pelting
wretchedly trivial
phlegm
one of the four “humours” which were held to rule the constitution of the body. Phlegm made one apathetic and phlegmatic. The others were Blood, which made one lively and sanguine; Yellow Bile, or Choler, which made one petulant and choleric; Black Bile, which made one gloomy and melancholy
pica
an unnatural longing by a pregnant woman for a particular food
poaching
making “poches” or holes in the ground
points
tagged laces
the popular
the mob
pot
familiar name for a morion, or steel cavalry helmet
powdering-tubs
pickling tubs
praysed
valued
prevaricator
a joking quibbler
prick-song hymns
hymns with formal written music
privileged men
college servants and the like who, though not University students, were reckoned with the Gown, not the Town
procatarctical cause
external cause
prolusion
introductory drama
propria quae maribus
a Latin verse written by Lilly the Grammarian to help boys to remember the gender of Latin nouns
puny
freshman or novice
Questionists
a sect of sceptics who believed only in liberty of conscience and liberty of prophesying
quintain
a swinging target for lance practice: anyone who did not hit it squarely was apt to be unhorsed
rabbits
young rabbits. Full-grown ones were coneys
raddled
daubingly marked
rebus
a punning picture, e.g. the Abbot Islip’s personal rebus in Westminster Abbey shows a little man falling from a tree, “I slip”; also two eyes and a lip, “Eyes lip”
to redargue
to go back over an argument
to renege
to break one’s oath or principle
rossomakka
the Russian maccarib, i.e. reindeer [?]
ruck
the slower-moving mass in a retreat or race
ruddle
red dip for marking sheep
ruffler
swash-buckler
ruffles it
swaggers
a country sword dance
sack-posset
warm drink made with dry Spanish wine
sand-caster
sand-pot used before the invention of blotting-paper
scout-master
intelligence officer
scrivener
law-stationer, who also gave legal advice and arranged loans and mortgages, etc. He stood in much the same relation to a lawyer as an apothecary did to a physician
to scum up
to froth up
seaton
a twist of silk or other material inserted in a wound to keep it open and thus maintain an artificial issue
Sebaptists
a sect that believed in self-baptism
Seekers
a sect that held that no perfect Revelation had yet been granted to Man, but ecstatically looked for one
Sergeant-major
Major
sequestration
official confiscation
several
separate
shallowling
a superficial person
sillabub
a drink of milk warm from the cow, curdled with sweet wine or cider
slip-coat cheese
cream cheese
slouch
slovenly fellow
slubberdegullion
a slobbering person
smooty
smutty
snaggle-toothed
with teeth jutting irregularly
snail-water
a drug distilled from snails, as a remedy against consumptions and hectic fevers
snap-sack
knapsack
snibbed
snubbed
to snuff
to sniff disdainfully
Socinians
followers of Lælius and Faustus Socinus, sixteenth-century theologians who held that Jesus was Man, not God
Sodom-apple
a Dead Sea apple
Sol
solution to a logical problem
soosies
fabrics of silk and cotton mixed
Soul-sleepers
a materialistic sect that denied the existence of the soul
spoon-maker
spud knife
a cheap knife
to stand perdue
to be in ambush
stilling-room
distillery
stock-fish
salted cod
stomach, without
unwilling to face something
sublunary
earthly
swinger
rogue
tabor
drum
tailed sonnet
a sonnet with six extra lines
Tangerine
of Tangiers
tenter-hooks
crooked nails fastened to the edges of cloth to prevent it shrinking after it is milled
thrum-chair
chair with a woven seat
thwartly
contradictorily or perversely
tire-woman
lady’s maid
Tories
Irish bandits
tormentil
sept-foil
to tote
to peep
town butt
the bull provided for serving the cows of a town-ship
train-oil
whale oil
Traskites
a sect who held that the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday
trot
hag
tuck
a rapier
turk’s cap
tulip
ululate
howl
untruss
undo one’s breeches
vapouring
talking nonsense
Venice red
scarlet
leaves and twigs used in religious ceremonies
vitilitigation
recrimination
whifflers
armed attendants who clear the way for a procession
whirret
smart blow
whored
made a whore of, by a false or repudiated marriage
wisses
knows
witling
a person who thinks himself witty
yawl
bawl
Endnotes
Foreword
1 Modern historians reject the traditional date of 1643.
CHAPTER TWO
2 These were rue, agrimony, wormwood, celandine, sage, balsam, mugwort, snapdragon, pimpernel, marigold, feverfew, burnet and sorrel; also wood-betony, scabious, brown may-weed, mint, avence, tormentil and the benedict thistle—a like weight of all of these, but of rosemary twice as much, and of elicampane-root half as much only. You mingle them all together, shred small; then you steep them in a good white wine three days and three nights, stirring them once or twice a day; then they are distilled in a common still. This water is held a certain prophylactic against the plague, and an indifferent good cure for the same.
CHAPTER THREE
3 Esquire Bushell was also rewarded for this day’s entertainment by being appointed warden and master-worker at a silver mint at Aberystwyth in Wales.
CHAPTER TWELVE
4 Once a clever Greek, knowing that a certain racecourse had in ancient times been stepped out, for a thousand paces, by the demi-god Hercules, ca
lculated the length of a single pace and, from that, the stature of Hercules: which, by the way, was less than that either of Goegmagog or of Goliath.
5 Sir Thomas Gardiner, the Elder, who had been the King’s candidate for the office of Speaker in the House of Commons, was complained against to the House that he had put obstructions in the way of persons signing a petition, which was for the removal from Parliament of Bishops and Popish Lords; he was committed to the Tower by the Lords and thereafter impeached for opposing Parliament in the matter of the Militia, and for saying that it was “a dangerous thing to anger a King.” Yet now he was a free man again and a perfect martyr in the eyes of all the countryside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
6 I have two little sisters of the same name, Elizabeth. The second was so christened when the first, the elder by four years, was on that very day pronounced by the physician to be stone dead; nevertheless, she awoke from her trance and lived.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
7Their text was drawn from the Book of Judges: “‘Curse ye Meroz,’ said the angel of the Lord, ‘curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.’” It was used to stir the laggards and neuters by the zealous ministers of both factions.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
8 This impediment had been pleaded against the Earl of Essex by his two wives successively, and they had been set free; which occasioned many sharp jests at Court and made him the more ready to show his manly valour in battle on the side of Parliament.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
9 These pits put me in mind of a confection that we made at Easter time, of sweet pastes and conserves laid one upon the other in layers: for first came the turf, then a reddish earth, then a blue clay, then a yellow sand, then this white pipe-clay, then an iron stone, then (I think) a reddish maum, then a green fat clay, then a thin grey rubble, then the green fat clay again, and last of all the yellow ochre.
10 This Independency, a notion that each smallest congregation is sufficient to judge of its own spiritual needs, without admonition or dictation from others, was a heresy first bred at Cambridge University in King James’s reign; thence cast opprobriously out and exiled to Holland and Northern America; now brought back and daily getting head.
11 The Earl of Essex died of a distemper about a year later, in his house at London.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
12 Colonel Legge had taken Sir Arthur Aston’s place after that Sir Arthur, curvetting upon Bullingdon Green to show some ladies his horsemanship, had tumbled off and broke his thighbone and lost his leg by amputation. There was a jest upon this, that when country people coming to market with their wares asked the sentries at the gate, “Good men, who is now your Governor?” and they answered, “One Legge,” the country people cried: “Why, is it still he? We had heard that the old whoreson was gone from you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
13 Not Mr. John Rous, the librarian of Oxford, to whom my husband at this time wrote a Latin ode.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
14 Yet the Welsh prisoners taken at Pembroke were sold by General Cromwell at but one shilling the head; which was strange in a man of Welsh descent, to value the Scots as having each man the worth of five Welshmen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
15 He was the first to impose ship-money as a tax upon inland towns.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
16 My husband could call Mr. Bradshaw “cousin”, his mother having been of that family—or else another of the same name.
17 The Levellers, of whom the chief was one Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, were dissatisfied with the new Government, which they considered too tender and forbearing of old evils: they held that every Jack was as good as his master, and would have swept away all privileges of rank and wealth whatsoever. The same Lilburne wrote a book entitled England’s Old and New Chains, in which he contended that the Army Grandees, as Generals Cromwell, Ireton and the rest, had broken the old chains of monarchy indeed, yet fettered England with new and stronger ones. He raised a mutiny in the Army, but General Cromwell put it down, shooting one of the Levellers as a scarecrow to the rest.
Epilogue
18 Marie; not Katherine or Elizabeth. [R. G.]
19 This should be 1674. [R. G.]
20 A pun. Sir Edward Powell was his cousin.