Some of Batman’s comments reflect the hostile relations between England and Spain during the 1580s; over competition for New World territory and over the perceived threat from Spain to English autonomy. In this arena, England had suffered some humiliation and economic loss, and the victory over Spain was yet to come in 1588:
As touching of golde, and silver, Spaine is beholding to the Indies, from whence commeth yearely an infinite masse of treasure: which if slouth and distrust, had not bene Pilates of England in times past, those Indies had served England and not Spaine, for the most part, as more plainly appeareth in the booke tituled, the Decade of the West and East Indies, and Andrew Theuet.[74]
Some additions and comments suggest that topics in Properties stimulated Batman to express a desperate level of irritation at the government and its failures. He is enraged by the government’s impositions, such as the taxes or ‘arerages’ imposed on clergy in the late years of the reign:
The Basiliske or Cockatrice, among creeping wormes is the most pestilent. And among men, the most pestilent minded, are the spoilers of the Clergie with such unconscionable arerages, that many Ministers have bene forced to leave their lyvings, and go a begging … My selfe have bene so plagued, that I speak by experience, and have to shewe by proofe, etc.[75]
This sharp reflection upon the world within his local and personal horizons against Bartholomew’s chapter on basiliscus ignores the traditional moral associations of the legendary basilisk. Such a self-reflexive attitude is evident in other comments upon the government and economy, such as his diatribe in the margin of Bartholomew’s chapter on the rose in Book 17. He starts with direct expository statements based on observation of roses, and concludes with an angry tirade against those whom he sees despoiling the garden of Tudor England. He calls on the Queen, ‘rose without thorn’, to take note:
Distilled water of Roses, is necessarie to many uses: the red rose to preserue and to medicine. Dodoneus writeth of ten kinde of roses, among the which, the Eglantine rose, and Muske rose, yeolow and white. There is one rose growing in England, is worth all these, Rosa sine spina; which royall Rose growing in hir proper soyle, is borne up of a well settled stalke, and armed with such thornes, as are apparant to so gentle a kinde, the leaves of lilye hiew, called the orient greene, not withstanding, subiect to flawes of dreadfull blastes, as all our common Roses be to tempesteous windes … May not the buds by the common profites, that are made by dayly pillage of the Cleargie, in abusing the gift of the Maiestie, who are never suffred to be at rest by one extreame assault or other, the taxe of rerages hath almost beggared, the humble and dutiful subiects. God graunt the view of this note to the royall Rose, that the Cleargie be no more oppressed.[76]
As we saw in the last chapter, when Elizabeth’s grandfather came to the throne, Bartholomew’s account of the fresh and blooming rose had helped to validate the adoption of the Tudor rose as national emblem. Here, that same account of the rose offers Batman a platform for a scarcely coherent blast against taxation policies under the Queen. Through his comment we can sense something of a commoner’s disillusion, a century later, with a somewhat battered and frost-bitten national emblem.
Batman thunders on behalf of the poor as well as the over-taxed clergy. The assertiveness of his comments, and his many references to, and expansions of, biblical texts, also reminds us that he was a popular professional preacher.[77] It has been suggested that medieval people in the differing environments of cathedral school, university and court had each developed a particular form of discourse suited to their immediate context: the Elizabethan scholar was a new kind of professional who was increasingly perceived as someone who could move readily between these different worlds.[78] Batman illustrates this notion as he blends the discourse of natural history with those of bitter political complaint and dogmatic assertion.