Long frieze mantles, resembling those which Spenser had, a century before, described as meet beds for rebels, and apt cloaks for thieves, were spread along the path which the cavalcade was to tread; and garlands, in which cabbage stalks supplied the place of laurels, were offered to the royal hand.

The women insisted on kissing his Majesty; but it should seem that they bore little resemblance to their posterity; for this compliment was so distasteful to him that he ordered his retinue to keep them at a distance, [175] On the twenty-fourth of March he entered Dublin.

That city was then, in extent and population, the second in the British isles.

It contained between six and seven thousand houses, and probably above thirty thousand inhabitants, [176] In wealth and beauty, however, Dublin was inferior to many English towns.

Of the graceful and stately public buildings which now adorn both sides of the Liffey scarcely one had been even projected.