Guinea Pigges - a feast expense

A 16thC or 17thC feast item for the Duke of Norfolk?

Light reading: Havey-cavey

Emily Colette Wilkinson in response to Jenny Davidson's blog on guinea pigs writes in part:

I also found transcribed in a 17th C family commonplace book a list of purchases and expenses for a sixteenth-century feast for the Duke of Norfolk that included "2 Guinea Pigges."

5/21/2008 12:45 AM

If it's a 16thC feast then this is an earlier reference to guinea pigs in English than is noted by the Oxford English Dictionary which refers to Henry Power, Experimental Philosophy (1664).

Any details on the reference Wilkinson has read would be wonderful.

Earliest guinea pig in a western painting

There is a painting in a private collection, from the late 1500s.

It's the earliest western painting I've come across with a guinea pig in it.

I'd like to find out more about it, so, if you have information, let me know...