Horrible History: did Roman slaves hand-feed their masters?

Found on the website Twinkl, “Ten short facts about the Romans” was posted on December 8th, 2020 by unknown author possibly based in Ireland. Regardless, but bearing in mind that the “facts” are intended to educate children, number seven elicited a raised eyebrow. The whole text reads as follows, with our highlighted emphasis:

“7. Rich Romans had slaves who served them some exotic foods.

There was a variety of wealth in Roman times. The richest of the Romans would have slaves who would feed their owners. The rich Romans would lay down as their slaves would feed the most exotic foods into their mouths. They were known to eat things such as Flamingo, Stork and roast parrot.”

Being charitable, the emboldened part of “fact” number seven is fine as it stands, but the paragraph that follows is best described as imprecise bordering on plain wrong. By dissecting the text, we hope to correct some general misconceptions and add a few facts to improve the piece. So, beginning with the first sentence, this is fine as there certainly was a vast difference in wealth between the richest Roman and the poorest. Sentence two, however, is only partially correct as slave ownership was not limited just to the richest as implied. Rather, slave ownership was widespread in the Roman world, and further afield in other societies and cultures. Essentially, if you could afford to buy, inherit or otherwise obtain a slave, feed and care for them, then far more Romans seem to have done so.

The next sentence begins well enough as there is documented evidence, epigraphy and imagery that shows wealthier Romans reclined on couches (Latin: lecti, sing. lectus) at dinner parties hosted in a formal dining room known as a triclinium (pl.: triclinia). The latter word was adopted from the Greek triklinion (τρικλίνιον) where tri- (τρι-) meant “three” and klinē (κλίνη) referred to a type of couch rather like a chaise longue. Collectively the three lecti were called triclinares (“of the triclinium”) and were set around three sides of a low square table; the fourth side facing the dining room entrance was left free to allow service to the table. Each lecti was sized to accommodate a diner who reclined, semi-recumbent, on their left side on cushions. Household slaves served multiple courses brought from the culina, or kitchen, while others entertained guests with music, song, poetry or dance.

The second part of sentence three however, caused some alarm. As highlighted above it claims: “slaves would feed the most exotic foods into their [the diners’] mouths”. Admittedly the host could have instructed his slaves to physically feed his guests, but that was not the norm. Even the 1st-century AD Roman satirist Petronius, in his work of fiction “Satyricon”, does not mention such behaviour while parodying Roman etiquette during his character Trimalchio’s ostentatious dinner (Cēna Trīmalchiōnis, “Dinner with Trimalchio”) [1]. Rather, polite Roman diners would have selected choice foods from the dishes presented to them and used their own fingers, or the appropriate cutlery, to feed themselves.

The final sentence states Romans “…were known to eat things such as Flamingo, Stork and roast parrot.” Wealthy Romans were seemingly unafraid to consume exotic creatures, or parts of them at least. The flamingo, for example, was only occasionally eaten by Romans, with Apicius suggesting a sauce for the bird (Apicius 6.2.21):

in fenicoptero: fenicopterum eliberas, lauas, ornas, includis in caccabum; adicies aquam salem anetum at aceti modicum. dimidia coctura alligas fasciculum porri et coriandri ut coquator. prope cocturam defritum mittis, coloras. adicies in mortarium piper cuminum coriandrum laseris radicem mentam rutam, fricabis. suffundis acetum, adicies caroenum, ius de suo sibi perfundis. reexinanies in eundem caccabum, amulo obliges. ius perfundis et inferes. idem facies et in psittato.

“Sauce for flamingo: pluck, wash and dress the flamingo and put in a pan; add water, salt, dill, and a little vinegar. Halfway through the cooking, bind up a bundle of leek and coriander to cook with it. Near the end of the cooking, add defrutum [2] for colour. Put in a mortar pepper, cumin, coriander, laser root [3], mint, rue; pound. Pour on vinegar, add caroenum [4], pour on some of the cooking liquor. Pour back into the same pan, thicken with starch. Pour the sauce over the bird and serve. You also make the same sauce for parrot.”

(Grocock & Grainger, 2006, 228 & 229)

In his Natural History (Latin: Naturalis Historia), Pliny the Elder attributes the vogue for eating flamingo tongue to the aforementioned Apicius. Considered a special delicacy, to kill the bird just for its tongue was a demonstration of truly conspicuous consumption (Dalby, 2003, 147). Flamingo tongues are also mentioned by Suetonius [5] as one of the ingredients, alongside pike livers, pheasant brains, peacock brains and lamprey milt, in a dish dedicated and named “The Shield of Minerva the Protectoress” by the Emperor Vitellius (reigned 19 April – 20 December AD 69). Again, it is the lavish nature of such a dish that should be stressed, not that it was widely eaten. As for stork, the meat of this large migratory marsh bird was only “briefly and undeservedly fashionable in early imperial Rome” (Dalby, 2003, 312). The implications are twofold: storks being eaten only appear in the historical record for a short time and only in Rome. To extrapolate that storks were popularly and widely eaten by Romans across the Empire, wealthy or otherwise, is stretching the known facts too far.

As for “roast parrot”, presumably these birds would have been of the African Grey variety native to equatorial Africa ranging from Kenya to the eastern part of the Ivory Coast. Given how far south their habitat is from Roman territory, these birds can only have been imported into the Empire as an expensive luxury through its North African provinces. Interestingly, the venerable Apicius does not suggest a recipe for parrot, and the only reference to Romans eating them must be assumed from the brief, oblique mention that flamingos and parrots can share the same sauce (see above).

Like the oft quoted “Romans ate dormice”, evidence for the widespread consumption of flamingos, storks or parrots is thin at best. Unqualified statements that seemingly imply “all Romans ate” such creatures are really intended to disgust modern sensibilities, be sensationalist to attract attention, and are plain misleading.

If you are, therefore, interested in discovering the sorts of food ordinary Romans routinely ate, then the following links may be of interest: “What did the Romans ever do for us: Roman Food?”, “Food History: A Roman soldier’s diet” and “Roman Fast Food”. We even have a select few recipes from Apicius for readers to recreate in “Fast Food or Dinner Party?”. If you would like more information or further Roman recipes, then do please get in touch. Bon appétit!

References:

Dalby, A. (2003), “Food in the Ancient World from A to Z”, London: Routledge.

Grocock, C. & Grainger, S. (2006), “Apicius”, Totnes: Prospect Books.

Suetonius, “The Twelve Caesars: Vitellius”, London: Penguin Classics (2007), p. 270.

Widger, D. (trans.) (2004), “The Satyricon, Vol. 2 (The Dinner of Trimalchio) by Petronius Arbiter”, Project Gutenberg EBook #5219, Available online (accessed 28 September 2024).

Endnotes:

1. The nouveau-riche host, Trimalchio. is an arrogant former slave who has become quite wealthy as a wine merchant. Essentially, the character is everything a respectable Roman should not aspire to be.

2. Defrutum is a reduction of must in ancient Roman cuisine, made by boiling down grape juice or must in large kettles until reduced to half of the original volume. Defrutum helped preserve and sweeten wine but was also added to fruit and meat dishes as a sweetening and souring agent. It was also given to food animals such as ducks and suckling pigs to improve the taste of their flesh.

3. Laser root (also known as laserwort or Silphium; Ancient Greek: σίλφιον, sílphion) is an unidentified plant used in classical antiquity as a culinary seasoning, a perfume, aphrodisiac, and medicine.

4. As for defrutum, but the grape juice or must for Caroenum was reduced to two-thirds of its original volume.

5. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. AD 69 – after AD 122) was a Roman historian writing during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is De vita Caesarum, commonly known in English as The Twelve Caesars, a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian.

Dispelling Some Myths: Rotten teeth

Despite the best efforts of historians, the internet is still awash with misconceptions about the Middle Ages. Many of these ideas were the product of Victorian writers and historians reflecting Medieval life through the lens of their own society, as was done by antiquarians before and by historians since. However, after more than a century in popular culture, and taught in schools, these sometimes broad, sweeping assertions remain deeply rooted in everyday consciousness, especially when repeatedly reinforced online, in social media, on television and in the movies. Before addressing one such notion, it is worth remembering that the Mediæval period lasted roughly 1,000 years during which peoples’ lives and experiences varied according to time, place and circumstance.

Comparing dental (or medical) care in the Mediæval world, or even earlier, to modern standards is much the same as comparing apples to oranges. Yet, in one key area Mediæval folk had one less worry about dental care as their diet contained far less refined starches, sugars and acids. By contrast modern diets are, in many cases, laden with additives that damage tooth enamel and encourage gum disease. Sugary drinks, coffee, chocolate and other sweets for example are all detrimental to the health of teeth. While natural sugars such as honey were frequently used in the past, it was not until the 16th-century that sugar from the New World began to appear in quantity in Britain.

Tudor adventurers  An age of discovery transformed Tudor life where exploration, conquest, colonisation and trade all had their impact in various guises. The middling sort benefited from a boom in trade prospering from the new goods becoming available. New items and imported luxuries from food to furniture were one way for Tudors to signal their wealth and status, and it was in the dining room that the taste for the new and exotic was clearly visible. Overseas trade brought new goods, such as tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes and chilli peppers, and the abundance of things that were previously rare. In the newly discovered distant Americas, the mass production began of a substance that was so valuable, and delicious, that it would become known as white gold - sugar.

Sugar had been a fantastically expensive commodity throughout the Middle Ages but during the reign of Elizabeth I the employment of slave labour in the colonies kept production costs low and the sugar price dropped sharply. The Mediæval diet of bread, pottage, beans, lentils, oats, dairy and eggs, occasional meat, and vegetables, began to be enhanced with sugar. Sold in cones, the sugar had to be broken into lumps with a hammer or shaved off the cone. To produce icing sugar to sprinkle over things the granules would have to been ground even finer in a pestle and mortar before being pushed through a silk sieve. Given the hours of work needed, it is perhaps easy to see why sugar was an expensive luxury.

Banqueting  After a meal, diners in the early Tudor period would have stood and drunk sweet wine and spices while the tables were cleared, or “voided” by the servants. Dishes and linens were removed, and the boards taken from the trestles to put the tables away. The voide would not be replaced with the more familiar dessert until much later in the 17th-century. To avoid the noise and disturbance of clearing away, it became increasingly popular for diners on the top table to withdraw to another room to enjoy special luxuries, or “banquettes”.

Today we think of a banquet as the full meal, but when banqueting became fashionable in Elizabeth I's reign, the word applied only to a final course of cakes, biscuits, sticky preserves and candied fruits, or “suckets”. All these tasty delights featured sugar in varying degrees, but the centrepiece of any banquet would be of decorative marchpane (marzipan), itself made from sugar, rosewater and almonds, which could be moulded into elaborate shapes. Eating these sugary treats meant sticky fingers. So, over time the double-ended fork and spoon combination (pictured), known as “sucket forks” gained widespread use, especially amongst the fashionable upper classes. Even so, forks were not used at table and did not become popular until much later in the 17th-century. Today few of us sit down to a feast, a banquet or a simple meal without a fork being present.

Hidden Killer  All that lovely sweet sugar was a must have for society folk, but it was not without its dangers. Queen Elizabeth’s love of sweets and her fear of the barber surgeon contributed to severe tooth decay and tooth loss to such an extent that foreign ambassadors reported difficulty understanding her speech. André Hurault de Maisse, Ambassador Extraordinary from King Henry IV of France, for example reported an audience with the queen during which he noticed:

“Her teeth are very yellow and unequal...and on the left side less than on the right. Many of them are missing, so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly.”

By Elizabeth’s day, after-dinner “comfits” were eaten to freshen breath. Comfits, however, were sweets consisting of a nut, seed, or other centre coated in sugar. This conspicuous consumption of sugary or starchy food and drink merely encouraged the growth of bacteria in plaque leading in many cases to decay and a dental abscess. The latter is a collection of pus that can form inside the teeth, in the gums or in the bone that holds the teeth in place. It is caused by a bacterial infection that without treatment can lead to sepsis (blood poisoning). It was this unforeseen consequence of too much sugar that proved to be a hidden killer in Tudor England.

Dental hygiene  Although Mediæval and earlier diets were far less laden with damaging ingredients, people still took care of their dental hygiene. To our eyes some of the methods used may seem basic:

• “Toothpicks” were used to clean between the teeth. Indeed, a 2016 study of some of the oldest human remains in Europe found microscopic evidence of indigestible wood fibres preserved inside calcified plaque [1] suggesting prehistoric people used crude toothpicks to clean their teeth.

• 
  The earliest known toothbrushes dating to 3,500 BC were found in Egyptian tombs next to their owners. Used for thousands of years, all over the world, these “chew sticks” rely on their frayed, fibrous ends to whisk away debris. Where available, the chewed root of the Liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) plant (pictured) was well suited as a simple yet effective toothbrush particularly as some research in 2020 suggests that liquorice extract may help reduce the growth of Streptococcus mutans bacteria in the mouth. This, in turn, lessens environmental acidity around the teeth and helps to prevent dental cavities from forming.

• Teeth were rubbed with a clean cloth to wipe off tartar build-up and remove any left-over food particles from the teeth.

• 
  Teeth were cleaned with a mixture of ground pumice (volcanic stone) and coral to remove tartar. The Roman used ground oyster shell in a similar way. Such abrasives will gradually remove tooth enamel over time however increasing the chance of tooth decay. Moreover, the powder tasted horrid, but could be sweetened with honey or sugar, which somewhat defeats the objective.

• Powdered sage or the ashes of burnt rosemary were used to whiten teeth.

• To freshen breath, herbs such as mint, cloves, cinnamon or sage were chewed.

• Water was used as a basic mouthwash to remove debris from the mouth, as was a mixture of mint and vinegar. A mix of acetic acid and water, vinegar has been used for thousands of years as a common disinfectant to kill bacteria, while the mint would freshen breath.

The evidence from the archaeological record reveals that, despite showing signs of wear, plaque and tartar buildup [2], Mediæval teeth often have surprisingly fewer cavities. Yet it is far from uncommon to observe the untreated buildup of tartar resulting in gum disease, tooth loss and infections. As already mentioned, sepsis caused by the latter could lead to death even among young, otherwise healthy people. So, what treatments were available to Mediæval people?

Dental treatments  Anderson’s (2004) article “Dental treatment in Medieval England” published in the British Dental Journal is well worth reading. In it Anderson notes that documentary evidence in “medical literature from the 12th- to 14th-century suggests care of the teeth was largely limited to non-invasive treatment.” The various texts cited by Anderson reveal herbal remedies, charms and amulets were the favoured cures mainly for toothache, which was itself believed to be the caused by a “tooth worm”.

The article emphasises that medical and dental practitioners at the time were heavily influenced by humoral theory, a system of medicine describing a supposed makeup and workings of the human body adopted by ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers. The most famous model comprises the four humours described by Hippocrates [3] and developed further by Galen [4]. In simple terms, the four humours are black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood where each corresponds to one of the traditional four temperaments. Based on Hippocratic medicine, it was therefore believed that for a body to be healthy, the four humours should be balanced in amount and strength to achieve eukrasia. Thus, in accordance with humoral theory, bloodletting was advised for certain types of toothache.

The treatises cited provide documentary evidence for powders and liquids for cleaning and/or whitening teeth, as mentioned above, together with methods for removing calculus and compounds for filling cavities. Evidence for surgical interventions for oral cancer and facial fracture is also presented, along with treating post-operative infection and abscess formation, and the mention of early forms of dentures made of human teeth or cow bone. That said, medical texts would have been expensive, and their possession limited to an elite group of physicians or surgeons most likely based in either the university towns or the larger Mediæval cities. Unsurprisingly, only the richer townsfolk would be able to afford their high fees. For most commonfolk living in small villages or isolated communities, they would have to rely largely on local barber surgeons and their own traditional remedies to treat dental problems. Regardless, the evidence suggests that people living in the Mediæval world understood that dental hygiene was important and took measures to protect their teeth as best they could. The introduction of new, exotic foodstuffs began to change diets, and the uptake of starchy, sugary ingredients did lead to increased tooth decay and loss; a problem still faced today in many western societies. But did all Mediæval people have rotten teeth as the movies and urban myths make out? No, not really.

Bon appétit!

Reference:

Anderson, T., (2004), “Dental treatment in Medieval England”, British Dental Journal 197, pp. 419–425, Available online (accessed 21 September 2024).

Endnotes:

1. Plaque is sticky film deposited on the teeth in which bacteria proliferate.

2. Tartar forms when plaque hardens on the teeth. Tartar build-up can irritate the gums, leading to gingivitis or periodontitis (gum disease) causing pain and discomfort. Tartar can trap bacteria against the tooth surface, leading to tooth decay and cavities, and can expose the sensitive areas of the teeth, leading to increased sensitivity and pain when consuming hot, cold, or sweet foods. In severe cases, tartar can lead to infections that may cause significant pain and swelling.

3. Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460 – c. 370 BC), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician and philosopher of the classical period referred to as the "Father of Medicine" in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field, such as the use of prognosis and clinical observation, the systematic categorization of diseases, and the (however misguided) formulation of humoral theory.

4. Aelius Galenus (September AD 129 – AD 216), often anglicised as Galen, was a Roman and Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher from Pergamon. He is considered one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity influential in the development of various scientific disciplines including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic.

About History: “By hook or by crook”

In the September edition of BBC History magazine Anatoly Liberman, professor at the University of Minnesota and author of An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, wrote on the origin of the phrase “by hook or by crook”, meaning “to get something done, no matter how”. Although the rhyme’s derivation is far from clear, this has not stopped popular theorising. According to Professor Liberman, some people point to AD 1169, the year King Henry II invaded Ireland. This theory links the supposed landing sites of the Anglo-Norman expedition to Hook Head in Wexford and the nearby village of Crooke in Waterford. Inconveniently the complete lack of any source makes this etymological explanation hollow. To confuse matters, this theory also has been related to another commonly repeated suggestion concerning Oliver Cromwell. He is reputed to have said that the town of Waterford would fall ‘by Hook or by Crooke’, an allusion to landing his army at one of the aforementioned two villages of Hook Head and the nearby Crooke during the siege of the Irish town in 1649/50.

More theories…  A third suggestion, according to Phrasefinder (Martin, 2024), has it that the phrase derives from the career of the Sir George Croke (or Crook), a celebrated English judge in the reign of Charles I. He became popular for refusing to accept the legality of “Ship Money”, a tax imposed by the King without the consent of Parliament. It was thus commonly said that ship money “may be gotten by Hook [that is, by force], but not by Crook” (Martin, 2024).

The next suggestion centres on the aftermath of the Great Fire of London in 1666. In this version two mysterious surveyors named Hook and Crook are said to have been engaged in determining the rights of claimants whose properties had been destroyed. Yet, once again, there are no contemporary documents to support the claim. Interestingly, however, the link may have originated because Dr. Robert Hooke, an English scientist [1], architect and polymath, was instrumental in the rebuilding of London after the conflagration. Moreover, in partnership with Sir Christopher Wren the two men both designed The Monument to the Great Fire and the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

All these hypotheses are at odds with chronology. Professor Liberman states: “the idiom first surfaces in writing around 1380, and must have been coined at about that time – too late for Henry’s invaders and hopelessly early for [Crook, Cromwell or] the fire.” Even so, it is in 1390 that the first substantiated citation of the phrase appears in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis:

“What with hepe and what with croke they make her maister ofte winne.”

In this instance Gower is using “hepe”, the mediæval name for a curved bill-hook, and “croke” to denote false witness and perjury. So, while he was not using the modern form of the phrase, “it is clear that he was using the reference to hooks and crooks in the same sense that we do now” (Martin, 2024).

Mediæval origins  So, where might the idiom originate? According to Professor Liberman, a probable source may be found in the documented Mediæval practice of gathering wood for fuel. He offers the suggestion that providing it was not cut, people were permitted to enter forests and remove dead or fallen wood by hooked poles (the “hook” element) or with a crook. This same feudal custom was recorded in the 1820s by the English rural campaigner William Cobbett. The only significant difference in Cobbett’s version is that peasants were allowed to take from royal forests whatever deadwood they could pull down with a shepherd’s crook or cut with a reaper’s bill-hook [2].

There is one small problem and that concerns the “Forest Laws” imposed by King William I on England forbidding the cutting down of trees and regulating the gathering of fallen timber for firewood, the collection of berries or indeed anything growing within the forest. The Norman laws superseded the earlier Anglo-Saxon ones in which rights to the forest (not necessarily just woods, but also heath, moorland and wetlands) were not exclusive to the king or nobles but shared among the people (Woodbury, 2012). The Normans established that a “forest” in the Mediæval period was a legally defined area where the “beasts of the chase [deer & wild pig] and their habitats including the vert” were for the pleasure of the monarch [3]. In AD 1079, for example, the New Forest in southern England was set aside by William I as his right, primarily for hunting deer.

William’s Forest Laws established that taking wood from the forest and hunting in banned forest areas was a crime, the latter specifically known as poaching. Unsurprisingly, the laws were despised by the commonfolk as they were prevented from using the woodland to provide food, fuel and building materials. They were also banned from enclosing their land by fencing or other means, ostensibly to protect crops, as this restricted the hunt. Likewise, they could not use the timber from the woodland for building houses and were not allowed to hunt game, especially the king’s deer, to provide food for their families. For those living in the forest, they were explicitly not allowed to own dogs or a bow and arrows, and, as the “underwood” was also protected, commoners also faced a severe restriction on the availability of fuel. The punishments for breaking the laws could range from fines to, in the most severe cases, death. Repeat offenders, for example, were blinded or executed.

An aside  The penalty for hunting with a bow is said to have been the severing of the first two fingers of the right hand so the poacher could no longer draw his bow. This is probably an apocryphal story, however, in much the same way that the two-fingered salute or V sign reputedly originated from a gesture made by English longbowmen fighting at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). The two are seemingly linked as the latter urban myth follows similar logic in that it claims English archers captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they could no longer draw their bows. The insinuation is that the two-fingered V-sign was used as both an insult and a display of defiance towards the French. But there are a couple of problems with this tale. Firstly, why go to the bother of only removing a couple of fingers when it would be far more effective to cut off the hand. Secondly, and most importantly, there are no written historical primary sources supporting the claim. The contemporary chronicler Jean de Wavrin did report King Henry V’s pre-battle speech mentioned the French were said to be threatening to cut off three fingers [not two] from captured bowmen. Yet, neither Wavrin or any other contemporary author reported that the threat was ever carried out after Agincourt or any other battle. Moreover, any surviving sources from the Hundred Years’ War period are surprisingly silent concerning a gesture of defiance. 

Enforcing the laws  The 12th- and 13th-centuries were the pinnacle for enforcement of the Forest Laws, where up to 1/3 of England, including whole counties, were subject to them. English king subsequently charged a fee for certain uses of the forest, generating a substantial income, which was increased by setting aside more expansive tracts of land. Accordingly, only moneyed landowners and the nobility could afford the right to hunt. Besides, the peasantry typically did not have the weapons, skills or, crucially, the time to hunt. So, to provide food for their families they devised other ways to bring meat to the table. Remember however, if found hunting (poaching), grazing their animals or even gathering firewood in the forest, England’s poor could be severely punished. For folk relying on the land to survive, the Forest Laws placed severe restrictions on their way of life. Unsurprisingly, the Norman laws were extremely unpopular since activities that had been allowed on the common land of Anglo-Saxon England had been made illegal. Yet, despite the risks, many who felt the Forest Laws were unfair simply broke them seeing their actions as more of a social crime. Indeed, it was not uncommon for local communities to simply not report people who hunted or collected firewood from the forest – whether “by hook or by crook”.

As the centuries passed, the penalties under the Forest Laws, specifically interference with the king’s deer and its food (“browse”), became less severe. Interestingly, the remnants of the mediæval legal structure policing the New Forest, including “Forest Rights”, are today administered by the Verderers Court. Anyone found breaking the policies and byelaws pertaining to the forest may still be prosecuted in accordance with UK legislation set out in The New Forest Acts of 1877, 1879, 1949, 1964, and 1970, and The Countryside Act 1968 Section 23. So, while variants of the Forest Laws remain with us, when the Mediæval customs fell out of use, the catchy phrase “by hook or by crook” survived.

Bon appétit! 

References:

BBC Bitesize, (2024), “Crime and punishment in medieval England, c.1000-c.1500: New crimes in Norman England”, Available online (accessed 18 September 2024).

City of London, (2024), “Robert Hooke”, The Monument website, Available online (accessed 4 September 2024).

Liberman, A. (2024), “Why do we say: by hook or by crook”, BBC History Magazine (September 2024), London: Immediate Media Company, p. 48.

 Martin, G., (2024), Phrasefinder: “By hook or by crook”, www.phrases.org.uk, Available online (accessed 20 September 2024).

Woodbury, S. (2012), “Forest Laws in the Middle Ages”, Available online (accessed 18 September 2024).

Endnotes:

1. Hooke also invented the microscope and was the first to visualise micro-organisms alongside many other contributions to scientific research.

2. Author’s emphasis.

3. The “vert” in this case is a late Middle English adjective for the flora or greenery. The term enters English via Old French from Latin viridis meaning “green”.

On This Day: “Heart and stomach…”

August 19th, 1588: On this day in 1588, Queen Elizabeth I of England delivered her famous speech to her assembled land forces at Tilbury in Essex as they prepared to repel an expected invasion by the Spanish Armada.

Before the speech was even given, the Armada had been driven from the Strait of Dover in the Battle of Gravelines eleven days earlier and had by then rounded Scotland on its way home. Elizabeth’s troops, however, were still held in readiness in case the Spanish army of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, might yet attempt to invade from Dunkirk. On the day of the speech, the Queen left her bodyguard before Tilbury Fort and went among her subjects with an escort of six men. Lord Ormonde walked ahead with the Sword of State; he was followed by a page leading the Queen's charger and another bearing her silver helmet on a cushion; then came the Queen herself, in white with a silver cuirass and mounted on a grey gelding. She was flanked on horseback by her lieutenant general the Earl of Leicester on the right, and on the left by the Earl of Essex, her Master of the Horse. Sir John Norreys brought up the rear.

After she had made her rounds through the troops, Elizabeth delivered her speech to them. The version of it most widely considered to be authentic was discovered within a letter addressed to the Duke of Buckingham. The letter had been penned by Leonel Sharp who had been attached to the Earl of Leicester at Tilbury during the threatened invasion of the Armada and would later become chaplain to Buckingham. According to Sharp, the Queen’s speech was as follows:

“My loving people.

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you on a word of a prince, they shall be duly paid. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”

For those who have noted the part of the speech in bold, then you might be wondering why that is so. The simple truth is that here at Tastes Of History we thought it would be fun to create some light-hearted historically themed T-shirts as much for our amusement as anyone else’s. The version pictured took its inspiration from Good Queen Bess’ speech at Tilbury but, having suggested that recipes would be found on our website, it seemed only fair that we deliver on the promise. So, for those who took the time to visit www.tastesofhistory.co.uk, here are a couple of Tudor-period dishes that might fit the bill (please note that no monarchs were harmed in the making of these recipes).

Heart  The first is for braised beef or ox heart. For those unaware, ox heart is today a much under-rated, and underused, cut of meat but this makes it very affordable. As Tom Hunt wrote in his article “An offal waste: why you should be eating ox heart” for The Guardian newspaper in 2020: “Ox heart is an overlooked ingredient, as is most offal, which tends to be treated like waste at the abattoir, where it’s recycled or just disposed of. That’s crazy, because it’s both delicious and affordable: lean and with a clean flavour.” Rather usefully the article also included a recipe for ox heart kebabs which we have yet to try, but our braised beef heart recipe below as proved a popular dish at Mediæval events:

Stomach  If braised heart is not to your taste, then to fulfil the second criteria of our little “joke”, perhaps you might prefer a recipe involving a stomach. The most obvious choice would be for haggis, a savoury pudding containing minced sheep's heart, liver, and lungs, combined with chopped onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, salt, and stock. Traditionally the ingredients are encased in the animal's stomach and cooked (artificial casings more often used today).

It could be argued that the idea of quickly cooking offal inside an animal's stomach has ancient origins [1] since for early hunters all the ingredients would have been conveniently available after a successful hunt. Thus, cooking the perishable offal near the site of the kill makes sense as it would ensure little of the valuable food was wasted. It would be relatively simple to grill the liver and kidneys directly over a fire, but this method would be unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Perhaps not wishing to remain in proximity of a fresh kill in case other predators are attracted to it, then an expedient solution might be to dice the offal and stuff it into the cleaned stomach giving the hunters a means to safely transport the meat back to a campsite. It follows that the hunters might add whatever herbs and fillers to the offal filled stomach before boiling the ingredients. In this way, rather than wasting the stomach it becomes a convenient cooking vessel, and a tasty dish something like haggis was born.

Many people might assume haggis to have a Scottish origin, yet the first known written recipes naming a dish made with offal and herbs as “hagese” (pictured) are in a cookbook from Lancashire in northwest England titled Liber Cure Cocorum [2]. This dates from around AD 1430, as does the recipe for “hagws of a schepe” in another English cookbook dated to the same year. These two early references are certainly not proof of an English origin, however, as they only really offer when and where the name was first documented. Indeed, other countries are known to have recipes for something similar, albeit with different names, which were undoubtedly created to solve the problem of perishable ingredients. We can confidently say, however, that haggis is today the national dish of Scotland thanks to Scots poet Robert Burns’ 1786 poem “Address to a Haggis”. From then on, the most popular recipes remain distinctly Scottish. 

Haggis is so popular that it can be purchased from numerous makers and retailers, both on the high-street and online. A search of the latter will return so many versions of haggis, including vegetarian options, that we considered the dish to be thoroughly covered by others as to leave well alone. All of which meant an alternative to satisfy the “stomach” criterion was needed. Time to consider eating Humble Pye as described in Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswife’s Jewell of 1596:

“To make a Pye of Humbles. Take your humbles being parboiled, and chop them very small with a good quantity of mutton suet, and half a handful of the herbs following - thyme, marjoram, borage, parsley and a little rosemary. Season the same being chopped, with pepper, cloves and mace, and so close your pie and bake it.”

Before proceeding, what exactly are “humbles”? Circa AD 1300 the word numbles (or noumbles) in Old English meant the edible viscera of animals, especially that of deer. The word comes via nombles in Old French for “loin of veal, fillet of beef, or haunch of venison”. This itself is derived from Latin lumulus, a diminutive of lumbus “loin”. Through rebracketing, which commonly occurred as the English language evolved, “a numble pie” would become “an umble pie” in Middle English. Umbles are therefore numbles without the n- but the word still meant what we would refer to today as “offal”. So, while Mediæval nobility or the wealthy would consume the higher quality venison meat, the offal and lesser quality parts of the animal would be baked into a pie for their servants. Thus, as a food fit for low-class servants or the poor, to “eat humble pie” became associated, by the 1800s, with being humiliated and forced to admit error or wrongdoing.

With all that said, we needed a recipe involving if not the stomach, then at least the umbles, so the following recipe for Umble Pye is adapted from one dating to the 1600s:

Bon appétit!

Endnotes:

1. Around 800 BC the earliest appearance in literature of a sheep’s stomach being used to encase what is thought to be a type of black pudding appears in Book 18 of Homer's classic saga “The Odyssey”: “Here at the fire are goats' paunches lying, which we set there for supper, when we had filled them with fat and blood.” The first recognisable recipe, using lengths of intestine as the container rather than a stomach can be found in Book 2 of Apicius’ De Re Coquinaria (“On Cookery”). The recipe botellum sic facies instructs the cook to: “Take the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs, chopped pine nuts, onion, and sliced leeks, and mix with blood [and forcemeats]. Add ground pepper and fill the intestine with the stuffing. Cook in stock and wine.”

2. þe nere means ‘the kidneys’.

On This Day: The Spanish Armada is sighted

July 29th, 1588: On this day in 1588, the fearsome Spanish Armada is sighted off England’s southern coast.

In late July of 1588, La Grande y Felicísima Armada - literally the “Great and Most Fortunate Navy” - sailed from Lisbon, a port city on the Atlantic coast in modern Portugal. This daunting war fleet was bound for England. The popular version of events - the one most likely found in school texts books - is that Philip II of Spain, deadly foe of Queen Elizabeth I of England, sent his huge Armada of ships to invade and return England to the Catholic faith. But the Spanish fleet was defeated by the plucky little English navy, whose courageous captains included Sir Francis Drake. It was crowning achievement of Elizabeth’s reign and a defining moment in English history - the moment we took on Europe and won! Or so the story goes because the popular version is not entirely true.

Philip, King of England

In 1588, Philip was 61, a devout Catholic and king of the largest empire in the world, reaching from South America to the Philippines. Elizabeth was in her 50s, still unmarried, still childless and ruling over a Protestant England in which Catholic plots were a constant threat. But in 1554, 34 years earlier, Philip had set sail from northern Spain to become part of the Tudor royal family. We often forget that before he was king of Spain, Philip II - the great villain in the Armada story - spent four years as king of England due to his marriage to Mary, Elizabeth’s older half-sister. Mary was desperate to secure England’s future as a Catholic country and dreaded the thought that she might die childless and leave the Protestant Elizabeth to take the throne. Philip, however, felt differently.

The alternative to Elizabeth, in the event of his and Mary’s marriage producing no children, was Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a Catholic, which was a plus, but due to her ancestry and close ties to the French court, she would have taken England firmly into the orbit of Philip’s French enemies, which was intolerable. Thus, the king of Spain rooted for his sister-in-law, persuading Mary to release Elizabeth from house arrest. When Mary lay dying, Philip realised, or at least believed, that the only way he could persuade Elizabeth to support Catholics was to marry her and get her to convert. And so, he proposed. Elizabeth, as ever, refused to commit herself. A few months later, hearing that Philip had “moved on” and started negotiations to marry a French princess, Elizabeth is quoted as saying: “He couldn’t have loved me all that much if he couldn’t wait a month or two for an answer.” Even so, despite the proposed match never happening, Elizabeth and Philip remained friends.

Why was the Spanish Armada launched against England? 

Over the next ten years, as Elizabeth and England became decidedly Protestant, there were rumblings from Rome. In the late 1560s, Catholics in northern England attempted an unsuccessful rebellion. To encourage them further, on February 25th, 1570 Pope Pius V (Jan 1566 - May 1572) excommunicated their Queen declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime", to be a heretic - a non-believer in the Catholic faith - and released all her subjects from any allegiance to her, even when they had "sworn oaths to her", threatening to excommunicate any that obeyed her orders. Elizabeth now had a big target on her back. In the eyes of the church any English Catholic who rebelled against their Queen, or indeed killed her, would not have committed a “sin” and would be forgiven.

Philip was now under pressure from the Pope in Rome to topple Elizabeth, but with his vast empire to run, he had plenty of other priorities. Religion alone was not a strong enough reason for Philip to invade England. Even so, it is still alleged that the Spanish king supported plots to have Elizabeth overthrown in favour of her Catholic cousin and heir presumptive, Mary, Queen of Scots. These plans were thwarted when Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned. After eighteen and a half years in custody, in 1586 Mary was found guilty of involvement in a Catholic plot to assassinate the English queen. It is said Elizabeth reluctantly signed the death warrant that saw Mary beheaded the following year, 1587, at Fotheringhay Castle near Oundle in Northamptonshire. With Mary, Queen of Scots dead, Philip preoccupied with his empire, and religious differences not a strong enough reason to invade, what triggered the Spanish attack?

Protests and Privateers

Two things tipped Philip’s hand. Firstly, Elizabeth supported Philip’s rebellious Protestant subjects in the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Secondly, Elizabeth was funding privateers to plunder Spanish ships across the Atlantic. At the time Spain had colonies in the Americas and ships would cross the ocean to Spain laden with treasure - gold, silver, jewels, etc. The treasure ships were tempting targets for a cash-strapped English monarch.

Elizabeth issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal authorising attacks or the capture of enemy vessels and shipping during wartime. Individuals or ships in possession of such Letters were known as “private men-of-war” or Privateers. Significantly, privateering was a way of mobilising armed ships and sailors without having to spend treasury resources or commit naval officers. Moreover, privateers were of great benefit to a smaller naval power or one facing an enemy dependent on trade as they disrupted commerce and pressured an enemy to deploy warships to protect merchant trade against such “commerce raiders”. Usefully for a penny-pinching court the cost was borne by investors hoping to profit from prize money earned from captured cargo and vessels. The proceeds would be distributed among the privateer's investors, officers, and crew.

Cruising for prizes with a Letter of Marque was considered an honourable calling combining patriotism and profit, in contrast to unlicensed piracy, which was universally reviled. It has been argued that privateering was a less destructive and wasteful form of warfare, because the goal was to capture ships rather than to sink them. English adventurers Thomas Cavendish (ca. AD 1555-ca.1592), Francis Drake (ca. AD 1540-1596) and John Hawkins (AD 1532-1595) were celebrated privateers. Though each had Letters of Marque and Reprisal, Cavendish was the only one who confined his raids to wartime. Regardless, the Spanish and other nationalities regarded all three as pirates who, in contrast to privateers, committed warlike acts at sea without the authorisation of any nation.

Philip’s Response

Philip was goaded into action. He planned an expedition to invade England, overthrow Elizabeth and, if the Armada was not entirely successful, at least negotiate freedom of worship for Catholics and financial compensation for war in the Low Countries. Through this endeavour, English material support for the United Provinces, the part of the Low Countries that had successfully seceded from Spanish rule, and English attacks on Spanish trade and settlements in the New World would end. Importantly, the King was supported by the Pope, who treated the invasion as a crusade, with the promise of a subsidy should the Armada make land. As a devout Catholic, Philip thus felt it was his duty to invade and conquer England in order to convert the country back to the Church of Rome.

On July 21st, 1588, the Armada of 141 ships outfitted with 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns, and carrying ca. 10,000 sailors and 19,000 soldiers, set sail from Lisbon headed for the English Channel. The full body of the fleet took two days to leave port.

In the Spanish Netherlands, 30,000 soldiers awaited the arrival of the Armada, the plan being to use the cover of the warships to convey the army on barges to a place near London. In all, 55,000 men were to have been mustered, a huge army for that time. Meanwhile the English fleet stood prepared, if ill-supplied, at Plymouth, awaiting news of Spanish movements.

Bowls anyone?

You may have heard it was while Sir Francis Drake enjoyed a game of bowls on the greens of Plymouth Hoe that the Spanish Armada was first sighted on the horizon. The usual story has Sir Francis turning to Lord Effingham, commander of the English fleet, and saying that there was no need to hurry, there would be plenty of time to finish the game and thrash the Spaniards too.

Disappointingly none of the early accounts of the Armada mention anyone playing bowls at all. It was about 25 years later that one account - just one - finally describes sailors in Plymouth in July 1588 “dancing, bowling, and making merry” on the shore as the Armada appeared. Yet it is such an irresistibly juicy detail that, in the 1730s, a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh tells us that Drake was determined to finish his game of bowls - and from then on it became “history”.

Invincible fleet?

The Spanish fleet that Philip assembled is usually depicted as an “invincible” Goliath to England’s little David of a navy. In reality it was anything but. It was not even the biggest fleet ever to have attacked England: the Norman invasion fleet of 1066, and the French force that crossed the Channel in 1545 and sank the Mary Rose, both boasted more vessels. The Spanish had around 130 ships, but nearly half of these were not built as warships. Rather they were used for duties such as scouting and dispatch work, or for carrying supplies, animals and troops. Surprisingly the English fleet actually outnumbered that of the Armada by some 200 ships to 130. Nevertheless, the Spanish fleet outgunned that of the English, with its available firepower being 50 percent greater than that of the enemy.

The “invincible” Armada had sailed into trouble long before it had an opportunity to engage its English foes, however. Soon after departing from Lisbon in May 1588, they faced disease, rotting food and bad weather. Storms forced four galleys and one galleon to turn back, and other ships had to put in for repairs at A Coruña in northern Spain. From there, the commander of the fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, wrote to Philip confessing that he could see “hardly any of those on the Armada with any knowledge or ability to perform the duties entrusted to them…we are very weak”. Philip insisted the invasion had to go ahead so, in July, the Armada set sail once more with the intention of navigating the English Channel towards its narrowest point. There it was to meet with an army of soldiers from the Netherlands led by the Duke of Parma, who were to be ferried across on barges to invade Kent. In the end only about 124 ships actually made it to the English Channel where the two fleets eventually met. Once again, the Spaniards began to experience more problems. Their first major casualties were self-inflicted: a crash and explosion lost two Spanish ships.

Battle is joined

The Armada was sighted in England on July 29th, when it appeared off the Lizard in Cornwall. The news was conveyed to London by a system of beacons that had been constructed along the south coast. The same day the English fleet was trapped in Plymouth Harbour by the incoming tide. The Spanish convened a council of war, where it was proposed to ride into the harbour on the tide and incapacitate the defending ships at anchor. From Plymouth Harbour the Spanish would attack England, but Philip explicitly forbade Medina-Sidonia from engaging, leaving the Armada to sail on to the east and toward the Isle of Wight. As the tide turned, 55 English ships set out to confront the Armada from Plymouth under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as vice admiral. The rear admiral was John Hawkins.

At daybreak on July 31st, the English fleet finally engaged the Armada off Plymouth near the Eddystone rocks. In two further encounters, off Portland Bill on August 2nd and off the Isle of Wight on August 4th, the English harassed the Spanish fleet at long range and easily avoided all attempts to bring them to close action. Given the Spanish advantage in close-quarter fighting, the English ships used their superior speed and manoeuvrability to keep beyond grappling range and bombarded the Spanish ships from a distance with cannon fire. However, the range proved too great for the manoeuvre to be effective, and at the end of the fighting neither fleet had lost a ship in action.

Fire ships!

By August 7th, the Armada was anchored off Calais in a tightly packed defensive crescent formation, not far from Dunkirk, where the Spanish army, reduced by disease to 16,000 men, was expected to be waiting. The army was not ready, and the Spanish fleet found itself increasingly vulnerable to attack. At midnight on August 7th/8th, the English set alight eight fireships, sacrificing regular warships by filling them with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder and tar, and cast them downwind among the closely anchored vessels of the Armada. The Spanish feared that these uncommonly large fireships were “hellburners”, specialised fireships filled with large gunpowder charges that had been used to deadly effect before. Two fireships were intercepted and towed away, but the remainder bore down on the fleet. The Armada's flagship and the principal warships held their positions, but the rest of the fleet cut their anchor cables and scattered in confusion. No Spanish ships were burnt, but the crescent formation had been broken, and the fleet now found itself too far downwind of Calais in the rising south-westerly wind to recover its position. The English closed in for battle.

At dawn on August 8th the English attacked the disorganized Spanish ships off Gravelines, and a decisive battle ensued. Retaining its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. The English then closed, firing damaging broadsides into the enemy ships. The ships were close enough for sailors on the upper decks of the English and Spanish ships to exchange musket fire. Many of the Spanish gunners were killed or wounded by the English broadsides, and the task of manning the cannon quickly fell to the regular foot soldiers who were unfamiliar with their operation.

After eight hours, the English ships began to run out of ammunition, and some gunners began loading objects such as chains into cannons. Around 4 pm, the English fired their last shots and pulled back. Five Spanish ships were lost and many others severely damaged in what is known as the Battle of Gravelines. The Spanish plan for the fleet to link up with its army had been decisively disrupted.

“Stomach of a King”

Once the Armada was sailing northward up the Channel, the day after the battle off Gravelines, the next popular myth appears. It is the story of Elizabeth’s rousing address to her men at Tilbury on northern bank of the Thames. Her famous speech in which the Queen tells the assembled troops that she may: “have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king - and of a King of England too” has been dramatized in countless films. Elizabeth is often depicted riding a horse, dressed in white velvet, or even in armour. “I myself shall be your general“, she tells her men.

Once more, all is not what it seems. Elizabeth had indeed come up with the plan to address the troops while the Spanish were still in the Channel. Yet by the time she did so, it was 11 days too late, and the Armada was already staring defeat in the face - off the coast of Scotland!

Even better, the economy was struggling, and England was broke. Elizabeth could not afford to pay her troops and had to send them home. Fortunately, by the end of 1588 half of the English force were facing death from disease so, as Elizabeth’s chief advisor, William Cecil, put it: “If they’re dead, you don’t have to pay them.”

So, when Elizabeth uttered her famous words at Tilbury, what was left of the Armada was on its way home.  The only option left to the Spanish ships was to return to Spain by sailing round the north of Scotland and home via the Atlantic or the Irish sea.  

What also aided the English in defeating the Armada?

The Spanish ships were beginning to show wear from the long voyage, and some were kept together by having their damaged hulls strengthened with cables. Supplies of food and water ran short.

Off Scotland and Ireland, the fleet ran into a series of powerful westerly winds which drove many of the damaged ships further toward the shore. Because so many anchors had been abandoned during the escape from the English fire-ships off Calais, many of the ships were incapable of securing shelter as the fleet reached the coast of Ireland and were driven onto the rocks where local inhabitants looted the ships.

More ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in direct combat. About 5,000 men died by drowning, starvation, and slaughter by local inhabitants after their ships were driven ashore on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. Reports of the passage of the remnants of the Spanish Armada around Ireland abound with onerous accounts of hardships and survival. In the end 67 ships and fewer than 10,000 men survived.

Why is the 1588 battle with the Spanish Armada so famous? 

The English story of the Armada is one of rumour, spin and outright lies! With the action all taking place at sea, and communication from the English fleet to shore being pretty much useless, no one at home knew what was actually happening. Likewise, events were blown out of all proportion because, again, no one really knew what had happened. In the end people believed what they wanted to believe and the “fake news” - or “tabloid truths” - still resonate with us today.

In England, the boost to national pride from the defeat of the Spanish invasion lasted for years and Elizabeth's legend persisted, and grew, long after her death. Yet the Armada’s defeat did not bring victory in the war with Spain; in fact, that conflict dragged on into the 17th-century.

The English Armada 

The Spanish never really saw the Armada as a significant setback. That was because the English suffered an embarrassing naval disaster of their own in 1589. That year, Sir Francis Drake led a so-called “Counter Armada”, with the aim of destroying the remainder of Philip’s fleet while it was under repair in Santander. It was a fiasco, in which 15,000 Englishmen died, and many of the 86 ships were lost. Drake and his fleet were forced - just like Philip II’s own fleet a year earlier - to stop at A Coruña for lack of provisions. Here, a local woman, Maria Pita, led fierce resistance against the English navy.

Legacy

The legend of the defeat of the Spanish Armada created by the Tudors, and retold by generations after them, has had a powerful legacy. In times of crisis, from the Second World War to the Falklands Conflict in 1982, it has been used to convince Britons that this small island can take on superpowers, that we come from a long line of cool-headed and inspirational leaders, and that, small as we are, we can still play a mighty role on the world stage. True or not, this populist version of the Armada story convinces many to believe in that fantasy. Who knows where this impressive mingling of facts, fantasy, and fibs might take us next? Why does Boris’ Brexit spring to mind..? Bon appétit!

About History: Press-ganging

Impressment, colloquially known as ‘the press’ or the ‘press gang’, was a means by which European navies could forcibly compel men into service during the 17th century and up to the early 19th century either to crew their fleets at the outbreak of war or to replace men lost to death or desertion. Essentially no different to conscription employed by the British Army, the Royal Navy’s system began in 1664, although the practice can be traced back to the time of King Edward I of England. Impressing was intended to solve a basic problem during wartime that there were never enough professional seamen to crew both a fully mobilised navy and the merchant fleet.

By modern standards, the average 18th century sailor experienced harsh working and living conditions in the Royal Navy. The size of a naval crew was determined by the number needed to man a warship’s guns. In Nelson’s navy this was typically about four times more than the number of crew needed to simply sail the ship. With so many more sailors, life aboard would lack basic privacy and the cramped, unhealthy conditions increasing the risk of illness and disease spreading through the crew. On lengthy voyages, shipowners and governments routinely estimated that 50% of the sailors would die due to scurvy. Yet, for many the food supplied by the Navy was plentiful, regular, and of good quality by the standards of the day. So, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was not at all unusual for impressed men to view life in the navy, hard though it was, as preferable to their previous lives on shore. Volunteering for further service when the opportunity came to leave the ship was not at all unusual.

What is more, naval pay in the 1750s remained an attractive prospect for many men, even though its value would be steadily eroded by rising prices as the century progressed (Roger, 1986, 137). Naval wages had been set in 1653 and were not increased until April 1797 after the Spithead mutiny by sailors of the Channel Fleet. Moreover, the Royal Navy was notorious for paying wages up to two years in arrears, that is until reforms in the 19th century improved conditions. The Navy also employed a policy of always withholding six months' pay to discourage desertion. In comparison, the pay on merchant ships was somewhat higher during peacetime and could increase to double the naval rate during wartime [1]. Despite the disparities, there were still many volunteers for naval service. 

The main problem with naval recruitment, especially during wartime, was a shortage of qualified and experienced seamen. The Royal Navy had to compete with the Merchant Navy and privateers to recruit from a small pool of ordinary and able seamen leaving all three groups short-handed. The Navy’s solution was to impress ‘eligible men of seafaring habits between the ages of 18 and 55 years’, but this included many merchant sailors as well as men from other, mostly European, nations. Men could be impressed ashore or directly from ships at sea. Non-seamen were sometimes impressed as well, though rarely; the Navy had little trouble recruiting unskilled ‘landmen’ by using the simple expedient of offering them a bounty. The recruitment figures presented to Parliament for the years 1755–1757 list 70,566 men, of whom 33,243 were volunteers (47%), 16,953 pressed men (24%), while another 20,370 were listed as volunteers separately (29%) (Hill, 2002, 135–137). Precisely what the distinction was between “volunteer” and “pressed man” is not recorded. It is likely that those who "volunteered" did so to get a sign-up bonus, two months' wages in advance and a higher rating in the Navy, which came with a commensurately higher wage. Volunteers were also protected from their creditors as British law forbade collecting any debts accrued before enlistment. One significant difference between volunteers and pressed men centred on the punishment meted out to those who deserted. If captured, volunteers were liable to execution while pressed men were simply returned to service (Hill, 2002, 135–137).

The popular image of press gangs, as illustrated right, is one of men being forcibly taken. While violence might have been threatened it was rarely used as dead or injured seamen were of no use to the Royal Navy. The last recorded press was in 1814 towards the end of Britain’s long war with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, yet press-ganging remained legal for another 50 years. Despite a public campaign for abolition, the government retained the right to impress until the 1860s when it finally created an effective Naval Reserve to crew the fleet in an emergency.

References:

Hill, J. R., (2002), ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy’, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lambert, A., (2023), ‘How common was press-ganging?’, Q&A, BBC History Magazine (July edition), p. 37.

Rodger, N.A.M., (1986), ‘The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy’, New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Endnotes:

1. During the 18th century, after deductions a Royal Navy Able Seaman was paid the princely sum of 22 shillings and 6 pence per month. As the Navy used a 28-day lunar month, the sailor’s annual rate of pay was somewhat more than 12 times this. In contrast, a farm worker of the era might earn around only a quarter to a third as much. However, wages on merchant ships were higher: 25 to 30 shillings per lunar month, and this increased further during wartime (merchant pay rates of 70 shillings per month at London and 35 shillings at Bristol were offered during the Seven Years' War). That said, dishonest ship-owners routinely cheated merchant crews of their pay in several ways (Roger, 1986, 124-136).