Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/211



AMES I. loved show and magnificence quite as much as his predecessors, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, so that we find the dress of the last period yet more exaggerated, extravagant sums of money spent on luxuries, banquets, masques, and other entertainments, and a general light worldliness pervading society during the early part of the seventeenth century. The Court itself was a "nursery of intemperance"; we hear rumours of the King being carried away from the dinner-table in his chair, unable to stand, ladies rolling about in intoxication. Thus the honour,