There was a
bugle-blast and a proclamation, and a fat butler appeared in a high
perch in the leftward wall, followed by his 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 simitars, 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 cannel-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' feather in them.
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