Of the Christ-tides of Henry IV. there are no events recorded, except that Stow states that "in the 2nd of his reign, he then keeping his Christmas at Eltham, twelve aldermen and their sons rode in a mumming, and had great thanks," but Henry V. had at least one sweet Christmas day. It was in the year 1418, when he was besieging Rouen, and Holinshed thus describes the sufferings of the garrison. "If I should rehearse (according to the report of diverse writers) how deerelie dogs, rats, mise, and cats were sold within the towne, and how greedilie they were by the poore people eaten and devoured, and how the people dailie died for fault of food, and young infants laie sucking in the streets on their mother's breasts, lieng dead, starved for hunger; the reader might lament their extreme miseries. A great number of poore sillie creatures were put out at the gates, which were by the Englishmen that kept the trenches, beaten and driven backe againe to the same gates, which they found closed and shut against them. And so they laie betweene the wals of the citie and the trenches of the enimies, still crieing for helpe and releefe, for lacke whereof great numbers of them dailie died. "Howbeit, King Henrie, moved with pitie, upon Christmasse daie, in the honor of Christes Nativitie, refreshed all the poore people with vittels, to their great comfort and his high praise." There are no notable Christ-tides until we come to the reign of Henry VIII. In the second year of his reign he kept Christmas quietly at Richmond, the queen being near her confinement, which event taking place on the first of January, she was sufficiently recovered to look at the festivities on Twelfth day. "Against the twelfe daie, or the daie of the Epiphanie, at night, before the banket in the hall at Richmond, was a pageant devised like a mounteine, and set with stones; on the top of which mounteine was a tree of gold, the branches and boughes frised with gold, spreading on everie side over the mounteine, with roses and pomegranates, the which mounteine was, with vices, brought up towards the king, and out of the same came a ladie apparelled in cloth of gold, and the children of honour called the henchmen, which were freshlie disguised, and danced a morice before the king; and, that done, re-entered the mounteine, which was then drawen backe, and then was the wassail or banket brought in, and so brake up Christmasse."