The Postcard
A postally unused postcard bearing no publisher's name. The card, which has a divided back, was published prior to June 1918.
The Mint House
The Old Mint House was erected in 1342, but the site is believed to have been used as a Norman mint as long ago as 1076.
It is a typical large half-timbered country house of the period, with 28 rooms, all rich in oak beams.
Edward IV stayed there in 1548 for the benefit of his health.
A woman and her lover were murdered in a gruesome manner in the house in 1586 by her husband. It is said that the lady haunts the house to this day.
Andrew Borde
Andrew Borde (c. 1490 – April 1549) was an English traveller, physician and writer.
Born at Boords Hill, Sussex, he was educated at the University of Oxford, and was admitted a member of the Carthusian order while under age.
In 1521 he intended to act as suffragan bishop of Chichester, though he never actually filled the office, and in 1529 he was freed from his monastic vows, not being able to endure, as he said, "the rugorosite off your relygyon".
He then went abroad to study medicine, and on his return was summoned to attend the Duke of Norfolk. He subsequently visited the universities of Orléans, Poitiers, Toulouse, Montpellier and Wittenberg.
He saw the practice of surgery at Rome, and went on pilgrimage to Compostela in Galicia. In 1534 Borde was in London at the Charterhouse Monastery, and in 1536 wrote to Cromwell, complaining that he was in thraldom there.
Cromwell freed him, and after entertaining him at his house at Bishop's Waltham in Hampshire, entrusted him with a mission to find out the state of public feeling abroad with regard to the English king. He wrote to Cromwell from various places, and from Catalonia he sent him the seeds of rhubarb, two hundred years before that plant was generally cultivated in England.
Two letters in 1535 and 1536 to the Prior of the Charterhouse anxiously argue for his complete release from monastic vows. In 1536 he was studying medicine at Glasgow and gathering his observations about the Scots and the "devellyshe dysposicion of a Scottysh man, not to love nor favor an Englishe man".
About 1538 Borde set out on his most extensive journey, visiting nearly all the countries of Europe except Russia and Turkey, and making his way to Jerusalem. Of these travels he wrote a full itinerary, lost by Cromwell, to whom it was sent.
He finally settled at Montpellier and before 1542 had completed his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, which ranks as the earliest continental guidebook, his Dietary and his Brevyary. He probably returned to England in 1542, and lived at Winchester and Pevensey.
John Ponet, bishop of Winchester, in an Apology against Bishop Gardiner, relates as matter of common knowledge that in 1547 Doctor Bord, a physician and a holy man, who still kept the Carthusian rules of fasting and wearing a hair shirt, was convicted in Winchester of keeping in his house three loose women.
For this offence, apparently, he was imprisoned in the Fleet, where he made his will on the 9th. April 1549. Thomas Hearne stated that Borde went round like a quack doctor to country fairs, and therefore rashly supposed him to have been the original Merry Andrew.
Andrew Borde's Literary Works
Borde left works on domestic hygiene and medicine, and The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge. In it the Englishman describes himself and his foibles, his fickleness, his fondness for new fashions, and his obstinacy, in verse. Then follows a geographical description of the country, followed by a model dialogue in the Cornish language.
Andrw Borde's authentic works are:
-- Here foloweth a Compenyous Regiment or Dyetary of health, made in Mountpyller (1542), of which there are undated and doubtless earlier editions
-- The Brevyary of health (1547)
-- The Princyples of Astronamy (1547)
-- The Peregrination of Doctor Board, printed by Thomas Hearne in Benedictus Abbas Petroburgensis (1735)
-- A Pronostycacyon or an Almanacke for the yere of our lorde MCCCCCXLV. made by Andrew Borde.
Andrew's Itinerary of Europe and Treatyse upon Berdes are lost.
Several jest-books have been attributed to him without authority:
-- The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam (earliest extant edition 1630)
-- Scogins Jests (1626), A mery jest of the Mylner of Abyngton, with his wyfe, and his daughter, and of two poore scholers of Cambridge (printed by Wynkyn de Worde)
-- A Latin poem, Nos Vagabunduli.