Nooks and Corners of English Life, Past and Present Part 11

PINS AND PIN-MONEY.

Metal pins are said to have been introduced into this country from France in the fifteenth century: as an article of commerce they are not mentioned in our statutes until the year 1483. Before this date, we are told that ladies were accustomed to fasten their dresses by means of skewers of boxwood, ivory, or bone; this statement has been doubted, but we are a.s.sured that, to this day, the Welsh use as a pin the thorn from the hedge.

Stow a.s.signs the first manufacture of metal pins in England to the year 1543; and they seem to have been then so badly made that in the thirty-fourth year of King Henry VIII. (1542-3), Parliament enacted that none should be sold unless they be "double-headed, and have the headdes soudered faste to the shanke of the pynne." In short, the head of the pin was to be well smoothed, the shank well shapen, and the point well rounded, filed, canted, and sharpened. The Act of Parliament, however, appears to have produced no good effect, for in the thirty-seventh year of the same reign it was repealed.

The manufacture of pins was introduced into several towns of Great Britain by individuals who, in some cases, are called the inventors of the article. The pin-makers of former days seem to have been a body somewhat difficult to please, of whom Guillim, in his _Display of Heraldry_, writes:--"The Society of Pinmen and Needlers, now ancient, or whether incorporated, I find not, but only that, in the year 1597, they pet.i.tioned the Lord Treasurer against the bringing in of foreign pins and needles, which did much prejudice to the calling." The Pinners'

Company was incorporated by Charles I. in 1636; the Hall is on part of the ancient Priory of the Augustine, or Austin Friars; it has been, since the reign of Charles II., let as a Dissenting meeting-house: it is in Pinners'-hall-court, Old Broad-street.

The manufacture of pins formed early a lucrative branch of trade. Sixty thousand pounds, annually, is said to have been paid for them to foreign makers, in the early years of Queen Elizabeth; but, as we have seen, long before the decease of that princess, they were manufactured in this country in great quant.i.ties; and in the time of James I., the English artisan is regarded to have "exceeded every foreign compet.i.tor in the production of this diminutive, though useful article of dress."

Pennant, in his description of old London Bridge, states that "most of the houses were tenanted by pin or needle makers, and economical ladies were wont to drive from the St. James's end of the town to make cheap purchases." But Thomson, in his minute _Chronicles of London Bridge_, does not mention pin-makers among the trades common on the bridge; haberdashers, who came here _late_ from the Chepe, however, sold pins.

Yet vast quant.i.ties of early pins have been recovered from the Thames near the site of the old Bridge. In 1864, Mr. Burnell exhibited to the British Archaeological a.s.sociation fifteen bra.s.s pins, varying in length from one inch and three-eighths to five inches and a half, stated to have been found on the paper on which they now are, in a cellar on the northern bank of the Thames, in excavating for the foundations of the South-Eastern Railway bridge. Most, if not all, of these pins have solid globose heads. At the same meeting, Mr. Syer c.u.ming exhibited two bra.s.s pins recovered from the mud of the Thames some years since. One is little less than two inches and a half in length, the other full seven inches and three-quarters long. The heads of both are formed with spiral wire; the shortest being globose, the other somewhat flattened. Mr.

c.u.ming stated that quant.i.ties of such early pins as those then produced have been found in and along the banks of the river, some of them measuring upwards of a foot in length. These great pins may have been employed in securing the wide-spreading head-dresses of the Middle Ages, and fastening the ends of the pillow-case, a use not quite obsolete in the time of Swift, who speaks of "corking pins," for this purpose, in his _Directions to Servants_.

For some time after their introduction pins must have been costly, for we find that they were acceptable New Year's gifts to ladies, and that presents of money were made for buying pins; whence money set apart for the use of ladies received the name of _pin-money_.

In France, three centuries ago, there was a tax for providing the queen with pins; from whence the term of _pin-money_ has been, undoubtedly, applied by us to that provision for married women, with which the husband is not to interfere. In Bellon's _Voyages_, 1553, we read:--"Quand nous donnons l'argent a quelque chambriere, nous _disons pour ses epingles_."

Pins must soon have been made and sold at a very cheap rate, to justify the common remark, "Not worth a pin," and equivalent expressions in some of our early writers, such as Tusser:

"His fetch is to flatter, to get what he can; His purpose once gotten, a _pin_ for thee than."

Pins are of various sizes, from the blanket-pin, three inches in length, to the smallest ribbon-pins, of which 300,000 only weigh one pound.

Insect-pins, used by entomologists, are of finer wire than ordinary pins, and vary in length from three inches to a size smaller than ribbon-pins. It has been calculated that ten tons of pins are made every week in England alone, requiring from fourteen to fifteen tons of bra.s.s-wire.

"What becomes of all the pins?" a question every day asked, received an answer, a few years since, upon the opening of an old sewer for repair, in Rea-street, Birmingham. At the bottom of it was a deposit as hard as the "slag" from a blast furnace, and in this deposit a vast number of pins were embedded: a piece about the size of a man's fist bristled with them, and this was but a specimen of a great ma.s.s of such matter. In another way, too, the deposit was a curiosity; for, independently of the pins, it inclosed a heterogeneous collection of old pocket-knives, marbles, b.u.t.tons, &c.

Anciently, there were local springs, known as _Pin Wells_, in pa.s.sing which the country maids dropped into the water a crooked pin to propitiate the fairy of the well. In some places, rich and poor believed this superst.i.tion.

PROVISIONS:

BREAD-MAKING, GROCERY, AND CONFECTIONERY.

Under the designation of _Panis_, Mr. Hudson Turner thinks that grain and flour, as well as bread, were included. It would appear that bread of different degrees of fineness was used. Thus, in the Household Expenses of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, third daughter of King John, and wife of the celebrated Simon de Montfort, 1265, "the earliest known memorial of the domestic expenditure of an English subject," we find that there was "bread purchased for the Countess," and "bread for the kitchen."

Loaves or cakes were made of bolted flour, are twice mentioned, as well as cakes, or wastells, perhaps biscuits; on one occasion half a quarter of flour is set down for pastry. It is inferred that the bread generally used in the family was made of a mixture of wheat and rye. As the dogs were fed with corn, it may be concluded that the servants fared no worse: at any rate there is no distinct notice of bread made of barley, oats, or the more inferior grain which were commonly used in France and other countries.

It is not clear that their bread was leavened with yeast, as that article occurs but once, and then in connexion with malt. The price of the quarter of wheat or rye varied from 5_s_. to 5_s_. 8_d_.; of oats, from 2_s_. to 2_s_. 4_d_.; twenty-five quarters, however, were bought at Sandwich, at 1_s_. 10_d_. When grain was brought from the Countess'

manors, some of the prices were rather below the average. The bailiff of Chalton was allowed 5_s_. the quarter for wheat, 4_s_. for barley, and 2_s_. 4_d_. for oats; the bailiff of Braborne had 4_s_. 4_d_. for wheat, and 1_s_. 3_d_. for oats.

The Manchet is a fine white roll, named, according to Skinner, from _michette_, French; or from _main_, because small enough to be held in the hand:

"No manchet can so well the courtly palate please As that made of the meal fetch'd from my fertil leaze."

Drayton's _Polyolbion_.

Here are two olden recipes for manchets:

"_Lady of Arundel's Manchet._--Take a bushel of fine wheat-flour, twenty eggs, three pound of fresh b.u.t.ter; then take as much salt and barm as to the ordinary manchet; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then let it lie the s.p.a.ce of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into bread, and bake it: let not your oven be too hot."--_True Gentlewoman's Delight_, 1676.

"Take a quart of cream, put thereto a pound of beef-suet minced small, put it into cream, and season it with nutmeg, cinnamon, and rose-water; put to it eight eggs and but four whites, and two grated manchets; mingle them well together and put them in a b.u.t.tered dish; bake it, and being baked, sc.r.a.pe on sugar, and serve it."--_The Queene's Royal Cookery_, 1713.

Manchets are used in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to this day.

The manchets and cheese, and fine ale, of Magdalen College are well known.

The Manciple, a purveyor of victuals, a clerk of the kitchen, or caterer, still subsists in the universities, where the name is therefore preserved; but Archdeacon Nares believed nowhere else. One of Chaucer's pilgrims is a manciple of the Temple, of whom he gives a good character for his skill in purveying.

It is curious to find that one of the domestic arts which is somewhat neglected in the households of the present generation, should, in the last century, have been considered an accomplishment of such importance as to be taught in schools: this was Pastry-making. There was then resident in London one of the ancient family of the Kidders, of Maresfield, in Suss.e.x, and a descendant of Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells. This was Edward Kidder, a pastrycook, or, as he calls himself, "pastry-master," who carried on his business in Queen Street, Cheapside, and was induced to open two schools in the metropolis to teach the art of making pastry, one at his own place of business, and the other in Holborn. He also gave instructions to ladies at their private houses. So popular did his system of teaching become, that he is said to have instructed nearly 6,000 ladies in this art. He also published a book of _Receipts of Pastry and Cookery_, for the use of his scholars, printed entirely in copper-plate, with a portrait of himself, in the full wig and costume of the day, as a frontispiece. He died in 1739, at the age of seventy-three. By will, he gave to his wife, Mary Kidder, a gold watch, a diamond ring, and all the other rings and trinkets used by her, and also all the furniture of the best room in which she lay in the house in Queen Street; and to his daughters, Elizabeth and Susan, he bequeathed all his money, bank-stock, plate, jewellery, &c. Susan, among other bequests, gave to her cousin, George Kidder, of Canterbury, pastrycook, 150_l_. and the copper-plates for the receipt-book.

Some dishes of the olden dinner-table are not very inviting. Our ancestors had no objection to stale fish; and blubber, if they could get it from a stray whale, or grampus or porpoise, was considered a delicacy. Yet some of the old dishes have stood the test of ages, as we see in the case of a Christmas Pie, the receipt to make which is preserved in the books of the Salters' Company, in the City of London.

"For to make a moost choyce Paaste of Gamys to be eten at ye Feste of Chrystema.s.se" (17th Richard II. A.D. 1394). A pie so made by the Company's cook in 1836 was found excellent. It consisted of a pheasant, hare, and capon; two partridges, two pigeons, and two rabbits; all boned and put into paste in the shape of a bird, with the livers and hearts, two mutton kidneys, forced-meats, and egg-b.a.l.l.s, seasoning, spice, catsup, and pickled mushrooms, filled up with gravy made from the various bones.

We must, however, remember that Cookery flourished in the reign of Richard II., who rebuilt Westminster Hall, and gave therein a _house-warming_, at which old Stow says, "he feasted ten thousand persons." Richard is also said to have kept 2,000 cooks, who left to the world their famous cookery-book, the "Form of Cury, or, a Roll of English Cookery," compiled about the year 1390, by the master-cooks of the Royal Kitchen.

Sugar was at first regarded as a spice, and was introduced as a subst.i.tute for honey after the Crusades. It was sold by the pound in the thirteenth century, and was procurable even in such remote towns as Ross and Hereford. Before the discovery of America, however, Sugar was a costly luxury, and only used on rare occasions. About 1459, Margaret Barton, writing to her husband, who was a gentleman and landowner of Norfolk, begs that he will vouchsafe "to buy her a pound of sugar."

Again: "I pray that ye will vouchsafe to send me another sugar-loaf, for my old one is done." The art of refining sugar, and what is called loaf-sugar, was discovered by a Venetian about the end of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth century. Sugar-candy is of much earlier date; for in Marin's _Storia di Commercio de Veneziani_, there is an account of a s.h.i.+pment made at Venice for England, in 1319, of 100,000 pounds of sugar, and 10,000 pounds of sugar-candy. Refined or loaf-sugar is thus mentioned in a roll of provisions in the reign of Henry VIII.: "two loaves of sugar, weighing sixteen pound two ounces, at ---- per pound." A letter from Sir Edward Wotton to Lord Cobham, dated Calais, March 6, 1546, informs him that he had taken up for his lords.h.i.+p twenty-five sugar-loaves, at six s.h.i.+llings a loaf, "which is eightepence a pounde." Up to the close of the fifteenth century its price varied from one-and-sixpence to three s.h.i.+llings a pound, "or, on an average, to a sum equivalent to about thirty s.h.i.+llings at present." Sugar has become to us almost a necessary of life. "We consume it in millions of tons; we employ thousands of s.h.i.+ps in transporting it. Millions of men spend their lives in cultivating the plants from which it is extracted, and the fiscal duties imposed upon it add largely to the revenue of nearly every established government. It may be said, therefore, to exercise a more direct and extended influence, not only over the social comfort, but over the social condition, of mankind, than any other production of the vegetable kingdom, with the exception, perhaps, of cotton alone."--_J. F. W. Johnston, M.A._[51]

Coffee is mentioned in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, date 1621, several years before coffee-houses were introduced into England. The first coffee-house was opened in 1650, at Oxford, by Jacobs, a Jew, "at the Angel; and there it (coffee) was, by some who delighted in novelty, drunk." About this time, Mr. Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London, one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for him every morning. But the novelty thereof, drawing too much company to him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his son-in-law, to sell coffee publicly, and they set up the first coffee-house in London, in St. Michael's Alley, in Cornhill. The sign was Pasqua Rosee's own head.

Tea was first sold in London by Thomas Garway, in Change Alley, in 1651, at from 16_s_. to 50_s_. per pound; it had been previously sold at from six pounds to ten pounds per pound. Pepys, in his _Diary_, tells, Sept.

25, 1669, of his sending "for a cup of Tea, a China drink he had not before tasted." Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, about 1666, had introduced Tea at Court. And, in Sir Charles Sedley's _Mulberry Garden_, we are told that "he who wished to be considered a man of fas.h.i.+on always drank wine-and-water at dinner, and a dish of tea afterwards."[52]

Spices and other condiments are mentioned in the Countess of Leicester's accounts, viz., anise, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, c.u.mmin, dried fennel, saffron, sugar, liquorice, mustard, verjuice, and vinegar, the prices of which were very low. It must not be supposed, from the low prices of some of these articles, that they were generally used in the country; the arrival of a s.h.i.+p laden with spices was an event of such importance, and perhaps rarity, that the King usually hastened to satisfy his wants before the cargo was landed. Thus in the 10th of Henry the Third, the bailiffs of Sandwich were commanded to detain, upon their coming to port, two great s.h.i.+ps laden with spices and precious merchandises, which were expected from Bayonne; and not to allow anything to be sold until the King had had his choice of their contents.

Among the glories of olden confectionery was March-pane, a biscuit composed of sugar and almonds, like those now called Macaroons. It is also called _ma.s.sepain_ in some old books. The word March-pane exists, with little variation, in almost all the European languages; yet the derivation of it is uncertain. In the Latin of the Middle Ages, March-panes were called _Martii panes_, which gave occasion to Hermolaus Barbaras to inquire into their origin, in a letter to Cardinal Piccolomini, who had some sent to him as a present. Balthazar Bonifacius says they were named from Marcus Apicius, the famous epicure. Minshew, following Hermolaus, will have them originally sacred to Mars, and stamped with a castle.

Whatever was the origin of their name, the English receipt-books show that they were composed of almonds and sugar, pounded and baked together. Here is a receipt:

"_To make a March-pane._--Take two pounds of almonds, being blanched, and dryed in a sieve over the fire, beate them in a stone mortar, and when they bee small, mixe them with two pounds of sugar beeing finely beaten, adding two or three spoonefuls of rose-water, and that will keep your almonds from oiling: when your paste is beaten fine, drive it thin with a rowling pin, and so lay it on a bottom of wafers; then raise up a little edge on the side, and so bake it; then yce it with rose-water and sugar, then put it into the oven againe, and when you see your yce is risen up and drie, then take it out of the oven and garnish it with pretie conceipts, as birdes and beasts being cast out of standing-moldes.

Sticke long comfits upright into it, cast bisket and carrowaies in it, and so serve it: you may also print of this march-pane paste in your moldes for banqueting dishes. And of this paste our comfit makers at this day make their letters, knots, armes, escutcheons, beasts, birds, and other fancies."--_Delightes for Ladies_ 1608.

March-pane was a constant article in the desserts of our ancestors, and appeared sometimes on more solemn occasions. When Elizabeth visited Cambridge, the University presented their chancellor, Sir William Cecil, with two pairs of gloves, a march-pane, and two sugar-loves. In the old play of _Wits_ we find a reference to

"----dull country madams that spend Their time in studying recipes to make March-pane and preserve plumbs."

Castles and other figures were often made of march-pane for splendid desserts, and were demolished by shooting or throwing sugar-plums at them.

_Almonds_ are an olden delicacy of our table, and have for ages been very extensively used in a variety of preparations.

Almond-milk, composed of almonds ground and mixed with milk or other liquid, was a favourite beverage, as was also almond-b.u.t.ter and almond-custard. The antiquity of the practice of serving almonds and raisins together at dessert seems to be shown from the name Almonds-and-raisins being given as that of an old English game in _Useful Transactions in Philosophy_, 1700.

_Biscuits_ (originally Biskets) of various kinds were in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; among which that most in repute was called Naples Biscuit, from the place where it was first made: it occurs in the Carpenters' Company's books in 1644.