At which time also because I would be sure your Lordships should be ascertained of the simpleness and scarcity of such stuff as I had here, I sent a man of mine to the Court, specially to declare to your Lordships that for plate, damask, napery and fine sheets, I had none at all and for the rest of my stuff neither was it such as with honour might furnish such a personage, nor yet had I any greater store thereof than I presently occupied, and he brought me this answer again from your Lordships that if I had it not I could not lend it. And yet all things being thus provided for, and the diet for his Lordship being also prepared, I sent word thereof to Mr. Kingesmele and thereupon the next day in the morning about nine of the clock the Cardinal came to Shene where I met and received him almost a quarter of a mile from the house, and when I had first brought the Cardinal to his lodging, and after the bishop to his, I thought good there to leave them to their repose. Thus having accommodated his Lordship as well as might be with so short a warning, I thought myself to have fully performed the meaning of your Lordships’ letters unto me, and because I had tidings the day before that a house of mine in the country by sudden chance was burned ... I took horse and rode the same night towards those places, where I found so much of my house burned as 200 marks will not repair....
This is not at all in accordance with his reputation for hospitality:
He kept house for forty and two years in an honourable proportion. For thirty years of these his family consisted of little less, in one place or another, than two hundred persons. But for more than twenty years, besides workmen and other hired, his number at the least hath been two hundred and twenty daily, as appeared upon check-role. A very rare example in this present age of ours, when housekeeping is so decayed.
I think that this reputation, and the enormous sums which he spent upon the enlargement and beautifying of Knole, make all the more remarkable the statements in the foregoing letter: that he had neither napery, plate, nor sheets, and that in order to provide his guest with a basin and ewer he was obliged to do without them himself. It is apparent also from his will that he indulged himself in the luxury of various musicians, “some for the voice and some for the instrument, whom I have found to be honest in their behaviour and skilful in their profession, and who had often given me after the labour and painful travels of the day much recreation and contatation with their delightful harmony.” “Musicians,” it was said, “the most curious he could have,” so that in these extravagances he was not parsimonious, although he disregarded the common comforts of life.