ursed, and many ceremonies observed, amongst these being that each
servitor of the royal table should eat some bread dipped in sauce of the
dish he bore. On these occasions meats for the king's table were brought
from the kitchen by yeomen of the guard, or beef-eaters. These men,
selected as being amongst the handsomest, strongest, and tallest in
England, were dressed in liveries of red cloth, faced with black velvet,
having the king's cipher on the back, and on the breast the emblems of
the Houses of York and Lancaster. By them the dishes were handed to the
gentlemen in waiting, who served royalty upon their knees. "You see,"
said Charles one day to the Chevalier de Grammont, "how I am waited on."
"I thank your majesty for the explanation," said the saucy Frenchman;
"I thought they were begging pardon for offering you so bad a dinner."
[This mode of serving the sovereign continued unto the coming of George
I.]

The costliness and splendour of some royal entertainments require the
description of an eye-witness to be fully realized. Evelyn, speaking of
a great feast given to the Knights of the Garter in the banqueting-hall,
tells us "the king sat on an elevated throne, at the upper end of the
table alone, the knights at a table on the right hand, reaching all the
length of the roome; over against them a cupboard of rich gilded plate;
at the lower end the musick; on the balusters above, wind musick,
trumpets, and kettle-drums. The king was served by the lords and
pensioners who brought up the dishes. About the middle of the dinner the
knights drank the king's health, then the king theirs, when the trumpets
and musick plaid and sounded, the guns going off at the Tower. At the
banquet came in the queene and stood by the king's left hand hand,
but did not sit. Then was the banquetting stuff flung about the roome
profusely. In truth the crowd was so great that I now staied no
longer than this sport began for fear of disorder. The cheere was
extraordinary, each knight having forty dishes to his messe, piled up
five or six high."

Concerning the habit mentioned by Evelyn, of mobs rushing into
banquet-halls, in order to possess themselves of all on which they could
lay hands, many instances are mentioned. The Duke of Tuscany, amongst
other authorities, narrates the inconvenience it caused at a supper he
gave the king. When his majesty drove to the duke's residence he was
preceded by trumpeters and torch-bearers, attended by the