London's Buried Treasure, by H.M. Castor

Cheapside, London - 1890-1900
by Detroit Publishing Co. (Library of Congress[1])
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A hundred years ago this coming March, an astonishing find was put on public display for the first time in the new ‘London Museum’ near St. James’s Palace. On March 19th, 1914, the Nottingham Guardian reported it thus:

Secret Revealed.

Discovery of Elizabethan Jewellery.

London’s Buried Treasures.

For two years a dozen persons have carefully guarded the secret of the wonderful discovery of treasure trove in the heart of the City. Yesterday the secret was revealed. In a glass case in the centre of the Gold and Silver Room at Stafford House, the new home of the London Museum, a collection of Elizabethan or early Jacobean jewellery, unique in the variety of its designs and priceless from a historic standpoint, invited the admiration of beholders. South Kensington can boast nothing to compare with it.

This dazzling collection was the Cheapside Hoard, a mass of almost five hundred jewels, stones and gold and enamelled jewellery that had been dug up by workmen while they were demolishing buildings in Cheapside in 1912. 

Photo of my own copy of The Cheapside Hoard: London's Lost Jewels by Hazel Forsyth

The 1914 display drew large crowds, and impressed King George V and Queen Mary so much that they visited twice. Gems and precious metals are usually reworked and reset over the years; what the hoard provided was therefore an immensely rare view of the past. Never before (or since) had such a large cache of 16^th- and 17^th-century jewellery been found, and the quality of the workmanship, the beauty and intricacy of the designs, and the sheer splendour of the massed hoard caused a sensation. Reading the description of the hoard on the current Museum of London’s website, it’s easy to see why:

The Hoard includes delicate finger rings, glittering necklaces, Byzantine cameos and a beautiful jewelled scent bottle. The range of gems is staggering – diamonds and rubies from India, pearls from the Middle East and sapphires from Sri Lanka as well as a unique Colombian emerald watch and stunning salamander brooch.

Today, the Museum of London has the whole hoard on display again for the first time in a century (the exhibition runs until 27^th April; click here for details). And to accompany the exhibition, its curator Hazel Forsyth has written an excellent book, The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels, which examines not only what the provenance and style of the jewellery can tell us about Elizabethan and Jacobean life and trade, but also the lives of the goldsmiths themselves, plus what she calls “the murky events surrounding the remarkable discovery and the subsequent acquisition of the Hoard by the Museum of London”.

Not surprisingly, journalists reporting on the exhibition in 1914 were particularly interested in where the hoard had come from and how it had been found. The London Museum, however, was oddly tight-lipped on the subject. The Nottingham Guardian gave its readers a confident account:

Some workmen engaged in excavating at a depth of 16 feet in an old City cellar scratched their heads as a sign of bewilderment when they noticed jewellery and precious stones, begrimed it is true, but none the less unmistakable, slip through the chalky soil which they were throwing on one side…

But in fact reporters did not know this kind of vivid detail for sure. The Museum had only stated that the hoard had come from a building somewhere near St Paul’s Cathedral, and indicated that it had been found in a wooden box – but even this last detail was more than the Museum really knew.

The reason for the confusion – and the secrecy – was the likelihood that exact details would give rise to competing claims of ownership. The hoard had been found beneath a cellar during the demolition of some 17^th-century shops: numbers 30-32 Cheapside. For hundreds of years Cheapside had been the main market street of the City of London, and its west end was internationally renowned as the spectacular goldsmiths’ quarter. Although by 1911, when the demolition work began, Cheapside’s heyday was long past, the owner of no.s 30-32 was still the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. The Company had clearly foreseen at least the possibility of something interesting being turned up, because it had drawn up a special contract with the building contractors carrying out the demolition, according to which “any antiquities and articles or objects of interest or value” found during the work had to be handed over to the Company. An additional complicating factor lurking in the background was the ancient law of treasure trove, which gave the City itself (in certain circumstances) rights to any gold or silver found.

However, the London navvies who actually undertook the demolition work seemed equally unconcerned by the City’s ancient rights or any contract their employer might have signed. They had their own method of turning ‘treasure’ they dug up into ready cash: they took it to a bloke in Wandsworth called ‘Stony Jack’.

‘Stony Jack’ was George Fabian Lawrence, a man who had what Hazel Forsyth describes as “a multifaceted career as a pawnbroker, dealer, collector of antiquities and sometime employee of both the Guildhall and London museums”. What seems to have run through all this, like a thread of gold through rock, was a passionate interest in archaeological finds, albeit with – it must be said – an idiosyncratically entrepreneurial twist. In an interview quoted in the Daily Herald in February 1937, Lawrence explained it thus:

I got to know a lot of navvies… [and] I thought what a lot of stuff was being lost because [they] did not know what to look for. I decided to try to teach them… I taught them that every scrap of metal, pottery, glass or leather that has been lying under London may have a story to tell the archaeologist and is worth saving. They were apt pupils, and hardly a Saturday passed without someone bringing me something. I got 15,000 objects out of the soil of London in 15 years for the London Museum alone.

(quoted in London’s Lost Jewels, p.8)

Certainly a wide range of items passed through Lawrence’s hands. Looking him up on Wikimedia Commons, I found this Roman ‘curse tablet’, which he sold to the British Museum in 1934:

Roman curse tablet, 1-399AD, discovered in Telegraph Street, London

Translation of Latin Inscription: I curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind 

and memory and liver and lungs mixed up together, and her words, thoughts and memory; 

thus may she be unable to speak what things are concealed, nor be able.. (trans British Museum)

by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Own work) 

[Public domain or CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The navvies brought the Cheapside treasure to Lawrence piecemeal, in pockets and sacks, hankies and hats. It is not surprising that they were not interested in recording the exact physical circumstances in which they had found the jewels, but it is a shame, since evidence was thereby lost that might have pointed to when and why the hoard was hidden (as well as, more generally, telling us how jewels were packaged and stored in the 17^th century). As Forsyth puts it:

Was there one box or several? Were the containers whole or damaged? Was the hole lined in some way or roughly dug?

We shall never know. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that Stony Jack’s role in the story was, overall, a fortunate one. How easily might the hoard have been split up between various pawnbrokers or backstreet dealers, without ever coming to the notice of a museum! As it was, Lawrence immediately wanted the collection to go to the London Museum – a new venture, not yet opened – and, though wrangles ensued with the British Museum and the V&A, and with the City authorities, that initial decision of Lawrence’s undeniably secured the hoard’s future. (Interestingly the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, despite their contract with the building firm, never even got a look-in.)

As to why the hoard was buried in the first place, and by whom, Hazel Forsyth’s book examines every possible angle. Firm answers are elusive, but the quest makes fascinating reading. And, since Forsyth – who is herself a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths – also examines many of the individual pieces from the hoard in detail (with the help of fantastic photographs), if you cannot make it to the exhibition itself, getting hold of London’s Lost Jewels is a marvellous substitute.

The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels by Hazel Forsyth is published by Philip Wilson Publishers.

The Cheapside Hoard exhibition runs at the Museum of London until 27^th April 2014. The Museum’s website – which includes a gallery of pictures of the hoard – is here.

H.M. Castor’s novel VIII – a new take on the life of Henry VIII, for teenagers and adults – is published by Templar in the UK, Penguin in Australia, Hachette in France, and Simon & Schuster in the US.

H.M. Castor's website is here.

There is Nothing Like a Dame, says Laurie Graham

By the time this post appears I’ll be in Italy preparing to direct Jack & the Beanstalk for the biennial Venice pantomime, so it seems an appropriate time to write about the man who shaped the pantomime dame as we know her today: the great Dan Leno.  

Dan started life as George Galvin, the child of two struggling music hall performers and if he wasn’t quite born in a trunk in the Princess Theatre, he was certainly soon a part of his parents’ endlessly travelling, bread-line existence. At the age of three he made his stage debut as Little George, the Infant Wonder Contortionist and Posturer.

In the 1860s childhood was a brief affair in even the most comfortable of families. In show-business it was over as soon as a child could walk onto a stage. By the age of eight Little George was earning a decent living as a clog dancer, doing the rounds of the northern music halls. Then his father died, his mother remarried, and when George began re-branding himself as a solo act he took his step-father’s surname, Leno, as part of his new stage persona. Dan Leno was born.  He married a comedienne, Lydia Reynolds, and perhaps under her influence began to develop his own repertoire of comedy songs, strung together with the rambling monologues that were to become his famous ‘patter’.

Dan Leno was the forerunner of a style of comedian that will be familiar to British readers.  He looked funny – short and skinny, with big ears and huge expressive eyes  - and had people laughing before he opened his mouth. And he was a conversationalist, not a teller of jokes, a character who chats with his audience and draws them in. Les Dawson, Max Miller, Larry Grayson, Frankie Howerd, all followed a style first developed by Dan Leno, as of course did that uber-Dame, Edna Everage, who introduced a little sharpened steel into the mix. 

 

Leno made his London debut at the Foresters’ Hall in Mile End, and then, as would have been quite typical for a support act in those days, jumped into a hackney and raced to Drury Lane to perform again at the Mogul Saloon. Neither of those venues survives today, but the New London Theatre now stands on the site of the Old Mo’.  The manager of the Surrey Theatre in Blackfriars Road saw Leno’s early London performances and recognised his potential for playing in pantomime. He cast him as Jack’s mother in the following season’s Jack & the Beanstalk. Dan Leno had found his niche. Cross-dressed, improvisational, and with an unerring gift for the absurd, Dan Leno set the pattern for all future pantomime dames.

‘Have you never been to the Tower of London? Oh if you’ve never been, do go again,’ is a typical Leno line.

Pantomime made him an overnight star and one of the highest earners on the London stage. He performed for King Edward VII and he became a merchandising phenomenon: comic books, tea sets, even a Dan Leno ink well.

There was so much money coming in that he could afford to buy a house and Lydia was able to retire, to concentrate on raising their children. But sadly the story doesn’t end well. Money may have been coming in but money was also pouring out, literally (he was drinking heavily) and figuratively. Generous to a fault, Dan Leno would help any fellow performer who had fallen on hard times. He was a founder member of the Grand Order of Water Rats, a benevolent association that recognised how financially precarious the life of a performer can be. The Water Rats are still going strong today.

As he entered his forties the physical demands of his performances took their toll. His hearing failed and his moods became erratic. He was twice admitted to the Camberwell Asylum and his attempts at a stage comeback ended in failure. Many people believed alcohol was to blame, some have suggested that he may have been suffering from an undiagnosed brain tumour. He died in October 1904 aged just 43 and his death was front page news. One of the most eloquent tributes paid to him came from the actor-manager, Max Beerbohm Tree.

So little and frail a lantern could not long harbour so big a flame.

Whether Dan Leno has quite left the building is open to discussion. His ghost is believed to walk the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the scene of many of his pantomime triumphs. There’s only one reported sighting of him, in the 1920s by the American comedian Stanley Lupino, who saw him in his dressing room mirror, but he’s been heard, clog-dancing in an empty dressing room and the smell of his distinctive lavender cologne has often been noticed backstage.

Jack & the Beanstalk will be my sixth (and last) Venice pantomime and I’ve been fortunate enough to direct the same amateur actor as Dame in all six of them. Jonathan Fox, who will be appearing as Dame Dotty Trott, seemed an unlikely bit of casting at the outset: a retired businessman, devoted grandfather and quietly spoken pillar of society. But strap him into a bustle and a GG cup bosom and he is a man transformed and a worthy heir to the legacy of Dan Leno.

Jack & the Beanstalk will be playing January 16 -18^th at the Teatro Avogaria in Dorsoduro, Venice. Reservations essential, 0039 348 515 0212. We’ll let you in for free but you’ll have to pay to get out.      

Befanissima - Michelle Lovric

In Italy, children put their stocking out not on Christmas Eve but the night before January 6th, the Christian Feast of the Epiphany. Here’s one version of the traditional Italian poem about the Befana, the gap-toothed old hag who patrols the world on her broomstick that night, searching out youngsters.

La Befana vien di notte,
con le scarpe tutte rotte,
col vestito tutto blu, la Befana viene giù.
Viene giù dal caminetto con un sacco pieno zeppo.
Ai bambini buoni buoni caramelle e confettoni.
Ai bambini cattivoni solo cenere e carboni.

The Befana arrives by night
in shoes all tattered and torn,
all dressed in blue, the Befana comes down.
She comes down the chimney with a sack packed full of stuff.
For the good, nice children, there are sweets and candy.
For the bold, bad children, only ashes and coal.

This week, I asked an enchanting little Venetian girl, Martina, what she expected in her stocking that night - coal or candy?

‘Have you been good all year?’ I inquired. 'Really good?'

With engaging honesty, she told me, ‘Così così.’ So-so.

I happen to know she received candy.

In shops all over Italy, the end of the Christmas season is signalled by the arrival in the shops of gap-toothed witch dolls on broomsticks, each hag bearing a stocking (“calza”) full of sweets, sometimes in the form of black, glittering sugar-coal.

The link with the Christian calendar is that this is the date when the Three Kings came to the Baby Jesus, with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Modern children, of course, prefer sugar.

There are many versions of the Befana story, but most agree that she was an intensely house-proud woman who hosted the Three Kings on their way to Bethlehem. In the usual story, she was invited to join them but claimed that she was far too busy with sweeping the house – hence her broomstick. But afterwards she was sorry, and went out to find the Holy Infant. She never did, and still roams the earth on her broomstick, looking for Him, and meanwhile distributing gustatory justice to children all over the world.

We do everything differently in Venice. It is not just that you sometimes see a Befana made entirely of garlic cloves at the Rialto Market. Or that the Befana often goes by the name ‘marantega’ in Venetian dialect. This is a word that could be translated a number of ways but I’ll go for ‘miserable old bezzom’. The maranteghe are the wailing widows of Venetian society, the diffusers of bad news, the walking death-notices, the scandalmongers and the mealy-mouthed mistresses of schadenfreude.

But the greatest difference between the Italian and the Venetian manifestations of the old bezzom is this: in Venice the Befana arrives not down the chimney but by water.

And she’s a man in a drag. Or five men in drag.

 

 

The Regata della Befana is organised every year by senior members of the most ancient rowing club in the city, the Bucintoro. The club is named after the glorious golden boat used during the Republic to take the Doge out into the lagoon to drop a golden ring into the water, symbolizing Venice’s marriage to the sea. Napoleon disposed of the boat, stripping down the gold for cash to feed his army, at the same time he arranged the burning of the golden book of Venetian nobles under a ‘Liberty Tree’ in San Marco.

But back to the Befana ... At ten am, every January 6th, not at all punctually, the maranteghe, splendid in mop caps, handknitted shawls and long dresses, climb into boats in which an erect broomstick has been has been fixed.

They pole through the limpid Grand Canal to the Rialto Bridge. In the bridge’s curved ‘armpit’ (there is probably an excellent architectural word for this, but a sunny armpit is what it looks like), a choir splendidly dressed in red warbles a welcome. Less welcome to the ears of the spectators are the interminable addresses by various interested parties broadcast on a squealing microphone.


This year the man addicted to the microphone announced 30 seconds of silence for the German tourist who lost his life just at this spot during the summer. But of course the tourists did not understand, and talked right through it. Indeed, some young tourists showed their most brutal side, elbowing older people off slippery pontili because they clearly felt so entitled to get that one essential photograph for their Facebook page. All too often one witnesses these 'scontri' or culture clashes between the dwindling Venetian population (now down to 57,000) and the vast tourist population - which numbers 352 for every local.

After the poorly observed silence, other boats begin to arrive, some with Santas, some with more witches.

Finally came the boat with the traditional stocking of the Befana, bulging with either coal or caramelle. Since I last saw the Regata della Befana, the stocking has been upgraded to a handsome red damask that looks rather like Smaug when coiled up on the deck.

The stocking was, as ever, hoisted up to the arch of the Rialto Bridge and dangled there in triumph while the choir sang its heart out.

Members of the public were offered crunchy galani biscuits, mulled wine and thick hot chocolate.

And that was the Regata della Befana done for another year.

Another magical happening marks the Epiphany in a grander part of Venice. At the Clock tower on Piazza San Marco, three model kings totter out of a door heralded by a trumpeter. They make a gesture of respect to the Madonna and child, and then disappear through another door, not to be seen again till next January 6th. There’s a video here.

But most magical of all for us this year was the evening before the Befana, when a group of friends met in an engineer’s studio at Ca’ Rezzonico to paint and draw a collection of ‘art’ stockings. In a way, we were replicating the idea of the Compagnie della Calza, the guilds of young men devoted to fashion and poetry, who sported fanciful, highly decorated stockings, as seen in the paintings of Vettor Carpaccio and others. It was these noble young men who founded Venice’s Carnevale, which originally featured erotic poetry readings and games. The ‘Companies of the Fancy Stockings’ feature in my children’s book, The Fate in the Box, and it was nice to come to grips with them not just in words but in pictures.

Our ‘opere’ were exhibited in the window for the whole day of the Befana, to bambini buoni buoni and bambini cattivoni alike.

Photos by Michelle Lovric and Jenny Lovric

Befana poem courtesy of Elena Romano

Stockings by Ross Frassanito, Claudia Marturano, Elena Romano, Susie Palmarin, Jenny and Michelle Lovric

Michelle Lovric’s website

It's All Greek

by Caroline Lawrence

replica kylix or Greek drinking cup by Exekias

Opposite the British Museum, on the corner of Great Russell Street and Bury Place, is a fabulous shop called It’s All Greek where you can purchase replicas of objects from ancient Greece. Artefacts inspire my writing so I often go to press my nose against the window, admiring the treasures within: busts, statues, helmets, jewellery, figurines and crateloads of pottery. There is even a replica of a kylix – a kind of cup with a very shallow bowl – that featured in my book, The Pirates of Pompeii.

Last Friday I was showing some sixth-form fans around the Roman section of the British Museum when one of them asked if you could actually drink from a kylix. I took them to It’s All Greek to find out. An offer of free mulled wine – sadly not in a kylix – got us chatting to the owner, a Classicist and ex-teacher. Elinor Wynne Lloyd showed us something I had never seen on those occassions I had merely pressed my nose against the window: a room full of treasures downstairs. Whipping out my notebook, I commenced an impromptu interview, asking her questions I thought other History Girls might ask, including what it’s like to drink from a kylix and which historical novels are her favourites. 

downstairs treasure trove at It's All Greek near the British Museum

Me: You used to teach Latin, Greek and Classical Civilisation at Queen's Gate School in London. After that you ran a teaching business called Locus Classicus. What was that?

Elinor: After sixteen years or so in mainstream teaching, I decided it would be fun to teach a greater variety of ages and needs, so I set up Locus Classicus in a dedicated room at home. I taught Latin, Greek and Classical Civilisation to individuals and small groups. One day it could be a twelve–year old who had moved school and needed to catch up with a year's Latin, the next it would be a revision class for a small group of A level Class Civ students…

Elinor Wynne Lloyd in her shop It's All Greek

I also went out and about, teaching in a small specialist London school for children with special needs. They loved Latin, and I used to take in the occasional Greek pot, bronze figurine, owl or oil lamp collected on trips to Greece over the years. Just having these things to handle, draw and talk about made a huge difference to lessons. It meant we could do a bit of work on mythology and Greek and Latin roots in our languages. 

Me: Do you miss anything about teaching?

Elinor: There are many things I miss but perhaps the most lasting memory is of taking trips to Greece. It was an amazing experience for me to see the girls' reactions to the places and works of art that they had studied at school. Gasping in disbelief after climbing the steps on the Acropolis to look up and see the Parthenon for the first time; traipsing up to the stadium in Delphi, eyes on the ground, then to turn round and see that incredible view over the site and the theatre and right down in the distance to the sea; awestruck silence at seeing a full size bronze statue…. Each time, I relived my own reactions on that formative first trip to Greece when I was 12 years old and of the passion that grew from those experiences.

Girls from Queen's Gate form a Q and G in the theatre of Epidauros in 1997

Me: In what ways do you feel you are still a teacher?

Elinor: It’s All Greek is more than just commerce. Next to each artefact nestles a little ‘information card’. If a customer wants to know more, we are thrilled to oblige! My triad of staff at the moment consists of a former pupil, a Classics graduate and a third-year Classics student!

Me: Handling replica artefacts can give insight into what it would have been like to use the original ones. Can you share anything that has particularly struck you?

large bronze tripod

Elinor: Some twenty years ago now, I wandered into a shop in Delphi, where I saw a glorious bronze tripod. At that stage I was teaching about Delphi, Apollo, the Pythia, the oracle, the tripod and the laurel. My modern Greek was rudimentary at best, but the shop owner and I struck up a conversation and together we carried the tripod outside into his little courtyard. The coals were lit, the bay leaves snipped and the ouzo was poured. I remembered then that in the Odyssey, royal storerooms were full of tripods which were exchanged as tokens of hospitality between guest and host. Here was I, in the centre of the world, watching the scented fumes rise towards Parnassus. Twenty years on, by design and coincidence, we stock that tripod at It's All Greek!

Me: Have you ever sipped wine from a kylix? What was it like?

Elinor: A potter I met in Olympia some years back was a maker of functional vases. On one occasion he handed me a shiny black replica kylix with a band of decoration around the rim and a small circle in the tondo, within which was a gorgoneion with protruding tongue. Within moments, the open bottle of Santorini Assyrtiko was being gently poured into the kylix (enough to obscure the gorgoneion) and proffered. I closed my eyes and took a sip: a little one. I knew there was an art to drinking from a kylix, a skill acquired by the Greek upper classes, so I concentrated intently on balancing the cup so as not to tip and dribble. I opened my eyes to a grin of delight from my observer. Dignity had been maintained but, what's more, during that split second, I had been there amidst the chatter and the hilarity and the imminent kottabos... [a dinner-party drinking game played by flicking the dregs of wine in the bottom of one's cup at various targets.]

Greeks playing kottabos, from a replica red-figure rhyton

Me: Do you read historical fiction? If so, can you share some of your favourite books?

Elinor: I remember my parents doing a bit of their own nurturing of my new-found passion for Greece when we returned from that first trip. They made sure that I had Mary Renault's The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea after going to Crete and Santorini for the first time.

Me: Snap! My parents gave me Mary Renault's book The Last of the Wine when I was eighteen! It sparked my interest in Classics and determined the whole course of my life. (I have blogged about it here). We've got to go now, but I have one last question: What is your current favourite piece in the shop?

Elinor: It's so hard to choose! When people ask where is my favourite place in Greece, I suffer from the same problem. If I'm in Delphi, it's Delphi, Olympia, Olympia and so forth. The silent Kerameikos with its rustling turtles is a favourite.

terracotta turtle and other artefacts

At the shop, there is similar fluctuation: the light one morning may strike a Cycladic figurine in such a way as to take my breath away. At dusk, the brooding shadows of a replica bronze helmet makes me stand to attention. A cheeky terracotta turtle – a replica of a child's toy – makes me smile. The cast of characters is alive, each with its own story to tell.

Me: Thanks, Elinor! History Girls and other readers of this blog might like to know they can browse and order your treasures online as well as at the shop: It's All Greek!

Caroline Lawrence writes history-mystery books for children set in Ancient Rome and the Wild West. Her motivation is the same as Elinor's: to bring history alive! 

'Fantastic New Diet - Deep-fried Brawn!' by Karen Maitland

You always know Christmas is over and the New Year has arrived, because the annual ritual is announced – the latest initiative from the government to make us all lose weight and eat healthily. Will our rulers never learn from history? Kings and governments have been trying to control what we eat and drink since the Middle Ages through laws, taxes and outright bans. And here we are, 700 years later, still fretting about obesity.

King Edward II (1284-1327) tried to legislate against ‘the outrageous consumption of meats and fine dishes’, in one of many Sumptuary laws which were regularly enacted right up to Elizabethan age in an attempt to control what the populace allowed were to spend on food, clothes and luxury goods. In 1336, Edward III, worried by excessive consumption and obesity among his subjects, attempted to limit all his subjects' meals to two modest courses.

' ... whereas heretofore, through the excessive and over many sorts of costly Meats which the People of this Realm have used … many mischiefs have happened to the People of the said Realm: for the great men, by these excesses, have been sore grieved, and the lesser People, who only endeavour to imitate the great ones in such sort of Meats, are much impoverished; whereby they are not able to aid themselves nor their liege Lord in time of need, as they ought; and many other evils have happened, as well to Souls as Bodies; …. That he would thereupon ordain … for the Profit of his People … that no man, of what estate or condition so ever he be, shall cause himself to be served in his house or elsewhere, at dinner, meal, or supper, or at any other time, with more than two messes, and each mess of two sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of Flesh or Fish, with the common sorts of pottage, without sauce or any other sort of victuals: and if any many choose to have sauce for his mess he well may, provided it be not made at great cost: and if flesh or fish be to be mixed therein, it shall be of two sorts only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, and shall stand instead of a mess; Except on the principle Feast of the year … on which Days and Feasts every man may be served with three courses at the utmost, after the manner aforesaid …'

 Naturally people soon found a way round that. Previously, sweet custards and flavoured creams would be served as a different dish to a pudding, but if you claimed custard to be sauce, you could eat both together. Meat would have been served as separately from vegetable dishes such as leeks-in-sops, but if you combined the two on one platter they became one course or ‘mess’.

 It is often thought that obesity is a modern problem and people used to eat healthier in the past. That maybe well be true, if by the past, we mean World War II rationing. But obesity certainly wasn’t limited to the present time, as is abundantly clear from the writings of Chaucer and Shakespeare. And little wonder, for a favourite dish served in medieval taverns was Brawn in Sharp Sauce. This consisted of the fat and head-meats of animals cooked and pressed into slabs of jellied brawn, which was then served deep-fried in lard. Was this really any healthier than popping in for a burger?

Records of food provided for workers and servants in Medieval and Tudor times suggest they consumed nearly twice today’s daily recommended calorific intake especially in bread and meat. We explain that by saying that they because they burned it off in manual labour and walking. That was probably true if you were farm worker, a sailor or blacksmith, but the vast numbers of clerks, nobles and those in Holy Orders did very little hard manual work. Yes, horse-riding probably did burn off more calories than driving in car, but I doubt it reduced the weight of the wealth who were carried on their journeys and didn’t have to saddle the horses.

Think of the vast quantities of salt ordinary people consumed especially during in winter and spring, when nearly every piece of meat, fish and even some vegetables would have been pickled or salted to preserve it. Then there was the drink. Records tell us that by the 15th Century those feeding the men and women harvesting in the fields were expected to provide either 6 pints of strong ale or a gallon of small ale daily to each person and that was just during working hours. In the Middle Ages ale, cider, mead or wine were the safe alternatives to water, even though these drinks may have been much weaker than those of today or watered down, the daily alcohol consumption, even of children, must have been a lot higher than today’s daily recommended intake.

 Did their health suffer? Did they die premature deaths? There were, of course many who died from malnutrition and starvation, as well as those who died as a result of over-indulgence. But provided a medieval man or woman survived fevers and accidents, they could expect to live just as long then as now, even on those diets.

Yesterday I went to visit the tomb of Sir John de Sully in Crediton Parish Church, Devon. Sully died in 1387 at the age of 106, having fought in numerous battles including Bannockburn and the battle of Cressy (Crecy). He fought his last battle in Spain (la batille de Spaigne) when he was 86 years old. When he was 105, he was asked in testify in case involving a dispute over a coat of arms. His testimony was recorded along with a large number of other knights who were in their 80’s and 90’s at the time of the trial and also Sir John Chydioke who, like Sully, was over a 100 years old. I wonder what their dietary secret was.

With the exception of World War II, I wonder which period in British history the majority of people would have eaten what today would be regarded as a really healthy diet and which was the worst. Have you ever been tempted to try any of the slimming or health diets of our ancestors?