Travel and Shelter done

Where the queen goes, her court must follow. The chaos that followed Elizabeth's summer progress prompted one historian to write, "Nothing save war was more disruptive to the orderly well-being of court life than a royal progress." Elizabeth went on progress each summer, to maintain contact with her people and to get out of London during plague season. When the Queen went on progress "she was not content to be accompanied by a mere handful of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting; she took along a great multitude and a large train of luggage, furnishings, food, and other suplies". Burghley tried to get the queen to limit the number of people she took on progress, but she was unwilling to compromise on the matter. To maintain the level of magnificence expected of her, she expected both her courtiers and her household to behave as though they were in residence at one of her palaces.

In 1553 a travel guide described France as being twenty-two days wide and nineteen days long. Another travel guide of the same period put the distance at sixteen days long. William Harrison's The Description of England, written in the 1580s, does not count days per se but he does list the distances between places and the implication is that the traveler might stop at each for a meal or for the night. "The way from Berwick to York, and so to London" is accomplished in twenty-two stops. London to Dover has another six stops.

On foot, one might travel three or four miles an hour during the day. Few people wanted to be out at night, so travel was confined to daylight hours. There were rivers to ford, however, and mountains to cross, so this was not a pace one could keep up indefinitely. Those who could, rode, either on horses or mules. The one hundred twenty mile journey from London to Stratford upon Avon took three days on horseback.

English gentlemen thought it unmanly to ride in any vehicle or on a mare. They used small, hard saddles and rated their horses by color, bay being the best. Women rode astride (using a man's saddle) or apillion. A pillion was a leather or padded cushion on a wooden frame which was strapped to the horse's back behind the saddle. A footboard hung from the offside and the woman clung to the man in front of her. By the sixteenth century, the sidesaddle was also an option. It was popularized by Catherine d' Medici, who brought one to France from Italy when she married the king of France in 1533.

There were some vehicles available. Wagons and carts had been around for a long time. Ladies might also be carried in litters. The coach, however, was a new development in sixteenth century England. A far cry from later developments, these coaches were an outgrowth of the carriages used to transport artillery. The first coaches had no springs or window glass and little padding. They differed from the four-wheeled carriages and covered wagons used earlier in that they were closed and had seats inside for passengers. One seat outside held the driver.
The first coach was brought to England from the Netherlands in 1555. The first coach in Scotland came from France with Mary, queen of Scots in 1561. Because of poor roads, the conveyance did not catch on outside London for some time.

The cleanest was to travel is by boat on the Thanes River. Usually, traveling by boat is faster than carriages or wagons. If you don’t have a boat, you would hail one by crying “Westward (or any other direction) Ho!” , A water taxi would cost about a penny.

To cross the English Channel (also called the Narrow Seas) to France could take days, even weeks, or in perfect weather conditions, only an afternoon.

One map giving travel times from Venice indicates that it took ten days to reach Augsburg, sixteen days to get to Brussels, and twenty-seven days to go all the way to London. Overland routes made use of rivers and canals.


Briggs, Asa, A Social History of England, Viking Press, New York, 1983
Loades, David, The Tudor Court, Barnes & Noble, New Jersey, 1987
Orlin, Lena Cowen, Elizabethan Households, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995.
Somerset, Anne, Ladies in Waiting, from the Tudors to the Present Day, Alfred A. Knopf New York, 1984.
An Elizabethan Progress by Zillah Dovey (1996)
John Leland's Itinerary, edited by John Chandler (1993)

update

Now when I update this page I will also post this little checklist

Checklist 5/10

Done
Courtesy and Etiquette- February 03, 2007
Introduction- April 28, 2007
Dancing- May 07, 2007
Food- June 16, 2007
Travel and Shelter-June 18, 2007

Calligraphy -in progress
Games and Pastimes
Clothing
Decorative Arts
Entertainment
Every Day Life
Habitat
Heraldry
Skills and Technology
Survival Skills

cooking part 2- finished

Over last weekend I entered my sugar paste plates under the food category at dragonsspines champions I scored a 39, 46.8, 45.75 giving me a average of 43.85! Needing only a average score of 35 to reach the average score of 70%! (I also want to brag that all three judges gave me the full 10 points for documentation!!)





** part 2 of category ***food in your area, including what was available, where it came from, restrictions on food and how it would be prepared. You shall include a sample of a menu for a normal day and for a feast

A Sixteenth Century Dinner (normal day)
First Course
Brawn (boar meat)
Roast Beef
Roast Venison (deer)
Meat Pie
Vegetables in season
Bread

Second Course
Roast Lamb
Rabbit
Bread
Tarts and Custard

The staple diet consisted of meat and bread and was much sweeter than today's food. Manchet was a very fine white bread made from wheat flour with a little bran and wheat germ added. It was creamy-yellow in colour. This bread was for the nobility

a wide variety of meat and game including what they hunted:- deer, boar, rabbit, quail, bustard, curlew, plover, cormorant, badger, hedgehog, heron, crane, pheasant, woodcock, partridge, blackbirds, etc. They also had meat from the animals they reared on their land:- beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, rabbit, chicken, duck, swan, peacock, goose, pigeon, doves etc.

The sea fish for eating included cod, haddock, ling, conger, and plaice.The fresh water fish included eels, pike, perch, trout, sturgeon, roach, and salmon.Cockles, mussels and oysters

Nobility didn't eat a lot of vegetables some medical texts advise against eating raw vegetables as engendering wind (gas) or evil humours. A variety of vegetables grown included leeks, garlic, peas, parsnips, collards, kale lentils, turnips, broad beans, onions, spinach, carrots, beets, artichokes, radishes, and asparagus. Herbs included borage, sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley and chives. edible flowers were also commonly seen in dishes

There were many varieties of apples, pears and cherries grown in England. Other popular fruits included damsons, plums, strawberries and gooseberries. Most of the fruit was cooked as doctors thought that raw food caused illness. Oranges, limes or any fruit imported from abroad was expensive and therefore only eaten by the upper classes. "Apricocks" (apricots) were imported from Portugal and "apples of love" (tomatoes) came from Mexico.

Sweets were common. Sugar became very popular and England was known for it's high quality honey. At Court sugar was added to ale, sauces for meat and fish, and sweetmeats like "marchpane" (marzipan).

Everyone avoided drinking water because it was very polluted. Hypocras was a sweet liqueur imported from the Eastern Mediterranean; it was the most expensive drink of all and was served at Royal banquets and special occasions. Wine was popular at Court; Sack was a sherry, a sweet wine from Spain; Aqua vitae (the Latin for the water of Life) was the name given to any strong spirit such as brandy. Ale was the word used for any fermented drink made from grain and water at Court more ale was drunk than wine. Small Ale (newly brewed) was often drunk at morning meals.

Feast

First Remove:

Soup (2 varieties, vegetable & meat)

Second Remove:

Roast peacock

Pork & egg pies

Roast Tongue

Leg of Pork

Fried spiced onions

Roast root vegetables

Beans

Third Remove:

Mushroom pasties

Braised venison in pepper sauce

Roast Lamb

Rabbit

Tarts and Custard

Bread

Fourth Remove:

Pears in red wine

Cheese and fruits

Marchpanes

candied roses and violets

cakes

wafers

Bibliography

Hart, R (1972) English Life in Tudor Times, Wayland Publishers, LondonEmmison, F.G. (1964)

Tudor Food and Pastimes - Life at Ingatestone Hall, Ernest Benn Ltd, LondonFraser, A (1996)

The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, LondonDyer, C (1989)

Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeBlack, M (1992)

The Medieval Cookbook, British Museum Press, LondonRenfrow, C (1998)

Take a Thousand Eggs or More, Volume 2, Cindy Renfrow