Wrapped Up With Economic Acrimony There Was A Good Deal Of The Hearty
Old English Hatred Of A Frenchman, Or A Spaniard, Or Any Foreigner,
Which Was Always Finding Expression.
Either it was the 'prentices who
rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the
Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and
"rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going
on and laughing at it,"[149] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed
to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador
because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed. "He was in a
great fury.... Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in
that they wanted judgement."[150]
There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the
fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who
scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family
servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in
the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts,
the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the
streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in
Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles
who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on
improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to
be spent on roast beef for their retainers.
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