GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



on occasions, probably on the Primate's journeyings over his 

 diocese, to provide lodgings ; and certainly, if my lord of Canter- 

 bury travelled with but half his train of servitors, the office could 

 have been no sinecure. 



Great state was kept up by his successor, Cardinal Pole, who, 

 by virtue of a patent from Philip and Mary, was allowed to keep 

 one hundred servants. 



Strype gives an account of the manner in which the good Arch- 

 bishop Parker, who was appointed to the See of Canterbury by 

 Elizabeth, kept open house. ' In the daily eating," he says, 

 * this was the custom ; the steward, with servants that were 

 gentlemen of the better rank, sat down at the tables in the hall 

 at the right hand, and the almoner, with the clergy and other 

 servants, sat on the other side," which reads as though the 

 chaplains and lower order of clergy were ranked with the lower 

 order of servants. The food left over from each day's feast " did 

 suffice to feed the bellies of a great number of poor hungry people 

 that waited at the gate ; and so constant and unfailing was this 

 provision at my lord's table, that whoever came in either at dinner 

 or at supper, being not above the degree of a knight, might there 

 be entertained worthy of his quality either at the steward's or the 

 almoner's table, and moreover it was the Archbishop's command 

 to his servants that all strangers should be received and treated 

 with all manner of civility and respect, and that places at the table 

 should be assigned to them according to their dignity and quality, 

 which redounded much to the praise and commendation of the 

 Archbishop. The discourse and conversation at meals was void 

 of all brawls and loud talking, and for the most part consisted in 

 framing men's manners to religion, or to some other honest or 

 becoming subject." 



There was a monitor in the hall, whose business it was at meal- 

 times to cry silence if any person spoke too loud, " or concerning 

 things less decent." 



In the Great Hall were also held the consecration banquets of 

 the Southern Province, at the charge of the newly consecrated 

 bishop ; perhaps the one most memorable for its magnificence 

 being that of William of Wykeham in 1367. 



These, however, were special occasions ; but so bounteous was 

 the provision even for the daily feasts, during the time of Cranmcr, 



42 



