Europe

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the ways in which English travellers observed Europe, its people, culture, and institutions. In the early sixteenth century the English court was painfully aware of its cultural inferiority to the most advanced states of Europe and accordingly intellectuals as well as ambassadors were sent abroad to bring back useful information to help England become more sophisticated, a practice that became much more complicated after the Reformation. England considered itself intimately connected to Europe as well as isolated from it. The chapter includes Robert Dallington’s survey of French practices and institutions; Thomas Coryat’s observations of Venice, Germany, and Switzerland; William Harborne’s account of his journey back from Constantinople; Sir Charles Somerset’s diary of his European travels to Paris and Florence; Fynes Moryson, the first professional English traveller, on Italy and Ireland; and William Lithgow’s harrowing account of his imprisonment by the Inquisition in Spain.