'The Secret lies in the Thimble' by Karen Maitland

17th Century silver thimble
Photo: Llangefni

In my Jacobean novel Traitor in the Ice, one of my characters passes a secret note to another folded into a band and hidden inside a thimble. This method of passing secret or coded messages was frequently used in times of religious persecution during the Tudor period and probably for centuries before that, and was still being used during the 17th century English Civil War. A band of folded paper was easily concealed in a thimble, which, even in a room crowded with people, a woman could causally set on table for the recipient to pick up, or it could be slipped into a work basket. Even the decoration on the thimble itself could be used as a coded message.

But the practising of concealing things in thimbles has a much older origin and is linked to what the thimble has come to symbolise. 

Thimbles have been excavated from ancient Chinese sites dating as far back as the 206BC to 220CE, as well as from Roman sites, such as Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried when Vesuvius erupted in 79CE. 

Copper-alloy thimble ring c. 1400-1600
Found in East Sussex
Photo: Andy Stanley
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

In the Middle Ages, most thimbles made from brass or copper alloy and were used by men, women and children. For sewing coarse cloth, they used topless thimble rings, pressing the needle with the side of the finger, and for finer cloth and embroidery, they used bee-hive shaped thimbles. 

By Tudor times, the giving of elaborately decorated thimbles as a lover’s token or an occasion gift was well established. These were often engraved with initials, coats of arms, and mottos, or decorated with emblems in the forms of birds, flowers and animals. Queen Elizabeth bestowed thimbles studded with precious stones on her favoured ladies-in-waiting.

C. 1708, a child's silver  thimble
with machine made circular punch marks
Photo: Kult Adams, Bristol City Museum
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

In 1693, John Lofting, a Dutch thimble manufacturer set up a thimble factory in Islington, in London, England, before moving his production to Buckinghamshire to take advantage of water-power. He was able to turn out two million thimbles per year, such was the demand. 

But thimbles had become far more than tools for sewing, they had taken on symbolic meanings too. Traditionally, a ring, a coin and a thimble are baked into a wedding cake for guests to share. The person who gets a ring will find happiness. The one who gets the coin will become wealthy, but the one who gets the thimble with remain unwed, a ‘spinster.’ The same applied, if a girl was gifted three thimbles, presumably because that meant she’d had three suitors and had not settled for any of them. 

'First Sun' by Camille Martin (1861-1898)
Photo: Vassil
Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy

The more important meaning of thimble, though, was protection and good fortune. A thimble is one of the most common objects metal detectorists unearth in fields and gardens. Many were simply lost there. At harvest time, field hands often wore thimbles to protect their hands when binding straw, and women and children would join menfolk for the harvest, and continued to sew or mend while resting from the heat of the day. So many thimbles were probably mislaid. But some seemed to have been deliberately placed in the earth, and contain scrolls of paper, grains of cereals, hazelnuts, crystals, and pebbles, many found with scraps of cloth inside. Some of these clothes, of course, would have been rags used as padding to keep the thimble snug to the finger, but not all. 

Since thimbles symbolised protection, if a woman was anxious about a son going off to war, a daughter giving birth, or a lover on a sea voyage, she’d write their name on a piece of paper and tuck it into a thimble, which she’d then bury in the earth to protect them. If she couldn’t write, she’d use some scrap belonging to the person, such as a strip cut from a garment or a fragment of something they'd used, even a piece of a consecrated wafer from Mass.

Copper- alloy thimble c.1400-1600
Found on the Isle of Wight
Photo: Frank Basford, Isle of White Council
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

The thimble could also be used to protect the whole household from the plague, or as a prayer for a good harvest. So, while thimbles unearthed with a grain of wheat or corn in them can simply be the result of them being lost during harvesting, sometimes a grain of corn might have been put inside deliberately. 

Often too something red would be added – a red bead, rowan berry or red thread to keep what was inside safe, and ensure it couldn’t be taken by evil spirits to cause harm. In a curious blending of the two superstitions, some years ago, I was thrilled to be given two Victorian silver thimbles by an elderly lady, which were tied together by a red cord. But I was warned never to cut or untie the red cord or tie a third thimble to the cord, for fear of bad luck.

Right up until the 1940’s, the tradition was that if a wife of a famer or farmworker died, a strip of cloth cut from her dress would be stuffed into her thimble and thrown out on to the field where she had worked. If a corpse of a woman was proving difficult to get inside a coffin because of stiffness or size, it was said that if her thimble was cast into the coffin first, her body would follow easily.

A Nürnberg thimble
Cast brass 14th Century
Photo: Llangefni

So if you are lucky enough to dig up an old thimble in your garden, do check carefully inside it before you wash the mud out.

If want to discover more, a good starting point is thimbles (colchestertreasurehunting.co.uk). It has a fascinating piece on the history of European thimbles, including why ‘Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. sent spies to Nürnberg to steal the secret of the thimble making,’ together with some excellent photographs of thimbles found in fields and gardens, dating from 12th century onwards to help you date yours.

'Keen As Mustard' by Karen Maitland

Black Mustard Flowers
Photo: Aryan Murmu

The second in my new Jacobean thriller series, Traitor in the Ice, is set in Battle Abbey in 1607, then occupied by the redoubtable dowager and recusant, Lady Magdalene, Viscountess Montague. When her grandson, Anthony Viscount Montague, inherited his estates in 1595, the 22-year-old wrote a rule book for the servants of his household detailing the duties of each officer and servant, from the high steward to the scullery man. While all the other servants were assigned a long list of tasks, I was intrigued to discover that the Sculleryman, had only two duties – to clean and safely store all the pewter and silverware, and ‘to have a single regard to the tempering and making of mustard with good seed and to the well keeping and serving of it.’ 

Preparing the mustard doesn’t sound like a task that would occupy much of the working day, but when you realise how important mustard was to the Tudor and Jacobean household and the vast quantities they used, it was a key job.

Thomas Tusser (1524-1580) in ‘His points of Good Husbandry’ advises –

Maids, mustard-seed gather, for being too ripe. 

And weather it well, ere ye give it a stripe:

Then dress it, and lay it in soller up sweet

lest foistiness make it, for table unmeet.

                            (Soller – a dry loft or upper room)

Black Mustard, Brassica nigra, in seed
Councillor's Marsh at Le Verdon-sur-Mer, France
Photo: Touam (Herve Agnoux)

Mustard seed, when ripe scatters from the stem at the slightest touch, so had to be gathered before it was fully ripe. Maver in 1615, says this should be done early in the morning when the dew was still on it. Depending on the quantity to be harvested, the whole plants were usually gathered up in the maid’s skirts or in a sheet carried between two poles, to minimise the loss of seed.

When dried, the plants were lightly beaten on a hurdle or put into linen bags and ‘striped’ with a thin cane to dislodge the seed. The chaff was blown off, and the tiny seeds sorted by hand or sieved to get rid of pieces of stem and husk. Another method was to wash the beaten seed, so that husk floated off, then put the seeds into a cloth bag, dry them, then stamp on them to crush them, before sieving to make a fine mustard flour. 

They could also be ground up using a pestle and mortar or quern, but this had to be done carefully to avoid getting mustard dust and oil in the eyes which could be an irritant. By the Elizabeth period, those who could afford it, equipped their sculleries with mustard mills alongside other utensils such as a bread grater and a mortar for spices. But grinding wasn’t the end of the process. The mustard then had to be made into a sauce.

Black Mustard Seeds. Photo: Sanjay Acharya

A 17th century recipe for mustard to be eaten with beef, calls for one and half pints of mustard seed to be ground into honey, olive oil and vinegar.

A more eye-watering sauce was made by soaking slices of horseradish in vinegar, squeezing them out, and adding sugar and a chopped onion to the vinegar. You used this flavoured vinegar to mix into your mustard flour to make a cooking sauce, which you spread beneath beef before braising it, or poured over slices of brawn. 

Mustard was also eaten with Poor Jack, dried salt cod, also known as haberdine, served in the cheaper inns or taverns. The fish was inexpensive, but had little flavour, so was consumed with large quantities of mustard. At the other end of the social scale, in wealthy households, plaice, ray and ‘White,’ pickled fish such as herring, ling, or whiting, was also served with mustard sauce. Minced salmon was dressed in a mustard, sugar and vinegar sauce. Goose, wild duck, gulls, woodcock and young herons came served with a mustard sauce, as did rabbit.

British mustard pot, John Gold, 1793
Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia, USA
Photo: Daderot

Perhaps Voltaire (1694-1778) had a point when he said, ‘In England there are sixty different religions, but only one sauce.’ Actually, the English Tudors and Jacobeans had a large array of different sauces, but mustard sauce was the one consumed in vast quantities by both the farm labourer and the wealthiest noble, and this was because all were agreed mustard was excellent for the digestion. ‘Let such whose stomachs are so weak they cannot digest their meat or appetite it, take of mustard seed a dram.’ Culpepper (1616-1654)

But while the English could scarcely eat a meal without mustard, the Scots viewed mustard consumption as a sign of weakness. They had long prided themselves on eating their meat with only the good natural gravy that sprang from the juices. In the 1630s, Robert Monro of Opisdale, was appalled by the Scottish soldiers serving in the armies of the King of Sweden whose ‘stomackes could not digest a Gammon of Bacon or cold Beefe without mustard,’ which he saw as evidence of moral degeneracy and feebleness among the once-tough Scottish soldiers.

USA Newspaper ASdvert 1922
Mustard still advertised as 
good for the digestion.

But mustard wasn’t just used in cooking. Horseradish and mustard are often found growing wild together on old monastic sites and near medieval inns. In the days before heat-gels, aching bones, stiff joints and muscles, the result of spending long, cold days walking or riding, could be eased with ointments made from a mixture of mustard and horseradish, sometimes provided as charity by monasteries, but which innkeepers also sold to suffering travellers. A body rub with the same ointment before setting out was a good way to keep out the cold. Mustard was also used as a cure for all kinds of other ailments, but as with early recipes, it’s not always clear which type of mustard they were using. White mustard, black mustard, hedge mustard, treacle mustard and garlic mustard were all used in cooking and medicinally, but modern botanists class some of these plants as being from different families.

Throughout the Middle Ages, households mostly grew the mustard they required for their own use, not least because young mustard greens were considered an excellent pick-me-up and purge after the long winter months of salt meat and dried beans. Medieval monasteries and manor farms supplied some surplus seed for market, but in Tudor times in ever-expanding cities such as London, many people no longer owned an herb patch, and mustard started to be collected on a commercial scale in the country to be sold in the city. 

It was usually transported in the form of solid dry balls, hence Shakespeare’s biting insult in Henry IV when Poins is described as having ‘wits as thick as Tewkesbury mustard.’ In Tewkesbury and elsewhere, cannonballs in iron mortars were used to grind the mustard seeds, which women had gathered from hedgerows and fields. Legend has it when Henry VIII visited Tewkesbury in 1535, he was presented with mustard balls covered in gold leaf.

Hedge Mustard, Sisymbrium officinale
Photo: Ian Cunliffe CC BY-SA 2.0

To make the balls, mustard had to be mixed with a variety of other ingredients to bind it, such as pease-meal, flour, wine or spices and then they were dried. An Italian recipe of 1465, combined the mustard with pounded raisins, cinnamon and cloves. When the ball was crushed and mixed into milk or vinegar, wine or cider, the result was an ‘instant’ sauce. This made it particularly useful for provisioning travellers or using onboard ships.

Not everyone was impressed with the result, though. Peter Mundy 1608-1667 noted in his journal that Tewkesbury mustard ‘is much spoken off, made up in balls as big as hen’s eggs, at 3d and 4d each, although a farthing worth off the ordinary sort will give better content in my opinion, this being in sight and taste much like the old dried thick scurf that sticks by the sides of a mustard pot.’

Treacle Mustard or Wormseed
Principly used in Tudor times 
to counteract poisons
Photo: Jason Hollinger

But whether it was for eating or rubbing on, the household and servants in Battle Abbey would have been connoisseurs of mustard, and if Viscount Montague’s sculleryman didn’t ‘cut the mustard’ and temper his seeds perfectly, his wages would have been ‘moonshine in the mustard pot,’ a delightful Jacobean phrase, meaning he’d be paid nothing.

 

Writing as KJ Maitland, her new novel, Traitor in the Ice, the 2nd in her Jacobean crime thriller series, is published on 31st March 2022, by Headline.

'A Plague of Mosquitoes on Your House' by Karen Maitland

'Mosquitoes liked the Costume' from Bill Nyer's 

History of the United States, 1894

One of the unexpected consequences of the summer’s heatwave this year was the huge reduction in Lapland’s mosquito population. A great relief for humans, since their mosquitoes have a reputation of being some of the most numerous and vicious in the world, but not so good for the birds, amphibians, fish and dragonflies which depend upon them.

But the heatwave seemed to have the reverse effect in England, because sitting with my office door open to try to get some relief from the heat, I was bitten numerous times by gnats and mosquitoes breeding in the water-butts and pond outside.

The news about Lapland reminded me of an old folktale I heard as a child which involved mosquitoes. Throughout Medieval Europe, Lapland was both admired for having the most skillful silversmiths and feared for having the most dangerous warlocks or sorcerers. The story goes that a Lapland sorcerer had the ambition of marrying his son to the daughter of one of the great kings of Europe. But his son, a peaceful herder, wanted to wed an ordinary girl who could do practical things like milk the reindeer. The sorcerer refused to listen. He changed himself into an owl, flew over the sea and abducted the beautiful princess, but she indignantly refused to consent to the marriage. So, he starved her to force her into submission. But the boy thwarted his father by smuggling reindeer milk to the princess.

Lapland Owl, also known as the Great Grey Owl or

the Spectral Owl.

Photo: Steve Wilson

Discovering she was still defiant, the sorcerer imprisoned the princess in a cave, but before sealing the entrance, he let in a great swarm of Lapland mosquitoes, thinking that after she'd been tormented by hundreds of bites she would soon become biddable. But the boy managed to smuggle some turpentine to the princess. She rubbed it on her skin and it prevented the mosquitoes from biting her, so she emerged, unscathed, to face the sorcerer’s third and most deadly ordeal.

Thinking about this tale, reminded me that while we are very aware of the insects that bred in medieval homes such as moths, weevils, lice and fleas, we sometimes overlook the mosquito problem. The numerous open sewers and puddles of stagnant water lying in city streets, the many ponds, ditches and undrained marshlands in the country were ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which must have driven people mad in the summer months. Of course, there were many more natural predators around then. Ponds were usually well stocked with fish that fed on the larvae, and birds and dragonflies devoured the adults. There were also several periods of cold, wet summers which limited insect numbers, but there were also years of hot weather too. 

Culex Mosquito female

Photo: Alan R. Walker

And right up until the 19th century, mosquitoes in England and Europe didn’t merely cause annoyance with their itchy bites, the marshlands were rife with malaria, known variously as the Ague, Marsh Fever or by Shakespeare’s time ‘quotidian tertian’, a fever which recurs in a cycle, which caused poor old Falstaff to shake and burn in Henry V. The links between mosquitoes and malaria were not understood until the 1880’s and in the Middle Ages and Tudor periods, the fever was generally ascribed to either drinking foul water or more commonly, breathing the bad air from cesspits or the miasmas of the marshes. Many people living in the marshlands in Norfolk and Suffolk became addicted to the juice and seeds of the white marsh poppy, which they used to try to alleviate the symptoms.

1905 illustration from a book of American Folktales

But even though they did not fully realise the danger, imagine squatting over a hole above a cesspit or ditch in which clouds of mosquitoes were swarming, looking for a nice bare rump to bore into. So, what could they do? The strewing herbs on the floors and bunches of herbs hung in windows would have helped to ward off some. Rubbing the skin with ransoms (wild garlic) and salves made from pine resin was said to stop the creatures biting. Stringing horse hair across windows and beds was supposed to discourage them, though it isn’t entirely clear whether this created a physical barrier or it was ‘magical’ power of the horsehair itself, which was often woven into protective amulets. Hanging pots or sponges filled with sharp vinegar over your head and feet in bed was said to keep the insects at bay, and you could also use vinegar infused with herbs such as lavender, rosemary, rue, mint and wormwood. These herbs were often planted near windows and doors to act as mosquito deterrents and when dried, were burned on hearth fires or braziers to drive them away.

1646, Apothecary smoking his pipe

Artist: Adriaen van Ostade

The fact that cottages would have been constantly ‘fumigated’ by the smoke from cooking fires and tallow candles would have helped to deter mosquitoes from entering. In this respect, poorer people probably had the advantage. Being forced to burn bones, animal dung, and greener wood on open fires which produced a lot of smoke and stink, probably served them better in warding off insects than the wealthier people who could afford to burn dry seasoned wood and had chimneys to draw the smoke away. But once strong tobacco began to be imported, people swiftly discovered that smoking a pipeful was a good way of protecting themselves from gnats and mosquitoes. One of reasons, it became so popular.

As for me, next summer, I might be resorting to the good old turpentine. Unless you have a favourite deterrent?