KING JOHN'S PALACE, KENT
(From a Drawing by J. Hassell, 1804)
One of the last visits of the King to Eltham was in the year 1575, when Henry held one of the tournaments in which in his early manhood he so much delighted. This is Holinshed's account of it:—
'After the parlement was ended, the king kept a solemne Christmasse at his manor of Eltham; and on the Twelfe night in the hall was made a goodlie castell, woonderouslie set out, and in it certeine ladies and knights; and when the king and queene were set, in came other knights and assailed the castell, where manie a good stripe was giuen; and at the last the assailants were beaten awaie. And then issued out knights and ladies out of the castell, which ladies were rich and strangelie disguised; for all their apparell was in braids of gold, fret with moouing spangls of siluer and gilt, set on crimson sattin, loose and not fastned: the mens apparell of the same sute made like Iulis of Hungarie; and the ladies heads and bodies were after the fashion of Amsterdam. And when the dansing was doone, the banket was serued in of two hundred dishes, with great plentie to euerie bodie.'
Remains of Eltham Palace
There is little more to be said about Eltham, which is a place so beautiful that it ought to have a more interesting history. Kings and Courts delight me not, nor do I take pleasure in reading about tournaments and masques.
There is no figure in the history of Eltham so pleasant to think upon as that of little Prince Richard, the lovely boy who was going to become such an extravagant King. One would like to have seen Edward entertaining his prisoner, King John of France; and one wonders what sort of figure was played by the Armenian Leo in the presence of Richard's splendour: but perhaps he knew the Court of Constantinople, and smiled at the splendour of the barbaric north.
Once more, how did they provide for the maintenance of so many guests? To feed two thousand every day is a great undertaking. We are accustomed to believe that the roads in winter were so bad as to be impassable. Now, everything had to be brought there, whatever the condition of the roads. And they were bye-roads, not high roads. The guests, too, and the nobles and their retainers, had to arrive by those roads. As was stated above, due notice was certainly given: a vast quantity of salt provisions was laid down in readiness: for the rest, the country was fertile and well cultivated. The Park contained deer—but they could not kill all; the Thames, only three miles away—but then, the roads!—was full of salmon and every kind of fish: the banks of the lower reaches and those of the Ravensbourne—again, those roads!—were the homes of myriads of wild birds. Still, one feels that the inland communications of the fourteenth century must have been a great deal better than those of the seventeenth century in order to allow of Christmas being kept in magnificence and profusion by two thousand people in a country village.