These Lord Mayors’ banquets are deserving of a passing notice. One of them, given in 1663, is described by Pepys. It was served at one o’clock, and a bill of fare was placed with every salt cellar, whilst at the end of each table was a list of “persons proper” there to be seated. Pepys was placed at the merchant-strangers’ table, “where ten good dishes to a mess, with plenty of wine of all sorts.” Napkins and knives were, however, only supplied at the Mayor’s table to him and the Lords of the Privy Council, and Pepys complains bitterly that he and those who were seated with him had no napkins nor change of trenchers, and had to drink out of earthen pitchers. He, however, took his spoon and fork away with him, as was customary in those days with guests invited to entertainments. The dinner, he says, was provided by the Mayor and two sheriffs for the time being, and the whole cost was from £700 to £800. We are not told what wines were drunk, but a list of those which were served at a similar banquet on Lord Mayor’s Day, 1782,[269] may be of interest. It will give some idea of the quantity and character of the drinks consumed at such entertainments:— Port, 438 bottles. Lisbon, 220 ” Madeira, 90 ” Claret, 168 ” Champagne, 143 ” Burgundy, 116 ” Malmsey or sack, 4 ” Brandy, 4 ” Hock, 66 ” ---- Grand total, 1249 bottles. From that time to the present there has not been any very material change in the descriptions of the wines which are drunk at Lord Mayors’ feasts, except that the heavier wines have been to some extent displaced by those of a lighter description. Thus, at various banquets which were given between 1860 and 1876, the following descriptions were consumed on Lord Mayor’s Day:—Various kinds of port, sherry, madeira, hock, claret, champagne, and moselle. In other respects great changes have, however, taken place at these feasts. Earthenware drinking vessels are no longer in vogue, “trenchers” are changed, napkins and knives are not wanting, and guests do not (with the knowledge of their host) walk off with their spoons and forks! But to resume. Hard-drinking was not confined to kings and Lord Mayors, and one of the practices amongst all classes of society which had the effect of stimulating excess, and of which we are not yet completely rid, was the drinking of healths. A French writer who visited England about the close of the seventeenth century, and who described the ludicrous grimaces which accompanied the ceremony, says that “whilst in France the custom had disappeared from polite society, any one in England who drank at table without doing so to the health of some person present would be considered as drinking on the sly, and that it would be regarded as an act of incivility.”[270]