[Sca-cooks] mysterious query

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 24, 2007, at 12:24 PM, Elaine Koogler wrote:

> Actually, the concept of a parliament as a part of the English  
> governmental
> system goes back much earlier...I know that Queen Elizabeth makes  
> reference
> to asking Parliament on several occasions during her reign...in fact,
> according to Wikipedia, the first elected parliament was summoned  
> by Simon
> de Montfort in 1265.  The election system was refined into creating  
> boroughs
> that were represented and resulted in the Model Parliament in 1295  
> of Edward
> I.  Again, according to Wikipedia, Parliament had split into the  
> two houses
> as they currently exist by the time of Edward III.  So, it would  
> appear that
> Parliament in England has been around for a while.  The Welsh  
> Parliament was
> brought into that of England in the 16th century, and James I,  
> successor to
> Elizabeth, combined the Scottish Parliament in as well.

Oh, no doubt! I was just wondering about the reasoning process for  
the statement that a reference to Parliament cakes in a novel set in  
the late 17th century was an anachronism. It could well be; I just  
wanted to know why, and the reasons I was able to think of myself  
didn't seem adequate. And, of course, none of those reasons actually  
supports their existence at that time, either; they merely fail, on  
their own merit, to prove that they didn't exist.

In other words, what we have pretty well established is that if  
Parliament Cakes as conceived in the 19th century (basically biscuits  
made with treacle, butter, flour, and powdered ginger, with or  
without other ingredients) did not exist in recognizable form in the  
17th century, the questions of treacle availability or the existence  
of a Parliament in either England or Scotland would not be among the  
reasons. The question, therefore, was "What are the reasons?"

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04