Usually the Court performances, like the masques, were important, almost official occasions, and many guests, including the members of the diplomatic corps, were invited. To provide accommodation for so numerous an audience, a large room was needed. Hampton Court possessed a splendid room for the purpose in the Great Banqueting Hall, one hundred and six feet in length and forty feet in breadth. But the palace at Whitehall for many years had no room of a similar character. For the performance of a masque there in 1559 the Queen erected a temporary "Banqueting House." Again, in 1572, to entertain the Duke of Montmorency, Ambassador from France, she had a large "Banketting House made at Whitehall," covered with canvas and decorated with ivy and flowers gathered fresh from the fields. An account of the structure may be found in the records of the Office of the Revels. Perhaps, however, the most elaborate and substantial of these "banqueting houses" was that erected in 1581, to entertain the ambassadors from France who came to treat of a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duc d'Anjou. The structure is thus described by Holinshed in his _Chronicle_:[656] This year (against the coming of certain commissioners out of France into England), by Her Majesty's appointment, on the sixth and twentieth day of March, in the morning (being Easter Day), a Banqueting House was begun at Westminster, on the south-west side of Her Majesty's palace of Whitehall, made in manner and form of a long square, three hundred thirty and two foot in measure about; thirty principals made of great masts, being forty foot in length apiece, standing upright; between every one of these masts ten foot asunder and more. The walls of this house were closed with canvas, and painted all the outsides of the same most artificially, with a work called rustic, much like stone. This house had two hundred ninety and two lights of glass. The sides within the same house was made with ten heights of degrees for people to stand upon; and in the top of this house was wrought most cunningly upon canvas works of ivy and holly, with pendants made of wicker rods, garnished with bay, rue, and all manner of strange flowers garnished with spangles of gold; as also beautified with hanging toseans made of holly and ivy, with all manner of strange fruits, as pomegranates, oranges, pompions, cucumbers, grapes, carrots, with such other like, spangled with gold, and most richly hanged. Betwixt these works of bays and ivy were great spaces of canvas, which was most cunningly painted, the clouds with stars, the sun and sun-beams, with diverse other coats of sundry sorts belonging to the Queen's Majesty, most richly garnished with gold. There were of all manner of persons working on this house to the number of three hundred seventy