Mistress Gunter entertains 1670

Mistress Mary Gunter(1) sighed with relief. The meal was almost over and Betsi and the other servants brought in the bowls, jugs of water and towels for the diners to wash their hands. The servants cleared away the pewter plates, cider(2) mugs, knives, and spoons(3).

Mistress Mary and Betsi had laboured over the menu and then the cooking for many days before. She had not been pleased when her husband, Thomas, had announced that they would entertain their friends with dinner(4) and a musical entertainment afternoon. Father David had only recently left the house after staying for the latter part of Lent to hear everyone’s confessions and then to celebrate Easter. It had been a busy time as everyone needed to take communion at the Easter Mass. Easter had been late this year, and now they were into the end of May, the lean times when stores are always low, the new harvests just coming in.

They had concocted a menu, the first course of stewed carp from their own stock in the pond, with rabbits from the market, roasted by the fire, and salmon caught in the Usk locally. To accompany this(5), they still had carrots and turnips in store and the cabbage was ready in the garden. The second course was a tart made with their own eggs and their own early spinach together with two neat’s tongues(6) cooked and pressed into shape and left to go cold.

To add to that, she had found cheese in the market made on the farm from local milk. Fortunately, the weather had been clement and plenty of young sallet greens were in the garden for the second course accompaniment. She had arranged the sallet(7) in her precious porcelain dish. She put sorrel, together with some red sage, then small lettuce hearts sliced lengthways with a layer of thinly sliced oranges and lemons (bought expensively in the market) and put pickled cucumbers from the larder on the top. It had looked spectacular, she thought, but everyone had just eaten it without comment. Then had come the new ‘dessert'(8), sweet almonds, dried figs and marmalad(9) of both quince and oranges cut into small squares to be eaten as delicacies, before she had signalled to Betsi to bring in the bowls for hand washing. 

Betsi would ensure that the small parlour on the ground floor just across the passageway from the hall kitchen was returned to its usual appearance and use for business while the guests went upstairs to the entertainment in the parlour on the first floor. The oval gate-leg table which had been extended to its full size would be folded back, the backed stools put to the wall and the armed chairs placed next to the reduced table for any clients and, of course, Thomas Gunter, the attorney, with his clerk to one side to keep the written records.

When she reached the parlour upstairs, Thomas was already seated holding his viol de gamba tuning it with his cousin Robert who had deigned to join them, as he was very fond of playing music. Robert had given Thomas some printed music he had recently acquired in London and the clerk, Owen, had copied them out so that everyone had one. Thomas, and Owen on the flute, had been practising them in preparation. It was obvious now that Robert, ever competitive, had also practiced well.

They started with some songs accompanying the women as they sang in parts including familiar ones such as ‘Old England Grown New’ and ‘Sir Francis Drake’. Then Mistress Gunter picked up her small harp and joined them playing the continuo part to their improvisations and embellishments. She thought then that she would love to have one of the new triple harps that were starting to become available in Wales. That would give her so much more flexibility in what to play. They paused for rest and conversation, Betsi having brought up some sweet cider and little cakes.

Master Richard Lewis and his wife Anna, relations by marriage, were to stay the night with them, it being too much to travel back to Usk in the evening and she noted that Master Richard, who was usually a very upright attorney, was drinking rather too much and becoming rather loud. She suggested that they might play a little more before Robert and his wife, Mary, returned home. Richard picked up his base viola and frowned in concentration as he tried to focus on what he was doing, before saying in a rather loud voice, that he would just listen for a while. Shortly afterwards his head was nodding as he slipped in and out of dozing. Eventually, Robert put down his viola and said that they must leave, and the party broke up as he and his wife were escorted downstairs and out through the grand door out into the garden to walk back to Priory House before it became dark on Beili Lane. Thomas escorted them to the garden gate before returning, looking at his wife with raised eyebrows and a smile, relieved that he had managed to have an evening with his equally opinionated cousin without falling out.

Later they had their light evening meal served on side tables in the upstairs parlour, just a few meat pies, potted meat cooked and sealed under butter, and the left over sallet. Richard had recovered and was full of conversation as though released from constraint after the departure of Robert Gunter. Mistress Mary thought that Robert was such an important man in the area as well as older than his cousin Thomas, and Richard. He tended to stop any flow in the free interchange of ideas by stating his opinion loudly and forcibly – and he disliked any opposition. And, of course, he was not a Catholic like Richard and Anna Lewis and themselves. Religion had to be avoided as a topic unless it was to find amusement at the habits and behaviour of the rising number of non-conformists, of whom there were many in the neighbourhood. At last, with Richard looking as if he would nod off again, the onerous day for Mistress Gunter was over, and they retired to bed.

The guest chamber had been prepared for the guests after Father David had left – they would never have guests to stay while he was with them, both because of the possible danger and because he rose so frequently from bed to say prayers. They took a combination of a rushlight and candle in a holder. The candle(10) gave better light, but the rushlight was useful in the night for a dimmer light in case you needed to rise and use the chamber pot. They were fortunate enough to have a tinder box in each room with a flint and iron striker with some tinder for lighting a fire or a candle. Mistress Gunter was glad to retire herself, as she and the servants would need to be up early to prepare breakfast(11) for the family and the visitors before they left. She had planned to give them oatmeal caudles(12) with ale, together with toast with butter, cinnamon and a little sugar dusted on it, together with cheese for those who wanted it.

After the breakfast and much less talking than the previous day, so much having already been covered, Thomas took their guests to the livery at the Sun Inn just inside the South Town Gate up the hill, to collect their horses and ride back to their house in Usk. Mistress Mary and the servants busied themselves with returning the house to its usual order with a satisfied feeling of having done well.