Nice DayOne Day,One Nice!!!!

Fast-day for the King’s death. I all the morning at my chamber making up my month’s accounts, which I did before dinner to my thorough content, and find myself but a small gainer this month, having no manner of profits, but just my salary, but, blessed be God! that I am able to save out of that, living as I do. So to dinner, then to my chamber all the afternoon, and in the evening my wife and I and Mercer and Barker to little Michell’s, walked, with some neats’ tongues and cake and wine, and there sat with the little couple with great pleasure, and talked and eat and drank, and saw their little house, which is very pretty; and I much pleased therewith, and so walked home, about eight at night, it being a little moonshine and fair weather, and so into the garden, and, with Mercer, sang till my wife put me in mind of its being a fast day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and home to cards awhile, and had opportunity ‘para baiser’ Mercer several times, and so to bed.

Up to the office all the morning, where Sir W. Pen and I look much askewe one upon another, though afterward business made us speak friendly enough, but yet we hate one another. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office, where all the afternoon expecting Mr. Gawden to come for some money I am to pay him, but he comes not, which makes me think he is considering whether it be necessary to make the present he hath promised, it being possible this alteration in the Controller’s duty may make my place in the Victualling unnecessary, so that I am a little troubled at it. Busy till late at night at the office, and Sir W. Batten come to me, and tells me that there is newes upon the Exchange to-day, that my Lord Sandwich’s coach and the French Embassador’s at Madrid, meeting and contending for the way, they shot my Lord’s postilion and another man dead; and that we have killed 25 of theirs, and that my Lord is well. How true this is I cannot tell, there being no newes of it at all at Court, as I am told late by one come thence, so that I hope it is not so. By and by comes Mrs. Turner to me, to make her complaint of her sad usage she receives from my Lord Bruncker, that he thinks much she hath not already got another house, though he himself hath employed her night and day ever since his first mention of the matter, to make part of her house ready for him, as he ordered, and promised she should stay till she had fitted herself; by which and what discourse I do remember he had of the business before Sir W. Coventry on Sunday last I perceive he is a rotten- hearted, false man as any else I know, even as Sir W. Pen himself, and, therefore, I must beware of him accordingly, and I hope I shall. I did pity the woman with all my heart, and gave her the best council I could; and so, falling to other discourse, I made her laugh and merry, as sad as she came to me; so that I perceive no passion in a woman can be lasting long; and so parted and I home, and there teaching my girle Barker part of my song “It is decreed,” which she will sing prettily, and so after supper to bed.

Up, and down to the Old Swan, and there drank at Michell’s and saw Betty, and so took boat and to the Temple, and thence to my tailor’s and other places about business in my way to Westminster, where I spent the morning at the Lords’ House door, to hear the conference between the two Houses about my Lord Mordaunt, of which there was great expectation, many hundreds of people coming to hear it. But, when they come, the Lords did insist upon my Lord Mordaunt’s having leave to sit upon a stool uncovered within their burr, and that he should have counsel, which the Commons would not suffer, but desired leave to report their Lordships’ resolution to the House of Commons; and so parted for this day, which troubled me, I having by this means lost the whole day. Here I hear from Mr. Hayes that Prince Rupert is very bad still, and so bad, that he do now yield to be trepanned. It seems, as Dr. Clerke also tells me, it is a clap of the pox which he got about twelve years ago, and hath eaten to his head and come through his scull, so his scull must be opened, and there is great fear of him. Much work I find there is to do in the two Houses in a little time, and much difference there is between the two Houses in many things to be reconciled; as in the Bill for examining our accounts; Lord Mordaunt’s Bill for building the City, and several others. A little before noon I went to the Swan and eat a bit of meat, thinking I should have had occasion to have stayed long at the house, but I did not, but so home by coach, calling at Broad Street and taking the goldsmith home with me, and paid him 15l. 15s. for my silver standish. He tells me gold holds up its price still, and did desire me to let him have what old 20s. pieces I have, and he would give me 3s. 2d. change for each. He gone, I to the office, where business all the afternoon, and at night comes Mr. Gawden at my desire to me, and to-morrow I shall pay him some money, and shall see what present he will make me, the hopes of which do make me to part with my money out of my chest, which I should not otherwise do, but lest this alteration in the Controller’s office should occasion my losing my concernment in the Victualling, and so he have no more need of me. He gone, I to the office again, having come thence home with him to talk, and so after a little more business I to supper. I then sent for Mercer, and began to teach her “It is decreed,” which will please me well, and so after supper and reading a little, and my wife’s cutting off my hair short, which is grown too long upon my crown of my head, I to bed. I met this day in Westminster Hall Sir W. Batten and [Sir] W. Pen, and the latter since our falling out the other day do look mighty reservedly upon me, and still he shall do so for me, for I will be hanged before I seek to him, unless I see I need it.

Elizabethan audiences at The Globe and The Rose theaters gnoshed on oysters, mussels, hazelnuts, walnuts, pies and dried fruit while attending plays by the likes of Shakepeare and Marlowe.

The evidence has emerged from the most detailed study ever carried out on a Tudor or early Stuart playhouse. Archaeologists have been analysing the thousands of seeds, pips, stones, nutshell fragments, shellfish remains and fish and animal bones found on the site of the Rose Playhouse on London’s South Bank.

Museum of London Archaeology has just published the findings in The Rose and The Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, written by archaeologists Julian Bowsher and Pat Miller.

Bowsher and Miller found that there was an identifiable class component to what audiences ate. The standing crowd in the open area in front of the stage — felicitously referred to as “groundlings” or “stinkards” — mainly stuck with shellfish and nuts. In fact, the huge quantities of discarded hazelnut shells doubled as a kind of sawdust layer on the floor to absorb the many grossnesses of weather and population density.

Oysters remained a staple in the diet of London’s poor well into the Victorian period, Bowsher notes. Large quantities of oyster shells have been found in pretty much every excavation she’s done at the Museum of London Archaeology.

The covered gallery seats where the monied theater-goers gatheredl, on the other hand, show evidence of a more rarefied diet of crab, sturgeon and imported dried fruit like raisins, fig and peaches.

There are also remnants of New World contributions to Elizabethan culture, like pumpkin seeds and tobacco leavings. Sir Walter Raleigh had only introduced Virginia tobacco to England in 1578, but audiences at The Globe and The Rose seem to have been smoking pipes just 10 years later.

We know tobacco was being grown on the banks of Thames already, but we don’t actually know that it was Virginia tobacco, though. It could have been Latin American tobacco via Spain’s colonies which was introduced to Europeans right after Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

An elderly couple in Dorset, UK, found much to their astonishment that the umbrella stand they put in a junk room because they thought it was ugly was an Chinese imperial vase made for the Emperor Qianlong in 1740. Its estimated auction value is £500,000 ($807,000), which is more than their house and everything in it is worth.

The couple, who prefers to remain anonymous, received it as a gift 50 years ago. They had no idea that it was a rare and valuable item. Over the years it’s seen some harsh treatment. There’s a noticeable crack in it and some paint stains. In perfect condition it might have been worth twice as much.

The vase is considered top quality porcelain from the period, a period which itself is considered the Golden Age of Chinese porcelain. The artwork is a beautifully detailed landscape of wooded mountains, most likely a one-of-a-kind design. The base is marked with insignia of the Emperor Qianlong and the Chinese script at the top of the vase translates to “precious thing.”

Guy Schwinge (scha-winge!) from Duke’s, the auction house whose appraiser found the vase during a walkthrough of the vendors’ home, clearly agrees:

“Successful firing of underglaze blue and red on one object required the highest level of technical mastery.

“Different firing conditions are necessary and it is a process fraught with difficulties.

“For this reason it is a combination of colours usually reserved only for the finest imperial wares.

“The quality of the painting on the vase is of the highest order.

“Stylistically it is reminiscent of the work of Wang Hui, who produced a series of 12 monumental scrolls depicting the Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour of 1689.

“The form of the vase is that of a Chinese lantern, a style characteristic of wares from the reign of Yongzheng and the early part of the reign of Qianlong.

“This vase balances elegance of form, outstanding decoration and technical prowess, which are all characteristics of the great period of innovation in porcelain manufacture under the legendary kiln supervisor, Tang Ying.

“He was so highly regarded by the Emperor that in 1743 he was commanded to compile an illustrated book on porcelain manufacture, which is an invaluable reference for scholars.”

There’s also some vague Florence Nightingale connection that none of the articles elucidate. Duke’s wesbsite cites Florence Nightingale’s home Embley Park as the original UK source of the vase.