One of the more unusual manuscripts digitised for the British Library’s Medieval and Renaissance Women project is Cotton Roll XIV 8: a year-long menu for the 15-year-old Princess Mary (the future Queen Mary I) and her household, in 1531.

The lunch menu for Mary and her household on Christmas, New Year’s Day and Twelfth Night: Cotton Roll XIV 8

This manuscript gives us a fascinating insight into the food eaten not only by Mary herself, but also by her household officials and servants. It is divided into six columns. The first column lists the dishes given to Mary and the second those for her lord president, chancellor, chamberlain, vice-chamberlain, steward, treasurer, comptroller, and other leading councillors. The third column is for her senior household officials, the cofferer, the clerk of the comptroller, the clerk of the kitchen, and the marshal. The fourth column is for gentlemen and gentlewomen. The titles of the final two columns have been torn off, but they were probably for Mary’s more junior servants and staff.

A portrait of Princess Mary, attributed to Lucas Horenbout (Hornebolte), c. 1525: courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 6453

The manuscript lists many dishes that may be unfamiliar to us today, such as pottage (a thick stew), brawn (meat boiled in spices and jelly, eaten cold), and bakemeats (pastry dishes, savoury or sweet, such as pies or tarts). More recognisable foods are pork, custard and blancmange. One of the most common meats is poultry, including chicken, swan, goose, partridge, snipe, crane, pheasant and heron.

The menu begins with Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Twelfth Night (6 January), the culmination of the Christmas season. On these days, Mary was to have two courses at each meal, with over 10 dishes per course at lunch and about 8 dishes at dinner, including roast swan, venison, pike, brawn, heron, rabbit, pheasant, sturgeon, crane, lamb, partridge, blancmange, custard and tarts. For lunch, she also had a boar’s head ‘solemnly served’. This was the traditional centrepiece of a Christmas feast for royal and noble households and it was usually seasoned with rosemary and bay leaves. Mary would be served this same menu on the feasts of All Saints (1 November) and the Purification (2 February), with the exception of the boar’s head. In contrast, the lowest of her household servants would have just five dishes at lunch, eating pottage, meat, pig or goose, veal or pork, and bakemeats.

After Christmas, the manuscript moves on to the menu for Sundays and feast days, and then for the others day of the week. The dishes are quite similar but fewer in number. Mary still had two courses at each meal, usually totalling 14 dishes at lunch and 10 at dinner. For the lowest servants in her household, only one course of two or three dishes was served. The exceptions to this rule were Fridays and Saturdays, when Catholics were supposed to eat fish instead of meat. On those days the menu lists a wide array of different fish, including plaice, haddock, cod, salmon, bream and lampreys.

A miniature of a feast from a Book of Hours ('The Golf Book') (Bruges, c. 1540): Add MS 24098, f. 19v

Our manuscript sheds light on the meals eaten at a royal court and how the food differed according to social status. Mary herself and her chief officials enjoyed a wide selection of dishes, while those at the lowest end of the scale were offered a much smaller range. The impression is of a wealthy court, with the princess feasting on a wide array of foods.

But 1531 was a difficult year for the princess. Her father, Henry VIII, banished her mother, Katherine of Aragon, from court in favour of his mistress, Anne Boleyn, who kept Mary away from Henry. Mary’s health declined and she suffered several illnesses. Although Mary might not have enjoyed the food listed here as much as in a typical year (she was unable to keep her food down for three weeks in the summer), this manuscript does give us a valuable insight into the food eaten by her household just two years before she fell further out of favour. In 1533, Henry divorced her mother and married Anne Boleyn. In response, the princess’s household was reduced from over 160 servants to just two. The following year, Mary was declared illegitimate. She would not again enjoy the lavish feasts described in this menu until she became queen of England in 1553.

We are grateful to Joanna and Graham Barker for their generous funding of Medieval and Renaissance Women.

 

Rory MacLellan

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Who was the first Queen of England in her own right? Matilda? Lady Jane Grey? Mary? Does Isabel of Portugal spring to mind?

To set the scene. On 21 May 1471, King Henry VI of England (r. 1422–1461, 1470–1471) died at the Tower of London, the prisoner of his rival Edward IV (r. 1461–1470, 1471–1483), the first Yorkist king. Henry had no surviving heirs, and his death took place during the Wars of the Roses, a time of political turmoil in England. For over a century, the English throne had been disputed by two rival families: Lancaster and York.

Amidst this conflict, and only a month after Henry VI’s death, Isabel of Portugal (b. 1397, d. 1471), dowager Duchess of Burgundy, laid a claim to the English throne. In a solemn document issued on 17 June 1471, Isabel declared herself universal heiress of the late king. The charter in which Isabel claimed her rights to the crown of England (Add Ch 8043) has been digitised for our Medieval and Renaissance Women Project.

Isabel of Portugal claims her rights to the crown of England and declares herself universal heiress of Henry VI, the late king: Add Ch 8043

Isabel of Portugal, dowager Duchess of Burgundy, was the daughter of João I, King of Portugal (r. 1385–1433), and Queen Philippa of Lancaster (b. 1360, d. 1415). Through her maternal lineage, Isabel shared a common ancestor with King Henry VI of England: John of Gaunt (b. 1340, d. 1399), Duke of Lancaster. John of Gaunt was Isabel’s grandfather and Henry VI’s great-grandfather. It was on the grounds of this consanguinity (the kinship of two individuals characterized by the sharing of common ancestors) that Isabel made claim to the English throne.

John of Gaunt and his relationships with the ruling houses of Portugal and Europe, including Isabel of Portugal (in red, right-hand margin), from the ‘Portuguese Genealogies’ (16th century): Add MS 12531/3, f. 10r

The charter was signed by Isabel herself, and it was validated by two notaries, Hugo de le Val and Matheus de Hamello, clergymen of the city of Arras in France (‘presbiter canonicus Atrebatensibus’). These notarial marks, together with Isabel’s signature, conferred legal validity upon this document.

Close-up of Isabel’s signature and two notarial marks: Add Ch 8043

However, Isabel did not hold on to her claim to the English throne for long. Only a few months later, on 3 November 1471, she ceded her rights to her son, Charles the Bold (b. 1433, d. 1477), Duke of Burgundy. At this time Isabel was 74 years old, and she died soon afterwards, on 17 December 1471, in the town of Aire-sur-la-Lys in France. The Yorkist king, Edward IV, ruled over England until 1483, surviving both Isabel and Charles the Bold, mother and son.

Charles the Bold, son of Isabel of Portugal, and his court: Yates Thompson MS 32, f. 14r

Although her claim never succeeded, this document demonstrates that Isabel of Portugal tried actively to take advantage of a time of political instability and unrest in England, in order to advance her own position and, more hopefully, that of her son. Isabel was well aware of her lineage to the late Henry VI, and at a time of turbulence and doubt during the Wars of the Roses, she did not hesitate to assert herself as universal heir.

We are grateful to Joanna and Graham Barker for their generous funding of Medieval and Renaissance Women.

 

Paula Del Val Vales

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One of the more unusual documents digitised as part of the British Library’s Medieval and Renaissance Women project is Add Ch 67394, a sworn testimony by four men that they had been told the deathbed confession of a woman called Alice of Hulton. It is the missing piece in a 600-year-old case involving an affair, a divorce, and a lovechild.

Declaration by Brother John Bradfield, Robert of Hebton, William Brechton of Ekygan and John Fogg of Bradshaw, regarding the deathbed confession of Alice of Hulton, 20 December 1447: Add Ch 67394

Alice of Hulton had been the lover of Robert of Pilkington, lord of Rivington in Lancashire. A soldier who fought in France in the Hundred Years War, Robert had testified in the famous Scrope v Grosvenor case in the Court of Chivalry in 1386. But he had his own legal problems to worry about.

Robert had married a different Alice, Alice of Astley, in 1379, but this was annulled in July that same year, as Alice of Astley was distantly related to Alice of Hulton, with whom he had had a relationship in 1367. He then married Katherine de Aynesworth in 1383 and they had seven children together. Despite this seemingly stable marriage, Robert spent the 1390s transferring his estates to various trustees, both within and without his family, seemingly to protect them from an unknown rival claimant. The reason for this takes us back to Alice of Hulton.

As it turned out, Robert’s second wife, Katherine, was also a cousin of Alice of Hulton, requiring him to secure a dispensation from the Pope in 1403 to confirm the validity of his marriage. On top of this, Alice of Hulton and Robert of Pilkington had a daughter, Imania, born out of wedlock in the late 1360s. Robert married Imania off to Roger of Bolton in 1385, seemingly forgetting about her until she and Roger had a son in the 1390s, also named Robert. Pilkington’s legal manoeuvres in the 1390s were his attempts to stop Imania’s son, his grandson, from having any claim on his lands. With the papal dispensation confirming his marriage in 1403, Pilkington died that year probably safe in the knowledge that his family’s estates were now secure.

Family tree of Alice of Hulton and Alice of Astley, from John Pilkington, The History of the Pilkington Family and its Branches from 1066 to 1600 (Liverpool, 1912), p. 221

So why was Alice of Hulton's testimony important in 1447, 44 years after Pilkington's death? That's because two years previously, in 1445, Imania's son, Robert son of Roger of Bolton, appeared in court to try and claim Rivington as the son and heir of Imania, over Pilkington's children by Katherine.

The case must still have been live in 1447, when these four men put their seals to this certificate. In it, they say that, while Alice of Hulton lay dying, William of Lener had heard a Richard French of Bolton proclaim that the divorce between Pilkington and Alice of Astley had been done under a false pretext, implying that Richard believed Pilkington and Alice of Hulton had not slept together. Lener said that Alice of Hulton swore that this was a lie, and that 'she would swear before almighty God at the day of doom that she had known part of the body of the said Robert in fleshly deed of sin'.

Despite Alice’s deathbed confession recorded in this document, her grandson Robert was unsuccessful in securing part of the estates of his grandfather, Robert of Pilkington. Rivington remained in the Pilkington family until it was sold in 1605. This small document is part of a fascinating story of the complexities of medieval marriage and inheritance, and preserves one woman’s attempt to tell her own story about her relationship with a powerful local lord.

We are grateful to Joanna and Graham Barker for funding our Medieval and Renaissance Women project.

 

Rory MacLellan

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