Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

But what, perhaps, more than anything else tended to maintain the social consideration of traders, was their incorporation into wealthy and powerful guilds; and the civil freedom and political weight of the towns. The rather common-looking man, in a plain cloth gown and flat cap, jogging along the high road on a hack, with great saddle-bags, is not to be compared in appearance with the knight who prances past him on a spirited charger, with a couple of armed servants at his heels; and the trader pulls his horse to the side of the road, and touches his bonnet as the cavalcade passes him in a cloud of dust; but the knight glances at his fellow-traveller’s hood as he passes, and recognises in him a member of the great Guild of Merchants of the Staple, and returns his courtesy. The nobleman, jostling at court against a portly citizen in a furred gown with a short dagger and inkhorn at his belt, sees in him an alderman of one of those great towns by whose help the king maintains the balance of power against the feudal aristocracy. Yet, after all, why should the merchant be “a rather common-looking man,” and the alderman a “portly citizen”? We are all apt to let our sober sense be fooled by our imagination. Thus we are apt to have in our minds abstract types of classes of men: our ideal knight is gallant in bearing, gay in apparel, chivalrous in character; while our ideal merchant is prosaic and closefisted in character, plain and uncourtly in manner and speech. A moment’s thought would be enough to remind us that Nature does not anticipate or adapt herself to class distinctions: the knight and the merchant, we have seen, might be brothers, reared up in the same old manor-house; and the elder son might be naturally a clown, though fortune made him Sir Hugh; while the cadet might be full of intelligence and spirit, dignified and courteous, though fortune had put a flat cap instead of a helmet on his head, and a pen instead of a lance into his hand.

Our plan limits us to mere glances at the picturesque outside aspect of things. Let us travel across England, and see what we can learn on our subject from the experiences of our journey. A right pleasant journey, too, in the genial spring-time or early summer. It must be taken on horseback; for, though sometimes we shall find ourselves on a highway between one great town and another, yet, for the most part, our road is along bridle-paths, across heath and moor; through miles of “greenwood;” across fords; over wide unenclosed wolds and downs dotted with sheep; through valleys where oxen feed in the deep meadowland; with comparatively little arable, covered with the green blades of rye and barley, oats, and a little wheat—

“Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky.”

Now and then we ride through a village of cottages scattered about the village-green; and see, perhaps, the parish-priest, in cassock and biretta, coming out of the village-church from his mass. Further on we pass the moated manor-house of a country knight, or the substantial old timber-built house of a franklin, with the blue wood-smoke puffing in a volume out of the louvre of the hall, and curling away among the great oak-trees which overshadow it. We may stay there and ask for luncheon, and be sure of a hearty welcome: Chaucer tells us,

“His table dormant in the hall alway
Stands ready covered, all the longe day.”

Then a strong castle comes in sight on a rising ground, with its picturesque group of walls and towers, and the donjon-tower rising high in the midst, surmounted by the banner of its lord. We seek out the monasteries for their hospitable shelter at nights: they are the inns of mediæval England; and we gaze in admiration as we approach them and enter their courts. From outside we see a great enclosure-wall, over which rise the clerestories and towers of a noble minster-church; and when we have entered through the gate-house we find the cloister court, with its convent buildings for the monks, and another court of offices, and the guest-house for the entertainment of travellers, and the abbot’s-house—a separate establishment, with a great hall and chambers and chapel, like the manor-house of a noble; so that, surrounded by its wall, with strong entrance-towers, the monastery looks like a great castle or a little town; and we doff our hats to the dignified-looking monk who is ambling out of the great gate on his mule, as to the representative of the noble community which has erected so grand a house, and maintains there its hospitalities and charities, schools and hospitals, and offers up, seven times a day in the choir, a glorious service of praise to Almighty God, and of prayer for the welfare of His church and people. But from time to time, also, we approach and ride through the towns, which are studded as thickly over the land as castles or monasteries. Each surrounded by a fair margin of common meadowland, out of which rise the long line of strong walls with angle towers, with picturesque machicolations and overhanging pent-houses; and the great gate-towers with moat, drawbridge, and barbican. Over the wall numerous church-towers and spires are seen rising from a forest of gables, making a goodly show. We enter, and find wide streets of handsome picturesque houses, with abundance of garden and orchard ground behind them, and guildhalls and chapels, the head-quarters of the various guilds and companies. The traders are wealthy, and indulge in conveniences which are rare in the franklin’s house, and even the lord’s castle; and live a more refined mode of life than the old rude, if magnificent, feudal life. Look at the extent of the town, at its strong defences; estimate the wealth it contains; think of the clannish spirit of its guilds; see the sturdy burghers, who turn out at the sound of the town-bell, in half armour, with pike and bow, to man the walls; consider the chiefs of the community, men of better education, wider experience of the world, deeper knowledge of political affairs, than most of their countrymen, many of them of the “gentleman” class by birth and breeding, men of perfect self-respect, and of high public spirit. If our journey terminates at one of the seaports, as Hull, or Lynn, or Dover, or Hythe, or Bristol, we find—in addition to the usual well-walled town, with houses and noble churches and guildhalls—a harbour full of merchant-ships, and exchanges full of foreign merchants; and we soon learn that these are the links which join England to the rest of the world in a period of peace, and enable her in time of war to make her power felt beyond the seas. Many of these towns have inherited their walls and their civic freedom from Roman times: they stood like islands amid the flood of the Saxon invasion; they received their charters from Norman kings, and maintained them against Norman barons. Each of them is a little republic amidst the surrounding feudalism; each citizen is a freeman, when everybody else is the sworn liege-man of some feudal lord.

These experiences of our ride across England will have left their strong impressions on our minds. The castles will have impressed our minds with a sense of the feudal power and chivalric state of the territorial class; and the monasteries with admiration of the grandeur and learning and munificence and sanctity of the religious orders; and the towns with a feeling of solid respect for the wealth and power and freedom and civilisation of the trader class of the people.

Entry of Queen Isabel of Bavaria into Paris, A.D. 1389.

Our first illustration forms part of a large picture in the great Harleian MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle (Harl. 2,397, f. 3), and represents Isabel of Bavaria, Queen of Charles VII., making her entry into Paris attended by noble dames and lords of France, on Sunday, 20th of August, in the year of our Lord 1389. There was a great crowd of spectators, Froissart tells us, and the bourgeois of Paris, twelve hundred, all on horseback, were ranged in pairs on each side of the road, and clothed in a livery of gowns of baudekyn green and red. The Queen, seated in her canopied litter, occupies the middle of the picture, in robe and mantle of blue powdered with fleur-de-lis, three noblemen walking on each side in their robes and coronets. The page and ladies, who follow on horseback, are not given in our woodcut. The Queen has just arrived at the gate of the city; through the open door may be seen a bishop (? the Archbishop of Paris) in a cope of blue powdered with gold fleur-de-lis, holding a gold and jewelled box, which perhaps contains the chrism for her coronation. On the wall overlooking the entrance is the king with ladies of the court, and perched on the angle of the wall is the court jester in his cap and bauble. On the left of the picture are the burgesses of Paris; their short gowns are of green and red as described; the hats, which hang over their shoulders, are black. On the opposite side of the road (not represented in the cut) is another party of burgesses, who wear their hats, the bands falling on each side of the face. In the background are the towers and spires of the city, and the west front of Notre-Dame, rising picturesquely above the city-wall.