Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/66

 was a very sufficient table at the Priory, where the great Lords and Ladies, their Esquires, Pages, and Fools (so they named Men of Letters in those days) were so stuffed with peacocks, pheasants, swans, partridges, capons, salmon, carp, trout, boars' heads, larded beef, and venison of all sorts and sizes, to say nothing of the rivers of sauces monastically concocted of spices (such as the cursed monk &c., &c.), of cunning condiments, of sweet confections with one notable device in marchpane, imaging the new tower, that they must but for the wine assuredly have choked. But the wine saved them for it was ecclesiastical and entirely canonical both as to quantity and quality; so that between the monastic spices and the purple juices this was a day remembered by lords and ladies in more ways than one. Nor did the townsfolk or the country folk starve, and if you put for peacocks, ducks, and for swans, geese, for boar's head, pork, for venison, mutton, and for wine strong ale, they made as hearty a banquet in the meadow as their betters did in the refectory, and were no more fit to hear Evensong than the monks were to sing it; and indeed you could scarcely make out the Psalms for the clatter of the misereres, as one monk after another fell forwards and lost his balance. And that night it is said that the three Lords Marcher began to discuss theological questions, the which proves that they must have been half-seas-over. Why? Because when these great seigneurs were sober they never talked of such things, knowing that matters ecclesiastical are beyond a curly pate which must pass under the razor to tackle these