But refinement was growing in the mixture of races which was to make modern Englishmen, and in the time of Hardicanute, much given to the pleasures of the table and at last dying from too copious a draught of wine,--“he fell downe suddenlie,” says Holinshed, “with the pot in his hand”--there was aim at niceness and variety and hospitable cheer. The Black Book of a royal household which Warner quotes in his “Antiquitates Culinariæ”[4] is evidence of this: “Domus Eegis Hardeknoute may be called a fader noreshoure of familiaritie, which used for his own table, never to be served with ony like metes of one meale in another, and that chaunge and diversitie was dayly in greate habundance, and that same after to be ministred to his alms-dishe, he caused cunyng cooks in curiositie; also, he was the furst that began four meales stablyshed in oon day, opynly to be holden for worshuppfull and honest peopull resorting to his courte; and no more melis, nor brekefast, nor chambyr, but for his children in householde; for which four melys he ordeyned four marshalls, to kepe the honor of his halle in recevyng and dyrecting strangers, as well as of his householdemen in theyre fitting, and for services and ther precepts to be obeyd in. And for the halle, with all diligence of officers thereto assigned from his furst inception, tyll the day of his dethe, his house stode after one unyformitie.” Of Hardicanute, “it hath,” says Holinshed, “beene commonlie told, that Englishmen learned of him their excessive gourmandizing and unmeasurable filling of their panches with meates and drinkes, whereby they forgat the vertuous use of sobrietie, so much necessarie to all estates and degrees, so profitable for all commonwealthes, and so commendable both in the sight of God, and all good men.” Not only to the Danes, but also to the later conquerors, the Normans, the old chronicler attributes corruption of early English frugality and simplicity. “The Normans, misliking the gormandise of Canutus, ordeined after their arrivall that no table should be covered above once in the day.... But in the end, either waxing wearie of their owne frugalitie or suffering the cockle of old custome to overgrow the good corne of their new constitution, they fell to such libertie that in often feeding they surmounted Canutus surnamed the hardie.... They brought in also the custome of long and statelie sitting at meat.” A fellow-Londoner with Holinshed, John Stow, says of the reign of William Rufus, the second Norman king of England, “The courtiers devoured the substance of the husbandmen, their tenants.”