de fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the
Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and
"rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going
on and laughing at it,"[149] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed
to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador
because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed. "He was in a
great fury.... Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in
that they wanted judgement."[150]

There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the
fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who
scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family
servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in
the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts,
the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the
streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in
Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles
who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on
improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to
be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's _Quip for an
Upstart Courtier_ parodies what the new and refined Englishman would
say:--

"The worlds are chaungde, and men are growne to more wit, and their
minds to aspire after more honourable thoughts: they were dunces in
diebus illis, they had not the true use of gentility, and therefore they
lived meanely and died obscurely: but now mennes capacities are refined.
Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as
they should be: not like gluttons as their fathers did, in chines of
beefe and almes to the poore, but in velvets, satins, cloth of gold,
pearle: yea, pearle lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his
birthday."[151]

On the whole, we may say that the objections to foreign travel rose from
a variety of motives. Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young men
spoiled by too much liberty, and there were surely many obnoxious boys
who bragged of their "foreign vices." Insular prejudice, jealousy and
conservatism, hating foreign influence, drew attention to these bad
examples. Lastly, there was another element in the protest against
foreign travel, which grew more and more strong towards the end of the
reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of James th