This book describes life in the England of Queen Elizabeth in terms of the concrete. Perhaps no Boroughport or Hollydean Hall can be discovered on the maps of the 1550's, but there were scores of towns and hundreds of rich manors in which the things discussed in this study were wholly typical. The Hollydeans were not wiser, more cultivated or better than a great many contemporaries among the wealthier gentry; the episodes laid in Boroughport could be duplicated in almost any chartered town near the seaboard.