It is unlikely that any English monarch has ever seen as much naked flesh on a single occasion as did Edward II when he was at Pontoise in 1313. There, he was entertained by Bernard the Fool and no fewer than fifty-four nude dancers. This event suggests a decadent extravagance, fitting the familiar stereotype of the king. Edward's affection for his favourites and his unkingly tastes for water sports and menial activities imply that his court had an eccentric, or even exotic, quality. The evidence of the household and chamber accounts, and the household ordinance of 1318, makes it possible to test this hypothesis, and to respond to the opinion of those who doubt whether true courts existed at all in this period.

For some historians of the early modern period, the term ‘court’ is not one which it is appropriate to use in the context of the fourteenth century; for Elton, the court had its origins in the reign of Henry VII, for it was only then that alternative centres of power were destroyed. As a result, ‘The Tudor Court as a centre of social and political life springs suddenly into existence with the accession of Henry VIII.’ Another argument rests on terminology, with the suggestion that at the start of the fifteenth century ‘a member of the royal entourage was known as “a household man”, and at the end, as a “courtier”’.