The cooking-pot is the sustainer of life, in that it gives strength to the weary and to the starving. To the poor dumb creatures, however, it is the end of life, and in savagery human life has been sacrificed to the gluttony of fellow-men. Wonderful stories are at times told of great feasts and of the magnificence of the kitchens of olden time, where the vessels and the cooking-pots were of extravagant size, making up, perhaps, for the fewer culinary utensils, for in early days the furnishings of the kitchen were few in number although massive and strong. Many of the baronial halls of the Middle Ages, and the homes of wealthy landowners in more recent days, have been the scene of great feasts. Merrie England rejoiced on such occasions when the roasting-jack and the spit contributed to the success of the feast, and the caldron or cooking-pot boiled upon the open hearth. In some old kitchens there are preserved ponderous bronze and copper pots, some so large that we can scarcely imagine that they were made for actual use. In the hall of Trinity Hospital at Leicester there is preserved a large caldron of bell metal, holding upwards of sixty gallons, which has been used as the cooking-pot of the institution from its foundation until quite recent times. This quaint old relic, now venerated as a curio, is locally called the Duke of Lancaster's porridge-pot, for it is said that it was made to the order of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, in 1331 (see Fig. 24). Not far removed from the corner where the old metal pot is shown to visitors there is a massive nutmeg-grater, a kitchen relic of olden time, which on the occasion of one of her visits to Leicester Queen Elizabeth presented to the hospital. Many old castles have relics of the feast to show visitors, and others no doubt could produce equally interesting examples of the coppersmiths' or the founders' art were they to search the vaults and cellars where disused metal-work was in years gone by stowed away. Visitors to Warwick Castle are familiar with "Guy's punchbowl," the remarkable metal caldron which is nearly twice the size of that attributed to the Duke of Lancaster, for it weighs, along with a fork said to have been used to handle the meat, 807 lb.