The clerk of the kitchen

Act II: The mill · November 7, 2026

Part 9 ended with a law that priced a mouse and left the catching to “Nettes, Engynnes and other reasonable Devyses”. Here is the man who wrote the engines down.

The archbishop’s kitchen

Leonard Mascall was clerk of the kitchen in the household of Matthew Parker, the first Archbishop of Canterbury of Elizabeth I’s reign.

He was a careful keeper of records. In 1573 he drew up the parish register of Farnham Royal, in Buckinghamshire, and copied into it the rules for keeping parish registers, with some English verses of his own.

Books for a household

He also wrote books for people who ran a house and a bit of land. First, around 1570, a book on how to plant and graft fruit trees, translated from the French with “certaine Dutch practises” added. Then one on keeping poultry (1581), one on taking stains out of cloth (1583), one on doctoring cattle (1587), and a book of medical remedies translated from Latin (1588).

Much of it he translated or gathered from others. He collected what worked, and put it in English.

The book that came after

Mascall was buried at Farnham Royal on 10 May 1589. In 1590 John Wolfe printed one more book with his initials on it: A Booke of Fishing with Hooke & Line, bound with Another of sundrie Engines and Trappes to take Polcats, Buzards, Rattes, Mice and all other kindes of Vermine & Beasts whatsoever.

Part of it was gathered from older books, like the others: its fishing half leans on the Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, printed in 1496. It even repeats a story about what looks like his own family: that a “maister Mascoll of Plumsted in Sussex” first brought carp into England. He didn’t: the 1496 book already says there were a few.

Twelve mousetraps

In 1992 the researcher David Drummond worked through the twelve mousetraps in Mascall’s book. One of them, he found, is also in a painting: the Mérode Altarpiece from part 7, with its two traps in Joseph’s workshop.

A trap catches a mouse, and then someone has to set it again.

One of Mascall’s twelve didn’t need anyone.

Next, part 11: A mill to take mice.

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Sources

1. Thompson Cooper, "Mascall, Leonard", Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 36 (1893): en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Mascall,_Leonard . Clerk of the kitchen to Archbishop Parker, the Farnham Royal register (1573), his death and burial (10 May 1589), and the carp and pippin story.
2. "Leonard Mascall", Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Mascall , and Wikisource, Author:Leonard Mascall: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Leonard_Mascall . His books and their dates.
3. Leonard Mascall, A Booke of Fishing with Hooke & Line … Another of sundrie Engines and Trappes to take Polcats, Buzards, Rattes, Mice and all other kindes of Vermine & Beasts whatsoever (London: John Wolfe, 1590), Early English Books Online text, Text Creation Partnership A07166 (CC0): github.com/textcreationpartnership/A07166 . The title page and the carp chapter.
4. David C. Drummond, "Unmasking Mascall's Mouse Traps", Proceedings of the 15th Vertebrate Pest Conference (1992): digitalcommons.unl.edu/vpc15/23 . Twelve mousetraps described and figured by Mascall, one of them also in the Mérode Altarpiece (abstract).
5. Thomas Satchell, introduction to the 1884 reprint of A Booke of Fishing with Hooke & Line: archive.org/details/bookeoffishingwi00mascrich . The book's debt to the 1496 Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, and carp in England before Mascall.