[378]. We are all familiar with the old adage,
‘After dinner sit awhile,
After supper walk a mile’:
it often used to puzzle me that this last line, while speaking from a medical point of view, should so calmly give up the general question as to whether suppers were or were not advisable as a part of the domestic régime. When we remember, however, that the couplet doubtless arose in a day when dinner was at twelve and supper at five or six, we can better understand its intent.
[379]. William Fleshmonger, D.C.L., was Dean of Chichester in 1528. (Hist. Univ. Oxford. Ackermann, p. 154.)
‘Also, the usage of fleshemongeres ys swych, that everych fleshemongere’ not a freman shall pay 25d. a year to the King if he have a stall. (Usages of Winchester. English Gilds, 354.)
[380]. The following list in one of our early statutes will help to familiarize the reader’s mind with some of these mediæval Latinisms:
‘Item, sallarii, pelletarii, allutarii, sutores, cissores, fabri, carpentarii, cementarii, tegularii, batellarii, carectarii, et quicunque alii artifices non capiant pro labore et artificio suo,’ etc.
‘Item, quod carnifices, piscenarii, hostellarii, braciatores, pistores, pulletarii et omnes alii venditores victualium teneantur hujus-modi victualia vendere,’ etc. [Stat. of Realm, vol. 1. p. 308.)
The first list refers to the ‘saddlers, skinners, whitetawyers, shoemakers, taylors, wrights, carpenters, masons, tylers, boatwrights, and carters;’ the second to the ‘butchers, fishmongers, taverners, brewers, bakers, and poulterers.’ With regard to the ‘Carnifex’ we may add that among other items of expenditure belonging to Edw. I.’s Queen at Cawood is mentioned ‘expensa duorum carnificum eosdem boves emencium.’