foulest term of disgrace which can be cast upon a knight; whilst even
up to the latter years of Elizabeth the contempt of parents and
elders seems to have been thought a grievous sin. In Italy, even,
fountain of all the abominations of the age, respect for the fifth
commandment seems to have lingered after all the other nine had been
forgotten; we find Castiglione, in his 'Corteggiano' (about 1520),
regretting the modest and respectful training of the generation which
had preceded him; and to judge from facts, the Puritan method of
education, stern as it was, was neither more nor less than the method
which, a generation before, had been common to Romanist and to
Protestant, Puritan and Churchman.

But with the Stuart era (perhaps at the end of Elizabeth's reign)
fathers became gradually personages who are to be disobeyed, sucked
of their money, fooled, even now and then robbed and beaten, by the
young gentlemen of spirit; and the most Christian kings, James and
Charles, with their queens and court, sit by to see ruffling and
roystering, beating the watch and breaking windows, dicing, drinking,
duelling, and profligacy (provided the victim be not a woman of
gentle birth), set forth not merely as harmless amusements for young
gentlemen, but (as in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of 'Monsieur
Thomas') virtues without which a man is despicable. On this point,
as on many others, those who have, for ecclesiastical reasons, tried
to represent the first half of the seventeenth century as a golden
age have been altogether unfair. There is no immorality of the court
plays of Charles II.'s time which may not be found in those of
Charles I.'s. Sedley and Etherege are not a whit worse, but only
more stupid, than Fletcher or Shirley; and Monsieur Thomas is the
spiritual father of all Angry lads, Rufflers, Blades, Bullies,
Mohocks, Corinthians, and Dandies, down to the last drunken clerk who