nine at night
but yet , while men were taking each other 's lives on such punctilios of honour , the hour was already arrived when Bacon was about to teach the world that they were no longer to reason from authority to fact , but to establish truth by advancing from fact to fact , till they fixed an indisputable authority , not from hypothesis , but from experiment . The state of society in the reign of James I. was also strangely disturbed , and the license of a part of the community was perpetually giving rise to acts of blood and violence . The bravo of the Queen 's day , of whom Shakspeare has given us so many varieties , as Bardolph , Nym , Pistol , Peto , and the other companions of Falstaff , men who had their humours , or their particular turn of extravaganza , had , since the commencement of the Low Country wars , given way to a race of sworders , who used the rapier and dagger , instead of the far less dangerous sword and buckler ; so that a historian says on this subject , `` that private quarrels were nourished , but especially between the Scots and English ; and duels in every street maintained ; divers sects and peculiar titles passed unpunished and unregarded , as the sect of the Roaring Boys , Bonaventors , Bravadors , Quarterors , and such like , being persons prodigal , and of great expense , who , having run themselves into debt , were constrained to run next into factions , to defend themselves from danger of the law . These received countenance from divers of the nobility ; and the citizens , through lasciviousness consuming their estates , it was like that the number -LSB- of these desperadoes -RSB- would rather increase than diminish ; and under these pretences they entered into many desperate enterprizes , and scarce any durst walk in the street after nine at night . -LSB- Footnote : history of the First Fourteen Years of King James 's Reign . See Somers 's Tracts , edited by Scott , vol . ii .