The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (35 page)

What was the foundation or groundwork of this dismal declining of Müister, but the banishing of their Bishop, their confiscating and casting lots for Church livings, as the soldiers cast lots for Christ's garments, and, in short terms, their making the house of God a den of thieves? The house of God a number of hungry Church-robbers in these days have made a den of thieves. Thieves spend loosely what they have gotten lightly; sacrilege is no such inheritance; Dionysius was ne'er the richer for robbing of Jupiter of his golden coat – he was driven in the end to play the schoolmaster at Corinth. The name of religion, be it good or bad that is ruinated, God never suffers unrevenged. I'll say of it as Ovid said of eunuchs:

Qui primus pueris genitalia membra recidit,
Vulnera quae fecit debuit ipse pati
.

Who first deprived young boys of their best part,
With self-same wounds he gave he ought to smart.
¹²⁵

So would he that first gelt
¹²⁶
religion or church-livings had been first gelt himself or never lived. Cardinal Wolsey is the man I aim at:
Qui in suas poenas ingeniosus erat
,
¹²⁷
‘first gave others a light to his own overthrow'. How it prospered with him and his instruments that after wrought for themselves, chronicles largely publish, though not apply; and some parcel of their punishment yet unpaid I do not doubt but will be required of their posterity.

To go forward with my story of the overthrow of that
usurper John Leiden. He and all his army, as I said before, falling prostrate on their faces and fervently given over to prayer, determined never to cease or leave soliciting of God till He had showed them from heaven some manifest miracle of success.

Not that it was a general received tradition both with John Leiden and all the crew of Cnipperdollings and Müncers,
¹²⁸
if God at any time at their vehement outcries and clamours did not condescend to their requests, to rail on Him and curse Him to His face, to dispute with Him and argue Him of injustice for not being so good as His word with them, and to urge His many promises in the scripture against Him: so that they did not serve God simply, but that He should serve their turns. And after that tenure are many content to serve as bondmen to save the danger of hanging. But he that serves God aright, whose upright conscience hath for his mot
Amor est mihi causa sequendi
¹²⁹
(‘I serve because I love'), he says
Ego te potius, Domine, quam tua dona sequar
¹³⁰
(‘I'll rather follow thee, Oh Lord, for thine own sake than for any covetous respect of that thou canst do for me').

Christ would have no followers but such as forsake all and follow him, such as forsake all their own desires, such as abandon all expectations of reward in this world, such as neglected and contemned their lives, their wives and children in comparison of him, and were content to take up their cross and follow him.

These Anabaptists had not yet forsook all and followed Christ. They had not forsook their own desires of revenge and innovation. They had not abandoned their expectation of the spoil of their enemies. They regarded their lives. They looked after their wives and children. They took not up their crosses of humility and followed him, but would cross him, upbraid him and set him at nought if he assured not by some sign their prayers and supplications.
Deteriora
sequuntur
:
¹³¹
they followed God as daring Him. God heard their prayers,
Quod petitur poena est
:
¹³²
‘it was their speedy punishment that they prayed for'. Lo, according to the sum of their impudent supplications, a sign in the heavens appeared, the glorious sign of the rainbow, which agreed just with, the sign of their ensign that was a rainbow likewise.

Whereupon, assuring themselves of victory (
Miseri quod volunt, facile credunt
:
¹³³
‘That which wretches would have they easily believe'), with shouts and clamours they presently ran headlong on their well-deserved confusion.

Pitiful and lamentable was their unpitied and well-performed slaughter. To see even a bear, which is the most cruellest of all beasts, too too bloodily overmatched and deformedly rent in pieces by an unconscionable number of curs, it would move compassion against kind, and make those that, beholding him at the stake yet uncoped with, wished him a suitable death to his ugly shape, now to re-call their hard-hearted wishes and moan him suffering as a mild beast, in comparison of the foul-mouthed mastiffs, his butchers. Even such comparsion did those overmatched ungracious Münsterians obtain of many indifferent eyes, who now thought them, suffering, to be sheep brought innocent to the shambles, whenas before they deemed them as a number of wolves up in arms against the shepherds.

The Emperials themselves that were their executioners, like a father that weeps when he beats his child, yet still weeps and still beats, not without much ruth and sorrow prosecuted that lamentable massacre. Yet drums and trumpets sounding nothing but stern revenge in their ears made them so eager that their hands had no leisure to ask counsel of their effeminate eyes. Their swords, their pikes, their bills, their bows, their calivers slew, empierced, knocked down,
shot through and overthrew as many men every minute of the battle as there falls ears of corn before the scythe at one blow. Yet all their weapons so slaying, empiercing, knocking down, shooting through, overthrowing, dis-soul-joined not half so many as the hailing thunder of the great ordinance. So ordinary at every footstep was the imbrument of iron in blood, that one could hardly discern heads from bullets, or clottred hair from mangled flesh hung with gore.

This tale must at one time or other give up the ghost, and as good now as stay longer. I would gladly rid my hands of it cleanly if I could tell how, for what with talking of cobblers, tinkers, rope-makers, botchers and dirt-daubers, the mark is clean out of my muse's mouth, and I am as it were more than duncified twixt divinity and poetry. What is there more as touching this tragedy that you would be resolved of? Say quickly, for now is my pen on foot again. How John Leiden died, is that it? He died like a dog: he was hanged and the halter paid for. For his companions, do they trouble you? I can tell you, they troubled some men before, for they were all killed and none escaped; no, not so much as one to tell the tale of the rainbow. Hear what it is to be Anabaptists, to be Puritans, to be villains. You may be counted illuminate botchers
¹³⁴
for a while, but your end will be ‘Good people, pray for us.'

With the tragical catastrophe of this Münsterian conflict did I cashier the new vocation of my cavaliership. There was no more honourable wars in Christendom then towards. Wherefore, after I had learned to be half-an-hour in bidding a man
bonjour
in German sunonimas,
¹³⁵
I travelled along the country towards England as fast as I could.

What with wagons and bare ten-toes having attained to Middleborough (good Lord, see the changing chances of us knights-arrant infants
¹³⁶
), I met with the Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,
¹³⁷
my late master. Jesu,
I was persuaded I should not be more glad to see heaven than I was to see him. Oh, it was a right noble lord, liberality itself, if in this iron age there were any such creature as liberality left on the earth, a prince in content because a poet without peer.

Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet die. If there be any spark of Adam's paradised perfection yet embered up in the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed that His perfectest image on poets. None come so near to God in wit, none more contemn the world.
Vatis avarus non temere est animus
, saith Horace,
versus amat, hoc studet unum
: ‘Seldom have you seen any poet possessed with avarice, only verses he loves, nothing else he delights in.' And as they contemn the world, so contrarily of the mechanical world are none more contemned. Despised they are of the world, because they are not of the world: their thoughts are exalted above the world of ignorance and all earthly conceits.

As sweet angelical quiristers they are continually conversant in the heaven of arts. Heaven itself is but the highest height of knowledge. He that knows himself and all things else knows the means to be happy; happy, thrice happy, are they whom God hath doubled His spirit upon and given a double soul unto to be poets.

My heroical master exceeded in this supernatural kind of wit He entertained no gross earthly spirit of avarice, nor weak womanly spirit of pusillanimity and fear that are feigned to be of the water, but admirable, airy and fiery spirits, full of freedom, maganimity and bountihood. Let me not speak any more of his accomplishments for fear I spend all my spirits in praising him, and leave myself no vigour of wit or effects of a soul to go forward with my history.

Having thus met him I so much adored, no interpleading was there of opposite occasions, but back I must return and bear half-stakes with him in the lottery of travel I was not altogether unwilling to walk along with, such a good purse-bearer, yet musing what changeable humour had so suddenly
seduced him from his native soil to seek out needless perils in those parts beyond sea, one night very boldly I demanded of him the reason that moved him thereto.

‘Ah,' quoth he, ‘my little page, full little canst thou perceive how far metamorphosed I am from myself since I last saw thee. There is a little god called love, that will not be worshipped of any leaden brains, one that proclaims himself sole king and emperor of piercing eyes, and chief sovereign of soft hearts. He it is that, exercising his empire in my eyes, hath exorcised and clean conjured me from my content.

‘Thou knowest stately Geraldine,
¹³⁸
too stately, I fear, for me to do homage to her statue or shrine. She it is that has come out of Italy to bewitch all the wise men of England. Upon Queen Catherine Dowager
¹³⁹
she waits, that hath a dowry of beauty sufficient to make her wooed of the greatest kings in Christendom. Her high exalted sunbeams have set the phoenix nest of my breast on fire, and I myself have brought Arabian spiceries of sweet passions and praises to furnish out the funeral flame of my folly. Those who were condemned to be smothered to death by sinking down into the soft bottom of an high-built bed of roses, never died so sweet a death as I should die if her rose-coloured disdain were my death's-man.
¹⁴⁰

‘Oh, thrice imperial Hampton Court, Cupid's enchanted castle, the place where I first saw the perfect omnipotence of the Almighty expressed in mortality, tis thou alone that, tithing all other men solace in thy pleasant situation, affordest me nothing but an excellent-begotten sorrow out of the chief treasury of all thy recreations.

‘Dear Wilton, understand that there it was where I first
set eye on my more than celestial Geraldine. Seeing her, I admired her; all the whole receptacle of my sight was unhabited with her rare worth. Long suit and uncessant protestations got me the grace to be entertained. Did never unloving servant so prenticelike obey his never-pleased mistress as I did her. My life, my wealth, my friends, had all their destiny depending on her command.

‘Upon a time I was determined to travel. The fame of Italy and an especial affection I had unto poetry, my second mistress, for which Italy was so famous, had wholly ravished me unto it. There was no dehortment
¹⁴¹
from it, but needs thither I would. Wherefore, coming to my mistress as she was then walking with other ladies of estate in paradise at Hampton Court, I most humbly besought her of favour that she would give me so much gracious leave to absent myself from her service, as to travel a year or two into Italy. She very discreetly answered me that if my love were so hot as I had often avouched, I did very well to apply the plaster of absence unto it, for absence, as they say, causeth forgetfulness. “Yet nevertheless, since it is Italy, my native country, you are so desirous to see, I am the more willing to make my will yours.
I, pete Italiam
: ‘Go and seek Italy', with Aeneas. But be more true than Aeneas: I hope that kind wit-cherishing climate will work no change in so witty a breast. No country of mine shall it be more, if it conspire with thee in any new love against me. One charge I will give thee, and let it be rather a request than a charge: when thou comest to Florence, the fair city from whence I fetched the pride of my birth, by an open challenge defend my beauty against all comers.

‘ “Thou hast that honourable carriage in arms that it shall be no discredit for me to bequeath all the glory of my beauty to thy well-governed arm. Fain would I be known where I was born; fain would I have thee known where fame sits in her chiefest theatre. Farewell, forget me not Continued deserts will eternize me unto thee; thy wishes shall be expired when thy travel shall be once ended.”

‘Here did my tears step out before words, and intercepted the course of my kind-conceived speech, even as wind is allayed with rain. With heart-scalding sighs I confirmed her parting request, and avowed myself hers while living heat allowed me to be mine own.
Hinc illae lachrimae
:
¹⁴²
here hence proceedeth the whole cause of my peregrination.'

Not a little was I delighted with this unexpected love story, especially from a mouth out of which was nought wont to march but stern precepts of gravity and modesty. I swear unto you I thought his company the better by a thousand crowns because he had discarded those nice terms of chastity and continency. Now I beseech God love me so well as I do a plain-dealing man. Earth is earth, flesh is flesh, earth will to earth, and flesh unto flesh. Frail earth, frail flesh, who can keep you from the work of your creation?

Dismissing this fruitless annotation
pro et contra
: towards Venice we progressed, and took Rotterdam in our way, that was clean out of our way. There we met with aged learning's chief ornament that abundant and superingenious clerk Erasmus, as also with merry Sir Thomas More,
¹⁴³
our countryman, who was come purposely over a little before us to visit the said grave father Erasmus. What talk, what conference we had then it were here superfluous to rehearse; but this I can assure you – Erasmus in all his speeches seemed so much to mislike the indiscretion of princes in preferring of parasites and fools, that he decreed with himself to swim with the stream and write a book forthwith in commendation of folly.
¹⁴⁴
Quick-witted Sir Thomas More travelled in a clean contrary province, for he seeing most commonwealths corrupted by ill custom, and that principalities were nothing but great piracies which, gotten by violence and murther, were maintained by private undermining and bloodshed, that in the chiefest flourishing
kingdoms there was no equal or well-divided weal one with another, but a manifest conspiracy of rich men against poor men, procuring their own unlawful commodities under the name and interest of the commonwealth, he concluded with himself to lay down a perfect plot of a commonwealth or government which he would entitle his
Utopia
.
¹⁴⁵