No. 217. The Canterbury Pilgrims.
Lydgate composed his poem of the “Storie of Thebes,” as a continuation of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” and in the prologue he describes himself as arriving in Canterbury, while the pilgrims were there, and accidentally taking up his lodging at the same inn. He thus seeks and obtains permission to be one of the fellowship, and returns from Canterbury in their company. Our cut [No. 217], taken from a fine manuscript of Lydgate’s poem (MS. Reg. 18 D. ii.), represents the pilgrims leaving Canterbury, and is not only a good illustration of the practice of travelling in companies, but it furnishes us with a characteristic picture of a mediæval town.
This readiness of travellers to join company with each other was not confined to any class of society, but was general among them all, and not unfrequently led to the formation of friendships and alliances between those who had previously been strangers to one another. In the interesting romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” composed in the thirteenth century, when Jean of Dammartin came to seek his fortune in England, and was riding from Dover to London, attended by a faithful servant, he overtook the earl of Oxford, who was on his way to London, with a numerous retinue of armed followers. Jean, having learnt from the earl’s followers who he was, introduced himself to him, and was finally taken into his service. Subsequently, in the same romance, Jean of Dammartin, returning to England, takes up his lodging in a handsome hotel in London, and while his man Robin puts the horses in the stable, he walks out into the street, and sees a large company who had just arrived, consisting of squires, servants, knights, clerks, priests, serving-lads (garçons), and men who attended the baggage horses (sommiers). Jean asked one of the esquires who they all were, what was their business, and where they were going; and was informed that it was the earl of Gloucester, who had come to London about some business, and was going on the morrow to Oxford, to be married to the lady Blonde, the object of Jean’s affections. Next morning the earl began his journey at daybreak, and Jean and his servant, who were mounted ready, joined the company. There was so little unusual in this, that the intruders seem, for a while, not to have been noticed, until, at length, the earl observed Jean, and began to interrogate him: “Friend,” said he, “you are welcome; what is your name?”— Amis, bien fustes vené,
Coment fu vostre non pelé?
—Romance of Blonde, l. 2,627.
Jean gave him an assumed name, said he was a merchant, and offered to sell the earl his horse, but they could not agree upon the terms. They continued conversing together during the rest of the journey. As they proceeded they encountered a shower of rain, which wetted the earl, who was fashionably and thinly clothed. Jean smiled at the impatience with which he seemed to bear this mishap, and when asked to tell the cause of his mirth, said, “If I were a rich man, like you, I should always carry a house with me, so that I could go into it when the rain came, and not get my clothes dirtied and wet.” The earl and his followers set Jean down for a fool, and looked forward to be made merry by him. Soon afterwards they came to the banks of a river, into which the earl rode, without first ascertaining if it were fordable, and he was carried away by the stream, and only saved from drowning by a fisherman in a boat. The rest of the company found a ford, where they passed the river without danger. The earl’s clothes had now been completely soaked in the water, and, as his baggage-horses were too far in the rear, he made one of his knights strip, and give him his dry clothes, and left him to make the best of his wet ones. “If I were as rich, and had so many men, as you,” said Jean, laughing again, “I would not be exposed to misfortunes of this kind, for I would carry a bridge with me.” The earl and his retinue were merry again, at what they supposed to be the folly of their travelling companion. They were now near Oxford, and Jean took his leave of the earl of Gloucester. We learn, in the course of the story, that all that Jean meant by the house, was that the earl ought to have had at hand a good cloak and cape to cover his fine clothes in case of rain; and that, by the bridge, he intended to intimate that he ought to have sent some of his men to ascertain the depth of the river before he went into it!
These illustrations of the manner and inconveniences of travelling apply more especially to those who could travel on horseback; but the difficulties were still greater for the numerous class of people who were obliged to travel on foot, and who could rarely make sure of reaching, at the end of each day’s journey, a place where they could obtain a lodging. They, moreover, had also to take with them a certain quantity of baggage. Foot-travellers seem to have had sometimes a mule or a donkey, to carry luggage, or for the weak women and children. Every one will remember the mediæval fable of the old man and his ass, in which a father and his son have the one ass between them. In mediæval illuminations representing the flight into Egypt, Joseph is often represented as walking, while the Virgin and Child ride upon an ass which he is leading. The party of foot-travellers in our cut [No. 218], taken from a manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), forms part of a group representing the relatives of Thomas Beckett driven into exile by king Henry II.; they are making their way to the sea-shore on foot, perhaps to show that they were not of very high condition in life.
No. 218. Travellers on Foot.
In Chaucer, it is a matter of surprise that the “chanoun” had so little luggage that he carried only a male, or portmanteau, on his horse’s crupper, and even that was doubled up (tweyfold) on account of its emptiness:— A male tweyfold on his croper lay,
It seemed that he caried litel array,
Al light for somer rood this worthy man.
—Cant. Tales, l. 12,494.
On the contrary, in the romance of “Berte,” when the heroine is left to wander in the solitary forest, the writer laments that she had “neither pack-horse laden with coffers, nor clothes folded up in males,” which were the ordinary accompaniments of travellers of any consequence:— N’i ot sommier à coffres ne dras troussés en male.
—Roman de Berte, p. 42.
A traveller, indeed, had many things to carry with him. He took provisions with him, or was obliged, at times, to reckon on what he could kill, or obtain undressed, and hence he was obliged to carry cooking apparatus with him. He carried flint and steel to strike a light, and be able to make a fire, as he might have to bivouac in a solitary place, or in the midst of a forest. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” when the count Begues of Belin finds himself benighted in the forest, he prepares for passing the night comfortably, and, as a matter of course, draws out his flint (fusil), and lights a fire:— Et li quens est desous l’arbre ramé;
Prent son fusil, s’a le fu alumé,
Grant et plenier, merveilleus embrasé.
—Garin le Loherain, ii., p. 231.
The traveller also often carried materials for laying a bed, if benighted on the road; and he had, above all, to take sufficient money with him in specie. He sometimes also carried a portable tent with him, or materials for making one. In the English romance of “Ipomydon” (Weber, ii. 343), the maiden messenger of the heiress of Calabria carries her tent with her, and usually lodges at night under it— As they rode by the way,
The mayde to the dwarfe gan saye,
“Undo my tente, and sette it faste,
For here a whyle I wille me ryste.”
Mete and drynke bothe they had,
That was fro home with them lad.
It may be remarked that in this story the first thought of every gallant knight who passes is to treat the lady with violence. All these incumbrances, combined with the badness of the roads, rendered travelling slow—of which we might quote abundant examples. At the end of the twelfth century, it took Giraldus Cambrensis four days to travel from Powisland to Haughmond Abbey, near Shrewsbury. The roads, too, were infested with robbers and banditti, and travellers were only safe in their numbers, and in being sufficiently well armed to repel attacks. In the accompanying cut ([No. 219]), from a manuscript of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), a traveller is taking his repose under a tree,—it is, perhaps, intended to be understood that he is passing the night in a wood,—while he is plundered by robbers, who are here jokingly represented in the forms of monkeys. While one is emptying his “male” or box, the other is carrying off his girdle, with the large pouch attached to it, in which, no doubt, the traveller carried his money, and perhaps his eatables. The insecurity of the roads in the middle ages was, indeed, very great, for not only were the forests filled with bands of outlaws, who stripped all who fell into their hands, but the knights and landed gentry, and even noblemen, took to the highways not unfrequently, and robbed unscrupulously. Moreover, they built their castles near difficult passes, or by a river where there was a bridge or ford, and where, therefore, they commanded it, and there they levied arbitrary taxes on all who passed, and, on the slightest attempt at resistance, plundered the traveller of his property, and put him to death or threw him into their dungeons. Incidents of this kind are common in the mediæval romances and stories. Piers de Bruville, in the history of Fulke Fitz-Warine, may be mentioned as an example of this class of marauders. “At that time,” says the story, “there was a knight in the country who was called Piers de Bruville. This Piers used to collect all the sons of gentlemen of the country who were wild, and other ribald people, and used to go about the country, and slew and robbed loyal people, merchants, and others.” In the fabliau of the “Chevalier au Barizel,” we are told of a great baron who issued continually from his strong castle to plunder the country around. “He watched so closely the roads, that he slew all the pilgrims, and plundered the merchants; many of them he brought to mishap. He spared neither clergy nor monk, recluse, hermit, or canon; and the nuns and lay-sisters he caused to live in open shame, when he had them in his power; and he spared neither dames nor maids, of whatever rank or class, whether poor or rich, or well educated or simple, but he put them all to open shame” (Barbazan, i. 209).
No. 219. Plundering a Traveller.
The roads, in the middle ages, appear also to have been infested with beggars of all descriptions, many of whom were cripples, and persons mutilated in the most revolting manner, the result of feudal wantonness, and of feudal vengeance. Our cut [No. 220], also furnished by a manuscript of the fourteenth century, represents a very deformed cripple, whose means of locomotion are rather curious. The beggar and the cripple, too, were often only robbers in disguise, who waited their opportunity to attack single passengers, or who watched to give notice to comrades of the approach of richer convoys. The mediæval popular stories give abundant instances of robbers and others disguising themselves as beggars and cripples. Blindness, also, was common among these objects of commiseration in the middle ages; often, as in the case of mutilation of other kinds, the result of deliberate violence. The same manuscript I have so often quoted (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), has furnished our cut No. 221, representing a blind man and his dog.