The earliest illustration of the turkey in Europe is ‘a turkey-cock in his pleasure correct’, requested by the Yorkshireman William Strickland when he utilized for his household’s coat of arms in 1550. Can it’s true, as custom has it, that it was he who launched the hen to England?
Strickland was the son of a sea captain from Marske within the North Driving and he’s mentioned to have sailed himself as a captain with Sebastian Cabot and introduced the turkeys house. Strickland’s date of start is unknown, however he died on 8 December 1598 at a sophisticated age. The one doable Cabot voyage, then, is that of 1526 to La Plata.
However that fleet sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, close to Cádiz. How and why would possibly Strickland, in later years deeply Puritan, have ended up in Spain? He definitely wasn’t a captain: other than Cabot himself, all these roles had been taken by Spaniards. And whereas the Spanish solely made up round half of the fleet’s crew, and a handful of Englishmen had been on board, Strickland’s identify doesn’t seem in any surviving record.
It was within the 1520s, nevertheless, that the primary turkeys appeared in Europe after the autumn of the Aztec Empire. What else may Strickland’s connection be? A puzzle to ponder, maybe, over a Christmas meal.
