One of the chief amusements of James I. and his Court were masques and emblematic pageants, and it appears by what is entitled “A Briefe Collection of the Extraordinarie Payments” of the Court of James I., from 1603 to the end of 1609, that the “charges for masks” amounted to £4215.[72] An imposing instance occurred in the year 1610, to commemorate the Queen’s eldest son, Henry, being created Prince of Wales. On this occasion the “whole Court of England, the Queen, the Princess-Royal, and all the aristocratic beauties of the day were busy devising robes, arranging jewels, and practising steps and movements for this beautiful poem of action, in which music, painting, dancing, and decoration, guided by the taste of Inigo Jones, were all called into employment to make the palace of Whitehall a scene of enchantment. In this masque the Court ladies personated the nymphs of the principal rivers, the Queen represented the Empress of Streams, and the little Prince Charles, in the character of Zephyr, attended by twelve little ladies, was to deliver the Queen’s presents to his elder brother, the newly created Prince of Wales, the presentation being the ostensible business of the masque. One of the chief attractions of this entertainment was a ballet, which was so arranged that Prince Charles always danced encircled by his little ladies, all of whom had been so carefully trained that they were rapturously applauded by the whole Court. This festive scene was perhaps one of the brightest and happiest in the Queen’s life, for when in after days some one accidentally recalled it to her memory after the death of Prince Henry, she gave way to the most acute grief.[73] But some of these magnificent masques appear to have been conducted with but little attention to decorum. The Countess of Dorset mentions in her Memoirs that there was “much talk of a mask which the Queen held at Winchester, and how all the ladies about the Court had gotten such ill names, that it was grown a scandalous place; and the Queen herself was much fallen from her former greatness and reputation she had in the world.” Peyton’s censure is even stronger. “The masks,” he says, “and plays at Whitehall were used only as incentives for lust; therefore the courtiers invited the citizens’ wives to those shows on purpose to defile them. There is not a chamber nor lobby, if it could speak, but would verify this.”