By a decree of the 24th of this king’s reign, no person below the degree of a knight could wear a collar of SS. The judges wear such collars because they are, or rank with, knights. That a decree was issued to this effect would seem to imply that previous to the period named, individuals below the knightly degree might wear the collar in question. Edward IV., therefore, when he conferred the collar on the Tanner of Tamworth, was not guilty of any anomaly. On the contrary, he evidently knew what he was about, by the remark-- “So here I _make_ thee the best Esquire That is in the North Countrie.” In Edward’s time then, the collar may have constituted the difference between squire and knight. But it was not the only one. If there was a difference at their necks, there was also a distinction at their heels. The knight always wore golden spurs: he was the Eques Auratus. The squire could wear spurs of no more costly metal than silver, and “White-spurs,” accordingly, was the generic term for an esquire. It was probably in allusion to this that the country squire mentioned by Jonson, displayed his silver spurs among his side-board plate. To return to Henry VIII.; let me add that he exhibited something of what was considered a knightly attribute, compassion for the lowly, when he suggested that due sleeping-time should be allowed to laborers during the summer. Edward VI. was simply a youth of much promise. His father was unwilling to create him a knight before he knew how to wield arms; and if he gained this knowledge early, he was never called to put it in practice. There was more of the chivalrous character in his over-abused half-sister, Mary, and also in Elizabeth; but then queens can not of course be considered as knights: Elizabeth, however, had much of the spirit, and she was surrounded by knightly men and served with a knightly devotion. There was, I may observe, one species of knights in her time, who were known as “knights of the road.” The 39th of Elizabeth, especially and curiously points to them in an act to relieve the hundred of Beynhurst from the statute of Hue and Cry (where there was no voluntary default) on account of the penalties to which that hundred was subject from the numerous robberies committed in Maidenhead Thicket. Mavor, in his account of Berkshire, says that “The vicar of Henley who served the curé of Maidenhead, was allowed about the same time an advance of salary as some compensation for the danger of passing the thicket.” The vicar, like the knights of the road, at least, had purer air than the clergy and chivalry who kept house in the capital. “In London,” says Euphues, “are all things (as the fame goeth) that may either please the sight, or dislike the smell; either fill the eye with delight, or fill the nose with infection.”