It was here, in his palace of Eltham, that Edward the Third held several parliaments; in one of which his faithful commons petitioned him to make his grandson, Richard of Bordeaux, Prince of Wales. In 1364, the same monarch gave a splendid banquet at Eltham, in honour of King John of France, whom the fate of war had made his prisoner, but whose captivity was soothed by every demonstration of respect and hospitality on the part of his royal brother and his consort. “The court of this sovereign,” says Warner, “was the very theatre of sumptuous carousal and romantic elegance. The martial amusements of tilts and tournaments, which were always accompanied by splendid feasts, were so much encouraged, that we have instances of their being solemnly celebrated by royal command, in different cities, no less than seven times in the course of one year.” “This gentle king of England,” says Froissart, “the better to feste these strange lordes and all their company, held a great court on Trinity Monday in the Friers, whereat he and the queene his mother were lodged, keeping their house eche of them apart. At this feaste, the king had well five hundred knights, and fifteen were new made. And the queene had well in her courte sixty ladies and damozelles. There might be seen great nobles, plenty of all manner of straunge vitaile. There were ladies and damozelles freshely apparelled, ready to have daunced if they might have leave.” The above, though applied by Froissart to the reception of John of Hainault, was a general feature in the court life of this period; and it is no wonder that King John of France, whom Prince Edward had pronounced “the bravest of knights,” found the weight of captivity much lightened in the congenial atmosphere of Eltham palace. The evening of Edward’s reign, however, exhibited a very different picture. Feast and tournament were gone, or rather the pleasures which they had once furnished to that chivalrous monarch during a long protracted reign, had now lost their zest. He spent the last months of his life between Eltham palace and his manor at Shene. “Decay,” says the historian, “had fallen heavy on body and spirit; he was incapable of doing much, and he did nothing. The ministers and courtiers crowded round the Duke of Lancaster, Prince Richard, and his mother. The old man was left to his mistress; and even she, it is said, after drawing his valuable ring from his finger, abandoned him in his dying moments,” The splendour of Eltham, however, was speedily revived in the person of his grandson, Richard the Second, whose reign, dazzling at its commencement, inglorious in its course, and disastrous at its close, the poet Gray has thus strikingly depicted:--