Stuart England
Old English hospitality
Daniel Lupton, London and the Countrey Carbonadoed, 1632
This true noble hearted fellow is to be dignified and honoured wheresoever he keeps the house. It's thought that pride, puritans, coaches and covetousness hath caused him to leave our land. There are six upstart tricks come up in great houses of late which he cannot brook: peeping windows for the ladies to view what doings there are in the hall, a buttery hatch that's kept locked, clean tables and a French cook in the kitchen, a porter that locks the gates at dinner time, the decay of black-jacks [leather bottles] in the cellar and blue-coats [servants] in the hall. He always kept his greatness by his charity: he loved three things, an open cellar, a full hall, and a sweating cook; he always provided for three dinners, one for himself, another for his servants, the third for the poor.
Any one may know where he kept hosue, either by the chimney's smoke, by the freedom at gate, by want of whirligig-jacks [spinning-jacks] in the kitchen, by the fire in the hall or by the full furnished tables. He affects not London, Lent, lackeys or bailiffs. There are four sorts that pray for him, the poor, the passenger, his tenants and servants. He is one that will not hoard up all, nor lavishly spend all, he neither racks nor rakes his neighbours (they are sure of his company at church as well as at home), and gives his bounty as well to the preacher as to others whom he loves for his good life and doctrine. He had his wine came to him by full butts, but his age keeps her wine-cellar in little bottles. Lusty able men well maintained were his delight, with whom he would be familiar. His tenants knew when they saw him, for he kept the old fashion, good, commendable, plain. The poor about him wore upon their backs; but now since his death, landlords wear and waste their tenants upon their backs in French or Spanish fashions. Well, we can say that once such a charitable practitioner there was, but now he's dead, to the grief of all England: and 'tis shrewdly suspected that he will never rise again in our climate.