This is a handbook or manual for well-born boys in Tudor times who had to learn how to behave at court. They were often sent to court or to a great house at an early age to be instructed, as was the experience of Sir Thomas More. The book provides instruction in arranging feasts and grand dinners, rituals of table-laying, the preparation, saucing and carving of meats and fish and servant's duties. This was the equivalent of a 'public school education' and a boy needed to know that clergy were to be served before noble lords or how to lace a doublet after first warming the lord's linen underpants before a fire. In addition to providing an introduction, eminent food historian Peter Brears has produced illustrations that show how the text instructed the readers to joint a rabbit, cut up a flat fish, or lay out a tablecloth.