"My men should use their swords and aegiss .

"My men should use their swords and aegiss ... but if John Stanshaw is in single alehouse then I will be in another." (1)

To historians of medieval and Reformation England, these lines should not be all that surprising. in every part the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the heyday of livery and maintenance, ritualized sauciness was in vogue among the affluent and they frequently employed large retinues of armed servants as signs of strength and prestige. However, it may surprise one to learn that the above statement was absoluteed by a priest, Geoffrey Ely vicar of

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