n
dressing myself and wanting a band,

[The band succeeded the ruff as the ordinary civil costume. The
lawyers, who now retain bands, and the clergy, who have only lately
left them off, formerly wore ruffs.]

I found all my bands that were newly made clean so ill smoothed that
I crumpled them, and flung them all on the ground, and was angry with
Jane, which made the poor girle mighty sad, so that I were troubled for
it afterwards. At noon I went forth, and by coach to Guild Hall (by the
way calling at Mr. Rawlinson's), and there was admitted, and meeting
with Mr. Proby (Sir R. Ford's son), and Lieutenant-Colonel Baron, a City
commander, we went up and down to see the tables; where under every salt
there was a bill of fare, and at the end of the table the persons
proper for the table. Many were the tables, but none in the Hall but the
Mayor's and the Lords of the Privy Council that had napkins

[As the practice of eating with forks gradually was introduced from
Italy into England, napkins were not so generally used, but
considered more as an ornament than a necessary.

"The laudable use of forks,
Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,
To the sparing of napkins."

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, act v., sc. 3.

The guests probably brought their own knife and fork with them in a
case.--M.B.]

or knives, which was very strange. We went into the Buttry, and there
stayed and talked, and then into the Hall again: and there wine was
offered and they drunk, I only drinking some hypocras, which do not
break my vowe, it being, to the best of my present judgement, only a
mixed compound drink, and not any wine.

[A drink, composed usually of red wine, but sometimes of white, with
the addition of sugar and spices. Sir Walter Scott ("Quarterly
Review," vol. xxxiii.) says, after quoting this passage of Pepys,
"Assuredly his pieces of bacchanalian casuistry can only be matched
by that of Fielding's chaplain of Newgate, who preferred punch to
wine, because the former was a liquor nowhere spoken against in
Scripture."]

If I am mistaken, God forgive me! but I hope and do think I am not. By
and by met with Creed; and we, with the others, went within the several
Courts, and there saw the tables prepared for the Ladies and Judges and
Bishopps: all great sign of a great dinner to