[Sca-cooks] Transcription of Katherine Seymour Hertford's commonplace book

Johnna Holloway johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu
Mon Feb 5 05:03:58 PST 2007


Very interesting.
I wonder how UPa ended up with the manuscript.
I looked her up in case people don't recognize the name.
The best short bio for her is in the HRP website.
*Lady Catherine Grey *
Lady Catherine Grey (1540 - 1568) was the sister to Lady Jane Grey, and 
led almost as tragic a short life. In 1554, she learnt that her father, 
sister and brother-in-law had been executed after the ill-starred 
attempt to place her elder sister on the throne. Under Queen Elizabeth 
I, Catherine's position as the rival claimant (she was the granddaughter 
of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary) rose once against to the surface. 
Her clandestine marriage to Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, in 1560 
did not help. Queen Elizabeth found out when Catherine's pregnancy 
became to obvious to disguise, and both husband and wife were sent to 
the Tower in September 1561. Catherine gave birth to a son, and, more 
scandalously, managed to conceive again. Catherine and Edward were meant 
to be kept apart, but the Lieutenant of the Tower, Edward Warner, had 
allowed the young couple to meet in secret. Freed from the Tower into 
house arrest in 1563, she died from tuberculosis in 1568, still 
separated from her husband. See Historic Royal Palaces for more about 
the prisoners kept in the Tower.

Off hand it looks to me like some of these recipes are out of Alessio. 
I'll have to do a comparison later. "Docter Stevens water" [20v]
is interesting because Karen Hess in her notes to MWBofC only dated such 
waters back to 1584. This would date it back another
16 years.

Johnnae


Daniel Myers wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I've finally finished my transcription project and have uploaded the  
> results.
>
> "The commonplace book of Countess Katherine Seymour Hertford" (U. of  
> Penn. Ms. Codex 823) is a 16th century English bound manuscript which  
> included both culinary and medicinal recipes - over 170 recipes total.
>
> The full text can be found at
> http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/mscodex823.txt
>
> - Doc
>
>
>   




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