For the festivals of this period the tables of princes, prelates, and great barons were plentifully supplied with many dishes of meat dressed in various ways. The Normans sent agents into different countries to collect the most rare dishes for their tables, by which means, says John of Salisbury, this island, which is naturally productive of plenty and variety of provisions, was overflowed with everything that could inflame a luxurious appetite. The same writer says he was present at an entertainment which lasted from three o'clock in the afternoon to midnight; at which delicacies were served up which had been brought from Constantinople, Babylon, Alexandria, Palestine, Tripoli, Syria, and Phoenicia. The sumptuous entertainments which the kings of England gave to their nobles and prelates at the festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide diffused a taste for profuse and expensive banqueting; for the wealthy barons, prelates, and gentry, in their own castles and mansions, imitated the splendour of the royal entertainments. Great men had some kinds of provisions at their tables which are not now to be found in Britain. When Henry II. entertained his own court, the great officers of his army, and all the kings and great men in Ireland, at the feast of Christmas, 1171, the Irish princes and chieftains were quite astonished at the profusion and variety of provisions which they beheld, and were with difficulty prevailed on by Henry to eat the flesh of cranes, a kind of food to which they had not been accustomed. Dellegrout, maupigyrum, karumpie, and other dishes were then used, the composition of which is now unknown, or doubtful. Persons of rank and wealth had variety of drinks, as well as meats; for, besides wines of various kinds, they had pigment, morat, mead, hypocras, claret, cider, perry, and ale. The claret of those times was wine clarified and mixed with spices, and hypocras was wine mixed with honey. [Illustration: A COOK OF THE PERIOD.] The profusion of viands and drinks, obtained at great expense from different parts of the world for the gratification of the animal appetites at such festivals as have been described, naturally led to EXCESSES IN EATING AND DRINKING,