Parliament, were melted butter to them; upon this lay a medley of flocks and feathers sewed up together in a large bag, (for I am confident it was not a tick) but so ill ordered that the knobs stuck out on each side like a crab-tree cudgel.  He had need to have flesh enough that lyeth on one of them, otherwise the second night would wear out his bones.—­Let us now walk into the kitchen and observe their provision.  And here we found a most terrible execution committed on the person of a pullet; my hostess, cruel woman, had cut the throat of it, and without plucking off the feathers, tore it into pieces with her hands, and afterwards took away skin and feathers together:  this done, it was clapped into a pan and fried for supper.—­But the principal ornaments of these inns are the men-servants, the raggedest regiment that ever I yet looked upon; such a thing as a chamberlain was never heard of amongst them, and good clothes are as little known as he.  By the habits of his attendants a man would think himself in a gaol, their clothes are either full of patches or open to the skin.  Bid one of them make clean your boots, and presently he hath recourse to the curtains.—­They wait always with their hats on, and so do all servants attending on their masters.—­Time and use reconciled me to many other things, which, at the first were offensive; to this most irreverent custom I returned an enemy; neither can I see how it can choose but stomach the most patient to see the worthiest sign of liberty usurped and profaned by the basest of slaves.”—­Peter then has a learned excursus de jure pileorum, wherein Tertullian de Spectaculis, Erasmus his Chiliades, and many other reverent authorities are adduced; also, giving an account of his successful exertions, as to “the licence of putting on our caps at our public meetings, which privilege, time, and the tyranny of the vice-chancellor, had taken from.”  After which, he still resumes in ire,—­“this French sauciness hath drawn me out of the way; an impudent familiarity, which, I confess, did much offend me; and to which I still profess myself an open enemy.  Though Jacke speak French, I cannot endure Jacke should be a gentleman.”

[29] Geographie de la France, II. p. 115.

[30] Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 94.

[31] P. 196, 203, 204.

[32] Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 90.—­Some other writers date the foundation A.D. 666.

[33] Gough’s Alien Priories, I. p. 9.

[34] This important part of its treasures, we may hope, from the following passage in Noel, has been in a measure preserved.  “On m’a assure que cette derniere partie des richesses litteraires de notre pays etoit heureusement conservee:  puisse aujourd’hui ce depot, honorant les mains qui le possedent, parvenir integre jusqu’aux tems properes ou le genie de l’histoire pourra utiliser sa possession.”—­Essais sur la Seine Inferieure, II. p. 21.