498 
great tables; but it may be doubted, 
whether a particular person was appoint- 
ed to this service, or it was a branch of 
the Sewer’s and cup- -bearer’s duty, for I 
observe, thé Sewer is sometimes called 
Pregustator,* and the cup-bearer tastes 
the water elsewhere.+ The religious 
houses, and their presidents, the abbots 
and priors, had their days of Gala, as 
hkewise their balls for strangers, whom, 
when persons of rank, they “often enter- 
tained with splendour and magnificence. 
And as for the secular clerey, archbi- 
shops, and bishops, their feasts, of which 
we have some upon record,t were so 
superb, that they might vie with the 
regal entertainments, or the pontifi- 
gal suppers of ancient Rome, (which 
y%ecame even proverbial,§) and certain- 
ly could not be dressed, and set 
out, without a large ritieaber of Cooks: \| 
In ‘shot, the satirists of the times be- 
fore, wae about the time of the Refor- 
mation, are continually inveighing against 
the high. living of the bishops and clerg oy ; 
indeed luxury was then carried to such 
an extravagant pitch amongst them, that 
archbishop Cranmer, A. 1541, fetid it 
necessary to bring the secular clergy un- 
der some reascuable regulation, in re- 
gard to the furnishing of their tables, not 
excepting even his own.” 
After this historical deduction of the 
Ars Coguinuria, Dr. Pegge furnishes the 
reader with a minute account of the ma- 
nuscript itself. This vellum roll, he says, 
contains 196 formule, or recipes, and 
belonged once to the Earl of Oxford. 
Mr. West bought it at the Earl’s sale, 
* Compare Leland, p. 3, with Godwin de 
Presul. p. 695, and so Junius in Etymol. w. 
Sewer. 
t Leland, p. 8,9. There are now tao 
gyeomen of the mouth in the king’s housenold. 
+ That of George Neville, archbishop of 
York, 6 Edw. iv. and that of William War- 
ham, archbishop of Canterbury, A.D 1504. 
These were both of them inthronization- 
feasts. Leland, Collectan. vi. p, 2, and 16 
of Appendix. They were wont minnere san- 
guinem after these superb entertainments, 
. 52, 
: § Sixty-two were employed by archbishop 
Neville ; and the hire of cooks at archbishop 
Warham’s feast, came to 231. 6s. 8d. 
|| Hor. II. Od. xiv. 28. where see Mons. 
Dacier. 
@ Strype’s Life of Cranmer, p. 451, or 
Lel. Coll. ut supra, p. 38. Sumptuary laws 
in regard to eating were not unknown in 
ancient Rome. Erasm. Collog. p. 81; ed 
Schrev. nor here formerly, see Lel. Coll, vi. 
p. 36, for 5 Ed. JL. © 
Scarce Tracis, 
Kee [Dec. i; 
and Mr. Brander at Mr. West’s. It 
is presumed to be one of the most an- 
cient remains of the kind now in being, 
rising as high as the reign of King 
Richard II. and has an additional value 
stamped upon it, by having been present- 
ed to Queen Biivabeety: in the 28th year 
of her reign, by Lord Stafford’s heir. 
The general observations which Dr. 
Pegee makes upon it are these: That 
many articles were in vogue in the four= 
teenth century, which are nowin a man- 
ner obsolete, as cranes, curlews, herons, 
seals, porpoises, &c. and on the contra- 
ry, that we feed on sundry fowls which 
are not named, either in the Roll, orthe 
Editor’s manuscripts, as quails, rails, teal, 
woodeocks, snipes, &c. Our cooks, he 
observes, had great regard to the eye, as 
well as the taste, in their compositions; 
flourishing and stewing are not only 
common, but even leaves of trees gilded, 
or silvered, are used for ornamenting 
messes. As to colours, which perhaps 
would chiefly take place in suttleties, 
blood boiled and fried, was used for dying 
black ; saffron for yellow, a and sanders 
for red, Atkenet is also used for colour= 
ing, and mulberries; amydon makes 
white, and orgie Hi pownas there, but 
what this colour is, the editor professes 
not to know, unless it be intended for 
another kane of yellow, and he should 
-read jownas, for jaulnas, orange tawney. 
The messes both in the Roll, andin Dr. 
Pegge’s manuscript, are chiefly soups, pots 
tages, ragouts, hashes, and the like hetch- 
potches, entire joints of meat being never 
served; and animals, whether fish or fowl, 
seldom brought to table whole, but 
hacked and hewed, and cut in pieces or 
gobbets; the mortar also was in great 
request, some messes being actually de~ 
nominated from it, as Mortrews, or Mor- 
terelys, as in the Editor’s manuscript. 
Now in this state of things, the genera 
mode of eating, he observes, must either 
bare heen with the spoon or the fingers; 
and this perhaps ‘may have been the rea- 
son that spoons became an usual present 
from gossips to their god-children, at 
christenings, and that the bason and 
ewer, for washing hefore and after dinner, 
was introduced. ‘Fable, or case-knives, 
would be of little use at this time, and the 
art of carving so perfectly useless as to be 
almost unknown. 
Forks, it should appear, were not intro- 
duced til the time of James I. Imshort, 
it is plain, that in the days of Richard the 
Second, our ancestors lived much after the 
French fashion, The more bulky and 
magnificent 
