had sold their favours at a dear rate.  Among these are some, “who pretending to be wits, as they called them,” says Arthur Wilson,[B] “or had handsome nieces or daughters, drew a great resort to their houses.”  And it appears that Gondomar, to prevent these conversaziones from too freely touching on Spanish politics, sweetened their silence by his presents.[C] The same grossness of manners was among the higher females of the age; when we see that grave statesman, Sir Dudley Carleton, narrating the adventures of a bridal night, and all “the petty sorceries,” the romping of the “great ladies, who were made shorter by the skirts,” we discover their coarse tastes; but when we find the king going to the bed of the bride in his nightgown, to give a reveille-matin, and remaining a good time in or upon the bed, “Choose which you will believe;” this bride was not more decent than the ladies who publicly, on their balconies, were soliciting the personal notice of Gondomar.

[Footnote A:  A statesman may read with advantage Sir Edward Walker on “The inconveniences that have attended the frequent promotions to Titles, since King James came to the crown.”  Sir Edward appears not to disapprove of these promotions during the first ten years of his reign, but “when alliance to a favourite, riches though gotten in a shop, persons of private estates, and of families whose fathers would have thought themselves highly honoured to have been but knights in Queen Elizabeth’s time, were advanced, then the fruits began to appear.  The greater nobility were undervalued; the ancient baronage saw inferior families take precedency over them; nobility lost its respect, and a parity in conversation was introduced which in English dispositions begot contempt; the king could not employ them all; some grew envious, some factious, some ingrateful, however obliged, by being once denied.”—­P. 302.]

[Footnote B:  One may conjecture, by this expression, that the term of “wits” was then introduced, in the sense we now use it.]

[Footnote C:  Wilson has preserved a characteristic trait of one of the lady wits.  When Gondomar one day, in Drury-lane, was passing Lady Jacob’s house, she, exposing herself for a salutation from him, he bowed, but in return she only opened her mouth, gaping on him.  This was again repeated the following day, when he sent a gentleman to complain of her incivility.  She replied, that he had purchased some favours of the ladies at a dear rate, and she had a mouth to be stopped as well as others.]

This coarseness of manners, which still prevailed in the nation, as it had in the court of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, could not but influence the familiar style of their humour and conversation.  James I., in the Edict on Duels, employs the expression of our dearest bedfellow to designate the queen; and there was no indelicacy attached to this singular expression.  Much of that silly and obscene correspondence