IN HIS BOOK The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre asks, “What exactly were the great cathedrals? The answer is that they were political acts.” Similarly, ceremonial occasions at aristocratic households were political acts. Although we might underestimate the semiotic power of such occasions, household books from the early modern period act as correctives, recording in minute detail the specifics of weddings, funerals, holidays—virtually any private, religious, or public celebration that a nobleman might celebrate in his own court.

From restaurants that offer the “Medieval Banquet” experience to action films that feature choreographed fights and much flinging about of food, most popular culture images tend to be egregious misrepresentations of great household occasions, since all ceremonies, from the medieval through the interregnum periods, were carefully choreographed procedures, dictated by protocols encoded in household ordinances and courtesy books, organized and executed by household officers, and designed to express order, power, privilege, hierarchy, and social control. Every moment of the event was a signifier—from the gathering and presentation of specific foods, to the participants’ wardrobe, to each person's position in processions, at chapel, at table and in private chambers.

The rituals in the household of Henry Algernon Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland, reflected the dynamics and structures of early modern society in his northeastern court, which comparison with royal accounts shows was as elaborate, if not more elaborate than the king’s. With very good reason Henry VII fined the earl £10,000 (estimated at £2,310,000 or three million dollars in today's money) for excess “ostentation.” The Second Northumberland Household Book preserved ordinances for fashioning such socio-political space for special occasions, preserving detailed accounts for the production of public ceremonies in the earl's household.

When a great household celebrated a major religious feast or secular festival, it strove to amalgamate, to produce a multi-dimensional entertainment by enlisting the cooperation of many people, from cooks to composers, from priests to players. The revels surrounding an actual early sixteenth-century wedding celebrated in Northumberland showed clearly that, in this case, art was often designed specifically to reflect life, at least in its idealized form; through a cooperative effort of household servants, the wedding revels illustrated the ideology and aesthetics of noble marriage.