Noel, noel, noel,
Noel sing we may
Because the King of all Kings
Was born this blessed day.

He brought unto them tidings
Of gladness and of mirth,
Which cometh to all people by
This holy infant’s birth.

Noel, noel, noel,
Noel sing we may
Because the King of all Kings
Was born this blessed day.

The “blessed day” wore on.  Gifts and sports filled the happy hours.  In the royal banqueting hall the Christmas dinner was royally set and served, and King and Queen and Princes, with attendant nobles and holiday guests, partook of the strong dishes of those old days of hearty appetites.

“A shield of brawn with mustard, boyl’d capon, a chine of beef roasted, a neat’s tongue roasted, a pig roasted, chewets baked, goose, swan and turkey roasted, a haunch of venison roasted, a pasty of venison, a kid stuffed with pudding, an olive-pye, capons and dowsets, sallats and fricases”—­all these and much more, with strong beer and spiced ale to wash the dinner down, crowned the royal board, while the great boar’s head and the Christmas pie, borne in with great parade, were placed on the table joyously decked with holly and rosemary and bay.  It was a great ceremony—­this bringing in of the boar’s head.  First came an attendant, so the old record tells us,

“attyr’d in a horseman’s coat with a Boares-speare in his hande; next to him another huntsman in greene, with a bloody faulchion drawne; next to him two pages in tafatye sarcenet, each of them with a messe of mustard; next to whom came hee that carried the Boareshead, crosst with a greene silk scarfe, by which hunge the empty scabbard of the faulchion which was carried before him.”

After the dinner—­the boar’s head having been wrestled for by some of the royal yeomen—­came the wassail or health-drinking.  Then the King said: 

“And now, Baby Charles, let us hear the boon ye were to crave of us at wassail as the guerdon for the holder of the lucky raisin in Master Sandy’s snapdragon.”

And the little eleven-year-old Prince stood up before the company in all his brave attire, glanced at his brother Prince Henry, and then facing the King said boldly: 

“I pray you, my father and my Hege, grant me as the boon I ask—­the freeing of Walter Raleigh.”

At this altogether startling and unlooked-for request, amazement and consternation appeared on the faces around the royal banqueting board, and the King put down his untasted tankard of spiced ale, while surprise, doubt and anger quickly crossed the royal face.  For Sir Walter Raleigh, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, the lord-proprietor and colonizer of the American colonies, and the sworn foe to Spain, had been now close prisoner in the Tower for more than nine years, hated and yet dreaded by this fickle King James, who dared not put him to death for fear of the people to whom the name and valour of Raleigh were dear.