“With us,” says Harrison, in the Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, p. 171, “the Nobilitie, Gentrie, and Students do ordinarilie go to dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or betweene five and six at afternoone. The merchants dine and sup seldome before twelve at noone, and six at night, especiallie in London. The husbandmen dine also at high noone, as they call it, and sup at seven or eight: but out of the tearme in our Universities the scholars dine at ten. As for the poorest sort, they generally dine and sup when they may: so that to talke of their order of repast, it were but a needlesse matter.”
“Theophilus. You wente to diner betyme I perceave. Eusebius. Even as I doe commonly, when I have no busynes, betwene nyne and ten; me thinkes it is a good houre: for by that meanes I save a breakfast, whyche for such idlers as I am, is most fittest.” Dialogue between Eusebius and Theophilus. Signat. B 4. A. D. 1556. W.
[183] Dr. Brian Higden at that time bore the office.
[184] The Cardinal perhaps remembered the credit which was gained by his successful rival Cardinal Adrian, who being elected to the papacy by the Conclave, through the influence of the emperor Charles V. “before his entry into the cittie of Rome (as we are told by one of Sir Thomas More’s biographers), putting off his hose and shoes, and as I have credibly heard it reported, bare-footed and bare-legged, passed through the streets towards his Palace, with such humbleness, that all the people had him in great reverence.” Harpsfield’s Life of Sir Thomas More. Lambeth MSS. No. 827, fol. 12. W.
[185] Storer, in his Poetical Life of Wolsey, 1599, has availed himself of this declaration of the cardinal, in a passage justly celebrated for its eminent beauty. The image in the second stanza is worthy of a cotemporary of Shakspeare:
I did not mean with predecessors pride,
To walk on cloth as custom did require;
More fit that cloth were hung on either side
In mourning wise, or make the poor attire;
More fit the dirige of a mournful quire