A proper newe booke of cokerye / edited by Catherine Frances Frere. With notes, introduction and glossary; together with some account of domestic life, cookery and feasts in Tudor days, and of the first owners of the book, Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, and Margaret Parker his wife.

Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A proper newe booke of cokerye / edited by Catherine Frances Frere. With notes, introduction and glossary; together with some account of domestic life, cookery and feasts in Tudor days, and of the first owners of the book, Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, and Margaret Parker his wife. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    77/300
    On a later occasion Parker’s business capacity saved not only his own College but the University of Cambridge from “ravening wolves.” The property of the University had been threatened by the rapacity of King Henry YIII’s Courtiers, and Parker, who was then Vice-Chancellor, accom- panied by other Heads of Colleges, personally interviewed the King at Hampton Court, when King Henry was so satisfied with the account presented to him of the revenues and expenses of the Colleges, written on “ a fair sheet of vellum,” that he confirmed the Colleges in their possessions, which thus “by the judicious management of Matthew Parker were preserved.” In 1547, in the reign of Edward VI, Matthew Parker, at the age of forty-three, married Margaret, who was herself twenty-eight, daughter of Robert Harlestone of Matsall, or Mattishal, Norfolk, gentleman. Margaret Parker, throughout her married life, proved indeed an ideal wife. She was “ a person accomplished in all good endowments of body and mind, and towards him of great tenderness.” She proved as excellent a wife as she was an excellent woman, “ very obedient, indulgent, and observant of her husband, and her behaviour such as it became much taken notice of, and Bishop Ridley is reported to have asked if Mrs. Parker had a sister, as though he should have been willing to have married, if he eould have found her fellow.” Dr. Sandys, Bishop of London, called her “Parker’s Abbess ” for “ her gravity, chastity, discretion and piety.” Strype gives a charming sketch of her: “While Parker was in a private capacity,” he says, “ she showed her discretion in her good house- wifery and frugality; and yet, for her husband’s