Thomas Wright

“ The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the hall where you sit at your meal in winter, with your chiefs and attendants, warmed by a fire made in the middle of the hall, whilst storms of rain or snow prevail without ”

“ During the period of which we are now speaking—the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the use of dice had spread itself from the highest to the very lowest class of the population. In its simpler form, that of the game of hazard, in which the chance of each player rested on the mere throw of the dice, it was the common game of the low frequenters of the taverns,—that class which lived upon the vices of society, and which was hardly looked upon as belonging to society itself. The practice and results of gambling are frequently referred to in the popular writers of the later middle ages. ”

“ Four of the sons of the latter conspire to murder him, and it is arranged that they shall invite him to go and play at chess with them in a retired cellar, and, having secretly provided themselves with knives, insult him, in order to draw him into a quarrel, and then stab him to death. “Hugues,” they said, “will you come with us to play at chess? you may gain a hundred francs on the gilt chess-board, and at the same time you will teach us chess and dice; for certainly you know the games much better than any of us.” ”

“ In the same romance, two of the heroes, Doon and Baudouin, also rise with the sun, and dress and wash, and then say their prayers; after which their attendant, Vaudri, “placed between them two a very large pasty, on a white napkin, and brought them wine, and then said to them in fair words, like a man of sense, ‘Sirs, you shall eat, if it please you; for eating early in the morning brings great health, and gives one greater courage and spirit; and drink a little of this choice wine, which will make you strong and fierce in fight.’ ... ”

“ The insecurity of the roads in the middle ages was, indeed, very great, for not only were the forests filled with bands of outlaws, who stripped all who fell into their hands, but the knights and landed gentry, and even noblemen, took to the highways not unfrequently, and robbed unscrupulously. ”

“ And in the Ecclesiastical Institutes, drawn up at a later period, and printed in the collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, it is stated that “It is also very needful to every mass-priest, that he diligently exhort and teach his parishioners that they be hospitable, and not refuse their houses to any wayfaring man, but do for his comfort, for love of God, what they then will or can; ... but let those who, for love of God, receive every stranger, desire not any worldly reward.” ”

“ During the Anglo-Saxon period, the social system, however developed or modified from time to time, was strictly that of our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and was the undoubted groundwork of our own. The Norman conquest brought in foreign social manners and sentiments totally different from those of the Anglo-Saxons, which for a time predominated, but became gradually incorporated with the Anglo-Saxon manners and spirit, until, towards the end of the twelfth century, they formed the English of the middle ages. ”

“ All the popular materials for social history represent their morals as being very low, and their tempers as overbearing and quarrelsome, the consequence of which was a separation of domestic life among the two sexes after marriage, the husbands, when not engaged at their work or business, seeking their amusement away from the house, and the wives assembling with their “gossips,” often at the public taverns, to drink and amuse themselves. ”

“ We have only one record of the manners of the Saxons before they settled in Britain, and that is neither perfect, nor altogether unaltered—it is the romance of Beowulf, a poem in pure Anglo-Saxon, which contains internal marks of having been composed before the people who spoke that language had quitted their settlements on the Continent. ”

“ We have a very curious illustration of the extravagant living at table of the latter half of the fifteenth century, in the curious allegorical tapestry long preserved at Nancy, in Lorrain, and said by tradition, probably 388 with truth, to have been the ornament of the tent of Charles le Téméraire, duke of Burgundy, when he laid siege to Nancy in 1477, and was defeated and slain. It is of Flemish workmanship, and no doubt pictures the manners of the Burgundian nobles and gentry, but at that time the court of Burgundy was the model of the fashionable life of western Europe. ”

“ You have no neighbour within six days’ journey powerful enough to refuse to come to your service if you send for him.’ ‘Lady,’ said the duke, ‘what you say is true; but in one thing you have made a great oversight. Wealth consists neither in rich cloths, nor in money, nor in buildings, nor in horses but it is made of kinsmen and friends: the heart of one man is worth all the gold in a country.’ ”

“ The burgher class—the merchant or tradesman, or the manufacturer—appear always as money-getting and money-saving people, and individuals often became very rich. This circumstance became a temptation, on the one hand, to the aristocrat, whose tendency was usually, through his prodigality, to become poor, and, on the other, to the rich man of no blood, who sought to buy aristocratic alliances by his wealth, and intermarriages between the two classes were not very unfrequent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Saxon Chronicle, in summing up the character of William the Conqueror, tells us that he “made large forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or a hind, should be blinded. As he forbade killing the deer, so also the boars; and he loved the tall stags as if he were their father. He also appointed concerning the hares, that they should go free.” The passion of the aristocracy for hunting was a bane to the rural population in more ways than one. ”

“ The consideration of the house and its parts and furniture, and of the outward forms of domestic life, leads us naturally to that of the constitution of the family. It was the chief pride of the aristocratic class to live very extravagantly, and to support a great household, with an immense number of personal attendants of different classes. In the first place the old system of fostering, which was kept up to a comparatively late period, added to the number of the lord’s or knight’s family. ”

“ But, whether in great numbers or in small, the travellers of the twelfth century sought the means of amusing themselves during their journey, and these amusements resembled some of those which were employed at the dinner-table—they told stories, or repeated episodes from romances, or sung, and they sometimes had minstrels to accompany them. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Huon, on his journey from his native city to Paris, asks his brother Gerard to sing, to enliven them on the road,— Cante, biau frere, pour nos cors esjoir. ”

“ Perhaps no animal is so intimately mixed up with the history of mankind as the horse—certainly none more so. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers travelled much on foot, and, as far as we know, the great importance in which the horse was held in the middle ages in this part of the world, began with feudalism, and the best and most celebrated breed of horses in Europe, from the earliest ages of chivalry, was brought from the East. The heroes of early romance and poetry are generally mounted on Arab steeds, and these have often the additional merit of having been won by conquest from the Saracens. ”

“ And again, by one of Alfred’s laws, it was provided, “If any one deceive an unbetrothed woman, and sleep with her, let him pay for her, and have her afterwards to wife; but if the father of the woman will not give her, let him pay money according to her dowry.” Regulations relating to the buying of a wife, are found in the Anglo-Saxon laws.
We learn nothing in the facts of history to the discredit of the Anglo-Saxon character in general. As in other countries, in the same condition of society, they appear capable of great crimes, and of equally great acts of goodness and virtue. ”

“ Thus dukes, counts, and knights desire to be skilful in warlike accomplishments; the president in parliament desires the gold chain and the seat of honour, with wisdom in giving judgment; the advocate wishes for eloquence in court, and for a fair bourgeoise or damoiselle at home to make his house joyful; the burgher wishes for a good fire in winter, and a good supply of fat capons; and the clergy are made to wish for good cheer and handsome women. The wishes of the women are on the whole, perhaps, more characteristic than those of the men. ”

“ The young ladies are here recommended to be bashful; not to be forward in falling in love; to pay proper attention to their dress, and to courteousness in behaviour; and not to be too eager in dancing. From all that we gather from the writers of the time, the love of dancing appears at this period to have been carried to a very great degree of extravagance, and to have often led to great dissoluteness in social manners, and the more zealous moralists preached against the dance with much earnestness. ”

“ Hawking was considered so honourable an occupation, that people were in the custom of carrying the hawk on their fists when they walked or rode out, when they visited or went to public assemblies, and even in church, as a mark of their gentility. ”

“ But yet the fourth time he entered the forest, and the steward saw that, and slew him, and delivered him to me to array to your meat. Here may ye see, my lord, that I have shown, by worthy reasons, that the swine had no heart.’ And thus escaped the cook.”
The story which follows this in the Gesta, tells of an emperor named “Alexaundre,” “who of great need ordained for a law, that no man should turn the plaice in his dish, but that he should only eat the white side, and in no wise the black side; and if any man did the contrary, he should die!” ”

“ The tavern was the general lounge of the idle, and even of the industrious, during their hours of relaxation; and in the towns a good 437 part of the male population who had not domestic establishments of their own appear to have lived at the taverns and eating-houses, the allurements of which drew them into every sort of dissipation, which ended in the ruin of men’s fortunes and health. The poet Occleve, in his reminiscences of his own conduct, describes the life of the riotous young men of his time. ”

“ In the enumeration of the parts of a house given in the English edition of Comenius’s “Janua Linguarum,” in the middle of the seventeenth century, there is no mention of a hall. “A house,” we are told in this quaint book, “is divided into inner rooms, such as are the entry, the stove, the kitchen, the buttery, the dining-room, the gallery, the bed-chamber, with a privy made by it; baskets are of use for carrying things to and fro; and chests (which are made fast with a key) for keeping them. The floor is under the roof. In the yard is a well, a stable, and a bath. ”

“ In the fabliau of “La Borgoise d’Orliens,” the mesnie of the burgher, who is not represented as a person of wealth or distinction, consists of two nephews, a lad who carried water, three chamber-maidens, a niece, two pautoniers, and a ribald, and these were all harboured in the hall. The pautonier was only another name for the ribald, or perhaps it was a sub-class or division of the infamous class who lived parasitically upon the society of the middle ages. Even the ordinary agriculturist had his mesnie. ”

“ Among other directions for table, you are told not to leave your spoon in your platter; not to return back to your plate the food you have put in your mouth; not to dip your meat in the salt-cellar to salt it, but to take a little salt on your knife and put it on the meat; not to drink from a cup with a dirty mouth; not to offer to another person the remains of your pottage; not to eat much cheese; to take only two or three nuts, when they are placed before you; not to play with your knife; not to roll your napkin into a cord, or tie it in knots; and not to get intoxicated during dinner-time! ”