Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/391

 preliminary procession that the interesting account is here set down entire:

"Thus were they marshalled. First, all the lustie lads and bold bachelors of the parish suitably, every wight with his blue buckram bridelace upon a branch of green broom (cause rosemary is scant there), and his alder pole for a spear in his right hand, in martial order ranged on afore, two and two in a rank: Some with a hat, some in a cap, some a coat, some a jerkin, some for lightness in his doublet and his hose, clean trust with a point afore: Some boots and no spurs, he spurs and no boots, and he neither one nor t'other: One a saddle, another a pad or a pannel fastened with a cord, for girths wear geason [were scarce]. And these to the number of a sixteen wight riding men and well beseen. But the bridegroom foremost, in his father's tawny jacket (for his friends were fain that he should be a bridegroom before the Queen), a fair straw hat with a capital crown, steeple-wise on his head: a pair of harvest gloves on his hands, as a sign of good husbandry: A pen and inkhorn at his back; for he would be known to be bookish: lame of a leg, that in his youth was broken at foot-ball: Well-beloved yet of his mother, that lent him a new muffler for a napkin that was tied to his girdle for losing. It was no small sport to mark this