Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/186

166 none but reredosses and our heads did never ake."

"England spendeth more on wines in one year than it did in ancient times in four years," grumbled another. The increase of luxury has undoubtedly its dangers, but there are degrees of luxury after all, and one can hardly regret the substitution of chimneys for the open hearth, of carpets for the stale rushes with their accompanying accumulations of dirt, of forks for fingers, not to mention items which to-day are considered necessaries rather than luxuries, as nightgowns, potatoes, and toothbrushes.

If the great feudal household was a creation of the past, and the hall no longer found the lord and his lady sitting at board with their array of feudal retainers, yet the Elizabethan household was an immense affair. The sixteenth century was the era of palaces, spacious and stately buildings, where open hospitality still reigned as in the bygone days, though the old simplicity of life had past. Elaborate and complicated were these Tudor palaces, with their fretted fronts and gilded turrets, their picturesque gables and castellated gateways. The foreign element was as visible in Elizabethan architecture as in