Don Sebastian of Portugal, being no epicure himself, determined to train his people by issuing a sumptuary edict that none of his subjects might have more than two dishes, and those of the simplest character, for their meals; but he forgot that no decree could alter the daily life of his people. Bianca of Milan, whom Maximilian the “Moneyless” married for her dowry, died of indigestion brought on by eating too freely of snails--“the large and lively sort,” reared for the market in the fierce heat below. Royal fatalities of this kind have been numerous. Thus in 1740 Charles, the brother and successor of Joseph I., not only went out hunting in the wet when he had the gout, but persisted in eating voraciously of mushrooms stewed in oil. Like Louis Philippe, he would not believe his medical advisers as they stood at his bedside “disputing as to whether mushrooms were a digestible diet or the contrary;” but, dismissing them from his presence, he ordered his favourite delicacy, the penalty for eating which was his death. Among our early kings who in some measure patronised the culinary art may be mentioned Richard Cœur de Lion, who loved venison, “the stealers of which he punished by the most horrible of mutilations;” while his brother John, who was equally fond of venison, is reported to have given great offence to certain clerical gentlemen by a joke at dinner upon a fat haunch, which, he said, “had come from a noble hart that had never heard mass,” which was regarded as a reflection on their corpulency. Edward III. paid every attention to good cheer; and as many as two thousand cooks are said to have been employed in the royal kitchen of Richard II., his chief _cuisinier_ having been known by the initials C. S. S., under which he wrote a culinary work, “On the Forme of Cury,” in which Richard II. is spoken of as his royal master, “the best and royallest viander of all Christian kynges.” A porpoise was a fashionable dish in the time of Henry V., who first had it at the royal table, and England, it is said, had never seen a king who gave dinners on so extravagantly profuse a scale as Edward IV.[31] Henry VIII. was an epicure, and a liberal rewarder “of that sort of merit which ministered to the gratification” of his palate, on one occasion having been so well pleased with the flavour of a new pudding that he gave a manor to the inventor. It may be added that Cardinal Campeggio--one of the legates charged to treat with Henry VIII. concerning his divorce from Catherine--drew up a report on the state of the English cookery, as compared with that of Italy and France, for the special use of the Pope.