In 1348 Edward III. kept a grand Christmas at Guildford. "Orders were given to manufacture for the Christmas sports eighty tunics of buckram of different colours, and a large number of masks--some with faces of women, some with beards, some like angel heads of silver. There were to be mantles embroidered with heads of dragons, tunics wrought with heads and wings of peacocks, and embroidered in many other fantastic ways. The celebration of Christmas lasted from All Hallow's Eve, the 31st of October, till the day after the Purification, the 3rd of February. At the court a lord of misrule was appointed, who reigned during the whole of this period, and was called 'the master of merry disports.' He ruled over and organised all the games and sports, and during the period of his rule there was nothing but a succession of masques, disguisings, and dances of all kinds. All the nobles, even the Mayor of London, had an officer of this kind chosen in their households. Dancing was a very favourite amusement. It was practised by the nobility of both sexes. The damsels of London spent their evenings in dancing before their masters' doors, and the country lasses danced upon the village green."[24] [Illustration: THE LORD OF MISRULE.] A Royal Christmas was kept at Westminster, with great splendour, in 1358, when King Edward had two crowned guests at his feast; but these were present from no choice of their own: they were the victims to the fortune of war at Poictiers and Neville's Cross. And in 1362, King David of Scotland and the King of Cyprus met at King Edward's grand entertainments. The later years of his life were spent by this great warrior-king in partial retirement from public affairs, and under the influence of his mistress, Alice Perrers, while John of Gaunt took a leading part in the government of the state. In 1376 Edward the Black Prince died, and the same year King Edward III. kept his last Christmas at Westminster, the festival being made memorable by all the nobles of the realm attending to swear fealty to the son of the Black Prince, who, by the King's desire, took precedence of his uncles at the banquet as befitted the heir apparent to the crown. The King died on the 21st of June, 1377, having reigned for just over half a century. The old chronicler, Stowe, refers to a TERRIBLE CHRISTMAS TEMPEST, which he says occurred in 1362: "The King held his Christmas at Windsore, and the XV. day following a sore and vehement south-west winde brake forth, so hideous that it overthrew high houses, towers, steeples, and trees, and so bowed them, that the residue which fell not, but remained standing, were the weaker." King Edward the Third's wardrobe accounts witness to the COSTLY CHRISTMAS ROBES