The following anecdotes relate to a period which is sufficiently remote to excite curiosity; yet not so distant as to weaken the interest we feel in those minutiae of the times.

The present one may serve as a curious specimen of the despotism and simplicity of an age not literary, in discovering the author of a libel.  It took place in the reign of Henry VIII.  A great jealousy subsisted between the Londoners and those foreigners who traded here.  The foreigners probably (observes Mr. Lodge, in his Illustrations of English History) worked cheaper and were more industrious.

There was a libel affixed on St. Paul’s door, which reflected on Henry VIII. and these foreigners, who were accused of buying up the wool with the king’s money, to the undoing of Englishmen.  This tended to inflame the minds of the people.  The method adopted to discover the writer of the libel must excite a smile in the present day, while it shows the state in which knowledge must have been in this country.  The plan adopted was this:  In every ward one of the King’s council, with an alderman of the same, was commanded to see every man write that could, and further took every man’s book and sealed them, and brought them to Guildhall to confront them with the original.  So that if of this number many wrote alike, the judges must have been much puzzled to fix on the criminal.

Our hours of refection are singularly changed in little more than two centuries.  In the reign of Francis I. (observes the author of Recreations Historiques) they were accustomed to say,—­

    Lever a cinq, diner a neuf,
    Souper a cinq, coucher a neuf,
    Fait vivre d’ans nonante et neuf.

Historians observe of Louis XII. that one of the causes which contributed to hasten his death was the entire change of his regimen.  The good king, by the persuasion of his wife, says the history of Bayard, changed his manner of living:  when he was accustomed to dine at eight o’clock, he agreed to dine at twelve; and when he was used to retire at six o’clock in the evening, he frequently sat up as late as midnight.

Houssaie gives the following authentic notice drawn from the registers of the court, which presents a curious account of domestic life in the fifteenth century.  Of the dauphin Louis, son of Charles VI., who died at the age of twenty, we are told, “that he knew the Latin and French languages; that he had many musicians in his chapel; passed the night in vigils; dined at three in the afternoon, supped at midnight, went to bed at the break of day, and thus was ascertene (that is threatened) with a short life.”  Froissart mentions waiting upon the Duke of Lancaster at five o’clock in the afternoon, when he had supped.