THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER AND THE CASUAL PASSER-BY
I
Thus kept up, the roads stretched away from the towns and plunged
into the country, interrupted by rivulets in winter and dotted with
holes; the heavy carts slowly followed their devious course, and the
sound of creaking wood accompanied the vehicle. These carts were
numerous and in very common use. Some were square-shaped timbrels,
simple massive boxes made of planks borne on two wheels; others,
somewhat lighter, were formed of slatts latticed with a willow
trellis. To add to their solidity, the wheels were studded with
big-headed nails.[83] Both sorts were used for labour in the {91}
country; they were to be found everywhere, and as they abounded
their hire was not expensive. Twopence for carrying a ton weight a
distance of one mile was the average price; for carrying corn, it
was about a penny a mile per ton.[84] All this does not prove that
the roads were excellent, but that these carts, indispensable to
agriculture, were numerous. They did not cost much to the villagers,
who usually were the makers thereof; they were built solid and
massive because they were easier to set up thus and resisted better
the jolts of the roads; a modest remuneration would suffice for their
owners. The king always employed a number; when he moved from one
manor to another, the brilliant _cortège_ of the lords was followed
by an army of loud-creaking borrowed carts.
The official purveyors found the carts wherever they went and freely
appropriated them; they exercised their requisitions ten leagues
on either side of the road followed by the royal convoy. They even
took without scruple the carts of travellers who had come perhaps
thirty or forty leagues distance, and whose journey was thus abruptly
interrupted. There were indeed statutes against forced loans, which
specifically provided that suitable payment should be made, that is
to say, “ten pence a day for a cart with two horses, and fourteen
pence for a cart with three horses.” But often no payment came. The
“poor Commons” renewed their protests, the parliament their statutes,
and the purveyors their exactions.
Besides the carts they required corn, hay, oats, beer, meat; it was
a little army that had to be fed, and the requisitions caused the
villagers painful apprehension. People did what they could to be
exempted; the simplest way was to bribe the purveyor, but the poor
could not. Yet numberless regulations had successively promised
{92} that there should never be any further abuse. The king was
powerless; under an imperfect government, laws created to last for
ever rapidly lose their vitality, and those made at that time died in
a day.
Purveyors swarmed; impostors gave themselves out as king’s officers
who were not, and did not prove the least greedy. All bought at
inadequate prices and limited themselves to fair promises of payment.
The statute of 1330 shows how these payments never came; how also
when twenty-five quarters of corn were taken only twenty were
reckoned because they were measured by “the heaped bushel.”[85] In
the same way, for hay, straw, etc., the purveyors found means to
reckon at a halfpenny what was worth two or three pence; they ordered
that supplies of wine should be held in readiness for them, kept the
best for themselves in order to sell it again to their own profit,
and exacted payment for returning a part to the original owners,
which was a strange reversal of things. The king acknowledged all
these evils and decreed reforms accordingly. A little later he did so
again, with no more result. In 1362 he declared that henceforth the
purveyors should pay ready money at the current market price; and he
gravely added, as an important guarantee, that the purveyors should
lose their detested name and should be called buyers: “that the
heinous name of purveyor be changed, and named achatour.”[86] A word
reform, if any.[87]
[Illustration 17. A REAPER’S CART GOING UP-HILL.
(_From the Louterell Psalter; Fourteenth Century; “Vetusta
Monumenta,” vol._ vi.)]
The same abuses existed in France, and numerous ordinances may be
read in the pages of Isambert, conceived in exactly the same spirit
and corresponding to {95} the same complaints; ordinances of Philip
the Fair in 1308, of Louis X in 1342, of Philip VI, who willed that
the “preneurs pour nous” (takers for us), should not take unless
they had “new letters from us,” which shows the existence of false
purveyors as in England. John of France renews all the restrictions
of his predecessors, December 25, 1355, and so on.
The king and his lords journeyed on horseback for the most part,
but they had carriages too. Nothing gives a better idea of the
awkward, cumbersome luxury which gave its splendour to civil life
during this century, than the structure of these heavy machines. The
best had four wheels, and were drawn by three or four horses, one
behind the other, one of them mounted by a postilion provided with a
short-handled whip of many thongs; solid beams rested on the axles,
and above this framework rose an archway rounded like a tunnel;[88]
an ungainly whole. But the details were extremely elegant, the wheels
were carved and their spokes expanded near the hoop into ribs forming
pointed arches; the beams were painted and gilded, the inside was
hung with those dazzling tapestries, the glory of the age; the seats
were furnished with embroidered cushions; a lady might stretch out
there, half sitting, half lying; pillows were placed in the corners
as if to invite sleep or meditation, square windows opened on the
sides and were hung with silk curtains.[89] {96}
Thus travelled the noble lady, slim in form, tightly clad in a
dress which outlined every curve of the body, her long slender hands
caressing the favourite dog or bird. The knight, equally tight in
his _cote-hardie_, looked at her with a complacent eye, and, if he
knew good manners, opened his heart to his nonchalant companion in
long phrases imitated from romances, themselves supposed to imitate
the language of his peers. The broad forehead of the lady, who has
perhaps coquettishly plucked out some of her hair as well as her
eyebrows, a process about which satirists were bitter,[90] brightens
up occasionally, and her smile is like a ray of sunshine. Meanwhile
the axles groan, the horse-shoes crunch the ground, the machine
advances by fits and starts, descends into the hollows, bounds all
of a piece at the ditches, and comes down with a heavy thud. The
knight must speak pretty loud to make his dainty discourse, Round
Table flavoured, heard by his companion. So trivial a necessity ever
sufficed to break the charm of the most delicate thought; too many
shocks shake the flower, and when the knight presents it, it has lost
its perfumed pollen.
[Illustration 18. AN ENGLISH CARRIAGE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
(_From the Louterell Psalter._)]
The possession of such a carriage was a princely luxury. They
were bequeathed by will from one to another, and the heirloom was
valuable. On September 25, 1355, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare,
wrote her last will and endowed her eldest daughter with “her great
carriage {99} with the covertures, carpets, and cushions.” In the
twentieth year of Richard II Roger Rouland received £400 sterling
“for making the Queen’s chariot”; and John le Charer, in the sixth of
Edward III, received £1,000 for the carriage of the Lady Eleanor.[91]
These were enormous sums. In the fourteenth century the average price
of an ox was thirteen shillings, one penny farthing; of a sheep, one
shilling and five pence; of a cow, nine shillings and five pence; and
a penny for a fowl.[92] Lady Eleanor’s carriage thus represented the
value of a herd of sixteen hundred oxen.
Scarcely less ornamented were the horse-litters sometimes used by
people of rank, especially by ladies. They were of the same shape as
the carriages, being covered with a sort of rounded vault, in which
were cut more or less large openings. Two horses carried them, one
before, the other behind, each being placed between the shafts with
which the contrivance was provided at both ends.[93]
Between these luxurious carriages and the peasants’ carts there was
nothing analogous to the multitude of middle-class conveyances to
which we are now accustomed; the middle class itself being as yet
but imperfectly developed. True, there were some not so expensive as
{100} those belonging to the princesses of Edward’s Court, but not
many. Every one at this time knew how to ride on horseback, and it
was much more practical to use one’s mount than the heavy vehicles
of the period. One went much faster, and was more certain to arrive.
“The Paston Letters” show that matters had changed little in the
fifteenth century. John Paston being ill in London, his wife wrote
asking him to return as soon as he could bear the horse-ride; the
idea of returning in a carriage did not even occur to them. Yet it
was a serious case, “a grete dysese.”
[Illustration 19. A YOUNG SQUIRE (CHAUCER’S SQUIRE) TRAVELLING ON
HORSEBACK.
(_From the Ellesmere MS._)]
Margaret Paston writes on September 28, 1443, “If I might have
had my will, I should have seen you ere this time; I would ye were
at home, if it were your ease, and your sore might be as well looked
to here as it is where {103} ye be, now liefer than a gown though it
were of scarlet. I pray you if your sore be whole, and so that ye
may endure to ride, when my father comes to London, that ye will ask
leave, and come home, when the horse shall be sent home again, for I
hope ye should be kept as tenderly here as ye be at London.”[94]
[Illustration 20. TRAVELLING IN A HORSE LITTER.
(_From the MS. 118 Français, in the Bibliothèque Nationale, late
Fourteenth Century._)]
Women were accustomed to riding almost as much as men, and when they
had to travel they usually did it on horseback. A peculiarity of
their horsemanship, which we have seen of late becoming again the
fashion after a lapse of five centuries, was that they habitually
rode astride. The custom of riding sideways did not spread in England
before the latter part of the fourteenth century, and even then it
was not general. In the invaluable manuscript of the Decretals in the
British Museum,[95] ladies on horseback are constantly represented,
always riding astride. At one place[96] horses are shown being
brought for a knight and a lady; both saddles are exactly the same;
each have tall backs, so as to form a sort of comfortable chair.
The numerous ivories of the fourteenth century in the Victoria and
Albert Museum and in the British Museum often represent a lady and
her lover, both on horseback, and hawking. In almost all cases the
lady unmistakably rides astride. Both ways of riding are shown in
the fifteenth-century illuminations in the Ellesmere manuscript of
Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” The wife of Bath rides astride, with
large spurs; the prioress sits sideways.
II
There were few places in England where the sight of the royal train
was not familiar. For the motives {104} mentioned above, the Court’s
journeys were incessant. The royal itineraries that have come down
to us throw a flood of light on this continual need of movement. The
itinerary of King John shows that he rarely passed a month in the
same place, most frequently he did not even remain there a week.
Within a fortnight he is often found at five or six different towns
or castles.[97] The same with Edward I, who, as we have seen, would
change his abode three times every fortnight.[98]
And when the king moved, not only was he preceded by twenty-four
archers in his pay, receiving threepence a day,[99] but he was
accompanied by all those officers whom the author of “Fleta”
enumerates with so much complacency. The sovereign took with him
his two marshals, his outer marshal (_forinsecus_) who in time of
war disposed the armies for battle, selected the halting-places on
his journeys, and at all times arrested malefactors found in the
_virgata regia_, that is to say, within twelve leagues around his
dwelling;[100] and his inner marshal (_intrinsecus_), who guarded
the palace and castles, and cleared them as much as possible of
courtesans. He collected from every common harlot (_meretrice
communi_) four pence by way of fine the first time that he arrested
her; if she returned she was brought before the steward, who solemnly
forbid her ever to present herself at the dwelling of the king,
queen, or their children; the third time she was imprisoned and the
tresses of her hair were shorn off; {107} the fourth time one
of those hideous punishments was resorted to which the Middle Ages
in their brutality tolerated; the upper lip of these women was cut
off, “ne de cætero concupiscantur ad libidinem.”[101] There was
also the chamberlain, who took care that the interior of the house
was comfortable: “He has to arrange decently for the king’s bed,
and to see that the rooms be furnished with carpets and benches;”
the treasurer of the wardrobe, who kept the accounts; the marshal
of the hall, whose mission it was to eject unworthy intruders and
dogs,—“non enim permittat canes aulam ingredi,”—and a crowd of other
officers.[102]
[Illustration 21. A WOMAN RIDING ASTRIDE (CHAUCER’S WIFE OF BATH)
(_From the Ellesmere MS._)]
[Illustration 22. A LADY RIDING SIDEWAYS (CHAUCER’S PRIORESS).
(_From the Ellesmere MS._)]
Overtopping all the rest, there was, moreover, the king’s seneschal
or steward, first officer of his household, and his great justiciary.
Wherever the king went the apparatus of justice was transported
with him; when he was about to start the steward gave to the
sheriff notice of the place where the Court would stop, in order
that he might bring his prisoners to the town where the prince was
to be stationed.[103] All the cases amenable to the jurisdiction
of the justices in eyre were then determined by the steward, as
the king’s justiciary, who prescribed, if necessary, the judicial
duel, pronounced sentences of outlawry, and judged in criminal
and civil cases.[104] This {108} right of criminal justice even
accompanied the king abroad, but he only exercised it when the
criminal had been arrested in his own royal place of abode. One such
case happened in the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward I. This
sovereign being at Paris, Ingelram de Nogent came into his house
to steal, and was caught in the act. After some discussion it was
acknowledged that Edward, by his royal privilege, should remain judge
in the matter; he delivered the robber over to Robert Fitz-John,
his steward, who caused Ingelram to be hung from the gibbet of St.
Germain-des-Prés.[105]
For a long time the chancellor himself, and the clerks who made out
the writs, followed the king on his journeys, and Palgrave notes
that frequently a strong horse was requisitioned from the nearest
convent to carry the rolls;[106] but this custom came to a close in
the fourth year of Edward III, when the Chancery was permanently
established at Westminster.
The tribunal moving on, a crowd of suitors moved with it. No matter
though they were not inscribed on the rolls, they followed without
losing patience, as gulls follow the ship, hoping that something may
come their way. Parties with a lawsuit, petitioners of every kind,
women “of ill life” (_de fole vie_), a whole herd of individuals
with no one to vouch for them, persisted in escorting the prince
and his courtiers. They quarrelled among each other, robbed by the
way, sometimes committed murders, and, as may be imagined, did not
contribute to render the news of the king’s arrival welcome to his
subjects.
[Illustration 23. A FAMILY DINNER AMONG THE GREAT, WITH DOGS,
MUSICIANS, CARVER, CUPBEARER, MARSHAL OF THE HALL (EXPELLING A LAZAR).
(_From the MS. Addit. 28162 in the British Museum. Fourteenth
Century._)]
In the ordinances of his household, Edward II enumerates and deplores
all these abuses; he orders that masterless men who follow the Court
shall be put in irons for forty days on bread and water, and that
the women of ill life shall be likewise imprisoned and branded with
a {111} hot iron; he forbids his knights, clerks, squires, valets,
grooms, in short, all who accompany him, to bring their wives with
them, unless these have any post or employment at Court, this host
of feminine beings increasing the chances of trouble. He also limits
the number of persons who should accompany the marshal, which had,
as will happen, increased little by little beyond all bounds. His
ordinances, like so many others in the Middle Ages, were conspicuous
for their wisdom, their minuteness, and their prompt decay.
Justice did not travel only in the king’s suite. She was peripatetic
in England, visiting the counties in the company of the royal
itinerant judges and going from hundred to hundred with that
governor, military chief, police magistrate, financial agent, the
sheriff, a functionary of great local, and sometimes tyrannical,
power, appointed and dismissed at will by the king during certain
periods, elected at others.
Both kinds, at fixed times, were on the move and caused a
considerable portion of the inhabitants to leave their work, take
to the road and be on the move too, in order to come to the court
that was to be held. Both kinds put before the jurors a number of
questions which the twelve men had to answer under oath, some of
those questions being obviously quite uncomfortable to reply to.
The sheriff goes about the hundreds[107] in his shire and holds the
“view of frank pledge,” chiefly established for the maintenance
of that ancient system of enforced solidarity which obliged,
theoretically at least, every male {112} to belong to a particular
group of inhabitants of ten or more (tithing), jointly responsible
for the misdeeds of any of their number in case the culprit cannot
be found, fined, jailed or hanged, according to the occasion. By
degrees the old “articles of the view,” greatly varying from place to
place,[108] had increased in number, and the jurors had to answer as
to a variety of smaller offences often duplicating the justices’ own
interrogatories.[109]
The “turns” or “tourns” of the sheriffs might, according to the
Great Charter, only take place twice a year, not oftener, because
their coming occasioned loss of time and money to the sworn men and
others who had to leave home and attend the court, and to the king’s
subjects at whose houses these officers and their train went to
lodge.[110] In spite of institutions which, as we shall see, had made
the very men placed under the jurisdiction of the sheriffs, bailiffs,
etc. themselves the censors of these same officials, abuses were
numerous, the Commons were ever complaining, and frequent statutes,
one after the other, denounced corrupt practices and stopped them—for
a time.[111] {113}
The itinerant justices’ inquiry covered a much larger field;
their “Articles of the Eyre,” or _Capitula Itineris_, included
every imaginable misdeed from highest to lowest, from “crimen læsæ
Majestatis,” above which nothing could be imagined, to fishing by
means of “kidels” (weirs) or the using of nets to capture pigeons
without the owner’s permit.
Coming four times a year in accordance with Art. 18 of the Great
Charter, sitting in the full court of the county, growing in
importance, while that of the sheriff as a judge went diminishing
and the system of the frankpledge was falling into disuse, the
itinerant justices submitted to the jury a ceaselessly increasing
number of questions, a whole quire of them in the first half of the
fourteenth century.[112] They asked what crimes, what misdemeanours,
what infractions against the statutes had come to their knowledge.
And in these minute interrogatories at every moment came up the
names of the sheriff, the coroner,[113] the bailiff, the constable,
of all the royal functionaries, whose conduct was thus placed under
popular control. Has any of these officers, says the judge, released
some robber, or counterfeiter or a clipper of coin? Has he for
any consideration neglected the pursuit against a vagabond or an
assassin? Has he unjustly received fines? Has he been paid by men
who wished to avoid a public charge (for example, of being sworn
as member of a jury)? Has the sheriff claimed more than reasonable
hospitality from those in his jurisdiction, in tourns held too oft?
Has he come with more than five or six horses? And {114} the juror
was obliged in the same way to denounce, under his oath, the great
who had arbitrarily imprisoned travellers passing through their
lands, and all those who had neglected to assist in arresting a
thief and running with the “hue and cry;”[114] for in this society
each man is by turns peace officer, soldier, and judge, and even
the humbler ones, menaced by so many exactions, have their share
too in the administration of justice and the maintenance of public
order. Highly important were, therefore, from a social point of view,
these judicial tourns, which periodically reminded the mere man that
he was a citizen, and that the affairs of the State were also his
affairs.[115]
Juries could at times, like so many other picturesque groups of
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]
III
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._)]