sometimes they were more successful, though their success was usually
temporary and vengeance overtook them sooner or later. No courts seem to
have been so unpopular as those of the Church; dealing with moral
offences, they touched the lives of the people in a way which must have
led to constant irritation, even if the archdeacons and their summoners
had not been unfair and extortionate. That they were so was the pretty
general opinion of mediæval Englishmen, from Chaucer to his contemporary
John Belgrave, who, when the archdeacon of Leicester was going to hold a
court, set up in his church a clearly written bill setting forth that the
archdeacon and his officials might well rank with the judges who condemned
Susannah, giving unrighteous judgment, oppressing the innocent, and
suffering evildoers. This so terrified the archdeacon and his officials,
possibly made cowards by their consciences, that they dared not hold their
courts. Civil courts were also liable to be broken up, especially the
open-air courts held by sheriffs. On one occasion, in the fourteenth
century, when the sheriff of Sussex was holding such a court, John
Ashburnham rode up, with a small boy bearing his tabard, and so threatened
the sheriff that he incontinently fled. To hasten his going Ashburnham
whistled on his fingers--a street-boy's accomplishment to which I must
admit I have never managed to attain in spite of repeated efforts--at
which whistle his esquire and other men in ambush suddenly rose up. Even
the assize courts were liable to be interfered with, especially in the
north, and at the end of the reign of Edward II. there were in Lancashire
several men of position who rode about with armed bands and turned up at
the courts with fifty or sixty ruffians to persuade their adversaries not
to proceed with their suits, or, if such peaceful picketing proved
unavailing, to terrorise the justices. Chief of these was Sir Walter
Bradshaw. He had been one of the sworn adherents of Sir Adam Banaster in
his rebellion, and having assisted in the attack on Liverpool Castle and
the capture of Halton, had fled the country after the defeat of his
friends at Preston. Returning later, he carried on a private war with Sir
Richard de Holand, another ruffian of the same kidney, each of them riding
about with small armies, oppressing each other's tenants and openly
defying the courts. These quarrels between county families were
undoubtedly more exciting when the process of cutting one another was
conducted with swords instead of with averted eyes and upturned noses, but
whether they were more conducive to the merriness of their rival retainers
may be doubted. These retainers, if we may trust Sir Ralph Evers, did not
always play their parts with the politeness and courtesy which their
masters displayed, and, in fact, on one occasion he remonstrated with Sir
Roger Hastings' servant, saying, 'Ye false hurson kaytyffes, I shall lerne
you curtesy and to knowe a gentilman.' It is possible that he was feeling
irritated at the time, as he had been lying in wait to ambush Sir Roger,
and it must have been annoying to find that he had only caught his
servants. Sir Roger himself seems to have been rather quick-tempered; he
had a grudge against one Ralph Jenner, and on his way to church on
Christmas Day discovered that Ralph was in the church; he at once decided
that the season of peace and goodwill was a suitable occasion to make an
end of his quarrel (and of his adversary), but the vicar flung himself on
his knees before him, while Lady Hastings ran up to Ralph Jenner
exclaiming, 'Woo worthe man this day! The chirche wolbe suspended and thou
slayn withoute thou flee away and gette thee oute of his sighte.'
Whereupon Ralph, either out of consideration for the parishioners or
himself, prudently fled.
[Illustration: '_He incontinently fled._']
It sometimes happened that these imperious gentry reaped the reward of
their own lawlessness and goaded their oppressed tenants to active
rebellion. As early as the twelfth century the sheriff of Hants is found
grimly entering in his accounts money spent on doing justice on the
peasants who burned their lord. At Faccombe in the same county, in 1426,
John Punchardon, lord of the manor, was dragged from his bed one Sunday
night, carried out into the fields, and there done to death. In this case
there was probably some personal feeling in the matter, as the murderers
included five members of the family of Cosyn, whose ancestors had formerly
held the manor, but who had now come down to the position of labourers. A
case in which the motive of rebellion was more clearly resentment to
oppression occurred at Preston in Sussex, in 1280, when the villeins of
Simon de Pierpoint set fire to his manor-house, and with drawn knives and
flourished axes compelled him to swear upon the Gospels that he would
demand no services from them without their consent, and would take no
action against them for their violence. At the same time they destroyed
their lord's tabard, so beat his charger that it could never be used again
and slew his 'gentle falcon,' thus wreaking their wrath on the outward
signs of his nobility. Such revolts were much more common in towns; for
instance, at Lynne, in 1313, when Robert Muhaut tried to exercise his
authority in a new direction, a crowd of tradesmen, under the leadership
of the prior, assaulted his house, dragged him out and made him stand on a
stall in the market-place and swear on the Host that he would not
interfere with the town officers. At Bristol, also about the same time,
the burgesses quarrelled with the castellan, barricaded the streets and
erected an embattled wall from behind which they shot into the castle, and
at Oxford the watchmen were on several occasions shot at with arrows:--I
have known, in more recent times, a casual shot at a proctor with a lump
of sugar have more disastrous effects--to the shooter.
[Illustration: '_... compellyd them for to devour the same writte._']
But if the lords of manors, town officials, and judges occasionally found
their authority slighted and their persons endangered by the disrespect of
those who should have been subservient to them, their trials were not to
be compared with those of the inferior officers such as bailiffs. In the
fourteenth century, when Philip of Berwick was elected as bailiff of
Hailsham, he had to fly for his life to escape from a certain John of
Buckholt, who terrorised the whole neighbourhood, chasing the vicar into
his church, killing several persons, and so frightening the coroner that
he dared not hold any inquests. With such men about as this John of
Buckholt, who was known as king among his people, the life of a bailiff
was not a happy one, and in particular, the life of the process-server was
exciting, but not necessarily merry. It can hardly have been cheering to
the man who had to serve a writ in Drayton Basset to know that the
offenders were boasting that 'whoo so ever wold be so bolde to serve any
warrant there shuld runne upon a pycheforke.' It was also not an uncommon
experience that Thomas Talbot and Thomas Gaiford had when they served a
writ on Agnes Motte, who 'reysyd upp her neghburs with wepyns drawen for
to slee and mordre the said bryngers of the writte and compellyd them for
to devour the same writte and ther, sitting upon ther knees, in saving of
ther lyves, eete the writte bothe wex and parchement,' in fact, from the
number of similar instances recorded it would almost seem that
writ-servers must have been accustomed to a diet of wax and parchment.
There seems also to have been a custom of serving writs in church, not
unattended with risk, as the sacredness of the place does not seem always
to have subdued the temper of the recipient. When William Nash served a
writ on John Archer in Ilmingdon churchyard he retorted by threatening to
make him eat it, and afterwards, as Nash was kneeling in the church, he
came up to him and said, 'Pray, longenekked horesson, by Goddes armes,
thou shalt be hanged ere I ete holy bred.' John Cheyney, also, when he was
served with a writ in church, took the server by the shoulders and thrust
him out of the church, saying that he would slit his nose, stove his eyes,
crop his ears, and 'make hym a curtall.'
[Illustration: '_... thrust him out of the church._']
No, taking into consideration the injuries inflicted by the more powerful
men in authority upon those subject to them and the pains suffered by
those having the responsibilities of office without its powers, I do not
think the mediæval populace was always merry and bright, and if any one,
after reading this article, still thinks that England in the Middle Ages
was a 'merrie' place, I can only say with Robert Sutton, 'Tprhurt,
tprhurt!'
VI
IVORY AND APES AND PEACOCKS
There is a sentence in the biblical account of the wonders of Solomon's
reign that has always had a fascination for me. 'Once in three years came
the navy of Tarshish bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes and
peacocks.' And the fascination lies not in the crude magnificence of tusks
and ingots, the burnished brilliance of peacocks, or the uncanny, too
human, grotesqueness of apes, but in all the varied multitude of unnamed
articles which must have constituted the cargo of those far-faring ships
of Tarshish--gaudy tissues interwoven with bettle-wings, strange shells,
jewel-crusted swords, carvings in sandal-wood and in the wood of the
mysterious almug tree. Possibly the almug tree is not mysterious to the
well-informed man, but I admit that I have always carefully avoided
looking it up; I might say, as was said of the purple cow, 'I never saw an
almug tree, I never want to see one,' because I am certain that it would
prove a vast disappointment. The unlading of a ship is an enlarged and, it
must be admitted, less personal version of the unpacking of a Christmas
hamper, a joy apportioned to childhood, not, in nine cases out of ten,
because in our maturer years we lose the appreciation of disinterring the
unexpected from swathings of paper, string, and straw, but because the
opportunities are denied us. Of course, it is given to few to unpack a
ship, and there may be persons of little imagination to whom a bill of
lading seems dull and uninspiring, but to me every such list is a
potential hamper. When the bill of lading is of the fifteenth century
there is added something of the feeling which we have when turning out a
drawer in an old forgotten bureau of our great-grandmother's. The everyday
objects of that time are now unfamiliar, and our ingenuity is taxed to
guess the use of some of them, while on the other hand it is quite a shock
to find that other things which we still use were known so long ago.
[Illustration: '_latten "Agnus Dei."_']
The hold of a ship, like poverty, makes strange bed-fellows acquaint. A
hundred distaves, emblems of peaceful home-life, came into London port in
1390 side by side with ninety-three dozen swords, these latter for Gerard
van Barle, who must have been either an armourer in business on a very
large scale, or else an army contractor. Six hundred oranges, at fifteen a
penny, we find sandwiched between eight barrels of varnish and nine glass
cups; a jar of preserved dates is thrust in between twelve yards of linen
cloth and a barrel containing seven and a half dozen beaver hats. A ship
of Dieppe came into Winchelsea harbour in 1490 with damask and satin and
pipes of wine, razors and needles and mantles of leopard skins, five gross
of playing-cards and eight gross of latten 'Agnus Dei.' These last, which
I regret to say seem to have been considerably less valued than the
'devil's books' which accompanied them, were plaques stamped with the
figure of the holy Lamb, and it would seem that they were so common that
the word became a synonym for a plaque, as in an inventory of the jewels
of Henry VII. occurs 'an Agnus of the Salutation of Our Lady.' In the same
way the component parts of the rosary became so intimately associated in
men's minds with prayers that when we read in a list of cargo of
'pater-nosters' or 'bedys' of amber, coral, tin, or 'tree' it is
impossible to be sure whether they were rosaries or beads in the modern
sense of ornaments. Devotional objects naturally figured largely in the
imports of mediæval days, images of painted wood or tin occurring with
frequency in the London customs accounts of 1390, and the alabaster
carvings for which England, and in particular Nottingham, was famous form
quite the most interesting of our exports in the fifteenth century. As a
whole it must be admitted that our exports at that time were very dull
compared to our imports; cloth, hides, and corn are but uninspiring
merchandise, and although the frequent mention of ale and beer might cheer
the heart of Mr. Belloc or the late Mr. Calverley it leaves me cold. One
item, however, is interesting in the fifteenth-century exports from
Bristol, and that is the constant occurrence in cargoes for Ireland, and
for nowhere else, of casks of 'corrupt wine.' This looks like 'another
injustice to Ireland.' With this untempting liquor went a good quantity of
honey, possibly to counteract its acidity, and of 'battery-ware,' which
was really such things as kettles, but may have been endeared to the Irish
from an imaginary connection with assault.
If the exported cloth was uninspiring in its lack of variety the same
charge cannot be brought against the imported stuffs. There is some room
for imagination in the cargo of Matthew Clayson's boat, which brought
kerchiefs of Cyprus and Syria (so at least I interpret _cirian_), oriental
kerchiefs and glittering (_relusant_) kerchiefs, with 707 lb. of pins
wherewith to fasten them. There is also something satisfactory about
baudrik powdered with Cyprian gold, and even about chamelet and sarcenet.
I own to a delight in the old drapery terms, and, whatever their merits as
materials, I feel that our modern trade terms such as viyella and eoline
(if these be their names) are feeble and finicking besides arras, bayes,
bewpers, boulters, borratoes, buffins, bustyans, bombacyes, calimancoes,
carrells, dornicks, frisadoes, fustians, grograines, mockadoes, minnikins,
makarells, oliotts, pomettes, plumettes, perpetuanas, rashes, russells,
sayes, stamells, tukes, tamettes, and woadmolles. But if these and similar
words have a fascination it is partly a fascination of the unknown, and I
should be grateful to any one who could tell me what it was that Walter
Hake brought into London port in 1390, for, besides two barrels with
fourteen nests of mazer cups and other recognisable goods, he carried
three thousand five hundred 'redwark,' ten hundred 'ruskyn,' as much
'popl,' and, most puzzling of all, eight thousand 'of good work' (_boni
operis_). I admit the temptation to endow the work with plurality and to
set this load of good works in opposition to a contemporary Rabelaisian
cargo of 'fartes of Portingale.'
[Illustration: '_... playing innumerable pranks._']
So far the cargoes of our ships have not greatly resembled those of the
ships of Tarshish, but, if the peacocks are to seek, we can easily find
the ivory, in the shape of combs, and as to the apes the _Clement_ of Rye
in 1490 brought home four dozen baboons (_baboynes_). It must, however, be
admitted that these baboons would not have found a home at the Zoo--they
were in fact little grotesque figures, and in that sense the word occurs
often in mediæval inventories. Edward III. had not only a number of
pieces of plate with 'babewyns' upon them, but one cup described as gilt
and enamelled with 'diverse babwynrie.' At the same time the real monkey
was a common enough object; he figures in the margin of scores of
illuminated manuscripts, playing innumerable pranks, not infrequently in
the dress of a priest, a monk, or a friar. Monkeys were kept by many of
the nobles, and when Thomas Becket went, as Chancellor of England, on an
embassy to the court of France an ape sat on every pack horse of his
gorgeous cavalcade. The merchandise of Venice in 1436 included 'Apes and
japes and marmusettes tayled,' and so far was the ape a common import that
at many seaports monkeys figured in the customs lists, the due at Norwich
being 40_d._ each, no small sum. With the monkey in these lists is also
found the bear, who at Norwich paid 42_d._ for admission to the country.
Bears were even commoner sights than monkeys, for not only were there the
performing bears in charge of itinerant showmen, but many of the poor
brutes were kept for sport, to be baited by dogs. It was probably for
purposes of sport that Sir John Bourchier, Earl of Bath, kept half-a-dozen
bears, which after the Reformation he stabled in the dismantled priory of
the Black Friars at Fisherton, near Salisbury. There they lived happily
until, according to Harry Sutton, their keeper, John Davy and Agnes his
wife with other naughty and evil-disposed persons broke into the close
where they were kept, and Agnes, 'being thene of most wyckyd and damnable
disposicion,' scattered poisoned bread on the ground and in the water
where the bears drank. As a result three of the bears died, as did also a
poor man's sow that drank of the pond; and a poor woman who washed her
face in the water 'so swelled that she was like to have died,' which I
take leave to think was an exaggeration on the part of Harry Sutton. There
is always another side to every story, and according to John Davy he had a
lease of part of the friary lands, and his wife was quite peaceably
walking there when Sutton, to frighten her away, untied 'the grettyste and
most terryble bere' and set him at her, whereat she being 'sore affrayed
and abashed' ran away and in running fell over a sow, not the poor man's
sow that died, but a sow of lead, and received a hurt from which she died.
The two versions are singularly divergent, and if Sutton could show three
dead bears and a sow in support of his story, Davy could show a dead wife
in support of his.
Henry III. was the proud possessor of a polar bear, which used to be taken
for a swim in the Thames to disport itself and to catch fish, no doubt to
the great joy of the young Londoners. This was a present from the King of
Norway, and gifts of strange beasts were often made to our kings, the
favourites naturally being lions and leopards, in allusion to the royal
arms, the Black Prince on one occasion sending his father a lion and a
leopard. In passing it may be remarked that it is a curious trait of the
heraldic lion that it cannot look a man in the face; when a lion looks at
you it becomes a leopard. This, I admit, sounds rather like the
schoolboy's description of the tortuous river of Palestine, 'The Jordan
runs straight down the middle of the map, but when you look at it it
wriggles,'--but it is none the less a fact. In early heraldry the lean and
fearsome beast that does duty for a lion when seen in profile is called a
leopard when its full face is shown; it is true that a later generation of
heraldic writers converted the three golden leopards of England into
'lions passant guardant,' but leopards they were, and, for those of us who
prefer the heraldry of the classic period to its debased and jargonised
descendant, leopards they remain. At the same time, as the live lions
could hardly be expected to look continuously over their left shoulders,
the royal menagerie at the tower was usually stocked with real leopards
as well as lions. For generations, and indeed centuries, the lions of the
Tower enjoyed much the same privileged position as the eponymous bears of
Berne, and were so emphatically the sight to which all country cousins, by
a humane version of 'Christianos ad leones,' had to be taken that their
name became, and remains, synonymous with all that is double-asterisked by
Baedeker.
[Illustration: '_When a lion looks at you it becomes a leopard._']
Mediæval Englishmen seem to have a partiality for strange beasts, combined
with a reluctance to pay exorbitant fees for seeing them. In 1364 Edward
III. had to order the mayor and sheriffs of London to protect Roger Owery
and John Want, to whom he had committed the custody of a certain Egyptian
beast called an 'Oure,' various persons, who apparently wished to see the
beast without paying, having threatened to assault them and kill the
'Oure.' What this creature was is not clear; possibly it was the aurochs
or buffalo--Borde's 'vengeable beast,' the Bovy of Bohemia. Whatever it
was its keepers, who had no doubt looked forward to making a good thing
out of exhibiting it, seem to have had a doubtful bargain, and the same
fate befell Thomas Charles, 'squier,' and William Lynde just about a
century later when they obtained from the king the keeping of his 'foul
called an Estrich.' They sent the ostrich round the country in charge of
Richard Axsmith and John Piers, 'for to disporte with the sight of hym the
kynges true lieges,'--and incidentally, though they do not think that
worth mentioning, to put money in their own pockets. 'How be hit that
oother mysdoers in certain places wher lite reverence is doon or shewed to
anything of the kinges, as the dede hathe proven, have withoute cause
wrongfully doon grete trespasses and offenses as wel to the said foul as
to Richard Axsmyth and John Piers.' At Royston a mob, egged on by the
prior, assaulted the keepers and caused the ostrich 'to ben seyn of alle
peuple' and the unfortunate 'fowle' was 'hurten so sore that he may
never be hool, as hit on hym wel appereth.' When they came to Norwich one
of the sheriffs cast them into prison as 'false Flemings,' and 'caused the
foul to be seyn in the common strete of alle peuple that list to come seen
hym for nought.' Nor did they have any better luck at the next town, Bury
St. Edmunds, where they were again imprisoned and the bird exhibited for
nothing, the townsmen 'axing hem who made hem so hardy as to go on with
the kinges foule about among his peuple without a commission.' This seems
to have been the end of their tour in the eastern counties.
[Illustration: '_The unfortunate "fowle" was "hurten so sore."_']
The ostrich does not often occur under that name, but its egg was often
made into a cup, under the name of a griffon's egg or 'grype's ey.' Edward
III. had more than one 'oef de greffon,' and Henry IV. had half-a-dozen
'gryppesheys,' but possibly by this time the term was only conventional
and the true origin of the egg was known, as one of these 'gryppesheys'
was mounted on 'two white ostriches.' The griffin, half eagle and half
lion, was a very popular mediæval beast; that no specimen is ever recorded
to have been taken round on show may have been due to the fact that this
beast 'so much disdaineth vassalrey and subjection that he will never be
surprised alive.' The appearance amongst the jewels of Richard II. of an
almsdish supported by two griffons suggests an analogy with its modern
relation the Jubjub, of which it is said that 'In charity meetings it
stands at the door, And collects though it does not subscribe.' If doubt
is to be thrown on examples of the griffon's eggs, still more dubitable is
the 'drinking vessel made of the horn of a griffon, mounted in copper
gilt,' which belonged to Edward III. This may well rank with a relic
preserved in the Cathedral Priory of Rochester,--'the rod of Moses which
budded,'--in view of the fact that it was Aaron's rod which budded and
that a griffon has no horns.
If our forefathers never had a chance of seeing a griffon and failed to
appreciate an ostrich when they did see one, there is no question that
they saw and appreciated the first elephant that landed in England. It was
a present from King Louis of France to Henry III. and landed at Sandwich
in 1255, whence it proceeded leisurely to London, filling all beholders
with astonishment. It only lived a couple of years, and when its successor
came over I do not know, but I suspect that there was a very long interval
before England was again visited by an elephant. Before its lamented
decease it sat for its portrait to Matthew Paris and another contemporary
chronicler, and the resulting sketches are quite recognisable. The
elephant was not a very favourite subject with mediæval artists, though
the Earl of Arundel in 1397 had a piece of tapestry (probably oriental)
'powdered with lions, olyfauntes and imagery,' and if any one wants to
know what it was like they have only to go to an old house in Market
Street at Rye, where they can see just such a piece of tapestry,
'olyfauntes' and all, reproduced as a wall-painting. Talking of elephants,
a learned man not many years back wrote an article with the fascinating
title, 'How the Elephant became a Bishop'; as a matter of fact it dealt
with the evolution of the chess 'bishop,' but what a title for a fairy
tale!