A mounted soldier at the end of the sixteenth century: from a broadside printed in 1596.
10. Buildings.—Even in Mary's days the good food of Englishmen had been the wonder of foreigners. "These English," said a Spaniard, "have their houses of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly as well as the king." In Elizabeth's time the houses were improved. Many windows, which had, except in the houses of the great, been guarded with horn or lattice, were now glazed, and even in the mansions of the nobility large windows stood in striking contrast with the narrow openings of the buildings of the middle ages. Glass was welcome, because men no longer lived—as they had lived in the days when internal wars were frequent—in fortified castles, where, for the sake of defence, the openings were narrow and infrequent. Elizabethan manor-houses, as they are now termed, sometimes built in the shape of the letter E, in honour, as is sometimes supposed, of the Queen's name, rose all over the country to take the place of the old castles. They had chimneys to carry off the smoke, which, in former days, had, in all but the largest houses, been allowed to escape through a hole in the roof. See pp. [466], [467], [469]-[471].
Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire; built by Thorpe for Sir Francis Willoughby about 1580-1588.
