All in vain; these abuses were already comprised among those which the Articles of the Eyre had for their object to discover, but failed to suppress. Periodically the magistrate came to question the country folk on the subject. Have “any lords or others gone to lodge in religious houses without being invited by the superiors, or gone at their own expense, against the will of the same?” Have any been so bold as to “send to the houses or mansions belonging to the monks or others, men, horses, or dogs to sojourn there at an expense not their own?” The application of these rules did not go without difficulty or even danger, for the magistrate questioned also the jury about “any who may have taken revenge for refusal of food or lodging.”[128]
The Commons in parliament, mindful as they were in such matters of the fate of the poorest, were not unmindful of their own, and took steps to prevent, in a general way and without reference to the impecunious, {121} the falling into disuse of monachal hospitality. The non-residence of the clergy, which was to be one of the causes of the Reformation two hundred years later, occasioned bitter protests during the fourteenth century. The Commons object especially because from this abuse there results a decay of the duties of hospitality. “And that all other persons advanced to the benefices of Holy Church,” they request of the king, “should remain on their said benefices in order to keep hospitality there, on the same penalty, exception made for the king’s clerks and the clerks of the great of the realm.”[129] Parliament protests also against the bestowal by the pope of rich priories on foreigners who remain abroad. These foreigners “suffer the noble edifices built of old time when they were occupied by the English to fall quite to ruin,” and neglect “to keep hospitality.”[130]
Only people of high rank were admitted into the monastery proper. The mass of travellers, pilgrims and others, were housed and fed in the guest-house, a building made on purpose to receive passers-by; it usually stood by itself, and was even, sometimes, erected outside the precincts of the monastery. Such, for instance, was the case in Battle Abbey, where the guest-house is still to be seen outside the large entrance gate. These edifices commonly consisted of a hall with doors opening on each side into sleeping rooms. People slept also in the hall; old inventories, for instance the one concerning the Maison-Dieu or hospital at Dover, show that beds were set up in the hall and remained, it seems, permanently there.[131] {122}
It is hardly necessary to recall that hospitality was also exercised in castles; noblemen who were not at feud willingly received one another; there were much stricter ties of brotherhood among them than now exist among people of the same class. We do not often now give lodging to unknown persons who knock at the door; at the most, and but rarely, do we permit a poor man passing along in the country to sleep for a night in our hay-loft. In the Middle Ages, men received their equals, not by way of simple charity, but as a habit of courtesy and also for pleasure. Known or unknown, the travelling knight was rarely refused the door of a country manor. His coming in time of peace was a happy diversion from the monotony of the days. There was in every house the hall, or large room where the meals were taken in common; the new-comer ate with the lord at a table placed on a raised platform called the dais, erected at one end of the room; his followers were at the lower tables disposed along the side walls. Supper finished, all soon retired to rest, people went to bed and rose early in those days. The traveller withdrew sometimes into a special room for guests, if the house were large; sometimes into that of the master himself, the solar (room on the first storey), and spent the night there with him. Meanwhile, in the hall, the lower tables were taken out, for in general these were not standing, but movable;[132] mattresses were placed on the ground over the litter of rushes which day and night covered the pavement, and the people of the household, the suite of the traveller, the strangers of less {123} importance, stretched themselves out there till morning. Such a litter of herbs or rushes was in constant use, and was to be found in the king’s palace as well as in the houses of mere merchants in the city: it was spread in lieu of a carpet, to keep the room warm and to give a feeling of comfort. It is still to be met with, and this is, apparently, the last place where it has found refuge, in old-fashioned French provincial diligences; the straw in English country omnibuses is also its lineal descendant. So it was at least when, in pre-automobile times, these lines were originally written.
Prices paid for the purchase of rushes constantly recur in the accounts of the royal expenses.[133] They were so largely used in towns as well as in the country, that people in cities did not know what to do with the soiled ones, and the local authorities had to interfere over and over again, especially in London, where the inhabitants were apt to throw them into the Thames, with the result of greatly damaging and polluting the water.
Through a window opened in the partition between his room and the hall, over the dais, the lord could see and even hear all that was done or said below. In the king’s house itself the hall was used for sleeping as is shown by the ordinances of Edward IV;[134] at a period much nearer our day (1514), Barclay still complains that at Court the same couch serves for two:
And never in the court shalt thou have bed alone,
and that the noise from the comers and goers, from brawlers, {124} coughers, and chatterers never ceases, and prevents sleep.[135] At the first streak of dawn, sending through the white or coloured panes of the high windows shafts of light on the dark carved timber-work, which, high above the pavement, supported the roof, all stirred on their couches; soon they were out of doors, horses were saddled, and the clatter of hoofs sounded anew on the highway.
Towards the latter part of the fourteenth century a change became noticeable in the use of the hall. It was first pointed out by that acute observer of manners, William Langland, the author of the “Visions.” Life was becoming, by degrees, less patriarchal and more private; people were less fond of dining almost publicly in their halls. Well-to-do individuals began to prefer having their meals by themselves in rooms with chimneys, which last particular Langland is careful to note as a sign of the growing luxuriousness of the times. “Elyng” (dull, silent) “is the hall,” he said, in a well-known passage:
“There the lorde ne the lady · liketh noughte to sytte,