sort of meats, are much impoverished, whereby they are not able to aid
themselves, nor their liege lord, in time of need, as they ought; and many
other evils have happened, as well to their souls as their bodies--our Lord
the King, desiring the common profit as well of the great men as the common
people of his Realm, and considering the evils, grievances, and mischiefs
aforesaid, by the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other
nobles of his said Realm, and of the commons of the same Realm, hath
ordained and established that no man, of what estate or condition soever he
be, shall cause himself to be served, in his house or elsewhere, at dinner,
meal, or supper, or at any other time, with more than two courses, and each
mess of two sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with
the common sorts of pottage, without sauce or any other sorts of victuals.
And if any man choose to have sauce for his mess, he may, provided it be
not made at great cost; and if fish or flesh be to be mixed therein, it
shall be of two sorts only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, and shall
stand instead of a mess, except only on the principal feasts of the year,
on which days every man may be served with three courses at the utmost,
after the manner aforesaid."

Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have outgrown, and
we smile at the unwisdom which could expect to regulate private habits and
manners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of moral authority when they
cannot be actually enforced, and may have been regarded, even at the time
at which they were issued, rather as an authoritative declaration of what
wise and good men considered to be right, than as laws to which obedience
could be compelled. This act, at any rate, witnesses to what was then
thought to be right by "the great persons" of the English realm; and when
great persons will submit themselves of their free will to regulations
which restrict their private indulgence, they are in little danger of
disloyalty from those whom fortune has placed below them.