The later seventeenth-century herbals are marked by a return to the belief in the influence upon herbs of the heavenly bodies, but it is a travesty rather than a reflection of the ancient astrological lore. The most notable exponent of this debased lore was the infamous Nicholas Culpeper, in whom, nevertheless, the poor people in the East End seem to have had a boundless faith. It is impossible to look at the portrait of that light-hearted rogue without realising that there must have been something extraordinarily attractive about the man who was the last to set up publicly as an astrologer and herb doctor. He was the son of a clergyman who had a living somewhere in Surrey. After a brief time at Cambridge he was apprenticed to an apothecary near St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and shortly afterwards set up for himself in Red Lion Street, Spitalfields, as an astrologer and herbalist. Culpeper was a staunch Roundhead and fought in at least one battle. All through the war, however, he continued his practice and he acquired a great popularity in the East End of London. In 1649 he issued his Physical Directory, which was a translation of the London Dispensatory. This drew down on him the fury of the College of Physicians, and the book was virulently attacked in a broadside issued in 1652, entitled “A farm in Spittlefields where all the knick-knacks of astrology are exposed to open sale.” By this time his works were enjoying an enormous sale. No fewer than five editions of his English Physician Enlarged appeared before 1698, and it was reissued even as late as 1802 and again in 1809. There is a vivid description of Culpeper in The Gentleman’s Magazine for May 1797:—

Culpeper wrote a number of medical works which do not concern us here, but his name will always be associated with his Herbal. His reason for having written it he affirms to be that, of the operation of herbs by the stars he found few authors had written, “and those as full of nonsense and contradiction as an Egg is full of meat. This not being pleasing and less profitable to me, I consulted with my two brothers Dr. Reason and Dr. Experience and took a voyage to visit my Mother Nature, by whose advice together with the help of Dr. Diligence I at last obtained my desire and, being warned by Mr. Honesty (a stranger in our days) to publish it to the world, I have done it.” It is impossible to read any part of this absurd book without a vision arising of the old rogue standing at the street corner and not only collecting but holding an interested crowd of the common folk by the sort of arguments which they not only understand but appreciate. In his preface he warns his readers against the false copies of his book “that are printed of that letter the small Bibles are printed with ... there being twenty or thirty gross errors in every sheet.” He is withering in his criticism of those who quote old authors as authorities. “They say Reason makes a man differ from a beast; if that be true, pray what are they that instead of Reason for their judgment quote old authors?” In his preface, as throughout his book, he affirms his belief in the connection between herbs and stars. Diseases, he asserts, vary according to the motions of the stars, “and he that would know the reason for the operation of the herbs must look up as high as the stars. It is essential to find out what planet has caused the disease and then by what planet the afflicted part of the body is governed. In the treatment of the disease the influence of the planet must be opposed by herbs under the influence of another planet, or in some cases by sympathy, that is each planet curing its own disease.” Elsewhere he directs that plants must always be picked according to the planet that is in the ascendant. Culpeper asserts that herbs should be dried in the sun,[124] his ingenious reasoning being this:—“For if the sun draw away the virtues of the herb it must needs do the like by hay, which the experience of every farmer will explode for a notable piece of nonsense.” He also pours scorn on those who say that the sap does not rise in the winter. Here his argument is even more remarkable, and yet one cannot help realising how effectual it would be with the class of folk with whom he dealt. “If the sap fall into the roots in the fall of the leaf and lies there all the winter then must the root grow all the winter, but the root grows not at all in the winter as experience teaches, but only in the summer. If you set an apple kernel in the spring you shall find the root to grow to a pretty bigness in the summer and be not a whit bigger next spring. What doth the sap do in the root all the winter that while? Pick straws? ’Tis as rotten as a rotten post.” He gives as his own version of what happens to the sap that “when the sun declines from the tropic of cancer, the sap begins to congeal both in root and branch. When he touches the tropic of capricorn and ascends to uswards it begins to wax thin again.” One cannot help suspecting that Culpeper knew perfectly well what nonsense he was talking, but that he also realised how remunerative such nonsense was and how much his customers were impressed by it. In his dissertation on wormwood one feels that he was writing with his tongue in his cheek, especially in the conclusion, which is as follows:—

NICHOLAS CULPEPER FROM “THE ENGLISH PHYSICIAN ENLARGED”

Less popular than Culpeper’s numerous writings, but far more attractive and altogether of a different stamp, are Coles’s two books, Adam in Eden and The Art of Simpling. The title of the latter runs thus:—

The preface is quaint and so typical of the spirit of the later seventeenth-century herbals that I transcribe a good deal of it:—

There is something very attractive in the last inconsequent remark!

Coles deals mercilessly with old Culpeper. “Culpeper,” he says, “(a man now dead and therefore I shall speak of him as modestly as I can, for were he alive I should be more straight with him), was a man very ignorant in the forme of Simples. Many Books indeed he hath tumbled over, and transcribed as much out of them as he thought would serve his turne (though many times he were therein mistaken) but added very little of his own.” He even comments on the fact that either Culpeper or his Printer cannot spell aright—“sure he or the Printer had not learned to spell.”

The Doctrine of Signatures he accepts unquestioningly. “Though Sin and Sathan have plunged mankinde into an Ocean of Infirmities Yet the mercy of God which is over all his Workes Maketh Grasse to grow upon the Mountaines and Herbs for the use of Men and hath not onely stemped upon them (as upon every man) a distinct forme, but also given them particular signatures, whereby a Man may read even in legible Characters the Use of them. Heart Trefoyle is so called not onely because the Leafe is Triangular like the Heart of a Man, but also because each leafe contains the perfect Icon of an Heart and that in its proper colour viz a flesh colour. Hounds tongue hath a forme not much different from its name which will tye the Tongues of Hounds so that they shall not barke at you: if it be laid under the bottomes of ones feet. Wallnuts bear the whole Signature of the Head, the outwardmost green barke answerable to the thick skin whereunto the head is covered, and a salt made of it is singularly good for wounds in that part, as the Kernell is good for the braines, which it resembles being environed with a shell which imitates the Scull, and then it is wrapped up againe in a silken covering somewhat representing the Pia Mater.”

Of those plants that have no signatures he warns the reader not to conclude hastily that therefore they have no use. “We must cast ourselves,” he says, “with great Courage and Industry (as some before us have done) upon attempting the vertues of them, which are yet undiscovered. For man was not brought into the world to live like an idle Loyterer or Truant, but to exercise his minde in those things, which are therefore in some measure obscure and intricate, yet not so much as otherwise they would have been, it being easier to adde than invent at first.” He then gives his own curious but naÏvely interesting theory of plants “commonly accounted useless and unprofitable.” “They would not be without their use,” he argues, “if they were good for nothing else but to exercise the Industry of Man to weed them out who, had he nothing to struggle with, the fire of his Spirit would be halfe extinguished in the Flesh.” After pointing out that weeding them out is in itself excellent exercise, he proceeds:—“But further why may not poysonous plants draw to them all the maligne juice and nourishment that the other may be more pure and refined, as well as Toads and other poysonous Serpents licke the venome from the Earth?... So have I seen some people when they have burned their fingers to goe and burne them again to fetch out the fire. And why may not one poyson fetch out another as well as fire fetch out fire?” “For should all things be known at once,” he wisely concludes, “Posterity would have nothing left wherewith to gratifie themselves in their owne discoveries, which is a great encouragement to active and quick Wits, to make them enquire into those things which are hid from the eyes of those which are dull and stupid.”

Coles’s Art of Simpling is the only herbal which devotes a chapter to herbs useful for animals—“Plants as have operation upon the bodies of Bruit Beasts.” This chapter is full of curious folk lore. He gives the old beliefs that a toad poisoned by a spider will cure itself with a plantain leaf; that weasels when about to encounter a serpent eat rue; that an ass when it feels melancholy eats asplenium; that wild goats wounded by arrows cure themselves with dittany; that the swallow uses celandine (“I would have this purposely planted for them,” he adds); that linnet and goldfinch (and have any birds brighter eyes?) constantly repair their own and their young one’s eyesight with eyebright; that if loosestrife is thrown between two oxen when they are fighting they will part presently, and being tied about their necks it will keep them from fighting; that cocks which have been fed on garlick are “most stout to fight and so are Horses”; that the serpent so hates the ash tree “that she will not come nigh the shadow of it, but she delights in Fennel very much, which she eates to cleer her eyesight;” that, if a garden is infested with moles, garlic or leeks will make them “leap out of the ground presently.” Perhaps the most remarkable effects of herbs are the two following. “Adders tongue put into the left eare of any Horse will make him fall downe as if he were dead, and when it is taken out againe, he becomes more lively than he was before.” And “if Asses chance to feed much upon Hemlock, they will fall so fast asleep that they will seeme to be dead, in so much that some thinking them to be dead indeed have flayed off their skins, yet after the Hemlock had done operating they have stirred and wakened out of their sleep, to the griefe and amazement of the owners.”

There is one chapter—“Of plants used in and against Witchcraft”—in which, amongst other things, we learn that the ointment that witches use is made of the fat of children, dug up from their graves, and mixed with the juice of smallage, wolfsbane and cinquefoil and fine wheat flour; that mistletoe, angelica, etc. were regarded as being of such sovereign power against witches that they were worn round the neck as amulets. Also, that in order to prevent witches from entering their houses the common people used to gather elder leaves on the last day of April and affix them to their doors and windows. “I doe not desire any to pin their Faiths upon these reports,” says Coles, “but only let them know there are such which they may believe as they please.” “However,” he concludes, “there is no question but very wonderful effects may be wrought by the Vertues which are enveloped within the compasse of the green mantles wherewith many Plants are adorned.”

Coles, nevertheless, treats with scorn, and by arguments peculiarly his own, the old belief in the connection between the stars and herbs. “It [the study of herbs] is a subject as antient as the Creation, yea more antient than the Sunne or the Moon, or Starres, they being created on the fourth day whereas Plants were the third. Thus did God even at first confute the folly of those Astrologers who goe about to maintaine that all vegetables in their growth are enslaved to a necessary and unavoidable dependence on the influences of the starres; whereas Plants were even when Planets were not.” In another passage, however, he writes, “Though I admit not of Master Culpeper’s Astrologicall way of every Planets Dominion over Plants, yet I conceive that the Sunne and Moon have generall influence upon them, the one for Heat the other for Moisture; wherein the being of Plants consists.”

The most attractive parts of the Art of Simpling are the chapters devoted to the “Joys of Gardening.” Coles tells us that “A house, though otherwise beautifull, if it hath no garden is more like a prison than a house.” Of what he has to say about gardens and the happiness to be found in gardening I quote much because it is all so pleasant.

“That there is no place more pleasant [than a garden] may appear from God himselfe, who after he had made Man, planted the Garden of Eden, and put him therein, that he might contemplate the many wonderful Ornaments wherewith Omnipotency had bedecked his Mother Earth.... As for recreation, if a man be wearied with over-much study (for study is a weariness to the Flesh as Solomon by experience can tell you) there is no better place in the world to recreate himself than a Garden, there being no sence but may be delighted therein. If his sight be obfuscated and dull, as it may easily be, with continuall poring, there is no better way to relieve it, than to view the pleasant greennesse of Herbes, which is the way that Painters use, when they have almost spent their sight by their most earnest contemplation of brighter objects: neither doe they onely feed the Eyes but comfort the wearied Braine with fragrant smells. The Eares also (which are called the Daughters of Musick, because they delight therein) have their recreation by the pleasant noise of the warbling notes, which the chaunting birds accent forth from amongst the murmuring Leaves....”

“Of the profits” [of a garden] he says, “First for household occasions, for there is not a day passeth over our heads but we have of one thing or other that groweth within their circumference. We cannot make so much as a little good Pottage without Herbes, which give an admirable relish and make them wholsome for our Bodies.... Besides this inestimable Profit there is another not much inferior to it, and that is the wholsome exercise a man may use in it.... If Gentlemen which have little else to doe, would be ruled by me, I would advise them to spend their spare time in their gardens, either in digging, setting, weeding or the like, then which there is no better way in the world to preserve health. If a man want an Appetite to his Victuals the Smell of the Earth new turned up by digging with a spade will procure it,[125] and if he be inclined to a Consumption it will recover him.

“Gentlewomen if the ground be not too wet may doe themselves much good by kneeling upon a Cushion and weeding. And thus both sexes might divert themselves from Idlenesse and evill company, which oftentimes prove the ruine of many ingenious people. But perhaps they may think it a disparagement to the condition they are in; truly none at all if it were but put in practise. For we see that those fashions which sometimes seem ridiculous if once taken up by the gentry cease to be so.” He quotes the Emperor Diocletian, who “left for a season the whole Government of the Empire and forsaking the Court betook himself to a meane House with a Garden adjoyning, wherein with his owne hands, he both sowed set and weeded the Herbes of his Garden which kinde of life so pleased him, that he was hardly intreated to resume the Government of the Empire.” “By this time,” he concludes, “I hope you will think it no dishonour to follow the steps of our grandsire Adam, who is commonly pictured with a Spade in his hand, to march through the Quarters of your Garden with the like Instrument, and there to rectify all the disorders thereof, to procure as much as in you lyes the recovery of the languishing Art of Simpling, which did it but appeare in lively colours, I am almost perswaded it would so affect you that you would be much taken with it. There is no better way to understand the benefit of it, than by being acquainted with Herballs and Herbarists and by putting this Gentle and ingenious Exercise in practise, that so this part of knowledge as well as others, may receive that esteem and advancement that is due to it, to the banishment of Barbarisme and Ignorance which begin again to prevaile against it.”

The real descendants, so to speak, of the herbal are the quaint old still-room books, many of which survive not only in museums and public libraries, but also in country houses. These still-room books, which are a modest branch of literature in themselves, are more nearly akin to herbals than to cookery books, with which they are popularly associated. For they are full of the old herb lore and of the uses of herbs in homely medicines. It must be remembered that even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries every woman was supposed to have some knowledge of both the preparation and the medicinal use of herbs and simples. When the herbal proper ceased and the first books on botany began to make their appearance the old herb lore did not fall into disuse, and the popularity of the still-room books in which it was preserved may be gathered from the fact that one of the first of these to be printed—A Choice Manual of rare and select Secrets in Physick & Chirurgerie Collected and practised by the Countesse of Kent[126] (late dec’d)—went through nineteen editions. There are some old books which merely inspire awe, for one feels that they have always lived in dignified seclusion on library shelves and have been handled only by learned scholars. But there are others whose leaves are so be-thumbed and torn that from constant association with human beings they seem to have become almost human themselves. Of this type are these old still-room books. They were an integral part of daily life and their worn pages bear mute witness to the fact.

FRONTISPIECE OF “THE CURIOUS DESTILLATORY,” BY THOMAS SHIRLEY, M.D., PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY (1677)

One of the most interesting is the Fairfax still-room book.[127] Its first owner was probably Mary Cholmeley, born during the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign, and married in 1626 to the Rev. the Hon. Henry Fairfax (uncle of the great Parliamentarian General—Lord Fairfax).[128] In common with the majority of MS. still-room books, the Fairfax volume contains much that has no immediate connection with a still-room, but is full of human interest. It is a curious medley of culinary recipes, homely cures, housewifely arts such as bleaching, dyeing, brewing and preserving, to say nothing of hastily scribbled little notes regarding lost linen (including no fewer than “xxiii handkerchares!”) and the number of fowls, etc., in the poultry-yard. This last entry, which runs all down one side of a page, is as follows: “I Kapon, XVI Torkies, XVIII dowkes, IIII henes, II cokes, X chekins, X giese, IV sowes.”

But the most charming entry of all is: “A note of Mistress Barbara her lessons on ye virginalle which she hath learned and can play them,” followed by a list of songs, the majority of which have the entry “Mr. Bird” beside them. William Bird was organist to Queen Elizabeth, and he presumably was “Mistress Barbara’s” music-master. She apparently also had lessons from Dr. Bull, then at the height of his fame, for his name appears in connection with some of the items. Amongst the songs we find “My trew Love is to ye grene Wood gon,” and there are quite a number of dances—pavanes and courantes—which she played. One feels very sure that “Mistress Barbara” was a fascinating person, but she could not have been more lovable than her sister Mary, who married Henry Fairfax. A love-letter, written in Charles I.’s reign, is doubtless quite out of place in a book on old herbals, but I cannot refrain from quoting the following, written by Mary to her husband about six years after their marriage, because it very clearly reveals the character of one of the many types of women who wrote these still-room books.

I quote only three recipes from this attractive MS.: “A Bath for Melancholy,” “Balles for the face” and “For them theyr speech faileth.”

To the modern mind the medical recipes to be found in these still-room books sound truly alarming, but in The Lady Sedley her Receipt book they are not more so than the prescriptions which were contributed by the most eminent physicians of that day. In his paper[129] on this MS. Dr. Guthrie quotes many of these recipes, amongst them one from the famous Dr. Stephens,[130] so frequently quoted by Sir Kenelm Digby and in other still-room books of the period. In Lady Sedley’s book his recipe is introduced thus: “A copy to make the sovreigns’t water that ever was devised by man, which Dr. Stephens a physician of great cuning and of long experience did use and therewith did cure many great cases, and all was kept in secret until a little before his death; when the Archbishop of Canterbury got it from him.” Amongst the other contributors to this MS. were no fewer than three of the doctors who attended Charles II. in his last illness, and if they gave the king even in a mild form medicines resembling those we find in this book, Macaulay’s description that “they tortured him for some hours like an Indian at the stake” can hardly have been exaggerated. There is a “Receipt for Convulsion Fitts” from Sir Edward Greaves (the first physician to be created a baronet) consisting of peony roots, dead man’s skull, hoofs of asses, white amber and bezoar; and the famous Dr. Sydenham contributed a “Prescription for the head” in which, not content with the seventy-two ingredients of which Venice treacle consisted, he added Wormwood, orange peel, angelica and nutmeg. Another distinguished contributor to this MS. was the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth. A prescription for stone from Judge Ellis consisted of Venice turpentine distilled with various herbs and spices in small ale. It was to be made only in June and taken “three days before the full and three days before the change of the Moone” (incidentally a survival of Saxon moon lore), but the Duke of Monmouth’s prescription for the same complaint is quite different and is compounded of ripe haws and fennel roots distilled in white wine and taken with syrup of elder. Lady Sedley, the first owner, and presumably author of the book, was the wife of Sir Charles Sedley, one of Charles II.’s intimate friends and notorious for his mad pranks. Between her husband and her daughter her life must have been almost unbearable, and it is not surprising that the unfortunate woman ended her days in a mad-house.

Of the MS. still-room books in the British Museum undoubtedly the most interesting is Mary Doggett: Her Book of Receipts, 1682.[131] On the first page is affixed a note: “This Mary Doggett was the wife of Doggett the Player who left a legacy of a yearly coat and badge to be rowed for.”[132] The MS. is beautifully written and contains an astonishing amount of information on every housewifely art, from washing “parti-coloured stockings” to making perfumes and “Sweete Baggs.” Indeed the reading of the headlines alone gives one some idea of the multifarious duties of a mistress of a large house in those days. We find—and I quote only a few—recipes “to make morello cherry cakes,” “apricock marmalett,” “to preserve Cherrys white,” “to candy oranges or lemons or any kind of sucketts,” “to preserve almonds,” “to preserve damsons,” “orange butter,” “pippin creame,” “to make molds for apricock Plumbs,” “apricock wine,” “to keep cherrys all the year,” “to make cowslip wine,” “cakes of clove gilly flowers,” “curran wine,” “grapes in jelly,” “cleer cakes of goosberys,” “fine cakes of lemons,” “to preserve Rasps whole,” “to make Lemon Creame,” “lemon Syllibub,” “orange biskett,” “cheese caks of oranges,” “to preserve pippins in slices,” “to make plumb biskett,” “to pickle Quinces,” “to preserve Wallnutts,” “to preserve double blew violetts for Salletts,” “to candy Double marygold, Roses, or any other flowers,” “to make good sorrell wine,” “sweet powders for linnen,” “to perfume gloves after the Spanish maner,” “to souse a pigg,” “Almond milk,” “to pickle cucumbers,” “drinks to cause sleep,” “snaile broth,” “plasters for bruises,” “to make pomades” and “past for the hands.” The receipts for “A Pomander,” for “Balme water,” “to dry roses for sweet powder,” and “a perfume for a sweet bagg” are particularly attractive, and I give them below.

“A Pomander. Take a quarter of an ounce of Civitt, a quarter and a half-quarter of an ounce of Ambergreese, not half a quarter of an ounce of ye Spiritt of Roses, 7 ounces of Benjamin, allmost a pound of Damask Rose buds cutt. Lay gumdragon in rose water and with it make up your Pomander, with beads as big as nutmegs and color ym with Lamb [sic] black; when you make ym up wash your hands wth oyle of Jasmin to smooth ym, then make ym have a gloss, this quantity will make seaven Braceletes.”

“A receipt for Balme. Take 6 or 7 handfulls of balme, cut it a little, put it in an Earthen pott wth a handfull of cowslip flowers, green or dry, half an ounce of Mace, a little bruised pow[d]er in ym, 4 quarts of strong ale, let ym stand a night to infuse: in ye morning put it into your still, poure upon it a quart of brandy. Past up your Still; you may draw about 2 quarts of water. Sweeten it with Sugar to your Tast and tye up too pennyworth of Saffron in a ragg, put it into ye water and let it lye till it be colored. Squeeze it out and bottle it for your use.”

“To dry Roses for sweet powder. Take your Roses after they have layen 2 or 3 days on a Table, then put them into a dish and sett ym on a chafering dish of Charcole, keeping them stirred, and as you stir ym strew in some powder of orris, and when you see them pretty dry put them into a gally pot till you use them.”

“A perfume for a sweet bagg. Take half a pound of Cypress Roots, a pound of Orris, 3 quarters of a pound of Rhodium, a pound of Coriander Seed, 3 quarter of a pound of Calamus, 3 orange stick wth cloves, 2 ounces of Benjamin, and an ounce of Storax and 4 pecks of Damask Rose leaves, a peck of dryed sweet Marjerum, a pretty stick of Juniper shaved very thin, some lemon pele dryed and a stick of Brasill; let all these be powdered very grosely for ye first year and immediately put into your baggs; the next year pound and work it and it will be very good again.”

The “Countesse of Kent’s” still-room book, which was one of the first to be published, contains more recipes against the Plague than most, and with one of these we find the instruction that it must be taken three times, “for the first helpeth not.” Amongst much that is gruesome there is a pleasant recipe entitled “A comfortable cordial to cheer the heart,” which runs thus: “Take one ounce of conserve of gilliflowers, four grains of the best Musk, bruised as fine as flower, then put it into a little tin pot and keep it till you have need to make this cordial following: Viz.: Take the quantity of one Nutmeg out of your tin pot, put to it one spoonful of cinnamon water, and one spoonful of the sirrup of gillifloures, ambergreece, mix all these together and drink them in the morning, fasting three or four hours, this is most comfortable.” The chef d’oeuvre of the collection, at least in the author’s opinion, is one introduced with this flourish, but it is too long for me to quote more than the comprehensive title:—“The Countesse of Kent’s powder, good against all malignant and pestilent diseases, French Pox, Small Pox, Measles, Plague, Pestilence, Malignant or Scarlet Feavers, good against melancholy, dejection of Spirits, twenty or thirty grains thereof being exhibited in a little warm Sack or Hartshorn Jelly to a Man and half as much or twelve grains to a Childe.”

Far more attractive than the volume which bears the “Countesse of Kent’s” name are the little-known books by Tryon. They are full of discourses and sermons, introduced at the most unexpected moments. Indeed, there are few subjects on which Tryon does not lecture his readers, from giving servants extra work on Sundays by having “greasy platters and Bloody-Bones more on Sunday than any other Day,” to sleeping in feather beds. It is interesting to find that women had already taken to smoking in the seventeenth century, and Tryon admonishes them thus:—“Nor is it become infrequent, for women also to smoak Tobacco. Tobacco being an Herb of Mars and Saturn, it hath its fiery Quality from Mars, and its Poysonous fulsome attractive Nature from Saturn: the common use of it in Pipes is very injurious to all sorts of people but more especially to the Female Sex.” Tryon seems to have been somewhat of a Socialist, and he takes great delight in commiserating “Lords, Aldermen, the Rich and the Great,” who are driven to “heartily envying those Jolley Swains, who feed only with Bread and Cheese, and trotting up to the knees in Dirt, do yet with lusty limbs, and vigorous stomach, and merry Hearts, and undisturbed Heads, whistle out more sollid joys than the others, with all their Wealth and State can purchase.”

The most famous of all still-room books was that written by Sir Kenelm Digby, the friend of Kings and philosophers and himself a man of science, a doctor, an occultist, a privateer and a herbalist. Indeed it would be impossible to catalogue his activities, and he has always been recognised as the type par excellence of the gifted amateur. Sir Kenelm was the elder son of the Digby who was one of the leaders in the Gunpowder Plot. Himself a man of European reputation, he numbered among his friends Bacon, Ben Jonson, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey and Cromwell. Queen Marie de’ Medici was only one of many women who fell in love with him, but his one love was his wife, one of the most beautiful women of her day—Venetia Anastasia Stanley, immortalised by Van Dyck and Ben Jonson. Sir Kenelm Digby was the intimate friend of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, and after the Restoration he was a prominent figure at the Court of Charles II. When the Royal Society was inaugurated in 1663, he was one of the Council, and his house in Covent Garden was a centre where all the wits, occultists and men of letters forgathered. Aubrey tells us that after the Restoration he lived “in the last faire house westward in the north portico of Covent Garden where my lord Denzill Hollis lived since. He had a laboratory there.”[133] One reads so much of the extravagances and excesses of Restoration days that it is all the pleasanter to remember the people of whom little has been written, the thousands of quiet folk who loved their homes and gardens and took delight in simple pleasures. It is of these people Sir Kenelm Digby’s book reminds us, and even the names of his recipes are soothing reading—syllabubs, hydromel, mead, quidannies, tansies, slipp-coat-cheeses, manchets, and so forth. Moreover, there is no savour of the shop in these recipes, the book being full rather of flowers and herbs. It is also very leisurely, and in these days that, too, is soothing. Time we frequently find measured thus:—“Whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very slowly” or “about an Ave Maria while.” It takes us back to a simple old world when great ladies not only looked well to the ways of their households, but attended themselves to the more important domestic matters. Sir Kenelm collected these recipes assiduously from his friends, and each housekeeper’s pride in her speciality is very evident. To mention only a few of these, we find:—“Scotch Ale from my Lady Holmeby,” “A very pleasant drink of Apples,” “Master Webb’s Ale and Bragot,” “Apples in Gelly,” “To make Bisket,” “Sir Paul Neal’s way of making Cider,” “My Lord of St. Alban’s Cresme Fouettee,” “The Queen’s Barley Cream,” “To pickle capons my Lady Portland’s way,” “Pickled Champignons,” “A Flomery-Caudle,” “My Lord Hollis Hydromel,” “Master Corsellises Antwerp Meath,” “My own considerations for making of Meathe,” “Meathe from the Muscovian Ambassadors Steward,” “White Metheglin of my Lady Hungerford’s which is exceedingly praised,” “My Lord of Denbigh’s Almond March-pane,” “My Lord Lumley’s Pease-pottage,” “Pease of the seed, buds of Tulips,” “A soothing Quiddany or Gelly of the Cores of Quinces,” “Sack with clove gilly-flowers,” “My Lord of Carlile’s Sack-posset,” “To make a whip Syllabub,” “Sucket of Mallow-stalks,” “The Countess of Newport’s Cherry Wine.” We may forget the recipes themselves, but the memory of them is associated with the fragrance of gillifiowers, roses, cowslips, elder flowers, violets, thyme, marjoram and the like. I give but these few below, and I wish there were space for more; for not only are they excellent in themselves, but, in common with all those in Sir Kenelm Digby’s book, they give more, perhaps, of the atmosphere of the old still-rooms than is to be found in any other collection.

“Sweet meat of Apples. My Lady Barclay makes her fine Apple-gelly with slices of John apples. Sometimes she mingles a few pippins with the Johns to make the gelly. But she liketh best the Johns single and the colour is paler. You first fill the glass with slices round-wise cut, and then the Gelly is poured in to fill up the vacuities. The Gelly must be boiled to a good stiffness. Then when it is ready to take from the fire, you put in some juyce of Lemon, and of Orange too, if you like it, but these must not boil; yet it must stand a while upon the fire stewing in good heat, to have the juyces incorporate and penetrate well. You must also put in some Ambergreece, which doth exceeding well in this sweet-meat.”

“Wheaten Flommery. In the West Country they make a kind of Flommery of wheat flower, which they judge to be more harty and pleasant then that of Oat-meal, thus; take half, or a quarter of a bushel of good Bran of the best wheat (which containeth the purest flower of it, though little, and is used to make starch), and in a great wooden bowl or pail, let it soak with cold water upon it three or four days. Then strain out the milky water from it, and boil it up to a gelly or like starch. Which you may season with Sugar and Rose or Orange-flower-water and let it stand till it be cold, and gellied. Then eat it with white or Rhenish-wine, or Cream, or Milk, or Ale.”

“A Flomery Caudle. When Flomery is made and cold, you may make a pleasant and wholesome caudle of it by taking some lumps and spoonfuls of it, and boil it with Ale and White wine, then sweeten it to your taste with Sugar. There will remain in the Caudle some lumps of the congealed flomery which are not ungrateful.”

“Conserve of Red Roses. Doctor Glisson makes his Conserve of red Roses thus: Boil gently a pound of red Rose-leaves (well picked, and the nails cut off) in about a pint and a half (or a little more, as by discretion you shall judge fit, after having done it once; the Doctor’s Apothecary takes two pints) of Spring water; till the water have drawn out all the Tincture of the Roses into itself, and that the leaves be very tender, and look pale like Linnen; which may be in a good half hour, or an hour, keeping the pot covered whiles it boileth. Then pour the tincted Liquor from the pale leaves (strain it out, pressing it gently, so that you may have Liquor enough to dissolve your Sugar) and set it upon the fire by itself to boil, putting into it a pound of pure double refined Sugar in small Powder; which as soon as it is dissolved, put into it a second pound, then a third, lastly a fourth, so that you have four pounds of sugar to every pound of Rose-leaves. (The Apothecary useth to put all the four pounds into the Liquor altogether at once.) Boil these four pounds of Sugar with the tincted Liquor, till it be a high Syrup, very near a candy height (as high as it can be not to flake or candy). Then put the pale Rose-leaves into this high Syrup, as it yet standeth upon the fire, or immediately upon the taking it off the fire. But presently take it from the fire, and stir them exceeding well together, to mix them uniformly; then let them stand till they be cold, then pot them up. If you put your Conserve into pots whiles it is yet thoroughly warm, and leave them uncovered some days, putting them in the hot Sun or stove, there will grow a fine candy on the top, which will preserve the conserve without paper upon it, from moulding, till you break the candied crust to take out some of the conserve.

“The colour both of the Rose-leaves and the Syrup about them, will be exceedingly beautiful and red, and the taste excellent, and the whole very tender and smoothing, and easie to digest in the stomack without clogging it, as doth the ordinary rough conserve made of raw Roses beaten with Sugar, which is very rough in the throat. The worst of it is, that if you put not a Paper to lie always close upon the top of the conserve, it will be apt to grow mouldy there on the top; especially aprÈs que le pot est entamÉ.”