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- Portrait of St. Francis Xavier, One of the Earliest Missionaries to Japan
In this city Pinto met, apparently for the first time, with Master Francis Xavier, general superior or provincial of the order of the Jesuits in India, in all parts of which occupied by the Portuguese he had already attained a high reputation for self-devotion, sanctity, and miraculous power; and who was then at Malacca, on his return to Goa, from a mission on which he had lately been to the Moluccas - The Embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520
(From the original painting at Hampton Court.) - Coaches in the Reign of Elizabeth
Coaches in the Reign of Elizabeth I (From 'Archcæologia.') - Sir Francis Drake, in his Forty-third Year
- The Globe Theatre
The first theatre was built in 1570. Thirty years after there were seven. The Queen had companies of children to play before her. They were the boys of the choirs of St. Paul's, Westminster, Whitehall, and Windsor. The actors called themselves the servants of some great lord. Lord Leicester, Lord Warwick, Lord Pembroke, Lord Howard, the Earl of Essex, and others all had their company of actors—not all at the same time. The principal Houses were those at Southwark, and especially at Bank Side, where there were three, including the famous Globe - Destroying a Straggler from the Armada
The first Spanish ships to meet their fate were the stragglers from the main body of the Armada. Above is shown one such vessel being engaged by an English captain. The great Spanish galleon is quite at the mercy of the smaller but handier vessel, which has got the wind of her enemy, and is pouring a destructive fire into her prow. - Lord Howard Attacking a Ship of the Spanish Armada
In this fruitless attempt to invade our shores ten thousand Spaniards gave up their lives. England lost but one ship and about a hundred men. - Teaching the Spaniard 'The Honour of the Flag'
Philip of Spain, arriving in the Straits of Dover on his journey to England to espouse Mary, flaunts the flag of Spain without paying the customary salute. Lord Howard of Effingham, the English admiral, soon brings him to his senses by firing a round shot across his bows. - Ships of the Time of Henry VIII
Looking at the lofty hulls, the immense mainsails, and the nearness of the ports to the water-line, we can easily understand how a want of care wrecked the Mary Rose. The ship in the background on the right is apparently trying to reduce sail, and has had to lower her main-yard. Her mainsail is almost in the water, to the apparent danger of the ship. - A Turkish Pirate Ship of 1579
Observe the sharp ram, the tower-like forecastle, and the curiously perched cabin aft. Also the tail-like ornaments at the stern, possibly reminiscent of the sterns of the old "Dragon-ships" and "Long Serpents". The big and somewhat triangular openings are probably gun-ports, but no guns are visible. - Sign of the 'Running Horse'
Why the crowd resorted thus to tipple the horrible compound does not appear: one would rather drink the usual glucose and dilute sulphuric acid of modern times. The pictorial sign of the old house still proudly declares— “When Skelton wore the laurel crown My ale put all the alewives down.” To do that, you would think, it must needs have been both good and cheap. Certainly, if the portrait-sign of Elynor be anything like her, customers did not resort to the “Running Horse” to bask in her smiles, for she is represented as a very plain, not to say ugly, old lady with a predatory nose plentifully studded with warts. - Dr. Martin Luther
Dr. Martin Luther - Queen Elizabeth’s Travelling Coach
Queen Elizabeth travelled in a coach, either the one built by Walter Rippon or that brought by Boonen (who, by the way, was appointed her coachman), on some of her royal progresses through the kingdom. When she visited Warwick in 1572, at the request of the High Bailiff she “caused every part and side of the coach to be opened that all her subjects present might behold her, which most gladly they desired.” The vehicle which could thus be opened on “every part and side” is depicted incidentally in a work executed by Hoefnagel in 1582, which Markland believed to be probably the first engraved representation of an English coach. As will be seen from the reproduction here given, the body carried a roof or canopy on pillars, and the intervening spaces could be closed by means of curtains. - Coach of Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies
Showing near-side “Boot.” Coaches with "Boots" From Coach and Sedan, we obtain a quaint but fairly graphic description of the coach of this period:— “The coach was a thick, burly, square-set fellow in a doublet of black leather, brasse button’d down the breast, back, sleeves and wings, with monstrous wide boots, fringed at the top with a net fringe, and a round breech (after the old fashion) gilded, and on his back an atchievement of sundry coats [of arms], in their proper colours.” The “boots” were projections at the sides of the body between the front and back wheels, as shown in the drawing of the coach occupied by Queen Elizabeth’s ladies; and there is much evidence to support the opinion that these boots were not covered. - Elynor Rummyng
A hundred and fifty years later than Piers Plowman we get another picture of an English ale-house, by no less celebrated a poet. This famous house, the “Running Horse,” still stands at Leatherhead, in Surrey, beside the long, many-arched bridge that there crosses the river Mole at one of its most picturesque reaches. It was kept in the time of Henry the Seventh by that very objectionable landlady, Elynor Rummyng, whose peculiarities are the subject of a laureate’s verse. Elynor Rummyng, and John Skelton, the poet-laureate who hymned her person, her beer, and her customers, both flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Skelton, whose genius was wholly satiric, no doubt, in his Tunning (that is to say, the brewing) of Elynor Rummyng, emphasised all her bad points, for it is hardly credible that even the rustics of the Middle Ages would have rushed so enthusiastically for her ale if it had been brewed in the way he describes. - Shooting rabbits with the crossbow
Joannes Stradanus, born at Bruges 1536, died at Florence 1605, a Flemish historical painter who delighted in portraying all kinds of sport, such as shooting, hunting, fishing and coursing, which he did with wonderful skill and in most realistic fashion. This picture is reduced from ' Venationes Ferarum,' a work consisting of 105 large plates of sporting scenes, dated 1578. The hunters carry stonebows, and the rabbits are being driven from their burrows by smoke and fire. Purse nets and stop nets may also be seen in use. - Raffaelle
- Venice in the Sixteenth Century