The glazing of windows was carried out in a fitful way. Some windows in buildings as early as Stokesay were already glazed, others even so late as the end of the fifteenth century were not so treated. In the scanty remains of Abingdon Abbey the so-called Prior’s Room has never had glass in its windows. This room is of the early Decorated period (c. 1300) and whether devoted to the prior or not, it was of sufficient importance to have a fine fireplace and plastered walls ornamented with coloured lines. The windows of the adjoining guest-house (if such were its purpose) have likewise never been glazed. These are of much later date—towards the end of the fifteenth century. They, too, lighted rooms of some importance, 30 ft. long, warmed by a large fire, handsomely roofed, and decorated in places with elaborate ornament.[1] Horn was occasionally used as a material for glazing prior to the general use of glass.
The improvement in domestic arrangements which is observable in the actual buildings at Stokesay is also noticeable in such contemporary accounts of building works as have been preserved. The Liberate Rolls of Henry III.’s time (1232–1269) contain many orders issued in respect of the king’s houses which were scattered up and down the country in almost every southern county from Kent to Hereford, and northwards to Northamptonshire and Nottingham. They nearly all point towards making the houses more comfortable. Windows were to be glazed to prevent draughts; porches were to be built to external doors; passages of communication were to be made from one building to another; roofs and walls were to be wainscoted; windows were to be enlarged; fireplaces were to be built; garde-robes were to be made less offensive; in some cases drainage was to be executed as a protection to health. Everything goes to show that Henry’s aim was to make his houses more convenient and more comfortable. In addition to structural alterations there are many orders for decoration. Buildings were to be whitewashed inside and out; windows were to be filled with painted glass, either heraldic or setting forth some scriptural subject, notably the story of Dives and Lazarus; shutters were to be painted with the king’s arms; and most frequently of all, rooms were to be painted green spangled with gold stars. It is quite clear that houses were gradually becoming not merely places of safety and of shelter from winter and rough weather, but places of pleasure and delight; not merely lairs but homes.
CHAPTER IV.
The Course of Mediæval Building in the Fourteenth Century.
The king, of course, may be supposed to have had unlimited means at his disposal for the improvement of his houses, and to have been better able than less exalted personages to gratify his wishes; but his subjects were also actuated by the same desires, and an examination of the large houses of the fourteenth century shows a considerable advance in the provision of rooms for special purposes, and indicates that the old restricted accommodation was no longer sufficient for the changing habits of the time. This expansion of the house was general, and was not confined to any particular district. To mention a few instances, there are in the North Alnwick Castle, built by the Percys about 1340, of which all but the external walls has been modernised; and Raby Castle, the home of the Nevills, Earls of Westmorland, built about 1378, also largely modernised. In the Midlands are Kenilworth Castle, almost rebuilt by John of Gaunt in the closing years of the fourteenth century; Warwick Castle, also almost entirely rebuilt by Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, a few years earlier; Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire, built by the De Broughtons about the beginning of the fourteenth century; Drayton House in Northamptonshire, by Simon de Drayton in 1328; and Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, where the greater part of the work is of this period. In the South is Penshurst Place for which a licence to crenellate was granted to John de Pulteney in 1341.
The smaller houses of this period do not, of course, show such extensive improvements as the large places just mentioned, nevertheless in them may be seen the same tendency towards greater civilisation. Even in the far North, where the disturbed state of the Border retarded the development of household comfort, we have the commodious house of Naworth in Cumberland, and the smaller house of Yanwath in Westmorland. In Yorkshire is Markenfield Hall; in Cheshire, Baguley, of which little besides its timber hall is left; in Northamptonshire the small but fine house at Northborough; in Berkshire is Sutton Courtney, so much altered, however, as to have lost its original character; while in Somerset is the very curious “Castle” of Nunney, where the rooms are placed over each other more after the fashion of the earlier keeps than of the long and low manor houses which were by this time the prevailing type.
In all these houses the hall was still the chief apartment, but it is supplemented by more subsidiary rooms than are to be found in earlier examples. The references in contemporary literature and documents are not numerous, but we have already seen that at Oakham in the Inquisition of 1340 the house consisted of a hall, four chambers, and a kitchen. If we turn to Chaucer, who lived during a large part of the fourteenth century, dying in 1400, we find in the few incidental references to domestic arrangements which occur that the hall was by far the most important room, although it had “chambers” and a “bower” to supplement it.
It is perhaps from the “Cook’s Tale of Gamelyn” that the best idea of a house may be gained, with its gatehouse, courtyard, and turreted hall. He tells us how his muscular hero Gamelyn, the prototype of Shakespeare’s Orlando, came with his friends to his ancestral home, held by his false brother, and how the gate was shut and locked against them by the porter, who resolutely refused them admission to the courtyard. Gamelyn, however, smote the wicket with his foot, broke the pin and effected an entrance. The porter he chased across the yard, broke his neck and threw him into a well. He and his friends then made merry with the brother’s meat and wine, while the latter hid himself in a “little turret,” for which we owe him our thanks, as showing that such features had a use. Meanwhile the gate had been flung open to admit all who cared to go in “or ride,” a touch which brings home to us the fact that hardly any of these gatehouses were wide enough to admit wheeled vehicles, which of course were somewhat rare in those days; the entrances were contrived only for foot passengers and horsemen. Presently the fortunes of the day changed, Gamelyn was overpowered and bound to a post in the hall, and the false brother emerged from the “selleer” (solar) to taunt him. For two days and nights Gamelyn stood bound without meat or drink, but then, thinking he had fasted too long, he besought Adam the “spencer” to free him. Adam hesitated to let him go out of “this bour,” but ultimately consented, and took him into the “spence” and gave him supper. The spence was the pantry, and the spencer the presiding genius of that place. It would be beside the mark to enter into the details of Gamelyn’s further adventures, suffice it to say that by Adam’s advice he let himself appear to be still bound to the post; the hall presently filled with his brother’s guests who cast their eyes on the captive as they came in “at hall door.” At a preconcerted signal, Gamelyn and Adam possessed themselves of some stout cudgels which the good spencer had provided, and between them they cudgelled the whole company, taking especial delight in dealing with the “men of holy Church.”
This glimpse into a fourteenth-century mansion is the longest which Chaucer vouchsafes; we read elsewhere of “halls, chambers, kitchens, and bowers,” and the “chamber” is occasionally mentioned as the alternative room to the hall so far as the owner and his wife are concerned. The difference between a “bower” and a “chamber” does not emerge very clearly. Adam, as we have seen, speaks of the hall as “this bour,” but as a rule the term is applied to a room in order to distinguish it from that apartment. It seems quite clear that to Chaucer the hall was the chief room, almost synonymous with the house, the other rooms he mentions being the merest accessories.
The most complete and most interesting house of this period is the well-known Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. It consists of two courts (Fig. 24), the hall being placed in the wing which divides them. It is thus protected on both of its long sides and is thereby enabled to have larger windows than if it had been on an outside wall. The exterior walls of the earlier parts of Haddon have comparatively few windows in them, and these of small size; and as the kitchen is one of the rooms so lighted it is dark, in spite of a larger window inserted in the sixteenth century, to a degree which horrifies housewives of the present day. Haddon being built on the slope of a hill could not be protected by a moat, hence it was more than ever necessary to be careful about external apertures. Some parts of Haddon are of the twelfth century, including much of the west wall, portions of the chapel (at the south-west corner), and the lower parts of the south and east walls and of the Peverel or Eagle tower; the licence granted to Richard de Vernon to fortify his house of Haddon with a wall 12 ft. high without crenellations is still preserved. This licence was granted by John, Earl of Morteigne, who, in 1199, became King John. The extent of this early work shows that already in the twelfth century there was a large house here, its area being little less than at the present day. But during the fourteenth century it was practically rebuilt on the lines which now remain, inasmuch as work of this period is to be found over the whole building. The extent of the house, and particularly the multiplicity of rooms, go to show how vastly the desire for comfort had increased by this time. Much other work was done in later years; the chapel was either enlarged or altered, and a range of rooms was added or rebuilt in the fifteenth century. In the early part of the sixteenth many of the rooms were embellished and modernised by Sir George Vernon, “the King of the Peak”; and yet later his daughter Dorothy and her husband Sir John Manners built the beautiful long gallery on the top of earlier rooms and laid out the garden with its picturesque terraces and noble flight of steps.
