Virtual Grub Street: Bad Breath, Mrs. Rigsby's Priest Hole, Needle Point and much more.

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

1) Thomas Dekker, in his Guls Horn-Book (1609), considers it proverbial that the breath of chambermaids stank with tooth decay from eating too many sugary foods.

2) Moor Lane, which ran next to Moor-ditch, London’s above ground sewer, was inhabited, during the 16^th century, by counterfeiters, receivers of stolen goods, unaccountable foreigners and the owners of the dives that served them ale.

3) On May 24, 1594, one Beatrice Beard informed on recusant Catholics in London to the Lord Keeper Puckering. Among her many revelations, one Strange “kept a college of priests at Mapledurham,” and “In Mrs. Rigsby's house in Old Street, behind Golden Lane, there is a vault under the stairs going up to a chamber, where two or three may be hid,…”

4) In accordance with The Vagabonds Act 1597 (39 Eliz., c. 4) “the penalty on constables neglecting to apprehend vagabonds is increased to 10s., and the penalties on masters of vessels for bringing vagabonds from Ireland and the Isle of Man is again fixed at 20s.; those from Scotland are also now included in this prohibition, and the vagabonds themselves so brought are to be whipped before they are sent back.”

5) In 1567, the local authorities of Liverpool entered an order that 'For further and greater repair of gentlemen and others to this town we find it needful that there be a handsome cock-fight pit made.'

6) When business got slow, Tudor & Jacobin London shop keepers would stand at their doors calling "What d'ye lack?—What d'ye lack?” followed by a recitation of the goods they offered.

7) Howe, in his continuation of Stowe’s Chronicle, says “ in the reign of Mary, and the beginning of queen Elizabeth’s, all the apprentices in London wore blue cloaks in the summer, and in the winter blue gowns”.

8) In 1591, the printer John Wolfe published a book of needle point patterns entitled New and Singular Patternes and Workes of Linnen, serving for patternes to make diverse sortes of lace wherein are represented unto us the seaven Planets, and many other Figures.

9) New Place, the sometime home of William Shaksper, of Stratford-upon-Avon, was originally erected by Sir Hugh Clopton, Knt. during the reign of Henry VII.

10) Many copies of the Quarto edition of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV do not include Act 3, Sc. 1. The mistake was apparently discovered and the scene was printed on a single sheet and inserted into the copies that had yet to be sold.

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