ed at London
with great pomp and solemnity.[***] This seems to have been the first
intercourse which that empire had with any of the western potentates of
Europe.

A law was passed in this reign,[****] by which the number of horses,
arms and furniture, was fixed which each person, according to the extent
of his property, should be provided with for the defence of the kingdom.
A man of a thousand pounds a year, for instance, was obliged to maintain
at his own charge six horses fit for demi-lances, of which three at
least to be furnished with sufficient harness, steel saddles, and
weapons proper for the demi-lances; and ten horses fit for light
horsemen, with furniture and weapons proper for them: he was obliged
to have forty corselets furnished; fifty almain revets, or, instead of
them, forty coats of plate, corse, etc. or brigandines furnished; forty
pikes, thirty long bows, thirty sheafs of arrows, thirty steel caps or
skulls, twenty black bills or halberts, twenty harquebuts, and twenty
morions or sallets. We may remark that a man of a thousand marks of
stock was rated equal to one of two hundred pounds a year; a proof that
few or none at that time lived on their stock in money, and that great
profits were made by the merchants in the course of trade. There is no
class above a thousand pounds a year.

* Rymer, vol. xv. p. 364.

** 1 Mar. Parl. 2, cap, 7.

*** Holingshed, p. 732. Heylin, p. 71.

**** 4 and 5 Phil. and Mar. cap. 2.

We pay form a notion of the little progress made in arts and refinement
about this time, from one circumstance; a man of no less rank than the
comptroller of Edward VI.'s household paid only thirty shillings a year
of our present money for his house in Channel Row;[*] yet labor and
provisons, and consequently houses, were only about a third of the
present price. Erasmus ascribes the frequent plagues in England to the
nastiness, and dirt, and slovenly habits among the people. "The floors,"
says he, "are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies
unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones,
spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and every thing that is
nasty."[**]

Holingshed, who lived in Queen Elizabeth's reign, gives a very curious
account of the plain, or rather rude way of living of the preceding
generation. There scarcely was a chimney to the houses, even in
considerable towns; the fire was kindled by the wall, and the smoke