Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T06:28:48.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Opening the Queen’s Closet: Henrietta Maria,Elizabeth Cromwell, and the Politics of Cookery*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Laura Lunger Knoppers
Laura Lunger Knoppers*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The essay shows how two royalist recipe books — The Queens Closet Opened (1655) and The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth (1664) — fashioned Henrietta Maria (1609–69) and Elizabeth Cromwell (1598–1665) as very different housewives to the English nation. By portraying the much-disliked French Catholic Henrietta Maria as engaged in English domestic practices, The Queens Closet Opened implicitly responded to the scandalous private revelations of The Kings Cabinet Opened (1645); while, in contrast, the satiric cookery book attributed to Elizabeth Cromwell stigmatized her as both a country bumpkin and a foreigner. Yet the cookery books also had unintended republicanizing effects, as consumers appropriated the contents of the queen’s closet for their own cabinets and kitchens.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , Summer 2007 , pp. 464 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

An early version of this essay was given at a 2003 Harvard Alumni Symposium on “New Work in the Renaissance,” and I am grateful for many helpful suggestions given at that time. Detailed and insightful reports provided by Jayne Archer and by one anonymous reader for Renaissance Quarterly usefully guided my revisions. I have also benefited from conversations about this project with Dan Beaver, Katie Field, and Marcy North.

References

Albala, Ken. Food in Early Modern Europe. Westport, 2003.Google Scholar
Archer, Jayne. “The Queen’s Arcanum: Authority and Authorship in The Queens Closet Opened (1655).” Renaissance Journal 1, no. 6 (2002) : 14–26.Google Scholar
Bermingham, Ann. Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art. New Haven, 2000.Google Scholar
Books Printed for, and Sold by Nathaniel Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill near the Royal Exchange. Appended to John Echard, Some Observations upon the Answer to an enquiry into the Grounds & Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy. London, 1671.Google Scholar
Britland, Karen. Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria. Cambridge, 2006.Google Scholar
Codrington, Robert. The Second Part of Youths Behaviour … Containing Excellent Directions for the Education of young Ladies, Gentlewomen, and other Persons, and Rules of Advice. London, 1664.Google Scholar
Coiro, Ann Baynes. “’A ball of strife’: Caroline Poetry and Royal Marriage.” In The Royal Image (1999), 26–46.Google Scholar
Collins Baker, C. H. Catalogue of the Pictures at Hampton Court. Glasgow, 1929.Google Scholar
Cooper, Nicholas. Houses of the Gentry, 1480–1680. New Haven, 1999.Google Scholar
Corns, Thomas N. “Duke, Prince and King.” In The Royal Image (1999), 1–25.Google Scholar
The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly called Joan Cromwel, the Wife of the Late Usurper, Truly Described and Represented, and now Made Publick for general Satisfaction. London, 1664.Google Scholar
Cunnington, Cecil Willett, and Cunnington, Phillis . Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century. Philadelphia, 1957.Google Scholar
Digby, Sir Kenelm. The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened: Whereby is Discovered Several ways for making Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine, &c. together with Excellent Directions for Cookery. London, 1669.Google Scholar
Dolan, Frances E. Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture. Ithaca, 1999.Google Scholar
Eikon Basilike: The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings. Ed. Philip Knachel. Ithaca, 1966.Google Scholar
Field, Catherine. “’Many hands hands’: Writing the Self in Early Modern Women’s Recipe Books.” In Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England, ed. Michelle Dowd and Julie Eckerle. Aldershot, 2007, 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fumerton, Patricia. Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament. Chicago, 1991.Google Scholar
Fumerton, Patricia. “Introduction: A New New Historicism.” In Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, ed. Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt, 1–17. Philadelphia, 1999.Google Scholar
Furdell, Elizabeth. The Royal Doctors, 1485–1714: Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts. Rochester, 2001.Google Scholar
Gillespie, Katharine. “Elizabeth Cromwell’s Kitchen Court: Republicanism and the Consort.” Genders 33 (2001) : 1–20.Google Scholar
Girouard, Mark. Life in the English Country House. New Haven, 1978.Google Scholar
Greenspan, Nicole. “Public Scandal, Political Controversy, and Familial Conflict in the Stuart Courts in Exile: The Struggle to Convert the Duke of Gloucester in 1654.” Albion 35, no. 3 (2003) : 398–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grey, Elizabeth, Countess of Kent. A Choice Manuall or Rare and Select Secrets in Physick and Chyrurgery. London, 1653.Google Scholar
Hackel, Heidi Brayman. Reading Material in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 2005.Google Scholar
Hall, Kim F. “Culinary Spaces, Colonial Spaces: The Gendering of Sugar in the Seventeenth Century.” In Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects, ed. Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan, 168–90. Cambridge, 1996.Google Scholar
The Hartlib Papers [computer file]: A Complete Text and Image Database of the Papers of Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600–1662) held in Sheffield University Library. 2nd ed. 2 CD-ROMs, Shelfmark CDR. Sheffield HRIOnline, Humanities Research Institute, 2002.Google Scholar
Heal, Felicity. Hospitality in Early Modern England. Oxford, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, James. Flagellum: Or The Life and Death, Birth and Burial of Oliver Cromwel. London, 1663.Google Scholar
Hibbard, Caroline. “The Role of a Queen Consort: The Household and Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–42.” In Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650, ed. Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, 393–414. London, 1991.Google Scholar
Hirst, Derek. “Reading the Royal Romance: Or, Intimacy in a King’s Cabinet.” The Seventeenth Century 18 (2003) : 211–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Lynette. “Cookery Books: A Cabinet of Rare Devices and Conceits.” Petits Propos Culinaires 5 (1980) : 19–34.Google Scholar
Hunter, Lynette. “Women and Domestic Medicine: Lady Experimenters, 1570–1620.” In Women, Science and Medicine (1997a), 89–107.Google Scholar
Hunter, Lynette. “Sisters of the Royal Society: The Circle of Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh.” In Women, Science and Medicine (1997b), 178–98.Google Scholar
Hunter, Lynette. “Books for Daily Life: Household, Husbandry, Behaviour.” In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume IV, 1557–1695, ed. John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, with Maureen Bell, 514–32. Cambridge, 2002.Google Scholar
Jagodinski, Cecile. Privacy and Print: Reading and Writing in Seventeenth-Century England. Charlottesville, 1999.Google Scholar
Kenseth, Joy. “A World of Wonders in One Closet Shut.” In The Age of the Marvelous, ed. Joy Kenseth, 81–101. Hanover, NH, 1991.Google Scholar
A Key to the Kings Cabinet: Or, Animadversions upon the three Printed Speeches, of Mr Lisle, Mr Tate, and Mr Browne, spoken at a Common-Hall in London, 3 July, 1645, Detecting the Malice and Falshood of their Blasphemous Observations made upon the King and Queenes Letters. Oxford, 1645.Google Scholar
The Kings Cabinet Opened: Or, Certain Packets of Secret Letters and Papers Written with the Kings own Hand, and taken in his Cabinet at Nasby-Field, June 14, 1645. London, 1645.Google Scholar
Knoppers, Laura Lunger. Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print, 1645–1661. Cambridge, 2000a.Google Scholar
Knoppers, Laura Lunger. “’Sing Old Noll the Brewer’: Royalist Satire and Social Inversion, 1648–1660.” The Seventeenth Century 15, no. 1 (2000b): 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Ladies Cabinet Enlarged and Opened: Containing many Rare Secrets, and Rich Ornaments of several kindes, and different uses … Collected and practiced by the late Right Honorable and Learned Chymist, The Lord Ruthuen.London, 1654.Google Scholar
Lamb, Patrick. Royal Cookery; or, the Complete Court-Cook. Containing the Choicest Receipts in all the particular Branches of Cookery now in use in the Queen’s Palaces. London, 1710.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Gilly. The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Blackawton, Devon, 2003.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Christopher, and Remington, Vanessa . Masterpieces in Little: Portrait Miniatures from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Woodbridge, 1996.Google Scholar
Macquoid, Percy. A History of English Furniture. 4 vols. London, 1904–08.Google Scholar
Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife.Ed. Michael R. Best. Kingston, 1986.Google Scholar
May, Robert. The Accomplisht Cook, Or, The Mystery of Cookery. Wherein the whole Art is revealed in a more easie and perfect method, then hath been publisht in any Language. London, 1660.Google Scholar
Mayerne, Theodore Turquet de. Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus: Or, Excellent & Approved Receipts and Experiments in Cookery … Copied from a choice Manuscript of Sir Theodore Mayerne Knight, Physician to the late K. Charles. London, 1658.Google Scholar
Mercurius Aulicus: Communicating the Intelligence and affaires of the Court, to the rest of the Kingdome. From July 13 to July 20, 1645. Oxford, 1645.Google Scholar
Millar, Olivar. “The Inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods.” Walpole Society 43 (1972) : 1–458.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Eikonoklastes. In Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes, 3:335–601. New Haven, 1962.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery. London, 1655.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery … With Additions. London, 1656.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery … The Fourth Edition corrected, with many Additions. London, 1658.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, Preserving and Candying, &c. … Corrected and Reviewed, with many Additions. London, 1659.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, Preserving, and Candying, &c…. Corrected and Reviewed, with many Additions. London, 1662.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirurgery, Preserving and Candying, &c…. Corrected and Reviewed, with many New and Large Additions. London, 1671.Google Scholar
M[ontagu], W[alter]. The Queens Closet Opened: Being Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, Preserving, and Candying, &c…. The Tenth Edition, Corrected, with many new and large Additions. London, 1696.Google Scholar
Nagy, Doreen Evenden. Popular Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England. Bowling Green, 1988.Google Scholar
Nedham, Marchamont. Mercurius Britanicus, Communicating the affaires of great Britaine: For the better Information of the People. 21–28 July 1645. London, 1645.Google Scholar
Orlin, Lena Cowen. “Gertrude’s Closet.” Shakespeare Jahrbuch 134 (1998) : 44–67.Google Scholar
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. Oxford, 2004. Also available in an online edition, 2006. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.Google Scholar
Parry, Graham. The Golden Age Restor’d: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603–1642. Manchester, 1981.Google Scholar
Peacock, John. “The Visual Image of Charles I.” In The Royal Image (1999), 176–239.Google Scholar
Pennell, Sara. “Perfecting Practice? Women, Manuscript Recipes and Knowledge in Early Modern England.” In Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson, 237–58. Aldershot, 2004.Google Scholar
Purkiss, Diane. Literature, Gender and Politics during the English Civil War. Cambridge, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raymond, Joad. “Popular Representations of Charles I.” In The Royal Image (1999), 47–73.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Graham. The Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. London, 1999.Google Scholar
The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I. Ed. Thomas N. Corns. Cambridge, 1999.Google Scholar
Sanders, Glenn. “’A Plain Turkish Tyranny’: Images of the Turk in Anti-Puritan Polemic.” In Puritanism and Its Discontents, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers, 167–96. Newark, DE, 2003.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven, 1992.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Kevin. “‘So Hard a Text’? Images of Charles I, 1612–1700.” The Historical Journal 43, no. 2 (2000) : 383–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheridan, Richard. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies. Baltimore, 1974.Google Scholar
Sherman, William H. “What Did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Books?” In Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, 119–37. Philadelphia, 2002.Google Scholar
Skerpan Wheeler, Elizabeth. “Eikon Basilike and the Rhetoric of Self-Representation.” In The Royal Image (1999), 122–40.Google Scholar
Smuts, Malcolm. Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England. Philadelphia, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Alan. “The Early Modern Closet Discovered.” Representations 50 (1995) : 76–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stine, Jennifer. “Opening Closets: The Discovery of Household Medicine in Early Modern England.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 1996.Google Scholar
Tebeaux, Elizabeth. “Women and Technical Writing, 1475–1700: Technology, Literacy, and Development of a Genre.” In Women, Science and Medicine (1997), 29–62.Google Scholar
Thornton, Dora. The Scholar in His Study. New Haven, 1997.Google Scholar
Three Speeches Spoken at a Common-Hall Thursday the 3 of July, 1645. By Mr. Lisle, Mr. Tate, Mr. Brown, Members of the House of Commons: Containing many Observations upon the Kings Letters, found in His own Cabinet at Nasiby fight. London, 1645.Google Scholar
Van der Doort, Abraham. “Abraham Van der Doorts’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles I.” Ed. O. Millar. Walpole Society 37 (1960) : 1–244.Google Scholar
Veevers, Erica. Images of Love and Religion: Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments. Cambridge, 1989.Google Scholar
Wall, Wendy. Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge, 2002.Google Scholar
White, Christopher. The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. New York, 1982.Google Scholar
White, Michelle Anne. Henrietta Maria and the English Civil Wars. Aldershot, 2006.Google Scholar
Wilson, Anne. Food and Drink in Britain from the Stone Age to the 19th Century. Chicago, 1991.Google Scholar
Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society. Ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton. Phoenix Mill, UK, 1997.Google Scholar
Woolley, Hannah. The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet Stored with all manner of Rare Receipts for Preserving, Candying & Cookery: Very Pleasant and Beneficial to all Ingenious Persons of the Female Sex. London, 1670.Google Scholar
Woolley, Hannah. The Gentlewomans Companion: Or, A Guide to the Female Sex. London, 1675.Google Scholar