On the dais at the upper end of the table, blazing with plate and crystal, stood the royal chair, with the Queen’s plate and knife and fork before it, exactly as if she had been present, while Leicester’s trencher and stool were set respectfully quite at the edge of the board.  In the neighbourhood of this post of honour sat Count Maurice, the Elector, the Pretender, and many illustrious English personages, with the fair Agnes Mansfeld, Princess Chimay, the daughters of William the Silent, and other dames of high degree.

Before the covers were removed, came limping up to the dais grim-visaged Martin Schenk, freshly wounded, but triumphant, from the sack of Werll, and black John Norris, scarcely cured of the spearwounds in his face and breast received at the relief of Grave.  The sword of knighthood was laid upon the shoulder of each hero, by the Earl of Leicester, as her Majesty’s vicegerent; and then the ushers marshalled the mighty feast.  Meats in the shape of lions, tigers, dragons, and leopards, flanked by peacocks, swans, pheasants, and turkeys “in their natural feathers as in their greatest pride,” disappeared, course after course, sonorous metal blowing meanwhile the most triumphant airs.  After the banquet came dancing, vaulting, tumbling; together with the “forces of Hercules, which gave great delight to the strangers,” after which the company separated until evensong.

Then again, “great was the feast,” says the chronicler,—­a mighty supper following hard upon the gigantic dinner.  After this there was tilting at the barriers, the young Earl of Essex and other knights bearing themselves more chivalrously than would seem to comport with so much eating and drinking.  Then, horrible to relate, came another “most sumptuous banquet of sugar-meates for the men-at-arms and the ladies,” after which, it being now midnight, the Lord of Leicester bade the whole company good rest, and the men-at-arms and ladies took their leave.

But while all this chivalrous banqueting and holiday-making was in hand, the Prince of Parma was in reality not quite so much “appalled” by the relief of Grave as his antagonist had imagined.  The Earl, flushed with the success of Hohenlo, already believed himself master of the country, and assured his government, that, if he should be reasonably well supplied, he would have Antwerp back again and Bruges besides before mid June.  Never, said he, was “the Prince of Parma so dejected nor so melancholy since he came into these countries, nor so far out of courage.”  And it is quite true that Alexander had reason to be discouraged.  He had but eight or nine thousand men, and no money to pay even this little force.  The soldiers were perishing daily, and nearly all the survivors were described by their chief, as sick or maimed.  The famine in the obedient Provinces was universal, the whole population was desperate with hunger; and the merchants, frightened by Drake’s successes, and appalled by the ruin all around them,