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I might here take just occasion to speak of the prince's armories. But
what shall it need? sith the whole realm is her armory, and therefore her
furniture infinite. The Turk had one gun made by one Orban, a Dane, the
caster of his ordnance, which could not be drawn to the siege of
Constantinople but by seventy yoke of oxen and two thousand men; he had
two other there also whose shot poised above two talents in weight, made
by the same Orban. But to proceed. As for the armories of some of the
nobility (whereof I also have seen a part), they are so well furnished
that within some one baron's custody I have seen three score or a hundred
corslets at once, besides calivers, hand-guns, bows, sheaves of arrows,
pikes, bills, poleaxes, flasks, touchboxes, targets, etc., the very sight
whereof appalled my courage. What would the wearing of some of them do
then (trow you) if I should be enforced to use one of them in the field?
But thanked be God! our peaceable days are such as no man hath any great
cause to occupy them at all, but only taketh good leisure to have them in
a readiness, and therefore both high and low in England.[209]

"_Cymbala pro galeis pro scutis tympana pulsant._"

I would write here also of our manner of going to the wars, but what hath
the long black gown to do with glittering armour? what sound acquaintance
can there be betwixt Mars and the Muses? or how should a man write
anything to the purpose of that wherewith he is nothing acquainted? This
nevertheless will I add of things at home, that seldom shall you see any
of my countrymen above eighteen or twenty years old to go without a dagger
at the least at his back or by his side, although they be aged burgesses
or magistrates of any city who in appearance are most exempt from brabling
and contention. Our nobility wear commonly swords or rapiers with their
daggers, as doth every common serving-man also that followeth his lord and
master. Some desperate cutters we have in like sort, which carry two
daggers or two rapiers in a sheath always about them, wherewith in every
drunken fray they are known to work much mischief. Their swords and
daggers also are of a great length, and longer than the like used in any
other country, whereby each one pretendeth to have the more advantage of
his enemy. But as many orders have been taken for the intolerable length
of these weapons, so I se