Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Alice Stopford Green

Minstrels and harpers and pipers and singers and play-actors, who stayed at home through the dark winter days “from the feast of all Saints to the feast of the Purification,” to make music and diversion for their fellow citizens, started off on their travels when the fine weather came, and journeyed from town to town giving their performances, and rewarded at the public expense with a gift of 6s. 8d. or 3s. 4d., and with dinner and wine “for the honour of the town.”[265] It was an easy life—

“Some mirth to make as minstrels conneth (know),
That will neither swynke (toil) nor sweat, but swear great oaths,
And find up foul fantasies and fools them maken,
And have wit at will to work if they would.”[266]

Entries in the town accounts of Lydd give some idea of the constant visits of these wandering troops, and of the charges which they made upon the town treasure.[267] Players from Romney came times without number, others from Rukinge, Wytesham, Herne, Hamme, Appledore, Stone, Folkestone, Rye; and besides these came the minstrels of the great lords, the King, the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord De Bourchier, Lord Fiennes, the Earl of Warwick, the Duke of York, Lord Arundel, Lord Exeter, Lord Shrewsbury, the Earl of Pembroke, Lord Dacres, etc.; all of whom doubtless the town dared not refuse to entertain, but “for love of their lords lythen (listen to) them at feasts.”[268] Besides this Lydd had its own special plays, The May and The Interlude of Our Lord’s Passion, and the whole town would gather on a Sunday to hear the actors, while watchmen were paid to keep guard on the shore against a surprise of the French. Its players seem to have set the fashion in the neighbourhood; the Romney Corporation “chose wardens to have the play of Christ’s Passion, as from olden time they were wont to have it,” and paid the expenses of a man to go to Lydd “to see the original of our play there,” besides giving the Lydd players a reward of 20s. for their performance.[269]

Other wanderers too knocked at the gates of Lydd—”the man with the dromedary,” a “bear-ward,” or the keeper of the King’s lions travelling with his menagerie and demanding a sheep to be given to the lions; archers and wrestlers from neighbouring towns whom Jurats and Commons gathered to see, and supplied with wrestling collars and food for themselves and their horses, as well as a “reward” at the public expense.[270] Besides bull-baiting, Lydd, doubtless, like other towns, had its occasional “bear-baiting.” There were the Christmas games and mumming, and the yearly visit of the “Boy Bishop”[271] of S. Nicholas who came from Romney to hold his feast at Lydd. And there was the universal festival of the “watch” on S. John’s Eve, when Lydd paid out of its common chest for the candles kept burning all night in the Common House, and for the feast—not a trifling expense if we may judge by the case of Bristol where the crafts who took part in the watch divided among them ninety-four gallons of wine.[272]

This festival was observed everywhere, but other local feasts were arranged according to local traditions. In Canterbury every Mayor was bound “to keep the watch” on the Eve of the Translation of S. Thomas. “And in the aforesaid watch the Sheriff to ride in harness with a henchman after him honestly emparelled for the honour of the same city. And the Mayor to ride at his pleasure, and if the Mayor’s pleasure be to ride in harness, the Aldermen to ride in like manner, and if he ride in his scarlet gown, the Aldermen to ride after the same watch in scarlet and crimson gowns.” The city was to be lighted by the Mayor finding “two cressets, or six torches, or more at his pleasure,” every Alderman finding two cressets, and each of the Common Council with every constable and town clerk one cresset. In Chester the great day for merry making was Shrove Tuesday, when the drapers, saddlers, shoemakers and many others met at the cross on the Roodeye, and there in the presence of the Mayor the shoemakers gave to the drapers a football of leather “to play at from thence to the Common Hall.” The saddlers at the same time gave “every master of them a painted ball of wood with flowers and arms upon the point of a spear, being goodly arrayed upon horseback accordingly.” The whole town joined in the sports, and everyone married within the year gave some contribution toward their funds.[273]

To these festivities we must add the yearly pageants of the Guilds—whether of the great societies like the Guild of St. George at Norwich,[274] whose Alderman in scarlet robe followed by the four hundred members with their distinguishing red hoods, marched after the sword of wood with a Dragon’s head for the handle which had been presented to them by Henry the Fifth;—or of the Corpus Christi Guild which evidently played a political part in the life of every great town. In York it is said to have had in the sixteenth century nearly fifteen thousand members, and at its great pageant, the Mayor and Town Council “and other worshipful persons” joined in a common feast, and sent wine and fruits at the public expense to great nobles and ladies in the city, till perhaps supplies ran out and the town was “drunken dry.”[275] The Craft Guilds also, whether voluntarily or by order of the Corporation, had their pageants, acting the same play year after year.[276]

It has been commonly supposed that the English people had in the later middle ages a passion for pageantry and display, which was one of the strongest forces in maintaining their guild organization. But towards the end of the fifteenth century at least it becomes less and less clear that the freewill of the craftsmen had much to say to the maintenance of these public gaieties, or that they felt any enthusiasm for amusements which yearly grew more expensive and burdensome.[277] There were places where the crafts, whether through poverty or economy, neglected to spend a due proportion of their earnings on the public festivals, and in one town after another as popular effort declined the authorities began to urge the people on to the better fulfilment of their duties. In 1490 a complaint was made in Canterbury that the Corpus Christi Play, the City Watch on S. Thomas’ Eve, and the Pageant of S. Thomas had fallen into decay. Some Mayors indeed “in their year have full honourably kept the said watch;” but others had neglected it, and “all manner of harness within the city is decayed and rusted for lack of the yearly watch.” It was therefore decreed that every Mayor should henceforth “keep the watch,” and that the crafts who apparently hoped to escape from the heavy charges of these plays by declaring themselves too poor to be formed into a corporate body, should forthwith be grouped together into a sort of confederation or give up their bodies for punishment.[278] In the same way when the tailors of Plymouth were incorporated in 1496, they had to bind themselves to provide a pageant every year on Corpus Christi Day for the benefit of the Corpus Christi Guild,[279] and so on in many other towns. Occasionally indeed the Corporation took a different and more merciful line; for the Mayor and Sheriffs of Norwich petitioned the Lords and Commons to pass an Act or Order to prevent Players of Interludes from coming into the city, as they took so large a share of the earnings of the poor operatives as to cause great want to their families, and a heavy charge to the city,[280] and Bridgenorth got an order from Elizabeth that the town might no longer pay players or bear-wards; whoever wanted to see such things must see them “upon their own costs and charges.”[281]

On the whole it is evident that long before the Reformation, and even when as yet no Puritan principles had been imported into the matter, the gaiety of the towns was already sobered by the pressure of business and the increase of the class of depressed workers. It was not before the fanaticism of religion, but before the coming in of new forms of poverty and of bondage that the old games and pageants lost their lustre and faded out of existence, save where a mockery of life was preserved to them by compulsion of the town authorities. And the town authorities were probably acting under pressure of the publicans, and licensed victuallers. Cooks and brewers and hostellers[282] were naturally deeply interested in the preservation of the good old customs, and it was in some cases certainly this class, the most powerful in a mediæval borough, who raised the protest against the indifference and neglect of the townspeople for public processions and merry-making, because “thereby the victuallers lose their money, and who insisted on the revival of these festivals for the encouragement of trade. Probably where the crafts were strong and the votes of the working people carried the day, the decision turned the other way.

VIII. All the multitudinous activities and accidents of this common life were summed up for the people in the parish church that stood in their market-place, close to the Common House or Guild Hall. This was the fortress of the borough against its enemies—its place of safety where the treasure of the commons was stored in dangerous times, the arms in the steeple, the wealth of corn or wool or precious goods[283] in the church itself,[284] guarded by a sentence of excommunication against all who should violate so sacred a protection.[285] Its shrines were hung with the strange new things which English sailors had begun to bring across the great seas—with “horns of unicorns,” ostrich eggs, or walrus tusks, or the rib of a whale given by Sebastian Cabot. From the church tower the bell rang out which called the people to arm for the common defence, or summoned a general assembly, or proclaimed the opening of the market.[286] Burghers had their seats in the church apportioned to them by the corporation in the same rank and order as the stalls which it had already assigned to them in the market-place. The city officers and their wives sat in the chief places of honour; next to them came tradesmen according to their degree with their families honourably “y-parroked (parked) in pews,” where Wrath sat among the proud ladies who quarrelled as to which should first receive the holy bread;[287] while “apprentices and servants shall sit or stand in the alleys.” There on Sundays and feast-days the people came to hear any news of importance to the community, whether it was a list of strayed sheep, or a proclamation by the bailiff of the penalties which had been decreed in the manor court against offenders.[288] The church was their Common Hall where the commonalty met for all kinds of business, to audit the town accounts, to divide the common lands, to make grants of property, to hire soldiers, or to elect a mayor. There the council met on Sundays or festivals, as might best suit their convenience; so that we even hear of a payment made by the priest to the corporation to induce them not to hold their assemblies in the chancel while high mass was being performed.[289] It was the natural place for justices to sit and hear cases of assault and theft; or it might serve as a hall where difficult legal questions could be argued out by lawyers. In the middle of the fifteenth century when the Bishop and the Mayor of Exeter were in the height of a fierce contest about the government of the town they met for discussion in the cathedral. “When my lord had said his prayers at the high altar he went apart to the side altar by himself and called to him apart the mayor and no more, and there communed together a great while.” And on this common ground the dean and chapter on the one side and the mayor and Town Council on the other, attended by their respective lawyers, fought out the questions of law on which the case turned.[290] In fair time the throng of traders expected to be allowed to overflow from the High Street into the cathedral precincts, and were “ever wont and used ... to lay open, buy and sell divers merchandises in the said church and cemetery and special in the king’s highway there as at Wells, Salisbury and other places more, as dishes, bowls, and other things like, and in the said church ornaments for the same and other jewels convenient thereto.”[291] In a draft presentation to a London vicarage of 1427 there is a written memorandum with an order from the king that no fairs or markets shall be held in sanctuaries, “for the honour of Holy Church.”[292] Edward the First had indeed forbidden such fairs in his Statute of Merchants, but such an order was little in harmony with the habits and customs of the age; and if there was an occasional stirring of conscience in the matter, it was not till the time of Laud that the public attained to a conviction, or acquiesced in an authoritative assertion, that the church was desecrated by the transaction in it of common business.[293]

In the middle ages however the townspeople were connected with their parish church after a fashion which has long been unknown among us. They were frequently the lay rectors; they appointed the wardens and churchwardens; they had control of the funds, and the administration of lands left for maintaining its services and fabric; sometimes they laid claim to the fees paid for masses.[294] The popular interest might even extend to the criticism and discipline of the rector; so that in Bridport an enquiry of the bishop as to whether his chaplain, “a foreigner from Britanny,” was “drunk every day” was held in presence of “a copious multitude of the parishioners,” and twelve townsmen acted as witnesses.[295] If a religious guild had become identified with the corporation, the town body and the Church were united by a yet closer tie. The corporation of Plymouth, which on its other side was the Guild of our Lady and St. George, issued its instructions even as to the use of vestments in St. Andrews, ruling when “the best copes and vestments” should be used at funerals, and how “the second blue copes” only might be displayed at the burial of any man who died without leaving to the Church an offering of twenty shillings.[296]