The opinions that have been ventured upon the relative sobriety of the Elizabethan period are as conflicting as they are various. The most reliable contemporary who can be cited in favour of the sobriety of the period is William Harrison, whose opinion may be gathered from two passages of his work. He says, ‘I might here talke somewhat of the great silence that is used at the tables of the honourable and wiser sort generallie over all the realme, likewise the moderate eating and drinking that is daily seene, and finallie of the regard that such one hath to keepe himselfe from note of surfetting and drunkennesse (for which cause salt meat, except beefe, bacon, and porke, are not anie whit esteemed, and yet these three may be much powdered). But as in the rehearsall thereof I should commend the nobleman, merchant, and frugall artificer, so I could not cleare the meaner sort of husbandmen of verie much bobbling (except it be here and there some od yeoman), with whom he is thought to be the meriest that talketh of most ribaldraie, or the wisest man that speakest fastest among them, and now and then surfeiting and drunkennesse, which they rather fall into for want of heed-taking, than wilfullie following or delighting in those errours of set mind and purpose. It may be that divers of them living at home with hard and pinching diet, small drinks, and some of them having scarce enough of that, are soonest overtaken when they come unto such banquets, howbeit they take it generallie as no small disgrace if they happen to be cup-shotten, so that is a grefe unto them, though now _sans remédie_ sith the thing is done and past.’ The passage that follows certainly suggests that in some respects our ancestors were wiser than their descendants:-- Drink is usually filled in goblets, jugs, bols of silver, in noblemen’s houses, all of which notwithstanding are seldom set upon the table, but each one, as necessitie urgeth, calleth for a cup of such drinke as him listeth to drinke: so that, when he have tasted of it, he delyvereth the cup againe to some of the standers bye, who, making it cleane by pouring out the drinke that remayneth, restoreth it to the cupboard from whence he fetched the same. By this device much idle tippling is cut off; for if the full pots shall continuallie stand at the elbowe or near the trencher, divers will alwaies be dealing with them, whereas they now drinke seldome, and onelie when necessitie urgeth, and so avoid the note of grete-drynkinge or often troubling the servitors with filling their bolls.