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Youth must have some dalliance,

Of good or yll sum pastance;

Companye me thynkes then best

All thoughts and fansys to dejest;

For idleness

Is chief mistress

Of vices all;

Then who can say

But myrth and play

Is best of all?

Company with honeste

Is vertu—vices to flee;

Company is good and ill,

But every man hath hys fre wyll;

The best ensew,

The worst eschew,

My Mynde shall be

Vertu to use,

Vice to refuse,

Thus shall I use me.”

HENRY VIII. AS A MUSICIAN

From a Royal MS. in British Museum.

At the outset there was nothing but feasting, jousts, feats of arms, masques, devices, pageants, and mummeries. At the feasts the King was lavish and free of hand; at the tilting the King challenged all and won the prize; at the masques and mummeries he was the best of all the actors; at the dance he was the most graceful and the most unwearied. There are long pages in contemporary history on this festive and splendid life at the Court, when as yet all the world was young to Henry, and no one had been executed except Empson and Dudley. The following extract from Holinshed shows the things in which he gloried, and the nature of a Court Pageant:—