dearest, and whither none but your gallants resort."[53]

With all the luxury of furniture and dress, with all the new elegance
and ceremony of court life, there naturally remained much disorder,
violence, and coarseness throughout the social system. Although the
laws concerning the maintenance of order in the streets were strict,
forbidding any one even to "blowe any horne in the night, or whistle
after the hour of nyne of the clock in the night," yet they were not
effectively enforced. A member of the House of Commons described a
Justice of the Peace as an animal, who for half a dozen of chickens
would dispense with a dozen penal laws[54]; and Gilbert Talbot spoke of
two serious street affrays, which he described in a letter to the Earl
of Shrewsbury as "trifling matters."[55] The gallows were kept busy in
town and country. The habits of violence, and the old fondness of the
nobility for fighting out their own quarrels, lingered in the prevalent
custom of duelling. Ladies, and even the queen herself, chastised their
servants with their own hands. On one occasion Elizabeth showed her
dislike of a courtier's coat by spitting upon it, and her habit of
administering physical correction to those who displeased her called
forth the witty remark of Sir John Harrington: "I will not adventure
her Highnesse choller, leste she should collar me also." The first
coach appeared in the streets of London in Elizabeth's time and the
sight of it "put both horse and man into amazement; some said it was a
great crab-shell brought out of China; and some imagined it to be one
of the Pagan temples, in which the Cannibals adored the divell." The
extravagance and luxury of the feasts which were given on great
occasions by the nobility were not attended by a corresponding advance
in the refinement of manners at table. In a banquet given by Lord
Hertford to Elizabeth in the garden of his castle, there were a
thousand dishes carried out by two hundred gentlemen lighted by a