waiters, who feed thereon in like
sort with convenient moderation, their reversion also being bestowed
upon the poor which lie ready at their gates in great numbers to
receive the same. This is spoken of the principal tables whereat the
nobleman, his lady, and guests are accustomed to sit; besides which
they have a certain ordinary allowance daily appointed for their
halls, where the chief officers and household servants (for all are
not permitted by custom to wait upon their master), and with them such
inferior guests do feed as are not of calling to associate the
nobleman himself; so that, besides those afore-mentioned, which are
called to the principal table, there are commonly forty or three score
persons fed in those halls, to the great relief of such poor suitors
and strangers also as oft be partakers thereof and otherwise like to
dine hardly. As for drink, it is usually filled in pots, goblets,
jugs, bowls of silver, in noblemen's houses; also in fine Venice
glasses of all forms; and, for want of these elsewhere, in pots of
earth of sundry colours and moulds, whereof many are garnished with
silver, or at the leastwise in pewter, all which notwithstanding are
seldom set on the table, but each one, as necessity urgeth, calleth
for a cup of such drink as him listeth to have, so that, when he has
tasted of it, he delivered the cup again to some one of the standers
by, who, making it clean by pouring out the drink that remaineth,
restoreth it to the cupboard from whence he fetched the same. By this
device (a thing brought up at the first by Mnesitheus of Athens, in
conservation of the honour of Orestes, who had not yet made expiation
for the death of his adulterous parents, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra)
much idle tippling is furthermore cut off; for, if the full pots
should continually stand at the elbow or near the trencher, divers
would always be dealing with them, whereas now they drink seldom, and
only when necessity urgeth, and so avoid the note of great drinking,
or often troubling of the servitors with filling of their bowls.
Nevertheless in the noblemen's halls this order is not used, neither
is any man's house commonly under the degree of a knight or esquire of
great revenues. It is a world to see in these our days, wherein gold
and silver most aboundeth, how that our gentility, as loathing those
metals (because of the plenty) do now generally choose rather the
Venice glasses, both for our wine and beer, than a