GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
on occasions, probably on the Primate’s journeyings overt 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.” F 
There was a monitor in the hall, whose business it was at meal- 
times to ery 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 ; pcrhaps 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 Cranmer, 
42 
