 |
| It's that time again!!! Welcome to Tudor Trivia Tuesday!!! |
1) The bar across the mouth of a fireplace, for suspending pots above the fire for cooking, was called “the gallows”.
2) “The methods of lighting the hall at night were still
rather clumsy, and not very perfect. Of course, when the apartment was very
large, a few candles would produce comparatively little effect, and it was
therefore found necessary to use torches, and inflammable masses of larger size. One method of supplying the deficiency was to
take a small pan, or portable fireplace, filled with combustibles, and suspend
it in the place where light was required. Such a receptacle was usually placed
at the top of a pole, for facility of carrying about, and was called a cresset,
from an old French word which meant a night-lamp. The cresset is mentioned by
Shakespeare and other writers as though it were chiefly used in processions at
night, and by watchmen and guides”
3) “The lord mayors' feasts [in London] were not held in
Guildhall till the year 1500, when the kitchen and offices were built by Sir
John Shaw, who was lord mayor for that year. Before this time they were held in
the Grocers' or Taylors' hall.”
4) 'There was no known pastime in which Henry VIII. did not
indulge. The privy purse expenses of 1532 show that in January Lord William won
£9 of the King at "shovilla bourde," and "My lord of Rocheforde
won of the King at shovilla bourde and betting at the game £45." In the
following month Lord Rocheford won £41, 12s. 6d. of the King at the same
pastime. It must be remembered that these accounts take no notice of the royal
wins, only of the losses.'[2]
5) The Tudor composer Thomas Morely (c. 1558-1602), set many
of the cries of the street vendors of London to music.
6) In the diary of the early 16th century traveler
Nicandor Nucius he describes Englishmen as “fair, inclining to a light color;
in their persons they are tall and erect; the hair of their beard and head is of
a golden hue; their eyes blue, for the most part, and their cheeks are ruddy;
they are martial and valorous, and generally tall; flesh-eaters, and insatiable
of animal food; sottish and unrestrained in their appetites; full of
suspicion.”[3]
7) When the first plague death was verified, in Vincenza,
Italy, in 1577, “the furniture in the house was burned and every exposed person stripped,
given new clothes, and removed outside the city. The house was purified by
aromatic fumigations and painted with milk of lime. All infected vestments and
bedding received a treatment with strong lye. The disease, however, spread, and
in one year the city, with a population of 30,000, suffered 1,908 deaths from
plague.”[4]
8) It was still not generally known in the England of Queen
Elizabeth that ferns reproduced via spores. Their seeds were said to be
invisible. They could only be collected between 11 a.m. and noon on Midsummer’s
Eve Day.
9) “There is a curious letter,” we are informed by Brand “from
the Abbot of Abingdon to Secretary Cromwell, about 1536, in which the writer
gives an account of a priest who had been captured for practicing conjuration. There
is the following description of this person:
‘It shall please your Maistership to be advertised that my
officers have taken here a Preyste, a suspecte person, and with hym certeyn
bokes of conjuracions, in the whyche ys conteyned many conclusions of that
worke; as fyndyng out of tresure hydde, consecratyng of ryngs with stones in
theym, and consecratyng of a cristal stone wheryn a chylde shall looke, and se
many thyngs. Ther ys also many fygors in hyt whiche haue dyvers thyngs in
theym, and amongs all, one the whiche hath a swerde crossed ouer with a septor.’”[5]
10) Many English Protestants escaping to Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary I, the standard Tudor translation of the Bible was called the Geneva Bible. The New Testament first appeared in that city in 1557. The Old and New Testament were first published together in 1560.
[1] Wright, Thomas. A History of Domestic Manners... in England (1871). 459.
[2]
Strutt, Joseph. Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), 239.
[3]
Rye, William Brenchley. England as Seen by Foreigners in the Days of
Elizabeth (1865). xlviii.
[4] Eager,
J. M. The Early History of Quarantine (1903), 21
[5] Hazlitt,
Carew. Brand’s Popular Antiquities (1905), I.142.
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.”
- A Thousand Years of English Terms. June 2, 2019. ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”. There was no clock to be o’. But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
- 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment