Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of EducationBates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
History
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education
Bates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- Social life and customs; Travel -- History
himself and a servant, comes to three hundred and two ducats [£385].
If there was one place where travelling ought to have worked out
relatively cheaply, it was Muscovy, seeing that on the sledges a
peasant would take a passenger fifty leagues for three or four crowns;
but it does not seem to have lowered the expenses of one Dr. Willes,
whose overland journey thither in 1600 cost eighty pounds, including
payments to guides. His own share may be reckoned as equivalent to two
hundred and forty pounds as compared with the fifteen pounds the same
route would cost to-day.
Luggage would frequently entail the same fare as the owner, since an
extra horse would be needed to carry a box. Leather trunks were to
be purchased which might be carried in front of the rider, but these
did not protect the contents against rain. As to what carriers took
as free luggage and what as "excess," there is no evidence but that
of one Englishman[136] who found he was entitled to five pounds free
on the Calais-Paris road and paid ten shillings surcharge on the rest
without comment. Any advice the experienced have to offer as regards
reduction of luggage for economy is in view far less of carriage than
of customs-duties. In Italy the exactions were severest; almost every
day's journey would take one over some boundary and at every bridge
there were two or three quattrini [twopence] to pay; at every gate
six or eight soldi [one shilling], besides baggage dues. Any article
carried through Italy would cost its price over again in dues; a sword,
for instance, you had to give up at the gate, pay a man to carry it
to the inn, where the host took care of it till your departure, when
you had to pay again for its carriage to the gate. The Papal states
had the lowest scale of charges, yet on crossing their boundary,
there was a giulio [3s. 6d.] to pay for the smallest hand-bag; and at
Florence even your corpse would be taxed a crown [£1 10s.] if it went
in or out of the city for burial. In Germany, where the burden was
lighter, Sir Thomas Hoby, coming down the Rhine in 1555, paid toll at
twenty-one custom-houses between Mainz and Herzogensbosch to fourteen
authorities. As a rule, too, the taxes were farmed, which increased
the tourists' sufferings from them, inasmuch as they were exacted
with greater rigour and it was the harder to get redress in cases of
extortion, especially when, as in Poland and Spain, the 'farmers' were
Jews or of Jewish blood. Bribery, however, was often practicable, and
where practicable, economical; one of the best guides to Spain repeats
concerning every custom-house that the traveller should say he has
nothing to declare and tip the officials only if they take his word,
that is, if they do not do their duty. It is true there were passes to
be obtained from a central authority, overriding the right of search,
such as the imperial pass in Germany, and the indefinite rights of
ambassadors, but how far these were respected seems to have been mainly
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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