After healths were drunk and speeches made, we ventured into the retiring-rooms, which seemed set apart for love and beauty; and we marvelled how there could be a bachelor in all London, while looking on that long array of sweet faces. Not that they were all dwellers in the City; but such as we often see in our suburban rambles pacing smooth grassy lawns, or peering over green hedgerows, before the neat villas that are scattered in hundreds around the skirts of this huge metropolis. There was the soft hazel eye of England, a look from which goes at once to the heart; lips that lay like roses resting upon each other; hair so bright and soft, that the richest silk would be coarse in comparison, though spun by the worms that fed on the mulberry-trees of Eden. Ever and anon forms swam by us more graceful than swans—beautiful as silver clouds sailing side by side over the noiseless blue of heaven. Here one coquetted with her fan; there another played with her bouquet; a third sat with her tiny hand half-buried amid a dark cluster of flowing ringlets; while a fourth beat her little foot to some well-remembered tune. On every hand stood flowers and choice greenhouse-plants high-piled, while a chastened light fell on the crimson carpet; and when we escaped, we scarcely knew whether we stood on our head or our heels, so entangled were our senses in jewels, flowers, rich dresses, bright eyes, long ringlets, and a thousand other sweet temptations, from which we prayed to be delivered.
From a work now before me, entitled the Royal Entertainments in London, (the title-page of which is wanting), I find the following account of Charles I.’s entertainment at Guildhall:
“Among the most important of the preliminary arrangements was that of providing a road for their majesties into the City, for the way from Kingsland to Shoreditch was impassable ‘in regard of the depth and foulness of it.’ A temporary approach was in consequence made across the meadows, in a line from Moorfields to Barnes, near Kingsland, ‘a retiring-house of Sir George Whitmore,’ who was then one of the aldermen; the banks being thrown down, and bridges fourteen feet wide thrown over the ditches. The previous night being rainy, and the morning gloomy and cloudy, the Lord Mayor commanded his tent to be pitched in a field, where his lordship and principal citizens, with some of the nobility, reposed themselves until their majesties came.* * * *
“In Moorfields waited about five hundred horsemen, being the masters, wardens, and prime men of each company, in velvet or plush coats, with gold chains, every horseman attended by a footman with truncheons and torches. Each company was preceded by a pendant of its arms; and fourteen trumpeters, with bannered trumpets and scarfs, were placed, four at the head of the troop, and two between every hundred horsemen.* * * *
“At Guildhall their majesties’ dinner was served up on the hustings, which were almost two yards from the ground, and the floor (of which was) covered with Turkey carpets. In the middle were two chairs under a cloth of state, and before them was placed a table six yards long: two yards from which, on the south, was ‘a table of garnish,’ or sideboard, of three yards square; and on the north, a room for music of all sorts.
“Upon a lower platform, raised about a yard from the ground, and extending from the hustings nearly to the door, were two tables for lords and ladies; while in the west end of the hall was a long table for his majesty’s pensioners; and in other rooms were tables prepared for the several sorts of their majesties’ attendants.
“The dinner was served without confusion by means of two ranks of liverymen, formed of eighty grave citizens attired in furs and liveries, who, standing at about two yards’ distance from each other, passed the dishes from the dressers at the west end of the hall until the servers received them and placed them on the table.
“Their majesties’ meat was apportioned in four services. The first consisted of fifty dishes of cold meats, as brawn, fish, and cold baked meats, upon the garnish or side-table; the other three were of all sorts of hot flesh and fish, boiled, roasted, and baked, to the number of one hundred and twenty dishes: after which was served up a curious and well-ordered dessert. To the two tables of the lords and ladies were appointed ten messes, consisting of five hundred dishes.
“Only a few months after, on the 5th of January, the king came into London under very different circumstances,—to demand the members of the House of Commons whom he had accused of high treason, and believed to be shrouded in the City. The populace greeted him with exclamations for the ‘privileges of parliament;’ and one Henry Walker, an ironmonger, threw into his coach a paper whereon was written, ‘To your tents, O Israel!’ ”
Stormy times followed soon after this visit, when Cromwell and his Ironsides obtained the ascendency; until at last the Protector’s fiery spirit passed away in an accompanying storm of thunder and lightning. Then Charles II. regained the throne, and together with his queen, more frequently joined the Lord Mayor’s banquet than any other monarch ever did before or since.