the life beneath. {826} Queen Elizabeth spat, in the presence of her nobles, at a gentleman who had displeased her; struck Essex on the cheek; drove Burleigh blubbering from her apartment. Laws in merry England were executed with uncompromising severity. Every township had its gallows; every village its stocks, whipping-post and pillory. Here and there, heretics were burned upon the market-place; and the block upon Tower Hill was seldom dry. ... Men and women who read Plato, or discussed the elegancies of Petrarch, suffered brutal practical jokes, relished the obscenities of jesters, used the grossest language of the people. Carrying farms and acres on their backs in the shape of costly silks and laces, they lay upon rushes filthy with the vomit of old banquets. Glittering in suits of gilt and jewelled mail, they jostled with town-porters in the stench of the bear-gardens, or the bloody bull-pit. The church itself was not respected. The nave of old S. Paul's became a rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes. ... It is difficult, even by noting an infinity of such characteristics, to paint the many-coloured incongruities of England at that epoch. Yet in the midst of this confusion rose cavaliers like Sidney, philosophers like Bacon, poets like Spenser; men in whom all that is pure, elevated, subtle, tender, strong, wise, delicate and learned in our modern civilisation displayed itself. And the masses of the people were still in harmony with these high strains. They formed the audience of Shakspere. They wept for Desdemona, adored Imogen, listened with Jessica to music in the moon-light at Belmont, wandered with Rosalind through woodland glades of Arden. Such was the society of which our theatre became the mirror." _J. A. Symonds, Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama, chapter 2, section 1, 2, and 5._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1497. Cabot's discovery of the North American Continent. See AMERICA: A. D. 1497. ENGLAND: A. D. 1498. Voyage and discoveries of Sebastian Cabot. Ground of English claims in the New World. See AMERICA: A. D. 1498. ENGLAND: A. D. 1502. The marriage which brought the Stuarts to the English throne. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1502. ENGLAND: A. D. 1509. The character and reign of Henry VII.