NORMAN PERIOD.
We have now arrived at a period which introduces a new element in
the formation of our national social life. Information respecting
the habits of the Normans is derivable not only from the chroniclers
and historians of the period, but from illuminated manuscripts,
Anglo-Norman fabliaux, the Bayeux tapestry, wood and other carvings in
sacred edifices, and even from chessmen.[49]
The Norman historians insist that their countrymen introduced greater
sobriety, and are ever contrasting their own morality with that of the
Saxons to the disparagement of the latter. William of Malmesbury speaks
of the Saxon nobility as given up to luxury and wantonness: ‘Drinking
in parties was a universal practice, in which occupation they passed
entire nights as well as days. The vices attendant on drunkenness,
which enervate the human mind, followed; hence it arose that when
they engaged William, more with rashness and precipitate fury than
military skill, they doomed themselves and their country to slavery,
by one, and that an easy, victory.’[50] Some of our later writers,
making little allowance for the national bias of Norman historians,
have even intensified this contrast. Thus, a modern gleaner of English
literature ventures to assert that the brutal intemperance to which
the Saxon was so prone, the Norman was free from. But scenes and
incidents which are ready to hand from Norman history must lead us to
modify such an opinion, or at any rate compel the acknowledgment that
the Normans very soon accommodated themselves to the luxurious habits
of the English.[51] Among the many conspiracies formed in the reign
of the first William, one at least was organised and developed amidst
the surroundings of excess, which cost one of its noble projectors
his life. The king had refused to give his consent to the alliance by
marriage of the noble houses of Norfolk and Hereford. Opportunity was
taken of the king’s absence from the country to cement the union. A
splendid banquet marked the event. Among the many distinguished guests
was Earl Waltheof. Norfolk and Hereford, fearing the anger of the king
at their disobedience, formed a scheme to depose him, and communicated
the same to their guests as soon as they saw them heated with wine.
Waltheof, who had well drunk, readily entered into the conspiracy; but
on the morrow, when the fumes of the drink were dispersed, he repented
his rash precipitation. Betaking himself to Lanfranc he confessed
all--he urged in extenuation that his intemperance on the occasion
had prevented due reflection, and craved his mediation. All was of no
avail; he was apprehended and publicly beheaded. Thus fell another of
the long roll of victims to drink.
A scene in lower life is depicted in the life of Hereward. The hero
in disguise is taken into King William’s kitchen to entertain the
cooks. After dinner the wine and ale were freely distributed, and the
result was a violent quarrel between the cooks and Hereward; the former
used the tridents and forks for weapons, while he took the spit from
the fire as a still more formidable weapon of defence.[52] On another
occasion, when Hereward secretly returned to his paternal home, which
had been taken possession of by a Norman intruder, he was aroused in
the middle of the night by sounds of boisterous revelry and merriment.
Stealthily approaching, he saw the new lord of Brunne with his knights
overcome by deep potations, and enjoying the coarse songs and brutal
jests of a wandering minstrel.
An anecdote producing the same kind of impression is told of Wulstan,
Bishop of Worcester. In the time of the Conqueror he was obliged to
retain a large retinue of men-at-arms through fear of the Danes.
He would not dine in private, but sat in his public hall with his
boisterous soldiers; and while they were drinking for hours together at
dinner, he would keep them company to restrain them by his presence,
pledging them, when it came to his turn, in a tiny cup which he
pretended to taste, and in the midst of the din ruminating to himself
on the Psalms.[53]
The illuminated manuscripts of the period abound with illustrations of
banquets, cupbearers, servants in cellars, &c., that suggest that the
life then was not more than either meat or drink. Rightly did John of
Salisbury remark that William would have deserved more renown had he
rather promulgated laws of temperance to a nation which he would not
have subdued by arms had it not already been conquered by excess of
luxury.[54]
As late as the year 1070 we are reminded of the intemperate propensity
of the Danes. During that year Sweyn visited this country. According to
the Saxon Chronicle they rifled the minster of Peterborough, put out to
sea with the spoil, and were arrested by a storm which scattered their
ships in all directions. Some of the spoil, it appears, was brought
back for safety, and placed in the identical church. Then afterwards,
continues the Chronicle, ‘through their carelessness and through their
drunkenness, on a certain night the church and all that was within it
was consumed with fire. Thus was the minster of Peterborough burnt and
harried.’
We have already enumerated the drinks adopted by the Saxons and the
Danes. They were principally ale, wine, mead, cider, morat, and
pigment. To these their Norman successors added clarré, garhiofilac,
and hippocras. Wine was perhaps more used than formerly, being chiefly
imported from France; but ale and mead were the common drinks. The
innumerable entries in Domesday Book show how large a proportion of the
productions of the country at this time consisted in honey, which was
used chiefly for the manufacture of mead.
New _plantations of vines_ seem to have been made about the time of
the Conquest, _e.g._ in the village of Westminster, at Chenetone in
Middlesex, Ware in Hertfordshire, Hanten in Worcestershire. They are
measured by arpents (arpenni). Holeburne had its vineyard, which came
into the possession of the Bishops of Ely, and subsequently gave its
name to a street which still exists. In Domesday Book (1086), among
the lands of Suein in Essex, is an entry respecting an enclosure of
six arpents, which in good seasons (_si bene procedit_) yielded twenty
modii of wine.
Vineyards were attached to the greater abbeys, especially in the south.
This is easily accountable: (1) The situation was in well sheltered
valleys, (2) Many of the monks were foreigners, and would know the
best modes of culture. Canterbury Church and St. Augustine’s Abbey had
vineyards; so had Colton, St. Martin’s, Chertham, Brook, Hollingburn,
and Halling, also Santlac near Battle, and Windsor.
William of Malmesbury, speaking of the fertility of the Vale of
Gloucester, and the spontaneous growth of apple-trees, adds that
_vineyards_ were more abundant there (_vinearum frequentia densior_)
than in any other district of England, the crops more abundant, and the
flavour superior. Moreover, the wines were very little behind those of
France. Mr. Barrington is clearly in error (_Archæol._ iii. p. 77) in
imagining that Malmesbury intends orchards and cider, not vineyards and
vines. Surely he would have used the terms then in use for these--viz.
_pomeria_ and _poma_. Indeed, in another passage, Malmesbury, speaking
of Thorney in the Isle of Ely, says it was studded on the one side with
apple-trees, on the other covered with vines, which either trail or are
supported on poles. Knight remarks that this question of the ancient
growth of the vine in England was the subject of a regular antiquarian
passage-at-arms in 1771, when the Hon. Daines Barrington entered the
lists to overthrow all the chroniclers and antiquaries from Malmesbury
to Pegge, and to prove that English grapes were currants and that the
vineyards of Domesday Book were nothing but gardens. The Antiquarian
Society inscribed the paper pellets shot on the occasion as _The
Vineyard Controversy_.
Speaking of the Windsor vines, William Lambarde says that tithe of them
was yielded in great plenty, ‘accompts have been made of the charges of
planting the vines that grew in the little park, as also of making the
wines, whereof some parts were spent in the household and some sold for
the king’s profit.’
The list of religious houses to which vineyards, and in many cases
orchards likewise, were attached might be indefinitely extended. There
is a record of a vineyard at St. Edmundsbury. The Saxon Chronicle
states that Martin, Abbot of Peterborough, planted another. William
Thorn, the monastic chronicler, writes that in his abbey of Nordhome
the vineyard was profitable and famous. But notwithstanding all this,
vine cultivation in this country could never commercially compete
with France; and wine would have been to the mass of the people an
unattainable luxury, had not the ports of Southampton and Sandwich been
open to foreign exports.
A glance at the occupations of the servants will afford some idea
of the monastic life of the period; _e.g._ in the time of William
Rufus, the servants at Evesham numbered five in the church, two in
the infirmary, two in the cellar, five in the kitchen, seven in
the bakehouse, four brewers, four menders, two in the bath, two
shoe-makers, two in the orchard, three gardeners, one at the cloister
gate, two at the great gate, five at the vineyard, four who served the
monks when they went out, four fishermen, four in the abbot’s chamber,
three in the hall.[55]
The name of the second William is one of the blots on our regal
history. He possessed, as is believed, his father’s vices without
his virtues. Rapin observes that William I. balanced his faults by a
religious outside, a great chastity, and a commendable temperance, but
that his son was neither religious, nor chaste, nor temperate; whilst
Malmesbury tells that he met with his tragical end in the New Forest
after he had soothed his cares with a more than usual quantity of wine.
In his reign excess and sensuality prevailed amongst the nobility as
everywhere, unchecked and well-nigh unrebuked; the voice even of the
Primate being stifled for the moment in the general profligacy, for,
failing of the co-operation of his suffragans, he quitted the kingdom,
powerless to cope with the depravity of the times.
An earnest desire on the part of Henry to curry favour and popularity
with the people was the cause of the recall of the archbishop from his
retirement at Lyons. His efforts after a reformation of manners were at
once renewed. Among the canons of Anselm, decreed at Westminster 1102,
appears the following:--‘That priests go not to drinking bouts, nor
drink to pegs (_ad pinnas_).’[56] It will be remembered that Archbishop
Dunstan had ordained that pins or nails should be fastened into the
drinking-cups at stated distances, to prevent persons drinking beyond
these marks. This well intended provision had been terribly perverted,
and the pegs intended for the restriction of potations became the
provocatives of challenges to drink, and thus the instruments of
intemperance. This abuse, at first an occasional sport, developed into
a custom, and was called _pin-drinking_ or _pin-nicking_, and to it we
owe the common slang, ‘_He is in a merry pin_.’ The cups thus marked
with pins, usually called _peg-tankards_, held two quarts. Inside was
a row of eight pegs, one above the other from top to bottom; thus
was there half a pint between each peg. Each person in turn drank a
peg-measure; thus, while the capabilities of the persons drinking were
variable, the draughts were a fixed quantity, so this inevitably gave
rise to intemperance, more especially as the tankards were renewed _ad
libitum_.
The asceticism of Anselm met with the usual opposition. One of Queen
Matilda’s letters to the Primate contained a strong effort to dissuade
him from such a habit. She urged the comfortable advice to Timothy,
besides quoting Greek and Roman philosophers. Nor would his views be
palatable to many of the clergy, who in this respect fell under the
impeachment of the chroniclers, whilst even the high places of the
Church were open to animadversion. The story is told of Ralph Flambard,
Bishop of Durham, that when lodged in the White Tower he freed himself
by stratagem. He provided himself in prison with stores of wine. Among
the casks sent in was one which a confederate had filled, not with
wine, but with a coil of rope. The gaolers he plied with drink, till
overcome by it they left him free to act. Thus did the Bishop make his
escape.
From incidental notices we gather that strong drink was used in
profusion. Thus in the king’s _progresses_, when too often wholesale
spoliation marked the action of his retinue, we read of his followers
burning provisions, washing their horses’ feet with the ale or mead,
pouring the drink on the ground, or otherwise wasting it.
The tragedy of the reign was the loss of the ‘Blanche Nef.’ King Henry
and his heir, Prince William, embarked at Harfleur for England on
the same night in separate vessels. The prince, to make the passage
agreeable, took with him a number of the young nobility. All was
mirth and joviality. The prince ordered three casks of wine to be
given to the ship’s crew. The mariners were in consequence many of
them intoxicated when they put out to sea at nightfall. It was the
great desire of the prince to overtake his father, who had sailed
considerably earlier, and this emulation was one of the causes of the
disaster. The vessel, which was sailing dangerously fast, struck upon
a rock and began to sink. The prince would, however, have been saved
in a boat that was lowered, but, putting back in response to the cries
of his half-sister, the boat sunk beneath the load of the numbers
who tried to avail themselves of its succour. Of some three hundred
passengers aboard the White Ship, only one escaped to tell the mournful
tale. The king, it is said, was never after seen to laugh, though he
survived the dismal wreck about fifteen years. Personally, he was a
man of strictly regular habits. Never was he known to be guilty of any
excess in eating or drinking, except that which cost him his life. A
surfeit of lampreys is said to have hastened his end; but for this,
all history endorses the testimony of the chronicler that he was plain
in his diet, rather satisfying the calls of hunger than surfeiting
himself by variety of delicacies. He never drank but to allay thirst,
execrating the least departure from temperance both in himself and in
those about him.
Allusions abound in this Norman period to convivial meetings of the
middle and lower classes in inns or private houses. The miracles of
St. Cuthbert, as related by Reginald of Durham, give an insight to
their private life in the earlier part of the twelfth century. Thus, a
parishioner of Kellow, near Durham, is described as passing the evening
drinking with the parish priest. Returning home late he was pursued by
dogs, and reaching his own house in terror, shut the door upon them.
He then mounted to a garret window to look at his persecutors, when he
was seized with madness, and his family being roused carried him into
the court and bound him to the seats (_sedilia_). On another occasion,
a youth and his monastic teacher are represented as going to a tavern,
and passing the whole of the night in drinking, till one of them
becomes intoxicated, and cannot be prevailed on to return home.
Hospitality in these troublous times was freely exercised. The
monasteries had their open guest-houses; the burgesses in the
towns were in the habit of receiving strangers as private lodgers,
in addition to the accommodation afforded in the regular taverns
(_hospitia_).
Sir Walter Scott would be ready to defend the clergy, as we found him
shielding the Norman nobles from any such imputation. The dialogue
in _Ivanhoe_ will be remembered. ‘An’ please, your reverence,’ said
Dennet, ‘a drunken priest came to visit the sacristan at St. Edmund’s.’
‘It does not please my reverence,’ answered the Churchman, ‘that there
should be such an animal as a drunken priest, or, if there were, that
a layman should so speak of him. Be mannerly, my friend, and conclude
the holy man only wrapped in meditation, which makes the head dizzy and
foot unsteady, as if the stomach were filled with new wine. I have
felt it myself.’
For reasons to be mentioned immediately, home vineyards were beginning
to be less cultivated, though they were not by any means discontinued.
William of Malmesbury tells of a vineyard attached to his monastery,
which was first planted in the eleventh century by a Greek monk who
settled there. The Exchequer Rolls contain a discharge of the sheriffs
of Northampton and Leicester, in the fifth year of Stephen, for certain
expenses incurred on account of the royal vineyard at Rockingham.
The acquisition of the Duchy of Guienne (1152) naturally led to an
interchange of commodities between England and France. Wine traffic
with Bordeaux was at once established; and from this time our statutes
are laden with ordinances concerning the importation of French wine,
most of which, in conformity to the mistaken notions of political
economy in those times, fix the _maximum_ of price for which they were
to be sold.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] Mr. Samuelson (_History of Drink_) observes that on the chessmen
of the twelfth century the queen usually carries a drinking-horn.
[50] _Hist. Reg._, § 245.
[51] Sir Walter Scott defends the character of the Norman nobles from
the charge of intemperance. See _Ivanhoe_, p. 100.
[52] Wright, _Homes of other Days_, p. 100.
[53] Bridgett, _Disc. of Drink_, p. 102.
[54] _De Nugis Curialium_, lib. viii.
[55] Cutt’s _Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages_.
[56] Canon ix. Cp. Johnson’s _English Canons_, pt. ii. p. 26. Wilkins,
_Concil._ I. 382. Concil. Londinens. A.D. 1102, ap. Spelm. II. 24.