=3. 3. 149 the Bermudas.= See note 2. 1. 144. Nares thinks that the real Bermudas are referred to here. =3. 3. 155 You shall ha’ twenty pound on’t.= As Commission on the two hundred. ‘Ten in the hundred’ was the customary rate at this period (see _Staple of News_, _Wks._ 5. 189). =3. 3. 165 St. Georges-tide?= From a very early period the 23d of April was dedicated to St. George. From the time of Henry V. The festival had been observed with great splendor at Windsor and other towns, and bonfires were built (see Shak, _1 Henry VI._ 1. 1). The festival continued to be celebrated until 1567, when Elizabeth ordered its discontinuance. James I., however, kept the 23d of April to some extent, and the revival of the feast in all its glories was only prevented by the Civil War. So late as 1614 it was the custom for fashionable gentlemen to wear blue coats on St. George’s Day, probably in imitation of the blue mantle worn by the Knights of the Garter, an order created at the feast of St. George in 1344 (see Chambers’ _Book of Days_ 1. 540). The passages relating to this custom are _Ram Alley_, _O. Pl._, 2d ed., 5. 486: By Dis, I will be knight, Wear a blue coat on great St. George’s day, And with my fellows drive you all from Paul’s For this attempt. _Runne and a great Cast_, _Epigr._ 33: With’s coram nomine keeping greater sway Than a court blew-coat on St. George’s day. From these passages Nares concludes ‘that some festive ceremony was carried on at St. Paul’s on St. George’s day annually; that the court attended; that the _blue-coats_, or attendants, of the courtiers, were employed and authorised to keep order, and drive out refractory persons; and that on this occasion it was proper for a knight to officiate as _blue coat_ to some personage of higher rank’. In the _Conversations with Drummond_, Jonson’s _Wks._ 9. 393, we read: ‘Northampton was his mortal enimie for beating, on a St. George’s day, one of his attenders.’ Pepys speaks of there being bonfires in honor of St. George’s Day as late as Apr. 23, 1666. =3. 3. 166 chaines? PLV. Of gold, and pearle.= The gold chain was formerly a mark of rank and dignity, and a century before this it had been forbidden for any one under the degree of a gentleman of two hundred marks a year to wear one (_Statutes of the Realm_, 7 Henry VIII. c. 6). They were worn by the Lord Mayors (Dekker, _Shomaker’s Holiday_, _Wks._ 1. 42), rich merchants and aldermen (Glapthorne, _Wit for a Constable_, _Wks._, ed. 1874, 1. 201-3), and later became the distinctive mark of the upper servant in a great family, especially the steward (see Nares and _Ev. Man out_, _Wks._ 2. 31). Massinger (_City Madam_, _Wks._, p. 334) speaks of wearing a chain of gold ‘on solemn days.’ With the present passage cf. _Underwoods_ 62, _Wks._ 8. 410: