An excellent description of the jewellery of Elizabeth towards the close of her brilliant reign is given by Paul Hentzner, who visited England in 1598: "The Queen had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore false hair and that red; upon her head she had a small crown; her bosom was uncovered, and she had on a necklace of exceedingly fine jewels. She was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads; her train was very long. Instead of a chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." To a courtier who knelt to her, "after pulling off her glove, she gave her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels." The best of all representations of that "bright occidental Star" is her faded waxwork effigy, still to be seen in Westminster Abbey--no other than the one which on the 28th of April, 1603, was carried on her coffin to the Abbey. It shows the veritable passion Elizabeth possessed for pearls. Her stomacher is encrusted with large Roman pearls, while strings of pearls hang round her throat and neck. Her earrings are circular pearl and ruby medallions, with huge pear-shaped pearl pendants. Full of detail are the records of costly "juelles" that have come down to us, particularly in the list, preserved in the British Museum,[138] of the New Year's gifts presented to the Queen, from the fourteenth to the thirty-sixth year of her reign. The practice of exchanging presents on New Year's Day attained extraordinary proportions at the Court of Elizabeth, and was supplemented by birthday presents, which, as Her Majesty's weakness for jewellery was well known, took for the most part the form of personal ornaments of every kind. The very accurate accounts that were kept by the officers of the Queen's wardrobe of every item in her enormous store of jewellery is witnessed by a number of curious entries in her wardrobe-book of losses of jewellery sustained by Her Majesty.[139] [138] British Museum. MSS. No. 4827. [139] Strickland, _Queens of England_, IV, pp. 262, 416. In addition to numerous inventories and wills full of information concerning the jewellery of the period, we have at our service, as in Roman times, the works of social satirists, such as _The Anatomie of Abuses_, by Philip Stubbes (1583), and Bishop Hall's poetical satires of 1597, to which we are indebted for many valuable details. In accepting these it is well to bear in mind the common tendency of every age to ridicule its own fashions; yet, in spite of Puritan narrowness, and the exaggerated indignation of the satirist, it is manifest that extraordinary luxury and extravagance in dress and jewellery were prevalent not only at Court, but among all classes of the community.