Free All the King's Cooks by Peter Brears Page A

Lord’s-side dresser, and an usher to guard the door. All of these later dined on the food left after the senior officers had departed. 2
    In the Great Watching Chamber and the other, smaller, chambers where specified officers such as the Master of the Horse, the Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners, the Secretaries and the servants of the King’s and Queen’s Privy Chambers took their meals, there would be far less ceremony. Serving and eating habits herewere probably just like those to be found every day in any noble dining chamber. Good table manners would be de rigueur , especially since everyone dining here would have been sent away from home when quite young to be a servant in a household of equal or superior status to his own, in order to gain those polite accomplishments which would elevate him from the lower orders for the rest of his days.
    When meals were to be served in the Great Watching Chamber, the tables would be set up by the pages, who may have stored them in their adjacent pages’ chamber when not in use.

    41.   Dining in Chamber There are no contemporary illustrations of the nobles dining in the Council and Great Watching Chambers, but this detail shows them being served in a tent at ‘The Field of the Cloth of Gold’. It is interesting to speculate whether the figure at the end of the table is Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Lord Great Master. It bears a certain resemblance to him, and his appearance here, close to the unique representations of the Kitchen, Boiling House, Bakehouse and Buttery which he controlled, would be most appropriate.
    Since the tables were only set up at mealtimes, they lacked the thick tops and solid frames of later periods, but instead would have relatively light planked tops, supported at intervals on trestles. Each trestle had one horizontal bar into which three mortices were cut, one at one end and two at the other, at slightly outward-splaying angles. Once the tenoned ends of the three legs had been inserted in the mortices, each trestle stood really firm on the floor, but once the weight of the table-top had been removed the legs could be easily pulled out, reducing the trestle to four short, interchangeable bars ideal for stacking in any convenient place 3
    The yeoman and groom ewerers for the King’s mouth then laid the cloth and prepared the ewery board for hand-washing, leaving the gentleman usher to supervise the setting of the table with silverware, rather than the gold used by the King, brought up from the scullery. 4 Manchet and cheat loaves now arrived from the pantry, wine, beer and ale from the butteries, and the food from the Lord’s-side dresser. Contemporary books of manners suggest that on taking their places, the Lord Chamberlain and his companions would have found everything they needed set out before them. 5 The silver trenchers – or shallow plates – probably had smaller flat, round wooden trenchers placed inside them to provide a good cutting service and also to protect the polished silver from serious damage. One contemporary set ordered for Sir Thomas Brudenell was described as having ‘round trenchers of silver … of 6 ounces [175g] the piece … to lay a wooden trencher in the midst, as ye know the manner is, and about the edge would be some pretty print or work’. 6 To the right of the trencher would lie a silver spoon, and perhaps a narrow, sharp-pointed eating knife – although it was customary for everyone to carry his own in a sheath hung from his belt – and above it, a drinking cup of silver or perhaps fine Venetian glass. To the left lay a manchet loaf and a fine linen damask napkin measuring some 45 by 27 inches (114 by 68.5cm), folded two or three times along its length and then probably crosswise to form a neat rectangle. 7
    After grace, each diner opened his napkin into a long strip and placed it either over his left shoulder or across his left forearm, for its purpose was simply to dry the lips before and after