The entertainment of a noble visitor was hospitable and generous. This
is shown in the case of John Casimir, Count Palatine of the Rhine and
Duke of Bavaria. He arrived about seven of the clock on the evening of
22nd January 1579. He landed at the Tower, and was there received by
divers noblemen and others, who conveyed him by cresset and torchlight
to the house of Sir Thomas Gresham in Bishopsgate Street, where he
was received with the sounding of trumpets, drums, fifes, and other
instruments, and a great concourse of people; here he rested for
some days. He was then taken by some of the nobility to the Queen at
Westminster, and lodged at Somerset House. The week after he hunted
at Hampton Court. On Sunday the first of February he was entertained
with a great tilting at Westminster; on Monday with a sword-fight at
barriers. On Tuesday he dined with the Mayor; on Wednesday with the
Duchess of Suffolk at the Barbican; on Thursday at the Steelyard. On
February the 8th he was made a Knight of the Garter. And when he went
away he took with him presents worth 3000 crowns.
The tiltings at Westminster attracted an immense number of spectators:
in the year 1581 so great was the concourse and so crowded were the
scaffolds that they broke down, and many persons were injured or killed.
April the 4th, 1581, was a day to be remembered. On that day the Queen
came from Greenwich by water to Deptford, where there was moored a
certain ship newly returned from a voyage round the world, the first
made by an Englishman. The ship was called _The Golden Hind_, the
Captain, Francis Drake. The Queen examined the ship, questioned the
Captain, looked at the charts, and saw the things collected and brought
home. Then she graciously dined on board, and after dinner conferred
the honour of knighthood upon the Captain. An immense number of persons
were gathered to see the Queen, and to gaze upon the ship which had
been all round the world. A wooden bridge on which one hundred persons
were standing broke, but happily none were killed. The ship was laid
up in Deptford Dockyard, till she was cut to pieces by visitors taking
each a piece of her timbers away. When she was at length broken up, a
chair was made out of the wood, and given by a Mr. John Davis to the
University of Oxford.
The observance of the Maundy was held in great state:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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