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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
The roll from which the following extracts are taken, contains an account of the expenses of the king's family [p] for seventeen weeks, beginning with Midlent Sunday, in the 18th year of his reign, when they were at Langley in Buckinghamshire.
page 350 note [p] The family must here be understood exclusively of the king and queen, who from various Records in the Tower, appear to have been resident elsewhere during the time included in this Roll; it probably consisted of at least six princes and princesses, with their attendants.
page 351 note [q] See the Observations prefixed to the wardrobe account of the 28th year of K. Edward I. published by the Society of Antiquaries, p. xii. and Sir George Shuckburgh's Table of the Depreciation of the Value of Money. Phil. Trans. for 1798, p. 176.
page 352 note [r] The Manor of Langley near Colnbrook in Buckinghamshire, came to the crown in the reign of king Edward the first.
page 352 note [s] The items of diet contained in this most curious roll fully evince to us how rigidly Lent was antiently kept in this kingdom, and how carefully our ancestors abstained from flesh meat during that season.
Of the shell-fish, and various other species both of sea and river fish mentioned therein, the greatest part are well known to continue at this day to be served up at our best tables, yet one cannot help wondering how some of them, the welks for instance, and minnows, could have ever obtained a place at the royal board. I find, however, authority for the antient use of both of them in Muffet, a physician who lived in Queen Elizabeth's days, and wrote a curious treatise on the different kinds of food used by the English. (His work however, was not, I believe, published before 1655, and is now very fearce.)
The minnow, still called, (as it should seem it is styled in this Record,) “mennom” in the north of England, is, as far as I can learn, at present totally disregarded as an article of diet, and even angling for them is now confined to the youngest votaries of that cruel, however pleasant, amusement; yet this does not appear to have been the case in antient times, and the improbability that this lillyputian delicacy could ever have made its way to the king's table, diminishes exceedingly on reading the account of them given by Muffet, who, p. 183, thus speaks of them: “Minoes (perhaps so called from their littleness) are a most delicate and light meat, either fried or sodden.”
page 353 note [s] Sectary was an old measure containing about a pint and a half.
page 353 note [t] The Haberdine appears to have been a species of salt cod, so called from the city of Aberdeen in Scotland, antiently famous for curing the same. Muffett on food used by the English, says, “it is nothing but an island cod, bigger somewhat than ours, and also firmer.” Skinner describes it, Asellus spicis siccatus et salitus, nescio an ab Aberdeno Scotiæ urbe, ubi magna ejus Copia est, certè Scotiæ littora constat piscium, et præcipue Asellorum esse fæcundissima.
page 353 note [u] A pickerel is a jack or a small pike.
page 354 note [x] Isenhampsted or Iselhampsted, now called Cheyneys or Isenhampsted-Cheyneys, is a village in Buckinghamshire, about five miles west of Amersham.
page 356 note [x] Dominica in passione, passion Sunday, was that which intervened between midlent and palm Sunday. It is called to this day in the north of England, “Carling Sunday.” For a particular account of the customs still retained there on this day, I must beg to refer to my edition of Bourne's Antiquities of the common people.
Durand tells us it was called Passion Sunday, because thereon were acted the mysteries of the passion.
page 357 note [y] A bind of eels consists of ten sticks, land every stick of twenty five eels.
page 358 note [z] Part of these four hundred and a half of eggs might have been purchased for the purpose of being stained with various colours, and given as Easter presents to the royal household, a custom which generally prevailed in Catholic times, in token of the resurrection, and still continues in the Greek church. In some parts of the north of England such eggs are still also presented to children at Easter, and called paste (pasque) eggs. See my edition of the Antiquities of the common people, p. 310. Hakluyt's Voyages, Ed. 1589, p. 34a. J. B.
page 360 note [a] The quantity of wine consumed in the third month, was thirty nine fectaries, which is the last monthly account contained in the Roll.
page 362 note [a] The alca, or auk, is a water-fowl, several species of which frequent our coasts.
page 362 note [b] In Bewick's British-Birds, vol. ii. p. 173, it is said that a bird of this genus, called the little auk, caught on the Durham coast, was for a short time fed with grain.