Wor—stershire salt, Women’s Wages, Maynour and more!

It's that time, again.  It's Tudor Trivia Tuesday!

1) In an astonishingly avant-garde move, Thomas Ravenscroft’s Pammelia, Musicke's Miscelanie or mixed varietie of pleasant Roundelaies and delightful Catches (1609) set the cries of the vendors of the  London streets to music.

2) Salt was sold on London streets from carts.  The driver cried out “Salt—salt—white Wor—stershire salt!” as he rode along.

3) In 1556, the will of Richard Claxton, of Old Park, in the county of Durham, mentions a "folden table" [folding table] in the parlor, valued at two shillings.

4) ‘In 1558, the earliest year the records date back, the total number of taverns, &c, in St. Dunstan's [parish] was twenty-six; of these two were brewers; eight "tipplers"; three innkeepers; thirteen "petty ostries".’ [Noble’s Memorials of Temple Bar.]

5) During the Feasts of the Livery Companies of London the Halls were "aromatized" with a precious Indian wood.  That is to say, incense was burned.

6) Beginning in the reign of Henry VIII, London’s trading companies were forced to provide loans called “precepts” to the crown as needed.  The practice was greatly expanded in the reign of Elizabeth I.

7)  According to Richard Braithwait’s Rules and Orders for the Government of the House of an Earle (c. 1605), an Earl’s chief officers should “be skilfull in the buying of clothes of gold and silver, velvets, and all kindes of silkes; household furnitures, as Plate, Hangings, Damaske, and Diaper Napery, and Linnen clothes; Broade cloathes and Frises, and all other, both ordinarye and extraordinary necessaryes. They must be able to iudge, not onely of the prices, but also of the goodnes of all kindes of corne, Cattell, and other household provisions ; and the better to enable themselves therto, are oftentimes to ride to Fayres and great markets, and ther to have conference with Graziers and Purveiors, being men of witt and experience, and of them to learne what places are fittest to make provisions at, and wher best to put off.”

8)  According to the Chronicon Preciosum, the daily wage at harvest time in 1514 for

A Mower was 4d. with meals and 6d. without;

A Reaper, and a Carter, 3d. with meals and 5d. without;

A Woman-Labourer and other Labourers, 2½d. with meals and 4½d. without.

9) According to the Commentaries of Blackstone,  'Maynour is when a Theefe hath stolne, and is followed with Hue and Cry, and taken, having that found upon him which he stole, that is called Maynour. And so we use to say when we find one doing an unlawful Act, that we took him with the Maynour or Manner.'  The thief is caught with the goods “in hand” (OF. mainaver, manier).  The item(s) stolen were called “the manner” (or “goods in hand”).  Caught ’um with the goods.  Thus Shakespeare writes, in Love’s Labours Lost:

Costard. The matter is to me sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.

Biron. In what manner?

Cos. In manner and forme following sir all those three. I was seene with her in the Manner house, sitting with her vpon the Forme, and taken following her into the Parke: which put to gether, is in manner and forme following. Now sir for the manner; It is the manner of a man to speake to a woman, for the forme in some forme.

The chain of puns on the word manner/manor is begun with Jaquenetta as the goods a manier — the goods that was he caught holding.

10) John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lords Cobham and Buckhurst, were created members of the Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council in 1586 in order to counterbalance the advantage of numbers that the Earl of Leicester's puritan faction had come to hold in the Council.  This would surely have been done on the advice of the leader of the moderate faction, the Baron Burghley.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576.  June 10, 2019.  “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot.  The citizens were prepared to give them a fight.  Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
• 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,…”
• 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.