The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1890-04-10
COURT LIFE IN TUDOR TIMES.
Wealth in Amazing stores of Silver and
Gold Plate.

The brilliant court life of the later
Tudor times was a new thing in English
history In earlier days it had not
been the fashion for the great land
owners to forsake their estates and live
at Tower Hill or Shoe Lane with fol-
lowing of 100 or 200 gentlemen in
livery and white frieZe. lined with
crimson taffetas. and to spend two or
three times their yearly income in a
merry life of Gicing. card playing. and
hunting in Gray's Inn Fields, lslington
and Highgate. and in buying dresses
fine enough to adorn court pageants
and professions where the greatest
mobiles of the land accepted the honor
of bearing the Queens litter.
The country noble or gentleman of
the time of Edward ". and Henry
VII. had other business and other am
bitions. He was not, indeed home
keeping man; he had to be away at
French wars. or fighting on the Scotch
border, or leading levies hither and
thther to put down a rebellion or to set
one going or to make Il raid on his
neighbor's property. But whether he
was Il successful soldier or "a good
Cotswold shepherd" or prosperous
lawyer or a wealthy Judge. he re-
manned true provincial in heart and
in interests. Booty was to be had in
France, even in Scotland; there was
none in London. On the contrary. a
journey to the Capital needed the one
thing that mobiles and landowners never
had-ready money in the purse. If a
country Lord had to attend Parliament
IA supply of oats and corn was carried
for the horses Ito save the expenses of
his purse; his wife managed the big
household and estates in the country,
and from London an army of servants
rode backward and forward continual
ly to fetch provisions from fields and
ponds and salting-tubs at home, SO that
he need never 90 to the market or to
the baker to buy for money.
1t was in the provinces that the noble
kept his true state. If his journey lay
through any town all the bells were
set ringing 'to give notice of the pas
sage of such eminency," and the
burghers stood to watch him pass in
his robe of scarlet twelve yards wide,
with pendent sleeves down on the
ground, and the ''furrur therein set,"
worth perhaps 9200 or $500 of our
money. while his attendants came after,
anxiously holding up with both hands
out of the filth of the medieval streets
the wide sleeves that trailed at their
sides.
The great oak chests of the country
houses were piled up with splendid
robes; cloth of gold, figured satins,
damask, and silk, and velvets, and fine
cloths were heaped together with rich
furs of marten and beaver. Sir John
Fastolf had thirty-tive coverings for
his head-hoodS of satin, russet, and
velvet, straw hats, hats of beaver lined
with damask gilt, and the like, to suit
his various robes. Chains of gold of
the "old fashion, and the 'snew,"
collars of gold covered with roses and
suns" precious stones, women's girdles
of cloth of gold harnessed with gold or
with silver-gilt worked by famous for
eign makers, made fu..y as brave show
in the fifteenth century as in the one
that came after.
But the real wealth of the mobiles lay
in their amazing stores of gold and
silver plate. Fastolf had laid up in his
treasure tower and in the safe rooms of
monasteries vessels that weighed over
10000 ounces, besides the plate in his
buffers pantry. We read of ewers,
and goblets, and platters of gold; great
chargers of silver weighing POO ounces
or more;a tiagon of silver or 351 ounces;
others with gold verges and enameled
chains about them; gilt basins, with
antelopes; gilt cups like fountains, with
enameled flowers; salt-celars like tow
ers; "baslns of $50 ounces, covered with
silver of Paris touch and over-gilt.
pounccd and embossed with roses, and
with great, large enamels in the bottom,
with certain beasts embossed standing
within Il hedge of silver and gilt upon
the said enamels;" great gallon pots
having the edges gilt and wreathed
with poppy-leaves; gilded goblets with
columbine flowers and the like. AT
the funeral of a lady of Berkeley, early
in the sixteenth century, the plate was
brought out to give "a drinking" to the
Mayor of Bristol and his brethren. land
l thank God wrote the steward, mo
plate nor spoons was lost, yet there
were twenty dozen spoons.n Such was
the wealth upon which the spendthrifts
of Elizabeth's court fed and feasted"
till ruin overlook them, and on which
Jack of Newbury" and his fellows
prospered and laid field to tield.-Mrs.
4. S. Green in the Speaker.