The custom of travelling with an army of retainers had other justification than that of mere display. In the days of the early Plantagenets the King’s highway was infested with robbers; not the wild highwaymen of later days, but oft-times a princely youth, who, from the fastness of his castle-home, dashed out to scour the country round, seeking what he might confiscate, and woe to the hapless traveller pursuing his lonely journey. Two other classes of robbers were comprised of outlaws driven to despair by the cruel forest laws, and the bands of men returned from the Crusades, who had originally sold their belongings in order to join the holy war, and had come back penniless.
The horse-litter was also in use. In fact, it seems to have come down from untold ages, for it is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah, and was evidently introduced from the south, probably brought to England by some of the Crusaders. It consisted of a kind of coach slung between two horses, and was chiefly employed for carrying the sick and aged, and on State journeys or at funerals. Professor Markland, writing in 1821, says: “In Sicily there is no way of travelling through mountain passes but in a ‘legia.’” However, that must have died out, for in 1904, when travelling all over Sicily, I never saw a single one of these palanquins, and we just used horses when we could not drive.
Ladies generally rode on mules. They accompanied their lords on many of their hunting expeditions, and joined in their pursuits in the Norman and Plantagenet periods. The greyhound was a favourite dog amongst them. It is evident, too, that women went out hunting on their own account, and on these occasions they adopted the custom of riding astride; as the chair arrangement rigged up on one side was anything but safe. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, gives a reproduction of an illumination from an early fourteenth-century MS., where a lady is represented riding crossways, winding the horn and pursuing game, while another is shooting with a bow and arrow. Women are reported to have been more versed in falconry than their lords, although they generally followed this sport on foot, and chiefly sought waterfowl.
As is well known, side saddles were only introduced into England by Anne of Bohemia. Now we are reverting to the cross saddle for women used by our forbears.
An outcome of the Crusades was the introduction of Arab steeds. Normandy itself was also famous for a splendid breed of horses. The greatest mark of appreciation known was to present a Normandy horse, and the most tempting form of bribe was the gift of a prancing Arab palfrey or noble charger. King John accepted horses in exchange for grants of land, and in payment of feudal rights. At that time, and in the reign of Edward I., the price of horses ranged from one to ten pounds. The animals were richly caparisoned, and wore bells—sometimes numbering several hundreds—on their harness, and particularly on the bridle. In fact, the trappings were often worth more than the steed, just as is the case on the ranches of Mexico to-day, where the value of the Mexican saddle is probably ten times that of the horse.
Whips were used by ladies and the lower orders, but the nobles relied entirely upon the spur.
During the fourteenth century horseback was still the favourite means of getting about, although there were vehicles on wheels known under the names of “chares,” “cars,” “chariots,” “caroches,” and “whirlicotes.” The roads until Elizabeth’s time were of almost inconceivable badness.
The mother of Richard II. is recorded as using a “chare” and a “whirlicote,” when in the disturbances of 1381 she had to travel from place to place, and on account of her age she was thus accommodated; but Stow remarks that the introduction of the side-saddle by Anne of Bohemia was displacing the whirlicote except on State and ceremonial occasions. Anne granted forty shillings a year to her “pourvoioir de noz chariettes.” But such “chariettes” were merely cumbersome waggons to which strong horses were attached. Priests rode at the head of troops and at pageants, and were some of the greatest equestrians of the age; the monks from Westminster enjoyed many a gallop in Hyde Park.
It was a bad time for wayfarers, this of the Middle Ages. Accommodation was lacking, provisions were scarce, and often they were overtaken by nightfall with no hostelry of any kind at hand. Travelling itself was dangerous in the turbulent state of the country, and, in fact, the highways were considered so unsafe that in 1285 a law was passed, enacting that all shrubs and trees were to be cut down for two hundred feet from the roadside between market towns, to allow no cover for robbers. People journeying along the same road had a custom of joining together in order to form a party of sufficient strength to defy attack, as Chaucer describes in the Canterbury Tales. To those who could not afford a horse the danger was tenfold. If encumbered with baggage or their family, the men often took a mule to carry their packages or give their wives and children a rest.