Bibliomania; or Book-Madness: A Bibliographical RomanceDibdin, Thomas Frognall
History
Bibliomania; or Book-Madness: A Bibliographical Romance
Dibdin, Thomas Frognall
Bibliography; Bibliomania; Book collecting; Books -- Prices
When one thinks of the then imagined happiness of the fair
object of these epistles--and reads the splendid account of
her coronation dinner, by Stow--contrasting it with the
melancholy circumstances which attended her death--one is at
loss to think, or to speak, with sufficient force, of the
fickleness of all sublunary grandeur! The reader may,
perhaps, wish for this, "coronation dinner?" It is, in part,
strictly as follows: "While the queen was in her chamber,
every lord and other that ought to do service at the
coronation, did prepare them, according to their duty: as
the Duke of Suffolk, High-Steward of England, which was
richly apparelled--his doublet and jacket set with orient
pearl, his gown crimson velvet embroidered, his courser
trapped with a close trapper, head and all, to the ground,
of crimson velvet, set full of letters of gold, of
goldsmith's work; having a long white rod in his hand. On
his left-hand rode the Lord William, deputy for his brother,
as Earl Marshall, with ye marshal's rod, whose gown was
crimson velvet, and his horse's trapper purple velvet cut on
white satin, embroidered with white lions. The Earl of
Oxford was High Chamberlain; the Earl of Essex, carver; the
Earl of Sussex, sewer; the Earl of Arundel, chief butler; on
whom 12 citizens of London did give their attendance at the
cupboard; the Earl of Derby, cup-bearer; the Viscount Lisle,
panter; the Lord Burgeiny, chief larder; the Lord Broy,
almoner for him and his copartners; and the Mayor of Oxford
kept the buttery-bar: and Thomas Wyatt was chosen ewerer for
Sir Henry Wyatt, his father." "When all things were ready
and ordered, THE QUEEN, under her canopy, came into the
hall, and washed; and sat down in the middest of the table,
under her cloth of estate. On the right side of her chair
stood the Countess of Oxford, widow: and on her left hand
stood the Countess of Worcester, all the dinner season;
which, divers times in the dinner time, did hold a fine
cloth before the Queen's face, when she list to spit, or do
otherwise at her pleasure. And at the table's end sate the
Archbishop of Canterbury, on the right hand of the Queen;
and in the midst, between the Archbishop and the Countess of
Oxford, stood the Earl of Oxford, with a white staff, all
dinner time; and at the Queen's feet, under the table, sate
two gentlewomen all dinner time. When all these things were
thus ordered, came in the Duke of Suffolk and the Lord
William Howard on horseback, and the Serjeants of arms
before them, and after them the sewer; and then the knights
of the Bath, bringing in the _first course_, which was eight
and twenty dishes, besides subtleties, and ships made of
wax, marvellous gorgeous to behold: all which time of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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