ng the incomes of persons, or
in the words of the proclamation, "finding that it is very hard for any
man's state of living and value to be truly understood by other
persons." They were to be regulated as they appear "sessed in the
subsidy books." But if persons chose to be more magnificent in their
dress, they were allowed to justify their means: in that case, if
allowed, her majesty would not be the loser; for they were to be rated
in the subsidy books according to such values as they themselves offered
as a qualification for the splendour of their dress!

In my researches among manuscript letters of the times, I have had
frequent occasion to discover how persons of considerable rank appear to
have carried their acres on their backs, and with their ruinous and
fantastical luxuries sadly pinched their hospitality. It was this which
so frequently cast them into the nets of the "goldsmiths," and other
trading usurers. At the coronation of James the First, I find a simple
knight whose cloak cost him five hundred pounds; but this was not
uncommon.[260] At the marriage of Elizabeth, the daughter of James the
First, "Lady Wotton had a gown of which the embroidery cost fifty pounds
a yard. The Lady Arabella made four gowns, one of which cost 1500_l._
The Lord Montacute (Montague) bestowed 1500_l._ in apparel for his two
daughters. One lady, under the rank of baroness, was furnished with
jewels exceeding one hundred thousand pounds; "and the Lady Arabella
goes beyond her," says the letter-writer. "All this extreme costs and
riches makes us all poor," as he imagined![261] I have been amused in
observing grave writers of state-dispatches jocular on any mischance or
mortification to which persons are liable whose happiness entirely
depends on their dress. Sir Dudley Carleton, our minister at Venice,
communicates, as an article worth transmitting, the great disappointment
incurred by Sir Thomas Glover, "who was just come hither, and had
appeared one day like a comet, all in crimson velvet and beaten gold,
but had all his expectations marred on a sudden by the news of Prince
Henry's death." A similar mischance, from a different cause, was the lot
of Lord Hay, who made great preparations for his embassy to France,
which, however, were chiefly confined to his dress. He was to remain
there twenty days; and the letter-writer maliciously observes, that "He
goes with twenty special suits of apparel for so many days' abode,
besides his tr