The second is the great (although not generall) amendment of lodging, for (said they) our fathers (yea and we ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered onlie with a sheet under coverlets made of dagswain or hopharlots (I use their owne terms) and a good round log under their heads insteed of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers or the good man of the house, had within seven yeares after his marriage purchased a matteres or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to reste his head upon, he thought himselfe to be well lodged as the lord of the towne, that peradventure laie seldom in a bed of downe or whole fethers: so well were they contented, and with such base kind of furniture: which also is not verie much amended as yet in some parts of Bedfordshire, and elsewhere further off from our southerne parts. Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed. As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them it was well, for seldom had they anie under their bodies, to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet and rased their hardened hides. The third thing they tell of, is the exchange of vessell, as of treene[10] platters into pewter, and wooden spoones into silver or tin. For so common were all sorts of treene stuffe in old time, that a man should hardlie find foure peeces of pewter (of which one was peradventure a salt) in a good farmer’s house and yet for all this frugalitie (if it may so be justly called) they were scarse able to live and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow, or an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure pounds at the uttermost by the year. Such also was their povertie that if some one od farmer or husbandman had beene at the alehouse a thing greatlie used in those daies, amongst six or seven of his neighbours, and there in a braverie to show what store he had, did cast downe his pursse, and therein a noble or six shillings in silver unto them (for few such men then cared for gold bicause it was not so readie paiment and they were oft inforced to give a penie for the exchange of an angell), it was verie likelie that all the rest could not laie downe so much against it; whereas in my time, although peradventure foure pounds of old rent be improved to fortie, fiftie, or an hundred pounds, yet will the farmer as another palme or date tree thinke his gaines verie small toward the end of his terme, if he have not six or seven yeares rent lieng by him, therewith to purchase a new lease, beside a faire garnish of pewter on his cupbord, with so much more in od vessel going about the house, three or foure featherbeds, so many counterlids and carpets of tapistrie, a silver salt, a bowle for wine (if not an whole neast) and a dozzen of spoones to furnish up the sute.” Or, again, to take another contemporary authority (Hall, _Society in the Elizabethan Age_):—