Education of this kind was bestowed more generally on the bourgeoisie—on the middle and even the lower classes; and to these school-education was much more generally accessible than we are accustomed to imagine. From Anglo-Saxon times, indeed, every parish church had been a public school. The Ecclesiastical Institutes (p. 475, in the folio edition of the Laws, by Thorpe) directs that “Mass-priests ought always to have at their houses a school of disciples; and if any one desire to commit his little ones (lytlingas) to them for instruction, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach them.” It is added that “they ought not, however, for that instruction, to desire anything from their relatives, except what they shall be willing to do for them of their own accord.” In the Ecclesiastical Canons, published under king Edgar, there is an enactment which would lead us to suppose that the clergy performed their scholastic duties with some zeal, and that priests were in the habit of seducing their scholars from each other, for this enactment (p. 396) enjoins “that no priest receive another’s scholar without leave of him whom he previously followed.” This system of teaching was kept up during at least several generations after the Norman conquest.
CHAPTER VII.
EARLY ENGLISH HOUSES.—THEIR GENERAL FORM AND DISTRIBUTION.
After the middle of the twelfth century, we begin to be better acquainted with the domestic manners of our forefathers, and from that period to the end of the fourteenth century the change was very gradual, and in many respects they remained nearly the same. In the middle classes, especially in the towns, there had been a gradual fusion of Norman and Saxon manners, while the Norman fashions and the Norman language prevailed in the higher classes, and the manners of the lower classes remained, probably, nearly the same as before the Conquest.
We now obtain a more perfect notion of the houses of all classes, not only from more frequent and exact descriptions, but from existing remains. The principal part of the building was still the hall, or, according to the Norman word, the salle, but its old Saxon character seems to have been so universally acknowledged, that the first or Saxon name prevailed over the other. The name now usually given to the whole dwelling-house was the Norman word manoir or manor, and we find this applied popularly to the houses of all classes, excepting only the cottages of labouring people. In houses of the twelfth century, the hall, standing on the ground floor, and open to the roof, still formed the principal feature of the building. The chamber generally adjoined to it at one end, and at the other was usually a stable (croiche). The whole building stood within a small enclosure, consisting of a yard or court in front, called in Norman aire (area), and a garden, which was surrounded usually with a hedge and ditch. In front, the house had usually one door, which was the main entrance into the hall. From this latter apartment there was a door into the chamber at one end, and one into the croiche or stable at the other end, and a back door into the garden. The chamber had also frequently a door which opened also into the garden; the stable, as a matter of course, would have a large door or outlet into the yard. The chief windows were those of the hall. These, in common houses, appear to have been merely openings, which might be closed with wooden shutters; and in other parts of the building they were nothing but holes (pertuis); there appears to have been usually one of these holes in the partition wall between the chamber and the hall, and another between the hall and the stable. There was also an outer window, or pertuis, to the chamber.
In the popular French and Anglo-Norman fabliaux, or tales in verse, which belong mostly to the thirteenth century, we meet with many incidents illustrating this distribution of the apartments of the house, which no doubt continued essentially the same during that and the following century. Thus in a fabliau published by M. Jubinal, an old woman of mean condition in life, dame Auberée, is described as visiting a burgher’s wife, who, with characteristic vanity, takes her into the chamber adjoining (en une chambre ilueques près), to show her her handsome bed. When the lady afterwards takes refuge with dame Auberée, she also shows her out of the hall into a chamber close adjoining (en une chambre iluec de joste). In a fabliau entitled Du prestre crucifié, published by Méon, a man returning home at night, sees what is going on in the hall through a pertuis, or hole made through the wall for a window, before he opens the door (par un pertuis les a veuz). In another fabliau published in the larger collection of Barbazan, a lady in her chamber sees what is passing in the hall par un pertuis. In the fabliau of Le povre clerc (or scholar), the clerc, having asked for a night’s lodging at the house of a miller during the miller’s absence, is driven away by the wife, who expects a visit from her lover the priest, and is unwilling to have an intruder. The clerc, as he is going away, meets the miller, who, angry at the inhospitable conduct of his dame, takes him back to the house. The priest in the meantime had arrived, and is sitting in the hall with the good wife, who, hearing a knock at the door, makes her lover hide himself in the stable (croiche). From the stable the priest watches the company in the hall through a window (fenestre), which is evidently only another name for the pertuis. In one fabliau the gallant comes through the court or garden, and is let into the hall by the back door; in another a woman is introduced into the chamber by a back door, or, as it is called in the text, a false door (par un fax huis), while the hall is occupied by company.
The arrangements of an ordinary house in the country are illustrated in the fabliau De Barat et de Haimet, printed in the collection of Barbazan. Two thieves undertake to rob a third of “a bacon,” which he (Travers) had hung on the beam or rafter of his house, or hall:— Travers l’avoit à une hart
Au tref de sa meson pendu.
The thieves make a hole in the wall, by which one enters without waking Travers or his wife, although they were sleeping with the door of their chamber open. The bacon is thus stolen and carried away. Travers, roused by the noise of their departure, rises from his bed, follows the thieves, and ultimately recaptures his bacon. He resolves now to cook the bacon, and eat some of it, and for this purpose a fire is made, and a cauldron full of water hung over it. This appears to be performed in the middle of the hall. The thieves return, and, approaching the door, one of them looked through the pertuis, and saw the bacon boiling:— Baras mist son oeil au pertuis,
Et voit que la chaudiere bout.
The thieves then climb the roof, uncover a small space at the top silently, and attempt to draw up the bacon with a hook.
No. 81. An Anglo-Norman House.
No. 82. The Hall and Chamber.