The homes of the poor were indeed bare and comfortless. The floors were of clay or beaten earth. A clumsy table, some wooden stools, a wooden trencher to hold the food, a pile of straw to sleep on, salt fish and rye or barley bread--these were all the comforts that a poor man could expect to have in his home. The house itself was built of boughs of trees interwoven with willow twigs and daubed with clay. The fire was made against a rock set into one of the walls, and the smoke found its way out as best it could. Before the reign of Elizabeth was over, chimneys had become more common, and many men whose fathers had lived in huts of mud and had eaten from wooden trenchers were building for themselves houses of oak with the comfort of a chimney and perhaps the elegance of a pewter porringer or two among their wooden dishes. At best the luxuries were not very luxurious, but a writer of the time lamented that men were no longer as brave and strong as they used to be, and thought their weakness was due to these dainty and enfeebling fashions. CHAPTER XI ELIZABETH'S SUITORS Never before did the hand of a woman and its possible bestowal in marriage play so important a part in the affairs of Europe as did that of Elizabeth. She contrived to delay and postpone giving an answer to Philip till his minister wrote home wrathfully, "The English queen is possessed of ten thousand devils," but at the death of Philip's third wife, ten years later, she was not at all displeased when the Spanish ambassador suggested pointedly that Philip was "still young enough to take a fourth wife." When France was showing too much favor to Scotland to suit English notions, she was fully capable of discussing the possibility of a Scotch husband, and when there was a whisper that one foreign ruler meditated the rescue of the captive Mary and a marriage with her, Elizabeth at once sent an agent to him to suggest a marriage with herself. Whenever her fears of Spain increased, she began to think of a French alliance. There was always a French suitor ready, for Catherine de Medicis was trying her best to persuade Elizabeth to choose one of the French princes for a husband. The English queen kept one suitor waiting in uncertainty for seven years, another for eleven. She had all sorts of absurd names for her admirers; one was her "lap-dog," one her "tame cat," one her "sheep," another her "frog." Occasionally she found a wooer who was not so ready as the others to await her royal pleasure. Three years after all negotiations with the Archduke Charles, brother of the German emperor, had been broken off, she was talking familiarly with some of the ladies of the bedchamber, and she said with some indignation:-- "The king of France is to marry one daughter of the emperor, and the king of Spain is to marry another." "There's many a noble marriage, your Majesty," said one of her ladies. "Would that there was one more," she added slily.