MATTHEW SR., EARLY LIFE, THE SPANISH ARMADA
As a teenager, Matthew would have joined his family and other fair-goers from the various towns in the shires of Essex, Sussex, Cambridge, Hertford, Middlesex, and Kent and from the continent at the annual Colchester Fair. Those attending were there to buy, sell, and pleasure themselves.
Strange odors filled the air from the smoke of cook-fires, mingling with the scents of the enormous market of spices and herbs. The language of other places and various dialects of his own tongue, the sight of strange faces with different cuts and lengths of beard and hair, the many different kinds of clothing people wore, and the taste of foreign food tingling his mouth helped him understand there was more to the world than Bocking and its close neighbor Braintree. But even moving among the crowd and touching the soft fur worn by a Dane, the perfumed leather of a French wine dealer, or the sleek Italian silk of a Venetian there to sell the spices of the East, or the feel and heft of foreign coins in his palms never led him to believe he would experience any of these things other than at the Fair. It was hard to imagine life among strangers in other countries.
Matthew was probably about 16 when he made his first London visit. He had listened many times to travelers speak of the city and had undoubtedly formed an impression – probably Jerusalem and Babylon with bits and pieces of Sodom and Gomorrah. But it is doubtful he was prepared for what he experienced.
On his first visit he would have been amazed by the number of birds in the countryside and the sounds of bells tolling and ringing to each other in the towns and villages he passed through on the 45-mile journey. There were bells in every tone of voice from cockcrow day bell at first light until evening curfew and finally ending with the solemn tolling at midnight. Many towns and villages had their own language of bells – bells to announce births, death, baptism, burial, the marriage feast, and the call to prayer and communion.
There was the barking of chained dogs, the crying out of street vendors, the clear voices of children singing or reciting lessons together emanating from open windows. The song of the wood saw, the hammer and chisel of the stonemason, the rattle of the cart maker, and the clang of the blacksmith pounding slow clean tunes of his anvil were in every village he passed through. As he neared London, a man in the meadow was probably sharpening his scythe and it sounded like the busywork of summer bees. And the thousands of yellow butterflies reminded him of the beauty of April’s daffodils.
Eventually the city appeared straight ahead of him, across fields with scattered houses, buildings, and churches, rising to fill the wide horizon. There stood the battlement wall, like a vast painted cloth, with its gates and gate-houses and towers. The spires and the steeples of the churches seemed like a wild forest stretching from the White Tower to the Tower of London to St. Paul’s Church atop its hill. Weather vanes sparkled from the four corners of each. The towers and long roof of St. Peter’s at Westminister Abbey, the Old Palace, Whitehall Palace, and the great houses lining the banks of the Thames must have been beyond his imagination. This ancient city, built between and among low hills and marshy ground by a river, would have seemed newly baptized to the eyes of this 16-year-old.
As any first time visitor would, he explored it all. He probably began with a visit to the Smithfield Market, easy to identify by its odors of hay and manure and the warm scent of cows, horses, sheep, and swine. On to St. Nicholas Shambles (next to Newgate) where the smell of the butcher and poulterer mingled. He found the market where the butchers and fishmongers offered their wares where Cornhill meets Three Needle street and Lombard. Then on to East Cheap where butchers worked close by the smoke of many cook-shops and the odor of fish married the smoke of the cook-shops on Thames street near Fishmonger’s Row. Following his nose around London, he found the dry fatty stink of the skinners tanning their furs in an area known as the Peltry. The musty odors of all kinds of grain were on Lombard street near its intersection with Bridge street. Fresh fruits and vegetables mixing with the odors of bake-house and brew-house meant he was just south of St. Paul’s churchyard in Carter Lane. Just west of Knightrider on Thames street was the garlic market.
As he continued his explorations, a new essence suddenly embraced him. He had found Bucklersbury where grocers and apothecaries sold much of the world’s sweetness and health. His sense of smell would have been flooded with a paradise of spices – mace and cinnamon, almonds and anise, ginger and clove and nutmeg. The essence of all these were happily confused with black English peppermint, rosemary, wild thyme, sweet violet, chamomile, lemon scented sweet flag, sweet cicely, and sweet woodruff, as licorice as any anise seed.
And for a penny he could climb the tower of St. Paul’s, see the Tower of London and the wondrous zoo there, get a guided tour of Westminister Abbey and touch the graves of kings. At King’s Head tavern he would have been introduced to oysters in bastard gravy – cooked with ale and bread crumbs and seasoned with ginger and pepper and sugar and saffron. Then on to the Mermaid for a salad of boiled turnips and beets and carrots followed by sturgeon cooked in claret, some chicken and fruits in a pie, and ending with a sweet pie of apples and oranges. He must have believed it was a meal even the Queen couldn’t top.
If he had heard that spiritus dulcis, an alchemist’s creation composed of sack distilled twice over and flavored with spirit of roses and candy “and clears nose and throat, cleans the eyes with fresh tears, tingles the toes and fingernails, and causes the stomach to leap and rejoice like a young lamb,” he would have ordered a cup with his meal.
As he headed toward manhood, he would have listened and occasionally participated in the endless debates on religion. His fellow citizens talked freely and openly and passionately on delicate subjects such as transubstantiation, predestination, the true and proper nature and number of the holy sacraments; the virtues and faults and strengths and weaknesses of The Book of Common Prayer, the best ways and means to translate the scriptures into the common tongue; the thorny questions of whether good works count with God or whether man could be justified by faith alone; whether the Pope in Rome is the anti-Christ; the place and purpose, if any, for altars and images and vestments and candles and incense, whether they were morally neutral, tolerable, and foolish, or whether there was a place for them in a reformed and purified service of worship; if there should be by name and title, bishops, if priests should marry; if married people may ever lawfully divorce; should private conscience or civil and public ordinances prevail.
Matthew was about 28 when the war with Spain began and Queen Elizabeth rallied her people in August 1588 at Fort Tilbury in Essex when it was expected that the Spanish Armada would land an army in Essex. Essex promised the Privy Council almost 4,000 men full armed with musket, shot and pike and it is likely Matthew was a member of Essex troop on parade in full war regalia on the 18th and 19th when Elizabeth, in what was undoubtedly the most dramatic moment of her reign, inspected her troops.
She was clad in all white velvet with a silver cuirass embossed with a mythological design, and bore in her right hand a silver truncheon chased in gold. She rode bareheaded, and there was a tuft of plumes, the sheen of pearls, and the glitter of diamonds in her hair. She carried her 55 years well.
On the 19th, after a review and march past, there was a cavalry exercise which amounted to an impromptu tournament. She dined in state in her general’s pavilion where all the Captains of her Army came to kiss her hand. Sometime during the activities of the second day, she stirred Matthew and the other soldiers with words they would always cherish:
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful for our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery. But, I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself so that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, and to lay down for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, and my honor and my blood, even in the dust … that any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already for your forwardness you deserve rewards and crowns; and we do assure you, in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you.
The North Sea winds blew the Armada off course and aborted the invasion thus saving the people of Essex and the Whipple family from the carnage of war.
TO BE CONTINUED
