A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages

by Thomas Wright

DE MENSA.

Multiferis omnes dapibus saturare solesco,
Quadrupedem hinc felix ditem me sanxerit ætas,
Esse tamen pulchris fatim dum vestibus orner,
Certatim me prædones spoliare solescunt,
Raptis nudata exuviis mox membra relinquunt.

In the illuminated manuscripts, wherever dinner scenes are represented, the table is always covered with what is evidently intended for a handsome table-cloth, the myse-hrægel or bord-clath. The grand preparation for dinner was laying the board; and it is from this original character of the table that we derive our ordinary expression of receiving any one “to board and lodging.”

The hall was peculiarly the place for eating—and for drinking. The Anglo-Saxons had three meals in the day,—the breaking of their fast (breakfast), at the third hour of the day, which answered to nine o’clock in the morning, according to our reckoning; the ge-reordung (repast), or nón-mete (noon-meat) or dinner, which is stated to have been held at the canonical hour of noon, or three o’clock in the afternoon; and the æfen-gereord (evening repast), æfen-gyfl (evening food), æfen-mete (evening meat), æfen-thenung (evening refreshment), or supper, the hour of which is uncertain. It is probable, from many circumstances, that the latter was a meal not originally in use among our Saxon forefathers: perhaps their only meal at an earlier period was the dinner, which was always their principal repast; and we may, perhaps, consider noon as midday, and not as meaning the canonical hour.

As I have observed before, the table, from the royal hall down to the most humble of those who could afford it, was not refused to strangers. When they came to the hall-door, the guests were required to leave their arms in the care of a porter or attendant, and then, whether known or not, they took their place at the tables. One of the laws of king Cnut directs, that if, in the meantime, any one took the weapon thus deposited, and did hurt with it, the owner should be compelled to clear himself of suspicion of being cognisant of the use to be made of his arms when he laid them down. History affords us several remarkable instances of the facility of approach even to the tables of kings during the Saxon period. It was this circumstance that led to the murder of king Edmund in 946. On St. Augustin’s day, the king was dining at his manor of Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire; a bandit named Leofa, whom the king had banished for his crimes, and who had returned without leave from exile, had the effrontery to place himself at the royal table, by the side of one of the principal nobles of the court; the king alone recognised him, rose from his seat to expel him from the hall, and received his death-wound in the struggle. In the eleventh century, when Hereward went in disguise as a spy to the court of a Cornish chieftain, he entered the hall while they were feasting, took his place among the guests, and was but slightly questioned as to who he was and whence he came.

No. 14. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner-Party Pledging.

In the early illuminated manuscripts, dinner scenes are by no means uncommon. The cut, [No. 14] (taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis, MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv., fol. 36, v^o), represents Abraham’s feast on the birth of his child. The guests are sitting at an ordinary long hall table, ladies and gentlemen being mixed together without any apparent special arrangement. This manuscript is probably of the beginning of the eleventh century. The cut, [No. 15], represents another dinner scene, from a manuscript probably of the tenth century (Tiberius, C. vi., fol. 5, v^o), and presents several peculiarities. The party here is a very small one, and they sit at a round table. The attendants seem to be serving them, in a very remarkable manner, with roast meats, which they bring to table on the spits (spitu) as they were roasted. Another festive scene is represented in the cut, [No. 16], taken from a manuscript of the Psychomachia of the poet Prudentius (MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, C. viii., fol. 15, r^o). The table is again a round one, at which Luxury and her companions are seated at supper (seo Galnes æt hyre æfen-ge-reordum sitt).

No. 15. Anglo-Saxons at Dinner.

It will be observed that in these pictures, the tables are tolerably well covered with vessels of different kinds, with the exception of plates. There are one or two dishes of different sizes in [fig. 14], intended, no doubt, for holding bread and other articles; it was probably an utensil borrowed from the Romans, as the Saxon name disc was evidently taken from the Latin discus. It is not easy to identify the forms of vessels given in these pictures with the words which are found in the Anglo-Saxon language, in which the general term for a vessel is fæt, a vat; crocca, a pot or pitcher, no doubt of earthenware, is preserved in the modern English word crockery; and bolla, a bowl, orc, a basin, bledu and mele, each answering to the Latin patera, læfel and ceac, a pitcher or urn, hnæp, a cup (identical in name with the hanap of a later period), flaxe, a flask, are all pure Anglo-Saxon words. Many of the forms represented in the manuscripts are recognised at once as identical with those which are found in the earlier Anglo-Saxon graves. In the vocabularies, the Latin word amphora is translated by crocca, a crock; and lagena by æscen, which means a vessel made of ash wood, and was, in all probability, identical with the small wooden buckets so often found in the early Saxon graves. In a document preserved in Heming’s chartulary of Canterbury, mention is made of “an æscen, which is otherwise called a back-bucket” (æscen the is othre namon hrygilebuc gecleopad, Heming, p. 393), which strongly confirms the opinion I have adopted as to the purpose of the bucket found in the graves.

No. 16. A Supper Party.

The food of the Anglo-Saxons appears to have been in general rather simple in character, although we hear now and then of great feasts, probably consisting more in the quantity of provisions than in any great variety or refinement in gastronomy. Bread formed the staple, which the Anglo-Saxons appear to have eaten in great quantities, with milk, and butter, and cheese. A domestic was termed a man’s hlaf-ætan, or loaf-eater. There is a curious passage in one of Alfric’s homilies, that on the life of St. Benedict, where, speaking of the use of oil in Italy, the Anglo-Saxon writer observes, “they eat oil in that country with their food as we do butter.” Vegetables (wyrtan) formed a considerable portion of the food of our forefathers at this period; beans (beana) are mentioned as articles of food, but I remember no mention of the eating of peas (pisan) in Anglo-Saxon writers. A variety of circumstances show that there was a great consumption of fish, as well as of poultry. Of flesh meat, bacon (spic) was the most abundant, for the extensive oak forests nourished innumerable droves of swine. Much of their other meat was salted, and the place in which the salt meat was kept was called, on account of the great preponderance of the bacon, a spic-hus, or bacon-house; in latter times, for the same reason, named the larder. The practice of eating so much salt meat explains why boiling seems to have been the prevailing mode of cooking it. In the manuscript of Alfric’s translation of Genesis, already mentioned, we have a figure of a boiling vessel ([No. 17]), which is placed over the fire on a tripod. This vessel was called a pan (panna—one Saxon writer mentions isen panna, an iron pan) or a kettle (cytel). It is very curious to observe how many of our trivial expressions at the present day are derived from very ancient customs; thus, for example, we speak of “a kettle of fish,” though what we now term a kettle would hardly serve for this branch of cookery. In another picture ([No. 18]) we have a similar boiling vessel, placed similarly on a tripod, while the cook is using a very singular utensil to stir the contents. Bede speaks of a goose being taken down from a wall to be boiled. It seems probable that in earlier times among the Anglo-Saxons, and perhaps at a later period, in the case of large feasts, the cooking was done out of doors. The only words in the Anglo-Saxon language for cook and kitchen, are cóc and cycene, taken from the Latin coquus and coquina, which seems to show that they only improved their rude manner of living in this respect after they had become acquainted with the Romans. Besides boiled meats, they certainly had roast, or broiled, which they called bræde, meat which had been spread or displayed to the fire. The vocabularies explain the Latin coctus by “boiled or baked” (gesoden, gebacen). They also fried meat, which was then called hyrstyng, and the vessel in which it was fried was called hyrsting-panne, a frying-pan. Broth, also (broth), was much in use.

No. 17. A Saxon Kettle.

No. 18. A Saxon Cook.

In the curious colloquy of Alfric (a dialogue made to teach the Anglo-Saxon youth the Latin names for different articles), three professions are mentioned as requisite to furnish the table: first, the salter, who stored the store-rooms (cleafan) and cellars (hedderne), and without whom they could not have butter (butere)—they always used salt butter—or cheese (cyse); next, the baker, without whose handiwork, we are told, every table would seem empty; and lastly, the cook. The work of the latter appears not at this time to have been very elaborate. “If you expel me from your society,” he says, “you will be obliged to eat your vegetables green, and your flesh-meat raw, nor can you have any fat broth.” “We care not,” is the reply, “for we can ourselves cook our provisions, and spread them on the table.” Instead of grounding his defence on the difficulties of his profession, the cook represents that in this case, instead of having anybody to wait upon them, they would be obliged to be their own servants. It may be observed, as indicating the general prevalence of boiling food, that in the above account of the cook, the Latin word coquere is rendered by the Anglo-Saxon seothan, to boil.[4] Our words cook and kitchen are the Anglo-Saxon cóc and cycene, and have no connection with the French cuisine.

We may form some idea of the proportions in the consumption of different kinds of provisions among our Saxon forefathers, by the quantities given on certain occasions to the monasteries. Thus, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the occupier of an estate belonging to the abbey of Medeshamstede (Peterborough) in 852, was to furnish yearly sixty loads of wood for firing, twelve of coal (græfa), six of fagots, two tuns of pure ale, two beasts fit for slaughter, six hundred loaves, and ten measures of Welsh ale.

No. 19. Anglo-Saxons at Table.

It will be observed in the dinner scenes given above, that the guests are helping themselves with their hands. Forks were totally unknown to the Anglo-Saxons for the purpose of carrying the food to the mouth, and it does not appear that every one at table was furnished with a knife. In the cut, [No. 19] (taken from MS. Harl. No. 603, fol. 12, r^o.), a party at table are eating without forks or knives. It will be observed here, as in the other pictures of this kind, that the Anglo-Saxon bread (hlaf) is in the form of round cakes, much like the Roman loaves in the pictures at Pompeii, and not unlike our cross-buns at Easter, which are no doubt derived from our Saxon forefathers. Another party at dinner without knives or forks is represented in the cut [No. 20], taken from the same manuscript (fol. 51, v^o.). The tables here are without table-cloths. The use of the fingers in eating explains to us why it was considered necessary to wash the hands before and after the meal.

No. 20. Anglo-Saxons at Table.

The knife (cnif), as represented in the Saxon illuminations, has a peculiar form, quite different from that of the earlier knife found in the graves, but resembling rather closely the form of the modern razor. Several of these Saxon knives have been found, and one of them, dug up in London, and now in the interesting museum collected by Mr. Roach Smith, is represented in the accompanying cut, [No. 21].[5] The blade, of steel (style), which is the only part preserved, has been inlaid with bronze.

When the repast was concluded, and the hands of the guests washed, the tables appear to have been withdrawn from the hall, and the party commenced drinking. From the earliest times, this was the occupation of the after part of the day, when no warlike expedition or pressing business hindered it. The lord and his chief guests sat at the high seat, while the others sat round on benches. An old chronicler, speaking of a Saxon dinner party, says, “after dinner they went to their cups, to which the English were very much accustomed.”[6] This was the case even with the clergy, as we learn from many of the ecclesiastical laws. In the Ramsey History printed by Gale, we are told of a Saxon bishop who invited a Dane to his house in order to obtain some land from him, and to drive a better bargain, he determined to make him drunk. He therefore pressed him to stay to dinner, and “when they had all eaten enough, the tables were taken away, and they passed the rest of the day, till evening, drinking. He who held the office of cup-bearer, managed that the Dane’s turn at the cup came round oftener than the others, as the bishop had directed him.” We know by the story of Dunstan and king Eadwy, that it was considered a great mark of disrespect to the guests, even in a king, to leave the drinking early after dinner.

No. 21. An Anglo-Saxon Knife.

Our cut, [No. 22], taken from the Anglo-Saxon calendar already mentioned (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. vi.), represents a party sitting at the heah-setl, the high seat, or dais, drinking after dinner. It is the lord of the household and his chief friends, as is shown by their attendant guard of honour. The cup-bearer, who is serving them, has a napkin in his hand. The seat is furnished with cushions, and the three persons seated on it appear to have large napkins or cloths spread over their knees. Similar cloths are evidently represented in our cut [No. 16]. Whether these are the setl-hrœgel, or seat-cloths, mentioned in some of the Anglo-Saxon wills, is uncertain.

No. 22. An Anglo-Saxon Drinking Party.

It will be observed that the greater part of the drinking-cups bear a resemblance in form to those of the more ancient period which we find in Anglo-Saxon graves, and of which some examples have been given in the preceding chapter. We cannot tell whether those seen in the pictures be intended for glass or other material; but it is certain that the Anglo-Saxons were ostentatious of drinking-cups and other vessels made of the precious metals. Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, has collected together a number of instances of such valuable vessels. In one will, three silver cups are bequeathed; in another, four cups, two of which were of the value of four pounds; in another, four silver cups, a cup with a fringed edge, a wooden cup variegated with gold, a wooden knobbed cup, and two very handsome drinking-cups (smicere scencing-cuppan). Other similar documents mention a golden cup, with a golden dish; a gold cup of immense weight; a dish adorned with gold, and another with Grecian workmanship (probably brought from Byzantium). A lady bequeathed a golden cup weighing four marks and a half. Mention of silver cups, silver basins, &c., is of frequent occurrence. In 833, a king gave his gilt cup, engraved outside with vine-dressers fighting dragons, which he called his cross-bowl, because it had a cross marked within it, and it had four angles projecting, also like a cross. These cups were given frequently as marks of affection and remembrance. The lady Ethelgiva presented to the abbey of Ramsey, among other things, “two silver cups, for the use of the brethren in the refectory, in order that, while drink is served in them to the brethren at their repast, my memory may be more firmly imprinted on their hearts.”[7] It is a curious proof of the value of such vessels, that in the pictures of warlike expeditions, where two or three articles are heaped together as a kind of symbolical representation of the value of the spoils, vessels of the table and drinking-cups and drinking-horns are generally included. Our cut, [No. 23], represents one of these groups (taken from the Cottonian Manuscript, Claudius, C. viii.); it contains a crown, a bracelet or ring, two drinking-horns, a jug, and two other vessels. The drinking-horn was in common use among the Anglo-Saxons. It is seen on the table or in the hands of the drinkers in more than one of our cuts. In the will of one Saxon lady, two buffalo-horns are mentioned; three horns worked with gold and silver are mentioned in one inventory; and we find four horns enumerated among the effects of a monastic house. The Mercian king Witlaf, with somewhat of the sentiment of the lady Ethelgiva, gave to the abbey of Croyland the horn of his table, “that the elder monks may drink from it on festivals, and in their benedictions remember sometimes the soul of the donor.”

No. 23. Articles of Value.

The liquors drunk by the Saxons were chiefly ale and mead; the immense quantity of honey that was then produced in this country, as we learn from Domesday-book and other records, shows us how great must have been the consumption of the latter article. Welsh ale is especially spoken of. Wine was also in use, though it was an expensive article, and was in a great measure restricted to persons above the common rank. According to Alfric’s Colloquy, the merchant brought from foreign countries wine and oil; and when the scholar is asked why he does not drink wine, he says he is not rich enough to buy it, “and wine is not the drink of children or fools, but of elders and wise men.” There were, however, vineyards in England in the times of the Saxons, and wine was made from them; but they were probably rare, and chiefly attached to the monastic establishments. William of Malmesbury speaks of a vineyard attached to his monastery, which was first planted at the beginning of the eleventh century by a Greek monk who settled there, and who spent all his time in cultivating it.

In their drinking, the Anglo-Saxons had various festive ceremonies, one of which is made known to us by the popular story of the lady Rowena and the British king. When the ale or wine was first served, the drinkers pledged each other, with certain phrases of wishing health, not much unlike the mode in which we still take wine with each other at table, or as people of the less refined classes continue to drink the first glass to the health of the company; but among the Saxons the ceremony was accompanied with a kiss. In our cut, [No. 14], the party appear to be pledging each other.

No. 24. Drinking and Minstrelsy.

No. 25. An Anglo-Saxon Fithelere.

The Anglo-Saxon potations were accompanied with various kinds of amusements. One of these was telling stories, and recounting the exploits of themselves or of their friends. Another was singing their national poetry, to which the Saxons were much attached. In the less elevated class, where professed minstrels were not retained, each guest was minstrel in his turn. Cædmon, as his story is related by Bede, became a poet through the emulation thus excited. One of the ecclesiastical canons enacted under king Edgar enjoins “that no priest be a minstrel at the ale (ealu-scóp), nor in any wise act the gleeman (gliwige), with himself or with other men.” In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert in Herefordshire, by the treachery of Offa’s wicked queen (A.D. 792), we are told that the royal party, after dinner, “spent the whole day with music and dancing in great glee.” The cut, [No. 24] (taken from the Harl. MS., No. 603), is a perfect illustration of this incident of Saxon story. The cup-bearer is serving the guest with wine from a vessel which is evidently a Saxon imitation of the Roman amphora; it is perhaps the Anglo-Saxon sester or sæster; a word, no doubt, taken from the Latin sextarius, and carrying with it, in general, the notion of a certain measure. In Saxon translations from the Latin, amphora is often rendered by sester. We have here a choice party of minstrels and gleemen. Two are occupied with the harp, which appears, from a comparison of Beowulf with the later writers, to have been the national instrument. It is not clear from the picture whether the two men are playing both on the same harp, or whether one is merely holding the instrument for the other. Another is perhaps intended to represent the Anglo-Saxon fithelere, playing on the fithele (the modern English words fiddler and fiddle); but his instrument appears rather to be the cittern, which was played with the fingers, not with the bow. Another representation of this performer, from the same manuscript, is given in the cut [No. 25], where the instrument is better defined. The other two minstrels, in [No. 24], are playing on the horn, or on the Saxon pip, or pipe. The two dancers are evidently a man and a woman, and another lady to the extreme right seems preparing to join in the same exercise. We know little of the Anglo-Saxon mode of dancing, but to judge by the words used to express this amusement, hoppan (to hop), saltian and stellan (to leap), and tumbian (to tumble), it must have been accompanied with violent movements. Our cut [No. 26] (from the Cottonian MS., Cleopatra, C. viii. fol. 16, v^o), represents another party of minstrels, one of whom, a female, is dancing, while the other two are playing on a kind of cithara and on the Roman double flute. The Anglo-Saxon names for the different kinds of musicians most frequently spoken of were hearpere, the harper; bymere, the trumpeter; pipere, the player on the pipe or flute; fithelere, the fiddler; and horn-blawere, the horn-blower. The gligman, or gleeman, was the same who, at a later period, was called, in Latin, joculator, and, in French, a jougleur; and another performer, called truth, is interpreted as a stage player, but was probably some performer akin to the gleeman. The harp seems to have stood in the highest rank, or, at least, in the highest popularity, of musical instruments; it was termed poetically the gleó-beam, or the glee-wood.

No. 26. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels.

Although it was considered a very fashionable accomplishment among the Anglo-Saxons to be a good singer of verses and a good player on the harp, yet the professed minstrel, who went about to every sort of joyous assemblage, from the festive hall to the village wake, was a person not esteemed respectable. He was beneath consideration in any other light than as affording amusement, and as such he was admitted everywhere, without examination. It was for this reason that Alfred, and subsequently Athelstan, found such easy access in this garb to the camps of their enemies; and it appears to have been a common disguise for such purposes. The group given in the last cut ([No. 26]) are intended to represent the persons characterised in the text (of Prudentius) by the Latin word ganeones (vagabonds, ribalds), which is there glossed by the Saxon term gleemen (ganeonum, gliwig-manna). Besides music and dancing, they seem to have performed a variety of tricks and jokes, to while away the tediousness of a Saxon afternoon, or excite the coarse mirth of the peasant. That such performers, resembling in many respects the Norman jougleur, were usually employed by Anglo-Saxons of wealth and rank, is evident from various allusions to them. Gaimar has preserved a curious Saxon story of the murder of king Edward by his stepmother (A.D. 978), in which the queen is represented as having in her service a dwarf minstrel, who is employed to draw the young king alone to her house. According to the Anglo-Norman relator of this story, the dwarf was skilled in various modes of dancing and tumbling, characterised by words of which we can hardly now point out the exact distinction, “and could play many other games.”

Wolstanet un naim aveit,
Ki baler e trescher saveit;
Si saveit sailler e tumber,
E altres gius plusurs juer.

In a Saxon manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, C. vi.), among the minstrels attendant on king David (represented in our cut, [No. 27]), we see a gleeman, who is throwing up and catching knives and balls, a common performance of the later Norman jougleurs, as well as of our modern mountebanks. Some of the tricks and gestures of these performers were of the coarsest description, such as could be only tolerated in a rude state of society. An example will be found in a story told by William of Malmesbury of wandering minstrels, whom he had seen performing at a festival at that monastery when he was a child, and which we can hardly venture to give even under the veil of the original Latin. A poem in the Exeter manuscript describes the wandering character of the Saxon minstrels. He tells us:—

swa scriþende Thus roving gesceapum hweorfað with their lays go gleo-men gumena the gleemen of men geond grunda fela, over many lands, þearfe secgað, state their wants, þonc-word sprecaþ, utter words of thank, simle suð oþþe norð always south or north, sumne gemetað they find one gydda gleawne, knowing in songs, geofum unhneawne. who is liberal of gifts. —Exeter Book, p. 326.

No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels and Gleeman.

We are not to suppose that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers remained at table, merely drinking and listening. On the contrary, the performance of the minstrels appears to have been only introduced at intervals, between which the guests talked, joked, propounded and answered riddles, boasted of their own exploits, disparaged those of others, and, as the liquor took effect, became noisy and quarrelsome. The moral poems often allude to the quarrels and slaughters in which feasts ended. One of these poems, enumerating the various endowments of men, says:— sum bið wrœd tæfle; one is expert at dice; sum bið gewittig one is witty æt win-þege, at wine-bibbing, beor-hyrde god. a good beer-drinker. —Exeter Book, p. 297. A “Monitory Poem,” in the same collection, thus describes the manners of the guests in hall:— þonne monige beoð but many are mæþel-hergendra, lovers of social converse, wlonce wig-smiþas, haughty warriors, win-burgum in, in pleasant cities, sittaþ æt symble they sit at the feast, soð-gied wrecað, tales recount, wordum wrixlað, in words converse, witan fundiað strive to know hwylc æsc-stede who the battle place, inne in ræcede within the house, mid werum wunige; will with men abide; þonne win hweteð then wine wets beornes breost-sefan, the man’s breast-passions, breahtme stigeð suddenly rises cirm on corþre, clamour in the company, cwide-scral letaþ an outcry they send forth missenlice. various. —Exeter Book, p. 314. In a poem on the various fortunes of men, and the different ways in which they come by death, we are told:— sumum meces ecg from one the sword’s edge on meodu-bence, on the mead-bench, yrrum ealo-wosan, angry with ale, ealdor oþþringeð, life shall expel, were win-sadum. a wine-sated man. —Exeter Book, p. 330. And in the metrical legend of St. Juliana, the evil one boasts:— sume ic larum geteah, some I by wiles have drawn, te geflite fremede, to strife prepared, þæt hy færinga that they suddenly eald-afþoncan old grudges edniwedan, have renewed, beore druncne; drunken with beer; ic him byrlade I to them poured wreht of wege, discord from the cup, þæt hi in win-sale so that they in the social hall þurh sweord-gripe through gripe of sword sawle forletan the soul let forth of flæsc-homan. from the body. —Exeter Book, p. 271.

There were other amusements for the long evenings besides those which belonged especially to the hall, for every day was not a feast-day. The hall was then left to the household retainers and their occupations. But we must now leave this part of the domestic establishment. The ladies appear not to have remained at table long after dinner—it was somewhat as in modern times—they proceeded to their own special part of the house—the chamber—and thither it will be my duty to accompany them in the next chapter. I have described all the ordinary scenes that took place in the Anglo-Saxon hall.

CHAPTER III.
THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE.—BEDS AND BED-ROOMS.—INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—CHARACTER AND MANNERS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON LADIES.—THEIR CRUELTY TO THEIR SERVANTS.—THEIR AMUSEMENTS.—THE GARDEN; LOVE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS FOR FLOWERS.—ANGLO-SAXON PUNISHMENTS.—ALMSGIVING.

The bower or chamber, which, as before stated, was, in the original Saxon mansions, built separate from the hall, was a more private apartment than the latter, although it was still easy of access. In the houses of the rich and the noble there were, as may easily be supposed, several chambers, devoted to the different purposes of the household, and to the reception of visitors. It was in the chamber that the lord of the household transacted his private business, and gave his private audiences. We see by the story of king Edwy that it was considered a mark of effeminacy to retire from the company in the hall after dinner, to seek more quiet amusement in the chamber, where the men rejoined the ladies of the family; yet there are numerous instances which show that, except on festive occasions, this was a very common practice. In some cases, where the party was not an ostentatious or public one, the meal was served in a chamber rather than in the hall. According to the story of Osbert king of Northumberland and Beorn the buzecarl, as told by Gaimar, it was in a chamber that Beorn’s lady received the king, and caused the meal to be served to him which ended in consequences so fatal to the country. We have very little information relating to the domestic games and amusements of the Anglo-Saxons. They seem to have consisted, in a great measure, in music and in telling stories. They had games of hazard, but we are not acquainted with their character. Their chief game was named tæfel or tæfl, which has been explained by dice and by chess; one name of the article played with, tæfl-stan, a table-stone, would suit either interpretation; but another, tæfl-mon, a table-man, would seem to indicate a game resembling our chess.[8] The writers immediately after the conquest speak of the Saxons as playing at chess, and pretend that they learnt the game from the Danes. Gaimar, who gives us an interesting story relating to the deceit practiced upon king Edgar (A.D. 973) by Ethelwold, when sent to visit the beautiful Elfthrida, daughter of Orgar of Devonshire, describes the young lady and her noble father as passing the day at chess.

Orgar jouout à un eschès,
Un giu k’il aprist des Daneis:
Od lui jouout Elstruet la bele.

The Ramsey history, published by Gale, describing a bishop’s visit to court late at night, says that he found the king amusing himself with similar games.[9] An ecclesiastical canon, enacted under king Edgar, enjoined that a priest should not be a tæflere, or gambler.

No. 28. Anglo-Saxon Chairs.

It was not usual, in the middle ages, to possess much furniture, for in those times of insecurity, anything moveable, which could not easily be concealed, was never safe from plunderers. Benches, on which several persons could sit together, and a stool or a chair for a guest of more consideration, were the only seats. Our word chair is Anglo-Norman, and the adoption of the name from that language would seem to indicate that the moveable to which it was applied was unknown to the great mass of the Anglo-Saxon population of the island. The Anglo-Saxon name for it was setl, a seat, or stol; the latter preserved in the modern word stool. We find chairs of different forms in the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, but they are always represented as the seats of persons of high rank and dignity, usually of kings. The two examples given in the accompanying cut ([No. 28]), are taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603, fol. 54, v^o., already referred to in our preceding chapters. It will be observed that, although very simple in form, they are both furnished with cushions. The chair in our cut [No. 29], taken from Alfric’s translation of Genesis (MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv.), on which a king is seated, is of a different and more elegant construction. We sometimes find, in the manuscripts, chairs of fantastic form, which were, perhaps, creations of the artist’s imagination. Such a one is the singular throne on which king David is seated with his harp, in our cut [No. 30], which is also taken from the Harleian Manuscript, No. 603 (fol. 68, v^o.). In addition to the seat, the ladies in the chamber had a scamel, or footstool.

No. 29. A King Seated.

No. 30. King David.

There was a table used in the chamber or bower, which differed altogether from that used in the hall. It was named myse, disc (from the Latin discus), and beod; all words which convey the idea of its being round—beodas (in the plural) was the term applied to the scales of a balance. The Latin phrase, of the 127th Psalm, in circuitu mensæ tuæ, which was evidently understood by the Anglo-Saxon translators as referring to a round table, is translated by one, on ymbhwyrfte mysan thine, and by another, in ymbhwyrfte beodes thines. If we refer back to the preceding chapter, we shall see, in the subjects which appear to exhibit a small domestic party (see cuts [No. 15], [19,], and [24]), that the table is round; and this was evidently the usual form given among the Anglo-Saxons to the table used in the chamber or private room. This form has been preserved as a favourite one in England down to a very recent period, as that of the parlour-table among the class of society most likely to retain Anglo-Saxon tastes and sentiments. In the pictures, the round table is generally represented as supported on three or four legs, though there are instances in which it was represented with one. In the latter case, the board of the table probably turned up on a hinge, as in our old parlour tea-tables; and in the former it was perhaps capable of being taken off the legs; for there is reason for believing that it was only laid out when wanted, and that, when no longer in use, it was put away on one side of the room or in a closet, in the smallest possible compass.

No. 31. A Lamp and Stand.

We have no information to explain to us how the bower or chamber was warmed. In the hall, it is probable that the fire gave warmth and light at the same time, although, in the fragment of the Anglo-Saxon poem relating to the fight at Finnesburg, there is an indistinct intimation that the hall was sometimes lighted with horns, or cressets; but, in the chamber, during the long evenings of winter, it was necessary to have an artificial light to enable its occupants to read, or work, or play. The Anglo-Saxon name for this article, so necessary for domestic comfort, was candel or condel (our candle); and, so general was the application of this term, that it was even used figuratively as we now use the word lamp. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon poets spoke of the sun as rodores candel (the candle of the firmament), woruld-candel (the candle of the world), heofon-condel (the candle of heaven), wyn-condel (the candle of glory). The candle was, no doubt, originally a mere mass of fat plastered round a wick (candel-weoc), and stuck upon an upright stick. Hence the instrument on which it was afterwards supported received the name of candel-sticca or candel-stæf, a candlestick; and the original idea was preserved even when the candle supporter had many branches, it being then called a candel-treow, or candle-tree. The original arrangement of the stick was also preserved; for, down to a very recent period, the candle was not inserted in a socket in the candlestick as at present, but it was stuck upon a spike. The Anglo-Saxon writers speak of candel-snytels, or snuffers. Other names less used, for a candle or some article for giving light, were blacern or blæcern, which is explained in glossaries by the Latin lucerna, and thæcela, the latter signifying merely a light. It was usual, also, among our Saxon forefathers, as among ourselves, to speak of the instrument for illumination as merely leoht, a light—“bring me a light.” A candlestick and candle are represented in one of the cuts in our last chapter (cut [No. 19]). The Anglo-Saxons, no doubt, derived the use of lamps from the Romans; and they were so utterly at a loss for a word to describe this mode of illumination, that they always called it leoht-fæt, a light-vat, or vessel of light. In our cut ([No. 31]) we have an Anglo-Saxon lamp, placed on a candelabrum or stand, exactly in the Roman manner. It will be remembered that Asser, a writer of somewhat doubtful authenticity, ascribes to king Alfred the invention of lanterns, as a protection to the candle, to prevent it from swealing in consequence of the wind entering through the crevices of the apartments—not a very bright picture of the comforts of an Anglo-Saxon chamber. The candles were made of wax as well as tallow. The candlestick was of different materials. In one instance we find it termed, in Anglo-Saxon, a leoht-isern, literally a light-iron: perhaps this was the term used for the lamp-stand, as figured in our last cut. In the inventories we have mention of ge-bonene candel-sticcan (candlesticks of bone), of silver-gilt candlesticks, and of ornamented candlesticks.

No. 32. Anglo-Saxon Beds.

A bed was a usual article of furniture in the bower or chamber; though there were, no doubt, in large mansions, chambers set apart as bedrooms, as well as chambers in which there was no bed, or in which a bed could be made for the occasion. The account given by Gaimar, as quoted above, of the visit of king Osbert to Beorn’s lady, seems to imply that the chamber in which the lady gave the king his meal had a bed in it. The bed itself seems usually to have consisted merely of a sack (sæccing) filled with straw, and laid on a bench or board. Hence words used commonly to signify the bed itself were bænce (a bench), and streow (straw): and even in king Alfred’s translation of Bede, the statement, “he ordered to prepare a bed for him,” is expressed in Anglo-Saxon by, he heht him streowne ge-gearwian, literally, he ordered to prepare straw for him. All, in fact, that had to be done when a bed was wanted, was to take the bed-sack out of the cyst, or chest, fill it with fresh straw, and lay it on the bench. In ordinary houses it is probable that the bench for the bed was placed in a recess at the side of the room, in the manner we still see in Scotland; and hence the bed itself was called, among other names, cota, a cot; cryb, a crib or stall; and clif or clyf, a recess or closet. From the same circumstance a bedroom was called bed-clyfa or bed-cleofa, and bed-cofa, a bed-closet or bed-cove. Our cut ([No. 32]), taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis (Claudius, B. iv.), represents beds of this description. Benches are evidently placed in recesses at the side of the chamber, with the beds laid upon them, and the recesses are separated from the rest of the apartment by a curtain, bed-warft or hryfte. The modern word bedstead means, literally, no more than “a place for a bed;” and it is probable that what we call bedsteads were then rare, and only possessed by people of rank. Two examples are given in the annexed cut ([No. 33]), taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603. Under the head were placed a bolstar and a pyle (pillow), which were probably also stuffed with straw. The clothes with which the sleeper was covered, and which appear in the pictures scanty enough, were scyte, a sheet, bed-felt, a coverlet, which was generally of some thicker material, and bed-reaf, bed-clothes. We know from a multitude of authorities, that it was the general custom of the middle ages to go into bed quite naked. The sketchy character of the Anglo-Saxon drawings renders it difficult sometimes to judge of minute details; but, from the accompanying cuts, it appears that an Anglo-Saxon going into bed, having stripped all his or her clothes off, first wrapped round his body a sheet, and then drew over him the coverlet. Sharon Turner has given a list of the articles connected with the bed, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon wills and inventories. In the will of a man we find bed-clothes (bed-reafes), with a curtain (hyrfte), and sheet (hopp-scytan), and all that thereto belongs; and he gives to his son the bed-reafe, or bed-cloth, and all its appurtenances. An Anglo-Saxon lady gives to one of her children two chests and their contents, her best bed-curtain, linen, and all the clothes belonging to it. To another child she leaves two chests, and “all the bed-clothes that to one bed belong.” On another occasion we read of pulvinar unum de palleo: not a pillow of straw, as Sharon Turner very erroneously translates it, but a pillow of a sort of rich cloth made in the middle ages. A goat-skin bed-covering was sent to an Anglo-Saxon abbot; and bear-skins are sometimes noticed, as if a part of bed furniture.

No. 33. Anglo-Saxon Beds.

The bed-room, or chamber, and the sitting-room were usually identical; for we must bear in mind that in the domestic manners of the middle ages the same idea of privacy was not connected with the sleeping-room as at the present day. Gaimar has preserved an anecdote of Anglo-Saxon times curiously illustrative of this point. King Edgar—a second David in this respect—married the widow of Ethelwold, whom he had murdered in order to clear his way to her bed. The king and queen were sleeping in their bed, which is described as surrounded by a rich curtain, made of a stuff which we cannot easily explain, when Dunstan, uninvited, but unhindered, entered the chamber to expostulate with them on their wickedness, and came to the king’s bedside, where he stood over them, and entered into conversation— A Londres ert Edgar li reis; King Edgar was at London; En son lit jut e la raine, He lay in his bed with the queen, Entur els out une curtine Round them was a curtain Delgé, d’un paille escariman. Spread, made of scarlet paille. Este-vus l’arcevesque Dunstan Behold archbishop Dunstan Très par matin vint en la chambre Came into the chamber very early in the morning. Sur un pecul de vermail lambre On a bed-post of red plank S’est apué cel arcevesque. The archbishop leaned. In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert by the instrumentality of the queen of king Offa, as it is told by Roger of Wendover, we see the queen ordering to be prepared for the royal guest, a chamber, which was adorned for the occasion with sumptuous furniture, as his bed-room. “Near the king’s bed she caused a seat to be prepared, magnificently decked, and surrounded with curtains; and underneath it the wicked woman caused a deep pit to be dug.” Into this pit the king was precipitated the moment he trusted himself on the treacherous seat. It is clear from the context that the chamber thus prepared for the king was a building apart, and that it had only a ground-floor.

It was in the chamber that the child, while an infant, was brought up by its mother. We have few contemporary notices of the treatment of children at this early age by the Anglo-Saxons, but probably it differed little from the general practice of a later period. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, an Englishman named Walter de Bibblesworth, who wrote, as a great proportion of English writers at that day did, in French verse—French as it was then spoken and written in England—has left us a very curious metrical vocabulary, compiled in French with interlinear explanations of the words in English, which commences with man’s infancy. “As soon as the child is born,” says the author, “it must be swathed; lay it to sleep in its cradle, and you must have a nurse to rock it to sleep.” Kaunt le emfès sera nées,
Lors deyt estre maylolez,
En soun berz l’enfaunt chochet,
De une bercere vus purvoyet,
Où par sa norice seyt bercé.
This was the manner in which the new-born infant was treated in all grades of society. If we turn to one of the more serious romances, we find it practised among princes and feudal chiefs equally as among the poor. Thus, when the princess Parise, wandering in the wild woods, is delivered in the open air, she first wraps her child in a piece of sendal, torn apparently from her rich robe, and then binds, or swathels, it with a white cloth:— La dame le conroie à un pan de cendex,
Puis a pris un blanc drap, si a ses fians bendez.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 76.
When the robbers carry away the child by night, thinking they had gained some rich booty, they find that they have stolen a newly-born infant, “all swatheled.” Lai troverent l’anffant, trestot anmaloté.
—Ibid. p. 80.
This custom of swatheling children in their infancy, though evidently injurious as well as ridiculous, has prevailed from a very early period, and is still practised in some parts of Europe. We can hardly doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers swatheled their children, although the practice is not very clearly described by any of their writers. We derive the word itself from the Anglo-Saxon language, in which beswethan means to swathe or bind, suethe signifies a band or swathe, and swethel or swæthil, a swaddling-band. These words appear, however, to have been used in a more extensive sense among the Anglo-Saxons than their representatives in more recent times, and as I have not met with them applied in this restricted sense in Anglo-Saxon writers, I should not hastily assume from them that our early Teutonic forefathers did swathe their new-born children. In an Anglo-Saxon poem on the birth of Christ, contained in the Exeter Book (p. 45), the poet speaks of— Bearnes gebyrda, The child’s birth, þa he in binne wæs when he in the bin was in cildes hiw in a child’s form claþum biwunden. with cloths wound round. These words refer clearly to the practice of swaddling; and, though the Anglo-Saxon artist has not here portrayed his object very distinctly, we can hardly doubt that, in our cut ([No. 34]), taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Cædmon, the child, which its mother is represented as holding, is intended to be swathed.

No. 34. Anglo-Saxon Mother and Child.

The word bin, used in the lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem just quoted, which means a hutch or a manger, has reference, of course, to the circumstances of the birth of the Saviour, and is not here employed to signify a cradle. This last word is itself Anglo-Saxon, and has stood its ground in our language successfully against the influence of the Anglo-Norman, in which it was called a bers or bersel, from the latter of which is derived the modern French berçeau. Another name for a cradle was crib; a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 87) speaks of cild geong on crybbe (a young child in a cradle). Our cut [No. 35], also taken from the manuscript of Cædmon, represents an Anglo-Saxon cradle of rather rude construction. The illuminators of a later period often represent the cradle of elegant form and richly ornamented. The Anglo-Saxon child appears here also to be swaddled, but it is still drawn too inaccurately to be decisive on this point. The latter illuminators were more particular and correct in their delineations, and leave no doubt of the universal practice of swaddling infants. A good example is given in our cut [No. 36], taken from an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, of which a copy is given in the large work of the late M. du Sommerard.

No. 35. Anglo-Saxon Child in its Cradle.

There is a very curious paragraph relating to infants in the Pœnitentiale of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, which furnishes us with a singular picture of early Anglo-Saxon domestic life, for Theodore flourished in the latter half of the seventh century. It may be perhaps right to explain that a Pœnitentiale was a code of ecclesiastical laws directing the proportional degrees of penance for each particular class and degree of crimes and offences against public and private morals, and that these laws penetrate to the innermost recesses of domestic life. The Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore directs that “if a woman place her infant by the hearth, and the man put water in the cauldron, and it boil over, and the child be scalded to death, the woman must do penance for her negligence, but the man is acquitted of blame.”[10] As this accident must have been of very frequent occurrence to require a particular direction in a code of laws, it implies great negligence in the Anglo-Saxon mothers, and seems to show that, commonly, at least at this early period, they had no cradles for their children, but laid them, swaddled as they were, on the ground close by the fire, no doubt to keep them warm, and that they left them in this situation.

No. 36. Mother and Child.

We are not informed if there were any fixed period during which the infant was kept in swaddling-cloths, but probably when it was thought no longer necessary to keep it in the arms or in the cradle, it was relieved from its bands, and allowed to crawl about the floor and take care of itself. Walter de Bibblesworth, the Anglo-Norman writer of the thirteenth century already quoted, tells us briefly that a child is left to creep about before it has learnt to go on its feet:—

Le enfaunt covent de chatouner
Avaunt ke sache à pées aler.

When the Anglo-Saxon youth, if a boy, had passed his infancy, he entered that age which was called cnithad (knighthood), which lasted from about eight years of age until manhood.

It is very rare that we can catch in history a glimpse of the internal economy of the Anglo-Saxon household. Enough, however, is told to show us that the Saxon woman in every class of society possessed those characteristics which are still considered to be the best traits of the character of Englishwomen; she was the attentive housewife, the tender companion, the comforter and consoler of her husband and family, the virtuous and noble matron. Home was her especial place; for we are told in a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 337) that, “It beseems a damsel to be at her board (table); a rambling woman scatters words, she is often charged with faults, a man thinks of her with contempt, oft her cheek smites.” In all ranks, from the queen to the peasant, we find the lady of the household attending to her domestic duties. In 686, John of Beverley performed a supposed miraculous cure on the lady of a Yorkshire earl; and the man who narrated the miracle to Bede the historian, and who dined with John of Beverley at the earl’s house after the cure, said, “She presented the cup to the bishop (John) and to me, and continued serving us with drink as she had begun, till dinner was over.” Domestic duties of this kind were never considered as degrading, and they were performed with a simplicity peculiarly characteristic of the age. Bede relates another story of a miraculous cure performed on an earl’s wife by St. Cuthbert, in the sequel of which we find the lady going forth from her house to meet her husband’s visitor, holding the reins while he dismounts, and conducting him in. The wicked and ambitious queen Elfthrida, when her step-son king Edward approached her residence, went out in person to attend upon him, and invite him to enter, and, on his refusal, she served him with the cup herself, and it was while stooping to take it that he was treacherously stabbed by one of her attendants. In their chamber, besides spinning and weaving, the ladies were employed in needlework and embroidery, and the Saxon ladies were so skilful in this art, that their work, under the name of English work (opus Anglicum), was celebrated on the continent. We read of a Saxon lady, named Ethelswitha, who retired with her maidens to a house near Ely, where her mother was buried, and employed herself and them in making a rich chasuble for the monks. The four princesses, the sisters of king Ethelstan, were celebrated for their skill in spinning, weaving, and embroidering; William of Malmesbury tells us that their father, king Edward, had educated them “in such wise, that in childhood they gave their whole attention to letters, and afterwards employed themselves in the labours of the distaff and the needle.” The reader will remember in the story of the Saxon queen Osburgha, the mother of the great Alfred, how she sat in her chamber, surrounded by her children, and encouraging them in a taste for literature. The ladies, when thus occupied, were not inaccessible to their friends of either sex. When Dunstan was a youth, he appears to have been always a welcome visitor to the ladies in their “bowers,” on account of his skill in music and in the arts. His contemporary biographer tells us of a noble lady, named Ethelwynn, who, knowing his skill in drawing and designs, obtained his assistance for the ornaments of a handsome stole which she and her women were embroidering. Dunstan is represented as bringing his harp with him into the apartment of the ladies, and hanging it up against the wall, that he might have it ready to play to them in the intervals of their work. Editha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, was well-known as a skilful needle-woman, and as extensively versed in literature. Ingulf’s story of his schoolboy-days, if it be true (for there is considerable doubt of the authenticity of Ingulf’s “History”), and of his interviews with queen Edith, gives us a curious picture of the simplicity of an Anglo-Saxon court, even at the latest period of their monarchy. “I often met her,” he says, “as I came from school, and then she questioned me about my studies and my verses; and willingly passing from grammar to logic, she would catch me in the subtleties of argument. She always gave me two or three pieces of money, which were counted to me by her handmaiden, and then sent me to the royal larder to refresh myself.”

Several circumstances arising out of certain rivalries of social institutions render it somewhat difficult to form an estimate of the moral character of the Anglo-Saxons. In the first place, before the introduction of Christianity, marriage was a mere civil institution, consisted chiefly in a bargain between the father of the lady and the man who sought her, and was completed with few formalities, except those of feasting and rejoicing. After the young lady was out of the control of her parents, the two sexes were on a footing of equality to each other, and the marriage tie was so little binding, that, in case of disagreement, it was at the will of either of the married couple to separate, in which case the relatives or friends of each party interfered, to see that right was done in the proportional repayment of marriage money, dowry, &c., and after the separation each party was at liberty to marry again. This state of things is well illustrated in the Icelandic story of the Burnt Njal, recently translated by Dr. Dasent, and it was not abolished by the secular laws, after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, marriage still continuing to be, in fact, a civil institution. But the higher clergy, at least, who were those who were most strongly inspired with the Romish sentiments, disapproved entirely of this view of the marriage state, and, although the Saxon priests appear not to have hesitated in being present at the second marriages after such separations, they were apparently forbidden by the ecclesiastical laws from giving their blessing to them.[11] With such views of the conjugal relations, we cannot be surprised if the associating together of a man and woman, without the ceremonies of marriage, was looked upon without disgust; in fact, this was the case throughout western Europe during the middle ages, in spite of the doctrines of the church, and the offspring was hardly considered as dispossessed of legal rights. It would be easy to point out examples illustrating this state of things. Again, the priesthood among the unconverted Saxons was probably, as it appears among the Icelanders in the story of the Burnt Njal just alluded to, a sort of family possession,[12] the priests themselves being what we should call family men; so that when the Anglo-Saxon people were Christians, and no longer pagans, the mass of the clergy, whatever may have been their sincerity as Christians, could not understand, or, at least, were unwilling to accept, the new Romish doctrine which required their celibacy. In both these cases, the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical writers, who are our chief authority on this subject, and were the most bigoted of the Romish party, speak in terms of exaggerated virulence, on the score of morality, against practices which the Anglo-Saxon people had not been used to consider as immoral at all. Thus, we should be led to believe, from the accounts of these ecclesiastical moralists, that the Anglo-Saxon clergy were infamous for their incontinence, whereas their declamations probably mean only that the Anglo-Saxon priests persisted in having wives and families. The secular laws contain frequent allusions to the continuance of principles relating to the marriage state, which were derived from the older period of paganism, and some of these are extremely curious. Thus, the laws of king Ethelred provide that a man who seduces another man’s wife, shall make reparation, not only as in modern times, by paying pecuniary damages, but also by procuring him another wife! or, in the words of the original, “If a freeman have been familiar with a freeman’s wife, let him pay for it with his wer-gild (the money compensation for the killing of a man), and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her home to the other.” By a law of king Ine, “if any man buy a wife (that is, if the bargain with her father has been completed), and the marriage take not place,” he was required to pay the money, besides other compensation. And again, by one of Alfred’s laws, it was provided, “If any one deceive an unbetrothed woman, and sleep with her, let him pay for her, and have her afterwards to wife; but if the father of the woman will not give her, let him pay money according to her dowry.” Regulations relating to the buying of a wife, are found in the Anglo-Saxon laws.

We learn nothing in the facts of history to the discredit of the Anglo-Saxon character in general. As in other countries, in the same condition of society, they appear capable of great crimes, and of equally great acts of goodness and virtue. Generally speaking, their least amiable trait was the treatment of their servants or slaves; for this class among the Anglo-Saxons were in a state of absolute servitude, might be bought and sold, and had no protection in the law against their masters and mistresses, who, in fact, had power of life and death over them. We gather from the ecclesiastical canons that, at least in the earlier periods of Anglo-Saxon history, it was not unusual for servants to be scourged to death by or by order of their mistresses. Some of the collections of local miracles, such as those of St. Swithun, at Winchester (of the tenth century), furnish us with horrible pictures of the cruel treatment to which female slaves especially were subjected. For comparatively slight offences they were loaded with gyves and fetters, and subjected to all kinds of tortures. Several of these are curiously illustrative of domestic manners. On one occasion, the maid-servant of Teothic the bell-maker (campanarius), of Winchester, was, for “a slight offence,” placed in iron fetters, and chained up by the feet and hands all night. Next morning she was taken out to be frightfully beaten, and she was put again into her bonds; but in the ensuing night she contrived to make her escape, and fled to the church to seek sanctuary at the tomb of St. Swithun, for being in a state of servitude there was no legal protection for her. On another occasion, a female servant had been stolen from a former master, and had passed into the possession of another master in Winchester. One day her former master came to Winchester, and the girl, hearing of it, went to speak to him. When her mistress heard that she had been seen to talk with a man from a distant province, she ordered her to be thrown into fetters, and treated very cruelly. Next day, while the mistress had gone out on some business, leaving her servant at home in fetters, the latter made her escape similarly to the sanctuary of the church. Another servant-girl in Winchester, taking her master’s clothes to wash in the river, was set upon by thieves, who robbed her of them. Her master, ascribing the mishap to her own negligence, beat her very severely, and then put her in fetters, from which she made her escape like the others. The interesting scene represented in our cut, [No. 37], taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603, fol. 14, v^o., may be regarded as showing us the scourging of a slave. In a picture in Alfric’s version of Genesis, the man scourged, instead of being tied by the feet, is fixed by the body in a cloven post, in a rather singular manner. The aptness with which the Saxon ladies made use of the scourge is illustrated by one of William of Malmesbury’s anecdotes, who tells us that, when king Ethelred was a child, he once so irritated his mother, that not having a whip, she beat him with some candles, which were the first thing that fell under her hand, until he was almost insensible. “On this account he dreaded candles during the rest of his life, to such a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be introduced in his presence!”

No. 37. Washing and Scourging.

No. 38. Hanging.

The cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ladies to their servants offers a contrast to the generally mild character of the punishments inflicted by the Anglo-Saxon laws. The laws of Ethelred contain the following injunction, showing how contrary capital punishment is to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon legislation:—“And the ordinance of our lord, and of his witan (parliament), is, that Christian men for all too little be not condemned to death; but in general let mild punishment be decreed, for the people’s need; and let not for a little God’s handywork and his own purchase be destroyed, which he dearly bought.” This injunction is repeated in the laws of Canute. It appears that the usual method of inflicting death upon criminals was by hanging. Our cut, [No. 38], taken from the illuminations to Alfric’s version of Genesis, represents an Anglo-Saxon gallows (galga), and the rather primitive method of carrying the last penalty of the law into effect. The early illuminated manuscripts give us few representations of popular punishments. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies enumerate the following implements of punishment, besides the galga, or gallows: fetters (fæter, cops), distinguished into foot-fetters and hand-fetters; shackles (scacul, or sceacul), which appear to have been used specially for the neck; a swipa, or scourge; ostig gyrd, a knotted rod; tindig, explained by the Latin scorpio, and meaning apparently a whip with knots or plummets at the end of thongs, like those used by the charioteers in the cuts in our next chapter; and an instrument of torture called a threpel, which is explained by the Latin equuleus. The following cut, [No. 39], from the Harleian MS., No. 603 (so often quoted), shows us the stocks, generally placed by the side of the public road at the entrance to the town. Two other offenders are attached to the columns of the public building, perhaps a court-house, by apparently a rope and a chain. The Anglo-Saxon laws prescribe few corporal punishments, but substitute for them the payment of fines, or compensation-money, and these are proportioned to the offences with very extraordinary minuteness. Thus, to select a few examples from the very numerous list of injuries which may be done to a man’s person,—if any one struck off an ear, he was to pay twelve shillings, and, if an eye, fifty shillings; if the nose were cut through, the payment was nine shillings. “For each of the four front teeth, six shillings; for the tooth which stands next to them, four shillings; for that which follows, three shillings; and for all the others, a shilling each.” If a thumb were struck off, it was valued at twenty shillings. “If the shooting finger were struck off” (a term which shows how incorrectly it has been assumed that the Anglo-Saxons were not accustomed to the bow), the compensation was eight shillings; for the middle finger, four shillings; for the ring-finger, six shillings; and for the little finger eleven shillings. The thumb-nail was valued at three shillings; and the finger-nails at one shilling each.

No. 39. Anglo-Saxon Punishments.

We have little information on the secrets of the toilette of the Anglo-Saxons. We know from many sources that washing and bathing were frequent practices among them. The use of hot baths they probably derived from the Romans. The vocabularies give thermæ as the Latin equivalent. They are not unfrequently mentioned in the ecclesiastical laws, and in the canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, warm baths and soft beds are proscribed as domestic luxuries which tended to effeminacy. If these were really the thermæ of the Romans, it is perhaps the hostility of the ascetic part of the Romish clergy which caused them to be discontinued and forgotten. Our cut [No. 37] represents a party at their ablutions. We constantly find among the articles in the graves of Anglo-Saxon ladies tweezers, which were evidently intended for eradicating superfluous hairs, a circumstance which contributes to show that they paid special attention to hair-dressing. To judge from the colour of the hair in some of the illuminations, we might be led to suppose that sometimes they stained it. The young men seem to have been more foppish and vain of their persons than the ladies, and some of the old chronicles, such as the Ely history, tell us (which we should hardly have expected) that this was especially a characteristic of the Danish invaders, who, we are told, “following the custom of their country, used to comb their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, often changed their clothes, and used many other such frivolous means of setting off the beauty of their persons.”[13]

There is every reason for believing that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of gardens and flowers, and many allusions in the writings of that period intimate a warm appreciation of the beauties of nature. The poets not unfrequently take their comparisons from flowers. Thus, in a poem in the Exeter Book, a pleasant smell is described as being— Swecca swetast, Of odours sweetest, swylce on sumeres tid such as in summer’s tide stincað on stowum, fragrance send forth in places, staþelum fæste, fast in their stations, wynnum æfter wongum, joyously o’er the plains, wyrta geblowene blown plants hunig-flowende. honey-flowing. —Exeter Book, p. 178. And one of the poetical riddles in the same collection contains the lines— Ic eom on stence I am in odour strengre þonne ricels, stronger than incense, oþþe rosa sy, or the rose is, on eorþan tyrf which on earth’s turf wynlic weaxeð; pleasant grows; ic eom wræstre þonne heo. I am more delicate than it. þeah þa lilie sy though that the lily be leof mon-cynne, dear to mankind, beorht on blostman, bright in blossom, ic eom betre þonne heo. I am better than it. —Exeter Book, p. 423. So in another of these poems we read—

Fæger fugla reord, Sweet was the song of birds, folde geblowen, the earth was covered with flowers, geacas gear budon. cuckoos announced the year. —Ibid. p. 146.

Before we quit entirely the Saxon hall, and its festivities and ceremonies, we must mention one circumstance connected with them. The laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxons earnestly enjoined the duty of almsgiving, and a multitude of persons partook of the hospitality of the rich man’s mansion, who were not worthy to be admitted to his tables. These assembled at meal-times outside the gate of his house, and it was a custom to lay aside a portion of the provisions to be distributed among them, with the fragments from the table. In Alfric’s homily for the second Sunday after Pentecost, the preacher, after dwelling on the story of Lazarus, who was spurned from the rich man’s table, appeals to his Anglo-Saxon audience—“many Lazaruses ye have now lying at your gates, begging for your superfluity.” Bede tells us of the good king Oswald, that when he was once sitting at dinner, on Easter-day, with his bishop, having a silver dish full of dainties before him, as they were just ready to bless the bread, the servant whose duty it was to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons from all parts were sitting in the streets begging some alms of the king. The latter immediately ordered the provisions set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish to be cut in pieces and divided among them. In the picture of a Saxon house given in our first chapter (p. 15), we see the lord of the household on a sort of throne at the entrance to his hall, presiding over the distribution of his charity. This seat, generally under an arch or canopy, is often represented in the Saxon manuscripts, and the chief or lord seated under it, distributing justice or charity. In the accompanying cut, [No. 40], taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius, the lady Wisdom is represented seated on such a throne. It was, perhaps, the burh-geat-setl, or seat at the burh-gate, mentioned as characteristic of the rank of the thane in the following extract from a treatise on ranks in society, printed with the Anglo-Saxon laws: “And if a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church (or perhaps private chapel), and kitchen (kycenan), bell-house, and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the king’s hall, then was he thenceforth worthy of the dignity of thane.”

No. 40. Wisdom on her Throne.

CHAPTER IV.
OUT OF DOOR AMUSEMENTS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—HUNTING AND HAWKING.—HORSES AND CARRIAGES.—TRAVELLING.—MONEY-DEALINGS.

The progress of society from its first formation to the full development of civilization, has been compared not inaptly to the life of man. In the childhood and youth of society, when the population was not numerous, and a servile class performed the chief part of the labour necessary for administering to the wants or luxuries of life, people had a far greater proportion of time on their hands to fill up with amusements than at a later period, and many that are now considered frivolous, or are only indulged in at rare intervals of relaxation, then formed the principal occupations of men’s lives. We have glanced at the in-door amusements of the Anglo-Saxons in a previous chapter; but their out-door recreations, although we have little information respecting them, were certainly much more numerous. The multitude of followers who, in Saxon times, attended on each lord or rich man as their military chief, or as their domestic supporter, had generally no serious occupation during the greater part of the day; and this abundance of unemployed time was not confined to one class of society, for the artisan had to work less to gain his subsistence, and both citizen and peasant were excused from work altogether during the numerous holidays of the year.

That the Anglo-Saxons were universally fond of play (plega) is proved by the frequent use of the word in a metaphorical sense. They even applied it to fighting and battle, which, in the language of the poets, were plega-gares (play of darts), æsc-plega (play of shields), and hand-plega (play of hands).[14] In the glossaries, plegere (a player), and plega-man (a playman), are used to represent the Roman gladiator; and plega-hús (a playhouse), and plega-stow (a play-place), express a theatre, or more probably an amphitheatre. Recent discoveries have shown that there was a theatre of considerable dimensions in the Roman town of Verulamium (near St. Alban’s); and old writers tell us there was one at the Silurian Isca (Caerleon), though these buildings were doubtless of rare occurrence; but every Roman town of any importance in the island had its amphitheatre outside the walls for gladiatorial and other exhibitions. The result of modern researches seems to prove that most of the Roman towns continued to exist after the Saxon settlement of the island, and we can have no doubt that the amphitheatres, at least for awhile, continued to be devoted to their original purposes, although the performances were modified in character. Some of them (like that at Richborough, in Kent, lately examined), were certainly surrounded by walls, while others probably were merely cut in the ground, and surrounded by a low embankment formed of the material thrown out. The first of these, the Saxons would naturally call a play-house, while the other would receive the no less appropriate appellation of a play-stow, or place for playing. Among the illustrations of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl., No. 603), to which we have so often had occasion to refer, there is a very curious picture, evidently intended to represent an amphitheatre outside a town. It is copied in our cut [No. 41]. The rude Anglo-Saxon draughtsman has evidently intended to represent an embankment, occupied by the spectators, around the spot where the performances take place. The spectator to the left is expressing his approbation by clapping with his hands. The performances themselves are singular: we have a party of minstrels, one of them playing on the Roman double pipes, so often represented in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, while another is dancing to him, and the third is performing with a tame bear, which is at the moment of the representation simulating sleep. Games of this kind with animals, succeeded no doubt among the Saxons to the Roman gladiatorial fights, but few have imagined that the popular English exhibition of the dancing bear dated from so remote a period. The manuscripts show that the double pipe was in use among the Anglo-Saxons; with a little modification, and a bag or bellows to supply the place of the human lungs, this instrument was transformed into a bagpipe.

No. 41. Games of the Amphitheatre.

Not the least curious part of this picture is the town in the background, with its entrance gateway, and public buildings. The Anglo-Saxon draughtsmen were imperfectly acquainted with perspective, and paid little attention to proportion in their representations of towns and houses, a circumstance which is fully illustrated in this picture. As the artist was unable from this circumstance to represent the buildings and streets of a town in their relative position, he put in a house to represent a multitude of houses, and here he has similarly given one building within the walls to represent all the public buildings of the town. An exactly similar characteristic will be observed in our cut [No. 42], taken from the same manuscript, where one temple represents the town. Here again we have a party of citizens outside the walls, amusing themselves as well as they can; some, for want of other employment, are laying themselves down listlessly on the ground.

No. 42. A Town.

The national sentiments and customs of the Anglo-Saxons would, however, lead to the selection of other places for the scenes of their games, and thus the Roman amphitheatres became neglected. Each village had its arena—its play-place—where persons of all ages and sexes assembled on their holidays to be players or lookers on; and this appears to have been usually chosen near a fountain, or some object hallowed by the popular creed, for customs of this kind were generally associated with religious feelings which tended to consecrate and protect them. These holiday games, which appear to have been very common among our Saxon forefathers, were the originals of our village wakes. Wandering minstrels, like those represented in our cut [No. 41], repaired to them to exhibit their skill, and were always welcome. The young men exerted themselves in running, or leaping, or wrestling. These games attracted merchants, and gradually became the centres of extensive fairs. Such was the case with one of the most celebrated in England during the middle ages, that of Barnwell, near Cambridge. It was a large open place, between the town and the banks of the river, well suited for such festivities as those of which we are speaking. A spring in the middle of this plain, we are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), because every year, on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the boys and youths of the neighbourhood assembled there, and, “after the manners of the English, practised wrestling and other boyish games, and mutually applauded one another with songs and musical instruments; whence, on account of the multitude of boys and girls who gathered together there, it grew a custom for a crowd of sellers and buyers to assemble there on the same day for the purpose of commerce.”[15] This is a curious and a rather rare allusion to an Anglo-Saxon wake.

One of the great recreations of the Anglo-Saxons was hunting, for which the immense forests, which then covered a great portion of this island, gave a wide scope. The most austere and pious, as well as the most warlike, of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, were passionately attached to the pleasures of the chase. According to the writer who has assumed the name of Asser, the great Alfred was so attached to this amusement, that he condescended to teach his “falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers” himself. His grandson, king Ethelstan, as we learn from William of Malmesbury, exacted from the Welsh princes, among other articles of tribute, “as many dogs as he might choose, which, from their sagacious scent, could discover the retreats and hiding-places of wild beasts; and birds trained to make prey of others in the air.” The same writer tells us of the sainted Edward the Confessor, that “there was one earthly enjoyment in which he chiefly delighted, which was, hunting with fleet hounds, whose opening in the woods he used with pleasure to encourage; and again, with the pouncing of birds, whose nature it is to prey on their kindred species. In these exercises, after hearing divine service in the morning, he employed himself whole days.” It is evident from the ecclesiastical laws, that it was difficult to restrain even the clergy from this diversion. One of the ecclesiastical canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, enjoins “that no priest be a hunter, or fowler, or player at tables, but let him play on his books, as becometh his calling.” When the king hunted, it appears that men were employed to beat up the game, while others were placed at different avenues of the forest to hinder the deer from taking a direction contrary to the wishes of the hunter. Several provisions relating to the employment of men in this way, occur in the Domesday survey. A contemporary writer of the Life of Dunstan gives the following description of the hunting of king Edmund the Elder, at Ceoddri (Chedder). “When they reached the forest,” he says, “they took various directions along the woody avenues, and the varied noise of the horns, and the barking of the dogs, aroused many stags. From these, the king with his pack of hounds chose one for his own hunting, and pursued it long, through devious ways with great agility on his horse, with the hounds following. In the vicinity of Ceoddri were several steep and lofty precipices hanging over deep declivities. To one of these the stag came in his flight, and dashed headlong to his destruction down the immense depth, all the dogs following and perishing with him.” The king with difficulty held in his horse.

No. 43. Anglo-Saxon Dogs.

The dogs (hundas), used for the chase among the Anglo-Saxons, were valuable, and were bred with great care. Every noble or great landowner had his hund-wealh, or dog-keeper. The accompanying cut ([No. 43]), taken from the Harleian MS. No. 603, represents a dog-keeper, with his couple of hounds—they seem to have hunted in couples. The Anglo-Saxon name for a hunting-dog was ren-hund, a dog of chase, which is interpreted by greyhound; and this appears, from the cut, to have been the favourite dog of our Saxon forefathers. It appears by an allusion given above, that the Saxons obtained hunting dogs from Wales; yet the antiquary will be at once struck with the total dissimilarity of the dogs pictured in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, from the British dogs represented on the Romano-British pottery. The dogs were used to find the game, and follow it by the scent; the hunters killed it with spears, or with bows and arrows, or drove it into nets. In the Colloquy of Alfric, a hunter (hunta) of one of the royal forests gives a curious account of his profession. When asked how he practises his “craft,” he replies, “I braid nets, and set them in a convenient place, and set on my hounds, that they may pursue the beasts of chase, until they come unexpectedly to the nets, and so become intangled in them, and I slay them in the nets.” He is then asked if he cannot hunt without nets, to which he replies, “Yes, I pursue the wild animals with swift hounds.” He next enumerates the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter usually hunted—“I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and sometimes hares.” “Yesterday,” he continues, “I took two harts and a boar, ... the harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.” “How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?” “My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, suddenly struck him down.” “You were very bold then.” “A hunter must not be timid, for various wild beasts dwell in the woods.” It would seem by this, that boar-hunting was not uncommon in the more extensive forests of this island; but Sharon Turner has made a singular mistake, in supposing, from a picture in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, that boar-hunting was the ordinary occupation of the month of September. The scene which he has thus mistaken—or at least, a portion of it—is given in our cut [No. 44] (from the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C. viii.); it represents swineherds driving their swine into the forests to feed upon acorns, which one of the herdsmen is shaking from the trees with his hand. The herdsmen were necessarily armed to protect the herds under their charge from robbers.

No. 44. Swine-Herds.

The Anglo-Saxons, as we have seen, were no less attached to hawking than hunting. The same Colloquy already quoted contains the following dialogue relating to the fowler (fugelere). To the question, “How dost thou catch birds?” he replies, “I catch them in many ways; sometimes with nets, sometimes with snares, sometimes with bird-lime, sometimes with whistling, sometimes with a hawk, sometimes with a trap.” “Hast thou a hawk?” “I have.” “Canst thou tame them?” “Yes, I can; of what use would they be to me unless I could tame them?” “Give me a hawk.” “I will give one willingly in exchange for a swift hound. What kind of hawk will you have, the greater or the lesser?”... “How feedest thou thy hawks?” “They feed themselves and me in winter, and in spring I let them fly to the wood, and I catch young ones in autumn and tame them.” A party of hawkers is represented in our cut [No. 45], taken from the manuscript last quoted, where it illustrates the month of October. The rude attempt at depicting a landscape is intended to represent a river running from the distant hills into a lake, and the hawkers are hunting cranes and other water-fowl. Presents of hawks and falcons are not unfrequently mentioned in Anglo-Saxon writers; and in a will, an Anglo-Saxon leaves to his natural lord “two hawks and all his stag-hounds.”

No. 45. Anglo-Saxons Hawking.

No. 46. Anglo-Saxons on a Journey.

The Saxon youths were proud of their skill in horsemanship. Bede relates an anecdote of the youthful days of Herebald, abbot of Tynemouth, when he attended upon bishop John of Beverley, from Herebald’s own words—“It happened one day,” the latter said, “that as we were travelling with him (the bishop), we came into a plain and open road, well adapted for galloping our horses. The young men that were with him, and particularly those of the laity, began to entreat the bishop to give them leave to gallop, and make trial of the goodness of their horses.... When they had several times galloped backwards and forwards, the bishop and I looking on, my wanton humour prevailed, and I could no longer refrain; but, though he forbade me, I struck in among them, and began to ride at full speed.” Horses were used chiefly by the upper classes of society in travelling. Two of a party of Saxon travellers are represented in our cut [No. 46] (from MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv.). The lady, it will be observed, rides sideways, as in modern times, and the illuminated manuscripts of different periods furnish us with examples enough to show that such was always the practice; yet an old writer has ascribed the introduction of side-saddles into this country to Anne of Bohemia, the queen of Richard II., and the statement has been repeated by writers on costume, who too often blindly compile from one another without examining carefully the original sources of information.[16] The next cut, [No. 47] (taken from MS. Harl. No. 603), represents a horseman with his arms, the spear, and the round shield, with its boss, which reminds us of those frequently found in the early Anglo-Saxon graves. The horse furniture is tolerably well defined in these figures. The forms of the spur (spura) and the stirrup (called in Anglo-Saxon stirap and hlypa) are very peculiar. Most of the furniture of the horse was then, as now, of leather, and was made by the shoemaker (se sceowyrhta), who seems to have been the general manufacturer of articles in this material. Alfric’s Colloquy enumerates among the articles made by the shoemaker, bridle-thongs (bridel-thwancgas), harnesses (gerœda), spur-leathers (spur-lethera), and halters (hælfra). The form of the saddle is shown in the representation of a horse without a rider, given, from the manuscript last quoted, in our cut [No. 48].

No. 47. An Anglo-Saxon Horseman.

No. 48. Anglo-Saxon Horse Fittings.

No. 49. A Chariot.

In the Anglo-Saxon church histories, we meet with frequent instances of persons, who were unable to walk from sickness or other cause, being carried in carts or cars, but in most cases these seem to have been nothing but the common agricultural carts adapted temporarily to this usage. A horse-litter is on one occasion used for the same purpose. It is certain, however, that the Anglo-Saxons had chariots for travelling. The usual names of all vehicles of this kind were wægn or wæn (from which, our waggon) and crat or cræt (which appears to be the origin of the English word cart). These two terms appear to have been used synonymously, for the words of the 18th Psalm, hi in curribus, are translated in one Anglo-Saxon version by on wænum, and in another by in crætum. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts give us various representations of vehicles for travelling. The one represented in the cut [No. 49] is taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius. It seems to have been a barbaric “improvement” upon the Roman biga, and is not much unlike our modern market-carts. The whip used by the lady who is driving so furiously, is of the same form as that used by the horsewoman in our cut No. 46. The artist has not shown the wægne-thixl, or shaft. A four-wheeled carriage, of rather a singular construction, is found often repeated, with some variations, in the illuminations of the manuscript of Alfric’s translation of the Pentateuch. One of them is given in our cut [No. 50]. It is quite evident that a good deal of the minor detail of construction has been omitted by the draughtsman. Anglo-Saxon glosses give the word rad to represent the Latin quadriga. From the same source we learn that the compound word wæn-fær, waggon-going, was used to express journeying in chariots.

No. 50. An Anglo-Saxon Carriage.

Riding in chariots must have been rare among the Anglo-Saxons. Horses were only used by the better classes of society; and we learn from Bede and other writers that pious ecclesiastics, such as bishops Aidan, Ceadda, and Cuthbert, thought it more consistent with the humility of their sacred character to journey on foot. The pedestrian carried either a spear or a staff; the rider had almost always a spear. It is noted of Cuthbert, in Bede’s life of that saint, that one day when he came to Mailros (Melrose), and would enter the church to pray, having leaped from his horse, he “gave the latter and his travelling spear to the care of a servant, for he had not yet resigned the dress and habits of a layman.” The weapon was, no doubt, necessary for personal safety. There is a very curious clause in the Anglo-Saxon laws of king Alfred, relating to an accident arising from the carrying the spear, which we can hardly understand, although to require a special law it must have been of frequent occurrence; this law provides that “if a man have a spear over his shoulder, and any man stake himself upon it,” the carrier of the spear incurred severe punishment, “if the point be three fingers higher than the hindmost part of the shaft.” He was not considered blameable if he held the spear quite horizontally.

The traveller always wore a covering for his head, which, though of various shapes, none of which resembled our modern hat, was characterised by the general term of hæt. He seems to have been further protected against the inclemency of the weather by a cloak or mantle (mentel). One would be led to suppose that this outer garment was more varied in form and material than any other part of the dress, from the great number of names which we find applied to it, such as basing, hæcce, hæcela, or hacela, pæll, pylca, scyccels, wæfels, &c. The writings which remain throw no light upon the provisions made by travellers against rain; for the dictionary-makers who give scúr-scead (shower-shade) as signifying an umbrella, are certainly mistaken.[17] Yet that umbrellas were known to the Anglo-Saxons is proved beyond a doubt by a figure in the Harleian manuscript, No. 603, which is given in our cut [No. 51]. A servant or attendant is holding an umbrella over the head of a man who appears to be covered at the same time with the cloak or mantle.

No. 51. An Anglo-Saxon Umbrella.

Travelling to any distance must have been rendered more uncomfortable, especially when passing through wild districts where there were no inns. The word inn is itself Saxon, and signified a lodging, but it appears to have been more usually applied to houses of this kind in towns. A tavern was also called a gest-hus or gest-bur, a house or chamber for guests, and cumena-hus, a house of comers. Guest-houses, like caravanserais in the East, appear to have been established in different parts of Saxon England, near the high roads, for the reception of travellers. A traveller in Bede arrives at a hospitium in the north of England, which was kept by a paterfamilias (or father of a family) and his household. In the Northumbrian gloss on the Psalms, printed by the Surtees Society, the Latin words of Psalm liv., in hospitiis eorum, are rendered by in gest-husum heara. This shows that Bede’s hospitium was really a guest-house: these guest-houses were kept up in various parts of England until Norman times; and Walter Mapes, in his treatise de Nugis Curialium, has preserved a story relating to one of William the Conqueror’s Saxon opponents, Edric the Wild, which tells how, returning from hunting in the forest of Dean, and accompanied only with a page, he came to a large house, “like the drinking houses of which the English have one in every parish, called in English gild-houses,” perhaps an error for guest-houses (quales Anglici in singulis singulas habebant diocesibus bibitorias, ghildhus Anglice dictas). It seems not improbable, also, that the ruins of Roman villas and small stations, which stood by the sides of roads, were often roughly repaired or modified, so as to furnish a temporary shelter for travellers who carried provisions, &c., with them, and could therefore lodge themselves without depending upon the assistance of others. A shelter of this kind—from its consisting of bare walls, a mere shelter against the inclemency of the storm—might be termed a ceald-hereberga (cold harbour), and this would account for the great number of places in different parts of England, which bear this name, and which are almost always on Roman sites and near old roads. The explanation is supported by the circumstance that the name is found among the Teutonic nations on the continent—the German Kalten-herberg—borne by some inns at the present day.

The deficiency of such comforts for travellers in Anglo-Saxon times was compensated by the extensive practice of hospitality, a virtue which was effectually inculcated by the customs of the people as well as by the civil and ecclesiastical laws. When a stranger presented himself at a Saxon door, and asked for board and lodging, the man who refused them was looked upon with contempt by his countrymen. In the seventh century, as we learn from the Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore, the refusal to give lodging to a stranger (quicunque hospitem non receperit in domum suam) was considered worthy of ecclesiastical censure. And in the Ecclesiastical Institutes, drawn up at a later period, and printed in the collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, it is stated that “It is also very needful to every mass-priest, that he diligently exhort and teach his parishioners that they be hospitable, and not refuse their houses to any wayfaring man, but do for his comfort, for love of God, what they then will or can; ... but let those who, for love of God, receive every stranger, desire not any worldly reward.” Bede describes as the first act of “the custom of hospitality” (mos hospitalitatis) the washing of the stranger’s feet and hands; they then offered him refreshment, and he was allowed to remain two nights without being questioned, after which period the host became answerable for his character. The ecclesiastical laws limited the hospitality to be shown to a priest to one night, because if he remained longer it was a proof that he was neglecting his duties.

Taverns of an ordinary description, where there was probably no accommodation for travellers, seem to have been common enough under the Anglo-Saxons and it must be confessed that there seems to be too much reason for believing that people spent a great deal of their leisure time in them; even the clergy appear to have been tempted to frequent them. In the Ecclesiastical Institutes, quoted above, mass-priests are forbidden to eat or drink at ale-houses (æt ceap-ealothelum). And it is stated in the same curious record that, “It is a very bad custom that many men practise, both on Sundays and also other mass-days; that is, that straightways at early morn they desire to hear mass, and immediately after the mass, from early morn the whole day over, in drunkenness and feasting they minister to their belly, not to God.”

Merchant travellers seem, in general, to have congregated together in parties or small caravans, both for companionship and as a measure of mutual defence against robbers. In such cases they probably carried tents with them, and formed little encampments at night, like the pedlars and itinerant dealers in later times. Men who travelled alone were exposed to other dangers besides that of robbery; for a solitary wanderer was always looked upon with suspicion, and he was in danger himself of being taken for a thief. He was compelled, therefore, by his own interest and by the law of the land, to show that he had no wish to avoid observation; one of the earlier Anglo-Saxon codes of laws, that of king Wihtræd, directed that “if a man come from afar, or a stranger go out of the high way, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn, he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain, or to be redeemed.”

No. 52. Taking Toll.

So prevalent, indeed, was theft and unfair dealing among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and so much litigation and unjust persecution arose from disputed claims to property which had been, or was pretended to have been, purchased, that it was made illegal to buy or sell without witnesses. It would be easy to multiply examples of robbery and plunder from Anglo-Saxon writers; but I will only state that, according to the Ely history, some merchants from Ireland, having come to Cambridge in the time of king Edgar, to offer their wares for sale, perhaps at the annual festivities of the Beorna-wyl, mentioned above, a priest of the place was guilty of stealing a part of their merchandise. We know but little of the trades and forms of commercial dealings of the Anglo-Saxons; but we may take our leave of the period of which we have been hitherto treating, with a few figures relating to money matters, from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl. No. 603). The cut [No. 52] represents, apparently, a man in the market, or at the gates of a city, taking toll for merchandise. The scales are for weighing, not the merchandise, but the money. The word pund, or pound, implies that the money was reckoned by weight; and the word mancus, another term for a certain sum of money, is also considered to have been a weight. Anglo-Saxon writings frequently speak of money as given by weight. Our cut No. 53 is a representation of the merchant, or the toll-taker, seated before his account book, with his scales hanging to the desk. In the first of these cuts, a man holds the bag or purse, in which the money received for toll or merchandise is deposited. The cut [No. 54] represents the receiver pouring the money out of his bag into the cyst, or chest, in which it is to be locked up and kept in his treasury. It is hardly necessary to say that there were no banking-houses among the Anglo-Saxons. The chest, or coffer, in which people kept their money and other valuables, appears to have formed part of the furniture of the chamber, as being the most private apartment; and it may be remarked that a rich man’s wealth usually consisted much more in jewels and valuable plate than in money.

No. 53. A Money Taker.

No. 54. Putting Treasure by.

We cannot but remark how little change the manners and the sentiments of our Saxon forefathers underwent during the long period that we are in any way acquainted with them. During the reign of Edward the Confessor, Norman fashions were introduced at court, but their influence on the nation at large appears to have been very trifling. Even after the Norman conquest the English manners and fashions retained their hold on the people, and at later periods they continually re-appear to assert their natural rights among the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons.

CHAPTER V.
THE EARLY NORMAN PERIOD.—LUXURIOUSNESS OF THE NORMANS.—ADVANCE IN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.—THE KITCHEN AND THE HALL.—PROVISIONS AND COOKERY.—BEES.—THE DAIRY.—MEAL-TIMES AND DIVISIONS OF THE DAY.—FURNITURE.—THE FALDESTOL.—CHAIRS AND OTHER SEATS.

A great change was wrought in this country by the entrance of the Normans. From what we have seen, in the course of the preceding chapters, society seems for a long time to have been at a standstill among the Anglo-Saxons, as though it had progressed as far as its own simple vitality would carry it, and wanted some new impulse to move it onwards. By the entrance of the Normans, the Saxon aristocracy was destroyed; but the lower and, in a great measure, the middle classes were left untouched in their manners and customs, which they appear to have preserved for a considerable length of time without any material change. The Norman historians, who write with prejudice when they speak of the Saxons, describe their nobility as having become luxurious without refinement; and they tell us that the Normans introduced greater sobriety, accompanied with more ostentation. “The nobility,” says William of Malmesbury, “was given up to luxury and wantonness.... Drinking in parties was an universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; unlike the Normans and French, who, in noble and splendid mansions, lived with frugality. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed.... In fine, the English at that time (under king Harold) wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skin adorned with punctured designs; they were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors; whose manners, in other respects, they adopted.”

Whatever moderation the Normans may have brought with them, or however they may have been restrained by the first Anglo-Norman monarch, it disappeared entirely under his son and successor: “when,” in the words of William of Malmesbury, “everything was so changed, that there was no man rich except the money-changer, and no clerks but lawyers.... The courtiers then preyed upon the property of the country people, and consumed their substance, taking the very meat from their mouths. Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress; and then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mince their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half naked.” This increasing dissoluteness of manners appears to have received no effectual check under the reign of the first Henry; in the twenty-ninth year of which, the writer just quoted tells us that “a circumstance occurred in England, which may seem surprising to our long-haired gallants, who, forgetting what they were born, transform themselves into the fashion of females, by the length of their locks. A certain English knight, who prided himself on the luxuriance of his tresses, being conscience-stung on the subject, seemed to feel in a dream as though some person strangled him with his ringlets. Awaking in a fright, he immediately cut off all his superfluous hair. The example spread throughout England; and, as recent punishment is apt to affect the mind, almost all the barons allowed their hair to be cropped in a proper manner, without reluctance. But this decency was not of long continuance; for scarcely had a year expired, before all those who thought themselves courtly, relapsed into their former vice; they vied with women in length of locks, and wherever these were wanting, put on false tresses; forgetful, or rather ignorant, of the saying of the Apostle, ‘If a man nurture his hair, it is a shame to him.’” Public and private manners were gradually running into the terrible lawlessness of the reign of king Stephen.

William of Malmesbury points out as one of the more remarkable circumstances which distinguished the Normans from the Saxons, the magnitude and solidity of their domestic buildings. The Anglo-Saxons seem, indeed, to have preferred the old national prejudice of their race against confining themselves within stone walls, while the Normans and Franks, who were more influenced by Roman traditions, had become great builders. We have scarcely any information relative to the progress of domestic architecture under William the Conqueror, but the Norman chiefs seem from the first to have built themselves houses of a much more substantial character than those which they found in existence. The residence of the Conqueror, while engaged in his operations against the insurgents in the isle of Ely, is imperfectly described by the anonymous author of the life of Hereward. It consisted of the hall, kitchen, and other buildings, which were inclosed by hedges and fosses (per sepes et foveas), and it had an interior and exterior court. Towards the end of the Conqueror’s reign, and in that of his son, were raised those early Norman baronial castles, the masonry of which has withstood the ravages of so many centuries. Under William and his sons, few ordinary mansions and dwelling houses seem to have been built substantially of stone; I am not aware that there are any known remains of a stone mansion in this country older than the reign of Henry II. The miracles of St. Cuthbert, related by Reginald of Durham, contain one or two allusions to the private houses of the earlier part of the twelfth century. Thus a parishioner of Kellow, near Durham, in the time of bishop Walter Rufus (1133-1140), is described as passing the evening drinking with the parish priest; returning home late, he was pursued by dogs, and reaching his own house in great terror, contrived to shut the door (ostium domus) upon them. He then went up to what, from the context, appears to have been the window of an upper floor or garret (ad fenestram parietis), which he opened in order to look down with safety on his persecutors. He was suddenly seized with madness, and his family being roused, seized him, carried him down into the court (in area), and bound him to the seats (ad sedilia). The same writer tells the story of a blind woman in the city of Durham, who used to run her head against the projecting windows of the houses (ad fenestrarum dependentia foris laquearia).

No. 55. A Norman Carousal.

We trace in the illuminations of the earlier Norman period the custom of placing the principal apartment at an elevation from the ground. The simple plan of the stone-built house of the latter part of this century, consisted of a square room on the ground floor, often vaulted, and of one room above it, which was the principal apartment, and the sleeping-room. This was approached by a staircase, sometimes external and sometimes internal, and it had a fire-place (cheminée), though this was not always the case in the room below. The lower room was the hall, and the upper apartment was called a solar, or soller (solarium), a word which has been supposed to be derived from sol, the sun, which was more felt in this upper room than in the lower, inasmuch as it was better lighted—it was the sunny room. Yet, even here, the windows were small, and without glass. We learn from Joscelin de Brakelonde that, in the year 1182, Samson, abbot of Bury, while lodging in a grange, or manor-house, belonging to his abbey, narrowly escaped being burnt with the house, because the only door of the upper story in which he was lodged happened to be locked, and the windows were too narrow to admit of his passing through them. In the early English “Ancren Riewle,” or rule of nuns, published by the Camden Society, there are several allusions to the windows of the parlour, or private room, which show that they were not glazed, but usually covered with a cloth, or blind, which allowed sufficient light to pass, and that they had shutters on hinges which closed them entirely. In talking of the danger of indulging the eyes, the writer of this treatise (p. 50) says, “My dear sisters, love your windows”—they are called in the original text thurles, holes through the wall—“as little as you may, and let them be small, and the parlour’s least and narrowest; let the cloth in them be twofould, black cloth, the cross white within and without.” The writer goes on to moralise on the white cross upon a black ground. In another part of the book (p. 97), the author supposes that men may come and seek to converse with the nuns through the window, and goes on to say, “If any man become so mad and unreasonable that he put forth his hand towards the windowcloth (the thurl-cloth), shut the window quickly and leave him.” Under the hall, when it was raised above the level of the ground, there was often another vaulted room, which was the cellar, and which seems to have been usually entered from the inside of the building. In the accompanying cut ([No. 55]), taken from the celebrated tapestry of Bayeux, are seen Harold and his companions carousing in an apartment thus situated, and approached by a staircase from without. The object of this was, perhaps, partly to be more private, for the ordinary public hall at dinner times seems to have been invaded by troops of hungry hangers on, who ate up or carried away the provisions which were taken from the table, and became so bold that they seem to have often seized or tried to seize the provisions from the cooks as they carried them to the table. William Rufus established ushers of the hall and kitchen, whole duty it was to protect the guests and the cooks from this rude rabble. Gaimar’s description of that king’s grand feast at Westminster, contains some curious allusions to this practice. After telling us that three hundred ushers (ussers, i.e. huissiers), or doorkeepers, were appointed to occupy the entrance passages (us), who were to hand with rods to protect the guests as they mounted the steps from the importunity of the garsons— Cil cunduaient les barons
Par les degrez, pur les garçons;
Od les verges k’es mains teneient
As barons vaie fesaient,
Ke jà garçon ne s’apremast,
Si alcon d’els ne l’ comandast—
he adds, that those who carried the provisions and liquor to the table were also attended by these ushers, that the “lecheurs” might not snatch from them, or spoil, or break, the vessels in which they carried them:—

Ensement tut revenaient par els
Cil ki aportouent les mès
De la quisine e des mesters,
E li beveres e li mangers,
Icil usser les cunduaient,
Pur la vessele dunt servaient,
Ke lecheur ne les escheçast,
Ne malmeist, ne defrussast.
—Gaimar, Estorie des Englès, l. 5985.

No. 56. The Norman Butler in his Office.

No. 57. A Draw-Well.

In the cut from the Bayeux tapestry, the feasting-room is approached by what is evidently a staircase of stone. In our cut [No. 56], taken from a manuscript of the earlier half of the twelfth century in the Cottonian library (Nero, C. iv.), and illustrating the story of the marriage feast at Cana, the staircase is apparently of wood, little better than a ladder, and the servants who are carrying up the wine assist themselves in mounting by means of a rope. It is a picture which at the same time exhibits several characteristics of domestic life—the wine vessels, the cupboard in which they are kept, and the well in the court-yard, the latter being indicated by the tree. The butler, finding wine run short, sends the servant to draw water from the well. It may be remarked that this appears to have been the common machinery of the draw-well among our forefathers in the middle ages—a rude lever, formed by the attachment of a heavy weight, perhaps of lead, at one end of the beam, which was sufficient to raise the other end, and thus draw up the bucket. It occurs in illuminations in manuscripts of various periods; our example in cut No. 57 is taken from MS. Harl. No. 1257, of the fourteenth century.

No. 58. Norman Cooks and the Attendants serving at Table.

Whatever truth there may be in William of Malmesbury’s account of the sobriety of the Normans, there can be no doubt that the kitchen and the cooks formed with them a very important part of the household. According to the Bayeux tapestry, duke William brought with him from Normandy a complete kitchen establishment, and a compartment of that interesting monument, of which we here give a diminished copy, shows that when he landed he found no difficulty in providing a dinner. On the left two cooks are boiling the meat—for this still was the general way of cooking it, as it was usually eaten salted. Above them, on a shelf, are fowls, and other sorts of small viands, spitted ready for roasting. Another cook is engaged at a portable stove, preparing small cakes, pasties, &c., which he takes from the stove with a singularly formed fork to place them on the dish. Others are carrying to the table the roasted meats, on the spits. It will be observed that having no “board” with them to form a table, the Norman knights make use of their shields instead.

The reader of the life of Hereward will remember the scene in which the hero in disguise is taken into king William’s kitchen, to entertain the cooks. After dinner the wine and ale were distributed freely, and the result was a violent quarrel between the cooks and Hereward; the former used the tridents and forks for weapons (cum tridentibus et furcis), while he took the spit from the fire (de foco hastile) as a still more formidable weapon of defence. In the early Chanson de Roland, Charlemagne is described also carrying his cooks with him to the war, as William the Conqueror is pictured in the Bayeux tapestry, and they held so important a position in his household, that, when one of his most powerful barons, Guenelon, was accused of treason, Charlemagne is made to deliver him in custody to the charge of his cooks, who place him under the guard of a hundred of the “kitchen companions,” and these treat him much in the same way as king William’s cooks sought to treat Hereward, by cutting or plucking out his beard and whiskers.

Li reis fait prendre le cunte Guenelun,
Si l’ cumandat as cous de sa maisun,
Tut li plus maistre en apelet Besgun:
‘Ben le me guarde, si cume tel felon,
De ma maisnée ad faite traisun.’
Cil le receit, si met c. cumpaignons
De la quisine, des mielz e des pejurs;
Icil li peilent la barbe e les gernuns.
—Chanson de Roland, p. 71.

Alexander Neckam, in his Dictionarius (written in the latter part of the twelfth century), begins with the kitchen, as though he considered it as the most important part of a mansion, and describes its furniture rather minutely. There is good reason, however, for believing that the cooking was very commonly performed in the court of the house in the open air and perhaps it was intended to be represented so in the scene given above from the Bayeux tapestry. The cooks are there delivering the food through a door into the hall.

The Norman dinner-table, as shown in the Bayeux tapestry, differs not much from that of the Anglo-Saxons. A few dishes and basins contain viands which are not easy to be recognised, except the fish and the fowls. Most of the smaller articles seem to have been given by the cooks into the hands of the guests from the spits on which they had been roasted. Another dinner scene is represented in our cut [No. 59], taken from the Cottonian manuscript already mentioned (Nero, C. iv.). We see again similarly formed vessels to those used at table by the Anglo-Saxons. The bread is still made in round flat cakes, and is marked with a cross, and with a flower in the middle. The guests use no forks; their knives are different and more varied in their forms than under the Anglo-Saxons. Sometimes, indeed, the shape of the knives is almost grotesque. The one represented below, in our cut [No. 60], is taken from a group in the same manuscript which furnished the preceding cut; it is very singularly notched at the point.

No. 59. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner Party.

No. 60. A Knife.

We see in these dinner scenes that the Anglo-Normans used horns and cups for drinking, as the Anglo-Saxons did; but the use of the horn is becoming rare, and the bowl-shaped vessels appear to have been now the usual drinking cup. Among the wealthy these cups seem to have been made of glass. Reginald of Durham describes one of the monks as bringing water for a sick man to drink in a glass cup (vase vitreo), which was accidentally broken. In a splendidly illuminated manuscript of the Psalms, of the earlier half of the twelfth century, written by Eadwine, one of the monks of Canterbury, and which will afford much illustration for this period,[18] we find a figure of a servant giving to drink, who holds one of the same description of drinking cups which were so popular at an earlier period among the Anglo-Saxons (see our cut [No. 61]). He holds in the left hand the jug, which had now become the usual vessel for carrying the liquor in any quantity. In our cut No. 62, furnished by the same manuscript as the preceding, the servant is taking the jug of liquor from the barrel. Our next cut, [No. 63], also taken from the Cambridge MS., represents several forms of vessels for the table. Some of these are new to us; and they are on the whole more elegant than most of the forms we meet with in common pictures.

No. 61. A Cup-bearer.

No. 62. The Servant in the Cellar.

No. 63. Anglo-Norman Pottery.

Wine appears to have been now more frequently used than among the Anglo-Saxons. Neckam, in the latter part of the twelfth century, has given us a rather playful enumeration of the qualities of good wine; which he says should be as clear as the tears of a penitent, so that a man may see distinctly to the bottom of his glass; its colour “should represent the greenness of a buffalo’s horn; when drunk, it should descend impetuously like thunder, sweet-tasted as an almond, creeping like a squirrel, leaping like a roebuck, strong like the building of a Cistercian monastery, glittering like a spark of fire, subtle as the logic of the schools of Paris, delicate as fine silk, and colder than crystal.” Yet still ale and mead continued to be the usual drinks. The innumerable entries in Domesday Book show us how large a proportion of the productions of the country, in the reign of William the Conqueror, still consisted in honey, which was used chiefly for the manufacture of mead. The manuscript in Trinity College Library, gives us a group of bee-hives (cut [No. 64]), with peasants attending to them; and is chiefly curious for the extraordinary forms which the artist, evidently no naturalist, has given to the bees.

No. 64. Anglo-Norman Bee-keepers.

We have hardly any information on the cookery during the period we are now describing. It is clear that numerous delicacies were served to the tables of the noble and wealthy, but their culinary receipts are not preserved. We read in William of Malmesbury, incidentally, that a great prince ate garlick with a goose, from which we are led to suppose that the Normans were fond of highly-seasoned dishes. Neckam tells us that pork, roasted or broiled on red embers, required no other sauce than salt or garlick; that a capon done in gobbets should be well peppered; that a goose, roasted on the spit, required a strong garlick-sauce, mixed with wine or “the green juice of grapes or crabs;” that a hen, if boiled, should be cut up and seasoned with cummin, but, if roasted, it should be basted with lard, and might be seasoned with garlick-sauce, though it would be more savoury with simple sauce; that fish should be cooked in a sauce composed of wine and water, and that they should afterwards be served with a sauce composed of sage, parsley, cost, ditany, wild thyme, and garlick, with pepper and salt. We learn from other incidental allusions of contemporary, or nearly contemporary, writers, that bread, butter, and cheese, were the ordinary food of the common people, probably with little else besides vegetables. It is interesting to remark that the three articles just mentioned, have preserved their Anglo-Saxon names to the present times, while all kinds of meat, beef, veal, mutton, pork, even bacon, have retained only the names given to them by the Normans, which seems to imply that flesh-meat was not in general use for food among the lower classes of society.

Bread seems almost always to have been formed in cakes, like our buns, round in the earlier pictures, and in later ones (as in our cut [No. 63]), shaped more fancifully. We see it generally marked with a cross, perhaps a superstitious precaution of the baker. The bread seems to have been in general made for the occasion, and eaten fresh, perhaps warm. In one of Reginald of Durham’s stories, we are told of a priest in the forest of Arden, who, having nothing but a peck of corn left, and receiving a large number of visitors on a sacred festival, gave it out to be baked to provide for them. The corn was immediately ground, perhaps with querns, and having been mixed with “dewy” water, in the usual manner, was made into twelve loaves, and immediately placed in the hot oven.[19] Cheese and butter seem also to have been tolerably abundant. An illuminator of the Cambridge MS., given in our cut [No. 65], represents a man milking and another churning; he who churns appears, to use a vulgar phrase, to be “taking it at his ease.” The milking-pail, too, is rather extraordinary in its form.

No. 65. Anglo-Normans Milking and Churning.

We have not any distinct account of the hours at which our Norman ancestors took their meals, but they appear to have begun their day early. In the Carlovingian romances, everybody, not excepting the emperor and his court, rises at daybreak; and in Huon de Bordeaux (p. 270), one of the chief heroes is accused of laziness, because he was in bed after the cock had crowed. In the romance of Doon de Mayence, the feudal lord of that great city and territory is introduced exhorting his son to rise betimes, for, he says, “he who sleeps too long in the morning, becomes thin and lazy, and loses his day, if he does not amend himself.”

Qui trop dort au matin, maigre devient et las,
Et sa journée en pert, s’y n’en amende pas.
—Doon de Mayence, p. 76.

In the same romance, two of the heroes, Doon and Baudouin, also rise with the sun, and dress and wash, and then say their prayers; after which their attendant, Vaudri, “placed between them two a very large pasty, on a white napkin, and brought them wine, and then said to them in fair words, like a man of sense, ‘Sirs, you shall eat, if it please you; for eating early in the morning brings great health, and gives one greater courage and spirit; and drink a little of this choice wine, which will make you strong and fierce in fight.’ ... And when Doon saw it, he laughed, and began to eat and drink, and they breakfasted very pleasantly and peacefully.” John of Bromyard, who wrote at a later period, has handed down a story of a man who despaired of overcoming the difficulty he found in keeping the fasts, until he succeeded in the following manner: at the hour of matins (three o’clock in the morning), when he was accustomed to break his fast, and was greatly tempted to eat, he said to himself, “I will fast until tierce (nine o’clock), for the love of God;” and when tierce came, he said he would fast unto sext (the hour of noon), and so again he put off eating until none (three o’clock in the afternoon); and so he gradually learnt to fast all day. We may perhaps conclude that, at the time when this story was made, nine o’clock was the ordinary hour of dinner.

This last-mentioned meal was certainly served early in the day, and was often followed by recreations in the open air. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 252), the Christian chiefs, after their dinner, go to amuse themselves on the sea-shore. In Doon de Mayence (p. 245), they play at chess and dice after dinner; and on another occasion, in the same romance (p. 314), the barons, after their dinner, sing and dance together; while in Fierabras (p. 185), Charlemagne and his court ride out on horseback, and set up a quintain, at which they justed all day (tout le jour—which would imply that they began early), until vespers (probably seven o’clock), when they returned into the palace to refresh themselves, and afterwards to go to bed. Supper was certainly served in the evening, and in these romances people are spoken of as going to bed immediately after it. On one occasion, in Doon de Mayence (p. 303), Charlemagne’s barons take no supper, but, after their beds are prepared, they are served plentifully with fruits and wine. In the same romance (p. 16), the guards of a castle go out, because it was a warm evening in summer, and have their supper laid out on a table in the field, where they remain long amusing themselves. In Fierabras (p. 68), the barons take a hot bath after dinner.

No. 66. A Faldestol.

Of the articles of household furniture during the period of which we are now writing, we cannot give many examples. We have every reason to believe that they were anything but numerous. A board laid upon tressels formed the usual dining table, and an ordinary bench or form the seat. In the French Carlovingian romances, the earlier of which may be considered as representing society in the twelfth century, even princes and great barons sit ordinarily upon benches. Thus, in the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (pp. 33, 36), Charlemagne invites the young chieftain, Huon, who had come to visit him in his palace, to sit on the bench and drink his wine; and in the same romance (p. 263), when Huon was received in the abbey of St. Maurice, near Bordeaux, he and the abbot sit together on a bench. Chairs belonged to great people. Our cut [No. 66], taken from the Trinity College Psalter, represents a chair of state, with its covering of drapery thrown over it. In some instances the cushion appears placed upon the drapery. This seat was the faldestol, a word which has been transformed in modern French to fauteuil (translated in English by elbow-chair). We read in the Chanson de Roland of the faldestol which was placed for princes, and of the covering of white “palie” (a rich stuff) which was spread over it. That of Charlemagne was of gold— Un faldestoed i unt fait tut d’or mer:
Là siet li reis qui dulce France tient.
—Chanson de Roland, p. 5.
The faldestol of the Saracen king of Spain was covered with a “palie” of Alexandrian manufacture,— Un faldestoet out suz l’umbre d’un pin,
Envolupet fut d’un palie Alexandrin;
Là fut li reis ki tute Espaigne tint.
—Ib. p. 17.
The infidel emir from Egypt, when he arrives in Spain, is seated in the midst of his host, on a faldestol of ivory. Sur l’erbe verte getent un palie blanc,
Un faldestoed i unt mis d’olifan;
Desuz s’asiet li paien Baligant.
—Ib. p. 102.
The faldestol was not always made of such rich materials. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Charlemagne is represented as sitting in a faldestol made of elm.

Karles monta ens el palais plenier;
Il est asis u faudestuef d’ormier.
Huon de Bordeaux, p. 286.

No. 67. Two Chiefs Seated.

The mouldings of the faldestol in the cut [No. 66] will be recognised as exactly the same which are found on old furniture of a much more recent period, and which, in fact, are those which offer themselves most readily to ordinary turners. The same ornament is seen on the chair represented in our cut [No. 67], taken from the same manuscript as the last, in which two men are seated, in a very singular manner. It was not uncommon, however, to have seats which held several persons together, such as the one represented in an Anglo-Saxon illumination given in a former chapter (p. 31), and such as are still to be seen in country public-houses, where they have preserved the Anglo-Saxon name of settle. One of these is represented in our cut [No. 68]. The persons seated in it, in this case, are learned men, and the cross above seems to show that they are monks. One has a table-book, and two of the others have rolls of parchment, which are all evidently the subject of anxious discussion.

No. 68. An Anglo-Norman Settle.

Chairs, and even stools, were, as has been already observed, by no means abundant in these early times, and we can easily suppose that it would be a difficult thing to accommodate numerous visitors with seats. To remedy this, when houses were built of stone, it was usual to make, in the public apartments, seats, like benches, in recesses in the wall, or projecting from it, which would accommodate a number of persons at the same time. We find such seats usually in the cloisters of monasteries, as well as in the chapter-houses of our cathedral churches. In the latter they generally run round the room, and are divided by arches into seats which were evidently intended to accommodate two persons each, for the convenience of conversation. This practice is illustrated by our cut No. 69, taken, like the preceding one, from the Cambridge Manuscript; it represents a group of seats of this kind, in which monks (apparently) are seated and conversing two and two.

No. 69. Seats in the Wall.

CHAPTER VI.
THE NORMAN HALL.—SOCIAL SENTIMENTS UNDER THE ANGLO-NORMANS.—DOMESTIC AMUSEMENTS.—CANDLES AND LANTERNS.—FURNITURE.—BEDS.—OUT-OF-DOOR RECREATIONS.—HUNTING.—ARCHERY.—CONVIVIAL INTERCOURSE AND HOSPITALITY.—TRAVELLING.—PUNISHMENTS.—THE STOCKS.—A NORMAN SCHOOL.—EDUCATION.

Alexander Neckam has left us a sufficiently clear description of the Norman hall. He says that it had a vestibule or screen (vestibulum), and was entered through a porch (porticus), and that it had a court, the Latin name of which (atrium) he pretends was derived from ater (black), “because the kitchens used to be placed by the side of the streets, in order that the passers-by might perceive the smell of cooking.” This explanation is so mysterious, that we may suppose the passage to be corrupt, but the coquinæ of which Neckam is speaking are evidently cook’s shops. In the interior of the hall, he says, there were posts (or columns) placed at regular distances. The few examples of Norman halls which remain are divided internally by two rows of columns. Neckam enumerates the materials required in the construction of the hall, which seem to show that he is speaking of a timber building. A fine example of a timber hall, though of a later period, is, or was recently, standing in the city of Gloucester, with its internal “posts” as here described. There appears also to have been an inner court-yard, in which Neckam intimates that poultry were kept. The whole building, and the two court-yards, were no doubt surrounded by a wall, outside of which were the garden and orchard. The Normans appear to have had a taste for gardens, which formed a very important adjunct to the mansion, and to the castle, and are not unfrequently alluded to in mediæval writers, even as far back as the twelfth century. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the castle of Manorbeer (his birthplace), near Pembroke, said that it had under its walls, besides a fine fish-pond, “a beautiful garden, inclosed on one side by a vineyard, and on the other by a wood, remarkable for the projection of its rocks, and the height of its hazel-trees.” In the twelfth century, vineyards were not uncommon in England.

No. 70. A Man warming himself.

A new characteristic was introduced into the Norman houses, and especially into the castles, the massive walls of which allowed chimney-flues to be carried up in their thickness. The piled-up fire in the middle of the hall was still retained, but in the more private apartments, and even sometimes in the hall itself, the fire was made on a hearth beneath a fire-place built against the side wall of the room. An illumination, in the Cottonian MS. Nero, C. iv., which we have already had occasion to refer to more than once, represents a man warming himself at a fireplace of this description. It appears, from a comparison of this ([No. 70]) with similar figures of a later period, that it was a usual practice to sit at the fire bare-legged and bare-foot, with the object of imbibing the heat without the intermediation of shoes or stockings. On a carved stall in Worcester Cathedral, represented in our cut [No. 71], which belongs to a later date (the latter part of the fourteenth century), and the scene of which is evidently intimated to be in the winter season, a man, while occupied in attending to the culinary operations, has taken off his shoes in order to warm himself in this manner. The winter provisions, two flitches of bacon, are suspended to the left of him, and on the other side the faithful dog seems to enjoy the fire equally with his master. From a story related by Reginald of Durham, it appears to have been a practice among the ladies to warm themselves by sitting over hot water, as well as by the fire.[20] In some of the illuminations of mediæval manuscripts, ladies are represented as warming themselves, even in the presence of the other sex, in a very free and easy manner. The fuel chiefly employed was no doubt still wood, but the remark of Giraldus Cambrensis that the name of Coleshulle (in Flintshire) signified the hill of coals (carbonum collis) implies that mineral coals were then known.

No. 71. Indications of Cold Weather.

It is hardly necessary to remark that, in the change in the mode of living which had suddenly taken place in this country, a form of society had also been introduced abruptly which differed entirely from that of the Anglo-Saxons. On the continent, throughout the now disjointed empire which had once been ruled by Charlemagne, there had arisen, during the tenth century, amid frightful misgovernment and the savage invasions of the northmen, a new form of society, which received the name of feudalism, because each landholder held, either direct from the crown or from a superior baron, by a feudal tenure, or fee (feodum, feudum), which obliged him to military service. Each baron had sovereignty over all those who held under him, and, in turn, acknowledged the nominal sovereignty of a superior baron or of the crown, which the latter practically was only sometimes able to enforce. One great principle of this system was the right of private warfare; and, as not only did the great barons obtain land in feudal tenure in different countries under different independent princes, but the lesser holders of sub-fees obtained such tenures under more than one superior lord, and as these, when they quarrelled with one superior, made war upon him, and threw themselves upon the protection of another who felt bound to defend his feudatory, war became the normal state of feudal society, and peace and tranquillity were the exceptions. One effect of feudalism was to divide the population of the country into two distinct classes—the landholders, or fighting-men, who alone were free, and the agricultural population, who had no political rights whatever, and were little better than slaves attached to the land. The towns alone, by their own innate force, preserved their independence, but in France the influence of feudalism extended even over them, and the combined hostility of the crown and the aristocracy finally overthrew their municipal independence. Feudalism was brought into England by the Normans, but it was never established here so completely or so fully as on the continent. The towns here never lost their independence, but they sided sometimes with the aristocracy, and sometimes with the crown, until finally they assisted greatly in the overthrow of feudalism itself. Yet the whole territory of England was now distributed in great fees, and in sub-fees; amid which a few of the old Saxon gentry retained their position, and many of the Norman intruders married the Saxon heiresses, in order, as they thought, to strengthen the right of conquest; but the mass of the agricultural population were confounded under the one comprehensive name of villains (villani), and reduced to a much more wretched condition than under the Anglo-Saxon constitution. The light in which the villain was regarded in the twelfth century in England is well illustrated in a story told in the English “Rule of Nuns,” printed by the Camden Society. A knight, who had cruelly plundered his poor villains, was complimented by one of his flatterers, who said, “Ah, sir! truly thou dost well. For men ought always to pluck and pillage the churl, who is like the willow—it sprouteth out the better for being often cropped.”

The power and wealth of the great Norman baron were immense, and before him, during a great part of the period of which we are now speaking, the law of the land was a mere nominal institution. He was in general proud, very tyrannical, and often barbarously cruel. A type of the feudal baron in his worst point of view is presented to us in the character of the celebrated Robert de Belesme, who succeeded his father Roger de Montgomery in the earldom of Shropshire, and of whom Henry of Huntingdon, who lived in his time, tells us, “He was a very Pluto, Megæra, Cerberus, or anything that you can conceive still more horrible. He preferred the slaughter of his captives to their ransom. He tore out the eyes of his own children, when in sport they hid their faces under his cloak. He impaled persons of both sexes on stakes. To butcher men in the most horrible manner was to him an agreeable feast.” Of a contemporary feudal chieftain in France, the same writer tells us, “When any one, by fraud or force, fell into his hands, the captive might truly say, ‘The pains of hell compassed me round.’ Homicide was his passion and his glory. He imprisoned his own countess, an unheard-of outrage; and, cruel and lewd at once, while he subjected her to fetters and torture by day, to extort money, he forced her to cohabit with him by night, in order to mock her. Each night his brutal followers dragged her from her prison to his bed, each morning they carried her from his chamber back to her prison. Amicably addressing any one who approached him, he would plunge a sword into his side, laughing the while; and for this purpose he carried his sword naked under his cloak more frequently than sheathed. Men feared him, bowed down to him, and worshipped him.” Women of rank are met with in the histories of this period who equalled these barons in violence and cruelty; and the relations between the sexes were marked by little delicacy or courtesy. William the Conqueror beat his wife even before they were married. The aristocratic class in general lived a life of idleness, which would have been insupportable without some scenes of extraordinary excitement, and they not only indulged eagerly in hunting, but they continually sallied forth in parties to plunder. They looked upon the mercantile class especially as objects of hostility; and, as they could seldom overcome them in their towns, they waylaid them on the public roads, deprived them of their goods and money, and carried them to their castles, where they tortured them in order to force them to pay heavy ransoms. The young nobles sometimes joined together to plunder a fair or market. On the other hand, men who could not claim the protection of aristocratic blood for their evil deeds, established themselves under that of the wild forests, and issued forth no less eagerly to plunder the country, and to perpetrate every description of outrage on the persons of its inhabitants, of whatever class they might be, who fell into their power. The purity of womanhood was no longer prized, where it was liable to be outraged with impunity; and immorality spread widely through all classes and ranks of society. The declamations of the ecclesiastics and the satires of the moralists of the twelfth century may give highly-painted pictures, but they lead us to the conclusion that the manners and sentiments of the female sex during the Norman period were very corrupt.

Nevertheless, feudalism did boast of certain dignified and generous principles, and there were noble examples of both sexes, who shine forth more brightly through the general prevalence of vice and of selfishness and injustice. It was in the walls of the feudal castle, amid the familiar intercourse which the want of amusement caused among its inmates, that the principle, or practice, arose, which we in modern times call gallantry, and which, though at first it only led to refinement in the forms of social manners, ended in producing refinement of sentiments. It was among the feudal aristocracy, too, that originated the sentiment we term chivalry, which has varied considerably in its meaning at different periods, and which, in its best sense, existed more in romance than in reality. After the possession of personal strength and courage, the quality which the feudal baron admired most, was what was termed generosity, but which meant lavish expenditure and extravagance; it was the contrast between the baron, who spent his money, and the burgher or merchant, who gained it, and laid it up in his coffers. “Noblemen and gentlemen,” says the “Rule of Nuns,” already quoted, “do not carry packs, nor go about trussed with bundles, nor with purses; it belongs to beggars to bear bag on back, and to burgesses to bear purses.” In fact, it was the principle of the feudal aristocracy to extort their gains from all who laboured and trafficked, in order to squander them on those who lived in idleness, violence, and vice. Under such circumstances, a new class had arisen which was peculiar to feudal society, who lived entirely upon the extravagance of the aristocracy, and who had so completely abandoned every sentiment of morality or shame, that, in return for the protection of the nobles, they were the ready instruments of any base work. They were called, among various other names, ribalds (ribaldi) and letchers (leccatores); the origin of the first of these words is not known, but the latter is equivalent to dish-lickers, and did not convey the sense now given to the word, but was applied to them on account of their gluttony. We have already seen how, in the crowd which attended the feasts of the princes and nobles, the letchers (lecheurs) were not content with waiting for what was sent away from table, but seized upon the dishes as they were carried from the kitchen to the hall, and how it was found necessary to make a new office, that of ushers of the hall, to repress the disorder. “In those great courts,” says the author of the “Rule of Nuns,” “they are called letchers who have so lost shame, that they are ashamed of nothing, but seek how they may work the greatest villany.” This class spread through society like a great sore, and from the terms used in speaking of them we derive a great part of the opprobrious words which still exist in the English language.

The early metrical romances of the Carlovingian cycle give us an insight into what were considered as the praiseworthy features in the character of the feudal knight. In Doon of Mayence, for example, when (p. 74) the aged count Guy sends his young son Doon into the world, he counsels him thus: “You shall always ask questions of good men, and you shall never put your trust in a stranger. Every day, fair son, you shall hear the holy mass, and give to the poor whenever you have money, for God will repay you double. Be liberal in gifts to all; for the more you give, the more honour you will acquire, and the richer you will be; for a gentleman who is too sparing will lose all in the end, and die in wretchedness and disgrace; but give without promising wherever you can. Salute all people when you meet them, and if you owe anything, pay it willingly, but if you cannot pay, ask for a respite. When you come to the hostelry, don’t stand squabbling, but enter glad and joyously. When you enter the house, cough very loud, for there may be something doing which you ought not to see, and it will cost you nothing to give this notice of your approach, while those who happen to be there will love you the better for it. Do not quarrel with your neighbour, and avoid disputing with him before other people; for if he know anything against you, he will let it out, and you will have the shame of it. When you are at court, play at tables, and if you have any good points of behaviour (depors), show them; you will be the more prized, and gain the more advantage. Never make a noise or joke in church; this is only done by unbelievers, whom God loves not. Honour all the clergy, and speak fairly to them, but leave them as little of your goods as you can; the more they get from you, the more you will be laughed at; you will never profit by enriching them. And if you wish to save your honour undiminished, meddle with nothing you do not understand, and don’t pretend to be a proficient in what you have never learnt. And if you have a valet, take care not to seat him at the table by you, or take him to bed with you; for the more honour you do to a low fellow, the more will he despise you. If you should know anything that you would wish to conceal, tell it by no means to your wife, if you have one; for if you let her know it, you will repent of it the first time you displease her.” The estimate of the female character at this period, even when given in the romances of chivalry, is by no means flattering.

With these counsels of a father, we may compare those of a mother to her son. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 18), when the youthful hero leaves his home to repair to the court of Charlemagne, the duchess addresses her son as follows: “My child,” she said, “you are going to be a courtier; I require you, for God’s love, have nothing to do with a treacherous flatterer; make the acquaintance of wise men. Attend regularly at the service of holy church, and show honour and love to the clergy. Give your goods willingly to the poor; be courteous, and spend freely, and you will be the more loved and cherished.” On the whole, higher sentiments are placed in the mouth of the lady than in that of the baron. We must, however, return to the outward, and therefore more apparent, characteristics of social life during the Norman period.

The in-door amusements of the ordinary classes of society appear not to have undergone much change during the earlier Norman period, but the higher classes lived more splendidly and more riotously; and, as far as we can judge, they seem to have been coarser in manners and feelings. The writer of the life of Hereward has left us a curious picture of Norman revelry. When the Saxon hero returned to Brunne, to the home of his fathers, and found that it had been taken possession of by a Norman intruder, he secretly took his lodging in the cottage of a villager close by. In the night he was roused from his pillow by loud sounds of minstrelsy, accompanied with boisterous indications of merriment, which issued from his father’s hall, and he was told that the new occupants were at their evening cups. He proceeded to the hall, and entered the doorstead unobserved, from whence he obtained a view of the interior of the hall. The new lord of Brunne was surrounded by his knights, who were scattered about helpless from the extent of their potations, and reclining in the laps of their women. In the midst of them stood a jougleur, or minstrel, alternately singing and exciting their mirth with coarse and brutal jests. It is a first rough sketch of a part of mediæval manners, which we shall find more fully developed at a somewhat later period. The brutality of manners exhibited in the scene which I have but imperfectly described, and which is confirmed by the statements of writers of the following century, soon degenerated into heartless ferocity, and when we reach the period of the civil wars of Stephen’s reign, we find the amusements of the hall varied with the torture of captive enemies.

In his more private hours of relaxation, the Norman knight amused himself with games of skill or hazard. Among these, the game of chess became now very popular, and many of the rudely carved chessmen of the twelfth century have been found in our island, chiefly in the north, where they appear to have been manufactured. They are usually made of the tusk of the walrus, the native ivory of Western Europe, which was known popularly as whale’s bone. The whalebone of the middle ages is always described as white, and it was a common object of comparison among the early English poets, who, when they would describe the delicate complexion of a lady, usually said that she was “white as whale’s bone.” These, as well as dice, which were now in common use, were also made of horn and bone, and the manufacture of such articles seems to have been a very extensive one. Even in the little town of Kirkcudbright, on the Scottish border, there was, in the middle of the twelfth century, a maker of combs, draughtsmen, chessmen, dice, spigots, and other such articles, of bone and horn, and stag’s horn appears to have been a favourite material.[21]

In the Chanson de Roland, Charlemagne and his knights are represented, after the capture of Cordova from the Saracens, as sitting in a shady garden, some of them playing at tables, and others at chess. Sur palies blancs siedent cil cevalers,
As tables juent pur els esbaneier,
E as eschecs li plus saive e li veill
E escremissent cil bacheler leger.
Chess, as the higher game, is here described as the amusement of the chiefs, the old, and the wise; the knights play at tables, or draughts; but the young bachelors are admitted to neither of these games, they amuse themselves with bodily exercises—sham fights.

No. 72. A Norman Lantern.

Although such games were not unusually played by day, they were more especially the amusements which employed the long evenings of winter, and candles appear at this time to have been more generally used than at a former period. They still continued to be fixed on candlesticks, and not in them, and spikes appear sometimes to have been attached to tables or other articles of furniture, to hold them. Thus, in one of the pretended miracles told by Reginald of Durham, a sacristan, occupied in committing the sacred vestments to the safety of a cupboard, fixed his candle on a stick or spike of wood on one side (candelam ... in assere collaterali confixit), and forgetting to take away the candle, locked the cupboard door, and only discovered his negligence when he found the whole cupboard in flames. Another ecclesiastic, reading in bed, fixed his candle on the top of one of the sides (spondilia) of his bed. Another individual bought two small candles (candelas modicas) for an obolus, but the value of the coin thus named is not very exactly known. The candle appears to have been usually placed at night in or on the chimney, or fire-place, with which the chamber was now furnished. In Fierabras (p. 93), a thief, having obtained admission in the night to the chamber of the princess Floripas, takes a candle from the chimney, and lights it at the fire, from which we are led to suppose that it was usual to keep the fire alight all night. Isnelement et tost vient à la ceminée,
Une chandelle a prinse, au fu l’a alumée.
On another occasion (p. 67), a fire is lit in the chimney of Floripas’s chamber, and afterwards a table is laid there, and dinner served. Lanterns were now also in general use. The earliest figure of a lantern that I remember to have met with in an English manuscript is one furnished by MS. Cotton. Nero, C. iv., which is represented in our cut ([No. 72]). It differs but little from the same article as used in modern times; the sides are probably of horn, with a small door through which to put the candle, and the domed cover is pierced with holes for the egress of the smoke.

No. 73. Occupations of the Ladies.

We begin now to be a little better acquainted with the domestic occupations of the ladies, but we shall be able to treat more fully of these in a subsequent chapter. Not the least usual of these was weaving, an art which appears to have been practised very extensively by the female portion of the larger households. The manuscript Psalter in Trinity College, Cambridge, furnishes us with the very curious group of female weavers given in our cut [No. 73]. It explains itself, as much, at least, as it can easily be explained, and I will only observe that the scissors here employed are of the form common to the Romans, to the Saxons, and to the earlier Normans; they are the Saxon scear, and this name, as well as the form, is still preserved in that of the “shears” of the modern clothiers. Music was also a favourite occupation, and the number of musical instruments appears to be considerably increased. Some of these seem to have been elaborately constructed. The manuscript last mentioned furnishes us with the accompanying figure of a large organ, of laborious though rather clumsy workmanship.

No. 74. A Norman Organ.

In the dwellings of the nobles and gentry, there was more show of furniture under the Normans than under the Saxons. Cupboards (armaria, armoires) were more numerous, and were filled with vessels of earthenware, wood, or metal, as well as with other things. Chests and coffers were adorned with elaborate carving, and were sometimes inlaid with metal, and even with enamel. The smaller ones were made of ivory, or bone, carved with historical subjects. Rich ornamentation generally began with ecclesiastics, and we find by the subjects carved upon them that the earlier ivory coffers or caskets belonged to churchmen. When they were made for lords and ladies, they were usually ornamented with subjects from romance, or from the current literature of the day. The beds, also, were more ornamental, and assumed novel forms. Our cut No. 75, taken from MS. Cotton. Nero, C. iv., differs little from some of the Anglo-Saxon figures of beds. But the tester bed, or bed with a roof at the head, and hangings, was now introduced. In Reginald of Durham, we are told of a sacristan who was accustomed to sit in his bed and read at night. One night, having fixed his candle upon one of the sides of the bed (supra spondilia lectuli suprema), he fell accidentally asleep. The fire communicated itself from the candle to the bed, which, being filled with straw, was soon enveloped in flame, and this communicated itself with no less rapidity to the combination of arches and planks of which the frame of the bed was composed (ligna materies archarum et asserum copiosa). Above the bed was a wooden frame (quædam tabularia stratura), on which he was accustomed to pile the curtains, dorsals, and other similar furniture of the church. Neckam, in the latter part of the twelfth century, describes the chamber as having its walls covered with a curtain, or tapestry. Besides the bed, he says, there should be a chair, and at the foot of the bed a bench. On the bed was placed a quilt (culcitra) of feathers (plumalis), to which is joined a pillow; and this is covered with a pointed (punctata) or striped (stragulata) quilt, and a cushion is placed upon this, on which to lay the head. Then came sheets (lintheamina, linceuls), made sometimes of rich silks, but more commonly of linen, and these were covered with a coverlet made of green say, or of cloth made of the hair of the badger, cat, beaver, or sable. On one side of the chamber was a perche, or pole, projecting from the wall, for the falcons, and in another place a similar perch for hanging articles of dress. It was not unusual to have only one chamber in the house, in which there were, or could be made, several beds, so that all the company, even if of different sexes, slept in the same room. Servants and persons of lower degree might sleep unceremoniously in the hall. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 270), Huon, his wife, and his brother, when lodged in a great abbey, sleep in three different beds in the same room, no doubt in the guest-house. Among the Anglo-Normans, the chamber seems to have frequently, if not generally, occupied an upper floor, so that it was approached by stairs.

No. 75. A Norman Bed.

The out-of-doors amusements of this period appear in general to have been rude and boisterous. The girls and women seem to have been passionately fond of the dance, which was their common amusement at all public festivals. The young men applied themselves to gymnastic exercises, such as wrestling, and running, and boxing; and they had bull-baitings, and sometimes bear-baitings. On Roman sites, the ancient amphitheatres seem still to have been used for such exhibitions; and the Roman amphitheatre at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, was known by the title of “The Bull-ring” down to a very late period. The higher ranks among the Normans were extraordinarily addicted to the chace, to secure which they adopted severe measures for preserving the woods and the beasts which inhabited them. Every reader of English history knows the story of the New Forest, and of the fate which there befell the great patron of hunting—William Rufus. The Saxon Chronicle, in summing up the character of William the Conqueror, tells us that he “made large forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or a hind, should be blinded. As he forbade killing the deer, so also the boars; and he loved the tall stags as if he were their father. He also appointed concerning the hares, that they should go free.” The passion of the aristocracy for hunting was a bane to the rural population in more ways than one. Not only did they ride over the cultivated lands, and destroy the crops, but wherever they came they lived at free quarter on the unfortunate population, ill-treating the men, and even outraging the females, at will. John of Salisbury complains bitterly of the cruelty with which the country-people were treated, if they happened to be short of provisions when the hunters came to their houses. “If one of these hunters come across your land,” he says, “immediately and humbly lay before him everything you have in your house, and go and buy of your neighbours whatever you are deficient of, or you may be plundered and thrown into prison for your disrespect to your betters.” The weapons generally used in hunting the stag were bows and arrows. It was a barbed arrow which pierced the breast of the second William, when he was hunting the stag in the wilds of the New Forest. Our cut ([No. 76]), from the Trinity College Psalter, represents a horseman hunting the stag. The noble animal is closely followed by a brace of hounds, and just as he is turning up a hill, the huntsman aims an arrow at him. As far as we can gather from the few authorities in which it is alluded to, the Saxon peasantry were not unpractised hands at the bow. We find them enjoying the character of good archers very soon after the Norman conquest, under circumstances which seem to preclude the notion that they derived their knowledge of this arm from the invaders. In the miracles of St. Bega, printed by Mr. G. C. Tomlinson, in 1842, there is a story which shows the skill of the young men of Cumberland in archery very soon after the entrance of the Normans; and the original writer, who lived perhaps not much after the middle of the twelfth century, assures us that the Hibernian Scots, and the men of Galloway, who were the usual enemies of the men of Cumberland, “feared these sort of arms more than any others, and called an arrow, proverbially, a flying devil.” We learn from this and other accounts, that the arrows of this period were barbed and fledged, or furnished with feathers. It may be observed, in support of the assertion that the use of bows and arrows was derived from the Saxons, that the names bow (boga) and arrow (arewe), by which they have always been known, are taken directly from their language; whereas, if the practice of archery had been introduced by the Normans, it is probable we should have called them arcs and fletches.

No. 76. A Stag-hunt.

After the entrance of the Normans, we begin to find more frequent allusions to the convivial meetings of the middle and lower orders in ordinary inns or private houses. Thus, we have a story in Reginald of Durham, of a party of the parishioners of Kellow, who went to a drinking party at the priest’s, and passed in this manner a great portion of the night.[22] This occurred in the time of bishop Geoffrey Rufus, between 1133 and 1140. A youth and his monastic teacher are represented on another occasion as going to a tavern, and passing the whole of the night in drinking, till one of them becomes inebriated, and cannot be prevailed on to return home. Another of Reginald’s stories describes a party in a private house, sitting and drinking round the fire. We are obliged thus to collect together slight and often trivial allusions to the manners of a period during which we have so few detailed descriptions. Hospitality was at this time exercised among all classes freely and liberally; the misery of the age made people meet together with more kindliness. The monasteries had their open guest-houses, and the unknown traveller was seldom refused a place at the table of the yeoman. In towns, most of the burgesses or citizens were in the habit of receiving strangers as private lodgers, in addition to the accommodation afforded in the regular hospitia or taverns. Travelling, indeed, was more usual under the Normans than it had been under the Saxons, for it was facilitated by the more extensive use of horses. But this also brought serious evils upon the country; for troops of followers and rude retainers who attended on the proud and tyrannical aristocracy, were in the habit of taking up their lodgings at will and discretion, and living upon the unfortunate householders without pay. It had been, even during the Anglo-Saxon period, a matter of pride and ostentation among men of rank—especially the king’s officers—to travel about accompanied with a great multitude of followers,[23] and this practice certainly did not diminish under the Normans. But, whether in great numbers or in small, the travellers of the twelfth century sought the means of amusing themselves during their journey, and these amusements resembled some of those which were employed at the dinner-table—they told stories, or repeated episodes from romances, or sung, and they sometimes had minstrels to accompany them. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Huon, on his journey from his native city to Paris, asks his brother Gerard to sing, to enliven them on the road,— Cante, biau frere, pour nos cors esjoir.
—Huon de Bordeaux, p. 18.
But Gerard declines, because a disagreeable dream of the preceding night has made his heart sorrowful. When we turn from romance to sober history, we learn from Giraldus Cambrensis how Gilbert de Clare, journeying from England to his great possessions in Cardiganshire, was preceded by a minstrel and a singing-man, who played and sang alternately, and how the noise they made gave notice of his approach to the Welshmen who lay in ambush to kill him.

No. 77. Norman Travellers.

No. 78. Cars.

A group of Norman travellers is here given from the Cottonian MS. Nero, C. iv. It is intended to represent Joseph and the Virgin Mary travelling into Egypt. The Virgin on the ass, or mule, is another example of the continued practice among ladies of riding sideways. Mules appear to have been the animals on which ladies usually rode at this period. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 60), when Huon, immediately after his marriage, proceeds on his journey homeward, he mounts his young duchess on a mule; so also, in the romance of Gaufrey (p. 62), the princess Flordespine is mounted on “a rich mule,” the trappings of which are rather minutely described. “The saddle was of ivory, inset with gold; on the bridle there was a gem of such power that it gave light in the darkness of night, and whoever bore it was preserved from all disease; the saddle-cloth (sambue) was wonderfully made; she had thirty little bells behind the cuirie, which, when the mule ambled, made so great a melody that harp or viol were worth nothing in comparison.” The Anglo-Norman historian, Ordericus Vitalis, has preserved a legend of a vision of purgatory, in which the priest who is supposed to have seen it describes, among other suffering persons, “a crowd of women who seemed to him to be innumerable. They were mounted on horseback, riding in female fashion, with women’s saddles.... In this company the priest recognised several noble ladies, and beheld the palfreys and mules, with the women’s litters, of others who were still alive.” The Trinity College Psalter furnishes us with the two figures of cars given in our cut [No. 78]; but they are so fanciful in shape, that we can hardly help concluding they must have been mere rude and grotesque attempts at imitating classical forms.

No. 79. The Stocks.

The manuscript last mentioned affords us two other curious illustrations of the manners of the earlier half of the twelfth century. The first of these ([No. 79]) represents two men in the stocks, one held by one leg only, the other by both. The men to the left are hooting and insulting them. The second, represented in our cut [No. 80], is the interior of a Norman school. We give only a portion of the original, where the bench, on which the scholars are seated, forms a complete circle. The two writers, the teacher, who seems to be lecturing viva voce, and his seat and desk, are all worthy of notice. We have very little information on the forms and methods of teaching in schools at this period, but schools seem to have been numerous in all parts of the country. We have more than one allusion to them in the naïve stories of Reginald of Durham. From one of these we learn that a school, according to a custom “now common enough,” was kept in the church of Norham, on the Tweed, the parish priest being the teacher. One of the boys, named Aldene, had incurred the danger of correction, to escape which he took the key of the church door, which appears to have been in his custody, and threw it into a deep pool in the river Tweed, then called Padduwel, and now Pedwel or Peddle, a place well known as a fishing station. He hoped by this means to escape further scholastic discipline, from the circumstance that the scholars would be shut out by the impossibility of opening the church door. Accordingly, when the time of vespers came, and the priest arrived, the key of the door was missing, and the boy declared that he did not know where it was. The lock was too strong and ponderous to be broken or forced, and, after a vain effort to open the door, the evening was allowed to pass without divine service. The story goes on to say, that in the night St. Cuthbert appeared to the priest, and inquired wherefore he had neglected his service. On hearing the explanation, the saint ordered him to go next morning to the fishing station at Padduwel, and buy the first net of fish that was drawn out of the river. The priest obeyed, and in the net was a salmon of extraordinary magnitude, in the throat of which was found the lost key of Norham church.

No. 80. A Norman School.

Among the aristocracy of the land, the education of the boy took what was considered at that time a very practical turn—he was instructed in behaviour, in manly exercises and the use of arms, in carving at table—then looked upon as a most important accomplishment among gentlemen—and in some other branches of learning which we should hardly appreciate at present; but school learning was no mediæval gentleman’s accomplishment, and was, in that light, quite an exception, unless perhaps to a certain degree among the ladies. In the historical romances of the middle ages, a prince or a baron is sometimes able to read, but it is the result of accidental circumstances. Thus, in the romance of the “Mort de Garin,” when the empress of the Franks writes secret news from Paris to duke Garin, the head of the family of the Loherains, it is remarked, as an unusual circumstance, that the latter was able to read, and that he could thus communicate the secret information of the empress to his friends without the assistance of a scholar or secretary, which was a great advantage, as it prevented one source of danger of the betrayal of the correspondence. “Garin the Loherain,” says the narrator, “was acquainted with letters, for in his infancy he was put to school until he had learned both Roman (French) and Latin.”

De letres sot li Loherens Garins;
Car en s’enfance fu à escole mis,
Tant que il sot et Roman et Latin.
—Mort de Garin, p. 105.

Education of this kind was bestowed more generally on the bourgeoisie—on the middle and even the lower classes; and to these school-education was much more generally accessible than we are accustomed to imagine. From Anglo-Saxon times, indeed, every parish church had been a public school. The Ecclesiastical Institutes (p. 475, in the folio edition of the Laws, by Thorpe) directs that “Mass-priests ought always to have at their houses a school of disciples; and if any one desire to commit his little ones (lytlingas) to them for instruction, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach them.” It is added that “they ought not, however, for that instruction, to desire anything from their relatives, except what they shall be willing to do for them of their own accord.” In the Ecclesiastical Canons, published under king Edgar, there is an enactment which would lead us to suppose that the clergy performed their scholastic duties with some zeal, and that priests were in the habit of seducing their scholars from each other, for this enactment (p. 396) enjoins “that no priest receive another’s scholar without leave of him whom he previously followed.” This system of teaching was kept up during at least several generations after the Norman conquest.

CHAPTER VII.
EARLY ENGLISH HOUSES.—THEIR GENERAL FORM AND DISTRIBUTION.

After the middle of the twelfth century, we begin to be better acquainted with the domestic manners of our forefathers, and from that period to the end of the fourteenth century the change was very gradual, and in many respects they remained nearly the same. In the middle classes, especially in the towns, there had been a gradual fusion of Norman and Saxon manners, while the Norman fashions and the Norman language prevailed in the higher classes, and the manners of the lower classes remained, probably, nearly the same as before the Conquest.

We now obtain a more perfect notion of the houses of all classes, not only from more frequent and exact descriptions, but from existing remains. The principal part of the building was still the hall, or, according to the Norman word, the salle, but its old Saxon character seems to have been so universally acknowledged, that the first or Saxon name prevailed over the other. The name now usually given to the whole dwelling-house was the Norman word manoir or manor, and we find this applied popularly to the houses of all classes, excepting only the cottages of labouring people. In houses of the twelfth century, the hall, standing on the ground floor, and open to the roof, still formed the principal feature of the building. The chamber generally adjoined to it at one end, and at the other was usually a stable (croiche). The whole building stood within a small enclosure, consisting of a yard or court in front, called in Norman aire (area), and a garden, which was surrounded usually with a hedge and ditch. In front, the house had usually one door, which was the main entrance into the hall. From this latter apartment there was a door into the chamber at one end, and one into the croiche or stable at the other end, and a back door into the garden. The chamber had also frequently a door which opened also into the garden; the stable, as a matter of course, would have a large door or outlet into the yard. The chief windows were those of the hall. These, in common houses, appear to have been merely openings, which might be closed with wooden shutters; and in other parts of the building they were nothing but holes (pertuis); there appears to have been usually one of these holes in the partition wall between the chamber and the hall, and another between the hall and the stable. There was also an outer window, or pertuis, to the chamber.

In the popular French and Anglo-Norman fabliaux, or tales in verse, which belong mostly to the thirteenth century, we meet with many incidents illustrating this distribution of the apartments of the house, which no doubt continued essentially the same during that and the following century. Thus in a fabliau published by M. Jubinal, an old woman of mean condition in life, dame Auberée, is described as visiting a burgher’s wife, who, with characteristic vanity, takes her into the chamber adjoining (en une chambre ilueques près), to show her her handsome bed. When the lady afterwards takes refuge with dame Auberée, she also shows her out of the hall into a chamber close adjoining (en une chambre iluec de joste). In a fabliau entitled Du prestre crucifié, published by Méon, a man returning home at night, sees what is going on in the hall through a pertuis, or hole made through the wall for a window, before he opens the door (par un pertuis les a veuz). In another fabliau published in the larger collection of Barbazan, a lady in her chamber sees what is passing in the hall par un pertuis. In the fabliau of Le povre clerc (or scholar), the clerc, having asked for a night’s lodging at the house of a miller during the miller’s absence, is driven away by the wife, who expects a visit from her lover the priest, and is unwilling to have an intruder. The clerc, as he is going away, meets the miller, who, angry at the inhospitable conduct of his dame, takes him back to the house. The priest in the meantime had arrived, and is sitting in the hall with the good wife, who, hearing a knock at the door, makes her lover hide himself in the stable (croiche). From the stable the priest watches the company in the hall through a window (fenestre), which is evidently only another name for the pertuis. In one fabliau the gallant comes through the court or garden, and is let into the hall by the back door; in another a woman is introduced into the chamber by a back door, or, as it is called in the text, a false door (par un fax huis), while the hall is occupied by company.

The arrangements of an ordinary house in the country are illustrated in the fabliau De Barat et de Haimet, printed in the collection of Barbazan. Two thieves undertake to rob a third of “a bacon,” which he (Travers) had hung on the beam or rafter of his house, or hall:— Travers l’avoit à une hart
Au tref de sa meson pendu.
The thieves make a hole in the wall, by which one enters without waking Travers or his wife, although they were sleeping with the door of their chamber open. The bacon is thus stolen and carried away. Travers, roused by the noise of their departure, rises from his bed, follows the thieves, and ultimately recaptures his bacon. He resolves now to cook the bacon, and eat some of it, and for this purpose a fire is made, and a cauldron full of water hung over it. This appears to be performed in the middle of the hall. The thieves return, and, approaching the door, one of them looked through the pertuis, and saw the bacon boiling:— Baras mist son oeil au pertuis,
Et voit que la chaudiere bout.
The thieves then climb the roof, uncover a small space at the top silently, and attempt to draw up the bacon with a hook.

No. 81. An Anglo-Norman House.

No. 82. The Hall and Chamber.

From the unskilfulness of the mediæval artists in representing details where any knowledge of perspective was required, we have not so much information as might be expected from the illuminated manuscripts relating to the arrangements of houses. But a fine illuminated copy of the romances of the San Graal and the Round Table, executed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the British Museum (MS. Addit. Nos. 10,292-10,294), furnishes us with one or two rather interesting illustrations of this subject. The romances themselves were composed in Anglo-Norman, in the latter half of the twelfth century. The first cut which we shall select from this manuscript is a complete view of a house; it belongs to a chapter entitled Ensi que Lancelot ront les fers d’une fenestre, et si entre dedens pour gesir avoec la royne. The queen has informed Lancelot that the head of her bed lies near the window of her chamber, and that he may come by night to the window, which is defended by an iron grating, to talk with her, and she tells him that the wall of the adjacent hall is in one part weak and dilapidated enough to allow of his obtaining an entrance through it; but Lancelot prefers breaking open the grating in order to enter directly into the chamber, to passing through the hall. The grating of the chamber window appears to have been common in the houses of the rich and noble; in the records of the thirteenth century, the grating of the chamber windows of the queen is often mentioned. The window behind Lancelot in our cut is that of the hall, and is distinguished by architectural ornamentation. The ornamental hinges of the door, with the lock and the knocker, are also curious. Our next cut ([No. 82]), taken from this same manuscript, represents part of the house of a knight, whose wife has an intrigue with one of the heroes of these romances, king Claudas. The knight lay in wait to take the king, as he was in the lady’s chamber at night, but the king, being made aware of his danger, escaped by the chamber-window, while the knight expected to catch him by entering at the hall door. The juxtaposition of hall and chamber is here shown very plainly. In another chapter of the same romances, the king takes Lancelot into a chamber to talk with him apart, while his knights wait for them in the hall; this is pictorially represented in an illumination copied in the accompanying cut ([No. 83]), which shows exactly the relative position of the hall and chamber. The door here is probably intended for that which led from the hall into the chamber.

No. 83. The Knights in waiting.

We see from continual allusions that an ordinary house, even among men of wealth, had usually only one chamber, which served as his sleeping-room, and as the special apartment of the female portion of the household—the lady and her maids, while the hall was employed indiscriminately for cooking, eating and drinking, receiving visitors, and a variety of other purposes, and at night it was used as a common sleeping-room. These arrangements, and the construction of the house, varied according to the circumstances of the locality and the rank of the occupiers. Among the rich, a stable did not form part of the house, but its site was often occupied by the kitchen, which was almost always placed close to the hall. Among the higher classes other chambers were built, adjacent to the chief chamber, or to the hall, though in larger mansions they sometimes occupied a tower or separate building adjacent. The form, however, which the manor-house generally took was a simple oblong square. A seal of the thirteenth century, attached to a deed by which, in June, 1272, William Moraunt grants to Peter Picard an acre of land in the parish of Otteford in Kent, furnishes us with a representation of William Moraunt’s manor-house. It is a simple square building, with a high-pitched roof, as appears always to have been the case in the early English houses, and a chimney. The hall door, it will be observed, opens outwardly, as is the case in the preceding cuts, which was the ancient Roman manner of opening of the outer door of the house; it may be added that it was the custom to leave the hall door or huis (ostium) always open by day, as a sign of hospitality. It will also be observed that there is a curious coincidence in the form of chimney with the cuts from the illuminated manuscript. We must not overlook another circumstance in these delineations,—the position of the chimney, which is usually over the chamber, and not over the hall. Fireplaces in the wall and chimneys were first introduced in the chamber.

No. 84. Seal of W. Moraunt.

As the grouping together of several apartments on the ground-floor rendered the whole building less compact and less defensible, the practice soon rose, especially in the better manoirs, of making apartments above. This upper apartment was called a soler (solarium, a word supposed to be derived from sol, the sun, as being, by its position, nearer to that luminary, or as receiving more light from it). It was at first, and in the lesser mansions, but a small apartment raised above the chamber, and approached by a flight of steps outside, though (but more rarely) the staircase was sometimes internal. In our first cut from the Museum manuscript ([No. 81]), there is a soler over the chamber, to which the approach appears to be from the inside. In the early metrical tales the soler, and its exterior staircase, are often alluded to. Thus, in the fabliau D’Estourmi, in Barbazan, a burgher and his wife deceive three monks of a neighbouring abbey who make love to the lady; she conceals her husband in the soler above, to which he ascends by a flight of steps:— Tesiez, vous monterez là sus
En cel solier tout coiement.
The monk, before he enters the house, passes through the court (cortil), in which there is a sheepcot (bercil), or perhaps a stable. The husband from the soler above looks through a lattice or grate and sees all that passes in the hall— Par la treillie le porlingne.
The stairs seem, therefore, to have been outside the hall, with a latticed window looking into it from the top. The monk appears to have entered the hall by the back door, and the chamber is adjacent to the hall (as in houses which had no soler), on the side opposite to that on which were the stairs. When another monk comes, the husband hides himself under the stairs (souz le degré). The bodies of the monks (who are killed by the husband) are carried out parmi une fausse posterne which leads into the fields (aus chans). In the fabliau of La Saineresse, a woman who performs the operation of bleeding comes to the house of a burgher, and finds the man and his wife seated on a bench in the yard before the hall— En mi l’aire de sa meson.
The lady says she wants bleeding, and takes her upstairs into the soler:— Montez là sus en cel solier,
Il m’estuet de vostre mestier.
They enter, and close the door. The apartment on the soler, although there was a bed in it, is not called a chamber, but a room or saloon (perrin):— Si se descendent del perrin,
Contreval les degrez enfin
Vindrent errant en la maison.
The expression that they came down the stairs, and into the house, shows that the staircase was outside.

In another fabliau, De la borgoise d’Orliens, a burgher comes to his wife in the disguise of her gallant, and the lady, discovering the fraud, locks him up in the soler, pretending he is to wait there till the household is in bed— Je vous metrai privéement
En un solier dont j’ai la clef.
She then goes to meet her ami, and they come from the garden (vergier) direct into the chamber without entering the hall. Here she tells him to wait while she goes in there (là dedans), to give her people their supper, and she leaves him while she goes into the hall. The lady afterwards sends her servants to beat her husband, pretending him to be an importunate suitor whom she wishes to punish! “he waits for me up there in that room:”— Là sus m’atent en ce perin.
* * * * *
Ne souffrez pas que il en isse,
Ainz l’acueillier al solier haut.
They beat him as he descends the stairs, and pursue him into the garden, all which passes without entering the lower apartments of the house. The soler, or upper part of the house, appears to have been considered the place of greatest security—in fact it could only be entered by one door, which was approached by a flight of steps, and was therefore more easily defended than the ground floor. In the beautiful story De l’ermite qui s’acompaigna à l’ange, the hermit and his companion seek a night’s lodging at the house of a rich but miserly usurer, who refuses them admittance into the house, and will only permit them to sleep under the staircase, in what the story terms an auvent or shed. The next morning the hermit’s young companion goes upstairs into the soler to find the usurer, who appears to have slept there for security— Le vallet les degrez monta,
El solier son hoste trova.
It was in the thirteenth century a proverbial characteristic of an avaricious and inhospitable person, to shut his hall door and live in the soler. In a poem of this period, in which the various vices of the age are placed under the ban of excommunication, the miser is thus pointed out:— Encor escommeni-je plus
Riche homme qui ferme son huis,
Et va mengier en solier sus.
The huis was the door of the hall. The soler appears also to have been considered as the room of honour for rich lodgers or guests who paid well. In the fabliau Des trois avugles de Compiengne, three blind men come to the house of a burgher, and require to be treated better than usual; on which he shows them upstairs— En la haute logis les maine.
A clerc, who follows, after putting his horse in the stable, sits at table with his host in the hall, while the three other guests are served “like knights” in the soler above—

Et li avugle du solier
Furent servi com chevalier.

No. 85. Ancient Manor-House, Millichope, Shropshire.

During the period of which we are speaking, the richer the householder, the greater need he had of studying strength and security, and hence with him the soler, or upper story, became of more importance, and was often made the principal part of the house, at least that in which himself and his family placed themselves at night. This was especially the case in stone buildings, where the ground-floor was often a low vaulted apartment, which seems to have been commonly looked upon as a cellar, while the principal room was on the first-floor, approached usually by a staircase on the outside. A house of this kind is represented in one of our cuts taken from the Bayeux tapestry, where the guests are carousing in the room on the first-floor. Yet still the vaulted room on the ground-floor was perhaps more often considered as the public apartment. In this manner the two apartments of the house, instead of standing side by side, were raised one upon the other, and formed externally a square mass of masonry. Several examples of early manor-houses of this description still remain, among which one of the most remarkable is that at Millichope in Shropshire; which evidently belongs to the latter half of the twelfth century. It has not been noticed in any work on domestic architecture, but I am enabled to describe it from two private lithographed plates by Mrs. Stackhouse Acton, of Acton Scott, from which the accompanying cuts are taken. The first ([No. 85]) represents the present outward appearance of the ancient building, which is now an adjunct to a farm-house. The plan is a rectangle, considerably longer from north to south than in the transverse direction. The walls are immensely thick on the ground-floor in comparison to the size of the building, as will be seen from the plan of the ground-floor given in the next cut ([No. 86]). The original entrance was at b, by a late Norman arch, slightly ornamented, which is seen in the view. To the right of this is seen one of the original windows, also round arched. On the north and east sides were two other windows, the openings of them all being small towards the exterior, but enlarging inwards. The interior must have been extremely dark; nevertheless it contains a fireplace, and was probably the public room. The opening at a is merely a modern passage into the farm-house. As this house stands on the borders of Wales, and therefore security was the principal consideration, the staircase, from the thickness of the walls, was safer inside than on the exterior. We accordingly find that it was worked into the mass of the wall in the south-west corner, the entrance being at c. The steps of the lower part—it was a stone staircase—are concealed or destroyed, so that we hardly know how it commenced, but there are steps of stone now running up to the soler or upper apartment, as represented in our plan of the upper floor. This staircase received light at the bottom and at the top, by a small loop-hole worked through the wall. Although the walls were so massive in the lower room, the staircase was secured by extraordinary precautions. At the top of the steps at d, again at e, and a third time at f, were strong doors, secured with bolts, which it would have required great force to break open. The last of these doors led into the upper apartment, which was rather larger than the lower one, the west wall being here much thinner. This was evidently the family apartment; it had two windows, on the north and east sides, each having seats at the side, with ornamentation of early English character. A view of the northern window from the interior, with its seats, is given in our cut [No. 88]; it is the same which is seen externally in our sketch of the house: this room had no fireplace.

No. 86. Plan of Ground-Floor of House at Millichope.

No. 87. Plan of the Upper Floor.

No. 88. Inside of Window at Millichope.

Towards the fourteenth century, the rooms of houses began to be multiplied, and they were often built round a court; the additions were made chiefly to the offices, and to the number of chambers. They were still built more of wood than of stone, and the carpenter was the chief person employed in their construction. In the fabliau of Trubert, printed by Méon, a duke, intending to build a new house, employs a carpenter to make the design, and takes him into his woods to select timber for materials. It may give some notion of the simplicity of the arrangement of a house, and the small number of rooms, even when required for royalty itself, when we state that in the January of 1251, king Henry III., intending to visit Hampshire, and requiring a house for himself with his queen and court, gave orders to the sheriff of Southampton to build at Freemantle a hall, a kitchen, and a chamber with an upper story (cum estagio, sometimes called in documents written in French chambre estagée), and a chapel on the ground, for the king’s use; and a chamber with an upper story, with a chapel at the end of the same chamber, for the queen’s use. Under the chamber was to be made a cellar for the king’s wines.

The chamber had, indeed, now become so important a part of the building, that its name was not unusually given to the whole house, which, in the documents of the thirteenth century, is sometimes called a camera ad estagiam—an upper-storied chamber. Such was the case with a house built in 1285 for Edward I. and his queen in the forest at Woolmer, in Hampshire, the account of the expenses of which are preserved in the Pipe Rolls. This house was seventy-two feet long, and twenty-eight feet wide. It had two chimneys, a chapel, and two wardrobes. The chapel and wardrobe had six glazed windows. There was also a hall in it, but the two chimneys appear to have belonged to the chamber. The windows of the chamber and hall had wooden shutters (hostia), but do not appear to have had glass. The kitchen was the only other apartment in the house. The ordinary windows of a house at this time were not usually glazed; but they were either latticed, or consisted of a mere opening, which was covered by a cloth or curtain by day, and was closed by a shutter, which turned upon hinges, either sideways, like an ordinary door, or up and down, and which seems generally to have opened outwards. The rooms were, in this manner, very imperfectly protected against the weather, even in palaces. A precept of Henry III. has been quoted, which directs glass to be substituted for wood in a window in the queen’s wardrobe at the Tower, “in order that that chamber might not be so windy;” and in the same reign a charge is made in the accounts relating to the royal manor at Kennington, “for closing the windows better than usual (et in fenestris melius solito claudendis).”[24]

These remarks on the general character of the house are, of course, intended to apply to the ordinary dwelling-house, and not to the more extensive mansion—which already in the thirteenth century was made to surround, wholly or partly, an interior court—or to the castle. These more extensive edifices consisted only of a greater accumulation of the rooms and details which were found in the smaller house. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, no great change took place in the general characteristics of a private house. The hall was still the largest and most important room, and was now usually raised on an under vaulted room, which, to whatever use it may have been applied, was usually called the cellar. Part of it appears to have been sometimes employed as the stable. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the hall, which is evidently the main part of the building, was open to the roof, with cross beams, on which they hanged the troughs, and the stable was attached to it, and intervened between the house and the garden. In the Cokes Tale of Gamelyn, the hall has its posts, or columns, and there is attached to it a room called a spence, which was more frequently called the buttery, in which victuals of different kinds, and the wine and plate, were locked up, and the man who had the charge of it was called the spencer or despencer, which it is hardly necessary to say was the origin of two common English surnames. The gentleman’s house, in Chaucer’s Sompnoures Tale, was a “large halle,” and is called a court, which had now become an ordinary term for a manor-house. A stordy paas doun to the court he goth,
Wher as ther wonyd a man of gret honour.
—Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 7,744.
In the Nonne Prestes Tale, the poor widow’s cottage also has its hall and bour, or chamber, although they were all sooty, of course, from the fires, which had no chimney to carry off the smoke. Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle.
—Ib. l. 16,318.
This house was situated within a court, or, as it is called, yard, which was enclosed by a hedge of sticks, and by a ditch:— A yerd sche had, enclosed al aboute
With stikkes, and a drye dich withoute.
In the Tale of Gamelyn, the yard, or court, as we use the Anglo-Saxon or the Anglo-Norman name for it, had a stronger fence, with a gate and wicket fastened by lock and bolt, and apparently a lodge for the porter. In the yard there was a draw-well, seven fathoms deep. While Gamelyn took possession of the hall, his brother shut himself up in the cellar, which could be made a safe place of refuge, when all the rest of the house was in the power of an enemy. The yard here had also a postern-gate. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the chamber has a low window, to swing outwardly— So mote I thryve, I schal at cokkes crowe
Ful pryvely go knokke at his wyndowe,
That stant ful lowe upon his bowres wal—
which is immediately afterwards called the “schot wyndowe”—

Unto his brest it raught, it was so lowe.

A new apartment had now been added to the house, called in Anglo-Norman a parlour (parloir), because it was literally the talking-room. It belonged originally to the monastic houses, where the parlour was the room for receiving people who came to converse on business, and, when introduced into private houses, it was a sort of secondary hall, where visitors might be received more privately than in the great hall, and yet with less familiarity than in the chamber. In the story of Sir Cleges, the knight finds the king seated in his parlour, and listening to a harper. In a Latin document of the year 1473, printed in Rymer’s Fœdera, a citizen of London has, in his mansion-house there, a parlour adjoining the garden (in quadam parlura adjacente gardino).

Houses were, as I have before stated, usually built in great part of timber, and it was only where unusual strength was required, or else from a spirit of ostentation, that they were made of stone. There appear to have been very few fixtures in the inside, and, as furniture was scanty, the rooms must have appeared very bare. In timber houses, of course, it was not easy to make cupboards or closets in the walls, but this was not the case when they were built of stone. Even in the latter case, however, the walls appear not to have been much excavated for such purposes. Our cut [No. 89] represents a cupboard door, taken from an illuminated manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; it is curious for its ironwork, especially the lock and key. The smaller articles of domestic use were usually deposited in chests, or placed upon sideboards and moveable stands. In the houses of the wealthy a separate room was built for the wardrobe.

No. 89. A Cupboard Door.

No. 90. The Cellarer of St. Alban’s.

The accompanying figure (cut No. 90), taken from a manuscript in the Cottonian Library (Nero, D. vii.), represents the cellarer, or house-steward, of the abbey of St. Alban’s, in the fourteenth century, carrying the keys of the cellar door, which appear to be of remarkably large dimensions; he holds the two keys in one hand, and a purse, or, rather, a bag of money, in the other, the symbols of his office. A drawing in the same MS., copied in our cut [No. 91], shows us the entrance-door to an ordinary house, with a soler, or upper room, above. The individual intended to be represented was Alan Middleton, who is recorded in the catalogue of officers of St. Alban’s as “collector of rents of the obedientiaries of that monastery, and especially of those of the bursar.” A small tonsure denotes him as a monastic officer, while the penner and inkhorn at his girdle denote the nature of his office; and he is just opening the door of one of the abbey tenants to perform his function. The door is intended to be represented opening outwards. These Benedictines of St. Alban’s have also immortalised another of their inferior officers, Walterus de Hamuntesham, who was attacked and grievously wounded by the rabble of St. Alban’s, while standing up for the rights and liberties of the church. He appears (cut [No. 92]) to be attempting to gain shelter in a house, which also has a soler.

No. 91. Alan Middleton.

There was one fixture in the interior of the house, which is frequently mentioned in old writers, and must not be overlooked. It was frequently called a perche (pertica), and consisted of a wooden frame fixed to the wall, for the purpose of hanging up articles of clothing and various other things. The curious tract of Alexander Neckam, entitled Summa de nominibus utensilium, states that each chamber should have two perches, one on which the domestic birds, hawks and falcons, were to sit, the other for suspending shirts, kerchiefs, breeches, capes, mantles, and other articles of clothing. In reference to the latter usage, one of the mediæval Latin poets has the memorial line—

Pertica diversos pannos retinere solebat.

No. 92. Walter de Hamuntesham attacked by a Mob.

Our cut [No. 93], taken from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, written in the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985, fol. 2, v^o), represents a perche, with two garments suspended upon it. The one represented in our next cut ([No. 94]) is of rather a different form, and is made to support the arms of a knight, his helmet, sword, and shield, and his coat of mail; but how the sword and helmet are attached to it is far from clear. This example is taken from an illuminated manuscript of a well-known work by Guillaume de Deguilleville, Le Pelerinage de la Vie humaine, of the latter end of the fourteenth century, also preserved in the French National Library (No. 6988): another copy of the same work, preserved in the same great collection (No. 7210), but of the fifteenth century, gives a still more perfect representation of the perche, supporting, as in the last example, a helmet, a shield, and coats of mail. In the foreground, a queen is depositing the staff and scrip of a hermit in a chest, for greater security. This subject is represented in our cut [No. 95].

No. 93. A Perche.

No. 94. Another Perche.

No. 95. Scene in a Chamber.

Furniture of every kind continued to be rare, and chairs were by no means common articles in ordinary houses. In the chambers, seats were made in the masonry by the side of the windows, as represented in our cut [No. 88], and sometimes along the walls. Common benches were the usual seats, and these were often formed by merely laying a plank upon two trestles. Such a bench is probably represented in the accompanying cut ([No. 96]), taken from a manuscript of the romance of Tristan, of the fourteenth century, preserved in the National Library at Paris (No. 7178). Tables were made in the same manner. We now, however, find not unfrequent mention of a table dormant in the hall, which was of course a table fixed to the spot, and which was not taken away like the others: it was probably the great table of the dais, or upper end of the hall. To “begin the table dormant” was a popular phrase, apparently equivalent to taking the first place at the feast. Chaucer, in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describing the profuse hospitality of the Frankeleyn, says— His table dormant in his halle alway
Stood redy covered al the longe day.
Yet, during the whole of this period, it continued to be the common practice to make the table for a meal, by merely laying a board upon trestles. The second cut on the preceding page ([No. 97]) is a very curious representation of such a table, from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (MS. Arch. A. 154). It must be understood that the objects which are ranged alternately with the drinking-vessels are loaves of bread, not plates.

No. 96. A Bench on Trestles.

No. 97. A Table on Trestles.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE OLD ENGLISH HALL.—THE KITCHEN, AND ITS CIRCUMSTANCES.—THE DINNER-TABLE.—MINSTRELSY.

As I have already stated, the hall continued to be the most important part of the house; and in large mansions it was made of proportional dimensions. It was a general place of rendezvous for the household, especially for the retainers and followers, and in the evening it seems usually to have been left entirely to them, and they made their beds and passed the night in it. Strangers or visitors were brought into the hall. In the curious old poem edited by Mr. Halliwell, entitled “The Boke of Curtasye,” we find especial directions on this subject. When a gentleman or yeoman came to the house of another, he was directed to leave his weapons with the porter at the outward gate or wicket, before he entered. It appears to have been the etiquette that if the person thus presenting himself were of higher rank than the person he visited, the latter should go out to receive him at the gate; if the contrary, the visitor was admitted through the gate, and proceeded to the hall. Whanne thou comes to a lordis gate,
The porter thou shalle fynde therate;
Take (give) hym thow shalt thy wepyn tho (then),
And aske hym leve in to go.
* * * * *
... yf he be of logh (low) degré,
Than hym falles to come to the.
At the hall door the visitor was to take off his hood and gloves— When thow come tho halle dor to,
Do of thy hode, thy gloves also.
If, when he entered the hall, the visitor found the family at meat, he stood at the bottom of the apartment in a respectful attitude, till the lord of the house sent a servant to lead him to a place where he was to sit at table. As you descended lower in society, such ceremonies were less observed; and the clergy in general seem to have been allowed a much greater licence than the laity. In the Sompneres Tale, in Chaucer, when the friar, who has received an insult from an inferior inhabitant, goes “to the court” to complain to the lord of the village, he finds the latter in his hall at the dinner table— This frere com, as he were in a rage,
Wher that this lord sat etyng at his bord.
—Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 7748.
The lord, surprised at the agitation in the countenance of the friar, who had come in without any sort of introduction, invites him to sit down, and inquires into his business. There is a scene in the early English metrical romance of Ipomydon, in which this hero and his preceptor Tholoman go to the residence of the heiress of Calabria. At the castle gate they were stopped by the porter, whom they ask to announce them in the hall:— The porter to theyme they gan calle,
And prayd hym, ‘Go into the halle,
And say thy lady gent and fre,
That come ar men of ferre contré,
And, if it plese hyr, we wold hyr prey
That we myght ete with hyr to-day.’
—Weber, Metr. Rom. ii. 290.
The porter “courteously” undertook the message, and, at the immediate order of the lady, who was sitting at her meat, he went back, took charge of their horses and pages, and introduced them into the hall. Then they asked to be taken into the lady’s service, who accepted their offer, and invited them to take their place at the dinner:—

He thankid the lady cortesly,
She comandyth hym to the mete;
But, or he satte in any sete,
He saluted theym grate and smalle,
As a gentille man shuld in halle.
—Weber, ii. 292.

Perhaps, before entering the mediæval hall, we shall do well to give a glance at the kitchen. It is an opinion, which has not unfrequently been entertained, that living in the middle ages was coarse and not elaborate; and that old English fare consisted chiefly in roast beef and plum-pudding. That nothing, however, could be more incorrect, is fully proved by the rather numerous mediæval cookery books which are still preserved, and which contain chiefly directions for made dishes, many of them very complicated, and, to appearance, extremely delicate. The office of cook, indeed, was one of great importance, and was well paid; and the kitchens of the aristocracy were very extensive, and were furnished with a considerable variety of implements of cookery. On account, no doubt, of this importance, Alexander Neckam, although an ecclesiastic, commences his vocabulary (or, as it is commonly entitled, Liber de Utensilibus), compiled in the latter part of the twelfth century, with an account of the kitchen and its furniture. He enumerates, among other objects, a table for chopping and mincing herbs and vegetables; pots, trivets or tripods, an axe, a mortar and pestle, a mover, or pot-stick, for stirring, a crook or pot-hook (uncus), a caldron, a frying-pan, a gridiron, a posnet or saucepan, a dish, a platter, a saucer, or vessel for mixing sauce, a hand-mill, a pepper-mill, a mier, or instrument for reducing bread to crumbs. John de Garlande, in his “Dictionarius,” composed towards the middle of the thirteenth century, gives a similar enumeration; and a comparison of the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, shows that the arrangements of the kitchen had undergone little change during the intervening period. From these vocabularies the following list of kitchen utensils is gathered:—a brandreth, or iron tripod, for supporting the caldron over the fire; a caldron, a dressing-board and dressing-knife, a brass-pot, a posnet, a frying-pan, a gridiron, or, as it is sometimes called, a roasting-iron; a spit, a “gobard,” explained in the MS. by ipegurgium; a mier, a flesh-hook, a scummer, a ladle, a pot-stick, a slice for turning meat in the frying-pan, a pot-hook, a mortar and pestle, a pepper-quern, a platter, a saucer.

No. 98. Making the Pot boil.

The older illuminated manuscripts are rarely so elaborate as to furnish us with representations of all these kitchen implements; and, in fact, it is not in the more elaborately illuminated manuscripts that kitchen scenes are often found. But we meet with representations of some of them in artistic sketches of a less elaborate character, though these are generally connected with the less refined processes of cookery. The mediæval landlords were obliged to consume the produce of the land on their own estates, and, for this and other very cogent reasons, a large proportion of the provisions in ordinary use consisted of salted meat, which was laid up in store in vast quantities in the baronial larders. Hence boiling was a much more common method of cooking meat than roasting, for which, indeed, the mediæval fire, placed on the ground, was much less convenient; it is, no doubt, for this reason that the cook is most frequently represented in the mediæval drawings with the caldron on the fire. In some instances, chiefly of the fifteenth century, the caldron is supported from above by a pot-hook, but more usually it stands over the fire upon three legs of its own, or upon a three-legged frame. A manuscript in the British Museum of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10, E. iv.), belonging formerly to the monastery of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, contains a series of such illustrations, from which the following are selected. In the first of these ([No. 98]) it is evidently a three-legged caldron which stands over the fire, to increase the heat of which the cook makes use of a pair of bellows, which bears a remarkably close resemblance to the similar articles made in modern times. Bellows were certainly in common use in Anglo-Saxon times, for the name is Anglo-Saxon, bælg, bælig, and bylig; but as the original meaning of this word was merely a bag, it is probable that the early Anglo-Saxon bellows was of very rude character: it was sometimes distinguished by the compound name, blast-bælg, a blast-bag, or bellows. Our second example from this MS. (cut [No. 99]) is one of a series of designs belonging to some mediæval story or legend, with which I am not acquainted. A young man carrying the vessel for the holy water, and the aspersoir with which it was sprinkled over the people, and who may therefore be supposed to be the holy-water clerc, is making acquaintance with the female cook. The latter seems to have been interrupted in the act of taking some object out of the caldron with a flesh-hook. The caldron here again is three-legged. In the sequel, the acquaintance between the cook and the holy-water clerc appears to have ripened into love; but we may presume from the manner in which it was represented ([No. 100]), that this love was not of a very disinterested character on the part of the clerc, for he is taking advantage of her affection to steal the animal which she is boiling in the caldron. The conventional manner in which the animal seems to be drawn, renders it difficult to decide what that animal is. The mediæval artists show a taste for playful delineations of this kind, which occur not unfrequently in illuminated manuscripts, and in carvings and sculptures. One of the stalls in Hereford cathedral, copied in the accompanying cut ([No. 101]), represents a scene of this description. A man is attempting to take liberties with the cook, who has in return thrown a platter at his head. In our next cut ([No. 102]), taken from another MS. in the British Museum, also of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 16, E. viii.), the object cooked in the caldron is a boar’s head, which the cook, an ill-favoured and hump-backed man, is placing on a dish to be carried to the table. The caldron, in this instance, appears to be intended to have been of more ornamental character than the others.

No. 99. The Holy-Water Clerc and the Cook.

No. 100. Interested Friendship.

No. 101. A Kitchen Scene.

No. 102. The Boar’s Head.

It will have been remarked that in most of these pictures the process of cookery appears to have been carried on in the open air, for, in one instance, a tree stands not far from the caldron. This appears, indeed, to have been frequently the case, and there can be no doubt that it was intended to be so represented in our next cut ([No. 103]), taken from the well-known manuscript of the romance of “Alexander,” in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford. We have here the two processes of boiling and roasting, but the latter is only employed for fowls (geese in this case). While the cook is basting them, the quistron, or kitchen-boy, is turning the spit, which is supported in a very curious manner on one leg of the tripod or trivet, on which the caldron is here supported. The building to the right is shown by the sign to be an inn, and we are, probably, to suppose, that this out-of-door cooking is required by some unusual festivity.

No. 103. Boiling and Roasting.

Although meat was, doubtless, sometimes roasted, this process seems to have been much more commonly applied to poultry and game, and even fresh meat was very usually boiled. One cause of this may, perhaps, have been, that it seems to have been a common practice to eat the meat, and even game, fresh killed—the beef or mutton seems to have been often killed for the occasion on the day it was eaten. In the old fabliau of the “Bouchier d’Abbeville” (Barbazan, tom. iv. p. 6), the butcher, having come to Bailueil late in the evening, and obtained a night’s lodging at the priest’s, kills his sheep for the supper. The shoulders were to be roasted, the rest, as it appears, was recommended to be boiled. The butchers, indeed, seem usually to have done their work in the kitchen, and to have killed and cut up the animals for the occasion. There is a curious story in the English Gesta Romanorum (edited by Sir Frederic Madden), which illustrates this practice. “Cæsar was emperor of Rome, that had a forest, in the which he had planted vines and other divers trees many; and he ordained over his forest a steward, whose name was Jonatas, bidding him, upon pain, to keep the vines and the plants. It fell, after this ordinance of the emperor, that Jonatas took the care of the forest; and upon a day a swine came into the forest, the new plants he rooted up. When Jonatas saw the swine enter, he cut off his tail, and the swine made a cry, and went out. Nevertheless, he entered again, and did much harm in the forest. When Jonatas saw that, he cut off his left ear; and the hog made a great cry, and went out. Notwithstanding this, he entered again the third day; and Jonatas saw him, and cut off his right ear, and with a horrible cry he went out. Yet the fourth day the swine re-entered the forest, and did much damage. When Jonatas saw that the hog would not be warned, he smote him through with his spear, and slew him, and delivered the body to the cook for to array the next day to the emperor’s meat. But when the emperor was served of this swine, he asked of his servants, ‘Where is the heart of this swine?’—because the emperor loved the heart best of any beast, and more than all the beast. The servants asked the cook where the heart of the swine was, for the lord inquired after it. The cook, when he had arrayed the heart, saw it was good and fat, and eat it; and he said to the servants, ‘Say to the emperor that the hog had no heart.’ The emperor said, ‘It may not be; and therefore say to him, upon pain of death, that he send me the heart of the swine, for there is no beast in all the world without a heart.’ The servants went to the cook with the emperor’s orders; and he replied, ‘Say to my lord, but if I prove mightily by clear reasons that the swine had no heart, I put me fully to his will, to do with me as he likes.’ The emperor, when he heard this, assigned him a day to answer. When the day was come, the cook, with a high voice, said before all men, ‘My lord, this is the day of my answer. First I shall show you that the swine had no heart; this is the reason. Every thought cometh from the heart, therefore every man or beast feeleth good or evil; it followeth of necessity that by this the heart thinketh.’ The emperor said, ‘That is truth.’ ‘Then,’ said the cook, ‘now shall I show by reasons that the swine had no heart. First he entered the forest, and the steward cut off his tail; if he had had a heart, he should have thought on his tail that was lost, but he thought not thereupon, for afterwards he entered the forest, and the forester cut off his left ear. If he had had a heart, he should have thought on his left ear, but he thought not, for the third time he entered the forest. That saw the forester, and cut off his right ear; where, if he had had a heart, he should have thought that he had lost his tail and both his ears, and never should have gone again where he had so many evils. But yet the fourth time he entered the forest, and the steward saw that, and slew him, and delivered him to me to array to your meat. Here may ye see, my lord, that I have shown, by worthy reasons, that the swine had no heart.’ And thus escaped the cook.”

The story which follows this in the Gesta, tells of an emperor named “Alexaundre,” “who of great need ordained for a law, that no man should turn the plaice in his dish, but that he should only eat the white side, and in no wise the black side; and if any man did the contrary, he should die!” It is hardly necessary to remark, that fish was a great article of consumption in the middle ages, and especially among the ecclesiastics and monks. The accompanying cut on the following page ([No. 104]), from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 1527), represents probably the steward of a monastery receiving a present of fish.

No. 104. A Present of Fish.

No. 105. A Pot and Platter.

In large houses, and on great occasions, the various meats and dishes were carried from the kitchen to the hall with extraordinary ceremony by the servants of the kitchen, who delivered them at the entrance of the hall to other attendants of a higher class, who alone were allowed to approach the tables. Our cut [No. 105], from MS. Reg. 10, E. iv., represents one of these servants carrying a pot and platter, or stand for the pot, which, perhaps, contained gravy or soup. The roasts appear to have been usually carried into the hall on the spits, which, among people of great rank, were sometimes made of silver; and the guests at table seem to have torn, or cut, from the spit what they wanted. Several early illuminations represent this practice of people helping themselves from the spits, and it is alluded to, not very unfrequently, in the mediæval writers. In the romance of “Parise la Duchesse,” when the servants enter the hall with the meats for the table, one is described as carrying a roasted peacock on a spit:—

Atant ez les serjanz qui portent le mangier;
Li uns porte .i. paon roti en un astier.
—Romans de Parise, p. 172.

In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” on an occasion when a quarrel began in the hall at the beginning of the dinner, the duke Begon, for want of other weapons, snatched from the hands of one of the attendants a long spit “full of plovers, which were hot and roasted:”—

Li dus avoit un grant hastier saisi,
Plain de ploviers, qui chaut sunt et rosti.
—Romans de Garin, ii. 19.

But the most curious illustration of the universality of this practice is found in a Latin story, probably of the thirteenth century, in which we are told of a man who had a glutton for his wife. One day he roasted for their dinner a fowl, and when they had sat down at the table, the wife said, “Give me a wing?” The husband gave her the wing; and, at her demand, all the other members in succession, until she had devoured the whole fowl herself, at which, no longer able to contain his anger, he said, “Lo, you have eaten the whole fowl yourself, and nothing remains but the spit, which it is but right that you should taste also.” And thereupon he took the spit, and beat her severely with it.

No. 106. Bringing the Dinner into Hall.

No. 107. Serving in Hall.

Our cut ([No. 106]), taken from a large illumination, given from a manuscript of the fifteenth century by the late M. du Sommerard, in his great work on mediæval art, represents the servants of the hall, headed by the steward, or maître d’hôtel, with his rod of office, bringing the dishes to the table in formal procession. Their approach and arrival were usually announced by the sounding of trumpets and music. The servants were often preceded by music, as we see in our cut [No. 107], taken from a very fine MS. of the early part of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2, B. vii.). A representation of a similar scene occurs at the foot of the large Flemish brass of Robert Braunche and his two wives at St. Margaret’s Church, Lynn, which is intended as a delineation of a feast given by the corporation of Lynn to king Edward III. Servants from both sides of the picture are bringing in that famous dish of chivalry, the peacock with his tail displayed; and two bands of minstrels are ushering in the banquet with their strains; the date of the brass is about 1364 A.D. Those who served at the table itself, whose business was chiefly to carve and present the wine, were of still higher rank—never less than esquires—and often, in the halls of princes and great chiefs, nobles and barons. The meal itself was conducted with the same degree of ceremony, of which a vivid picture may be drawn from the directions given in the work called the “Ménagier de Paris,” composed about the year 1393. When it was announced that the dinner was ready, the guests advanced to the hall, led ceremoniously by two maîtres d’hôtel, who showed them their places, and served them with water to wash their hands before they began. They found the tables spread with fine table-cloths, and covered with a profusion of richly-ornamented plate, consisting of salt-cellars, goblets, pots or cups for drinking, spoons, &c. At the high table, the meats were eaten from slices of bread, called trenchers (tranchoirs), which, after the meats were eaten, were thrown into vessels called couloueres. In a conspicuous part of the hall stood the dresser or cupboard, which was covered with vessels of plate, which two esquires carried thence to the table, to replace those which were emptied. Two other esquires were occupied in bringing wine to the dresser, from whence it was served to the guests at the tables. The dishes, forming a number of courses, varying according to the occasion, were brought in by valets, led by two esquires. An asséeur, or placer, took the dishes from the hands of the valets, and arranged them in their places on the table. After these courses, fresh table-cloths were laid, and the entremets were brought, consisting of sweets, jellies, &c., many of them moulded into elegant or fantastic forms; and, in the middle of the table, raised above the rest, were placed a swan, peacocks, or pheasants, dressed up in their feathers, with their beaks and feet gilt. In less sumptuous entertainments the expensive course of entremets was usually omitted. Last of all came the dessert, consisting of cheese, confectionaries, fruit, &c., concluded by what was called the issue (departure from table), consisting usually of a draught of hypocras, and the boute-hors (turn out), wine and spices served round, which terminated the repast. The guests then washed their hands, and repaired into another room, where they were served with wine and sweetmeats, and, after a short time, separated. The dinner, served slowly and ceremoniously, must have occupied a considerable length of time. After the guests had left the hall, the servers and attendants took their places at the tables.

No. 108. The Seat on the Dais.

The furniture of the hall was simple, and consisted of but a few articles. In large residences, the floor at the upper end of the hall was raised, and was called the dais. On this the chief table was placed, stretching lengthways across the hall. The subordinate tables were arranged below, down each side of the hall. In the middle was generally the fire, sometimes in an iron grate. At the upper end of the hall there was often a cup-board or a dresser for the plate, &c. The tables were still merely boards placed on tressels, though the table dormant, or stationary table, began to be more common. Perhaps the large table on the dais was generally a table dormant. The seats were merely benches or forms, except the principal seat against the wall on the dais, which was often in the form of a settle, with back and elbows. Such a seat is represented in our cut [No. 108], taken from a manuscript of the romance of Meliadus, in the National Library at Paris, No. 6961. On special occasions, the hall was hung round with tapestry, or curtains, which were kept for that purpose, and one of these curtains seems commonly to have been suspended against the wall behind the dais. A carpet was sometimes laid on the floor, which, however, was more usually spread with rushes. Sometimes, in the illuminations, the floor appears to be paved with ornamental tiles, without carpet or rushes. It was also not unusual to bring a chair into the hall as a mark of particular respect. Thus, in the English metrical romance of Sir Isumbras:—

The riche qwene in haulle was sett,
Knyghttes hir serves to handes and fete,
Were clede in robis of palle;
In the floure a clothe was layde,
“This poore palmere,” the stewarde sayde,
“Salle sytte abowene yow alle.”
Mete and drynke was forthe broghte,
Sir Isambrace sett and ete noghte,
Bot luked abowte in the haulle.
* * * * *
So lange he satt and ete noghte,
That the lady grete wondir thoghte,
And tille a knyghte gane saye,
“Bryng a chayere and a qwyschene (cushion),
And sett yone poore palmere therin.”
* * * * *
A riche chayere than was ther fett,
This poore palmere therin was sett,
He tolde hir of his laye.

Until comparatively a very recent date, the hour of dinner, even among the highest classes of society, was ten o’clock in the forenoon. There was an old proverb which defined the divisions of the domestic day as follows:— Lever à six, disner à dix,
Souper à six, coucher à dix.
Which is preserved in a still older and more complete form as follows:— Lever à cinq, diner à neuf,
Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf,
Fait vivre d’ans nonante et neuf.
Five o’clock was the well-known hour of the afternoon meal; and nine seems formerly to have been an ordinary hour for dinner. In the time of Chaucer, the hour of prime appears to have been the usual dinner hour, which perhaps meant nine o’clock. At least the monk, in the Schipmannes Tale, calls for dinner at prime:— “Goth now your way,” quod he, “al stille and softe,
And let us dyne as sone as ye may,
For by my chilindre it is prime of day.”
And the lady to whom this is addressed, in reply, expresses impatience, lest they should pass the hour. The dinner appears to have been usually announced by the blowing of horns. In the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, on the arrival of visitors, the tables were laid out for dinner—

They sette tresteles, and layde a borde;
* * * * *
Trumpet begonne for to blowe.
—Weber, ii. 7.

No. 109. Washing before Dinner.

Before the meal, each guest was served with water to wash. It was the business of the ewer to serve the guests with water for this purpose, which he did with a jug and basin, while another attendant stood by with a towel. Our cut [No. 109], represents this process; it is taken from a fine manuscript of the “Livre de la Vie Humaine,” preserved in the National Library in Paris, No. 6988. In the originals of this group, the jug and basin are represented as of gold. In the copy of the Seven Sages, printed by Weber (p. 148), the preparations for a dinner are thus described:— Thai set trestes, and bordes on layd;
Thai spred clathes and salt on set,
And made redy unto the mete;
Thai set forth water and towelle.
The company, however, sometimes washed before going to the table, and for this purpose there were lavours, or lavatories, in the hall itself, or sometimes outside. The signal for washing was then given by the blowing of trumpets, or by the music of the minstrels. Thus, in the English metrical romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, At noon à laver the waytes blewe,
meaning, of course, the canonical hour of none. Grace was also said at the commencement, or at the end, of the meal, but this part of the ceremony is but slightly alluded to in the old writers.

Having washed, the guests seated themselves at table. Then the attendants spread the cloths over the tables; they then placed on them the salt-cellars and the knives; and next the bread, and the wine in drinking cups. All this is duly described in the following lines of an old romance:— Quant lavé orent, si s’asistrent,
Et li serjant les napes mistrent,
Desus les dobliers blans et biax,
Les saliers et les coutiax,
Après lou pain, puis lo vin
Et copes d’argent et d’or fin.
Spoons were also usually placed on the table, but there were no forks, the guests using their fingers instead, which was the reason they were so particular in washing before and after meat. The tables being thus arranged, it remained for the cooks to serve up the various prepared dishes.

At table the guests were not only placed in couples, but they also eat in couples, two being served with the same food and in the same plate. This practice is frequently alluded to in the early romances and fabliaux. In general the arrangement of the couples was not left to mere chance, but individuals who were known to be attached to each other, or who were near relatives, were placed together. In the poem of La Mule sanz Frain, the lady of the castle makes Sir Gawain sit by her side, and eat out of the same plate with her, as an act of friendly courtesy. In the fabliau of Trubert, a woman, taken into the household of a duke, is seated at table beside the duke’s daughter, and eats out of the same plate with her, because the young lady had conceived an affectionate feeling for the visitor. So, again, in the story of the provost of Aquilée, the provost’s lady, receiving a visitor sent by her husband (who was absent), placed him at table beside her, to eat with her, and the rest of the party were similarly seated, “two and two:”— La dame première s’assist,
Son hoste lez lui seoir fist,
Car mengier voloit avec lui;
Li autre furent dui et dui.
—Méon Fabliaux, ii. 192.
In one of the stories in the early English Gesta Romanorum, an earl and his son, who dine at the emperor’s table, are seated together, and are served with one plate, a fish, between them. The practice was, indeed, so general, that the phrase “to eat in the same dish” (manger dans la même écuelle), became proverbial for intimate friendship between two persons.

There was another practice relating to the table which must not be overlooked. It must have been remarked that, in the illuminations of contemporary manuscripts which represent dinner scenes, the guests are rarely represented as eating on plates. In fact, only certain articles were served in plates. Loaves were made of a secondary quality of flour, and these were first pared, and then cut into thick slices, which were called, in French, tranchoirs, and, in English, trenchers, because they were to be carved upon. The portions of meat were served to the guests on these tranchoirs, and they cut it upon them as they eat it. The gravy, of course, went into the bread, which the guest sometimes, perhaps always at an earlier period, eat after the meat, but in later times, and at the tables of the great, it appears to have been more frequently sent away to the alms-basket, from which the leavings of the table were distributed to the poor at the gate. All the bread used at table seems to have been pared, before it was cut, and the parings were thrown into the alms-dish. Walter de Bibblesworth, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, among other directions for the laying out of the table, says, “Cut the bread which is pared, and let the parings be given to the alms”— Tayllet le payn ke est parée,
Les biseaus à l’amoyne soyt doné.
The practice is alluded to in the romance of Sir Tristrem (fytte i. ft. 1.)— The kyng no seyd no more,
But wesche and yede (went) to mete;
Bred thai pard and schare (cut),
Ynough thai hadde at ete.
It was the duty of the almoner to say grace. The following directions are given in the Boke of Curtasye (p. 30):— The aumenere by this hathe sayde grace,
And the almes-dysshe hase sett in place;
Therin the karver a lofe schalle sette,
To serve God fyrst withouten lette;
These othere lofes be parys aboute,
Lays hit myd (with) dysshe withouten doute.
The use of the tranchoir, which Froissart calls a tailloir, is not unfrequently alluded to in the older French writers. That writer tells the story of a prince who, having received poison in a powder, and suspecting it, put it on a tailloir of bread, and thus gave it to a dog to eat. One of the French poets of the fifteenth century, Martial de Paris, speaking against the extravagant tables kept by the bishops at that time, exclaims, “Alas! what have the poor? They have only the tranchoirs of bread which remain on the table.” An ordinance of the dauphin Humbert II., of the date of 1336, orders that there should be served to him at table every day “loaves of white bread for the mouth, and four small loaves to serve for tranchoirs” (pro incisorio faciendo). For great people, a silver platter was often put under the tranchoir, and it was probable from the extension of that practice that the tranchoirs became ultimately abandoned, and the platters took their place.

No. 110. A Dinner Scene.

No. 111. A King at Dinner.

We give three examples of dinner-scenes, from manuscripts of the fourteenth century. The first, cut [No. 110] (on the last page), is taken from a manuscript belonging to the National Library in Paris, No. 7210, containing the “Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine.” The party are eating fish, or rather have been eating them, for the bones and remnants are strewed over the table. We have, in addition to these, the bread, knives, salt-cellars, and cups; and on the ground a remarkable collection of jugs for holding the liquors. Our second example, cut [No. 111], is taken from an illuminated manuscript of the romance of Meliadus, preserved in the British Museum (Additional MS., No. 12,228). We have here the curtain or tapestry hung behind the single table. The man to the left is probably the steward, or the superior of the hall; next to him is the cup-bearer serving the liquor; further to the right we have the carver cutting the meat; and last of all the cook bringing in another dish. The table is laid much in the same manner in our third example, cut [No. 112]. We have again the cups and the bread, the latter in round cakes; in our second example they are marked with crosses, as in the Anglo-Saxon illuminations; but there are no forks, or even spoons, which, of course, were used for pottage and soups, and were perhaps brought on and taken off with them. All the guests seem to be ready to use their fingers.

No. 112. A Royal Feast.

There was much formality and ceremony observed in filling and presenting the cup, and it required long instruction to make the young cup-bearer perfect in his duties. In our cut [No. 111], it will be observed that the carver holds the meat with his fingers while he cuts it. This is in exact accordance with the rules given in the ancient “Boke of Kervyng,” where this officer is told, “Set never on fyshe, flesche, beest, ne fowle, more than two fyngers and a thombe.” It will be observed also that in none of these pictures have the guests any plates; they seem to have eaten with their hands, and thrown the refuse on the table. We know also that they often threw the fragments on the floor, where they were eaten up by cats and dogs, which were admitted into the hall without restriction of number. In the “Boke of Curtasye,” already mentioned, it is blamed as a mark of bad breeding to play with the cats and dogs while seated at table— Whereso thou sitt at mete in borde (at table),
Avoide the cat at on bare worde,
For yf thou stroke cat other dogge,
Thou art lyke an ape teyghed with a clogge.
Some of these directions for behaviour are very droll, and show no great refinement of manners. A guest at table is recommended to keep his nails clean, for fear his fellow next him should be disgusted— Loke thy naylys ben clene in blythe,
Lest thy felaghe lothe therwyth.
He is cautioned against spitting on the table— If thou spit on the borde or elles opone,
Thou shalle be holden an uncurtayse mon.
When he blows his nose with his hand (handkerchiefs were not, it appears, in use), he is told to wipe his hand on his skirt or on his tippet— Yf thy nose thou clense, as may befalle,
Loke thy honde thou clense withalle,
Prively with skyrt do hit away,
Or ellis thurgh thi tepet that is so gay.
He is not to pick his teeth with his knife, or with a straw or stick, nor to clean them with the table-cloth; and, if he sits by a gentleman, he is to take care he does not put his knee under the other’s thigh!

The cleanliness of the white table-cloth seems to have been a matter of pride; and to judge by the illuminations great care seems to have been taken to place it neatly and smoothly on the table, and to arrange tastefully the part which hung down at the sides. Generally speaking, the service on the table in these illuminations appears to be very simple, consisting of the cups, stands for the dishes of meat (messes, as they were called) brought by the cook, the knives, sometimes spoons for soup and liquids, and bread. Ostentatious ornament is not often introduced, and it was perhaps only used at the tables of princes and of the more powerful nobles. Of these ornaments, one of the most remarkable was the nef, or ship—a vessel, generally of silver, which contained the salt-cellar, towel, &c., of the prince, or great lord, on whose table it was brought with great ceremony. It was in the form of a ship, raised on a stand, and on one end it had some figure, such as a serpent, or castle, perhaps an emblem or badge chosen by its possessor. Our cut [No. 113], taken from a manuscript in the French National Library, represents the nef placed on the table. The badge or emblem at the end appears to be a bird.

No. 113. The Nef.

No. 114. Gluttony.

Our forefathers seem to have remained a tolerably long time at table, the pleasures of which were by no means despised. Indeed, to judge by the sermons and satires of the middle ages, gluttony seems to have been a very prevalent vice among the clergy as well as the laity; and however miserably the lower classes lived, the tables of the rich were loaded with every delicacy that could be procured. The monks were proverbially bons vivants; and their failings in this respect are not unfrequently satirised in the illuminated ornaments of the mediæval manuscripts. We have an example in our cut [No. 114], taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Arundel Collection in the British Museum ([No. 91]); a monk is regaling himself on the sly, apparently upon dainty tarts or patties, while the dish is held up by a little cloven-footed imp who seems to enjoy the spirit of the thing, quite as much as the other enjoys the substance. Our next cut ([No. 115]) is taken from another manuscript in the British Museum of the same date (MS. Sloane, No. 2435), and forms an appropriate companion to the other. The monk here holds the office of cellarer, and is taking advantage of it to console himself on the sly.

No. 115. Monastic Devotions.

When the last course of the dinner had been served, the ewer and his companion again carried round the water and towel, and each guest washed. The tables were then cleared and the cloths withdrawn, but the drinking continued. The minstrels were now introduced. To judge by the illuminations, the most common musical attendant on such occasions was a harper, who repeated romances and told stories, accompanying them with his instrument. In one of our cuts of a dinner party ([No. 112]), given in a former page, we see the harper, apparently a blind man, led by his dog, introduced into the hall while the guests are still occupied with their repast. We frequently find a harper thus introduced, who is sometimes represented as sitting upon the floor, as in the accompanying illustration ([No. 116]) from the MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 71, v^o. Another similar representation occurs at folio 203, v^o of the same MS.

No. 116. The Harper in the Hall.

The barons and knights themselves, and their ladies, did not disdain to learn the harper’s craft; and Gower, in his “Confessio Amantis,” describes a scene in which a princess plays the harp at table. Appolinus is dining in the hall of king Pentapolin, with the king and queen and their fair daughter, and all his lords, when, reminded by the scene of the royal estate from which he is fallen, he sorrowed and took no meat; therefore the king, sympathising with him, bade his daughter take her harp and do all that she could to enliven that “sorry man:”—

And she to don her faderes heste,
Her harpe fette, and in the feste
Upon a chaire which thei fette,
Her selve next to this man she sette.

Appolinus in turn takes the harp, and proves himself a wonderful proficient, and

When he hath harped alle his fille,
The kingis hest to fulfille,
Awaie goth dishe, awaie goth cup,
Doun goth the borde, the cloth was up,
Thei risen and gone out of the halle.

No. 117. A Harper.

The minstrels, or jougleurs, formed a very important class of society in the middle ages, and no festival was considered as complete without their presence. They travelled singly or in parties, not only from house to house, but from country to country, and they generally brought with them, to amuse and please their hearers, the last new song, or the last new tale. When any great festival was announced, there was sure to be a general gathering of minstrels from all quarters, and as they possessed many methods of entertaining, for they joined the profession of mountebank, posture-master, and conjurer with that of music and story-telling, they were always welcome. No sooner, therefore, was the business of eating done, than the jougleur or jougleurs were brought forward, and sometimes, when the guests were in a more serious humour, they chanted the old romances of chivalry; at other times they repeated satirical poems, or party songs, according to the feelings or humour of those who were listening to them, or told love tales or scandalous anecdotes, or drolleries, accompanying them with acting, and intermingling them with performances of various kinds. The hall was proverbially the place for mirth, and as merriment of a coarse description suited the mediæval taste, the stories and performances of the jougleurs were often of an obscene character, even in the presence of the ladies. In the illuminated manuscripts, the minstrel is most commonly a harper, perhaps because these illuminations are usually found in the old romances of chivalry where the harper generally acts an important part, for the minstrels were not unfrequently employed in messages and intrigues. In general the harp is wrapped in some sort of drapery, as represented in our cut [No. 117], taken from a MS. in the National Library of Paris, which was perhaps the bag in which the minstrel carried it, and may have been attached to the bottom of the instrument. The accompanying scene of minstrelsy is taken from a manuscript of the romance of Guyron le Courtois in the French National Library, No. 6976.

No. 118. Minstrelsy.

The dinner was always accompanied by music, and itinerant minstrels, mountebanks, and performers of all descriptions, were allowed free access to the hall to amuse the guests by their performances. These were intermixed with dancing and tumbling, and often with exhibitions of a very gross character, which, however, amid the looseness of mediæval manners, appear to have excited no disgust. These practices are curiously illustrated in some of the mediæval illuminations. In the account of the death of John the Baptist, as given in the gospels (Matthew xiv. 6, and Mark vi. 21), we are told, that at the feast given by Herod on his birthday, his daughter Herodias came into the feasting-hall, and (according to our English version) danced before him and his guests. The Latin vulgate has saltasset, which is equivalent to the English word but the mediæval writers took the lady’s performances to be those of a regular wandering jougleur; and in two illuminated manuscripts of the early part of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum, she is pictured as performing tricks very similar to those exhibited by the modern beggar-boys in our streets. In the first of these ([No. 119]), taken from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., the princess is supporting herself upon her hands with her legs in the air, to the evident admiration of the king, though the guests seem to be paying less attention to her feats of activity. In the second ([No. 120]), from the Harleian MS. No. 1527, she is represented in a similar position, but more evidently making a somersault. She is here accompanied by a female attendant, who expresses no less delight at her skill than the king and his guests.

No. 119. King Herod and his Daughter Herodias.

No. 120. Herod and Herodias.

It would appear from various accounts that it was not, unless perhaps at an early period, the custom in France to sit long after dinner at table drinking wine, as it certainly was in England, where, no doubt, the practice was derived from the Anglo-Saxons. Numerous allusions might be pointed out, which show how much our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were addicted to this practice of sitting in their halls and drinking during the latter part of their day; and it was then that they listened to the minstrel’s song, told stories of their own feats and adventures, and made proof of their powers in hard drinking. From some of these allusions, which we have quoted in an earlier chapter, it is equally clear, that these drinking-bouts often ended in sanguinary, and not unfrequently in fatal, brawls. Such scenes of discord in the hall occur also in the early French metrical romances, but they take place usually at the beginning of dinner, when the guests are taking their places, or during the meal. In “Parise la Duchesse,” a scene of this description occurs, in which the great feudal barons and knights fight with the provisions which had been served at the tables: “There,” says the poet, “you might see them throw cheeses, and quartern-loaves, and great pieces of flesh, and great steel knives”— Là veissiez jeter fromages et cartiers,
Et granz pieces de char, et granz cotiauz d’acier
—Roman de Parise, p. 173.
In “Garin le Loherain” (vol. ii. p. 17), at a feast at which the emperor and his empress were present, a fight commences between the two great baronial parties who were their guests, by a chief of one party striking one of the other party with a goblet; the cooks are brought out of the kitchen to take part in it, with their pestles, ladles, and pot-hooks, led by duke Begon, who had seized a spit, full of birds, as the weapon which came first to hand; and the contest is not appeased until many are killed and wounded.

The preceding remarks, of course, apply chiefly to the tables of the prince, the noble, and the wealthy gentleman, where alone this degree of profusion and of ceremony reigned; and to those of the monastic houses and of the higher clergy, where, if possible, the luxury even of princes was overpassed. The examples of clerical and monastic extravagance in feasting are so numerous, that I will not venture on this occasion to enter upon them any further. All recorded facts would lead us to conclude, that the ordinary course of living of the monks was much more luxurious than that of the clerical lords of the land, who, indeed, seem to have lived, on ordinary occasions, with some degree of simplicity, except that the great number of people who dined at their expense, required a very large quantity of provisions. Even men of rank, when dining alone, or hastily, are described as being satisfied with a very limited variety of food. In the romance of “Garin,” when Rigaud, one of the barons of “Garin’s” party, arrives at court with important news, and very hungry, the empress orders him to be served with a large vessel of wine (explained by a various reading to be equivalent to a pot), four loaves (the loaves appear usually to have been small), and a roasted peacock— On li aporte plain un barris de vin,
Et quatre pains, et un paon rosti.
—Garin le Loherain, vol. ii. p. 257.
In a pane of painted glass in the possession of Dr. Henry Johnson, of Shrewsbury, of Flemish workmanship of about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and representing the story of the Prodigal Son, the Prodigal is seated at table with a party of dissolute women, feasting upon a pasty. It is reproduced in our cut [No. 121]. They appear to have only one drinking-cup among them, but the wine is served from a very rich goblet. We cannot, however, always judge the character of a feast by the articles placed on the table by the mediæval illuminators, for they were in the constant habit of drawing things conventionally, and they seem to have found a difficulty—perhaps in consequence of their ignorance of perspective—in representing a crowded table. Our cut [No. 122], on the following page, taken from MS. Reg. 10 E. iv., in which we recognize again our old friend the holy-water clerc, represents a table which is certainly very sparingly furnished, although the persons seated at it seem to belong to a respectable class in society. Some cooked articles, perhaps meat, on a stand, bread, a single knife to cut the provisions, and one pot, probably of ale, from which they seem to have drunk without the intervention of a glass, form the whole service.

No. 121. Feasting on a Pasty.

We find allusions from time to time to the style of living of the class in the country answering to our yeomanry, and of the bourgeoisie in the towns, which appears to have been sufficiently plain. In the romance of “Berte” (p. 78), when Berte finds shelter at the house of the farmer Symon, they give her, for refreshment, a chicken and wine. In the fabliau of the “Vilain mire” (Barbazan, vol. iii. p. 3), the farmer, who had saved money, and become tolerably rich, had no such luxuries as salmon or partridge, but his provisions consisted only of bread and wine, and fried eggs, and cheese in abundance—

N’orent pas saumon ne pertris,
Pain et vin orent, et oés fris,
Et du fromage à grant plenté.

No. 122. A Dinner tête-à-tête.

The franklin, in Chaucer, is put forward as an example of great liberality in the articles of provisions:—

An householdere, and that a gret, was he,
Seynt Julian he was in his countré,
His breed, his ale, was alway after oon;
A bettre envyned man was nowher noon.
Withoute bake mete was never his hous,
Of fleissch and fissch, and that so plentyvous,
It snewed in his hous of mete and drynke,
Of alle deyntees that men cowde thynke.
Aftur the sondry sesouns of the yeer,
He chaunged hem at mete and at soper.
Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewe,
And many a brem and many a luce in stewe (fish pond),
Woo was his cook, but if his sauce were
Poynant and scharp, and redy al his gere;
His table dormant in his halle alway
Stood redy covered al the longe day.
—Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 341.

A story in the celebrated collection of the Cent. Nouvelles Nouvelles (Nouv. 83), composed soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, gives us some notion of the store of provisions in the house of an ordinary burgher. A worthy and pious demoiselle—that is, a woman of the respectable class of bourgeoisie, who was, in this case, a widow—invited a monk to dine with her, out of charity. They dined without other company, and were served by a chambrière or maid-servant, and a man-servant or valet. The course of meat, which was first placed on the table, consisted of porée, or soup, bacon, pork tripes, and a roasted ox’s tongue. But the demoiselle had miscalculated the voracity of her guest, for, before she had made much progress in her porée, he had devoured everything on the table, and left nothing but empty dishes. On seeing this, his hostess ordered her servants to put on the table a piece of good salt beef, and a large piece of choice mutton; but he ate these also, to her no little astonishment, and she was obliged to send for a fine ham, which had been cooked the day before, and which appears to have been all the meat left in the house. The monk devoured this, and left nothing but the bone. The course which would have followed the first service was then laid on the table, consisting of a “very fine fat cheese,” and a dish well furnished with tarts, apples, and cheese, which also quickly followed the meat. It appears from this story that the ordinary dinner of a respectable burgher consisted of a soup, and two or three plain dishes of meat, followed by cheese, pastry, and fruit. An illumination, illustrative of another tale in this collection, in the unique manuscript preserved in the Hunterian Library, at Glasgow, and copied in the annexed cut ([No. 123]), represents a dinner-table of an ordinary person of this class of society, which is not over largely furnished. We see only bread in the middle, what appears to be intended for a ham at one end, and at the other a dish, perhaps of cakes or tarts. The lower classes lived, of course, much more meanly than the others; but we have fewer allusions to them in the earlier mediæval literature, as they were looked upon as a class hardly worth describing. This class was, no doubt, much more miserable in France than in England. A French moral poem of the fourteenth century, entitled “Le Chemin de Pauvreté et de Richesse,” represents the poor labourers as having no other food than bread, garlic, and salt, with water to drink:—

N’y ot si grant ne si petit
Qui ne preist grant appetit
En pain sec, en aux, et en sel,
Ne il ne mengoit riens en el,
Mouton, buef, oye, ne poucin;
Et puis prenoient le bacin,
A deux mains, plain d’eaue, et buvoient.

No. 123. A Frugal Repast.

As I have said, the dresser (dressoir) or cupboard was the only important article of furniture in the hall, besides the tables and benches. It was a mere cupboard for the plate, and had generally steps to enable the servants to reach the articles that were placed high up in it, but it is rarely represented in pictured manuscripts before the fifteenth century, when the illuminators began to introduce more detail into their works. The reader may form a notion of its contents, from the list of the service of plate given by Edward I. of England to his daughter Margaret, after her marriage with the duke of Brabant; it consisted of forty-six silver cups with feet, for drinking; six wine pitchers, four ewers for water, four basins with gilt escutcheons, six great silver dishes for entremets; one hundred and twenty smaller dishes; a hundred and twenty salts; one gilt salt, for her own use; seventy-two spoons; and three silver spice-plates with a spice-spoon.

The dresser, as well as all the furniture of the hall, was in the care of the groom; it was his business to lay them out, and to take them away again. It appears to have been the usual custom to take away the boards and tressels (forming the tables) at the same time as the cloth. The company remained seated on the benches, and the drinking-cups were handed round to them. So tells us the “Boke of Curtasye”—

Whenne they have wasshen, and grace is sayde,
Away he takes at a brayde (at once),
Avoydes the borde into the store,
Tase away the trestles that been so store.

CHAPTER IX.
THE MINSTREL.—HIS POSITION UNDER THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—THE NORMAN TROUVERE, MENESTREL, AND JOUGLEUR.—THEIR CONDITION.—RUTEBEUF.—DIFFERENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN USE AMONG THE MINSTRELS.—THE BEVERLEY MINSTRELS.

The minstrel acted so very prominent a part in the household and domestic arrangements during the middle ages, that a volume on the history of domestic manners would be incomplete without some more detailed account of his profession than the slight and occasional notices given in the preceding pages.

Our information relating to the Anglo-Saxon minstrel is very imperfect. He had two names—scop, which meant literally a “maker,” and belonged probably to the primitive bard or poet; and glig-man, or gleo-man, the modern gleeman, which signifies literally a man who furnished joy or pleasure, and appears to have had a more comprehensive application, which included all professional performers for other people’s amusement. In Beowulf (l. 180), the “song of the bard” (sang scopes) is accompanied by the sound of the harp (hearpan swég); and it is probable that the harp was the special instrument of the old Saxon bard, who chanted the mythic and heroic poems of the race. The gleemen played on a variety of instruments, and they also exhibited a variety of other performances for the amusement of the hearers or spectators. In our engraving from an Anglo-Saxon illumination (p. 37), one of the gleemen is tossing knives and balls, which seems to have been considered a favourite exhibition of skill down to a much later period. The early English Rule of Nuns (printed by the Camden Society) says of the wrathful man, that “he skirmishes before the devil with knives, and he is his knife-tosser, and plays with swords, and balances them upon his tongue by the sharp point.” In the Life of Hereward, the gleeman (whose name is there translated by joculator) is represented as conciliating the favour of the new Norman lords by mimicking the unrefined manners of the Saxons, and throwing upon them indecent jests and reproaches. But, in the later Anglo-Saxon period at least, the words scop and gleóman appear to have been considered as equivalent; for, in another hall-scene in Beowulf, where the scop performs his craft, we are told that— Leoð wæs asungen, The lay was sung, gleómannes gyd, the gleeman’s recital, gamen eft astáh, pastime began again, beorhtode benc-swég. the bench-noise became loud. —Beowulf, l. 2323. There is here evidently an intimation of merrier songs than those sung by the scop, and whatever his performances were, they drew a louder welcome. And in a fragment of another romance which has come down to us, the gleeman Widseth bears witness to the wandering character of his class, and enumerates in a long list the various courts of different chiefs and peoples which he had visited. We learn, also, that among the Anglo-Saxons there were gleemen attached to the courts or households of the kings and great chieftains. Under Edward the Confessor, as we learn from the Domesday Survey, Berdic, the king’s joculator, possessed three villas in Gloucestershire.

On the continent, when we first become acquainted with the history of the popular literature, we find the minstrels, the representatives of the ancient bards, appearing as the composers and chanters of the poems which told the stories of the old heroes of romance, and they seem also to have been accompanied usually with the harp, or with some other stringed instrument. They speak of themselves, in these poems, as wandering about from castle to castle, wherever any feasting was going on, as being everywhere welcome, and as depending upon the liberality either of the lord of the feast, or of the guests, for their living. Occasional complaints would lead us to suppose that this liberality was not always great, and the poems themselves contain formules of begging appeals, which are not very dignified or delicate. Thus, in the romance of “Gui de Bourgogne,” the minstrel interrupts his narrative, to inform his hearers that “Whoever wishes to hear any more of this poem, must make haste to open his purse, for it is now high time that he give me something”— Qui or voldra chançon oïr et escouter,
Si voist isnelement sa boursse desfermer,
Qu’il est hui mès bien tans qu’il me doie doner.
—Gui de Bourgogne, l. 4136.
In like manner, in the romance of “Huon de Bordeaux,” the minstrel, after having recited nearly five thousand lines, makes his excuse for discontinuing until another day. He reminds his auditors that it is near vespers, and that he is weary, and invites them to return next day after dinner, begging each of them to bring with him a maille, or halfpenny, and complaining of the meanness of those who were accustomed to give so small a coin as the poitivine “to the courteous minstrel.” The minstrel seems to have calculated that this hint might not be sufficient, and that they would require being reminded of it, for, after some two or three hundred lines of the next day’s recital, he introduces another formule of appeal to the purses of his hearers. “Take notice,” he goes on to say, “as may God give me health, I will immediately put a stop to my song; ... and I at once excommunicate all those who shall not visit their purses in order to give something to my wife”— Mais saciés bien, se Dix me doinst santé,
Ma cançon tost vous ferai desiner;
Tous chiaus escumenie, ...
* * * * *
Qui n’iront à lour bourses pour ma feme donner.
—Huon de Bordeaux, l. 5482.
These minstrels, too, display great jealousy of one another, and especially of what they term the new minstrels, exclaiming against the decadence of the profession.

It would appear, indeed, that these French minstrels, the poets by profession, who now become known to us by the name of trouvères, or inventors (in the language of the south of France, trobadors), held a position towards the jougleurs, or jogleurs[25] (from the Latin joculatores, and this again from jocus, game), which the Anglo-Saxon scop held towards the gleeman. Though the mass of the minstrels did get their living as itinerant songsters, they might be respectable, and sometimes there was a man of high rank who became a minstrel for his pleasure; but the jougleurs, as a body, belonged to the lowest and most degraded class of mediæval society, that of the ribalds or letchers, and the more respectable minstrels of former days were probably falling gradually into their ranks. It was the class which abandoned itself without reserve to the mere amusement and pleasure of the aristocracy, and it seems to have been greatly increased by the Crusades, when the jougleurs of the west were brought into relations with those of the east, and learnt a multitude of new ways of exciting attention and making mirth, of which they were previously ignorant. The jougleurs had now become, in addition to their older accomplishments, magicians and conjurers, and wonderfully skilled in every description of sleight of hand, and it is from these qualities that we have derived the modern signification of the word juggler. They had also adopted the profession of the eastern story-tellers, as well as their stories, which, however, they turned into verse; and they brought into the west many other exhibitions which did not tend to raise the standard of western morals.

The character of the minstrels, or jougleurs, their wandering life, and the ease with which they were admitted everywhere, caused them to be employed extensively as spies, and as bearers of secret news, and led people to adopt the disguise of a minstrel, as one which enabled them to pass through difficulties unobserved and unchallenged. In the story of Eustace the monk, when Eustace sought to escape from England, to avoid the pursuit of king John, he took a fiddle and a bow (a fiddlestick), and dressed himself as a minstrel, and in this garb he arrived at the coast, and, finding a merchant ready to sail, entered the ship with him. But the steersman, who did not recognise the minstrel as one of the passengers, ordered him out. Eustace expostulated, represented that he was a minstrel, and, after some dispute, the steersman, who seems to have had some suspicions either of his disguise or of his skill, concluded by putting the question, “At all events, if thou knowest any song, friend, let us have it.” The monk was not skilled in singing, but he replied boldly, “Know I one? Yea! of Agoulant, and Aymon, or of Blonchadin, or of Florence of Rome (these were all early metrical romances); there is not a song in the whole world but I know it. I should be delighted, no doubt, to afford you amusement; but, in truth, the sea frightens me so much at present, that I could not sing a song worth hearing.” He was allowed to pass. Some of those who adopted the disguise of the jougleur were better able to sustain it, and minstrelsy became considered as a polite accomplishment, perhaps partly on account of its utility. There is, in the history of the Fitz-Warines, a remarkable character of this description named John de Raunpaygne. Fulke Fitz-Warine had formed a design against his great enemy, Moris Fitz-Roger, and he established himself, with his fellow outlaws, in the forest near Whittington, in Shropshire, to watch him. Fulke then called to him John de Raunpaygne. “John,” said he, “you know enough of minstrelsy and joglery; dare you go to Whittington, and play before Moris Fitz-Roger, and spy how things are going on?” “Yea,” said John. He crushed a herb, and put it in his mouth, and his face began immediately to swell, and became so discoloured, that his own companions hardly knew him; and he dressed himself in poor clothes, and “took his box with his instruments of joglery and a great staff in his hand;” and thus he went to Whittington, and presented himself at the castle, and said that he was a jogeleur. The porter carried him to Sir Moris, who received him well, inquired in the first place for news, and receiving intelligence which pleased him (it was designedly false), he gave the minstrel a valuable silver cup as a reward. Now, “John de Raunpaygne was very ill-favoured in face and body, and on this account the ribalds of the household made game of him, and treated him roughly, and pulled him by his hair and by his feet. John raised his staff, and struck a ribald on the head, that his brain flew into the middle of the place. ‘Wretched ribald,’ said the lord, ‘what hast thou done?’ ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘for God’s mercy, I cannot help it; I have a disease which is very grievous, which you may see by my swollen face. And this disease takes entire possession of me at certain hours of the day, when I have no power to govern myself.’ Moris swore a great oath, that if it were not for the news he had brought, he would have his head cut off immediately. The jogeleur hastened his departure, for the time he remained there seemed very long.” The result of this adventure was the attack upon and slaughter of Moris Fitz-Roger by Fulk Fitz-Warine. Some time after this, Fulk Fitz-Warine, having recovered his castle of Whittington, was lamenting over the loss of his friend, Sir Audulf de Bracy, who had fallen into the hands of king John’s emissaries, and was a prisoner in Shrewsbury castle, where king John had come to make his temporary residence, and again asked the aid of John de Raunpaygne, who promised to make a visit to the king. “John de Raunpaygne knew enough of tabor, harp, fiddle, citole, and joglery; and he attired himself very richly, like an earl or baron, and he caused his hair and all his body to be entirely dyed as black as jet, so that nothing was white except his teeth. And he hung round his neck a very handsome tabor, and then, mounting a handsome palfrey, rode through the town of Shrewsbury to the gate of the castle; and by many a one was he looked at. John came before the king, and placed himself on his knees, and saluted the king very courteously. The king returned his salutation, and asked him whence he came. ‘Sire,’ said he, ‘I am an Ethiopian minstrel, born in Ethiopia.’ Said the king, ‘Are all the people in your land of your colour?’ ‘Yea, my lord, man and woman.’ ... John, during the day, made great minstrelsy of tabor and other instruments. When the king was gone to bed, Sir Henry de Audeley sent for the black minstrel, and led him into his chamber. And they made great melody; and when Sir Henry had drunk well, then he said to a valet, ‘Go and fetch Sir Audulf de Bracy, whom the king will put to death to-morrow; for he shall have a good night of it before his death.’ The valet soon brought Sir Audulf into the chamber. Then they talked and played. John commenced a song which Sir Audulf used to sing; Sir Audulf raised his head, looked at him full in the face, and with great difficulty recognised him. Sir Henry asked for some drink; John was very serviceable, jumped nimbly on his feet, and served the cup before them all. John was sly, he threw a powder into the cup, which nobody perceived, for he was a good jogeleur, and all who drunk became so sleepy that, soon after drinking, they lay down and fell asleep. John de Raunpaygne and Sir Audulf de Bracy took the opportunity for making their escape. We have here a mysterious intimation of the fact that the minstrel was employed also in dark deeds of poisoning. Still later on in the story of Fulk Fitz-Warine, the hero himself goes to a tournament in France in disguise, and John de Raunpaygne resumes his old character of a jougleur.” “John,” says the narrative, “was very richly attired, and well mounted, and he had a very rich tabor, and he struck the tabor at the entry to the lifts, that the hills and valleys rebounded, and the horses became joyful.”

All these anecdotes reveal to us minstrels who were perfectly free, and wandered from place to place at will; but there were others who were retained by and in the regular employ of individuals. The king had his minstrels, and so most of the barons had their household minstrels. In one of the mediæval Latin stories, current in this country probably as early as the thirteenth century, we are told that a jougleur (mimus he is called in the Latin, a word used at this time as synonymous with joculator) presented himself at the gate of a certain lord to enter the hall and eat (for the table in those days was rarely refused to a minstrel), but he was stopped by the porter, who asked him to what lord he was attached, evidently thinking, as was thought some three centuries later, that the treatment merited by the servant depended on the quality of the master. The minstrel replied that his master was God. When the porter communicated this response to his churlish lord, or equally churlish steward, they replied that if he had no other lord, he should not be admitted there. When the jougleur heard this, he said that he was the devil’s own servant; whereupon he was received joyfully, “because he was a good fellow” (quia bonus socius erat). The records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries contain many entries of payments to the king’s minstrels, and the names of some of them are preserved. On great festivals at the king’s court, minstrels came to seek employment from every part of the world which acknowledged the reign of feudalism. Four hundred and twenty-six minstrels were present at the marriage festivities of the princess Margaret, daughter of Edward I.; and several hundred played before the same monarch at the Whitsuntide of 1306. This affluence of minstrels gave rise to the practice of building a large music-gallery at one end of the mediæval hall, which seems to have been introduced in the fourteenth century. At this time minstrels were sometimes employed for very singular purposes, such as for soothing the king when undergoing a disagreeable operation. We learn from the wardrobe accounts that, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Edward I. (A.D. 1297) twenty shillings, or about fifteen pounds in modern money, was given to the minstrel of Sir John Maltravers as a reward for performing before the king while he was bled.

The king’s minstrels, and those of the great lords, were very well paid, but the great mass of the profession, who depended only on what they obtained in gifts at each particular feast, which they recklessly squandered away as soon as they got it, lived a hard as it was a vagabond life. The king’s minstrels, in the fourteenth century in England, received from sixpence to sevenpence halfpenny a day, that is from seven shillings and sixpence to nine shillings and fourpence halfpenny, during the whole year. On the other hand, Colin Muset, one of the best of the French song-writers of the thirteenth century, complains of the want of liberality shown to him by the great baron before whom he had played on the viol in his hostel, and who had given him nothing, not even his wages:— Sire quens, j’ai vielé
Devant vos en vostre ostel;
Si ne m’avez riens donné,
Ne mes gages acquiter.
And he laments that he is obliged to go home in poverty, because his wife always received him ill when he returned to her with an empty purse, whereas, when he carried back his malle well stuffed, he was covered with caresses by his whole family. The French poet Rutebeuf, whose works have been collected and published by M. Jubinal, may be considered as the type of the better class of minstrels at this period, and he has become an object of especial interest to us in consequence of the number of his shorter effusions which describe his own position in life. The first piece in the collection has for its subject his own poverty. He complains of being reduced to such distress, that he had been obliged for some time to live upon the generosity of his friends; that people no longer showed any liberality to poor minstrels; that he was perishing with cold and hunger; and that he had no other bed but the bare straw. In another poem, entitled Rutebeuf’s Marriage, he informs us that his privations were made more painful by the circumstance of his having a shrew for his wife. In a third he laments over the loss of the sight of his right eye, and informs us that, among other misfortunes, his wife had just been delivered of a child, and his horse had broke its leg, so that, while he had no means of supporting a nurse for the former, the latter accident had deprived him of the power of going to any distance to exercise his minstrelsy craft. Rutebeuf repeats his laments on his extreme poverty in several other pieces, and they have an echo in those of other minstrels of his age. We find, in fact, in the verse-writers of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and in some of those of the fourteenth, a general complaint of the neglect of the minstrels, and of the degeneracy of minstrelsy. In a poem against the growing taste for the tabor, printed in M. Jubinal’s volume, entitled “Jougleurs et Trouvères,” the low state into which the minstrels’ art had fallen is ascribed to a growing love for instruments of an undignified character, such as the tabor, which is said to have been brought to us from the Arabs, and the pipe. If an ignorant shepherd from the field, says the writer of this poem, but play on the tabor and pipe, he becomes more popular than the man who plays on the viol ever so well— Quar s’uns bergiers de chans tabore et chalemele,
Plus tost est apelé que cil qui bien viele.
Everybody followed the tabor, he says, and the good minstrels were no longer in vogue, though their fiddles were so much superior to the flutes, and flajolets (flajols), and tabors of the others. He consoles himself, however, with the reflection that the holy Virgin Mary never loved the tabor, and that no such vulgar instrument was admitted at her wedding; while she had in various ways shown her favour to the jougleurs. “I pray God,” our minstrel continues, “that he will send mischief to him who first made a tabor, for it is an instrument which ought to please nobody. No rich man ought to love the sound of a tabor, which is bad for people’s heads; for, if stretched tight, and struck hard, it may be heard at half a league’s distance:”—

Qui primes sist tabor. Diex li envoit contraire!
Que c’estrument i est qu’ à nului ne doit plaire.

Nus riches hom ne doit son de tabour amer.
Quant il est bien tendu et on le vent hurter,
De demie grant lieue le puet-on escouter;
Ci a trop mauvès son por son chief conforter.

No. 124. An Organ Player.

The musical instruments used by the mediæval gleemen and minstrels form in themselves a not uninteresting subject. Those enumerated in the Anglo-Saxon vocabularies are the harp (hearpe, cithara), the byme, or trumpet, the pipe, “or whistle,” the fithele, viol, or fiddle, the horn, and the trumpet, the latter of which was called in Anglo-Saxon truth and særga. To these we must certainly add a few others, for the drum or tabor seems to have been in use among them under some form, as well as the cymbal, hand-bells, lyre struck by a plectrum, and the organ, which latter was already the favourite church instrument. A portable organ was in use in the middle ages, of which we give a figure ([No. 124]), from a manuscript in the British Museum of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 14 E. iii.). This hand-organ was known also by the name of the dulcimer. It occurs again in the following group ([No. 125]), taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,293), where the performer on the dulcimer is accompanied by two other minstrels, one playing on the bagpipe, the other on the viol or fiddle.

No. 125. A Group of Minstrels.

No. 126. David and his Musicians.

Each of the figures in this group is dressed in a costume so different from the others that one might almost suppose them engaged in a masquerade, and they seem to discountenance the notion that the minstrels were in the habit of wearing any dress peculiar to their class. In this respect, their testimony seems to be confirmed by the circumstance that minstrels are mentioned sometimes as wearing the dresses which have been given them, among other gifts, as a reward for their performances. The illuminated letter here introduced ([No. 126]), which is taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 5102), represents king David singing his psalms to the harp, while three musicians accompany him. The first, who sits beside him, is playing on the shalm or psaltery, which is frequently figured in the illuminations of manuscripts. One of the two upper figures is playing on bells, which also is a description of music often represented in the illuminations of different periods; and the other is blowing the horn. These are all instruments of solemn and ecclesiastical music. In the next cut ([No. 127]), taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), the shalm is placed in the hands of a nun, while a friar is performing on a rather singularly shaped cittern, or lute.

No. 127. Musicians of the Cloister.

No. 128. The Angelic Choir.

No. 129. An Angel Playing on the Shalm.

In other manuscripts we find the ordinary musical instruments placed in the hands of the angels; as in the early fourteenth century MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., in a representation (copied in our cut [No. 128]) of the creation with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy, an angelic choir are making melody on the trumpet, fiddle, cittern, shalm, and harp. There is another choir of angels at p. 168 of the same MS., with two citterns and two shalms, a fiddle and a trumpet. Similar representations occur in the choirs of churches. In the bosses of the ceiling of Tewkesbury abbey church we see angels playing the cittern (with a plectrum), the harp (with its cover seen enveloping the lower half of the instrument), and the cymbals. In the choir of Lincoln cathedral, some of the series of angels which fill the spandrels of its arcades, and which have given to it the name of the angel choir, are playing instruments, such as the trumpet, double pipe, pipe and tabret, dulcimer, viol and harp, as if to represent the heavenly choir attuning their praises in harmony with the human choir below:—“therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name.” We will introduce here another drawing of an angelic minstrel ([No. 129]), playing a shalm, from the Royal MS. 14 E. iii.; others occur at folio 1 of the same MS. It has been suggested that the band of village musicians with flute, violin, clarionet, and bass-viol, whom most of us have seen occupying the singing-gallery of some country church, are probably not inaccurate representatives of the band of minstrels who occupied the rood-lofts in mediæval times. In this period of the middle ages, indeed, music seems to have had a great charm for all classes of society, and each class appears in turn in the minstrel character in the illuminations of the manuscripts. Even the shepherds, throughout the middle ages, seem to have been musical, like the swains of Theocritus or Virgil; for we constantly find them represented playing upon instruments; and in confirmation we give a couple of goatherds ([No. 130]), from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 83, of early fourteenth century date: they are playing on the pipe and horn. But, besides these instruments, the bagpipe was also a rustic instrument: there is a shepherd playing upon one on folio 112 of the same MS. (given in our cut [No. 131]): and again, in the early fourteenth century MS. Reg. 2 B. vi., on the reverse of folio 8, is a group of shepherds, one of whom plays a small pipe, and another the bagpipes. Chaucer (in the “House of Fame”) mentions— Pipes made of grene corne,
As han thise lytel herde gromes,
That kepen bestis in the bromes.
It is curious to find that even at so late a period as the reign of queen Mary, they still officiated at weddings and other merrymakings in their villages, and even sometimes excited the jealousy of the professors of the joyous science, as we have seen in the early French poem against the taborers.

No. 130. A Group of Shepherds.

No. 131. A Bagpiper.

No. 132. The Lady and Tambourine.

No. 133. A Drummer.

I give next (cut [No. 132]) a representation of a female minstrel playing the tambourine; it is also taken from a MS. of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 182).

The earliest instance yet met with of the modern-shaped drum is contained in the Coronation Book of Richard II., preserved in the Chapter-house. Westminster, and is represented in the annexed cut ([No. 133]). This mediæval drummer is clearly intended to be playing on two drums at once; and, in considering their forms and position, we must make some allowance for the mediæval neglect of perspective.

No. 134. Blowing the Trumpet and Playing on the Cymbals.

In the mediæval vocabularies we find several lists of musical instruments then best known. Thus John de Garlande, in the middle of the thirteenth century, enumerates, as the minstrels who were to be seen in the houses of the wealthy, individuals who performed on the instruments which he terms in Latin, lyra (meaning the harp), tibia (the flute), cornu (the horn), vidula (the fiddle), sistrum (the drum), giga (the gittern), symphonia (a symphony), psalterium (the psaltery), chorus, citola (the cittern), tympanum (the tabor), and cymbala (cymbals). The English glossaries of the fifteenth century add to these the trumpet, the ribibe (a sort of fiddle), organs, and the crowd. The forms of these instruments of various periods will be found in the illustrations which have been given in the course of the present chapter. It will be well perhaps to enumerate again the most common; they are the harp, fiddle, cittern or lute, hand-organ or dulcimer, the shalm or psaltery, the pipe and tabor, pipes of various sizes played like clarionets, but called flutes, the double pipe, hand-bells, trumpets and horns, bagpipes, tambourine, tabret, drum, and cymbals. We give two further groups of figures in illustration of these instruments, both taken from the Royal MS. so often quoted, 2 B. vii. In the first ([No. 134]) we have a boy (apparently) playing the cymbals; and in the second (No. 135) an example of the double flute, which we have already seen in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (see before, pp. 35 and 65), and which appears to have been one of the musical instruments borrowed immediately from the Romans. In conclusion of this subject we give a group of musical instruments ([No. 136]) from one of the illustrations of the celebrated book entitled “Der Weise König,” a work of the close of the fifteenth century.

No. 135. The Dulcimer and Double Flute.

No. 136. Musical Instruments.

The early commentator on the Dictionarius, or Vocabulary, of John de Garlande, calls the musical instruments instrumenta leccatorum, (instruments of the letchers or ribalds), and I have already stated that the minstrels, or jougleurs, were considered as belonging generally to that degraded class of society. In the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, they are generally classed under the head of reprehensible or disgraceful professions, along with ribalds, heretics, harlots, and so forth. It was the same character which led them, a little later, to be proscribed in acts of parliament, under the titles of rogues and vagabonds. In the older poetry, too, they are often joined with disgraceful epithets. There is a curious early metrical story, or fabliau, which was made, no doubt, to be recited by the minstrels themselves, although it throws ridicule on their profession; it is entitled Les deux Troveors ribauz, “the two ribald trouvères,” and consists in a ludicrous dispute between them on their qualifications as minstrels. My readers must not suppose that at this time the reciters of poetry were a different or better class than those who performed jugglery and low buffoonery—for, in this poem, either of the two claimants to superiority boasts of his skill equally in possessing in his memory completely, and being able to recite well, the early Chansons de Geste, or Carlovingian romances, the later romances of chivalry, and the fabliaux or metrical stories; in playing upon the most fashionable musical instruments, such as the citole, the fiddle, and the gigue (gittern); in performing extraordinary feats and in sleight of hand; and even in making chaplets of flowers, and in acting as a spy or as a go-between in love intrigues. No doubt there were minstrels who kept themselves more respectable, but they were exceptions to the general character of the class, and were chiefly men in the service of the king or of the great barons. There appears also to have been, for a long time, a continued attempt to raise minstrelsy to a respectable position, and out of this attempt arose, in different places, companies and guilds. Of these, the most remarkable of which we have any knowledge in this country, was the ancient fraternity of minstrels of Beverley, in Yorkshire. When this company originated is not known; but it was of some consideration and wealth in the reign of Henry VI., when the church of St. Mary’s, in that town, was built; for the minstrels gave a pillar to it, on the capital of which a band of minstrels were sculptured. The cut below ([No. 137]) is copied from the engraving of this group, given in Carter’s “Ancient Painting and Sculpture.” The oldest existing document of the fraternity is a copy of laws of the time of Philip and Mary, similar to those by which all trade guilds were governed: their officers were an alderman and two stewards or seers (i. e. searchers); and the only items in their laws which throw any light upon the history or condition of the minstrels are—one which requires that they should not take “any new brother except he be mynstrell to some man of honour or worship, or waite of some towne corporate or other ancient town, or else of such honestye and conyng (knowledge) as shall be thought laudable and pleasant to the hearers there;” and another, to the effect that “no mylner, shepherd, or of other occupation, or husbandman, or husbandman servant, playing upon pype or other instrument, shall sue (follow) any wedding, or other thing that pertaineth to the said science, except in his own parish.” Institutions like these, however, had little effect in counteracting the natural decline of minstrelsy, for the state of society in which it existed was passing away. It would be curious to trace the changes in its history by the instruments which became especially characteristic of the popular jougleur. The harp had given way to the fiddle, and already, towards the end of the thirteenth century, the fiddle was yielding its place to the tabor. In the Anglo-Norman romance of Horn, of the thirteenth century, we are told of a ribald “who goes to marriages to play on the tabor”— A li piert qu’il est las un lechur
Ki à ces nocces vient pur juer od tabur;
and the curious fabliau of the king of England and the jougleur of Ely describes the latter as carrying his tabor swung to his neck—

Entour son col porta soun tabour.

No. 137. The Minstrels of Beverley.

CHAPTER X.
AMUSEMENTS AFTER DINNER.—GAMBLING.—THE GAME OF CHESS.—ITS HISTORY.—DICE.—TABLES.—DRAUGHTS.

The dinner hour, even among the highest ranks of society, was, as I have stated, early in the forenoon; and, except in the case of great feasts, it appears not to have been customary to sit long after dinner. Thus a great part of the day was left on people’s hands, to fill up with some description of amusement or occupation. After the dinner was taken away, and the ceremony of washing had been gone through, the wine cup appears to have been at least once passed round, before they all rose from table. The Camden Society has recently published an early French metrical romance (“Blonde of Oxford,” by Philippe de Reimes), which gives us a very interesting picture of the manners of the thirteenth century. Jean of Dammartin is represented as the son of a noble family in France, who comes to England to seek his fortune, and enters the service of an earl of Oxford, as one of the esquires in his household. There his duty is to attend upon the earl’s daughter, the lady Blonde, and to serve her at table. “After the meal, they wash their hands and then go to play, as each likes best, either in forests or on rivers (i.e. hunting or hawking), or in amusements of other kinds. Jean goes to which of them he likes, and, when he returns, he often goes to play in the chambers of the countess, with the ladies, who oblige him to teach them French.” Jean does his best to please them, for which he was qualified by his education, “For he was very well acquainted with chamber games, such as chess, tables, and dice, with which he entertains his damsel (Blonde); he often says ‘check’ and ‘mate’ to her, and he taught her to play many a game:”—

De jus de cambres seut assés,
D’eschés, de tables, et de dés,
Dont il sa damoisele esbat;
Souvent li dist eschek et mat;
De maint jeu à juer l’aprist.
—Blonde of Oxford, l. 399.

This is a correct picture of the usual occupations of the after-part of the day among the superior classes of society in the feudal ages; and scenes in accordance with it are often found in the illuminations of the mediæval manuscripts. One of these is represented in the engraving ([No. 138]) on the following page, taken from a manuscript of the fifteenth century, containing the romance of the “Quatre Fils d’Aymon,” and preserved in the Library of the Arsenal, in Paris. In the chamber in front a nobleman and one of the great ladies of his household are engaged at chess, while in the background we see other ladies enjoying themselves in the garden, which is shown to us with its summer-house and its flower-beds surrounded with fences of lattice-work. It may be remarked, that the attention of the chess-players is withdrawn suddenly from their game by the entrance of an armed knight, who appears in another compartment of the illumination in the manuscript.

Of the chamber games enumerated in the foregoing extract from the romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” that of chess was no doubt looked upon as by far the most distinguished. To play well at chess was considered as a very important part of an aristocratic education. Thus, in the “Chanson de Geste” (metrical romance) of Parise la Duchessse, the son of the heroine, who was brought up by the king in his palace, had no sooner reached his fifteenth year, than “he was taught first his letters, until he had made sufficient progress in them, and then he learnt to play at tables and chess,” and learnt these games so well, “that no man in this world was able to mate him:”— Quant l’anfès ot xv. anz et compliz et passez,
Premiers aprist à lettres, tant qu’il en sot assez;
Puis aprist-il as tables et à eschas joier,
It n’a ome an cest monde qui l’en peust mater.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 86.
In this numerous cycle of romances, scenes in which kings and princes, as well as nobles, are represented as occupying their leisure with the game of chess, occur very frequently, and sometimes the game forms an important incident in the story. In “Garin le Loherain,” a messenger hurries to Bordeaux, and finds count Thiebaut playing at chess with Berengier d’Autri. Thiebaut is so much excited by his news, that he pushes the chess-board violently from him, and scatters the chess-men about the place— Thiebaus l’oït, à pou n’enrage vis,
Li eschés boute, et le jeu espandit.
—Garin le Loherain, ii. 77.
So, in the same romance, the emperor Pepin, arriving at his camp, had no sooner entered his tent than, having put on a loose tunic (bliaut), and a mantle, he called for a chess-board, and sat down to play— Eschés demande, si est au jeu assis.
—Ib., ii. 127.
Even Witikind, the king of the pagan Saxons, is represented as amusing himself with this game. When the messenger, who carried him news that Charlemagne was on the way to make war upon him, arrived at “Tremoigne,” the palace of the Saxon king, he found Witikind playing at chess with Escorfaus de Lutise, and the Saxon queen. Sebile, who was also well acquainted with the game, looking on— A lui joe as eschas Escorfaus de Lutise;
Sebile les esgarde, qi do jeu est aprise.
—Chanson des Saxons, i. 91.
Witikind was so angry at this intelligence, that his face “became as red as a cherry,” and he broke the chess-board to pieces— D’ire et de mautalant rugist comme cerise;
Le message regarde, le geu peçoie et brise.
In the “Chanson de Geste” of Guerin de Montglaive, the story turns upon an imprudent act of Charlemagne, who stakes his whole kingdom upon a game of chess, and losing it to Guerin, is obliged to compound with him by surrendering to him his right to the city of Montglaive, then in the possession of the Saracens.

No. 138. A Mediæval after-dinner Scene.

These “Chansons de Geste,” formed upon the traditions of the early Carlovingian period, can only of course be taken as a picture of the manner of the age at which they were composed, that is, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and we know, from historical evidence, that the picture is strictly true. At that period chess certainly was what has been termed the royal game. The celebrated Walter Mapes, writing in the latter half of the twelfth century, gives a curious anecdote relating to tragical events which had occurred at the court of Britany, apparently in the earlier part of the same century. Alan of Britany, perhaps the last of the name who had ruled over that country, had, at the suggestion of his wife, entrapped a feudatory prince, Remelin, and subjected him to the loss of his eyes and other mutilations. Remelin’s son, Wigan, having escaped a similar fate, made war upon Alan, and reduced him to such extremities that, through the interference of the king of France, he made his peace with Wigan, by giving him his daughter in marriage, and thus for many years the country remained in peace. But it appears that the lady always shared in her father’s feuds, and looked with exulting contempt on her father’s mutilated enemy. One day she was playing with her husband at chess, and, towards the end of the game, Wigan, called away by some important business, asked one of his knights to take his place at the chess-board. The lady was the conqueror, and when she made her last move, she said to the knight, “It is not to you, but to the son of the mutilated that I say ‘mate.’” Wigan heard this sarcasm, and, deeply offended, hurried to the residence of his father-in-law, took him by surprise, and inflicted upon him the same mutilations which had been experienced by Remelin. Then, returning home, he engaged in another game with his wife, and, having gained it, threw the eyes and other parts of which her father had been deprived on the chess-board, exclaiming, “I say mate, to the daughter of the mutilated.” The story goes on to say that the lady concealed her desire of vengeance, until she found an opportunity of effecting the murder of her husband.

We need not be surprised if, among the turbulent barons of the middle ages, the game of chess often gave rise to disputes and sanguinary quarrels. The curious history of the Fitz-Warines, reduced to writing certainly in the thirteenth century, gives the following account of the origin of the feud between king John and Fulk Fitz-Warine, the outlaw:—“Young Fulk,” we are told, “was bred with the four sons of king Henry II., and was much beloved by them all except John; for he used often to quarrel with John. It happened that John and Fulk were sitting all alone in a chamber playing at chess; John took the chess-board and struck Fulk a great blow. Fulk felt himself hurt, raised his foot and struck John in the middle of the stomach, that his head went against the wall, and he became all weak and fainted. Fulk was in consternation; but he was glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, and he rubbed John’s ears, who recovered from his fainting-fit, and went to the king his father, and made a great complaint. ‘Hold your tongue, wretch,’ said the king, ‘you are always quarrelling. If Fulk did anything but good to you, it must have been by your own desert;’ and he called his master, and made him beat him finely and well for complaining.” Similar incidents recur continually in the early romances I have just quoted as the “Chansons de Geste,” which give us so vivid a picture of feudal times. A fatal quarrel of this kind was the cause of the feud between Charlemagne and Ogier le Danois. At one of the Easter festivals of the court of Charlemagne, the emperor’s son, Charles, and Bauduin, the illegitimate son of Ogier, went to play together. Bauduin and young Charles took a chess-board and sat down to the game for pastime. “They have arranged their chess-men on the board. The king’s son first moved his pawn, and young Bauduin moved his aufin (bishop) backwards. The king’s son thought to press him very hard, and moves his knight upon the other aufin. The one moved forward and the other backward so long, that young Bauduin said ‘mate’ to him in the corner:”— Il et Callos prisent un esquekier,
Au ju s’asisent por aus esbanier.
S’ont lor esches assis sor le tabler.
Li fix au roi traist son paon premier,
Bauduinés traist son aufin arier.
Li fix au roi le volt forment coitier,
Sus l’autre aufin a trait son chevalier.
Tant traist li uns avant et l’autre arier,
Bauduinés li dist mat en l’angler.
—Ogier de Danemarche, l. 3159.
The young prince was furious at his defeat, and, not content with treating the son of Ogier with the most insulting language, he seized the chess-board in his two hands, and struck him so violent a blow on the forehead, that he split his head, and scattered his brains over the floor. In a well-known illuminated manuscript of the fifteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 E. vi.), containing a copy of the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” this scene is represented in an illumination which is copied in our cut [No. 139]. Similar incidents are rather common in these old romances. In that of “Parise la Duchesse,” her young son, brought up as a foundling at the court of the king of Hungary, becomes an object of jealousy to the old nobles. Four of the sons of the latter conspire to murder him, and it is arranged that they shall invite him to go and play at chess with them in a retired cellar, and, having secretly provided themselves with knives, insult him, in order to draw him into a quarrel, and then stab him to death. “Hugues,” they said, “will you come with us to play at chess? you may gain a hundred francs on the gilt chess-board, and at the same time you will teach us chess and dice; for certainly you know the games much better than any of us.” Hugues seems to have been conscious of the frequency of quarrels arising from the game, for it was not until they had promised him that they would not seek any cause of dispute, that he accepted their invitation. They then led him into the cellar, and sat down at the chess-board. “He began by playing with the son of duke Granier; and each put down a hundred francs in coined money; but he had soon vanquished and mated them all, that not one of them was able to mate him:”— Au fil au duc Graner comença à juer;
Chascuns mist c. frans de deniers moniez;
Mais il les a trestoz et vancus et matez,
Que il n’i ot i. sol qui l’an poüft mater.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 105.
Hugues, in kindness, offered to teach them better how to play, without allowing them to risk their money, but they drew their knives upon him, and insulted him in the most outrageous terms. He killed the foremost of them with a blow of his fist, and seizing upon the chess-board for a weapon, for he was unarmed, he “brained” the other three with it. We learn from this anecdote that it was the custom in the middle ages to play at chess for money.

No. 139. A Quarrel at Chess.

As I have already remarked, these romances picture to us the manners of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and not those of the Carlovingian era. The period when the game of chess was first introduced into western Europe can only be conjectured, for writers of all descriptions were so much in the habit of employing the notions belonging to their own time in relating the events of the past, that we can place no dependence on anything which is not absolute contemporary evidence. The chess-board and men so long preserved in the treasury of St. Denis, and said to have belonged to Charlemagne, were, I think, probably, not older than the eleventh century, and appear to have had a Byzantine origin. If the game of chess had been known at the court of Charlemagne, I cannot but think that we should have found some distinct allusion to it. The earliest mention of this game that we know is found in a letter from Damianus, cardinal bishop of Ostia, to Alexander II., who was elected to the papacy in 1061, and enjoyed it till 1073. Damianus tells the pope how he was travelling with a bishop of Florence, when, “having arrived in the evening at a hostel, I withdrew,” he says, “into the cell of a priest, while he remained with the crowd of travellers in the spacious house. In the morning, I was informed by my servant that the aforesaid bishop had been playing at the game of chess; which information, like an arrow, pierced my heart very acutely. At a convenient hour, I sent for him, and said in a tone of severe reproof, ‘The hand is stretched out, the rod is ready for the back of the offender.’ ‘Let the fault be proved,’ said he, ‘and penance shall not be refused.’ ‘Was it well,’ I rejoined, ‘was it worthy of the character you bear, to spend the evening in the vanity of chess-play (in vanitate scachorum), and defile the hands and tongue, which ought to be the mediator between man and the Deity? Are you not aware that, by the canonical law, bishops, who are dice-players, are ordered to be deposed?’ He, however, making himself a shield of defence from the difference in the names, said that dice was one thing, and chess another; consequently that the canon only forbade dice, but that it tacitly allowed chess. To which I replied, ‘Chess,’ I said, ‘is not named in the text, but the general term of dice comprehends both the games. Wherefore, since dice are prohibited, and chess is not expressly mentioned, it follows, without doubt, that both kinds of play are included under one term, and equally condemned?’” This occurred in Italy, and it is evident from it that the game of chess was then well known there, though I think we have a right to conclude from it, that it had not been long known. There appears to be little room for doubting, that chess was, like so many other mediæval practices, an oriental invention, that the Byzantine Greeks derived it from the Saracens, and that from them it came by way of Italy to France.

The knowledge of the game of chess, however, seems to have been brought more directly from the East by the Scandinavian navigators, to whom such a means of passing time in their distant voyages, and in their long nights at home, was most welcome, and who soon became extraordinarily attached to it, and displayed their ingenuity in elaborately carving chess-men in ivory (that is, in the ivory of the walrus), which seem to have found an extensive market in other countries. In the year 1831, a considerable number of these carved ivory chess-men were found on the coast of the Isle of Lewis, probably the result of some shipwreck in the twelfth century, for to that period they belong. They formed part of at least seven sets, and had therefore probably been the stock of a dealer. Some of them were obtained by the British Museum, and a very learned and valuable paper on them was communicated by sir Frederic Madden to the Society of Antiquaries, and printed in the twenty-fourth volume of the Archæologia. Some of the best of them, however, remained in private hands, and have more recently passed into the rich museum of the late lord Londesborough. We give here two groups of these curious chess-men, taken from the collection of lord Londesborough, and from those in the British Museum as engraved in the volume of the Archæologia just referred to. The first group, forming our cut [No. 140], consists of a king (1), from the collection of lord Londesborough, and a queen (2), bishop (3), and knight (4), all from the Archæologia; and the second group ([No. 141]) presents us with the warriors on foot, to which the Icelanders gave the name of hrokr, and to which sir Frederic Madden gives the English name of warders, one of them (5) from lord Londesborough’s collection, the other (6) from the British Museum. The rest are pawns, all from the latter collection; they are generally plain and octagonal, as in the group to the right (7), but were sometimes ornamented, as in the case of the other example (8).

No. 140. Icelandic Chess-men of the Twelfth Century.

It will be seen at once that in name and character these chess-men are nearly identical with those in common use, although in costume they are purely Scandinavian. The king sits in the position, with his sword across his knee, and his hand ready to draw it, which is described as characteristic of royalty in the old northern poetry. The queen holds in her hand a drinking horn, in which at great festivals the lady of the household, of whatever rank, was accustomed to serve out the ale or mead to the guests. The bishops are some seated, and others standing, but all distinguished by the mitre, crosier, and episcopal costume. The knights are all on horseback, and are covered with characteristic armour. The armed men on foot, just mentioned by the name of warders, were peculiar to the Scandinavian set of chess-men, and supplied the place of the rocks, or rooks, in the mediæval game, and of the modern castle.

No. 141. Icelandic Chess-men of the Twelfth Century.

Several of the chess-men had indeed gone through more than one modification in their progress from the East. The Arabs and Persians admitted no female among the persons on their chess-board, and the piece which we call the queen was with them the pherz (vizier or councillor). The oriental name, under the form fers, ferz, or ferce, in Latin ferzia, was long preferred in the middle ages, though certainly as early as the twelfth century the original character of the piece had been changed for that of a queen, and the names fers and queen became synonymous. It is hardly necessary to say that a bishop would not be found on a Saracenic chess-board. This piece was called by the Persians and Arabs pil or phil, meaning an elephant, under the form of which animal it was represented. This name was also preserved in its transmission to the west, and with the Arab article prefixed became alfil, or more commonly alfin, which was again softened down into aufin, the usual name of the piece in the old French and English writers. The character of the bishop must have been adopted very early among the Christians, and it is found under that character among the Northerns, and in England. Such, however, was not the case everywhere. The Russians and Swedes have preserved the original name of the elephant. In Italy and France this piece was sometimes represented as an archer; and at an early period in the latter country, from a supposed confusion of the Arabic fil with the French fol, it was sometimes called by the latter name, and represented as a court jester. Roc, the name given by the Saracens to the piece now called the castle, meant apparently a hero, or champion, Persian rokh; the name was preserved in the middle ages, but the piece seems to have been first represented under the character of an elephant, and it was no doubt, from the tower which the elephant carried on its back, that our modern form originated. The Icelanders seem alone to have adopted the name in its original meaning, for with them, as shown in cut No. 141, the hrokr is represented as a warrior on foot.

No. 142. Chess-man of the Thirteenth Century.

A few examples of carved chess-men have been found in different parts of England, which show that these highly-ornamented pieces were in use at all periods. One of these, represented in our cut [No. 142], is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and, to judge by the costume, belongs to the earlier part of the thirteenth century. Its material is the tooth of the walrus (the northern ivory); it represents a knight on both sides, one wielding a lance, the other a sword, the intervening spaces being filled with foliage. Another knight, made of real ivory, is represented in our cut No. 143, taken from an engraving in the third volume of the Archæological Journal, where it is stated to be in the possession of the Rev. J. Eagles, of Worcester. It belongs to the reign of Edward III. Here the knight is on horseback, and wears chain-mail and plate. The body of the horse is entirely covered with chain-mail, over which housings are placed, and the head with plate-armour.

No. 143. Chess-man of the Fourteenth Century.

All who are acquainted with the general character of mediæval carving will suppose that these ornamental chess-men were of large dimensions, and consequently rather clumsy for use. The largest of those found in the Isle of Lewis, a king, is upwards of four inches in height, and nearly seven inches in circumference. They were hence rather formidable weapons in a strong hand, and we find them used as such in some of the scenes of the early romances. According to one version of the death of Bauduin, the illegitimate son of Ogier, the young prince Charles struck him with the rook so violent a blow that he made his two eyes fly out:—

Là le dona Callos le cop mortel
Si com juoit as eskés et as dés;
Là le feri d’un rok par tel fiertés,
Que andus les elx li fist du cief voler.
—Ogier de Danemarche, l. 90.

A rather rude illumination is one of the manuscripts, of which M. Barrois has given a fac-simile in his edition of this romance, representing Charles striking his opponent with the rook. According to another version of the story, the young prince, using the rook as a missile, threw it at him. An incident in the romance of the “Quatre Fils d’Aymon,” where the agents of Regnault go to arrest the duke Richard of Normandy, and find him playing at chess, is thus told quaintly in the English version, printed by Copeland:—“When duke Richarde saw that these sergeauntes had him thus by the arm, and helde in his hande a lady of ivery, wherewith he would have given a mate to Yonnet, he withdrew his arme, and gave to one of the sergeauntes such a stroke with it into the forehead, that he made him tumble over and over at his feete; and than he tooke a rooke, and smote another withall upon his head, that he all to-brost it to the brayne.”

No. 144. An Early Chess-board and Chess-men.

The chess-boards were naturally large, and were sometimes made of the precious metals, and of other rich materials. In one romance, the chess-board and men are made of crystal; in another, that of “Alexander,” the men are made of sapphires and topazes. A chess-board, preserved in the museum of the Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris, and said to have been the one given by the old man of the mountains (the sheikh of the Hassassins) to St. Louis, is made of rock-crystal, and mounted in silver gilt. In the romances, however, the chess-board is sometimes spoken of as made of ormier, or elm. In fact, when the game of chess came into extensive use, it became necessary not only to make the chess-board and men of less expensive materials and smaller, but to give to the latter simple conventional forms, instead of making them elaborate sculptures. The foundation for this latter practice had already been laid by the Arabs, whose tenets, contrary to those of the Persians, proscribed all images of living beings. The mediæval conventional form of the rook, a figure with a bi-parted head, somewhat approaching to the heraldic form of the fleur-de-lis, appears to have been taken directly from the Arabs. The knight was represented by a small upright column, the upper part of it bent to one side, and is supposed to have been meant for a rude representation of the horse’s head. The aufin, or bishop, had the same form as the knight, except that the bent end was cleft, probably as an indication of the episcopal mitre. The accompanying figure of a chess-board ([No. 144]), taken from a manuscript of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Cotton. Cleopat. B. ix.), but no doubt copied from one of the latter part of the thirteenth century, when the Anglo-Norman metrical treatise on chess which it illustrates was composed, gives all the conventional forms of chess-men used at that time. The piece at the left-hand extremity of the lower row is evidently a king. The other king is seen in the centre of the upper row. Immediately to the left of the latter is the queen, and the two figures below the king and queen are knights, while those to the left of the queen and white knight are rooks. Those in the right-hand corner, at top and bottom, are aufins, or bishops. The pawns on this chess-board bear a striking resemblance to those found in the Isle of Lewis. The same forms, with very slight variations, present themselves in the scenes of chess-playing as depicted in the illuminated manuscripts. Thus, in a manuscript of the French prose romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 12,228, fol. 23, v^o), written between the years 1330 and 1350, we have an interesting sketch (given in our cut [No. 145]) of two kings engaged in this game. The rooks and the bishops are distinctly represented, but the others are less easily recognised, in consequence of the imperfect drawing. Our next cut ([No. 146]) is taken from the well-known manuscript of the poetry of the German Minnesingers, made for Rudiger von Manesse, early in the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the National Library in Paris, and represents the prince poet, Otto of Brandenburg, playing at chess with a lady. We have here the same conventional forms of chess-men, a circumstance which shows that the same types prevailed in England, France, and Germany. Another group, in which a king is introduced playing at chess, forms the subject of our cut [No. 147], and is taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the Harleian collection in the British Museum (No. 1275), consisting of a numerous series of illustrations of the Bible history, executed evidently in England. It will be seen that the character of chess as a royal game is sustained throughout.

No. 145. A Royal Game at Chess.

No. 146. A Game at Chess in the Fourteenth Century.

No. 147. A King at Chess.

In this century the game of chess had become extremely popular among the feudal aristocracy—including under that head all who could aspire to knighthood. Already, in the twelfth century, directions for the game had been composed in Latin verse, which seems to show that, in spite of the zeal of men like cardinal Damianus, it was popular among the clergy. Towards the latter end of the thirteenth century, a French dominican friar, Jacques de Cessoles, made the game the subject of a moral work, entitled Moralitas de Scaccario, which became very popular in later times, was published in a French version by Jean de Vignay, and translated from this French version into English, by Caxton, in his “Boke of Chesse,” so celebrated among bibliographers. To the age of Jacques de Cessoles belongs an Anglo-Norman metrical treatise on chess, of which several copies are preserved in manuscript (the one I have used is in MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii. fol. 161, v^o), and which presents us with the first collection of games. These games are distinguished by quaint names, like those given to the old dances; such as de propre confusion (one’s own confusion), ky perde, sey sauve (the loser wins), ky est larges, est sages (he that is liberal is wise), meschief fet hom penser (misfortune makes a man reflect), la chace de ferce et de chivaler (the chace of the queen and the knight), de dames et de damyceles (ladies and damsels), la batalie de rokes (the battle of the rooks), and the like.

It is quite unnecessary to attempt to point out the numerous allusions to the game of chess during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when it continued to be extremely popular. Chaucer, in one of his minor poems, the “Boke of the Duchesse,” introduces himself in a dream as playing at chess with Fortune, and speaks of false moves, as though dishonest tricks were sometimes practised in the game. He tells us,—

At chesse with me she gan to pleye,
With hir fals draughtes (moves) dyvers
She staale on me, and toke my fers (queen);
And whanne I saugh my fers awaye,
Allas! I kouthe no lenger playe,
But seyde, “Farewel, swete! ywys,
And farewel al that ever ther ys!”
Therwith Fortune seyde, “Chek here!”
And “mate” in the myd poynt of the chekkere (chess-board),
With a powne (pawn) errante, allas!
Ful craftier to pleye she was
Than Athalus, that made the game
First of the chesse, so was hys name.
—Robert Bell’s Chaucer, vol. vi. p. 157.

With the breaking up of feudalism, the game of chess seems to have gone to a great extent out of practice, and made way for a comparatively new game,—that of cards, which now became very popular. When Caxton printed his “Boke of Chesse” in 1474, he sought only to publish a moral treatise, and not to furnish his countrymen with a book of instructions in the game. The cut of the chess-player given in this book, copied in our cut [No. 148], shows some modifications in the forms of the chess-men. The knight, the rook, and the pawn, have preserved their old forms; but we are led to suppose, by the number of pieces with the bi-partite head, that the bishop had assumed a shape nearly resembling that of the rook. We have just seen Chaucer alluding to one of the legends relating to the origin of this game. Caxton, after Jean de Vignay and Jacques de Cessoles, gives us a strange story how it was invented under Evylmerodach, king of Babylon, by a philosopher, “whyche was named in Caldee Exerses, or in Greke Philemetor.”

No. 148. Chess in the Fifteenth Century.

No. 149. An Italian Chess-board.

Meanwhile, the game of chess had continued to flourish in Italy, where it appears to have experienced improvements, and where certainly the forms of the men were considerably modified. An Italian version of the work of Jacques de Cessoles was printed at Florence in 1493, under the title of Libro de Giuocho delli Scacchi, among the engravings to which, as in most of the editions of that work, there is a picture of a group of chess-players, who are here seated at a round table. The chess-board is represented in our cut, [No. 149], and it will be seen at a glance that the chess-men present a far greater resemblance to those used at the present day than those given in the older illuminations. Within a few years of the date of this book, a Portuguese, named Damiano, who was perhaps residing in Italy, as his work seems to have appeared there first, drew up a book of directions for chess with a set of eighty-eight games, which display considerable ingenuity. An edition of this book was published at Rome as early as 1524, and perhaps this was not the first. The figures of the chess-men are given in this treatise; that of the king is vase-shaped, not unlike our modern chess-king, but with two crowns; the queen is similar in shape, but has one crown; the delfino (bishop) differs from them in being smaller, and having no crown; the cavallo (knight) has the form of a horse’s head; the rocho, as it is still called, is in the form of a tower, like our modern castle; and the pedona (pawn) resembles a cone, with a knob at the apex. In England, the game of chess seems not to have been much in vogue during the sixteenth century; it is, I believe, only alluded to once in Shakespeare, in a well-known scene in the Tempest, which may have been taken from a foreign story, to which he owed his plot. The name of the game had been corrupted into chests or cheasts. The game of chess was expressly discouraged by our “Solomon,” James I., as “overwise and philosophicke a folly.” An attempt to bring it into more notice appears to have been made early in the reign of Elizabeth, under the patronage of lord Robert Dudley, afterwards the celebrated earl of Leicester, who displayed on many occasions a taste for refinements of this sort. Instructions were again sought from Italy through France; for there was printed and published in London, in the year 1562, a little volume dedicated to lord Robert Dudley, under the title of “The Pleasaunt and wittie Playe of the Cheasts reniewed, with Instructions both to Learn it Easily and to Play it Well; lately translated out of Italian into French, and now set forth in Englishe by James Rowbotham.” Rowbotham gives us some remarks of his own on the character of the game, and on the different forms of the chess-men, which are not uninteresting. He says:—“As for the fashion of the pieces, that is according to the fantasie of the workman, which maketh them after this manner. Some make them lyke men, whereof the kynge is the highest, and the queene (whiche some name amasone or ladye) is the next, bothe two crowned. The bishoppes some name alphins, some fooles, and some name them princes, lyke as also they are next unto the kinge and the queene, other some cal them archers, and thei are fashioned accordinge to the wyll of the workeman. The knights some call horsemen, and thei are men on horse backe. The rookes some cal elephantes, cariyng towres upon their backes, and men within the towres. The paunes some cal fote men, as they are souldiours on fote, cariyng some of them pykes, other some harquebushes, other some halbards, and other some the javelyn and target. Other makers of cheastmen make them of other fashions; but the use thereof wyll cause perfect knowledge.” “Our Englishe cheastmen,” he adds, “are commonly made nothing like unto these foresayde fashions: to wit, the kynge is made the highest or longest; the queene is longest nexte unto him; the bishoppe is made with a sharpe toppe, and cloven in the middest not muche unlyke to a bishop’s myter; the knight hath his top cut asloope, as thoughe beynge dubbed knight; the rooke is made lykest to the kynge and the queene, but that he is not so long; the paunes be made the smalest and least of all, and thereby they may best be knowen.”

At an early period the German tribes, as known to the Romans, were notoriously addicted to gambling. We are informed by Tacitus that a German in his time would risk not only his property, but his own personal liberty, on a throw of the dice; and if he lost, he submitted patiently, as a point of honour, to be bound by his opponent, and carried to the market to be sold into slavery. The Anglo-Saxons appear to have shared largely in this passion, and their habits of gambling are alluded to in different writers. A well-known writer of the first half of the twelfth century, Ordericus Vitalis, tells us that in his time even the prelates of the church were in the habit of playing at dice. A still more celebrated writer, John of Salisbury, who lived a little later in the same century, speaks of dice-playing as being then extremely prevalent, and enumerates no less than ten different games, which he names in Latin, as follows:—tessera, calculus, tabula (tables), urio vel Dardana pugna (Troy fight), tricolus, senio (sice), monarchus, orbiculi, taliorchus, and vulpes (the game of fox).—“De Nugis Curialium,” lib. i. c. 5. The sort of estimation in which the game was then held is curiously illustrated by an anecdote in the Carlovingian romance of “Parise la Duchesse,” where the king of the Hungarians wishes to contrive some means of telling the real character (aristocratic or plebeian) of his foundling, young Hugues, not then known to be the son of the duchess Parise. A party of robbers (which appears not to have been a specially disreputable avocation among the Hungarians of the romance) are employed, first to seduce the youth to “the chess and the dice,” and afterwards to lead him against his will to a thieving expedition, the object of which was to rob the treasury of the king, his godfather. They made a great hole in the wall, and thrust Hugues through it. The youth beheld the heaps of gold and silver with astonishment, but, resolved to touch none of the wealth he saw around him, his eyes fell upon a coffer on which lay three dice, “made and pointed in fine ivory”— Garde for i. escrin, si a veu iij. dez,
Qui sont de fin yvoire et fait et pointuré.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 94.
Hugues seized the three dice, thrust them into his bosom, and, returning through the breach in the wall, told the robbers that he had carried away “the worth of four cities.” When the robbers heard his explanation, they at once concluded, from the taste he had displayed on this occasion, that he was of gentle blood, and the king formed the same opinion on the result of this trial.

During the period of which we are now speaking—the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the use of dice had spread itself from the highest to the very lowest class of the population. In its simpler form, that of the game of hazard, in which the chance of each player rested on the mere throw of the dice, it was the common game of the low frequenters of the taverns,—that class which lived upon the vices of society, and which was hardly looked upon as belonging to society itself. The practice and results of gambling are frequently referred to in the popular writers of the later middle ages. People could no longer stake their personal liberty on the throw, but they played for everything they had—even for the clothes they carried upon them, on which the tavern-keepers, who seem to have acted also as pawnbrokers, readily lent small sums of money. We often read of men who got into the taverner’s hands, playing as well as drinking themselves naked; and in a well-known manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 167 v^o) we find an illumination which represents this process very literally (cut No. 150). One, who is evidently the more aged of the two players, is already perfectly naked, whilst the other is reduced to his shirt. The illuminator appears to have intended to represent them as playing against each other till neither had anything left, like the two celebrated cats of Kilkenny, who ate one another up until nothing remained but their tails.

No. 150. Mediæval Gamblers.

No. 151. A Dice-Player.

A burlesque parody on the church service, written in Latin, perhaps as early as the thirteenth century, and printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ,” gives us rather a curious picture of tavern manners at that early period. The document is profane,—much more so than any of the parodies for which Hone was prosecuted; but it is only a moderate example of the general laxness in this respect which prevailed, even among the clergy, in what have been called “the ages of faith.” This is entitled “The Mass of the Drunkards,” and contains a running allusion to the throwing of the three dice, and to the loss of clothing which followed; but it is full of Latin puns on the words of the church service, and the greater part of it would not bear a translation.

It will have been already remarked that, in all these anecdotes and stories, the ordinary number of the dice is three. This appears to have been the number used in most of the common games. In our cut No. 151, taken from the illumination in a copy of Jean de Vignay’s translation of Jacobus de Cessolis (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), the dice-player appears to hold but two dice in his hand; but this is to be laid solely to the charge of the draughtsman’s want of skill, as the text tells us distinctly that he has three. We learn also from the text, that in the jug he holds in his right hand he carries his money, a late example of the use of earthen vessels for this purpose. Two dice were, however, sometimes used, especially in the game of hazard, which appears to have been the great gambling game of the middle ages. Chaucer, in the “Pardoneres Tale,” describes the hazardours as playing with two dice. But in the curious scene in the “Towneley Mysteries” (p. 241), a work apparently contemporary with Chaucer, the tormentors, or executioners, are introduced throwing for Christ’s unseamed garment with three dice; the winner throws fifteen points, which could only be thrown with that number of dice.

No. 152. Ornamental Dice.

It would not seem easy to give much ornamentation to the form of dice without destroying their utility, yet this has been attempted at various times, and not only in a very grotesque but in a similar manner at very distant periods. This was done by giving the die the form of a man, so doubled up, that when thrown he fell in different positions, so as to show the points uppermost, like an ordinary die. The smaller example represented in our cut [No. 152] is Roman, and made of silver, and several Roman dice of the same form are known. It is singular that the same idea should have presented itself at a much later period, and, as far as we can judge, without any room for supposing that it was by imitation. Our second example, which is larger than the other, and carved in box-wood, is of German work, and apparently as old as the beginning of the sixteenth century. Both are now in the fine and extensive collection of the late lord Londesborough.

No. 153. A Party at Tables.

The simple throwing of the dice was rather an excitement than an amusement; and at an early period people sought the latter by a combination of the dice-throwing with some other system of movements or calculations. In this way, no doubt, originated the different games enumerated by John of Salisbury, the most popular of which was that of tables (tabula or tabulæ). This game was in use among the Romans, and was in all probability borrowed from them by the Anglo-Saxons, among whom it was in great favour, and who called the game tæfel (evidently a mere adoption of the Latin name), and the dice teoselas and tæfel-stanas. The former evidently represents the Latin tessellæ, little cubes; and the latter seems to show that the Anglo-Saxon dice were usually made of stones. At a later period, the game of tables, used nearly always in the plural, is continually mentioned along with chess, as the two most fashionable and aristocratic games in use. An early and richly illuminated manuscript in the British Museum—perhaps of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Harl. No. 1257)—furnishes us with the figures of players at tables represented in our cut [No. 153]. The table, or board, with bars or points, is here clearly delineated, and we see that the players use both dice and men, or pieces—the latter round discs, like our modern draughtsmen. In another manuscript, belonging to a rather later period of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii. fol. 157, v^o), we have a diagram which shows the board as composed of two tables, represented in our cut [No. 154]. It was probably this construction which caused the name to be used in the plural; and as the Anglo-Saxons always used the name in the singular, as is the case also with John of Salisbury in the twelfth century, while the plural is always used by the writers of a later date, we seem justified in concluding that the board used by the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans consisted of one table, like that represented in our cut [No. 153], and that this was afterwards superseded by the double board. It is hardly necessary to point out to our readers that these two pictures of the boards show us clearly that the mediæval game of tables was identical with our modern backgammon, or rather, we should perhaps say, that the game of backgammon, as now played, is one of the games played on the tables.

No. 154. A Table-Board (Backgammon) of the Fourteenth Century.

In the manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii.) the figure of the board is given to illustrate a very curious treatise on the game of tables, written in Latin, in the fourteenth, or even perhaps in the thirteenth, century. The writer begins by informing us, that “there are many games at tables with dice, of which the first is the long game, and is the game of the English, and it is common, and played as follows” (multi sunt ludi ad tabulas cum taxillis, quorum primus est longus ludus, et est ludus Anglicorum, et est communis, et est talis naturæ), meaning, I presume, that it was the game usually played in England. From the directions given for playing it, this game seems to have had a close general resemblance to backgammon. The writer of the treatise says that it was played with three dice, or with two dice, in which latter case they counted six at each throw for the third dice. In some of the other games described here, two dice only were used. We learn from this treatise the English terms for two modes of winning at the “long game” of tables—the one being called “lympoldyng,” the other “lurchyng;” and a person losing by the former was said to be “lympolded.” The writer of this tract gives directions for playing at several other games of tables, and names some of them—such as “paume carie,” the Lombard’s game (ludus Lombardorum), the “imperial,” the “provincial,” “baralie,” and “faylys.”

This game continued long to exist in England under its old name of tables. Thus Shakespeare:— This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice.
—Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act v. Sc. 2.
The game appears at this time to have been a favourite one in the taverns and ordinaries. Thus, in a satirical tract in verse, printed in 1600, we are told of— An honest vicker, and a kind consort,
That to the alehouse friendly would resort,
To have a game at tables now and than,
Or drinke his pot as soone as any man.
—Letting of Humours Blood, 1600.
And one of the most popular of the satirical writers of that period, Dekker, in his “Lanthorne and Candle-Light,” printed in 1620, says, punningly,—“And knowing that your most selected gallants are the onelye table-men that are plaid withal at ordinaries, into an ordinarye did he most gentleman-like convay himselfe in state.” We learn from another tract of the same author, the “Gul’s Hornbooke,” that the table-men at this time were usually painted.

We hardly perceive how the name of tables disappeared. It seems probable that at this time the game of tables meant simply what we now call backgammon, a word the oldest mention of which, so far as I have been able to discover, occurs in Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” first printed in 1646. It is there written baggamon. In the “Compleat Gamester,” 1674, backgammon and ticktack occur as two distinct games at what would have formerly been called tables; and another similar game was called Irish. Curiously enough, in the earlier part of the last century the game of backgammon was most celebrated as a favourite game among country parsons.

Another game existing in the middle ages, but much more rarely alluded to, was called dames, or ladies, and has still preserved that name in French. In English, it was changed for that of draughts, derived no doubt from the circumstance of drawing the men from one square to another. Our cut [No. 155], taken from a manuscript in the British Museum of the beginning of the fourteenth century, known commonly as Queen Mary’s Psalter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a lady and gentleman playing at dames, or draughts, differing only from the character of the game at the present day in the circumstance that the draughtsmen are evidently square.

No. 155. A Game at Draughts.

No. 156. Cards in the Fourteenth Century.

The mediæval games were gradually superseded by a new contrivance, that of playing-cards, which were introduced into Western Europe in the course of the fourteenth century. It has been suggested that the idea of playing-cards was taken from chess—in fact, that they are the game of chess transferred to paper, and without a board, and they are generally understood to have been derived from the East. Cards, while they possessed some of the characteristics of chess, presented the same mixture of chance and skill which distinguished the game of tables. An Italian writer, probably of the latter part of the fifteenth century, named Cavelluzzo, author of a history of Viterbo, states that “in the year 1379 was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called naib.” Cards are still in Spanish called naipes, which is said to be derived from the Arabic: but they were certainly known in the west of Europe before the date given by Cavelluzzo. Our cut [No. 156] is taken from a very fine manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum (MS. Addit. 12,228, fol. 313, v^o), which was written apparently in the south of France between the years 1330 and 1350; it represents a royal party playing at cards, which was therefore considered at that time as the amusement of the highest classes of society. They are, however, first distinctly alluded to in history in the year 1393. In that year Charles VI. of France was labouring under a visitation of insanity; and we find in the accounts of his treasurer, Charles Poupart, an entry to the following effect:—“Given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilt and diversly coloured, and ornamented with several devices, to deliver to the lord the king for his amusement, fifty-six sols of Paris.” It is clear from this entry that the game of cards was then tolerably well known in France, and that it was by no means new, though it was evidently not a common game, and the cards had to be made by a painter—that is, as I suppose, an illuminator of manuscripts. We find as yet no allusion to them in England: and it is remarkable that neither Chaucer, nor any of the numerous writers of his and the following age, ever speak of them. An illuminated manuscript of apparently the earlier part of the fifteenth century, perhaps of Flemish workmanship (it contains a copy of Raoul de Presle’s French translation of St. Augustine’s “Civitas Dei”), presents us with another card-party, which we give in our cut [No. 157]. Three persons are here engaged in the game, two of whom are ladies. After the date at which three packs of cards were made for the amusement of the lunatic king, the game of cards seems soon to have become common in France; for less than four years later—on the 22nd of January, 1397—the provost of Paris considered it necessary to publish an edict, forbidding working people to play at tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or ninepins, on working days. By one of the acts of the synod of Langres, in 1404, the clergy were expressly forbidden to play at cards. These had now made their way into Germany, and had become so popular there, that early in the fifteenth century card-making had become a regular trade.

No. 157. Cards in the Fifteenth Century.

In England, in the third year of the reign of Edward IV. (1463), the importation of playing-cards, probably from Germany, was forbidden, among other things, by act of parliament; and as that act is understood to have been called for by the English manufacturers, who suffered by the foreign trade, it can hardly be doubted that cards were then manufactured in England on a rather extensive scale. Cards had then, indeed, evidently become very popular in England; and only twenty years afterwards they are spoken of as the common Christmas game, for Margery Paston wrote as follows to her husband, John Paston, on the 24th of December in 1483:—“Please it you to weet (know) that I sent your eldest son John to my lady Morley, to have knowledge of what sports were used in her house in the Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband; and she said that there were none disguisings, nor harpings, nor luting, nor singing, nor none loud disports, but playing at the tables, and the chess, and cards—such disports she gave her folks leave to play, and none other.... I sent your younger son to the lady Stapleton, and she said according to my lady Morley’s saying in that, and as she had seen used in places of worship (gentlemen’s houses) there as she had been.”

From this time the mention of cards becomes frequent. They formed the common amusement in the courts of England and Scotland under the reigns of Henry VII. and James IV.; and it is recorded that when the latter monarch paid his first visit to his affianced bride, the young princess Margaret of England, “he founde the quene playing at the cardes.”

It must not be forgotten that it is partly to the use of playing cards that we owe the invention which has been justly regarded as one of the greatest benefits granted to mankind. The first cards, as we have seen, were painted with the hand. They were subsequently made more rapidly by a process called stencilling—that is, by cutting the rude forms through a piece of pasteboard, parchment, or thin metal, which, placed on the cardboard intended to receive the impression, was brushed over with ink or colour, which passed through the cut out lines, and imparted the figure to the material beneath. A further improvement was made by cutting the figures on blocks of wood, and literally printing them on the cards. These card-blocks are supposed to have given the first idea of wood-engraving. When people saw the effects of cutting the figures of the cards upon blocks, they began to cut figures of saints on blocks in the same manner, and then applied the method to other subjects, cutting in like manner the few words of necessary explanation. This practice further expanded itself into what are called block-books, consisting of pictorial subjects, with copious explanatory text. Some one at length hit upon the idea of cutting the pages of a regular book on so many blocks of wood, and taking impressions on paper or vellum, instead of writing the manuscript; and this plan was soon further improved by cutting letters or words on separate pieces of wood, and setting them up together to form pages. The wood was subsequently superseded by metal. And thus originated the noble art of Printing.

CHAPTER XI.
DOMESTIC AMUSEMENTS AFTER DINNER.—THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE.—PET ANIMALS.—OCCUPATIONS AND MANNERS OF THE LADIES.—SUPPER.—CANDLES, LAMPS, AND LANTERNS.

When the dinner was over, and hands washed, a drink was served round, and then the ladies left the table, and went to their chambers or to the garden or fields, to seek their own amusements, which consisted frequently of dancing, in which they were often joined by the younger of the male portion of the household, while the others remained drinking. They seem often to have gone to drink in another apartment, or secondary hall, perhaps in the parlour. In the romance of “La Violette” (p. 159), we read of the father of a family going to sleep after dinner. In the same romance (p. 152), the young ladies and gentlemen of a noble household are described as spreading themselves over the castle, to amuse themselves, attended by minstrels with music. From other romances we find that this amusement consisted often in dancing, and that the ladies sometimes sang for themselves, instead of having minstrels. We find these amusements alluded to in the fabliaux and romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In one of the fabliaux, a knight having been received hospitably at a feudal castle, after dinner they wash, and drink round, and then they go to dance— Ses mains
Lava, et puis l’autre gent toute,
Et puis se burent tout à route,
Et por l’amor dou chevalier
Se vont trestuit apparillier
De faire karoles et dances.
In the early English romance of “Sir Degrevant,” after dinner the ladies go to their chambers to arrange themselves, and then some proceed to amuse themselves in the garden— When the lordys were drawin (withdrawn),
Ladyes rysen, was not to leyn,
And wentten to chaumbur ageyne,
Anon thei hom dythus (dight);
Dame Mildore and hyr may (maid)
Went to the orcherd to play.
In the romance of “Lanfal,” we have the same circumstance of dancing after dinner:— And after mete Syr Gaweyn,
Sir Gyeryes and Agrafayn,
And Syr Launfal also,
Went to daunce upon the grene,
Unther the tour ther lay the quene,
Wyth syxty ladyes and mo.
* * * * *
They hadde menstrayles (minstrels) of moch honours,
Fydelers, sytolyrs, and trompours,
And elles hyt were unryght;
Ther they playde, for sothe to say,
After mete the somerys day,
Alle what (till) hyt was neygh nyght.
It was only on extraordinary occasions, however, that the dancing or walking in the garden continued all day. In the romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” the dinner-party quit the table, to wander in the fields and forests round the castle, and the young hero of the story, on their return thence, goes to play in the chambers with the ladies:—

Après manger lavent leurs mains,
Puis s’en vont juer, qui ains ains,
Ou en forès ou en rivieres,
Ou en deduis d’autres manieres.
Jehans au quel que il veut va,
Et quant il revent souvant va
Jouer és chambres la contesse
O les dames.

There were two classes of dances in the middle ages, the domestic dances, and the dances of the jougleurs or minstrels. After the first crusades, the western jougleurs had adopted many of the practices of their brethren in the east, and, among others, it is evident from many allusions in old writers that they had brought westward that of the “almehs,” or eastern dancing-girls. These dances formed, like the vulgar fabliaux, a part of the jougleur’s budget of representations, and were mostly, like those, gross and indecent. The other class of dances were of a simpler character,—the domestic dances, which consisted chiefly of the carole, in which ladies and gentlemen, alternately, held by each other’s hands and danced in a circle. This mode of dance prevailed so generally, that the word carole became used as a general term for a dance, and caroler, to carole, was equivalent with to dance. The accompanying cut ([No. 158]), taken from a manuscript of the Roman de Tristan, of the fourteenth century, in the National Library at Paris (No. 6956), represents a party dancing the carole to the music of pipe and tabor. A dance of another description is represented in our next cut ([No. 159]), taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 174), also of the fourteenth century. Here the minstrels themselves appear to be joining in the saltitation which they inspire. It is a good illustration of the scene described from the romance of “La Violette.” On festive occasions this dancing often continued till supper-time.

No. 158. Dancing the Carole.

No. 159. A Mediæval Dance.

No. 160. The Game of Hoodman-blind.

No. 161. A Game at Hot-cockles.

Other quieter games were pursued in the chambers. Among these the most dignified was chess, after which came tables, draughts, and, in the fourteenth century, cards. Sometimes, as described in the preceding chapter, they played at sedentary games, such as chess and tables; or at diversions of a still more frolicsome character. These latter seem to have been most in vogue in the evening after supper. The author of the “Ménagier de Paris,” written about the year 1393 (tom. i. p. 71), describes the ladies as playing, in an evening, at games named bric, and qui fery? (who struck?), and pince merille, and tiers, and others. The first of these games is mentioned about a century and a half earlier by the trouvère Rutebeuf, and by other mediæval writers; but all we seem to know of it is, that the players were seated, apparently on the ground, and that one of them was furnished with a rod or stick. We know less still of pince merille. Qui fery? is evidently the game which was, at a later period, called hot-cockles; and tiers is understood to be the game now called blindman’s buff. These, and other games, are not unfrequently represented in the fanciful drawings in the margins of mediæval illuminated manuscripts; but as no names or descriptions are given with these drawings, it is often very difficult to identify them. Our cut ([No. 160]), which is given by Strutt, from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is one of several subjects representing the game of blindman’s buff, or, as it was formerly called in England, hoodman-blind, because the person blinded had his eyes covered with a hood. It is here played by females, but, in other illuminations, or drawings, the players are boys or men—the latter plainly indicated by their beards. The word hoodman-blind is not found at an earlier period than the Elizabethan age, yet this name, from its allusion to the costume, was evidently older. A personage in Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 4) asks— What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
Hot-cockles seems formerly to have been a very favourite game. One of the players was blindfolded, and knelt down, with his face on the knee of another, and his hand held out flat behind him; the other players in turn struck him on the hand, and he was obliged to guess at the name of the striker, who, if he guessed right, was compelled to take his place. A part of the joke appears to have consisted in the hardness of the blows. Our cut ([No. 161]), from the Bodleian manuscript (which was written in 1344), is evidently intended to represent a party of females playing at hot-cockles, though the damsel who plays the principal part is not blindfolded, and she is touched on the back, and not on the hand. Our next cut ([No. 162]), which represents a party of shepherds and shepherdesses engaged in the same game, is taken from a piece of Flemish tapestry, of the fifteenth century, which is at present to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. Allusions to this game are found in the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the “commendatory verses” to the second edition of “Gondibert” (by William Davenant), printed in 1653, is the following rather curious piece of wit, which explains itself, and is, at the same time, an extremely good description of this game:—