Note 15 — Chapter I

MS. Sloane, 2530, f. 6-7, quoted by J.O. Halliwell in his edition of Tarlton's Jests, p. xi. The Bell Savage seems to have been especially patronized by fencers. George Silver, in his Paradoxe of Defence (1599), tells how he and his brother once challenged two Italian fencers to a contest "to be played at the Bell Savage upon the scaffold, when he that went in his fight faster back than he ought, should be in danger to break his neck off the scaffold."