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Show Great Royal Feasts Once Marked Yule A modern Christmas dinner is a mere "snack" compared to the royal Yule banquets of Kings and Queens in history. For one of Edward Ill's Christmas Christ-mas feasts 2,000 oxen were prepared. pre-pared. The guests ate as much as they could and the vast leftovers were distributed to anyone who happened to come along. Edward was the first English king to employ em-ploy French cooks for a Christmas feast When Henry III spent Christmas of 1241 at Gloucester, he ordered the sheriff to buy 20 large salmon to put into pies for the Christmas dinner. Richard II feasted 10,000 people at a banquet in 1399. He kept more than 1,000 cooks, each of whom specialized in one kind of food. |