A BANQUET
From Strutt’s Manners and Customs.
In considering the food of the people we must be reminded that a large part of every year consisted of those days on which neither meat, eggs, butter, nor milk could be eaten, and only one meal a day was to be taken; and of those days on which meat was forbidden. There were one hundred and ten days in the year, nearly one in three, on which a strict churchman would not eat meat, and of these there were more than sixty days on which he was allowed only one meal a day, and that without meat, butter, eggs, or milk. It is not to be supposed that the great mass of the people obeyed so rigid a rule: the work of the world, at least in the case of everything that demands activity of brain or strength of arm, would come to an end. Such a rule is only for a company of monks; but it is very certain that Lent and Fridays were observed with the greatest strictness so far as concerned abstinence from meat. No butchers’ stalls were opened; no cooks’ shops served meat to their customers. Dispensations and indulgences were granted, but the broad fact remains that in Lent and on Fridays no meat could be bought or sold, and none was used. Fish was thus a very important constituent in the food-supply; and the price of fish, which the Companies for the most part regulated by themselves for their own profit, was continually the subject of complaint and even of riots. Leprosy, it was commonly held, was caused by eating salted fish after it had become putrid or tainted.
The following sorts of fish were salted: cod, salmon, conger, ling, brake, sturgeon, herring, pilchard, sprats, and eels; while perch, tench, bream, grayling, eels, and trout were caught for food. Carp and pike were considered delicacies. The great houses had fish-ponds or stews. Sea fish were baked in pies to enable them to be carried inland. (See also London in the Time of the Tudors, pp. 127, 152.)
There were many markets for food in London. The names of most of them have been preserved by the name of the street. Of the instances in the case of the streets running out of Chepe we have already spoken. Certain commodities are still associated with certain localities; fish has always been sold at Billingsgate, cattle and horses at Smithfield, and butchers’ meat in Newgate Street. The great market on the south side of Chepe was given up to mercers, tailors, drapers, armourers, saddlers—all trades unconnected with food.
The food of the country people, according to Piers Plowman, consisted almost entirely of vegetable produce. “I have no money,” says Piers, “to buy pullets, geese, or pigs.” He had two green cheeses, a few curds and cream, an oat-cake and two loaves of beans and bran for the children. He says that he has no salt bacon, but he has parsley, leeks, and cabbages. The peasants ate, besides, peascods, beans, leeks, onions, chervils, and such fruit as grew wild; but they had no meat, or fish, wheaten or barley bread, no wine or beer.
This was in the country, where life was truly grievous. In the town, according to the same authority, there was a very different scene. Here, among the crowd of craftsmen of all kinds, cooks and their valets cried out all day, “Hot pies, hot! Good pigs and geese! Come and dine! come and dine!” While the taverner bawled, “White wine of Alsace! Red wine of Gascony! Wine of the Rhine! Wine of Rochelle!”
And he paints a tavern scene at which Clement the cobbler sells his cloak, and Hick the hackney man his hood, and they spend the money in drink.
“Cis the shoemaker sat on the bench, Wat the warrener and his wife also, Tim the tinker and two of his prentices, Hick the hackney man, and Hugh the needle-seller, Clarice of Cock Lane, and the clerk of the church, Daw the ditcher, and a dozen others, Sir Piers of Pridie and Pernel of Flanders, a fiddle-player, a ratter, a sweeper of Cheap, a rope-maker, a riding-man, and Rose the dish-maker, Godfrey of Garlickhithe, and Griffin the Welshman, and many old-clothesmen.”