LONDON CUSTOM-HOUSE
"Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,
And dream of London, small, and white, and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green;
Think, that below bridge the green lapping waves
Smite some few keels that bear Levantine staves,
Cut from the yew wood on the burnt-up hill,
And pointed jars that Greek hands toiled to fill,
And treasured scanty spice from some far sea,
Florence gold cloth, and Ypres napery,
And cloth of Bruges, and hogsheads of Guienne;
While nigh the thronged wharf Geoffrey Chaucer's pen
Moves over bills of lading----"
W. MORRIS
There are two episodes of Chaucer's life which belong even more properly
to Chaucer's England; in which it may not only be said that our interest
is concentrated less on the man than on his surroundings, but even that we
can scarcely get a glimpse of the man except through his surroundings.
These two episodes are his life in London, and his Canterbury Pilgrimage;
and with these we may most fitly begin our survey of the world in which he
lived.
The most tranquilly prosperous period of the poet's life was that space of
twelve years, from 1374 to 1386, during which he lived over the tower of
Aldgate and worked at the Customs House, with occasional interruptions of
foreign travel on the King's business. The Tower of London, according to
popular belief, had its foundations cemented with blood; and this was only
too true of Chaucer's Aldgate. It was a massive structure, double-gated
and double-portcullised, and built in part with the stones of Jews' houses
plundered and torn down by the Barons who took London in 1215. But, in
spite of similar incidents here and there, England was generally so free
from civil war that the townsfolk were very commonly tempted to avoid
unnecessary outlay upon fortifications. The traveller in Germany or
Switzerland is often surprised to see even villages strongly walled
against robber barons; while we may find great and wealthy English towns
like Lynn and Cambridge which had little other defence than a ditch and
palisade.[79] Even in fortified cities like London, the tendency was to
neglect the walls--at one period we find men even pulling them gradually
to pieces[80]--and to let the towers or gates for private lodgings. As
early as the last year of Edward I., we find Cripplegate thus let out; and
such notices are frequent in the "Memorials of London Life," collected by
Mr. Riley from the City archives.[81]
Here Chaucer had only half a mile to go to his daily work, by streets
which we may follow still. If he took the stricter view, which held that
gentlefolk ought to begin their day with a Mass, and to hear it fasting,
then he had at least St. Michael's, Aldgate, and All Hallows Stonechurch
on his direct way, and two others within a few yards of his road. If,
however, he was of those who preferred to begin the day with a sop of wine
or "a draught of moist and corny ale," then the noted hostelry of the
Saracen's Head probably stood even then, and had stood since the time of
the Crusades, within a few yards of Aldgate Tower. Close by the fork of
Fenchurch and Leadenhall Streets he would pass a "fair and large-built
house," the town inn of the Prior of Hornchurch. Then, in Fenchurch
Street, the mansion and garden of the Earls of Northumberland, and again,
at the corner of Mart Lane, the manor and garden of Blanch Apleton.
Turning down Mart Lane (now corrupted into _Mark_), the poet would pass
the great chain, ready to be stretched at any moment across the narrow
street, which marked the limits of Aldgate and Tower Street wards. He
would cross Tower Street a few yards to the eastward of "the quadrant
called Galley Row, because galley men dwelt there." These galley men were
"divers strangers, born in Genoa and those parts," whose settlement in
London had probably been the object of Chaucer's first Italian mission,
and who presently prospered sufficiently to fill not only this quadrant,
but also part of Minchin Lane, and to possess a quay of their own. But,
like their cousins the Lombards, these Genoese soon showed themselves
smarter business men even than their hosts. They introduced unauthorized
halfpence of Genoa, called "Galley halfpence"; and these, with similar
"suskings" from France, and "dodkins" from the Low Countries, survived the
strict penalties threatened by two Acts of Parliament, and lasted on at
least till Elizabeth's reign. "In my youth," writes Stow, "I have seen
them pass current, but with some difficulty, for the English halfpence
were then, though not so broad, somewhat thicker and stronger."[82] Stow
found a building on the quay which he identified with their hall. "It
seemeth that the builders of the hall of this house were shipwrights, and
not carpenters;" for it was clinker-built like a boat, "and seemeth as it
were a galley, the keel turned upwards." But this building was probably
later than Chaucer's time. The galley quay almost touched that of the
Custom-House; and here our poet had abundant opportunities of keeping up
his Italian while sampling the "wines of Crete and other sweet wines in
one of the cellars, and red and white wines in the other cellar."[83] His
poems show an appreciation of good vintages, which was no doubt partly
hereditary and partly acquired on the London quays, where he could talk
with these Mediterranean mariners and drink the juice of their native
grapes, remembering all the while how he had once watched them ripening on
those southern slopes--
How richly, down the rocky dell,
The torrent vineyard streaming fell
To meet the sun and sunny waters
That only heaved with a summer swell![84]
When Chaucer began his work in 1374 there was no regular building for the
Customs; the King hired a house for the purpose at L3 a year, and a single
boatman watched in the port to prevent smuggling. In 1383, however, one
John Churchman built a house, which Richard II. undertook to hire for the
rest of the builder's life; this became the first Custom-House, and lasted
until Elizabeth's reign. The lease gives its modest proportions exactly: a
ground floor, in which the King kept his weigh-beams for wool and other
merchandise; a "solar," or upper chamber, for a counting-house; and above
this yet another solar, 38 by 21-1/2 feet, partitioned into "two chambers
and one _garret_, as men call it." For this new house the King paid the
somewhat higher rent of L4. Chaucer was bound by the terms of his
appointment to do the work personally, without substitute, and to write
his "rolls touching the said office with his own hand"; but it is probable
that he accepted these terms with the usual medieval licence. He went
abroad at least five times on the King's service during his term of
office; and the two original rolls which survive are apparently not
written by his hand. His own words in the "House of Fame" show that he
took his book-keeping work at the office seriously; but it is not likely
that the press of business was such as to keep him always at the
counting-house; and he may well have helped his boatman to patrol the
port, which extended down-river to Gravesend and Tilbury. It is at least
certain that, in 1376, he caught John Kent smuggling a cargo of wool away
from London, and so earned prize-money to the value of L1000 in modern
currency. It is certain also that his daily work for twelve years must
have kept him in close daily contact with sea-faring folk, who, from
Homer's days at least, have always provided the richest food for poetry
and romance. The commonest seaman had stirring tales to tell in those
days, when every sailor was a potential pirate, and foreign crews dealt
with each other by methods still more summary than plank-walking.[85]
Moreover, there was even more truth than now in the proverb that "far
fowls have fair feathers"; and the Genoese on Galley Quay had sailed many
seas unknown even to the tempest-tossed shipman of Dartmouth, whose
southern limit was Cape Finisterre. They had passed the Pillars of
Hercules, and seen the apes on the Rock of Gibraltar, and shuddered from
afar at the Great Whirlpool of the Bay of Biscay, which sucked in its
floods thrice daily, and thrice belched them forth again; and into which
about this time "four vessels of the town of Lynn, steering too
incautiously, suddenly fell, and were swallowed up under their comrades'
eyes."[86]
Moreover, the very streets and markets of London then presented a pageant
unquestionably far more inspiring to a man of Chaucer's temperament than
anything that can be seen there to-day. It is easy to exaggerate the
contrast between modern and medieval London, if only by leaving out of
account those subtle attractions which kept even William Morris from
tearing himself away from the much-abused town. It is also undeniable
that, however small and white, Chaucer's London was not clean, even to the
outward eye; and that the exclusive passion for Gothic buildings is to
some extent a mere modern fashion, as it was the fashion two hundred years
ago to consider them a positive eyesore. To some great poet of the future,
modern London may well supply a grander canvas still; but to a writer like
Chaucer, content to avoid psychological problems and take men and things
as they appear on the surface, there was every possible inspiration in
this busy capital of some 40,000 souls, where everybody could see
everything that went on, and it was almost possible to know all one's
fellow-citizens by sight. Some streets, no doubt, were as crowded as any
oriental bazaar; but most of the buying and selling went on in open
market, with lavish expenditure of words and gestures; while the shops
were open booths in which the passer-by could see master and men at their
work, and stop to chat with them on his way. In the absence of catalogues
and advertisements, every man spread out his gayest wares in the sun, and
commended them to the public with every resource of mother-wit or
professional rhetoric. Cornhill and Cheapside were like the Mercato
Vecchio at Florence or St. Mark's Square at Venice. Extremes meet in
modern London, and there is theme enough for poetry in the deeper
contrasts that underlie our uniformity of architecture and dress. But in
Chaucer's London the crowd was almost as motley to man's eye as to God's--
Barons and burgesses and bondmen also ...
Baxters and brewsters and butchers many,
Woolwebsters and weavers of linen,
Tailors and tinkers and tollers in markets,
Masons and miners and many other crafts ...
Of all-kind living labourers leapt forth some,
As dykers and delvers that do their deeds ill,
And drive forth the long day with _Dieu vous sauve, Dame Emme_
Cooks and their knaves cried "Hot pies, hot!
Good griskin and geese! go dine, go!"
Taverners unto them told the same [tale]
"White wine of Alsace and red wine of Gascoyne,
Of the Rhine and of Rochelle, the roast to defye!" [digest.[87]
The very sticks and stones had an individuality no less marked. The
churches, parish and monastic, stood out as conspicuously as they still
stand in Norwich, and were often used for secular purposes, despite the
prohibitions of synods and councils. For even London had in Chaucer's time
scarcely any secular public buildings, while at Norwich, one of the four
greatest towns in the kingdom, public meetings were sometimes held in the
Tolhouse, sometimes in the Chapel of St. Mary's College, in default of a
regular Guildhall. The city houses of noblemen and great churchmen were
numerous and often splendid, and Besant rightly emphasizes this feudal
aspect of the city; but he seems in his enumeration of the lords'
retainers to allow too little for medieval licence in dealing with
figures; and certainly he has exaggerated their architectural magnificence
beyond all reason.[88] But at least the ordinary citizens' and artisans'
dwellings presented the most picturesque variety. Here and there a stone
house, rare enough to earn special mention in official documents; but most
of the dwellings were of timber and plaster, in front and behind, with
only side-gables of masonry for some sort of security against the
spreading of fires.[89] The ground floor was generally open to the
street, and formed the shop; then, some eight or ten feet above the
pavement, came the "solar" or "soller" on its projecting brackets, and
sometimes (as in the Custom House) a third storey also. Outside stairs
seem to have been common, and sometimes penthouses on pillars or cellar
steps further broke the monotony of the street, though frequent enactments
strove to regulate these in the public interest. Of comfort or privacy in
the modern sense these houses had little to offer. The living rooms were
frequently limited to hall and bower (_i.e._ bedroom); only the better
sort had two chambers; glass was rare; in Paris, which was at least as
well-built as London, a well-to-do citizen might well have windows of
oiled linen for his bedroom, and even in 1575 a good-sized house at
Sheffield contained only sixteen feet of glass altogether.[90] Meanwhile
the wooden shutters which did duty for casements were naturally full of
chinks; and the inhabitants were exposed during dark nights not only to
the nuisance and danger of "common listeners at the eaves," against whom
medieval town legislation is deservedly severe, but also to the far
greater chances of burglary afforded by the frailty of their habitations.
It is not infrequently recorded in medieval inquests that the housebreaker
found his line of least resistance not through a window or a door, but
through the wall itself.[91] Moreover, in those unlighted streets, much
that was most picturesque by day was most dangerous at night, from the
projecting staircases and penthouses down to doorways unlawfully opened
after curfew, wherein "aspyers" might lurk, "waiting men for to beaten or
to slayen." These and many similar considerations will serve to explain
why night-walking was treated in medieval towns as an offence
presumptively no less criminal than, in our days, the illegal possession
of dynamite. The 15th-century statutes of Oxford condemn the nocturnal
wanderer to a fine double that which he would have incurred by shooting at
a proctor and his attendants with intent to injure.[92]
[Illustration: THE TOWER, WITH LONDON BRIDGE IN THE BACKGROUND
(FROM MS. ROY. 16 F. ii, f. 73: A LATE 15TH CENTURY MS. OF THE POEMS OF
CHARLES D'ORLEANS)]
But to return to the inside of the houses. The contract for a well-to-do
citizen's dwelling of 1308 has been preserved, by a fortunate chance, in
one of the city Letter-books. "Simon de Canterbury, carpenter, came before
the Mayor and Aldermen ... and acknowledged that he would make at his own
proper charges, down to the locks, for William de Hanigtone, skinner,
before the Feast of Easter then next ensuing, a hall and a room with a
chimney, and one larder between the said hall and room; and one solar over
the room and larder; also, one oriel at the end of the hall, beyond the
high bench, and one step with a porch from the ground to the door of the
hall aforesaid, outside of that hall; and two enclosures as cellars,
opposite to each other, beneath the hall; and one enclosure for a sewer,
with two pipes leading to the said sewer; and one stable, [_blank_] in
length, between the said hall and the old kitchen, and twelve feet in
width, with a solar above such stable, and a garret above the solar
aforesaid; and at one end of such solar, there is to be a kitchen with a
chimney; and there is to be an oriel between the said hall and the old
chamber, eight feet in width.... And the said William de Hanigtone
acknowledged that he was bound to pay to Simon before-mentioned, for the
work aforesaid, the sum of L9 5_s._ 4_d._ sterling, half a hundred of
Eastern martenskins, fur for a woman's head, value five shillings, and fur
for a robe of him, the said Simon, etc."[93] Read side by side with this
the list of another fairly well-to-do citizen's furniture in 1337. Hugh le
Benere, a Vintner who owned several tenements, was accused of having
murdered Alice his wife.[94] He refused to plead, was condemned to prison
for life, and his goods were inventoried. Omitting the stock-in-trade of
six casks of wine (valued at six marks), the wearing apparel, and the
helmet and quilted doublet in which Hugh had to turn out for the general
muster, the whole furniture was as follows: "One mattress, value 4_s._; 6
blankets and one serge, 13_s._ 6_d._; one green carpet, 2_s._; one torn
coverlet, with shields of sendal, 4_s._; ... 7 linen sheets, 5_s._; one
table-cloth, 2_s._; 3 table-cloths, 18_d._; ... one canvas, 8_d._; 3
feather beds, 8_s._; 5 cushions, 6_d._; ... 3 brass pots, 12_s._; one
brass pot, 6_s._; 2 pairs of brass pots, 2_s._ 6_d._; one brass pot,
broken, 2_s._ 6_d._; one candlestick of latten, and one plate, with one
small brass plate, 2_s._; 2 pieces of lead, 6_d._; one grate, 3_d._; 2
andirons, 18_d._; 2 basins, with one washing vessel, 5_s._; one iron
grating, 12_d._; one tripod, 2_d._; ... one iron spit, 3_d._; one
frying-pan, 1_d._; ... one funnel, 1_d._; one small canvas bag, 1_d._; ...
one old linen sheet, 1_d._; 2 pillows, 3_d._; ... one counter, 4_s._; 2
coffers, 8_d._; 2 curtains, 8_d._; 2 remnants of cloth, 1_d._; 6 chests,
10_s._ 10_d._; one folding table, 12_d._; 2 chairs, 8_d._; one portable
cupboard, 6_d._; 2 tubs, 2_s._; also firewood, sold for 3_s._; one mazer
cup, 6_s._; ... one cup called "note" (_i.e._ cocoanut) with a foot and
cover of silver, value 30_s._; 6 silver spoons, 6_s._"[95]
This implies no very high standard of domestic comfort. The hall, it must
be remembered, had no chimney in the modern sense, but a hole in the roof
to which the smoke went up from an open hearth in the centre of the room,
more or less assisted in most cases by a funnel-shaped erection of lath
and plaster.[96] It is not generally realized what draughts our ancestors
were obliged to accept as unavoidable, even when they sat partially
screened by their high-backed seats, as in old inn kitchens. A man needed
his warmest furs still more for sitting indoors than for walking abroad;
and to Montaigne, even in 1580, one of the most remarkable things in
Switzerland was the draughtless comfort of the stove-warmed rooms. "One
neither burns one's face nor one's boots, and one escapes the smoke of
French houses. Moreover, whereas we [in France] take our warm and furred
_robes de chambre_ when we enter the house, they on the contrary dress in
their doublets, with their heads uncovered to the very hair, and put on
their warm clothes to walk in the open air."[97] The important part played
by furs of all kinds, and the matter-of-course mention of dirt and vermin,
are among the first things that strike us in medieval literature.
But the worst discomfort of the house, to the modern mind, was the want of
privacy. There was generally but one bedroom; for most of the household
the house meant simply the hall; and some of those with whom the rest were
brought into such close contact might indeed be "gey ill to live wi'."[98]
We have seen that, even as a King's squire, Chaucer had not a bed to
himself; and sometimes one bed had to accommodate three occupants. This
was so ordered, for instance, by the 15th-century statutes of the
choir-school at Wells, which provided minutely for the packing: "two
smaller boys with their heads to the head of the bed, and an older one
with his head to the foot of the bed and his feet between the others'
heads." A distinguished theologian of the same century, narrating a
ghost-story of his own, begins quite naturally: "When I was a youth, and
lay in a square chamber, which had only a single door well shut from
within, together with three more companions in the same bed...." One of
these, we presently find, "was of greater age, and a man of some
experience."[99] The upper classes of Chaucer's later days had indeed
begun to introduce revolutionary changes into the old-fashioned common
life of the hall; a generation of unparalleled success in war and commerce
was already making possible, and therefore inevitable, a new cleavage
between class and class. The author of the B. text of "Piers Plowman,"
writing about 1377, complains of these new and unsociable ways (x., 94).
"Ailing is the Hall each day in the week,
Where the lord nor the lady liketh not to sit.
Now hath each rich man a rule to eaten by himself
In a privy parlour, for poor men's sake,
Or in a chamber with a chimney, and leave the chief Hall,
That was made for meals, and men to eaten in."
Few men, however, could afford even these rudiments of privacy; people
like Chaucer, of fair income and good social position, still found in
their homes many of the discomforts of shipboard; and their daily
intercourse with their fellow-men bred the same blunt familiarity, even
beneath the most ceremonious outward fashions. It was not only starveling
dependents like Lippo Lippi, whose daily life compelled them to study
night and day the faces and outward ways of their fellow-men.
But let us get back again into the street, where all the work and play of
London was as visible to the passer-by as that of any colony of working
ants under the glass cases in a modern exhibition. Often, of course, there
were set pageants for edification or distraction--Miracle Plays and solemn
church processions twice or thrice in the year,--the Mayor's annual ride
to the palace of Westminster and back,--the King's return with a new Queen
or after a successful campaign, as in 1357, when Edward III. "came over
the Bridge and through the City of London, with the King of France and
other prisoners of rich ransom in his train. He entered the city about
tierce [9 a.m.] and made for Westminster; but at the news of his coming so
great a crowd of folk ran together to see this marvellous sight, that for
the press of the people he could scarce reach his palace after noonday."
Frequent again were the royal tournaments at Smithfield, Cheapside, and
Westminster, or "trials by battle" in those same lists, when one gentleman
had accused another of treachery, and London citizens might see the
quarrel decided by God's judgment.[100] Here were welcome contrasts to the
monotony of household life; for there was in all these shows a piquant
element of personal risk, or at least of possible broken heads for others.
Even if the King threw down his truncheon before the bitter end of the
duel, even if no bones were broken at the tournament, something at least
would happen amongst the crowd. Fountains ran wine in the morning, and
blood was pretty sure to be shed somewhere before night. In 1396, when the
little French Princess of eight years was brought to her Royal bridegroom
at Westminster, nine persons were crushed to death on London Bridge, and
the Prior of Tiptree was among the dead. Even the church processions, as
episcopal registers show, ended not infrequently in scuffling, blows, and
bloodshed; and the frequent holy days enjoyed then, as since, a sad
notoriety for crime. Moreover, these things were not, as with us, mere
matters of newspaper knowledge; they stared the passer-by in the face.
Chaucer must have heard from his father how the unpopular Bishop Stapledon
was torn from his horse at the north door of St. Paul's and beheaded with
two of his esquires in Cheapside; how the clergy of the cathedral and of
St. Clement's feared to harbour the corpses, which lay naked by the
roadside at Temple Bar until "women and wretched poor folk took the
Bishop's naked corpse, and a woman gave him an old rag to cover his belly,
and they buried him in a waste plot called the Lawless Church, with his
squires by his side, all naked and without office of priest or
clerk."[101] Chaucer himself must have seen some of the many similar
tragedies in 1381, for they are among the few events of contemporary
history which we can definitely trace in his poems--
Have ye not seen some time a pale face
Among a press, of him that hath been led
Toward his death, where as him gat no grace,
And such a colour in his face hath had,
Men mighte know his face that was bestead
Amonges all the faces in that rout?[102]
What modern Londoner has witnessed this, or anything like it? Yet to all
his living readers Chaucer appealed confidently, "Have ye not seen?"
Scores of wretched lawyers and jurors were hunted down in that riot, and
hurried through the streets to have their heads hacked off at Tower Hill
or Cheapside, "and many Flemings lost their head at that time, and namely
[specially] they that could not say 'Bread and Cheese,' but 'Case and
Brode.'"[103] It may well have been Simon of Sudbury's white face that
haunted Chaucer, when the mob forgot his archbishopric in the unpopularity
of his ministry, forgot the sanctity of the chapel at whose altar he had
taken refuge, "paid no reverence even to the Lord's Body which the priest
held up before him, but worse than demons (who fear and flee Christ's
sacrament) dragged him by the arms, by his hood, by different parts of the
body towards their fellow-rioters on Tower Hill without the gates. When
they had come thither, a most horrible shout arose, not like men's shouts,
but worse beyond all comparison than all human cries, and most like to the
yelling of devils in hell. Moreover, they cried thus whensoever they
beheaded men or tore down their houses, so long as God permitted them to
work their iniquity unpunished."[104] De Quincey has noted how such cries
may make a deeper mark on the soul than any visible scene. And here again
Chaucer has brought his own experience, though half in jest, as a parallel
to the sack of Ilion and Carthage or the burning of Rome--
So hideous was the noise, _benedicite!_
Certes, he Jacke Straw, and his meinie
Ne made never shoutes half so shrill,
When that they woulden any Fleming kill ...[105]
Last tragedy of all--but this time, though he may well have seen, the poet
could no longer write--Richard II.'s corpse "was brought to St. Paul's in
London, and his face shown to the people," that they might know he was
really dead.[106]
Nor was there less comedy than tragedy in the London streets; the heads
grinned down from the spikes of London Bridge on such daily buffooneries
as scarcely survive nowadays except in the amenities of cabdrivers and
busmen. The hue and cry after a thief in one of these narrow streets,
encumbered with show-benches and goods of every description, must at any
time have been a Rabelaisian farce; and still more so when it was the
thief who had raised the hue and cry after a true man, and had slipped off
himself in the confusion. The crowds who gather in modern towns to see a
man in handcuffs led from a dingy van up the dingy court steps would have
found a far keener relish in the public punishments which Chaucer saw on
his way to and from work; fraudulent tradesmen in the pillory, with their
putrid wares burning under their noses, or drinking wry-mouthed the
corrupt wine which they had palmed off on the public; scolding wives in
the somewhat milder "thewe"; sometimes a penitential procession all round
the city, as in the case of the quack doctor and astrologer whose story is
so vividly told by the good Monk of St. Alban's. The impostor "was set on
a horse [barebacked] with the beast's tail in his hand for a bridle, and
two pots which in the vulgar tongue we call _Jordans_ bound round his
neck, with a whetstone in sign that he earned all this by his lies; and
thus he was led round the whole city."[107] A lay chronicler might have
given us the reverse of the medal; some priest barelegged in his shirt,
with a lighted taper in his hand, doing penance for his sins before the
congregation of his own church. The author of "Piers Plowman" knew this
well enough; in introducing us to his tavern company, it is a priest and a
parish clerk whom he shows us cheek-by-jowl with the two least reputable
ladies of the party. The whole passage deserves quoting in full as a
picture of low life indeed, but one familiar enough to Chaucer and his
friends in their day; for it is a matter of common remark that even the
distance which separated different classes in earlier days made it easier
for them to mix familiarly in public. The very catalogue of this tavern
company is a comedy in itself, and may well conclude our survey of common
London sights. Glutton, on his way to morning mass, has passed Bett the
brewster's open door; and her persuasive "I have good ale, gossip" has
broken down all his good resolutions--
Then goeth Glutton in, and great oaths after.
Ciss the seamstress sat on the bench,
Wat the warrener, and his wife drunk,
Tim the tinker, and twain of his knaves,
Hick the hackneyman and Hugh the needler;
Clarice of Cock's Lane, the clerk of the church,
Sir Piers of Prydie and Pernel of Flanders;
An hayward and an hermit, the hangman of Tyburn,
Daw the dyker, with a dozen harlots [rascals
Of porters and pickpurses and pilled tooth-drawers; [bald
A ribiber and a ratter, a raker and his knave [lute-player, scavenger
A roper and a ridingking, and Rose the disher, [mercenary trooper
Godfrey the garlicmonger and Griffin the Welshman,
And upholders an heap, early by the morrow [furniture-brokers
Give Glutton with glad cheer good ale to hansel.[108] [try
[Illustration: A TOOTH-DRAWER OF THE 14TH CENTURY, WITH A WREATH OF PAST
TROPHIES OVER HIS SHOULDER
(FROM MS. ROY. VI. E. 6 f. 503 b)]