London," deserting their
country mansions, which were now left to the care of "a poor alms-woman,
or a bed-rid beadsman."

In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country hospitality for the
metropolis, and this breaking-up of old family establishments, crowded
London with new and distinct races of idlers, or, as they would now be
called, unproductive members of society. From a contemporary manuscript,
one of those spirited remonstrances addressed to the king, which it was
probably thought not prudent to publish, I shall draw some extracts, as a
forcible picture of the manners of the age.[A] Masters of ancient
families, to maintain a mere exterior of magnificence in dress and
equipage in the metropolis, were really at the same time hiding themselves
in penury: they thrust themselves into lodgings, and "five or six knights,
or justices of peace," with all their retinue, became the inmates of a
shopkeeper; yet these gentlemen had once "kept the rusty chimneys of two
or three houses smoking, and had been the feeders of twenty or forty
serving-men: a single page, with a guarded coat, served their turn now."

[Footnote A: The MS. is entitled "Balaam's Ass, or a True Discoverie
touching the Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King
James."--Lansdowne Collection, 209. The writer, throughout, speaks of the
king with the highest respect.]

"Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house and an emperor in the
streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a
coach; giving that allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained
houses full of men; pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and
burying all the treasures of the kingdom into a few citizens' coffers.

"There are now," the writer adds, "twenty thousand masterless men turned
off, who know not this night where to lodge, where to eat to-morrow, and
ready to undertake any desperate course."

Yet there was still a more turbulent and dangerous race of idlers, in

"A number of younger brothers, of ancient houses, who, nursed up in
fulness, pampered in their minority, and left in charge to their elder
brothers, who were to be fathers to them, followed them in despair to
London, where these untimely-born youths are left so bare, that their
whole life's allowance was consumed in one year."

The same manuscript exhibits a full and spirited picture of manners in
this long period of peace.

"The gentry are like owls, all