The Sparrowhawk Companion (18 page)

Rex Anglias
English king (Latin), meaning an English sovereign.

Rex Anglorum
King of the English (Latin), meaning a non-English sovereign.

rhino
Cash, specie, currency.

ridge
A guinea. See POUND, STERLING.

riding chair
In colonial America, a conveyance similar to a sulky. See SULKY.

riditto
A masquerade. See MASQUERADE.

right
To be compliant, willing.

royal foot scamp
A footpad or robber who robbed with civil manners. See SCAMP.

royal scamp
A mounted “gentleman” highwayman, who robbed with manners. See SCAMP.

ruelle
A reception held in the bedchamber of a fashionable lady.

rum lay
The art of burglary of private residences. See CRACK LAY, DUB LAY.

rummage
1. To make either a thorough or haphazard search, especially by customsmen of a merchantman to find untaxed, smuggled rum, and later for any contraband or untaxed or illegal goods; 2. to examine minutely and completely.

runagate
A vagabond. Probably a corruption of
renegade
(one who runs or flees).

sabot
In naval munitions, a wooden or metal device that contained incendiary materials fired at an enemy vessel (from the French for
shoe
). See CARCASS.

scamp
A highwayman, or armed robber, mounted or on foot. See TOBY.

scope
An aim or purpose.

seegar
A roll of tobacco leaf, smoked in lieu of a pipe. Now a c
igar
.

sheriff
An officer of a county charged with judicial duties such as executing processes and orders of courts and judges. (From OE
shire reeve
.) See BAILIFF, CONSTABLE.

ship’s husband
A joint-stock owner of a merchantman chosen by
other stockholders to supervise the building, fitting, and sailing of a ship, and also to keep accounts.

ship of the line
A warship of two or three gun decks, of between sixty and 120 guns.

Simurg
In Persian mythology, a monstrous bird having the powers of reasoning and speech. See WYVERN.

slip slop
“Bad liquor.” (Samuel Johnson’s
Dictionary
)

sloop
A small, one-masted fore-and-aft rigged vessel with a mainsail and jib; a sloop-of-war with ten guns on the upper deck.

slops
A sailor’s loose, knee-length knickerbockers. A forerunner of
pantaloons
, or
pants
.

slubberdegullion
“A paltry, dirty, sorry wretch.” (Samuel Johnson’s
Dictionary
)

smack
A single-masted sailing boat for coasting or fishing.

small beer
A trivial matter or concern.

smallclothes
A man’s close-fitting, knee-length breeches.

snollygoster
A shrewd, unscrupulous person.

soccage
A feudal tenure of land requiring payment of rent or other non-military service to a lord or sovereign. See COPYHOLD, IN FEE, QUIT-RENT.

soldier’s wind
A wind “on the beam”; to sail with the wind. See BEAT TO WINDWARD.

solicitor
1. A member of the legal profession qualified to advise clients and instruct barristers, but barred from appearing as an advocate in court except in certain lower courts; 2. a law officer below an attorney-general. See ATTORNEY, BARRISTER.

soul driver
A colonial middleman who purchased transported felons and redemptioners and drove them to market in the Tidewater and Piedmont of Virginia.

sparrowhawk
Any of various small hawks or falcons in Europe and North America.

specie
Coined money. See DOLLAR, POUND, STERLING.

sponge
To defraud or cheat.

sponger
A prison for debtors. Also a
sponging house
.

spontoon
A spear-like staff, largely ceremonial, carried by officers in
eighteenth–century armies.

spouting club
A London club for those interested in public address, usually meeting in a tavern or public house.

starboard
The right side of a vessel, looking forward. See LARBOARD.

sterling
1. British silver money, of 92.5 percent purity; 2. of solid, impeccable worth.

steward
On a plantation, the man who oversaw agricultural tasks, supervising overseers, and was responsible for provisioning the master’s or owner’s house with food and other necessities.

stocks
A wooden frame with holes for a prisoner’s legs and/or hands, into which the prisoner would be locked for public punishment. See PILLORY.

stone
For centuries, the official British unit of weight, equal to fourteen pounds.

subaltern
The military rank of an officer below that of captain. See ENSIGN.

sucker
To remove new shoots from a tobacco stalk.

sulky
A two-wheeled, one-horse carriage for one person, canopy optional. See RIDING CHAIR.

supper
In the eighteenth century, a mail meal taken in the evening, about 8 o’clock. See BREAKFAST, DINNER.

sweating
The humidification of cured tobacco leaves to attain pliability.

sweetscented
A species of tobacco with fine leaves and a mild taste. See ORONOCO.

syllabub
A dessert made of cream or milk, curdled with wine and sometimes with whipped or solidified gelatin.

tardle
An entanglement, or complicated situation.

tare
An allowance made for the weight of a hogshead (or other container) in which tobacco was prized or packed, e.g., 1097 pounds gross minus 979 pounds net equals 118 pounds tare. See CROP NOTE, TRANSFER NOTE.

tariff
A tax levied on goods or commodities imported into a country for final sale, used as a revenue-raising device or as a political policy to either protect a country’s industry or as a penalty to discourage consumption of a commodity. See CUSTOM, EXCISE.

tatler
A clock or watch.

tilbury
Sixpence. Formerly the fare for crossing by boat on the Thames River between Gravesend and Tilbury Fort.

tipstaff
A sheriff’s officer, bailiff, or constable; an officer who waited on a court. So called because of the iron-tipped staff he carried.

tobo
Shorthand for tobacco, an abbreviation used in account book entries.

toby
A colloquial term for a highway or road as a regular venue of robbery.
High
toby was robbery committed by a mounted robber;
low
toby was committed by footpads. See SCAMP.

ton
A prevailing fashion or vogue. From the French
tone
.

top sail
To abandon one’s debts by going to sea.

topping
The pruning of undressed, unwanted tobacco leaves from a stalk.

Tory
A member of a British political group that originally supported the Stuarts, and later royal authority and the established (state) church, and that opposed all Parliamentary reforms. From the Irish-Gaelic term
toraidhe
, a pursued man, robber or outlaw. See WHIG.

toy
An amusing or diverting thing.

toy shop
A shop in which baubles and trifles were sold.

transfer note
A receipt from a colonial tobacco inspector for a certain number of pounds of loose, un-prized tobacco, and which, like the crop note, could be used as currency to purchase goods, but not for payment of debts outside of the colonies. See CROP NOTE, TARE.

turn off
To hang or execute a criminal.

union
A group of English country parishes consolidated for the administration of the poor laws.

uphills
Loaded dice, or dice that were weighted to turn up high numbers.

vail
A gratuity or tip.

vestry
In the Anglican Church, a committee of members of a parish that administered parish affairs; a meeting of this group or of the entire congregation; the church itself. A vestryman was usually a permanent member of the governing committee.

victualling office
The stomach.

viscount
A nobleman ranking between an earl and a baron. The French style is
vicomte
. See BARON, BARONET, DUKE, EARL, MARQUIS.

wagtail
A lewd woman.

wall gun
A firearm mounted on a swivel or stanchion in a fort, larger than a musket but smaller than a cannon (or gun). Also called a
long-gun
. See FIRELOCK, GUN.

wapentake
1. A subdivision of some English shires corresponding to a hundred; 2. a political assembly; 3. a Crown officer who could “take” or arrest a man with a “weapon” (origin obscure, probably Old English or Old Norse). See HUNDRED.

watchman
One of a body of parish-employed men appointed to keep watch from sunset to sunrise, and empowered to make arrests. Also called a
catchpole
.

wedge
A pistol.

Westminster wedding
The marriage of a whore and a rogue. It implied the low esteem in which Parliament and its members, situated in Westminster, were held by the public.

Whig
1. A member of a Scottish group that in 1648 marched to Edinburgh to oppose the court party; 2. a member or supporter of an eighteenth–century British political party that sought to limit or reduce royal authority, exclude Catholics from political power and office, and later to expand Parliamentary power. The origin of the term is uncertain, though it is thought to come from the town of Whiggamore, or from
whig
, meaning a country bumpkin or yokel. See TORY.

whither-go-ye
A wife, so called of one who enquired of a husband’s
destination; a nag.

wig
1. A manufactured covering of human or horsehair for the head, fashionable with men and women in the eighteenth century; 2. to rebuke or scold.

wine fountain
A silver or gilded urn of rococo design for serving wine on a table.

woolsack
A large, wool-stuffed cushion on which sat the Lord Chancellor of the House of Lords.

workhouse
A public (government) institution for housing and employing paupers or petty offenders, mandated by the Crown and administered by parishes or parish unions.

writ of assistance
In the eighteenth century, a British general search warrant used in the American colonies, and signed by a justice, that allowed customsmen and a sheriff to search private property for illegal or untaxed goods, while not specifying the place or the goods to be searched for. Writs of assistance were a major grievance of the colonies. See ATTAINDER, GENERAL WARRANT.

wyvern
A fabulous animal usually represented as a two-legged creature resembling a dragon. See SIMURG.

yawl
1. A ship’s jolly-boat with four to six oars; 2. a two-masted, fore-and-aft sailing boat; 3. a small fishing boat.

younker
A boy or junior seaman; contemptuously, a young person.

by Edward Cline

In the course of researching
Sparrowhawk
, I collected my own library of reference books so that library hours would not govern the progress of the writing. The following list is by no means a complete one of the titles I assembled. Many of the monographs on specific colonial era subjects, such as food, cooperage, medicine, and printing, most of them catalogued in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Colonial Williamsburg, are not included. However, the list does include many titles found in that library, The Mariners’ Museum archives, the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary, and other research venues, but of which I was able to procure copies for my own collection.

Among the titles not included in the list, but mentioned here for the record, are the multiple volumes of the noncirculating
Journals of the House of Lords
and the
House of Commons Journals,
which, together with especially the single Namier and Turberville titles listed below, were of invaluable help in the task of faithfully recreating Parliament in the eighteenth century. These I found, dusty and neglected, atop shelves of the Swem Library. I must have been the first person in a decade to open them. These, in turn, were complemented by official reports, letters, diaries, private journals, and period newspapers and magazines in a detective’s task of piecing together the puzzling and often exasperating machinations of British politics. A.S. Turberville noted in an appendix to his
The House of Lords in the XVIIIth Century
:

For a member of either the Commons or Lords, that “degree of certainty” meant not being held responsible to his electorate or to the public for whatever he might say in his House; nor was he accountable for his voting record, for which he did not regard himself as answerable to anyone, least of all to his electorate. It was not until the mid-1770s that the Commons relented and permitted the public reporting, without penalty, by printers and newspapers of speeches and the business of the lower House. It was only then that members of the Commons began to mind what they said and how they voted.

Another work that was of priceless assistance was Alan Valentine’s
The British Establishment, 1760-1784: An Eighteenth Century Biographical Dictionary
, published in 1970 by the University of Oklahoma Press (UOP), an edition of which I invested in. It contains over three thousand entries and often served as the starting point for further research of the lives and actions of particular members of the Commons and Lords and of events in Parliament itself, and featured biographical information on key “establishment” figures in law, the arts, and other professions. Particular emphasis was put on Parliamentary members’ voting records on key issues such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and its repeal almost a year later in the face of unexpected colonial opposition.

While I did not need one for purposes of
Sparrowhawk
, I searched in vain for its American companion, a reference work that would contain biographical précis of all the men who participated in the various colonial legislatures and governments up to the time of the Declaration of Independence, in addition to précis of the colonial “establishment” in the arts, law, and other professions. I queried the editor of the UOP about the prospect of producing an
American Colonial Establishment,
1740-1776
. Was one in the works? I noted that it would be a research tool of inestimable value to scholars, historians. and novelists alike. No, replied the editor, but it was a marvelous idea. Did I know anyone who might be willing to assume the task of researching and writing one? I submitted the names of some historians I knew, and presumably they were approached, but apparently they declined to embark on such a project.

As a result, to write those chapters in the
Sparrowhawk
series set in the Virginia General Assembly, because that body’s
Journals
gloss over the voting and speaking records of its burgesses, inference and deduction were my chief tools.

As noted above, this bibliography is selective and not all-inclusive, intended chiefly to give a reader an idea of the scope of research necessary to recreate the British-American culture and politics of the period between 1744 and 1775.