[As the practice of eating with forks gradually was introduced from
     Italy into England, napkins were not so generally used, but
     considered more as an ornament than a necessary.

                    “The laudable use of forks,
          Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,
          To the sparing of napkins.”

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, act v., sc. 3.

     The guests probably brought their own knife and fork with them in a
     case.—­M.B.]

or knives, which was very strange.  We went into the Buttry, and there stayed and talked, and then into the Hall again:  and there wine was offered and they drunk, I only drinking some hypocras, which do not break my vowe, it being, to the best of my present judgement, only a mixed compound drink, and not any wine.

[A drink, composed usually of red wine, but sometimes of white, with the addition of sugar and spices.  Sir Walter Scott ("Quarterly Review,” vol. xxxiii.) says, after quoting this passage of Pepys, “Assuredly his pieces of bacchanalian casuistry can only be matched by that of Fielding’s chaplain of Newgate, who preferred punch to wine, because the former was a liquor nowhere spoken against in Scripture.”]

If I am mistaken, God forgive me! but I hope and do think I am not.  By and by met with Creed; and we, with the others, went within the several Courts, and there saw the tables prepared for the Ladies and Judges and Bishopps:  all great sign of a great dinner to come.  By and by about one o’clock, before the Lord Mayor came, come into the Hall, from the room where they were first led into, the Lord Chancellor (Archbishopp before him), with the Lords of the Council, and other Bishopps, and they to dinner.  Anon comes the Lord Mayor, who went up to the lords, and then to the other tables to bid wellcome; and so all to dinner.  I sat near Proby, Baron, and Creed at the Merchant Strangers’ table; where ten good dishes to a messe, with plenty of wine of all sorts, of which I drunk none; but it was very unpleasing that we had no napkins nor change of trenchers, and drunk out of earthen pitchers and wooden dishes.—­[The City plate was probably melted during the Civil War.-M.B.]—­It happened that after the lords had half dined, came the French Embassador, up to the lords’ table, where he was to have sat; but finding the table set, he would not sit down nor dine with the Lord Mayor, who was not yet come, nor have a table to himself, which was offered; but in a discontent went away again.  After I had dined, I and Creed rose and went up and down the house, and up to the lady’s room, and there stayed gazing upon them.  But though there were many and fine, both young and old, yet I could not discern one handsome face there; which was very strange, nor did I find the lady that young Dawes married so pretty as I took her for, I having here an opportunity of looking much upon her very near.