Of far more importance was the Act of 1496, passed ‘against vacabonds and beggars.’ This empowers two justices of the peace ‘to rejecte and put away comen ale-selling in townes and places where they shall think convenyent, and to take suertie of the keepers of ale-houses of their gode behavyng, by the discrecion of the seid justices, and in the same to be avysed and aggreed at the time of their sessions.’ Leland gives in his _Collectanea_ a wine list which indicates the comparative prices of wines at this time:-- De Vino rubeo, VI dolia, prec. dol. 4_l_ 24 li De Vino claret, IV dol. prec. dol. 7¾ 14 li 13 8 De Vino alb. elect. unum dol 3 li 6 8 De Vino alb. pro coquina i. dol 3 li De Malvesey, i but 4 li De Ossey, i pipe 3 li De Vino de Reane, ii almes 26s 8 We get a good notion of the daily routine of court living in this reign from the ordinances of the royal household. There is nothing whatever in them indicative of excess, but they are interesting as matters of history, and records of etiquette. ‘When the king cometh from evensong into his great chamber on the even of the day of estate, the chamberlain must warn the usher before evensong that the king will take spice and wine in his great chamber.... Then shall the gentleman usher bring thither the esquire, and especially the king’s server (officer who set, removed, tasted, &c.) to bring the king’s spice plate.... And when the usher cometh to the cellar door, charge a squire for the body with the king’s own cup.’ This is simply a specimen of pages of like directions. Entries in the Household Book of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, furnish details of a nobleman’s style of living at the beginning of the sixteenth century. On the Feast of the Nativity 290 persons dined and supped at Thornbury Castle, on which occasion were consumed eleven pottles and three quarts of Gascony wine, and 171 flagons of ale. This was not excessive for the times, the vices of which are admirably pictured in William Dunbar’s remarkable poem, _The Dance_. He describes a procession of the seven deadly sins in the lower regions. Gluttony brings up the rear:-- Then the foul monster Gluttony, Of wame [belly] insatiable and gredy, To dance he did him dress: Him followed mony foul dronkart, With can and collop, cup and quart, In surfett and excess. Fully many a wasteful wally-drag [outcast], With wames [bellies] unwieldable did forth wag, In creische [fat] that did incress: Drink, aye, they cried, with mony a gape, The fiends gave them hait leid to lap [hot lead to lap] Their levery [reward] was no less.