George Neville: his archbishop of York’s feast 1465

There were 3,000 guests and the feast lasted a week:-

There was a frenzy of butchery. The carcasses disembowelled, plucked, prepared and dressed for the occasion included 1,000 sheep, 500 deer of various varieties, 400 swans, 2,000 each of pigs and chickens, 104 peacocks, 12 ‘porpoises and seals’ and 6 wild bulls. An army of pastry-makers produced nearly 10,000 pastries, pies and tarts, as well as ‘sugared delicates and wafers’ with which the more privileged of the sated guests would idly toy as they digested the twenty-two pounds of meat that, on average, each was served. All this was washed down with three hundred tuns* of ale and a hundred tuns of wine.”

* A tun is the equivalent of 256 gallons

Thomas Penn The Brothers York: An English tragedy pp134-5

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