Following the coronation of Elizabeth of York, as was the custom, they staged a magnificent banquet. In Westminster Hall, the High Steward, the Duke of Bedford, acted as the Queen’s Champion, riding a horse trapped in red roses and dragons. He led other mounted lords around the hall, keeping the crowds under control. On at stage built near a window on the left side of the hall, the king and his mother observed the banquet from behind a lattice and cloths of arras, unseen by the crowd.

 On another stage on the right were the kings of arms, heralds, pursuivants and select ‘strangers’ who viewed the feast. The queen entered with her train and the feast began. All participants were seated at nine tables. After washing her hands, the queen, wearing her crown, sat at the center table on a dais with John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury on her right and Katherine Woodville, Duchess of Bedford and her sister Cecily on her left.

Two of her women sat at her feet in front of the table and the countesses of Oxford and Rivers kneeled on either side holding a kerchief. At the next to the right wall sat the barons of the Cinque Ports and the members of the chancery. Seated at the left table were the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London along with distinguished merchants and citizens. There were two tables in the middle of the hall. On the right were the bishops and abbots on one side and the Lords Temporal on the other. At the lower end of the table were the judges, barons of the Exchequer, knights and other nobles. At the left table were the duchesses, countesses, baronesses, and the wives of the bannerets and bachelors, about eighty total participants.

The archbishop said grace before the feast began. Trumpeters and minstrels announced each course and the food arrived in a procession led by the sergeants of arms, the Controller and the treasurer, followed by the duke of Bedford and the earls of Derby and Nottingham on horseback. Next came Lord Fitzwater, the sewer, in a surcoat with tabard sleeves and a hood around his neck, carrying his signature towel.

The sewer was in charge of the entire ceremony, arranging the tables, seating the guests, and the tasting and serving of dishes. The first course, carried on the shoulders of knights, was announced by the trumpets. The dishes were presented to the high table so the queen could make her choices before they were offered to the others. The first course began with an elaborate decoration made of spun sugar, pastry or marzipan, paraded through the hall and the minstrels played as everyone dined. Then followed:

Shields of brawn in armor (flesh of boar, perhaps decorated with the queen’s heraldic arms)

Frumenty (wheat porridge with venison)

Bruet, a rich broth with meat

Hart powdered graunt Chars. (Ground deer meat mixed with spices, raisins and dates)

Pheasants

Swan with chawdron (spiced entrails)

Capons in high grease

Lampreys in galantine (eels in a seasoned bread sauce spiced with wine and vinegar)

Crane with cretonne (a thick meat soup with almonds and eggs)

Pikes in Latimer sauce

Heron in sauce

Carp in foil (carp in thin pastry)

Kid

Perch in jelly

Coneys in high grease (rabbit)

Mutton richly garnished

Valence baked (raisins or almonds)

Custard

Tart poleyn (chicken tart

Leyse damask (prunes in residual yeast from ale or wine in rosewater)

Fruit Synoper (fruit dessert)

Fruit Formage (perhaps another type of fruit dessert)

Another subtlety, meant to impress and may have been eaten but mostly served as decoration

The tables were cleared for the second course, as people conversed, exchanging gossip or commenting on the various fashions on display. Then, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, another subtlety served with hippocras (spiced wine) was presented before another twenty-seven dishes were served.

Mawmenny (a broth of ground capon, pork or beef thickened with flour or breadcrumbs in a wine sauce and garnished with lozenges of gold leaf)

Roast peacock dressed in its own plumage

Bitterns

Pheasants

Browes (a small bird served in broth or gravy)

Egrets in beorwetye (possibly beer sauce)

Cocks

Partridges

Sturgeon in fresh fennel

Plovers

Suckling rabbit

Seal in fenyn (leeks)

Red shanks (a type of game bird)

Snipe

Quails

Larks engrailed (probably in a pie)

Crayfish

Venison in royal paste (pastry)

Baked quinces

Marchpane royal (marzipan)

Cold baked meats

Lethe of Cyprus (slices of jellied dessert, perhaps with fruits from Cyprus)

Fritters

Castles of jelly in temple-wise made

A final subtlety

Finally, after all had dined, the queen distributed largesse three times per the custom of a coronation. The Garter King of Arms, along with other kings of arms, heralds and pursuivants, did their obeisance and in the name of all the officers, gave thanks to the Queen saying:

“Right high, mighty, most noble and excellent Princess, most Christian Queen, and all our most dread sovereign and liege lady, we, the officers of arms and servants of all nobles, beseech Almighty God to thank you for the great and abundant largesse which Your Grace has given us in honor of your most honorable and righteous coronation, and to send Your Grace to live in honor and virtue”.

As he cried, more largesse was distributed ‘in five places in the hall’.

The Queen’s minstrels played and after them, the minstrels of other estates. A bowl and towel was presented to the Queen to wash her hands as the trumpets sounded. They then served her fruit and wafers. The Lord Mayor, Sir William Horne, came forward and offered her the traditional golden goblet of hippocras as she rewarded him with another gold cup with a cover.

“And after the feast the Queen departed with God’s blessing and the rejoicing of many a true Englishman’s heart”.

The following morning, the King and Queen, the Lady Margaret Beaufort and the princesses, heard Mass in St. Stephen’s Chapel, nobly accompanied by eighty peeresses, ladies and gentlewomen. The Queen then processed to the Parliament chamber to received guests sitting on her throne under a canopy of estate, with the Lady Margaret seated to her right and her aunt, the Duchess of Bedford and her sister Cecily of York on her left.

They all sat together at a banquet that followed, attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and various duchesses and baronesses. After the feast, Elizabeth presided over the court celebrations as she and her ladies danced. On that day, the king finally assigned Elizabeth her dower as Queen of England and on the following day, she went by barge to Greenwich Palace.

Further reading:  “Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485-1547 by Retha Warnicke, “Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, Volume 4” by John Leland and Thomas Hearne, “Elizabeth of York” by Arlene Naylor Okerlund, “Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World” by Alison Weir