Category Archives: Series: Johanna St John

British Studies, Early Modern, Manuscripts, Records, Documents and Notes, Remedies, Series: Johanna St John, Women and Gender

Placing Historical Recipes in Fiction: The Lady of the Tower

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By Elizabeth St.John

Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthven being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she (Lucy St.John Apsley) suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life. She was not only to these, but to all the other prisoners that came into the Tower, as a mother. All the time she dwelt in the Tower, if any were sick she made them broths and restoratives with her own hands, visited and took care of them, and provided them all necessaries; if any were afflicted she comforted them, so that they felt not the inconvenience of a prison who were in that place.

Lucy Hutchinson
Biographical Fragment
Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson

Leaping from the pages of Lucy Hutchinson’s memoirs, this insight to a seventeenth-century woman’s life within the Tower of London immediately set me on a hunt for more information about Lucy St.John and the world she inhabited. Writing about her mother, Lucy Hutchinson chose to focus on the attributes of medicinal skills and recipes she used to tend to the prisoners within the Tower. This paragraph inspired the writing of my debut best-selling novel, The Lady of the Tower, and sent me on a glorious journey into the methods and curatives that were an everyday part of Lucy’s life.

Portrait of Lady Johanna St.John by kind permission of Lydiard House & Park.

These  seventeenth-century remedies were precious commodities exchanged by family and friends alike. And since Lucy St.John would have known her nephew’s wife, Lady Johanna St.John, it was no stretch of the “probable” for me to think that Lucy would be familiar with the recipes within Johanna’s collection, or may even have contributed some of her own.

Already acquainted with Lady Johanna and the Lydiard estate through my own family records, I delved into her recipe book, which is archived at The Wellcome Library in London. (Ed. note: this recipe book has been of much interest to many of us here at The Recipes Project, too! See these posts.) The beautifully preserved leather-bound book contains recipes designed to help a knowledgeable and educated woman manage the health of her family, servants and livestock. Relying on a great deal of herbal wisdom, as well as the more exotic ingredients found in the London apothecaries, Lady Johanna’s book is a testament to the importance placed on remedies, in an age where so little was still known about the body and its infirmities. When I decided to use extracts from the book to illustrate Lucy’s learnings in The Lady of the Tower, I was fascinated to discover that many of the herbal properties and therapies Lady Johanna recommend are still used in pharmaceutical production today.

Extract and Photograph is of Lady Johanna Saint John’s Recipe Book, archived at The Wellcome Library, London, MS 4338.

One particular recipe of interest is that for “Gilbert’s Water.”

It is bad for nothing it cures wind and the colick restoreth decayed nature good for a consumption expels poison & all infection from the Hart helps digestion purifies the blood gives motion to the spirits drives out the smallpox for the grippes in young children weomen in labor bringeth the Afterbirth stops floods for sounding and faintings

Lady Johanna St.John
Recipe Book
1680

Lady Johanna devotes two pages of her precious recipe book to Adrian Gilbert’s Cordial Water, which was perhaps indicative of the importance she placed on its curative powers. The recipe itself was complex, requiring Dragons Burnett leaves (probably the simple dragon’s mace, a common weed), and then moving on to a page full of rarer ingredients, such as “Crab’s eyes taken in the full of the moon.”  Promoting the contemporary belief man shared the virtue of the plants digested, Mr Gilbert was taking no chances with his curative, empowering the recipient with dragon strength to fight his condition.

But there is more to the story. Adrian Gilbert was a well-known alchemist and amateur scientist, and half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh, himself a distinguished botanist. Adrian’s brother, Humphrey Gilbert, was under the patronage of Robert Cecil and Robert Dudley who maintained an alchemical laboratory in Limehouse. Now it gets interesting. When Sir Walter Raleigh was under the care of Lucy St.John during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, Lucy funded his scientific experiments, lending him her hen house in which to perform his alchemy. I don’t believe it is that much of a stretch to think that Sir Walter and his half-brother Adrian Gilbert traded medicinal recipes, nor that Lucy St.John would keep a record of any precious curatives that came into her possession. For her to then pass these on to her niece, who shared her passion for botany, gardens and curatives, would be a natural occurrence.

Writing credible historical fiction is always about linking the probables, and in connecting Lucy St.John with Lady Johanna and using their common interest in medicinal curatives, I brought truth to my narrative. What is undisputed is these interesting women’s common desire to protect their families and charges from the dangers of seventeenth-century life, and a shared concern for health, hope for treatment, and the rewards of recovery.

The Lydiard Chronicles. Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Biography

Elizabeth St.John was brought up in England and lives in California. To inform her writing, she has tracked down family papers and residences from Nottingham Castle, Lydiard Park, and Castle Fonmon to the Tower of London. Although the family sold a few castles and country homes along the way (it’s hard to keep a good castle going these days), Elizabeth’s family still occupy them – in the form of portraits, memoirs, and gardens that carry their imprint. And the occasional ghost.

https://tinyurl.com/AmazonElizabethStJohn
www.elizabethjstjohn.com

British Studies, Manuscripts, Records, Documents and Notes, Remedies, Series: Johanna St John, Women and Gender

Exploring CPP 10A214: Enter Lady Honywood, Continued; Getting it on Paper

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By Hillary Nunn with Rebecca Laroche

Elaine Leong’s posting about paper’s use as a medical tool inspired me to look more carefully at instances of paper in the Layfield manuscript, which Rebecca Laroche and I have been examining in this series. What I found was much more than I expected. It turns out that concentrating on paper highlights some of the embedded puzzles about recipe transmission that have been lurking in the College of Physicians of Philadelphia manuscript, and even in the Recipe Projects blog itself. My exploration also brings us back to Lady Honywood, proving once more Rebecca’s observation that “one just has to take advantage of a name like ‘Lady Honywood’ if it’s given to you.”

Rebecca and Elaine both have written substantially about Lady Honywood (or Honeywood) in Recipe Project posts before. This past March, Elaine pointed out that Joanna St. John’s 1680 recipe book contains a remedy attributed to Lady Honeywood “for a cancer,” where the medicine is spread on paper and then laid on the sore. Not surprisingly, Lady Honeywood’s name rang a bell for me, since almost two years earlier, Rebecca had devoted two posts to Lady Honywood’s presence in the Layfield manuscript. Lady Honywood’s recipe for the gout, Rebecca showed, hinted that the compiler of the CPP manuscript’s second section had a particular need to treat that ailment since seven cures for gout appear there.

But it turns out that Elaine and Rebecca were talking about the same recipe, or so I found out when I searched for mention of paper in the CPP manuscript. While St. John labels the recipe as a cancer treatment, the Layfield manuscript identifies it as “The Lady Honywood: receite for the Goute, running & swellinge.”

Layfielde_MS Honywood
[1]

The Layfield manuscript mentions the concoction’s effectiveness against cancer as an afterthought, but it is nonetheless there – as is paper as mode of administration. The ingredients are identical as well, with two notable variations. First, the Layfield manuscript walks the user through the process of rendering juice from its herbal ingredients, while St. John begins with the juices:

Wellcome4338Honywood

Otherwise, the only difference is that St. John’s version calls for “bean flower” while the Layfield manuscript calls for “wheaten flour.”

The variation in recipe titles is not uncommon, of course, and it certainly highlights Rebecca’s point about the importance of local needs in the organization of these manuscripts. At the same time, it underscores how easily categorization schemes can obscure connections among texts and contributors. Lady Honywood and her recipe, variant title or no, forge a connection between two manuscripts, the St. John and the Layfield, that otherwise show no obvious overlap. And, ironically enough, a search for paper helped bring to light what had been an unidentified link within this very blog. The overlap between manuscripts, and the one between blog entries, hints further at what connections lie just beyond the reach of our current digital tools. Just more evidence that we need a searchable database of these manuscripts!

Notes:

[1] Below is a transcription for the Layfield hand:

Rx. one handfull of Fetherfew, salladine, smalledge, &
Rhew, of each a handfull, pick them cleane, wash them &
drie the water out cleane, & beate them in a mortar very
small, & then straine the Juce of it into a dish, &
thicken it with wheaten-flower; & put into it the
yelke of anew-laid egg, & as much honey as [that] con-
taines too, all beaten together, & spread it vpon capp
paper, or Grossers browne-paper, & apply it to the
place pained; & as the paine remoues, or moues so
follow it with this medicine –
2. this same also will helpe the Ague in a womans breast
or any bruise, the bloode beinge setled, or kill a felon
or the Kings euell, if it be swellinge or runninge.
If it be runninge lay adrie peece of paper vpon the
soare, & the plaister vpon it, by Gods blessinge it will
do all these cures

Early Modern, Series: Beer, Series: Johanna St John, Tools and Techniques

How to brew beer with a ‘paile of cold water’

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By Elaine Leong

Der Münchner Taxisgarten bei Nacht by Martin Falbisoner. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.

The sun is shining brightly outside my window and the temperatures are finally (!) getting warm in Berlin. When this happens, Berliners all head out to the parks, terraces and to their beloved balconies for the ‘Balkonsaison’. Of course, we all associate different drinks with our terrace parties but one drink which always graces summer gatherings is some ice-cold beer. So, it is perhaps apt that we’ve been talking so much about beer on The Recipes Project in the last few weeks. Actually, it was Molly Taylor-Poleskey who first talked about beer in 2013. In her post, Molly told us about the curious beer soup enjoyed by Prince Freidrick Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia every morning. Joel Klein then wrote about cock ale as an aphrodisiac. Marieke Hendriksen started this summer’s strand on beer with her post on beer as medicine. Alun Withey and Annie Grey then enlightened us on how we might venture to replicate medicinal beers at home. My own previous post, if you recall, mulled over how early modern men and women preferred the ‘long boil’. I hinted there that I had found another curious beer recipe in the archives and I’d like to bring it to your attention here.

As I explained in my last post, beer and ale continued to be home-brewed in English country houses in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Many estates have dedicated brew houses (some of which are still extant, see here for example) and a team of brewers to produce the necessary drinks needed for the table. Now, I tend to spend my time reading manuscript recipe books produced by literate and wealthy early modern men and women. In that sense, while there are a number of recipes for brewing in these books, often times the recipes provide only a fairly thin description of the brewing process. That is, they provide some idea of the proportion of ingredients used, a list of the steps needed and the length of the boil. What most of them don’t tell you, somewhat crucially, is real trick to beer brewing – the mixing and combining of materials at the correct temperature.

Firstly, I want to start by confessing that my knowledge of beer brewing is entirely theoretical and historical. I’m sure that many readers out there are much more au fait with the process and experienced than I. As I understand it though, one key moment in the brewing process is the mashing step where one combines the malt with the hot liquid. Not only do mashing heats greatly affect the taste of the beer but if the temperature is too high the malt grains set and the entire batch of beer is ruined.[1] Householders and recipe compilers were well aware of this fact. In the same set of instructions sent by Johanna St. John to her steward Thomas Hardyman but intended for the brewer at Lydiard Park, where she askes for the long (4-5 hour boil), Johanna also instructs her helpers that ‘the water must not boyl but only be redy to boyl when [the brewer] powers it on the mault’.[2]

In fact, this step has long interested historians of Science. After all, before thermometers were widely available, how did brewers (and interested householders) gauge mashing heats? It turns out early modern brewers had various ways of gauging mash temperatures. James Sumner and Pamela Sambrook recount a range of different ways from the ‘hour-glass’ method (bringing the water to boil but leaving it to cool for a fixed time’ to putting one’s finger in the boiling (or near boiling) water. But like I said this kind of information tends to be absent in recipes for brewing in household collections. However, rather fascinatingly, this was not so in a recipe now in the Hartlib Papers. Titled ‘Mr Breretons Brewers Recipe for brewing Ale’, the recipe instructs the maker to ‘Let your water boyle and let it be cooled with the quantitie of a paile of Cold water’.

Image taken from Marjolein van Dekken, ‘Female brewers in Holland and England’, Medievalists.net, May 7, 2013 http://www.medievalists.net/2013/05/07/female-brewers-in-holland-and-england/

To this reader, the title of the recipe is significant here. Since we’re talking about the Hartlib Papers, Mr Brereton here might refer to William Brereton, a contact of Hartlib’s who eventually bought the Hartlib archive. Yet Brereton is not the only person vouching for this recipe, rather this is recipe of his brewer. This is where I think this particular recipe differs from others in the ‘recipe archive’. Many of the examples in household recipe books are merely outlines of instructions to give to one’s experienced brewer. In her letter, Johanna certainly did not intend to brew the ale herself and nor did she expect her steward to do so. As I pointed out in my last post, one recipe, in a book associated with Bridget Hyde, specifically references the ‘brewer’ (a male brewer, in fact) as the maker of the beer rather than the actual recipe reader. The recipes for brewing Ale in the Hartlib Papers appears to have come directly from the maker himself. Perhaps this is the reason why practical information such as how to moderate or adjust mashing heats is included. Close readings of beer recipes, it turns out, can tell us much about who was doing the work alongside how one might do it.

[1] Pamela Sambrook, Country House Brewing in England 1500-1900 (London and Rio Grande: The Hambledon Press, 1996, 93-100 and James Sumner, Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700-1880 (London and Brookfield, VT: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), chapter 2.

[2] Brian Carne, Some St. John Family Papers. Reproduced, with corrections and additions, from the Report of the Friends of Lydiard Tregoz, 27, 28 and 29 (1994-6), 68.

17th Century, British Studies, Early Modern, Family and Household, Food and Drink, Remedies, Series: Alcohol, Series: Beer, Series: Johanna St John, Tools and Techniques

The Long Boil: Recipes for Ale and Beer in late Seventeenth-century England

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By Elaine Leong

I read Marieke’s recent post on beer as medicine with great interest. Like many of you out there, I’m a lover of all things ale and beer and was cheered both to learn about medicinal beer and to find ever more reasons to visit our local biergarten. Coincidentally, I have also been spending my time learning about early modern beer brewing. My entry into this adventure was via a recipe found in the correspondence of Edward Conway, second Viscount Conway and Colonel Edward Harley. In 1651, Harley send his uncle a recipe to brew ale which requested the maker to boil water on its own for three hours.

Intrigued, I embarked on a journey to try to understand why any early modern householder might utilise their resources in such an um… interesting way. My research took me a number of different directions from learning more about drinking water and water quality to mineral spas and baths to iatrochemical theories. Along the way though, I also read recipe after recipe after recipe for home brews.

The brewery at Charlecote Park, Warwick. Image courtesy of wikimedia commons.

The seventeenth century was, of course, the heyday of English country house brewing.[1] Like the production of medicines and foodstuffs, the brewing of ale and beer was seen to reside firmly within the purview of the early modern English housewife. Indeed, Gervase Markham, one of the most frequently quoted early modern conduct book writers, devotes an entire chapter to the art of brewing in his The English Housewife.[2]

Given that many of the surviving manuscript recipe books were produced within the homes of well-off landed gentry, many of whom resided in large countryside estates, it is not perhaps surprising that recipes of ale and beer are common features in these texts. From ‘cock ale’ (on which Joel Klein so engagingly wrote last year) to ‘heath beer’ to ‘laxative beer’ to ‘Doctor Ffryers beere for ye Scurvy’ to an ‘Ale by Dr Willis when sharp Humours in the Blood cause convulsive motions in the joynts’, instructions to make all kinds of ales and beers abound in early modern English household recipe books. In general, these can be separated into two groups.

The first deals with the actual brewing of ale and beer. That is, it offers readers suggestions for the proportions of malt to water to hops and instructions on the different steps of brewing. The second group of recipes involve boiling or seeping a variety of herbs in ready-brewed ale or beer. Willis’ recipe mentioned above is good example. There, the compiler (in this case, Johanna St. John), advises the maker to boil in 4 gallons of ale 4 handfuls of fur or pine tree and 6 orange peels and ¼ of a pound of yellow dock roots if brewing in the winter or male peony roots and 2 ounce of chine root if brewing in the summer. The ale here serves a dual function – both as medicine and as a liquid carrier for the herbs infused within.

The other group of recipes for ale and beer concern the brewing process itself and provide fascinating insight into ‘brewing science’ in the early modern household. Thanks to James Sumner and Otto Sibum, we are well aware of the range of knowledge and techniques required of commercial or common brewers.[3] As with recipes for other medicines and foodstuffs, there is a great deal of variation in the ‘recipe archive’. Two recipes particularly stand out and I aim to share both with you over my next two posts.

The first recipe is for strong beer and is recorded in at least three contemporary manuscript recipe books (here, here and here). This version, to make two hogsheads of beer, uses malt, wheat, dried ‘pease’, oates and hops. Interestingly, the recipe suggests that the ‘brewer’ boil the liquor for two hours – revealing both who is actually doing the brewing (unlikely the recipe compiler) and the country gentry’s preference for the ‘long boil’ which so irked later writers such as Thomas Tryon and Jeffrey Boys.[4]

Johanna St. John, a frequent subject of posts on this blog, also preferred the long boil. In a letter to her steward, she gave very specific instructions for the stocking of her cellar. This included the preparation of two sorts of strong beer and an ale which she ‘would have it boyled for 4 to 5 howers at the least’.[5] There might be many reasons for seventeenth-century gentlemen and gentlewomen opted for the ‘long boil’. Given that this step might have been performed in an open-copper, this step must have affected both the taste and the strength of the finished drink. The fashion for the ‘long boil’ faded by the eighteenth-century when brewers preferred shorter boils of around an hour. An example can be seen in Joseph Boys’ Directions for Brewing in which the recommended boil lasts only an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the kind of beer brewed (p. 15).

All this talk about beer has weakened my resolve to write, lured by the early summer sunshine and some good German heiferweizen, I think that I might just go visit that local biergarten. I haven’t, though, forgotten about the second intriguing beer recipe. It’s one to make strong ale and I promise to talk more about it in my next post.

[1] Pamela Sambrook, Country House Brewing in England 1500-1900 (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1996).

[2] Chapter 8, Of the Office of the Brew house, and the Bake house, and the necessary things belonging to the same. Gervase Markham, The English House-wifes in The Way to get Wealth (London 1631), 243.

[3] Heinz Otto Sibum, ‘Reworking the Mechanical Value of Heat: Instruments of Precision and Gestures of Accuracy in Early Victorian England’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 26.1 (1995): 73-106 and James Sumner, Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700-1880 (London, 2013).

[4] Thomas Tryon’s A New Art of Brewing (London 1690) and Jeffrey Boy’s Directions for Brewing Malt Liquors (1700)

[5] Brian Carne, Some St. John Family Papers. Reproduced, with corrections and additions, from the Report of the Friends of Lydiard Tregoz, 27, 28 and 29 (1994-6), 95.