The ministers’ whitebait dinner

57 days after Easter · Greenwich, Kent

No longer kept

Near the close of each parliamentary session the Cabinet dined together on whitebait at Greenwich, usually soon after Trinity Monday. The dinner began as Sir Robert Preston’s fishing parties at his cottage on Dagenham Reach, where Pitt came every spring, and moved to a Greenwich tavern for convenience. After Preston’s death the invitations were said to go round in Cabinet boxes.

The time for meeting was usually after Trinity Monday, a short period before the end of the Session.

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 1, p. 674. Read the original

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The ministers’ whitebait dinner

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