English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (XIVth Century)

by J. J. Jusserand

Edward III sends messengers or heralds to foreign parts, viz., France, Germany, Brabant, Flanders, Scotland, to call the nobility of these countries to a great tournament, a sort of international match to be held on St. George’s Day. The amount of the expense so incurred, which is not less than thirty-two pounds, shows that the messengers must have had long protracted journeys and must have had to visit every part of the countries allotted to each of them.[304]

Sometimes the king got into trouble with his Commons on account of expenses for messengers, which he did not always feel inclined to pay from his own purse. Such a case happened in 1378, and the Commons took this opportunity to once more assert their views about {230} the French and other foreign possessions of their sovereign, Ireland being included among them. They plainly state, as they had before, that these countries and the expenses concerning them are a matter for the king, not for them; it is a sort of kingly luxury with which they will have nothing to do. They remonstrate, therefore, that about forty-six thousand pounds sterling have been spent and entered as an item of national expense “for the safeguard of certain countries, places and fortresses, for which the Commons ought in no way to be charged. These are partly in the march of Calais and partly at Brest, Cherbourg, in Gascony, and in Ireland; and also expenses over certain messengers to Flanders, Lombardy, Navarre, and Scotland.”

The Government peremptorily refuses to accept this kind of reasoning, and returns a spirited reply: “To which it was answered that Gascony and the other forts which our lord the king has in the parts beyond, are and must be as barbicans for the kingdom of England, and if the barbicans are well kept, with the safeguard formed by the sea, the kingdom will be secure of peace. Otherwise we shall never find rest nor peace with our enemies; for then they would push hot war to the thresholds of our houses, which God forbid. Besides, through these barbicans our said lord the king has convenient gates and entrances towards his enemies to grieve them when he is ready and can act.” Telling reasons are also given for retaining among public expenses the costs of the journeys of messengers north and south.[305] None the less did the Commons of England long continue to consider the French wars, glorious perhaps, but undoubtedly expensive, as a personal quarrel of their sovereign, and as, in fact, little more than a rivalry between two French sovereigns speaking the same language and belonging to the same family. {231}

Besides letters, couriers and messengers had many strange parcels to carry from one place in the country to another: presents to fair ladies, commodities of all sorts for their own masters. Thus, in the year 1396, we find a servant of the Duke de Berri sent as a messenger to Scotland, and travelling all the way thither from France across England to fetch certain greyhounds of which his master was especially fond. He is accompanied by three men on horseback, to help him in taking care of the hounds, and he carries a safe-conduct from Richard II, to travel without hindrance through the English dominions with his followers and their belongings.[306]

Among the missions given by the king to his servants are some which, at the present day, would seem singularly repugnant. He might, for instance, charge one of his faithful retainers to carry the quarters of a criminal’s body executed for treason to the great towns of England. In this case he did not employ simple messengers; they were personages of trust, followed by an escort to convey the remains. Thus Edward III, in the fifty-first year of his reign, paid not less than twenty pounds to “Sir William de Faryngton, knight, for the costs and expenses he had incurred for transporting the four quarters of the body of Sir John of Mistreworth, knight, to different parts of England.”[307]

Of all travellers, the messenger was the swiftest; first, because travelling was his business; he was a good horseman, an experienced person, clever in getting out of trouble on the road and at the inns; then he had the right of way; woe to whoever thought to stop him; there were immense fines if the master were powerful, still more if the man were the king’s messenger. A messenger of the queen, who had been imprisoned by {232} the constable of Roxburgh Castle, did not hesitate to claim £10,000 sterling for contempt of his sovereign, and £2,000 as indemnity for himself.[308]

When, on August 7, 1316, Jacques d’Euse, cardinal-bishop of Porto, was chosen pope at Lyons, and assumed the name of John XXII, Edward II being at York learnt the news ten days afterwards through Laurence of Ireland, messenger of the house of the Bardi. And indeed we find by the accounts of the king’s household that this prince paid Laurence twenty shillings on the 17th of August to reward him for his trouble. It was only on the 27th of September that, being still at York, the king received by Durand Budet, a messenger of cardinal de Pelagrua, the official letters announcing the election; he gave five pounds to the messenger. Finally, the pope’s nuncio having arrived in person shortly afterwards, bearing the same news no longer so fresh, the king made him a present, inversely proportionate to his speed, of a hundred pounds.[309]

Such was the custom, presents were made to the bringers of good news; royal messengers had thus a chance of casually increasing their meagre pay of threepence a day. Most fortunate were those who brought word to the king himself of happy events. Edward III gave a forty marks pension for life to the queen’s messenger who came announcing the birth of the Prince of Wales, the future Black Prince; he gave thirteen pounds, three shillings and fourpence to John Cok of Cherbourg, who told him of the capture of King John at Poictiers; he settled a pension of one hundred shillings upon Thomas of Brynchesley who brought him the good news of the capture of Charles of Blois.[310] {233}

Sometimes messengers, in spite of their privileges and cleverness, were liable to find themselves in very difficult plight. In time of war they had to conceal their real function, and were in constant danger of being stopped and having their bag searched and their letters opened. People felt strongly about foreigners living in England, many of them being friars who might disclose the secrets of the realm in their private correspondence. The Commons therefore asked for very strict rules to be passed in order to remedy this possible evil, and we find them, in the year 1346, when England was at war with France, recommending the creation of something like the cabinets noirs of a later date.[311]

Langland in his “Visions” graphically compares the different modes of travelling of messengers and such other wayfarers as merchants going with their goods from one place to another. The one is the swiftest of all, no one would dare to stop him; the other is retarded by his pack, his debts, his fear of robbers which prevents his travelling at dark, the impossibility for him to use short cuts across the fields, while short {234} cuts are freely allowed to messengers: no hayward would disturb them; no man in his senses, no “wys man” would “wroth be” on account of his crops being spoiled by a messenger; the messenger shows his letters and is free to go: