304 THE COOKERY OF VENISON 



long with ordinary care, for the deer must have been 

 sent in from many a distant forest and chase to 

 furnish out those sumptuous boards. The great house 

 of Neville had manors in most of the English counties. 

 At the installation of George, the youngest brother of 

 the Kingmaker, as Archbishop of York, all the world 

 of the Court society was bidden to the feasting. 

 Upwards of 500 'stagges, bucks, and roes' were 

 served entire, and 4,000 cold pasties of venison figured 

 on the bill of fare. At many a coronation banquet 

 the menu was nearly as magnificent, as we gather 

 from ' The Noble Book of Cookery,' reprinted from a 

 rare manuscript in the Holkham collection, and edited 

 by Mrs. Napier. The guests brought Gargantuan 

 appetites to those feasts, and the caterers went in 

 for show and quantity rather than quality. We can 

 imagine the amount of pains which could be spared 

 on the dressing and the serving when half a thousand 

 deer were turning simultaneously on the spits. Ex- 

 ceptional attention may have been paid to the bucks 

 that were destined for the upper tables. They ap- 

 peared in what we should now consider barbaric 

 company. There were peacocks displaying their 

 gorgeous trains the oldest and toughest of the cocks ; 

 there were swans in their snowy plumage, selected for 

 size and splendour ; there were even the eagles we 



