lord's title and style were "Pallaphilos, prince of Sophie, High Constable Marshal of the Knights Templars, and Patron of the Honorable Order of Pegasus." And he kept a stately court, having for his chief officers-Mr. Onslow (Lord Chancellor), Anthony Stapleton (Lord Treasurer), Robert Kelway (Lord Privy Seal), John Fuller (Chief Justice of the King's Bench), William Pole (Chief Justice of the Common Pleas), Roger Manwood (Chief Baron of the Exchequer), Mr. Bashe, (Steward of the Household), Mr. Copley (Marshal of the Household), Mr. Paten (Chief Butler), Christopher Hatton (Master of the Game), Messieurs Blaston, Yorke, Penston, Jervise (Masters of the Revels), Mr. Parker (Lieutenant of the Tower), Mr. Kendall (Carver), Mr. Martyn (Ranger of the Forests), and Mr. Stradling (Sewer). Besides these eighteen Placemen, Pallaphilos had many other mock officers, whose names are not recorded, and he was attended by a body-guard of fourscore members of the Inn.

From the pages of Gerard Leigh and Dugdale, the reader can obtain a sufficiently minute account of the pompous ceremonials and heavy buffooneries of the season. He may learn some of the special services and contributions which Prince Pallaphilos required of his chief courtiers, and take note how Mr. Paten, as Chief Butler, had to provide seven dozen silver and gilt spoons, twelve dozen silver and gilt salt-cellars, twenty silver and gilt candlesticks, twenty fine large table-cloths of damask and diaper, twenty dozen white napkins, three dozen fair large towels, twenty dozen white cups and green pots, to say nothing of carving-knives, carving table, tureens, bread, beer, ale, and wine. The reader also

may learn from those chroniclers how the company were placed according to degrees at different tables; how the banquets were served to the sound of drums and fifes;

how the boar's head was brought in upon a silver dish; how the gentlemen in gowns, the trumpeters, and other musicians followed the boar's head in stately procession; and how, by a rule somewhat at variance with modern notions concerning old English hospitality, strangers of worth were expected to pay in cash for their entertainment, eightpence per head being the charge for dinner on the day of Christmas Eve, and twelve-pence being demanded from each stranger for his dinner on the fol- . lowing day.

Ladies were not excluded from all the festivities; though it may be presumed they did not share in all the riotous meals of the period. It is certain that they were invited, together with the young law-students from the Inns of Chancery, to see a play and a masque acted in the hall; that seats were provided for their special accommodation in the hall whilst the sports were going forward; and that at the close of the dramatic performances the gallant dames and pretty girls were entertained by Pallaphilos in the library with a suitable banquet; whilst the mock Lord Chancellor, Mr. Onslow, presided at a feast in the hall, which with all possible speed had been converted from theatrical to more appropriate uses.

But though the fun was rare and the array was splendid to idle folk of the sixteenth century, modern taste would deem such gaiety rude and wearisome, would call the ladies' banquet a disorderly scramble, and think the whole frolic scarce fit for schoolboys. And in many respects those revels of olden time were indecorous, noisy, comfortless affairs. There must have been a sad want of room and fresh air in the Inner Temple dininghall, when all the members of the inn, the selected students from the subordinate Inns of Chancery, and half a hundred ladies (to say nothing of Mr. Gerard

Leigh and illustrious strangers), had crowded into the space set apart for the audience. At the dinners what wrangling and tumult must have arisen through squabbles for place, and the thousand mishaps that always attend an endeavor to entertain five hundred gentlemen at a dinner, in a room barely capacious enough for the proper accommodation of a hundred and fifty persons. Unless this writer greatly errs, spoons and knives were in great request, and table linen was by no means 'fair and spotless' towards the close of the rout.

Superb, on that holyday, was the aspect of Prince Pallaphilos. Wearing a complete suit of elaborately wrought and richly gilt armor, he bore above his helmet. a cloud of curiously dyed feathers, and held a gilt pole-axe in his hand. By his side walked the Lieutenant of the Tower (Mr. Parker), clad in white armor, and like Pallaphilos furnished with feathers and a pole-axe.

On entering the hall the prince and his Lieutenant of the Tower were preceded by sixteen trumpeters (at full blare), four drummers (at full drum), and a company of fifers (at full whistle), and followed by four men in white armor, bearing halberds in their hands. Thrice did this procession march round the fire that blazed in the centre of the hall; and when in the course of these three circuits the four halberdiers and the musicians had trodden upon everybody's toes (their own included), and when moreover they had blown themselves out of time and breath, silence was proclaimed; and Prince Pallaphilos, having laid aside his pole-axe and his naked. sword and a few other trifles, took his seat at the urgent entreaty of the mock Lord Chancellor.

But Kit Hatton's appearance and part in the proceedings were even more outrageously ridiculous. The future Lord Chancellor of England was then a very elegant and witty young fellow, proud of his quick humor

and handsome face, but far prouder of his exquisitely proportioned legs. No sooner had Prince Pallaphilos taken his seat, at the Lord Chancellor's suggestion, than Kit Hatton (as master of the game) entered the hall, dressed in a complete suit of green velvet, and holding a green bow in his left hand. His quiver was supplied with green arrows, and round his neck was slung a hunting-horn. By Kit's side, arrayed in exactly the same style, walked the Ranger of the Forests (Mr. Martyn); and having forced their way into the crowded chamber, the two young men blew three blasts of venery upon their horns, and then paced three times round the fire. After thus parading the hall they paused before the Lord Chancellor, to whom the Master of Game made three curtsies, and then on his knees proclaimed the desire of his heart to serve the mighty Prince Pallaphilos.

Having risen from his kneeling posture Kit Hatton blew his horn, and at the signal his huntsman entered the room, bringing with him a fox, a cat, and ten couples of hounds. Forthwith the fox was released from the pole to which it was bound; and when the luckless creature had crept into a corner under one of the tables, the ten couples of hounds were sent in pursuit. It is a fact that English gentlemen in the sixteenth century thus amused themselves with a fox-hunt in a densely crowded dining-room. Over tables and under tables, up the hall and down the hall, those score hounds went at full cry after a miserable fox, which they eventually ran into and killed in the cinder-pit, or as Dugdale expresses it, "beneath the fire." That work achieved, the cat was turned off, and the hounds sent after her, with much blowing of horns, much cracking of whips, and deafening cries of excitement from the gownsmen, who tumbled over one another in their eagerness to be in at the death.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE RIVER AND THE STRAND BY TORCHLIGHT.

CARCELY less out of place in the dining-hall than

SCA

on which the Prince Pallaphilos made his appearance at the High Table after supper, when he notified to his subjects in what manner they were to disport themselves till bedtime. Thus also when the Prince of Purpoole kept his court at Gray's Inn, A. D. 1594, the prince's champion rode into the dining-hall upon the back of a fiery charger which, like the rider, was clothed in a panoply of steel.

In costliness and riotous excess the Prince of Purpoole's revel at Gray's Inn was not inferior to any similar festivity in the time of Elizabeth. On the 20th of December, St. Thomas's Eve, the Prince (one Master Henry Holmes, a Norfolk gentleman) took up his quarters in the Great Hall of the Inn, and by the 3rd day of January the grandeur and comicality of his proceedings had created so much talk throughout the town that the Lord Treasurer Burghley, the Earls of Cumberland, Essex, Shrewsbury and Westmoreland, the Lords Buckhurst, Windsor, Sheffield, Compton, and a magnificent array of knights and ladies visited Gray's Inn Hall on that day and saw the masque which the revellers put upon the stage. After the masque there was a banquet, which was followed by a ball. On the following day the prince, attended by eighty gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Temple (each of the eighty wearing a plume on his head), dined in state with the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city, at Crosby Place. The frolic continued for many days more; the royal Purpoole on one occasion visiting Blackwall with a splendid retinue, on another (Twelfth Night)