Extravagance
The man who endowed Sackville College was Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset. And a very sober, dour man of God he looked, too.
His son and heir Richard, on the other hand, was described as “one of the seventeenth century’s most accomplished gamblers and wastrels.” He pissed away much of his birthright. He did build the College – I’m not sure how breakable wills were in those days – but he never added all the things his father wanted, like a regular quarterly stipend for the inmates.
It as struggled ever since.
If you go to his Wikipedia page, you can see Richard in all his glory. Doesn’t he look like a world class wastrel? I particularly want to call attention to his shoes, picture above.
We were told they were made of porcelain.
How in the sam hill would that work? I’ve thought about it. They must surely have started by taking a cast of his foot, because a ceramic shoe would have no give. The heel looks heavy enough, but if any part of the shoe shattered while he was standing, it would’ve cut his feet to ribbons. Was he carried around in a sedan chair?
They’d known about porcelain from China for ages, but the Europeans had just begun working out how to manufacture it themselves and hadn’t sorted it all out yet. I get that it would be trendy, but it would be so damned dangerous.
Happy Fourth, Yanquis! And yes, we voted. Results expected tomorrow. Miraculous, isn’t it?
July 4, 2024 — 7:43 pm
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