Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/161

Rh and hoods of green velvet. There, too, stood a golden castle, before the gate of which sat a man making a garland of roses, as a prize for the victor of the joust which would follow. As this strange spectacle—a compound of the real and unreal—rested before the spectators, the six foresters blew their horns, the forest opened, and out stepped four armed knights ready to fight. Equally extravagant were the huge banquets given in this reign. The "glory of hospitality" was an Englishman's boast. For every man who chose to ask for it, there was free food and free lodging, though the latter might be but a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall. There was little fear of this privilege being abused, for suspicious characters might not wander at large in these days, and for any one who could not give a satisfactory account of himself there were the village stocks. For the sin of idleness our forefathers had no mercy; they abhorred it as a vice which would undermine their sturdy commonwealth, as, indeed, it is undermining the England of to-day. An Act passed in 1531 decreed that any person "being whole and mighty in body and able to labour," found begging, might