stretch not to maintain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet,
go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us
their charity and at every man's door to sing a _Salve Regina_, whereby
we shall keep company and be merry together."

Students recalling the social life of England should bear in mind the
hours kept by our ancestors in the fourteenth and two following
centuries. Under the Plantagenets noblemen used to sup at five P.M., and
dine somewhere about the breakfast hour of Mayfair in a modern London
season. Gradually hours became later; but under the Tudors the ordinary
dinner hour for gentlepeople was somewhere about eleven A.M., and their
usual time for supping was between five P.M. and six P.M., tradesmen,
merchants and farmers dining and supping at later hours than their
social superiors. "With us," says Hall the chronicler, "the nobility,
gentry, and students, do ordinarily go to dinner at eleven before noon,
and to supper at five, or between five and six, at afternoon. The
merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve at noon and six at night.
The husbandmen also dine at high noon as they call it, and sup at seven
or eight; but out of term in our universities the scholars dine at ten."
Thus whilst the idlers of society made haste to eat and drink, the
workers postponed the pleasures of the table until they had made a good
morning's work. In the days of morning dinners and afternoon suppers,
the law-courts used to be at the height of their daily business at an
hour when Templars of the present generation have seldom risen from bed.
Chancellors were accustomed to commence their daily sittings in
Westminster at seven A.M. in summer, and at eight A.M. in winter months.
Lord Keeper Williams, who endeavored to atone for want of law by
extraordinarily assiduous attention to the duties of his office, used
indeed to open his winter sittings by candlelight between six and seven
o'clock.

Many were the costly banquets of which successive Chancellors invited
the nobility, the judges, and the bar, to partake at old York House; but
of all the holders of the Great Seal who exercised pompous hospitality
in that picturesque palace, Francis Bacon was the most liberal,
gracious, and delightful entertainer. Where is the student of English
history who has not often endeavored to imagine the scene when Ben
Jonson sat amongst the honored guests of

"England's high Chancellor, the destin'd heir,