displeased with this impudent and unreasonable liberty.” The maids of honour and the ladies in waiting seem to have been more inclined to follow the example set by their royal mistress than the male courtiers. There was one of these fine gentlemen who _would_ address himself to Mistress Mary Ratcliffe, one of Elizabeth’s maidens of honour, in such a tone that she relished neither his conversation nor discourse. At length, she told him “that his wit was like a custard, nothing good in it but the sop, and when that was eaten you may throw away the rest.” The maids of honour were not at all disinclined to be frolicsome; but this was with no ill purpose. Observe, however, how this humour was indecently corrected by that same Knollys who was offended with the cross in the Queen’s chapel, and employed Pace, the court fool, to pull it down. Knollys “had his lodgings at court, where some of the ladies and maids of honour used to frisk and hey about, in the next room, to his extreme disquiet o’ nights, though he had often warned them of it; at last, he gets one to bolt their own back door, when they were all in, one night, at their revels, strips off [to] his shirt, and so, with a pair of spectacles on his nose, and Aretino in his hand, comes marching in at a postern door of his own chamber, reading very gravely, full upon the faces of them. Now let the reader judge what a sad spectacle and pitiful fright these poor creatures endured, for he faced them, and often traversed the room, in this posture, above an hour.”