Account and recipe book, 1661-1788

Manuscript volume, on paper, in several hands, containing accounts and recipes apparently recorded by members of the Bones family of Essex. There are thirteen cookery recipes for wines and cordials, orange water, oyster loaves and gingerbread. Medical recipes include one for a cerecloth to cure bruises and sprains; salves for cankers, sore mouths and sore nipples; and a version of Sir Walter Raleigh's "receipt against the Plague." The accounts include receipts for rent, agricultural produce, and expenditures for household services, particularly laundry bills for male members of the family. The volume also contains dated and undated autographs of several Bones family members; notes, sentence drafts and pen trials; and several stanzas of poetry, possibly an unfinished draft of a single poem concerning an encounter with a blue-eyed woman (first line: "Abroad as I was walking").