Tim Tatters, Jack o' Lent, Jailed Juries and more!

It's that time again!!!
Welcome to Tudor Trivia Tuesday!!!

1) John Taylor the Water-Poet informs us that on Shrove Tuesday, “Tim Tatters (a most valiant villain) with an ensign made of a piece of a baker's mawkin fixed upon a broom staff, he displays his dreadful colours, and calling the ragged regiment together, makes an illiterate oration, stuffed with most plentiful want of discretion…”. A “baker's mawkin” was a rag tied to a stick and used to reach into the ovens and clean their insides.[1]

 

2) The Shrove Tuesday character Tom Tatters led his followers — “youths armed with cudgels, stones, hammers, rules, trowels, and hand-saws,” — proceeded, after his speech, to “put play houses to the sack, and bawdy houses to the spoil…”.

 

3) On Ash Wednesday, in Tudor times, a thin scare-crow was set up, and shied at with sticks, in imitation of one of the sports of the preceding day. The figure was called a Jack-a-lent, a term which is often met with in old literature, as expressive of a small and insignificant person. Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their plays, make a character say—

                                             If I forfeit,

Make me a Jack o' Lent and break my shins

For untagged points and counters.[2]

 

4) Sir Nicholas Throckmorton had been among the plotters of the Wyatt Rebellion against Queen Mary I. in January and February of 1554 [N.S.]. He chose to defend himself in court and repeatedly showed that the officers of the court were willy-nilly suspending procedural rules to his disadvantage. He impressed the jury so well that he was acquitted. In consequence, he was imprisoned for nearly a year without charge before he was released.[3]

 

5) The judge in the case of treason against Nicholas Throckmorton for his part in the Wyatt Rebellion remanded the jury that acquitted the defendant to prison to await the Queen’s pleasure. He furthermore pronounced heavy fines upon them.

 

6) Under Edward VI’s vagrancy law (1 Edw. VI., c. 3, 1547), vagabonds were to be apprehended by the local authorities and offered up in slavery for two years to anyone who had offered them employment and been refused. Children were to be forced into service as apprentices or servants until the age of 24, if male, and 20, if female.

 

7) Parents who sought to rescue their children from forced servitude under Edward VI’s vagrancy law (1 Edw. VI., c. 3, 1547) were to be sentenced to slavery for life.

 

8) John Dee recorded in his diary “March 20th, [1594,] I did before Barthilmew Hikman pay Letice her full yere's wagis ending the 7th day of Aprill next; her wagis being four nobles, an apron, a payr of hose and shoes.”

9) Pancake’s on Shrove Tuesday was already the custom as Shakespeare makes clear in his play All's Well that Ends Well:

Count. Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

Clo. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib's rush for Tom's forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun's lip to the friar's mouth, nay, as the pudding to his skin.

 

10) It is also from The Water Poet that we have this humbler bit of Lenten fare:

The cut-throats butchers, wanting throats to cut,

At Lent's approach their bloody shambles shut:

For forty days their tyranny doth cease.

And men and beasts take truce and live in peace;

The cow, the sow, the ewe may safely feed.

And low, grunt, bleat, and fructify and breed,

Cocks, hens, and capons, turkey, goose, and widgeon.

Hares, conies, pheasant, partridge, plover, pigeon,

All these are from the break-neck poulterer's paws

Secured by Lent, and guarded by the laws,

The goring spits are hanged for fleshly sticking,

And then cook's fingers are not worth the licking.

 

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[1] Taylor, John. Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet (1617, 1870).  394.

[2] Chambers, R. The Book of Days (1888), I.240.

[3] State Trials; or, A Collection of the Most Interesting Trials, Prior to the Revolution of 1688 (1826). 1-16.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Excerpts from Letters about the Origin of the 1563 Plague. January 17, 2021.  “on the progress of the conflict between Queen Elizabeth I’s forces and those of the French Regent, the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.”
• On Shakespeare and Drinking Smoke. January 4, 2021. “The debate raged for some time: Had Shakespeare smoked pot? Tobacco? Both?”
• The Medieval Chimney: Not What You Might Think.  May 19, 2019.  “The famous Royal antiquary, John Leland, source of a great deal of detailed information about the towns and countryside of England during the reign of Henry VIII, stood awestruck before a full-length vertical chimney as if he were standing before the Hagia Sophia.”
• 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.”
• What Hamlet’s Gravedigger Teaches Us.  July 01, 2018. “The William Shakspere of the monument proudly presented a bag of grain to the world, the source, together with usury, real estate, and theater shares, of most of his considerable wealth and of his right to a grave within the chancel.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.