Nym, Pistol, Peto, and the other companions of Falstaff, men who had
their humours, or their particular turn of extravaganza, had, since
the commencement of the Low Country wars, given way to a race of
sworders, who used the rapier and dagger, instead of the far less
dangerous sword and buckler; so that a historian says on this subject,
"that private quarrels were nourished, but especially between the
Scots and English; and duels in every street maintained; divers sects
and peculiar titles passed unpunished and unregarded, as the sect of
the Roaring Boys, Bonaventors, Bravadors, Quarterors, and such like,
being persons prodigal, and of great expense, who, having run
themselves into debt, were constrained to run next into factions, to
defend themselves from danger of the law. These received countenance
from divers of the nobility; and the citizens, through lasciviousness
consuming their estates, it was like that the number [of these
desperadoes] would rather increase than diminish; and under these
pretences they entered into many desperate enterprizes, and scarce any
durst walk in the street after nine at night."[Footnote: history of
the First Fourteen Years of King James's Reign. See Somers's Tracts,
edited by Scott, vol. ii. p.266.]

The same authority assures us farther, that "ancient gentlemen, who
had left their inheritance whole and well furnished with goods and
chattels (having thereupon kept good houses) unto their sons, lived to
see part consumed in riot and excess, and the rest in possibility to
be utterly lost; the holy state of matrimony made but a May-game, by
which divers families had been subverted; brothel houses much
frequented, and even great persons, prostituting their bodies to the
intent to satisfy their lusts, consumed their substance in lascivious
appetites. And of all sorts, such knights and gentlemen, as either
through pride or prodigality--had consumed their substance, repairing