A Righte Merrie Christmasse | Page 7

horsed, in a mummery, with sound of trumpets, sackbuts, cornets, shalmes, and other minstrels, and innumerable torch lights of wax, rode from Newgate through Cheape, over the bridge, through Southwarke, and so to Kennington beside Lambheth, where the young prince remained with his mother and the Duke of Lancaster, his uncle, the Earls of Cambridge, Hertford, Warwicke, and Suffolke, with divers other lords. In the first rank did ride forty-eight in the likeness and habit of Esquires, two and two together, clothed in red coats and gowns of say or sandal, with comely visors on their faces; after them came forty-eight Knights, in the same livery of colour and stuff; then followed one richly arrayed like an Emperor; and, after him some distance, one stately attired like a Pope, whom followed twenty-four Cardinals; and, after them, eight or ten with black visors, not amiable, as if they had been legates from some foreign princes. These maskers, after they had entered Kennington, alighted from their horses, and entered the hall on foot; which done, the prince, his mother, and the lords, came out of the chamber into the hall, whom the said mummers did salute, showing by a pair of dice upon the table their desire to play with the prince, which they so handled, that the prince did always win when he cast them. Then the mummers set to the prince three jewels, one after the other, which were a bowl of gold, a cup of gold, and a ring of gold, which the prince won at three casts. Then they set to the prince's mother, the duke, the earls, and other lords, to every one a ring of gold, which they did also win. After which they were feasted, and the music sounded, the prince and lords danced on the one part with the mummers, which did also dance; which jollity being ended, they were again made to drink, and then departed in order as they came."
When he came to the throne as Richard II. he had very enlarged ideas on expenditure, and amongst others on Christmas feasts. He held one at Lichfield in 1398, where the Pope's Nuncio and several foreign noblemen were present, and he was obliged to enlarge the episcopal palace in order to accommodate his guests. Stow tells us: "This yeere King Richarde kept his Christmas at Liechfield, where he spent in the Christmas time 200 tunns of wine, and 2000 oxen with their appurtenances." But then he is said to have had 2000 cooks, and cookery was then elevated into a science: so much so, that the earliest cookery book that has come down to us is The Forme of Cury, which "was compiled of the chef Mairt Cok of Kyng Richard the Secunde, Kyng of .nglond[4] aftir the Conquest." Twenty-eight oxen, three hundred sheep, an incredible number of fowls, and all kinds of game were slaughtered every morning for the use of his household. It seems incredible, but see what old John Hardyng, the metrical chronicler, says:--
Truly I herd Robert Ireleffe saye, Clerke of the grene cloth, y^{t} to the household, Came euery daye for moost partie alwaye, Ten thousand folke by his messis tould, That folowed the hous aye as thei would, And in the kechin three hundred seruitours, And in eche office many occupiours;
And ladies faire with their gentilwomen, Chamberers also and launderers, Three hundred of them were occupied then.
[Footnote 4: [Transcriber's Note: ".nglond" appears in the original. An 18th-Century annotated edition of The Forme of Cury notes that in the original manuscript, "E was intended to be prefixed in red ink" in place of the leading period. See Pegge, Samuel, The Forme of Cury, p. 1, note c (London: J. Nichols, 1780) (page image available at http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC042.html).]]
Of the Christ-tides of Henry IV. there are no events recorded, except that Stow states that "in the 2nd of his reign, he then keeping his Christmas at Eltham, twelve aldermen and their sons rode in a mumming, and had great thanks," but Henry V. had at least one sweet Christmas day. It was in the year 1418, when he was besieging Rouen, and Holinshed thus describes the sufferings of the garrison. "If I should rehearse (according to the report of diverse writers) how deerelie dogs, rats, mise, and cats were sold within the towne, and how greedilie they were by the poore people eaten and devoured, and how the people dailie died for fault of food, and young infants laie sucking in the streets on their mother's breasts, lieng dead, starved for hunger; the reader might lament their extreme miseries. A great number of poore sillie creatures were put out at the gates, which were by the Englishmen that kept the trenches, beaten and driven backe againe to the same gates, which they