the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other
nobles of his said Realm, and of the commons of the same Realm, hath
ordained and established that no man, of what estate or condition soever he
be, shall cause himself to be served, in his house or elsewhere, at dinner,
meal, or supper, or at any other time, with more than two courses, and each
mess of two sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with
the common sorts of pottage, without sauce or any other sorts of victuals.
And if any man choose to have sauce for his mess, he may, provided it be
not made at great cost; and if fish or flesh be to be mixed therein, it
shall be of two sorts only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, and shall
stand instead of a mess, except only on the principal feasts of the year,
on which days every man may be served with three courses at the utmost,
after the manner aforesaid."

Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have outgrown, and
we smile at the unwisdom which could expect to regulate private habits and
manners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of moral authority when they
cannot be actually enforced, and may have been regarded, even at the time
at which they were issued, rather as an authoritative declaration of what
wise and good men considered to be right, than as laws to which obedience
could be compelled. This act, at any rate, witnesses to what was then
thought to be right by "the great persons" of the English realm; and when
great persons will submit themselves of their free will to regulations
which restrict their private indulgence, they are in little danger of
disloyalty from those whom fortune has placed below them.

Such is one aspect of these old arrangements; it is unnecessary to say that
with these, as with all other institutions created and worked by human
beings, the picture admits of being reversed. When by the accident of birth
men are placed in a position of authority, no care in their training will
prevent it from falling often to singularly unfit persons. The command of a
permanent military force was a temptation to ambition, to avarice, or
hatred, to the indulgence of private piques and jealousies, to political
discontent on private and personal grounds. A combination of three or four
of the leading nobles was sufficient, when an incapable prince sate on the
throne, to effect a revolution; and the rival claims of the houses of York
and Lancaster to the crown, to