Scarcely less out of place in the dining-hall than Kit Hatton's hounds, was the mule fairly mounted on which the Prince Pallaphilos made his appearance at the High Table after supper, when he notified to his subjects in what manner they were to disport themselves till bedtime. Thus also when the Prince of Purpoole kept his court at Gray's Inn, A.D. 1594, the prince's champion rode into the dining-hall upon the back of a fiery charger which, like the rider, was clothed in a panoply of steel.
In costliness and riotous excess the Prince of Purpoole's revel at Gray's Inn was not inferior to any similar festivity in the time of Elizabeth. On the 20th of December, St. Thomas's Eve, the Prince (one Master Henry Holmes, a Norfolk gentleman) took up his quarters in the Great Hall of the Inn, and by the 3rd day of January the grandeur and comicality of his proceedings had created so much talk throughout the town that the Lord Treasurer Burghley, the Earls of Cumberland, Essex, Shrewsbury and Westmoreland, the Lords Buckhurst, Windsor, Sheffield, Compton, and a magnificent array of knights and ladies visited Gray's Inn Hall on that day and saw the masque which the revellers put upon the stage. After the masque there was a banquet, which was followed by a ball. On the following day the prince, attended by eighty gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Temple (each of the eighty wearing a plume on his head), dined in state with the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city, at Crosby Place. The frolic continued for many days more; the royal Purpoole on one occasion visiting Blackwall with a splendid retinue, on another (Twelfth Night) receiving a gallant assembly of lords, ladies, and Knights, at his court in Gray's Inn, and on a third (Shrovetide) visiting the queen herself at Greenwich, when Her Majesty warmly applauded the masque set before her by the actors who were members of the Prince's court. So delighted was Elizabeth with the entertainment, that she graciously allowed the masquers to kiss her right hand, and loudly extolled Gray's Inn "as an house she was much indebted to, for it did always study for some sports to present unto her;" whilst to the mock Prince she showed her favor, by placing in his hand the jewel (set with seventeen diamonds and fourteen rubies) which he had won by valor and skill in the tournament which formed part of the Shrovetide sports.