The general public, too, showed itself greatly concerned over the great consumption of wood in the glass-houses. Indeed, during this period the wasting of the woods was a general complaint wherever furnaces were set up. So strong was this feeling, indeed, that in 1584 an act was passed against the making of glass by strangers and outlandish men and for the preservation of woods spoiled by glass-houses; and in 1589, the year after the Armada, it was proposed to reduce the number of glass-houses from fifteen to four, transferring the rest to Ireland, where the loss of trees did not matter so much, the timber not being urgently needed, as in England, for the purpose of shipbuilding. One curious fact is that for a long time--from the twelfth century at least in unbroken record--English window glass of a high order had been produced, as witness the windows of King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, which date from 1515-31; and it seems impossible to conceive that, with Venetian and Eastern glass to copy, the craftsmen who produced the windows should not have also turned their skill to the making of drinking vessels, particularly as the fashion for vessels of glass had strongly set in. “It is a world to see in these our daies wherein gold and silver most aboundeth how that our gentilitie as lothing these mettals (because of the plentie) do now generalie choose rather the Venice glasses both for our wine and beere than anie of those mettals or stone wherein beforetime we have beene accustomed to drink.... “The poorest also will have glasse if they may but sith the Veneccian is somewhat too deere for them they content themselves with such as are made at home of ferne and burned stone, but in fine all go one way that is to shards at the last.” On the other hand, when Sir Richard Mansel applied in 1624 for a patent to manufacture glass and to train Englishmen in the art, it was opposed, on the ground that fifty years before a similar patent had been granted to Jacob Verzelini and that it had been altogether neglected, and very few Englishmen had been brought up in the art. Mansel, in his reply, stated that he himself had brought many strangers from beyond seas to instruct his fellow-countrymen in making all sorts of glass, crystalline, Murano, spectacle glasses, and mirror plates.