servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef,
smoking hot and ready for the knife.

After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose--and the whole house with him
--and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess Elizabeth;
from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the general
assemblage. So the banquet began.

By midnight the revelry was at its height. Now came one of those
picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day. A description of it
is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it:

'Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after
the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on
their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two
swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold. Next came
yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin,
traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of
crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on
their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots
with pykes' (points a foot long), 'turned up. And after them came a
knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets
of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannell-bone,
laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over that, short cloaks
of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers' fashion,
with pheasants' feathers in them. These were appareled after the fashion
of Prussia. The torchbearers, which were about an hundred, were
appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors, their faces black.
Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which were disguised,
danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a
pleasure to behold.'

And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing,
lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours
which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the
ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his
wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the
gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and
pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter.
Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him
into a higher and still more enter