The halls of the Justice of Peace were dreadful to behold. The skreen was garnished with corslets and helmets, gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, launces, pikes, halberts, brown bills, bucklers.
Public inns were rare: travellers were entertained at religious houses for three days together, if occasion served. The meetings of the gentry were not at taverns but in the fields or forests with their hawks and hounds, and their bugle horns in silken bawderies.
Before the Reformation there were no poor’s rates: the charitable doles given at the religious houses, and the church ale in every parish, did the business.
In every parish there was a church-house, to which belonged spits, potts, etc., for dressing provision. Here the housekeepers met, and were merry and gave their charity. The young people came there too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc. Mr. A. Wood assures me there were few or no alms-houses before the time of Henry VIII.: that at Oxon, opposite Christ Church, was one of the most ancient in England.
In every church there was a poor’s box, and the like at great inns.
Before the wake or feast of the dedication of the church, they sat there all night, fasting and praying, viz. on the eve of the wake.
The solemnity attending processions in and about churches, and the perambulations in the fields were great diversions also of those times.
Glass windows in churches and gentlemen’s houses were rare before the time of Henry VIII. In my own remembrance, before the civil wars, copyholders and poor people had none. In Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, and Salop, it is so still. About 90 years ago, noblemen’s and gentlemen’s coats were of the fashion of the beadles and yeomen of the guard, (i.e.) gather’d at the middle. The benchers in the Inns of Court yet retain that fashion in the make of their gowns.
Captain Silas Taylor says, that, in days of yore, when a church was to be built, they watched and prayed on the vigil of the dedication, and took that part of the horison when the sun arose for the East, which makes that variation, so that few stand true except those built between the two equinoxes.
From the time of Erasmus to about 20 years last past the learning was downright pedantry. The conversation and habits of those times were as starcht as their bands and square beads, and gravity was then taken for wisdom. The doctors in those days were but old boys, when quibbles passed for wit even in their sermons.