So early as the 16th century the inhabitants of the City of London were remarkable for the astonishing profusion of their repasts, if we are to believe the poet Massinger—
“Men may talk of country Christmas, and court gluttony,
Their thirty pounds for buttered eggs, their pies of carps’ tongues,
Their pheasants drenched with ambergrise; the carcases
Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to
Make sauce for a single peacock:—yet their feasts
Were fasts, compared with the City’s.”[XXIX_102]
The description of one dish will enable us to judge of the others—
“Three sucking pigs, served up in a dish,
Took from the sow as soon as she had farrowed,
A fortnight fed with dates and muskadine,[Z]
That stood my master in twenty marks a piece;
Besides the puddings in their bellies, made
Of I know not what.”[XXIX_103]
Hang thyself, voluptuous Apicius! thou hast never dreamed of such delicate fare!
In the comedy of the “Parson’s Wedding,”[XXIX_104] the captain orders for his supper “chines fry’d and the salmon calver’d, a carp and black sauce, red deer in the blood, and an assembly of woodcocks and jacksnipes, so fat you would think they had their winding-sheets on; and upon these, as their pages, let me have wait your Sussex wheatear, with a feather in his cap; over all which let our countryman, general chine of beef, command. I hate your French pottage, that looks as if the cook-maid had more hand in it than the cook.”
The luxurious munificence of Norman kings is almost as remarkable as that of the emperors of degenerate Rome.
William the Conqueror had himself crowned three times in the same year, and the banquets he gave on those occasions were such that they impoverished the kingdom.[XXIX_105]
At the dinner given on the marriage of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and brother of Henry III., with the daughter of Raymond, Earl of Provence, more than thirty thousand dishes were served on the table of the bride and bridegroom.[XXIX_106]
In the year 1252, “John Mansel, the king’s counsellor, gave a stately dinner to the kings of England and Scotland and their queens; there was also present Edward, the king’s son, the Bishop of London, and many earls, barons, knights, and citizens; in short, so large was his company, that his house at Totehill could not contain them; therefore he set up tents and pavilions for their reception; seven hundred messes of meat was not sufficient to serve them for the first course.”[XXIX_107]