[9] “Take not every rope’s end with every man that hauls,” ran the warning to the young. “Believe not all men that speak thee fair, Whether that it be common, burgess or mayor.” Manners and Meals, 183. See Songs and Carols (Percy Society, vol. xxiii.) viii. ix. xviii.
[10] Manners and Meals, 182.
[11] Percy Society, vol. xxiii. Songs and Carols, see songs xxxii. and xxxv.
[12] Commonplace book of the fifteenth century edited by Miss Toulmin Smith. Catechism of Adrian and Epotys, p. 40, lines 421-8.
“Men’s works have often interchange
That now is nurture sometime had been strange.
Things whilom used be now laid aside
And new fetis [fashions] daily be contrived.”
—Caxton’s Book of Courtesy (E. E. Text Society), 45.
[14] Manners and Meals, 271.
[15] Ibid. p. 265.
[16] The popularity of the “Ship of Fools,” with its trite, long-winded, and vague moralities, is an excellent indication of the intellectual position of the new middle class.