Henry VIII’s Great Feast at Greenwich, May 1527

Abstract

This paper examines one of the greatest feasts ever hosted by Henry VIII, at Greenwich in May 1527, to celebrate the conclusion of a treaty with France. Modern comments on this concentrate on the setting and the spectacle, but the focus here is on the food. Complete menus and the corresponding accounts of Henrician feasts are extremely rare. My discovery of the menu, together with the accounts for the food, combined with information from culinary recipes, makes it possible to examine the dishes in detail. The analysis shows that the court feast here was moving away from its medieval counterparts, in both organization and content. The standard arrangements of the medieval feast were slowly giving way to a more modern and internationalist style. Similarly, while some of the dishes date back to the fourteenth century, others were new, and show the beginnings of a style that would not find full expression until the end of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the decorative dishes were designed as an integral part of the entertainment. The food was an essential part of the display of the King’s status and power: the art of the table was an important facet of court culture.

Notes

1 See Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of York and Lancaster [usually known as Hall's Chronicle], ed. H. Ellis (London, 1809), pp. 721-4; Rawdon Brown et al. (eds), Calendar of State Papers Venetian (London, 1864–1940), vol. 4, no 105. For all the calendared sources cited here, I give document numbers rather than page references, as I have used the versions found on the website ‘British History Online’: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/.

2 The accounts are calendared in J. S. Brewer et al. (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (London, 1862–1932) [hereafter cited as L&P], vol. 4, no 2159 (for the food, signed by Guildford as controller of the Household, and wrongly ascribed to 1526); no 3104 (Guildford and Wyatt’s accounts, the latter as treasurer of the Chamber, for building the banqueting house); nos 1888, 3097, 3098 and 3107 (Revels accounts).

3 The relevant sections of the chapter on the Greenwich festivities in 1527 are by Starkey, Susan Foister, and Simon Thurley.

4 See Peter Brears, Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London, 2015), pp. 599-603.

5 The menu is British Library [hereafter BL], MS Add. 45716A, fol. 58. Other menus for Henry VIII appear in fols 55-61, 119-125. The printed extracts of Dunche’s manuscript do not include this menu, as the early twentieth-century editors deem the menus of little interest and print only four. See A. G. W. Murray and Eustace F. Bosanquet (eds), The Manuscript of William Dunche (Exeter, 1914), pp. 58-61.

6 The account for the 1528 dinner is BL, MS Lansdowne 1, fols 203-9, calendared in L&P, vol. 4, no 3969.

7 For reasons of space, I have not set out here the complete list of sources for the recipes in my databases. Specific recipes are cited below. For the seven families of medieval recipes, see Constance B. Hieatt, ‘Listing and Analysing the Medieval English Culinary Recipe Collections: A Project and its Problems’, in Carole Lambert (ed.), Du manuscrit à la table (Montreal/Paris, 1992), pp. 15-21, p. 21. My databases cover 1,571 recipes for the medieval period (to 1499), and 681 recipes for the sixteenth century, from 1545. The earliest printed cookbook, The Boke of Cokery, produced by Pynson in 1500, is a version of Holkham MS 674, which dates from after, but probably not long after, 1467. Although I have used the Pynson book to illustrate my comments, the statistics do not include recipes from this source.

8 The description of this supper by the papal nuncio and the table plan survive. See Starkey, European Court in England, p. 46 ; CSP Venetian, vol. 2, no 918.

9 For the laundry details, see L&P, vol. 4, no 3104, cited above. Peter Brears, Cooking and Dining (p. 600) states that there were thirty-one guests, but this is an error (private communication to the author, 3 April 2017).

10 The calculation in the manuscript mistakenly produces a total of £152 17s. 11½d. after deduction of the cost of the reusable leftovers, which was £9 11s. 6d. For the 1515 estimate, see L&P, vol. 2, ii, no 58.

11 For an analysis of medieval menu planning, see my article, ‘The Late-Medieval Menu in England — A Reappraisal’, Food and History, vol. 1, no 1 (2003), pp. 49-83, and particularly pp. 63-4 for the two-potage system at the start of each course in the fifteenth century, and for what constituted a ‘potage’.

12 The identification of Welsh as the gardener is from the index and notes in Frederick Madden (ed.), Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary (London, 1831), p. 273.

13 Bodleian Library, Oxford University [hereafter Bodleian], MS Ashmole 1444 (early 16^th century), r. 26, reproduced in Constance B. Hieatt, A Gathering of Medieval English Recipes (Turnhout, 2008), p. 43.

14 A. W., A Book of Cookrye [1584] (facs. of 1591 edn, Amsterdam, 1976), fol. 14v.

15 Thomas Dawson, The Good Huswifes Jewell, part 2 [1585] (facs. of 1597 edn, Amsterdam, 1977), p. 28; Markham, The English Huswife (London, 1615), p. 42.

16 Pynson, The Boke of Cokery (London, 1500), sig. Avii. For earlier recipes, see the Forme of Curye (late 14^th century), r. 61, in Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler (eds), Curye on Inglysch (Early English Text Society, Second Series 8, London, 1985), p. 111; Constance B. Hieatt (ed.), An Ordinance of Pottage (London, 1988), p. 48, r. 37, 38 (mid-15^th century).

17 For the stuffed capons, see the recipe in Ordinance of Pottage, r. 163, p. 96. For sorrel sauce as the accompaniment to green geese, see A Propre new booke of Cokery (London, 1545), sig. Aiii.

18 See the menus for the coronation of Henry VII in 1485, BL, MS Add. 4712, fol. 25; the coronation of Elizabeth of York in 1488, reproduced in John Leland, De Rebus Britannicus Collectanea (facs. of 1774 edn, Westmead, Farnborough, 1970), vol. 4, p. 226; the inthronization of Archbishop Warham in 1504, reproduced in R. Warner, Antiquitates Culinariae (1791), (facs. of 1791 edn, London, 1981), p. 113.

19 See C. B. Hieatt (ed.), Cocatrice and Lampray Hay (Totnes, 2012), r. 23, pp. 58-60. The earlier, simpler recipe is in Bodleian, MS Rawlinson D1222, reproduced in Hieatt, Gathering, p. 69.

20 Pynson, Boke of Cokery, sig. Iii.

21 Magdalen College, Cambridge, Pepys MS 1047, r. 15. Online partial transcription, http://www.godecookery.com/pepys/pepys.htm. This is an incomplete transcription of the culinary recipes by James L. Matterer: all of the recipes attributed in the manuscript to the King’s cook are included (fols 7-13), but not the others (fols 14-16, 19).

22 For these standard accompaniments to the ‘great birds’, see A Propre new booke of Cokery, sig. Aiii-Aiiii.

23 Pero appears many times in the accounts: simply as ‘Pero’ in the list of the King’s household in 1509 (L&P, vol. 1, no 82); as ‘Pero, French cook’ in a quarterly wages payment at Midsummer 1509 in the King’s Book of Payments (L&P, vol. 2, p. 1441); as ‘Pero le Doulx’, cook for the King’s mouth, in warrants in 1511 and 1514 (L&P, vol. 1, nos 970, 2624, 3561). ‘Piro, the French cook’ was paid his quarterly wages in 1540 (L&P, vol. 16, no 380). He also appears in the list of quarterly wages for June 1547 under Edward VI, as ‘Pero Doulx, the Frenche Coke’; see J. P. Collier (ed.) Trevelyan Papers Prior to A.D. 1558 (London, 1857), p. 195, and twice in a household book covering 1529-30, ibid., pp. 143, 147.

24 For a French recipe, see the Livre fort excellent de Cuysine (Lyon, 1555), transcribed in Timothy J. Tomasik and Ken Albala (eds & trans.), The Most Excellent Book of Cookery (Totnes, 2014), pp. 118-121. For later English recipes, see Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, part 2, 1597, p. 6; J[ohn] M[urrell], A Newe Booke of Cookerie (London, 1615), fol. 9, for rabbit, explicitly described as French.

25 Hieatt, Cocatrice, r. 72, pp. 113-14.

26 See, for instance, the ‘breme in comfet’ in Pynson, Boke of Cokery, sig. Ii.

27 The recipe is Pynson, Boke of Cokery, sig. Ki.

28 For the menu references, see the menu for Elizabeth of York, cited above (n. 18), p. 227; this dish appears later, for instance in the menu for the coronation of Mary I, BL, MS Add. 34320, fol. 86. For the recipe, see A Propre new booke of Cokery, sig. Aiiii.

29 Livre fort excellent, p. 252.

30 Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, part 1 (1587), fol. 30; A.W., Book of Cookrye, fol. 28v; Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, part 2 (1597), p. 17.

31 Hieatt, Cocatrice, r. 80, pp. 122-3; Pynson, Boke of Cokery, sig. Iii.

32 See the recipe for eel reversed (skinned, with a stuffing put back into the skin and roasted), in Bodleian, MS Ashmole 1392 (c. 1410), reproduced in Hieatt, Gathering, p. 27. For ‘reversed’ dishes in menus, see the menus for Elizabeth of York, p. 226 (kid); for Henry VIII and the French ambassadors in November 1527, BL, MS Add. 45716A, fol. 59 (chickens); for Mary I’s coronation, BL, MS Add. 34320, fol. 86 (deer).

33 Hieatt, Ordinance of Pottage, r. 92; Pynson, Boke of Cokery, sig. Dii.

34 Pynson, Boke of Cokery, sig. Kii.

35 Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, part 1 (1587), fols 18, 31v-32.

36 Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, part 1 (1587), fol. 19. For an earlier version of chickens in a caudle sauce, see Hieatt, Ordinance of Pottage, p. 49.

37 A. W., Book of Cookrye, fol. 25.

38 See Margaret Westcott, ‘Katherine Courtenay, Countess of Devon, 1479–1527’, in Todd Gray, Margery Rowe and Audrey Erskine (eds), Tudor and Stuart Devon: The Common Estate and Government (Exeter, 1992), pp. 13-38, p. 26; L&P, vol. 3, no 3375 (Mary’s household accounts).

39 For the standard weight of a dish of butter being one pound, see Brears, Cooking and Dining, p. 92.

40 See my contribution to the 2012 French Shakespeare Society’s conference, ‘Shakespeare et les arts de la table’: ‘At the Dramatists’ Table: The Climax and Decline of a Mannerist Cuisine in England, 1580–1630’, available online at: http://shakespeare.revues.org/1693.

41 See, for instance, the descriptions of Lord Burghley’s residences in London and at Theobalds, in the first draft of John Norden’s Speculum Britanniae (1593), quoted in Paula Henderson, The Tudor House and Garden (London, 2005), p. 4.

42 Description by the papal nuncio, CSP Venetian, vol. 2, no 918.

43 The expenses for the subtleties are fol. 116. Mary’s master cook is mentioned only as ‘Hugh’; his full name was Hugh Pigott, mentioned in household rolls of 1525 and 1533, in Madden, Privy Purse Expenses, p. 257. See also L&P, vol. 4, i, no 1577 (2), and vol. 6, no 1199, for these rolls.

44 For illustrations of the tents, see Susan Doran (ed.), Henry VIII: Man and Monarch (London, 2009), p. 95.

45 For the recipe, see J[ohn] Par[tridge], The Treasurie of commodious Conceits (London, 1573), ch. 9, sig. Biv-v.

46 Brears, Cooking and Dining, p. 603. The caption to Brears’ own drawing of part of block 91 (p. 555) is inaccurate and uninformative.

47 For information on this series, see the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which also offers views of the prints: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O972846/triumph-of-the-emperor-maximilian-woodcut-maximilian-i-holy/ [accessed 19 August 2017].

48 Hall, Chronicle, p. 723.

49 For the recipe for sugar plate, see Sir Hugh Plat, Delightes for Ladies (London, 1602), no 13A. Plat also gives a recipe for sugar paste (no 10A), made with cream, sugar, pounded almonds and isinglass, used for moulds of small animals; this would have been very suitable for the swans and cygnets swimming in the moat of the subtlety.

50 Quotation from Hall, Chronicle, p. 724.

51 The first printed recipe for snow appears in A Propre new booke, sig. [A7v]. The Livre fort excellent has a recipe for ‘Naige contrefaicte’ [counterfeited snow] (p. 180), and a reference to ‘Neige en rommarin’ [snow on rosemary] in one of its menus (p. 254).

52 Dawson, Good Huswifes Jewell, part 1, fols 13-13v, 22v-23.

53 Starkey, European Court in England, p. 54.

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Gilly Lehmann

Gilly Lehmann retired from her position at the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon, as a professor of English studies in 2007. Her research interest is the history of English cookery. While her research at first focussed on the eighteenth century for her French doctoral thesis (1989), with a revised version published in 2003 as The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, she has more recently concentrated on culinary styles and their relationship to the other arts, over a longer period. She is a contributor to the Oxford DNB and to the Oxford Companion to Food.