Domestic Resurrections and Everyday Miracles
While palingenesis may have been an experimental process many held in doubt, even as they studied it with fascination, many other forms of resurrection and preservation were part of daily life, regularly attempted in gardens and kitchens and recommended or contested in print and manuscript texts. Texts gathered here describe various domestic resurrections promoted and debated in the period in the realms of gardening, cooking, and medicine, as well as a ballad about a bizarre act of Royalist political theatre in 1661.
Chapter IX: That there is not any art whereby any flower may be made to grow double, that was naturally single, nor of any other scent or color than it first had by nature; nor that the sowing or planting of herbs one deeper than other, will cause them to be in flower one after another, every month in the year.
The wonderful desire that many have to see fair, double, and sweet flowers, hath transported them beyond both reason and nature, feigning and boasting often of what they would have, as if they had it. And I think from this desire and boasting hath risen all the false tales and reports, of making flowers double as they list, and of giving them color and scent as they please, to flower likewise at what time they will. I doubt not but that some of these errors are ancient, and continued long by tradition, and others are of later invention and therefore the more to be condemned, that men of wit and judgment in these days should expose themselves in their writings to be rather laughed at than believed for such idle tales…. For I will show you mine own experience in the matter. I have been as inquisitive as any man might be, with everyone I knew, that made any such report, or that I thought could say anything therein, but I never could find anyone that could assuredly resolve me that he knew certainly any such thing to be done … whereupon I have made trial at many times, and in many sort of plants, accordingly, and as I thought fit, … but I could never see the effect desired, but rather in many of them the loss of my plants … and therefore let no man believe any such reports, be they never so ancient; for they are but mere tales and fables….And if any man can form plants at his will and pleasure, he can do as much as God himself that created them.
Walnut-Water, which is called the Water of Life
Take green walnuts in the beginning of June, beat them in a mortar, and still them in an ordinary still, keep that water by itself; then make a second water, gathering your walnuts about midsummer, or within a little after, use them as the other, keep that also by itself, then take a quart of each, and mix them together, and [dis]still them in a glass and keep it for your use.
The Virtues
It will heal all manner of dropsies and palsies, drank with wine fasting. It is good for the eyes if you put one
drop therein, it helpeth the conception in a woman if she drink thereof, one spoonful in wine once a day. It
will make them fair if it be washed therewith. It is good for all infirmities in the body. Whoever drinketh much
of it, shall live so long as nature shall continue in him finally. If you have any wine that is turned, put in a
little vial of it, and keep it close stopped, and within four days it will rectify again.
Preserving produce as a form of violence
Many of our gentlewomen, who look upon themselves to be saints, do yet make no conscience of spoiling those good creatures and hopeful fruits which the providence of God sends into the world for the real use and benefit of mankind, whilst they turn them into wantonness, and waste and pervert them before ever they come to maturity, to quite contrary ends than that for which the great and good Creator designed them … He gave them virtues to add health and strength to such as should in their due season eat them, but they, by seizing upon them with an unnatural and untimely violence (the same thing to vegetables as murder or killing is to animals) and using them absurdly and preposterously, make them the occasions of diseases and destruction.
A political “resurrection” or exhumation of a body
The newly restored Stuart government exhumed the bodies of several men responsible for the execution of Charles I, the subject of several of Pulter’s poems, in order to execute them posthumously for treason. These “regicides,” who had died of natural causes between Charles’s death (in 1649) and the restoration of his son, Charles II to the throne (in 1660), included Oliver Cromwell.
- But they wanted a tyrant underground wrapped
- with a fa, etc.
- ’Twas thought the great wind had him stole,
- with a fa, etc.
- At last they dived into a hole,
- with a fa, etc.
- And looking into the vault round,
- Oliver’s nose they quickly found,
- And two traitors more that lay underground.
- with a fa, etc.
- Then out of Westminster they lifted them they,
- with a fa, etc.
- To the Sign of the Lion all in one day,
- with a fa, etc.
- And then upon the thirtieth day,
- On sledges they did them convey,
- To Tyburn for to take their way,
- with a fa, etc.
- Oliver first to Tyburn came,
- with a fa, etc.
- The Sheriffe and his men for him made room,
- with a fa, etc.
- Then Squire Dun his coffin burst,
- With a rope Gaffer Cromwell up he thrust,
- And when he came down his head off must,
- with a fa, etc.