the Royal Household Accounts
also show increased expenditure for the diversions, as well as for the
banquetings, of the festival. For instance, the payments to the Lord
of Misrule, which in Henry the Seventh's time never exceeded L6 13s.
4d., were raised by Henry the Eighth in his first year to L8 6s. 8d.,
and subsequently to L15 6s. 8d. In the first year is a payment to "Rob
Amadas upon his bill for certain plate of gold stuf bought of him for
the disguisings," L451 12s. 2d.; and another to "Willm. Buttry upon
his bill for certen sylks bought of him for the disguisings," L133 7s.
5d. In the sixth year are charges "To Leonard Friscobald for diverse
velvets, and other sylks, for the disguising," L247 12s. 7d.; and "To
Richard Gybson for certen apparell, &c., for the disguysing at the
fest of Cristemes last," L137 14s. 1/2d. Considerable payments are
made to the same Gybson in after years for the same purpose,
particularly in the eleventh, for revels, called a Maskelyn. In the
tenth year large rewards were given to the gentlemen and children of
the King's Chapel; the former having L13 6s. 8d. "for their good
attendance in Xtemas"; and "Mr. Cornisse for playing affore the King
opon newyeres day at nyght with the children," L6 13s. 4d.

Hall, in his Chronicle, Henry VIII. folio 15b, 16a, gives the
following account of a

ROYAL MASQUERADE AT GREENWICH,

where the King was keeping his Christmas in 1512: "On the daie of the
Epiphanie, at night, the King with XI others, wer disguised after the
maner of Italie, called a maske, a thing not seen afore in England;
thei were appareled in garments long and brode, wrought all with gold,
with visers and cappes of gold; and after the banket doen, these
maskers came in with six gentlemen disguised in silke, bearing staffe
torches, and desired the ladies to daunce: some were content, and some
that new the fashion of it refused, because it was a thing not
commonly seen. And after thei daunced and communed together, as the
fashion of the maske is, thei tooke their leave and departed, and so
did the quene and all the ladies."

In 1521 the King kept his Christmas at Greenwich "with great nobleness
and open court," and again in 1525. In 1527, he received the French
Embassy here, and also kept his Christmas "with revels, masks,
disguisings, and banquets royal;" as he did again in 1533, in 1537,
and in 1543; the last-mentioned year "he entertained twenty-one of the
Scottish nobility whom