Livestock and a few terms and sayings surrounding them

Everything you never wanted to know about sheep.

Sheep are not just sheep.

That is to say, there is a wide range of terminology connected with sheep according to their age and gender [including the gender ‘gelding’] before you even get to technical terms in shearing.

There are some excellent shearing videos on YouTube so I’m not going there.  Here however is a table of  the names given to sheep at various ages.

Age	Male	Female	Gelded
Generic name	Tup/Ram	Ewe	Wether
Until weaned	Lamb	Lamb	Lamb
Up to first shearing	Tup-hogget	Ewe-hogget	Wether-hogget
After first shearing	Shearling	Gimmer	Dinmont
After 2nd shearing	Two-year tup	Ewe	Wether
After 3rd shearing	Tup	Twinter-ewe	Wether

In addition, when a ewe is past breeding age she is said to be a draft-ewe.

The Bellwether of the flock was a steady creature who wore a bell to attract the attentions of the other members of the flock to lead them home; in the Middle Ages and after it was also a jocose but deprecating name given to a man of decided opinions and tendency to try to lead the opinions of others.

Another term with implications attached if used descriptively was free-martin; this referred to an ewe who displayed masculine behaviour and generally lacked functioning ovaries.

The fleece of a hogget at its first shearing could yield 15lb of wool; the average weight of wool from an ewe was 4-5 lb though this varied from species to species and long staple sheep gave more.

Ah yes, staple – this refers to the length of the wool.  Long staple wool was in demand for weaving the warp of a bolt of cloth and the often very fine short staple wool for the weft.  This is a simplification!

Another Medieval term that might be used in a derogatory sense to describe appearance was to say that someone had dag-locks.  The dag-locks were the matted and soiled locks of wool around the sheep’s rear end.  Dag-wool was refuse wool

What have sheep in common with sherry?

Up to the 15^th century the wool of the merino sheep was rather coarse, and not much prized.  It came under the attentions of Spanish monks who produced the forerunner of the breed as we know it today, with long lustrous wool that is of good fineness.

The Spanish monks were very good at selective breeding; as well as the merino they also developed the famous Andalusian horse and the grapes for the wine of Xerez, otherwise known as sherry.

Little boy blue come blow up your horn

The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn

Where is the boy that looks after the sheep

He’s under a haystack fast asleep

MAY be a satire on Thomas Wolsey, little boy blue [blue being heraldically associated with his home town of Ipswich] and referring to him being the son of a grazier [and butcher], and doubtless expected to care for the animals in his youth.   If it was meant as a satire on him, it would be suggesting that he abrogated his responsibilities as Lord Chancellor by ignoring the needs of the people in putting the wishes of the king and his own ambitions first. 

I am not about to go into breeds but an excellent article is the PDF available online by AK Copus ‘Changing Markets and the development of Sheep Breeds in Southern England 1750 – 1900.

Everything you never wanted to know about swine

Age	Male	Female	Gelded
Generic name	Boar	Sow	Hog
Under a year	Pig/pigling/piglet	Pig/pigling/piglet	Pig/pigling/piglet
Young		gilt [before first litter]
3 years old	Hog-steer

Note that pig iron was so called because it ran into ‘pigs’ bars of iron side by side coming off the stream of melt because it was said to represent pigs suckling a  sow.  The term pig was in use for a young hog well into the early years of the 19^th century.

A Tantony Pig is a corruption of ‘St Anthony’s pig’.  A tantony pig is one of the terms of the runt of the litter [the other being cab pig as devotees of 101 Dalmations will know].  St Anthony is patron saint of pigs and runt pigs were given to the monks hospitallers of St Anthony, to be reared as free range pigs. They were free to roam and would follow anyone who looked likely to give them a choice morsel, hence the term ‘to follow someone around like a tantony pig’.  As the swine wore small bells to identify them, a tantony also came to refer to a small ring of bells.

A pig in a poke – in the middle ages sucking pigs were sold in sacks, or pokes.  The unscrupulous would sell a sack in which was a cat or dog not the pig that was expected.  It is a warning against purchasing without checking the goods first.

Tom, Tom the piper’s son, he stole a pig and away did run

The pig was eat, and Tom was beat, and he went roaring down the street

This nursery rhyme is often illustrated with Tom carrying an actual piglet under one arm, but actually referred to a confectionary not as large as a pie and containing apple or dried fruit.

Everything you never wanted to know about cattle AKA kine

Age	Male	Female	Gelded
Generic name	Bull	Cow	Ox
Unweaned	Calf	Calf	Calf
Young [under three years]		Heifer [or before first calving]
mature	bull	cow	Bullock

The word cattle is a corruption of the Saxon catel, which also gives us the word chattel, or property.

Ox [plural oxen] are generally geldings used as draught beasts.

Young cattle may also be referred to as veals if destined to become veal meat, even as meat cattle are sometimes called beeves.

An old term for a bovine is a neat, which survives only in neatsfoot jelly and neatsfoot oil made from the hooves and lower legs of cattle.

The term free-marten is used for cows as well, typically of females born as twins to males, and which are always infertile.

Cattle of course come in two varieties, beef and dairy, and what is food for one is generally less good for the other.  Dairy cattle needing fine grassland led to the rise in prices of dairy produce during and immediately following the Napoleonic war owing to the need to turn over more land to arable farming, initially to have enough bread for domestic consumption and subsequently as a result of the Corn Laws which forbade the importing of cheap foreign grains. 

Everything you never wanted to know about horses

Age	Male	Female	Gelded
Generic name	Stallion	Mare	Gelding
Under a year	Foal	Foal	Foal
One to two years	Yearling	Yearling	Yearling
Two to four years	Colt	Filly	Gelding
Over 4	Stallion	Mare	Gelding

The Heavy Horse for draught work appeared in several different places in Europe around the beginning of the sixteenth century, the first recorded Suffolk Punch being in 1511.  It has been postulated that as knights in armour became obsolete the destrier was bred into the general stock which increased the strength and size of working horses.  The main reason for the change from oxen to horses as draught beasts was more to do with improved agricultural practices than with anything else, because horses could be sustained on improved fodder since a horse costs more to keep than an ox [an ox costs about 70% the cost of a horse to feed].  Horses tend to live longer than oxen, but the main advantage is their versatility and ability to perform more than one basic task; they also do not churn up the land as much with their feet. Oxen tended to be used in the north of England where fodder was less rich and where too the heavy lands needed their superior stamina.  Horses were used in the south west as early as the fourteenth century.  The advent of the heavy horse brought a superior stamina to the farm.

[for greater detail on the economics of horses versus cattle in depth see John Langdon ‘The economics of horses and oxen in medieval England’ available online as a PDF]

May I just add, as a matter of general livestock interest,  a link to Mike Rendell's blog 'The Musings of Richard Hall'  where the activities of Mr Robert Bakewell of Dishley are chronicled and his ground-breaking selective breeding.
http://georgiangentleman.posterous.com/73297943
There's a link there to the New Dishley Society and I've put it on my list of favourite places too

Renaissance Food Terminology, a few odd terms

Renaissance Food Terms

References: 

'All the King's Cooks' Peter Brears

'Food and Feast in Medieval England' Peter Hammond

'Food and Feast in Tudor England'  Alison Sim 

Let’s be honest, most of these terms are Medieval but these are some of the things with which Felicia and Robin would be familiar. 

Here you will find Manchet Bread, Cheat Bread, Maslin Bread, Coney,Verjuice, Girout, Frumenty, Herbolace, Poor Knights of Windsor/Payne Perdew, Pie/Coffin, Mortrews, Collops, Aloes, Risshews, Skuets. Million Pie, Macrows and Possets/Caudles. 

My apologies that I haven't  yet worked out how to put in an internal link to jump directly to them all

Bread

Manchet bread – the finest, whitest bread, only eaten by the richest, ground very finely, no bits at all to wear the teeth.  This is the bread the prioress in the Canterbury tales fed her dog, the point being that she gave her pet food that most of the populace could not afford. At that, as a white bread it is not as white as we would expect white bread to be, not being as finely milled and bleached as modern tastes call for. 

Cheat or Chat bread – the next grade of bread.  Everyday fare for most people would eat.  Wholemeal.

Maslin bread – a coarse, dark bread made from a mix of rye and other grains.  Maslin was a rye mix usually sown for animal feed but the poorest made do with bread  made from it. 

Why Rabbit is Coney

In this period rabbit refers only to the young animal, under a year old; the adult is a coney. Henry VIII liked rabbit served with sauce of parsley, boiled butter, and verjuice [see below] served with salt and pepper and thickened with breadcrumbs. Rabbits for great houses were reared in warrens which might be huge affairs a mile across, or a smaller warren mound, stemming from the time when the Normans introduced them and they were sufficiently delicate to have trouble surviving the English climate.  Wild rabbits and hares were also in season September-March. Rabbits were more profitable than sheep on poor soil as besides the meat, the skins  could be sold to to tailors, glovers and hatters.

Also it is a meat that is available in winter, valuable in a time when most meat animals were slaughtered.  Pigeons in a dovecot were similarly available.

Up to a few months old, rabbit was designated as not counting as meat so monks could eat them on fast days.  (young)Rabbit meat fried with spinach. 

Coney derives from Latin cuniculus. Apicus, the famous gourmet of  the1^st Century praised rabbit meatballs.  [Never got around to making them myself.]

Verjuice

For Henry VIII this was crabapple juice, but any tart juice could be called Verjuice; indeed it was common to make it from the pressings of grapes that did not ripen as was common enough in England [I have a vine and it’s only ripened fully to black three times that I know of; 1976, 2008 and 2009].

Girout

Meat stew served to William the Bastard on his coronation day – Christmas day – and served at every coronation since up to George V.

By  the 16^th Century prunes and spices added, and it was called Christmas broth, porridge or pottage. Gradually more spices added and it became Christmas pudding

Frumenty

Served with venison or on its own, this is essentially boiled, cracked wheat, the name deriving from the Latin frumentum, grain. It may also be called fermenty, furmity or a number of different incarnations of the name.  Some recipes call for the cooking to be done in milk  or broth, and may include egg. Also to this may be added saffron, dried fruit, sugar, almonds, almond milk, spices, such as cinnamon, and orange flower water. You may be sure that Henry VIII had the richest variety.

It was a traditional Christmas dish, and also eaten on Mothering Sunday [American readers, please note that the English Mothering Sunday was during Lent and was a time to visit the Mother Church, nothing to do with one’s female parental unit; the permitted use of egg in frumenty was a welcome Lenten departure from fast].

Herbolace

Baked egg with cheese and herbs, a fore-runner of the omelette

Poor Knights of Windsor AKA Payn Perdew AKA Poor Knights’ Pudding

Bread cut into sticks, soaked in beaten egg [and possibly sherry], scattered with sugar and cinnamon and fried. This is a way of using up stale bread.  The name Payn Perdew is from Pain Perdu which is French for lost bread, because the bread is covered in the batter.

Pie

Just a note that this is a word that is short for magpie, leading also to the word pied [as in pied piper] meaning two coloured.  In the terms of foodstuff it refers to the habit magpies have of collecting an eclectic selection of stuff. Pie is a dish made of any old thing in other words….. Medieval pies were big with a thick ‘coffin’ of pastry made of flour, butter, broth and an egg or two.  Melton Mowbray pie is the earliest recipe for pork pies in 14^th C and includes plenty of raisins and currants in the coffin. Coffin was the term generally used for the crust.

Mortrews

Described as a  pottage of pounded pork or chicken, flavoured with minced onion and stuffed with egg yolks and breadcrumbs sufficient ‘that it be standing’: which is to say, not so much a pottage really as a form of meat loaf.  This is a medieval dish still extant. 

One might also have a mortews of fish.

Collops

Monday prior to Ash Wednesday is called collop Monday in the north of England.  The last meat is eaten then, of collops, or slices of meat or bacon lightly fried then stewed in gravy.  In south, collops are cut from bacon or ham.  In north and Scotland venison sometimes used, or more often steak or lamb

Aloes or Olives of Beef or Veal

Aloe is a corruption of the Old French for Lark which this dish is supposed to resemble.  This dish appears in the Middle Ages and consists of meat slices wrapped around a herb stuffing and baked.

Risshewes

 We would call them rissoles, cakes made of ground meat which might contain herbs and vegetables,  baked or fried.

Skuets

Medieval kebabs…. skewers of pork, veal or lamb. Used in the  middle ages, given flamboyance by Richard II whose cooks served dainty titbits of meat on silver skewers.  Parboil onion, use bacon and lamb rubbed with salt and pepper, mace, clove or ginger.  Also mushroom.  Dip threaded skuets in melted butter and spoon it over while cooking on spit-grill.

Million Pie

A Norfolk dish made of the million, mullion, or melon, or as we know it today, the pumpkin.  This was the local dish that was the forerunner of the Pilgrim Fathers’ well know pumpkin pie.

Macrows

Macaroni; a 14^th Century name for it. 

Possets and caudles

These are mentioned as early as 12^th Century.

The name may change but essentially it is a thickened milk drink, curdled with ale or wine.  The thickener can be oatmeal, breadcrumbs or egg.  Drunk in medieval period for breakfast or supper. It could be as mean as a drink made with whey or buttermilk  and ale with stale breadcrumbs, or as rich as one made with heavy sherry wine and cream with eggs.  Generally it would be given as a bever, a half drink, half meal workmen would take between meals to keep them going.  Nowadays we have egg-nogg.

Silver Threads among the......lead. Yet another Felicia and Robin prequel

Silver threads among the….lead.

When your client drops dead during the time that he is resting from having a sitting it is extremely disconcerting to say the least.

Signor d’Agnolo was a nice old man who had asked for a painting of himself for posterity since his silversmithing business had done extremely well; he provided threads of silver to the Arte della Seta, the guild of silkworkers to weave them, as they do gold threads, in their brocades and tissues, and for the Arte della Lana, the guild of woollen manufacturers who used such threads in cloth-of-silver, often woven in with threads dyed that richest of blues, Alessandrine to produce an effect like moonlight on a lake at night.

My master and I had been glad to do the portrait because we were low on funds – my master had but recently been maintaining a very expensive mistress whom I disliked more than usual – and having the chance to live in at Signor d’Agnolo’s country villa meant we did not have to pay the bills for day to day living.  He set a good table too, so we were eating better than we did even when we were in funds, and though my master teases me for my fondness for my food, he should recall that I am growing and must needs fuel the growth.

We were told of the death when Signor d’Agnolo’s man, Bartolomeo, came howling through the house like the angel of death himself, tearing at his clothes and hair.

My master reached surreptitiously for a pen-cil and I stood on his foot.  The poor fellow did not deserve to turn up in a painting as one of the afflicted whose devils were cast into the Gaderine swine. 

“Censorious little shrew” said my master without rancour.

Perhaps it would be a good point at which to describe the other members of Signor d’Agnolo’s household.

The Signora d’Agnolo was a recent acquisition and I use the term advisedly.  Tancia d’Agnolo was definitely of the class of fogattini, the small-hatted ones which is to say the insignificant; being the child of a shoemaker.  Her husband had not only waived a dowry to possess such a beautiful, if not very clever, bride as his second wife, but had settled a considerable sum on her father.  Tancia was happy enough with the bargain, which being so there is not a shoemaker in the land who would not jump at such a suggestion, for everyone knows that shoemakers are always having to live on credit, since nobody ever pays his shoemaker unless he has to. 

I will say that it is one of the more attractive things about my master that he pays in advance and in full any sum owed to our shoemaker who considers my master little short of the angel he would resemble if one did not take the aquiline nose into account.

Tancia was not of course held in high regard by Signor d’Agnolo’s two sons, Giovanni and Leonardo.  They were twins whose birth together with the third son who had died had cost the life of their mother, and each as different to the other as two beings could be, belying the idea that twins were always as alike in personality as in looks.  Giovanni was apparently the older by some half an hour, and was the good looking one, with smouldering eyes that a lot of girls found irresistible.  I thought he looked sulky myself but then I am not really old enough to get stupid about young men. He liked being wealthy and spent the allowance his father made him as soon as it was in his hands; and he was not so good a worker in his father’s workshops that he was like to earn a bonus ever either; though his flights of imagination in the matter of making decorative beads and spangles for clothing pleased his father mightily.  Leonardo on the other hand was a hard working young man, diligent and patient and without a single spark of originality or imagination in his body.  He put in twice as much effort in the workshop as Giovanni and gave his father all that he could.  Both youths were seventeen and might expect to have their papers of release from apprenticeship within the next year when they might choose to leave their father to set up on their own or seek work with another master.

oOoOo

Naturally we had not stayed frozen, bar my master’s desire to sketch, when Bartolomeo spread the news of his master’s sudden death.  We ran to Signor d’Agnolo’s room where he lay in horrid evidence of the truth.

Some servants are prone to exaggeration after all.

Signor d’Agnolo had voided himself and vomited horribly and his eyes started from his head in an expression of seeming horror, but more likely from the efforts of his extreme purging.  The little red spots in his eyes and on his face spoke of how he had gasped frantically for breath.  I had seen this before on a drowning victim whose body my master had managed to acquire.

It is not legal but how is an artist to understand anatomy if we have not studied how the body works at first hand?  Bribing a sexton is one of the little expenses one has to accept.

Tancia set up a screech which was hardly surprising for her husband of but a few weeks was a rather horrid sight.

“Dear God!” cried Leonardo “It must be lead poisoning – see his pewter goblet!  Have I not warned him often and often that the acid in wine will leach out the lead into his drink?”

“Funny” said my master “I saw no signs of memory loss or headache, and he has not complained once of stomach ache when we have dined here.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Giovanni quickly “You know about poisoning, Signor Robertini?”

“Of course I do” said my master.  “I use poisons as a matter of course; many of my pigments are poison, and I have been refreshing my mind as I teach Felicia to prepare them safely.  Salt of Saturn  I use every day, the soluble form of lead.”

It is part of his secret formula that permits his paints to dry more quickly than those of many other artists but of course he would not mention that.

I went forward to the pewter goblet; it stood still on the table and had not been upset and a good third remained in it.

I sipped cautiously.

“Felicia!” my master paled.  He does care for my wellbeing.

“It is bitter master; there is no sweetness at all” I said.  “The name most people give to Salt of Saturn is Sugar of Lead because it makes things taste sweet.  This wine has something horrid in the bottom of it.”

“Permit me to enlighten you my child” said my master grimly “With so sudden and violent a death with just these symptoms.  They are similar to death by lead poisoning but I have never heard of lead poisoning coming on so fast.  It is a slower death than – arsenic.  Which tastes bitter.”

I pulled a face; I could not help it.

“With so little amount you will take no harm, child, but you should not have taken the risk!” my master chided me. “But it is clear that this is no case of accidental lead poisoning but deliberate murder.”

“Who would murder our father?” demanded Giovanni.

“You for one, brother” said Leonardo “Were you not in trouble for being in debt yet again?  And is it not a fact that you watch Tancia with lustful eyes that dwell on her perfect face and white globes that you long to touch with your lewd fingers?”

Giovanni gave an angry bark of laughter.

“Not I, brother; she is not fiery enough for me.  I should prefer the artist maid when she is old enough to have a figure as well as a temper.  See?” he added as I bit my thumb at him.  “Delightful!”

“Oh my poor husband!” wailed Tancia “Who will care for me now he is gone? Will my step sons see that I have a handsome dowry to remarry?”

“Pretty Tancia, to get rid of you to another as foolish as our father, anything” said Giovanni “But only if you stop this screeching.  I would listen to the Artist and his brown shrew.”

“Who carried the wine to him?” I asked. I looked to Signor d’Agnolo’s man Bartolomeo for an answer.  He had his own hysterics under control and was weeping.

“The maid Lucia” said Bartolomeo.  “She is my lady’s maid but she said that she would carry it to the master.”

“Send for her” said my master.

It is wonderful how he can take charge by sheer personality; we had of course no standing in the household at all but Bartolomeo obeyed without question.

oOoOo

The little maid came and gasped in horror at the sight of her dead master.

“Dear God!” she cried “Surely this is a nightmare!” she turned to look at the brothers “The powder cannot have done this!”

Leonardo let out a howl.

“You have murdered my father on the orders of your lover, my brother!” he cried “I will kill you and him!” and he launched himself towards her drawing his knife as he did so.

My master’s own knife was out of the scabbard before anyone could blink, blocking and parrying the blade and in one smooth movement wrenching it from Leonardo’s hand.

“I would prefer to hear about this powder you know” he said calmly, kicking Leonardo’s feet from under him.

“It was Signor Leonardo who gave it to you, wasn’t it?” I said to the girl.

“Yes Signorina!” she said “He said it would enhance the master’s performance to please my mistress the more!”

“Madness!” howled Leonardo from the floor “Why would I kill my father?”

“Yes, why would he?” asked Giovanni “He is the good boy not the wastrel.”

“Because,” I said, “However good he was, however hard he worked, he could never please your father as well as you.  You were the one with brilliance and flair who pleased your father with your designs even though you vexed him with your spendthrift habits.  He knew you would settle down in time.  Perhaps he was wild as a youth himself.  But Signor Leonardo was jealous that for all his diligence you were favoured – even as Cain was favoured over Abel by their father.  Abel was a fraudster but your brother decided to go further.  Moreover from the way he speaks of the fair Signora Tancia d’Agnolo, it is he who lusts for his stepmother and perhaps hoped to possess her if your father were out of the way.”

“It is a SIN!” cried Tancia.

I knew she was not very clever but if she had not noticed that murder was more of a sin than technical incest then she was dimmer even than I thought.

Giovanni nodded.

“I see” he said shortly.  “Thank you Signor Robertini, Signorina Felicia.  You will present your arguments to the Gonfalonier?”

We acquiesced of course.

Giovanni had grown up and laid aside that wild youth in the shock of the death of his father. A hard way to have to come fully to manhood’s estate.

oOoOo

“So what started you suspecting Leonardo?” asked my master.

“It was he who was keen to suggest accidental death and to insist that he had warned his father about the dangers of drinking from a pewter goblet” I said “And then when he saw that he could not pass it off as such with our testimony to the contrary he was ready to lay it onto Giovanni.  And to kill the girl before she could speak.”

My master nodded.

“Your reasoning as ever is good” he said.  “Well, at least we are to get paid to finish the painting from our sketches for Giovanni; and then we shall eat well, hmmm?”

“Until you spend all our funds on something frivolous” I said tartly.

He laughed and cuffed me lightly.

He does at least acknowledge his many faults.

Thomas Wolsey, Catlover. Oh, and he was Lord Chancellor too.

In a period when cats and cat lovers could, by a papal ordinance of 1484 be burned, Thomas Wolsey was a notable cat lover. 

The name Wolsey comes from Wulfsig, or ‘Wolf victory’; wolves are canines, but on the other hand they have the same capacity for independence that cats do; a cat will stay because it wants to.

Some cats are attached to places, others to people; but there are those people with whom cats will happily stay, regardless of their movements.  Wolsey was apparently one of those people as he travelled about in the king’s train and on the king’s business generally taking at least two of his cats with him.  One indeed was said to attend mass with him and sit quietly and with all apparent piety throughout.

Tom Wolsey was born in Ipswich, the son of a small land owner who owned and raised cattle of various kinds.  He was educated at Felawe’s school, now the Ipswich School and still going strong, and at Oxford University.  He was almoner first and very briefly to Henry VII and then to Henry VIII, and had a running rivalry with Henry VII’s mother Margaret Beaufort [perhaps she was an ailurophobe; she was certainly dictatorial and there is not a single dictator I know of who liked cats].

In the period of my Robin and Felicia books Wolsey has not yet risen to cardinal, let alone Lord Chancellor.  I give him a number of fictional cats which are whimsically named as, by my reading of his character through looking at as many accounts of him as I can, I fancy he might have done. 

I have Felicia describe him in many ways as essentially feline; neat and economical of movement, sleek, and with the eye of a mouser. Her first impressions are not favourable:

      “He seemed most affable.”  I said.  “Indeed, he seemeth like the very fireside cat that hath but late licked the cream off his whiskers; distaining overmuch the work of hunting rats but rather dispatching the common cats to do the same.  Yet withal, I fancy, it sometimes taketh his whimsy to pursue a choice mouse, playing with it before deciding whether to bite it in the neck or let it go.  Be wary, my master, lest you become the churchman’s mouse to scurry hither and thither at the wave of his velvet gloved paws.”

From 'The Mary Rose Mystery'

Felicia acquires a more positive view of Tom Wolsey as she gets to know him, but she continues to refer to him as 'Tom Mouser' especially when his position of Royal Spymaster [an invention of mine in the biography of Thomas Wolsey but not, I think, unreasonable] involves her and Robin in dangerous adventures.

Wolsey rose in the church, becoming Bishop of Lincoln in 1512, Archbishop of York in 1514, Cardinal in 1515 and rose in a secular fashion too, to become  Lord Chancellor in 1515. 

Ipswich has this year honoured her famous son with a statue near the house reputed to be the one where he was born, and David Annand of Fife was commissioned to cast it in bronze.  He has included a cat, which is very appropriate.  Thank you David Annand!

For an excellent history see The King’s Cardinal by Peter Gwyn

By the way I have a cat blog too now at http://sarahs-cat-spot.blogspot.com/

Time is not measured by Rollex in previous eras

Time Generally

Medieval/Renaissance

      Time for most people was measured by the Church.  The year was governed by a combination of religious festivals and farming expediency; the religious festivals usually coinciding with farming needs. Calendars were just being introduced but the idea of most people dating anything ‘the umpteenth of whatever’ was totally alien.  Dating was by festivals and saints’ days. It is possible to find a saint for every day, but most did not go in for quite so sad a depth of hagiography; but might date a letter, say, ‘Wednesday following the day of St Wilfrid’.  Major saints had a vigil held before their feast, which was a fast day; there are complex rules governing how these move if they fall on Sunday or another major feast.  (Anyone who is interested should look up Father John Wooley online for a comprehensive discussion. http://www.saradouglass.com/relfest.html) Note; the vigil ran to sundown, which was when the next day started: even as Sabbath started at sundown on Saturday.

The days were divided according to the church offices and the prayers that were said at the following times – themselves dependant on time of year in some cases:

Matins midnight

Lauds sunrise

Prime 6-30 am

Terce 9-00 am

Sext noon

Nones 3-00 pm

Vespers sunset or 6-00 pm ish

Compline 9-00 pm ish aka bedtime

The farmworker’s day was determined as it always has been by the time of year; he worked from dawn until dusk. The hardest work of the year was during harvest, when the day was very long too; in winter there were less tasks to do on the land save marling it but the few animals that were not slaughtered still had to be cared for, and there was repair to tools and fences.

The year was divided into quarters as I have mentioned in the section on finances in the Renaissance, concerning pay by the quarter. 

Quarter days:

Lady Day, 25^th March, held as New Year’s day until 1751 and the reason for the superstition of cleaning the grate completely on New Year’s eve [it makes sense at the end of spring to be without a fire where it does not do so in the middle of winter]

Midsummer Day 24^th June St John’s feast day

Michaelmas Day 29^th September

Christmas Day 25^th December

Country folk were still calculating by the quarter day up to the second world war in some places.

Even in the Regency time was not as all-important as it is now.  Time nowadays is measured in nanoseconds and consumes all our lives.  Then the nearest quarter hour was good enough – and likely to be different in every village or at every church steeple by which gentlemen set their watches.  Accurate chronometers for the use of sailors had been invented in 1750 for the purposes of calculating longitude at sea, but pocket watches were not of that degree of accuracy, and nor did this particularly matter.  Especially as the time from one place to the next might be anything up to an hour different.

Country wide timekeeping only became important with the widespread use of railways; when ‘railway time’ was adhered to as the standard.

No Regency buck is going to look at his watch and say ‘it is three seventeen’; for one thing that means of expressing the time is modern, and for another it would not occur to him to be that accurate – unless he was trying to break a record driving from London to Brighton, when he would probably start on the hour or half hour in any case.  He would for every day purposes say either ‘it’s about quarter past three’ or if he was trying to hurry up the females in his life ‘hurry up, it’s coming up twenty past three already’.

Moon phases as they relate to time of rising and setting.

Nothing irritates me much more than to read things like ‘the sickle moon was just rising as they went to Almack’s’

The rising and setting times of the moon are determined by the phases and though that may vary by some hours in general the following is true.

The New Moon or dark of the moon rises very early in the morning, between the late early hours and early morning and sets in the early evening.  This is only really noticeable when there is the first sliver of new moon visible.

First Quarter  rises quite early in the morning and sets sometime at or after midnight.

Full Moon rises early evening, sets very, very early in the morning

Third Quarter rises after midnight and sets  during the first part of the morning

During each of these phases of course the time shifts slightly each day. 

The Jordanian astronomical society have a calculator which will calculate times of rising and setting any month of any year you want for total accuracy; it is called Accurate Time and there are a number of versions that can be downloaded. 

What's going on with the books....

'Poison for a Poison Tongue' is wrapped and ready to go just as soon as I have a US tax code to log me as a person at Create Space [doing the paperwork to explain that I shall be paying any taxes in Britain not to the US government is a whole new ballgame to join right after that]. So, I await the wheels of bureacracy on that.

'Death of a Fop' proof copy is winging its way towards me in the mail.

'William Price and the 'Thrush'' is still in the pipeline.  However as I know what it's going to look like, here's a view of all of them.

This is all very exciting, and I'm hoping to get my tax code soon so I can get going. 
To anyone who has read 'Death of a Fop' and the first William Price novella online, these are revised, extended somewhat, and -I fondly hope - improved.Thanks for the input that has enabled me to do so.

Signor di Piccolo's Bill of Exchange - another prequel

Niccola di Piccolo’s missing money-note

It would be neither  kind nor accurate to say that my master virtually lived in Signor di Piccolo’s library, but it would not be unfair to say that he spent a very great deal of time there.  Naturally he took me, his apprentice, with him.

 There were those books I was not permitted to peruse – Master Robin is oft times strict over what he considers suitable for the eyes of a young girl – but I managed to get a glimpse of most of them in any wise, since once my master is absorbed in reading, he might as well be as remote as the moon for all the notice he takes of what is going on around him. 

 Signor di Piccolo has quite fifty books, an awe-inspiring collection, and he is pleased that they are enjoyed by another scholar. Though the initial acquaintance was professional, when my master was painting Signor de Piccolo’s portrait, a friendship sprang up, and Signor di Piccolo stands our patron, and my master’s friend, benefiting from Master Robin’s polymathy. 

This means that my master is generally the life and soul of gatherings of other scholars, and I get the privilege of fetching and carrying food and drink for a selection of drunken philosophers.  Which is educational enough most of the time, for most of them are willing to debate with anyone who can hold a good debate, and often I am permitted to join in.  I learn much, too, in just listening, so I do not mind fetching and carrying, and making them comfortable if they should fall into bibulous slumber.  

I do not clear up vomit.  Signor di Piccolo has servants to do that sort of thing and there are only so many things I will do unpaid.

Signor di Piccolo is a big man in the Arte della Lana, the woollen guild; and as such has many friends who are wealthy merchants from that guild and the Arte della Seta, the silk guild.  They are good patrons for portraiture and wealthy enough to mostly pay up without a murmur and no need to threaten to paint amusingly obscene trade signs on their doors suggesting that another trade be theirs. It is where an artist has the advantage over other craftsmen, in that he might ridicule bad payers; but the friends of Signor Piccolo were all unquestionably honest men; a fact that will be seen to be of some importance as I come to the meat of my tale.

The merchants of Florence do much business overseas, and this was the root of Signor Piccolo’s problem, for he frequently held Bills of Exchange, which might only be words written on parchment or even paper, but those words might be worth thousands of florins.  The big banking families issue these Bills in exchange for real money, and the Bills may then be exchanged for money again with other branches of that family, or other families with whom there is an understanding, even in other countries.  Signor di Piccolo was guarding one for the guild that was made out in English sovereigns to the value of quite eighty pounds, an immense sum, for the purchase of the finest Florentine woollen cloths, dyed rich colours like pavonazzo,  a wonderful colour with the shimmer of the peacock, between blue and violet and using extravagant dyes to produce it, not merely indigo but even more expensive grain, too, for that violet shimmer. 

And Signor di Piccolo had managed to lose his Bill of Exchange.

He certainly had it in the morning. Indeed he had it in his hand when he came into the library, because he was telling my Master how nervous it made him and that he must put it away safely.

He got momentarily sidetracked at that moment because my master was producing his own satirical version  of one of Horace’s 'Odes', the one about how nobody can escape death.  My master had been changing it to a version that swore that no man could escape taxes, addressing it to Niccolo Machiavelli, another of his unsavoury friends.  When I tell you that it began ‘Eheu, fugaces, Niccole, Niccole’ and spoke not of wrinkled brows but of purses wrinkled for hanging empty you will get the general gist.  My master had made enough the previous year to have had to pay a large tax to the city and it had irked him, and he was now wrestling with the phrase about Sisyphus and his eternal toil to change the sense to suggest that he represented all Florentines.

It was a pointless exercise, but then when are men not given to pointless exercise in their leisure hours?

Signor di Piccolo came to argue over the wording, and they sat together, his neat dark head bobbing in thought beside my master’s golden one.  Until Signor Piccolo’s man Giovanni came to find us to tell his master that the noon meal was served.

About time too in my opinion, and probably had been ready for a while since while Giovanni tracked down the errant master of the house. 

We were staying for the afternoon, having a small commission to repair a fresco, and then for an evening gathering of convivial men.  You must not get me wrongly; my master is in general above painting and repairing frescos, that pay only a florin a foot, but this was a favour to a friend.  And free meals while we were there too.

The repair work went well, and the evening passed well, until one of the other guild members who was there asked Signor di Piccolo about the Bill of Exchange; and he went to get it. 

The first we knew of its disappearance was when Signor di Piccolo, white of face, asked my master and me to step into his library.

Then he broke down and admitted the loss.

“I know that Felicia is said to be good at finding things” he said “And I wondered…. You see, I cannot but think that it has been stolen; and I will not suspect any of my servants, all of whom have been with me for many years; but I do not wish to suspect the guests either!”

I quite saw his problem.

I enumerated the guests.

“Piero Mancini, whom you say is the one who asked for the Bill of Exchange; high in the guild, beyond suspicion.  Of course to ask you where it is might be an easy way to divert suspicion from himself if he had seen it and been tempted, for his daughter Agnesa is to be married, and the dowries regarded as proper here in Florence can be crippling to produce” I said.  It is true; many families can only afford for one of their daughters to wed, for the competition in giving ever greater dowries.  I think it sheer foolishness myself; and younger daughters so often sent into nunneries in childhood, where the dowry as a Bride of Christ is much less, and where they are taught to make reticella, lace of various kinds, and to sew, and might hope to sell enough of their work to form a dowry before they are old enough to take vows.

“Yes, my brother is concerned about his daughter, who is already eighteen years old and unwed, though it has given him time to save more for when Giuliana should marry” said Signor di Piccolo “But I cannot see that Piero would even feel such temptation as to steal from me, let alone give way to it!”

“Probably not” I said “But it is well to look at all people concerned.   And next we have Andrea Rizzo, who is the bridegroom to Agnesa Mancini.  He is doing quite well in the guild but when a young man marries there are more expenses.  He too might be tempted.”

“That I refuse to believe” said Signor di Piccolo “For has he not reported honestly on flaws in cloth that the inspector missed when it was due to be stamped?”

“If he had said farewell to his mistress I might have been more ready to believe him honest without needing proof” I said tartly “But to my mind there is something dishonest in a man who will take a wife whilst retaining his mistress.”

“Art a prude, thou shrewling” said my master. “Many a man keeps a wife and a mistress.”

“But it is impolite to both to take a wife whilst keeping a mistress” I said. “You would not, master.”

He had the grace to look uncomfortable.  His habits might be free but his eccentric moral code is quite firm  even though he be as much a fornicator and drunkard as he is a genius and polymath.

“Well that is my own personal ethic” he said. “Let it stand that you dislike the practice but than most see nothing dishonest in it.”

I bowed my head in acquiescence. 

“Very well, master” I said.  “Giovanni Trovato is the only other person here directly connected to the wool trade.”

Trovato means foundling; and Giovanni the foundling had been reared in the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the orphan hospital maintained by the Wool Guild.  He had attracted much notice for his intelligence and had been serving for the past four years as one of the inspectors for the guild.

“He is a good boy” said Signor Piccolo “It is a responsible task to oversee the quality of goods; his integrity is, and must be, unimpeachable!”

“Quid custodiet ipsos custodies” I murmured.  My master cuffed me gently across the back of the head.

“Leave Juvenal out of this” he said. “Besides, the phrase ‘who watches the watchmen’ was in his satire referring to the corrupting influence of women; not what I’d be expecting from your partisan lips!”

“But master, every apprentice in the city knows that Giovanni Trovato has a secret mistress!” I declared. “And he visits her early in the mornings not late at night to try to avoid prying eyes – but ‘tis when we apprentices be out running errands!”

“Great God!” said Signor di Piccolo “I never knew that!”

“Oh trust an apprentice to know all” said my master.  “They are worse gossips than old women and fishwives.”

He beamed at me complacently for his little victory of barbed comment.

In front of Signor di Piccolo I could scarcely put my tongue out to him, that would be worth getting his slipper across my backside for.

I went on,

“Iacopo Brunello the goldsmith seems prosperous enough but his wife is ailing.  Who knows what medicines he might need for her?  And Antonio de Luca is a tailor of no great wealth. And finally Bartolo Moretti is said to have received some severe reverses in the investments he has made in foreign trade, for he put much into the sugar trade and now the plantations on Cyprus and Sicily are failing; and his fortunes with them, for he failed to trust in the newer plantations on Madeira.”

I could not feel much sympathy for Signor Moretti; since mine own looks suggest African ancestors I have compassion for the poor slaves who work the plantations and it has ever seemed unfair that others should grow wealthy on unpaid toil.

“But how hard it is to question the honesty of any of them, however great the temptations!” cried Signor di Piccolo.  “How can I ask any of them such questions as would impugn their honour?”

“I think it would be well to see if any might have opportunity” I said “When we were called to eat, I presume you placed the Bill of Exchange in your strongroom?”

He looked at me with a curious expression on his face.

“Why – I cannot say I recall” he said.  “Though where else might I have put it?”

I snorted.  He is an old enough friend that he permits such a liberty.

“Signor, my experience of scholars tells me that you may have wandered in to dine with it in your hand and used it to wipe your fingers on between dishes; or left it with the napery; or taken it to the jakes with you, and either left it, or proceeded to use it” I said dryly.

He went ashen.  Using a Bill of Exchange in such a fashion would be a rather extravagant way to cleanse one’s person.

Then I started chuckling as the answer came to me.

“Fear not, Signor de Piccolo!” I cried “Though I fancy that the Bill of Exchange has indeed drifted to nether regions, such nether regions are no worse than to follow the winding River Cocytus into the realms of Hades.”

“Felicia, what are you talking about? Have you run even more whimsical than usual?” Signor di Piccolo does not stand on ceremony with me either.

“I believe I catch her meaning” said my master “But let the little shrew have her victory and show how she has found the prize.  Fetch it down from the shelf, shrewling.”

I took down the second volume of Horace’s ‘Odes’ and there, gently laid next to the fourteenth ode, was the missing Bill of Exchange.

Signor di Piccolo cried out in joy and embraced me, kissing me on both cheeks.

When dealing with scholars such little problems are amazingly easy.  Assume that they have no mind outside their current interest and leave everything else in the last book they were reading.

When this is a Bill of Exchange its discovery is a fortunate business, but less salubrious when a shred of smallage is left decaying gently between the leaves to mark a place.

My Master had the grace to look slightly guilty before suggesting heartily that we rejoin the others.

I decided to be nice and make no issue of the matter.  After all, he’s not such a bad master, really.

This is where the 14^th ode may be found in translation.

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceOdesBkII.htm#_Toc39742788