PART IX.

AT HOME: IN COURT: AND IN SOCIETY.

CHAPTER XLV.

LAWYERS AT THEIR OWN TABLES.

A long list, indeed, might be made of abstemious lawyers; but their
temperance is almost invariably mentioned by biographers as matter for
regret and apology, and is even made an occasion for reproach in cases
where it has not been palliated by habits of munificent hospitality. In
the catalogue of Chancellor Warham's virtues and laudable usages,
Erasmus takes care to mention that the primate was accustomed to
entertain his friends, to the number of two hundred at a time: and when
the man of letters notices the archbishop's moderation with respect to
wines and dishes--a moderation that caused his grace to eschew suppers,
and never to sit more than an hour at dinner--he does not omit to
observe that though the great man "made it a rule to abstain entirely
from supper, yet if his friends were assembled at that meal he would sit
down along with them and promote their conviviality."

Splendid in all things, Wolsey astounded envious nobles by the
magnificence of his banquets, and the lavish expenses of his kitchens,
wherein his master-cooks wore raiment of richest materials--the _chef_
of his private kitchen daily arraying himself in a damask-satin or
velvet, and wearing on his neck a chain of gold. Of a far other kind
were the tastes of Wolsey's successor, who, in the warmest sunshine of
his power, preferred a quiet dinner with Erasmus to the pompous display
of state banquets, and who wore a gleeful light in his countenance when,
after his fall, he called his children and grandchildren about him, and
said: "I have been brought up at Oxford, at an Inn of Chancery, at
Lincoln's Inn, and in the King's Court--from the lowest degree to the
highest, and yet have I in yearly revenues at this present, little left
me above a hundred pounds by the year; so that now, if we wish to live
together, you must be content to be contributaries together. But my
counsel is that we fall not to the lowest fare first; we will not,
therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we
will begin with Lincoln's Inn diet, where many right worshipful men of
great account and good years do live full well; which if we find
ourselves the first year not able to maintain, then will we in the next
year come down to Oxford fare, where many great, learned, and ancient
fathers and doctors are continually conversant; which if our purses