"Care was taken," says Wood, "that formalities in public assemblies
should be used, which, through negligence, were now, and sometime
before, left off. That the wearing of boots and spurs also be
prohibited, 'a fashion' (as our Chancellor saith in his letters) rather
befitting the liberties of the Inns of Court than the strictness of an
academical life, which fashion is not only usurped by the younger
sort, but by the Masters of Arts, who preposterously assume that part
of the Doctor's formalities which adviseth them to ryde _ad
prædicandum Evangelium_, but in these days implying nothing else but
_animum deserendi studium_." It was therefore ordered, "that no person
that wears a gown wear boots; if a graduate, he was to forfeit 2_s._
6_d._ for the first time of wearing them, after order was given to the
contrary; for the second time 5_s._, and so toties quoties. And if an