Tudor New Year Gifts, Marchpane, New Books and Lost Castles
Hello fellow history lovers and Happy New Year!
I ended up having a nosey around the gifts that Elizabeth I received for new year 1588-89 and there were some beauties. The Countess of Cumberland gifted the queen ‘a a peire of braselets, conteyninge eight peeces of gold, sett with sparks of diamonds and rubyes, and knotts or rundells of small pearles betwene them, threded’. Sounds lovely. And then Mr Captain Crosse gave her ‘a faire large looking glasse set in frame, corded with crimson velvett, bound with a passamayn lace of Venis gold.’ Perfect, except then the clerk added the note: ‘The glass broken’. Oops.
Probably the best gift (in my humble opinion) was from the queen’s Master Cook, John Smithson, and it was ‘one faire marchpayne, with St. George in the middest’. If you want to make your own marchpane, figure of St George optional, I have a recipe on the website. It’s pretty easy to make, too. Let me know how it goes! You can find more of the gifts given to Elizabeth during her reign at this fantastic website here.
History
I’ve been tapping away on the computer since the summer and have written five chapters of the new book, so I’m on target for my due date of May (yay!). I’ll reveal all about it soon! My first book, Forgotten Women of the Wars of the Roses, is out at the end of February and available to pre-order at the Pen and Sword website.
I have some events planned to celebrate the book coming out so please stay in touch and keep a lookout if you’d like to come along. I’ll be running a giveaway on here too, so stay tuned to find out how to enter.
Over on the blog I posted a new recipe, for A Potage of Cherries. Basically a fancy butter-fried slice of bread and juicy, ruby-red cherries, it’s super easy to make and tastes gorgeous. If you fancy making a Tudor recipe make it this one.
I also investigated a little about the abandoned Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy, which was settled in the Iron Age but for some mysterious reason dwindled to a handful of residents by the 1500s. Interested in lost castles? I tried to figure out what the Lost Castle of Southampton would have been like, and also delved into the history of what was once Caversham Castle.
There were two forgotten histories I looked at too, the role of Lady Margaret Stewart in building the atmospheric Kilchurn Castle in Scotland and a forgotten woman of Shakespeare’s history. Mary Baker was a custodian of Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and was remembered for showing tourists around her home in the 1800s. Read more of her story here.
Due to working on the book I’ve been a bit sporadic with newsletters, but the most intensive part is now done, so I’ll be posting more regularly from now on. I’ll also be creating some bonus content for paid subscribers, so if you’d like to be in on that, do consider turning on a paid subscription (prices start from £3.50 per month). Don’t forget you can also keep in touch on my Facebook and Instagram pages too, so feel free to follow and join in the chat.
Sketching
2023 was a bumper year for my artwork. I’ve been working with Amy at Two Lost Birds and we’ve completed a huge elephant painting on a garage door, a beach scene complete with boats and seagulls in a back garden and more recently, a 5 metre tall Venetian Plaster oak tree! You can find all these on my Instagram @sketcherjoey or Facebook. I also finished my commissions in time for Christmas and will start to share these on social media soon. I didn’t want to spoil the surprises! One of them was a Medieval building in York which I loved painting! I’ll share soon.
That’s it for now, I hope you all have a wonderful start to the New Year. If you’re lucky you might get some marchpane like Queen Elizabeth!
See you in February!