The Palace which impressed Hentzner so much was constantly throughout her reign the home of Elizabeth and her court. Her own memories of semi-imprisonment there, relieved by occasional gaieties, or her two attacks of small-pox in 1562, were not bitter enough to blind her to its attractions. Many a Christmas was celebrated there with masques and revels. The accounts once at least show the significant entry "for making of new hearths in the great kitchen at Hampton Court for boyling of brawnes against Christmas." Greedy as she was of money—almost as greedy as she was of praise—Elizabeth was lavish in her expenditure on decoration and on entertainment, and year after year the most sumptuous preparations were made for Christmas festivities. Gradually even the Queen's spirits tired, and in 1598 occurred her last recorded visit to the Palace, "more privately," as her cousin Lord Hunsdon (Mary Bullen's son) wrote, "than is fitting for the time or beseeming her estate." Even then, though she was sixty-five, she is said to have been seen "dancing the Spanish Panic to a whistle and taboureur, none being with her but my Lady Warwick."[1] Four years later, after weeks when she would attend to no business but hear only "old Canterbury tales," she passed away.
- ↑ Quoted by Mr. E. Law from Miss Strickland's "Life of Elizabeth."
