“The common salutation of women I abhor; it is odious to me in whomsoever I see it. When I have seen good men salute those women that they have visited, or that have visited them, I have made my objection against it; and when they have answered that it was but a piece of civility, I have told them that it was not a comely sight. Some, indeed, have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked them why they have made balks? why they did salute the most handsome, and let the ill-favored ones go?” More than a century before this decided expression of the great allegorist, Richard Whytford had said, in his “Type of Perfection” (1532): “It becometh not, therefore, the personnes religious to follow _the manere of secular personnes_, that in theyr congresses or commune metynges, or departyngs, done use to kysse, take hands, or such other touchings that good religious-personnes shulde utterly avoyde.” In Collet’s “Relics of Literature” maybe found this suggestive paragraph: “Dr. Pierius Winsemius, historiographer to their High Mightinesses the States of Friesland, in his _Chronijck van Frieslandt_, 1622, tells us that the pleasant practice of kissing was utterly ‘unpractised and unknown’ in England till the fair princess Ronix (Rowena), the daughter of King Hengist of Friesland, ‘pressed the beaker with her lipkens, and saluted the amorous Vortigern with a husjen (a little kiss).’” But, whether this Anglo-Saxon incident be true or mythical, it is certain that in the time of Cardinal Wolsey, who lived cotemporaneously with Erasmus, from whom we have quoted, the osculatory reputation of the English was widely spread. Cavendish, the biographer of Wolsey, says, in reference to a visit at the château of M. Créqui, a distinguished French nobleman: “Being in a fair great dining chamber, I awaited my Lady’s coming; and after she came thither out of her own chamber, she received me most gently, like one of noble estate, having a train of twelve gentlewomen. And when she with her train came all out, she said to me, ‘Forasmuch as ye be an Englishman, whose custom is in your country to kiss all ladies and gentlewomen without offence, and _although it be not so here_ in this realm [France, _temp._ Henry VIII.], yet will I be so bold to kiss you, and so shall all my maidens.’ By means whereof, I kissed my lady and all her women.” When Bulstrode Whitelock was at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, as ambassador from Oliver Cromwell, he waited on her on May-day, to invite her to “take the air, and some little collation he had provided as her humble servant.” She came with her ladies; and “both in supper-time and afterwards,” being “full of pleasantness and gayety of spirits, among other frolics, commanded him to teach her ladies _the English mode of salutation_, which, after some pretty defences, their lips obeyed, and Whitelock most readily.”