Less care is taken to raise strong houses than formerly; among the numerous castles with which the land bristles may be seen, in the distant valley where the ancient town of St. David's lies screened, a bishop's palace that would have suited neither William de Longchamp nor Hugh de Puiset, a magnificent dwelling, without towers of defence, or moats, or drawbridges, an exceptional dwelling, built as though the inhabitants were already secure of the morrow.[437]
The outside is less rude, and the inside is adorned and enriched; life becomes more private than it used to be; existence less patriarchal and more refined; those who still cling to old customs complain that the rich man dines in a chamber with a chimney, and leaves the large hall which was made for men to take their meals in together.[438] The walls of these chambers with chimneys are painted or covered with hangings; tapestries represent (as do those of Edward II.) the king surrounded by his nobles,[439] or (like those of the Black Prince) the "Pas de Saladin," or "sea-sirens," with a border of "swans with ladies' heads," in other words, chimeras, "and ostrich feathers"; or, again, like those of Sir John Falstofe, in the following century, the adoration of the shepherds, a hawking scene, the siege of Falaise (taken in 1417), a woman playing the harp near a castle, "a giant piercing a boar with a spear": all of which are the more noticeable as they are nothing but literature put into colours or embroidery.[440]
The conveniences and elegancies of the table are now attended to; cooks write out their recipes in English; stewards draw up in the same language protocols concerning precedence, and the rules which a well-trained servant should observe. Such a one does not scratch his head, and avoids sneezing in the dish; he abstains from wiping the plates with his tongue, and in carving takes the meat in his left hand and the knife in his right, forks being then unknown; he gives each one his proper place, and remembers "that the Pope hath no peere." When the master dresses, he must be seated on a chair by the fire, a "kercheff" is spread over his shoulders, and he is "curteisly" combed with an ivory comb; he is rinsed "with rose-watur warme"; when he takes a bath the air is scented with herbs hanging from the ceiling. When he goes to bed the cats and dogs which happen to be in his room should be driven away, or else a little cloth provided for them.
The food is rich and combines extraordinary mixtures. Hens and rabbits are eaten chopped up with pounded almonds, raisins, sugar, ginger, herbs dipped in grease, onions and salt; if the mixture is not thick enough, rice flour is added, and the whole coloured with saffron. Cranes, herons, and peacocks are cooked with ginger. Great attention is paid to outward appearance and to colour; the dishes must be yellow or green, or adorned with leaves of gold and silver, a fashion still preserved in the East. Elaborate cakes, "subtleties" as they were then termed, are also served; they represent:
Maydon Mary that holy virgyne
And Gabrielle gretynge hur with an Ave.[441]
People adorn their bodies as well as their houses; luxury in dress is carried to such an excess that Parliament finds it necessary to interfere, and forbids women of the lower classes to wear any furs except cat and rabbit.[442] Edward III. buys of master Paul de Monteflor gowns for the queen, in "stuffs from over the sea," to the enormous amount of 1,330 pounds. He himself wears a velvet waistcoat, on which he has caused golden pelicans to be embroidered by William Courtenay, a London embroiderer. He gives his mistress Alice Perrers 21,868 large pearls, and thirty ounces of smaller ones. His daughter Margaret receives from him two thousand pearls as a wedding present; he buys his sister Aliénor a gilded carriage, tapestried and embroidered, with cushions and curtains of silk, for which he pays one thousand pounds.[443] At that time one might for the same sum have bought a herd of sixteen hundred oxen.
The sense of beauty, together with a reverence for and a worship of it, was spreading among the nation whose thoughts shortly before used to run in quite different lines. Attention is paid to physical beauty, such as it had never received before. Men and women wear tight garments, showing the shape of the figure. In the verses he composed for his tomb at Canterbury, the Black Prince mourns over "his beauty which has all gone." Richard II., while still alive, has graven on his tomb that he was "corpore procerus."[444] The taste of the English for finery becomes so well known, that to them is ascribed, even in France, the invention of new fashions. Recalling to his daughters, in order to teach them modesty, that "the deluge in the time of Noah happened for the pride and disguises of men, and mostly of women, who remodelled their shapes by means of gowns and attire," the Knight de la Tour Landry gives the English ladies the credit, or rather the discredit, of having invented the immeasurable head-dresses worn at that day. It is an evil sign; in that country people amuse themselves too much: "In England many there are that have been blamed, the report goes, I know not whether it is wrongly or rightly."[445]
Owing to the attention paid to physical beauty in England, sculptors now begin—a rare thing at that time—to have living models, and to copy the nude. In the abbey of Meaux, "Melsa," near Beverley, on the banks of the Humber, was seen in the fourteenth century a sight that would have been rather sought for by the banks of the Arno, under the indulgent sky of Italy. The abbot Hugh of Leven having ordered a new crucifix for the convent chapel, the artist "had always a naked man under his eyes, and he strove to give to his crucifix the beauty of form of his model."[446]
One last trait may be added to the others: not only the beauty of live beings, but that also of inanimate things is felt and cared for, the beauty of landscapes, and of trees. In 1350-1 the Commons complain of the cutting down of the large trees overshadowing the houses, those large trees, dear already to English hearts, and point out in Parliament the loss of this beauty, the great "damage, loss, and blemish" that results from it for the dwellings.[447]