AN ARMCHAIR ESSAY

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 92, 12 January 1929, Page 24

AN ARMCHAIR ESSAY

A NEWS AGENCY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (Written for “The Dominion" by Charles Wilson.»

Rich as we are every morning with news from all sorts of out-of-the-way places, of curious and extraordinary happenings, which in olden days would, had they been made public, have been deemed inventions' or imaginations, news from the South Pole, news by wireless, news of a beloved monarch’s illness, flashed thousands of , miles across the ocean by a means in times gone by not heard of, still less imagined possible, we are apt to think, if the modern newspaper reader thinks about such things at all, that in the Middle Ages people had to go without tidings of the world’s great happen I ings, that news agencies did not exist. I that monarchs and rulers were large- ■ ly in ignorance of what was going on ; in other kingdoms and territories save I their own. But this is not so, and no ' better evidence of the growth of great ' news collecting agencies can be had ,

than that afforded by the publication of the news letters at first destined for perusal by a limited few, but later given out to a much larger and wider public. I have recently spent a few hours with a little volume published in Mr. John Lane's JVeek-end Library, under the title of “The Fugger News Letters, being a- selection of unpublished letters from the correspondents of the House of Fugger during the years 1568 and 1605.” The Fuggers :>>ear to have been the Rothschilds of their time. Their principal scene of business activity was at Augsburg, the House being founded by one James Fugger, a master weaver, the family eventually amassing great wealth and gaining almost European-wide power, it being under the Emperor Charles the Fifth that they were accorded their greatest privileges, and were ennobled. The Fuggers had correspondents in most of the European capitals, who regularly transmitted news to the parent house at Augsburg, many of their letters, after, we may be sure, much rigid sub-editing, being made public in a series of broadsheets. The original communications were kept at headquarters until they were presented. Originally they were bought, but never paid for, by the Imperial Austrian authorities at Vienna, when at last the Fuggers fell from their high estate. They are now' in the National Library-at Vienna. The original English translation was set forth in an expensive book, of which a much cheaper edition (4s. 6d.) is now available, and from which I quote here.

If you care to know how such important happenings as the Battle of Lepanto, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the setting out and downfall of the Spanish Armada, the murder of William of Orange, Drake’s West Indian victories and piracies, and similar events were recorded by contemporary

news gatherers, you have only to dip into this little book. But the Fugger correspondents also recorded what to their mind were social occurrences of moment. Thus we have accounts of witch trials and burnings—and even slower and more cruel punishments —prices of popular foods, mighty earthquakes, royal feasts and festivities. the doings of alchemists, the persecutions of the Jews, births of monstrosities, even commercial bankruptcies. A Fugger correspondent keeps his principals informed of royal tragedies in France, of rebellions of peasants, of attempts at poisoning princes. There are letters from India and even from Japan. Russia seems, to have been in almost as bad a state of financial chaos as to-day. A letter from a Moscow agent reads as follows: — "The only fresh news I have to report at this time is that the Muscovite him-

self ravages and despoils his own land and nation. The people are pitilessly and cruelly killed in their thousands in all towns and many villages. They freeze to death and perish by violent means. Corn, cattle, and all else that is needed for man’s sustenance is burnt; corn is scattered in the streets and the fields, and altogether much wanton damage is wrought.” We read all ’about the great massacre of the Huguenots in Paris, of the murder of the great leader Admiral Coligny, and, on another page, of the murder of the Catholic leaders, the Guises. Human life appears.to have been held as but of small value. There are>accounts of auto da fe’s in Seville and other Spanish cities, which are almost too awful scenes to be described, but it is rarely that a Fugger reporter expresses either horror or surprise. “These things occurred, and I have only to report them,” seems to have been generally his motto. It is not for me to moralise. Sectarianism seriously interfered with commerce in Belgium, the Calvinist iconoclasts indulging in a perfect the art treasures in the churches at orgie of mutilation and destruction of Antwerp and Brussels. An Antwerp agent reports that this spoliation had its commercial side, “four ships loaded witii sculptured and carved statues, bells, and stone o effigies of saints brass candlesticks and other such like ornaments lying here soon to be dispatched to Russian ports. The consignors hope to do good business with them, ■

Fugger news agents were scarcely to be depended upon for the accuracy of the news items which they transmitted. They were continually sending out news or rumours as to the matrimonial plans of certain European potentates upon Elizabeth of England. Philip of Spain would apparently have desired his nominal enemy to wife, but she frankly disavowed any scheme

which she though would damage the Protestant cause in England. Then, too, a Frenchman, the Duke of Anjou, was put forward as an aspirant for the hand of the self-willed Queen Bess. Late in 1581 the Paris correspondent sent word to the Augsberg house that our King received word yesterday from London that his brother was married to the Queen on the 22nd day of the month. . . . All manner of things are said about this marriage, also that our King and his Lady Mother do not view it with displeasure. The French proverb holds good: “Jeune folle, vielle enragee!” As a matter of fact, which a well-informed news gatherer ought to have known, the Due D’Anjou never had a chance of wedding Elizabeth, who “turned down” all foreign aspirants with equal contumely. As time went on the preparations for the humbling of Elizabeth and England went on in Spain with (Srer-in-creasing zeal. Salzburg reports in 1588 that “there is war against England in the air.” The Pope was good enough to deprive the Queen of England of all the titles she has held up till now, to divest her of all the honours and dignities she enjoys, and transfers them all to the King of Spain, “who is declared King of Spain, England, and Ireland.” His Holiness, however, was just a trifle previous in his anticipations of Spanish supremacy over England. Philip was not destined to wear the title of King of England “for all time” as a result of his dispatch of the Armada, nor was the Pope to benefit by the condition “that His Majesty, when he obtains possession of this land and provinces, shall pay tribute to the Holy Roman See of a certain yearly pension, as is done on behalf of the Kingdom of Naples.” It is just as well not to count chickens before they are hatched. Of both, Philip of Spain and the Pope himself were to be convinced. Meanwhile while .Spain was making preparations for the conquest of England, John Bull’s sons were having quite a merry time of it with the Spanish galleons in the

Pacific and the West Indies. Much of . the Fugger . news seems to have found its way to Augsburg from Dutch commercial sources and'a good deal of this intelligence can hardly have been pleasant reading for those who sympathised with Spain and her continental friends. One Dutch message reports the triumphant return of an English nobleman, Cavendish, who, on his own venture, had set sail twentyfive months ago with two ships and one pinnace and sailed round the route . of Magellan, robbing, burning, and sinking Spanish ships in the Pacific. His seems to have been a very profitable venture, for after burning ten towns and inflicting great damage on the Spaniards he conquered a big galleon on her way from China to the Indies or Peru. This vessel, which was richly laden with silks and other wares, had a cargo worth 360,000 ducats. Cavendish, we are told, took what was best, loaded it into his two ships and burnt the rest with the galleon. This amateur Captain Flint of the sixteenth century returned home by way of the Cape of Good Hope richer by almost a million and we are not astonished to read that his crew of two hundred men had all grown wealthy. No wonder that this pretty little game of bespoiling the Dons was popular and that “The English Earl of Cumberland is also said to have the intention of setting out on such an expedition.” Fugger correspondents are kept quite [ busy at times chronicling cases of witchcraft, which in the sixteenth century was firmly believed in, although the evidence upon which the accused witches were condemned to the most horrible tortures would not, I am afraid, be accepted by a modern jury. At a place called Schawb-Nunchen oue poor wretch,’’ an innkeeper’s wife, “a short, stout, seventy-year-old doxy,, who had taken to her misdeeds when eighteen years of age,” was, I read, as the result of much petitioning let off rather lightly, her sentence beng “reduced,” inasmuch as “she was at first strangled and then only burned.” What was this particular correspondent’s idea of reduced severity I fail to understand. A Weimar correspondent records what is claimed to have been a wonderful miracle, a local glover who possessed a stag’s antler which had been taken from a stag’s head twenty years before, being suddenly astonished at the antler which he nailed up as an ornament starting to bleed from the largest horn. The bleeding kept on for several days, neither water nor soda removing the stains from a wodden seat and the antler being eventually taken away by order of the Duchess and still dripping blood. “God knows,” piously exclaims the correspondent, “what this portends I” Much about the same time The Fugger agent at Corunna reports a most audacious raid by the English under Drake, who, landing about two miles from the harbour, fired on and shot down most of the city wall and set fire to two galleons, “one of them a marvellously big vessel” with fifty-two pieces of cannon. The English set fire to the vessels, but with English daring first removed the cannon to their own ships. Altogether the English took away over 140 big pieces of cannon which had been assembled for use by the Armada.

There appear to have been veryamicable relationships between the Bohemian and the Russian courts for one report from Prague tells how a Russian Embassy, consisting of fiftycoaches, each carrying a large chest containing presents, arrived there, and a banquet was given by His Majesty to the strangers. Alas, at this great feast the visitors “partook so freely of brandy and heavy Hungarian wine that they 7 had to be carried to thenlodgings.” The strangers brought with them presents of thousands of valuable furs, so we may expect the court ladies at least would forgive the Muscovite envoys their ill manners in getting tipsy at a court function. It would be quite an error to imagine that betting was an eighteenth century invention at courts. Pope Gregory having died rather suddenly, the Fugger reporter gives the odds laid against sundry “favourites” for election to the coveted honour, and advises that a vast sum was daily changing hands on the event. Rulers of that day were apt to overlook adverse criticisms launched against them if only the offenders contributed liberally if unwillingly to the Royal purse. One Herr Kinksky, “an old man of great merit.” was punished by having to relinquish his office of Burgrave of Karlstein and the twenty thousand florins which he had with His Majesty were forfeited. The reporter moralises for once thus: “It is not wise to joke with the Great, for they have long arms and one must not open one’s mouth too wide. It is not wise.” It is astonishing how credulous some of the Fugger correspondents and their informants could be at times. Thus their Madrid agency reports a terrifying storm to have occurred in the ham