The following circumstances probably gave rise to the tyranny of the
feudal power, and are the facts on which the fictions of romance are
raised. Castles were erected to repulse the vagrant attacks of the
Normans; and in France, from the year 768 to 987, these places disturbed
the public repose. The petty despots who raised these castles pillaged
whoever passed, and carried off the females who pleased them. Rapine, of
every kind were the _privileges_ of the feudal lords! Mezeray observes,
that it is from these circumstances romancers have invented their tales
of _knights errant_, _monsters_, and _giants_.
De Saint Foix, in his "Historical Essays," informs us that "women and
girls were not in greater security when they passed by abbeys. The monks
sustained an assault rather than relinquish their prey: if they saw
themselves losing ground, they brought to their walls the relics of some
saint. Then it generally happened that the assailants, seized with awful
veneration, retired, and dared not pursue their vengeance. This is the
origin of the _enchanters_, of the _enchantments_, and of the _enchanted
castles_ described in romances."
To these may be added what the author of "Northern Antiquities," Vol.
I. p. 243, writes, that as the walls of the castles ran winding round
them, they often called them by a name which signified _serpents_ or
_dragons_; and in these were commonly secured the women and young maids
of distinction, who were seldom safe at a time when so many bold
warriors were rambling up and down in search of adventures. It was this
custom which gave occasion to ancient romancers, who knew not how to
describe anything simply, to invent so many fables concerning princesses
of great beauty guarded by _dragons_.
A singular and barbarous custom prevailed during this period; it
consisted in punishments by _mutilations_. It became so general that the
abbots, instead of bestowing canonical penalties on their monks, obliged
them to cut off an ear, an arm, or a leg!
Velly, in his History of France, has described two festivals, which give
a just idea of the manners and devotion of a later period, 1230, which
like the ancient mysteries consisted of a mixture of farce and piety:
religion in fact was their amusement! The following one existed even to
the Reformation:--
In the church of Paris, and in several other cathedrals of the kingdom,
was held the _Feast of Fools_ or madmen. "The priests and clerks
assembled elected a pope, an archbishop, or a bishop, conducted them in
great pomp to the church, which they entered dancing, masked, and
dressed in the apparel of women, animals, and merry-andrews; sung
infamous songs, and converted the altar into a beaufet, where they ate
and drank during the celebration of the holy mysteries; played with
dice; burned, instead of incense, the leather of their old sandals; ran
about, and leaped from seat to seat, with all the indecent postures with
which the merry-andrews know how to amuse the populace."
The other does not yield in extravagance. "This festival was called the
_Feast of Asses_, and was celebrated at Beauvais. They chose a young
woman, the handsomest in the town; they made her ride on an ass richly
harnessed, and placed in her arms a pretty infant.[14] In this state,
followed by the bishop and clergy, she marched in procession from the
cathedral to the church of St. Stephen's; entered into the sanctuary;
placed herself near the altar, and the mass began; whatever the choir
sung was terminated by this charming burthen, _Hihan, hihan_! Their
prose, half Latin and half French, explained the fine qualities of the
animal. Every strophe finished by this delightful invitation:--
Hez, sire Ane, ça chantez,
Belle bouche rechignez,
Vous aurés du foin assez,
Et de l'avoine si plantez.
They at length exhorted him, in making a devout genuflexion, to forget
his ancient food, for the purpose of repeating without ceasing, _Amen,
Amen_. The priest, instead of _Ite missa est_, sung three times, _Hihan,
hihan, hihan_! and the people three times answered, _Hihan, hihan,
hihan_! to imitate the braying of that grave animal.[15]
What shall we think of this imbecile mixture of superstition and farce?
This _ass_ was perhaps typical of the _ass_ which Jesus rode! The
children of Israel worshipped a golden ass, and Balaam made another
speak. How fortunate then was _James Naylor_, who desirous of entering
Bristol on an _ass_, Hume informs us--it is indeed but a piece of cold
pleasantry--that all Bristol could not afford him _one_!
At the time when all these follies were practised, they would not suffer
men to play at _chess_! Velly says, "A statute of Eudes de Sully
prohibits clergymen not only from playing at chess, but even from having
a chess-board in their house." Who could believe, that while half the
ceremonies of religion consisted in the grossest buffoonery, a prince
preferred death rather than cure himself by a remedy which offended his
chastity! Louis VIII. being dangerously ill, the physicians consulted,
and agreed to place near the monarch while he slept a young and
beautiful lady, who, when he awoke, should inform him of the motive
which had conducted her to him. Louis answered, "No, my girl, I prefer
dying rather than to save my life by a _mortal sin_!" And, in fact, the
good king died! He would not be prescribed for out of the whole
Pharmacopoeia of Love!
An account of our taste in female beauty is given, by Mr. Ellis, who
observes, in his notes to Way's Fabliaux, "In the times of chivalry the
minstrels dwelt with great complacency on the fair hair and delicate
complexion of their damsels. This taste was continued for a long time,
and to render the hair light was a great object of education. Even when
wig first came into fashion they were all flaxen. Such was the colour of
the Gauls and of their German conquerors. It required some centuries to
reconcile their eyes to the swarthy beauties of their Spanish and their
Italian neighbours."[16]
The following is an amusing anecdote of the difficulty in which an
honest Vicar of Bray found himself in those contentious times.
When the court of Rome, under the pontificates of Gregory IX. and
Innocent IV., set no bounds to their ambitious projects, they were
opposed by the Emperor Frederick; who was of course anathematised. A
curate of Paris, a humorous fellow, got up in his pulpit with the bull
of Innocent in his hand. "You know, my brethren (said he), that I am
ordered to proclaim an excommunication against Frederick. I am ignorant
of the motive. All that I know is, that there exist, between this Prince
and the Roman Pontiff great differences, and an irreconcileable hatred.
God only knows which of the two is wrong. Therefore with all my power I
excommunicate him who injures the other; and I absolve him who suffers,
to the great scandal of all Christianity."
The following anecdotes relate to a period which is sufficiently remote
to excite curiosity; yet not so distant as to weaken the interest we
feel in those minutiæ of the times.
The present one may serve as a curious specimen of the despotism and
simplicity of an age not literary, in discovering the author of a libel.
It took place in the reign of Henry VIII. A great jealousy subsisted
between the Londoners and those foreigners who traded here. The
foreigners probably (observes Mr. Lodge, in his Illustrations of English
History) worked cheaper and were more industrious.
There was a libel affixed on St. Paul's door, which reflected on Henry
VIII. and these foreigners, who were accused of buying up the wool with
the king's money, to the undoing of Englishmen. This tended to inflame
the minds of the people. The method adopted to discover the writer of
the libel must excite a smile in the present day, while it shows the
state in which knowledge must have been in this country. The plan
adopted was this: In every ward one of the King's council, with an
alderman of the same, was commanded to see every man write that could,
and further took every man's book and sealed them, and brought them to
Guildhall to confront them with the original. So that if of this number
many wrote alike, the judges must have been much puzzled to fix on the
criminal.
Our hours of refection are singularly changed in little more than two
centuries. In the reign of Francis I. (observes the author of
Récréations Historiques) they were accustomed to say,--
Lever à cinq, dîner à neuf,
Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf,
Fait vivre d'ans nonante et neuf.
Historians observe of Louis XII. that one of the causes which
contributed to hasten his death was the entire change of his regimen.
The good king, by the persuasion of his wife, says the history of
Bayard, changed his manner of living: when he was accustomed to dine at
eight o'clock, he agreed to dine at twelve; and when he was used to
retire at six o'clock in the evening, he frequently sat up as late as
midnight.
Houssaie gives the following authentic notice drawn from the registers
of the court, which presents a curious account of domestic life in the
fifteenth century. Of the dauphin Louis, son of Charles VI., who died at
the age of twenty, we are told, "that he knew the Latin and French
languages; that he had many musicians in his chapel; passed the night in
vigils; dined at three in the afternoon, supped at midnight, went to bed
at the break of day, and thus was _ascertené_ (that is threatened) with
a short life." Froissart mentions waiting upon the Duke of Lancaster at
five o'clock in the afternoon, when he _had supped_.
The custom of dining at nine in the morning relaxed greatly under
Francis I., successor of Louis XII. However, persons of quality dined
then the latest at ten; and supper was at five or six in the evening. We
may observe this in the preface to the Heptameron of the Queen of
Navarre, where this princess, describing the mode of life which the
lords and ladies whom she assembles at the castle of Madame Oysille,
should follow, to be agreeably occupied and to banish languor, thus
expresses herself: "As soon as the morning rose, they went to the
chamber of Madame Oysille, whom they found already at her prayers; and
when they had heard during a good hour her lecture, and then the mass,
they went to dine at ten o'clock; and afterwards each privately retired
to his room, but did not fail at noon to meet in the meadow." Speaking
of the end of the first day (which was in September) the same lady
Oysille says, "Say where is the sun? and hear the bell of the abbey,
which has for some time called us to vespers; in saying this they all
rose and went to the religionists _who had waited for them above an
hour_. Vespers heard, they went to supper, and after having played a
thousand sports in the meadow they retired to bed." All this exactly
corresponds with the lines above quoted. Charles V. of France, however,
who lived near two centuries before Francis, dined at ten, supped at
seven, and all the court was in bed by nine o'clock. They sounded the
curfew, which bell warned them to cover their fire, at six in the
winter, and between eight and nine in the summer. Under the reign of
Henry IV. the hour of dinner at court was eleven, or at noon the latest;
a custom which prevailed even in the early part of the reign of Louis
XIV. In the provinces distant from Paris, it is very common to dine at
nine; they make a second repast about two o'clock, sup at five; and
their last meal is made just before they retire to bed. The labourers
and peasants in France have preserved this custom, and make three meals;
one at nine, another at three, and the last at the setting of the sun.
The Marquis of Mirabeau, in "L'Ami des Hommes," Vol. I. p. 261, gives a
striking representation of the singular industry of the French citizens
of that age. He had learnt from several ancient citizens of Paris, that
if in their youth a workman did not work two hours by candle-light,
either in the morning or evening, he even adds in the longest days, he
would have been noticed as an idler, and would not have found persons
to employ him. On the 12th of May, 1588, when Henry III. ordered his
troops to occupy various posts at Paris, Davila writes that the
inhabitants, warned by the noise of the drums, began to shut their doors
and shops, which, according to the customs of that town to work before
daybreak, were already opened. This must have been, taking it at the
latest, about four in the morning. "In 1750," adds the ingenious writer,
"I walked on that day through Paris at full six in the morning; I passed
through the most busy and populous part of the city, and I only saw open
some stalls of the vendors of brandy!"
To the article, "Anecdotes of Fashions," (see Vol. I., p. 216) we may
add, that in England a taste for splendid dress existed in the reign of
Henry VII.; as is observable by the following description of Nicholas
Lord Vaux. "In the 17th of that reign, at the marriage of Prince Arthur,
the brave young Vaux appeared in a gown of purple velvet, adorned with
pieces of gold so thick, and massive, that, exclusive of the silk and
furs, it was valued at a thousand pounds. About his neck he wore a
collar of SS, weighing eight hundred pounds in nobles. In those days it
not only required great bodily strength to support the weight of their
cumbersome armour; their very luxury of apparel for the drawing-room
would oppress a system of modern muscles."
In the following reign, according to the monarch's and Wolsey's
magnificent taste, their dress was, perhaps, more generally sumptuous.
We then find the following rich ornaments in vogue. Shirts and shifts
were embroidered with gold, and bordered with lace. Strutt notices also
perfumed gloves lined with white velvet, and splendidly worked with
embroidery and gold buttons. Not only gloves, but various other parts of
their habits, were perfumed; shoes were made of Spanish perfumed skins.
Carriages were not then used;[17] so that lords would carry princesses
on a pillion behind them, and in wet weather the ladies covered their
heads with hoods of oil-cloth: a custom that has been generally
continued to the middle of the seventeenth century. Coaches were
introduced into England by Fitzalan Earl of Arundel, in 1580, and at
first were only drawn by a pair of horses. The favourite Buckingham,
about 1619, began to have them drawn by six horses; and Wilson, in his
life of James I., tells us this "was wondered at as a novelty, and
imputed to him as a mastering pride." The same _arbiter elegantiarum_
introduced sedan-chairs. In France, Catherine of Medicis was the first
who used a coach, which had leathern doors and curtains, instead of
glass windows. If the carriage of Henry IV. had had glass windows, this
circumstance might have saved his life. Carriages were so rare in the
reign of this monarch, that in a letter to his minister Sully, he
notices that having taken medicine that day, though he intended to have
called on him, he was prevented because the queen had gone out with the
carriage. Even as late as in the reign of Louis XIV. the courtiers rode
on horseback to their dinner parties, and wore their light boots and
spurs. Count Hamilton describes his boots of white Spanish leather, with
gold spurs.
Saint Foix observes, that in 1658 there were only 310 coaches in Paris,
and in 1758 there were more than 14,000.
Strutt has judiciously observed, that though "luxury and grandeur were
so much affected, and appearances of state and splendour carried to such
lengths, we may conclude that their household furniture and domestic
necessaries were also carefully attended to; on passing through their
houses, we may expect to be surprised at the neatness, elegance, and
superb appearance of each room, and the suitableness of every ornament;
but herein we may be deceived. The taste of elegance amongst our
ancestors was very different from the present, and however we may find
them extravagant in their apparel, excessive in their banquets, and
expensive in their trains of attendants; yet, follow them home, and
within their houses you shall find their furniture is plain and homely;
no great choice, but what was useful, rather than any for ornament or
show."
Erasmus, as quoted by Jortin, confirms this account, and makes it worse;
he gives a curious account of English dirtiness; he ascribes the plague,
from which England was hardly ever free, and the sweating-sickness,
partly to the incommodious form, and bad exposition of the houses, to
the filthiness of the streets, and to the sluttishness within doors.
"The floors," says he, "are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes; under
which lies, unmolested, an ancient collection of beer, grease,
fragments, bones, spittle, excrement of dogs and cats, and everything
that is nasty."[18] And NOW, certainly we are the cleanest nation in
Europe, and the word COMFORTABLE expresses so peculiar an idea, that it
has been adopted by foreigners to describe a sensation experienced
nowhere but in England.
I shall give a sketch of the domestic life of a nobleman in the reign of
Charles the First, from the "Life of the Duke of Newcastle," written by
his Duchess, whom I have already noticed. It might have been impertinent
at the time of its publication; it will now please those who are curious
about English manners.
"_Of his Habit_.
"He accoutres his person according to the fashion, if it be one that is
not troublesome and uneasy for men of heroic exercises and actions. He
is neat and cleanly; which makes him to be somewhat long in dressing,
though not so long as many effeminate persons are. He shifts ordinarily
once a day, and every time when he uses exercise, or his temper is more
hot than ordinary.
"_Of his Diet_.
"In his diet he is so sparing and temperate, that he never eats nor
drinks beyond his set proportion, so as to satisfy only his natural
appetite; he makes but one meal a day, at which he drinks two good
glasses of small beer, one about the beginning, the other at the end
thereof, and a little glass of sack in the middle of his dinner; which
glass of sack he also uses in the morning for his breakfast, with a
morsel of bread. His supper consists of an egg and a draught of small
beer. And by this temperance he finds himself very healthful, and may
yet live many years, he being now of the age of seventy-three.
"_His Recreation and Exercise_.
"His prime pastime and recreation hath always been the exercise of
mannage and weapons, which heroic arts he used to practise every day;
but I observing that when he had overheated himself he would be apt to
take cold, prevailed so far, that at last he left the frequent use of
the mannage, using nevertheless still the exercise of weapons; and
though he doth not ride himself so frequently as he hath done, yet he
taketh delight in seeing his horses of mannage rid by his escuyers, whom
he instructs in that art for his own pleasure. But in the art of weapons
(in which he has a method beyond all that ever was famous in it, found
out by his own ingenuity and practice) he never taught any body but the
now Duke of Buckingham, whose guardian he hath been, and his own two
sons. The rest of his time he spends in music, poetry, architecture, and
the like."
The value of money, and the increase of our opulence, might form, says
Johnson, a curious subject of research. In the reign of Edward the
Sixth, Latimer mentions it as a proof of his father's prosperity, that
though but a yeoman, he gave his daughters five pounds each for their
portion.[19] At the latter end of Elizabeth's reign, seven hundred
pounds were such a temptation to courtship, as made all other motives
suspected. Congreve makes twelve thousand pounds more than a
counterbalance to the affection of Belinda. No poet will now fly his
favourite character at less than fifty thousand. Clarissa Harlowe had
but a moderate fortune.
In Sir John Vanbrugh's Confederacy, a woman of fashion is presented with
a bill of millinery _as long as herself_.--Yet it only amounts to a poor
fifty pounds! at present this sounds oddly on the stage. I have heard of
a lady of quality and fashion who had a bill of her fancy dressmaker,
for the expenditure of one year, to the tune of, or rather, which closed
in the deep diapason of, six thousand pounds!