Meat and food in plenty was there every day, and at fairs and other junketings the tables did wellnigh break with what they bore.

Then drank they wine as it were water, then did a man fill his belly and carry away withal as much as he could; then was wealth and plenty.

Otherwise is it now.

A costly and a bad time hath arisen since many a year, and the food and drink of the best peasant is much worse than of yore that of the day labourer and the serving man." We may well imagine the vivid recollections which a peasant in the year 1525 had of the golden days of a few years before.

The day labourers and serving men were equally tantalized by the remembrance of high wages and cheap living at the beginning of the century.