inhabitants, become one of the sights of the road. If they perjured
themselves or accepted bribes, they would be sent to London and be
jailed in the Tower; they were to travel along, not by night, but “by
clear day, in the view of all, so that the country people might see
the pain and shame of those guilty men who will be thereby the better
punished.”[116]

Or else, if that unanimity which became obligatory in the latter
part of the fourteenth century had not been secured, the itinerant
justices, in order to get it any way, {115} were free to place the
twelve men in carts and carry them about wherever they went, until
the twelve chose to agree.[117]

When monks came out of the cloister and travelled, they wilfully
modified their costume, and it became difficult to distinguish them
from the great. I saw, writes Chaucer:

    “I saugh his sleves purfiled atte hond
     With grys, and that the fynest of a lond,
     And for to festne his hood undur his chyn
     He hadde of gold y-wrought a curious pyn,
     A love-knotte in the gretter end ther was.”[118]

But the councils are still more explicit, and do more than justify
the satire of the poet. Thus the Council of London in 1342,
reproaches the religious with wearing clothing “fit rather for
knights than for clerks, that is to say short, very tight, with
excessively wide sleeves, not reaching the elbows, but hanging
down very low, lined with fur or with silk.” They made themselves
conspicuous by their long beards, rings on their fingers, costly
girdles, purses or bags whereon figures were embroidered in gold,
knives resembling swords, boots red or party-coloured, or slashed
long-pointed shoes (the Polish-born poulaine); in a word, all the
luxury of the magnates of the land. Later, in 1367, the Council of
York renewed the same criticisms; the religious have “ridiculously
short” clothing; they dare publicly to wear those coats “which do
not come down to the middle of the legs, and do not even cover the
knees.” Severe prohibitions were made for the future, though on a
journey tunics shorter than the regulation gown were tolerated.[119]

[Illustration 24. A COOK ON A JOURNEY (CHAUCER’S COOK).

(_From the Ellesmere MS._)]

A bishop did not start on a journey without a great train; and the
bishops, besides their episcopal visitations, {116} had, like the
nobility, to travel to visit their lands and to live on them. On
all these occasions they took with them their servants of different
kinds and their followers, as the king did his court. The accounts
of the expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, give an
idea of the lordly life led by well-to-do prelates. He was a bishop
of some importance, and rich in proportion; many manors belonged to
his bishopric; he could hold his rank as prelate and as lord, be
hospitable, charitable to the poor, and spend much on requests and
suits at the court of Rome and elsewhere. He had constantly in his
pay about forty persons of different ranks, the greater part of whom
accompanied him in his numerous changes of residence. His squires
(_armigeri_) had from a mark (13s. 4d.) to a pound a year; his
_valleti_, that is, the clerks of his chapel and others, his carters,
porters, falconers, grooms, messengers, etc., had from a crown to
eight {117} shillings and eightpence. In the third category came the
kitchen servants, the baker, with two to four shillings a year; in
the fourth, that of the boys or pages who helped the other servants,
and whose wages greatly varied, being from one to six shillings a
year. All the household was dressed alike, in striped cloth (_pannus
stragulatus_), supplied by the bishop, besides the fixed salary.
One of the most peculiar retainers of the bishop belonged to a now
extinct race, and was his champion, Thomas de Bruges, who received
an annual payment to fight in the prelate’s name in case any lawsuit
should have to be terminated by a judicial duel.[120]

At eventide, monks, great men, and travellers of all degree sought
shelter for the night. When the king, preceded by his twenty-four
archers, and escorted by his lords and the officers of his household,
was expected in a town, the marshal selected a certain number of the
best houses, which were marked with chalk. The chamberlain asked the
inhabitants to make room, and the Court settled as well as it could
in the lodgings. Even the capital was not exempt from the annoyance
of this burden; the marshal had, however, to come {118} there to an
understanding with the mayor, sheriffs, and city officers for the
selection of the habitations. Sometimes the royal agent chose to
forget this wise proviso, and trouble followed. In the nineteenth
year of Edward II, that prince having come to the Tower, the people
of his household quartered themselves on the citizens without the
mayor and aldermen having been consulted; the very sheriff’s house
was marked with chalk. Great was the wrath of this officer when he
found Richard de Ayremynne, the king’s own secretary, established in
his house, the stranger’s horses in his stable, his servants in the
kitchen. Undaunted by the thought of a royal secretary’s importance,
the sheriff, counting on the privilege of the city, drove out the
secretary and his suite by force, rubbed off the marks of the chalk,
and became once more master of his own abode. Cited to appear before
the Court steward, and accused of having contemned the king’s orders
to the extent of at least £1,000, he stoutly defended himself, and
appealed in defence to the mayor and citizens, who produced the
charters of the city privileges. The charters were clear, their
purport could not be denied; the sheriff’s boldness was excused;
Ayremynne consoled himself as best he could, and did not receive any
indemnity.[121]

In the country, if the king did not happen to be within easy reach
of one of his own or his lieges’ castles, he often went to lodge at
the neighbouring monastery, sure of being received there as master.
The great on their journeys did their best to imitate the prince in
this respect.[122] In {119} the convents hospitality was a religious
duty; for the order of St. John of Jerusalem the first of duties.
This order had establishments all over England, and it was a piece
of good fortune for the poor traveller to come to one of them. No
doubt he was treated there according to his rank, but it was much
not to find the door closed. The accounts of the year 1338,[123]
show that these knight-monks did not seek at all to avoid the heavy
burden of hospitality; in their lists of expenditure are always to
be found charges occasioned by _supervenientibus_ (strangers). When
it was an affair of kings or princes, they outdid themselves; thus
the Prior of Clerkenwell mentions “much expenditure which cannot be
given in detail, caused by the hospitality offered to strangers,
members of the royal family, and to other grandees of the realm who
stay at Clerkenwell and remain there at the cost of the house.” In
consequence, the account closes with this sad summing up: “Thus
the expenditure exceeds the receipts by twenty-one pounds, eleven
shillings and fourpence.” The mere proximity of a great man was a
source of expense, for, even if he did not go himself, he would
send his suit to profit of the hospitality of the convent. In the
accounts for Hampton, the list of people to whom beer and bread have
been furnished ends by these words: “because the Duke of Cornwall is
staying in the vicinity.”[124]

It should be noted that most of these houses had been endowed by
the nobles, and each one, recognizing his own land or that of a
relative, a friend, or an ancestor, {120} felt himself at home in
the monastery. But these turbulent lords, friends of good cheer,
abused of the monks’ gratitude, and their excesses caused complaints
which came to the ears of the king.[125] Edward I forbade any one to
venture to eat or lodge in a religious house, unless the superior had
explicitly invited him, or he were the founder of the establishment,
and even then his consumption should be moderate. The poor only, who
more than any one lost by the excesses of the great, might continue
to be lodged for nothing: “The king intendeth not that the grace of
hospitality should be withdrawn from the destitute.”[126] Edward
II, in 1309, confirmed these rules, which had apparently fallen
into abeyance, and promised again, six years later, that neither he
nor his family would make inordinate use of the hospitality of the
monks.[127]

All in vain; these abuses were already comprised among those which
the _Articles of the Eyre_ had for their object to discover, but
failed to suppress. Periodically the magistrate came to question the
country folk on the subject. Have “any lords or others gone to lodge
in religious houses without being invited by the superiors, or gone
at their own expense, against the will of the same?” Have any been so
bold as to “send to the houses or mansions belonging to the monks or
others, men, horses, or dogs to sojourn there at an expense not their
own?” The application of these rules did not go without difficulty or
even danger, for the magistrate questioned also the jury about “any
who may have taken revenge for refusal of food or lodging.”[128]

The Commons in parliament, mindful as they were in such matters of
the fate of the poorest, were not unmindful of their own, and took
steps to prevent, in a general way and without reference to the
impecunious, {121} the falling into disuse of monachal hospitality.
The non-residence of the clergy, which was to be one of the causes of
the Reformation two hundred years later, occasioned bitter protests
during the fourteenth century. The Commons object especially because
from this abuse there results a decay of the duties of hospitality.
“And that all other persons advanced to the benefices of Holy
Church,” they request of the king, “should remain on their said
benefices in order to keep hospitality there, on the same penalty,
exception made for the king’s clerks and the clerks of the great of
the realm.”[129] Parliament protests also against the bestowal by
the pope of rich priories on foreigners who remain abroad. These
foreigners “suffer the noble edifices built of old time when they
were occupied by the English to fall quite to ruin,” and neglect “to
keep hospitality.”[130]

Only people of high rank were admitted into the monastery proper.
The mass of travellers, pilgrims and others, were housed and fed in
the guest-house, a building made on purpose to receive passers-by;
it usually stood by itself, and was even, sometimes, erected outside
the precincts of the monastery. Such, for instance, was the case in
Battle Abbey, where the guest-house is still to be seen outside the
large entrance gate. These edifices commonly consisted of a hall with
doors opening on each side into sleeping rooms. People slept also
in the hall; old inventories, for instance the one concerning the
Maison-Dieu or hospital at Dover, show that beds were set up in the
hall and remained, it seems, permanently there.[131] {122}

It is hardly necessary to recall that hospitality was also exercised
in castles; noblemen who were not at feud willingly received one
another; there were much stricter ties of brotherhood among them
than now exist among people of the same class. We do not often
now give lodging to unknown persons who knock at the door; at the
most, and but rarely, do we permit a poor man passing along in the
country to sleep for a night in our hay-loft. In the Middle Ages, men
received their equals, not by way of simple charity, but as a habit
of courtesy and also for pleasure. Known or unknown, the travelling
knight was rarely refused the door of a country manor. His coming in
time of peace was a happy diversion from the monotony of the days.
There was in every house the _hall_, or large room where the meals
were taken in common; the new-comer ate with the lord at a table
placed on a raised platform called the _dais_, erected at one end
of the room; his followers were at the lower tables disposed along
the side walls. Supper finished, all soon retired to rest, people
went to bed and rose early in those days. The traveller withdrew
sometimes into a special room for guests, if the house were large;
sometimes into that of the master himself, the _solar_ (room on the
first storey), and spent the night there with him. Meanwhile, in the
hall, the lower tables were taken out, for in general these were not
standing, but movable;[132] mattresses were placed on the ground
over the litter of rushes which day and night covered the pavement,
and the people of the household, the suite of the traveller, the
strangers of less {123} importance, stretched themselves out there
till morning. Such a litter of herbs or rushes was in constant use,
and was to be found in the king’s palace as well as in the houses of
mere merchants in the city: it was spread in lieu of a carpet, to
keep the room warm and to give a feeling of comfort. It is still to
be met with, and this is, apparently, the last place where it has
found refuge, in old-fashioned French provincial _diligences_; the
straw in English country omnibuses is also its lineal descendant.
So it was at least when, in pre-automobile times, these lines were
originally written.

Prices paid for the purchase of rushes constantly recur in the
accounts of the royal expenses.[133] They were so largely used in
towns as well as in the country, that people in cities did not know
what to do with the soiled ones, and the local authorities had to
interfere over and over again, especially in London, where the
inhabitants were apt to throw them into the Thames, with the result
of greatly damaging and polluting the water.

Through a window opened in the partition between his room and the
hall, over the dais, the lord could see and even hear all that was
done or said below. In the king’s house itself the hall was used for
sleeping as is shown by the ordinances of Edward IV;[134] at a period
much nearer our day (1514), Barclay still complains that at Court the
same couch serves for two:

    And never in the court shalt thou have bed alone,

and that the noise from the comers and goers, from brawlers, {124}
coughers, and chatterers never ceases, and prevents sleep.[135] At
the first streak of dawn, sending through the white or coloured panes
of the high windows shafts of light on the dark carved timber-work,
which, high above the pavement, supported the roof, all stirred on
their couches; soon they were out of doors, horses were saddled, and
the clatter of hoofs sounded anew on the highway.

Towards the latter part of the fourteenth century a change became
noticeable in the use of the hall. It was first pointed out by that
acute observer of manners, William Langland, the author of the
“Visions.” Life was becoming, by degrees, less patriarchal and more
private; people were less fond of dining almost publicly in their
halls. Well-to-do individuals began to prefer having their meals by
themselves in rooms with chimneys, which last particular Langland
is careful to note as a sign of the growing luxuriousness of the
times. “Elyng” (dull, silent) “is the hall,” he said, in a well-known
passage:

    “There the lorde ne the lady · liketh noughte to sytte,
     Now hathe uche riche a reule · to eten bi hym-selve
     In a prive parloure · for pore mennes sake,
     Or in a chambre with a chymneye · and leve the chief halle,
     That was made for meles · men to eten inne.”[136]

Less and less inhabited, the hall gradually became little more than
a sort of thoroughfare leading to the rooms where people were living
a life more private than before. It decreased in size as well as in
importance, until it was nothing in ordinary houses but the vestibule
which we now see.

It must have been chiefly to the very poor, or the very rich or
powerful that the monastery served as a hostelry. Monks received the
former out of charity, {125} and the latter out of necessity, the
common inns being at once too dear for the one and too miserable
for the other. They were intended for the middle class: merchants,
small landowners, itinerant packmen, etc. A certain number of beds
were placed in one room, and a certain number of men in each bed,
usually two, but sometimes three, the latter number being in any
case frequent in Germany, according to Chaucer’s friend, Eustache
Des Champs, sent to those parts as “ambassador and messenger” by the
French king: “No one lies apart, but two and two in a dark room, or
oftener three and three, in the same bed as it chances.” He regrets
the better manners and more refined customs of his own country, “doux
pays, terre très honorable.”[137]

Travellers bought separately their food and drink, chiefly bread, a
little meat, and beer. Complaints as to excessive prices were not
less frequent than now. The innkeeper’s extortions were supplemented
by those of his assistants. Chaucer’s good parson, branding those
men who encourage the evil practices of their subordinates, does not
forget “thilke that holden hostelries,” and who “sustenen the theft
of hir hostilers (ostlers).”[138] The people petitioned parliament
and the king interfered accordingly with his wonted useless good
will. Edward III promulgated, in the 23rd year of his reign, a
statute to constrain “hostelers et herbergers” to sell food at
reasonable prices; and again, four years later, tried to put an end
to the “great and outrageous cost of victuals kept up in all the
realm by inn-keepers and other retailers of {126} victuals, to the
great detriment of the people travelling through the realm.”[139]

To have an example of ordinary travelling, we may follow the warden
and two fellows of Merton College, who went with four servants from
Oxford to Durham and Newcastle in 1331.[140] They travelled on
horseback; it was in the dead of winter. Their food was very simple
and their lodging inexpensive, the same items constantly recur; they
comprise, on account of the season, candles and fire, sometimes a
coal fire. One of their days may give an idea of the rest: for a
Sunday spent at Alreton they write down:

 Bread                4d.
 Beer                 2d.
 Wine               1 ¼d.
 Meat               5 ½d.
 Potage               ¼d.
 Candles              ¼d.
 Fuel                 2d.
 Beds                 2d.
 Fodder for Horses   10d.

[Illustration 25. THE NEW HABITS OF LUXURY. A GENTLEMAN DRESSING
BEFORE THE FIRE.

(_From the MS. 2 B._ vii., _in the British Museum_. _Fourteenth
Century._)]

Beds, we see, were not expensive; our men did not spend more for them
than for their beer. Another time, the servants alone are at the
inn, and the sleeping of the four comes to a penny for two nights.
Generally, when the party is complete, the whole of their beds cost
twopence; at London the price was a little higher, that is {129}
a penny a head.[141] Sometimes they have eggs or vegetables for a
farthing, a chicken or a capon. When they had sauce or condiments,
they put them down separately, for example: fat, ½d.; gravy, ½d.;
pickle, the same price; sugar, 4d.; pepper, saffron, mustard. Fish
recurs regularly every Friday. Evening comes, the roads are dark;
the way is lost, they take a guide, to whom they give a penny: “In
famulo ducenti nos de nocte, 1d.” On crossing the Humber they pay
eightpence, which may appear much, compared with the other prices;
but we must remember that the river was wide and difficult to cross,
especially in winter. The annals of the Abbey of Meaux frequently
tell of the ravages caused by the river’s overflow, of farms and
mills destroyed, of entire domains submerged, and of crops swept
away. The ferry owners benefited by these accidents, in continually
augmenting their prices, and at last the king himself was obliged to
intervene in order to re-establish the normal rate, which was a penny
for a horseman; this is what the warden and fellows {130} with their
company paid.[142] Sometimes our travellers furnished themselves
beforehand with provisions to carry with them; a salmon was bought,
“for the journey,” eighteenpence, and for having it cooked, doubtless
with some complicated sauce, they pay eightpence.

[Illustration 26. AN ENGLISH INN IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

(_From the Louterell Psalter._)]

Life-like specimens of dialogues on arrival, between traveller and
innkeeper, and discussion as to the price of victuals, may be read
in the Manual of French Conversation, composed at the end of the
fourteenth century by an Englishman, under the title of “La Manière
de Language que t’enseignera bien à droit parler et escrire doulz
François.”[143]

Chapter iii is particularly interesting. It shows “how a man who is
going far out of his own country, riding or walking, should behave
himself and talk upon the way.” The servant sent forward to engage
the room utters the fond hope “‘that there are no fleas, nor bugs,
nor other vermin.’ ‘No, sir, please God,’ replies the host, ‘for I
make bold that you shall be well and comfortably lodged here—save
that there is a great peck of rats and mice.’”

The provisions are passed in review, the fire lighted, supper
prepared: the traveller arrives, and it is curious to note in what
unceremonious fashion he assures himself before dismounting that he
will find at the inn “good supper, good lodging, and the rest.”[144]

[Illustration 27. THE NEW INN, GLOUCESTER.

(_Built for Pilgrims, Fifteenth Century, still in use._)]

Further on (chap. xiii) another hostelry is described, and the
conversation between two travellers who have just slept in the same
bed shows what a trouble the fleas were: “William, undress and wash
your legs, and then dry them with a cloth, and rub them well for
love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your legs, for {133}
there is a peck of them lying in the dust under the rushes. . . . Hi!
the fleas bite me so! and do me great harm, for I have scratched my
shoulders till the blood flows.”

[Illustration 28. ON THE ROADSIDE. THE ALEHOUSE.

(_From the MS. 10 E. IV.; English; Fourteenth Century._)]

Beer was drunk along the way, and was found in other places besides
the inn where travellers slept at night. At the cross-roads, in
the more frequented parts of the country, alehouses, with a long
projecting pole above the door and a bush at the end of it, invited
the traveller to have a rest and a drink. Chaucer’s pilgrims, riding
on the way to Canterbury, dismounted at a house of this kind. The
pardoner, who had his habits, would not begin his tale without a
little comfort:

    “But first, quod he, her at this ale-stake
     I wil bothe drynke and byten on a cake.”

A miniature of the fourteenth century, of which we give a
reproduction, represents the alehouse with its long horizontal
pole holding its bush well out in front above the road. The house
consists but of one storey, a woman stands before the door with a
large beer-jug, and a hermit is drinking from a large cup. It was the
fashion to have extremely long poles, which offered no inconvenience
in the country, but in town they had to be regulated, and a maximum
length fixed. According to the wording of the Act, poles so long were
used, that they “did tend to the great deterioration of the houses
in which they {134} were placed,” and they reached so far and had
signs so low, that they were in the way of the riders’ heads. The Act
of 1375 relating these grievances orders that in future poles shall
not extend more than seven feet over the public way,[145] which was
enough to give picturesqueness to streets not so wide as ours.

There were taverns of ill-fame, especially in towns, so bad some of
them, that they might almost have gone by another name. In one of
the Latin dramas of Hrotsvitha,[146] tenth century, is shown the
holy hermit Abraham, who, learning that the girl Mary, whom he had
reared in virtue, lived as a courtesan in a hostelry, goes to her,
pretending love, and converts her. In most mediæval story books
telling of the prodigal son, he is usually represented sowing his
very wild oats at the inn or tavern. Musicians of the meanest order
would entertain the sitters at the table with their pipings, and then
pass the hat.[147] Having to answer before Archbishop Arundel for his
disparaging statements concerning pilgrimages, the Lollard William
Thorpe declares in 1407 that pilgrims are frequenters of ill-famed
hostelries, “spending their goods upon vitious hostelars, which are
oft uncleane women of their bodies.”[148] In some such inn, the
“Cheker of the Hope” (hoop) in Canterbury, the continuator of Chaucer
leads his pilgrims, and shows how the pardoner’s advances to Kit the
tapster had the edifying result of getting for him many more blows
than caresses.[149]

In London it was forbidden by the king to keep open {135} house
after curfew, and for very sufficient reasons, “because such
offenders as aforesaid, going about by night, do commonly resort and
have their meetings and hold their evil talk in taverns more than
elsewhere, and there do seek for shelter, lying in wait and watching
their time to do mischief.”[150]

It was for fear of such dangers that when the sheriffs and bailiffs
held their Views of Frankpledge, they asked the juries of their
hundreds to say upon oath what they knew “of such as continually
haunt taverns, and no man knoweth whence they come; of such as sleep
by day and watch by night, eat well and drink well, and possess
nothing.”[151]

Langland’s life-like picture of a tavern in the fourteenth century
is well known. With a vivid realism worthy of Rabelais he makes us
hear and see the tumultuous scenes at the alehouse, the discussions,
the quarrels, the big bumpers, the drunkenness which ensues; every
face is plainly visible, coarse words, laughter and attitudes strike
the on-looker in that strange assembly, where the hermit meets the
cobbler and “the clerk of the churche,” a band of cut-purses and
bald-headed tooth-drawers:

    “Thomme the tynkere · and tweye of hus knaves,
     Hicke the hakeneyman · and Howe the neldere,[152]
     Claryce of Cockeslane · the clerk of the churche,
     Syre Peeres of Prydie · and Purnel of Flanders,
     An haywarde and an heremyte · the hangeman of Tyborne,
     Dauwe the dykere · with a dosen harlotes,
     Of portours and of pyke-porses · and pylede toth-drawers. . . .
     Ther was lauhyng and lakeryng and ‘let go the coppe!’
     Bargeynes and bevereges · by-gunne to aryse,
     And seten so til evesong rang.”[153]

{136}

Peasants, too, are found there. Christine de Pisan, that poetess
whose writings and character so often recall steady John Gower, shows
them drinking, fighting, gambling; they have to appear before the
provost, and fines accrue to augment their losses:

“At these taverns each day will you find them established, and
enjoying long potations. As soon as their work is over, many agree to
go there and drink, and they spend, you may be sure, more than they
have earned all day. Do not ask if they fight when they are tipsy,
the provost has several pounds in fines from it during the year.
. . . And there also are to be seen some of those idle gallants who
haunt taverns, handsome and gay.”[154]

Art, literature, the trend of thought were changed at the time of
the Renaissance, but taverns remained the same; witness Skelton’s
description of an alehouse on the highroad, quite similar to those
which Langland had known a century and a half earlier. The ale-wife,
who brews, God knows how, her beer herself, is a withered old crony,
not unlike the “weird sisters” who were to welcome {137} Macbeth on
the heath. She keeps her tavern near Leatherhead, in Surrey, on a
declivity by the highroad, and there gathers as motley a crowd as
that in the “Visions,”

    “Her nose somdele hoked,
     And camously croked. . . .
     Her skynne lose and slacke,
     Grained like a sacke,
     With a croked backe. . . .
     She breweth noppy ale,
     And maketh therof port sale
     To travellars, to tynkers,
     To sweters, to swynkers,
     And all good ale drinkers.”

Passers-by and dwellers in the neighbourhood flock to her house:

    “Some go streyght thyder,
     Be it slaty or slyder;
     They holde the hye waye,
     They care not what men say,
     Be that as be may;
     Some, lothe to be espyde,
     Start in at the back syde,
     Over the hedge and pale,
     And all for the good ale.”

The reputation of the houses with a long pole and bush had not
improved, and many of those who frequented them had, as we see,
little wish to be “espyde.” As for paying the score, there was the
rub! Devotees of drink whose purse was empty would not deprive
themselves, however, and they paid in kind:

    “Instede of coyne and monny,
     Some brynge her a conny,
     And some a pot with honny,
     Some a salt, and some a spone,
     Some their hose, some theyr shone.” {138}

As to the women, one brings:

           “her weddynge-rynge
    To pay for her scot,
    As cometh to her lot.
    Som bryngeth her husbandes hood,
    Because the ale is good.”[155]

The worst-famed of these houses began a little later to receive the
visits of the most illustrious of their customers, one who held his
court under their smoky rafters and came there to his earthly end,
“babbling of green fields,” immortal Sir John Falstaff.

IV

Other isolated houses along the roads, by the fords or the bridges,
on sacred spots, on the cliffs by the sea, had also much to do
with travellers, those of the hermits. Such holy men would tell
the way, help to cross a river, sometimes give shelter, sometimes
absolution.[156] One shrives passers-by in that gem of mediæval
French stories, “Le chevalier au barisel”; another, in the “Roman
de Renard,” being favoured with a visit from no less a person than
the hero of the romance. Led by a peasant through the pathless wood,
Master Reynard reaches the secluded spot; the mallet was hanging
before the door, and the peasant having given with it a loud knock
the hermit hastened to draw the bolt: {141}

    Tant ont erré par le bocage
    Qu’ils sont venu à l’ermitage.
    Le maillet trovèrent pendant
    A la porte par de devant.
    Li vileins hurte durement
    Et l’ermite vint erraument (promptly),
    Li fermai oste de la roille (bolt).[157]

[Illustration 29. THE HERMITAGE CHAPEL OF ST. ROBERT.

(_Hewn out of the rock, Knaresborough; the knight of a much later
date._)]

Most holy in early times, living examples of renouncement, teaching
virtue and piety by their words and deeds, hermits became, some of
them, canonized saints, like St. Robert of Knaresborough,[158] or
devotional writers of fame like Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole;
pilgrims flocked to their cells in order to be sanctified by their
advice and presence. An “officium de Sancto Ricardo eremita” was
composed after Richard Rolle’s death, in the thought that he would
surely be canonized some day:

    Letetur felix Anglorum patria . . .
    Pange lingua graciosi
    Ricardi preconium,
    Pii, puri, preciosi,
    Fugientis vitium.[159]

These men fasted, had ecstasies, were tempted by the devil, who in
the case of Richard, instead of clumsily taking some hideous shape
(see further, p. 290) took the much more enticing one of “a faire
yonge womane, the whilke,” wrote the hermit, “I had sene be-fore and
the whilke luffed (loved) me noght a little in gude lufe.”[160]

The cave or hermitage in which Saint Robert spent {142} most of his
life still exists at Knaresborough, entirely hollowed out of the
rock, with a later-date perpendicular window.[161]

Persuaded, rightly or wrongly, that they had much to atone for, the
kings included among the redeeming good works to be performed by them
aid to holy hermits. One of the pilgrims who visited St. Robert was
King John, who came unheralded and who, according to the metrical
life of the saint, had some trouble in making him notice his presence:

    Roberd he fand knelan prayand,
    Hys orysons contynuand,
    That for nai noyse that thai couth maike
    Nay mare he mowed than dose ane ake (oak).[162]

Edward III gives to “three hermits and eight anchorite recluse
persons within the city of London and in the suburbs thereof, to wit
to each of them, 13s. 4d. in aid of their support.”[163] Welcomed on
his landing, in 1399, by a seaside hermit called Matthew Danthorp,
“in quodam loco called Ravenserespourne” (Ravenspur), Bolingbroke,
{143} soon to be King Henry IV, grants him and all the hermits
his successors a variety of favours, including the right to any
waif or wreck cast by the sea on the sand for two leagues about his
hermitage: “Cum wrecco maris, et wayfs et omnibus aliis proficuis
et commoditatibus super sabulum per duas leucas circa eundem
locum contingentibus imperpetuum,” in spite of any statute to the
contrary.[164]

Less brilliant fortunes and less holy a fame usually fell to the lot
of English hermits of the fourteenth century. Those like Rolle of
Hampole, doing ceaseless penance, consumed by divine love, were rare
exceptions; they lived by preference in cottages, built at the most
frequented parts of the highway, or at the entrance to bridges.[165]
They throve there, like Godfrey Pratt,[166] on the charity of the
passers-by; the bridge with its chapel was in itself almost a sacred
building; the presence of the hermit sanctified it still further. He
attended to the keeping in order of the building, or was supposed
to do so, and was willingly given a farthing.[167] A strange race
of men, which in that century of disorganization and reform, when
everything seemed either to die or undergo a new birth, multiplied in
spite of rules and regulations. They swelled the number of parasites
of the religious edifice, cloaking under a dignified habit a life
that was less so. These evil growths {144} clung, like moss in the
damp of the cathedral, to the fissures of the stones, and by the slow
work of centuries threatened the noble structure with ruin. What
remedy was there? To mow down the ever-growing weeds was scarcely
possible; a patient hand, guided by a vigilant eye, was needed to
pluck them out one by one, and to fill up the interstices: saints can
do this, but saints are rare. Episcopal prescriptions might often
seem to do great work; a mere seeming. Though the heads were beaten
down, the roots remained, and the lively parasite struck yet deeper
into the heart of the wall.

[Illustration 30. A HERMIT TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL.

(_From the MS. 10 E. IV; English; Fourteenth Century._)]

Solemn interdictions and rigorous rules were not wanting, bowing
down heads which ever rose again. To become a hermit a man must be
resolved on an exemplary life of poverty and privations, and, that
imposture should be impossible, he must have episcopal sanction, that
is, possess “testimonial letters from the ordinary.”[168] These {145}
rules were broken, however, without scruple. Inside his dwelling the
not very devout creature in hermit’s garb could lead a quiet, easy
life, and it was so hard elsewhere! The charity of passers-by was
enough for him to live upon, especially if he was not harassed by an
over-exacting conscience and knew how to beg; no labour, no pressing
obligation, the bishop was distant and the alehouse near. All these
reasons caused a never-ending growth of the mischievous species of
false hermits who only took the habit to live by it, without asking
any permit from any one. In the statutes they were bracketed with
beggars, wandering labourers, and vagabonds of all kinds, pell mell,
to be imprisoned awaiting judgment. There was exception only for
“approved” hermits: “Except men of religion and approved hermits
having letters testimonial from the ordinary.” A statute like this
is enough to show that Langland did not exaggerate; his verse is but
a commentary on the law. The author of the “Visions” is impartial
and does justice to sincere anchorites: true Christians resemble
them.[169] But what are these false saints who have pitched their
tent by the side of the highroads or even in the towns, at the door
of the alehouse, who beg under the church porches, who eat and drink
plentifully, and leisurely pass the evenings warming themselves?

    “Ac eremites that en-habiten · by the heye weyes,
     And in borwes a-mong brewesters · and beggen in churches.”[170]

What is that man who rests and roasts himself by the hot coals, and
when he has drunk his fill has nothing to do but go to bed? {146}

                          “lewede eremytes,
    That loken ful louheliche · to lacchen[171] mennes almesse,
    In hope to sitten at even · by the hote coles,
    Unlouke hus legges abrod · other lygge at hus ese,
    Reste hym and roste hym · and his ryg (back) turne,
    Drynke drue and deepe · and drawe hym thanne to bedde;
    And when hym lyketh and lust · hus leve ys to aryse;
    When he ys rysen, rometh out · and ryght wel aspieth
    Whar he may rathest have a repast · other a rounde of bacon,
    Sulver other sode mete · and som tyme bothe,
    A loof other half a loof · other a lompe of chese;
    And carieth it hom to hus cote · and cast hym to lyve
    In ydelnesse and in ese.”[172]

All these are unworthy of pity, and, adds Langland, with that
aristocratic touch which now and then recurs in his lines, all these
hermits were common artisans, “workmen, webbes and taillours, and
carters’ knaves”; formerly they had “long labour and lyte wynnynge,”
but they noticed one day that these deceitful friars swarming
everywhere, “hadde fatte chekus” (cheeks); they thereupon abandoned
their labour and took lying garments, as though they were clerks:

    . . . “Other of som ordre, other elles a prophete.”

They are seldom seen at church, these false hermits, but they are
found seated at great men’s tables because of their cloth. Look at
them eating and drinking of the best! they who formerly were of the
lowest rank, at the side tables, never tasting wine, never eating
white bread, without a blanket for their bed:

    “Ac while he wrought in thys worlde · and wan hus mete with treuthe,
     He sat atte sydbenche · and secounde table;
     Cam no wyn in hus wombe · thorw the weke longe,
     Nother blankett in hus bed · ne white bred by-fore hym.
     The cause of al thys caitifte · cometh of meny bisshopes
     That suffren suche sottes.”[173]

{147}

These rascals escape the bishops, who ought to have their eyes
wider open. “Alas!” said, in charming language, a French poet of the
thirteenth century, Rutebeuf, “the coat does not make the hermit; if
a man dwell in a hermitage and be clothed in hermit’s dress, I don’t
care two straws for his habit nor his vesture if he does not lead a
life as pure as his frock betokens. But many folk make a fine show
and marvellous seeming of worth; they resemble those over-blossoming
trees that fail to bring forth fruit.”[174]

Under the eyes of the placid hermit, comfortably established by the
roadside, calmly preparing himself by a carefree life for a blissful
eternity, moved the variegated flow of travellers, vagabonds,
wayfarers, and wanderers. His benediction rewarded the generous
passer-by; the stern look of the austere man did not disturb his
sanctimonious indifference. The life of others might rapidly consume
itself, burnt by the sun, gnawed by care; his own endured in the
shade of the trees, and continued without hurt, lulled by the murmur
of human passions—

    Et je dirai, songeant aux hommes, que font-ils?
    Et le ressouvenir des amours et des haines
    Me bercera pareil au bruit des mers lointaines.
                                            (Sully Prudhomme.)

{148}

Good or bad, the whole race (still surviving in the East)
disappeared in England at the Reformation, leaving but a memory, and
surviving only in poetry:

    It is the Hermit good!
    He singeth loud his godly hymns
    That he makes in the wood.
    He’ll shrive my soul, he’ll wash away
    The Albatross’s blood.

{149}

[Illustration 31. AN ESCAPED PRISONER FLYING TO SANCTUARY.

(_From the MS. 10 E. IV._)]

SECURITY OF THE ROADS

These roads, thus followed in every direction by the king and the
lords moving from one manor to another, by the merchants and peasants
going to the fair, the market, or the staple, by sheriffs, monks and
itinerant justices, by ladies in carriages and villains driving their
carts, were they safe? The theorist studying the legal ordinances of
the period, and the manner in which the county police and the town
watch and ward were organized, might come to the conclusion that
precautions were well taken for the prevention of misdeeds, and that
travelling did not present more danger than it does at present. If
we add, as Mr. Thorold Rogers has shown, that common carriers plied
their trade between Oxford and London, Winchester, Newcastle, etc.,
and that the price of transport was not dear, we might be persuaded
that the roads were quite safe, and we should be wrong; wrong too, if
on the faith of romantic tales, we pictured to ourselves brigands in
every thicket, a hanged man on {150} every branch, and robber barons
at every cross-road. But _accident_, or the unexpected, must be taken
into account.

Accident played a great part in the social life of the fourteenth
century. It was the moment when modern life began, the outward
brilliancy of a novel civilization had recently modified society from
top to bottom, the need to be constantly on the watch had become less
apparent; the moated castle with its drawbridge, battlements and
loop-holes, had begun to change into a villa or a mansion, while the
hut was growing into a house. Confidence was greater, but not always
justified: accidents are unexpected mishaps.

More means were taken than formerly to hinder ill-doing; but numerous
occurrences happened to destroy this incipient security. Society was
in reality neither calm nor quite settled, and many of its members
were still half savage. The term “half” may be taken literally. If a
list were made of the characteristics of such or such an individual
of the time, it would be found that some belonged to a refined,
and some to a barbarous world. Hence these contrasts: on one side
order, which it would perhaps be unjust not to consider as the normal
condition; and on the other, the frequent ebullitions of the untamed
nature. Let us select an example of such accidents which could take
at times remarkable proportions. Here are a knight and his men at the
corner of a road, waiting for a troop of merchants. The text itself
of the victims’ petition gives all the details of the encounter.[175]

The facts happened in 1342. Some Lichfield merchants state to their
lord, the Earl of Arundel, that on a certain Friday they sent two
servants and two horses laden with “spicery and mercery,” worth
forty pounds, to Stafford for the next market day. When their men
“came beneath Cannock Wood” they met Sir Robert de Rideware, Knight,
waiting for them, together with {151} two of his men, who seized
on the servants, horses, and goods, and took them to the priory of
Lappeley. Unfortunately for the knight, during the journey, one of
the servants escaped.

At the priory the band found “Sir John de Oddyngesles, Esmon de
Oddyngesles, and several others, knights as well as others.” It was
evidently a pre-arranged affair, carefully devised; all was done
according to rule; they shared “among them the aforesaid mercery and
spicery, each one a portion according to his degree.” That done, the
company left Lappeley and rode to the priory of Blythebury, a nuns’
priory. Sir Robert declared that they were the king’s men, quite
exhausted, and begged for hospitality. But the company had obviously
a suspicious appearance, and the abbess refused. Indignant at this
unfriendly reception, the knights burst open the doors of the barns
and lofts, gave hay and oats to their horses, and so passed the night.

But they were not the only people to have made a good use of their
time. The escaped servant had followed them at a distance; when he
saw they had taken up their quarters at the priory he returned with
all speed to Lichfield and warned the bailiff who hastened to collect
his men for the pursuit of the robbers. The latter, men of the sword,
as soon as they were met, stood their ground, and a real battle took
place, in which they had at first the upper hand, and wounded several
of their pursuers. At length, however, they were worsted and fled;
all the spices were recovered, and four of their company taken, who,
without further ado, were beheaded on the spot.

Robert de Rideware was not one of the latter, and did not lose heart.
He met his relative Walter de Rideware, lord of Hamstall Rideware,
with some of his followers, while the bailiff was on his way back to
Lichfield; all together veered around in pursuit of the bailiff. A
fresh fight. This time the king’s officer was routed and fled, {152}
while the highway gentlemen once more captured the spices.

What resource remained for the unhappy William and Richard, authors
of the petition? Resort to justice? This they wanted to do. But as
they were going for this purpose to Stafford, chief town of the
county, they found at the gates some retainers of their persecutors,
who barred their passage and even attacked them so hotly that they
had difficulty in escaping without grievous hurt. They returned
to Lichfield, watched by their enemies, and led there a pitiable
existence. “And, sir, the aforesaid William and Richard, and several
people of the town of Lichfield, are menaced by the said robbers and
their maintainers, so that they dare not go anywhere out of the said
town.”[176]

This legal document, the original of which has been preserved, is, in
many ways, characteristic, and shows us local tyrants not unlike the
latter day ones in the _Promessi Sposi_ and their terrible _bravi_.
One may, especially, notice the coolness and determination of the
knights, not disconcerted by the death of four of their number; the
attack under cover of a wood; the selection of the victims, “garsuns”
belonging to rich merchants; the request for hospitality in a priory
under pretext of journeying in the king’s service; the expeditious
justice of the bailiff, and the persistent surveillance to which the
victims were subjected by their lordly robbers.

These, though remarkable, are not quite exceptional facts, and Robert
of Rideware was not the only man on the look out in the copses along
the roads. Other noblemen were, like him, supported by devoted
retainers, ready for any enterprise. Capes and liveries of their
masters’ colours were given to them, and they went about as the {153}
uniformed soldiers of their chief; a lord well surrounded with his
partizans considered himself as above the common law, and it was no
easy matter for justice to make herself respected by him. The custom
of having a number of resolute followers wearing one’s colours became
universal at the end of Edward III’s reign and under Richard II; it
survived in spite of statutes[177] during the whole of the fifteenth
century, and contributed to render even more embittered and bloody
the War of the Roses.

But even outside the periods of civil war, the misdeeds of certain
barons and their retainers, or of retainers acting on their own
account under cover of their lord’s colours—“notoirs meffesours et
meintenours of meffesours,” the statute said of both,[178]—were at
times so frequent and serious that parts of the country seemed to
be in a state of war. Throughout the fourteenth century, the abuse
called _maintenance_, which word meant in old French _protection_,
was on the increase, in spite of all the efforts of king and
Parliament. The great of the land, and some lesser people too, had
their own men, sworn to their service and ready to do anything they
were commanded, which consisted sometimes in the most monstrous
deeds, such as securing property or other goods to which neither
their masters, nor any claimant paying their master in order to be
thus “protected,”[179] had any title. They terrorized the rightful
{154} owners, the judges and the juries, ransoming, beating and
maiming any opponent.[180]

Statutes were, as usual, numerous, well-meant, peremptory, and
inefficient. The evil was so general that Edward III had to forbid
the people nearest him, the chief officers of his court, his “dearest
consort, the queen,” his son the prince of Wales, the prelates of
Holy Church,[181] to thus interfere with the regular course of the
law. The will of the king is that “the poor should enjoy their right
just as the rich.”[182] But they do not; great ladies practice
maintenance, one among others even dearer to the king than his dear
consort, namely his mistress, Alice Perers.[183]

A new reign begins; maintenance flourishes better than ever before.
The preamble of a statute of the second year of Richard II[184]
gives a perhaps somewhat exaggerated picture of these disorders so
as to better justify rigorous measures, but the description must
have been at least partly true. We there see—and the king, it is
stated, has learnt it both from the petitions addressed to parliament
and by public rumour—that certain people in several parts of the
kingdom claimed “to have right to divers lands, tenements and other
possessions, and some espying women and damsels unmarried, and some
desiring to make maintenance in their marches, do gather together
to a great number of men of arms and archers, _to the manner of
war_, and confederate themselves by oath and other confederacy.”
These people, having no “consideration to God, nor to the laws
of Holy Church, nor of the land, {155} nor to right, nor justice,
but refusing and setting apart all process of the law, do ride in
great routs in divers parts of England, and take possession and
set them in divers manors, lands, and other possessions of their
own authority, and hold the same long with such force, _doing many
manner apparelments of war_; and in some places do ravish women and
damsels, and bring them into strange countries, where please them;
and in some places lying in await with such routs do beat and maim,
murder and slay the people, for to have their wives and their goods,
and the same women and goods retain to their own use; and sometimes
take the king’s liege people in their houses, and bring and hold
them as prisoners, and at the last put them to fine and ransom _as
it were in a land of war_; and sometimes come before the justices in
their sessions in such guise with great force, whereby the justices
be afraid and not hardy to do the law; and do many other riots and
horrible offences, whereby the realm in divers parts is put in great
trouble, to the great mischief and grievance of the people.”[185]
Which shows how vainly the Good Parliament had worked, for, in 1376,
the Commons had already made exactly similar complaints: “Now great
riot begins anew by {156} many people in different parts of England
who ride with a great number of armed men,” etc.[186]

Besides these organized and quasi-seignorial bands, there were
ordinary robbers, numerous enough for chantries to have been founded
“for the safety of travellers who were in danger from thieves.”[187]
Against those people who impeded travelling much more grievously
than ever the floods and broken bridges, Edward I had taken, in
1285, special measures in the Statute of Winchester. These men were
described there as accustomed to crouch down in the ditches, coppice,
or brushwoods near the roads, especially those linking two market
towns. This was, of course, the passage-way of many easy victims,
richly laden. The king orders therefore that, for a space of two
hundred feet, the ground on each side of the road should be cleared
in such a manner that there remain neither coppice nor brushwood,
nor hollow nor ditch which serve as shelter for malefactors: “où
leur peut tapir pur mal fere.” Only large trees such as oaks might
be left. The owner of the soil had to do the work; if he neglected
it, he would be responsible for robberies and murders, and have to
pay a fine to the king. If the road went through a park, the same
obligation lay on the lord, unless he consented to close it by a wall
or a hedge so thick, or by a ditch so wide and deep, that robbers
could not cross them: “qe meffesurs ne pussent passer ne returner pur
mal fere.” The king sets the example and orders such clearings to be
made at once on the lands belonging to the crown.[188]

After which, things continued pretty much as before: “Meanwhile,”
writes a chronicler for the years 1303–05, {157} “certain
malefactors, bound together, four, six, ten or twenty went in
company to fairs and markets, rifled the houses of honest people
and were not ashamed to capture through their misdoings the goods
of the faithful and rich people.”[189] Worse than that: we find as
we progress in the fourteenth century, that these common thieves
had improved their methods and increased their profits. They allied
themselves, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, to the seignorial
bands, and were not henceforward unticketed men for whom no one was
responsible. The Commons were aware of the fact, and complained
accordingly: “Whereas it is notoriously known _throughout all the
shires of England_ that robbers, thieves, and other malefactors on
foot and on horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the
land in divers places, committing larcenies and robberies: may it
please our lord the king to charge the nobility of the land that none
such be maintained by them, privately nor openly; but that they help
to arrest and take such bad ones.”[190] In the preceding parliament
the same complaints had been made, and the king had already promised
that he would order “such remedy as should be pleasing to God and
man.”[191] But neither God nor man had had apparently cause to be
pleased.

In addition to the support of the great, these evildoers enjoyed
various privileges. Some of them could be met along the roads, cross
in hand; both king and church forbade seizing them, they were men
who had forsworn the realm. When a robber, a murderer, or any felon
found himself too hard pressed, he fled into a church and found
safety. In almost all societies having reached a certain stage of
civilization the same privilege has existed or still exists. It
was known to the Romans, {158} was legislated about by Theodosius
the Great, Justinian and the early councils,[192] and is still in
constant use in many parts of the East. A church in the Middle Ages
was an inviolable place: whoever crossed its threshold was under
the protection of God, and many wonderful miracles, the history of
which was familiar to everybody, attested with what particular favour
the right of sanctuary was regarded especially by the Holy Virgin.
At Walsingham, one of the most famous British pilgrimages, people
never failed to go and see the “Gate of the Knight,” a gate which
had stretched itself so as to give miraculous shelter to a man on
horseback, hard pursued by his enemies, and who found himself thus
opportunely placed beyond the reach of men as well as beyond the
reach of law.

[Illustration 32. THE KNOCKER OF THE DURHAM SANCTUARY (NORMAN).]

Several interesting relics of old English sanctuaries are still in
existence, such as stone sign-posts which helped the fugitive to
avoid either vengeance or justice: “Even to-day, in various parts
of England, curious stone crosses, {159} inscribed with the word
SANCTUARIUM, are to be met with. Such crosses probably marked the
way to a sanctuary and served to guide fugitives.”[193] At Durham is
to be seen a beautiful bronze knocker, cast and chiselled in Norman
times, still affixed to the cathedral door through which malefactors
were admitted to the sanctuary.[194] As soon as they had knocked,
the door was opened, the bell in the Galilee tower was rung, and
after having confessed before witnesses their crime, which was at
once put into writing, the culprits were allowed to enjoy the peace
of St. Cuthbert. Several churches had a chair or stool called the
_fridstool_, or peace chair (originally, in some cases, a presbyteral
or episcopal seat) the reaching of which by the fugitive secured for
him the maximum protection. Beverley has one of the oldest, in stone,
perfectly plain, formerly accompanied with a Latin inscription,
saying: “This stone seat is called _freedstoll_, that is, chair
of peace, on reaching which a fugitive criminal enjoys complete
safety.”[195] The Beverley sanctuary was the most celebrated and
safest in England.[196] In this case, and in some others, at Hexham
for example, the privilege extended not only to the church, but to
one mile or more round it, the space being divided into several
circles, usually marked by stone crosses, and it was more and more
sinful to remove fugitives violently from the sanctuary the nearer
{160} they were to the inner circle. If they were dragged from the
altar or the fridstool, no money atonement was accepted from the
abductor, who thus apparently forfeited his life. Describing the
several circles around the Hexham sanctuary, Prior Richard, who wrote
between 1154 and 1167, says of the inner one: “If any one, moved by
a spirit of madness, ventured with diabolical boldness to seize one
in the stone chair near the altar which the English call _fridstol_,
that is a chair of quiet or peace, or at the shrine of the holy
relics, back of the altar, no compensation will be determined for
such a glaring sacrilege, no amount of money will serve as an
atonement, for it is what the English call _botolos_ (bootless), that
is a thing for which there can be no compensation.”[197]

[Illustration 33. THE FRIDSTOOL AT HEXHAM ABBEY, NORTHUMBERLAND
(NORMAN).]

[Illustration 34. THE FRIDSTOOL AT SPROTBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE.

_Fourteenth Century._]

That same fridstool has been preserved, being not improbably the
original episcopal seat of the famous St. Wilfrid, born about 634,
the builder of the old church {163} at Hexham, a crypt of which,
with some Roman stones used for the walls, is still in existence.

Near the fridstool was to be seen a queer, short, stone statue now
moved to another place in the church, of a man, with brutal features,
“wearing a long coat, buttoned in front from the neck to the waist,
having three coils or clumsy ligatures . . . round his ankles; and
he holds erect with both hands a staff or club as tall as himself.”
A. B. Wright, author of an “Essay towards the history of Hexham,”
expresses the opinion that, “it was intended to represent an officer
of justice, with his staff and plume, his feet bared and manacled, to
show that within the bounds of sanctuary he dared not move towards
his design and that there his authority availed him not.”[198]

A confirmation of this opinion may be found in the figures carved
on the little known but very curious fridstool at Sprotborough,
Yorkshire, apparently of the fourteenth century: the fugitive
who could not be properly represented seated in the chair, since
this would have made it impossible of use, is shown protected and
covered by it, while a clumsy and much deteriorated image of some
law official, carrying his staff, stands at one of the sides of
the chair, but unable to move, being bound to it by a collar or
_carcannum_.[199]

Among the most curious remembrances of the English sanctuaries figure
the registers still preserved in some few places, in which were
entered the confessions of the criminals at the moment they asked
for admittance. The Beverley and the Durham ones have been printed;
both date from the fifteenth century; that of Durham covers the years
1464 to 1524; it includes, besides other crimes, 195 murders and
homicides, in which 283 persons {164} are concerned, and which are
divided as follows, according to the trades and avocations of the
perpetrators:

 “Husbandmen             8
 Labourers               4
 Yeomen                  4
 Gentlemen               4
 Ecclesiastics           3
 Merchants               2
 Tailor                  1
 Plumber                 1
 Carpenter               1
 Tanner                  1
 Baxster                 1
 Glover                  1
 Sailor                  1
 Apprentice              1
 Under-Bailiff           1
 Servant                 1
 Knight (an accessory)   1

 “The occupations of the remainder are not mentioned.”[200]

The entries in the two registers are much alike; the formalities are
of the same kind; the Galilee bell is tolled, the culprit confesses;
witnesses are called to hear him, and the names of all concerned
are given in full. Here is an example translated from the Latin
original: “To be remembered that on the 6th day of October, 1477,
William Rome and William Nicholson, of the parish of Forsate, fled
to the cathedral church of St. Cuthbert in Durham, where on account,
among other things, of a felony committed and publicly confessed by
them, consisting of the murder by them of William Aliand, they asked
from the venerable and religious men, Sir Thomas Haughton, sacristan
of the said church, and William Cuthbert, master of the Galilee
there, both brothers and monks of the same church, to be admitted to
the benefit of the immunity of the church, according to the liberties
and privileges conceded in old time to the most glorious confessor
Cuthbert. And by the ringing of one bell according to custom, they
obtained this benefit. There were present there, seeing and hearing,
the discreet men William Heyhyngton, Thomas Hudson, John Wrangham,
{165} and Thomas Strynger, witnesses called in especially for the
occasion.”[201]

At Beverley there were no witnesses: the culprit swore, his hand on
the Book. Besides stating the cause of his flying to sanctuary he
took his oath to remain peaceful, to help in case of fire or strife,
to be present at mass on the commemoration day of King Athelstan,
benefactor of the church, etc.:

 “Also ye shall bere no poynted wepen, dagger, knyfe, ne none other
 wapen, ayenst the kynges pece.

 “Also ye shalbe redy at all your power, if ther be any debate or
 stryf, or oder sodan case of fyre within the towne, to help to
 surcess it.

 “Also ye shalbe redy at the obite of Kyng Adelstan, at the dirige,
 and the messe, at such tyme as it is done, at the warnyng of the
 belman of the towne, and doe your dewte in ryngyng, and for to offer
 at the messe on the morne,”[202] etc.

To drag men out of the sanctuary was a sacrilege punished with
whipping, heavy fines, excommunication, or even death. Nicholas le
Porter had helped to snatch from the church of the Carmelites of
Newcastle some laymen who had taken refuge there “for the safety
of their lives,” and who, once delivered to the civil authority,
had been executed. Only the Pope’s nuncio could secure for him his
pardon, and he had to submit to a public penance very little in
accord with our present customs:

“We order,” wrote Bishop Richard to the parson of St. Nicholas of
Durham, “that on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Whitsun-week
just coming, he shall receive the whip from your hands publicly,
before the chief door of your church, in his shirt, bare-headed,
{166} and barefoot.[203] He shall there proclaim in English the
reason for his penance and shall admit his fault; and when he has
thus been whipped the said Nicholas will go to the cathedral church
of Durham, bareheaded, barefoot, and dressed as above, he will walk
in front, you will follow him; and you will whip him in the same
manner before the door of the cathedral these three days, and he will
repeat there the confession of his sin.”[204]

Excommunication was the punishment meted out to Ralph de Ferrers, one
of the retainers of the then all-powerful John of Gaunt, for having
dragged from the Westminster sanctuary, at mass time, two prisoners
escaped from the Tower where his master had sent them, and for having
killed one in the process, 1378. The Duke of Lancaster, in alliance
then with Wyclif, caused the reformer to write one of his most
virulent treatises against the right of sanctuary, asking for its
abolition.

The right was, however, maintained; the king himself did not dare to
infringe upon it, and, though unwilling, had to let traitors escape,
by such means, his revenge or justice. In a case of this kind, one of
the Henries wrote to the Prior of Durham, and careful as he was to
state that he bound himself only “for the present occasion,” there
is no doubt that his acknowledgment of the full immunities enjoyed
by St. Cuthbert’s church had nothing {167} exceptional: “Trusty and
welbeloved in God,” says the king,[205] “we grete you well. And
wheras we undirstand that Robert Marshall late comitted to prison for
treason is now escapid and broken from the same into youre church of
Duresme, we havyng tender zele and devocion to ye honour of God and
St. Cuthbert, and for the tendir favour and affection that the right
reverend father in God our right trusty and welbeloved the Bisshop of
Duresme our chauncellor of England we have for his merits wol that
for that occasion nothyng be attempted that shud be contrarie to
the liberties and immunities of [your] church. We therefor wol and
charge you that he be surely kept there as ye wol answere unto us
for him.” As there could be very little need for the king to declare
such an obvious feeling as his respect for St. Cuthbert, the earnest
recommendation by which he ends his epistle is most likely to have
been the real cause of his writing to his wellbeloved the Prior of
Durham. Another characteristic instance is the rebellion of Jack Cade
in 1450, when one of his accomplices fled to St. Martin-le-Grand, the
most famous of the London sanctuaries. The king in this case wrote to
the Dean of St. Martin’s ordering him to produce the traitor. This
the Dean refused to do, and he exhibited his charters, which being
found correct and explicit, the fugitive was allowed to remain in
safety where he was.[206]

The right of sanctuary was most valuable, not only for political
offenders, but also, and more frequently, for robbers. They escaped
from prison, fled to the church, and saved their lives. “In this
year,” 1324, say the “Croniques de London,”[207] “ten persons
escaped out of Newgate, of whom five were retaken, and four escaped
{168} to the church of St. Sepulchre, and one to the church of
St. Bride, and afterwards all for-swore England.” But when the
refugees were watched in the church by their personal enemies, their
situation, as evidenced by the statute of 1315–1316, became perilous.
The authors of a petition[208] to the king set forth in that year
that armed men established themselves in the cemetery, and even in
the sanctuary, to watch the fugitive, and guarded him so strictly
that he could not even go out to satisfy his natural wants. They
hindered food from reaching him; if the felon decided to swear that
he would quit the kingdom his enemies followed him on the road,
and in spite of the law’s protection dragged him away and beheaded
him without judgment. The king reforms all these abuses,[209] and
re-enacts the old regulations as to abjuration, which were as
follows: “When a robber, murderer, or other evil-doer shall fly unto
any church upon his confession of felony, the coroner shall cause the
abjuration to be made thus: Let the felon be brought to the church
door, and there be assigned unto him a port, near or far off, and
a time appointed for him to go out of the realm, so that in going
towards that port he carry a cross in his hand, and that he go not
out of the king’s highway, neither on the right hand, nor on the
left, but that he keep it always until he shall be gone out of the
land; and that he shall not return without special grace of our lord
the king.”

The felon took oath in the following terms: “This hear thou, sir
coroner, that I, N., am a robber of sheep, or of any other beast, or
a murderer of one or of more, and a felon to our lord the King of
England, and because I have done many such evils or robberies in this
land, I {169} do abjure the land of our lord Edward King of England,
and I shall haste me towards the port of such a place which thou
hast given me, and I shall not go out of the highway, and if I do I
will that I be taken as a robber and felon to our lord the king; and
at such a place I will diligently seek for passage, and that I will
tarry there but one flood and ebb, if I can have passage; and unless
I can have it in such a place I will go every day into the sea up to
my knees assaying to pass over; and unless I can do this within forty
days, I will put myself again into the church as a robber and a felon
to our lord the king. So God me help and his holy judgment.”[210]

Dover was the port oftenest assigned to abjurors. The time limit
varied, being on occasions so brief, that it must have been almost
impossible for people on foot to fulfil the condition: which was most
probably what the coroner had in view, for he would assign sometimes
different delays to different refugees for the same distance. “The
distance from York to Dover over London Bridge was nearly 270 miles,
and there are several entries of eight days being the allotted time,
thus maintaining a rate of over 33 miles a day.”[211] {170}

In the church robbers found themselves side by side with insolvent
debtors. These before seeking refuge were usually careful to make
a general donation of all their property, and the creditors who
cited them to justice remained empty handed. In 1379,[212] Richard
II enacted remedial legislation. During five weeks, once a week,
the debtor is to be summoned, by proclamation made at the door of
the sanctuary, to appear in person or by attorney before the king’s
judges. If he does not choose to appear justice shall take its
course; sentence will be passed, and the property that he had given
away will be shared among the creditors.

This, however, served, as usual, only for a time. In the first years
of the following reign the Commons are found lamenting the same
abuses. Apprentices who have plundered their masters, tradesmen in
debt, robbers, flee to St. Martin-le-Grand and live there in quiet
on the money they have stolen. They employ the leisure which this
peaceful existence leaves them in patiently forging “obligations,
indentures, acquitances,” imitating the signatures and seals of
honest city merchants and of other people. Felons, murderers and
thieves avail themselves of this restful seclusion for preparing new
crimes; they go out at night to commit them, and safely return in the
morning to their inviolate retreat. The king, apparently puzzled as
to what to do, when the abuse is so great and the privilege {171} so
sacred, vaguely promises that “reasonable remedy shall be had.”[213]

Some years later (A.D. 1447) the Goldsmiths’ Company of London was
startled on finding that a quantity of sham gold and silver plate
and jewellery had been issued from the privileged precincts of St.
Martin-le-Grand’s sanctuary, to the great detriment of their own
worshipful company. They brought the facts to the notice of the
king, who wrote to the Dean recommending him to check this abuse if
possible: “Trustie and welbeloved, we grete you wel, and let you
to wote that we be informed that there be divers persons dwellinge
within our seinctuarie of St. Martin’s that forge and sell laton
and coper, some gilt and some sylverd for gold and silver, unto
the great deceipt of our lege people. . . . ”[214] The tone of the
king’s letter is very moderate; he seems to write only to please the
Goldsmiths’ Company, while realizing that he is powerless in the
matter, and that his recommendations will come to nothing.

A priest who took refuge in a church was not obliged to quit England;
he swore that he was a priest, and “enjoyed ecclesiastic privilege,
according to the praiseworthy custom of the kingdom.”[215] But the
church, who accorded to all comers the benefit of sanctuary, reserved
to herself the power of removal from it. “In this year (1320), a
woman who was named Isabel of Bury, killed the priest of the church
of All Saints, near London Wall, and she remained in the same church
five days, so that the Bishop of London issued his letter that the
church would not save her, wherefore she was brought out of the
church to Newgate and was hanged on the third day afterwards.”[216]
{172}

In those days, when riots and rebellions were not uncommon,
the right of sanctuary might be valuable for any one; reformers
like Wyclif vainly protested against this exorbitant but useful
custom.[217] A bishop even, however sacred his person, might have
to spur his horse and fly towards a church to save his head. The
Bishop of Exeter tried and failed when Isabella and her son came
to overthrow Edward II:[218] “The same day came one Sir Walter de
Stapleton, who was Bishop of Exeter, and the king’s treasurer the
previous year, riding to his house in Elde Deanes lane to his dinner,
and there he was proclaimed traitor; and he seeing that fled on his
horse towards the church of St. Paul’s, and was there met and quickly
unhorsed, and brought to Cheap, and there he was stripped and his
head cut off.”

Under Richard III might be seen a queen and a king’s son refuse
to quit the sacred enclosure of Westminster, in which their lives
were safe, thanks to the sanctity of the place. Sir Thomas More has
left in his history of the usurper, the first real history in the
national language, a moving picture of the plucky defence of Edward
IV’s widow and of the persistent efforts of Richard to snatch the
second child of the late king from the abbey. To reiterated demands
the queen replied: “In what place coulde I recken him sure, if he
be not sure in this the sentuarye whereof was there never tiraunt
yet so develish, that durst presume to breake. . . . For soth he
hath founden a goodly glose, by whiche that place that may defend a
thefe, may not save an innocent.”[219] The “goodly glose” of Richard
III consisted simply in having the right of sanctuary abolished.
In a speech in favour of {173} the measure, which was aimed
especially at the places of refuge of St. Paul’s and Westminster,
the Duke of Buckingham is represented by More drawing a very lively
as well as an exact picture of the disorders there: “What a rabble
of theves, murtherers, and malicious heyghnous traitours, and that
in twoo places specyallye. . . . Mens wyves runne thither with
theyr housebandes plate, and saye, thei dare not abyde with theyr
housebandes for beatinge. Theves bryng thyther theyr stolen goodes,
and there lyve thereon. There devise thei newe roberies; nightlye
they steale out, they robbe and reve, and kyll, and come in again as
though those places gave them not only a safe garde for the harme
they have done, but a license also to doo more.”[220]

This privilege endured, however, and even survived the Reformation;
but from that hour it was less respected. Lord Chancellor Bacon
speaks of the sanctuary of Colnham, near Abingdon, as being
considered “insufficient” for traitors, under Henry VII; several
political criminals who had taken refuge there, were seized,
therefore, and one of them was executed.[221] Sanctuaries were
suppressed, legally at least, in the twenty-first year of the
reign of James I: “And be it alsoe enacted by the authoritie of
this present parliament that no sanctuarie or priviledge {174} of
sanctuary shal be hereafter admitted or allowed in any case.”[222]
But they lingered on in England as well as on the continent. Cromwell
complains, in one of his most famous speeches, of the difficulties
his Government sometimes experience on that account when they have
to ask from foreign potentates that justice be done. He alludes to
the recent assassination of an English messenger, and says: “It is
the pleasure of the Pope at any time to tell you that though the man
is murdered, yet his murderer has got into the sanctuary.” Another
proof that, after the statute of James I, the right of sanctuary
did not fall entirely into disuse in England is that it had to be
re-abolished in 1697; sanctuaries are to be found even so late as
the reign of George I, when the one at St. Peter’s, Westminster, was
demolished.

With all their penal severity, law and custom still gave other
encouragements to malefactors. They often received charters of
pardon which the royal chancery willingly granted because they must
be paid for, while the Commons unweariedly renewed their complaints
against this abuse. The priest, John Crochille, states to the king
in parliament that while he was at the Court of Rome he has been
outlawed, and was imprisoned on his return. The chancellor has
granted him a charter of pardon, but he is “so impoverished that he
has not wherewith to pay for the said charter.”[223]

Charters were thus given to the innocent for money, and to “common
felons and murderers” also, which had two results: the number of
brigands increased by reason of their impunity, and men dared not
bring the most formidable criminals to justice for fear of seeing
them return pardoned and ready to wreak a terrible revenge.

Most unluckily, the interest that the great had in {175} the
continuance of this abuse tended also to its maintenance. In league
with their retainers, they wanted to defend them from justice as
they themselves were defended by them in the street or on the road;
and the best means of saving these _bravi_ from the consequences of
some assassination was to obtain or buy for them a charter of pardon.
The Commons knew it, and reminded the king that often the protectors
of such criminals secured charters for them on the representation
that these men were abroad, occupied in fighting for the prince. The
charter once obtained, the malefactors returned and renewed their
ill-deeds, without fear of being troubled by any one.[224]

For all these reasons the traveller would not have been prudent if
he had not foreseen on starting the chance of some untoward meeting,
and if he had not armed himself in consequence. This was such a
recognized necessity that the Chancellor of the University of Oxford
allowed the students, on the occasion of a journey, to carry arms,
otherwise strictly forbidden.[225]

There was, then, at best, but moderate safety against robbers, and
there was not always much against the sheriff’s officers themselves.
At a time when prowlers were so numerous, it was enough to be a
stranger in the district, especially if it were night, to be sent to
gaol on suspicion, {176} as shown by a statute of Edward III.[226]
Nothing more general than the terms of this law; the power to arrest
is almost unlimited: “Whereas, in the statute made at Winchester
in the time of King Edward, grandfather to the king that now is,
it is contained, That if any stranger pass by the country in the
night, of whom any have suspicion, he shall presently be arrested
and delivered to the sheriff, and remain in ward till he be duly
delivered; and because there have been divers manslaughters,
felonies, and robberies[227] done in times past, by people that
be called roberdesmen, wastors, and draw-latches . . . ” whoever
suspects any to be one such, “be it by day or by night,” shall cause
him immediately to be arrested by the constables of the towns; the
man shall be kept in prison till the justices of gaol delivery come
down, and meanwhile inquiry shall be made.

Think now of a stranger passing through the town by night; some
constable feels suspicious and wants to arrest him; imagining himself
already in prison “till the justices come down,” the man runs away
instead of allowing himself to be taken. The statute has provided
for his case.[228] “If they will not obey the arrest, hue and cry
shall be levied upon them, and such as keep the watch shall follow
with hue and cry with all the town, and the towns near, and so hue
and cry shall be made from town to town until that they be taken and
delivered {177} to the sheriff.”[229] A singular picture: night wraps
in its shadows the crooked lanes of the unlit city; the stranger is
perhaps a robber, perhaps an honest man, who has lost his way, not
knowing the place; his fault is not to be within doors by curfew; he
gropes his way as best he can; the watch perceives and challenges
him; fearing the result he takes to his heels, and behold! the hue
and cry begins, the watch runs, the town wakes up, lights appear, and
one after the other the more zealous join in the chase. If the town
is fortified, the postern gates have long been closed, and he will be
surely taken. Scarcely can he hope to cast himself into some unshut
doorway at a turning of the street, behind which he will cower,
listening with trembling hand and beating heart to the watch who pass
heavily along at a charging pace, followed by a crowd of furious
shouters. The number of steps lessen, and the shouts become fainter,
then die away, lost in the depths of the city.

If the place is not important enough to be enclosed by walls, the
first thought of the fugitive will be to gain the open, and then
he must not fear marshes, ditches, hedges; he must know how, at a
bend of the ground, to leave the high-road and profit by any place
where the Statute of Winchester has been negligently applied. But
for that he is lost, the constables follow, the town follows, the
“cry” continues, and at the next village the scene of the start will
begin over again. The inhabitants, warned by the clamour, light their
lanterns, and see, they are already in the chase. Before he reaches
the end of the high-street some peasant will be found on the alert,
ready to bar the passage of the road to him. All have an interest
in it, all have been robbed, or their friends, or relatives; {178}
someone of their kin may have been wounded or murdered on the road
as he returned from market. Every one has heard of such misfortunes,
and feels himself personally menaced. Hence this zeal in joining the
chase with the hue and cry, and the conviction that, running so hard
and making so many folk run, the fugitive must be a famous brigand
ready for the gibbet.[230]

{179}

PART II

_LAY WAYFARERS_

{181}

[Illustration 35. AN ADVENTURE SEEKER.

(_From the MS. 2 B._ vii; _English; early Fourteenth Century_.)]

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

 “_Qui ne s’adventure n’a cheval ni mule, ce dist Salomon.—Qui trop
 s’adventure perd cheval et mule, respondit Malcon._”

 VIE DE GARGANTUA.

We have seen the aspect and usual condition of English roads; we must
now take separately the principal types of the wandering class and
see what sort of a life the wayfarer led, and what was his importance
in society or in the State.

Wayfarers belonging to civil life were, in the first place, quacks
and drug-sellers, glee-men, tumblers, minstrels, and singers; then
messengers, pedlars, and itinerant chapmen; lastly, outlaws, thieves
of all kinds, peasants out of bond or perambulating workmen, and
beggars. To ecclesiastic life belonged preachers, mendicant friars,
and those strange dealers in indulgences called pardoners. Lastly
there were palmers and pilgrims, whose journeyings {182} had a
religious object, but in whose ranks, as in Chaucer’s book, clerk and
lay were mingled.

Many of these individuals, the friars for instance, had, it is true,
a resting-place, but their existence was spent, for the greater part,
on the roads; when they left their abode their purpose was not to
reach this or that place, they had no fixed itinerary, but spent
their time in ceaseless rambles about the country, begging as they
went. They had, in the long run, caught the manners and the language
of true nomadic wayfarers, and in common opinion were generally
confounded with them; they belonged to that caste or family of beings.

As for the strange race which we still see at the present day
wandering from country to country, and which, later than any, will
represent among us the caste of wanderers, it had not yet made its
appearance in the British world, and are outside the limits of the
present work. The Bohemians or Gipsies remained entirely unknown in
England till the fifteenth century.

[Illustration 36. BLIND BEGGAR AND HIS DOG.

(_From the MS. 10 E. IV._)]

{183}

[Illustration 37. “THER WAS ALSO A DOCTOUR OF PHISIK” (CHAUCER’S
DOCTOR).

(_From the Ellesmere MS._)]

CHAPTER I

HERBALISTS, CHARLATANS, MINSTRELS, JUGGLERS, AND TUMBLERS

The most popular of all the wanderers were naturally the most
cheerful, or those held to be the most beneficent. These latter were
the folks with a universal panacea, very numerous in the Middle
Ages; they went about the world selling health. They established
themselves in the village green, or the market place, on holidays,
spreading a carpet or a piece of cloth on the ground; they displayed
their drugs, and began to harangue the people. Their numbers go
diminishing nowadays, for the laws are more and more unkind to them,
but they have not yet entirely disappeared, so natural to man {184}
are credulity and the longing for health. One may still hear at the
present day discourses not very different from those they spoke in
the fourteenth century in England, France, or Italy; their profession
is one that has changed less than any. In the thirteenth century
the herbalist of Rutebeuf spoke like Ben Jonson’s mountebank of the
seventeenth, like the charlatan who yesterday a few steps from our
door attracted the crowd to his trestle, limiting however his sales,
on account of the churlishness of the legislator, to tonics, tooth
pastes and the like. Big words, marvellous tales, praise of their
noble and distant origin, enumeration of the extraordinary cures
they have made, ostentatious display of an unbounded devotion to the
public good, and of entire pecuniary disinterestedness: all this is
found, and always will be found, in the talk of these insinuating
itinerants, as it is also found to-day in the advertisements, on
walls or in newspapers, of wondrous cures discovered by a priest,
by a convent, by a gentleman of worth and disinterestedness; which
advertisements have, to some extent, replaced the itinerant healer of
olden times.

“Good people,” said Rutebeuf’s medicinal herb-seller six hundred
years ago, “I am not one of those poor preachers, nor one of those
poor herbalists who stand in front of churches with their miserable
ill-sown cloak, who carry boxes and sachets and spread out a carpet.
Know that I am not one of these; but I belong to a lady whose name is
Madame Trote de Salerno, who makes a kerchief of her ears, and whose
eyebrows hang down as silver chains behind her shoulders: know that
she is the wisest lady that is in all the four parts of the world.
My lady sends us into different lands and countries, into Apulia,
Calabria, Burgundy, into the forest of Ardennes to kill wild beasts
in order to extract good ointments from them, and give medicine to
those who are ill in body. . . . And because she made me swear by the
saints when I {185} parted from her, I will teach you the proper
cure for worms, if you will listen. Will you listen?

“. . . Take off your caps, give ear, look at my herbs which my lady
sends into this land and country; and because she wishes the poor as
well as the rich to have access thereto, she told me that I should
make pennyworths of them, for a man may have a penny in his purse who
has not five pounds; and she told and commanded that I might take
pence of the current coin in the land and country wherever I should
come. . . .

“These herbs, you will not eat them; for there is no ox in this
country, no charger, be he never so strong, who if he had a bit the
size of a pea upon his tongue would not die a hard death, they are
so strong and bitter. . . . You will put them three days to sleep in
good white wine; if you have no white take red, if you have no red
take fine clear water, for one may have a well before his door who
has not a cask of wine in his cellar. If you breakfast from it for
thirteen mornings you will be cured of your various maladies. For if
my father and mother were in danger of death and they were to ask of
me the best herb I could give them, I should give them this. This is
how I sell my herbs and my ointments; if you want any, come and take
them; if you don’t, let them alone.”[231]

This herbalist was of those early maligned in France and England
by royal ordinances for the illegal practice of medicine. Philip
the Fair in 1311, John the Good in 1352, had issued severe decrees
against them. They were berated with being “ignorant of men’s
temperament, of the time and mode of administering, of the virtues
of medicines, above all, of laxative ones in which lies danger of
death.” These people “often come from abroad,” go through town and
suburbs, and venture to administer to the confiding sick, “clisteria
multum laxativa et alia {186} eis illicita,”[232] at which the royal
authority was justly indignant.

In England the itinerant drug-sellers had no better reputation; the
popular songs, satires and farces always show them associating in
taverns with the meanest rabble, and using—true to nature—the most
ridiculous rant. Master Brundyche’s man, in a play of the fifteenth
century, thus prepares the minds of the hearers for the advent of the
“leech,” his master, deriding both:

    What dysease or syknesse y^t ever ye have,
    He wyl never leve yow tylle ye be in your grave.[233]

To have an idea of what their recipes might be, one must recall what
the medicine was that the statutes of the kingdom protected. John
of Gaddesden, court doctor under Edward II, got rid of the marks of
the small-pox by wrapping the sick man in red cloths, and he thus
cured the heir to the throne himself.[234] He had for a long time
been troubled how to cure stone: “At last,” says he, in his “Rosa
Anglica,” “I bethought myself of collecting {187} a good number of
those beetles which in summer are found in the dung of oxen, also of
the crickets which sing in the fields. I cut off the heads and the
wings of the crickets and put them with the beetles and common oil
into a pot; I covered it and left it afterwards for a day and night
in a bread oven. I drew out the pot and heated it at a moderate fire,
I pounded the whole and rubbed the sick parts; in three days the pain
had disappeared”; under the influence of the beetles and the crickets
the stone had broken into bits.[235] It was almost always thus, by a
sudden illumination, bethinking himself of beetles or of something
else, that the learned man discovered his most efficacious remedies:
Madame Trote de Salerno never confided to her agents in the various
parts of the world the secret of more marvellous and unexpected
recipes.

The law, however, made a clear distinction between a court physician
and a quack of the cross-ways. Kings and princes had their own
healers, attached to their persons, whom they trusted more than they
did their ministers. Securing by indentures of 1372 and 1373 the
services of “frere William de Appleton, phisicien et surgien,” and
of “Maistre Johan Bray,” granting them forty marks yearly pension
with the “bouche en court,” or right to be fed at his tables, and
other advantages, John of Gaunt, “roy de Castille,” was careful
to bind those men of learning to attend on him “in peace and in
war, _so long as they lived_,” a pledge which his brother, King
Edward, never exacted from his chancellors. A Gaddesden had the
support of an established reputation to apply any medicament to his
patients, and he offered the warranty of his high position. He had
studied at Oxford, and he was an authority; a grave physician like
Chaucer’s “doctour,” who had grown rich during the plague, his wealth
increasing his repute— {188}

    “For gold in physik is a cordial,”

had not neglected to pore over the works of “Gatesden.”

With lesser book-knowledge but an equal ingenuity, the wandering
herbalist was not so advantageously known: _he_ could not, like
the royal physician, rely on his good reputation and his “bouche
en court” to make his patients swallow glow-worms, rub them with
beetles and crickets, or give them “seven heads of fat bats”[236] as
remedies. The legislator kept his eye on him. In the country, like
most of the other wayfarers, the man nearly always found means to
escape the rigour of the laws; but in towns the risk was greater.
The unhappy Roger Clerk was sued in 1381 for the illegal practice of
medicine in London, because he tried to cure a woman by making her
wear a certain parchment on her bosom. Though such a nostrum could
not possibly be more hurtful than the use of fat bats, he was carried
to the pillory “through the middle of the city, with trumpets and
pipes,” on a horse without a saddle, his parchment and a whetstone
round his neck, unseemly pottery hanging round his neck and down his
back, in token that he had lied.[237]

Uneasy at the increase of these abuses, Henry V issued in 1421
an _Ordinance against the meddlers with physic and surgery_, “to
get rid of the mischiefs and dangers which have long continued
within the kingdom among the people by means of those who have
used the art and practice of physic and surgery, pretending to be
well and sufficiently taught in the same arts, when of truth they
are not so.” Henceforth there would be severe punishments for all
practitioners who have not been approved in their speciality, “that
is to say, those of physic by the universities, and the surgeons by
the masters of that art.”[238] The mischief {189} continued just
as before; which seeing, in order to give more authority to the
medicine approved by the State, Edward IV, in the first year of his
reign, erected the Company of Barbers of London using the faculty of
surgery, into a corporation.[239]

The Renaissance came and found barbers, quacks, empirics, and
sorcerers continuing to prosper on British soil, and still the
subject of song, satire and play. John Heywood’s Pothecary is a
lineal descendant of Rutebeuf’s herbalist; he sells a wonderful
_Syrapus de Byzansis_, and advertises it in such a way that, anything
that happens, he is right:

    “These be the thynges that breke all stryfe
     Betweene mannes sycknes and his lyfe;
     From all payne these shall you delever
     And set you even at reste for ever.”[240]

Henry VIII deplored the hold those men kept on the common people, and
on some of their betters too; he considered it his duty to enact new
rules. “The science and connyng of physyke and surgerie,” said the
king in his statute, “to the perfecte knowlege wherof bee requisite
bothe grete lernyng and ripe experience, ys daily within this Royalme
exercised by a grete multitude of ignoraunt persones, of whom the
grete partie have no maner of insight in the same nor in any other
kynde of lernyng; some also can no lettres on the boke, soofarfurth
that common artificers, as smythes, wevers, and women boldely
and custumably take upon theim grete curis and thyngys of great
difficultie, in the which they partely use sorcery and which-crafte,
partely applie such medicine unto the disease as be verey noyous and
nothyng metely therfore, to the high displeasoure {190} of God . . .
and destruccion of many of the kynge’s liege people, most specially
of them that cannot descerne the uncunnyng from the cunnyng.”[241]
The examples above have shown how difficult it must often have been
to “descerne” between them.

Consequently, the king continues, every one who may wish to practise
in London or seven miles round, must previously submit to an
examination before the bishop of that city, or before the Dean of
St. Paul’s, assisted by four “doctors of phisyk.” In the country the
examination will take place before the bishop of the diocese or his
vicar-general. In 1540, the same prince united the corporation of the
barbers and the college of surgeons, and granted each year to the new
association the bodies of four condemned criminals “for anathomies.”

Hardly were all these privileges conceded than doubts filled the
mind of the legislator himself, and who, it may be wondered, did he
regret? precisely those old unregistered quacks, those possessors
of infallible secrets, those village empirics so harshly treated
in the statute of 1511. A new law was enacted, which is but one
long enumeration of the guilty practices of qualified doctors; they
poison their clients as thoroughly as the quacks of old, the chief
difference is that they take more for it, refusing even to interfere
if the patient is poor:

“Mynding oonelie theyre owne lucres, and nothing the profite or ease
of the diseased or patient, [they] have sued, troubled and vexed
divers honest persones aswell men as woomen, whome God hathe endued
with the knowledge of the nature, kinde, and operacion of certeyne
herbes, rotes, and waters, . . . and yet the saide persones have not
takin any thing for theyre peynes and cooning, but have mynistred the
same to the poore people oonelie for neighbourhode and Goddes sake,
and of pite and {191} charytie; and it is nowe well knowen that the
surgeons admytted wooll doo no cure to any persone, but where they
shall knowe to be rewarded with a greater soome or rewarde than the
cure extendeth unto, for in cace they wolde mynistre theyre coonning
to sore people unrewarded, there shoulde not so manye rotte and
perishe to deathe for lacke of helpe of surgerye as dailie doo.”
Besides, in spite of the examinations by the Bishop of London, “the
most parte of the persones of the said crafte of surgeons have
small coonning.” For which cause all the king’s subjects who have,
“by speculacion or practyse,” knowledge of the virtues of plants,
roots, and waters, may as before, notwithstanding enactments to the
contrary, cure any malady apparent on the surface of the body, by
means of plasters, poultices, and ointments “within any parte of the
realme of Englande, or within any other the kinges dominions.”[242]

A radical change, as we see; the secrets and “speculacions” of
country people were no longer those of sorcerers, but precious
recipes which they had received from God by intuition; the poor,
subject to die without a doctor, rejoiced, the quacks breathed once
more—but were led again onto the boards of the comic stage just as
before. Ben Jonson, that bold pedestrian who walked all the way from
London to Scotland, and who, in his long rambles through villages
or cities, had become familiar with the variegated characters
haunting their market places, painted, in his turn, the portrait of
the “mountebank doctor,” one of the best, not better however than
Rutebeuf’s, and very similar to it, for, as we said, the type passed
on from century to century, unchanged.

Old Ben, as usual, paints from life, having seen and heard more
than once at Bartholomew and other fairs the drug-seller pacing his
scaffold and exclaiming, “O, health, health! the blessing of the
rich! the riches of the {192} poor! who can buy thee at too dear a
rate, since there is no enjoying this world without thee.” Upon which
the man makes game of the despicable “asses” his rivals, boasts of
his incomparable panacea, into which enters a little human fat, which
is worth a thousand crowns, but which he will part with for eight
crowns, no, for six, finally for sixpence. A thousand crowns is what
the cardinals Montalto and Farnese and his friend the Grand Duke of
Tuscany have paid him, but he despises money and he makes sacrifices
for the people. Likewise he has a little of the powder which gave
beauty to Venus and to Helen; one of his friends, a great traveller,
found it in the ruins of Troy and sent it him. This friend also sent
a little of it to the French Court, but that portion had become
“sophisticated,” and the ladies who use it do not obtain from it such
good results.[243]

Three years later, an English traveller, finding himself at Venice,
was filled with wonder at the talk of the Italian mountebanks, and
describing them, he too, from life, gave another copy of the same
immutable original. “Truely,” wrote Coryat, “I often wondered at
many of these natural orators. For they would tell their tales with
such admirable volubility and plausible grace, even _extempore_,
and seasoned with that singular variety of elegant jests and witty
conceits, that they did often strike great admiration into strangers
that never heard them before.” They sell “oyles, soueraigne waters,
amorous songs printed, apothecary drugs, and a common-weale of other
trifles. . . . I saw one of them holde a viper in his hand, and play
with his sting a quarter of an houre together, and yet receive no
hurt. . . . He made us all beleeve that the same viper was lineally
descended from the generation of that viper that lept out of the
fire upon St. Paul’s hand, in the island of Melita, now called
Malta.”[244] {193}

No doubt the loquacity, the volubility, the momentary conviction,
the grace, the insinuating tone, the light, winged gaiety of the
southern charlatan were not found so fully or so charmingly at the
festivals of old England. These festivals were, however, merry and
boisterous, attended by large crowds, among which moved many an
artful character so full of jest and guile that Shakespeare thought
them worthy of immortality; he gave it them indeed in creating,
as a model of those men whose “revenue is the silly cheat,” his
incomparable “Autolycus, a rogue.”

Country labourers went in numbers to these meetings, to stand jests
which, aimed at them, were an amusement even to themselves, and to
buy some drug which would do them good: they are to be seen there
still. At the present day they continue to collect before the vendors
of cures for the toothache and other troubles. Certificates abound
round the booth; it seems as though all the illustrious people in
the world must have been benefited by the discovery; the man now
addresses himself to the rest of humanity. He talks, gesticulates,
gets excited, leans over with a grave tone and a deep voice. The
peasants press around, gaping with inquisitive eye, uncertain if
they ought to laugh or to be afraid, and in the end get confident.
The large hand fumbles in the new coat, the purse is drawn forth
with an awkward air, the piece of money is held out and the medicine
received, while the shining eye and undecided physiognomy say plainly
that the cunning and the habitual practical sense are here at fault;
that these good souls, clever and invincible in their own domain
when it is a question of a sheep or a cow, are the victims of every
one in an unknown land, the land of medical lore. The vendor bestirs
himself, and now, as formerly, triumphs over indecision by means of
direct appeals.

In England the incomparable Goose Fair at {194} Nottingham should
be chosen as the place to see these spectacles, which shine there in
all their infinite variety, with quacks as racy as those of pristine
days, scenes reminding one of Rubens’ great “Kermesse” at the Louvre,
and at every turn and before every shop living confutations of St.
Evremond and others’ ideas of the temper of the English, ever lost in
their thoughts, as if merry England were no more.[245]

Greater still was, in the Middle Ages, the popularity of those
wayfarers, numerous too at the Goose Fair, who came not to cure, but
to amuse, and who, if they did not offer remedies for diseases, at
least brought forgetfulness of troubles; the minstrels, tumblers,
jugglers, and singers. Minstrels and _jongleurs_, under different
names, exercised the same profession, that is, they chanted songs
and romances to the accompaniment of their instruments, as is still
done in the East, in Persia for instance, where poems are not told
but chanted, in various keys according to the subject. At a time
when books were rare, and the theatre, properly so called, did not
exist, poetry and music travelled with the minstrels and gleemen
along the roads; such guests were always welcome. They were to be
found at every feast, wherever there were rejoicings; it was expected
from them, as from wine or beer, that care would be lulled to sleep,
and merriment would replace it. They had many ways to fulfil the
expectation, some dignified, some not. Of the first sort was the
singing and reciting, either in French or English, of the loves and
deeds of ancient heroes.

This was a grand part to play, one held in much reverence; the
harpers and minstrels who arrived at the castle gates, their heads
full of war stories, or sweet tales, or lively songs to excite
laughter, “ad ridendum,” were received with the highest favour. On
their coming they announced themselves without by some “murie {195}
singing” overheard in the house; soon came the order to bring them
in; they were ranged at one end of the hall, and every one gave ear
to them.[246] They preluded on their instruments, and then began to
sing. On what subject?

    “Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
     For old unhappy far off things
         And battles long ago:
     Or is it some more humble lay
     Familiar matter of to-day?
     Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
     That has been and may be again?”[247]

Like Taillefer at Hastings, they told of the prowess of Charlemagne
and of Roland, or they spoke of Arthur, or of the heroes of the wars
of Troy, undoubted ancestors of the Britons of England:

    “Men lykyn jestis for to here,
     And romans rede in diuers manere
     Of Alexandre the conqueroure,
     Of Julius Cesar the emperoure,
     Of Grece and Troy the strong stryf,
     There many a man lost his lyf, {196}
     Of Brute that baron bold of hond
     The first conqueroure of Englond,
     Of kyng Artour that was so riche,
     Was non in his tyme him liche,
     *  *  *  *  *
     How kyng Charlis and Rowlond fawght
     With Sarzyns nold they be cawght,
     Of Tristrem and of Ysoude the swete
     How they with love first gan mete,
     Of kyng John and of Isombras,
     Of Ydoyne and of Amadas,
     Stories of diuerce thynggis
     Of pryncis, prelatis, and of kynggis,
     Many songgis of diuers ryme,
     As english, frensh, and latyne.”[248]

In the fourteenth century most of these old romances, heroic,
forceful, or touching, had been re-cast and put into new language;
florid descriptions, complicated adventures, marvels and prodigies
had been added to them; many had been turned into prose, and instead
of being sung they were read.[249] The lord listened with pleasure,
and his taste, palled by surfeit, caused him to take delight in
the strange entanglements with which every event was henceforth
enveloped. He now lived a more complex life than formerly; being more
refined he had more wants, and grand, simple pictures in poems like
the Song of Roland no longer satisfied his imagination: he preferred
variety to grandeur. The heroes of romance {197} found harder and
harder tasks imposed on them, and were obliged to triumph over more
and more marvellous enchantments. As the hand became more alert the
modelling improved; the softer-hearted heroes of amorous adventures
were endowed by the poet with that charm, at once mystic and sensual,
so characteristic of the sculptured figures of the fourteenth
century. The author of “Sir Gawayne” takes a scarcely concealed
pleasure in describing the visits which his knight receives, in
painting his lady, so gentle, so pretty, with easy motions and gay
smile; he puts into his picture all his art, all his soul; he finds
words which seem caresses, and verses which shine as with a golden
gleam.[250]

These pictures, not rare in the thirteenth century, greatly
multiplied in the fourteenth, but toward the end thereof passed from
the romance into the tale, or into poems, half tale, half romance,
such as the “Troilus” of Chaucer. After many transformations the
metrical romance was gradually giving way to new forms and styles
which better suited the tastes of the hour. A hundred years earlier
such a man as Chaucer would have taken up the Arthur legends in his
turn, and would have written some splendid long-winded poetical
romance for the minstrels; but he left us tales and lyric poems
because his own taste and that of the age were different, and he
felt that people were still curious but not enthusiastic about old
heroic stories, that few any longer followed them with passion to
the end, and that they were rather made the ornament of libraries
than the subject of daily thought.[251] Thenceforward men liked to
find separately in {198} ballads and in tales the lyric breath and
the spirit of observation formerly contained with all the rest in
the great metrical romances, the poetical _summæ_ of earlier days;
and these, abandoned to the less expert of the itinerant rhymers,
became such wretched copies of the old originals that they were the
laughing-stock of people of sense and taste.

Many of the grand French epics were thus abridged and put into
skipping, barren English verse, the epics being out of fashion, their
substitutes valueless. So, when Chaucer, surrounded by his fellow
pilgrims, favoured them with a story of Sir Thopas, popular good
sense, personated by the host, rebelled, and the performance was
rudely interrupted. Yet from Sir Thopas to many of the romances which
ran the streets or the roads the distance is small, and the laughable
parody was hardly more than a close imitation. Robert Thornton, in
the first half of the fifteenth century, copied from older texts a
good number of these remodelled romances. In turning their pages one
is struck by the excellence of Chaucer’s jesting, his caricature
being almost a portrait.

These poems are all cut after one and the same pattern, tripping
and sprightly, with little thought and less sentiment; the cadenced
stanzas march on, clear, easy, and empty; no constraint, no effort;
one may open and close the book without a sigh, without regret, with
no positive weariness nor really-felt pleasure. Were it not for the
proper names, the reader might pass chancewise from one romance to
another without noticing the change. Take no matter which, “Sir
Isumbras” for example: {199} after a prayer for form’s sake, the
rhymer vaunts the valour of the hero, then praises a quality of
especial value, with which he was happily endowed, his fondness for
minstrels and his generosity towards them:

    “He luffede glewmene well in haulle
     He gafe thame robis riche of palle (fine cloth)
       Bothe of golde and also fee;
     Of curtasye was he kynge,
     Of mete and drynke no nythynge,
       On lyfe was none so fre.”

Isumbras, his wife, and his son, are without peers; he is the most
valiant of knights, his wife the most lovely of women:

    “I wille yow telle of a knyghte
     That bothe was stalworthe and wyghte,
       And worthily undir wede;
     His name was hattene syr Ysambrace.”

So is also Sir Eglamour:

    “Y shalle telle yow of a knyght
     That was bothe hardy and wyght,
       And stronge in eche a stowre.”

So is also Sir Degrevant:

    “And y schalle karppe off a knyght
     That was both hardy and wyght,
     Sire Degrevaunt that hend hyght,
       That dowghty was of dede.”[252] {200}

So is also Chaucer’s Sir Thopas:

    “. . . I wol telle verrayment
         Of myrthe and of solas,
     Al of a knyght was fair and gent
     In batail and in tornament,
         His name was Sir Thopas.”

And though Sir Thopas almost comes within the scope of the present
work, being an adventure seeker, “a knight auntrous,” ever on his
way, never sleeping in a house—

    “And for he was a knight auntrous,
     He nolde slepen in non hous,
       But liggen in his hode;
     His bright helm was his wonger (pillow),”

yet must we abide by the ruling of mine host and leave him alone:

    “No more of this for Goddes dignitee.”

But, even at a comparatively late date, the inmate of an out of the
way castle usually proved more lenient. He welcomed the minstrel, his
verse and his viol as he welcomed change; he lent a complacent ear to
his commonplace romances, his ballads on every subject, his praise
of flowers, women, wine, spring, heroes and saints, his _goliardic_
dispraise of women,[253] monks and friars, his tales of love or
laughter, his patriotic songs the rarest of all, for the Hundred
Years War was for the English chiefly a royal and not a national
war, and this alone can explain the scant place occupied in the
songs of the time by Crécy {201} and Poictiers, never mentioned by
Chaucer, never mentioned by Langland (who disapproved of the war),
celebrated only by one solitary songster known by name and otherwise
unknown, the unimitated and ungifted Laurence Minot.[254] The noble
listened; he had few intellectual diversions; he gave little time
if any to reading, which was not for him then an unmixed pleasure,
and needed effort; there was no theatre for him to go to. At long
intervals only, when the great yearly feasts came round, the knight
might go, in company with the crowd, to see Pilate and Jesus on the
boards. There he found sometimes not only the crowd but the king too.
Richard II, for example, witnessed a religious play or mystery in the
fourteenth year of his reign, and had ten pounds distributed among
several clerks of London who had played before him at Skinnerwell
“the play of the Passion and of the creation of the world.”[255] A
few years later he saw the famous York plays, at the feast of Corpus
Christi, performed in the streets of that city.[256] In ordinary
times the knight was only too happy to receive in his home men of
vast memory, who knew more verse and more music than could be heard
in a day.

The king himself liked their coming. He had them sometimes brought
up to him in his very chamber, where he was pleased to sit and hear
their music. Edward II received four minstrels in his chamber at
Westminster and heard their songs, and when they went he ordered
twenty ells of cloth to be given them for their reward.[257] No
one thought in those days of rejoicings without minstrels; there
were four hundred and twenty-six of them {202} at the marriage of
the Princess Margaret, daughter of Edward I.[258] Edward III gave
a hundred pounds to those who were present at the marriage of his
daughter Isabella,[259] some figured also at his tournaments.[260]
When a bishop went on his pastoral rounds he was occasionally greeted
by minstrels, hired on purpose to cheer him; they were of necessity
chosen among local artists, who were apt to fiddle cheap music to
his lordship. Bishop Swinfield, in one of his rounds, gave a penny a
piece to two minstrels who had just played before him; but on another
occasion he distributed twelve pence a piece.[261]

When men of importance were travelling they sometimes had the
pleasure of hearing minstrels at the inn, and in that manner
whiled away the long empty evenings. In the curious manual already
quoted, called “La manière de langage,” composed in French by an
Englishman of the fourteenth century, the traveller of distinction
is represented listening to the musicians at the inn, and mingling
his voice at need with their music: “Then,” says our author, “come
forward into the lord’s presence the trumpeters and horn-blowers
with their frestels (pipes) and clarions, and begin to play and blow
very loud, and then the lord with his squires begin to move, to
sway, to dance, to utter and sing fine carols till midnight without
ceasing.”[262]

In great houses minstrels’ music was the usual seasoning of meals.
At table there are only two amusements, {203} says Langland, in his
“Visions”: to listen to the minstrels, and, when they are silent,
to talk religion and to scoff at its mysteries.[263] The repasts
which Sir Gawain takes at the house of his host the Green Knight
are enlivened with songs and music. On the second day the amusement
extends till after supper; they listen during the meal and after it
to many noble songs, such as Christmas carols and new songs, with all
possible mirth:

                            “Mony athel songez,
    As coundutes of kryst-masse, and carolez newe,
    With all the manerly merthe that mon may of telle.”

On the third day,

    “With merthe and mynstralsye, with metez at hor wylle,
     Thay maden as mery as any men moghten.”[264]

In Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale,” King Cambynskan gives a

                  “Feste so solempne and so riche
    That in this worlde ne was ther noon it liche.”

And this prince is shown sitting after the third course among his
nobles, listening to the music:

    “. . . So bifelle after the thridde cours,
     Whil that the kyng sit thus in his nobleye,
     Herkyng his mynstrales her thinges pleye
     Byforn him atte boord deliciously. . . .”

During all these meals the sound of the viol, the voice of the
singers, the “delicious things” of the minstrels, were interrupted,
it is true, by the crunching of the bones {204} gnawed by the dogs
under the tables, by the quarrels of the same, or by the sharp cry
of some ill-bred falcon; for many noblemen kept during dinner these
favourite birds on a perch behind them. Their masters, enjoying their
presence, were indulgent with the liberties they took.

The minstrels of Cambynskan are represented as attached to his
person; those belonging to the King of England also had permanent
functions. The sovereign was seldom without them, and even when
he went abroad was accompanied by them as well as by his hawks
and hounds, a complete orchestra. Henry V engaged eighteen, who
were to follow him to Guyenne and elsewhere.[265] Their chief is
sometimes called _king_ or _marshal_ of the minstrels.[266] On
May 2, 1387, Richard II gave a passport to John Caumz (? Camuz),
“rex ministrallorum nostrorum,” who was setting out for a journey
beyond the sea.[267] On January 19, 1464, Edward IV grants a pension
of ten marks “to our beloved Walter Haliday, marshall of our
minstrels.”[268] The Roll of Thomas Brantingham, treasurer to Edward
III, bears frequent mention of royal minstrels, to whom a fixed
salary of seven pence-halfpenny a day is paid.[269] King Richard II
had in the same manner minstrels in his pay, and enjoyed their music
{205} when travelling. When he went for the last time to Ireland he
had to wait for ten days at Milford on account of contrary winds.
That French gentleman, Créton, who was with him, and wrote afterwards
a most interesting account of what befell the unfortunate king during
the last year of his reign, states in his chronicle that the time was
merrily passed at Milford while expecting a change in the weather,
and that day and night they had music and songs of minstrels.[270]

The richer nobles imitated, of course, the king, and had their own
companies, whom they allowed to play at times in various parts
of the country (as was the case later with regular actors), and
whom they supplied with testimonial letters vouching for them and
their artistic ability.[271] The accounts of Winchester College
under Edward IV show that this college recompensed the services of
minstrels belonging to the king, the Earl of Arundel, Lord de la
Ware, the Duke of Gloucester, the [Earl] of Northumberland, and the
Bishop of Winchester; these last often recur. In the same accounts,
time of Henry IV, mention is made of the expenses occasioned by the
visit of the Countess of Westmoreland, accompanied by her suite. Her
minstrels formed part of it, and a sum of money was given them.[272]
{206}

When visiting towns and performing before the citizens, itinerant
troups made a collection among the bystanders, having, however,
themselves a fee to pay for the privilege. A curious example of this
is recorded in John of Gaunt’s register,[273] where his seneschal
of Newcastle-under-Lyme is ordered to see to it that 4d. be paid to
William de Brompton a burgess of that city and Margery his wife, “by
every minstrel coming there to make his minstralcy against the feast
of St. Giles the Abbot,” and that a payment be also made to the same
for every bear brought there to be baited, a regular inquest having
shown that such fees had been paid to that couple and to Margery’s
ancestors from time immemorial.

Like lords and princes, from the early fifteenth century at least,
cities themselves had their troups of minstrels: “London, Coventry,
Bristol, Shrewsbury, Norwich, Chester, York, Beverley, Leicester,
Lynn, Canterbury, had them, to name no others. They received fixed
fees or dues, wore the town livery and badge of a silver scutcheon,
played at all local celebrations and festivities and were commonly
known as _waits_.”[274]

Besides money and good meals, those musical wanderers often received
a variety of gifts, such as cloaks, furred robes, and the like.
Langland alludes more than once to these largesses, which proves
that they were considerable, and he regrets that all this was not
distributed to the poor who go, they too, from door to door, and are
the minstrels of God: {207}

    “Clerkus and knyghtes · welcometh kynges mynstrales,
     And for love of here lordes · lithen hem at festes:
     Much more, me thenketh · riche men auhte
     Have beggers by-fore hem · whiche beth godes mynstrales.”[275]

But his advice was not heeded, and long after his time the minstrels
continued to be admitted to the castle halls. In erecting the hall
the builder took into account the probable visits of musicians, and
often raised a gallery for them above the entrance door, opposite
to the dais, the place where the master’s table was set.[276] This
custom long survived the Middle Ages. At Hatfield a minstrels’
gallery of the seventeenth century adorns the hall of that beautiful
place, and is still, on great occasions, put to the use it was
originally intended for.

[Illustration 38. PLAYING UPON THE VIELLE.

(_From the MS. 10 E.IV; English; early Fourteenth Century._)]

The classic instrument of the minstrel was the _vielle_, a kind of
violin or fiddle with a bow, something like ours, a drawing of which,
as used in the thirteenth century, is to be found in the album of
Villard de Honnecourt.[277] It was delicate to handle, and required
much skill; in proportion therefore as the profession lowered, the
good performer on the _vielle_ became rarer; the common tambourine
or tabor, which needed but little training, replaced the _vielle_,
and true artists complained of the music and the taste of the {208}
day. It was a tabor that the glee-man of Ely wore at his neck when
he had his famous dialogue with the King of England, which proved
so bewildering for the monarch: “He came thence to London; in a
meadow he met the king and his suite; around his neck hung his tabor,
painted with gold and rich azure.”[278]

The minstrels played yet other instruments, the harp, the lute, the
guitar, the bag-pipe, the rota (a kind of small harp, the ancient
instrument of the Celts), and others.[279]

[Illustration 39. _Cittern._ _Bagpipe._ _Clarion._ _Rebec._
_Psaltery._ _Syrinx._ _Sackbut._ _Regals._ _Gittern._ _Shalm._
_Timbrel._ _Cymbals._

THE MINSTRELS’ GALLERY AT EXETER.

(_Fourteenth Century._)]

The presents, the favour of the great, rendered enviable the lot
of the minstrels; they multiplied accordingly, and the competition
was great, which made the trade less profitable. In the fifteenth
century, the king’s minstrels, clever and able men, protested to
their master against the increasing audacity of the false minstrels,
who deprived them of the greater part of their revenues. “Uncultured
peasants,” said the king, who sided with his own men, “and
workmen of different trades in our kingdom of England have passed
themselves off as minstrels; some have worn our livery, which we
did not {211} grant to them, and have even given themselves out to
be our own minstrels.” By means of these guilty practices, they
extorted much money from the king’s subjects, and although they had
no understanding nor experience of the art, they went from place to
place on festival days and gathered all the profits which should have
enriched the true artists, those who had devoted themselves entirely
to their profession, and did not exercise any low trade.

The king, to protect his men against such unlawful competition,
authorized them to reconstitute and consolidate the pre-existing
gild of minstrels; no one could henceforth exercise this profession,
whatever his talent, if he had not been admitted into the gild. A
power of inquiry was granted to the members of the society, who had
the right to have false minstrels fined, the money to be applied
to candles lit in the chapel of the Holy Virgin at St. Paul’s and
in the “royal free chapel of St. Anthony.” For a pious motive was
associated then with most actions, and minstrels, so badly treated
by the generality of religious writers, were in this case bound,
says the king, to pray in those two chapels for him while alive and
for his soul when dead, for his “dearest consort Elizabeth queen of
England,” and for the soul of his “dearest lord and father”; this
till the end of time. Women were, as well as men, admitted into the
fraternity.[280]

Such was the will of the king; in the same manner, and without any
better success, the price of bread and the wage for a day’s labour
were lowered by statute, all of which had but a limited and temporary
effect. {212}

The authorities had other reasons for watching over singers and
itinerant musicians; while they showed indulgence to the armed
retainers of the great, they feared the rounds made by those glee men
with no other arms than their vielle or tabor, but sowing sometimes
strange disquieting doctrines under colour of songs. These were more
than liberal, and went at times so far as to recommend social or
political revolt. The Commons in parliament denounced by name, at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, the Welsh minstrels as fomentors
of trouble and causes of rebellion. Their political songs encouraged
the insurgents to resistance; and parliament, who bracketed them with
ordinary vagabonds, knew well that in having them arrested on the
roads, it was not simple cut-purses whom it sent to prison. “_Item_:
That no westours and rimers, minstrels or vagabonds, be maintained
in Wales to make kymorthas or quyllages on the common people, who
by their divinations, lies, and exhortations are partly cause of
the insurrection and rebellion now in Wales. _Reply_: Le roy le
veut.”[281]

Popular movements were the occasion for satirical songs against the
great, songs composed by minstrels and soon known by heart among the
crowd. It was a popular song which furnished to John Ball the text
for his famous speech at Blackheath in the revolt of 1381:

    “When Adam delved and Eve span,
     Who was then the gentleman?”

Again, under Henry VI, when the peasants of Kent rose, and their
allies the sailors took and beheaded the Duke of Suffolk at sea,
a satirical song was composed, became popular and has come down
to us. As before killing him they had given a mock trial to the
king’s favourite, so in the song they present the comedy of his
funeral; {213} nobles and prelates are asked to come and sing their
responses, and in this pretended burial service, which is in reality
a hymn of joy and triumph, the minstrel calls down heavenly blessings
on the murderers. At the end the Commons are represented coming in
their turn to sing a sarcastic _Requiescant in pace_ over all English
traitors.[282]

The renown of the popular rebel, Robin Hood the outlaw, who lived
in the twelfth century if he ever lived at all, went on increasing.
His manly virtues were extolled; picturesque companions were, later,
invented for him: Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Little John and all the
imaginary inhabitants of Sherwood Forest; listeners were told how
this pious man, who, even in the worst danger, waited till mass
was over before thinking of his safety, boldly robbed great lords
and high prelates, but was merciful to the poor;[283] which was an
indirect notice to the brigands of the time that they should be
careful to discern in their rounds between the tares and the wheat.