Hall, Holinshed, Stow, Fabian, and Speed, may be consulted for a minute description of the various feasts given on public occasions.

Mr. Strutt introduces a bill of fare, with the prices to each article, of an entertainment in 1530, at the burial of Sir John Rudstone. The articles are (allowing for the discoveries since made of turtle, John Doree, &c.) nearly what would now afford a plentiful corporation dinner. The fish were pikes and sturgeons: there were ten swans: the other dishes were common ones,-capons, brawn, pigeons, &c., the cost exceedingly small.

-As to the table of the Scots, no particular remark occurs, unless it be that two national dishes (still cherished at the plentiful tables in the north) made, in the sixteenth century, a part of the gentleman's usual meal.

Hospitality, from one end of the island to the other, seems to have been especially harboured at religious houses; and if the monk was to a proverb, fond of good living, jollity, and conviviality, he was not backward in imparting a share of his dainties to the benighted or wandering stranger. In Barclay's Eclogues we find some account of the favourite dishes of the age :

'What fishe is of savor sweet and delicious, Rosted or sodden in swete herbes or wine,

Or fried in oyle, most saforous and fine,

The pasties of a hart:

The crane, the fesaunt, the pecocke, and the curlewe,

The patriche, plover, bittorn, and heron sewe;

Season'd so well in licour redolent,

That the hall's full of pleasant smell and sent.'

We close this division by inserting two extracts from treatises printed by Wynkyn de Worde. The first is from 'The Boke of Kervinge,' and proves that the pleasures of the table must have been highly valued, when so pointed an attention was paid to their minutiæ.

6 The termes of a kerver be as here followeth Breke that deer; lesche that brawn; rere that goose; lyste that swanne; sauce that capon; spoil that hen; fruche that chekyn; unbrace that mallard; unlace that conye; desmembre that heron; display that crane; dysfygure that pecocke; unjoint that bytterne; untacke that curlewe; allay that fesande; wynge that patryche; wynge that quaile; mynce that plover; thye that pygyon; border that pastie; thye that woodcocke; thye all maner small birds; tymbre that fýre; tyere that egge; chynne that samon; strynge that lampreye; splat that pyke; sauce that plaice; sauce that tench; splay that breme; syde that haddock; tuske that berbell; culpin that trout; tyne that cheven; trassene that ele; trame that sturgeon; under-trounch that porpus; tayme that crabbe; barbe that lobster. Here endeth the goodlye termes of kervynge.'

The other is an epicurean carol, taken from a miscellany published by the same printer, and is still retained, with some innovations, at Queen's College, Oxford.

'A Carol bryngyng in the Bore's Head.

Caput Apri deforo

Riddens laudes Domino.

The Bore's head in hande bring I,

With garlandes gay and rosemary,

I pray you synge merely,

Qui estis in convivio.'

The Bore's head I understande,

Is the chese servyce in this lande,

Loke wherever it be fande

Servite cum cantico.'

Be gladde, lordes, more or lasse,

For thys hath ordayned our stewarde;
To chere you alle this Chrystemasse,

The bore's head with mustarde.

Dress.

THE habits of fashionable people, at the close of the 15th age, were truly fantastical. A petticoat hung over the loins; a long doublet, laced over a stomacher, covered the fore-part of the body; and the wide sleeved mantle, like a woman's gown,. fell over the petticoat, and descended to the ancles. The materials of which these dresses were composed, were gay and costly, (such as silks and velvets, cloth of gold and silver, &c.); and there seems to have been a real difficulty in knowing the well dressed man from the woman. This puzzle was, however, completely done away by a most absurd and ludicrous fashion, imported from the Continent, soon after the accession of Henry VIII.

* Found.

a fashion which characterized a gross and indecent buffoon, the monarch and the labourer, the judge and the watchman. At the same time the doublet and the mantle became shorter; and long breeches came into use, instead of the petticoat.

Some time after the monarch, increasing in dimension, the loyalty of the age prescribed corpulency to the subject, and every part of the male dress was stuffed with cotton or wool, that the wearer might emulate the bulk of the sovereign.

The fantastic variety of habits in the sixteenth century, was humorously satirized by Dr. Andrew Borde, a burlesque poet of that period.

As to the head, the hood of the last age had given way to a coarse round felt hat, a cap or a bonnet among the men. The female, as a matron, wore a plain coif or velvet bonnet; but, if a maiden, had her head uncovered, and permitted her tresses to hang down either simply or braided with ribbonds.

The men wore their hair at full length, until the capricious Henry VIII. decreed, that his attendants and courtiers should poll their heads.'

Henry directed also, that cloth of gold and tissue should only adorn the duke and marquis; purple should be reserved for the royal family; silks and velvets might be worn by the opulent commoner; but none inferior to an earl in dignity might use embroidery.

Beneath these gay habits the legs could boast no

tighter or richer covering than boots, made of cloth. A pair of black silk hose, made in Spain, was a present worthy the acceptance of a king.

The Scots afford no materials for any particular observation on their dress. The ladies, in spite of a legal ordnance, That no woman cum to the kirk nor mercat with her face muffalit,' appear, by the declamations of their contemporary poets, to have continued to use the fashion which they thought most becoming.

RIGHT TO THE CROWN OF ENGLAND IN THE LINE OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

EDWARD, the son of Edmund Ironside, nephew to St. Edward the Confessor, was the next heir of the Saxon line; whence some modern English condemn the accession of the Confessor, who certainly could derive no right from the unjust Danish Conquest, as Bedford, who was the author of the book en titled, Hereditary Right,' pretends. But it is evident, from Mr. Earberry, (Occasional Historian, p. 4.) that during the reign of the English Saxons, when the next heir was esteemed by the States unfit, in dangerous or difficult times, the king's thanes advanced another son or brother of the deceased king, so as never to take one that was not of his family. Often, if the heir was a minor, an uncle was made king; and, upon the uncle's death, though he left issue, the crown reverted to