The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

by Mortimer, Ian

  5. Basic Essentials

  1. David Crystal, ‘To modernise or not to modernise: there is no question’, Around the Globe, 21 (2002), pp. 15–17.

  2. Black, Reign, pp. 5, 364–5.

  3. Eliz. Home, pp. 60, 69.

  4. As in Harrison, Description, chapter four: ‘no occupier shall have occasion to travel far off with his commodities’.

  5. Mortimer, ‘Machyn’, pp. 981–98; Richard W. Bailey and Colette Moore, ‘Henry Machyn’s English’, in Christopher M. Cain and Geoffrey Russom (eds), Studies in the English Language III (2007), pp. 231–50; Derek Britton, ‘The Dialectal Origins of the Language of Henry Machyn’, in ibid., pp. 251–66.

  6. P. Beresford Ellis, The Cornish Language and its Literature (1974), p. 57, quoting Andrew Boorde, Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1542).

  7. Stoyle, West Britons, plate 2.

  8. Stoyle, West Britons, pp. 35–9.

  9. Carew, Survey, f. 56r.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Hollyband, Campo di Fior.

  12. Frances A. Yeates, ‘Italian Teachers in Elizabethan England,’ Journal of the Warburg Institute, vol. 1 (1937), pp. 103–16 at pp. 103–4, quoting Bruno, La Cena et la Ceneri (1584), dialogue III (G. Bruno, Opere italiane, ed. G. Gentile (1925), i, pp. 64–5).

  13. Lawrence Stone, ‘Elizabethan Overseas Trade’, Economic History Review, New Series, 2, 1 (1949), pp. 30–58 at p. 31.

  14. The types of paper and wood used are taken from Horman’s Vulgaria, ‘de scholasticis’.

  15. ‘Rules made by E. B. for children to write by’, quoted in Molly Harrison and O. M. Royston, How they Lived, vol ii: an anthology of original accounts written between 1485 and 1700 (Oxford, 1963), p. 163.

  16. Duffy, Morebath, p. 14. Other examples are to be found in inventories, e.g. Havinden, Inventories, p. 150, and Herridge, Inventories, pp. 5, 8, 25.

  17. The reference to chamber clocks is from Horman’s Vulgaria. The price is from Stevenson, ‘Extracts’, p. 301.

  18. Doran, Exhibition, pp. 145–7.

  19. Scott, EOaW, p. 50, quoting the letter of Robert Laneham.

  20. 6 Henry VIII, cap. 4 (1515). These hours are stated in the Statute of Artificers in 1563 (5 Elizabeth, cap. 4).

  21. Mortimer, ‘Machyn’, p. 988.

  22. Carew, Survey, f. 54r.

  23. Robert S. Dilley, ‘The Customary Acre: an Indeterminate Measure’, Agricultural History Review 23 (1975), pp. 173–6 at p. 174.

  24. Carew, Survey, f. 36r.

  25. Eliz. Home, pp. 87, 93.

  26. Platter, Travels, p. 175.

  27. Hodgen, ‘Fairs’, p. 391.

  28. Hodgen, ‘Fairs’, pp. 393, 395; Emmison, HWL, p. 193.

  29. Emmison, HWL, p. 191.

  30. Hoskins, Exeter, p. 59.

  31. Eliz. Home, pp. 87–9.

  32. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, p. 118. In London in 1560, basic foodstuffs, drink and fuel are 75 per cent more than they were twenty years earlier. See Dawson, Plenti & Grase, p. 34.

  33. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, p. 118; CAHEW, i, pp. 150–1; Overton, ‘Prices’, p. 140.

  34. Thirsk, Documents, pp. 599–601.

  35. 5 Elizabeth, cap. 11.

  36. For the horse-powered aspect of Mestrelle’s press, see Magno, p. 142.

  37. In stating this, it is acknowledged that a modern pair of sheets is a different commodity from the Elizabethan ones. The modern pair is manufactured by machine, it is a luxury item, and there are many cheaper artificial alternatives. In the 1590s the sheets represent many hours of labour, and cheap artificial alternatives do not exist. Nevertheless, it is assumed here that they are comparable, for the sake of argument.

  38. 13 Elizabeth, cap. 8. See also Peter Spufford, ‘Long-Term Rural Credit in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England: the Evidence of Probate Accounts’, in Arkell, Death, pp. 213–28; Emmison, HWL, p. 91; Mortimer, ‘Accounts’.

  39. Emmison, HWL, pp. 146, 165.

  40. Hoskins, Exeter, p. 52.

  41. Lawrence Stone, ‘An Elizabethan Coalmine’, Economic History Review, New Series, 3, 1 (1950), pp. 97–106.

  42. Mortimer, Probate, p. 25.

  43. Emmison, HWL, p. 167.

  44. Mortimer, Probate, p. 3.

  45. Pelling, CL, p. 126. The causes of syphilis were well known at the time, so this reflects an expectation that the master would sleep with the servant.

  46. Eliz. Home, pp. 4, 12, 20, 66, 72, 73, 80.

  47. Magno, p. 146.

  48. Platter, Travels, pp. 163, 183; Rye, England; Magno, p. 144.

  6. What to Wear

  1. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 159, quoting Moryson’s Itinerary, part one, p. 199. Most of the references to the queen’s clothes in this chapter are from Arnold.

  2. Scott, EOaW, p. 12.

  3. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 7–10. The question of whether women can show their nipples is a matter of doubt – and of context. No Puritan would have thought it seemly. But in some artwork and in sculptures of women from the New World, the full breast is often depicted; and the French ambassador describes seeing ‘the whole breast’.

  4. Eliz. People, pp. 31–2.

  5. For a 1568 case, see Emmison, HWL, p. 274.

  6. Tudor Tailor, pp. 36–7.

  7. Tudor Tailor, p. 38.

  8. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 90.

  9. Schneider, ‘Colors’, esp. pp. 111–14. Her analysis of colour having nationalistic overtones seems plausible, and I have followed it here; but she does not pay enough attention to the number of common women’s petticoats and kirtles that are dyed with madder.

  10. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 157–8. The practice of sending fashion dolls is mentioned in the correspondence between Marie de Medici and Henri II of France: ‘Fontenac tells me that you desired to have some models of the fashion of dress in France. I am sending you some dressed dolls and will send you with the Duc de Bellegarde a good tailor.’ Quoted in Norris, Costume, ii, p. 667. For the value of imports, see under ‘babies’ in Port & Trade.

  11. Thomas Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606), quoted in Black, Reign, p. 268.

  12. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 115, 125, 128, 135–6.

  13. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 4.

  14. Stubbes, Anatomy, pp. 8, 33, 36.

  15. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 42.

  16. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 4–5.

  17. Eliz. Home, pp. 61–2.

  18. Tudor Tailor, p. 36.

  19. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 47. The example cited there is recorded in the Much Wenlock parish register for 1547.

  20. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 208; Norris, Costume, ii, p. 545.

  21. Holmes, London, p. 24; Schneider, ‘Colors’, p. 119; Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 206–10.

  22. ‘Menstrual clouts’ [cloths] are mentioned in the early English translations of the Bible. See Tudor Tailor, p. 24. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 52, states that women do not wear drawers until the nineteenth century; but Pepys’s wife does. See entries for 15 May 1663 and 4 June 1663.

  23. Tudor Tailor, p. 20; Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 209.

  24. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 48.

  25. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 144–7.

  26. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 154.

  27. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 49 (Kempe); Tudor Tailor, pp. 22, 40, 46.

  28. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 143.

  29. Stubbes, Anatomy, pp. 44–5.

  30. Holmes, London, p. 25.

  31. Platter, Travels, p. 182.

  32. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 42.

  33. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 122–3, 156–7.

  34. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 213–14.

  35. Tudor Tailor, p. 33.

  36. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 214.

  37. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 311, quote BL Stowe 557, fol. 72.

  38. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 313, quote BL Stowe 557, fol. 76.

  39. Quoted in Sh. Eng., ii, p. 97.

  40. Quoted in Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 203.

  41. Quoted in Sh. Eng., ii, p. 110. No date or p
lace is given.

  42. Havinden, Inventories, p. 220.

  43. Probate inventory of Alice Bates, http://www.the-orb.net/ather-stone/inventory.html, downloaded 10 June 2011.

  44. Havinden, Inventories, p. 120. Avis Gardner’s clothes are a red petticoat (3s 4d), an old frieze cassock (2s), a waistcoat (8d), a flannel apron (6d), an old worsted apron (3d), two old linen aprons (4d), three smocks (1s 8d), seven kerchiefs (2s), old rail [nightshift] (2d), seven partlets (1s 8d), an old pair of shoes (2d) and a hat (4d). The chest was worth 1s 8d.

  45. Mortimer, Probate, pp. 15, 23, 25.

  46. For the definition of ‘rubbers’, see OED. The same source quotes as its earliest reference to hairbrushes Oswald Gaebelkhover, The book of physicke, translated by A. M. (1st edn, 1599). For a German illustration of a sixteenth-century maker of hairbrushes, see Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 233. Most gentlewomen used combs through the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. William Kent started manufacturing modern hairbrushes in 1777. Note that a high-quality hairbrush probably used for grooming was found on the Mary Rose. See Before the Mast, p. 354.

  47. Stubbes, Anatomy, pp. 40–1.

  48. Platter, Travels, p. 182.

  49. 1 Corinthians, ch. 11, v. 6; Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 40; Tudor Tailor, p. 28.

  50. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 325, quoting BL Stowe 557, fol. 91.

  51. Quoted in Norris, Costume, ii, p. 552. See also Tudor Tailor, p. 33.

  52. This list is from the inventory of the glover William Hobday of Stratford, who died in 1601, quoted in Jeanne Jones, Family Life in Shakespeare’s England (Stroud, 1996), pp. 80–1.

  53. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 332 (pelican); Doran, Exhibition, p. 107 (ship jewel).

  54. Eliz. Home, p. 95.

  55. Mortimer, Probate, p. 33. In saying this I am mindful especially of how very few probate inventories mention jewellery.

  56. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 42.

  57. This apparently includes the queen. See Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 27, for her earrings being hung by pearls; look at almost all the painted portraits for her lack of piercings in her ears. However, the one by Federico Zuccaro, supposed to be of her at Sudeley Castle, clearly shows a pierced ear.

  58. Stubbes, Anatomy, pp. 49–50.

  59. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 37.

  60. Horman, Vulgaria, ‘de cubicularibus’.

  61. Quoted in Scott, EOaW, p. 81.

  62. Doran, Exhibition, pp. 104–5.

  63. A boxwood pomander was found on the Mary Rose. See Before the Mast, p. 161.

  64. Quoted in Scott, EOaW, p. 80.

  65. Eliz. Home, pp. 1–2.

  66. Tudor Tailor, p. 16.

  67. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 39.

  68. Phillis Cunnington and Catherine Lucas, Occupational Costume in England (1967, rep. 1968), p. 25.

  69. Tudor Tailor, p. 39.

  70. Stubbes, Anatomy, pp. 30–1; Tudor Tailor, p. 18; Norris, Costume, ii, 2, pp. 530, 542–4.

  71. Cunnington, Underclothes, pp. 41, 44.

  72. Andrew Boorde’s advice to a youth was to wear a ‘petticoat’ next to his shirt in winter, as was John Russell’s. See Furnivall (ed.), Babees Book, pp. 177, 247.

  73. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 41.

  74. Tudor Tailor, pp. 18–19, 36.

  75. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 29.

  76. Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 41; Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 26.

  77. Havinden, Inventories, pp. 249–50.

  78. Leather jerkins were the most common garment on the Mary Rose. See Before the Mast, p. 18.

  79. Tudor Tailor, pp. 18–20; Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 21; Picard, London, p. 128; Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion: 1560–1620, vol. 3 (1985), p. 6.

  80. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 25.

  81. Havinden, Inventories, p. 86; Herridge, Inventories, p. 421.

  82. Herridge, Inventories, pp. 68, 217, 372.

  83. Claudius Hollyband, The Italian Schoolmaster (1597), [n.p., section on ‘familiar talks’].

  84. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 18.

  85. Combs were among the most-common items found on the Mary Rose. See Before the Mast, p. 156.

  86. Stevenson, ‘Extracts’, p. 300 (lord’s rapier, 1581); Herridge, Inventories, p. 268.

  87. The armour quantifications are from Emanuel Green (ed.), Certificate of Musters in the County of Somerset, temp. Elizabeth 1569, Somerset Record Society, 20 (1904), pp. 3–6.

  88. See Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 139, for a nobleman wearing his damask nightgown to his execution.

  89. Eliz. Home, p. 111.

  90. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 139–40.

  91. Quoted in Norris, Costume, ii, p. 617.

  92. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 7.

  93. OED quoting Wardr. Acc. Hen. VIII in Archaeologia, 9 (1789), p. 245: ‘one dussen brushes, and one dussen and a halfe of rubbers delyvered to like use into oure saide warderobe of our roobis’ [1536]; W. Warde translated by ‘Alessio’, Secretes (1558), i, v, p. 90: ‘To die hogges brystels and other thinges, for to make rubbers and brusshes.’ See also the images in Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 233.

  94. Arnold, Wardrobe, pp. 233–4.

  95. Emmison, HWL, p. 98.

  96. Dawson, Jewel, p. 151.

  97. Stow, Survay, Cordwainer Street Ward; Port & Trade.

  98. Stubbes, Anatomy, p. 31.

  7. Travelling

  1. Emmison, Disorder, p. 14.

  2. Horman, Vulgaria, ‘de coniugalibus’: ‘Maydens that carry gere upon theyr head putte a wrethe of haye between the vessel and theyr heed to stay it from goglynge.’

  3. Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 464.

  4. Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 463; Holmes, London, p. 24.

  5. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 231; Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 463. Rippon made a coach for the earl of Rutland in 1564.

  6. Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 232. Three hundred carts are mentioned by Von Wedel (Arnold, Wardrobe, p. 232) and four hundred by Harrison, Description, book 3, ch. 1.

  7. Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 463.

  8. Picard, London, p. 32.

  9. Markland, ‘Carriages’, pp. 458–9.

  10. Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 469.

  11. Markland, ‘Carriages’, pp. 459, 462–3.

  12. Sh. Eng., i, p. 204.

  13. Eliz. Home, pp. 86, 96.

  14. Platter, Travels, p. 182.

  15. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 4.

  16. ‘There have been knights and lords and gentlemen with their coaches, coach after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift …’ Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Scene 2.

  17. Picard, London, p. 33, quoting T. R. Forbes, Chronicle from Aldgate (1971).

  18. Eliz. People, p. 36, quoting John Stow.

  19. Quoted in Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 466.

  20. Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 465.

  21. Emmison, HWL, pp. 287–8.

  22. For example, Black, Reign, p. 263.

  23. Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 458.

  24. 2 & 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 8 (1555); 5 Elizabeth, cap. 13 (1563); 18 Elizabeth, cap. 5 (1576); Emmison, HWL, pp. 242–3.

  25. Emmison, Disorder, pp. 17–19.

  26. Leland, Itinerary, i, pp. 221, 274. Eighty years later Thomas Westcote described Devon in the same way, breaking the whole county up into rivers, and describing the towns and principal residences according to the river valley in which they are situated. See George Oliver and Pitman Jones (eds), Thomas Westcote, A View of Devonshire in MDCXXX (1845).

  27. Emmison, HWL, p. 281.

  28. The queen fails to repair several bridges in Essex. See Emmison, HWL, p. 281.

  29. Sh. Eng., i, p. 200.

  30. Black, Reign, p. 264; Markland, ‘Carriages’, p. 444.

  31. Stevenson, ‘Extracts’, p. 295; Mortimer, Probate, p. 31.

  32. Overton, ‘Prices’, p. 130.

  33. Havinden, Inventories, pp. 135, 140. A ‘lame old horse’ is valued at 2s on p. 137.

  34. Black, Reign, p. 264; Herbert Joyce, T
he History of the Post Office from its establishment down to 1836 (1893), pp. 2–5. The prices are from Black. I have read that the standard charge was 1d per mile as a result of an Act of 1548, and I suspect that the 3d per mile was not introduced until James I’s reign; but I cannot find any such Act among Edward VI’s statutes, and have therefore trusted Black.

  35. Edward Watson, The Royal Mail to Ireland (1917), pp. 9–10.

  36. Platter, Travels, p. 230.

  37. Sh. Eng., i, pp. 201–2.

  38. Scott, EOaW, p. 180, quoting Claudius Hollyband, French Littleton (1576).

  39. Magno, p. 149.

  40. Sh. Eng., i, p. 207. Black, Reign, p. 263, gives the same list.

  41. Emmison, Disorder, pp. 271–77, 308–10.

  42. Leland, Itinerary, i, p. 29.

  43. Platter, Travels, p. 152.

  44. Wilson, ‘State’, p. 37.

  45. Platter, Travels, p. 154.

  46. Magno, p. 143.

  47. Picard, London, p. 14.

  48. Hoskins, Exeter, p. 63.

  49. For another Act, see 13 Elizabeth, cap. 18 (1570), bringing the River Lea to the north of London.

  50. Gerard, Autobiography, p. 132.

  51. John Taylor, ‘the Waterpoet’, describes their use in a poem about a sinking vessel. Dowloaded from http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/Renascence_Editions/taylor1.html#livbyp08.

  52. Laughton, Armada, xlv; Sh. Eng., i, p. li.

  53. Laughton, Armada, xliv–xlv; Sh. Eng., i, pp. 156–7.

  54. Platter, Travels, pp. 150–1.

  55. N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, Volume 1, 660–1649 (1997), p. 486; Harrison, Description.

  56. Wilson, ‘State’, pp. 36–7.

  57. Emmison, HWL, p. 62; Rose, ‘Navigation’, p. 178.

  58. Emmison, HWL, p. 59.

  59. Laughton, Armada, xliv–xlv; Sh. Eng., i, p. 358.