The Swan, Felstead
The signboards tell the same tale all through the fifteenth century. The Antelope of Henry VI, the White Lion of Edward IV, and the White Boar of Richard III each take their turn. The changes they represented meant little more than incidental gossip to the burghers. All the real life of the citizens was in their home and trade, in their craft guilds, in treaties with neighbouring towns, or in the little controversies of the town council.
We know only a few incidental details about the internal comforts of the White Hart inns. The majority of the guests slept in large rooms, on couches or wooden bedsteads. Only a few very important grandees were accorded a private camera. The bed was a long sack-like mattress stuffed with straw or hay; great folk would carry with them their own bed on their journeys. Most people lay in their ordinary clothes on the bed, though counterpanes and linen were just coming into use. Carpets were chiefly employed like tapestry for hanging on the walls and diminishing the continual draughts. The women had their special apartments; the serving men slept on the rushes of the hall, while the grooms were left to make the best of stable and barn. Meals were taken at fixed hours, at a long movable table on trestles in the hall, guests and servants sitting down together, but placed according to rank. Some of the dishes would not commend themselves to fastidious moderns, but at least, there was never any lack of good wholesome fare; loaves, joints and meat pasties all on a gargantuan scale. Wines of British as well as foreign extraction competed with the nut brown ale. Essex was in those days the vineyard of England.
How much we have fallen off in the capacity of our stomachs from the good old times of open-air life and daily exercise on horseback may be judged from the following allowance of provisions granted to Lady Lucy, one of the maids of honour to Queen Katherine of Aragon:
“Breakfast—A chine of beef, a loaf, a gallon of ale.
Luncheon—Bread and a gallon of ale.
Dinner—A piece of boiled beef, a slice of roast meat, a gallon of ale.
Supper—Porridge, mutton, a loaf, and a gallon of ale.”