of which a lot of easy
money can be made, provided luck holds good. The modern
(19:36):
prospectus was also in full career under Elizabeth, who probably
had a hand in concocting some of the most important specimens.
Lord Bacon wrote one describing the advantages of the Newfoundland
fisheries in terms which no promoter of the present day
could better. Every type of prospectus was tried on the
(19:56):
investing public, some genuine, many doubtful, others as outrageous in
their impositions on human credulity as anything produced in our
own times. The company promoted was abroad in London on
change and at court. What with royal favor, social prestige,
general prosperity, the new national eagerness to find vent for
(20:18):
surplus commodities, and above all the spirit of speculation fanned
into flame by the real and fable wonders of America.
What with all this, the investing public could take its
choice of going the limit in one hundred different and
most alluring ways. England was surprised at her own investing wealth.
The East India Company raised eight million dollars with ease
(20:42):
from a thousand shareholders and paid a first dividend of
eighty seven and a half percent. Spices, pearls and silks
came pouring into London, and English goods found vent increasingly
abroad thust. The expanding business opportunities, of course, produced the
spirit of the trust of very much the same sort
of trust that Americans think so ultra modern. Now. Monopolies
(21:06):
granted by the crown and the volcanic forces of widespread
speculation prevented some of the abuses of the trust, but
there were Elizabethan trusts for all that, though many A
promising scheme fell through. The Feltmaker's Hat Trust is a
case in point. They proposed buying up all the hats
in the market, so as to oblige all dealers to
(21:28):
depend upon one central warehouse. Of course, they issued a
prospective showing how everyone concerned would benefit by this benevolent plan.
Ben Jonson and other playwrights were quick to seize the
salient absurdities of such an advertisement in the Staple of News,
Johnson proposed a news trust to collect all the news
(21:49):
of the world, corner it classified into authentic, apocryphal, barber's gossip,
and so forth, and then sell it for the sole
benefit of the consumer in links to suit all purchases.
In the devil is an ass he is a little
more outspoken. We will take in citizens, commoners and aldermen
to bear the charge and blow them off again like
(22:10):
so many dead flies. This was exactly what was at
that very moment being done. In the case of the
Alum Trust. All the leading characters of much more modern
times were there already. Fitz Doctoral ready to sell his
estates in order to become his grace, the Duke of
drowned Land guilt head, the London money lender who lives
(22:33):
by finding fools, and my lady tail Bush, who pulls
the social wires at court. And so the game went on,
usually with the result explained by Shakespeare's Fishermen Empiricles. I
marvel how the fishes live in the sea. Why as
men do a land, the great ones eat up the
little ones. The Newcastle coal trade grew into something very
(22:56):
like a modern American trust, with the additional advantage of
an authorized government monopoly. So long as they agreed upon
duty was paid, then there was this starch monopoly, a
very profitable one, because starch was a new delight, which
soon enabled Elizabethan fox to wear ruffo collars big enough
to make their heads, as one irreverent Satiris exclaimed, looked
(23:19):
like John Baptists on a platter. But America could not
America defeat the machinations of all monopolies and other trusts.
Wasn't America, of the land of actual gold and silver,
where there was plenty of room for everyone? There soon
grew up a wild belief that you could tap America
for precious metals, almost as its Indians tapped maple trees
(23:41):
for sugar. The mountains of bright stones were surely there.
Peru and Mexico were nothing to these. Only find them
and get rich quick would be the order of the
day for every true adventurer. These mountains moved about in
men's imaginations and on prospectors maps, away ahead of the
latest pioneer, somewhere behind the back of beyond. They and
(24:04):
their glamour died hard, even that stage geographer of a
later day, Thomas Jeffries added to his standard Atlas of
America in seventeen hundred and sixty this item of information
on the far northwest. Hereabouts are supposed to be the
mountains of bright Stones mentioned in the map of ye
(24:25):
indian ach Gac. Speculation of the wildcat kind was bad,
but it was the seami side of a praiseworthy spirit
of enterprise. Monopoly seems worse than speculation, and so in
many ways it was, but we must judge it by
the custom of its age. It was often unjust and
generally obstructed, but it did what neither the national government
(24:49):
nor joint stock companies had yet learnt to do. Monopoly
went by court favor, and its rights were often scandalously let,
and sometimes sublet as well. But on the whole the Queen,
the court, and the country really meant business, and monopolists
had either to deliver the goods or get out. Monopolists
sold dispensations from unworkable laws, which was sometimes a good
(25:13):
thing and sometimes a bad. They sold licenses for indulgence
and forbidden pleasures, not often harmless. They thought out and
collected all kinds of indirect taxation, and had to face
all the troubles that confront the framers of a tariff
policy today. Most of all, however, in a rough and
ready way, they set a sort of civil service going.
(25:35):
They served as boards of trade, departments, of the Interior customs,
inland revenue, and so forth. What Crown in Parliament either
could not or would not do was farmed out to monopolists.
Like speculation, a system worked both ways, and frequently for evil.
But like the British Constitution, though on a lower plane,
(25:57):
it worked. A monopoly at home, like those which we
have been considering, was endurable because it was a working
compromise that suited existing circumstances more or less, and that
could be either mended or ended as time went on.
But a general foregm monopoly, like Spain's monopoly of America
was quite unendurable. Could Spain not only hold what she
(26:20):
had discovered and was exploiting, but also extend her sphere
of influence over what she had not discovered? Spain said yes,
England said no. The Spaniards looked for tribute, the English
looked for trade. In government, in religion and business and everything.
The two great rivals were irreconcilably opposed. Thus the lists
(26:43):
were set, and sea dog battles followed. Elizabeth was an
exceedingly able woman of business, and was practically president of
all the great joint stock companies engaged in oversea trade.
Wherever a cargo could be bought or sold, there went
an English ship to buy or sell it. Whenever the
authorities in foreign parts tried discrimination against englishmen or English goods,
(27:07):
the English sea dogs growled and showed their teeth, and
if the foreigners persisted, the sea dogs bit them. Elizabeth
was extravagant at court, but not without state motives. For
at least a part of her extravagance, a brilliant court
attracted the upper classes into the orbit of the crown
while it impressed the whole country with the sovereign's power.
(27:31):
Courtiers favored with monopolies had to spend their earnings when
the state was threatened, and might not the Queen's vast
profusion of jewelry be turned to account at a pinch.
Elizabeth could not afford to be generous when she was young.
She grew to be stingy when she was old. But
she saved the state by sound finance as well as
(27:51):
by arms. In spite of all her pomps and vanity.
She had three thousand dresses, and gorgeous ones at that
during the course of her her bathroom was waynscotted with
Venetia mirr, so that she could see nine and ninety
reflections of her very comely person as she dipped and
splashed or dried her royal skin. She set a hot
(28:13):
pace for all the votaries of dress to follow. All
kinds of fashion came in from abroad with the rush
of newfound wealth, and so instead of being sanely beautiful,
they soon became insanely bizarre. An Englishman, says Harrison, endeavoring
to write of our attire, gave over his travail and
only drew the picture of a naked man, since he
(28:36):
could find no kind of garment that could please him
in eat. Whiles together, I am an Englishman and naked,
I stand here musing in my mind what raiment I
shall wear. For now I will wear this, and now
I will wear that, and now I will where I
cannot tell what. Except you see a dog in a doublet,
(28:59):
you shall not any so disguised as are my countrymen
of England. Women also do far exceed the likeness of
our men, what shall I say of their gala gascon
to bear out their attire and make it fit plumb round.
But the wives of citizens and burgesses, like all nuveau riche,
were still more bizarre than the courtiers. They cannot tell
(29:22):
when or how to make an end, being women in
whom all kinds of curiosity is to be seen in
far greater measure than in women of higher calling. I
might name hughes devised for the nonce, their doy TwixT
green and yollow, peas porridge, tawny pop and jay blue,
and the devil in the head. Yet all this crude absurdity,
(29:45):
from the courtier to the carter was the glass reflecting
the constantly increasing sea born trade ever pushing farther afield
under the stimulus and protection of the sea dogs. And
the Queen took precious good care it all paid toll
to her treasury through the customs, so that she could
have more money to build more ships. And if her
(30:07):
courtiers did stuff their breeches out with sawdust, she took
equally good care that each fighting man among them downed
his uniform and raised his troops or fitted out his ships.
When the time was ripe for action end of Chapter four,
Chapter four of Elizabethan Sea Dogs by William Wood. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter four Elizabethan England.
Elizabethan England is the motherland, the true historic home of
(00:22):
all the different peoples who speak the Sea born English tongue.
In the reign of Elizabeth there was only one English
speaking nation. This nation consisted of there five million people,
fewer than their art to day in London or New York.
But hardly had the Great Queen died before Englishmen began
(00:43):
that colonizing movement which has carried their language the whole
world round and established their civilization in every quarter of
the globe. Within three centuries after Elizabeth's day, the use
of English as a native speech had grown quite thirtyfold.
Within the same three centuries, the number of those living
(01:03):
under laws and institutions derived from England had grown one hundredfold.
The England of Elizabeth was in England of great deeds,
but of greater dreams. Elizabethan literature, take it for all
in all, has never been surpassed. Myriad minded Shakespeare remains unequaled. Still.
Elizabethan England was indeed a nest of singing birds. Prose
(01:27):
was often far too pedestrian for the exultant life of
such a mighty generation. As new worlds came into their
expectant can the glowing Elizabethan's wished to fly there on
the soaring wings of verse. To them, the tide of
fortune was no ordinary stream, but the white mained proud neck,
(01:50):
arching tide that bore adventures to sea with pomp of
waters unwithstood. The goodly heritage that England gave her offspring
overseas included Shakespeare and the English Bible. The Authorized Version
entered into the very substance of early American life. There
(02:10):
was a marked difference between Episcopaalian Virginia and Puritan New England,
but both took their stand on this version of the
English Bible, in which the springs of holy writ rejoiced
to run through channels of Elizabethan prose. It is true
that Elizabeth slept with her father's before this book of
books was printed, and that the first of the Stewarts
(02:33):
reigned in her stead. Nevertheless, the Authorized Version is pure Elizabethan.
All its translators were Elizabethans, as their dedication to King
James still printed with every copy gratefully acknowledges in its
reference to the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen
(02:54):
Elizabeth of most happy memory. These words of the Reverend
Scholars contained no empty compliment. Elizabeth was a great sovereign
and in some essential particulars a very great national leader.
This daughter of Henry the eighth and his second wife,
Anne Bolin the Debonair, was born a heretic in fifteen
(03:15):
hundred and thirty three. Her father was then defying both
Spain and the Pope. Within three years after her birth,
her mother was beheaded, and by act of Parliament, Elizabeth
herself was declared illegitimate. She was fourteen when her father died,
leaving the kingdom to his three children in succession, Elizabeth
(03:36):
being the third. Then followed the Protestant reign of the
boy king Edward the sixth, during which Elizabeth enjoyed security,
then the Catholic reign of her Spanish half sister, Bloody Mary,
during which her life hung by the merest thread. At first, however,
Mary concealed her hostility to Elizabeth because she thought the
(03:58):
two daughters of Henry v. S eighth ought to appear
together in her triumphal entry into London from one point
of view, and a feminine one at that. This was
a fatal mistake on Mary's part, for never did Elizabeth
show to more advantage. She was just under twenty, while
Mary was nearly twice her age. Mary had indeed provided
(04:19):
herself with one good foil in the person of Anne
of Cleaves, the Flemish mare whose flat, coarse face and
lumbering body had disgusted King Henry thirteen years before when
Cromwell had foisted her upon him as his fourth wife.
But with poor, fat straw colored Anne on one side,
(04:39):
in black and sallow formed looking man voice Mary on
the other, the thairly English Princess Elizabeth took London by
storm on the spot. Tall and majestic, she was a
magnificent example of the finest Anglo Norman type, always the
glass of fashion and then the very mold of form.
Her splendid figure looked equally well on horseback or on foot.
(05:03):
A little full in the eye, and with a slightly
aquiline nose, she appeared as she really was, keenly observant
and commanding, though these two features just prevented her from
being a beauty. The bright blue eyes and the finely
chiseled nose were themselves quite beautiful enough. Nor was she
less taking to the ear than to the eye, for
(05:25):
a marked contrast to gruff Mary and wheezy Foreign, and
she had a rich, clear, though rather too loud, English voice.
When the court reined up and dismounted, Elizabeth became even
more at the center of attraction. Mary marched stiffly on
and plodded after. But as for Elizabeth, perfect in dancing, riding, archery,
(05:49):
and all the sports of chivalry, she trod the line
like a buck in spring, and looked like a lance
in rest. When Elizabeth succeeded in the Autumn Fifth eighteen
hundred and fifty eight, she had died need of all
she had learned in her twenty five years of adventurous life.
Fortunately for herself and on the whole, most fortunately for
(06:11):
both England and America, she had a remarkable power of
inspiring devotion to the service of their Queen and country
in men of both the cool and ardent types. And
this long after her personal charms had gone. Government, religion, finance, defense,
and foreign affairs were in a perilous state of flux,
(06:33):
besides which they have never been more distractingly mixed up
with one another. Henry the seventh had saved money for
twenty five years, his three successors had spent it lavishly
for fifty. Henry the eighth had kept the church Catholic
and ritual, while making it purely national. In government, the
Lord Protector Somerset had made it as Protestant as possible.
(06:57):
Under Edward the sixth, Mary had done her to bring
it back to the pope. Home affairs were full of
doubts and dangers, though the great mass of the people
were ready to give their handsome young queen a fair
chance and not a little favor. Foreign affairs were worse.
France was still the hereditary enemy, and the loss of
Calais under Mary had exasperated the whole English nation. Scotland
(07:22):
was a constant menace in the North. Spain was gradually
changing from friend to foe. The Pope was disinclined to
recognize Elizabeth at all. To understand how difficult her position was,
we must remember what sort of constitution England had when
the German of the United States was forming. The Roman
Empire was one constituent whole, from the emperor down. The
(07:44):
English speaking peoples of today formed constituent holes from the
electorate up. In both cases, all parts were and are
in constant relation to the whole. The case of Elizabeth
in England, however, it was very different. There was neither
spoted unity from above nor democratic unity from below, but
a mixed and fluctuating kind of government in which Crown, nobles,
(08:08):
Parliament and people formed certain parts which had to be
put together for each occasion. The accepted general idea was
that the Sovereign Supreme as an individual, looked after the
welfare of the country in peace and war so far
as the Crown estates permitted, but that whenever the crown
resources would not suffice, then the Sovereign could call on
(08:30):
nobles and people for whatever the common wheel required. No
bless obleege in return for the estates or monopolies which
they had acquired. The nobles and favored commoners were expected
to come forward with all their resources at every national crisis,
precisely as the Crown was expected to work for the
(08:52):
common will. At all times. When the resources of the
Crown and favored courtiers sufficed, no Parliament was called, but
whenever they had to be supplemented, then Parliament met and
voted whatever it approved. Finally, every English freeman was required
to do his own share towards defending the country in
(09:13):
time of need, and he was further required to know
the proper use of arms. The great object of every
European court during early modern times was to get both
the old feudal nobility and the newly promoted commoners to
revolve round the throne as round the center of their
solar system, by sheer force of character. For the tutors
(09:38):
had no overwhelming army like the Roman conquerors. Henry the
eighth had succeeded wonderfully well. Elizabeth now had to piece
together what had been broken under Edward the sixth and Mary.
She too succeeded, and with the hearty goodwill of nearly
all her subjects. Mary had left the royal treasury deeply
(09:59):
in debt. Yet Elizabeth succeeded in paying off all arrears
and meeting new expenditure for defense and for the court.
The royal income rose. England became immensely richer and more
prosperous than ever before. Foreign trade increased by leaps and bounds.
Home industries flourished and were stimulated by new arrivals from
(10:22):
abroad because England was a safe asylum for the craftsman
whom Philip was driving from the Netherlands to his own
great loss and his rivals gained. English commercial life had
been slowly emerging from medieval ways throughout the fifteenth century.
With the beginning of the sixteenth the rate of emergence
(10:43):
had greatly quickened. The soil bound peasant, who produced enough
food for his family from his thirty acres, was being
gradually replaced by the well to do yeomen who tilled
one hundred acres and upwards. Such holdings produced a substantial
surplus for the market. This increased the national wealth, which
in its turn increased both home and foreign trade. The
(11:06):
peasant milly raised a little wheat and barley, kept a
count perhaps some sheep. The youngan or tenant farmer had
sheep enough for the wool trade, besides some butter, cheese,
and meat for the nearest growing town. He began to
garnish his cupboards with pewter, and his joined beds with
tapestry and silk hangings, and his tables with carpets and
(11:27):
fine napery. He could even feast his neighbors and servants.
After a sharing day with new fangled foreign luxuries like dates, mace, raisins,
currants and sugar. But Elizabethan's society presented striking contrasts. In
parts of England, the practice of engrossing and enclosing holdings
(11:48):
was increasing as sheep raising became more profitable than farming.
The tenants thus dispossessed either swelled the ranks of the
vagabonds who infested the highways, or sought their life glihood
at sea or in London, which provided the two best
openings for adventurous young men. The smaller provincial towns afforded
them little opportunity, for there the trades were largely in
(12:12):
the hands of close corporations descended from the medieval craft guilds.
These were eventually to be swept away by the general
trend of business. Their dissolution had indeed already begun, for
smart village craftsmen were even then forming the new industrial
settlements from which most of the great manufacturing towns of
(12:32):
England have sprung. Camden the historian found Birmingham full of
ringing anvils. Sheffield a town of great name for the
smiths therein Leeds, renowned for cloth and Manchester already a
sort of cottonopolis, though the cottons of those days were
still made of wool. There was a wage's question than
(12:54):
is now. There were demands for a minimum living wage.
The influx of gold and silver from Las America had
sent all prices soaring. Meat became almost prohibitive for the
submerged tenth. There was a rapidly submerging tenth. Beef rose
from once cent a pound in the forties to four
in fifteen hundred and eighty eight, the year of the Armada.
(13:16):
How would the lowest paid of craftsmen fare on twelve
cents a day with butter at ten cents a pound.
Efforts were made again and again to readjust the ratio
between prices and wages, but as a rule, prices increased
much faster than wages. All these things, the increase of
(13:36):
surplus hands, the high cost of living, grievances about wages
and interests, tended to make the farms and workshops of
England recruiting grounds for the sea, and the young men
would strike out for themselves as freighters, traders, privateers, or
downright pirates, lured by the dazzling chance of great and
(13:56):
sudden wealth, the gamble of it was as potent than
as now, probably more potent still. It was an age
of wild speculation, accompanied by all the usual evils that
follow frenzied ways. It was also an age of monopoly.
Both monopoly and speculation sent recruits into the sea dog ranks.
(14:19):
Elizabeth would grant, say to Sir Walter Raleigh, the monopoly
of sweet wines. Raleigh would naturally want as much sweet
wine imported as England could be induced to swallow. So too, Elizabeth,
who got the duty crews, would be wanted for the
monopolistic ships. They would also be wanted for free trading vessels,
(14:41):
that is, for the ships of the smugglers who underbid, undersold,
and tried to overreach the monopolists who represented law, though
not quite justice, but speculation ran to greater extremes than
either monopoly or smuggling. Shakespeare's Putter out of Fire, for one,
was a typical Elizabethans speculator, exploiting the riskiest form of
(15:06):
sea dog trade for all, and sometimes for more than
all that it was worth. A merchant adventurer would pay
a capitalist, say one thousand pounds as a premium to
be forfeited if his ship should be lost, but to
be repaid by the capitalist fivefold to the merchant if
it returned. Incredible as it may seem to us, there
(15:27):
were shrewd money lenders always ready for this sort of deal.
In life or life and death insurance an eloquent testimony
to the risks encountered in sailing unknown seas in the
midst of well known dangers. Marine insurance of the regular
kind was, of course a very different thing. It was
(15:49):
already of immemorial age, going back certainly to medieval and
probably too very ancient times. All forms of insurance on
land are mere mushroom by comparison. Lloyd's had not been
heard of, but there were plenty of smart Elizabethan underwriters
already practicing the general principles which were to be formally
(16:11):
adopted two hundred years later in seventeen hundred and seventy
nine at Lloyd's coffee House. A policy taken out on
the Tiger immortalized by Shakespeare would serve as a model still,
and what makes it all the more interesting is that
the Elizabethan underwriters calculated the tiger's chances at the very
(16:32):
spot where the association known as Lloyd's transacts its business
today the Royal Exchange in London. This in turn brings
elizabeth herself upon the scene, for when she visited the Exchange,
which Sir Thomas Gresham had built to let the merchants
do their street work undercover, she immediately grasped its full
(16:54):
significance and caused it, by a harold and a trumpet,
to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, the name it bears today,
and Elizabethan might well be astonished by what he would
see at any modern Lloyds, yet he would find the
same essentials. For the British Lloyds, like most of its
foreign imitators, is not a gigantic insurance company at all,
(17:18):
but an association of cautiously elected members who carry on
their completely independent private business in daily touch with each other,
precisely as Elizabethans did. Lloyd's method differs wholly from ordinary insurance.
Instead of insuring vessel and cargo with a single company
(17:39):
or man, the owner puts his case before Lloyd's, and
any member can then write his name underneath for any
reasonable part of the risk. The modern underwriter all the
world over is the direct descendant of the Elizabethan who
wrote his name under the conditions of a given risk.
At Sea. Stock companies were in one sense old when
(18:03):
Elizabethan men of business were young, but the Elizabethans developed
them enormously. Going shares was doubtless prehistoric. It certainly was ancient,
medieval and Elizabethan, but those who formerly went shares generally
knew each other and something of the business too. The
favorite number of total shares was just sixteen. There were
(18:26):
sixteen land shares in a Celtic household, sixteen shares in
Scottish vessels not individually owned, sixteen shares in the theater
by which Shakespeare made his pile. But sixteenth and even
hundreds were put out of date when speculation on the
grander scale began and the area of investment grew. The
(18:48):
New River Company for supplying London with water had only
a few shares then, as it continued to have down
to our own day, when they stood at over a
thousand times par The ulster plantation in Ireland was more
remote and appealed to more investors, and on wider grounds,
sentimental grounds both good and bad, and included. The Virginia
(19:12):
plantation was still more remote and risky, and appeal to
an ever increasing number of the speculating public. Many an
investor put money on America in much the same way
as a factory hand today puts money on a horse
he has never seen or has never heard of, otherwise
than as something out of which a lot of easy
money can be made, provided luck holds good. The modern
(19:36):
prospectus was also in full career under Elizabeth, who probably
had a hand in concocting some of the most important specimens.
Lord Bacon wrote one describing the advantages of the Newfoundland
fisheries in terms which no promoter of the present day
could better. Every type of prospectus was tried on the
(19:56):
investing public, some genuine, many doubtful, others as outrageous in
their impositions on human credulity as anything produced in our
own times. The company promoted was abroad in London on
change and at court. What with royal favor, social prestige,
general prosperity, the new national eagerness to find vent for
(20:18):
surplus commodities, and above all the spirit of speculation fanned
into flame by the real and fable wonders of America.
What with all this, the investing public could take its
choice of going the limit in one hundred different and
most alluring ways. England was surprised at her own investing wealth.
The East India Company raised eight million dollars with ease
(20:42):
from a thousand shareholders and paid a first dividend of
eighty seven and a half percent. Spices, pearls and silks
came pouring into London, and English goods found vent increasingly
abroad thust. The expanding business opportunities, of course, produced the
spirit of the trust of very much the same sort
of trust that Americans think so ultra modern. Now. Monopolies
(21:06):
granted by the crown and the volcanic forces of widespread
speculation prevented some of the abuses of the trust, but
there were Elizabethan trusts for all that, though many A
promising scheme fell through. The Feltmaker's Hat Trust is a
case in point. They proposed buying up all the hats
in the market, so as to oblige all dealers to
(21:28):
depend upon one central warehouse. Of course, they issued a
prospective showing how everyone concerned would benefit by this benevolent plan.
Ben Jonson and other playwrights were quick to seize the
salient absurdities of such an advertisement in the Staple of News,
Johnson proposed a news trust to collect all the news
(21:49):
of the world, corner it classified into authentic, apocryphal, barber's gossip,
and so forth, and then sell it for the sole
benefit of the consumer in links to suit all purchases.
In the devil is an ass he is a little
more outspoken. We will take in citizens, commoners and aldermen
to bear the charge and blow them off again like
(22:10):
so many dead flies. This was exactly what was at
that very moment being done. In the case of the
Alum Trust. All the leading characters of much more modern
times were there already. Fitz Doctoral ready to sell his
estates in order to become his grace, the Duke of
drowned Land guilt head, the London money lender who lives
(22:33):
by finding fools, and my lady tail Bush, who pulls
the social wires at court. And so the game went on,
usually with the result explained by Shakespeare's Fishermen Empiricles. I
marvel how the fishes live in the sea. Why as
men do a land, the great ones eat up the
little ones. The Newcastle coal trade grew into something very
(22:56):
like a modern American trust, with the additional advantage of
an authorized government monopoly. So long as they agreed upon
duty was paid, then there was this starch monopoly, a
very profitable one, because starch was a new delight, which
soon enabled Elizabethan fox to wear ruffo collars big enough
to make their heads, as one irreverent Satiris exclaimed, looked
(23:19):
like John Baptists on a platter. But America could not
America defeat the machinations of all monopolies and other trusts.
Wasn't America, of the land of actual gold and silver,
where there was plenty of room for everyone? There soon
grew up a wild belief that you could tap America
for precious metals, almost as its Indians tapped maple trees
(23:41):
for sugar. The mountains of bright stones were surely there.
Peru and Mexico were nothing to these. Only find them
and get rich quick would be the order of the
day for every true adventurer. These mountains moved about in
men's imaginations and on prospectors maps, away ahead of the
latest pioneer, somewhere behind the back of beyond. They and
(24:04):
their glamour died hard, even that stage geographer of a
later day, Thomas Jeffries added to his standard Atlas of
America in seventeen hundred and sixty this item of information
on the far northwest. Hereabouts are supposed to be the
mountains of bright Stones mentioned in the map of ye
(24:25):
indian ach Gac. Speculation of the wildcat kind was bad,
but it was the seami side of a praiseworthy spirit
of enterprise. Monopoly seems worse than speculation, and so in
many ways it was, but we must judge it by
the custom of its age. It was often unjust and
generally obstructed, but it did what neither the national government
(24:49):
nor joint stock companies had yet learnt to do. Monopoly
went by court favor, and its rights were often scandalously let,
and sometimes sublet as well. But on the whole the Queen,
the court, and the country really meant business, and monopolists
had either to deliver the goods or get out. Monopolists
sold dispensations from unworkable laws, which was sometimes a good
(25:13):
thing and sometimes a bad. They sold licenses for indulgence
and forbidden pleasures, not often harmless. They thought out and
collected all kinds of indirect taxation, and had to face
all the troubles that confront the framers of a tariff
policy today. Most of all, however, in a rough and
ready way, they set a sort of civil service going.
(25:35):
They served as boards of trade, departments, of the Interior customs,
inland revenue, and so forth. What Crown in Parliament either
could not or would not do was farmed out to monopolists.
Like speculation, a system worked both ways, and frequently for evil.
But like the British Constitution, though on a lower plane,
(25:57):
it worked. A monopoly at home, like those which we
have been considering, was endurable because it was a working
compromise that suited existing circumstances more or less, and that
could be either mended or ended as time went on.
But a general foregm monopoly, like Spain's monopoly of America
was quite unendurable. Could Spain not only hold what she
(26:20):
had discovered and was exploiting, but also extend her sphere
of influence over what she had not discovered? Spain said yes,
England said no. The Spaniards looked for tribute, the English
looked for trade. In government, in religion and business and everything.
The two great rivals were irreconcilably opposed. Thus the lists
(26:43):
were set, and sea dog battles followed. Elizabeth was an
exceedingly able woman of business, and was practically president of
all the great joint stock companies engaged in oversea trade.
Wherever a cargo could be bought or sold, there went
an English ship to buy or sell it. Whenever the
authorities in foreign parts tried discrimination against englishmen or English goods,
(27:07):
the English sea dogs growled and showed their teeth, and
if the foreigners persisted, the sea dogs bit them. Elizabeth
was extravagant at court, but not without state motives. For
at least a part of her extravagance, a brilliant court
attracted the upper classes into the orbit of the crown
while it impressed the whole country with the sovereign's power.
(27:31):
Courtiers favored with monopolies had to spend their earnings when
the state was threatened, and might not the Queen's vast
profusion of jewelry be turned to account at a pinch.
Elizabeth could not afford to be generous when she was young.
She grew to be stingy when she was old. But
she saved the state by sound finance as well as
(27:51):
by arms. In spite of all her pomps and vanity.
She had three thousand dresses, and gorgeous ones at that
during the course of her her bathroom was waynscotted with
Venetia mirr, so that she could see nine and ninety
reflections of her very comely person as she dipped and
splashed or dried her royal skin. She set a hot
(28:13):
pace for all the votaries of dress to follow. All
kinds of fashion came in from abroad with the rush
of newfound wealth, and so instead of being sanely beautiful,
they soon became insanely bizarre. An Englishman, says Harrison, endeavoring
to write of our attire, gave over his travail and
only drew the picture of a naked man, since he
(28:36):
could find no kind of garment that could please him
in eat. Whiles together, I am an Englishman and naked,
I stand here musing in my mind what raiment I
shall wear. For now I will wear this, and now
I will wear that, and now I will where I
cannot tell what. Except you see a dog in a doublet,
(28:59):
you shall not any so disguised as are my countrymen
of England. Women also do far exceed the likeness of
our men, what shall I say of their gala gascon
to bear out their attire and make it fit plumb round.
But the wives of citizens and burgesses, like all nuveau riche,
were still more bizarre than the courtiers. They cannot tell
(29:22):
when or how to make an end, being women in
whom all kinds of curiosity is to be seen in
far greater measure than in women of higher calling. I
might name hughes devised for the nonce, their doy TwixT
green and yollow, peas porridge, tawny pop and jay blue,
and the devil in the head. Yet all this crude absurdity,
(29:45):
from the courtier to the carter was the glass reflecting
the constantly increasing sea born trade ever pushing farther afield
under the stimulus and protection of the sea dogs. And
the Queen took precious good care it all paid toll
to her treasury through the customs, so that she could
have more money to build more ships. And if her
(30:07):
courtiers did stuff their breeches out with sawdust, she took
equally good care that each fighting man among them downed
his uniform and raised his troops or fitted out his ships.
When the time was ripe for action end of Chapter four,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd is a thought-provoking, opinionated, and topic-driven journey through the top sports stories of the day.