were dressed into fricassees.* On some occasions, therefore, a coarse and clownish dish was a pleasing variety. In the year 1661, a gathering of marquesses, lords, knights, and squires took place at Newcastle, to celebrate a great anniversary, when, on account of the number of guests, each was required to bring his own dish of meat. Of course it was a sort of competition in which each strove for pre-eminence; but the specimen of Sir George Goring was reckoned a master-piece. It consisted of four huge, brawny pigs, piping hot, bitted and harnessed with ropes of sausage, all tied to a monstrous bag-pudding.†

In variety of wines, and the copious use of them, the wealthier classes of England of this age were not a whit behind their ancestors; indeed, the arrival of the Danish king and his courtiers, in the reign of James, greatly increased the national thirst, insomuch that it was observed, the Danes had again conquered England. In the succeeding reign the cavaliers were as little famed for temperance as the courtiers of James. The English followed, also, very scrupulously, the Danish custom of drinking healths; and foreigners were astonished to find that, when a company amounted to some twenty or thirty, it was still expected that every guest should drink the health of each in rotation. Such festivals, of course, inflamed the love of quarrel; toasts were given which produced discussion or refusal to drink them; and if the overheated parties did not immediately come to blows, still duels and bloodshed were the usual consequences. Sometimes, when a lady or an absent patron was toasted, the company pledged the toast upon their knees. Among other disgusting modes of drinking healths at this time, the toper sometimes mingled his own blood with the wine. was fortunate that, while the aristocracy were thus becoming more vitiated, the common people had become more temperate than formerly; but, adds Stow to this assertion, "it was not from abstinence, but necessity, ale and beer being small, and wines in price above their reach."

It

Greater temperance in eating and drinking naturally prevailed during the period of the commonwealth, from the ascendancy of puritan principles, which recommended simplicity and selfdenial; and as so many of the leaders of the dominant party had risen from the ranks, the new style of living frequently assumed the character of the old Saxon coarseness. A republican simplicity especially prevailed in the banquets at Whitehall during Cromwell's administration, the plain fare of whose tables was the subject of many a sneer among the luxurious loyalists. An idea of his dinners may be formed from the following specimen of his lady's mode of baking a pig. The carcase was encased in a coating of clay, like one of his own Ironsides in his coat-of-mail, and

in this state it was stewed among the hot ashes of the stoke-hole. Scotch collops also formed one of the standing dishes of her cookery. We are also informed that she ate marrowpuddings at breakfast; while her youngest daughter, the Lady Frances, delighted in a sausage made of hog's liver. Cromwell, with the stomach of a soldier, despised French cookery and elaborate dishes, and at his state dinners these were placed upon his table chiefly for show. After a feast of this kind much boisterous merriment generally prevailed, but it was harmless and even dignified compared with the gross outrages of a royal banquet in the reign of James or the festivals of the cavaliers in the time of his son. The London civic feasts during the commonwealth were also of a very decorous character: in one, which was given to Fairfax and Cromwell, the dishes were all of a substantial character, suited to military appetites; no healths were drunk, and the only music that enlivened the banquet was that of trumpets and drums.†

The popular sports and games, from the gradual change that had taken place in the manner of living, had been always contracting within a narrower circle; and from the reign of Charles I. to the Restoration few persons had either inclination or opportunity for those amusements that had formerly been universal. James, who followed every species of venery, delighted in hawking-a sport, in the costume appropriated to which he was often drawn by the artists of the period; and this royal predilection gave a momentary revival to a recreation that was otherwise on the point of extinction. Tennis was one of the favourite amusements of his son, Prince Henry, as it was of the courtiers in general. The game of pall-mall was as yet a novelty; but, when it was played, the competition was so keen, that those who engaged in it frequently stripped to their shirts. Another old game which was still a favourite, was that of the balloon, a large ball of leather, which was inflated with air by a vent, and then bandied by the players with the hand. Billiards was also one of those fashionable games which were now beginning to supersede the more boisterous sports of the preceding century. In spite of change, however, the pristine national love of blood-shedding still remained, and the English nobility and gentry still flocked with rapture to the exhibitions of bear-baiting and cock-fighting, and wagered large sums upon the issue. The Puritans, amidst their dislike of those sports which they reckoned cruel and sinful, very properly abhorred above all things a bear-baiting; and, therefore, Cromwell, Pride, and Hewson, that they might remove the popular temptation, slew all the bears, an exploit that gave rise to the poem of Hudibras.

We learn from the Book of Sports that the

* Court and Kitchen of Mrs. Joan Cromwell, in Secret Hist. of James I., ii. 499,

† Whitelock.

Pepys.

were required to study three years in the schools of arts and laws, that they might be qualified for the offices to which their rank entitled them. But these regulations seem to have produced little general diffusion of literary attainments among any class of the community. At the commencement of the Reformation few even of the higher clergy could preach; and, when they attempted discussion with such antagonists as Wisheart and Knox, their arguments were so absurd and so indicative of utter ignorance, as to move only laughter and contempt among the auditors.*

The rudeness of demeanour that had hitherto characterised the Scotch was commensurate with such a state of ignorance and barbarism. Even in the court of the beautiful Mary, where courtesy might have been most expected, the grim barons elbowed their way in most boisterous fashion, and "would shoulder and shoot Rizzio aside when they entered the queen's chamber, and found him always speaking with her."+ Hitherto, indeed, the highest examples in Scotland had by no means tended to exalt the standard of court manners. James V., certainly the most accomplished of his race, thus received a solemn deputation of the clergy when they applied for his consent to persecute the reformers :-" Wherefore," he roared in a fury, “gave my predecessors so many lands and rents to the kirk? Was it to maintain hawks, dogs, and whores to a number of idle priests? The king of England burns, the king of Denmark beheads you: I will stick you with this whinger!" and, suiting the action to the word, he unsheathed his dagger and drove them from his presence.‡ The clergy, indeed, could not well complain of such treatment: they dealt in much the same fashion with the laity, and even with each other. A rich specimen was exhibited on one occasion at Glasgow, by Dunbar, the archbishop of that see, and Cardinal Beatoun, each asserting his right to walk first in a procession to the cathedral. After many hot and foul words, the controversy grew so fierce that a battle commenced between the followers of the two dignitaries, even in the churchporch; heads were broken, beards torn out by handfuls, and copes and tippets rent to shreds, while crosses and cross-bearers were thrown to the ground and trampled under foot. Knox, who steps aside from the mournful narrative of the martyrdom of his friend Wisheart to describe this "merrie bourde," welcomes it with a triumphant huzza, and only regrets that the men-at-arms did not also buckle to the conflict, and heighten the fun with a little bloodshed. The rules of morality seem to have been as little regarded among the influential classes as those of common courtesy. Previous to the Reformation, the practice of concubinage among the clergy was not only more prevalent in Scotland than it seems ever to have been in England, but was more openly and un

blushingly practised: the royal amours of James IV. and James V. were as gross and vulgar as they were profligate; and the court of Mary, unless it has been greatly belied, only increased the sensuality of the preceding reigns. These examples had their consequent influence upon the people at large; and, in the poetical writings of Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we find unquestionable evidence of a similar immorality prevailing through the whole community.

In the times when court pageants were matters of such importance, the Scots did their best to vie with their richer and more refined neighbours; and in some of their masques we find that they had an advantage over their national rivals, by the introduction of bonâ fide Ethiopians, who personated black queens and empresses. These were slaves from the East Indies, captured from the Portuguese by the Scottish cruisers, in the days of Barton and Wood. The following account is given by an old chronicler of one of these courtly spectacles. When Mary of Guise was about to enter St. Andrew's, on her marriage to James V, "first she was received at the New Abbey gate; upon the east side thereof there was made to her a triumphal arch by Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, Lion Herald, which caused a great cloud come out of the heavens above the gate, and open instantly; and there appeared a fair lady, most like an angel, having the keys of Scotland in her hands, and delivered them to the queen, in sign and token that all the hearts of Scotland were open to receive her grace; with certain orations and exhortations made by the said Sir David Lindsay to the queen, instructing her to serve her God, obey her husband, and keep her body clean, according to God's will and commandments."+

In Scotland, as in other countries, court pageants were often made the vehicles of political satire, on which account offence was sometimes taken when none had been intended. An incident of this kind occurred at the baptism of James VI. A splendid banquet was given, at which the envoys of Elizabeth were distinguished guests; and the dishes were conveyed into the hall upon a large and richly adorned vehicle that seemed to move of its own accord. But, unfortunately, this quaint device was preceded by a band of satyrs ornamented with long tails, and armed with whips, who, as they ran through the hall, clutched their tails in their hands, and flourished them to and fro. The English guests immediately started up in a rage. The actors were Frenchmen, and it was surmised that they had brandished their caudal appendages in defiance of England; and the envoys, after vowing a dire revenge, retired to the extremity of the hall, that they might no longer witness the obnoxious exhibition.‡

Although the principles of taste had changed, they had scarcely improved, during a long course of years, in the pageantries of a royal procession, + Pitscottie.

⚫ Tytler.

+ Melvil