Note 282 — The Library.

Lysander is perfectly correct about the feast which was given at the archbishop's inthronization; as the particulars of it—"out of an old paper roll in the archives of the Bodleian library," are given by Hearne in the sixth volume of Leland's Collectanea, p. 1-14: and a most extraordinary and amusing bill of fare it is. The last twenty dinners given by the Lord Mayors at Guildhall, upon the first day of their mayoralties, were only sandwiches—compared with such a repast! What does the reader think of 2000 chickens, 4000 pigeons, 4000 coneys, 500 "and mo," stags, bucks, and roes, with 4000 "pasties of venison colde?"—and these barely an 18th part of the kind of meats served up! At the high table our amiable Earl of Worcester was seated, with the Archbishop, three Bishops, the Duke of Suffolk, and the Earl of Oxford. The fictitious archiepiscopal feast was the one intended to be given by Nevell to Edward IV.; when the latter "appointed a day to come to hunt in More in Hertfordshire, and make merry with him." Nevell made magnificent preparations for the royal visit; but instead of receiving the monarch as a guest, he was saluted by some of his officers, who "arrested him for treason," and imprisoned him at Calais and Guisnes. The cause of this sudden, and apparently monstrous, conduct, on the part of Edward, has not been told by Stow (Chronicles, p. 426; edit. 1615), nor by Godwyn, (Catalogue of the Bishops of England, p. 481, edit. 1601): both of whom relate the fact with singular naiveté. I have a strong suspicion that Nevell was so far a bibliomaniac as to have had a curious collection of astrological books; for "there was greate correspondency betweene this Archbishop and the Hermetique philosophers of his time; and this is partly confirmed to me from Ripley's dedication of his 'Medulla' to him, ann. 1746; as also the presentation of Norton's 'Ordinall,'" &c. Thus writes Ashmole, in his Theatrum Chemicum, p. 455.