The Hon. Horace Walpole published an account of the formalities observed at the “setting” of Queen Elizabeth’s dinner-table, as described by a German traveler who was present on such an occasion. After the table-cloth had been spread two gentlemen appeared, one bearing a rod and the other having a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread. After kneeling three times with the utmost reverence, they placed these three articles upon the table and withdrew. Later in the ceremony came an unmarried lady dressed in white silk, and a matron carrying a tasting-knife. The former, having thrice prostrated herself, approached the table in the most graceful manner, and rubbed with bread and salt the plates provided for the guests. After this the yeomen of the guard, clad in scarlet, and each with a golden rose upon his back, entered bare-headed, bringing a course of four-and-twenty dishes. In the households of the English nobility a similar custom prevailed. A rhythmical code of instructions to servants of the fifteenth century required that the salt should always be the first article placed on the festive board after the cloth was laid:[337]— Tu dois mettre premièrement en tous lieux et en tout hostel La nappe, et après le sel; Cousteaulx, pain, vin et puis viande, Puis apporter ce qu’on demande. In the “Haven of Health” (Thomas Coghan, London, 1636) are these verses, quoted from an earlier author:— Sal primo poni debet, primoque reponi, Omnis mensa male ponitur absque sale. A curious little treatise, with the title “How to serve a Lord,” specifies how the principal salt-cellar shall be placed:— Thenne here-uppon the boteler or panter shall bring forthe his pryncipall salte … he shall sette the saler in the myddys of the tabull accordyng to the place where the principall soverain shall sette … thenne the seconde salte att the lower ende … then salte selers shall be sette uppon the syde tablys. The custom of placing salt upon the table before all else is thought to have originated in the ancient conception of this substance as the symbol of friendship; and indeed no banquet, however elaborate, was complete without it. The salt was, moreover, the last article to be removed from the hospitable board. It was as though our forefathers thereby intended that the guests, seeing salt on the table, might realize that they were “invited in love and were loved before they came;” and the fact that it was allowed to remain after the other dishes had been removed might serve to remind them that while feasts, like many other good things, come to an end, love and friendship may be perpetual.[338] Macrobius wrote, in the fifth century A. D., that the ancients did not consider themselves as either welcome or safe at a banquet unless the salt and the shrines of their gods were placed upon the table; the former indicating a cordial greeting, and the latter being a guarantee of protection.