days, and no lack of wine and beer to slacken thirst and promote digestion. But there was a period of the year when higher feasting than this was looked for with a pious impatience.

When the festival of All

Saints arrived, there came with it the long-desired venison, with permission to enjoy it! and the hungry men cried jubilate! and tendered unctuous thanks for rich mercies. The day was the opening of the venison season, and was therefore celebrated in the bishop's palace as a grand festival. The ordinary joints were from the calf, which cost (whole) twenty pence (a great price), the capons and the geese were little regarded and daintily dealt with. The ecclesiastical gentlemen

I went in" for the venison; and honoured be the example set by those primitive and orthodox Christians -they ate it unmarred by the modern barbarous and heretical accompaniment of "currant jelly."

Up at York, there was a lack of archbishops who held that appetite was an excellent thing to get and to get rid of. There was some exception, perhaps, in the person of Savage, who, after filling the sees of Rochester and London, was translated to the archbishopric of York (1501-7). He made the whole province, as well as the hospitable county from which his province takes its name, especially indignant at his not appearing to be enthroned. He sent his fool, John Goose, to amuse the household, and a deputy to go through the enthronization with maimed rites. This, however, might have been endured, if it had been

Old Archbishops of York.

11

York had always found

followed by the usual feast. solace at the funeral baked meats of one primate by thinking of the inauguration cheer of his successor. But there was no feast on this occasion; and the orthodox appetites as well as the thirsty claimants to be guests were profoundly scandalized. I am not

sure if "a regular savage" may not be a Yorkshire phrase, having its origin like the Dublin one of " Agar the naygur!" to stigmatize archiepiscopal meanness. But Yorkshire soon forgave the man, for he made up for his inaugurating short-comings by feasting half the county. The frank people there readily pardoned the prelate for neglecting all his professional duties, since he kept that hunting country alive and musical with the blast of the huntsman's horn and the "tongue" of the archiepiscopal hounds. "Tally-ho!" was to them better than "O be joyful!" unless it were understood as "O be joyful in the Lord Archbishop, all ye lands!" to which they could give a hearty Amen!

In mere matters of state, Wolsey was the last of the Archbishops of York (1514-30) who was attended at bed-time and lever by nine or ten lords of his household, each of whom was himself helped to dress for such service by a couple of lacqueys of his The archbishop had degrees of officers: after the lords there were the gentlemen, distinct in service and at board. The young lords dined in the cardinal's chamber, at a table with the chamberlain and

own.

In

ushers, while the young gentlemen of the household dined in the same room, but at a table apart. addition to these, Wolsey was famous for having the tallest yeomen that ever waited on a master's will. He was as anxious to procure, and as fond of maintaining tall fellows, as ever Frederick was of his gigantic grenadiers. Insomuch," says Cavendish, "that well was that nobleman and gentleman that might prefer any tall and comely yeoman unto his service."

Wolsey's splendid style of decking himself is well known. All else in his house and person corresponded with this. His distaste for retrenchment, on the ground that what might thus be a superflux he could give to the poor, was wise. In his lavish expense he, at all events, encouraged labour, and promoted art and refinement. The poor, he said, would do no more than drink ale that was given to them; and he said this in extremely offensive words, for employing which he had, however, the authority of Scripture.

There was an admirable admixture of graceful homage and honest truth in the sermon which Dr. Colet preached in Westminster abbey, in November, 1515, at the installation of Wolsey as cardinal. The eloquent dean exalted the man and his dignity to an equality with the seraphim; but after floating both, as it were, through a glorious heaven of privileges, the dean dropped them plump on to the hard earth of duties. Looking closely at the cardinal, he said: "Let not one in so proud a position, made most illus

Rich Lenten Fare.

13

trious by the dignity of such an honour, be puffed up by its greatness. But remember that our Saviour, in his own person, said to his disciples, 'I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,' and 'He who is least among you shall be greatest in the kingdom of heaven; and again, He who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.'" The dean's sharpest counsel touched Wolsey's most vulnerable point. " "My lord cardinal," said Colet, "be glad, and enforce yourself always to do and execute righteousness to rich and poor with mercy and truth." Wolsey sailed out of the abbey after this exhortation, with an air of being still in the warm and golden atmosphere of his ineffable privileges.

The old English episcopal splendour of life, generally, may be said to have gone out with Warham, the last of the Archbishops of Canterbury, named while England was in full communion with Rome. His enthronization feast, on Passion Sunday, in 1504, was a marvel for its profusion and magnificence, although a Sunday in Lent brought with it Lenten fare. The bill of that fare, however, is one of the longest on record; and the fare itself must have satisfied the wildest appetites as well as tried the stoutest digestions. Edward, Duke of Buckingham, last of the ordinarilyappointed lord high constables, as the primate's tenant, served him on his throne, and from the back of his horse directed with his truncheon where the dishes should be placed upon the tables. After this service,

rendered bareheaded and amid much mediæval pomp, was concluded, the proud Stafford was regaled with ceremony almost as circumstantial in his own hall. The ducal servitor lay headless in his grave when Warham's funeral feast took place in 1532. The guests left the primate's body in the cathedral, to partake of the funeral banquet in the neighbouring palace. At the heels of the guests followed a hungry crowd, who unceremoniously laid hold of everything within reach. While the row and the scramble were being enacted at the banquet, the primate's body was silently deposited in its sepulchre; and then the faithful few who had remained to the last sat down to a sumptuous dinner unmolested by unseemly mobs. If Cranmer's enthronization feast was in every respect different to his predecessor's, the reason is said to have been that, while his own means were small, much of the property of the see had been sequestered, and was in the keeping of a king not likely to relax his hold of it. No mounted ducal steward, unbonneted and preceded by heralds, superintended the service of the table. Ordinary waiting men brought in the venison which Cranmer loved, and which was a present to grace the board. The convent of Canterbury contributed, more or less willingly, so many swans, partridges, and "such other things" that the prior, Goldwell (who was, subsequently, the only English bishop at the council of Trent), wrote to Cromwell, the week following, his excuses for sending that poten