"Trencher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fishermen, and became only by Act of Parliament poachers, smugglers, and illicit distillers; the province of the male portion of the family was to find food for the rest; and a pair of spurs laid on an empty trencher was well understood by the goodman as a token that the larder ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the foot of his sister's table dispensing its hospitalities chiefly to himself. Through some law unknown to science, all dishes seemed to gravitate toward the main center of Dicky's trencher, thereby leaving the rest ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... were given their dinner according to the usage, which was this:—A number of oak and birch trees were felled, and over every two and two there was spread a tablecloth—that is, the warm skin of a deer or wild-boar; into this, as into a wooden trencher, was poured the warm blood of the wild animals, which the hounds lapped up, while forty huntsmen played a march with drums and trumpets, which was re-echoed from the neighbouring wood, to the great delight of all the listeners. When the hounds had lapped up all the blood, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... costing three guineas a piece, his enemies were fond of reminding him that there had been a time when he had eked out by his wits an income of barely fifty pounds, when he had been happy with a trencher of mutton chops and a flagon of ale from the College buttery, and when a tithe pig was the rarest luxury for which he had dared to hope. The Revolution came, and changed his whole scheme of life. He obtained, by the influence of Dorset, who took a peculiar pleasure in befriending ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "trencher favorite" of Arden of Feversham, in love with Maria, sister of Mosby. A weak man, who both loves and honors Arden, but is inveigled by Mosby to admit ruffians into Arden's house to murder him.—Geo. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... put them into Salt and Water for about two Hours; then boil them very tender till a Pin will easily go into them; then drain them well from the Water, and put them into your preserving Pan, putting as much clarified Sugar to them as will cover them, laying some Trencher or Plate on them to keep them down; then set them over a Fire, and by Degrees heat them till they boil; then let them have a quick boil till the Sugar comes all over them in a Froth; then set them by till ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... recipe, which is a secret of the Order, is of excellent quality, and deserves its reputation. The monastery bread, made from the wheat grown by the monks, was of the substantial and honest kind which in England would probably be called 'farmhouse bread,' although the great wheel or trencher-shaped loaves of the French provinces might cause some surprise there. My meal, therefore, might have been worse than it was, and as it was given to me for nothing, it would have been very bad manners not to appear ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... this is a great marvel, this hound lying here in the dung. Truly he is goodly of growth, but I know not certainly if he have speed with this beauty, or if he be comely only, like as are men's trencher dogs that their lords keep for ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... Trencher, n. [trncher] Trinchero; la mesa; las viandas; la comida. Tagagaw ng trinchera; ang dulang; ang ulam; ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... is not free from stones, roots, and sod, I should put on the manure, as directed, in the autumn, and begin on one side of the prospective bed and trench it all over, mingling the fertilizer through the soil. The trencher can throw out on the surface back of him every stone, root, and weed, so that by the time he is through there is a sufficient space of ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter—large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed—stood at his lodge door in a frank and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his feeling towards her had never been so strong or so distinct as since her refusal to kiss the 'candlestick.' He was on the point of speaking, of saying something explicitly tender, when the wooden trencher which the party were using at their play, came bowling between him and Sylvia, and spun out its little period right betwixt them. Every one was moving from chair to chair, and when the bustle was over Sylvia was seated at some distance from him, and he left standing ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Baird,' said he, swallowing down a draught of wine, and pushing aside his trencher. 'Your license, gentlemen. I must be alone. Take care of the lads, Nigel. Malcolm is spent too. His deft service was welcome ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those who sing of deeds of arms are perhaps especially addicted. The great age which Anacreon attained points to a temperate life; and he more than once denounces intoxication with as great zeal as a modern reformer who has eschewed the flagon for the trencher. According to Anacreon, drunkenness is "the vice of barbarians;" though, for the matter of that, it is difficult to say what achievable vice is not. In Ode LXII, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... I haue taught him (euen as one would say precisely, thus I would teach a dog) I was sent to deliuer him, as a present to Mistris Siluia, from my Master; and I came no sooner into the dyning-chamber, but he steps me to her Trencher, and steales her Capons-leg: O, 'tis a foule thing, when a Cur cannot keepe himselfe in all companies: I would haue (as one should say) one that takes vpon him to be a dog indeede, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit then he, to take a fault vpon me that he did, I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... know the quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks; they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. All ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... discourse was on the subject of young noblemen and gentlemen who thought of going to sea, the naval service being considered as noble as that of the land. Lord Crewe remarked that "in Queen Elizabeth's time one young nobleman would wait with a trencher at the back of another till he come of age himself;" and he mentioned the Earl of Kent, who was waiting on Lord Bedford at table when a letter came to that lord announcing that the earldom had fallen to his ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... say, when last year, after the dance at Hampton, thou wert enraged against the noble that slighted thee; and, flushed with wine, thou took'st me by the ear, and mad'st me hand thee into thy coach, and get in beside thee, with a drawn sword in my hand and a dripping trencher on my ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... pledge, thy son. Thus, like a Roman Tribune, thou thy gate Early sets ope to feast, and late; Keeping no currish waiter to affright, With blasting eye, the appetite, Which fain would waste upon thy cates, but that The trencher creature marketh what Best and more suppling piece he cuts, and by Some private pinch tells dangers nigh, A hand too desp'rate, or a knife that bites Skin-deep into the pork, or lights Upon some part of kid, as if mistook, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... met him with his army at the city Adida, which is upon a hill, and beneath it lie the plains of Judea. And when Trypho knew that Simon was by the Jews made their governor, he sent to him, and would have imposed upon him by deceit and trencher, and desired, if he would have his brother Jonathan released, that he would send him a hundred talents of silver, and two of Jonathan's sons as hostages, that when he shall be released, he may not make Judea revolt from the king; for that at present he was kept ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... well picked and beaten in a Mortar, and put them into a Syrup, so much as the Flowers will stain, boil them, and stir them till you see it will turn Sugar again, then pour it upon a wet trencher, and when it is cold cut it into Lozenges, and that which remaineth in the bottom of the Posnet scrape it clean out, and beat it and searce it, then work it with some Gum Dragon steeped in Rosewater and a little Ambergreece, so make it into ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... after this, steered his course for Oxford, where he visited Messrs. Treby, Stanford, Cooke, and other collegians, his particular friends, of whom he got a trencher-cap.—Having staid at Oxford as long as was agreeable to his inclinations, he set out for Abington, and from thence to Marlborough, having put on a pair of white stockings, a grey waistcoat, and the trencher-cap. Thus equipped, he pretended to be disordered in his ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... ramming be not bruised, because that weakens its effect; that a little quantity of paper, lint, or the like, be rammed over it, and then the ball be intruded. If the ball be red hot, a tompion, or trencher of green wood, is to be driven in before it. Also, in martial law, an indictment or specification of the crime of which a prisoner stands accused. Also, in evolutions, the brisk advance of a body to attack an enemy, with bayonets fixed at the charge, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... ground. This, too, might be thought a praise by some.' But hear Nash, who was far from praising: 'I leaue all these to the mercy of their mother-tongue, that feed on nought but the crums that fall from the translator's trencher,—that could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should haue neede; yet English Seneca, read by candle-light, yeelds many good sentences—hee will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragicall speeches.' I cannot determine exactly when ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... it. [201] In the cost of wheat there has been very little change. The average price of the quarter, during the last twelve years of Charles the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great majority of the nation lived almost entirely ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... swain, King Henry's blood, The honourable blood of Lancaster, Must not be shed by such a jaded groom. Hast thou not kiss'd thy hand and held my stirrup? Bare-headed plodded by my foot-cloth mule And thought thee happy when I shook my head? How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneel'd down at the board, When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it and let it make thee crest-fallen, Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride, How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood And duly waited for my coming forth. ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... Ricaras could be prevailed on to go with us till the return of the other chief; and that the Chayennes were a wild people, afraid to go. He invited Captain Clark to his house, and gave him two carrots of tobacco, two beaver-skins, and a trencher of boiled corn and beans. It is the custom of all the nations on the Missouri to offer to every white man food and refreshment when he first ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... Her curiosity was reaching the breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the faeries' trencher ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... in, but I dare say I had hard work to do it. At last he came in, and I will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr. Fearing. There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it was laid upon his trencher." In this way the guide tells us his first introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved himself in the Interpreter's House. For instance, in the parlour full of dust, when the Interpreter said that the dust is original sin and inward corruption, you would have ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... thought it necessary to inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming dress and a very awkward address: "not knowing that an Englishman's beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it worse in a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, than in ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... before the supper was served, but when every man had his trencher filled Rainouart entered the hall, armed with his staff, and stood leaning against a pillar, watching the noble company. 'Sir,' said Aimeri, the man whom the Saracens most dreaded, 'who is it that I see standing there holding a piece of wood that five ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... had seared his kindly and humane temperament. But jolly Dan poured oil—not to say ale—on the wounds and eased them. As it was neither dinner-time nor supper-time, the sailor ordered a repast ample enough for both, and fell to his trencher with hearty good will. His companion did his best to emulate him, and for a spare man did excellently. Dan ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... brief space of something like sleep-walking as the soldiers led her through branching corridors to this room, and fetched for her attendant the only woman available, a wench they had taken from trencher-washing in the royal kitchen. She remembered irritably rejecting the woman's clumsy services and sending her to sleep on her pallet, while she herself walked to and fro with her surging thoughts until ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Amfortas died, when he was called back to Montsalvatch to inherit his possessions, among which was the Holy Grail. Arthur and all the knights of the Round Table were present at his coronation, and paid him a yearly visit. When he died, "the Sangreal, the sacred lance, and the silver trencher or paten which covered the Grail, were carried up to the holy heavens in presence of the attendants, and since that time have never anywhere been seen ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... broiled by her own hand, and the luscious huckleberries in tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious dignity by little Marie; once only was Pere Francois Xavier annoyed by the absence of a display of childish pleasure ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... ingeniously concealed without, by their forming the sculptured mouths of two griffins cut in a great stone tablet decorating that external part of the dwelling. A mattress lay rolled up in one corner, with a jug of water, a flask of wine, and a wooden trencher containing cold roast beef ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... would gladly entertain Into his house some trencher chapelain; Some willing man that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions. First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed Whiles his young master lieth o'er his head. Second that he do on no default Ever presume to sit above the salt. Third ...
— English Satires • Various
... next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more sedately, and reached his cabin without being observed ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the cattle to eat the grass closer till Lammas (August 1). Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much material 'to his bailiff'; for there is more trust in an honest score chalked on a trencher than 'in a commen writen scrowle'. Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices. An acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, was at this time worth from L20 to L30; of twelve years' growth, L5 to L6; but on many of the best lands ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... set before him some mouldy bread on a trencher and said, 'Eat,' and some brackish water in a cup and said, 'Drink,' and when he had eaten and drunk, the old man went out, locking the door behind him and fastening ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... Roman repast, were occasionally brought in, and removed, with the dishes on them; sometimes each joint was served up separately, and the fruit, deposited in a plate or trencher, succeeded the meat at the close of the dinner; but in less fashionable circles, particularly of the olden time, fruit was brought in baskets, which stood beside the table. The dishes consisted of fish; meat boiled, roasted, and dressed in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... proprietor, may be learnt from Shakespear. His most infatuated and passionate lovers are Antony and Othello; yet both of them betray the commercial and proprietary instinct the moment they lose their tempers. "I found you," says Antony, reproaching Cleopatra, "as a morsel cold upon dead Caesar's trencher." Othello's worst agony is the thought of "keeping a corner in the thing he loves for others' uses." But this is not what a man feels about the thing he loves, but about the thing he owns. I never understood the full significance of Othello's outburst until I one day heard a lady, in ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... boy! I knew him, at Caius' trencher, when for hire He prostituted his abused body To that great gormond, fat Apicius; And was the noted pathic ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... them as you doe for Almond milk, draw them through a strainer, with the yolks of two or three Eggs, season it well with Sugar, and make it into a thick Batter, with fine flower, as you doe for Bisket bread, then powre it on small Trencher plates, and bake them in an Oven, or baking pan, and these are the ...
— A Book of Fruits and Flowers • Anonymous
... stopped. Turning out of the private cloister-entrance of the deanery, right upon them, had come Dr. Gardner, one of the prebendaries. He cast a displeased glance at Yorke, not speaking; and little Channing, touching his trencher to the doctor, flew to the place where he had left his books, caught them up, and ran out of the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... madnes! What, haveinge fyrst beene cheated of thy wealthe, Darest thou againe be cheated of thy witt,— And thynke so poor a lord as is my father, The most dyspysd forsaken Ganelon, Can propp thy mynde,[82] fortune's shame upon thee! Wayte with a trencher, goe learne policye; A servingman at dynner tyme will teach thee To give attendance on the full-fedd gueste, Not on the hungry sharke; and yet you thynke To feede on larke by serving ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... end of this was laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make for fish; Nor fetch in firing 170 At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish: 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master:—get ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... abated, leaving in its stead that placid quiet which is apt to linger about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sou{er}aynes bred thow choppe, & at it be newe & able; se all{e} o{er} bred a day old or {o}u choppe to e table; all{e} howsold bred iij. dayes old / so it is p{ro}fitable; and trencher bred iiij. dayes ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... essential article for the table, it is seldom well prepared. Mix on a trencher, in the proportion of a tea-spoonful of flour to four ounces of the best butter. Put it into a saucepan, and two or three table-spoonfuls of hot water; boil it quick for a minute, and shake it ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... felt no shame to eat from wooden dishes. As for knives and forks—nobody used those! Every one ate with his fingers. Think how primitive it must have been to go to a banquet of the Lord-Mayor of London arrayed in your silk or velvet costume, and eat roasted ox with your fingers from a trencher, or square slab of wood! Yet such a procedure was considered entirely proper ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... was none at the moment, but the Vicar was not to be cheated out of this new chance of helping another. Striding into the kitchen, he laid hands upon the pewter dishes, of whose polish Sally Lawrence was so proud, and handed them to the widow with the remark that "a wooden trencher served better." ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... Trencher-chapelaine; Some willing man, that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions. First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, While his young master lieth o'er his head; Second, that he do, upon no default, Never to sit above the salt; Third, that he never change his trencher twise; Fourth, that he use all common courtesies, Sit bare at meales, and one half rise and wait; Last, that he never his young master beat, But he must aske his mother to define How manie jerks she would his breech should ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... (medical) kuracado. Treaty kontrakto, traktajxo. Tree arbo. Trefoil trifolio. Trellis palisplektajxo. Tremble tremi. Trembling tremo—ado. Tremendous grandega. Tremor tremeto, skueto. Tremulous trema, skueta. Trench fosajxo. Trenchant akra. Trencher lignotelero. Trepidation tremeco, tremado. Trespass transpasxo, ofendo. Tress (hair) harligo. Tress plektajxo. Trestle (bench) stablo. Trial (an attempt) provo—ajxo—ado. Triangle triangulo. Tribe gento. Tribulation ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... stout trencher man; one who has a good appetite, or, as the term is, plays a good knife ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... swears, in the phrase of the land. He is a fair guest, and a fair inviter, and can excuse his good cheer in the accustomed apology. He has some faculty in mangling of a rabbit, and the distribution of his morsel to a neighbour's trencher. He apprehends a jest by seeing men smile, and laughs orderly himself, when it comes to his turn. His businesses with his friends are to visit them, and whilst the business is no more, he can perform this well enough. His discourse is the news ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... number of sheep bequeathed by one man, of a quantity of cotton cloth worth nine shillings presented by another, of a pewter flagon worth ten shillings by a third, of a fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, and one small trencher salt, by others; and of presents or legacies, amounting severally to five shillings, one pound, two pounds, &c., all faithfully recorded with the names of the donors, we are at first tempted to smile; but a little reflection will soon ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... tongue, Madge!" angrily exclaimed Giles. "Good father, heed not a woman; they are caught by the lip and the fist, like my lord's trencher-man. This Sir Osmund is both lean and ill-favoured. I wonder what the Lady Mabel saw above his shoe to wed with an ugly toad spawned i' the Welsh marshes. Had ye seen her first husband, Sir William Bradshaigh—rest his soul! he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... ever set before the pampered sons of civilization. They had been swimming in their native element a couple of hours before, and were a species of trout, weighing from a pound and a half to two pounds apiece. Mr. Mellowtone declared that they were delicious; and he justified his praise by his trencher practice. For bread we had cold johnny cake, for we were out of flour, as no trading steamer had passed since the ice in the river broke up. We lived well at the Castle, for besides the game and fish supplied by the woods and the rivers, ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... costume, on his favorite horse; there was a sticking-plaster silhouette of him in the widow's bedroom, and a miniature in the drawing-room, where he was drawn in a gown of black and gold, holding a gold-tasselled trencher cap with one hand, and with the other pointing to a diagram of Pons Asinorum. This likeness was taken when he was a fellow-commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, and before the growth of that blue beard which ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... water, then strain all the liquor from the Pulp, then take a pint of that liquor, and half a pound of Sugar, and boil it till it be a quaking gelly on the back of a spoon; so then pour it on your moulds, being taken out of fair water; then being cold turn them on a wet trencher, and so slide them into the boxes, and if you would have it ruddy colour, then boil it leasurely close covered, till it be as red as Claret Wine, so may you conceive, the difference is in the boiling of it; remember to boil your Quinces ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... their spoons all over. When these were the practices of fastidious people, the proceedings of those who were not such may be discreetly left to imagination. The second table was served in a much more ordinary manner. In this instance the knife was iron and the spoon pewter, the plate a wooden trencher (never changed), and the drinking-cup of horn. In the midst of the table stood a pewter salt-cellar, formed like a castle, and very much larger than we use ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... the mere cup and trencher, we no doubt Fared passing well; but as for merriment 10 And sport, without which salt and sauces season The cheer but scantily, our sizings were Even of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... linen, and thereto costlie cupbords of plate worth five or six hundred or a thousand pounds."[39] The lord of the manor no longer took his meals with all his retainers in the great hall, throwing the bones and scraps from his wooden trencher to his dogs. He withdrew into a separate apartment, and dined with a new refinement. A hitherto unknown variety of food covered the table, served on pewter, china, or silver, instead of the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... answered him and said, "Our Lord God must first send a sharp pouring shower, with thunder and lightning, and afterwards cause it mildly to rain, as then it wetteth finely through. In like manner, a willow or a hazel wand I can easily cut with my trencher-knife, but for a hard oak a man must have and use axes, bills, and such-like, and all little enough to fell and to ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... otiation. Or as others of them that go ordinarily to Church and neuer pray to winne an opinion of holinesse: or pray still apace, but neuer do good deede, and geue a begger a penny and spend a pound on a harlot, to speake faire to a mans face, and foule behinde his backe, to set him at his trencher and yet sit on his skirts for so we vse to say by a fayned friend, then also to be rough and churlish in speach and apparance, but inwardly affectionate and fauouring, as I haue sene of the greatest podestates and grauest iudges and Presidentes of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... just come from the Borough, Will you buy a pudding stirrer. I hope I am not too soon, For you to buy a wooden spoon. I've come quick as I was able, Thinking you might want a ladle, And if I'm not too late, Buy a trencher or wood plate. Or if not it's no great matter, So you take a wooden platter. It may help us both to dinner, If you'll buy a wooden skimmer. Come, neighbours, don't be shy, for I deal just and fair, Come, quickly come and buy, all ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of one room into the other, as thrown with some great force. Captain Hart, being in a slumber, was taken by the shoulder and shaked until he did sit up in his bed, thinking that it had been one of his fellows, when suddenly he was taken on the pate with a trencher, that it made him shrink down into the bed-clothes, and all of them, in both rooms, kept their heads at least within their sheets, so fiercely did three dozen of trenchers fly about the rooms; yet Captain Hart ventured again to peep out to see what was the matter, and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... fish must see to peason and furmety, the tail and the liver; you must look if there be a salt porpos or sole, turrentine, and do after the form of venison; baked herring, lay it whole on the trencher, then white herring in a dish, open it by the back, pick out the bones and the row, and see there be mustard. Of salt fish, green-fish, salt salmon, and conger, pare away the skin; salt fish, stock fish, marling, mackrel, and hake with butter, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... Astrida's banquet, the old Lady at the Duke's right hand, and the Count of Harcourt on his left; Osmond carved for the Duke, and Richard handed his cup and trencher. All through the meal, the Duke and his Lords talked earnestly of the expedition on which they were bound to meet Count Arnulf of Flanders, on a little islet in the river Somme, there to come to some agreement, by which Arnulf might make restitution to Count Herluin of Montreuil, for certain ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... State are kept. The large standing salt was the dividing line upon the table. Salt cellars dating from the fourteenth century are in existence, and many curiously shaped designs intervened before the bell-shaped salts which were fashionable in the days of Elizabeth and the trencher salts of Queen Anne and the early Georges. Salt cellars with feet came into fashion in the reign of George II; then followed many minor changes until the beautifully perforated salt cellars with blue liners bearing hall-marks dating from the close of the eighteenth century came into vogue. ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... treaty of fellowship. As to the hardy feats, both of sword and trencher, performed by this "curtal fryar," behold are they not recorded at length in the ancient ballads, and in the magic ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... these two together however much they disagreed at other times. Tom did not say a word, but began to cut a loaf to pieces as though they had the very largest appetites; the great pile of slices lay untouched on the trencher, but the cutting had served its purpose of a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... same style. On a broad hearth, paved with brick, lay some of the choicest terriers, hounds and spaniels. One or two of the great chairs had litters of cats in them, which were not to be disturbed. Of these, three or four always attended him at dinner, and a little white wand lay by his trencher, to defend it if they were too troublesome. In the windows, which were very large, lay his arrows, cross-bows, and other accoutrements. The corners of the room were filled with his best hunting and hawking poles. ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... articles for setting the table was the trencher. These were made of wood, and often were only a block of wood, about ten or twelve inches square and three or four deep, hollowed down into a sort of bowl in the middle. In this the food was placed,—porridge, meat, vegetables, etc. Each person did not have ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the council chamber, in all the situations of thought and activity, he tested their abilities. But he particularly considered their behavior at the banquet-table. From first to last they were sumptuously entertained, and their demeanor over the trencher-board and ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... more excellent quality than is commonly set before others; and, calling to mind the falcon which you now ask of me, and his excellence, I judged him meet food for you, and so you have had him roasted on the trencher this morning; and well indeed I thought I had bestowed him; but, as now I see that you would fain have had him in another guise, so mortified am I that I am not able to serve you, that I doubt I shall never know peace of mind more." In witness whereof he had the feathers and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was furnished with long wooden tables and benches; each person was provided with a trencher, a jug of water, and a cup, having on it the name of the brother to whom it is appropriated, as Frere Paul, Frere Francois, &c. which name they assume on taking the vow. Their supper consisted of bread soaked in water, a little salt, and two raw carrots, placed by ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... was a saving woman, took the money, for I heard it rattle in her hand, hung the jars about my shoulders, and gave Martina the meat and corn in a basket. The flat cakes, however, she carried herself on a wooden trencher, because, as she said, she feared lest we should break them and anger the ghosts, who liked their food to be well served. So we started, and presently entered the mouth of that awful valley which, Martina told me, looked as though it had been riven ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... squire would gladly entertain Into his house some trencher-chaplain; Some willing man that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions. First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, Whilst his young master lieth o'er his head. Secondly, that he do, on no default, Ever presume to sit above the salt. Third, that he never change his trencher ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... say—that Mr. Amyas is as good as three to his trencher: but still there's crumbs, Mr. Brimblecombe, crumbs; and waste not want not is my doctrine; so you and I may have a somewhat to stay our stomachs, about an ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... for the dead! I know that sprig of Mistletoe, O Spirit in the midst! Under it I swung the girl I loved—girl no more now than I am a boy—and kissed her spite of blush and pretty shriek. And thee, too, with fragrant trencher in hand, over which blue tongues of flame are playing, do I know—most ancient apparition of them all. I remember thy reigning night. Back to very days of childhood am I taken by the ghostly raisins simmering in a ghostly brandy flame. Where now the merry boys and girls ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... trance?" said d'Aubricour. "Waken, and carry this trencher of beef to your brother. Best that you should do it," he added in a low voice, taking up a flask of wine, "and save our comrade from at once making ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... three hours were up, I relieved him, and continued the firing. As our balls bounded off the sloping iron rails like peas upon a trencher, utterly failing to make any impression, and as the shot from the Blakely gun came clear through our walls, Anderson directed that the men should cease firing at that particular place. I regretted very much that the upper tier of guns had been abandoned, as they were all loaded and pointed, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... was an age of luxury; but on the farms the laborer was glad to get a bundle of straw for a bed, and a wooden trencher to eat from. Vegetables were scarcely known, and fresh meat was eaten only by the well to do. The cottages were built of sticks and mud, without chimneys, and were nearly as bare of furniture as the wigwam ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... will probably make something like an inverted cornucopia, or wiredrawn extinguisher; and one will cross it with a dash, and another with a loop; while another will make a letter wholly different—something that shall look like a pudding leaning against a trencher set on edge—something that is only a great 'A' by courtesy, being in fact nothing but an overgrown little 'a;' bearing the same proportion to a common 'a' as an alderman does to a common man, and looking as if it had been invented by some municipal ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... painful to connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable to a ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... country-side at loggerheads about her—would be decidedly bettered by this discipline under Mise Fougueiroun: whose name long has been one to conjure with in all the kitchens between Saint-Remy and the Rhone. For the Provencaux are famous trencher-men, and the way that leads through their gullets is not the longest way to ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... always a welcome guest in those days, and Peter was eagerly welcomed by all. He was speedily seated at the board, the best of everything heaped upon his trencher; whilst as he talked and ate at the same time, doing both with hearty goodwill, Joan and one of the serving wenches slipped away to the tempting packs and undid the strings, handling the wares thus exposed with tender care and ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... over the world. They are always promised very young; but the espoused never see one another, till three days after their marriage. The bride is carried to church, with a cap on her head, in the fashion of a large trencher, and over it a red silken veil, which covers her all over to her feet. The priest asks the bridegroom, Whether he is contented to marry that woman, be she deaf, be she blind? These are the literal words: to which having answered, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... hardly get above a bite or two at a baiting: then your only way is to desist from your sport, about two or three days: and in the meantime, on the place you late baited, and again intend to bait, you shall take a turf of green but short grass, as big or bigger than a round trencher; to the top of this turf, on the green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten one by one, as many little red worms as will near cover all the turf: then take a round board or trencher, make a hole in the middle thereof, and through ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... which characterized the rest of the house. A table in the centre of the room took up the chief of the space, and at this table sat a bronzed and stalwart man, whom Corinne instantly recognized as her protector in that forest adventure of long ago. He was seated with a trencher before him, and was doing an justice to the fare set out; but he was also in earnest conversation with Madame Drucour, who was seated opposite, her elbows lightly resting upon the table, and her chin ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Lyons," but the natives worked their boats like gondolas, standing, one rowing and another steering with oars, that were like half a lance in shape, a pace and a half long, with a round board like a trencher tied at the end. "And with these they make very good pace, being great coasting voyagers, but not venturing far out to sea or away from their own country, lest they should be seized and sold for slaves to ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... good deal here besides,' said Rollo. 'Mrs. Charteris, don't you want a bread trencher? Or a rocking chair? ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... all the meat with the ears, which cut in pieces. Have ready four neats' feet, also well boiled; take out the bones, cut the meat in thin slices, mix it with the head, and lay it with the belly-piece: roll it up tight, and bind it up, and set it on one end, with a trencher upon it; set it within the tin, and place a heavy weight upon that, and let it stand all night. In the morning take it out, and bind it with a fillet; put it in some salt and water, which must be changed every four or five days. When sliced, it looks like brawn. It is also good dipped ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... badness of the Latin, and, when her mistress cast her eyes on her, blushed, possibly with a consciousness of having laughed at her master. Mrs Partridge, upon this, immediately fell into a fury, and discharged the trencher on which she was eating, at the head of poor Jenny, crying out, "You impudent whore, do you play tricks with my husband before my face?" and at the same instant rose from her chair with a knife in her hand, with which, most probably, she would have executed very tragical vengeance, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... these lazy ones delighted in filth. Again and again have I seen one or another throw the scrapings of the trencher bowls just outside the door of the tent or hut, where those who came or went must of a necessity tread upon them, and one need not struggle hard to realize what soon was the ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... Well, I never was more interested; fancy ferreting out Wycliffe, the Black Prince, our friend Sir Walter Raleigh, Pym, Hampden, Laud, Ireton, Butler, and Addison, in one afternoon. I walked about two inches taller in my trencher cap after it. Perhaps I may be going to make dear friends with some fellow who will change the history of England. Why shouldn't I? There must have been freshmen once who were chums of Wycliffe of Queen's, or Raleigh of Oriel. I mooned up and down the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summersault several times together upon a trencher,[20] fixed on a rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... worry him, that Ape had paid it, What dainty tricks! ——— O that bursen Bear-ward: In his French doublet, with his blister'd bullions, In a long stock ty'd up; O how daintily Would I have made him wait, and shift a trencher, Carry a cup of wine? ten thousand stinks Wait on thy mangy hide, thou ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was loth to ask, lest he should be denied: I would ask, but I would ask to obtain; O, would I knew that manner of asking! To beg were base; and to couch low, and to carry an humble show of entreaty, were too dog-like, that fawns on his master to get a bone from his trencher: out, cur! I cannot abide it; to put on the shape and habit of this new world's new-found beggars, mistermed soldiers[206], as thus: "Sweet gentlemen, let a poor scholar implore and exerate that you would make him rich in the possession of a mite of your favours, to keep him a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... The troopers were valiant trencher-men, whatever else they were, and promptly assaulted the meat-pie fort, as from its size and shape ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Untaught and feeble is my pen: But on one statement I may safely venture; That few of our most highly gifted men Have more appreciation of the trencher. I go. One pound of British beef, and then What Mr. Swiveller called a "modest quencher;" That home-returning, I may 'soothly say,' "Fate cannot touch me: I ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... when his master goes to dinner. Learn of him, you diminutive urchins, how to behave yourselves in your vocation: take not up your standings in a nut-tree, when you should be waiting on my lord's trencher. Shoot but a bit at butts; play but a span at points. Whatever you do, memento mori—remember to rise betimes in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... lived in days of yore, When outlaws bold were rife, The days of dagger and of bowl, Of dungeon and of strife. Oh! for the days when forks were not, On skewers came the meat; When from one trencher ate three foes: Oh! but those times were sweet! When hooded hawks sat overhead, And underfoot was straw Where hounds and beggars fought for ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Scobels and the school-children. The juveniles were in a state of alarm at having lost you. They had been playing the game in severe silence, and at a turn in the grove missed you altogether. Oh, here comes Scobel, with his trencher on the back ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... my pack-horse from me, I slit his throat and left him. I can bear Dishonour, public insult, many shames, Shrill scorn, and open contumely, but he Who filches from me something that is mine, Ay! though it be the meanest trencher-plate From which I feed mine appetite—oh! he Perils his soul and body in the theft And dies for his small sin. From what strange clay We men ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... fashion they mounted and rode away. They came to a new house called Hoarstones, where there were three score or more people, and horses of several colors, and a fire with meat roasting. They had flesh and bread upon a trencher and they drank from glasses. After the first taste the boy "refused and would have noe more, and said it was nought." There were other refreshments at the feast. The boy was, as he afterwards confessed, familiar with the story of the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Opera or the Varietes, sometimes at the Cafe de Paris, the Maison Doree, or the Trois Freres, M. Bertin may be seen enjoying the music, or his dinner and wine, but never was he a servile courtier or trencher-follower of the Monarch of the Barricades. It is after these enjoyments, or after his petit souper, that M. Bertin proceeds for the last time for the day, or rather the night, to the office of the paper. There shutting himself ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... shall be compos'd dark sentences, Pleasing to factious brains: And every other where place me a Jest, Whose high abuse shall more torment than blows: Then I my self (quicker than Lightning) Will fly me to a puissant magistrate, And weighting with a Trencher at his back, In midst of jollity, rehearse those gauls, (With some additions) So lately vented in your Theater. He, upon this, cannot but make complaint, To your great ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... (1.) Your trencher chaplains, that thrust themselves into great men's families, pretending the worship of God, when in truth the great business is their own bellies; and were notably painted out by Ahab's prophets, and also Nebuchadnezzar's wise men, who, though they pretended great devotion, yet their lusts and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... entreated my cousin Sidonia to help my poor father, she said, 'Get me a good maid who will do my business well, and then I shall see what can be done to help him. Now, as no one will take service with her, what else can I do, but play the trencher-woman myself, and thus save ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... water in Mendoza's hand)—"a Town and Gown row is a novelty to me. The Town has the best of it, clearly, though: the men outnumber the lads. Ha, a good blow! How that tall townsman went down before yonder slim young fellow in the scarlet trencher cap." ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Queen, along with all them that had to do with feeding and the kitchens. They thanked God for her because she had brought back the old fasts. For, as they argued, your fast brings honours to cooks, since, after a meagre day, your lord cometh to his trencher with a better appetite, and then is your cook commended. The Archbishop's cooks were the hottest in this contention, for they had the most reason to know. The stablemen, palfreniers, and falconers' mates were, most part ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... from French influence. Some, however, have called attention, perhaps too much attention, to the French words found in Lowland Scotch; and it is common to adduce always the same set of examples, such as ashet, a dish (F. assiette, a trencher, plate: Cotgrave), gigot, a leg of mutton, and petticoat-tails, certain cakes baked with butter (ingeniously altered from petits gastels, old form of petits gateaux), by way of illustration. Indeed, a whole book has been written on this subject; see A Critical ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... dais at the upper end of the table, blazing with plate and crystal, stood the royal chair, with the Queen's plate and knife and fork before it, exactly as if she had been present, while Leicester's trencher and stool were set respectfully quite at the edge of the board. In the neighbourhood of this post of honour sat Count Maurice, the Elector, the Pretender, and many illustrious English personages, with the fair Agnes Mansfeld, Princess Chimay, the daughters of William ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and saw with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and provident people: in Holland reckless parents were as rare as disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the table once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would look at one another and say, "Who is to find bread for them all when we ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade |
