But the inutility of home vineyards is demonstrated from the cheapness of foreign wines at this time. In 1342 the price of Gascon wines in London was 4_d._, and that of Rhenish, 6_d._ per gallon; and in 1389, foreign wine was only 20_s._ per tun for the best, and 13_s._ 4_d._ for the second--that is, about three halfpence a dozen. But to turn to the king himself. The pageant, or royal entertainment, on the accession of Richard II. is described by the chronicler Walsingham. The city was most richly adorned, and the conduits ran with wine for three hours. In the upper end of the Cheap was erected a castle with four towers, on two sides of which ran forth wine abundantly. In the towers were placed four beautiful girls dressed in white, who, on the king’s approach, blew in his face leaves of gold, and filling cups of gold with wine at the spouts of the castle, presented them to the king and his nobles. The citizens had signified their joy in much the same way before, when Edward I. returned from the Holy Land. Maitland, in his _London_, seems to have regarded with wonder the fact that the very conduits in the streets through which the cavalcade passed ran with wine; but it happened before, and happened very often afterwards. Mr. Morewood (_Hist. Ineb. Liq._) fell into the same error, and exclaims, ‘To this extravagance there are few parallels, except that of Polemkin, when he gave a magnificent feast to the Empress Catherine, at his palace in the Taurida, when the conservatory fountains were filled with champagne and claret, and served to the company by means of silver pumps applied to those reservoirs.’ The king was young when he came to the throne, extravagant, and fond of luxury. His Christmases seem to have been kept with especial splendour, and this to the very close of his unfortunate reign. In 1399 there was a royal Christmas at Westminster, when the consumption was prodigious. In the previous Christmas, at Lichfield, where the pope’s nuncio and other foreigners were present, they got rid of two hundred tuns of wine and two thousand oxen. But the king had a profligate set about him--De la Pole, De Vere, &c.; while he was grossly misled by the advice of Robert Tresylian, his Chief Justice of the King’s Bench; and no better epitome of the king’s ill star can be given than a stanza from the tragedy of _The Fall of Robert Tresylian_ (1388): Thus the king, outleaping the limits of his law, Not reigning but raging, as youth did him entice, Wise and worthy persons from court did daily draw, Sage counsel set at nought, proud vaunters were in price, And roisters bear the rule, which wasted all in vice: Of riot and excess grew scarcity and lack, Of lacking came taxing, and so went wealth to rack.