There were taverns of ill-fame, especially in towns, so bad some of them, that they might almost have gone by another name. In one of the Latin dramas of Hrotsvitha,[146] tenth century, is shown the holy hermit Abraham, who, learning that the girl Mary, whom he had reared in virtue, lived as a courtesan in a hostelry, goes to her, pretending love, and converts her. In most mediæval story books telling of the prodigal son, he is usually represented sowing his very wild oats at the inn or tavern. Musicians of the meanest order would entertain the sitters at the table with their pipings, and then pass the hat.[147] Having to answer before Archbishop Arundel for his disparaging statements concerning pilgrimages, the Lollard William Thorpe declares in 1407 that pilgrims are frequenters of ill-famed hostelries, “spending their goods upon vitious hostelars, which are oft uncleane women of their bodies.”[148] In some such inn, the “Cheker of the Hope” (hoop) in Canterbury, the continuator of Chaucer leads his pilgrims, and shows how the pardoner’s advances to Kit the tapster had the edifying result of getting for him many more blows than caresses.[149]
In London it was forbidden by the king to keep open {135} house after curfew, and for very sufficient reasons, “because such offenders as aforesaid, going about by night, do commonly resort and have their meetings and hold their evil talk in taverns more than elsewhere, and there do seek for shelter, lying in wait and watching their time to do mischief.”[150]
It was for fear of such dangers that when the sheriffs and bailiffs held their Views of Frankpledge, they asked the juries of their hundreds to say upon oath what they knew “of such as continually haunt taverns, and no man knoweth whence they come; of such as sleep by day and watch by night, eat well and drink well, and possess nothing.”[151]
Langland’s life-like picture of a tavern in the fourteenth century is well known. With a vivid realism worthy of Rabelais he makes us hear and see the tumultuous scenes at the alehouse, the discussions, the quarrels, the big bumpers, the drunkenness which ensues; every face is plainly visible, coarse words, laughter and attitudes strike the on-looker in that strange assembly, where the hermit meets the cobbler and “the clerk of the churche,” a band of cut-purses and bald-headed tooth-drawers:
“Thomme the tynkere · and tweye of hus knaves,
Hicke the hakeneyman · and Howe the neldere,[152]
Claryce of Cockeslane · the clerk of the churche,
Syre Peeres of Prydie · and Purnel of Flanders,
An haywarde and an heremyte · the hangeman of Tyborne,
Dauwe the dykere · with a dosen harlotes,