The year book of daily recreation and information concerning remarkable men and manners, times and seasons, solemnities and merry-makings, antiquities and novelties on the plan of the 'Every-day book and table book.' / By William Hone.

  • Hone, William, 1780-1842.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The year book of daily recreation and information concerning remarkable men and manners, times and seasons, solemnities and merry-makings, antiquities and novelties on the plan of the 'Every-day book and table book.' / By William Hone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/842
    My lord useth and accustometh to give yearly, when his lordship is at home, and hath an Abbot of misrule in Christmas, in his lordship’s house, upon new-year's day, in reward, 20s. te his lordship’s officer of arms, herald, or pursuivant, for crying “ Largess” before his lordship on new-year’s day, as upon the twelfth day following, for each day, 10s. a To his lordship’s six trumpets, when they play at my lord’s chamber door, on new-year’s day in the morning, 13s. 4d. for my lord, and 6s. 8d. for my lady, if she be at my lord’s finding. To his lordship’s footmen, when they do give his lordship gloves in the morn- ing, each of them 3s. 4d.* REMARKABLE NEW YEAR'S GIITS. Sir John Harrington, of Bath, sent to James I. (then James VI. of Scotland only) at Christmas, 1602, for a New-year’s gift, a curious “dark lantern.” The top was a crown of pure gold, serving also to cover a perfume pan; within it was a shield of silver embossed, to reflect the light ; on one side of which were the sun, moon, and planets, and on the other side the story of the birth and passion of Christ “as it is found graved by a king of Scots [David II.] that was prisoncr in Notting- ham.” Sir Jolin caused to be inscribed in Latin, on this present, the following pas- sage for his majesty’s perusal, “ Lord re- member me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” Mr. Park well observes of this New-year’s lantern, that ‘ it was evidently fabricated at a moment when the lamp of life grew dim in the frame of queen Elizabeth: it is. curious as arelique of court-craft, but it displays a ‘darkness visible’ in the eharacter of our politic knight, and proves that he was an early worshipper of the regal sun which rose in the north, though his own ‘notes and pri- vate remembrances’ would seem to indicate adifferent disposition.” In truth the ‘regal sun” of the north had not yet ap- peared above the horizon; for Elizabeth was still living, and the suppliant to her expected successor was ectually writing of her, in these terms: ‘I find some less mindful of what they are suun to lose, than of what perchance they may hereafter get. Now, on my own part, I cannot blot from my memory’s table the goodness of our sovereign lady to me, even (I will * Antiquarian Repertory, say) before born. Her affection to my mother, who waited in her privy chamber, her bettering the state of my father’s for- tune, her watchings over my youth, her liking to my free speech, &c., have rooted such love, such dutiful remembrance of her princely virtues, that to tarn askant from her condition with tearless eyes would stain and foul the spring and fount of grati- tude.” The grieving knight wrote thus of his “ sovereign lady,” to his own wife, whom he calls “sweet Mall,” two days after he had dispatched the dark lantern to James, with “Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.’”* Dark Lantern. It is a persuasion among the illiterate that it is not lawful to go about with a dark lantern. This groundless notion is presumed to have been derived either from Guy Fawkes having used a dark lantern as a conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, or from the regulation of the curfew which required all fires to be extinguished by a certain hour. Lanterns. Lanterns were in use among the an- cients. One was discovered in the sub- terranean ruins of Herculaneum. Some lanterns were of horn, and others of bladder resembling horn. One of Stosch’s gems represents Love enveloped in dra- pery, walking softly, and carrying a lan- tern in his hand. The dark lantern of the Roman sentinels was square, covered on three sides with black skin, and on the other side white skin, which permitted the light to pass. On the Trojan column is a great ship-lantern hanging before the poop of the vessel. With us, lanterns were in common use very early. That horn-lanterns were invented by Alfred is a common, but apparently an erroneous statement; for Mr. Fosbroke shows that not only horn, but glass lanterns were mentioned as in use among the Anglo- Saxons, many years before Alfred lived. That gentleman cites from Aldhelm, who wrote in the seventh century, a passage to this effect, “ Let not the glass lantern be despised, or that made of a shorn hide and osier-twigs; or of a thin skin, al- though a brass lamp may excel it.” Our ancient hand-lantern was an oblong square, carried the narrow end uppermost, with an arched aperture for the light, and a square handle.+ * Nuge Antique i. 321, 325. t Barrington’s Obs. on Anc. Statutes. Brand