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MORALS, MANNERS, DIVERSIONS, BANQUETS, AND
DRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN, ABOUT

THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH AND BEGINNING
OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.

Morals.

As to moral habits, the English were in general still brave, humane, and (at least among each other) hospitable. That their priests and monks were luxurious and gluttonous, we know from their own prelates, and that their proflicacy exceeded the usual natural bounds of licentiousness, we are but too well assured by the report of the visitation under Cromwell; but the faults of a singularly depraved and pampered race, ought not to be laid at the door of a whole nation.

The lower orders of the community were extremely ignorant; and, as little attention was shewn to instruct them in the religious duties of life, they repaid the neglect by plundering their superiors. But although twenty-two thousand persons are said to have been executed chiefly for theft, in the time of Henry VIII. yet was murder almost entirely unknown, and England might, in the 16th century, as she still may do in the 19th,) proudly vaunt, that the taking away life in cold blood, at least without some legal colour of justice, was a practice almost unknown within her limits.

An unhappy species of political rivalry, wherein each head of a party found it necessary to support

its adherents in rapine and murder, lest he should be deserted by all, prevents the eulogy from being extended at this period to the sister nation, wherein the example of the Douglas family, of the house of Hamilton, and of many gallant but ferocious warriors, too plainly shewed that it was possible to unite in the same person intrepid bravery against the foreign foe, and inexorable cruelty of the defenceless neighbour.

Manners.

TOWARDS the sixteenth century the manners of the English became more humane than those of their ancestors had been, whom continual warfare, and an eager thirst for conquest and spoil, had united to render ungentle and tremendous. Foreigners now visited the shores of England, and were not displeased with their reception, nor harsh in their accounts of the people. Several of the nobility and gentry traversed the continent, and brought back some knowledge of foreign language; and the splendid pageantry which shone at the court of Henry VIII., connected as it was with the knightly gallantry, supported and encouraged a spirit of emulation and honour, which paved the way to a general civilization. Still every thing was truly simple in the habits of domestic life. The furniture of the knight and the gentleman was heavy, plain, and scanty. Plate was abundant; but there appears to have been a service of pewter to use on common days.

The entertainments and feasting of the age are spoken of in another place; the following quotation, however, may be admitted here, as it satirizes some errors against good breeding still existing in the present more polished age :

'Slow be the servers in serving in, alwaye,
But swifte be they after, taking meate away;
A special custom used is them amonge,
No good dishe to suffer on borde to be longe.
If th' dishe be pleasante, whether fleshe or fishe,
Ten handes at once swarme in the dishe;
And if it be fleshe, ten knives shalt thou see
Mangling the fleshe, and in the platter flee;
Put there thy hands in peryl without fayle,
Without a gauntlet or a glove of mayle.

Exercises and Sports.

Barclay's Eclogues.

TOURNAMENTS, tilts, and justing, as well as hawking and hunting, continued to be the favourite amusements of the nobility. Women were sometimes expert at the long-bow. In the northern districts of Great Britain, the chase was followed with a degree of pomp and magnificence which astonished the eyes even of princely visitors.

Bear-baiting, brutal as it was, was by no means an amusement of the lower people only. Gaming was remarkably prevalent among the inferior ranks, although prohibited by severe laws.

With the reign of Henry VIII. an eagerness for pageants and expensive shows, attended by masques, was introduced to the court and people of

England. The pageant was a moveable stage, representing a ship, a castle, or a mountain. The masques were the actors, who represented a kind of dramatic entertainment, consisting of an uninteresting dialogue, frequently on a theological subject.

In Hall, Holinshed, &c. we have prolix descriptions of the pageant, and specimens of the quaint and pedantic verse which was used to ac company the bulky and pompous spectacle.

The stage (if it could be said to exist) was in the hands of priests, scholars, and parish clerks. Moralities, a tedious species of dramatic entertain ment, seem to have begun with the sixteenth century; but these grew so polemico-satiric, that it became necessary to prevent the authors and actors, by a legal restraint, from touching on controversial subjects.

The country-people, it is probable, amused themselves around their winter's fire-side by telling stories, or else (as a contemporary poet, Barclay, sings) by reciting

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Of Mayde-Marran, or els of Robin Hood ;
Of Bentley's ale, which chafeth well the blood,
Of Perte of Norwich, sause of Wilbaton,
Of buckish Toby, well stuff'd as a tun.'

The females had other diversions.

Then is it pleasure, the yonge maides amonge,
To watch by the fier the winter-nightes longe;
And in the ashes some playes for to marke,
And cover wardes for fault of other warke;

To taste white shevers, to make prophet-roles;
And, after talke, oft times to fille the boles.'

He adds, with more good humour than harmony,

"Methinks no mirth is scant,

Where no rejoicing of minstrelsie doth want;

The bagpipe or fiddle to us is delectable,' &c. &c.

Dancing round the Maypole, and riding the hobby-horse, were favourite country sports; but these suffered a severe check at the Reformation, as did the humorous pageant of Christmas, personified by an old man hung round with savory dainties.

We have reason to think that gaming was the favourite amusement of the Scots in the sixteenth century. Sir David Lindsay, in a tragedy, makes Cardinal Beaton declare, that he had played with the king for 3,000 crowns of gold in one night 'at cards and dice;' and an anonymous bard (cited by the historian of English poetry) avers, that

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THE tables of the English were now provided with more varieties than formerly, and are spoken of with great signs of approbation by strangers, who had tasted of the island hospitality; yet, as no artificial pasturage was then known, the cattle for the family supply, from Michaelmas to Whitsuntide, were still slain and salted at the close of the summer.

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