A Sheriff’s Post, a Tailor’s Goose, One Fell Swoop, and much more!

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

1) Being the most popular place of rendezvous in London, bills were hung on the columns lining the nave and the outer walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral advertising every kind of skilled and unskilled labor, school, and tutoring service.

2) ‘At the doors of sheriffs were usually set up ornamental posts, on which royal and civic proclamations were fixed. So, in "Twelfth Night" (i. 5), Malvolio says: " He'll stand at your door like a sheriff's post." "A pair of mayors' posts," says Staunton, " are still standing in Norwich, which, from the initials T. P., and the date 159- are conjectured to have belonged to Thomas Pettys, who was mayor of that city in 1592."’ [Dyer]

3) King Henry VIII's book of payments includes the following entry, under date May 1515. "Master Almoner redeeming prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the Compter, £20."

4) Market goods often were regulated to assure consistency of product for which a given amount of money was to be paid.  We learn from Harrison’s Description of England that “the flower of one bushell with another, they make fortie cast of manchet, of which euerie lofe weigheth eight ounces into the ouen, and six ounces out, as I haue beene informed.”

5) The areas of London known as Walbrooke, Oldbourne, Langbourne, Holywell, Clement's Well, and Clerkenwell, were once water sources for the city — once actual streams and wells.  They all had become dry or otherwise unusable by the end of the 16^th century.

6) “Room and board” describes meals as “board” because meals were actually served, until modern times, on boards laid on top of trestles and the board and trestles removed to closets or side walls between meals in order to make more room for activities in the hall.

7) ‘[A] tailor’s goose was a jocular name for his pressing-iron, probably from its being often roasting before the fire, an allusion to which occurs in "Macbeth" (ii. 3): "come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose."'  [Dyer]

8) ‘Another term in falconry is "stoop," or "swoop," denoting the hawk's violent descent from a height upon its prey….’  This gives the original meaning of a common saying even today.  ‘In "Macbeth" (iv. 3),... Macduff, referring to the cruel murder of his children, exclaims, "What! ... at one fell swoop?"’ [Dyer]

9) During the 16^th century (and long before), “it was believed that [witches,] by making a little waxen figure of the person upon whom their ill-will had fallen, by sticking pins in it, and by holding it to a fire until it slowly melted away, so would [they cause] that person suffer, dwindle, and die.” [Lucy]

10) ‘The following song,… in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 4), mentions the custom[, during the time of Shakespeare,] of sticking yew [in the burial shroud of one who was being buried]:

Come away, come away, death,

    And in sad cypress let me be laid;

Fly away, fly away, breath:

    I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

    My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,

               O prepare it!

    My part of death, no one so true

               Did share it!’ [Dyer]

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Who Saved Southampton from the Ax? September 2, 2019.  “One of the popular mysteries of the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I is why the Queen executed her favorite, the Earl of Essex, for treason, and left his accomplice, the Earl of Southampton, to languish as a prisoner in The Tower until King James I ascended the throne.”
• The Secret Correspondence of Robert Cecil and James I. August 25, 2019.  “As he was planning an armed attempt to “secure the person of the Queen,” after having returned from the country, in disgrace, and to force her to dismiss ministers who did not satisfy him, he was waiting for a return letter from King James VI of Scotland.”
• A Brief Introduction to Poisoning a Nobleman.  August 4, 2019. “As those who read the primary accounts whenever possible know, never were vagaries so vague as in the Middle Ages.”
• A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.  April 28, 2019.  “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.