, 1890-03-14
IN TUDOR TIMES,
wealth In Amazing Stores of Silver and
Gold Plate-The Court Life.

Goid Plate-The Court Life.
The brilliant court life of the later Tu-
dor times was q 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 a following of a
hundred or two of gentlemen in livery of
white frieze, lined with crimson taffetas,
and to spend two or three times their
yearly income in a merry life of dicing,
card playing and hunting in Gray's Inn
Fields, %Islington 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 ambitions. He
was not, indeed, a home keeping man;
he had to be away at French wars, or
fighting on the Scotch border, or leading
levies hither and thither to put down a
rebellion or to set one going, or to make
a raid on his neighbours property. But
whether he was a successful soldier Oh
ga good Cotswold shepherd, - or a pros
porous lawyer, or a wealthy judge, he
remained a 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 land owners never had-ready
money in the purse. If a country lord
had to attend parliament, a supply OF
oats and corn was carried for the horses,
''to ave the expenses of his purse;'' his
Drifa rnonaual 81, Ill Ia,,coIo1l o~l -
tates in the country, and from London
an army of ervants rode backward and
forward continually to fetch provisions
from fields and ponds and sailing tubs
at home, so that he need never go 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 passage of
such eminency," and the burgers 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 e200 or e30O
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
n beaver. Sir John Fastolf had thirty
five coverings for his head-hoods of
satin, russell 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 new"
collars of gold covered with crosses 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 fully as brave a 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 sill
yer 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 charg.
ers of silver, weighing 200 ounces or
more; a fagon of silver of 351 ounces;
others with gold verges and enameled
chains about them; gilt basins, with an
telopes; gilt cups like fountains, with
enameled flowers; salt cellars like tow
ers; "basins of $50 ounces, covered with
silver of Paris touch and over gilt,
bounced and embossed with roses, and
with great large enamels in the bottom,
with certain beasts embossed standing
within a hedge of silver and gilt upon
the said enamels;" great gallon pots
having the edges gilt and wreathed with
poppy leaves; gilded goblets with column
bine flowers and the like. AT the funeral
of a lady of Berkeley, early in the Six
teenth century, the plate was brought
out to give ga drinking" to the mayor of
Bristol and his brethren, 'and 1 thank
God" wrote the steward, "no plate nor
spoons was lost, yet there were twenty
dozen spoons" Such was the wealth
upon which the spendthrifts of Eliza
beth's court ''fed and feasted'' till ruin
overlook them, and on which "Jack Of
Newbury" and his fellows prospered and
laid field to field.-Mrs. a. s. Green in
The Speaker.