In these details I am not attempting any complete picture of the rural life at this time, but rather indicating by illustrations the sort of study which illuminates its literature.  We find, indeed, if we go below the surface of manners, sober, discreet, and sweet domestic life, and an appreciation of the virtues.  Of the English housewife, says Gervase Markham, was not only expected sanctity and holiness of life, but “great modesty and temperance, as well outwardly as inwardly.  She must be of chaste thoughts, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighborhood, wise in discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comportable in her counsels, and generally skillful in the worthy knowledges which do belong to her vocation.”  This was the mistress of the hospitable house of the country knight, whose chief traits were loyalty to church and state, a love of festivity, and an ardent attachment to field sports.  His well-educated daughter is charmingly described in an exquisite poem by Drayton: 

He had, as antique stories tell,

       He had, as antique stories tell,
       A daughter cleaped Dawsabel,
       A maiden fair and free;
       And for she was her father’s heir,
       Full well she ycond the leir
       Of mickle courtesy.

       “The silk well couth she twist and twine,
       And make the fine march-pine,
       And with the needle work: 
       And she couth help the priest to say
       His matins on a holy day,
       And sing a psalm in Kirk.

       “She wore a frock of frolic green
       Might well become a maiden queen,
       Which seemly was to see;
       A hood to that so neat and fine,
       In color like the columbine,
       Ywrought full featously.

       “Her features all as fresh above
       As is the grass that grows by Dove,
       And lythe as lass of Kent. 
       Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,
       As white as snow on Peakish Hull,
       Or swan that swims in Trent.

       “This maiden in a morn betime
       Went forth when May was in the prime
       To get sweet setywall,
       The honey-suckle, the harlock,
       The lily, and the lady-smock,
       To deck her summer hall.”

How late such a simple and pretty picture could have been drawn to life is uncertain, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the luxury of the town had penetrated the country, even into Scotland.  The dress of a rich farmer’s wife is thus described by Dunbar.  She had “a robe of fine scarlet, with a white hood, a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at her side from a silken belt of silver tissue; on each finger she wore two rings, and round her waist was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richly embroidered with silver.”