The Anglo-French Entente in the Seventeenth Century. Charles Bastide
to have grumbled much at the loss of time: the age was not one of quick travelling, and worse might befall a passenger than tossing about the Channel on a cold night. Many a seventeenth-century packet-boat met with the fate of the White Ship, when it did not fall into the hands of unscrupulous privateers. Under the Protectorate, the packet-boat was escorted by "a pinnace of eight guns";[14] but the improvident Government of Charles ii. left the merchants to guard their ships as well as they might.
Happy the passenger whose title, fortune, family connections or mere impudence secured him a place on one of the royal yachts! He had nothing to fear from the insolence or greed of the seamen, and instead of setting foot on a filthy tar-bespattered deck, he found, according to the Duc de Verneuil, "rooms which were admirably clean with foot carpets and velvet beds."[15]
But the traveller lands on English shores. Hardly has he left the boat when the Custom-House officers are upon him. The alert and courteous officials one meets with nowadays at Dover or Newhaven have little in common with their predecessors of the Restoration. The latter were coarse, ill-clad wretches bent on extorting from the travellers a pay that a needy Government held back. Useless to add, that they readily succumbed to the offer of a bribe. Even the Puritan Custom-House officers had been known for a consideration to wink at a forged pass. "Money to the searchers," observed Evelyn, "was as authentiq as the hand and seale of Bradshaw himselfe."[16]
When the Frenchman has got rid of these, he is confronted by the harbour-master, who demands the payment of a licence to pass over seas. Nor are his troubles at end: he needs must get the governor of the castle to affix his seal to the pass. If that exalted personage is out with the hounds, there is nothing to do but to await his return. There is not even the expedient of visiting the town to while away the time. Dover, in the seventeenth century, far from resembling the picturesque port we know closely nestling in a hollow of the white cliffs, held altogether "in one ill-paved street about a mile long" and lined with "tumbledown houses."[17]
What about the castle? "Built upon a chalky rock, very lofty and looking out to sea. It was formerly called the key to England, and, before cannon came into use, was considered impregnable; but at the present time it is used solely as a prison. It is placed too high for it to endanger any vessel, and by land it could not withstand half a day's regular siege."[18] The harassed traveller must needs bend his steps to an inn, probably the French inn, kept by one Lefort and his capable wife.[19]
Travellers never landed at Folkestone: it was then "a small poor-looking town, inhabited by fishermen."[20] Skippers seldom preferred Rye to Dover, which greatly puzzled Frenchmen. "Rye is built on a hill at the foot of which is a pretty good harbour which might accommodate all kinds of ships; but I cannot imagine why the haven is so neglected. I am sure the French or the Dutch would make it a very convenient haven, being at the mouth of a fine river. The port is blocked up by sandbanks, through the carelessness and idleness of the inhabitants and the selfish disposition of some of their neighbours, who have reclaimed from the sea a great part of the port and turned it into enclosed lands. But that is the people's business and not mine."[21]
At last the Frenchman, all formalities being disposed of, is free to pursue his journey. He may choose between a saddle horse or a coach. According to Chamberlayne, the charge for a horse was threepence a mile, besides fourpence a stage for the guide. The coach cost less: one shilling for five miles.[22] In a few hours the traveller would reach Gravesend and there he would take boat up to London Bridge.
Coulon gives a slightly different route: Dover to Gravesend via Canterbury, Sittingbourne, and Rochester; Gravesend to London via Dartford (spelt by Coulon Datford). By the way, he copies a sixteenth-century guide-book, Jean Bernard's Traité de la Guide des Chemins d'Angleterre (1579).[23]
Travelling is both easier and quicker than in France, but there are dangers to look out for. "Take heed," cautions Jean Bernard, "of a wood called Shuttershyll (Shooter's Hill) or the Archers' Hill, very perilous for travellers and passers-by on account of the thieves and robbers, who would formerly take refuge there." Even under the Merry Monarch, marauders lurked about every main road.
One of the guide-book writers, the Lyonnese Payen, has handed down to us a very curious computation, which it is worth while to transcribe:—
"TABLE OF THE ROADS, OF THE INNS AND THE EXPENSE TO BE INCURRED"
"FROM PARIS TO ENGLAND"
"Dieppe: 30 leagues. Lodge at Place Royale and pay per meal, 20 sous. Rye: 30 leagues. Pay for the Channel crossing, 3 livres. Lodge at the Ecu de France and pay for meal, 15 sous. Gravesend: 30 leagues. Pay by post, 9 livres. Lodge at Saint Christopher's and pay per meal, 20 sous. London: 10 leagues. Pay by boat on the Thames, 10 sous. Lodge at the Ville-de-Paris, at the Common Garden, and pay for meal, 12 sous."[24]
The Ville-de-Paris was a French inn, and the landlord at the time was one Bassoneau, as Claude Mauger records in his delightful dialogues.[25]
M. Payen was a wise man; as he travelled without ostentation, he managed to get from Paris to London spending about 26 francs or a little over. In London, he could rent a room for four shillings a week.
It is interesting to compare the above account with that of Fynes Moryson, an Englishman writing some thirty-five years previously. Choosing the longer route at a time when civil wars had made the roads round Paris impassable, he took boat from Paris to Rouen, was three days going down the river and paid the boatman "one French crown" or three francs. His meals had cost him 15 sous in Paris, but he was charged only 12 for them in Rouen, and the hostler told him that before the religious wars the price of a meal was as low as 8 sous. Along the road the innkeepers asked 15 sous, the price of the supper including lodging for the night. Yet, he exclaims, "all things for diet were cheaper in France than they used to be in England." From Rouen he rode to Dieppe and there took passage to Dover for "one crown." Odd expenses he duly recorded: 10 sous for a "licence to pass over sea" plus 5 sous gratuity to the officer; 10 sous "for my part in the hire of a boat to draw our ship out of the haven." It took him fourteen hours to sail to Dover. There he had to disburse sixpence for a seat in the boat that carried the passengers ashore. The rest of the journey was easy, though two little mishaps happened to him: in Dover he was taken into custody on suspicion of being a papist and brought before the Mayor; on his arrival in his sister's house in London, the servants sought to drive him from the door, not one of them recognising in the dirty, ill-clad, lean stranger the gentleman who had set out for his travels ten years before.[26]
Political changes have, as well as private misfortunes, obliged a great man to travel under conditions which to the most humble would appear trying enough. The details of Charles