Tea at Trianon: The Shambles

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 12, 2017

The Shambles

The butchers' district in the city of York, where St. Margaret Clitherow lived. From The Vintage News:

The street’s long existence has been confirmed by its first mention in the Domesday Book of 1086, a manuscript ordered by the William the Conqueror. Besides being the name of the popular York street, the word “shambles” is a term describing a multitude of narrow, curvy streets and alleys that form a maze. It also was used to describe a street of butchers and meat selling, in general. The word origin is primarily rooted in the Anglo-Saxon word “shamel,” which can be literally translated as a stall for selling meat. In time, this term evolved into “flesshamels”: shelves for flesh, which were the main element in almost any butcher’s shop. (Read more.)