He appeared to be a man in a
hurry, dressed for a hard ride on horseback, or so a number of historical
accounts claim. There are quite a few variations in the historical record of
Gunpowder Plot, the conspiracy among a small group of Catholics to blow sky
high not only the English Parliament but King James I and his ministers of
state.
And all with the light of a match in the
pocket of one Guy Fawkes.
The year was 1605. Good Queen Bess had
died in ‘03, James VI of Scotland had ascended the English throne as James I,
and English Catholics were growing increasingly disappointed that a more
relaxed attitude toward the Old Faithin
a Protestant land had not come to pass. After all, James was the son of Mary,
Queen of Scots, Catholic to the core, and to many it just stood to reason that
there would be an easing of both civic and religious restrictions on the
English Catholic community.
The Michaelmas daisy is so named because it blooms in late September and through much of October in moderate climates, adding color to gardens when many other perennials are well past their prime. Michaelmas falls on Sept. 29. The plant is also known as aster.
John Tradescant the Younger, the 17th-century Englishman and botany enthusiast for whom Agecroft’s Tradescant Garden is named, brought samples of the Virginia aster (aster lateriflorus) back to England from America in 1633, later returning again with the New England aster (aster nova angliae) and a sample of the New York aster (aster nova belgii).
It’s time to eat. It’s Michaelmas.
September 29: The Feast Day of St. Michael and All Angels, observed and celebrated as one of the Quarter Days on Tudor England’s calendar.
Rents got paid. Reeves got elected (the shire reeves, from which we derive the word “sheriff”).
Geese got nervous, and for good reason: the traditional meal at Michaelmas was roast goose.
Christian tradition holds that St. Michael the Archangel (whose name in Hebrew translates, “Who is like God?”) was the leader of the angelic army of God that threw Satan out of Heaven after a considerable row. A more earthly tradition holds that when Satan fell to earth, he landed amidst prickly blackberry bushes, and he cursed them as he did so, stomping on them in retaliation.
As a result, the admonition to refrain from picking blackberries after September 29 became part of the lore of Michaelmas (pronounced MICKel-mus). The fact that the berries generally didn’t taste so good after late September made the stricture more convenient. Sept. 29 falls near the autumnal equinox, and so became one of the four
“Quarter Days” of the year, in which outstanding debts were
traditionally settled and a variety of legal matters might be attended
to in Tudor England.. These days were mentioned in a 1575 poem by
George Gascoigne:
And when the tenants come to pay their quarter’s rent, They bring some fowl at Midsummer, a dish of fish in Lent, At Christmas a capon, at Michaelmas a goose, And somewhat else at New Year’s tide, for fear their lease fly loose.
Apparently a little extra greasing of the landlord’s palm was never a bad idea, just to stay on his good side.
