Note 540 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
The court of James I. was incomparably the most disgraceful scene of profligacy which this country has ever witnessed; equal to that of Charles II. in the laxity of female virtue, and without any sort of parallel in some other respects. Gross drunkenness is imputed even to some of the ladies who acted in the court pageants (Nugæ Antiquæ, i. 348), which Mr. Gifford, who seems absolutely enraptured with this age and its manners, might as well have remembered. Life of Ben Jonson, p. 231, etc. The king's prodigality is notorious.