LITERATURE AND SCIENCE IN LONDON
§ I. THE LIBRARIES OF LONDON
The Libraries in London were few in number, and, according to modern
ideas, scanty as to the works they contained. Every monastery had its
library: St. Paul’s Cathedral had its library; there were books of
devotion belonging to every church, and, indeed, to every house; but of
private libraries there were very few. The famous Duke Humphrey had a
great collection of books, which he gave to the University of Oxford in
two donations, one of two hundred and sixty-four volumes, the other of
two hundred and sixty-five. The Duke of Bedford at the same time bought
the collection of Charles the Fifth of France, and brought the books
over to England. Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, had another great
library. The finest libraries in London were those of the Franciscans,
whose Library was built for them by Whittington, and the Dominicans,
who in their best days were remarkable for their pursuit of learning.
[Illustration: JOHN LYDGATE PRESENTING HIS “LIFE OF ST. EDMUND” TO
HENRY VI.
From MS. in British Museum. Harl. 2278.]
The catalogue of the books presented by Guy Beauchamp to the monks of
Bordesley shows what was the lighter reading of the brethren. It is as
follows:—
“A tus iceux, qe ceste lettre verront, ou orrount, Guy de Beauchamp,
Comte de Warr. Saluz, en Deu. Saluz nous aveir baylè en la garde le
Abbé e le Covent de Bordesleye, lessé à demorer a touz jours touz les
Romaunces de sonz nomes: ceo est assaveyr, un volum, qe est appelé
Tresor. Un volum, en le quel est le premer livre de Lancelot, e un
volum del Romaunce de Aygnes. Un Sauter de Romaunce. Un volum des
Evangelies, e de Vie des Seine. Un volum, qe p’le des quatre principals
Gestes de Charles, e de dooun, e de Meyace e de Girard de Vienne et
de Emery de Nerbonne. Un volum del Romaunce Emmonnd de Ageland, e deu
Roy Charles dooun de Nauntoyle. E le Romaunce de Gwyoun de Nauntoyl.
E un volum del Romaunce Titus et Vespasien. E un volum del Romaunce
Josep ab Arimathie e deu Seint Grael. E un volum, qe p’le coment Adam
fust eniesté hors de paradys, e le Genesie. E un volum en le quel
sount contenuz touns des Romaunces, ceo est assaveir, Vitas patrum ay
commencement: e pus un Conte de Auteypt; e la Vision Seint Poll: et
pus les Vies des xii Seins. E le Romaunce de Willame de Loungespe. E
Autorites des Seins humes. E le Mirour de Alme. Un volum ne le quel
sount contenuz la Vie Seint Pére e seint Pol, e des autres liv. E un
volum qe est appelé l’Apocalips. E un livere de Phisik, e de Surgie.
Un volum del Romaunce de Gwy, e de la Reyhne tut enterement. Un volum
del Romaunce de Troies. Un volum del Romaunce de Willame de Orenges e
de Teband de Arabie. Un volum del Romaunce de Amase e de Idoine. Un
volum del Romaunce Girard de Viene. Un volum del Romaunce deu Brut, e
del Roy Costentine. Un volum de le enseignment Aristotle enveiez au Roy
Alisaundre. Un volum en le quel sount contenuz les Eufaunces Nostre
Seygneur, coment il fust mené en Egipt. E la vie Seint Edwd. E la
Visioun Seint Pol. La Vengeaunce n’re Seygneur par Vespasien a Titus,
e la Vie Seint Nicolas, qe fust nez en patras. E la Vie Seint Eustace.
E la Vie Seint Cudlac. E la Passioun n’re Seygneur. E la Meditacioun
Seint Bernard de n’re Dame Seint Marie, e del Passioun sour deuz fiz
Jesu Creist n’re Seignt. E la Vie Seint Eufrasie. E la Vie Seint
Radegounde. E la Vie Seint Juliane. Un Volum, en lequel est aprise
de Enfants et lumiere à Lays. Un volum del Romaunce d’a Alisaundre,
ove peintures. Un petit rouge livere, en le quel sount contenuz mons
diverses choses. Un volum del Romaunce des Mareschans, e de Ferebras e
de Alisaundre. Les queus livres nous grauntous par nos hryrs e pur nos
assignes qil demorront en la dit Abbeye, etc.”
The more serious part of these libraries may be gathered from the
Glastonbury List, which contains the following classical authors:—
Aristotle
Livy
Orosius
Sallust
Donatus
Sedulus
Virgil, Æneid
Virgil’s Georgics
Virgil’s Bucolics
Æsop
Tully
Bœthius
Plato
Isagoge of Porphyry
Prudentius
Fortuanus
Persius
Isidore
Smaragdus
Marcianus
Horace
Priscian
Prosper
Claudian
Juvenal
Cornutus
While the list of Forty Books, collected by Abbot John de Taunton and
given to the Library in 1271, is instructive:—
St. Augustine upon Genesis.
Ecclesiastical Dogmas.
St. Bernard’s Enchiridion.
St. Bernard’s Flowers.
Books of Wisdom, with a Gloss.
Postils upon Jeremiah and the Lesser Prophets.
Concordances to the Bible.
Postils of Albertus upon Matthew, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah
and Others, in One Volume.
Postils upon Mark.
Postils upon John, with a Discourse on the Epistles throughout
the Year.
Brother Thomas’ Old and New Gloss.
Moralities on the Gospels and Epistles.
St. Augustine on the Trinity.
Epistles of Paul glossed.
St. Augustine’s City of God.
Kylwardesby upon the Letter of the Sentences.
Questions concerning Crimes.
Perfection of the Spiritual Life.
Brother Thomas’ Sum of Divinity, in Four Volumes.
Decrees and Decretals.
A Book of Perspectives.
Distinctions of Maurice.
Books of Natural History, in Two Volumes.
Books on the Properties of Things.
The disposition and arrangement of a mediæval library has been treated
by Mr. Willis Clarke in his Rede Lecture for 1894. The books were at
first kept in the cloister, but since our climate would very speedily
destroy books lying in the open air, there were aumbries, or presses,
constructed for them. In course of time the cloister was flagged, and
the readers were provided with “carrels,” _i.e._ small wooden pews, or
cupboards, closed except in the front, which was open to the light.
Each carrel contained a desk on which to lay the books. The next step
was the construction of the library. That built by Whittington for
the Franciscans was a noble hall, 129 feet long and 31 feet broad.
It contained twenty-eight desks and twenty-eight double settles of
wainscot. Certain books remained always on the desks for reference,
and others were brought out from time to time, and both sorts were
chained. In some cases an upright bookcase had an open shelf in front
on which books could be read, but they were all chained in their
places. This caused the books to be ranged with their backs towards
the wall. In some cases when books were embossed on the side, they
were not placed side by side but flat on the shelf. The chaining of
books in all monastic libraries was the constant rule. Since every
monastery had its scriptorium, it is reasonable to believe that copies
of books were continually being renewed, when the scribes were not
occupied in renewing the books wanted for service in the chapel. In
every monastery, also, there were illuminators and painters. Lastly,
to show that the much-abused friars made good use of the libraries
they possessed, there is a List of Scholars given in Steven’s
_Monasticon_,[11] from which it appears that eighty names of learned
scholars and writers may be found among the Dominicans, as many as
one hundred and twenty-two among the Franciscans, and one hundred and
thirty-seven among the Carmelites.
[11] Steven’s edition of Dugdale’s _Monasticon_.—ED.
A good deal of information remains concerning the library of St.
Paul’s. It contained, among other treasures, eleven MSS. of the
Gospels, beautifully written, and bound with silver covers richly
enamelled; there were also five Psalters, eight Antiphonals, twenty
books of Homilies, seventeen Missals, Manuals, Graduals, Treposia,
Organ books, Epistle books, Gospel books, Collectaria and Capitularia,
Pontificals, Benedictionals. There were Bibles and portions of
Scripture with glosses. And there was the Chronicle of Ralph de Diceto.
There was another library in the precinct of St. Paul’s, and that was
founded by Walter Sherington; in it were books on medicine, chronicles,
grammars, the Fathers, classical authors, and books on law.
§ II. LONDON AND LITERATURE
The connection of Mediæval London with literature and learning must be
considered first in the light of Ecclesiastical History and next from
the secular point of view.
How far were monastic institutions in general, and those of London
in particular, homes of learning and literature? The question can be
answered by inference from what we know of other monasteries, not
in London, and by the examples of scholars and writers who sprang
from those Houses. In the first place, by far the greater number of
scholars and writers, for eight hundred years, worked in the Religious
Houses. If we run through a list, however imperfect, we shall see that,
especially in the writing of histories, monks and later friars are
conspicuous. Such a list is instructive and suggestive.
[Illustration: PAGE FROM PLESHY BIBLE]
For instance, Bede was a monk of Durham; Egbert, Archbishop of York,
was a monk of Hexham; Alcuin, of York; John Scotus or Erigena was a
monk; Eadmer, who wrote the life of Anselm, was a monk of Canterbury;
the Saxon Chronicle was carried on by monks; Astern, another monk of
Canterbury, wrote the lives of St. Dunstan and St. Alphege; Lucian,
monk of Eberburgh, wrote an account of Chester; Colman, monk of
Worcester, wrote the life of Bishop Wulstan of that see; Turgot, monk
of Jarrow, wrote the history of the Monastery of Durham; the famous
Ordericus Vitalis was a monk of St. Evroult, Normandy; the great
historian, William of Malmesbury, belonged to the monastery of that
town; Geoffrey of Monmouth was a monk in the monastery of the town he
is called after; Henry of Huntingdon, another well-known historian,
was a monk at Romsey; Ailred of Rievaulx was a Cistercian; Hilarius,
who wrote the miracle plays, was an English monk; Walter of Evesham
was a monk of that place; Layamon was a priest; Roger Bacon was a Grey
Friar—as was also Duns Scotus; Roger of Wendover was a monk of St.
Albans; of the same monastery was Matthew Paris; Bartholomew Cotton was
a monk of Norwich; Matthew of Westminster was a Benedictine, probably
of St. Peter’s; Ralph, or Ranulf, Higden was a monk of St. Werburgh’s;
Robert of Brunen was a canon of the Gilbertine Order; Nigel Wireker,
author of “Brunellus,” was precentor in the Benedictine Monastery of
Canterbury; John of Salisbury, author of _De Nugis Curialum_ was a
monk in La Celle, in the French diocese of Troyes; Thomas of Ely, who
wrote a Chronicle, was a monk of Ely; Jocelin of Brakelonde was a monk
of Bury St. Edmunds; William Newburgh was an Augustinian monk; Roger
of Hoveden was at one time under vows, since he was employed to go
from one Abbey to another, as a kind of visitor or receiver; Benedict,
author of a Chronicle, was Abbot of Peterborough; Ralph de Diceto
was Dean of St. Paul’s; Alexander Neckham was Abbot of Cirencester;
Gervase, the herdman, was a monk of Canterbury; Robert Holcot,
theologian, was a Dominican. This long list, which might be enlarged,
is sufficient to prove that the pursuit of learning was encouraged, and
held in honour in the monasteries. A few of the names quoted above are
those of scholars, most of them are the names of chroniclers, and many
of contemporary chroniclers. Now the practice followed in one House
was observed in every other House obedient to the same Rule. If at St.
Albans we find one monk after another writing contemporary history,
it is reasonable to suppose that at Westminster and at Holy Trinity
Priory, and at Bermondsey, other monks were employing their time in
similar pursuits. We do not, in other words, hear of many learned men
coming from the London Houses, but since it is certain that at other
Houses of the same Rule there were scholars and writers; since it is
certain, for instance, that the Dominicans produced fiery champions for
the true faith; since, further, it is certain that some of the greatest
men of learning were Franciscans, it seems childish to doubt that the
same studies, the same incentives to study, were found in the London
Houses. Further, out of the great mass of learned doctors, monks, and
friars who preached, wrote, and disputed at Oxford, Cambridge, and
elsewhere, since only one or two names have survived, there should
be little cause for surprise if, for any given House, not one single
man should survive of all those who adorned the Rule and advanced its
name for learning during the long centuries of its existence. We must
remember that although the monks and friars were savagely attacked
for pride, luxury, and incontinence, their enemies seldom ventured to
attack them for lack of interest in learning or zeal for study. If it
is true that the learned and studious life had become discouraged, or
had been allowed to die out, which I cannot believe, there would have
been this additional crime alleged against them.
Stanley mildly laments that he can find no mention of any great scholar
among the Benedictines of St. Peter’s. The same lament may, with equal
justice, be made over the Houses of Bermondsey, the Holy Trinity, the
Cistercians of Eastminster, and any other London House. Nay, a similar
lament may be made over many a college of Oxford and Cambridge in the
present century, where, with every possible encouragement to learning,
so few great scholars can be found belonging to any single College. I
imagine that these desks, these closed cabins, in the north cloister,
of which we read, where the monks sat and studied, were never empty,
generation after generation; there must always have been some to whom
the quiet of the cloister was a special gift of Heaven enabling them
to study; and there must always have been also the majority, who had
no gift for scholarship. To them was assigned the practical management
of the House, or some other work, to save them from vacuity. In truth,
for such men as these, the atmosphere of the House was distinctly
prejudicial to study, cut up as the day was by service, by forms, and
rules.
And lastly, as regards the monastic learning, we must not forget the
masses of papers and parchments destroyed in the Dissolution of the
Houses and the Dispersion of the Libraries; we do not know, we can have
no conception, what treasures were destroyed and scattered. Bale says,
“To destroye all without consideracyon is, and will be unto Englande
for ever, a most horrible infamy among the grave seniors of other
nacyons. I know a merchante that boughte the contentes of two noble
lybraryes for XL shyllyngs pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. Thys
stuffe hath he occupy in the stede of paper by the space of more than
these X yeares.”
For eight hundred years the monks of St. Peter’s, Westminster,
had worked in their cloister. What had they done? Where were the
Chronicles, the scholastic disputations, the treatises they had
compiled? They were never taken out of the library; they never saw
the light at all; they were burned when the House perished. In common
candour, let us acknowledge that in all these generations of monks some
must have done good work.
As regards the literature of the people, we are not without specimens
of their songs, though these do not date, for the greater part,
before the fifteenth century. Yet London was always a City for music,
song, and dancing. Probably the songs that have been preserved for
us had older forms. There are the religious songs, as that in the
Annunciation, beginning:
“Tyrle, Tyrle, so merylye the shepperdes began to blow.” There are the
moral songs lamenting the vices of the age:—
“Every man in hys degre
Cane say yf he avysed be
Ther was more trust in sum care
Than is now in many on.
Thys warld ys now al changed new
So many men bene found ontrew
That in trewth lyven but few
Feythfull to tryst upon.”
And the drinking song:—
“Brynge us in good ale, and brynge us in good ale;
For our Blessed Lady’s sake brynge us in good ale;
Brynge us in no brown brede, for that is made of branne,
Nor brynge us in no whyt brede, for therein is no gaine,
But brynge us in good ale.
Brynge us in no befe, for ther is many bonys,
But brynge us in good ale, for that goeth downe at onys,
And brynge us in good ale.”
And there were the songs sung in dancing:—
“Skip it, and trip it, nimbly, nimbly,
Tickle it, tickle it, lustily:
Strike up the tabour for the wenches’ favour
Tickle it, tickle it, lustily.
Let us be seen upon Hygate Greene,
To dance for the honour of Holloway:
Since we are come hither let us spare for no leather
To dance for the honour of Holloway.”
And there is the old song of the folk—the oldest that has come down
to us. The pipe plays the air, the tabor beats an accompaniment, the
singers march down the street wearing garlands and carrying green
branches, to welcome the coming of spring:—
“Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
And springth the wde nu (_wood anew_).
Sing cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Llouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu, wel singeth thu cuccu
Ne swik thu naver nu;
Sing cuccu, cuccu nu, sing cuccu,
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu.”
(Harley MS. British Museum, 978.)
There is another side to the connection of London with literature. It
was in London that modern English poetry began. Geoffrey Chaucer was
born in London, the descendant of a long line of Londoners; Gower
lived much in London; Occleve was a Londoner; Lydgate knew London well,
and lived much in the City. If we were permitted to choose poets to
grace the mediæval life of London, we could not select four about whom
the City could more fitly pride herself than this illustrious company.
[Illustration: LYDGATE AT WORK
From MS. in British Museum. Harl. 2278.]
Just as colleges increased and multiplied at Oxford and Cambridge for
students in Divinity and Arts, so they increased in London, that great
University for Lawyers. There were Inns of Court and Chancery Inns,
and an Inn of Serjeants. Here lived the students of law, “of their own
private maintenance as being altogether fed either by their places or
their practice, or otherwise by their proper revenue, or exhibition
of parents or friend: for that the younger sort were either gentlemen
or the sons of gentlemen or of other more wealthy persons. There were
six of such colleges. Four of them were Inns of Court, viz. the Inner
and Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn. Nine were houses of
Chancery, viz. Clifford’s Inn, Dane’s Inn, Furnival’s Inn, Barnard’s
Inn, Staple Inn, Clement’s Inn, New Inn, Chester’s Inn, and one other
whose site is unknown. There was a Serjeants’ Inn in Fleet Street,
another in Chancery Lane, and a third called Scroop’s Inn over against
St. Andrew’s Church, Holborn. The Serjeants’ Inns were only for Judges
and Serjeants. The difference between the Houses of Court and the
Houses of Chancery was that the former were set apart for students
and graduates of Law only, while the latter received the officers,
attorneys, solicitors, and clerks who followed the Court of King’s
Bench or Common Pleas. Some young students, however, entered a House of
Chancery first, and then, after having performed the exercises of that
House, removed to an Inn of Court, where they studied for seven years:
frequented “readings, meetings, boltings, and other learned exercises,”
including small pleadings before a mock Court, and then, but only by
the general consent of the Benchers, who have always been extremely
jealous of admission, were called to the upper Bar, with permission
to practise in the Courts, and in their chambers. After fourteen or
fifteen years at the least, the barrister might hope to be elected a
Bencher. From the Benchers were chosen Readers for each House; from the
Benchers also were elected the Serjeants, and from the Serjeants the
Judges.
This observance dates from the time when ecclesiastics ceased to
be judges, and when the legal machinery of the country was framed
and ordered. The origin of the Serjeants is the small body of
servants—“serjeants”—of the King, who were learned at law and were kept
in the pay of the King to plead his cases. Some of these serjeants
were Italian canonists. There was a great body of ecclesiastical
lawyers. The temporal lawyer grew gradually. He was an attorney, that
is, he represented some one, or he was a pleader who was allowed to
speak on behalf of a client. It was in the reign of Henry III. that
ecclesiastics ceased to be judges. One supposes that the ecclesiastical
lawyer, the canonist, continued to exist and to find plenty of
employment. (See Appendix VIII.)
§ III. THE PHYSICIAN
The advance of medicine, as of all the sciences, was slow indeed during
the centuries under consideration. In earlier times monks were the
only physicians: their modes of cure were principally prayer, holy
water, relics, and pilgrimages; but they knew the use of herbs. It was
forbidden to ecclesiastics to use fire or knife, in other words, to
practise surgery, but they treated wounds. They set broken limbs, and
on occasion they let blood. They set up everywhere houses or hospitals
for lepers, and in all the greater monastic foundations there were
rooms for cupping and blood-letting. At the medical school of Monte
Cassino, the relics of St. Matthew were relied upon far more than the
teaching of the professors. Sisterhoods or associations of matrons
and elderly women studied and practised obstetrics. Abelard exhorted
nuns to learn and practise surgery. Certain Orders undertook different
branches of medical work. The Johannists and the brotherhood of St.
Mary gave their attention to epidemics and plagues; the brethren of
St. Lazarus treated leprosy, smallpox, and fever; the brothers of St.
Anthony and the Holy Ghost studied “St. Anthony’s Fire”—dysentery;
the Knights Templars studied ophthalmia; the Knights Hospitallers
maintained companies of women as nurses.
[Illustration: THE DOCTOR OF PHYSIC
From the Ellesmere MS.]
[Illustration: AN OPERATION
From a MS. in Trinity College, Cambridge.]
[Illustration: SURGEON OPERATING ON THE SKULL
From a MS. in Trinity College, Cambridge.]
It was because the physician was at first an ecclesiastic that surgery
was separated from medicine. When the physician was a professional
person living by the profession, he pretended to hold surgery in
contempt, and refused to operate at all. Lanfranc, however, insisted
that medicine and surgery ought to go together. When Henry V. invaded
France in 1415, he took with him thirteen surgeons, viz. Thomas
Morstede and twelve assistants. On his second expedition he asked
the City of London to send him volunteers as assistants. None were
forthcoming, and Thomas Morstede was empowered to impress as many
assistants as he might require. By this time the blood-letting and the
surgery were entrusted to the barbers, who were forbidden to advertise
this part of their work by placing a cup full of blood in the window.
For the people for whom a physician was not attainable, there were
bone-setters and herbalists, the latter of whom, if not the former, are
still with us.
[Illustration: AN ALCHEMIST’S LABORATORY
From MS. Add. in British Museum. 10,302.]
If the physician of the ninth century believed in relics and holy
water, his successor of the fourteenth century placed his reliance
mainly on astrology. He was a learned man; he had read all the authors
enumerated by Chaucer; he had also read all that was necessary to
make an astrologer. This branch of medical science was of the highest
importance. “A Physician”—see Skeat’s _Notes to the Canterbury Tales_,
...—“must take heed and advyse hym of a certain thing, that faileth
not, nor deceyveth, the which thing the Astronomer of Egypt taught,
that by conjunction of the Moone with sterres fortunate cummeth
dreadful sickness to good end: and with contrary Planets falleth the
contrary, that is, to evill ende.” The physician therefore treated his
patient with reference to fortunate hours. This was “magik naturel”
as opposed to magic forbidden. Also when he framed images of wax for
his patient, making them at a fortunate moment. He also understood
what were considered the four elementary qualities—hot, moist, cold,
dry,—the mixture of these qualities determined the nature of a man. The
physician, it will be observed, did not keep or sell his own drugs;
for that purpose he went to the apothecaries, who were distinguished
from the physicians chiefly by their ignorance as to the astrological
part of medicine they knew—that is, the power and use of the drugs they
imported, collected, and sold, but they did not know the proper moment
of administering them. The physician observed diet very carefully;
he was dressed in a manner which proclaimed the high opinion he
entertained of his importance, and he believed in _aurum potabile_,
gold that could be administered as a medicine.
In another place (Knight’s Tale), Chaucer describes in general terms
the medical treatment of the time:—
“Al were they sore y-hurt, and namely oon,
That with a spere was thirled his brest boon.
To othere woundes, and to broken armes,
Some hadden salves and some hadden charmes
Fermacies of herbes, and eek save
They dronken.”
Save (salvia) is sage, still taken by country people in the form of
tea. It was greatly esteemed formerly. Hence the proverb of the school
of Salerno, “Cui moriatur homo dum salvia crescit in horto?” And still
in another place (The Nonne Preestes Tale), Chaucer enumerates some
herbs in common use:—
“A day or two ye shul have digestyves
Of wormes, er ye take your laxatyves,
Of lauriol, centaure, and fumetere,
Or elles of ellebor, that groweth there,
Of catapuce, or of gaytres beryis,
Of erbe yve, growing in our yerd, that mery is:
Pekke hem up right as they growe, and ete hem in.”
On this passage Skeat explains that the “gaytres beryes” were probably
the berries of the Greek thorn, _Rhamnus catharticus_, which in
Swedish is the goat berries tree = (A.S.) treow and goat = (A.S.)
gate. The _catapuce_ is the caper spurge. Skeat also quotes a passage
from Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ on the merits of these herbs.
“Wormwood, centaury, pennyroyal, are likewise magnified and much
prescribed, especially in hypochondrian melancholy, and because the
spleen and blood are often misaffected in melancholy. I may not omit
endive, succory, dandelion, and fumitory, which cleanse the blood.”
It was the property of every wort or herb to heal a man or to harm him.
I have added a few to the list given above. Every herbalist or wise
woman knew them and their properties.
Betony dispels nightmare, cures sudden giddiness, and prevents
drunkenness
Cress cures baldness and scurf
Wood lettuce cures dimness of vision
White poppy ” sleeplessness
Smear wort ” fevers
Asterion ” falling sickness
Everfern } ” headache and liver
Churmel }
Water lily ” dysentery
Leek wort ” bite of adder
Savine ” swollen feet
Wood dock ” stiff joints
Five leaf }
Madder } ” sickness and sores
Way-bread ” worms
In the country house the ladies were all herbalists: in the towns, the
herbalist kept a shop for the sale of her roots and flowers and leaves,
and was the General Practitioner for the craftsmen and their households.
[Illustration: ‘Recuyell of the Hist. of Troye,’ _c._ 1471
‘Dictes and Sayings,’ p. 1477
CAXTON’S PRINTING]