The Journal of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and early Stuart Englandorder this book
Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino
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The book contains the account of the travels of Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino. Platter was a young medical student, of Protestant origins, from Basle in Switzerland, who visited England in 1599. He described his arrival in Dover and travel to London, as well as his visits to Nonsuch, Greenwich, Oxford and Woodstock. He includes an account of the buildings and places he encountered, including Shakespeare's Globe theatre. Busino was chaplain to the Venetian ambassador and lived in England during the period 1617-18. His journal gives a particularly vivid account of social life in London during the early seventeenth century, and is perhaps unique in giving a contemporary description of early Stuart England in language which has a modern ring.

From "Travels in England 1599":

"And this church stands detached, and people are in the habit of walking through it on their way to Westminster. Right round the church dwell the booksellers and binders where all manner of fine books may be had for sale. Close to St. Paul's church, outside the door, a pulpit, is erected right out in the open with only a small roof over it, and around it are numerous covered gangways, where the mayor and dignitaries of London sit and hear the sermon. For every Sunday a preacher who is to take office in the country or in another town has to deliver a test sermon there; and if none is available, some other one is procured, and the congregation mostly sits or stands beneath an open sky, coming and going at will, for the sermon must last three, or at the least, two hours together - for which reason the preacher always has a bottle of wine and some bread behind him near the pulpit, where at his request, he is refreshed with food and drink. For since the congregation is so vast that the aforesaid big church will not hold it, so that the sermon is delivered before the church as I described, the preacher must speak all the louder, so that all may hear and understand, hence he requires some refreshment. The sermon ended, the herald precedes the lord mayor, carrying a red sword with yellow stripes, bared and vertical, wearing a white hat, an ashen grey coat with black borders, trunks and tunic, and brown and yellow stockings. And after him the mayor, clad in black with velvet hat, wearing a red coat lined with fur, followed on foot to his residence, where the preacher and other fine gentlemen have lunch with him, for he must keep open house."

ISBN 185066014X. hardback, 208 pages.

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