Feast of St. Michael, September 29: Beginning of the English Year.

Archangel St. Michael defeating Satan,
between Archangels Gabriel and
Raphael.  Marco d'Oggiono, 1516.

In this series:

• Feast of St. Michael, September 29: Beginning of the English Year.
• Get Thee to the Mop.
• The Feast of St. Michael: English harvest festival and so much more.

Those who have read my “Thousand Years of English  Terms” may recall that the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (a.k.a. “Michaelmas”), on September 29, marked the beginning to the English legal and business year.  It gave its name to the first term of the year: “Michaelmas Term”. The agricultural and religious years dovetailing with the “terms” as well, Michaelmas was the beginning of the English year in all respects except the turning over of the calendar year (New Years Day fell on March 25^th) and spring planting.

Still, the farmer’s year begins on Michaelmas when he is customarily expected to pay his annual rent.  At some point, it became the custom also to present the landlord with a Michaelmas goose.  Some claim — on what basis and how far back in time is not clear — that the landlord, for his part, had the goose plucked and cooked by his household for all to enjoy on the Feast of St. Michael on that very day.

In the 19^th century it was commonly claimed that Queen Elizabeth I heard about the defeat of the Spanish Armada while she was eating her Michaelmas feast which just happened to feature goose.  She declared that she would eat goose each year for the annual feast in commemoration of her greatest victory.  There are a number of problems to this theory, not the least of which being that she had already had a grand public celebration of the victory well before Michaelmas.

If we look backwards from Elizabeth I we find the Michaelmas offering from the tenant expressly mentioned:

And when the tenauntes come to paie their quarters rent,

They bringe some fowle at Midsommer, a dish of Fish in Lent,

At Christmasse a capon, at Mighelmasse a goose :

And somewhat else at Newyeres tide, for feare their lease flie loose.

The soldier poet George Gascoigne gives us these lines from the “Flowers” section of his 1573 Poesies.[1]  For his part, Gascoigne represents it as an exaction rather than a shared dish of the evening’s feast.  It may well have been treated as exaction in one locality and gift in another.

He also represents tenant rents as quarterly, each quarter having its related exaction for the landlord’s table.  This seems likelier the smaller the tenant.  In the Fragmenta Antiquitatis, however, we find the perhaps earliest known medieval reference to the Michaelmas Goose, in 1470, as part of an annual rent:

John de la Hay took of William Barnaby, Lord of Lastres, in the county of Hereford, one parcel of land of the demesne lands, rendering therefore twenty-pence a-year, and one goose, fit for the lord's dinner, on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, [attendance at] court, and other services thereupon due, &c.[2]

Hay is a freeman tenant who pays an annual rent and various feodary services for his land…. and a goose.

So then, the Michaelmas Goose runs all through the Feast Day of St. Michael long before 1588.  So, too, did installations of municipal officers selected in elections over the previous weeks or appointed by the Royal Court.  The City of London held the special privilege, by Royal Charter, of electing their sheriffs rather than having them appointed by the monarch in the days following Michaelmas.  They celebrated this high honor by installing them on Michaelmas day.  Most cities elected their aldermen and mayors on the days leading up to the feast and paraded them through the streets to be congenially welcomed by the old officeholders and installed in office on or around Michaelmas day.  So then, Michaelmas celebrated a fresh new start of English city governments.

The monarch gave out the lands and offices within his or her gift to the dearest and most appreciated of their subjects on the day.  Queen Elizabeth I, for one notable example, created her dearest Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester on Michaelmas in 1564.  The date being precisely that day gave his creation the highest possible honor.

The goose is not the only bit of folk-practice associated with the Feast of St. Michael.  It was the Saint Michael, the Archangel, who defeated Satan in the great battle of rebellion against Heaven in Christian folklore.  Michaelmas being about the day that blackberries begin to turn bitter, another tradition of the feast day was that the defeated Satan plummeted to earth among brambles and in his fury spit on them.  Therefore, it is the day commemorating his vanquisher on which the berries upon which the vanquished had expectorated turn bitter. No berry-picker would fail to remember that blackberries turn bitter around September 29^th.  She or he had better pick the last of their berries before Michaelmas.

As always, the farmer had his received knowledge relating to the day, be it fact or fiction.  The author of The twelve moneths, or, A pleasant and profitable discourse of every action, whether of labour or recreation, proper to each particular moneth branched into directions relating to husbandry, as plowing, sowing, gardening, planting, transplanting ... as also, of recreations as hunting, hawking, fishing, fowling, coursing, cockfighting: to which likewise is added a necessary advice touching physick ...: lastly, every moneth is shut up with an epigrame: with the fairs of every month (1661) informs us how the farmer calculated the number of floods that would occur in the coming year: “They say, so many dayes old the Moon is, on Michaelmas Day, so many Floods after.”

Returning to the  goose, however, the Michaelmas version is always spoken of as roasted as opposed to any other means of preparation.  Roasting a goose, when described, always involves using a gridiron rather than a spit.  The following recipe for sauce to be put on your goose (for surely you are properly celebrating this highest of days) is taken from an early 15^th century manuscript:

Sause for a goose.

Take a faire panne, and set hit under the goose whill sche rostes [while she roasts]; and kepe clene the grese that droppes thereof, and put therto a godele [quantity] of wyn and a litel vynegur, and verjus, and onyons mynced or garlek; then take the gottes [guts] of the goose, and slitte hom, and scrape hom clene in watur and salt, and so wassh hom, and sethe hom, and hak hom smal; then do all this togedur in a postenet [pipkin] and do therto raisinges of corance, and pouder of pepur, and of gynger, and of canell, and hole clowes, and maces, and let hit boyle, and serve hit forthe.[3]

I realize that you are especially busy on this day and will let you get back to your cooking.

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[1] Gascoigne, George.  The Poesies (1573, 1575, etc.), ed. John W. Cunliffe (1907, 1969).  72.

[2]Fragmenta Antiquitatis (1815). Blount, Thomas & Beckwith, Josiah ed. 412.  “Johannes de la Hay cepit de Will. Barnaby, domino de Lastres in com. Heref. unum parcellum terrae de terris dominicalibus. Reddend. inde per annum xx d. et unam aucam habilem pro prandio domini in festo Sancti Michaelis Archangeli, sectam curiae et alia servitia inde debita, &c. Rot. Cur. 10 Edw. IV.”

[3] Warner, Richard. Antiquitates Culinariae (1791). 63.  Citing “A collection of ordinances and regulations, for the government of the Royal Houſehold, made in divers  reigns, &c. p. 425.”

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• 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.”
• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.