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Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found in Coryat’s “Crudities” (1611). He saw in Italy generally a curious custom of using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out of the dish with his fingers–would give offense. And he accounts for this peculiarity quite naturally: “The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane.” Coryat found the use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom, and when he returned, and, oftentimes in England, imitated the Italian fashion, his exploit was regarded in a humorous light. Busino says that fruits were seldom served at dessert, but that the whole population were munching them in the streets all day long, and in the places of amusement; and it was an amusement to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in a sort of competition of gormandize between the city belles and their admirers. And he avers that one young woman devoured twenty pounds of cherries, beating her opponent by two pounds and a half.

All foreigners were struck with the English love of music and drink, of banqueting and good cheer. Perlin notes a pleasant custom at table: during the feast you hear more than a hundred times, “Drink iou” (he loves to air his English), that is to say, “Je m’en vois boyre a toy.” You respond, in their language, “Iplaigiu”; that is to say, “Je vous plege.” If you thank them, they say in their language, “God tanque artelay”; that is, “Je vous remercie de bon coeur.” And then, says the artless Frenchman, still improving on his English, you should respond thus: “Bigod, sol drink iou agoud oin.” At the great and princely banquets, when the pledge went round and the heart’s desire of lasting health, says the chronicler, “the same was straight wayes knowne, by sound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon’s loudest voyce.” It was so in Hamlet’s day:

“And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.”

According to Hentzner (1598), the English are serious, like the Germans, and love show and to be followed by troops of servants wearing the arms of their masters; they excel in music and dancing, for they are lively and active, though thicker of make than the French; they cut their hair close in the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; “they are good sailors, and better pyrates, cunning, treacherous, and thievish;” and, he adds, with a touch of satisfaction, “above three hundred are said to be hanged annually in London.” They put a good deal of sugar in their drink; they are vastly fond of great noises, firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells, and when they have a glass in their heads they go up into some belfry, and ring the bells for hours together, for the sake of exercise. Perlin’s comment is that men are hung for a trifle in England, and that you will not find many lords whose parents have not had their heads chopped off.

It is a pleasure to turn to the simple and hearty admiration excited in the breasts of all susceptible foreigners by the English women of the time. Van Meteren, as we said, calls the women beautiful, fair, well dressed, and modest. To be sure, the wives are, their lives only excepted, entirely in the power of their husbands, yet they have great liberty; go where they please; are shown the greatest honor at banquets, where they sit at the upper end of the table and are first served; are fond of dress and gossip and of taking it easy; and like to sit before their doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen by the passers-by. Rathgeb also agrees that the women have much more liberty than in any other place. When old Busino went to the Masque at Whitehall, his colleagues kept exclaiming, “Oh, do look at this one–oh, do see that! Whose wife is this?–and that pretty one near her, whose daughter is she?” There was some chaff mixed in, he allows, some shriveled skins and devotees of S. Carlo Borromeo, but the beauties greatly predominated.