A Yorkshire Almanac Comprising 365 Historical Extracts, Red-letter Days and Customs, and Astronomical and Meteorological Data
Gluttony, from Hieronymus Bosch’s 1500-ish The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (Bosch 1500ish).
William Noy, Ed. 1645. The great feast, at the inthronization of the reverend father in God, George Neavill Arch-Bishop of Yorke, Chancellour of England, in the sixt yeere of Edward the fourth. London: Edward Husbands. Get it:
.Wheat: 300 quarters. Ale: 300 tuns. Wine: 100 tuns. Hypocrisy: 1 pipe. Oxen: 104. Wild bulls: 6. Muttons: 1,000! Veal calves [“vedles”]: 304. Pigs [“porks]: 304. Swans: 400. Geese: 5,000. Capons: 7,000. Young pigs [“pigs”]: 3,000. Plovers: 400. Quails: 1,200. Fowls called rays [?]: 2,400. Peacocks: 400. Mallards and teals: 4,000. Cranes: 204. Kids: 204. Chickens: 3,000. Pigeons: 4,000. Rabbits [“coneys”]: 4,000. Bitterns: 200. Herons [“hernshawes”]: 400. Pheasants: 200. Partridge: 500. Woodcocks: 400. Curlews: 100. Egrets: 1,000. Stags, bucks and roes: 504. Pasties of venison, cold: 103. Pasties of venison, hot: 1,500. Pikes and breams: 508. Parted dishes of jelly: 3,000. Plain dishes of jelly: 3,000. Cold tarts: 103. Hot custards: 2,000. Porpoises and seals: 12. Cold custards: 3,000. Of all kinds of sweetmeats abundance.
Various moderns give the date as 22 September 1465 on bases unknown to me. What are “fowls called rayes” and “hernshawes”? Item 4 was presumably added by William Noy, and, though the table plan suggests something approaching 3,000 guests, I think it fair to suggest that “it is very doubtful if Master Noy did not get it up as a firebrand against the clergy” (Thorpe 1843).
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