Punishing on pillories,
Or on pynnyng stools,
Brewesters, Bakers,
Bochers, and Cookes,
For these be men upon molde (earth)
That most harm worken
To the poor people.
‘Cook’ or ‘Coke’ certainly holds a high position in the scale of frequency at present, and, as I have had occasion to notice in another chapter, is one of those few tradal names that have taken to them the filial desinence, ‘Cookson’ being by no means uncommon. Of all these we might have said much, but to mention them must suffice, and to pass on. Solid bread-baking, however, as I have just hinted, was not the sole employment of this nature in early days. A poem I have recently quoted speaks of ‘waferers.’ Our ‘Wafers,’ relics of the old ‘Simon’ or ‘Robert le Wafre,’ seem to have confined themselves all but entirely to the provision of eucharistic bread, though they were probably vendors also of those sweet and spiced cakes which, under the name of ‘marchpanes,’ were decidedly popular. Among other gifts that Absolom the clerk gave Alison, Chaucer hints of—
Wafers piping hot out of the glede,[[371]]
and the ‘Pardoner,’ in enumerating the company of lewd folks of Flanders, speaks of ‘fruitsters,’ ‘singers with harps,’ and ‘waferers.’ Piers Plowman puts them amid still more disreputable associates. No doubt, true to the old adage, ‘near the church, never in it,’ they were wont to hang about the sacred edifice abroad and at home, offering their traffic to the devouter worshippers as they entered in. We ourselves know how searing to heart and conscience is such a life as this. That all were not of this kind we are reminded by the will of an Archbishop of York of the thirteenth century, who therein bequeaths a certain sum to two ‘waferers,’ evidently on account of their exemplary conduct while conducting their trade at the Minster door.