It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago.

It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,--even directing fresh straw to be laid for them on his ample mansion floor, that they might not soil the bravery of their dresses when they bunked down for the night.

The building is brimful of the character and history of that period.

Indeed, there are no two milestones of English history so near together, and yet measuring such a space of the nation's life and manners between them, as this hall and that of Chatsworth.

It was built, of course, in the bow-and-arrow times, when the sun had to use the same missiles in shooting its barbed rays into the narrow apertures of old castles--or the stone coffins of fear-hunted knights and ladies, as they might be called.