HOUSE SERVANT AND PORTER, EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY
Richard Redman, Bishop of Ely (1500), gave food to the poor wherever he went, and on his departure from a town gave every poor man sixpence at least. Nicholas, Lord Bishop of Ely, gave every day bread and drink and warm meat to 200 persons. The Earl of Derby fed 60 aged persons twice a day, all comers thrice a week, and on Good Friday 2700. Robert Winchesley, in the thirteenth century, fed thousands every day in time of dearth. Henry in 1236 ordered 6000 poor persons to be fed at Westminster on Circumcision Day; and so on, other instances being recorded by the careful Stow.
There is a very simple explanation of this profuseness, which seems to us so wasteful and so mischievous. There were no bank investments, no companies, no stocks or shares; a nobleman’s estates brought him in every year so much money; it belonged to his rank to maintain as great a state as his means would allow; to accumulate money was not considered either noble or princely; to accumulate manors—yes—and to spend the rents as they came in every year with a lavish hand, was considered the part of a courteous and noble lord. Henry III., Edward II., and Richard II. are instances where the association of lavish expenditure with true princeliness was carried to a disease. This, however, is a characteristic trait of the mediæval noble. The bourgeois, the merchant, the trader, might save and spare and accumulate. It was his métier. The noble must exhibit his wealth by a splendid dress, a splendid following, a splendid table, and a splendid generosity. No doubt had Hugh Spencer the elder been longer spared to an admiring country he would have added many more manors to his long list; but he would not have added much, if anything, to the ready money in the long narrow chest which was carried between two horses as he went with his riding from town to castle.
EARL RIVERS PRESENTING HIS BOOK TO EDWARD IV.
From MS. Lambeth, 265.
Stories of the banquets and gifts of the great citizens show a command of ready money which the most princely of the nobles never possessed, though probably few of the citizens could compare, as far as wealth went, with the first among the nobles.
The magnificence of the banquet at which Whittington made a gift to the King, astonished both the King and his bride; probably there was not, in all England and France together, another man who could have provided such a banquet. Among the great nobles, with a vast territory and many thousands of vassals, there was not certainly, outside the City of London, any one who could command the rich and splendid things which were ready to the hand of a great merchant. Even the fires were fed with cedar and perfumed wood. When Katherine spoke of it, the Mayor proposed to feed the flames with something still more costly and valuable, and, in fact, he threw into the fire the King’s own bonds, to the amount of £60,000. Among the bonds were some, to the amount of 10,000 marks, due to the Mercers’ Company; one of 1500 marks, due to the Chamber of London; one of 2000 marks, belonging to the Grocers; and all Whittington’s private loans and advances. It is probable that in burning these bonds the Mayor acted by previous agreement of the City; but if not—if he took on himself the loans due to the Companies—he made a most splendid and princely gift. The sum of £60,000 advanced by one man would, even in these days, be considered enormous; in those days it can hardly be reckoned as less than a million and a quarter of our present money.