By Ellie Jones, Cathedral Archivist
This month’s Library and Archives In Focus event is on the theme of food and drink. The irony of this topic isn’t lost on us, as “no food and drink in the Library and Archives” is one of the main rules for using the Library and Archives!
It is always an interesting exercise making the selections for what we might bring out for these events. There was a lot to choose from for this topic: a medieval recipe for rice pudding, accounts for feast day flans, and a note about choosing sacramental wine seemed obvious enough choices – but what else? Something which unexpectedly caught our eye was a short reference to a Dean & Chapter subscription towards buying wheat in April 1795, and a copy of a letter written in response to an attack on King George III in the autumn of that year.
In 1795-96 a series of riots (known later as the “Bread Riots”) erupted across Britain. Several bad winters in a row had resulted in poor crop harvests, and political unrest was impacting the movement of foodstuffs across Europe. There was a shortage of cereal crops, meat and dairy products, and the price of bread more than doubled. The result was food scarcity, high inflation, and widespread accusations of profiteering.
With grain supplies difficult to obtain via the usual route through France – this was the time of the French Revolution – the British government tried to import more grain from the Baltic, and even Quebec, instead. In April 1795, the Dean & Chapter subscribed £20 to the ‘association for purchasing foreign wheat’, to be imported and sold in Exeter. On 29 October 1795 King George III was attacked on his way to the State Opening of Parliament. An angry crowd surrounded the royal carriage, throwing stones at the windows, and shouting: “Peace and Bread!”, “No War!”, “Down with George!”.
The Dean and Chapter wrote this Loyal Address to the king two weeks after the attack, expressing “unfeigned concern at the imminent danger to which your Royal Person was lately exposed”.Join us if you can at “In Focus: Making a Meal of it – Food and Drink in the Cathedral Library & Archives”, 2pm-4pm on Tuesday 18 February to discover more.