lawfull wife;’[33] another part and a half equally to my son Edmund and my daughter Anne—my son in law Robert Baker and his wife I remember not in this my will, as I have already given them their portion; to the quire in Windsor 40s.; to the poor of Radwinter 40s.; to the poor children of the hospital at London 20s.; to the poor of St. Thomas Apostle in London 20s.; to each child of my son Baker 10s.; to each child of my cousin Morecroft, Clerk 5s.—‘I make & ordayne the sayed Marion Isebrande alias Marion Harrison, daughter to William Isebrande and Ann his wife, sometyme of Anderne neere vnto Guisnes in Picardie, and whome by the lawes of god I take and repute in all respectes for my true and lawfull wife,’ and my son Edmund Harrison, my Executors.—Witnesses, Mr. Wm. Birde, Esq., Thos. Smith, yeoman; Lancelott Ellis, vicar of Wimbishe; & Thos. Hartlie the writer hereof.”

His Will was proved on November 22, 1593, by the said Edmund Harrison, son and executor named therein, the relict and executrix Marion, being dead. Letters of administration to the goods, etc., of Marion Harrison, late of New Windsor, in the county of Berks, were granted on December 12, 1593, to her son Edmund Harrison.

William Harrison had opinions of his own about public and social matters in his day, and also had often racy ways of expressing those opinions. I’ll extract some. He calls Becket “the old cocke of Canturburie;” notes how the Conferences of clergy and laity stirrd the parsons “to applie their books ... which otherwise ... would giue themselues to hawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the alehouse, shooting of matches, and other like vanities;” he complains of the subsidies and taxes that the clergy are made to pay, “as if the church were now become the asse whereon euerie market man is to ride and cast his wallet;” also of “the couetousnesse of the patrones, of whom some doo bestow aduousons of benefices vpon their bakers, butlers, cookes, good archers, falconers, and horsekeepers,” while others “doo scrape the wool from our clokes;” he notes how Popish “images ... and monuments of idolatrie are remooued” from the churches, “onelie the stories in glasse windowes excepted,” which are let stay for a while, from the scarcity and cost of white glass; he’d like to get rid of Saints’ Days; he commends the decent apparel of the Protestant parsons, as contrasted with that of the Popish blind sir-Johns, who went “either in diuerse colors like plaiers, or in garments of light hew, as yellow, red,[34] greene, etc., with their shooes piked,[35] ... so that to meet a priest in those daies was to behold a peacocke that spreadeth his taile when he danseth before the henne;” and then he denounces the cheating at elections for College fellowships, scholarships.

Harrison also tells us that he had for a time the “collection” (of MSS., maps, etc.) of “William Read,[36] sometime fellow of Merteine college in Oxford, doctor of diuinitie, and the most profound astronomer that liued in his time.” He has a cut at the Popes’ nephews—“for nephues might say in those daies: Father, shall I call you vncle?”—says that he knew one of the Norwich-diocese churches turnd “into a barne, whilest the people heare seruice further off vpon a greene: their bell also, when I heard a sermon there preached in the greene, hanged in an oke for want of a steeple. But now I vnderstand that the oke likewise is gone.” After saying what England in old time paid the Pope, he asks, “and therevpon tell me whether our Iland was one of the best paire of bellowes or not, that blue the fire in his kitchen, wherewith to make his pot seeth, beside all other commodities.”

In describing the Universities, Harrison dwells again on the packing and bribing practist at elections for fellowships and scholarships, and how “poore mens children are commonlie shut out by the rich,” whose sons “ruffle and roist it out, exceeding in apparell, and hanting riotous companie which draweth them from their bookes[37] vnto an other trade.” He also complains of the late-nam’d “idle fellowships” that are still a disgrace to our Universities, tho’ now their holders don’t work for “eighteene or peraduenture twenty yeeres,”

And he repeats, in milder words, Ascham’s[38] caution against sending young men to Italy, for “an Italianate Englishman is a devil incarnate,” as the Italians themselves said.[39] “And thus much at this time of our two vniuersities, in each of which I haue receiued such degree as they have vouchsafed, rather of their fauour than my desert, to yeeld and bestow vpon me.”

Of his chapter on “Degrees of the People of England” the most interesting parts to me are those on the evil of sending young Englishmen to Italy; the anticipation of the modern J. S. Mill & Coöperative doctrine of the evil of too many middlemen in trade (the argument will cover distributors as well as importers), and lawyers in business; the improvement in the condition of yeomen; the often complaind-of evil[40] of “our great swarmes of idle seruing men;” and our husbandmen and artificers never being better tradesmen, tho’ they sometimes scamp their work.

Harrison’s chapter “Of the Food and Diet of the English” is very interesting, with its accounts of the dinners of the nobility “whose cookes are, for the most part, musicall-headed Frenchmen and strangers,” and who eat “delicates wherein the sweette hand of the seafaring Portingale is not wanting.” Then it notices the rage for Venice glass among all classes—as Falstaff says, A.D. 1598, in 2 Hen. IV., II. i. 154, “Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking.” This is followd by capital accounts of the diet of the gentlemen and merchants, and the artificers; the bread[41] and drink