Their education was severely
moral, and pursued with great strictness in respect to useful
exercises, and what were deemed elegant accomplishments. From being
pages, they were advanced to the next gradation of squires; from
squires, these candidates for the honours of knighthood were
frequently made knights.
But in the sixteenth century the page had become, in many instances, a
mere domestic, who sometimes, by the splendour of his address and
appearance, was expected to make up in show for the absence of a whole
band of retainers with swords and bucklers. We have Sir John's
authority when he cashiers part of his train.
"Falstaff will learn the humour of the age,
French thrift, you rogues, myself and skirted page."
Jonson, in a high tone of moral indignation, thus reprobated the
change. The Host of the New Inn replies to Lord Lovel, who asks to
have his son for a page, that he would, with his own hands hang him,
sooner
"Than damn him to this desperate course of life.
_LOVEL._ Call you that desperate, which, by a line
Of institution, from our ancestors
Hath been derived down to us, and received
In a succession, for the noblest way
Of brushing up our youth, in letters, arms,
Fair mien, discourses civil, exercise,
And all the blazon of a gentleman?
Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence,
To move his body gracefully, to speak
The language pure, or to turn his mind
Or manners more to the harmony of nature,
Than in these nurseries of nobility?
_HOST.
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