All the King's Cooks (2 page)

Together with my colleagues Marc Meltonville, Gary Smedley and Adrian Worrell, I arrived at the Palace late on the previous evening to take up residence in the original confectioners’ quarters. Next morning we were given our first access to the kitchen just after 8a.m., with under an hour to clad the early stoves with firebrick and sheet metal, set up the work-tables with all their equipment, carry in the logs, charcoal, water and food and put everything in place. In the middle of all this the butcher arrived with the roasting joint for that day, a huge pig, over five feet from snout to rump, which had to be mounted on the Palace’s slender spits. Work on this had hardly started when the press rushed in, dozens of reporters and photographers representing newspapers, magazines and agencies, along with several national and regional television and radio crews. They all gave excellent coverage for
the event, ensuring its success. Over the next few days tens of thousands of visitors passed through the kitchens, many being international tourists spending Christmas in London, along with others from the Home Counties.

Everyone was both enthusiastic and interested, asking numerous questions, which we answered as our 20th-century selves, not as our 16th-century predecessors. Most English people would have been puzzled, probably beyond credibility, had we attempted Tudor speech, while this would have been totally unintelligible to visitors from overseas. The purpose of the enterprise was to interact with, and inform the public about the kitchens and Tudor food in the most easily-approached and accessible manner.

This initial period of kitchen re-enactment proved so popular and commercially successful that it was repeated and expanded year by year, now being in its twentieth season. Over this period hundreds of thousands of people have been able to see, first-hand, that the food cooked for Henry’s court was of the finest quality, tenderly cooked and richly flavoured. They have also seen how the table manners of the period were neat, efficient, cleanly and elegant, vastly different from those invented by 20th century filmmakers, actors and presenters, with their belching, gnawing, food-throwing and other ridiculous obscenities.

The project has produced other benefits too, particularly in the understanding of the form and function of the kitchens. By actually living and working here, carrying out identical operations to those of the Tudor cooks, and with a knowledge of their household regulations or ordinances, many of the subtleties of the building’s design have slowly become apparent. In the following chapters, the reader will be given a tour of the Hampton Court kitchens built by Henry VIII. Each suite of rooms will be introduced in turn, commencing with the administrative offices at the back gate, going into the now demolished departments in the outer court, then following the progress of the food from its reception into the kitchens through to its service in the hall and chambers, and the table-manners employed there. It is an impressive journey, one which slowly reveals the vast expertise and practical knowledge of its original designers as incorporated into their 400 by 90ft (122 by 27m) structure.

Unfortunately it cannot convey some of the most memorable and moving experiences of staging and working in the palace. These always take you by surprise. When least expected, centuries can suddenly slip away, as on one black January night when groups of us all in Tudor clothes, were walking, chatting, along the lantern-lit passages amid the thick muffling mist which had risen from the Thames. The perfect authenticity sent a shiver down the spine: there was nothing separating us from the 1540s. Many other memories are based on food, as should be expected, everything from pungent mustards to rich succulent stews, massive pies and intricate sugarwork. Here there is every opportunity to enjoy and appreciate dishes cooked for Henry VIII, his queens, courtiers and servants, the final chapter giving both the menus for their meals, and contemporary recipes (in modernised form) for cooking each individual dish. The only way to fully appreciate the fine quality of England’s Tudor food heritage is to take this book into the kitchen, and start cooking. The results will amply repay the effort.

Peter Brears
Leeds 2010.

NOTE: In the following chapters, the positions of each room, as shown in the plan and elevation of the kitchens (fig. 1) pp. 2–3, is indicated by giving its number in round brackets. Where the name of any section begins with a capital letter, as in ‘the Pastry’, this refers to this division of the household administration, but if it is entirely lower case, as in ‘the pastry’, this refers to the rooms in which its practical work was undertaken.

Today it can be difficult to comprehend the wide range of practical problems involved in operating a Tudor royal household. First, there was its great size – up to around twelve hundred people in winter and about eight hundred in summer. Then there was its importance – it was a major centre of government, the focus of international, national and personal ambitions, and our most visible national status symbol, constantly observed by ambassadors and other visitors from throughout Christendom. It was also a remarkably mobile institution, moving from palace to palace every few weeks during the winter, going on extended progresses from great house to great house in summer. To efficiently feed and manage such a complex organisation required real skill and experience, especially at a time when only carts, packhorses and barges were available for transport, roads were largely unmade, and food preservation restricted to drying and salting.

Good hospitality has always been seen as a significant indicator of a monarch’s power and status. Edward IV’s Black Book (1472) of royal household regulations traced its origins back to the legendary King Lud, who ensured that every day his tables were loaded with excellent, if basic foods from eight in the morning till seven in the evening, and to King Cassibellan, who supposedly organised one great feast that necessitated the slaughter of 40,000 cattle, 100,000 sheep and 30,000 deer and involved
‘many disguisings, plais, minstralsye and sportes’. On somewhat safer ground, the Black Book went on to describe Henry I as a great meat-giver, Edward II as the king who could feed all his court from the beef and mutton bred in his parks, and Edward III as a great reformer of the royal household. His was ‘the house of very policy, the flower of England; [he was] the first setter of certainty among his domestics upon a grounded rule’.
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The Black Book’s comprehensive regulations, or ‘ordinances’, were extended by Cardinal Wolsey at the palace of Eltham in 1526 and subsequently by Thomas Cromwell in 1540, each with the aim of improving the control of the household’s provisions and expenditure.

Although the royal household was a complex organisation, it was basically divided into four units. The Privy Chamber served the King’s personal needs, the Great Chamber those of the leading nobles and household officers, the Queen’s Side served the Queen and her household, and the former Lord Steward’s department provided all the provisions, equipment, fuel and major financial and catering services for most of the court. With the exception of a few separate departments, such as the Chapel Royal, the Jewel House, the Tents and Revels, the Works, the Ordnance and the Stables, which were directly responsible to the King, in 1540 the household was placed under the control of a Lord Great Master. Here we shall see how he and his staff administered the former Lord Steward’s department at just one of Henry VIII’s palaces, Hampton Court.

When you approach the long Tudor west front of Hampton Court Palace, you see the façade of Wolsey’s Base Court lodgings flanked by two projecting wings. The one on the right was the Great House of Ease, or latrine block, while the one on the left was the Back Gate, the entrance to the main kitchen buildings. Here, on the first floor above the gate passage, was the Counting House, the administrative centre of the royal household. In the Black Book its purpose had been defined as the maintenance of

worship and welfare of the hoole household … in whyche the corrections and judgements be gevyn; in whome ys taken the audyte of all thinges of thys courte, beying of the [Treasurer’s]
charge, as principal hedde of all other officers in whom every officer of the household takyth hys charge on hys knee, promissing trouthe and obedyance to the King, and to the rules of thys office; for at the green-cloth ys alwey represented the Kinges power touching matters of thys household.
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To stress this power, the Counting House bore its own coat of arms – a key and a white rod arranged as a diagonal cross, indicating its right to open, close, and administer justice to all household offices. These devices were set on a green background to represent the ‘greencloth’, the table covered in green baize which stood in the centre of the counting house, around which all the chief officers sat when transacting their business. This is how its component parts are described in the building accounts:
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A pair of timbers for a table in the newe counting house …
for an iron trestle for the same table …
for 2 locks for the cupboard in the same table …
for 6 heart rings [handles] for the tills [drawers] in the same
table.

As head of the entire household, the Lord Great Master presided at the greencloth. This important post was first held by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, from 1540 to 1545, and then by William Paulet, Lord St John. These nobles were directly responsible to the King for regulating every aspect of his household, enforcing and introducing appropriate financial and management regulations, defining the duties of all their officers, reducing waste, ensuring efficiency, and disciplining those who infringed the numerous rules.

Second in command came the Treasurer of the Household, Sir Thomas Cheney. He was similarly responsible for the regulation and supply of the household, the Black Book describing how on taking up his appointment he should make a full inventory of all the goods placed in his care, oversee the acquisition of food, forage, fuel, wines and so on, make sure that everything in his office was efficiently controlled and run, as well as administering justice over his household staff – ‘cheryssing the good officer, and punishing the evyll doer’ as necessary.
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In third place, Sir John Gage served the Treasurer as Comptroller of the Household. It was his job to keep detailed accounts ‘as of every pewter dysshe, cup of tree [wood], pottes of leather or earth, as of othyr many small and infinite spyces and other thinges’, such as foodstuffs, gold and silver. He also managed the Treasurer’s finances, agreed the specifications and prices of goods supplied to the household, ordered the payment of accounts from the various domestic offices, audited their returns, reported on their performance, and listed the items remaining in them when the court moved on to another property.
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Each of these great officers held his position by the direct authority of the King as represented by a white staff of office – hence their combined title of the White Sticks. In practice, they supervised the overall management of the household, at least one of the three having to be present at the greencloth in the counting house between eight and nine each morning to inspect its financial records, uncover any unreasonable wastage, and punish those responsible for incurring it.
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The White Sticks also determined the remuneration of all the household staff. Senior staff, such as the cofferer, were paid an annual sum, in his case £50 a year, while the junior staff, such as sergeants and clerks, or yeomen, grooms and pages, received a daily rate of 16d and 6d respectively when on duty, and ‘board wages’ (a subsistence allowance) of 6d and 4d respectively, if they were sick.
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Of greater importance, however, was the granting of ‘bouche of court’ – the right to receive food and other necessaries from the court. Those entitled to this privilege were listed in an ‘ordinary’ prepared by the officers of the Greencloth – this was a document stating precisely what each person should receive according to his rank.
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A duke, for example, received:

every of them for their Bouche of Court in the morning one chett lofe [brown loaf], one manchett [small white loaf], one gallon of ale; for the afternoone, one manchett, one gallon of ale; and after supper, one chet lofe, one manchet, one gallon of ale, one pitcher of wyne, and from the last day of October unto the first day of April, one torch, one pricket [candle], two sises [small candles], one pound of white lights, ten talshides [timbers for fuel], eight faggots and … from the last day of March
unto the first day of November, to have moyety [half] of the said waxe, white lights, wood and coals, which doth amount in money by the year to the summe of £39 13s 4d.

At the other end of the scale, ordinary officers of the household received:
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For their Bouche after supper, everie of them being lodged within the court, dim’ [half] chet lofe, dim’ gallon of ale; and from the last day of October unto the first day of Aprill, by the day, two sises, one pound white lights, two talhides, two faggots; and from the last day of March unto the first day of November, to have the moyety of the said waxe, white lights, wood and coals, amounting to the sum of £4 7s 5d.

The ordinary also listed those entitled to have both bouche of court and their dinners and suppers (to be either consumed in the King’s Chamber or in the Queen’s Side, or with the remainder of the household), and those who were entitled only to their food and wages. The details of each individual’s menu were minutely specified, with regard both to content and to cost, the King’s and Queen’s costing a massive £3 5s 0d daily, while that of a servant or porter cost about 2
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/
₄
d.
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Just how much it could cost to feed the entire court for a year is given in an ordinary of the 1540s, which details an expenditure of £16,327 5s 5d on food alone, and a further £4,445 2s 6d on the transport costs, fuel and equipment required for its acquisition and preparation.
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