In episode 168 we look at salt. Its importance. The Romans. All sorts of stuff.

Buy the Book Recommendation:
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

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Rough Transcript for Episode 168: Tudor Salt

Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is Episode 168 and it’s all about Salt.

A king with three beautiful daughters asks them how much they love their father.

• The eldest says, “I love you as bright as the sunshine.”
• The second daughter says, “I love you as wide as the ocean.”
• The youngest says, “Oh father, I love you as much as water and salt.”

The father, not satisfied with the youngest daughter’s reply, sentences her to death. Her two sisters instead give a small dog and one of the youngest sister’s garments to the executioners. They cut off the small dog’s tongue, and show the king, saying it was the youngest princess. In reality, the executioners left her in a cave.

She is found in that cave by a wizard who takes her into his castle across from a palace. Here a King’s son falls in love with the Princess, and a match is soon agreed upon. The day before the wedding, they kill and quarter the wizard, and the blood turns the castle into a palace.

On the day of the wedding, the girl passes salt and water to everybody except for the King. When asked why he is not eating, he explains he is not feeling well. After the meal, everyone tells stories.

The king tells the crowd of the daughter he executed. He is devastated, but then the Princess puts on the same dress she had when she told him she loved him as much as water and salt. She tells him how hard it is to eat anything without any water and salt, and he realizes how much she loved him all along. Reconciled, they embrace.

Shakespeare echos this folktale in King Lear when Cordelia doesn’t give Lear the answer he is looking for, and banishes her. 

In the British Museum, in the Waddesdon Bequest Gallery, Henry VIII’s Royal Salt Clock is on loan. It’s a combination salt cellar and table clock, about 30 cm tall, made of gold, with jewels like rubies, garnets, and pearls decorating it, as well as miniature cameo sculptures around the sides, likely made in Paris by the royal goldsmith Pierre Mangot, around 1530. It was probably a gift from Francis to Henry, and when it was on the table during a banquet, surrounded by candlelight, it would have twinkled and glittered, showing off just how valuable it was. Because salt was a valuable commodity, the closer you sat to this gorgeous item, the more important you were. In fact, there was a saying that important people sat “above the salt” to signify just how important they were. Henry VIII had 11 salt cellars in his inventory, but the only one that still exists is this one, which is now owned by the Goldsmith’s Company.

Salt has long been valuable – entire cities were built where there were salt mines (Salzburg). While salt’s earliest origins come from China, Europe was no stranger to the importance of salt both in flavor, and in preserving food. 

The Romans valued salt so much that we still use words today that they first created to show how important salt was. For example, Roman soldiers were often paid in salt, which is where the term Salary comes from. Also, they enjoyed putting salt on fresh vegetables to give it flavor – hence the word salad. 

When the Romans first arrived in southern England they discovered Britons making salt by pouring brine on charcoal and then scraping off the crystals that would form. The Romans taught their own ways of making salt to the Britons, and then built a salt works in Essex to support the new town they had founded on the Thames. As they explored the island further, they heard about a place the locals called Black Pit in what is today Cheshire, which had been producing salt for centuries. Discovered pottery shows that the Britons there had been creating salt using the Roman method – though they had come up with it independently – since 600 BC. The Romans settled in, and built salt works in Cheshire. Nearby North Wales had silver mines, and they would mine for silver, leaving lead left over, which was used to make large pans for boiling brine to make their pan-evaporated salt. 

The Anglo Saxons built on this history, and built towns around the salt works in the area. If you live in a town in England that ends in “wich” like Norwich, Droitwich, or Middlewich, congratulations – you live in a salt producing town generally associated with a brine spring. The Anglo Saxon word for those mine springs was wich, so those names are a holdover from that history. In fact, Middlewich, Norwich, and Droitwich are known as the Three Domesday Wiches because of their inclusion in the Domesday Book. The salt was taken from the Midlands on the river Mersey to the Irish Sea, where in 1207 King John gave permission for a town to be built at the end of the river, in a deep protected harbor, which is now Liverpool. The port of Liverpool became incredibly important for taking salt out of the midlands and shipping it to the rest of England, and even to Ireland. 

William Camden, the chronicler known for his Britannia, the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, wrote of Middlewich in 1580:
“From thence runneth Wever down by Nantwich, not far from Middlewich, and so to Northwich. These are very famous Salt-Witches, five or six miles distant, where brine or salt water is drawn out of pits, which they pour not upon wood while it burneth as the ancient Gauls and Germans were wont to do, but boil it over a fire to make salt thereof. Neither doubt I that these were known unto the Romans, and that from hence was usually paid the Custom of Salt, called Salarium.

“For, there went a notable highway from Middlewich to Northwich, raised with gravel to such a height, that a man may easily acknowledge that it was the work of the Romans, seeing that all this country over, gravel is so scare: and from then at this day it is carried to private men’s uses. Mather Paris writeth that Henry III stopped up these salt-pits when in hostile manner he wasted this shire; because the Welshmen, so tumultuous in those days should not have any victuals or provisions from thence. But when the fair beams of peace began once more to shine out, they were opened again.

“Then runneth the Dane under Kinderton, the old seat of the ancient race of the Venebles; who, ever since the first coming of the Normans have been commonly called the Barons of Kinderton. Beneath this southwards, the little river croco, runnerth also into the Dan…Croke, the river aforesaid being past Brereton, within a little while visiteth Middlewich, very near unto his confluence with Dan, where there be two wells of salt water, parted one from the other by a small brook: Sheathes they call them. The one stands not open, but at certain set times, because folk willingly steal the water thereof, as being of greater virtue and efficacy.”

Salt was used mostly for preserving food during the winter, but you needed a LOT of it. In one recipe from 1305 from the Bishop of Winchester’s household, there is a recipe for butter which called for a pound of salt to be added to every 10 pounds of butter. After you salted the food, you would have to unsalten it to eat it – either by soaking vegetables in water for a few days before consuming, or with the butter, adding fresh butter to the salted. 

Another important port in London was Bristol, which imported French and Portuguese sea salt, which was used for salting fish. The English production of salt was just unable to keep up with the needs of the British salt fisheries. Even after Henry VIII broke with the Roman church, the fast days continued, and throughout the 16th century people who ate flesh during lent were punished with three months in prison. But by the 16th century, in addition to the French and Portuguese salt, there was cheap salt coming down from Scotland, where they would use cheap coal to evaporate sea water in iron pans. 

In the 1560’s Elizabeth took on a number of ideas to help protect the fishers, and by extension, the salt industry. First, in 1563 she considered a proposal to add Wednesday to Friday as a non-meat day, which would also help to build up the fleet of ships used for fishing – important with the threat of invasion from the sea. The proposal was debated for 22 years, and finally died in 1585 when it was deemed just too unpopular. Later,  she wanted to try to copy the Scottish way of making salt, and granted a patent for the use of new types of iron pan that would give the Tyneside salter a market advantage over the imported salt. This plan was unsuccessful at first, but Elizabeth and the subsequent Stuart administrations would makerepeated attempts to stimulate the coastal salt making so that all English salt needs would come from English and Scottish sources. By the 17th century this involved negotiation with the Salters Company which had been now joined by the salt traders of the main East and South coast salt towns.

In 1682 a merchant called John Collins wrote a book called Salt and Fishery, a Discourse, which you can read online at the Internet Archive. I’ll have a link in the show notes. But the Table of Contents includes:

1. The several ways of making Salt in England, and foreign parts.

2. The Character and Qualities good and bad, of these several sorts of Salt, English refin’d asserted to be much better than any Foreign.

3. The Catching and Curing, or Salting of the most eminent or staple sorts of Fish, for long or short keeping.

4. The salting of Flesh.

5. The cookery of Fish and Flesh.

6. Extraordinary experiments in preserving Butter, Flesh, Fish, Fowl, Fruit, and Roots, fresh and sweet for long keeping.

7. The case and sufferings of the Saltworkers.

8. Proposals for their relief, and for the advancement of the Fishery, the Woollen, Tin, and divers other Manufactures.

Although the main topics are salt and fish, it of course covers many things including the history of salt in England. 

Of Salt upon Sand, Embodyed by the Sun.

Where the Sun shines hot, and the Tides vary but little, ‘tis easie to have Salt enough, as they have in many places of the Streights.

With Salt of the like kind made near Smyrna, Beef at Midsummer hath been extremely well preserved in manner following.

The Ox hath been killed one day, and cut out into pieces and salted the next, the Salt hath been beat very small, and the Beef being well rubbed therewith, it was footed or pressed into a Cask, with sprinklings of Salt between each Lay, in which condition it was permitted to stand 48 hours, for close packing made the Blood to arise above the Meat which was powred [poured] off, then a Brine was made of fresh-water, and Salt as strong as might be sufficient to cause the Salt to Dissolve (which it will not, if too little water be put in,) then the Meat was washed in this Brine, and well salted again as before, and then the cask filled up with the Brine aforesaid. This was imparted by Mr. Richard Norris, and ancient experienced Master or Mate, who now teacheth Navigation and Mathematicks in Crutched-Fryers and saith he hath often seen it so done, and none of the Meat stunk.

So that’s it for this week. The Book recommendation this week is Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, A World History.  I’ll have a link to purchase in the show notes at englandcast.com/salt.   Let me know what you thought about this episode -You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or join the new Tudor Learning Circle, which is a free social network just for Tudor history nerds.

[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]