Billiards, Breeches, Square-Toed Shoes, and more.

It's Tudor Trivia Tuesday!!!

1. In 1487, while Christopher Columbus was waiting on court favour in Lisbon, his brother Bartholomew went to London to try and interest Henry VII. in the enterprise; he was robbed by pirates on the way, and was glad to get employment at the English court for a time in drawing maps and making a globe, but he was unsuccessful in the main object of his journey.  Growth of English Industry, I. 501.

2.  In 1563, a statute was passed requiring every English bishop to bind over to justices every man in his diocese who "with a froward and willful mind, obstinately refused to give to the relief of the poor according to his ability".  The justices were to have the power to assess the payment such a person should make to the poor and to imprison him if he failed to comply.  In 1597, the statute was strengthened to allow the authorities to distrain the goods of anyone who refused to obey the justices’ orders.

3. The following “The Crafte to make Ypocras [Hipocras]” appears in Arnold Chronicle (c. 1490):

Take a quarte of red wyne, an ounce of cynamon, and halfe an once [ounce] of gynger, a quarter of an ounce of greynes, & longe peper, a  half a pounde of suger, and brose all this (not too small) & than put them in a bage of wullen clothe, made therefore with the wyne, & lete it hang over a vessel tyll the wyne be rune thorowe.

4.  Early in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the fashion of wearing trousers was much affected: these were breeches (says Randle Holme) which sat so tight upon the thighs, that they discovered the whole make and shape. But this fashion was by no means now newly invented; for its first appearance was, I believe, in the middle of the reign of Edward the Fourth.  Strutt.

Scads of colorful information and entertainment.

5. Milleners or haberdashers had not (says Howe, in his Continuation of Stow’s Chronicle) any gloves imbroydered or trimmed with gold or silk, neither gold imbroidered girdles and hangers; neither could they make any costly wash or perfume, untill, about the 14th or 15th year of queen Elizabeth, when the right honourable Edward de Vere, earle of Oxford came from Italy, and brought with him gloves, sweet bagges, a perfumed leather jerkin, and other pleasent things; and that year the queen had a paire of perfumed gloves trimmed onely with four tuftes, or roses of coloured silke. The queen took such delight in those gloves, that she was pictured with them upon her hands.  But if perfumed gloves were then first introduced into the realm, what shall we say of the “swete gloves” mentioned in the inventory of the wardrobe of king Henry the Eighth, at Hampton Court?  Strutt.

6.  In Act I, sc. 5, of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra calls for a game of billiards.  The reference would seem to be to the version called “French Billiards” that appeared on the scene in Europe during the 15^th century.

7.  Mary, Queen of Scots, brought her personal billiard table over to Scotland from France.  She was permitted a table during her confinement, in England, at Fotheringham as evidenced by a bookkeeping entry for material “for the Q[ueen’s] billeyard boord.”  She is said to have been buried in its cover.

8. In the time of queen Mary [Tudor] (says Bulver) square toes were grown in fashion, insomuch as men wore their shooes of so prodigious a breddth at the toes, that, if I remember aright, there was a proclamation came out, that no man should wear his shooes above sixe inches square at the toes.  Strutt.

9.  In Tudor times it was believed that eating the brain of a bear made the diner wild and bear-like in behavior.

10.  Admiral James Columbus, son of Christopher, settled and planted the island of Jamaica in 1509.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I.  March 24, 2019.  “her majesty told [Lady Scrope] (commanding her to conceal the same ) that she saw, one night, in her bed, her body exceeding lean, and fearful in a light of fire.”
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.  January 29, 2019. “Mr. Sheffeld told me that afore the old Erle of Oxford tyme, that cam yn with King Henry the vii., the Castelle of Hengham was yn much ruine,…”
• Why Shakespeare Appears on Title Pages from 1598.  November 20, 2018.  ‘These he finds unconvincing.  The author’s name having appeared in a number of title pages after 1598, he continues, “it would seem foolish for publishers not to attach the Shakespeare brand to his previously unattributed plays—unless they had other reasons not to do so.”’ 
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Shakespeare on Gravity. August 26, 2018. “So carelessly does Shakespeare throw out such an extraordinary divination. His achievement in thus, as it were, rivalling Newton may seem in a certain sense even more extraordinary than Goethe's botanical and osteological discoveries;…”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.