Cardinal Wolsey, Cat Lover

It hasn’t always been safe to like cats. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull (a law issued by the Vatican) that made it legal to burn those implicated in witch craft, by virtue of owning a cat. Thus, being a cat-owner became a high risk occupation.

As hysteria over witchcraft grew, persecution of cats and cat-owners continued for the next couple of centuries. But in the early 16^th century, and the court of King Henry VIII one man was not afraid to like cats – Cardinal Wolsey.

 

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

Thomas Wolsey was born in 1473, the son of a cattle dealer and butcher. The young Wolsey studied at Oxford University and joined the church. Obviously a man of talent, he became chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury and then entered the household of King Henry VII.

This Tudor monarch was prepared to favor talent for its own sake rather than solely promote the nobility, which found Wolsey in the right place at the right time.

Wolsey quickly established a reputation for intelligence, diligence, and diplomacy. When Henry VIII succeeded his father to be king of England, it was natural that he appointed Wolsey as Almoner. The latter’s efficiency and ingenuity won Henry’s trust, so that Wolsey rose and rose, eventually becoming Chancellor and dominating the Royal Council.

 

Statue of Cardinal Wolsey in Ipswich town center
Note the cat peeking around his seat 

But at a time when being a cat lover was dangerous, the Cardinal was just that. He had several and they were said to keep him company whilst he worked hard on the King’s business. A cat also sat with him during mass, behaving impeccably and providing quiet comfort. A cat was often at his side during formal meetings.  Indeed, Wolsey was said to take two cats along when he accompanied the king of royal progress. It seemed people exercised tact rather than point out the link between cats and witchcraft to one of the most powerful men in England.

 

Detail of the cat from the above statue

Wolsey’s story came to an unhappy end, but it was nothing to do with cats. When he failed to do what Henry wanted most – to secure his divorce from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. This saw Wolsey dismissed from his position as Chancellor on 22^nd September 1529, and a rapid fall from grace saw him stripped of most of his assets. He died in 1530

Hey Diddle Diddle: Cats and Nursery Rhymes

I never was a huge fan of nursery rhymes. Although they are meant to entertain small children, I always found them slightly sinister. This is perhaps backed up by the eldest son, who when little used to think the words to “Baa Baa Black Sheep” went:

Baa, baa, black sheep

Have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full;

One for the monster ….

Obviously this should have been master, but my son misheard.

Perhaps I would have liked these rhymes more if they featured cats. So let's see what is on offer.

The Cat and the Fiddle

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,

The little dog laughed to see such fun

And the dish ran away with the spoon

What is the significance of the “cat and the fiddle”?

There are several different explanations.
One is that the cat is code for Queen Elizabeth I, and is a comment on her evasive behavior with foreign diplomats. She is famous for skillfully manipulating those emissaries sent by foreign princes to negotiate a marriage contracct with Elizabeth. Some believe this nursery rhyme is a comment on her ability to fiddle and pull the diplomates' strings and play with them as a cat does mice – especially as she never married and was famous for being the virgin Queen.

However, nice as this story is, sources believe Hey Diddle Diddle was written around 200 years after her reign – which hardly makes it topical and top of the rhyme-makers mind.

A representation of Bastet
holding a sistrum

Perhaps more convincing is the explanation likening the words to a description of a type of ancient Egyptian instrument called a sistrum. Many ancient depictions of the cat-goddess Bastet show her holding a sistrum which is fiddle-shaped. Intriguingly, the cow and the moon could be represented by another Egyptian goddess, Hathor, who bore horns on her head between which is suspended a large disc.

Alternatively, the “cat and fiddle” could be a corruption of the Latin expression “catus fideles” meaning faithful cat, but to the untrained ear sounding like ‘cat and fiddle’.

The Cat and the Pudding String

Sing, sing, what shall I sing?

The cat’s run away with the pudding string.

Do, do, what shall I do?

The cat’s run away with the pudding too.

This rhyme is altogether more straightforward. If you’ve ever made traditional Christmas puddings, you’ll have some idea what this is about. The pudding ingredients are mixed and then placed within a large muslin cloth which is gathered around the mix and tied off. The pudding is then steamed or boiled.

Obviously, a playful  cat took a fancy to the securing string and played with it. Perhaps the cook saw what kitty was about and chastised her, at which point the cat takes off with the string in her mouth and pulls the pudding after her.

Simple! (Must have been a small pudding though.)

Going to Saint Ives

As I was going to Saint Ives,

I met a man with seven wives;

Every wife had seven sacks;

Every sack had seven cats;

Every cat had seven kits

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives.

How many were there going to Saint Ives?

Beautiful St Ives on the Cornish coast of England

This one is my favorite because on the face of things it’s a simple test of multiplication. [St Ives is a town in Cornwall.]

However, is it instead a trick question?

Can you be confident the man with seven wives was indeed going towards St Ives, or could he and his entourage have been walking away (and therefore making the math considerably easier!!)

What do you think?

18th Century Propaganda Linked Old Maids to Cats

I dedicate this post to Charlotte – a loyal follower of “Fall in Love with History”. 

Widget - looking utterly adorable

Regular readers of "Fall in Love with History" (like Charlotte!) will have twigged the two things that interest me most are history and cats; so it’s high time for another post melding both together. As part of my ongoing research into all things feline, let's look at how cats were perceived in the past.

Old Maid

No I’m not talking about myself, (my ambition is to become a mad-cat-lady in later life, rather than an old maid). But when it comes to cat ownership in the 18^th century, the image consistently linked to cat ownership is the older single woman, usually portrayed with warts and a burgeoning moustache i.e. the “old maid”.

Old Maids Attend a Cat's Funeral.
Courtesy of Wellcome Images

Face Value?

This is why history is so fascinating, because you can take things at face value: ugly older women kept cats…although this seems rather harsh. But in reality, this stereotype was another example of how the ruling male class kept women in check.

In the 18^th century, success to a woman wasn’t about a career, but marrying well, being a good wife, and raising children. Anything that detracted from a woman devoting her life to making men happy was perceived as a threat to the very fabric of society.

Society Crumbles

Where might it end, if women no longer looked to their husband’s for affection, but sought comfort from pets instead? This bowel-churning prospect for the Georgian male was something that needed stamping out – and what better way to do this than ridicule. Or rather, by making a connection between ugliness and pet cats, by linking loneliness and isolation to pet keeping, so that the young and beautiful were not be tempted to follow the same path.

[The eagle eyed will spot the pet clutched to the lady's breast
is a small dog, not a cat.]

Bad Press

At this time cats had a bad press anyway, after previous links to witchcraft and devil worship (largely a result of manipulation of feline reputation by the Catholic Church). Cats were considered a pet of the poor, rather than a luxury. Indeed, their very character was portrayed as treacherous, self-interested, and vicious – not something any young lady in search of a husband wanted to be linked with.  The subliminal message was that spending your affection unwisely, i.e. not dedicated to men, led to a lonely, unfulfilled life.

All in all, if you were an older woman in the 18^th century who loved cats, society was going to take the mickey. Not enough time had passed from cat’s being vilified as the devil’s familiar, and the prevailing view that woman were there to serve men could not cope with a women spending her affection elsewhere.

Just as well I’m a 21^st century gal ….

Medieval Monks, Marginalia, and Cats

Your job is boring and repetitive. You ache to express yourself. The only way you can do this is to wait until your supervisor isn’t looking – and doodle on your notepad. Well, this is equivalent to the medieval monks who laboriously copied out manuscripts by hand – and added small drawings of their own invention in the margins.

Cats will be cats
as in this marginalia illustration

Perhaps the cats that inspired these drawings in the margins (or “marginalia”), also kept the monks company. As the monks drew, so these felines worked alongside, keeping down the rats and mice. This was big problem for the monks because the vermin were attracted to the paper which they ate – destroying all that painstaking work. But the vermin were also bold, and climbed the desks where the scribes worked and stole their food.

“Most wretched mouse, often you provoke me to anger. May God destroy you!”

[Caption from a humours illustration of a Hildebert, a 12^th century scribe, as he tries to catch the mouse that steals his cheese.]

Another cat doing what cats do.
Clearly this scribe was bored

But let’s face it many medieval monks did match the psychological profile of a typical cat lover as creative and intelligent. However, one writer was left his cat’s autograph when the cat stepped in ink and walked across the manuscript.

A cat with wearing what appears to be a
prototype jet pack

Perhaps another scribe who was perhaps less pleased by his cat’s “signature” was the one who returned in the morning to find a page soaked in cat wee. He was forced to leave that page blank with a message to the effect that nothing was missing but he’d learnt a lesson not to leave books out at night.

Medieval paw prints captured in ink

We know at least one Irish monk welcomed his feline companion. He even gave the cat a name, Pangur Ban, and wrote a rather sweet poem about him:

I and Pangur Ban my cat

Tis a like task we are at:

Hunting mice is his delightful

Hunting words I sit all night

This scribe was not a cat lover by all accounts

What is interesting is that whilst cats were valued as mousers, they were also feared as devilish creatures. Indeed, cats were widely used elsewhere in medieval carvings and paintings, to tell ordinary folk cautionary tales of good and evil – where the cat was portrayed as a cunning trickster. Hmmm, I suppose cats have at least got their own back in the 21^st century, with life on their terms. 

Widget- very much a 21st century cat

The Collective Term for a Group of Cats?

Anyone who has been following this blog for a while will know I'm a "mad cat lady" in training. I love anything and everything to do with cats. Whilst waiting for my son to meet me in Waterstones, Birmingham (bearing in mind we live near London, this happened to be our easiest to-get-to bookstore – but that's a whole different story), I discovered a charming book about collective nouns. 

If you mentally switched off at the mention of "nouns" (and by default, grammar) fear not! This post is about cuteness not clauses, and can be read by those phobic about punctuation. So, onwards! Let's answer those all important questions such as…

What is the Correct Term for a Group of Cats?

Yes, it made me pause (or paw-se.) To my shame I'd never stopped wonder what a group of cats is called – sometimes I amaze even myself!

According to Chloe Rhodes(*), there are two early mentions of the collective noun for cats.  A manuscript from 1450, the Egerton Manuscript, "a  clouder of cats." Whilst in 1476 a list found at the end of "Horse, Sheep, and Goose" states "a cluster of tame cats."

Three terms seem to be in use in the Middle Ages (which raises questions in my mind about how often a group of cats pops up in conversation) and these are clowder, cluster, and clutter. It seems likely that these words have a common origin, possibly an Old English word, clott, meaning a mass of objects stuck together.

Hmm, not sure it's how I would have described a group of cats – more like an "independence of cats" in my book. Perhaps a better term is one found in the Harley Manuscript which sites "a glorying of cats." That's more like it! The term glorying is also interchangeable with glaryn, meaning to shine brightly, which at a push could describe cats eyes glowing in the darkness.

Next week: A litter of kittens? I think not! Find out the proper term for a cuteness/ confection of kittens.

Fellow cat lovers, leave your suggestions of a fitting term to describe a group of cats.

(*) An Unkindness of Ravens. Chloe Rhodes. Michael O'Mara books.

Cat Law in History

This week I take a quick romp through history and look at the law as it pertains to cats.

 

Old English common law states that cats and dogs are:

"Not property, being base by nature."

This seems a wise ruling, since in medieval England theft was punishable by hanging; given that cats are apt to wander and chose their own home, if cats are perceived as property householders could easily find themselves on the scaffold through no fault of their own.

Another 'cat' law was the 13th century "Rule of Nuns". This forbade holy women from keeping any animal other than a cat. I find this interestingly ironic given that a couple of centuries later, woman find themselves convicted of witch craft, based largely on that they owned a cat, which was considered - the devil's familiar.

 

Medieval Welsh laws are quite effusive about cats. The Venedotian Code clearly lays out the value of a cat:

The worth of a kitten from the night it is kittened until it shall open its eyes is a legal penny;

And from that time until it shall kill mice, two legal pence;

And after it shall kill mice, four legal pence;

And so it shall always remain.

At that time:

One penny       -was the value of a lamb or hen

Two pence       -a cockerel or gander

Four pence      -sheep or a goat

In return the qualities or 'job description' of a cat are:

To see, to hear, to kill mice, to have her claws entire, to rear kittens…and if she be deficient in any of these qualities, let one third of her worth be returned.

Another early Welsh law, the Dimetian Code describes the compensation due for killing or stealing a cat. This involves suspending the dead cat by the tail with its head on the floor. The corpse is then covered with grain until the tip of the tail is covered - and this amount of corn is the animal's worth - although the practicalities seem fraught with difficulty.

An interesting detail from this code relates to what becomes of the cat if a marriage breaks up. When the husband and wife's goods and chattels are divided, the relatively high worth of a cat is reflected in that:

The husband took the cat is there was but one

With any others [cats] going to the wife.

 

When it came to a cat killing creatures it shouldn't - such as a neighbor's birds - the law is a friend of the cat. In Scotland, a late 19th century, an aggrieved plaintiff (who owned the dead pigeon) took the cat's owner to court. The judge concluded:

"It was legitimate for the plaintiff to keep a pigeon, but just as much so for the defendant to keep a cat…but there is no obligation for the owner of a cat to restrain it to the house."

And finally:

Another interesting legal case, this time in Maine, - a plaintiff sued a neighbor for killing a valuable foxhound but was confounded by the defense's argument. The defendant claimed that the dog was chasing his cat, and the law states:

"Any person may lawfully kill a dog which …is found worrying, wounding, or killing any domestic animals..."

It seems the cat enjoys a protection in law, not afforded to birds!

Dr Johnson on Cats.

CAT - "a domestick animal that catches mice, commonly reckoned by naturalists the lowest order of the leonine species."
Dr Johnson's definition from the 1755 dictionary.

 CAT - "small furry domesticated carnivorous quadruped. A spiteful or malicious woman."

Concise Oxford Dictionary 1977.



Hodge's memorial - Gough Square.

When Dr Johnson wrote that cats were 'commonly reckoned' the lowest feline species, it is my opinion he was being ironic - for the great man was a huge fan of cats. During his life he owned (or 'was owned by'!) several cats, of whom the most well-known was Hodge. In fact, so well-known was Johnson's affection for Hodge that a statue of the cat, appropriately seated on a dictionary, is to be found at the far end of Gough Square.

The attic room Johnson worked in (17 Gough Street)

Dr Johnson did most of his work assembling the dictionary, in an attic room at 17 Gough Square.  According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson was in fact a cat lover.
"Nor would it be just….to omit the fondness which he [Johnson] shewed for animals which he had taken under his protection."
This kindness extended to visiting the fish market in person, in order to select the best oysters for his cat since he didn’t want to put his servants out.
"I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature."

A stained glass window at 17 Gough Street, showing the great man.

So did Johnson's partiality for felines colour his dictionary definitions?
How do his definitions compare to the modern equivalent?

Let's take a look and find out.

 To PURR - "To murmur as a cat or leopard in pleasure."

Dr Johnson 1755

 PURR - "Make low continuous vibratory sound expressing pleasure."

Oxford Dictionary -1977

Hmmm, I prefer Johnson's more poetic version, rather than the more scientific explanation.

One, nil to Dr Johnson.

"Purr? That's a tough one. Let me sleep on it."

To LAP - "To feed by quick reciprocations of the tongue."Dr Johnson 1755

 LAP - "To take up liquid by the tongue as a cat does."

Oxford Dictionary 1977.

 Is it just me, or is Johnson's definition more evocative? The Oxford definition is very passive, 'taking up liquid' - how exactly is this done?

Another vote for Johnson, from me.

"Mouse, did someone say mouse?"

MOUSE - "The smallest of all beasts; a little animal haunting houses and corn fields, destroyed by cats."
Dr Johnson 1755

 MOUSE - "Small rodent especially shrew or vole: timid, shy or retiring person."

Oxford Dictionary 1977

This is one of those answers that have you scurrying around the dictionary. If you aren’t sure what a mouse is then you're probably going to be unclear what a rodent, shrew or vole is….

Dr Johnson wins hands down for clarity.

 OK, so I might be biased but it seems to me Johnson's almost poetic language when describing cat-related words exemplifies someone who knows, loves and enjoys observing cats.

Bravo, Dr Johnson, Hodge trained you well!
 

Cats in Battle.

My midweek post is about ‘Cats in Battle’ and how cats helped the Eygptians win (and also lose!) a battle.

The first story is recorded by ancient historian, Herodotus. He writes about an attack on Egypt in 701 by the Assyrians. Now this invasion caught the Egyptians on the hop; they had become lazy and neglected to maintain a well-trained and armed fighting force. The pharaoh, Sethos, wept in despair at the very real fear that his country would be invaded and overrun. But one night he had a dream where the gods told him to be of good cheer and meet the enemy with courage.

            So Sethos did his best and raised a rag tag army of labourers, artisans and tradesmen. They marched to meet the Assyrian invaders and on the night before battle set up camp in fields close to the invading force. But during the night mice ate through the Assyarians bow strings and shield straps, such that in the morning and unable to defend themselves they fled. And the reason the Egyptian bow strings remained intact? They had taken cats with them to protect their food stores from vermin!

Modern day 'cat armour.'

           

            But in another story told by the military writer, Polyaenus, the outcome was very different. He writes of the Persian king, Cambyses, attacking Egypt in 525 BC. Now Cambyses knew that the Egyptians revered certain animals as sacred and so placed rows of cats, dogs and ibis in front of his advancing army. The superstitous Eygptian soldiers, feared to harm the sacred animals and refused to attack. In so doing Cambyses seized the advantage, and was able to take the city and then Egypt!

The Egyptian goddess, Bastet, nursing kittens.