(against the coming of certain commissioners out
of France into England), by Her Majesty's appointment, on
the sixth and twentieth day of March, in the morning (being
Easter Day), a Banqueting House was begun at Westminster, on
the south-west side of Her Majesty's palace of Whitehall,
made in manner and form of a long square, three hundred
thirty and two foot in measure about; thirty principals made
of great masts, being forty foot in length apiece, standing
upright; between every one of these masts ten foot asunder
and more. The walls of this house were closed with canvas,
and painted all the outsides of the same most artificially,
with a work called rustic, much like stone. This house had
two hundred ninety and two lights of glass. The sides within
the same house was made with ten heights of degrees for
people to stand upon; and in the top of this house was
wrought most cunningly upon canvas works of ivy and holly,
with pendants made of wicker rods, garnished with bay, rue,
and all manner of strange flowers garnished with spangles of
gold; as also beautified with hanging toseans made of holly
and ivy, with all manner of strange fruits, as pomegranates,
oranges, pompions, cucumbers, grapes, carrots, with such
other like, spangled with gold, and most richly hanged.
Betwixt these works of bays and ivy were great spaces of
canvas, which was most cunningly painted, the clouds with
stars, the sun and sun-beams, with diverse other coats of
sundry sorts belonging to the Queen's Majesty, most richly
garnished with gold. There were of all manner of persons
working on this house to the number of three hundred seventy
and five: two men had mischances, the one broke his leg, and
so did the other. This house was made in three weeks and
three days, and was ended the eighteenth day of April, and
cost one thousand seven hundred forty and four pounds,
nineteen shillings, and od mony, as I was credibly informed
by the worshipful master Thomas Grave, surveyor unto Her
Majesty's works, who served and gave order for the same.

[Footnote 656: Edition of 1808, IV, 434. See also Stow's _Chronicle_,
under the year 1581.]

Although built in such a short time, and of such flimsy material, this
expensive Banqueting House seems to have been allowed to stand, and to
have been u