Wolf Hall

I'm irritated by their eating habits!

Polite and dainty cutting-up with a knife and a tiny morsel popped into the mouth, followed by teensy weensy chewing ..... surely it was a bit more earthy!

Not exactly Charles Laughton's portrayal of Henry chomping on chicken legs is it, Riverwalk?

I believe that manners at court were a lot more polished that Charles Laughton portrayed (the chicken-bone throwing was his own idea), though perhaps not the same manners as today. Clean hands were important, they were washed before, during and after a meal If you didn't know how to behave you were considered a clodhopper.

www.latourdulac.com/manners/Elizabethan.html has a section on "Behaving At Table" Henry's court must have been much the same as Elizabeth's

I think that must have been my late father's favourite scene in any film - the sight of Charles Laughton half eating a chicken leg and then throwing the bones over his shoulder to the hounds sitting behind his chair used to amuse him no end . His own table manners were impeccable, I might add!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xPhU5132I

This is nothing to do with Wolf Hall but it is a hilarious 'dinner party'
(an hilarious dinner party?)

If you think about it "Riverwalk" the upper classes would have to be fairly refined when it came to eating. They were spending a considerable amount on their clothes and, even with numerous servants cleaning them, would have been far more difficult than it is today. I can't be the only person to have ruined a really nice garment with an irremovable drop of gravy (more than one actually )

My mother was a big Charles Laughton fan and I don't think we ever had roast chicken for dinner without her declaiming "Manners are dead! Refinement is a thing of the past!" although she did refrain from throwing the bones over her shoulder