Part 36

Henry III. was the first of our kings whose reign exceeded half-a-century in duration. He was a moderate man, loved plain fare, and cared more for masses than merriment. He was an easy, indolent monarch, with troubles enough to have fired him to activity; but he would have given half his realm for the privilege of daily dining in peace and quietness, a boon seldom vouchsafed to him. His subjects must have dined as ill as himself, if we may judge by the extraordinary variation in the prices of articles of consumption during his reign. Thus the price of wheat, for instance, varied from one shilling to a pound a quarter. The royal statute upon ale rather displeased all citizens of this period, for by it the price was fixed at a halfpenny per gallon in cities, while in the country the same quantity might be sold for a farthing. A gallon of ale for a halfpenny ought, however, to have satisfied the most thirsty of drinkers.

The frugal Edward I. very little patronised either eating or drinking, beyond what nature required. He was a very moderate wine-drinker, but he exceedingly offended those who were otherwise, by imposing a duty of two shillings a tun on all wine imported, over and above the old existing duty. The unlucky Edward II. was to the first Edward, what Louis XVI. was to Louis XIV., the scape-goat for the crimes of a predecessor and tyrant too powerful to be resisted. The banqueting-room of this Edward, however, was, as is often the case with such princes, oftener used than the council-room, and the favourites feasted with their weak lord until rebellion marred the festivity. There never was a merrier reign (despite public calamity) closed by so terrible a murder as that of this king, whose last dinner would have almost disgusted a dog.

Edward III. was a gorgeous patroniser of the culinary art; the cooks and his guests adored him; and Windsor Castle, which he built as a fortress and a pleasaunce, is a monument of his power and his taste. But his love for good cheer was imitated by his subjects to their ruin; and king and parliament interfered to remedy by penalty, what might have been obviated by good example. Servants were prohibited from eating flesh, meat, or fish, above once a day. By another law, it was ordained that no one should be allowed, either for dinner or supper, above three dishes in each course, and not above two courses; and it is likewise expressly declared that _soused_ meat is to count as one of these dishes. And of these laws I will only observe, that if they were obeyed, servants and citizens of the days of Edward III. were a very different class of people from what they are at present.

When it is stated of Richard II. that two thousand cooks and three hundred servitors were employed in the royal kitchen, we think we become acquainted with the gastronomic tastes of that unhappy king. But as he was one of those whose virtues were his own, and his vices were of others’ making, so this Sardanapalian array of cooks was kept up by those who ruled from behind the throne, and finally left the king to starve, despite his counting cooks by thousands. His chief _cuisinier_ is known only by the initials C. S. S., under which he wrote a culinary work in English, “On the Forme of Cury.” In this work, he speaks of poor Richard, his royal master, as the “best and royallest viander of all Christian kynges.”

Henry IV. kept a princely but not a profuse table. He was the first king in England whose statutes may be said to have acted as a check on the freedom of after-dinner conversation upon religious matters; for in his reign took place the first execution in England, on account of opinions connected with matters of faith. The household expenses of this monarch are set down at something less than £20,000 per annum of the money of the time; and this sum, moderate enough, appears to have been fairly applied to the purposes for which it was intended. A porpoise was a fashionable dish in the time of Henry V., who first had it at the royal table, and thus sanctioned its use at tables of lower degree. Loyal folks in those days copied the example set them by their sovereign, as they did in the later days of George III. boiled mutton and caper sauce, when country gentlemen “dined like the king, sir, at two o’clock.” But Henry V. was oppressed with debts, and, like many men in similar positions, his banquets were all the more splendid, and his prodigality was equal to his liabilities. So extravagant a monarch bequeathed but a poor inheritance to Henry VI., who was occasionally as hard put to it for a dinner as ever the Second Charles was. When Edward IV. jumped into poor Henry’s seat, he found a host of angry persons who disputed his power, and these he took care to conciliate by the most powerful, nay irresistible means that were ever applied to the solution of a difficulty, or the removal of an obstruction. He simply invited them to dinner; and, certainly, up to that time England had never seen a king who gave dinners on so extravagantly profuse a scale. They were marked, however, by something of a barbaric splendour; and the monarch, gay and glittering as he was, dazzling in dress, and overwhelmingly exuberant of spirits, was more like William de la Marck than any more knightly host. In short, Edward was but a coarse beast at table. “In homine tam corpulento,” says the Croyland chronicler, “tantis sodalitiis, vanitatibus, crapulis, luxuriis et cupiditatibus dedito,”--a sort of testimonial to character which neither monarch nor man could be justified in being proud of. The young Edward V. is the “petit Dauphin” of English history, but with a less cruel destiny, for he was at least not starved to death, amid dirt, darkness, and terror, but mercifully, if roughly, murdered, and so saved from the long and yet unexpiated assassination of the innocent and helpless Louis XVII. His murderer sought to make people forget the heinousness of his crime, by the double splendour of his coronation dinners. The ceremony and the festival took place, not only in London, but in York; and Richard hoped he had feasted both the northern and southern provinces into sentiments of loyalty. A curious incident preceded the first dinner,--the anointing of himself and consort at the coronation. There is nothing singular in the fact, but there _is_ in the manner of it. Richard and his queen stripped themselves naked to the waist, in order that the unction might be more liberally poured over them,--and in Richard’s own case, perhaps for another reason, that the great nobles who were present might see that they were not about to sit down to dinner with a sovereign who was as deformed in body as his enemies declared him to be.

Almost all young readers of history take their first permanent idea of Henry VII. from that gallant Richmond, in Shakspeare’s Tragedy, who comes in like an avenging angel, at the beginning of the fifth act, and has it all his own generous way, until he sticks “the bloody and devouring bear,” and sends a note to Elizabeth to come and be married. This Elizabeth, by the way, was the good mother of Henry VIII., and she was the only woman for whom that capricious prince ever felt a spark of pure affection. His love and respect for _her_ were permanent, and the fact merits to be recorded. But to return to Henry VII., and to conduct him to the dinner-table, where alone we have present business with him; I do not know that I can find a better “trait” touching himself and his times, than one connected with his royal visit to York.

He was received in the city with more than ordinary ceremony, and loudly-expressed delight at the sight of his “sweet-favoured” face; “some casting out of obles and wafers, and some casting out of comfits in great quantities, as it had been hailstones, for joy and rejoicing of the king’s coming.” But I must pass over the outward show--how Augustans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Dominicans met him at Micklegate, and how these, with priors, and friars, and canons of hospitals, and priests, and knights, and noble, and gentle, and simple, accompanied the monarch to the Minster, and thence to the archbishop’s palace, where Henry resided during his stay in the northern capital. The grandest banquet given to him during his sojourn, was in this palace, on the eve of the festival of St. George: the great hall was divided into a centre and two aisles. In each division there were two tables, half-a-dozen in all. The king sat at the centre table, arrayed in all the pomp and glory of a king;--George and garter, crown, and England’s sceptre. One individual only was esteemed worthy of being seated at the same table, namely, the Archbishop of York, who was quite as powerful a man, in his way, as Henry Tudor himself. Knights carved the joints, and earls waited upon prince and prelate. Lord Scrope, of Bolton, _because_ he was a Knight of the Garter, served the king with water; another member of chivalry handed the cup, and the sovereign’s meat was especially carved for him by a Welsh cousin, Sir David Owen. The distribution of the other tables exhibited a judicious mixture of priest and layman. At the first table in the centre of the hall (the cross-table at the top being occupied by the king and the archbishop) sat two secular dignitaries, the Lords Chancellor and Privy Seal, and with them, the Abbots of St. Mary and Fountains, with the archbishop’s suffragans, other prelates, and the royal chaplains; thus the chief members of the clergy were seated in greatest numbers near the king. The second table was entirely occupied by lay nobility, earls, barons, knights and esquires of the king’s body. Of the two tables in the right aisle, the city clergy and the Minster choir occupied one to themselves. At the upper end of the other table were several knights of the garter, all sitting on one side, “and beneath them a void space, and then other honest persons filled that table.” We are glad to fall on the term “_other_ honest,” or we might have been tempted to believe that a distinction was made between honesty and nobility. The tables in the left aisle were occupied, one by the municipal authorities and other citizen guests; the second by the judges, “and beneath them _other_ honest persons,” again. At the rear of the king’s table a stage was erected, on which stood the royal officer of arms, who cried his “largesse” three times, in the usual manner, and doubtless with something of the stentorian powers made familiar to us by the late Mr. Toole, and the present loud and lively Mr. Harker. “The surnape,” we are told, “was drawn by Sir John Turberville, the knight-marshal; and after the dinner there was a voide, when the king and his nobles put off their robes of state, except such as were knights of the garter, who rode to even-song, attired in the habit of their order;” and a very fitting close to a feast,--and a good example is held forth therein to all who rise from a festival without any more thought of being thankful for it, than is implied by trying to find out the reflection of their nose in the mahogany.

The following table story, cited by Southey, furnishes another illustration of social, and, indeed, of political, life about this time:--

“Henry (then Richmond), on his march from Milford, lodged one night with his friend David Llwyd, at Matha’farn. David had the reputation of seeing into the future, and Richmond, whether in superstition or compliment, privately inquired of him, what would be the issue of his adventure. Such a question, he was told, was too important to be immediately answered, but in the morning a reply should be made. The wife of David saw that her husband was unusually grave during the evening; and having learnt the cause, she said, ‘How can you have any difficulty about your answer? Tell him he will succeed gloriously. If he does, you will receive honours and rewards. But, if it fail, depend upon it, he will never come here to reproach you.’” Hence, it is said, a Welsh proverb, “A wife’s advice without asking it.”

Henry VIII. loved to take a quiet dinner, occasionally, with his chancellor, at Chelsea; and there he would walk in the garden, with his arm round that neck which he afterwards flung beneath the axe of the executioner. He was given to indulgences of all sorts, and with respect to those of the appetite and palate, he was well served by his incomparable clerk of the kitchen, honest and clever William Thynne, who was not a _mere_ clerk of the kitchen, but a gentleman and scholar to boot; loving poetry though he was no poet, and editing Chaucer with as much zeal as that with which he regulated the accounts of his kitchen clerkship. Henry ate not wisely, but too well; and this huge feeding brought him at last to such a size, that he could not be moved but by aid of “a machine.” In other words, I suppose, he could not walk, and was compelled to submit to locomotion in a chair. Among the sovereigns who assembled at the Congress of Vienna, and who were as strangely there together as the half-dozen kings whom Candide met at the _table d’hôte_ in Venice, was that monster of a man, the King of Wurtemburg. This mountain of flesh dined daily at the imperial table, where a semicircular piece was cut out of the mahogany, in order that the stomach of the monarch might rest comfortably against the table, when engaged in its appropriate work. He did not lack wit for abounding in fatness, and to him, I believe, is properly attributed the neat saying, when he saw Lord Castlereagh in simple civilian’s dress, without a star, amid the gold lace, gems, jewels, ties, tags, and glittering uniforms of the crowd around him. The king asked who he was, and on being informed, he remarked: “Ma foi! il est _bien distingué_!” He could not have paid the same compliment to the noble Stewart’s wife, if it be true, as was reported, that at one of the state-dinners, or state balls, she appeared with her husband’s jewelled garter, worn as a _bandeau_, and “Honi soit qui mal y pense” burning in diamonds upon her forehead.

May it not have been the unpleasant effects of Henry’s gastronomic indulgences that made of him a dabbler in medicine? Many of his prescriptions in his own handwriting are still extant, and some of them are in the British Museum. He invented a plaister, and was the concocter of more than one original ointment for the cure of indigestion. He also prepared “a plaister for the Lady Ann of Cleves, to mollify and lessen certain swellings proceeding from cold, and to dissipate the boils on the stomach.” His majesty in some of his after-dinner ruminations professed also to have discovered a remedy for the plague; the prescription for which he sent to the lord mayor. He was very tender of the health of Wolsey, when the cardinal little regarded his own. His majesty, on one occasion, counsels his minister, if he would soon be relieved from “the sweating,” to take light suppers, and to drink wine very moderately, and to use a certain kind of pill. I do not know if Henry’s cookery and kitchen at all smelt of unorthodoxy before the Reformation, but it is a fact that, when Cardinal Campeggio came over here on the business of the divorce of Henry and Catherine, he was especially charged by the Pope to look into the state of cookery in England generally, and in the royal palace in particular.

The royal table of Elizabeth was a solemnity indeed. But it was all a majestically stupendous sham. The attendants thrice bent their knee as they approached to offer her the different dishes; and when these ceremonies had been gone through, the queen rose and retired to a private room, where the meats were placed before her, and she was left to dine as comfortably as the citizens and their wives of Eastcheap and Aldersgate.

Among the numerous new year’s gifts made to Elizabeth, and by which she contrived to maintain a splendid wardrobe, gifts of good things for her table were not wanting. One of her physicians presented her with a box of foreign sweetmeats; another doctor with a pot of green ginger; while her apothecaries gave her boxes of lozenges, ginger-candy, and other conserves. “Mrs. Morgan gave a box of cherries and one of apricots.” The queen’s master-cook and her serjeant of the pastry presented her with various confectionary and preserves.

Elizabeth and her “maids” both dined and breakfasted upon very solid principles and materials. Beef and beer were consumed at breakfast,--“a repast for a ploughman!” it may be said. Alas! ploughmen are content, or seem so, to strengthen their sinews as they best may of a morning with poor bread and worse tea. Elizabeth made a truly royal bird of the goose,--a distinction which her sister Mary failed to give to the cygnet, the stork, and the crane. These no more suited the national taste than that Crimean delicacy, a Russian oyster, and which all Englishmen who have tasted thereof pronounce to be a poisonous dab of rancid putty. Yet Russian princes are fond thereof, and Russian sovereigns order them for especial favourites;--just as the Prince Regent, whenever Lord Eldon was to dine at Carlton House, always commanded the chancellor’s favourite dish to be placed near him,--liver and bacon.

The household expenditure of James I. amounted to £100,000 sterling yearly; double the sum required for the same purpose by Elizabeth; and if “cock a leekie” and “haggis” were dishes to which his national taste gave fashion, the more foreign delicacies of snails and legs of frogs, dressed in a variety of ways, were readily eaten by the very daintiest of feeders. The taste of the purveyors was, however, something clumsy. What would now be said if a _chef_ sent up to table four huge pigs, belted and harnessed with ropes of sausages, and all tied together to a monstrous bag-pudding?

The court of James I. was uncleanly enough, but it was made worse by the example of the Danish king and his courtiers, on the royal visit to the Stuart. “The Danish custom of drinking healths was scrupulously observed, and in a company of even twenty or thirty, every person’s health was required to be drunk in rotation; sometimes a lady or an absent patron was toasted on the knees, and, as a proof of love or loyalty, the pledger’s blood was even mingled with the wine.” It is well known that the ladies of the court, as well as the gentlemen, got “beastly drunk,” in honour of the visit of the King of Denmark to his sister, the consort of James I.

James, whose taste in gastronomy was not a very delicate one, used to say that if ever he were called upon to provide a dinner for the devil, his bill of fare should consist of “a pig, a poll of ling and mustard, and a pipe of tobacco for digestion.”

There was more temperance under Charles I., and increased moderation under the Commonwealth, when Cromwell’s table was remarkable for its simplicity. The civic feasts of those days were also distinguished by their decorous sobriety; and it is, perhaps, worth noticing that the “show” followed, and did not precede the dinner.

Charles I. was served with a world of old-fashioned ceremony, not unlike that which ought to have made Louis XIV. very uncomfortable. The fact, however, is, that both monarchs were pleased with the cumbrous solemnities of state, and nothing affected our English king more in his fallen fortunes than the rude service which he received at the hands of the Puritan servitors of whose masters he was the captive. When he was in durance at Windsor, his meat was brought to him uncovered, and carried without any observance of respectful form, by the common soldiers. No trial or “say” of the meats was made; no cup presented on the knee. This absence of ceremony wounded Charles to the very quick. It chafed him more than greater sorrows did subsequently. It was, he observed, the refusal to him of a service which was paid, according to ancient custom, to many of his subjects; and rather than submit to the humiliation, he chose to diminish the number of dishes, and to take his meals in strict privacy.

There are few kings who had such variety of experience in matters of the table as Charles II. The first spoonful of medicine that was offered him he resisted with a determined aversion which never left him for that sort of _pabulum_. His table was but simple enough during the latter years of his father, but it was worse after the fatal day of Worcester. He was glad then, at White Lady’s, to eat “bread and cheese, such as we could get, it being just beginning to be day;” and “bread, cheese, small beer, and nothing else,” sufficed him in the oak. Bread, butter, ale and sack, he swallowed in country inns, and seemed rather to look on the masquerade and the meals as a joke.