FRANCE PAINTED to the LIFE By a Learned and Impartial Hand Quid non Gallia parturit ingens LONDON Printed for William Leake at the Crown in Fleet-street betwixt the two Temple Gates 1656. TO THE READER HIstories are like Iewels not valued by their bulk but their beauty and lustre Real worth exceeds words yet this History is furnished with both t is rare for the matter method truth and use It needs no Apologie it s own furniture will sufficiently praise it especially amongst the Ingenuous and Learned here is a solid and pleasant relishment for any that desire forrain rarities The Pen-man managed his time with advantage And it may be said that a Judicious Reader may see France in this Book as well as by travel Nothing worthy observation hath escap'd the Author what hath was not worth his Pen. Thou hast as it came to hand without any adulteration a true Copy of his conceptions and labours without addition or diminution Take hereof a serious view thereby thou shalt inform thy judgement please thy fancy and be rendred able to discourse of the several places and passages therein mentioned equally with those who have in person surveyed them FRANCE Painted to the Life The First Book The beginning of our Journey the nature of the Sea a Farewell to England ON Thursday the 28th of June at the time when England had received the cheif beauty of France and the French had seen the cheif beauties of England we went to Sea in a Bark of Dover The Port we arrived at Diepe in Normandy the hour three in the afternoon the wind fair and high able had it continued in that point to have given us a waftage as speedy as our longing Two hours before night it came about to the Westward and the tide also not befriending us our passage became tedious and troublesome The next day being dedicate to the glory of God in memory of St. Peter we took the benifit of the ebb to assist us against the wind This brought us out of the sight of England and the floud ensuing compelled us to our anchor I had now leisure to see Gods wonders in the deep wonders indeed to us which had never before seen them but too much familiarity had made them none other than the Saylers play-fellows The waves striving by an inbred ambition which should be the highest which foremost precedency and super-eminency was equally desired and each enjoyed it in succession The wind more covetous in appearance to play with the water than disturbe it did onely rock the billow and seemed indeed to dandle the Ocean You would at another time have thought that the Seas had onely danced at the Winds whistle or that the Wind straining it self to a treble and the Seas by a disdiapason supplying the base had tuned a Coranto to our Ship For so orderly we rose and fell according to the time and note of the billow that her violent agitation might be thought to be nothing but a nimble Galliard filled with Capers The nimbleness of the waves and correspondency of our Bark unto them was not to all our company alike pleasing what in me moved onely a reverend and awful pleasure was to others an occasion of sickness their heads giddy their joynts enfeebled their stomacks loathing sustenance and with great pangs avoiding what they had taken In their mouthes nothing so frequent as that of Horace Illi robur aes triplex Circa pectus erat qui fragilem truci Commisit pelago ratem Hard was his heart as brass which first did venture In a weak Ship on the rough Seas to enter Whether it be that the noisom smels which arise from the saltness and tartness of that Region of waters poisoneth the brain or that the ungoverned and unequal motion of the Ship stirreth and unsettleth the stomack or both we may conjecture with the Philosphers rather than determine This I am sure of that the Cabbins and Deck were but as so many Hospitals or Pest-houses filled with diseased persons whilst I and the Marriners onely made good the hatches here did I see the scaly Nation of that Kingdom solace themselves in the brim of the waves rejoycing in the light and warmness of the day and yet spouting from their mouthes such quantity of waters as if they had purposed to quench that fire which gave it They danced about our vessel as if she had been a moving May-pole and that with such a delightful decorum that you never saw a Measure better troaden with less art And now I know not what wave bigger than the rest tossed up our Ship so high that I once more ken'd the coast of England an object which took such hold on my senses that I forgot the harmless company which sported below me to bestow on my dearest Mother this and for ought I could assure my self my last Farewell England adiew thy most unworthy Son Leaves thee and grieves to see what he hath done What he hath done in leaving thee the best Of Mothers and more glorious than the rest Thy sister Nations Had'st thou been unkind Yet might he trust thee safer than the Wind. Had'st thou been weak yet far more strength in thee Than in two inches of a sinking Tree Say thou wert cruel yet thy angry face Hath more love in it then the Seas embrace Suppose thee poor his zeal and love the less Thus to forsake his Mother in distress But thou art none of those No want in thee Onely a needless Curiositie Hath made him leap thy Ditch O let him have Thy blessing in his Voyage and hee 'l crave The Gods to thunder wrath on his neglect When he performs not thee all due respect That Nemesis on him her scourge would pluck When he forgets those breasts wich gave him suck That Nature would dissolve and turn him earth If thou bee'st not remembred in his Mirth May he be cast from Mankind if he shame To make profession of his Mothers name Rest then assur'd in this though some times he Conceal'd perhaps his Faith he will not thee CHAP. I. Normandy in general the Name and bounds of it The condition of the ancient Normans and of the present Ortelius Character of them examined In what they resemble the Inhabitants of Norfolk The Commodities of it and the Government THe next ebb brought us in sight of the sea-coast of Normandy a shoar so evenly composed and levelled that it seemeth the work of Art not Nature The Rock all the way of an equal height rising from the bottom to the top in a perpendicular and withal so smooth and polished that if you dare beleive it the work of Nature you must also think that Nature wrought it by the line and shewed an art in it above the imitation of an Artist This wall is the Northern bound of this Province the South part of it being confined with Le-Maine la Beausse l' Isle du France On the East it is divided from
Patients and yet from all parts he was much sought unto Hope of cure and a charitable opinion which they had of themselves had brought unto him divers distressed Damsels which I am confident had no interest in his miracle In the same Inn Alehouse I should say where we were to be harboured there had put in a whole covey of these Ladies Errant Pilgrims they called themselves and had come on foot two dayes journey to clear their eye-sight They had white vails hanging down their backs which in part covered their faces yet I perceived by a glimpse that some of them were past cure though my charity durst allow them Maids it was afraid to suppose them Virgins yet so far I dare assure them they should recover their sight that when they came home they should see their folly At that time what with too much watching on ship-board what with the tartness of the water and the violence of the wind working upon me almost forty hours together whilst I lay on the hatches mine eyes had gotten a rheum and redness My Hostess good woman perswaded me to this holy and blessed Wight but I durst not venture not that I had not as good a claim to my virginity as the best there but because I had learned what a greivous sentence was denounced on Ahaziah King of Israel for seeking help of Beelzebub the God of Ekron When I hap to be ill let mine amendment come in God's Name Mallem semper profanus esse quám sic religiosus as Minutius Felix of the Roman Sacrifices let my body still be troubled with a sore eye then have such a recovery be a perpetual eye-sore to my conscience Rather than go on pilgrimage to such a Saint let the Papists count me for an Heretick Besides how durst I imagine in him an ability of curing my bodily eyes who above seventy years had been troubled with a blindness in the eyes of his soul Thou Fool said our Saviour almost in the like case first cast out the beam of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brothers eye The next morning August the third I left my Pilgrims to try their fortunes and went on in our journey to Paris which that day we were to visit My eyes not permitting me to read and mine ears altogether strangers to the French chat drave my thoughts back to Roven and there nothing so much possessed me as the small honour done to Bedford in his Monument I had leisure enough to provide him a longer Epitaph and a short apology against the envy of that Courtier which perswaded Charles the eighth to deface the ruines of his Sepulcher Thus So did the Fox the coward'st of the Heard Kiâ—k the dead Lion and profane his Beard So did the Greeks about their vanquisht Hoast Drag Hector's Reliques and torment his Ghost So did the Parthian slaves deride the head Of the great Crassus now betray'd and dead To whose victorious Sword not long before They would have sacrific'd their lives or more So do the French assault dead Bedford's spright And trample on his ashes in despite But foolish Curio cease and do not blame So small an honour done unto his Name Why griev'st thou him a Sepulcher to have Who when he liv'd had made all France a Grave His Sword triump'd through all those Towns which lie In the Isle Main Aniou Guyen Normandy Thy Fathers felt it Oh thou worst of men If Man thou art do not endeavour then This Conqueror from his last Hold to thrust Whom all brave minds shall honour in the dust But be not troubled Bedford Thou shalt stand above the reach of malice Though the hand Of a French baseness may deface thy name And tear it from thy Marble Yet shall Fame Speak lowdly of thee and thy acts Thy praise A Pyramis unto it self shall raise Thy brave Atchievements in the time to come Shall be a Monument above a Tombe Thy name shall be thy Epitaph and he Which once reads Bedford shall imagine thee Beyond the power of Verses and shall say None could express thy Worth's a fuller way Rest thou then quiet in the shades of Night Nor vex thy self with Curio's weaker spright Whilst France remains and Histories are writ Bedford shall live and France shall Chronicle it Having offered this unworthy yet grateful sacrifice to the Manes of that brave Heroe I had the more leisure to behold Mante and the Vines about it being the first that ever I saw They are planted like our Hop-gardens and grow up by the help of Poles but not so high They are kept with little cost and yeild profit to an Husbandman sufficient to make him rich had he neither King nor Landlord The Wine which is pressed out of them is harsh and not pleasing as much differing in sweetness from the Wines of Paris or Orleans as their language doth in elegancy The rest of the Norman Wines which are not very frequent as growing onely on the frontiers towards France are of the same quality As for the Town of Mante it seemeth to have been of good strength before the use of great Ordinance having a wall a competent ditch and at every gate a Draw-bridge They are still sufficient to guard their pullen from the Fox and in the night time to secure their houses from forrain burglaries Once indeed they were able to make resistance to a King of France but the English were then within it At last on honourable terms it yeilded and was entred by Charles the seventh the second of August Anno 1449. The Town is for building and bigness somewhat above the better sort of Market Towns here in England The last Town of Normandy towards Paris is Pontoise a Town well fortified as being a borderer and one of the strongest bulwarks against France It hath in it two fair Abbeys of Maubuisson and St. Martin six Churches parochial whereof that of Nostre-dame in the suburbs is most beautiful The name it derives from a bridge built over the River of Oyse on which it is scituated and by which on that side it is well defended the bridge being strengthened with a strong gate and two draw-bridges It is commodiously scituate on the rising of an hill and is famous for the siege laid before it by Charles the seventh Anno 1442. but more fortunate unto him in the taking of it For having raised his armes upon the Duke of Yorkes coming to give him battel with 6000. men onely the French Army consisting of double the number he retired or fled rather unto St. Deuis But there hearing how scandalous his retreat was to the Parisians even ready to mutiny and that the Duke of Orleance and others of the Princes stirred with the ignominiousness of his flight began to practise against him he speedily returneth to pontoise and maketh himself Master of it by assault Certainly to that fright he owed the getting of the Town and all Normandy the
neither the said Infanta nor the Children born by her to the King shall be capable to inherit any of the estates of the King of Spain and in the eighth article she is bound to make an act of renunciation under her own hand-writing as soon as she cometh to be twelve years old which was accordingly performed But this being not sufficient to secure their fears it is thought that she was some way or other disabled from conception before ever she came into the Kings embraces A great crime I confess if true yet I cannot say with Tully in his defence of Ligarius Novum crimen Caie Caesar hec tempus mauditum Jaqueline Countess of Holland was Cozen to Philip Duke of Burgundie Her being fruitful would have debarred him from those estates of Holland Zealand and West-Freezland therefore though she had three Husbands there was order taken she should never have Child with her two first Husbands the Duke would never suffer her to live and when she had stollen a wedding with Frane of Borselle one of her servants the Dukes Physitians gave him such a potion that she might as well have married an Eunuch upon this injury the poor Lady died and the Duke succeeded in those Countries which by his Grand-child Marie were conveyed over into the House of Austria together with the rest of his estate I dare not say that that Family hath inherited his practises with his lands and yet I have heard that the Infanta Isabella had the like or worse measure afforded her before she was bedded to the Arch-duke Albertus A diabolical trick which the prostitutes of the heathen used in the beginnings of the Gospel and before of whom Octavius complaineth quod originem futuri hominis extinguant paricidium faciunt antequam pariunt Better luck than the King hath his Sister beyond the mountains I mean his eldest Sister Madame Elizabeth married to the King of Spain now living as being or having been the Mother of two Children His second Sister Madame Christian is married to Amadeo Victor Principe Maior or heir apparent of the Duke of Savoy to whom as yet she hath born no issue The youngest Henrietta Mariae is newly married to his most Excellent Majesty of England to whom may she prove of a most happy and fruitful womb Et pulchra faciat te prole parentem Of these alliances the first were very profitable to both Princes could there be made a marriage between the Kingdoms as well as the Kings But it is well known that the affections of each people are divided more unconquerable mountains than their dominions The French extreamly hating the proud humour and ambition of the Spaniard We may therefore account each of them in these marriages to have rather intended the perpetuity of their particular houses than the strength of their Empires and that they more desired a noble stock whereon to graft posterity than power The alliance with Savoy is more advantagious though less powerful than that of Spain For if the King of France can keep this Prince on his party he need not fear the greatness of the other or any of his faction The continuall siding of this House with that of Austria having given many and great impediments to the fortune of the French It standeth so fitly to countenance the affairs of either King in Italy or Germany to which it shall incline that it is just of the same nature with the estate of Florence between Millain and Venice of which Guicciaraine saith that Mantennero le coseâ—d Italia bilanâ—iate On this reason King Henry the fourth earnestly desired to match one of his Children into this Countrey and left this desire as a Legacie with his Council But the alliance of most use to the State of France is that of England as being the nighest and most able of all his neighbours An alliance which will make his Estate invincible and incompassed about as it were with a wall of brass As for the Kings bastard Brethren they are four in number and born of three several beds The eldest is Mr. Alexander made Knight of the Order of St. John or of Malta in the life time of his Father He is now Grand Prior of France and it is much laboured and hoped by the French that he shall be the next Master of the Order a place of great command and credit The second and most loved of his Father whose lively image and character he is said to be is Mr Caesar made Duke of Vendosme by his Father and is at this time Governor of Brittain a man of a brave spirit and one who swayeth much in the affairs of State His Father took great care for his advancement before his death and therefore married him to the Daughter and Heir of the Duke of Mercuer a man of great possessions in Brittain It is thought that the inheritance of this Lady both by her Fathers side and also by her Mothers who was of the Family of Marsegues being a stock of the old Ducal tree is no less than 200000. Crowns yearly Both these were born unto the King by Madame Gabriele for her excellent beauty surnamed labelle Dutchess of Beauforte a Lady whom the King most entirely affected even to the last gasp and one who never abused her power with him so that we may truly say of her what Velleius flatteringly said of Livia the Wife of Augustus Ejus potentiam nemo senset nisi levatione periculi aut accessione dignitatis The third of the Kings natural Brethren is Mr. Henry now Bishop of Metz in Lorraine and Abbot of St. Germans in Paris As Abbot he is Lord of the goodly Fairbourg of St. Germans and hath the profits of the great Fair there holden which make a large revenue His Bishoprick yeildeth him the profits of 20000. Crowns and upwards which is the remainder of 60000. the rest being pawned to the Duke of Lorraine by the last Bishop who was of that family The Mother of this Mr. Henry is the Marchioness of Verneville who before the death of the King fell out of his favour into the prison and was not restored to her liberty till the beginning of the Queen Mothers Regency The fourth and youngest is Mr. Antonie born unto the King by the Countess of Morret who is Abbot of the Churches of Marseilles and Cave hath as yet not fully six thousand pound a year when his Mother dieth he Will be richer The Kings lawful Brother is named John Baptist Gaston born the 25th of April Anno 1608. A Prince of a brave and manlike aspect likely to inherit as large a part of his Fathers spirit as the King doth of his Crown He is entituled Duke of Aniou as being the third Son of France but his next elder Brother the Duke of Orleance being dead in his childhood he is vulgarly and properly called Monsieur This title is different from that of Daulphin in that that title is onely appropriated to the Heir
in their Religion If the eye be blind the body cannot chuse but be darkned and certainly there is nothing that hath prepared many of this Realm more to embrace the reformation than this blockishness of their own Clergy an excellent advantage to the Protestant Ministers could they but well humor it and likely to be a fair inlargement to their party if well husbanded Besides this the French Catholicks are not over earnest in their cause and so do lye open to the assaults of any politick enemy to deal with them by main force of argument and in the servent spirit of zeal as the Protestants too often do is not the way Men uncapable of opposition as this people generally are and furious if once thwarted must be tamed as Alexander did his Horse Bucephalus Those that came to back him with the tyranny of the spur and a cudgel he quickly threw down and mischieved Alexander came otherwise prepared for turning his Horse toward the Sun that he might not see the impatiency of his shadow he spake kindly to him and gently clapping him on the back till he had left his flinging and wildness he lightly leapeth into the saddle the Horse never making resistance Plutarch in his life relateth the storie and this the Morall of it CHAP. XII The correspondency between the King and the Pope This Pope An Omen of the Marriage of France with England An English Catholick's conceit of it His Holiness Nuntio in Paris A learned argument to prove the Popes universality A continuation of the Allegory of Jacob and Esau The Protestants compelled to leave their Forts and Towns Their present estate and strength The last War against them justly undertaken not fairly mannaged Their insolence and disobedience to the Kings command Their purpose to have themselves a free Estate The War not a War of Religion King James in justice could not assist them more than he did First forsaken by their own party Their happiness before the War The Court of the Edict A view of them in their Churches The commendation which the French Papists give to the Church of England Their Discipline and Ministery c. WE have seen the strength and subtilty as also somewhat of his poverties at home let us now see the alliance which this French Esau hath abroad in the world in what credit and opinion he standeth in the eye of Bâ—eâ—i the Romish Hittite the daughter of whose abominations he hath married And here I find him to hold good correspondency as being the eldest son of the Church and an equal poize to ballance the affairs of Italy against the potency of Spain Oâ— this ground the present Pope hath alwayes shewed himself very favorable to the French side well knowing into what perils a necessary and impolitick dependance on the Spanish party onely would one day bring the state Ecclesiastick As in the general so in many particulars also hath he expressed much affection unto him as first by taking into his hand the Valtolin till his Son of France might settle himself in some course to recover it secondly his not stirring in the behalf of the Spaniard during the last warrs in Italy and thirdly his speedy and willing grant of the dispensation of Madames marriage of which his Papacy was so large an Omen so fair a Prognostick Est Deus in nobis agitante calescimus illi The Lar or Angel Guardian of his thoughts hastened him in it in whose time there was so plausible a presage that it must be accomplished For thus it standeth Malachy now a Saint then one of the first Apostles of the Irish one much reverenced in his memory to this day by that Nation left behind him by way of prophesie a certain number of Motto's in Latine telling those that there should follow that certain number of Popes onely whose conditions successively should be hereby expressed in those Motto's according to that order he had placed them in Messingham an Irish Priest Master of the Colledge of Irish fugitives in Paris hath collected together the lives of all the Irish Saints which book himself shewed me In that volume and the life of that Saint are the several Motto's and the several Popes set down columewise one against the other I compared the lives of them with the Motto's as farre as my memory would carry me and found many of them very answerable as I remember there are thirty six Motto's yet to come and when just as many Popes are joyned to them they are of opinion for so Malachy foretold that either the world should end or the Popedom be ruined Amongst others the Motto of the present Pope is most remarkable and sutable to the cheif action likely to happen in his time being this Lilium Rosa which they interpret and in my mind not unhappily to be intended to the conjunction of the French Lillie and the English Rose To take from me any suspition of imposture he shewed me an old book printed almost two hundred years ago written by one Wion a Flemming and comparing the number of the Motto's with the Catalogue of the Popes I found the name of Vrban now Pope directly to answer it upon this ground an English Catholike whose acquaintance I gained in France made a Copy of Verses in French and presented them to the English Embassadors the Earles of Carlisle and Holland because he is my Friend and the conceit is not to be despised I begged them of him and these are they Lilia juncta Rosis Embleme de bon ' presage de l' alliance de la France avec l' Angleterre Ce grand dieu quid ' un oecl voit tout ce que les aâ—s Souos leurs voiles sacrez vont a nous yeax cathans Descouvre quelque fois ainsi qui bon luy semble Et les moux avenir et les biene tout ensemble Ainsc fit il iadis a ce luy qui primier Dans l' Ireland porta de la foye le laurier Malachie son nom qu' autymon de l' Eglise On verra soir un jour il qui pour sa devise Aura les Lys chenus ioints aux plus belles fleures Qui docent le pinâ—temps de leurs doubles couleurs CHARLES est le fleuron de la roso pour pree HENRITTE est le Lys que la plus belle pree De la France nâ—urit pour estrâ— quelque iour Et la Reine des flâ—ures et des roses l' amour Adorable banquet bien beu reux courâ—nne Que la bonte du ciel en parrage nous donne Heu reux ma partie heu reux mille fois Cela qui te fera reflorrier en les Roys With these verses I take my leave of his Holiness wishing none of his successors would presage worse luck unto England I go now to see his Nuntio to whose house the same English Catholike brought me but he was not at home his name is Ferdinando d' Espado a
granted to Sir Giles Mompesson was just one of the French Offices As for Monopolies they are here so common that the Subject taketh no notice of it not a scurvy petty book being printed but it hath its priviledge affixed ad imprimendum solum These being granted by the King are carried to the Parliament by them formally perused and finally verified after which they are in force and vertue against all opposition It is said in France that Mr. Luines had obtained a Patent of the King for a quart d' Escu to be paid unto him for the Christning of every Child throughout the Kingdom A very unjust and unconscionable extortion Had he lived to have presented it to the Court I much doubt of their denial though the onely cause of bringing before them such Patents is onely intended that they should discuss the justice and convenience of them As the Parliament hath a formality of power left in them of verifying the Kings Edicts his grants of Offices and Monopolies so hath the Chamber of Accompts a superficial survey of his gifts and expences For his expences they are thought to be as great now as ever by reason of the several retinues of Himself his Mother his Queen and the Monsieur Neither are his gifts lessened The late warrs which he mannaged against the Protestants cost him dear he being fain to bind unto him most of his Princes by money and Pensions As the expences of the King are brought unto this Court to be examined so are also the gifts and pensions by him granted to be ratified The titulary power given to this Chamber is to cut off all those of the Kings grants which have no good ground and foundation the Officers being solemnly at the least formally sworn not to suffer any thing to pass them to the detriment of the Kingdom whatsoever Letters of Command they have to the contrary But with this Oath they do oftentimes dispense To this Court also belongeth the Enfranchisement or Naturalization of Aliens Anciently certain Lords Officers of the Crown and of the Privie Council were appointed to look into the Accompts now it is made an ordinary and soveraign Court consisting of two Presidents and divers Auditors and after under Officers The Chamber wherein it is kept is called La Chambre des Comptes it is the beautifullest piece of the whole Palace the great Chamber it self not being worthy to be named in the same day with it It was built by Charles the eighth Anno 1485. afterwards adorned and beautified by Lewis the twelfth whose Statua is there standing in his Royal Robes and the Scepter in his hand he is accompanied by the four Cardinal-Virtues expressed by way of Hieroglychick very properly and cunning each of them have in them its particular Motto to declare its being The Kings Portraicture also as if he were the fifth Virtue had its word under-written and contained in a couple of verses which let all that love the Muses skip them in the reading are these Quatuor has comites fowro caelestia dona Innocuae pacis prospera sceptra gerens From the King descend we to the Subjects ab equis quod aiunt ad asinos and the phrase is not much improper the French Commonalty being called the Kings Asses These are divided into three ranks or Classes the Clergy the Nobless the Paisants out of which certain Delegates or Committees chosen upon an occasion and sent to the King did anciently concurre to the making of the supreme Court for justice in France it was called the Assembly of the three Estates or Conventus Ordinum and was just like the Parliament of England but these meetings are now forgotten or out of use neither indeed as this time goeth can they any way advantage the State For whereas there are three principal if not sole causes of these Conventions which are the disposing of the Regency during the non-age or sickness of a King the granting aids or subsidies and the redressing of grievances there is now another course taken in them The Parliament of Paris which speaketh as it is prompted by power and greatness appointeth the Regent the Kings themselves with their Officers determine of the taxes and as concerning their grievances the Kings ear is open to private Petitions Thus is that title of a Common-wealth which went to the making up of this Monarchy escheated or rather devoured by the King that name alone containing in it both Clergy Princes and People so that some of the French Counsellors may say with Tully in his Oration for Marcellus unto Caesar Doleoque cum Respublica immortalis esse debeat eam unius mortalis anima consistere yet I cannot but withal affirm that the Princes and Nobles of France do for as much as concerneth themselves upon all advantages fly off from the Kings obedience but all this while the poor Paisant is ruined Let the poor Tennant starve or eat the bread of carefulness it matters not so they may have their pleasure and be accompted firm Zealots of the Common liberty and certainly this is the issue of it the Farmer liveth the life of a slave to maintain his Lord in pride and laziness the Lord leadeth the life of a King to oppress his Tennant by fines and exactions An equality little answerable to the old platforms of Republicks Aristotle genius ille naturae as a learned man calleth him in his fourth book of Politicks hath an excellent discourse concerning this disproportion In that chapter his project is to have a correspondency so far between Subjects under the King or people of the same City that neither the one might be over rich nor the other too miserably poor They saith he which are too happy strong or rich or greatly favoured and the like cannot nor will not obey with which evil they are infected from their infancy The other through want of these things are too abjectly minded and base for that the one cannot but command and the other but serve and this he calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a City inhabited onely by slaves and tyrants That questionless is the most perfect and compleat form of Government Vbi veneratur potentem humilis non timet antecedit non contemnit humiliorem potens as Velleius But this is an happiness whereof France is not capable their Lords being Kings and their Commons Villains And to say no less of them than in truth they are the Princes of this Country are little inferior in matters of Royalty to any King abroad and by consequence little respective in matter of obedience to their own King at home Upon the least discontent they will draw themselves from the Court or put themselves into Arms and of all other comforts are ever sure of this that they shall never want partizans neither do they use to stand off from him fearfully and at distance but justifie their revolt by publike declaration and think the King much indebted to them if upon fair terms and an
honourable reconcilement they will please to put themselves again into his obedience Henry the fourth was a Prince of as undanted and uncontroulable a spirit as ever any of his Predecessors and one that loved to be obeyed yet was he also very frequently baffled by these Roytelets and at the last died in an affront The Prince of Conde perceiving the Kings affection to his new Lady began to grow jealous of him for which reason he retired unto Bruxels The King offended at this retreat sent after him and commanded him home The Prince returned answer that he was the Kings most humble Subject and Servant but into France he would not come unless he might have a Town for his assurance withal he protected in publike writing a Nullity of any thing that should be done to his prejudice in his absence A stomackful resolution and somewhat misbecoming a Subject yet in this opposition he persisted his humour of disobedience out-living the King whom he had thus affronted But these tricks are ordinary here otherwise a man might have construed this action by the term of rebellion The chief meanes whereby these Princes become so head-strong is an immunity given them by their Kings and a liberty which they have taken to themselves By their Kings they have been absolutely exempted from all tributes tolles taxes customs impositions and subsidies by them they have been alwayes estated in whole entire Provinces with a power of Hante and many justice as the Lawyers term it passed over unto them the Kings having scarce an homage or acknowledgement of them To this they have added much to their strength and security by the insconcing and fortifying their houses which both often moveth afterwards enableth thē to contemn his Majesty An example we have of this in the Castle of Rochforte belonging to the Duke of Tremoville which in the long Civil Wars endured a shelf of five thousand shot and yet was not taken A very impolitick course in my conceit in the French to bestow honours and immunities upon those Qui as the Historian saith ea suo arbitrio aut reposcituri aut retenturem videantur quique modum habent in sua voluntate For upon a knowledge of this strength in themselves the Princes have been alwayes prone to civil Warrs as having sufficient means for safety and resistance On this ground all they write the Kings authority and disobey his justice Insomuch that the greatest sort of Nobles in this Kingdom can seldom be arraigned or executed in person and therefore the Laws condemn them in their images and hang them in their pictures A pretty device to work justice If by chance or some handsome sleight any of them be apprehended they are put under a sure guard and not doomed to death without great fear of tumult and unquietness Neither is it Vnus alter onely some two or three that thus stand upon their distance with the King but even all the Nobility of the Realm A rout so disordered unconfined and numberless that even Fabius himself would be out of breath in making the reckoning I speak not here of those that are stiled La Noblesse but of Titulados men onely of titular Nobility of the degree of Baron and above of these there is in this Country a number almost innumerable quot Coelum stellas take quantity for quantity and I dare be of the opinion that Heaven hath not more Stars than France Nobles you shall meet with them so thick in the Kings Court especially that you would think it almost impossible the Country should bear any other fruit This I think I may safely affirm and without Hyperbole that they have there as many Princes as we in England have Dukes as many Dukes as we Earls as many Earls as we Barons as many Barons as we Knights A jolly company and such as know their own strength too I cannot but as much marvel that those Kings should be so prodigal in conferring honours considering this that every Nobleman he createth is so great a weakening to his power On the other side I cannot but as much wonder at some of our Nation who have murmured against our late Soveraign and accused him of an unpardonable unthriftiness in bestowing the dignities of his Realm with so full and liberal an hand Certainly could there any danger have risen by it unto the State I could have been as impatient of it as another But with us titles and ennobling in this kind are onely either the Kings favour or the parties merit maketh whomsoever he be that receiveth them rather reverenced than powerful Raro eorum honoribus invidetur quorum vis non timetur was a good Aphorism in the dayes of Paterculus and may for ought I know be as good still Why should I envy any man that honour which taketh not from my safety or repine at my Soveraign for raising any of his Servants into an higher degree of eminency when that favour cannot make them exorbitant Besides it concerneth the improvement of the Exchequer at the occasions of Subsidies and the glory of the Kingdom when the Prince is not attended by men meerly of the Vulgar Add to this the few Noble men of any title which he found at his happy coming in amongst us and the additions of power which his coming brought unto us and we shall find it proportionable that he should enlarge our Nobility with our Country Neither yet have we indeed a number to be talked of comparing us with our neighbour Nations We may see all of the three first rank in the books of Miles Brook and Vincent and we are promised also a Catalogue of the creations and successions of all our Barons then we should see that as yet we have not surfeited Were this care taken by the Heralds in France perhaps the Nobility there would not seem so numberless sure I am not so confused but this is the main vice of that Profession of six Heralds which they have amongst them Viz Mountjoy Normandy Guyenns Valoys Britain and Burgoyne not one of them is reported to be a Genealogist Neither were their Predecessors better affected to this study Peradine the onely man that ever was amongst them hath drawn down the Genealogies of twenty four of the cheif Families all eminent and of the bloud in which he hath excellently well discharged himself but what a small pittance is that compared to the present multitude The Nobles being so populous it cannot be but the Nobless as they call them that is the Gentry must needs be thick set and onely not innumerable Of these Nobless there be some that hold their estates immediately of the Crown and they have the like immunity with the Princes Some hold their feifes or seuda of some other of the Lords and he hath onely Basse justice permitted to him as to mulct and amerce his Tennants to imprison them or to give them any other correction under death All of them have power to
raise and enhaunce up their rents to tax his Subjects on occasion and to prohibite them such pleasures as they think fit to be reserved for themselves In Grettanl in Picardie I saw a post fastened in the ground like a race-post with us and thereon an inscription I made presently to it as hoping to have heard news of sōe memorable battel there fought but when I came at it I found it to be nothing but a declaration of the Prince of Condes pleasure that no man should hunt in those quarters Afterward I observed them to be very frequent But not to wander through all particulars I will in some few of them onely give instance of their power here The first is Droict de Balliage power to keep Assizes or to have under them a Baillie and an Imperial seat of justice for the definition of such causes as fall under the compass of ordinary jurisdiction In this Court there is notice taken of treason robberies murthers protections pardons fairs markets and other matters of priviledge Next they have a Court of ordinary jurisdiction and therein a Judge whom they call Le Guarde de Justice for the decision of smaller business as debts trespass breach of the Kings peace and the like In this the purse is onely emptied the other extendeth to the taking away of the life for which every one that hath Hante Justice annexed to his feife hath also his particular Gibbet Nay which is wonderful methodical by the Criticisme of the Gibbet you may judge at the quality of him that owneth it for the Gibbet of one of the Noblesse hath but two pillars that of the Chastellan three the Barons four the Earls six the Dukes eight and yet this difference is rather precise than general The last of their jura Regalia which I will here speak of is the Command they have upon the people to follow them unto the warrs a Command not so advantagious to the Lord as dangerous to the Kingdom Thus live the French Princes thus the Noblesse thus those Sheep which God and the Laws hath brought under them they do not shear but fleece them and which is worse than this having themselves taken away the wooll they give up the naked carcass to the King Tonderi oves meas volo non deglubi was accounted one of the golden sayings of Tiberius but it is not currant here in France Here the Lord and the King though otherwise at odds amongst themselves be sure to agree in this the undoing and oppressing of the Paisant Ephraim against Manasseh and Masnasseh against Ephraim but both against Juda saith the Scripture The reason why they thus desire the poverty of the Commons is as they pretend the safety of the State and their own particulars Were the people once warmed with the feeling of ease and their own riches they would be presently hearkening after the Warrs And if no employment were offered abroad they would make some at home Histories and experience hath taught us enough of this humour in this kind it being impossible for this hot-headed and hare-brain'd people not to be doing Si extraneus deest domi hostem quaerunt as Justin hath observed of the ancient Spaniards A pretty quality and for which they have often smarted CHAP. XIV The base and low estate of the French Paisant The misery of them under their Lords The bed of Procrustes The suppressing of the Subject prejudicial to a State The Wisdom of King Henry the seventh The French forces all in the Cavillery The cruel Impositions laid upon the people by the King No Demain in France Why the trial by twelve men can be used onely in England The gabel of Salt The Popes licence for wenching The gabel by whom refused and why the Gascoines impatient of taxes The Taille and Taylon The Pancarte or aids the vain resistance of those of Paris The Court of aids The manner of gathering the Kings moneys The Kings Revenue The corruption of the French Publicans King Lewis why called the Just The moneys currant in France The gold of Spain more Catholike than the King The happiness of English Subjects BY that which hath been spoken already of the Nobless we may partly guess at the low estate of the Paisant or Country man of whom we will not now speak as Subjects to their Lords and how farre they are under their commandment but how miserable and wretched they are in their apparel and their houses For their apparel it is well if they can allow themselves Canvas or an outside of that nature As for Cloath it is above their purse equally and their ambition if they can aspire unto Fustian they are as happy as their wishes and he that is so arrayed will not spare to aim at the best place in the Parish even unto that of Church-Warden When they go to Plow or to the Church they have shooes and stockings at other times they make bold with Nature and wear their skins Hats they will not want though their bellies pinch for it and that you may be sure they have them they will alwayes keep them on their heads The most impudent custom of a beggarly fortune that ever I met with and which already hath had my blessing As for the Women they know in what degree Nature hath created them and therefore dare not be so fine as their Husbands some of them never had above one pair of stockings in all their lives which they wear every day for indeed they are very durable the goodness of their faces tels us that they have no need of a band therefore they use none And as concerning petticoats so it is that all have such a garment but most of them so short that you would imagine them to be cut off at the placket When the parents have sufficiently worn these vestures and that commonly is till the rottenness of them will save the labour of undressing they are a new cut out and fittted to the Children Search into their houses and you shall find them very wretched and destitute as well of furniture as provision No butter salted up against Winter no poudering tub no pullein in the rick barten no flesh in the pot or at the spit and which is worse no money to buy them The description of the poor aged couple Philemon and Baucis in the eigth book of the Metamorphosis is a perfect character of the French Paisant in his house-keeping though I cannot affirm that if Jupiter and Mercury did come amongst them they should have so hearty an entertainment for thus Ovid marshelleth the dishes Ponitur hic bicolor sincerae bacca Minervae Intubaque radix lactis Massa coacti Ovaque non acri leviter versata favellâ Prunaque in patulis redolentia mala canistris Hic nux hic mixta est rugosis carica palmis Et de purpurers collectae vitibus uvae Omnia fictilibus nitede They on the Table set Minerva's fruit The double coulour'd Olive
Picardy by the River of Some and on the West it is bounded with the Ocean and the little River Crenon which severeth it from a corner of Britain It extendeth in length from the beginning of the 9th degree of longitude to the middle of the 23. viz. from the Cape of St. Saviour West to the Port town of St. Valeria East For breadth it lieth partly in the 49th partly in the 50th degree of latitude So that reckoning 60. miles to a degree we shall find it to contain 270. English miles in length and 60 English miles in breadth where it is narrowest Amongst the Nations it was accounted a part of Gallia Celtica the name Neustria This new title it got by receiving into it a new Nation A people that had so terribly spoiled the Maritine Coasts of England France and Belgia that a furore Normannorum was inserted into the Letany Originally they were of Norway their name importeth it Anno 800. or thereabouts they began first to be accounted one of the plagues of Europe 900. they seated themselves in France by permission of Charles the Balde and the valour of Rollo their Captain Before this they had made themselves Masters of Ireland though they long held it not and Anno 1067. they added to the glory of their name by the Conquest of England You would think them a people not onely born to the warrs but to victory But Vt frugum semina mutato solo degenerant sic illa genuina feritas eorum amaenitate mollita est Florus spake it of the Gaules removed into Asia it is appliable to the Norwegians transplanted into Gallia yet fell they not suddenly and at once into the want of courage which now possesseth them During the time they continued English they attempt the Kingdom of Naples and Antioch with a fortune answerable to their valour Being once oppressed by the French and inslaved under that Monarchy they grew presently Crest fall'n and at once lost both their spirits and their liberty The present Norman then is but the corruption of the ancient the heir of his name and perhaps his possessions but neither of his strength nor his manhood Bondage and a fruitful soil hath so emasculated them that it is lost labour to look for Normans in Normandy There remaineth almost nothing in them of their Progenitors but the remainders of two qualities and those also degenerated if not bastards a penurious pride and an ungoverned doggedness Neither of them become their fortune or their habit yet to those they are constant Finally view him in his rags and dejected countenance and you would swear it impossible that those snakes should be the descendents of those brave Heroes which so often triumphed over both Religions foyling the Saracens and vanquishing the Christians But perchance their courage is evaporated into wit and then the change made the better Ortelius would seem to perswade us to this conceit of them and well might do it if his words were Oracle Le Gens saith he speaking of this Nation sont de plus accorls subtills d' esprit de la Gaule A Character for which the French will little thank him who if he speak truth must in matter of descretion give precedency to their vassals But as Imbat a French Leader said of the Florentines in the fifth book of Guicciardine Non supena done consistesse lingeque tanto celebrare de Fiorâ—ntini so may I say of the Normans for my part I could never yet find where that great wit of theirs lay Certain it is that as the French in general are termed the King's asses so may these men peculiarly be called the Asses of the French or the veriest Asses of the rest For what with the unproportionable rents which they pay to their Lords on the one side and the immeasurable taxes laid upon them by the King on the other they are kept in such a perpetuated course of drudgery that there is no place for wit or wisdom left amongst them Liberty is the Mother and Nurse of those two qualities and therefore the Romans not unhappily expressed both the condition of a Free-man and a discreet and modest personage by this one word Ingenuous Why the French King should lay a greater burden upon the backs of this Nation than their fellows I cannot determine Perchance it is because they have been twice conquered by them once from King John and again from Henry the sixth and therefore undergo a double servitude It may be to abate their natural pride and stubbornness Likely also it is that being a revolting people and apt to an apostasie from their Allegiance they may by this meanes be kept impoverished and by consequence disabled from such practises This a French Gentleman of good understanding told me that it was generally conceited in France that the Normans would suddenly and unanimously betray their Country to the English were their King a Cathâ—like But there is a further cause yet of their beggarliness and poverty which is the litigiousness and frequent going to law as we call it Ortelius however he failed in the first part of the Character in the conclusion of it hath done them justice Mais en generall saith he its sont scavans an passible en prosses pluideries They are pretty well versed in the querks of the Law and have wit more than enough to wrangle In this they agree exactly well with the Inhabitants of our Country of Norfolke Ex infima plebe non pauci reperiuntur saith Mr. Cambden qui si nihil sit litium lites tamen ex ipsis jaris apicibus serere callent They are pretty fellows to find out quirks in Law and to it they will whatsoever it cost them Mr. Cambden spake not at random or by the guess for besides what my self observed in them at my being once among them in a Colledge-progress I have heard that there have been no less than 340. Nisi prius's tried there at one Assises The reason of this likeness between the two Nations I conjecture to be the resemblance of the site and the soyl both lie upon the Sea with a long and spacious coast both enjoy a Country champain little swell'd with hils and for the most part of a light and sandy mould To proceed to more particulars if there be any difference between the two Provinces it is onely this that the Country of Normandy is much better and the people of Norfolk are somewhat the richer For indeed the Country of Normandy is enriched with a fat and liking soil such a one quae demum votis respondet avari Agricolae which may satisfie the expectation of the Husbandman were it never so exorbitant In my life I never saw Corn-fields more large and lovely extended in an equal level almost as far as eye-reach The wheat for I saw little Barley of a fair length in the stalk and so heavy in the ear that it even bended double you would think the grain had a desire to kiss
imagine them to be coy of their lips yet this is their humour It seemed to me at first strange and uncivil that a woman should turn away from the proffer of a salutation Afterwards I liked the custom very well and I had good cause for it for it saved me from many an unsavoury peice of mannerliness This notwithstanding could not but amaze me that they who in their actions were so light and wanton should yet think themselves modest and confine all lasciviousness unto a kiss A woman that is kissed they account more than half whored be her deportment never so becoming which maketh them very sparing of receiving such kindnesses But this is but a dissembled unwillingness and hath somewhat in it of the Italian As they had rather murther a man in private than openly speak ill of him so it may be thought that these Damsels would hardly refuse a mans bed though education hath taught them to fly from his lips Night and the Curtains may conceal the one the other can obtain no pardon in the eye of such as may happen to observe it Upon this ground your French Traveller that perhaps may see his Hostess kissed at Dover and see a Gentleman salute a Lady in the streets of London relateth at his coming home strange Chymera's of the English modesty to further this sinister opinion he will not spare to tell his Comerades for this I have noted to you to be a part of his humour what Merchants Wives he enjoyed at London and in what familiarity such a Lady entertained him at Westminster Terrible untruths and yet my poor Gallant thinketh he lieth not I remember I met in Paris with an English Docter and the Master of a Colledge there who complained much of the lasciviousness of the English Women and how infamously every French Taylor that came from us reported of them withall he protested it did not much greive him because he thought it a just judgement of God upon our Nation that all the married men should thus suffer A strange peice of Divinity to me that never before heard such preaching This was the occasion of the doctrine In the old English Mass-book called Secundum usum Sarum the Woman at the time of marriage promiseth her future Husband to be bonny and buxome at bed and at board till death us depart c. This being too light for the gravity of the action then in hand and in mine opinion somewhat less reverent than a Church duty would require the Reformers of that Book thought good to alter and thought fitter to put in to love cherish and obey That this was a sufficient assurance of Conjugal faith he would not grant because the promise of being buxome in bed was excluded Besides he accounted the supposed dishonesty of the English Wives as a vengeance plucked down on the heads of the people for chopping and changing the words of the holy Sacrament for such they esteem the form of Matrimony Though his argument needed no answer yet his accusation might expect one And an English Gentleman though not of the English faith laid open the abuse and seemed to speak it out of knowledge When the Monsieurs came over full pursed to London the French Pandars which lay in wait for such booties grow into their acquaintance and promise them the imbraces of such a Dame of the City or of such a Lady of the Court Women perhaps famed for admirable beauties But as Ixion amongst the Poets expected Juno and enjoyed a Cloud So those beguiled wretches instead of those eminent persons mentioned to them take into their bosomes some of the common prostitutes of the Town Thus are they cozened in their desires thus do they lie in their reports whilst poor fools they think themselves guilty of neither imposture For the other accusation which would seem to fasten a note of immodesty upon our English Gentlewomens lips I should be like enough to confess the crime were the English kisses like unto those of the French As therefore Doctor Bale Master of the Requests said unto Mendoza the Spanish Embassador upon his dislike of the promiscuous sitting of men and women within our Churches Turpe quidem id esse apud Hispanos qui etiam in locis sacris cogitarent de explendâ libidine a quâ procul aberant Anglorum mentes So do I answer to the bill of the Complaint An Oxford Doctor upon this Text Betrayest thou the Son of man with a Kiss made mention of four sorts of kisses viz. Osculum charitatis Osculum gratioris familiaritatis Osculum calliditatis and Osculum carnalitatis Of these I will bestow the last on the French and the third on the Spaniards retaining the two first unto our selves whereof the one is enjoyned by the precept and the other warranted by the examples of holy Scriptures For my part I see nothing in the innocent and harmless salutations of the English which the Doctor calleth Oscula gratioris familiaritatis that may move a French mans suspition much I confess which may stir his envy Perhaps a want of that happiness in himself maketh him to dislike it in us as the Fox that had lost his tayl perswaded all others to cut off theirs But I have already toucht the reason why that Nation is unworthy of such a favour their kisses being heat and sulphury and indeed nothing but the Prologue of their lust whereas on the contrary and I dare be confident in it the chast and innocent kiss of the English Gentlewoman is more in Heaven than many of their best devotions It were not amiss to explain in this place a verse of Ovids common in the mouthes of many but in the understanding of few Oscula qui sumpsit non caetera sumpsit Hoec quoque quae sumpsit perdere dignus erat He that doth onely kiss and doth no more Deserves to loose the kisses given before Which must be understood according to the fashion of Rome and Italy and since of France and Spain where they were given as pawns of a dishonest contract and not according to the customs of England where they are onely proffered in the way of a gratious and innocent familiarity and so accepted I return again to the French women and though I may not kiss them which he that seeth them will have good cause to thank God for yet they are at liberty to be courted An office which they admit freely and return as liberally an office to which they are so used that they can hardly distinguish complement from wooing till the Priest expecteth them at the Church door That day they set themselves forth with all the variety of riches their credit can extend to A Schollar of the University never disfurnished so many of his Freinds to provide for a journey as they do neighbours to adorn that wedding At my being at Pontoise I saw Mrs. Bride return from the Church the day before she had been somewhat of the condition of a
supplied by the multitude of religious houses which are in it These six Churches are called by the names St. Nicholas du' Chardomere 2. St. Estienne at this time in repairing 3. St. Severin 4. St. Bennoist 5. St. Andre and the 6. St. Cosme It hath also eight Gates 1. Porte de Nesse by the water side over against the Louure 2. Porte de Bucy 3. St. Germain 4. St. Michell 5. St. Jacques 6. St. Marcell 7. St. Victor and the 8. Porte de la Tornelle It was not accounted as a distinct member of Paris or as the third part of it until the year 1304. at which time the Scholars having lived formerly dispersed about the City began to settle themselves together in this place and so to become a peculiar Corporation The Vniversity was founded by Charles the great Anno 791. at the perswosion of Al'uine an Oxford man and the Scholar Venerable Bede who brought with him three of his condisciples to be the first Readers there Their names were Rabbanus Maurus John Duns surnamed Scotus Claudus who was also called Clement To these four doth the Vniversity of Paris owe its original and first rudiments Neither was this the first time that England had been the School-master unto France we lent them not onely their first Doctors in Divinity and Philosophy but from us also did they receive the mysteries of their Religion when they were Heathens Disciplina in Britannia reperta saith Julius Caesar Com. 6. atque inde in Galliam translata esse existimatur an authority not to be questioned by any but by a Caesar Learning thus new born at Paris continued not long in any full vigor for almost three hundred years it was fallen into a deadly trance and not here onely but almost through the greatest part of Europe Anno 1160 or thereabouts Peter Lambard Bishop of Paris the first Author of Scholastical Divinity and by his followers called the Master of the Sentences received it here in this by the favour and incouragement of Lewis the seventh In his own house were the Lectures first read and after as the number of Students did encrease in sundry other parts of the Town Colledges they had none till the year 1304. the Schollars sojourning in the houses of the Citizens accordingly as they could bargain for their entertainment But Anno 1304. Joan Queen of Navarre Wife to Philip the fair built that Colledge which then and ever since hath been called the Colledge of Navarre and it is at this day the fairest and largest of all the rest Non ibi consistunt exempla ubi caeperunt sed intenuem accepta tramitem laâ—issima evaganoi viam sibi faciunt as Velleius This good example ended not in twenty it self but invited diverse others of the French Kings and people to the erecting of convenient places of study so that in process of time Paris became enriched with fifty two Colledges so many it still hath though the odd fourty are little serviceable to Learning For in twelve onely of them is there any publike reading either in Divinity or Philosophy These twelve are the Colledges of 1. Harcourte 2. Caillve or the petit Sorbonne 3. Liseuer or Cerovium 4. Boncorrte 5. Montague 6. Les Marche 7. Navarre 8. De le Cardinal de Noyne 9. Le Plessis 10. De Beavis 11. La Sorbonne 12. De Clermont or the Colledge of the Jesuits There are also publike readings in the houses of the four Orders of Mendicant Friers Viz. the Carmelites the Augustines the Franciscans or Cordeliers and the Dominicans The other Colledges are destinate to other uses That of Arras is converted to an house of English Fugitives and there is another of them hard by the gate of Jacques employed for the reception of the Irish in others of them there is Lodging allotted out to Students who for ther instruction have resort to some of the twelve Colledges above mentioned In each of these Colledges there is a Rector most of whose places yeild them but small profit The greatest commodity which accreweth to them is raised from Chamber-rents their Preferments being much of a nature with that of a Principal of an Hall in Oxford or that of a Treasurer in an Inne of Chancery in London At the first erection of their Colledges they were all prohibited marriage though I see little reason for it There can hardly come any inconvenience or damage by it unto the Scholars under their charge by assuming of leases into their own hands for I think few of them have any to be so embezelled Anno 1520. or thereabouts it was permitted to such of them as were Doctors in Physick that they might marry the Cardinal of Toute-ville Legate in France giving to them that indulgence Afterwards in the year 1534. the Doctors of the Laws petitioned the Vniversity for the like priviledge which in fine was granted to them and confirmed by the Court of Parliament The Doctors of Divinity are the onely Academicals now barred from it and that not as Rectors but as Preists These Colledges for their building are very inelegant and generally little beholding to the curiosity of the Artificer So confused and so ill proportioned in respect of our Colledges in England as Exeter in Oxford was some twelve years since in comparison of the rest or as the two Temples in London now are in reference to Lincolns Inne The Revenues of them are sutable to the Fabricks as mean and curtailed I could not learn of any Colledge that hath greater allowances than that of the Sorbonne and how small a trifle that is we shall tell you presently But this is not the poverty of the Vniversity of Paris onely all France is troubled with the same want of encouragements in learning Neither are the Academies of Germany in any happier estate which occasioned Erasmus that great light of his times having been here in England and seen Cambridge to write thus to one of his Dutch acquaintance Vnum Collegium Cantabrigiense confidenter dicam superat vel decem nostra It holdeth good in the neatness and graces of the buildings in which sense he spake it but it had been more undeniable had he intended it of the Revenues Yet I was given to understand that at Tholoza there was amongst twenty Colledges one of an especial quality and so indeed it is if rightly considered There are said to be in it twenty Students places or Fellowships as we call them The Students at their entrance are to lay down in deposito six thousand F lorens or Liures to stay there onely six years in the mean time to enjoy the profits of the House at the 6 years end to have his 6000. Liures paid unto him by Successor Vendere jure potest emerat ille prius A pretty Market The Colledge of Sorbonni which indeed is the glory of this Vniversity Was built by one Robert de Sorbonne of the Chamber to Lewit the ninth of whom he was very well beloved It
superfluous and abrogation of unprofitable Edicts c. He hath the keeping of the Kings geeat Seal and by vertue of that either passeth or putteth back such Letters Pattents and Writs as are exhibited to him He hath under him immediately for the better dispatch of his Affairs four Masters of the Requests and their Courts Their Office and manner of proceeding is the same which they also use in England in the persons there is thus much difference that in Franee two of them must be perpetually of the Clergy One of their Courts is very ancient and hath in it two Presidents which are two of the Masters and fourteen Counsellers The other is of a later erection as being founded Anno 1580. and in that the two other of the Masters and eight Councellers give sentence Thus have I taken a veiw of the several Chambers of the Parliament of Paris and of their particular Jurisdictions as far as my information could conduct me One thing I noted further and in my mind the fairest ornament of the Pallace which is the neatness and decency of the Lawyers in their apparrel for besides the fashion of their habit which is I assure you exceeding pleasant and comely themselves by their own care and love to handsomeness adde great lustre to their garments and more to their persons Richly drest they are and well may be so as being the ablest most powerfull men under the Princes la Noblesse in all the Country An happiness as I conjecture rather of the calling than of the men It hath been the fate and destiny of the Law to strengthen enable its professors beyond any other any Art or Science the Pleaders in all Common-wealths both for sway amongst the people and vague amongst the Military men having alwaies had the preheminence Of this rank were Pericles Phochion Alcibiades and Demosthenes amongst the Athenians Antonius Mar. Cato Caesar and Tullie amongst the Romans men equally famous for Oratory and the Sword yet this I can confidently say that the several States above mentioned were more indebted unto Tullie and Demosthenes being both meer Gown men than to the best of their Captaines the one freeing Athens from the Armies of Macedon the other delivering Rome from the conspiracy of Catiline O fortunatum natam me Consule Romam It is not then the fate of France only nor of England to see so much power in the hand of the Lawyers and the case being general me thinks the envy should be the less and less it is indeed with them than with us The English Clergy though otherwise the most accomplisht in the World in this folly deserveth no Apologie being so strangely ill affected to the Pleaders of this Nation that I fear it may be said of some of them Quod invidiam non ad causam sed personam et ad valantatem dirigant A weakness not more unworthy of them than prejudicial to them for fostering between both Gownes such an unnecessary emulation they do but exasperate that power which they cannot controle and betray themselves to much envy and discontentedness A disease whose care is more in my wishes than in my hopes CHAP. IX The Kings Pallace of the Louure by whom built the unsutableness of it The fine Gallery of the Queene Mother The long Gallery of Henry the fourth his magnanimous intent to have built it into a Quadrangle Henry the fourth a great builder his infinite project upon the Mediterranean and the Ocean Lasalle des Antiques The French not studious of Antiquities Burbon House The Tuilleries c. WE have discharged the King of one Pallace and must follow him to the other where we shall find his residence It is seated in the west side of the Town or Ville of Paris hard by Porte neufue and also by the new Bridge An House of great fame and which the Kings of France have long kept their Courts in It was first built by Phillip Augustus anno 1214. and by him intended for a Castle it then serving to imprison the more potent of the Noblesse and to lay up the Kings Treasury for that cause it was well moated and strengthened with walls and draw Bridges very serviceable in those times It had the name of Louure quasi L'oeuure or the work the Building by way of excellencie An Etymologie which draweth nigher to the ear than the understanding or the eye And yet the French writers would make it a miracle Du Chesne calleth it superbe bastiment qui n' a son esgal en toute la Christiente and you shall hear it called in another place Bastiment qui passe muiourd huy en excellenee et en grandeur tous les autres Brave Eligies if all were Gold that glistered It hath given up now its charge of money and great prisoners to the Bastile and at this time serveth only to imprison the Court. In my life I never saw any thing more abused by a good report or that more belyeth the rumours that go of it The ordinary talk of vulgar travellers and the bigg words of the French had made me expect at the least some prodigie of Architecture some such Majestical house as the Sunne Don Phoebus is said to have dwelt in by Ovid. Regia solis erat sublimibus alta columnis Clara micante auro flammasque imitante pyropo Cuius ebur nitidum c. Indeed I thought no fiction in Poetry had been able to have parralell'd it and made no doubt but it would have put me into such a passion as to have cryed out with the young Gallant in the Comidie when he saw his Sweet heart Hei mihi qualis erat talis erat qualem nunquem ego vidi But I was much deceived in that hope and could find nothing in it to admire much less to envy The Fable of the Mountaine which was with child and brought forth a Mouse is questionless a Fable This House and the large fame it hath in the world is the Morall of it Never was there an House more unsuitable to it self in the particular examination of parts nor more unsutable to the Character and esteem of it in the general survey of the whole You enter into it over two Draw-bridges and thorough three Gates ruinous enough and abundantly unsightly In the Quadrangle you meet with three several fashions of buildings of three several ages and they so unhappily joyned one to the other that one would half beleeve they were clapped together by an Earthquake The South and West parts of it are new and indeed Prince like being the work of Francis the first and his Son Henry had it been all cast into the same mould I perswade my self that it would be very gratious and lovely The other two are of ancient work and so contemptible that they disgrace the rest and of these I suppose the one to be at the least a hundred years older than his partner such is it without As for the inside it is farre
and preferments of the French By these propositions to which the Jusuits in the end subscribed I know not with what mental reservation it is more than evident that they have left him no command neither over their consciences nor their persons So that all things considered we may justly say of the Papal power in France what the Papists falsly say of Erasmus namely that it is Nomen sine rebus In one thing onely his authority here is entire which is his immediate protection of all the Orders of Friers and also a superintendency or supreme eye over the Monks who acknowledge very small obedience if any at all to the French Bishops For though at the beginning every part and member of the Diocess was directly under the care and command of the Bishop yet it so happened at the building of Monestaries in the Western Church the Abbots being men of good parts and sincere life grew much into the envy of their Diocesan For which cause as also to be more at their own command they made suit to the Pope that they might be freed from that subjection Vtque intutelam Dive Petri admitterentur A proposition very plausible to his Holiness ambition which by this meanes might the sooner be raised to his height and therefore without difficulty granted This gap opened first the several Orders of Friers and after them the Deans and Chapters purchased to themselves the like exemptions In this the Popes power was wonderfully strengthened in having such able and so many props to uphold his authority it being a true Maxime in State Quod qui privilegia obtenent ad eadem conservanda teneantur authoritatem concedentis tueri This continued till the Council of Trent unquestioned where the Bishops much complained of their want of authority and imputed all the schismes and vices in the Church to this that their hands were tied Hereupon the Popes Legates thought it fit to restore to their jurisdiction their Deans and Chapters At that of the Monks and Monestaries they were more sticking till at the last Sebastian Pighinus one of the Popes Officers found out for them this satisfaction that they should have an eye and inspection into the lives of the Monks not by any authority of their own Sed tanquam a sede Apostolica delegati But as for the Orders of Friers the Pope would not by any means give way unto it They are his Janizaries and the strongest bulwarks of his Empire and are therefore called in a good Author Egregia Romanae Curiae instrumenta So that with them the Diocesan hath nothing to do each severall religious House being as a Court of Peculiars subject onely to the great Metropolitan of Rome This near dependance on his Holiness maketh this generation a great deal more regardless of their behaviour than otherwise it would be though since the growth of the reformation shame and fear hath much reformed them They have still howsoever a spice of their former wantonness and on occasions will permit themselves a little good fellowship And to say truth of them I think them to be the best Companions in France for a journey but not for acquaintance They live very merrily and keep a competent table more I suppose than can stand with their vow and yet far short of that affluency whereof many of our books accuse them It was my chance to be in an house of the Franciscans in Paris where one of the Friers upon the entreaty of our Friend had us into the Hall it being then the time of their Refectory a favour not vulgar There saw we the Brothers sitting all on a side and every one a pretty distance from the other their several commons being a dish of pottage a chop of mutton a dish of Cherries and a large glass of water This provision together with a liberal allowance of ease and a little of study keepeth them exceeding plump and in good liking and maketh them having little to take thought for maketh them as I said before passing good Company As I travelled to Orleans we had in coach with us three of these mortified sinners two of the Order of St. Austin and one Franciscan the merriest Crickets that ever chirped Nothing in them but mad tricks and complements and for musick they would sing like Hawks when we came to a vein of good Wine they would chear up themselves and their neighbour with this comfortable doctrine Vivamus ut bibamus et bibamus ut vivamus and for Courtship and toying with the Wenches you would easily beleeve it had been a trade with which they had not a little been acquainted Of all men when I am married God keep my wife from them and till then my neighbours On the other side the common Priests of France are so dull and blockish that you shall hardly meet with a more contemptible people The meanest of our Curats in England for spirit and discourse are very Popes to them for learning they may safely say with Socrates Hoc tantum scimus quod nescimus but you must not look that they should say it in Latine Tongues they have none but those of their Mother and the Masse Book of which last they can make no use unless the Book be open and then also the Book is fain to read it self for in the last Romanum Missale established by the authority of Pius the fifth and recognized by Clement the eighth Anno 1600. every sillable is diversly marked whether it must be sounded long or short just as the varifying examples are in the end of the English Grammer When I had lost my self in the streets of Paris and wanted French to enquire homeward I used to apply my self to some of this reverend habit But O soeclum insipiens et infacitum you might as easily have wrought water out of the flint as a word of Latine out of their mouthes Nor is this the disease of the vulgar Masse mumbler onely it hath also infected the right worshipful of the Clergy In Orleans I had business with a Chanoin of the Church of St. Croiz a fellow that wore his surplice it was made of Lawne and Lace with as good a credit as ever I saw any and for the comliness and capacity of his cap he might have been a Metropolitan perceiving me to speak to him in a strange Tongue for it was Latine he very learnedly asked me this question Num potestis loqui Gallica which when I had denied at last he brake out into another Interrogatory viz. Quandiu fuistis in Gallice To conclude having read over my Letter with two or three deadly pangs and six times rubbing of his temples he dismissed me with this cordial and truly it was very comfortable to my humor Ego necotias vestras curabo A strange beast and one of the greatest prodigies of Ignorance that ever I met with in mans apparrel Such being the Romish Priests it is no marvail if the French be no more setled and resolute
posterity hath admired without envie To come home unto our selves the writers of the Romans mention the revolt of Britaines and the slaughter of 70000 Confederates to the Romans under the conduct of Vocudia and she in the beginning of her encouragements to the action telleth the people thus Solitum quidem Britannis foeminarum ductu bellare Of all these Heroicall Ladyes I read no accusation of witchcraft innative courage and a sense of injury being the armes they fought withall Neither can I see why the Romans should exceed us in modesty or that we need envie unto the French this one female Warriour when it is a fortune which hath befallen most nations As for her atchievements they are not so much beyond a common being but that they may be imputed to naturall meanes For had she been a Witch it is likely she would have prevented the disgrace which her valour suffered in the ditches of Paris though she could not avoid those of Champeigne who took her prisoner The Divell at such an exigent only being accustomed to forsake those which he hath intangled so that she enjoyed not such a perpetuity of faelicity as to entitle her to the Divells assistance she being sometimes conquerour sometimes overthrowne and at last imprisoned Communia fortune ludibria the ordinary sports of Fortune her actions before her March to Orleans having somewhat in them of cunning and perhaps of imposture as the Vision which she reported to have incited her to these attempts her finding out of the King disguised in the habit of a Countrey-man and her appointing to her selfe an old sword hanging in Saint Katharines Church in Tours The French were at this time meerly crâ—â—t-fallen not to be raised but by a miracle This therefore is invented and so that which of all the rest must prove her a sorceresse will onely prove her an impostor Gerrard seigneur de Haillan one of the best writers of France is of opinion that all that plot of her coming to the King was contrived by three Lords of the Court to hearten the people as if God now miraculously intended the restauration of the Kingdome Add to this that she never commanded in any battaile without the assistance of the best Captaines of the French Nation and amongst whom was the Bastard of Orleans who is thought to have put this device into her head The Lord Bellay in his discourse of Art Military proceedeth further and maketh her a man onely thus habited Pour fair revenir le courage aux Francois which had it been so would have been discovered at the time of her burning Other of the later French Writers for those of the former age savour too much of the Legend make her to be a lusty lasse of Lorreine trained up by the Bastard of Orleans and the Seigneur of Brandicourt only for this service that she might carry with her the reputation of a Prophetesse and an Ambassadresse from Heaven Admit this and farewell Witchcraft As for the sentence of her Condemnation and the confirmation of it by the Divines and Vniversity of Paris it is with me of no moment being composed onely to humour the Victor If this could sway me I had more reason to encline to the other party for when Charles had setled his estate the same man who had condemned her of Sorcery absolved her and there was also added in defence of her innocency a Decree from the Court of Rome Joane then with me shall inherit the title of La puelle d' Orleans with me she shall be ranked amongst the famous Captaines of her time and be placed in the same throne equall with the valiant'st of all her Sex in times before her Let those whom partiality hath wrested aside from the path of truth proclaime her for a Sorceress for my part I will not flatter the best Fortunes of my Countrey to the prejudice of a truth neither will I ever be induced to think of this female Warriour otherwise than as of a noble Captaine Audetque viris concurrere Virgo Penthesilea did it why not she Without the stain of Spells and Sorcery Why should those Arts in her be counted sin Which in the other have commended been Nor is it fit that France should be deny'd This Female Soldier since all Realms beside Have had the honour of one and relate How much that Sex hath ev'n forc'd the state Of their decaying strength let Scytha spare To speak of Tomyris the Assyrians care Shall be no more to have their deeds recited Of Ninus's wife nor are the Dutch delighted To have the name of their Velleda extoll'd the name Of this French Warriour hath eclips'd their fame And silenc'd their atchievements let the praise That 's due to Vertue wait upon her raise An Obelisk unto her you of Gaule And let her Acts live in the mouths of all Speak boldly of her and of her alone That never Lady was as good as Joane She dy'd a Virgin 't was because the earth Held not a man whose Vertues or whose Birth Might merit such a Blessing but above The Gods provided her a fitting Love And gave her to St. Denis she with him Protects the Lillies and their Diadem You then about whose Armies she doth watch Give her the honour due unto her Match And when in Field your Standard you advance Cry ' loud St. Denis and St. Joan for France CHAP. III. The study of the Civil Law received in Europe The dead time of Learning The Schoole of Law in Orleans The Oeconomie of them The Chancelour of Oxford anciently appointed by the Diocaesan there Method here and Prodigality in bestowing Degrees Orleans a great Conflux of Strangers The Language there The Corporation of Germaines there Their House and Privilege Dutch Latine The difference between an Academy and an University I Have now done with the Town and City of Orleans and am come to the Vniversity or Schooles of Law which are in it this being one of the first places in which the Study of the Civil Law was received in Europe for immediately after the death of Justinian who out of no lesse than two thousand volumes of Law-Writers had collected that body of the Imperiall Laws which we now call the Digest or the Pandects the study of them grew neglected in these Westerne parts nor did any for a long time professe or read them The reason was bâ—cause Italy France Spaine England and Germany having received new Lords over them as the Franks Lombards Saxons Sarcens and others were faine to submit themselves to their Lawes It happened afterwards that Lotharius Saxo the Emperour who began his Raigne Anno 1126 being 560 yeares after the death of Justinian having taken the City of Melphy in Naples found there an old Copy of the Pandects This he gave to the Pisans his Confederates as a most reverend relique of Learning and Antiquity whence it is called Litera pisana Moreover he founded the Vniversity of Bologne or Bononia ordaining the Civill
of all the City to be made one of the next yeares Eschevins Of the two Wenches one so extremely impudent that even an immodest â—are would have abhorred her language and of such a shamelesse deportment that her very behaviour would have frighted Lust out of the most incontinent man living Since I first knew mankinde and the world I never observed so much impudency in the generall as I did then in her particular and I hope shall never be so miserable as to suffer two dayes more the torment of her and of her conversation In a word she was a wench borne to shame all the Friers with whom she had traffiqued for she would not be Casta and could not be Cauta and so I leave her A creature extremely bold because extremely faulty and yet having no good property to redeem both these and other unlovely qualities but as Sir Philip Sidney saith of the strumpet Baccha in the Arcadia a little counterfeit Beauty disgraced with wandring eyes and unweighed speeches The other of the young females for as yet I am doubfull whether I may call any of them women is of the same profession also but not halfe so rampant as her companion Haec habitu casto cum non sit casta videtur as Ausâ—nius giveth it of one of the two wanton Sisters by her carriage a charitable stranger would have thought her honest and to that favourable opinion had my self been inclinable if a French Monsieur had not given me her Character at Orleans besides there was an odde twinkling of her eye which spoyled the composednesse of her countenance otherwise she might have passed for currant so that I may safely say of her in respect of her fellow-harlot what Tacitus doth of Pompey in reference to Caesar viz. Secretior Pompeius Caesare non melior they were both equally guilty of the same sin though this last had the more cunning to dissemble it and avoyd the infamy and censure due unto it And so I am come to the old Woman which was the last of our goodly companions A woman so old that I am not at this day fully resolved whether she were ever young or no 't was well I had read the Scriptures otherwise I might have been prone to have thought her one of the first pieces of the Creation and that by some mischance she had escaped the Floud her face was for all the world like unto that of Sybilla Erythraea in some old print or that of one of Solomons two Harlots in the painted cloth you would not but have imagined her one of the Relikes of the first age after the building of Babel for her very complexion was a confusion more dreadfull than that of Languages as yet I am uncertain whether the Poem of our Arch-Poet Spencer entituled was not purposely intended on her sure I am it is very appliable in the Title but I might have saved all this labour Ovid in his description of Fames hath most exactly given us her Portraiture and out of him and the eighth book of the Metamorphosis you may take this view of her Nullus erat crinis cava lumina pallor in ore Labra incana situ scabri rubigine dentes Dura cutis per quaÌ„ spectari viscera possent Ventris erat pro ventre locus peÌ„dere putares Pectus a spinae tantummodo crate teneri Unhair'd pale-fac'd her eyes sunk in her head Lips hoary-white and teeth most rusty red Through her course skin her guts you might espie In what estate and posture they did lie Belly she had none onely there was seen The place where her belly should have been And with her Hips her body did agree As if 't were fastned by Geometry But of this our Companion as also of the rest of the Coach full Sunday-night and our arrival at Paris hath at the last delivered us Ablessing for which â— can never be sufficiently thankfull and thus Dedit Deus his quoque finem The Fourth Book Or PICARDY CHAP. I Our return towards England more of the Hugonots hate unto Crosses The Towns of Luzarch and St. Lowp The Country of Picardy and People The Picts of Brittain not of this Country Mr. Lesdiguier Governour of Picardy The Office of Constable what it is in France By whom the place supplied in England The Marble Table in France and Causes there handled Clermont and the Castle there The Warrs raised by the Princes against D' Ancre What his Designs might tend to c. IVly the twenty seventh having dispatched that business which brought us into France and surveyed as much of the Country as that opportunity would permit us we began our journey towards England in a Coach of Amiens better accompanied we were than when we came from Orleans for here we had Gentlemen of the choisest fashion very ingenuous and in mine opinion finer conditioned than any I had met withal in all my acquaintance with that Nation and which appeared to me somewhat marvellous we had no vexation with us in the shape of a French-woman to torment our ears with her discourse or punish our eyes with her complexion Thus associated we began to wag on towards St. Lowp where that night we were to be lodged The Country such as already I have described it in the Isle of France save that beyond St Denis it began to be somewhat more hilly by the way I observed those little cressets erected in the memory of St. Denis as being vainly supposed to be his resting places when he ran from Mountmartyr with his head in his hand which the zealous madness of the Hugonots had thrown down and were now reedifyed by King Lewis It could not but call to mind the hate of that Nation unto that harmless monument of Christs suffering the Cross which is grown it seemeth so exorbitant that the Papists make use of it to discover an Hugonot I remember that as we passed by water from Amiens to Abbeville we met in the boat with a berry of French Gentlewomen To one of them with that little French which I had I applied my self and she perceiving me to be English questioned my Religion I answered as I safely might that I was a Catholike and she for her better satisfaction proffered me the little cross which was on the toâ— of her beads to kiss I kissed it and ratheâ— should I desire to kiss it than many of their lip thereupon the rest of the company gave â—ome this verdict that I was un urai Christien et 〈◊〉 point un Hugonet But to proceed to our jourâ—ey The same day we parted from Paris we passed through the Town of Luzarch and came to that of St. Lowp The first famous onely in its owner which is the Count of Soisons the second in an Abbey there scituate built in memory of St. Lupus Bishop of Troyes in Campagne These Towns passed we entred into Picardy Picardy is divided into the higher which containeth the territories of Calais and Burlogne
with the Town of Monstrevelle and the lower wherein are the goodly Cities of Amiens Abeville and many other places of principal note The higher which is the lesser and more Northern part is bounded North and West with the English Ocean and on the East with Flanders and Artoys The later which is the larger the richer and the more Southern hath on the East the little County of Veromandoys on the West Normandy and on the South the County of Campaigne In length it comprehendeth all the fifty one degree of Latitude and three parts of the fiftieth extending from Cales in the North to Clermont in the South In breadth it is of a great inequality For the higher Picardy is like Linea amongst the Logicians which they define to be Longitudo sine Latitudine it being indeed nothing in a manner but a meer border The lower is of a larger breadth and containeth in it the wole twenty fourth degree of Longitude and a fourth part of the twenty three So that by the proportion of degrees this province is an hundred and five miles long and seventy five broad Concerning the name of Picardy it is a difficulty beyond my reading and my conjecture All that I can do is to overthrow the less probable opinions of other Writers and make my self subject to the scoffe which Lactantius bestoweth on Aristotle Recte hic sustulit aliorum disciplinas sed non recte fundavit suam Some then derive it from Pignan one sorsooth of Alexander the greats Captains who they fain to have built Amiens and Pigmingin an absurdity not to be honoured with a confutation Some from the Town of Pigmingin it self of which mind is Mercator but that Town never was of such note as to name a Province Others derive it from Picardus a fanatical heretick of these parts about the year 1300. and after but the appellation is farre older than the man Others fetch it from the Picts of Brittanie whom they would have to fly hither after the discomfiture of their Empire and Nation by the Scots A transmigration of which all Histories are silent this being the verdict of the best Antiquary ever nursed up in Brittain Picti itaque praelio funestissimo debellati aut penitus fuerunt extincti aut paulatim in Scotorum nomen nationem concesserint Lastly some others derive the name from Pigs which signifyeth a Lance or Pike the inventors of which warlike Weapon the fathers of this device would fain make them In like manner some of Germany have laboured to prove that the Saxons had that name given them from the short Swords which they used to wear called in their language Seaxen but neither truly For my part I have consulted Ptolomie for all the Nations and the Itinerarium of Antonius for all the Towns in this Tract but can find none of which I may fasten any probable Etymologie All therefore that I can say is that which Mr. Robert Bishop of Auranches in Normandy hath said before me and that onely in the general Quos itaque aetas nostra Picardos appellat Vere Belgae dicendi sunt qui post modum in Picardorum nomen transmigrarunt This Country is very plentiful of corn and other grain with which it abundantly furnisheth Paris and hath in it more store of pasture and meadow ground than I else saw in any part of France In Vines onely it is defective and that as it is thought more by the want of industry in the people than any inability ih the soyl for indeed they are a people that will not labour more than they needs must standing much upon their state and distance in the carriage of their bodies savouring a little of the Spaniard when Picardiser to play the Picard is usually said of those who are lofty in their looks or gluttonous at their tables this last being also one of their simptomes of a Picard The Governour of this Province is the Duke les Deguiers into which Office he succeeded Mr. Luynes as he also did in that of the Constable two preferments which he purchased at a deer rate having sold or abandoned that Religion to compass them which he had professed for more than sixty years together An Apostasie most unworthy of the man who having for so many years supported the cause of Religion hath now forsaken it and thereby made himself guilty of the cowardice of M. Antonius qui cumin desertores saeviri debuer at desertor sui exercitus factus est But I fear an heavier sentence waiteth upon him the Crown of immortality not being promised to all those which run but to those onely which hold out to the end For the present indeed he hath augmented his honours By this Office which is the principal of all France he hath place and command before and over all the Peers and Princes of the bloud and at the coronation of the French Kings ministreth the Oath When the King entereth a City in state or upon the rendition of that he goeth before with the Sword naked and when the King sitteth in an Assembly of the three Estates he is placed at the Kings right hand he hath command over all his Majesties Forces and he that killeth him is guilty of high treason he sitteth also as cheif Judge at the Table of Marble upon all suits actions persons and complaints whatsoever concerning the warrs This Table de Marble was wont to be continually in the great Hall of the Palace of Paris from whence at the burning of that Hall it was removed to the Louure At this Table doth the Admiral of France hold his Sessions to judge of traffiick prizes Letters of Marts piracies and business of the like nature At this Table judgeth all Le grand Maistre des eaures et Forrests we may call him the Justice in Eire all his Majesties Forrests and Waters The actions there handled are thefts and abuses committed in the Kings Forrests Rivers Parks Fish-ponds and the like In the absence of the Grand Maistre the power of sentence resteth in the Les grands Maistres enquesteures et generaux reformateurs who have under their command no fewer than 300. subordinate Officers Here also sit the Marshals of France who are ten in number sometimes in their own power sometimes as Assistants to the Constable under whose direction they are with us in England the authority of the Marshalship is more entire as that which besides its own jurisdiction hath now incorporated in it self most of the matters anciently belonging to the Constables which Office ended in the death of Edward Lord Duke of Buckingham the last hereditary and proprietary Constable of England This Office of Constable to note unto you so much by the way was first instituted by Lewis the Gross who began his reign Anno 1110. and conferred on Mr. Les Deguiers on the 24th of July Anno 1622. in the Cathedral Church of Grenoble where he first heard Mass and where he was installed Knight of both Orders And
Julius Caesar at the time of his second expedition into Brittaine this Haven being then Portus Gessorianus This Tower which we now see seemeth to be but the remainder of a greater work and by the height and scituation of it one would guesse it to have been the Key or watch Tower unto the rest it is built of rude and vulgar stone but strongly cemented together the figure of it is six square every square of it being nine paces in length A compass to little for a Fortress and therefore it is long since it was put to that use it now serving onely as a Sea mark by day and a Pharos by night Vbi accensae noctu faces navigantium cursum dirigunt The English men call it the Old man of Boulogue and not improperly for it hath all the signes of age upon it The Sea hath by undermining it taken from it all the earth about two squares of the bottom of it the stones begin to drop out from the top and upon the rising of the wind you would think it were troubled with the Palsie in a word two hard winters seconded with a violent tempest maketh it rubbish what therefore is wanting of present strength to the Haven in this ruine of a Tower the wisdom of this age hath made good in a Garrison And here me thinks I might justly acâ—use the impolitick thrift of our former Kings of England in not laying out some money upon the strength and safety of our Haven Townes not one of them Portsmouth onely excepted being Garrison'd true it is that Henry the eighth did eâ—ect Block-Houses in many of them but what bâ—bles they are and how unable to resist a Flees royally appointed is known to every one I know indeed we were sufficiently Garrison'd by out Naâ—e could it either keep a watch on all particular places or had it noâ— sometimes occasion to be absent I hope our Kings are not of Darius mind in the storie quâ— gloriosius raâ—us est hostem 〈◊〉 quam non admittere neither will I take 〈◊〉 to give counsell onely I could wish that we were not inferiour to our neighbours in the greatness of our care since we are equal to the best of them in the goodness of our Country This Town of Boulogne and the Country about it was taken by Henry the eighth of England Anno 1545. himself being in person at the siege a very costly and chargeable victory The whole list of his Forces did amount to 44000. foot and 3000. horse Field Pieces he drew after him above a hundred besides those of smaller making and for the conveyance of their Ordinance baggage and other provision there were transported into the Continent above 25000. Horses True it is that his designes had a further aim had not Charles the Emperour with whom he was to join left the field and made peace without him So that judging onely by the success of the expedition we cannot but say that the winning of Boulonnois was a dear purchase and indeed in this one particular Sr. Walter Raleigh in the preface to his most excellent History saith not amiss of him namely that in his vain and fruitless expeditions abroad he consumed more treasure than all the rest of our victorious Kings before him did in their several Conquests The other part of his censure of that Prince I know not well what to think of as meerly composed of gall and bitterness Onely I cannot but much marvail that a man of his wisdom being raised from almost nothing by the Daughter could be so severely invective against the Father certainly a most charitable judge cannot but condemn him of want of true affection and duty to his Queen seeing that it is as his late Majesty hath excellently noted in his ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΟΠΔΩΡΟΠa thing monstrous to see a man love the Child and hate the Parents And therefore he may earnestly enjoyn his Son Henry to repress the insolencie of such as under pretence to tax a vice in the person seek craftily to stain the Race Presently after this taking Boulogne the French again endeavoured the regaining of it even during the life of the Conquerour but he was strong enough to keep his gettings After his death the English being engaged in a warr against the Scots and Kit having raised a rebellion in Norfolk they began again the reconquest of it and that more violently than ever Upon news of their preparations an Ambassage was dispatched to Charles the fifth to desire succours of him and to lay before him the infancy and several necessity of the young King who was then about the age of ten years This desire when the Emperour had refused to hearken to they besought him that he would at the least be pleased to take into his hands and keeping the Town of Boulogne and that for no longer time than until King Edward could make an end of the troubles of his Subjects at home An easie request yet did he not onely deny to satisfie the King in this except he would restore the Catholike Religion but he also expresly commanded that neither any of his men or munition should go to the assistance of the English An ingratitude for which I cannot find a fitting Epithite considering what fast friends the Kings of England have alwayes been to the united Houses of Burgundy and Austria what moneys they have helped them with and what sundry warrs they have made for them both in Belgium to maintain their authority and in France to augment their potency from the marriage of Maximilian of the Family of Austria with the Lady Mary of Burgundie which happened in they ear 1478. unto the death of Henry the eighth which fell in the year 1548. are just seventy years in which time onely it is thought by men of knowledge and experience that it cost the Kings of England at the least six millions of pounds in the meer quarrels and defence of the Princes of those Houses An expense which might seem to have earned a greater requital than that now demanded Upon this denial of the unkindful Emperour a Treaty followed between England and France The effect of it was that Boulogne and all the Country of it should be restored to the French by paying to the English at two dayes of payment 800000. Crowns Other Articles there were but this the principal and so the fortune of young Edward was like that of Julius Caesar towards his end Dum clementiam quam praestiterant expectant incauti ab ingratis occupati sunt The CONCLUSION A Generall censure of France and the French A gratulation to England The end of our journey ON wednesday the third of August having stayed in Boulogne three dayes for wind and company and not daring to venture on Calice by reason of the sickness there raging we took ship for England the day fair and the wind fitly serving us we were quickly got out of the harbour into the main And so I take my leave of France