[Footnote 34:  “Of bread made of wheat we have sundrie sorts dailie brought to the table, whereof the first and most excellent is the mainchet, which we commonlie call white bread.”—­Harrison, Description of England prefixed to Holinshed, chap. 6.]

[Footnote 35:  His honour was somewhat preposterous, for he bare, &c., first edit.]

[Footnote 36:  Clown, first edit.]

[Footnote 37:  The art of hawking has been so frequently and so fully explained, that it would be superfluous, if not arrogant, to trace its progress, or delineate its history, in this place.  In the earliest periods it appears to have been exclusively practised by the nobility; and, indeed, the great expense at which the amusement was supported, seems to have been a sufficient reason for deterring persons of more moderate income, and of inferior rank, from indulging in the pursuit.  In the Sports and Pastimes of Mr. Strutt, a variety of instances are given of the importance attached to the office of falconer, and of the immense value of, and high estimation the birds themselves were held in from the commencement of the Norman government, down to the reign of James I., in which Sir Thomas Monson gave L1000 for a cast of hawks, which consisted of only two.

The great increase of wealth, and the consequent equalization of property in this country, about the reign of Elizabeth, induced many of inferior birth to practise the amusements of their superiors, which they did without regard to expense, or indeed propriety.  Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Governour (1580), complains that the falcons of his day consumed so much poultry, that, in a few years, he feared there would be a great scarcity of it.  “I speake not this,” says he, “in disprayse of the faukons, but of them which keepeth them lyke cockneyes.”  A reproof, there can be no doubt, applicable to the character in the text.]

[Footnote 38:  A term in hawking, signifying the short straps of leather which are fastened to the hawk’s legs, by which she is held on the fist, or joined to the leash.  They were sometimes made of silk, as appears from The Boke of hawkynge, huntynge, and fysshynge, with all the propertyes and medecynes that are necessarye to be kepte:  “Hawkes haue aboute theyr legges gesses made of lether most comonly, some of sylke, which shuld be no lenger but that the knottes of them shulde appere in the myddes of the lefte hande,” &c. Juliana Barnes, edit. 410, “Imprynted at London in Pouls chyrchyarde by me Hery Tab.”  Sig.  C. ii.]

[Footnote 39:  This authority of his is that club which keeps them under as his dogs hereafter, first edit.]

[Footnote 40:  Now become a man’s total, first edit.]

[Footnote 41:  Of the game called one and thirty, I am unable to find any mention in Mr. Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, nor is it alluded to in any of the old plays or tracts I have yet met with.  A very satisfactory account of tables may be read in the interesting and valuable publication just noticed.]