First Course, of Nine Dishes.
Long wortes (vegetables). An hen in dubate.
Shuldres of motoun.
Wylde goos. Wode doves.
Fresh laumprey. Grete codlynge.
Bonsomers. Tortons, in paste.
Second Course, of Ten Dishes.
Pynnonade (a confection of almonds and pines).
Malardes of the rivere.
Cotes, rost, and dampettes.
Quayles, and goldefynche.
Ele reversed. Breme de mere.
Frypours ryalle. Viande en feast.
Quarters of lambe.
The bills of fare I have thus given are intended for dinners of moderate size, but I might easily have given much larger ones, though we should have learnt nothing more by them than by the smaller ones, from which the reader will be able to form a very good judgment of the general style of eating among our forefathers, when they lived well. The fifteenth century, especially, was celebrated for its great feasts, at which the consumption of provisions was enormous. The bills of expenses of some of them have been preserved. In the sixth year of the reign of Edward IV. (A.D. 1466), George Nevile was made archbishop of York, and the account of the expenditure for the feast on that occasion contains the following articles:—Three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tuns of ale, one hundred tuns of wine, one pint of hypocras, a hundred and four oxen, six wild bulls, a thousand sheep, three hundred and four calves, the same number of swine, four hundred swans, two thousand geese, a thousand capons, two thousand pigs, four hundred plovers, a hundred dozen of quails, two hundred dozen of the birds called “rees,” a hundred and four peacocks, four thousand mallards and teals, two hundred and four cranes, two hundred and four kids, two thousand chickens, four thousand pigeons, four thousand crays, two hundred and four bitterns, four hundred herons, two hundred pheasants, five hundred partridges, four hundred woodcocks, one hundred curlews, a thousand egrettes, more than five hundred stags, bucks, and roes, four thousand cold venison pasties, a thousand “parted” dishes of jelly, three thousand plain dishes of jelly, four thousand cold baked tarts, fifteen hundred hot venison pasties, two thousand hot custards, six hundred and eight pikes and breams, twelve porpoises and seals, with a proportionate quantity of spices, sugared delicacies, and wafers or cakes.
On the inthronation of William Warham as archbishop of Canterbury in 1504, the twentieth year of the reign of Henry VII., a feast was given for which the following provisions were purchased:—Fifty-four quarters of wheat, twenty shillings’ worth of fine flour for making wafers, six tuns or pipes of red wine, four of claret wine, one of choice white wine, and one of white wine for the kitchen, one butt of malmsey, one pipe of wine of Osey, two tierces of Rhenish wine, four tuns of London ale, six of Kentish ale, and twenty of English beer, thirty-three pounds’ worth of spices, three hundred lings, six hundred codfish, seven barrels of salted salmon, forty fresh salmon, fourteen barrels of white herrings, twenty cades of red herrings (each cade containing six hundred herrings, which would make a total of twelve thousand), five barrels of salted sturgeons, two barrels of salted eels, six hundred fresh eels, eight thousand whelks, five hundred pikes, four hundred tenches, a hundred carps, eight hundred breams, two barrels of salted lampreys, eighty fresh lampreys, fourteen hundred fresh lamperns, a hundred and twenty-four salted congers, two hundred great roaches, a quantity of seals and porpoises, with a considerable quantity of other fish. It will be understood at once that this feast took place on a fish day.
This habit of profuse and luxurious living seems to have gradually declined during the sixteenth and first part of the seventeenth century, until it was extinguished in the great convulsion which produced the interregnum. After the Restoration, we find that the table, among all classes, was furnished more soberly, and with plainer and more substantial dishes.
CHAPTER XVII.
SLOW PROGRESS OF SOCIETY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—ENLARGEMENT OF THE HOUSES.—THE HALL AND ITS FURNITURE.—ARRANGEMENT OF THE TABLE FOR MEALS.—ABSENCE OF CLEANLINESS.—MANNERS AT TABLE.—THE PARLOUR.
The progress of society in the two countries which were most closely allied in this respect, England and France, was slow during the fifteenth century. Both countries were engaged either in mutual hostility or in desolating civil wars, which so utterly checked all spirit of improvement, that the aspect of society differed little between the beginning and the end of the century in anything but dress. At the close of the fourteenth century, the middle classes in England had made great advance in wealth and in independence, and the wars of the roses, which were so destructive to the nobility, as well as the tendency of the crown to set the gentry up as a balance to the power of the feudal barons, helped to make that advance more certain and rapid. This increase of wealth appears in the multiplication of furniture and of other household implements, especially those of a more valuable description. We are surprised, in running our eye through the wills and inventories during this period, at the quantity of plate which was usually possessed by country gentlemen and respectable burghers. There was also a great increase both in the number and magnitude of the houses which intervened between the castle and the cottage. Instead of having one or two bedrooms, and turning people into the hall to sleep at night, we now find whole suits of chambers; while, where before, the family lived chiefly in the hall, privacy was sought by the addition of parlours, of which there were often more than one in an ordinary sized house. The hall was in fact already beginning to diminish in importance in comparison with the rest of the house. Whether in town or country, houses of any magnitude were now generally built round an interior court, into which the rooms almost invariably looked, only small and unimportant windows looking towards the street or country. This arrangement of course originated in the necessity of studying security, a necessity which was never felt more than in the fifteenth century. We have less need to seek our illustrations from manuscripts during this period, on account of the numerous examples of buildings which still remain in a greater or less state of perfection, but still an illumination now and then presents us with an interesting picture of the architectural arrangements of a dwelling-house in the fifteenth century, which may be advantageously compared with the buildings that still exist. One of these is represented in our cut [No. 234], taken from an illuminated copy of the French translation of Valerius Maximus (MS. No. 6984, in the National Library at Paris). The building to the left is probably the staircase turret of the gateway; that before us is the mass of the household apartments. We are supposed to be standing within the court. At the foot of the turret is the well, a very important object within the court, where it was always placed in houses of this description, as in the troubles of those days the household might be obliged to shut themselves up for a day or two and depend for their supply of water entirely on what they could get within their walls.
