"The ordinarie rate of his expence, is this: ten gold crownes a moneth his owne dyet, eight for his man, (at the most) two crownes a moneth his fencing, as much dancing, no lesse his reading, and fiftene crownes monethly his ridings: but this exercise he shall discontinue all the heate of the yeare. The remainder of his 150 pound I allow him for apparell, bookes, Travelling charges, tennis play, and other extraordinaire expences."[330] A few years later Howell fixes annual expense at £300--(£50 extra for every servant.) These three hundred pounds are to pay for riding, dancing, fencing, tennis, clothes, and coach hire--a new item of necessity. An academy would seem to have been a cheaper means of learning accomplishments. For about £110 one might have lodging and diet for himselfe and a man and be taught to ride, fence, ply mathematics, and so forth.[331] Lassels very wisely refrains from telling those not already persuaded, what the cost will be for the magnificent Grand Tour he outlines. We calculate that it would be over £500, for the Earl of Cork paid £1000 a year for his two sons, their governor, only two servants and only saddle-horses:[332] whereas Lassels hints that no one with much pretension to fashion could go through Paris without a coach followed by three lacqueys and a page.[333] Evelyn, at any rate, thought the expenses of a traveller were "vast": "And believe it Sir, if he reap some contentment extraordinary, from what he hath observed abroad, the pains, sollicitations, watchings, perills, journeys, ill entertainment, absence from friends, and innumerable like inconveniences, joyned to his vast expences, do very dearly, and by a strange kind of extortion, purchase that smal experience and reputation which he can vaunt to have acquired from abroad."[334]
Perhaps some details from the education of Robert Boyle will serve to illustrate the manner of taking the Grand Tour. His father, the great Earl of Cork, was a devoted adherent to this form of education and launched his numerous sons, two by two, upon the Continent. He was, as Boyle says, the sort of person "who supplied what he wanted in scholarship himself, by being both a passionate affecter, and eminent patron of it."[335] His journal for 1638 records first the return of "My sones Lewis and Roger from their travailes into foreign kingdomes,... ffor which their safe retorn, god be ever humbly and heartely thancked and praised both by me and them."[336] In the same year he recovered the Lord Viscount of Kynalmeaky and the Lord of Broghill, with Mr Marcombes, their governor, from their foreign travels into France and Italy. Then it was the turn of Francis and Robert, just removed from Eton College. With the governor Marcombes, a French servant, and a French boy, they departed from London in October 1639, "having his Majestie's license under his hand and privy signett for to continew abrode 3 yeares: god guide them abrod and safe back."[337]