It is not to be wondered at. The court was rotten, and its influence filtered then, as always, to the masses. Even the pledge of temperance introduced on the continent about this time was no safeguard. It is told how Henry himself contrived to make an envoy of the German court, who was an associate of a temperate order, break his pledge, assuring him that if his master would only visit England he would not lack boon companions. Foreigners visited England. They came, they saw, they reported. A certain Master Stephen Perlin, a French physician who was in England just after Henry’s death, records for the benefit of his countrymen: ‘The English, one with the other are joyous, and are very fond of music; they are also great drinkers. Now remember if you please that in this country they generally use vessels of silver when they drink wine; and they will say to you usually at table, “Goude chere,” and they will also say to you more than one hundred times, “Drind oui,” and you will reply to them in their language, “I plaigui” (I pledge you).’ One of our own writers, Philip Stubbes, who was ridiculed by Nash for ‘pretending to anatomize abuses and stubbe up sin by the rootes,’ asserts that the public-houses were crowded in London from morning to night with inveterate drunkards, whose only care appears to have been as to where they could obtain the best ale, so totally oblivious to all other things had they become.[95] And what a flood of light is thrown not only on the universal drinking, but upon the respectability of the same, in the fact that a bishop, Bishop Still, a Bishop of Bath and Wells, and previously Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and Master also of Trinity, whose portrait still hangs in the College hall of the latter, should be the author of the following drinking song, which Warton calls the first Chanson à Boire _of any merit_ in our language, and apologises for introducing a ballad convivial and _ungodlie_. I cannot eate but lytle meate, My stomacke is not good, But sure I thinke that I can drinke With him that wears a hood. Though I go bare, take ye no care, I nothing am a colde, I stuff my skyn so full within, Of joly good ale and olde. _Chorus._ Backe and syde go bare, go bare, Booth foote and hand go colde, But belly, God send thee good ale ynoughe, Whether it be new or olde. I have no rost, but a nut brawne toste, And a crab laid in the fyre; A little breade shall do me steade, Much breade I not desyre. No frost nor snow, nor winde, I trowe, Can hurt mee, if I wolde, I am so wrapt and throwly lapt Of joly good ale and olde. _Chorus._ Backe and syde go bare, go bare, etc.