Bread or Blood
My Week 37 of WolfCrawl
On the table Week 37
Thurston Poll for WolfCrawlers
Luis of Portugal, Duke of Beja
The Fishmonger
I have been very critical of Cromwell recently and still am, but this week I have felt very sorry for him. ‘Basden, the fishmonger claimed he was owed for three thousand stockfish.’ ‘Bay salt too - but why would any kitchen buy salt at one mark the bushel?’ This and the listing of the fabric prices after his meeting with Dorothea in an effort to show he was true to Wolsey. It seems strange, but at that moment he seems to me like a mortally wounded animal hiding in the furthest corner. He crawls into his numbers.
Fisch market or also called The Interest penny by Frans Synders and Anthonis van Dyck, c. 1621
What else was on the menu?
There's no good food north of York, but maybe Jane would still like it, as she is ‘a great doer at the table.’ For Christopher there is bread and honey in the monastery kitchen and Norfolk looks like ‘a man who has chewed and digested himself.’ But he only looks like it, unfortunately he is still there.
Drinkers are gathering at alehouses, passing leather flasks hand to hand and are dreaming of a time where ‘…every pot bubbled with fat self- renewing capons.’ Alcohol, hunger and political-religious upheaval create an explosive atmosphere. How much better the world would be if Cromwell at least didn't plan to tax every meagre meal, they think.
Peasants Brawling over Cards by Adriaen Brouwers, 1631/1633
Thurston. No, please don’t !
This is the stupidest idea of the whole trilogy, letting my Thurston go to war. What´s this nonsense? Now I have to worry about Thurston too?!
WolfCrawler Poll ‘Thurston has to stay in the kitchen’. Vote now!It's bad enough that all the kitchen staff are being pulled off for military service, but why Thurston as well? Cromwell desperately needs Thurston, who is (probably) the only person he can consider a friend. Who shares his pain over the loss of his daughters. To whom he could openly talk about his grief after the encounter with Dorothea.
And anyway, what are we supposed to eat then? Will Cromwell send the marmoset monkey to kitchen duty?
Dining monkeys in the kitchen by David Teniers, c 1660
Luis of Portugal, Duke of Beja
‘ My Master will offer his own nephew, the Portuguese prince. Dom Luis is a fine young man, she could not do better.’ The marriage candidate that Chapuys offers for Mary here is the second son of the Portuguese king Manuel and Maria of Aragon.
The marriage connections on the continent were v e r y complex and I might overlook something and got lost in this jungle, but I do not think that Luis (*1506-1555, that´s the only Luis of Portugal I found) was the nephew of Emperor Charles but his cousin. Luis’ mother Maria of Aragon (married to the King of Portugal Manuel) and Charles’ mother Joanna of Aragon (married to the Habsburg Philip, the Fair) were sisters. Cousins and actually brothers-in-law as Emperor Charles was married to Isabella of Portugal, a sister of Luis. And Mary is a cousin of both, Luis and Emperor Charles, through her mother Catherine of Aragon…
It's a labyrinth, I hope I've found the right way out. Maybe Eustache just wants to confuse everyone, who knows. From that point of view, I find at least the family relationships of Henry's women after Catherine refreshingly simple.
The Conquest of Tunis, 2nd tapestry, Detail Dom Luis, infante of Portugal by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (*1502-+1550)
