John Drake, the Norwich shoemaker, was resolved to dress, for once, like a knight; and accordingly he betook himself to Sir Philip Calthrop’s tailor, and seeing some fine French tawney cloth lying there, which the cavalier had sent to have made into a gown,—gentlemen then, as now, it seems, sometimes found “their own materials,”—the aspiring Crispin ordered a gown of the same stuff and fashion. The knight, on calling at the tailor’s, saw the two parcels of “materials,” and inquired as to the proprietary of the second. “The stuff,” said the master, “is John Drake’s, the Norwich shoemaker, who _will_ have a gown of the same fashion as your valiant worship.” “Will he so?” asked proud Sir Philip; “then fashion mine as full of cuts as thy shears can make it, and let the two be alike, as ordered.” He was obeyed; but when John Drake looked wonderingly upon his aristocratic garment, and saw the peculiar mode thereof, and was moreover told the reason there_for_, he rubbed his bullet-head vexedly, and remarked, “By my latchet, an it be so John Drake will never ask for gentleman’s fashion again.” I have spoken in my ‘Table Traits’ of how a French knight gained a livelihood by making salads; I may notice here that a Flemish frau, Dingham van der Plafze, did the same by starching ruffs in London, in Queen Elizabeth’s time. She gave lessons to the nobility at four or five pounds the course for each pupil, and an additional pound for showing them how to make the starch. The nobility of course patronized her; being a foreigner, the duchesses accounted her “divine.” People of the commonalty, with as much wisdom, esteemed her as a devil; and starch itself was looked upon as a sort of devil’s broth. The women who wore ruffs were looked upon as anything but respectable; and the men who placed around the neck the “monstrous ruff, of twelve, yea sixteen, lengths apiece, set three or four times double,” were accounted of as having made “three steps and a half to the gallows.”