[MR] History Blog: Turkey Eaten in Tudor England

Garth Groff and Sally Sanford mallardlodge1000 at gmail.com
Fri Dec 22 02:17:04 PST 2017


Noble Friends,

This piece was forwarded to me by Lady Sophia, who is not on the Merry
Rose. The History Blog article cites three animal bones found at a dig in
Exeter in 1983. The bones were recently analyzed and found to be from
turkeys. According to the blog, the turkey was introduced to England by
explorer William Strickland circa 1524-1526. They were at first bred as
exotic pets, but became a table item for the rich around 1550.

I almost missed the first comment at the end of the article. Turkeys were
known in Spain and Germany even earlier. Thus the American turkey
definitely falls within the SCA period.

Here's the link: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/49943

There is more about William Strictland on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Strickland_(navigator) . Although he
was granted arms (crested with a turkey), Strickland apparently was never
knighted. His religious views were unacceptable to Queen Elizabeth. The
turkey decorating the lectern of Strickland's parish church in Yorkshire is
shown in the History Blog article, but according to the Wikipedia article
it is a 20th century creation (actually 1934, according to one of the web
sites below).

The church, including photos of the turkey lectern, can be viewed at
http://wasleys.org.uk/eleanor/churches/england/yorkshire/east_riding/east_one/boynton/index.html
and again at
https://churchhuntingnorth.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/st-andrews-boynton/ .

It took me a bit of searching, but I found a depiction of Strickland's arms
at
https://books.google.com/books?id=twW0OFpGzJAC&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false
. Other searches brought up only the Westmoreland branch of the family's
arms.

Now I wonder if turkey feathers were ever used for fletching during the
16th century. They might have occasionally appeared on sport arrows used by
the rich, but military archery was in serious decline by the time the
turkey arrived in Europe and their use there would be unlikely.

I sure had fun digging out all this stuff for y'all.

Yours Aye,

Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge


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