Note 182 — THE PROLOGUE. (continued 4)
Reading edition
The prevailing hour of dinner with our ancestors appears to have been much earlier. In the Northumberland Household Book it is said, “to X of the clock that my lord goes to dinner.”
“With us,” says Harrison, in the Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, p. 171, “the Nobilitie, Gentrie, and Students do ordinarilie go to dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or betweene five and six at afternoone. The merchants dine and sup seldome before twelve at noone, and six at night, especiallie in London. The husbandmen dine also at high noone, as they call it, and sup at seven or eight: but out of the tearme in our Universities the scholars dine at ten. As for the poorest sort, they generally dine and sup when they may: so that to talke of their order of repast, it were but a needlesse matter.”
“Theophilus. You wente to diner betyme I perceave. Eusebius. Even as I doe commonly, when I have no busynes, betwene nyne and ten; me thinkes it is a good houre: for by that meanes I save a breakfast, whyche for such idlers as I am, is most fittest.” Dialogue between Eusebius and Theophilus. Signat. B 4. A. D. 1556. W.