The banishment of the Jews from England by Edward I., in 1290, was not quite so thorough as is popularly supposed to have been. A small section of the community remained behind, or returned, under the disguise of Lombards. This remnant, according to Jewish tradition, was finally driven out in 1358; but there is on record a petition to the Good Parliament which shows that, even after that date, some of them continued to lead a masked kind of existence in England. The same inference is to be drawn from the fact that the House for Jewish Converts, built by Henry III. in the thirteenth century, continued in existence till the seventeenth. Broadly speaking, however, Edward’s expulsion cleared England of Jews. But, while removing the objects of Christian hatred, it did not diminish the hatred itself. Although the “unclean and perfidious” race had, to all intents and purposes, vanished from men’s eyes, the legend of their wickedness and misanthropy lingered in tradition and was consecrated by literature. In the middle of the ensuing century we find Gower, the poet, representing a Jew as saying:

A few years afterwards Chaucer, in his Prioresses Tale, immortalised the monkish fiction of child-murder, which had already done yeoman’s service in justifying the persecution of the Jews. Chaucer’s child, to judge from the scene of its murder being laid in Asia, seems to be the eldest member of the large family of massacred Innocents, representatives of which are to be met with in nearly every European country.

At the further end of this Jewish quarter stood a little school for Christian children, who learnt in it “swich maner doctrine as men used there,” that is, “to singen and to rede.” Among these youthful scholars was a widow’s son, “a litel clergeon, seven year of age,” whom his mother had taught to kneel and pray before the Virgin’s image. Day by day on his way to and from school, as he passed through the Jewry, this Innocent used full merrily to sing “Alma Redemptoris”:

But

was sorely vexed at the child’s piety, and stirred up the inmates of the Jewry with such words:

The Jews took the hint, and conspired to chase this Innocent out of the world. They hired a homicide, and, as the boy went by, this cursed Jew seized him, cut his throat, and cast him into a pit.

The poor widow waited all night for her little child in vain, and as soon as it was daylight she hastened to the school and elsewhere, seeking it, until she heard that it had last been seen in the Jewry. Half distracted with anguish and fear, she continued her search among the accursed Jews, now calling on Christ’s mother for help, now imploring every Jew she met to tell her if her child had passed that way. They all answered and said no!

But Jesus, who loves to hear his praises sung by the mouth of Innocence, directed her steps to the pit, and there, wondrous to relate, she heard her child, with its throat cut from ear to ear, singing lustily “Alma Redemptoris.”

“So loude, that al the place gan to ringe.”

The Christian folk, awestruck, sent for the Provost. The boy was taken out of the pit, amid piteous lamentations, “singing his song alway,” and was carried in procession to the Abbey, his mother swooning by the bier. The Jews were punished for their crime “with torment and with shameful death”; they were first drawn by wild horses and afterwards hanged.

Meanwhile, this Innocent was borne to his grave, and when sprinkled with holy water spoke and sang, “O Alma Redemptoris mater!” The abbot, “who was a holy man as monks are, or else ought to be,” began to adjure the child by the holy Trinity to tell him what was the cause of its singing, “sith that thy throte is cut, to my seminge?” The child answers: “‘My throte is cut unto my nekkeboon,’ and I should have died long ago. But Jesus Christ wills that his glory last and be remembered. So I am permitted to sing ‘O Alma’ loud and clear.”

He relates how Christ’s mother sweet, whom he had always loved, came to him and, laying a grain upon his tongue, bade him sing this anthem. Thereupon the holy monk, drawing out the boy’s tongue, removed the grain, and forthwith the boy gave up the ghost softly. The martyr’s “litel body sweet” was laid in a tomb of clear marble.

The Prioresses Tale ends with an apostrophe to young Hugh of Lincoln “sleyn also with cursed Jewes, as it is notable,” and a request that he should pray for us “sinful folk unstable.” Amen.

Bishop Percy, in his Reliques of Ancient Poetry, has preserved the Scottish ballad of The Jew’s Daughter, which turns on an incident bearing a close resemblance to Chaucer’s tale, although it seems to be based on the alleged murder at Trent, in 1475, of a boy called Simon.127 The name of the victim, on the legend reaching England, may quite easily have been changed into the familiar Hugh. The Scottish version is as follows:

However, the boy is enticed with an apple “reid and white” and stabbed in the heart with a little pen-knife by the Jew’s daughter, who then laughingly lays him out on a dressing board, dresses him like a swine, puts him in “a cake of lead” and casts him into a filthy draw-well. Lady Helen, the boy’s mother, misses him in the evening and runs to the “Jewis castel,” calling upon her “bonny Sir Hew.” He answers from the bottom of the well.

And so one century religiously handed down to the next its fictions and its prejudices.

Yet, the Jew is as hard to keep out as Nature herself: Expellas furca tamen usque recurret. In 1410 we hear of a Jewish physician named Elias Sabot who came from Bologna with permission to settle and practise in any part of the realm. There is also reason to believe that the Jewish remnant left in England after Edward’s expulsion was strongly reinforced by the immigration of refugees from Spain towards the end of the fifteenth century. The reign of Queen Elizabeth was also distinguished by the influx of many foreigners—merchants, miners,128 and physicians—and it is highly probable that there were Jews amongst them. But how perilous such a venture was can be seen from the following episode. In the year 1581 a certain Jeochim Gaunz, or Gaunse, came over with a proposal to furnish to the English Government some new information concerning the methods of smelting and manufacturing copper and lead ores, and conducted experiments in the mining districts of Cumberland. For some nine years the enterprising stranger lived in London unmolested, because unsuspected. But on an evil day, in September 1589, he went to Bristol, and there fell in with the Rev. Richard Crawley, a clergyman interested in Hebrew. On finding that Gaunz knew that language, Mr. Crawley cultivated his acquaintance, and in the course of one of their learned discussions Gaunz betrayed his Judaism. The discovery led to his arrest. Cross-examined by the local magistrates, he boldly confessed that he was a Bohemian Jew, born and bred, unbaptized and absolutely unable to accept the claims of Christianity to a divine origin. He was sent before the Privy Council at Whitehall, where all traces of him are lost.

But the unpopularity of the race in Elizabethan England, apart from Gaunse’s case, is abundantly attested by the Elizabethan drama. A few authors made occasional attempts to whitewash the stage Jew; but these attempts, somewhat dubious at the best, were certainly not successful. That the general opinion of the Jew continued to be anything but a favourable one, is implied by casual references in various plays, and is manifestly proved by the delineation of the Jewish character in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Marlowe’s Barabas and Shakespeare’s Shylock are both replicas of the Jew as conceived by mediaeval imagination: a money-monger fabulously rich, ineffably tender to his own people, incredibly cruel to the Christian. It is a portrait drawn by prejudice and coloured by ignorance. The two great dramatists adopted the popular lay-figure and breathed into it the spirit of life. The result is a gruesome monstrosity, animated by genius.

Barabas in the first scene of the play “is discovered in his counting-house, with heaps of gold before him.” This wealth is the fruit of extensive trade with the lands of the East. Every wind that blows brings to the Jew of Malta

In all this prosperity Barabas sees a fulfilment of the ancient blessing bestowed by Jehovah on the sons of Israel; a proof and a pledge of the Lord’s continued favour to His chosen people:

He does not envy the Christian his fruitless faith, nor does he see any virtue in poverty:

He mentions wealthy Jews in various lands, “wealthier far than any Christian,” and the opulence of the race consoles him for its political humiliation:

Thus this practical idealist soliloquises, spiritualising the realities of filthy lucre, materialising spiritual prophecies, and, in the midst of national disgrace, retaining his racial pride intact—a living Jew. Nor is he devoid of human affections:

Round these two objects, “his girl and his gold,” all the emotions of Barabas centre, and he is happy.

But, alas! Fortune is fickle. At the very moment when Barabas is congratulating himself on his prosperity, calamity is at the door. A Turkish fleet has arrived in the harbour to demand from the Knights of Malta “the ten years’ tribute that remains unpaid.” At this emergency the Knights hurriedly hold a consultation among themselves, and, of course, decide that the Jews shall pay the debts of their Christian masters. The scapegoats are summoned to the senate-house, and the decision is announced to them, by one of the Knights, who candidly tells Barabas:

It is in vain that the Hebrews plead poverty. They are told that they must contribute their share to the welfare of the land in which they are allowed to get their wealth. Nor will their share be the same as that of the faithful. The Christians, in suffering them to live in their country, commit a sin against their God, and the present distress is a punishment for it:

How truly mediaeval the whole scene is!

The other Jews consent to give up one-half of their estates. Barabas upbraids them for their cowardice, and stoutly refuses to comply. But his refusal of half only leads to the confiscation of the whole of his property. In return for this sacrifice Barabas is cheerfully told that he will be suffered to live in Malta, and, “if he can,” make another fortune. The Hebrew argues: “How can I multiply? of naught is nothing made.” But the Christian retorts: “From naught at first thou com’st to little wealth, from little unto more, from more to most.”

But what need have we of argument?

Thus the poor millionaire is preached out of his possessions. What if he individually be blameless? He is one of the accursed race, and must pay the penalty for the collective sins of his forefathers. All that he obtains by his vigorous protests is the comfortless saw:

He is stripped of all he had, his goods, his money, his ships, his stores; and his mansion is converted into a nunnery. Nothing remains to him but his life, and he is left to bewail his misery and to curse its authors to his heart’s content. This he proceeds to do in the following terms:

His brethren, too timid to second Barabas in his struggle, now gather round him and strive to console him in his sorrow. But Barabas is not to be comforted, any more than Job was under like circumstances. Indeed, he compares his lot with Job’s, and finds it immeasurably harder:

What is there left to him to live for or upon? He likens himself to a general

However, Barabas lies. He is not quite so destitute as he would make us believe. He hints that his genius had foreseen the possibility of such a mishap and provided against it. While he is mourning his misery in loneliness, there enters his lovely daughter Abigail, just turned out of her home by the nuns, lamenting her father’s misfortunes. He tries to calm her:

But she tells him that his house has been taken possession of by nuns, and therefore he cannot get at his hidden treasure. On hearing of this crowning calamity poor Barabas cries:

“My gold! my gold, and all my wealth is gone!”

accusing Heaven and the stars of their exceeding cruelty. But his courage and cunning do not fail him even then. He rises to the height of his misfortune and instructs his daughter to go to the Abbess of the nunnery, and, by pretending that she wishes to be converted, to obtain access to the treasure. Abigail, after much hesitation, consents to play the part of hypocrite, and she plays it with consummate skill and success. “The hopeless daughter of a hapless Jew” goes to the holy lady and declares that, fearing that her father’s afflictions proceed from sin or want of faith, she desires to pass away her life in penitence. She is admitted to the sisterhood as a novice. Barabas rails at her in simulated wrath, while secretly he gives her some final instructions concerning the treasure, and parts with her on the understanding that at midnight she will join him with the hoard.

Vexed and tormented by the memories of his lost wealth, the wretched Barabas roams the livelong night, sleepless and homeless, haunting, like the ghost of a departed miser, the place where his treasure is hid; and beseeching the God of Israel to direct Abigail’s hand. At last she appears at a window aloft, and lets the bags fall. Whereupon the Jew bursts forth into an ecstasy of joy:

Two young Christian gentlemen, Mathias and Lodowick, are enamoured of the Jew’s daughter. Barabas, in the bitterness of his soul, resolves to have both youths murdered: Lodowick as the son of the Governor who bereft him of his fortune, Mathias simply as a Christian. In pursuance of this dark design, he makes use of his beloved daughter. He promises her hand to each of the youths in turn; he incenses the one against the other; and he instructs his daughter to receive them both, and entertain them “with all the courtesy she can afford.” “Use them as if they were Philistines,” he says to her, “dissemble, swear, protest, vow love” to each. No considerations of maidenly modesty need restrain her, for neither youth is “of the seed of Abraham.” She obeys, not knowing her father’s real purpose. A mock betrothal to Lodowick takes place. Abigail plights her troth to the youth; for “it’s no sin to deceive a Christian”—one

No sooner has the deluded Lodowick departed, than his rival appears on the scene, and is treated likewise. But Barabas is counting without his daughter. Abigail, though indifferent to Lodowick, reciprocates Mathias’ affection. Besides, the double part she is induced to play for her father’s sake is abhorrent to her nature.

In the meantime Barabas, by foul lies and forged letters, brings about a mortal duel between the two rivals. Abigail, on hearing of her lover’s death and of her father’s villainy, indignant at having been made the instrument of his crime, revolted and sick of life, resolves to return to the nunnery and take the veil in earnest.

Barabas is exasperated by this last blow. He curses his daughter for her desertion, adopts for his heir a rascally Mohammedan slave, who had been his accomplice throughout, and makes use of him to poison all the nuns, his own daughter included.

Barabas is rejoicing at the success of his plot. On hearing the bells ring for the funeral of his victims, he breaks into fiendish exultation:

But his joy is short-lived. Before her death Abigail confessed the part which she had unwillingly taken in the conspiracy that brought about the mutual murder of the two young gentlemen. The friar who received Abigail’s confession taxes Barabas with the crime. The Jew, frightened, tries to save his life by feigned conversion. He promises to do penance:

and to give an immense sum to the friar’s monastery. The friar accepts the offer joyously, and is inveigled by the Jew into his house, where he is strangled. But the Mohammedan slave, in a moment of merry and amorous expansiveness, betrays his own and his master’s secrets to his boon companions, who immediately inform the Governor. Barabas and the slave are arrested and sentenced to death. The former drugs himself, and, under the impression that he is dead, is thrown outside the city walls. On recovering from the draught, he determines to avenge his wrongs by delivering the city up to the Turks. The Governor and the Knights of Malta are taken prisoners, and the Jew is made Governor. But, knowing that he will never be safe in a place and amongst people that had so much cause to hate him, he purchases peace and more wealth by a second treachery. He offers to invite the Turkish general and his comrades to a banquet and to murder them, while their soldiers are entrapped in a monastery and blown up. The Christians accept the offer, and Barabas felicitates himself on his cunning:

But though they hate the Turk, the Christians hate the Jew more heartily still. They apprise the doomed general of Barabas’ plan, and the latter is, literally, made to fall into the pit which he had dug for the Turk. In his fury and despair the wretch confesses all his sins, boasting of the stratagems by which he had meant to bring confusion on them all, “damned Christian dogs and Turkish infidels” alike, and, having cursed his fill, dies. The Knights exact reparation from the Turks for the sack of the city, and thus the play ends in a triumph for the Cross.

The Jew, as has been seen, does not become the villain of the piece, until after he has been made the victim. But the audience is supposed to execrate his villainy and laugh at his sufferings. The author takes good care to disarm pity by painting the Jew in the blackest and most ludicrous colours that he can find on his palette. He endows him with a colossal nose and all the crimes under the sun. Barabas’ cruelty to the poor is only equalled by his insolence to the powerful. He is made to say that he “would for lucre’s sake have sold his soul.” His contempt and hatred towards the Christians is dwelt upon with reiterated emphasis:

He instructs his Mohammedan slave:

He brags that he himself has always acted on those precepts:

He gives a lurid account of his past life:

After a career of treachery as a military engineer, he became a usurer:

And when the Turk had related some of his own exploits in the fields of murder, deceit, and torture of Christians, the Jew sees in him a brother:

Thus all the anti-Jewish prejudices of the Middle Ages are embodied in Barabas, who, lest the list should be incomplete, is also accused of fornication and of having crucified a child. His daughter with all her charm and loveliness seems to be created partly as a foil to the Jew’s grotesque personality, partly as a means of wounding him through the one weak spot in his anti-Christian cuirass—his affection for her.

The Merchant of Venice has its twin brother in the ballad of Gernutus, the Jew of Venice, preserved in Percy’s Reliques:

Both stories seem to be derived from an Italian novel by Giovanni Fiorentino, written about 1378, and first printed at Milan in 1554.

Shakespeare’s Shylock is cast in the same mould as Marlowe’s Barabas. He loathes the Christian and his manners, his masques, and merriments and foppery. He will not dine with him, lest he should “smell pork, eat of the habitation which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devils into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.” His covetousness intensifies his superstitious hatred of the Gentile:

The Christian’s scorn exasperates the Jew still further:

But, while abhorring the Christian in his heart, he outwardly fawns upon him, awaiting an opportunity of gratifying his hunger for vengeance. This soon presents itself. Antonio, the upright and proud Venetian merchant, proposes to stand security for a friend who wants to borrow three thousand ducats of the Jew, on Antonio’s bond. Even while negotiating the loan, the Christian reviles the Jew as “an evil soul, a villain with a smiling cheek,” a whited sepulchre. Shylock now reminds him of all the insults and invectives he used to heap upon him in the Exchange:

and yet you solicit my help.” The Christian answers:

and asks him to lend the money as to an enemy. The Jew pretends to forgive and forget; but he takes Antonio at his word, and playfully demands a forfeit “for an equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.” The bond is sealed, and it proves a fatal bond. Antonio’s ships are wrecked at sea, and, when the term expires, he finds himself unable to pay the Jew.

Shylock, like Barabas, has an only daughter, Jessica, whom he cherishes and trusts above all human beings. All the love that he can spare from his ducats is lavished upon this daughter. Fair as Abigail, Jessica lacks the filial loyalty and sweet grace which render the daughter of Barabas so charming a contrast to her father. Jessica is “ashamed to be her father’s child.” She detests him, and to her her own home “is hell.” Enamoured of a Christian youth, she enters into a shameless intrigue with him to deceive and rob her father, and, disguised as a boy, she runs away with her lover, carrying a quantity of gold and jewels from the paternal hoard. The discovery of his daughter’s desertion throws Shylock, as it did Barabas, into despair. He never felt his nation’s curse until now.

While in this mood he hears of Antonio’s losses and rejoices exceedingly thereat. The news of his enemy’s mishap acts as a salve for his own domestic woes. His old grudge against the Christian, embittered by his recent misfortune, steels him against mercy. He recalls the indignities and injuries of which he had been the recipient at Antonio’s hands, all because he was a Jew, and vows to exact the full forfeit: to have the Christian’s flesh. Antonio is taken to prison and implores Shylock for pity; but the latter grimly answers: “I’ll have my bond. Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; but since I am a dog, beware my fangs. I will have my bond.”

The Venetian law was strict on the subject of commercial transactions. The prosperity of the Republic depended on its reputation for equity and impartiality, and not even the Doge could interfere with the course of Justice. The trial commences. Antonio appears in court, and Shylock demands justice. He is not to be softened by prayers from the victim’s friends, or by entreaties from the Duke. He will not even accept the money multiplied three times over; but he insists on the due and forfeit of his bond. Thus matters stand, when Portia, the betrothed of Antonio’s friend, appears on the scene in the guise of a young and learned judge. She first endeavours to bend the Jew’s heart; but on finding him inflexible, she acknowledges that there is no power in Venice that can alter a legally established claim: “The bond is forfeit, and lawfully by this the Jew may claim a pound of flesh.”

Antonio is bidden to lay bare his breast, and Shylock is gleefully preparing to execute his cruel intent; the scene has reached its climax of dramatic intensity, when the tables are suddenly turned upon the Jew. The young judge stays his hand with these awful words:

Shylock has scarcely recovered from this thunderclap, and expressed his willingness to accept the money offered to him at first, when the judge interrupts him: “The Jew shall have all justice—nothing but the penalty”—just a pound of flesh, not a scruple more or less. If not, “thou diest and all thy goods confiscate.”

Shylock is now content to accept only the principal. But the judge again says: “Since the Jew refused the money in open Court, he shall have merely justice and his bond—nothing but the forfeiture,” under the conditions already named.

Shylock offers to give up his claim altogether. But no! the judge again says:

Antonio intercedes on behalf of his enemy, and allows him to retain the use of one half of his goods, on condition that he become a Christian and bequeath his property to his Christian son-in-law and his daughter. The Jew perforce accepts these terms, leaves the Court crestfallen, and every good man and woman is expected to rejoice at his discomfiture.

Such is the Jew in Shakespeare’s eyes, or rather in the eyes of the public which Shakespeare wished to entertain. Yet, despite the poet’s anxiety to interpret the feelings of his audience, his own humanity and sympathetic imagination reveal themselves in the touching appeal put into the victim’s mouth: “Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian? if you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and, if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”

But few, if any, of Shakespeare’s contemporaries shared his own broad sense of justice. The Jew was popularly regarded as the quintessence of all that is foul, grim, and greedy in human form. In him the Elizabethan Englishman saw all the qualities that he detested: covetousness, deceitfulness, and cruelty. Moreover, the Jew was still identified with the typical usurer, and usury continued to be regarded in England with all the superstitious horror of the Middle Ages. ♦1546♦ It was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that a law was reluctantly passed, fixing the interest at 10 per cent. But the prejudice against lending money for profit was so strong that the law had to be repealed in the following reign. All loans at interest were again pronounced illegal under Edward VI. by an Act which defeated its own purpose, and was in its turn repealed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when, despite the law, the rate of interest was 14 per cent. A second Act, passed in 1571, while violently condemning usury, in the modern sense of the term, permits an interest of 10 per cent. This rate remained in force under James I.

Bacon has recorded for us the opinions and the sentiments of his contemporaries on the subject. In his essay Of Seditions and Troubles, written some time between 1607 and 1612, he says: “Above all things, good Policie is to be used, that the Treasure and Moneyes, in a State, be not gathered into few Hands. For otherwise, a State may have a great Stock, and yet starve.... This is done, chiefly, by suppressing, or at least, keeping a strait Hand, upon the Devouring Trades of Usurie, etc.” In this passage Bacon objects to usury on economic grounds. Elsewhere he sets forth objections of a totally different nature. In the essay Of Riches, published in 1625, he says: “Usury is the certainest Meanes of Gaine, though one of the worst; As that, whereby a Man doth eate his Bread; In sudore vultûs alieni; and besides, doth Plough upon Sundaies.” Aristotle’s mischievous metaphor was still quoted as an argument against usury. It is mentioned by Bacon among the many “witty invectives against usury”129 current in his time, and it is embodied by Shakespeare in the phrase that usurers “take a breed for barren metal.”130

At that time the question was engrossing public attention. In 1621 a Bill for the abatement of usury had been brought into Parliament, and two years later a second Bill to the same effect passed the Commons. Bacon seized the opportunity for the publication of his essay Of Usurie, which appeared in 1623. In a letter to Secretary Conway he states that his object in writing it was to suggest means, whereby “to grind the teeth of usury and yet to make it grind to his Majesty’s mill in good sort, without discontent or perturbation.” In consonance with this view, Bacon describes usury as an evil, indeed, but as an inevitable evil: “For since there must be Borrowing and Lending, and Men are so hard of Heart, as they will not lend freely, Usury must be permitted.” He proceeds to balance the advantages and disadvantages of the practice and comes to the conclusion that it should be recognised and controlled by the State, for “It is better to mitigate Usury by Declaration, than to suffer it to rage by Connivance.” Bacon’s advocacy was not wasted. ♦1624♦ In the following year Usury was once more sanctioned by the Legislature and interest was reduced to 8 per cent. But this measure did not obliterate the deep-seated hatred of the money-lender, nor did it weaken the popular idea that usury was the peculiar attribute of a Jew. Bacon in the same essay tells us that there were among his contemporaries men who recommended “that Usurers should have Orange-tawney Bonnets, because they doe Judaize.”

However, the abhorrence of the Jew was that which is inspired by a repulsive abstraction rather than by a concrete individual. The Jew in the flesh was practically an unknown creature to the ordinary English man and woman of the age. If he was hated as a blood-sucking ghoul, he was not more real than a ghoul. But scarcely had the generation that hissed Barabas and Shylock on the stage passed away, when the Jew reappeared as a human reality upon the soil which his fathers had quitted more than three centuries before.

Meanwhile a great change had come over England. The protest against authority, both in its intellectual and in its spiritual form, had crossed the Channel and been welcomed by responsive souls on our shores. When Erasmus came to England in 1498, he found here more than he brought with him. Grocyn had learnt his Greek in Italy, and Colet had returned from that country breathing scorn for the “ungodly refinements” of theology. In these scholars, and scholars like these, Erasmus found kindred spirits; hearty allies in the struggle for light. Colet enchanted him with his Platonic eloquence, and Sir Thomas More with the sweetness of his temper. And the band of these three noble men—Colet, Erasmus and More—all eager for reform and for purification of mind and soul, sowed the seed from which was to spring a plant that even they little dreamed of. The characteristic compromise between the new and the old under Henry VIII., grew into the purer Protestantism of Elizabeth and James I., and, though in Shakespeare we still see a world essentially Catholic in tone and ideas, it is a world that is fast dying away. Yet a few years more and Protestantism, under its most militant and morose aspect, has banished the last vestiges of mediaeval Catholicism and merriment from Merry England. King Charles is gone, and Oliver Cromwell has inherited the realities, if not the pomp, of royalty.