Free The Fetter Lane Fleece by Gregory House

the Winter solstice and the Spring Equinox. Also Groundhog Day in the Eastern USA.
    Hallowtide: The religious festival of All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween 1 st November.
    Brandywine: later shortened to brandy, alcoholic distillation of wine occasionally also used to describe wine fortified with brandy.
    Sack: A very popular form of fortified wine similar to sherry sometimes augmented with sugar and brandy for extra taste.
    Rhenish: as the name implies a wine from the Rhine region, very popular in England.
    Scarlet cloth: this was the common name of the finest woven woollen cloth used for gowns, kirtles and doublets and does not refer to the colour thus you can have blue scarlet or green scarlet as is described in period documents.
    Justice: the local judge or royal official charged with keeping the peace
    The Common Watch: acted as a police force and occasional fire brigade, and regarded by the Tudor citizens as next to useless and dumber than a pile of pig droppings.
    Parish Ward Muster: citizen militia of reasonable quality and equipment, usually recruited from the better classes of Londoners.
    Bedlam: the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem a hospice for those found to be decayed in their wits, mad crazed or deluded, hence the phrase as ‘its bedlam’ or as ‘mad as Bedlam’. In the Tudor period the common term of insanity was Bedlamite.
    The Liberties: areas of the city of London and Southwark under the jurisdiction of the church and exempt from interference by city or county officials, usually swarming with punks, cony catchers, thieves, murders and forgers.
    Wherry: a small boat with one to four rowers used for transport on the Thames, the taxi of its day.
     

The Liberties of London, A Tudor Christmas Frolic
Prologue A Perilous Position
    Ned closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the winter chilled stonework of the bridge. No, he kept on telling himself, don’t look down. That wasn’t a good idea. It may look like any other patch of the murky, stygian gloom of mid winter, but searching for an unseen peril below didn’t help. If he fell he knew what happened. He’d seen it a minute or so ago when the bridge wall collapsed. Earless Nick’s luckless minion tumbled over him and, screaming briefly, had plummeted onto the ice which had shattered with a loud crash, then finally a choking gurgle. So no, he didn’t need to peer down there to see the effects. His imagination was already doing a good enough job supplying him with the images he didn’t need. He already knew the Fleete Ditch by reputation—all of London and the Liberties did. In summer you could smell it for a mile. So a closer inspection of the sluggish, turgid, stream, charged with turds and piss channel scourings was not required. Instead he needed to do something constructive, like figure out how to climb up.
    As it was, his fingers were getting cramped, shoved as they were between the iron and the stone. He’d tried to tighten his grip on the iron staple and who knows, without the gloves, it may have been easier. However as slippery as they felt right now, they protected his flesh from the jagged edged iron. Damn the Liberties work crews and damn Sir Thomas Bloody More! That lofty royal official had been Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and this bridge was under his jurisdiction for repair. Perhaps if the new Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom had spent less time a’ hunting heretics, he could have put that spare energy to better use. Like repairing the bloody Fleete Ditch Bridge!
    Ned attempted to distract himself from this situation. An ancient philosopher had suggested that, when in peril, one should recall a happy or pleasurable occasion to regain a moment of joy. Well he did that, and what readily sprang to mind was the Christmas Revels. His Christmas Revels actually, that he’d organised, financed and in fact should have, at this very moment, been sitting down to, feasting on roast suckling pig with a tankard of the finest sack in