Series 1 > Journals of Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, with his observations on public affairs and other memoranda, 1665-1676

96
JOURNAL OF JOHN LAUDER
of St. Louis : it was first fund in Africk. The pomme Minion
is better then any of ours: our Marican seiraes to be a de-
generat sort of it.
The silver hat-strings are much in use at present: they sell
them by the weight. The tabby doublets wt the silk [called
wats]1 furring wtin are also in faschion: wery warm in winter,
cost 20 franks. Men and women from the least to the greatest,
yea not the wery keel wifes and fruit wifes, but they have
manchon muffes. A man cannot get a good one under a pistol:
some of a meiner size are sold for 6 or 4 francks. Our best
furrings comes out of Musco’e. Chamois gloves and linnens
mad of goats skines, which are found better in Poictou then
in any other province of France, are not in so great cont2 wt
them as wt us; yet they find them wondrously warm; some
thinkes them strenthning and corroborative of a feeble hand.
We have sein som buy them to lay swallings of their handes.
Perruvicks, besydes they are most faschious, they are de¬
structive both to the body, since they are wery unwholsome,
engendring humeurs; as also to the purse, they being ex¬
travagantly dear thorow all France, especially at Paris, wheir
its a wery mean one a man will get for 4 pistols; and a man
can have no fewer then 2 at a tyme, on to change another.
We have spoken wt some Catolicks that have bein at
Geneve. The disciplin is very strick their yet. A Catholick
if a craftsman they suffer him to excerce his trade 3 moneth :
they’le let him stay no longer. If a man swear their, he’el be
layd in prison, lay their 24 howers wtout meat or drink. A
man cannot speak wt a woman on the Street wtout giving
scandal. The Sabath is keipt as we do, nothing to be sold
their on it, as thorow France its the greatest market day of the
week, the peasants bringing in al they have to sell in abondance.
Its the resort of al the banished Germans, Italians and other
strangers that would enjoy the excercise of their Religion
freely and purely.
In shaving a man, its impossible for a Frenchman to cut
a man; they have such a net way of baging the flech: also it
would do a man good to be washen wt their water, whiles rose
1 Interlined. Wats, ouates.
Estimation.