Edith Sitwell - Fanfare for Elizabeth

BY

EDITH SITWELL

This is England, this is the Happy Isle ; it is the year 1533 and we are on our way to the country palace of the King a giant with a beard of gold and a will of iron. If a lion knew his strength, said Sir Thomas More to Cromwell, of his master, it were hard to rule him. Henry the Eighth had that leonine strength, but he had also a strange wisdom that was like a third eye, seeing into the hearts of his people. He was born to rule, and with all his lions strength and ferocity he was in certain ways a great King averting from England many of the storms that arose in Europe from the changes in religious opinion. But his blindness in one direction was as great as his seeing powers in another, and he did not avert poverty from his people. On the contrary, he brought down destitution upon thousands by the overthrow of the monasteries.

He was a man of great personal beauty : His Majesty, wrote the Venetian, Sebastiano Giustinian, is as handsome as nature could form, above any Christian prince handsomer far than the King of France. He is exceedingly fair, and as well proportioned as possible. When he learned that the King of France wore a beard, he allowed his to grow ; which being somewhat red, has the appearance of being of gold. Affable and benign, he offends no one. He has often said to the Ambassador that he wished that everyone was content with his own condition, adding that we are content with our islands.

He drew the bow, declared the Ambassador, with greater force than any man in Europe, and jousted marvellously. As late as 1529, a new ambassador, Falier, said that In the eighth Henry God has combined such corporeal and intellectual beauty as not merely to surprise but astound all men. His face is angelic rather than handsome.

Even in his later years Henry had still an appearance of great magnificence and power, like a sun running to seed. But he had grown heavier, the earth shook when he walked. And the prince with the face of an angel had fallen under the spell of his own princely will.

His temper had changed ; but in earlier days he seemed a part of the English soil, of the English air, which was so mild that laurel and rosemary flourish all winter, especially in the southern parts, and in summer time England yields apricots plentifully, musk melons in good quantity, and figs in some places, all of which ripen well, and by the same reason, all beasts bring forth their young in the open fields, even in the time of winter. And England hath such abundance of apples, pears, cherries and plums, such variety of them and so good in all respects, that no country yields more or better, for which the Italians would gladly exchange their citrons and oranges. But upon the sea coasts the winds many times blast the fruits in the very flower.

At the end of Elizabeths reign, Besides that we have most delicate apples, plummes, peares, walnuts, filberds, etc., wrote Harrison, and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie yeeres passed, in comparison with which most of the old trees are nothing worth, have we no less store of strange fruit, as abricots, almonds, peaches, figges, corne-trees (a kind of cherry) in noble mens orchards. I have seene capers, oranges and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here ; besides the strange trees, brought from far, whose names I know not. We have in like sort such workmen as are not onlie excellent in graffing the naturall fruits, but also in their artificial mixtures, whereby one tree bringeth forth sundrie fruits, and one and the same fruit of divers colours and tastes, dalleing as it were with nature and his course, as if his whole trade were perfectlie known unto them : of hard fruits they will make tender, of soure sweet, of sweet yet more delicate, bereaving, also some of their kernels, others of their cores, and finally induing them with the savour of muske, ambre, or sweet spices at their pleasures. Divers also have written at large of these severall practises, and some of them had to convert the kernels of peaches into almonds, of small fruit to make farre greater, and to remove or add superfluous moisture to the trees.

Gardens and orchards containing fruits such as these, grew in the heart of London.

It was thought, earlier in the giants reign, that gold lay under the soil. But that hope proved to be unfounded. There were, however, other riches. Polydore Vergil had called the wool yielded by those sheep that bring forth their young in the open fields, Englands Golden Fleece. All was fatness and plenty, until the nation of the beggars began with the destitution caused by the suppression of the monasteries.

What is that rumbling noise we hear, resembling the beginning of an earthquake? It is the sound of the carts bringing merchandise to London. But in the mornings to come there will be less and less travellers to the City, for a reason we shall see. The Plague is approaching London, slow wave by wave, and will overwhelm it like a sea.

Now we, and the carts, are coming nearer to the noble city of London (as Andrew Boorde, one of the Kings physicians, called it), in that city which excelleth all others for Constantinople, Venice, Rome, Florence, cannot be compared to London.

Presently we shall come to the heart of the City, the Tower, and see, fixed to one of the turrets by spears, the skulls denuded of flesh, the signs of Henrys vengeance against traitors.

Small dark clouds circling in the sky swoop downwards from time to time, and we see that they are kites and other carrion birds so tame, wrote Trevison, that they will eat bread and butter out of little childrens hands.

But now we are only on the outskirts the suburbs which were then the slums and the breeding-places of the Plague, the dwelling-places of the criminal population.

How happy, wrote Thomas Dekker, were cities if they had no Suburbes, sithence they serve but as caves, where monsters are tied up to devoure the Citties their-selves. Would the Divell hire a villain to spil blood? There we shall finde him. One to blaspheme? there he hath choice. A Pandar that would court a nation at her praiers? hees there a cheater that would turne his own father a-begging? Hees there too. A harlot that would murder her own new-borne Infant? She lies in there.

Now we are passing Newington, one of the worst of the slums, and from there move onwards through the shamble-smelling, overhanging streets where the Plague breeds, onward through the streets haunted by Puffing Dick, King of the Beggars, he who was a man crafty and bold; yet he died miserably. For, after he had commanded now fully eight years, he had the pyning of the Pox and the Neopolitan scurf, and there was an end of Puffing Dick.

The company of the beggars, a nation within a nation, living by its own laws, even speaking its own language, was to become, in the reign of Elizabeth, one of the gravest of menaces, till there came a time when that nation bearded, and tried to browbeat, the great Queen in her own person.

By the year 1536, this nation had been joined by the helpless, needy wretches, unused to dolour, and uninstructed in business who were turned abroad following the overthrow of the Monasteries. Mr. Ronald Fuller, in The Beggars Brotherhood, gives the number of these condemned to starvation as 88,000.

Every day would see hordes of these poor creatures going to join the company of the ruffians who, at the beginning of Henrys reign, were ruled over by Cocke Lorell, the thyrde person in the realm and the terror of the London streets.Cocke Lorell may have been a myth, but the later King, Puffing Dick, was a very real personage.