was served up by watch-words. Jacks are but an invention of the other
age: the poor boys did turn the spits, and licked the dripping-pan,
and grew to be huge lusty knaves. The beds of the servants and
retainers were in the great halls, as now in the guard-chamber, &c.
The hearth was commonly in the middle, as at most colleges, whence the
saying, "Round about our coal-fire." Here in the halls were the
mummings, cob-loaf-stealing, and a great number of old Christmas plays
performed. Every baron and gentleman of estate kept great horses for a
man at arms. Lords had their armories to furnish some hundreds of men.
The halls of justices of the peace were dreadful to behold, the
skreens were garnished with corslets and helmets, gaping with open
mouth, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberts, brown bills,
batterdashers, bucklers, and the modern colivers and petronils (in
King Charles I.'s time) turned into muskets and pistols. Then were
entails in fashion, (a good prop for monarchy). Destroying of manors
began temp. Henry VIII., but now common; whereby the mean people live
lawless, nobody to govern them, they care for nobody, having no
dependance on anybody. By this method, and by the selling of the
church-lands, is the ballance of the Government quite altered, and put
into the hands of the common people. No ale-houses, nor yet inns were
there then, unless upon great roads: when they had a mind to drink,
they went to the fryaries; and when they travelled they had
entertainment at the religious houses for three days, if occasion so
long required. The meeting of the gentry was not then at tipling-
houses, but in the fields or forest, with their hawks and hounds, with
their bugle horns in silken bordries. This part very much abounded
with forests and parks. Thus were good spirits kept up, and good
horses and hides made; whereas now the gentry of the nation are so
effeminated by coaches, they are so far from managing great horses,
that they know not how to ride hunting-horses, besides the spoiling of