With robbours and revers (thieves) · that riche men dispoilen;
Ther the messager is ay murye · hus mouthe ful of songes.”[312]
Wayfarers there were in whom both characteristics were united, the slowness of pace of the merchant and the lightness of heart of the messenger. These were the pedlars, a very numerous race in the Middle Ages, one of the few sorts of wanderers that have not yet entirely disappeared. A jovial race they seem to have been; they are so now, most of them, for their way to success is through fair speech and enticing words; and how could they be enticing if they did not show good humour and jollity? “Gaiety” mends their broken wares, and colours the faded ones, and blinds customers to otherwise {235} obvious defects. They have always been described thus; they were merry and sharp-tongued; such was Shakespeare’s Autolycus; such is, in a novel of our time, the jovial owner of the dog Mumps, Bob Jakin of “The Mill on the Floss.” “ ‘Get out wi’ you, Mumps,’ said Bob, with a kick; ‘he is as quiet as a lamb, sir’—an observation which Mumps corroborated by a low growl, as he retreated behind his master’s legs.” About the exact scrupulousness prevailing among the tribe the opinion has perhaps not been quite so consistent, which is the best that can be said for it.
One good point about them, however, is that in mediæval England, whatever may have been their reputation, they entirely escaped legislation. Very possibly they were impliedly included in statutes against vagrants and rovers; but they may at least argue that as a matter of fact they are not named in any Act of Parliament, and pass unobserved or nearly so by the Westminster legislator down to a comparatively recent date. They are for the first time named in a statute during the reign of Edward VI, in which, it is true, they are treated in a contemptuous manner, being described as more “hurtful than necessary to the common wealth.” This is called “an acte for tynkers and pedlers,” and is to the following effect: “For as muche as it is evident that tynkers, pedlers and suche like vagrant persons are more hurtfull than necessarie to the Common Wealth of this realm, Be it therefore ordeyned . . . that . . . no person or persons commonly called pedler, tynker or pety chapman shall wander or go from one towne to another or from place to place out of the towne, parishe or village where such person shall dwell, and sell pynnes, poyntes, laces, gloves, knyves, glasses, tapes or any suche kynde of wares whatsoever, or gather connye skynnes or suche like things or use or exercise the trade or occupation of a tynker,” except those that shall have a licence from two justices {236} of the peace; and then they will be allowed to travel only in the “circuyte” assigned to them.[313]
Queen Elizabeth, too, had a word for pedlars, and it was not more complimentary than what her brother had to say about them, although “scollers of the Universityes” joined them on her list of disreputable roamers. They figure in her “Acte for the punishment of vacabondes”; and a very curious list of wanderers is found in it: “It ys nowe publyshed,” says the queen, “that . . . all ydle persones goinge aboute in any countrey of the said Realme, using subtyll craftye and unlawfull games or playes, and some of them fayninge themselves to have knowledge in phisnomye, palmestrye, . . . and all fencers, bearwardes, comon players in interludes and minstrels not belonging to any baron of this realme . . . all juglers, pedlars, tynkers, and petye chapmen . . . and all scollers of the Universityes of Oxford or Cambridge yt goe about begginge . . . and all shipmen pretendinge losses by sea . . . shalbee deemed roges vacabounds and sturdy beggers intended of by this present act.”[314] But the case of pedlars was not seriously taken in hand before the reign of William III who put a tax upon them and, ominously enough, bound them to certify commissioners for transportation how they travelled and traded.[315]
The late date of this statute of pedlars, if it may be called so, is the more remarkable that they swarmed along the roads in the Middle Ages, more numerous than tinkers or any other wandering representatives of petty trades. There were not then as now large shops in every village with all the necessaries of life ready provided for the inhabitants. The shop itself was itinerant, being nothing else than the pack of travelling chapmen. In the same way {237} as the literature propagated by the minstrels, as news, tales, and letters, pardons from Rome and many other commodities, so household wares were carried about the country by indefatigable wayfarers. A host of small useful things, or sometimes useless, but so pleasing! were concealed in their unfathomable boxes. The contents of them are pretty well shown by a series of illuminations in a fourteenth-century manuscript, where a pedlar is represented asleep at the foot of a tree, while monkeys have got hold of his box and help themselves to the contents. They find in it vests, caps, gloves, musical instruments, purses, girdles, hats, cutlasses, pewter pots, and a number of other articles.[316]
As to the means by which pedlars came by their goods, a variety seem to have been used by them, and purchase was only one among several. A proverbial saying preserved for us by Langland shows how they secured furs for their country customers. The author of the “Visions” states how Repentance came once to Avarice, and examined him as to his usurious doings:
“ ‘Hastow pite on pore men · that mote nedes borwe?’
‘I have as moche pite of pore men · as pedlere hath of cattes,
That wolde kille hem, yf he cacche hem myghte · for coveitise of here skynnes.’ ”[317]