interest as showing that the virtue of a fine-sounding name for a medicine
was recognised some six centuries before Mr. Ponderevo hit on the sonorous
Tono-Bungay. Here are some of the items; Oxerocrosium, Diaterascos,
Apostolicon, Dyaculon, Ceroneum, Popilion, Agrippa, Gracia Dei--all of
them compounds of the patent medicine types; Galbanum, Armoniak, Apoponak,
Bedellum, Collofonium, Mastik, and Dragon's blood--simpler vegetable
preparations; Seruse, Calamine, Litharge, and Tutie--which are mineral
substances: Tutie being 'bred of the sparkles of brasen furnaces,
whereinto store of the mineral Calamine beaten to dust, hath been cast.'
Of the high-sounding preparations Popilion was so called from its
containing poplar leaves; Diaterascos was a plaster compounded of pitch,
wax, acetic acid, and various aromatics; Ceroneum was a similar plaster
without the acid, containing rather more aromatics and also saffron,
aloes, and litharge; and Dyaculon was a third variety of plaster, very
remotely, if at all, connected with the adhesive Diachylon plasters of
modern times. 'The oynment that is called Agrippa' was still used in the
fifteenth century for deafness, and at that date Apostolicon was made as
follows: Take equal quantities of 'vermod (wormwood), smallache (water
parsley), centori, waybred (? plantain), and the rote of osmond and als
muche of egremoyne (agrimony) as of all the others,' seethe in vinegar and
add an ounce of 'medwax (beeswax) that is multen in woman's milk' (a
favourite solvent). To this is added alum, galbanum, pitch, and
turpentine, and the whole worked up into an ointment. If this is not
sufficiently elaborate for your purpose, 'Her is makyng of Gracia Dei:
Take betanye, pympernel and vervayn, of ilkon an handfull, bothe crope and
rote, and wasshe hem clene and stamp hem smalle and do hem in a new erthen
pote and put therto a galon of white wyne, and if you may get no white
wyne take red, and sethe them till yt come to a potell:' let it cool,
strain through canvas, seethe again, and add half-a-pound of 'gud mede
wax, bot loke the wax be molten first, and woman's milke of knave child
and a pond of rosyn and a pond of gome litarge and a pond of galbanum and
a pond of popanelke (? opoponax) and a pond of arestolog rotundum
(birth-wort) and an unce of mastike wel poudred,' stir well and then 'do
als mykill baume (balsam) als weies a peny and a ferthyng and lete it
sethe whil you may say iij _Miserere mei deus_ all the hole salme'; take
off the fire, add gum turpentine, and stir till melted, strain and skim
off any dirt with a feather. When cold it should be worked up between the
hands until it becomes of sticky consistency, it is then to be spread on
clean linen or leather, and is good for all manner of sores that be
perilous. There is another method of preparing Gracia Dei which was used
by 'Hopkyn of the fermory of Killyngworth,' that is to say in the
infirmary at Kenilworth Priory, and a third, devised by 'the gude erl of
Herforth' which is much more elaborate, the herbs used being 'betany,
vervayne, pympernel, comfrey, osmond, dayshy, mousher (mouse-ear)
weybrede, rib (? rhubarb), milfoile (the yarrow, which in Saxon leechdom
seems to have been held good for everything from headaches to
snake-bites), centory, anence, violete, flos campi (? campion), smalache,
sauge, and egremoyn.'
[Illustration: '_... led through the middle of the city._']
When these simple remedies were not successful recourse could always be
had to charms--either sheer pagan gibberish or rhyming prayers and
invocations of saints. It was obviously appropriate for the sufferer from
toothache to appeal to St. Appolonia, who was tortured by having her teeth
broken with a mallet, but it was less obvious why a man with the falling
sickness should cut his little finger and write with his blood the names
of the three kings, Jasper, Balthazar, and Melchior, on a piece of
parchment and hang it round his neck; nor do I know why SS. Nichasius and
Cassian should be invoked against any 'erwig or any worme that is cropyn
into a mans bed.' It was as well in any case to be sure that the charm was
genuine, as Roger atte Hache found in 1382. His wife, Joan, being ill, he
accepted the word of one Roger Clerk of Wandsworth that he was skilled
in medical lore and paid him 12_d._ to undertake her cure. Clerk took a
leaf of parchment out of a book and sewed it up in cloth of gold and bade
Joan put it round her neck. When she got no better her husband grew
suspicious and summoned Clerk for fraud. Clerk, being asked to explain the
value of the piece of parchment, said that it was a good charm for fever
and contained the words 'Anima Christi sanctifica me' and other similar
pious expressions, but upon examination it was found that there were no
such words upon it, and as he proved to be ignorant of physic and
illiterate, it was adjudged that he should be led through the middle of
the city, with trumpets and pipes, riding on a horse without a saddle,
with the parchment and a whetstone (the recognised symbol of a liar) hung
round his neck, and in front of him the unseemly emblem of the medical
profession.
V
THOSE IN AUTHORITY
It is a common delusion, or, not to beg the question before producing
evidence, a common opinion, that England in olden times, by which I mean
that vague period when all words were spelled with an 'e' at their end and
most with a 'y' in the middle, was a 'merrie' place. This idea is held not
only by the _laudatores temporis acti_, who find it safer to repine for a
past which can never be recovered than to enthuse over a future which may
arrive and prove disappointing, but also by those energetic persons who
set out to make the world enjoy itself and imagine that their schemes for
compulsory happiness will really only restore a lost gaiety to the nation.
Life in the Middle Ages was undoubtedly more highly coloured, more varied,
more picturesque, but that it was merrier is at least a doubtful
assumption. As the life of a people is reflected in their arts, we may
compare the life of the Middle Ages to the quaint, irregular lines of some
unimproved village street, or to the older parts of such towns as
Winchester and Guildford, and contrast it with the mid-Victorian era, the
flattest and dullest of all periods, as typified by Brixton, or with the
frivolity of the present day, portrayed in the outbreak of terra-cotta and
white wood flimsinesses all over the country. But the picture is not
complete. In the background, behind the straight sameness of 'Alma
Terrace,' or the quirked and joggled sameness of 'Mafeking Avenue,' lies
nothing more terrible than the 'desirable residence' or the 'eligible
mansion.' Behind your picturesque old-world cottages frowns the shadow of
the feudal fortress. And, as Huxley remarked to the young man who said
that he did not see what difference it would have made to him if his
great-grandfather had or had not been a monkey, 'it must have made a lot
of difference to your great-grandmother.'
It was not without reason that such names as Batvilayne, Scorchevilayne,
and Maungevilayne are found amongst the landowning classes. There were men
who would beat, scorch, or devour their villeins, and some six-and-a-half
centuries ago an ancestor of the present Lord Ashburnham could oppress his
tenants until they were reduced to literal beggary, and when they
complained to the Justices could airily reply that they were his villeins
and, short of injury to life and limb, he need not answer them. Such was
the position of the bulk of the peasantry, but in practice they did not
often suffer by it, for it was obviously to the advantage of the landlord
to have prosperous tenants. It was at the hands of the officials, the
swarm of stewards, bailiffs, catchpoles, and so forth, that the peasants,
yeomen, and smaller gentry suffered. These men, secure in the protection
of a chain of superiors reaching back to some great noble, lived on their
neighbours, wringing money from them on every, or no, pretext. A favourite
weapon was the jury list; the frequency with which juries were summoned
and the resulting inconvenience to those called away from their work made
the more wealthy willing to pay well for exemption; then money could be
obtained by summoning four or five times as many jurors as were required
and taking bribes from the superfluous to let them go home again. Another
common object of the country-side was the 'scotale,' which was a kind of
bean-feast. No doubt this lent an appearance of merriness to life in the
country, just as the wriggling of the worm on the hook lent it a
superficial air of gaiety which deceived old Isaak Walton, but it is
questionable if the feasters really enjoyed themselves, as they knew that
the ale which formed the main feature of the meal was brewed from malt
which they had unwillingly contributed, and that they were paying for the
(compulsory) privilege of consuming their own produce. Nor did the
townsmen escape entirely; even five hundred years ago the Christmas box
was an established extortion, and, in 1419, William Sevenok, Mayor of
London, had to forbid the custom of the servants of the mayor, sheriffs,
and corporation begging gifts from the tradesmen at Christmas, as it was
found that they used threats towards those who would not give and accepted
the gifts of others as bribes to overlook their offences against the
trading laws. Not only at Christmas did the servants of the city and the
court fleece the tradesmen; the doubtful privilege of supplying the royal
court with provisions could be, and frequently was, avoided by a gift to
the purveyors, and one result was that rogues from time to time went round
the breweries pretending to be court purveyors and taking money to leave
the ale alone. A rogue of a similar type, with a turn of humour, was
William Pykemyle, who in 1379 went to the town house of the Countess of
Norfolk, and, pretending to be a royal messenger, left word that she was
to dine with the King at Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, next day; having
received from her a reward of 3_s._ 4_d._ (royal messengers always
expecting a substantial tip) he went on to the Countess of Bedford and
gave a similar message, only making the place of dining Eltham. Whether
the ladies kept their appointments is not recorded, but the gay deceiver
was caught and committed to Newgate.
If the men of the Middle Ages had had nothing more to complain of than
extortion by threats and trickery they might have been merry enough, but
when the bailiffs exercised their powers of arbitrary arrest and
imprisonment it was another matter. From the sheriffs downwards those
'clothed with a little brief authority' used it unscrupulously to fill
their own pockets, dragging men off to prison on false accusations, or on
none, and causing convicted felons to accuse the innocent of participation
in their crimes. Release from prison depended solely upon the payment of a
fine to the officer concerned, and was almost as easily available for the
guilty as for the innocent. Upon occasion the powers of the law could be
used to assist the criminal and punish his victim. During the misrule of
the last years of Henry III., one, Wilkin of Gloseburne, accused Gilbert
Wood of killing his son; Gilbert promptly turned the tables by bribing the
gaoler of York, who arrested Wilkin on a charge of theft, bound him naked
to a post in the prison, and kept him without food until he paid 40_s._
About the same time, in Suffolk, a man stole six geese belonging to
Constance de Barnaucle; possibly he would have argued that they were
'barnacle geese,' and as this species notoriously grew on trees they were
_feræ naturæ_, in which there could be no property. If so, he must have
felt that his case was weak, as he ran away, pursued by the lady's
servant. The thief was caught by the bailiffs of Thingoe Hundred, but
either they were friends of his or they saw a chance of getting the geese
themselves, for they let him go free, and when the pursuer came up they
showed half-a-dozen other geese, which he naturally failed to identify;
they then talked big about libel actions and false accusations and
terrified 4_s._ out of the unlucky man's pockets.
[Illustration: '_... failed to identify the geese._']
Besides accusations of actual misdeeds, charges of opposing a predominant
or favouring a fallen faction could be used for purposes of extortion.
Towards the end of the reign of Edward II., when the Despensers were in
power, Alan of Teesdale, chamberlain to the younger Despenser, with the
assistance of Geoffrey Eston, the villainous gaoler of York, started a
report that Sir John de Barton had spoken ill of Hugh le Despenser,
whereat Hugh was much moved and furiously threatened Sir John, who for
fear of his power had to give them lands to appease their lord. The same
two scoundrels burnt down part of one of Alan's own mills and then laid
the blame first on Sir John de Barton, then on Thomas Vipont, and finally
on the Abbot of Byland, all of whom, for fear of the Despenser, paid heavy
compensation. They further extorted lands from Master Thomas de Leuesham
by threatening to accuse him of having been a partisan of Andrew de
Harclay, who, after winning the earldom of Carlisle by his loyalty at
Boroughbridge in 1322, had, the following year, been dramatically
degraded and executed as a traitor. Nearly a century earlier, Robert
Passelewe, Justice of the Jews, had extorted £60 from John le Prestre, a
wealthy Jew, by threatening to commit him to Corfe Castle for having
financed the Bishop of Carlisle and Hubert de Burgh, then in disgrace.
From the same Jew Passelewe extorted, amongst other things, a cameo worth
40 marks; he seems to have had an appreciation for jewels, as he
appropriated a 'camehew' and an emerald belonging to a Jew who was hanged,
and made Benedict Crispin give him another cameo, which he afterwards gave
to the Queen. Crispin was fleeced by several persons in high places and
had to part with another of his cameos, 'on which was engraved a chariot
with two angels,' to Peter de Rievaux, the Treasurer.
If the Jews were plundered we may at least put it to the credit of our
ancestors that they showed a fine impartiality in according similar
treatment to Christian clergy. The sheriff of Yorkshire, in 1315, wishing
to persuade Master Henry de Percy, rector of Wharrom, to surrender his
church, handed him over to Geoffrey Eston,[2] the gaoler of York, of whom
we have already said something, who bound him to a convicted criminal and
kept him five days without food or drink; at the end of that time he paid
£20 to be released, but he kept his church. Encouraged by this, the
sub-sheriff followed his superior's example and brought the rector of
Whixley to Geoffrey, who confined him 'in a horrible place in the prison'
until he produced 20 marks. Most prisons, probably, had a 'horrible
place,' usually an underground dungeon, such as 'the pit of the gaol' at
Exeter, or the 'fosse' at Newgate, or the place in the King's Bench
prison called by the grim humour of the fifteenth century 'Paradise,' from
which Alexander Lokke, who had been detained there 'alle this holy tyme of
Cristemasse,' begged to be removed to some other prison. Apart from these
dungeons the comfort of the prisoners depended largely on their possession
of money; they were not 'lodged at his majesty's expense,' but were
dependent upon money supplied by friends or on the alms of the charitable,
and their position when the gaoler was a tyrant was unenviable. In the
reign of Henry VIII. the keeper of Norwich gaol, Andrew Asketell, 'of his
uncharitabill and covetous mind' oppressed the poor prisoners, charging
them twice as much for ale as it cost outside--and ale, it must be
remembered, was in those days really 'the people's food in liquid
form'--and when kind people sent 'a potte ale' to the prisoners he made
his servants pour the drink in the streets and break the vessels. But he
did this once too often, when 'a litill boy haveng a veray power woman to
his moder in prison brought to her to ye prison wyndow a crok with ale.'
Edward Rede, alderman and J.P., seeing her drink thus snatched from her,
kindly sent her 'a cruse with drynk.' The arrival of this widow's cruse so
annoyed the keeper that he came up to the alderman and insulted him,
calling him 'a Bedlam man,' and as a result he saw prison life from a
fresh point of view. Some two centuries earlier Newgate was controlled by
Edmund le Lorimer, who ill-treated his prisoners shockingly, keeping them
short of food, depriving them of their share in the common alms, and
preventing them communicating with their friends. He robbed them, taking
from Roger Martel a gold cross with four garnets and a 'pere crapaudyn' or
toad-stone, the precious jewel which a toad bears in its head and which is
an invaluable antidote to poison, and he inflicted such severe 'penaunce'
to extort money that many died, including a knight, Sir John de Horn, and
that Roger de Colney, being loaded with irons and deprived of food,
snatched a knife from a companion and cut his throat.
All those in authority were not brutes; it is even recorded of a Suffolk
bailiff that finding on his recovery from illness that his deputy had been
guilty of extortion, he returned the money and dismissed the deputy. But
the reports from Yorkshire in 1275 were fairly typical; the bailiff of the
Earl of Lincoln had done 'many acts of oppression, rapine, and injuries
beyond belief'; 'many other things, beyond number and astonishing,' were
related of the sub-sheriff, and 'innumerable devilish acts of oppression'
were accredited to the steward of Earl Warenne. The earl himself was a man
of violence, who had turned about a fifth part of the county of Sussex
into a game preserve, and maintained armed keepers to prevent the peasants
from driving the deer out of their corn. The story is well known how, when
King Edward's commissioners demanded by what title he held his lands, he
produced a rusty sword and said 'by this my ancestors won their lands and
by this I will defend them.' Like most well-known stories this is
apocryphal, and in any case a distaff would have been more appropriate, as
his lands had descended through an heiress, but that he would have been
willing to protect his lands with the sword is likely enough. One of his
descendants, the Earl of Surrey of the time of Henry VIII. seems to have
inherited some of his lawlessness, as he was charged with 'a lewde and
unsemely manner of walking in the night abowght the stretes and breaking
wyth stonebowes (_i.e._ catapults) of certeyne wyndowes.' It does not
appear that he wanted 'Votes for Peers' and, in fact, he admitted that he
'hadde verye evyll done therein,' and was sent to the Fleet prison.
Life must certainly have been more exciting, if not merrier, in now
peaceful Sussex when Earl John de Warenne was alive. He was carrying on a
sort of private war with his neighbour, Robert Aguillon, who was also on
bad terms with his other neighbour, William de Braose, while further west,
at Midhurst, was John de Bohun, who displayed his contempt for the law by
attacking Luke de Vienne on the high road and ducking him in a horse-pond
when he was on his way to hold a court. The son and namesake of this
William de Braose showed his temper by insulting one of the Justices of
the King's Court who had given judgment against him. Edward I. was not the
man to excuse such conduct; he had, indeed, banished the Prince of Wales
from court for insolence towards a judge, and Braose had to walk in
penitential garb through Westminster Hall when the court was sitting and
apologise to the justice. With such examples set by their lords it is not
surprising that the smaller men adopted an attitude of swagger and
arrogance, riding with armed followers through markets and fairs for the
mere pleasure of frightening the people. As an example of apparently
pointless insolence, the constable of Shrewsbury gave his groom 4_d._ to
go through the village of Cressage calling out 'Wekare, Wekare,' to
insult both men and women. The character of the insult is not obvious, but
it was evidently clear to those concerned, as a woman dared to
remonstrate; the groom struck at her and wounded a man who came to her
assistance, but then had to fly and was shot--for which his lord obtained
full compensation.
[Illustration: '_... ducking him in a horse-pond._']
Whatever the meaning of 'Wekare,' there can be no doubt of the insult
conveyed by Robert Sutton to Roger of Portland, clerk of the Sheriff of
London, when he exclaimed in full court, 'Tprhurt, tprhurt!' This
monosyllable is a very trumpet blast of contempt and its significance
surely did not require to be emphasised by Robert's 'raising his
thumb'--whether to his nose or not it is not stated, which is a pity, as
it would have been interesting to find the 'long nose' flourishing in
1290. City Officers, and more particularly mayors and aldermen, were very
touchy, seeing and punishing 'vile and abominable abuse' in the most
harmless retort, and my sympathy is certainly with Collard, the cobbler,
who was sent to prison at Norwich because, when the mayor ordered him to
take off his beard he refused to do so and said, 'Noo, I was ones shaven
and I made an othe I wolde never have off my berde again, I was so evell
shaven.' Still there is no doubt that however arbitrary the authorities
may have been they also had their trials, and, if officials often abused
their powers, their was another side to the question. Smaller men than
William de Braose could, upon occasion, tell the judges what they thought
of them. In 1300 one Henry de Biskele came into the Sussex county court
and asked leave to say certain matters 'on the king's behalf,' and having
thus obtained silence and the attention of the whole court, he broke out
into violent abuse of one of the justices, calling him a liar and using
other opprobrious terms, for which he was lucky to escape with a fine of
20_s._ Some fifty years later a more violent act of contempt of court
occurred at Pevensey. John de Molyns, the Queen's steward, came to hold a
court there, but being busy appointed a deputy to take his place in the
morning; this official seems to have irritated the townsmen, and when he
ordered them to withdraw outside the bar, contrary to their local custom,
Roger Porter replied by challenging him to come outside and fight. During
the luncheon interval the deputy reported the state of affairs, and in the
afternoon the steward himself came to the court, preceded by the portreeve
carrying his white wand of office, but the townsmen refused to come when
summoned, Roger and Simon Porter in particular declaring that they were
not bound to attend. At last the steward rose in wrath and started to
seize the two Porters, who fled to their house and with drawn swords stood
in the doorway. A pitched battle ensued between them and the steward's
men, in which several were injured, but in the end victory rested with the
law.
[Illustration: '_... with drawn swords stood in the doorway._']
Even the King's Court at Westminster was not safe from disturbance. In
1332 John Parles, acting as attorney for Adam Basset in a plea of debt
against Florence de Aldham, was waiting in the great hall at Westminster,
where the court was in session. He was sitting on a table 'close to the
sellers of jewels,' from which it would seem that the lower end of the
hall was used for stalls, or at any rate for peddling jewellery, even
while cases were proceeding. Presently Florence came up with two men and
abused John Parles, threatening to kill him if he did not abandon the
suit; Richard Calware dragged him off the table and struck him a blow
which drew blood and Thomas Newark whipped out a knife and would have
killed him if he had not been restrained. John at once made his way to the
bar and complained to the judges, who ordered the arrest of his
assailants, but they struggled towards the door and were joined by Thomas
of Thornhamton with his sword drawn. But the clerks of the court,
apprentices, and attorneys barred the doors and disarmed them, and they
were all handed over to the warden of the Tower.