“This barbour shall have, every satyrday at nyght, if it please the Kinge to cleanse his head, legges, or feet, and for his shaving, two loves, one picher wyne. And the ussher of chambre ought to testyfye if this is necessaryly dispended or not.”
So far as appears from Edward the Fourth’s Liber Niger Domus, soap was used only for washing clothes. The yeoman lavender, or washerman, was to take from the Great Spicery ‘as muche whyte soape, greye, and blacke, as can be thought resonable by proufe of the Countrollers,’ and therewith ‘tenderly to waysshe ... the stuffe for the Kinges propyr persone’ (H. Ord. p. 85); but whether that cleansing material ever touched His Majesty’s sacred person (except doubtless when and if the barber shaved him), does not appear. The Ordinances are considerate as to sex, and provide for “weomen lavendryes” for a Queen, and further that “these officers oughte to bee sworne to keepe the chambre counsaylle.” But it is not for one of a nation that has not yet taken generally to tubbing and baths, or left off shaving, to reproach his forefathers with want of cleanliness, or adherence to customs that involve contradiction of the teachings of physiologists, and the evident intent of Nature or the Creator. Moreover, reflections on the good deeds done, and the high thoughts thought, by men of old dirtier than some now, may prevent us concluding that because other people now talk through their noses, and have manners different from our own, they and their institutions must be wholly abominable; that because others smell when heated, they ought to be slaves; or that eating peas with a knife renders men unworthy of the franchise. The temptation to value manners above morals, and pleasantness above honesty, is one that all of us have to guard against. And when we have held to a custom merely because it is old, have refused to consider fairly the reasons for its change, and are inclined to grumble when the change is carried out, we shall be none the worse for thinking of the people, young and old, who, in the time of Harrison and Shakspere, the “Forgotten Worthies”[82]
and Raleigh, no doubt ‘hated those nasty new oak houses and chimnies,’ and sighed for the good old times:
“And yet see the change, for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become willow, but a great manie through Persian delicacie crept in among vs, altogither of straw, which is a sore alteration.... Now haue we manie chimnies, and yet our tenderlings complaine of rheumes, catarhs and poses. Then had we none but reredosses, and our heads did neuer ake.[83] For as the smoke in those daies was supposed to be a sufficient hardning for the timber of the house; so it was reputed a far better medicine to keepe the goodman and his familie from the quack or pose, wherewith as then verie few were oft acquainted.” Harrison, i. 212, col. 1, quoted by Ellis.
If rich men and masters were dirty, poor men and servants must have been dirtier still. William Langlande’s description of Hawkyn’s one metaphorical dress in which he slept o’ nightes as well as worked by day, beslobbered (or by-moled, bemauled) by children, was true of the real smock; flesh-moths must have been plentiful, and the sketch of Coveitise, as regards many men, hardly an exaggeration:
... as a bonde-man of his bacon · his berd was bi-draveled,
With his hood on his heed · a lousy hat above,
And in a tawny tabard · of twelf wynter age
Al so torn and baudy · and ful of lys crepyng,
But if that a lous[84] couthe · han lopen the bettre,