[220] Our forefathers esteemed the March brewing; we the October.

[221] To “build a sconce” means, I suppose, to fix a candle in a candle-stick.

[222] This speech of Sir Richard’s is very much in Shirley’s style:  cf. Lady of Pleasure (I. 1).

[223] Galley-foist was the name given to long many-oared barges, particularly the Lord Mayor’s barge of state.  Foist is also a term for a sharper; and gallifoist was intended to be pronounced here gullifoist.

[224] An account of the way to play Gleek is given in the Compleat Gamester, 1674.

[225] Ambergrease was not uncommonly used for culinary purposes.

[226] Father-in-law is often used by old writers for step-father.  Perhaps “by a” is a correction for “to a.”

[227] Title, mark of distinction (Hamlet, I. 4, &c.).

[228] A head-covering worn by women.  “A night-rail (for a woman) pignon, pinon,” Sherwood’s Engl.-French Dict. 1650.

[229] To be “in the suds” was an expression for to be “in the dumps.”

[230] Vid.  Notes of the Commentators on Henry V., iii. 7 ("strait trossers").

[231] Regals were a kind of small portable organ:  vide Nares.

[232] Cf. a passage in Shirley’s Witty Fair One (IV. 2):  “What makes so many scholars then come from Oxford or Cambridge like market-women with dorsers full of lamentable tragedies and ridiculous comedies which they might here vent to the players, but they will take no money for them?”

[233] The Theorbo was a kind of lute.

[234] On June 20, 1632, a royal proclamation was made “commanding the Gentry to keep their Residence in at their Mansions in the Country, and forbidding them to make their habitations in London and places adjoining.”  The text of the proclamation is in Rushworth’s Historical Collections (1680), Pt.  II. vol. i. p. 144.  In a very interesting little volume of unpublished poems, temp.  Charles I. (MS. 15,228, British Museum), there is an “Oade by occasion of his Maiesties Proclamatyon for Gentlemen to goe into the Country.”  It is too long to quote here in full, but I will give a few stanzas:—­

    Nor lett the Gentry grudge to goe
    Into the places where they grew,
    Butt thinke them blest they may doe so: 
                Who would pursue

    The smoaky gloryes of the Towne,
    That might goe till his Native Earth
    And by the shineing fyre sitt downe
               Of his own hearth;

    Free from the gripeing Scriv’ners bands
    And the more biteing Mercers bookes,
    Free from the bayte of oyled hands
               And painted lookes?

    The Country, too, eene chops for rayne: 
    You that exhale it by your pow’r,
    Let the fatt drops fall downe again
               In a full show’r.

And you, bright beautyes of the time,
That spend your selves here in a blaze,
Fixe to your Orbe and proper Clime

                      Your wandring Rayes.