The reign of Charles I. very nearly covers the second quarter of the seventeenth century. If we had to select a single author as our guide to the social habits of the time, we should probably at once fix upon Thomas Heywood, the busiest of dramatic writers, ‘a sort of prose Shakespeare,’ as Charles Lamb makes bold to say. Of his numerous works, one is a direct exposure of the then drinking customs.[129] The immense variety of drinking-cups, as well as the intrinsic value of many of them, speaks volumes. He describes them as ‘some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, &c., mazers, broad-mouth’d dishes, moggins, whiskins, piggins, cruizes, ale-bowles, wassell-bowles, court-dishes, tankards, kannes, from a bottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest-people of the countrey; small jacks wee have in many ale-houses, of the citie and suburbs, tip’t with silver, besides the great black jacks and bombards at the court, which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their returne into their countrey, that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes: we have besides, cups made of horns of beasts, of cocker-nuts, of goords, of the eggs of estriches, others made of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of pearl. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowls, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feast to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flagons, tankards, beere-cups, wine-bowls, some white, some percell gilt, some gilt all over, some with covers, some without, of sundry shapes and qualities.’