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Updated: May 9, 2025
Delighted with the sound of the swinging bells, the procession, the pomps, and the vanities of the said marriage, which was talked of long after the episcopal rejoicings, the women desired a harvest of Moorish girls, a deluge of old seneschals, and baskets full of Egyptian baptisms.
On either side of the young prince rode the two seneschals of Aquitaine, Sir Guiscard d'Angle and Sir Stephen Cossington, the one bearing the banner of the province and the other that of Saint George.
'O, the life as a lady at Enckworth Court! The flowers, the woods, the rooms, the pictures, the plate, and the jewels! Horses and carriages rattling and prancing, seneschals and pages, footmen hopping up and hopping down. It will be glory then! 'We might hire our father as one of my retainers, to increase it, said Ethelberta drily. Picotee's countenance fell. 'How shall we manage all about that?
Delighted with the sound of the swinging bells, the procession, the pomps, and the vanities of the said marriage, which was talked of long after the episcopal rejoicings, the women desired a harvest of Moorish girls, a deluge of old seneschals, and baskets full of Egyptian baptisms.
There were the bailiffs and seneschals, whose actual powers had quite disappeared, but whose offices served to complicate matters. Then there were the governors of provinces, well-fed gentlemen with fat salaries and little to do. The bulk of local administration fell into the hands of the intendants and their sub-delegates. The powers of the intendant were extensive.
The whole passage is worth giving in English, because historians tell us very little about the festive manners of the twelfth century: 'We wish and order that the King of Youth of Ambialet shall keep his festivals, have his seneschals, judges, servants, and officials, and that on the day appointed for the merry-making, the King of Youth shall demand from the most recently married man in the viscounty, and woman who shall have taken a husband, a pail of wine and a quarter of walnuts; and if they refuse, the king can order his officers to break the doors of their house, and neither we nor our bailiffs shall have the right to interfere.
'We have granted this favour to our youth, says the charter, 'because, having been witness of their merrymaking, we have taken great pleasure and satisfaction therein. You may guess, then, that in one way and another the King and his seneschals accumulated good store of wine by the end of the festival, when they shared it among the populace in a great carouse; nor were they held too strictly to account for the justice of particular fines by which the whole commonalty profited.
The preachers in Paris and throughout the kingdom delivered most vehement sermons against the King, the government, and the Protestants, and seemed to the King to be such "trumpeters of sedition" that he ordered the seneschals and other officers to put a stop to these turbulent discourses, censure their authors, and compel them to stick to their texts.
A grand cavalcade, in which Prince Louis Napoleon rode as one of the knights, left Eglinton Castle on the 28th of August at two in the afternoon, with heralds, banners, pursuivants, the knight-marshal, the jester, the King of the Tournament, the Queen of Beauty, and a glowing assemblage of knights and ladies, seneschals, chamberlains, esquires, pages, and men-at-arms, and took their way in procession to the lists, which were overlooked by galleries in which nearly two thousand spectators were accommodated; but all the while the rain came down in bucketfuls, never ceased while the tourney proceeded, and brought the proceedings to a premature and ignominious close.
At the same time, orders were sent in the duke's name to the seneschals of the castles and towns between Pavia and Milan to see that the roads and bridges were repaired and widened, in order that the bridal party might be able to travel without hindrance or inconvenience.
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