Pet. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My houshold stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing.
In the anonymous play of A knacke to knowe a knave, 1594, one of the old men says, "My house? why, 'tis my goods, my wyfe, my land, my horse, my ass, or any thing that is his." If Mr. Malone's conjecture respecting the date of The taming of the shrew be well founded, it is difficult to say whether Shakspeare is the borrower, in this instance, or not.
ACT IV.
Scene 1. Page 494.
Cru. ... their blue coats brushed——
Thus in Nashe's Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriell Harvey's hunt is up, when this foul-mouth'd writer has accused his adversary Harvey of defrauding Wolfe his printer of thirty-six pounds, he adds, that he borrowed of him a blue coat for his man; "and yet Wolfe did not so much as brush it, when he lent it him, or presse out the print where the badge had been." In another place, alluding to the same transaction, he states that Wolfe "lent him one of his prentises for a serving creature to grace him, clapping an old blue coate on his backe, which was one of my Lord of Harford's liveries (he pulling the badge off)."
The practice of giving liveries to menial servants has not originated in modern times. It is mentioned in some of the statutes made in the reign of Richard the Second. In that of Edward the Fourth the terms livery and badge appear to have been synonymous, the former having no doubt been borrowed from the French language, and signifying a thing delivered. The badge consisted of the master's device, crest, or arms, on a separate piece of cloth, or sometimes silver, in the form of a shield, fastened to the left sleeve. Greene, in his Quip for an upstart courtier, speaking of some serving men, says, "their cognizance, as I remember, was a peacocke without a tayle." In queen Elizabeth's time the nobility gave silver badges, as appears from Hentzner's Travels, p. 156, edit. Norimb. 1612, 4to. "Angli magnifici domi forisque magna assectantium famulorum agmini secum trahunt, quibus in sinistro brachio scuta ex argento facta appendunt." But this foolish extravagance was not limited to persons of high rank. Fynes Moryson, speaking of the English apparel, informs us that "the servants of gentlemen were wont to weare blew coates, with their masters badge of silver on the left sleeve, but now they most commonly weare clokes garded with lace, all the servants of one family wearing the same liverie for colour and ornament:" we are therefore to suppose that the sleeve badge was left off in the reign of James I. Yet the badge was at one time so general an accompaniment to a blue coat, that when any thing wanted its usual appendage, it was proverbially said to be like a blue coat without a badge.
The custom of clothing persons in liveries and badges was not confined to menial servants. Another class of men called retainers, who appear to have been of no small importance among our ancestors, were habited in a similar manner. They were a sort of servants, not residing in the master's house like other menial domestics, but attending occasionally for the purpose of ostentation, and retained by the annual donation of a livery consisting of a hat or hood, a badge, and a suit of clothes. As they were frequently kept for the purpose of maintaining quarrels and committing other excesses, it became necessary to impose heavy penalties on the offenders, both masters and retainers. In process of time they were licensed. Strype complains of the too great indulgence of queen Mary in this respect. "She granted," says he, "more by half in her short five years than her sister and successor in thirteen. For in all that time there were but fifteen licenses of retainer granted, whereas queen Mary had granted nine and thirty. She was more liberal also in yielding the number of retainers to each person, which sometimes amounted to two hundred. Whereas Q. Elizabeth never yielded above an hundred to any person of the greatest quality, and that rarely too. But Bishop Gardiner began that ill example, who retained two hundred men: whereas under Q. Elizabeth the Duke of Norfolk retained but an hundred; and Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, but forty." He has added a list of the persons to whom Mary granted licenses, and the number of persons retained. Eccl. memorials, iii. 479.
Nor did these retainers always consist of men of low condition. The entertaining author of a book entitled A health to the gentlemanly profession of serving men, or the serving man's comfort, 1598, 4to, (to whom these notes have occasionally been indebted, and who with good reason is supposed to have been Jervis Markham,) has certainly alluded to them in the following curious passage, wherein he is consoling the objects of his labour: "Amongst what sort of people should then this serving man be sought for? Even the duke's sonne preferred page to the prince, the earles seconde sonne attendant upon the duke, the knights seconde sonne the earles servant, the esquires sonne to weare the knightes lyverie, and the gentlemans sonne the esquiers serving man: Yea I know at this day, gentlemen younger brothers, that weares their elder brothers blew coate and badge, attending him with as reverend regard and duetifull obedience, as if he were their prince or soveraigne." Let us congratulate ourselves that we no longer endure such insolent aggressions, the result of family pride and ignorance, and which had been too often permitted to degrade the natural liberties and independence of mankind. The excellent old ballad of Times alteration, has the following illustrative stanza of the coats and badges in question: