[399] Ornamented with guards or facings.—The coats of fools were commonly guarded.
[400] “The woman with the horn in her forehead was probably Margaret Griffith, wife of David Owen, of Llan Gaduain, in Montgomery. A portrait of her is in existence, prefixed to a scarce pamphlet, entitled, ‘A miraculous and monstrous, but yet most true and certayne Discourse of a Woman, now to be seen in London, of the age of threescore yeares or thereabouts, in the midst of whose forehead there groweth out a crooked Horne of four ynches long. Imprinted at London, by Thomas Orwin, and are to be sold by Edward White, dwelling at the little north dore of Paules Church, at the signe of the Gun, 1588.’”—Gilchrist.
[401] To beg a person for a fool was to apply to be made guardian of a person who had been legally proved to be an idiot. It was in the king’s power to grant the custody of an idiot’s person and the profits of his estate to any subject.
[402] Gallants prided themselves on wearing spurs that jingled. Middleton, after elaborately describing a young prodigal’s attire, adds:—“Lastly, he walked the chamber with such a pestilent jingle that his spurs over-squeaked the lawyer" (Works, viii. 71). So Chapman in Monsieur D’Olive:—“You may hear them (the gallants) half a mile ere they come at you—six or seven make a perfect morice-dance; they need no bells, their spurs serve their turn.”
[403] This is the reading of Dyce’s copy of ed. 2. Other copies read:— “Faith, I utter small fragments as your knight courtes your Citty widow with something of his guilt: some aduancing his high-colored beard,” &c.
[404] Accomplishments.
[405] “At this time Flushing was in the hands of the English as part of the security for money advanced by Queen Elizabeth to the Dutch. The governor and garrison were all Englishmen.”—Reed.
[406] Model in wax or clay.
[407] Talc.—Reed quotes from Giles Fletcher’s Russe Commonwealth, 1591, p. 10:—“In the province of Corelia, and about the river Duyna towards the North-sea, there groweth a soft rock which they call Slude. This they cut into pieces, and so tear it into thin flakes, which naturally it is apt for, and so use it for glasse lanthorns and such like. It giveth both inwards and outwards a clearer light then glasse, and for this respect is better than either glasse or horne; for that it neither breaketh like glasse, nor yet will burne like the lanthorne.”