Note 797 — PART IV. From the Reformation to the present time. (continued 3)
Reading edition
They were not all, it seems, the daughters of respectable or opulent families: 200 of them, if we rightly understand one of our MSS. were poor girls, clothed at the expense of Captain Wharton and Mr. Kirby, two newly restored aldermen, and both flaming royalists. It was very natural for the young girls to be then brisk and joyful, if it were only to find themselves unexpectedly, and all of a sudden, so well and gayly clad. The other hundred lasses may be supposed to have been clothed at their own expense, or that of their parents and friends.