'Who feasts the poor, a true reward shall find, Or helps the old, the feeble, lame, and blind.'"
"All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined, Come, here is good news for to pleasure your mind; Old Christmas is come for to keep open house, He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse; Then come, boys, and welcome, for diet the chief, Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd pies, and roast beef."
Christmas-Keeping in the Country
was revived in accordance with the commands of Queen Elizabeth, who listened sympathetically to the "Lamentations" of her lowlier subjects. Their complaint was that the royal and public pageants at Christmastide allured to the metropolis many country gentlemen, who, neglecting the comforts of their dependents in the country at this season, dissipated in town part of their means for assisting them, and incapacitated themselves from continuing that hospitality for which the country had been so long noted. In order to check this practice, the gentlemen of Norfolk and Suffolk were commanded by Queen Elizabeth to depart from London before Christmas, and "to repair to their counties, and there to keep hospitality amongst their neighbours." The presence of the higher classes was needed among the country people to give that assistance which was quaintly recommended by Tusser in his "Hundreth good Points of Husbandrie":
"At Christmas be mery, and thanke God of all: And feast thy pore neighbours, the great with the small. Yea al the yere long have an eie to the poore: And God shall sende luck to kepe open thy doore."
Henry Lord Berkeley, who had a seat in Warwickshire, appears to have set a good example in this respect to the noblemen of the period, for, according to Dugdale, "the greatest part of this lord's abydinge after his mother's death, happenynge in the sixth yeare of Queen Elizabeth, was at Callowdon, till his own death in the eleventh of Kinge James, from whence, once in two or three yeares, hee used in July to come to Berkeley." The historic house of Berkeley essentially belongs to Gloucestershire; but on the death of Edward VI., Henry Lord Berkeley,
With a good old fashion, when when Christmas was come,
To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum.
by descent from the Mowbrays and the Segraves, became possessed of the ancient Manor and castellated mansion of Caludon, near Coventry, where he lived in splendour, and kept a grand retinue, being profuse in his hospitalities at Christmas, as well as in his alms to the poor throughout the year. "As touchinge the Almes to the poore of 5 & six country p'ishes & villages hard adjoyninge to Callowdon were relieved, with each of them a neepe of holsome pottage, with a peece of beoffe or mutton therin, halfe a cheate loafe, & a kan of beere, besides the private Almes that dayly went out of his purse never without eight or ten shillings in single money of ijd iijd & groates, & besides his Maundy & Thursday before Ester day, wherein many poore men and women were clothed by the liberality of this lord and his first wife, whilest they lived; and besides twenty markes, or twenty pound, or more, which thrice each yeare, against the feaste of Christmas, Ester, and Whitsontide, was sent by this Lord to two or three of the chiefest Inhabitants of these villages, and of Gosford Street at Coventry, to bee distributed amongst the poore accordinge to their discretions. Such was the humanity of this Lord, that in tymes of Christmas and other festyvalls, when his neighbor townships were invited and feasted in his Hall, hee would, in the midst of their dynner, ryse from his owne, & goynge to each of their tables in his Hall, cheerfully bid them welcome. And his further order was, having guests of Honour or remarkable ranke that filled his owne table, to seate himselfe at the lower end; and when such guests filled but half his bord, & a meaner degree the rest of his table, then to seate himselfe the last of the first ranke, & the first of the later, which was about the midst of his large tables, neare the salt."
Another home of Christmas hospitality in the days of "Good Queen Bess" was Penshurst in Kent, the birthplace of the distinguished and chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney. "All who enjoyed the hospitality of Penshurst," says Mills's History of Chivalry, "were equal in consideration of the host; there were no odious distinctions of rank or fortune; 'the dishes did not grow coarser as they receded from the head of the table,' and no huge salt-cellar divided the noble from the ignoble guests." That hospitality was the honourable distinction of the Sidney family in general is also evident from Ben Jonson's lines on Penshurst:
"Whose liberal board doth flow With all that hospitality doth know! Where comes no guest but is allow'd to eat, Without his fear, and of thy Lord's own meat Where the same beer and bread, and self-same wine, That is His Lordship's, shall be also mine."[57]