Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

I am far from suggesting that the Eeformation had, on the whole, an injurious effect on England, but indirectly in many ways it seems to have led to curious and even pernicious results. Among the most peculiar of these was the increase of piracy in Elizabeth's reign. The following account, given in Froude's ' English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century,' will explain what I mean : — * In harbour there were still a score of large ships, but they were dismantled and rotting ; of artillery fit for sea work there was none. The men were not to be had, and, as Sir William Cecil said, to fit out ships without men was to set armour on stakes on the seashore. The mariners of England were otherwise engaged and in a way that did not please Cecil. He was the ablest Minister that L2 148 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN Elizabeth had. He saw at once that on the Navy the prosperity and even the liberty of England must even- tually depend. If England were to remain Protestant, it was not by Articles of religion or Acts of Uniformity that she could be saved, without a fleet at the back of them. But he was old-fashioned. He believed in law and order, and he has left a curious paper of reflections on the situation. The ships' companies in Henry VIII.'s days were recruited from the fishing smacks, but the Eefor- mation itdelf had destroyed the fishing trade. In old times, Cecil said, no flesh was eaten on fish days. The King himself could not have license. Now to eat beef or mutton on fish days was the test of a true believer. . . . The fishermen had taken to privateering because the fasts of the Church were neglected. He saw it was so. He recorded his own opinion that piracy, as he called it, was detestable, and could not last. He was to find that it could last, that it was to form the special discipline of the generation whose business it would be to fight the Spaniards. But he struggled hard against the unwelcome conclusion. He tried to revive lawful trade by a Navi- gation Act. He tried to restore the fisheries by Act of Parliament. He introduced a Bill recommending godly abstinence as a means to virtue, making the eating of meat on Fridays and Saturdays a misdemeanour, and adding Wednesday as a half fish day. The House of Commons laughed at him as bringing back Popish mummeries. To please the Protestants he inserted a clause that the statute was politically meant for the increase of fishermen and mariners, not for any super- stition in the choice of meats ; but it was no use. The Act was called in mockery " Cecil's Fast," and the recovery of the fisheries had to wait till the natural inclination of human stomachs for fresh whiting and salt cod should revive in itself.' AUGUST 149 I have made this long extract because it seems to me to throw an exceedingly interesting side-light on the non- cultivation, and above all on the bad cooking, of vege- tables, which extended to a great degree into my child- hood. Even to-day, in spite of the increased quantity of vegetables and their comparative cheapness, it is rare to see them in any variety in English family life ; and I am told that at ordinary clubs Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts represent in winter the vegetable kingdom. What is still more remarkable is that the absence of vegetables has now extended to all the principal foreign hotels, with the probable notion of suiting the English taste.