"To loove to play at Dice
To sware his blood and hart
To face it with a Ruffins look
And set his Hat athwart."[123]

The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen." So
does Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, to whom they used to run when
they were arrested for debt, or for killing a carman, making as their
only apology, "I am a Jyntelman, and being a Jyntelman, I am not thus to
be used at a slave and a colion's hands."[124] Hall, writing in the
third person, in the assumed character of a friend, describes himself as
"a man not wholly unlearned, with a smacke of the knowledge of diverse
tongues ... furious when he is contraried ... as yourselfe is witnesse
of his dealings at Rome, at Florence, in the way between that and
Bollonia ... so implacable if he conceyve an injurie, as Sylla will
rather be pleased with Marius, than he with his equals, in a maner for
offences grown of tryffles.... Also spending more tyme in sportes, and
following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause,
I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for." [125]

This terrible person, on the 16th of December 1573, at Lothbury, in
London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants
and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and
in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate
to one of the players." "Hall sware (as he will not sticke to lende you
an othe or two), to throw Mallerie out at the window. Here Etna smoked,
daggers were a-drawing ... but the goodman lamented the case for the
slaunder, that a quarrel should be in his house, ... so ... the matter
was ended for this fitte."

But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester,
took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then
to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards." The
next day at "Poules"[126] came Mallerie to Hall and "charged him very
hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner of folkes at Mawe."
Hall, far from showing that fury which he described as his
characteristic, denied the charge with meekness. He said he was patient
because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the
past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.

Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of
gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable
that Hall cr