In the Presence Chamber, too, Hentzner saw the royal table laid and the ceremony of tasting performed, before the royal dishes were carried to a more private apartment. An ancient custom by which the sovereign occasionally dined in state in the Presence Chamber, and was served by great nobles of the realm upon the knee, from cupboards of massy plate, had fallen into disuse, but was revived by James.[1] In the Hall, or if more convenient in the Great Chamber, plays were given.[2] For this purpose the dimensions, in the larger palaces, were fully adequate. The hall of Hampton Court is 115 ft. × 40 ft., that of Windsor 108 ft. × 33 ft., that of Eltham, locally known as King John's Barn, 100 ft. × 36 ft. These alone survive, but the hall of Richmond is known to have been 100 ft. × 40 ft., and that of Whitehall 100 ft. × 45 ft.[3] But for an exceptional entertainment, such as a great banquet or mask, more space was desirable, and temporary structures, known as banqueting-houses, were erected as required. The device had already been employed by Henry VIII. A banqueting-house had been one of the splendours at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and two others, one of which was called the 'long house', or 'disguising house', were decorated by Holbein for the reception of a French embassy at Greenwich in 1527.[4] Edward VI also had had a banqueting-house in Hyde Park for the reception of another French embassy in 1551.[5] In the first year of Elizabeth's reign she used four banqueting-houses, one for the French ambassadors at Westminster in May, two others at Greenwich and Cobham Hall in July,[6] and a fourth at Horsley in August. A later one, prepared at Whitehall in June 1572 for the reception of the Duke of Montmorency, required 116 workmen to decorate it at a cost of £224. It
- ↑ V. P. x. 46, 121; xi. 430; xii. 273, 547; Gawdy, 132; Birch, i. 69; Sully, Mémoires, 469. Von Wedel, however, saw Elizabeth dine in state at Greenwich in 1584 (loc. cit., 262).
- ↑ Cf. ch. vii.
- ↑ The position of the Hall at Whitehall can be fairly well identified as extending across Horse Guards Avenue; cf. L. T. R. vii. 41.
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 189; Reyher, 336.
- ↑ Tudor Revels, 17; Hatfield MSS. i. 92, from which it appears that there was one house only, with a kitchen, and also stands in Hyde and Marylebone Parks.
- ↑ V. P. vii. 91; Holinshed, iii. 1510; Machyn, 203: 'The x day of July was set up in Greenwich park a goodly banketting-house made with fir powlles, and deckyd with byrche and all manner of flowers of the feld and gardennes, as roses, gelevors, lavender, marygolds, and all maner of strowhyng erbes and flowrs'; Feuillerat, Eliz. 81: 'Robert Trunckewell . . . woorking . . . vppon toe modells of the Masters device for a rowfe and a cobboorde of a bancketinge howse', 97, 106.
