ColonelThomasPride

In this depiction, St George is dressed in resplendent, jewel-encrusted gold and silver armour. However, his helmet is particularly curious—could the circular attached object be a mirror, or is it simply an ill-fitting visor? 3/7

📅#OTD 1644, #Shropshire. After several refusals, Parliamentarian Samuel More eventually surrenders Hopton Castle to the royalists. His garrison are put to the sword, leading to the phrase 'Hopton Quarter' being used as a byword for brutality. #17thCentury

There is no Woman of the Day post today but a contender might be printer, publisher and bookseller Mary Cooper of Paternoster Row, London (year of birth unknown) who in March 1744 published the first known book of English nursery rhymes in print including some that were slyly seditious in their time. Tommy Thumb's Song Book was a compilation of riddles and forty nursery rhymes, each with a woodcut illustration which included: Baa Baa Black Sheep, about the medieval wool tax imposed by Edward I in 1275 to pay for the Crusades. The taxes became known as "maltolts" or "ill takings" of wool. Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, about the persecution, torture and execution of Protestant martyrs during the reign of Mary I from 1553 to 1558. Silver bells were thumbscrews. Ladybird, Ladybird, about the persecution of Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603. Oranges and Lemons, which follows a condemned man en route to his execution via the churches of St Clemens, St Martins, Old Bailey, Bow, Stepney, and Shoreditch. The book included other lesser-known nursery rhymes that would have most parents today giving it a wide berth because they contained references to what we would consider adult themes but it’s worth noting that children’s literature in those days had a dark origin. Even those that weren’t a form of political resistance to the elite ruling classes featured graphic methods of death and torture. Mary wasn’t above taking political risks herself, publishing books with unpopular and controversial religious views, but she inherited a thriving printing business from her late husband and ran it very successfully from 1743 to 1761. She also worked with self-financing authors and printers who required a point of distribution and developed an effective network of hawkers and pedlars who sold her popular books in London, York and Bath. She personally owned at least 18 copyrights and is named on the imprints of at least two scholarly books in Latin. Mary died in August 1761, that rare thing, a woman of sufficient standing in the male-dominated printing and publishing trade. I tried to find out what percentage of publishers today are women as an indicator of progress, but I can’t tell you. The only stats available are for those who “identify as female”. You’ll just have to read my thoughts instead.