Amazing really that they were still set on doing it after the surgeon was called: perhaps the first cavalier had cut his buttock all wrong? Nor is this parliamentary propaganda. The blood loss from the first cutter was so great that a surgeon had to be fetched and because of this summoning one of the wives of these five royalists burst in and prevented her husband from cutting off his own buttocks with some threatening fire tongs. ‘Well, I’d give him my best horse and hunting dogs.’ ‘Well, I’d give him my daughter’s maidenhead.’ ‘Well, I’d… ‘ ‘Well, I’d cut off my own rump and eat it.’ ‘Come on then let’s see you….’ The matter ended in tears, of course, and pretty copious ones at that.

Presumably the prelude to this particularly brunch went something like this. These were just five idiots out for a good time: once their war and their cause had been lost. But Angela probably has never sniffed glue or stayed after hours in a pub.

Five royalists ‘out of zeale of affection to their King at Bredagh, would drink his health in blood, and to effect this, unanimously agreed to cut a peece of their Buttocks, and fry their flesh that was cut off on a grid iron.’ Angela McShane who discusses this episode in a recent essay tries to resolve the mystery of why grown men would act like this through almost twenty pages, juggling blood pacts, with sacramental satire and jokes about the Rump Parliament (get it?). This patriotic feast, the latest in our immortal meals series, took place in 1650 or possibly in 1649 at Milton in Berkshire. Patriotism is a very fine thing, but it can also make men and women act like asses: or even worse, chop off parts of their rumps and eat their own cooked flesh….

Cut at top of buttocks