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Their bodies are all naked, sauing their priuities, whiche they hide with felles of beastes. All the Troglodites are circumcised aftre the maner of the Egiptians, sauing only the Claudians: whiche they so terme of claudicacion or limping. They onely, dwellinge from their childe hode within the country of the Hesternes, are not touched with rasour or knife.
Which although that of themselves they are not offensive at all, yet their great numbers are thought to be very prejudicial, and therefore justly reproved of many, as are in like sort our huge flocks of sheep, whereon the greatest part of our soil is employed almost in every place, and yet our mutton, wool, and felles never the better cheap.
Thomas Betson died in 1486, and was thus an exact contemporary of those other Merchants of the Staple, George and Richard Cely, whom he must have known; indeed, William Cely, their cousin and agent, writes from London to George in Calais in 1481, advising him that he has dispatched 464 fells to him in the Thomas of Newhithe, 'and the sayd felles lyeth nexte be afte the maste lowest under the felles of Thomas Bettson'. By the aid of the 'Stonor Letters and Papers', which contain many letters from and concerning him during the years of his partnership with Sir William, and of the 'Cely Papers', which are full of information about the life of a Merchant of the Staple at Calais, Thomas Betson may be summoned before us by a kindly magic until he almost lives again.
Their chief foode was milke and Hony. Against colde and other stormes, thei wrapped their bodies in felles, and hides of beastes, and Mice skinnes. Thei knewe not what Wollen meante, ne any facion of garmente. This maner of life was in many of the Scithians, but not in all.
These al being of the part called Libye, liue for the moste parte a wilde lyfe abrode in the fieldes like beastes, making no household prouision of meate, ne wearing any maner of appareil but gotes felles. The gentlemen, and men of honour emong them, haue neither cities nor townes, but Turrettes builte vpon the waters side, in the which they laye vp the ouerplus of that that they occupy.
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