The procession from the Temple to the palace of Whitehall was the most magnificent that had ever been seen in London. “One hundred gentlemen in very rich clothes, with scarce anything to be seen on them but gold and silver lace, were mounted on the best horses and the best furniture that the king’s stable and the stables of all the noblemen in town could afford.” Each gentleman had a page and two lacqueys in livery waiting by his horse’s side. The lacqueys carried torches, and the page his master’s cloak. “The richness of their apparel and furniture glittering by the light of innumerable torches, the motion and stirring of their mettled horses, and the many and gay liveries of their servants, but especially the personal beauty and gallantry of the handsome young gentlemen, made the most glorious and splendid show that ever was beheld in England.”
These gallant Templars were accompanied by the finest band of picked musicians that London could afford, and were followed by the antimasque of beggars and cripples, who were mounted on “the poorest, leanest jades that could be gotten out of the dirt-carts.” The habits and dresses of these cripples were most ingeniously arranged, and as the “gallant Inns of Court men” had their music, so also had the beggars and cripples. It consisted of keys, tongs, and gridirons, “snapping and yet playing in concert before them.” After the beggars’ antimasque came a band of pipes, whistles, and instruments, sounding notes like those of birds, of all sorts, in excellent harmony; and these ushered in “the antimasque of birds,” which consisted of an owl in an ivy bush, with innumerable other birds in a cluster about the owl, gazing upon her. “These were little boys put into covers of the shape of those birds, rarely fitted, and sitting on small horses with footmen going by them with torches in their hands, and there were some besides to look unto the children, and these were very pleasant to the beholders.” Then came a wild, harsh band of northern music, bagpipes, horns, &c., followed by the “antimasque of projectors,” who were in turn succeeded by a string of chariots drawn by four horses abreast, filled with “gods and goddesses,” and preceded by heathen priests. Then followed the chariots of the grand masquers drawn by four horses abreast.
The chariots of the Inner and Middle Temple were silver and blue. The horses were covered to their heels with cloth of tissue, and their heads were adorned with huge plumes of blue and white feathers. “The torches and flaming flamboys borne by the side of each chariot made it seem lightsom as at noonday.... It was, indeed, a glorious spectacle.”
Whitelock gives a most animated description of the scene in the banqueting-room. “It was so crowded,” says he, “with fair ladies glittering with their rich cloaths and richer jewels, and with lords and gentlemen of great quality, that there was scarce room for the king and queen to enter in.” The young queen danced with the masquers herself, and judged them “as good dancers as ever she saw!” The great ladies of the court, too, were “very free and easy and civil in dancing with all the masquers as they were taken out by them.”
Queen Henrietta was so delighted with the masque, “the dances, speeches, musick, and singing,” that she desired to see the whole thing acted over again! whereupon the lord mayor invited their majesties and all the Inns of Court men into the city, and entertained them with great state and magnificence at Merchant Taylor’s Hall.[603]
Many of the Templars who were the foremost in these festive scenes afterwards took up arms against their sovereign. Whitelock himself commanded a body of horse, and fought several sanguinary engagements with the royalist forces.
The year after the restoration, Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards earl of Nottingham, kept his readers’ feast in the great hall of the Inner Temple with extraordinary splendour. The entertainments lasted from the 4th to the 17th of August.
At the first day’s dinner were several of the nobility of the kingdom and privy councillors, with divers others of his friends; at the second were the lord mayor, aldermen, and principal citizens of London; to the third, which was two days after the former, came the whole college of physicians, who all appeared in their caps and gowns; at the fourth were all the judges, advocates, and doctors of the civil law, and all the society of Doctors’ Commons; at the fifth were entertained the archbishops, bishops, and chief of the clergy; and on the 15th of August his majesty king Charles the Second came from Whitehall in his state barge, and dined with the reader and the whole society in the hall. His majesty was accompanied by the duke of York, and attended by the lord chancellor, lord treasurer, lord privy seal, the dukes of Buckingham, Richmond, and Ormond; the lord chamberlain, the earls of Ossory, Bristol, Berks, Portland, Strafford, Anglesy, Essex, Bath, and Carlisle; the lords Wentworth, Cornbury, De la Warre, Gerard of Brandon, Berkley of Stratton and Cornwallis, the comptroller and vice-chamberlain of his majesties’s household; Sir William Morice, one of his principal secretaries of state; the earl of Middleton, lord commissioner of Scotland, the earl of Glencairne, lord chancellor of Scotland, the earls of Lauderdale and Newburgh, and others the commissioners of that kingdom, and the earl of Kildare and others, commissioners of Ireland.
An entrance was made from the river through the wall into the Temple Garden, and his majesty was received on his landing from the barge by the reader and the lord chief justice of the Common Pleas, whilst the path from the garden to the hall was lined with the readers’ servants in scarlet cloaks and white tabba doublets, and above them were ranged the benchers, barristers, and students of the society, “the loud musick playing from the time that his majesty landed till he entered the hall, where he was received with xx. violins.” Dinner was brought up by fifty of the young gentlemen of the society in their gowns, “who gave their attendance all dinner-while, none other appearing in the hall but themselves.”
On the 3rd of November following, his royal highness the duke of York, the duke of Buckingham, the earl of Dorset, and Sir William Morrice, secretary of state, were admitted members of the society of the Inner Temple, the duke of York being called to the bar and bench.[604]