From a document in TNA WARD 5/39, listing the lands etc of the recently deceased John Bowyer, knight: Comitate Cestrie A messuage and twoe Cottages with thappertunances in the County of Chester in Bradwall Are holden of Thomas Venables esquire […]
Monthly Archives: February 2012
The reliability of “Winwood’s Memorials”
The three-volume Memorials of affairs of state in the reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I, collected (chiefly) from the original papers of … Sir Ralph Winwood, edited by Edmund Sawyer, published in 1725 (2nd ed. 1727), is a hugely convenient work for those working on late Elizabethan and early Stuart State Papers, since […]
on the wagon
charrette, n. a final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline Thus saith Futility Closet. And I thought, there’s a definition of my state if ever one was. But of course one has to check these things (words) in the OED, which says: charet | charette, n. Obs. A wheeled vehicle or conveyance. ..que? Only by […]
Sir Charles Cornwallis in his valley of misery
The first English Ambassador in Spain post-Elizabeth, Sir Charles Cornwallis, got bit of a rough deal. English trade with Spain had just been opened up again (in 1604), but relations were still somewhat strained, and many English merchants found themselves in trouble in Spain – some of it their own causing, but much of it not. These […]