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

by Thomas Wright

THE POET’S HOT-COCKLES.

Thus poets, passing time away.
Like children at hot-cockles play;
All strike by turn, and Will is strook
(And he lies down that writes a book).
Have at thee, Will, for now I come,
Spread thy hand faire upon thy bomb;
For thy much insolence, bold bard,
And little sense I strike thus hard.
“Whose hand was that?” “’Twas Jaspar Mayne.”
“Nay, there you’re out; lie down again.”
With Gondibert, prepare, and all
See where the doctor comes to maul
The author’s hand, ’twill make him reel;
No, Will lies still, and does not feel.
That book’s so light, ’tis all one whether
You strike with that or with a feather.
But room for one, new come to town,
That strikes so hard, he’ll knock him down;
The hand he knows, since it the place
Has toucht more tender than his face;
Important sheriff, now thou lyst down,
We’ll kiss thy hands, and clap our own.
The game of hot-cockles has only become obsolete in recent times, if it be even now quite out of use. Most readers will remember the passage in Gay’s “Pastorals:”— As at hot-cockles once I laid me down,
And felt the weighty hand of many a clown,
Buxoma gave a gentle tap, and I
Quick rose, and read soft mischief in her eye.
This passage is aptly illustrated by the cut from the tapestry. The same Bodleian manuscript gives us a playful group, reproduced in our cut [No. 163], which Strutt believes to be the game called, in more modern times, “frog-in-the-middle.” One of the party, who played frog, sat on the ground, while his comrades surrounded and buffeted him, until he could catch and hold one of them, who then had to take his place. In our cut, the players are females.

No. 162. Shepherds and Shepherdesses.

No. 163. The Game of Frog-in-the-Middle.

Games of questions and commands, and of forfeits, were also common in mediæval society. Among the poems of Baudouin and Jean de Condé (poets of the thirteenth century), we have a description of a game of this kind. “One time,” we are told, “there was play among ladies and damsels; there were among them both clever and handsome; they took up many games, until, at last, they elected a queen to play at roy-qui-ne-ment (the king who does not lie); she, whom they chose, was clever at commands and at questions:”— Une foi ierent en dosnoi
Entre dames et damoiselles;
De cointes i ot et de belles.
De plusieurs deduits s’entremistrent,
Et tant c’une royne fistrent
Pour jouer au roy-qui-ne-ment.
Ele s’en savoit finement
Entremettre de commander
Et de demandes demander.
—Barbazan Fabliaux, tom. i. p. 100.
The aim of the questions was, of course, to provoke answers which would excite mirth; and the sequel of the story shows the great want of delicacy which prevailed in mediæval society. Another sort of amusement was furnished, by what may be called games of chance; in which the players, in turn, drew a character at hazard. These characters were generally written in verse, in burlesque and often very coarse language, and several sets of them have been preserved in old manuscripts. They consist of a series of alternate good and bad characters, sometimes only designed for females, but at others for women and men: two of these sets (printed in my “Anecdota Literaria”) were written in England; one, of the thirteenth century, in Anglo-Norman, the other, of the fifteenth century, in English. From these we learn that the game, in England, was called Rageman, or Ragman, and that the verses, describing the characters, were written on a roll called Ragman’s Roll, and had strings attached to them, by which each person drew his or her chance. The English set has a short preface, in which the author addresses himself to the ladies, for whose special use it was compiled:— My ladyes and my maistresses echone,
Lyke hit unto your humbylle wommanhede
Resave in gré (good part) of my sympille persone
This rolle, which withouten any drede
Kynge Ragman me bad mesoure in brede,
And cristyned yt the meroure of your chaunce;
Draweth a strynge, and that shal streight yow leyde
Unto the verry path of your governaunce—
i. e. it will tell you exactly how you behave yourself, what is your character. This game is alluded to by the poet Gower in the “Confessio Amantis:”— Venus, whiche stant withoute lawe,
In non certeyne, but as men drawe
Of Ragemon upon the chaunce,
Sche leyeth no peys (weight) in the balaunce.
The ragman’s roll, when rolled up for use, would present a confused mass of strings hanging from it, probably with bits of wax at the end, from which the drawer had to select one. This game possesses a peculiar historical interest. When the Scottish nobles and chieftains acknowledged their dependence on the English crown in the reign of Edward I., the deed by which they made this acknowledgment, having all their seals hung to it, presented, when rolled up, much the appearance of the roll used in this game; and hence, no doubt, they gave it in derision the name of the Ragman’s Roll. Afterwards it became the custom to call any roll with many signatures, or any long catalogue, the various headings of which were perhaps marked by strings, by the same name. This game of chance or fortune was continued, under other names, to a late period. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the burlesque characters were often inscribed on the back of roundels, which were no doubt dealt round to the company like cards, with the inscribed side downwards.

No. 164. Ball-Playing.

Sometimes the ladies and young men indulged within doors in more active games—among which we may mention especially different games with the ball, and also, perhaps, the whipping-top. We learn from many sources that hand-ball was from a very early period a favourite recreation with the youth of both sexes. It is a subject not unfrequently met with in the marginal drawings of mediæval manuscripts. The annexed example (cut [No. 164]), from MS. Harl. No. 6563, represents apparently two ladies playing with a ball. In other instances, a lady and a gentleman are similarly occupied. Our cut [No. 165] is taken from one of the carvings of the miserere seats in Gloucester cathedral. The long tails of the hoods belong to the costume of the latter part of the fourteenth century. The whipping-top was also a plaything of considerable antiquity; I think it may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period. Our cut [No. 166] is taken from one of the marginal drawings of a well-known manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.) of the beginning of the fourteenth century. It may be remarked that the knots on the lashes merely mark a conventional manner of representing a whip, for every boy knows that a knotted whip would not do for a top. Mediæval art was full of such conventionalities.

No. 165. A Game at Ball.

No. 166. Whipping-Top.

No. 167. The Game of Kayles.

Most of these recreations of young people in the middle ages were gradually left to a still younger age, and became children’s games, and of these the margins of the illuminated manuscripts furnish abundant examples. One of these (taken from the margin of the Royal MS., 10 E. iv., of the fourteenth century) will be sufficient for the present occasion. A favourite game, during at least the later periods of the middle ages, was that which is now called nine-pins. The French gave it the name quilles, which in our language was corrupted into keyles and kayles. The lad in our cut ([No. 167]) is not, as at present, bowling at the pins, but throwing with a stick, a form of the game which was called in French the jeu de quilles à baston, and in English club-kayles. Money was apparently played for, and the game was looked upon as belonging to the same class as hazard. In a series of metrical counsels to apprentices, compiled in the fifteenth century, and printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ,” ii. 223, they are recommended to—

Exchewe allewey eville company,
Caylys, carding, and haserdy.

When no gaiety was going on, the ladies of the household were employed in occupations of a more useful description, among which the principal were spinning, weaving, knitting, embroidering, and sewing. Almost everything of this kind was done at home at the period of which we are now speaking, and equally in the feudal castle or manor, and in the house of the substantial burgher, the female part of the family spent a great part of their time in different kinds of work in the chambers of the lady of the household. Such work is alluded to in mediæval writers, from time to time, and we find it represented in illuminated manuscripts, but not so frequently as some of the other domestic scenes. In the romance of the “Death of Garin le Loherain,” when count Fromont visited the chamber of fair Beatrice, he found her occupied in sewing a very beautiful chainsil, or petticoat:— Vint en la chambre à la bele Beatriz;
Ele cosoit un molt riche chainsil.
—Mort de Garin, p. 10.
In the romance of “La Violette,” the daughter of the burgher, in whose house the count Girard is lodged, is described as being “one day seated in her father’s chambers working a stole and amice in silk and gold, very skilfully, and she made in it, with care, many a little cross and many a star, singing all the while a chanson-à-toile,” meaning, it is supposed, a song of a grave measure, composed for the purpose of being sung by ladies when weaving:— I. jor sist es chambres son pere,
Une estole et i. amit pere
De soie et d’or molt soutilment,
Si i fait ententevement
Mainte croisete et mainte estoile,
Et dist ceste chanchon à toile.
—Roman de la Violette, p. 113.
In one of Rutebeuf’s fabliaux, a woman makes excuse for being up late at night that she was anxious to finish a piece of linen cloth she was weaving:— Sire, fet-elle, il me faut traimer
A une toile que je fais.
And in another fabliau, that of “Guillaume au Faucon,” a young “bacheler” entering suddenly the chamber of the ladies, finds them all occupied in embroidering a piece of silk with the ensigns of the lord of the castle. Embroidery, indeed, was a favourite occupation: a lady thus employed is represented in our cut [No. 168], taken from a richly illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.) The ladies, too, not only made up the cloths into dresses and articles of other kinds, but they were extensively employed in the various processes of making the cloth itself. Our cut [No. 169], taken from a manuscript of about the same period (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents the process of carding the wool; and the same manuscript furnishes us with another cut (No. 170), in which a lady appears in the employment of spinning it into yarn. Our next cut ([No. 171]), taken from an illumination in an early French translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid (in the National Library, MS. 6986), represents three ladies (intended for the three Fates) employed in these domestic occupations, and will give us a notion of the implements they used.

No. 168. Embroidery.

No. 169. A Lady Carding.

No. 170. A Lady Spinning.

No. 171. The Three Fates.

No. 172. Birds Encaged.

Domestic animals, particularly dogs and birds, were favourite companions of the ladies in their chambers. A favourite falcon had frequently its “perche” in a corner of the chamber; and in the illuminations we sometimes see the lady seated with the bird on her wrist. Birds in cages are also not unfrequently alluded to through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the romance of “La Violette” a tame lark plays rather an important part in the story. Our cut No. 172, where we see two birds in a cage together, and which is curious for the form of the cage, is given by Willemin from a manuscript of the fourteenth century at Paris. The hawk, though usually kept only for hunting, sometimes became a pet, and persons carried their hawks on the fist even in social parties within doors. The jay is spoken of as a cage-bird. The parrot, under the name of papejay, popinjay, or papingay, is also often spoken of during the middle ages, although, in all probability, it was very rare. The favourite talking-bird was the pie, or magpie, which often plays a very remarkable part in mediæval stories. The aptness of this bird for imitation led to an exaggerated estimate of its powers, and it is frequently made to give information to the husband of the weaknesses of his wife. Several mediæval stories turn upon this supposed quality. The good chevalier de la Tour-Landry, in his book of counsels to his daughters, composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, tells a story of a magpie as a warning of the danger of indulging in gluttony. “I will tell you,” he says, “a story in regard to women who eat dainty morsels in the absence of their lords. There was a lady who had a pie in a cage, which talked of everything which it saw done. Now it happened that the lord of the household preserved a large eel in a pond, and kept it very carefully, in order to give it to some of his lords or of his friends, in case they should visit him. So it happened that the lady said to her female attendant that it would be good to eat the great eel, and accordingly they eat it, and agreed that they would tell their lord that the otter had eaten it. And when the lord returned, the pie began to say to him, ‘My lord, my lady has eaten the eel.’ Then the lord went to his pond, and missed his eel; and he went into the house, and asked his wife what had become of it. She thought to excuse herself easily, but he said that he knew all about it, and that the pie had told him. The result was that there was great quarrelling and trouble in the house; but when the lord was gone away, the lady and her female attendant went to the pie, and plucked all the feathers from his head, saying, ‘You told about the eel.’ And so the poor pie was quite bald. But from that time forward, when it saw any people who were bald or had large foreheads, the pie said to them, ‘Ah! you told about the eel!’ And this is a good example how no woman ought to eat any choice morsel by gluttony without the knowledge of her lord, unless it be to give it to people of honour; for this lady was afterwards mocked and jeered for eating the eel, through the pie which complained of it.” The reader will recognise in this the origin of a much more modern story.

One of the stories in the celebrated mediæval collection, entitled “The Seven Sages,” also turns upon the talkative qualities of this bird. There was a burgher who had a pie which, on being questioned, related whatever it had seen, for it spoke uncommonly well the language of the people. Now the burgher’s wife was a good-for-nothing woman, and as soon as her husband went from home about business, she sent for her friend out of the town; but the pie, which was a great favourite of the burgher, told him all the goings on when he returned, and the husband knew that it always spoke the truth. So he became acquainted with his wife’s conduct. One day the burgher went from home, and told his wife he should not return that night, and she immediately sent for her friend; but he was afraid to enter, for “the pie was hung up in his cage on a high perch in the middle of the porch of the house.” Encouraged, however, by the lady, the friend ventured in, and passed through the hall to the chamber. The pie, which saw him pass, and knew him well on account of some tricks he had played upon it, called out, “Ah, sir! you who are in the chamber there, why don’t you pay your visits when the master is at home?” It said no more all the day, but the lady set her wits to work for a stratagem to avert the danger. So when night came, she called her chamber-maiden, and gave her a great jug full of water, and a lighted candle, and a wooden mallet, and about midnight the maiden mounted on the top of the house, and began to beat with the mallet on the laths, and from time to time showed the light through the crevices, and threw the water right down upon the pie till the bird was wet all over. Next morning the husband came home, and began to question his pie. “Sir,” it said, “my lady’s friend has been here, and stayed all night, and is only just gone away. I saw him go.” Then the husband was very angry, and was going to quarrel with his wife, but the pie went on—“Sir, it has thundered and lightened all night, and the rain was so heavy that I have been wet through.” “Nay,” said the husband, “it has been fine all night, without rain or storm.” “You see,” said the crafty dame, “you see how much your bird is to be believed. Why should you put more faith in him when he tells tales about me, than when he talks so knowingly about the weather?” Then the burgher thought he had been deceived, and turning his wrath upon the pie, drew it from the cage and twisted its neck; but he had no sooner done so than, looking up, he saw how the laths had been deranged. So he got a ladder, mounted on the roof, and discovered the whole mystery. If, says the story, he had not been so hasty, the life of his bird would have been saved. In the English version of this series of tales, printed by Weber, the pie’s cage is made to hang in the hall:— The burgeis hadde a pie in his halle,
That couthe telle tales alle
Apertlich (openly), in French langage,
And heng in a faire cage.
In the other English version, edited by the author of this work for the Percy Society, the bird is said to have been, not a pie, but a “popynjay,” or parrot, and there are other variations in it which show that it had been taken more directly from the Oriental original, in which, as might be expected, the bird is a parrot.

No. 173. Lady and Dog.

Among the animals mentioned as pets we sometimes find monkeys. One of the Latin stories in the collection printed by the Percy Society, tells how a rustic, entering the hall of a certain nobleman, seeing a monkey dressed in the same suit as the nobleman’s family, and supposing, as its back was turned, that it was one of his sons, began to address it with all suitable reverence; but when he saw that it was only a monkey chattering at him, he exclaimed, “A curse upon you! I thought you had been Jenkin, my lord’s son.”[26] The favourite quadruped, however, has always been the dog, of which several kinds are mentioned as lady’s pets. Chaucer tells us of his prioress,— Of smale houndes hadde sche, that sche fedde
With rostud fleissh and mylk and wastel breed.
—Cant. Tales, l. 147.
Our cut [No. 173], from a manuscript of the St. Graal, in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,293, fol. 31), written in the thirteenth century, represents a queen seated in conversation, with her dog in her lap. The next cut ([No. 174]), from an illumination in the interesting manuscript of the Roman de Meliadus in the British Museum (MS. Addit. 12,228, fol. 310), belonging to the latter half of the fourteenth century (the reign of our Edward III.), represents the interior of a chamber, with two little dogs gamboling about. In the singular work on domestic economy, entitled the “Ménagier de Paris,” written about the year 1393, the lady of the household is particularly recommended to think of the “chamber beasts,” such as little dogs, the “chamber birds,” &c., inasmuch as these creatures, not having the gift of speech, could not ask for themselves.[27] I have printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ” a curious Anglo-Norman poem, of the beginning of the fourteenth century, written as a satire on the ladies of the time, who were too fond of their dogs, and fed them delicately, while the servants were left to short commons (Reliq. Antiq. vol. i. p. 155). Cats are seldom mentioned as pets, except of ill-famed old women. There was a prejudice against them in the middle ages, and they were joined in people’s imagination with witchcraft, and with other diabolical agencies. The accompanying group of an old lady and her cats (cut [No. 175]) is taken from a carving on one of the misereres in the church of Minster, in the Isle of Thanet. Curiously enough, the English “Rule of Nuns,” of the earlier half of the thirteenth century, forbids the nuns to keep any “beast” but a cat.

No. 174. Interior of a Chamber.

No. 175. The Lady and herCats.

The chamber was, as might be expected, more comfortably furnished than the hall. The walls were covered with curtains, or tapestry, whence this apartment is frequently termed in the fabliaux and romances the chambre encortinée. The story of a fabliau printed in my “Anecdota Literaria” turns upon the facility with which a person might be concealed behind the “curtains” of the chamber. Besides a bench or stool to sit upon, there was usually a chair in the chamber. In the fabliau of the Bouchier d’Abbeville, the priest’s lady, when she rises out of bed to dress, is represented as placing herself in a chair— En le caiere s’est assisse.
In the early English romance of “Horn,” the lady, receiving a gentleman into her chamber, gives him a rich chair which would hold seven people, and which is covered, in true regal style, with a baldekin:—

The miri maiden, also sone
As Hatherof into chamber come,
Sche wend (thought) that it were Horn;
A riche cheir was undon,
That seiven might sit theron,
In swiche craft y-corn (chosen).
* * * *
A baudekin theron was spred,
Thider the maiden hadde him led
To siten hir beforn,
Frout (fruit) and spices sche him bede,
Wine to drink, wite and rede,
Bothe of coppe and horn.

The chamber was especially distinguished by its fireplace and chimney. The form of the mediæval fireplace is well-known from the numerous examples still remaining in the chambers of our old castles and mansion houses. The fire was made on the hearth, upon iron dogs, which had often very ornamental forms. The old romances frequently represent people sitting round the chamber fireplace to hold private conversation. It was here also that the heads of the family, or individual members of it in their own chambers, assembled in the evening when no ceremonious feasting was going on. In a story in the text of the “Seven Sages,” printed by Weber, a young married woman is represented sitting in the evening with her lord by the chamber fireside, attended by their squire, and playing with a dog— The yonge levedi and hire lord
Sete an even by the fer (fire);
Biforen hem stod here squier.
* * * * *
The bichche lai in hire barm (bosom).
—Weber, iii. 71.
In “Gautier d’Aupais,” when the young damsel sends for her mother, her messenger finds the old lady sitting on a richly-worked counterpoint by a coal fire (probably of charcoal)— Sor une coutepointe ouvré d’auqueton
Trova seant la dame lez i. feu de charbon.
—Gautier d’Aupais, p. 25.
In the romance of “Sir Degrevant,” when the lady Myldore has sent for her lover to come privately to her chamber at night, she orders her maiden to prepare a fire, and place fagots of fir-wood to keep it burning— Damesele, loke ther be
A fuyre in the chymené;
Fagattus of fyre-tre,
That fetchyd was yare (formerly).
—Thornton Romances, p. 234.
A board is placed on trestles to form a table, and a dainty supper is served, which the lady carves for her lover, and she further treats him with rich wines. In the romance of “Queen Berthe” (p. 102), three persons, holding a secret consultation in the chamber of one of their party, sit on carpets (sur les tapis); but these were no doubt embroidered cloths thrown over the seats. Floor-carpets were sometimes used in the chambers, but this was uncommon, and they seem to have been more usually, like the hall, strewed with rushes. It appears that sometimes, as a refinement in gaiety, flowers were mixed with the rushes. In a fabliau in Meon (i. 75), a lady who expects her lover, lights a fire in the chamber, and spreads rushes and flowers on the floor— Vient à l’ostel, lo feu esclaire,
Jons et flors espandre par l’aire.
There was an escrin, or cabinet, which stood against the wall, which was often so large that a man might conceal himself behind it. The plot of several mediæval stories turns upon this circumstance. Chests and coffers were also kept in the chamber; and it contained generally a small table, or at least the board and trestles for making one, which the lord or lady of the house used when they would dine or sup in private. The practice of thus dining or supping privately in the chamber is not unfrequently alluded to in the old stories and romances.

Supper, however, being the second meal in the day at which the whole household met together, was generally a more public one, and was held, like the dinner, in the hall, and with much the same forms and services. It was preceded and closed by the same washing of hands, and the table was almost as plentifully covered with viands. After having washed, the company drank round, and it seems to have been the usual custom, on leaving the supper-table, to go immediately to bed, for people in general kept early hours. Thus, in one of the pious stories printed by Meon, in describing a royal supper-party, we are told that, “when they had eaten and washed, they drunk, and then went to bed”— Qant orent mengié, si laverent,
Puis burent, et couchier alerent.
And in another story in the same collection, the lady receives a stranger to supper in a very hospitable manner—“when they had eaten leisurely, then it was time to go to bed”— Qant orent mengié par loisir,
Si su heure d’aler gesir.
Sometimes, however, there were dancing and other amusements between supper and bed-time. Thus, in the romance of “Sir Degrevant,”— Bleve (quickly) to soper they dyght,
Both squiere and knyght;
They daunsed and revelide that nyght,
In hert were they blythe.
In a fabliau published by Barbazan, on the arrival in a nobleman’s castle of a knight who is treated with especial courtesy, the knights and ladies dance after supper, and then, at bed-time, they conduct the visitor into his bed-chamber, and drink with him there before they leave him:— Après mengier, chascuns comence
De faire caroles et dance,
Tant qu’il fu houre de couchier;
Puis anmainment le chevalier
En sa chambre où fait fu son lit,
Et là burent par grant delit;
Puis prinrent congié.
Fruit was usually eaten after supper. In a fabliau of the thirteenth century, a noble visitor having been received in the house of a knight, they go immediately to supper. “After they had done eating, they enjoyed themselves in conversation, and then they had fruit,” and it was only after this that they washed— Après mengier se sont deduit
De paroles, puis si ont fruit.
In the lay of the “Chevalier à l’Espée,” Sir Gauwain takes, instead of supper, fruit and wine before he goes to bed.

The custom of keeping early hours still prevailed, and is very frequently alluded to. People are generally described as rising with the sun. Such was the case with the king, in the romance of “Parise la Duchesse”— Landemain par matin, quand solaus fu levez,
Se leva li rois Hugues.
—Parise, ed. P. Paris, p. 219.
It was the custom, after rising, to attend service either in the church or in the private chapel. In the history of Fulke Fitz-Warine, Jose de Dynan, in his castle of Ludlow, rose early in the morning, heard service in the chapel, after which he mounted to the top of the loftiest tower, to take a view of the country around, then descended and “caused the horn to be sounded for washing.” This was no doubt the signal for the household to assemble for breakfast. In Chaucer’s “Squyeres Tale,” the king’s guests, after great feasting and carousing at night, sleep till “prime large” in the morning, that is till six o’clock, which is spoken of in a manner which evidently intimates that they had considerably overslept themselves. The princess Canace had left her bed long before, and was walking with her maidens in the park. In the “Schipmannes Tale,” too, the lady rises very early in the morning, and takes her walk in the garden. In the curious “Book” of the Chevalier de la Tour Landry, we are told of a very pious dame whom he knew, whose daily life was as follows:—She rose early in the morning, had two friars and two or three chaplains in attendance to chant matins while she was rising; as soon as she left her chamber she went to her chapel, and remained in devotion in her oratory while they said matins and one mass, and then she went and dressed and arrayed herself, after which she went to recreate herself in the garden or about the house; she then attended divine service again, and after it went to dinner; and during the afternoon she visited the sick, and in due time supped, and after supper she called her maître d’hôtel, and made her household arrangements for the following day.

The hour of breakfast is very uncertain, and appears not to have been fixed. The hour of dinner was, as already stated, nine o’clock in the morning, or sometimes ten. In the lay of the “Mantel Mautaillé,” king Arthur is introduced on a grand festival day refusing, according to his custom, to begin the dinner till some “adventure” occurs, and the guests wait till near “nonne,” when the grand seneschal, Sir Keux, takes upon himself to expostulate, and represents that dinner had been ready a long time (pieçà). Nonne is here probably meant for midday, or noon. The queen was in her chamber, greatly distressed at having to wait so long for dinner. The regular hour of supper appears to have been five o’clock in the afternoon, but when private it seems not to have been fixed to any particular hour. In summer, at least, people appear usually to have gone to bed when darkness approached; and this was the time at which guests ordinarily took their leave. Thus, at January’s wedding-feast, in Chaucer, we are told that— Night, with his mantel, that is dark and rude,
Gan oversprede themesperie aboute;
For which departed is the lusti route
Fro January, with thank on every side,
Hoom to her houses lustily thay ryde.
—Cant. Tales, l. 9672.
We must not forget that these remarks apply to the seasons of the year when days were long, for the scenes of most of these romances and tales are laid in the spring and summer months, and especially in May. We have much less information on the domestic relations during winter.

No. 176. A Supper.

One reason for keeping early hours was that candles and lamps were too expensive to be used in profusion by people in general. Various methods of giving artificial light at night are mentioned, most of which seem to have been considered more or less as luxuries. At grand festivals the light was often given by men holding torches. In general, candles were used at supper. The accompanying cut ([No. 176]), taken from the manuscript of the St. Graal already mentioned, represents a person supping by candlelight. In the fabliau of “La Borgoise d’Orliens,” a lady, receiving her lover into her chamber, spreads a table for him, and lights a great wax candle (grosse chandoile de cire).

Lighting in the middle ages was, indeed, effected, in a manner more or less refined, by means of torches, lamps, and candles. The candle, which was the most portable of them all, was employed in small and private evening parties; and, from an early period, it was used in the bed-chamber. For the table very handsome candlesticks were made, which were employed by people of rank, and wax-candles (cierges) were used on them. They were formed with an upright spike (broche), on which the candle was stuck, not, as now, placed in a socket. Thus, in a scene in one of the fabliaux printed by Barbazan, a good bourgeois has on his supper-table two candlesticks of silver, “very fair and handsome,” with wax-candles— Desor la table ot deus broissins,
Où il avoit cierges, d’argent,
Molt estoient bel et gent.
—Barbazan, vol. iv. p. 184.
So in the romance of “La Violette,” when the count Lisiart arrives at the castle of duke Gerart, on the approach of bedtime, two men-servants make their appearance, each carrying a lighted cierge, or wax-candle, and thus they lead him to his chamber— Atant lor vinrent doi sergant,
Chascuns tenoit j. cerge ardant;
Le conte menerent couchier.
—La Violette, p. 30.
This, however, appears to have been done as a mark of honour to the guest, for, even in ducal castles common candles appear to have been in ordinary use. In a bedroom scene in a fabliau printed by Meon (tom. i. p. 268), in which the younger ladies of the duke’s family and their female attendants slept all in beds in one room, they have but one candle (chandoile), and that is attached to the wood of the bed of the duke’s daughter, so that it would appear to have had no candlestick. One of the damsels, who was a stranger, and less familiar than the others, was unwilling to take off her chemise until the light was extinguished, for it must be remembered that it was the general custom to sleep in bed quite naked, and the daughter of the duke, whose bedfellow she was to be, blew the candle out— Roseite tantost la soufla,
Qu’à s’esponde estoit atachie.
Blowing out the candle was the ordinary manner of extinguishing it. In the “Ménagier de Paris,” or instructions for the management of a gentleman’s household, compiled in the latter half of the fourteenth century, the lady of the house is told, after having each night ascertained that the house is properly closed and all the fires covered, to see all the servants to bed, and to take care that each had a candle in a “flat-bottomed candlestick,” at some distance from the bed, “and to teach them prudently to extinguish their candles before they go into their bed with the mouth, or with the hand, and not with their chemise,” i. e., they were to blow their candle out, or put it out with their fingers, not to extinguish it by throwing their shifts upon it—another allusion to the practice of sleeping naked.[28] Extinguishers had not yet come into general use. People went to bed with a candle placed in a candlestick of a different description from that used at table; and we learn from a story in the “Ménagier de Paris” that it was customary for the servant or servants who had charge of the candles, to accompany them into their bedroom, remain with them till they were in bed, and then carry the candles away. Candles were, however, usually left in the chamber or bedroom all night; and there was frequently a spike, or candlestick, attached to the chimney; as in the fabliau just quoted there was, no doubt, a similar spike attached to the wood-work of the bed. The stick, whether fixed or movable, was made for convenience in placing the candle in the chamber, and not for the purpose of carrying it about; for the latter purpose, it appears to have been generally taken off the stick, and carried in the hand. Our cut [No. 177], taken from one of the carved stalls of the chapel of Winchester school, represents an individual, perhaps the cellarer or steward, who has gone into the cellar with a candle, which he carries in this manner, and is there terrified by the appearance of hobgoblins. In the fabliau of the “Chevalier à la Corbeille,” an old dueña, employed to watch over her young mistress, being disturbed in the night, is obliged to take her candle, and go into the kitchen to light it; from whence we may suppose that it was the custom to keep the kitchen fire in all night.

No. 177. The Cellarer in a Panic.

No. 178. Man with Lantern.

An old poem on the troubles of housekeeping, printed by M. Jubinal in his “Nouveau Recueil de Contes,” enumerates candles and a lantern among the necessaries of a household— Or faut chandeles et lanterne.
A manuscript of the thirteenth century in the French National Library (No. 6956) contains an illumination, which has furnished us with the accompanying cut ([No. 178]), representing a man holding a lantern of the form then in use, and lanterns are not unfrequently mentioned in old writers.

It appears to have been a common custom, at least among the better classes of society, to keep a lamp in the chamber to give light during the night. In one of the fabliaux printed in Meon, a man entering the chamber of a knight’s lady, finds it lit by a lamp which was usually left burning in it— Une lampe avoit en la chambre,
Par costume ardoir i siaut.
In the English romance of “Sir Eglamour,” several lamps are described as burning in a lady’s chamber— Aftur sopur, as y yow telle,
He wendyd to chaumbur with Crystyabelle,
There laumpus were brennyng bryght.
We may suppose, notwithstanding these words, that a lamp gave but a dim light; and accordingly we are told in another fabliau that there was little light, or, as it is expressed in the original, “none,” in a chamber where nothing but a lamp was burning,— En la chambre lumiere n’ot,
Hors d’un mortier qu’iluec ardoit,
Point de clarté ne lor rendoit.
In the accompanying cut ([No. 179]), taken from an illumination in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the National Library in Paris (No. 6988), a nun, apparently, is arranging her lamp before going to bed. The lamp here consists of a little basin of oil, in which, no doubt, the wick floated; but the use of the stand under it is not easily explained.

No. 179. A Bedroom Chamber Scene.

Lamps were used where a light was wanted in a room for a long time, because they lasted longer without requiring snuffing. The lamps of the middle ages were made usually on the plan of those of the Romans, consisting, as in the foregoing example, of a small vessel of earthenware or metal, which was filled with oil, and a wick placed in it. This lamp was placed on a stand, or was sometimes suspended on a beam, or perch, or against the wall. We have an example of this in the preceding cut ([No. 179]), which explains the term mortier (mortar) of the fabliau, it was a wick swinging in oil in a basin. Our cut [No. 180], taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Harl., No. 1227), represents a row of lamps of rather curious form, made to be suspended. In our next cut ([No. 181]), from a manuscript of the same date (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), we have lamps of a somewhat similar form, made to be carried in the hand.

No. 180. Mediæval Lamps.

No. 181. Men carrying Lamps.

Torches were used at greater festivals, and for occasions where it was necessary to give light to very large halls full of company. They were usually held in the hand by servants, but were sometimes placed against the wall in holds made to receive them. Torches were not unfrequently used to give light to the chamber also. In one of the stories of the “Seven Sages,” a man, bringing a person in secret to the king’s chamber, “blewe out the torche,” in order to cause perfect darkness (Weber, iii. 63); and in the early English romance of “Sir Degrevant” (Weber, iii. 213), where light is wanted in a lady’s chamber, it is obtained by means of the torches.

There were other means of giving light, on a still greater scale, which I shall describe in a subsequent chapter, when treating of the fifteenth century.

CHAPTER XII.
THE BED AND ITS FURNITURE.—THE TOILETTE; BATHING.—CHESTS AND COFFERS IN THE CHAMBER.—THE HUTCH.—USES OF RINGS.—COMPOSITION OF THE FAMILY.—FREEDOM OF MANNERS.—SOCIAL SENTIMENTS, AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS.

It was now a matter of pride to have the bed furnished with handsome curtains and coverings. Curtains to beds were so common, that being “under the curtain” was used as an ordinary periphrasis for being in bed; but these curtains appear to have been suspended to the ceiling of the chamber, with the bedhead behind them. With regard to the bed itself, there was now much more refinement than when it was simply stuffed with straw. Beds among the rich were made with down (duvet); in the “Roman de la Violette” we are told of a bed made of bofu—perhaps of flocks. From the vocabulary composed by Alexander Neckam early in the thirteenth century, we learn that the bed was covered much in the same way as at present. First, a “quilte” was spread over the bed; on this the bolster was placed; over this was laid a “quilte poynté” or “rayé” (courtepointe, or counterpane); and on this, at the head of the bed, was placed the pillow. The sheets were then thrown over it, and the whole was covered with a coverlet, the common material of which, according to Neckam, was green say, though richer materials, and even valuable furs, were used for this purpose. In the “Lai del Désiré,” we are told of a quilt (coilte), made in checker-wise, of pieces of two different sorts of rich stuff, which seems to have been considered as something extremely magnificent—

Sur on bon lit s’ert apuiée;
La coilte fu à eschekers
De deus pailles ben faiz e chers.

Among all classes the appearance of the bed seems to have been a subject of considerable pride, no doubt from the circumstance of the bedroom being a place for receiving visitors. There were sometimes two or more beds in the same room, and visitors slept in the same chamber with the host and hostess. Beds were also made for the occasion, without bedsteads, sometimes in the hall, at others in the chamber beside the ordinary bed, or in some other room. The plots of many mediæval stories turn on these circumstances. People therefore kept extra materials for making the beds. In the “Roman du Meunier d’Arleux,” when a maiden comes as an unexpected visitor, a place is chosen for her by the side of the fire, and a soft bed is laid down, with very expensive sheets, and a coverlet “warm and furred”—

Kieute mole, linchex molt chier,
Et covertoir chaut et forré.

One custom continued to prevail during the whole of this period,—that of sleeping in bed entirely naked. So many allusions to this practice occur in the old writers, that it is hardly necessary to say more than state the fact. Not unfrequently this custom is still more strongly expressed by stating that people went to bed as naked as they were born; as in some moral lines in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ” (ii. 15), against the pride of the ladies, who are told that, however gay may be their clothing during the day, they will lie in bed at night as naked as they were born. It is true that in some instances in the illuminations persons are seen in bed with some kind of clothing on, but this was certainly an exception to the rule, and there is generally some particular reason for it. Thus, in the “Roman de la Violette” (p. 31), the lady Oriant excites the surprise of her dueña by going to bed in a chemise, and is obliged to explain her reason for so singular a practice, namely, her desire to conceal a mark on her body. Our cut [No. 182], taken from the romance of the St. Graal, in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,292, fol. 21, v^o), represents a king and queen in bed, both naked. The crowns on their heads are a mere conventional method of stating their rank: kings and queens were not in the habit of sleeping in bed with their crowns on their heads. In the next cut ([No. 183]), taken from a manuscript of the romance of the “Quatre Fils d’Aymon,” of the latter part of the fourteenth century, in the National Library in Paris (No. 6970), there is still less room left for doubt on the subject. The people seem to be sleeping in a public hostelry, where the beds are made in recesses, not unlike the berths in a modern steamer; the man on horseback is supposed to be outside, and his arrival has given alarm to a man who was in bed, and who is escaping without any kind of clothing. In the English romance of “Sir Isumbras,” the castle of Isumbras is burnt to the ground in the night, and his lady and three children escaped from their beds; when he hurried to the spot, he found them without clothing or shelter— A dolefulle syghte the knyghte gane see
Of his wyfe and his childir three,
That fro the fyre were flede;
Alle als nakede als thay were borne
Stode togedir undir a thorne,
Braydede owte of thaire bedd.
Curiously enough, while so little care was taken to cover the body, the head was carefully covered at night, not with a nightcap, but with a kerchief (couvrechief), which was wrapped round it.

No. 182. King and Queen in Bed.

No. 183. Night Scene in a Hostelry.

No. 184. A Lady Bathing.

The practice of warm-bathing prevailed very generally in all classes of society, and is frequently alluded to in the mediæval romances and stories. For this purpose a large bathing-tub was used, the ordinary form of which is represented in the annexed cut ([No. 184]), taken from the manuscript of the St. Graal, of the thirteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,292, fol. 266). People sometimes bathed immediately after rising in the morning; and we find the bath used after dinner, and before going to bed. A bath was also often prepared for a visitor on his arrival from a journey; and, what seems still more singular, in the numerous stories of amorous intrigues, the two lovers usually begin their interviews by bathing together.

No. 185. Lady at her Toilette.

Our cut [No. 185], from another volume of the manuscript last quoted (MS. Addit. No. 10,293, fol. 266), represents a lady at her toilette. It is a subject on which our information at this period is not very abundant. The round mirror of metal which she is employing was the common form during the middle ages, and was no doubt derived from the ancients. The details of the ladies’ toilette are not often described, but the contemporary moralists and satirists condemn, in rather general terms, and evidently with more bitterness than was called for, the pains taken by the ladies to adorn their persons. They are accused of turning their bodies from their natural form by artificial means, alluding to the use of stays, which appear to have been first employed by the Anglo-Norman ladies in the twelfth century. They are further accused of plucking out superfluous hairs from their faces and eyebrows, of dyeing their hair, and of painting their faces. The chevalier de la Tour-Landry (chap. 76) tells his daughters that the whole intrigue between king David and the wife of Uriah arose out of the circumstance of the lady combing her hair at an open window where she could be seen from without, and says that it was a punishment for the too great attention she gave to the adornment of her head. The toilette of the day seems to have been completed at the first rising from bed in the morning. There are some picturesque lines in the English metrical romance of “Alisaunder,” which describe the morning thus:—

In a moretyde (morrow-tide) hit was;
Theo dropes hongyn on the gras;
Theo maydenes lokyn in the glas,
For to tyffen (adorn) heare fas.
—Weber, i. 169.

The chamber, as it has been already intimated, was properly speaking the women’s apartment, though it was very accessible to the other sex. It was usually the place for private conversation, and we often hear of persons entering the chamber for this purpose, and in this case the bed seems to have served usually for a seat. Thus, in the romance of “Eglamour,” when, after supper, Christabelle led the knight into her chamber— That lady was not for to hyde,
Sche sett hym on hur beddys syde,
And welcomyd home thet knyght.
Again, in a fabliau printed by Meon, a woman of a lower grade, wishing to make a private communication to a man, invites him into her chamber, and they sit on the bed to converse— En une chanbre andui en vont,
Desor un lit asis se sont.
And in the fabliau of “Guillaume au Faucon,” printed by Barbazan, Guillaume, visiting the lady of a knight in her chamber, finds her seated on the bed, and he immediately takes a seat by her side to converse with her. In the illuminated manuscripts, scenes of this kind occur frequently; but in the fourteenth century, instead of being seated on the bed, the persons thus conversing sit on a bench which runs along the side of the bed, and seems to belong to the bedstead. A scene of this kind is represented in our cut [No. 186] (taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the British Museum, MS. Addit. No. 12,228, fol. 312), which is a good representation of a bed of the fourteenth century. A lady has introduced a king into her chamber, and they are conversing privately, seated on the bench of the bed. In some of these illuminations, the persons conversing are seated on the bed, with their feet on the bench.

No. 186. Conversation in the Chamber.

No. 187. Taking Clothes from the Chest.

The illuminators had not yet learned the art of representing things in detail, and they still too often give us mere conventional representations of beds, yet we see enough to convince us that the bedsteads were already made much more elaborately than formerly. Besides the bench at the side, we find them now with a hutch (huche) or locker at the foot, in which the possessor was accustomed to lock up his money and other valuables. This hutch at the foot of the bed is often mentioned in the fabliaux and romances. Thus, in the fabliau “Du chevalier à la Robe Vermeille,” a man, when he goes to bed, places his robe on a hutch at the foot of the bed— Sur une huche aus piez du lit
A cil toute sa robe mise.
Another, having extorted some money from a priest, immediately puts it in the hutch— Les deniers a mis en la huche.
The hutch was indeed one of the most important articles of furniture in the mediæval chamber. All portable objects of intrinsic value or utility were kept in boxes, because they were thus ready for moving and taking away in case of danger, and because in travelling people carried much of their movables of this description about with them. Hence the uses of the hutch or chest were very numerous and diversified. It was usual to keep clothes of every description in a chest, and illustrations of this practice are met with not uncommonly in the illuminated manuscripts. One of them is given in our cut [No. 187], taken from an illumination in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, given by Willemin. Jewels, plate, personal ornaments of all kinds, and all descriptions of “treasure,” were similarly locked up in chests. In our cut No. 188, taken also from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., of the beginning of the fourteenth century), a man appears in the act of depositing in a chest fibulæ or brooches, rings, buttons, and other objects, and a large vessel probably of silver. Our cut No. 189, from a manuscript in the National Library in Paris (No. 6956), represents a miser examining the money in his hutch, which is here detached from a bed; but in some other illuminations, a hutch of much the same form appears attached to the bed foot. In Anglo-Saxon the coffer was called a loc, whence our word locker is derived; or a cyste, our chest; or an arc: from the Anglo-Normans we derive the words hutch (huche) and coffer (coffre). The Anglo-Saxons, as we have shown in a former chapter (p. 79), like our forefathers of a later period, kept their treasures in lockers or hutches. In the “Legend of St. Juliana,” an Anglo-Saxon poem in the Exeter Book, it is remarked in proof of the richness of a chieftain:—

þeah þe feoh-gestreon Although he riches under hord-locan, in his treasure-lockers, hyrsta únrím, jewels innumerable, æhte ofer eorþan. possessed upon earth. —Exeter Book, p. 245.

No. 188. The Treasure Chest.

Among the Anglo-Saxons the lady of the household had the charge of the coffers. In one of the laws of Cnut relating to robberies, it is declared that “if any man bring a stolen thing home to his cot, and he be detected, it is just that the owner have what he went for; and unless it has been brought under his wife’s key-lockers (cæg-locan), let her be clear; for it is her duty to keep the keys of them, namely, her storehouse (hord-ern), and her chest (cyste), and her box (tege).” (Cnut’s Laws, No. 180.)

No. 189. A Miser and his Hoard.

No. 190. Joseph buying up the Corn.

In the old metrical romances, when a town is taken and sacked, the plunderers are described as hurrying to the chambers, to rifle the chests and coffers, which were kept there. Thus, in the romance of the “Mort de Garin,” when Fromont’s town is taken by the followers of the hero of the romance, “the Lorrains,” we are told, “hastened to destroy the town; there you might see many a chamber broken open, and many a hutch burst and torn, where they found robes, and silver, and glittering gold”— Loheren poignent por le borc desrochier.
Là véissiez mainte chambre brisier,
Et mainte huche effondrer et percier,
Et trovent robes, et argent, et or mier.
—Mort de Garin, p. 168.
So in the romance of “Garin,” of which that just quoted is the sequel, on a similar occasion, “there you might see them rob the great halls, and break open the chambers, and force the coffers (escrins),”— Là véissiez les grans salles rober;
Chambres brisier, et les escrins forcier.
—Garin le Loherain, tom. i. p. 197.
Further on, in the same romance, the fair Beatrix, addressing her husband, the duke Begues, tells him that he has gold and silver in his coffers,— Or et argent avez en vos escrins.
—Ib., tom. ii. p. 218.
Money was, indeed, commonly kept in the huche or coffer. In the fabliau of “Constant Duhamel,” when Constant is threatened by the forester, who had detained his oxen on the pretence that they had been found trespassing, he tells him that he was ready to redeem them, as he had a hundred sols of money in his hutch by his bed— J’ai en ma huche lez mon lit,
Cent sols de deniers à vostre oes.
—Barbazan, iii. 307.
In the accompanying cut ([No. 190]), from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), Joseph is represented counting out the money from his huche, to buy up the corn of Egypt, during the years of plenty.

No. 191. Sitting on the Huche.

The chests were kept in the chambers, as being the most retired and secure part of the house, and, from the terms in which the breaking open of the chambers is spoken of in the foregoing extracts, we are led to suppose that the chambers themselves were usually locked. The ordinary place for the chests or hutches, or, at least, of the principal chest, was by the side, or more usually at the foot, of the bed. We have just seen that this was the place in which Constant Duhamel kept his huche. Under these circumstances it was very commonly used for a seat, and is often introduced as such, both in the literature of the middle ages, and in the illuminations of the manuscripts. In the romance of “Garin” (tom. i. p. 214), the king’s messenger finds the count of Flanders, Fromont, in a tent, according to one manuscript, seated on a coffer (sor un coffre où se sist). So, also, in the “Roman de la Violette,” p. 25, the heroine and her treacherous guest are represented as seated upon “a coffer banded with copper” (sor j. coffre bendé de coivre). Our cut [No. 191], taken from one of the engravings in the great work of Willemin, represents a scribe thus seated on a coffer or huche, and engaged apparently in writing a letter. Our next cut ([No. 192]), taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 E. vi.), represents a lady and gentleman, seated on apparently a coffer, the former of whom is presenting a ring to the other.

This latter object, the ring, acts also a very frequent and very important part in the social history of the middle ages. A ring was often given as a token of affection between lovers, as may perhaps be intended by the subject of our last cut, or between relatives or friends. In the romance of “Widukind,” tom. ii. p. 20, the queen gives her ring to her lover in a secret interview in her tent. So, in the romance of “Horn,” the lady Rigmel gave her lover, Horn, a ring as a token. It was often, moreover, given not merely as a token of remembrance, but as a means of recognition. In the well-known early English romance of “Sir Tristram,” the mother of the hero, dying in childbirth of him after his father had been slain, gives a ring to the knight to whose care she entrusted the infant, as a token by which his parentage should be known when he grew up:— A ring of riche hewe
Than hadde that levedi (lady) fre;
Sche toke (gave) it Rouhand trewe,
Hir sone schie bad it be;
Mi brother wele it knewe,
Mi fader yaf it me.
This ring leads subsequently to the recognition of Tristram by his uncle, king Mark. In the romance of “Ipomydon” (Weber’s “Metrical Romances,” vol. ii. p. 355), the hero similarly receives from his mother a ring, which was to be a token of recognition to his illegitimate brother. So, in the romance, Horn makes himself known in the sequel to Rigmel, by dropping the ring she had given him into the drinking-horn which she was serving round at a feast. Rings were often given to messengers as credentials, or were used for the same purpose as letters of introduction. In the romance of “Floire and Blanceflor” (p. 55), the young hero, on his way to Babylon, arrives at a bridge, the keeper of which has a brother in the great city, to whose hospitality he wishes to recommend Floire, and for that purpose he gives him his ring. “Take this ring to him,” he says, “and tell him from me to receive you in his best manner.” The message was attended with complete success. In our cut [No. 193], taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), the messenger arrives with the letter of which he is the bearer, and at the same time exhibits a ring in the place of credentials.

No. 192. The Token of the Ring.

No. 193. The Delivery of the Ring.

There was another circumstance which gave value and importance to rings in the middle ages. Not only might rings be charmed by the power of the magician, but it was an article of general belief that the engraved stones of the ancients, which were found commonly enough on old sites, and even the precious stones in general, without any engraving, possessed extraordinary virtues, the benefit of which was imparted to those who carried them on their persons. In the romance of “Melusine” (p. 357), the heroine, when about to leave the house of her husband, gives him two rings, and says, “My sweet love, you see here two rings of gold, which have both the same virtue; and know well for truth, that so long as you possess them, or one of them, you shall never be overcome in pleading nor in battle, if your cause be rightful: and neither you nor others who may possess them, shall ever die by any weapons.” In a story among the collection of the “Gesta Romanorum,” edited by sir Frederic Madden for the Roxburghe Club (p. 150), a father is made, on his deathbed, to give to his son a ring, “the virtue of which was, that whosoever should bear it upon him, should have the love of all men.” The ring given by the princess Rigmel to Horn possessed virtues of an equally remarkable description—“Whoever bore it upon him could not perish; he need not fear to die either in fire or water, or in field of battle, or in the contention of the tournament.” So, in the romance of “Floire and Blanceflor” (p. 42), the queen gives her son a ring which would protect him against all danger, and assure to him the eventual attainment of every object of his wishes. Nor was the ring of sir Perceval of Galles (Thornton Romances, p. 71) at all less remarkable in its properties, of which the rhymer says—

Siche a vertue es in the stane,
In alle this werlde wote I nane
Siche stone in a rynge;
A mane that had it in were (war)
One his body for to bere,
There scholde no dyntys (blows) hym dere (injure),
Ne to dethe brynge.

The consideration of the house and its parts and furniture, and of the outward forms of domestic life, leads us naturally to that of the constitution of the family. It was the chief pride of the aristocratic class to live very extravagantly, and to support a great household, with an immense number of personal attendants of different classes. In the first place the old system of fostering, which was kept up to a comparatively late period, added to the number of the lord’s or knight’s family. As might was literally right in the middle ages, each man of worth sought to strengthen himself by the alliances which were formed by finding powerful foster-fathers for his sons, and the personal attachment and fidelity between the chief of the family and his foster-child was often greater even than that between the father and his own son. In addition to the foster children, gentlemen sent their sons to take an honourable kind of service in the families of men of higher rank or greater wealth, where the manners and accomplishments of gentlemen were to be learnt in greater perfection than at home; and the younger sons of great families sought similar service with a view to their advancement in the world. These two classes were the young squires, who served at table, and performed a great number of what we should now call menial offices to the lord and ladies of the household, in all the amusements and recreations of which they took part, and at the same time were instructed in gentlemanly manners and exercises—it was a sort of apprenticeship introductory to knighthood. In the same manner the knightly families sent their daughters to serve under the ladies of the greater or lesser feudal chieftains, and they formed that class who, in the French romances and fabliaux, are called the chambrières, or chamber attendants, and in the English texts, simply the maidens, of the establishment. The ladies of rank prided themselves upon having a very great number of these chambrières, or maidens, for they were not only a means of ostentation, but they were profitable, inasmuch as besides attending on the personal wants of their mistresses, they were constantly employed in spinning, weaving, and the various processes of producing cloth, in millinery and dress-making, in embroidery, and in a great number of similar labours, which were not only required for furnishing the large number of persons who depended upon their lord for their liveries, &c., but which were sometimes sold to obtain money, which was always a scarce thing in the country. The beauty of the pucelles, as they are often termed in the French text, or maidens, is also spoken of as a subject of pride. In a metrical story printed by Meon (ii. 38), a great lady receiving a female stranger into her household, became so much attached to her, “that she made more of her than of all her maidens, of whom,” it is added, “there were handsome ones in her chambers”— De li la dame fet grant feste,
Plus que de totes ses puceles,
Dont en ses chambres a de beles.
And so, in the romance of “Blonde of Oxford” (p. 30), when the countess went with her maidens to visit John, the remark is made that among them there were plenty of beauties:—

Et la contesse et ses puceles,
Dont ele avoit assés de beles.

The usual age for sending a boy to foster appears to have been seven years. That was the age at which Fulke Fitz-Warine was sent to Joce de Dynan in Ludlow Castle. “The lady,” the narrative tells us, “became with child; when she was delivered, at the time ordained by God, they called the child Fulke. And when the child was seven years old, they sent it to Joce de Dynan to teach and nourish; for Joce was a knight of good accomplishment. Joce received him with great honour and great affection, and educated him in his chambers with his own children.” Fulke the younger, in the next generation, was taken as his foster-child by the king (Henry II.), and was nourished and educated with the young princes, of whom John, in the sequel, proved a bad foster-brother. The great barons sought to form alliances of this kind with the king, as well as with his great ministers and other men of power. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain” (vol. i. p. 62), king Pepin gives the two orphan sons of Hervis of Metz, Garin and Begon, as foster-children to the count Hardrés, and they thus become severally the foster-brothers, or, as they are termed in the old French, compains (companions), of his two sons, Begon being the foster-brother of Guillaume of Montclin, and Garin of Fromont. Although they belong to rival families, and are each other’s enemies through the turbulent scenes which form the subject of the story, the sentiment of the relationship by fostering often shows itself. This yearning after something beyond mere ordinary friendship seems to have been often felt in the middle ages, and led to various characteristic practices, among which one of the most remarkable was that of sworn brotherhood. Two men—they are generally knights—who felt a sufficiently strong sentiment towards each other, engaged, under the most solemn oaths, in a bond of fraternity for life, implying a constant and faithful friendship to each other. This practice enters largely into the plot of several of the mediæval romances, as in that of “Amis and Amiloun,” and in the curious English metrical romance of “King Athelston,” printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ.” The desire for this true friendship was not unnaturally increased by the general prevalence of treacherous falsehood and hateful feuds. There is a beautiful passage in the romance of “Garin,” just quoted, which illustrates this sentiment, while it furnishes an interesting picture of domestic life. “One day,” we are told, “Begues was in his castle of Belin, and beside him sat the beautiful Beatris. The duke kissed her both on the mouth and on the cheeks, and very sweetly the duchess smiled. In the middle of the hall she saw her two sons, the eldest of whom was Garin, and the youngest was named Hernaudin; their ages were respectively twelve years, and ten. Along with them were six damoisels (gentlemen’s sons) of worth, and they were running and leaping together, and playing, and laughing, and making game. The duke looked at them, and began to sigh; which was observed by the lady, who questioned him—‘Ah! rich duke! why have you sorrowful thoughts? You have gold and silver in your coffers, falcons in plenty on your perches, and rich cloths, buildings, and mules, and palfreys, and baggage-horses; and you have crushed all your enemies. You have no neighbour within six days’ journey powerful enough to refuse to come to your service if you send for him.’ ‘Lady,’ said the duke, ‘what you say is true; but in one thing you have made a great oversight. Wealth consists neither in rich cloths, nor in money, nor in buildings, nor in horses but it is made of kinsmen and friends: the heart of one man is worth all the gold in a country.’”—

Dist li dus, “Dame, verités avez dit;
Mais d’une chose i avez moult mespris.
N’est pas richoise ne de vair ne de gris,
Ne de deniers, de murs, ne de roncins,
Mais est richoise de parens et d’amins;
Li cuers d’un homme vaut tout l’or d’un pais.”
—Garin le Loherain, ii. 218.

The incident of the younger, or even at times the elder, sons of feudal lords or landholders going to seek service is the groundwork of the romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” and of the story of “Courtois d’Arras,” printed by Meon in his collection of fabliaux and stories. The latter tale is a mediæval version of the scriptural story of the Prodigal Son. Youths of good family easily found service in this manner, and the service itself was not considered dishonourable, because lords and gentlemen admitted nobody to immediate attendance on their persons but sons of gentlemen—persons of as good blood as themselves. To be a good servant was a gentlemanly accomplishment, and the payment these gentlemanly servants received consisted ordinarily in their clothing and gifts of various kinds, rarely in money. I have already hinted that the intercourse between the male and female portions of the household was on a footing of familiarity and freedom, and at the same time on a tone of gallantry which could hardly produce a high degree of morality, but the details on this subject, though very abundant, are in great part of a description which cannot here be entered upon. This intercourse extended to what we should now call the privacy of the bed-chamber. It was usual, indeed, for the ladies to receive visits from the gentlemen, tête-à-tête, in their chamber. In the fabliau of “Guillaume au Faucon,” printed in Barbazan, the young “damoisel,” as the noble youth was usually termed, having fallen in love with the beautiful wife of the lord in whose service he was, took an opportunity of visiting her in her chamber, when he knew that all her maidens were employed in another part of the building. Without knocking, he opened the door gently, and found the lady sitting alone on her bed. The lady saluted him with “a sweet smile,” and told him to come in and sit on the bed by her side, and there “he laughed, and talked, and plaid with her, and the lady did the same”— Rit et parole et joe à li,
Et la dame tot autresi.
In the midst of these familiarities, Guillaume made his declaration of love, and was rejected, but his pursuit was ultimately successful. In another fabliau of the thirteenth century, that of “Gautier d’Aupais,” it is the daughter of his lord and lady with whom the young “damoisel” falls in love, and he takes the opportunity one morning, while the two latter are at church, to pay a visit to the young lady in her chamber. Although in bed on account of illness—and it has been already stated how people went to bed without any clothing—the lady is not surprised by Gautier’s visit, but invites him to sit on her bed, and tell her something to amuse her, and he finds the opportunity of making his love with more success than the hero of the other tale. In the same manner, the ladies are continually described as visiting the gentlemen in their chambers, both by day and by night. In “Blonde of Oxford,” a fashionable romance composed for the entertainment of the best society, Blonde thus leaves her bed, throwing only a mantle over her person, to pass whole nights with Jean of Dammartin, and their interviews are described in language which would not be allowed in any respectable book at the present day. The chevalier de la Tour-Landry, in his moral instructions to his daughters, tells them a story to illustrate the ill results of a quarrelsome temper. There was a young lady, he says, the daughter of “a very gentle knight,” who quarrelled at the game of tables with a gentleman who had no better temper than herself, and who, provoked by the irritating language she used towards him, told her that she was known to be in the habit of going by night into the men’s chambers, and kissing and embracing them in their beds without candle; and this is told, not in reproof of conduct which was unusually bad, but to show that people who speak ill of others run the risk of having their own failings exposed. Examples of this intercourse of persons of different sexes in their chambers, and of the results which frequently followed, from the mediæval romances and stories, might be multiplied to almost any extent.

In these stories, the ladies in general show no great degree of delicacy, but, on the contrary, they are commonly very forward. It is usual with them to fall in love with the other sex, and, so far from attempting to conceal their passion, they often become suitors, and make their advances with more warmth and less delicacy than is shown by the gentlemen in a similar position. Not only are their manners dissolute, but their language and conversation are loose beyond anything that those who have not read these interesting records of mediæval life can easily conceive, which was a common failing with both sexes. The author of the “Ménagier de Paris” (ii. 60), in recommending to his daughters some degree of modesty on this point, makes use of words which his modern editor, although printing a text in obsolete language, thought it advisable to suppress. It might be argued that the use of such language is evidence rather of the coarseness than of the immorality of the age, but, unfortunately, the latter interpretation is supported by the whole tenor of contemporary literature and anecdote, which leave no doubt that mediæval society was profoundly immoral and licentious.

On the other hand, the gallantry and refinement of feeling which the gentleman is made to show towards the other sex, is but a conventional politeness; for the ladies are too often treated with great brutality. Men beating their wives, and even women with whom they quarrel who are not their wives, is a common incident in the tales and romances. The chevalier de la Tour-Landry tells his daughters the story of a woman who was in the habit of contradicting her husband in public, and replying to him ungraciously, for which, after the husband had expostulated in vain, he one day raised his fist and knocked her down, and kicked her in the face while she was down, and broke her nose. “And so,” says the knightly instructor, “she was disfigured for life, and thus, through her ill behaviour and bad temper, she had her nose spoiled, which was a great misfortune to her. It would have been better for her to be silent and submissive, for it is only right that words of authority should belong to her lord, and the wife’s honour requires that she should listen in peace and obedience.” The good “chevalier” makes no remark on the husband’s brutality, as though it were by no means an unusual occurrence.

A trouvère of the thirteenth century, named Robert de Blois, compiled a code of instructions in good manners for young ladies in French verse, under the title of the “Chastisement des Dames,” which is printed by Barbazan, and forms a curious illustration of feudal domestic manners. It was unbecoming in a lady, according to Robert de Blois, to talk too much; she ought especially to refrain from boasting of the attentions paid to her by the other sex; and she was recommended not to show too much freedom in her games and amusements, lest the men should be encouraged to libertinism. In going to church, she was not to “trot or run,” but to walk seriously, not going in advance of her company, and looking straight before her, and not to this side or the other, but to salute “debonairely” all persons she met. She is recommended not to let men put their hands into her breasts, or kiss her on the mouth, as it might lead to greater familiarities. She was not to look at a man too much, unless he were her acknowledged lover; and when she had a lover, she was not to boast or talk too much of him. She was not to expose her body uncovered out of vanity, as her breast, or her legs, or her sides, nor to undress in the presence of men. She was not to be too ready in accepting presents from the other sex. The ladies are particularly warned against scolding and disputing, against swearing, against eating and drinking too freely at table, and against getting drunk, the latter being a practice from which much mischief might arise. A lady was not to cover her face when the went in public, as a handsome face was made to be seen, and it was not good manners to remain with the face covered before a gentleman of rank. An exception, however, is made in the case of ugly or deformed faces, which might be covered. There was another exception to the counsel just mentioned. “A lady who is pale-faced, or who has not a good smell, ought to breakfast early in the morning; for good wine gives a very good colour; and she who eats and drinks well must heighten her colour.” One who has bad breath is recommended to eat aniseed, fennel, and cumin to her breakfast, and to avoid breathing in people’s faces. A lady is to be very attentive to her behaviour in church, rules for which are given. If she could sing, she was to do so when asked, and not require too much pressing. Ladies are further recommended to keep their hands clean, to cut their nails often, and not to suffer them to grow beyond the finger, or to harbour dirt. In passing other people’s houses, ladies were not to look into them; “for a person often does things privately in his house, which he would not wish to be seen, if any one should come before his door.” For this reason, too, when a lady went into another person’s house, she is recommended to cough at the entrance, or to speak out loud, so that the inmates might not be taken by surprise. The directions for a lady’s behaviour at table are very particular. “In eating, you must avoid much laughing or talking. If you eat with another (i. e., in the same plate, or of the same mess), turn the nicest bits to him, and do not go picking out the finest and largest for yourself, which is not courteous. Moreover, no one should eat greedily a choice bit which is too large or too hot, for fear of choking or burning herself.... Each time you drink, wipe your mouth well, that no grease may go into the wine, which is very unpleasant to the person who drinks after you. But when you wipe your mouth for drinking, do not wipe your eyes or nose with the table-cloth, and avoid spilling from your mouth, or greasing your hands too much.” The lady is further, and particularly, recommended not to utter falsehoods. The remainder of the poem consist of directions in making love and receiving the addresses of suitors. The “Book” of the chevalier de la Tour-Landry contains instructions for young ladies, in substance very much like these, but illustrated by stories and examples.

The chamber-maidens also went abroad, like the young sons of gentlemen; but female servants who came as strangers appear not in general to have been well regarded, and they probably were, or were considered as, a lower class. The circumstance of their having left the country where they were known, was looked upon as prima facie evidence that their conduct had brought them into discredit there. The author of the “Ménagier de Paris” advises his daughter never to take any such chambrières, without having first sent to make strict inquiries about them in the parts from whence they came. This same early writer on domestic economy divides the servants, who, in a large household, were very numerous, into three classes: those who were employed on a sudden, and only for a certain work, with regard to whom the principal caution given is to bargain with them for the price of their labour before they begin; those who were employed for a certain time in a particular description of work, as tailors, shoemakers, butchers, and others, who always came to work in the house on materials belonging to the master of the house, or harvest-men, &c., in the country; and domestic servants who were hired by the year. These latter were expected to pay an absolute passive obedience to the lord and lady of the household, and to those set in authority by them. The lady of the house had the especial charge of the female servants, and the “Ménagier” contains rather minute directions as to her housekeeping duties. She was to require of the maid-servants, “that early in the morning the entrance to your hostel, that is, the hall, and the other places by which people enter and stop in the hostel to converse, be swept and made clean, and that the footstools and covers of the benches and forms be dusted and shaken, and after this that the other chambers be in like manner cleaned and arranged for the day.” They were next to attend to and feed all the “chamber animals,” such as pet dogs, cage birds, &c. The next thing to be done was to portion out to each servant her or his work for the day. At midday the servants were to have their first meal, when they were to be fed plentifully, but “only of one meat, and not of several or of any delicacies; and give them one only kind of drink, nourishing but not heady, whether wine or other; and admonish them to eat heartily, and to drink well and plentifully, for it is right that they should eat all at once, without sitting too long, and at one breath, without reposing on their meal, or halting, or leaning with their elbows on the table; and as soon as they begin to talk, or to rest on their elbows, make them rise, and remove the table.” After their “second labour,” and on feast-days, the servants were to have another, apparently a lighter, repast, and lastly, in the evening (au vespre), they were to have another abundant meal, like their dinner, and then, “if the season required it,” they were to be “warmed and made comfortable.” The lady of the house was then, by herself or a deputy on whom she could depend, to see that the house was closed, and to take charge of the keys, that nobody could go out or come in; and then to have all the fires carefully “covered,” and send all the servants to bed, taking care that they put out their candles properly, to prevent the risk of fire. In the English poem of the “Seven Sages,” printed by Weber, the emperor is described as going to his chamber, after the time of locking windows and gates— Whan men leke windowe and gate,
Themparour com to chambre late.
—Weber, iii. 60.
And it appears from a tale in the same collection, that the doors and windows were unlocked at daybreak—

Tho (when) the day dawen gan,
Awai stal the yonge man;
Men unlek dore and windowe.
—Ib., p. 87.

There was another duty performed by the ladies in the mediæval household, which was a very important one in an age of turbulence, and must not be overlooked—they were both nurses and doctors. Medical men were not then at hand to be consulted, and the sick or wounded man was handed over to the care of the mistress of the house and her maidens. The reader of Chaucer will remember the medicinal knowledge displayed by dame Pertelot in the “Nonne-Prestes Tale.” Medicinal herbs were grown in every garden, and were dried or made into decoctions, and kept for use. In the early romances we often meet with ladies who possessed plants and other objects which possessed the power of miraculous cures, and which they had obtained in some mysterious manner. Thus, in the Carlovingian romance of “Gaufrey,” when Robastre was so dangerously wounded that there remained no hope of his life, the good wife of the traitor Grifon undertook to cure him. “And she went to a coffer and opened it, and took out of it a herb which has so great virtue that whoever takes it will be relieved from all harm. She pounded and mixed it in a mortar, and then came to Robastre and gave it him. It had no sooner passed his throat than he was as sound as an apple” (“Gaufrey,” p. 119). So in “Fierabras” (p. 67), the Saracen princess Floripas had in her chamber the powerful “mandeglore” (mandrake), which she applied to the wounds of Oliver, and they were instantly healed. In the “Roman de la Violette” (p. 104), when Gerart, desperately wounded, is carried into the castle, the maiden who was lady of it took him into a chamber, and there took off his armour, undressed him, and put him to bed. They examined all his wounds, and applied to them ointments of great efficacy, and under this treatment he soon recovered. In the English romance of “Amis and Amiloun,” when sir Amiloun is discovered struck with leprosy, the wife of his friend Amis takes him into her chamber, strips him of all his clothing, bathes him herself, and then puts him to bed— Into hir chaumber she can him lede,
And kest of al his pover wede (poor clothes),
And bathed his bodi al bare;
And to a bedde swithe (quickly) him brought,
With clothes riche and wele ywrought;
Ful blithe of him thai ware.
—Weber, ii. 459.
To the knowledge of medicines was too often added another knowledge, that of poisons—a science which was carried to a great degree of perfection in the middle ages, and of which there were regular professors. The practice of poisoning was, indeed, carried on to a frightful extent, and it appears, from a variety of evidence, that women were commonly agents in it.

A great part of the foregoing remarks apply exclusively to the aristocratic portion of society, which included all those who had the right to become knights. Through the whole extent of this portion of society one blood was believed to run, which was distinguished from that of all other classes by the title of “gentle blood.” The pride of gentle blood, which was one of the distinguishing characteristics of feudalism, was very great in the middle ages. It was believed that the mark of this blood could never disappear; and many of the mediæval stories turn upon the circumstance of a child of gentle blood having been stolen or abandoned in its earlier infancy, and bred up, without any knowledge of its origin, as a peasant among peasants, or as a burgher among burghers, but displaying, as it grew towards manhood, by its conduct, the unmistakable proofs of its gentle origin, in spite of education and example. The burgher class—the merchant or tradesman, or the manufacturer—appear always as money-getting and money-saving people, and individuals often became very rich. This circumstance became a temptation, on the one hand, to the aristocrat, whose tendency was usually, through his prodigality, to become poor, and, on the other, to the rich man of no blood, who sought to buy aristocratic alliances by his wealth, and intermarriages between the two classes were not very unfrequent. In most cases, at least in the romances and stories, it was an aristocratic young lady who became united with a wealthy merchant, and it was usually a stroke of selfish policy on the part of the lady’s father. In the fabliau of the “Vilain Mire” (Barbazan, ii. 1)—the origin of Molière’s “Médecin malgré lui,”—and in one or two other old stories, the aristocratic young lady is married to an agriculturist. Marriages of this description are represented as being never happy; the husband has no sympathy for his wife’s gentility, and, according to the code of “chivalry,” the lady was perfectly justified in being unfaithful to her husband as often as the liked, especially if she sinned with men who were superior to him in blood.

It was common for the burgher class to ape gentility, even among people of a lower order; for the great merchant was often superior in education and in intelligence, as he was in wealth, to the great majority of the aristocratic class. In Chaucer, even the wife of the miller aspired to the aristocratic title of madame— Ther durste no wight clepe (call) hir but madame.
—Cant. Tales, l. 3954.
And in speaking of the wives of various burghers who joined in the pilgrimage, the poet remarks— It is right fair for to be clept (called) madame.
—Ibid., l. 378.
The burghers also cherished a number of servants and followers in their household, or mesnie. In the fabliau of “La Borgoise d’Orliens,” the mesnie of the burgher, who is not represented as a person of wealth or distinction, consists of two nephews, a lad who carried water, three chamber-maidens, a niece, two pautoniers, and a ribald, and these were all harboured in the hall. The pautonier was only another name for the ribald, or perhaps it was a sub-class or division of the infamous class who lived parasitically upon the society of the middle ages. Even the ordinary agriculturist had his mesnie.

What I have said of the great dissoluteness and immorality of the aristocratic class applies more especially to the households of the greater barons, though the same spirit must have spread itself far through the whole class. The aristocratic class was itself divided into two classes, or rather two ranks,—the great barons, and the knights and lesser landholders, and the division between these two classes became wider, and the latter more absolutely independent, as the power of feudalism declined. These latter were the origin of that class which in more modern times has been known by the title of the old country gentleman. As far as we can judge from what we know of them, I am led to think that this class was the most truly dignified, and in general the most moral, portion of mediæval society. There is abundant evidence that the tone of morality in the burgher and agricultural classes was not high; and the whole tenor of mediæval popular and historical literature can leave no doubt on our minds that in the middle ages the clergy were the great corruptors of domestic virtue among both these classes. The character of the women, as described in the old satirists and story-tellers, as well as in records of a still more strictly truthful character, was very low, and, in the towns especially, they are described as spending much of their time in the taverns, drinking and gossiping. Of course there were everywhere—and, it is to be trusted, not a few—bright exceptions to this general character.

CHAPTER XIII.
OCCUPATIONS OUT OF DOORS.—THE PLEASURE-GARDEN.—THE LOVE OF FLOWERS, AND THE FASHION OF MAKING GARLANDS.—FORMALITIES OF THE PROMENADE.—GARDENING IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Humboldt, in his “Cosmos,” has dwelt on the taste for the beauties of nature which has prevailed among various peoples, and at different periods of the world’s history, but he appears to me to have by no means appreciated or done justice to the force of this sentiment among our forefathers in the middle ages, and, perhaps I may say, especially in England. In our ancient popular poetry, the mention of the season of the year at which an event happens generally draws from the poet some allusion to the charms of nature peculiar to it, to the sweetness of the flowers, the richness of the fruit, or the harmony of the song of birds. In some of the early romances, each new division of the poem is introduced by an allusion of this kind. Thus, at the opening of what the editor calls the first chapter of the second part of the romance of “Richard Cœur de Lion,” the poet tells us how it— Merye is in the tyme of May,
Whenne foulis synge in her lay;
Floures on appyl-trees and perye (pear-tree);
Smale foules synge merye.
Ladyes strowe here boures (chambers)
With rede roses and lylye flowres;
Gret joye is in frith (grove) and lake.
—Weber, ii. 149.
Such interruptions of the narrative are frequent in the long romance of “Alexander” (Alexander the Great), and are always expressive. Thus, on one occasion the poet tells us, abruptly enough, how— Whan corn ripeth in every steode (place),
Mury (pleasant) it is in feld and hyde (meadow).
—Ibid., i. 24.
And again, introduced equally abruptly, we are informed—

In tyme of hervest mery it is ynough;
Peres and apples hongeth on bough.
The hayward bloweth mery his horne;
In everyche (every) felde ripe is corne;
The grapes hongen on the vyne;
Swete is trewe love and fyne.
—Weber, p. 238.

When, indeed, we consider the confined and dark character of most of the apartments of the feudal dwelling, we cannot be surprised if our mediæval forefathers loved the recreations which brought them into the open air. Castles and country mansions had always their gardens and pleasure-grounds, which were much frequented by all the different branches of the household. The readers of Chaucer will remember the description of the “noble” knight January— Amonges other of his honest thinges,
He had a gardyn walled al with stoon,
So fair a gardyn wot I no wher noon.
It is implied, at least, that this garden was extensive, and— This noble knight, this January the olde,
Such deynté hath in it to walk and playe,
That he wold no wight suffre bere the keye,
Save he himself.
—Chaucer, The Marchaundes Tale.
So, in the curious popular collection of mediæval stories, entitled the “Seven Sages,” we are told of a rich burgess who Hadde, bihinden his paleys,
A fair gardin of nobleys,
Ful of appel-tres, and als (also) of pirie (pear-trees);
Foules songe therinne murie.
Amideward that gardyn fre,
So wax (grew) a pinnote-tre,
That hadde fair bowes and frut;
Ther under was al his dedut (pleasure).
He made ther-under a grene bench,
And drank ther under many a sschench (cupful).
—Weber, iii. 23.
And again, in the same collection of stories, a prudent mother, counselling her daughter, tells her— Daughter, thi loverd (lord) hath a gardin,
A wel fair ympe (young tree) is tharin;
A fair harbeth (arbour) hit overspredeth,
Alle his solas therinne he ledeth.
—Weber, iii. 69.
In Chaucer’s “Frankeleynes Tale,” when the lady Dorigen was in want of amusement to make her forget the absence of her husband, her friends, finding that the sea-shore was not sufficiently gay,— Schope hem for to pleien somwhere elles,
They leden hire by rivers and by welles,
And eke in other places delitables;
They dauncen, and they pley at ches and tables.
So on a day, right in the morwe tide,
Unto a gardeyn that was ther beside,
In which that they had made her ordinance
Of vitaile, and of other purveance,
They gon and plaie hem al the longe day:
And this was on the sixte morwe of May,
Which May had painted with his softe schoures
This gardeyn ful of leves and of floures:
And craft of mannes hond so curiously
Arrayed had this gardeyn of suche pris
As if it were the verray paradis.
* * * * *
And after dinner gan thay to daunce
And singe also; sauf Dorigen alone.
An important incident in the story here occurs, after which—

Tho (then) come hir other frendes many on,
And in the alleyes romed up and down,
And nothing wist of this conclusioun,
But sodeynly began to revel newe,
Til that the brighte sonne had lost his hewe.

It would be easy to multiply such descriptions as the foregoing, but we will only refer to the well-known one at the commencement of the “Romance of the Rose,” where the carolling is described with more minuteness than usual. There were employed minstrels, and “jogelours,” and apparently even tumblers, which are thus described in Chaucer’s English version:— Tho (then) myghtist thou karoles sene,
And folk daunce and mery bene,
And made many a faire tournyng
Upon the grene gras springyng.
There myghtist thou se these flowtours,
Mynstrales and eke jogelours,
That wel to synge dide her peyne,
Somme songe songes of Loreyne;
For in Loreyn her notes bee
Fulle swetter than in this contré.
There was many a tymbester,
And saillouris (jumpers, or tumblers), that I dar wel swere
Couthe (knew) her craft ful parfitly,
The tymbris up ful sotilly
They caste and hente fulle ofte
Upon a fynger faire and softe,
That they ne failide never mo.
Ful fetys damyseles two,
Ryght yonge, and fulle of semelyhede,
In kirtles and noon other wede,
And faire tressed every tresse,
Hadde Myrthe doon for his noblesse
Amydde the karole for to daunce.
But herof lieth no remembraunce
How that they daunced queyntly,
That oon wolde come alle pryvyly
Agayn that other, and whan they were
Togidre almost, they threwe yfere (in company)
Her mouthis so, that thorough her play
It semed as they kiste alway.
To dauncen welle koude they the gise,
What shulde I more to you devyse?
These lines show us that our forefathers in the middle ages had their dancing girls, just as they had and still have them in the East; it was one trait of the mixture of Oriental manners with those of Europe which had taken place since the crusades.

In these extracts, indeed, we have allusions to the practices of dancing and singing, of playing at chess and tables, of drinking, and even of dining, in the gardens. Our engraving [No. 194], taken from the romance of “Alexander,” in the Bodleian Library, represents a garden scene, in which two royal personages are playing at chess. Dancing in the open air was a very common recreation, and is not unfrequently alluded to. In the Roman de Geste, known by the title of “La Mort de Garin,” a large dinner party is given in a garden— Les napes metent pardeanz un jardin.
—Mort de Garin, p. 28.
And, in the “Roman de Berte” (p. 4), Charles Martel is represented as dining similarly in the garden, at the midsummer season, when the rose was in blossom—

Entour le saint Jehan, que la rose est fleurie.

No. 194. A. Mediæval Garden Scene.

There is an early Latin story of a man who had a cross-grained wife. One day he invited some friends to dinner, and set out his table in his garden, by the side of a river (fecit poni mensam in hortu suo prope aquam). The lady seated herself by the water-side, at a little distance from the table, and cast a very forbidding look upon her husband’s guests; upon which he said to her, “Show a pleasant countenance to our guests, and come nearer the table;” but she only moved further off, and nearer the brink of the river, with her back turned to the water. He repeated his invitation in a more angry tone, in reply to which, to show her ill-humour, she drew further back, with a quick movement of ill-temper, through which, forgetting the nearness of the river, she fell into it, and was drowned. The husband, pretending great grief, sent for a boat, and proceeded up the stream in search of her body. This excited some surprise among his neighbours, who suggested to him that he should go down the stream, and not up. “Ah!” said he, “you did not know my wife—she did everything in contradiction, and I firmly believe that her body has floated against the current, and not with it.”

Even among the aristocratic class the garden was often the place for giving audience and receiving friends. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” a messenger sent to the count Fromont, one of the great barons, finds him sitting in a garden surrounded by his friends—

Trouva Fromont seant en un jardin;
Environ lui avoit de ses amins.
—Roman de Garin, i. 282.

A favourite occupation of the ladies in the middle ages was making garlands and chaplets of flowers. In the “Lai d’Aristote” (Barbazan, iii. 105, 107), king Alexander’s beautiful mistress is described as descending early in the morning, walking in the garden alone, and making herself a chaplet of flowers. In another fabliau, published in Germany by Adelbert Keller, a Saracenic maiden descends from her chamber into the garden, performs her toilette at the fountain there, and then makes herself a chaplet of flowers and leaves, which she puts on her head. So Emelie, in Chaucer’s “Knights Tale,”— Iclothed was sche fressh for to devyse.
Hire yolwe (yellow) heer was browdid in a tresse
Byhynde hire bak, a yerde long, I gesse.
And in the gardyn at the sonne uprise (sun-rise)
Sche walketh up and doun wheer as hire liste;
Sche gadereth floures, partye whyte and reede,
To make a certeyn gerland for hire heede,
And as an aungel hevenly sche song.
A little further on, Arcyte goes at daybreak into the fields to make him a chaplet, of the leaves of woodbine or hawthorn, for it must be remembered that this takes place in the month of May, which was especially the season for wearing garlands. In “Blonde of Oxford,” Jean of Dammartin, seeking his mistress, finds her in a meadow making herself a chaplet of flowers— A dont de la chambre s’avance,
De là le vit en i. prael
U ele faisoit un capiel.
—Blonde of Oxford, p. 30.
Our cut [No. 195], taken from a well-known manuscript in the British Museum, of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), represents a party of ladies in the garden, gathering flowers, and making garlands. The love of flowers, as I have stated in a former chapter, seems to have prevailed generally among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and affectionate allusions to them occur, not unfrequently, in the literary remains of that early period. Many of our old favourite garden-flowers are, I believe, derived from the Anglo-Saxon gardens. Proofs of a similar attachment to flowers might be quoted in abundance from the writings of the periods subsequent to the entrance of the Normans. The wearing of garlands or chaplets of flowers was a common practice with both sexes. In the romantic history of the Fitz-Warines, written in the thirteenth century, the hero, in travelling, meets a young knight who, in token of his joyous humour, carries a chaplet of flowers on his head. In the later English romance of the “Squyer of Lowe Degree,” when the “squyer” was preparing to do his office of carver in the hall— There he araied him in scarlet red,
And set a chaplet upon his hed;
A belte about his sydes two,
White brod barres to and fro.
Walter de Biblesworth talks of ladies dancing the carole, their heads crowned with garlands of the blue-bottle flower— Mener karole
Desouz chapeau de blaverole.
—Vocabularies, p. 161.
Garlands of flowers were also the common rewards for success in the popular games.

No. 195. Ladies making Garlands.

All these enjoyments naturally rendered the garden a favourite and important part of every man’s domestic establishment; during the warmer months of the year it was a chosen place of resort, especially after dinner. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” Begues is represented as descending from his palace, after dinner, to walk with his fair wife Beatrice in his garden— En son palais fu Begues de Belin;
Après mangier entra en un jardin,
Aveuc lui fu la belle Biatris.
—Roman de Garin, vol. ii. p. 97.
In another part of the same romance, Begues de Belin and his barons, on rising from the table, went to seek recreation in the fields— Quant mangié ont et beu à loisir,
Les napes ostent, et en prés sunt sailli.
—Ibid., vol. i. p. 203.
The manuscript in the British Museum, from which we took our last illustration, furnishes the accompanying representation of a group of ladies walking in the garden, and gathering flowers ([No. 196]).

No. 196. Ladies walking in the Garden.

In the “Ménagier de Paris,” compiled about the year 1393, its author, addressing his young wife, treats briefly of the behaviour of a woman when she is walking out, and especially when passing along the streets of a town, or going to church. “As you go,” he says, “look straight before you, with your eye-lids low and fixed, looking forward to the ground, at five toises (thirty feet) before you, and not looking at, or turning your eyes, to man or woman who may be to your right or left, nor looking upwards, nor changing your look from one place to another, nor laughing, nor stopping to speak to anybody in the street” (vol. i. p. 15). It must be confessed that this is, in some points, rather hard counsel for a lady to follow; but it is consistent with the general system of formalities of behaviour in the middle ages, upon which the ladies gladly took their revenge when removed from constraint. When two or more persons walked together, it was the custom to hold each other by the hands, not to walk arm-in-arm, which appears to be a very modern practice. In the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the emperor and Ogier, when reconciled, are thus represented, walking in a friendly manner hand in hand. The ladies in our last engraving are walking in this manner; and in our next ([No. 197]),—taken from a copy, given in M. du Sommerard’s “Album,” from a manuscript in the library of the arsenal at Paris, written and illuminated for a prince of the house of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century,—the lords and ladies of a noble or princely household are represented as walking out in the same manner. It is well known that the court of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century, offered the model of strict etiquette. This illustration gives us also a very good picture of a street scene of the period to which it belongs. The height of gentility, however, at least, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seems to have been to hold the lady by the finger only. It is in this manner that, in the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the hero holds the princess Gloriande— Donques enmainne le bon Danois Ogier,
E Gloriande, qui par le doit le tient.
—Roman d’Ogier, p. 110.
So, in the romance of “La Violette,” at the festivities given by the king, the guests “distributed themselves in couples in the hall (i. e. a gentleman with a lady), one taking the other by the finger, and so they arranged themselves two and two”—

Quant il orent assés deduit,
Par la sale s’acoinsent tuit;
Li uns prent l’autre par le doi,
Si s’arangierent doi et doi.
—Roman de la Violette, p. 10.

No. 197. A Promenade Scene in the Fifteenth Century.

In the curious poem entitled “La Court de Paradis,” the sainted ladies in heaven are represented as thus walking and holding each other by the finger,— L’une tint l’autre par les dois.
—Barbazan, iii. 139.
As a mark of great familiarity, two princes, Pepin’s son, Charles, and the duke Namles, are represented in the romance of “Ogier” as one, Charles, holding his hand on the duke’s shoulder, while the duke held him by his mantle, as they walked along; they were going to church together:—

Kalles sa main li tint desus l’espaule;
Namles tint lui par le mantel de paile.
—Roman d’Ogier, p. 143.

No. 198. A Bishop Preaching.

It may be remarked that sitting was equally a matter of etiquette with walking, though we sometimes meet with ladies and gentlemen seated in a manner which is anything but ceremonious. In the annexed cut ([No. 198]), taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century, the reference to which I have unfortunately lost, a number of ladies, seated on the ground, and apparently in the open air, are listening to the admonitions of an episcopal preacher.

As I have introduced the subject of the love of our forefathers for trees and flowers, some account of gardening in the middle ages will not be out of place, especially as what has hitherto been written on the history of gardening in England during this early period, has been very imperfect and incorrect. We have no direct information relating to the gardens of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers—in fact, our knowledge is limited to a few words gathered from the old vocabularies. The ordinary names for a garden, wyrt-tun and wyrt-geard, a plant-inclosure and a plant-yard, are entirely indefinite, for the word wyrt was applied to all plants whatever, and perhaps they indicate what we should call the kitchen-garden. The latter word, which was sometimes spelt ort-geard, orc-geard, and orcyrd, was the origin of our modern orchard, which is now limited to an inclosure of fruit-trees. Flowers were probably cultivated in the inclosed space round the houses. It would appear that the Saxons, before they became acquainted with the Romans, cultivated very few plants, if we may judge from the circumstance that throughout the Anglo-Saxon period the names by which these were known were nearly all derived from the Latin. The leek appears to have been the principal table vegetable among the Anglo-Saxons, as it was among the Welsh its name, leac, or leah, is pure Anglo-Saxon, and its importance was considered so much above that of any other vegetable, that leac-tun, the leek-garden, became the common name for the kitchen-garden, and leac-weard, a leek-keeper, was used to designate the gardener. The other alliaceous plants were considered as so many varieties of the leek, and were known by such names as enne-leac, or ynne-leac, supposed to be the onion, and gar-leac, or garlic. Bean is also an Anglo-Saxon word; but, singularly enough, the Anglo-Saxons seem not to have been originally acquainted with peas, for the only name they had for them was the Latin pisa, and pyse. Even for the cabbage tribe, the only Anglo-Saxon name we know is simply the Latin brassica; and the colewort, which was named cawl, and cawl-wyrt, was derived from the Latin caulis. So the turnip was called næpe, from the Latin napus; and rædic, or radish, is perhaps from raphanus.[29] Garden cresses, parsley, mint, sage, rue, and other herbs,[30] were in use, but mostly, except the cresses, with Latin names.

We have long lists of flowering plants in the Anglo-Saxon vocabularies, but as they are often difficult to identify, and, being chiefly enumerated for their medicinal qualities, are mostly wild plants, they throw little light on the character of the flower-garden. For the garden rose and the lily they used the Roman names rose and lilie; the latter appears to have been an especially favourite flower among the Anglo-Saxons. Among other plants, evidently belonging to the garden, are suthernwood, sutherne-wude, the turnsole or sunflower, called sigel-hwerfe (the gem-turned) or solsæce (which is merely the Latin solsequium), the violet (clæfre), the marigold, called read-clæfre, the gilliflower, hwit-clæfre, the periwinkle, pervincæ, the honeysuckle, hunig-sucle, the piony, for which the Anglo-Saxons had only the Latin word pionia, the daisy, dæges-eage, and the laur-beam, which was perhaps the bay-tree rather than the laurel.

The chief fruit of the Anglo-Saxons was undoubtedly the apple, the name of which, æppel, belongs to their language. The tree was called an apulder, and the only varieties mentioned are the surmelst apulder, or souring apple-tree, and the swite apulder, or sweeting apple-tree. The Anglo-Saxons had orchards containing only apple-trees, to which they gave the name of an apulder-tun, or apple-tree garden; of the fruit of which they made what they called, and we still call, cider, and which they also called æppel-win, or apple-wine. They appear to have received the pear from the Romans, as its name pera, a pear, and piriga, a pear-tree, was evidently taken from pirus. They had also derived from the Roman gardens, no doubt, the cherry-tree (cyrs-treow, or ciris-beam, from the Latin cerasus), the peach (persoc-treow, from persicarius), the mulberry (mor-beam, from morus), the chestnut (cysten, cyst, or cystel-beam, from castaneus),[31] perhaps the almond (magdala-treow, from amigdalus), the fig (fic-beam, from ficus), and the pine (pin-treow, from pinus). The small kernels of the pine were used very extensively in the middle ages, in the same way as olives. We must add to these the plum (plum-treow), the name of which is Anglo-Saxon; the medlar, which was known in Anglo-Saxon by a very unexplainable name, but one which was preferred to a comparatively recent period; the quince, which was called a cod-æple, or bag-apple; the nut (hnutu), and the hazel-nut (hæsel-hnutu). They called the olive an oil-tree (ale-beam), which would seem to prove that they considered its principal utility to be for making oil. The vine was well-known to the Anglo-Saxons; they called it the win-treow, or wine-tree, its fruit, winberige, or wine berries, and a bunch of grapes, geclystre, a cluster. We find no Anglo-Saxon words for gooseberries or currants; but our forefathers were well acquainted with the strawberry (strea-berige) and the raspberry, which they called hynd-berige. Perhaps these last-mentioned fruits, which are known to be natives of Britain, were known only in their wild state.[32]

The earliest account of an English garden is given by Alexander Neckam, who flourished in the latter half of the twelfth century, in the sixty-sixth chapter of the second book of his treatise, De naturis rerum, which exists only in manuscripts (I quote from one in the British Museum, MS. Reg. 12 G. xi.). He introduces at least one plant, the mandrake, which was fabulous, and gives several names which I shall be obliged to leave in his original Latin, as, perhaps through corruption of the text, I cannot interpret them, but there can be little doubt that it is in general a correct enumeration of the plants and trees cultivated in a complete English garden of the period. “A garden,” he says, “should be adorned on this part with roses, lilies, the marigold, molis, and mandrakes, and on that part with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, cresses, ortulano, and the piony. Let there also be beds (areæ) enriched with onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions (hinnuilis). The garden is also ennobled by the cucumber which creeps on its belly, and by the soporiferous poppy, as well as by the daffodil and the acanthus. Nor let pot-herbs be wanting, if you can help it, such as beets, herb mercury, orache, the acedula, (sorrel?) and the mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to have anise, mustard, white pepper, and wormwood.” Neckam then goes on to the fruit-trees. “A noble garden,” he says, “will give you medlars, quinces, the pearmain (volema), peaches, pears of St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons (or lemons), oranges, almonds, dates, and figs.” When Neckam speaks of a “noble garden,” he of course speaks of that of a great baron or prince, and enumerates fruits of choice, and mostly above the common range. Medlars and quinces were formerly held in great esteem, and much used. I have ventured to interpret volema as meaning the pearmain, which was considered one of the choicest apples, as the apple is not mentioned in the list, and as in one of the early glossaries that meaning is attached to the word. Peaches were, as we have seen, known to the Anglo-Saxons; and in 1276 we find slips of peach-trees mentioned in an official record as planted in the king’s garden at Westminster. The pear of St. Regle was one of the choice kinds of pears brought from France, and it and several other kinds of pears are enumerated in the accounts of the earl of Lincoln’s garden in Holborn (London) in 1296. It is rather surprising that Mr. Hudson Turner, in his very valuable volume on domestic architecture, where he supposes that mala aurea in Neckam’s list were intended for the golden apples of the Hesperides, should not have known that the malum aureum of the middle ages was the orange. Pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and figs, are known to have been cultivated in England at different periods, but it is not probable that the fruit came often to perfection. It may be remarked that Neckam gives a separate chapter to the cultivation of the vine, which belonged to the vineyard, and not to the garden. After an enumeration of plants which were not grown in Western Europe, Neckam gives a list of others, known for their medicinal qualities, some of which can hardly have been planted in a garden, unless it belonged to a physician; although it appears to have been the custom to devote a corner of the garden to the medicinal plants most in use, in order that they might be ready at hand when wanted. The gardener’s tools in the twelfth century, as enumerated by Neckam in his treatise De Utensilibus, were few and simple; he had an axe, or twibill, a knife for grafting, a spade, and a pruning-hook.

John de Garlande lived during the first half of the thirteenth century. He was an Englishman, but had established himself as a scholar in the university of Paris, so that the description of his garden which he gives in his “Dictionarius” may be considered as that of a garden in the neighbourhood of Paris, which, however, probably hardly differed from a garden in England. It may be considered as the garden of a respectable burgher. “In master John’s garden are these plants, sage, parsley, dittany, hyssop, celandine, fennel, pellitory, the rose, the lily, and the violet; and at the side (i. e. in the hedge), the nettle, the thistle, and foxgloves. His garden also contains medicinal herbs, namely, mercury and the mallow, agrimony, with nightshade, and the marigold.” Master John’s gardener had also a garden for his potherbs, in which grew borage, leeks, garlic, mustard, onions, cibols, and scallions; and in his shrubbery grew pimpernel, mouseare, selfheal, buglos, adderstongue, and “other herbs good for men’s bodies.”[33] Master John had in his fruit-garden, cherry-trees, pear-trees, apple-trees, plum-trees, quinces, medlars, peaches, chestnuts, nuts, wallnuts, figs, and grapes. Walter de Bibblesworth, writing in England towards the close of the thirteenth century, enumerates as the principal fruit-trees in a common garden, apples, pears, and cherries— Pomere, perere, e cerecer;
and adds the plum-tree (pruner), and the quince-tree (coingner).

The cherry, indeed, appears to have been one of the most popular of fruits in England, during the mediæval period. The records of the time contain purchases of cherry-trees for the king’s garden in Westminster in 1238 and 1277, and cherries and cherry-trees are enumerated in all the glossaries from the times of the Anglo-Saxons to the sixteenth century. The earl of Lincoln had cherry-trees in his garden in Holborn towards the close of the thirteenth century, and during the same century we have allusions to the cultivation of the cherry in other parts of the kingdom. The allusions to cherries in the early poetry are not at all unfrequent, and they were closely mixed up with popular manners and feelings. It appears to have been the custom, from a rather early period, to have fairs or feasts, probably in the cherry orchards, during the period that the fruit was ripe, which were called cherry-fairs, and sometimes cherry-feasts; and these are remembered, if they do not still exist, in our great cherry districts, such as Worcestershire and Kent. They were brief moments of great gaiety and enjoyment, and the poets loved to quote them as emblems of the transitory character of all worldly things. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the poet Gower, speaking of the teachers of religion and morality, says:— They prechen us in audience
That no man schalle his soule empeyre (impair),
For alle is but a cherye-fayre.
And the same writer again:— Sumtyme I drawe into memoyre,
How sorow may not ever laste,
And so cometh hope in at laste,
Whan I non other foode knowe;
And that endureth but a throwe,
Ryght as it were a chery-feste.
So again, under the reign of Henry IV., about the year 1411, Occleve, in his poem “De regimine principum,” recently printed for the Roxburgh Club, says (p. 47),—

Thy lyfe, my sone, is but a chery-feire.

During the rest of the fifteenth century, the allusions to the cherry-fairs are very frequent.[34] Yet in face of all this, and still more, abundant evidence, Loudon (“Encyclopædia of Gardening,” edition of 1850) says, “Some suppose that the cherries introduced by the Romans into Britain were lost, and that they were re-introduced in the time of Henry VIII. by Richard Haines (it should be Harris), the fruiterer to that monarch. But though we have no proof that cherries were in England at the time of the Norman conquest, or for some centuries after it, yet Warton has proved, by a quotation from Lidgate, a poet who wrote about or before 1415, that the hawkers in London were wont to expose cherries for sale, in the same manner as is now done early in the season.”

To turn from the fruit-garden to the flower-garden, modern writers have fallen into many similar mistakes as to the supposed recent date of the introduction of various plants into this country. Loudon, for instance, says that we owe the introduction of the gilliflower, or clove-pink (dianthus caryophyllus), to the Flemings, who took refuge on our shores from the savage persecutions of the duke of Alva, in the latter half of the sixteenth century; whereas this flower was certainly well known, under the name of gillofres, ages before. Roses, lilies, violets, and periwinkles, seem to have continued to be the favourite garden-flowers. A manuscript of the fifteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Sloane, No. 1201) furnishes us with a list of plants then considered necessary for a garden, arranged first alphabetically, and then in classes, of which I will here give verbatim the latter part, as the best illustration of the mediæval notion of a garden, and as being, at the same time, a very complete list. After the alphabetical list, the manuscript goes on:—

Of the same herbes for potage.

Borage, langdebefe[35], vyolettes, malowes, marcury, daundelyoun, avence, myntes, sauge, parcely, goldes[36], mageroum[37], ffenelle, carawey, red nettylle, oculus Christi[38], daysys, chervelle, lekez, colewortes, rapez, tyme, cyves, betes, alysaundre, letyse, betayne, columbyne, allia, astralogya rotunda, astralogia longa, basillicam[39], dylle, deteyne, hertestong, radiche, white pyper, cabagez, sedewale, spynache, coliaundre, ffoothistylle[40], orage, cartabus, lympens, nepte, clarey, pacience.

Of the same herbes for sauce.

Hertestonge, sorelle, pelytory, pelytory of spayne, deteyne, vyolettes, parcely, myntes.

Also of the same herbez for the coppe.

Cost, costmary, sauge, isope, rose mary, gyllofre, goldez, clarey, mageroum, rue.

Also of the same herbes for a salade.

Buddus of stanmarche[41], vyolette flourez, parcely, red myntes, syves[42], cresse of Boleyne, purselane, ramsons, calamyntes, primerose buddus, dayses, rapounses, daundelyoun, rokette, red nettelle, borage flourez, croppus of red ffenelle, selbestryve, chykynwede.

Also herbez to stylle (distill).

Endyve, rede rose, rose mary, dragans[43], skabiose, ewfrace[44], wermode, mogwede, beteyne, wylde tansey, sauge, isope, ersesmart.

Also herbes for savour and beauté.

Gyllofre gentyle, mageroum gentyle, brasyle, palma Christi, stycadose, meloncez, arcachaffe, scalacely[45], philyppendula[46], popy royalle, germaundre, cowsloppus of Jerusalem, verveyne, dylle, seynt Mare, garlek.

Also rotys (roots) for a gardyne.

Parsenepez, turnepez, radyche, karettes, galyngale, eryngez[47], saffrone.

Also for an herbere.

Vynes, rosers, lylés, thewberies[48], almondez, bay-trees, gourdes, date-trese, peche-trese, pyneappulle, pyany romain, rose campy, cartabus, seliane, columbyne gentyle, elabre.

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The processes of gardening were simple and easy, and the gardener’s skill consisted chiefly in the knowledge of the seasons for sowing and planting different herbs and trees, and of the astrological circumstances under which these processes could be performed most advantageously. The great ambition of the mediæval horticulturist was to excel in the various mysteries of grafting, and he entertained theories on this subject of the most visionary character, many of which were founded on the writings of the ancients; for the mediæval theories were accustomed to select from the doctrines of antiquity that which was most visionary, and it usually became still more visionary in their hands. Two English treatises on gardening were current in the fifteenth century, one founded upon the Latin treatise of Palladius, and entitled “Godfrey upon Palladie de Agricultura,” the other by Nicholas Bollarde, a monk of Westminster—the monks were great gardeners. These treatises occur not unfrequently in manuscripts, and both are found in the British Museum, in the Sloane MS., No. 7. An abridgment of them was edited by Mr. Halliwell, from the Porkington manuscript, in a collection of “Early English Miscellanies,” printed for the Warton Club. In these treatises, cherry-trees appear to have been more than any others the subjects of experiment, and to have been favourite stocks for grafting. Among the receipts given in these treatises we may mention those for making cherries grow without stones, and other fruit without cores; for making the fruit of trees bear any colour you like; for making old trees young; for making sour fruit sweet; and “to have grapes ripe as soon as pears or cherries.” This was to be brought about by grafting the vine on a cherry-tree, according to the following directions, the spelling of which I modernise:—“Set a vine by a cherry till it grow, and at the beginning of February when time is, make a hole through the cherry-tree at what height thou wilt, and draw through the vine branch so that it fill the hole, and shave away the old bark of the vine as much as shall be in the hole, and put it in so that the part shaven fill the hole full, and let it stand a year till they be ‘souded’ together, then cut away the root end of the vine, and lap it with clay round about, and keep it so after other graftings aforesaid.” This is from Nicholas Bollarde. Godfrey upon Palladius tells us how “to have many roses. Take the hard pepins that be right ripe, and sow them in February or March, and when they spring, water them well, and after a year complete thou mayst transplant them; and if thou wilt have timely (early) roses, delve about the roots one or two handbreadths, and water their scions with warm water; and for to keep them long, put them in honeycombs.” According to the receipts edited by Mr. Halliwell, “If thou wilt that in the stone of a peach-apple (this was the ordinary name for a peach) be found a nut-kernel, graft a spring (sprout) of a peach-tree on the stock of a nut-tree. Also a peach-tree shall bring forth pomegranates, if it be sprong (sprinkled) oft times with goat’s milk three days when it beginneth to flower. Also the apples of a peach-tree shall wax red, if its scion be grafted on a playne tree.” Such were the intellectual vagaries of “superstitious eld.”

Peaches are frequently mentioned among the fruit of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; but nectarines or apricots are not met with before the fifteenth century. The latter were called in old English by their French name of abricots, and subsequently, and still more frequently, apricocks.

CHAPTER XIV.
AMUSEMENTS.—PERFORMING BEARS.—HAWKING AND HUNTING.—RIDING.—CARRIAGES.—TRAVELLING.—INNS AND TAVERNS.—HOSPITALITY.

During the period of which we are treating, the same rough sports were in vogue among the uneducated classes that had existed for ages before, and which continued for ages after. Many of these were trials of strength, such as wrestling and throwing weights, with archery, and other exercises of that description; others were of a less civilised character, such as cockfighting and bear and bull-baiting. These latter were favourite amusements, and there was scarcely a town or village of any magnitude which had not its bull-ring. It was a municipal enactment in all towns and cities that no butcher should be allowed to kill a bull until it had been baited. The bear was an animal in great favour in the middle ages, and was not only used for baiting, but was tamed and taught various performances. I have already, in a former chapter, given an example of a dancing bear under the Anglo-Saxons; the accompanying cut ([No. 199]) is another, taken from a manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Arundel. No. 91).

No. 199. A Dancing-Bear.

I fear the fact cannot be concealed that the ladies of former days assisted not unfrequently at these rough and unfeminine pastimes. There can be no doubt that they were customary spectators of the baiting of bulls and bears. Henry VIII.’s two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, witnessed this coarse amusement, as we are assured by contemporary writers, with great satisfaction. The scene represented in our cut [No. 200], which is copied from one of the carved seats, of the fourteenth century, in Gloucester cathedral, is chiefly remarkable for the small degree of energy—the quiet dignity, in fact—displayed by the actors in it.

No. 200. Baiting the Bear.

No. 201. A Hawk on its Perch.

Hawking and hunting, especially the former, were the favourite recreations of the upper classes. Hawking was considered so honourable an occupation, that people were in the custom of carrying the hawk on their fists when they walked or rode out, when they visited or went to public assemblies, and even in church, as a mark of their gentility. In the illuminations we not unfrequently see ladies and gentlemen seated in conversation, bearing their hawks on their hands. There was generally a perche in the chamber expressly set aside for the favourite bird, on which he was placed at night, or by day when the other occupations of its possessor rendered it inconvenient to carry it on the hand. Such a perche, with the hawk upon it, is represented in our cut [No. 201], taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” of the fourteenth century (MS. Addit. in the British Museum, No. 12,224). Hawking was in some respects a complicated science; numerous treatises were written to explain and elucidate it, and it was submitted to strict laws. Much knowledge and skill were shown in choosing the hawks, and in breeding and training them, and the value of a well-chosen and well-trained bird was considerable. When carried about by its master or mistress, the hawk was held to the hand by a strap of leather or silk, called a jesse, which was fitted to the legs of the bird, and passed between the fingers of the hand. Small bells were also attached to their legs, one on each. The accompanying cut ([No. 202]), from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (No. 6956), represents the falconer or keeper of the hawks holding in one hand what appears to be the jesse; he has a bird in his right hand, while another is perched on a short post, which is often alluded to in the directions for breeding hawks. The falconer wears hawks’ gloves, which were made expressly to protect the hands against the bird’s talons.

No. 202. Hawks and their Keeper.

No. 203. Ladies Hawking.

Hawking was a favourite recreation with the ladies, and in the illuminated manuscripts they often figure in scenes of this kind. Sometimes they are on foot, as in the group represented in our cut [No. 203], taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.). One lady has let go her hawk, which is in the act of striking a heron; the other retains her hawk on her hand. The latter, as will be seen, is hooded. Each of the ladies who possess hawks has one glove only—the hawk’s glove; the other hand is without gloves. They took with them, as shown here, dogs in couples to start the game. The dogs used for this purpose were spaniels, and the old treatise on domestic affairs entitled “Le Ménagier de Paris,” gives particular directions for choosing them. In the illuminations, hawking parties are more frequently represented on horseback than on foot; and often there is a mixture of riders and pedestrians. The treatise just referred to directs that the horse for hawking should be a low one, easy to mount and dismount, and very quiet, that he may go slowly, and show no restiveness. Hawking appears to have commenced at the beginning of August; and until the middle of that month it was confined almost entirely to partridges. Quails, we are told, came in in the middle of August, and from that time forward everything seems to have been considered game that came to hand, for when other birds fail, the ladies are told that they may hunt fieldfares, and even jays and magpies. September and October were the busiest hawking months.

No. 204. Rousing Game.

No. 205. Following the Hawk.

Hawking was, indeed, a favourite diversion with the ladies, and they not only accompanied the gentlemen to this sport, but frequently engaged in it alone. The hawking of the ladies, however, appears to have been especially that of herons and water-fowl; and this was called going to the river (aller en rivière), and was very commonly pursued on foot. It may be mentioned that the fondness of the ladies for the diversion of hawking is alluded to in the twelfth century by John of Salisbury. The hawking on the river, indeed, seems to have been that particular branch of the sport which gave most pleasure to all classes, and it is that which is especially represented in the drawings in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Dogs were commonly used in hawking to rouse the game in the same manner as at the present day, but in hawking on the river, where dogs were of course less effective, other means were adopted. In a manuscript already quoted in the present chapter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), of the beginning of the fourteenth century, a group of ladies hawking on the banks of a river are accompanied by a man, perhaps the falconer, who makes a noise to rouse the water-fowl. Our cut [No. 204] is taken from a very interesting manuscript of the fourteenth century, made for the monastery of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, and now preserved in the library of the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.); it is part of a scene in which ladies are hawking on a river, and a female is rousing the water-fowl with a tabor. The fountain is one of those conventional objects by which the mediæval artist indicated a spring, or running stream. This seems to have been a very common method of rousing the game; and it is represented in one of the carved seats, or misereres (as they have been termed technically), in Gloucester cathedral, which is copied in our cut No. 205. This scene is rather curiously illustrated by an anecdote told by an old chronicler, Ralph de Diceto, of a man who went to the river to hunt teal with his hawk, and roused them with “what is called by the river-hawkers a tabor.”[49] The tending of the hawks used in these diversions was no slight occupation in the mediæval household, and was the subject of no little study; they were cherished with the utmost care, and carried about familiarly on the wrist in all places and under all sorts of circumstances. It was a common practice, indeed, to go to church with the hawk on the wrist. One of the early French poets, Gaces de la Buigne, who wrote a metrical treatise on hunting in the middle of the fourteenth century, advises his readers to carry their hawks with them wherever there were assemblies of people, whether in churches or elsewhere— Là où les gens sont amassés,
Soit en l’église, ou autre part.
This is explained more fully by the author of the “Ménagier de Paris” (vol. ii. p. 296), who wrote especially for the instruction of the female members of his family. “At this point of falconry,” he says, “it is advisable more than ever to hold the hawk on the wrist, and to carry it to the pleadings (courts of justice), and among people to the churches, and in other assemblies, and in the streets, and to hold it day and night as continually as possible, and sometimes to perch it in the streets, that it may see people, horses, carts, dogs, and become acquainted with all things.... And sometimes, in the house, let it be perched on the dogs, that the dogs may see it, and it them.” It was thus that the practice of carrying a hawk on the wrist became a distinction of people of gentle blood. The annexed engraving ([No. 206]), taken from the same manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents a lady tending her hawks, which are seated on their “perche.”

No. 206. A Lady and her Hawks.

No. 207. Ladies Shooting Rabbits.

The author of the “Ménagier de Paris,” a little farther on than the place last quoted (p. 311), goes on to say, “At the end of the month of September, and after, when hawking of quails and partridges is over, and even in winter, you may hawk at magpies, at jackdaws, at teal, which are in river, or others, ... at blackbirds, thrushes, jays, and woodcocks; and for this purpose you may carry a bow and a bolt, in order that, when the blackbird takes shelter in a bush, and dare not quit it for the hawk which hovers over and watches it, the lady or damsel who knows how to shoot may kill it with the bolt.” The manuscript which has furnished us with the preceding illustrations gives us the accompanying sketch ([No. 207]) of a lady shooting with her bolt, or boujon (as it was termed in French),—an arrow with a large head, for striking birds; but in this instance she is aiming not at birds, but at rabbits. Archery was also a favourite recreation with the ladies in the middle ages, and it no doubt is in itself an extremely good exercise, in a gymnastic point of view. The fair shooters seem to have employed bolts more frequently than the sharp-headed arrows; but there is no want of examples in the illuminated manuscripts in which females are represented as using the sharp-headed arrow, and sometimes they are seen shooting at deer. This custom prevailed during a long period, and is alluded to not unfrequently at so late a date as the sixteenth century. We learn from Leland’s “Collectanea” (vol. iv. p. 278), that when the princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., was on her way to Scotland, a hunting-party was got up for her in the park at Alnwick, and that she killed a buck with an arrow. Similar feats were at times performed by queen Elizabeth; but she seems to have preferred the cross-bow to the long-bow. The scene represented in our cut [No. 208] is from the same manuscript; the relative proportions of the dog and the rabbit seem to imply a satirical aim. Our next cut ([No. 209]), taken from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., represents ladies hunting the stag. One, on horseback, is winding the horn and starting the game, in which the other plants her arrow most skilfully and scientifically. The dog used on this occasion is intended to be a greyhound.

No. 208. The Lady at the Rabbit-Warren.

No. 209. Ladies Hunting the Stag.

It must be remarked that, in all the illuminations of the period we are describing, which represent ladies engaged in hunting or hawking, when on horseback they are invariably and unmistakeably represented riding astride. This is evidently the case in this group ([No. 209]). It has been already shown, in former chapters, that from a very early period it was a usual custom with the ladies to ride sideways, or with side-saddles. Most of the mediæval artists were so entirely ignorant of perspective, and they were so much tied to conventional modes of representing things, that when, no doubt, they intended to represent ladies riding sideways, the latter seem often as if they were riding astride. But in many instances, and especially in the scenes of hunting and hawking, there can be no doubt that they were riding in the latter fashion; and it is probable that they were taught to ride both ways, the side-saddle being considered the most courtly, while it was considered safer to sit astride in the chase. A passage has been often quoted from Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” in which a troop of ladies is described, all mounted on fair white ambling horses, with splendid saddles, and it is added that “everichone (every one) ride on side,” which probably means that this was the most fashionable style of riding. But, as shown in a former chapter (p. 72), it has been rather hastily assumed that this is a proof that it was altogether a new fashion. Our next cut ([No. 210]), taken from a manuscript in the French National Library (No. 7178), of the fourteenth century, represents two ladies riding in the modern fashion, except that the left leg appears to be raised very awkwardly; but this appearance we must perhaps ascribe only to the bad drawing. It must be observed also that these ladies are seated on the wrong side of the horse, which is probably an error of the draughtsman. Perhaps there was a different arrangement of the dress for the two modes of riding, although there was so little of what we now call delicacy in the mediæval manners, that this would be by no means necessary. Chaucer describes the Wife of Bath as wearing spurs, and as enveloped in a “foot-mantle:”—

Uppon an amblere esely sche sat,
Wymplid ful wel, and on hire heed an hat
As brood as is a bocler, or a targe;
A foot-mantel aboute hire hupes (hips) large,
And on hire feet a paire of spores scharpe.
—Cant. Tales, l. 471.

No. 210. Ladies Riding.

Travelling on horseback was now more common than at an earlier period, and this was not unfrequently a subject of popular complaint. In fact, men who rode on horseback considered themselves much above the pedestrians; they often went in companies, and were generally accompanied with grooms, and other riotous followers, who committed all sorts of depredations and violence on the peasantry in their way. A satirical song of the latter end of the reign of Edward I., represents our Saviour as discouraging the practice of riding. “While God was on earth,” says the writer, “and wandered wide, what was the reason he would not ride? Because he would not have a groom to go by his side, nor the grudging (or discontent) of any gadling to jaw or to chide:”—

Whil God was on erthe
And wondrede wyde,
Whet wes the resoun
Why he nolde ryde?

For he nolde no groom
To go by hys syde,
Ne grucchyng of no gedelyng
To chaule ne to chyde.

No. 211. An Abbot travelling.

“Listen to me, horsemen,” continues this satirist, “and I will tell you news—that ye shall hang, and be lodged in hell:”—

Herkneth hideward, horsmen,
A tidyng ich ou telle,
That ye shulen hongen,
Ant herbarewen in helle!

The clergy were great riders, and abbots and monks are not unfrequently figured on horseback. Our cut [No. 211] (from MS. Cotton, Nero, D. vii.) represents an abbot riding, with a hat over his hood; he is giving his benediction in return to the salute of some passing traveller.

No. 212. A Knight and his Steed.

The knight still carried his spear with him in travelling, as the footman carried his staff. In our cut [No. 212], from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (No. 6963), the rider, though not armed, carries his spear with him. The saddle in this instance is singularly and rather rudely formed. It was a great point of vanity in the middle ages in England to hang the caparisons of the horse with small bells, which made a jingling noise. In the romance of “Richard Cœur de Lion” (Weber ii. 60), a messenger coming to king Richard has no less than five hundred such bells suspended to his horse— His trappys wer off tuely sylke,
With five hundred belles rygande.
And again, in the same romance (vol. ii. p. 223), we are told, in speaking of the sultan of “Damas,” that his horse was well furnished in this respect— Hys crouper heeng al fulle off belles,
And hys peytrel, and hys arsoun;
Three myle myghte men here the soun.
The bridle, however, was the part of the harness usually loaded with bells, and, according to Chaucer, it was a vanity especially affected by the monks; for the poet tells us of his monk, that— Whan he rood, men might his bridel heere
Gyngle in a whistlyng wynd so cleere,
And eek as lowde as doth the chapel belle.
—Cant. Tales, l. 169.
The rider is seldom furnished with a whip, because he urged his steed forward with his spurs; but female riders and persons of lower degree have often whips, which generally consist of several lashes, each having usually a knob at the end. Such a whip is seen in our cut [No. 213], taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Arundel. No. 91), which represents a countryman driving a horse of burthen; and he not only uses the whip, but he tries further to urge him on by twisting his tail. A whip with one lash—rather an unusual example—is in the hand of the woman driving the cart in our cut [No. 214], which is taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the French National Library (No. 6961), belonging to the fourteenth century. The lady here is also evidently riding astride. The cart in which she is carrying home the wounded knight is of a simple and rude construction. As yet, indeed, carriages for travelling were very little in use; and to judge by the illuminations, they were only employed for kings and very powerful nobles in ceremonial processions.

No. 213. A Horsewhip.

The horse was, after a man’s own limbs, his primary agent of locomotion. Perhaps no animal is so intimately mixed up with the history of mankind as the horse—certainly none more so. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers travelled much on foot, and, as far as we know, the great importance in which the horse was held in the middle ages in this part of the world, began with feudalism, and the best and most celebrated breed of horses in Europe, from the earliest ages of chivalry, was brought from the East. The heroes of early romance and poetry are generally mounted on Arab steeds, and these have often the additional merit of having been won by conquest from the Saracens. In the thirteenth century they were obtained from Turkey and Greece; and at a later period from Barbary. France, also, had its native breed, which enjoyed a high reputation for many valuable qualities, and especially for its fierceness in war; Gascony, and, on the other side of the Spanish frontier, Castile and Aquitaine, were much celebrated for their horses. The Gascons prided themselves much on their horses, and they displayed this pride sometimes in a very singular manner. In 1172, Raymond de Venous, count of Toulouse, held a grand cour plénière, and, as a display of ostentation, caused thirty of his horses to be burnt in presence of the assembly. It was a fine example of the barbarity of feudalism. At the provincial synod of Auch, held in 1303, it was ordered that archdeacons, when they made their diocesan circuits, should not go with more than five horses, which shows that the Gascon clergy were in the habit of making a great display of cavalry. It appears that at this early period the best horses were imported into England from Bordeaux. It may be mentioned, in passing, that the male horse only was ridden by knights or people of any distinction, and that to ride a mare was always looked upon as a degradation. This seems to have been an old Teutonic prejudice, perhaps a religious superstition.

No. 214. Lady and Cart.

The kinds of horses most commonly mentioned in the feudal ages are named in French (which was the language of feudalism), the palefroi, or palfrey, the dextrier, the roncin, and the sommier. The dextrier, or destrier, was the ordinary war-horse; the roncin belonged especially to the servants and attendants; and the sommier carried the luggage. Ladies especially rode the palfrey. The Orkney islands appear to have been celebrated for their dextriers. The Isle of Man seems also to have produced a celebrated breed of horses. Brittany was celebrated for its palfreys. The haquenée, or hackney, of the middle ages, appears to have been especially reserved for females. England seems not to have been celebrated for its horses in the middle ages, and the horses of value possessed by the English kings and great nobles were, in almost all cases, imported from the Continent. The ordinary prices of horses in England in the reign of Edward I., was from one to ten pounds, but choice animals were valued much higher. When St. Louis returned to France from his captivity, the abbot of Cluny presented to the king and the queen each a horse, the value of which Joinville estimates at five hundred livres, equivalent to about four hundred pounds of our present English money. These must have been horses which possessed some very extraordinary qualities, as the price is quite out of proportion to that of other horses at the same period. In the charters published by M. Guérard, horses are valued at forty sols, and at three pounds at various periods during the eleventh century. In 1202, two roncins are valued at thirty sols each, another at forty, two at fifty each, and two at sixty; the roncin of an arbalester at sixty sols; a sommier, or baggage-horse, at forty sols; and three horses, of which the kind is not specified, at six pounds each. These appear to have been the ordinary prices at that period; for, though prices of horses are mentioned as high as thirty-four, thirty-five, and forty pounds, these were only possessed or given as presents by kings. The value of horses went on rising through the thirteenth century, until Philippe le Hardi found it necessary to fix it by an ordonnance, which limited the price which any man, whether lay or clergy, however rich, might give for a palfrey, to sixty pounds tournois, and that to be given by a squire for a roncin to twenty pounds. The prices of horses appear not to have varied much from this during the fourteenth century. In the middle of the century following the prices rose much higher.

Of the colours of horses, in the middle ages, white seems to have been prized most highly, and after that dapple-gray and bay or chestnut. The same colours were in favour among the Arabs. One of the poets of the thirteenth century, Jean Bodel, describes a choice Gascon horse as follows:—“His hair,” he says, “was more shining than the plumage of a peacock; his head was lean, his eye gray like a falcon, his breast large and square, his crupper broad, his thigh round, and his rump tight. They who saw it said that they had never seen a handsomer animal.” The food given to horses in the middle ages seems to have been much the same as at the present day. In 1435 the queen of Navarre gave carrots to her horses. Although the mediæval knight resembled the Arab in his love for his horse, yet the latter was often treated hardly and even cruelly, and the practice of horsemanship was painful to the rider and to the horse. To be a skilful rider was a first-rate accomplishment. One of the feats of horsemanship practised ordinarily was to jump into the saddle, in full armour:—

No foot Fitzjames in stirrup staid,
No grasp upon the saddle laid;
But wreath’d his left hand in the mane,
And lightly bounded from the plain.

Though horse-races are mentioned in two of the earliest of the French metrical romances, those of “Renaud de Montauban,” and of “Aiol,” they seem never to have been practised in France until very recently, when they were introduced in imitation of the English fashion. Post-horses were first introduced in France during the reign of Henry II., that is, in the middle of the sixteenth century.

Great importance was placed in the breeding of horses in the middle ages. Charlemagne, in the regulations for the administration of his private domains, gives particular directions for the care of his brood-mares and stallions. Normandy appears to have been famous for its studs of horses in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and documents show that the monks took good care rigorously to exact the tithes of their produce to stock the monastic stables. Traces of the existence of similar studs are found also in other parts of France. At this time a horse was considered the handsomest present that could be made by a king or a great lord, and horses were often given as bribes. Thus, in 1227, the monks of the abbey of Troarn obtained from Guillaume de Tilli the ratification of a grant made to them by his father in consideration of a gift to him of a mark of silver and a palfrey; and the monks of St. Evroul, in 1165, purchased a favour of the English earl of Gloucester by presenting to him two palfreys estimated to be worth twenty pounds of money of Anjou. Kings frequently received horses as presents from their subjects. The widow of Herbert du Mesnil gave king John of England a palfrey to obtain the wardship of her children; and one Geoffrey Fitz-Richard gave the same monarch a palfrey for a concession in the forest of Beaulieu. In 1172, Raimond, count of St. Gilles, having become the vassal of the king of England, engaged to pay him an annual tribute of a hundred marks of silver, or ten dextriers, worth at least ten marks each. The English studs appear already in the thirteenth century to have become remarkable for their excellence.

Travelling, in the middle ages, was assisted by few, it any, conveniences, and was dangerous as well as difficult. The insecurity of the roads made it necessary for travellers to associate together for protection, as well as for company, for their journeys were slow and dull; and as they were often obliged to halt for the night where there was little or no accommodation, they had to carry a good deal of luggage. An inn was often the place of rendezvous for travellers starting upon the same journey. It is thus that Chaucer represents himself as having taken up his quarters at the Tabard, in Southwark, preparatory to undertaking the journey to Canterbury; and at night there arrived a company of travellers bent to the same destination, who had gathered together as they came along the road:— At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure ifalle
In felaschipe.
—Cant. Tales, l. 23.
Chaucer obtains the consent of the rest to his joining their fellowship, which, as he describes it, consisted of persons most dissimilar in class and character. The host of the Tabard joins the party also, and it is agreed that, to enliven the journey, each, in his turn, shall tell a story on the way. They then sup at a common table, drink wine, and go to bed; and at daybreak they start on their journey. They travelled evidently at a slow pace; and at Boughton-under-Blee—a village a few miles from Canterbury—a canon and his yeoman, after some hard riding, overtake them, and obtain permission to join the company. It would seem that the company had passed a night somewhere on the road, probably at Rochester,—and we should, perhaps, have had an account of their reception and departure, had the collection of the “Canterbury Tales” been completed by their author,—and that the canon sent his yeoman to watch for any company of travellers who should halt at the hostelry, that he might join them, but he had been too late to start with them, and had, therefore, ridden hard to overtake them:— His yeman eek was ful of curtesye,
And seid, “Sires, now in the morwe tyde
Out of your ostelry I saugh you ryde,
And warned heer my lord and soverayn,
Which that to ryden with yow is ful fayn,
For his disport; he loveth daliaunce.”
—Cant. Tales, l. 12,515.
A little further on, on the road, the Pardoner is called upon to tell his tale. He replies—

“It schal be doon,” quod he, “and that anoon.
But first,” quod he, “here, at this ale-stake,
I will both drynke and byten on a cake.”
—Ibid., l. 13,735.

No. 215. A Pilgrim at the Ale-Stake.

No. 216. The Road-side Inn.

The road-side ale-house, where drink was sold to travellers, and to the country-people of the neighbourhood, was scattered over the more populous and frequented parts of the country from an early period, and is not unfrequently alluded to in popular writers. It was indicated by a stake projecting from the house, on which some object was hung for a sign, and is sometimes represented in the illuminations of manuscripts. Our cut [No. 215], taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents one of those ale-houses, at which a pilgrim is halting to take refreshment. The keeper of the ale-house, in this instance, is a woman, the ale-wife, and the stake appears to be a besom. In another ([No. 216]), taken from a manuscript copy of the “Moralization of Chess,” by Jacques de Cessoles, of the earlier part of the fifteenth century (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), a round sign is suspended on the stake, with a figure in the middle, which may possibly be intended to represent a bush. A garland was not unfrequently hung upon the stake; on this Chaucer, describing his “sompnour,” says:— A garland had he set upon his heed,
As gret as it were for an ale-stake.
—Cant. Tales, l. 688.
A bush was still more common, and gave rise to the proverb that “good wine needs no bush,” that is, it will be easily found out without any sign to direct people to it. A bush suspended to the sign of a tavern will be seen in our cut ([No. 224]) to the present chapter.

No. 217. The Canterbury Pilgrims.

Lydgate composed his poem of the “Storie of Thebes,” as a continuation of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” and in the prologue he describes himself as arriving in Canterbury, while the pilgrims were there, and accidentally taking up his lodging at the same inn. He thus seeks and obtains permission to be one of the fellowship, and returns from Canterbury in their company. Our cut [No. 217], taken from a fine manuscript of Lydgate’s poem (MS. Reg. 18 D. ii.), represents the pilgrims leaving Canterbury, and is not only a good illustration of the practice of travelling in companies, but it furnishes us with a characteristic picture of a mediæval town.

This readiness of travellers to join company with each other was not confined to any class of society, but was general among them all, and not unfrequently led to the formation of friendships and alliances between those who had previously been strangers to one another. In the interesting romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” composed in the thirteenth century, when Jean of Dammartin came to seek his fortune in England, and was riding from Dover to London, attended by a faithful servant, he overtook the earl of Oxford, who was on his way to London, with a numerous retinue of armed followers. Jean, having learnt from the earl’s followers who he was, introduced himself to him, and was finally taken into his service. Subsequently, in the same romance, Jean of Dammartin, returning to England, takes up his lodging in a handsome hotel in London, and while his man Robin puts the horses in the stable, he walks out into the street, and sees a large company who had just arrived, consisting of squires, servants, knights, clerks, priests, serving-lads (garçons), and men who attended the baggage horses (sommiers). Jean asked one of the esquires who they all were, what was their business, and where they were going; and was informed that it was the earl of Gloucester, who had come to London about some business, and was going on the morrow to Oxford, to be married to the lady Blonde, the object of Jean’s affections. Next morning the earl began his journey at daybreak, and Jean and his servant, who were mounted ready, joined the company. There was so little unusual in this, that the intruders seem, for a while, not to have been noticed, until, at length, the earl observed Jean, and began to interrogate him: “Friend,” said he, “you are welcome; what is your name?”— Amis, bien fustes vené,
Coment fu vostre non pelé?
—Romance of Blonde, l. 2,627.
Jean gave him an assumed name, said he was a merchant, and offered to sell the earl his horse, but they could not agree upon the terms. They continued conversing together during the rest of the journey. As they proceeded they encountered a shower of rain, which wetted the earl, who was fashionably and thinly clothed. Jean smiled at the impatience with which he seemed to bear this mishap, and when asked to tell the cause of his mirth, said, “If I were a rich man, like you, I should always carry a house with me, so that I could go into it when the rain came, and not get my clothes dirtied and wet.” The earl and his followers set Jean down for a fool, and looked forward to be made merry by him. Soon afterwards they came to the banks of a river, into which the earl rode, without first ascertaining if it were fordable, and he was carried away by the stream, and only saved from drowning by a fisherman in a boat. The rest of the company found a ford, where they passed the river without danger. The earl’s clothes had now been completely soaked in the water, and, as his baggage-horses were too far in the rear, he made one of his knights strip, and give him his dry clothes, and left him to make the best of his wet ones. “If I were as rich, and had so many men, as you,” said Jean, laughing again, “I would not be exposed to misfortunes of this kind, for I would carry a bridge with me.” The earl and his retinue were merry again, at what they supposed to be the folly of their travelling companion. They were now near Oxford, and Jean took his leave of the earl of Gloucester. We learn, in the course of the story, that all that Jean meant by the house, was that the earl ought to have had at hand a good cloak and cape to cover his fine clothes in case of rain; and that, by the bridge, he intended to intimate that he ought to have sent some of his men to ascertain the depth of the river before he went into it!

These illustrations of the manner and inconveniences of travelling apply more especially to those who could travel on horseback; but the difficulties were still greater for the numerous class of people who were obliged to travel on foot, and who could rarely make sure of reaching, at the end of each day’s journey, a place where they could obtain a lodging. They, moreover, had also to take with them a certain quantity of baggage. Foot-travellers seem to have had sometimes a mule or a donkey, to carry luggage, or for the weak women and children. Every one will remember the mediæval fable of the old man and his ass, in which a father and his son have the one ass between them. In mediæval illuminations representing the flight into Egypt, Joseph is often represented as walking, while the Virgin and Child ride upon an ass which he is leading. The party of foot-travellers in our cut [No. 218], taken from a manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), forms part of a group representing the relatives of Thomas Beckett driven into exile by king Henry II.; they are making their way to the sea-shore on foot, perhaps to show that they were not of very high condition in life.

No. 218. Travellers on Foot.

In Chaucer, it is a matter of surprise that the “chanoun” had so little luggage that he carried only a male, or portmanteau, on his horse’s crupper, and even that was doubled up (tweyfold) on account of its emptiness:— A male tweyfold on his croper lay,
It seemed that he caried litel array,
Al light for somer rood this worthy man.
—Cant. Tales, l. 12,494.
On the contrary, in the romance of “Berte,” when the heroine is left to wander in the solitary forest, the writer laments that she had “neither pack-horse laden with coffers, nor clothes folded up in males,” which were the ordinary accompaniments of travellers of any consequence:— N’i ot sommier à coffres ne dras troussés en male.
—Roman de Berte, p. 42.
A traveller, indeed, had many things to carry with him. He took provisions with him, or was obliged, at times, to reckon on what he could kill, or obtain undressed, and hence he was obliged to carry cooking apparatus with him. He carried flint and steel to strike a light, and be able to make a fire, as he might have to bivouac in a solitary place, or in the midst of a forest. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” when the count Begues of Belin finds himself benighted in the forest, he prepares for passing the night comfortably, and, as a matter of course, draws out his flint (fusil), and lights a fire:— Et li quens est desous l’arbre ramé;
Prent son fusil, s’a le fu alumé,
Grant et plenier, merveilleus embrasé.
—Garin le Loherain, ii., p. 231.
The traveller also often carried materials for laying a bed, if benighted on the road; and he had, above all, to take sufficient money with him in specie. He sometimes also carried a portable tent with him, or materials for making one. In the English romance of “Ipomydon” (Weber, ii. 343), the maiden messenger of the heiress of Calabria carries her tent with her, and usually lodges at night under it— As they rode by the way,
The mayde to the dwarfe gan saye,
“Undo my tente, and sette it faste,
For here a whyle I wille me ryste.”
Mete and drynke bothe they had,
That was fro home with them lad.
It may be remarked that in this story the first thought of every gallant knight who passes is to treat the lady with violence. All these incumbrances, combined with the badness of the roads, rendered travelling slow—of which we might quote abundant examples. At the end of the twelfth century, it took Giraldus Cambrensis four days to travel from Powisland to Haughmond Abbey, near Shrewsbury. The roads, too, were infested with robbers and banditti, and travellers were only safe in their numbers, and in being sufficiently well armed to repel attacks. In the accompanying cut ([No. 219]), from a manuscript of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), a traveller is taking his repose under a tree,—it is, perhaps, intended to be understood that he is passing the night in a wood,—while he is plundered by robbers, who are here jokingly represented in the forms of monkeys. While one is emptying his “male” or box, the other is carrying off his girdle, with the large pouch attached to it, in which, no doubt, the traveller carried his money, and perhaps his eatables. The insecurity of the roads in the middle ages was, indeed, very great, for not only were the forests filled with bands of outlaws, who stripped all who fell into their hands, but the knights and landed gentry, and even noblemen, took to the highways not unfrequently, and robbed unscrupulously. Moreover, they built their castles near difficult passes, or by a river where there was a bridge or ford, and where, therefore, they commanded it, and there they levied arbitrary taxes on all who passed, and, on the slightest attempt at resistance, plundered the traveller of his property, and put him to death or threw him into their dungeons. Incidents of this kind are common in the mediæval romances and stories. Piers de Bruville, in the history of Fulke Fitz-Warine, may be mentioned as an example of this class of marauders. “At that time,” says the story, “there was a knight in the country who was called Piers de Bruville. This Piers used to collect all the sons of gentlemen of the country who were wild, and other ribald people, and used to go about the country, and slew and robbed loyal people, merchants, and others.” In the fabliau of the “Chevalier au Barizel,” we are told of a great baron who issued continually from his strong castle to plunder the country around. “He watched so closely the roads, that he slew all the pilgrims, and plundered the merchants; many of them he brought to mishap. He spared neither clergy nor monk, recluse, hermit, or canon; and the nuns and lay-sisters he caused to live in open shame, when he had them in his power; and he spared neither dames nor maids, of whatever rank or class, whether poor or rich, or well educated or simple, but he put them all to open shame” (Barbazan, i. 209).

No. 219. Plundering a Traveller.

The roads, in the middle ages, appear also to have been infested with beggars of all descriptions, many of whom were cripples, and persons mutilated in the most revolting manner, the result of feudal wantonness, and of feudal vengeance. Our cut [No. 220], also furnished by a manuscript of the fourteenth century, represents a very deformed cripple, whose means of locomotion are rather curious. The beggar and the cripple, too, were often only robbers in disguise, who waited their opportunity to attack single passengers, or who watched to give notice to comrades of the approach of richer convoys. The mediæval popular stories give abundant instances of robbers and others disguising themselves as beggars and cripples. Blindness, also, was common among these objects of commiseration in the middle ages; often, as in the case of mutilation of other kinds, the result of deliberate violence. The same manuscript I have so often quoted (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), has furnished our cut No. 221, representing a blind man and his dog.

No. 220. A Cripple.

No. 221. A Blind Man and Dog.

It will be easily understood, that when travelling was beset with so many inconveniences, private hospitality would be looked upon as one of the first of virtues, for people were often obliged to have recourse to it, and it was seldom refused. In the country every man’s door was open to the stranger who came from a distance, unless his appearance were suspicious or threatening. In this there was a mutual advantage; for the guest generally brought with him news and information which was highly valued at a time when communication between one place and another was so slow and uncertain. Hence the first questions put to a stranger were, whence he had come, and what news he had brought with him. The old romances and tales furnish us with an abundance of examples of the widespread feeling of hospitality that prevailed during the middle ages. Even in the middle and lower classes, people were always ready to share their meals with the stranger who asked for a lodging. The denial of such hospitality was looked upon as exceptional and disgraceful, and was only met with from misers and others who were regarded as almost without the pale of society. The early metrical story of “The Hermit,” the foundation of Parnell’s poem, gives us examples of the different sorts of hospitality with which travellers met. The hermit and his companion began their travels in a wild country, and at the end of their first day’s journey, they were obliged to take up their lodgings with another hermit, who gave them the best welcome he could, and shared his provisions with them. The next evening they came to a city, where everybody shut his door against them, because they were poor, till at length, weary and wet with rain, they sat down on the stone steps of a great mansion; but the host was an usurer, and refused to receive into his house men who promised him so little profit. Yet at length, to escape their importunities, he allowed them to enter the yard, and sleep under a staircase, where his maid threw them some straw to lie upon, but neither offered them refreshment, except some of the refuse of the table, nor allowed them to go to a fire to dry their clothes. The next evening they sought their lodging in a large abbey, where the monks received them with great hospitality, and gave them plenty to eat and drink. On the fourth day they came to another town, where they went to the house of a rich and honest burgher, who also received them with all the marks of hospitality. Their host washed their feet, and gave them plenty to eat and drink, and they were comfortably lodged for the night.

It would not be difficult to illustrate all the incidents of this story by anecdotes of mediæval life. The traveller who sought a lodging, without money to pay for it, even in private houses, was not always well received. In the fabliau of the “Butcher of Abbeville” (Barbazan, iv. 1), the butcher, returning from the market of Oisemont, is overtaken by night at the small town of Bailleuil. He determined to stop for the night there, and, seeing a poor woman at her door, at the entrance of the town, he inquired where he could ask for a night’s lodging, and she recommended him to the priest, as the only person in the town who had wine in his cellar. The butcher accordingly repaired to the priest’s house, where he found that ecclesiastic sitting on the sill of his door, and asked him to give him a lodging for the sake of charity. The priest, who thought that there was nothing to be gained from him, refused, telling him he would find plenty of people in the town who could give him a bed. As the butcher was leaving the town, irritated by his inhospitable reception, he encountered a flock of sheep, which he learnt were the property of the priest; whereupon, selecting the fattest of them, he dextrously stole it away unperceived, and, returning with it into the town, he went to the priest’s door, found him just closing his house, for it was nightfall, and again asked him for lodging. The priest asked him who he was, and whence he came. He replied that he had been to the market at Oisemont, and bought a sheep; that he was overtaken by night, and sought a lodging; and that, as it was no great consideration to him, he intended to kill his sheep, and share it with his host. The temptation was too great for the greedy priest, and he now received the butcher into his house, treated him with great respect, and had a bed made for him in his hall. Now the priest had—as was common with the Catholic priesthood—a concubine and a maid-servant, and they all regaled themselves on the butcher’s sheep. Before the guest left next morning, he contrived to sell the sheep’s skin and wool for certain considerations severally to the concubine and to the maid, and, after his departure, their rival claims led to a quarrel, and even to a battle. While the priest, on his return from the service of matins, was labouring to appease the combatants, his shepherd entered, with the information that his best sheep had been stolen from his flock, and an examination of the skin led to the discovery of the trick which had been played upon him—a punishment, as we are told, which he well merited by his inhospitable conduct. A Latin story of the thirteenth century may be coupled with the foregoing anecdote. There was an abbot who was very miserly and inhospitable, and he took care to give all the offices in the abbey to men of his own character. This was especially the case with the monk who had the direction of the hospitium, or guest-house. One day came a minstrel to ask for a lodging, but he met with an unfriendly reception, was treated only with black bread and water to drink, and was shown to a hard bed of straw. Minstrels were not usually treated in this inhospitable manner, and our guest resolved to be revenged. He left the abbey next morning, and a little way on his journey he met the abbot, who was returning home from a short absence. “God bless you, good abbot!” he said, “for the noble hospitality which has been shown to me this night by your monks. The master of your guest-house treated me with the choicest wines, and placed rich dishes on the table for me in such numbers, that I would not attempt to count them; and when I came away this morning, he gave me a pair of shoes, a girdle, and a knife.” The abbot hurried home in a furious rage, summoned the offending brother before a chapter, accused him of squandering away the property of the monastery, caused him to be flogged and dismissed from his office, and appointed in his place another, in whose inhospitable temper he could place entire confidence.

These cases of want of hospitality were, however, exceptions to the general rule. A stranger was usually received with great kindness, each class of society, of course, more or less by its own class, though, under such circumstances, much less distinction of class was made than we might suppose. The aristocratic class, which included what we should now call the gentry, sought hospitality in the nearest castle; for a castle, as a matter of pride and ostentation, was, more or less, like an abbey, a place of hospitality for everybody. Among the richer and more refined classes, great care was taken to show proper courtesy to strangers, according to their rank. In the case of a knight, the lord of the house and his lady, with their damsels, led him into a private room, took off his armour, and often his clothes, and gave him a change of apparel, after careful ablution. A scene of this kind is represented in the accompanying cut ([No. 222]), taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Lancelot,” of the fourteenth century, in the National Library in Paris (No. 6956). The host or his lady sometimes washed the stranger’s feet themselves. Thus, in the fabliau quoted above, when the hermit and his companion sought a lodging at the house of a bourgeois, they were received without question, and their hosts washed their feet, and then gave them plenty to eat and drink, and a bed:— Li hoste orent leur piez lavez,
Bien sont peu et abreviez;
Jusqu’ au jor à ese se jurent.
We might easily multiply extracts illustrative of this hospitable feeling, as it existed and was practised from the twelfth century to the fifteenth. Our cut [No. 223], taken from a manuscript of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Harl. No. 1527), is another representation of the reception of a stranger in this hospitable manner. In the “Roman de la Violette” (p. 233), when its hero, Gerard, sought a lodging at a castle, he was received with the greatest hospitality; the lord of the castle led him into the great hall, and there disarmed him, furnished him with a rich mantle, and caused him to be bathed and washed. In the same romance (p. 237), when Gerard arrives at the little town of Mouzon, he goes to the house of a widow to ask for a night’s lodging, and is received with the same welcome. His horse is taken into a stable, and carefully attended to, while the lady labours to keep him in conversation until supper is ready, after which a good bed is made for him, and they all retire to rest. The comforts, however, which could be offered to the visitor, consisted often chiefly in eating and drinking. People had few spare chambers, especially furnished ones, and, in the simplicity of mediæval manners, the guests were obliged to sleep either in the same room as the family, or, more usually, in the hall, where beds were made for them on the floor or on the benches. “Making a bed” was a phrase true in its literal sense, and the bed made consisted still of a heap of straw, with a sheet or two thrown over it. The host, indeed, could often furnish no more than a room of bare walls and floor as a protection from the weather, and the guest had to rely as much upon his own resources for his personal comforts, as if he had had to pass the night in the midst of a wild wood. Moreover the guests, however numerous and though strangers to each other, were commonly obliged to sleep together indiscriminately in the same room.

No. 222. Receiving a Stranger.

No. 223. Receiving a Guest.

The old Anglo-Saxon feeling, that the duration of the chance visit of a stranger should be limited to the third day, seems still to have prevailed. A Latin rhyme, printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ” (i. 91), tells us,—

Verum dixit anus, quod piscis olet triduanus;
Ejus de more simili fætet hospes odore.

In towns the hospitality of the burghers was not always given gratis, for it was a common custom, even among the richer merchants, to make a profit by receiving guests. These letters of lodgings were distinguished from the inn-keepers, or hostelers, by the title of herbergeors, or people who gave harbour to strangers, and in the larger towns they were submitted to municipal regulations. The great barons and knights were in the custom of taking up their lodgings with these herbergeors, rather than going to the public hostels; and thus a sort of relationship was formed between particular nobles or kings and particular burghers, on the strength of which the latter adopted the arms of their habitual lodgers as their signs. These herbergeors practised great extortions upon their accidental guests, and they appear to have adopted various artifices to allure them to their houses. These extortions are the subject of a very curious Latin poem of the thirteenth century, entitled “Peregrinus” (the Traveller), the author of which describes the arts employed to allure the traveller, and the extortions to which he was subjected. It appears that persons were employed to look out for the arrival of strangers, and that they entered into conversation with them, pretended to discover that they came from the same part of the country, and then, as taking especial interest in their fellow-countrymen, recommended them to lodgings. These tricks of the burghers who let their lodgings for hire are alluded to in other mediæval writers. It appears, also, that both in these lodging-houses and in the public inns, it was not an unusual practice to draw people into contracting heavy bills, which they had not the money to pay, and then to seize their baggage and even their clothes, to several times the amount of the debt.

No. 224. A Hostelry at night.

Our cut [No. 224], taken from an illumination in the unique manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (fifteenth century), in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow, represents the exterior and the interior of a public hostel or inn. Without, we see the sign, and the bush suspended to it, and a company of travellers arriving; within, the bed-chambers are represented, and they illustrate not only the practice of lodging a number of persons in the same bedroom, but also that of sleeping in a state of perfect nudity. Our next cut ([No. 225]) is a picture of a mediæval tapster; it is taken from one of the carved seats, or misereres, in the fine parish church of Ludlow, in Shropshire. It will, probably, be remarked that the size of the tapster’s jug is rather disproportionate to that of his barrel; but mediæval artists often set perspective and relative proportions at defiance.

No. 225. A Mediæval Tapster.

The tavern in the middle ages seems to have been the usual scene of a large portion of the ordinary life of the lower class of society, and even partially of the middle class, and its influence was certainly very injurious on the manners and character of the people. Even the women, as we learn from a number of contemporary songs and stories, spent much of their time drinking and gossiping in taverns, where great latitude was afforded for carrying on low intrigues. The tavern was, in fact, the general rendezvous of those who sought amusement, of whatever kind. In the “Milleres Tale,” in Chaucer, Absolon, “that joly was and gay,” and who excelled as a musician, frequented the taverns and “brewhouses,” meaning apparently the lesser public-houses where they only sold ale, to exhibit his skill— In al the toun nas brewhous ne taverne
That he ne visited with his solas,
Ther as that any gaylard tapster was.
—Cant. Tales, l. 3,334.
And Chaucer’s friar was well acquainted with all the taverns in the towns he visited— He knew wel the tavernes in every toun,
And every osteller or gay tapstere.
—Ibid., l. 240.
The tavern was especially the haunt of gamblers, who were encouraged by the “tapster,” because they brought him his most profitable customers. As I have said before, when his customers had no money, the taverner took their articles of dress for payment, and in doing this he added the profits of the money-lender to those of the taverner. In the fabliau of “Gautier d’Aupais,” the young prodigal Gautier, hungry and penniless, arrives towards evening at a tavern, where he finds a number of guests enjoying themselves. His horse is taken to the stable, and he joins the guests, but when the moment comes for paying, and the taverner demands three sols, he is induced in his desperation to try his luck at the dice. Instead, however, of retrieving his fortunes, he loses his horse and his robe, and is obliged to return to his father’s house on foot, and in his shirt—

Si a perdu sa robe et son corant destrier;
En pure sa chemise l’en convint reperier.

The story of Cortois d’Arras, in the fabliau in “Barbazan” (i. 355), is somewhat similar. Young Cortois, also a prodigal, obtains from his father a large sum of money as a compensation for all his claims on the paternal property, and with this throws himself upon the world. As he proceeded, he heard the tavern-boy calling out from the door, “Here is good wine of Soissons, acceptable to everybody! here credit is given to everybody, and no pledges taken!” with much more in the same style. Cortois determined to stop at the tavern. “Host,” said he, “how much do you sell your wine the septier (a measure of two gallons)? and when was it tapped?” He was told that it had been fresh tapped that morning, and that the price was six deniers. The host then goes on to display his accommodations. “Within are all sorts of comforts; painted chambers, and soft beds, raised high with white straw, and made soft with feathers; here within is hostel for love affairs, and when bed-time comes you will have pillows of violets to hold your head more softly; and, finally, you will have electuaries and rose-water, to wash your mouth and your face.” Cortois orders a gallon of wine, and immediately afterwards a belle demoiselle makes her appearance, for such were in these times reckoned among the attractions of the tavern. It is soon arranged between the lady and the landlord that she is to be Cortois’ chamber-companion, and they all begin drinking together, the taverner persuading his guest that he owes this choice wine to the lady’s love. They then go to carouse in the garden, and they finish by plundering him of his money, and he is obliged to leave his clothes in pledge for the payment of his tavern expenses. The ale-wife was especially looked upon as a model of extortion and deceit, for she cheated unblushingly, both in money and measure, and she is pointed out in popular literature as an object of hatred and of satire. Our cut [No. 226], also furnished by one of the carved misereres in Ludlow Church, represents a scene from Doomsday: a demon is bearing away the deceitful ale-wife, who carries nothing with her but her gay head-dress and her false measure; he is going to throw her into “hell-mouth,” while another demon is reading her offences as entered in his roll, and a third is playing on the bagpipes, by way of welcome.

No. 226. The Ale-Wife’s End.

CHAPTER XV.
EDUCATION.—LITERARY MEN AND SCRIBES.—PUNISHMENTS; THE STOCKS; THE GALLOWS.

I put together in a short chapter two parts of my subject which may at the first glance seem somewhat discordant, but which, I think, on further consideration, will be found to be rather closely related—they are, education and punishment for offences against the law. It can hardly be doubted, indeed, that, as education becomes more general and better regulated, if the necessity of punishment is not entirely taken away, its cruelty is greatly diminished.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was certainly a general feeling of the necessity of extending and improving education. It was during this period that our great universities rose into existence, and flourished, and these schools, which provided for the higher development of the mind, had their thousands of students, instead of the hundreds who frequent them at the present day. But the need of some provision for education was felt most in regard to that less elevated degree of instruction which was required for the more youthful mind,—in fact, it was long before the people of the middle ages could be persuaded that literary education was of any use at all, except for those who were to be made great scholars; the clergy itself, unfortunately, did not see the necessity of popular education, and although the schools in parish churches were long continued, they appear to have been conducted more and more with negligence. It was the mercantile class in the towns which made the first step in advance, by the establishment of those foundations which have continued to the present time under the name of grammar schools. These schools are traced back to the thirteenth century, when the merchant guilds, by whom they were founded, began to assume a greater degree of importance, and they were usually intended for the general benefit of the town, but were combined with an ecclesiastical establishment for performing services for the souls of the members of the guilds, in consequence of which, at the Reformation, they became involved in the superstitious uses, and were dissolved and refounded in the reign of Edward VI., so that they are now generally known as king Edward’s foundations. The great object of these schools was to give the instruction necessary for admission into the universities; and they were in some degree the answer to an appeal which came deeply from the mass of the people,—for there was at this time a great spontaneous eagerness for learning, both for the sake of the learning itself, and because it was a road to high distinction, which was not open to the masses in any other direction. It was a very common practice for poor youths to go about the country during vacation time, to beg money to keep them at school during term. In Piers Ploughman, among the objects of legitimate charity, the writer enumerates money given to— Sette scolers to scole,
Or to som othere craftes.
—Piers Ploughman, Vis., l. 4,525.
And in the popular complaints of the burden of taxation, involuntary and voluntary, the alms given to poor scholars are often enumerated.

No. 227. A Monk at his Studies.

Independent, however, of what may be considered more especially as scholarship, a considerable amount of instruction began now to be spread abroad. Reading and writing were becoming much more general accomplishments, especially among ladies. Among the amusements of leisure hours, indeed, reading began now to occupy a much larger place than had been given to it in former ages. Even still, popular literature—in the shape of tales, and ballads and songs—was, in a great measure, communicated orally. But much had been done during the fourteenth century towards spreading a taste for literature and knowledge; books were multiplied, and were extensively read; and wants were already arising which soon led the way to that most important of modern discoveries, the art of printing. Most gentlemen had now a few books, and men of wealth had considerable libraries. The wills of this period, still preserved, often enumerate the books possessed by the testator, and show the high value which was set upon them. Many of the illuminations of the fourteenth century present us with ingenious, and sometimes fantastic, forms of book-cases and book-stands. In our cut [No. 227], from a manuscript of metrical relations of miracles of the Virgin Mary, now preserved in the library of the city of Soissons in France, we have a monk reading, seated before a book-stand, the table of which moves up and down on a screw. Upon this table is the inkstand, and below it apparently the inkbottle; and the table has in itself receptacles for books and paper or parchment. In the wall of the room are cupboards, also for the reception of books, as we see by one lying loose in them. The man is here seated on a stool; but in our cut [No. 228], taken from a manuscript in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985), he is seated in a chair, with a writing-desk attached to it. The scribe holds in his hand a pen, with which he is writing, and a knife to scratch the parchment where anything may need erasion. The table here is also of a curious construction, and it is covered with books. Other examples are found, which show that considerable ingenuity was employed in varying the forms of such library tables.

No. 228. A Mediæval Writer.

The next cut ([No. 229]) is taken from one of the illuminations to a manuscript of the “Moralization of Chess,” by Jacques de Cessoles (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), and is intended as a sort of figurative representation of the industrial class of society. It is curious because the figure is made to carry some of the principal implements of the chief trades or manufactures, and thus gives us their ordinary forms. We need only repeat the enumeration of these from the text. It is, we are told, a man who holds in his right hand a pair of shears (unes forces); in his left hand he has a great knife (un grant coustel); “and he must have at his girdle an inkstand (une escriptoire), and on his ear a pen for writing (et sur l’oreille une penne à escripre).” Accordingly we see the ink-pot and the case for writing implements suspended at the girdle, but by accident the pen does not appear on the ear in our engraving. It is curious through how great a length of time the practice of placing the pen behind the ear has continued in use.

No. 229. Industry.

The punishments of the middle ages are remarkable, still more so in other countries than in England, for a mixture of a small amount of feeling of strict justice with a very large proportion of the mere feeling of vengeance. Savage ferocity in the commission of crime led to no less savage cruelty in retaliation. We have seen, in a former chapter, that this was not the sentiment of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, but that their criminal laws were extremely mild; but after the Norman conquest, more barbarous feelings on this subject were brought over from the Continent. Imprisonment itself, even before trial, was made frightfully cruel; the dungeons into which the accused were thrown were often filthy holes, sometimes with water running through them, and, as a refinement in cruelty, loathsome reptiles were bred in them, and the prisoners were not only allowed insufficient food, but they were sometimes stripped naked, and thrown into prison in that condition. In the early English romance of the “Seven Sages” (the text printed by Weber), when the emperor was persuaded by his wife to order her step-son for execution, he commanded that he should be taken, stripped naked of his clothes, and then hanged aloft— Quik he het (commanded) his sone take,
And spoili him of clothes nake,
And beten him with scourges stronge,
And afterward him hegge (high) anhonge.
—Weber, iii. 21.
At the intercession of one of the wise men, the youth is respited and thrown into prison, but without his clothing; and when, on a subsequent occasion, he was brought out of prison for judgment, he remained still naked.

Our three cuts which follow illustrate the subject of mediæval punishments for crimes and offences. The first ([No. 230]) is taken from a well-known manuscript, in the British Museum, of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), and represents a monk and a lady, whose career has brought them into the stocks, an instrument of punishment which has figured in some of our former chapters. It is a very old mode of punishing offenders, and appears, under the Latin name of cippus, in early records of the middle ages. An old English poem, quoted by Mr. Halliwell in his Dictionary, from a manuscript at least as old as the fifteenth century, recounting the punishments to which some misdoers were condemned, says:— And twenty of thes oder ay in a pytt,
In stokkes and feturs for to sytt.
The stocks are frequently referred to in writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they have not yet become entirely obsolete. The Leeds Mercury for April 14, 1860, informs us that, “A notorious character, named John Gambles, of Stanningley (Pudsey), having been convicted some months ago for Sunday gambling, and sentenced to sit in the stocks for six hours, left the locality, returned lately, and suffered his punishment by sitting in the stocks from two till eight o’clock on Thursday last.” They were formerly employed also, in place of fetters, in the inside of prisons—no doubt in order to cause suffering by irksome restraint; and this was so common that the Latin term cippus, and the French ceps, were commonly used to designate the prison itself. It may be remarked of these stocks, that they present a peculiarity which we may perhaps call a primitive character. They are not supported on posts, or fixed in any way to the spot, but evidently hold the people who are placed in them in confinement merely by their weight, and by the impossibility of walking with them on the legs, especially when more persons than one are confined in them. This is probably the way in which they were used in prisons.

No. 230. A Party in the Stocks.

No. 231. An Offender Exposed to Public Shame.

A material part of the punishment of the stocks, when employed in the open air, consisted, of course, in the public disgrace to which the victim was exposed. We might suppose that the shame of such exposure was keenly felt in the middle ages, from the frequency with which it was employed. This exposure before the public was, we know, originally, the chief characteristic of the cucking-stool, for the process of ducking the victim in the water seems to have been only added to it at a later period. Our cut [No. 231], taken from an illumination in the unique manuscript of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,” in the Hunterian Library, at Glasgow, represents a person thus exposed to the scorn and derision of the populace in the executioner’s cart, which is drawn through the streets of a town. To be carried about in a cart was always considered as especially disgraceful, probably because it was thus that malefactors were usually conducted to the gallows. In the early romances of the cycle of king Arthur we have an incident which forms an apt illustration of the prevalence of this feeling. Sir Lancelot, when hastening to rescue his lady, queen Guenever, has the misfortune to lose his horse, and, meeting with a carter, he seizes his cart as the only means of conveyance, for the weight of his armour prevented him from walking. Queen Guenever and her ladies, from a bay window of the castle of sir Meliagraunce, saw him approach, and one of the latter exclaimed, “See, madam, where as rideth in a cart a goodly armed knight! I suppose that he rideth to hanging.” Guenever, however, saw by his shield that it was sir Lancelot. “‘Ah, most noble knight,’ she said, when she saw him in this condition, ‘I see well that thou hast been hard bested, when thou ridest in a cart.’ Then she rebuked that lady that compared him to one riding in a cart to hanging. ‘It was foul mouthed,’ said the queen, ‘and evil compared, so to compare the most noble knight of the world in such a shameful death. Oh Jhesu! defend him and keep him,’ said the queen, ‘from all mischievous end.’”

Our next cut ([No. 232]) is taken from the same manuscript in the British Museum which furnished us with [No. 230]. The playful draughtsman has represented a scene from the world “upso-down,” in which the rabbits (or perhaps hares) are leading to execution their old enemy the dog.

No. 232. A Criminal drawn to the Gallows.

The gallows and the wheel were instruments of execution of such common use in the middle ages that they were continually before people’s eyes. Every town, every abbey, and almost every large manorial lord, had the right of hanging, and a gallows or tree with a man hanging upon it was so frequent an object in the country that it seems to have been almost a natural ornament of a landscape, and it is thus introduced by no means uncommonly in mediæval manuscripts. The two examples given in our cut [No. 233] are taken from the illuminations in the manuscript of the romance of the “Chevalereux comte d’Artois,” in the manuscript from which this romance was printed by M. Barrois.

No. 233. Mediæval Ornaments of the Landscape.

CHAPTER XVI.
OLD ENGLISH COOKERY.—HISTORY OF “GOURMANDISE.”—ENGLISH COOKERY OF THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.—BILLS OF FARE.—GREAT FEASTS.

I have spoken of the ceremonious forms of the service of the mediæval table, but we are just now arrived at the period when we begin to have full information on the composition of the culinary dishes in which our ancestors indulged, and it will perhaps be well to give a brief summary of that information as illustrative both of the period we have now been considering, and of that which follows.

There is a part of the human frame, not very noble in itself, which, nevertheless, many people are said to worship, and which has even exercised at times a considerable influence over man’s destinies. Gastrolatry, indeed, is a worship which, at one time or other, has prevailed in different forms over all parts of the world—its history takes an extensive range, and is not altogether without interest. One of the first objects of search in a man who has just risen from savage life to civilization is rather naturally refinement in his food, and this desire more than keeps pace with the advance of general refinement, until cookery becomes one of the most important of social institutions. During all periods of which we read in history, great public acts, of whatever kind, even to the consecration of a church, have been accompanied with feasting; and the same rule holds good throughout all the different phases of our social relations. The materials for the history of eating are, indeed, abundant, and the field is extensive.

William of Malmesbury, as we have seen before, tells us that the Anglo-Saxons indulged in great feasting, and lived in very mean houses; whereas the Normans eat with moderation, but built for themselves magnificent mansions. Various allusions in old writers leave little room for doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers indulged in much eating; but, as far as we can gather, for our information is very imperfect, this indulgence consisted more in the quantity than in the quality of the food, for their cookery seems to have been in general what we call “plain.” Refinement in cookery appears to have come in with the Normans; and from the twelfth century to the sixteenth we can trace the love of the table continually increasing. The monks, whose institution had, to a certain degree, separated them from the rest of the world, and who usually, and from the circumstances perhaps naturally, sought sensual gratifications, fell soon into the sin of gluttony, and they seem to have led the way in refinement in the variety and elaborate character of their dishes. Giraldus Cambrensis, an ecclesiastic himself, complains in very indignant terms of the luxurious table kept by the monks of Canterbury in the latter half of the twelfth century; and he relates an anecdote which shows how far at that time the clergy were, in this respect, in advance of the laity. One day, when Henry II. paid a visit to Winchester, the prior and monks of St. Swithin met him, and fell on their knees before him to complain of the tyranny of their bishop. When the king asked what was their grievance, they said that their table had been curtailed of three dishes. The king, somewhat surprised at this complaint, and imagining, no doubt, that the bishop had not left them enough to eat, inquired how many dishes he had left them. They replied, ten; at which the king, in a fit of indignation, told them that he himself had no more than three dishes to his table, and uttered an imprecation against the bishop, unless he reduced them to the same number.

But although we have abundant evidence of the general fact that our Norman and English forefathers loved the table, we have but imperfect information on the character of their cookery until the latter half of the fourteenth century, when the rules and receipts for cooking appear to have been very generally committed to writing, and a certain number of cookery-books belonging to this period and to the following century remain in manuscript, forming very curious records of the domestic life of our forefathers. From these I will give a few illustrations of this subject. These cookery-books sometimes contain plans for dinners of different descriptions, or, as we should now say, bills of fare, which enable us, by comparing the names of the dishes with the receipts for making them, to form a tolerably distinct notion of the manner in which our forefathers fared at table from four to five hundred years ago. The first example we shall give is furnished by a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth century, and belongs to the latter part of the century preceding; that is, to the reign of Richard II., a period remarkable for the fashion for luxurious living: it gives us the following bill of fare for the ordinary table of a gentleman, which I will arrange in the form of a bill of fare of the present day, modernizing the language, except in the case of obsolete words.

First Course.

Boar’s head enarmed (larded), and “bruce,” for pottage.
Beef. Mutton. Pestles (legs) of Pork.
Swan. Roasted Rabbit. Tart.

Second Course.

Drope and Rose, for pottage.
Mallard. Pheasant. Chickens, “farsed” and roasted.
“Malachis,” baked.

Third Course.

Conings (rabbits), in gravy, and hare, in “brasé,” for pottage.
Teals, roasted. Woodcocks. Snipes.
“Raffyolys,” baked. “Flampoyntes.”

It may be well to make the general remark, that the ordinary number of courses at dinner was three. To begin, then, with the first dish, boar’s-head was a favourite article at table, and needs no explanation. The pottage which follows, under the name of bruce, was made as follows, according to a receipt in the same cookery-book which has furnished the bill of fare:—

Take the umbles of a swine, and parboil them (boil them slowly), and cut them small, and put them in a pot, with some good broth; then take the whites of leeks, and slit them, and cut them small, and put them in, with minced onions, and let it all boil; next take bread steeped in broth, and “draw it up” with blood and vinegar, and put it into a pot, with pepper and cloves, and let it boil; and serve all this together.

In the second course, drope is probably an error for drore, a pottage, which, according to the same cookery-book, was made as follows:—

Take almonds, and blanch and grind them, and mix them with good meat broth, and seethe this in a pot; then mince onions, and fry them in fresh “grease,” and put them to the almonds; take small birds, and parboil them, and throw them into the pottage, with cinnamon and cloves and a little “fair grease,” and boil the whole.

Rose was made as follows:—

Take powdered rice, and boil it in almond-milk till it be thick, and take the brawn of capons and hens, beat it in a mortar, and mix it with the preceding, and put the whole into a pot, with powdered cinnamon and cloves, and whole mace, and colour it with saunders (sandal-wood).

It may be necessary to explain that almond-milk consisted simply of almonds ground and mixed with milk or broth. The farsure, or stuffing, for chickens was made thus:—

Take fresh pork, seethe it, chop it small, and grind it well; put to it hard yolks of eggs, well mixed together, with dried currants, powder of cinnamon and maces, cubebs, and cloves whole, and roast it.

I am unable to explain the meaning of malachis, the dish which concludes this course.

The first dish in the third course, coneys, or rabbits, in gravy, was made as follows:—

Take rabbits, and parboil them, and chop them in “gobbets,” and seethe them in a pot with good broth; then grind almonds, “dress them up” with beef broth, and boil this in a pot; and, after passing it through a strainer, put it to the rabbits, adding to the whole cloves, maces, pines (the kernels of the pine cone), and sugar; colour it with sandal-wood, saffron, bastard or other wine, and cinnamon powder mixed together, and add a little vinegar.

Not less complicated was the boar in brasé, or brasey:—

Take the ribs of a boar, while they are fresh, and parboil them till they are half boiled; then roast them, and, when they are roasted, chop them, and put them in a pot with good fresh beef broth and wine, and add cloves, maces, pines, currants, and powdered pepper; then put chopped onions in a pan, with fresh grease, fry them first and then boil them; next, take bread, steeped in broth, “draw it up” and put it to the onions, and colour it with sandal-wood and saffron, and as it settles, put a little vinegar mixed with powdered cinnamon to it; then take brawn, and cut it into slices two inches long, and throw it into the pot with the foregoing, and serve it all up together.

Raffyolys were a sort of patties, made as follows:—

Take swine’s flesh, seethe it, chop it small, add to it yolks of eggs, and mix them well together; put to this a little minced lard, grated cheese, powdered ginger, and cinnamon; make of this balls of the size of an apple, and wrap them up in the cawl of the swine, each ball by itself; make a raised crust of dough, and put the ball in it, and bake it; when they are baked, take yolks of eggs well beaten, with sugar and pepper, coloured with saffron, and pour this mixture over them.

Flampoyntes were made thus:—

Take good “interlarded” pork, seethe it, and chop it, and grind it small; put to it good fat cheese grated, and sugar and pepper; put this in raised paste like the preceding; then make a thin leaf of dough, out of which cut small “points,” fry these in grease, and then stick them in the foregoing mixture after it has been put in the crust, and bake it.

Such was a tolerably respectable dinner at the end of the fourteenth century; but the same treatise gives us the following bill of fare, for a larger dinner, though still arranged in three courses:—

First Course.

Browet farsed, and charlet, for pottage.
Baked mallard. Teals. Small birds. Almond milk served with them.
Capon roasted with the syrup.
Roasted veal. Pig roasted “‘endored,’ and served with the yolk on his neck over gilt.” Herons.
A “leche.” A tart of flesh.

Second Course.

Browet of Almayne and Viaunde rial for pottage.
Mallard. Roasted rabbits. Pheasant. Venison.
Jelly. A leche. Urchynnes (hedgehogs).
Pome de orynge.

Third Course.

Boar in egurdouce, and Mawmené, for pottage.
Cranes. Kid. Curlew. Partridge. (All roasted.)
A leche. A crustade.
A peacock endored and roasted, and served with the skin.
Cockagris. Flaumpoyntes. Daryoles.
Pears in syrup.

The receipt for making farsed browet, or browet farsyn, is literally as follows:—

Take almonds and pound them, and mix with beef broth, so as to make it thick, and put it in a pot with cloves, maces, and figs, currants, and minced ginger, and let all this seethe; take bread, and steep it in sweet wine, and “draw it up,” and put it to the almonds with sugar; then take conyngs (rabbits), or rabbettes (young rabbits), or squirrels, and first parboil and then fry them, and partridges parboiled; fry them whole for a lord, but otherwise chop them into gobbets; and when they are almost fried, cast them in a pot, and let them boil altogether, and colour with sandal-wood and saffron; then add vinegar and powdered cinnamon strained with wine, and give it a boil; then take it from the fire, and see that the pottage is thin, and throw in a good quantity of powdered ginger.

It is repeated, at the end of this receipt, that, for a lord, a coney, rabbit, squirrel, or partridge, should be served whole in this manner. The other pottage in this course, charlet, was less complex, and was made thus:—

Take sweet cow’s milk, put it in a pan, throw into it the yolks and white of eggs, and boiled pork, pounded, and sage; let it boil till it curds, and colour it with saffron.

The following was the syrup for a capon:—

Take almonds, and pound them, and mix them with wine, till they make a thick “milk,” and colour it with saffron, and put it in a saucepan, and put into it a good quantity of figs and currants, and add ground ginger, cloves, galingale (a spice much used in the middle ages), and cinnamon; let all this boil; add sugar, and pour it over your capon or pheasant.

The leche in this first course was, perhaps, the dish which is called in the receipts a leche lumbarde, which was made thus:—

Take raw pork, and pull off the skin, and pick out the skin sinews, and pound the pork in a mortar with raw eggs; add to it sugar, salt, raisins, currants, minced dates, powdered pepper, and cloves; put it in a bladder, and let it seethe till it be done enough, and then cut it into slips of the form of peas-cods: grind raisins in a mortar, mix them with red wine, and put to them almond-milk, coloured with sandal-wood and saffron, and add pepper and cloves, and then boil the whole; when it is boiled, mix cinnamon and ginger with wine and pour on it, and so serve it.

Browet of Almayne, which comes in with the second course of this dinner, was a rather celebrated pottage. It was made in the following manner:—

Take coneys, and parboil them, and chop them in gobbets, and put them with ribs of pork or kid into a pot, and seethe it; then take ground almonds, and mix them with beef broth, and put this in a pot with cloves, maces, pines, minced ginger, and currants, and with onions, and boil it, and colour it with saffron, and when this is boiled, take the flesh out from the broth, and put it in it; and take “alkanet” (alkanet is explained in the dictionaries as the name of a plant, wild buglos; it appears to have been used in cookery to give colour), and fry it, and press it into the pot through a strainer, and finally add a little vinegar and ground ginger mixed together.

The composition of viande royale was as follows:—

Take Greek wine, or Rhenish wine, and clarified honey, and mix them well with ground rice, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and cloves, saffron, sugar, mulberries, and sandal-wood; boil the mixture, and salt it, and take care that it be thick.

Pome de oringe was quite a different thing to what we should expect from the name. It was made as follows:—

Take pork liver, pound it well raw, and put to it ground pepper, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, and currants; make of this balls like apples, and wet them well in the white of eggs, and then put them in boiling water, and let them seethe, and when they have seethed a while, take them out, and put them on a spit, and roast them well; then take parsley, and grind it, and wring it up with eggs through a strainer, and put a little flour to it, and with this “endore” the balls while roasting, and, if you will, you may take saffron, sandal-wood, or indigo, to colour them.

Endore was the technical term of the kitchen for washing over an article of cookery with yolks of eggs, or any other liquid, to give a shiny appearance to its exterior when cooked.

Both the pottages in the third course are rather elaborate ones. The following was the process of making boar in egurdouce, or egredouce, a word which of course means “sour-sweet:”—

Take dates, washed clean, and currants, and boil them, and pound them together, and in pounding put cloves to them, and mix them up with vinegar, or clarey, or other sweet wine, and put it in a fair pot, and boil it well; and then put to it half a quartern of sugar, or else honey, and half an ounce of cinnamon in powder, and in the “setting down” take a little vinegar and mix with it, and half an ounce of ground ginger, and a little sandal-wood and saffron; and in the boiling put minced ginger to it; next, take fresh brawn, and seethe it, and then cut it in thin slices, and lay three in a dish, and then take half a pound of pines, and fry them in fresh grease, and throw the pines into it; and when they are thoroughly hot take them out with a skimmer, and let them dry, and cast them into the same pot; and then put the syrup above the brawn in the dishes, and serve it.

Mawmené was made according to the following receipt:—

Take almonds and blanch them and pound them, and mix them with water or wine, and take the brawn of capons or pheasants, and pound it small, and mix it with the other, and add ground rice, and put it in a pot and let it boil; and add powder of ginger and cloves, and cinnamon and sugar; and take rice, and parboil it and grind it, and add it to them, and colour it with sandal-wood, and pour it out in dishes; and take the grains of pomegranates and stick in it, or almonds or pines fried in grease, and strew sugar over it.

The following was the manner of making the crustade, mentioned in the third course of this bill of fare:—

Take chickens, and pigeons, and small birds, and make them clean, and chop them to pieces, and stew them altogether in a good broth made of fair grease and ground pepper and cloves, and add verjus to it, and colour it with saffron; then make raised crusts, and pinch them and lay the flesh therein, and put to it currants, and ground ginger, and cinnamon; and take raw eggs, and break them, and strain them through a strainer into the pottage of the stew, and stir it well together, and pour it into the raised crusts, above the flesh, and then place the covers on them and serve them.

The process of serving a peacock “with the skin” also requires some explanation. The skin was first stripped off, with the feathers, tail, and neck and head, and it was spread on a table and strewed with ground cummin; then the peacock was taken and roasted, and “endored” with raw yolks of eggs; and when roasted, and after it had been allowed to cool a little, it was sewn into the skin, and thus served on the table, always with the last course, when it looked as though the bird were alive. To make cokagrys, you must

Take an old cock and pull him, and wash him, and skin him all but the legs, and fill him full of the stuffing made for the pome de oringe; and also take a pig and skin him from the middle downwards, and fill him full of the same stuffing, and sew them fast together, and seethe them; and when they have seethed a good while, take them up and put them on a spit, and roast them well, and endore them with yolks of eggs mixed with saffron; and when they are roasted, before placing them on the table, lay gold and silver foil on them.

Flampoyntes have been already explained. Pears in syrup were merely boiled in wine, and seasoned with sugar and spices.

In these bills of fare, our readers who believe in the prevalence of “old English roast beef,” will find that belief singularly dissipated, for our ancestors seem to have indulged in all sorts of elaborately made dishes, in which immense quantities of spices were employed. The number of receipts in these early cookery-books is wonderfully great, and it is evident that people sought variety almost above all other things. Among the Sloane manuscripts in the library of the British Museum, there is a very complete cookery-book (MS. No. 1201) belonging to the latter part of the fifteenth century, which gives seven bills of fare of seven dinners, each to differ entirely in the dishes composing it from the other, with the object, of course, of giving a different dinner every day during seven consecutive days. In the foregoing bills of fare, we have seen that on flesh-days no fish was introduced on the table, but fish is introduced along with flesh in the seven dinners just alluded to, which are, moreover, curious for the number of articles, chiefly birds, introduced in them, which we are not now accustomed to eat. The first of these bills of fare, which are all limited to two courses, runs as follows:—

First Course, of Eleven Dishes.

Nowmbles (umbles) of an harte. Vyand ryalle. The syde of an hert rostede.
Swanne with chauderoun. Fesaunt rostede. Bytore (bittern) rostede.
Pyke, and grete gurnarde.
Haggesse of Almayne. Blaunche custade.
A sotelté, a blake bore enarmede with golde.

Second Course, of Eleven Dishes.

Gelé. Cream of almonds.
Kynd kydde. Fillets of an herte endored. Squyrelle rost.
Chykons (chickens) ylarded. Partriche and lark rost.
Perche and porpoys rost.
Frytours Lumbard. Payne puffe (puff-bread).
A sotelté, a castelle of sylver with fanes (vanes or flags) of gold.

It appears that at this time it was considered more absolutely necessary than at an earlier period, that each course at table should be accompanied with a subtilty, or ornamental device in pastry, representing groups of various descriptions, as here a black boar and a castle. We have here the porpoise eaten among fishes, and the squirrel among animals; we have before seen hedgehogs served at table. In the “Ménagier de Paris,” a French compilation, made in the year 1393, a hedgehog is directed to have its throat cut, and to be skinned and emptied, and then to be arranged as a chicken, and pressed and well dried in a towel; after this it was to be roasted and eaten with “cameline,” a word the exact meaning of which seems not to be known; or in pastry, with duckling sauce. Squirrels were to be treated as rabbits. The same book gives directions for cooking magpies, rooks, and jackdaws. The second of the seven bills of fare given in the Sloane Manuscript contains turtles (the bird) and throstles, roasted; in the third we have roasted egrets (a species of heron), starlings, and linnets; in the fourth, “martinettes;” in the fifth, barnacles, “molette,” sparrows, and, among fishes, minnows; and in the sixth, roasted cormorants, heathcocks, sheldrakes, dotterels, and thrushes. The seventh bill of fare runs thus:—

First Course, of Nine Dishes.

Long wortes (vegetables). An hen in dubate.
Shuldres of motoun.
Wylde goos. Wode doves.
Fresh laumprey. Grete codlynge.
Bonsomers. Tortons, in paste.

Second Course, of Ten Dishes.

Pynnonade (a confection of almonds and pines).
Malardes of the rivere.
Cotes, rost, and dampettes.
Quayles, and goldefynche.
Ele reversed. Breme de mere.
Frypours ryalle. Viande en feast.
Quarters of lambe.

The bills of fare I have thus given are intended for dinners of moderate size, but I might easily have given much larger ones, though we should have learnt nothing more by them than by the smaller ones, from which the reader will be able to form a very good judgment of the general style of eating among our forefathers, when they lived well. The fifteenth century, especially, was celebrated for its great feasts, at which the consumption of provisions was enormous. The bills of expenses of some of them have been preserved. In the sixth year of the reign of Edward IV. (A.D. 1466), George Nevile was made archbishop of York, and the account of the expenditure for the feast on that occasion contains the following articles:—Three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tuns of ale, one hundred tuns of wine, one pint of hypocras, a hundred and four oxen, six wild bulls, a thousand sheep, three hundred and four calves, the same number of swine, four hundred swans, two thousand geese, a thousand capons, two thousand pigs, four hundred plovers, a hundred dozen of quails, two hundred dozen of the birds called “rees,” a hundred and four peacocks, four thousand mallards and teals, two hundred and four cranes, two hundred and four kids, two thousand chickens, four thousand pigeons, four thousand crays, two hundred and four bitterns, four hundred herons, two hundred pheasants, five hundred partridges, four hundred woodcocks, one hundred curlews, a thousand egrettes, more than five hundred stags, bucks, and roes, four thousand cold venison pasties, a thousand “parted” dishes of jelly, three thousand plain dishes of jelly, four thousand cold baked tarts, fifteen hundred hot venison pasties, two thousand hot custards, six hundred and eight pikes and breams, twelve porpoises and seals, with a proportionate quantity of spices, sugared delicacies, and wafers or cakes.

On the inthronation of William Warham as archbishop of Canterbury in 1504, the twentieth year of the reign of Henry VII., a feast was given for which the following provisions were purchased:—Fifty-four quarters of wheat, twenty shillings’ worth of fine flour for making wafers, six tuns or pipes of red wine, four of claret wine, one of choice white wine, and one of white wine for the kitchen, one butt of malmsey, one pipe of wine of Osey, two tierces of Rhenish wine, four tuns of London ale, six of Kentish ale, and twenty of English beer, thirty-three pounds’ worth of spices, three hundred lings, six hundred codfish, seven barrels of salted salmon, forty fresh salmon, fourteen barrels of white herrings, twenty cades of red herrings (each cade containing six hundred herrings, which would make a total of twelve thousand), five barrels of salted sturgeons, two barrels of salted eels, six hundred fresh eels, eight thousand whelks, five hundred pikes, four hundred tenches, a hundred carps, eight hundred breams, two barrels of salted lampreys, eighty fresh lampreys, fourteen hundred fresh lamperns, a hundred and twenty-four salted congers, two hundred great roaches, a quantity of seals and porpoises, with a considerable quantity of other fish. It will be understood at once that this feast took place on a fish day.

This habit of profuse and luxurious living seems to have gradually declined during the sixteenth and first part of the seventeenth century, until it was extinguished in the great convulsion which produced the interregnum. After the Restoration, we find that the table, among all classes, was furnished more soberly, and with plainer and more substantial dishes.

CHAPTER XVII.
SLOW PROGRESS OF SOCIETY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—ENLARGEMENT OF THE HOUSES.—THE HALL AND ITS FURNITURE.—ARRANGEMENT OF THE TABLE FOR MEALS.—ABSENCE OF CLEANLINESS.—MANNERS AT TABLE.—THE PARLOUR.

The progress of society in the two countries which were most closely allied in this respect, England and France, was slow during the fifteenth century. Both countries were engaged either in mutual hostility or in desolating civil wars, which so utterly checked all spirit of improvement, that the aspect of society differed little between the beginning and the end of the century in anything but dress. At the close of the fourteenth century, the middle classes in England had made great advance in wealth and in independence, and the wars of the roses, which were so destructive to the nobility, as well as the tendency of the crown to set the gentry up as a balance to the power of the feudal barons, helped to make that advance more certain and rapid. This increase of wealth appears in the multiplication of furniture and of other household implements, especially those of a more valuable description. We are surprised, in running our eye through the wills and inventories during this period, at the quantity of plate which was usually possessed by country gentlemen and respectable burghers. There was also a great increase both in the number and magnitude of the houses which intervened between the castle and the cottage. Instead of having one or two bedrooms, and turning people into the hall to sleep at night, we now find whole suits of chambers; while, where before, the family lived chiefly in the hall, privacy was sought by the addition of parlours, of which there were often more than one in an ordinary sized house. The hall was in fact already beginning to diminish in importance in comparison with the rest of the house. Whether in town or country, houses of any magnitude were now generally built round an interior court, into which the rooms almost invariably looked, only small and unimportant windows looking towards the street or country. This arrangement of course originated in the necessity of studying security, a necessity which was never felt more than in the fifteenth century. We have less need to seek our illustrations from manuscripts during this period, on account of the numerous examples of buildings which still remain in a greater or less state of perfection, but still an illumination now and then presents us with an interesting picture of the architectural arrangements of a dwelling-house in the fifteenth century, which may be advantageously compared with the buildings that still exist. One of these is represented in our cut [No. 234], taken from an illuminated copy of the French translation of Valerius Maximus (MS. No. 6984, in the National Library at Paris). The building to the left is probably the staircase turret of the gateway; that before us is the mass of the household apartments. We are supposed to be standing within the court. At the foot of the turret is the well, a very important object within the court, where it was always placed in houses of this description, as in the troubles of those days the household might be obliged to shut themselves up for a day or two and depend for their supply of water entirely on what they could get within their walls.

No. 234. Court of a House of the Fifteenth Century.

The cut here given ([No. 234]) is a remarkably good and perfect representation of the exterior, looking towards the court, of the domestic buildings. The door on the ground floor to the right is probably, to judge by the position of the windows, the entrance to the hall. The steps leading to the first floor are outside the wall, an arrangement which is not uncommon in the existing examples of houses of this period in England. We have also here the open gallery round the chambers on the first floor, which is so frequently met with in our houses of the fifteenth century. It is probable that within the door at the top of the external flight of steps, as here represented, a short staircase led up to the floor on which the chambers were situated. Perhaps it may have been a staircase into the gallery, as the opening round the corner to the right seems to be a door from the gallery into the chambers.

No. 235. A Knight at the Door.

In another illumination in the same manuscript (cut [No. 235]), a knight is represented knocking at the door of a house into which he seeks admittance. The plain knocker and the ring will be recognised at once by all who have been accustomed to examine the original doors still remaining in so many of our old buildings, but why the person who thus signifies his wish to enter should hold the ring with his right hand, and the knocker with his left, is not very clear. The knocker, instead of being plain, as in this cut, was often very ornamental. This is, of course, the outer door of the house, and our readers will not overlook the loophole and the small window through which the person who knocked might be examined, and, if necessary, interrogated, before the door was opened to him.

Let us now pass through the door on the ground floor, always open by day, into the hall. This was still the most spacious apartment in the house, and it was still also the public room, open to all who were admitted within the precincts. The hall continued to be scantily furnished. The permanent furniture consisted chiefly in benches, and in a seat with a back to it for the superior members of the family. The head table at least was now generally a permanent one, and there were in general more permanent tables, or tables dormant, than formerly, but still the greater part of the tables in the hall were made for each meal by placing boards upon trestles. Cushions, with ornamental cloths, called bankers and dorsers, for placing over the benches and backs of the seats of the better persons at the table, were now also in general use. Tapestry was suspended on the walls of the hall on special occasions, but it does not appear to have been of common use. Another article of furniture had now become common—the buffet, or stand on which the plate and other vessels were arranged. These articles appear to have been generally in the keeping of the butler, and only to have been brought into the hall and arranged on the buffet at meal times, for show as much as for use. The dinner party in our cut [No. 236], taken from an illumination of a manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” formerly in the possession of M. Barrois, a distinguished and well-known collector in Paris, represents a royal party dining at a table with much simplicity. The ornamental vessel on the table is probably the salt-cellar, which was a very important article at the feast. Besides the general utility of salt, it was regarded with profoundly superstitious feelings, and it was considered desirable that it should be the first article placed on the table. We have still a feeling of superstition with regard to the spilling of salt. A metrical code for the behaviour of servants, written in the fifteenth century, directs that in preparing the table for meals, the table-cloth was first to be spread, and then, invariably and in all places, the salt was to be placed upon it; next were to be arranged successively, the knives, the bread, the wine, and then the meat, after which the waiter was to bring other things, when each was called for:— Tu dois mettre premierement
En tous lieux et en tout hostel
La nappe, et apres le sel;
Cousteaulx, pain, vin, et puis viande,
Puis apporter ce qu’on demande.
In our last cut ([No. 236]) it will be seen that the “nappe” is duly laid, and upon it are seen the salt-cellar, the bread (round cakes), and the cups for wine. Knives are wanting, and the plates seldom appear on the table in these dinner scenes of the fifteenth century, any more than in the previous period. This, no doubt, arose from the common practice at that time, of people carrying their own knives with them in a sheath attached to the girdle. We find, moreover, few knives enumerated in our inventories of household goods and chattels. In the English metrical “Stans Puer ad Mensam,” or rules for behaviour at table, written by Lydgate, the guest is told to “bring no knyves unskoured to the table,” which can only mean that he is to keep his own knife that he carries with him clean. The two servants are here duly equipped for duty, with the towel thrown over the shoulder. The table appears to be placed on two board-shaped trestles, but the artist has forgotten to indicate the seats. But in our next cut ([No. 237]), a very private party, taken from a manuscript of the early French translation of the Decameron (in the National Library at Paris, No. 6887), are placed in a seat with a back to it, although the table is still evidently a board placed upon trestles. It may be remarked that in dinner scenes of this century, the gentlemen at table are almost always represented with their hats on their heads.

No. 236. A Dinner Scene at Court.

No. 237. A Private Dinner.

As we have already hinted, the inventories of this period give us curious information on the furniture of houses of different descriptions. We learn from one of these, made in 1446, that there were at that time belonging to the hall of the priory of Durham, one dorsal or dorser, embroidered with the birds of St. Cuthbert and the arms of the church, five pieces of red cloth (three embroidered and two plain), no doubt for the same purpose of throwing over the seats; six cushions; three basins of brass; and three washing-basins. A gentleman at Northallerton, in Yorkshire, who made his will in 1444, had in his hall, thirteen jugs or pots of brass, four basins, and two ewers (of course, for washing the hands), three candlesticks, five (metal) dishes, three kettles, nine vessels of lead and pewter, “utensils of iron belonging to the hall,” valued at two shillings—probably the fire-irons, one dorser and one banker. An inventory of a gentleman’s goods in the year 1463, apparently in the southern part of England (printed in the “New Retrospective Review”), gives, as the contents of the hall,—a standing spear, a hanging of stained work, a mappa-mundi (a map of the world) of parchment—a curious article for the hall, a side-table, one “dormond” table (a permanent table), a beam with six candlesticks.

A vocabulary of the fifteenth century (“Volume of Vocabularies,” p. 197) enumerates, as the ordinary furniture of the hall, a board, a trestle, a banker, a dorser, a natte (table-cloth), a table dormant, a basin, a laver, fire on a hearth, a brand or torch, a yule-block, an andiron, tongs, a pair of bellows, wood for the fire, a long settle, a chair, a bench, a stool, a cushion, and a screen. The permanent or dormant table, is shown in the scene given in our cut [No. 238], taken from the beautifully illuminated manuscript of the “Roman de la Violette,” at Paris, some facsimiles from which were privately distributed by the comte de Bastard, from whom I had the honour of receiving a copy. We have here also the seat with its back, and the buffet with its jugs and dishes. In our cut [No. 236], we had the waits or trumpeters, who were always attached to the halls of great people to announce the commencement of the dinner. Only persons of a certain rank were allowed this piece of ostentation; but everybody had minstrelsy to dinner who could obtain it, and when it was at hand. The wandering minstrel was welcome in every hall, and for this very reason the class of ambulatory musicians was very numerous. In the scene given in this cut ([No. 238]), the wandering minstrel, or, according to the story, a nobleman in that disguise, has just arrived, and he is allowed, without ceremony or suspicion, to seat himself at the fire, apparently on a stool, beside the two individuals at dinner.

No. 238. Reception of the Minstrel.

The floor of the hall was usually paved with tiles, or with flag stones, and very little care appears to have been shown to cleanliness, as far as it was concerned, except that it was usual to strew it with rushes. Among the various French metrical “Contenances de Table,” or directions for behaviour at table, of the fifteenth century, the person instructed is told that he must not spit upon the table at dinner time— Ne craiche par dessus la table,
Car c’est chose desconvenable,
which is necessarily an intimation that he must spit upon the floor. In another of these pieces he is told that when he washes his mouth at table, he must not reject the water into the basin— Quant ta bouche tu laveras,
Ou bacin point ne cracheras.
The reason for this rule was evidently the circumstance that one basin might serve for all the company; but the alternative again was of course to spit the water out upon the floor. Again, in one of these codes, the learner is told that when he makes sops in his wine, he must either drink all the wine in the glass, or throw what remains on the floor:— Enfant, se tu faiz en ton verre
Souppes de vin aucunement,
Boy tout le vin entierement,
Ou autrement le gecte à terre.
Or, as it is expressed in another similar code more briefly— Se tu fais souppes en ton verre,
Boy le vin ou le gette à terre.
There can be no doubt that all this must have made an extremely dirty floor. Another rather naïve direction shows that no more attention was paid to the cleanliness of the benches and seats; it is considered necessary to tell the scholar always to look at his seat before he sits down at table, to a assure himself that there is nothing dirty upon it!—

Enfant, prens de regarder peine
Sur le siege où tu te sierras,
Se aucune chose y verras
Qui soit deshonneste ou vilaine.

The fireplace at the side of the hall, with hearth and chimney, were now in general use. An example is given in our last cut; another will be seen in our cut [No. 239], and here, though evidently in the hall, and a monastic hall too, the process of cooking is pursued at it. The monks appear to be taking a joyous repast, not quite in keeping with the strict rule of their order, and the way in which they are conducting themselves towards the women who have been introduced into the monastery does not speak in favour of monastic continence. This picture is from a manuscript bible, of the fifteenth century, in the National Library at Paris (No. 6829).

Manners at table appear to have been losing some of the strictness and stiffness of their ceremonial, while they retained their rudeness. The bowl of water was carried round to the guests, and each washed his hands before dinner, but the washing after dinner appears now to have been commonly omitted. In one of the directions for table already quoted, the scholar is told that he must wash himself when he rises from bed in the morning, once at dinner, and once at supper, in all thrice a day:— Enfant, d’honneur lave tes mains
A ton lever, à ton disner,
Et puis au soupper, sans finer;
Ce sont trois foys à tout le moins.
And again, in another similar code,—

Lave tes mains devant disner,
Et aussi quant vouldras soupper.

No. 239. A Monastic Feast.

Still people put their victuals to their mouth with their fingers, for, though forks were certainly known in the previous century, they were not used for conveying the food to the mouth. It was considered, nevertheless, bad manners to carry the victuals to the mouth with the knife—

Ne faiz pas ton morsel conduire
A ton coustel qui te peult nuire.

Another practice strictly forbidden in these rules was picking your teeth with your knife while at table. From the use thus made of the hand, in the absence of forks, it may be supposed that we should have directions for keeping it clean during the process of eating. One of these appears droll enough to us at the present day. It is directed that a person sitting at table in company is not to blow his nose with the hand with which he takes his meat. Handkerchiefs were not yet in use, and the alternative of course was that, if any one felt the need of performing the operation in question, he was to lay down his knife, and to do it with the hand which held it. In one of the French codes this direction is given rather covertly, as follows:— Ne touche ton nez à main nue
Dont ta viande est tenue.
But in another it is enunciated more crudely, thus:— Enfant, se ton nez est morveux,
Ne le torche de la main nue
De quoy ta viande est tenue;
Le fait est vilain et honteux.
All these circumstances show a state of manners which was very far from refined.

Among other directions for table, you are told not to leave your spoon in your platter; not to return back to your plate the food you have put in your mouth; not to dip your meat in the salt-cellar to salt it, but to take a little salt on your knife and put it on the meat; not to drink from a cup with a dirty mouth; not to offer to another person the remains of your pottage; not to eat much cheese; to take only two or three nuts, when they are placed before you; not to play with your knife; not to roll your napkin into a cord, or tie it in knots; and not to get intoxicated during dinner-time!

Our next cut ([No. 240]) represents one of the backed seats, after a pattern of this century. It is taken from a manuscript of the romance of Launcelot du Lac, in the National Library at Paris (No. 594). It is probable that this seat belonged to the parlour, or, as the name signifies, conversation room. The custom still continued of making seats with divisions, so that each person sat in a separate compartment. A triple seat of this kind is represented in our cut [No. 241], taken from a manuscript of the French Boccaccio in the National Library at Paris.

No. 240. A Domestic Scene.

No. 241. A Triple Seat.

The parlour seems to have been ornamented with more care, and to have been better furnished than the hall. This apartment appears to have been placed sometimes on the ground floor, and sometimes on the floor above, and large houses had usually two or three parlours. It had often windows in recesses, with fixed seats on each side; and the fireplace was smaller and more comfortable than that of the hall. As carpets came into more general use, the parlour was one of the first rooms to receive this luxury. In the inventory I have already quoted from the “New Retrospective Review,” the following articles of furniture are described as being in the parlour— A hanging of worsted, red and green.
A cupboard of ash-boards.
A table, and a pair of trestles.
A branch of latten, with four lights.
A pair of andirons.
A pair of tongs.
A form to sit upon.
And a chair.
This will give us a very good idea of what was the usual furniture of the parlour in the fifteenth century. The only movable seats are a single bench, and one chair—perhaps a seat with a back like that shown above. The table was even here formed by laying a board upon trestles. The cupboard was peculiar to this part of the house; many of my readers will probably remember the parlour cupboards in our old country houses, the branched candlestick of metal, suspended from the ceiling, and the tongs and andirons for the fire.

The principal articles of furniture in the parlour are all exhibited in illuminations in manuscripts of the same period. The “hanging of worsted” was, of course, a piece of tapestry for the wall, or for some part of the wall, for the room was in many, perhaps in most, cases, only partially covered. Sometimes, indeed, it appears only to have been hung up on occasions, perhaps for company, when it seems to have been placed behind the chief seat.[50] The wall itself was frequently adorned with paintings, in common houses rude and merely ornamental, while in others of a better class they represented histories, scenes from romances, and religious subjects, much like those exhibited on the tapestries themselves. In the cut annexed ([No. 242]), taken from a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the romance of “Lancelot,” in the National Library at Paris, No. 6784, we have a representation of a parlour with wall paintings of this kind. Morgan le Fay is showing king Arthur the adventures of Lancelot, which she had caused to be painted in a room in her palace. Paintings of this kind are very often alluded to in the old writers, especially in the poets, as every one knows who has read the “Romance of the Rose,” the works of Chaucer, or that singular and curious poem, the “Pastyme of Pleasure,” by Stephen Hawes. Chaucer, in his “Dream,” speaks of—

A chamber paint
Full of stories old and divers,
More than I can as now reherse.

No. 242. Morgan le Fay showing king Arthur the Paintings of the Adventures of Lancelot.

There was in the castle of Dover an apartment called Arthur’s Hall, and another named Guenevra’s Chamber, which have been supposed to be so called from the subjects of the paintings with which they were decorated; and a still more curious illustration of the foregoing drawing is furnished by an old house of this period still existing in New Street, Salisbury, a room in which preserves its painting in distemper, occupying the upper part of the wall, like the story of Lancelot in the pictures of the room of Morgan le Fay. We give a sketch of the side of this room occupied by the painting in the accompanying cut ([No. 243]). It occupies the space above the fireplace, and the windows looking into the street, but it has been much damaged by modern alterations in the house. The subject, as will at once be seen, was of a sacred character—the offering of the three kings.

No. 243. Wall-Paintings still remaining in a House at Salisbury.

The window to the left of the fireplace, which is one of the original windows of this house, has a deep sill, or seat, which was intended as one of the accommodations for sitting down. This was not unfrequently made with a recess in the middle, so as to form a seat on each side, on which two persons might sit face to face, and which was thus more convenient both for conversation, and for looking through the window at what was going on without. This appears to have been a favourite seat with the female part of the household when employed in needlework and other sedentary occupations. There is an allusion to this use of the window sill in the curious old poem of the “Lady Bessy,” which is probably somewhat obscured by the alterations of the modern copyist; when the young princess kneels before her father, he takes her up and seats her in the window:—

I came before my father the king,
And kneeled down upon my knee;
I desired him lowly of his blessing,
And full soon he gave it unto me.
And in his arms he could me thring,
And set me in a window so high.

The words of our inventory, “a form to sit upon, and a chair,” describe well the scanty furnishing of the rooms of a house at this period. The cause of this poverty in movables, which arose more from the general insecurity of property than the inability to procure it, is curiously illustrated by a passage from a letter of Margaret Paston to her husband, written early in the reign of Edward IV. “Also,” says the lady to her spouse, “if ye be at home this Christmas, it were well done ye should do purvey a garnish or twain of pewter vessel, two basins and two ewers, and twelve candlesticks, for ye have too few of any of these to serve this place; I am afraid to purvey much stuff in this place, till we be surer thereof.” As yet, a form or bench continued to be the usual seat, which could be occupied by several persons at once. One chair, as in the inventory just mentioned, was considered enough for a room, and was no doubt preserved for the person of most dignity, perhaps for the lady of the household. Towards the latter end of this period, however, chairs, made in a simpler form, and stools, the latter very commonly three-legged, became more abundant. Yet in a will dated so late as 1522 (printed in the “Bury Wills” of the Camden Society), an inhabitant of Bury in Suffolk, who seems to have possessed a large house and a considerable quantity of household furniture for the time, had, of tables and chairs, only “a tabyll of waynskott with to (two) joynyd trestelles, ij. joynyd stolys of the best, a gret joynyd cheyre at the deyse in the halle—the grettest close cheyre, ij. fote stoles—a rounde tabyll of waynskott with lok and key, the secunde joynyd cheyer, ij. joynyd stolys.” The ordinary forms of chairs and stools at the latter end of the fifteenth century are shown in our cut [No. 244], taken from a very curious sculpture in alto-relievo on one of the columns of the Hôtel-de-Ville at Brussels. At this time we begin to find examples of chairs ingeniously constructed, for folding up or taking to pieces, so as to be easily laid aside or carried away. Some of these resemble exactly our modern camp-stools. A curious bedroom chair of this construction is represented in our cut [No. 245], taken from a fine illuminated manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” of the fifteenth century, in the collection of M. Barrois of Paris, but now, I believe, in the library of lord Ashburnham. The construction of this chair is too evident to need explanation. It explains the phrase, used in some of our old writers, of unfolding a chair.

No. 244. Sculpture from the Hôtel-de-Ville, Brussels.

No. 245. A Bedroom Chair.

No. 246. A Chandelier.

At this time much greater use appears to have been made of candles than formerly, and they seem to have been constructed of different substances and qualities. Candlesticks, made usually of the mixed metal called laton or latten (an alloy of brass), were found in all houses; they appear to have been still mostly made with a spike on which the candle was stuck, and sometimes they were ornamented, and furnished with mottoes. John Baret, who made his will at Bury, in 1463, possessed a “candylstykke of laten with a pyke,” two “lowe candylstikkez of a sorth,” (i.e. to match), and three “candylstykkes of laton whereupon is wretyn grace me governe.” A testament dated in 1493 enumerates “a lowe candilstyke of laton, oon of my candelstykes, and ij. high candilstykes of laton.” In the will of Agas Herte of Bury, in 1522, “ij. belle canstykes and a lesser canstyke,” occurs twice, so that they seem to have formed two sets, and there is a third mention of “ij. bell canstykes.” We also find mention at this time of double candlesticks, which were probably intended to be placed in an elevated position to give light to the whole apartment. Our inventory of the contents of the parlour contains “a branch of latten, with four lights,” which was no doubt intended for this purpose of lighting the whole room (a sort of chandelier), and appears to have been identical with the candlebeam, not unfrequently mentioned in the old inventories. A widow of Bury, named Agnes Ridges, who made her will in 1492, mentions “my candylbeme that hangyth in my hall with vj. bellys of laton standyng thereon,” i.e. six cups in which the candles were placed. Our cut [No. 246] represents a candlebeam with four lights. It is slung round a simple pulley in the ceiling, by a string which was fixed to the ground. It is taken from a manuscript of the “Traité des Tournois” (treatise of tournaments), by king René, in the National Library at Paris, No. 8352; and as the scene is represented as taking place in a princely hall, which is fitted up for a festive entertainment, we may take it as a curious proof of the rudeness which was still mixed up with the magnificence of the fifteenth century. In a fine illumination in a manuscript of Froissart in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 18 E. 2), representing the fatal masque at the court of Charles VI. of France, in 1393, in which several of the courtiers were burnt to death, we have, in the king’s palace, a chandelier exactly like that in our last cut, except that each candlestick on the beam contains two candles—a “double candlestick.” This manuscript is of the latter part of the fifteenth century. It had been the custom, on festive occasions, or in ceremonies where large apartments required to be lighted, to do this by means of torches which servants held in their hands. This custom was very common, and is frequently spoken of or alluded to in the mediæval writers. Nevertheless, the inconvenience and even danger attending it, led to various plans for superseding it. One of these was, to fix up against the walls of the room frames for holding the torches, of which an example is given in the accompanying cut ([No. 247]), representing a torch-frame, still preserved in the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence. One of the group, it will be observed, has a long spike, intended to hold a large candle. Candlesticks fixed to the wall in various manners are seen in manuscripts of the fifteenth century; and an example is given in our cut [No. 248], taken from a part of the same illumination of Froissart mentioned before. The candle is here placed before a little image, on the upper part of the fireplace, but whether this was for a religious purpose or not, is not clear. In this cut, the three princesses are seated on the large chair or settle, which is turned with its back to the fire. This important article of furniture is now found in the parlour as well as in the hall.

No. 247. Candle and Torch-holders.

No. 248.—Ladies Seated.

CHAPTER XVIII.
IN-DOOR LIFE AND CONVERSATION.—PET ANIMALS.—THE DANCE.—RERE-SUPPERS.—ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE “NANCY” TAPESTRY.

As people began to have less taste for the publicity of the old hall, they gradually withdrew from it into the parlours for many of the purposes to which the hall was originally devoted, and thus the latter lost much of its former character. The parlour was now the place commonly used for the family meals. In a curious little treatise on the “most vyle and detestable use of dyce play,” composed near the beginning of the sixteenth century, one of the interlocutors is made to say, “So down we came again,” i.e. from the chambers above, “into the parlour, and found there divers gentlemen, all strangers to me; and what should I say more, but to dinner we went.” The dinner hour, we learn from this same tract, was then at the hour of noon; “the table,” we are told, “was fair spread with diaper cloths, the cupboard garnished with much goodly plate.” The cupboard seems now to have been considered a necessary article of furniture in the parlour; it had originally belonged to the hall, and was of simple construction. One of the great objects of ostentation in a rich man’s house was his plate; which, at dinner time, he brought forth, and caused to be spread on a table in sight of his guests; afterwards, to exhibit the plate to more advantage, the table was made with shelves, or steps, on which the different articles could be arranged in rows one above another. It was called in French and Anglo-Norman a buffet, or a dressoir (dresser), the latter name, it is said, being given to it because on it the different articles were dressés, or arranged. The English had, in their own language, no special name for this article of furniture, so that they called it literally a cup-board, or board for the cups. In course of time, and especially when it was removed from the hall into the parlour, this article was made more elaborately, and doors were added to it, for shutting up the plate when not in use. It thus became equivalent to our modern sideboard. We have seen a figure of a cupboard of this more complicated structure in a cut in our last chapter; and we shall have others of different forms in our next.

No. 249. A Sick Room.

Our cut [No. 249] is a good representation of the interior of a parlour furnished with the large seat, or settle, and with rather an elaborate and elegant cupboard. The latter, however, does not belong to the picture itself, having been introduced from another in the same manuscript by Mr. Shaw, in his beautiful work the “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” from which it is here taken. It is found in a fine manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 D. 1), containing the French translation of the “Historia Scholastica” of Peter Comestor, and written in the year 1470. The subject of this illumination is taken from the Scriptural story of Tobit, who here lies sick and blind on the settle, having just despatched his son Tobias on his journey to the city of Rages. The lady cooking is no doubt intended for his wife Anna; it will be observed that she is following the directions of a book. Cookery books and books of medicinal receipts were now common. The kettle is suspended over the fire by a jack of a construction that occurs not unfrequently in the manuscripts of this period. The settle is placed with its back to the window, which is covered with a large curtain.

As the parlours saved the domestic arrangements of the household from the too great publicity of the hall, so on the other hand they relieved the bedchambers from much of what had previously been transacted in them, and thus rendered them more private. In the poem of the “Lady Bessie,” when the earl of Derby and Humphrey Brereton visit the young princess, they are introduced to her in her bower, or chamber, but she immediately conducts the latter into the parlour, in order to converse with him:— She took him in her arms, and kissed him times three;
“Welcome,” she said, “Humphrey Brereton;
How hast thou spedd in the west countrey?
I pray thee tell me quickly and anon.”
Into a parlour they went from thence,
There were no more but hee and shee.
The female part of the family now passed in the parlour much of the time which had been formerly passed in their chambers. It was often their place of work. Young ladies, even of great families, were brought up not only strictly, but even tyrannically, by their mothers, who kept them constantly at work, exacted from them almost slavish deference and respect, and even counted upon their earnings. The parental authority was indeed carried to an almost extravagant extent. There are some curious instances of this in the correspondence of the Paston family. Agnes Paston, the wife of sir William Paston, the judge, appears to have been a very harsh mother. At the end of June 1454, Elizabeth Clere, a kinswoman who appears to have lived in great intimacy with the family, sent to John Paston, the lady’s eldest son, the following account of the treatment of his sister Elizabeth, who was of marriageable age, and for whom a man of the name of Scroope had been proposed as a husband. “Therefore, cousin,” writes Jane Clere, “meseemeth he were go for my cousin your sister, without that ye might get her a better; and if ye can get a better, I would advise you to labour it in as short time as ye may goodly, for she was never in so great a sorrow as she is now-a-days, for she may not speak with no man, whosoever come, nor even may see nor speak with my man, nor with servants of her mother’s, but that she beareth her on hand otherwise than she meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week, or twice, and sometimes twice in a day, and her head broken in two or three places. Wherefore, cousin, she hath sent to me by friar Newton in great counsel, and prayeth me that I would send to you a letter of her heaviness, and pray you to be her good brother, as her trust is in you.” In spite of her anxiety to be married, Elizabeth Paston did not succeed at this time, but she was soon afterwards transferred from her paternal roof to the household of the lady Pole. It was still the custom to send young ladies of family to the houses of the great to learn manners, and it was not only a matter of pride and ostentation to be thus surrounded by a numerous train, but the noble lady whom they served did not disdain to receive payment for their board as well as employing them in profitable work. In a memorandum of errands to London, written by Agnes Paston on the 28th of January, 1457, one is a message to “Elizabeth Paston that she must use herself to work readily, as other gentlewomen do, and somewhat to help herself therewith. Item, to pay the lady Pole twenty-six shillings and eightpence for her board.” Margaret Paston, the wife of John Paston, just mentioned, and daughter-in-law of Agnes, seems to have been equally strict with her daughters. At the beginning of the reign of Edward IV., she wrote to her son John concerning his sister Anne, who had been placed in the house of a kinsman of the name of Calthorpe. “Since ye departed,” she says, “my cousin Calthorpe sent me a letter complaining in his writing that forasmuch as he cannot be paid of his tenants as he hath been before this time, he proposeth to lessen his household, and to live the straitlier, wherefore he desireth me to purvey for your sister Anne; he saith she waxeth high (grows tall), and it were time to purvey her a marriage. I marvel what causeth him to write so now, either she hath displeased him, or else he hath taken her with default; therefore I pray you commune with my cousin Clare at London, and weet (learn) how he is disposed to her-ward, and send me word, for I shall be fain to send for her, and with me she shall but lose her time, and without she will be the better occupied she shall oftentimes move (vex) me and put me in great inquietness; remember what labour I had with your sister, therefore do your part to help her forth, that may be to your worship and mine.” There certainly appears here no great affection between mother and daughter.

Among other lessons, the ladies appear to have been taught to be very demure and formal in their behaviour in company. Our cut [No. 250] represents a party of ladies and gentlemen in the parlour engaged in conversation. It is taken from an illumination in the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” formerly in the possession of M. Barrois. They are all apparently seated on benches, which seem in this instance to be made like long chests, and placed along the sides of the wall as if they served also for lockers. These appear to be the only articles of furniture in the room. There is a certain conventional position in most of the ladies of the party which has evidently been taught, even to the holding of the hands crossed. The four ladies with the gentleman between them are no doubt intended to be the attendants on the lady of the house, holding towards her the position of Elizabeth and Anne Paston. We have precisely the same conventional forms in the next cut ([No. 251]), which is taken from an illumination in a manuscript of the “Legenda Aurea,” in the National Library in Paris (No. 6889). We see here the same demureness and formal crossing of the hands among the young ladies, in presence of their dame. It may be observed that, in almost all the contemporary pictures of domestic scenes, the men, represented as visitors, keep their hats on their heads.

No. 250. A Conversation Scene.

No. 251. A Social Group of the Fifteenth Century.

One of the most curious features in the first of these scenes is that of the cages, especially that of the squirrel, which is evidently made to turn round with the animal’s motion, like squirrel-cages of the present day. We have now frequent allusions to the keeping of birds in cages, and parrots, magpies, jays, and various singing birds, are often mentioned among domestic pets. During the earlier half of the century of which we are now more especially speaking, the poems of Lydgate furnish us with several examples. Thus, in that entitled “The Chorle and the Bird,” we are told— The chorle (countryman) was gladde that he this birdde hadde take,.
Mery of chere, of looke, and of visage,.
And in al haste he cast for to make.
Within his house a pratie litelle cage,.
And with hir songe to rejoise his corage.
And in another of Lydgate’s minor poems, it is said of Spring,— Whiche sesoun prykethe (stirs up) fresshe corages,
Rejoissethe beastys walkyng in ther pasture,
Causith briddys to syngen in ther cages,
Whan blood renewyth in every creature.
Among these, we find birds mentioned which are not now usually kept in cages. Thus, in a manuscript of the time of Edward IV., we find a receipt for food for that favourite bird of the mediæval poets, the nightingale.[51] Small animals of various kinds were also tamed and kept in the house, either loose or in cages. The plot of some of the earlier fabliaux turns upon the practice of taming squirrels as pets, and keeping them in cages; and this animal continued long to be an especial favourite, for its liveliness and activity. In one of the compartments of the curious tapestry of Nancy, of the fifteenth century, which has been engraved by M. Achille Jubinal, we see a lady with a tame squirrel in her hand, which she holds by a string, as represented in our cut [No. 252].

No. 252. Lady and Squirrel.

The parlour was now the room where the domestic amusements were introduced. The guest in the early tract on “Dyce Play,” quoted in a former page, tells us, “and, after the table was removed, in came one of the waiters with a fair silver bowl, full of dice and cards. Now, masters, quoth the goodman, who is so disposed, fall too.” Gambling was carried to a great height during the fifteenth century, and was severely condemned by the moralists, but without much success. Dice were the older implements of play, and tables (or backgammon). A religious poem on saints’ days, in a manuscript written about the year 1460, warning against idle amusements, says— Also use not to pley at the dice ne at the tablis,
Ne none maner gamys, uppon the holidais;
Use no tavernys where be jestis and fablis,
Syngyng of lewde balettes, rondelettes, or virolais.
After the middle of the fifteenth century, cards came into very general use; and at the beginning of the following century, there was such a rage for card-playing, that an attempt was made early in the reign of Henry VIII. to restrict their use by law to the period of Christmas. When, however, people sat down to dinner at noon, and had no other occupation for the rest of the day, they needed amusement of some sort to pass the time; and a poet of the fifteenth century observes truly,— A man may dryfe forthe the day that long tyme dwellis
With harpyng and pipyng, and other mery spellis,
With gle, and wyth game.
Such amusements as these mentioned, with games of different kinds in which the ladies took part, and dancing, generally occupied the afternoon, from dinner to supper, the hour of which latter meal seems usually to have been six o’clock. The favourite amusement was dancing. A family party at the dance is represented in our cut [No. 253], from M. Barrois’ manuscript of the “Comte d’Artois.” The numerous dances which were now in vogue seem to have completely eclipsed the old carole, or round dance, and the latter word, which was a more general one, had displaced the former. The couple here on their legs are supposed to be performing one of the new and tasteful fashionable dances, which were much more lively than those of the earlier period; some of them were so much so as to scandalise greatly the sage moralists of the time. The after-dinner amusements were resumed after supper; and a practice had now established itself of prolonging the day’s enjoyment to a late hour, and taking a second, or, as it was called, a rere-supper (arrière souper), which was called the banquet in France, where the three great meals were now the dinner, the supper, and the banquet, and dinner appears to have been considered as the least meal of the three. It was thus, probably, that, in course of time, dinner took the place of supper, and supper that of banquet.

No. 253. A Dance.

We have a very curious illustration of the extravagant living at table of the latter half of the fifteenth century, in the curious allegorical tapestry long preserved at Nancy, in Lorrain, and said by tradition, probably with truth, to have been the ornament of the tent of Charles le Téméraire, duke of Burgundy, when he laid siege to Nancy in 1477, and was defeated and slain. It is of Flemish workmanship, and no doubt pictures the manners of the Burgundian nobles and gentry, but at that time the court of Burgundy was the model of the fashionable life of western Europe. It happens, curiously enough, that a few years later a rather obscure French writer, named Nicole de La Chesnaye, compiling one of those allegorical dramas then so popular under the title of “Moralities,” took the story of this tapestry as his subject, and has thus left us the full explanation of what might otherwise have been not easily understood. The title of this morality is “La Nef de Santé” (the ship of health), and a second title is “La condamnacion des bancquetz” (the condemnation of banquets); and its object is to show the unhappy consequences of the extravagance in eating and drinking, which then prevailed. It opens with a conversation between three allegorical personages named Dinner, Supper, and Banquet, who declare their intention to lead joyous life evening and morning, and they resolve on imitating Passe-Temps (pastime) and Bonne-Compagnie (good company). At this moment Bonne-Compagnie herself, who is described as a dashing damsel (gorrière damoiselle), enters with all her people, namely, Gourmandize (greediness), Friandize (daintiness), Passe-Temps, already mentioned, Je-Boy-à-Vous (I drink to you), Je-Pleige-d’Autant (I pledge the same), and Acoustumance (custom). Each names what he prefers in good cheer, and Bonne-Compagnie, to begin the day, orders a collation, at which, among other things, are served damsons (prunes de Damas), which appear at this time to have been considered as delicacies. There is here a marginal direction to the purport that, if the morality should be performed in the season when real damsons could not be had, the performers must have some made of wax to look like real ones. They now take their places at table, and, while they are eating, Je-Boy-à-Vous calls the attention of the company to the circumstance that Gourmandize, in his haste to eat the damsons, had swallowed a snail. Passe-Temps next proposes a dance, and chooses for his partner the lady Friandize, comparing her to Helen, and telling her that he was Paris. She, in reply, compares herself to Medea, and her partner to Jason. Then the musicians, “placed on a stage or some higher place,” are to play a measure “pretty short.” Dinner, Supper, and Banquet next make their appearance, and, addressing Bonne-Compagnie, make their apology for entering without being invited; but the lady receives them well, asks their names, and, in return, tells them those of her people. Dinner, to show his gratitude for this friendly reception, invites the whole party to go to his feast, which is just ready; and Supper invites them to a second repast, and Banquet to a third. They accept the invitation of Dinner, and are served with friture, brouet, potage, gros pâtés, &c. Meanwhile Supper and Banquet look upon the party from “some high window,” and converse on the consequences likely to follow their excesses. This scene is represented in the first compartment of the tapestry, as it now exists (for it has undergone considerable mutilation), and is represented in our cut [No. 254]. It is a good picture of a seignorial repast of the fifteenth century. There are people at table, besides those enumerated in the morality, who are here indicated by their names: Passe-Temps at one end of the table, a lady to his left, and after her Je-Boy-à-Vous, who has Bonne-Compagnie by his side, and to her left Dinner, the host. To the right of Passe-Temps sits the lady Gourmandize, and to her right Je-Vous-Pleige (I pledge you), and next to him Friandize. The cups in which they are drinking are flat-shaped, and appear, by the colours in the original, to be of glass, with the brims, and other parts in some, gilt. The minstrels, in the gallery, are playing with trumpets. Among the attendants, we see the court fool, with his bauble, who had now become an ordinary, and almost a necessary, personage in the household of the rich; it was the result of an increasing taste for the coarse buffoonery which characterised an unrefined state of society. The court fool was licensed to utter with impunity whatever came to his thought, however mordant or however indecent. Beside him are two valets with dogs, which appear to have been usually admitted to the hall, and to have eaten the refuse on the spot. A window above gives us a view of the country, with buildings in the distance, and Supper and Banquet looking in upon the company. An inscription in the upper corner to the right tells us how these two personages came slyly to look at the assembly, and how through envy they conspired to take vengeance upon the feasters—

Soupper et Bancquet
Vindrent l’assemblée adviser,
Dont par envie prestement
Compindrent de viengence user.

No. 254. A Dinner Party in grand ceremony.

The morality next introduces the Diseases who are to be the executors of the vengeance of Supper and Banquet, and who, according to the stage directions, are to be dressed “very strangely, so that you would hardly know whether they are women or men.” These are Apoplexy, Paralysis, Pleurisy, Cholic, Quinsy, Dropsy, Jaundice, Gravel, and Gout. At the end of this scene, Supper and Banquet address themselves to these people, and ask them to undertake an assault on Bonne-Compagnie and the other guests of Dinner; and they consent at once, and Supper places them in an ambuscade in his dwelling. Meanwhile the feast ends, and Bonne-Compagnie says grace, and orders the player on the lute to perform his duty, whereupon “the instrument sounds, and the three men shall lead out the three women, and shall dance whatever dance they please, while Bonne-Compagnie remains seated.” Supper and Banquet then present themselves in turn to invite Bonne-Compagnie and her people, and they go first to Supper, who receives them with extraordinary hospitality. But Supper was a wicked traitor; and the stage directions inform us that, while the guests were enjoying themselves, his agents, the Diseases, were to be introduced watching them through a window. As soon as the substantial viands are eaten, Supper goes to order what was called the issue, or dessert; and in his absence Bonne-Compagnie orders the minstrels to play an air, and they obey. While the dessert is preparing, Supper goes to the Diseases, to ask if they are ready, and they arm and attack the guests, overthrowing tables and benches, and treating everybody with great cruelty. After some other scenes, Banquet comes to announce that his feast is ready, condoles with the sufferers on the treatment they had received from Supper, though he is meditating still greater treachery himself, and they go and feast with him. The Diseases, ready at his command, make a much more fatal attack upon the guests.

Banquet’s feast forms the second compartment of the tapestry of Nancy in its present state, and is represented in our cut [No. 255]. When compared with the morality, it presents some variations. In front, Banquet is standing before the table, opposite to Je-Boy-à-Vous and Je-Pleige-d’Autant, and appears to be replying to Bonne-Compagnie, who is seated between Passe-Temps and Acoustumance. Further to the left Banquet appears again, with his hand on his sword, addressing the Diseases, who are at the entrance of the hall, waiting for his signal for the attack. At the lower corner on the left we see Supper, talking with another important personage, probably intended to represent Dinner. Above, to the right, through a window, we see Banquet again, with one of his attendants fastening on his armour, while another holds his casque, which he has not yet placed on his head. The first of the inscriptions in this compartment of the tapestry, which is on the left, tells how, while the guests are feasting in all jollity, Banquet and his rout arm and come to slaughter the whole assembly— Chiere ilz tyrent joyeulsement,
Y estant Bancquet et la route
Qui s’armerent et là proprement
Occirent l’assemblée toute.
The second inscription consists of eight lines moralizing on the final ruin which often falls on those who make enjoyment the business of their lives:— Les trois folz ont grant volonté
De cherche[r] leur malle meschance;
Quant on a bien ris et chanté,
A la fin fault tourner la chance.
Ha! vous vellez avoir plaisance!
Bien l’auré vous ung tandis;
Mès gens quy prenent leur aisence,
En fin se treuvent plus mauldiz.
It is remarkable that these eight lines, taken from the tapestry, are introduced into the morality, and placed in the mouth of the fool at the end of the first scene.

No. 255. A Banquet in the Fifteenth Century.

It will be remarked at once that there is a much greater display of luxury in the banquet scene than in the dinner scene. Upon the table are two peacocks, each with a shield hung to its neck, no doubt to show the armorial bearings of the host; a boar’s head, dressed in the most fashionable manner; a subtelty, representing a ship filled with birds, surrounded by a sea full of fishes, and having a tall mast, with a sail made of silk and ermine, and surmounted by a figure of a naked female, intended probably to represent the goddess Venus. There are also on the table four candles, of coloured wax. A noble dresser stands against the wall, covered with vessels of gold and of glass, but the metal far predominates. The minstrels are standing apparently on the floor on a level with the guests, and consist of a man playing on the cittern, or lute, a harper, and one who plays on the pipe and drum, the latter instrument a substitute for the tabor. The valets with the dogs are again introduced, but we miss the court fool.

The remaining portions of the tapestry represent the attack of the Diseases, and the great havoc they made among the guests.

The banquet was known in England by that name, as well as by the name of rere-supper. In the curious English morality play, entitled “The Interlude of the Four Elements,” printed early in the sixteenth century, the same distinction is made between the three meals as in the French morality described above. Sensual-appetite, one of the characters in the piece, leads Humanity to the tavern to dine, and orders a dinner of three courses, with a choice variety of wines. As they are leaving after dinner, the taverner reminds them that they were to return to supper; and then Humanity proposes a cup of “new” wine, as though wine was then valued for being new. Food and liquor were formerly adulterated in more dishonest manner even than in modern times, and the taverner answers the demand jokingly— Ye shall have wyne as newe as can be,
For I may tell you in pryvyté
Hit was brued but yester nyght.
But he immediately adds— But than I have for your apetyte
A cup of wyne of olde claret;
There is no better, by this lyght.
After supper they go to dance, and meanwhile Sensual-appetite goes to prepare the banquet:—

I shall at the towne agayne
Prepare for you a banket,
Of metys that be most delycate,
And most pleasaunt drynkes and wynes therate,
That is possyble to get.
Which shall be in a chamber feyre
Preparyd poynt devyse (in perfection),
With damaske water made so well
That all the howse thereof shall smell
As it were Paradyse.

In “Acolastus,” a work by the grammarian Palsgrave, published in 1540, the banquet is still identified with the rere-supper, when he speaks of “the rere-supper, or banket, where men syt downe to drynke and eate agayne after their meate.” And again, still later, Higins, in his “Nomenclator,” published in 1585, explains the Latin word pocœnium by “a reare-supper, or a banket after supper.” The term rere-supper was in use throughout the fifteenth century. An English vocabulary of that century speaks of a meal between dinner and supper, under the name of “a myd-dyner under-mete,” the same which, no doubt, was called by a French word, a bever, as consisting especially in taking a drink, and which, removed to the time between breakfast and dinner, is now called a luncheon.

In the introduction to Lydgate’s “Story of Thebes,” which is introduced as a continuation of the “Canterbury Tales,” the poet pretends to have arrived at the inn in Canterbury when it was occupied by the pilgrims, who invite him to sup with them, and he joins their company. “Our host,” who is the leader of the pilgrims, offers him his place at their supper heartily: Praying you (he says) to suppe with us this night,
And ye shall have made, at your devis,
A great pudding, or a round hagis,
A French moile, a tansie, or a froise.
These appear to have been the usual favourite dishes at an ordinary supper of this date (the first half of the fifteenth century). The hagis appears to have been much the same dish as the Scottish haggis of the present day. The moile was a dish made of marrow and grated bread. The tansie was a kind of omelet, resembling apparently what the French now call an omelette aux fines herbes; while the froise had small strips of bacon in it—an omelette au lard. This latter was a very favourite dish among the monks. After supper, the guests, or at least some of them, are represented as taking “strong nottie ale” before going to bed. They rise early, “anon as it is day,” and start on their return towards London; and they take no meal before dinner, having it

Fully in purpose to come to dinere
Unto Ospring, and breake there our fast.

There is a longer preface to the supplementary tale of “Beryn,” written about the same date as the “Story of Thebes,” and printed in the edition of Chaucer’s works by Urry, in which the divisions of the day are tolerably well described. The pilgrims there arrived at their destination in Canterbury “at mydmorowe,” which is interpreted in the glossaries as meaning nine o’clock in the forenoon, and then took their lodgings, “ordeyned” their dinner, and, while it was preparing, went to make their offerings to the shrine of St. Thomas in the cathedral church. Meanwhile the Pardoner had separated from the company, and engaged in a low intrigue with the “tapster,” or barmaid, who offers him a drink, but he tells her he had not yet broken his fast—we are to conclude that this was the case with the rest of the company—and She start into the town, and set a py al hote.
Meat pies appear to have been very common articles of food in the middle ages, and to have been kept always ready at the cooks’ shops. The offering seems to have taken but a small space of time, and then— They set their signys upon their hedes, and som oppon their capp,
And sith to the dyner-ward they gan for to stapp (step);
Every man in his degré wissh (washed) and toke his sete,
As they wer wont to doon at soper and at mete;
And wer in silence for a tyme, tyl good ale gan arise.
It appears, therefore, that people did not hold conversation while eating, but that the talk and mirth began with the liquor, whether ale or wine. It was then agreed that they should remain that day in Canterbury, and all sup together at night— “Then al this after-mete I hold it for the best
To sport and pley us,” quod the hoost, “ech man as hym lest (likes),
And go by tyme to soper, and to bed also,
So mowe we erly rysen, our jorney for to do”.
Accordingly they all walk forth into the city, where the knight, who with his son had put on fresh gowns, took the latter to the town walls to explain to him their strength, and the character of the defences; and as many of the rest as had changes of apparel with them imitated their example, and they separated in parties, according to their different tastes. The monk, the parson, and the friar, went to visit some clerical acquaintance, and indulged in spiced wine. The ladies remained at home:— The wyfe of Bath was so wery, she had no wyl to walk;
She toke the priores by the honde, “Madam, wol ye stalk
Pryvely into the garden to se the herbis growe?
And after with our hostis wife in her parlour rowe (talk)?
I wol gyve yowe the wyne, and ye shul me also;
For tyl we go to soper we have naught ellis to do.”
The prioress assents to this proposal— —and forth gon they wend,
Passing forth sofftly into the herbery;
For many a herb grew for sewe (pottage) and surgery;
And all the aleys fair and parid, and raylid, and ymakid;
The sauge and the isope yfrethid and istakid;
And othir beddis by and by fresh ydight,
For comers to the hooste right a sportful sight.
When the guests reassembled, they agreed that the knight should be their “marshall” of the table, and he ordered them all to wash, and then appointed them to their seats, that they might be properly seated together, for this was part of his duty. They thus sat two and two, each couple, no doubt, at one dish— They wissh (washed), and sett right as he bad, eche man wyth his fere,
And begonne to talk of sportis and of chere
That they had the aftir-mete whiles they wer out;
For othir occupacioune, tyll they wer servid about,
They had not at that tyme, but eny man kitt (cut) a loff.
Thus it would appear that nothing eatable was as yet placed on the table but bread. Presently, the supper was served round to them, of which there was only one “service,” out of courtesy on the part of the rich members of the company towards those who were poor, as there was to be an equal division of the expenses of the supper. In return, the highest places of the table were yielded to the persons of best estate, and these, as an acknowledgment, gave a cup of wine round at their own expense, and then left the table to retire to their beds. But the less genteel of the company, the miller and the cook, with the sompnour, the yeoman, the reeve, and the manciple, remained “drinking by the moon,”—that is, they had no candle. There was, however, one candle in the bedroom, which seems to have served to light the whole company,—for it is evident that they all slept in beds in one room,—and this candle was only put out when they were all gone to bed, which was the moment the Pardoner awaited to steal away and pursue his intrigue. Next morning they were out of their beds so early that they left the town on their homeward journey at sunrise.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE AND USES.—BEDS.—HUTCHES AND COFFERS.—THE TOILETTE; MIRRORS.

The chambers were now, except in smaller houses, mostly above the ground-floor; and, as I have already observed, the privacy of the chamber was much greater than formerly. In the poem of “Lady Bessy,” quoted in a former chapter (the whole poem is given in Mr. Halliwell’s privately printed “Palatine Anthology”), when the earl of Derby was plotting with the lady Bessy for calling in the earl of Richmond, he proposed to repair secretly to her in her chamber, in order to prepare the letters:— “We must depart (separate), lady,” the earle said then;
“Wherefore keep this matter secretly,
And this same night, betwix nine and ten,
In your chamber I think to be.
Look that you make all things ready,
Your maids shall not our councell hear,
For I will bring no man with me
But Humphrey Brereton, my true esquire.”
He took his leave of that lady fair,
And to her chamber she went full light,
And for all things she did prepare,
Both pen and ink, and paper white.
The earl, on his part,—

—unto his study went,
Forecasting with all his might
To bring to pass all his intent;
He took no rest till it was night,
And when the stars shone fair and bright,
He him disguised in strange mannere;
He went unknown of any wight,
No more with him but his esquire.
And when he came her chamber near,
Full privily there can he stand;
To cause the lady to appeare
He made a sign with his right hand.
And when the lady there him wist,
She was as glad as she might be;
Charcoals in chimneys there were cast,
Candles on sticks standing full high.
She opened the wickett, and let him in,
And said, “Welcome, lord and knight soe free!”
A rich chair was set for him,
And another for that fair lady;
They ate the spice, and drank the wine,
He had all things at his intent.

No. 256. Interior of the Chamber.

No. 257. The Nursing Chamber.

The description given in these lines agrees perfectly with the representations of chambers in the illuminated manuscripts of the latter part of the fifteenth century, when the superior artistic skill of the illuminators enabled them to draw interiors with more of detail than in former periods. We have almost invariably the chimney, and one “rich chair,” if not more. In our cut [No. 256], we have a settle in the chamber, which is turned to the fire. This picture is taken from a manuscript of the early French translation of Josephus, in the National Library in Paris (No. 7015), and represents the death of the emperor Nero, as described by that writer. All the furniture of this chamber is of a superior description. The large chair by the bed-side is of very elegant design; and the settle, which is open at the back, is ornamented with carved panels. Our next cut ([No. 257]), taken from a manuscript of Lydgate’s metrical Life of St. Edmund (MS. Harl. No. 2278), represents the birth of that saint. This room is more elaborately furnished than the former. The fittings of the bed are richer; the chimney is more ornamental in its character, and is curious as having three little recesses for holding candlesticks, cups, and other articles; and we have a well-supplied cupboard, though of simple form. From the colours in the manuscript, all the vessels appear to be of gold, or of silver-gilt. The seat before the fire in this cut ([No. 257]) seems to be the hutch, or chest, which in Nos. 261 and 262 we shall see placed at the foot of the bed, from which it is here moved to serve the occasion.

The lady seated on this chest appears to be wrapping up the new-born infant in swaddling-clothes; a custom which, as I have remarked on a former occasion, and as we shall see again further on, prevailed universally till a comparatively recent period. Infants thus wrapped up are frequently seen in the illuminated manuscripts; and their appearance is certainly anything but picturesque. We have an exception in one of the sculptures on the columns of the Hôtel de Ville at Brussels (represented in our cut [No. 258]), which also furnishes us with a curious example of a cradle of the latter part of the fifteenth century.

No. 258. A Cradle.

It will, no doubt, have been remarked that in these cuts we observe no traces of carpets on the floor. In our cut [No. 256], the floor is evidently boarded; but more generally, as in our cuts Nos. 257, 260, and 261, it appears chequered, or laid out in small squares, which may be intended to represent tiles, or perhaps parquetry. There is more evidence of tapestried or painted walls; although this kind of ornamentation is only used partially, and chiefly in the dwellings of the richer classes. The walls in the chamber in cut [No. 257] appear to be painted. In the same cut we have an example of an ornamental mat.

The most important article of furniture in the chamber was the bed, which began now to be made much more ornamental than in previous times. We have seen in the former period the introduction of the canopy and its curtains, under which the head of the bed was placed. The celure, or roof, of the canopy, was now often enlarged, so as to extend over the whole bed; and it, as well as the tester, or back, was often adorned with the arms of the possessor, with religious emblems, with flowers, or with some other ornament. There were also sometimes costers, or ornamental cloths for the sides of the bed. The curtains, sometimes called by the French word ridels, were attached edgeways to the tester, and were suspended sometimes by rings, so as to draw backwards and forwards along a pole; but more frequently, to judge by the illuminations, they were fixed to the celure in the same manner as to the tester, and were drawn up with cords. At the two corners of the celure portions of curtain were left hanging down like bags. The curtains which draw up are represented in our cuts Nos. 259 and 260. Those in cuts Nos. 261 and 262, if not in Nos. 256 and 257, are evidently drawn along poles with rings. The latter method is thus alluded to in the old metrical romance of “Sir Degrevant:”—

That was a mervelle thynge,
To se the riddels hynge,
With many red golde rynge
That thame up bare.

The celure and tester were fixed to the wall and ceiling of the apartment, and were not in any way attached to the bed itself; for the large four-post bedsteads were introduced in the sixteenth century. In some illuminations the bed is seen placed within a square compartment separated from the room by curtains which seem to be suspended from the roof. This appears to have been the first step towards the more modern four-post bedsteads. In one of the plates to D’Agincourt’s “Histoire de l’Art” (Peinture, pl. 109), taken from a Greek fresco of the twelfth or thirteenth century in a church at Florence, we have the curtains arranged thus in a square tent in the room, where the cords are not suspended from the roof, but supported by four corner-posts. The bed is placed within, totally detached from the surrounding posts and curtains. The space thus left between the bed and the curtains was perhaps what was originally called in French the ruelle (literally, the “little street”) of the bed, a term which was afterwards given to the space between the curtains of the bed and the wall, which held rather an important place in old French chamber life, and especially in the stories of chamber intrigue.

No. 259. A Bed of the Fifteenth Century.

The bedstead itself was still a very simple structure of wood, as shown in our cut [No. 259], which represents the bed of a countess. It is taken from the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” which has already furnished subjects for our previous chapters on the manners of the fifteenth century. The lady’s footstool is no less rude than the bedstead. The bed here evidently consists of a hard mattress. It was still often made of straw, and the bed is spoken of in the glossaries as placed upon a stramentum, which is interpreted by the English word “litter;” but feather-beds were certainly in general use during the whole of the fifteenth century. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, Chaucer (Dreme, v. 250) thus described a very rich bed:— Of downe of pure dovis white
I wol yeve him a fethir bed,
Rayid with gold, and right well cled
In fine blacke sattin d’outremere,
And many a pilowe, and every bere (pillow cover)
Of clothe of Raines to slepe on softe;
Him thare (need) not to turnen ofte.
Agnes Hubbard, a lady of Bury, in Suffolk, who made her will in 1418, left among other things, “one feather-bed” (unum lectum de plumis). A rich townsman of the same place bequeathed, in 1463, to his niece, “certeyne stuffe of ostilment,” among which he enumerates “my grene hanggyd bedde steynyd with my armys therin, that hanggith in the chambyr ovir kechene, with the curtynez, the grene keveryng longgyng therto; another coverlyte, ij. blanketts, ij. peyre of good shetes, the trampsoun, the costerys of that chambyr and of the drawgth chambyr next, tho that be of the same soort, a grete pilve (pillow) and a smal pilve; the fethirbeed is hire owne that hire maistresse gaf hire at London.” After enumerating other articles of different kinds, the testator proceeds—“And I geve hire the selour and the steynyd clooth of the coronacion of Our Lady, with the clothes of myn that long to the bedde that she hath loyen (lain) in, and the beddyng in the draught chamber for hire servaunth to lyn in; and a banker of grene and red lying in hire chambyr with the longe chayer (a settle, probably); and a stondyng coffre and a long coffre in the drawth chambyr.” William Honyboorn, also of Bury, bequeathed to his wife in 1493, “my best ffether bedde with the traunsome, a whyte selour and a testour theron, with iij. white curteyns therto, a coverlight white and blewe lyeng on the same bedde, with the blankettes.” The same man leaves to his daughter, “a ffether bedde next the best, a materas lyeng under the same, iiij. peyr shetys, iij. pelowes, a peyr blankettes.” John Coote, who made his will at Bury in 1502, left to his wife, for term of her life, “alle my plate, brasse, pewter, hanggynges, celers, testers, fetherbeddes, traunsoms, coverlytes, blankettes, shetes, pelows, and all other stuff of hussold (household);” and afterwards bequeaths these articles separately to his son and daughter, after their mother’s death:—“I will that William Coote have my beste hanged bede, celer, testor, and curteyns longgyng to the same, the beste fetherbede, the beste coverlyght, the beste peyer of blankettes, the beste peyer shetes; and Alys Coote to have the next hanged bede, celer, and testour, wyth the ij^de fetherbede, blankettes, and the ij^de peyer shetes.” In the will of Anne Barett, of Bury, dated in 1504, we read, “Item, I bequeth to Avyse my servaunte x. marc, a ffether bed, a traunsom, a payre shetes, a payre blankettes, a coverlyght.” Lastly, the will of Agar Herte, a widow of the same town, made in 1522, contains the following items:—“Item, I bequethe to Richard Jaxson, my son, a ffetherbed, ij. trawnsoms, a matras, ij. pelowes, iiij. payer of schetes, a payer of blankettes, and a coveryng of arasse, and a secunde coverlyght, a selour and a testour steynyd with fflowers, and iij. curteyns;” ... “Item, I bequethe to Jone Jaxson, my dowghter, a fetherbed, a matras, a bolster, ij. pelowes, iiij. payer of schetes, a payer of blankettes, a coverlyght with fflowre de lyce, a selour and a testour steynyd with Seynt Kateryn at the hed and the crusifix on the selour, ... a secunde coverlyght, ij. pelow-beris (pillow-covers), the steynyd clothes abowte the chamber where I ly;” ... “Item, I bequethe to Fraunces Wrethe a ffetherbed, a bolster, a payer of blankettes, my best carpet, a new coverlyght with fflowers, ij. payer of schetes, ij. pelows with the berys.”

These extracts from only one set of wills are sufficient to show the great advance which our forefathers had made during the fourteenth century in the comfort and richness of their beds, and how cautious we ought to be in receiving general observations on the condition of previous ages by those who write at a subsequent period. I make this observation in allusion to the account so often quoted from Harrison, who, in the description of England written in Essex during the reign of Elizabeth, and inserted in Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” informs us that “our fathers (yea, and we our selves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats, covered onelie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain,[52] or hopharlots (I use their owne termes), and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster. If it were so that our fathers, or the good-man of the house, had, within seven years after his mariage, purchased a matteres, or flocke bed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to reste his heade upon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, so well were they contented. Pillowes, said they, were thought meete onelie for women in child-bed. As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them it was well, for seldom had they anie under their bodies to keepe them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides.” A description like this could only apply to the lower classes in society, who had as yet participated but little in the march of social improvement.

No. 260. A. Truckle-bed.

As the privacy of the chamber had become greater, it seems now to have been much less common in private mansions for several people to sleep in the same room, which appears more rarely to have had more than one bed. But a bed of a new construction had now come into use, called a truckle or trundle bed. This was a smaller bed which rolled under the larger bed, and was designed usually for a valet, or servant. The illuminations in the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” already quoted more than once, furnish us with the early example of a truckle-bed represented in our cut [No. 260]. The count d’Artois lies in the bed under the canopy, while the truckle-bed is occupied by his valet (in this case, his wife in disguise). The truckle-bed is more frequently mentioned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Every reader will remember the speech of mine host of the Garter, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (act iv. sc. 5), who says of Falstaff’s room, “There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing bed and truckle-bed.” It was the place allotted to the squire, when accompanying the knight on “adventures.” So in Hudibras (part ii. canto ii.)— When Hudibras, whom thoughts and aking
’Twixt sleeping kept all night and waking,
Began to rub his drowsy eyes,
And from his couch prepared to rise,
Resolving to dispatch the deed
He vow’d to do, with trusty speed;
But first, with knocking loud and bawling,
He roused the squire, in truckle lolling.
In the English universities, the master-of-arts had his pupil to sleep in his truckle-bed.

No. 261. A Bedroom Scene.

The chamber, as the most private part of the house, was stored with chests and coffers, in which the person who occupied it kept his money, his deeds and private papers, and his other valuables. Margaret Paston, writing from Norwich to her husband about the year 1459, gives a curious account of the preparations for his reception at home. “I have,” she says, “taken the measure in the drawte chamber, there as ye would your coffers and your cowntewery (supposed to mean a desk for writing) should be set for the while, and there is no space beside the bed, though the bed were removed to the door, for to set both your board (table) and your coffers there, and to have space to go and sit beside; wherefore I have purveyed that ye shall have the same drawte chamber (withdrawing room—the origin of our name of drawing-room for the salon) that ye had before, thereat ye shall lye to yourself; and when your gear is removed out of your little house, the door shall be locked, and your bags laid in one of the great coffers, so that they shall be safe, I trust.” The hucches (hutches) or chests, and coffers, in the bed-chamber, are frequently mentioned in old writings. The large hutch seems to have been usually placed at the foot of the bed. In one of our preceding cuts ([No. 257]) we have seen it moved from its place to make a temporary seat before the fire. The cut annexed ([No. 261]), taken from a manuscript Latin Bible in the National Library in Paris (No. 6829), shows us the hutch in its usual place, and opened so as to expose its contents to our view. It is here evidently filled with money, and the persons who have entered the chamber seem to be plundering it. In a very popular old story, the same in substance as that of Macbeth and his daughters, an old man, on the marriage of his daughter, weakly gives up all his property to the young married pair, trusting to their filial love for his sustenance, and they go on treating him worse and worse, until he is saved from actual destitution by a deception he practises upon them. In one version of the story, given in English verse in a manuscript of the fifteenth century, the father goes to a friend and borrows a large sum of money in gold, which he places in his coffer, and, having invited them to his dwelling, and persuaded them to remain all night, he contrives that early in the morning they shall, as by accident, espy him counting his gold. The unfilial children, who supposed that he had given them all he possessed, were astonished to find him still rich, and were induced, by their covetousness, to treat him better during the rest of his life. The poem describes the old man leaving his bed to count the gold in his chest:— But on the morow, at brode daylight,
The fadir ros, and, for they shulden here
What that he dide in a boistous manere,
Unto his chest, which thre lokkes hadde,
He went, and therat wrethed he ful sadde,
And whan it was opened and unshit,
The bagged gold bi the merchaunt hym lent
He hath untied, and streight forth with it
Unto his beddis feete gone is and went,
What doth thanne this sel man and prudent
But out the gold on a tapit hath shot,
That in the bagges left ther no grot.
—MS. Harl. 372, fol. 88, v^o.
Robbers, or plunderers in time of war, when breaking into a house, always made direct for the chamber. Among the letters of the Paston family, is a paper by a retainer of sir John Fastolf, who had a house in Southwark, giving an account of his sufferings during the attack upon London by Jack Cade and the commons of Kent in 1450, in which he tells how “the captain (Cade) sent certain of his meny to my chamber in your rents, and there broke up my chest, and took away one obligation of mine that was due unto me of 36l. by a priest of Paul’s and one other obligation of one Knight of 10l., and my purse with five rings of gold, and 17s. 6d. of gold and silver; and one harness (suit of armour) complete of the touch of Milan; and one gown of fine perse blue, furred with martens; and two gowns, one furred with bogey (budge), and one other lined with frieze.” One of John Paston’s correspondents, writing from London on the 28th of October, 1455, gives the following still more pertinent account of the robbing of a man’s house:—“Also there is great variance between the earl of Devonshire and the lord Bonvile, as hath been many day, and much debate is like to grow thereby; for on Thursday at night last past, the earl of Devonshire’s son and heir came, with sixty men of arms, to Radford’s place in Devonshire, which (Radford) was of counsel with my lord Bonvile; and they set a house on fire at Radford’s gate, and cried and made a noise as though they had been sorry for the fire; and by thet cause Radford’s men set open the gates and yede (went) out to see the fire; and forthwith the earl’s son aforesaid entered into the place, and entreated Radford to come down of his chamber to speak with them, promising him that he should no bodily harm have; upon which promise he came down, and spoke with the said earl’s son. In the mean time his meny (retinue) rob his chamber, and rifled his hutches, and trussed such as they could get together, and carried it away on his own horses.” As soon as this was done, Radford, who was an eminent lawyer residing at Poghill, near Kyrton, and now aged, was led forth and brutally murdered. In the stories and novels of the middle ages, the favoured lover who has been admitted secretly into the chamber of his mistress is often concealed in the hutch or chest.

No. 262. A Lady in Bed.

Our cut [No. 262], taken from the same manuscript of the Bible which furnished our last illustration, represents the hutch also in its place at the foot of the bed. This sketch is interesting, both as showing more distinctly than the others the rings of the bed-curtains, and the rods attached to the celure, and as a particularly good illustration of the habit which still continued in all classes and ranks of society, of sleeping in bed entirely naked. The same practice is shown in several of our other cuts (see Nos. 256, 260, and 261), and, indeed, in all the illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth century which contain bedroom scenes. Wherever this is not the case, there is some evident reason for the contrary, as in our cut No. 257. During this period we have not so many pictorial illustrations of the toilet as might be expected. The ladies’ combs were generally coarse and large in the teeth, but often very elaborately and beautifully ornamented. The mirror was, as at former periods, merely a circular piece of metal or glass, set in a case, which was carved with figures or ornaments externally. The vocabularies mention the mirror as one of the usual objects with which a chamber should be furnished.

No. 263. A Dealer in Mercery.

Our cut [No. 263] is taken from a manuscript (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, A. vii. fol. 93, r^o) of the English translation of the singular work of the French writer, Guillaume de Deguilleville, entitled “Le Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine,” a poem which bears a striking resemblance in its general character to the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of Bunyan. The English version, which is in verse, and entitled simply the “Pilgrim,” has been ascribed to Lydgate. In the course of his adventures, the pilgrim comes to the lady Agyographe, who is represented as dealing in “mercerye,” but the enumeration of articles embraced under that term is rather singular:— Quod sche, “Geve (if) I schal the telle,
Mercerye I have to selle;
In boystes (boxes) soote (sweet) oynementis,
Therewith to don allegementis (to give relief)
To ffolkes whiche be not glade,
But discorded and mallade,
And hurte with perturbacyouns
Off many trybulacyouns.
I have knyves, phylletys, callys,
At ffeestes to hang upon wallys;
Kombes mo than nyne or ten,
Bothe ffor horse and eke ffor men;
Merours also, large and brode,
And ffor the syght wonder gode;
Off hem I have fful greet plenté,
For ffolke that haven volunté
Byholde hemsilffe therynne.”
Our cut represents the interior of the house of the lady mercer, with the various articles enumerated in the text; the boxes of ointment, the horse-combs, the men’s combs, and the mirrors. She first offers the pilgrim a mirror, made so as to flatter people, by representing them handsomer than they really were, which the pilgrim refuses:— “Madame,” quod I, “yow not displeese,
This myroure schal do me noon eese;
Wherso that I leese or wynne,
I wole nevere looke thereinne.”
But ryght anoon myne happe it was
To loken in another glasse,
In the whiche withouten wene (without doubt)
I sawe mysylff ffoule and uncleene,
And to byholde ryght hydous,
Abhomynabel, and vecyous.
That merour and that glas
Schewyd (showed) to me what I was.
In the celebrated “Romance of the Rose,” one of the heroines, Belacueil, is introduced, adorning her head with a fillet, and with this head-dress contemplating herself in a mirror:— Belacueil souvent se remire,
Dedans son miroer se mire,
Savoir s’il est si bien seans.
There is a representation of this scene in the beautiful illuminated manuscript of the “Romance of the Rose” in the British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 4425), in which, singularly enough, the mirror itself, which is evidently of glass, is represented as being convex, though perhaps we must attribute this appearance to the unskilfulness of the designer, who in his attempt to show that the mirror was round, failed in perspective. In our first cut, from Guillaume de Deguilleville, it will be observed that the artist, in order to show that the articles intended to be represented are mirrors, and not plates, or any other round implements, has drawn the reflections of faces, although nobody is looking into them. Another peculiarity in the illumination of the “Romance of the Rose,” a portion of which is represented in our cut [No. 264], is that the mirror is fixed against the wall, instead of being held in the hand when used, as appears to have been more generally the case. Standing-mirrors seem not to have been yet in use; but before the end of the fifteenth century, glass mirrors, which appear to have been invented in Belgium or Germany, came into use.

No. 264. Lady and Mirror.

CHAPTER XX.
STATE OF SOCIETY.—THE FEMALE CHARACTER.—GREEDINESS IN EATING.—CHARACTER OF THE MEDIÆVAL SERVANTS.—DAILY OCCUPATIONS IN THE HOUSEHOLD: SPINNING AND WEAVING; PAINTING.—THE GARDEN AND ITS USES.—GAMES OUT OF DOORS; HAWKING, ETC.—TRAVELLING, AND MORE FREQUENT USE OF CARRIAGES.—TAVERNS; FREQUENTED BY WOMEN.—EDUCATION AND LITERARY OCCUPATIONS; SPECTACLES.

During the fifteenth century, society in England was going through a transition which was less visible on the surface than it was great and effectual at the heart. France and England were both torn by revolutionary struggles, but with very different results; for while in France the political power of the middle classes was destroyed, and the country was delivered to the despotism of the crown and of the great lords, in our country it was the feudal nobility which was ruined, while the municipal bodies had obtained an increased importance in the state, and the landed gentry gained more independence and power from the decline of that of the great feudal barons. Yet in both countries feudalism itself, in its real character, was rapidly passing away—in France, before the power of the crown; in England, before the remodelling and reformation of society. While the substance of feudalism was thus perishing, its outward forms appeared to be more sought than ever, and the pride and ostentation of rank, and its arrogance too, prevailed during the fifteenth century to a greater degree than at any previous period. The court of Burgundy, itself only in origin a feudal principality, had set itself up as the model of feudalism, and there the old romances of chivalry were remodelled and published anew, and were read eagerly as the mirror of feudal doctrines. The court of Burgundy was remarkable for its wonderful pomp and magnificence, and for its ostentatious display of wealth; it was considered the model of lordly courtesy and high breeding, and was the centre of literature and art; and circumstances had brought the court of England into intimate connection with it, so that the influence of Burgundian fashions was greater during this period in England than that of the fashions of the court of France. There can be no doubt, too, that the social character in England and in France were now beginning to diverge widely from each other. The condition of the lower class in France was becoming more and more miserable, and the upper classes were becoming more licentious and immoral; whereas, in England, though serfdom or villanage still existed in name, and in law, the peasantry had been largely enfranchised, and it was gradually disappearing as a fact; and their landlords, the country gentry, lived among them in more kindly and more intimate intercourse, instead of treating them with tyrannical cruelty, and dragging them off to be slaughtered in their private wars. Increased commerce had spread wealth among the middle classes, and had brought with it, no doubt, a considerable increase of social comfort. Social manners were still very coarse, but it is quite evident that the efforts of the religious reformers, the Lollards, were improving the moral tone of society in the middle and lower classes.

People had, moreover, begun now to discuss great social questions. The example of this had been given in England in the celebrated poem of “Piers Ploughman,” in the middle of the fourteenth century, and such questions were mooted very extensively by the Lollards, who held as a principle the natural equality of man. This was a doctrine which was accepted very slowly, and was certainly discountenanced by the Roman Catholic preachers, who encouraged the belief that the division of society into distinct classes was a permanent judgment of God, and even invented legends to account for its origin. Long after feudalism had ceased, it was difficult to disabuse people of the opinion that the blood which flowed in the veins of a gentleman was of a different kind from that of a peasant, or even from that of a burgher. One of the legendary explanations of these divisions of blood is given by a poetical writer of the reign of Henry VII., named Alexander Barclay, who has left us seven “eclogues,” as he calls them, on the social questions which agitated men’s minds in his day. One day, according to this story, while Adam was absent occupied with his agricultural labours, Eve sat at home on their threshold, with all her children about her, when suddenly she became aware of the approach of the Creator, and, ashamed of the great number of them, and fearful that her productiveness might be misinterpreted, she hurriedly concealed those which were the least well-favoured. “Some of them she placed under hay, some under straw and chaff, some in the chimney, and some in a tub of draff; but such as were fair and well made she wisely and cunningly kept with her.” God told her that he had come to see her children, that he might promote them in their different degrees; upon which she presented them in their order of birth. God then ordained the eldest to be an emperor, the second to be a king, and the third a duke to guide an army; of the rest he made earls, lords, barons, squires, knights, and “hardy champions.” Some he appointed to be “judges, mayors, and governors, merchants, sheriffs, and protectors, aldermen, and burgesses.” While all this was going on, Eve began to think of her other children, and, unwilling that they should lose their share of honours, she now produced them from their hiding-places. They appeared with their hair rough, and powdered with chaff, some full of straws, and some covered with cobwebs and dust, “that anybody might be frightened at the sight of them.” They were black with dirt, ill-favoured in countenance, and mishapen in stature, and God did not conceal his disgust. “None,” he said, “can make a vessel of silver out of an earthen pitcher, or goodly silk out of a goat’s fleece, or a bright sword of a cow’s tail; neither will I, though I can, make a noble gentleman out of a vile villain. You shall all be ploughmen and tillers of the ground, to keep oxen and hogs, to dig and delve, and hedge and dike, and in this wise shall ye live in endless servitude. Even the townsmen shall laugh you to scorn; yet some of you shall be allowed to dwell in cities, and shall be admitted to such occupations as those of makers of puddings, butchers, cobblers, tinkers, costard-mongers, hostlers, or daubers.” Such, the teller of the story informs us, was the beginning of servile labour.

A song of the fifteenth century, printed in the collection of songs and carols edited for the Percy Society, the burthen of which is the necessity of money in all conditions, describes the different ranks and their various aspirations in the following order: the yeoman who desires to become a gentleman, the gentleman who seeks to be a squire, the squire who would be a knight, the lettered man who seeks distinction in the schools, the merchant who aspired to rise to wealth, and the lawyer who sought promotion at the bar. In the interesting “Recueil de Poésies Françoises des xv^e et xvi^e siècles,” by M. de Montaiglon (vol. iii. pp. 138, 147), there are two poems, probably of the latter part of the fifteenth century, entitled Les Souhaitz des Hommes (the wishes of the men) and Les Souhaitz des Femmes (the wishes of the women), in which the various classes are made to declare that which they desire most. Thus dukes, counts, and knights desire to be skilful in warlike accomplishments; the president in parliament desires the gold chain and the seat of honour, with wisdom in giving judgment; the advocate wishes for eloquence in court, and for a fair bourgeoise or damoiselle at home to make his house joyful; the burgher wishes for a good fire in winter, and a good supply of fat capons; and the clergy are made to wish for good cheer and handsome women. The wishes of the women are on the whole, perhaps, more characteristic than those of the men. Thus, the queen wishes to be able to love God and the king, and to live in peace; the duchess, to have all the enjoyments and pleasures of wealth; the countess, to have a husband who was loyal and brave; the knight’s lady, to hunt the stag in the green woods; the damoiselle, or lady of gentle blood, also loved hunting, and wished for a husband valiant in war; and the chamber-maiden took pleasure in walking in the fair fields by the river-side; while the bourgeoise loved above all things a soft bed at night, with a good pillow, and clean white sheets. That part of society which now comes chiefly under our notice had fallen into two classes, that which boasted gentle blood, and the ungentle, or burgher class, and this was particularly shown among the ladies, for the bourgeoise sought continually to imitate the gentlewoman, or damoiselle, who, on her part, looked on these encroachments of the other with great jealousy. M. de Montaiglon has printed in the collection just quoted (vol. v. p. 5) a short poem entitled, “The Debate between the Damoiselle and the Bourgeoise,” in which the exclusive rights of gentle blood are strongly claimed and disputed. We have seen the same ambition of the wives of burghers and yeomen to ape the gentlewoman as far back as the days of Chaucer, and it now often becomes a subject of popular satire. Yet we must not forget that this desire to imitate higher society assisted much in refining the manners of the middle classes. M. de Montaiglon (vol. ii. p. 18) has printed a short piece in verse of the latter part of the fifteenth century, entitled the “Doctrinal des Filles,” containing the sentiments which teachers sought to implant in the minds of young ladies, and it will suit England at that time equally with France. The young ladies are here recommended to be bashful; not to be forward in falling in love; to pay proper attention to their dress, and to courteousness in behaviour; and not to be too eager in dancing. From all that we gather from the writers of the time, the love of dancing appears at this period to have been carried to a very great degree of extravagance, and to have often led to great dissoluteness in social manners, and the more zealous moralists preached against the dance with much earnestness. The author of our “Doctrinal” admonishes the young unmarried girl to dance with moderation when she is at the “carol” (the name of the ordinary dance), lest people who see her dancing too eagerly should take her for a dissolute woman— Fille, quant serez en karolle,
Dansez gentiment par mesure,
Car, quant fille se desmesure,
Tel la voit qui la tient pour folle.
The young lady is next cautioned against talking scandal, against believing in dreams, against drinking too much wine, and against being too talkative at table. She was to avoid idleness, to respect the aged, not to allow herself to be kissed in secret (kissing in public was the ordinary form of salutation), and not to be quarrelsome. She was especially to avoid being alone with a priest, except at confession, for it was dangerous to let priests haunt the house where there were young females— Fille, hormis confession,
Seullette ne parlez à prebstre;
Laissez-les en leur eglise estre,
Sans ce qu’ilz hantent vos maisons.
These lines, written and published in a bigoted Roman Catholic country, by a man who was evidently a staunch Romanist, and addressed to young women as their rule of behaviour, present perhaps one of the strongest evidences we could have of the evil influence exercised by the Romish clergy on social morals, a fact, however, of which there are innumerable other proofs.

Whatever may have been the effect of such teaching on the better educated classes, the general character of the women of the middle and lower classes appears to have been of a description little likely to be conducive to domestic happiness. All the popular materials for social history represent their morals as being very low, and their tempers as overbearing and quarrelsome, the consequence of which was a separation of domestic life among the two sexes after marriage, the husbands, when not engaged at their work or business, seeking their amusement away from the house, and the wives assembling with their “gossips,” often at the public taverns, to drink and amuse themselves. In the old mysteries and morality plays, in which there was a good deal of quiet satire on the manners of the age in which they were composed and acted, Noah’s wife appears often as the type of the married woman in the burgher class, and her temper seems to have become almost proverbial. In the “Towneley Mysteries,” when Noah acquaints his wife with the approach of the threatened deluge, and of his orders to build the ark, she abuses him so grossly as a common carrier of ill news, that he is provoked to strike her; she returns the blow, and they have a regular battle, in which the husband has the advantage, but he is glad to escape from her tongue, and proceed to his work. In the “Chester Mysteries,” Noah’s wife will not go into the ark; and when all is ready, the flood beginning, and the necessity of taking her in apparent, she refuses to enter, unless she is allowed to take her gossips with her:— Yea, sir, sette up youer saile,
And rowe fourth with evill haile,
For withouten fayle
I will not oute of this towne,
But I have my gossippes everyechone (every one)
One foote further I will not gone (go).
They shall not drowne, by Sante John,
And I maye save ther life!
They loven me full wel, by Christe!
But thout lett them into they cheiste,
Elles (otherwise) rowe nowe wher the leiste (where you like),
And gette thee a newe wiffe.
It is to be supposed that Noah, when he wanted her, had found her with her gossips in the tavern. At last, Noah’s three sons are obliged to drag their mother into the “boat,” when a scene occurs which appears thus briefly indicated in the text,— Noye.
Welckome, wiffe, into this botte!
Noye’s Wiffe.
Have thou that for thy note! [She beats him.]
Noye.
Ha, ha! marye, this is hotte!
It is good for to be still.
The conversation of these “gossips,” when they met, was loose and coarse in the extreme, and, as described in contemporary writings, the practice even of profane swearing prevailed generally among both sexes to a degree which, to our ears, would sound perfectly frightful—it was one of the vices against which the moralists preached most bitterly. Life, indeed, in spite of its occasional refinement in the higher ranks of society, was essentially coarse at this period, and we can hardly conceive much delicacy of people who dieted as, for instance, the family of the earl of Northumberland are reported to have done in the household book, compiled in 1512, which was published by bishop Percy. I only give the breakfast allowances, which, on flesh-days, were “for my lord and my lady,” a loaf of bread “in trenchers,” two manchets (loaves of fine meal), one quart of beer (or, as we should now call it, ale), a quart of wine, half a chine of mutton, or a chine of beef boiled; for “my lord Percy and Mr. Thomas Percy” (the two elder children), half a loaf of household bread, a manchet, one pottle of beer (two quarts—they were not yet allowed wine), a chicken, or else three mutton bones boiled; “breakfasts for the nurcery, for my lady Margaret and Mr. Ingram Percy” (who in fact were mere children), a manchet, one quart of beer, and three mutton bones boiled; for my lady’s gentlewomen, a loaf of household bread, a pottle of beer, and three mutton bones boiled, or else a piece of beef boiled. It will be seen here that the family dined two to a plate, or mess, as was the usual custom in the middle ages. On fish-days, the breakfast allowances were as follows: for my lord and my lady, a loaf of bread in trenchers, two manchets, a quart of beer, a quart of wine, two pieces of salt fish, six baked herrings, or a dish of sprats; for the two elder sons, half a loaf of household bread, a manchet, a pottle of beer, a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish, a dish of sprats, or three white (fresh) herrings; for the two children in the nursery, a manchet, a quart of beer, a dish of butter, a piece of salt fish, a dish of sprats, or three white herrings; and for my lady’s gentlewomen, a loaf of bread, a pottle of beer, a piece of salt fish, or three white herrings. We shall be inclined, in comparing it with our modern style of living, to consider this as a very substantial meal to begin the day with.

According to the old moral and satirical writers, excessive greediness in eating had become one of the prevailing vices of this age. Barclay, in his “Eclogues,” gives a strange picture of the bad regulations of the tables at the courts of great people, in the time of Henry VII. He describes the tables as served in great confusion, and even as covered with dirty table-cloths. The food he represents as being bad in itself, and often ill-cooked. Everybody, he says, was obliged to eat in a hurry, unless he would lose his chance of eating at all, and they served the worst dishes first, so that when you had satiated yourself with food which was hardly palatable, the dainties made their appearance. This led people to eat more than they wanted. When an attractive dish did make its appearance, it led literally to a scramble among the guests:— But if it fortune, as seldome doth befall,
That at beginning come dishes best of all,
Or (before) thou hast tasted a morsell or twayne,
Thy dish out of sight is taken soon agayne.
Slowe be the servers in serving in alway,
But swifte be they after taking thy meate away.
A speciall custome is used them among,
No good dish to suffer on borde to be longe.
If the dish be pleasaunt, eyther fleshe or fishe,
Ten handes at once swarme in the dishe;
And if it be fleshe, ten knives shalt thou see
Mangling the flesh and in the platter flee;
To put there thy handes is perill without fayle,
Without a gauntlet or els a glove of mayle.
It would thus seem that the servers left the guests, except those at the high table, to help themselves. It appears that in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, the English had gained the character of keeping the most profuse tables, and being the greatest eaters, in Europe. A scrap preserved in a manuscript of the reign of Henry VIII., and printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ” (vol. i. p. 326), offers rather a curious excuse for this character. There was a merchant of England, we are told, who adventured into far countries, and when he had been there a month or more, a great lord invited this English merchant to dinner. And when they were at dinner, the lord wondered that he eat not more of his meat, for, said he, “Englishmen are called the greatest feeders in the world, and it is reported that one man will eat as much as six of another nation, and more victuals are consumed there than in any other region.” “It is true,” the merchant replied, “it is so, and for three reasonable causes so much victual is served on the table; one of which is, for love, another, for physic, and the third, for dread. Sir, as concerns the first, we are accustomed to have many divers meats for our friends and kinsfolk, because some love one manner of meat, and some another, and we wish every man to be satisfied. Secondly, in regard of physic, because for divers maladies which people have, some men will eat one meat, and some another, it is desirable that everybody should be suited. The third cause is for dread; for we have so great abundance and plenty in our realm, of beasts and fowls, that if we should not kill and destroy them, they would destroy and devour us.” It may be remarked that, during this period, the English merchants and burghers in general seem to have kept very good tables, and that the lower orders, and even the peasantry, appear to have been by no means ill fed.

The confusion in serving at table described by Alexander Barclay was no doubt caused in a great measure by the numerous troops of riotous and unruly serving men and followers, who were kept by the noblemen and greater land-holders, and who formed everywhere one of the curses of society. Within the household, they had become so unmanageable that their masters made vain attempts to regulate them; while abroad they were continually engaged in quarrels, often sanguinary ones, with countrymen or townsmen, or with the retainers of other noblemen or gentlemen, in which their masters considered that it concerned their credit to support and protect them, so that the quarrels of the servants became sometimes feuds between their lords. The old writers, of all descriptions, bear witness to the bad conduct of serving men and servants in general, and to their riotousness, and especially of the garçons, or, as they were called in English, “lads.” Cain’s garcio, in the “Towneley Mysteries,” was intended as a picture of this class, in all their coarseness and vulgarity; and the character of Jak Garcio, in the play of “The Shepherds,” in the same collection, is another type of them.

We have seen that the breakfast in the household of the Percys was a very substantial meal, but it seems not to have been generally considered a regular meal, either as to what was eaten at it, or as to the hour at which it was taken. Perhaps this was left to the convenience, or caprice, of individuals.[53] We have a curious description of the division of the occupations of the day in a princely household, in an account which has been left us of the household regulations of the duchess of York, mother of king Edward IV., which, however, were strongly influenced by the pious character of that princess, who spent much time in religious duties and observances. Her usual hour of rising was seven o’clock, when she heard matins; she then “made herself ready,” or dressed herself, for the occupations of the day, and when this was done, she had a low mass in her chamber. After this mass, she took something “to recreate nature,” which was, in fact, her breakfast, though it is afterwards stated that it was not a regular meal. She then went to chapel, and remained at religious service until dinner, which, as we are further told, took place, “upon eating days,” at eleven o’clock, with a first dinner in the time of high mass for the various officers whose duty it was to attend at table; but, on fasting days, the dinner hour was twelve o’clock, with a later dinner for carvers and waiters. After dinner, the princess devoted an hour to give audience to all who had any business with her; she then slept for a quarter of an hour, and then spent her time in prayer until the first peal of even-song (vespers), when “she drank wine or ale at her pleasure.” She went to chapel, and returned thence to supper, which, on eating days, was served at five o’clock, the carvers and servers at table having supped at four. The ordinary diet in the house of this princess appears to have been extremely simple. On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, the household was served at dinner with beef and mutton, and one roast; at supper with “leyched” beef and roast mutton; on Monday and Wednesday, they had boiled beef and mutton at dinner, and at supper, the same as on the three other days; on Friday, salt fish and two dishes of fresh fish; and on Saturday, salt fish, one fresh fish, and butter, for dinner, and salt fish and eggs for supper. After supper, the princess “disposed herself to be familiar with her gentlewomen,” with “honest mirth;” and one hour before going to bed she took a cup of wine, went to her privy closet to pray, and was in bed by eight o’clock.

The duchess of York is of course to be looked upon as a model of piety and sobriety, and her hours are not perhaps to be taken as exactly those of other people, and certainly not her occupations. In the French “Débat de la Damoiselle et de la Bourgeoise,” the latter accuses the gentlewoman of late rising. “Before you are awake,” she says, “I am dressed and have attended to my duties; do not therefore be surprised if we are more diligent than you, since you sleep till dinner-time.” “No,” replies the damoiselle, “we must spend our evening in dancing, and cannot do as you, who go to bed at the same time as your hens.”

No. 265. Lady at her Distaff.

It has been stated already that, even in the highest ranks of society, the ladies were usually employed at home on useful, and often on profitable work. This work embraced the various processes in the manufacture of linen and cloth, as well as the making it up into articles of dress, and embroidery, netting, and other similar occupations. The spinning-wheel was a necessary implement in every household, from the palace to the cottage. In 1437, John Notyngham, a rich grocer of Bury St. Edmunds, bequeathed to one of his legatees, “j spynnyng whel et j par carpsarum,” meaning probably “a pair of cards,” an implement which is stated in the “Promptorium Parvulorum” to be especially a “wommanys instrument.” A few years previously, in 1418, Agnes Stubbard, a resident in the same town, bequeathed to two of her maids, each, one pair of wool-combs, one “kembyng-stok” (a combing-stock, or machine for holding the wool to be combed), one wheel, and one pair of cards; and to another woman a pair of wool-combs, a wheel, and a pair of cards. John Baret, of Bury, in 1463, evidently a rich man with a very large house and household, speaks in his will of a part of the house, or probably a room, which was distinguished as the “spinning house.” Our cut [No. 265], from an illuminated Bible of the fifteenth century in the Imperial Library at Paris (No. 6829), represents a woman of apparently an ordinary class of society at work with her distaff under her arm. The next cut ([No. 266]) is taken from a fine illuminated manuscript of the well-known French “Boccace des Nobles Femmes,” and illustrates the story of “Cyrille,” the wife of king Tarquin. We have here a queen and her maidens employed in the same kind of domestic labours. The lady on the left is occupied with her combs, or cards, and her combing-stock; the other sits at her distaff, also supported by a stock, instead of holding it under her arm; and the queen, with her hand on the shuttle, is performing the final operation of weaving.

No. 266. A Queen and her Damsels at Work.

Some of the more elegant female accomplishments, which were unknown in the earlier ages, were now coming into vogue. Dancing was, as already stated, a more favourite amusement than ever, and it received a new éclat from the frequent introduction of new dances, of which some of the old popular writers give us long lists. Some of these, too, were of a far more active and exciting description than formerly. One of the personages in the early interlude of “The Four Elements,” talks of persons—

That shall both daunce and spryng,
And torne clene above the grounde,
With fryscas and with gambawdes round,
That all the hall shall ryng.

No. 267. A Lady Artist.

Music, also, was more extensively cultivated as a domestic accomplishment; and it was a more common thing to meet with ladies who indulged in literary pursuits. Sometimes, too, the ladies of the fifteenth century practised drawing and painting,—arts which, instead of being, as formerly, restricted almost to the clergy, had now passed into the hands of the laity, and were undergoing rapid improvement. The illuminated manuscript of “Boccace des Nobles Femmes,” which furnished the subject of our last cut, contains several pictures of ladies occupied in painting, one of which (illustrating the chapter on “Marcie Vierge”) is represented in our cut [No. 267]. The lady has her palette, her colour-box, and her stone for grinding the colours, much as an artist of the present day would have, though she is seated before a somewhat singularly formed framework. She is evidently painting her own portrait, for which purpose she uses the mirror which hangs over the colour-box. It is rather curious that the tools which lie by the side of the grinding-stone are those of a sculptor, and not those of a painter, so that it was no doubt intended we should suppose that she combined the two branches of the art. In one of the illuminations of the manuscript of the “Romance of the Rose,” which has been quoted before, preserved in the British Museum, we have a picture of a male painter, copied in our cut [No. 268], and intended to represent Apelles, who is working with a palette and easel, exactly as artists do at the present day: both he and our lady artist in the cut are evidently painting on board. We begin now also to trace the existence of a great number of domestic sports and pastimes, some of which still remain in usage, but which we have not here room to enumerate.

No. 268. A Painter at his Easel.

Out of doors, the garden continued to be the favourite resort of the ladies. It would be easy to pick out numerous descriptions of gardens from the writers of the fifteenth century. Lydgate thus describes the garden of the rich “churl:”— Whilom ther was in a smal village,
As myn autor makethe rehersayle,
A chorle, whiche hadde lust and a grete corage
Within hymself, be diligent travayle,
To array his gardeyn with notable apparayle,
Of lengthe and brede yelicke (equally) square and longe,
Hegged and dyked to make it sure and stronge.
Alle the aleis were made playne with sond (sand),
The benches (banks) turned with newe turvis grene,
Sote herbers (sweet beds of plants), with condite (fountain) at the honde,
That wellid up agayne the sonne schene,
Lyke silver stremes as any cristalle clene,
The burbly wawes (bubbling waves) in up boyling,
Rounde as byralle ther beamys out shynynge.
Amyddis the gardeyn stode a fressh lawrer (laurel),
Theron a bird syngyng bothe day and nyghte.
And at a somewhat later period, Stephen Hawes, in his singular poem entitled “The Pastime of Pleasure,” describes a larger and more magnificent garden. Amour arrives at the gate of the garden of La Bel Pucel, and requests the portress to conduct him to her mistress—

“Truly,” quod she, “in the garden grene
Of many a swete and sundry flowre
She maketh a garlonde that is veray shene,
Wythe trueloves wrought in many a coloure,
Replete with swetenes and dulcet odoure;
And all alone, wythout company,
Amyddes an herber she sitteth plesauntly.”

From the description of this “gloryous” garden that follows, we might imagine that the practice of cutting or training trees and flowers into fantastic shapes, as was done with box-trees in the last century, had prevailed among the gardeners of the fifteenth. The garden of La Bel Pucel is described as being—

Wyth Flora paynted and wrought curyously,
In divers knottes of marvaylous gretenes;
Rampande lyons stode up wondersly,
Made all of herbes with dulcet swetenes,
Wyth many dragons of marvaylos likenes,
Of dyvers floures made ful craftely,
By Flora couloured wyth colours sundry.

Amiddes the garden so moche delectable
There was an herber fayre and quadrante,
To paradyse right well comparable,
Set all about with floures fragraunt;
And in the myddle there was resplendyshaunte
A dulcet spring and marvaylous fountaine,
Of golde and asure made all certaine.
* * * * *
Besyde whiche fountayne, the moost fayre lady
La Bel Pucel was gayly syttyng;
Of many floures fayre and ryally
A goodly chaplet she was in makynge.

No. 269. A Lady and her Maidens weaving Garlands.

I have had occasion before to observe that garlands and chaplets of flowers were in great request in the middle ages, and the making of them was a favourite occupation. Our cut [No. 269], taken from the illuminated calendar prefixed to the splendid manuscript “Heures” of Anne of Brittany in the Imperial Library in Paris, where it illustrates the month of May, represents the interior of a garden, with a lady thus employed with her maidens. This garden appears to be a square piece of ground, surrounded by a high wall, with a central compartment or lawn enclosed by a fence of trellis-work and a hedge of rose trees. Pictures of gardens will also be found in the MS. of the “Romance of the Rose” already referred to, and in other illuminated books, but the illuminators were unable to represent the elaborate descriptions of the poets. Besides flowers, every garden contained herbs for medicinal and other purposes, such as love-philtars, which were in great repute in the middle ages. In the romance of “Gerard de Nevers” (or La Violette), an old woman goes into the garden attached to the castle where she lives, to gather herbs for making a deadly poison. This incident is represented in our cut [No. 270], taken from a magnificent illuminated manuscript of the prose version of this romance in the Imperial Library in Paris. The garden is here again surrounded by a wall, with a postern gate leading to the country, and we have the same trellis fencings as before. It appears to have been the usual custom thus to enclose and protect the beds in a garden with a trellis fence.

No. 270. A Lady gathering Herbs.

The various games and exercises practised by people out of doors seem to have differed little at this time from those belonging to former periods, except that from time to time we meet with allusions to kinds of amusement which have not before been mentioned, although they were probably well known. Among the drawings of the borders of illuminated manuscripts, from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, we meet with groups of children and of adults, which represent, doubtless, games of which both the names and the explanations are lost; and sometimes we are surprised to find thus represented games which otherwise we should have supposed to be of modern invention. One very curious instance may be stated. In the now rather celebrated manuscript of the French romance of “Alexander,” in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which was written and illuminated in the fourteenth century, we have representations of a puppet show, which appears to be identical with our modern Punch and Judy. We copy one of these curious early drawings in our cut [No. 271].

No. 271. A Puppet Show.

Among the pastimes most popular at this time with the lower and middle classes were archery, the practice of which was enforced by authority, and shooting with the crossbow, as well as most of the ordinary rough games known at a later period, such as football and the like. The English archers were celebrated throughout Europe. The poet Barclay, who wrote at the close of the century, makes the shepherd in one of his eclogues not only boast of his skill in archery, but he adds—

I can dance the ray; I can both pipe and sing,
If I were mery; I can both hurle and sling;
I runne, I wrestle, I can welle throwe the barre,
No shepherd throweth the axeltree so farre;
If I were mery, I could well leape and spring;
I were a man mete to serve a prince or king.

No. 272. A Party Hawking.

No. 273. A Royal Carriage and Escort.

Bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and such like sports, were also pursued with avidity; and even gentlemen and young noblemen took part in them. Any game, in fact, which produced violent exercise and violent excitement was in favour with all ranks. Among the higher classes, hunting and hawking were pursued with more eagerness than ever, and they become now the subjects of numerous written treatises, setting forth their laws and regulations. When gentlemen were riding out for pleasure, they were usually accompanied with hawks and hounds. In the annexed cut ([No. 272]), taken from an illuminated manuscript of the French Boccaccio at Paris (Imperial Library, MS. No. 6887), a party thus attended meets another party on horseback, and they are in the act of saluting each other. Horses were still almost the only conveyance from place to place, though we now more often meet with pictures of carriages; but, though evidently intended to be very gorgeous, they are of clumsy construction, and seem only to have been used by princes or great nobles. I give two examples from a superbly illuminated manuscript of the French translation of “Valerius Maximus,” in the great national library in Paris (No. 6984), executed in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The first (cut [No. 273]) is a royal car, in which a throne has been placed for the king, who sits in it in state. His guards lead the horses. The form of the carriage is very simple; it is a mere cart on wheels, without any springs, and has a covering supported on two large hoops, which are strengthened by cross-bars resembling the spokes of a wheel. In the second example (cut [No. 274]), the carriage bears some resemblance to a modern omnibus. It is intended to represent the incident in Roman history, where the unfilial Tullia caused her charioteer to drive over the body of her father, Servius Tullus, who had been slain by her husband Tarquin the Proud. The ladies appear to sit on benches inside the carriage, while the driver is mounted on the horse nearest to it. These carriages still retained the name of carts, although they appear to have been used chiefly on state occasions. Riding in them must have been very uneasy, and they were exposed to accidents. When Richard II. made his grand entry into London, a ceremony described by Richard de Maidstone in Latin verse, the ladies of the court rode in two cars, or carts, one of which fell over, and exposed its fair occupants in a not very decorous manner to the jeers of the multitude.

No. 274. Tullia Riding over her Father’s Body.

As yet carriages seem not to have been used in travelling, which was performed on horseback or on foot. During the century of which we are speaking, especially after the accession of Henry VI. to the English throne, the roads were extremely insecure, the country being infested by such numerous bands of robbers that it was necessary to travel in considerable companies, and well armed. From this circumstance, and from the political condition of the age, the retinue of the nobility and gentry presented a very formidable appearance; and such as could only afford to travel with one or two servants generally attached themselves to some powerful neighbour, and contrived to make their occasions of locomotion coincide with his. We find several allusions to the dangers of travelling in the Paston Letters. In a letter dated in 1455 or 1460 (it is uncertain which), Margaret Paston desires her husband, then in London, to pay a debt for one of their friends, because, on account of the robbers who beset the road, money could not be sent safely from Norfolk to the capital. A year or two earlier, we hear of a knight of Suffolk riding with a hundred horsemen, armed defensively and offensively, besides the accompaniment of friends. As travelling, however, became frequent, it led to the multiplication of places of entertainment on the roads, and large hostelries and inns were now scattered pretty thickly over the country, not only in all the smaller towns, but often in villages, and sometimes even in comparatively lonely places. In the manuscript of the French Boccaccio in the Imperial Library (No. 6887), there is a picture (copied in our cut [No. 275]) representing a publican serving his liquor on a bench outside his door.

No. 275. A Publican.

The tavern was the general lounge of the idle, and even of the industrious, during their hours of relaxation; and in the towns a good part of the male population who had not domestic establishments of their own appear to have lived at the taverns and eating-houses, the allurements of which drew them into every sort of dissipation, which ended in the ruin of men’s fortunes and health. The poet Occleve, in his reminiscences of his own conduct, describes the life of the riotous young men of his time. The sign which hung at the tavern door, he says, was always a temptation to him, which he could seldom resist. The tavern was the resort of women of light character, and was the scene of brawls and outrages; by the former of which he was frequently seduced into extravagant expenditure, but his want of courage, he confesses, kept him out of the latter. Westminster gate was then celebrated for its taverns and cooks’ shops, at which the poet Occleve’s lavishness made him a welcome guest:— Wher was a gretter maister eek than y,
Or bet acqweyntid at Westmynsler yate,
Among the taverneres namely (especially)
And cookes? Whan I cam, eerly or late,
I pynchid nat at hem in myne acate (purchase of provisions),
But paied hem as that they axe wolde;
Wherfore I was the welcomer algate (always),
And for a verray (true) gentilman yholde.
Here he spent his nights in such a manner that he went to bed later than any of his companions, except perhaps two, whose time of going to bed he says that he did not know, it was so late, but he asserts that they loved their beds so well that they never left them till near prime, or six o’clock in the morning, which thus appears, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, to have been considered an excessively late hour for rising.

The tavern was also the resort of women of the middle and lower orders, who assembled there to drink, and to gossip. It has been already stated that, in the mysteries, or religious plays, Noah was represented as finding his wife drinking with her gossips at the tavern when he wanted to take her into the ark. The meetings of gossips in taverns form the subjects of many of the popular songs of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both in England and France. It appears that these meetings of gossips in taverns were the first examples of what we now call a pic-nic, for each woman took with her some provisions, and with these the whole party made a feast in common. A song of perhaps the middle of the fifteenth century, printed in my collection of “Songs and Carols,” edited for the Percy Society, gives us rather a picturesque description of one of these gossip-meetings. The women, having met accidentally, the question is put where the best wine was to be had, and one of them replies that she knows where could be procured the best drink in the town, but that she did not wish her husband to be acquainted with it:— I know a drawght of mery-go-downe,
The best it is in all thys towne;
But yet wold I not, for my gowne,
My husbond it wyst, ye may me trust.
The place of meeting having thus been fixed, they are represented as proceeding thither two and two, not to attract observation, lest their husbands might hear of their meeting. “God might send me a stripe or two,” said one, “if my husband should see me here.” “Nay,” said Alice, another, “she that is afraid had better go home; I dread no man.” Each was to carry with her some goose, or pork, or the wing of a capon, or pigeon pie, or some similar article— And ich (each) off them wyll sumwhat bryng,
Gosse, pygge, or capons wyng,
Pastés off pigeons, or sum other thyng.
Accordingly, on arriving at the tavern, they call for wine “of the best,” and then Ech off them brought forth ther dysch;
Sum brought flesh, and sume fysh.
Their conversation runs first on the goodness of the wines, and next on the behaviour of their husbands, with whom they are all dissatisfied. In one copy of the song, a harper makes his appearance, whom they hire, and dance to his music. When they pay their reckoning, they find, in one copy of the song, that it amounts to threepence each, and rejoice that it is so little, while in another they find that each has to pay sixpence, and are alarmed at the greatness of the amount. They agree to separate, and go home by different streets, and they are represented as telling their husbands that they had been to church. This is no doubt a picture of a common scene in the fifteenth century. Among the municipal records of Canterbury, there is preserved the deposition of a man who appears to have been suspected of a robbery, and who, to prove an alibi, describes all his actions during three days. On one of these, Monday, he went after eight o’clock in the evening to a tavern, and there he found “wyfes” drinking, “that is to say, Goddardes wyfe, Cornewelles wyfe, and another woman,” and he had a halfpennyworth of beer with them. This was apparently at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII.

No. 276. A Scribe, in Spectacles, from the tapestry of Nancy.

It has been intimated before, that literature and reading had now become more general accomplishments than formerly. We can trace among the records of social history a general spreading of education, which showed an increasing intellectual agitation; in fact, education, without becoming more perfect, had become more general. I have already given figures of the implements of writing at an earlier period. In one of the compartments of the tapestry of “Nancy” (of the latter part of this century), engravings of which have been published by M. Achille Jubinal, we have a figure of a scribe (cut No. 276) with all his apparatus of writing,—the pen, the penknife, and the portable pen-case with ink-stand attached. But the most curious article which this scribe has in use is a pair of spectacles. Spectacles, however, we know had been in existence long before this period. A century earlier, Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath” observed rather sententiously:— Povert ful often, whan a man is lowe,
Maketh him his God and eek himself to knowe.
Povert a spectacle is, as thinketh me,
Thurgh which he may his verray frendes se.
Lydgate, addressing an old man who was on the point of marrying a young wife, tells him to Loke sone after a potent (staff) and spectacle;
Be not ashamed to take hem to thyn ease.
John Baret, of Bury St. Edmunds, in 1463, left by will to one of the monks of Bury, his ivory tables (the tabulæ for writing on), and a pair of spectacles of silver-gilt:—“Item: To daun Johan Janyng, my tablees of ivory, with the combe, and a payre spectacles of sylvir and ovir-gilt.” This shows that already in the middle of the fifteenth century, a pair of spectacles was not an uncommon article.

CHAPTER XXI.
CHANGES IN ENGLISH DOMESTIC MANNERS DURING THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE REFORMATION AND THE COMMONWEALTH.—THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S HOUSE.—ITS HALL.—THE FIREPLACE AND FIRE.—UTENSILS.—COOKERY.—USUAL HOURS FOR MEALS.—BREAKFAST.—DINNER, AND ITS FORMS AND CUSTOMS.—THE BANQUET.—CUSTOM OF DRINKING HEALTHS.

The Reformation brought with it, or at all events it was coeval with, a general revolution in society. Although the nobility still kept up much of their ancient state, feudalism was destroyed during the reigns of the first two Tudors, while the lower and middle classes of the population were rising in condition and in the consciousness of their own importance, and with this rise came an increase of domestic comforts and social development. It was on the ruins of the monastic property, confiscated by Henry VIII., that the English gentlemen gained their highest position, and, by their independence of the old aristocracy, they assisted in finally breaking its power, and thus gave a new character to English society, which at the same time was experiencing influences that came successively from without. Till the reign of Elizabeth, and after her accession to the throne, there was a close connection with the Netherlands and Germany, and we imported most of our novelties and fashions from our Protestant neighbours on the continent; whilst, from Elizabeth’s reign onwards, and with little intermission to the present time, France has been our principal model for imitation. This is a point which is the more necessary to be observed in treating of this subject, because during the period between the Reformation and the Commonwealth, the art of engraving in this country had been carried to little perfection, and was comparatively rarely practised, and we are obliged to look for our pictorial illustrations of manners to the works of foreign artists.

No. 277. Houses in the Streets of a Town, Fifteenth Century.

In towns, domestic architecture experienced no great change in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Small narrow streets, with buildings chiefly of the class we term half-timber houses—the best of which had their lower story of stone, while those above, each projecting beyond the one below it, consisted of a timber framework filled up with bricks—occupied the greater part of the town, and gave it a compact appearance which was quite inconsistent with our modern notions of sanitary arrangement. In the interior the rooms were generally small and dark, but domestic comfort seems not to have been so much overlooked as we are in the habit of supposing. Our cut [No. 277], taken from an engraving in the English edition of Barclay’s “Ship of Fools,” 1570, gives us a good representation of the general appearance of houses in a town at that period. In the country a greater change had taken place in all but the houses of the peasantry. The older castles had become obsolete, and, with the increasing power and efficiency of the laws, it was no longer necessary to consult strength before convenience. The houses of the gentry were, however, still built of considerable extent, and during the sixteenth century the older domestic arrangements were only slightly modified. Now, however, instead of seeking a strong position, people chose situations that were agreeable and healthful, where they might be protected from inclemency of weather, and where gardens and orchards might be planted advantageously. Thus, like the earlier monastic edifices, a gentleman’s house was built more frequently on low ground than on a hill.

No. 278. The “Hundred Men’s Hall,” at St. Cross, near Winchester.

In the sixteenth century, the hall continued to hold its position as the great public apartment of the house, and in its arrangements it still differed little from those of an earlier date; it was indeed now the only part of the house which had not been affected by the increasing taste for domestic privacy. We have many examples of the old Gothic hall in this country, not only as it existed and was used in the sixteenth century, but, in some cases, especially in colleges, still used for its original purposes. One of the simplest, and at the same time best, examples is found in the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, and a sketch of the interior, as represented in our cut [No. 278], will serve to give a general notion of the arrangements of this part of the mansion in former days. As the hall was frequently the scene of festivities of every description, a gallery for the musicians was considered one of its necessary appendages. In some cases, as at Madresfield in Worcestershire, a gallery ran round two or more sides of the hall; but generally the music gallery occupied one end of the hall, opposite the dais. Under it was a passage, separated from the hall by a wooden screen, usually of panel-work, and having on the opposite side the kitchen and buttery. In the large halls, the fireplace still frequently occupied the centre of the hall, where there was a small, low platform of stone. This is distinctly seen in the preceding view of the interior of the hall of St. Cross. In our cut [No. 279] we give another example of this kind of fireplace, from the hall at Penshurst in Kent, where it is still occupied by the iron dogs, or andirons, that supported the fuel. It may be observed that these latter, in the north of England and in some other parts, were called cobirons.

No. 279. Fireplace in the Great Hall at Penshurst, Kent.

The implements attached to the fireplace had hitherto been few in number, and simple in character, but they now became more numerous. In the inventories previous to the sixteenth century they are seldom mentioned at all, and the glossaries speak only of tongs and bellows. In the will of John Baret of Bury, made in 1463, “a payre of tongys and a payre belwys” are mentioned. John Hedge, a large householder of the same town in 1504, speaks of “spytts, rakks, cobernys, aundernnys, trevettes, tongs, with all other iryn werkes moveabyll within my house longying.” This would seem to show that cobirons and andirons were not identical, and it has been supposed that the former denomination belonged more particularly to the rests for supporting the spit. The schoolmaster of Bury, in 1552, bequeathed to his hostess, “my cobbornes, the fire pany (? pan), and the tonges.” If we turn to the north, we find in the collection of wills published by the Surtees Society a more frequent enumeration of the fire implements. William Blakeson, prebendary of Durham, possessed in 1549 only “a payre of cobyrons and one payre of tongys.” In 1551, William Lawson, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, had in his hall “one yryn chymney, and a poor, with one paire of tonges,” which are valued at the rather high sum of thirty shillings. This is the first mention of the iron chimney, or grate, but it occurs continually after the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1557, the “iron chymney” of the parish clerk of St. Andrew’s in Newcastle was valued at twenty shillings. The fire implements in the hall of the farm-house at West Runcton near Northallerton, in 1562, were “j. cryssett, ij. rachyncrokes, j. pair of tonges, one paire off cobyrons, j. speitt, one paire off potes.” We find the cresset frequently included among the implements attached to the fireplace. The racking-crook was the pothook. In 1564, John Bynley, minor canon of Durham, had in his hall “one iron chimney, with a bake (back), porre (a por, or poker), tongs, fier shoel (fire shovel), spette (spit), and a littell rake pertening thereto.” The fire-irons in the hall of Margaret Cottam, widow, of Gateshead, in 1564, were “one iron chimney, one porr, one payre of toynges, gibcrokes, rakincroke, and racks.” The gibcrokes was probably a sort of pothook or jack. Nearly the same list of articles occurs frequently in subsequent inventories. In 1567, a housekeeper of Durham had among other such articles “a gallous (gallows) of iron with iiij. crocks.” The gallows was, of course, the cross-bar of iron, which projected across the chimney, and from which the crooks or chains with hooks at the end for sustaining pots were suspended; as the gallows turned upon hinges, the pot could be moved over the sire, or from it, at pleasure, without being taken from the hook, and as the crooks, of which there were usually more than one, were of different lengths, the pot might be placed lower to the fire or higher from it, at will. From the character of some of these adjuncts to the fireplace, it is evident that the hall fire was frequently used for cooking. The sixteenth century was the period at which ornamentation was carried to a very high degree in every description of household utensil, and to judge from the valuation of some of these articles in the inventories, they were no doubt of elegant or elaborate work. Numerous examples of ornamental ironwork, specially applied to fire-dogs or andirons, will be found in Mr. M. A. Lower’s interesting paper on the ironworks of Sussex; and many others, still more elaborate, are preserved in some of our old gentlemen’s houses in different parts of the country; but this ornamentation was carried to a far higher degree in the great manufactories on the continent, from whence our countrymen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries obtained a large portion of their richer furniture. The figure in the middle of the group of fire-irons represented in our cut [No. 280], is an example of a fire-dog of this elaborate description, preserved in the collection of count Brancaleoni, in Paris, whence also the other articles in the cut are taken. Most of them explain themselves; the implement to the right is a somewhat singularly formed pair of tongs; that immediately beneath the fire-dog is an instrument for moving the logs of wood which then served as fuel. As a further example of the remarkable manner in which almost every domestic article was at this period adorned, we may point out a box-iron, for ironing linen, &c. (cut [No. 281]), which is also preserved in one of the French collections; such an article was of course not made to be exposed to the action of the fire, and this circumstance gave rise to the contrivance of forming it into a box, with a separate iron which was to be heated and placed inside.

No. 280. Ornamental Fire-irons, Sixteenth Century.

No. 281. A Box-iron, Sixteenth Century.

No. 282. Fireplace and Pothook.

The fire-irons, as we find them enumerated in writings or pictured in engravings, appear to have formed the same list, or nearly so, though of course differing in form and ornament according to the varying fashions of the day, until at a considerably later period they were reduced to the modern trio of shovel, poker, and tongs. The single pothook, with a contrivance for lengthening it and shortening it, is shown in our cut No. 282, taken from one of the remarkable wood engravings in “Der Weiss Kunig,”—a series of prints illustrative of the youthful life of Maximilian I. of Germany, who ascended the imperial throne in 1493. The engravings are of the sixteenth century, and the form of the fireplace belongs altogether to the age of the Renaissance. The gallows, with its pothooks or crokes of different lengths, appears in our cut No. 283, taken from Barclay’s “Ship of Fools,” the edition of 1570, though the design is somewhat older. The method of attaching the crooks to one side of the fireplace, when not in use, is exhibited in this engraving, as also the mode in which other smaller utensils were attached to the walls. In this latter instance there are no dogs or andirons in the fireplace, but the pot or boiler is simply placed upon the fire, without other support. There were, however, other methods of placing the pot upon the fire; and in one of the curious wooden sculptures in the church of Kirby Thorpe, in Yorkshire, representing a cook cleaning his dishes, the boiler is placed over the fire in a sort of four-legged frame, as represented in the annexed cut [No. 284].

No. 283. The Fireplace and its uses.

No. 284. A Cook cleaning his Dishes.

Early in the seventeenth century the fireplace had taken nearly its present form, although the dogs or andirons had not yet been superseded by the grate, which, however, had already come into use. This later form of the fireplace is shown in our cut [No. 285], taken from one of an interesting series of prints, executed by the French artist, Abraham Bosse, in the year 1633. It represents a domestic party frying fritters in Lent. One of the dogs is seen at the foot of the opening of the fireplace.

No. 285. Frying Fritters.

In the sixteenth century, the articles of furniture in the hall continued to be much the same as in the century preceding. It continued to be furnished with hangings of tapestry, but they seem not always to have been in use; and they were still placed not absolutely against the wall, but apparently at a little distance from it, so that people might conceal themselves behind them. If the hall was not a very large one, a table was placed in the middle, with a long bench on each side. There was generally a cupboard, or a “hutch,” if not more, with side tables, one or more chairs, and perhaps a settle, according to the taste or means of the possessor. We hear now also of tables with leaves, and of folding tables, as well as of counters, or desks, for writing, and dressers, or small cupboards. The two latter articles were evidently, from their names, borrowed from the French. Cushions were also kept in the hall, for the seats of the principal persons of the household, or for the females. The furniture of the hall of William Lawson, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1551, consisted of one table of wainscot, valued at twenty shillings, two double counters, valued together at thirty shillings, a drawer and two forms, estimated at five shillings, two cushions and two chairs, also valued at five shillings, five other cushions, valued at twelve shillings, two carpet cloths and a cupboard cloth, valued together at ten shillings, and the hangings in the hall, estimated to be worth fifty shillings. This seems to have been a very well furnished hall; that of Robert Goodchild, parish clerk of St. Andrew’s in Newcastle, in 1557, contained an almery (or large cupboard), estimated at ten shillings; a counter “of the myddell bynde,” six shillings; a cupboard, three shillings and fourpence; five basins and six lavers, eight shillings; seventeen “powder (pewter) doblers,” seventeen shillings; six pewter dishes and a hand-basin, five shillings; six pewter saucers, eighteen pence; four pottle pots, five shillings and fourpence, three pint pots and three quart pots, three shillings; ten candlesticks, six shillings; a little pestle and a mortar, two shillings; three old chairs, eighteen pence; six old cushions, two shillings; and two counter-cloths. Much of the furniture of English houses at this time was imported from Flanders. Jane Lawson, in the year last mentioned, had in her hall at Little Burdon in Northumberland, “Flanders counters with their carpets.” She had also in the hall, a long side table, three long forms and another form, two chairs, three stools, six new cushions and three old cushions, and an almery. The whole furniture of the hall of the rectory house of Sedgefield in Durham, which appears to have been a large house and well entertained, consisted of a table of plane-tree with joined frame, two tables of fir with frames, two forms, a settle, and a pair of trestles. The hall of Bertram Anderson, a rich and distinguished merchant and alderman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1570, was furnished with two tables with the carpets (table-covers), three forms, one dozen cushions, half-a-dozen green cushions, one counter with the carpet, two “basinges” (basins), and two covers, one chair, and one little chair. This is a striking proof of the rarity of chairs even at this late date. Buffet stools, which are supposed to be the stools with a flat top and a hole in the middle through which the hand might be passed to lift them, are also mentioned among the articles of furniture in the hall at this period. The furniture of the hall at the manor-house of Croxdale, in the county of Durham, in the year 1571, consisted of one cupboard, one table, two buffet stools, and one chair; yet Salvin of Croxdale was looked upon as one of the principal gentry of the Palatinate. In enumerating the furniture of the ancient hall, we must not forget the arms which were usually displayed there, especially by such as had dependent upon them a certain number of men whom it was their duty or their pride to arm. The hall of a rich merchant of Newcastle, named John Wilkinson, contained in 1571, the following furniture: one almery, one table of wainscot, one counter, one little counter, one dresser of wainscot, one “pulk,” three chairs, three forms, three buffet stools, six cushions of tapestry, six old cushions of tapestry, six green cushions, two long carpet cloths, two short carpet cloths, one say carpet cloth, the “hyngars” in the hall, on the almery head one basin and ewer, one great charger, three new “doblers,” one little chest for sugar, and one pair of wainscot tables; and of arms, two jacks, three sallets of iron, one bow and two sheaves of arrows, three bills, and two halberts. Some of the entries in these inventories are amusing; and, while speaking of arms, it may be stated, that a widow lady of Bury, Mary Chapman, who would appear to have been a warlike dame, making her will in 1649, leaves to one of her sons, among other things, “also my muskett, rest, bandileers, sword, and headpiece, my jacke, a fine paire of sheets, and a hutche.” In 1577, Thomas Liddell, merchant of Newcastle, had in his hall, “three tables of waynscoot, sex qwyshons of tapestery, a cowborde, three wainscoot formes, two chayrs, three green table clothes, fower footstoles, sixe quyshons, two candlesticks, a louckinge glasse, sexe danske pootts of powther (pewter), two basings, and two vewers (ewers), a laver and a basinge, fyve buffatt stules.” It is curious thus to trace the furniture of the hall at different periods, and compare them together; and we cannot but remark from the frequency with which the epithet old is applied to different articles, towards the end of the century that the hall was beginning rapidly to fall into disuse. The cause of this was no doubt the increasing taste for domestic retirement, and the wish to withdraw from the publicity which had always attended the hall, and it gradually became the mere entrance lobby of the house, the place where strangers or others were allowed to remain until their presence had been announced, which is the sense in which we commonly use the word hall, as part of the house, at the present day. In the enumeration of the parts of a house given in the English edition of Comenius’s “Janua Linguarum,” in the middle of the seventeenth century, there is no mention of a hall. “A house,” we are told in this quaint book, “is divided into inner rooms, such as are the entry, the stove, the kitchen, the buttery, the dining-room, the gallery, the bed-chamber, with a privy made by it; baskets are of use for carrying things to and fro; and chests (which are made fast with a key) for keeping them. The floor is under the roof. In the yard is a well, a stable, and a bath. Under the house is the cellar.”

No. 286. A Folding Table.

It has already been remarked that tables with leaves began to be mentioned frequently after the commencement of the sixteenth century. Andrew Cranewise, of Bury, in 1558, enumerates “one cupborde in the hall, one plaine table with one leafe.” He speaks further on, in the same will, of “my best folte (fold or folding) table in the hall, and two great hutches.” In 1556, Richard Claxton, of Old Park, in the county of Durham, speaks of a “folden table” in the parlours, which was valued at two shillings. These folding tables appear to have been made in a great variety of forms, some of which were very ingenious. Our cut No. 286 represents a very curious folding table of the sixteenth century, which was long preserved at Flaxton Hall, in Suffolk, but perished in the fire when that mansion was burnt a few years ago. As represented in the cut, which shows the table folded up so as to be laid aside, the legs pull out, and the one to the right fits into the lion’s mouth, and is secured by the pin which hangs beside it.

No. 287. Cresset and Moon.

The methods of lighting the hall at night were still rather clumsy, and not very perfect. Of course, when the apartment was very large, a few candles would produce comparatively little effect, and it was therefore found necessary to use torches, and inflammable masses of larger size. One method of supplying the deficiency was to take a small pan, or portable fireplace, filled with combustibles, and suspend it in the place where light was required. Such a receptacle was usually placed at the top of a pole, for facility of carrying about, and was called a cresset, from an old French word which meant a night-lamp. The cresset is mentioned by Shakespeare and other writers as though it were chiefly used in processions at night, and by watchmen and guides. The first figure in our cut No. 287, taken from Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” represents one of the cressets carried by the marching watch of London in the sixteenth century. From the continual mention of the cresset along with the fire-irons of the hall, in the wills published by the Surtees Society, we can hardly doubt its being used, at least in the north of England, for lighting the hall itself. An improvement of the common cresset consisted in enclosing the flame, by whatever material it was fed, in a case made of some transparent substance, such as horn, and thus making it neither more nor less than a large lantern fixed on the end of a pole. The form of this implement was generally globular, and, no doubt from its appearance when carried in the night, it was denominated a moon. The “moon” was carried by servants before the carriages of their masters, to guide them along country lanes, and under other similar circumstances. The second figure in our cut [No. 287] represents a “moon” which was formerly preserved at Ightham Moat House, in Kent; the frame was of brass, and the covering of horn. To assist in lighting the hall, sometimes candlesticks were fixed to the walls round the hall, and this perhaps will explain the rather large number of candlesticks sometimes enumerated among the articles in that part of the house. In our cut [No. 282], we have an example of a candlestick placed on a frame, which, turning on a pivot or hinges, may be turned back against the wall when not in use.

During the period of which we are now speaking, almost everything connected with the table underwent great change. This was least the case with regard to the hours of meals. The usual hour of breakfast was seven o’clock in the morning, and seems scarcely to have varied. During the sixteenth century, the hour of dinner was eleven o’clock, or just four hours after breakfast. “With us,” says Harrison in his description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, “the nobilitie, gentrie, and students (he means the Universities), doo ordinarilie go to dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or between five and sixe, at afternoone.” Before the end of the century, however, the dinner hour appears to have varied between eleven and twelve. In a book entitled the “Haven of Health,” written by a physician named Cogan, and printed in 1584, we are told: “When foure houres be past after breakefast, a man may safely take his dinner, and the most convenient time for dinner is about eleven of the clocke before noone. The usual time for dinner in the universities is at eleven, or elsewhere about noon.” In Beaumont and Fletcher, the hour of dinner was still eleven; “I never come into my dining-room,” says Merrythought, in the “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” “but at eleven and six o’clock.” “What hour is’t, Lollis?” asks a character in the “Changeling,” by their contemporary Middleton. “Towards eating-hour, sir.” “Dinnertime? thou mean’st twelve o’clock.” And other writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century speak of twelve o’clock and seven as the hours of dinner and supper. This continued to be the usual hour of dinner at the close of the same century.

During the reign of Elizabeth, and afterwards, persons of both sexes appear to have broken their fast in the same substantial manner as was observed by the Percies at the beginning of the century, and as described in a previous chapter; yet, though generally but four hours interposed between this and the hour of dinner, people seem to have thought it necessary to take a small luncheon in the interval, which, no doubt from its consisting chiefly in drinking, was called a bever. “At ten,” says a character in one of Middleton’s plays, “we drink, that’s mouth-hour; at eleven, lay about us for victuals, that’s hand-hour; at twelve, go to dinner, that’s eating-hour.” “Your gallants,” says Appetitus, in the old play of “Lingua,” “never sup, breakfast, nor bever without me.”

No. 288. A Basin and Ewer, Sixteenth Century.

The dinner was the largest and most ceremonious meal of the day. The hearty character of this meal is remarked by a foreign traveller in England, who published his “Mémoires et Observations” in French in 1698. “Les Anglois,” he tells us, “mangent beaucoup à diner; ils mangent à reprises, et remplissent le sac. Leur souper est leger. Gloutons à midi, fort sobres au soir.” In the sixteenth century, dinner still began with the same ceremonious washing of hands as formerly; and there was considerable ostentation in the ewers and basins used for this purpose. Our cut [No. 288] represents ornamental articles of this description, of the sixteenth century, taken from an engraving in Whitney’s “Emblems,” printed in 1586. This custom was rendered more necessary by the circumstance that at table people of all ranks used their fingers for the purposes to which we now apply a fork. This article was not used in England for the purpose to which it is now applied, until the reign of James I. It is true that we have instances of forks even so far back as the pagan Anglo-Saxon period, but they are often found coupled with spoons, and on considering all the circumstances, I am led to the conviction that they were in no instance used for feeding, but merely for serving, as we still serve salad and other articles, taking them out of basin or dish with a fork and spoon. In fact, to those who have not been taught the use of it, a fork must necessarily be a very awkward and inconvenient instrument. We know that the use of forks came from Italy, the country to which England owed many of the new fashions of the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is curious to read Coryat’s account of the usage of forks at table as he first saw it in that country in the course of his travels. “I observed,” says he, “a custome in all those Italian cities and townes through which I passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels, neither doe I thinke that any other nation of Christendome doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian, and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate. For while with their knife which they hold in one hande they cut the meat out of the dish, they fasten their forke, which they hold in their other hande, upon the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate with his fingers, from which all at the table do cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the lawes of good manners, insomuch that for his error he shall be at the least brow-beaten, if not reprehended in wordes. This forme of feeding I understand is generally used in all places of Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver, but those are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane. Hereupon I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked cutting of meate, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home; being once quipped for that frequent using of my forke by a certain learned gentleman, a familiar friend of mine, one Mr. Lawrence Whittaker, who in his merry humour doubted not to call me at table furcifer, only for using a forke at feeding, but for no other cause.” Furcifer, in Latin, it need hardly be observed, meant literally one who carries a fork, but its proper signification was, a villain who deserves the gallows.

The usage of forks thus introduced into England, appears soon to have become common. It is alluded to more than once in Beaumont and Fletcher, and in Ben Jonson, but always as a foreign fashion. In Jonson’s comedy of “The Devil is an Ass,” we have the following dialogue:— Meerc. Have I deserv’d this from you two, for all
My pains at court to get you each a patent?
Gilt. For what?
Meerc. Upon my project o’ the forks.
Sle. Forks? what be they?
Meerc. The laudable use of forks,
Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,
To th’ sparing o’ napkins.
In fact the new invention rendered the washing of hands no longer so necessary as before, and though it was still continued as a polite form before sitting down to dinner, the practice of washing the hands after dinner appears to have been entirely discontinued.

No. 289. A Dinner Party in the Seventeenth Century.

Our cut [No. 289], taken from the English edition of the Janua Linguarum of Comenius, represents the forms of dining in England under the Protectorate. It will be best described by the text which accompanies it in the book, and in which each particular object is mentioned. “When a feast is made ready,” we are told, “the table is covered with a carpet and a table-cloth by the waiters, who besides lay the trenchers, spoons, knives, with little forks, table napkins, bread, with a saltsellar. Messes are brought in platters, a pie in a plate. The guests being brought in by the host, wash their hands, out of a laver or ewer, over a hand-basin, or bowl, and wipe them with a hand-towel; then they sit at the table on chairs. The carver breaketh up the good cheer, and divideth it. Sauces are set amongst roste-meat in sawsers. The butler filleth strong wine out of a cruse, or wine-pot, or flagon, into cups, or glasses, which stand on a cup-board, and he reacheth them to the master of the feast, who drinketh to his guests.” It will be observed that one salt-cellar is here placed in the middle of the table. This was the usual custom; and, as one long table had been substituted for the several tables formerly standing in the hall, the salt-cellar was considered to divide the table into two distinct parts, guests of more distinction being placed above the salt, while the places below the salt were assigned to inferiors and dependants. This usage is often alluded to in the old dramatists. Thus, in Ben Jonson, it is said of a man who treats his inferiors with scorn, “he never drinks below the salt,” i.e., he never exchanges civilities with those who sit at the lower end of the table. And in a contemporary writer, it is described as a mark of presumption in an inferior member of the household “to sit above the salt.” Our cut [No. 290], taken from an engraving by the French artist, Abraham Bosse, published in 1633, represents one of the first steps in the laying out of the dinner-table. The plates, it will be seen, are laid, and the salt-cellar is duly placed in the middle of the table. The servant is now placing the napkins—

The pages spred a table out of hand,
And brought forth nap’ry rich, and plate more rich.
—Harrington’s Ariosto, lxii. 71.

No. 290. Laying out the Dinner-table, 1633.

The earlier half of the sixteenth century was the period when the pageantry of feasting was carried to its greatest degree of splendour. In the houses of the noble and wealthy, the dinner itself was laid out with great pomp, was almost always accompanied with music, and was not unfrequently interrupted with dances, mummings, and masquerades. A picture of a grand feast carried on in this manner is given in one of the illustrations to the German work on the exploits of the emperor Maximilian, published at the time under the title of “Der Weiss Kunig.” An abridged copy of this engraving is given in our cut [No. 291]. The table profusely furnished, the rich display of plate on the cupboards, the band in front, and the mummers entering the hall, are all strikingly characteristic of the age. The dresser, or cupboard, was now one of the great means of display among the higher orders of society, who invested vast wealth in its furniture, consisting of vessels made of the precious metals and of crystal, sometimes set with precious stones, and often adorned with the most beautiful sculpture, or moulded into singular or elaborate forms. So much attention was given to the arrangement of the plate on the dresser, and to the ceremonies attending it, that it was made a point of etiquette how many steps, or gradations, on which the rows of plate were raised one above another, members of each particular rank of society might have on their cupboards. Thus, a prince of royal blood only might have five steps to his cupboard; four were allowed to nobles of the highest rank, three to nobles under that of duke, two to knights-bannerets, and one to persons who were merely of gentle blood. These rules, however, were probably not universally obeyed. It was the duty of the butler to have charge of the plate in the hall, and his station there was usually at the side of the cupboard, as in the engraving taken from “Der Weiss Kunig” ([No. 291]). Comparatively few examples of the domestic plate of an early period have survived the revolutions of so many ages, during which they were often melted for the metal, and those which remain are chiefly in the possession of corporations or public bodies; but several fine collections of the ornamental plate of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been made, and among these one of the best and most interesting is that of the late lord Londesborough, now in the possession of lady Londesborough.[54]

No. 291. Mummers at a Feast.

A dinner scene on a smaller scale is represented in our next cut ([No. 292]), copied from one in which Albert Durer represents Herodias dancing and performing before Herod at his solitary meal. This pageantry at dinner was succeeded, and apparently soon superseded, in the higher society by masques after dinner, which continued to be very fashionable until the breaking out of the civil commotions in the middle of the seventeenth century. During the period of the Protectorate and the Commonwealth, the forms of eating and drinking were much simplified, and all that expensive ostentation, which had arisen in the high times of feudal power, and had become burthensome to the aristocracy after it had been weakened by the reigns of the Tudors, disappeared.

No. 292. Herodias dancing before Herod.

The regular order of service at dinner seems to have been still three courses, each consisting of a number and variety of dishes, according to the richness of the entertainment. To judge from the early cookery books, which have been described in a former chapter, our ancestors, previous to the sixteenth century, in the better classes of society, were not in the habit of placing substantial joints on the table, but instead of them had a great variety of made dishes, a considerable proportion of which were eaten with a spoon. At the tables of the great, there was a large attendance of servants, and the guests were counted off not, as before, in couples, but in fours, each four being considered as one party, under the title of a mess, and probably having a dish among them, and served by one attendant. This custom is often alluded to in the dramatists, and it is hardly necessary to observe that it was the origin of our modern term in the army. The plate, as well as the porcelain and earthenware, used at table during the greater part of this period, was so richly diversified, that it would require a volume to describe it, nor would it be easy to pick out a small number of examples that might illustrate the whole. Our cut [No. 293] represents a peculiar article of this period, which is not undeserving of remark, two knife-cases, made of leather, stamped and gilt.

No. 293. Knife-cases.

No. 294. Drinking Vessels.

From what has been said, it will be seen that our popular saying of “the roast beef of old England,” is not so literally true as we are accustomed to suppose. While, however, the style of living we have been describing prevailed generally among the higher ranks and the richer portion of the middle classes, particularly in towns, that of the less affluent classes remained simple and even scanty, and a large portion of the population of the country probably indulged in flesh meat only at intervals, or on occasions when they received it in their lord’s kitchen or hall. A few plain jugs, such as those represented in our cut [No. 294], taken from a wooden sculpture in the church of Kirby Thorpe, in Yorkshire, with platters or trenchers in pewter or wood, formed the whole table service of the inferior classes. It was the revolution in the middle of the seventeenth century which first abolished this extravagant ostentation, and brought into fashion a plainer table and more substantial meats. A foreigner, who had been much in England in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and published his observations in French at the Hague in 1698, tells us that the English of that period were great eaters of meat—“I have heard,” says he, “of many people in England who have never eaten bread, and ordinarily they eat very little; they nibble sometimes a little bit, while they eat flesh by great mouthfuls. Generally speaking, the tables are not served with delicacy in England. There are some great lords who have French and English cooks, and where you are served much in the French fashion; but among persons of the middle condition of which I am speaking, they have ten or twelve sorts of common meat, which infallibly come round again in their turns at different times, and of two dishes of which their dinner is composed, as for instance, a pudding, and a piece of roast beef. Sometimes they will have a piece boiled, and then it has always lain in salt some days, and is flanked all round with five or six mounds of cabbage, carrots, turnips, or some other herbs or roots, seasoned with salt and pepper, with melted butter poured over them. At other times they will have a leg of mutton, roasted or boiled, and accompanied with the same delicacies; poultry, sucking pigs, tripe, and beef tongues, rabbits, pigeons, all well soaked with butter, without bacon. Two of these dishes, always served one after the other, make the ordinary dinner of a good gentleman, or of a good burgher. When they have boiled meat, there is sometimes somebody who takes a fancy to broth, which consists of the water in which the meat has been boiled, mixed with a little oatmeal, with some leaves of thyme, or sage, or other such small herbs. The pudding is a thing which it would be difficult to describe, on account of the diversity of sorts. Flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, fat, marrow, rasins, &c. &c., are the more common ingredients of a pudding. It is baked in an oven; or boiled with the meat; or cooked in fifty other fashions. And they are grateful for the invention of puddings, for it is a manna to everybody’s taste, and a better manna than that of the dessert, inasmuch as they are never tired of it. Oh! what an excellent thing is an English pudding! To come in pudding time, is a proverbial phrase, meaning, to come at the happiest moment in the world. Make a pudding for an Englishman, and you will regale him be he where he will. Their dessert needs no mention, for it consists only of a bit of cheese. Fruit is only found at the houses of great people, and only among few of them.” The phrase, “to come in pudding time,” occurs as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The absence of the dessert at the English table, of which the writer just quoted complains, arose from the abandonment in the middle of the seventeenth century of an old custom. In the earlier part of that century, and in the century previous, when the company rose from the dinner-table, they proceeded to what was then called the banquet, which was held in another apartment, and often in an arbour in the garden, or, as it was called, the garden-house. The banquet of an earlier period, the fifteenth century, was, as we have already seen, a meal after supper. In Massinger’s play of the “City Madam,” a sumptuous dinner is described as follows:— The dishes were raised one upon another,
As woodmongers do billets, for the first,
The second, and third course; and most of the shops
Of the best confectioners in London ransack’d
To furnish out a banquet.
In another of Massinger’s dramas, one of the characters says:— We’ll dine in the great room, but let the musick
And banquet be prepared here.
It appears, therefore, that the banquet was often accompanied with music. At the banquet the choice wines were brought forth, and the table was covered with pastry and sweetmeats, of which our forefathers at this period appear to have been extremely fond. A usual article at the banquet was marchpanes, or biscuits made of sugar and almonds, in different fanciful forms, such as men, animals, houses, &c. There was generally one at least in the form of a castle, which the ladies and gentlemen were to batter to pieces in frolic, by attacking it with sugar-plums. Taylor, the water-poet, calls them— Castles for ladies, and for carpet knights,
Unmercifully spoil’d at feasting fights,
Where battering bullets are fine sugred plums.
On festive occasions, and among people who loved to pass their time at table, the regular banquet seems to have been followed by a second, or, as it was called, a rere-banquet. These rere-banquets are mentioned by the later Elizabethan writers, generally as extravagances, and sometimes with the epithet of “late,” so that perhaps they took the place of the soberer supper. People are spoken of as taking “somewhat plentifully of wine” at these rere-banquets. The rere-supper was still in use, and appears also to have been a meal distinguished by its profusion both in eating and drinking. It was from the rere-supper that the roaring-boys, and other wild gallants of the earlier part of the seventeenth century, sallied forth to create noise and riot in the streets.

One of the great characteristics of the dinner-table at this period was the formality of drinking, especially that of drinking healths, so much cried down by the Puritans. This formality was enforced with great strictness and ceremony. It was not exactly the modern practice of giving a toast, but each person in turn rose, named some one to whom he individually drank (not one of the persons present), and emptied his cup. “He that begins the health,” we are told in a little book published in 1623, “first, uncovering his head, he takes a full cup in his hand, and setting his countenance with a grave aspect, he craves for audience; silence being once obtained, he begins to breathe out the name, per-adventure, of some honourable personage, whose health is drunk to, and he that pledges must likewise off with his cap, kiss his fingers, and bow himself in sign of a reverent acceptance. When the leader sees his follower thus prepared, he sups up his broth, turns the bottom of the cup upward, and, in ostentation of his dexterity, gives the cup a phillip to make it cry twango. And thus the first scene is acted. The cup being newly replenished to the breadth of a hair, he that is the pledger must now begin his part, and thus it goes round throughout the whole company.” In order to ascertain that each person had fairly drunk off his cup, in turning it up he was to pour all that remained in it on his nail, and if there were too much to remain as a drop on the nail without running off, he was made to drink his cup full again. This was termed drinking on the nail, for which convivialists invented a mock Latin phrase, and called it drinking super nagulum, or super-naculum.

This custom of pledging in drinking was as old as the times of the Anglo-Saxons, when it existed in the “wæs heil” and “drinc heil,” commemorated in the story of the British Vortigern and the Saxon Rowena, and it is alluded to in several ballads of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as in that of “King Edward and the Shepherd,” where the man who drinks pledges his companion with the word “passelodion,” and the other replies by “berafrynde,” and in that of “The Kyng and the Hermyt,” where the words of pledging and reply are “fusty bandyas,” and “stryke pautnere.” Both these ballads are printed in Hartshorne’s “Ancient Metrical Tales.” The drinking of the healths of absent individuals appears to have been introduced at a later period, and was carried to its greatest degree of extravagance on the continent. The person whose health a man gave was usually expected to be his mistress; and in France he was expected, in doing this, to drink as many times his glass or cup full of wine as there were letters in her name. Thus, in Ronsard’s “Bacchanales,” the gallant drinks nine times to his mistress Cassandre, because there were nine letters in her name:— Neuf fois, au nom de Cassandre,
Je vois prendre
Neuf fois du vin du flacon;
Affin de neuf fois le boire
En memoire
Des neuf lettres de son nom.
And a less celebrated poet, of a rather later date, Guillaume Colletet, in a piece entitled “Le Trebuchement de l’Ivrongne,” printed at Paris in 1627, introduces one of his personages drinking six times to his mistress, because her name was Cloris:—

Six fois je m’en vas boire au beau nom de Cloris,
Cloris, le seul desir de ma chaste pensée.

The manner of pledging at table, as it still existed in England, is described rather ludicrously in the “Memoires d’Angleterre,” of the year 1698, already quoted. “While in France,” the author says, “the custom of drinking healths is almost abolished among people of any distinction, as being equally importunate and ridiculous, it exists here in all its ancient force. To drink at table, without drinking to the health of some one in especial, among ordinary people, would be considered as drinking on the sly, and as an act of incivility. There are in this proceeding two principal and singular grimaces, which are universally observed among people of all orders and all sorts. It is, that the person to whose health another drinks, if he be of inferior condition, or even equal, to that of him who drinks, must remain as inactive as a statue while the drinker drinks. If, for instance, he is in the act of taking something from a dish, he must suddenly stop, return his fork or spoon to its place, and wait, without stirring more than a stone, until the other has drunk; after which, the second grimace is to make him an inclinabo, at the risk of dipping his perriwig in the gravy in his plate. I confess that, when a foreigner first sees these manners, he thinks them laughable. Nothing appears so droll as to see a man who is in the act of chewing a morsel which he has in his mouth, of cutting his bread, of wiping his mouth, or of doing anything else, who suddenly takes a serious air, when a person of some respectability drinks to his health, looks fixedly at this person, and becomes as motionless as if a universal paralysis had seized him, or he had been struck by a thunderbolt. It is true that, as good manners absolutely demand this respectful immobility in the patient, it requires also a little circumspection in the agent. When any one will drink to the health of another, he must fix his eye upon him for a moment, and give him the time, if it be possible, to swallow his morsel.” It is hardly necessary to observe that this custom is the origin of our modern practice of “taking wine” with each other at table, which is now also becoming obsolete.

CHAPTER XXII.
HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE.—THE PARLOUR.—THE CHAMBER.

No. 295. Table of Sixteenth Century.

As social peace and security became more established in the country, people began to be more lavish in all the articles of household furniture, which thus became much more numerous during the period of which we are now treating. It also went through its fashions and its changes, but in the progress of these changes it became less ponderous and more elegant. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, and perhaps later in some parts of the island, where social progress was slower, the old arrangements of a board laid upon trestles for a table still prevailed, though it was gradually disappearing; and, although the term of “laying” the board in a literal sense was no longer applicable, it has continued to be used figuratively, even to our own times. Richard Kanam, of Soham, in the county of Cambridge, whose will was proved so late as the 12th of April, 1570, left, among other household furniture, “one table with a payer of tressels, and a thicke forme.” The first step in the change from tables of this kind appears to have been to fix the trestles to the board, thus making it a permanent table. The whole was strengthened by a bar running from trestle to trestle, and ornamental wood-work was afterwards substituted in place of the trestles. A rather good example of a table of this description is given in the cut on the preceding page ([No. 295]), taken from that well-known publication, the “Stultifera Navis” of Sebastian Brandt. This, however, was a clumsy construction, and it soon gave way to the table with legs, the latter being usually turned on the lathe, and sometimes richly carved. This carving went out of use in the unostentatious days of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, to make way for plain table legs, and it never quite recovered its place.

No. 296. Henry VIII’s Chair.

We have seen already that in the latter part of the previous century, in the chairs and stools, the joinery work of Flanders was taking the place of the older rude and clumsy seats. This taste still prevailed in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, and a large proportion of the furniture used in this country, as well as of the earthenware and other household implements, during the greater part of that century, were imported from Flanders and the Netherlands. Hence, in the absence of engravings at home, we are led to look at the works of the Flemish and German artists for illustrations of domestic manners at this period. The seats of the description just mentioned were termed joint (or joined) stools or chairs. A rather fine example of a chair of this work, which is, as was often the case, three-cornered, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where it is reported to have been the chair of Henry VIII., on what authority I know not. It is represented in our cut [No. 296]. These “joined” chairs and stools were laid aside for furniture of a more elegant form, which was used during the reign of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, and of which examples are so common that it is hardly necessary to give one here. This fashion appears to have been brought from France. An example of rather peculiar style is given in our cut [No. 297], taken from a picture executed in 1587, representing Louis de Gonzagues, duke of Nivernois.

No. 297. Chair of duke de Nivernois.

Hitherto the cushions were merely adjuncts to the chairs, but by another advance in convenience the cushion was soon made as a part of the chair or stool, which at the same time became simpler in form again. Our cut No. 298, taken from one of the prints of Abraham Bosse, dated in 1633, represents the general character of the chairs and stools used in France at that date, as they are drawn in the works of this artist, and also the manner in which they were arranged round a room when not in use. On the left appears the end of a cushioned bench, which was generally of the length of two or three stools, and appears as a common article of furniture. Among other articles of furniture now introduced was the couch, or, as we should call it, the sofa. This was called, in the age of Shakespeare, a day-bed, and appears to have been in some discredit, as an article indicating excess of luxury. Large cupboards, usually termed court-cupboards, and often very richly carved, were now in general use, for containing, under lock and key, the plate and other valuables. In allusion to the carvings on these cupboards, which usually consisted of faces more or less grotesque, and not very artistically executed, Corbet, in his “Iter Boreale,” speaks of a person—

With a lean visage, like a carv’d face
On a court-cupboard.

No. 298. Stools and Chairs of the age of Charles I.

The sixteenth century was especially the age of tapestries, and no gentleman could consider his rooms furnished if they wanted these important adjuncts. They were now elaborately worked into great historical pictures, sacred or profane, or mythological or other subjects, to suit the varieties of tastes. Sir John Elyot, in his “Governor,” reminds his readers that “semblable decking oughte to bee in the house of a noblemanne, or man of honoure; I meane concerning ornaments of hall and chambers in arras, painted tables, and images concernynge historyes, wherein is represented some monument of vertue most cunningly,” &c. At the commencement of the seventeenth century this practice was already beginning to go out of fashion, and it was not long afterwards that it was entirely laid aside: and the walls were again covered with panels, or painted or whitewashed, and adorned with pictures. In our last cut, of the date of 1633, we see the walls thus decorated with paintings.

No. 299. A Chandelier of the Sixteenth Century.

The rapid social revolution which was now going on, gradually produced changes in most of the articles of domestic economy. Thus, the old spiked candlestick was early in the century superseded by the modern socket candlestick. The chandelier represented in our cut [No. 299], taken from one of Albert Durer’s prints of the Life of the Virgin, published in 1509, in its spikes for the candles and its other characteristics, belongs to a ruder and earlier style of household furniture, and has nothing in common with the rich chandeliers which now began to be used.

The parlour appears in the sixteenth century to have been a room the particular use of which was in a state of transition. Subsequently, as domestic life assumed greater privacy than when people lived publicly in the hall, the parlour became the living room; but in the sixteenth century, though in London it was already used as the dining-room, in the country it appears to have been considered as a sort of amalgamation of a store-room and a bedroom. This is best understood from the different inventories of its furniture which have been preserved. In 1558, the parlour of Robert Hyndmer, rector of Sedgefield, in the county of Durham, contained—“a table with a joined frame, two forms, and a carpet; carved cupboards; a plain cupboard; nine joined stools; hangings of tapestry; and a turned chair.” In the parlour at Hilton Castle, in the same county, in 1559, there were—“one iron chimney, two tables, one counter, two chairs, one cupboard, six forms, two old carpets, and three old hangings.” In 1564, Margaret Cottom, a widow of Gateshead, had in her parlour—“one inner bed of wainscot, a stand, a bed, a presser of wainscot, three chests, a Dantzic coffer;” a considerable quantity of linen and cloth of different kinds, and for different purposes; “tallow candles, and wooden dishes, a feather bed, a bolster, and a cod (pillow), two coverlets, two happgings (coverlets of a coarser kind), three blankets, three cods (pillows), with an old mattress; five cushions, a steel cap, and a covering; a tin bottle, a cap-case with a lock.” In the house of William Dalton, a wealthy merchant of Durham in 1556, the parlour must have been very roomy indeed to contain all the “household stuff” which it holds in the inventory, namely, “a chimney, with a pair of tongs; a bedstead close made; a feather bed, a pair of sheets, a covering of apparels, an ‘ovese’ bed, a covering wrought of silk; a cod (pillow), and a pillow-bere; a trundle-bed, a feather bed, a twilt (quilt), a happing (coverlet), and a bolster; a stand-bed, a feather-bed, a mattress, a pair of blankets, a red covering, a bolster, and curtains; eight cods, and eight pillow-beres; seven pair of linen sheets; eight pair of strakin (a sort of kersey) sheets; six pair of harden (hempen) sheets; thirteen yards of diaper tabling; ten yards and a half of table-cloth; twenty-one yards of towelling; four hand towels; two dozen napkins; five pillow-beres; two head sheets; a pair of blankets; two ‘overse’ beds, and three curtains; a cupboard; a table, with a carpet; a counter, with a carpet; a Dantzic chest; a bond chest; a bond coffer; an ambry; a long settle, and a chair; three buffet stools; a little stool; two forms; red hangings; a painted cloth; three chests; a stand-bed, a pair of blankets, two sheets, a covering, and two cods; an ‘ambre call.’” In 1567, the parlour at Beaumont Hill, a gentleman’s house in the north, contained the following furniture:—“One trundle bed, with a feather bed; two coverlets, a bolster, two blankets, two carpet table cloths, two coverlets, one presser, a little table, one chest, three chairs, and three forms.” In other inventories, down to the end of the century, we find the parlour continuing to be stored in this indiscriminate manner.

No. 300. A Dying Man and his Treasures.

No. 301. A Bed-chamber and its Furniture.

No. 302. A Time-piece, &c.

This period also differs from former periods in the much greater number of beds, and greater abundance of bed-furniture, we find in the houses. We have often several beds in one chamber. Few of the principal bedrooms had less than two beds. The form of the bedstead was now almost universally that with four posts. Still in the engravings of the sixteenth century, we find the old couch-bed represented. Such appears to be the bed in our cut [No. 300], taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” an English book printed at Leyden in 1586. We have here another, and rather a late example, of the manner in which money was hoarded up in chests in the chambers. The couch-bed is still more distinctly shown in our cut [No. 301], taken from Albert Durer’s print of St. Jerome, dated in 1511. This print is remarkable for its detail of the furniture of a bed-chamber, and especially for the manner in which the various smaller articles are arranged and suspended to the walls. Not the least remarkable of these articles is the singular combination of a clock and an hour glass, which is placed against the wall as a time-piece. This seems, however, to have been not uncommon. A time-piece of the same kind is represented in our cut [No. 302], which is taken from a print of St. Jerome at prayer, by Hans Springen Kelle, without date, but evidently belonging to the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The method of suspending or attaching to the walls the smaller articles in common use, such as scissors, brushes, pens, papers, &c., is here the same as in the former. Our next cut ([No. 303]), from a print by Aldegraver, dated in 1553, represents evidently a large four-post bedstead, which is remarkable for its full and flowing curtains. The plate appears here to be kept in the bed-chamber. Chests, cupboards, presses, &c., become now very numerous in the bedrooms, and we begin to meet with tables and chairs more frequently. In 1567, the principal chamber in the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Hutton, at Hunwick, contained the following articles:—“In napery, in linen sheets, sixteen pair; certain old harden (hempen) sheets, and sixteen pillowberes; two Dantzic chests, a little chest bound with iron, a candle chest, and another old chest; a press with two floors and five doors; a folding table, seven little cushions, and two long cushions of crool (a sort of fine worsted) wrought with the needle, and a carpet cloth that is in working with crools for the same; six feather beds, with six bolsters, and a coarse feather-bed tick; eight mattresses, and nine bolsters; twelve pillows, twelve pair of blankets, and six happings; twenty coverlets, three coverings for beds of tapestry, and two of dornix (Tournay); a carpet cloth of tapestry work, five yards long, and a quarter deep; five standing beds, with cords; two testers with curtains of saye, and two testers with curtains of crool.” In the principal chamber in the house of lady Catherine Hedworth, in 1568, the following furniture is enumerated:—“One trussing bed, one feather bed, one pair of blankets, one pair of sheets, one bolster, one pillow with a housewife’s covering, four pillows, two Flanders chests, one almery, two cupboards, three coffers, two cupboard stools, three buffet forms, one little buffet stool, two little coffers, five mugs, three old cushions.” The principal chamber of Thomas Sparke, suffragan bishop of Berwick, whose goods were appraised in 1572, was furnished with the following articles:—“A stand-bed, with a testron of red saye and fringe, and a truckle-bed; a Cypres chest, a Flanders chest, a desk, three buffet stools; the said chamber hung with red saye.” At Crook Hall, in the suburbs of Durham, in 1577, the principal chamber contained three beds; another chamber contained four beds; and a third two beds. These lists furnish good illustrations of the various prints from which we have already given some sketches.

No. 303. A Bed of the Sixteenth Century.

No. 304. A Bed of the Seventeenth Century.

Our cut [No. 304] represents the usual form of the bedstead in the seventeenth century, and the process of “making” the bed; it is taken from a print by the French artist, Abraham Boste, of the date 1631. Another of his prints, of the same date, has furnished us with a sketch of a bedroom party (cut [No. 305]), which is no unapt illustration of domestic manners in the seventeenth century. It represents a custom which prevailed especially in France. A woman, after childbirth, kept her room in state, and with great ceremony, and received there daily her female acquaintances, who passed the afternoon in gossip. This practice, and especially the conversation which took place at it, were frequent subjects of popular satire, and formed the groundwork of one of the most celebrated books of the reign of Louis XIII., entitled “Les Caquets de l’Accouchée,” first published in 1622. An edition of this curious satire has been recently published by M. Ed. Fournier, in the introduction to which, as well as in the text, the reader will find abundant information on this subject.

No. 305. A Bedroom Party.

CHAPTER XXIII.
OCCUPATIONS OF THE LADIES.—GAMES AND ENJOYMENTS.—ROUGHNESS OF ENGLISH SPORTS AT THIS PERIOD.—THE HOT-HOUSES, OR BATHS.—THE ORDINARIES.—DOMESTIC PETS.—TREATMENT OF CHILDREN.—METHODS OF LOCOMOTION.—CONCLUSION.

No. 306. Ladies at Work.

During the period at which we are now arrived, almost all the relations of domestic life underwent a great change, and nothing hardly could produce a wider difference than that between the manners and sentiments of the reign of Henry VII., and those of Charles II. This was especially observable in the occupations of the female sex, which were becoming more and more frivolous. At the earlier portion of the period referred to, women in general were confined closely to their domestic labours, in spinning, weaving, embroidering, and other work of a similar kind. A hand-loom was almost a necessary article of furniture in a well regulated household, and spinning was so universal an occupation, that we read sometimes of an apartment in the house set apart for it—a family spinning room. Even to this present day, in legal language, the only occupation acknowledged, as that of an unmarried woman, is that of a spinster. Our cut ([No. 306]) represents a party of ladies at their domestic labours; it is taken from Israel van Mechelin’s print of “The Virgin Ascending the Steps of the Temple,” where this domestic scene is introduced in a side compartment. Two are engaged at the distaff, the old poetical emblem of the sex. Another is cutting out the cloth for working, with a pair of shears of very antiquated form. The shape of the three-cornered joined chair in this group is worthy of remark. The female in our cut [No. 307] is also seated in a chair of rather peculiar construction, though it has occurred before at an earlier period (cut [No. 245], p. 375), and we meet with it again in our next cut ([No. 308]). It is what was sometimes called a folding chair. This cut is taken from one of the illustrations to the English edition of Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” printed in 1676, but it is a copy of the earlier originals. The great weaving establishments in England appear to have commenced in the sixteenth century, with the Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands.

No. 307. A Lady at the Loom.

The old domestic games continued to be practised in the middle and upper classes of society, although they were rather extensively superseded by the pernicious rage for gambling which now prevailed throughout English society. This practice had been extending itself ever since the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had been accompanied with another evil practice among the ladies, that of drinking. It need hardly be observed that these two vices furnished constant themes to the dramatists and satirists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the example set by the court under James I. caused them to increase greatly, and they rose to the highest pitch of extravagance under Charles II. Barclay’s “Ship of Fools” (the early English edition) has furnished us with the group of female gamesters, represented in our cut [No. 308]. It will be seen that the ladies are playing with cards and dice, and that the ale jug is introduced as an accompaniment. In fact we must look upon it as a tavern party, and the round table, as far as we can judge, appears to be fixed in the ground. The same book furnishes us with an illustration (cut [No. 309]), in which two gamblers are quarrelling over a game at backgammon. A child is here the jug-bearer or guardian of the liquor. Our cut [No. 310] represents a gambling scene of a rather later period, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” printed in 1586; dice are here the implements of play.

No. 308. A Party of Ladies.

No. 309. A Gamblers’ Dispute.

No. 310. A Party at Dice.

A very curious piece of painted glass, now in the possession of Mr. Fairholt, of German manufacture, and forming part, apparently, of a series illustrative of the history of the Prodigal Son, represents a party of gamblers, of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, in which they are playing with two dice. It is copied in our cut [No. 311]. The original bears the inscription, “Jan Van Hassell Tryngen sin hausfrau,” with a merchant’s mark, and the date, 1532. Three dice, however, continued to be used long after this, and are, from time to time, alluded to during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

I have, in a former chapter, traced the history of playing-cards down to the latter half of the fifteenth century. After that time, they are frequently mentioned. They formed the common amusement in the courts of Scotland and England 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.”

No. 311. A Gambling Party of the Sixteenth Century.

In Germany at this time card-playing was carried to an extravagant degree, and it became an object of attack and satire to the reformers among the clergy. Our cut [No. 312] represents a German card-party in a tavern, taken from an early painted coffer in the Museum of Old German Art at Nuremberg. The design of the cards is that of packs of fancifully ornamented cards made in Germany at the close of the fifteenth century. The German satirists of that age complain that the rage for gambling had taken possession of all classes of society, and levelled all ranks, ages, and sexes; that the noble gambled with the commoner, and the clergy with the laity. Some of the clerical reformers declared that card-playing as well as dice was a deadly sin, and others complained that this love of gambling had caused people to forget all honourable pursuits.

No. 312. Cards early in the Sixteenth Century.

A similar outcry was raised in our own country; and a few years later it arose equally loud. A short anonymous poem on the ruin of the realm, belonging apparently to the earlier part of the reign of Henry VIII. (MS. Harl. No. 2252, fol. 25, v^o), complains of the nobles and gentry:— Before thys tyme they lovyd for to juste,
And in shotynge chefely they sett ther mynde,
And ther landys and possessyons now sett they moste,
And at cardes and dyce ye may them ffynde.
“Cardes and dyce” are from this time forward spoken of as the great blot on contemporary manners; and they seem for a long time to have driven most other games out of use. Roy, in his remarkable satire against cardinal Wolsey, complains that the bishops themselves were addicted to gambling:— To play at the cardes and dyce
Some of theym are no thynge nyce,
Both at hasard and mom-chaunce.
The rage for cards and dice prevailed equally in Scotland. Sir David Lindsay’s popish parson, in 1535, boasts of his skill in these games:— Thoch I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche;
I wot there is nocht ane amang yow all
Mair ferylie can play at the fute-ball;
And for the cartis, the tabels, and the dyse,
Above all parsouns I may beir the pryse.
The same celebrated writer, in a poem against cardinal Beaton, represents that prelate as a great gambler:—

In banketting, playing at cartis and dyce,
Into sic wysedome I was haldin wyse,
And spairit nocht to play with king nor knicht
Thre thousand crownes of golde upon ane night.

Though gardening and horticulture in general, as arts, were undergoing considerable improvement during this period, the garden itself appears to have been much more neglected, except as far as it was the scene of other pastimes. A bowling-green was the most important part of the pleasure garden in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and bowls, and exercises of a similar character, were the favourite amusements of all classes. The gardens themselves, which were apart from the house, and made more retired by lofty walls enclosing them, were usually adorned with alcoves and summer-houses, or, as they were then more usually termed, garden-houses, but these were chiefly celebrated, especially in the seventeenth century, as places of intrigue. There are continual allusions to this usage in the popular writers of the time. Thus, one of the personages in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman Hater” exclaims, “This is no garden-house: in my conscience she went forth with no dishonest intent.” And, in the play of the “Mayor of Quinsborough,”— Poor soul, she’s entic’d forth by her own sex
To be betray’d to man, who in some garden-house,
Or remote walk, taking his lustful time,
Binds darkness on her eyes, surprises her.
A character in another old play, “The London Prodigal,” seeking employment of a rather equivocal character, says, “Now God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or garden-house, where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all secret service.”

Amid the gaiety which was so especially characteristic of this age, a spirit of vulgar barbarity had arisen and spread itself very widely, and the popular games most practised were in general coarse and cruel. A foreign writer already quoted, but one who was evidently a very unprejudiced observer, has left us some rather amusing remarks on this subject which are worthy of being repeated. “The English,” he says, “have games which are peculiar to them, or at least, which they affect and practise more than people do elsewhere. To see cocks fight is a royal pleasure in England. Their combats of bulls and dogs, of bears and dogs, and sometimes of bulls and bears, are not combats to the last gasp, like those of cocks. Everything that is called fighting is a delicious thing to an Englishman. If two little boys quarrel in a street, the passers stop, make in a moment a ring round them, and encourage them to settle it by blows of the fist. If it comes to fighting, each takes off his cravat and his jacket, and gives them in charge to one of the company; then begin the blows of the fist, in the face if possible, the blows of the foot on their shins, the pulling of one another by the hair, &c. The one who has knocked the other down, may give him one blow or two when he is down, but no more, and every time the one who is down will rise, the other must return to the combat as long as he pleases. During the combat, the circle of spectators encourage the combatants to the great joy of their hearts, and never separate them, so long as things are done according to rule. And these spectators are not only other children, and street porters, but all sorts of respectable people, some of whom make their way through the crowd to see nearer, others mount upon the shops, and all would pay for places, if stages could be built up in a moment. The fathers and mothers of the little boys who are fighting look on like the others, and encourage the one who gives way, or is wanting in strength. These kind of combats are less frequent among grown-up men than among children, but they are not uncommon. If the driver of a hackney-coach has a dispute about his fare, with a gentleman whom he has carried, and the gentleman offers to settle the dispute by fighting, the coachman agrees to it willingly. The gentleman takes off his sword, disposes of it in some shop with his walking-stick, his gloves, and his cravat, and fights in the manner I have described. If the coachman is well beaten, which is almost always the case, he is considered as paid; but if he beats, he who is beaten must pay the sum that was in question, and that which caused the quarrel. I once saw the late duke of Grafton fighting in the open street in the middle of the Strand with a coachman, whom he thrashed in a terrible manner. In France, we treat such kind of people with blows of a stick or, sometimes, of the flat of the sword; but in England that is never done; they never use a sword or stick against those who are not similarly armed; and if any unlucky foreigner (for it would never come into the mind of an Englishman) should strike with the sword any one who had not got one, it is certain that in an instant a hundred persons would fall upon him, and perhaps beat him so that he would never recover. Wrestling is also one of the diversions of the English, especially in the northern provinces. Ringing the bells is one of their great pleasures, especially in the country; there is a way of doing it, but their peal is quite different from those of Holland and the Low Countries. In winter football is a useful and charming exercise; it is a ball of leather, as large as a man’s head, and filled with wind; it is tossed with the feet in the streets. To expose a cock in a place, and kill it at a distance of forty or fifty paces with a stick, is also a very diverting thing; but this pleasure only belongs to a certain season. This also is the case with the dances of the milkwomen, with the throwing at one another of tennis-balls by girls, and with divers other little exercises.” Such was the rude character of the amusement of all classes of our population during the seventeenth century.

The ladies still had their household pets, though they varied sometimes in their character, which perhaps arose in some measure from the circumstance that the discovery of or increased communication with distant countries, brought the knowledge of animals and birds which were not so well known before. Thus, in the sixteenth century, monkeys appear to have been much in fashion as domestic favourites, and we not unfrequently find them in prints in attendance upon ladies. Since the discovery of the West Indies, and the voyages of the Portuguese to the coast of Africa, parrots had become much more common than formerly. In pictures of the period of which we are speaking, we often find these, as well as smaller domestic birds, in cages of various forms. In our cut [No. 313], taken from Whitney’s “Emblems” (printed in 1585), we have a parrot in its cage, and a small bird (perhaps meant for a canary), the latter of which is drawing up its water to drink in a manner which has been practised in modern times, and supposed to be a novelty. It is very unsafe indeed to assume that any ingenious contrivances of this kind are modern, for we often meet with them unexpectedly at a comparatively early date.

No. 313. Birds and Birdcage.

With the multiplicity of new fashions in dress now introduced, the work of the toilette became much greater and more varied, and many customs were introduced from France, from Italy, and from the East. Among customs derived from the latter quarter, was the introduction of the eastern hot and sweating baths, which became for a considerable period common in England. They were usually known by the plain English name of hothouses, but their eastern origin was also sometimes indicated by the preservation of their Persian name of hummums. This name is still retained by the two modern hotels which occupy the sites of establishments of this description in Covent Garden. Sweating in hothouses is spoken of by Ben Jonson; and a character in the old play of “The Puritan,” speaking of a laborious undertaking, says, “Marry, it will take me much sweat; I were better go to sixteen hothouses.” They seem to have been mostly frequented by women, and became, as in the East, favourite places of rendezvous for gossip and company. They were soon used to such an extent for illicit intrigues, that the name of a hothouse or bagnio became equivalent to that of a brothel; and this circumstance probably led eventually to their disuse. A very rare and curious broadside woodcut of the reign of James I., entitled “Tittle-tattle, or the several branches of gossipping,” which in different compartments represents pictorially the way in which the women of that age idled away their time, gives in one part a sketch of the interior of a hothouse, which is copied in our cut [No. 314]. In one division of the hothouse the ladies are bathing in tubs, while they are indulging themselves with an abundance of very substantial dainties; in the other, they appear to be still more busily engaged in gossip. The whole broadside is a singularly interesting illustration of contemporary manners. A copy of it will be found in the print-room of the British Museum; and it may be remarked (which I think has not been observed before), that it is copied from a large French etching of about the same period, a copy of which is in the print department of the Imperial Library in Paris.

No. 314. A Hothouse.

This is sufficient to show the close resemblance at this time between manners in France and in England. In the former country, the resort of women in company to the hot-baths is not unfrequently alluded to, and their behaviour and conversation there are described in terms of satire which cannot always be transferred to our modern pages. In these popular satires, the bathers are sometimes chambrières, and at others good bourgeoises. The pic-nics, which had formerly taken place at the tavern, were now transferred to the hot-bath, each of a party of bathers carrying some contribution to the feast, which they shared in common. Thus, in the popular piece entitled “Le Banquet des Chambrières fait aux Estuves,” printed in 1541, it is the chamber-maidens who go to the bath, and they begin immediately to produce their contributions, one exclaiming— —j’ay du porc frais,
Une andouille et quatre saulcices.
To which a second adds,— —j’aye une cottelette,
Qui le ventre quasi m’eschaulde.
And a third,— Moy, un pasté à sauce chaulde.
The women are seen eating their pic-nic feast in one compartment of our cut. This practice soon passed from the servant maids of the bourgeoisie to their mistresses, and from the burghers’ wives to ladies of higher condition. Our word pic-nic, representing the French piquenique, the origin or derivation of which word seems not to be clearly known, appears to have come into use at the latter end of the last century, when people of rank formed evening parties at which they joined in such pic-nic suppers, to which each brought his or her contribution. The term is now applied almost solely to such collations in the fields, or in the open air.

We have already seen how, at an earlier period, men of a superior rank in London, and probably in at least the larger country towns, lived much in the taverns and cooks’ shops or eating-houses. This practice continued, and underwent various modifications, the principal of which was the establishment of houses where a public table was served at fixed hours, at which a gentleman could take his place on payment of a certain sum, much in the same style as our modern tables d’hôte. Gradually these establishments became gambling-houses, and men settled down after dinner to cards, dice, and other games. They were called ordinaries, and in the reign of Elizabeth they had become an important part of the social system. It was here that people went to hear the news of the day, or the talk of the town, and to frequent the ordinary became gradually considered as a necessary part of the education of a gentleman of fashion. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the usual price of an ordinary appears to have been two shillings; but there were ordinaries at eighteen-pence, and at some fashionable ordinaries the price was much higher.

No. 315. Swaddling a Child.

The general treatment of children, their costume, and their amusements, remained much as formerly, and closely resembled those of France and Germany as they were then, and as they have existed in some parts even to our own days. The pernicious practice of swathing or swaddling the child as soon as it was born prevailed everywhere, and the infant was kept in this condition until it became necessary to teach it the use of its limbs. The process of swaddling is shown in our cut [No. 315], taken from one of the prints by Bosse, published in 1633, which furnish such abundant illustration of contemporary manners. The period during which boys were kept in petticoats was very short, for at a very early age they were dressed in the same dress as up-grown people, like little miniature men. Our only representatives of the appearance of little boys in the sixteenth century, is found in one or two educational establishments, such as the Blue-Coat School in London. The costume of a child during the short transition period between his swathes and his breeches is represented in our cut [No. 316], of a boy riding upon his wooden horse. It is taken from a German woodcut of the date of 1549.

No. 316. A Boy a-cock-horse.

In the sixteenth century little improvement had taken place in the means of locomotion, which was still performed generally on horseback. Coaches, by that name, are said to have been introduced into England only towards the middle of the sixteenth century. They were made in various forms and sizes, according to fashion or caprice, and towards the end of the century they were divided into two classes, known by the foreign names of coaches and caroches. The latter appear to have been larger and clumsier than the former, but to have been considered more stately; and from the old play of “Tu Quoque,” by Green (a drama of Elizabeth’s reign), we learn that it was considered more appropriate to the town (and probably to the court), while the coach was left to the country:—

Nay, for a need, out of his easy nature,
May’st draw him to the keeping of a coach
For country, and carroch for London.

Ben Jonson, in his comedy of “The Devil is an Ass,” gives us a great notion of the bustle attending a caroch:— Have with them for the great caroch, six horses,
And the two coachmen, with my ambler bare,
And my three women.
Coaches of any kind, however, were evidently not in very common use until after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Women in general, at least those who were not skilful horsewomen, when the distance or any other circumstance precluded their going on foot, rode on a pillion or side-saddle behind a man, one of her relatives or friends, or sometimes a servant. The accompanying cut ([No. 317]) represents a couple thus mounted, the lady holding in her hand the kind of fan which was used at the period. From a comparison of the figure of the Anglo-Saxon ladies on horseback, who were evidently seated in the saddle as in a chair, sideways to the horse, we are led to suppose that the Anglo-Saxon lady’s saddle, and probably the saddle for females in general during the middle ages, was the same as that which was known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the name of a pillion. The rider placed her feet usually on a narrow board, which was called in French the planchette. It is evident that a woman could not be very solidly seated in this manner, and not only did she want the command over the horse which would enable her to take part in any very active exercises, but it was considered almost necessary to place a man on a saddle before her. We have, accordingly, seen that, from a very early period, when engaged in hunting and in any sort of active riding, the lady used a saddle, as at present, in which she raised one leg over a part of the saddle-bow, made for that purpose, and placed the other foot in the stirrup, by which she obtained a firm seat, and a command over the horse. Different writers have ascribed, without any reason, the introduction of this mode of riding for ladies to various individuals, and Brantôme seems to have thought that this practice was first brought into fashion by Catherine de Medicis. The last cut is taken from a drawing in the curious Album of Charles de Bousy, containing dates from 1608 to 1638, and now preserved among the Sloane manuscripts (No. 3415) in the British Museum; and the same manuscript has also furnished us with the annexed cut ([No. 318]) of a lady of rank carried in her chair, with her chair-bearers and attendants. Ladies, and especially persons suffering from illness, were often carried in horse-litters, and there are instances of chairs mounted somewhat like the one here represented, and carried by horses. The first attempt towards the modern gig or cabriolet appears to have been a chair fixed in a cart, something in the style of that represented in our cut [No. 319], which in its ornamentation has a very mediæval character, although it is given as from a manuscript in the Imperial Library in Paris (No. 6808), of the beginning of the sixteenth century.

No. 317. Riding on a Pillion.

No. 318. A Lady carried in her Chair.

The close of the period of which we are here speaking introduces us to one in which the manners and customs of our forefathers were less widely different from those of our own days; and the history of domestic manners since that time, characterised less by broad outline of the general features in its revolutions than by a gradual succession of minute changes, and fashions which must be traced from day to day, is less capable of being treated in the comprehensive style of these pages. Having now, therefore, brought down our sketch of the History of the Domestic Manners of our forefathers to the middle of the seventeenth century, we shall here, for the reason just stated, conclude it, and leave to some worthier labourer, or to some future occasion, the task of tracing more minutely the history of domestic manners and sentiments during the period which followed the middle ages.

No. 319. A Mediæval Cabriolet.