silver and gilt spoons, twelve dozen silver and gilt
salt-cellars, twenty silver and gilt candlesticks, twenty fine large
table-cloths of damask and diaper, twenty dozen white napkins, three
dozen fair large towels, twenty dozen white cups and green pots, to say
nothing of carving-knives, carving table, tureens, bread, beer, ale, and
wine. The reader also may learn from those chroniclers how the company
were placed according to degrees at different tables; how the banquets
were served to the sound of drums and fifes; how the boar's head was
brought in upon a silver dish; how the gentlemen in gowns, the
trumpeters, and other musicians followed the boar's head in stately
procession; and how, by a rule somewhat at variance with modern notions
concerning old English hospitality, strangers of worth were expected to
pay in cash for their entertainment, eightpence per head being the
charge for dinner on the day of Christmas Eve, and twelve-pence being
demanded from each stranger for his dinner on the following day.

Ladies were not excluded from all the festivities; though it may be
presumed they did not share in all the riotous meals of the period. It
is certain that they were invited, together with the young law-students
from the Inns of Chancery, to see a play and a masque acted in the hall;
that seats were provided for their special accommodation in the hall
whilst the sports were going forward; and that at the close of the
dramatic performances the gallant dames and pretty girls were
entertained by Pallaphilos in the library with a suitable banquet;
whilst the mock Lord Chancellor, Mr. Onslow, presided at a feast in the
hall, which with all possible speed had been converted from theatrical
to more appropriate uses.

But though the fun was rare and the array was splendid to idle folk of
the sixteenth century, modern taste would deem such gaiety rude and
wearisome, would call the ladies' banquet a disorderly scramble, and
think the whole frolic scarce fit for schoolboys. And in many respects
those revels of olden time were indecorous, noisy, comfortless affairs.
There must have been a sad want of room and fresh air in the Inner
Temple dining-hall, when all the members of the inn, the selected
students from the subordinate Inns of Chancery, and half a hundred
ladies (to say nothing of Mr. Gerard Leigh and illustrious strangers),
had crowded into the space set apart for the audience. At the dinners
what wrangling and tumult