THE shopping list for one of English history’s most sumptuous feasts has been found in the archives of Longleat House.

The banquet was thrown for Elizabeth I by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, in July 1560, the year after her Coronation and around the time many historians believe that he became her lover.

Ten pages of accounts for the dinner are among papers that were deposited in the Longleat archives by the 1st Viscountess Weymouth, a relative of Dudley’s. The document has been put on public display for the first time to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of the Virgin Queen in 1603.

Dudley held the feast at his Thames-side home in Kew to celebrate the Treaty of Edinburgh, a declaration of peace with Scotland.

The bill for the food alone came to £83 16s 6d, equivalent to just under £20,000 today. The shopping list included ten sheep, six herons, 48 teal, 60 eggs, 41 dozen loaves and 89lb of butter. They also reveal that Dudley paid 6s 4d each for six shoveller ducks.

Among the more exotic delights on offer were 26 turkeys, recently introduced to England from Central America, and pineapples which food historians had previously believed were only introduced 100 years later, during the reign of Charles II.

The so-called banquet course — a series of treats after the feast itself — consisted of sweetmeats, cakes and exotic fruits whose ingredients included 86lb of sugar to satisfy Elizabeth’s notoriously sweet tooth, blamed for eventually turning her teeth black.

Elizabeth’s affection for Dudley, whom she made Master of Horse on her succession to the throne in 1559 and later made Earl of Leicester, was well known. Their relationship caused scandal when Dudley’s wife, Amy Robsart, died in a fall in 1560. Court gossip suggested that Dudley had her killed so that he would be free to marry the Queen.

Despite his repeated proposals, including one at a lavish party at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, where he begged a visiting Spanish bishop to marry them immediately, Elizabeth always refused. She told him that she would rather be a beggar woman and single than Queen and married.

No details of how many guests attended the banquet are recorded in the ten pages of accounts. But Dr Kate Harris, the archivist at Longleat House, said: “To judge from other similar banquets it would not have been all that many, despite the amount of food.

“Not everyone would have been presented with the same dishes. Only the royal party would have eaten the most exotic and expensive dishes. We don’t have the menu apart from the food for the banquet course, which would probably have been bought in ready-made. It took place at the end of the meal and the diners would have formed themselves in intimate little groups. By this time the banquet course had a reputation for excess and immorality.”

Other documents in the collection give a fascinating insight into the life of the Elizabethan court. They include a letter from Elizabeth to the Earl of Shrewsbury, written in 1588, in which she records her devastation at Dudley’s sudden and unexpected death.

Elizabeth visited Longleat House in 1574, while it was under construction, despite the protestations of Sir John Thynne that he was not ready to receive a royal guest. The Queen, suspicious that Sir John was more concerned about the expense of the hospitality he would be expected to lay on than her comfort, refused to be bought off with the gift of a giant emerald set with diamonds and rubies that he sent her by way of apology.

Dr Harris said: “Several courtiers bankrupted them- selves trying to build houses in which to play host to Elizabeth. Sir John Thynne went to great lengths to put her off, even writing about a ‘sweating sickness’ that had overtaken the house. In the letters back it is suggested that the Queen thinks he is reluctant to have her at the house because of the expense.”

All the documents, including some decorated with portraits of the Queen and with borders including the royal emblem in gold, are on display at Longleat, in Wiltshire, until the end of this month.

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