Taverns of an ordinary description, where there was probably no accommodation for travellers, seem to have been common enough under the Anglo-Saxons and it must be confessed that there seems to be too much reason for believing that people spent a great deal of their leisure time in them; even the clergy appear to have been tempted to frequent them. In the Ecclesiastical Institutes, quoted above, mass-priests are forbidden to eat or drink at ale-houses (æt ceap-ealothelum). And it is stated in the same curious record that, “It is a very bad custom that many men practise, both on Sundays and also other mass-days; that is, that straightways at early morn they desire to hear mass, and immediately after the mass, from early morn the whole day over, in drunkenness and feasting they minister to their belly, not to God.”
Merchant travellers seem, in general, to have congregated together in parties or small caravans, both for companionship and as a measure of mutual defence against robbers. In such cases they probably carried tents with them, and formed little encampments at night, like the pedlars and itinerant dealers in later times. Men who travelled alone were exposed to other dangers besides that of robbery; for a solitary wanderer was always looked upon with suspicion, and he was in danger himself of being taken for a thief. He was compelled, therefore, by his own interest and by the law of the land, to show that he had no wish to avoid observation; one of the earlier Anglo-Saxon codes of laws, that of king Wihtræd, directed that “if a man come from afar, or a stranger go out of the high way, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn, he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain, or to be redeemed.”
No. 52. Taking Toll.
So prevalent, indeed, was theft and unfair dealing among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and so much litigation and unjust persecution arose from disputed claims to property which had been, or was pretended to have been, purchased, that it was made illegal to buy or sell without witnesses. It would be easy to multiply examples of robbery and plunder from Anglo-Saxon writers; but I will only state that, according to the Ely history, some merchants from Ireland, having come to Cambridge in the time of king Edgar, to offer their wares for sale, perhaps at the annual festivities of the Beorna-wyl, mentioned above, a priest of the place was guilty of stealing a part of their merchandise. We know but little of the trades and forms of commercial dealings of the Anglo-Saxons; but we may take our leave of the period of which we have been hitherto treating, with a few figures relating to money matters, from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl. No. 603). The cut [No. 52] represents, apparently, a man in the market, or at the gates of a city, taking toll for merchandise. The scales are for weighing, not the merchandise, but the money. The word pund, or pound, implies that the money was reckoned by weight; and the word mancus, another term for a certain sum of money, is also considered to have been a weight. Anglo-Saxon writings frequently speak of money as given by weight. Our cut No. 53 is a representation of the merchant, or the toll-taker, seated before his account book, with his scales hanging to the desk. In the first of these cuts, a man holds the bag or purse, in which the money received for toll or merchandise is deposited. The cut [No. 54] represents the receiver pouring the money out of his bag into the cyst, or chest, in which it is to be locked up and kept in his treasury. It is hardly necessary to say that there were no banking-houses among the Anglo-Saxons. The chest, or coffer, in which people kept their money and other valuables, appears to have formed part of the furniture of the chamber, as being the most private apartment; and it may be remarked that a rich man’s wealth usually consisted much more in jewels and valuable plate than in money.
| No. 53. A Money Taker. | No. 54. Putting Treasure by. |
We cannot but remark how little change the manners and the sentiments of our Saxon forefathers underwent during the long period that we are in any way acquainted with them. During the reign of Edward the Confessor, Norman fashions were introduced at court, but their influence on the nation at large appears to have been very trifling. Even after the Norman conquest the English manners and fashions retained their hold on the people, and at later periods they continually re-appear to assert their natural rights among the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons.
CHAPTER V.
THE EARLY NORMAN PERIOD.—LUXURIOUSNESS OF THE NORMANS.—ADVANCE IN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.—THE KITCHEN AND THE HALL.—PROVISIONS AND COOKERY.—BEES.—THE DAIRY.—MEAL-TIMES AND DIVISIONS OF THE DAY.—FURNITURE.—THE FALDESTOL.—CHAIRS AND OTHER SEATS.
A great change was wrought in this country by the entrance of the Normans. From what we have seen, in the course of the preceding chapters, society seems for a long time to have been at a standstill among the Anglo-Saxons, as though it had progressed as far as its own simple vitality would carry it, and wanted some new impulse to move it onwards. By the entrance of the Normans, the Saxon aristocracy was destroyed; but the lower and, in a great measure, the middle classes were left untouched in their manners and customs, which they appear to have preserved for a considerable length of time without any material change. The Norman historians, who write with prejudice when they speak of the Saxons, describe their nobility as having become luxurious without refinement; and they tell us that the Normans introduced greater sobriety, accompanied with more ostentation. “The nobility,” says William of Malmesbury, “was given up to luxury and wantonness.... Drinking in parties was an universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; unlike the Normans and French, who, in noble and splendid mansions, lived with frugality. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed.... In fine, the English at that time (under king Harold) wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skin adorned with punctured designs; they were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors; whose manners, in other respects, they adopted.”
Whatever moderation the Normans may have brought with them, or however they may have been restrained by the first Anglo-Norman monarch, it disappeared entirely under his son and successor: “when,” in the words of William of Malmesbury, “everything was so changed, that there was no man rich except the money-changer, and no clerks but lawyers.... The courtiers then preyed upon the property of the country people, and consumed their substance, taking the very meat from their mouths. Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress; and then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mince their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half naked.” This increasing dissoluteness of manners appears to have received no effectual check under the reign of the first Henry; in the twenty-ninth year of which, the writer just quoted tells us that “a circumstance occurred in England, which may seem surprising to our long-haired gallants, who, forgetting what they were born, transform themselves into the fashion of females, by the length of their locks. A certain English knight, who prided himself on the luxuriance of his tresses, being conscience-stung on the subject, seemed to feel in a dream as though some person strangled him with his ringlets. Awaking in a fright, he immediately cut off all his superfluous hair. The example spread throughout England; and, as recent punishment is apt to affect the mind, almost all the barons allowed their hair to be cropped in a proper manner, without reluctance. But this decency was not of long continuance; for scarcely had a year expired, before all those who thought themselves courtly, relapsed into their former vice; they vied with women in length of locks, and wherever these were wanting, put on false tresses; forgetful, or rather ignorant, of the saying of the Apostle, ‘If a man nurture his hair, it is a shame to him.’” Public and private manners were gradually running into the terrible lawlessness of the reign of king Stephen.