men do wear no beards at all.  Some lusty courtiers also and gentlemen of courage do wear either rings of gold, stones, or pearl, in their ears, whereby they imagine the workmanship of God not to be a little amended.  But herein they rather disgrace than adorn their persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women do likewise upon their heads and shoulders.  In women also, it is most to be lamented, that they do now far exceed the lightness of our men (who nevertheless are transformed from the cap even to the very shoe), and such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for none but light housewives only is now become a habit for chaste and sober matrons.  What should I say of their doublets with pendant codpieces on the breast full of jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundry colours?  Their galligascons to bear out their bums and make their attire to fit plum round (as they term it) about them.  Their fardingals, and diversely coloured nether stocks of silk, jerdsey, and such like, whereby their bodies are rather deformed than commended?  I have met with some of these trulls in London so disguised that it hath passed my skill to discern whether they were men or women.

      [1] (COS.)

        “I am an English man and naked I stand here,
        Musying in my mynde what rayment I shall were;
        For now I will were thys, and now I will were that;
        Now I will were I cannot tell what. 
        All new fashyons be plesaunt in me;
        I wyl haue them, whether I thryve or thee.”

      From Andrew Boorde’s Introduction (1541), and Dyetary (1542),
      edited by F.J.F. for Early English Text Society, 1870, p. 116. (A
      most quaint and interesting volume, though I say so.)—­Furnivall.

Thus it is now come to pass, that women are become men, and men transformed into monsters; and those good gifts which Almighty God hath given unto us to relieve our necessities withal (as a nation turning altogether the grace of God into wantonness, for

  “Luxuriant animi rebus plerunque fecundis,”)

not otherwise bestowed than in all excess, as if we wist not otherwise how to consume and waste them.  I pray God that in this behalf our sin be not like unto that of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose errors were pride, excess of diet, and abuse of God’s benefits abundantly bestowed upon them, beside want of charity towards the poor, and certain other points which the prophet shutteth up in silence.  Certes the commonwealth cannot be said to nourish where these abuses reign, but is rather oppressed by unreasonable exactions made upon rich farmers, and of poor tenants, wherewith to maintain the same.  Neither was it ever merrier