Despite all that was tipped into it, the river was remarkably full of life.- P49
By long tradition, at the Southwark end of the bridge the heads of serious criminals, especially traitors, were displayed on poles, each serving as a kind of odd and grisly bird-feeder. (The rest of the bodies were hung above the entrance gates to the city, or distributed to other cities across the realm.) There were so many heads, indeed, that it was necessary to employ a Keeper of the Heads. Shakespeare, arriving in London, was possibly greeted by the heads of two of his own distant kinsmen, John Somerville and Edward Arden, who were executed in 1583 for a fumbling plot to kill the Queen.- P50
Starch’s possibilities for fashionable discomfort were already being translated into increasingly exotic ruffs, soon to be known as piccadills (or peckadills, pickadailles, picardillos or any of about twenty other variants), from which ultimately would come the name ‘Piccadilly’,* and these grew ‘every day worser and worser’, as one contemporary glumly noted. Moreover, dyes were not yet colour-fast, or even close to it, adding a further powerful incentive to stay dry.- P52
Those who ate well ate at least as well as today.- P52
