One o’clocke!”
Sumptuary laws were constantly renewed and continually broken. Yet the mass of the people obeyed the unwritten law by which a man’s station was shown by his dress. For more on this subject see the Chapter on Dress.
The ordering of the household was strict. Early hours were kept; in summer servants and apprentices were up at five; in winter at six or seven; there were rules as to attendance at morning and evening prayers; there was to be no quarrelling; no striking; no profane language.
It is said that coaches were introduced in this reign; but there had always been coaches, i.e. wheeled conveyances of a kind. Such a carriage, belonging to the fourteenth century, is figured in J. J. Jusserand’s English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages—a cumbrous unwieldy thing, yet still a coach. What really happened in this century was the introduction of a much more convenient kind of coach from Holland.
Stow laments the mud and the splashing in the streets. “The coachman rideth behind the horse tails, lasheth them, and looketh not behind him; the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray and letteth his horse lead him home.” Most of the City streets, however, were so narrow and so much obstructed by houses standing out, for as yet there was no alignment except in streets like Chepe, which were highways and market streets, that no wheeled vehicle could pass at all.
SHOP AND SOLAR, CLARE MARKET, NOW DEMOLISHED
From a photograph taken in 1895.
There was very little more lighting at night than there had been in the preceding centuries. If a London dame ventured out of the house after dark, the ’prentice carried a link before her. Some of the old shops or sheds with “solars” over them remained in Stow’s time; the last of them stood in Clare Market, and was pulled down a few years ago. See the accompanying photograph of it. Stow says that stalls had become sheds, i.e. roofed stalls; and then shops, i.e. enclosed stalls; and then “fair houses.” He instances a block of houses called Goldsmiths’ Row, between Bread Street and the Cross, which contained ten dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, “all in one frame, uniformly built.” They were four stories high. The shops seem to have been open, but perhaps the upper part was protected with a shutter or with glass.
Inland communication was conducted by means of carts and coaches. Harrison[5] complains of the new fashion: “Our Princes and the Nobilitie have their cariage commonlie made by carts, wherby it commeth to passe that when the Queene’s Majestie dooth remove from anie one place to another, there are usuallie 400 carewanes, which amount to the summe of 2400 horses, appointed out of the counties adjoining, whereby hir cariage is conveied safelie unto the appointed place. Hereby also the ancient use of sumpter horses is in maner utterlie relinquished, which causeth the traines of our princes in their progresses to shew far lesse than those of the kings of other nations.”
During this long reign, in spite of plague and pestilence, the population of London increased, and the suburbs extended, as we have seen, in all directions. The increase of population was due (1) to the increase of trade in London, which required a great accession of ship-builders, boat-builders, makers of the various gear required for ships, seamen, lightermen, porters, stevedores, and the like; (2) to the large number of immigrants from France and the Low Countries; and (3) to the number of persons released from the Religious Houses. That is to say, this last is generally represented as one of the causes. To me it seems as if the influence of these people on the population of London must be regarded as quite insignificant. There were some 8000 monks, nuns, and friars who were sent into the world. Many of those who were in priests’ orders obtained places in parish churches, conforming by degrees to the changes of doctrine; the monks and nuns had pensions; many of the latter went abroad; of the friars many were absorbed in the general population; a certain number, one knows not how many, refused to work, and joined the company of rogues and masterless men, but there seems nothing to show how many of them settled in London.