The History of Prostitution Part 27

The people are betrothed by the practice of the Lutheran Church a long time before the actual marriage. This is considered as nothing more than a wholesome check upon hasty unions in a general point of view. In Norway, however, this probationary period is extended to a limit beyond the endurance of flesh and blood. The wedding is a prodigious merry-making, and it is absolutely indispensable that the means for an extravagant hospitality should have been acc.u.mulated before the parties dare attempt the public ceremony. The profusion is so great as sometimes to dissipate a whole year's earnings. The obligation to this expense increases the delay required by the Church, and it frequently happens that the affianced cohabit before the nuptial benediction is p.r.o.nounced. As the betrothal is a half-marriage, the arrangement loses part of its offensive character in the eyes of the parties themselves, and also of their neighbors. The children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage, which takes place in by far the largest number of cases. In those occasional instances where the wedding ceremony is not duly completed, there is a particular legal act by which a child can be acknowledged. Failure of marriage under such circ.u.mstances, or failure of natural duty to offspring, is against the sentiment of the people. While these facts do not alter the actual concubinage or illegitimacy, it is easy to understand that a considerable difference exists between such conduct, however reprehensible, and those habits which may be fairly characterized as licentiousness or profligacy.

Norway is very far from being free of syphilis. Bayard Taylor says, "Bergen is, as I am informed, terribly scourged by venereal diseases.

Certainly I do not remember a place where there are so few men, tall, strong, and well made as the people generally are, without some visible mark of disease or deformity. A physician of the city has recently endeavored to cure syphilis in its secondary stage by means of inoculation, having first tried the experiment upon himself, and there is now a hospital where this form of treatment is practiced upon two or three hundred patients, with the greatest success, another physician informed me. I intended to have visited it, but the sight of a few cases around the door so sickened me that I had no courage to undertake the task." We have no means of ascertaining whether the malady exists with the same virulence in the interior as on the coast. The habits of the people would seem adverse to the supposition that it does.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY TO THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

Aboriginal Morals and Laws.--Anglo-Saxon Legislation.--Introduction of Christianity.--St. Augustine.--Prost.i.tution in the Ninth Century.-- Court Example.--Norman Epoch.--Feudal Laws and their Influences.-- Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts.--General Depravity.--Effects of Chivalry.--Fair Rosamond.--Jane Sh.o.r.e.--Henry VIII.--Elizabeth.--James I.

The first references to prost.i.tution which we find in the works of the early British annalists are so vague that it is difficult to derive from them any very definite idea as to its extent and character. Among the crude efforts at legislation there are laws to enforce chast.i.ty among women, but whether the necessity for these enactments was owing to general licentiousness or to the existence of a regular cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes does not appear.

At the period of the Roman invasion, the morals of the Britons were as low as might be expected from their nomadic habits. The population was divided into small communities of men and women, who appear to have lived promiscuously, no woman being attached to any particular man, but all cohabiting according to inclination, the carnal instinct being the feeling which regulated s.e.xual intercourse. A sort of marriage was inst.i.tuted, but with no idea that either of the parties to it should be restricted by its obligations. Its only object seemed to be to provide means for rearing the children, and to fix somewhere the responsibility of their nurture and support. A society const.i.tuted as this was can, of course, be considered scarcely a step removed from barbarism. The regulation to provide for the children was necessary to prevent depopulation; its tendency was to remove from the woman's path every obstacle to l.u.s.t; over the man it exercised but very slight control.

A still farther proof of the demoralized condition of the people is found in the gross ceremonies attending these marriages. The man appeared on his wedding day dressed in all the rude trappings of the time; the woman was entirely naked. A repulsive coa.r.s.eness marked their licentiousness, and the rudeness of manners was nowhere more conspicuous than in the relations existing between the s.e.xes.

It is to be presumed that the Anglo-Saxons imported into England the laws and customs prevailing in their own country. The rules they made against adultery were frightfully severe. When a couple were detected in the commission of the offense, the woman was compelled to commit suicide, to avoid the greater tortures awaiting her if she refused. Her body was then placed on a pile of brushwood and consumed. Nor did her partner in guilt escape punishment; he was usually put to death on the spot where her ashes lay collected. These penalties would appear to be sufficiently severe, but in some instances worse were inflicted. Where the case was one of peculiar aggravation, the adulteress was hunted down by a number of infuriate demireps of her own s.e.x, each armed with a club, a knife, or some other formidable weapon, and stabbed or beaten to death. If one party of her pursuers became weary of the sport, another took their places until the victim expired beneath the blows.

These extremely rigid ideas of the Anglo-Saxons do not seem to have been consistent, for while adultery was punished in the severe manner described, incest was not only permitted, but commonly practiced; and it was even the custom for relations to marry within the closest degrees of consanguinity.

But they were not long located in England before the more savage traits of their character were softened down, and the women soon found amus.e.m.e.nt more suitable to their s.e.x than that of chasing their erring sisters as quarry. The marriage ceremonies also a.s.sumed a more refined and decent character, although the wife continued to be regularly purchased by her husband, and the contract was still considered a mere matter of bargain and sale. By the laws of Ethelbert marriageable women were made commodities of barter, and enactments of this character are to be found in existence long subsequent to his reign.

As the Anglo-Saxons were a hardy, vigorous race, and existed chiefly by hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, and a rude and imperfect system of agriculture, it is not probable that prost.i.tution existed among them to any great extent. The fatigues of the chase and field exhausted the energy of the body, and diminished the desire and capacity for s.e.xual indulgence, and, living in small detached communities as they did, they knew nothing of the stimulating incentives of city life.

Yet that prost.i.tutes existed, and lived by the wages of their profession, is proved by the fact that women (who were ent.i.tled by law to hold and dispose of property) bequeathed their wealth to their daughters, with the occasional stipulation that they should live chaste lives in the event of their remaining single, and not earn money by prost.i.tuting their persons.

In the reign of Canute a law was enacted by which any one found guilty of adultery was to be punished by the loss of the nose and the ears.[288] In the course of time the crime came to be punished by a fine paid to the husband of the woman. This penalty soon fell into disrepute, as it was found that some husbands and wives took advantage of it to extort fines from persons possessing more money than prudence. By a subsequent enactment the male adulterer became the property of the king, who might send him to the wars, or employ him at hard labor as he pleased. By a law of Edgar's time the adulterer of either s.e.x was compelled to live, for three days in each week, on bread and water for seven years. This was treating the evil on physiological principles.

We can not infer any very strict condition of morals as the result of this harsh legislation. When punishment is carried to an extreme entirely disproportioned to the offense, it is as likely to fail in its object as mistaken lenity. Forgery and arson were more frequent in England when punished with death than they are at present; and although we have no statistics of the time from which we can deduce any positive conclusions, we may reasonably imagine that neither the death penalty, nor the other barbarous punishments subst.i.tuted for it, exercised any very powerful influence in the diminution of the crime among our hardy progenitors. It may have taught them greater caution and dissimulation in the prosecution of their evil purposes, but it did not render them the less eager to profit by the opportunities thrown in their way.

It has been already shown that the founders of Christianity treated illicit s.e.xual indulgence as a sin, and resorted to extreme measures for its suppression, but yet, to some extent, tolerated prost.i.tution. Shortly after he had established himself in Britain, Augustine put some curious queries to the Pope touching the manner in which chast.i.ty among converts to the new faith should be enforced. The nature of these interrogatories and replies forbids their appearance here.[289]

That Augustine required to be instructed on such prurient details proves that he was a believer in the Jewish observances of physical ablutions and cleansing of the person being necessary to the removal of moral impurities, and that he carried his scrutiny into the morals of his flock much farther than was consistent with modesty and good sense. However much his religious teachings might have improved the manners of the people, the regulations alluded to would have exercised no very salutary or efficacious influence over them.

The lives of the early kings and rulers of Britain serve to ill.u.s.trate the morals of the nation during their respective reigns, not only by exhibiting individual examples where the condition of the ma.s.ses is hidden from view, but by affording us an index to that condition when it is considered that the manners of the court have, in all ages and all countries, exercised an important influence on those of the people.

Augustine converted Ethelbert, but his son Endbald deserted the Christian Church because it refused its sanction to his mother-in-law becoming his wife. It is true that he afterward divorced her, and returned to Christianity, but in this he was influenced rather by satiety than by the promptings of a reviving faith. Many of the other kings of the Heptarchy were as remarkable for the headstrong ardor of their pa.s.sion as Endbald.

Canulph of Wess.e.x had, in the year 784, an intrigue with one of his female subjects, and frequently quitted his court to enjoy her society in the country. During one of these clandestine excursions he was surprised and surrounded in the night by the followers of Kynchard, a rival pretender to the throne, and murdered in the arms of his mistress.

In the ninth century prost.i.tution seems to have been a prevailing vice throughout the country, and frequent references are made to it in the discussions of the period. In the arguments used in favor of t.i.thes, in the time of Athelstan, it was held by some canonists that the clergy had a right to demand one tenth of the profits earned by prost.i.tutes in the exercise of their calling. It is but right to add that the Church did not persist in enforcing this extraordinary claim.[290]

Edwy, who ascended the throne at the early age of seventeen, became involved in a controversy with the monks on the question, then first started, of the celibacy of the clergy. The celebrated Dunstan favored the new doctrine, but Edwy opposed it. The youthful and inexperienced prince was no match for his sagacious antagonist, as he soon after discovered. On the day of his coronation, which took place soon after his marriage with his cousin Elgiva, whom he loved and resolved to wed, though she was within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church, his n.o.bles were indulging in the pleasures of the banquet, when it was discovered that Edwy had stolen away. Dunstan and Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, conjecturing the cause of his absence, proceeded to the private apartments of the queen, and found him in her company. They tore him from her, and dragged him back to the party. Elgiva's face was seared with a red-hot iron to destroy her beauty, and she was transported to Ireland. Her wounds being soon healed, and all trace of the injuries removed, she returned to her own country, but was met by a party the archbishop had sent to intercept her, and put to death. Thus, professedly to preserve the morals of the king, these high ecclesiastics committed crimes of far greater gravity than a marriage even between persons more nearly related than Edwy and Elgiva.

Edgar, who succeeded Edwy, was of a still more pa.s.sionate and licentious disposition. He broke into a convent, and carried off one of the nuns, named Editha, who was remarkable for her beauty. In the heat of pa.s.sion, he violated her person; and for the double offense of abduction and rape, the Church, according to the peculiar morality of the times, punished him by compelling him to resign his crown for the period of seven years. By a curious inconsistency, he was permitted to retain possession of Editha, who lived with him as a concubine.

Another of his mistresses he obtained by a less violent process. In pa.s.sing through Andover, he accidentally met the daughter of a neighboring n.o.ble, who fascinated him by her remarkable beauty. Listening only to the suggestion of his pa.s.sion, he proceeded immediately to the residence of the maiden's mother, and, informing her of the violent love with which she had inspired him, demanded that she should be permitted to share his bed that night. The mother, fearing to excite the king's anger by a refusal, resorted to a stratagem, by which she hoped to evade his wrath, and, at the same time, preserve the chast.i.ty of her daughter. She directed a handsome waiting-maid to introduce herself into the young lady's chamber, and the king was admitted after dark. When Edgar discovered the trick which had been played on him, he manifested no resentment, and the accidental partner of his bed became afterward his favorite mistress.

These were not his only amours. Elfrida, daughter of the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re, was distinguished by extraordinary beauty, and the fame of her charms reached the court, although she resided in the country in strict retirement, and had never been a mile from home. Edgar, hearing of her beauty, and doubting whether her appearance justified the extravagant praise lavished on it, sent one of his trusted favorites, Earl Athelwold, to her father's residence to make a report to him on the subject.

Athelwold himself, like many a similar envoy, fell in love with the young lady, and informed the king that rumor had greatly exaggerated her merits, and that she was positively ungainly. This was sufficient to allay the king's curiosity, and Athelwold shortly afterward secured the young lady's hand in marriage. He explained the matter to Edgar by remarking that it was her fortune which induced him to overlook her homely features. The king desired him to introduce her at court, and Athelwold persistently refusing, the king suspected the true state of the case. He intimated to the earl that he had determined to visit the castle where she resided, and the husband, dreading the consequences, implored his wife to conceal her beauty as much as possible. Elfrida, woman-like, did precisely the contrary, and set off her charms by the richest and most becoming toilette in her wardrobe. Edgar was so enraged at the deception practiced on him that he put the unfortunate earl to death, and married the widow.

The infusion of Danish blood does not seem to have exercised an improving influence on Anglo-Saxon manners. Judging from the following, the contrary may be inferred.

Ethelred kept a number of Danish troops in his pay, who were stationed in different parts of the country. A complaint was made to the king that the Danes had attained such a pitch of refinement, and made such an advance in luxury, that they combed their hair daily, and were guilty of other acts of personal embellishment equally reprehensible. Worse still, it was averred that the women looked with favor on these practices of the Danes, and that the latter debauched the wives and daughters of the English, and disgraced the nation.[291] It is evident that women who could thus easily be led away were only virtuous from the want of opportunity.

The legislation of this period shows that prost.i.tution was not only tolerated, but indirectly encouraged.

If a man seduced the wife of another, he was compelled, by an early Saxon law, to pay a fine to the husband, and to procure for him another woman, whom he was to remunerate for admitting him to her bed.[292] This was not only offering a direct premium to prost.i.tution by providing for the debauching of a woman every time another chose to be seduced, but it shows that females were in the habit of cohabiting with men for hire. The fines for adultery were graduated according to the rank of the woman. If she happened to be the wife of a n.o.bleman, her chast.i.ty was valued at the moderate sum of six pounds sterling (about thirty dollars); while the wife of a churl brought to her husband as a salve for his injured honor about a dollar and a half. The effect of these enactments could not but exercise a demoralizing and injurious influence on the manners of the people. They reduced the estimate of female chast.i.ty to that of a cheap marketable commodity, whose loss could be repaid by a small money compensation.

By the laws of Ethelbert a man was permitted to buy a wife, provided the purchase was made openly, and many such transactions are recorded, the price being sometimes paid down in money, and sometimes in palfreys and other kinds of property. The practice, however, was soon modified, and it became necessary to obtain the consent of the bride. The husband was compelled to support and protect her, and to treat her with respect. A couple desirous of contracting marriage were formally betrothed in presence of the priest, and this practice, having something of an ecclesiastical obligation without any of its legal force, was frequently productive of the same evil consequences as in Norway at the present day.

This custom of betrothal prevailed down to the time of Elizabeth.

The Normans introduced into England, if not a higher standard of morals, at least a greater refinement in vice. Their laws were moulded by the spirit of the feudal system which they imported with them. Under their sway society was divided into two cla.s.ses--feudal lords and their va.s.sals.

The lord could dispose of the person and property of the va.s.sal, limited, indeed, by certain restrictions, but still leaving so much power in his hands as to render the latter a virtual slave.

Thus, by the laws of the time, a va.s.sal who seduced or debauched his lord's wife or near relative, or who even took improper liberties with them, might be punished by the forfeiture of his land. When a baron died, the estate escheated to the king, who took immediate possession, and kept it until the heir applied to do homage for it, and pay such a fee as the king might demand. If the heir happened to be a minor, the king retained possession of the estate until he reached his majority; and when the inheritance devolved on a female, the king might give her any husband he thought proper. He often turned this privilege to account by selling the right to the hand and fortune of an heiress. Geoffrey de Mandeville paid Henry III. a sum equal to about twenty thousand dollars for permission to wed Isabel, countess of Gloucester, with the right to all her lands and revenues. Even a male heir could not select his own bride except by purchasing permission from the king, otherwise he had to accept his majesty's choice.

We have no means of estimating the amount of licentiousness arising from these arbitrary regulations, but we only require a little acquaintance with human nature to arrive at the conclusion that they must have been a prolific source of vice. The husband being selected by the king from purely mercenary or interested motives, no attention was, of course, paid to disparity of ages, or other circ.u.mstances on which the purity of the marriage-bed depends. When the inclinations are forced in this way, women, as well as men, are apt to revenge themselves on their partners by seeking illicit enjoyments. Mercenary marriages, when projected, as they are even in our day, from sordid motives on the part of parents or guardians, almost invariably lead to infidelity, and many an old dotard, who forces himself upon a girl under age, merely serves as a screen for her clandestine amours.

In the reign of Henry III., grave disputes occurred between the civil and ecclesiastical courts on the subject of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy. The common law deemed all children to be illegitimate who had been born before marriage. By the canon law they were held to be legitimate if the parents married subsequent to their birth.

When a dispute of inheritance arose, it was customary for the civil to issue writs to the spiritual courts, directing an inquiry to be inst.i.tuted into the legitimacy of the claimants; and as the bishops always returned answers in accordance with the canon law, all persons whose parents had married at any period were legitimate. When it is considered how strongly most parents feel for the honor of their offspring, the tendency of such decisions to increase prost.i.tution becomes apparent. It may be considered unjust to inflict disabilities on the child for the sins of the parent, but such penalties undoubtedly have the effect of imposing a check upon concubinage.

We have stated that the king claimed the disposal of the hands and fortunes of heiresses: the barons claimed a still greater privilege from their tenants. In some localities the feudal lord insisted upon enjoying the person of one of the daughters of each tenant who happened to be blessed with a plurality of them. He returned her to her parents within a given time.

Every extreme is followed by a reaction in the opposite direction. The abject condition of women, as indicated by the foregoing facts, led to the inst.i.tution of chivalry, which elevated her from the position of a slave, and the mere instrument of sensual gratification, to that almost of a deity, thus a.s.signing her a rank as much above her real sphere as her former one had been beneath it.

Previous to the advent of this system, women could not appear at any public exhibition or place of amus.e.m.e.nt unless accompanied by a band of armed retainers. Any female encountered alone and unprotected was liable to insult.

Chivalry, if it did not put an end to, greatly modified this state of things. By its rules each of its members was const.i.tuted a champion of female virtue and honor. No man was admitted into the order whose valor was not above suspicion, and a word uttered by him derogatory to the _beau s.e.xe_ excluded him from its ranks. No woman, however, was deemed worthy of knightly protection who had not preserved her honor, it being to that quality alone that knighthood volunteered its safeguard. At public ceremonies, if a woman of easy virtue ventured to take precedence of a woman of honorable fame, she was immediately reminded of the impropriety of her conduct by some member of the order, and compelled to retire to the rear.

This recognition of virtue had a strong tendency to promote female chast.i.ty. It could not put a stop to voluntary prost.i.tution, but it at least prevented virtuous women being necessitated to yield their honor to force. It held out, moreover, an attractive premium to correct conduct among the s.e.x by making it the object of heroic exploits, celebrated in the romantic lays of minstrels and troubadours. Its observances have a fantastic aspect in the light of modern civilization, but they unquestionably exercised a powerful corrective influence over the female character, so degraded at its commencement, while, at the same time, they elevated that of the male s.e.x by teaching them to respect themselves.

In the wars of the period, it was against the rules of chivalry to take women prisoners. When a town was captured and entered by victorious troops, the first step taken was to make proclamation that no violence should be offered to any female. This conduct was so much at variance with the notions and habits of soldiery, that the feelings which sustained chivalry must have taken deep root in the minds of all cla.s.ses to restrain the pa.s.sions of the military, strengthened as they were by dissolute habits, and the absence of opportunity for their gratification during service in the field.

To such an extreme was this feeling of deferential courtesy to the s.e.x carried, that the Normans were severely censured for their conduct at the capture of the castle of Du Guesclin, it being alleged that they disturbed the repose of the ladies. But as the tendency of every human inst.i.tution is to degenerate from its original purpose, the rigid purism which marked the foundation of chivalry soon began to relax, and disorders crept in and sapped the basis of a system which was too theoretically perfect to have any extended duration.

It is difficult to ascertain the precise character of the relations which existed between the Troubadours and the mistresses to whose service they devoted themselves, and who were frequently married women. The knight Bertram happened to lose the favor of his mistress, the wife of Talleyrand de Perigord, in consequence of stories which had been related to her implicating his fidelity, and charging him with dividing his knightly attentions. He protests his innocence of these accusations in a lay as impa.s.sioned as that of a lover to the object of his adoration, and invokes a number of knightly calamities upon himself if his devotion to her be not above suspicion.

It is hardly credible that the loves of such ardent admirers was immaculate Platonism. On the other hand, the fact that husbands were rarely or never jealous of them, goes some way to refute the idea that they had a more serious character. The lords of those times were proud of the protestations of regard offered to their ladies, and rewarded the Troubadours with rich and valuable presents. The lords of our day, grown wise by experience, make a point of keeping all such interlopers at a distance.

While chivalry poised its lance in defense of the Lucretias, and then of the Dulcineas of the day, the religious view of the commerce of the s.e.xes was particularly ascetic.

Although the most profound devotion was paid to woman in the abstract by the order, the Church sought to encourage perpetual celibacy, the seclusion of women, and the separation of the s.e.xes. The clergy were forbidden to marry, and the idea seemed to prevail that it was impossible for men and women to mingle without being under the influence of lascivious ideas, and ready to carry them into practice as soon as opportunity offered. The attempt to organize society on such a basis had an inevitable tendency to produce demoralization. Its obvious result, instead of promoting chast.i.ty was to increase secret licentiousness and encourage prost.i.tution.