The banquet, thus cheered by compliments, toasts, and the shouts of the onlookers, lasted three hours. At its conclusion, which would be three o’clock in the afternoon, a singular ceremony took place. “The table was placed upon the ground, and their Majesties, standing upon it, proceeded to wash their hands.” The King and Queen then retired to their own apartments, while the Spanish guests were taken to the picture gallery. In an hour’s time they returned to the Audience Chamber, where dancing had begun.
Fifty ladies of honor were present, “richly dressed and extremely beautiful.” Prince Henry danced a galliard; the Queen, with the Earl of Southampton, danced a brando; the Prince danced another galliard—“con algunas cabriolas,” with certain capers; then another brando was performed; the Queen with the Earl of Southampton, and Prince Henry with another lady of the Court, danced a correnta. This ended the ball. They then all took their places at the windows, which looked out upon a court of the Palace. There they had the pleasure of seeing the King’s bears fight with greyhounds, and there was very fine baiting of the bull. Then followed tumblers and rope-dancers. With these performances ended the entertainment and the day. The Lord Chamberlain accompanied the Constable to the farthest room; the Earl of Devonshire and other gentlemen went with them to their coaches, and fifty halberdiers escorted them on their way home with torches. On the morrow, one is pained to read, the Constable had an attack of lumbago.
There are other notes on the Court which one finds in the descriptions of foreign travelers. Thus, the King was served on one knee; while he drank his cupbearer remained on one knee; he habitually drank Frontignac, a sweet, rich French wine; when Queen Elizabeth passed through the street men fell on their knees (this practice seems to have been discontinued at her death); servants carried their masters’ arms on the left sleeve; the people, within or without the Court, were noisy and overbearing (all travelers agree on this point); they hated foreigners and laughed at them; they were magnificent in dress; they allowed their wives the greatest liberty, and spent all they could afford upon their dresses; the greatest pleasure the wives of the citizens had was to sit in their doorways dressed in their best for the passers-by to admire; they were accustomed to eat a great quantity of meat; they loved sweet things, pouring honey over mutton and mixing sugar with their wine; they ardently pursued bull and bear baiting, hunting, fishing, and sport of all kinds; they ate saffron cakes to bring out the flavor of beer; they spent great sums of money in tobacco, which was 18s. a pound, equal to more than £6 of our money; their great highway was the river, which was covered with boats of all kinds plying up and down the stream, and was also covered with thousands of swans. The river, indeed, maintained as watermen, fishermen, lightermen, stevedores, etc., as many as forty thousand men. When we read of James kissing his favorites—a practice nauseous to the modern Englishman—we must remember that it was then not an uncommon thing, but quite the contrary, for friends to kiss each other. In France and Germany men have always greeted each other with a kiss. On entering a room a visitor kissed all the ladies present. Thus it was reckoned unusual when the Duchess of Richmond (1625) admitted the Duke of Brunswick to Ely House on the proviso that he must not kiss her. He did not, but he kissed all her ladies
ROSAMOND’S POND, ST. JAMES’S PARK.
twice over in a quarter of an hour. And the Constable of Castile, the day before the great banquet, kissed all the Queen’s ladies of honor. Erasmus remarks that the English have a custom “never to be sufficiently commended. Wherever you go, you are received with a kiss from all; when you take your leave, you are dismissed with kisses; you return—kisses are repeated; they come to visit you—kisses again.”
Those who read—and trust—the gossiping and scandalous memoirs of the day acquire a very imperfect idea of King James’s Court. The physical defects and weaknesses of the King are exaggerated: we are told that his legs were weak, and that he rolled in his gait; the foreign ambassadors, however, speak of him as a man of great strength and strong constitution: we are told that he spoke thickly; there is nothing said of this defect in the letters written by these visitors. That he lived privately, and went not abroad, as Queen Elizabeth had done, is acknowledged; that his Court was in any way ridiculous does not appear, except in such a writer as Anthony Welldon. In this place, happily, we have not to consider his foreign or domestic policy, or his lofty ideas on Divine Right; but only his Court. In the fierce light which beats upon a throne every weakness is made visible and appears out of proportion. We must remember, however, that the blemishes are not visible to him who only occasionally visits the Court, or witnesses a Court function. We, for instance, are only outsiders: we know nothing of the whispers which run round the inner circle. Those who are about the person of the sovereign must experience, one would think, something of degradation when they make the inevitable discovery that the King’s most excellent Majesty, whom they have been wont to serve on bended