f Shrewsbury as "trifling matters."[55] The gallows were kept busy in
town and country. The habits of violence, and the old fondness of the
nobility for fighting out their own quarrels, lingered in the prevalent
custom of duelling. Ladies, and even the queen herself, chastised their
servants with their own hands. On one occasion Elizabeth showed her
dislike of a courtier's coat by spitting upon it, and her habit of
administering physical correction to those who displeased her called
forth the witty remark of Sir John Harrington: "I will not adventure
her Highnesse choller, leste she should collar me also." The first
coach appeared in the streets of London in Elizabeth's time and the
sight of it "put both horse and man into amazement; some said it was a
great crab-shell brought out of China; and some imagined it to be one
of the Pagan temples, in which the Cannibals adored the divell." The
extravagance and luxury of the feasts which were given on great
occasions by the nobility were not attended by a corresponding advance
in the refinement of manners at table. In a banquet given by Lord
Hertford to Elizabeth in the garden of his castle, there were a
thousand dishes carried out by two hundred gentlemen lighted by a
hundred torch-bearers and every dish was of china or silver. But forks
had not yet come into general use, and their place was supplied by
fingers. Elizabeth had two or three forks, very small, and studded with
jewels, but they were intended only for ornament. A divine inveighed
against the impiety of those who objected to touching their meat with
their fingers, and it was only in the seventeenth century that the
custom of eating with forks obtained general acceptance, and ceased to
be considered a mark of foppery.

The co-existence of coarseness and brilliant luxury, so characteristic
of the time, is curiously apparent in the amusements of the city and
the court. The whole people, from Elizabeth to the country boor,
delighted in the savage sports of bull and bear-baiting. In the
gratification received by these exhibitions, appear the remains of the
old bloodthirstiness which had once been only satisfied with the sight
of human suffering. The contrast is striking when we turn to the
masques, the triumphs, and the pageants which were exhibited on great
occasions by the court or by the citizens of London. The awakening of
learning and the new interest in life were expressed in the dramatic
entertainments which min