The floor of the hall might be of wood, though at the early period of which we write it was very commonly of earth. There were no carpets, except in palaces of great luxury, even at a much later date; instead, the floor was covered with rushes or straw. Straw was anciently one of the symbols of investiture; in the Salic law the person conveying an estate cast a wisp of straw into the bosom of him to whom the property was to be conveyed. With this custom in mind, we can understand the anecdote told by Alberic des Troisfontaines of William the Conqueror. The floor of the room in which he was born was covered with straw. The newborn child, having been placed on the floor for a moment, seized in his tiny hands a bit of the straw, which he held vigorously. "Parfoi!" cried the midwife, "cet enfant commence jeune à conquerir." Obviously, the anecdote, with its allusion to the Conquest, was made up long after the event, but it serves to show that even in the mansions of the well to do straw was the usual floor covering; and even much later we do not find the old coverings of rushes, branches, or straw displaced by carpets. In 1373 the inhabitants of a certain town (Aubervilliers) were exempted from a feudal tax on condition of their furnishing annually forty cartloads of straw to the hotel, or palace, of Charles V., twenty to that of the queen, and ten to that of the dauphin. On special occasions the ordinary straw might be displaced by fresh green boughs upon the floor and against the walls. Froissart tells us that on a very warm day "the count of Foix entered his chamber and found it all strewn with verdure and full of fresh new boughs; the walls all about were covered with green boughs to make the room more fresh and fragrant.... When he felt himself in this fresh new chamber, he said: 'This greenery refreshes me greatly, for assuredly this has been a hot day.'" When the rushes or straw remained long on the floor without being renewed, as was assuredly often the case, trampled on by men and used as a couch by the dogs of the establishment, the effect must have been quite other than refreshing. This must have been the case in many a private house, but especially in such public places as the great churches and the great university of the Sorbonne, whose students sat on the floor upon straw, and had to pay twenty-five sous each to the chancellor for furnishing it.
In the hall of the castle thus rudely furnished the inmates lived a large part of their lives. There the household assembled for meals. There the minstrel, if one chanced to be present, recited his romance. There the lord in person, or his seneschal or baillie, held his court to administer justice. It was the common room of the house, and usually contained all there was in the way of decoration. Comfort even here was hardly to be found; one can fancy that the fire on the open hearth gave out more smoke than heat, and the windows, often entirely unglazed and ill-fitting, let in more cold than light.
The smaller apartments were even less pretentious in the way of comfort. Opening out of the hall, or arranged around the court, were little cubby-holes of places to serve as sleeping apartments. The furniture in them was of the simplest description, and one was not even sure of finding a bedstead; for unless the occupant were outrageously affected by what the old folks doubtless called the degenerate effeminacy of the age--in the year 1000--his bed was apt to be made on the floor, or in a bunk against the wall. Sometimes there was a larger apartment opening from the rear of the hall and destined for the private use of the lord and his lady. As luxury increased, this apartment gradually became better furnished, and at length there developed the lady's bower, where she might retire with her maids. Of these there would often be a goodly number, some mere domestics, some young girls of good family sent to learn polite manners and domestic arts under the lady of the castle. In the bower also tapestries would be hung on the walls, and, in place of arms, perhaps there would be the various musical instruments in popular use, particularly the harp, in various forms, known as psaltérions, cythares, décacordes; the rote, which was what we should now call a viol; various forms of violins, such as the rebec and the lute; guitars; and perhaps flutes. The use of these instruments was, of course, not unknown to the ladies themselves, and we find many references in the romances to maidens at the courts playing upon the harp and singing, though the professional minstrel or the page in training was oftener the performer.
In the bower, the lady was not occupied with mere amusements. We are apt to forget that our more complex civilization has taught us to rely upon others to do many things which even our great-grand-mothers had to do for themselves. Placed in the position of Robinson Crusoe, even with the help of the simple tools which Defoe allows him to have, how helpless would be the average man of to-day, simply because, from long dependence on the little conveniences of modern life,--from Lucifer matches and cooking stoves to ready-made clothing and ready-made houses,--he would have lost the use of the most elementary faculties. So the female Crusoe, in a feudal castle lone island, far from the conveniences of town and shops, must, if she expected to get any comfort for herself and those around her, know how to do innumerable small things that even the modern shopgirl finds done for her as a matter of course.
She must know how to make bread, without question. In the romance of King Florus a faithful wife disguises herself as a page and accompanies her husband without his recognizing her. They fall upon evil days, and the wife-page earns a living for herself and her master by starting a bakery and eventually an inn. The lady of the manor must not only know how to make the greater part of the clothing that she wears, but must know how to weave the cloth of which her gown is made, and to spin the yarn from which cloth and thread alike must come, and to card the wool or prepare the flax before that. If soap be considered necessary,--and there seems to have been no excessive use of it,--it would be wise for her to know how to make it, since there might be no place near by where soap could be bought. Candles, too, of a rude sort, or some sort of rushlight, for domestic use, it would be well to know how to make; and, of course, she should know how to make cheeses and to cure meats for use during the long months when fresh meats might not be had. Even on the tables of the rich, salt meats were the staple article. Unable to provide for the feeding of large flocks through the winter--forage was scarce, root crops were little cultivated for stock, and the omnipotent potato had not yet come to its own,--the lord's steward would have a large number of animals slaughtered just at the beginning of winter, and the flesh of these had to be salted down. The good housewife would, of course, know something of the process. Though in large households the management of the male servants, the outdoor servants generally, fell to the steward or baillie, the lady even here undoubtedly had to give a general supervision, and had to provide work for and maintain discipline among the women of the household. It must have required no small amount of ability and tact, therefore, successfully to be the lady of the chateau.
We need not pause here to consider the amusements and the traditional occupations of women, such as fine sewing and embroidery, or music and the care of flowers. These can best be noticed when we examine the romances of a later age.
For women of the upper classes feudalism was not, we may say, entirely unjust or evil in its operations; but as feudalism meant oppression verging on slavery for Jacques Bonhomme, the peasant, his wife Jeanne could hardly have been in better case. With peasant marriages the seigneur could interfere even more tyrannically than with those of his feudal wards. In some places the bride and groom owed to the seigneur certain gifts called mets de manage. On the day of the wedding these "must be brought to the chateau by the bride, accompanied by musicians; the said mets shall consist of a leg of mutton, two fowls, two quarts of wine, four loaves of bread, four candles, and some salt, under pain of a fine of sixty sous." In some places that most infamous right known par excellence as the droit du seigneur was claimed, and we find a writer even as late as the seventeenth century recording the fact that the husband was sometimes required to purchase his bride's exemption from this right.
At the early date of which we write, however, there is little or no information to be had about the peasantry; the monkish chroniclers mention them but rarely, and then unsympathetically. Popular literature, with its lais, contes, fabliaux, or rude dramas in which Jacques and Jeanne appear, did not yet exist. We may, however, guess from the barbarity with which they were treated how near to that of the brutes was their condition.
About the year 997, soon after the death of the glorious Duke Robert the Fearless, the peasants of Normandy began to murmur against the wrongs they had to suffer. "The seigneurs," they said, "only do us harm; on account of them we have neither gain nor profit from our labor. Every day they take from us our work animals for feudal services. And then there are the laws, old and new, and pleas and lawsuits without end, about coinage, about forest rights, about roads, about milling our grain, about hommage. There are so many constables and bailiffs that we have not one hour of peace; every day they are pouncing down on us, seizing our goods, chasing us away from our land. There is no guarantee for us against the seigneurs and their men, and no contract holds good with them. Why do we allow ourselves to be treated thus, instead of trying to right our wrongs? Are we not men as they are? Courage is all we need. Let us therefore bind ourselves together by an oath, swearing to sustain each other. And if they make war upon us, have we not, for one knight, thirty or even forty young peasants, active, and fit to fight with clubs, with pikes, with bows and arrows, yea, with stones if there be no better weapons? Let us learn how to resist the knights, and we shall be free to cut the trees, to hunt, to fish at our own sweet will; and we will do as we please upon the water, in the fields, and in the forests." They held secret meetings, and finally formed some sort of an organization. But the seigneurs got wind of their designs. The young Duke Richard sent for his uncle, Raoul, Count of Evreux. "Sire," said Raoul, "do not you stir a foot, but leave it all to me." He collected a force of knights and men at arms, and, informed by a spy of the meeting place of the peasants, bore down upon them suddenly and arrested all the ringleaders. Then came the punishment, the like of which was not uncommon, though the victims were more numerous than usual. Some were empaled outright; some were cooked before a slow fire; some were sprinkled with molten lead. Others had their eyes torn out, their hands cut off, their legs scorched; and of these victims the few who survived were sent back among their fellows to inspire terror.
One can well believe that these horrors and the ever present sight of those who had suffered from them kept the peasants in awe, as the old chroniclers exultantly tell us. The account as given in Wace's Roman de Rou has in our eyes a pathos and a poetic grandeur far greater than the chronicler's enthusiastic record of the deeds of the great Norman dukes. With us the democratic spirit, or mere humanity, is so much stronger than with him that we read his lines with feelings of pity and indignation quite unforeseen by him. Is it not pitiful, this cry of the peasants?