Connected with fairs as furnishing the necessaries of life may be given an account of the living of the people in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
From the household book of the Earl of Northumberland above-mentioned it appears, that his family, during winter, lived mostly on salted meat and salt fish, and on that account there was an order for providing 180 gallons of mustard. On flesh days through the year, breakfast for the earl and his lady was a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, half a chine of mutton, or a chine of beef boiled. On meagre days, a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish, or a dish of buttered eggs. During Lent, a loaf of bread, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, two pieces of salt fish, six baconed herrings, or a dish of sprats. The other meals had as little variety, except on festival days.
At that time capons, chickens, hens, pigeons, rabbits, plovers, woodcocks, quails, snipes, partridges, and pheasants, were accounted such delicacies as to be prohibited except at the earl’s table.
From the same book it appears that the earl had only two cooks for dressing victuals for his household which consisted of 229 persons.
Hollinshed, who wrote about 1577, observes that white meats, i. e. milk, butter and cheese, formerly the chief food of the English people, were in his time degraded to be the food of the lowest sort, and that the wealthy fed upon flesh and fish.
Feasts in those times were carried beyond all bounds of moderation. There is preserved an account of a feast given by Archbishop Nevill at his installation, 1466, in which are mentioned, among a great variety of others, the following articles, viz. wheat 300 quarters, ale 300 tuns, 80 oxen, 6 wild bulls, 1000 sheep, 300 calves, 300 swine called porks, 2000 pigs, 200 kids, 4000 rabbits, upwards of 400 harts, bucks and roes, 3000 geese, 2300 capons, 2000 chickens, 4000 pigeons, 100 peacocks, 200 cranes, 4000 mallards and teals, 500 partridges, 400 woodcocks; 1500 hot, and 4000 cold venison pasties, 2000 hot custards, and 4000 cold ones. On the tables at this feast it is mentioned there were 4 porpoises and 8 seals.
There were 62 cooks and 515 servants to assist them, and not less than 3000 persons in all were at this feast.
At the above period there was not discovered in society, any pleasure but that of crouding together in hunting and feasting. The delicate pleasures of conversation, in communicating opinions, sentiments and desires, were wholly unknown.
About the year 1512 the breakfast hour was eight, and at ten they sat down to dinner; at three in the afternoon they had a drinking, and four was the hour for supper. The gates of the Earl of Northumberland’s castles were shut at nine in the evening throughout the year, “to the intent that no servant shall come in at the said gate, that ought to be within, who are out of the house at that hour.”
By a household establishment of Lord Fairfax’s, about 1650, it appears that eleven had then become the hour of dining, and towards the end of that century the hour was twelve, but from the beginning of the last century it has gradually grown later to the present times, when seven has become the fashionable hour in noblemen’s houses.