Henry VIII (11 page)

Tablecloths, napkins, fingerbowls, and ewers were bought, stored, and issued daily by the Ewery, a department sometimes referred to as the Napery. The basins and ewers were normally of silver gilt. The royal napery would be of the finest linen damask, often embroidered with silver or gold thread. Tablecloths were changed at least twice a week, or sooner if they became grubby.
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The ancient royal right of purveyance, or “prise,” meant that the King was allowed to buy food on demand at prices fixed at a lower rate than normal. His purveyors not only seized upon the choicest goods at markets, farms, and ports, but also commandeered horses and wagons to transport the goods. They did not pay in cash, but issued receipts, which could only be redeemed by the hapless vendor in person at the Board of the Greencloth—a requirement that often put him to considerable inconvenience and expense. The royal purveyors were consequently very unpopular, especially in the southeast, where the court was usually based, and the system was open to abuses and corruption. Thomas Cromwell tried to improve it in 1539, insisting that vendors be paid in cash, and making each county responsible for supplying its quota of goods at the “King's price,” or paying taxes to make up for any shortfall. But it was a long time before the new arrangements came fully into force, and there were still many complaints.
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In the greater houses, about 600 lesser members of the household ate in the great hall, which at Hampton Court could accommodate as many as three hundred at a sitting; in the lesser houses, there were outer guard chambers which served as dining rooms. About 230 officers and servants took meals in their own departments.

The senior officers of the household, the nobility, and the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber ate in some style off silver dishes at tables set up in the great watching chamber. Privy councillors had the right to dine in the council chamber. All were served by Gentlemen Ushers, Sewers, Grooms, and Pages of the Chamber, who ate what was left after their betters had departed.
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By the sixteenth century, people of high rank preferred to dine in privacy and comfort, rather than preside over their household. The King normally took his meals in the privy chamber, or, if he was entertaining guests, in greater state in the presence chamber.

There were frequent, obviously unsuccessful injunctions against courtiers eating their meals in their lodgings or “in corners and secret places,”
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or entertaining guests at the King's expense, which caused endless problems for the kitchens. The Clerk of the Kitchen kept detailed records of where and what each person should be eating, and made regular checks that everyone was where he was supposed to be. Only the Lord Chamberlain, the Vice Chamberlain, the Captain of the Guard, and the Lord Steward were allowed to take meals in their own lodgings.

Breakfast—comprising bread, meat, and ale—was served around 7 A.M.; dinner, the main meal of the day, was between 10 A.M. and 1 P.M., and supper between 4 and 7 P.M. An evening snack, called “all night,” was distributed around 8 to 9 P.M.
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Dinner and supper consisted of two courses with a prescribed number of dishes at each.

What a man ate was an outward manifestation of his rank. The number of dishes and type of food served to each person differed according to degree, being determined by sumptuary laws and the dietaries laid down in the Household Ordinances: the Lord Chamberlain got sixteen dishes at dinner and eleven at supper, while Household servants received four at each.
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The Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber enjoyed a rich daily diet consisting of beef, mutton, veal, capons, conies, pheasants, and either lamb, pigeon, or chicken, followed by tart, butter, and fruit.
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Smaller, cheaper portions of meat were served to servants, as well as bowls of that Tudor staple, pottage, which was meat stock thickened with oatmeal or barley and seasoned with salt, vegetables, and herbs.
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Andrew Barclay complained bitterly about the food served to the lower ranks; while he and his companions “gnawed” on brown bread and cheese, “as hounds ravenous,” they had to watch “dainteous dishes” destined for their superiors' tables being carried past them:

To see such dishes and smell the sweet odour,
And nothing to taste, is utter displeasure.

 

Occasionally, as a sign of favour, lords would send down choice morsels to their servants—a practice that Barclay says caused “great anguish and torment” to those not so favoured. Even if one was lucky, such “scraps” did not

. . . allay thy hunger and desire,
But, by their sweetness, set thee more on fire.

 

Rank and precedence also dictated where a person sat at meals. Tables were usually arranged in a U shape, with the top table being set on the dais. This was where the most important people sat, “above the salt,” with the persons of highest estate occupying chairs; the ceremonial saltcellar, or nef, was always placed to the right of the most important person present. Those on the lower tables were seated according to their degree, with the lowliest at the far end.

If important guests were present at meals, the menu would be more lavish in their honour, and appropriate to their rank, not that of the host. The Dukes of Burgundy had elevated the art of dining into a powerful status symbol, and much of what was produced by the royal kitchens was beautifully presented and designed to impress visitors. Food might be gilded with gold or silver leaf, or painted with edible natural dyes; taste was not a priority. Some food was even scented with musk or ambergris, and rose water was a common ingredient.

At every mealtime, trestle tables were set up and spread with cloths, which were strewn with herbs and flowers to purify the air. In the privy chamber, each diner's place was set with a silver or perhaps pewter
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trencher, spoon, goblet, and sauce bowl; manchet loaves wrapped in a napkin; and a flagon of wine. Every person brought his own eating knife, which he kept in a sheath attached to his belt, but the King owned sets of eating knives—one set was garnished with “emeralds, pearls, rubies and amethysts, with knives having diamonds at the end of them”
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—which were placed at the convenience of guests. Some had matching forks, but forks (an Italian invention) were used only to serve meat or sticky foods, not for eating. It was customary to eat with a knife and one's fingers, having due regard for the sensibilities of others: one used the left hand to take food from communal dishes, and the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand to eat with. The knife was for serving and cutting meat, and helping oneself from the salt bowls. Spoons were used to eat liquid food, and were rubbed clean with bread several times during a meal.
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Henry VIII owned sixty-nine gold spoons and twelve silver spoons “with columns at the ends.”
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Place settings similar to those in the privy chamber were laid in the great hall, but the utensils were of wood, the bread was cheat, and ale, not wine, was served in a leather jug. In both chamber and hall, food was served in “messes” in large dishes, each mess being sufficient for four persons. A cooked mess of beef weighed seven hundred grams, so each person received about 175 grams of meat.
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Meals were served with great ceremony. The company was summoned by minstrels blowing trumpets, shawms, or pipes.
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A fanfare sounded as the high table was seated, then a Latin grace was said by the chaplain. The company stood—the men bareheaded—as dishes were carried in procession into the dining chamber, where diners were served in order of rank and numerous servants stood by to attend to their needs. Good table manners, a sign of good breeding, were expected of everyone. People washed their hands before dinner and between courses. Napkins were not spread on laps but laid across the left shoulder. Elbows or fists were not to rest on the table, and picking one's nose or scratching one's head was unthinkable, although diners might spit discreetly and wipe runny noses on their sleeves.
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It was the mark of a gentlemen to be familiar with the intricate rules for carving the many cuts of meat that were served.

In the hall, the courtesies were not always strictly observed. It was so crowded and chaotic that there were frequent spillages and breakages. And the company, as Andrew Barclay observed, was far too hungry to observe niceties:

If the dish is pleasant, either flesh or fish,
Ten hands at once swarm in the dish;
And if it be flesh, ten knives shalt thou see
Mangling the flesh, and in the platter flee.
To put there thy hands is peril without fail
Without a gauntlet, or else a glove of mail. . . .
Slow be the servers in serving alway,
But swift be they after taking meat away.

 

This was because those serving would eat whatever was left after the sitting had ended.

It was considered uncharitable to finish all one's food. Leftover food, known as manners, was placed on a dish called a voider and passed down to those of lesser rank, or collected by the Almoner and given to the beggars who crowded outside the palace gates.
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9

“Elegant Manners, Extreme Decorum, and Very Great Politeness”

The King's magnificence was expressed through elaborate rituals and spectacular ceremonial. The propaganda value of colourful and sumptuous display, in which Henry delighted, was well understood, and the pageantry of his court incorporated dynastic, heraldic, and allegorical themes. John Skelton had told his pupil, “Be bountiful, liberal and lavish.”
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The King never forgot his advice, and his extravagant lifestyle, set against the splendid backdrop of his residences, was designed to emphasise to others the dignity of his elevated calling and place England firmly in the eye of Europe.

A rigid code of etiquette was observed at court, especially in the King's presence. Entertainments and festivals were organised with the maximum ceremony, and during the reign there were six great occasions of state: two coronations, one near-legendary summit meeting, two royal visits, and a reception for a future queen.
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Then there were public processions and the solemnities attendant upon royal births, betrothals, marriages, and deaths; receptions of ambassadors; and the solemnities attendant upon the creation of peers. Court ceremonies and functions were usually organised by Garter King of Arms, assisted by the Vice Chamberlain.
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The court was at its most splendid on the feast days that marked the major religious and other festivals: Christmas, New Year, the Feast of the Epiphany (or Twelfth Night), Easter, Ascension Day, the Feast of the Assumption, and the Feast of St. John the Baptist on Midsummer Day. These days were marked by pious observances as well as feasting and merrymaking. At Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary on 2 February, the King walked in a candlelit procession to chapel, his candle borne by a nobleman on his right.
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On festival days, the court ate exceptionally well, and the King would feast in public; his subjects— provided they were respectably dressed—could come to watch.

There were times when food was not so plentiful. The court fasted on fish and dairy foods—“white meats”—on Fridays and Saturdays, and observed an even stricter regimen during Lent, when dairy foods were not allowed.
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The King relaxed this rule in 1541.

Tudor feasts were an extravaganza of excess. The King's hospitality was boundless, and cost the equivalent of around £4 million a year. Up to seven hundred guests might be invited, and 240 different dishes served on gold or silver-gilt plates. When the King entertained thirty people at Windsor, there were fourteen varieties of meat, eight hundred eggs, ninety dishes of butter, eighty loaves of chestnut bread, three hundred wafers, gingerbread coated in gold leaf, and sufficient fruit and drink for each diner to have ten oranges and twenty alcoholic beverages.
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All guests were seated in order of rank, and served with impressive ceremony. The cupbearers and food tasters attending royalty would remain kneeling throughout the proceedings. The choicest food was reserved for the top table, but might be passed down to lesser mortals as a mark of favour. Along the walls stood buffets groaning with plate; candles were often placed in front of this plate, to reflect more light.

The centrepiece of a feast would be a prodigy dish, such as a roasted peacock re-dressed in its plumage
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or pies baked in the shape of St. Paul's Cathedral. But the pièce de résistance was the subtlety, an artistic confection brought in at the end of every course and offered to the high table. Subtleties, which originated in Burgundy, were the opus magnus of the Confectioner's artistry, and were made entirely of sugar and almond paste, moulded into fantastic sculptures up to two or three feet high, then painted and gilded. Subtleties, which were unsurprisingly “an assault for valiant teeth,”
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might be in the form of scenes from romances, myths, battles, or religious works; some represented coats of arms, others ships, castles, churches—Wolsey served a subtlety of St. Paul's Cathedral
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—or even representations of the guest of honour. Many had some political significance, and most bore mottoes. At Garter feasts, “a George on horseback” had been customary since 1440.
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Feasts could last for several hours. Once, when the King got bored, he amused himself by throwing sugarplums at his guests.
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On a few other occasions, he himself served them.

Such feasting could stretch the resources of the kitchens beyond their limits, and sometimes temporary kitchens had to be erected in the palace gardens, as at Greenwich on Twelfth Night, 1533.
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After a court entertainment or feast, the King might hold a banquet for the most honoured guests. A banquet might be a grand meal, but it was usually a dessert of sweet dishes and confectionary, known as the void, and it was usually held in the intimacy of King or Queen's privy chamber or in one of the banqueting houses in the palace gardens. A banquet was a gourmet's delight, with only the best and rarest foods and wines being served in the richest of settings.

Banquets were served buffet style, with the guests helping themselves after the servants had been dismissed. Among the delicacies were suckets (pieces of fruit in syrup, which were eaten with forklike sucket spoons),
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marchpane, jellies, biscuits, “kissing comfits” of sugar fondant, and mounds of syllabub called Spanish paps.
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Much of this food and wine was intended to act as an aphrodisiac. Later, comfits such as apples with caraway seeds and sugared spices were passed round on ornate spice plates: Henry had one of silver gilt set upon four antique heads with an elaborate cover of silver, agate, porcelain, and emerald chased with roses and fleurs-de-lys.
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At the end of the evening, the King and Queen were ceremonially presented with their gold cups, and hippocras and wafers were served.
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Then the company departed, many, presumably, to amorous adventures.

The King's daily life was governed by ritual.
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Even when he was not on show to the world, he was rarely alone, even in his privy lodgings or stool chamber. His Gentlemen, Grooms, Ushers, or pages would usually be in attendance. Four knights acting as Esquires of the Body waited upon the King day and night, two each to a shift.

At 7 A.M. every day, the morning watch of the Yeomen of the Guard would relieve the night watch in the presence chamber, and the Ushers would take their places at the door of the privy chamber, ready to challenge all who wished to enter. The King rose at around 8 A.M. By then, the Grooms and pages had lit the fire, ensured it was not smoking, cleaned and tidied the royal apartments, and tried—not always successfully—to awaken the Esquires of the Body, who slept in the “pallet chamber” next door to the royal bedchamber.
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Sometimes the King complained that they were still snoring when he was up and dressed.

Each morning, a Yeoman of the Wardrobe would bring the freshly brushed clothes chosen by the King to the door of the privy chamber, and there pass them to a Groom or page, who would hand them to the King's Gentlemen who were waiting to attend him. Meanwhile, the Esquires of the Body would have entered Henry's bedchamber “to array him and dress him in his [under] clothes.”
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Clean body linen, strewn with fresh herbs provided by Mrs. Harris, the King's laundress, was kept in one of two chests in the bedchamber; the other chest held the dirty linen awaiting collection by Mrs. Harris, who, out of her wages, which gradually rose to £20 (£6,000) a year, had to pay for the two chests and the herbs, as well as sweet powder and soap, and wood for her fire.
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Every week, she washed the King's clothes and all his other linen, including fourteen breakfast cloths, eight hand towels, and thirty-six napkins.
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Any other garments needed by the Esquires were handed to them at the bedchamber door by a Groom. Then, “loosely dressed,” Henry would emerge into the privy chamber, where his Gentlemen had the privilege of completing his robing. No Groom was allowed “to lay hands upon the royal person, or intermeddle with dressing, except it be to warm clothes and hand these to the Gentlemen; both Grooms and Ushers must keep a convenient distance from the King's person, not too homely or bold advancing themselves.”
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When the King was dressed, he seated himself on a chair with a footstool, and a kerchief was laid around his shoulders. Then Penny, his barber, came to shave him, bringing a basin of water scented with cloves; cloths; knives; combs of ivory, bone, or horn;
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and scissors in case the royal hair or beard needed trimming. Since Penny came into such close contact with his sovereign, he was required to keep himself “pure and clean” and avoid “vile persons” and “misguided women.”
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Nowhere in the Household Ordinances is there any reference to the King bathing. Although he had bathrooms at most of his houses, and wooden tubs at others, we do not know how often he used them. He certainly took herbal baths for medicinal purposes in winter, and, for fear of catching evil humours, avoided bathing during plague epidemics
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— which suggests he was taking baths at other times; he was a fastidious man, and would surely not have gone to the trouble of installing so many sophisticated bathrooms if he did not intend to use them.

The King's bathroom, or “bain” (French for bath), in the Bayne Tower at Hampton Court, built in 1529, had a ceiling laced with gilded battens, and window seats. The bath was attached to the wall, and there were taps for hot and cold water, the hot water being heated by a stove in the next room. There were comparable facilities at the Tower, Windsor, Beaulieu, Bridewell, and even in some lesser houses; all were on the first floor near the royal bedchamber.
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During the latter part of his reign, the King built himself huge sunken baths on the ground floor, like those of Francis I of France at Fontainebleau; that at Woodstock had water piped from a spring called Rosamund's Well, and was cold in summer and warm in winter.
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There was a similar bath at Hampton Court, and another was excavated at Whitehall in the 1930s. The latter is known to have been equipped with thirty-five towels of Holland linen, washing cloths, bathrobes, pails, and sheets and sponges for lining the bath.
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At Beaulieu and Greenwich, the bathrooms contained folding beds complete with curtains:
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it was customary for a bather to retire to bed for a time after a bath to ensure that he did not take a chill.

There was a garderobe adjacent to each of the King's bedchambers, and sometimes a stool chamber; those at Greenwich and Hampton Court had pictures and bookshelves.
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A close stool was a pewter chamber pot set in an elaborate boxed seat; one of the King's close stools was upholstered in black velvet, silk fringing, and two thousand gilt nails, and it had “elbows and side pieces.”
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It is often claimed that the King did not use close stools until the end of his reign, but his sister Mary took one to France with her in 1514,
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so they must have been in use much earlier. Five of Henry's were recorded at Hampton Court in 1547: one was covered in green velvet and silk, “embroidered with the King's arms and badges.”
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Two of his close stools at Ampthill had backs, and some even had their own cisterns for flushing.
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The title of Groom of the Stool derived from that gentleman's privilege of attending his sovereign whenever he used the close stool; his duties were to provide him with a flannel “to wipe his nether end”
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and to summon a Yeoman of the Chamber to empty and clean the pot. Sir Thomas Heneage, Groom of the Stool from 1536 to 1546, was witness to the King's chronic constipation and his efforts to relieve it, and was present when, one night in 1539, the King took a laxative: “he slept until two of the clock in the morning, and then rose to go to the stool, which by working of the pills had a very fair siege.”
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Once he was ready to face the world, the King “came forth” from his privy chamber, and was immediately crowded by the hordes of courtiers and petitioners waiting outside.
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Once he had fought his way past them, having graciously dealt with some requests, he went in procession to mass in the chapel royal, then, whenever possible, spent the morning hunting before returning for a late dinner. Alternatively he might read or work in his library, visit the stables to see his horses, or spend time mixing the medicinal remedies that he was fond of devising. Often, he was to be found relaxing in the privy chamber in the company of his Gentlemen, and might not come forth at all that day.
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The King's schedule meant that he did not always eat his meals at the same time as the rest of the court.
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Since the thirteenth century English monarchs had enjoyed the advantages of having their own privy kitchens: mealtimes could be flexible, the King could be served the choicest menus, and there was less risk of his food being poisoned, accidentally or deliberately. At Hampton Court, the privy kitchen was directly below the King's apartments, connected by a spiral stair, so meals arrived hot,
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which was not always the case elsewhere. There were similar arrangements in other royal residences, and on the Queen's Side.
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The royal menus were always decided by the Master Cook in consultation with the King's physicians and the Sewer, and the Gentlemen Ushers let the privy kitchen know when and where Henry wished his meals to be served and how many guests would be present. The Ushers were also responsible for ensuring that the table was set properly and that everyone was seated in the right place. The King always sat in the middle of the high table, “a little above the salt, his face being to the whole view of the chamber.”
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