University of Virginia Library

Of the period when calves were first introduced into this country we have no certain account. It must, however, have been previous to the age of Elizabeth, inasmuch as we find England in that reign already celebrated for its beef, then commonly partaken of at breakfast, its introduction to the dinner-table being the innovation of a later age. That eminent naturalist, Mr. P. Hyson, has proved to demonstration that veal must have been antecedent to beef, as the maturity of the one is necessarily preceded by the precocity of the other; indeed, veal may be defined as beef in an incipient state. According to an antient distich preserved by that erudite antiquary, Mr. Puffman, [Hofman] of Bishopsgate Street Within,

If there be any truth in this tradition, the era must be that of King John, who was formally excommunicated by Pope Leo the Tenth (Ganganelli) for granting Catholic Emancipation, and refusing to kiss his toe. The dissolution of the monastic orders followed, and the Reformation was soon after brought about, principally through the preaching of the celebrated Martin Bree. This supposition is further countenanced by a passage in the old play of King John, by Barber Beaumont and Fletcher, in which the Lord Falconbridge, addressing the Archbishop of Austria, is made to say “And hang a calve's skin on those recreant limbs,” a recommendation which would seem to intimate that calve-skins were rare at that period, and worn only as an article of dress, on state occasions, by the principal nobility.

Leden, or as it is now spelt, Leadenhall, was formerly a Dominican Convent for monks of the Order of St. Francis. It occupied the site on which the market now stands, having Gracious (now Grace-church) street to the west, and to the east a magnificent pile of building belonging to the Honourable East India Company, against whom these ambitious ecclesiastics maintained a long litigation in the Court of Chancery on the subject of tythes.

Jackasses are supposed to be indigenous in this country; it is at least certain that they were common in the time of Richard the Conqueror, and the breed has by no means degenerated. From the peculiar sagacity of this “fine animal,” its name is held in great veneration in the City of London, as the symbol of “absolute wisdom,” and has not only been frequently conferred as a title of honour upon aldermen, but has even been supposed to lend a lustre to the name of the chief magistrate himself. Mr. Kempe, in his valuable History of the New Post Office, mentions a rare print, representing a Lord Mayor in his robes of office with an ass's head on. It were superfluous to speak farther of the ass, in its emblematic capacity, before a society which has so deservedly affixed A.S.S. as a proud distinction to the names of its members. As an article of food, the flesh of the ass is now little in request, except at corporation dinners and other civic entertainments, and occasionally, in the form of sausages, in the more thickly inhabited parts of the metropolis.

From this term of address it would seem that the salesman, or master butcher, here alluded to, was a person of distinction, or a member of a body corporate. Ealdermann, or Eorlderman, was a title of honour amongst the ancient Scandinavians or Scavengers, and is still used by their descendants, the Low Dutch, as the appropriate designation of an elderly lady. It was the custom formerly, for Eorldermen to ride upon white horses (see Tillotson and Jeffrey Monmouth passim). Their persons were held to be inviolable, and the form of an imprecation is still extant, made use of towards an offender who had inflicted an injury on one of their body— “Zoundes, Sir! you've cutte offe the Eorldermanne's thumbe!”

This title must not be confounded with the modern “Alderman,” an office of great dignity and importance, usually filled by persons of respectability.

Bobbe, an antient coin, equal in value to one shilling of our money. It was styled a Bobbe, from Robert Bruce, last Sovereign Prince of South Wales, who was slain in battle by Edward the Third, and whose effigy and legend it bore. One of these scarce coins is now in my possession, the head much defaced, and the inscription altogether obliterated.

A curious illustration of the state of the gastronomic thermometer in days of yore. Its fluctuations seem to have been nearly the same in all ages. My learned friend, Mr. Michael Scaley, whose experience in these matters is too well-known to need farther comment, affirms, that, “Weal is allays dearest a'ter Chrissmus.”

The Boar, or “Hogge,” was the well-known cognisance of the House of Lancaster, and usually stamped on the coins of all the Princes of that dynasty. When William the Third, surnamed the Crook-back Tyrant, from causing Perkin Warbeck to be smothered in the Tower, fell at Bosworth Field, Joseph de Lancaster, the sole survivor of the family, fled to America, where it is believed he still resides, exercising, in imitation of another great living potentate, the humble occupation of a schoolmaster. Mr. Heseltine's assertion, that he became a bricklayer in St. Giles's parish (vide ‘Last of the Plantagenets’), and built a stack of chimneys at Eastwell Park, for the Earl of Winchelsea, is a pleasing fiction, but utterly at variance with facts as developed by the severity of historical research. The precise value of the Hogge I have no means of ascertaining. The Tyzzie is the same as the Tizzy, i. e., sixpence, and was current during the “wars of the Roses,” so called from a noble but turbulent family, which recently became extinct in the person of the late George Rose, Esq., M.P., for the borough of Christ Church, Hants.