The meeting of the gentry were not at taverns, but in the fields or forests, with hawks and hounds, and their bugle-horns, in silken bawderies.
Hawking.
In the last age every gentleman-like man kept a sparrow-hawk, and the priest a hobby, as dame Julian Berners teaches us, (who wrote a treatise on field-sports, temp. Henry VI.:) it was a divertisement for young gentlewomen to manne sparrow-hawks and merlines.
Church-houses—Poor-rates.
Before the Reformation there were no poor’s rates; the charitable doles given at religious houses, and church-ale in every parish, did the business. In every parish there was a church-house, to which belonged spits, pots, crocks, &c. 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, &c. Mr. A. Wood assures me, there were few or no alms-houses before the time of king Henry VIII.; that at Oxford, opposite to Christ church, is one of the most ancient in England. In every church was a poor man’s box, and the like at great inns.
In these times, besides the jollities above-mentioned, they had their pilgrimages to several shrines, as to Walsingham, Canterbury, Glastonbury, Bromholm, &c. Then the crusades to the holy wars were magnificent and splendid, and gave rise to the adventures of the knight-errant and romances; the solemnity attending processions in and about churches, and the perambulations in the fields, were great diversions also of those times.
Glass Windows.
Glass windows, except 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.
Men’s Coats.
About ninety years ago, noblemen’s and gentlemen’s coats were of the bedels and yeomen of the guards, i. e. gathered at the middle. The benchers in the inns of court yet retain that fashion in the make of their gowns.