THE OBSERVER ( Magazine ) - ' The Triumph of the British ' c.1971 series edited by Colin Cross - But most people had scurvy -

Richard Tames

THE 'roast beef of olde England' was in Tudor times the preserve of the upper classes only.

The masses fed meagerly, The rich sometimes ate themselves to death, but their more lavish tables, reserved for special occasions, were for sheer display, not only for greed.

On 6 January 1508 the guests and household of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham consumed in two meals : 678 loaves, 33 bottles of Gascony, 259 flagons of ale, 36 rounds of beef, 12 sheep, 2 calves, 4 pigs, 3 swans, 6 geese, 6 sucking pip, 10 capons, 2 peacocks, 2 herons, 22 rabbits, 300 - odd fowl of various kinds (including 3 dozen larks and 9 mallards), 50 - odd fishes, eels and other types of sea-food (including a salt sturgeon, half a fresh salmon and 200 oysters), plus eggs, milk ( 15 flagons ), herbs and other sundries .

Such banquets were reserved for religious festivals or special occasions like a marriage, the knighting of an eldest son or a visit by the King. A profusion of dishes was served, with the emphasis on the exotic and the spectacular - herons or peacocks reinserted into their skins after cooking, or gilded, or served in armorial poses on an edible plinth of ' mortrew' (egg yolks and minced meats).

More routinely, the custom was a breakfast of wine-soaked bread, then a main 'dinner' in the early afternoon, with plenty of meat and few or no vegetables. except for boiled lettuce. Fruit was popular, though.

Salting and smoking were almost the only methods of food preservation and so spices were relied upon to make bitter or half-rotten meat edible in the winter months. Brought at enormous expense from the East, spices cost from 6d. a pound ( pepper ) to 15s. a pound ( saffron ), the latter being equal to about three months' wages for an unskilled labourer. Galingale, zeodary and ginger were much favoured. Sugar and rice also qualified as 'spices' on account of their rarity.

The other great import was wine, imported by the 'tun' ( of 252 gallons ) mainly from the former English-held lands in Gascony. By the late fifteenth Century annual imports amounted to about 3 million gallons, accounting for a third of all imports by value. The carrying capacity of all vessels Came to be reckoned in terms of their 'tunnage'.

The poor, by contrast, rarely saw meat, except as bacon, provided by runty, razor-backed pigs which lived on acorns and rotten fruit. The staple of the peasant's diet was bread, and that mostly black or brown, made from rye or barley or a mixture of the two known as maslin'. Vegetables were eaten in soups or stews, the only kind of dish possible in a cauldron over an open fire. Cheese was the main source of protein, especially in winter, and home-brewed ale was the common drink. Honey was the only sweetener, and nuts and berries gathered on the village waste provided some variety in an otherwise monotonous diet.

As a diet its main deficiency was a serious lack of vitamin C, especially in winter, when fruit and vegetables were scarce, By spring, most of the population would have blotchy skin and swollen gums, the early symptoms of scurvy.

Another common deficiency disease, due to lack of vitamin A, was xerophthalmia, night-blindness, which made it difficult for the eyes to adjust swiftly from light to dark or dark to light and might eventually lead to total blindness. A folk remedy was found in the plant appropriately christened 'eye-bright'. Skin diseases, indiscriminately labeled leprosy, were also the result of the bad diet.

For the most part, however, the main problem was not the quality of food, but its quantity. Harvest failure could still mean death by starvation. Two or three harvest failures in succession could wipe out whole human communities .