Straw litter covered the floor, which was changed seven times a year—a higher standard of cleanliness and luxury than prevailed generally, seeing that Erasmus, 200 years later, could still complain of the filthy rush-covered floors of English houses, where bones, scraps, and ale from the table accumulated, with even less desirable kinds of dirt, and which, when it was replaced, was removed so perfunctorily that the lower layers remained undisturbed, it might be for years.
The Obedientiary Rolls, moreover, supply us with an interesting insight into the commodities in general use, and also into their prices. Reducing to modern values we find an egg and a herring practically cost then, as now, a penny apiece. Sugar existed in various forms—Sugar Scaffatyn, Sugar of Cyprus, Sugar Roset, and sweetmeats or comfits of various kinds, varying from one to several shillings a pound. Rice was largely consumed, and cost threepence a pound. ‘Coryns,’ i.e. grapes of Corinth, in other words currants, about two shillings a pound. Enormous quantities of groceries, ‘spiceries’ as they were termed, figured in the accounts, but, doubtless, largely because St. Swithun had his stall at St. Giles’s Fair, and dealt extensively in ‘spices.’
It was at Fair time that the monks had their chief holiday, and made their chief purchases. It was at the Fair that they purchased also the furs they wore so largely. On the top of the hill the Prior had his special pavilion, and kept practically open house—and doubtless the monks keenly appreciated the rare opportunity the Fair afforded for a little excursion beyond the walls. For though the Prior mingled freely with the outer world, as a great political person-age was summoned regularly to Parliament, and so forth, the monk in general but rarely left the convent gate, and saw little beyond ‘the studious cloister’s pale.’
We have fewer details of the Abbey of Hyde, just as we have fewer remains of its fabric. Such part as remains, apart from some unimportant ruins, is generally supposed to have formed part of the Tithe barn. Opposite the gateway of this—which is really an interesting piece of architectural work, unfortunately very meagre in extent,—is the Church of St. Bartholomew, Hyde, where, as already stated, the lay servants of the abbey worshipped. The squared and worked stones which are to be seen freely in the houses all round the neighbourhood are, otherwise, practically all that still remains of the great abbey.
Of its internal life we know also but little; the Liber de Hyda preserves most of its history, but we have no obedientiary rolls to chronicle its small beer. During much of its later history it had a hard struggle for existence. The Black Death all but brought ruin to it, though later on William of Wykeham did much to restore its prosperity. Its best-known abbot was Walter Fyfhyde, abbot from 1318 to 1361.
Of St. Mary’s Abbey we have fewer details still. It enjoyed a considerable revenue from the tolls, or ‘octroi,’ on merchandise which entered the city at the East Gate.
Far different from the life of monk or nun was that of the friar. In the fourteenth century he was firmly established as a Winchester institution. He was the active missioner, the revivalist, the preacher. He moved in the world, not in the cloister. He taught, he preached, he visited the slums; he was the Church-army worker or the Salvationist of his time, and if he wrought too much on the superstitious fears of his hearers, even if the relics which he permitted them to kiss were usually nothing but ‘pigges bones,’ like those of Chaucer’s ‘gentle pardonere,’ as often as not he would have been prepared to defend the fraud as a pious deception which did no harm to his listeners, while as a class the friars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were undoubtedly the salt of the earth.
All the four orders of friars were represented in Winchester—Black Friars or Dominicans, Grey Friars or Franciscans, White Friars or Carmelites, and Austin Friars. Their quarters were generally in the slums. The name ‘Grey Friars’ still lingers in ‘The Brooks,’ and ‘The Friary’ in Southgate Road preserves the memory of the Austin Friars, though the latter, strictly speaking, were rather canons than friars proper. Between the several types of ecclesiastics deadly jealousy existed, and if monk and friar agreed at all, it was probably in a common hostility to the ordinary parochial incumbent or parish priest.
Besides these, many smaller religious or semi-religious houses of various types existed. Adjoining Wykeham’s College was the ‘Sustern Spital,’ a community of nursing sisters, fronting on to College Street; the little college of St. Elizabeth of Hungary stood near the boundary wall of ‘Mead’; and besides these were a number of others, of which Magdalene College was perhaps the chief. Mediaeval Winchester could certainly display ‘Pious Founders’ with any city of its day.
The monasteries continued to flourish in greater or less prosperity till the middle of Henry VIII.’s reign. But though the cloister monk himself might come but little in contact with the outer world, the aspects in which the monastery as a whole did so were numerous and important. Not only in its immediate vicinity did it serve as educator, general almoner, and physician, relieving want and sheltering distress, but far away also from its walls its word was law, its control all-sufficient. As landed proprietors on a widely extended scale the monasteries wielded enormous territorial influence. At their grange farms, such as the farm of the Augustinians at Silkstede, they maintained large bodies of farm hands, they reared sheep, they drove to market, they bought and sold. Nor was this all; all was fish that came into their net, and Church patronage not the least important or acceptable, so that more and more the duty of providing for the spiritual needs of neighbouring or outlying parishes fell to their share, along with the tithes or dues paid to support it, and in such cases tithe was no longer paid to the incumbent direct but to the monastery, who appointed a ‘vicar’ or deputy to carry out the spiritual duties,—a system satisfactory enough, perhaps, if faithfully followed out, but leading to every form of evil and neglect when laxity supervened, and selfishness replaced zeal; and so the system of ‘vicars’ as incumbents was inaugurated, while the frequent iteration and survival up and down the country side of such monastic addenda to the names of Hampshire towns and villages, as Itchen Abbas, Abbot’s Ann, Monk’s Sherborne, Prior’s Barton, to quote but one or two, is an eloquent testimony to the firm grasp which the monk had secured of the spiritual patrimony of the Church, and to this more than anything else is to be attributed the present poverty of the Church, and the lay patronage existing in so many rural English parishes to-day.